Republished with permission from Florida Phoenix, by Diane Roberts

Men are in crisis.

Or so we’re told.

Mostly by men.

Who are men supposed to be? How are they supposed to behave?

It used to be so clear: Get a job in business or manufacturing to earn the money to support the children whose care you delegate to their mother, take out the trash, lift heavy objects, watch sports on television, and never discuss your feelings.

Man stuff.

Now women are doing man-stuff: Running companies such as GM and Northrup Grumman; running Ivy League universities; running for president.

It’s very confusing for men, who already feel dissed and diminished.

More women get college degrees than men; women are outnumbering men on American payrolls; women are even analyzing NFL games on television.

Now one of them wants to become the Leader of the Free World.

So it’s hardly surprising, as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat informs us (over and over), masculinity is on the ballot in 2024.

In this corner, you’ve got Kamala Harris, an indisputably female person (despite her never having birthed any babies), and in the other, Donald Trump.

Trump casts himself as the most masculine of men, holder of the most dominant XY chromosomes, the bull in the national china shop.

The yellow hair (dyed), the tan (fake), the shoulder pads, the long, long red ties (yeah, we get the phallic implication), the bluster, the boasting, the constant threats of violence: here, ladies and gents, is the manliness of corporate America half a century ago.

It was embarrassing even then.

Dang Women

Trumpist Republicans—now 99% of the party—have fully embraced this pathetic spectacle: the cruelty, the studied stupidity, the embrace of violence, the pitiable “whose is bigger” competition.

Douthat and other traditionalists snipe at “the male feminist, the enlightened pro-choice dude,” who shares equally in housework and parenting.

I mean, what’s up with these dang women? Why do they want careers (and cats) instead of children?

Didn’t God (a man, of course, with a beard) issue women uteruses so they could pop out babies for men to subsequently ignore?

Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, the Kansas City Chiefs’ place kicker, and other leading philosophers of gender are deeply concerned about falling birthrates.

If we girls don’t go around craving their lordly sperm, what will become of Civilization?

Affronted by Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, Musk generously offered to father her child: That would surely cure her of her progressive cat-lady ways.

Last year, Missouri U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley produced a book called Manhood, in which he rightly attacks the very rapey misogynist Andrew Tate, but says nothing about the very rapey misogynist Donald Trump, the guy who might shove his way back into the White House.

You remember Josh Hawley from Jan. 6, 2021, right? Raising his fist in solidarity with the insurrectionists, then running for his life like a little bitch.

And what about that hyper-manly Mark Robinson, Trumpist candidate for governor of North Carolina, the fellow who says feminism was created by Satan?

He told a room full of women, “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.”

He may be Black but channels the white guy id almost as well as Trump himself.

Straws

Fox’s Jesse Watters, one of Trump’s most truth-challenged cheerleaders, built his career on insulting women, stalking a female journalist because she wrote negative things about conservative dinosaur Bill O’Reilly, and claiming that if Harris gets elected, “she’s going to get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.”

Er, whut? Talk about rapey! Even the indefensible “Judge” Jeanine Pirro told him to take that one back.

He didn’t: Watters is also the guy who has informed America that any man who votes for a woman will turn into a woman—a fate worse than death.

Now he’s pitching a little hissy fit because Tim Walz used a straw to drink a milkshake.

Watters took to Fox, bleating like an outraged sheep: “The other day you saw him with a vanilla ice cream shake. Had a straw in it.”

How do real men consume a milkshake, scoop it out with a butcher knife? Spread it on well-done steak?

Watters added: “Women love masculinity, and women do not love Tim Walz, so that should just tell you about how masculine Tim Walz is.”

Actually Jesse, old boy, Walz polls far better with women than Trump or Vance.

Watters had a similar response to Joe Biden licking an ice cream cone.

Apparently, a man fastening his lips on a roughly cylindrical object with a view to obtaining a pleasurable taste experience is beyond the pale of Manly Manness.

‘Tampon Tim’

Neither vice-presidential nominee deployed a straw or ate a kitten during their debate last Tuesday night, but the learned pundits of the sane-washing media assured us it was a contest between competing definitions of masculinity.

Douthat of the Times called Walz “affable, well-meaning, and out of his depth,” while J.D. Vance presented an “effective prosecution of the case against the Biden-Harris administration.”

Vance, a former Marine who leads with his manly beard, would be an appropriately virile VP, reminding uppity women they have one job: to be mothers.

Walz, a former social studies teacher, as governor of Minnesota provided sanitary products in schools, realizing some girls don’t have access to them.

Trumpists sneered, calling him “Tampon Tim,” an unsubtle suggestion that maybe he had, you know, lady-parts.

But other debate commentators saw it differently.

In the Washington Post, Dana Milbank pointed out that while Walz tripped over some words (in a regular Dad kind of way), Vance whined like a toddler denied a cupcake when Margaret Brennan, one of the moderators, pointed out that no, the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio are not “illegals,” and no, immigrants are not driving up housing prices, complaining: “Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check!”

Walz kept trying to be agreeable (possibly a mistake) while Vance lied about the 2020 election, Jan. 6, and his desire for a national abortion ban.

Tell me again why we should worry about men’s fragile egos and tormented souls when they spend their lives trying to control our bodies?