Boys Will Be Boys? Not in Liz Plank’s For the Love of Men

In recent weeks, Brad Pitt has become a poster man of sorts for toxic masculinity awareness, but there’s only so much one man—even one very famous man—can do to tip the scales of gender inequality. Women are marching in the streets; women are running for office, speaking truth to power, and rising up to hold abusive men accountable. So, uh, where are the men in all this? As women assume the emotional labor in the effort to enact social change, “Where is the version of the feminist movement, but for men?” asks feminist journalist Liz Plank in her new book, For the Love of Men.

The book is a near-forensically reported examination of modern masculinity and an urgent call to action in the Trump era. More than terrorism, natural disasters, and nuclear war, “there is no greater threat to humankind,” Plank writes, “than our current definition of masculinity.” She points to statistics—such as the fact that 99 percent of school shooters are men, or that a woman serving in uniform has a higher likelihood of being assaulted by a fellow soldier than being killed by enemy fire.

But For the Love of Men is no man-hating burn book—far from it. Plank also speaks with men, including queer men and men of color, about their lived experiences, their pain, the ways societies across the world encourage them to stifle their emotions, and the prevailing misperception that they are base beings with no inherent desire for intimacy and connection. “When I started talking to men about their own gender,” Plank writes, “it changed my entire outlook on feminism.”

Plank spoke with Vogue about toxic masculinity under Trump, the backlash she’s getting from some feminists, and quitting chivalry as an act of male solidarity.

As a feminist journalist, you usually dive into the female perspective. How did you decide to home in on the topic of men?

I come from an academic background. I got a Master’s in gender theory, and I was a women’s studies major in college. I’d been studying, researching, and talking about gender and women for 10 years, reporting on women’s rights in my media career. And I very often found myself in these amazing rooms with amazing women, saying amazing things about the need for radical change in our society. And I was really frustrated by how few men I was seeing in those rooms—and even how they were treating the men in those rooms. So many feminist panels, and at the end, someone would always say, “Thank you to the men who are here.” And then two guys raise their hands and we applaud them. I just thought, “What a lost opportunity to not have half of us here, when all of us benefit from gender equality.”

I’ve thought about this throughout #MeToo: We as women did not get to this place in society alone, so why should we figure out a way forward alone? As you write in the book, where is the male equivalent of the feminist movement?

To be completely honest, it is occurring. There are groups of men that are assembling and finding community in Jordan Peterson, in Tucker Carlson, in Donald Trump. We are seeing men seeking meaning in their identity, but they’re being preyed upon because there is this void of conversation. That was one of the biggest revelations through reporting this book: just how little support there is out there for men, and how little attention there is to masculinity as an idea. Some people are speaking to these men. We know that Steve Bannon admitted to using World of Warcraft communities, what he calls “isolated young white men,” and he exploited those spaces to build Breitbart, to build a white nationalist movement in the United States.

You started working on the book before Trump was elected, and then had to essentially rewrite it after 2016 and again during #MeToo. What did Trump’s win tell you about toxic masculinity?

I was invited on cable news to speak about how bad Trump was for women almost every week, and there’s obviously a lot of material there. But Trump also went after men in very gendered ways. I was at the Trump rally when he, in Iowa, called Ted Cruz a pussy. He talked about Crying Chuck Schumer. This is my hope for 2020, that we can talk about how Donald Trump is not just bad for women, but he’s really bad for men too. There was this big stat during the [2016] campaign: “7 out of 10 women have an unpopular view of Donald Trump.” But before the election, a woman who supported Trump told me: “I think 7 out of 10 women have an unpopular view of a lot of men.” I realized, “Oh, Donald Trump’s not going to win because we don’t respect women. Donald Trump’s going to win because we don’t respect men.” The standard for men is so low.

Did you find there are men rising up and examining masculinity in a meaningful way?

