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    ‘A big cratering’: an expert on gen Z’s surprise votes – and young women’s growing support for Trump

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    Long before voting closed in the 2024 elections, pundits predicted that young Americans would be riven by a canyon-wide gender gap. Those predictions turned out to be correct.As a whole, Kamala Harris won voters between the ages of 18 and 29 by six points. But preliminary exit polling indicates that Donald Trump opened up a 16-point gender gap between young men and young women: 56% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Trump while just 40% of their female peers did so.Even more surprisingly, Trump managed to improve on his 2020 performance among young women, despite that gap. In 2020, 33% of young women voted for him.Earlier in the campaign, polling indicated that abortion was the top issue for women under 30. Other surveys also found that young women have veered to the left, becoming, by some measures, the most progressive cohort ever measured in US history – but many did not vote like it. In fact, many appeared not to vote at all. Early estimates show that only 42% of young people turned out to vote. That’s less than in the 2020 election.The political scientist Melissa Deckman runs the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and recently published The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy. Although she’s an expert on the youth vote, and in particular on how young women vote, even she was taken aback by Tuesday’s results – and especially by the diminished turnout, as her research has found that young women are more politically engaged than ever.We discussed what we can glean from the youth vote, what it indicates about young people’s lives and what it means for the future of the United States.We’re still waiting for more detailed data on how young men and women prioritized issues in this campaign, but what do we know so far about the issues that were most important to gen Z?By and large, it was the economy. For gen Z voters who care about the economy, they really broke for Donald Trump.Abortion really dropped as being the most salient issue for younger people. I think that was the most surprising to me.If you look at the youth vote in 2022 – and this is all young voters, not just men or women – 44% said abortion was the issue they put at their top priority. Whereas this fall, the issue was only 13% [exit polling shows]. That’s a pretty big cratering.Typically, why do we see gender gaps like this?The gender gap among gen Z voters reflects the larger gender gap we’ve often seen historically in this country. Women have tended to vote for Democrats while men have tended to vote for Republicans, and we saw that same pattern among women more generally and men more generally this election cycle. Historically, that’s been because women have tended to want a larger size and scope of government. They tend to be more supportive of government programs. Men have tended to vote pocketbook issues and want less government.Why do you think we saw such a gender gap between gen Z men and women?A lot of young women came of age politically during the Trump presidency. We often in political science talk about these being “the impressionable years” – that a lot of people often develop their orientations toward government as late teens, early adults. They’re witnessing the election of Trump, who has said openly misogynistic things, who many women have [spoken out] about how they’ve been harassed and even assaulted by him. He bragged about sexual assault on that infamous Access Hollywood tape.You combine that with the #MeToo movement a couple years later, which was a larger, broader conversation about sexual harassment and its prevalence in society. That made a cognitive dissonance for these young women: America’s elected Trump in an era where we’re recognizing that sexual harassment is a problem. It made them far less likely to embrace the GOP.This generation of young women is strongly supportive of abortion legality, and they’re having fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers. All of those things together have fomented for them a gender consciousness in ways that we don’t see with older generations of American women.What’s notable about gen Z, however, is that unlike perhaps the last several election cycles – where you had a majority of young men voting for Democrats, either for Congress or for Biden in 2020 – we saw a more rightward turn in voting behavior among young men, and that’s probably driven by two things. One: the Democratic party didn’t have a convincing message for a lot of young men, especially on the economy. Secondly: Donald Trump’s decision to meet young men where they are – going on Joe Rogan – it sent the message that he cared about their votes. When you don’t have someone willing to fight for your votes and talk about your interests, you’re less interested in voting for that party.View image in fullscreenThe 2022 midterms took place only months after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in the decision Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Since then, we’ve seen more than a dozen states ban almost all abortions and heard reports of at least four women dying as a result of abortion bans. After all that, why has abortion become less important to young women?Dobbs – it was such a political earthquake. It really, really motivated young women to vote at much higher levels in that midterm election. But you also have to remember the electorate in a midterm is different than the electorate in a general election, and midterm elections tend to draw more motivated voters to begin with. To think that that was going to carry over in 2024 maybe was not the most accurate prediction.I’m really struck that gen Z stayed home in ways they didn’t in 2020. It was one of the biggest surprises for me – mainly because we’ve seen, in the last three federal election cycles, gen Z outperforming younger voters in earlier cycles.Gen Z is really mistrustful of institutions – at higher rates than an older Americans. Perhaps they felt like they’ve gone to the ballot box, they’ve tried to make these changes and they haven’t really seen enough action. Maybe this is a reflection of the fact that increasingly younger voters are are less in tune to government and don’t think government can provide them solutions to their problems.So why was the economy so important to gen Z?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEconomic anxiety is really palpable among this generation. They’re disproportionately more likely to feel the pain of the economy because they want to move out of their parents’ basement. They can’t afford rent or to buy a house. They have massive student loan debt. There’s a sense among younger people that the American dream isn’t really available for them.Even though you have, on a macro level, some indicators of the economy doing quite well – low unemployment, some growth, there’s even actually been a reduction in inflation – that doesn’t matter. Because you have younger Americans really feeling the pinch of higher prices.In many ways, maybe young voters were just like older Americans, in voting their pocketbook and being unhappy with the status quo politically.Do you think the Harris campaign then erred in centering abortion so much?Public opinion polls show that most Americans are broadly supportive of abortion legality – like more than two-thirds. It’s even higher for young women. We find about seven in 10 say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. So I don’t think it was necessarily a bad strategy.I do think, though, that it’s a strategy that assumes that abortion was the top issue that voters cared about. Perhaps focusing more on the economy and how her policies would help young people – maybe more attention should have been focused there.We expected – and my data has shown – that when gen Z women have been able to vote, they tend to have voted for Democrats, for House or Senate or president. They broke really wide for Biden in 2020.It was still a pretty big gap [in 2024]. Most young women really preferred Harris over Trump, by far.What do you think this portends for the future? Are these younger women a little bit more amenable to Republicans – or are they just amenable to Trump?That’s the million-dollar question.[On the issues] young women are really to the left, and I don’t see any evidence that any of those things will change. They’re far more likely to prioritize climate change than gen Z men are. They want to do more to mitigate gun violence. They want to have more spending on mental health. They are very, very supportive of LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice.If young people find that their economic situation hasn’t improved in four years, I could totally see them going in the other direction. I don’t see a massive switch or any kind of realignment happening necessarily.Notably, young men are more liberal [than conservative] on these same policies. But I think that young men who are disaffected, who feel like women’s gains have come at their expense – this is a common theme you hear on the manosphere – they were receptive to a change.This interview reflects two conversations and has been edited for length and clarity.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Rogan, Musk and an emboldened manosphere salute Trump’s win: ‘Let that sink in’

