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I wrote recently about the Democrat Party’s amusing, media-coordinated effort to brand itself as the Party of 21^st century masculinity. Salon.com’s contribution to that narrative was an opinion piece titled, “Joyful Warrior Tim Walz and the Last Days of Patriarchy,” by Christopher Cotton, an Ohio high school English teacher for 22 years. It presents a good opportunity to dissect the mind of the male feminist.

The thrust of the Salon article is that, as Cotton puts it, “Boys and men are behaving like a conquered people,” by which he means that the much-discussed “boy crisis” or “crisis of masculinity” in this country stems in large part from males having absorbed the cultural message that girls and women are proving themselves superior – in the classroom, in the business world, and in the political arena. “Boys and men tend toward competitiveness and winner/loser thinking,” he writes, “and they see a war that is going poorly, and may already have been lost. That perception is indeed a crisis.” The resulting “psychic wounds are profound,” resulting in “underachievement, underemployment, alcoholism, drug addiction, despair, suicide.”

Cotton states in the article that he doesn’t personally believe that girls are smarter than boys or superior to them, but this is the perception that boys and men have adopted, and that perception has “triggered this crisis.” And yet the rest of the article demonstrates that he views this crisis through a feminist lens and is fully onboard with the creed that “The Future is Female.” Though he does not describe himself as such in his article, he is clearly a male feminist.

A male feminist is a man who would define himself as an ally of women against what they believe to be the systemic sexism, rampant misogyny, and patriarchal oppression of contemporary America. In truth, he is someone who has bought into a false cultural Marxist ideology that is waging war against the very definitions of “male” and “female” in order to abolish the nuclear family, just as Karl Marx explicitly called for. The male feminist believes, as Marx did, that the nuclear family is patriarchal slavery for women and children, and that they – and the husbands and fathers oppressing them – can only be liberated by dismantling the patriarchy, the family, and masculinity itself. The whole damn system is guilty as hell, as the protest slogan goes, and has to burn.

A male feminist embraces the standard feminist assumptions about the sexes: that traditional masculinity is a toxic, vengeful, misogynist, petty, controlling, and violent social construct; and that conversely, women are the opposite of all these things. He also accepts unquestioningly that in America today something called “the patriarchy” rules and oppresses women; in fact, patriarchy in America is no more real than systemic racism. And the self-loathing male feminist also faults men for all the problems and conflicts in society; women, by contrast, are the solution.

Despite the fact that there is no historical evidence of a society dominated by women, the male feminist nevertheless believes there was a time in the distant, misty past when societies were matriarchal and there was less conflict between people, and between people and the natural order. Cotton claims that “a very long time ago,” before the “great overthrow” – i.e., the beginning of Western civilization – men who were jealous of women’s spiritual authority decided to arrogate absolute power for themselves and “launch the patriarchy.” He says the virulent misogyny of the “Abrahamic religions” recast women into subservient roles, and men have clung jealously and brutally to their patriarchal power ever since.

Cotton argues that men suffer from a “frustrated” sense of “birthright” that “lives on in the male subconscious” and that is threatened by women surpassing them in various arenas. He argues that masculinity is rooted in a toxic, ego-driven competition and aggression that have made a bloody mess of the world, and that it’s time for men to step aside, let women take over, and let them set the world aright.

“The end of patriarchy,” Cotton assures men, “is not a victory for women and a defeat for men, it turns out, but an opening for all of us. It provides an opportunity for deep fulfillment, for an emotional richness unimaginable to our grandfathers.” In fact, “The era of post-patriarchy might offer the best hope for the future of our species.”

But there is an evil obstacle to this “female ascendancy”: Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, which he describes as “a desperate attempt to recover the supposed lost birthright of men and restore a perceived rightful power.” He believes that insecure MAGA men are guilty of “American far-right terrorism,” which he does not define except to say that it is “first and foremost a misogynist phenomenon. We see it online in the sickening, violent, sexualized hate directed at women who have power or who merely speak up for themselves.”

He offers no examples of this supposed MAGA hate for women, but presumably he is referring to Right-wing opposition to Kamala Harris. I’m a Right-winger, and I can assure Mr. Cotton that our complaints about the Democrat presidential candidate have nothing to do with her sex but with her far-Left agenda, epic incompetence, race-baiting, lies, and total absence of gravitas and authority. I am unaware of a single serious conservative commentator who has expressed “hatred” of her at all, much less because she’s a woman.

Cotton adds that “[t]here is a special fury among the extreme right directed at white women who are not at home having babies.” He does not define “extreme right,” nor does he give an example of this “special fury.” This is just ugly, bigoted nonsense; I would wager that he lives, as I once did, in a narrowly circumscribed progressive bubble and does not personally know a single conservative. He has simply absorbed the demonized stereotype of conservative men that is relentlessly promoted by his Party’s propagandists.

(If feminist ally Cotton wants to see real-world examples of hateful misogyny, he can look at what his own Party is doing to women by supporting the trans agenda and erasing women’s private spaces and women’s sports.)

Cotton concludes his Salon article by asserting oddly that Kamala’s running mate Tim Walz has a “classic middle-American dad vibe” which “infuriates” and “drives MAGA men nuts.” Again, he cites no examples. I know many, many conservative men and I feel confident speaking for all of them when I say not one of us is infuriated or driven nuts by Walz’s purported manliness. Not one of us feels threatened or exasperated by his so-called 21^st century masculinity. What we are concerned about is the same thing that concerns us about Kamala Harris: their radical, totalitarian designs on America.

Male feminists like Christopher Cotton are in the ideological grip of a Marxist delusion about human nature and society. They are not allies for women in a struggle against hateful oppression; instead, they are facilitating an agenda designed to tear women away from the meaningful bonds of family, and to consign them to slavery to an all-powerful State.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior