Trump’s Gender Performance as Toxic Hypermasculinity

The return of populism presents one of the most salient topics in contemporary political science. An extensive body of literature provides a diverse set of lenses to make sense of neopopulism (Casullo and Colalongo Reference Casullo and Colalongo2022; Engesser et al. Reference Engesser, Ernst, Esser and Büchel2017; Finchelstein Reference Finchelstein2019; Kaltwasser et al. Reference Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo, Ostiguy, Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo and Ostiguy2017; Lynch and Cassimiro Reference Lynch and Cassimiro2022; Moffitt Reference Moffitt2016; Mudde Reference Mudde, Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo and Ostiguy2017; Müller Reference Müller2017; Ostiguy Reference Ostiguy, Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo and Ostiguy2017; Tormey Reference Tormey2019; Urbinati Reference Urbinati2019). In contrast to the classical expressions of populism in the twentieth century, their twenty-first-century counterparts are not propelled by a modernizing drive but by a fear of loss: “[T]hey target primarily urban and rural lower-middle classes, who feel threatened by the rapid pace of disruptive social changes brought about by globalization and technology. These new populisms are defensive and reactive” (Casullo Reference Casullo2009, 156).

Alongside prominent figures such as Duterte, Bolsonaro, Nicolás Maduro (Venezuela), Matteo Salvini (Italy), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Narendra Modi (India), and Javier Milei (Argentina), the literature on populism features Donald Trump as a prime example. Before being elected in 2016 to serve as the 45th US president, Trump was a well-known real-estate businessman. He had acquired popularity as an entertainment personality with several appearances in movies and TV shows, including, The Apprentice, featuring his catchphrase, “You’re fired!” Trump’s celebrity status has also been shaped by a history of public controversies and aggressive media appearances.

The identification of Trump as a populist seems straightforward. In the introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Populism, Kaltwasser and colleagues (Reference Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo, Ostiguy, Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo and Ostiguy2017) identify three main approaches to the study of populism: the ideational, the political-strategic, and the sociocultural. Trump exemplifies the ideational approach (see also Mudde Reference Mudde, Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo and Ostiguy2017) in his rhetoric focused on the opposition between enemies in defense of a popular rebellion against the alleged elites of the “deep state” and progressive liberals, who are supposedly destroying American values and culture. The political-strategic approach (Weyland Reference Weyland, Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo and Ostiguy2017) draws attention to Trump’s mobilization of the resentment of different groups that feel they are being left behind and their incorporation into a coalition around his charismatic leadership. Finally, and more centrally to the focus of this paper, the sociocultural approach sheds light on Trump’s particular communication style (Moffitt Reference Moffitt2016; Ostiguy Reference Ostiguy, Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo and Ostiguy2017). Trump constructs direct communicative channels to his audiences through transgressive provocations that are often seen as improper by the “political establishment.”

Despite the existence of women populist leaders such as Giorgia Meloni (Italy), Marine Le Pen (France), Pia Kjærsgaard (Denmark), Sarah Palin (the United States), Alice Weidel (Germany), and Eva Perón (Argentina), the literature around contemporary populism emphasizes the centrality of masculinity cutting across diverse historical experiences: “The cult of personality around populist leaders contributes to the masculinization of politics. … This leader is usually portrayed as a masculine and potentially violent ‘strongman’” (Löffler, Luyt, and Starck Reference Löffler, Luyt and Starck2020, 3). Investigations into contemporary expressions of populism focus on hypermasculinity, toxic masculinity, and macho populism in charismatic leaders (Curato Reference Curato2019; De Chavez and Pacheco Reference De Chavez and Pacheco2020; Encinas-Franco Reference Encinas-Franco2022; Gomes and Martins Reference Gomes and Martins2020; Linders, Dudink, and Spierings Reference Linders, Dudink and Spierings2022; Messerschmidt Reference Messerschmidt2021). According to Linders, Dudink, and Spierings (Reference Linders, Dudink and Spierings2022, 654), “masculinity is crucial to understanding the success of populist right-wing politicians.” Löffler, Luyt, and Starck (Reference Löffler, Luyt and Starck2020, 1) also argue that right-wing populisms are often sexist, as “they oppose feminism and gender-equality measures, same-sex marriage and gender studies; they seek to re-instantiate traditional family and associated gender roles; and they pursue a strong-man style of political leadership.”

One of the central figures discussed by this literature that highlights the relationship between hypermasculinity and populism is Rodrigo Duterte (Encinas-Franco Reference Encinas-Franco2022). His misogynistic, aggressive speeches often reenact patriarchal structures that are deeply rooted in Philippine society. According to De Chavez and Pacheco (Reference De Chavez and Pacheco2020, 264), “[t]he rise of Duterte … brought to the fore a type of masculinity that involves spectacular performances that rehearse qualities of ‘toxic masculinity’ while localizing such qualities, claiming that it is representative of the average Filipino male.” Curato (Reference Curato2019, 261) also uses the term “toxic masculinity” in reference to Duterte, explaining that “toxic has served as a descriptor to emphasize the physical harm, emotional damage, and lethal effects of patriarchal power.” Duterte’s “war on drugs” (Reyes Reference Reyes2016) evinces the lethal dimension of toxic masculinity and its contribution to what Mbembe (Reference Mbembe2003) calls a form of necropolitics.

Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil is another prominent example of the populist performance of hypermasculinity. His militarism, crusade against so-called gender ideology, and anti-LGBT expressions, as well as his vulgar appropriations of soccer, are some of the indicators of hypermasculinity (Gomes and Martins Reference Gomes and Martins2020; Mendonça and Mendonça Reference Mendonça and Mendonça2021). Bolsonaro makes frequent misogynist jokes and was convicted in 2015 for saying he would not rape a congresswoman because she did not deserve it (Kaiser Reference Kaiser2018).

To return to the main subject of this paper, Trump’s identity performance is commonly qualified as an expression of toxic hypermasculinity (Bostdorff Reference Bostdorff2022; Johnson Reference Johnson2017; Neville-Shepard and Neville-Shepard Reference Neville-Shepard and Neville-Shepard2021; Pizarro-Sirera Reference Pizarro-Sirera2020; Powell, Butterfield, and Jiang Reference Powell, Butterfield and Jiang2018). “Trump’s rhetorical form functions through a toxic, paradoxically abject masculine style” alienated “by a feminized political establishment” (Johnson Reference Johnson2022, 177–78). Trump’s misogynistic language, self-portrayal as a ladies’ man, and sexual “jokes” construct the image of a cis-hetero strongman (Rowland Reference Rowland2021). To cite one example, his many chauvinist statementsFootnote ¹ include bragging about his sexually predatory behavior: “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”Footnote ²

Donald Trump often seeks to flaunt his alleged success with women, projecting an image of a playboy and womanizer who is desired despite his scorn for women. The many accusations of sexual misconduct pending against himFootnote ³ contribute to this image of a cis-hetero-masculine sex machine who cannot control himself around women. According to Schermerhorn, Vescio, and Lewis (Reference Schermerhorn, Vescio and Lewis2022, 475), Trump’s “masculinity functions as a cultural ideology that legitimates and justifies sexual violence.” The characterization of Trump’s identity performance in terms of toxic hypermasculinity (Bostdorff Reference Bostdorff2022; Johnson Reference Johnson2017; Neville-Shepard and Neville-Shepard Reference Neville-Shepard and Neville-Shepard2021; Pizarro-Sirera Reference Pizarro-Sirera2020; Powell, Butterfield, and Jiang Reference Powell, Butterfield and Jiang2018) rests on the verbal articulation of his relations to other social groups. Bostdorff’s (Reference Bostdorff2022) rhetorical analysis concludes that Trump’s hypermasculinity and the projection of himself as primitive, white, and working class is a way of dominating women and racial minorities.

As in the case of many other contemporary populists, Trump’s performance of masculinity seems to offer simple solutions in confusing times. The person who can “Make America Great Again” necessarily needs to be a “good old man,” who speaks his mind authentically. According to Kurtzleben (Reference Kurtzleben2020), Trump has successfully weaponized masculinity, addressing mainly men and amplifying long-standing gender gaps in politics.

The Many Versions of Donald Trump

We argue that the concept of toxic hypermasculinity is insufficient to make sense of Trump’s gender performance. Following Linders, Dudink, and Spierings (Reference Linders, Dudink and Spierings2022), a proper comprehension of the way populists enact gender identity requires a nuanced view unpacking the overlap of many masculinities. Indeed, Trump’s identity performance is characterized by its multiplicity. Beyond the hegemonic, toxic, and dominating masculinities pointed out by Messerschmidt and Bridges (Reference Messerschmidt, Bridges, Kimmel and Messner2018), Trump also displays weakness through enacted victimhood. Johnson (Reference Johnson2017) rightly characterizes Trump’s gender performance as paradoxical. Trump’s toxic masculinity is accompanied by self-victimization, which is, however, not connoted with femininity but incorporated into masculinity by staging it vis-à-vis the supposedly feminized establishment personified by Hillary Clinton and later Kamala Harris. This performance is “creating an avenue for identification with audiences who imagine themselves as voiceless on the basis of their subjugation to the power of the political establishment” (Johnson Reference Johnson2017, 231).

We can find support for the characterization of Trump’s identity as multiple and paradoxical if we look beyond the literature on populist gender and its focus on rhetoric. Research on Trump’s self-presentation, and in particular its embodied and aesthetic dimension, emphasizes multiplicity. Olthof (Reference Olthof, Olthof and Zwiers2020) focuses on class and characterizes Trump as a “blue-collar billionaire.” He engages in self-fashioning, actively fabricating a counterfactual rags-to-riches story. This fake class hybridity indicates Trump’s chameleon-like character: Trump “is the ultimate political performer who has succeeded in creating a public persona on the basis of bluff and bravado. As president, he effortlessly switches between being presidential and politically incorrect, and his ‘real’ personality remains elusive” (2020, 194).