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      Late on Tuesday night, when it became clear that Donald Trump would be re-elected as president of the United States, the so-called “heterodoxy” was elated.For years, these male podcasters, influencers and public figures had marketed themselves as free-thinking pundits who evaded the bounds of political classification. “Their political views could once have been described as libertarian,” Anna Merlan wrote for the Guardian in August; the word used to describe them pointed to the same, derived from the Greek heteros, meaning other, and doxa, meaning opinion.However, in 2024, the heterodoxy universally endorsed, supported and celebrated the hyper-masculine promise of Trump. This has created a moment in which the vast majority of online voices who appeal to young men are explicitly pro-Trump. In the wake of his win, those who at least feigned political ambivalence now feel no need to moderate themselves.Joe Rogan reacted to Trump’s win on Tuesday night by yelling a reverential “holy shit” in a video he posted to X that showed him watching Trump’s election party on Fox News. Rogan, whose chart-topping podcast has an estimated 81% male audience, considers himself more of a conversationalist than a pundit but nevertheless endorsed Trump hours before the election, after hosting Trump and JD Vance on The Joe Rogan Experience. (He invited Kamala Harris, but they could not agree on interview terms.)Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primary and then voted libertarian, and initially liked Robert F Kennedy Jr in 2024. He has supported left-leaning policies like drug and marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage and abortion rights, though he vehemently opposes gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Ultimately, he attributed his pivot to Trump to Elon Musk, the last guest to appear on his podcast before the election.“If it wasn’t for him we’d be fucked,” Rogan posted, referring to Musk. “He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way.”Musk, who is generally well-liked among heterodox figures and their supporters, was gleeful as it became clear that Trump had won. He posted a picture to X showing him holding a sink in the Oval Office – a reference to his 2022 takeover of Twitter HQ – captioned “let that sink in”, seemingly relishing the business success and policy influence he anticipates having under a second Trump administration, which he helped secure.Musk’s shift to the far right – after voting for Obama and opposing Trump in 2016 – became noticeable during the pandemic, when he became frustrated that lockdown requirements were slowing production at SpaceX and Tesla. Since taking over Twitter, now X, he has re-platformed Trump and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones as well as racist and sexist provocateurs like the white nationalist Nick Fuentes. “Your body, my choice. Forever,” Fuentes posted on Tuesday night; the phrase has been making rounds on social media since. Musk personally shares an increasingly large volume of far-right content on his own page – especially transphobic content, seemingly in response to his estranged daughter coming out as transgender.While final election data has yet to be released, initial exit polling indicates that men, and particularly young men aged 18-29, were a crucial pillar of support for Trump. Now more than ever, young men are at odds with more liberal young women, supporting Trump over Harris 56% to 42%, while young women preferred Harris 58% to 40%, according to exit polls. These young men, especially those without a college degree, have expressed feeling unfulfilled, dissatisfied with their jobs and lives, and desirous of a society and home life with traditional gender roles. For years, media outlets have documented how more and more young men have been radicalized after consuming content from right-leaning entertainers and commentators, especially on platforms like YouTube and Twitch. Now, as more of those men have reached voting age, this phenomenon appears to be benefiting Trump and the far right.One 2021 study found that a leading predictor of support for Trump – over party affiliation, gender, race and education level – was belief in “hegemonic masculinity”, defined as believing that men should be in positions of power, be “mentally, physically, and emotionally tough”, and reject anything considered feminine or gay. Some heterodox influencers gained a following by embodying or promoting precisely this brand of masculinity, and giving their followers a script for blaming dissatisfaction on women.Jordan Peterson, who has built a career as a pop pseudo-psychologist promoting patriarchy and the revival of the “masculine spirit”, considers himself to be “devoid of ideology”, but has aligned himself with rightwing figures like Tucker Carlson, Andy Ngo and Matt Walsh and frequently decried the media’s coverage of Trump, calling it biased. He was quick to celebrate Trump’s victory – albeit in a backhanded way. “Thank Heaven for working class slobs,” he posted to X at 1.40am.Nico Kenn De Balinthazy, better known by his YouTube moniker Sneako, took to the streets of New York on Tuesday night in a Make America Great Again hat and an American flag draped around his shoulders. Sneako, who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 before switching his allegiance to Trump, could be seen trying to provoke the people around him, gloating as the results came in. He loudly laughed at one woman who was crying. The day before the election, he had posted on X: “Kamala Harris is proof that women shouldn’t vote.”Not every heterodox figure has been explicitly pro-Trump this year. Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, which is overwhelmingly geared toward men (particularly college-age men), was also quick to react to the election results. In a video posted to his Instagram, Portnoy – who has been accused of consistently misogynistic behavior both at and outside work – didn’t celebrate Trump, who he has never endorsed, but he expressed indignation at liberal voters.“People like myself, independents, moderates – the Democrats gave us no choice,” Portnoy said, at times slurring his words. “That was the worst campaign. And their pure arrogance and their moral superiority have driven people away. If you say you’re voting for Trump, suddenly you’re a Nazi, you’re Hitler, you’re garbage. Enough. Enough.”Lex Fridman never endorsed Trump either. The science and politics podcast host is less brash than the bulk of the heterodoxy, but is still popular among young men and still friendly to rightwing figures like Carlson and the former Trump adviser Stephen Miller when they stop by for interviews. On election night, he replied to Musk’s enthusiasm for Trump with a rocket emoji and “LFG!”He also was sure to acknowledge a perceived win for himself as he celebrated Trump’s. “PS: Long-form podcasts FTW,” he posted. “I hope to see politicians from both sides doing 2-3+ hour genuine, human conversations moving forward.”During this election cycle, Trump’s embrace of the bro-centric podcast scene came as he sidelined (and in some cases, fumbled) traditional campaign tactics like door-knocking and canvassing. This choice appears to have had no negative effect on his election bid. In fact, it may have even helped him. Trump’s victory could very well be an emboldening choice among heterodoxy figures, who now see the possible fruits of openly embracing the right. They certainly aren’t going away. More

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      The women ‘cancelling out’ their Trump-loving partners’ votes: ‘No one will ever know’

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      Mackenzie Owens and her boyfriend strut toward the camera like models on a catwalk, posing as she takes a dramatic sip from her Stanley cup. “Just a bf and a gf going to cancel each other’s votes,” reads the caption of their TikTok – the couple, who live in Pennsylvania, support separate candidates this election season.Owens made the TikTok to join in on a trend of women disclosing that they’re voting against their partners’ preferred candidates. In one video, a woman mischievously tucks away a strand of hair as she mails in her ballot, “proudly” cancelling out her boyfriend’s ballot – “because someone paid attention in US History & has to care about keeping the Dept of Education!!!!” In another, a woman dances to Ciara’s Level Up before driving off to “cancel out” her “Trump loving Husband’s vote in a swing state”.View image in fullscreenThe dozens of women participating are, for the most part, Democrats supporting Kamala Harris’s bid, while their male partners are voting for Donald Trump. (Owens did not disclose who she or her boyfriend voted for.) Though their posts provide levity in the final days of an ugly presidential race, they also underscore the pivotal role gender is playing in the election.A late October national poll from USA Today/Suffolk University found that women resoundingly back Harris over Trump, 53% to 36%, a “mirror image” of men’s support for Trump over Harris, 53% to 37%. A September poll from Quinnipiac University similarly found a 26-point gender gap. An unknown – but certainly sizable – number of women are seeing this gender gap in their own relationships.Owens, who is 19, isn’t particularly bothered by her boyfriend’s politics. “Nowadays, people think that you