They're different figures but both cringe and scandal-plagued. Peterson's more serious contributions to the discourse, but he's also a goofy benzo addict.
I think he made some very good contributions before becoming a goofy benzo addict, which are now overshadowed by his becoming a goofy benzo addict. It's too bad.
Yeah, I almost wonder if liberal antipathy drove him mad. Sometimes he sounds pretty intelligent and reasonable and then...If you can only define yourself in opposition to something you will never really succeed.
I mean, maybe he couldn't take the stress of being a right-wing intellectual and having all those people harassing him and talking crap about him. You need a pretty thick skin.
People don't really think about how abnormal the stress of being a celebrity is. Even popular people like Taylor Swift have people going through their trash and stalking them. Imagine if you're now in a situation where half the country hates your guts, and (as a right-wing university guy) your old support network now turns on you.
The problem with associating virtues with either masculinity or femininity it is so easy to slip into defining them as opposites. If masculinity is brave, femininity becomes cowardly. If femininity is empathetic, then masculinity is unfeeling.
Why gender the virtues? What’s the point? What do we gain? Don’t we want everyone to be disciplined and integrated and intuitive and rational and determined and caring? Do we care if someone’s strengths and weaknesses match their gender stereotype? Why would we?
I think we should care about men, not masculinity.
While I understand the argument against gendering qualities, there's a long history of archetypical male and female energies, for example anima/animus, yin/yang, etc. We all need to integrate these energies within ourselves and between ourselves.
There is no toxic anything except toxicity itself; it is the narcissism ever more pervasive in the world and available to anyone and everyone to become or to reject.
Completely agree, and I hate that about gender virtues. But I think it is likely impossible to avoid having them. We feel a biological need to group ourselves together, to separate male and female. Men seek friendship from other men, women seek friendship from other women. That is never going away. Whatever path we choose going forward, it will have to conform to a framework that includes gender identity or it will disintegrate.
Something about Walz gives me pause. As a NeverTrump libertarian-conservative, I was ready to vote for Harris until she picked Walz for veep. I’ll probably still vote for her, but Walz somehow feels condescending and insulting—almost like a male version of Sarah Palin, a bald faced attempt to appeal to a demographic. Something about him rubs me the wrong way.
I'm worried about Trump refusing to concede. If you're a libertarian or a classical liberal or any kind of small-d democrat or small-r republican, sometimes you have to vote for Romney over Stalin, or Clinton over Hitler (or, realistically, Orban). This is one of those times.
There’s an academic and media obsession with things that are right-coded or whatever it is that links them in peoples minds. There’s so much fascination with fascism and ‘far-right’, publicised and analysed to death, especially by those hostile to them (they seem fascinated by it all). Right wingers by contrast don’t seem the least bit interested in socialism, it’s just an endless braindead repeat of ‘look what these crazies are doing now!!!’. There’s zero interest.
Same thing with masculinity and femininity. There is so much discourse on masculinity and extreme interest (by people of all political persuasions, and especially by progressive women!) on the topic that isn’t at all replicable to femininity. Perhaps it’s just politically incorrect for a man to analyse a woman’s femininity, but I think there’s more to it.
Are you kidding? You must be suffering from some terrible political parallax to think that right-wingers don't assiduously study their enemies. In fact, people on the right do better at passing the Political Turing Test than people on the left.
Obviously, those on the right study their enemies but they're generally pretty repulsed and not intrigued by them at all, like they know instinctively that they could never be on that side (and there's nothing deeper to be discovered). On the other hand, I think leftists are kind of fascinated by hard right-wing individuals and theories while covering it up with feelings and performances of disapproval and resentment.
And I think this is why leftists are much more likely to go all the way to the right in times of instability or when they have an epiphany than vice-versa.
I completely agree about the politicization of masculinity. I am, however, very curious how Ken would define what becoming a "conscious and integrated" man means in practical terms. Probably a question for him, but was left wondering it after reading this.
First, I'm writing a whole book on the topic, so in full transparency, my response here is going to be embarrassingly brief, and likely slightly less than completely satisfying.
