The 2024 election, perhaps more than any in history, was an election of identity politics. But unlike that that term usually implies—that we’re talking about women and/or racial minorities—this race was about a particular kind of masculine identity that increasingly crosses racial lines, and imperils women and men alike.

Donald Trump’s strategy of courting disaffected men was a risky one: After all, men are less likely to vote than women, and the disaffected don’t tend to be the most civically engaged citizens. With this election being the first since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision allowed Republican-run states across the nation to criminalize abortion, liberals and feminists understandably believed that it would be a referendum on misogyny. And it was. The problem is that it turns out the United States is pretty damn sexist—and a lot of men wanted this election to be about them. Their votes for Trump weren’t just about the economy, or crime, or immigration; their votes were about reasserting their dominance.

Sexism, of course, doesn’t explain everything about this election. Many voters are genuinely frustrated with high costs of housing and groceries, and remember lower interest rates and cheaper gas under Trump; many genuinely do see undocumented immigration as out of control, overwhelming the fragile support systems in their cities, and contributing to the kind of low-level disorder and dysfunction they find increasingly intolerable. Plenty of women voted for Donald Trump including, if exit polls are to be believed (and I’m looking at CNN’s), close to half of white women. Compared to 2020 and 2016, it looks like more Latina women voted for Trump this year too, even as upwards of 60 percent cast their ballots for Harris.

But like in 2016, Trump’s 2024 victory was a largely male one and a largely white one. This time, though, he peeled off more men of color. For the first time, a majority of Latino men voted Republican. Trump’s support among white men, and his overwhelming support among white men without college degrees, held steady. And like in 2020, roughly 20 percent of Black men voted for him (in 2016, this number was less than 15 percent). The one group that has moved significantly away from Trump is white college-grad women: This demographic never backed Trump en masse, but nearly 60 percent of them voted for Kamala Harris, compared to 51 percent who backed Hillary Clinton.

Gender was a major driver of Trump’s victory in 2016. Eight years later, pundits and analysts will be hunting for a newer, fresher explanation. But sometimes, the truth simply asserts itself on repeat.

In 2016, Trump pitched himself to the disaffected working-class white man. He ran a campaign of explicit gender and racial grievance. His rallies were characterized by gross and almost cartoonish misogyny. He won, and political science researchers confirmed that while a sense of economic displacement was real, racism and sexism were the fuel that powered the Trump fire. It wasn’t just that working class white men were frustrated by their lots in life; they were frustrated because they were no longer easily ahead of women and racial minorities, and because they no longer lived in a country dominated by people who looked and believed as they did.

In 2024, the pitch changed a bit. The racial grievance remained – undocumented immigrants were still described as criminals and even people “poisoning the blood of our country;” Puerto Rico was described as a floating island of trash—but it was better couched in issue-specific terms. The misogyny remained, too, but it also got a glow-up. Instead of leaning into the vulgarity of “Trump the bitch” slogans, Trump and his vice-presidential pick JD Vance promised men an administration that saw them, that worked for them, that sought to restore them to power, and that liked and respected them. And they contrasted it with a Democratic Party that didn’t just forget men, but was outright hostile to their very nature (in this telling, when liberals criticize toxic masculinity, they’re just talking about men in general). Yes, Kamala Harris came in for more than her share of Trump-supporter sexism and racism—casting her as a prostitute and as low-IQ were favorite insults—but the ultimate case Trump and Vance made for themselves was less “don’t elect this bitch” and more “put someone who gets you in the White House.”

To this end, Trump surrounded himself with tech bros and podcast bros and fighting bros. The men of the Christian right and the architects of Project 2025 were there too, but they receded a bit as Trump courted the kind of men who may not go to church much anymore, but who still want the respect traditionally afforded to men simply by virtue of being men. Vance spoke to this directly in earlier podcast clips and fundraising appeals that may have been damaging to his ticket’s female support, but might also have piqued the interest of resentful male listeners: He derided single cat ladies and by extension the entire category of women who believe that their lives are just as good (if not better) without men than with them. The men Trump and Vance courted likely don’t believe they hate women at all, despite voting against women’s most fundamental rights. Many of them seem to desperately want female affection, approval, and perhaps most of all respect—but having not exactly earned it, long for a time when female deference was essentially mandatory.

That is the American that Trump and Vance promised these men they would bring back. Yes, it’s an America where a (white) working-class man could make a living wage—but the fantasy is less about the number on a paycheck and more about the ability to have a financially dependent and adoring wife, or to be able to be as violent, crass, and unrestrained as one wishes without social consequence. As much as pundits and voters may point to the economy, or immigration, or crime as reasons voters backed Trump, the truth is that Trump offered virtually nothing in the way of actual policy on any of those issues. He offered instead the promise of masculine strength and male dominance, of men returned to their rightful positions of authority in the White House and in houses across America. He talked to men who are frustrated and men who are adrift, many who feel—in spite of all evidence—mistreated and even discriminated against. And he promised them a return to power.

This—the special treatment of men, and of white men in particular—is the original American identity politics. And in 2024, it has put another man in the White House, the latest in an unbroken masculine chain more than two centuries long.