Donald Trump has won the White House again. From the very beginning of his first administration, marked by his “Muslim ban”, until its end, marred by a violent riot at the US Capitol, the former president was fueled by the anger of his largely white, male base. These are often men who have few similarities to billionaires such as Trump, but who have felt their social and financial status threatened by some “other”, whether real or imagined. Trump and his Republican party have long tapped into that resentment.

There were the cancel culture mobs, the Marxists and the immigrants. Before that, the commies and the race agitators. Most recently, the CRT boogeymen, the “woke left” and the DEI hires – all these epithets serving as dog whistles, in historical terms and contemporary ones, for racial and ethnic groups who chip away at the financial security of white “real Americans”.

Now another obsession has come to plague a critical mass of the right: women.

Since Trump was last in office, a plethora of podcasts and media personalities – peddling more pseudo-science than political science – has emerged, framing women as both oppressors and second-class citizens. Hypersexual and frigid. Cunning and simple. Gold-digging parasites while also career-driven and disgustingly independent. In the manosphere, things don’t have to make sense. They must simply invoke certain feelings. Trump is an expert at that.

He makes men feel things. They see his bravado, his lawsuits, his crimes, his net worth and his sexual assault allegations, and it makes him the man.

Of course, as they see it, we need more Traditional Men in a time when women have become catered to, feminism has taken over and women aren’t accepting their rightful place in the home, out of the workplace (where........

© The Guardian