🏛️ Politics

⬅️ Hub: Boy Crisis MOC

Left denial, right nostalgia, AIBM, and the double standard.

Politics

• Civic Participation: Strautmanis noted that current political discourse can be exclusionary—people feel unqualified to engage unless they use the “right language” (e.g. patriarchy, toxic masculinity). We must broaden the tent.
• Left’s Blind Spot: Reeves critiqued national Democrats for avoiding the topic out of fear it undermines efforts to support women. This silence leaves a vacuum that the alt-right eagerly fills with grievance-based narratives.
• Zero-Sum Thinking: Support for boys is often wrongly viewed as subtracting from girls. The panel stressed we must adopt a “both/and” mindset: we can uplift girls and support boys simultaneously.
• The left’s vision of masculinity as “act like a woman” contrasts with the right’s conflation of it with “coarseness and cruelty,” leaving men without a positive model.
• There is a persistent fear of being labeled a misogynist when discussing men’s issues. Advocates are often mischaracterized as part of the “manosphere” or compared to figures like Andrew Tate, regardless of nuance.
• Advocates feel compelled to repeatedly reassure audiences that they also care about women’s struggles—something rarely reciprocated in reverse.
• This double standard creates a kind of “entry cost” for anyone who wants to speak seriously about male disadvantages.
• Both discuss the “gravitational wells” of political polarization: how critics from the left can push thoughtful commentators toward right-wing platforms (e.g., Jordan Peterson, Daily Wire) simply because they’re the only ones willing to engage with controversial issues.
• Reeves mentions Melissa Kearney (author of The Two-Parent Privilege) and Carol Hooven as examples of left-leaning thinkers ostracized for raising uncomfortable truths.
• This leads to criticism capture: when fear of negative perception distorts messaging, or worse, when advocates lean into caricatures because that’s the only feedback they get.
• Reeves hints at addressing issues like fatherhood and family courts in the future but warns that these areas are more emotionally volatile and often associated with more radical activism.
• His strategy is to “lower the temperature” first before tackling hotter topics. Success will be measured in how mainstream and nonpartisan these issues can become.

Of Boys and Men _ Why the Modern Male Is S - Reeves, Richard copy, p.109 (file not included in this release)

First, motivation: “The women are so driven. They know they have to provide for their family.” Second, independence: “They [the women] don’t really need a relationship, they can do it on their own.” Third, persistence: “When stuff gets hard, the guys tend to run away, the girls don’t.” Fourth, planning: “Women tend to live in the future, men tend to live in the present.” Put these together—motivation, independence, persistence, and planning—and it is no wonder

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Men appear to motivate each other to stay put, rather than hit the road.

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It is one thing to point out that there are aspects of masculinity that in an immature or extreme expression can be deeply harmful, quite another to suggest that a naturally occurring trait in boys and men is intrinsically bad. Indiscriminately slapping the label of “toxic masculinity” onto this kind of behavior is a mistake. Rather than drawing boys into a dialogue about what lessons can be learned, it is much more likely to send them to the online manosphere where they will be reassured that they did nothing wrong, and that liberals are out to get them. Adolescent girls are after all capable of similar kinds of bullying and disrespect, often toward other girls, but it is not instantly cast as “toxic femininity.”

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first of four major failings of the political Left on issues related to boys and men, which is a tendency to pathologize naturally occurring aspects of masculine identity, usually under the banner of toxic masculinity. The second progressive flaw is individualism; male problems are seen as the result of individual failings of one kind or another, rather than of structural challenges. Third is an unwillingness to acknowledge any biological basis for sex differences. Fourth is a fixed conviction that gender inequality can only run one way, that is, to the disadvantage of women

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If men are depressed, it is because they won’t express their feelings. If they get sick, it is because they won’t go to the doctor. If they fail at school, it is because they lack commitment. If they die early, it is because they drink and smoke too much and eat the wrong things. For those on the political Left, then, victim-blaming is permitted when it comes to men.

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The pandemic illustrated this individualistic tendency well. Men are considerably more vulnerable to COVID-19. Globally, men were around 50% more likely than women to die after contracting the virus.28 In the U.S., about 85,000 more men than women had died from COVID by the end of 2021. For every 100 deaths among women aged 45–64, there were 184 male deaths.29 The result was to cut 2 years off the average predicted life spans for American men, the largest drop since World War II, compared to a decline of 1 year for women.

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The higher male death rate also received almost no attention from health institutions or media. When it was acknowledged, the main explanations provided were that men were either more vulnerable because of preexisting conditions related to “lifestyle” factors, such as smoking or alcohol, or to a lack of responsibility with regard to safety measures, for example, mask wearing.33 In short, if men were dying, it was their own fault. But this was not true. The gap in mortality is not explained by sex differences in rates of infection, or in preexisting conditions.34 The difference is biological.

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The sex differences in Covid mortality make it clear that we need more of what feminist health care advocates have been urging for decades: more gender-specific medicine, including clinical trials that break down the results and side effects by gender. “over the past two decades, we’ve radically revised how we conduct medical research and take care of our female patients,” writes Marianne J. Legato. “I now believe that … it’s time to focus on the unique problems of men just the way we have learned to do with women.” A good first step would be to establish an office of Men’s Health in the Department of Health and Human Services, to mirror the excellent one that already exists for women, and with equivalent funding of $35 million.36 The Affordable Care Act should also be expanded to provide men with the same coverage that allows women to get a free annual health checkup

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In October 2021, the Council published a National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality, the first in U.S. history.46 The strategy is entirely asymmetric. No gender inequalities related to boys or men are addressed. The strategy is entirely asymmetric. No gender inequalities related to boys or men are addressed.

