I don't like to toot my own horn all that much - but I'm going to toss in a gratuitous "I told you so" here.
It was 25 years ago this month that Christina Hoff Summers released "The War Against Boys". And as the father, at the time, of a 17 year old stepson and a 7 year old boy, I was profoundly disturbed by what Summers was reporting. I won't spoil it - it's more worth a read now than ever - but the basic story came to this: the education system was becoming feminized in a way that was going to be deleterious to boys, someday, and that was going to have dire effects on society. Boys, tired of having boyhood with its restlessness and rambunctiousness treated as a pathology, complete with medication, would disengage from the education process; the ratio of girls to boys in universities would drop from about even to roughly 3:2, and eventually 2:1, in favor of women, with dire effects not only on boys' livelihoods, but social and romantic prospects.
And it's pretty much entirely come true. Young men are forsaking the dating pool for video games and porn, even as women wonder where all the guys are. Entire university departments are becoming female reservations, as men pass up college - some for the trades, some for service jobs and aimlessness. The birth rate is plummeting.
But there are signs of life - or at least restlessness - among young men. Guys are leaving the Democratic Party - the party associated with the education system, the post-secondary system and the "woke" social ideology that's been devaluing boyhood and manhood for a generation, now.
River Page a the Free Press gives a solid explanation. Page - like yours truly - stsrted out as a liberal Democrat, in his case a Bernie Bro. And his rationale for the Democrats' cratering among young men is no surprise, to those who've read War Against Boys:
The first is the Democratic Party’s demonization of white men, ostensibly in the service of “social justice.” As Rod Dreher put it in The Free Press earlier this week, “Think what it must be like to be a white boy growing up in a culture that tells you that you are what’s wrong with the world. You are not only demonized by cultural elites and institutions—not because of anything you believe or have done—but because of who you are.”
The second, and related reason, has to do with the Democratic Party’s embrace of an extreme version of identity politics. General respect for minorities is one thing; deification is quite another. People will tolerate many things, but secondhand embarrassment is not one of them, which is what most men (and many women, I suspect) feel when they hear a land acknowledgment, a “fat activist” screaming about privilege, or any of the other corny displays we’ve been subject to over past years. More concretely, the Democratic Party’s embrace of the most extreme goals of the trans movement, such as allowing children to transition or for transwomen to participate in women’s sports, strikes many men—even a lot of gay ones, including me—as insane.
I've observed over the years that when Democrats, academia or the media (pardon the redundancy) deign to try to understand those who are different than them - red-state voters, gun owners, MAGA, or now young men - they do it in the same way Jane Goodall tried to understand mountain gorillas: acting like their subjects are academic curiosities rather than humans.
Park gets the same impression:
So I was not surprised to learn recently that the Democratic Party plans to spend $20 million on a project called “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan.” Like Margaret Mead observing the grass-skirted natives in Samoa, notebook in hand, Dems plan to study the “syntax, language, and content that gains attention and virality” in online male spaces, according to a plan obtained by The New York Times.
It’s money well wasted. The Democrats have been losing the support of young men like me for years. Why?
You should read the whole thing.
So - Park mentioned the Democrats efforts. What exactly are they?
Well, there's an "outreach effort" led by Post Malone and LeBron James.
Just kidding. It's led by Democrat influence Olivia Julianna.
Olivia who?
“I LOVE YOUNG MEN:” Top Democrat activist and thought leader Olivia Julianna is now advising Democrats on how to win over young men. pic.twitter.com/wvPIiTVaoo
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) May 29, 2025
Ms. Julianna seems like a dubious ambassador to young men. I'll take the high road here - hearing that Angie Harmon or Sarah Michelle Gellar were Republicans might have had more, er, impact had I been in the target market back then - but even so, reaching out to a generation of men who rebuke "woke" with someone who is a raging paladin of "woke" culture is, as they say, a bold strategy. Let's see how it works.
And we have seen how it's working: here's her manifesto (co-written with that other paladin of male outreach, Harry Sisson):
The Politics of Getting Laid and Preachy Females:
— Olivia Julianna 🇺🇸🦅🗳️ (@0liviajulianna) May 13, 2025
It’s no secret that young men have been turning away from the Democratic Party—and pundits, commentators, politicians, and young men with platforms have all offered their takes on why. Well, add me to the mix.
The short answer?… pic.twitter.com/gCQ8pat5Vm
Now, I'm not in Julianna and Sisson's target audience (thank merciful heavens), but I can't imagine this sort of patronization is going to work.
Although it may be more accurate to say that if this sort of patronization works, America is in a lot bigger trouble than we thought.
