Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/04/2026
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Location
LRW 1003

Research in Progress Seminar (RIPS)

Elbows Up: Reactionary Masculinities, Trumpism, and Canadian Youth

Dr. Izabela Steflja
Associate Professor, Political Science
Wilfrid Laurier University

This paper explores how Trumpian masculinity and threats to state sovereignty travel across borders, shaping reactionary constructions of masculinity in Canada. Emerging from heteronormative hockey culture, the Canadian “elbows up” metaphor promotes a self-disciplined, responsible, and purposeful masculinity, set against the Trumpian adolescent masculinity that glorifies excess, impulsive aggression, and unaccountable power. The paper analyses the problematic implications of these competing masculinities for gender norms and militarized imaginaries among Canadian youth. These dynamics are amplified by a growing traditionalist and fiscally conservative turn among young Canadians, particularly a generation of young men motivated by financial insecurity and tempted by the rise of alternative right militarization. The paper concludes by reflecting on the consequential reshaping of Canadian national identity and its intersections with masculinity in response to the gendered disorder of global politics.

Dr. Izabela Steflja is Associate Professor of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the Conflict and Security Lead at the Balsillie School for International Affairs. Recipient of the 2025 Early Career Researcher Award, her work examines postconflict justice, focusing on the relationship between international criminal courts and conflict-affected communities, and on women and children’s participation in armed groups. Her research challenges binary understandings of victims and perpetrators, exposes colonial and gendered assumptions, and centers the voices of those most affected by mass violence. Her current SSHRC/DND-funded project, Victims, Soldiers or Terrorists? Labelling of Children Associated with Armed Groups (2024-26), interrogates dominant notions of childhood and agency, and examines the inequitable representation of children associated with armed groups. Grounded in years of ethnographic fieldwork East and Central Africa and the Balkans, Dr. Steflja is the author of Women as War Criminals (Stanford, 2020) and Illegitimate Justice (McGill-Queens, 2026).