Donald Trump's toxic masculinity is killing people

While campaigning in Latrobe, Pennsylvania (where Arnold Palmer was born in 1929 and learned to golf from his father), Donald Trump, in his inimical insensitivity and inappropriateness, referred to the golfer’s large schlong.

“Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women,” Trump said. “This is a guy that was all man. When he took the showers with other pros, they came out of there. They said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable,’” Trump said with a laugh. “I had to say. We have women that are highly sophisticated here, but they used to look at Arnold as a man.”

While Trump believes that a big penis makes one “all man,” he clearly does not believe character counts – or should count – in how we respect and honor people.

So what about those of us who were born with a penis who do not identify as male? What about people who were not born with a penis who do identify as male? What about those extremely rare individuals who are apparently born with a condition causing three penises, called “triphallia?” Are they more of a “man” than even Arnold Palmer?

I believe that a major tenet of liberation is having the freedom to self-identify.

Numerous commentators have examined Trump’s mental pathology, but we cannot understand the motivational factors directing his words and actions without an investigation of socially constructed gender norms.

Even before an infant’s assigned sex is inscribed on a birth certificate, family and friends have already made assumptions about that infant’s general life course, assumptions based on a highly sophisticated and complex network of gender-based roles.

These gendered roles maintain the sexist structures of society, and heterosexism reinforces those roles by casting such epithets as “f***ot,” “d*ke,” and “homo” at anyone who steps outside their designated roles, regardless of their sexual identities.

All people are saddled with the heavy burden of the manufactured “masculine/feminine” binary. Concepts of masculinity and femininity promote the domination of males over females and reinforce the identification of maleness with power.

Assigned males are encouraged to be independent, competitive, goal-oriented, and unemotional and to value physical and mental courage and toughness. Assigned females, on the other hand, are taught to be nurturing, emotional, sensitive, and expressive, to be caretakers of others while disregarding their own needs.

Society mandates that males must be “in control.” They cannot get too close to their feelings, and if they do, they certainly cannot allow them to show. They must “keep it all together” and “suck it up.” They cannot show vulnerability, awkwardness, or doubts. They must be “on top,” in bed and out.

Within the male/masculine conflation, society maintains a rigidly controlled hierarchy. On top isthe so-called “Alpha Male,” characterized by:

· Being in charge

· Inflated confidence

· Mental and physical toughness

· Being highly competitive, with winning being more important than what is contested

· Having presence (taking up the space they inhabit; being seen as physically dominant, virile)

· Strong body language in how they talk, walk (exaggerated swagger), what they look at, where they place their hands, where they position themselves around others in what they consider as the most powerful position to take control: “I alone can do it.”

· Taking chances and move out of their comfort zone,

· Being surrounded by trophy girlfriends and/or wives who grab their arm, or are placed literally and figuratively by their side, behind, and beneath them – and seldom talk

· Being vocal and loud with a solid voice

· Intense eye contact and hard, firm handshakes

· Being calm under pressure, showing no signs of fear or trepidation

· Knowing how to dress

· Standing out

· Having no problem saying “no”

· Persevering and not giving up,

· Projecting any apparent weaknesses and shortcomings as the problems of others

· Blaming others for these weaknesses, shortcomings, and losses

· Never apologizing, backing down, or retreating, but fighting back “ten times harder”

· Banning signs of tenderness or vulnerability from other team members in the arena of gladiators except for when inebriated and during the heat of sex.

For alpha males, weaknesses include intellectualism, empathy, and showing strong emotions except anger and rage.

The Beta Male, on the other hand, are seen by the Alphas as:

· Followers,

· Unremarkable,

· Lacking confidence,

· Avoiders of risk and confrontation

· Lacking physical presence and charisma

· Emotional

Though ultimately unattainable for any male, the deception of alpha masculinity circulates around them on patriarchal wires that project the alluringly tasty rewards of control, security, and independence – but only if they perpetually compete in the race by sprinting after that elusive rabbit.

Some boys and men internalize this socially mandated illusion of masculinity to the extreme and turn to self-destructive and toxic hyper-masculinity. As they run and run and run around the course, they invariably stumble, hurting themselves and others along the way.

They build and accumulate frustration, turning to resentment and then to anger and often rage because they can never truly reach, grasp, and consume the promised patriarchal bait.

For those men and boys who survive, the societal masters dispose of them as dog trainers dispose of the overworked greyhounds. They are stalked, controlled, used, wasted, and ultimately slaughtered.

Girls and women, who also grow up in a patriarchal system of domination, are certainly not immune to internalizing these messages, and thereby, they often collude in pressuring males to join and remain in the race.

When compulsory masculinity reaches the level of toxic hyper-masculinity (and even beforehand), all boys and men must surrender their critical reasoning by never challenging the system, along with losing their individuality, their moral and ethical compasses, their emotions, and their very integrity and humanity, all for some promise of security, support, and sense of camaraderie and the privileges that automatically accrue to followers of the patriarchal system of domination and control.

Taken to extremes, this often results in violence. On the international scale, it results in wars.

Fortunately, a new generation is challenging the system by revolutionizing the former conceptualization of gender identity and expression. They are shaking up traditionally dichotomous binary notions of male/female, masculine/feminine, and gay/straight.

They are courageously calling into question this social myth of gender normativity, the boxes society places us into as it imposes upon us all our gender scripts. They have opened the boxes for all of us to ultimately obliterate the gender status quo of binary oppositions by demonstrating the visible ways, the options upon an enormous gender continuum, one that does not depend upon a sex assigned to us, a sex that is imposed and forced upon us by others.

Their stories and experiences have great potential to bring us into a future — a future in which anyone and everyone on the gender spectrum will live freely, unencumbered by social taboos and cultural norms. It is a future in which the “feminine” and “masculine” — and everything between — can live and prosper in us all.

But how many more people must die as a result of toxic tyrants showing off their bare chests atop enormous beasts?

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Originally published here.