On Father’s Day, imagine fathers and father figures sitting down with their sons and the young men in their lives—to talk, to listen, and to speak the truth about the dangerous forces vying for boys’ attention.
The danger isn’t abstract. It’s as real as the smartphones in our sons’ and grandsons’ pockets. Angry, mean-spirited, primarily white men, are filling social media feeds and podcast queues with the same destructive messages the antisexist men’s movement has been working to dismantle for decades. These voices, masquerading as “coaches,” and “alpha” leaders, actually are exploiting the fears and insecurities of young men. And they’re doing it not to help them grow, but to conscript them into a movement defined by grievance, cruelty, and hatred of women, people of color, immigrants, and the transgender community.
This phenomenon of young men gravitating toward Donald Trump and other fear-mongering right-wing figures—across race and ethnicity—has sparked soul searching analysis among a broad range of commentators, researchers, and activists. And it’s not just happening in the U.S. From France to Finland, from Hungary to the UK, a dangerous nostalgia for a patriarchal past is gaining ground, with young men being courted by unscrupulous suitors. The rise of far-right and nationalist movements across Europe—from France’s National Rally to Hungary’s constitutional rollbacks—has put young men at the forefront of cultural retrenchment.
Rather than offering a vision of healthy manhood rooted in compassion, integrity, and emotional literacy, these “manosphere” influencers, most often aligned with extreme right-wing politicians, are peddling a retreat into a rigid, patriarchal past. They exploit vulnerability, promote domination over compassion, control over cooperation.
Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro are recognizable names but sadly they have an army of junior officers. All offer a mix of “personal empowerment” rhetoric and misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigrant worldviews marketed to impressionable, alienated young men as “edgy”, “transgressive.”
Certainly, many younger men today are feeling adrift—economically unsure, culturally unmoored. In the UK, France, Spain and Canada, young men now outnumber women outside the workforce because of precarious labor and educational disparities. They are coming of age in an era when traditional ideas of masculinity are being questioned, but because they are unaware of the affirmative vision of manhood the pro-feminist men’s movement has been promoting for decades, they are easy marks for charlatans.
Unhinged as Trump’s tough talkin’ persona and authoritarian expression of masculinity may be, it has captured the imagination of younger males, oddly comforted by its hard-line rigidity, despite it offering no solutions for the despair these men are feeling about their lives. What they need is help to heal; what they are getting are invitations to hate.
MAGA men scoff at the notion of boys as nurturers, or that men can be tender. They laugh at empathy. But we are not laughing. We refuse to look away.
Across the globe, there’s a growing community of individuals and organizations providing healthy expressions of masculinity. They offer a different path. Groups like Equimundo, MenEngage Alliance, Next Gen Men, Fathering Together, CONNECT, A Call to Men, Men4Choice, and MenCare, are among dozens of groups that long have been doing the real work—quietly, steadily, lovingly—of providing young men with something radically different: the permission—and the tools—to be whole. Embracing emotions, learning empathy, valuing equity, and standing against misogyny and injustice.
Their work is grounded not in fear but love. Not in power over others, but in power with others. These organizations understand something fundamental: Boys want to feel seen. They want to feel heard. They want to belong. But they need guidance; they need role models—fathers, uncles, mentors, coaches, teachers—to show up for them.
Father’s Day is a celebration of caregiving. Let’s also make it a day for men to be emotionally sensitive guides, not just breadwinners or protectors.
Let’s say to the boys in our lives: You don’t have to be angry to be strong. You don’t have to dominate to be respected. You don’t have to hate women to be a man.
Let’s tell them: You can cry and still be brave. You can nurture and still be powerful. You can be gentle and still be strong.
This Father’s Day, let’s commit to raising a generation of sons who can grow into manhood not shackled by rigid roles but liberated by love, equality, connection.
The struggle to free boys and men from patriarchy’s grip continues. But we are not alone. And we are not powerless.
Let’s begin the conversation with our sons—again, and again, and again—until they hear us. Until they believe us. Until they believe in themselves.
Rob Okun ([email protected]), syndicated by Peace Voice, is editor emeritus of Voice Male, a magazine chronicling the antisexist men’s movement for more than three decades.
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