'You capitulated to Russia': Vance rant on America’s 'androgynous' masculinity draws fire

20 February

U.S. Vice President JD Vance addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., February 20, 2025.

Vice President JD Vance, in a rare public appearance, told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that America’s “cultural message” tells young men they should “suppress every masculine urge” and become “androgynous idiots.” His comments on Thursday were well-received at the far-right conference, but more widely, were quickly denounced, as critics urged him to revisit his own remarks and his own societal and religious beliefs.

“I think that our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge,” the Ohio Republican said, to cheers (video below). “You should try to cast aside your family, you should try to suppress what makes you a young man in the first place.”

“And I think that my, my message to young men is, don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends or because you’re competitive.”

Vance went on to claim that “our cultural message is, I think, that it wants to turn everybody into whether male or female into androgynous idiots who think the same, talk the same and act the same.”

“We actually think God made male and female for a purpose, and we want you guys to thrive as young men and as young women, and we’re gonna help with our public policy to make it possible to do that.”

Fred Wellman is a graduate of West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School, an Army veteran of 22 years who served four combat tours, and is now a political consultant and the host of the podcast “On Democracy.”

“Nobody thinks that,” Wellman wrote, responding to Vance’s remarks. “We just don’t want our young men to rape women. This isn’t hard. This guy is such a f— incel.”

“This guy is too much of a chicken to stand up publicly to a guy who he privately described as a ‘moral disaster’ or to defend his own wife’s honor from a punk kid who said we should ‘normalize Indian hate.’ Obsequious, snivelling, Vancely cowardice ain’t masculinity,” decried U.S. Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL).

Appearing to mock the vice president, The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill asked, “Who told men they can’t have beer with their friends? What I miss?”

Self-described former “Republican flack” and conservative Christian, Kristy Campbell, appearing to denigrate President Trump’s attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week, noted, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to lecture on masculinity at CPAC – which was launched in 1974 with an incredible speech by future president Ronald Reagan about freedom and America’s role in the world – when you just capitulated to Russia.”

Award-winning author Jennifer Erin Valent blasted Vance, saying, “What he’s really aiming at isn’t the ability to exercise true masculine strength but rather the ability to be a jerk without accountability. And since he brought God into it, I advise him to take a walk through the gospels and see how his brand of manhood measures up to Christ’s.”

“These guys aren’t reviving masculinity, they’re reviving being a dick. There’s a difference,” wrote Justin Kanew, a writer, producer, and political activist who appeared on the 15th and 18th seasons of “The Amazing Race.” Kanew runs the progressive platform The Tennessee Holler.

“For somebody who supposedly is so smart, JD Vance really says some stupid things,” blasted CNN political commentator Maria Cardona. “No, our culture does not tell young men that they cannot be masculine. But hopefully they are getting the message that that masculinity has to come with decency, compassion, generosity, and confidence that you can be all these things and that actually define real confident manhood. Real men don’t have to go around proving that they are real men.”

Emmy-nominated writer and comedian Mike Drucker asked, “is masculinity when you never stop fucking whining about everything? that seems to be the vance demo.”

David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, remarked, “Is the message young American men need to hear: ‘keep drinking beer with your friends and telling jokes that might offend people’? That doesn’t make you a ‘bad person,’ but there’s something broken in a culture that thinks that’s the most important message to give kids.”

Watch Vance’s remarks below or at the link.

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