For all of the unexpected turns 2016 has held for Republicans, one thing is certain: this year will be remembered as the election season that launched a thousand women’s studies dissertations.

If “small hands” and “Little Marco” didn’t convince you that the Republican presidential primary is actually a controlled study in anxious masculinity, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have now gone full caveman: trading barbs over their wives’ honor. (Sure, it’s a Twitter fight – not quite as testosterone-laden as an old-fashioned duel – but hey, it’s a new world.)

After an anti-Trump group ran Facebook ads in Utah ahead of Tuesday’s primary that featured a nearly-nude shot of Melania Trump, the blustery candidate accused Cruz’s campaign of being behind the picture. “Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a GQ shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!” Trump tweeted. Cruz responded by tweeting to Trump that the picture did not come from him and that “if you try to attack Heidi, you’re more of a coward than I thought. #classless”

Sure, misogyny has been a staple of the Republicans’ run this year, whether accusing women of menstruating while moderating or upholding a platform that would strip women of hard-won rights. But this kind of one-upmanship is different than the Republican’s everyday sexism. It’s what psychologist and professor Stephen J Ducat calls “the wimp factor” – the way that American politics have long been shaped by men’s stark fear of being feminized.

For many men, masculinity is a hard-won yet precarious achievement that must be constantly proven and defended Stephen J Ducat

The “wimp factor” is why Teddy Roosevelt once called Woodrow Wilson a “white-handy Miss Nancy” and why the Wall Street Journal ran a piece years ago that declared “we’ve already had a woman president: Jimmy Carter”.

Fighting for one’s masculine bonafides by using women’s bodies as a proxy is also nothing new. One of the most famous moments in American politics was when CNN’s Bernard Shaw asked Democratic presidential hopeful Mike Dukakis in 1988 whether he would support the death penalty if his wife was raped and murdered. When Dukakis didn’t respond uproariously and angrily – instead answering from a policy perspective – his candidacy was considered dead in the water. If he wasn’t willing to protect “his” woman, how could he protect his country?

“For many men, masculinity is a hard-won, yet precarious and brittle psychological achievement that must be constantly proven and defended,” Ducat has written. And now that the Republican political climate is being framed by a candidate like Trump, who has literally turned the primary into a manhood-measuring contest, hyper-masculine posturing has become the most prevalent theme of the party.

Instead of having the desired effect of making the candidates seem strong, however, Republicans’ antiquated chest-pounding comes across as more pathetic than powerful. It’s a political fight that isn’t based in confidence, but misogynist insecurity and weakness. I’m with Pulitzer prize winning columnist Connie Schultz, who responded that this is what happens “when both boys realize they’re going to lose to a girl”.

Americans have bigger concerns than which candidate has the most noble or beautiful wife, or who has the biggest hands. When the battle for the White House takes place in a locker room, everyone loses.