have to have the same political opinions as your partner, because [hyper-partisan politics] is a big problem in society, but I personally think it’s cool to co-exist and learn about the other side, and get different opinions I didn’t think of before,” she said. “But in a way, that’s not socially acceptable.”Meanwhile, liberal TikTokers are weighing in to say they could never date or marry a Trump supporter, given the former president’s sexist remarks about women and his appointment of anti-abortion justices to the supreme court, which resulted in the 2022 reversal of Roe v Wade. “What do you mean you’re on your way to cancel out your husband’s vote?” reads one viral tweet. “You should be on your way to the courthouse. Divorce babe. Divorce.”Harris needs women to turn out on Tuesday, especially those who might take a page from the TikTokers’ playbook and vote differently from the men in their lives. But those posts come from mostly young, liberal women who feel safe publicly disagreeing on candidates. In recent days, Democratic groups have made overtures to Republican women, or women who project conservatism to their friends and family but quietly harbor doubts about Trump.Republican turnout among women – especially white women, who backed Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections – can be partially explained by their husbands, who are seen as wielding influence over the family vote, said strategists and advocates who spoke with the Guardian.“Women often give deference to the presumed expertise of their husbands on politics, and then the men reinforce that presumption and express their intensity and so-called greater expertise,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “We try to reinforce to women that you have your own way of doing things, your own point of view, you focus on what’s good for the whole family. Then we emphasize that the vote is private.”That’s a sentiment echoed in a new ad, narrated by Julia Roberts, from the progressive evangelical organization Vote Common Good. In the ad, a woman whose husband appears to be a Trump supporter enters the voting booth to cast her ballot for Harris. “In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want and no one will ever know,” Roberts says in the voiceover.Doug Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good, said the group first conceptualized the ad during the 2022 midterms. “We kept hearing from women that they were going to pay an emotional price with their families, friends and church if they didn’t continue to toe the line [and vote for Trump],” Pagitt said.On a campaign stop in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Michelle Obama told swing state voters: “If you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter.” Liz Cheney, a never-Trump Republican who campaigned alongside Harris in Detroit last week, reminded Republican women that there is no official way to look up how someone voted: “You can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody, and there will be millions of Republicans who do that on November 5.”The Lincoln Project, a moderate political action committee, also released a bluntly titled ad, Secret, where two Trump-supporting men assume their wives also back their candidate. However, when the couples get to the polls, one of the women mouths “Kamala” to the other, and after an affirmative nod, both fill in their ballots for the Democrat.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis messaging is stoking anger among conservative personalities, who say it is sexist and retrograde to assume women only vote for Trump to appease their husbands. They also, paradoxically, say this messaging is undermining traditional family values. Charlie Kirk, who last year said the “radical left” was being “run by childless young ladies” on antidepressants, called the ads “the embodiment of the downfall of the American family” on Megyn Kelly’s podcast.The Fox News host Jesse Watters said that if he found out his wife had secretly voted for Harris, “that’s the same thing as having an affair … it violates the sanctity of our marriage”. This, despite the fact that Watters had an affair with his current wife while still married to his first wife.In the final stretch, these complex – and often secretive – relationship dynamics are affecting Democrats’ ground game, said Kelly Dittmar, director of research and scholar at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics. “You see it in public women’s bathrooms or places where women can be directly appealed to without the barrier of the man in their life. There are stickers or signs that say, ‘Remember, your vote is private,’” she said.Nancy Hirschmann, a political scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, added that canvassers for Harris were trained to avoid outing wives who may be registered Democrats to their Republican husbands: “If a man answers the door who’s clearly in favor of Trump, you don’t ask for the woman by name, you ask if there are other voters in the house you can speak to.”View image in fullscreenIt is too early to tell if Republican-coded women may in fact turn out to be secret Harris voters. But back on TikTok, women vocally share their 2024 picks, even if they go against their partner’s choice – or an ex-partner’s choice.Jamisen Casey, a 21-year-old student who goes to school in California but is registered to vote in her home state of Tennessee, took part in the trend, with a twist. “My absentee ballot on its way home to cancel out my ex boyfriend’s vote,” Casey wrote in the caption of a video showing her dancing with the envelope while We Both Reached for the Gun from the musical Chicago plays.“It’s really hard to know that there are men out there who want to vote against reproductive rights, even though they shouldn’t have a say in it at all,” Casey, who voted for Harris, said. She doesn’t think she could date someone who doesn’t share her views again. “As a political science major, I made a decision that I don’t want to put myself in that position.” More

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      Do Democrats have a ‘men’ problem? – podcast

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      The Harris campaign, which has been praised for how it has managed to reach out to women, is now having to balance their attention and pitch some policies that would appeal to men.
      But is it too little too late? Jonathan Freedland speaks to Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, and Gloria Oladipo, a breaking news reporter for Guardian US, about why men could decide this year’s election and why both campaigns might be taking them for granted

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      ‘Be a man and vote for a woman’: Kamala Harris’s unlikely edge in America’s masculinity election

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      A man in a baseball cap strides through a field of corn. A woman in flannel turns and smiles, a line of trucks visible behind her. As piano music swells, an American flag ripples in a gentle breeze. This video is pure, uncut Americana. Naturally, it’s a political ad.Specifically, it’s an ad made by the Lincoln Project, a group of moderates and former Republicans united by a desire to topple Donald Trump and support Kamala Harris. And it’s making one of the most obvious appeals to men and masculinity yet in the 2024 election.As the ad nears its crescendo, the deep voice of Sam Elliott, an actor best known for playing grizzled but folksy cowboy types, demands: “What the hell are you waiting for? Because if it’s the woman thing, it’s time to get over that.” He continues: “It’s time to be a man and vote for a woman.”Masculinity and people’s views on gender roles may be more important than ever in 2024 – and not just because Harris is the first woman of color to ever secure a major-party nomination for president. The 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade thrust women’s rights to the forefront of the election. Numerous identity-based groups, including White Dudes for Harris, have gathered to drum up enthusiasm. An extreme gender gap has also yawned open among the youngest US voters: having come of age in the era of #MeToo, gen Z women are becoming the most progressive and politically active cohort ever measured – while gen Z men are increasingly apathetic to politics and drifting further to the right.Conservatives are openly using anxiety around masculinity to win this election, telling men that their problems stem from not being man enough. Josh Hawley, the influential Republican senator from Missouri, published a book called Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. The Fox News host Jesse Watters went even further.