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Young men of the MAGA movement (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The days when most young voters, whether male or female, would reliably vote Democrat are over. Among the axiomatic election patterns smashed by Donald Trump, young men have swung to the Republicans by nearly 30%.
Cue the scorn. The Left-leaning press has derided the shift as merely the rise of “toxic masculinity” and the hatred of women’s rights. The New York Times described something even more sinister, calling it creeping “hegemonic masculinity”.
This reflexive contempt may unintentionally provide an explanation for the reversal. Many young men believe they live in a liberal-leaning society that actively despises them, treating them with disdain rather than empathy as their struggles have mounted.
Imagine an 18-year-old voter filling out his ballot for the first time. Looking back over his childhood and adolescence, this young man would feel his cohort are far from oppressors. Instead, they are drowning in problems.
He would have reached adolescence as the #MeToo movement took hold globally. The legitimate castigation of high-profile sexual abusers would rapidly devolve into widespread call-out culture, in which boys and young men were suspected of perpetuating the patriarchy and rape culture. The ordinary clumsiness of youthful love and teenage romantic inquiry was transformed, overnight, into behaviours that were liable for disciplinary action from school administrators.
The start of high school coincided with liberal bureaucrats locking schools down during the pandemic. Left with no other choices, the youth languished at home with online classes and virtual socialising that amounted to little more than doom scrolling. Last year, a study found that two-thirds of young men believed “no one really knows me” and one in three young men had spent no time with anyone outside their household in the prior week. Surveys show that the number of young men who say they lack a single close friend has soared fivefold since 1990.
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SubscribeWho knew that constantly trashing men would push them away.
Generally a good article but it fell into a nasty habit which belied the soberness of the rest of the article with this sentance: “The Trump campaign carefully cultivated the resentment brewing in this generation.”. Perhaps this could have been rephrased to “empathised with the resentment…”. The resentment (quiet as it had been) was obviously growing despite leftist claims that young men agreed with feminism, LGBT++++ rights, equity rather than equality etc. When even women are rejecting “the agenda” it should make lefties reconsider their positions.
Still, mustn’t let one phrase spoil an otherwise thoughtful piece. More please Unherd.
Agreed, interestingly I picked up on the same phrase, which gave away that Trumps campaign wasn’t legitimate, which wasn’t what the article was otherwise about.
Unherd have taken this article off the main page for the past few hours. Might be a mistake on their part but there is an article from earlier in the week in its place.
If they ever organise, 18 year old men with nothing to lose who have been told by society they are toxic and unnecessary are a civilisation destroying force. Women beware if the anger and resentment of disenfranchised young men is ever unleashed.
Fortunately, I don’t think this lonely, over-medicated, feminised, porn/video game addicted lot could galvinise or gather in great enough numbers to “unleash” on anything beyond their parents’ front yard.
This could be because this article is one of a number that is trolling me and my shadow banned Substack. They often lower their standards to get at me, which is embarrassing and disappointing.
I wrote an article about how feminism has reacted since 2016, basically not by reassessing feminism and policy, but by focusing on personality and identity, by making Trump’s personality the symbol of a collective personality, a collective diagnosed with toxic masculinity. I ended it by saying they have demonized half the demos.
So this article has inverted my argument and made the men sound pathetic. The resentment line targets me as a good Nietzschean, because I was once a Nietzsche scholar (the lefty kind).
I always use their trolling to plug my Substack, so here it is:
The Figure of Feminism Since 2016 – interpocula
Or check out my about page to find out why so many people do not want my story to spread:
About – interpocula
Why have the like tallies been changed from all these posts, including this one above, that now has no likes whatsoever?
That sort of thing seems to happen randomly. I’ve liked something, gone away and come back, and now it has no likes — but I get the little red flag if I try to like it.
Lee Fang has always been open about his political leanings, but still manages to be as objective as possible. Very happy to see his contributions to UnHerd.
“How to champion the interests of women without seeing identity as a zero sum game in which lifting one group up must come at the expense of the other?”
Given there are two sexes its pretty much axiomatic that advancing the interests of one must put the other at a disadvantage. Thats the problem. You can’t make quotas for women (whether in employment or education or anything) without meaning that some men somewhere will then lose out on opportunities they were equally qualified for but didn’t get because of their sex. Once you enter the ‘advancing the interests of X’ game, you are are de facto in the ‘disadvantaging Y’ game as well.
