Your essay makes me think, honestly, about the difficulties that an excess of choice can create for people. Much better writers than I have talked about the anxiety created for many American women post-Second Wave Feminism who have been told that they can "be anything", while at the same time being shackled by all the ways in which those expanded choices are still constricted by the realities of living in patriarchy. You can, as the old advertisement said, "bring home the bacon" in so many more ways now, but you better be ready to "fry it up in the pan" when you get there, because that's also still your job. In the face of the plethora of (weirdly bank-handed) choices, many women feel paralyzed. Though, to my mind, it's less about the choices available (such as they are), and more about the way they are layered on top of all the traditional expectations of women that persist.
In the face of that very gendered burden, is it any surprise that many women are either a) susceptible to trad wife propaganda, which purports to eliminate their anxiety by returning them to the simple clarity of patriarchal expectation, or b) resentful of a feminist movement that has yet to "fix" thousands of years of patriarchy? Easier to just buy that any despair you feel as a woman in the face of it all is a signal of your failings as an individual, rather than a systemic failing that you will likely be subjected to for the entirety of your life. Be a feminist and court despair all your life (she says as a lifelong feminist)!
It seems like, for men, there is a flip side to this conundrum. Post-Second Wave Feminism they've been encouraged to be more emotionally complex, more accountable, more vulnerable, more engaged in the daily, intimate maintenance of families and relationships and community, all while moving through a patriarchal world that still devalues all of those things systemically and doesn't teach anyone how to do any of it (men or women, honestly). So, they still have to figure out how to "be men" in a world that has very narrow ideas of what that means, at the same time that they're expected to be more than that, with very little guidance about how.
Add to that a culture that is so judgmental and essentialist around bodies (Female bodies can make babies and are subject to hormonal cycles! They must all be mothers and crazy to boot! Males have a preponderance of testosterone! That must make them natural warriors and dominators!) Young men aren't actually given nuanced guidance about how to live with the ebbs and flows of being in male body without just being an aggressive asshole because you can. Is it any wonder that the Pete Hegseths of the world want to buy into a simplistic, performative narrative of masculinity that lets them avoid all the complications of figuring out how to be a person navigating this world with billions of other complex, imperfect, overburdened, confused people? Because that shit is really hard, and never stops being hard.
None of this is an excuse for Pete Hegseth. He's a small-minded, weak-willed, puppet of a person, playing a Real Boy for all to witness. But I think we do ourselves a disservice if we see him as special in his awfulness, rather than simply a particularly well-rendered symptom of a systemic conundrum that we're all responsible for perpetuating and fixing, to the extent that we can, while we're still here.
I think this is very, very astute, and absolutely agree that there's nothing special about what all this hollow pursuit has done to him. If he's useful, in its in how clearly this particular destination of masculinity just looks so exhausting. That seems important because your insight into the "excess of choice" of it all is really well put-- both traditional masculinity and trad-wife femininity are being sold as forms of freedom from the muddier, murkier alternatives, but the thing about simplicity is it's supposed to make your life easier! And those lifestyles are so much harder to maintain!
Are they harder, though? I mean, they're harder on your soul, I think. But that's very much my bias. They're certainly easier from the perspective of feeling socially acceptable, even admired perhaps, which I have to remember is way more important to many people than it is for me. He doesn't have a life I want (I agree, it seems exhausting), but he has a life we're raised to want-- power, access, money, a pretty, blonde wife, seemingly healthy children. He may be willing to barter his soul for that. He may not even see it as a soul barter because he fits the prevailing narrative of successful masculinity and attainment.
I think what I'd offer, re: "is it harder?" is that it if were actually easier (especially given how much that life matches, as you note, the things we'e been taught to idealize) there'd be a moment when the Hegseth's of the world were satisfied, when they could stop going to increasingly ridiculous lengths to prove that, no really, they're real men. I mean, my guy's primary animating impetus for becoming Secretary of Defense (a hard job) was his personal offense that women serving in combat roles diminished his own manly service. That doesn't seem like a man who's happy!
But, of course, I'm probably not a great analyst of whether he's happy or not, because as you note so well it's clearly not the life either of us want, but it is a life that we're taught to want. So I could be very wrong! I appreciate you pushing me here.
