Trump and Militant Evangelical "Masculinity"

A friend sent me a link to a piece in Religion & Politics that may help explain why 81% of evangelical Christians voted for a man who is the antithesis of what true Christian values should be. Indeed, it looks at the sickness that has overtaken conservative Christianity in general and created a reality where hatred of others and fear of anyone different - the "other " if you will - has supplanted any message of love and kindness. Oh yes, we hear the self-congratulatory, falsely pious "godly folk" talk about "love" of others, but when their actions and rhetoric are examined, it is almost invisible in practice. Instead of being a force for good - I have my doubts if Christianity has actually ever been truly a force for good - conservative Christianity has become one of the great evils in the world today. Only fundamentalist Islam is a greater evil given its adherents willingness to use murder and physical violence.   Yet both fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam at their core have hatred of others at their core and a bizarre view of masculinity.  Here are article highlights:

Yes, there were Supreme Court appointments and fears about religious freedom to consider, and a longstanding alliance with the Republican Party to contend with. But even so, how could the self-professed “Moral Majority” embrace a candidate who seemed to flaunt his own cruelty?

The truth is, many evangelicals long ago replaced the suffering servant of Christ with an image that more closely resembles Donald Trump than many would care to admit. They’ve traded a faith that privileges humility and elevates the least of these for one that derides gentleness as the province of wusses. Having replaced the Jesus of the gospels with an idol of machismo, it’s no wonder many have come to think of Trump himself as the nation’s savior.

Indeed, white evangelical support for Trump can be seen as the culmination of a decades-long embrace of militant masculinity, a masculinity that has enshrined patriarchal authority, condoned a callous display of power at home and abroad, and functioned as a linchpin in the political and social worldviews of conservative white evangelicals. In the end, many evangelicals did not vote for Trump despite their beliefs, but because of them.
 THE ROOTS OF THIS ideology can be traced back to the 1970s, a decade in which evangelicals began to stake a new claim on politics and culture. As they mobilized around “family values” issues, defining masculinity and femininity was central to their task. James Dobson was one of the earliest and most influential proponents of this effort.  . . . . To wit, men like to “hunt and fish and hike in the wilderness”; women prefer to “stay at home and wait for them.” More significantly, “men derive self-esteem by being respected; women feel worthy when they are loved.”

He saw this as a crisis of gender, but also as a threat to national security. For the sake of the nation, a “call to arms” was needed, a reassertion of the “Judeo-Christian concept of masculinity” in the face of feminists’ “concerted attack on ‘maleness.’”

To understand how changing gender roles could imperil the nation, the politicization of evangelical Christianity must be placed in the context of Cold War politics, and against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

Evangelicals staunchly opposed communism, and their reasons for doing so were many: communists were anti-American, anti-God, and they threatened God-given rights and the integrity of the family. A strong military was necessary to ward off the communist peril, and strong men were essential to a strong military.

But the rising generation caused reason for concern. Young men sporting long hair and flowered shirts dodged the draft, shunned authority, and shirked their duty to protect America from the threat of global communism. The Vietnam era would emerge as a pivotal moment in the relationship between American evangelicals and the U.S. military. . . . . evangelicals who supported U.S. military action in Vietnam came to hold the military itself in high (and often uncritical) esteem.

Evangelicals like Dobson responded with a clarion call to turn back the tide of impending chaos by reasserting moral absolutes and reestablishing a “Christian civilization.” Defining and defending distinct gender roles was at the heart of this effort, providing conservative evangelicals a clear identity against secularists, feminists, and other liberals.

Reflecting the unsettled times, Promise Keepers called for a new Christian masculinity, an alternative both to the “softer,” modern version they found lacking, and to the “macho” version they feared had become outmoded. Their solution: the archetype of the “Tender Warrior.”

Authors like Steve Farrar, Gordon Dalbey, and Stu Weber—all white evangelical men—pioneered this “Tender Warrior” motif. Significantly, all three looked to Vietnam for the source of masculine identity. . . . In words that would echo through the movement, Weber insisted that God himself was unmistakably “the Warrior of both testaments.” Forget “gentle Jesus, meek and mild”—Jesus was “the ultimate man.”

