Offline with Jon Favreau - Is Masculinism Holding MAGA Together?

Episode Date: June 6, 2026

Who are the men who want women to be quiet? Author and Atlantic staff writer Helen Lewis argues it’s nearly everyone on the right. She joins Offline to make the case that “masculinism” and its mission to reestablish the primacy of men is what unites conservatives more than anything else…except maybe Donald Trump. In reporting her most recent cover story, Helen spoke with so-called intellectuals and leaders of the masculinism movement, many of whom have direct ties to senior MAGA officials, even as they speak openly about repealing women’s rights: to vote, to run for office, and to make basic decisions about work and life. Jon and Helen discuss how influencers profit by preying on young men, how right wing grievances are bleeding into electoral contests across the country, and who can model better masculinity for boys.

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And that's the thing I think is that I think Democrats could embrace is that I don't have anything to prove. Like that's the state you get to with your masculinity. That actually, you know what? I do. I like sports, but I also enjoy watching films or like I'm a dad and actually having kids means a lot to me and all that kind of stuff. That's all there. And that I think does begin to look powerful. In contrast to what you see sometimes on the magaside, which is guys in like heavy makeup and, you know, like hairspray saying that it's gay to each.

soup, right? I just think that begins to look... Shout out to Jesse Waters. Right, but like that just begins to look really weird, doesn't it? Like, you just think, just maybe just eat the soup and like have sex with everyone you want to have sex with. I'm John Favreau and you just heard from today's guest Helen Lewis, staff writer at the Atlantic. Helen just published a provocative piece that really breaks new ground on the post-2024

Manosphere debate. It's titled The Men Who Want Women to Be Quiet. And it's all about the voices on the right giving rise to masculinism, a movement that's trying to reverse the advances of feminism and reassert the, quote, primacy of men. You're likely already familiar with some of the figures in the movement, your Andrew Tates, your Nick Fuentes's, and many of the names we've talked about on this podcast express similar beliefs. But in this piece, Helen goes deeper and speaks with many of the so-called intellectuals and leaders of the movement, many of whom have direct ties to senior MAGA officials. even as they speak openly about repealing women's right to vote, to run for office, or even to make the most basic decisions about work and life. Helen and I had a great conversation about the misogyny at the core of the MAGA movement,

how the influencers profiting off this movement prey on young men and the ways these right-wing grievances are now bleeding into electoral contests across the country. We'll get to that conversation in a minute, but before we do, if you want to support independent pro-democracy media pushing back, against the tide of the Andrew Tates and Nick Fuentes of the world, consider subscribing to Friends of the Pod. As a friend of the pod, you get access to subscriber-only shows like Pod Save America-only friends, all of our great substack newsletters,

and you get ad-free episodes of all your favorite Crooked Media podcasts, including this one. Head on over to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe. All right, here's Helen Lewis. Helen, welcome to offline. Thank you very much for having me. You recently wrote a big piece for the Atlantic about masculinism. Is that how we're saying it?

Masculinism? Yeah, you can say masculism if you want, which is the original Charlotte Perkins-Gilman coinage. But I went for masculinism because I think it gives the idea that the people who are behind this would say this is a kind of reaction to or a counter movement against feminism. It's about researching the primacy of men and also saying that feminism went too far. Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to start by asking how you define it's, and how it's different from sexism or misogyny.

Well, those are quite narrow things, right? In the sense of sexism, I would say, is the belief that women are inferior to men in whatever way you want to say. Misogyny is kind of the weaponized version of that. Like, that's hatred of women. This, you could have no hate in your heart for women. You would just believe that society should be organized in a different way. And one of the things that, you know, I try and do in my work, it's hard, but I think

it's good intellectual discipline, is try and. argue with the best version of your opponent's case, right? Say this is what these people think that they're doing. They think society would be better organized than this. They think it would be better for women, right? They think women would be happier living in a patriarchal society. So they think that they're doing this on behalf of women. It's not motivated by hatred or fear.

So I wanted to use that more neutral term, essentially, from the start, just to say this is, and also to say, this is an ideology, right? This is an intellectual movement. So you make a big claim in the piece. Here's a quote, masculineism has become the single most important force uniting the American right, bringing together an unlikely constellation of pastors, posters, senators, preachers, influencers, podcasters, and fanboys. So masculinity, and you're telling, more important force than immigration or fighting wokeness or fighting the left or Donald Trump himself on the right.

Why do you think it is the most important force uniting all these factions? Maybe not more important than Donald Trump, because I think the way a lot of MAGA functions is that essentially by deferring to the strongman leader, you avoid having a lot of arguments. There are a lot of situations in which, what do we think about this? We think whatever Donald Trump thinks about it today. And if he thinks something different tomorrow, we'll think something different tomorrow. So let's put him aside. But it was very obvious to me that as I was writing it, you know, the MAGA movement is split

among a number of fundamental different ways. The question of Israel, obviously a really important one, foreign policy, but also the tariffs have upset a lot of people who are essentially protectionist. You know, and the regulation of tech. We've just seen the executive order on regulating AI go through. After an intense back and forth, David Sachs, the AI czar seems to have been involved in that. You know, there are countervailing forces within that Trump White House. But the thing that absolutely everybody, the kind of table stakes, the price of emission,

I think absolutely everybody agrees is that traditional gender roles are best. Men should be manly in this very narrowly defined way and women should be feminine and not too ambitious, you know, all of that kind of stuff. So to me it just seemed to be that, you know, you can hold all kinds of views and still be, call yourself a member of MAGA. The one thing you probably can't be as a radical feminist, I would say. That would be, that would be tough to accommodate that in the however big the tent currently is. It is interesting, though, that of all the other issues, this is probably, like, I agree that it is, it's the glue that sort of holds it all together, but they don't speak about it as publicly or openly as some of the other issues. They talk about immigration all the time.