I think part Jeff's final points captures one key very clearly: "Perhaps we should talk more about how to integrate all of our parts..."
With my above caveat in mind, here's a little bit on what "'conscious and integrated' means in practical terms," in my world, at least:
A modicum of self-, other-, and systems- (community, organizational, ecological, societal, global) awareness.
Recognition that his words and actions have an impact (potentially) on all of the above.
An understanding that he gets to be responsible for his words and actions and their impact.
He's done (or is doing) the healing work necessary to release the grip of childhood and adolescent wounds, such that he's able to meet challenging relational moments in real time.
He's faced and befriended his shadows - both "dark" and "light."
He's developed (or developing) emotional literacy, flexibility, and fluency.
He is in possession of his own inner child and inner adolescent - and is discerning about when and if he lets them drive.
His ego is in check.
He's in possession of his human fallibility, is comfortable with ambiguity, and well aware that he doesn't - nor will he ever - know it all.
It's worth noting that, being human, an important part of real practice is recovering from drifting off at the wheel and falling into autopilot.
There's no shortage of what I could add to the above, including putting "responsibility" in huge, bold caps... and hopefully this'll do as (at least) a snack for the moment.
I'm always happy to be in real-time conversation about this stuff.
"It's worth noting that, being human, an important part of real practice is recovering from drifting off at the wheel and falling into autopilot." -So completely and absolutely true! Don't let the elephant yank you around!
Hi Jeff! This brings up an interesting question for me. As Gen X kid coming up in the 70's, there was a lot of talk about androgyny and self-expression, maybe as a holdover of the Hippie movement. I have vague memories of a show called *Free to Be... You and Me" that pushed this this idea very hard. The Replacements even had a song, "Androgynous" with lyrics about "unisex evolution."
I think it's odd how society has turned its back on that idea of gender as personal expression. These days the message seems to be that there are two gender teams with different uniforms and you have to play for one (if you don't like Team Blue, you can switch to Team Pink, or vice versa, but it's a big deal.). The idea that you can just do stuff and not worry about whether it's appropriate for your gender , and everyone else can too, doesn't seem to occur to young people.
In other words, I wonder if some of the conflicts and distress around masculinity are just the outcome of people getting very invested in a concept which is kind of vague and ageworn, not fit to build an identity around.
I think gender is perceived as much more fluid among younger people today than in the 80s or 90s. But it also seems more taxonomized and politicized. Today, everyone wants to put everyone in categories and labels, which is different from the playfulness of the past
I think it's kind of neat that they are experimenting that way, but the thing about experiments is that some of them fail. I just hope that when they find aspects of the new gender labels that they don't like, they don't become so disillusioned that it radicalizes them.
My attitude was always 'biology sets the bell curves for the sexes in different places, but if you're closer to the mean for the other bell curve on something or everything that's cool too.'
I mean, I picked up masculinity when I wanted to date women. But if you want to do the ace thing, go for it--there are monastic cultural traditions in many cultures after all. You want to be a tomboy or a femboy, hey, no skin off my back.
I feel you entirely missed my point, which was that you don’t need to be a femboy (whatever that means), yiu don’t need to categorize yourself and then follow the rules of your self-chosen caste, you can be a gender weirdo and that’s ok! It’s normal, even.
I think the term femboy comes from a group of people wanting to create a shared community that is outside normative hetero cuture. You could see that as "in a perfect culture, people wouldn't HAVE to be femboys" but I think realistically it's more like, "people who share characteristics instinctively seek to create their own groups." Humans like being part of a group, we don't really like being unique snowflakes blowing around in the wind by ourselves.
Since we grew up in a culture pushing the androgynous line, we can forget how completely separated the genders traditionally were. Being able to not worry about gender is a very new idea.
Loved the article. Brings to mind a heuristic of mine that might help with sense-making:
Living systems only focus their attention inwards when they receive a signal that there is a problem.
