How American males feel about themselves has been in a steady decline since the 2008 recession – but Establishment pundits and scholars continue to seem clueless about its causes. Instead, they continue to treat men as self-defeating idiots.

On Oct. 16, The New York Times looked at the waning American male worker in an op-ed, and as might be expected the editorial avoided examining underlying sexism towards men in the age of ascendent feminism. Although the NYT has eagerly examined problems and their causes for female workers, using the trope of the hard-working virtuous victim oppressed by selfishly powerful men, the newspaper lacked the courage and honesty to investigate oppressive causes in the case of male workers.

So what are the causes? The trope of the wounded male is ready fodder for gender activists and even misandrists. Robert Bly more sympathetically points to the male wound as the beginning of masculine growth. David K. Flowers unsympathetically argues that there are too many parasitic men living off the good graces of dysfunctional women. And The Wall Street Journal states that the waning male energy in our nation is due primarily to the loss of low-skilled jobs traditionally held by working class males. While all of these explanations point in different directions, all overlook how males have been much greater victims of sexism in a society that has historically entrusted to men the most high-risk work and sent them into every war.

It is not hard to see that the NYT’s vain attempt at balancing its recent news coverage of women’s issues is related to the presidential election. And if so, it doesn’t really work. It doesn’t because it fails to dig into the deeper causes for mass withdrawal by men from society and economy. For instance, while the NYT op-ed does cite Princeton Economist Alan B. Krueger’s recently published paper, “Where Have All the Workers Gone?”, the NYT does not probe further into the reasons male workers are experiencing historic levels in both unemployment and despair. In addition, the editorial does not ask how globalization, anti-unionism, and feminism have combined forces in making it socially and economically acceptable to be openly misandric in the news, on film and television, and in schools and workplaces. Sure, the NYT‘s attempt picked up on Krueger’s study about the failing well-being of American adult men, arguing that seven million men (or 11.4%) between the ages of 25 and 54 have left the labor force, not to return, but the NYT‘s opinion eschews addressing key contributions from those in masculinity studies or men’s rights. And why is this?

I maintain that the American Establishment has ignored and will continue to ignore identifying the causes of an ever expanding masculine crises (war veteran despair and suicide, increasing male unemployment, massive male incarceration, demonizing “deadbeat” dads, drugging boys in schools, and so on) until it is too late. The Establishment has little interest in questioning the political and economic strategy that currently favors a gynocentric world view as a female-centered society is favored for avoiding impediments in the march of global capitalism and expanding markets.