The Men Who Don’t Want Women to VoteA virulent form of misogyny has become the single most important force holding together the American right, Helen Lewis argued in the June issue.Helen Lewis’s “The Men Who Don’t Want Women to Vote” is the most important thing I have read this year. My husband has said that Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election because of the misogyny that exists in America; Lewis’s article proved him correct, with just a teaspoon of humor mixed into an otherwise very frightening topic.Amy CristGettysburg, Pa.Upon finishing “The Men Who Don’t Want Women to Vote,” I found myself equal parts stunned and galvanized. Lewis has an extraordinary ability to illuminate what so many of us feel but struggle to articulate, and this article was no exception.The MAGA movement contends that feminism is to blame for American decline. But feminism didn’t emerge from nothing. Feminism is the consequence of the “man problem” Lewis identifies, not its cause.The Bible passage that anti-feminist commentators love to cite is from Ephesians: “Wives, submit to your husbands.” But that’s where they stop reading. The verse goes on to say that a husband must provide for his wife, and love her as he loves his own body. This is not a “do as I say or else” arrangement; it is a covenant of mutual care—her health and happiness are meant to be as important to him as his own, and vice versa. When men forget the instruction to care for their wives as they care for themselves, women have no choice but to learn to care for themselves.I was recently at the pharmacy, and the man ahead of me—trying to pick up a prescription for his sick wife—answered the pharmacist’s questions with “I don’t know; my wife takes care of that.” When a husband utters, “My wife takes care of that,” the word that means “everything.” It means knowing the passwords, the medications and dosages, the appointment schedules. It means knowing what to say to assuage a teenager’s broken heart, whom to call at the school, how to manage a crisis. It means caring for sick husbands and aging parents—sacrificing for the people you love.I am the breadwinner in my family. My husband stayed home and raised our three daughters. The plan was for him to return to work once the girls were in elementary school. But we all know what happens when we make plans—God laughs. My husband now lives with a neurological condition that complicates our lives in ways neither of us anticipated. Does working to provide health care for my children and husband make me less of a woman? Would my husband be mocked in the manosphere for not working? Is staying home to raise children noble only when a woman does it?Erika JacksonGilbert, Ariz.I worry that “The Men Who Don’t Want Women to Vote” misses a crucial component of the rise of masculinism. I stand in vocal opposition to misogyny and the idiocy of the far-right masculine media sphere. I teach my daughters that they control their bodies and that they should never miss a vote. But I do think that a large cohort of men is struggling with issues that have been ignored, or sometimes even mocked, by the mainstream media. Many men try to be good husbands and parents, only to hear mantras like “We don’t need men” and “There are no good men out there”; on social media, people discuss whether they’d prefer to be trapped in the woods with a man or a bear. Meanwhile, American men are nearly four times more likely than women to die by suicide. The manosphere discusses that issue frequently, as Lewis notes; the mainstream media do not. When men hear negative messages about being a man from the mainstream media but see the manosphere addressing their struggles, they will gravitate toward it. I hope society can learn to address male issues without mocking them. Otherwise, I fear, the extremism will continue.Ben RodriguezSuffield, Conn.A significant number of men are never fully socialized. These men have few if any friends—and certainly no female friends. Deep down, they may not hate or fear women; they just don’t know how to interact with them. They never learned how to work with or cooperate with them. If one accepts that, then quixotic attempts to repeal women’s suffrage or strip women of social and political freedoms should not surprise anyone.Virgil JoseApple Valley, Calif.Helen Lewis makes a convincing argument that the noisy, often lewd misogyny of the MAGA right is no longer fringe and presents a real danger to women. This sexist worldview reflects and interacts with patriarchal systems across the world.Examining more than 350 variables across 176 nations, the scholars Valerie M. Hudson, Donna Lee Bowen, and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen have demonstrated that “the fate of nations is tied to the status of women.” Their 2020 book, The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide, shows that nations that subordinate women tend to be more fragile, autocratic, corrupt, and impoverished. The subordination of women appears to produce the kind of governance that leads to worse outcomes for everyone. The sexual political order is, as they write, the “first political order”—what starts in a family shapes a broader community’s politics.Eleanor H. KlauminzerOlalla, Wash.Helen Lewis replies:As you might imagine, this article prompted a large and varied mailbag. I heard from grandfathers—happily married for decades—who couldn’t understand how society seemed to have gone backwards, from middle-aged men who felt overlooked because their problems weren’t fashionable, and from parents who worried about what their sons were watching online. I came away thinking that screen-time limits are good, that schools should do more to accommodate rambunctious boys as well as conscientious girls, and that the Democrats need to develop their own, positive visions of masculinity to compete with those of Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes.Some of the likely 2028 presidential contenders have started to do that: Gavin Newsom talks regularly about men’s problems, and signed an executive order aimed at improving mental-health services and reducing male suicide rates in California. Pete Buttigieg has learned how to bro out on podcasts such as Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant—the kind of spaces where Donald Trump did so well during the 2024 campaign. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez waded into the debate over the looks-maxxer Clavicular (the guy who claims to have achieved a better jawline by hitting himself with hammers) by highlighting the pressures on young men to conform to unrealistic beauty standards. The conversation is definitely shifting.Behind the CoverIn this month’s cover story, “Empire of Grift,” Anne Applebaum examines how hardened ideologues and opportunistic profiteers are bending American diplomacy to advance an antidemocratic agenda—and their own financial interests. For our cover, the illustrator Ben Hickey created an ominous image of figures in shadow arrayed around a map of the world, evoking the war-room scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.Corrections“The Great Romance Slump” (September) stated that birth control was legalized for married couples in 1965. In fact, in 1965 the Supreme Court held that the government couldn’t restrict a married couple’s access to birth control. “Confessions of a Token Black Professor” (September) described a sign affixed to the wall of a former mill in Lewiston, Maine, as neon. In fact, it is a marquee sign.This article appears in the October 2026 print edition with the headline “The Commons.”