MAGA influencers dominate online spaces where young men gather by providing someone to blame for their problems, while Democratic leaders rarely show up.
As a 65 year old woman, I am so willing to help young men find good, moral, protective outlets for their burgeoning masculinity as they mature. I worked out with men in many gyms from my college days through to my 40s. I understand it and feel many women have overdone the "toxic masculinity" moniker in inappropriate situations. It's a shame.
This is a serious issue and I have no solutions to offer.
In 1945, at the age of 14, my dad hitchhiked from Idaho to Oregon to assist his mother with the purchase of a piece of property. My father-in-law was riding the rails at the age of 13 because there wasn’t enough food in his home; during the Great Depression, he worked for the CCC. My dad enlisted in 1952. He was 82nd Airborne during the Korean Conflict. My father-in-law enlisted in 1942. He survived the Bataan Death March and 42 months as POW. My husband had a low draft number so he enlisted in the Air Force in 1972. These are the men I have known.
My son, age 48, is a Joe Rogan fan. No bueno. His son is seventeen. I’m very worried about my grandson. He’s a sweet boy with crappy parents. I gave him a copy of Marcus Aurelius for his birthday.
Having never been a man, I’ve never tried to blame my failures on anyone but myself. I too was told not to cry. I joke that I was in wit-less protection for decades due to the scope and number of secrets I was required to keep. My dad committed suicide when I was 13 after my mother, a malignant narcissist, had an affair.
I am now an old woman who pulled herself out of the pit of despair. I believe there’s hope for young men, but they must start with self reflection, a thing that’s not a thing in the social media they’re consuming. Please tell them to look out for ROUS 🐀
Another thoughtful post! Instead of spending millions of dollars commissioning a study on how to reach “young American men”, the Democratic Party leadership should talk to you instead! They should, but they won’t. Another thing I wish the Democratic Party is saying instead of blaming men in general for the very real issues women are facing — put the blame squarely on where it belongs— Republican politicians! They’re the ones actually taking away our rights to bodily autonomy, voting down domestic violence legislations and defunding the healthcare that women need. The truth is, we need both men and women to help us protect these rights. But we sure as shit don’t need Republican politicians! But the Dem leadership won’t talk that way because they’re worried about a blowback score or some rich donors won’t like it.
Evan, you had me throughout, save for two things that just kept poking out at me like weeds in an otherwise appealing garden bed. So for what it's worth they were: Andrew Tate as some sort of role model? What, so to be a man you must abuse and enslave females? And, sort of a watered down likewise, Fraternity houses? I mean, they haze boys with sometimes deadly results, foster drinking to excess, have been host to 'frat parties' in which their female peers were drugged, raped and occasionally more. In what way (seriously) would these experiences prepare them for mature manhood? I'd rather see them working on a cattle drive or in a community center or doing something like Americorps. Men need to be at the center of communities and families, so they don't end up as sick dominators and loners.
I appreciate the thoughtful response and I completely agree with your concerns about Andrew Tate and the darker sides of frat culture. To be clear, I wasn’t endorsing either. I was pointing out how desperate the search for purpose and identity has become for many young men, and how easily that vacuum gets filled with toxic figures or environments when no better alternatives are offered.
If anything, my argument is that we need more healthy and grounded spaces for young men, like AmeriCorps, civic groups, or service roles, that offer belonging, growth, and responsibility without cruelty or misogyny.
When we abandon that space, others take it. And what they offer is far worse.
We are in agreement, then. I have been interested in this question from before it started to be discussed in the media. As a woman and the mother of a daughter I could not help being concerned that, during this time of rapid social change nothing appeared on the horizon to help young men redefine themselves in a positive way during the period/process of change. Which has made misogyny soar. I also studied anthropology and Western Civ as an undergraduate and was from that time forward impressed by how young men/older boys in particular have in most cultures been mentored by older men, for good or for ill. Too bad we have such an abundance of 'ill' right now. Keep up the good work bringing this issue to the fore. It's really not only about politics, but about ways we are redefining ourselves, but of course those who favor chaos are exploiting our challenges. I wish you, and all men, one of whom I married and love dearly, one of whom was my dad, who I also loved dearly, and one of whom was my brother who lost his moorings in war (and I still loved, although it was a long, hard road). Peace.
I enjoyed your exchange, Evan and George. Many men I know and have observed do best if they are part of a team with strong leadership. The civil rights and womens movements did a disservice to young white men, and now many families want female instead of male children because they do better in school which equates to better economic success. The Dems made a huge mistake catering to wokeness.
The loss of trade schools and unions has also done young men a disservice. Most men I know need to feel like good providers for their families, and those opportunities are waning badly. Chris Murphy, the senator from CT, has the right idea: focus on the economy and what MAGA is doing to working people and young graduates. Dems must come up with clear economic solutions. Plainly, clearly, loudly, repeatedly.
Oh for chrissakes, another lame, shallow hot take on 'wokeness.' Union membership and organizing rights surged under President Biden, the first president to actually walk a picket line. Kamala Harris aimed her entire campaign toward the economic needs of working class and middle class families, including addressing the pressing issue of affordable housing. Anyone who doesn't know that wasn't listening.
Yes, I know. I was on board with Kamala. But their messaging sucked. Most people do not have the attention span or focus for anything but simple repetition at volume. Bernie gets attention. I wish Hillary hadn't shut him out of the 2016 race. I feel certain he would have beaten Rump.
Bernie couldn't beat Hillary Clinton in the primary; it's doubtful he would have beaten Trump. It's amazing to me to hear people claiming that Harris's message 'sucked' when Trump had no message - other than mass deportation and phony claims about how he was going to fix the economy without ever saying how.
