Why aren't we talking about the engine running our world?
It's more important than ever that we understand the drive behind the world's most powerful men.
Last month Elon Musk shared a post that said, “Trump won. Trudeau resigned… Masculinity is making a comeback. Great men are rising.” “2025 is looking promising.”
A few months before he shared a post that said that “women and low T men” cannot think freely because they “can’t defend themselves physically.” “This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making. Democratic, but a democracy only for those who are free to think.”
Last month Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and said that more corporations should embrace masculine energy.
“I think a lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered. Masculine energy is good, and obviously, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it… I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.”
The analysis that corporate culture isn’t masculine enough is interesting coming from someone whose employees are 2/3rds male.
Ironically, for valuing it so highly, masculinity doesn’t seem to come naturally these “high status men.” They both have quite the public repertoire of trying really, REALLY hard to appear masculine. But falling short.
Mark’s appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast is best described as a bro-off. Mark fought for his life to impress Joe on such topics as MMA fighting, neck strength, hunting, bows and arrows, and corporate masculinity.
Last year this cringey moment of Mark trying to fit in with the UFC fighters went viral:
Elon has repeatedly tried very hard to impress the gaming community—bragging online about his skills, hosting Twitch livestreams—only for the gamers to quickly discover that Elon bought his success in the games he was claiming to dominate.
And while we’re on the topic of trying really, really, really hard to appear hyper- masculine, we can’t forget our tech nerd-turned-astronaut-turned-cowboy friend Jeff Bezos. Once bullied for being a computer dweeb, Jeff now spends his days pumping iron, taking shirtless selfies and posing for his… country album cover? Viagra commercial? mid-life-crisis hotline ad? It’s unclear.
Hold on, this sounds familiar…
Whenever I think of these men and their desperate public spectacles of manliness, I can’t help but think of lawns. Specifically the story of how the practice of replacing natural ecosystems with chemical-soaked wastelands (aka lawns) came into fashion.
For this we have an epic bro-off to thank.
Specifically King Louis the XIV. Or as he liked to refer to himself, the Sun God.
And his “best friend” Nicolas Fouquet:
Nicolas, wishing to put his vast wealth and manliness on public display, built himself the most lavish estate in all of France. It was called Vaux-le-Vicomte.
Never one to be out-bro-ed, Louis had no choice but to arrest and imprison his friend Fouquet, seize his land and assets and create his own estate patterned exactly after his friend’s. Only bigger. And waste-ier.
He called this new bigger, better palace Versailles. The grounds of Versailles include the first historical record we have of a non-food-producing, non-natural, non-grazing, purely ornamental field. Or as King Louis called it: “tapis-vert” or “green carpet.”
400 years later and now the poor and the rich alike have the privilege to waste entire Saturdays transforming land that was once life-giving into harmful decoration. #equality.
Thanks Louis and Nick!
Louis and Nick also remind us that iron-pumping, MCC fighting cowboys are not the set-in-stone standard of masculinity like some gender-essentialists would have us believe. In their time, masculinity was expressed with panty-hose, high heels, make up, ruffly dresses and carefully curled long hair.
But despite their differences, the broligarchs from 16th century France share something in common with the broligarchs we find ourselves with today…. a very fragile male ego that requires constant reinforcement.
Unfortunately, this is not unique to broligarchs.
It’s actually how patriarchal masculinity works.
Understanding patriarchal masculinity
Let’s start by differentiating maleness from masculinity from patriarchal masculinity. A crucial, but usually neglected distinction.
Maleness= being a male.
Masculinity= attributes, behaviors and roles regarded as characteristic of men or boys. Our current cultural iteration of masculinity includes strength, leadership, assertiveness, independence, courage.
Patriarchal Masculinity= the social pressure for men and boys to only perform behaviors, attitudes and roles considered masculine and to shun any behavior, attitude or role considered feminine. This pressure does not let up regardless of how many masculinity metrics you meet.
There is nothing wrong with maleness. It should be celebrated and honored.
There is nothing wrong with masculinity and displaying masculine attributes like strength and courage.
There is something wrong with patriarchal masculinity.
A key difference between maleness and patriarchal masculinity is that maleness does not have to be earned or proven. It cannot be taken away. It is not fragile or precarious.
