Sex

THE TIES THAT BIND:

Masculinity at the End of History (Matthew Gasda, Fall 2025, American Affairs)

By the close of the twentieth century, the links in the chain of value transmission were under severe pressure, but the whole chain hadn’t completely disintegrated. The internet was new. Teen behavior had not yet turned antisocial. And there were old men around who belonged to things or at least had vivid memories of belonging to mass membership organizations: unions, churches, veterans’ associations, Rotary Clubs, Masons, Elks, Knights of Columbus, neighborhood bars. That kind of communal memory is now largely gone, as any trip to the now virtually empty or decaying physical meeting places of these organizations can attest.

Today, male adolescence largely lacks that primitive, self-organizing spontaneity. Sports has been co-opted into ultra-organized traveling sports. Boys learn from watching role models online and become hyper-optimized one-sport athletes. If they gamble or bet, it’s not over cards on a porch; it’s on a phone, on DraftKings. The steep decline in drinking as a habit for young adults may be heralded as a moral victory of sorts, but its dire consequences for male socialization and dating (outsourced to the antiseptic world of Tinder) are already in evidence, a too predict­able development. Even games have become less ritualistic because these are played online with headphones on: enervated, isolated, overstimulated. No real bonding.

I will argue that today’s young men are not just experiencing the technological foreclosure of their own possible development into functional manhood—but are enthusiastically participating in it. They are subject to many of the same social expectations and psychological pressures as men before, yet they are simultaneously living through a warped form of traditional American masculinity that carries all the burdens and drawbacks of that tradition with few (or none) of its former benefits.

It’s no wonder that young men are atomized after our war on fraternal organizations.

FIRST, DO NO HARM:

Supreme Court Delivers the Obvious Result in Skrmetti (Frank DeVito, Jun 22, 2025, American Conservative)

Tennessee had banned surgical and hormonal interventions for minors with gender dysphoria. There are many reasons to impose such a ban. First and foremost, “changing one’s gender” is not possible because it does not comport with nature and the design of the human person.

But putting fundamental reality aside, there are additional, prudential reasons to stop these procedures for minors: Despite the clearly biased and ideologically driven “science” that supposedly shows sex-change surgeries are good and healthy for confused children, the adverse consequences are becoming increasingly obvious as more data becomes available. The long-term effects of doing these terrible things to minors are starting to come to light. While we shouldn’t need statistics to prove that it is good to prevent emotionally troubled and confused children from mutilating their sex organs, they help bolster the obvious argument.

If leftist activists want to oppose laws like the one in Tennessee (about half of U.S. states have similar laws), fine. Start a movement and go convince the voters that children should be able to surgically sterilize themselves or take drugs to interfere with puberty.

MY SUMMER OF HOTNESS:

There’s Never Been a Better Time to Be a Dull Man: Gather ’round, men with nerdy hobbies and unstereotypical interests. Society’s “dull” is the new “incredibly attractive.” (Joanna Sommer, June 18, 2025, Inside hook)

Whether it be plants, Pokémon cards or chess like my boyfriend, it’s clear that having a partner with a mundane hobby is kind of hot. For one, the science is all there: Having a hobby is good for you. It can help with managing stress levels, social wellbeing, mood and even your immune system. And if you’re feeling good mentally and physically, a potential partner is bound to notice your confidence and pleasure for life, which in turn makes you generally more attractive.

Having a hobby also gives you something to make time for outside of your work day, which seems like a pretty impressive thing to do anymore. Life is busy, but rallying your energy toward something you like and feel driven about simply for pleasure? Hot. That said activity having nothing to do with scrolling on your phone? Even hotter. It shows you’re well-rounded, passionate and not chronically glued to screens like the rest of us. You’re also educated on a hyper-niche topic that not everyone is, which adds another lovely layer to all of this.

It doesn’t even matter if the hobby seems “dull” to the public eye. That gives it a negative connotation. Even if it’s simple like watering plants or bird watching, you’re doing more than a lot of other people. Only 67% of adults in the United States report having multiple hobbies. In a world where people are social media-obsessed and constantly staying on top of “trends,” it’s much cooler to do your own thing that makes you happy, even if it seems dry by societal standards. You aren’t alone in your dry hobby, either. Enter: the Dull Men’s Club.