The DNC, not the Clinton campaign, controlled access to voting rolls, and his campaign was given access to them - AFTER his campaign illegally hacked the Clinton campaign's voter data base. Facts, not fantasy.
Appreciate the enthusiasm, but let’s not confuse talking about problems with effectively addressing them. Yes, Biden walked a picket line — a historic moment. And yes, Kamala mentioned housing and working-class issues. But where’s the follow-through? Where was the clear plan, the urgency, the fire?
If listing priorities was enough, the DNC would be crushing it. But young voters — especially working-class men — are asking a different question: “What have you done for us lately, and why should we trust you to do more?”
Messaging isn’t implementation. And speeches aren’t solutions.
Didn't realize I was being enthusiastic. I'll be sure to curb that.
The follow-through? President Biden appointed workers' rights advocates to the NLRB and increased its funding. He signed executive orders encouraging unionization and workers' rights, including supporting unionization at Starbucks and Amazon. He required federal construction contracts to include labor agreements, and he repealed the Trump admin's actions that prevented federal employees from organizing. I could go on, but you're as capable of looking that up as I am. If you choose to.
Kamala Harris never got the chance to follow through on her working and middle-class agenda because she lost the election.
Working class voters have a long history of voting against their own economic interests, so today's young working class men doing the same are nothing new. However, young men of this era would benefit from listening to men of previous eras, like JKF: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." They'd also benefit from asking themselves why they prefer to play the victim; why are they waiting to be rescued as though it's someone else's job to do that? FTR, there are plenty of young men who aren't waiting; they're making their own luck. From Maxwell Frost to David Hogg to 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, who just last night won the primary to become NYC's next mayor, for example. It's a choice. Sit there and complain about what you're not being handed, or get off your ass and get to work. I guarantee that the young men who making their own luck aren't looking to losers from MAGA world to define manhood for them.
What Did I Do For MY Democracy? The Answer Rests With YOU
We as citizens have an obligation to speak out against the federal government
Expect and insist free and fair elections
DO NOT become cynical about elections
Phone calls matter to legislators
Yard signs matter
Everybody has a townsquare where we can make our voices heard So Engage Don’t shy away from difficult conversations Let them know how you feel about people disappearing off the streets is not OK Taking away medical care from our unfortunate citizens for tax breaks for the uberwealthy
God, what tripe. You self-sabotaged your excellent rundown of "what's wrong with young men" when you then say that the Dems can win them over with empathy.
The young human male (YHM) mind is primitive. Its rank-ordered priorities are: getting laid, dominating something, establishing and maintaining a status within a YHM hierarchy, and "getting fucked up" (escape into something chemical, usually). Violence and bellowing can be proxies for any of these priorities.
Ok, so they got that way because of daddy issues? Daddy was mean and beat them up, giving them 'lessons' that they now apply to the world? So far, so good. You fail when you arrogate to yourself the judgement that empathy and 'listening' can "heal" those "wounds".
Seriously? Haven't young women been deluded since dirt was new that they would be able to "fix" a man? And how does that work out for them? All you've got here is old, exhausted female-mind prognosis for what's wrong with men and how to fix them. But maybe they don't WANT to be fixed.
Dem feminists have been adamant that they DO NOT WANT to "win over" young men. That's because they know that the only path to doing that would be to give them the things from the hierarchy above, and they're not willing to do that. The GOP is.
Thanks for the spirited response — always refreshing to hear from someone who’s cracked the code of the “young human male” by way of Reddit anthropology and 1950s barstool psychology.
It’s clear you’ve put a lot of thought into your hierarchy of needs (getting laid, dominating, escaping through substances — inspiring stuff), and I genuinely wish you the best on your journey through whatever podcast pipeline convinced you that empathy is a weakness and that women’s opinions are “exhausted female-mind prognoses.”
But just a thought: if the GOP’s secret weapon is giving young men the chance to scream and punch things, maybe the bar should be a little higher. Some of us believe they deserve more than that. Even if they’ve been failed, even if they’re angry.
That’s not “fixing” anyone. It’s respecting them enough to try something better.
Your rejoinder is refreshing. Usually what I hear back are either mere dittos or sputtering rage.
I'm afraid I was not sufficiently clear in the few words I chose to use. I don't think that "empathy is a weakness". Empathy is a skill and an approach, albeit one that is useless in the face of... this. And what is it, really, Sociobiology? Is that still a thing? It's hard to tell from my old cracked-leather 1950's barstool.
Also, women can, and do, have opinions about a lot of things. I'm not interested in locking horns with that particular beast, so I'm not. What I'm doing is channeling the thoughts I get from female informants who are now in their 50s and 60s who, in their words, have "learned their lessons" about changing men. They, themselves, have stated they feel 'exhausted' by their life-long male-improvement efforts which lead to inadequate results (in their own view).
I admit that my dime store Maslow hierarchy is a bit rough around the edges, but I think it largely captures the reality of the young male experience. There are exceptions, of course, but that just proves the rule.
By "setting the bar higher" you are, in fact, implying a change to be made on the part of the young men. Whereupon the response 99% of the time will be 'fuck you, Pops'. Dressing things up in euphemisms is a liberal practice that leads to nothingness... except for possible short-lived feelings of righteousness.
The "more than that" you referenced that young men "deserve" leaves me hanging a bit; I'm not clear what it means so I'm not sure how to respond to it. Russ Douthat said some pretty weird shit about giving young men something 'more', squicking everyone out in the process. I'm certain that's not what you're referring to, though, so forget I mentioned it.
