'If You Can Keep It': What ‘Masculinism’ Means For America

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Last week marked the anniversary of Congress passing the 19th Amendment. In 1919, that constitutional amendment gave women the right to vote, although for decades that right only applied in practice to white women. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and Jim Crow-era state laws prevented black women from voting. Fast forward 107 years, and now a growing conservative movement wants to repeal that and other hard-fought rights for women and people of color. It's called masculinism, and its goal is to combat what its believers see as a feminized U.S. society. For the next part of our ongoing politics and democracy series, if you can keep it, how a right-wing fringe movement has shifted toward the center of power in America, thanks to its connections to the Trump administration and its influence on Republican policy.

What do followers of this movement want? What does it mean for our democracy if a growing movement in conservative politics, one that could gain power in the future, wants to re-institute patriarchy in U.S. politics, and as a result, eliminate the right for women, black people, and other people of color to have a role in public life. I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd's Willing. You're listening to the 1A podcast.

We'll be back with more after this short break. Stay with us. This message comes from Angie. If you're tackling a home project, check out Angie.com. From roofing to remodels and everything in between, Angie connects you with skilled pros who do such a good job. You might trust them to do other things, like pull out your tooth or be your kid's godfather. Don't actually ask them to do those things.

Just let them get the job done well. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your projects at Angie.com. That's ANG.com. This message comes from I-XL, providing an online learning environment intended to keep student skills sharp over summer vacation. The platform covers core subjects

and adapts to each child's pace. Receive 20% off at IXL.com slash NPR. This message comes from NPR sponsor Charles Schwab, with its original podcast On Investing. Each week, you'll get thoughtful, in-depth analysis of both the stock and the bond markets. Listen today and subscribe at Schwab.com slash on investing or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the 1A podcast. We're talking about how a right-wing fringe movement has shifted toward the center of power and its influence on the Republican Party. Joining us from London is Helen Lewis. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic. She wrote the magazine's June cover story titled The Men Who Want Women to Be Quiet. Helen, welcome to One A.

Hello. And joining us from Washington, D.C. is Laura K.field. She's a writer and political theorist and author of Furious Minds, the making of the MAGA New Right from Princeton University Press. Laura, welcome to you as well. Thank you for having me. Helen, let's just start with a broad definition. How would you define the masculinism movement? Well, I wanted to distinguish it from the manosphere, which people might have heard of, and they might associate that with people like perhaps Andrew Tate, or they might have watched Louis Ther's Netflix documentary. But I wanted to make the point that behind the kind of viral influences, who are often very much into shock tactics, there is a coherent ideology.

And essentially it says feminism has gone too far. Patriarchy should be rehabilitated. Men should be the head of the household. They're better suited to serving armies, to be political leaders, and to hold all kinds of public roles. And essentially, women are much more suited to being homemakers. So a very traditional approach to gender roles. So Helen, who are the champions here?

If they're not quite the Manosphere characters that we've talked about on this show, who are the people with the real ideology and what are the ideological origins of the movement? Well, I think one of the most obvious people to talk about in this context is Pete Hegseth, a secretary of defense or war, as he would have it, because he believes, you know,

that women shouldn't serve in combat roles. in the military. And in fact, you know, there have been reported stories about the fact of female and black officers being denied promotions, you know, that he has a very particular view of what he thinks an army should look like and it doesn't include women and minorities. So he's a very obvious example. I spoke to the founder of Christchurch, of the denomination that he's part of, which is a, I would describe it as a kind of fire-breathing Calvinist denomination, and Doug Wilson is the head of that. Now, he is, you know, he is a kind of, he's 72, but he has the, He has the blog approach of a much younger man, shall we say,

and that he talks about women as small-breasted biddies and Jezebels and lots of other words that I'm not going to inflict on your listeners at this time of the day. But, you know, what you have is somebody who has a very biblical interpretation, you know, describe himself as a biblical patriarch. And he was invited into the Pentagon by Pete Hegseth to talk to all the people who work there. So you have someone there who has a view of America that is incredibly old-fashioned, who has also a direct route into government. And that would be a very obvious example, I think.

