It’s been conventional wisdom that younger generations emerge more progressive than their predecessors. “The young people will save us,” has been a sentiment often shared by elders, albeit problematically, as they’ve watched new movements build power. But this summer, we’ve reached a breaking point: that is not true anymore for Gen Z men.

MAGA has captured older men, especially older white men: according to recent polling data, about half of its movement is over the age of sixty-five, and more than 60 percent is white, Christian, and male. More surprising is the stark gender divide that has emerged among American youth: over the past twenty-five years, the partisan gap between young women and young men has nearly doubled, and Gen Z women are today a whopping twenty-three points more liberal than their generation’s men. It’s a regressive trend, with Gen Z men proving to be more conservative than millennial men.

It’s also an apparently rapid trend, at least when it comes to Gen Z men’s views on gender: 49 percent of Gen Z men said the United States had become “too soft and feminine” in 2022; just one year later, that number jumped to 60 percent. And all of these trends are only exacerbated when lasering in on white Gen Z men in particular.

Some of this political divide is attributable to the growing popularity of cultural figures such as Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate. The “manosphere” targets young men struggling with the emotional and psychological impacts of contemporary American culture — changing social norms surrounding identity and purpose, for example — and promotes a particularly noxious and regressive form of masculinity. At the same time, and with great success, manosphere influencers weaponize the popularity of the term “toxic masculinity” as an example of how men are actually victims of a changing society that wants to malign them, sideline them, and replace them.

These guys — Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and their contemporaries — aren’t simply capitalizing on male anger. That undersells their strategic approach and wide appeal. They leverage the power of wellness and self-help rhetoric in a society that purports to be a meritocracy. And they offer clear answers to some of the most profound questions we all grapple with: Who am I? What is my purpose in this life? What is my role? What gives life meaning?

The answers the manosphere provides to these questions are, of course, wrong. But they’re clear answers nonetheless, and answers that have cross-race appeal; their message resonates with white and non-white men alike.

With the ascension of J. D. Vance as the Republican vice-presidential candidate, the worldview of the “manosphere” has gone from a fringe part of internet culture to the top of national politics. Vance opposes gay marriage, abortion, in vitro fertilization, and no-fault divorce. Synergy between the cultural on-ramps to reactionary gender politics, Republican leadership championing that worldview, and a thriving right-wing movement where men find belonging means that it’s more important than ever to present an alternative, healthy representation of masculinity — in general, but perhaps especially for the millions of working-class white men who are, according to data, a key demographic of the far-right movement.

Conversations about masculinity on the Left often end up playing into the reactionary power of the manosphere by focusing on rebutting what we find problematic: we tell men what not to do, who not to be, how not to act. And delivering on economic policy wins, while essential, is not enough to combat the way the Right takes advantage of the perceived status threats, feelings of disrespect by cultural elites, racial animus, growing unhappiness, and worsening economic reality of working-class white men in particular.

Rightful critiques of masculinity are incomplete without an affirmative vision of our own to offer. Whether we like it or not, most people yearn for a clear sense of meaning and purpose in life, particularly in an era marked by rapid social, political, and economic change. And the reality is that for most people, that sense of meaning or purpose will be mediated by identity, especially by gender and race. 

One way we can affirmatively engage in this conversation is by uplifting depictions of manhood in mass culture that working-class white men find relatable and representative, but that promote healthier, more progressive social dynamics and ways of being. Also at the top of national politics, the “tonic masculinity” of Governor Tim Walz has gone viral as a refreshing example of this kind of progressive man.

Walz moves through the world — in T-shirts, hunting camo, and the uncool kind of dad sneaker — exuding affable white guy, Midwest nice, football coach energy that has evidently resonated with tons of people. A big part of the appeal seems to come from the down-to-earth, average Joe, dad vibes he gives. As one person tweeted, there are “a lot of us who hope our dad would have ended up a lot more like Tim Walz than JD Vance if it weren’t for Fox News.”

White women in particular — probably because they are more likely to be close to men of their own race who make up the bulk of the MAGA movement — have reacted to Walz with a kind of longing; in TikToks and Twitter/X threads, they’ve bemoaned the radicalization of men and the impact it’s had on relationships with their fathers, uncles, and brothers. Walz as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in an age when so many men have been “red-pilled” into reactionary politics — and with Vance as the other ticket’s comparison — is a real opportunity for a different vision of masculinity to culturally take root.

Walz shows how straight white men can embody and advocate for principles that hold deep cultural resonance in America, like “family values” and “freedom.” For example, when he talks about how he and his wife used intrauterine insemination (IUI) to conceive their children, how as a dad, “I [shouldn’t] have to go right back to work five days later, after my wife had a C-section,” and how “there’s nothing pro-family [about the Right] other than having women be incubators for their vision,” he articulates and demonstrates a fundamentally different version of family values, freedom, and fatherhood than the one the Right offers men.