And a second-tier heuristic:
There are two sorts of parasites. One sort integrates seamlessly into the host system. The second trips immune system alarms far out of proportion by the danger it poses and/or latches on to existing injury sites in order to profit from the increased resources that are rushed to repair the damage.
If you consider that our body politic is a living system, and apply the above heuristics, you might come up with something like the following:
Masculinity, and the lives of men, are in serious trouble at this point in history, so the entire civilization is bending around the problem (in much the same way it did with the crisis of femininity occasioned by the complete technological and economic disruption of women's lives in the 50s and 60s). As a result, the second sort of parasite, in many different guises (i.e. self-help gurus, politicians of all stripes, cult leaders, hucksters, and purveyors of various drugs and distractions) is swarming around the topic--and will likely continue to do so until there is once again a valid, broadly accepted and understandable-by-the-average-high-school-drop-out role and manner for male adulthood.
It’s just one more area where normies have to navigate weird dem taboos. Inflation probably flipped this election, but this kind of crap exhausts me though I’d never vote GOP.
I like what you’re saying and agree, and I think one of the key axioms to get young men integrated and socially finding their place and role is helping them fit in as young men, with other boys/men, together in certain activities like sports, Scouts, leadership programs, clubs, programs for the arts, etc.
I've always been conflicted about masculinity myself. On the one hand, the chest beating and boorishness really turns me off. Masculinity can be a cudgel with which to bully your fellow men. I knew as a kid I had to hide the fact that purple was my favorite color, because somehow colors have genders? On the other hand, I love the aspirational nature of manliness. Men are taught to be direct and forthright, instead of scheming. To be tough and to have grit. Often we are taught to use our power to protect the weak, the whole spiderman "great responsibility" thing. These are all important virtues and I wouldn't give them up for anything. But if we define all those things as masculine, how do I teach my daughter to be tough and forthright? I don't think I have the answers, but I think you are absolutely right that we need to ensure that people who are outside the norms of manliness can be accepted, and that it doesn't require dismantling masculinity to do it.
Also, ever noticed that manly men in the 50s didn't look or act the way gym rats do today? The bro spaces have created a version of masculinity that didn't exist back then. Whenever I hear someone talk about being an alpha or about cucks, I remember that our greatest president of all time was Abraham Lincoln. A total beta cuck if ever there was one.
This post pushed me over the edge to become paid, BTW. Thanks also for the pointer to Sam Kahn's excellent post - I already read Castalia, but not rigorously, and somehow I missed that one.
If you will forgive a tangent, you wrote en passant that "Yet, in 2016, Trump was the most gay-friendly Republican nominee ever". You have written the same thing a couple of other times in the last few months (since I started following you).
I wonder how true that is, in terms of Trump's positioning relative to the nominal median point of the Republican Party. From your inside Republican politics perspective, was Trump (in terms of his public *party* persona, so not just in appearances but when talking to donors, etc.) from Golden Escalator day to election day 2016) more accepting of gays relative to, for example Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, or even Scott Walker as *they* positioned themselves of say June 2015, or more accepting than McCain in 2007-2008 relative for example to the 2007-2008 release of Mitt Romney (versus the "severely conservative" 2011/12 release), any edition of Mike Huckabee, etc. ...
How did Huntsman position himself during his no-hope** run for the nomination? He took a fairly clear civil unions yes, SSM no stand starting early in his governorship, 2009 [1], and did not come out for SSM until early 2013.
I'd also say, very much in the spirit of parsing loophole abuse :), that the most gay-friendly Republican presidential nominee *ever* relative to the party's contemporary Overton window on the topic has to have been Barry Goldwater in his 1990s version, re DADT in particular and the Religious Right more generally. Of course he was long out of the Senate by then, but when he was in the Senate he certainly did not hesitate to speak his mind.
** a party that would nominate a 2012 Huntsman would be a party that I would have rejoined without much angst. A party that will nominate Trump three times will have to wait for the Ds to fall much much further than they have so far before that Trumpy party gets my vote for any Federal office (fortunately or otherwise, I don't live in a state or CD where there is one of the relatively rare Republicans who both has a reasonable chance of winning for Senate or House in Nov and is also someone I could vote for in good conscience: if I lived in MD I'd be seriously torn re my Senate vote; if I lived in CA-22 I'd be equally torn re my House vote).