As you know, we agree about Hegseth and most things. But I keep thinking about the saying, "We get to choose our hard." I don't want any part of the hardness of his life, but he doesn't want any part of the hardness of mine, either. They're both hard, though. We (those of us that want gender roles and a world, generally, that are both more complex and nuanced and, maybe, PLEASE GOD, someday less hard) have to figure out how to be more rewarding than the simplicity of patriarchal gender roles and social acceptance.
I think we're likely very close here, and of course nobody's life is easy in a world still shaped by all these awful intersecting forces. The only thing I'll offer (as the cis man comparison for Hegseth here) is that while I wouldn't say my life is free of hardship, I think it's full of a lot more joy and peace than his is (and a lot more than mine was when I cared a whole lot more about what kind of man I appeared to be in public).
Amen. And my life, similarly, is hard, but got SO MUCH easier once I stopped worrying about how anybody felt about my performance of womanhood or femininity. That, as you've said, might be the worst, hardest thing-- that endless chasing of other people's affirmation of our choices and performance.
That also seems the greatest trap of patriarchal gender roles-- that they're dependent on no one admitting they're a performance.
In reading this essay, I couldn't help but reflect on the friends I have who have served in the military, and the ways that they are the antithesis of what we see in Hegseth because they have embraced care, empathy, and interdependence. And the throughline I see is that they have done the work to know who they are and what is important to them such that they don't care how they are perceived by those who don't know them well. My best friend's husband who keeps a spotless kitchen and who trains dozens of teenage recruits in discipline. The best man in our wedding, the Army pediatrician who worries about tiny 2 lb babies and kept all our crappy college cars running. My husband's childhood friend who was deployed so many times that no one can keep track and who talks openly about the scars on one's soul that taking a human life leaves (and who has no patience for anyone doing anything stupid with a deadly weapon). We're all spread out over the country these days because that's what life in the military requires these days, but I remember a recent conversation with a friend whose oldest son is nearly 14, where she lamented that we couldn't all spend more time together because she really wishes her kid had more time to see all the different models of how to be a man. When I think about these friends, I see men who have chosen to believe that caring for people and relationships matters, and that caring is a strength, not a weakness. (And thus these tend to be people in well-connected networks of family and friends that look out for each other.)
This is such a lovely tribute to what sounds like a lovely network and community. In every case, contra Hegseth, it sounds like the way they lived their lives (both personally and professionally) was so focused on others, rather than trying to prove something about themselves.
I appreciate this essay a lot. Would love to hear you and Chris Crass take on masculinity in a conversation - do you know of his current work with White men?
My job with high schoolers gives me the opportunity to watch the boys take in the Hegseths and Rogans of the world and for some of these kids, it's obvious that they have few other voices influencing them. I see a quite a few men my age (40s) working through a lot of the crap they've been taught, which is great, but . . . I imagine my students motoring through life and having no one in their workplace, their family, their romantic relationships with the language or will to step in front of them and say, "this needs to stop, this isn't the way". Makes me feel desperate to impart humane values to them at every opportunity . . . but how far that will go against the tidal wave of all that other crap? I'm not extra hopeful.
Re: your students, what do you notice about what about this particular story of masculinity is so appealing? Or is it not particularly appealing, there's just a dearth of other options (and the social fear of not joining the crowd)?
I think they're getting pro-GOP and some pro-MAGA stuff at home . . . the kids I'm thinking of are thinkers and are drawn to podcasts, talking/thinking stuff . . . and the Rogans of the world are on their algorithms and it just keeps cycling. When I have one-on-one or small group discussions with them, they express thoughtful opinions and haven't bought into the sneering side of things deeply, but the main voices they have access to are making complex arguments which seem to be backed up by evidence. I think they feel like they are paying attention to the intelligent people and that seems moral to them (compared to those who scream shockingly amoral stuff). And I think they just haven't lived long enough, been exposed to enough, to have heard of other ways of thinking.
One of them went to see Charlie Kirk speak at a state university recently, and came back unimpressed - he couldn't hear Kirk speak and thought that the crowd was pretty stupid, despite mostly being older than him. He said he wanted to go see the spectacle, which surprised me, because that doesn't seem like his thing.