I appreciate your comprehensive review of why young men are attracted to republicans and their feed the billionaire, stave the kid, WWF platform and legislative style. But while dems need to do a better job of communicating to young men, they need to do a better job of communicating in general.
But on the other hand, I see snowflakes everywhere. Racists are attracted to the KKK. People go where they are wanted and feel their mindset is reinforced. Young men go to trump because they want to be scammers, cons, criminals, sexual abusers, and billionaires? Maybe being lied into more wars is exciting? It's the video game generation.
That's why there are so many cosplay clowns in the trump admin. A drunken, weekend host at fox leads DoD. A Barbie like creation who kills their own dog leads Homeland. An attractive, but dim, dolt, Russian tool heads another important org. A member of WWF heads the Education Sept! She thinks AI is A1! trump brags about loving the poorly educated! It's real life video gaming. Masked ICE Gestapo snatch people off the streets carrying assault weapons looks cool and tough! To hell with rules and laws! Hive me one of those guns so Y can terrorize those innocent people! Wow!
The young male mind might be attracted to these poorly prepared, incompetent cosplay characters, (mine wasn't) but that isn't reality. I wonder how many of these young men are holding worthless trump twitcoins instead of a diploma or a tool set looking for riches to fall from their orange savior's hands? Forget the scams, dude, did you see him in front of those new big, huge flagpoles, and holds a bible upside-down while threatening peaceful prot00estors! Now that's cool! And I wanted to be at j/6 attacking law enforcement, but my mom said I had to mow the lawn.
I'm not sure which reference is more apt for this situation: I'm rereading 1984, and I see so much of the Ignorance is Strength performance by trump and maybe that is the attraction. But I also hear Dean Wormer echoing in my head as he addresses a failing student in the college comedy Animal House Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son'.
Maybe the drug addled, chainsaw wielding fool, musk, is what is now considered masculine. Or is it George Santos, Gym Jordan, or Matt Schlap? The right wing, nutjob characters like the criminal bannon, the disgraces carlson, the moronic rogan, etc. are bloviating charlatans that have no need for anything but more suckers to feed their coffers. While young men need direction, the direction they are choosing is not good for them now or in the future.
Could it be that dems could push the message that they were the ones who pushed healthcare reform so these young men could live at home and still be covered by mom's health ins, policy? Maybe Kamala Harris should have worn an expensive Rolex while standing in front of a concentration camp yelling 'I captured these people and here they will rot!' Maybe Tim Walz should have done tequila shots and played Grand Theft Auto instead of using his extensive coaching and civil service career as an example to young men. A cage match should determine primary winners.
Yes, something needs to be done to attract meandering young men back to a party that works for the benefit of most instead of a few, but if policies don't matter a cosplay Fast and Furious are more attractive, then this isn't a democratic party issue, but a societal issue. Thanks for your thoughful analysis. Mine was a more guttural reaction.
Appreciate the passion — somewhere in that ten-car pileup of metaphors is a decent point trying to get out. I think we actually agree on the stakes: the right is offering spectacle, aggression, and false empowerment, while Democrats haven’t done enough to offer young men anything compelling in return.
Where we part ways is that I don’t think the solution is more snark, cosplay insults, or five-paragraph free association monologues. I think it’s meeting people where they are — even if that place is messy, angry, and misdirected — and giving them a reason to believe there’s a future worth fighting for.
You called your response “guttural.” That’s fair. But I’m aiming for something strategic.
Ten-car pile up of metaphors and paragraphs of free association. I like it. My version of trumpspeak. I just forgot to add Hannibal Lecter references.
You have some worthwhile ideas of how to reach the maga youth. I hope inroads are made in the maga youth movement. I don't have the answers. But I do have a reference point of how difficult the problem will be to solve. I mentioned to a male, maga relative that someone is twice as likely to be murdered in FL than NY - as recent data indicates - and the response was a side eye, 'I don't believe it.' When people don't believe the facts, the data, the science, or the the truth, and instead find comfort in the deception that comforts their inner prejudices, how do you reach them? Another maga relative thinks Gavin Newsom should be arrested and worse for what he is doing to CA. She lives in the Northeast and gets all her info from fox news and her conspiratorial friends. How do you reach someone like that?
More free association here, but aybe tough love is the answer. As their decisions in life and the voting booth make their lives more miserable, maybe alight will go off that shows them the way forward is not with a male dominated party of liars, cranks, crooks, creeps, cowards, cretins and conspiracy, cosplay clowns.
Since I am a lazier writer than you are, I ask AI what advantages do white men have compared to white women. Quite a few advantages it seems:
1. Economic Advantages
Higher earnings: On average, white men earn more than white women for similar work. This gender wage gap persists even when controlling for education, experience, and job type.
Leadership representation: White men are overrepresented in high-paying leadership roles (e.g., CEOs, politicians, board members) compared to white women.
Access to capital: Male entrepreneurs—especially white men—often have greater access to venture capital and business financing than women.
2. Career Advancement
Fewer barriers to promotion: White men face fewer structural and social barriers to climbing the corporate ladder, while white women are more likely to face the "glass ceiling."
Greater credibility: Men are often assumed to be more competent in traditionally male-dominated fields (STEM, finance, etc.), granting them more initial trust or opportunities.
3. Social Perceptions and Expectations
Authority and competence: White men are more likely to be seen as authoritative or competent, whereas women may be judged more harshly or expected to balance likability with assertiveness.
Freedom from gendered scrutiny: Men typically face less scrutiny about their appearance, parenting choices, emotional expression, and work-life balance.