Many thanks for the support. What pushed you over the edge, and what are your interests? (feel free to dm) Regarding Trump, he was noticeably more gay-accepting than other Republican contenders in 2015/16. He said he was fine with gay marriage, it was settled, and held out a rainbow flag lol. It was clear he had no issues there. You could say others like Goldwater were more accepting on a relative basis, in their historical contexts. I haven't studied it in any detail, but that's my two cents. In the context of this piece, I was trying to draw a complexity with Trump in the way he brought both masculinity and a social moderation in 2016, as I perceived him at the time - which obviously has evolved.
Very good points, Huntsman was far more gay-friendly and in an intelligent way. Perhaps another way of saying that Trump was the only person who could win a GOP primary, talk about being pro-gay, and not lose any votes over it. Huntsman was for gay marriage before most Democrats, but he couldn't brag about it in the GOP primary because he would have lost. Trumps radicalism on immigration allowed him to get away with all kinds of positions that would have killed the candidacy of another candidate.
…even the media is manspreading!…and during an election that might hinge on women issues and with a female candidate to boot…to think that we are in the year 2024 and we are still hung up on adam and eve speaks volume about our evolution…
Thats silly to put Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate into the same category.
They're different figures but both cringe and scandal-plagued. Peterson's more serious contributions to the discourse, but he's also a goofy benzo addict.
I think he made some very good contributions before becoming a goofy benzo addict, which are now overshadowed by his becoming a goofy benzo addict. It's too bad.
Agree
Yeah, I almost wonder if liberal antipathy drove him mad. Sometimes he sounds pretty intelligent and reasonable and then...If you can only define yourself in opposition to something you will never really succeed.
I mean, maybe he couldn't take the stress of being a right-wing intellectual and having all those people harassing him and talking crap about him. You need a pretty thick skin.
People don't really think about how abnormal the stress of being a celebrity is. Even popular people like Taylor Swift have people going through their trash and stalking them. Imagine if you're now in a situation where half the country hates your guts, and (as a right-wing university guy) your old support network now turns on you.
The problem with associating virtues with either masculinity or femininity it is so easy to slip into defining them as opposites. If masculinity is brave, femininity becomes cowardly. If femininity is empathetic, then masculinity is unfeeling.
Why gender the virtues? What’s the point? What do we gain? Don’t we want everyone to be disciplined and integrated and intuitive and rational and determined and caring? Do we care if someone’s strengths and weaknesses match their gender stereotype? Why would we?
I think we should care about men, not masculinity.
While I understand the argument against gendering qualities, there's a long history of archetypical male and female energies, for example anima/animus, yin/yang, etc. We all need to integrate these energies within ourselves and between ourselves.
There is no toxic anything except toxicity itself; it is the narcissism ever more pervasive in the world and available to anyone and everyone to become or to reject.
Aka narcissism/toxicity is a function of free will to do right or wrong. Immutable traits are not of free will. Different parts of the mind.
Completely agree, and I hate that about gender virtues. But I think it is likely impossible to avoid having them. We feel a biological need to group ourselves together, to separate male and female. Men seek friendship from other men, women seek friendship from other women. That is never going away. Whatever path we choose going forward, it will have to conform to a framework that includes gender identity or it will disintegrate.
Something about Walz gives me pause. As a NeverTrump libertarian-conservative, I was ready to vote for Harris until she picked Walz for veep. I’ll probably still vote for her, but Walz somehow feels condescending and insulting—almost like a male version of Sarah Palin, a bald faced attempt to appeal to a demographic. Something about him rubs me the wrong way.
I'm worried about Trump refusing to concede. If you're a libertarian or a classical liberal or any kind of small-d democrat or small-r republican, sometimes you have to vote for Romney over Stalin, or Clinton over Hitler (or, realistically, Orban). This is one of those times.
