Last week’s essay, “Is fiction too female-coded,” struck a nerve. Thought I’d follow up with commentary on a related topic: masculinity.
It’s become an obsession this election. Just mentioning the word can send people ducking for cover, thumping their chests, or ranting.
Masculinity.
Since reading Richard Reeves’ book Of Boys and Men, I’ve been exploring masculinity and men’s issues more deeply — not just as societal topics but as a way to navigate my own internal conflicts. To be honest, I’m getting tired of it. There’s something unmasculine about talking about masculinity too much, yet here I am. Here we all are. Maybe it’s time to shut up about it, or at least reconsider how we talk about it.
Every other day, the media cranks out articles dissecting masculinity in the context of the election. Today’s example is from NBC News, claiming Trump and Harris voters are battling over what masculinity looks like in 2024. Meanwhile, the Lincoln Project put out an ad featuring a deep, manly voice urging, “It’s time to be a man and vote for a woman.”
It’s worth asking, Does masculinity even matter? Why is it such a hot-button issue right now?
Of course it matters. But I also think we’re overemphasizing it. We may be focusing on the wrong gender, in fact. Think about it. We have a woman knocking on the door of the Presidency in an election where women’s rights are front and center. Why are we fixating so much on masculinity? I get that Trump, Walz, and Emhoff have sparked conversations about masculinity in their own ways and that some see this election as a gender war. But it feels like all sides are over-focusing on masculinity to the point of losing perspective — myself included.
For much of the last decade, I’ve felt caught between two warring camps in the masculinity discourse. Both are obsessed with it in different ways.
On one side are the Masculinists. They see masculinity as the backbone of civilization, under siege by the feminization of education, work, and culture. To them, traditional male virtues like strength, honor, and responsibility are being dismantled; boys and men are struggling amid challenging cultural and economic trends; and masculinity needs to be restored and revitalized. But Masculinism has a dark side — it can morph into rigid, surface-level, one-size-fits-all conceptions of masculinity. What begins as a defense of masculinity can turn into a backlash against those who don’t conform. It also can descend into performative obsessions with testosterone levels, squat records, and shirtless selfies.
On the other side are the Liberationists. They see masculinity as a relic — at best outdated, at worst dangerous. For them, dismantling traditional gender roles is key to greater freedom and equality. “Let people be who they are” is their mantra, and they push to transcend or even erase masculinity altogether. But this approach has its own pitfalls. By focusing solely on deconstruction, Liberationists often dismiss the positive aspects of masculinity — like protection, task-orientation, and resilience. Taken to extremes, it can leave boys and men confused, push society toward 50+ gender options, and become its own force of oppression by pathologizing male behavior.
Over the years, I’ve leaned toward the Masculinist side on cultural issues while favoring the Liberationist approach on legal equality. I’ve pushed back against the excesses of gender ideology and anti-male sentiment, while celebrating the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision legalizing gay marriage. My essay last week asking if fiction is too female-coded can be seen as grappling with these issues.
Recently, the conversation around masculinity has taken on a surreal tone. Some Masculinists have become a parody of themselves, latching onto cringe influencers like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, who peddle hyper-masculinity as some kind of cure-all. Meanwhile, the Liberationists have evolved from champions of inclusion into ideological enforcers who treat any acknowledgment of traditional gender roles as betrayal. Ask a Liberationist to define “boy” and watch them squirm.
Politically, the GOP has been consumed by a coarse, dumbed-down version of Masculinism. This was the context of JD Vance’s snide cat-lady commentary. Yet, in 2016, Trump was the most gay-friendly Republican nominee ever, and I initially perceived his combative style as a reassertion of masculinity in politics. At some point along the way, though, I began to see Trump’s swagger as a disguise concealing outright narcissism, boorishness, and corruption.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have shifted from Hillary Clinton’s man-hating Liberationist vibes to a divergent approach. Joe Biden made it ok to be a straight white male Democrat again. And with the Harris-Walz campaign, we see an open embrace of masculinity with Tim Walz, the sturdy Midwestern dad, and Doug Emhoff, the supportive husband. But to some, it feels like Democrats are pushing a sanitized, female-approved “good guy masculinity” that boxes men into a neat Democratic stereotype. And despite the recent change of tone, the progressive left is still caught up in Liberationist thinking, wanting to call pregnant women “birthing people” and follow Rachel Levine’s calls to eliminate any age limits for youth trans surgeries.
Both sides need to touch grass. And maybe we all need to stop blowing masculinity out of proportion as a topic. Isn’t it strange that talking heads never analyze Harris’s femininity in the same way they do Walz’s aw-shucks masculinity? How much of the masculinity signaling on both sides is a just a ploy for votes?
Yes, masculinity matters. Masculinity embodies qualities like strength, courage, and responsibility that are essential for personal development, social cohesion, and civilizational advancement. It provides balance and purpose, contributing positively to families, communities, and society as a whole.
