On night three of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Donald Trump arrived to the James Brown classic, “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” but something was off. Half the song was in Italian, as the version announcing his entrance was the classic 1993 duet between Brown and Luciano Pavarotti. Perhaps the Brown estate had joined the dozens of other artists who have, at times, sent cease-and-desist notices to the Trump campaign to stop using their music.
Regardless, the message was clear: Trump’s Republican Party, and the vision it has for the future of the United States, is a man’s world.
Some Republicans were shocked when the RNC platform was rushed through to ease up on openly attacking abortion rights and marriage equality, but the GOP rightly saw its strong stance against women and LGBTQ people as damaging its prospects in November’s election.
But to watch the four nights of the convention was to see clearly that the cultural, social, and political foundation of Trump’s Republican Party remains toxic masculinity. The misogyny was so radioactive that it was shocking that women played any role in the event at all.
On paper, women made up a little less than 40% of the speakers at the podium. They were, ostensibly, women from all walks of life: different ages, races, creeds, and nationalities. Some were very wealthy businesswomen; others were poor minimum-wage workers. Some were elected politicians, while others were on stage simply because they worked at one of Trump’s golf courses. But they all had one thing in common: They were there because of the men in their lives.
Callista Gingrich, former ambassador to the Vatican under Trump, spoke at length about Trump’s piety and the need to defend the “right of doctors, nurses, and teachers to act in accordance with their conscience”—i.e. refuse to give abortions and birth control or teach about gender and sexuality—and claimed that Biden had identified practicing Catholics as presenting an “elevated risk of domestic terrorism simply because of their faith.”
A Catholic herself, Callista Gingrich met her husband, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, when she was 27 years old and working as a staffer in Congress. He was 23 years her senior. After embarking on a six-year affair with him that culminated in marriage four months after he divorced his second wife (who he decided to abandon just months after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis). In order to be married to Callista in the Catholic church, Gingrich had his previous marriage annulled on the grounds that his now ex-wife was a divorcée.
Usha Vance, a second-generation Indian-American, was allotted five uncomfortable minutes on stage to introduce her husband, the new vice-presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, while the mostly-white crowd before her held up signs that said “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!”
Though having graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and edited two Yale Law journals, though having clerked for the Supreme Court, she was reduced to gushing wife and mother at the RNC, with none of her academic or professional accomplishments mentioned.
Then, she sat down next to Donald Trump, a man who courts have concluded committed sexual assault and who was found liable for the rape of at least one woman, as her husband talk to a nationwide audience about what a good man Trump is.
Roofing tycoon and richest “self-made” woman in the U.S. Diane Hendricks spoke movingly of her struggle to advance in life despite her difficult rural beginnings. “If I can make it, you can make it, too,” she said from the podium.
A mother at 17, she was married to her first husband for three years and then became a Playboy Bunny to support herself and her child as a single mother at 22, which is the same year she met her future husband, construction magnate Ken Hendricks. Yet her well-timed and fortunate marriage to a man already established and seven years her senior was not part of the story that was told of how she rose to the top. Worth $22 billion, she is a major financial backer of not just Donald Trump, but anti-union politicians like Scott Walker.
Melania Trump arrived only on the last night, the first time she has been seen in public with her husband in many months. Cutting a striking figure in her cherry-red dress suit, Melania avoided kissing her husband as she greeted him on stage at the close of his speech. She did not speak one word during her entire appearance.
Yet, the image of the submissive and broken-down woman always requires its opposite: a forceful and violent man. The RNC delivered. The final night of the convention featured three figures of professional wrestling and bloodsport: Hulk Hogan, an alleged batterer; Linda McMahon, wife of WWF founder Vince McMahon, who is currently being sued for sexual assault); and Dana White, the CEO and president of UFC, also known for beating his wife in public.
“If you are a man in this country and you don’t vote for Donald Trump, you’re not a man,” said Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk outside of the arena, echoing the masculinist energy underlying the content of the speeches inside.
When J.D. Vance took the stage after his wife’s speech, he praised her for being such a good mother and then proceeded to wipe out any view of women being anything but wives and mothers. Apparently, the workforce, in his ideal world, is male. “We need a president who answers to the working man, union and non-union alike,” he declared.
There were others who endorsed a similar view. After his first night’s remarks, in which he sold out his union to bosses in the views of many, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien endorsed right-wing Sen. Josh Hawley’s writing in Compact Magazine, where he proposes that Teddy Roosevelt’s affirmation—“I am for business. But I am for manhood first, and business as an adjunct to manhood”—should be “conservatives’ mantra.”
“Hawley is 100% on point,” O’Brien wrote, directing his 47,200 followers on X, many of them union members, to a publication that describes itself as “shaped by our desire for a strong…state that defends community—local and national, familial and religious—against a libertine left and a libertarian right.”
Not all Teamsters were pleased with O’Brien’s backing of Hawley’s male-dominated “pro-labor conservatism.” A rogue tweet from someone in charge of the union’s main national account on X read: “Unions gain nothing from endorsing the racist, misogynistic, and anti-trans politics of the far right.” It was quickly deleted but gained wide notice as a sign of rank-and-file dissent.
Much of the Republican convention’s programming was focused on veterans, soldiers, and war, but immigration, Israel, and even veneration of the fraternity brothers across the United States who taunted and mocked the protests on college campuses against the ongoing genocide in Gaza were highlighted.
At one point, an edited video to introduce the fraternity members from the University of North Carolina included footage from Ole Miss, where white frat bros surrounded a Black woman and made animal noises to mock her.
Combined with images like the sea of signs demanding “Mass Deportation Now!” and other hate-filled rhetoric, there is one inescapable conclusion: The fascist wing of the GOP has totally taken control of the party.
To deny its roots in the toxic masculinity that shores up its power would be shortsighted. The tip-toeing around questions of abortion and marriage equality indicates that the Republican Party knows that its misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia could sink its chances in November.
But as the words of its delegates and leaders last week showed, the party just can’t help letting its misogyny show.
Anti-fascist union militants, progressives, women’s organizations, and the left generally would be missing out on an opportunity to hit the Republicans where they’re most vulnerable if they don’t press hard on women’s and LGBTQ issues in November.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.
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