If I don't vote for her I'm writing in Haley, whom I voted for in Georgia's primary even after Mr. Tangerine Man clinched.
There’s an academic and media obsession with things that are right-coded or whatever it is that links them in peoples minds. There’s so much fascination with fascism and ‘far-right’, publicised and analysed to death, especially by those hostile to them (they seem fascinated by it all). Right wingers by contrast don’t seem the least bit interested in socialism, it’s just an endless braindead repeat of ‘look what these crazies are doing now!!!’. There’s zero interest.
Same thing with masculinity and femininity. There is so much discourse on masculinity and extreme interest (by people of all political persuasions, and especially by progressive women!) on the topic that isn’t at all replicable to femininity. Perhaps it’s just politically incorrect for a man to analyse a woman’s femininity, but I think there’s more to it.
Hadn’t connected the too, but you may be on to something.
Are you kidding? You must be suffering from some terrible political parallax to think that right-wingers don't assiduously study their enemies. In fact, people on the right do better at passing the Political Turing Test than people on the left.
Obviously, those on the right study their enemies but they're generally pretty repulsed and not intrigued by them at all, like they know instinctively that they could never be on that side (and there's nothing deeper to be discovered). On the other hand, I think leftists are kind of fascinated by hard right-wing individuals and theories while covering it up with feelings and performances of disapproval and resentment.
And I think this is why leftists are much more likely to go all the way to the right in times of instability or when they have an epiphany than vice-versa.
I completely agree about the politicization of masculinity. I am, however, very curious how Ken would define what becoming a "conscious and integrated" man means in practical terms. Probably a question for him, but was left wondering it after reading this.
Hi Andrew,
First, I'm writing a whole book on the topic, so in full transparency, my response here is going to be embarrassingly brief, and likely slightly less than completely satisfying.
I think part Jeff's final points captures one key very clearly: "Perhaps we should talk more about how to integrate all of our parts..."
With my above caveat in mind, here's a little bit on what "'conscious and integrated' means in practical terms," in my world, at least:
A modicum of self-, other-, and systems- (community, organizational, ecological, societal, global) awareness.
Recognition that his words and actions have an impact (potentially) on all of the above.
An understanding that he gets to be responsible for his words and actions and their impact.
He's done (or is doing) the healing work necessary to release the grip of childhood and adolescent wounds, such that he's able to meet challenging relational moments in real time.
He's faced and befriended his shadows - both "dark" and "light."
He's developed (or developing) emotional literacy, flexibility, and fluency.
He is in possession of his own inner child and inner adolescent - and is discerning about when and if he lets them drive.
His ego is in check.
He's in possession of his human fallibility, is comfortable with ambiguity, and well aware that he doesn't - nor will he ever - know it all.
It's worth noting that, being human, an important part of real practice is recovering from drifting off at the wheel and falling into autopilot.
There's no shortage of what I could add to the above, including putting "responsibility" in huge, bold caps... and hopefully this'll do as (at least) a snack for the moment.
I'm always happy to be in real-time conversation about this stuff.
I see a lot in this that relates to being a good human being.
But not much that I can relate to a masculine / feminine dialectic.
Thanks for laying this out, Ken! I appreciate it. I was intrigued by that line, but this really helps tease out the the meaning of it.
"It's worth noting that, being human, an important part of real practice is recovering from drifting off at the wheel and falling into autopilot." -So completely and absolutely true! Don't let the elephant yank you around!
Great question. I'll share that with Ken and see what he says.
Hi Jeff! This brings up an interesting question for me. As Gen X kid coming up in the 70's, there was a lot of talk about androgyny and self-expression, maybe as a holdover of the Hippie movement. I have vague memories of a show called *Free to Be... You and Me" that pushed this this idea very hard. The Replacements even had a song, "Androgynous" with lyrics about "unisex evolution."
I think it's odd how society has turned its back on that idea of gender as personal expression. These days the message seems to be that there are two gender teams with different uniforms and you have to play for one (if you don't like Team Blue, you can switch to Team Pink, or vice versa, but it's a big deal.). The idea that you can just do stuff and not worry about whether it's appropriate for your gender , and everyone else can too, doesn't seem to occur to young people.
