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toxic masculinity
What the Knicks Can Teach Us About Surviving Unprecedented Times
On Wednesday night, the Knicks embodied hope as remaining present. Hope as remaining committed. Hope as continuing to work when you are 29 points down and the other side is telling you they're in your head.
Jun 13, 2026
I was one of millions of people who died multiple times during Wednesday night's NBA Finals game. And I was among the millions who were reborn, multiple times, during that same game.
Much has been written about the power of sports, and I may not be adding anything new to the conversation. That's all right. Sometimes it is enough to join the chorus in effervescent awe. But like millions of others, I cannot help finding deep metaphor in being part of the Knicks family during these times of horror.
Wednesday's game broke records, first in the wrong direction. Shockingly early in the night, the Knicks fell behind by 29 points, on their way to the largest deficit ever overcome in NBA Finals history. They were down 27 at halftime; until this series, no team had rallied from more than 24 points in a Finals game, a mark set by the 2008 Celtics against the Lakers. The Spurs were shooting the lights out of Madison Square Garden, and their superstar seemed unstoppable. At one point, after absorbing a hard foul, he rose from the floor, pointed to his temple, and taunted: I'm in your head.
In my head, I felt nothing but devastation.
Fromm was right that art captures human experience better than abstraction ever could, and the art of basketball, through the brilliance of these Knicks, captures hope better than any essay I could write, including this one.
There is so much to be devastated about in this world. President Donald Trump is making a mockery of our dream of a democracy and of our collective efforts to build a more just world, taking our taxpayer money to wage a war (which he calls flippantly an excursion) on Iran that includes attacks on civilian infrastructure. He has torn into the White House itself, a building whose restrained architecture once symbolized a leadership that refused the grandiosity of false emperors. And this Sunday, on his 80th birthday, he is converting its South Lawn into a $60 million carnival of toxic masculinity: a cage-fighting spectacle staged to soothe an unbelievably fragile ego, men bashing into one another beneath the windows of the people's house.
This is only scratching the surface. If the Spurs were truly in our heads, the heads of so many of us in the United States and around the world, they would find us grappling to locate our way back to hope during this time of polycrises.
And yet, somehow, that is exactly what is happening. It has nothing to do with chest-thumping enactments of domination. Nor does it have anything to do with positive thinking, manifestation, or any other individualizing nonsense. The Knicks, friends, are showing us something about how communities find their way out of despair, and maybe even out of fascism.
The long arc toward justice is indeed long. It can look devastating. Unprecedented. It can break new records in how low it sinks. There might be a step toward the championship, and then suddenly the gap grows wider than it has ever been.
But Jalen Brunson and his teammates did not simply believe. They did not repeat mantras. They did not lash out with aggression because they were threatened and humiliated. They kept working. Possession by possession. A 13-0 run to claw the lead under 20. Brunson answering basket after basket, he would finish with 36 points, while OG Anunoby added 33 of his own.
Mariame Kaba, the brilliant abolitionist organizer and author, teaches us that hope is a discipline. Not a feeling that visits us when conditions improve, but a practice we commit to precisely when they don't. Half a century earlier, the critical psychologist Erich Fromm arrived at the same insight in The Revolution of Hope, distinguishing real hope from both passive optimism and desperate waiting. For Fromm, hope is active or it is nothing, a readiness to move toward what does not yet exist. He also warned that our language for experiences like hope has been flattened into "worn-out coins," and that art often captures what essays cannot.
On Wednesday night, the Knicks embodied what Kaba and Fromm theorized. Hope as remaining present. Hope as remaining committed. Hope as continuing to work when you are 29 points down and the other side is telling you they're in your head. That is hope. That is also how change happens.
Some fans at Madison Square Garden walked out early during those moments of deep devastation. I don't judge them, they weren't wrong about how bad it looked. They were only wrong about what it meant to stay. They read the score as the ending rather than the middle, and walking to the subway they missed witnessing one of the greatest moments in NBA history. So many around us conclude that the score of our democracy is final. Despair is a premature exit from a game that is still being played.
And, the lessons do not stop here. That winning basket, with 1.2 seconds left, was not a triumphant swish. Brunson's three-pointer missed. The game was won because Anunoby crashed the boards anyway and, unthinkably, miraculously, gloriously, tipped the miss in with one hand. The decisive act of the greatest comeback in Finals history was someone showing up for a shot that failed. If you want a single image of disciplined hope, there it is: The work continues even when the shot doesn't make it, especially when the shot doesn't make it.
I would be remiss as a critical psychologist if I did not name a very important irony playing out before us as well. The Spurs' young superstar is a French immigrant, beloved and celebrated by a state whose government has made the persecution of immigrants and white supremacy its signature project. None of this is his fault, he is 22 years old and magnificent at his craft, and he deserves none of our resentment. The contradiction belongs to Texas, and to a country that cheers immigrant excellence in its arenas while caging immigrant families at its borders.
So this is my invitation. This Saturday night, while the machinery of spectacle prepares the White House lawn for Sunday's celebration of brute force, watch the Knicks instead. Watch a group of people who were further down than anyone has ever been, who did not posture and did not quit, attempt to finish what they started, one win from the franchise's first championship since 1973. Fromm was right that art captures human experience better than abstraction ever could, and the art of basketball, through the brilliance of these Knicks, captures hope better than any essay I could write, including this one.
We need to understand how change happens in devastating times. We need to understand how we, too, can participate in revolutionary care. Not by thumping our chests when we are up. Not by throwing in the towel when we break records in our losses. But by continuing to show up. By the discipline of persisting, not out of naïve faith, but out of practice.
The game isn't over. Find your team, and keep making your way toward the basket. And, when it is time to celebrate, get in community and dance under those famous orange and blue skies!
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Beware Men Who Wage War to Prove They Are Men
The rabid hypermasculinity unleashed across Iran by the White House can be no surprise.
Mar 21, 2026
Seemingly endless recitations throughout history of what constitutes virtuous citizenship emphasize military life. A specifically masculine heritage of violence in the service of the nation oversees and delimits democracy and authority—a privileged area of social welfare in contrast to health, education, the environment, or poverty.