These multiple and paradoxical self-enactments are also evinced in several empirical studies that focus on Trump’s bodily comportment and facial expressions. An analysis of Trump’s presidential portraits reveals that in contrast to most US presidents, who are depicted smiling, the facial expression of Trump’s first official portrait displays an almost menacing seriousness with a dominant glare (Schaefer Reference Schaefer2020). Gökarıksel and Smith (Reference Gökarıksel and Smith2016, 80) interpret a similar portrait: “His signature pose, lips puckered, eyes narrowed, and head tilted, presents an aggressive, enraged look.” Focusing on Trump’s body, they describe his gender performance as “fascist masculinity,” which embodies white supremacy by enacting ethnic homogeneity. Contrary to these two accounts of Trump’s seriousness, one study closely analyzes his body language and concludes that Trump is a true comedian: “Trump violates many of the normative bodily standards of presidential propriety expected for the political stage” (Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016, 82). Continuing to play the role of the big showbiz entertainer from his TV career, he uses his body in an unpresidential manner to imitate, mock, and ridicule his opponents through grimacing and excessive gestures (see also Mendonça and Caetano [Reference Mendonça and Caetano2021] on Bolsonaro’s self-presentation).

Research on the gendered nonverbal body language of Clinton and Trump in the 2016 town-hall presidential debate gives us an initial indication of how Trump’s paradoxical bodily performance plays out in regard to gender (Wasike Reference Wasike2019). While the study finds that Trump displayed more anger in his facial expressions and tried to intimidate his opponent with his bodily presence by oddly stalking her across the stage—indicators of toxic masculinity—he also displayed far more confined postures, using less space with his gestures and body—a type of comportment typically connoted with femininity (see Young Reference Young2005).

The subtle infusion of Trump’s masculinity with feminine traits also becomes evident in a study that brings together fatness and masculinity studies to examine comedians’ fat shaming of Trump (Kindinger Reference Kindinger2022). A gendered reading of Trump’s fatness reveals that on the one hand it expresses softness and physical weakness. Unlike the athletic ideal of masculinity, which valorizes hard bodies, the softness of fat bodies is connoted with feminine maternity and fertility. On the other hand, however, fatness also represents a power move by occupying space, being heavy and thus unremovable—qualities associated with masculinity. Trump’s fatness crosses not only gender but also class boundaries. It simultaneously signifies wealth and abundance, marking elite status, while also enacting a supposed working-class affiliation: “Trump successfully utilized his … fatness-as-ordinariness to appeal to his voters, who are often imagined as a homogeneous mass of white, fat, underclass or working-class Americans” (2022, 338). Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection as a disruptive claim to everyday authenticity, another study investigates Trump’s “abject corporeality” (Shugart Reference Shugart2021). The public perception of Trump’s body fixates on his fatness, with images on social media ridiculing his large-sized posterior, which again underscores his feminine traits: “[T]he fetishization of Trump’s buttocks sexually primitivizes and arguably emasculates him insofar as it aligns him with the raced, feminine primitive” (2021, 285). At the same time, however, this vulgarization of Trump also works to enhance his “authenticity, even vulnerability” (285) as a regular working-class man.

In reviewing the studies on Trump’s self-presentation with a particular focus on his embodied identity performance, we have made important headway. While we recognize that such classed, gendered, and bodily markers rely on cultural stereotypes, they remain crucial to understanding how Trump performs identity multiplicity. In contrast to the relatively unanimous conceptualization of Trump’s gender performance as a form of toxic hypermasculinity in populism studies, we can now understand Trump’s identity as inherently multiple. As a “blue-collar billionaire,” Trump hybridizes working- and upper-class performances. The same is true for his fat body, which signifies both working-class normalcy and upper-class abundance. His menacing seriousness enacting a threat to his enemies is oddly contrasted by his comedic embodied ridicule of his opponents. Finally, and most importantly for the purpose of this paper, his masculine aggression jarringly clashes with his feminine confined hand gestures and soft body. While all these examinations show evidence of Trump’s multiplicity and indeed hybridity, they have so far overlooked his queer masculinity.

Hegemonic Masculinity and its Imperceptibility

While research on Trump’s embodiment paints a complex picture of his plural identity performances, including aspects of femininity, populism studies focusing on his rhetoric tend to overlook this plurality. This oversight can be explained through theories of hegemonic masculinity. The concept of hegemonic masculinity was put forward by Raewyn Connell in the 1980s and further developed in Masculinities (Connell [1995] Reference Connell2005). While the concept has been intensely debated and reworked (e.g., Demetriou Reference Demetriou2001), its influence is strong today, as is evident in the analyses of Trump and other populists cited above (Messerschmidt Reference Messerschmidt2019). For Connell ([1995] Reference Connell2005, 77), the main purpose of hegemonic masculinity is the manifestation and perpetuation of patriarchy as the domination of masculinity over femininity.

Rather than essentializing gender as born sex or relying on theories of gender roles, Connell conceptualizes gender as a practice. Gender is an act that is continuously reproduced through repetition, much as in Butler’s (Reference Butler1990) theory of performativity. This means that we cannot simply attribute hegemonic masculinity to a person—in our case, Donald Trump. Rather, we need to understand hegemonic masculinity as a web of practices and performances that individual people temporarily and situationally navigate. Messner (Reference Messner2007) points out that we should not think of hegemonic masculinity as the expression of the most common male gender performance either. Hegemonic masculinity constitutes a fantasy that inhabits the social imaginary as a pinnacle expression of ideal manhood. Professional athletes, film actors, movie characters, and politicians sometimes embody this archetype, playing the role of the ideal man. But hegemonic masculinity is not performed by a specific person all the time.