In other words, I wonder if some of the conflicts and distress around masculinity are just the outcome of people getting very invested in a concept which is kind of vague and ageworn, not fit to build an identity around.
I think gender is perceived as much more fluid among younger people today than in the 80s or 90s. But it also seems more taxonomized and politicized. Today, everyone wants to put everyone in categories and labels, which is different from the playfulness of the past
I think it's kind of neat that they are experimenting that way, but the thing about experiments is that some of them fail. I just hope that when they find aspects of the new gender labels that they don't like, they don't become so disillusioned that it radicalizes them.
My attitude was always 'biology sets the bell curves for the sexes in different places, but if you're closer to the mean for the other bell curve on something or everything that's cool too.'
I mean, I picked up masculinity when I wanted to date women. But if you want to do the ace thing, go for it--there are monastic cultural traditions in many cultures after all. You want to be a tomboy or a femboy, hey, no skin off my back.
I feel you entirely missed my point, which was that you don’t need to be a femboy (whatever that means), yiu don’t need to categorize yourself and then follow the rules of your self-chosen caste, you can be a gender weirdo and that’s ok! It’s normal, even.
I agree and did get your point.
I think the term femboy comes from a group of people wanting to create a shared community that is outside normative hetero cuture. You could see that as "in a perfect culture, people wouldn't HAVE to be femboys" but I think realistically it's more like, "people who share characteristics instinctively seek to create their own groups." Humans like being part of a group, we don't really like being unique snowflakes blowing around in the wind by ourselves.
I agree with you on that, actually.
I just do think the bell curves are in different places and that's going to affect anyone who wants to attract the opposite sex.
I'm the same way. Pretty open to all types.
Since we grew up in a culture pushing the androgynous line, we can forget how completely separated the genders traditionally were. Being able to not worry about gender is a very new idea.
Loved the article. Brings to mind a heuristic of mine that might help with sense-making:
Living systems only focus their attention inwards when they receive a signal that there is a problem.
And a second-tier heuristic:
There are two sorts of parasites. One sort integrates seamlessly into the host system. The second trips immune system alarms far out of proportion by the danger it poses and/or latches on to existing injury sites in order to profit from the increased resources that are rushed to repair the damage.
If you consider that our body politic is a living system, and apply the above heuristics, you might come up with something like the following:
Masculinity, and the lives of men, are in serious trouble at this point in history, so the entire civilization is bending around the problem (in much the same way it did with the crisis of femininity occasioned by the complete technological and economic disruption of women's lives in the 50s and 60s). As a result, the second sort of parasite, in many different guises (i.e. self-help gurus, politicians of all stripes, cult leaders, hucksters, and purveyors of various drugs and distractions) is swarming around the topic--and will likely continue to do so until there is once again a valid, broadly accepted and understandable-by-the-average-high-school-drop-out role and manner for male adulthood.
Like you, I look forward to that day.
It’s just one more area where normies have to navigate weird dem taboos. Inflation probably flipped this election, but this kind of crap exhausts me though I’d never vote GOP.
Yeah. Inflation is the headline, and this stuff is the subtext.
Yeah. I think it explains why our ceiling is so low.
When basic masculine traits are deemed toxic, it's pretty critical.
Honestly the imbalance is toward the feminine these days, not the masculine.
I like what you’re saying and agree, and I think one of the key axioms to get young men integrated and socially finding their place and role is helping them fit in as young men, with other boys/men, together in certain activities like sports, Scouts, leadership programs, clubs, programs for the arts, etc.
I've always been conflicted about masculinity myself. On the one hand, the chest beating and boorishness really turns me off. Masculinity can be a cudgel with which to bully your fellow men. I knew as a kid I had to hide the fact that purple was my favorite color, because somehow colors have genders? On the other hand, I love the aspirational nature of manliness. Men are taught to be direct and forthright, instead of scheming. To be tough and to have grit. Often we are taught to use our power to protect the weak, the whole spiderman "great responsibility" thing. These are all important virtues and I wouldn't give them up for anything. But if we define all those things as masculine, how do I teach my daughter to be tough and forthright? I don't think I have the answers, but I think you are absolutely right that we need to ensure that people who are outside the norms of manliness can be accepted, and that it doesn't require dismantling masculinity to do it.
