Linsky Bits: Congrats! It's a ... bro? et al.

Some of us lost our Dads to the cult, are we now losing our sons?

yes, I asked AI to give me a finance bro baby boy.

This was the chat on the Ladybrainers text chain in the days after the election. Remarkably, in our collection of 8 kickass women, we 10 have sons (and maybe one more on the way). We have actively raised these boys to respect powerful women while valuing lives that are not exactly like their own.

Or so we believe.

As the pieces started being sorted after the bomb drop, it turns out that so very many young men have chosen to back a candidate and platform that believes it’s their moral right and duty to control women. Please don’t make me link out to the “Your body. My choice. Forever.” asshat.

As mothers, we dug into our young adult boy brains, asking them how this could have happened. Many of them had already reported that they have seen a lot of toxic bro talk on TikTok and the socials, but they’d poo-pooed it, saying it was just chatter. Joe Rogan, Barstool Sports guy, Andrew Huberman, Elon and that Tate asshole are influential enough that their acolytes are myriad. It’s everywhere. Most of our boys have said they know the difference between what is bullshit and what is real.

And yet, they are steeped in it. The algorithm makes sure it’s coming for them from so many angles, but it’s not just online. It’s so many light jokes and friends with small quips and ribs, as they age into their freshy adulthood where they are SUPPOSED to try on identities and feel around in them. Just maybe not topple democracy on your journey.

It’s important to know that in our 10-pack of American boyhood, ages 13-32, not all are white. None are Christian. Not all of them are straight, some don’t use the pronoun he. Of those that could vote, I don’t think any of them voted red, but I know that two chose not to vote at all. And more than half of them have friends who did vote red.

One of my sons asked a friend, honestly wondering, why he chose red. This is a snip from the text he got back:

I kind of can’t believe that some of us who had to sift through our fathers’ right-wing pap are now in the fight for the souls of our sons.

Let me be clear, I fully understand and support women who are thinking about the 4B nuclear option and cutting men out of their lives completely. Especially those who are still in the reproductive window, autonomy is paramount. And as a divorced woman who got away from a cheating Republican husband, and thrived, I can only recommend that with every part of my being.

Look, I know it’s not popular to hear that our young men are struggling, because who isn’t. But these are our babies. The boys who we taught to drive and took to hockey practice, bought them their first phone, snapped prom pictures with. While we set them free to learn to be the men we raised them to be, in real life, real practice, I am unwilling to give up and cut them off.

I choose hope. And I’m leaning in with love and intellect to gird them against the metallic siren song of bro-dom. This takes nothing away from doing the same for our daughters, I just might also teach the girls how to throat punch and sweep the leg.

What I’m feeling is, that when it comes to the older dude-bros of my generation, I will fight back.

When it comes to the minds who are still searching to take root, as a mom, I will fight forward.

Ladybrainers put up some really good links if you are in this particular battle with us, I don’t have all the answers yet on how we have to fight this fight, but I’m all ears if you want to suggest more:

» Scott Galloway, also known as Professor G has a lot to say about this. He’s more for parents to understand, not someone you need to force your kid to watch.

» For the Love of Men Podcast is great, and maybe for your dating age guys. Hope they will listen to these ladies about love and women and not the incels.

» We Are Man Enough a podcast and an IG handle.

» We Can Do Better Than Positive Masculinity from the author of BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity

» This from the New Yorker yesterday:

A battle between women and men has been building for decades, and with this heated election it arrived at an inflection point. Reflecting on how Donald Trump triumphed, Jia Tolentino argues that, when women gained firmer control over culture in the twenty-tens and the years since, it made a certain cohort of men “lose their grip.” “Over time, their numbers grew, fermenting in corners of the Internet that indulged their feelings of being left behind,” she writes. And then came a man who promised to reverse the shifts that had turned American life toward equality. In 2016, “Trump won despite and because of the fact that he’d bragged about sexually assaulting women; the fact that his wife was hot, silent, and seemingly miserable; the fact that he had so many accusers no one could keep track,” Tolentino explains.

And now he’s done it again. Preliminary exit-poll data from this year show that young female voters went, by thirty to forty points, for Kamala Harris, while their male counterparts backed Trump by similarly significant numbers. The chasm between these voters is the chasm between conservative and progressive ideas of gender, and it is undergirded by fear. “It’s men fearing women’s enthrallment to independence at the expense of their own centrality,” Tolentino writes, “and women fearing their subjugation to men at the expense of their lives.” But the difference is about volition: “Men who voted for Trump fear what women might actually want; women who voted for Harris fear what will be done to them against their will.”

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What To Watch when you’re just taking a disco nap.

» Iliza Schlesinger is a gift. If you haven’t seen her Netflix comedy show, Hot Forever, it’s a balm. And as if she recorded it for you, today.

» I don’t know if I can dip back into Yellowstone on Sunday, but I have loved the ruthlessness of Beth. Even if she’s horrible, and so is everyone else. Maybe I just need a bite of her evil side for inspo.

» Nine Days is the palate cleanser. This movie is simply lovely and reminds you what a gift it is just to be here. As one critic said, it invites you to reconsider your whole worldview.

» And … woobie for you.

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I’m grateful for you, my little vegetables that understand the importance of seasoning and time. Onward.

XOSM