Alcibiades’ Trump Card: The Political Masquerades of Masculinity
Gender has been a pervasive theme in media coverage of the Democratic primaries, as Kathryn Topper addressed in a recent Eidolon article. Less acknowledged, however, is the critical role that gender — more specifically, masculinity — is playing in the Republican race.
We expect candidates to trade policy-based jabs, yet lately their quips and insults sound like the stuff of reality TV: Rubio’s boots, called “cute” by Rand Paul, appeared in an attack ad sponsored by Jeb Bush’s SuperPAC. Rubio assured voters that, heeled boots aside, he is manly: after all, he bought a gun on Christmas Eve. Not to be outdone, Ted Cruz went hunting in full camo with Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson.
But Trump outdoes them all. He accused Jeb of having “to bring in mommy to take a slap at him.” Most recently he announced plans to sue Cruz. Other candidates may bully protesters, but Trump’s abuse is physical: he encourages violence and has confiscated coats at winter rallies. His policies display a shrewdness that knows no compassion: he doesn’t just want to build a wall at the border with Mexico, he wants Mexico to pay for it. It’s no wonder his supporters praise his “cojones.” Trump’s ability to convert a hypermasculinity into a lead in the polls tells us not just something about Trump, but also about our political discourse.
These contests over masculinity are as old as history. There’s a long-standing tradition of comparing current events to Thucydides, and with good reason — while ostensibly focusing on the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides actually gives insight into the complexities of politics, war, economics, even human nature itself. In his narrative of the speeches given on the eve of the Sicilian Expedition, Thucydides reveals how masculinity shaped both the speeches given for and against the expedition, and voters’ decisions. Ultimately, what Thucydides shows is that when masculinity is in crisis, the speaker who seems most masculine will prevail — even if his ideas are irrational.
According to Thucydides, in 415 BCE the Athenians decided to invade Sicily. They had been fighting a sporadic and intense war with the Spartans and their allies for sixteen years. Sicily posed no immediate threat, but the arrival of an embassy from Egesta, a Sicilian city, provided the perfect pretext for intervention. After appointing three generals — Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus — to lead the expedition, the Athenians gathered to consider whether to sail to Sicily. Thucydides reports that Nicias (6.9–14) and Alcibiades (6.16–18) gave opposing speeches, each offering his perspective on the best interests of the city.
Nicias’ plan offered a realistic assessment of Athenian limitations. Urging caution, Nicias warned the Athenians that if they were distracted or weakened by the expedition, the Spartans would surely attack. After pointing out all the reasons not to sail — allies in revolt, the cost of maintaining control over Sicily if they won, and risks that a loss in Sicily would pose — Nicias concluded that the more sensible decision would be to remain at home on defensive alert. Resources could then be used to benefit Athenians still suffering from the effects of the plague and a long war.
Lastly, he urged the Athenians not to let Alcibiades unnecessarily place Athens in danger for his own benefit, requesting that the chairman put the expedition to a vote. “This,” he said, “is the honorable exercise of office — to benefit one’s country as best one can, or at least be no conscious party to its harm” (6.13; trans. Hammond).
On the other hand, displaying a reckless disregard of facts, Alcibiades argued in support of the expedition. Instead of reasoned evidence, he focused on his own successes and contributions to Athens’ reputation. He claimed that his extravagant lifestyle added to the impression of Athenian greatness abroad, and his Olympic victories made Athens seem more powerful. Inequality, he argued, is a leader’s greatest asset: “There is nothing wrong if someone with good cause for pride does not treat others as equals, just as those in a poor state do not expect others to share their misfortune” (6.16; trans. Hammond). Noting his military feats, Alcibiades promised an easy victory in Sicily.
Like Alcibiades, Trump shamelessly draws attention to his unequal status. Trump is so wealthy that he doesn’t need to fundraise. This, according to Trump, is what makes him so successful, and his supporters agree: his wealth means he can’t be bought. As Trump himself has said, “we have a government that’s really messed up because we don’t have a leader at the top. A right leader could get it done… I have tremendous energy, tremendous to a point where it’s almost ridiculous when you think about it. But we need somebody with great energy, with great passion, with great deal making skills.”
Rather than engaging in discussions of policy, both rely on their own success as evidence of their fitness to lead, and both have a knack for arousing public enthusiasm. As Judd Legum has suggested, “Trump is focused on each moment and eliciting the maximum amount of passion in that moment. His supporters love it.” Legum likens Trump’s campaign to WWE wrestling. Both are highly performative, and their fakeness doesn’t matter for a spectator enamored by the passion, energy, and sense of justice.
