Nicole Russell's Excellent Blame-Shifting Adventure: How to Solve the Male Crisis by Yelling at Feminists and Misquoting C.S. Lewis
USA Today: Our Columnists Get Paid by the Culture War, Not the Word
Nicole Russell opens her column with a Camille Paglia quote from 1990. “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.” She calls this an uncomfortable truth. What it actually is, is a provocation from a contrarian academic who has spent decades fighting with mainstream feminists. Paglia wrote that in *Sexual Personae*, a dense book about art history, not a policy memo. Using her as a stand-in for “the left” is like using Dennis Rodman as a stand-in for American diplomacy. Yes, he did the thing once, but nobody appointed him spokesman. Russell treats Paglia as though she represents the feminist consensus when, in reality, Paglia is the guest the mainstream keeps uninviting. That is not a strong foundation for an argument.
More importantly, the line itself only works if you ignore who was actually allowed to build things for most of recorded history. For centuries, women were barred from universities, guilds, property ownership, and political power. If men built the visible architecture of civilization, they also built the walls that kept women outside. Pointing to the result and blaming the excluded group is the kind of logic that would flunk a seventh-grade history fair.
C.S. Lewis Called. He Wants His Context Back.
Russell drops a C.S. Lewis quote like it is a mic drop. “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” She claims Lewis saw the “trap” of the left neutering men. Here is the problem. Lewis wrote *The Abolition of Man* in 1943. He was responding to a British English textbook called *The Control of Language* by Alexander King and Martin Ketley. The book taught that statements about beauty or value were just expressions of personal feeling. Lewis argued that if you teach children there is no real goodness, you remove the emotional and moral center that connects reason to behavior. He called this center the “chest.” His argument was about moral education, not feminism. He was not writing about the MeToo movement. He was not writing about American gender politics in 2026. He was writing about poetry lessons in upper-form British schools during World War II. Russell yanks a 1943 quote about a textbook completely out of its context and pretends it is a prediction of modern liberalism. That is not an argument. That is a parlor trick.
The Podcast Where the Left Said the Exact Opposite of What She Claims
Russell points to a *New York Times* podcast episode titled “America Has a Masculinity Crisis” as proof that the left is “puzzled” by its own creation. She claims the takeaway is that the right offers young men community while the left berates them. She quotes Nadja Spiegelman asking, “If on the left what men are hearing is ‘Men are trash,’ doesn’t it make sense, then, that the right is their safe space?” What Russell leaves out is that Spiegelman asks this as a question she wants to solve, not as a concession. The same podcast features Frederick Joseph explicitly calling the manosphere “toxic,” “insidious,” and “heinous.” He calls President Trump an alleged rapist and describes right-wing influencer culture as disgusting. Ruth Whippman, the other guest, says the progressive “shut up” narrative is harmful, but she also frames patriarchy as a system that harms everyone, including men. The episode is a nuanced conversation about how the left can do better, not an endorsement of the right. Russell treats a diagnostic question as an admission of guilt. That is called cherry-picking, and it does not become less obvious just because you bold the font.
The Survey Says: Andrew Tate Came in Last, But Let’s Blame Feminism Anyway
Russell cites an Institute for Family Studies survey to argue that young men are adrift and turning right. She notes, correctly, that the survey found parents ranked as the most influential role models and that young men value sacrifice, strength, responsibility, and leadership. She also notes, correctly, that Andrew Tate ranked last among admired figures. Then she ignores her own evidence. If young men reject Tate and admire their parents, the “manosphere welcoming them with open arms” narrative collapses. The survey actually says young men are not captured by online influencers. Their hopes are being frustrated by economic obstacles, not by feminist rhetoric. The report states that young men care about their status, want to contribute, and are distressed by the gap between their circumstances and their goals. It does not say they are angry at women. Russell uses the survey’s headline numbers to build a crisis, then skips the part where the crisis is economic and relational, not political. That is like reading a weather report about a drought and blaming it on the umbrella industry.
Men Are Responsible for Their Own Behavior. Duh.
Russell’s entire thesis depends on treating adult men as passive objects with no agency. She writes that the left “neutered” men and “pushed them aside,” as if a generation of males were simply waiting for instructions and got the wrong memo. This is nonsense. Men are not pets who forgot to neuter themselves because the vet handed out gender studies pamphlets. They are human beings who make choices. The data on college degrees shows a complex shift driven by cost, job markets, and changing social expectations. The suicide rate among men in 2024 was roughly four times higher than among women, which is a genuine tragedy that demands better mental health access and economic support, not a lecture about feminist rhetoric. Blaming women for men’s internal struggles is the kind of cop-out that would get laughed out of a freshman philosophy seminar. If your response to a man’s pain is to point at a woman who asked for a raise, you are not solving a crisis. You are selling a scapegoat.
The Receipts Do Not Lie
When you strip away the culture-war packaging, Russell’s column is a highlight reel of logical shortcuts. She uses a contrarian feminist as a stand-in for an entire movement. She uses a 1943 book about moral education as a crystal ball for 2026 gender politics. She quotes a *New York Times* podcast that explicitly rejects the manosphere and pretends it endorses the right. She cites a survey showing young men reject toxic influencers, then claims the manosphere is winning. She never proves that the left’s “men are trash” rhetoric caused anything, because she never establishes how many people actually say that, or how it reached these supposed victims, or what policy she is even talking about. She just asserts a cause, asserts an effect, and dares you to notice the gap. I noticed. You should too.
If thou dost hunger for turgid prose that turns a 1943 book about English class into a prophecy of gender politics, then avail thyself of the original windbag's intellectual incontinence here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/06/07/male-mental-health-crisis-feminism-gender-divide/90403105007/
Works Cited
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2026, May 20). *Suicide data and statistics*. https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/data/index.html
Institute for Family Studies. (2026, March). *Young men aren’t checked out. Their hopes are being frustrated*. https://ifstudies.org/blog/young-men-are-not-checked-out-their-hopes-are-being-frustrated
Lewis, C. S. (1943). *The abolition of man*. Oxford University Press.
Paglia, C. (1990). *Sexual personae: Art and decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson*. Yale University Press.
Pew Research Center. (2024, November 18). *More young women than men have college degrees*. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/11/18/us-women-are-outpacing-men-in-college-completion-including-in-every-major-racial-and-ethnic-group/
Russell, N. (2026, June 7). The left fueled the male crisis. Now it’s shocked. *USA Today*. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/06/07/male-mental-health-crisis-feminism-gender-divide/90403105007/
Spiegelman, N. (Host). (2026, May 29). *America has a masculinity crisis* [Audio podcast episode]. In *The Opinions*. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/opinion/young-men-masculinity-crisis.html