This is an adapted version of a speech presented to Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum 2024. Watch or listen to the speech here.
Since the 1960s, cultural leaders in media, Hollywood, academia, and politics have fiercely criticized men for expressing male characteristics, and have fiercely criticized women for expressing female characteristics. This has led some commentators on the right more recently to lambast what they call the “overfeminization” of society.
But are we really experiencing a cultural “overfeminization?” It looks to me like, instead, we have a swap. We have feminization where there should be masculinity, and masculinization where there should be femininity. Our women are pushed to act like men, and our men to act like women, and the resulting social transgenderism makes everyone extremely unhappy, not to mention dysfunctional.
Both sexes are out of whack. We are all transgender now.
Some try to address this by praising men’s positive attributes and criticizing women’s negative attributes. This is a good effort, but so far it has still largely left out praising women for female attributes and, to a lesser extent, criticizing men for feminine behaviors. It’s an improvement on the West’s long reign of feminist socialization, but I think it could use some more improvements.
Is America Really ‘Overfeminized’?
Before we get to those, let’s look at the more recent critiques of social “overfeminization.” One prominent critique of women has become a social media meme called “the longhouse.” It was explained in First Things by a man who goes by