They talk about there's fights over the war in Iran. There's everything you hear from the White House. They don't talk a lot about women and women's roles, like specifically. Certainly the people that you talk to in this. do, but what do you make of the fact that doesn't come from the politicians themselves? That's interesting. I think they almost don't have to because we all have such a keen sense of gender politics and things can be so coded that you almost don't need to. I mean, you mentioned immigration. And just to go back to that, one of the things that's very interesting

is that a lot of the kind of MAGA-Manusphere crossover influences aren't white. You know, Myron Gaines is fresh and fit. I mentioned the piece is Sudanese American. Andrew Tate is mixed race. He has, I think, Black British father and a, white mother, Sneiko, who's featured in the Louis Theroux documentary. And, you know, Trump made big gains with young black men and young Hispanic men. So there's something that's slightly more complicated going on with immigration. I do agree with you that it's a, it's a very big binding force in that coalition. But the reason I think that gender doesn't get talked about up front is because you don't need to. So to give you an example, like I've been just watching a lot of the

clips about James Talarico, the Democrat. That's going to ask about that, yeah. Right. But it's a very obvious example. So James Telerico, the Democratic contender for the Senate nomination in Texas, running against Ken Paxton, who has a scandal list as long as your arm, there is essentially no positive case to make for Ken Paxton. And so, you know, they've gone out very early, very negative against James Tallerico. And, you know, saying that he's vegan ought not to be gendered, right? But it is. It's like real men eat barbecue. And girls and gays, you know, are vegans. to the extent that Arnold Schwarzenegger made a whole documentary for Netflix, which is very good about eating vegetarian food and how healthy that is for you.

And he did two things in it I noticed at the time. One, he called it a plant-based diet because you can't say vegetarian because that's for girls and gays. And two, he said how amazing it was for like bodybuilding and how strong your erections would be. So it was basically like, don't worry, men. Like you can eat vegetables and like nothing bad will happen to your masculinity. And so that's what I mean is I don't know if it needs to be surfaced. because there are just so many dog whistles that then do invoke ideas about gender. How and when do you think masculinism sort of became this dominant force organizing the political right?

Was it Trump's election in 2016? Was it before that? Was it after that? Like, trace the evolution for us. That's a really interesting question. I mean, I probably go back even further than that and back to Phyllis Schlafly and the 1970s. You know, the second wave of feminism was this incredible flower. of both consciousness raising and crucially also legislation, right?

That's when you start to get things like the ruling on equal rights here, things like the demands for equal pay. And then that bleeds into the third wave and worries about sexual harassment. But there was essentially this huge feminist swell. And so there was a need for a right-wing woman figurehead to lead the charge against it, right? There was a feeling that what you couldn't do is have a bunch of dry old do. telling women to get back in their box, that would be kind of unpleasant.

So you found this new kind of organising that Phyllis-Luffley did. And, you know, the backlash to Roe versus Wade is a really big part of that, like a really energizing issue, that attempts to speak to right-wing women, particularly as mothers, and forge this new idea of what it means to be a right-wing woman.

So I would go back almost to that, really. And the fact that, you know, that it is quite hard to succeed, obviously, even now within the, the Trump White House. You know, it's the number of women who've been pushed out of that White House is, I think, really striking, actually. I'm not sure that they are necessarily the least competent people objectively,

but they have been far more expendable than some of the other people in there. So I think I would probably trace this particular version of the kind of right-wing masculinity movement back to the 70s, even as far back as that. But obviously, given enormous impetus by the election of Trump the first time around in 2016, when we had the whole grab by the pussy. is that lock your room talk? Is that just how men talk and Democrats are actually missing something by saying that's a standard we should, you know, hold politicians to?

And you see that all the time now. And actually you see it from Democrats too. It's kind of essentially Graham Platner's argument in Maine is like this is just how guys talk. And Democrats who don't get that, you know, who have these politeness standards, that's kind of feminine and weak. Well, it is. I mean, so many of these movements,

be it a backlash to racial progress or, or this are a backlash to some perceived loss of status or, you know, someone else's rights being advanced. And I feel like with around 2016, you get, it's not just Trump, but it's Trump beating Hillary Clinton in that race. And I think, you know, you talk about this in the piece a little bit too. In the 2010s, you have the future as female. And like, do you, do you see sort of where the culture went in the 2020?

tens as part of what accelerated the masculinism movement sort of post-Trump's election? I think so, because I think there was a feeling that women had grabbed the microphone during that time, and they were getting, you know, from the perspective of being a, you know, a feminist writing through it, the Me Too movement was, you know, it was a, it felt like lots of people had had stories that they had been sitting on for often for decades, right, in some cases, that they were now felt empowered to speak. But then I think sometimes that was read as being very privileged women getting to speak. Why are we hearing from all these Hollywood actresses? You know, like you're getting paid millions per film. Do you really have anything to complain

about? And then there was a feeling from some men that actually they had things that were wrong in their life. And like, why doesn't anyone want to hear about the things that have happened to me? And at the same time, I think you're right. There was a genuine progress. I mean, the majority now, for example, of medical students in the US are female. You know, you have colleges that are actually putting their thumb on the scales, essentially for affirmative action for men in some humanities courses, because they, you know, that is, that is the group that doesn't really want to go and do higher education in those subjects.