“I don’t see why any man would vote Democrat. It’s not the party of virtue, security. It’s not the party of strength,” Watters said, shortly after White Dudes for Harris held a call with more than 190,000 participants. Watters added: “I heard the scientists say the other day that when a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.”Watters is not a serious person, but Americans’ obsession with masculinity is, to the point that it can determine the outcome even of presidential elections where two men are running. (So, most of them.) Americans revere presidents as role models, fixating on their status – real or perceived – as founding fathers, real fathers, war heroes, and masters of diplomacy and making money and cheating on their wives without getting caught (or, at least, without getting divorced). Because presidents epitomize American notions of manhood, elections reveal what kind of man, what type and degree of masculinity, is most respected and deserving of power.View image in fullscreenTrump has turned his campaign into a pitch for hyper-traditional masculinity. At this year’s Republican national convention, he walked on stage to the James Brown song It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World and was introduced by Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship who was caught slapping his wife on camera. On the campaign trail, he has hammed it up with YouTubers and podcasters who have male-centric audiences and dim views of women.With the general public and her opponent so preoccupied by masculinity, Harris is not emphasizing her pioneering nomination. Rather, in order to win a contest that no woman has ever won, she’s trying to take advantage of stereotypes about men, women and leadership – and, when they can’t work in her favor, using them to kneecap Trump instead.Masculinity, it turns out, may be the most partisan issue in US politics.A few good menWhen people conjure up the image of a “good man” or a “real man”, they tend to imagine the same qualities: someone who is dominant, successful and tough – and who is nothing like women, according to Theresa Vescio, a psychology professor who studies gender, politics and privilege at Penn State.This way of thinking is so pervasive that people gender political matters that, objectively, have no sex. National defense and the economy are seen as topics that men care about, because men are expected to prize being providers for and protectors of their families. Healthcare – including abortion rights – and education are seen as women’s issues, because women are supposed to be compassionate caregivers. (In reality, at least among gen Z, young women care about all of these issues more than young men do.) Even the political parties themselves are gendered: Republicans are associated with more masculine issues and traits, Democrats with feminine ones.These stereotypes inform American ideals of the presidency. “What we expect in a good leader is that they’re powerful, high status, top, able to lead. That overlaps substantially with stereotypes of masculinity and men,” Vescio said. “So when we think about who would be a good leader, stereotypes of men fit and complement. There’s no incongruity.”They complement one another so seamlessly, in fact, that the role of masculinity in elections was once invisible. We’re so used to seeing men run for office, and seeing “gender” only become a buzzword when a woman steps into the fray, that we often don’t even recognize that men have a gender, let alone that male candidates offer up different, competing visions of masculinity.But they do compete, even in the most animalistic ways. For example, presidential candidates are more likely to succeed when they have one key, traditionally masculine physical quality: height.The taller candidate is more likely to win more votes and be re-elected; they are also more likely to be seen by experts as being better leaders and simply “greater”. This link between height and presidential preference is so strong and so subconscious that when Richard Nixon ran against John F Kennedy in 1960, voters tended to think their chosen candidate was taller. (Kennedy was taller, and he won.) Ron DeSantis might have been laughed at for reportedly wearing ill-fitting heels when he ran for president, but he would have been right to worry.If you’re still not convinced, take the 2004 race between George W Bush and John Kerry, which hinged on the candidates’ supposed manhood to a startling degree. Bush sold himself as a down-home rancher who may have occasionally been “misunderestimated” but who you wanted to grab a beer with. Kerry, meanwhile, was a Vietnam combat veteran with a deep understanding of policy. This presented a problem for Bush: how could he be “the man’s man” when his opponent was part of the uber-masculine military?“What they did was, they went and they attacked his service record, because that was his greatest political strength,” said Jackson Katz, author of the book Man Enough? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity. An advocacy group, technically formed independent of Bush, dedicated itself to questioning Kerry’s record.View image in fullscreenKatz continued of Kerry: “His attitude was like: ‘This is beneath me, to respond to these attacks.’ And it backfired. Because in the masculinity narrative, if you don’t defend your honor that’s being besmirched, you’re emasculated, you’re not strong.”Kerry, of course, lost.The architect of the attack to undermine Kerry is now working on Trump’s 2024 campaign, which is attempting to run the same playbook against Tim Walz. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has suggested that Walz left the national guard to avoid serving in the Iraq war.In fact, Walz was in the national guard for 24 years and left to run for Congress several months before his unit was deployed to Iraq. Walz has defended his record – but Team Trump isn’t typically all that worried about the truth.Masculinity subtext comes textWhen Trump descended down a golden escalator during the 2016 primary, we entered a new, far more obvious era of presidential masculinity. During that primary, Trump loved to talk about “Little Marco” Rubio, which prompted Rubio to attack Trump for his supposedly undersized hands. There is no better proof that masculinity underscores presidential elections than two candidates subtly accusing one another of having small penises.Well, maybe there is: Trump, the man who started the dick-measuring contest, won the one for the White House, too.The more people believe that traditional notions of masculinity are good and true, the more likely they were to vote for Trump in 2016, when Trump ran against a woman, and 2020, when Trump did not, Vescio found in a 2021 study. This finding held true regardless of people’s party, gender, race or level of education. It also held true even after Vescio controlled for people’s trust, or lack thereof, in government, undermining the idea that Trump’s popularity is due to his populism rather than his masculine posturing.When it comes to cosplaying masculinity, one of Trump’s greatest assets is his disinterest in reality. In other words: he’s good at making big, bold, often untrue statements, and people like that in a man.“Trump promises, more than anybody else: ‘I’m going to do this.’ Oftentimes, in violation of what the president can actually do,” said the political scientist Dan Cassino, who studies male gender identity at Fairleigh Dickinson University. “But he says he’s going to go in and fix a problem. ‘I’m going to do this on day one. Whatever Congress says doesn’t matter.’ That sort of agentic behavior is perceived as being very, very masculine.”Republicans, especially, really like this kind of behavior in a man. This can partially be chalked up to demographics. Both men and older people, who are more likely to embrace traditional gender roles, are likelier to be Republicans. It can be explained by the nature of conservatism itself. Conservatives want to preserve tradition.View image in fullscreenThere’s also another explanation: sexism.“As researchers, we differentiate between hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. Hostile sexism is: ‘Women are terrible and it’s OK to beat your wife,’” Cassino said. “Benevolent sexism is more like: ‘Oh, women are pure and precious, we have to protect them.’ That means keeping them out of things like politics, putting up separate spheres.”Lilliana Mason, a Johns Hopkins University professor who studies partisan identity, measured people’s hostile sexism by asking whether they agreed with statements like: “Women seek to gain power by getting control over men.” Republicans, she found, were on average about twice as likely as Democrats to show signs of hostile sexism.“The better predictor of being Republican is not gender, but sexism,” Mason said. “There are a lot of women who hold sexist attitudes and are pro-patriarchy and believe that women shouldn’t be in power.”I’ve encountered shades of this attitude: in January 2020, I met a woman in her 30s from Louisiana, at the March for Life, the largest annual anti-abortion gathering in the United States. Women, she told me at the time, should not be president, because they just can’t be leaders in the same way as men.“Women and men are completely different biologically,” she said. “And so for that reason, I believe that they should have specific jobs for who they are, biologically.”She planned to vote for Trump.Sexism is more than a collection of views about women – it’s a belief system about how men and women should interact. (And that men and women are the only two genders.) But as much as Trump may benefit from the GOP’s sexism, he doesn’t seem all that interested in gender relations. He has praised and attacked individual women, including his accuser E Jean Carroll, often over their looks, but he rarely speaks about women as a category.Instead, he has largely delegated that to JD Vance.In addition to claiming that “traditional masculine traits are now actively suppressed from childhood all the way through adulthood”, Vance has denigrated childfree women as “childless cat ladies”, agreed that the purpose of the “postmenopausal female” is to help raise grandchildren, and claimed women who prioritize careers over families are on “a path to misery”.