If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, SheKnows may receive an affiliate commission.
Richard V. Reeves was at the forefront of the conversation about the crisis facing boys and men — and shining a light on why it should matter to everyone — when his book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It was published in 2022.
It’s a topic he says he was cautioned against writing about — a third rail, if you will — and yet in the nearly two years since, the conversation around young men, mental health, masculinity, and more has only widened. Thanks to social media and our current political climate, masculinity is now a hot-button topic and one that has become politically charged. It’s also playing a role in the increasingly divided political views we’re seeing today. Among 18-29-year-olds, 40 percent of young women identify as liberal compared with only 25 percent of their male peers, according to a Gallup poll.
SheKnows talked to Reeves, now founder of the think tank the American Institute for Boys and Men, about masculinity, why young men are listening to manfluencers, and why we need to “create space in mainstream conversation and mainstream political culture” for these conversations.
SheKnows: Let’s talk about the political divide we’re seeing right now among Gen Z young men and women. You’ve written that it’s a mistake to equate the rightward lean of young men as a reactionary backlash to the progress of women, but that’s what it feels like to a lot of people right now.
Richard Reeves: The first thing to say is that there is this unprecedented gap in Gen Z, in the under 30s, in terms of political affiliation and voting intention. But it’s also worth emphasizing that more of that gap is being driven by the move of young women to the left than it is of young men to the right.
Now that said, young men are significantly less likely to be on the left than historically young men have been. Is that a move to the right or is it a move away from the left? I think that’s an important distinction. And when I look into the data … I think an inevitable potential reaction to this is like, “Oh, it’s because all these men are just … They’re fed up with women, they’re reacting against the rise of women. They’re watching Andrew Tate videos. They’re fed up with #MeToo.”
But if you look at the evidence, and I published on this, on attitudes of young men towards gender equality, there’s no evidence that there’s anything other than continued progress towards more enlightened views on gender equality. And so I think the story’s a little bit more complicated, and I think that for most young men it’s actually more a question of feeling quite politically homeless. They don’t see much on the left for them, for sure. And I don’t necessarily think they’re wrong about that.
SK: You’ve called this the masculinity election. Where are you seeing the different views of masculinity coming out in this current political climate?
RR: Yeah, it’s an unexpected outcome, I think. To some extent the issues around masculinity and the performance of masculinity have characterized the contemporary Republican Party and certainly Donald Trump for some time now. That’s really been doubled down on this year.
I think a really good data point here is that in 2016, Donald Trump was introduced by his daughter to the Republican National Convention. In 2020, he was introduced by his daughter. And in 2024, he was introduced by Dana White, who runs UFC.
What’s interesting is that [we] thought that the whole debate was going to be about women’s rights, especially more on the left. But now with Kamala Harris and her vice presidential pick, Tim Walz, on the ticket, something quite unusual has happened: Kamala Harris is not making very much of the fact that she could be the first woman president. And I think with her pick of Tim Walz she’s signaling a potential openness to wanting to win back some of these male votes and maybe try and do something to blunt the impression that the Democrats have become a bit of an anti-men party. And weirdly, I think as a woman, she might have more space to do that; I think she may have a bit more permission to address some of the issues of boys and men.
And in her pick of Tim Walz, you’ve there got someone who’s a high school teacher, which is hugely important for me, but also a high school coach. And he’s being described as the kind of guy that would fix your car, put his arm around you if you need reassurance, and then make sure you got home safe. Those are quite traditional positive masculine virtues and I’m pleased to see that they’re actually being talked about in that way.
SK: Considering these different portrayals of masculinity and the politicizing of it, I’m interested in your take on where that leaves teen boys — some of whom will be voting for the first time in this election.
RR: I think as a starting position, teenagers generally are still figuring out who [they] are and [their] politics are probably in a certain degree of flux. Many of us, if we think back to when we were younger, maybe our politics are not quite the same today. And so I think they’re still forming their political identity in the same way that they’re forming any other aspects of their identity.
What I worry about as far as teen boys are concerned is that if they don’t feel as if there’s a space for them to have a conversation about what’s happening to boys and men and what we should be concerned about, then they start to look online for some of the answers to those political questions. And that can lead to all kinds of potentially unfortunate outcomes, because as a general proposition, I think the better person to talk to about your problems, and maybe even about politics, is your brother or your dad or your uncle (if you want it to be a guy) rather than what Christine Emba in the WashingtonPost called the manfluencers; these online influencers who have very significant followings and whose views on politics are, I would say, not that well-formed in many cases. If we don’t create space in mainstream conversation and mainstream political culture for these conversations about masculinity and men, and boys and men, and what’s happening, I’m afraid we drive it online and to some extent drive it underground.