Which is why the game should be ‘Everyone competes on their own personal merit, not what they have between their legs’.
The bigger problem is that they are disadvantaging a group Y who we still rely upon to do all the difficult non office jobs that X won’t touch, but are critical for the economy and for society to function – construction, driving trucks, delivery, waste, energy etc etc.
For instance, in the military, all you have after decades of “progressive” and “feminism” is a) a number of ships being sunk in peacetime across various Western navies thanks to “diversity” and b) as UK data shows, increasing shortfall in military recruitment as it turns out working class white lads don’t feel like dying for a society that despises them.
The framing of the issue is wrong. It is not men voting Republican that is the problem it is women voting Democrat
Women who don’t care about illegal immigrants, economy, free speech, the warmongering by the “establishment”….
But they love virtue signalling
I don’t think rethinking is in the Democrats’ genes any more than it is in European socialists’. Rather doubling down on failed policies has been the invariable response to electoral failure. This stems from their permanent sense that they are the virtuous ones so that whatever they do has virtue. They try to cultivate guilt in those who would naturally disagree with them but eventually that breeds more and more resentment. The West is turning away slowly from ‘woke’ generally but is it going to happen fast enough for it to save itself? Probably not.
The voting booth or mail in ballot was one place young men could express their views, have them heard and not have to worry about being pulled aside by their (typically woman run) HR department for saying the wrong thing (they often did not even know it was wrong).
Mr Fang missed the fashionable practice of drugging boy behavior into submission by diagnosing it as hyperactivity. I suspect that for each one drugged, many others got the clear message that their normal inclinations were inferior and bad.
The young men and boys need men older than them to be involved in their lives and to know them and care about them and hold them accountable to higher standards than what is typical at school and elsewhere. So guys please step up to the plate, we need you!
Good article, whatever the resident imbecile says.
Simple, view them as individuals and allow them to make their decisions. And each decision will allow them to make better for the future. Good and bad.
Great article Lee. I only have to look at the young men sprawled around the streets of lower Manhattan to see that something has gone terribly wrong.
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It’s also important for women to not parrot men hating narrative.
It takes two sides to make a relationship.
The women who “love men” seem to be awfully nonchalant about male suicide and homeless rates, anti male quotas in jobs, etc. And their burning desire for equality seems to vanish where men are discriminated against – family courts, military drafts, legal disparities in domestic violence, universities.
“If you are a man who believes women dont love men in general and you arent loved by at least one woman, the work is on you to figure out why.”
It is amusing how women have no agency or accountability when it’s their own lives, but vociferously demand it if men.
From the pov of a young man today, with the insanely biased legal and divorce system and the general craziness of so many women, I suspect they are just grateful if they aren’t being “loved by at least one woman”….
No, women love men as long as they don’t vote for Trump. Unfortunately, most institutions in the U.S. have been feminized with the Woke Mind Virus. Even male educators, media personalities, and politicians are feminine (by heterosexual male standards). Not only do they lack empathy for young men, they actively disdain them.
Sure, some young men are suffering from mental health issues as a result. The majority have turned Conservative, voted for Trump, and are having the time of their lives. They have their pick of the minority of young women who have escaped the echo chamber. Tinder makes that efficient.
The remaining cat ladies today are screaming and crying in their social media posts, even more pathetic than guys locked in their parents’ basement playing video games. Early indications are that they’re doubling down on the insanity.
If happiness is any indicator, I’d say men are the winners in this day and age. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!
…and don’t forget that there are some mothers and sisters amongst these women. I wonder what the conversations between them and their sons/brothers are like? Both sides have to engage, and for “free speech” it isn’t necessary only to have a platform – you have to speak directly to others, and listen to their reply. And in formal, debating terms, you would be judged by the audience who would then expres how/if they had been persuaded by your arguments.
Women might stop trying to have everything every way and only on their terms
This article is almost as embarrassingly stupid as the morons who think a fat, orange clown is somehow a symbol of masculinity.
I have no sympathy for these entitled brats.
Hey Champagne – we meet again! Still not found that real hobby? Don’t worry. It’ll turn up sometime. I’m leaving Unherd in a couple of weeks because my subscription is ending and I’ll gift you with a free tip, in parting; based on your summer prediction that Harris would win in a landslide – don’t take up betting. Farewell and good luck.
Thanks for reminding us how dangerous you are to us.