Reaction to my Washington Post essay “Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness” (gift link!) has been overwhelming and, to my delight, generally positive. It’s also given me entirely new questions to think about.
Perhaps the most consistent negative response to “Men are Lost” has been a rejection of the idea that there might be value in putting forth any sort of “ideal” of manhood or masculinity. As (now-former) Atlantic writer Ed Yong put it: “I just don’t buy the premise that men need a specific “positive vision of…masculinity” over and above just striving to be a good person.”
This is an example of a broader phenomenon that I’ve been observing recently with fascination and frustration: the unwillingness of progressives to grapple with the premise that ideals—or fixed social norms more broadly—might, in fact, be good.
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