Well, let's hear a bit of what some prominent masculinist influencers have said online and to the media. Men are good at smashing and breaking things. They're good at fighting. And when you have this egalitarian dogma that women and men have to be the same, it's like saying everybody has to be able to dunk the basketball. If you've got an egalitarian dogma that says everyone has to be able to dunk, the only thing you're going to wind up doing is lowering the net. Within the parameters of a liberal democratic society language,

how much can men be men? Is this kind of like an inextricable problem from the nature of the system itself? Males should not be providers, we are told, or leaders of family, or even engage the family over much, except to support womanly nurturing. Males should be ashamed of the wildness in their hearts, and the need they have for competitive greatness or iron sharpening iron.

We should repeal the 19th Amendment. We should take it away. They vote for the wrong candidate every single time. Every single time the women vote Democrat. They vote for the wrong person. The voices we heard there was a Christian nationalist pastor, Doug Wilson, influencer Charles Cornish Dale, academic Scott Yenner, and the far-right white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes. Laura, what underlying trends in U.S. society?

do you see as fuel for this masculinist movement, what they're pointing to in their critiques? Thank you. Yeah, my work sort of situates this masculinist movement in the broader foment of the intellectual right. And so this is all taking place against the background of an intellectual movement that's tied to Trumpism that is sort of against liberal democracy as such,

against liberal pluralism, and does stand for these older hierarchies. And I think, generally, this is a movement that's fueled by anger. I mean, my book is called Furious Minds. And they're angry about a lot of things. I think that, you know, there are a lot of things for Americans to be angry about. But one of the things that they're upset about is the kind of social transformations that have happened over the last 50 years, and especially in professional spaces. And so they're lashing out a lot at professional women and their loss of status that they

see as the result of other people, other groups rising in professional worlds and universities and in sort of the elite spaces that they do care about. But it also includes minorities, right? That's a big part of the broader picture as well. And something really struck me in those quotes, that montage that we just played, and I believe it was a Charles Cornish Dale, the critic with the English accent. The critique wasn't just about feminism. or demasculinity or minorities or liberalism that was damaging men, it was democracy, that democracies themselves cannot allow men to flourish. That was striking. Yeah, I noticed that too because I hadn't quite seen that quote until I saw it in Helen's piece,

but the idea that men can't be fully themselves and sort of fully manly in the context of an egalitarian, pluralistic liberal democracy. And I think depending on your definition of manliness, you know, if you're talking about just manly domination of others and a very sort of pinched and old-fashioned kind of violent understanding of masculinity or manliness, then I guess that's true, right? Liberal democracy does posit that people are equal and should not be dominated by any other group. And so there is a tension there, but I think, I mean, my own view is that that's an extremely pinched and bizarre way to understand sort of manly virtue. Well, Helen, we can talk about opinion, but it's really important that

We talk about policy. So what kinds of policies do these influencers advocate for as solutions to what they see as issues in U.S. society? Well, you mentioned at the very top there, the rollback of DEI. You know, there is an effort to say actually white men of the ones who've been really shut out of lots of prestigious jobs in journalism, publishing academia. Scott Yenna, who's one of the people you quoted now at the Heritage Foundation, has posited this idea of the family weight. which is essentially the idea that you should be able to preferentially hire and promote married men and you should be able to pay them more so that their wives can stay at home. I know and that is, it's kind of fascinating because to me that is DEI,

that is affirmative action for men. So it's kind of flipping around some of the stuff that we've been talking around in helping women and minorities in the last decade to say, well, let's, you know, let's apply this to men instead. I mean, heritage is a big think tank. It's very powerful in the MAGA world. and Project 2025, which some of your listeners might have heard of the kind of blueprint for a second Trump term, had a very traditional vision of gender.