WE ARE ALL fALLEN:

New Testament scholar NT Wright weighs in on transgenderism and the Christian faith (Katelyn Webb, 5/22/25, Christianity Today)

The 76-year-old noted that current conversations often emphasize internal feelings over biological realities, explaining, “People have gotten used to thinking in terms of, ‘Never mind what my body is or how I was physically born, what matters is who I feel deeply within myself I really am.’”

Wright clarified that while he has served as a pastor in many complicated situations, he has not personally counseled someone wrestling with gender identity.

“So what I’m going to say is cautious and very much aware that there are enormous sensitivities around this issue,” he said.

The Surprised by Hope author also warned against the politicization of such matters. “There are people who are capitalizing on the discomfort of some people in order to make, as it were, political points — and some who would say that all gender is entirely fluid and you can make up … who you want to be and how you should behave.”

In addressing the biological aspect, Wright pointed to the distinction between chromosomes and identity: “Females quite clearly have XX chromosomes; males have XY chromosomes. So I’m assuming that our correspondent still simply has XX and hasn’t somehow, through hormone treatment, acquired a Y chromosome. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that’s an option.”

“I’m not a scientist,” he said. “I do not understand the biology, nor how the hormones work.”

Nonetheless, Wright returned to a theological perspective grounded in grace. “Again and again, I want to say, as with Jesus in the Gospels, God meets us where we are and loves us as we are. That’s absolutely vital.”

“Grace enfolds us in the love of God,” he said. “Then when we are enfolded and know that God is with us, then God may want to say to us, perhaps through a wise pastor, through our own voice of conscience or in prayer or whatever, now, there are certain ways forward that you now need to travel.”

The theologian emphasized that this process is not about condemnation, stressing, “It’s not to say, ‘Oh, you’re wicked. Oh, you’re a sinner. You shouldn’t be doing this, that, or the other.”

“It’s to say, ‘Well, where we are now is quite complicated, and let’s see how we can move forward step by step knowing that the God of grace and love is with you.’”

Wright cautioned that saying “God is with you” does not mean affirming all past choices uncritically. “This is not an ‘anything goes’ question,” he said. “God wants you to be a genuine, fully flourishing human being.”

When asked whether God can love and accept someone in this condition, Wright responded, “I want to say absolutely yes. That’s basic to the Gospel and all that it’s about.”

FREAKY FARM WIVES:

Is the Tradwife just a kink? Don’t underestimate the happy housewife’s power (Poppy Sowerby, December 30, 2024, UnHerd)

The “traditional-wife” lifestyle has recently become a cultural juggernaut. Born of the reactionary idea that women must stay at home to care for children and the household, it teenaged into an aspirational trend which involved everything the dream Fifties stay-at-home mum did plus a soupçon of farmgirl hardiness (the most viral tradwives are those who run homesteads, muddy, ruddy and graceful). In 2024, she came of age, with Mormon model Nara Smith becoming one of TikTok’s top influencers by baking in exquisite ballgowns, baby perennially on the hip. Hannah Neeleman (or “Ballerina Farm” on Instagram), then broke the internet in July. An article in The Sunday Times profiling this “queen of the tradwives” crystallised the fantasy. It kept X busy for at least two weeks, as commentators argued over whether the newspaper had unfairly implied that Neeleman was oppressed. For part of the fascination these women hold is the conviction that beneath their mild and milky exterior, torment and frustration must surely lurk. As a result, the article focused heavily on Neeleman’s pre-trad career as a ballerina at Juilliard; look what you could have been, the piece seemed to say — and you packed it all in… for this? Feminists have, after all, been trained by Betty Draper, Mrs Robinson and the Stepford wives to spy the Prozac-popping crackpot beneath the painted-on smile; exposing the tradwife’s purgatorial “real life” has become a favourite pastime of internet curtain-twitchers — not out of concern, but prurience.