WITH DEMOCRATIC President Bill Clinton sending the military on “emasculating” peacekeeping missions, and with debates raging about women in combat and gays in the military, the crisis only deepened. Before long a new slate of books on evangelical masculinity appeared, offering instructions on how to raise properly masculine sons in a “feminized” culture. Abandoning any lip service to “tenderness,” these books championed an unabashedly aggressive, testosterone-driven masculinity. In 2001 Dobson himself joined the growing outcry against a “war against boys” in America. In his Bringing up Boys he again he criticized a “small but noisy band of feminists” who attacked “the very essence of masculinity.” He derided “feminists and other social liberals” who wanted to make boys more like girls, and men more like women—“feminized, emasculated, and wimpified.” Bringing up Boys found a receptive audience, quickly selling more than a million copies.
 Also in 2001, Douglas Wilson’s Future Men insisted that boys must be raised to be warriors. Central to Wilson’s “definition of masculinity” was the concept of dominion . . . Women’s role was a passive one: women yearned to be fought for. They possessed something “wild at heart,” but it was “feminine to the core, more seductive than fierce.” . . . . Aggression was “part of the masculine design”; men were “hardwired for it.” Attempts to pacify men only emasculated them: “If you want a safer, quieter animal, there’s an easy solution: castrate him.” Yes, “a man is a dangerous thing,” he wrote, but the very strength that made men dangerous also made them heroes.
 It is not difficult to imagine how evangelicals, steeped in literature claiming that men were created in the image of a warrior God, might be receptive to sentiments like those expressed by the late Jerry Falwell, in his 2004 sermon “God is Pro-War.” In fact, surveys demonstrate that traditionalist evangelicals are more likely than other Americans to approve of U.S. engagement in a preemptive war, support military action against terrorism, and condone the use of torture.

This brand of militant masculinity also helps explain the lack of outrage on the part of many evangelicals when it comes to Trump’s character issues.  Ominously, though, there is a fine line between merely speaking of brute force and enacting violence. Less than a month after the election, a 28-year-old white man shot up a D.C. pizzeria with a military-style assault rifle. He said he was in search of a child sex slave ring linked to Hillary Clinton, which turned out to be a hoax generated by fake news reports. Chillingly, he cited one of his favorite books, Wild at Heart, in a post-arrest interview with The New York Times.
 What makes a strong leader? A virile (white) man. And what of his vulgarity? Infidelity? Bombast? Even sexual assault? Well, boys will be boys.
 Trump appeared at a moment when evangelicals feel increasingly beleaguered, even persecuted. Issues related to gender—from the cultural sea change on gay marriage to transgender bathroom laws to the Hyde Amendment and the contraceptive mandate—are at the center of their perceived victimization. The threat of terrorism looms large, American power isn’t what it used to be, and nearly two-thirds of white evangelicals harbor fears that a once-powerful nation has become “too soft and feminine.”

In Donald Trump, they have found the leader they have been looking for.

In my view, these people are mentally disturbed and pose a clear and present danger to America and the world. Frighteningly, Trump has nominated many such religious extremist to his cabinet.  The truth is that these are not nice and decent people.  They harbor a sickness and hate filled core that needs to be eliminated.

America's Toxic Masculinity

America suffers from more violence than other developed nations, especially gun violence due to America's ridiculous gun laws that serve to maximize gun manufacturer profits under the guise of 2nd Amendment liberties.   But, as a piece in the Los Angeles Times argues, the main underlying source of violence in America is men - or at lease those who cling to the most toxic aspects of what is deemed to be acceptable masculinity.   If we want to reduce violence, many, any men could stand to undergo some feminization.  Until America recognizes that the so-called "macho male" is a toxic danger and steps are taken to change the cultural dynamic, things likely will not improve for the batter.  Here are column excerpts:

In the wake of the Orlando, Fla., shooting, some conservative politicians called for the use of the term “radical Islam” to label the violent movement with which Omar Mateen identified himself. In the wake of the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, many called for a review of violence by law enforcement against black Americans.And after Dallas, some piled on the Black Lives Matter movement, suggesting that the gunman was spurred to murder because he’d made reference to the group. Others use the term “black-on-black violence” to refer to the killings of poor black Americans in their communities, playing into what author Ta-Nehisi Coates has labeled “the enduring myth of black criminality.”

What we don’t talk about is how the greatest predictor of violence isn’t religion, occupation or race. It’s gender.

In the United States, 98% of those who commit mass shootings are male; 98% of the officers who have shot and killed civilians are male; 90% of those who commit homicide by any means are male; and 80% of those arrested for all violent crimes — murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault — are male.

If women are less likely to kill strangers, could increasing the number of women on the police force reduce officer-involved killings? A 2002 study by the National Center for Women and Policing shows that, although women comprise 12.7% of sworn police personnel in urban centers, only 5% of citizen complaints for excessive force involve female police officers. The average male officer is two to three times more likely to be named in an excessive force complaint.

It’s a significantly under-studied area — which is why it’s so crucial to talk about the role men play in America’s epidemic of violence. We need serious, current research in order to understand why male police officers are more violent in their interactions with citizens and how the culture of policing can be changed.

There are myriad theories as to why men are nearly 50 times more likely to commit murder than women. Some neuroscientists say testosterone is directly connected to aggression and competition, attitudes that are correlated with violence. . . . . Some psychotherapists have argued that men are raised to suppress vulnerable emotions, which leads them to become overwhelmed and express pain physically rather than verbally. 

[I]f physicality alone, rather than brain chemistry or socialization, were the reason that men kill at a much higher rate than women, then we would expect guns to be a leveling technology. The statistics, however, do not bear this out. From 1980 to 2014, the gender gap in gun ownership closed by 17%. Yet the rates at which men and women kill have remained relatively stable.