So definitely there was a situation where it was felt that like men were falling behind, and that was something that you kind of weren't allowed to talk about. And always say, as ever with politics, seeing everything as a zero-sum game. Well, if we're talking about women, then we must not be talking about, men. But, you know, the wit I would concede, and I did talk about this in the piece, I do also think that I talk to a lot of parents, liberal parents, who said, I feel like my son, my young son, my 12-year-old, 14-year-old, is being made to feel like he's carrying this kind of original sin around with him, like, you know, that masculinity is inherently toxic. And actually, that's not

really a message that I want to give to my kids. We have all of these children's books that are about, like, brave, sassy heroines. Well, hang in a minute. Do we have, like, brave, sassy, boys? Is that a thing that you're allowed to have now? And so I do, that's the bit, I think, I do have a lot of sympathy for. Yeah. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. While summer brings exciting travel and sun-drenched adventures for many, it can also feel like a stressful juggling act. Balancing a packed schedule can quickly lead to burnout, leaving you feeling guilty that you aren't maximizing every single moment of sunshine. Therapy can help you understand your needs and set healthy boundaries so you can enjoy summer on your own terms. Just walk into that therapist's office and

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Quince.com slash offline. You talked to a wide range of prominent feminism haters for the piece. Who are some of the most influential figures that a lot of people don't know about, but probably should? Well, I start off with Douglas Wilson, who I think is really influential, because he was massive in the American homeschooling movement in the 1990s. And I think that's one of those things if you were outside it, you wouldn't have really any interaction with it. But he has built himself this mini empire in Moscow, Idaho,

which is a publishing company and a streaming platform. And he's written a million books. And, you know, he has, his son-in-law is involved in the liberal arts college there. He's involved with the school there, right? Like, he has thought about every single way that you would get your message out. And in the old days, it was through, you know, leaflets and books about homeschooling kids. Now it's through streaming platforms. So I think he is really incredibly influential. And he's only really become someone that people have talked about in the last couple of months

because he's Pete Higgseth's past. Well, he's the founder of the denomination to which Pete Hegsafe, the secretary of war, belongs to. And, you know, his views are, how do I describe them? I think in the piece I described them as uncompromising, which is a lobel. Like wants to repeal the 19th Amendment, right? Yeah, he wants to bring back household voting, for example. He's described his political views as paleo-confederate. He's described himself as a Christian nationalist, a theocrat, a patriarch. You know, he believes that St. Paul and other people in the Bible laid down the view,

which is the man is the head of the household and a woman's role is to support him. And he would like to move back to an America where that is the case. And he's been in February, he went into the Pentagon to preach to them at the invitation of Hague set. And one of the things that he said was, you know, I want you to be uncompromising Christians, unashamed Christians at work. Right. So, you know, this again is somebody who doesn't believe in the separation of church and state. He wants a Christian America and he's, you know, he's legitimately entitled to. He's pulling every lever he can to achieve his political vision.

But it is a very distinct one, a minority one. And what a lot of people could see is an extreme one. So to me, that was really interesting to write about, you know, somebody who has both got a very specific ideology and has thought quite deeply about all the ways to advance that ideology. I think if you're someone who opposes that ideology, you really need to know about that. I was thinking about Doug Wilson because I, you know, there's just so many stories about the Trump administration and so many outrages that, you know, for the last 10 years, but especially in the, in the second administration. So I remember hearing about Doug Wilson and Pete Hegseth, but, you know, reading your piece again, like you said,

he led a prayer service at the Pentagon. And then you've got Hegseth, who has moved to block the promotion of female officers and opposes women in combat. And he's faced allegation of sexual misconduct, abuse, harassment, violence towards women. He's now running the military, asking our troops to pray for victory in Jesus' name

in the war in Iran. Why do you think the Wilson connection and Hegsseth's, you know, views, which could be described as, you know, a form of masculinism, just not as maybe louder or specific as, as Doug Wilson's? Why do you think that hasn't been a bigger topic

of public debate? That's a really good question. I mean, I think, again, it's a bit, like, some of this stuff is the kind of sea that we swim in. I think that, I don't know, It's odd maybe to reference stand-up comedians, but the staple of every hack, stand-up comedians act is a kind of like little light battle of the sexist humor.

Like, you know, why are women like this kind of stuff? So I just think there's a kind of soup where it is still more acceptable to say things that are sexist, you know, sexist in a kind of slightly ironic way than maybe some other things. So in the case, but I also think that, you know, the military is an interesting wedge issue because I think, I don't know what the polling is,

I'd be interested to see it, but I would imagine that a relatively significant minority of the American population are a bit uneasy about women in combat roles. Actually, not as far as I can tell, a particularly controversial thing within the military itself. But it's something that lots of people outside, including lots of women, feel maybe they actually do have a few questions about it. So I can see why that is a kind of, that's a really potent issue. But it's also, you're right.

Pete Heggseth has a very particular vision for what he thinks an army should be. that is actually weirdly kind of pre-Christian, right? It's almost, it's sort of Spartan. It's kind of pagan, right? He thinks they should all be kind of strapping, I think, oiled, beardless warriors and they should look a certain way. And there's kind of an aesthetic to it. And that's the other thing.

I'm not sure I brought this out enough in the piece, but I think it's part of it, is that machinism is an aesthetic too, right? You can, you know, it's the bodybuilding pictures and the Spartans and the Roman statues. you avatars on Twitter and like there are all these kind of you know um cultural signifiers that it has kind of it's got an aesthetic of its own in the same way that the maga aesthetic is now kind of gold leaf and AI slop there is also a very distinct maga masculinist aesthetic yeah it's just i was

i'm like i'm trying to imagine a similar case where a pastor or someone uh who's defense secretary or any cabinet secretary and they belong to this pastor's church and the pastor comes in and leads a service. And the pastor has a view that we should segregate black and white Americans again or even like that Israel shouldn't have a right to exist. These would be controversies that we would be talking about quite a bit, particularly in the segregation case. And you're right, I guess maybe because it's partly aesthetic, maybe because we, like you said, we just swim in these waters and we're used to it. It just doesn't quite get the same level of attention. It's just, it's just wild to me. I also have a kind of slightly spicy theory that I'm

sure will get me in trouble, which is I think a lot of middle class men don't believe that middle class women actually face sexist depression, right? I don't think that they think that sex is a, you know, women like of their class, they think that they are kind of pampered and they do all right. They're willing to believe that maybe if you're a migrant woman, it's hard or whatever it might be, or women in Iran have it hard. But they don't think that essentially their girls, you know, their girlfriends and wives have ever suffered any real. real disability due to being a woman. So I think there is also that kind of feeling

that the sexism on its own is just not real in some bone-deep kind of way. And actually maybe, I think it sometimes bleeds out into actually isn't it easier to be women because you know you get men but chivalrous and they buy you dinner and they open doors for you and they look after you. So I think that may also be part of it.

