ARE MEN IN TROUBLE?

 

Recently, comedian Bill Maher (who's work I used to enjoy, but who now seems to be drifting more and more rightward) gave a spoken editorial about the state of men in America, and how men are losing their masculinity because women are forcing them to repress it.  Fox News host Tucker Carlson also did a recent special on his network entitled "The End of Men", in which he also lamented the end of masculinity in America, and recommended testicle tanning(!), among other things as a possible solution. The root of these arguments (and others like them) is that men in America have been too emasculated; that fear of toxic masculinity and rise of women as leaders in both politics and the workforce have turned men into girly men.  There's also a clear implication that the rise of gay rights in the past few decades and the acceptance of trans people have also somehow delegitimized classic heterosexual manhood.

Like a lot of political arguments, there is a core truth here, but's it layered under lies.  Whether testosterone levels are dropping is hard to measure, but it does appear that sperm levels are dropping in men around the world. (Although most of that drop was recorded in one study put out in 2017 that has its critics.)  Assuming that this trend is real, it's a serious problem that could increase the number of miscarriages and unhealthy children being born.  

But is a society run by castrating women to blame for this problem?  No.  While it is true that as human beings have more and more moved away from our primitive ancestors we've had less and less need for masculine strength to protect the species.  But our move to a more civilized world  doesn't account for the potential drop in sperm count.

The real root of the problem may be something far more sinister: the rise of the use of chemicals in products that act as endocrine disruptors.  Shanna Swan, a leading scholar of reproductive health, recently wrote a book called Count Down about this serious problem, and in it she bluntly states that “...our modern world is threatening sperm counts, altering male and female reproductive development, and imperiling the future of the human race.”  Even more depressing is her assertion that those endocrine disrupters are found in literally thousands of different products, with little to no mention of them given on the labels.  (And if you want more proof of how this isn't because of society, she also points out that animal species exposed to these same kinds of chemicals also have the same kinds of problems). 

Other countries in Canada and Europe have moved to regulate these chemicals, but, not surprisingly, America's love of the free market has lead to little or no regulations here.  Just like tobacco companies, manufacturers of lead based products and the fossil fuel industry, chemical companies have gotten away with slowly poisoning the public with their products by lobbying politicians into ignoring the dangers of  those products.  And that has nothing to do with nagging women. 

THE GOP AND THE SOUL OF MITT ROMNEY

 

There is no image that personifies the position of Utah Senator Mitt Romney in the Republican party more than his standing up in congress to cheer for the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court as members of his own party bitterly slunk out of the room.  (While two other senators in the Republican party joined Romney in voting for her, he was the only one to celebrate her victory).  By refusing to engage in the disgusting political theatrics that Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham had displayed during Jackson's senate hearing, and then voting for a Supreme Court candidate who was both groundbreaking and qualified, Romney's basic decency had left him applauding alone.

While I didn't vote for Romney back in 2012, he's always struck me as a reasonable man. His governorship of  Massachusetts was mostly moderate, and the campaign he ran against Barack Obama mostly avoided demonizing the president and stuck to the issues.  I say mostly because there was one moment that he would come to regret: during the campaign he met with then TV star Donald Trump and accepted his endorsement.  At that time Trump was mostly known for promoting the  "birther" conspiracy that Obama was not actually a legitimate president.  While Romney never embraced this crazy theory, he was birther adjacent.  

Then, to Romney's credit, he gave a speech on March 3rd of 2016 before Trump had won the Republican nomination,  in which he blasted Trump, saying “Here’s what I know: Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud.  His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing members of the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.”  And unlike other Republicans who criticized Trump during his campaign, Romney continued to go after him even after he won.  And he is the only Republican Senator to vote to remove Trump from office in both of the impeachment trials.

The fact that Romney has always been a Republican is no surprise; his father was a Republican Governor himself.  And, before Mitt went into politics, he was a successful businessman.  It's clear that the appeal of the Republican party to him was that it was seen as the party that was pro business and  lower taxes.  His anger at Trump is for what he revealed about the party; that at the end of the day, race was a far bigger factor than tax cuts.  For years, wealthy Republicans like Romney had somehow convinced themselves that the backbone of the GOP, those middle class, blue collar white workers, cared about issues like capital gains tax cuts and regulations, when what they really cared about were issues like Mexican immigrants "stealing" their jobs and black people "exploiting" welfare.  What Trump did was pull off the pro business band aid of the party and expose the gaping wound of bigotry underneath.  And that stung Romney, who clearly was distressed to see the real feelings of Republican rank and file voters laid bare.

So what's a honorable man like Romney to do?  He's no longer welcome at party gatherings, and he was even booed at a Republican rally in his home state of Utah, but I doubt he will ever switch parties or become an independent; the GOP's pro business image is in his blood.  Sadly, with the passing of John McCain and the further Trumpifying of the party, Romney's brand of polite politics is fading in the GOP.  That a former presidential candidate and strong party member could become an outcast in his own party just 10 years later is proof of just how much Donald Trump has stained the Republicans and the country as a whole.  There's no place anymore for decent people in the Grand Old Party.