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National Politics Trump's Cartoonish Performance of Masculine Strength, from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
Donald Trump’s decision to mobilize the military in Los Angeles, against the reasoned judgment and expressed wishes of LA Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, presents yet another opportunity to observe, in real time, how the Trump era continues to be shot through with destructive and antiquated ideas about masculine strength—along with growing pushback against them.
It might or might not be coincidental, but the fact that Trump called in the National Guard and a contingent of Marines to do what local law enforcement was perfectly capable of handling came during the week before the president’s expensive and ostentatious celebration of military prowess, planned for June 14 in Washington, D.C.
That public display of military hardware and martial might—an exhibitionist obsession of many autocratic rulers over the past century—is timed to coincide with both the Army’s 250-year anniversary and Trump’s own 79th birthday. That it’s happening over Father’s Day weekend adds yet another gendered overlay to the cultural politics of the moment.
One way to understand this blizzard of events is to see them in some context. For example, in my 2016 book about presidential masculinity, Man Enough?, I argued that the American presidency occupies a critically important symbolic space in the gender order, largely because more than any single person, the U.S. president embodies the national identity.
As a result—and in a country that sees itself as the apex of masculine “rugged individualism”—the ways in which the president performs his masculinity are both drawn from and have a disproportionate impact upon which qualities of “manhood” are esteemed, rewarded during any given period and which are disdained.
It might or might not be coincidental, but the fact that Trump called in the National Guard and a contingent of Marines to do what local law enforcement was perfectly capable of handling came during the week before the president’s expensive and ostentatious celebration of military prowess, planned for June 14 in Washington, D.C.
That public display of military hardware and martial might—an exhibitionist obsession of many autocratic rulers over the past century—is timed to coincide with both the Army’s 250-year anniversary and Trump’s own 79th birthday. That it’s happening over Father’s Day weekend adds yet another gendered overlay to the cultural politics of the moment.
One way to understand this blizzard of events is to see them in some context. For example, in my 2016 book about presidential masculinity, Man Enough?, I argued that the American presidency occupies a critically important symbolic space in the gender order, largely because more than any single person, the U.S. president embodies the national identity.
As a result—and in a country that sees itself as the apex of masculine “rugged individualism”—the ways in which the president performs his masculinity are both drawn from and have a disproportionate impact upon which qualities of “manhood” are esteemed, rewarded during any given period and which are disdained.
https://msmagazine.com/2025/06/13/trump-masculinity-strong-man-los-angeles-protests-flag-day-birthday/