I really appreciated this exchange with Diana Fox Tilson, LICSW as well as Lisa Sibbett’s take on it here.

I think the three of us likely agree on many fundamentals and share a vision for a more egalitarian future. We disagree about how to get there. I land on the side of celebrating positive progress and welcoming men who want to participate in that future. I don’t see that as infantilizing or pandering.

Lisa draws a parallel to racial justice or disability justice: should we emphasize our progress or our failures? Relevant to this, the NYT ran a conversation this month between two progressive writers, asking “Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off?” In the conversation, they conclude that yes, the more performative, compulsory aspects of our 2010s reckoning on race and identity issues actually had a counterproductive effect, driving voters away from the Democrats and towards an administration that is actively suppressing people’s rights and freedoms.

In my mind, we can’t turn the tide on our current political situation, which is now posing a real threat to women, if we can’t get men as well as women into our coalition. We need to build a big tent movement and what we’ve done so far is not working. Nothing really matters if we can’t win popular support for our ideas; it’s hard to overemphasize how high the stakes are here.

Since it feels relevant here, I’m sharing one of my favorite essays that I’ve written on this platform…it’s about how the Left will keep losing elections until it figures out how to make its own voters less miserable, which means positive message framing and emphasizing connection, belonging, meaning and purpose. I think that requires a hefty dose of what Lisa calls “measured encouragement” in order to succeed. darbysaxbe.substack.com…