Legum may explain why we’re entertained by Trump, and his theory equally applies to Alcibiades’ speech. But he doesn’t show how it translates to actual votes. Thucydides, however, does. At the end of his first speech, Nicias warns the Athenians not to let their fears of being called malakoi — soft or effeminate — shame them into supporting the expedition. Alcibiades doesn’t mention masculinity in his speech, but Nicias knew that his own plan would be perceived as less traditionally manly. Here Thucydides alerts the reader to masculinity’s role in shaping voters’ decisions, and how politicians can manipulate voters into making decisions contrary to their interests by making claims about their gender identity.
Michael Kimmel, a sociologist, suggests that gender may likewise play a crucial role in Trump’s campaign. His research builds on earlier research by Matthew MacWilliams’ study at UMass Amherst that found it was not gender, age, income, race, or religion that determined whether one would support Trump, but authoritarianism. The premise of the study was that each man had two components to his gender — an inner and an outer. Those who were internally feminine, but externally masculine — FMs — were more prone to authoritarianism. Insecure in his masculinity, “Mr. FM,” as Kimmel calls him, “takes to all sorts of loud hypermasculine over-compensation.” While Kimmel suggests his theory cannot completely account for Trump’s unexpected success, he notes that we can’t fully discount it either: “Are Trump’s supporters,” he asks, “all insecure about their masculinity?”
The American crisis of masculinity seems to have emerged as women began to achieve more rights; when one half of the binary experiences a shift, repercussions are inevitable. Traditionally masculine spaces and occupations become co-ed. One interviewee in Kimmel’s Misframing Men: The Politics of Contemporary Masculinity observed,
Those bitches have taken over…They’re everywhere. You know that ad “It’s everywhere you want to be.” That’s like women. They’re everywhere they want to be! There’s nowhere you can go anymore — factories, beer joints, military, even the goddamned firehouse! [Raucous agreement all around.] We working guys are just fucked.
In such crises, many voters may turn to a candidate such as Trump, whose masculinity is undeniable. His promises to “make America great again” are shaped by policies achieved through an unconstrained chauvinism toward his Republican rivals, his protesters, and his constituents.
In the fifth century, Greece experienced its own crisis of masculinity. As the assembly floor became a proving ground on par with the battlefield, masculinity was no longer situated in the body, proven solely through physical acts. The civil and partisan strife that enveloped the Greek world also offered new stakes for men: their rhetoric tended towards the thoughtless, immoderate, and frantic as the most immediate consequence was not loss in battle but a loss of votes. In his postmortem analysis of the war between oligarchs and democrats in Corcyra, Thucydides explains how civil conflict and factional strife destabilizes masculinity:
Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given to them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, incapacity to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting a justifiable means of self-defense. (3.82.4; trans. Crawley).
Translations do not do justice to the gendered framing of Thucydides’ analysis. The ancient Greek word for courage, andreia, is formed from the andr- stem, meaning “man.” It referred specifically to men as opposed to women. If one wanted to talk about men as human beings distinct from gods or animals, the word anthropos was used. When the ancient Greeks spoke of “courage,” what they said and heard was the English equivalent of “manliness.” “Reckless audacity,” therefore, was considered manly; moderation was a means of disguising unmanliness.
This passage, appearing in the context of civil war, reveals how social and political unrest provided new ways for men to prove their masculinity, upping the ante in a contest of masculinity. Andreia would always refer to “manliness,” but the meaning of “manliness” changed as men faced new challenges. The advice of the prudently cautious man urging careful consideration and forethought was unmanly compared to plans shaped by this new, hypermasculine man whose excess knew no bounds. This new masculinity rendered qualities that had previously been considered masculine inferior.
Alcibiades’ hypermasculinty, unlike Trump’s, was not shaped by a shift in the gender binary, but by a civil and partisan strife that offered men opportunities to demonstrate a bolder masculinity. Discipline was a fundamental quality of masculinity in ancient Greece; its opposite, femininity, was traditionally framed in the language of excess and indiscipline. Plutarch describes Alcibiades’ excessive lifestyle in the language of effeminacy, a reputation that forms of the backdrop to many jokes in Aristophanes’ plays. Alcibiades’ lack of restraint also rebounded onto ancient descriptions of his licentious sexuality.
