Professor Angela Smith has recently given a paper at the 'Approaches to Discourse' conference at Georgetown University (Washington DC). She spoke on the concept of hypermasculinity, which was first
theorised in the early 1980s. At that time masculinity was often perceived as
being under threat from the great advances in gender equality made following the
arrival of Second Wave Feminism. Angela argued that in the last five years we have seen a rise
in the performance of hypermasculinity on the national stage, often aligned with
right wing politics and a heightened sense of national identity in face of a
perceived over-reaching of liberalism. Angela's paper explored how some
politicians use social media to promote their messages, side-stepping the
otherwise regulating voice of the mainstream media. She looked at tweets from the personal account of
Donald Trump to offer an explanation for at least part of the appeal of the
‘Make America Great Again’ hashtag, and argued that resurgent hypermasculinity
can be used to explore such data.
