I really hope more men see Walz as a masculine ideal. He loves his family and his community, and behaves in a way that leads them to love him back.

Ideas about how men are expected to live and behave will always differ from culture to culture, but even within a given culture there are different expectations, based on things like class, for instance. In fact, I would say that’s the big difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, at least in this instance. Walz is a working class man, Vance is firmly a member of the upper class. Given this, it shouldn’t be surprising that Walz seems more in touch with the “average American,” where Vance seems very, well, out of touch.

So why then do so many working class men identify more with Vance? It’s complicated, but it generally all comes down to hierarchy. Working class Americans have been told their whole lives that workers are lower in the social hierarchy, especially those who work more physical jobs and make less than what is necessary to be considered at least upper middle class. By this metric, Walz is a “loser” while Vance is a “winner.” Hierarchy is very important to many men and few of them want to be associated with “losers.” It doesn’t matter so much that Trump and Vance are weird and out of touch, what matters is they are rich, and in this country your place in the social hierarchy is largely determined by your wealth and income.

The bulk of the article I found frustrating, as I felt it focused on vagueries in what masculinity is. The last paragraph finally gave something useful to grab onto:

“If you look at the problems young men are facing: Lack of economic opportunity is one of them, lack of growth and wages is one of them. But you also have isolation and loneliness and suicidal ideation and these deaths of despair that are happening and plaguing particularly the white men community. And I can’t imagine another group of people in this country having [problems] like that where it wouldn’t be talked about all the time.”

After really thinking critically about these points, I was able to see things with being frustrated about. Here in Pennsylvania, there are quite a number of places where I can see how focusing on these issues could bring major improvement.

The bonus is I feel these things are part of the Democratic platform, it’s just the current messaging doesn’t speak well to the type of voters who are suffering from these issues.

They’re largely economic and healthcare issues, things that have been hammered by Republicans for the last few decades. Messages about climate change jobs (renewables, etc) and expanded healthcare or Medicare for All feel largely targeted to those already on board the Democratic platform.

Change it to focusing on how the Republicans have left them empty handed to give everything to the wealthy, how business and billionaire taxation is going to give it back to them, how free or subsidized schooling will get them in demand jobs, and how we will get doctors to come to rural areas again. It’s already there, just the messaging isn’t targeted to people turned off the current political scene.

I do feel like some of this has been tried in the past, so some of you may feel this didn’t work before, but we’ve also had a bit of Overton shift since then as well, climate has become more front and center, education wasn’t seen so broadly as a controversial thing, and whether the goals of the messaging were actually accomplished or not (they obviously were not), the overall situation was still better in reality.

Fucking hell, gender is a spectrum - lets stop obsessing over trying to define it so fucking much.

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