Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire

As the planet warms, new authoritarian movements in the West are embracing a toxic combination of climate denial, racism and misogyny. Rather than consider these resentments separately, this article interrogates their relationship through the concept of petro-masculinity, which appreciates the historic role of fossil fuel systems in buttressing white patriarchal rule. Petro-masculinity is helpful to understanding how the anxieties aroused by the Anthropocene can augment desires for authoritarianism. The concept of petro-masculinity suggests that fossil fuels mean more than profit; fossil fuels also contribute to making identities, which poses risks for post-carbon energy politics. Moreover, through a psycho-political reading of authoritarianism, I show how fossil fuel use can function as a violent compensatory practice in reaction to gender and climate trouble.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Millennium: Journal of International Studies

• Publication date

  2018-06-20

• Fields of study

  Political Science, Sociology, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1177/0305829818775817
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• No references are available for this paper.

• Ideology, environmental attitudes, and perceived pace of transition: explaining public acceptance of fossil fuel phase-out in Spain

  2026cites this paper
• Transition Imaginaries

  2026cites this paper
• Power relations and challenges for organic soy and sustainability transitions in Paraná, Brazil

  2026cites this paper
• Minerals-for-peace or naked extractivism? Trump and resource imperialism in Ukraine

  2026cites this paper
• Mothers as Science Storytellers

  2026cites this paper
• Ecofeminism as a Traveling Theory: French and German Perspectives

  2026cites this paper
• Black, Black Oil: Petromasculinity and Slow Violence in The Black Eden

  2026cites this paper
• Sweaty bodies: a feminist approach to socioenvironmental politics

  2026cites this paper
• Settler colonialism lock-in: Transitions and the prefiguring of settler futurities

  2026cites this paper
• Regressing to Nature: Culture Industry and Fascism in Times of Ecological Crisis

  2026cites this paper
• Controversia, negacionismo y neoconservadurismo: desafíos pedagógicos para una educación ambiental crítica

  2026cites this paper
• Critical mapping of the energy-gender nexus: From “sex disaggregation” to “doing gender equality”

  2026cites this paper
• Selective intersectionality: far-right populist Re-casting of social discontent in Europe’s green transition

  2026cites this paper
• The political ideological dimensions of meat consumption

  2026cites this paper
• “Can we envision Decarbonisation beyond extraction? Challenging claims of a ‘just' energy transition from the seabed”

  2026cites this paper
• Creating and Staying with the Trouble – Potenziale von weiblichen* ‚Non-Traditional Students‘ für eine transformierte und transformative Wissenschaft

  2026cites this paper
• Climate policy backlash: taming an unruly concept?

  2026cites this paper
• Far-right fossil fuel ignorance: the nostalgia of national-industrial modernity

  2026cites this paper
• Discourses of Climate Delay in the Fields of Physical Activity and Sport Promotion.

  2026cites this paper
• Who cares about gender? A comparison of parties’ commitment to gender equality in the UN climate regime

  2026cites this paper
• A gender perspective on bicycle-powered mobility visions

  2026cites this paper
• Fuelling masculinity: how ads for plant-based burgers and electric trucks reinforce gender norms and resist sustainable imaginaries

  2025influential citation
• Learning to lack? Towards a psychoanalytic interpretation of climate anxiety as a political emotion in education for climate justice

  2025cites this paper
• A Crude, Cruel Crisis

  2025cites this paper
• No to the ‘mad’ Green Deal, yes to ‘quality’ Czech food: how the far-right populist Freedom and Direct Democracy messages on environmental issues

  2025cites this paper
• Food production and Afrikan metaphysical thought in the time of polycrisis

  2025cites this paper
• Unleashing American Energy? Uncertainties in energy transition developments under a new Trump administration

  2025cites this paper
• A feminist new materialist ontology of masculinity

  2025cites this paper
• Entangled Masculinities – Masculinities in the Context of Global Crises

