About this episode

The episode discusses the rise of masculinism in American politics and its implications for both major parties.

The MAGA movement has fully embraced masculinism, which The Atlantic’s staff writer Helen Lewis defines in her cover story this month as “a movement to fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men.” Democrats have a more complicated relationship with it. After the last presidential election, when Donald Trump made inroads with young men, even those of color, some Democrats began wondering whether their party did indeed have a man problem. This campaign season, one Democrat who seems to have answered that call is Graham Platner, who won the primary in Maine this week and may be key to the party’s chances of winning the Senate. But several women described “toxic” relationships with Platner, including one who said he “could be rough with her.” Platner’s campaign disputed any claims of physical intimidation or altercations. In Texas’s U.S. Senate race, manliness has become even more explicit. Republican attacks on the Democratic nominee James Talarico rely on all manner of terms that effectively mean “unmanly”: low-T, transgender, secretly a woman, gay, man-child, and—God forbid—vegan. Democrats responded to these attacks with a photo of Talarico eating…

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