Despite the Kamala Harris presidential campaign’s desperate appeal to white male voters with camouflage trucker hats, CNN’s Dana Bash characterized Democrats as an estrogen-fueled political movement uncomfortable with traditional traits of masculinity.
Doug Emhoff and Vice-Presidential nominee Tim Walz, Bash said Thursday at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), represent the party’s effort to “put forward male figures” who “can speak to men out there who might not be the testosterone-laden, gun-toting type of guy who wants to listen to Hulk Hogan.”
“In addition,” Bash said, the party’s representation of masculinity intends to send the message that “it’s okay in 2024 to be a man comfortable in his own skin who supports a woman.”
Her claim includes the implicit smear that conservative men are uncomfortable with Kamala Harris because she’s a woman, and not because she’s a far-left California leftist eager to capitalize on identity politics to produce conformity, a common negative feminine behavior. Her vice-presidential pick’s embrace of the term “weird” similarly reeks of toxic femininity decades after he backed out of deploying to Iraq and then began campaigning on his military service.
Featuring Hulk Hogan at Republicans’ nominating convention in July offended leftists determined to redefine masculinity as always negative. David French penned a column in The New York Times complaining about Hogan’s prime-time performance as a provocative display of “anger” and “grievance,” as if channeling those emotions to glorify vigilance and strength are inherently toxic masculine virtues.
“If you ever wondered whether the Republican Party sees itself as the party of men, I’d invite you to rewatch the last night of the Republican National Convention,” French wrote. “Republican manliness was the capstone of the convention.”
Here is Hogan’s address at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July:
Hogan exhibited more testosterone in his 10-minute performance of high-octane patriotism than was present at the entire DNC, which was, frankly, full of fat people. Excess weight can cause and be a result of inflated estrogen levels.
Masculinity, like beauty, offers a set of aspirational standards that encourage men to be the best versions of themselves. Leftists would rather erase these standards in the kind of narcissistic behavior characteristic of feminist identity politics. No, not all men will be as strong as Hogan, a professional entertainer for whom body-building helped his career. That doesn’t mean men ought to embrace apathy towards personal health to make themselves feel better.
Men should be strong. Strength makes men capable of delivering on their responsibility to support their family, friends, and neighbors, whether that means helping someone move or protecting passengers on the subway. Of course strong men support women. In fact, support for women is, and always has been fundamental to healthy models of male masculinity.
So when Dana Bash says Democrats are presenting a reimagined model of a man as one who supports a woman, she’s really just an ideologue pretending Republicans are allergic to addressing women’s needs. Nikki Haley, who felt compelled to constantly remind Americans of her uterus, would probably beg to differ.
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