Beyond the relationship between masculinity and femininity as domination, hegemonic masculinity makes sense of the internal diversity and relationships within masculinity. Masculinities should always be thought of in plural, and they articulate themselves in diverse intersectional manifestations. Connell ([1995] Reference Connell2005, 76–80) makes sense of the gender-internal relationships between masculinities through relations of domination, marginalization, and complicity. Hegemonic masculinity dominates gay masculinities through direct intimidation and aggression (much like it does femininity), and it marginalizes ethnic minority and working-class masculinities through ignorance. Hegemonic masculinity, then, is only accessible to a relatively small group of people. But even among this group, the majority rarely engages in it. By benefiting from it and not challenging it, many men are complicit even while not enacting it.

The fact that gender mostly goes unnoticed highlights a crucial feature of hegemonic masculinity: its overall imperceptibility. While female identity performances, whether enacted by female or male bodies, are marked as “other,” masculinity’s hegemony conceals its power and prevents its identification by visual or other sensory means. Indeed, hegemonic masculinities are “hidden in plain sight, operating in a disguised way. … [H]egemonic masculinities are so obvious that people do not actually ‘see’ them” (Messerschmidt Reference Messerschmidt2019, 17; emphasis in original).

Trump’s Queer Masculinity: “He’s the Drag Queen You Can Vote For”

In the case of Donald Trump, the analysis of hegemonic masculinity is only partially sustained. Although domination and marginalization are at work—as is evident in his rhetorical display of aggression against women, racial minorities, and trans people, which is in line with the concept of hegemonic masculinity—Trump’s gender performance is only partly imperceptible. It is exactly his emphasized aggression, open toxicity, and hypermasculinity (Johnson Reference Johnson2017; Pizarro-Sirera Reference Pizarro-Sirera2020) that make his gender performance so remarkable to the public eye. Trump and the movement that supports him, then, abandon the power position of invisibility through a new white-male identity politics (Asenbaum Reference Asenbaum2023; Robinson Reference Robinson2000). Appropriating the rhetoric and tactics of historically structurally oppressed groups, “white men negotiate the increased visibility of their racial and gender privilege by discursively constructing (white) masculinity as stigmatizing” (Bridges Reference Bridges2021, 664).

There are, however, other aspects to Trump’s gender performance that have gone unnoticed. The characterization of Trump as hypermasculine focuses on the content of his rhetoric but neglects his aesthetics and embodied identity performance, which are still shrouded by hegemonic power. While Trump enacts his gender in a dominating way by verbally attacking othered identity groups, his corporeal aesthetics convey a different dynamic. His orange makeup, dyed hair, pouty lips, and confined gestures express his gender in a feminine manner. We contend that the focus on Trump’s rhetoric has led observers to overlook his physically embodied queerness. Through camp imagery and gender parody, by employing loud colors and effeminate gestures, Trump crosses gender boundaries.

Trump’s orange skin tone has long been a topic of public contention. Critical observers have pointed out that Trump’s skin color is not only due to artificial tanning but also to the use of makeup. They identify “the pink circles surrounding his eyes peeping through an orange face, his neck often showing a stark line where the makeup fades and the more natural skin tone shows. While Trump must think this look projects youth and power, it also suggests insecurity and vanity” (Thomas Reference Thomas2024). Commonly attributed to Trump’s showmanship and experience in the TV industry, as well as his attempt to project the image of a golfing and yacht-sailing playboy, the gendered dimension of wearing makeup within the heterosexual matrix is obvious. Beyond the application of foundation, concealer, and bronzer, Trump’s beauty routine entails elaborate hair treatments. His hair’s varying shades, from reddish to platinum blond to gray, are explained by his impatience with having to leave the dye in for the required amount of time (Akalin Reference Akalin2024). In subjecting himself to strict beauty routines, Trump feminizes his body, which clashes with his rhetorical performance of the hypermasculine strongman.

The feminization of Trump’s embodied self-presentation also includes his facial expressions and bodily comportment. His pout has become so emblematic that it inspires Trump masks with puckered lips (Abrams Reference Abrams2020). Pouting is generally connoted with sexualized femininity (Gabriel Reference Gabriel2017). Beyond feminization, the pout signifies discontent, which plays into Trump’s self-victimization. His sulking may invite identification by those who feel unfairly treated by society. The display of weakness is also evident in Trump’s small hand movements, keeping the elbows close to his body while gesturing using the lower arms with bent wrists and with thumb and index finger touching (see figure 1). Bent or limp wrists are typically observed in straight women and gay men (Brown Reference Brown2016).

Figure 1

Trump’s Gestures

Sources: Top left: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/24949307320. Creative commons license. Accessed March 31, 2025. Top right: https://www.heute.at/i/trump-macht-aus-oval-office-ein-golden-office-120097771/doc-1imq4gkql0. Creative commons license. Accessed March 31, 2025. Bottom left: https://images.app.goo.gl/BfTMcdJap2hBS8Rn8. Creative commons license. Accessed March 31, 2025. Bottom right: https://images.app.goo.gl/8KwPJfo8R6FXLdmA9. Creative commons license. Accessed March 31, 2025.

