rotmanmagazine.ca / 103In the West, the expectation has always been for men
to be ‘powerful’ and ‘dominant’, and these shifts in the
global economic system have taken away some of the ways
in which they exhibit dominance and competence. As UC
Berkeley Sociologist Arlie Hochschild has said, this has
been an era of numerous challenges to masculinity, espe-
cially white working-class masculinity.
‘Masculinity as dominance’ doesn’t just entail dominance
over women—it also entails dominance over other men.
How does this manifest itself?
One of the most interesting things about watching the rise
of Trump and his beliefs has been the gender discourses
displayed both by the President and his supporters — as well
as by those who are opposed to Trump and what he stands
for. When Trump speaks, we very often see discourses of
dominance over other men. He emasculates people on a
regular basis, talking about Mexican immigrants as ‘failed
men’ who are violent sexual predators. He has even called
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ‘weak’. Much to
his credit, Trudeau didn’t take the bait.
None of this is new for Trump. This is something he
was doing way back in the 1980s, when he said similar
things about the Central Park Five [the case where five
teenagers were wrongfully convicted of raping a woman].
We also see him constantly challenging the masculinity
of the men who oppose him — but we see the same thing
with the groups who oppose Trump. They also use emas-
culating language, making fun of Trump’s ‘tiny hands’ or
talking about how he is Putin’s ‘wife’, to put it nicely. We
are seeing these discourses emerge on both sides, in a way
that indicates how powerful insults around masculinity
are in our culture.
You believe that we need to redefine gender norms that
are damaging to both young boys and girls. Please de-
scribe these norms.
Since the mid 1970s, we have seen an increasing discourse
around the evolving notion of ‘what it means to be a girl’.
While we haven’t yet reached equality for women, we are at
least sending messages to girls about how strong, powerful
and smart they are.
The problem is, we haven’t seen a similar shift for
boys. There has been no widespread discussion about
how boys can be more empathetic and sensitive, and how
to value things like cooperation. Instead, we continue to
give boys the message that ‘being a real man’ means be-
ing dominant over others; and if they slip up at any time,
they are subject to emasculating insults or homophobic
epithets.
This mindset sends really scary messages to young
men, and they take a toll not just on them, but also on
young women. While we are telling young women, ‘You
can be anything you want to be’, at the same time, they
continue to be used as resources by young men to shore
up their own masculinity. When young men enact what I
call ‘compulsive heterosexuality’, they are not expressing
care or love for young women; they are using their bod-
ies as props to build up their own masculinity and showing
how much more powerful they are.What’s the best way to deal with ‘compulsive heterosexu-
ality’?
One thing we need to do with young people of all genders
is to talk about desire and love and affection, and equip
them with language about their emotions. If you talk to
young men about what it means to be in a relationship, orThere has been no widespread discussion about how
boys can be more empathetic and sensitive.