Let's Talk About Boys

Yeah, yeah...boys

Pendulums swing, but not precisely. They are not metronomes. In the course of my lifetime, the gender-power pendulum has swung dramatically toward women—they have advanced dramatically in the workplace, they are better educated than men, they have changed the global sensibility toward humanism, compassion and care. Various forms of despicable male behavior have become unacceptable. I suspect we’re about to experience a run of women political leaders, especially Presidents. These are all good things. But there have been negative effects as well, especially on the psychology of men. This recent report from Brookings—Elaine Kamarck strikes again (with help from Jordan Muchnik), relying on research done by her colleague Richard Reeves—outlines a tectonic shift in human dynamics.

Men are bummed. Their comparative advantage, muscle-labor, has been supplanted by brain labor. They aren’t any better at thinking and reasoning than women. Too many are rendered ineffective by their unruly passions—reversing the ancient canard about gender. Their natural aggression has been domesticated; a certain number of men were never going to adjust easily to that. Indeed, 45% believe they are being discriminated against—and, to some extent they have a case: toxic masculinity has become a common slur, often justified, but sometimes overcooked. We don’t hear much about toxic femininity, but it exists, subtly…and sometimes not so subtly. I first noticed it 30 years ago in Michikuo Kakutani’s absurd New York Times review of Richard Brookhiser’s brilliant short biography of George Washington—this was in 1996 and the reek of its toxic feminism still lingers:

In Mr. Brookhiser's case, he has managed to be both tedious and sycophantic…and pushes his entire narrative toward the silly, simplistic and unsubstantiated conclusion that contemporary confusion about fathers and fatherhood has resulted in our estrangement from Washington, the "father" of this country.

And what is so tedious and sycophantic?

He writes of the first President's "workaday feats of strength and stamina," his skill at dancing and riding, and his taste for uniforms.

Kakutani gets this precisely wrong. According to every other biography of the man I’ve read, Washinton’s incredible skill as a horseman—he was said to be the best of his generation, a talent much prized—was crucial to his ability to establish authority and lead his troops, and then to lead his nation. His stature—he was 6.4”—and grace, and personal restraint, didn’t hurt either. Physical courage is no less important than moral courage in human affairs; taken together, as they were with Washington, they often signal greatness.

Kamarck and Muchnik make this observation:

Glocalities [the polling firm] found young women are most concerned about issues like “sexual harassment, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, and mental health problems.” Men were generally more focused on “competition, bravery, and honor.” The study found young men have become more patriarchal in their orientations overall when compared with women and even older men.

The analysis further linked “feelings of despair and societal disillusionment, a focus on patriarchal values, and rebelling against cosmopolitan liberal values” to the growing rise of the radical right.

Of course, it’s about time that sufficient attention was paid to issues like “sexual harassment, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect.” But it’s also true that “competition, bravery, and honor” were essential to the development and survival of our species. The archeologist Ludovic Slimak argues that male coming-of-age rituals which emphasized such values, centering on the hunt, were common even among Neanderthals. And the military historian William McNeill argued in Keeping Together in Time that the dances men performed to rehearse the hunt were essential—and perhaps even selected for—in the evolutionary process. If you went out alone to hunt a lion, there was a good chance you wouldn’t survive; if you practiced the “kill the lion” dance and went out as a coordinated group, chances were better than you’d have a nice loin of lion for dinner.

The need for these ceremonies is hardwired in men. And we have lost track of their importance over time. We have decided they are unnecessary, perhaps even barbaric. And there is some validity to that, too: Technology has robbed combat of whatever nobility it might once have had. War is now an act of impersonal insanity; kinetic violence has become brutal beyond reason. But the essential male survival instincts of competition, physical bravery and honor remain in our DNA. They have been socialized through sports, but nothing quite beats the “muscular bonding” of close-order drill that McNeill describes. I once asked Eric Greitens—a Navy SEAL elected Governor of Missouri who turned out to be something of a scoundrel, but a smart guy nonetheless—how he would get testosterone-addled pubescent boys to pay more attention in school. He said, “I’d give them an hour of PT [physical training] every morning before class.”