But it's also understood in this ironic way, isn't it? So Doug Wilson says, you know, I want to take the vote away from women, but only maybe in 200 years. And that's understood to be kind of cute. Whereas I think if someone said, I want to bring back Jim Crow, but only in 200 years, not now, people would be, at that point, people would be out, essentially in a way that they're not out at this. This is understood to be kind of, you know, kind of funny and ironic and cutesy in a way that I don't think we apply necessarily to other injustices in American history. Well, the other dynamic here that I think is

fascinating in your piece is the difference between, you know, the difference between. who some of these men are online and how they express themselves online and how they are in person, like when you spoke to them. Could you talk a little bit about like the sort of the difference between their persona when you actually interviewed them versus what you see online? Yeah, I mean, this may be partly me.

I'm quite okay with interpersonal conflict. It doesn't bother me. In fact, I managed to, when I interviewed Jordan Peterson in 2018 now, He went on Joe Rogan afterwards and said I was animus possessed, which is a Jungian term, meaning that I've got like too much masculine anger in me and I'm not properly feminine. And that's probably, it's probably true. It's probably fair enough, actually. But, you know, I don't.

Real compliment I would take it. Right. But apart from that, it was a great night at the theatre. Yeah. But, you know, I think it's one of the things when you're a journalist that you should be able to do, right? You should be able to, if you want to challenge someone, you should be okay at saying it to their face. You don't need to hide behind the keyboard or the screen. you know, say it to their face.

But that is quite rare. And I, you know, so I didn't go into these conversations looking to pick fights with people, but I was kind of willing to challenge them and say that, you know, I disagree with them where I disagree. And actually, most people don't want to fight with you on Zoom in that way. But I think that's really fascinating. I mean, I mentioned in the piece Joel Webern, who is a very hard right past her, thinks, you know, there's LGBTQ mafia and posts about Jewish sodomites and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, he was polite. I've interviewed men who've interrupted me far more. Like, he listened to me

very thoughtfully. He called me ma'am. You know, all of this kind of stuff. And then you go away and you look at his Twitter feed and it's, you know, it's Jewish sodomites and the LGBT mafia. And it's just, so I think you have to, when you're writing these stories about modern politics. You have to acknowledge the posting of it all. Right? And so much of politics is now posting. I mean, the Democrats have started to do it too with that performatively like saying, telling Stephen Miller that he's ugly and like, you know, everybody now just does the kind of insult comic routine. But that's not how most people live their actual lives. So, you know, and I think it's, people struggle with it, right? Because the performativity doesn't mean that there isn't also sincerity

underneath. But you have to acknowledge that some of this is, there's a kind of WWE aspect to all American politics now. People are playing the heel in quite a lot of situations. Yeah, I was going to ask because obviously it's hard to get into these people's minds, but like how much of the nastiness is, do you think is sincere belief? How much is performance? And maybe most importantly, how much does that even matter? Yeah, does it even really matter? I don't, I'm of the feeling that it, that it doesn't. You should take responsibility for all of your words, whether or not you meant them, because some people will think that you meant them, right? And they might make decisions acting on them.

But it was really interesting to talk to Doug Wilson. Who has called women? Let me get you the list. Small-breasted biddies, Jezebels, lumberjack Dykes. You know, he's just, he blogs like a kind of 2000s insult blogger. To hear him say, oh, I think that the way Nick Fuentes talks about women is repulsive. You know, he doesn't talk about women the way that, you know, Jesus said, you know, talk about women like, they're your crown and, and St. Paul, and, and he doesn't

do that. And I said to him, well, look, hang on a minute. This is what you're doing too. But, but in his mind, he's doing, you know, he's doing a bit, essentially. Yeah. And he's being elegant in his insults and there to, you know, to some extent to be understood in this kind of literary referential way, whereas he thinks, you know, Nick Fuentes is actually kind of vulgar and gauche. And that was, that was just a really interesting moment to me that you'd have somebody who, you'd have somebody who, who uses that kind of language, who makes a point of saying things that are deliberately offensive, but then they would still say that, no, no, he's really offensive. Nick Fuentes is really offensive. Yeah, I guess you always need someone who's more extreme than you to appear a little

bit more reasonable to others, I guess. Well, it is a huge problem for that section of the right, the appearance of Nick Fuentes. Yes. And, you know, he caused a massive split at the Heritage Foundation, which may be the most influential MAGA think tank, because it's a lot of of his comments about the Holocaust and Jewish people. And you watched a section of the rights, which has made a fetish of never condemning offensive comments, being cool with everything, suddenly try and find the way to articulate,

oh no, this is actually our red line. And they really, really struggled, to the extent that lots of people left the Heritage Foundation for Mike Pence's think tank, because Kevin Roberts would not condemn those remarks. And that to me was really interesting. Again, first of all, that they didn't condemn Nick Fuentes saying that all women should be put in breeding gula.

which seems like a fairly extreme opinion to me. But also that they struggled so hard to find a way to say, you can't say that. Because so much of that bit of the right is built on saying, that's feminine, that's nagging, that's Karen stuff. That's the HR department, won't you not say that? If you come with us, you can say whatever you like. And then you get somebody who really doesn't,

who goes past the self-appointed rules, and then they're kind of completely stuffed. One detail in your piece that really stuck out at me was the title of Doug Wilson's first podcast episode, The Sin of Empathy. And you also talk about a marketing professor who rails against suicidal empathy. This is something that's been on my mind for a while

because I've seen Elon Musk talk about this a lot that empathy is suicidal and the Western civilization is dying because of empathy. Why does masculinism need to treat empathy as a weakness? Like what is inherently fashiret? about caring for another person or trying to understand where someone else is coming from. Yeah. So that's, Doug Wilson has a podcast called Man Rampant, which is just a great name for podcast. I'm sad that you didn't pick it for this podcast, really. Next season. Yeah, the first