I also think there’s something specific about teen boys going on, which is that teenagers generally are known for their rebellious spirit. And right now, particularly if you are a teen boy in a mostly liberal or progressive home or community, one way to really get a rise out of your classmates or maybe your mom or your sister is to start professing some views that you’ve picked up online from perhaps some more misogynist content. So in other words, go against the prevailing orthodoxy — you get shock value from that.
I know a lot of people who’ve gone through the experience of having a teen boy who flirts for a while with some of these more reactionary figures online, but with some patience and some love and some grace it’s typically a period that they will grow out of. There aren’t very many mature men who are seriously consuming some of the worst online content. It’s the 15-year-old boys, and sometimes they’re brandishing it just to upset mom. That doesn’t make it okay, but I think we have to see it a little bit in that line … Teenagers with any spirit about them will very often tend to go against the orthodoxy that their parents try to pass onto them. That’s a story as old as human history.
SK: That’s essentially what one of the teen boys we interviewed said. So is conservatism the new counterculture for Gen Z boys?
RR: I think that’s a good way to put it, particularly if they are perhaps in more liberal or progressive circles … If you’re in a very conservative family or a very conservative area of the country, then it’s not very countercultural perhaps to be conservative. But if we’re talking mostly about people who are more in urban areas and perhaps in more liberal cities or liberal families, then yeah, there’s no question that there’s a little bit of a countercultural element to this, where adopting some of these more conservative views is going to mark you out from perhaps your parents’ views or from some others, and certainly from your peers.
But again, if we see it in that spirit and engage with it honestly, then I don’t think there’s [anything] necessarily to be afraid of in and of itself. We want our young people, men and women, to be forming their own views. I think in an ideal world we don’t just want them spouting whatever orthodoxy their school or their parents has given them. We want them to be challenging and thinking. And if there are some issues that they want to raise, maybe some of those issues are worth discussing. But let’s discuss them honestly and respectfully, and that usually turns out okay.
I think what doesn’t turn out okay is if there’s a moral panic; that if a teen boy who’s consuming some of this kind of manosphere content is treated like a teen boy that’s consuming the darker end of the pornography world or whatever — “I can’t believe you would watch that. I can’t believe you would listen to him.” If we get too immediately morally judgmental about it, all the evidence is that it actually tends to drive those teen boys further into the manosphere.
So shaming them … turns out not to be a very effective tactic for drawing them in. And I think as a general proposition, we have done a better job of calling young men out than of calling them in, and it’s time that we did a better job of calling them in.
SK: What’s your recommendation for a parent who’s concerned about these issues?
RR: Sit down and talk to them about it. Watch some of the videos together. If you hear them mentioning a video that said something, say, “Oh, I’d like to watch that. Can I watch that with you?” And then discuss it with them and say, “What did you agree with? What did you disagree with? What did you like about this? What’s appealing about this?” Have a grown-up conversation about it. Take the appeal seriously and use it as an opportunity for a constructive conversation.
If you want your teen boy to have a good conversation about masculinity and what it means to be a man, have it with him yourself rather than allowing somebody else to have it with him online. And don’t blame him if he’s looking for an answer to the question, “How should I be a young man today?” You want to be in that conversation. You do not want to be subcontracted in that conversation to somebody online.
SK: As a father of boys, what’s giving you hope right now about where we’re at with boys and young men?
RR: Well, first of all, there is a growing awareness that we can actually be compassionate towards boys and men. We can move a little bit past the eye-rolling phase into that helping-hand phase a bit.
I think we are going through a difficult transition point; I don’t think there’s any question about that. The transformation and the position and role of men in society that’s been brought about by the huge changes that we’ve seen for women — that’s the necessary consequence of a wonderful and positive social change. But I think it’s also dislocating. It’s going to take work.
I see the work being done now. And most importantly, I feel like the spirit’s getting a bit better. We’re a little bit less eager to prove each other wrong or prove each other to be the villain of the peace than perhaps we were a few years ago. And I hope that’s true, maybe that’s wishful thinking. Ask me again in a year.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Leave a Comment