Trump's Cartoonish Performance of Masculine Strength, from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
(a fascinating, depressing read)
Trump’s Cartoonish Performance of Masculine Strength, from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
PUBLISHED 6/13/2025 by Jackson Katz
Is Trump’s eagerness to use military force on domestic protesters a measure of his confidence—or his weakness?
Protesters confront National Guard soldiers and police outside of a federal building as protests continue in Los Angeles following three days of clashes with police after a series of immigration raids on June 9, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
Donald Trump’s decision to mobilize the military in Los Angeles, against the reasoned judgment and expressed wishes of LA Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, presents yet another opportunity to observe, in real time, how the Trump era continues to be shot through with destructive and antiquated ideas about masculine strength—along with growing pushback against them. It might or might not be coincidental, but the fact that Trump called in the National Guard and a contingent of Marines to do what local law enforcement was perfectly capable of handling came during the week before the president’s expensive and ostentatious celebration of military prowess, planned for June 14 in Washington, D.C. That public display of military hardware and martial might—an exhibitionist obsession of many autocratic rulers over the past century—is timed to coincide with both the Army’s 250-year anniversary and Trump’s own 79th birthday. That it’s happening over Father’s Day weekend adds yet another gendered overlay to the cultural politics of the moment.
One way to understand this blizzard of events is to see them in some context. For example, in my 2016 book about presidential masculinity, Man Enough?, I argued that the American presidency occupies a critically important symbolic space in the gender order, largely because more than any single person, the U.S. president embodies the national identity. As a result—and in a country that sees itself as the apex of masculine “rugged individualism”—the ways in which the president performs his masculinity are both drawn from and have a disproportionate impact upon which qualities of “manhood” are esteemed, rewarded during any given period and which are disdained.
The powerful masculine symbolism surrounding the U.S. presidency is also arguably the single biggest reason why we have never elected a woman president. To date, no woman has been able to successfully navigate the delicate balancing act required to be seen as simultaneously strong enough to act as commander-in-chief, defend the country, and also be feminine enough to be “likeable.” It’s a terribly unfair burden, one that reveals the deep misogyny that underlies the perpetuation of the monopoly and near-monopoly that men—especially white men—have on the highest stations of economic and political power. The gendered nature of the presidency is made especially visible when it comes to threats to the nation on matters both foreign and domestic. That’s because the president functions, essentially, as the nation’s protector—which itself taps into normative and even elemental expectations about men’s roles in patriarchal societies.
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Meanwhile, liberal and progressive voices in politics and media have cautioned anti-Trump protesters to avoid violence at all costs, because it enhances Trump’s power by providing him with the pretext to deploy violent state power in response. This guidance carries a powerful gendered subtext that is rarely expressed out loud, even on the left. One recent instance involved the actor, director, and documentary film narrator Peter Coyote. In a Substack post directed at anti-Trump protesters, he urged them to understand that public protest is theater, and the audience is never the police, the politicians or the Congress; it is always the American people. With apparent reference to the counterproductive, violent actions of a small group of left-wing activists in recent years, the first piece of advice he gave was to let women organize the event.“They’re more collaborative,“ he wrote. “They’re more inclusive, and they don’t generally bring the undertones of violence men do.”
https://msmagazine.com/2025/06/13/trump-masculinity-strong-man-los-angeles-protests-flag-day-birthday/
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