If Democrats Want To Reach Men They Need To Stop Demonizing Masculinity

Respecting and valuing masculinity is the first step toward earning back men’s trust.

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About the Author

Julian is a columnist for Reality’s Last Stand and a member of the Braver Angels media team. He’s also the founder of Heal the West, a Substack movement dedicated to combating illiberalism via spiritual formation and rebuilding the American community.

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Last month, the New York Times reported that Democratic leadership is launching a new initiative aimed at reconnecting with male voters. Titled “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan” (or SAM, for short), the campaign intends to spend $20 million to boost the party’s appeal among men. The move isn’t surprising—Trump won decisively with male voters in 2024, capturing 55 percent of the male vote to Harris’ 42 percent.

The report has drawn its share of mockery, even from prominent voices on the left. MSNBC contributor Rotimi Adeoye noted the obvious flaw: “Democratic donors treating men like an endangered species on a remote island they need to study probably won’t rebuild trust.”

One reason the initiative strikes so many as tone-deaf is that, in recent years, top Democrats have done a poor job connecting with ordinary men. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, for instance, said Harris chose him as a running mate in part because he could “code talk to white guys.” “I was the permission structure to say, ‘look, you can do this and vote for this,’” he explained. But if Democrats genuinely want to appeal to working-class men, using the latest social justice jargon out of Swarthmore may not be the best strategy. On the campaign trail, Walz often felt like the kind of guy a room full of Harvard professors staying at the Ritz-Carlton imagined was a working-class regular Joe.

Leftist cultural commentators have gone so far as to label things like working out, eating red meat, and even being attracted to Sydney Sweeney as “right-wing” and therefore problematic. That’s hardly a recipe for making men feel respected by the left.

As Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men and author of Of Boys and Men, puts it: “One of the markers of being on the right now is to actually just be unapologetic about being a guy and being masculine and not having to apologize for mansplaining and ‘toxic masculinity’ and manspreading and all of that.”

Mocked as the SAM report has been, it actually puts its finger on the problem. SAM’s first round of research quotes an Asian American professional who said that Democrats are the party of “the fluid masculinity of being, like, empathetic and sensitive,” while “Republicans are more like, the traditional masculinity of a provider, strong, and the machismo type.” If Democratic leaders are serious about winning back men, then they need to stop demonizing traditional masculinity.

The essence of masculinity can be distilled into two words: provide and protect. Too many Democratic voices have condemned these drives as toxic. But while each has a potential dark side, both are fundamentally prosocial.

Let’s start with the impulse to provide.