The Decline and Fall of Toxic Masculinity, We Hope

 

It was 2018, and Sen. Kamala Harris was sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioning Brett Kavanaugh about the Mueller Report. It was his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and it wasn’t going well at all.

We remember that hearing, mostly for the sexual assault allegations of Christine Blasey Ford, but also for the FBI’s refusal to investigate those allegations, and for Kavanaugh’s insistence that beer was a major food group.

But Harris was less interested in Kavanaugh’s creepy youth than in his furtive sidestepping of a question she undoubtedly knew the answer to. Specifically, she wanted to know if he’d ever discussed the Mueller Report with anyone from Trump’s personal law firm.

It was a yes-or-no question, and Kavanaugh took great pains to avoid answering it. If he said yes, he’d be confessing to a major ethical breach. If he said no, he’d be lying to Congress, and Harris would have the receipts to prove it.

But it wasn’t the substance of Harris’s questioning that makes it worth another look. It was her attitude, her relentlessness, her hardnosed willingness to press him for an answer he was desperate to avoid giving. For eight long, squirmy minutes, she made the most of his discomfort.

I refer to this episode, not to point out Harris’s prosecutorial skills — which are, not surprisingly, formidable — but rather to put the episode in the context of a recurring theme in this presidential campaign: the tension between toxic masculinity, and whatever we choose to call its opposite. Attuned masculinity? Caring masculinity?

You couldn’t find a better avatar for the toxic male than Brett Kavanaugh. Okay, maybe you could — Hulk Hogan comes to mind — but Kavanaugh gets extra points for his current status as the nation’s highest-ranking sleazebag.

But in this on-camera showdown, one camera focuses on the drunken misogynist whose long-ago predations were finally — and spectacularly —catching up to him. The other focuses on this female — a Black female, no less — who has the temerity to address him in the same voice his prep school headmaster used when giving him detention.

But it was worse than that. The whole episode was a vivid symbol of the toxic male’s worst fear. This woman was — metaphorically but forcefully — taking away his manhood. The expressions on his face say it all — sweaty panic mixed with whiny embarrassment. A portrait in emasculation.

Trump has recently reminded us of how “nasty” Harris was in those hearings, which is, of course, a tell. What he’s saying, in his oblivious way, is that he watched that video, and he’s utterly terrified.

Which is why, in many ways, Tuesday’s debate will likely echo that same confirmation hearing. And why toxic masculinity will indeed be on this year’s ballot.

Trump has given tens of millions of men permission to be as toxic as their violent fantasies allow. He plays to their reptilian impulses, and he perpetuates a culture of male supremacy that is well past its sell-by date.

Harris, meanwhile, has unexpectedly given voice to the backlash of men who are disgusted with that culture. Between her husband and her running mate, she has brought us two guys who live in the real world, and who share the same values as the women in their lives.

Doug Emhoff and Tim Walz are probably as surprised as we are to be suddenly representing a new brand of masculinity, mostly because it’s nothing new to them. While it has certainly gone under-appreciated in the political arena, it’s been evolving over many decades in the real world. Like a lot of things, it’s no big deal. Until Republicans make it one.

Both of these guys think nothing of a woman taking the lead role in any sort of endeavor, including the presidency. Both understand that women make them better men, and vice-versa.

They’re both strong, accomplished men, emotionally intelligent and attuned to the fundamental parity of men and women. They embrace their “feminine side” without embarrassment, indeed without thinking about it at all. To them it’s just common-sense caring, and an innate understanding that we’re all in this together. If those are “feminized” sentiments, who cares? Who even thinks that way?

So, of course, they’ve become lightning rods for the toxic misogynists of right-wing media, who do think that way. In their minds, Harris should be home making babies and leaving that president stuff to the menfolk.

To them, Emhoff is a smart-ass San Francisco Jew, but otherwise they don’t yet  know what to make of him. They still haven’t quite processed JD Vance’s dark-skinned wife Usha, so the idea of a female Black politician and her Jewish husband is, even to them, more sit-com than scandal. And since there’s nothing in their makeup that can process the words “First Gentleman,” they’ve held off going after Emhoff, at least for now. Stay tuned.

Walz is another story. He makes them crazy. The pundits on the right are trying mightily to reconcile his out-front macho credentials — football coach, National Guard, gun-friendly — with his “nanny state” policies as governor. In their toxic minds, real men shouldn’t care if kids go hungry over the summer, or if women die from ectopic pregnancies, or if an AR-15 wipes out a class of middle-schoolers.

That Walz so clearly does care about these things offends them deeply. So they go after what they think of as his “soft” side, and the results have been mostly comical. On Fox, Jesse Watters — the Prince of Smarm — was appalled that Walz was spotted in public, not just drinking a vanilla ice cream shake, but —OMG — drinking it through a straw!

In Fox-world, this apparently brands Walz as some sort of girly-man, a point Watters drives home with this masterful syllogism:

Women love masculinity, and women do not love Tim Walz, so that should just tell you about how masculine Tim Walz is.

What I think he’s trying to say is that Walz’s masculinity just isn’t toxic enough. Watters and his fellow propagandists are fumbling for ways to slime him, but nothing they throw is landing. We don’t yet have the polls that will tell us what women actually think of Tim Walz, but I have plenty of anecdotal evidence that they’re just fine with his masculinity.

Does all this really matter in the election? Maybe not directly, but it will certainly be part of the background hum. And while it would be nice to think that Trump represents the decline and fall of the toxic male, that would surely be naïve. Even if male dominance were to be beaten back in this country, it would still rule much of the world — a vast empire that was old before the Old Testament. It won’t be overcome overnight.

But blows against the empire are always important. So if regular guys like Walz and Emhoff are really a threat to anyone’s manhood, I say we take the win.