On January 20, 2026, I published an essay titled, “Backlash Against the Backlash: Feminists Reveal Their 2026 Playbook.” In the essay, I commented on two items written by feminist authors. The first item was an article published in Foreign Affairs, titled, “How to Save the Fight for Women’s Rights: The Backlash Against Democracy Calls for New Strategies.” The second item was a report published by UN Women and the UN Research Institute for Social Development titled, “Understanding Backlash Against Gender Equality: Evidence, Trends and Policy Responses.”The aims of the UN’s report and the article in Foreign Affairs were to communicate with activist readers the feminist playbook for 2026. The components of that playbook were listed in my previous essay, and they included platitudes like “strengthen[ing] democratic institutions” and “strengthen[ing] broad-based coalitions.” But they also include things like investing in initiatives that include boys and men, and recommendations to use words like “family,” “life,” and “care” in new lights. Overall, the aim of the 2026 feminist playbook is to pushback against the growing “backlash” against feminism and “gender equality” activism.On April 25, 2026, the Journal of Gender Studies published an article titled, “The limits of ‘backlash’ masculinity: on the value of reframing gendered resistance as ‘countermovement’.” The article was written by Steven Roberts and Stephanie Westcott—both feminists, working at universities in the city of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia.The aim of Roberts and Wescott’s paper was to encourage feminists to start using the concept and word “countermovement” rather “backlash” when describing individuals and organizations who are both pushing back against the excesses of feminism and advocating for the well-being of boys and men. Roberts and Wescott identified these individuals and organizations as those who coordinate “masculinist restoration” and seek “not just to oppose feminism, but to re-legitimize patriarchal authority…reshape public discourse, and institutionalize normative masculinity through appeals to common sense, victimhood, or moral order.”Roberts and Wescott did not provide names of individuals or organizations who they had in mind when writing their paper. Instead, they referred only to “men’s rights groups,” “anti-gender organizations,” “manosphere influencers,” and “state-aligned political actors.” The lack of these details is important because it is unclear if persons or organizations who are genuinely concerned about boys’ and men’s well-being, and who are engaged in legitimate discourse about sex differences and related academic theories, are part of these categories.According to Roberts and Wescott, countermovements are “strategically organized actors who mobilize in opposition to progressive gains,” and they reflect a “reaction to disruption, i.e. a patterned, protective response to the destabilization of normative orders.”Roberts and Wescott then expanded on their conceptualization of “countermovement” and how it differs from that of “backlash””:“we propose countermovement as a tool that may help gender scholars move beyond backlash as a language of grievance or regression, towards a more coordinated and politically attuned understanding of masculinity as an active site of power. This reframing also foregrounds masculinity as a formalized political field, rather than an abstractive concept or identity: one in which legitimacy is contested, power is reorganized, and new strategies for reasserting or recalibrating patriarchal dominance are actively trialled. Put simply, backlash and countermovement operate at different analytic registers. Backlash, we contend, is most effective in capturing how gendered resistance is experienced, expressed, and circulated at the level of affect and discourse. Countermovement, by contrast, provides a framework for analysing how such resistance is organized, coordinated, and mobilized as a political project.”Elsewhere in their paper, Roberts and Wescott added that misogyny is a “mobilizing force” that provides “ideological coherence” in countermovements against feminist progressivism. Thus, Roberts and Wescott equated men’s rights groups and mansophere influencers with misogyny, though example names of such individuals and groups were entirely absent from their paper.So, why have I highlighted Roberts and Wescott’s paper?First, the paper itself an indirect admission that boys’ and men’s advocates have been effective in raising awareness of issues facing the male population. Roberts and Wescott’s paper is a reaction to this progress, and it seems to reflect some degree of worry that the grip on the typical academic narrative is slipping. Remarkably, instead of using this moment to introspect and consider if the promotion of ideas like “male privilege,” “patriarchy,” and “gender inequality” might have gone too far, feminist academics and activists are digging their heels in deeper. In doing so, they are revealing an ugly underbelly—one characterized by a shocking lack of empathy and understanding for boys and men. Moreover, to sustain their careers, often via taxpayer-funded salaries, they are resorting to cancelations of nonconforming voices, and they are spinning data and pushing out propaganda to desperately maintain their narrative.A second reason for highlighting Roberts and Westcott’s paper is that the paper openly presented another step in the feminist playbook—a shift in activist nomenclature and the thinking that underlies it. Knowledge of these intellectual underpinnings is important. With this information, men’s advocates can predict feminist plays. For example, groups like UN Women may start using the word “countermovement” in some of their reports or social media communications, whereas they might use the word “backlash” in other documents or communications. By having a prior awareness of these two words and their conceptual underpinnings, men’s advocates can respond more quickly, precisely, and academically to the relevant documents and communications. In other words, by having a copy of the playbook before the game begins, men’s advocates can stop a play before it goes anywhere.Third, Roberts and Westcott’s paper exemplifies a concerning characteristic about activist academia. Universities are meant to be politically neutral. Yet, academics like Roberts and Westcott issue intellectual directives to political activists from atop their taxpayer-funded tower of privilege. This feature of academia, which has existed for many years, warrants more media attention, and it requires correction.Finally, as progress toward boys’ and men’s issues continues in Australia, the feminist playbook, and the academic papers that inform it, should not be forgotten. For example, one of the proposed plays was to invest more in initiatives that include boys and men. That sounds friendly, but it is a trojan horse, and appointed leaders in the men’s space, such as Victoria’s first ever Minister for Men and Boys, should be aware of that. In the Minister’s case, he will be surrounded by the many feminist academics in his state, who will want to shape the position to be part of the playbook. In fact, just one day after the appointment was made, Roberts and Westcott co-authored an article in The Conversation titled, “A new minister in Victoria will tackle the manosphere. Here’s what they should do.” In the article, Roberts, Westcott, and their colleagues shared their desire for the new Minister position to be used as a vehicle to counter the “countermovement.”