Uncovering Hegemonic Masculinity’s Hidden Fragility in the 2024 Election

The 2024 U.S. election was, by any standard, a game changer. On the one hand, there was Kamala Harris seeking to preserve norms and institutions, while, on the other, was Donald Trump, a fascist, racist, misogynist, and populist former President promising retribution against his political opponents and insulting nearly every core constituency. The reasons for Trump’s victory are too complex to discuss in detail, and the entire picture will remain unclear until voter data is released. There are a few indisputable elements, however, particularly in regards to the role of hegemonic masculinity. Elizabeth Spiers defines hegemonic masculinity as the belief that men should be “dominant in hierarchies of power and status[,] and that this dominance over not just women but all less powerful groups is the natural order.” The importance of this dynamic is irrefutable  in the demographic divisions of the election; more men voted for Trump than for Harris. While the reasoning behind each vote is unique to the individual, the inherent fragility in hegemonic masculinity offers significant explanatory power for the demographic trends in this election.

The 19th century-style heteronormative patriarchy the second Trump administration seeks to reestablish must first be examined before uncovering the fragility of hegemonic masculinity. Heteronormative patriarchy is a system constructed around the following elements: the family unit must be organized into specific, hierarchical gender roles within the constraints of the nuclear family unit; the act of sex is for reproductive purposes only (therefore outlawing all sexualities except for heterosexuality); and the entire system is presented as part of a natural order that cannot be challenged. Heteronormative patriarchy is zero-sum, meaning that equity gains by women (and others) have to come at the expense of men. There is no win-win option. Men are also guaranteed personal liberties at the expense of others with the justification that men are “naturally” dominant. Under heteronormative patriarchy, masculinity and femininity are the only two possible expressions of gender, which is fundamentally intertwined with biological sex, unlike most feminist approaches that treat sex and gender as separate concepts. Hegemonic masculinity, and its more deferential feminine counterpart, are complementary and interdependent. The social value of both and, therefore, the self-esteem of those who perform them, is sourced from their internal power dynamic. The value of masculinity stems from its dominance, while subservience determines the value of femininity.

Masculinity within heteronormative patriarchy is often correlated with strength, whereas  femininity is correlated with weakness. There is, however, a subversive underlayer to this dynamic. Within heteronormative patriarchy, women are required to possess incredible, unacknowledged strength for tasks such as childbearing, or emotional labor on behalf of family members. Men, conversely, are expected to serve as breadwinners for the household, but the ways in which their economic activity relies on women’s work in the home, or the ways in which their mental health is dependent on women providing emotional labor on their behalf, go intentionally unacknowledged by the system. As a result, women and girls are socialized with a level of hidden resiliency to hardship and suffering that men and boys often do not have. Masculine identities are predicated on others doing their emotional labor, therefore absolving men and boys of the responsibility for their own well-being.

Heteronormative patriarchy has increasingly been deconstructed, as the gap in gender inequity narrows globally. Several Western states, for example, have decriminalized gay marriage and abortion, and have reduced their gaps in education and pay across genders. This trend has mostly been beneficial for women and those who exist outside of the sex and gender binaries, and, as feminists would argue, for men as well, because all people are freed from a rigid sex and gender binary, and from hierarchical roles within the household. However, given the zero-sum context of the political, social, and economic institutions created through heteronormative patriarchy, these gender equity gains have come at the expense of men, and hegemonic masculinity has decreased in value socially and economically. To make matters worse, while the hidden resiliency of femininity prepares women and girls for a world of hardship and suffering, hegemonic masculinity does not prepare men and boys to weather the same storm. As a result, men and boys are even more underprepared to deal with this correspondent loss of privilege and power than women and other marginalized identities are with the potential outcomes of the second Trump administration.

Of course, it is worth noting that masculinity’s decreasing value is only a balancing of the scales – the value of masculinity under heteronormative patriarchy is unjustly attained. However, rather like how part of possessing a white identity means being protected from a genuine consciousness of whiteness, and therefore “absolves” white people from dealing with the consequences of their privilege, hegemonic masculinity affords men insulation from facing the underlying unjust power structures. These built-in blinders to injustice do not excuse those who ascribe to hegemonic masculinity from their responsibility of addressing gender equity. People have agency, even within oppressive structures, especially if they operate from a position of privilege and power. Amia Srinivasan notes that “those who insist that men aren’t in a position to know better are in denial of what men have seen and heard.” Rather, men choose not to listen because it is convenient for them not to – justice feels like oppression for those who are already situated in a position of power and privilege presented to them as “natural.” While this trend is certainly not the only reason men (and white men in particular) voted to elect Trump, it undeniably plays into the appeal of Trumpian politics to those men. The feeling of “oppression” that comes with gains in gender equity is not something we can simply dismiss, as Democrats now know all too well.

Of course, gains in gender equity are, by definition, not oppressive to men. However, that does not mean that the lived experiences of men have improved as heteronormative patriarchy, especially in the U.S., has been deconstructed. While these increasingly negative lived experiences are well documented by men’s rights activists in the “manosphere” – the online communities dedicated to addressing the grievances of men – there is some genuine truth to this dynamic. Overall, men and boys are struggling. In education, women and girls are dramatically outperforming them. Boys are three times more likely to be expelled from school than girls are, and there is a fifteen-point gap between men’s and women’s completion of bachelor degrees. More men died during the Covid-19 pandemic than did women, and, it is worth noting, men are significantly more likely to die from suicide or overdose. Beyond statistical evidence, there is anecdotal evidence as well; more and more women report they are struggling to find partners, making heterosexual dating more of an ordeal than an opportunity to find a partner. 

