Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., says the media and policymakers in Washington, D.C., are both partly to blame for the crisis of masculinity among American men, which is the topic of his new book releasing today: "Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs."
Hawley's book says trade policies that gave away jobs to China have made it harder for American men to find jobs, which is a big factor in why so many men are no longer actively looking for work.
"At the turn of the last century, to give China most favored nation status permanently, we have lost almost 4 million blue collar jobs to China since they did that. Sixty-thousand of those in the state of Missouri," Hawley told Fox News Digital. "It has been a bloodbath of good jobs lost that has harmed families, it has decimated whole communities."
"If you want to look at stupid policies that have really hurt working men and working families in this nation, I'd start right there," he said. "That is a prime example of, frankly, idiotic policy that is still extremely popular in Washington, D.C."
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Hawley said the media makes the problem worse by making it clear it favors men who are "androgynous consumers" for the benefit of big businesses. He wrote in his book that androgyny is a new top ideal of the "Epicurean left" in "big corporations and the corporate media."
"This is the dirty secret of what the left really wants, which is: they want men not to rock the boat," the conservative senator told Fox News Digital in an interview.
"They're pushing this line of just basically it's consumerism. I mean, that's what it comes down to for them, which makes sense, right? Because that's how they make their money. So they want men to be androgynous consumers, they want women to be androgynous consumers, too," Hawley said.
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"And it's this push towards androgyny, their radical gender ideology, and consumerism, consumerism, consumerism," he said.
When it comes to modern-day views of masculinity, Hawley believes that Andrew Tate, the disgraced influencer with more than 6.5 million followers on Twitter, is not as good of a role model as he purports to be.
"I think that he has bought into the leftist critique. He's bought into this idea that masculinity is inherently toxic," Hawley said. "He's just owning it and saying, ‘Yeah, that's great. Let's all be toxic.’ But my message to men is we can do better than that."
"It’s the left that says, all manhood is toxic. They're the ones who say that all masculinity is toxic masculinity. That's not true," he said.
"So I think that the problem with the kind of Andrew Tate-like ideology is that it basically, it glories in the toxic nature of what the left says manhood is. And that's just all a lie. That's not true at all," Hawley said. "I would say that it's really telling though, that Tate has appeal to so many young men, it tells you they're searching for something, they're searching for someone to challenge them."