“It’s also essential that beliefs in boys and men “falling behind” or being victims of feminism and gender equality are strongly refuted. These beliefs are promoted by manosphere myths that cause significant harm.”Thus, if male leaders in the policy and government space are not careful, and do not exhibit a backbone, then their magnanimity will be used as a weakness to be exploited. My recommendation to these men is to be unwavering in adopting an androcentric approach to boys’ and men’s well-being—knowing full well that such an approach will indirectly improve the lives of girls and women. In taking this approach, male leaders will have various labels thrown at them. “Misogynist” is one of them, and academics like Roberts and Westcott shamefully provide the intellectual greenlight for why such a label is deemed permissible.We also know from Roberts and Westcott’s paper that other labels exist—some of which refer to the collective of these supposed misogynists. It will be interesting to observe how these labels are used moving forward and what the response to them is.For example, you might imagine a future scenario, where an activist journalist, who follows UN Women’s X feed and who read the Foreign Affairs article in early 2026, tries a “gotcha” question on a man who is leading a new government role in the space of male well-being.The journalist might ask in a smug tone, “Sir, there are some concerns that you are anti-woman, perhaps even a misogynist. Can you clarify for the record – are you part of the backlash against gender equality?”My recommendation to this male leader is to not dodge the question. Instead, the man should stand proudly—remembering all the sons, brothers, fathers, and grandfathers that he represents, and knowing full well of all the unfair tricks and traps set in feminist academic writing—and respond with a confident and easy-going grin on his face:“No. I’m part of the countermovement.”Related Content at The Nuzzo LetterSUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTERIf you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you.Thanks for reading The Nuzzo Letter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jameslnuzzo.substack.com

“Shorter life expectancy among men in general, if likely avoidable, would clearly be an issue of public health importance based on the magnitude of potential population impact. However, men as a group have more wealth, influence, and prestige, so this difference would not be a social injustice and, therefore, not a health disparity or equity issue.”That statement was written in a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2011. The title of the paper is “Health Disparities and Health Equity: The Issue Is Justice,” and it has been downloaded over 97,000 times according to the publisher’s website and cited over 1,400 times according to Google Scholar. The lead author of the paper is Paula Braveman, who is currently a professor emeritus at the University of California – San Francisco. In writing the paper, Braveman was accompanied by six co-authors, all of whom have doctoral letters after their names. Remarkably, none of those letters created immunity from the anti-male prejudice expressed in the statement that the authors signed off on.Putting aside all the nasty and inaccurate things said about boys and men in humanities journals, Braveman’s statement is one of the most irresponsible things that I have ever read about men’s well-being in a health or medical journal. Her statement is shocking in its dismissiveness, its irrationality, and its inhumanity. It was published 15 years ago, but it is still relevant, because it helps to explain how we arrived at our current situation in which group identities are prioritized over individual flesh-and-blood human beings. It helps to make sense of why substantially more funds and initiatives have been dedicated to women’s than men’s well-being, even though male life expectancy has been significantly shorter than female life expectancy for many years.The misguided ideas expressed in Braveman’s statement come from critical theory, critical race theory, and intersectionality. The injection of these ideas into the public health domain can be traced back to the founding of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health within the World Health Organization in 2005, including the Commission’s 2008 report titled, “Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on social determinants of health.” The report included a section on “gender equity,” which only discussed women’s health.In the past year, men’s health has received increased attention in the public policy sphere, and continued progress seems likely. As this progress is made, investigations into how discussions of sex and public health became so historically one-sided ought to also be conducted. The individuals who created the one-sided narrative ought to be known, and their ideas ought to be dissected.Here, my purpose is to identify Paula Braveman and her colleagues as some of the individuals responsible for the years-long denial of boys’ and men’s health issues, and to explain why Braveman’s statement is incorrect, as to ensure a proper defence is readily available the next time that such a statement is made.So, let us reiterate Braveman’s statement and then dissect it.Reiterating Braveman’s statementFirst, Braveman said that male life expectancy is not an area of public health importance. Second, Braveman said that the reason that male life expectancy is not an area of public health importance is because it is not a social justice, health disparity, or health equity issue. Third, Braveman said that the reason that male life expectancy is not a social justice, health disparity, or health equity issue is because “men as a group have more wealth, influence, and prestige” than women.Dissecting Braveman’s statementBraveman’s statement is problematic on many fronts.First, Braveman incorrectly assumed that for a topic to fall within the purview of public health that it must be a social justice, health disparity, or health equity issue. Yet, the field of public health existed well before Woke concepts like “equity” and “social justice” became popular among activist academics. Furthermore, Braveman’s notion that men’s health and life expectancy are of concern to public health only if certain socioeconomic or sociopolitical conditions or qualifiers are met also is misaligned with the history of public health. Therefore, Braveman’s view is not a health or medical view, it is a misguided philosophical and sociopolitical view.Second, Braveman illogically classified all men as being the same. Braveman said that men as a “group” have more wealth, influence, and prestige than women. However, this was a sweeping generalization that ignored the range of life experiences of many men. One example is homelessness, which is a topic