Richard Reeves

They actually want their sisters and friends to have the same opportunities as them.

They are doing more fathering, as I've said.

Violent crime has fortunately gone down.

But they also don't want to feel bad about themselves.

And they don't want to be told that they're the problem.

And so I think what happened, particularly perhaps in 2024, was that just a lot of these young men, and it really was very interesting that it was the younger of the young men who are most likely to have voted Republican in the last election.

So it was the 18-year-olds more than the 28-year-olds.

Which is, again, against trend.

And I don't think that means for a moment that they're going to continue to do that.

What I think happened was that I'll make a political point without perhaps taking sides, is that I've noticed that when Democrats talk about what happened with young men, in particular in the last election, they tend to say, why did young men move to the right?

And I don't see any shift in their policy views or anything.

And I would say to them, are you quite sure that they didn't move away from the left?

Right.

I guess that's a much harder thing to think.

Right.

It's in some ways very easy to think these young men spent too much time online.

They listen to too many podcasts.

They got beguiled by this hyper masculinity.

And we've created an overnight generation of misogynists who suddenly voted the wrong way from their perspective.

Or is it that they were just up for grabs?