Patriarchal masculinity on the other hand must constantly be proven and earned. Even if you are the swollest MCC fighter on the yacht, even if you married your 4th model, have 13 kids, or are literally the richest men in the world, your patriarchal masculine status can be ripped from you with one feminine fashion choice, girly drink or effeminate body language. It’s so incredibly fragile. It requires constant effort to uphold.
And it’s EXHAUSTING to constantly uphold. There are often dire social consequences like facing bullying and ostracizing if you don’t perform patriarchal masculinity correctly.
And worst of all, when it’s NOT upheld?
Things can become dangerous.
“Evidence suggests that it is not innate aggression that makes men violent, but the internalized belief that they fall short of society’s perceived standards for masculinity. Psychologists call this phenomenon, “masculine discrepancy stress” and research shows that the more acutely a man suffers from this, the more likely he is to commit almost every type of violence, including sexual assault, intimate partner violence and assault with a weapon.” -
The more acutely a man experiences masculine discrepancy stress, the more likely he is to harm other humans.
Uh oh.
What does that mean when the richest, most powerful men in the world suffer from masculine discrepancy stress?
recently talked about this in the article The Most Fragile Men Control the Internet:“Musk, Zuckerberg, and their billionaire boy band are so obsessed with proving who’s the most alpha that they’ve lost the plot. They’re not exuding strength; they’re just insecure men rigging platforms and rewriting algorithms like a group of closeted frat boys terrified of being the least manly guy in the room…. But this double standard isn’t about men being powerful and women living in fear; it’s about male insecurity being codified into policy.” - Liz Plank
Somehow we are still living with the effects of the codification of King Louis XIV’s male insecurity 400 years later. Whenever we dedicate our money, energy, natural resources and Saturday afternoons to lawn care we can thank Louis’s fragile ego. Let’s pray the current codifying of Elon, Mark, Jeff and Donald’s masculine insecurities won’t be so long lasting.
When masculine insecurity is codified into laws
I've read plenty of articles lamenting Zuckerburg wanting to bring back masculinity. I've read plenty of articles lamenting his termination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. But I haven't read much expressly linking the two.
They are linked though. They are very linked. We’re just not talking about it.
Which made me extra thankful to come across Adam Conover’s (of Adam Ruins Everything) recent YouTube video entitled Elon and Zuck are insecure men.
Adam does link Zuckerberg’s masculine insecurity with his terminating DEI:
"Both Musk and Zuck are trapped in this cycle of humiliation where they feel the need to prove their masculinity, fail publicly to do so and then double down lashing out in ever more aggressively stereotypically masculine ways…”
“At the root of Zuck's decision to allow abuse and harassment of vulnerable people on his platforms or Musk's efforts to destroy the mechanics of American government from the inside are these dudes’ failures to be the men they imagine themselves to be...
It explains the fascist turn in American politics." - Adam Conover
Adam Conover is not the only one to notice the sneaky face of patriarchal masculinity hiding at the root of the current fascist state of affairs we find ourselves in.
Theresa Vescio, a psychology professor at Penn State who studies Donald Trump says, “Everything he says and does is about masculinity.”
Her research found that after political affiliation, how strongly someone embraces hegemonic masculinity was THE strongest predictor for supporting Trump, even stronger than someone’s gender, race or level of education.
Vescio found that the more insecure you are as a man, the more you support tough guy right-wing policies.
Wait if patriarchal masculinity drives so much, why aren’t we talking about it?
As obvious as it is that Elon, Mark, Jeff and Donald constantly feel the need to prove their masculinity, they almost never actually say the word.
I know, I looked. I couldn’t find one example of cowboy astronaut Jeff Bezos saying the word “masculine” despite dedicating the last decade to its mastery.
But according to author Liz Plank, this tracks. In her book For the Love of Men, she interviewed hundreds of men about masculinity both publicly and privately. These men were all eager for a place to discuss their lives, but when asked “Tell me about how masculinity has affected your life?” over and over again Liz received the same response, “Huh, I’ve never thought about that before.”
Once they got going though, they all had stories of the pressure to perform manhood from childhood to adulthood—in their home, at school, at work—they could never escape it.
Even though these men had been living with the pressure to prove their manhood their whole lives, they hadn’t really thought about it.
This is because masculinity pressure is largely unconscious.
Here are a few of the studies of the unconscious masculinity compass included in For the Love of Men:
When men were told they scored low on a handgrip strength test, they were more likely to then lie about their height.
