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By: Alexander L. Jensen

Abstract:��

What is “toxic masculinity”? And how does it shape Americans’ interactions in the social and political realm? In the years since the rise of Trump and the peak of the #MeToo movement, media narratives and public discussions of gender frequently address the issue of “toxic masculinity.” In the halls of the academy, however, “toxic masculinity” is considered an underdeveloped concept (Harrington 2021). Yet, scholarship on “toxic masculinity” fails to account for public opinion in a systematic manner, skirting a straightforward definition of the concept and instead defining it by example or in relation to other concepts. In this dissertation, I employ a series of original nationwide surveys – and survey experiments – of Americans to understand how the mass public conceptualizes “toxic masculinity,” and how it shapes citizens engagement with the public square. Across the project, I define the concept more clearly and show how “toxic masculinity” has deep political roots and strong partisan connections. In Chapters 1 and 2, I demonstrate that the public uses “toxic masculinity” as an accessible critique of men’s harmful attitudes and behaviors, often located at political sites of power. I show in Chapter 3 how the concept can be employed as a successful rhetorical device to attack male officeholders who are under fire for their misbehavior. In Chapter 4, I take this line of research a step further, demonstrating how individual-level endorsement of “toxic masculinity” operates as a gendered ideology - a system of beliefs about how individuals should manifest and perform gender - that informs their support for, or opposition to, political officials. My findings in the project speak to fundamental questions about concept formation and validation in the social sciences, but they also suggest new inroads for research at the nexus of gender and politics. By incorporating measures of individuals’ endorsement of gender ideologies into studies of political attitudes and behavior, scholars can gain a more complete understanding of gender’s roots as a social identity that shapes individuals’ opinions and beliefs.