Stop listening to conservatives telling you that masculinity is in crisis

In an episode of The New York Times’ “Matter of Opinion” podcast Ross Douthat discussed the crisis of masculinity in America. Hunter of Daily Kos wrote his response a week ago.

There is no "crisis of masculinity" in America. It does not exist. It is made up, just as it has been made up at every other point in history including 1.) when women were allowed to vote, 2.) when women began to enter the "workforce" in slightly larger numbers than in the decade before that, or 3.) when women were able to open bank accounts without their husbands' permissions. There are wonderful old-timey comics featuring sad-sack men in dresses crying about their fate when those other historical trends poked at their fragile emotions. ... The problem is that conservative men are big gigantic whining babies about everything, whimpering to themselves whenever any event happens in the world that does not revolve around them and their own personal desires. The "crisis" is that liberal men have taken all the masculinity for themselves while conservative men work themselves up into crying, flag-waving tantrums whenever cartoon candy mascots show up with less sexy footwear than they had been hoping for. ... When a liberal man learns that his wife has gotten a raise and now makes more money than he does, he's happy about her success and the extra money. He doesn't go off and whine in a corner about well, the real problem nowadays is that nobody hires based on upper body strength.

Then Paul Waldman of the Washington Post added his voice, here quoted by Chitown Kev in a pundit roundup for Kos. Waldman referred to the book Manhood by Sen. Josh Hawley, which was released recently and roundly panned.

Like most of the crisis-of-masculinity-mongers, Hawley has little in the way of practical recommendations to fix this supposed problem. But if American men are really overcome by such anxiety, here’s a solution: Stop listening to conservatives telling you that masculinity is in crisis. The manliest thing one can do might be to stop caring about masculinity altogether. That’s not to deny that men face some genuine problems, especially when it comes to educational achievement — even as they still dominate almost every facet of public life, from politics to religion to business.

Waldman added that conservative pundits are preying on men feeling anxious about a rapidly changing world. Waldman says the issue is centuries old. Kev corrects him – the issue is at least two millennia old. Sophocles has an example of it in Antigone and it is a central theme in Lysistrata by Aristophanes. Signe Wilkinson tweeted a cartoon showing a female pharmacist in front of a wall of condoms with the description

Man up, Republicans and take personal responsibility! Instead of passing nanny state laws banning abortion, make it unnecessary. A Prophylactic Solution.

Michael Harriot tweeted a thread taking on the claim that insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting different results. Some of Harriot’s replies: Do you really want to take your heart medication only once? If you go to the gym and lift weights you don’t get stronger ... unless you do it every day. Civil rights protesters didn’t make it across the Edmund Pettus Bridge until the third try. The Montgomery Bus Boycott would have failed if it lasted only one day. Part of Harriot’s thread is in response to Ice Cube posting a Contract with Black America. Good stuff. But none of the ideas are new – some have been around for 90 years – and they haven’t been implemented because they weren’t explained to black people adequately. They haven’t been implemented because there has always been a racist party, though that has switched a few times in history. It’s amazing that racist white people always know which party that is. Mary McLeod Bethune was part of Franklin Roosevelt’s Black Cabinet. She got things done because she was able to organize persistent protests, to the point FDR became scared not to implement her goals. One of those was an executive order banning discrimination in the defense industry. Millions of blacks got jobs. And that’s the reason why black people started supporting Democrats in 1944. The Civil Rights bills didn’t get passed because of one protest. It took many over many years. So when a person says we need to just vote harder, they’re missing a great deal. Yes, vote. And also protest in as many ways possible, repeated for as long as it takes. The debit limit bill passed the Senate 63-36. That drama is over for a couple years. By then let’s hope we can elect enough same people they can eliminate this threat – though there was a chance in 2021 and they didn’t take it. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote about the good, the bad, and the ugly of the bill to raise the debt limit. The good: It diluted the power of the Freedom Caucus. McCarthy owes them nothing. McCarthy does owe Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats for getting the bill over the finish line. The bad: Even though loud voices proclaimed hostage taking is not regular order, it now is. The debt limit will be reached on January 1, 2025, which means it isn’t in play for the election, but the lame duck Congress will have to do something – unless Biden is able to challenge the constitutionality of the law before then. Some destructive Republican talking points were given fresh wind. These are that work requirements for food benefits are good, the IRS is the enemy, and the deficit is more important than policy and can be addressed only through cuts. The ugly: Sen. Joe Manchin’s pet project of an oil pipeline from West Virginia to the Virginia coast was included with provisions preventing court challenges and over the objections of Virginia members of Congress. It was included at a time when nobody nowhere should be building oil infrastructure.