Manliness and the Right

I hate linking you to an article behind a paywall. But I find this one to be really important for our conversation. Liza Featherstone wrote a piece called “Josh Hawley and the Republican Obsession With Manliness.” My values are clear, but I’m not trying to get into partisan stuff here. Partisanship distracts our attention from the work that truly matters.

However, it merits noting that:

In a recent speech at the National Conservatism Conference, the [increasingly dangerous] Senator Josh Hawley blamed the left for the mental health problems of men, for our joblessness, obsession with video games and hours spent watching pornography. “The crisis of American men,” he said, “is a crisis for the American republic.”

The knee-jerk from the so-called “left” of the media circus was to simply dismiss the Senator’s concerns as “hilariously empty.”

Look! I find the man scary. And it is absolutely true that “there can be a homophobic and fascistic component to such calls.” Patriarchy’s call for masculinity is part of the authoritarian playbook. See places ranging from Brazil to China. It is an optimal way to manipulate young men into nationalistic violence.

But Featherstone reminds us, Hawley “is tapping into something real — a widespread, politically potent anxiety about young men that is already helping the right.”

Deindustrialization has stripped many men of their ability to earn a decent wage, as well as of the pride they once took in contributing to prosperous communities. Boys are sometimes over-disciplined and overmedicated for not conforming to behavioral expectations in school. And while more women than men are diagnosed with anxiety or depression, men are more likely to commit suicide or die of drug overdoses.

None of these problems are caused by liberals. But liberalism hasn’t offered a positive message for men lately.

We have to take this seriously. There IS something wrong with the way pornography and video games (I’m NOT against them), social media and other trappings of the virtual world are keeping boys from what is REAL. 

It is keeping our boys and our men from our feelings, from our embodied selves. 

And all that we keep hearing is that we are toxic. 

Patriarchy IS toxic. It IS dangerous and oppressive. And it is also not all that we are.

What we need is help. We need to turn towards one another. And offer a positive vision instead.

Let’s learn to be better men, and let’s help other men become better.

Saludos,

Gibrán