I got this message from a guy who said, “We have a group here at my apartment in Brooklyn, and we get together and talk about these issues.” There are underground groups of men, which feels a little bit like feminism, or racial justice in the 1960s—men who are rebelling. I think that’s the right term. They’re not conforming to society’s standards. But they’re doing it secretively because I think people are comfortable with the idea of women rising against sexism, but we are less comfortable with men rising against a patriarchy. I know a lot of people in the movement who don’t understand why I’m writing this book.

Why, because they feel a man should be writing it?

Some women see this conversation as a threat. They think it’ll take away from the space that we’re giving to women. I remember being on a feminist panel two years ago, on a big stage, and saying something to the effect of, “But what about men?” And a very prominent feminist who I respect said, “I don’t care about men.” And she got a round of applause. I don’t think we should get standing ovations for excluding people on the basis of their gender when our entire movement is about including people, regardless of their gender. This is what the Bannons and Trumps want us to believe—that it’s men versus women, that if we give rights to women, we’re taking away rights from men. Feminists know that that’s not true.

You explore the fact that gender is a social construct, and the way it’s constructed for men and boys is flawed. It was heartbreaking to read about how different cultures ritualistically toughen up boys from a young age. How do some of the problems with grown men start with how little boys are raised?

Gender is just a script that you’re given at birth. We give these gender scripts to boys, encouraging them not to cry, encouraging them to not show emotion. So if you’re told that you’re not allowed to feel emotion, you are going to grow up not being able to manage your emotions. And to me, the line is so clear when you look at the way that boys are raised with what is happening with young men and adult men who are using guns to kill other people, kill the women in their lives. [If] you don’t prepare men in any way to be able to have emotional intelligence, you get the situation we’re in now. If we are not also emphasizing how to have a plan for boys and men in our society, then all of the advancement towards women can actually become counterproductive.

Every time there’s a mass shooting, we talk about gun reform, mental health, and video games. But there’s not a sweeping discussion about toxic masculinity and the fact that the same profile of person is committing this violence. Why?

As I was engrossing myself in this topic, the link between idealized masculinity and violence kept going through my head. I just thought, “Why isn’t this on the cover of every newspaper, every single day? Why isn’t this crisis the front page of the New York Times when it is so interconnected to so many of our biggest social problems?” When it is a brown or a black person that commits acts of violence, we will generalize a problem to that entire group. When one Muslim person does something bad, it is “all Muslims are bad.” I started wondering: If we called idealized masculinity a religion, would we start paying attention to it?

You say that working on this book and exploring masculinity has changed your outlook on feminism. How?

Writing this book has fundamentally changed me. And I don’t mean to use Bachelor language, but it was a journey.

You’ve been here for the right reasons.

And I did not expect what happened next! I had to confront my own, I guess, biases. I was not realizing that a lot of men are actually causing pain to women in their lives because they’re in deep pain. Maybe men are born loving women, and loving themselves, and loving other men, and there’s something in our society that changes that. Seeing men as fundamentally good instead of fundamentally flawed was a huge shift.

You talk in the book about quitting chivalry in your personal life. How did that change your perspective?

I thought it would be disempowering, like: Oh, man. Now I have to give up the tiny little bit of privilege that I get as a woman—a free dinner once in a while, men asking me on dates. And actually giving that up was one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. I initially did it for the men in my life, but it’s fundamentally shifted the power dynamics in my relationships. I didn’t realize how much I was letting these predetermined gender roles dictate my own behavior. Even though I would say, “Well, I don’t have to return the favor,” whether it’s sexual, or going on another date with this person, or letting them choose where we’re going because they’re paying. We can be equal partners in this. Incidentally, that’s when I also started dating women and I realized, Wow, when you don’t have all these predetermined gender roles, when it isn’t clear who’s going to pay or who’s supposed to ask who on the date, we can just get to know each other as human beings.

Brad Pitt is opening up about toxic masculinity. Is there hope for the rest of mankind?

One hundred percent. Hopefully, more men feel comfortable doing this, and the more who do it, the better this conversation’s going to be.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Originally Appeared on Vogue