America’s gender troubles helped to spawn the Age of Trump and the democracy crisis we currently face.

Fascism is coded as a masculine political ideology insofar as it emphasizes the strongman figure, violence and rejection of “political correctness." Politeness and empathy are branded as feminine and weak. Women are deemed vessels for producing more soldiers for the state. Rape culture is a defining feature of fascism. Fascism is also both homosocial and homoerotic in its aesthetic and attempts to channel male libidinal energy in the form of a fake populist mass movement in service to the Dear Leader (the fascist leader is almost always a man).

Donald Trump, like other fascist and authoritarian leaders, fulfills most, if not all, of these roles for his MAGA cultists. Social scientists have shown hostile sexism and misogyny is tied to support of Trump, the MAGA movement and authoritarianism more broadly. Trump has been accused of sexual assault and harassment by many women. In the civil case filed by E. Jean Carroll, a court of law deemed Trump a sexual assaulter.

Public opinion polls consistently show that Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters are white men who are drawn to his regressive and reactionary performance of white masculinity. The white masculinity that Trump is performing is also racist and white supremacist. This does not limit its appeal to nonwhite people. Social scientists and other experts have shown that there are Black and brown men who are also attracted to Trump’s fake alpha male persona. Black and brown men’s support of Trump and the MAGA movement may be a deciding factor in what will be a very close 2024 election.

"The global crisis in democracy is tied directly to a crisis in masculinity."

Jackson Katz, Ph.D., is an educator, author and scholar-activist who has long been a major figure in the growing global movement of men working to promote gender equity and prevent gender-based violence. He is a frequent contributor to Ms. Magazine, where he writes about masculinities, politics and violence. His new film is entitled
The Man Card: 50 Years of Gender, Power, and the American Presidency." He is also a co-founder of the Young Men Research Initiative. Katz is the author of two books, including the classic bestseller "The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help." His next book, entitled "Every Man: Why Violence Against Women Is a Men's Issue", is scheduled to be published by Penguin Random House UK in February 2025. His TEDx talk on that topic has been translated into 27 languages and has over 5.5 million views. He has lectured and trained in all fifty U.S. states, eight Canadian provinces and every continent except Antarctica.

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In this conversation, Katz shares his concerns about the 2024 election and how too many men are willing to destroy democracy by supporting Trump and the neofascist MAGA movement. Katz details how the MAGA movement and the larger global antidemocracy movement are an unhealthy and destructive reaction to changes in society that make many men feel lost, marginalized and searching for meaning and community in their lives. Katz offers some hope that if Kamala Harris defeats Trump it will create an opportunity to vanquish Trumpism and to weaken the types of violent and antisocial masculinity that he and the MAGA movement........

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