4. Safety and Bodily Autonomy
Lower rates of gender-based violence: White men are statistically less likely to experience sexual harassment, assault, or intimate partner violence.
More bodily autonomy: Women often face greater regulation and public debate over reproductive rights and health decisions.
5. Legal and Institutional Treatment
Bias in legal settings: Men, especially white men, may receive more lenient treatment in some legal systems compared to women or people of color.
Historical legacy: Many institutions (education, law, medicine, government) were designed by and for white men, which still influences access and norms.
That is quite the list of advantages. Maybe dems need to be more misogynistic, patriarchal, and macho. Dems do need to be fighters instead of simply policy wonks.
I apologize for the rambling, but it is a very complex and frustrating subject.
Interesting that you call MPT's post a 'ten-car pileup of metaphors' when he's actually making a great deal of sense. More introspection and less whining about how the world and especially the Democrats 'don't understand' young men would do you some good. FTR, young men under 30, for example, weren't raised by boomers. Their parents are likely Gen Xers. It's also likely that both their moms and their dads have stressful, overloaded schedules, where in the past it was mostly dads who worked outside the home. I don't think the challenges facing young men are vastly different from those facing young women, but young women don't seem to be having an identity crisis. It would be useful to explain why young men are, instead of demanding that a political party solve that problem for them.
Thank you, Jane, for taking the time to read and reply to my comment. The comparison I made between white men and white women seemed the easiest to make in a short space. But I would assume that the data relating to the comparisons between white men, and brown or black men, or LGBTQ is more stark still in favor of white men.
Maybe young men need more male mentors, counselors, and role models as they grow up. But republicans slash school funding for history, so expecting them to add more male models to schools is foolhardy. After all, GOP has reached their goal of dumbing men to the point where they fall for republican slogans and performance antics and ignore dem policies that make their lives better.
There are no easy, or immediate answers. Y recall after the 2024 election results were final, Tim Miller of The Bulwark responding to Nicolle Wallace's question of what just happened and what can be done about it. Tim relied soberly, and without hesitation that people who voted for trump and republicans need to feel the pain of their decision. Without consequences, there is no reflection. That is what I feel at this moment in time, and I think it pertains to young men as well.
If I tell you that you can run across the street without looking, someone might get away with it for a while, but then Wham!, what happened? Why is my arm broken and I am bruised from head to toe? You listened to the wrong people and acted on bad advice. Young men are doing that now. Sometimes lessons are learned the hard way. Right now young men are getting schooled.
Again, you make some very good points. I agree that many folks in MAGA world, including young men, aren't going to snap out of it until the consequences they voted for start hitting home. The prancing caricature of masculinity being amplified by the right has nothing to do with real manhood. It's entertaining, but it's also dangerous. Ever since Trump invaded our politics a decade ago, his message has been 'if you're dissatisfied with your life, it isn't your fault; it's not the result of your own choices or your failures to do something about it; it's [fill in the blank]'s fault. THEY'RE to blame for your circumstances.' Let's face it, a message like that that lets people off the hook for their own life choices is very appealing, and millions ate it up. But Trump is a hollow man, and all his talk was cheap and empty. He hasn't and isn't doing anything to make the lives of his voters any better. He's a charlatan, a fraud. But some people won't believe that until it hits them between the eyes.
What frustrates me about these articles on why Democrats need to solve their 'young men problem' is that nobody ever addresses exactly what it is young men are looking for or feel they're lacking and why. Like this article, the 'problem' is always presented as a series of generalized accusations with little evidence to back them up, followed by a demand: "what are you going to about it?" That's a thin premise to work with, to say the least.
I like your insight into who is to blame for young men flocking to criminals, and creeps: it's [fill in the blank]'s fault. Eventually,, they will have to look in the mirror, pull off the silly red hay and say. what the hell am I doing to myself? Do I want a career, do I want a relationship outside the game room, do I want a family, a future? Until they face the real enemy, themselves, they will never change direction no matter what dems do to male their lives better via policy.
This isn’t about coddling young men or demanding a political party “solve” their problems. It’s about recognizing a growing vacuum — emotional, economic, and cultural — that the right is eagerly filling with rage and identity cosplay. You mentioned that young women don’t seem to be having an identity crisis. That’s worth asking why — maybe because there are more spaces built to empower them, while young men are increasingly told to “suck it up” or get written off as a problem.
I’m not here to defend nihilism or excuse toxicity. I’m asking why the Democratic Party , the one that claims to care about inclusion and the future, isn’t doing more to reach these young men before the worst voices get to them first.
You say we need more introspection. That’s literally what this article was doing. Maybe listening — not lecturing — would do some good.
Not about coddling? Really? Because that's exactly what you just said. 'What have YOU done for ME lately, and why should I believe you.' Name one thing - emotional, economic or cultural - that young men have to overcome that young women don't. NO spaces were built for young women or handed to them. LOTS of women over several generations WORKED for the inclusion of women in hiring, in college admissions, and for securing rights that had previously been denied to them, like home ownership, credit in their own names, etc. That's something today's young men either don't know or don't appreciate. Hell, we're in the year 2025, and we're STILL having 'the first woman' to do this, or hold that office.
Sorry if hearing things you'd prefer not to hear sounds like 'lecturing.'
I hope those who have influence in these areas will learn how to include young men who are searching for something other than what the right has to offer.
As a teen, I remember watching my two younger brothers sit & watch western movies; conflict resolution equaled force of some kind & it was always of interest the physical sort. This was the 1950s; we have not progressed much.
