A Shocking Turn in the War on Men - Richard Reeves - #1087

“I think I have to be honest that I felt like banging my head against the brick wall with Democrats until November 2024... And then there was an election, and then my inbox started filling up with Democrats. Because they saw how much they'd fallen behind with men, especially young men. I mean, they can read a poll. And there's no question that one of the things that happened in the 24 election was that Democrats lost men, and especially young men, in a very, very big way.”

“Activists are always psychologically reluctant to succeed because there's something about your identity and your purpose that is tied up to your own failure. If you succeed, you have to start saying, great, we've done it. Now I have to find some new identity. If you've actually wrapped up your identity in the sense that the whole of society is stacked against men, and then suddenly people do start caring about men, you've either got to say, oh, that's not true anymore, or say, no, no, that can't be true.”

“For too long, the deficit framing around this issue of young men... classic example, of course, would be toxic masculinity. I'm just like, let's start with not making you toxic. There's just this way of talking about young men that really suggests that they're the problem, rather than looking at the kind of systems around them. I do think we have to set the table in a way that allows us to do the work, the cultural stuff both before and after.”

“Fatherhood is the last male institution. You don't have institutions anymore that are kind of just like male. It transforms us from the inside out. It's just existentially obvious to you that there are lives in the world that are just unambiguously more important than your own and for whom you would do anything. You would give your life for them. It changes men in this massively kind of positive way.”

“What's happening to young men is masculinity vertigo, in which on Monday, what you're being told is, the problem is that you're not masculine enough. You need to work out more, be more dominant, man up. The next day, what you're being told is, you're too masculine. You need to cry more and eat more salad, and go to therapy more, and find your feminine side. Then on Wednesday, you're back to the other one. It's just become this very contested and difficult thing right now.”

“Dads should actually be able to take time off and should take time off with their kids, not because they can do what mums do, nor in support of gender equality, but because dads are awesome, and kids are awesome, and kids do really well with their dads around them. I don't want to be the deputy, the malfunctioning mom, the kind of, 'oh, if only you could be a mom.' I want a pro-dad argument rather than a gender equality argument for fathering.”

“The fertility rate conversation is a great example of where people take their priors and explain the fertility rate based on what they already thought. Jennifer Schuber's basic conclusion is the thing that's causing the decline of fertility rate is a lack of gender equality, while conservatives will say it is feminism and the entry of women into the workplace. Truth is, no one knows. And so it's a really dangerous subject because it is one of those things that we don't know yet.”

“The message I think most young men need is 'we need you.' Society still needs you, the tribe still needs you, your family still needs you, your kids, for the love of God, definitely still need you. We want you because you're a man, not despite being a man. We see you being a man as a feature, not a bug. I just don't think enough men have heard that. Not as a volunteer, but as a man.”