Identity sovereignty is not only about who we are allowed to be.
It is also about who we are told to fear.

Drawing from Antonio Gramsci, dominant power does not rule mainly through force. It rules by shaping common sense. It decides what masculinity should look like. It decides what is respectable. It decides what feels dangerous.

When these definitions are absorbed as natural, policing no longer looks like enforcement.

It looks like culture.

When Bad Bunny steps onto a global stage dressed in ways that disrupt rigid macho expectations, the backlash that follows is often framed as authenticity or cultural defence. But through a Gramscian lens, the reaction can reflect how hegemonic masculinity has already shaped the criteria for legitimacy.

The script has been written long before the performance begins.

The policing then happens internally, because the narrative has been normalised as common sense.

Power does not only script masculinity.
It scripts credibility.
It decides whose identity is legitimate, and whose must be corrected.

And once you recognise how legitimacy is shaped, you begin to see the pattern elsewhere.

The same mechanism appears wherever a dominant power determines who is believed, who is protected, and who must remain silent.