The left needs a better story for men

Men are justifiably angry about the state of the world, and we need to acknowledge that.

Striking workers at a mineral pigment plant in Beltsville, Maryland, 1973.

We—those of us who stand against Trump and Musk and Zuckerberg and Bezos and the other billionaires sinking the government to profit from its wreckage—need a story for men that is better than the one the right is telling.

I’m really angry. These assholes are ripping people from our families and communities to deport them and making memes about it. They’re firing my friends in D.C. who’ve worked for the federal government for years. They’re gutting already-lackluster protections for workers. They’re selling oil and gas leases on public lands. They’re sharing AI-generated videos of Gaza rebuilt as a luxury resort with a massive gold Trump statue (yes, Trump just did that).

I’m also pissed at the Democratic Party for not figuring out how to beat these people. For taking billionaire campaign contributions themselves. For marginalizing progressive party members. For supporting and funding genocide in Gaza. For not standing for working people against the corporate execs and Wall Street banks who’ve been amassing growing mountains of wealth over my entire lifetime.

And that’s on top of the rage I was already feeling. We live in an exceptionally, heartbreakingly unequal society. Most of us have to work long hours at jobs that feel monotonous and meaningless. Most of us have to take orders from a boss. Most of us have to try to fit so much—adulting, haggling with health insurance companies, parenting—into the limited time we have outside of work. And we’re still barely scraping by, as the cost of housing and other basic needs (eggs!) keeps going up.

I recently read an article about “burner boys,” young migrants in Ghana who make cents an hour torching American electronics we send to developing countries once they stop working, causing them to cough up blood at night. In Indonesia, discarded plastic pours into the ocean at an estimated rate of 365 tons an hour. Plastic waste from countries like the U.S. is even used for fuel in Indonesian bakeries, resulting in “some of the most lethal cuisine imaginable,” as the journalist described it.

There’s a lot to be pissed off about it. The problem is when I hear Trump talk, I feel like he’s acknowledging that anger.

I don’t agree with a word he says. I know he’s bullshitting. I know he’s only making things worse. Way worse. But he’s bullshitting about problems. Everyday problems. The cost of living. Crime. The loss of manufacturing jobs. Constant war. Of course, he throws in right-wing talking points about immigrants and trans people, meant to divide us. But he acknowledges—somehow in his rambling, off-the-cuff, narcissistic way—the sense that society is declining. That something is off. That something is broken. That it makes sense that we’re mad.

Trump said this in his inauguration speech: “For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.” Can you imagine a Democrat saying that? Other than maybe Bernie (who’s not even a Democrat), AOC, and a small handful of other progressives?

Instead, the Democratic Party is raising money from the tech billionaires they’re claiming to be in battle with (included Elon Musk). They’re getting pissy at progressive groups pressuring them to fight back harder. They’re "not going after every single issue” and rather “picking the most important fights and lying down on the train tracks on those fights.”

I’m not just angry. I’m worried, sad, scared. But anger is the first thing I go to. I think that’s because it’s the emotion I was given the most freedom to express as a boy. If I was mad about losing a soccer game, my parents and coaches urged me to channel that into winning the next one. They cheered along as I aggressively stole the ball from another kid or scored a goal. But if I revealed even in the smallest ways that I was scared or sad, I was talked out of it. I was told to be tough. To walk off the pain. I learned to hide it away.

No wonder young men gravitated toward Trump and away from Democrats last November, after solidly voting Democratic in presidential elections for decades. Republicans gave voice to the anger. Democrats talked about “joy” and “saving democracy” (which is important but also super abstract).

Dressmakers on strike, 1958.

Not only are Republicans channeling the anger, but they’re also telling a story about men.

They’re saying we’re naturally, biologically, “traditionally” meant to the be the ones in charge. Musk has promoted the idea that only “high-testosterone alpha males” should be society’s decision-makers. “Manhood is real and biological,” and men are “meant to lead,” wrote Sen. Josh Hawley in his book Manhood, tying it to societal decline: “No menace to this nation is greater than the collapse of American manhood.” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has said, “I think having a culture that celebrates [masculine] aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.” Trump has said that “manhood is under attack.”

They say some contradictory and weird stuff too. JD Vance recently said that masculinity is “telling jokes to one another.” Really. That’s all he said. But Republicans are talking about what men should try to be like. They’re telling a story.

We need a better, more convincing story for men.

We need to talk about how so-called “traditional masculinity” (the stuff Republicans want men to take as historical fact) isn’t actually traditional.

We need to talk about how capitalism relies on a gendered division labor, which distorts our ideas about what it means to be a man or woman.

We need to talk about how traditional masculinity and patriarchy actually harm men too.

We need to talk about how Trump, Musk, and the other billionaires aren’t actually on the side of the vast majority of men and instead trick us into thinking we need to be powerful over women to feel better about them exploiting us at work.

We need to talk about the complexity of sex and gender, especially the complex role of testosterone.

We need to sell men on the value of developing emotional intelligence, nurturing relationships, and other aspects of care work, which is undervalued in this society.

That’s what I’m trying to do with this newsletter. I’m trying to help write this story and spread the word, and I need your help. If you want to join me in this, hit subscribe, leave a comment, and/or email me your ideas (jeremy@mohler.coach). Also, check out

J. P. Hill

and

Garrett Bucks

, writers who are writing a different, better story for men too.

Now, a question for the comments below (or email me at jeremy@mohler.coach): Is there anything you’d add to my list of things men need to hear?

(P.S. If you become a paid subscriber for $5/month, you’ll get occasional bonus posts—plus the warm feeling of supporting my writing!)

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