  2025cites this paper
• Wages of Extraction: Industry and Political Narratives of Fossil Fuel Production in Canada

  2025cites this paper
• The Long Shadow of Partisan Hostility: How Affective Polarization Hinders Democracies’ Ability to Mitigate Climate Change

  2025cites this paper
• Masculinity, femininity, and support for climate policy

  2025cites this paper
• Anthropocene ordinary: Emergent worlds with/in imaginaries of anthropogenic planetary crisis

  2025cites this paper
• The new urban backlash: the narrative of motorist populist movements in Estonia, Poland, and Ukraine

  2025cites this paper
• Afectos fósiles: un diálogo entre las petromasculinidades y la teoría de los afectos

  2025cites this paper
• Low-emissions, High Tensions: Social Media Groups and the Escalation of Climate Obstruction

  2025cites this paper
• River Energies

  2025cites this paper
• Men, masculinities, and the planet at the end of (M)Anthropocene: ecological/social/economic/political relations, processes and consequences

  2025cites this paper
• The Gendered Subject of Geoengineering and the Denialist Unconscious

  2025cites this paper
• Farming masculinities in transition? Revisiting the entanglements of agricultural production and masculinities in times of socio-ecological crisis through a systematic literature review

  2025cites this paper
• Petropatriarchy and the price of water: gendered consequences

  2025cites this paper
• Cuerpas en resistencia. Disidencia, abyección y escritura en Temporada de huracanes de Fernanda Melchor y Fruta podrida de Lina Meruane

  2025cites this paper
• Gender equity and care for transformative climate justice

  2025cites this paper
• Sociology amid Climate Breakdown: A Call for Systemic Pedagogical Transformation

  2025cites this paper
• Introduction: John Stone's Trajectory From Race Relations to Nationalism

  2025cites this paper
• En mal de altura: notas sobre petromasculinidad y el sublime fascista en Vox

  2025cites this paper
• Analysis of the conflicts between development preferences and spatial differences based on participatory mapping in the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces World Heritage Site, China

  2025cites this paper
• ‘Work hard, play hard, drink hard’: frontier masculinities and female teachers’ experiences in a regional Australian mining town

  2025cites this paper
• The American Single-Family Home: Towards a Social and Environmental History

  2025cites this paper
• Exploring intersectional energy justice based on the case of planned hard coal phase-out in the Silesian Voivodeship in Poland

  2025cites this paper
• Foundations of climate change denial: Anti-environmentalism and anti-science

  2025influential citation
• Exclusionary Environmentalism: Exploring Gender and Antifeminism in Far-Right Ecologisms

  2025cites this paper
• Men and the mask: Dramaturgical mask-wearing, masculinities and oilmen's ‘stoical’ emotional shielding practices in Scotland's offshore oilfields

  2025cites this paper
• A qualitative study of how young women in a rural Canadian community plan their futures

  2025cites this paper
• The Living Flame: Energy, promotion and ‘natural’ gas in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s

  2025influential citation
• Economic sociology and the far-right

  2025cites this paper
• Ecofeminism Revisited – in Dialogue with Sherilyn MacGregor

  2025cites this paper
• Fossil complacency: reorienting climate hypocrisy and system change debates

  2025cites this paper
• Masculinities in transition: a life history study of the UK vegan activist movement

  2025cites this paper
• Escuchando la tierra (bajo el asfalto)

  2025cites this paper
• Gender and Climate Justice

  2025cites this paper
• Daddy's home: sexual politics, authoritarian desire, and the re-election of Donald Trump

  2025cites this paper
• Instrumental Bot Identities and the Politics of Online Discourse

  2025cites this paper
• From commodity to commons: Understanding the transformative potential of mobility cooperatives for just sustainability transitions

  2025cites this paper
• Exploring the nexus of gender and energy transitions: A systematic literature review

