Josh Hawley and our "Masculinity Crisis"

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For Democrats, no single voting bloc might be more important to the party's 2024 success than Gen-Z.

Born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, the first generation reared on the internet has come of age, with more than 30 million members of Gen-Z—the oldest of whom are now 26 years old—having reached legal voting age as of 2021. By 2028, demographers anticipate Gen-Z and their older Millennial counterparts will constitute the majority of the U.S. electorate, setting them up to have a profound influence on the direction of the country for decades to come. Early in their political lives, they've also proven to be a reliably Democratic voting bloc at a time the United States finds itself at a crossroads on issues like abortion, labor rights, and continued protections for the LGBTQ community.

A look under the hood, however, paints a more complicated picture of America's most progressive generation at a time progressives need them most. And what it means for the future isn't exactly clear.

New data shows there is a growing, gender-based rift emerging in Gen-Z between men and women fueled by economic and social strife researchers say present warning signs not only for the progressive movement but for the state of American politics.

The 2023 State of American Men survey, authored by the Washington D.C.-based Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice, says the emergent trend involves everything from an increasing sense of social isolation fueled by young Americans' increasingly online lives to the current state of the economy, all the way to fears over the onset of artificial intelligence.

In that environment, younger male voters today, the authors conclude, suffer heightened rates of depression and anxiety about their stations in life that have pushed them increasingly to the right on issues like gender inequality, threatening to upend years of progress on the issue. "Men in the U.S.," the report reads, "are in trouble."

And the data, they claim, supports that—particularly as trends show America's young women moving in the exact opposite direction.

A culture of isolation
According to the survey data, approximately two-thirds of young men feel that "no one really knows" them compared to a little more than half of elder Millennials aged 38-45, a sign they say reveals the fragility of Gen-Z males' connections and relationships.

Almost half of all members of Gen-Z had thoughts of suicide in the past two weeks, compared to just one-third of their elder Millennial counterparts. Nearly one-third reported having not had an interaction with someone outside their home in the previous week and had lower rates of physical interaction than both younger and older Millennial respondents.

And many of those young men, the report notes, live their lives online at a significantly higher rate than their older counterparts and are significantly more likely to consume content by "manosphere" figures like Andrew Tate and right-wing groups like the Proud Boys who offer unapologetic affirmations of masculinity.

A loss of solidarity
The result of that, researchers say, has been declining rates of support and positive perception among young Americans for feminist and racial justice movements that are critical for progressives.

Even though many members of Gen-Z remain likely to support progressive candidates and causes, many of America's young men, the researchers argue, are beginning to show regressive views toward women in particular that run counter to progressive policy goals.

Gen-Z males, for example, are more likely to believe men's lives are harder than women's. Younger men were also less likely to agree similarly qualified women in the workplace should be paid the same as men. And less than half, the survey found, agreed with the idea feminism "has made America a better place."

And while the insular enclaves of the internet play a large part in why, the researchers argued, the shift could be seen as a distillation of growing unease about a rapidly changing world at a time of increasing social anxiety. In dialogues over concepts like "toxic masculinity," Richard Reeves—a researcher at the Brookings Institution who recently authored a book about the state of American men—told Newsweek many feel displaced in conversations about the direction of society and therefore feel a loss of agency in that changing world.

"There's a sense the culture has gotten really good at telling these young men what not to do, but not very good at telling them what to do," Reeves told Newsweek. "They have a long list of 'don'ts' and not that can be a quite disempowering thing that creates a sense of frustration among men who do feel like they're struggling. They are struggling in school, they are struggling the labor market."

While the data shows regressive ideas about women's position in the workplace, it also demonstrates many of those young men want to see themselves as providers. But that data also needs to be placed against the backdrop of a social media environment researchers argue has grown increasingly materialistic, a U.S. economy approaching record levels of income inequality, and decreasing levels of dissatisfaction among Gen-Z workers in the workplace that feeds into those depressive feelings.

And online, Reeves said, one group more than the other is taking that male grievance—justified or not—seriously.

"The danger with this debate is it's a vicious circle," said Reeves. "If men don't feel heard, and if they don't feel like their problems or their issues are taken seriously and as seriously as the equally big problems facing women and girls, then they are more likely to start reacting negatively to the existence of a movement that is just for women. Especially when they don't see any real movement for men except on the right."

Policy solutions
While progressives will likely rely on the youth vote in 2024 and beyond, modern political movement leaders, the report's authors warn, either need to address the shift or risk exacerbating negative trends even further.

Part of that is to know what they're up against.

While groups and social media ecosystems on the left have sought to reinforce what constitutes toxic behavior among males, the report's authors argue, those on the right—whether politicians or social media influencers—have cultivated cohesive environments that serve to reinforce their subscribers' aspirational views of masculinity and shun their insecurities—helping contribute to the increasingly divergent views among America's most-online generation.

There are those figureheads of a restrictive like nouveau misogyny that will like really feed the politics of a kind of masculine antagonism," Brian Heilman, another of the report's co-authors, told Newsweek. "And I think we can say that the left hasn't necessarily done ourselves a whole lot of favors by making our narrative 'Don't be toxic. Don't be this bad thing.'"

To offset the trend, Heilman said American leaders need to find a way to invite those voices in and adopt their own brand of aspirational politics not based on grievance, he said, but optimism, giving people ownership of a culture of being authentic, caring, nurturing, and good. Some of it could be based in the workplace, helping change perceptions of interpersonally-facing jobs in growing fields like healthcare from their traditional feminine connotations to masculine ones.

Sometimes I doubt "equality" is the true agenda of the woke movement.