It was about men as breadwinners and women as homemakers. And Heritage has carried that on. They released another report in January this year, which was, you know, had a kind of whole constellation of things that it was against, from daycare to dating apps to no-fault divorce, you know, to single-parent benefits. And it is all about this kind of like, let's change the tax system, let's change small laws and regulations, just all. of it to nudge society in the direction that we'd like it to go in. So there are people thinking

about this very seriously in policy terms. Laura, I just want to better understand this idea that white men have lost influence in the circles of power. If you look at Congress, I think it would be hard to argue that there's an underrepresentation of white men. The number of U.S. presidents who were white men all save one. So how do you have, How are they coming to this conclusion that white men have been pushed out of even the C-suite majority white men? So what are they drawing on as evidence to support this claim? Well, I think that they're grounding this in their very narrow experiences in their, you know, in some professional spaces and what they call the liberal elite spaces of the university. I think you're right.

It doesn't really pan out. are some things we can point to, like, you know, the fact that most many university students now, I think there's a majority who are women, and there have been these transformations. But the idea that white men have been excluded, I think, is based on a false understanding of, you know, affirmative action and some of the DIA policies. I think what they're actually, you know, they can't point to the evidence concretely, but what they're actually experiencing is a, is the shift in our culture, right? a shift where, you know, in Hollywood, women are represented differently.

We have, you know, gay marriage celebrated in these elite spaces. And so they have various terms for this. They talk about sort of liberal domination in the universities, in the media, in government. And I think you're right, it's not sort of accurate. But there's this sort of under, there's this feeling that they express that, that the cultural norms have shifted. And I think that much is true, right? And they have different words to describe this gynocracy,

the Longhouse, the cathedral, you know, liberalocracy. They have all these terms to describe what they see as a kind of tyranny of majority opinion that has been feminized. We're speaking to Laura Field. She's a political theorist and author of Furious Minds, The Making of the Maga New Right. Also with us, Helen Lewis, staff writer for The Atlantic. And we're hearing from you, Adam emails.

I live in Indiana where the governor, changed June from Pride Month to Nuclear Family Month. What a shame. And Randolph in Virginia emails, I am a U.S. Army veteran who deployed to Afghanistan as an intelligence analyst and have worked as a contractor in the intelligence community for over 20 years. In my opinion, Pete Hegseth, his pastor in this current White House administration project project project an illusion of masculinity. But in reality, they project the complete opposite. He is in the position of Secretary of Defense primarily due to being President Trump's sycophant and not by merit as he pretends. to enforce. We want to hear from you as well. If you have thoughts about the masculinism movement,

or you notice a shift in politics where you live or the media you consume, email us at 1A at wamu.org. Helen, one of the things that you bring to light in your piece in the Atlantic is that the masculineism movement, even if it's not based on, you know, as Laura says, they aren't hanging anything on real data. It is based on some things that are real, or does have elements of real problems for men, male loneliness, graduation rates plummeting for young men, so that there is a foundation of disaffection or deterioration among men that this movement seems to be at least gaining a foothold from. Yeah, and I think when you look at the audience for these kind of messages, you have to bear that in mind, that particularly for non-college educated men,

wages have been really stagnant. Job and opportunities have been really not very mediocre now for 10, 20 years, really since the financial crash in America. So there is a whole load of dissatisfaction. You know, they also speak to men at vulnerable times in their lives, you know, post-divorce, for example. And a lot of the messages are about the way that the court system will favour mothers. And I think those are very powerful to men who are having a really tough time in their lives.

But at the other end, you know, I do think there is a – I think Laura's right to pick up on this idea that the cultural, shift has been very hard. So quite a lot of these influences come out of the academy. You know, they are professors somewhere. And they have experienced what it's like when a hiring committee says, well, it's quite embarrassing that we've got an all-male department. Shouldn't we try and recruit more women and more minority candidates? So I think for the, you know, they feel that there is a tier of men who would otherwise have got quite good jobs and lives, and they have been essentially replaced by professional women. And one of the things that's most

interesting is the class aspect of this, because if you hear this discourse online, there are lots of chats about how women all have, you know, work in HR or they have pointless email jobs or whatever it might be. And actually the biggest professions in the US for women are education and nursing, you know, hard-scrabble, you know, working class and low-middle-class jobs that are not, you know, easy and you sit around all day on a laptop. But so much of this I think is about, and as Laura correctly identifies in her book, men from an elite class who now understand that they have to compete with a whole load of extra people for the, you know, the jobs and status that they want. Well, we mentioned that this movement finds a voice on podcasts, YouTube,