Masculinity is a dynamic force that, when guided by self-awareness and respect, can contribute greatly to the world. This isn’t about tearing down manhood or propping up outdated norms. It’s about understanding that masculine and feminine energies are complementary, not opposing forces. Both have shadow sides, too. Toxic masculinity is real and so is toxic femininity — so why do we discuss one but not the other?
We shouldn’t dismantle masculinity or reject it as inherently problematic. We should encourage and nurture it, just as we should femininity. And I think we can balance normative masculinity with tolerance for those who don’t fit the mold. The straight guy who likes poetry, the effeminate gay, and the gender-fluid person all deserve cultural space and protection. My family does, too.
This past week I spoke with Ken Mossman, a professional coach and leadership trainer who runs a men’s program called Integrated Adult Man (IAM). Ken is in his 60s, straight, married, and classically masculine in an unaffected, neighborly, hiker-in-the-Adirondacks way. At one point during the call, I asked Ken how he defines masculinity.
Ken paused and took a breath. “What’s important is that men become integrated and conscious adults. How masculinity fits into that is up to them.”
At first, I was taken aback. Here was a guy running a men’s program who balked at defining masculinity. It didn’t seem to matter to him, at least not individually. But as we spoke further, I came to understand that Ken was not deconstructing masculinity. He was putting it in context of what matters at the individual level: becoming conscious and integrated men.
I paused for a few breaths to wrap my head around what he was saying. “Makes sense,” I eventually replied.
Masculinity exists in a context, as Harris might say. It exists in relation. Perhaps we should talk more about how to integrate all of our parts, regardless of which candidate we support.
This is my current view on the topic — what do you think? Add in the comments.
Links to check out:
Ken Mossman’s website
- by Richard Reeves (highly recommend the book)
My essays on related topics:
Others to check out:
- for smart conservative views on masculinity
- for intelligent feminist commentary from the left
Provocative essay by
, “The 2024 election is a gender war”I enjoyed this piece by
“You’re definitely not straight”
Loved the article. Brings to mind a heuristic of mine that might help with sense-making:
Living systems only focus their attention inwards when they receive a signal that there is a problem.
And a second-tier heuristic:
There are two sorts of parasites. One sort integrates seamlessly into the host system. The second trips immune system alarms far out of proportion by the danger it poses and/or latches on to existing injury sites in order to profit from the increased resources that are rushed to repair the damage.
If you consider that our body politic is a living system, and apply the above heuristics, you might come up with something like the following:
Masculinity, and the lives of men, are in serious trouble at this point in history, so the entire civilization is bending around the problem (in much the same way it did with the crisis of femininity occasioned by the complete technological and economic disruption of women's lives in the 50s and 60s). As a result, the second sort of parasite, in many different guises (i.e. self-help gurus, politicians of all stripes, cult leaders, hucksters, and purveyors of various drugs and distractions) is swarming around the topic--and will likely continue to do so until there is once again a valid, broadly accepted and understandable-by-the-average-high-school-drop-out role and manner for male adulthood.
Like you, I look forward to that day.
This post pushed me over the edge to become paid, BTW. Thanks also for the pointer to Sam Kahn's excellent post - I already read Castalia, but not rigorously, and somehow I missed that one.
If you will forgive a tangent, you wrote en passant that "Yet, in 2016, Trump was the most gay-friendly Republican nominee ever". You have written the same thing a couple of other times in the last few months (since I started following you).
I wonder how true that is, in terms of Trump's positioning relative to the nominal median point of the Republican Party. From your inside Republican politics perspective, was Trump (in terms of his public *party* persona, so not just in appearances but when talking to donors, etc.) from Golden Escalator day to election day 2016) more accepting of gays relative to, for example Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, or even Scott Walker as *they* positioned themselves of say June 2015, or more accepting than McCain in 2007-2008 relative for example to the 2007-2008 release of Mitt Romney (versus the "severely conservative" 2011/12 release), any edition of Mike Huckabee, etc. ...
How did Huntsman position himself during his no-hope** run for the nomination? He took a fairly clear civil unions yes, SSM no stand starting early in his governorship, 2009 [1], and did not come out for SSM until early 2013.
I'd also say, very much in the spirit of parsing loophole abuse :), that the most gay-friendly Republican presidential nominee *ever* relative to the party's contemporary Overton window on the topic has to have been Barry Goldwater in his 1990s version, re DADT in particular and the Religious Right more generally. Of course he was long out of the Senate by then, but when he was in the Senate he certainly did not hesitate to speak his mind.
** a party that would nominate a 2012 Huntsman would be a party that I would have rejoined without much angst. A party that will nominate Trump three times will have to wait for the Ds to fall much much further than they have so far before that Trumpy party gets my vote for any Federal office (fortunately or otherwise, I don't live in a state or CD where there is one of the relatively rare Republicans who both has a reasonable chance of winning in for Senate or House in Nov and is also someone I could vote for in good conscience).
[1] https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=51795519&itype=CMSID