China’s Sissy Problem—and Ours

It’s important to make clear that this piece is not an attack on homosexual men; it’s an attack on sissies. There is a difference between the two. In his latest special, Sorry, Louis CK finished the show with a joke about American men. Today, according to Louis, gay men carry themselves with an air of authority, purpose, and meaning. They keep themselves in good shape and dress appropriately. Straight men, on the other hand, have become notably weaker, both physically and mentally; many of them lack the characteristics that we would have associated with previous generations of men. They are sloppy, weak-willed, and overly apologetic. They dress terribly. At the end of the joke, which is much funnier than I just made it sound, the audience applauded and let out a collective roar. Why? Because Louis’s joke resonated. He articulately expressed what so many of his fans were already thinking. The United States, too, has a crisis of masculinity—one even worse, perhaps, than China’s.

For generations, the sissy has been a frowned-upon character in American life. Only recently it has become a respected, even institutionalized lifestyle. California’s Silicon-Valley stereotype of the “soy boy”, a demasculinized consumer of a meatless, synthetic diet, is now national. ( Senator Ted Cruz held a recent rally in Texas where he warned Democrats wanted to “turn the state blue.” If they have their way, he cried, Texas would soon resemble California, swimming in a sea of “tofu and silicon and dyed hair.” There is a commonly-cited association between the consumption of soy products and elevated estrogen levels; basically, there are compounds found in soy that are biochemically similar to estrogen, and while the science isn’t totally in yet, many men online abjure soy consumption as an impairment of testicular fortitude. Good bye Peyton Manning, hello Patton Oswalt.

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However, across the country, according to a Pew Research Center study, rates of children living in single-parent households have never been higher. In fact, the U.S. now boasts the highest rate of children living in single-parent households in the world. As the study notes, “3% of children in China, 4% of children in Nigeria, and 5% of children in India live in single-parent households.” In the U.S., meanwhile, the rate is a staggering 23 percent. At least 80 percent of the country’s single-parent homes are headed by single mothers.

Absolutely nothing good comes from father absence—which,.according to a report published by the U.S. Department of Justice, “has a strong and significant effect on both female and male levels of violence,” including “homicide and robbery.” Children look to their fathers to lay down the rules and enforce them, and learn to do so through imitationtion

To compound matters, fewer young men are entering the labor force. Bloomberg’s Peter McCoy notes that to be out of the labor force means one does not have a job and is “not actively seeking one.” What are America’s young men doing instead? Playing video games. A paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research argues that younger men, “ages 21 to 30, exhibited a larger decline in work hours over the last fifteen years than older men or women.” Since 2004, they continue, “time-use data show that younger men distinctly shifted their leisure to video gaming and other recreational computer activities. We propose a framework to answer whether improved leisure technology played a role in reducing younger men’s labor supply.” Maybe this is why China, the country orchestrating the “attack” on sissy men, is simultaneously cracking down on video games.