Winning the Battle of the Sexes

On Crossing the Gender Divide

Much of Mao Zedong Thought does not “hold up,” but the above aphorism does. Source: Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line (modified by yours truly)

Gen Z men and women are becoming increasingly divided politically. Across a number of countries, 18 to 29-year-old men are much more likely to identify as conservative, while women are much more likely to identify as liberals. Daniel Cox of the American Enterprise Institute attributes the divergence to gender politics. While the #MeToo movement galvanized young women into a sense of political solidarity, young men have felt adrift and alienated:

Most young men are probably not interested in making America great again, but they do feel acutely the need to secure a place for themselves in a culture that readily identifies male advantage but ignores the challenges young men face. Out of a sense of increased insecurity, more young men are adopting a zero-sum view of gender equality — if women gain, men will inevitably lose. It's an outlook that makes them defensive, encourages them to ignore or overlook enduring challenges women face in society, and can even spur misogyny.

I’m almost a decade removed from the demographic profiled in Cox’s article. I’ve also graduated from the struggling young man phase of my life. I have a wife, two children, and a career. But based on my own experience transitioning to full adulthood, I can understand where today’s young men are coming from. Cox’s article discusses the work of Richard Reeves, who has highlighted the challenges young men face:

They are struggling more in school, are less likely than women to go to and graduate from college, have fewer close friends than previous generations, and are four times as likely to commit suicide than women. Reeves argues that this state of affairs requires that we hold two seemingly contradictory ideas at once: Men at the highest rungs of the economic ladder are still advantaged by a system that perpetuates gender inequality, while men on the lower rungs of society face unique challenges because they are men.

That last line is essential to understanding why many men reject a feminist worldview focused on “smashing the patriarchy.” The idea that society is biased in their favor goes against their own lived experience. Furthermore, even questioning this notion publicly can have detrimental personal and professional consequences. So, very often, men will remain silent about what they actually think, furthering resentment toward a status quo of sex-based pathologizing (“toxic masculinity”) and casual gaslighting (basement-dwelling college dropouts should give up their patriarchal status).

As an example from my own life, I was once at a company town hall where at least two-thirds of the fellow employees around me were women. One of them pointedly asked the (male) CEO why the C-suite was majority male while the company was majority female. He promised to do more to achieve gender parity at the top level. Meanwhile, women were vastly overrepresented at every other level of the company. Yet this went unquestioned, even though the number of people affected by the latter imbalance was many times greater. As usual, an unrepresentative minority of alpha males made for a safe and easy target.

Did I follow up by asking if steps would be taken to hire more underemployed men for entry-level positions? Obviously not, because I can read a room and was unwilling to commit career suicide to make a point. Did I even mention what I was thinking to another male employee so we could commiserate? No, because he was just as likely to brand me a sexist and spread that career-destroying word around. So I remained silent, as did, perhaps, other men (and women) with similar thoughts. Thus a false consensus is achieved while stirring quiet discontent.

Cox mentions a survey that found “two-thirds of young women believe that in most or in every way, what happens to women in the US will have a bearing on their own lives — an idea known as ‘linked fate’ in sociology.” In my example, the idea of “linked fate” motivated the female questioner at the town hall to speak up for other women’s interests. Meanwhile, my silence (and the silence, perhaps, of others), borne of realpolitik, showed the absence of linked fate as a motivating power among men. Cowed by a false consensus at school and in the workplace, it’s no wonder many young men have sought company in the sometimes dark corners of the internet.

Men are not supposed to speak up for each other, but are apparently expected to identify with the “linked fate” of women. That fewer than half of Gen Z men identify as feminists would be alarming if feminism only meant equal rights for women. But obviously, feminism is a contested term and is frequently used to mean collective advocacy for women, which can come at the expense of men (eg, when driven by equity instead of equality). That women should speak up for other women is a logical form of reciprocal altruism: I speak up for you, you speak up for me. But to ask men to speak up for women, and not the reverse, is to launch a losing offensive against human nature.

Is the answer that men should embrace a “linked fate” and start a #WhatAboutUs movement? That may be where we are headed. But better for both sexes to reject what Cox calls “a zero-sum view of gender equality” and speak out for each other in the name of something greater. As a married man with two children, I share a linked fate with my wife in wanting what’s best for our son and our daughter. Our relationship is non–zero sum. Pair bonding, and having children together, is the optimal outcome of the battle of the sexes: individually and collectively. That is the objective our society should be encouraging, because it is how and why our interests, and our destinies, ultimately converge.

The most significant issues of gender politics are, in fact, non–zero sum. Restrictions on women’s reproductive rights impact potential fathers as well as potential mothers. Declining male achievement rates negatively affect women by reducing their pool of marriageable men (since women tend to be hypergamous, favoring men of higher socioeconomic status). Cultures of untempered machismo, as opposed to refined BDE, are toxic for women and the average man alike. The proliferation of online pornography warps sexual appetites and expectations to the detriment of both sexes. By focusing on our mutual interests, instead of stewing in grievances, the thesis of patriarchy and the antithesis of feminism can resolve in a synthesis of mutual understanding and baby-making.