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Episode Summary Many people expected that Donald Trump's fate would be decided by women last year. It was, after all, the first presidential race since the Republican-dominated Supreme Court had decided to roll back a national right to abortion.But Trump upended that possibility by deciding to run a campaign that was focused very heavily on men and trying to attract the votes of men who didn’t commonly participate in voting.That’s why I wanted to bring Juliana Menasce Horowitz onto the show today. She’s a senior associate director of research at the Pew Research Center where she and several colleagues have come out with a very interesting report about how gender is presented in American society and how people think they present in that regard.The transcript of this audio-only episode is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep doing this. Please subscribe to stay in touch and get unlimited access.Related Content—Tradwives, Instagram farmers, and performative gender roles—Male pop-culture is obsolete, and men are suffering because of it—Trump, Nietzsche, and the politics of gendered religious despair—Seeing the bigger story behind Moms for Liberty’s narrative—Yes, fitness and politics have a history—How an oversharing Christian blogger inadvertently documented his own radicalizationAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction04:15 — Less of a partisan divide on whether men are valued for being caring11:57 — Why the Pew Research Center no longer uses terms like “Baby Boomer” or “Gen Z”20:07 — The challenge of sampling smaller demographic groups27:04 — Does self-reporting introduce error in polling?30:16 — Age differences in self-perception of femininity and masculinity32:43 — Influence of family and media on gender identity37:10 — Role of religion and coaches in gender identity38:29 — Marital status and gender identity41:40 — Societal acceptance of non-traditional gender roles46:26 — Republican voters seem to think hobbies are biologically based52:06 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: You have so many interesting findings in the report here, but one that really stands out in particular is that the Republican men that you talk to really seem to see the topic of masculinity and being a man quite a bit differently compared to other demographic groups.JULIANA HOROWITZ: Yeah, sure. So yeah, that's something that we sought throughout the report. We asked several questions about, um, you know, to, to sort of get at some of the topics that have been out there in the, in the public discourse and the political narrative about men and masculinity.And one of the things that we wanted to look at is whether the public perceives masculinity as being under attack. And so we asked the question about, um, you know, about whether people think other people in the [00:02:00] US have mostly positive or negative views of men who are manly or masculine. And, and for the most part, Americans don't see masculinity as being under attack based on that question. But Republican men were the most likely to say that people in the US have mostly negative views of men who are mainly or masculine. Um, and then we also asked some other questions that got at, um, you know, different traits that people think society does or doesn't value in men. And personal ratings of masculinity and femininity. So basically how people see themselves and through, you know, throughout the survey, through all these different topics, including the self ratings Republican men really stand out in being different from democratic men and from Republican women and democratic women,SHEFFIELD: Yeah, they do. And just zooming out on the question a little bit. So only 25% of the entire sample said that people have a mostly negative viewpoint of manly or masculine men, but among Republican men, that was 45% who said that?And that was, as you said, pretty unusual. So what was the finding with Republican women? What did they think on that same topic?HOROWITZ: Right, so among Republican women, we saw that about a quarter of Republican women said that people have mostly negative views, um, compared to 20% of democratic men and only 13% of Democratic women. So Republican women and democratic men actually had fairly similar views on this. And then democratic women were the least likely to see masculinity as being under attack. Under attack. And one of the things that's interesting too, is that for those who say, especially for Republicans actually, who say that people have negative views of men who are masculine, um, the vast majority of those Republicans say that that's a bad thing, right? So it's bad that people have negative views.It was different. For Democrats, it was a little bit more mixed. So for Democrats who say that people have negative views of masculine men, um, 45% said it was bad. Only 17% said it was good, and 37% said it was neither good nor bad. And so they had more split views as to whether it was a bad thing or sort of [00:04:00] neutral.Neither good nor bad that people have negative views of masculine men. Before Republicans, both men and women, um, who said that that was the case, they, they overwhelmingly saw that as a bad thing.