GOOD MEN Scarcity Strikes MAGA

This alleged “problem” is more acute among professional conservatives than elsewhere

For years, I’ve warned about the dire threat of GOOD MEN scarcity. In spite of the apparent abundance of GOOD WOMEN, there’s a massive shortage of equally GOOD men. It’s driven female writers to write endless articles wondering where this endangered species is and declare modern men absolutely SUCK.

This line is used to blame men for all the problems with dating and marriage, which is why I mock it. It ignores the larger socioeconomic and cultural forces at play that make relationships worse. It also completely exculpates women’s role in this sordid state of affairs. (Let’s just say claims of GOOD WOMEN abundance are overstated.) Unironic claims of GOOD MEN scarcity are primarily made by conservatives to attack men and are linked to the modern Right’s concerning trait of “simping.” Anti-men rhetoric isn’t the exclusive purview of feminists. Plenty of conservatives are guilty of it as well, despite their alleged support for traditional social roles.

Imagine my reaction to the Washington Post covering GOOD MEN scarcity among DCs MAGA scene last week. The article almost reads like a satirical piece I would write. While the report does interview at least one man to provide the male perspective, it’s primarily focused on the female perspective of MAGA dating. The women are pissed that the conservative men are neither sufficiently masculine nor sufficiently religious. As I’ve described in previous podcasts and articles, these women working in the conservative movement often have unrealistic standards. The opening paragraph captures the “unicorn” man these women seek.

When Morgan Housley, 29, moved to Washington for her job in April, she had some non-negotiables for the conservative man she was looking to date: He had to “love the Lord,” genuinely enjoy going to church, and be able to “provide and protect, emotionally, physically, spiritually, all of those things.” A fit, athletic man she could go on runs with.

So far, Mr. Right has not materialized.

Instead, many of the single MAGA men she’s seen are …

“Not fit, workaholics and not taking finding a wife seriously,” Housley says.

That may sound reasonable when put that way, but that’s not quite how it works out. These women essentially want church mouse Glenn Powell, a very rare thing to find. The woman interviewed, Morgan Housley, complains that the religious men are not manly enough for her standards, while the manly guys aren’t religious enough. She describes the horror story of finding out a guy she’s dating isn’t going to church enough. She dumped him. The article hilariously ends with Housley believing one of the National Guardsmen patrolling the capital may meet her stringent demands. If she finds the men in professional conservatism insufficiently religious, she’s going to be in for a rude awakening with the normie men in fatigues.

Another woman interviewed shared similar complaints as Housley. It’s extremely common among women you meet in these circles. Essentially, what they want is a very masculine guy, say a bro, who shares the exact same religious views and fervor as the woman. That’s a tough task. The bros aren’t really going to church and are an uncommon type within conservative circles. Most of the guys in conservatism, especially the religious ones, are “nerdier” than their ideal and women suspect some of them are closet cases. (This doesn’t prevent a lot of these trad women from marrying gay men, however.) The women will dump guys over them being in a different denomination and the suspicion they might not share the same enthusiasm for church.

This article illustrates the delusional thinking among this particular demographic. All the women are perfect and don’t need to change anything. There’s no pondering if the woman might have an unpleasant personality, need to work out more, or is too homely to think she deserves her unicorn. It’s the men who need to radically change to be worthy of a second date. He needs to be absolutely perfect upon first encounter. Potential issues that could easily be resolved are practically hate crimes against the woman in question. There’s no need to be reasonable or accommodating. This thinking ultimately encourages misandry.

It’s understandable that people want their significant other to share the same values, but many of these women take it to irrational extremes. It’s similar to how leftist women police the views of their boyfriends. If the guy laughed at a harmless joke they considered sexist, the woke woman would break up with them. These types of stories were common grist in the 2010s and early 2020s. In fact, reports on the dating woes of young DC conservatives in the first first Trump administration centered on this dynamic. In one 2018 article, the men complained about their dates interrogating them about their political views to determine they were sufficiently liberal and feminist. Their right-leaning views made them pariahs on the dating market. Now the theme is that these men aren’t meeting the delusional standards of young conservative women.

Millennial women forcing their boyfriends to stand with trans rights and Black Lives Matter is one of the reasons we got peak woke. Woke women, like pretty much all women, wanted traditionally masculine guys to date. They didn’t actually want to date the “soyboys” that fully agree with them. But the bros they wanted were less likely to put up with their woke inquisition, forcing them to date effeminate men who would proudly wear “I Stand With Her” shirts.

Women involved in conservative politics operate in a similar way when they expect their men to share the exact same views as themselves. Many of these women also seem to be deeply repulsed by normal male sexuality. This was exemplified by one popular podcast arguing that real men don’t need sex and husbands should be more like priests. These attitudes drive away the men they want to date.

The WaPo article illustrates the reasoning behind GOOD MEN scarcity claims. They primarily emanate from women who are being a bit irrational. Everyone mocks incels for believing they deserve dream women derived from overt porn consumption. But conservatives encourage these young women to stick with their unicorn hunts while indulging the complaints over the inability to find these mythical creatures.

There is something to GOOD MEN scarcity in general society. Conservatives blame it on video games and porn, believing it’s all a result of the individual men. While porn is a problem, it’s more of a symptom of dysfunction rather than a cause. Men are falling behind in American society. Fewer young men are going to college or doing really anything to ensure they obtain a stable income to raise a family. Meanwhile, young women are advancing further than ever before in society, giving them high incomes, power, and independence. The vast majority of women want to marry a guy of at least similar status and income. That’s much harder to do now. The smaller number of high status men are less inclined to settle down when they have a wealth of options. The larger number of high-achieving, reasonably attractive women are less inclined to settle for whatever they can get if they think they can obtain one of the rare “Chads.” Thus, dating becomes a mess for both men and women.

Things, however, are a bit different within the DC conservative scene. First, there are more men than women, negating the usual dynamic of major metros where there are more young, college-educated women than young, college-educated men. These are guys with conservative values who generally want to start families and are more willing to go to church than the average normie. But they don’t meet the church mouse Glenn Powell ideal, thus the women are encouraged to loathe them. This is rich when the women aren’t Hollywood starlets themselves. Many of them don’t work out and are extremely unpleasant to be around. But the older, married men and women tell them they’re perfect 10s and say all of their problems are due to men. Simping is a cancer on the Right.

There are legitimate concerns about the state of young men and dating in general. But the loudest voices making a fuss about this often base it on their own unrealistic standards and it quickly descends into men-bashing. Hence, the need for mockery of GOOD MEN scarcity claims.

Complaints about dating aren’t going anywhere and they’re going to grow even more voluminous in the years to come. But we probably should not let Con Inc. dictate our view of it. It’s legitimate for a woman to complain that she can’t find a man with a steady job or one without substance abuse issues. It’s another thing entirely to lump those serious issues alongside those of DC conservative women failing to find their unicorn.

People will always have standards, but it’s not wise to embolden delusions.