Also, ever noticed that manly men in the 50s didn't look or act the way gym rats do today? The bro spaces have created a version of masculinity that didn't exist back then. Whenever I hear someone talk about being an alpha or about cucks, I remember that our greatest president of all time was Abraham Lincoln. A total beta cuck if ever there was one.
Me Tarzan!
Appreciate the shout out! Totally agree — it’s important but entirely over emphasized. There’s a need for balance in this world
This post pushed me over the edge to become paid, BTW. Thanks also for the pointer to Sam Kahn's excellent post - I already read Castalia, but not rigorously, and somehow I missed that one.
If you will forgive a tangent, you wrote en passant that "Yet, in 2016, Trump was the most gay-friendly Republican nominee ever". You have written the same thing a couple of other times in the last few months (since I started following you).
I wonder how true that is, in terms of Trump's positioning relative to the nominal median point of the Republican Party. From your inside Republican politics perspective, was Trump (in terms of his public *party* persona, so not just in appearances but when talking to donors, etc.) from Golden Escalator day to election day 2016) more accepting of gays relative to, for example Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, or even Scott Walker as *they* positioned themselves of say June 2015, or more accepting than McCain in 2007-2008 relative for example to the 2007-2008 release of Mitt Romney (versus the "severely conservative" 2011/12 release), any edition of Mike Huckabee, etc. ...
How did Huntsman position himself during his no-hope** run for the nomination? He took a fairly clear civil unions yes, SSM no stand starting early in his governorship, 2009 [1], and did not come out for SSM until early 2013.
I'd also say, very much in the spirit of parsing loophole abuse :), that the most gay-friendly Republican presidential nominee *ever* relative to the party's contemporary Overton window on the topic has to have been Barry Goldwater in his 1990s version, re DADT in particular and the Religious Right more generally. Of course he was long out of the Senate by then, but when he was in the Senate he certainly did not hesitate to speak his mind.
** a party that would nominate a 2012 Huntsman would be a party that I would have rejoined without much angst. A party that will nominate Trump three times will have to wait for the Ds to fall much much further than they have so far before that Trumpy party gets my vote for any Federal office (fortunately or otherwise, I don't live in a state or CD where there is one of the relatively rare Republicans who both has a reasonable chance of winning for Senate or House in Nov and is also someone I could vote for in good conscience: if I lived in MD I'd be seriously torn re my Senate vote; if I lived in CA-22 I'd be equally torn re my House vote).
[1] https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=51795519&itype=CMSID
Many thanks for the support. What pushed you over the edge, and what are your interests? (feel free to dm) Regarding Trump, he was noticeably more gay-accepting than other Republican contenders in 2015/16. He said he was fine with gay marriage, it was settled, and held out a rainbow flag lol. It was clear he had no issues there. You could say others like Goldwater were more accepting on a relative basis, in their historical contexts. I haven't studied it in any detail, but that's my two cents. In the context of this piece, I was trying to draw a complexity with Trump in the way he brought both masculinity and a social moderation in 2016, as I perceived him at the time - which obviously has evolved.
Very good points, Huntsman was far more gay-friendly and in an intelligent way. Perhaps another way of saying that Trump was the only person who could win a GOP primary, talk about being pro-gay, and not lose any votes over it. Huntsman was for gay marriage before most Democrats, but he couldn't brag about it in the GOP primary because he would have lost. Trumps radicalism on immigration allowed him to get away with all kinds of positions that would have killed the candidacy of another candidate.
…even the media is manspreading!…and during an election that might hinge on women issues and with a female candidate to boot…to think that we are in the year 2024 and we are still hung up on adam and eve speaks volume about our evolution…
Haha, true. And thank you.
No.