“We Can Do Better Than ‘Positive Masculinity,” wrote Ruth Whippman in the New York Times yesterday:
Perhaps it’s a predictable irony that in an election cycle that could realistically deliver the first female president, so much of the commentary has been about men. Or rather, not about men exactly, but about “masculinity.” Because somehow, in 2024, we still find ourselves unable to talk about men and boys without using masculinity as the basic frame of reference.
The bottom of the page read: “Ruth Whippman is the author of ‘BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity.’” The release date is June 4, 2024. A person who just published a book with “masculinity” in the title was groaning at the “predictable irony” of discussing the term so near to a possible Kamala Harris win. “I am angry to be experiencing the exact situation I asked for” could have been the lede, but this is a column about male stereotypes, so elsewhere it went. But where?
It’s not clear at first. “Masculinity has had an unfairly bad rap, its proponents argue, becoming permanently shackled to the word ‘toxic,’” Whippman writes. “Positive masculinity is an attempt to rebrand and reinstate it for the next generation.” The next passages express obligatory revulsion toward the horror-dude Trump/Vance duo, and though try-hard Tim Walz gets better grades, he still annoys because only by loading speech with “sports metaphors and gun references” does Walz earn “the social leeway for his more feminist sensibilities.” If these are the available archetypes for the next generation of boys, Whippman considers, “we might do better to ditch the masculinity rhetoric altogether.”
Interesting! And replace it with what? The Times piece word-saladed to a close without really saying. Maybe the answer was in BoyMom?
I bought the book. Wow. The opening paragraph:
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