In this moment of crisis, macho leaders are a weakness, not a strength [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

In this moment of crisis, macho leaders are a weakness, not a strength
Robin Dembroff

Mon 13 Apr 2020 09.00 EDT

Trump and Bolsonaro have been a liability in the face of coronavirus. We need leaders with a different emotional skillset

For the entirety of Ronald Reagan’s first term, despite overwhelming evidence that Aids was a public health crisis, he brushed off the disease’s severity, saying “it would go away”. By 1987, Aids had killed more than 29,000 Americans. In that same year, Don Francis, an official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified before Congress that Reagan’s administration caused “untold hardship, misery and expense to the American public” by obstructing, resisting and interfering with policies and programmes designed to prevent the Aids epidemic in the US.

Certain factors at play in the Aids epidemic are not at play in our current pandemic: most obviously, Covid-19 is not associated with the gay community. Nonetheless, there are echoes of Reagan’s response to the Aids epidemic. Last month, days after California had declared a state of emergency and Seattle schools had begun to close, Donald Trump asserted that Covid-19 would simply “go away”. Shortly before that, he said that it would “disappear … like a miracle”. Trump was joined in his parade of denial by other far-right populist leaders, especially Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro. In March, he described Covid-19 as a “little flu” that does not warrant “hysteria”, and claimed that Brazil would be protected from the virus by its climate and youthful population.

What motivates men like Trump and Bolsonaro to deny, falsify and dismiss evidence about public health crises?

One salient feature stands out as common among these men: toxic masculinity. The concept has become popular, with Google searches for the term skyrocketing in January 2019 when the shaving company Gillette released a series of advertisements that challenged traditional expressions of masculinity, such as bullying, suppressing emotions and sexual harassment. Those advertisements set off a public debate about whether toxic masculinity is a helpful concept. Some took to Twitter and other media to complain that “masculinity isn’t a sickness”, while others, like the American Psychological Association, maintained that these traditional forms of masculinity harm not only men, but also those around them.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/13/leaders-trump-bolsonaro-coroanvirus-toxic-masculinity