Men, or rather masculinity, seems to be increasingly in crisis. This crisis takes many forms: incels (involuntary celibates who claim that they have been denied the sexual attention they feel that women owe them), volcels (so-called “voluntary celibates”), MGTOWs (Men Going Their Own Way, who feel that relationships with women threaten their masculinity), and  Men’s Right Activists (who believe that everything from divorce laws to #metoo have made men a persecuted group). These crises and subcultures are often tied into the alt-right world, and at times have shown up in the screeds and manifestos of mass shooters.

What is up with men? Why is this happening? Joining us to answer these questions is Nathan Duford, author of Solidarity in Conflict: A Democratic Theory (Stanford UP, 2022) and researcher of the sexual politics of the early Frankfurt School.

In this episode, we discuss the following ideas/thinkers/texts/etc.:

• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain Gang All-Stars
• South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol singing “American Pie” at the White House
• Another ship runs aground in the Suez Canal
• Nathan Duford,“What Can Men Want?” (Parapraxis, 2022)
• Guy Hocquenghem, Homosexual Desire (Duke UP, 1972)
• The Anti-Defamation League‘s report on Nicholas Feuntes
• Will Blunderfield
• Tucker Carlson‘s “The End of Men” docuseries
• “No-fault” divorce
• Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” (1964)
• “Raw Egg Nationalists”
• Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (1978)
• Rod Dreher, editor-at-large at The American Conservative 
• Christian men’s retreat features Chuck Norris dual-wielding guns in a tank
• “incels” (involuntary celibates)
• “volcels” (voluntary celibates)
• J. Edgar Bauer, “”The Freak of Nature’: On Erich Fromm’s Vindication of Binomal Sexuality and the Potentials of ‘Homosexual Deviation'” (2016)
•  María Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System” (Hypatia, 2007)
• Isla Vista mass shooter Elliot Rodger’s “manifesto”
• The 2018 “migrant caravan” panic
• Noah Zazanis, “On Hating Men and Becoming One Anyway” (The New Inquiry, 2019)
• Former President Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood “grabbing pu**y” tape
•  Nathan Duford on Twitter @nrduford

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