Susie Wiles simply runs focus groups on what low wattage young male voters want then nut job Musk kicks in a couple hundred million. What a great system!
As a 65 year old woman, I am so willing to help young men find good, moral, protective outlets for their burgeoning masculinity as they mature. I worked out with men in many gyms from my college days through to my 40s. I understand it and feel many women have overdone the "toxic masculinity" moniker in inappropriate situations. It's a shame.
This is a serious issue and I have no solutions to offer.
In 1945, at the age of 14, my dad hitchhiked from Idaho to Oregon to assist his mother with the purchase of a piece of property. My father-in-law was riding the rails at the age of 13 because there wasn’t enough food in his home; during the Great Depression, he worked for the CCC. My dad enlisted in 1952. He was 82nd Airborne during the Korean Conflict. My father-in-law enlisted in 1942. He survived the Bataan Death March and 42 months as POW. My husband had a low draft number so he enlisted in the Air Force in 1972. These are the men I have known.
My son, age 48, is a Joe Rogan fan. No bueno. His son is seventeen. I’m very worried about my grandson. He’s a sweet boy with crappy parents. I gave him a copy of Marcus Aurelius for his birthday.
Having never been a man, I’ve never tried to blame my failures on anyone but myself. I too was told not to cry. I joke that I was in wit-less protection for decades due to the scope and number of secrets I was required to keep. My dad committed suicide when I was 13 after my mother, a malignant narcissist, had an affair.
I am now an old woman who pulled herself out of the pit of despair. I believe there’s hope for young men, but they must start with self reflection, a thing that’s not a thing in the social media they’re consuming. Please tell them to look out for ROUS 🐀
Another thoughtful post! Instead of spending millions of dollars commissioning a study on how to reach “young American men”, the Democratic Party leadership should talk to you instead! They should, but they won’t. Another thing I wish the Democratic Party is saying instead of blaming men in general for the very real issues women are facing — put the blame squarely on where it belongs— Republican politicians! They’re the ones actually taking away our rights to bodily autonomy, voting down domestic violence legislations and defunding the healthcare that women need. The truth is, we need both men and women to help us protect these rights. But we sure as shit don’t need Republican politicians! But the Dem leadership won’t talk that way because they’re worried about a blowback score or some rich donors won’t like it.
Evan, you had me throughout, save for two things that just kept poking out at me like weeds in an otherwise appealing garden bed. So for what it's worth they were: Andrew Tate as some sort of role model? What, so to be a man you must abuse and enslave females? And, sort of a watered down likewise, Fraternity houses? I mean, they haze boys with sometimes deadly results, foster drinking to excess, have been host to 'frat parties' in which their female peers were drugged, raped and occasionally more. In what way (seriously) would these experiences prepare them for mature manhood? I'd rather see them working on a cattle drive or in a community center or doing something like Americorps. Men need to be at the center of communities and families, so they don't end up as sick dominators and loners.
Hi Leigh,
I appreciate the thoughtful response and I completely agree with your concerns about Andrew Tate and the darker sides of frat culture. To be clear, I wasn’t endorsing either. I was pointing out how desperate the search for purpose and identity has become for many young men, and how easily that vacuum gets filled with toxic figures or environments when no better alternatives are offered.
If anything, my argument is that we need more healthy and grounded spaces for young men, like AmeriCorps, civic groups, or service roles, that offer belonging, growth, and responsibility without cruelty or misogyny.
When we abandon that space, others take it. And what they offer is far worse.
We are in agreement, then. I have been interested in this question from before it started to be discussed in the media. As a woman and the mother of a daughter I could not help being concerned that, during this time of rapid social change nothing appeared on the horizon to help young men redefine themselves in a positive way during the period/process of change. Which has made misogyny soar. I also studied anthropology and Western Civ as an undergraduate and was from that time forward impressed by how young men/older boys in particular have in most cultures been mentored by older men, for good or for ill. Too bad we have such an abundance of 'ill' right now. Keep up the good work bringing this issue to the fore. It's really not only about politics, but about ways we are redefining ourselves, but of course those who favor chaos are exploiting our challenges. I wish you, and all men, one of whom I married and love dearly, one of whom was my dad, who I also loved dearly, and one of whom was my brother who lost his moorings in war (and I still loved, although it was a long, hard road). Peace.
https://postcardstovoters.org/
I enjoyed your exchange, Evan and George. Many men I know and have observed do best if they are part of a team with strong leadership. The civil rights and womens movements did a disservice to young white men, and now many families want female instead of male children because they do better in school which equates to better economic success. The Dems made a huge mistake catering to wokeness.
The loss of trade schools and unions has also done young men a disservice. Most men I know need to feel like good providers for their families, and those opportunities are waning badly. Chris Murphy, the senator from CT, has the right idea: focus on the economy and what MAGA is doing to working people and young graduates. Dems must come up with clear economic solutions. Plainly, clearly, loudly, repeatedly.
There, that's my empathy.
Oh for chrissakes, another lame, shallow hot take on 'wokeness.' Union membership and organizing rights surged under President Biden, the first president to actually walk a picket line. Kamala Harris aimed her entire campaign toward the economic needs of working class and middle class families, including addressing the pressing issue of affordable housing. Anyone who doesn't know that wasn't listening.
Yes, I know. I was on board with Kamala. But their messaging sucked. Most people do not have the attention span or focus for anything but simple repetition at volume. Bernie gets attention. I wish Hillary hadn't shut him out of the 2016 race. I feel certain he would have beaten Rump.