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My colleague Fariha Haque and I have recalculated the WEF rankings, taking into account gender inequalities in both directions.54 We also removed one of the fourteen variables, a subjective survey of the pay gap of dubious quality, and weighted all the domains equally (WEF gives more weight to variables with the widest gaps). Our two-way approach pushed the U.S. score up to 0.84 and Iceland’s up to 0.97. As our paper shows, it also changed the country rankings, in some cases quite significantly.

The Right-Wing

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There are three big weaknesses in their approach. First, many conservatives fuel male grievances for political gain, which simply creates more anger and discontent. Second, they overweight the importance of biological sex differences for gender roles (a mirror image of the progressive tendency to dismiss them altogether). Third, they see the solution to men’s problems as lying in the past rather than the future, in the form of a restoration of traditional economic relations between male providers and female carers. Rather than helping men adapt to the new world, conservatives beguile them with promises of the old. This may provide some temporary psychological relief. But we don’t need painkillers. We need a cure.

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While progressives make the mistake of denying any biological basis for sex differences, conservatives like Peterson—and he is quite representative in this regard—make the opposite error of explaining away current gender inequalities with an appeal to nature. They end up justifying disparities that are much too wide to be attributed to natural causes.

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The more fervently the Left denies any innate sex differences, the more strongly many on the Right feel the need to insist on their importance, and vice versa. The room for nuance becomes smaller.

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In his 1992 book, Men and Marriage (an update of his 1973 book Sexual Suicide), conservative intellectual George Gilder argued that feminism would render men redundant. Once women were able to be “both provider and procreator,” he warned, the need for marriage to a man would decline, leaving them as either “outlaws” or “exiles.”

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Gilder saw the fragility of the male role. “Unlike a woman, a man has no civilized role or agenda inscribed in his body,” he wrote. “The man’s role in the family is thus reversible; the woman’s is unimpeachable and continues even if the man departs… . A man without a woman has a deep inner sense of dispensability.”

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Daniel Schwammenthal, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Transatlantic Institute, says, “The iron rule of politics is that if there are real problems in society and responsible parties don’t deal with them, the irresponsible parties will jump on them.”44

Why Advocating for Men Is Unpopular

• The subject is heavily coded as conservative, creating barriers for liberal or centrist thinkers to enter the space.
• There’s a vicious cycle: if only reactionaries talk about men, moderates stay away; then only reactionaries are left, reinforcing the stereotype.
• Reeves aims to break this cycle through strategic tone, topic selection, and credibility-building.

American Institute for Boys and Men

• Reeves launched the American Institute for Boys and Men to institutionalize research and policy proposals.
• The Institute began with areas that are:
  • Data-rich (education, mental health)
  • Hard to dispute morally (e.g., male suicide)
  • Less politically charged than, say, family courts
• Reeves is careful about optics: initial coverage, advisory board members (like Scott Galloway, Jonathan Haidt), and focus areas are curated to avoid right-wing pigeonholing.

Double Standard, Women Problems are Societies Problem and Men Need to Figure it Out Themselves

Note

“Publicly trying to work out why men are struggling is largely a thankless task. This is a zero-sum view of empathy. There is an assumption that any attention paid toward men takes it away from women or some other minority group who is more deserving.

After all, haven’t men had it good for long enough? Maybe they should just suck it up for a while. But empathy doesn’t work this way. It’s not a limited resource.

Recognizing the plights of men does not ignore the plights of women. And ultimately, women end up suffering anyway—as it’s this increasing cohort of apathetic, checked-out, and resentful men who contribute to the exact lack of eligible partners that women say they’re struggling with.

Women posting ‘boohoo, poor patriarchy, sad,’ whilst also complaining ‘where are all the good men at?’ is mating logic seppuku.

If one sex loses, both sexes lose.

A common question is, ‘Why don’t men just do better?’ Surely they can try harder in school, employment, and health. Chop chop, men! Hurry up and stop being so useless!

Well, no other group is told, when they suffer poor outcomes in the real world, that they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We don’t tell any other group to simply ‘talk about their problems.’ Instead, we spend billions in taxpayer money and private charity to set up committees, departments, campaigns, and funds to solve the problem.

In simple terms:

• If a woman has a problem, we ask: What can we do to fix society?
• If a man has a problem, we ask: What can men do to fix themselves?

It’s a blatant double standard.

People unwilling to admit to any structural disadvantages faced by men are standing in the way of solving the problems that are hurting men, and also the potential wives they should be viable for.

The problems are not just in men’s heads. They’re out there in society.

We should not gaslight men into thinking they can solve these problems by being ‘less masculine.’

If the patriarchy is so powerful, why aren’t men flourishing more?

As Christine Emba says: many young men feel their difficulties are dismissed out of hand as ‘whining from a patriarchy’ they don’t feel part of. Just because you’re in the majority doesn’t mean you don’t need support.

Modern men are being made to pay for the sins and advantages their fathers and grandfathers enjoyed.”​ -Chris Williamson