In discussing police violence against black Americans, he once said that black youth “[apparently all know . . . that the minute you’re pulled over, you “Hey Siri,” so it notifies your parents where you’re at and starts recording right away. My kids don’t have to do that. They don’t have to think about that. What a diminishment of life, if that’s the first thing that’s on your mind.” That’s a simple, digestible articulation of the horrors of racism, framed from the perspective of a loving father. He draws attention to racism without using language the Right has coded as “woke,” which often alienates average people; it can be a universal part of fatherhood, when conceived of this way, to want all kids to be able to live full lives free of fear.

Similarly, when he was a high school teacher and sponsored the school’s first gay-straight alliance club, Walz demonstrated how straight, traditionally masculine men can use the privileges of their identity to advance the rights and recognition of a group with less political and social power.

All of this is more profoundly meaningful because Walz’s economic record demonstrates something that I’ve described as “structural kindness”: believing in the kind of systematic reforms, through policymaking and government action, that make the conditions of society easier for people en masse. This exists in contrast to the way that many people, conservative men in particular, demonstrate and flaunt interpersonal kindness — to their own families, children, wives, and daughters — while advancing policies that make conditions of society harder for women or families as a whole.

Walz’s record as governor is pro-worker, pro-labor, and therefore pro-family — in the structural sense, as well as the interpersonal and the rhetorical. As an example, facing criticism from the Right who called him a “big-government liberal” for providing free lunch to all schoolchildren in the state, Walz simply responded about himself: “What a monster! Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn.”

It is, of course, still unknown what the exact dynamics of federal economic policy will look like under a hypothetical Kamala Harris–Tim Walz administration. But Walz’s record on this front is strong and hopefully will be a foundation of what the administration will push for federally.

We are also in the middle of another wave of youth organizing: young people on college campuses have played a leading role in protesting against the horror in Gaza. People who malign the protesters, or who have supported escalation against them, include many Democratic elected officials and liberal pundits. The wave of campus encampments of last spring could have offered an opportunity for a conversation about what students were getting right about inclusion: they were modeling democratic practices inside the encampments, often in communities that were racially, religiously, and gender diverse. Their organizing was not perfect, but they were trying their best — and succeeding in many ways — as they attempted to do the right thing in the face of unspeakable horror.

This week, when Walz was asked about how the Harris-Walz administration would handle the Israel-Hamas war, he said, referring to the Uncommitted movement, “I think the people in Michigan are speaking out for all the right reasons.” If he plays a leading role in shifting how leaders (including his own presidential ticket-mate) respond to the students too — an approach that understands and acknowledges the care, compassion, and kindness at the heart of their organizing — it can be yet another example of how a different approach to masculinity can be critical in the fight against authoritarianism here and abroad.

Across all these examples, the message should be simple: supporting other people’s freedoms doesn’t take away from your manhood. You can find profound purpose and meaning in your identity as a father, as a husband, as a man that isn’t defined by subjugation, emotional distance, or suppression. It actually can be masculine to care about the well-being and dignity of other human beings.

It’s not just that Walz is a “nice guy”; it’s that he subverts the conception that reactionary political and cultural forces have established as what it means to be a rural white man. Celebrating these kinds of moments in mass culture is a way to say “this is what we want more of” without making men feel lectured to.

Cultural moments can help us provide a vision of healthier masculinity that feels relatable and real to people. Football coaching and hunting are things we code as traditionally masculine, ruggedly American. But that doesn’t and shouldn’t mean that the people enmeshed in these cultures are doomed to fall prey to reactionary politics. As people engaged in the political project of building a more progressive future, we should capitalize on these kinds of opportunities to broaden the base of people engaged in that project with us — or at the very least, try to prevent our opposition’s base from expanding more than it already has.

It’s worth noting the recent example of John Fetterman, who successfully campaigned for federal office as an internet darling and who has, in many ways, betrayed his base upon becoming a senator. In different ways, Fetterman also offered a version of white and supposedly working-class (though Fetterman himself comes from wealth) masculinity and online cultural relevance that rebuked authoritarianism. Walz is different — he has become more progressive over the course of his career. If that changes as vice president, it would be catastrophic to have yet another example of progressive masculinity that was ultimately a public relations campaign to maintain the status quo. The stakes are simply too high.

At this juncture, it’s imperative that the Left offer its own script, one that speaks to people’s identities as they exist in the here and now, allows for people’s questions and discomfort without sacrificing our values or vision, and affirmatively advocates for a new social order characterized by equity, inclusivity, and justice. That script may remain largely unwritten at the moment, but it will include camo hats, hunting, and, hopefully, kindness in policymaking.