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and that is interesting and we will come back to that in a little bit.Less of a partisan divide on whether men are valued for being caringSHEFFIELD: But one thing that also is interesting is that you and your colleagues also asked the survey respondents whether Americans place enough value on men being caring or open about their emotions, or soft spoken or affectionate. And the partisan divide was not nearly so great on this question, which I found kind of fascinating.HOROWITZ: That's right. And, and I wanted to mention, I wanted to, to be clear that we didn't present these traits as being masculine or feminine. I mean, we chose. A balance list based on, you know, based on what, what we read and based on what we know of how society sees these straits as being more associated with masculinity or femininity. Um, but we didn't present it that way to, to our respondents. And so, yeah. So a majority of Americans overall say that there's not enough value placed on men who are, you know, open about their emotions, soft spoken, um, caring, affectionate. There were differences. You know, Democrats are more likely to say that there's not enough value placed on, on men who have these traits, but even among Republicans, um, you know, the, the balance of opinion was that there's not enough, even if it wasn't a majority saying that, that Republicans were on the side of saying there's not enough value placed on men with these straits, it was a little bit different.Um. On the traits that might be considered more traditionally masculine. So confidence, assertiveness, um, being a risk taker, being physically strong there. Overall, we saw more, um, more mixed views among Americans overall. We didn't see a majority saying too much, not enough or about right, but we did say we did.See for the most part, people tended to be on the side of saying there's too much value placed on these traits for men than saying there's not enough. But Republican men were more likely to say that there's not [00:06:00] enough value placed on men who have these more traditionally masculine traits.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and just to underscore your earlier point, the traits were not said to be associated with any particular expression of being masculine or feminine or male or female.But you did also talk about some other traits on the list here. And they were broken down, including some traits that are perhaps associated with quote unquote toxic masculinity. And there with these traits, the partisan dynamic did come back a little bit more. Isn't that right?HOROWITZ: Yeah, well, so actually there, there, there is a little bit of a party of party division there, but for the most part, so, so in this list we ask about certain behaviors and, um, we, we ask people the extent to which they find these behaviors acceptable for men to do. Some of the things on the list that majorities of Americans, um, and this really crossed, you know, crossed parties even though there, there might have been differences, but it's majorities of both Democrats and Republicans who thought that things like throwing a punch of provoked, um, drinking a lot of alcohol when out with friends, having many different sexual partners or joining in when other men are talking about women in a sexual way. Majorities of Americans across party saw these as, as unacceptable behaviors for men. And so there were differences of degree, there were differences in the share saying that, but for the most part, this was not one where we saw or sort of our, our biggest partisan gaps.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I guess it was, uh, more of a difference, uh, uh, by gender in this case, right?HOROWITZ: We did see some differences by gender here too. Yes. Um, but again, like it was, um, you know, women were more likely to say these behaviors are unacceptable. But majorities of men also also said that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. It was just by a higher percentage,HOROWITZ: exactly. There's a, mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no. And then there were some, some age differences with some of these, uh, behaviors, such as, uh, [00:08:00] a divide between, uh, what people thought about the idea of men putting a lot of effort into their style and fashion, and also playing a lot of video games.There were age differences there that were interesting.HOROWITZ: Yeah. Those were interesting. Young people, both young men and young women, were more likely to say that those were acceptable behaviors for, for men to do. And so it was interesting to see that, that age gap there. Um, it was picking up more than, you know. I think sometimes we do focus on gender and party because that's where we see a lot of our gaps. But in this case, when it comes to, yeah, to putting a lot of effort into how you look and playing video games, both young men and young women we're the most likely to say that those are acceptable things for men.SHEFFIELD: Now, what about in terms of. Of whether, uh, men can take care of the house or, uh, take charge in day to day, uh, activities and things like that.HOROWITZ: Yeah. We asked a series of, of questions about behaviors