Trump-is-gay-for-Putin jokes aren’t funny. They’re harmful
As President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Helsinki for their controversial summit, the New York Times Opinion section’s Twitter page circulated an animated video titled “Trump and Putin: A Love Story.” The shirtless men kiss passionately, ride unicorns through fields of rainbows, and daydream about each other over pink and purple landscapes.
The video is deeply homophobic, using the possibility of gay sexuality to belittle both men. What’s more, it’s the product of a journalistic trend that uses gay romance as a metaphor for political weakness and inefficiency. These lazy, dangerous narratives result from the entrenchment of masculinity and heterosexuality in U.S. foreign policy. They trickle down from the ways we talk about security in our military institutions, and they have profound implications for the safety and security of LGBT people globally.
Gay romantic depictions of Trump’s relationships with foreign leaders often propagate when his diplomatic strategies are most ill-conceived. After Trump initially canceled his summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius called Trump’s cancellation notice a “breakup letter” and concluded that he “writes in the tone of a wounded suitor.” After the summit, The Boston Globe printed a cartoon that featured Trump and Kim sharing a milkshake and writing love letters against a backdrop of hearts, a unicorn and a rainbow. The cartoon asks, “Will it be true love or just a … ‘Singapore fling?’” The New York Times’ Frank Bruni (himself gay) described Trump’s conciliatory attitude toward Putin’s interference in the 2016 election as that of a “besotted lover.” He called it “a classic tale of affections strangled and at times set free.” Last year, Stephen Colbert faced a backlash after looking into the camera and telling Trump, “The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c- holster.”
These depictions attack Trump’s desire to appear powerful and legitimate abroad by emasculating and reducing him to a purportedly “unmanly” act. The persistence of such narratives in a liberalizing climate of gay rights seems perplexing. But they result in part from the ingrained expectations of a particular type of manhood in U.S. institutions. Specifically, we can trace them to hyper-masculinity in the military.
Military recruits and strategists undergo socializations that force them to reject femininity and adopt alpha, warrior mentalities. Men are expected to control emotions; take risks; display aggression, violence and physical toughness; and promote overt heterosexuality. These processes are often sexual. For example, in some military training, soldiers chant, “This is my rifle (holding up rifle), this is my gun (motioning to penis); one’s for killing, the other’s for fun.”
Men constitute approximately 75 percent of U.S. military personnel, and the military remains the primary remnant of traditional, manhood-making rituals. This is important because, as gender and militarism scholar Cynthia Enloe notes, U.S. foreign policy is remarkably militarized. The Pentagon exercises significant oversight in the government’s agenda. Military actors carry out U.S. ambitions around the world, and traditional masculinity plays a critical role in U.S. presentation. It is through this lens that gayness becomes a tool of belittlement and a metaphor for failure.
Because gay-Trump metaphors conflate homosexuality with inadequacy and failure, they further the stereotype that gay people are weak political actors and security risks.
Trump is astonishingly ill-informed about foreign affairs. He undermines the U.S. intelligence community at the peril of our safety and institutional integrity. He is ineffectual, and even dangerous, in his foreign policy. Gay romance metaphors do not convey this reality — they obscure it. We should indict the conditions giving rise to these narratives and seriously consider the costs of linking gay sexuality with failure, security risk and shame.
Meredith Loken is an incoming assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.