that falls within the domain of public health. In the U.S., men are approximately 70% of the unsheltered homeless. Homeless people have little or no wealth, influence, or prestige.Third, when discussing shorter male life expectancy, Braveman added the qualifying phrase “if likely avoidable.” In doing this, Braveman seems to have expressed doubt as to whether shorter life expectancy among males is avoidable or preventable. However, this deterministic view of the sex difference in life expectancy is misaligned with historical datafrom the U.S. Since 1900, the sex difference in life expectancy has been as large as 7.8 years in the 1970s and as small as 1-2 years in the early 1900s. If the sex difference in life expectancy was due purely to biological factors, then one might expect the size of the sex difference to remain roughly the same over time. Yet, the large sex difference in life expectancy in the 1970s is believed to have been due to high rates of cigarette smoking among men, which caused them to develop lung cancer and ischemic heart disease at higher rates than women. Cigarette smoking is a modifiable risk factor of early mortality, as are many other causes of early male mortality – for example, poor diet, lack of physical activity, and drug and alcohol abuse. Thus, Braveman’s deterministic view of male life expectancy ignores the role of preventive health actions that can alter how long someone lives. In fact, what makes Braveman’s qualifying phrase particularly egregious is that it is the specific role of the field of public health to address the preventive health measures that can enhance the quality and length of people’s lives.IntersectionalityAnother problem with Braveman’s statement is that it contradicts itself, given that Braveman’s guiding philosophy is one that includes intersectionality. The contradiction is that many individuals who fall within the intersectionality framework based on race are boys and men. Thus, Braveman simultaneously wanted to virtue signal by saying that public health should be focused on only so-called oppressed, marginalized, or minority groups, without understanding that many of the males who she disregarded with her blanket statement about life expectancy are members of these minority groups. For example, in the year that Braveman’s article was published, there were 20.4 million black males in the U.S., accounting for 6.5% of the total U.S. population. There were also 8.3 million Asian or Pacific Islander males, who accounted for 2.6% of the total U.S. population, and 2.1 million American Indian or Alaskan Native males, who accounted for 0.6% of the total U.S. population (see Table IV here). Life expectancy for black males in the U.S. in the year that Braveman’s article was published was 72.2 years—the lowest of any demographic group other than perhaps American Indian and Alaskan Native men.What’s more, these demographic data do not account for boys and men who might fit into other intersectional categories – for example, Hispanic males based on ethnicity, non-heterosexual males based on sexual orientation, or mentally or physically impaired males based on disability status. After all these intersectional categories are accounted for, the only males of non-interest to Braveman are heterosexual white males who do not have a disability.BoysAnother concerning aspect of Braveman’s statement is its implications for boys. Braveman referred to “men” rather than boys. Nevertheless, all men start life as boys, and boys’ early life experiences have a great impact on their lives as adults. And one reason that male life expectancy is shorter than female life expectancy is because of the disproportionate number of deaths that occur among boys and young men. In other words, one cannot disentangle male life expectancy from boys’ health.Yet, Braveman’s statement implied that public health should also not take an interest in boys, because, one day, all those boys will supposedly have greater “wealth, influence, and prestige” than their female counterparts. However, boys have no power; they are entirely dependent on their parents and other adults in society. Moreover, compared to girls, boys exhibit many worse health outcomes and educational outcomes, such as higher school dropout rates and greater rates of communication disorders, autism spectrum disorder, Tourette Syndrome, accidental drownings, suicide, etc.Conclusion: personal accountabilityIn conclusion, misguided philosophy underlies why boys’ and men’s well-being have not been given appropriate focus by big public health. Paula Braveman’s statement provides a prime example of this. Her statement was prejudicial, stereotyped, and not evidence-based. For this dereliction, Braveman and her co-authors should be held personally accountable. Braveman’s paper was presumably approved by multiple peer reviewers and the journal’s editor. Those individuals are also responsible, albeit to a different degree. International groups like the World Health Organization are also to blame, because they set the tone for global- and national-level health policies. Countless numbers of other health officials and academics have also played a role, as they have pushed Woke Medicine in recent years. Finally, women’s health advocates, like those who wrote the recent National Academies’ grand plan for the future of women’s health, are also responsible, as they have continually exhibited a childish inability to express concurrent care for both women and men.Men and women should not be viewed as enemies caught in a zero-sum game. They are Nature’s pair, and they are meant to flourish together. As this positive, forward-looking message begins to gain traction, one need not shy away from simultaneous discussions about problematic ideas from the past, and the individuals who created and spread those ideas.Moving forward, fear of personal accountability can serve as a formidable deterrent against the publication of wrongheaded ideas—ones that we do not want to read again in our fairer and healthier future.Related Content at The Nuzzo LetterSUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTERIf you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you.Thanks for reading The Nuzzo Letter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jameslnuzzo.substack.com