Today, they asked me if I felt I'd be a better president than Trump. I said I thought I would, not because I'd have great answers to all our problems, but because I would hope to assemble/appoint people who are experienced, moral and focused on serving the people rather than themselves - and I don't see that in our current administration. I said that with all the things that have lead us to this point in history, with our hands in what they're in, it's virtually impossible to be in that role - the most powerful position in the world, even if we're losing power - and NOT make choices that harm someone or are inhumane in some way.
This little group of guys are the only ones I can speak openly to, as we've gotten to a place where I trust they aren't going to turn me in for speaking openly about "politics". I also don't bring up the topic, I let them bring it up. Otherwise, I talk about all sorts of stuff (our curricula gives me lots of entry points) but in ways that aren't naming our political parties . . . I focus on values and morals and human rights and needs.
There are a few kids I've had over the years who DO seem drawn to the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world and that sort of rhetoric, "owning the libs" and such. I'm very careful around those kids, both speaking directly to the mean crap they say which almost always targets another student in the class, and also not getting into partisan stuff. I've thankfully had more thoughtful boys who just don't have many other voices in their periphery.
This line made my day: Two preening tough guys— men who may wear suits but who assure you that they’d be more comfortable shirtless, pecs gleaming in the C-Span lights— peacocking for one another in a wood paneled hearing room.
Gold.
The part about how men don't need to be taught how to be a different version of masculinity but just kind and loving humans--thank you! I shout this at every Ross Douthian podcast I hear, and I've never heard an actual man say it out loud :)
It's been a recent development for me articulating it that way for myself (shout out to Ruth Whippman's Boymom), and I guess I'm still open to the idea that there could be somebody smarter than me who could start the conversation from "how to be a man" and get to a destination that was neither still rooted in patriarchy nor just naval-gazing and deep-sighing for its own sake, but for me the "what is my relationship to the people around me and how do I strengthen them?" has helped me a million times more in rethinking my relationship to patriarchy than asking directly "what's a different version of being a man."
Well said. And Ruth is the best! Would be curious what your take is on Reeve’s work, too.
I find myself wanting to believe but struggling bw “is now the time to be centering boys/men?” And if, as you say, any kind of convo about “masculinity’ can be separated from patriarchy meaningfully.
I think spending a lot of time reading/thinking about Reeves (who I appreciate as somebody who cares about this deeply, but who I also struggle with) that also helped me get to the "we do need to talk to men specifically, but not about how to be men" camp. I realized that where I find a lot of his work to be the weakest (as in his gap year proposals) it's where he gets the most essentialist/biological and also when he most accepts the right's "boys and men are under attack" framing every time women and trans people try to point out what's unworkable about the moment. How about you?
I don’t have anything this thoughtful to reply with, I wish that I did! I think I feel basically the same (esp regarding essentialism) but would love to hear people like you and Ruth on this. Unsurprisingly I worry that girls and women’s rights are under historic and wide scale attack rn and think about how to balance that with concerns about boys too. And Ofc they are intertwined! But also men are still are in charge of…almost everything. So the ways they are “left behind” sometimes feel should be more nuanced.
Just saying if you ever write a post related I would eat it up :)
The song at the end of this essay reminded me of the gorgeous poem Self Portrait With No Flag by Safia Elhillo. I can't believe I forgot it during our discussion of patriotism!
Before all the Hegseth insanity, perhaps just before the inauguration of the Fall of the USA, a close friend, an academic, usually on the liberal side of the aisle, with 2 adult sons, plaintively asked: don't we need to worry about the way we're all taking away the manhood of our young white males and making them feel bad about themselves? To my knowledge neither he nor his sons served in the military. I think Hegseth has helped him with his answer and he's back on track, but it certainly reminded me that we don't help ourselves by creating an us/them dichotomy and focusing on vilifying rather than conversing.
I think you're absolutely right, Gail. I think it's really crucial that those of us who love justice and humanity keep a welcoming arm out to young men, and that hand becomes more, not less, outstretched when we name how bankrupt the vision being offered by the traditional masculinity crew truly is.
