The world generates so much beauty and creativity that I am wary of getting into the habit of writing nothing but cautionary tales. Yet, I must fly another warning flag— this about the views of manhood that are circulating in the current Republican Party and on the Internet. 

There is nothing secret about what these horrifying views are. They are ubiquitous, at once self-pitying and unabashed. I have written about a comparatively mild screed, Senator Josh Hawley’s Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs (2023) you can read that piece here. Others have also dissected them. I think of Michelle Goldberg, or, most recently, Rebecca Traister in “The Nice Men of the Left: An election defined by two very different kinds of guys.” (New York Magazine, August 12-25, 2024, pp. 7-8).  

Who is the “Real Man”? He has power over women and the right to feel and be superior to them. For many, a Christian God ordains this hierarchy.

Some neo-patriarchs, like Hawley, are kindly enough fellows. Other neo-patriarchs wear their guns on their hips. Notice how often they touch handle or holster. Power over women means sex, for the sake of sex or for the sake of becoming a father or both. Having a child means having some purchase on the future. 

Childless men, like childless women, are drags on a proper society.

As for feminists and queers, erase them. 

I wish I were joking.  I wish I were being satiric. I am not. The 2024 elections will either give more “Real Men” political power, or block their whiny and cruel hopes. 

It is an existential election.