Many of the recent laments about the loss of masculinity—like Josh Hawley’s book Manhood—are simplistic, and have been dismissed out of hand as toxic. But this is a political and policy question that warrants serious discussion. Boys are falling behind academically; they are not meeting their social responsibilities, especially devoted fatherhood. The Washington Post recently reported that a staggering 28% of men under 30 had no sex in the past year! And 34% still live with their parents. All too many have lives of onanistic fantasy, playing video games and watching porn. Too many of them have no idea how to act around women, how to be charming or gallant or thoughtful. Too few boys know how to court a woman, how to flirt; too few of them are engaged in having children, building families. As John Ellis reports in News Items:

(The) global shift towards very low fertility, with the exception (so far) of sub-Saharan Africa, is among the most important events in our world. One implication is that the population of Africa is forecast to be larger than that of all today’s high-income countries, plus China by 2060. Another is that familiar population pyramids, with the largest numbers at the youngest ages, are inverting. In South Korea, for example, males aged 50-54 are 4.3 per cent of the population, while those aged 0-4 are a mere 1.5 per cent of it. Similar inversions are occurring elsewhere, notably including China and even, albeit more slowly, in India. (Source: ft.com)

There are political implications, obviously. A good part of Donald Trump’s support—and a good part of the gender gap—comes from alienated men. Right-wing populist militias—and inner city street gangs—feed on resentment, and the absence of community, and the neglect of approved channels for “muscular bonding.”

I am not arguing here for a restoration of machismo. Far from it. But the disdain for maleness, for competition, for meat-eating, for a healthy masculine appreciation of women—saying, “Hey, you look great today” needn’t be an act of aggression—has distorted society. A “me too” accusation has nuclear power; it makes a clumsy attempt at courtship potentially ruinous. The fact that writers like Kakutani have been able to peddle their parochialism unchallenged—it would be sexist to challenge them!—has led to a destructive diffidence and sometimes, yes, toxic, reaction among too many men.

Pendulums swing...Testosterone need not be fetishized, but it shouldn’t be reproved, either. The relationship between men and women need not be oppressors v. oppressed, even if that was the case too often in the past. We need to begin to think about policies to redress the current imbalance—for starters, a major effort to bring boys up to educational parity—lest a minority of aggressor troglodytes lay waste to our democracy.

Men and women are different. Neither gender is superior. We are different but equal. We need to acknowledge that, and be smart about it.

Creative Masculinity…and Joe Biden

Too often Democratic politicians try to win over black voters by bribing them with laundry lists—and all too often, they’re offering the wrong laundry. (Not enough emphasis on issues like crime, school choice and immigration.) Right now, a better course of action would be to remind black audiences just how atrocious a person Donald Trump is. Biden—finally!—did that at a rally the other day:

“What would’ve happened if Black Americans had stormed the Capitol? I don’t think [Trump would] be talking about pardons,” Biden said. “This is the same guy who wanted to tear gas you as you peacefully protested GEORGE FLOYD’s murder. It’s the same guy who still calls the ‘Central Park Five’ guilty, even though they were exonerated. He’s that landlord who denies housing applications because of the color of your skin. He’s that guy who won’t say ‘Black Lives Matter’ and invokes neo-Nazi, Third Reich terms. We all remember, Trump is the same guy who unleashed the birtherism lie against BARACK [OBAMA].”

More of this, please, Mr. President.

Creative Masculinity…and Benjamin Franklin

We’ve just been watching the Apple+ series Franklin starring Michael Douglas as the elderly Benjamin Franklin and it is simply excellent, a vital lesson in diplomacy, American history and…naughtiness. Now there was a fellow who knew how to flirt!

A similar series about George Washington—and another about the rivalry of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson—would be valuable. (As was Ethan Hawke’s Showtime series about John Brown, The Good Lord Bird, with an extravagantly charming and masculine Frederick Douglass portrayal.)