Reason for Dubya's "strutting" [View All]

[ewagner]

Here's the link to Buzzflash:

<http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/03/int05011.html> The article makes perfect sense and explains a lot about the Bush Administration, and religous fundamentalists in general.

But it does raise some serious questions about the manner in which Lakoff (Don't think about an Elephant frames the debate. If this interview and author are correct, any attempt to fram the political debate in "nurturing" terms plays directly into the hands of the Republican spin machine.

on edit: here's a snippit:

BuzzFlash: In your book, The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, & the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, you argue that the current positions and attitudes of the Republican Party and Bush Administration can best be viewed through a certain lens that we traditionally associate with the he-man, the virile figure--you call it the phallus. Briefly, how would you define "anxious masculinity?"

Stephen J. Ducat: It's a culture based on male domination and a culture in which most things feminine tend to be devalued, even if they are secretly envied. In such a culture, the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman. This powerful adult male imperative to be unlike females and to repudiate anything that smacks of maternal care taking is played out just as powerfully in politics as it is in personal life. In fact, political contests among men are in many ways the ultimate battles for masculine supremacy. This makes disavowing the feminine in oneself and projecting it onto one’s opponent to be especially important. This femiphobia--this male fear of being feminine--operates unconsciously in many men as a very powerful determinant of their political behavior. Also, this femiphobia constitutes a very significant motive for fundamentalist terrorism.


Read it, tell me what you think.