AMID all the joy and positivity and the big, beautiful polling surges for Kamala Harris, the word has gone out: This presidential election is not going to be about the United States getting its first woman leader. Nor is it going to be a referendum on inflation, immigration or foreign policy anymore. It’s going to be a referendum on masculinity in America.
The choice is clear. On one side, there’s the enlightened maleness embodied by Harris’ vice presidential pick Tim Walz and her husband, Doug Emhoff. These are the good progressive dads, Rebecca Traister of New York Magazine writes, the “nice men of the left” who do guy things like coach football but also manifest liberal and feminist virtues – like being “happily deferential” and “unapologetically supportive of women’s rights” and “committed to partnership” in marriage and politics alike.
Walz especially is being held up all over as a paragon of liberal dadhood: “A regular guy,” Mona Charen of The Bulwark writes, “at a time when the country needs reminding that being a regular guy is actually pretty great.” Then there is the other model, the dark side of the Y chromosome: the toxic masculinity of Donald Trump, the anti-cat-lady conservatism of JD Vance, all of them wrapped together in a package that Zack Beauchamp of Vox describes as “neo-patriarchy.” This is a worldview, he writes, that may claim to allow for more female agency than the older patriarchy but really just wants a “rever.