In ancient Greece sexuality was decided not by the gender of one’s partners, but rather the role one played in the sexual act. The citizen man who played the penetrating role maintained his status. The man who lacked restraint, on the other hand, might allow himself to be penetrated.
In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates describes the kinaidos — a man who cannot control the urge to scratch his sexual itch — as man who lacks the discipline to temper his desire. This man, according to Socrates, cannot properly distinguish between personal interests and the interests of Athens; he should not rule. But it is precisely this merging of public and private interest that makes Alcibiades’ speech so successful. In light of the rumors concerning Alcibiades’ sex life, Nicias’ concern about his own plan seeming malakoi is pretty ironic.
While we might find this destabilization of masculinity refreshing — a sexually “marginal” person with power in antiquity! — in the historical tradition Alcibiades’ lack of restraint, his excess, and his privileging of the personal ultimately serve to undermine his character; they expose the extent to which the Athenians were led astray by his unrestrained rhetorical display.
Two important lessons emerge. First, when masculinity is in crisis, a new, bold masculinity will often prevail and trump rational arguments, regardless of how ill-informed and irrational the speaker is. Alcibiades’ plan was not the most rational, nor was his lifestyle the most masculine. Yet the boldness of his patriotism prevailed, and Nicias’ paled in comparison. In Trump’s case, his campaign to “make America great again” stirs up patriotic fervor through his performance of masculinity. But this fervor and passion effectively mask the his unsuitability for office. And the hypermasculinity of both Trump and Alcbibiades point toward a pervasive insecurity. Are they, like their supporters, also insecure?
Trump paints a picture of himself at odds with reality. He claims to be every working man’s man, even though he is anything but. He paints a bold vision of America — he will make it great again. Thucydides offers us a glimpse into the devastating effects of masculinity masquerading as patriotism: it blinds voters to rational arguments.
Second, hypermasculinity is itself a product of the conditions of the crisis from which it emerges. Trump’s hypermasculinity is first and foremost shaped by the need to respond to feminism through the rejection and marginalization of women. His comment that he finds his daughter so attractive that he would sleep with her if they were not related demonstrates an unsettling model of objectification. In December Trump declared that Hillary was “schlonged” by Obama in 2008, an undeniably sexual and gendered framing of her defeat. By reducing her loss to a sexual quip, Trump reduces Hillary’s loss, denying her capacity — and the capacity of women more generally — for political leadership.
Most recently Trump invited a New Hampshire woman on stage to repeat an insult she spontaneously hurled at Ted Cruz at a rally. Cruz, she said, was a “pussy.” On the Howard Stern Show, Trump also questioned Obama’s masculinity and sexuality. By denigrating men through models and names that question their masculinity, Trump simultaneously bolsters his own masculine capital and reaffirms politics as a man’s space, empowering a binary gender system.
The Athenian crisis of masculinity was not a response to women’s rights, but rather conflict among men. Thus the language used to diminish a man’s masculinity opposes itself to the phantom specter of a man who embodied qualities attributed to the feminine gender and who, like a woman, must be sexually penetrated. To imagine a woman in power in antiquity was unthinkable; they didn’t even figure into the vocabulary of political jabs politicians hurled at one another. Sadly, that politicians call into question each other’s political leadership by so overtly questioning their masculinity may be a testament to the strides women have made politically.
Thucydides wrote his history with the benefit of both firsthand knowledge of the war and hindsight. As the father of “scientific” history and political science, historians and political scientists look to Thucydides for the foundations of western political thought, and both diplomatic and military strategy. Thucydides’ authorial voice, with, at moments, its nearly impenetrable Greek, is itself elusive: what does Thucydides really think? What lessons are we supposed to take from his history, a “possession for all time” (ktēma eis aiei)? What Thucydides shows us is the outcome of a crisis of masculinity. Alcibiades may have won the debate, but the expedition itself was a disaster. Alcibiades himself was recalled before even reaching Sicily. Nearly all the Athenians sent on the expedition died.
Rather than viewing the Republican candidates as entertainers, as so many would like to do, we need to understand that masculinity is an important aspect in a post-empirical, conservative world. The real question is: will we blindly settle for being entertained by the masculine melodrama shaping the Democratic and Republican races, or will we demand more of the candidates and of ourselves?
Jessica Penelope Evans is a visiting assistant professor of Classics at Middlebury College.