Much classical and modern political theory assumes and even endorses domestic violence, bellicose masculinity, and the notion that “real” politics is generated, discussed, and concluded between men. The idea that male virtue is tied to violence, whether in defense of faith, family, or the border, is immensely strong.
From individual duels to national campaigns, the “right” way to engage in violence has given rise to ideas of nobility. Masculine worth is supposedly incarnate in bloodshed and authoritarian leadership, embodied in the military as a righteous national embodiment of power, spirit, religiosity, and victory.
Raewyn Connell articulates the history of North Atlantic countries that conquered much of the world with contemporary ethnographic study of gender politics. She finds white male sexuality in Western Europe and North America is isomorphic with power: Men seek global dominance and desire, orchestrated to oppress women through hegemonic masculinity.
US masculine anxiety is repeating itself in a manner that may be totally predictable, but is no less disastrous for humanity, other animals, and the planet.
This encompasses overt sexism—rape, domestic violence, and obstacles to female career advancement—and more subtle domination, such as excluding women from social settings and sports teams, or the bourgeois media’s fascination with men. Ironically, women’s rights are often invoked to justify invasions that injure them. For example, the British used traditional limitations on women’s freedom and education to legitimize the colonization of India.
Everywhere you look, from diplomats to bombers to correspondents, war is an implicitly and explicitly masculine activity. This is rarely, if ever, recognized in mainstream media coverage and academic knowledge, or problematized as such.
That said, reactionary commentators, male and female alike, have gone out of their way to valorize the hypermasculinity that has been unleashed, beyond even normal limits, in the United States since 2001, laying claim to chivalry, dominance, and certainty.
Reactionary public commentators churn out press columns and viral videos, seizing the opportunities afforded by war to push a domestic agenda for male power, using international relations to denounce queerness and feminism.
Camille Paglia, Peggy Noonan and Ann Coulter endorse compulsory heterosexuality. Coulter called one deceased soldier “an American original—virtuous, pure, and masculine as only an American man can be” who “died bringing freedom and democracy to 28 million Afghans.” She insisted that “there is no other country in the world—certainly not in continental Europe—that could have produced such a man.”
In 2025, US Chief of Protocol Monica Crowley stated that “we are in an era of true masculinity thanks to the bold and muscular leadership of President Trump and our Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.” And Hegseth dutifully promises “maximum lethality, not lukewarm legality” in the assault on Iran.
But behind those loud voices lurks a figure long plagued by doubts, failures, and weaknesses—actually existing masculinity. Hence Niccolo Machiavelli in the 16th century proposing that men dressed in uniform and trained to fight lose any “habits they consider effeminate.”
Such anxiety has been common among imperial powers across history and geography, with numerous institutions dedicated to carrying forward errant masculine impulses or channeling them into military readiness: physical culture, “strenuous living,” social Darwinism, rational recreation, and French neoclassical romanticism among them.
Matthew Arnold famously wrote, “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton”; but a deep concern for military preparedness led him to warn that “disasters have been prepared on those playing fields as well as victories.” Pierre de Coubertin revived the ancient Olympics in 1896 as an international festival of male athletes and diplomats that could cultivate “man’s moral musculature,” redeeming French masculinity after the shocks of the Franco-Prussian conflict a quarter of a century earlier.
By the end of the 19th century, the United States had been at peace for three decades, ever since its bloody Civil War. As most veterans of that conflict passed away, there was public debate about whether American men were still capable of martial masculinity.
Wars in Cuba and the Philippines followed in quick succession. Hundreds of thousands were killed and wounded to expand US imperialism—part of a desperate, felt need to “build masterful male citizens.”
That has its modern corollaries. In 1960, President-elect John F. Kennedy alerted Sports Illustrated readers to a “growing softness, our increasing lack of fitness.” Such trends supposedly constituted “a threat to our security” that must be addressed, per Ancient Greece’s Olympian quest to forge and maintain “a vigorous state.” After all, “struggles against aggressors throughout our history have been won on the playgrounds and corner lots and fields of America.”
Concerns about masculinity and domination of territory routinely underpin the allocation of government resources. Donald J. Trump’s National Youth Sports Strategy feared that “most young people are not moving enough,” detailing “surveillance systems” to monitor children. His 2025 “Presidential Fitness Test” for school pupils aimed to improve “our economy, military readiness, academic performance, and national morale” and “emphasize the importance” of “military readiness.”
The hypermasculinity unleashed across Iran by the current White House can come as no surprise. The fact that it is reinforced by a video of Hollywood explosions and outbursts makes this horror simultaneously banal and fatal, as propaganda and movies meet in male bodies: “machismo from film and television, crassly interspersed with real infrared kill-shot footage.”
US masculine anxiety is repeating itself in a manner that may be totally predictable, but is no less disastrous for humanity, other animals, and the planet.
It’s what those men do.
Not all men—the ones who need war to ensure that they are, in fact, men. To them, Hegseth and his cadre represent “less a symbol of toxic masculinity than a masculine tonic.”
Shall we join in? Thanks, but no thanks.
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More 'Beef' With Bobby: Meat and Masculinity
In 2026, the federal government is telling us how men should be men, with devastating effects on our health and planet.
Mar 17, 2026
In January 2026, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the Food and Drug Administration’s new inverted food pyramid to replace the Michelle Obama's “myplate” visualization. There is some good in the change: promoting whole foods and minimizing processed foods, as I noted in My “Beef” with Bobby. But the science ends here as RFK instead relies on bro-science. Taking his cue from the “manosphere” and MAHA wellness influencers, he emphasizes animal proteins over plant proteins. More on that in a moment.
Just one month after releasing the new food pyramid, RFK released a workout video with Kid Rock where the pair eat steaks, pump iron, and then drink raw milk in a hot tub together. It’s difficult to watch, but even more difficult to describe. Comedian Stephen Colbert called it “senior softcore that feels like dropping acid.”
