Why do the arguments of men\u2019s rights activists and TERFs sound so \u2026 similar?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about knowing your role in nature,\u201d says \u201cTom,\u201d a Republican man looking for a biblical woman to settle down with. \u201cIt\u2019s undesirable for women to be too independent. As a man, I want to take care of you, and I believe in that biology.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTom\u201d is one of the many pseudonymous conservatives dated by journalist Vera Papisova for her recently viral Cosmopolitan<\/em> article<\/a>. (Its fame is late-blooming, as it happens\u2014the article was first published in February 2025.) The essay is a memorable catalogue of grotesques: the trembling man who hollers \u201cwhite, liberal women are a plague on society\u201d before drinking \u201c11 iced coffees\u201d; the man who may or may not remember sending Papisova death threats over the internet, who nonetheless insists that \u201cfrom his point of view, we actually agreed on most things\u201d; the guy who speaks about Donald Trump in the first person. (\u201cThey say horrible things about me and make everyone hate me and think I\u2019m a bad person,\u201d says the Trump-channeller, apparently speaking from the depths of an oracular trance.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, it\u2019s Tom, and his bedrock faith in a \u201cbiology\u201d that mandates the same exact domestic arrangement as a sitcom filmed in 1952, who stands out to me. As a trans person, I am also used to hearing about \u201cbiology,\u201d and specifically, how it negates my existence. Call it a hunch\u2014I am unable to reach Tom for comment on this one\u2014but somehow I doubt that his opinions on trans people are any more charitable than his thoughts on women with jobs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That is to say, for most of my adult life, I\u2019ve been studying how misogynists think, and as an out trans person, it\u2019s been increasingly important for me to recognize TERF talking points when I hear them. Yet the more I listen to the two groups, the more similar they sound. Men\u2019s rights activists (MRAs) and TERFs ought to be, by their own logic, mortal enemies. So why do the two groups believe the exact same things? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Papisova\u2019s piece is one of several recent trend pieces reflecting the growing consensus that dudes are not all right these days. Young men are lonely<\/a>. Young men are sexless<\/a>. Young men are misogynistic<\/a>. Young men are adopting right-wing politics in high numbers, even as young women<\/em> have become the most left-leaning demographic in the country<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSixty years ago some of these [men] would have been fathers. Small-business owners. Dependable men in hats riding slow commuter trains, their mindscapes perfumed with thoughts of stocks, bonds, lawn care,\u201d writes Daniel Kolitz, in his own viral essay on gooners<\/a>\u2014who are (yes) a quasi-religious subculture of mostly straight young guys who aim to achieve transcendence through continual masturbation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But 60 years ago\u2014in 1965\u2014experts were also<\/em> worried about the dudes; in point of fact, that was the year<\/a> George M. Frederickson published the first-ever paper about the \u201ccrisis in masculinity.\u201d Masculinity was in crisis in 1965 (because men had \u201cfeminizing\u201d office jobs instead of doing manual labour) and masculinity was in crisis in 1985 (because women had started working in the offices) and masculinity was in crisis in 1995 (because there weren\u2019t enough drum circles, cf. Iron John<\/em><\/a>). Masculinity has been in crisis for so long, and for so many reasons, that it almost makes one question whether there was ever an unchallenged or universal \u201cmasculinity\u201d in the first place.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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