Trump's GOP is no country for MAGA women [View all]

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Trump's GOP is no country for MAGA women
At the Republican National Convention, MAGA women learn there's no place for them in Trump's GOP

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED JULY 20, 2024 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) MILWAUKEE — On the third night of the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump's WWE-inspired entrance to the came complete with a trollish musical cue, James Brown's infamous ode to traditional gender hierarchies, "It's A Man's Man's Man's World."

Earlier that day, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., learned the song's lesson the hard way. The once-soaring MAGA star was facing down a painfully small crowd at the signing of her book "MTG." Just before the trollish congresswoman was scheduled to arrive, a group of red-clad workers busied themselves with building big stacks of Greene's hardcover, published in November 2023. But only a few American flag-festooned folks had lined up. An hour later, Greene still hadn't arrived, but the crowd hadn't gotten much bigger, with fewer than 20 people waiting. When she finally rolled in at 3 PM, Greene took one look at the underwhelming crowd, muttered something to her entourage and then quickly hid in a nearby room.

....(snip)....

After four days at the RNC, I suspect a major source of her woes was something darker. The GOP, already the party of sexism, is getting more gratuitous with its toxic masculinity. Everywhere one looked at the convention, Republicans were exalting maleness with an ardor that reads as "defensive" to outsiders but appears to be a convincing display to those inside the MAGA cult. The overcompensation led to a grand finale featuring both pro wrestler Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White, rather than the traditional activists and politicians one hears at a convention. Hogan declared Trump a "gladiator," which should be funny applied to a doughy senior citizen caked in make-up, but appears to have been taken at face value by the RNC crowd. Along with the James Brown song, Trump used "Macho Man" by the Village People as intro music, still indifferent to the irony of the song.

....(snip)....

"The Republican convention is just making it totally explicit that the project of Trumpism is centrally about masculinity,” Jackson Katz, who researches the tropes of masculinity, told 19th News. As Mel Leonor Barclay writes, it's "key to a Trump victory," because "Trump has a significant advantage among men — 27 points in a New York Times/Siena College survey of registered voters — that surpasses Biden’s advantage among women." ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/07/20/the-clearest-message-of-the-convention-is-no-country-for-maga-women/