Hyper-masculinity in a Cage
How appropriate for this administration
Yes, there will be a cage matches on the White House lawn next month for an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event to mark the US’s 250th anniversary and Trump’s 80th birthday.
(Normally these wrestling matches are held in the Cabinet Room among the contentious and ill-informed cabinet members, but for the 250th more space was needed.)
But seriously, cage match fighting symbolizes a bloody, brutal masculine ideology. It is “wildly popular among young men.”
You can imagine Trump drooling over the term “Ultimate Fighting Championship.” It combines some of his favorite hyperbolic terms such as “ultimate,” “fighting,” and “championship”.
Of course, when Trump was at risk of having to actually fight in Vietnam, he dodged the draft, claiming “bone spurs.”
Hyper-masculinity is an ideology that is an extension of patriarchy. It is a kind of uber-patriarchy that has emerged in reaction to feminism, womanism, and respect for LGBTQ+ identities.
Hyper-masculinists regard violence as strength. It is the belief that physical force and dominance are necessary to prove one’s masculinity.
(How’s that working out for you in the Iran war, Trump?)
Hyper-masculinity values danger and risk-taking as an exciting and acceptable way to display courage.
That would be the love affair with guns. Even the shape of a gun is a tip off.
Women are often seen as the enemy that must be subdued and controlled. Hyper-masculinists view relationships as power struggles. They objectify women and exhibit a general lack of empathy.
The suppression of all emotion except anger is central. Compassion, vulnerability or even sadness is weak and “feminine.”
So, no wonder they can’t get a date.
I actually like the martial arts and studied tae kwon do for years along with my three sons. We did not do full contact fighting but learned ritualized steps called forms that helped us practice the key moves.
I am so proud of the men my sons have become. They value compassion, relationship and decency.
Today, Mixed Martial Arts, as it is now called, is highly regulated. The rules establish specific weight classes, ban dangerous strikes (like eye-gouging or blows to the back of the head), and require referees to protect fighters who can no longer defend themselves.
I wonder if the matches at the White House will be highly regulated.
Nothing else is.
My mother forbade my brother and me from playing with toy guns. That made us stand out in every neighborhood play group in Pensacola and Jacksonville FL. My mother's second husband took delight in cleaning his gun in front of the five of us
𝙇𝙀𝙏 ‘𝙀𝙈 𝘽𝙇𝙀𝙀𝘿!!
—𝗧𝗥𝗨𝗠𝗣𝗜𝗦𝗠 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗖𝗛 𝗧𝗢 𝗙𝗔𝗦𝗖𝗜𝗦𝗠 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗪𝗔𝗥
Trump's bloody MMA spectacle on the White House lawn aims to attract rightists and thugs around an authoritarian “strong man” regime: a Cesar.
It is not merely some personal megalomania to be sneered at; it is a calculated political tool to forge a weapon aimed against us.
Don't laugh. It should be taken deadly seriously considering that the White House Cesar is turning his thumb down on democracy, and up for more wars of pillage.
It is a siren call for the culture of violence necessary for the political aims of Trumpism, which ultimately lie outside of the law and democracy. Fascism in the streets and around the world.
Not for nothing since the time of slavery have cruel despots organized public spectacles of death and torture of slaves, serfs, and workers forced to kill each other or be subjected to horrors for the jeering crowd, from gladiators in the Roman Colosseum, to Medieval torture, and public hangings.
These Hunger Games by the ruling classes were meant to instill fear, dehumanize the audience, and reduce our dignity and solidarity. So it is today.
They were part of preparing soldiers for the cruelty of bloody wars, conquest, rape and pillage against the “others,” the rivals of the rulers.
Trump's blood sports —where workers beat each other to a pulp for the entertainment of the jeering mob of cigar-smoking wealthy rulers swilling whiskey and placing bets, while grabbing women— are aimed at whipping up fascist mobs.
A blood match to the nationalist death cry of: USA! USA! USA! to rally the crazed hordes and prepare them to issue forth from their cages to rampage and kill.
Trump orders: Go forth and conquer! Kill the Iranian schoolgirls, teach those women their place, rip the immigrant child from her mother's breast, kill the fisherman in the Caribbean, beat down strikers for Wall Street bosses! Seize the oil and gold!
It promotes a mindset of indifferent cruelty. This is the violent corollary to the rightist campaign against “toxic empathy.”
“Just step over the homeless person, kick the hungry kids down. Stomp on that country. Let's bet on how many will die.”
This is a right-wing political spectacle by an increasingly authoritarian regime that wants to unleash its thugs on us and the world on behalf of Wall Street robber barons and their profits.
A tribute to an American Cesar who comes not to praise democracy but to bury it.