Don't panic, men: We're not helpless — and we don't need the right's phony masculinity

In spare moments between elbowing rivals, physically threatening colleagues and witnesses, dehumanizing their political opponents and refusing to stand up for the truth or simply to do their jobs, purportedly adult Republican males remain in a fever pitch trying to convince us they know what it takes to be a man. 

Apparently, it’s all about vague notions of character and virtues and morality and — gosh darn it — not being some wimpy woke liberal-intellectual-hedonist-groomer-babykiller (or some version of that, ordered according to taste). Oh, and you need to stand back and stand by for Donald Trump’s next assault on the American experiment.

Men have forever worried about being manly enough. The disgraced former guy, for instance, found it necessary to reference his “manhood” during a debate and can’t seem to stop talking about his junk like an insecure adolescent. I occasionally fall prey to thoughts about my male bonafides. I don’t even own a table saw. What’s up with that? During the pandemic, I convinced myself I ought to learn how to tie more knots (I quickly noticed that having busy hands near your lap is not a good look in a Zoom call).

Books on what constitutes masculinity keep churning out like a fraternity pledge spewing after shooting a tallboy. One notorious recent example is “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs,” by Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a weighty tome of supposed biblical lessons for how to raise boys and young men in the midst of what he decries as a plight of “Epicurean liberalism” that leads the males of the species astray into lives for hedonistic pleasure.

The Washington Post’s Becca Rothfeld opened her entertaining review of Hawley’s book pointedly: “For practically as long as men have existed, they have been in crisis. Everything, it seems, threatens them with obsolescence.” Again, despite Hawley’s fervor, this is nothing new: the alleged crisis of masculinity seems to be a recurring feature in Western culture. It's true, however, that there appears to be something of a crisis for young men in America at the moment. Graduation rates are down and suicide rates are up, and the more general epidemic of loneliness seems to afflict men in particular.  

Whether this is a chronic issue or an acute crisis, the situation has been exploited, and likely exacerbated, by self-styled manly politicians and podcasters who profit in selling fear and despair. Republicans in Congress constantly set awful examples of what it means to be an adult, much less a man. Among other things, these men never want to pass legislation that would give younger people, whatever their gender expression, a leg up in life.

In the Hawley version of righteous manhood, men do not judge other men for predatory sexual behavior. Donald Trump has been found liable for sexual assault and defamation in the E. Jean Carroll case and has been accused of sexual assault or harassment by dozens of women. He will almost certainly be the Republican presidential nominee next year. None of Trump's documented or alleged behavior merits any direct comment in Hawley's book.

As Salon’s Amanda Marcotte recently noted, none of the other Republican candidates vying for the nomination even bothers bringing this history up: “Neither he nor the voters he’s speaking to give a single fig about sexual violence. If anything, rape charges just burnish one’s reputation in MAGA circles, which have made a virtue out of toxic masculinity.” 

Nor do men like Hawley, who make such ostentatious use of the Bible, flinch from other forms lawlessness, at least not when it’s perpetrated by other white men. They support a twice-impeached former president who faces four separate criminal indictments comprising 91 felony charges, and who yearns to return to the White House in order to pardon himself, seek revenge on his enemies and exercise dictatorial powers. Hawley rendered himself a global laughingstock by raising his fist in support of the insurrectionists gathering outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and then scampering away from the very mob he had encouraged once they had stormed that potent symbol of our democracy. 

So manly, bro! Hawley is likely calculating that his loyalty will be rewarded when what's left of American democracy is short-circuited by a Trump victory in 2024.

Religious belief has, of course, been weaponized by conservatives for many decades. Abortion became a hot-button issue in the late 1970s because GOP strategists needed something to attract the votes of right-wing Christians that was more acceptable than the fight to re-segregate public education. Fundamentalists and evangelicals have been trained for the past half-century to turn the other cheek to the actual lessons of Jesus and set their sights on the Prosperity Gospel, where God is perceived as something of a fiduciary, blessing those who do well financially (and support the pastors' lavish lifestyles). In the hyper-ideological MAGA world of American Christianity, Jesus has largely been cast aside as too wimpy, too woke, too concerned with unmanly things like healing the sick and welcoming the foreigner.

I'm not trying to sell young men (or anyone else) on any particular form of religious belief, but the basic morality of Christianity — turning the other cheek, serving those in need, welcoming the stranger — which are certainly virtues also embraced by other faiths, could be said to offer a decent foundation for creating responsible citizens and future workers, husbands and fathers. 