LEADING ARTICLESource of Usual Health Care for Adults Age 18 and Older: United States, 2024NCHS Data Brief Summary: In 2024, 9 in 10 adults reported having a source of usual health care, with women more likely to report having a source of usual care (93.3%) than men (87.1%). Women were more likely to report a doctor’s office or health center as their source of usual care (82.2%) compared with men (72.6%). The percentage of adults reporting an urgent care center or clinic in a drug store or grocery store as their source of usual care declined with age. The percentage of adults with a Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center or VA outpatient clinic as their source of usual care increased with age. Men were more likely (2.0%) than women (1.5%) to report a hospital emergency room as their usual source of health care.THE NUZZO LETTER IN THE NEWSUN Propaganda Campaigns Can be Traced Back to Media Biases from 15 Years AgoDomestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance (DAVIA)Nuzzo on Exercise and Mental HealthTherapy DisruptorsEpisode description: Exercise is not yet a big part of the mental health treatment landscape. Exercise needs to be a major part of the mental health landscape and Dr. James L. Nuzzo is here to make the case. It’s inexpensive if not free, frequently effective immediately, and has none of the side effects you’ll see listed in the Big Pharma TV ads. Exercise as a mental health tool is more than just a politically correct platitude, and this podcast may just change your mind about how you view it in your arsenal of treatment options.ARTICLES AND ESSAYSSex/GenderThe War on Biology Is Far From OverReality’s Last StandActivists are flooding the zone with pseudoscience on sex because too much of their politics now depends on it.FAQ about the IOC Policy on the Protection of the Female (Women’s) Category in Olympic SportInternational Olympic Committee (IOC)Gender Blind Spot: United Nations Neglects the Global Crisis of Male HomelessnessInternational Council for Men and BoysBrazil establishes penalties of up to 5 years for interrupting a womanLa Derecha Diario(See also the article by Free Speech Union Brasil on Substack titled,“Brazil’s Senate votes to criminalise “misogyny” )The Rise of the Anti-ManosphereThe DispatchOpinion: Another generation of men will be left behind as Australia creates a generation of lost boysWestern Sydney University(See the related article in The Australian titled, “‘Lost boys’: another generation of men will be left behind.” See also my brief comment on these articles on X here.)Psychologist Dr. John Barry Exposes The Truth About MasculinityTHE SALIENTSEpisode description: 1. Why male suicide was dismissed as “men being better at DIY” in his psychology class. 2. How negative messaging about masculinity creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. 3. Gamma Bias: the hidden cognitive distortion shaping how society sees men. 4. Why men express depression differently (and why therapists miss it). 5. The fertility crisis and whether we’re heading toward “civilizational collapse”. 6. What men can do to reclaim their sense of selfEducationTexas Tech University System to phase out all sexual orientation, gender identity programsThe College FixCAPS or no caps: Scholars reject capitalization rules for feminist ‘activism,’ ‘trans’ identityThe College FixNorth Carolina Is a Model for Higher-Education ReformThe Tar Heel State has dramatically improved its universities in recent years.Martin Center for Academic RenewalBeyond protection?University AffairsThe impact of ethics sprawl on researchers at Canadian universities.Exercise ScienceSex differences in wheelchair marathon performanceArchives of Physical Medicine and RehabilitationAbstract: Objective: To evaluate the historical trends of sex differences in athletic performance and participation among male and female wheelchair marathon athletes Design: This retrospective, observational study utilized secondary, publicly available data of the Boston, Chicago, and New York City marathons within the Wheelchair Division from 1984 to 2023. Athletic performance and participation were evaluated across all marathon events and over time using univariate analysis of variance and Pearson correlations. Results: Sex differences in athletic performance were observed with males outperforming females in all marathon events over time (p Conclusion: Significant sex differences were observed in wheelchair marathon performance and participation. These findings highlight the importance of sex as a key biological variable related to human health and performance, especially among wheelchair athletes.American College of Sports Medicine Position Stand. Resistance Training Prescription for Muscle Function, Hypertrophy, and Physical Performance in Healthy Adults: An Overview of ReviewsMedicine and Science in Sports & ExerciseAbstract: Purpose: The aim of this overview of reviews was to determine the impact of resistance training (RT) prescription on muscle function and hypertrophy, utilizing evidence synthesis methods. It updates the American College of Sports Medicine 2009 Position Stand, “Progression models in resistance training for healthy adults.” Data sources: Ovid MEDLINE(R) ALL, Ovid Emcare, Ovid Embase, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, EBSCOhost SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science Core Collection current to October 2024. Eligibility criteria: Eligible systematic reviews synthesized randomized trials of healthy adults (≥18 yr) who completed RT (≥6 wk; range: 6–52 wk), compared with a group that completed no exercise or an alternative RT program, and reported the change in muscle function, size, or physical performance. Results: We synthesized data from 137 systematic reviews (>30,000 participants). Compared with no exercise (control), RT significantly improved muscle strength, size (hypertrophy), power, endurance, contraction velocity, gait speed, balance, and multiple physical function outcomes. Few RT prescription (RTx) variables affected primary adaptations. However, voluntary strength was enhanced by lifting heavier loads (≥80% one-repetition maximum), through a complete range of motion, for 2–3 sets, at the beginning of training sessions, and ≥2 sessions/wk. Muscle hypertrophy was enhanced by higher volumes (≥10 sets/wk) and eccentric overload. Power was enhanced by moderate loads (30%–70% one-repetition maximum), low-to-moderate volume (≤24 repetitions⋅sets), Olympic-style weightlifting, and power RT (fast concentric phase). Power RT enhanced physical function. Training to momentary muscle fatigue, equipment type, exercise complexity, set structure, time under tension, blood flow restriction, and periodization did not consistently impact training outcomes. Conclusions: Healthy adults should perform progressive RT, with variable prescription consistent with our findings, to improve muscle function, size, and physical performance. Muscle strength, hypertrophy, power, and certain components of physical function can be enhanced by manipulating the RT variables highlighted.HISTORICAL ARCHIVESSexual molestation of males: Associations with psychological disturbanceBritish Journal of Psychiatry (2018)Abstract: Background: There are no epidemiological data in Europe on associations between sexual molestation in males and psychological disturbance. Aims: To investigate whether sexual molestation in males is a significant predictor of psychological disturbance. Method: We recruited men attending general practice and genitourinary medicine services. Participants took part in a computerised interview about sexual molestation as children or adults. We ranked reported sexual experiences into three categories of decreasing severity. Each category was treated as an independent predictor in a multivariate analysis predicting different types of psychological disturbance. Results: Men who reported child sexual abuse were more likely to report any type of psychological disturbance. Men who reported sexual molestation in adulthood were 1.7 (1.0–2.8) times more likely to have experienced a psychological disorder, but self-harm