episode is called the sin of empathy. And yeah, there's toxic empathy and suicidal empathy. Elon Musk quite often does little rants about the hard men of Gondor and how, who are they? Well, the problem is, here I live in England, as you can tell from my accent. The problem is we're like the hobbits in the shire. And we don't understand that we're facing the orcs, comma, brackets, Muslims. And we need the hard men of Gondor to defend us. And that's like Tommy Robinson and other kind of provocateurs like that. So for him, essentially, the feminine problem is that women feel sorry for other people,

people who present themselves as victims. and that is illegal immigrants, refugees, violent criminals who've had a really rough childhood, and they feel sorry for those people, instead of recognizing their inherent danger as strong men do, and therefore they let them get away with stuff. So that's kind of a bit of Helen Andrews' great feminization thesis in her essay, that women corrupt the law because they rely too much on their feelings and not enough on facts. so they will be sort of soft on crime. And again, you can see how it, you know,

it narrates perfectly into lots of messages that the right already had about the Democrats, about not being tough enough on crime. And now it takes on this extra-gendered dimension in which rehabilitating criminals now becomes feminine for reasons best known to itself and therefore bad. Or allowing migration is because you feel sorry for people who live in Mexico or Venezuela or wherever it might be,

and so you let them in. But you don't realize, that actually, you know, they're rapists and they're coming to infiltrate your country. So that, when you understand that, I did find that a kind of little skeleton key for understanding what it is that they're all so worried about. But it, you know, and I think social media again plays a part in this. You know, they're just a feeling that you can sort of numb yourself by just consuming huge amounts of content about the threat that you're under. I mean, it's one of things that I find really fascinating is this is a discourse that is very much about strength,

but they appeared, there's a, you know, someone doing one of those fake kendals that was conservative man afraid of cities, which really made me laugh, right? I live in London and quite often, you know, you'll get American right wingers who are absolutely convinced that this is basically Mogadishu on a bad day. And you're like, actually, have you looked at our murder rate versus mid-sized American city? You know, we don't have guns, so it's quite hard for people to kill each other. But they're absolutely convinced that, like, living in a city is the worst thing that could happen to you. and are afraid of cities, but that for some reason isn't feminine.

That's not being hysterical and overall. That is a sensible level of fear based on a real and true threat. And so that was the other thing I was trying to bring out was the immense flexibility of this discourse, right? You find the feeling that you already have and then you work back to why it's either masculine or feminine based on whether you approve of it or not, basically. I do think it's the skeleton key. And to me, where we started about this masculine or, you're... colonialism being sort of the uniting force among all of these right-wing factions makes a lot more sense. It reminded me of Stephen Miller going on TV a couple months ago. And I think he was talking

about Iran. He might have been talking about Venezuela, some kind of conquest that they wanted to do. It might have also been about immigration. Could be about any of these things. But he said, the laws of nature are force and strength and power, and that is how decisions get made. And that is just the world, the way it is, that is reality, something to that effect. And it really, to me, that was the dividing line between how they see the world and how they think everyone else sees the world. And this idea that we make laws and international treaties and diplomacy and cooperation and we understand other people and we try to cooperate. Like that whole ideology for them is, is, you know, against nature. It's not reality.

And they would say it's feminine. Yeah, it's weak. I think that's exactly right. You have to essentially follow the lead of Trump in which every negotiation there is a winner and a loser. And you bully people until you make sure that you are the winner. And that everything is zero sum. And that's it. You can't possibly have a mutually beneficial cooperative arrangement.

No, in that case, you probably, you probably, you probably, you. you're the pussy, you've been the one, you've been tricked, essentially. The other thing, my colleague Tom Nichols once wrote a piece about Trump and masculinity, which I thought was really interesting. He compared him to the kind of World War II veterans that he'd grown up around, who had often, you know, got purple hearts, you know, they had often done incredible, brave things under fire, and sometimes you didn't even find out that they'd done them until they died,

and they found the medals in the drawer. This was an archetype of masculinity that was about being a protector, that was being stoic and strong. And that's very different. I don't see a lot of protecting in this, right? And again, but that kind of comes back to the J.D. Vance thing about Ordo Amoris, right? The idea that you only really, the only people you look, like, you care about your family, and that's just about it.

You admit you care about your nation. You certainly do not care about anybody in another country. Like, screw those guys. What are they got to do with you? And so, yeah, I think empathy and the limits of empathy is absolutely core to understanding that worldview. And by the way, Stephen Miller is a very good example. I don't know if I, I didn't go into this in the piece, but his kind of origin story, his kind of Spider-Man bitten by a spider thing, is the Duke Lacrosse story, right, which was a false accusation of rape.

And that is the kind of key to this mythology, too, is that actually that men are more at risk from false accusations of rape than women are from rape. Right. And actually, that's not really true if you look at the numbers, but it's a very powerful motivating message when you find an actual case where their false accusation has been made. Because you can say, actually, we're having the wrong conversation about rape. We should be talking about men and how unfair this is on them. Yeah. It's interesting because you talk to so many religious folks like Wilson, how they justify defining empathy as a sin when empathy is very clearly at the core of nearly every, everything Jesus says and does in the New Testament? Like, what is the theological justification

for this? And I know that goes into the J.D. Vance and the O'Doramas thing as well. But, yeah, I mean, I grew up Catholic, right? My dad is a deacon in the Catholic Church, and my mom was an R.E. teacher. And so I went, you know, I read a lot of Bible. It went to mass a lot. And I was kind of, you know, I was just kind of fascinated by how different our conceptions of Jesus were. You know, the Jesus that I grew up, within more in the European and British tradition is, blessed other meek, you know, like leave your mother and father and follow me, you know, turn the other cheek, you know, a new commandment I give on to you, love one

another, all of this kind of stuff. Kind of like hippie Jesus, I guess. But like to them, that's not appealing. They like, you know, Rambo Jesus, who would have been machine gunning the way of the stone from the grave with an AK-47, right? I find it fascinatingly disconnected from the Bible. American evangelical Christianity has got entirely its own set of beliefs about Jesus that are, you know, for me, hard to reconcile with the Jesus of the Bible, but extremely internally coherent.

