“Mine is bigger than yours” is both a verbal statement and a visible sign of male virility. The boasting begins in junior high school when locker rooms become salons for trash talk about size — of one’s ego, performance, or body. For some, boys only enclaves were spaces where guys could demonstrate their prowess; for others, locker rooms were cauldrons of fear because they were often ruthlessly teased about how they didn’t measure up to a prevailing cultural image of what it means to be male.
Several years ago, after making a bad shot while playing tennis, I rebuked myself with a quaint and tame epithet. A friend in the next court heard what I said, shook his head, and with a smile remarked, “Mark, you need to swear like a man.” He was joking — sort of. I accepted his teasing, but if it had happened fifty years ago in the junior high locker room, I would have been emotionally crushed. I didn’t start my growth spurt until the end of high school, which made me feel vulnerable and overly self-conscious as a teenager. While I was a good athlete, which provided me with some male-cred, I was small and an occasional object of teasing. I was also a singer, which in some guy spaces I felt I needed to minimize, because my maleness would be even more suspect.
It can be said that next week’s presidential election is a contest about differing policies or styles of leadership, or a referendum on populism. Those certainly are garnering necessary attention, but I think there are some other dynamics in play that need to be acknowledged. Beneath all the posturing from and pleading by the campaigns, there is an essential question being asked: what does it mean to be a man, to be strong, to be big, to be in charge, to be a leader for all? A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump crowed about the size of golf legend Arnold Palmer’s genitalia. The inference was that the size of Palmer’s private parts mattered; that the size of one’s penis is the measure of manliness. And Trump’s continuous bombast and bluster are not so subtle appeals to this model of maleness, and much of his success has to do with the fact that it resonates with the many millions who are resistant, if not resentful, of any other paradigm of maleness and power.
A disdain, if not hostility, is emerging toward gay men. All sorts of religious and cultural arguments are offered against homosexuality, but I think a deeper root is that gay men present a more expansive notion of manhood, which is antithetical to the John Wayne and Marlboro Man images which have predominated for so long. And as for men who seek to become female through hormones or surgery, they are perceived to be even more threatening, because trans women are giving up the notion of manhood altogether.
“Wait until Dad gets home,” some supporters of Trump invoke at campaign rallies, an unambiguous message conveying that should Donald Trump reassume the Presidency punishment will be meted out, the law will be laid down, and what is perceived to be bad behavior will be corrected. The statement is meant to evoke an image of strength. I hear it as a call for a return to a concept of maleness that is framed by domination and force. My experience is that these appeals generate anxiety, ramp up fear, and keep people suspicious of one another. Not to mention that unrelenting and unrepentant displays of maleness don’t work over the long haul, and even if perceived to be successful in the short term, require an ongoing and blistering display of vengeful manliness.
When I look to models of maleness, I see Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King, each of whom looked to Jesus as their exemplar. Jesus knew the fallacy of male domination — and he countered it with compassion and servanthood. As did Tutu and King. And despite the historical record to the contrary, leaders don’t always need to be men. For me, the most effective leader in Western history was a woman, Queen Elizabeth I of England, who reigned from 1558 until her death in 1603. She presided during a time of violent religious polarization between the emerging Protestant reformation and the established Roman Catholic Church. She brokered the via media – or way in between, which gave birth to the Anglican Church that was, and remains, both Protestant and Catholic. Following the example of Jesus, she sought to bring people together from their warring allegiances. Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr. and Desmond Tutu were leaders who appealed to a different, and more abiding kind of power — and to a God who was not framed as a father distributing punishment, but as a hidden presence that fosters love.