Trump’s self-feminization through beauty routines, body language, and facial expressions accompanied by the blatant display of aggression is sometimes read as “mean girl” feminine, instead of toxic masculine (Watercutter Reference Watercutter2024). His attacks on social media, and in particular the body shaming of his opponents (Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016), are then understood as stereotypical teenage-girl bullying. This queer image is unreadable to many but often resonant with gay men, in particular his supporters in Gays for Trump. In the terms of one supporter, “[t]he makeup, the hair, the sharp tongue, the cattiness. … He’s the gayest president we’ve ever had” (quoted in Lefferts Reference Lefferts2025). Another supporter puts it this way: “It’s obvious why Trump would be a gay icon. He’s brassy, he’s outrageous and upsets all the right people. … Everything about him is at once hyper-masculine and faintly camp. He’s the drag queen you can vote for” (Yiannopoulos Reference Yiannopoulos2016).

Beyond these more subtle bodily cues, Trump also embraces gay culture explicitly. At his rallies he regularly dances to songs closely associated with gay communities such as the Village People’s “YMCA,” which he adopted from the anti-COVID-vaccination movement (Saris Reference Saris2020). The song’s lyrics invite lonely “young men” into a welcoming community where “you can hang out with all the boys” and “do whatever you feel.”Footnote ⁴ In the context of the protests against social distancing, “YMCA” signifies not only frivolous celebration but also physical and sexual proximity. Without saying a word, Trump’s dance movements (see figure 2) articulate a sexually charged message. Trump’s queer gender performance can be further observed in his dancing to the Village People’s “Macho Man,” stylizing himself in hypermasculine yet heavily gay-connoted terms, and to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” presenting himself not only as feminine but as a figurative “queen,” in direct reference to gay and drag culture.

Figure 2

Trump’s Dancing

Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/MnoeJPBqMGVzXeJZ8. Creative commons license. Accessed March 31, 2025.

Trump displays his openness not only to gay culture but to homosexual acts, for example when he rebelled against COVID-19 restrictions by telling his followers, “I will kiss the guys and the beautiful women” (quoted in Clark Reference Clark2020). In his 2024 election campaign he went one step further and lusted over sportsman Arnold Palmer: “[T]his is a guy that was all man. … [W]hen he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable’” (quoted in LeVine and Arnsdorf Reference LeVine and Arnsdorf2024). At another rally, Trump appeared to simulate performing oral sex on a microphone that forced him to “bend over like this” to articulate his dismay about its low positioning (Lubin Reference Lubin2024).

Saving the Patriarchy through Hybrid Masculinities

The oversight of the queer aspects of Trump’s masculinity is partly due to the incorporation of queerness into hegemonic masculinity. While his identity performance is perceptible as shrill, loud, and highly visible, these qualities are not attributed to his gender. Rather, they are explained as part of his showmanship, attention seeking, populism, and opposition to the establishment (Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016). The gendered aspects of this performance are absorbed by the hegemony of masculine power.

Current research explains the apparent shift in masculinities from hegemonic imperceptibility to the visible enactment of gender through the concept of hybridity (Bridges Reference Bridges2014; Bridges and Pascoe Reference Bridges and Pascoe2014; Demetriou Reference Demetriou2001; Messner Reference Messner2007). Hegemonic masculinity is increasingly challenged through movements such as #MeToo, which, by enacting marginalized identity and contesting hegemonic power, wrest the veil of invisibility off masculinities. To maintain its hegemonic position, masculinity adapts by borrowing and incorporating elements of marginalized identity performances. Through acts of appropriation that incorporate but do not acknowledge sources, masculinities secure the patriarchal order. In this way, masculinities become more perceptible and heterogenous, but they do not lose their hegemonic status. Hegemonic masculinity changes its face and is transformed into “a hybrid bloc that unites various and diverse practices in order to construct the best possible strategy for the reproduction of patriarchy” (Demetriou Reference Demetriou2001, 348).

Hybrid masculinities, then, do not signify a break from or an alternative to hegemonic masculinity but rather its adaption and perpetuation, which is why Bridges (Reference Bridges2021) also calls them “hybrid hegemonic masculinities.” King (Reference King2009, 367) describes this phenomenon as “abject hegemony”: “White masculinity prevails not by expelling that which is Other, but by sacrificing its own fictions in order to absorb, assimilate, and make room for Otherness, offering up, for instance, cherished narratives of masculine strength, aggression, and invulnerability in order to indulge in femininity, passivity, and lack.” Along the same lines, Carroll (Reference Carroll2011) observes how white masculinities are increasingly defined by mutability, adjusting to new contexts to secure their dominance. They adopt the rhetoric and strategies of historically marginalized groups to portray themselves as victims of discrimination.

This kind of hybridization can be underpinned by a conscious political rationale. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s enactment of manhood as governor of California presents a telling example. To soften his hypermasculinity, Schwarzenegger foregrounded his caring and nurturing side by displaying himself with children in kindergartens and schools. He appended his image as the decisive and fearless Terminator by drawing on his role as a friendly kindergarten cop. In the hybrid “masculinity of Arnold Schwarzenegger, we see the appropriation and situational display of particular aspects of femininity, strategically relocated within a powerfully masculine male body” (Messner Reference Messner2007, 467).