And actually got to the upstant where they now identify Trump with Jesus, because Trump was wronged. He was betrayed. Much as St. Peter betrayed Jesus, so did, you know, the rest of the Republican Party by, you know, agreeing to going along with him not being the candidate or whatever. I find it absolutely fascinating. So I did want to bring in the Christianity because I think it's a really important part of the story. It's also one that has a kind of ironic codical, which is that Andrew Tate converted to Islam because he said, and I quote, Christianity is a cucked religion, right, that it's not patriarchal

enough, that Jesus is kind of nambi-pambi, and actually Islam is properly patriarchal. And that was much more appealing to him. And I said that to Joel Webben, the pastor. I was like, you want essentially a guardianship system of women. That's Saudi Arabia. Well, not even Saudi Arabia now, because now Saudi Arabia is liberalizing and, you know, a lesser extent. But actually, a lot of these guys, you know, want something much more hardcore

than traditional mainstream Christianity. And therefore the kind of Jesus of the Bible is sort of slightly, slightly embarrassing to them almost. He's a problem for them, and it's why a lot of their quotes where they justify some of their views in the Bible, they go to the Old Testament, do you notice? Or St. Paul, right? Or St. Paul rather than actually Jesus, because that's where the title of the peace ends up coming from, that women should be quiet. That's St. Paul's advice to godly women. But yeah, you know, that is really interesting to me at a time when America is becoming less religious. that actually the more fire-breathing bits of American religion seem to be more resistant to secularization.

So you might end up in an odd situation in which the kind of middle bit of American mainstream Christianity is kind of slowly ebbing away. And what is left are the people who are very strongly theocratic. I could see that trajectory happening. Offline is brought you by Mint Mobile. When people hear that Mint Mobile plans are only $15 per month, they may wonder, what's the catch?

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just in time for the new Supergirl movie. Discover your power and channel your inner superhero. Fly into your local Zhu booster and experience it for yourself today. And see Supergirl, only in theaters, June 26. I want to touch on something you said earlier about you noted some legitimate entry points into masculineism and talking to parents about their boys. And, you know, men are genuinely lonelier. That's an issue falling behind, becoming more alienated, I think, from society.

in a way that's harmful to all of us. So how do you think the left, society, everyone deals with this idea that there are legitimate issues that men are facing and that if we roll our eyes at them or ignore them, then perhaps they go down a rabbit hole and find the Doug Wilson's of the world? Like, what is the proper way to handle some of these issues and also prevent young boys from sort of following this path? I mean, I'm not a parent, so, you know, take my parenting advice from an extreme pinch of salt. But I do think that often the way that we structured schools can be quite hard on boys. So I wrote about this in my first book, Difficult Women.

I had a chapter on education. And what lots of teachers told me was that schools are now structured, around essentially the perfect model pupil is the good girl, right, who just sits there, is quiet, does the work, whatever. And for lots of boys, you know, it's one of the reasons I think that maybe ADHD diagnoses are on the rise, right? They just find school really tough, like the level of concentration and quiet and not burning off their excess energy, really tough. And that gets interpreted as behavioral issues. So I think there is a piece there about just being more open to the idea that you might need to give boys some latitude.

Richard Reeves had this idea about letting boys start school a year later, right? Like there are, and every so often someone will pop up and say, maybe we should let teenagers start school later in the morning, right? We do run schooling in the way that is convenient for parents and teachers and maybe isn't actually the best thing for the individual children involved. So I think that's definitely part of it. But the other thing is, you know, for all that I had to my disputes with Jordan Peterson, And some of the stuff in his early work, I think, was really good and useful.

Like, one of the things he used to talk about was just self-respect and discipline. And this is the kind of work, the much mocked, like, clean your room stuff. But essentially, you would find quite sweet Reddit threads of boys or young men saying, like, I've done everything on the thing. You know, there's this girl in my class. I really like her. And, like, I've tidied up. I've, you know, I've shaved.

I've had a shower every day this week. And you think, who needs to be told this? But no one is born knowing how often to shower. So clearly someone hadn't told them. And that stuff I thought was really positive. Like make yourself somebody that you respect and then other people will kind of want you. And it's one of the really big things I think that's causing problems in some of other societies where there are mismatched expectations much more is that women want much more egalitarian relationships. And because of feminism, they have the means to turn down men who don't offer that.

And so men have got to decide, essentially, whether do you want to hold out for somebody who will be submissive to you in this patriarchal way? Or would you like to have a different kind of relationship that makes it easier to have a relationship? I mean, Matt Iglesia suggested only slightly trolling that more young men just need to be, like, pretend to be really, really left wing, given that women are more left wing than, like, if it really means that much to you to have a girlfriend, consider compromising. Consider, like, taking an interesting, you know, the clean energy or whatever it is that you're, that the girl that you're interested in is also interested in. Well, I was thinking about the politics of all this, and obviously there's been this sort of long and somewhat interminable debate after the 2024 election about what the left can do to reach young men. And do you think there's a version of, you know, here's what being a good man looks like that makes sense for the left to offer? Or is the whole frame wrong? I think there absolutely is.

And I think it's one that doesn't have to be a kind of anxious straight jacket. Because I find that some of the way that some of the people on the right talk about masculinity is just, it's like a constant monitoring. Like you've just got to keep a grip on it and not do anything that like women like, you know, in a way that just sounds to me like deeply unrelaxing. And actually oddly young and insecure, you know, I just, I think that's kind of fascinating. I think, I think a bomber is a good example of this, right? somebody who has been married for a long time, clearly massively respects his wife,

thinks that having a smart wife is something that you boast about, right? It's not something that makes you feel less of a man. It's like, look who I managed to land. I remember I went to the DNC in 2024, and it was the night that both the Obama spoke, and he said, you know, I'm the only guy who has to follow Michelle Obama. And it was a really beautiful moment because it was Chicago, right, home crowd. They had loved Michelle Obama. Could not have been happier and really probably more than him.