“Vance is very much doing appeals, I think, less about masculinity, more about benevolent sexism,” Cassino said. “At its edges, it goes into what is called natalism, that the job of women is to reproduce, which is the extreme, extreme end of benevolent sexism.”This is the Vance innovation on the already masculine Trump ticket: he operationalizes Trump’s static vision of white-man hypermasculinity into a blueprint for how genders should live with one another. If Trump and Vance win, that blueprint could be turned into policy.View image in fullscreenThere are signs that Trump is coming around to Vance’s approach – at least when it comes to abortion, one of Trump’s biggest electoral weaknesses and an issue that has quite a bit to do with male-female relations.“I WILL PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE,” he posted to TruthSocial over the weekend. “THEY WILL FINALLY BE HEALTHY, HOPEFUL, SAFE, AND SECURE.”The feminine catch-22When Harris walked out on stage at the Democratic convention to accept her party’s nomination for president, Kelly Dittmar was immediately struck by one thing.“She didn’t wear white,” said Dittmar, who, as the director of research at Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics, makes something of a living noting how powerful women present themselves in public.White is the color of the suffragettes who fought for women’s right to vote in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; Democratic women regularly don it for the major rituals of US politics, including the convention. “Like half the crowd was wearing white,” Dittmar pointed out.But not Harris. She wore a navy suit and a matching pussy bow blouse.It was an unmistakable declaration: Harris did not want to focus on how she has made history. In the weeks since, she has stayed true to that stance. When presidential debate moderators brought up abortion and Donald Trump’s racist lies about her identity, Harris didn’t respond with anecdotes about her experience as a woman of color. Instead, she told the audience: “I do believe that the vast majority of us know that we have so much more in common than what separates us.”If Hillary Clinton stands accused of focusing on her gender too much when she ran for president in 2016, Harris is doing everything she can to avoid falling into the same trap. But the braided nature of masculinity, leadership and politics leaves female political candidates in such a bind that even the act of raising an eyebrow becomes fraught.During the debate, Harris didn’t bother to hide her skepticism at Trump’s boasts, lies and rambling. “If she wants to win, Harris needs to train her face not to respond,” the pollster Frank Luntz posted on X at the time. “It feeds into a female stereotype and, more importantly, risks offending undecided voters.”It’s not clear what “female stereotype” Luntz – who said nothing of Trump’s tendency to smirk while Harris spoke – was referring to. (The female stereotype of having expressions?) But it is true that “as a female candidate, you have to be feminine, because otherwise you’re not a good woman”, Cassino said. “But you also have to be masculine, because in the US, we’ve decided that leaders are masculine. So you have to have masculine traits and feminine traits.”When it comes to telegraphing her masculine credentials, Harris has a built-in advantage: she spent years working in law enforcement, a field associated with toughness, victory and men. In her very first speech as the presumptive Democratic candidate, Harris recalled her time as a prosecutor and California attorney general.“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said, using a line that has since become a part of her stump speech. “Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.” Translation: she knows how to dominate the worst of the worst.“Democrats don’t need Harris to go out and shoot guns in her campaign ad or on the campaign trail,” said Nichole Bauer, a Louisiana State University professor who studies political communication. “But they do need her to display those masculine qualities that we associate with political leaders, and those are really masculine qualities that we don’t always think of as being gendered – like talking about her experience as a vice-president, an attorney general, a senator.”Last week, Harris sat down with Oprah, who had been stunned to learn, during the debate, that the vice-president owns a gun. “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,” Harris said. Then she laughed. “Probably should not have said that.”That exchange encapsulated Harris’s balancing act. She’s got a gun and she’s not afraid to use it, but she’ll laugh about it. That laugh, experts said, may be one of Harris’s best assets when it comes to convincing voters that she is both competent and warm. It helps burnish her claim that she’s a “joyful warrior”, an image that “creates a distinct persona that I think bridges those gendered expectations”, Dittmar said. Joy, she continued, “alludes [to] kindness and even empathy, which is more traditionally associated with femininity and women”.There are very few true independents in the US electorate; all but 3% of self-identified independents lean Democrat or Republican. But that tiny fraction of the population can decide a close election. When judging a candidate, undecided voters tend to rely heavily on racial and gendered stereotypes, according to Bauer.“If Harris displays masculinity in a super aggressive way, similar to how Trump and Vance might do it, then she risks falling into this ‘angry Black woman’ stereotype that we’ve been socialized to think of as a negative stereotype, as something incompatible with political leadership,” Bauer said. “It’s just this really narrow set of behaviors that she has to fit into to try to show her leadership qualities.”In past elections, the men who have tried to take down Trump attempted to outman him. Rubio suggested he had a bigger you-know-what; DeSantis sold himself to voters as the grown-up version of Trump; in a 2020 debate, Joe Biden snapped: “Donald, would you just be quiet for a minute?” But running on full-tilt masculinity would never work for Harris. Not only did it not work for most of those men, but as a woman, she cannot win a masculinity-off.View image in fullscreenInstead, her supporters’ best shot at defeating Trump may be to unman him. That Lincoln Project ad, for example, framed Trump next to images of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Harris, meanwhile, is pictured giving a salute. “The images of Trump in the ad are chaotic. It’s social unrest,” pointed out Erin Cassese, a University of Delaware political science professor. The ad seems to ask: would a real man lose control like Trump did?During the debate, Harris urged viewers to go to one of Trump’s rallies. “He talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about ‘windmills cause cancer’,” she said. “And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”Those attacks – the kind of attacks that could once have been directed at Biden – also undermine Trump’s masculinity. Cassino summarized the message as: “He’s kind of old and confused and weird. This is not a masculine guy.”‘Toxic’ masculinityAs much as the internet may like to call traditional stereotypes of masculinity “toxic”, they are not necessarily bad. Success, hardiness, being a provider and protector – those can all be good qualities.The problem, for individuals, is that stereotypes of masculinity can be so strict and stifling that they are impossible for anybody to live up to. No one can be in power at all times. You might be the boss at the office, but when you get home, your teenage children are still likely to ignore your commands.And, for US society as a whole, clinging to a narrow notion of masculinity really can be toxic. “It allows for aggression towards groups that aren’t appropriately masculine, which would be different kinds of groups of men that we define as problems, and women,” Vescio said. “It masks racism and sexism.”Harris isn’t right or wrong to lean into some masculine stereotypes. After all, if a woman can harness them well enough to win the most masculine office in US history, then maybe such attitudes and behaviors won’t be considered “masculine” any more. Maybe they’re just ways that people, of all genders, can act. Maybe voters will start to value “feminine” traits in leaders, too.View image in fullscreen“The only way we can ever stop defining our politics in terms of men versus women is, have so many women run that is just not notable any more,” Cassino said.Sending Trump back to the White House may affirm his brand of masculinity on a national scale. The more Trump larps masculinity, the more Republicans grow to like it; the more deeply invested they become in masculinity, the more polarized the United States may become. People who support traditional masculinity also tend to show signs of sexism (benevolent and hostile), anti-Black racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia.But, in Dittmar’s view, voting Harris into office may indicate that people don’t want to shove women into a separate sphere.“We’re voting on a lot of things, but among them is that version of leadership and our evaluation of these gendered versions of it,” Dittmar said. “As well as, even more broadly, our sense of the appropriate roles of women, the ways in which women should be treated by our political leaders.” More

