
Today we are talking about Eamon Whalen’s article “Are Men OK?” which is a recent cover story for The Nation about women’s rise in economic power, the declining cultural power of men, and the manhood intellectual Richard Reeves. Male labor force participation has fallen from 80% in 1970 to 69% in January 2020, and undergraduate enrollment for men has fallen from 58% to 44% in that same time period. Richard Reeves proposes policies to ameliorate this. Conservatives think he isn’t acknowledging the “feminist conspiracy” going on and the liberals think he’s a watered down men’s rights activist reifying the gender binary. What can we take away from his point of view?