Men with baby faces are more likely to display hostile behavior and commit crimes.
Men who are unemployed are more likely to be violent inside the home.
When men are told they score lower on masculinity tests, they are more willing to act aggressively, harass women and belittle other men.
When men were divided into two groups- one braided rope, one braided hair, they were then presented with a choice to work on a puzzle or punch a punching bag. The men randomly assigned to braid hair overwhelmingly chose to punch the punching bag and did so more aggressively than those who braided rope.
The researchers of the hair-braiding study said,
"The most liberal, non-homophobic men in our studies were just as uncomfortable braiding hair as those who hold very traditional beliefs about gender roles... Men's anxiety about violating the male gender role is almost like a classically conditioned response.... when men feel less strong, they have all kinds of ways to compensate for it. And most of this isn't conscious or intentional." - For the Love of Men
Navigating life based on an inner masculinity compass isn’t conscious or intentional.
I never really thought about patriarchal masculinity’s invisible hand in the men’s lives around me or in our culture at large until reading Plank’s book.
Given it’s impact on the world, we should all be talking about patriarchal masculinity on the daily
One of the most eye-opening part of Plank’s book was when she notes the wide discrepancy between how many of our society’s self-proclaimed problems—war, corporate greed, inequality, the climate crisis, crime, violence— are affected by masculinity insecurity (all of them) compared to how often masculinity is brought up in Congress, the UN, religious sermons, peace activism efforts or the news (almost never).
She said given its immense impact, masculinity should be discussed every single day in Congress.
When I read this part, I had to shut the book, mouth agape to process this.
Whoa. How had I never noticed this?
The more I reflected, the more I could see she was right- patriarchal masculinity is the driving force behind how our society is run and yet you wouldn’t know it from listening to the lawmakers, CEOs, journalists or peace activists.
Come to think of it, every dream our great male visionaries and poets come up with of an ideal society—Plato’s city of Atlantis, Thomas More’s Utopia, Augustine’s City of God, Jesus’s kingdom of God—all of them describe societies defined by equality, cooperation, co-dependence, empathy and unity.
Patriarchal masculinity, by contrast, is defined by hierarchy, competition, independence, stoicism and isolation. How have we allowed this force to so thoroughly infiltrate our leaders and societies for so long when it is the exact opposite of what we see as ideal?
Truly mind boggling when you think about it.
“Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease.” - bell hooks
And just to re-iterate: we do want men, we do not want patriarchal masculinity. The women don’t want it. The men, when interviewed, also don’t want it. They all have stories of the relentless teasing and isolation from other men and women policing manliness. It’s exhausting. It’s restrictive. It’s killing women and men alike.
And it’s currently the driving motivation behind the most powerful men in the world, whose male insecurity all too often bleeds into unjust, unnecessary laws and policy.
It’s not only high time we start to really understand patriarchal masculinity, it’s imperative if we want to get out of our current nightmarish reality and stay out.
I’ll be dedicating my next four articles diving into understanding what patriarchal masculinity is, the extent of its impact and what we can do about it.
This goes so much deeper than Elon, Mark, Jeff and Donald. They did not create patriarchal masculinity, but they are stuck defending it.
And we are all suffering for it.
Talk to me- masculinity is such a fraught topic with lots of feelings- what did this bring up for you? Defensiveness? Head nods? To what degree have you thought of the societal impact of patriarchal masculinity?
Do you enjoy thinking about and discussing all things patriarchy and feminism?? Cool me too. Come discuss with me and the Matriarchal Blessing community by becoming a paying subscriber. Our next gathering will be in April when we will be discussing Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall.
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I live in the UK and am the mother of 3 young men. They talk to me about toxic masculinity and how they do not want to embody it. I am very proud of them. Patriarchy is terrible for women and awful for men. Clearly it is brutal to those who don't identify with their assigned gender roles especially those who don't identify as either male or female. I always appreciate the amount of thought and research evidenced in your posts Celeste. Thank you truly.ML
Spot on. And in their youth, all of these men were likely put-down - if not outright bullied - by other boys, maybe grown men and even girls for not being proto-male. This goes for JD Vance, Stephen Miller. It’s known Trump’s father was abusive. Rogan had a horrible dad.
When healthy adult masculinity isn’t visible in our culture or lives, the models are cartoon masculinity, jacked athletes, marvel, and the bullies that produce more bullies.