was the single most likely problem to occur (odds ratio⩵2.6, range⩵l.3–5.2). Men reporting ‘consenting’ sexual experiences when aged under 16 years also were more likely to report acts of self-harm (odds ratio⩵l.7, range⩵0–2.8). Conclusions: Sexual abuse as a child or adult is associated with later psychological problems. All forms of sexual molestation were predictive of deliberate self-harming behaviour in men.Physical fitness differences between prepubescent boys and girlsJournal of Strength and Conditioning Research (2012)Abstract: The purpose of this study was to analyze in which physical capabilities boys and girls are closer or distant. An additional objective was to find which of the body fat, physical activity, and somatotype factors have a greater effect on prepubescent children’s physical fitness. This was a cross-sectional study involving 312 children (10.8 ± 0.4 years). The physical fitness assessment employed sets of aerobic fitness, strength, flexibility, speed, agility, and balance. The boys presented higher values in all selected tests, except tests of balance and flexibility, in which girls scored better. Gender differences in the physical fitness were greatest in the explosive strength of upper (p ≤ 0.01, η(p)(2) = 0.09) and lower limbs (p ≤ 0.01, η(p)(2) = 0.08), although with a medium-size effect of gender, and smaller in the abdominal (p > 0.05, η(p)(2) = 0.007) and upper limbs (p > 0.05, η(p)(2) = 0.003) muscular endurance, and trunk extensor strength and flexibility (p > 0.05, η(p)(2) = 0.001). The endomorphic (p ≤ 0.01, η(p)(2) = 0.26) in the girls, and the ectomorphic (p ≤ 0.01, η(p)(2) = 0.31) and mesomorphic (p ≤ 0.01, η(p)(2) = 0.26) in the boys, had the high-sized effect on the physical fitness. The physical activity in the girls, and the endomorphic and body fat in the boys, did not have a significant effect. These findings can help in the planning of activities that take into account the success and motivation of both boys and girls and thus increase levels of physical activity and physical fitness at school. However, in prepubescent children, one cannot neglect the influence of genetic determinism, observed from the morphoconstitutional point of view.Sex-related differences in vision are heterogeneousScience Reports (2018)Abstract: Despite well-established sex differences for cognition, audition, and somatosensation, few studies have investigated whether there are also sex differences in visual perception. We report the results of fifteen perceptual measures (such as visual acuity, visual backward masking, contrast detection threshold or motion detection) for a cohort of over 800 participants. On six of the fifteen tests, males significantly outperformed females. On no test did females significantly outperform males. Given this heterogeneity of the sex effects, it is unlikely that the sex differences are due to any single mechanism. A practical consequence of the results is that it is important to control for sex in vision research, and that findings of sex differences for cognitive measures using visually based tasks should confirm that their results cannot be explained by baseline sex differences in visual perception.RUBBISH BINA new minister in Victoria will tackle the manosphere. Here’s what they should doThe Conversation(See my brief comment on this article on X here.)Masculinity, masculinist politics, and political extremismJournal of Gender Studies(See my brief comment on this article on X here.)Wildfires in the (M)anthropocene: fieldnotes from a young woman social scientist in PortugalGender, Place & CultureAbstract: The gendered character of wildfire research has marginalised alternative knowledges and realities, particularly those of women. This article examines how situated epistemologies can foster alternative ways of knowing and governing fire-risk in the context of feminist and decolonial critiques of the Anthropocene. As a young woman researcher early in her career studying social dynamics in communities affected by severe wildfires, fieldwork posed challenges due to my personal background and identity. However, it also offered opportunities to explore gender relations and practices in fire-prone areas of Portugal. What also meant knowing untold stories of women and the power structures that entangle them. Drawing on autoethnographic data gathered during research in two rural communities of Central Portugal, it is argued that researchers’ embodied situatedness and experiences influence how wildfire knowledge is produced and the consequences that may follow. The paper aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on how male- and white-dominant narratives in wildfire science have marginalised knowledges and approaches, preventing the much-desired paradigm shift in fire-risk reduction policies and practices. Finally, a wildfire-situated epistemology is proposed as a means of reclaiming not only unreported realities and the forces of reproduction underpinning the (m)Anthropocene’s master narrative but also shedding light on the current invisibility of its women researchers.“Cis Hell”Journal of Gender StudiesAbstract: This paper develops the concept of cis hell to describe the regulatory normativity over all bodies based on gender biopolitics as a global political pandemic. Centring the recent UK Supreme Court’s 2025 Equality Act ruling and connecting it to similar examples across the world, we demonstrate how biopower operates through social movements inspired by the new authoritarianisms to establish transnational regimes of bodily control. Drawing connections between trans exclusion in the UK, USA and pronatalist policies in Turkey, Hungary, and Russia, we argue these seemingly disparate developments represent coordinated manifestations of biopolitical logic reducing human worth to reproductive capacity. Authoritarian innovation threatens and destroys modest progress towards human rights for vulnerable groups. ‘Gender-critical’ activism, despite protection claims, functions within a broader masculinist restoration project threatening collective prosperity by constraining human potential and re-centring white, male, and cis supremacy. The purported ‘safety’ of cisgender categorization creates a hell of rigid taxonomies undermining human flourishing across the gender spectrum, necessitating a radical reimagining of gender justice as essential to global prosperity through participative co-design processes inherent in new social movements theory focusing on social identity, human potential, and affect.Feminism, so confusing: Charli XCX’s Brat and nihilistic feminismCommunication and Critical/Cultural StudiesAbstract: This essay introduces “nihilistic feminism” as an emerging representational discourse in order to understand nihilism as a product of neoliberal and postfeminist ideals. I define nihilistic feminism as a disavowal of both patriarchy and feminism, characterizing feminism as necessary in theory but impossible in practice and, therefore, unworthy of pursuit; instead, nihilistic feminism positions fulfillment of individual pleasures as the only feasible alternative. This essay examines Charli XCX’s 2024 album Brat and its viral “brat summer” trend as exemplars, identifying three