RFK has long sought to prove his manliness. He has admitted to taking testosterone, while insisting, unconvincingly, that he’s not on steroids. The administration more broadly seems to have an obsessive and desperate need to demonstrate its masculine prowess. In fact, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s warrior mentality may have contributed to the US attacks on Iran. It has certainly contributed to his callous dismissal of human casualties. Both meanwhile defer to President Donald Trump’s allegedly off-the charts levels of testosterone.
These food policies and performative workouts might appear unrelated. But, a closer connection exists between beef, masculinity, and the American nation, one that has, in fact, twined since the country’s earliest days. RFK’s effort to Make American Healthy Again is mere revival of a longstanding American narrative.
For all its chest-thumping certainty, this administration’s relationship to masculinity looks less like confidence than anxiety, much like the frontier myth itself.
The idea that meat is manly can be traced to the cultural founding of the nation on the actual frontier. In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that the struggle to conquer the wilderness had fostered American virtues of independence, self-reliance, and democracy. Proving your manly virtue on the frontier made immigrants into American men as America became a virtuous nation. Declaring the closing of the frontier, Jackson lamented America’s ability to grow and innovate. Men would wither without the opportunity to test their mettle as the nation expanded.
Beef was central to imperial expansion on the frontier. Ranching not only justified the expropriation American Indian land, but beef products supplied to the US Army made expansion possible. By slaughtering to the brink of extinction the 50 million bison that roamed the Great Plains, they settled the “Indian question.” Historian Joshua Specht calls cattle “mobile colonizers.” Culturally, ranchers and cowboys justified the violence against American Indians in the interests of civilization. Central to this myth was the frontier man, bringing civilization to the feminized “vanishing Indian,” a curious paradox, to be sure, where Native Americans could be at once docile and violent.
Today we are left with an embarrassing historical echo. Protein as the final frontier of fitness influencers ironically returns us to the actual frontier in American history. Now we can see why RFK’s two provocations in the culture war of 2026 are related. Food has always been gendered and tied to nothing less than the ideals of the nation and what it means to be an American.
Today we see the same gendering of meat wrapped up with big business. Only un-American soy boys refuse to eat meat. Meat advertisements often demonstrate the masculinity of meat consumption by displaying oversexualized women cooking meat, implying that both women and animals are to be dominated and consumed by men.
There is of course no evidence that soy intake affects male hormones, or that meat consumption is required for elite athletic performance. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose character once said, “You hit like a vegetarian,” has more recently called for cutting back on meat, noting that it isn’t necessary for athletes and harms the planet. James Cameron’s documentary The Game Changers challenges the myth that animal protein is needed for physical strength and elite athletic performance. Cameron follows tennis stars, Olympians, and even the ultimate fighter James Wilks to see how plant protein permeates their diets. But the myth lives on, perpetrated by RFK’s shirtless workouts and emphasis on eating meat. And because the old adage “follow the money” seems to be guiding light for this administration, it should come as no surprise that the meat industry is also a major donor.
Still, the science on red meat consumption and its effects on our planet and health are clear. Red meat consumption reduces life expectancy by increasing risks of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and cancer. Cattle also consume much of the world’s arable land, leading to deforestation and increased greenhouse gas emissions. While beans and legumes make it into the dietary guidelines, they are entirely absent from the pyramid.
Despite the eagerness of the administration, Kid Rock, and MAHA followers to heed RFK’s food and exercise advice, many of these same figures recoiled when Michelle Obama tried to move toward nutrient-dense fruit and vegetables in school lunches. Republicans accused her of trying to impose a “nanny-state,” and bristled at her impudent attempt to shape what Americans choose to eat. Again, gender is at work in our food policies.
Despite claiming to restore “scientific integrity” and “common sense,” RFK ignores the government’s own "Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee," which consistently advocated plant-based sources of protein, especially beans and lentils while reducing the intake of red meat. The committee even suggested moving the “Beans, Peas, and Lentils Subgroup from the Vegetables Food Group to the Protein Foods Group.”
Cultural tropes can be hard to break, but it is time for a new generation of athletes and influencers to confront the wellness-to-fascism pipeline. Our secretary of health should not be making policy decisions on the basis of pseudoscience for the sake of winning a culture war. Nor should his leadership parrot “manosphere" talking points that openly embrace a hostility toward women and decry the feminization of Western society. This is nothing short of what one nutritionist called a "vibes-based policy disaster." For all its chest-thumping certainty, this administration’s relationship to masculinity looks less like confidence than anxiety, much like the frontier myth itself. Still, these performances should not require the rest of us to pay with our health and our planet for their fragile egos.
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Missiles, Memes, and Masculinity: When the White House Turns War Into Entertainment
Consider what’s missing from the videos: no civilians running from falling bombs. No grieving families. No returning veterans struggling with trauma.
Mar 09, 2026
A week into Trump’s illegal war against Iran, the White House released a 42-second video on X, featuring movie scenes spliced with real military footage of strikes in Iran, promising “justice, the American way.” Rather than sober statements about national security or the grim human realities of war, the March 5 video resembled a movie trailer.
The clips stitched together real footage of missile strikes with pop-culture heroes: Russell Crowe in Gladiator, Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, Keanu Reeves’ relentless assassin in the John Wick films. Even SpongeBob SquarePants made an appearance. The video was immediately mocked for reflecting the militaristic fantasies of teenage boys (see Hegseth, Pete), more than that of the US starting a war.
The editing followed a familiar formula: a heroic movie quote, a dramatic cut to real explosions, then a video-game style victory sound. War, apparently, has become content. Actor Ben Stiller publicly demanded the removal of a Tropic Thunder clip, used without permission, stating, “War is not a movie.”
When political leaders celebrate military violence using the imagery of hypermasculine heroes, they reinforce those expectations rather than challenge them. What’s the message for our sons and grandsons?
The controversy over these videos isn’t only about taste or messaging. It’s about something deeper: the way American political culture still equates masculinity with domination and violence. When leaders celebrate military strikes using action-movie heroes and gaming tropes, they reinforce one of the oldest myths about manhood—that men’s strength is proven by crushing enemies.
JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY. 🇺🇸🔥 pic.twitter.com/0502N6a3rL
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 6, 2026
Criticism of the videos continues for trivializing violence. Coverage from Reuters described them as part of a broader “meme war,” blending Hollywood imagery and gaming culture with real military action. But the controversy isn’t only about tone. It’s about something deeper: the way American culture still links masculinity with domination and force.
For generations, boys have been raised on stories where one’s manhood is proven through violence. Movies, video games, and political rhetoric repeat the same narrative: the male hero defeats the enemy through superior power. Beyond the troubling optics lies a deeper cultural question: What do these videos reveal about the way masculinity is still defined in 21st century America?
In this script, restraint looks weak. Empathy looks soft. Diplomacy looks naïve. Real men strike back.
Really!? A quarter of the way through the century, the slow, steady gains of an international movement to redefine masculinity still remains beneath the radar.
The White House videos used Hollywood mythology to bolster its geopolitical messaging. Consider the imagery: Maximus in Gladiator embodies righteous vengeance. Maverick in Top Gun represents fearless individualism. Tony Stark’s Iron Man combines technological power with swaggering bravado. The assassin played by Keanu Reeves in John Wick eliminates enemies with relentless efficiency.
Psychologist Mary L. Trump—Donald Trump’s niece—has written about how fragile masculinity often masks deep insecurity. In her book Too Much and Never Enough, she describes a family culture in which vulnerability was treated as weakness and domination became the only acceptable form of strength. That dynamic doesn’t stay confined to one family. It echoes through political culture.
When leaders, almost always white and male, celebrate explosions with movie quotes and gaming sound effects, they reinforce a version of masculinity that sees empathy as weakness and violence as proof of strength.
Such a cultural script carries real consequences. The overwhelming majority of violence worldwide—from mass shootings to domestic abuse to war—is committed by men. Researchers who study masculinity point to rigid expectations that equate manhood with dominance and emotional suppression.
When political leaders celebrate military violence using the imagery of hypermasculine heroes, they reinforce those expectations rather than challenge them. What’s the message for our sons and grandsons?
Consider what’s missing from the videos: no civilians running from falling bombs. No grieving families. No returning veterans struggling with trauma. War is no longer presented as solemn or ethically complex; it is packaged like a video game. If a podcaster promoted that, we’d be outraged. That our government is doing so demonstrates just how morally bankrupt the Trump administration is.
War appears not as tragedy, but as spectacle.
Across the country—and around the world—men are challenging the old patriarchal script. They are often choosing caregiving over breadwinning, confronting sexism rather than ignoring it, and working to prevent violence in their communities.
Their courage doesn’t appear in action-movie montages, yet it may be far more important. Because the real challenge facing our society isn’t simply defeating enemies abroad; it’s transforming manhood at home.
If we want a safer, more humane world, boys must learn that real courage isn’t measured by explosions or victory screens. It’s measured by the ability to protect life, show empathy, and reject violence—even in a culture that socializes you to believe violence is what makes you a man.
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What Bondi Beach and Brown University Reveal About Stopping Gun Violence
Australia’s response to a December 14 mass shooting reminds us that violence is not an inevitability to be endured; it is a problem to be confronted.
Dec 19, 2025
Days ago, two tragedies unfolded on opposite sides of the world—each marked by gun violence and grief, yet met with starkly different national responses.
On December 14, on the first night of Hanukkah, a gathering on Bondi Beach in Sydney turned into horror when a father and son opened fire during a “Hanukkah by the Sea” celebration, killing 15 people and wounding 40 in what Australian authorities called an antisemitic terrorist attack. The carnage would have been much worse were it not for the heroic act of Ahmed al-Ahmed, an Australian citizen who migrated from Syria two decades ago.
The day before in Providence, Rhode Island, a shooter opened fire at Brown University during finals, killing two students and wounding nine. As of this writing, authorities are actively searching for a suspect—and a motive.
These shootings—one at a beloved public beach, the other on an Ivy League campus—expose not only shared grief but radically different understandings of responsibility. In Australia, sorrow was quickly followed by collective resolve. The US followed a familiar ritual: shock, condolences, and political paralysis. If I had a dollar for every politician’s “thoughts and prayers,” I could join the billionaire class those officials so eagerly protect.
If we are serious about honoring the victims and survivors in Sydney, at Brown, and everywhere else touched by mass shootings, expressing grief is not enough.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the Bondi Beach massacre as an act of “evil beyond comprehension,” pledging solidarity with the Jewish community and signaling renewed efforts to strengthen gun laws: tougher licensing, tighter oversight, and renewed limits on gun ownership.
Australians remember what followed the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Within days, the country banned rapid-fire weapons, bought back and destroyed nearly 1 million firearms, and created a national gun registry. The result? Decades with virtually no similar mass shootings.
In the US, by contrast, each new tragedy yields the same results: more guns, more shootings, more grief; this in a country with more guns than people! And once again, the gendered reality of this violence is almost entirely ignored. There's a reason we never hear the phrase, gunwoman.
The overwhelming majority of US mass shooters are male—frequently young, usually white, and commonly driven by grievance, isolation, and entitlement. This is not incidental. It’s a pattern demanding honest cultural reckoning. For decades, we’ve failed to challenge destructive norms of masculinity. No surprise that those norms keep finding their most lethal expression through guns.
Let’s be clear: This is not about demonizing men. It’s about telling the truth. We train boys to suppress vulnerability, to equate manhood with dominance, and to interpret frustration as humiliation. When that script collides with easy access to weapons designed to kill many people quickly, the outcome is predictable. Every time. Full stop.
Australia acted on that reality. After Port Arthur, it banned fully automatic weapons, semi-automatic rifles, and pump-action shotguns—and treated firearms not as sacred objects, but as regulated tools with enormous public risk. Rather than deny their grief, Australians transformed it into collective responsibility, identifying gun violence as a systemic problem requiring systemic solutions.
