Saving Men from Feminism in order to Save Feminism Is a Lousy Idea
New writing on boys and men by Richard Reeves reveals achingly familiar blind-spots
In the past week, I have been sent two articles about issues facing men and boys, both, as it turns out, by Brookings Senior Fellow Richard Reeves, a self-described “wonk” who has recently published a book, Of Boys and Men (2022), from which one of the articles is excerpted.
I hasten to say that I am glad to see anyone seriously discussing “The boys feminism left behind,” the title of one of the articles, even if I find the author’s arguments ill-conceived. My comments below are based on the two articles.
For far too long, the attitude of most feminists and liberal thinkers, presented with evidence of boys’ or men’s difficulties, has been exemplified in Jane Caro’s jaw-dropping rant for the Sydney Morning Herald, “How to help boys do better at school: stop giving them a leg up in the outside world.” Caro, a feminist leader in Australia, opined that boys weren’t doing well in school because the arrogant little bastards knew they didn’t have to; they should be given no assistance.
In a long article about men’s issues, British journalist Rose Hackman similarly concluded, after interviewing men about experiences of discrimination and hostility, that male suffering was simply part of the adjustment formerly privileged males would have to make in a now equal society. Feminists’ angry certainty that boys and men have always been advantaged is so addictive that it can easily withstand abundant evidence to the contrary.
On this score, I’m not sure Reeves understands what he is up against.
Reeves’ articles cover territory familiar to all of us who have looked into male disadvantage over the past thirty and more years: the stunning lack of empathy for men’s problems, including recent indifference to their greater vulnerability to Covid-19; the public pathologizing of many natural male behaviors and characteristics, now dubbed “toxic;” the kneejerk conviction that social resources, energy, and ingenuity should always go to girls and women, even when boys and men are obviously not doing well; and the ease with which feminists and other so-called progressives turn a blind eye to male troubles in school and their declining achievements in higher education and the job market.
What is required, according to Reeves, “is a simple change in mindset, recognizing that gender inequalities can go in both directions.” While acknowledging that such a change will not be easy, Reeves calls on those he claims to be “the strongest advocates for gender equality, many of whom are on the liberal side of the political spectrum, to take a more balanced view.” Ouch. Here the woeful inadequacy—even incoherence—of Reeves’ blinkered perspective becomes sadly evident. While I heartily commend Reeves for his compassion for boys, his inability or unwillingness to admit that feminism and progressivism are the problems—not the solutions, as he suggests—is an all-too-familiar fatal flaw.
In emphasizing a “change in mindset,” Reeves doesn’t mention decades-old policies and laws that have entrenched harm to men, many of them enacted by Democratic administrations (though often with enthusiastic support from Republicans): these include no fault divorce and related alimony and child custody policies that force men to pay support for children they may never see; the Violence Against Women Act, which pours money into feminist organizations that portray men as perpetrators; mandatory charging policies in cases of claimed domestic abuse, which lead to men being thrown out of their homes and forced to accept culpability for violence they did not commit; expansions to rape shield law that have significantly limited men’s ability to make legal defense against false accusations, and preferential hiring policies that mandate employers to overlook highly qualified white men in order to fulfill “equity” goals. Good luck getting a single progressive to agree to revoke, scale back, or reform any of these overtly anti-male policies; it’s not clear that Reeves himself opposes them.
With all these still in place, Reeves’ moderate proposals—getting more men into school teaching and other female-dominated professions (a disastrous idea in the current climate), encouraging fathers to be more involved in their children’s lives, and retiring the obnoxious phrase “toxic masculinity”—are unlikely to have any impact.
Progressives’ abysmal failure to confront their own prejudices makes highly suspect Reeves’ faith in governmental and inter-governmental organizations such as the U.S. Gender Policy Council (successor to the Council on Women and Girls) or, even worse, the World Economic Forum. Reeves goes so far as to allege that “Closing the gaps where girls and women are behind remains an important policy goal,” so long as the policies are broadened to also address male “gaps.” But even if one agrees that financially burdensome social engineering programs will improve male outcomes, what makes Reeves imagine for a moment that endemically anti-male organizations will ever commit to empowering men? Does he not realize that the passivity and dependency of both men and women—and not the vibrant autonomy and self-reliance fostered by strong men and intact families—are necessary to organizations promoting global governance and top-down control?
It's possible that Reeves’ repeated declarations of allegiance to feminism are more strategic than sincere, but his promotion of feminism as an equality movement is, to say the least, disappointing. He tells us that “The movement to liberate women has unleashed the power and talent of half of the global population—to the benefit of us all.” But if this were even remotely true, he wouldn’t need to be writing a book about the “millions of men benched,” as he states, by devastating social changes. Reeves’ attempt to wiggle out of his own contradiction comes in his claim that “You don’t upend a 12,000-year-old social order without experiencing cultural side effects.” By why should anyone think that male disadvantage is a “side effect”? There is plenty of evidence in feminists’ own statements that male decline has been the aim all along. When celebrated American journalist and author Hanna Rosin titled her book The End of Men: And the Rise of Women (2012), one would have had to search hard to find there even a feigned commitment to equality. We can go back to the nineteenth century to find feminists declaiming about female moral superiority—see, for example, British feminist and theosophist Frances Swiney’s triumphalist The Awakening of Women; Or, Woman’s Part in Evolution (1899), in which Swiney looked forward to the ascendency of women.
