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On the campaign trail, Donald Trump has repeatedly praised the rear end and physique of Ohio Senator Jon Husted. Even in North Carolina, he couldn’t stop talking about the glutes he had left away off there in the Midwest. He burbled:
I looked at his ass, and then I looked at his legs, and my — I said, “His ass is like, it’s like a pile of muscle.” Then I looked at his legs, and I said, “Man, his feet are big.” Then I looked at his shoulders, and I tapped him on the shoulder, and it actually hurt my hand. It was like a piece of steel. I said, “This guy’s a monster.”
Weeks earlier, in Ohio, Trump insisted, “I’m studying his body. I’ve never studied the body of a man before. It’s not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course. But it’s never been my thing.” Then he did his ass riff again.
Trump’s blatantly sexual obsession with Husted’s build has led some commentators, pro and anti Trump, to suggest that the president may be homosexual. Jesse Waters of Fox News joked that Trump sounded “a little gay.” Political media advisor Marty Taylor asked, “Is Donald Trump America’s first gay president?”
The answer to that question is “no,” first because James Buchanan was gay, and second because Trump is not. Trump sexualizes other men, and obsesses about their appearance, because he is extremely invested in a eugenic patriarchy which sees masculine fitness as a key attribute of power. His sexual, and more-than-borderline abusive, remarks about Husted are consistent with—not some sort of ironic contradiction to— his administration’s virulent homophobia. Failing to understand that only helps Trump.
Patriarchy is obsessed with male-male bonds
Because of homophobia and because of the way sexual desire and sexual identity are collapsed in contemporary discourse, any expression of male-male desire, or even affection, is often framed as homosexual (and of course as deviant.) But as pioneering queer scholar Eve Sedgwick argued in her classic Between Men, homosocial desire is in fact part and parcel of a patriarchal heterosexual culture in which powerful bonds between men establish and provide access to power.
Often we separate homosexual and homosocial patriarchal bonds by arguing that the first is sexual and that the second is not. But (as Sedgwick points out) this is too simplistic. As one ugly, obvious example, Jeffrey Epstein and Trump bonded over the pursuit of young women, some of whom were likely children. Patriarchy is cemented by (misogynist, abusive) sexual competition, which means that the bonds between men are suffused with sexual desire.
Another example is Trump’s relationship with Marco Rubio. In the 2016 primary campaign, Trump referred to Rubio as “Little Marco”—mocking his stature, infantilizing him, and also, pretty clearly, implying that his penis was small.
Rubio responded in a debate with a prepared insult riff.
Let me tell you something: Last night in the debate during one of the breaks... [Trump] went backstage, he was having a meltdown. First, he had this little makeup thing applying, like makeup around his mustache, because he had one of those sweat mustaches. Then he asked for a full-length mirror. I don’t know why... Maybe to make sure his pants weren’t wet. I don’t know.”
These comments are clearly meant to feminize Trump (he wears makeup; he is frightened) and to infantilize him (he does not have control of his bowels.) And they also, in part through feminization, sexualize Trump, not least by drawing attention to his genitals.
The fact that Rubio is talking about Trump’s genitals does not mean that Rubio is gay. Rather, it means that Rubio is attempting to sexually humiliate Trump in order to establish dominance, just as Trump called Rubio “Little Marco” in order to sexually humiliate and dominate him. But because we live in a frequently nightmarish and abusive patriarchy, people often do not recognize or draw the distinction between sexual interest and sexual violence, or for that matter between sex and abuse.
Epstein was a friendly competitor; Rubio was a rival; Husted is an ally who Trump sees as a subordinate—and he is not the first male ally/subordinate whose appearance Trump has praised. Trump often boasts that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth looks like a Hollywood military leader from “central casting” prompting Senator Tammy Duckworth to suggest (probably correctly) that Trump only hired Hegseth because “he looks good on TV.” Hegseth, in turn, has been obsessed with the appearance of his troops, banning beards, attacking “fat troops,” mandating testosterone testing —as well as trying to force trans soldiers out of the service.
Male-male relationships in patriarchy are about sexualized competition, sexualized humiliation and dominance, and sexualized policing of appearance to advance some and assert control over others. In patriarchy, sexual potency and privilege are inseparable from authority and power, and so the negotiation of power between men always involves asserting, denigrating, and/or appreciating the relative sexual merits of other men vis-à-vis one’s own. Controlling or humiliating other men is a sign of (sexual) dominance; allying with other (powerful, sexual) men is a sign of status.
This is what is happening with Husted. Trump is fawning over Husted’s ass because he thinks that masculine assfulness is a sign of power. Trump believes pointing out the power will attract voters (everyone loves patriarchy!) and he also believes it redounds to his own assfulness, inasmuch as he is the ass in charge of all the other asses.
It’s also worth noting, though, that Trump’s comments sexualize Husted and are effectively sexual harassment. Trump is someone who loves to humiliate and assert dominance over everyone, and that absolutely includes his allies. Talking about Husted’s ass on stage is a way for Trump to declare that he can do anything to the men around him. Husted is a big powerful manly man, but Trump can sexualize and thereby feminize him, because he’s the president and the patriarch. That’s how patriarchy works.
Why calling Trump gay is wrong and harmful
Patriarchy, in short, generates sexualized male-male bonds and sexualized male-male public discourse regardless of the sexual identities of the men involved. Sexualizing other men, noticing and policing the appearance of other men, joining in sexual pursuits with other men—all are a completely normalized part of public heterosexual male identity. When Trump elevates men he perceives as good looking, or sexually harasses or insults other men, or sexually bonds with other men, it does not mean he is gay. It means that he is steeped in and deeply invested in patriarchal power.
The distinction matters for a number of reasons. First of all, using “gay” as an insult, or suggesting that being gay is funny, or abnormal, or weird, harms gay people—just as using racial slurs to refer to Clarence Thomas harms all Black people. It may feel empowering or like just desserts to leverage stigma against someone as despicable as Trump. But ultimately the stigma harms the stigmatized, not the most powerful guy in the world.
Or, as political analyst Jared Yates Sexton put it:
For the love of fucking god, stop fucking attacking Donald Trump with blatant and repulsive homophobia. If you think going after fascists by calling them gay or producing AI slop of them in dresses or making out, you’re part of the fucking problem.
In particular, it’s important to recognize that the abusive sexualized rhetoric Trump uses around men, and the obsession with abusive sexualized dominance that is so central to his monstrous life, is part of standard patriarchy.
Patriarchy itself loves to link sexual abuse to marginalized sexual identities. But it is patriarchy which insists that the patriarch owns women and children and is entitled to sexually assault and terrorize them. Trump’s sexual harassment of Husted is best contextualized not by speculating that Trump is gay, but by pointing out that he has been held liable for a horrific sexual assault, has been credibly accused of sexual harassment, abuse, and rape by more than twenty women, and has been credibly accused of sexually harassing children.
Patriarchy compulsively conflates power, masculinity, sex, and dominance. That affects the way those committed to patriarchy treat men. It affects the way they treat children. It affects the way they treat queer and gender nonconforming people. And it affects the way they treat other men, heterosexual or otherwise. We need to put the blame for that where it belongs—not on gay people, but on people like Trump, who believe they are entitled to abuse everyone, and on people like Jon Husted, who refuse to stop them, or else join in.
Thank you for putting words to my discomfort with the “Trump is gay” bullshit being thrown around. I knew using homophobia was ugly and damaging- I hadn’t seen the rest of it. After reading this, it’s crystal clear and I see it fucking everywhere.
Edited for clarity, it’s early here.