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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. In 2020, 56% of men under 30 voted for Joe Biden. In 2024, that same percentage, 56%, voted for Donald Trump. That dramatic swing is cited in the April cover story of the Nation magazine, a story with the, Are Men Okay? The answer largely is no. On its face, the article is a profile of the author Richard Reeves, some of you know of him. He wrote that book called, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It. The article also brings in other writers on the topic, Susan Faludi, Jessica Calarco, Hannah Rosa and others. Most of the article frames the issue of men and masculinity today through describing Richard Reeves and the pushback to him from both left and right.

The article explains that Reeves sees his project as trying to not cede the national conversation about the plight and the alienation of men today to the right wing manosphere, to not cede the conversation to that. Reeves celebrates feminism as perhaps the "greatest economic liberation in human history". That's a quote cited in the article that.

Barack Obama put Reeves book on his public summer reading list. It's endorsed by Senator Chris Murphy, among others. Through the profile of Richard Reeves, the article the Nation raises some of the questions surrounding American men today. Why is there now a much lower rate of going to college or entering the workforce among men than among women?

Why have women changed so much in the decades of modern feminism, but but men not so much. Why are retro masculinity figures like Trump and JD Vance, and a list of angry and often misogynist podcasters as popular as they are with young men today. Let's have some of this conversation with the author of the article in the Nation, Eamon Whalen, who covers the intersection of masculinity and the political right. Eamon, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Eamon Whalen: Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian: Why'd you want to profile Richard Reeves?

Eamon: I became familiar with Richard Reeves in 2023, probably within a year before his book came out or a year after his book came out. I was writing a story for Mother Jones magazine where I worked at the time, that was exploring this rise of, as you said, the manosphere podcasters and so-called masculinity influencers and how they were bringing the message of a once fringe subculture of men's rights activists that has been burbling on the internet for some decades now.

They were through this explosion of short form video content and a masculine self help. They were bringing this message of the manosphere, which is a very anti-feminist, misogynistic message to a very larger audience in making some of the, let's say, logic and tropes of that culture. They were making it mainstream. The timing of the rise of a figure, specifically someone like Andrew Tate, who in 2022 and 2023 became genuinely one of the most famous people in the world, especially among young people, Richard Reeves book came out.

While he wasn't intending, I think, to be a man in the center trying to explain this phenomenon, he has ended up as that. What Reeves would tell you is that much of the rise of this is a backlash to feminism and it is a reassertion of patriarchy. I think a unique component of his message and perhaps provocative is he says that this is actually stemming from problems men are having that we aren't attentive to enough and a unmooring of men over the last several decades in American life and a driftlessness.

I felt like as the election started and it was a very, very gendered election, as the New York Times has called it, that Reeves, his profile was growing and he was often being called on to explain what was going on with young men in politics specifically, but just more broadly, what were the underlying issues that may be driving this? In addition to just like I said, a reassertion of masculine dominance, that there may be something deeper going on.

Brian: On that driftlessness word you used, and whatever this is, that is deeper, a couple of things, an economic thing and more of a psychological thing. I mentioned a couple of the stats in your article about men falling behind women in some workforce and higher ed measures.

Of course, as you also point out, men are still almost all the Fortune 500 CEOs. They are by far the majority in Congress and state legislatures. Men have power at the top. Women still earn 20% less than men on average at work, another stat that you cite and remind us of, Reeves acknowledges all this too, but he says there are, "parts of the distribution where men are really struggling".

What's the realm in which men are failing or falling behind that Richard Reeves is trying to address that part of the distribution, as he put it.

Eamon: I think to start with, what he focuses on the most or his starting point would be education. Somewhat striking statistic that he uses is that the enrollment in college, in higher education, the disparity between men and women is now higher than it was before Title IX, before women were granted inclusion into higher education.

The disparity has now flipped where men are, I believe, over 15 percentage points less of a proportion of higher education. I actually think that's a more simple way of looking at the political breakdown is that we see in politics today. Partisan identity is largely tied to college education. If much less men are going to college, it would follow the logic that less men will vote for Democrats.

The other thing would be that, largely the boys that are struggling in school and young men struggling in college education tend to be from more working class backgrounds and racial minority backgrounds and are not able to take advantage of a lot of the educational initiatives that are in high schools and middle schools to try to get kids to college. There's something that isn't clicking there. I think beginning with education is where he focuses on because that tends to be an early sign of later stability and success in life.

