Defense secretary Pete Hegseth convened an unusual meeting earlier this week. Hundreds of top military commanders flew in from around the world to converge on Quantico at Hegseth’s orders. There, the former Fox personality and National Guard veteran postured in front of an enormous American flag and lectured his audience on grooming standards and more. Troops will have to meet a “male level” for physical standards, and there would be no more “fat generals.” If women cannot meet those standards, he said, “so be it … That is not the intent, but it could be the result.” But there’s no reason to take Hegseth at his word. He’s railed against women in combat roles for years, and this week, his speech betrayed an obvious fixation on gender. “I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat units with females who can’t meet the same combat arms physical standards as men,” he said.

As journalist Jasper Craven reported in a recent piece for The Baffler, Hegseth has defined himself in opposition to women since he was an undergraduate at Princeton. According to a friend who knew Hegseth during his time in ROTC, the future Pentagon leader feared women “didn’t have the ability, if he was shot, to pick him up and carry him off the battlefield. That rubbed him the wrong way.” A hypermasculine bravado would later shape his time in public life. Hegseth has shown a particular reverence for special operators, defending some against accusations of war crimes, and he complains, often, that “woke” standards are weakening the military. Although Hegseth’s military career “was not especially remarkable,” Craven wrote, he expects his sons “to join the military — specifically, to become certified killers, as Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, or Green Berets.” During his confirmation, a New Yorker investigation uncovered a pattern of sexual harassment at Concerned Veterans for America when Hegseth was the leader of the conservative group. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that a woman had accused Hegseth of rape. (He reached a financial settlement with the woman but denies the allegation.)

After Tuesday’s meeting, I spoke to Craven about his reporting along with Hegseth’s latest speech and gender obsessions, and how they are enabled by a pervasive culture of impunity.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

At the Quantico meeting, Hegseth rehashed some old fixations. He’s consumed by grooming standards and “fat troops,” as he put it. Why do you think this is such a priority for him? 
I think that Hegseth from an early age really embraced this old-school GI archetype and all of the trappings and the image that goes along with it. Obviously, he grew up in the immediate shadow of Vietnam and the Cold War, but he preferred to obscure those military failures and reached back to World War II and the white-male GI whose successes saved the world from fascism. So there’s not a whole lot of deep thinking that accompanies that aspirational ideal for Hegseth. It’s really about the trappings, the image, the strength, and markers of old-school patriarchy.

Part of that stems from the fact that the wars Hegseth fought in Iraq and Afghanistan had no deep moral center. So all he could really do is glom onto this image, being the GI that Americans would still salute and recognize based on their uniform even though the wars may have been corrupt. That’s all Hegseth has had to hang onto, and he’s embraced that very deeply. Partially to squeeze valor out of it, but also to support his darker ideology, which revolves around deep misogyny and racial prejudice.

Who is most affected by Hegseth’s new grooming standards?
Black troops can develop a skin condition called pseudofolliculitis barbae because of frequent shaving, and in recognition of this ailment, the military relaxed grooming standards so they didn’t have to shave all the time and have these painful flare-ups on their faces. This is a way to expel Black troops from the force and hopefully, in Hegseth’s mind, bring in white ones. But it’s also a way to create more discipline and a more regimented culture. It smooths a path to create loyalty, to make it such a punishing environment that expressions of individualism are nonexistent. It may sound........

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