Look at the fact Donald Trump cannot tie a tie. My father took me aside and taught me how to do this when I was eight. He can't shake hands. These are the basic building blocks of traditional masculine style, and he's a parody of it.
Stephen MarcheWhen you ask single men in their 20s, "Do you want children?" they want children more than women do. Again, economics drive this. If you're a 29-year-old woman, having a baby is going to seriously blow up your career. If you're a 29-year-old man, it isn't.
Stephen MarcheThe research points pretty clearly to the rise of companionate marriage, and I just think it's going to keep being popular, for the very simple reason that it's basically the only way to afford a family life in the 21st-century in advanced economies. It's one of the major reasons for the spike in income inequality. Surgeons used to marry their secretaries. Now they marry other surgeons.
Stephen MarcheMen are losing power in their daily lives, but manliness is still iconic of power. This creates incredible turbulence around masculinity and incredible confusion around gender norms that's only going to accelerate.
Stephen MarcheWhat we're seeing now is not just a backlash against feminism. When you look at guys like [Jesse] Helms in the '80s or even Reagan and Bush, there was a real political backlash against feminism. This is different. This is a parodic recreation of the destruction of traditional masculinity. Look at these hollow men. Look at Steve Bannon who wears sweat pants, who doesn't shave. Or Yiannopoulos who is just a clown. This is toxic masculinity. It's new. To see it as a return to the past is a mistake. It's the breakdown of traditional masculinity, rather than its retrenchment.
Stephen MarcheOne thing you can say about Trump is that he is not a traditional patriarch. He has a wife who's not even in the White House. And you could say the same of Duterte in the Philippines and of Putin. They're parodies of masculinity. They're hyper-masculine, but they're also totally unsure of their masculinity, and they parade it around.
Stephen Marche