Barack Obama gave a speech at the DNC last week that included a little dick joke aimed at Donald Trump. He said something about Trump’s obsession with crowd size and then made a simple hand gesture that let everyone know for sure he wasn’t talking about crowd size, but rather suggesting that Donald Trump has a micro penis. Now of course, we all know this is funny because Trump is so thoroughly unlikable. So, what’s the problem?
It’s also toxic as fuck.
For sure, Obama isn’t the first, nor the worst to use sex to humiliate another with a differing political opinion. Anybody remember Gamergate? That was the online campaign of hate organized by male radical right-wing gamers - incels, the alt-right and white supremacists - back in 2014. That group of charming young men came up with the term, “cuck” - an all-purpose insult for any man who would dare to disagree with or fail to fall in line with their rabid agenda.
Cuck is derived from the word cuckold, an old-school (as in 13th century) term for a man whose wife fucks other men with or without his knowledge. He’s typically viewed as pathetic and laughable. In incel parlance, a cuck is a man who has been taken advantage of by women. White nationalists and the alt right go on to say the cuck is a man who has been duped by woke culture and feminism; he’s weak, emasculated, and has a small penis. They call other conservatives who fail to adopt their racist, anti-Semitic and sexist views “cuckservatives”. In general, cuck is used to describe any man who supports women’s rights, racial equality or the Queer community. Clearly, cuck is an insult that arises from the men on the radical right and their own anxieties about their masculinity and fear of being “cucked” or controlled by empowered women and people of color. Interesting side note: cuckhold pornography regularly features racist tropes.
Now, let me take a moment to clarify, Obama never said anything like that. And his joke was nothing at all like the real terror created by Gamergate. But the approach is largely the same – humiliate the other man by arguing he lacks sexual power.
Aside from Obama’s little dig and the alt-right’s favorite insult, there have been a few other recent examples of male candidates trying to diss one another about their size, power, and prowess. Donald Trump repeatedly poked fun at fellow presidential candidate, Marc Rubio, “Little Marc Rubio is… all talk and no action” he wrote back in 2016. In turn, Rubio suggested Trump’s very small hands could be a sign that his penis is also very small. During the last election, Joe Biden tried his best to get in on the macho circle jerk by saying he’d challenge Trump to a push up contest and later telling a group of voters that he’d beat up Trump and kick his ass if they were both still in high school.
Ultimately, bullshit rhetoric like this, whether tweeted, spoken or gestured is nothing more than toxic patriarchy. It fuels a competitive machismo between men, as one tries to humiliate the other. It’s an alpha dog mentality -- an aggressive posturing that seeks to take power and control from others. While it’s juvenile on the surface, it's corrosive at its core and it has no place in American politics.
And all this begs the question, “Where does this leave women in politics”? That’s the subject of part 2 – stay tuned.
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