Lindsey Graham Tough
Written by Nick Carraway –
“Cause you gotta be hangin’ toughHangin’ tough, hangin’ tough,
We’re rough.” — New Kids on the Block
There’s nothing quite as ridiculous as watching five suburban white teens dancing in unison and telling us how tough they are. This song sold millions of records, so I guess it fooled someone. It’s just hard to say if it was anyone over the age of fourteen. They certainly weren’t fooling any teenage boys or any adults. It’s one of those songs that inspires laughter today. It almost makes you feel sorry for those five boys. Almost.
The problem comes with the illusion of masculinity. We saw that again when Lindsay Graham tried to defend gun rights in the only way he can. He asserted that he owns an AR-15 and he would use it to hunt down gangs. Yup, I can see him now just mowing down street hard gangsters. Sure, and the New Kids were rough.
The trouble with a topic like this is that it exists in layers. The first layer is that we know Graham isn’t exactly the picture of stereotypical masculinity. There have been nasty rumors about his sexuality since he’s not married and seems effeminate to some. So, the picture of Graham with his big gun is laughable at best.
Of course, then there is the immediate second layer. What exactly is the definition of a man? Then, we get the question of whether any of this really matters. What if Lindsay Graham is gay? What if he doesn’t really participate in stereotypical alpha male activities? Should any of that really matter? Certainly, it is a little rich for progressives to trumpet the rights of LGTBQ+ individuals and then turn around and whisper about Graham. If you are going to support some people on that journey you need to support all people on that journey.
Of course, this doesn’t mean anything about Graham. I’m not speculating one way or the other. I honestly don’t care. What I care about is how people portray themselves and portray masculinity as a whole. The insinuation is that men own guns and bigger men own bigger guns. In my younger days, I remember seeing a bumper sticker that said, “If you own a gun you are a citizen. If you don’t you are a subject.” I certainly didn’t realize that the right to own a gun had turned into the duty to own a gun.
I don’t own a gun and I’m pretty confident in saying that I never will. I guess you would surmise that I’m not really a man. Would I become more of a man if I somehow lied about that? Maybe I could say I own a gun. Maybe I could say that I can lift 200 pounds. Maybe I could brag about a would be enormous porn collection. Maybe then I would be a man.
All of this goes back to marketing. The NKOTB were mass marketed as a group of tough teens that could also sing and dance. Graham is mass marketing himself as the man’s man there to protect us from the big bad government. Meanwhile, we can’t help but wonder what this is all saying about manhood and what it means to be a man. Obviously, these notions inspire more laughter than anything else and yet we can’t be blind to the overall effect that it has on us as men and on culture in general.
Men as a whole are struggling. Some of us are struggling since we aren’t going as far in our careers as we thought we should. Not being the breadwinner in a family can be a blow to the male ego. Some men are struggling with the “Me Too” movement and how to navigate the workplace and society at large with women. Some men struggle with the concept of male identity as it pertains to their own sexuality and how they are perceived in the world. All of these things get jumbled up when we are bombarded by the images of false bravado.
So, it isn’t so much to poke fun at NKOTB or Lindsay Graham for what they are. It is about poking fun at who they were trying to convince us they were. No one really believes those five teens were hanging tough and no one really believes Graham is roaming around town with his AR-15 looking for hoodlums to kill. Maybe he’s going after that Trump vote after all and thinks he can fool us into thinking he’s the man’s man. Most of us don’t care and those that do aren’t buying it for a minute.
Yes, this image of toxic masculinity has always bothered me, particularly when these very rigid gender roles get played out in the young people I work with who identify as transgender. It’s as if we’re retreating to the Victorian world of ‘if a woman wants to live independently or work in a blue collar trade, she must live as a male’, or Lindsey Graham’s version – ‘I’ll brandish an AR-15 to prove I’m a man.’
In the 1970’s, it looked as if we were pushing back on these stereotypes, but they’ve always played right below the surface. Such a pity, especially for young people at the developmental stage of struggling to understand their own identity, to have these layers of limitations heaped on them.
Human personalities and interests lie on a continuum, and not all – maybe not even most – lie at the polar opposite ends.
1Not only won’t invaders come near Miss Lindsey’s manse; now those rendering assistance won’t either.
2Mr. Graham strikes me as the kind of man who will get all tangled up in a concoction of his doubts about his man-hood, his love-need to carry a gun, and his ultimate belief that carrying a gun is not sufficient, but that using a gun is the only certain, satisfying way to prove his man-hood. He is dangerous.
3Graham needs to get a smaller gun so when they take it away and shove it up his A$$ it won’t hurt so much.
4Oh, give Lindsey a break. He’s simply pandering to his knuckle-dragging constituency. You know – the ones who think that personal redemption only comes from the ownership and display of lethal weaponry. He knows he won’t have to personally protect his neighborhood from marauding gangs of BLM antifas.
Hmmm. Come to think of it, maybe he really isn’t that smart…
5Toxic masculinity is just so exhausting. Yet it seems to be the big drawing card for a lot of Republican voters. Plenty of folks will no doubt love the hyper-masculinity of the bull-riding, gravelly-voiced pretender in the adjoining post. And those who can’t look the part (such as Graham) can still adopt the lingo and the ammosexual fetishism and garner plenty of support.
We try to teach our daughters how to be safe in such a toxic environment. The real challenge is teaching our sons that being a real man is about being empathetic, understanding, and loving toward everyone. It’s a long, long road to enlightenment, but if we don’t get more young men on the right path, we are doomed to repeat our past failings.
6I think this is all about the GOP voter wanting to be ruled. They want the he-man figure of their imagination who will make everything right. All of the wimpy GOP men in the Senate and House are trying to look like that he-man, without much success. Four years of his majesty were tough, but I think this next four will also be, because these wannabe rulers want to be noticed.
7Miss lindsey is a tough talker all the time. He’s also a fake. This gun toting he man stuff is his way to look tough with the proud boyz and such.
8I also see the dudes around here with their big pickups and assault rifle decals thinking it makes them tough. Watch for miss lindsey to get a big truck when he goes trolling for liberal gangs.
Lindsay reminds me of the Hollywood studio people who lived where I grew up. Never afraid to butch it up when the thought they had to prove they weren’t what everyone knew they were. Thing was, that was in a different era and they would all be in their 100s by now.
The AK thing reminded me of a future transsexual neighbor I had decades ago in Hawaii. He was pretty drunk and I made some stupid joke. He said, his arm wafting, ‘You need to remember, behind every flick of the wrist is a knife’. Instantly from out of nowhere there was a blade an inch from my nose. Then it was put away and everything was la-di-da again.
Lindsay is the desperate kind. And dangerous. He said the quiet part out loud.
9Graham gay … hmm … I’ll have to ask my gay guy friends to check their gaydars. In any case, needing to have an AR-15 as a civilian, thinking maybe you can mow down an intruder in your house, seems to me more an indication of tiny dick syndrome or even the blue pill isn’t doing the job. I don’t want to know if any of that applies to my brother-in-law who just got two of them to protect him against Antifa, I think is what he said.
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