It is virtually impossible to spend any meaningful amount of time on social media and not be bombarded with “inspirational” capitalist content. Whether it’s clips of Mark Cuban bragging about his investment strategies or the thousandth pair of 20-something-year-old men who decided to start a business podcast, it will show up eventually. You will be inspired, whether you like it or not, to invest in stocks and hate poor people because, apparently, their poverty is their own fault.

Much of this subculture’s ethos is based on a particular form of self-improvement, which focuses on hypermasculinity, dominance, rugged individualism, and the accrual of personal wealth. In this sphere, the only motivator is profit, and the only thing holding one back is laziness or a lack of drive. Advice about taking control of one’s own circumstances, however, is coupled with a significant dose of misogyny, xenophobia, and other forms of finger-pointing that relieve the reader, listener, or viewer of nearly all responsibility for society’s ills. Instead, these problems are caused by trans people, poor people, women, and immigrants. The answer, these voices offer, is to be found in masculinity, cut-throat competition, capitalism, and right-wing politics. The process is, after all, a pipeline: It begins with seemingly positive commentary on improving oneself and ends with trampling over others.

The so-called “manosphere” has had real-world consequences, as we saw in the 2024 presidential election. About 56 percent of young men voted for President Donald Trump last November — a perfect inversion of 2020, when 56 percent voted for Joe Biden. Trump collaborated with big-name influencers like Theo Von, Adin Ross, and Joe Rogan, all of whom have large male audiences, and exploited the bravado of a now-infamous photo — Trump, with blood running down his ear, pumps his fist in the air — following the attempt on his life to attract voters drawn to strength. That rugged, masculine philosophy is clear in Trump’s style of governance. Everything, from his official White House portrait to his foreign policy, is carefully curated to maintain the illusion of absolute dominance. The officials Trump chose to fill his cabinet must meet the same standards. Instead of hiring someone experienced and capable to run the Department of Defense, Trump chose Pete Hegseth — a former Fox News anchor with several Crusader tattoos and an alleged propensity for domestic abuse. The result of Trump choices was an embarrassing national security failure caused by the accidental addition of Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to a Signal group chat in which top cabinet officials gleefully discussed military operations in Yemen. But that doesn’t matter — what matters is optics. 

I am certainly not the first person to describe this phenomenon. The phrase “toxic masculinity” exists for a reason, and the concept I’ve just described has been discussed over and over again in political conversations following Trump’s recent victory. I’ve seen an abundance of writers and pundits placing the blame for the manosphere on the left. Progressives, they say, didn’t make space for positive forms of masculinity and ridiculed those they deemed toxic; as a result, men were driven to the ideological right out of necessity to protect their very being. I’m not convinced that’s true — there are plenty of examples of leftist and left-leaning male figures, including traditionally masculine men who serve as models of progressive masculinity. But there is, I think, a major marketing issue for the left.

We let conservatives define us without putting forth our own self-definition, as we have for generations. In the mainstream American mind, leftist thinking is associated with unchecked elitism stemming from high-ranking universities and big cities. To the right, progressives care more about inserting critical race theory into schools than about making sure families have enough to eat. None of this is true — even if the former claim has some validity to it — and yet it is how we are perceived. And on topics we do care about, like critical race theory, police reform, transgender rights, and workers’ rights, conservatives have spun our views to seem extreme and dangerous. According to right-wing rhetoric, we don’t just accept that critical race theory is valid — we want to infect children’s minds with it and make them racist against white people. We don’t just want police reform, we want to abolish all laws. We don’t just want workers to have power over their own employment or to raise the standard of living using tax dollars we’re already paying, we want to turn the U.S. into the Soviet Union. It’s the same old story when it comes to masculinity. 

But all is not lost. Fifty-six percent of young men voting for Donald Trump is a sad reality, but we should not forget that a huge chunk of them voted against him. The idea that men are moving away from the left en masse is a lie. Though the manosphere is real, and the toxic beliefs it puts forward are a danger to social and political progress, it has not come to dominate American politics in the way that some of its adherents think it has. A far more convincing argument for Trump’s victory is based on economic concerns. Trump is viewed as a businessman — someone who understands how the economy works and is capable of making it function efficiently. As a result of that pretense, which well suits his abrasive personality and cut-throat political philosophy, voters thought him the more fitting of the two presidential candidates to address the country’s financial woes. But there are alternatives on the left that both present an image of toughness in the face of economic adversity and actually do the work of making people’s lives better.

Labor leaders are a great example. Sean O’Brien, the General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, is someone who exudes toughness and masculinity while standing in support of workers’ rights — although recent decisions by O’Brien may indicate that he doesn’t much care for workers after all. While O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024, the Teamsters did not endorse a presidential candidate. Indeed, they might have endorsed Harris had the Democratic Party accepted their application to speak at their convention in August. Trump, for his part, is working to dismantle unions and make life worse for workers across the country. 

Leftist politics need not compromise on the socially progressive ideals that we hold so dear — transgender rights, feminism, inclusiveness, and the like. It need not promote men at the expense of others or suppress the ambitions of people from underrepresented groups toward positions of leadership. But it should expand to include positive examples of masculinity that appeal to working class men, women, and everyone in between. At the base of leftist movements in the United States and across the world are workers. If we return to our roots, and mean it, conservatives will be hard-pressed to define us as out of touch with common people. And, as a result, they’ll have to do more than appeal to a simplistic portrayal of masculine strength to win elections.