Brian: Psychologically, what's the crisis, as Reeves and the other authors you interviewed would characterize it. I notice Reeves and you cite an Australian study of men who've attempted suicide. The word that came up most in their reflections on that was useless or uselessness. Why is that important as regards the changing role of men in society?

Eamon: I found that to be a very interesting finding that rhymed with something that I had read in the book by the feminist author Susan Faludi that you referenced earlier called, Stiffed. She talks about a previous archetype of masculinity in America. This goes back to the 1700s. There is a survey of heroic male archetypes.

It was much less a lone ranger and much more of a man of the community and someone who specifically valued public usefulness. I thought that that was very interesting that now that men who are committing or attempting suicide are describing their condition as useless.

I think that extends to today with the-- I cite this report, the State of American Men Report from 2023 by a NGO called the Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice. They did a survey of 2,000 men from age 18 to 45 in January 2023. They found that two thirds of all the men that they surveyed agreed with the statement that "no one really knows them."

Half of them said their online life was more meaningful than their offline life. One third of the young men in that study spent no time in person with someone outside their household in the prior week. 40% of those men had thought about suicide in the previous two weeks. That's a it's somewhat of a small sample size, but I think in any collection of men that you're surveying, those should be pretty startling concerning responses.

Brian: The thinkers on this believe this is to some degree a response to the rise of more opportunity for women, more equality for women in the workplace and in society in general, leaving men who could take dominance for granted and a certain usefulness for granted because they had spheres of usefulness that weren't open to women, leaving them lost.

Eamon: I think it's a little bit more complicated than that. I think that that is partially what explains it. I think you also have to factor in at the same time as that occurred, we also were undergoing a deindustrialization that cleared the sectors of the economy that were most populated by male workers. That was previously the foundation for the Fordist family wage, the one wage per family, and that the deindustrialization coinciding with the inclusion of women into the workplace.

I think we just dropped the ball in how to reintegrate men into the economy after the loss of these large, large employing industries in America. I think that that is a very key component to include into that historical formulation.

Brian: Listeners, where would you like to enter this conversation as we continue with Eamon Whalen, who covers the intersection of masculinity and right wing politics for the Nation magazine, and has the cover story in the forthcoming April issue titled, Are Men Okay? 212-433-WNYC.

If you're a man, especially younger man, tell us a story of your own sense of what it means to be a man these days or your struggles to define that for yourself. 212-433-9692 have you been drawn to the right wing manosphere or no guys who have, what's the attraction? What's the void? If you think there's a void that has allowed that stuff to catch on as much as it has.

212-433-WNYC. Is there no cultural alternative as Richard Reeves suggests? We're going to get into this aspect of it with Eamon Whalen from the Nation. No cultural alternative, no "permission space," as Reeves calls it, for men that's more progressive but is about them and their well being, not only about what they need to give up or change to make the world more equal. 212-433-WNYC. Or you can ask a question based on Eamon's reporting. 212-433-9692, call or text.

Eamon, a key to this, it seems to me, as Reeves celebrates feminism but writes about a crisis facing boys and men is where he says women's lives have been recast, men's have not. Women's lives have been recast, men's have not. What's needed, he continues, is a positive vision of masculinity for a post-feminist world. Do you get it, what he means by women's lives have been recast, men's have not.

Eamon: I think that there's, I think an opening up of the opportunities and the life outcomes that women could see for themselves because of feminism and a distribution of a full rights in American democracy. I think that that is a pretty fundamental recasting. [crosstalk]

Brian: Go ahead. I'm sorry. I was going to say the other half of that that we've talked about on this show before is that while women have embraced and become eligible for roles that were previously open to men, men have not in any commensurate way adopted the roles that were previously mostly defined as female or that women were constrained to or confined to because they didn't have the choices.

When he proposes policies to address this, I noticed one of them, that is Richard Reeves, who you wrote about, one of them is six months of fully paid paternal leave. Another one is start initiatives to get men into traditionally female professions like education and non-MD health care jobs, mirroring the efforts to get women into STEM fields. Maybe when more men are home health aides, then we're going to know that we've achieved some equilibrium. That's the women's lives have been recast, men's have not, or a part of it. Right?

Eamon: Absolutely. I think that that this conversation about the obstacles that have prevented men's lives from being recast is where some of the criticism of Reeves comes in from Someone like Niobe Way, who's a psychologist at NYU, who wrote the book, Rebels with a Cause.

She's a psychologist that has been studying and speaking to young men for 40 years. What she's talking about is that much of the socialization of men that could recast their lives into working into more traditionally feminine care work or to be more active in their families, or just active in their relationships, or more emotionally available, what have you, is based on a culture and a socialization of men, which he calls boy culture, that she believes that Reeves isn't foregrounding enough in his approach to recasting men's lives.