When engaging with the consequences of oppression, it is sometimes difficult not to feel as if a focus on the lived experiences of dominant identity groups takes attention away from the lived experiences of identity groups enduring discrimination. This is, however, simply another symptom of the underlying zero-sum context. Truly dismantling heteronormative patriarchy requires shifting towards a more positive-sum understanding of identity, so that all gendered experiences, including that of men, matter in the fight against patriarchy. That does not mean, however, that we can ignore the existing hierarchies, as men’s rights activists tend to do. Without dealing with the underlying power structures, addressing men’s lived experiences will come, once again, at the expense of women and people who exist outside of the sex and gender binaries, as is likely to happen during the second Trump administration. 

Dismantling patriarchy on a conceptual level – the purported goal of feminism –  is not about adjusting the relative positions of different groups, but rather about the abolishment of the identity categories as they are currently constituted because, in the end, we are all human. Our bodies may not all be the same, but ultimately neither our bodies nor our identities need to determine our social, economic, or political power. Dismantling patriarchy on a practical level, however, is not so simple. We are still currently living with economic, social, and political systems defined by heteronormative patriarchy, and structurally, gender/sex, race, and class are still major determinants of political power. While policy and advocacy movements, like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, can address the gendered and racialized nature of American social and economic systems, our political system begins and ends with the premise of one vote per citizen. It does not take the embedded injustices into account, and it is then all too easy for the genuine promise of democracy to give more power to those who already have it, all while disguising this imbalance as part of the democratic process.

As many activists and political organizers have long understood, a just and fair political system imposed on an unjust, zero-sum, social and economic context does not correct the underlying injustice. It simply perpetuates it by locking existing power structures into the democratic process. The promise of American democracy, then, is an opportunity for those with lower status to make some gains, but only if those gains happen on the terms of those with higher status. This dynamic should not come as a surprise given that it is a prevailing pattern that has played out repeatedly in American history. Each group of people (starting with white, landowning men) that has been added to the American electorate has had to fight for their inclusion in the promise of American democracy, implying that said inclusion was not self-evident, regardless of what the Declaration of Independence posits. 

The support of men for Trump in the 2024 election can be understood as a response to tangible losses of their privilege and power as the social and economic value of masculinity has decreased. Because hegemonic masculinity protects men from acknowledging the existing hierarchies propping up their privilege and power vis à vis other identities, it is all too easy to disregard the demands of those on the margins as overblown or unfair, or even as reverse oppression. Because hegemonic masculinity is fundamentally zero-sum, it is not just that the version of masculinity the Trump movement sells is appealing to men, especially men who perceive themselves to be struggling in comparison to the power and position of men in the past. It is that hegemonic masculinity is presented to them as the sole source of their social value, implying they are valueless without it.  Moreover, it is not just men that participate in hegemonic masculinity – women who perform its feminine counterpart play the same role in constructing heteronormative patriarchy. Both hegemonic masculinity and subservient femininity, as social constructs, are inextricable from each other. In practice, however, hegemonic masculinity requires the consent of others to function; from women, it requires their willing subservience, and from identity groups that exist outside of the gender and sex binaries, it requires their willing self-erasure. But identity does not have to be zero-sum, as much as those who perform hegemonic masculinity attempt to make it so.

A political system that does not take these power dynamics into account will never achieve a just society where a citizen’s social and economic status is not determined by their identity. A Harris administration, focused on shoring up the existing institutions, would not have achieved that kind of systemic change. The Trump administration will not either (regardless of the hopes of Trump voters), but if the administration delivers on Trump’s promise to take apart the institutions of American democracy, there is an opportunity to remake the promise of America so that it does address the underlying power structures. To many Americans at this moment, the thread of hope for a future where identity does not determine one’s value is too tenuous to hold onto, especially in the face of the inevitable suffering the Trump administration will incite. However, if there is one thing this election has made clear, it is that a majority of Americans are not happy with the status quo. The government has not delivered on the promise of democracy for most Americans – something that most Americans now have in common. Trump managed to build one of the most diverse and multiethnic coalitions in American history, implying that for once, identity is not the driving factor in politics. Is that not the goal of the feminist movement? It hurts that of all the people to succeed at that first, it had to be one of the most sexist, racist, and misogynist leaders this country has ever had. But at the end of the day, it seems the American electorate is finally ready to move past identity politics – we just disagree on what should replace it. If the Right can build a coalition that is not grounded in identity, why can’t the Left do the same? 

Editors

Pau Torres Pagès, Managing Editor

Sara Radovic, Copy Editor

Julia White

Julia White (she/her, they/them) is a first-year master’s student in NYU’s International Relations program. Julia completed a combined BA/MA program in International Peace and Conflict Resolution at American University in 2021, and then worked for a few years in real estate before returning to academia — eventually, Julia plans to pursue a PhD in Political Theory. Julia’s academic interests include gender and feminist theory, political theory, political economy, and nuclear disarmament. When not studying, Julia can be found exploring Central Park while listening to podcasts, reading romance novels, and (attempting) to grow an herb garden.