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      God knows we need an antidote to all the lousy men in the news – and I think I’ve found one | Emma Brockes

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      For the past month, every woman I know has been having versions of the same conversation, roughly opening with: for the love of God, how rapey is the news? No period of history has been free from accounts of male sex-offending. But the present roll call of alleged offenders – Diddy, Fayed, the French rapist and his endless accomplices, various scandals in broadcasting, and last week, new charges for the man who keeps giving on this subject, Harvey Weinstein – is particularly grim. For just one day, I would like to turn on the news without having to hear a presenter struggling to find a way to say “lube” in a BBC voice. So let’s talk about something else: Doug Emhoff.Doug Emhoff! Kamala Harris’s husband and consort, a man very possibly in line to be the first first gentleman of the United States and, as far as we can tell, an antidote to lousy men everywhere. This week, I heard Emhoff referred to as a “wife guy”, which made me smile – wife guy being simultaneously a nice term of affection for men who unreservedly support their wives, and also a reminder that no word for a female equivalent can exist. (What use the tautology of being a “husband chick” when, for straight women, embedded in the definition of the word “wife” is total, unwavering support of your husband).Anyway, Emhoff – what a rare beast. A former entertainment lawyer, a music person who named his kids after jazz legends, a man extremely adept at playing the lovable goofball, which doesn’t rule out the possibility he’s a lovable goofball, and a husband seemingly completely happy to promote, support and cheerlead his high-profile wife. To my eye, Emhoff, who is 59, has Dan Aykroyd, or maybe John Goodman, energy: the American every-dad who can rock a plaid shirt at the weekend, and on Monday whip up a quick lawsuit to vanquish your enemies.Exactly how Emhoff has nailed this vibe comes down to a mixture of things. The fact he’s called Doug definitely helps. Has there ever, in public life, been a bad “Doug”? (No.) Doug is easygoing. Doug is dependable – but not boring! Doug shows up. Doug quit his job when his wife became vice-president so he could give her his all. Doug is a mensch, although on the subject of his Jewishness, opponents of leftwing positions around Israel assert that Doug has overplayed his heritage for political gain. This sounds perilously close to Donald Trump’s observations about Harris’s background, but anyway, it’s all part of the 360 degrees of Doug Emhoff. After all, Doug isn’t perfect!I mean, he really isn’t. Earlier this year, Emhoff acknowledged that the end of his first marriage to Kerstin Mackin in 2008 was messy and that he had been unfaithful. It’s not ideal, I know. It is telling, however, that Emhoff’s first wife, who has kept his name, has been extremely active promoting Harris’s bid for the presidency. When JD Vance went after Harris for not having biological children – a sentence it still seems wild to have to type – Kerstin Emhoff popped up to defend the Democratic candidate, calling Vance’s remarks “baseless attacks”. She told CNN that, “for over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I”. She was, she said, grateful to have her as part of their blended family.Which brings us to the Emhoff kids. To anyone’s knowledge, has there ever been a hipster first son or daughter in the White House? Of course, go back enough years and who knows; maybe in 1798, Abigail Adams was riding around the West Wing on a penny farthing drinking mojitos out of a teacup. But in recent memory, ranging back over Trump’s children, the Obama kids, the Bush twins and Chelsea Clinton, every one of them looked perfectly primed for a postgrad internship at Goldman Sachs or a nepo arrangement in Hollywood. Ella Emhoff, by contrast, is a designer specialising in knitwear, who lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She turned up at the Democratic convention earlier this year covered in tattoos and wearing pebble glasses and a vintage frock.There are other wife guys out there, although you have to search quite hard to find them. A friend suggests Alexis Ohanian, husband to Serena Williams and millionaire co-founder of Reddit. Ohanian has his own thing going on, which doesn’t guarantee that a man won’t resent his wife’s success. But in public, Mr Serena Williams always seems over the moon to be by her side. There’s an argument for Prince Harry as wife guy. You’ve probably got to rope Denis Thatcher into this conversation. I’m sure there are others.But this is about Doug Emhoff, who, to the extent that we can ever know anything about other people’s relationships, offers further proof of Harris’s good judgment. She could have had anyone, but she chose Doug, and there’s a lesson in that for all of us. Whoever they may be, find your Doug Emhoff – possibly on the second go-around, just to be safe – and run for the biggest job you can imagine.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Harris wants to bring ‘joy, joy, joy’ to Americans. What about Palestinians? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Muslim Women for Harris is disbandingGot any spare brooms to hand? I think the folk at the Democratic national convention may need a few extra because they’ve been very busy this week trying to sweep the carnage in Gaza under the rug.Hope and joy have been the big themes of the convention. On Wednesday, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, told the crowd that working to get Kamala Harris elected would mean “joy, joy, joy comes in the morning”. It is wonderful to see all this exuberance, all this optimism for a brighter future. But it is also impossible not to contrast the revelry in Chicago with the Biden administration-sponsored suffering coming out of Gaza.Well, it’s impossible for some of us, anyway. For plenty of delegates at the convention, the suffering of Palestinians, the harrowing images on social media of charred babies and toddlers in Gaza whose heads have been caved in from US-manufactured bombs, seem to be nothing more than an annoying distraction. Pro-Palestinian protesters at the convention haven’t just been met with stony faces, they’ve been met with jeers and violence. One delegate inside the convention was caught on camera repeatedly hitting a Muslim woman in the head with a “We Love Joe” sign. The woman’s crime was that she had peacefully unfurled a banner saying “Stop Arming Israel”. It’s not clear who the man assaulting this woman was but one imagines he will not face any consequences.To be fair, Gaza hasn’t been completely ignored. On Monday, there was a panel centered on Palestinian human rights, in which Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric doctor who treated patients in Gaza, talked about the horrors she had witnessed. But the panel, while important, wasn’t on the main stage. It wasn’t given star billing like the parents of the Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who gave an emotional speech on Wednesday. It felt a lot like pro-Palestinian activists had just been tossed a few crumbs.For a brief moment, it did seem like a Palestinian might get a proper chance to speak. The Uncommitted National Movement, which launched an anti-war protest vote during the primaries, had been urging convention officials to include two Palestinian American speakers on the convention’s main stage. “We are learning that Israeli hostages’ families will be speaking from the main stage. We strongly support that decision and also strongly hope that we will also be hearing from Palestinians who’ve endured the largest civilian death toll since 1948,” the movement’s statement released on Tuesday read.By Wednesday evening, however, it seemed clear that the convention had rejected these requests. In response, a group of uncommitted delegates staged a sit-in in front of Chicago’s United Center. Ilhan Omar joined the demonstration, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called in via FaceTime.In light of the convention’s refusal to have a Palestinian American speaker, the group Muslim Women for Harris made the decision to disband and withdraw support for Harris. “The family of the Israeli hostage that was on the stage tonight, has shown more empathy towards Palestinian Americans and Palestinians, than our candidate or the DNC has,” Muslim Women for Harris’s statement read.For those of us who have been cautiously optimistic that Harris might break from Joe Biden’s disastrous policy of unconditional support for Israel, this week has been bitterly disappointing. Whoever wins this election, it seems clear joy, joy, joy will not be coming to Gaza anytime soon. Just more bombs, bombs, bombs.Dismiss ‘grannies’ as frail old biddies at your perilWhether it’s “Nans against Nazis” protesting in Liverpool or the Raging Nannies getting arrested at US army recruitment centers, older women are some of the toughest activists out there, writes Sally Feldman.Woman, 75, uses gardening tools to fill in potholes outside home in Scottish villageArmed with a bucket and spade, Jenny Paterson undertook the resurfacing work against her doctor’s orders. She’d had surgery and wasn’t supposed to lift things but said: “I’m fine and I’m not a person to sit around and do nothing anyway.” Which has given me some inspiration to pick up a rake and go tackle the raggedy roads of Philadelphia.The late Queen Elizabeth II thought Donald Trump was ‘very rude’Apparently, she also “believed Trump ‘must have some sort of arrangement’ with his wife, Melania, or else why would she have remained married to him?