But speculation that these influencers are trapped by male fantasies is all part of the grift: it is no coincidence that Neeleman wore the infamous milkmaid dress on the cover of Evie last month, with the headline “The New American Dream”. Flirting with the aesthetics of Simone de Beauvoir’s archetypal housewife — a woman condemned to “immanence”, a passive and internal state of drudgery — is a deliberate provocation by influencers like Neeleman: dressing like a milkmaid transfigures the common-or-garden microcelebrity into both a sex symbol and a challenge to modern feminism. This is the secret to their success.

Inevitably, then, pulling off the “homesteader” vibe has become the focus of a multimillion-dollar industry, with blogs and books springing up left, right and centre — well, mostly on the Right. But the guides betray an irony of this trend: the real tradwives aren’t just about frilly dresses — there is a serious and sober set of moral values at the core of trad ideology, one shot through with puritanical and paranoid beliefs about the state, Big Pharma, the food industry and so on interfering with the closed, controlled unit of the family. This, after all, is why Nara Smith spends four hours making her kids cinnamon-toast-crunch cereal from scratch. Being this evangelical takes dedication. So the delusion that young mums can dip into this aesthetic without engaging with the conservatism at its foundations is worth a lot of money.

There’s a reason that the tradwife’s appeal has endured — it has, let’s remember, been a trend for a decade or more. It’s partly because the media adores the whiff of oppression that clings to her, hence the Ballerina Farm hysteria. She is also an ideal foil for feminism — beautiful, natural and meek, she is everything conservative men love, and everything radfems hate: perfectly poised for virality. And that’s because her role as a lifestyle guru means that her actual values — though generally Mormon, conservative and modest — are mysterious and therefore intriguing. Her fans are not looking for direct precepts; being told that abortion is wrong, or that premarital sex makes you worthless, would not be appealing. Instead, they want to cosplay a nebulously traditional woman by baking rye bread in a long dress.

STOP EXPLOITING THE DISORDERED:

German Study: Vast Majority of People Will Grow Out of Transgenderism Within 5 Years (Ben Johnson, 6/16/24, Daily Signal)

A massive, yearslong study shows the overwhelming majority of young people who identify as transgender will grow out of the diagnosis within five years.

A similar supermajority of trans-identifying people suffered from at least one other psychological condition, found researchers, who tracked all children and young adults diagnosed with gender dysphoria over a nine-year period.

It’s ideology, not medicine.

REORDER DOES NOT HEAL DISORDER:

Adults who undergo trans surgeries at 12 times higher risk of attempting suicide – report (Samantha Kamman, 25 May 2024, Christianity Today)

Trans-identifying adults who undergo body-mutilating surgeries as part of an effort to look like the opposite sex have an elevated suicide attempt risk, according to a recent study.

MUTILATING DEPRESSIVES:

Development of Gender Non-Contentedness During Adolescence and Early Adulthood (Pien Rawee, Judith G. M. Rosmalen, Luuk Kalverdijk & Sarah M. Burke, 2/27/24, Archives of Sexual Behavior)

Adolescence is an important period for the development of gender identity. We studied the development of gender non-contentedness, i.e., unhappiness with being the gender aligned with one’s sex, from early adolescence to young adulthood, and its association with self-concept, behavioral and emotional problems, and adult sexual orientation. Participants were 2772 adolescents (53% male) from the Tracking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey population and clinical cohort. Data from six waves were included (ages 11–26). Gender non-contentedness was assessed with the item “I wish to be of the opposite sex” from the Youth and Adult Self-Report at all six waves. Behavioral and emotional problems were measured by total scores of these scales at all six waves. Self-concept was assessed at age 11 using the Global Self-Worth and Physical Appearance subscales of the Self-Perception Profile for Children. Sexual orientation was assessed at age 22 by self-report. In early adolescence, 11% of participants reported gender non-contentedness. The prevalence decreased with age and was 4% at the last follow-up (around age 26). Three developmental trajectories of gender non-contentedness were identified: no gender non-contentedness (78%), decreasing gender non-contentedness (19%), and increasing gender non-contentedness (2%). Individuals with an increasing gender non-contentedness more often were female and both an increasing and decreasing trajectory were associated with a lower global self-worth, more behavioral and emotional problems, and a non-heterosexual sexual orientation. Gender non-contentedness, while being relatively common during early adolescence, in general decreases with age and appears to be associated with a poorer self-concept and mental health throughout development.