and in academia, and public policy. Helen, what are the main ways you see this ideology spreading and getting attention, especially with new audiences? Well, I think Doug Wilson is a really interesting example of somebody who has thought very well about building a kind of media empire. So he's based in Moscow, Idaho, where members of his family are involved in the local liberal arts college, the local school. He has a streaming platform that distributes content that he makes. He has a publishing imprint that members of his family are involved with. And, you know, he writes his blog, he makes his videos and he's planted churches around the US. So this is somebody who has absolutely thought about all the different communication channels

that you would, you know, in 2026, wanted to have to get your message out. And that's, you know, that's the same for lots of these guys. There's a whole circuit of, well, Laura can talk to this. There's a whole circuit of kind of conferences where you can go and sit with a lot of other like-minded people and hear about, you know, the horrors of the gynoocracy. Laura, go ahead. Oh, sorry. Yeah, a lot of them, they have podcasts. I mean, many of the people, I sort of limited myself to writing about people with PhDs.

I mean, not exclusively. But, you know, these are people writing books, writing journal articles. And then some of the younger people, like Charles Cornish Dale, or there's another figure who goes by the pen name Bronze Age Pervert, but his real name is Kostin'Elamiriu, and he has a PhD from Yale. But they have pretty massive followings online. And they have podcasts where they talk about. bodybuilding and they talk about classical music or Homer, you know, they're talking about all these different kinds of things. And I guess one thing I would add that I think is a reason for

the sort of flourishing of masculinism is a lot of these influencers and including the sort of high brow people are also sort of filling a gap of meaning. You know, they're helping these young men navigate their lives and, you know, find guidance in I think a world that we can all agree can be very confusing. Well, we have to take a quick. break, but before we do, we got this message from one of you. Chance emails, I'm a 25-year-old white male, and the social media algorithm keeps pushing repeal 19th content on me. I don't know why. I would never support this. And David in Florida emails, hearing how white males want to roll back equality reminds me of the quote, the loss of privilege feels like oppression.

So to come, what this movement might do beyond the current administration, we'll be right back. This message comes from IXL, providing an online learning environment intended to keep student skills sharp over summer vacation. The platform covers core subjects and adapts to each child's pace. Receive 20% off at IXL.com slash NPR. This message comes from NPR sponsor Charles Schwab with its original podcast on investing. It's hosted by Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial. research. Each week, Liz Ann, Colin, and their guests analyze economic developments and bring

context to conversations around stocks, fixed income, the economy, and more. Download the latest episode and subscribe at Schwab.com slash on investing or wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from HomeServe, a burst pipe, a dead water heater, the AC calling it quits. Who do you call? HomeServe is an easy way to handle unexpected home repairs with plans cover stuff basic homeowners insurance usually won't. Instead of scrambling for a contractor, you make one call to get the repair process started. Join the millions of customers who trust homeserve right now. Go to homeserve.com slash podcast for 50% less your first year. Savings compared to renewal price, void in Florida. Let's get back into our discussion of masculinity

and what the rise of this conservative movement means for U.S. politics. Here's a voicemail we got from one of you. I am so surrounded by men who are comfortable being men and love having strong women in their lives and also are willing to be caring and loving and kind and supportive. I don't even know that this is going on in the world about trying to strip so many rights from women until I listen to YouTube. And the YouTube podcasters that I listen to are highlighting these extremist podcasters that claim religious grounds. and have no religious ground. And I think I hope I pray people wake up and vote against this. Let's talk a little bit more about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. His name came up earlier.

