Emasculation in Republican Psychological Warfare, And Why It Works
The racist lynchings of the 19th and 20th centuries featured castration as a central component of those ritualized assaults. The same appears to be true of contemporary rhetorical lynchings visible in the right wing media-scape. First aired on April 23 of this year as a news item, the latest ad by the Grand Dragon of GOP character assassins, Floyd Brown, is only the most recent example. Brown, who succeeded in turning Black rapist murderer Willie Horton into Michael Dukakis's running mate, is now going after the testicular credibility of Barack Obama. The ad cited a vote Obama cast as an Illinois state senator against a bill mandating the death penalty for gang-related murders -- a bill the state's Republican governor later vetoed for being overly broad, vague, discriminatory, and for lacking any deterrent effect. The spot's narrator concludes, "When the time came to get tough, Obama chose to be weak. So, the question is: can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?" The closing shot is that of the rubble at New York's post-9/11 ground zero.
Not surprisingly, Factcheck.org found it to be a mendacious hodgepodge of distortions and misrepresentations. Of course, what Brown is after is not veracity but the generation of emotion in his audience, principally anxiety. As he had successfully done with Dukakis, the aim is to emasculate Obama and thus to induce in the electorate a fear that the Democratic nominee will be unable to function as a manly protector.
Some might think that this strategy is targeted at the so-called "Security Mom" demographic -- women supposedly so frightened by the terrorist bogy man that they will forsake all other concerns, like reproductive choice and health care, and vote Republican. This was certainly George W. Bush's 2004 answer to the gender gap, which since 1980 consistently disadvantaged the GOP among female voters. Unfortunately for McCain, the most recent (June 11) NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Obama with a 19% lead among women overall, and a seven-point advantage among white women in particular.
The primary audience, I would argue, is the other side of the gender gap, the "Insecurity Men," male voters unconsciously anxious about their masculinity, and who are generally well disposed toward Republican candidates. (Wednesday's poll showed McCain with a 20% lead among white men.) Men as a group tend to be much more troubled than are women over the possibility that they might have traits of the other gender. The more central that male domination is to a social order, the more anxious they are about this. In fact, in such a world, the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman. As I described in my last post, the findings of my own research and that of others have shown that conservative men are much more likely to suffer from the fear that they might be "feminine," than are liberal males. One way this femiphobia gets managed is through projection -- by hating, denigrating, and attacking other men whose masculinity is imagined as somehow deficient.
This is where Republican psy-ops masters like Brown work their crude but effective rhetorical necromancy. They know that most voters don't support typical conservative positions on issues. Many among the electorate might recoil at the liberal label (because of successful framing by conservatives), but when asked on survey after survey, people tend to embrace liberal positions. That means the burden of getting right-wing presidential candidates into office falls largely on the GOP's psychological warfare team, not the platform committee. Their most tried and true method has been to feminize their male political opponents.
Those who think castration is a harsh and overly dramatic metaphor to describe one of the key psychological aims of conservative messaging might want to ponder a 2006 statement by GOP strategist Grover Norquist. He argued that Democrats will only be tolerable once they "are comfortable with their minority status." He went on to elaborate, "Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate."
If past is indeed prologue, then progressives might want to reflect back on the last Republican convention so that we can prepare to respond to the butch histrionics we will no doubt witness at the end of the summer. The organizers of the 2004 GOP convention at Madison Square Garden, a location with a history of pugilistic efforts to prove manhood, clearly understood the importance of calling into question the gonadal bona fides of their opponents. The goal of this hypermasculine strut-fest, after softening the television audience with the foreplay of moderate sweet talk, was to make John Kerry their woman. (Republicans had already attempted this with John Edwards by dubbing him "the Breck girl.")
First, Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed that any guys who were anxious about the loss of jobs under the reign of George W. Bush were "economic girlie men." In other words, the Democratic candidates, who are always whining about pink slips, may as well be wearing pink slips. Real men don't fret about the losers in the new global Darwinian economy.
If there is anything wimpier than compassion for those insufficiently ruthless or privileged to be among the financial elite, it is the unmanly predisposition towards international collaboration. Collaboration, for some Republicans, had evoked femiphobic anxiety to such a degree that, in domestic legislative matters, they had been unwilling to even negotiate with Democrats. As Grover Norquist observed just prior to the convention, "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape."