Your essay makes me think, honestly, about the difficulties that an excess of choice can create for people. Much better writers than I have talked about the anxiety created for many American women post-Second Wave Feminism who have been told that they can "be anything", while at the same time being shackled by all the ways in which those expanded choices are still constricted by the realities of living in patriarchy. You can, as the old advertisement said, "bring home the bacon" in so many more ways now, but you better be ready to "fry it up in the pan" when you get there, because that's also still your job. In the face of the plethora of (weirdly bank-handed) choices, many women feel paralyzed. Though, to my mind, it's less about the choices available (such as they are), and more about the way they are layered on top of all the traditional expectations of women that persist.
In the face of that very gendered burden, is it any surprise that many women are either a) susceptible to trad wife propaganda, which purports to eliminate their anxiety by returning them to the simple clarity of patriarchal expectation, or b) resentful of a feminist movement that has yet to "fix" thousands of years of patriarchy? Easier to just buy that any despair you feel as a woman in the face of it all is a signal of your failings as an individual, rather than a systemic failing that you will likely be subjected to for the entirety of your life. Be a feminist and court despair all your life (she says as a lifelong feminist)!
It seems like, for men, there is a flip side to this conundrum. Post-Second Wave Feminism they've been encouraged to be more emotionally complex, more accountable, more vulnerable, more engaged in the daily, intimate maintenance of families and relationships and community, all while moving through a patriarchal world that still devalues all of those things systemically and doesn't teach anyone how to do any of it (men or women, honestly). So, they still have to figure out how to "be men" in a world that has very narrow ideas of what that means, at the same time that they're expected to be more than that, with very little guidance about how.
Add to that a culture that is so judgmental and essentialist around bodies (Female bodies can make babies and are subject to hormonal cycles! They must all be mothers and crazy to boot! Males have a preponderance of testosterone! That must make them natural warriors and dominators!) Young men aren't actually given nuanced guidance about how to live with the ebbs and flows of being in male body without just being an aggressive asshole because you can. Is it any wonder that the Pete Hegseths of the world want to buy into a simplistic, performative narrative of masculinity that lets them avoid all the complications of figuring out how to be a person navigating this world with billions of other complex, imperfect, overburdened, confused people? Because that shit is really hard, and never stops being hard.
None of this is an excuse for Pete Hegseth. He's a small-minded, weak-willed, puppet of a person, playing a Real Boy for all to witness. But I think we do ourselves a disservice if we see him as special in his awfulness, rather than simply a particularly well-rendered symptom of a systemic conundrum that we're all responsible for perpetuating and fixing, to the extent that we can, while we're still here.
I think this is very, very astute, and absolutely agree that there's nothing special about what all this hollow pursuit has done to him. If he's useful, in its in how clearly this particular destination of masculinity just looks so exhausting. That seems important because your insight into the "excess of choice" of it all is really well put-- both traditional masculinity and trad-wife femininity are being sold as forms of freedom from the muddier, murkier alternatives, but the thing about simplicity is it's supposed to make your life easier! And those lifestyles are so much harder to maintain!
Are they harder, though? I mean, they're harder on your soul, I think. But that's very much my bias. They're certainly easier from the perspective of feeling socially acceptable, even admired perhaps, which I have to remember is way more important to many people than it is for me. He doesn't have a life I want (I agree, it seems exhausting), but he has a life we're raised to want-- power, access, money, a pretty, blonde wife, seemingly healthy children. He may be willing to barter his soul for that. He may not even see it as a soul barter because he fits the prevailing narrative of successful masculinity and attainment.
Love this conversation.
I think what I'd offer, re: "is it harder?" is that it if were actually easier (especially given how much that life matches, as you note, the things we'e been taught to idealize) there'd be a moment when the Hegseth's of the world were satisfied, when they could stop going to increasingly ridiculous lengths to prove that, no really, they're real men. I mean, my guy's primary animating impetus for becoming Secretary of Defense (a hard job) was his personal offense that women serving in combat roles diminished his own manly service. That doesn't seem like a man who's happy!
But, of course, I'm probably not a great analyst of whether he's happy or not, because as you note so well it's clearly not the life either of us want, but it is a life that we're taught to want. So I could be very wrong! I appreciate you pushing me here.