But it seems that Reeves drank the feminist Kool-Aid and still feels it coursing through his veins: “The fight for gender equality has historically been synonymous with the fight for and by girls and women, and for good reason,” he claims. True, we’ve heard a good deal, over the years, about the alleged gender pay gap and the need to get more women into STEM. I’ve never heard anyone express an interest in closing the gendered workplace death gap, the homelessness gap, the suicide gap, the prison gap or the many other gaps (the false allegation gap, the homicide gap, the dirty and dangerous jobs gap) that have always exposed male disadvantage. Feminists have made good careers out of neglecting inequalities that don’t concern women. How many times can the willful neglect of male well being be passed over as an unintended consequence?
As for the “liberal side of the political spectrum” that Reeves openly prefers, it can barely even acknowledge men’s needs. Take a read through the Biden Agenda for Women (warning: you’ll need a cast-iron stomach) where Biden’s team promised to “Ensure mothers and all parents can access high-quality, affordable child care.” A party that can’t even say the word fathers is not likely to be enthusiastic about Reeves’ recommendation for “decent fathers, no matter their marital status, to be deeply involved in their children’s lives.” Of course, Reeves is careful to specify that they must be “decent.” Does he recommend that only “decent” mothers be deeply involved in their children’s lives? Feminist-compliant distrust and even dislike of some men seems to simmer under the surface of Reeves’ discussions.
What really sets the seal of doom on Reeves’ project is his insistence that boys and men deserve societal compassion and assistance because such are necessary to keep the progressive movement ticking along, i.e., to support women and social justice advocates as they pursue their never-to-be-questioned goals. Reeves makes clear that he is not at all interested in allowing dissident men to decide for themselves what is in their best interests. In fact, he wants to prevent them from doing so. Addressing men’s problems, Reeves assures his feminist readers, “is in women’s economic self-interest” because “A world of floundering men is unlikely to be a world of flourishing women.” Imagine promoting compassion for women because it will benefit men. Moreover, Reeves doesn’t even try to hide his disgust and fear over “the populist right.” He warns his readers, assumed to be good Democrats, that “alienated men are the voters most likely to veer towards the populist right” and that in parts of Europe and even South Korea, “young men are swinging hard right.” The idea that disenfranchised men might choose to align themselves with political parties that don’t hate them seems to strike Reeves as a bad thing.
Here we come to the repugnant nub of Reeves’ arguments. Men are to be saved from the most noticeable idiocies of the feminist movement so that they will continue to make the sacrifices—of freedom, time, bodily ease, safety, hard-earned money, and even of life itself—that men have always made, but now without the respect and compensation that used to come their way. Reeves’ most heartily expressed disapproval is not for the many liberal policy-makers (many of them, I suspect, his friends) who have sidelined men over the past forty years but for those allegedly “hard right” movements that are now harnessing some men’s discontent. Reeves seems concerned that some of the men who voted for Donald Trump will keep on voting with their feet, choosing to permanently remove their tax dollars, ingenuity, muscle power, and forbearance from projects avowedly opposed to male flourishing. Perhaps a majority of men will recognize and at last refuse their own exploitation.
Here's where I most emphatically part company with Reeves, not only in his assurance that every reader will share his horror at Trump or Brexit, but in his belief that he knows better than the men he is writing about. “A new model of mature masculinity and fatherhood is desperately needed,” he claims. I am trying to remember if there has ever been a time over the near six decades of my life when women have been told what they owed men and children. Does Reeves believe in the necessity of a “new model of mature femininity and motherhood”—one that will replace, perhaps, the constant anti-male hectoring, adolescent promiscuity, false accusations, and family court blood-sucking fostered by feminism? No, only men, it seems, must be discouraged from looking out for themselves.
The problem is that the attitudes expressed in accusations of “toxic masculinity” have now become structural features of our society, far too deep-rooted to be addressed with the few touch-ups that Reeves advocates. So long as men can see that a single anonymous accusation of sexual misconduct can bring a swift end to career and reputation; so long as they can see that everything they’ve worked for—and the very children they have fathered—can be “judicially stolen” (Stephen Baskerville’s term) by a grasping ex-wife aided by the courts and social services; so long as affirmative action and equity hiring disqualify them from employment and advancement; so long as the casual sexism they witness all around them costs its purveyors nothing, some number of men, increasing every year, will rightly turn away from the mainstream political parties and organizations that have tolerated and promoted such malevolence.
To write as if men are wrong to turn away—and not to squarely target the ideology that has supported such pathological bigotry—is to send a message that the individual men one is writing about matter less than a favored worldview. That’s not good enough for those of us who object to men’s bad treatment, and it shouldn’t be good enough for Richard Reeves.
I am reading Reeves' book right now. Yes, from what I can glean so far, he will never disobey his feminist superiors. Speaking of the sudden success of girls over boys in school, he roundly dismisses that there is any intentional disadvantaging of the boys, rather it's subtle and structural. He says this around the 19 min mark in a recent interview with Chris Williamson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1N7gA9cA1g&t=1170s). I think you are exactly correct: what he does not see is that the globalist strategy is to make men dependents. There is nothing more soul crushing to most men than to be dependent on Big Mommy. And I think it is intentional: promoting feminist books like "The End of Men" is designed to crush their spirits, get them to give up, to retreat to a virtual world online--which the globalists can control, too.
Great analysis, I could feel the outrage building. You’re really on fire recently. So good to see.