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHow Tanya Smith stole $40m, evaded the FBI and broke out of prisonThe Guardian has a fascinating profile of Smith that touches on how the FBI couldn’t catch her for so long because they didn’t think a Black woman was capable of orchestrating her crimes. In Smith’s memoir, she recounts how one officer told her that “neeee-grroes murder, steal and rob, but they don’t have the brains to commit sophisticated crimes like this”.A clueless Alicia Silverstone eats poisonous fruit off a bushIf you’re wandering the streets of London and see a bush in someone’s front garden with mysterious fruit on it, should you a) admire it and move on? Or b) reach through the fence and film a TikTok of yourself munching the lil street snack while asking whether anyone knows what the heck it is? This week, Silverstone chose option b. The woman thinks vaccines are dodgy and yet she has no problem sticking an unknown fruit into her mouth. Turns out it was toxic but Silverstone has confirmed she’s OK, which means we can all laugh at her without feeling too bad about it.Women use ChatGPT 16%-20% less than their male peersThat’s according to two recent studies examined by the Economist. One explanation for this was that high-achieving women appeared to impose an AI ban on themselves. “It’s the ‘good girl’ thing,” one researcher said. “It’s this idea that ‘I have to go through this pain, I have to do it on my own and I shouldn’t cheat and take short-cuts.’” Very demure, very mindful.Patriarchal law cuts some South African women off from owning their homesBack in the 1990s, South Africa introduced a new land law (the Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Act) that was supposed to fix the injustices of apartheid. It upgraded the property rights of Black long-term leaseholders so they could own their homes. But only a man could hold the property permit, effectively pushing women out of inheriting. Since the 1990s, there have been challenges and changes to the Upgrading Act, but experts say that women’s property rights are still not sufficiently recognized and “customary law has placed women outside the law”.The week in pawtriarchyThey stared into the void of an arcade game, and the void stared back. Punters at a Pennsylvania custard shop were startled when they realized that the cute little groundhog nestled among the stuffed animals in a mechanical-claw game was a real creature. Nobody knows exactly how he got into the game but he has since been rescued and named Colonel Custard. “It’s a good story that ended well,” the custard shop manager said. “He got set free. No one got bit.” More

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      ‘Guys go where their buddies are’: the young men recruiting each other to fight for abortion rights

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      View image in fullscreen“Oh, no, no, I think you’re trying to get in contact with my wife.”That’s what a man in Florida recently told an activist who knocked on his door to talk about abortion rights. But the man was wrong. The activist, who represented a group called Men4Choice, was there to talk to him, because the group is dedicated to getting more men who support abortion rights involved in the fight for them.“They have to get off the sidelines,” said Dewayne Martin, the youth organizing director for Men4Choice, who relayed the activist’s account to the Guardian. “They have to become the foot soldiers of this movement.”Two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions, most men in the United States support abortion rights. Within months of the decision, 65% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 said they supported abortion being legal in all or most cases. But Men4Choice calls these young men “passively pro-choice”.Young women still support abortion rights at higher rates than their male peers – and young men are just not as motivated to take a public stand on the issue. Just 43% of gen Z men say that abortion rights are a “critical issue”, compared with 68% of gen Z women, the political scientist Melissa Deckman found in her forthcoming book The Politics of Gen Z. This indifference has consequences: compared with women, men between the ages of 18 and 44 are less likely to say that abortion is motivating them to vote in the 2024 elections, according to polling from the firm PerryUndem. They are also less likely to say that the state of abortion rights will affect whom they vote for.Men4Choice’s goal is to get these young men to vote, canvass and otherwise act on their beliefs – instead of leaving the work to women.“When we think about our organizing strategy, it’s: help men see the harm,” said Oren Jacobson, a Men4Choice co-founder. “Help men understand how this issue is not just a woman’s issue. It’s not just about abortion. It’s about freedom, it’s about power, it’s about control. It is an issue that impacts all of us, our families, our loved ones.”View image in fullscreenIt affects young men’s futures, too. Compared with young men whose partners got pregnant and gave birth, young men whose partners had abortions are almost four times more likely to graduate college. Young men who have been involved in an abortion are also more likely to make more money than those whose partners gave birth. Overall, an estimated one in five men has impregnated somebody who has had an abortion.Democrats have made abortion rights one of their central issues in the 2024 elections, while Republicans – wary of how outrage over Roe’s downfall probably lost them a much heralded “red wave” in the 2022 midterms – have tried to downplay the issue and their own role in overturning Roe. However, as they’ve backed away, rightwing commentators and politicians have become far more adept at discussing masculinity than their leftwing counterparts, experts have told the Guardian. These rightwing public figures are not only willing to acknowledge that young men are struggling – with getting into college, with their finances, with their mental health – but also to portray these struggles as the result of women’s growing social and political power.This kind of talk – which is so popular it has essentially spawned a cottage industry – is believed to be a major reason why, despite their past support for liberal causes, so many young men are now pivoting towards conservatism (and potentially towards supporting Donald Trump).“It feels good. It’s telling men: ‘You’re the priority. You’re the superior being,’” said Davan’te Jennings, a Men4Choice fellow who lives in Georgia. “‘You act like this, this is when you get all the cars, the women, the mansion. Grind 24/7. Don’t think about mental health. Depression isn’t real.’”In Jennings’ view, such “toxic masculinity” is part of the reason why young men don’t feel like they can be openly passionate about abortion rights. He hears references to it all the time: when Jennings talks to men through Men4Choice, the men often use phrases like “to be a man” and “the manly thing to do”. Expressing emotions – including caring about abortion rights – doesn’t fit into that mold of masculinity.View image in fullscreenMen4Choice, then, aims to reframe how abortion fits into antiquated and restrictive notions of masculinity. “Masculinity is taking action,” Martin said. “Masculinity is caring for the people that you love. Masculinity is ensuring that you are building a pathway towards freedom for you and your people, and realizing that those two things are not separate.”Christian Shephard, a 26-year-old Men4Choice fellow who serves as an organizer for the group in central Florida, tries to open up conversations about abortion rights with men by discussing how some men treat women, including how they may objectify or sexualize women.“It may sound like that has nothing to do with reproductive justice, but it certainly does,” Shephard said. “There is a clear connection between how people talk about women and how these [anti-abortion] laws are being created to deprive them of fundamental rights.”In a recent Men4Choice “community conversation” – virtual and in-person discussions where fellows are expected to bring male friends – one man claimed he didn’t have to take any responsibility for abortion because “women should keep their legs closed”, Jennings recalled.“That was literally the words he used,” Jennings said. “Most of us who are pro-choice on the call are like: ‘Now we see why it’s important to dismantle that way of thinking.’”Jacobson launched Men4Choice in 2015, but the group has exploded in the years since Roe’s demise. The Men4Choice fellowship program, which runs three times a year and is training 70 men between the ages of 18 and 28 this summer, has almost tripled in size since the summer of 2022. Many Men4Choice fellows are based in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina – all states with abortion bans.Though he was raised in a Democratic area of Miami, Martin, 22, said he hadn’t acted on his support for abortion rights until 2020. He was a high school senior working on organizing around school boards when a friend told him about Men4Choice.