"Masculinsim" Goes Mainstream: A Movement to Fight Feminism  🔗 **Source:** ["Masculinsim" Goes Mainstream: A Movement to Fight Feminism](https://share.snipd.com/episode/050d8339-8149-43c8-8342-667a1dfe940f) ## Highlights - **Masculinism Defined As Political Ideology** - Masculinism is a coherent political ideology arguing men and women are suited for different roles and that men should lead publicly while women be caregivers. - Helen Lewis links it to policy aims like repealing the 19th Amendment and household-based voting as alternatives to individual rights. Transcript: Helen Lewis Quite a long time now. It's the idea essentially that men should be in charge, that that's the way that the world should be ordered, that you get now new versions of it that are about talking about biology. You know, men's hormones mean that they're more suited for government. But it's not exactly patriarchy in the sense that it is a political ideology. And it's one that its adherence will kind of argue for. And I didn't want to just say sexism or misogyny because I think that is a kind of conversation ender. You know, we can all agree that's bad. Well, I say we can all agree that's bad. Obviously, quite a lot of people don't agree that's bad. But I wanted to give this its due as being a fleshed out set of ideas that sit behind the manosphere influences that people might have heard of your Andrew Tate's or your Myron Gaines of Fresh and Fit and has got a kind of intellectual underpinning both to them and to the MAGA movement. When you say it's a political ideology, what do you mean? In the sense that there is a set of governing ideas, and then a series of kind of policy proposals that flow from them. In the same way that you might see this as the kind of flip side of feminism. So the idea behind feminism was that men and women should be politically and financially equal. And you should enact policies in order to make that happen. You should give women the vote, you should make them entitled to equal pay for equal work, you should stop discrimination that keeps women out of being judges, say, or serving in the Military, whatever it might be. This is the other side of that. It says men and women aren't equal. They're suited for different things. Men are much better suited to being politicians, to being CEOs, to serving in combat roles. And women's role is to be nurturers, supporters, mothers. ([Time 0:02:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cd2e8b7c-2b08-4448-a0b9-ce77cb2024a9)) - **Douglas Wilson's Household Voting Argument** - Douglas Wilson argues pre-19th Amendment household voting was preferable because husbands represented families at the ballot box. - Wilson frames suffrage as replacing 'covenanted' family units with atomistic individualism and blames it for social decay. Transcript: Terry Gross Sure. Because this is him talking about why we should repeal the 19th Amendment. Speaker 3 Back in the bad old days, before the 19th Amendment, the men were considered to be the heads of their households and represented their families at the ballot box. So what happened when their wives were granted suffrage? Let us take a typical presidential election to illustrate it, using the first one in 1920 after women's suffrage was accomplished, the election between Warren Harding and James Cox. If both the husband and wife vote for Harding, say, then what you have done is simply multiply the number of total votes cast for him by two. And if the husband votes for Harding say, and the wife votes for Cox, then what you have done is cancel out the voice of that particular household. Upon discovering how they were each going to vote, what would be the harm if the two of them just stayed home for a quiet dinner together in order to cancel out one another's vote that way? Where was the great progress supposed to be located? The net effect of women's suffrage was not an advance in women's rights, but rather part of a push to replace covenanted entities, like families, with raw individualism. An overweening state greatly prefers governing an atomistic populace, where each individual is like a BB thrown into an electoral sack. There's no structural rigidity to it, especially after laxity in the law concerning porn, pot, and poker has now greased all the BBs. Nothing coheres anymore. In the older system, the people were grouped in molecules, Birch's little platoons, some of them quite complex, and molecular societies are much more capable of resisting the demands Of statism. So the suffrage movement was actually not taking up the cause of women, but rather was part of a long-sustained war on the family. The nadir of this kind of thinking says that a decision to abort a child is a decision between a woman and her doctor. The father of the child is stripped of any legal ability to protect the life of his own legitimate child. We need to retrace all of our steps in order to discover how travesty like that could ever happen. And when we do, we discover that a lot of it started at Seneca Falls. ([Time 0:04:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9749513a-559b-4137-b59b-813604fcb86c)) - **Gender Roles Unite The American Right** - Lewis argues masculinism is the single strongest unifying force on the American right because it transcends policy splits by centering traditional gender roles. - She observed disparate MAGA factions cohere around the notion 'men should be men, women should be women.' Transcript: Terry Gross As the single most important force uniting the American right, bringing together an unlikely constellation of pastors, senators, preachers, influencers, podcasters, and fanboys. Why do you think it's the most important factor uniting the American right? You know, when I was writing this, I was thinking about what are the linking strands between MAGA and the kind of loose constellation of influences around that. Helen Lewis And it was just in the middle of a very, very big split over Israel. You know, you have people like the podcaster Tucker Carlson taking a very different line from the White House, criticizing the White House very strongly on that. And you also had Tucker Carlson hosting the very, very right-wing podcaster Nick Fuentes on his show, which the Heritage Foundation refused to condemn. And then there was then a mass walkout from the Heritage Foundation. Lots of people up sticks and went to Mike Pence's new foundation. You know, these