The Wimp Factor

By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet. Posted October 29, 2004.

Swaggering machismo got a new lease on life after the post-9/11 attacks, as Republicans tried to appropriate not just patriotism but also masculinity as a GOP virtue. Attacking the manhood of the opposition has become a signature tactic of any GOP election strategy. So it isn't surprising that the 2004 presidential election campaign has been played out over the past six months as a battle over John Kerry's masculinity. Be it his "sensitivity" on the war on terror or "girlie-man" preoccupation with the lack of jobs or health care, Kerry has been forced to defend himself from a barrage of rhetoric carefully designed to cast not just him but the entire Democratic plank as the epitome of feminine weakness.

As Stephen Ducat points out in his new book, "The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity," this obsessive focus with masculinity is hardly new. The penis was a major player even in ancient Greek politics. In the United States, politicians have long adopted a working class machismo to win popular support. Wonder where Dubya got his inspiration? You need look no further than Teddy Roosevelt, who was as much a faux cowboy as our current president.

A professor of psychology in the School of Humanities at New College of California, Ducat is a licensed clinical psychologist. "The Wimp Factor" draws connections between Mohamed Atta's last wishes, the electoral gender gap and environmentalism to paint a picture of a national psyche defined by a deeply flawed definition of manhood.

Ducat spoke to AlterNet from his home in San Francisco.

What is the central thesis of your book?

First let me throw out the term "femiphobia" as a way of naming this anxiety. Femiphobia is the male fear of being feminine. The underlying premise of my book is that the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman. This imperative to be repudiate everything feminine – whether it's external or internal – is played out as much in politics as in personal life.

In politics – where there is an enormous potential for personal gain or ruin – what this leads to is a concerted effort on the part of candidates to disavow the feminine in themselves, and to project it on to their opponents.

That was the central function of the Republican National Convention. Once you got past the moderate sweet talk, the purpose was essentially to make John Kerry their woman. There were a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle code words in this attempt to feminize him. This is a strategy that Republicans have long employed. They've just been more brazen about it lately.

In the book, you argue that this anxiety about the feminine defines not just American politics but has been a part of the history of Western culture.

The problem with our current notion of masculinity is that it’s a definition of manhood based on domination. The problem with definition of manhood based on domination is that domination can never be a permanent condition. It’s a relational state – it is dependent on having somebody in the subordinate position, which means that you may be manly today, but you’re not going to be manly tomorrow, unless you’ve got somebody to push around and control. This definition goes back to the ancient Greeks, and it makes masculinity a precarious and brittle achievement – which has to be constantly asserted. It has to be proven over and over again. It is the ultimate Sisyphean pursuit.

It has characterized politics going all the way back to the ancient Greeks. They had their own version of the "wimp factor." The worst thing an ancient Greek politician could be accused of is being a binoumenos, which loosely translated means "fucked male." Manhood for the ancient Greeks – just as it is for us – was a difficult and transient achievement. It wasn't the gender that you had sex with that determined your masculinity, but what position you occupied in a relationship of domination. If you were penetrated, you were rendered essentially a woman. If you were the penetrator, then you were the man. In a way, we still hold that definition.

So is there anything unique in the way this "anxious masculinity" has taken root and developed in American political life?

In the United States, from the very beginning, if a politician wanted to attack the masculinity of a candidate, he would often accuse him of being aristocratic. The affectations of aristocracy were seen as markers of effeminacy. In a way that has very much informed what I describe in the book as the "wimp factor."

The term "wimp factor" is traceable to the representation of George Herbert Walker Bush in 1989 on the cover of Newsweek. Bush was a pampered patrician from an Eastern establishment family who was raised in the lap of luxury – which framed him as aristocratic. This was understood to be his primary political vulnerability, which was expressed in terms that are very similar to the concerns expressed in the 19th century.

Of course, in American culture, class is judged more in terms of style rather than anything empirical. So Bush [Senior] had a certain kind of artistocratic manner about him – he went to a truck stop and asked for "a splash" of more coffee. The incident made the news because it was judged to be an effeminate gesture.

So what I talk about in the book about the 19th century is the makeover that Theodore Roosevelt embarked on of himself – from somebody who is seen as an aristocratic dandy to becoming the "Cowboy of the Dakotas," as he liked to refer to himself.

Lakshmi Chaudhry is senior editor of AlterNet.

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