Lesbian Congresswoman Compares Pete Hegseth to Tom of Finland

The Democratic U.S. Congresswoman Becca Balint sharply criticized on Thursday the new testosterone initiative announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. She accuses the Trump administration of a paradoxical blend of hyper-masculine homoeroticism and systematic homophobia.

The backdrop is a Wednesday order by Hegseth mandating testosterone screening for all active-duty service members aged 30 and older (TheColu.mn reported). Hegseth, who extols the Pentagon on social media as the “High-T Department of War” (a testosterone-heavy ministry of war), says the aim is to boost the “readiness of the warriors.”

Speaking to journalist Scott MacFarlane of MeidasTouch in the Capitol, Balint delivered a pointed critique of the minister’s conduct. She drew a direct parallel to queer art history: “Pete Hegseth is the poster child for the ultra-masculine, rugged macho man. I’m not sure you know who Tom of Finland is?” said the openly lesbian lawmaker from Vermont. “Pete Hegseth is the embodiment of that.”

Tom of Finland, alias Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), gained worldwide fame through his iconic erotic drawings of extremely muscular men in uniforms and leather wear. With his unmistakable pencil-and-ink work, he radically reshaped and defined gay culture and aesthetics in the latter half of the 20th century.

The paradoxes of the “Macho” politics

Balint stressed that her critique isn’t a denigration of homoeroticism itself. Rather, she denounces the double standard of a government that actively targets queer people in the military while presenting itself in hypermasculine terms: “I think this is emblematic of the fact that so many people in this administration harbor strange, intense homoerotic feelings toward men, while they are simultaneously incredibly homophobic.” The Trump administration, Balint argues, fuels “hate and fear” toward the queer community. The real problem, she says, lies in the responsible figures’ denial: “I don’t think homoeroticism is the strange part. The strange part is that they pretend like it isn’t the point.”

Hypocrisy around hormone therapies
The testosterone initiative has sparked serious outrage within the community. Just a few months earlier, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth began moving to exclude transgender people from the military. At that time, the Pentagon argued the cost of hormone therapies was prohibitively high — about $5.2 million per year. Now, in the same department, there is broad funding for testosterone regimens.

Money at the Pentagon, it seems, is flowing rather freely: it was recently revealed that the Defense Department spent roughly seven million dollars on luxury lobster in a single month (TheColu.mn reported).

Hegseth has long tied his opposition to trans people to a “warrior ethos.” In May of this year he declared with evident pride: “No men in dresses anymore. That’s it.”

For Balint, however, Hegseth’s fixation on testosterone-driven masculinity is about more than rhetoric. She views it as an intentional move to roll back military diversity after it became known that Hegseth personally removed several women and Black men from a Navy promotion list. “The fact that he systematically keeps women and non-white people from advancing reveals the whole game. It’s really about more than a performance-based system,” the Democrat explained. (dk)