foundations of nihilistic feminism: political hopelessness and withdrawal, hedonistic hyperindividualism, and aestheticized (apolitical) chaos.The moral-political economy of discomfort: who is allowed to feel uncomfortable in higher educationPedagogy, Culture & SocietyAbstract: This conceptual paper interrogates the affective limits of discomfort in higher education by situating it within a broader moral-political economy. While work on ‘pedagogies of discomfort’ in the past has framed unease and disruption as pathways to ethical and transformative learning, this paper argues that not all discomfort is equally recognised or welcomed. Drawing on scholarship on affective governance, backlash politics, and DEI controversies in the United States, the analysis shows how universities selectively authorise certain forms of discomfort – those aligned with reflective growth, civility, and institutional legitimacy – while delegitimising others, such as anger, refusal, or exhaustion that expose structural injustice or institutional complicity. Introducing the concepts of authorised and unauthorised discomfort, the paper argues that discomfort becomes politically significant precisely when it exceeds the affective limits institutions are willing to tolerate. In doing so, the analysis reframes discomfort a site of ongoing struggle over affective legitimacy, authority, and voice.(See my brief comment on this article on X here.)SUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTERIf you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you!If you prefer to donate to a specific project, please see the Go Fund Me page for my current research on sex differences in muscle strength in children.Thanks for reading The Nuzzo Letter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jameslnuzzo.substack.com

On March 12, 2026, ABC News in Australia published an article titled, “Teachers, schools given handbook to combat misogynistic behaviour in classrooms.”The article highlighted a new guide published by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety and Monash University titled, “An Introductory Guide to the Manosphere and the Impacts for Young People, Teachers and Schools.”In this video, Tom Golden and I dissect the guide, highlighting its many flaws. Our discussion ties back to my recent essay/podcast, “Australian Research Council Funds Biased Project on “Anti-Women” Movements,” and to Tom’s recent essay, “The Manosphere Study That Reveals Academic Panic.” See also Janice Fiamengo’s recent essay, “Masculinity Experts “Map the Manosphere” and Find Nothing Good.”Related Content at The Nuzzo LetterSUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTERIf you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you!Thanks for reading The Nuzzo Letter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jameslnuzzo.substack.com

In the Rubbish Bin of the Weekly Roundup on July 27, 2025, I included a paper published in the journal Men and Masculinities titled, “Mapping of the Neo-Manosphere(s): New Directions for Research.” This paper was authored by Vivian Gerrand, Debbie Ging, Joshua Roose, and Michael Flood. The paper and its authors were supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC). ARC is one of Australia’s main funders of academic research, and its staff are 60-70% female.Joshua Roose is also an investigator on an ARC-funded project titled, “The Far Right: Intellectuals, Masculinity and Citizenship,” while both Roose and Flood are authors of the book, “Masculinity and Violent Extremism,” and they are co-investigators on a second ARC-funded project titled, “Anti-Women Online Movements; Pathways and Patterns of Participation.” This latter four-year project, which is scheduled to end in December of this year, was funded by Australian taxpayers at a level of $400,000. The stated aim of the project is to “understand the influences shaping men’s attraction to anti-women online movements and patterns of participation within them.” Here, my purpose is to briefly highlight the in-built bias in this project (and others like it) and briefly explain where research on such topics is going.First, the project disregards results from polls conducted in Australia and the United States on online abuse and harassment. These polls, several of which were published prior to the project’s start date in December 2022, clearly show that the proportion of women who experience online abuse and harassment is no greater than the proportion of men who experience online abuse and harassment. In fact, results from these polls typically show that men are more likely to report being victims of online abuse and harassment.Second, the project only intends to explore the male perpetrator – female victim paradigm. Data on the female perpetrator – male victim paradigm, the male perpetrator – male victim paradigm, and the female perpetrator – female victim paradigm will presumably not be captured. This means that topics like online misandry and expressed hate toward men will not be examined. Women’s political radicalization on the left will also not be examined, presumably because this political identity matches that of the researchers and the current federal government in Australia. Evidence of this radicalization exists in the form of polling data showing more women moving further to the Left in their political ideology, while men’s political beliefs have remained relatively stable. Also, one recent U.S. survey found that a greater proportion of women than men endorse political violence in the form of targeted murders of President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. But apparently it is the boys and men who are the political extremists in need of re-education!Also, there is no need to speculate on where this academic work is heading, because the activist academics are already telling us. In their 2025 paper in Men and Masculinities, the activist academics wrote:“…the regulation of online platforms must be brought to the fore. Social media ecosystems remain largely unregulated in their amplification of misogynistic content through opaque algorithmic recommendation systems. Government efforts to regulate them have met with fierce resistance and resulted in court cases – and not always successful ones (eSafety Commissioner 2024). Structural interventions must therefore include policy reforms that address not just content moderation, but also the architecture of virality, algorithmic bias, and platform accountability. Such approaches should complement rather than replace educational strategies, recognising that upstream regulation of the digital environment is as crucial to long-term prevention.”