things are causing really big schisms. You might think as well of the over regulating AI, for example, there are very different views on that. Free trade generally versus protectionism. America first isolationism versus foreign policy adventuring. You know, these are really deep splits that I think whoever succeeds Donald Trump will have to manage very carefully. I mean, you've seen J.D. Vance has been given the poison chalice of being the face of the Iran negotiations. Any successor to Trump is going to have difficulty holding his coalition together because the only thing really they can agree on is that Trump is the alpha king. But maybe the one thing that they do all agree with is traditional gender roles are better. Men should be men, women should be women. Women have got a bit too uppity. It's better that they should be seen and not heard, or at least they should succeed in kind of MAGA approved ways. And there's a very strong aesthetic look about many of the women at the top of that movement. And that is very traditionally feminine, you know, iron femme, really. So I just found it was it was basically apart from the persona of Donald Trump, one of the only things that I could see that really united them. ([Time 0:10:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/84223325-3bf8-4f25-a9de-421c57c15ac8)) - **Fertility Anxiety Tied To Demographic Fears** - Masculinists blame falling fertility on feminism and women's workforce participation, framing natality as a cultural crisis. - Lewis notes this explanation is flexible and often tied to racialized fears about demographic change and immigration. Transcript: Terry Gross But the explanation among many masculinists is like, plain women, they don't want to have children anymore, or they don't want to have as many children, or they're going to work and They're not staying home and therefore they're not having children. And I feel like, oh, women can't win because if women want children, then a lot of men complain, oh, women, all they want to do is have children. I don't want to have children. I don't want to have that many children. I don't want to be tied down like that. So like the pendulums with this movement is swinging toward like fertility, stay home, have lots of children. What do you see that as being about? Is that connected at all to the fear that white people will no longer be the majority population in a few decades? Oh, I mean, absolutely. Helen Lewis I mean, somebody like Elon Musk has taken up a very true and upsetting story about grooming gangs in Britain. But the thesis behind it has been expanded into this all-purpose bogeyman of essentially Islam is coming to take over Europe. And those families that have very recently come from poorer countries have more children. And you will absolutely hear that said all over the manosphere. That the problem is essentially feminism has stopped white women from having enough kids. And that will lead to the kind of the end of the white race or European descent civilization or Judeo-Christian religion or whatever you want to put it in that way. The trouble with it is, I think that this ideology is incredibly flexible. As you say, when it was the 1950s, the idea was women can't vote because they don't have enough responsibilities outside the home. They're silly little brains. They just earn a bit of pin money and whatever it is. They're not full actors in civil society. So why would we want to hear from them? And now that the majority of American women go out and work, even after having children, it's switched to, well, actually, the problem is that, you know, they're ruining society by Going and doing that. So whatever women are currently doing, turns out to be to be wrong. ([Time 0:16:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c39ae112-8154-4f2d-baac-2e4d1131fa89)) - **Nick Fuentes' Hostile Misogyny Example** - Nick Fuentes declares "Our number one political enemy is women" and advocates imprisoning them, linking women to low fertility and empathy for 'brown people.' - Lewis uses this as an example of malevolent sexism that fuses misogyny with racism. Transcript: Terry Gross And in this, he's talking about the problem with women. And this is from his podcast, America First with Nick Fuentes. And it was recorded on February 11th of this year. Our number one political enemy is women. Because women constrain everything. Every conversation. Every man. Everything. They have to be imprisoned. They are the ones that are hurting the fertility rate. They are the ones making us sympathetic to poor people, which are also brown people. You know, I want you to understand something. When you're sympathetic to poor people, you're sympathetic to brown people because brown people are poor. Okay. Not all poor people are brown, but most brown people are poor. So women are making us sympathetic to poor people, a.k brown people. Women are making us sympathetic to George Floyd. Women are the reason that their fertility rate is low because they're getting educated and they attack every man as a rapist and a pedophile. And they're henpecking and controlling all the men. So just like Hitler imprisoned gypsies, Jews, communists, you know, all of his political rivals, we have to do the same thing with women. ([Time 0:21:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d9604d56-0d7b-4a61-9199-bb859f48de70)) - **Actively Defend Individual Voting Rights** - Defend individual voting rights explicitly and avoid complacency because gains in rights can be reversed by ideologies like masculinism. - Lewis recommends keeping debating tools sharp and arguing clearly for universal adult suffrage. Transcript: Helen Lewis So I also think, you know, if you're somebody who does believe in individual voting rights or liberalism, whatever it is, you kind of need to keep... Or imprisoning women. Right. But you are kind of somebody who does need to keep your debating weapons sharp. Those arguments are never really truly won in a way that I think probably, you know, 90s liberals were a bit complacent about. You do have to stand up and say incredibly controversial things like, I actually think that all adults should vote. I mean, you know, which is a very recent historical development. You know, even for a long time, very few people in England, where I live, you know, only a few nobles were in charge of the government, even when we had a quote-unquote