Some argue that the incorporation of marginalized practices signals progressive gender reconfigurations. Queerness or Blackness read on white, cis-gender, heterosexual male bodies may advance the acceptance of marginalized groups in mainstream culture (Anderson Reference Anderson2009; Heasley Reference Heasley2005). Others, however, interpret these developments critically and understand them as ways of exerting hegemonic power (Bridges Reference Bridges2014; Bridges and Pascoe Reference Bridges and Pascoe2014; Demetriou Reference Demetriou2001). Hybrid masculinities can be seen as a way to allow men to distance themselves from the dominating and exclusionary functions of hegemonic masculinity.

The phenomenon of hybrid masculinities has been empirically studied by Bridges (Reference Bridges2014) in the article “A Very ‘Gay’ Straight.” According to the author, it has become a practice for some heterosexual men to adopt some elements of gay identity while retaining distance from homosexuality. Despite declaring a straight sexual identity and engaging in heterosexual relations, they adopt gay sexual aesthetics expressed in (1) tastes, by liking certain literature, music, and arts associated with femininity or queerness; (2) behaviors, such as feminine bodily mannerisms and speech patterns; and (3) ideologies, such as feminist and LGBT-friendly political views. Some of these elements are also reflected in Heasley’s (Reference Heasley2005) typology of the queer masculinities of straight men. “Straight sissy boys,” for example, are heterosexual men who adopt gay mannerisms and bodily behavior, while “social-justice straight-queers” defend feminist opinions in public.

The hybrid encounter between queer and hegemonic masculinities exhibits a pronounced visual dimension—mannerisms, bodily comportment, clothing, and colors, as well as other performative signifiers. It is by aesthetically appearing as queer that straight men are enabled to make masculinity more appealing and attuned to the zeitgeist (Gamson Reference Gamson2005). Hence, we argue that if Trump’s gender performance has not yet been identified as queer, it is because analyses have overly focused on the content he articulates. Certainly, Trump’s ideology and political views must be identified as transphobic and misogynistic, but his gender performance exhibits pronounced elements of queer masculinity. Following Bridges’s aforementioned work on “gay” straight men, Trump certainly does not advance feminist or LGBT ideologies, but he does exhibit behaviors stereotypically seen as “gay,” such as a feminine bodily comportment and an obsession with youthful looks.

Trump’s Fake Subversion

Drawing on the literature on masculinities discussed above, we are now in a position to respond to the four questions raised in the introduction. In answering these questions, we will develop the concept of fake subversion.

First, why does Trump convey his reactionary political content via queer masculinities? The hybrid supplementation of Trump’s toxic hypermasculinity expressed through verbal misogyny and transphobia with a queer masculine embodied performance appears to be a power move. Not necessarily a deliberate strategy but an unintentional and unnoticed political enactment, his jarring gender performance goes beyond seeking attention as a shrill and loud populist and adds a revolutionary spirit to his persona. This rebellious aura employs queer aesthetics to articulate fake subversion.

The concept of fake subversion draws on queer theory to articulate a contribution to populism studies. Queer is inherently subversive. In the foundational book Gender Trouble, which carries the subtitle Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Judith Butler (Reference Butler1990) troubles feminism by contesting the category “woman” as a stable subject. It is this notion of subversion that inspires our thinking. Accordingly, subversion entails the challenge to the dominant discourses, norms, institutions, and practices that deny multiplicity, difference, and self-transformation. The term “queer” itself epitomizes this subversive spirit, going beyond a mere critique of gender binarism and disrupting all sociopolitical disciplinary institutions and power asymmetries.

Importantly, queer is itself not a sexual identity category equivalent to gay or lesbian. Much to the contrary, while the identifiers “gay” and “lesbian” draw identity boundaries and define the subject, the purpose of the term “queer” is to defy categorization and break down identity boundaries: “[Q]ueer politics is a challenge and resistance to dominant and debilitating norms of gender and sexuality” (Chambers Reference Chambers2009, 2). Queer, then, is not an identitarian descriptor but a political signifier of subversion. Queer enacts a mutiny against hegemonic identity constructions within the heterosexual matrix (Butler Reference Butler1990). In doing so, it engenders an anarchist vision of destruction that is necessary to achieve freedom (Daring et al. Reference Daring, Rogue, Shannon and Volcano2013). Queer constitutes a utopian move toward queer futurities of liberated societies (Muñoz [2009] Reference Muñoz2019).

While it may be puzzling why a right-wing populist like Trump employs a revolutionary spirit based on radical left and anarchist ideologies, it becomes apparent that the subtle aura of queer subversiveness he adds to his gender performance taps into libertarian fantasies. This appropriation of queerness reflects an ongoing trend in late capitalist societies of incorporating rebellious aesthetics into mainstream discourse (Boltanski and Chiapello [1999] Reference Boltanski, Chiapello and Elliott2018; Fisher Reference Fisher and Colquhoun2020). Trump’s jarring mimicry of queer masculinity juxtaposed against reactionary rhetoric creates irritation, which is commonly read as populist antiestablishment performance, but on a subtle level signifies gender revolution. In actuality, of course, Trump does not pursue this agenda. He stages antidemocratic sentiments and a conservative return to the past as radically progressive. While indeed insinuating a deep societal upheaval, as expressed in the insurrection of January 6, 2021, it is one that aims to restore traditional gender roles (Avila Reference Avila2025). His performance of queer masculinity, then, enacts liberation while realizing domination. Trump’s expression of queer gender rebellion signifies fake subversion.