“As the manosphere becomes more diverse, politically incoherent, and ideologically unstable - driven predominantly by the whims of algorithmic capitalism - there is an increasingly urgent need to educate boys and men about gendered disinformation, mental health, gender-based abuse and the political economies of social media and influencer culture. This challenge is further complicated by the recent incursion of analyses from the field of evolutionary psychology into this space, as well as some psychotherapists working with boys, who eschew structural analyses of power, insist on immutable sex differences and claim that encouraging boys to express emotion is treating them as ‘defective girls’.”Importantly, the funded projects that I have mentioned are not one-offs. The Australian Communications and Media Authority is now pouring millions more dollars into a program called the eSafety Commissioner’s Preventing Tech-based Abuse of Women Grants Program. The funded projects will, as usual, be biased from the start. They will not acknowledge the lack of sex difference in online abuse victimization, and they will presumably only explore the male perpetration - female victimization paradigm. They will not be open to hearing about boys’ and men’s experiences or life challenges. In essence, the funding will be given to activist academics who will then use to generate one-sided information that the government will then use as rationale for creating sex-biased polices and increasing controls of freedom of expression online.Related Content at The Nuzzo LetterSUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTERIf you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you.Thanks for reading The Nuzzo Letter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jameslnuzzo.substack.com

On February 9, 2026, the Australian Communications and Media Authority – an agency within the country’s federal government – announced that it will be awarding several million dollars in grants for its latest taxpayer-funded adventure, the eSafety Commissioner’s Preventing Tech-based Abuse of Women Grants Program.The stated aim of the program is to “improve the safety of Australian women and their children through the prevention of technology-facilitated gender-based violence.” The program’s guidelines, which I have uploaded below, specify that grants will be awarded for prevention initiatives that do one of the following:1. “address one or more of the drivers of tech-based abuse against women and their children, and/or;2. aim to challenge and shift the prevailing social norms that contribute to tech-based abuse against women and their children, and/or;3. promote positive and respectful behaviour and accountability in men and boys that perpetrate or may perpetrate tech-based abuse against women and their children.”Groups who apply for these grants can ask for as much as $400,000, and projects that focus on First Nations women will be given priority.However, just like other grant programs, annual funding allotments, and federal budgets in Australia, the eSafety Commissioner’s program is sex-biased. Earlier this week, I summarized survey data that rebut the common misconception that online abuse and harassment predominantly impact girls and women.Four population-level surveys on online abuse and harassment have been carried out in Australia, and none of them have found that women are more likely than men to experience online abuse or harassment. Two of the surveys found identical rates of online abuse and harassment victimization between Australian men and women, while the other two surveys found victimization rates that were 3-4 percentage points higher in men than women. These surveys were conducted by different types of organizations, including universities, independent research firms, and the Australian Institute of Criminology.Not included in my previous summary was the eSafety Commissioner’s 2022 national survey on Australians’ negative experiences online. The reason that I did not include this survey was because the eSafety Commissioner’s Office suspiciously decided not to present the results in a sex-segregated manner. Therefore, the sex-specific rates of online abuse and harassment identified in that survey remain unknown.The Office’s decision to not present these results in a sex-segregated way is suspicious for at least three reasons. First, women’s health advocates are some of the strongest advocates for sex-segregated data. This advocacy stems from their misguided belief that women have been historically ignored as participants in research studies. Second, if the results from the Office’s survey were to have shown greater female than male victimization, the Office would surely have used those results to communicate an evidence-based need for more attention to girls and women. Third, on the Office’s website for “gendered violence,” data on online abuse and harassment are presented in a sex-segregated way. However, those data come from the 2022 survey published by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women (ANROWS). The survey by ANROWS found identical rates of ever experiencing online abuse or harassment in men and women, but the eSafety Commissioner’s Office misleads readers on their website by ignoring this inconvenient finding. Instead, the Office focuses only a specific subset of findings in which women reported greater victimization than men.Australia’s eSafety Commissioner’s Office is not alone in shady handling and reporting of data on online abuse and harassment. The United Nations (UN) also regularly engages in these tactics. For example, in 2025, UN Women published a report titled, Tipping Point: The Chilling Escalation of Online Violence Against Women in the Public Sphere. The report stated that 210 men and 641 women were surveyed in this study on online abuse and harassment. Yet, only the results from the female participants were published in the final report. Similarly, in 2021, UN Women published a report titled, Violence Against Women in the Online Space: Insights from a Multi-Country Study in the Arab States. The report stated that approximately 7,000 of the survey’s respondents were men, amounting to 65% of the total sample. Yet, UN Women did not publish the men’s results. With such data reporting methods, one cannot determine whether the women’s rates of online abuse and harassment are greater than the men’s rates, less than the men’s rates, or the same as the men’s rates. Notably, this suppression of male victimization data is common in UN propaganda, and, in 2025, the UN suppressed male victimization data when it made “digital violence” against women its theme for 16 Days of Activism on “gender-based violence.” Consequently, the campaign was described by DAVIA, the Domestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance, as evidence of the UN’s “rampant dishonesty” and its attempts to “smear men and frighten women.”To conclude, suppression of male victimization data is a tactic used by both UN Women and Australia’s eSafety Commissioner’s Office. This tactic is then used to push for more funding into women’s groups and causes. These groups then use the funding to conduct research that includes only female participants. The results are then conveniently used to argue for more attention and funding for women, as male victimization is never even measured.The repeated behavior of male data suppression that underlies all of this is making it increasingly difficult for people to not connect large female employee representation in organizations like UN Women and the Australian Public Service with the non-evidence-based, sex-biased policies and programs that these groups continue to create and advocate for.Related Content at The Nuzzo LetterSUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTERIf you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you.Thanks for reading The Nuzzo Letter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jameslnuzzo.substack.com

