The Crisis Over American Manhood Is Really Code for Something Else
Democrats and Republicans Agree Men Are in Trouble. They Disagree on What to Do About It.
Portrait of the Modern American Man — In Nurse’s Scrubs
Democrats Have a Man Problem. These Experts Have Ideas for Fixing It.
Actually, yes. It turns out ideas about gender and masculinity can be reliable indicators of how people vote by party and by candidate, according to a new POLITICO Magazine/IPSOS poll conducted in early May, which surveyed 1,016 respondents, including 267 Republicans, 307 Democrats and 324 independents. (Those who did not have a party affiliation were also included.)
Here’s more on that and some of the other big takeaways from the survey:
Both parties agree that ideas of manliness could use an update.
The survey asked respondents to agree or disagree with a series of quotations from Democrats and Republicans that pointed to problems with American men and Americans’ ideas about masculinity.
Most people — Democrats and Republicans — agreed that prevailing societal ideas of masculinity are flawed, that boys’ and men’s economic prospects are under threat and that men should spend less time watching porn and playing video games. Though there are partisan splits on some questions, majorities of Republicans and Democrats agreed with statements on the problematic state of American masculinity or a need for a more positive version of it, no matter the party of the speaker. (Respondents could see only the quotations, no attribution, in the survey.)
These results surprised both political pollsters and scholars who focus on gender.
Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster and president of Bellwether Research and Consulting, said it was “fascinating” that Republicans and Democrats agreed in exactly equal measures with a quote from Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, about how masculinity is about “how you stick up for other people.”
“If you think about who Republicans are supporting in the primary, they’re supporting Trump,” Matthews said. But apparently, she noted, they don’t like everything about him: “They like his policies and they like what he stands for, but they don’t like his version of a masculine male.”
Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, says that response to Emhoff’s quote shows that masculinity is a “cherished identity” on the right and left. This finding presents an opportunity, she suggested, for Democrats to counter Trump masculinity or other kinds of masculinity on the right with their own vision of masculinity. “That just shows you how Democrats have not successfully deployed a different image of masculinity that could be very powerful for them and could really undercut Trump,” she said.
Democrats and Republicans disagree on the causes of men’s problems.
So a majority of Americans, according to this survey, think there are problems with dominant cultural messages about masculinity. They’re worried about men not working and spending time on video games and porn. And they also agree with a call for a more positive vision of masculinity.
When it comes to who is to blame and what is to be done to address these problems, though, a partisan split begins to emerge.
There were larger gaps in how respondents of different parties responded to questions about #MeToo, the Democratic Party and job losses, with majorities of Republicans blaming #MeToo for making it harder for men to be themselves, blaming entertainment and culture for making it hard to be a “traditional guy,” and blaming the decimation of certain industries for men’s economic outlook.
Declines in the number of manufacturing and skilled labor jobs have made it harder for men to be financially successful.
The #MeToo movement has made it harder for men to feel like they can speak freely at work.
The Democratic Party is hostile to masculine values.
Republicans were also more likely to disagree with statements that women still encountered discrimination and faced significant societal hurdles and agree with the statement that “discrimination against women is no longer a problem.”
Discrimination against women is no longer a problem in the United States.
It is easy to understand why women’s groups are still concerned about societal limitations of women’s opportunities.
Over the past few years, government and news have been showing more concern about the treatment of women than is warranted by women’s actual experiences.
Republicans were also more likely to agree with traditional gender roles, at least when it came to a question about what is best for children.
Traditional family structures, with a wage-earning father and homemaking mother, best equip children to succeed.
On the other hand, when it came to a question about having male and female bosses, respondents from both parties were largely comfortable with having either, suggesting that support for traditional gender roles among Republicans might be strongest inside the home.
I would be equally comfortable having a woman as a boss as I would having a man as a boss.
Ideas about gender roles and sexism shape voting.
Will any of this matter when it comes time to actually vote?
Those who scored high on two indices in particular designed by the polling team to describe two specific kinds of sexism were more likely to vote for Trump in a general election matchup with Biden and for Trump or Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary. Those two indices were the “modern sexism index” — questions that measured respondents’ beliefs about sexism and gender equality efforts today, especially beliefs about such movements going too far — and the “traditional sexism index” — questions about traditional gender roles, such as less comfort with having a woman as a boss than a man as a boss.
Preferred general election candidate
We also came up with an index that measured agreement with statements that men were targeted by politics or culture in some way — by the entertainment industry, the #MeToo movement or policies that decimated male-dominated industries, for instance. We called this index the “gender politics index.” It was also highly predictive of support for Trump in the general election of support for Trump or DeSantis in the primary (among reported likely Republican primary voters). It was even more strongly correlated with Trump support in particular than the modern or traditional sexism indices. Trump and DeSantis supporters, in other words, are more likely to agree that the deck has been unfairly stacked against men compared to Democrats and supporters of other 2024 Republican presidential candidates.
Matthews explained that concerns about the persecution of men have been on the rise in recent years, fueled primarily by the #MeToo movement. She recalled doing opinion panels in September 2018, during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings and hearing that conservative moms in particular were worried that their sons would be subject to possibly false sexual assault allegations in the future. “They saw this sort of anti-male movement. They worried that it and the #MeToo movement had gone too far,” she said. “They worried about the men in their lives, and the men, of course, worried about themselves.”
Preferred primary candidate of Republicans in the top quartile of the gender politics index
While 49 percent of Republicans surveyed said they’d support Trump in the primary, 57 percent of Republicans who scored high in the gender politics index support him. DeSantis also saw a slight jump among these voters, moving from 27 percent support among all Republicans to 31 percent support among those who scored high on the gender politics index.
All three indices also drive attitudes toward abortion, divorce, trans rights, gun control and, to a lesser degree, spending on health care.
Percentage who support access to abortion in most cases
Percentage who support laws that limit access to firearms
As the 2024 presidential race heats up and a man vs. man matchup looks increasingly likely, perhaps even another Biden-Trump competition, it’s likely we’ll see ideas about masculinity figure in more and more in politics — and it probably won’t let up anytime soon. “To make believe masculinity is not a cherished identity?” Williams said. “I don’t know who you’re kidding, but it’s not the American public.”