As you know, we agree about Hegseth and most things. But I keep thinking about the saying, "We get to choose our hard." I don't want any part of the hardness of his life, but he doesn't want any part of the hardness of mine, either. They're both hard, though. We (those of us that want gender roles and a world, generally, that are both more complex and nuanced and, maybe, PLEASE GOD, someday less hard) have to figure out how to be more rewarding than the simplicity of patriarchal gender roles and social acceptance.
I think we're likely very close here, and of course nobody's life is easy in a world still shaped by all these awful intersecting forces. The only thing I'll offer (as the cis man comparison for Hegseth here) is that while I wouldn't say my life is free of hardship, I think it's full of a lot more joy and peace than his is (and a lot more than mine was when I cared a whole lot more about what kind of man I appeared to be in public).
Amen. And my life, similarly, is hard, but got SO MUCH easier once I stopped worrying about how anybody felt about my performance of womanhood or femininity. That, as you've said, might be the worst, hardest thing-- that endless chasing of other people's affirmation of our choices and performance.
That also seems the greatest trap of patriarchal gender roles-- that they're dependent on no one admitting they're a performance.
In reading this essay, I couldn't help but reflect on the friends I have who have served in the military, and the ways that they are the antithesis of what we see in Hegseth because they have embraced care, empathy, and interdependence. And the throughline I see is that they have done the work to know who they are and what is important to them such that they don't care how they are perceived by those who don't know them well. My best friend's husband who keeps a spotless kitchen and who trains dozens of teenage recruits in discipline. The best man in our wedding, the Army pediatrician who worries about tiny 2 lb babies and kept all our crappy college cars running. My husband's childhood friend who was deployed so many times that no one can keep track and who talks openly about the scars on one's soul that taking a human life leaves (and who has no patience for anyone doing anything stupid with a deadly weapon). We're all spread out over the country these days because that's what life in the military requires these days, but I remember a recent conversation with a friend whose oldest son is nearly 14, where she lamented that we couldn't all spend more time together because she really wishes her kid had more time to see all the different models of how to be a man. When I think about these friends, I see men who have chosen to believe that caring for people and relationships matters, and that caring is a strength, not a weakness. (And thus these tend to be people in well-connected networks of family and friends that look out for each other.)
This is such a lovely tribute to what sounds like a lovely network and community. In every case, contra Hegseth, it sounds like the way they lived their lives (both personally and professionally) was so focused on others, rather than trying to prove something about themselves.
I appreciate this essay a lot. Would love to hear you and Chris Crass take on masculinity in a conversation - do you know of his current work with White men?
My job with high schoolers gives me the opportunity to watch the boys take in the Hegseths and Rogans of the world and for some of these kids, it's obvious that they have few other voices influencing them. I see a quite a few men my age (40s) working through a lot of the crap they've been taught, which is great, but . . . I imagine my students motoring through life and having no one in their workplace, their family, their romantic relationships with the language or will to step in front of them and say, "this needs to stop, this isn't the way". Makes me feel desperate to impart humane values to them at every opportunity . . . but how far that will go against the tidal wave of all that other crap? I'm not extra hopeful.
Love Chris' work.
Re: your students, what do you notice about what about this particular story of masculinity is so appealing? Or is it not particularly appealing, there's just a dearth of other options (and the social fear of not joining the crowd)?
I think they're getting pro-GOP and some pro-MAGA stuff at home . . . the kids I'm thinking of are thinkers and are drawn to podcasts, talking/thinking stuff . . . and the Rogans of the world are on their algorithms and it just keeps cycling. When I have one-on-one or small group discussions with them, they express thoughtful opinions and haven't bought into the sneering side of things deeply, but the main voices they have access to are making complex arguments which seem to be backed up by evidence. I think they feel like they are paying attention to the intelligent people and that seems moral to them (compared to those who scream shockingly amoral stuff). And I think they just haven't lived long enough, been exposed to enough, to have heard of other ways of thinking.
One of them went to see Charlie Kirk speak at a state university recently, and came back unimpressed - he couldn't hear Kirk speak and thought that the crowd was pretty stupid, despite mostly being older than him. He said he wanted to go see the spectacle, which surprised me, because that doesn't seem like his thing.