Some people of faith have formed groups like The Christian Left to remind the cultists of Mammon of what their faith is supposed to be about. Salon contributor Nathaniel Manderson, an evangelical believer and former pastor, regularly writes on how the right is twisting the faith he once preached, most recently in this essay about House Speaker Mike Johnson, who likes to boast that his worldview is an open book, if that book is the Bible. Know-nothing members of Congress insist that they are sick and tired of the separation of church and state mandated by the First Amendment. To be fair, they aren’t all that keen about the rest of the Constitution, either. 

The funny thing about Christian nationalism is that beyond keeping men in charge (yet another perversion of the actual gospel), it isn’t Christian and it’s immensely damaging to our shared sense of nationhood.

I ask the young men of the so-called manosphere: Haven't you noticed that your feelings of loneliness, and your perceived difficulty in finding a decent career and meaningful relationships, are being stoked for political purposes? As Will Norris writes in the Washington Monthly, in an analysis you should stop right now and read: “To a new generation of Republican leaders, Trump proved the potential of disillusioned young men as a growth demographic.” 

But of course Republicans aren't really trying to help young men become engaged citizens who can fully participate in the economic and cultural life of the country. In the economic sphere, they want to keep you a gig worker or "independent contractor" as long as possible, with no guaranteed living wage or benefits or even reasonable workplace safety standards. Similarly, they’d prefer you to remain a kind of junior citizen for as long as possible, not fully vested in democracy or the country's future. Oh, and on balance they'd like it if you didn’t vote, especially if you’re a “woke” student on campus.

Young people in a democratic republic need more training in civics and media literacy, in large part to better understand the critical role journalism plays in democracy. They could also use training on how to spot a con man (or woman), especially when they use religion as part of the pitch. As has been true throughout history, those most concerned about religious morality and in dispensing rules about “how to be a man” often have deep issues with themselves, and often with women. There was an earlier masculinity panic that led to a push for a manlier version of Christianity around the time of World War I. That affected many young men in that era, including one conflicted young man who grew up in segregated Washington, D.C., and became the deeply paranoid director of the FBI and one of the most powerful Americans of the 20th century. Others have noted that the false notion of America as a uniquely "Christian nation" was also prominent in World War I propaganda, though men of many faiths or none fought side by side in that horror show.

We can't go back to some idealized past that never existed (no matter how badly the MAGA forces want to). But we can certainly use wisdom from the past to inform us now. Instead of taking highly dubious marching orders from a faux-religious right-wing politician or some muscle-bound misogynist podcaster, perhaps young men should be encouraged to look to classic literature and music, and to the voices of women as well as men.  

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Personally, I think young men could find sounder advice from this old song by Stephen Stills than from anything in Josh Hawley's recycled 256 pages:

We are not helpless, we are men.
What lies between us,
It can be set aside and ended.
Every day we learn more how to hate, 

We shut the door,
And then we tell ourselves we can't relate.
Only to the ones who are the same,
Yet even they are different,
And ever so they shall remain.

That line, “And then we tell ourselves we can’t relate” feels especially relevant in an era when so many younger men may feel lost and unable to pursue healthy relationships, not to mention distracted by the angry messaging of fundamentalists, grifters, online trolls and "manfluencers" with weird ideas about sex and gender who encourage them, among other things, to “keep women in their place” and find a “tradwife.”

To state the obvious (again), what Hawley and other “concerned” Republicans think makes a good man is belied by much of their behavior. Maybe it's sufficient to mention that a slew of them broke their oath of office. In his book, Hawley argues that “No menace to this nation is greater than the collapse of American manhood.” I would argue that traitorous and grifting members of Congress pose a somewhat greater menace.

Hawley was educated at Stanford and then Yale Law School, two of the most exclusive elite schools in America. But that doesn't stop him from blatantly misunderstanding the Greek philosopher Epicurus in his nonsensical complaint about "Epicurean liberalism." Following some early Christians, Hawley spins Epicurus' philosophy as an appeal to wantonness and gluttony, which it absolutely is not.

Epicurus advised people (addressing not just male citizens but also women and enslaved people) to work to attain tranquility in life, to strive to avoid fear and bodily pain, to be courageous, to try to live a well-considered life, to appreciate having fewer worldly things, to be authentic and not to fear death. (He also developed the concept that the physical world is made up of tiny particles, which he named atoms!) 

Any person, of any age and gender, would do much better to study the far-ranging ideas of Epicurus than the warmed-over nostrums Josh Hawley cribs from his readings of the Bible. It’s the easiest thing in the world to play the tough guy; it’s much harder to face your fears and become a human being.