While many believe young people are becoming more liberal, data shows that 12th grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative compared to liberal. Around 25% of high school seniors identify as conservative while only 13% identify as liberal. In contrast, the share of 12th grade girls identifying as liberal has risen to 30%. Many factors may contribute to this trend, including the rhetoric of Donald Trump which appealed to disaffected young men, and the focus of progressive movements on issues of gender and racial equality which some young men perceive as a “matriarchy.” However, most high school seniors claim no political identity, and many boys in high school do not actively discuss
I think it’s because a progressive view on gender isn’t focused on defining what the “right” way to be masculine is. No one on the left tells women and girls what the right way to be feminine is either. That’s the whole concept; recognizing that strict gender norms are exclusionary and create marginilized men and women.
The issue is not the left not telling young men how to be a “real man”, it’s the right pushing toxic ideas of masculinity. From a left perspective, you are good man simply by not being toxic and just being who you are as an individual.
I think people here are falling into a trap of framing laid for them by the right; namely that the right deliberately fabricated a mental health crisis for young men by telling them they’re victims, and has also now gotten the left to blame themselves for it. Young men are only victims of right-wing toxicity.