But it was just, it was cool in that way of like, I don't have anything to prove. And that's the thing I think is that I think Democrats could embrace is that I don't have anything to prove. Like, that's the state you get to with your masculinity. That actually, you know what, I do, I like sports, but I also enjoy watching films. Or like, I'm a dad and actually having kids means a lot to me and all that kind of stuff. That's all there. And that, I think, does begin to look powerful.

In contrast to what you see sometimes on the magazine. which is guys in like heavy makeup and, you know, like hairspray saying that it's gay to eat soup. Right? Like, I just think that begins to look. Right, but like that just begins to look really weird, doesn't it? Like you just think, just maybe just eat the soup and like have sex with everyone you want to have sex with. So I think that like that level of relaxation is there. I interviewed Gavin Newsom and he was talking about the fact that how sad he thinks it is that,

like lots of young men haven't asked a girl out. I could just, I could do with it. I could have a few more stories, like heartwarming stories about male politicians on the left, talking about how they got together with their partners. Like that would be fine. Yeah.

Where it becomes really tense, right, is when there's a sense of, you know, like how much about male sexuality is, is inherently frightening or about dominance. And I think that's the bit that's really tough for the Democrats. You mentioned both of these candidates. so I was going to ask about them, which is like, it's interesting. We're talking now and right at this moment, we're having this debate that sort of circles

around masculinism with James Talleyico, who the right has decided to go all in on saying is not masculine enough, low Tatar Rico, six-gender Jimmy. Stephen Miller called him the Democrats' first transgender Senate candidate. And then, which again. And then on the other side. you've got Graham Platner, and the knock on him is certainly not that he's not masculine enough, but that he represents a more toxic brand of masculinity, usually associated with MAGA candidates that the right is pushing,

that he represents this. What do you make of like sort of both of these dynamics? And one thing it always gets me to think is like, okay, if you are a guy running for office, like, it's like, I got to be masculine. I can't be too masculine. I can't be toxic masculine, but I can't be called low tea. And the right's going to do this. Like, it's a tricky balance.

Yeah. I think you're best served by just being your actual personality, whatever that happens to be. I mean, if it works, it works. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. Right. And not everybody's, I'm certainly not cut out for elected office. It's not going to happen for me. I'm not, you know, I find, I would find people quite annoying if I had to be nice to them all day.

That would be too much for me. Like, I'm not going to be a politician. But the Tala Rico thing I think is interesting because there's two separate things I've been thinking about him a lot. I spent the early 2020s saying all this emphasis on language is turning people off. It's really weird. You know, it's really exclusionary. It just makes people think that you're, you know, having these semantic arguments about how many genders there are. And like, why are we doing this when there's all this other stuff going on the world?

The thing I would say about him is the reason that he came to fame is that he went on Joe Rogan. And a big sort of argument about Democrats about doing that. So what he isn't, he's not from that bit of the progressive wing of the Democrats that has a very minority set of views on language and things like that, and also thinks that anybody who doesn't share them basically is a bigot who should be shot, right? He's willing to go out there and make, if he thinks there's six genders, God bless him, like he's, it's America, you're entitled to your views, go out and go out and argue that, right? The problem that I think that lots of people had during that period and people like me had was this feeling that, by the way, the commissar has declared that there

are six genders and anybody who dissents from this, you know, is, you know, do better. Right, exactly, do better. And with the claps. But, like, so I appreciate, I would like to have an argument with James Salarico about how many genders there are. I still feel like they're probably infinite genders, actually. And probably, I think he's right that God is non-binary. Like, he's God.

He's not a person. Right. Why would he, this is the reminds me of the arguments I used to have with my very Catholic parents in my teens. So I think there's that stuff is kind of interesting. But so I mean, winning Texas for the Democrats is a massive stretch anyway. So like, let's be honest, what would probably happen is that he will lose and everybody will say it's because he said all of those things in 2020. It's probably more like to be just because he's had a blue rosette on.

But there should be room enough in the tent for people with a wide range of views. And if you can, I feel like if you can go out as far as Platner on one side and that's, you know, and then you should be able to go out as far as Tala Rica on the other side. Plattner's an interesting one because it's someone who clearly throughout most of his life, like sort of did embrace, even though he had pretty left-wing views, did sort of embrace the language of a more toxic masculinity, I mean, all of his Reddit posts, right? And now has sort of, you know, at least in his politics over the last couple of years, has been much more, at least in the way he talks, much less of the toxic masculine sort of guy. and then you get the sexting scandal and you're like, well, that's more traditional guy who's just behaving... That's quite bipartisan.

Yeah, guy behaving shittily, right? So it is that it's, that's a curious one to me because I think some people perceive him as the typical toxic, masculine guy, but I don't quite know if that's his problem, even though he clearly does have some problems right now. I think Josh Barrow identified a very big problem and he lumped Fetterman in this group as well, John Fetteman in Pennsylvania, which is just the kind of screw up. I think he referred to them as both being low conscientiousness. And that's the thing. And I think that is the real knock on them.

James Talariko, I think I might think he said some very silly things and he might have some disagreements with me. What I have not heard anybody say so far, I've not heard anyone impugning his character, right? By all accounts, he seems to be a decent guy. Yeah. I'm not sure I would be willing to say that about Graham Platner. I think he has probably treated people in his life quite badly.

And the other thing, again, that is gendered. I am not sure that a female candidate with that kind of background would get all those passes. No. There is a kind of boys would be boys. I was just thinking about the fact that, you know, the two most chaotic female and Republicans, I would have said, were like Marjorie Taylor Green, now out of Congress, and Nancy Mace, now sort of friendless and influenceless. So there is a kind of degree of forgiveness of Platner that is very much tied to both. him being a man and him having committed very male coded sins in the past, right? I think that has to be part of that conversation. What do you think about the MAGA women in this way? Because

you talked about Phil Schaffley, but like, are the Marjorie Taylor Greens and Nancy Mases, like are they sort of the, you know, ten iterations away from Filchafley on this? You've got in, you've got like Caroline Levitt sort of making the case at the briefing every day. And, And what does it take to be a MAGA woman in good standing in this world of masculinity? I think you've got a couple of archetypes that you can play into. One of them is the kind of hyper-secretary, right? The kind of very much the efficient executor of Trump's power. And I would put Caroline leave it in that group, right?

