How progressives’ masculinity backlash left young men adrift

A New York Times conversation on young men’s crisis lands amid a long-running cultural debate: whether the left’s push to dismiss traditional masculinity helped create the very despair now being discussed. New reporting cites shifting gender dynamics in educat

By the time the New York Times was framing young men’s struggles on its Opinions podcast, the argument had already been running for years—through classrooms, newsrooms, and Hollywood—about whether masculinity should be treated as a problem to fix or a normal part of society to cultivate.

In a discussion on “The Opinions” podcast. Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman. along with authors Ruth Whippman and Frederick Joseph. introduced the episode with a blunt premise: “Young men are in crisis.” The framing didn’t stop there. The introduction added that while “the left tells men to stay in their lane. ” the “manosphere and the far right” are “welcoming them with open arms.”.

Spiegelman’s response sharpened the contradiction. She said: “If on the left what men are hearing is ‘Men are trash. ’ doesn’t it make sense. then. that the right is their safe space?” She also pointed to what she described as a widening gender divide in politics. with “men moving right” and “women moving left. ” and asked how the left could bring men back.

The episode’s logic is only as strong as the evidence behind it—and the evidence, in this telling, points to multiple fronts at once.

Men falling behind in education and health

Young men’s struggles are presented as widely established: men are “much less likely than women to earn a college degree,” and their suicide rate is described as “four times higher.” The article also cites that men struggle more with drugs, gambling and pornography addiction.

A March Institute for Family Studies survey is used to complicate the most alarming headlines. Instead of concluding that young men are emotionally disconnected or swept up by the loudest online voices. the survey is described as finding that young men “care about their status. ” “want to contribute. ” and are “distressed by the gap between their current circumstances and what they desire for their life.”.

The same survey is said to include a counterintuitive ranking of influence. The research reportedly found that parents were young men’s most influential figures, while Andrew Tate ranked last. It also claims young men’s definition of masculinity includes traits described as healthy: “sacrifice, strength, responsibility, leadership.”.

That picture, while softer than the crisis headlines, still leaves a hard question hanging over the culture debate: if young men are not rejecting masculinity for the sake of rejecting it, what are they rejecting—and what is failing to reach them?

Tate’s appeal, and the limits of the influencer narrative

Andrew Tate is introduced through his appeal to “lonely young men. ” with the article describing him as a controversial influencer who has amassed “thousands of fans” and whose videos “experts say promote toxic masculinity.” But the later survey claim—that Tate ranked last behind parents—places an important constraint on the narrative that influencer culture alone explains the turn.

In this account, the crisis is not treated as a simple story of young men being “captured” by the internet. Instead, the emphasis shifts toward identity, community, and approval—something young men reportedly feel they are missing.

A culture shift described as deliberate

The author’s central claim is that the cultural message has been steady: masculinity was not merely criticized. but treated as inherently obsolete or harmful. After MeToo. the article says. men were “broadly vilified as sex-obsessed predators.” It argues that the left’s feminist-centered focus on empowering women came at the cost of “cultivating men’s strengths. ” calling it a process that “neutered” men and pushed them aside.

The argument then turns to the reaction now being seen in mainstream conversations, including the New York Times episode. It frames the current bemoaning of men’s decline as difficult to reconcile with a long run of messaging that, in the author’s view, repeatedly devalued men.

The author anchors that view with a line from Camille Paglia—a 1990 provocation quoted as: “If civilization had been left in female hands. we would still be living in grass huts.” The article says the remark endures because it points to an uncomfortable truth: “Men are not optional to a thriving society.”.

To dramatize the cost of manufacturing a kind of manhood that lacks room for honor or enterprise, the piece also brings in C.S. Lewis: “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

It ends up arriving at a single, continuous through-line: if men are sidelined or framed as interchangeable with women—or treated as less valuable—then asking why they are “angry, lonely and lost” becomes, in the author’s telling, an act of political and cultural whiplash.

One report can’t solve a moral argument, but it can clarify the stakes

There’s a specific tension at the center of this story: the New York Times episode depicts a political and social exchange where men are moving toward the right while women move left. and it quotes Spiegelman questioning why men would see the left as a place where they belong. The survey evidence cited later suggests parents. not online influencers. carry the most weight in young men’s lives. and that young men want to contribute rather than disengage.

Taken together. the facts described here don’t eliminate the role of cultural messaging; they also narrow the explanation to something more human than a simple scapegoat. The crisis is described not only as a decline in outcomes—college degrees. suicide rates. and higher struggles with drugs. gambling and pornography addiction—but as a mismatch between what young men “desire for their life” and where they feel they are.

Where the situation stands now

The immediate moment in this piece is the New York Times podcast episode—an admission that “Young men are in crisis” and that the left is struggling to understand why the men it sidelined are being pulled elsewhere. From there, the reported evidence stretches across education, mental health, and life milestones.

A March Institute for Family Studies survey is then positioned as both warning and restraint: young men are delayed from major life events like “marriage. children. full-time work. college. ” but they still care about status. want to contribute. and define masculinity in ways described as rooted in sacrifice. strength. responsibility. and leadership.

In the author’s closing framing, the lesson is not that masculinity should be treated as untouchable. It’s that civilization—whether through politics. family life. or community—can’t afford to treat a large share of its population as disposable. If men are struggling in ways that show up in both life outcomes and mental health metrics. the question the piece leaves behind is not whether that crisis exists. but why so many systems spent so long telling boys and young men what not to be.

young men crisis masculinity New York Times Opinions podcast Nadja Spiegelman Andrew Tate Institute for Family Studies education gap suicide rate mental health gender divide politics