He personally intervened in Navy officer promotions at the one-star admiral rank. He struck women, black officers, some white men from the list. It resulted in no female officers on the new one-star list and only two non-white officers. Earlier this year, Pete Hegseth also removed two women and two black colonels from the Army's one-star general promotion list. These are rare interventions by a Secretary of Defense who typically would sign off on these lists or reject them entirely. These lists are recommendations created by boards of active generals and admirals. That's why it's so rare for the Secretary of Defense to get directly involved. Of course, we can't forget about the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a black man who was sidelined.

by Pete Hegseth. Now, we brought up Pete Hegseth because he attends the Pilgrim Hill Reform Fellowship. That church is part of the communion of reformed evangelical churches, the broader network of fundamentalist churches co-founded by Doug Wilson, who we've been talking about is one of the drivers of the masculinism movement. So, Helen, what other concrete actions have we seen in the Trump administration that align with masculinist philosophy? It's clear that the Pentagon is ground zero, where else? Well, I think one of the things that's just been really obvious

over the last couple of months is there's soon to be very different standards applied for women and men working in the White House. I mean, you've just seen this departure of high-profile woman after high-profile woman, Tulsi Gabbard, Kristi Noem,

the Secretary of Labor. You know, there seems to be a kind of indulgence perhaps of men in the way that there isn't of women. And I think that's the kind of thing that will be quite obvious to female voters. We know that the Republicans

underperform among women. there was a really big gender gap. And for all that, I think lots of people in the Trump administration and the masculinity movement think that they are appealing to men, there is always the danger of turning off those women in swing states with some of this stuff. So, you know, it will be interesting to look into the midterms about whether or not this is a driving force.

I suspect we won't see it in any particularly obvious way that you can immediately point to causally, but I think it will add to a sense of a White House that is perhaps slightly out of touch in a way that voters are already worried about. And, you know, it's not something that Trump seems at all bothered about, you know, because that would be to show weakness, you know, that in this paradigm, it would be an unmanly thing to do.

And just to be clear, Pete Hegseth's Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, he's not a member of Christ Church, but he is a part of the broader group that that church, that church is a part of. We got this message from one of you. As an administrator within a high-profile Florida University, it isn't outright anti-D-EI rhetoric. It's a little more quiet, but it's definitely anti-D-EI. We've had to completely remove our DEI sites and pages altogether to be in line with what Ron DeSantis wants. We've had to remove all instances of diversity across all of our website pages. My friends who are professors are seeing more complaints from young right-wing students simply for teaching and discussing literature and contemporary writing that discusses racism, microaggressions, etc. from well-known authors. that much of this thinking is happening within the academic sphere. Where are you seeing masculineism creep in academia? So I mean, I've been focused on these mega adjacent

intellectuals. And I think that from my experience, I sort of, I came up in conservative academia studying with sort of relatively conservative scholars, but sort of the best of the conservative of world. And in my experience in academia, I mean, feminism never really took hold in some of these spaces. And so there was a kind of, you know, it wasn't the misogyny that we see on the new right, but there was kind of an anti-feminist undercurrent. And I think that in some, but in these mega, with these mega intellectuals, I mean, there are a few examples who are still within academia. Patrick Deneen at the University of Notre Dame has spoken quite, you know, has written against feminism as a kind of bond.

The release from domestic life is akin to a kind, and the entry into corporate life is a kind of almost akin to bondage. And there are others who are still in academia, but a lot of these people have left academia, either to work somewhere like at the Heritage Foundation, like Scott Yenner, or to become influencers. Well, Helen, you interviewed Doug Wilson and other influencers for your story on this movement.

What did they say about their priorities? What are they hoping to accomplish either through this administration or future administrations? Well, I mean, they take the long view. Doug Wilson said to me, you know, repealing the 19th Amendment is not a priority. It's a sort of 200-year stretch goal. But one of the things it does is it unites this movement around a kind of destination. Their idea is very much a return to patriarchy. And then anything along the way that they can rack up on the school board is,

is a win for them. You know, it's a very clearly articulated vision. He's also said that, you know, he's a Christian nationalist. He's described his politics as paleo-confederate. You know, he has got a, you know, he wants to wind the clock back to an earlier version of America that he finds more congenial to him, really. Well, we got this message from Mel in Pittsburgh who asks, how does the masculinism movement feel about the LGBTQ community? If they don't like women's rights, I assume their stance on queer people can't be positive either. Laura, Is it positive? Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. I think that a lot of this is bound up to a kind of extremism that's brought into the movement that, you know, is against feminism. But that's almost just the, that's not quite as taboo as the racism that you also find in the movement. And then the homophobia and the anti-trans dimension is very strong. And so I think part of the policy agenda here that we should recognize, it's not just,