Then another person of my piece, the professor, Jessica Calarco from UW Madison, where she writes a lot about how women are America's social safety net, she knocks Reeves for not acknowledging that those professions, like you said, which he calls heal professions, healthcare, education, administration and literacy, he doesn't do enough to acknowledge that those professions are low paid for the fact that they have long been associated as women's work. There are some obstacles, I think, to why men's lives have not been recast.

Brian: Susan in Princeton, you're on WNYC with Eamon Whelan from the Nation. Hi Susan, thank you for calling in.

Susan: Hi. Thank you. It's so funny he mentioned NYU and professor there. I was a PhD student there in the late '60s and early '70s, very interested in male-female stereotypes, and actually wrote an article, Big-Time Careers for the Little Women, about why women would have an easier time accepting and moving into more male-oriented professions than men would have moving into women's.

I think I haven't read the books that have been mentioned and your speaker is an expert about. I'm sorry to say that. I will certainly read them. My idea was very simple minded. It was based on this notion that in women's moving towards the male stereotypic behaviors and occupations, they were moving from a less preferred stereotype culturally, I think in this culture towards more valued one.

Whereas men would have a much harder time because they would be moving from a very preferred stereotype, aggressive, assertive, achieving, towards the woman stereotype, nurturing, emotional, compassion, which while lovely to express and have, were seen as not as worthy really. It certainly didn't get recognized and paid for running a household and keeping a husband happy and at work and children healthy.

Men, I predicted, would have a much harder time. I was actually expressing some sympathy for the work that men would have to do in going against the favored cultural stereotype towards one that was really not much regarded as valuable, particularly at all.

Brian: That's a really good way to put it. Did either your own research or things you followed since, get to new notions of masculinity. Besides the economics that you point out, economics and status, lower paying, lower status jobs they would need to be moving into, also different notions of what makes a man a man or gives a man dignity.

Eamon: One term that was passed around in social psych at the time as an ideal was androgyny. I know it has negative connotations, but the idea was that the ideal would be a balance such that both male and females could share characteristics that were highly valued in each stereotype, and that that was the ideal. Men have moved.

We have a lot more house dads and house husbands. Those of us in the women's lib movement in the '70s were, I think, picking men and talking about our positive regard for men who were more nurturing. My husband was a social psychology professor at NYU and he was very open to it. Many of my friends, we felt we really had different kinds of guys.

They're there, but it's much harder work and I respect them tremendously for doing it. Whereas we women, we got up on the mat and we were fighting hard for our rights and our values. That looked good to people, even though now they think men look at us and think, "Oh, whoops. We we created competitors."

Brian: Some men. Susan, thank you very much for your call. We really appreciate all you added. Eamon, does Richard Reeves, or any of the other authors and thinkers about this, who you interviewed for the article explain or put language to what a positive contemporary vision of masculinity might be, if the way-- Actually, I'm going to play a clip to set this up.

Most of the listeners know the type of masculinity that Trump projects, that JD Vance projects, that Elon Musk projects. Then there was some surprise after the election when Mark Zuckerberg, of course the founder of Facebook and now Meta, came out and said this.

Mark Zuckerberg: The kind of masculine energy, I think is good. Obviously society has plenty of that. I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it. I do think that there's just something-- All these forms of energy are good. I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits.

Brian: Obviously, Eamonn, a lot of people are cringing as they hear that about celebrating the aggression. I'm sure some people are not. Do some of the thinkers you interviewed for this article in the Nation talk about what that energy, to use Zuckerberg's word, could be in a contemporary positive vision of masculinity and how it's any different from a positive contemporary vision of femininity?

Eamon: I just wanted to say to the last caller, Susan, that her research seemed very prescient. Just to add one, I think an example of what she was saying, is a stat that Reeves had said in several interviews is that there are today more women who are fighter pilots than men who are preschool and kindergarten teachers. I believe that is the right stat.

That's an example of the ease or the difficulty men have in entering feminine jobs that Niobe Way would describe as a outcome of our boy culture. In terms of the models of masculinity, I think there are lots of different ones that are more preferable to, than what we see a lot in our politics today, and especially in right wing politics and then amongst our tech elite who are having these, I don't know if you want to call them midlife crises.

The Zuckerberg and Musk and that thing, I would say it's a very cartoonish, very aestheticized masculinity that isn't actually based on anything substantive. I think it very rings, to me as a form of masculinity that Susan Faludi in her book Stiff describes as ornamental, which she talks about as the dominant form of masculinity in the post New Deal order in America.