In the US, mass shootings are still framed as isolated incidents—acts of deranged individuals—or worse, as unavoidable features of national life: school shootings; movie theater shootings; grocery store shootings; church, mosque, and synagogue shootings. Together they form a normalized nightmare we refuse to confront honestly, ignoring the 393 mass shootings so far in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
At Brown University, students and families are now living with the trauma of a field of learning turned into a killing field. Final exams meant to test academic mastery became tests of life and death. The remainder of the semester was canceled, and students headed home to process a violent assault rather than celebrating the end of the semester.
And yet, even as Brown students grieve, politicians employ familiar distractions—talking about mental health or spiritual resilience—anything to avoid confronting easy access to weapons of mass destruction.
Australia’s response reminds us that violence is not an inevitability to be endured; it is a problem to be confronted. Their approach is not perfect; nor is their country. Their strategy reflects a fundamental belief: Government exists to protect lives, not to fetishize weapons. The US, trapped in a twisted love affair with the Second Amendment, continues to block meaningful reform.
Still, this country has a choice. We can center honest conversations about masculinity and how we raise boys. We can invest in early interventions for alienated youth. We can regulate weapons of mass killing. Or we can keep normalizing trauma and, laughably, calling it freedom.
When Brown students return to campus, many will have already spent weeks organizing for tougher gun laws. I predict students across the country will join them.
If we are serious about honoring the victims and survivors in Sydney, at Brown, and everywhere else touched by mass shootings, expressing grief is not enough. Action—the antidote to despair—is required. Now.
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Trump Won't Make America Safe Again By Minimizing Domestic Violence
The president’s remarks come at a time when he and his enablers celebrate toxic masculinity while cutting services for the most vulnerable, including domestic violence prevention and support for Survivors.
Sep 13, 2025
For those of us who work to prevent domestic violence and support survivors, it was beyond disheartening to hear the president of the United States, one of the most powerful men in the world, say, “If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say, 'This was a crime,' see?" His off-the-cuff remark was in regard to the crime rate in DC and is hard not to interpret as downplaying domestic violence.
It was notable to me that these remarks were made at the Bible Museum, at a conference for the freedom of religious education. Sadly, organized religions have too often been places that have turned a blind eye toward domestic violence, with an attitude that things that happen in the home should stay private or are to be worked out in the home. This, of course, minimizes the power and coercion behind domestic violence. Every day I speak to victims who are in situations where they cannot get help because the violence is happening at home, whether it is because they know what will happen when their abuser posts bail or they will have no place to live, or they do not want to disrupt their children’s lives and pull them out of school. The list goes on and on.
The president’s remarks come at a time when he and his enablers celebrate toxic masculinity while cutting services for the most vulnerable, including domestic violence prevention and support for Survivors. Recently Housing Urban Development funding has been cut, even though the connection between homelessness and domestic violence is clear. The California Inter Agency Council on homelessness reported that 74,779 survivors and 24,721 children of survivors experienced homelessness in 2024, that survivors had a higher rate of return to homelessness after exiting homeless services, that 14% of survivors returned to homelessness versus 10% of the overall homeless population, and that Survivors had a lower rate of exits to permanent housing—14% among survivors versus 18% among the overall homeless population. Yet funding for homelessness prevention at organizations, like the Survivor Justice Center that I run, are being cut.
Just last week I was interviewed about a hand signal that went viral that started when people were trapped at home with their abusers during the pandemic and need a nonverbal way to get help. Many of us are also standing in solidarity with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and their re-traumatization by the ongoing dismissal of his crimes by the powers that be.
We must stop minimizing abuse just because it happened with someone you know.
Next month is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, where advocates, survivors, and supporters across the nation come together to commemorate those lives that have been lost to intimate partner violence and to continue the work to end domestic violence. I hope we can come together this month to commemorate those lives, and to raise awareness that this is not just a little fight that happens between a husband and a wife at home.
Every day, a friend, colleague, neighbor, community supporter, a good Samaritan, whomever asks me how this could still be happening, how could these ingrained power and control and coercive and abusive behavior be happening. They ask how they can help.
This is why I wrote earlier this year about the blame game. And about the burden that is placed on the survivor. We must stop minimizing abuse just because it happened with someone you know.
You can help. You can recognize the hand signal. You can say “a little fight with the wife” is wrong for so many reasons—even the reference to “the wife” removes agency from the victim spouse and makes it sound like a reference to property. As if we are returning to a far-off time from the 1950s, when domestic violence was not discussed and women were not seen as equal partners, but people that should know their place and be barefoot in the kitchen. We won’t go back.
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Suicide Rates Among Young Men Are On the Rise; Toxic Masculinity May Be To Blame
Masculine representations rooted in ideals that reward toughness, emotional suppression, and dominance are quietly accelerating a mental health crisis among young men.
Sep 02, 2025
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is now the second leading cause of death among males aged 15-29, and suicide rates among young men in the US have risen by roughly a third since 2010. Across much of Africa, where I work as a public health and gender equality practitioner, men make up the vast majority of suicide deaths, and in Lesotho, the country with the highest suicide rate globally, men are dying at three times the rate of women.
Rigid gender roles may be to blame. Masculine representations rooted in ideals that reward toughness, emotional suppression, and dominance are quietly accelerating a mental health crisis among young men. These rigid norms don’t simply discourage boys from seeking help; they actively shame vulnerability, equate emotional expression with weakness, and isolate those who are struggling. In cultures where being “a real man” means staying silent, mental distress festers in the dark. Unless we confront and transform these harmful ideals, any global response to youth mental health will be incomplete—and too late for many.
In many parts of Africa, young men grow up under intense pressure to become providers, protectors, and problem-solvers. These roles and expectations are deeply tied to their perceived worth. But when systemic barriers like poverty, unemployment, or lack of education make these ideals unreachable, the emotional toll can be devastating. With mental health services scarce and stigma-free spaces almost nonexistent, many suffer in silence.
