Can you believe this is 2026 and not 1946 or 1866? I've often wished that I could go back in time for a personal opportunity to choose a different path and make a different decision. But I am as certain as I am of my age that I cannot return to a previous time in my life and start over again. Fantasizing that I can is merely looking behind me with regrets, resentments, and disappointments. Although the exercise can morph into a legitimate positive experience wherein I learn something about myself or gain a deeper appreciation for my family and life, it seldom blossoms into beautiful thoughts. America's political and religious right wing are in a fantastical continuum of reminiscence, rarely if ever in critical reflection. They chew on and digest the what-ifs, resentments, false grievances, and regrets as if their way of life depends on it...which I suppose it does.
I thought I would never live to see it. Millions of American men believe they are endangered, that they are the victims of intolerance and neglect, that they are entitled to break laws and restructure our democracy to favor them and their causes. A journalist for The Atlantic , Helen Lewis, writes about this dangerous movement in an article The Men Who Want Women to Be Quiet. I will mirror her ideas with my own.
When I had the chance to vote for a woman, Geraldine Ferraro as Mondale's running mate, in 1984, I did not. I still believed in God and in the tenets of my faith. I held conservative religious and political views, wary of challenges to those views, afraid that the challenges were personal and harmful. I had a husband and two young daughters. My husband and I wanted to be in the ministry, and even though we had left a religious cult only two years previously under traumatic circumstances, we still believed in our calling. We still believed in Biblical truths. Why was I afraid of a political election and the powerful, intelligent woman who desired a role in national leadership?
Because religious beliefs are innately weak, changeable, and thereby unreliable. They are constant and strong only where religious leaders wield immense power. The new "masculinism" is a weak movement that can find its strength only in violence, coercion, manipulation, and lies. When people accept beliefs that have no basis in reason, logic, reality, or fact, they embrace fantasy. No matter the people's intentions or hopes -- which in themselves could be beautiful! -- fantasy is play and is inherently untrustworthy.
Women are no longer the damsels-in-distress that men in this movement would want women to be. We have education and work and financial opportunities that raise us above the subjugation, imprisonment, deprivation, loneliness, poverty, helplessness and hopelessness of previous generations. We vote, we buy homes and get financial credit without spousal signatures, we speak without our fathers' and husbands' permissions, we build careers on our own. We love and play without the heavy brutal hand of discriminatory laws. What must this male movement do to bring American women to their side?
First, they must rewrite and change laws. Voting Rights and the Supreme Court Roe versus Wade decision were the beginning. Women's healthcare and reproductive decisions have been criminalized in states like Texas where "masculinism" is rampant in state legislatures, evangelical churches, fundamentalist sects, and among the wealthy white class. Trump's antics have played a major role in the Republican party's destructive Project 2025: he distracts the voters on social media and television from the party's projects, and voters will blame the demented old rapist exclusively when they realize the damages to their personal lives. We end up with policies and new laws that subjugate women. The Republican party is on a fast-track to creating a damsel-in-distress population, one that will submit without recourse to the white Christian male knights.
Second, they must increase the misinformation cycle. We've a problem already stewing on the backburner. The "masculinism" movement can simply turn up the heat and serve the poison. The U.S.A. has a confirmation bias problem and a social media addiction. The political and religious right own most of our news and information media, from Facebook and Conservative Radio to the Washington Post and the CBS conglomerate. They serve up misinformation and evil disinformation regularly, entertainingly, and with bad intent. As long as the average American has a vehicle and an iphone, they feel secure and do not pay close attention to politics and national news. The great consumers of the world are also the great ignoramuses.
Next, they must create portals into which fearful squealers and back-stabbers will mollify their own inadequacies by turning in others. It's happening. Trump's DOJ is already on it. And millions of truly awful women are on board with the truly awful men who have subjugated them. These women reside among their white Christian male supremacist counterparts in white evangelical churches, the Republican party, MAGA, the billionaire class, Moms For Liberty groups...as well as in our own families and among our coworkers. They have lost power; therefore, they will wrest power from all other women. It happened to me in 1982 in the Church of Our Saviour. I know for a fact that the majority of women are like the majority of men -- afraid, weak, resentful, spiteful, and cruel.
What can you and I do to about the "masculinism" movement?
Just as we've done with MAGA and the Republican party, we can vote for the opposition to right wing movements. We can speak truth to power as coworkers, administrators, bosses, artists, writers, journalists, wives, and mothers. We can be activists and volunteers. We can be the independent, strong, intelligent, talented, kind, helpful, and truthful women that this nation needs to hear and see. Never apologize for being kind but know when to draw the line. Set boundaries and speak honestly.
Most important, embrace other women who are on the side lines, who are afraid, who feel uncomfortable with challenge and change, who need strong and loving sisters. I was there once. I am forever grateful for the women I could trust to show me the way.