The Left Is Paying a High Price for Getting Men Wrong | Opinion

The left is losing young men. The 15 percent increase in support for Trump among Gen Z men in the 2024 election—compared to 2020—appears to have persisted in recent polling. The shift reflects a broader reality: while Gen Z is assumed to be more progressive, young men in particular are shifting to the right, globally.

In the United States, Trump’s appeal among young men has been attributed to many things. In his first term, median weekly real wages for young men increased, as did labor force participation. But more than that: he made men feel heard.

His campaign spoke to what those of us researching masculinities know well: young men increasingly feel that the system isn’t working for them. The left’s failure lies in its reluctance to treat that experience as politically meaningful. Its engagement with masculinity rarely moves beyond the lens of toxicity, focusing on the systemic harm that it can cause. In concretizing an alternative, it tells men they can “be whoever they want.” But that assumes a level of agency that many simply do not feel.

Young men are navigating a cultural economy filled with contradictory doctrines, deepened by a crisis of connection that’s drawing them down the manosphere funnel. The ideal of defining masculinity for yourself is framed as liberating, but ignores a central paradox: boys are expected to be both successful and emotionally available, while the paths to achieving either feel increasingly out of reach.

It’s here that they’re caught by a rising tide of misogyny. According to a recent report highlighted in the New York Times, it took less than nine minutes for TikTok to serve content to 16-year-old boys that blamed women for men’s struggles. There is a yawning absence of a clear alternative, or at least one that can move fast enough to compete. Boys are turning to whatever makes sense of this contradiction: leaders who show that they too feel this emotional confusion, while showing visible pathways to improve the lives of boys and young men. They also need to see those leaders on platforms that matter to them.

Instead of this material reality, the left often talks about masculinity as a cultural or ideological construct. But for many working-class men, masculinity is tied to their everyday lives: how they earn respect, support families, or find purpose at work. Masculinity has long been structured around functions—provider, protector, builder—that still shape how many men understand their place in the world. As those roles have eroded, particularly in places where stable work has disappeared, the left has offered few alternatives that feel tangible or aspirational. Meanwhile, masculinity remains one of the only frameworks that confers dignity: so much so that it’s being used to position a return to manual labor as more meaningful than upward mobility.

This disconnect often falls along class lines. Some of us are afforded the emotional and social freedom to distance ourselves from masculinity without fearing a loss of our identity or belonging. For men who have been raised to see work as a central part of who they are, performing the masculinity they were taught to admire is important to them, even if the labor market no longer supports it. Young men also want to know where they fit, growing up as the first digital natives where societal goalposts keep shifting. The task isn’t to dismiss or idealize masculinity—but to take seriously the ways it still functions as a source of value to prevent its weaponization

Republican men are far more likely than democratic men to see themselves as highly masculine. What makes the left less likely to identify with masculinity is curious: perhaps they don’t want to associate with it, seeing it as a cause of harm or dominance. Or the traits they do value—like reflection, care, or emotional openness—aren’t culturally recognized as masculine.

This is where the left needs to lean into the discourse of masculinity. What would it look like to see a progressive use of the aspects of masculinity Gen Z find so appealing? Instead of using these norms to uphold patriarchal oppression, they can instead be rooted in shared purpose or narratives to defend those they love. Instead of asking men to be less, the left must invite young men to be more: more present in the fight for justice and in their communities.

Everyone is talking aboutboys and men. But if we keep speaking around them, not with them, the left risks further divergence. Masculinity isn’t going away. The question is who will shape it, and to what end.

Alice Lassman is a researcher and policy expert on economic policy and societal dynamics, with experience at McKinsey, the United Nations, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and work featured in major publications and media.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.