In 2020, Joe Biden won young men under 30 by 15 points. In 2024, Donald Trump won them by 13 points. What happened, and what can Democrats do about it? As someone who has been elected three times to the board of directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City, I was worried about dynamics that I felt few Democrats were registering.
I saw these repeatedly as I was researching my book, “The Boy Crisis.” I recall interviewing a young man from Mill Valley, California, a city with deep Democratic Party ties. As the interview concluded, he broke down, “I wish I hadn’t been born male.”
I knew why: He had already shared: “In public schools and even in the private all-male school I attend, all we hear is ‘The future is female.’ That doesn’t inspire me for my future. As for masculinity, it’s ‘toxic masculinity.’ Then we are told we’re part of the patriarchy that makes rules to benefit men at the expense of women. The conclusion is that ‘Men are the oppressors; women are the oppressed.’ I can’t help being who I am.”
When I asked him who he talks with about this, he said, “My guy friends. They feel the same. But I’d never tell my girlfriend. She’s a feminist. She’d break up with me.”
On a spring break, I encountered seven guys reuniting at Starbucks. Though attending different colleges, they all nodded as one guy complained, “If I take a sexual initiative too quickly, I’m labeled a sexual harasser. But if I ask permission to hold her hand, she looks at me like I’m a wimp.” One concurred, “I feel ‘Damned if I do; damned if I don’t. … if they’re so into equality, why don’t they take the sexual initiatives and risk the rejection?”
Once they felt comfortable, stories poured out. One recalled, “My best friend and a girl both got drunk at a fraternity party. They had consensual sex, but she had a boyfriend who found out, and she accused my friend of date rape ‘because she was drunk.’ Well, he was drunk too! A committee heard the case, but he couldn’t even cross-examine her. He was expelled, his record tainted for life.”
Their voices dropped. “It’s all #MeToo for women and #ShutUp for men.” One concluded, “College is a dangerous place for men.”
A couple of the guys knew President Barack Obama had written a letter to college presidents warning that if a woman reports any type of sexual violation, they must “Believe Women” lest they risk federal funding. This denial of due process distanced them from Democrats even if their family and community was liberal.
In other interviews, one man noted, “It’s mostly girls in college now and the girls are complaining this is unfair to them to have to compete for small numbers of guys. Ironically, many colleges are finally giving some affirmative action to guys to please the women.”
Among working men, the feeling of having “the cards stacked against me” is directed at human resources. “If I tease a man, no problem; if I tease a woman, I’ll be reported to HR. HR doesn’t ‘get it’ that guys tease people we respect, so if I only tease guys I’m really discriminating against women.” In essence, they feel that HR is actually HeR.
Whether in high school, college or the workplace, they associate this anti-male attitude as coming from the Democrats, with diversity, equity and inclusion policies that are not diverse enough to include them. Especially if they are white.
GOVERNMENT EXCLUDES MEN ON BASIS OF GENDER
But it isn’t just race. The Biden-Harris White House formed a White House Gender Policy Council that explicitly excludes men. Even the most vulnerable: Native American, Black men, gay men and transgender men. That is, when it comes to benefits, the Gender Policy Council excludes the male gender.
A similar exclusion of males happened under Obama, who created a White House Council for Women and Girls — but refused to create a corresponding council for men and boys. This discrimination was eliminated under Trump, who discontinued all gender-related councils.
The discrimination that men feel is not just perpetrated by Democrats. Many young men raised by single moms saw their dads lose a custody battle that left them “dad-deprived” and experiencing some of the more than 50 problems faced by dad-deprived boys. Many became failures to launch and addicted to drugs, video games, pornography and alcohol. Both political parties perpetrate this family court bias.
Similarly, even though boys and men die sooner of 14 out of 15 of the leading causes of death, it is not just Democrats who have created eight federal offices of men’s health and no federal offices of women’s health. Nor is it just Democrats that continue to require draft registration at age 18 only for men but require no registration for any contribution by women.
Democrats take the blame, though, because on top of these discriminations against men, Democrats, via DEI, HR, “Believe Women,” “#MeToo,” “toxic masculinity,” “the patriarchy,” “male privilege,” “male power” and taking pride in “the future is female,” create safe spaces and trigger warnings for women but not for men. Democrats appear to be the ones blaming them for all the bad and showing no concern about their failure to launch, their suicides, their street homelessness, their deaths from opioid overdose, their dad deprivation …
When many of these men hear that men are turning to Trump because they have problems voting for a woman for president, they once again feel blamed by a party they feel has its blinders on. When Michelle Obama explicitly blames male rage for hurting women, they’d like her to understand that anger is vulnerability’s mask and to approach their vulnerability with compassion rather than blame.
Losing will be a gift to the Democrats only if it generates more introspection than if they had won, if they take time to consider what they are missing about the men they are missing.
This guest commentary by Warren Farrell originally appeared as a special to The Kansas City Star on November 10, 2024.
Warren Farrell is author of “The Boy Crisis, and Why Men Are the Way they Are.” He served on the board of the National Organization for Women in New York City. He currently chairs the Coalition for a White House Council on Boys and Men.