Plain English with Derek Thompson
May 22, 2026 · 59 min · 11 segments
Over the past century, attitudes about gender roles have become one of the clearest dividing lines in the country. Many Republicans, both men and women, say men are getting a raw deal in modern…
Helen LewisGuest
Derek ThompsonHost
Everybody knows the word feminism, but in your new cover story in The Atlantic, you introduce or talk about a phenomenon that you call masculinism.
What is masculinism, and what makes this a new idea as opposed to just a retread of traditional chauvinism?
It is a belief that feminism has gone too far, that American life is now skewed too much in favor of women, that, you know, it's, men are discriminated against.
It's been around since at least the 1990s, but I wanted to get beyond the idea of the manosphere.
So we've heard a lot about the manosphere, which people tend to regard as, like, influencers and slightly shock jocks.
But I wanted to say that behind that is a really serious intellectual movement that encompasses quite a lot of religious elements, being America, but also people working in think tanks, for example, or, you know, um, online commentators working in pretty highbrow magazines, right? These are some serious arguments.
And what's new about it is it is the glue holding together MAGA, which I hadn't kind of really thought about before until I talked to Laura Field, who's wr- wrote a brilliant book called Furious Minds, which is tearing- tying together all the different strands of American online right.
You know, the Claremont Institute people, the post-liberals, the, you know, the social conservatives, the people worried about birth rates, all of this kind of stuff.
But the one thing they can basically all agree on is that traditional gender roles are better, feminism has gone too far, and that public life has become feminized, and they don't like it, and they would like to turn the clock back on that.
What is this phenomenon reacting to most recently? Because some of these phenomena that you're talking about, the rise of feminism, you know, even wor- something like working women, these are old phenomena.
Yeah, when I was doing my research for this, I found a quote from the Henry James novel, The Bostonians, in which one of the characters complains about we now live in a hysterical, canting, chattering age where, you know, uh, like, men are, are not being risk-averse enough, and it was...
Everybody knows the word feminism, but in your new cover story in The Atlantic, you introduce or talk about a phenomenon that you call masculinism.
What is masculinism, and what makes this a new idea as opposed to just a retread of traditional chauvinism?
It is a belief that feminism has gone too far, that American life is now skewed too much in favor of women, that, you know, it's, men are discriminated against.
It's been around since at least the 1990s, but I wanted to get beyond the idea of the manosphere.
So we've heard a lot about the manosphere, which people tend to regard as, like, influencers and slightly shock jocks.
But I wanted to say that behind that is a really serious intellectual movement that encompasses quite a lot of religious elements, being America, but also people working in think tanks, for example, or, you know, um, online commentators working in pretty highbrow magazines, right? These are some serious arguments.
And what's new about it is it is the glue holding together MAGA, which I hadn't kind of really thought about before until I talked to Laura Field, who's wr- wrote a brilliant book called Furious Minds, which is tearing- tying together all the different strands of American online right.
You know, the Claremont Institute people, the post-liberals, the, you know, the social conservatives, the people worried about birth rates, all of this kind of stuff.
But the one thing they can basically all agree on is that traditional gender roles are better, feminism has gone too far, and that public life has become feminized, and they don't like it, and they would like to turn the clock back on that.
What is this phenomenon reacting to most recently? Because some of these phenomena that you're talking about, the rise of feminism, you know, even wor- something like working women, these are old phenomena.
Yeah, when I was doing my research for this, I found a quote from the Henry James novel, The Bostonians, in which one of the characters complains about we now live in a hysterical, canting, chattering age where, you know, uh, like, men are, are not being risk-averse enough, and it was...
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3 of 6
Fuentes' Breeding Gulags Rant
Here’s his most disturbing quote about women
The "Guilt Jubilee" Concept
He reframes backlash as a guilt reset
Defining Modern Masculinism
First she defines this rising ideology clearly
+3 more clips · 4 min 51 sec of audio in all
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