Bernie couldn't beat Hillary Clinton in the primary; it's doubtful he would have beaten Trump. It's amazing to me to hear people claiming that Harris's message 'sucked' when Trump had no message - other than mass deportation and phony claims about how he was going to fix the economy without ever saying how.
Messaging, not message.
Hillary wouldn't give Bernie access to Dem voting rolls.
The DNC, not the Clinton campaign, controlled access to voting rolls, and his campaign was given access to them - AFTER his campaign illegally hacked the Clinton campaign's voter data base. Facts, not fantasy.
Hi Jane,
Appreciate the enthusiasm, but let’s not confuse talking about problems with effectively addressing them. Yes, Biden walked a picket line — a historic moment. And yes, Kamala mentioned housing and working-class issues. But where’s the follow-through? Where was the clear plan, the urgency, the fire?
If listing priorities was enough, the DNC would be crushing it. But young voters — especially working-class men — are asking a different question: “What have you done for us lately, and why should we trust you to do more?”
Messaging isn’t implementation. And speeches aren’t solutions.
Didn't realize I was being enthusiastic. I'll be sure to curb that.
The follow-through? President Biden appointed workers' rights advocates to the NLRB and increased its funding. He signed executive orders encouraging unionization and workers' rights, including supporting unionization at Starbucks and Amazon. He required federal construction contracts to include labor agreements, and he repealed the Trump admin's actions that prevented federal employees from organizing. I could go on, but you're as capable of looking that up as I am. If you choose to.
Kamala Harris never got the chance to follow through on her working and middle-class agenda because she lost the election.
Working class voters have a long history of voting against their own economic interests, so today's young working class men doing the same are nothing new. However, young men of this era would benefit from listening to men of previous eras, like JKF: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." They'd also benefit from asking themselves why they prefer to play the victim; why are they waiting to be rescued as though it's someone else's job to do that? FTR, there are plenty of young men who aren't waiting; they're making their own luck. From Maxwell Frost to David Hogg to 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, who just last night won the primary to become NYC's next mayor, for example. It's a choice. Sit there and complain about what you're not being handed, or get off your ass and get to work. I guarantee that the young men who making their own luck aren't looking to losers from MAGA world to define manhood for them.
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God, what tripe. You self-sabotaged your excellent rundown of "what's wrong with young men" when you then say that the Dems can win them over with empathy.
The young human male (YHM) mind is primitive. Its rank-ordered priorities are: getting laid, dominating something, establishing and maintaining a status within a YHM hierarchy, and "getting fucked up" (escape into something chemical, usually). Violence and bellowing can be proxies for any of these priorities.
Ok, so they got that way because of daddy issues? Daddy was mean and beat them up, giving them 'lessons' that they now apply to the world? So far, so good. You fail when you arrogate to yourself the judgement that empathy and 'listening' can "heal" those "wounds".
Seriously? Haven't young women been deluded since dirt was new that they would be able to "fix" a man? And how does that work out for them? All you've got here is old, exhausted female-mind prognosis for what's wrong with men and how to fix them. But maybe they don't WANT to be fixed.
Dem feminists have been adamant that they DO NOT WANT to "win over" young men. That's because they know that the only path to doing that would be to give them the things from the hierarchy above, and they're not willing to do that. The GOP is.
Hi George,
Thanks for the spirited response — always refreshing to hear from someone who’s cracked the code of the “young human male” by way of Reddit anthropology and 1950s barstool psychology.
It’s clear you’ve put a lot of thought into your hierarchy of needs (getting laid, dominating, escaping through substances — inspiring stuff), and I genuinely wish you the best on your journey through whatever podcast pipeline convinced you that empathy is a weakness and that women’s opinions are “exhausted female-mind prognoses.”
But just a thought: if the GOP’s secret weapon is giving young men the chance to scream and punch things, maybe the bar should be a little higher. Some of us believe they deserve more than that. Even if they’ve been failed, even if they’re angry.
That’s not “fixing” anyone. It’s respecting them enough to try something better.
Take care out there.
-Evan
Hello Evan,
Your rejoinder is refreshing. Usually what I hear back are either mere dittos or sputtering rage.
I'm afraid I was not sufficiently clear in the few words I chose to use. I don't think that "empathy is a weakness". Empathy is a skill and an approach, albeit one that is useless in the face of... this. And what is it, really, Sociobiology? Is that still a thing? It's hard to tell from my old cracked-leather 1950's barstool.
Also, women can, and do, have opinions about a lot of things. I'm not interested in locking horns with that particular beast, so I'm not. What I'm doing is channeling the thoughts I get from female informants who are now in their 50s and 60s who, in their words, have "learned their lessons" about changing men. They, themselves, have stated they feel 'exhausted' by their life-long male-improvement efforts which lead to inadequate results (in their own view).
I admit that my dime store Maslow hierarchy is a bit rough around the edges, but I think it largely captures the reality of the young male experience. There are exceptions, of course, but that just proves the rule.
By "setting the bar higher" you are, in fact, implying a change to be made on the part of the young men. Whereupon the response 99% of the time will be 'fuck you, Pops'. Dressing things up in euphemisms is a liberal practice that leads to nothingness... except for possible short-lived feelings of righteousness.
The "more than that" you referenced that young men "deserve" leaves me hanging a bit; I'm not clear what it means so I'm not sure how to respond to it. Russ Douthat said some pretty weird shit about giving young men something 'more', squicking everyone out in the process. I'm certain that's not what you're referring to, though, so forget I mentioned it.
Best Regards,
George
I appreciate your comprehensive review of why young men are attracted to republicans and their feed the billionaire, stave the kid, WWF platform and legislative style. But while dems need to do a better job of communicating to young men, they need to do a better job of communicating in general.
