A recent headline The Times has run about the Elon Musk-Donald Trump breakup includes the phrase “Trump Has No Plans to Call Musk, Officials Say.” I guess they’re at the no-contact point, after many hours of dramatic public scrapping on social media. Trump is threatening to sell his Tesla.

There’s been a variety of responses from the greater MAGAverse. While the majority of people appear to be siding with the president, there are a few who are on the fence, like the far-right influencer Jack Posobiec, who posted on X:

Some of y’all cant handle 2 high agency males going at it and it really shows

This is direct communication (phallocentric) vs indirect communication (gynocentric)

I understand you aren’t used to it

This view of masculinity is fascinating to me. Historically, “phallocentric” communication was that you walked over to a guy and punched him in the face, or asked him to step outside. Even in professional wrestling, which involves histrionic male rivalries and is revered by Trump world, enemies eventually hit each other over the head with a folding chair (even if it’s for show). I’m not saying it’s the best way to work out differences, but that’s the cowboy stereotype.

Hurling epithets over social media with your friends as Trump and Musk have spent much of the last 24 hours doing is not behavior that I think of as traditionally male; if anything, it’s passive-aggressive and female coded. It’s Season 2 “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” Taylor versus Demi. It’s any given season of “Real Housewives,” where the women divvy their loyalties up behind whoever is the reigning alpha. I half expect Andy Cohen to moderate the MAGA reunion, if he could even get Trump and Musk in a room together.

In The Atlantic earlier this year, Jill Filipovic called this version of manhood “The Adolescent Style in American Politics.” I called it “Toxic Immaturity” in 2023. This style of masculinity rejects the old-fashioned notion that being a man means being a provider, a moral exemplar or a protector. That’s been replaced by disruption and edgelord posturing without any accountability to other people. If that’s what passes for aspirational masculinity these days, men and boys are in more trouble than I thought.