Second, why do Trump’s followers appreciate his queer performance? This question poses itself differently for LGBT and cis-hetero Trump supporters. As noted earlier, many gay men recognize—and his gay supporters clearly appreciate—Trump’s queer masculinity. They identify his queerness with “an air of subversion and rebellion … something gay people have sorely missed since mainstream politicians started joining us on pride parades” (Yiannopoulos Reference Yiannopoulos2016). Many of his cis-hetero supporters, by contrast, do not interpret his queer mannerisms as an issue of gender relations. Just like the wider public, they overlook gender and read Trump’s queer masculinity as eccentric showmanship (Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016).

This is not to say that Trump’s queerness does not play a role for his straight supporters. Their attraction to their idol’s queerness can possibly be explained through the seductive force of fake subversion. To further substantiate fake subversion, the concept of carnivalesque populism is helpful. Gaufman and Ganesh (Reference Gaufman and Ganesh2024) draw on Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque as a temporary and playful yet serious enactment of rebellion, inverting societal hierarchies that, according to the authors, coincide with the populist rhetoric of the disempowered people rebelling against the privileged elite. Carnival, however, is not inherently progressive. If employed by the powerful, frivolous enjoyment can be used as diversion from the political and societal problems of everyday life. Play and masquerade harbor deceptive potential. Accordingly, carnivalesque populism “is designed to assuage a discontented populace by creating an illusion of power of the masses” (2024, 15; emphasis in original).

In a recent revisit of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque investigating the Black Lives Matter protests as well as the January 6 storming of the Capitol, Sheckels (Reference Sheckels2023) comes to a similar conclusion. Rather than being inherently progressive, carnivalesque can be employed by emancipatory and reactionary forces alike. When elite actors draw on it, as Trump did during the January 6 insurrection, this constitutes appropriation: “What the president did was coopt a strategy more common to left-leaning demonstrators and try to use it to overturn the election results. He created a mob, more aptly labeled ‘right-wing’ than ‘left-wing,’ and charged that mob with a ‘carnivalesque’ task” (2023, 675).

In Trump’s gender performance, carnivalesque populism—including its deceptive elements—and the subversive spirit of queer meet, resulting in fake subversion. In this paper, we investigate gender performance as a central dimension of fake subversion. The concept, however, may have broader relevance. Right-wing populists exploit conspiracy theories, a distrust in science, and the general destabilization of a sense of shared reality in the post-truth era, and augment their reactionary intentions with a rebellious aura, promising progress, freedom, and prosperity while aiming to conserve the existing order.

The populist deception combines the display of strength, commonly connoted with masculinity, with a performance of weakness, associated with femininity, exemplified by Trump’s self-victimization. The literature on the supposed victimhood of populists and the far right is rich and extensive (Banet-Weiser Reference Banet-Weiser2021; Chouliaraki Reference Chouliaraki2024), so we can hardly do it justice in the confines of this paper. This literature sheds light on Trump’s instrumentalization of economic grievances in the face of precarity to conceal white and male privileges and enact supposed marginalization (Bostdorff Reference Bostdorff2022; Homolar and Löfflmann Reference Homolar and Löfflmann2022; Johnson Reference Johnson2017; Neville-Shepard and Neville-Shepard Reference Neville-Shepard and Neville-Shepard2022). According to the embodied gender focus of this paper, we would like to point to a pronounced performative, corporeal identity dimension of populist victimhood. Actually, victimized groups including women, LGBT people, and racialized groups, although diverse and differently positioned in societies, exhibit some common performative habits. Consider the stereotypical limp wrist that characterizes the body language of some straight women, gay men, and African Americans. The limp wrist signals submission in the face of structural threat. When Trump uses such marginalized gestures he appends his violent rhetoric with victimhood—a billionaire presenting himself as oppressed. While, for the most part, not consciously recognizing these performative identity aspects, Trump’s supporters take pleasure in his self-victimization as they feel recognized in their misery. The xenophobic, misogynistic, and transphobic hate Trump offers provides an easy pathway toward enhancing their self-worth: “Trump’s populist subjects … oscillate between feeling subjugated and empowered” (Johnson Reference Johnson2022, 176).

Third, why does Trump’s queer masculinity go unnoticed? Indeed, Trump’s queer gender performance remains entirely undebated and untheorized. An exception is Tom Nichols’s (Reference Nichols2020) piece for The Atlantic entitled “Donald Trump, the Most Unmanly President,” which discusses Trump’s lack of cis-hetero manly qualities such as, as well as several social media memes.Footnote ⁵ The lack of attention paid to queer aspects is due to Trump’s embodied gender performance forming a part of hegemonic, toxic hyper-, and hybrid masculinities.

Invisibility—or rather, imperceptibility—is one of the core features of hegemonic masculinities. As forms of hegemonic masculine domination are naturalized, they are imperceptible. Both their violent and gendered aspects are shielded from public scrutiny. Trump’s queer masculinity appears to be incorporated into masculine hegemony and hence is indiscernible. When it is detected, it is interpreted as attention-seeking and comedic showmanship (Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016, 82) and in doing so, is disassociated from gender.

