Insecure about your manhood? Research says you might be a Trump voter.

[CousinIT]

https://shareblue.com/trump-manhood-insecure-fragile-masculinity-research/

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Fragile masculinity was also higher in areas where Republican House candidates defeated Democrats in the 2018 midterms.

But interestingly, this is a recent development. Fragile masculinity wasn’t correlated with support for Mitt Romney in 2012 or John McCain in 2008, and it didn’t affect voting patterns in congressional races in either 2014 or 2016.

So fragile masculinity isn’t inherently a Republican thing; it’s a Trump thing. But Trump has now so completely dominated the Republican Party that it has become a Republican thing.

This data also tracks with other research we have on the effects of masculinity and sexism on politics.

Support for Trump, in particular, was also found to be connected to “hostile sexism.” Hostile sexism is exactly what it sounds like: a type of sexism that is overtly hostile to women, or at least to women who don’t conform to the gender norms you expect. (Hostile sexism is the bad cop to the good cop of “benevolent sexism” — putting women on a pedestal, as long as they conform to the gender norms you expect.)

Both fragile masculinity and hostile sexism involve being so obsessed with traditional gender norms that it becomes harmful — to yourself, to others, or to both yourself and others.

FROM WASHINGTON POST on this subject:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/11/29/how-donald-trump-appeals-to-men-secretly-insecure-about-their-manhood/

. . .

From boasting about the size of his penis on national television to releasing records of his high testosterone levels, President Trump’s rhetoric and behavior exude machismo. His behavior also seems to have struck a chord with some male voters. See, for example, the “Donald Trump: Finally Someone With Balls” T-shirts common at Trump rallies.

But our research suggests that Trump is not necessarily attracting male supporters who are as confidently masculine as the president presents himself to be. Instead, Trump appears to appeal more to men who are secretly insecure about their manhood. We call this the “fragile masculinity hypothesis.” Here is some of our evidence.

What is ‘fragile masculinity’?

Research shows that many men feel pressure to look and behave in stereotypically masculine ways — or risk losing their status as “real men.” Masculine expectations are socialized from early childhood and can motivate men to embrace traditional male behaviors while avoiding even the hint of femininity. This unforgiving standard of maleness makes some men worry that they’re falling short. These men are said to experience “fragile masculinity.”

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How fragile masculinity was related to voting behavior

We measured the popularity of these search topics in every media market in the country during the years preceding the past three presidential elections. In the map below, darker colors show where these searches were most prevalent in 2016.



We found that support for Trump in the 2016 election was higher in areas that had more searches for topics such as “erectile dysfunction.” Moreover, this relationship persisted after accounting for demographic attributes in media markets, such as education levels and racial composition, as well as searches for topics unrelated to fragile masculinity, such as “breast augmentation” and “menopause.”

In contrast, fragile masculinity was not associated with support for Mitt Romney in 2012 or support for John McCain in 2008 — suggesting that the correlation of fragile masculinity and voting in presidential elections was distinctively stronger in 2016.

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