That is, it is highly based on a performance of male aggression and anger, based on mass consumerism and pop culture and very showy images. A lot of ways that I think we could understand a Zuckerberg masculinity or Trump masculinity is not as a race retro but as a new modern form that is, I think, very shallow and very shallowly expressed.

I'm hesitant to prescribe a new vision of masculinity. I think there are lots of forms of it that could be healthier. I guess I find that this discussion not quite as productive. I know that there are actually a lot of men and young boys that do just want a new model and a new script. I think that that is actually valuable to talk about, even if other people may see it as a better idea to try to reimagine humanity as someone like Niobe Way says.

Brian: One more call. Joseph in Queens, you're on WNYC with Eamon Whalen, who covers the intersection of masculinity and right wing culture for the nation. Hi Joseph.

Joseph: Hey, Brian. I just wanted to mention that I'm 35 now, but when I was younger I was very heavily online. One thing that these influences do is that they attract you via something that you're really interested in. For example, I was really attracted to philosophy at the time. I went in into philosophy, but then they'll slowly introduce these misogynistic ideas slowly and then all of a sudden you're watching something that you didn't realize turned into something very negative.

I didn't realize until I was older, I'm 35 now and I'm married and I have a son, that type of stuff was what I was watching because I was really focused on the philosophy of it. Then a second thing I want to mention is that how I got out of that whole funk was having something that I was just good at on my own without being dependent on external validation, without being dependent on a job or a relationship, something that I was able to work on, on my own and just get satisfaction from that.

Because if you're dependent on external validation, then you're going to find ways to get that, whether it's through media, or through other people, or through a job. When those things fail you, then you're looking for something or someone to blame. I think that's what's happening--

Brian: Grievance culture spaces. Right?

Joseph: Exactly. I don't know how to do it, but I think that, one, boys and men need to-- The basic things, get off the phones and get off the media, but also just find something that you're really good at or something that you're interested in that's going to give you a sense of satisfaction, and that you could work on, on your own. Eventually I feel like that will attract the type of life that you're looking for. It's difficult but it's much better than depending on media and people telling you what being a man is.

Brian: Joseph, thank you so much. Another great call. Let's end with a follow up to Joseph, including anything you want to say just in reaction to listening to him. He brings it back to one of Richard Reeves main points, which is that all of those spaces have been so cultivated and have grown so much online, where maybe they do get people drawn in by their interest in video games or in his case philosophy or whatever. Then the misogynistic messages start to come and these particular notions of masculinity.

Based on your article, Richard Reeves wants there to be alternative permission spaces for men to discuss being men, to celebrate being men, but that don't have that right wing misogynist cast. Do they exist any more than they did when he wrote his book three years ago?

Eamon: That's a good question. I do want to hone in on what the caller talked about as the on ramp to a lot of these very corrosive manosphere subcultures, is that it is often through practical self help, geared at young men, to go back to the article that introduced me to Reeves work in my research on motherjones.com. I spoke to young men who had come under the influence of people like Andrew Tate and alpha male influencers.

The main character in my story quite literally typed into YouTube, "Advice for men," or, "Male advice". It takes you on a journey, like he said, where the influencers build up credibility with you by giving you practical advice that improves your life. Famously, Jordan Peterson, his famous quip was, "Clean your room." It's very simple, constructive advice.

Then they start to layer on a very misogynistic right wing worldview that tends to locate the issues in men's life and put it on the fault of women and feminism and broader social equity schemes in general. In terms of positive masculinity spaces, it's hard to say. It does actually seems like it's gotten worse.

Part of the Trump campaign strategy that was reportedly masterminded by one of Barron Trump's friends, whose parents are members at Mar-a-Lago, was this famous podcast strategy that I think it's important to say that the podcasts that Trump appeared on weren't necessarily these older, more distinctly men's rights manosphere podcasts.

These were podcasts that were hosted by either comedians or athletes that aren't necessarily forthrightly political, but where a lot of that logic of the manosphere and the cultural mores and tropes have become dominant. I don't want to downplay that there are a lot of people working on this issue on the other direction, but they are swimming upstream against a very, very strong current that is going on in the digital spaces that men are gathering today.

Brian: Eamon Whalen covers the intersection of masculinity and right wing culture. He wrote the cover story for the April edition of the Nation called, Are Men Okay? Thank you for sharing this with us, Eamon. We really appreciate it.

Eamon: Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

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