or, you know, or things that men do that we presented as being specifically, you know, when thinking about men who date women or who are in a relationship with women. Um, and this was, um, well the one item where a majority said it was acceptable was, um, we asked about men, you know, focusing on taking care of the kids and taking care of the home while their wife focuses on, on working for pay. And 57% of Americans said that that was acceptable for men to do. Um, we, um, you know, we, we do see that as more acceptable among younger adults, but a majority across the board say that's the case where we saw a little bit more. Um, you know, when, when it was interesting was when it comes to splitting, the bill went out on a date. Um. It was interesting because we, you know, like that was more acceptable for, um, that that was more acceptable for older women. So it was, it was interesting because we saw both, um, this was a really interesting one. Like younger men thought it was [00:10:00] acceptable to split the bill on the date, and younger men were more likely than young women to say that that was the case. And then for women, it was the older women, women 65 plus were more likely to say that it was acceptable, um, to split the bill when, when, on a, when a man is out on a date with a woman. So I thought that was interesting, but that was one where we saw a difference between young men and young women where young men said, yeah, that's acceptable.And, and young women were less likely to say it's extremely or very acceptable. I mean, they, they thought it was acceptable too, but they tended to fall more on the somewhat acceptable and not firmly on the, on the extremely, very acceptable side.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, uh, but then also on the partisan, uh, their, uh, differences that they were pretty significant on that question as well, splitting the bill. Uh, there was a 20 point gap, uh, and yet, so while Democrats, 44 percent of them said that it was extremely acceptable, uh, to split the bill, it still wasn't a majority.of Democrats. So I found that kind of interesting,HOROWITZ: It wasn't the majority. And you know, what I didn't do was look to see the age differences within parties because we know that, you know, a lot of young women also lean democratic. And we know that young women are less likely in young men to say this is highly acceptable. And so it would be interesting to go in and kind of look at the, whether it's young women who might be pulling Democrats out, you know, not. Getting to a majority saying that. So I think that'd be an interesting thing to look at. But yeah, on a lot of these, so for example, on taking care of the home and children while their wife works for pay, there was a difference there too. Um, with, you know, two thirds of democrats say that that would be acceptable compared with about half of Republicans saying that that would be, again, like, I should say, highly acceptable. 'cause we did have a, a, um, a category that was somewhat acceptable. So it's very few people saw that as like,not unacceptable,SHEFFIELD: yeah, or inappropriate. Um, yeah.Why Pew Research Center no longer uses terms like "Baby Boomer" or "Gen Z"SHEFFIELD: And now one thing that [00:12:00] is, um, different also, if, if people are reading the, the web version of this, um, is that you guys are not using, generational labels, uh, which is a pretty big difference, uh, within the Pew Research Center. Um, the center was a big proponent, uh, historically of, of, of generational labels, but now, uh, you and your colleagues have decided to move away from those types of labels.Can we talk about that?HOROWITZ: Of course. So that's something that's happened over the last few years, maybe the last three or four years. And as we were gearing up to start looking at Gen Z, as Gen Z was moving into adulthood, we started doing some mythological explorations to see, you know, over time our surveys have moved from the phone to the web. One of the things that we started exploring was whether we could compare some of those surveys, because we have surveys going back a long, a long time, and we wanted to be able to look at other generations where they were coming into adulthood like Gen Z, and we realized we weren't able to do that because of the methodological and the mode changes. And then during that time, we started talking to different people, um, and there were some public, um, critiques of our, not just our work, but of using generational lens in general in social science research. And so we engaged with some of our critics. We had a lot of conversations with our critics, with other people, um, other researchers who used generational analysis and just really thought about. You know, and also thinking about the changing landscape and how generations have been used more recently, not by us, but you know, by people using it to really, um, you know, propagate stereotypes and talk about millennials, avocado toast, and those types of, those types of things that weren't really useful for understanding people and how they think and how they behave. Um, and so in thinking about all of that and doing some of the method…
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