What Is Petro-masculinity? How Toxic Masculinity Is A Climate Crisis Issue
It’s well known that feminism and climate justice are intertwined. Women and girls disproportionately experience the effects of climate breakdown globally: 80% of people displaced by the climate crisis globally are women, while women and girls are often left out of school or unable to work due to climate issues. All of these factors put them at greater risk of experiencing violence.
But, while we look at the ways climate breakdown affects marginalised genders, we also have to consider the ways that toxic masculinity actively obstructs climate justice. Not just through the oligarchs, Elon Musks and CEOs of oil companies, but also in the everyday patriarchy and the way it intertwines with fossil fuels.
For example: a 2019 study found that men avoid recycling in order to not be perceived as gay. In 2016 a different study found that men perceive environmentalism as ‘feminine’, leading them to avoid certain environmental behaviours in order to maintain their masculine image. Plus, repeated studies have shown that, while understanding of the science of the climate crisis is growing, white conservative men are consistently more likely to engage in climate change denial.
Basically, toxic masculinity is a climate justice issue. Let’s dive into why.
What is petro-masculinity
In 2018 political scientist Cara Daggett coined the term ‘petro-masculinity’ in an article titled ‘Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire’, published in the journal Environmental Humanities. In it, she argued that petro-masculinity connects fossil fuels with masculine identities in culture, leading to political authoritarianism and actively shaping debates over climate change policy. The term has now become popular among both academics and activists when examining the ways gender and the fossil fuel industry intersect.
Petro-masculinity describes the way that culture that has arisen around the fossil fuel industry and become combined with ideas of masculinity. In particular, a lot of white conservative men have formed emotional and cultural attachments to climate denial, fossil fuels, and authoritarianism. Extracting, producing and consuming fossil fuels have become synonymous with traditional ideas of masculinity, power, and dominance. Fossil fuels have also become a key part of maintaining ‘traditional masculine values’ like toughness, strength, and self-sufficiency.
The fossil fuel industry has itself reinforced these beliefs through marketing, advertising, and lobbying; contributing to making it an even more emotionally tense arena by essentially manufacturing a full-blown culture war in order to survive.
When people use phrases like ‘make America great again’, they imagine an America with a white nuclear family in the suburbs, headed up by the ‘traditional masculine man’, all of which was historically underpinned by good old-fashioned fossil fuels. There is, after all, a reason that Trump focused his 2016 campaign so heavily on coal (signifying he was on the side of ‘real men’) despite it being an industry in massive decline. Daggett describes this in stark terms, as a petro-nostalgic fantasy.
As Daggett explained, fossil fuels don’t just make profits, they make identities and cultural meaning. It’s about what fossil fuels represent: lifestyles underpinned by white supremacy and patriarchy. These ideas also hurtle the planet towards chaos, but it’s easier for men to hold onto these identities and pretend the climate crisis doesn’t exist, than to accept that masculinity could be toxic.
This gendered framing of climate breakdown both gives us insight into inequality in society and impacts how we can address the climate crisis. In Daggett’s words:
Sherilyn MacGregor, for example, argues that environmentalism itself has become masculinised as a result of the dominance of science and security frames for understanding climate change. These ‘hardened’ framings result in a preference for ‘the kinds of solutions that are the traditional domain of men and hegemonic masculinity’, which lead to a ‘downgrading of ethical concerns’ like justice, health, or economic equity.
Why is petro-masculinity harmful?
It’s pretty clear that those who benefit from the patriarchy love to cling to it. In the same way, aligning fossil fuels with masculinity can also hinder a just transition. Renewable energy and other climate justice solutions are seen as weak, feminine, or some horrific ‘woke’ alternative to the traditional lifestyle these people want to return to.
All of this serves the interests of fossil fuel companies and the elites who profit from them: distracting people with culture wars to downplay the urgency of the climate crisis we are in. It obscures the environmental damage, extreme weather events, public health risks and violence against Indigenous and marginalised communities through another distraction technique.
More worryingly, petro-masculinity also lends itself to the global rise in fascism.
How petro-masculinity fuels authoritarianism
The culture of petro-masculinity is intertwined with political authoritarianism and militarism, because the extraction and production of fossil fuels can’t be separated from the wider picture of national security, geopolitical power, international relations and global conflicts. A clear example can be seen in Israel’s genocide, occupation and apartheid in Gaza: at the end of October 2023, Israel (which is itself backed by western superpowers entrenched in fossil fuels, particularly the USA) was already granting oil and gas exploration licenses in Gaza to fossil fuel giants.
As the climate crisis escalates, authoritarian movements around the world have been embracing climate denial, racism and misogyny as key parts of their platforms. Petro-masculinity is helpful to understand both how this has happened, and why it is working. Not only do men cling to the petro-nostalgic fantasies of past lifestyles, but they also see attempts for progressive changes in society as active threats to these ideas. Renewable energy, antiracist movements and LGBTQ+ rights are all seen as dangerous challenges that need to be defeated, because otherwise those with privilege will lose their power, and those longing for petro-nostalgic fantasies will never achieve them. This means not only a commitment to white supremacy, homophobia, ableism and a range of other oppressions, but also a commitment to fossil fuels over a just transition. Fossil fuels become a symbol representing wider conservatism, even when they actively pose a risk to all life on Earth.
An attachment to the righteousness of fossil fuel lifestyles, and to all the hierarchies that depend upon fossil fuels, produces a desire to not just deny, but to refuse climate change, and a willingness to engage in authoritarianism to do so.
In layman’s terms, fossil fuel violence and authoritarianism aren’t simply about misogyny alone, but ideas around gender are tied to fossil fuel-powered fantasies, and the climate crisis can push people into fascism to defend them.
A sustainable future will mean more than just substituting out one type of energy for another. It really requires challenging a modern Western culture and a way of life that’s premised on unending growth and expansion of cheap energy, mass consumerism and all of the ways that those things factor in a certain traditional vision of the American way of life. Right-wing climate denial understands that the change required is this significant, and their response is defiance – to refuse that change.
So what can we do?
Like our approach to other forms of oppression, tackling petro-masculinity requires an intersectional commitment. It’s not just about pushing sustainability, more renewable energy and reduced consumption (though we do need these), it’s about continuing to unpack marginalisation based on gender, race, class, disability, sexual identity and more, and working towards liberation for all. It looks like resisting rising fascism in all its forms, not just voting every few years but also actively getting involved in antifascist organising for justice. It’s about community care, union organising and just transitions all being underpinned by an intersectional approach to justice that comes from the grassroots bottom up organising and from the top down in policy changes.
Changing culture and values takes time, which is why resistance to fascism must be strong and committed. But the first step is understanding petro-masculinity and working to address the social and economic inequalities it reinforces, while resisting the fossil fuel industry and authoritarian movements wherever we find them.
Learn more and start organising: