Vice President J.D. Vance claimed that men are under attack for being men at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the largest conferences of movement conservatives.

His argument, which Republicans have long made, is that “our culture” suppresses men and tells them that they’re bad because they like to tell jokes and have beer. He did not explain who or what in American culture opposes jokes and beer.

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“If your masculinity is defined by the vehicle you drive, you’re doing it wrong.”

“The cultural message — and I think the president’s and mine is the exact opposite –but our cultural message is I think that it wants to turn everybody, whether male or female, into androgynous idiots who think the same, talk the same, and act the same,” he said.

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“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 going to help with our public policy to make it possible to do that,” he added.

Vance is far from the first conservative to argue that America hates men in order to advance a political agenda that has little to do with helping men. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), for example, wrote a book called Manhood and tried to build his political brand around being a defender of masculinity.

This argument is generally a way of attacking LGBTQ+ people, even though there are plenty of masculine queer and trans people, and they are often the people who actually do get told not to be masculine by mainstream culture.

In fact, Vance had very little to say late last year when the audience at a rally started chanting “Tampon Tim,” a reference to how Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed a law that allowed some schools to distribute period products in boys bathrooms. It was a way to help some teen boys feel more masculine by helping them fit into a traditionally masculine space, and conservatives hated the measure so much that they made it their main criticism of Walz.

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