At noon that day, it was barely nine degrees. The icy wind swept down the Mall and clouds darkened the sky. But the new president had a reputation to uphold: although he came from a wealthy family, his vindictive campaign had made him the archetype of the virile man, drinking hard cider in a log cabin, facing his opponent, whom he overwhelmed with nicknames and portrayed as an aristocratic wimp in ruffled shirts. In that month of March 1841, in the pouring rain, without an overcoat, hat or gloves, William Henry Harrison gave the longest speech in American history… Virile enough to make him sick, since on this occasion (according to legend) he contracted pneumonia from which he died 32 days later.
The longest presidential inaugural address led to the shortest presidency.
But this display of virility is not entirely a coincidence. As Michael Kimmel, author of Manhood in Americathe years 1840-1950 are the scene of a moral panic where the shaping of true, strong and virile heroes – Kit Carson, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett – is not a coincidence. Since the beginning of the American Republic, the country has been going through cycles of “crisis of masculinity”, of which we find recurring markers around the fear of feminization, of the softening of men, but also of the pangs of a possible destructive matriarchy (as attested by the Moynihan report of 1965, which blames women for the possible destructuring of African-American communities).
The contemporary period is no exception. From the beginning of the 21st centurye century, the marked masculinization of the presidential function, in the wake of George W. Bush after September 11, 2001, is apparent in the vocabulary, the posture, the rhetoric.
In this context, the Republican Party gradually appropriated the definition of fortitude, setting itself up as the protector of the country, gradually relegating the Democratic Party to a soft space. In 2004, even three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star (medals for heroism, bravery and merit in combat) were not enough for John Kerry to embody the image of the defender of the nation in the face of Bush. Like the title of EJ Dionne’s book, Stand Up, Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revengepublished in 2018, the Democratic Party is failing to turn the tide: Republican toughness and muscle remain, whether it’s on terrorism, war or the border.
The tempo of the masculinization of the Republican term has been accelerating since 2015, on a score whose main theme is racial resentment (“they take our jobs, our women, our culture”) and gender (“we can’t say anything anymore”). The right creates wokeism (a Frankenstein monster from the woke movement, which has little to do with it) like a bullfighter muleta. This development contributes, as Matthew Gutmann explains in Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Shortsto construct a reductionist vision of man, which research designates as a “hegemonic masculinity” and which is a strong predictor of the vote (male as well as female) for the Grand Old Party.
This also explains, in a mirror image, the reduction of women to the functions of their uterus, and of the childless woman to a cat woman.
Today, the fact that the Republican candidate gravitates in an extremist nebula through his interviews with young masculinist, sexist, anti-Semitic or racist influencers — Logan Paul, Adin Ross, Lex Fridman — contributes to normalizing speeches like Andrew Tate. At the same time, the fragmentation of the media landscape tends to smooth the candidate’s image: his communications reserved for his Truth Social network, a bubble far from the public eye, are much more raw and radical.
Although there is a certain irony, which Tom Nichols points out in The Atlanticso that “the president’s supporters do not subject him to their own criteria of masculinity” and support a whiner, a bullyfar from the quasi-chivalrous values of the proto-republicans, this posture attracts a male fringe… and particularly among the young. To the point where the famous gender gapwhich the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) defines as the difference between the percentage of women and men who vote for a given candidate, is now at an all-time high. In 2008, the difference between women and men was 12 points. Now, that gap is 43 points…and it’s as high as 51 points among those under 30.
This fracture is palpable through the antithetical stagings of the two conventions. But the reality is more complex and rests on the intersection of two fractures which are also class faults.
At the top—in Congress, among company CEOs, among billionaires—white men hold the upper hand. Under the glass ceiling, more and more women (though not all, by any means)—black, white, and Hispanic—are gradually making progress despite persistent discrimination, obstacles, and backlash.
And, following a vertical fault line, Richard Reeves, a researcher at the Brookings Institution and author of Of Boys and Mennotes a real social disconnect in the middle and poor classes, even more pronounced in communities of color. At a time of deindustrialization and the decline of blue-collar jobs (which the Republican candidate valorizes), the jobs that are growing are in education, health care and food — “pink collar” jobs (the name says it all here). And women are now more numerous in university benches, earn their degrees more quickly and their rate of completion of a cycle of studies is significantly higher.
Gender divides, but above all divides of color and social class: the parties have not been mistaken.