Know Your Enemy - What's Wrong With Men?

Matt and Sam explore the "crisis of masculinity" in America — reading books on the subject by Senator Josh Hawley and Harvard political theorist Harvey Mansfield.

Duration: 1h 51m
Broadcast on: 05 Jun 2023
Audio Format: other

"Many men in this country are in crisis, and their ranks are swelling," Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said at the National Conservatism conference in 2021. "And that's not just a crisis for men. It's a crisis for the republic."

Some version of this sentiment — that men are in trouble, adrift, or falling behind — is shared by writers and thinkers across the political spectrum. It's nearly impossible to open a magazine without finding an article about the state of manhood in America. Brookings Institution scholar Richard Reeves' 2022 book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It is a best-seller. Figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate attract huge audiences, serving as reactionary self-help gurus for young people eager to be told what a man is and how he should behave. One doesn't have to accept the right's framing of the problem — nor any kind of gender essentialism — to acknowledge the statistics: boys and men are falling behind in education, in work-force participation, and succumbing to drugs, alcoholism, and suicide.

Hawley — apparently having stewed on the topic for two years — has just released a book on "manhood," which advises a revival of biblical virtues to guide the aimless young men of 21st century America. To pair with Hawley, we read Harvey Mansfield's 2006 book on "manliness." Putting Hawley's evangelical Christian preaching in conversation with Mansfield's Straussian philosophical playfulness proved very constructive. Along the way, we talk about our own relationship to manhood and try to decide which (if any) of the virtues associated with maleness are worth preserving, defending, or even advising young men to embrace.

Further reading:

Harvey C. Mansfield, Manliness, Yale University Press, 2006.

Joshua Hawley, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, Regnery, 2023.

Joshua Hawley, "America's Epicurean Liberalism," National Affairs, Fall 2010.

Becca Rothfeld, "How to be a man? Josh Hawley has the (incoherent) answers," The Washington Post, May 18, 2023.

Phil Christman, "What Is It Like to Be a Man?" Hedgehog Review, Summer 2018.

Martin Amis, "Return of the Male," London Review of Books, Dec 5, 1991.

Martha Nussbaum, "Man Overboard," New Republic, June 22, 2006.

Idrees Kahloon, "What's the Matter With Men?" The New Yorker, Jan 23, 2023.

Zoë Heller, "How Toxic Is Masculinity?" The New Yorker, Aug 1, 2022.

Lisa Miller, "Tate-Pilled What a generation of boys have found in Andrew Tate’s extreme male gospel." New York Magazine, Mar 14, 2023.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

All righty. Welcome listeners to episode 74 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sippmann, your podcast co-host, and I'm here as always with my great friend Sam Adderbell. Hey, Sam. Hi, Matt. How are you doing today? I'm good. I'm excited if a little bit sheepish about sharing this episode with the listeners. Why would that be, Sam? Well, we talked about manhood, manliness, the crisis of men, masculinity, and what all of our friends on the right have to say about how men should be and what's wrong with them today. But that meant that we also had to talk about our own relationship to our maleness, and that made me a little bit nervous, but I think it was really fun. Yes. As Josh Holly, who we talk about in this episode might say, we stepped into the breach and exercised courage in taking on this subject. I have to say, there were times of this episode where I did feel a little silly because it does feel a little silly to talk about manhood. But I think that's a fine way to approach the subject because I think having humor about oneself is also an important manly quality. Yes. If you're going to bang on and on about manliness, and you don't do so with a little bit of sheepishness and a little bit of humor, that's bad, you're like. But we do, just for listeners, we're not going to tell you much about this episode, but it is focused on two books. Josh Holly, the senator from Missouri, his new book called Manhood, and then we reach back to Harvey Mansfield's 2006 book, Manliness. It was funny when I was talking to Hannah about doing this, she's been writing a lot about Philip Roth lately, and she mentioned that Philip Roth sometimes uses the adverb, "manfully," so it'd be like, "manfully," he lifted his head. I do think that's hilarious and very Rothian, but also I feel that manfully we took on this touchy subject. Well, we shouldn't give anything more away. As always, we're grateful to our partners at Descent. They sponsor the podcast. We love partnering with them. One thing they do for us is if you subscribe for $10 a month to know your enemy on our Patreon at patreon.com/knowyourenemy, you get a free digital subscription to Descent. And if you subscribe for $5 a month, you get access to all of our bonus episodes. So please do consider supporting us on Patreon, and if you would, consider rating and reviewing us on iTunes. It's always helpful to help people find the podcast and give them a sense of what it's about. Yeah, let's get a hot KYE summer. Yes, we want summer of 2023 to be the KYE summer. As always, we want to thank Jesse Brennan, our intrepid producer, who did a great job with the three and a half hours that we recorded for this episode, and Will Epstein who does the music for the podcast. And is there anything else to say? No, we should get to our conversation about what's the deal with men. What is the deal with men?

Alrighty, Samuel, well, let's get to it. Today, we're going to hash out some stuff about a very non-controversial, non-anxiety-inducing, definitely not a "please don't cancel us" topic, which is manliness, manhood, being a man. The What's Wrong with Men episode of Know Your Enemy? Yes, exactly. I was talking to Hannah, my girlfriend. I mean, she knew what we were doing because she saw me reading books called Manliness, Manhood. What's up with men all week? But she said, "Is it just the two of you?" And I said, "Yeah, I mean, we have the authority to talk about manhood, which is the two of us." But that being said, if there's any moment at which we need a woman's perspective on these matters, Hannah's just across the wall and is willing to come and settle any outstanding issues. You know, normally, Sam, it's me that has the personal experience. The first hand, you know, I was a young conservative, but you two are also a man, so this may be one of the first episodes where you can say, "As a man, as an ex, as a Y," I have been socialized into maleness, and I will rely on that experience in the course of this episode. Now, this podcast is about the right, and I think it's very hard to talk about the, say, post-war conservative movement without gender as a major feature of it. Traditional gender roles, the kind of apparatus around how we think about equality, what that means in terms of, you know, our professional lives, educational lives, and so on and so forth. Gender is a big part of that story, and we've done a number of episodes on, say, the overturning of Roe. We've done a couple of episodes on transgender rights and issues, but we haven't really talked about men and manliness and gender and politics with that being the focus. And, you know, one reason we wanted to do this,

Transcription truncated.

Matt and Sam explore the "crisis of masculinity" in America — reading books on the subject by Senator Josh Hawley and Harvard political theorist Harvey Mansfield.