My comment on the media pooh-poohing “bros”
I wrote this letter to the editor of the New Yorker. It’s been long enough that I doubt they’ll print it, but I wanted to share my thoughts. Everyone knows our culture misunderstands women. I think men could use more compassion and that doing so won’t hurt any other group.
To the editor,
Andrew Marantz’s article The Battle for the Bros perpetuates a subtle but common double standard: when society conflicts with men, there’s something wrong with men and they need fixing, but society conflicting with women means there’s something wrong with society and it needs fixing. It shows up more among liberals and overcoming it would help answer the article’s question “Young men have gone MAGA. Can the left win them back?”.
It appears in statements like “there is clearly a kind of guy—the contemporary don’t-tread-on-me type who demands both the freedom to have gay friends and the freedom to use “gay” as an insult—who resents the idea of his morality being dictated by the family-values right or his speech being curtailed by the hall-monitor left.” It permeates the article, though, which seems to ask, “What’s wrong with these men,” whom it belittles as “bro”s.
In fact, women have as much agency as men and men are affected by culture having evolved away from valuing inherent parts of them as much as women. If the left wants to win men back, it could start by treating them as three-dimensional humans who feel hurt and suffer too.
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