Instead of seeking support through therapy or confiding in someone they trust, many young men cope with inner distress by turning to alcohol, aggression, or silent withdrawal. These internalized ideals of “staying strong” act like slow-burning fuses. Left unaddressed, emotional strain builds until it erupts often into breakdowns, which spiral into isolation, and eventually, into tragedy. Many of these young men appear perfectly “fine” on the surface, attending school, church, or work, making it easy for their pain to go unnoticed, even by those closest to them. While many girls and young women are increasingly accessing mental health resources even in under-resourced settings, young men remain notably absent from these services. In Rwanda, a study revealed that girls are more likely to utilize youth health friendly services than their counterpart boys. This disparity is not unique to Rwanda; similar trends are observed in west African regions, where mental health services for adolescents are limited, and boys often do not seek help due to societal expectations and stigma.
To be sure, women and girls continue to face serious mental health challenges, often exacerbated by gender-based violence and limited access to care. Recognizing their struggles does not diminish the urgent need to address the silent crisis among young men. Both require focused attention if we are to improve youth mental health across societies. Yet ignoring the silent struggles specific to young men is costing lives worldwide.
To effectively tackle this issue, we must address the needs of all adolescents, with attention to those most at risk. This means introducing gender-transformative education that teaches emotional literacy and normalizes help seeking as strength. We need male-friendly, culturally grounded safe spaces in schools, sports clubs, faith groups, and online where boys can be vulnerable without judgment. Mental health professionals must adopt gender transformative approaches that understand masculinity’s impact on behavior.
Above all, media and storytelling must shift the narrative so boys grow up knowing that feeling is not failure. Imagine a generation of boys brave enough to ask for help, a future where strength includes compassion, and manhood means connection, not isolation. This is the future we owe boys and men. No young man should have to choose between silence and survival.
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How Does Copaganda Work and Why Is It Harmful?
Copaganda contributes to a cycle in which the root causes of our safety problems never get solved even though people in power constantly claim to be trying.
May 17, 2025
Copaganda is a specific type of propaganda in which the punishment bureaucracy and the powerful interests behind it influence how we think about crime and safety. I use the term “punishment bureaucracy” instead of “criminal justice system” in this book because it is a more accurate and less deceptive way to describe the constellation of public and private institutions that develop, enforce, and profit from criminal law. The government determines what things are considered a “crime” subject to punishment versus what things are permitted or tolerated even if they hurt people. Then, the government determines what kinds of punishments are appropriate for the conduct it prohibits. Across history and different societies, the definition of crime and how it should be punished has varied depending on who has power and what serves their interests, not an objective evaluation of what causes harm.
The powerful define crime to suit their interests, making some things legal and others punishable. They also decide how what is criminalized gets punished. Should the government execute or cage or whip people who break a law? Should the government mandate a public apology, permit survivors to initiate restorative processes, seize assets, require volunteer work, revoke a business or driver’s license, confine someone to their home, banish them? Should society show them love and give them help? Should society instead invest more in preventing certain harms from happening in the first place?
Having defined crime and punishment, the government also determines which crimes to enforce against which people. “Law enforcement” rarely responds to most violations of the law. It only enforces some criminal laws against some people some of the time.
The obsessive focus by news outlets on the punishment bureaucracy as a solution to interpersonal harm draws away resources from investment in the things that work better, along with a sense of urgency for those priorities.
These decisions, too, follow patterns of power, not safety. That is why U.S. police chose for many years to arrest more people for marijuana possession than for all “violent crime” combined. That is why police prioritize budgets for SWAT teams to search for drugs in poor communities over testing rape kits. That is why the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office responded to proposed county budget cuts by threatening to cut the divisions that handle white-collar crimes and sexual abuse. That is why about 90 percent of people prosecuted for crimes are very poor. That is why no senior figures were prosecuted for the 2008 financial crisis or the U.S. torture program after 9/11. That is why police tolerate widespread drug use in dorms at Ivy League universities. That is why most of the undercover police operations in hundreds of U.S. cities target disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and immigrant people instead of other police officers, prosecutors, real estate developers, fraternities with histories of drug distribution and rape, or corporate board rooms with histories of tax evasion, fraud, and insider trading. That is why a playground fight at a low-income school results in a child being taken away from their parents and jailed with a criminal record, while the same fight at a prep school may result in a call to parents for an early pickup that afternoon.
In an unequal society where a few have more money and power than the many, the punishment bureaucracy is a tool for preserving inequalities. It maintains the social order by using government violence to manage the unrest that comes from unfairness, desperation, and alienation, and it crushes organized opposition against the political system. These functions explain why the punishment bureaucracy expands during times of growing inequality and social agitation. Throughout history, those who are comfortable with how society looks tend to preserve and expand the punishment bureaucracy, even though—and largely because—it operates as an anti-democratic force. Those who have wanted to change certain aspects of our society—such as movements for workers, racial justice, women’s suffrage, economic equality, peace, ecological sustainability, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and so on—have tended throughout history to combat the size, power, and discretion of the punishment bureaucracy. Why? Because it is almost always wielded against them.
So, how does copaganda work? It has three main roles.
Job #1: Narrowing Our Understanding of Threat
The first job of copaganda is to narrow our conception of threat. Rather than the bigger threats to our safety caused by people with power, we narrow our conception to crimes committed by the poorest, most vulnerable people in our society. For example, wage theft by employers dwarfs all other property crime combined—such as burglaries, retail theft, and robberies—costing an estimated $50 billion every year. Tax evasion steals about $1 trillion each year. That’s over sixty times the wealth lost in all police-reported property crime. There are hundreds of thousands of known Clean Water Act violations each year, causing cancer, kidney failure, rotting teeth, damage to the nervous system, and death. Over 100,000 people in the United States die every year from air pollution, about five times the number of homicides. At the same time, most sexual assaults, domestic violence crimes, and sex offenses against children go unreported, unrecorded, and ignored by the legal system. Punishment bureaucrats feed reporters stories that measure “safety” as any short-term increase or decrease in, say, official homicide or robbery rates, rather than by how many people died from lack of health care, how many children suffered lead poisoning, how many families were rendered homeless by eviction or foreclosure, how many people couldn’t pay utility bills because of various white-collar crimes, how many thousands of illegal assaults police and jail guards committed, and so on. Sometimes the rates of various crimes go up and down, and we should all be concerned about any form of violence against any human being. But the first job of copaganda is getting us focused almost exclu- sively on a narrow range of the threats we face, mostly the officially-recorded crimes of poor people, rather than the large-scale devastation wrought by people with power and money.