Vice President Cheney raised the threatening specter of collaboration in his convention speech, warning his audience that Kerry would deploy U.S. troops "only at the directive of the United Nations." Even worse, recovering Democrat Zell Miller pointed out, the Democratic candidate "would let Paris decide when America needs defending." The Massachusetts senator, were he ever to run the White House, would imperil the masculinity of all men by turning the U.S. into a submissive bottom in the global contest for supremacy, the deferential housewife in the family of nations. Using certain code words for effeminacy, Cheney impugned Kerry's own manhood more directly. "He talks about leading a more sensitive war on terror, as though al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side." Democrats, the Vice President added, are "faint-hearted," "weak," and "wobbly." In contrast, screamed Zell Miller, "George Bush wants to grab terrorists by the throat."
We live in a culture where manhood is a Sisyphean and evanescent achievement. I'm sure you remember Sisyphus. He's the fellow condemned for eternity to push that boulder up the mountain, only to have it fall down again before reaching the top. So, you may prove your manhood today. But tomorrow you will have to do it all over again. We could think of this process as the hypermasculine version of Groundhog Day. What's required is a ceaselessly vigilant effort to repudiate any quality coded feminine. Often, especially in politics and warfare, this is achieved by projecting these threatening qualities onto the enemy, and, as witnessed in both the convention performances and Schwarzenegger's films, by striking a posture of chest-thumping omnipotence and insensate hardness. Miller, in his rhapsody to Bush's "spine of tempered steel," mined the same vein in the cultural unconscious that gave us that ultimate image of obdurate manly machinery, Arnold's Terminator. So, what was the effect of this weeklong masculine drag show? It produced an 11-point bounce in the polls for Bush.
Many pundits, especially those of the essentialist persuasion, have explained this sort of political machismo as simply a case of testosterone poisoning. But I would argue that it is not men's testicles that transform some males into mouth-breathing, saber-rattling paleoconservatives. Rather, it is the fear of losing them that animates these histrionic performances of hypermasculinity. And it is this anxiety that we can expect to be a primary target of the upcoming Republican gathering in September.
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I think what worked against, Dukakis, a weak candidiate and Kerry, who failed to respond will not work well in today's climate. McCain's base may believe the bunk but I think it be found offensive to most voters. As Obama is doing, he needs to counter each ad either himslef or by surrogates. Dollar for Dollar he can bury McCain, something Dukakis and Kerry could not.
Much of this of course depends upon how the Republicans choose to play the 'Fear Card' and what 'world events' (Conveniently created or otherwise) play out during the remaining election season.
If they can rattle a few skeletons and pull the old 'Scooby Doo' tricks the Repubs usually pull, then that Testosterone driven rage will seem like 'Strength in times of need' to the sheeple who fall for it. (And they are many)
We need to unmask the fear mongers, pull back the curtain and show the scary Wizard of Oz for who he really is, because too many people buy into their hype when fear comes a calling... and they have already shown a penchant for making things go bump in the night with enough conviction to scare most of the population into thinking that ONLY the Repubs can save them.
Don't be surprised if some kind of 'Threat' or 'Attack' (a.k.a some 'favor' the Repubs call in) occurs before this election closes... they'll need it to get people frightened enough to buy into the chest thumping argument yet again.
Let's hope the American People have come to recognize the stitch when the wool gets pulled over their eyes.
As a woman, I can say that most women (including me) TALK TOO MUCH - we can't seem to get to the point without extensive explanation - aka - nuance.
This defeats us repeatedly in a "sound bite" (republican) world.
Think "cut and run", "tax and spend", Defeat-o-Crats - etc.
We need talking points that hit hard and often. We can have all the marvelous, satisfying dialog we want among ourselves, but when it comes to the media, we need stuff like:
Republicans - Wars 'R Us
Republicans - Bullies 'R Us
GOP - Come Die with Us - except we won't and you will
Republicans: We spend it all and borrow more - for you to pay back
I know the keen minds here could come us with dozens more.
Old white woman for Obama '08
This is a good post. I agree that the lynchings of the past were an attempt to emasulate black men, because of an unconcious fear of his superior masculinity. Now the Republicans play the same game only on a psychological level. To them war is manly, negotiation is effeminate. Guns to republicans indicate strength as an extension of their masculinity. All this is to over compensate for a real feeling of inferiority. This explains why so many of them engage in closeted activities.
convincing. but couldn't you say that this really about NFL, nascar, fox, mass-media, "They Live"-style conditioning - that this sort of psycho-sexual reductivism is a cultural phenomenon, that happens to be augmented/
Sure, you could say it about any essentially patriarchal organization. This country isn't run by the NFL or nascar, though. It is run by a patriarchy that we despeartely need to replace. Naming and understanding the patriarchy is one of the steps toward combating it. Lets' don't trivialize the importance of this by saying, "oh everybody else is like that too..." This matters.
Republicans=Party of fear. Republican
I would reframe this argument slightly.