But on the other hand, I see snowflakes everywhere. Racists are attracted to the KKK. People go where they are wanted and feel their mindset is reinforced. Young men go to trump because they want to be scammers, cons, criminals, sexual abusers, and billionaires? Maybe being lied into more wars is exciting? It's the video game generation.
That's why there are so many cosplay clowns in the trump admin. A drunken, weekend host at fox leads DoD. A Barbie like creation who kills their own dog leads Homeland. An attractive, but dim, dolt, Russian tool heads another important org. A member of WWF heads the Education Sept! She thinks AI is A1! trump brags about loving the poorly educated! It's real life video gaming. Masked ICE Gestapo snatch people off the streets carrying assault weapons looks cool and tough! To hell with rules and laws! Hive me one of those guns so Y can terrorize those innocent people! Wow!
The young male mind might be attracted to these poorly prepared, incompetent cosplay characters, (mine wasn't) but that isn't reality. I wonder how many of these young men are holding worthless trump twitcoins instead of a diploma or a tool set looking for riches to fall from their orange savior's hands? Forget the scams, dude, did you see him in front of those new big, huge flagpoles, and holds a bible upside-down while threatening peaceful prot00estors! Now that's cool! And I wanted to be at j/6 attacking law enforcement, but my mom said I had to mow the lawn.
I'm not sure which reference is more apt for this situation: I'm rereading 1984, and I see so much of the Ignorance is Strength performance by trump and maybe that is the attraction. But I also hear Dean Wormer echoing in my head as he addresses a failing student in the college comedy Animal House Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son'.
Maybe the drug addled, chainsaw wielding fool, musk, is what is now considered masculine. Or is it George Santos, Gym Jordan, or Matt Schlap? The right wing, nutjob characters like the criminal bannon, the disgraces carlson, the moronic rogan, etc. are bloviating charlatans that have no need for anything but more suckers to feed their coffers. While young men need direction, the direction they are choosing is not good for them now or in the future.
Could it be that dems could push the message that they were the ones who pushed healthcare reform so these young men could live at home and still be covered by mom's health ins, policy? Maybe Kamala Harris should have worn an expensive Rolex while standing in front of a concentration camp yelling 'I captured these people and here they will rot!' Maybe Tim Walz should have done tequila shots and played Grand Theft Auto instead of using his extensive coaching and civil service career as an example to young men. A cage match should determine primary winners.
Yes, something needs to be done to attract meandering young men back to a party that works for the benefit of most instead of a few, but if policies don't matter a cosplay Fast and Furious are more attractive, then this isn't a democratic party issue, but a societal issue. Thanks for your thoughful analysis. Mine was a more guttural reaction.
Hey MPT,
Appreciate the passion — somewhere in that ten-car pileup of metaphors is a decent point trying to get out. I think we actually agree on the stakes: the right is offering spectacle, aggression, and false empowerment, while Democrats haven’t done enough to offer young men anything compelling in return.
Where we part ways is that I don’t think the solution is more snark, cosplay insults, or five-paragraph free association monologues. I think it’s meeting people where they are — even if that place is messy, angry, and misdirected — and giving them a reason to believe there’s a future worth fighting for.
You called your response “guttural.” That’s fair. But I’m aiming for something strategic.
And strategy requires clarity.
Ten-car pile up of metaphors and paragraphs of free association. I like it. My version of trumpspeak. I just forgot to add Hannibal Lecter references.
You have some worthwhile ideas of how to reach the maga youth. I hope inroads are made in the maga youth movement. I don't have the answers. But I do have a reference point of how difficult the problem will be to solve. I mentioned to a male, maga relative that someone is twice as likely to be murdered in FL than NY - as recent data indicates - and the response was a side eye, 'I don't believe it.' When people don't believe the facts, the data, the science, or the the truth, and instead find comfort in the deception that comforts their inner prejudices, how do you reach them? Another maga relative thinks Gavin Newsom should be arrested and worse for what he is doing to CA. She lives in the Northeast and gets all her info from fox news and her conspiratorial friends. How do you reach someone like that?
More free association here, but aybe tough love is the answer. As their decisions in life and the voting booth make their lives more miserable, maybe alight will go off that shows them the way forward is not with a male dominated party of liars, cranks, crooks, creeps, cowards, cretins and conspiracy, cosplay clowns.
Since I am a lazier writer than you are, I ask AI what advantages do white men have compared to white women. Quite a few advantages it seems:
1. Economic Advantages
Higher earnings: On average, white men earn more than white women for similar work. This gender wage gap persists even when controlling for education, experience, and job type.
Leadership representation: White men are overrepresented in high-paying leadership roles (e.g., CEOs, politicians, board members) compared to white women.
Access to capital: Male entrepreneurs—especially white men—often have greater access to venture capital and business financing than women.
2. Career Advancement
Fewer barriers to promotion: White men face fewer structural and social barriers to climbing the corporate ladder, while white women are more likely to face the "glass ceiling."
Greater credibility: Men are often assumed to be more competent in traditionally male-dominated fields (STEM, finance, etc.), granting them more initial trust or opportunities.
3. Social Perceptions and Expectations
Authority and competence: White men are more likely to be seen as authoritative or competent, whereas women may be judged more harshly or expected to balance likability with assertiveness.
Freedom from gendered scrutiny: Men typically face less scrutiny about their appearance, parenting choices, emotional expression, and work-life balance.
4. Safety and Bodily Autonomy
Lower rates of gender-based violence: White men are statistically less likely to experience sexual harassment, assault, or intimate partner violence.
