The Atlantic’s June Cowl: Helen Lewis on Masculinism

For The Atlantic’s June problem cowl story, “The Males Who Do not Need Girls to Vote,” employees author Helen Lewis reviews on the rise of “masculinism,” a motion to battle again towards the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of males. Lewis argues that a number of strains of anti-feminism—from the Christian proper, from the manosphere, and from Donald Trump—have coalesced and turn into a brand new and potent pressure in American political life: “Removed from being a fringe perception system, masculinism has turn into the only most essential pressure uniting the American proper, bringing collectively an unlikely constellation of pastors, posters, senators, preachers, influencers, podcasters, and fanboys.”

Lewis writes that, like hottest actions, masculinism has many entry factors, and each defensible and alarming varieties: “At one finish of the spectrum are reputable considerations about male loneliness, the declining share of males in increased training, stagnant wages for non-college-educated males, and the deadening results of day-trading, gaming, and porn.” On the different finish of masculinism, Lewis writes, is a political agenda near that in The Handmaid’s Story, whereby ladies are denied the precise to work, vote, and management their very own physique. The coverage targets of masculinism’s proponents are very actual: the rollback of no-fault divorce; tax breaks to reward male breadwinners and feminine homemakers; an finish to something with a whiff of DEI, even management packages for girls within the navy, together with one lower by Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth; a return to the office tradition of the Seventies, the place sexual harassment was normalized; an open choice for male workers in hiring, promotion, and pay awards. “In different phrases, affirmative motion for males,” Lewis writes.

For the quilt story, Lewis spoke with outstanding figures in masculinist circles, together with Douglas Wilson, a co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Church buildings, who has constructed a small empire devoted to disseminating his theocratic imaginative and prescient for the US (one of many denomination’s 170 affiliated church buildings counts Pete Hegseth as a member). Lewis additionally interviewed the manosphere provocateur Charles Cornish-Dale, a spiritual historian who has studied at each Oxford and Cambridge, and who is thought on-line as Uncooked Egg Nationalist; Joel Webbon, a hard-right pastor based mostly in Austin who has constructed a big social-media following by opposing feminism and the “LGBT Mafia”; and Helen Andrews, who wrote a viral 2025 essay that questioned whether or not better feminine participation within the workforce is a “risk to civilization.” Moreover, she writes about such outstanding masculinists as Scott Yenor, who has declared that trendy ladies are “medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome,” and since 2000 has taught political philosophy at Boise State College.

Lewis concludes that masculinism “features as a perpetual-motion machine of grievance, an inarticulate howl of anguish at the established order—no matter that at present is. Masculinism is each critical and foolish, generally camp and generally chilling, an attention-grabbing efficiency and a real proposition. No marvel it has turn into the cornerstone of Trumpism.”

Helen Lewis’s “The Males Who Do not Need Girls to Vote” was revealed at the moment at TheAtlantic.com. Please attain out with any questions or requests.

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