Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri is on a crusade to call men out of their stasis and back to their true selves. In a speech made at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Hawley said: “The Left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic. They want to define the traditional masculine virtues — things like courage and independence and assertiveness — as a danger to society.” There is a disdain for virtues in our society because there is a disdain for faith and traditional values. America has an identity crisis and it hurts men. Insisting that manliness is naturally a bad thing that’s to be rejected gives men no motivation to participate in the aspects of society that need their skills the most. Women need strong, masculine men, and so does society.

Men of this generation have been shamed into a more compliant and feminine shadow of who they could be. Senator Hawley rhetorically asked, “Can we be surprised that after years of being told they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games?” This lack of accountability and retreating into fantasy is a problem for men of all races and creeds, creating absentee fathers and poor providers.

But it’s not all men’s fault. On the one hand, they have the political socialists telling them that work is no longer a noble or worthy activity. For example, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants a system that provides “economic security to all those who are unable or unwilling to work” [emphasis added]. Then they have the feminists insisting that men are the oppressors of women. Feminists would probably prefer a women-dominate culture à la the Amazons of Greek mythology where the gender roles are completely reversed. They forget that even in that myth, Hippolyte, Queen of the Amazons, was more attracted to masculine Hercules than the wimpy she-men of the Amazon tribe.

It’s not just the socialists and the feminists who are degrading masculinity. The American Psychological Association (APA) has even lent its platform to the dismantling of it. It attributes certain downward trends to “traditional masculinity”: “Men commit 90 percent of homicides in the United States and represent 77 percent of homicide victims. They’re the demographic group most at risk of being victimized by violent crime. They are 3.5 times more likely than women to die by suicide, and their life expectancy is 4.9 years shorter than women’s. Boys are far more likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder than girls, and they face harsher punishments in school — especially boys of color.”

Notice that all the blame for the negative behaviors of men is placed at the doorstep of traditional masculinity or “toxic masculinity.” But the APA forgot to recon with biology. Even scientists can figure out a way to put men down.

A study conducted by the University of Cambridge details the fact that men are naturally more systematic and logical, whereas women are empathetic. The study tested over half a million people, so the results were thorough. While it does definitively state that men and women are different psychologically, it also labels men’s tendency toward logic as an autistic trait. There is nothing wrong with being autistic, of course. Autism sufferers are some of the most out-of-the-box thinkers we have and we need their insight. But the “autism” label does have a lot of negative stigma attached to it, especially in the social context. By affixing this label to the way a man thinks and processes, it implies that men are not neurotypical. Even in this study that disproves the idea there are no differences between the sexes, it finds a way to degrade men.

Leftist elites want to push a genderless society, but they’re only succeeding in hurting the next generation by creating confusion and destroying identity. Matt Walsh, podcaster and political pundit, pointed out that this attempt to erase masculinity from children is stealing childhoods. An example of this is that boys learn differently than girls. Boy are not built to sit for long periods of time. This causes problems in the classrooms. So if their spirit is not chastised out of them, they are medicated to get the desired behavior. But if they are not medicated, they are introduced to “transgender” ideology, which seeks to convince children that it does’t matter what you are biologically — boys can be girls and girls can be boys. This makes for sad, confused, and messed up kids.

So what’s the solution? Teach boys how to be brave, critical thinkers, courteous, strong, independent, adventurous, and wise. Raise boys to be men of character. As Candace Owens puts it: “There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.”