More bodily autonomy: Women often face greater regulation and public debate over reproductive rights and health decisions.
5. Legal and Institutional Treatment
Bias in legal settings: Men, especially white men, may receive more lenient treatment in some legal systems compared to women or people of color.
Historical legacy: Many institutions (education, law, medicine, government) were designed by and for white men, which still influences access and norms.
That is quite the list of advantages. Maybe dems need to be more misogynistic, patriarchal, and macho. Dems do need to be fighters instead of simply policy wonks.
I apologize for the rambling, but it is a very complex and frustrating subject.
Interesting that you call MPT's post a 'ten-car pileup of metaphors' when he's actually making a great deal of sense. More introspection and less whining about how the world and especially the Democrats 'don't understand' young men would do you some good. FTR, young men under 30, for example, weren't raised by boomers. Their parents are likely Gen Xers. It's also likely that both their moms and their dads have stressful, overloaded schedules, where in the past it was mostly dads who worked outside the home. I don't think the challenges facing young men are vastly different from those facing young women, but young women don't seem to be having an identity crisis. It would be useful to explain why young men are, instead of demanding that a political party solve that problem for them.
Thank you, Jane, for taking the time to read and reply to my comment. The comparison I made between white men and white women seemed the easiest to make in a short space. But I would assume that the data relating to the comparisons between white men, and brown or black men, or LGBTQ is more stark still in favor of white men.
Maybe young men need more male mentors, counselors, and role models as they grow up. But republicans slash school funding for history, so expecting them to add more male models to schools is foolhardy. After all, GOP has reached their goal of dumbing men to the point where they fall for republican slogans and performance antics and ignore dem policies that make their lives better.
There are no easy, or immediate answers. Y recall after the 2024 election results were final, Tim Miller of The Bulwark responding to Nicolle Wallace's question of what just happened and what can be done about it. Tim relied soberly, and without hesitation that people who voted for trump and republicans need to feel the pain of their decision. Without consequences, there is no reflection. That is what I feel at this moment in time, and I think it pertains to young men as well.
If I tell you that you can run across the street without looking, someone might get away with it for a while, but then Wham!, what happened? Why is my arm broken and I am bruised from head to toe? You listened to the wrong people and acted on bad advice. Young men are doing that now. Sometimes lessons are learned the hard way. Right now young men are getting schooled.
Again, you make some very good points. I agree that many folks in MAGA world, including young men, aren't going to snap out of it until the consequences they voted for start hitting home. The prancing caricature of masculinity being amplified by the right has nothing to do with real manhood. It's entertaining, but it's also dangerous. Ever since Trump invaded our politics a decade ago, his message has been 'if you're dissatisfied with your life, it isn't your fault; it's not the result of your own choices or your failures to do something about it; it's [fill in the blank]'s fault. THEY'RE to blame for your circumstances.' Let's face it, a message like that that lets people off the hook for their own life choices is very appealing, and millions ate it up. But Trump is a hollow man, and all his talk was cheap and empty. He hasn't and isn't doing anything to make the lives of his voters any better. He's a charlatan, a fraud. But some people won't believe that until it hits them between the eyes.
What frustrates me about these articles on why Democrats need to solve their 'young men problem' is that nobody ever addresses exactly what it is young men are looking for or feel they're lacking and why. Like this article, the 'problem' is always presented as a series of generalized accusations with little evidence to back them up, followed by a demand: "what are you going to about it?" That's a thin premise to work with, to say the least.
I like your insight into who is to blame for young men flocking to criminals, and creeps: it's [fill in the blank]'s fault. Eventually,, they will have to look in the mirror, pull off the silly red hay and say. what the hell am I doing to myself? Do I want a career, do I want a relationship outside the game room, do I want a family, a future? Until they face the real enemy, themselves, they will never change direction no matter what dems do to male their lives better via policy.
This isn’t about coddling young men or demanding a political party “solve” their problems. It’s about recognizing a growing vacuum — emotional, economic, and cultural — that the right is eagerly filling with rage and identity cosplay. You mentioned that young women don’t seem to be having an identity crisis. That’s worth asking why — maybe because there are more spaces built to empower them, while young men are increasingly told to “suck it up” or get written off as a problem.
I’m not here to defend nihilism or excuse toxicity. I’m asking why the Democratic Party , the one that claims to care about inclusion and the future, isn’t doing more to reach these young men before the worst voices get to them first.
You say we need more introspection. That’s literally what this article was doing. Maybe listening — not lecturing — would do some good.
Not about coddling? Really? Because that's exactly what you just said. 'What have YOU done for ME lately, and why should I believe you.' Name one thing - emotional, economic or cultural - that young men have to overcome that young women don't. NO spaces were built for young women or handed to them. LOTS of women over several generations WORKED for the inclusion of women in hiring, in college admissions, and for securing rights that had previously been denied to them, like home ownership, credit in their own names, etc. That's something today's young men either don't know or don't appreciate. Hell, we're in the year 2025, and we're STILL having 'the first woman' to do this, or hold that office.
Sorry if hearing things you'd prefer not to hear sounds like 'lecturing.'
I hope those who have influence in these areas will learn how to include young men who are searching for something other than what the right has to offer.
As a teen, I remember watching my two younger brothers sit & watch western movies; conflict resolution equaled force of some kind & it was always of interest the physical sort. This was the 1950s; we have not progressed much.
Remember the war movies? They were all about the glorification of violence and domination.
Susie Wiles simply runs focus groups on what low wattage young male voters want then nut job Musk kicks in a couple hundred million. What a great system!