all of the things that have already been passed against trans people, but it's the repeal of marriage equality is, I think, certainly on their agenda in addition to all of the things that Helen's discussed. We got this from Brian, who emails, I'm a 25-year-old gay Marine Corps veteran. What concerns me about this movement is that my male peers are gravitating towards such toxicity and overly puritanical values, which are often associated with conservative circles, including the military. I have a deep fear that my fellow Gen Z peers are following influencers who are are extremists and are spreading easily digestible and memorable slogans that further isolate them.

Laura, who is the target audience for the masculinism movement? That's a great question. I mean, I think a lot of it is bound up in our current politics, right, in the MAGA movement. And then young men who, you know, in the world, in the thinking of political theorists, you have someone like Harvey Mansfield who talks about Thumos, is this sort of energy that young men have this spiritedness, this need for recognition. And so I think we can all, you know, in our knowledge of young men, recognize that there's something of that in them.

I have two little boys, right? And I think when they get older, there's a kind of desire to assert oneself in the world. And so young men are a big part of the audience. And I guess just again, going back to this problem of just meaning, right, in our modern liberal world and increasingly secularization. And people all over are searching for a kind of guidance in how to live their life. so I think young people are especially susceptible. But I think it's also, it's kind of narrow too because it's an online thing in many respects.

It's not clear how widespread this is, I think you've heard from listeners already during this conversation. You know, this is not, it's mainstream in a way because Pete Hegseth is the Secretary of Defense. But in other ways, I think it's important to note, you know, it's not all conservatives have this affinity towards masculinism. And certainly not all young men are drawn to this. So we don't want to exaggerate. We don't want to overstate how power. this is, especially because it's something that we can fight back against. I think, you know, this fragility of these men is really important. There are other versions of masculinity to celebrate.

There are other, we can all have open conversations about how to support the family. It doesn't have to be this vision. We're here with Laura Field. She's a political theorist and author of Furious Minds, the Making of the Maga New Right, and Helen Lewis, staff writer at the Atlantic. Let's talk about Graham Platner then. He's a candidate for Senate in Maine, Democratic candidate. And he came to mind with what you were just saying, Laura, about sort of the outward masculinity in the political world. Graham Platner has spoken directly, you know, that he's a gruff, deep-voiced, manly oyster farmer guy who used to be toxic in his view, had a toxic life post-war in Iraq. He says he's grown past it. He has all kinds of problems in his campaign. But his profile as a masculine manly man with a broad-churchase.

and a beard aligned not with conservative republicanism but with Democrats. What do you see in Graham Platner, his profile, his campaign that informs this discussion we're having? Well, I mean, I think that it shows that there are other models of masculinity, right, clearly. And I mean, I worry a little bit about the problems he's had recently even just this last week, right, with the kind of the sexting or whatever. So I'm not sure he should be our model. But I think there is a kind of acceptance there, right, this kind of man and even maybe a desire for that. And I think there are other models too.

I think of Talariko in Texas, right, who's fighting this battle now against presumably Ken Paxton, who's also mired in all his other kinds of controversies. And he's a, you know, he's a very forthright Christian and standing for a different kind of masculinity. He gets torn up by the, by the right. But I don't know how, I don't know how effective those attacks are. Well, Helen, in your piece, you mention k-fabe, and that's this theatrical style of acting. It's common and professional wrestling. And you reference it as a parallel to some of these masculinist influencers. I'm curious, why do you see that parallel? And how do you see a certain performance of masculinity showing up in our politics? Right, because I think the way that lots of these guys talk is,

you know, it is trolling and is performative. One thing I note in the piece is, you know, I was able to have these very pleasant, polite, intellectual conversations with them. But if you compare that with their online presence, it is, you know, it's absolutely night and day. So there is this kind of, and I think wrestling is a good way of thinking about it, this kind of heel turn, you know, that they want to be somebody that liberals, you know, rage against because that raises their standing among their, their peers. And that's a kind of skeleton key for understanding a huge amount of the Trump administration, I think, you know, the idea of, are you being serious, are you being silly?