  2025cites this paper
• The smell of polluted leisure in the Anthropocene: a qualitative arts-based approach to studying sport, eco-emotions, the senses, men, and the environment

  2025cites this paper
• The fear of uselessness: From the normalization to the enjoyment of ecological destructiveness

  2025cites this paper
• Bungalows and oil tanks: The environmental damages of petroleum refining and the urban politics of heavy industry

  2025cites this paper
• Gender and Support for Climate Change Policies: The Case of Offshore Wind Farms

  2025cites this paper
• Ecomodern Masculinity in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom

  2025cites this paper
• Review Essay: Postanthropocentric Political Theories

  2025cites this paper
• “They Want to Kill Our Cows. That Means You're Next:” White Masculine Victimhood and the Green New Deal’s War on Hamburgers

  2025influential citation
• ‘Green tech’ geographies: The role of technology in contemporary frontier-making processes

  2025cites this paper
• Denial is a pipeline in Canada: a feminist critical discourse analysis of Canadian far-right climate obstruction

  2025influential citation
• Orchestrating the narrative: The role of fossil fuel companies in delaying the energy transition

  2025cites this paper
• Wicked politics and trashy economics: Gender and scandalous expertise

  2025cites this paper
• The German scramble for green hydrogen in Namibia: Colonial legacies revisited?

  2025cites this paper
• From warming bodies to heating spaces: Using feminist energy justice and oral histories to unpack home heating transitions in Europe, 1945-present

  2025cites this paper
• Petro-politics, Gender Violence and Human Trafficking in Nigeria’s Niger Delta Region

  2025influential citation
• Green, innovative, and unfair: The case of unjust energy transitions and civic resistance and opposition in Portugal

  2025cites this paper
• Ecofeminism as a Traveling Theory. French and German Perspectives

  2025cites this paper
• Roadblocks of polarization: Interpretive mechanisms of opposition to a speed limit policy on German highways

  2025cites this paper
• ‘Like in Every Other Facet of Life, I am Privileged to be a Man’: Political Subjectivities of Young Men Working in the Australian Health Care and Social Assistance Sector

  2025cites this paper
• Wissen für eine sozial-ökologische Transformation: Perspektiven der Geschlechterforschung auf Klima- und Umweltkrisen

  2025cites this paper
• Let’s Keep Our Eyes on the Road: The Case for Peace and Conflict Researchers to Study Vehicular Violence

  2025cites this paper
• Fuelled humans: The petromodern entanglement of driving and living in Françoise Sagan

  2025cites this paper
• Gasolina

  2025cites this paper
• Fear of artificial intelligence or fear of looking in the mirror? Revisiting the Western machine-takeover imaginary

  2025cites this paper
• Apocalyptic Authoritarianism

  2025cites this paper
• Climate Hoax: The Shift from Scientific Discourse to Speculative Rhetoric in Climate Change Conversations

  2025cites this paper
• Slick and smooth: The role of petro-products in making and maintaining ‘femininity’ in the beauty salon

  2025cites this paper
• Reactions to policy action: socio-political conditions of backlash to climate change policy

  2025cites this paper
• Democratizing energy justice: Rethinking energy justice in authoritarian times

  2025cites this paper
• From ‘Wokeism’ to ‘Le Wokeisme’: Diffusion of Anti‐Wokeness as a Far‐Right Master Frame From the United States to France

  2025cites this paper
• Oil, life, and everyday fossil fascism: appropriative signification in U.S. petroleum supremacy

  2025cites this paper
• Preppen for Future?

  2025cites this paper
• Hostile sexism and overconfidence shape the public’s views of climate change

  2025cites this paper
• Carbon societies’ past, present and future: History, crisis and social transformation

  2025cites this paper
• Motherly oil industry: Governing the desire for climate action through petro-feminine spatial imaginaries

  2025cites this paper
• Behind the Mask: A graphical autobiography of life and labor in the oil sands

  2025cites this paper