Job #2: Manufacturing Fear
The second job of copaganda is to manufacture crises and panics about this narrow category of threats. After the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, for example, the news bombarded the public with a series of “crime waves” concerning various forms of crime committed by the poor even though government data showed that, despite some categories of police-reported crime rising and others falling at the beginning of the pandemic, overall property and violent crime continued to be at near-historic fifty-year lows the entire time. As a result of continual news-generated panics, nearly every year of this century, public opinion polls showed people believing that police-reported crime was rising, even when it was generally falling.
Copaganda leaves the public in a vague state of fear. It manufactures suspicion against poor people, immigrants, and racial minorities rather than, say, bankers, pharmaceutical executives, fraternity brothers, landlords, employers, and polluters. Copaganda also engenders fear of strangers while obscuring the oppressive forces that lead to interpersonal violence between acquaintances, friends, and family members. (Police themselves commit one-third of all stranger-homicides in the U.S., but these figures are generally excluded from reported crime rates.) This matters because when people are in a perpetual state of fear for their physical safety, they are more likely to support the punishment bureaucracy and authoritarian reactions against those they fear.
Job #3: Promoting Punishment as the Solution
The third job of copaganda is to convince the public to spend more money on the punishment bureaucracy by framing police, prosecutors, probation, parole, and prisons as effective solutions to interpersonal harm. Copaganda links safety to things the punishment bureaucracy does, while downplaying the connection between safety and the material, structural conditions of people’s lives. So, for example, a rise in homeless people sleeping in the street might be framed as an economic problem requiring more affordable housing, but copaganda frames it as “disorder” solvable with more arrests for trespassing. Instead of linking sexual assault to toxic masculinity or a lack of resources and vibrant social connections to escape high-risk situations, copaganda links it to an under-resourced punishment system. Like a media-induced Stockholm syndrome, copaganda sells us the illusion that the violent abuser is somehow the liberator, the protector, our best and only option.
If police, prosecutions, and prisons made us safe, we would be living in the safest society in world history. But, as I discuss later, greater investment in the punishment bureaucracy actually increases a number of social harms, including physical violence, sexual harm, disease, trauma, drug abuse, mental illness, isolation, and even, in the long term, police-recorded crime. Instead, overwhelming evidence supports addressing the controllable things that determine the levels of interpersonal harm in our society, including: poverty; lack of affordable housing; inadequate healthcare and mental wellness resources; nutrition; access to recreation and exercise; pollution; human and social connection; design of cities, buildings, and physical environments; and early-childhood education. Addressing root causes like these would lower police-reported crime and also prevent the other harms that flow from inequality that never make it into the legal system for punishment, including millions of avoidable deaths and unnecessary suffering that exceed the narrow category of harm that police record as “crime.”
The obsessive focus by news outlets on the punishment bureaucracy as a solution to interpersonal harm draws away resources from investment in the things that work better, along with a sense of urgency for those priorities. It also promotes the surveillance and repression of social movements that are trying to solve those root structural problems by fighting for a more equal and sustainable society. Copaganda thus contributes to a cycle in which the root causes of our safety problems never get solved even though people in power constantly claim to be trying.
As you read the examples collected in this book with the above three themes in mind, ask yourself: what kind of public is created by consuming such news? If we see one of these articles once, we may not notice anything odd, or we may shake our heads at how silly, uninformed, and nefarious it is. But if we see thousands of them over the course of years, and we hardly see anything else, we become different people. It is the ubiquity of copaganda that requires us to set up daily practices of individual and collective vigilance.
Copyright © 2025 by Alec Karakatsanis. This excerpt originally appeared in Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, published by The New Press. Reprinted here with permission and please note that it is not available for re-posting elsewhere.
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It's Time for Young Men to Be Allies in the Fight Against Online Misogyny
The fight against misogyny requires active engagement from all corners of society, including those who have the privilege and responsibility to challenge these harmful ideologies.
May 16, 2025
Earlier this year, the University of York released a sobering report: 90% of secondary school teachers in the U.K. said their male students are being heavily influenced by online misogynistic figures—often quoting or defending toxic masculine personalities in classes. Girls, meanwhile, are withdrawing from discussions, leaving classrooms quietly divided along gender lines.
This is not just a school issue; it's a society-wide crisis forming in real time, and it's happening worldwide. Boys are learning that dominance is power and empathy is weakness, lessons they carry with them far beyond the walls of a classroom. Online misogyny thrives not only because of those who perpetrate it but also due to the silence of many men who choose not to confront it. This passive complicity allows harmful narratives to flourish, shaping a digital culture where toxic masculinity is normalized and women's voices are marginalized.
There is a better way forward. As a human rights advocate with extensive experience in promoting positive masculinity at RWAMREC, Rwanda Men's Resource Center, I have witnessed firsthand how transformative male engagement approaches can challenge gender-based violence and reshape harmful cultural narratives, both online and in the real world. But, despite their demonstrated successes, these programs are vastly underutilized. Many campaigns focus exclusively on empowering women to protect themselves, rather than mobilizing men to take collective responsibility for change. To truly create lasting change and address online misogyny, we must invest in programs that equip men with the tools and confidence to act as allies.
Without the active involvement of tech companies in combating online misogyny, even the most well-intentioned male allies will face an uphill battle.
