Do you want to show you're a man? Shoot somebody.

In a new book, The Wimp Factor: Gender Gender Gaps, Holy Wars and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, author Stephen Ducat contends that the Republican's success can be attributed to "femiphobia," or "fear of all things feminine."

From the San Francisco Chronicle review:

"The Wimp Factor suggests that American hyper-masculinity -- as seen in, but not limited to, the Bush administration, Christian fundamentalism and right-wing U.S. policy -- has created a contentious political landscape in which more and more men are becoming conservative. Ducat said that men with the extreme type of masculinity that is afraid of characteristics traditionally considered feminine -- self-reflection, attunement to others, appreciation for human interrelatedness -- may become sociopaths: possessed of a guilt-free capacity to hurt others for personal gain.

'The Bush administration is the most sociopathic American administration in my lifetime,' [Ducat] said, citing the administration's unilateral assault on Iraq and, leading up to it, apparent falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi ties to al Qaeda."