America's Toxic Masculinity Crisis

Being gay, one is often only too aware of the toxicity of "real man" Masculinity in Virginia.  Gays by definition pose a threat to the sensibilities and self-esteem of those whose sense of self-worth depends on their macho self-image and desperate need to be a "real man."  In the wake of the recent Oregon mass shooting, it appears that the killer,  Christopher Harper-Mercer may have been one such psychologically unbalanced American male who held a grudge against women and clung to the trappings of supposed masculinity, including an obsession with guns.  A piece in Salon looks at the shooter and the frightening online world that he seeming lived in.  Here are excerpts:

In the wake of any tragedy, there’s a natural impulse to wonder: How did this happen? Who was to blame for this? In the week since Christopher Harper-Mercer’s execution of nine students at an Oregon community college, the question has become the same: Who is at fault here? 

Wedged among the proliferation of dank memes, choruses of copycat threats, violent Pepe .gifs, and cries of “Beta Uprising,” the 4chan forum /r9k/ might be closest to actually having an answer. According to the users, women were to blame for this rampage: If “the sluts” had just given it up to Mercer, he might never have gone on to murder innocent people. As horrible as 4chan may be, this claim is seemingly backed up by Mercer’s own words. In the days leading up to the attack, he posted complaints on a number of online forums about being chaste against his wishes. In his rambling manifesto left at the scene of the crime, he reportedly wrote: “I am going to die friendless, girlfriendless, and a virgin.”

Mercer’s frustration and rage at being a virgin likely contributed to his lashing out at innocent bystanders. But the real issue wasn’t that Mercer was a virgin and that this whole thing could have been avoided with a pity-fuck. The problem is that Mercer—like the community that it seems he was a part of—felt that he wasn’t a “real” man because of it.

The state of being a man is a compilation of external influences that ultimately define whether someone is a “real” man or not. Guns, sex, and money serve as a sort of holy trinity for traditional masculinity, the tropes by which a supposedly true man is known. When it’s stripped down to its toxic core, “what is a man” ends up being defined by how many chicks he can bang, how much ass he can kick, and how much money and “status” he has. 

Of course, for all the swaggering machismo and bravado of these would-be alphas, their concept of masculinity is so fragile that a trending Twitter hashtag can threaten it. When we define so many aspects of “manhood” as being external to just existing, it means that manhood is something that can be taken away from you at any time.

[P]art of being “a man” in the traditional, hyper-masculine sense means being a virile sex machine. A (male) virgin is, thus, an aberration, a mistake, and a pretender who doesn’t deserve his penis. The incel boards and forums are full of young men complaining about how they’re subhuman, genetic refuse that mistakenly made it off the production line. They live in deep pain and resentment over the fact that they are not men the way they feel like they should be.

The more than men believe in the tropes of traditional masculinity and gender roles, the more they feel the pressure to live up to them, and the more pain they feel when they believe they fall short. But they can’t express that pain. After all, the traditional masculine man isn’t allowed to express pain, weakness, fear, or insecurity. They’re expected to be stoic, a silent pillar of strength. Their only acceptable emotion is anger. 

Violence is somethinganyone can do. When you’re feeling powerless, then you take that power back—preferably from someone else.

In fact, a study published in the medical journal Injury Prevention documents this phenomenon quite clearly: Men who feel the most male discrepancy stress (that is, who feel the worst about not being manly enough) are also the most likely to have committed violent assaults on others, as well as committing assaults with a weapon.
 
Gun manufacturers post advertisements featuring loving images of big, erect rifles with the caption: “Consider your man-card reissued.” The message is clear: You may not measure up, but you can buy a substitute to make up for it, chock full of copper-jacketed death sperm.

Charles Harper-Mercer felt he couldn’t measure up as a man by being a lover, so he decided to show the world just how big his semi-automatic murder penis was.

Mercer was someone who was obsessed with the trappings of masculinity that he felt he couldn’t measure up to and lashed out, as statistics show that so many do.

We need to recognize just how damaging it is to sell the idea of men at their worst—brutish, violent and barely in control of themselves—is the only way to be a “real” man. We’ve stuck ourselves with a toxic idea of masculinity where you continually have to prove you’re a man—being willing to hurt others in order to do so—instead of manhood being something inherent.

The defenders of toxic masculinity love to portray those who don’t conform as being unmanly or beta white-knight manginas—sexual quislings who seek to betray their gender because they can’t measure up. It’s a way of derailing the conversation, to pit people against one another rather than to accept the truth: This form of masculinity has failed us. It doesn’t produce men; it produces anger, rage, and pain. It teaches us that the only way to be a man is to aspire to be the worst in us. We can do better. We can be better.

Obviously, I hold these "real man" types in low regard.  They hold gays in low regard if not contempt, but it's really only because they hold themselves in such low regard and because gays threaten their sense of masculinity.   Behind most "real man" types you will find a homophobe worried about his own lack of masculinity regardless of the outward bravado.