As hegemonic masculinity’s grip on power threatens to loosen, toxic hyper- and hybrid masculinities evolve. Trump’s toxic hypermasculinity (Bostdorff Reference Bostdorff2022; Johnson Reference Johnson2017; Neville-Shepard and Neville-Shepard Reference Neville-Shepard and Neville-Shepard2021; Pizarro-Sirera Reference Pizarro-Sirera2020; Powell, Butterfield, and Jiang Reference Powell, Butterfield and Jiang2018) further serves to cover up his queer gender aspects. By accentuating and exaggerating cis-hetero masculinity through assertions of aggression, Trump diverts attention from his queerness. Indeed, audience studies have shown that his supporters perceive him as hypermasculine (Powell, Butterfield, and Jiang Reference Powell, Butterfield and Jiang2018), and they attribute his political incorrectness, entrepreneurship, and fighting spirit to his masculine self (Dignam et al. Reference Dignam, Schrock, Erichsen and Dowd-Arrow2021).

As white, cis-hetero masculinity becomes increasingly perceptible through feminist contestation as well as the identity politics of “angry white men” (Kimmel Reference Kimmel2013), should their queer dimensions not also become more visible? The answer is no, and this is explained through hybrid masculinities, which are characterized by stealth. They conceal their power grab with a friendly exteriority that appropriates embodied behaviors, cultural expressions, and symbols of marginalized groups. Because hybridity is part of hegemony, it necessarily acts secretly. Those enacting hybridity are, for the most part, as unaware of the power move as their audiences. This stealth is essential for Trump’s fake subversion. An open association with queerness would likely not be appreciated by Trump’s supporters. Only by ignoring its existence can both Trump and his followers take pleasure in the queer rebellious spirit.

Fourth, what new light does the case of Trump’s queer masculinity shed on the concept of hybrid masculinities? Trump’s gender performance complicates this concept. Conforming to the established theory, Trump incorporates aesthetic and embodied elements of queer masculinity associated with societal marginalization into his dominant, white, cis-hetero-masculine identity, which constitutes a mostly subconscious response to increasing calls for progressive and more egalitarian gender relations. This superficial concession masks the perpetuation of patriarchy.

The case of Donald Trump, however, also goes beyond and enriches the existing theory. A comparison between Bridges and Pascoe’s (Reference Bridges and Pascoe2014) original hybrid masculinities and the concept of fake subversion provides a good starting point. The authors unpack the hybridization of masculinities in three steps. First, through discursive distancing, men disassociate themselves from their white, male privileges, for example, by criticizing other men’s sexist behavior. Second, through strategic borrowing, they then appropriate marginalized performative elements such as gay aesthetics. Finally, by fortifying boundaries while on the surface eroding identity differences, they solidify their dominant position in society. Comparing these steps to fake subversion, it becomes apparent that Trump’s queer performance does engage in strategic borrowing by co-opting queer aesthetics and also in fortifying boundaries by perpetuating male privilege. However, he does not engage in discursive distancing. Quite to the contrary, Trump’s fake subversion embraces hegemonic masculinities by glorifying traditional gender roles and forcefully upholding binary cis-gender boundaries. The combination of subversive appearance with reactionary substance is what creates fake subversion’s jarring effect.

This divergence between Trump’s fake subversion and existing hybrid masculinities as studied to date can partly be explained by the fact that the latter have mostly been observed and theorized within liberal and progressive politics. It makes sense that left-leaning men would display feminine, queer, or racially marginalized traits to appeal to political peers. In this sense, Heasley (Reference Heasley2005) conceptualizes “social-justice straight-queers” as straight men who embody feminist and pro-LGBT stances. This kind of thinking also sits at the core of the original articulation of the concept of hybrid masculinities. Demetriou (Reference Demetriou2001) draws on Antonio Gramsci’s hegemonic left bloc of the proletariat and peasants. As the dominant class, the proletariat needed to make performative concessions to appeal to peasants to incorporate them into an alliance under proletarian leadership. Hybridity through the co-option of marginalized identifiers, then, works within a bloc consisting of allied groups: “[T]he fundamental class is in constant, mutual dialectical interaction with the allied groups and appropriates what appears pragmatically useful and constructive for the project of domination at a particular historical moment” (2001, 345).

This approach is also reflected in empirical work. Bridges and Pascoe’s (Reference Bridges and Pascoe2014) review of empirical findings describes how hybrid identity performances allow profeminist men to distance themselves from misogynistic attitudes and stage themselves as progressive. According to them, when straight-identifying men incorporate gay or female behaviors, they show a “soft side” appealing to their progressive political peers in general, and to women they are attracted to in particular.

In the above cases, pro-LGBT political convictions align with cis-hetero male queer embodiments. The case of Donald Trump, however, differs significantly. Here, not only a conservative but an ultraconservative with ties to the far right (Neiwert Reference Neiwert2017) engages in queer hybridization. The fact that Republicans append their masculinities with feminine traits to appeal to liberal voters has been studied in reference to both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush (Messerschmidt Reference Messerschmidt2010) as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger (Messner Reference Messner2007). Similarly, men’s rights activists have been observed hybridizing their identities with gay elements (Bridges Reference Bridges2014). However, nowhere is the misalignment between form and content as jarring as in the ultraright Trump and his hybrid masculinity. In contrast to the cases of the Bushes and Schwarzenegger, Trump does not appear to engage in hybridity to appease central or liberal voters. His performance employs the revolutionary spirit of queerness to signify fake subversion.