Content creators promoting hypermasculine personas characterized by control, dominance, and anti-woman rhetoric have amassed audiences in the tens of millions across platforms like X, TikTok, and YouTube. Such creators often blend self-improvement themes with misogynistic and conspiratorial messaging, making their content more appealing and harder to critique. A U.K.-based survey of secondary school teachers revealed that 90% observed male students mimicking or defending online personalities who espouse these hypermasculine ideologies, demonstrating their real-world influence in shaping gender attitudes among youth. Too many boys view this kind of hateful content with complacency, fostering environments where such attitudes are normalized. But a recent study presented compelling evidence supporting the effectiveness of male bystander intervention in reducing sexist behavior. The research found that when male bystanders actively confronted instances of gender prejudice, female victims experienced increased feelings of empowerment and a greater willingness to confront the perpetrator themselves.
By encouraging men to reflect on their behaviors and understand the impact of their words, the toxic patterns that often go unchecked in digital spaces can be dismantled. Educational campaigns that include men in honest conversations about gender equality have led to more respectful engagement on social media, gaming platforms, and online forums. Participants are more likely to recognize misogynistic content, challenge harmful narratives, and avoid contributing to hostile online environments. These efforts not only reduce the prevalence of online abuse but also shift cultural norms around masculinity, making empathy and accountability part of the standard.
Of course not all boys and men endorse or participate in misogynistic behavior online, and many already stand as strong allies in promoting gender equality. However, the pervasive nature of online misogyny calls for a collective response. While male engagement is essential, it is not enough on its own. Tech companies also play a critical role, as their platforms often become spaces where misogynistic content thrives. These companies must take responsibility by implementing robust policies, monitoring harmful behavior, and holding users accountable. Without the active involvement of tech companies in combating online misogyny, even the most well-intentioned male allies will face an uphill battle.
The fight against misogyny requires active engagement from all corners of society, including those who have the privilege and responsibility to challenge these harmful ideologies. By standing up and speaking out, men can help disrupt the cycle and create a safer, more inclusive online environment for everyone. We need increased funding for initiatives that engage men in preventing online misogyny. We also need media literacy education in schools that arm young people with tools to recognize and challenge harmful online behaviors. Men's active involvement in challenging misogyny is more than supportive, it's revolutionary. When boys and men confront sexist remarks, push back against harmful gender stereotypes, or simply opt out of disrespectful conversations, they break the cycle that normalizes misogyny in everyday life.
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The "New" Masculinity Is Actually 50 Years Old
Woven together over decades, the antisexist men's movement has created a multilayered tapestry of one of the most important social change movements you may never have heard of.
Sep 03, 2024
Since the presidential campaign shake-up in July, the national conversation about manhood has been abuzz with talk of a “new” masculinity, embodied by good, decent men like Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff. What’s actually new, though, is what’s now coming into focus: the consequences of 50 years of men's hard work to redefine manhood.
Masculinity has too often been narrowly characterized as poisonous misogyny, and many men seen as patriarchal MAGA heads. The rest of us, apparently, just stand by mute, unwilling to challenge the bigots and bullies. That’s a lie. All men— including even “white dudes”—have been taking back the narrative.
While it’s refreshing to hear the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, Gov. Walz, and second gentlemen, Mr. Emhoff, cited as models of this “new” masculinity, it’s far from new. Men have been successfully crafting strategies to break out of the man box since the mid-1970s.
"It’s time for men to take a leap of faith and trust that our lives will be enriched in ways we can’t imagine if we loosen our grip and share the reins or, Goddess forbid, hand them over to women..."
Nearly everyone is aware of the bad news about “toxic” masculinity—from men like Andrew Tate to groups like the Proud Boys. Few, though, know the good news: men’s efforts to redefine manhood.
Time for a little history.
For 50 years, a growing number of men of all races and ethnicities in North America and around the world have followed women in working to prevent domestic and sexual violence and protect reproductive rights, while also working to redefine and transform traditional ideas about manhood, fatherhood, and brotherhood.
The antisexist men’s movement incorporates a range of men and men’s experiences: from boys on the journey to manhood and fathering/mentoring to male survivors and men of color; from GBTQI+ men to men overcoming violence; from men’s health to men’s experience with feminism. Woven together, over the decades we’ve created a multilayered tapestry of one of the most important social change movements you may never have heard of.
There are men—and women—around the world, working day in and day out for gender equality. Globally, the campaign is united under the banner of the MenEngage Alliance, a network of more than 1,000 members in 88 countries. In North America, organizations like Equimundo, Next Gen Men, Fathering Together, A Call to Men, and Men4Choice, have for years been transforming our idealistic aspirations into concrete action.
There certainly are men who feel marginalized, deeply resentful of women’s gains. Andrew Yarrow’s Man Out: Men on the Sidelines of American Life empathizes with them; men who are distressed about their place in contemporary society. They’re highly susceptible to being seduced by traditional manhood, characterized by Trump and Vance’s unhinged bluster.
By contrast, Doug Emhoff and Tim Walz represent men able to integrate being both steady and strong and tender and vulnerable. As a high school teacher, Mr. Walz, for example, was able to simultaneously coach football and advise a gay straight alliance.
Today, more men understand that we can’t ignore the power we hold in society. Not a power we earned, but one we received at birth simply by arriving on the planet in male-identified bodies. Relinquishing our grip on the twin symbols of that power—privilege and entitlement—is not easy. Men fear both losing control and having less; fear the unknown wondering, “What will my life look like if I am not in charge?” It’s time for men to take a leap of faith and trust that our lives will be enriched in ways we can’t imagine if we loosen our grip and share the reins or, Goddess forbid, hand them over to women, perhaps beginning in November with Kamala Harris.
Men are rejecting a fixed definition of masculinity, replacing it with an emotionally rich expression of masculinities. We are navigating our lives with both our eyes and our hearts open, beginning to see the contours of a manhood that celebrates rather than dreads men’s tears and uncertainties. Men are now able to negotiate the gender landscape on surer footing, better able to bear witness to women’s lives, understand women’s realities—and our own.
Masculinity based on domination and emotional rigidity has failed men. Men have been working for five decades to replace those traits with compassion and vulnerability. That’s the masculinity inspiring men not just to move forward, but to unambiguously declare, “We’re not going back.”
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