American society needs to man up. 

In the election just concluded, the yawning chasm between the candidate choices of men and women — particularly younger Americans — received overdue attention. 

Polls taken this fall showed a 53% gap between young men and women, with the men supporting former President Donald Trump and women flocking to Vice President Kamala Harris.  

This isn’t a gender gap; it’s a gender canyon.  

It’s been customary over the decades to look at differing political attitudes among the sexes from the perspective of women voters. 

But this year, as young men found a home in Trump World, we saw a focus on the political attitudes, and frustrations, of young American men. Legacy media have been curiously studying what they believe is a new phenomenon — when in fact it’s been brewing for decades. 

The reporting was like a nature show studying exotic species in the rain forest. 

Yet young men haven’t been hidden in a canopy of trees. They have been among us, and are reacting to decades of derision, of feeling — rightly or wrongly — unwelcome, unneeded and a nuisance to society’s progress. 

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One of the most important chroniclers of this serious problem is the writer and scholar Richard V. Reeves. No conservative, Reeves worked for many years at the Brookings Institution, a respected center-left think tank, before launching the American Institute for Boys and Men. 

Throughout the campaign, Reeves stressed that, despite all the shallow accusations about “toxic masculinity” from callous progressives, men have not migrated rightward on issues, continuing to be socially moderate to liberal. 

The issue is not their political attitudes, but the attitudes of the political system toward them. They are feeling left behind. 

“In the real world, the interests of men and women are not pitted against each other, however much our culture warriors tell us otherwise,” Reeves writes. “It is hard to create a society of flourishing women if men are floundering.”

Yet they are floundering — and worse. 

The statistics are sobering. Stagnant wages. A significant decline in male college enrollment. An epidemic of loneliness. And a spike in suicide. 

We need to cut a new path toward purpose for men, pointing them toward what center-right scholar and author Arthur Brooks calls “earned success.” 

“Earned success reassures us that what we do in life is of significance and value, for ourselves and those around us,” he writes. “To truly flourish, we need to know that the ways in which we occupy our waking hours are not based on the mere pursuit of pleasure or money or any other superficial goal.”

But that’s not how society treats boys. 

From the earliest years, schools seek orderly compliant behavior that is far easier for girls than boys. The message too often sent to boys is they are an irritant to be dealt with, so they are diagnosed, medicated and constantly disciplined. 

Boys, who grow into young men, do not wish to be sidelined. They yearn to be celebrated as people of purpose and value and skill — despite the ruckus and rambunctiousness.  

As the author John Eldredge points out in his seminal work “Wild At Heart,” about the masculine journey, boys want to know “they have what it takes.” They will spend a lifetime seeking the answer to this question — often with meandering, frustrating and destructive results. 

There is nothing wrong with society intentionally encouraging men to aspire to a life that is good, and noble and praiseworthy. Yearning to provide for a spouse and children is not selfish patriarchy; it’s servant leadership filled with profound meaning and value. 

Let’s help them find fulfilling work, no matter the salary attached. Let’s honor the trades and men who get dirty at family-sustaining jobs. Let’s stop the coddling of men living on the public dole and show there is purpose and dignity in all work. And there is dissipation and despair in useless idle isolation. 

Eight decades ago, C.S. Lewis diagnosed the decline in society’s respect for, and demands of, its men, calling these shadowy people “men without chests.” 

“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

Let’s make 2025 the Year of the American Man. 

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.