Today's Republican Party defines a "strong male" as a bully—a violent, unreasoning narcissist with no humanity, no conscience, and no self-restraint. Any time a man shows intelligence, nuance, caution,, or compassion, he is trashed and discarded by Republicans. Which explains the current group of Neanderthal psychopaths that currently dominate the party—the same group that has trashed our Constitution and disgraced our country.
Democrats have to redefine what it means to be strong ...
HuffPost's Pick
Strength is forbearance, compassion, humility, as demonstrated by the strangely nice aegis of the Christian Right, Jesus. Strength is Gandhi, MLK, Caesar Chavez. Strength is Atticus Finch (To Kill A Mockingbird), Marshal Will Kane (High Noon), Erin Brockovich (Erin Brockovich).
We all know that strength is a single parent, a struggling widow, an inner city cop, a soldier fighting in Iraq and his/her family, waiting and hoping, a two earner family that is just getting by.
Strength is not now and never was bravado. It is doing the hard things every day, rain or shine, like it or not, because other people depend on you. Pushing other people around is a weakness of character, a flaw revealing inner fear. On days when you might be tempted to be the swinging dick CEO, remember that what powers his aggression is fear.
Who is it that we need to beat up? Who do we need to intimidate? The terrorists. They are terrorists because we have already been beating them up and intimidating them. More of us terrorizing them will not make them want to terrorize us any less.
why do we keep giving people like Brown and Rove so much credit, look they are hacks, and will flod like a cheap cair if we began to shine a light on them, dig into Mr. Brown background and see what will pop up, you will be very surprise, remember we got the best researchers in the world, so let's do this.
The ticket most Americans prefer is the ticket a cop wrote.
The republicans should be thankful that the feeble Democrats don't have the courage to do what justice demands - the impeachment of their criminal leaders Bush and Cheney.
I'm kind of hopeful about Bush and Cheney paying for their crimes someday. There is always the UN, and they aren't exactly Bush and Cheney's best friends. Perhaps we will see something akin to Neurembourg trials part II.
It is my understanding that Presidents (and VP's) can be impeached even after they have ended their term in office. While this may sound like nothing more than a symbolic gesture and therefore not worth the time, it is actually quite useful, even crucial, in that conviction through impeachment not only results in the loss of pensions, but all special rights and privileges enjoyed by sitting and former Presidents. In other words, if Bush and Cheney were impeached after they left office, they would not only lose their pensions, but their right to decline to give testimony or to withhold evidence under the right of Executive Priviledge. All the evidence they have withheld, all the testimony of former aides that have been denied Congress would no longer be covered by Executive Privilege if Bush & Cheney were impeached, even after the fact. Then true criminal trials could proceed within the Judicial Branch.
In reality...
Absolutely. It's all they got. Imagine how had it is to get people without 6 figure incomes and portfolios to vote against their most basic interests, like food, water, air and gas. Takes a whole lotta FOX Kool-aid.
I have to wonder after Hillary's dogged run for the nomination if women will still be seen as weak.
She kind of put to rest the idea of women being soft. GW Bush on the other hand showed that his manhood was more Hollywood than Normandy Beach.
Beware Republicans, your tough guy image has a big fat tumor on it's face called Iraq.
All Americans should be ashamed of the intellectual quagmire which has overthrown honest debate in the electoral process. Why? Because WE allow that shit to formulate our opinions and decide our choices. We are a lost bunch. Small wonder China has overtaken us economically and militarilly.
Reason and Morality, in this "intellectual quagmire," have come to refer to how a thing or thought or policy will play out in the polls.
Barrister - you make a good point but this is nothing new. When did we last have an intellectual honest debate in this country? Americans for the most part are ignorant especially when it comes to politics or what is happening in the rest of the world because frankly they don't care. We have a long way to go before we will see that. Sad but true.
There is no question the republicans will engage this sort of tactic. It reminds me of that article that I read that criticized Obama for BEING FAITHFUL in his marriage. Right because what's more feminine that monogamy right? John MCain will be painted as the war hero and Obama by contrast will be painted as emotive, and reflective, and willing to negotiate and compromise. Hopefully the country doesn't make the same mistake it made the LAST TWO ELECTIONS.
These guys remind me of paparazzi. Out for the money, with no sense of shame . Now that I think about it, I guess they do belong in the GOP.
Maybe republicans just like appear tough, but deep inside they're raging homosexuals. Maybe it's that repressed fascism, their disdain for humanity, democracy, liberty, you know those "gay ideals"! I guess just like their political views, they haven't come out of their closets, oh, except in airport bathrooms!
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