Wronged and Dangerous: Viral Masculinity and the Populist Pandemic

Description

Is populism fueled by a feeling of manhood under attack? If gender is its driving force, are there better ways to respond? COVID-19 delivers a stark warning: the global surge of populism endangers public health. Wronged and Dangerous introduces "viral masculinity" as a novel way to meet that threat by tackling the deep connection of our social and physical worlds. It calls us to ask not what populism says, but how it spreads. Leading with gender without leaving socioeconomic forces behind, it upends prevailing wisdom about populist politics today. You do not need to know or care about gender to get invested. You only need to be concerned with our future.

Karen Lee Ashcraft is Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder. She grew up in the lap of evangelical populism, and her research examines how gender interacts with race, class, sexuality, and more to shape organizational and cultural politics.

"Connecting the pandemic-like spread of right-wing populism with aggrieved masculinity (i.e. "a seething sense of rightful virility wrongly denied"), Ashcraft's Wronged and Dangerous makes a convincing argument for shifting studies of populism away from only considering issues of class." Love Reading