She doesn't set policy on her own. What she does is she goes out and she's the saleswoman for it. So there's that kind of archetype. Then there's the kind of ballbuster and you get kind of honorary man status until you don't. And then there's the kind of mother, which I think Susie Wiles has got,

has essentially been like she's the designated grown up and everybody else therefore gets to act even more like a teenager. Because actually, you know, there's mom who's going to kind of keep this, you know, she's going to the one who's going to make me get to the briefing on time. Oh, what a buzzer. kill. And that's, so that is one, maybe one version of kind of authority within that MAGA set up.

But, you know, I think that we were just talking earlier about the number of MAGA women who've been burned essentially by this by feeling that they were not respected in the end, that actually their voices weren't heard or they weren't really in the power games. And I think Trump himself is, there's a phrase that they use in very postmodern graduate seminar, but homosocial, which is that actually his primary social bonds are with men. He's interested in what men think. He sees himself in competition with men. Women are not massively interesting to him,

except maybe as a means of keeping score. Like he seems to be, and maybe this is something he's just come to in his later years, he seems to be much more interested in how attractive men are than how attractive women are these days, which is, you know, a choice and a reversal from maybe where he was. But it also does speak to where what he does, which is he thinks that he lives in a man's world

and women are kind of just. just an adjunct to that. I don't feel like he really sees himself in competition with women ever. They're people that he would need to beat because by definition they're not playing the same game he is. Yeah, no, I get that too. You described this masculinism as hitting its imperial overreach phase, like the Roman Empire. They all idolize.

What does that look like in practice? And do you think it starts costing them? Do you think it sort of undermines this whole movement? I think when it moves beyond the kind of disrespect to designated enemy women, that's quite dangerous. You know, and I think that that has, Trump can be as rude about Rosie O'Donnell as he wants, and that's never going to cause him any problems. But the feeling that when people start saying overtly sexist, dismissive things about, you know, women we like. I do still think that will be a problem for them. And I also think that

the, you know, when, when Twitter was Twitter, people on the left got very carried away and said a lot of things that probably, you know, in the cold light of day, maybe they don't feel great about it. And there's exactly the same thing I would say is happening with the right now on Elon Musk's X. Lots of people are saying things out loud that I think in a couple of years time might be when the wind changes again, real millstones around their neck. And just ultimately, I don't think that Americans like overt bigotry. I don't like overt evil.

And so the coded language of this stuff about, you know, feminism has made women unhappy is, you know, it's framed as kind of concern trolling. People regard very differently from she's a bitch. And at that point, people are just a bit like, well, that's a bit uncalled for, isn't it? You know, I don't know how this went down in America, but certainly in Europe, the way that Trump and Vance treated Zelensky,

just that straightforward discurtesy, played really badly here. And I'm not sure how in America it played with swing voters. I'd be really interested to know. But people do have a very finely tuned sense of like, they don't like rudeness. Maybe they like caricatured campy, WWE heel turns, but just like that level of disrespect, I think, sometimes, when it feels uncalled for, I think is still a turnoff.

And I think because of the fact that everybody has got so into their bubble and that that, you know, that mage masculine sphere is so on the march, you do end up with people like Fuentes saying things like women should be put in gulags. And that will be something that people get asked about for years and years to come. And they will either have to say, no, I don't think women should be putting gulags. And then some people will hate that. Or they'll have to go along with, you know, Nick Frentas is Nick Frentas. And a lot of women, I think at that point, there's already a big voting gap.

Anyway, you know, there was a great piece in, I think, BuzzFeed in 2016, about the Ivanka Trump voter. You know, the people who liked Ivanka Trump, because she was the reassurance that this wasn't just a kind of bully boys club. And they're in danger of becoming that, losing that gloss of irony and, you know, or only against sour-faced feminists and lesbians. And it becoming, oh, actually, no, the mask has slipped. They actually just don't like women. I think that is still dangerous in American politics. Yeah, I remember being surprised even in 2024,

that people who do focus groups would say that people would bring up spontaneously without even being asked J.D. Vance's childless cat ladies comment, that that was just something that broke through and it's very hard for things to break through and really bothered people. I think Trump's, I think you mentioned this in the piece, the quiet piggy that... Quiet piggy. It's just rude. It's just unnecessary. And the childless cat lady, I think, you know, he obviously thinks it's because it's, you know, it's about baron apparatchiks.

That's Scott Yenna of the Heritage Foundation's phrase. But enough people will know somebody in their circle who is infertile, not by choice. And for them, that might be the worst thing in their lives, desperately wanted to be parents and haven't been able to make that happen. And then you just think, well, who's this guy? Like, you know, it just, the picking on the minority does not land in the way they want to. there's a kind of splash damage around it. And then that does become something. I think the same thing you see with,

do you see the congressman who deleted his tweet about how he wants to, he wants to get rid of Pride Month and have nuclear family month and will eliminate homosexuality for America? And I was really interested to see that, oh no, a staffer posted that. Because again, open, overt homophobia is still something that makes people recoil in America. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, saying the quiet part out loud does seem like it could be what, what saves us. Right, but Trump always get, traditionally Trump has got away with it because he says outrageous things in a kind of campy, liberacee, WWE way. And J.D. Vance does not have

access to that register. There is nothing about J.D. Vance that says, I'm fun, this is show business. It just comes up mean. No subtlety. No subtlety. And nasty. Yeah. And unnecessary, as my mother would say, that was unnecessary, J.D. Vance. Yeah, this is

why Rubio is catching up to him in the invisible primary right now. Helen Lewis, thank you so much for joining. This was a fantastic conversation about this, and really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favro. It's produced by Emma Ilich-Frank.

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