And you mentioned Graham Platner, and I think my takeaway from that whole mess, is that you are now hearing people on the left dust down the exact same playbook that we heard about Donald Trump and the kind of locker room talk. And now we're hearing exactly the same thing that this is just locker room talk and what he's being attacked for is just being an average guy. And the question then arises, does the average guy repeatedly cheat on his partner? Does the average guy allegedly shove his partner into a room and lock the door her, you know, all of this kind of stuff.

So there are, like, there are deep questions being worked out about how much, and Laura mentions there, Fomos, Simos, this idea of kind of testosterone, right? This idea about how much are men innately kind of going to do all of these things? And actually, the people who don't, is that a reflection on them, are they like James James Talarico, you know, seem deemed to be less manly because they're not kind of all overdating sites or whatever it might be? Well, I mean, how when Laura said that she doesn't think this is something. it would be easy to overblow the,

overestimate the power and influence of this movement. And in your reporting, when you look at the players involved, when you look at the involvement of someone like Pete Hegseth at the highest levels of our government, is it your sense that this is a movement that's gaining traction in the GOP and could have longer-term impacts on how their policies are shaped? I see it in a couple of different ways.

I think one, it's a kind of see, handshake. You know, you say these things about women. You say you want to repeal the 19th Amendment as a way of showing that you're kind of cool with it, you know, that you can handle dealing with these edgy ideas. And that's also available to young maga women, too. It's not just young maga men. So I think that's definitely part of it. But when you ask to who the audience for this stuff is, sometimes literally the audience is young men working in the Trump administration, young Republicans, young college conservatives. That's the way that somebody like Bronze Age pervert frames his kind of political project. He wants to be read by young people who are going

to go on to be in positions of power. So, you know, we've heard from lots of your listeners who are, you know, find this ideology, you know, very alien to them. It's not their thing at all. But it doesn't necessarily have to be widely held or majority held to still have a profound effect on American politics, I think. Well, we'll end on some messages from you. Sophia emails, it's a shame that young and older men are succumbing to the ideology that America needs to turn back the clock in a sense to traditional nuclear heteronormative family values. Perhaps it stems from a serious lack of men being taught at early ages, healthy emotional processes, and regulation, and being taught that masculinity equals power and domination of others rather than

strength, courage, leadership, express their emotional intelligence and respect. I do see a counterculture shift in my circles in response to this. However, it's horrifying as a 27-year-old woman to see this shift that's being pushed on young boys on social media. Their minds are still malleable. And Bruce in Atlanta says as a white male, I am offended by what these guys are pushing as masculinity. Their toxic attitudes are harmful to so many people in situations. I don't understand why any male should think he is superior to female simply by virtue of him being male.

While we've been speaking to Helen Lewis, she's a staff writer at The Atlantic. Her June cover story for the magazine is titled The Men Who Want Women to Be Quiet. Also with us, Laura Kfield. She's a writer and political theorist and author of Furious Minds, the making of the MAGA New Right from Princeton University Press. Thanks to you both. You can hear more shows than our If You Can Keep It series on politics and democracy, including discussions on the Supreme Court and the Justice Department. Find them under the if you can keep a tab at the 1A.org.

Today's producer was Michael Filaro. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White. I'm Todd's Willie. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk again tomorrow. This is 1A.

This week on up first, President Trump heads to the NATO summit with a stark warning for Iran, make a deal or the U.S. will, quote, finish the job. We're tracking what the escalating tension means for energy prices, plus a critical, Senate race upended as Democrat Graham Platner faces sexual assault allegations. That's this week on Up First. Listen every morning on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're having such a sports summer. The New York Mix won the NBA championship. The World Cup is in full swing. And a new season of Love Island has brought us back into the villa. On It's Been a Minute, we talk about how this summer we're all coming together to root for our favorite sports teams and our favorite couples. Listen to It's Been a Minute on. on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.