Panel: John A. Macdonald’s Political Campaigns Essay

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The patriotic rhetoric inherent to John A. Macdonald’s Conservative Party was quite well-received in the sociohistorical context of the late nineteenth century, echoing into the twentieth. Even though the party’s ideology revolved predominantly around anti-Americanism, its imagery and symbolism referenced specific discourses on gender, class, and ethnicity. The discourse set apart the privileged British-Canadian middle-class males who would gain the most favorable position in terms of their social, cultural, and political power.

The first example reflects gender stereotyping, which remains a prominent issue in modern times. The paternalist nationalism expressed in Macdonald’s political campaigns feminized Canada, pushing the stereotype of heterosexual gender norms and depicting the country as fragile and in need of being saved from the “nasty United States” (Wood, 2001, p. 53). In the country, women remain to be reduced to housekeeping roles and experience inequality, with their part in the labor market being quite limited (Lau, 2020). The narrative of females being vulnerable and needing to be saved remains among the prominent narratives of modern patriarchal society inherent to the left-wing ideology.

Within the patriarchal narratives of the campaign, the ideas of toxic masculinity were rampant, which is the second example. The “vulnerable Miss Canada” had to be saved from the “wolves at the door,” calling for a strong male figure to dominate in society, representing power and labor that would sustain the country and make it stronger (Wood, 2001, p. 55). In the narrative, there was an opposition between the “strong” and “weak” men, with the latter not being seen as the desired members of Canadian society. Toxic masculinity runs rampant in modern media, specifically film and television, and the general social narrative pushes stereotypical images of gender. Both the portrayal of women as vulnerable and less masculine men as not worthy of being called men are harmful and should no longer be part of progressive Canadian society.

References

Lau, R. (2020). CTV News. Web.

Wood, P. K. (2001). Defining “Canadian”: Anti-Americanism and identity in Sir John A. Macdonald’s nationalism. Journal of Canadian Studies, 36(2), 49-69.

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