The Left’s war on men is backfiring disastrously

Young males are moving to the Right. But as birth rates collapse, this is a bigger problem than politics

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Sex is supposed to be fun, and productive, but when mixed with politics it can have some less fortunate societal impacts. This autumn, as the US presidential election moved to its denouement, both campaigns focused largely on their gender bases, hoping to win the chromosomal war.
Women almost elected the pathetic Kamala Harris, with 53 per cent of them giving her their votes according to the exit polls. Her biggest edge was among younger women, who supported her by 61 per cent, and black women, who backed her by 91 per cent. Some Democrats attacked white women after the election for “dooming Kamala”, particularly married suburban women, who turned out to care about things other than sexual politics.
But what really saved Donald Trump was his strong support among men. Trump’s focus on the “Manosphere” of fight fans, fitness buffs, male influencers, and people attracted to uber-males like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk paid off big time, with him winning the overwhelming majority of white as well as Hispanic working class men. He even notched up an astounding 21 per cent among male African Americans, more than twice his percentage with black women. Among white men under 30, he won by an astonishing 14 points.  
Men clearly preferred the Trump model to that presented by Democratic men, who proudly boasted of being “less masculine” than their Republican counterparts, leading to comparisons with Bud Light’s disastrous flirtation with a transgender influencer. The low point, however, was the laughable attempt to manufacture he-men who “eat carburetors for breakfast” and vote for Harris, in a TV ad later revealed to have been created independently of her official campaign by Hollywood actors and writers.
The election confirmed the sexual divide in US politics: macho boys are the GOP base while women, particularly single women, constitute the core progressive constituency. The existence of a gender gap is nothing new, certainly, but according to recent Gallup surveys it is now five times bigger than in 2000. Survey data has found that, from 1999 to 2013, about three in 10 women aged 18 to 29 consistently identified as liberal. That figure rose to 40 per cent in 2023.  
The sexualisation of politics is a global phenomena. In the UK, for example, young women identify as liberal at a 25 per cent higher rate than men. In Germany, they tilt to the Left at a 30 per cent higher rate. Similarly in Canada, according to a 2020 poll, women favoured the Liberals by two to one while men slightly tilted to the Conservatives.
At the same time, like their Trumpista American counterparts, Europeans under 30 – particularly men – are shifting to the Right, notably in Spain, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland. In South Korea, the Right-wing shift among young males was sufficient to put an “anti-feminist” into the presidency.  
The chasm between young men and women goes well beyond politics. Take Korea, where the gap is particularly intense. Once known for their familial culture, notes the Atlantic, more than a third of Korean men and a quarter of Korean women who are now in their mid-to-late 30s will never marry. More will never have children.  
Similar gaps are observable throughout east Asia. In Japan, the harbinger of modern Asian demographics, single person households are expected to reach 40 per cent of all households by 2040. Traditional values such as hard work, sacrifice, and loyalty are largely rejected by the new generation shinjinrui or “new race”. These younger Japanese, writes one sociologist, are “pioneering a new sort of high quality, low energy, low growth existence”.
China also worries about the impact of deteriorating relations between the sexes. Its campaign to promote a new family-oriented society may come to naught, as Chinese young people, like their western counterparts, adopt a “Live for yourself’ lifestyle. Nearly 70 per cent of adults aged 18–36 live on their own according to one survey.
In China, at least, sexual division is not sown at school. But the West, notably the US, bristles with “queer studies” courses and classes seeking to attack “the patriarchy”. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of women’s and gender studies degrees in the United States has increased by more than 300 per cent since 1990, and in 2015, there were more than 2,000 degrees conferred.
Inculcated at school, post-familialism is now part of the progressive agenda. Black Lives Matter has long made clear its opposition to the nuclear family – in favour of some form of collectivised childrearing. Even among rank and file Democrats, support for prioritising marriage and children is far less common than among Trump supporters, notes Pew.
This divergence is developing at a time when men lag behind women at school and work. Today, according to demographer Nick Eberstadt, the economic non-participation rate for men is at “Depression era” levels, rising from 6 per cent in the mid-1960s to 16 per cent today. Brookings’ Richard Reeves notes that men are increasingly “left behind,” plagued by psychological disorders, lack of friends, and remain outside the economy.  
Women may be surpassing men in school, but may not clearly benefit from the alienation of the sexes. Recent data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, for example, show that 84 per cent of women, compared to 66 per cent of men, reported regularly feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
Not surprisingly, the sex crisis is moving into the bedroom. In Japan, roughly a third of men enter their 30s as virgins and a quarter of men over 50 never marry. This “sex recession” is also evident in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. The US is seeing a decline in sex, too, particularly among the young, and one in four single women has not had a partner in two years. More people, notes the Institute for Family Studies, get their jollies online, while we are now witnessing the emergence of sexually enhanced robots.
In the short run, progressives, in America and elsewhere, may benefit from the lack of traditional sex, the decline in marriage, lower family formation, falling birthrates – and the rise of so-called “childless cat ladies”. But over time, the much higher birthrates in in red states than blue ones will constitute a “conservative fertility advantage”, notes demographer Lyman Stone.
Yet relations between men and women are far more important than politics. Our society needs to find a way to reconnect men and women. Our collective sex lives and the future peopling of the planet depend on it.
Joel Kotkin is presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas
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