What do machismo, misogyny, and male dominance have to do with the election results?
In trying to make sense out of the recent national election results that now show that Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Trump by a very slender 2.6 million votes74,893,762 (48.4%) vs 77,189,203 (49.9%) as of press time. This means that nearly half of the voters were willing to trust a woman to lead this country as she proved repeatedly that she was far more qualified than the twice impeached and convicted president-elect. So, what does make up this slenderest of victories? Some recent data shows that young white males and a majority of Latino men were voting for the macho man, not the smart-qualified woman.
The Trump campaign indeed did niche marketing to certain target groups, especially white men, white Christian nationalists, and Latino men. The braggadocio BS that he was spewing during his campaign is and was targeting specific demographics. I want to understand this and to do it I need to be careful with definitions.
Donald Trump has become the national symbol of male chauvinistic misogyny. A good friend of mine who voted for Trump wasn’t quite sure what that word meant lately. Indeed, misogynist, chauvinist, and machismo are often used interchangeably but there are some nuances. Some cultural, some universal. Just to be clear, male chauvinism is the belief in male dominance and supremacy. Misogyny is the hatred of women — all women. While machismo manifests itself mainly through the promotion of rigid gender roles and inequality of opportunities between men and women, this is prevalent in Latin cultures but not explicitly with all, it can vary from country to country (not to mention, they’ve elected female leaders for some time now — Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, and most recently Mexico). There are plenty of Latinos who voted for Harris, but still, within their family culture, there are certain roles men and women are expected to take dominance or subservience.
Still what the Republican campaigns did was a kind of selective targeting of the subgroups mentioned above to eke out small majorities. While the Democrats were working on the big-tent diversity campaign the Republicans were slicing off small margins. This plays into the very basis for the decades-long Culture Wars that have divided America ever since Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio guy, coined the term “Feminazi.” The battle over reproductive rights, transgender issues, and cultural diversity are all predicated upon the roles men and women are “expected” to play in public or private relations.
And those roles have been changing for a very long time. Perhaps since World War II with women working in the defense industry while the men went to war, or was it when women gained the right to vote a century ago? It distinctly changed when women had a choice of reproductive rights either by contraception or Roe v Wade. What seems apparent in this recent election is that there is significant blowback from traditionalist-minded institutions and men about the sexual revolution.
What exactly is a man’s role in contemporary society if not the primary breadwinner? For there is a lot of power that comes with the making of the money.
Yet we now have at least two generations of women who have grown up expecting more than being the subservient homemaker. And just as many men have found some accommodation to shared responsibilities, however, they define it. So, what’s this backlash about?
I think that many younger white men and definitely a lot of Latinos find it challenging to have assertive, smart women making the decisions. And then you throw in the changing sexual roles and mores that promote more sexually liberated women and the 40-year decline in middle-class incomes —men are often left feeling less and less empowered (virulent perhaps) and they look towards the macho man billionaire or MMA fighter or a millionaire sports figure or bad boy rapper. Many of those role models have gotten into legal trouble for sexual assaults on women or underage girls. The examples are too many to list (you’ve read all about them). But Matt Gaetz comes to mind as the most recent example besides Trump himself who epitomizes male chauvinism and machismo. Trump alone seems to have gotten away with all his bad behavior, sexual or otherwise, and now he is now the Macho man president.
The democrats on the other hand need to show that they are standing on the side of the working class, both men and women and that all of the progressive advances of the last 70 years can lift all boats regardless of race, gender, religion, or class. At least that’s the ideal. It needs to be made real, paired with the reality that not everyone is going to become a billionaire because of Trump’s tax cuts, no matter how many lotto tickets they buy.
*misogyny is expressed in more direct forms of violence, discrimination, and hatred towards women.
Male chauvinism: belief in male dominance and supremacy.
While machismo manifests itself mainly through the promotion of rigid gender roles and inequality of opportunities between men and women, misogyny is expressed in more direct forms of violence, discrimination, and hatred toward women
