Republican men see masculinity as under attack, but most Americans seem to disagree

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.

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Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

04:15 — Less of a partisan divide on whether men are valued for being caring

11:57 — Why the Pew Research Center no longer uses terms like “Baby Boomer” or “Gen Z”

20:07 — The challenge of sampling smaller demographic groups

27:04 — Does self-reporting introduce error in polling?

30:16 — Age differences in self-perception of femininity and masculinity

32:43 — Influence of family and media on gender identity

37:10 — Role of religion and coaches in gender identity

38:29 — Marital status and gender identity

41:40 — Societal acceptance of non-traditional gender roles

46:26 — Republican voters seem to think hobbies are biologically based

52:06 — Conclusion

Audio Transcript

The 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 s