Today, they asked me if I felt I'd be a better president than Trump. I said I thought I would, not because I'd have great answers to all our problems, but because I would hope to assemble/appoint people who are experienced, moral and focused on serving the people rather than themselves - and I don't see that in our current administration. I said that with all the things that have lead us to this point in history, with our hands in what they're in, it's virtually impossible to be in that role - the most powerful position in the world, even if we're losing power - and NOT make choices that harm someone or are inhumane in some way.
This little group of guys are the only ones I can speak openly to, as we've gotten to a place where I trust they aren't going to turn me in for speaking openly about "politics". I also don't bring up the topic, I let them bring it up. Otherwise, I talk about all sorts of stuff (our curricula gives me lots of entry points) but in ways that aren't naming our political parties . . . I focus on values and morals and human rights and needs.
There are a few kids I've had over the years who DO seem drawn to the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world and that sort of rhetoric, "owning the libs" and such. I'm very careful around those kids, both speaking directly to the mean crap they say which almost always targets another student in the class, and also not getting into partisan stuff. I've thankfully had more thoughtful boys who just don't have many other voices in their periphery.
This line made my day: Two preening tough guys— men who may wear suits but who assure you that they’d be more comfortable shirtless, pecs gleaming in the C-Span lights— peacocking for one another in a wood paneled hearing room.
Gold.
The part about how men don't need to be taught how to be a different version of masculinity but just kind and loving humans--thank you! I shout this at every Ross Douthian podcast I hear, and I've never heard an actual man say it out loud :)
It's been a recent development for me articulating it that way for myself (shout out to Ruth Whippman's Boymom), and I guess I'm still open to the idea that there could be somebody smarter than me who could start the conversation from "how to be a man" and get to a destination that was neither still rooted in patriarchy nor just naval-gazing and deep-sighing for its own sake, but for me the "what is my relationship to the people around me and how do I strengthen them?" has helped me a million times more in rethinking my relationship to patriarchy than asking directly "what's a different version of being a man."
Well said. And Ruth is the best! Would be curious what your take is on Reeve’s work, too.
I find myself wanting to believe but struggling bw “is now the time to be centering boys/men?” And if, as you say, any kind of convo about “masculinity’ can be separated from patriarchy meaningfully.
I think spending a lot of time reading/thinking about Reeves (who I appreciate as somebody who cares about this deeply, but who I also struggle with) that also helped me get to the "we do need to talk to men specifically, but not about how to be men" camp. I realized that where I find a lot of his work to be the weakest (as in his gap year proposals) it's where he gets the most essentialist/biological and also when he most accepts the right's "boys and men are under attack" framing every time women and trans people try to point out what's unworkable about the moment. How about you?
I don’t have anything this thoughtful to reply with, I wish that I did! I think I feel basically the same (esp regarding essentialism) but would love to hear people like you and Ruth on this. Unsurprisingly I worry that girls and women’s rights are under historic and wide scale attack rn and think about how to balance that with concerns about boys too. And Ofc they are intertwined! But also men are still are in charge of…almost everything. So the ways they are “left behind” sometimes feel should be more nuanced.
Just saying if you ever write a post related I would eat it up :)
"The only problem is, his lifelong adversary has been his tether to the rest of humanity— his sense of empathy, care and interdependence."
Yes yes yes.
It's really tragic!
The song at the end of this essay reminded me of the gorgeous poem Self Portrait With No Flag by Safia Elhillo. I can't believe I forgot it during our discussion of patriotism!
https://getlitanthology.org/poemdetail/425/
No time like the present to share a lovely piece!
Before all the Hegseth insanity, perhaps just before the inauguration of the Fall of the USA, a close friend, an academic, usually on the liberal side of the aisle, with 2 adult sons, plaintively asked: don't we need to worry about the way we're all taking away the manhood of our young white males and making them feel bad about themselves? To my knowledge neither he nor his sons served in the military. I think Hegseth has helped him with his answer and he's back on track, but it certainly reminded me that we don't help ourselves by creating an us/them dichotomy and focusing on vilifying rather than conversing.
I think you're absolutely right, Gail. I think it's really crucial that those of us who love justice and humanity keep a welcoming arm out to young men, and that hand becomes more, not less, outstretched when we name how bankrupt the vision being offered by the traditional masculinity crew truly is.