democracy. And it took successive huge political movements to change that. So these, you know, these ideas of individual rights don't, they're not natural, or they're not, you know, settled forever. ([Time 0:25:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/36ca384f-6d6f-4a32-8811-d4712ae6935d)) - **Testosterone As Political Signaling** - Testosterone and 'high T' aesthetics have become political signals for toughness and leadership in masculinist circles. - Lewis links this to testosterone therapy, diet culture (anti-soy), and narratives casting leaders as 'alpha' even when ethically compromised. Transcript: Terry Gross Testosterone is the thing that sets apart men from women. Men have a lot of it. Women have a little of it. And it's become like the defining quality for some men of like what real manhood is. So can you talk a little bit about testosterone? Helen Lewis I mean, this is a story of many strands, one of which it's now never been easier to get hold of testosterone replacement therapy. So just a huge number of people, you know, particularly in that Manosphere podcast zone are on it. You know, they're middle aged men who are feeling a little bit more tired, you know, things a little bit more hard than they used to be. And they get a prescription for testosterone in the same way that women have been getting HRT prescriptions. And guess what? They feel peppy and alive again. And that is not an unreasonable medical presentation. But there does seem to also be just a kind of lifestyle feeling that this is what men are. They are aggressive and they are go-getting and they're driven. And testosterone is kind of the hormonal version of that. So one of the books that I talk about in the piece is that The Last Man by Charles Cornish Dale, who goes by the online alias Raw Egg Nationalist. And the reason that he believes that you should take raw eggs is that they boost your testosterone. And, you know, his whole theory is that the MAGA movement is a testosterone movement. Donald Trump is the high T president because he, for example, doesn't care about equality. You know, he's about ambition and ruthlessness because the winners need to win and be dominant. And so, you know, they want to bring back, as they say it, testosterone to politics. It's all got a bit hippie drum circle, people trying to care about the weak and the poor and try and make sure that everybody's happy. No, that's not the way things should be. Politics is about power and drive. And those things are symbolized by testosterone. ([Time 0:27:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d619b831-83c1-46e9-9a3b-b83a202c9b5e)) - **Trump As Ultimate Patriarchal Figure** - Trump embodies the patriarchal fantasy masculinists admire: a dominant, unaccountable leader who enforces hierarchy and rewards loyalty. - Lewis compares Trump to an 'ultimate patriarch' whose theatrical authority satisfies the movement's control anxieties. Transcript: Helen Lewis See Trump? Well, they see him as the ultimate bully and the ultimate patriarch. You know, here is somebody who controls everything around them. And, you know, I see masculinism as quite an anxious ideology in a way because it's about control. You know, it's about needing to kind of keep a grip on your emotions. You never cry. You know, you don't eat soup because that's gay. You don't cross your legs because, you know, that's Gavin Newsom did that and everyone mocked him on Twitter for it. You know, all these things that you kind of can't do because they would somehow impugn your masculinity does add up to quite a kind of anxious way to live, in my view. But the way that it's reframed around Trump is, you know, I always think of kind of Trump as the Eric Cartman from South Park of American public life, you know, he just he just does what He wants. And everybody else has to deal with it. And that's the kind of ultimate patriarchal fantasy. You can do whatever you want, and everyone else has to put up with it. And actually, everyone else kind of worships you and look up to you. And, you know, you've got the woman on your arm and you've got the guys who love being in the status hierarchy where they all know who the top one is. ([Time 0:33:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/640da414-e561-4162-8f86-f2c6b714131d)) - **Real Male Grievances Feed The Movement** - Legitimate grievances among men and boys—job loss, isolation, and changing social expectations—fuel masculinist appeal. - Lewis acknowledges these real harms (manufacturing decline, dating shifts, social media) even while criticizing extremist responses. Transcript: Helen Lewis You know, I've written about feminism and the, you know, the things that affect women throughout my career, but it is very important to talk about the facts. So I think it's really tough to be a young man right now. My colleague Derek Thompson once described the situation of young men as being like monks in the casino. You know, we know that they drink less, they party less, they are less likely to be coupled up than previous generations of men. At the same time, via their smartphones, they can access any amount of porn and crypto and gambling. This is a bit where I think I do have some overlap with Doug Wilson. And I think that lots of bits of modern life are really tough for young people. They are being urged into funnels to make money for big social media corporations that are not necessarily the way that you would choose for anybody to live. And I think that the decline of traditional manufacturing has meant that the workplace has become easier for women to get a job and in some respects harder for men at the entry level. Then there has been, I think, in some places, overt discrimination against men and white men, because lots of companies in the last 10 years have looked at their diversity statistics And kind of vomited how bad they were, and gone on what will probably turn out to be unconstitutional hiring binges to try and make those statistics look better. Now, that's an advance for equal rights. It's tough on the individual men that that has affected. So I think, you know, when you are taking on some of these more outrageous ideas, you have to acknowledge that some people feel hard done by in the last decade. And that is not a completely preposterous situation to take. ([Time 0:40:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/732b1eb0-f513-4feb-a164-cf1092275802))