Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

The current presidential administration has become a “manosphere,” a growing cult championing male supremacy. Its champions are led by:

• Donald Trump, President – the sex predator.

• JD Vance, Vice President – the everyman.

• Pete Hegseth, Sec. of Defense – the warrior.

• Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy — “Trump’s brain.”

Their manosphere is grounded in a broad anti-feminist ideology and the belief that men have been victims of the social change that has transformed the U.S. over the last half-century. Sadly, in today’s postmodern capitalist world, Trump’s manosphere includes some leading “ladies” of the administration as well, like Pam Bondi, Attorney General, and Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security.

On September 7, 1968, some 200 demonstrators — feminists and civil rights advocates – protested Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, NJ. Standing arm-and-arm on the boardwalk, women threw mops, make-up and bras into a “Freedom Trash Can.” Symbolically, the second-wave women’s movement was born.

Now, a half-century later, American women’s lives are very different. The St. Louis Federal Reserve reports that female labor-force participation rates best illuminate the changes that have occurred. It finds that in 1960, 44.2 percent of females worked but by 2024 it had increased to 77.5 percent. The Educational Policy Institute notes that higher education “gender distribution has flipped over the course of a 55-year period. While men had a 58 percent share of total enrollment in 1970, by 2025 they are estimated to have a 43 percent share with the women’s share reaching 57 percent.” And, as Pew Research finds, “The gender gap in pay has slightly narrowed in the United States over the past 20 years or so. In 2024, women earned an average of 85% of what men earned ….”

Clearly, women’s place in society has changed over the last half-century.

The resulting questions these findings raise is simple: what do they mean for men? In a profoundly changing America, what does it mean for a “man” to be a “man”?

In many cities like New York and its suburbs, one is accustomed to seeing both middle- and working-class men holding a baby or pushing a stroller. Throughout the country, for many — but by no means all — what was once considered “woman’s work” like raising children or cooking, clearing & shopping is now shared by adult........

© CounterPunch