Some Good News About Men

Pew surveyed over 6000 adult Americans about their views on masculinity in September. The survey covered traits people think are valued too much or too little in men these days; how acceptable they think certain behaviors are in men; and how they think men have fared relative to women in various aspects of life. 

Overall, the survey shows a lean among men and women toward what I would consider reasonable masculine values: valuing caring over physical strength, for example. They also reject the more extreme expressions of masculinity like bragging about how many women a guy has laid. Most say that women are doing better in school and jobs and they’re okay with that.

Unsurprisingly, Republican men come down harder for the more extreme characteristics and feel like they’re getting a worse deal, although even those numbers and not wildly tilted in that direction.

It’s an interesting survey, with a lot more there than I’ve said. It is somewhat at odds with my perceptions of the election, though. In particular, the reported large differentials between women and men in support for the presidential candidates suggest a greater difference between men’s and women’s attitudes for issues associated with gender differences than the survey shows.

It’s possible that the reporting or the presidential polls themselves approach the question of gender differently than the Pew survey. Michael Podhorzer has a detailed analysis of how framing poll questions leads to different responses on Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportation. I suspect a similar analysis can be done on gender.

Josh Clinton shows how demographic weighting affects polling results.

I haven’t done much with those two articles because I am wary of trying to “unskew” the polls. I still think that there is distortion in both framing of questions and demographic weighting because of the perceptual black hole that is Dobbs and abortion. I might look at them in more detail after the election.

There’s been a sharp increase in the number of vasectomies since Dobbs. It’s encouraging that men are doing their part, but nobody should have to make their reproductive health decisions on the basis of what a bunch of religious fanatics with a poor grasp of biology impose on them. Tubal sterilizations have also increased.

The latest polls, now cooling on the table, came out even, conveniently enough for reporters of the horse race. They were before Trump’s Nazi-inflected rally. I’m guessing there will be one more wave of polls before next Tuesday.