The fascist creep of male victimization

Portraying men as victims has moved into the mainstream. That is the opposite of progress.

For years now, far right, politically violent groups have been successfully recruiting men with conspiracies centered around one narrative: The modern-day man is a victim.  

The fantasy that they are victimized by abstract foreigners, elites and minorities peaks recruits’ interest, but what most successfully swells far-right ranks (especially as they become more racially diverse) is the story that they are victimized by women. Women who won’t date them, women who do not act like women anymore (where are all the good women?!), women who do not know their place.  

This victimization narrative for men yearns for a time they believe is slipping away. A time when good women knew that their only role was in service to men, and society respected that – in no small part because it was built around that. This was a time when means for enforcement – economic entrapment, degradation, forced reproduction, civic erasure, violence, routine assault, femicide – were all fair play. 

Now, anyone paying honest attention to the world around us knows that we have barely moved away from this model. Every new right gained is under threat, reproductive rights are being snatched back, and those rights that have been enshrined into law struggle with enforcement. 

But the loosening of the seams is threat enough. Any grievance – economic, political, spiritual – can now be met with one answer. Men are being denied their rightful dominant position – and are being victimized by a world that is slowly weakening the foundations of patriarchy. 

If the framing had remained on the fringes of the far right, I would simply retort that the only ways in which men are being victimized by virtue of their gender is through patriarchy itself. After all, this is a system that ultimately oppresses all genders. It pushes men into violence on themselves and others, and denies them the tools for connection and survival as a devil’s pact for domination. 

The framing is spreading though – not only contaminating the heart of the right well beyond its margins, but reaching further into the halls of liberal respectability. 

And this election, the male victim narrative went mainstream. 

Time and time again, in the runup to Tuesday, we were told that these elections were about men and masculinity. We were directed – including by the most revered and liberal outlets – to empathize with men and boys. 

This was an issue, we were told, that was – of all things – overlooked. 

Poor men and boys, we were instructed, they are falling behind. Poor men and boys, they have not been handed a new script outside of the one in which they should provide as a singular head of household.  

(They have not been handed a new script?! Millions of women are falling about themselves assuring men it is fine to share the financial burden, fine to express their full identities, fine to express vulnerability, more than fine to go to therapy.)

Ezra Klein aired an episode – twice – featuring Richard Reeves, a man celebrated by outlets across the political spectrum (and funded by a billionaire under the guise of gender justice), whose main policy proposal is affirmative action in schools for boys. Yes, that’s right, affirmative action for boys at a time when affirmative action for minoritized groups is being slashed and threatened across the board. 

Reeves contends in his book – which, unlike a lot of other people, I do not recommend except to understand what we are up against – that part of the problem is the left’s condemnation of “toxic masculinity”. Men feel attacked by this term, he instructs. 

I have heard this argument from countless bad faith whataboutist, right-wing apologists who, in a call for so-called civility or pragmatism, say we just need to move a little more to the center. Come on now, meet them half way.

But how can we meet anyone half way when we are told that the problem isn’t our society’s centering and celebrating of male aggression, domination and coercion – and rather our daring to find a word to point it out. 

And now, the long-pontificated upon results are in. 

Young men, radicalized by online ecosystems, sure, but also radicalized by a permissive society that bends over backwards to accommodate their ailments, have moved right. Young women have stayed left. 

So, what now?

If I cut my arm off as proof of my service to you, could we, maybe, please, agree more politically?

Is that a solution? Must we be limbless as well as spineless? 

Treating men as victims by virtue of their gender because we are moving away from patriarchy is asking women to sacrifice themselves, once more – often quite literally – for the benefit and reassurance of men. 

Do not tell women or anyone on these matters of gender that they should move a little more to the center. Do not tell us to appease a master who is not a master by offering up parts of ourselves as testament - our pelvises, our throats, our hearts, our lungs. 

There is no moving to the center on gender. To do so would be to cede to an open-ended prolonging of dehumanization, fake hierarchies, shortened lives and misery.