People Will Die So Our President Can Feel More Like a Man
Trump’s toxic masculinity and the military
by LAURA MUTH
Donald Trump’s election in November 2016 shocked analysts and many of the reporters who followed his campaign. Throughout the fall, every bullying remark, bald-faced lie and revelation of wrongdoing had brought about speculation that the Republican nominee could never win the presidency.
What those analyses missed was that for many of Trump’s supporters, what seemed like gaffes to reporters were features of his candidacy. Trump built a brand on toxic masculinity, and he instrumentalized widely-held beliefs about the military to do it.
The military remains one of the most revered institutions in American society, ranking in one Gallup poll above everything from small businesses to the police.
It is also a hyper-masculinized institution, both in terms of its composition — only 14.5 percent of the U.S. military is female, and they make up only 2.7 percent of front-line units — and the fact that the ideal characteristics associated with successful soldiers are also the traits traditionally coded as masculine.
Soldiers, the ultimate idealized version of men, are thought of as decisive, strong, brave, virile, physically and socially dominant. The individual personalities of soldiers are basically immaterial. This is about the archetype of the military man.
The military represents the pinnacle of masculinity, the ultimate in manliness. And Trump simultaneously tried to lay claim to the masculinity associated with the military and to raise himself above it, to prove himself even manlier than the manliest of institutions.
On the campaign trail, Trump accepted a Purple Heart as a gift and joked that he had always wanted one, hinting at military ambition despite a lack of service. He said that he invited the soldier, Lt. Col. Louis Dorfman, to speak, but that Dorfman simply wanted Trump to continue speaking on his behalf.
Trump further tried to present himself as the candidate representing the military and its interests by promising tens of billions of dollars more in yearly defense spending, despite the fact that the United States already spends more than the next seven countries combined.
He likewise pledged to have more active-duty troops and to purchase more materiel, from submarines to fighter planes. His goal was to present himself as a clear break with weak military policy under Pres. Barack Obama, and framed Hillary Clinton as “erratic,” a criticism that is both ironic coming from Trump and one that echoes generations of men discrediting women by called them hysterical or overly emotional.
At the same time as he set himself up as a champion for the military, Trump also emphasized his dominance over it. His claim that he knew “more about ISIS than the generals do,” and further stated he knew more than defense and offense than the generals or Obama do.
Indeed, Trump’s consistent statements to know more than anyone else are also an example of toxic masculinity. There can be no higher authority than Trump, and he needs no input or approval from anyone else. A corollary of this authority — he is also the only one who is man enough to fix everything from our tax system to our war on terror.
Since his election, Trump has continued to project an image of himself as a military man, despite the fact that he has never worn the uniform. He has staffed his cabinet and administration with more former generals than any other president since World War II.
At the same time, he has actively taken power away from the same generals. His changes to the National Security Council seem to downgrade the participation of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff while giving a seat to White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, a man who served a stint in the Navy but has since become known mainly for his right-wing, white nationalist political ideology.
The NSC is not the only example of the Trump administration sidelining its own appointees from the military. Marine Corps general John Kelly, formerly of U.S. Central Command and currently Trump’s homeland security secretary, was reportedly not consulted ahead of time about Trump’s immigration executive order.
Neither was Marine general James Mattis, the secretary of defense. Both were reportedly blindsided by the timing of the order and did not hear any details before it was signed. In fact, Kelly was literally on a phone call for a briefing on the order when he was abruptly informed that it had just been signed.
All of this behavior makes clear that Trump views the military as a prop to build his own brand as a sort of Nietzschean Übermensch, or superman, for whom strength is inherently good and weakness inherently bad. He lays claim to their expertise and strength to burnish his own credentials, but consistently presents himself as even stronger than these paragons of manliness.
Indeed, his promises to give the military more funding can be seen not only as a promise designed to garner support from military voters, but also as a declaration that only he can save the American military from a decline into mediocrity and weakness.
This funding promise does not reflect the reality of the American military’s primacy in the world. It does reflect an obsession with the image of strength. Furthermore, it defines strength only in terms of physical capacity for force. Just as his ability to grab women without their consent or to mock and denigrate journalists who question him is meant to be a projection of personal power, as president Trump views our military might as an extension of his own strength.
It creates a precarious position for the United States. When the president values his personal brand of masculinity and his need to appear strong over more nuanced considerations of policy, it literally endangers lives. Just consider the Navy SEAL and the civilians killed in a recent raid in Yemen–although planning of the raid did begin under Obama, military officials said Trump approved it “without sufficient intelligence.”
Even in the wake of that raid, which failed to kill or apprehend its actual target and resulted in civilian deaths, including children, Trump still wants the military to reconsider its rules of engagement. He believes the military is hampered by excessive concern for civilian lives.
Experts on terrorism have consistently argued that the U.S. war on terror cannot be won by force alone. The ideology that attracts terrorists must somehow be addressed, through rhetoric or competing ideologies. But in the mind of a man obsessed with proving his masculinity, ideological arguments are for those too weak or two cowardly to fight.
Trump’s policies, from the promised border wall to the pledge to “wipe out Islamic terror groups,” is predicated on the belief that strength only counts when it is physical, visible and used to coerce, punish and exclude. It is the same kind of strength that we elevate in society when we encourage boys to toughen up and be a man, or when we excuse their violence and violation of others’ space and bodies as boys being boys.
The result, paradoxically, is men afraid so afraid of being seen as weak that they become myopic in their view of power. And that is a result that puts us in ever-more dangerous positions fighting threats that cannot be eliminated by force and attacking people who aren’t threats at all.
Refugees and immigrants will die outside our borders and soldiers and civilians alike will face increased danger, all so one person who has literally spent his life in gilded towers can feel like more of a man.
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