Free-form Friday: The Problem with “Stupid, White Men”

I started a post about the U.S. Election that I threw out because it basically contained observations that others were already making, along with an admission that I don’t know what just happened. I mean, I have some thoughts, and it wasn’t a total surprise, but I don’t really know.

That said, I wanted to make note of a few observations that I’m not seeing elsewhere, which relate to this point: I kinda hear the Trumpists’ message about men.

I have a Bush-era book on my shelf called, How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. The book’s editors kind of catch themselves in the title page with a quote that says, “And by the way, it’s not just stupid white men, there’s a lot of stupid people of color who need to get kicked out too” (Sofia Quintero). But then, right under it, it includes a quote that says, “Forget about stupid white men, it’s the smart ones I’m worried about” (Ludovic Blain). The point is, I can see how this message might be less than affirming to men.

I’m a man. At the time I got that book, I took the title to be referring to Bush and his team (which I guess didn’t include, say, Condoleeza Rice). It didn’t occur to me to take offense. That said, in the years since, it’s hard for me to think of many examples of the most vocal leaders of my general political orientation — I’ll say Democrats (even though I don’t mean all Democrats or just Democrats, but just to be concise, I’ll say, Democrats)— anyway, I can’t think of many examples of fellow-Democrats saying much nice about men at all.

When have your heard Democrats say the word, “masculinity,” without preceding that word with the word, “toxic?” What’s good masculinity? When, in a political context, have you heard Democrats acknowledge male sexuality; the male sexual impulse as natural, benign, or even a neutral fact of life? Trumpists are all about sex. Trump’s message to men is, “elect me and you, too can get away with rape and grabbing ‘em by the pussy.” The Democratic message could easily be inferred to be that male sexuality is inherently evil, that everything is sexual harassment (or worse), that Al Franklin is the same as Bill Cosby, and above all else, as Freud may or may not have said— there is no joke!

I got on the first call of “White Dudes for Harris,” during which, early on, someone acknowledged issues of concern to, ya know, white dudes. But whatever those issues were were never identified on the call. The best part of that call was when Big Lebowski actor Jeff Bridges said, “I’m white, I’m the Dude, and I’m for Harris.” But other than that, there was a missed opportunity to acknowledge such issues and offer something by way of addressing them.

The Trumpists, by contrast, say to men that they (we) are the targets. The Dems devalue them (us). We white dudes can’t freely express ourselves. The Democrats are trying to create a world of “incels.” J.D. Vance’s talk about children, childbearing and cat ladies was, to the ears of many men, about having sex or not having sex. MAGA women appear either to be sexy and desirable (Melania Trump, Kristi Noem, Alina Habba) or traditional wives and mothers (Katie Britt, Amy Coney Barrett). The Nikki Haleys who sought leadership are beat back, and the less physically attractive female Republican leaders are kept off the center-stage. This is not simply a message about women, but also about men, and the roles men and women are supposed to have relative to one another.

We Dems offer an explicitly different message, but what the Trumpists were telegraphing is not that we Dems are sincere in our professions of equality and mutuality, but instead are espousing a variation of the “great replacement theory”— just as, in other contexts, the message is that non-whites are supplanting whites, in this context women are replacing men.

Kamala Harris herself said nothing I can think of to further this narrative, but she embodied the Trumpists’ boogeywoman. To many of us, Trump seemed off his rocker by continuing to talk about Joe Biden after Biden dropped out, as if Biden could get back in the race or that Biden was unfairly usurped. We Dems made the mistake of thinking that Trump was either delusional, or aggrieved by the “unfair” turn of events because he realized that he was about to get his ass handed to him by Harris. But I now suspect that Trump had a strategy, which was to tell men that this is another example of a woman unfairly replacing a man.

I’m not suggesting that the Trumpists are at all right. We did far too little to combat the idea that what’s wrong with Trump and his supporters is that they are (a) men and (b) white. That’s not what’s wrong with them. And we did even less to present an alternative theory of the case that (a) men, including but not limited to those who are (b) white, would receive as affirming and empowering.

I don’t have the solution to this, but I think we should start by acknowledging that this was one of the presumably many, many reasons Trump won. (Check out the gender gap…)

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One more thing on this point…I heard a discussion about why Trump’s scurrilous anti-trans ads seemed to be hitting home. Some dimwit said it was because people had a hard time imagining that anyone sane would willingly give up male privilege, and thus were disgusted by trans women. Well, that’s one explanation. But IT’S WRONG. Nobody thinks like that. And if we Dems want to start beating people who are running on the platform that the most primal grievances of men (and whites) are legitimate, we have to stop talking about privilege in a political context, except as a political insult. Saying that Donald Trump is privileged is an accusation, meaning that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has gone through life getting unfair breaks that most of the rest of us never get. It’s insulting. The trouble in saying that all men, or all whites, or any other class of people are privileged is that it’s still an insult.

Most people do not feel that they are privileged. Trump was saying pretty much the opposite to men (not just white men)— they are disadvantaged because they are men. I’m not saying that the concept of privilege is illegitimate. It is legitimate, but it’s a concept that belongs in academia. And while we’re at it, let’s keep the concept of intersectionality restricted to academia, too. That is, unless we want to alienate everyone left who didn’t think we were calling them “privileged.”

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Finally, I’ve written many times about how Trump is using pro-wrestling as a script. I’ll address this point again, but this is already a long post. For now, I’ll simply reiterate the point. To the extent that we Dems ignore pro-wrestling, we will remain vulnerable. I don’t mean we need to be up on who in wrestling is feuding with who, who’s the champion of this or that or anything along those lines. (Although I will note that didn’t hurt Jimmy Carter’s political fortunes that he had a favorite pro-wrestler, Mr. Wrestling II). Instead, what I mean is we need a better understanding of the pro-wrestling ethos, the archetypical pro-wresting storylines, the moral messages of the pro-wrestling pantomime, and how pro-wrestling succeeds in blurring the distinction between the real and the fake. And more. But I’ll come back to that at a later date…