I'm reading
"Brett Kavanaugh and the Adolescent Aggression of Conservative Masculinity" by Alexandra Schwartz in The New Yorker. Schwartz writes about Kavanaugh's "wildly emotional performance, in which he alternated between shouting, as he blamed the Clintons and the Democrats for conspiring to torpedo his nomination to the Supreme Court, and weeping, as he spoke about the pain that he and his family have experienced in the weeks since accusations of sexual assault against him became public."
First, Kavanaugh never
wept. He struggled to contain his emotion, often sticking his tongue into his left cheek, which seemed to be his way of controlling himself. He was under an immensely powerful attack and fighting for his life. What he did was not "wild" (nor was it tame). It was real emotion, under some degree of control. If he had been completely controlled, I suspect the New Yorker writer would have called him steely and cold, and that would be characterized as masculine (and thus scary and bad).
Kavanaugh choked up and sobbed...
He didn't
sob! He came to the verge of breaking down into crying, but he never did. He just stopped talking, did that tongue move, and waited to regain composure. Can men do that? How many times have I heard progressive women assert that men
should cry and why don't men cry, come on, men, cry, we'll think better of you if you do, it's a strong man who can cry? But let him approach a breakdown into tears and he's already
weeping and
sobbing and he's condemned — as he was when he did not cry — as manifesting the bad kind of masculinity.
... as he described his father’s detailed calendars, which apparently inspired his own calendar-keeping practice; he seemed unable to gain control over himself, gasping and taking frequent sips of water.
He didn't seem that way to me. He seemed that way to you? And actually it seems like bullying to subject a man to emotional torture and then taunt him for approaching tears, even as he fights like hell to control himself. I think of school yard bullies who terrify a targeted boy and make his own vulnerability to tears into further torture by saying things like,
What's the matter, is the little baby going to cry?
The initial impression was of naked emotional vulnerability, but Kavanaugh was setting a tone. Embedded in the histrionics were the unmistakable notes of fury and bullying.
I'm blogging as a read, so I brought up bullying before I saw Schwartz's use of the word. But she's accusing Kavanaugh of bullying! How does that work?
Kavanaugh shouted over Dianne Feinstein to complain about the “outrage” of not being allowed to testify earlier; when asked about his drinking, by Sheldon Whitehouse, he replied, “I like beer. You like beer? What do you like to drink, Senator?” with a note of aggressive petulance that is hard to square with his preferred self-image of judicious impartiality and pious Sunday churchgoing.
If you protest bullying, you're the bully.
Stop bullying me about bullying you. I think maybe Schwartz caught herself making Kavanaugh seem sympathetic — the poor man was weeping and sobbing — that she needed to flip into making him the attacker. He was defending himself, but look: He defended himself with "aggressive petulance."
What we are seeing is a model of American conservative masculinity that has become popular in the past few years, one that is directly tied to the loutish, aggressive frat-boy persona that Kavanaugh is purportedly seeking to dissociate himself from. Gone are the days of a terse John Wayne-style stoicism. Now we have Trump, ranting and raving at his rallies; we have Alex Jones, whose habit of screaming and floridly weeping as he spouts his conspiracy theories is a key part of his appeal to his audience. When Kavanaugh is not crying or shouting, he uses a distinctly adolescent tone that might best be described as “talking back.” He does not respond to senators. He negs them. His response, when he is asked about his drinking, is to flip the question and ask the senators how they like their alcohol; his refusal to say whether he would coöperate with an F.B.I. investigation brings to mind a teen-ager stonewalling his parents. If Kavanaugh is trying to convince the public that he could never have been capable, as a teen-ager, of aggression or peer pressure, this is an odd way to go about it.
Well, that's an interesting observation, and I'll let that part stand for now, because I want to watch the hearing which is beginning again. What Schwartz is describing is something I would not have called "masculine," but men are doing it. Is Kavanaugh like
Trump?! Imagine Trump in the position Kavanaugh was in yesterday and how he might have behaved and spoken.
ADDED: Let me get back to that last paragraph. First, Schwartz sets aside an older form of "conservative masculinity" — "the loutish, aggressive frat-boy persona." I don't know why this is considered specifically conservative. There is, indeed, something we call the "frat boy." I've had an aversion to this type of person since I was a college student and no one I knew would want anything to do with a frat boy. At the time, I believed fraternities were obsolescent and would soon be gone. I thought football was about to die too. Clearly, I was wrong, but I'm just saying I never liked the "frat boy" I never wanted anything to do with. I mean, there was
one frat boy I once went to a movie with. I can't remember his name. Let's say it was Bob. The friends I had called him "Frat Boy Bob," and though I liked him, I never overcame my aversion to the general stereotype that I and my friends had stamped onto him. I can't remember his name, as I said, but I do remember the movie. It was
the 1962 Orson Welles version of "The Trial" — with Anthony Perkins as — in the words of
IMDB — "An unassuming office worker [who] is arrested and stands trial, but he is never made aware of his charges." I wonder if Frat Boy Bob ever became aware of my charges against him.
Schwartz sees Kavanaugh as distancing himself from the "frat boy persona." She adds, "Gone are the days of a terse John Wayne-style stoicism." I think she's positing a second older form of "conservative masculinity," the John Wayne type, but maybe she means to conflate John Wayne and the frat boy, which strikes me as ludicrous. I'm not convinced that the stoical and terse masculine type is gone, and Kavanaugh has some of that some of the time. He has a frat boy part to him too. He likes his beer. He went to parties. He owned up to that and he owned up to embarrassment because he didn't have the sexual activity that might seem to go along with that style, but he told us he was also proud of not acting out sexually because he had religious scruples. Schwartz makes no mention of the conservative masculinity that comes from religion and that demands sexual continence.
Schwartz posits a new sort of masculinity that is "is directly tied" to the old frat boy style. What's the direct tie? Did this new thing evolve out of the frat boy or spring from the same inborn impulses? I don't know what she means. She's observing something and it reminds her of something else, so these things are tied. As she proceeds to describe this newly popular form of masculinity, the model is less the frat boy (a college character) than the teenager:
When Kavanaugh is not crying or shouting, he uses a distinctly adolescent tone that might best be described as “talking back.” He does not respond to senators. He negs them.
Negging is adolescent?! Maybe The New Yorker thinks "negging" is just being negative. But here's
the Wikipedia article on negging, which is how I've understood the slang since first hearing it:
Negging is an act of emotional manipulation whereby a person makes a deliberate backhanded compliment or otherwise flirtatious remark to another person to undermine their confidence and increase their need of the manipulator's approval. The term was coined and prescribed by the pickup artist community, several of whose members have proposed it as an effective method to build attraction.
And as far as "talking back" — Kavanaugh was responding to questions. Yes, he was resistant to them much of the time, but the Democratic Senators were trying to manipulate and handle him and get him to damage himself. Perhaps Schwartz thinks Kavanaugh seemed like a teenager because she saw the Senators as adopting a parental scolding tone and she liked that and was disappointed that it didn't cow Kavanaugh. He stood up to them. Why isn't that good? It isn't good if you want him to let Senators
treat him like a teenager. Then, his failure to accept the position they put him in looks like he's a
bad teenager (and not the good little boy you characterize him as trying to be).
But what does any of that say about present-day conservative masculinity?!
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