Donald Trump’s electoral victory last year, driven in part by rising support from young men, was the culmination of a backlash against the girlboss feminism and intersectional rhetoric that had dominated the culture over the prior decade. But these movements fell victim to their own fundamental contradictions: They promised liberation while embracing a system of social control.
Contrary to the hope of dismantling the patriarchy, feminism instead reshaped it and, in some respects, married it. The result was what we call the “alpha male state.”
In the late 20th century, feminists sought to use government and bureaucracy to break up patriarchy. The effort was alarmingly successful, giving us brand new departments for women’s matters, ministers for women, NGOs for women, welfare groups for women, bureaucratic doulas: a whole new class of professional hand-holders, hand-wringers, and hand-outers. New holidays, awards, and all manner of validation rituals were foisted on the public, who were pushed, cajoled, and ultimately threatened into participating in the celebrations and viewing this as a great leap forward. The state, it was imagined, would provide endless welfare and social support for women with mechanical neutrality while being incapable of self-interest.
But in reality, masculinity wasn’t destroyed through this apparent feminization of the state; instead, it was outsourced and then reified as something far more insidious than individual men. The original goal was first to subjugate and then demasculinize men. Unable to achieve this on their own, feminists required a strong arm to pressure for change. Appealing to the state to intervene in altering social and economic relations and laws, they saw an immediate social payoff. But it came at a price.
To address the social and behavioral changes being demanded, the state had to aggregate masculinity to itself and wield masculine power to compel men to give up theirs. In other words, the state, at the behest of feminists, had to become the alpha in sites of gender relationships—work, economics, family, education. Furthermore, for the sake of legitimacy, the state had to provide for these feminists in a way that would demonstrate its capability exceeded what ordinary men could provide, thereby drawing more women under its wing.
By the time Clintonism was in full swing and Blairism campaigned on women’s issues, power was shifting from the everyman to secular institutions: the state, universities, corporations, and media. Instead of sloughing off masculine traits, these entities absorbed and amplified them, offering up provision, protection, and authority.
In this system, political parties, especially those aligned with state expansion, recognized an opportunity. In exchange for votes, they offered women state-backed benefits, a degree of protection, and influence. Feminist movements in turn endorsed the growth and masculinization of bureaucracy while agitating for increased funding for NGOs, media initiatives, and academic programs centered on gender equity. Through the gradual transfer of power from fathers, brothers, and husbands to these institutions, feminists publicly displayed their true alpha male function over time: powerful, paternalistic, and punitive when challenged.
While all this was going on, everyman masculinity returned with a vengeance whenever the state shut its hypervigilant eye. It sometimes occurred in wholesome ways, such as when the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria, Australia overwhelmed state services and local men stepped in, often without formal training, to protect their communities, homes, and families. They operated bulldozers, created firebreaks, fought blazes with garden hoses, and coordinated informal rescue efforts. As a beautiful and elemental mirror, everywoman also rallied, rescued, organized, and housed people in the wake of the Northern Rivers Floods of 2022, with state services all but absent. However, during the pandemic, while the alpha male state was busy elbow-bumping and whingeing about Zoom fatigue, waves of resistance emerged, often led by “ordinary Aussie blokes”: tradesmen, small business owners, and blue-collar workers. Many framed their opposition not in policy terms, but in the masculine-coded language of defiance and individual freedom.
“The alpha male state hijacked feminism.”
In asserting such control over women’s lives and choices, the alpha male state hijacked feminism. By sidelining the role of ordinary men in society and inflating women’s egos, it encouraged a performance of agency for women, but never allowed them to truly embody it. They remain forever beholden to its benevolence.
When compared to the alpha state, men stood no chance. From the perspective of the feminist project, why bother with a flawed, fallible partner when the state can subsidize your lifestyle, Hollywood can script your empowerment, and human resources can enforce your worldview? The alpha male state emboldened and actively encouraged feminists to mock and belittle women who sought marriage and male companionship: Why put up with a little man, when the state can push them around so easily and give you so much? All the alpha male state wants in exchange is your “forever vote”—your commitment to the sisterhood, a trifle compared to the burdens of marriage and children.
After feminism was co-opted by the state apparatus, its next phase emerged as an arranged marriage with media, music, and pop culture. By the time influencers began pushing #bossbitch, the expanded alpha male state paradigm was well and truly established. Indeed, the rise of this trope in Hollywood occurred in an industry that had thoroughly embraced performative feminism. Male characters were increasingly minimized or ridiculed—foppish, foolish, and fallible, whereas female leads became untouchable avatars of empowerment. If you can’t see it, you can’t be it, feminists demanded, while Hollywood writers, producers and directors fell into line. From the Alien franchise, to GI Jane, to Katniss Everdeen, silver screen women were fighting aliens, wars, and ruling classes.
“Silver screen women were fighting aliens, wars, and ruling classes.”
The men in Alien are either incompetent (for example, bureaucrats who don’t listen), feckless, or cowardly, whereas in GI Jane, her superiors attempt to sabotage or undermine her, and she teaches them to be better through tough love. In The Hunger Games, Peeta is emotionally sensitive, nonviolent, and often saved by Katniss; Gale is more traditionally masculine but morally flawed; and the male authority figures are either manipulative or controlling.
Buoyed by these narratives, fourth wave feminists believe that their much-deserved inheritance from the second and third wavers is complete power over institutions that would reinforce their perspectives and silence any serious dissent. How could they not believe this? The collective narrative perpetuated by the alpha male state-feminist marriage that promised women it wouldn’t let them fail was all they had ever known.
But something shifted. The protective spell began to wear off. The backlash against woke corporatism, the populist disruption that Trump emblematizes, and growing disillusionment with legacy media narratives all signaled that the alpha male state’s dominance is no longer assured.
Modern state logic relies on centralized authority, control over knowledge, and a homogenous moral narrative. However, these pillars are now under strain: for example, alternative media challenges epistemic control, corporate virtue signaling provokes backlash, and digital subcultures fragment identity. As public exhaustion with these narratives aggregated into outright rejection, the girlboss and the alpha male state itself became objects of ridicule. Like any alpha male being mocked for being effeminate, the state changed tack.
Feminism’s greatest mistake has not been its challenge to patriarchy—what else would it exist to do?—but its blind faith in replacing men with institutions. Power, like affection, cannot be automated or commanded. And the state, much like any alpha male, eventually loses interest in the plaything it conquers.