‘Woke’ allyship is no substitute for marriage
Conn Carroll
Video Embed
The boys, to alter a phrase, are not all right.
Whether it is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on the Right or Richard Reeves on the Left, people across the political spectrum are beginning to notice that men, particularly young men, aren’t doing well.
Young men are far more likely to get bad grades in high school, far less likely to go to college, and even less likely to graduate college than young women. In fact, soon, over two-thirds of all new college graduates are expected to be women.
For conservatives, the cause of, and solution to, young men’s troubles is obvious: With fewer than half of all households now led by a married couple, record-high numbers of boys are being raised without fathers. To fix men, we need to fix marriage first.
For the Left, diagnosing the problem can be difficult because even admitting there is a problem undercuts one of the foundational presumptions of the Left, which is that white men are privileged by their race and gender and, therefore, can never suffer.
How the Left gets around this ideological contradiction is fascinating, which is why a new report produced by Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice is worth reading. According to Equimundo, which recently conducted a poll of over 2,000 American men between 18 and 45, “boys and men are not all right” because of “their eroding support for gender and racial equity.”
“The gender gap in morbidity,” Equimundo explains, “is also related to the way we raise boys in restricted versions of manhood in America.” “It is not being biologically male that is driving challenges among men in the U.S.,” the report continues. “Rather, harm typically results from pressures to conform to restrictive norms related to manhood that intersect with economic injustices, racial inequities, and other factors.”
The trouble with young men today, according to the Left, isn’t that the traditional family has fallen apart. It’s that it hasn’t fallen apart completely enough. Only when men are completely free “from pressures to conform to restrictive norms related to manhood” will men get better.
You can see the hostility to marriage in small signs throughout the report. For starters, the report doesn’t mention “fathers” or “fatherhood” once. And when it does mention marriage, it only does so as part of its “Man Box” series of questions designed to determine how captured men are by “harmful manhood.”
“A man should always have the final say about decisions in his relationship or marriage,” Equimundo stated to men during its poll before asking if they agreed or disagreed with the statement. In the sole appearance of marriage in the report, the institution is insinuated to be nothing more than a tool of patriarchal oppression, not the great leveling institution it actually is.
So what does Equimundo offer up instead of marriage to channel men’s needs and desires into cooperative, productive behavior? Social justice lectures and allyship.
“We can and must invest in greater sexual and relationship literacy for young men,” Equimundo advises. “This includes engaging them in discussions about consent and communication, as well as approaching male sexuality in ways that do not demonize young men or essentialize them as having uncontrollable sexual urges.”
Does this approach to male sexuality include marriage? Of course not. “Nor should we promote narrow ideas of what healthy, caring relationships should be,” Equimundo claims.
In addition to lecturing men on how best to channel their sexual urges outside of marriage, Equimundo counsels, “We need a massive narrative shift and a major marketing push on the many obvious benefits of allyship for gender equality and racial justice and of healthy, connected versions of manhood.”
But just what are the “benefits of allyship” to men exactly?
Because according to Equimundo’s own polling, it is the young men who are most likely to be active allies who are also the worst off. In one section of the report, Equimundo celebrates the fact that “younger men are the most likely to say they have participated in various events or acts supporting gender equality, racial justice, healthy masculinity, or LGBTQIA+ rights.”
“The fact that younger men are the most likely to have participated in equity-affirming events suggests that more could and should be done to deliberately engage young men as allies across these causes,” Equimundo concludes.
But then, in a separate portion of the report, Equimundo notes that it is these same younger men who have “higher rates of depressive symptoms, suicidal thoughts, and a sense of isolation.”
If performing acts of allyship to help break down traditional family norms is so essential for young men’s happiness, then why is it that those men most likely to act as allies are also the most unhappy?
Growing a mustache for Movember, attending a Black Lives Matter rally, or donating to Planned Parenthood isn’t going to improve anyone’s life, particularly young men.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
What will motivate young men and give them purpose is the goal of finding one young woman who wants to share the rest of their life with them. And again, Equimundo’s own research shows this is true. According to its own poll, those men who expressed the most traditional views about family life, even the twisted caricature that Equimundo presents, also “show the highest purpose in life, while men with the most progressive views about manhood feel the least purpose in life.”
So if you are an unhappy young man, go to the gym, get a job, and ask a girl out on a real date. Don’t bother attending a Pride parade. It is not going to make you any happier.