Watch an excerpt from our new film The Man Card: Gender, Power & the American Presidency

Over the closing days of the 2024 presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, there’s been no shortage of discussion about Trump’s huge and growing lead among male voters in the polls.¹

There’s been less discussion about how Trump’s tough-guy persona and explicit appeals to men, as men, are entirely consistent with right-wing political strategy going back decades.

“It’s impossible to overstate the central importance of debates about men and masculinities to the outcome of this year’s election,” said Jackson Katz, the creator of our new release The Man Card: 50 Years of Gender, Power & the American Presidency. “The problem is that right-wing strategists have long understood this, while most Democrats and larger elements of the left have only recently begun to figure it out.”

For Katz, the outcome of the election could come down to how many men are willing to reject nostalgic appeals to mythical and outmoded ideals of manhood and instead focus on policy substance.

“Trump’s strategy, in keeping with right-wing political strategy for decades, has always been to double-down on the men’s vote, especially the young men’s vote,” Katz said. “The outcome of this election could hinge on whether enough men are strong enough, and clear-eyed enough, to resist propaganda appeals designed to tap into their emotions, shut down rational thinking, and deflect attention away from actual policies.”

If you’re interested in taking a closer look at how these deeply gendered dynamics have shaped presidential campaigns over time, don’t miss The Man Card. This fully revised update of our 2020 film of the same title comes just in time to make sense of the explosive gender politics shaping the 2024 race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

 

 

Created and co-written by acclaimed author and political analyst Jackson Katz, and directed by award-winning filmmakers Peter Hutchison and Lucas Sabean, The Man Card takes account of Harris’s unexpected entry into the race and explores the deeply gendered cultural and political forces that confront women who run for high office. The film also ranges across five decades of presidential campaigns to show how the Right has perfected the art of weaponizing regressive ideas about manhood to cast their opponents as “soft” and appeal to working-class white male voters at the level of identity rather than policy.

The Man Card is required viewing for anyone who wants to understand why it’s been so hard for a woman to be elected president, and why outmoded ideas about masculinity and power have become central features of American presidential politics.

1. “Donald Trump Triples Lead with Male Voters,” by Aila Slisco, Newsweek, Oct. 23, 2024.

 

Praise for The Man Card

 

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