“It was in that moment that I realized, despite my being raised by a community of women who have served as my village and have made my life possible in several ways, I’ve never taken a direct action to support them on this issue,” recalled Martin, who became a Men4Choice fellow that year.View image in fullscreenIn the months before Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, Men4Choice partnered with Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband and the second gentleman of the United States, to host events centered on energizing men to fight for abortion rights. (“This is an issue of fairness to women. Women are dying,” Emhoff told NBC in May. “It’s affecting men’s ability to plan their lives.”) Now, the group is trying to mobilize male volunteers and funnel them towards partner organizations working on the ground.“Guys go where their buddies are,” Jacobson said. “You have to create an ecosystem of men to get them to show up.”Men4Choice is also heavily focusing on Florida, which has banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy – before many people even know they’re pregnant – and where voters will decide in November whether to amend the state constitution to protect abortion rights.Abortion-rights ballot measures previously have succeeded in Republican strongholds, such as Ohio and Kentucky. Exit polls found that 73% of male voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in favor of the Ohio measure – a significant share of voters, but still less than the 81% of young female voters who supported it.The Florida amendment must garner 60% of the vote to pass. This fall, Men4Choice wants to reach 400,000 voters through phone and text banking, according to Martin. The group also wants to hold 100 community conversations with men.There is, however, a limit to the organization’s activism. Men4Choice focuses on men who already support abortion rights or are at least open to having a discussion about it – not men who are adamantly opposed to the procedure. “If there’s not an understanding or a clear line of wanting to understand,” Jennings said, “and we’re just going to sit here and get into a debate – it’s pointless.” More

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      Young women are the most progressive group in American history. Young men are checked out

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      View image in fullscreenWhen Donald Trump strutted on to the stage at the Republican national convention last month, it was to a raucous cover of James Brown’s It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World. The song credits men with inventing cars, trains, lights, boats, toys and commerce. The message was not subtle. At least, not to Melissa Deckman.“This idea of America needing someone who is a strong masculine figure – I think the Republican campaign this year is doing it even in a more pronounced and overt way than it did in 2016,” said Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute. “You have a lot of younger men admiring the strength of Trump – or what they think is strong.”Deckman would know. In her forthcoming book The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy, she dives into the deep political divides between gen Z women and men and explores how they feel about growing up in the Trump era. Based on interviews with roughly 90 gen Z political activists, numerous focus groups and extensive polling, Deckman has identified what she calls a “historic reverse gender gap”.View image in fullscreenShe has found that gen Z men are becoming more conservative as well as increasingly indifferent to politics, bucking longstanding trends, dating back at least to the 1970s, that saw young people across the board voting liberal and men being generally more involved in politics than women. Meanwhile, gen Z women have not only become the most progressive cohort in US history but are also expected to outpace their male peers across virtually every measure of political involvement, such as donating money, volunteering for campaigns, registering people to vote – and, of course, voting.Young women were outstripping men on political engagement well before Joe Biden stepped aside in favor of Kamala Harris, setting the internet ablaze with memes and teeing up yet another presidential contest between Trump and a woman. Now, with Harris the presumptive Democratic nominee, a generation already riven by a canyon-wide political gender gap is watching a contest between a woman who could become the nation’s first Black and south Asian female president and a man who likes calling women “nasty”.“For me, the question come November is gonna be: to what extent do attitudes about gender influence the vote for Trump?” Deckman asked.Polls indicate that young men’s views on gender, femininity and masculinity are rapidly shifting. In 2022, 49% of gen Z men said that the United States had become “too soft and feminine”, Deckman found. Just a year later, 60% of gen Z men said the same. Deckman found that those who agreed with the statement were far more likely to have voted for Trump in 2016 – even after controlling for political party.No matter their age, women have long voted at higher rates than men – but that is the only political activity where they have consistently exceeded men. Men historically donated more, volunteered with campaigns more and otherwise participated in political life more. This year, Deckman believes young women will surpass young men not only at voting, but in all political activities. Democrats have historically had a firm grip on voters under 30 – a grip they may now be losing. Gen Z men, Deckman noted, have “reverted to the mean of men”: while they’re not necessarily more conservative that most men, they are more conservative than their millennial counterparts.Not all menThese trends are even more pronounced among white gen Z men. If you combine the number of independent gen Z men who lean Republican with those who identify as Republicans, Deckman said, young white men “look very conservative compared to even older white men”. She believes Trump will probably win young white men.In 2020, 49% of white men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Biden, according to an analysis of AP VoteCast data by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. Meanwhile, 42% voted for Trump.The damage that could do to Harris, however, is mitigated by the fact that white men make up a shrinking segment of gen Z. About half of gen Z is white, making it the most diverse generation in US history. Several polls have suggested that Trump could win among young Black and Latino men – a claim that Deckman eyes with suspicion, especially since Harris has entered the race and the GOP seems unable to stop themselves from making racist comments about her. Some Republicans have started calling Harris the “first DEI president”.Deckman’s surveys have found that gen Z men are less likely than their female counterparts to say that racial equality is important to them, but 45% do believe that it’s important, including 52% of Black gen Z men.“If Donald Trump uses misogynistic, racist language toward Kamala Harris, I think the net effect for young men will be more off-putting than not,” Deckman said. “The end result for him is a net negative. It’s also, of course, wrong.”‘They don’t care’Another mitigating factor could help Harris: young men don’t seem all that interested in politics, period.“They don’t care,” Deckman said. In surveys, “I asked them: what are you passionate about? What issues are critically important to you? There’s like 20% gaps between young men and young women on everything.”In addition to caring more about issues like LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, as might be expected, gen Z women care more about economic issues like inflation, jobs and unemployment, which are typically thought to be more important to men. (LGBTQ+ zoomers also cared equally or more about every issue than straight zoomers.) Even men who agree that the US is too “soft and feminine” don’t feel more motivated to act. Instead, it is Democratic women who reject that notion who tend to get more involved in politics.While young men fall behind women in political engagement, women have, over the last few decades, gone to college and joined the workforce at higher and higher rates. These trends are not unrelated. The more education and money you have, the more likely you are to be invested in politics.Feeling like your rights are under “direct threat” also increases political involvement – and in the age of Trump, #MeToo and the fall of Roe v Wade, plenty of gen Z women feel like their rights are under threat. Gen Z men just don’t feel the same urgency.Surprisingly, there is one area of political involvement where young men and women feel similarly: they are both deeply uninterested in running for office. Women have long been less interested in running for office than men. But as of 2022, Deckman found, only 6% of gen Z men said they definitely planned to run for office, while 4% of gen Z women said the same. Despite women’s political enthusiasm, zoomers as a whole remain unconvinced that joining government is worth it.“Gen Z is far less likely to be confident in the federal government, in the media, in organized religion, in the police, in the criminal justice system,” Deckman said. “This is just endemic to a generation of young people who have grown up in one crisis after another.” More