In another brilliant analysis, Janice Fiamengo demonstrates where Trump won the presidency.
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Not the End, Not Even the Beginning of the End
But a modest defeat for feminism in Donald Trump’s victory
Janice Fiamengo, Nov 15, 2024
In the week following the American election results, a consensus of sorts has emerged: this was about men.
Whether in distasteful embrace of “bro” masculinity, or in celebration of a world in which “male traits can build rather than destroy” (in the surprisingly sympathetic words of Quillette’s Claire Lehmann), men were the ones who determined the election outcome, so the story goes. Donald Trump was victorious over Kamala Harris because he gave men permission to reject feminist dictates, including about abortion.
A good deal of the commentary on this theme, not surprisingly, has been negative, ranging from the sneering to the hysterical. There have also been raucous celebrations and upbeat analyses of the “rebellion of American men.” Even amidst the male-blaming and catastrophizing, the talk of sex strikes and husband-poisoning, there have been signs that the era of men being taken for granted as voters may at last be coming to an end.
Democrat Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution under-stated the case when he pointed out that “Trying to either shame or guilt or scare men into voting Democrat was spectacularly unsuccessful.” Future Democratic campaigns, he suggests, will have to take men into account. Whether the Trump presidency will deliver on the hopes now raised among some men’s advocates remains to be seen.
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First, a review: the Democratic campaign vision for men was notable for its anti-male contempt.
Democrats promoted a progressive masculinity, one that was explicitly subservient to women. Francis Wilkinson at Bloomberg praised VP candidate Tim Walz as a man who “can happily play second fiddle to a Black woman” and “doesn’t have to live in constant fear of losing status.” In case the implied insult to imagined Republican men (with their fragile masculinity) was not clear enough, Wilkinson concluded his piece with a direct address: “He’s not frightened of women, afraid of Black people or terrified of the future. Why are you?”
Riffing on the same theme, Sam Berry at The Los Angeles Loyalan, a campus newspaper, celebrated Walz for his “gentle masculinity” and willingness to “take a backseat to his running mate.” A soft man happy to play a supporting role to a DEI presidential candidate was purportedly attractive to young people (by which he seemed to mean young women). Berry interviewed a sociology professor at UC Santa Barbara who saw it as a positive that “Walz overall doesn’t express his masculinity” (whatever that means) and who asserted that “People [by which she seemed to mean women] are more happy to see a man support a woman in power rather than using his role as a man in society to benefit his own self.”