On Christmas Eve 2025, a women’s magazine called Evie Magazine published an article titled, “Why Does Hollywood Keep Telling Women To Pick Broke Men?” The author of the article was Carmen Schober.Schober’s general thesis was that modern Hollywood movies often show women choosing subpar men over better men, with female characters “following their hearts” and pursing a “man-child-turned-hero-fantasy.”Schober argued that modern movies often show women passing on men who would make better longer-term partners – men, who, in the movies, “dressed well, worked hard, [and] did not need to ‘grow up’.” According to Schober, the alternative presented to women in these movies are men who are incompetent, unkempt, and financially insecure. Abstract examples of subpar men given by Schober included “a broke poet with commitment issues, a boyish drifter with no plans for the future, or an eccentric loner obsessed with escaping convention at all costs.”Schober concluded that movies that depict women choosing subpar men over better man are propaganda because research and polling data show that women desire the traits embodied by the men who the women are rejecting in the movies.I agree with Schober that Hollywood movies often portray non-serious men in ways that make them more interesting, important, and desirable than they would be in real life. Actor Kevin Sorbo made broadly similar points in his 2023Fox News article titled, “Let’s make Hollywood manly again,” which Icovered at The Nuzzo Letter. Nevertheless, I think Schober’s aim was off when she critiqued the movie The Notebook.The Notebook and Its ImportanceThe Notebook was a 2004 adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks’ book of the same name. It starred Rachel McAdams as Allie Hamilton, Ryan Gosling as Noah Calhoun, and James Marsden as Lon Hammond, Jr.The Notebook is adored by many audiences. It has an IMDB rating of 7.8 out of 10, which is solid for a romantic movie in an anti-romantic age. The Notebook also plays at outdoor cinemas in Australia around Valentine’s Day every year, again signalling the movie’s broad appeal.I think the theme and characters of The Notebook warrant careful examination for a couple of reasons. First, I think The Notebook will be central to the eventual romantic counterrevolution in movies. Second, an examination of The Notebook can help people understand their own partner preferences and relationships, which is partly why Schober wrote her article in the first place.Schober’s ArgumentIn her article, Schober argued that Allie should have chosen Lon to be her lifelong partner rather than Noah. However, in arguing this position, Schober made direct claims and indirect suggestions about Noah that were inaccurate. Here, I address these inaccuracies, and I argue that they invalidate Schober’s position and that Allie’s choice of Noah was a rational one.Character TraitsOne reason that Schober believed that Allie should have picked Lon over Noah is because Lon exhibited the following desirable partner traits: virtuous, successful, respectful, smart, fun, supportive, kind, reliable, fit, and good-looking. By implication, Schober suggested that Noah did not embody these traits or that he embodied these traits to a much lesser extent than did Lon. Yet, there is nothing in the movie that suggests Noah is not virtuous, successful, respectful, smart, fun, supportive, kind, reliable, fit, or good-looking.Noah Was Not “Emotionally Volatile”Schober also argued that another reason Allie should have picked Lon over Noah is because Noah’s character was “emotionally volatile.” However, this claim is not supported by a holistic evaluation of Noah’s character. Noah was kind, funny, passionate, and deeply in love with Allie. To the extent that one wants to claim that Noah’s character was emotionally volatile, perhaps one might cite the scene where Noah kicks the deck chair. Or one might cite the scene where Noah half-heartedly tries to sell the house that he built for Allie, and he pulls out his shotgun when the potential buyer offers him more than his asking price. However, these scenes are used artistically to reinforce Noah’s love for Allie more than they are to show character flaws in Noah.Noah was no danger to Allie, and to the extent that he displayed emotional volatility, it was less than the emotional volatility displayed by Allie. In two different scenes, Allie pushes Noah and slaps his face. Noah did not push or hit Allie in return, and his continued love and devotion toward Allie after these events shows how lucky Allie was to have him as an option for a lifelong partnership. Also, one should not forget Allie’s emotional outbursts when she called Noah a “b*****d” and “son of a b***h,” after he accused her of partnering with Lon because Lon has a lot of money.Finally, Schober’s statement about Noah’s supposed emotional volatility implies that Lon was not emotionally volatile. This implication about Lon is uncertain because Lon and Allie’s relationship received less screen time and spanned fewer and more matured years than Noah and Allie’s relationship. Thus, Lon might have also been emotionally volatile, but we simply did not see enough of him to know.Noah Was Not “Directionless”Schober also claimed that Noah was “directionless for most of the story.” Yet, there is little in the movie to suggest that Noah’s life did not have direction. Noah worked at the lumberyard throughout the movie, and like Lon, Noah served in combat in World War II. Lon was a white-collar professional, whose life trajectory was helped by his family’s “Old Southern money,” whereas Noah came from a working-class background and was raised by his father. However, just because Lon worked in a higher status job and presumably made a higher salary than Noah does not mean that Noah’s life was “directionless.” When not working in the lumberyard, Noah spent much of his time building the house that he had promised Allie – an act of direction and dedication. In fact, when Allie reunited with Noah, and they were in the canoe, Allie told Noah that the house he built, and his commitment to finishing it, were “beautiful.” Finally, to the extent that Noah’s life lacked any degree of direction, it is clear from the story that Allie was the missing piece.Noah Was Devoted to AllieSchober also criticized Noah as being undependable and “a guy who disappears for years.” Schober also expressed frustration with Noah for not reaching out to Allie after building the house for her, adding that Noah “just broods and hopes she’ll come around.”Here, Schober seems to have forgotten the part of the movie where Noah writes Allie one letter each day for a year, which was Noah’s attempt at reconnecting with Allie after she moved away for school. Unfortunately, Allie’s mom stole each of Noah’s letters from the mailbox before Allie could see them. Thus, during that year, Allie was entirely unaware that Noah was reaching out to her. Allie’s mom only shares the letters with Allie later in the movie, after Allie is an adult and engaged to Lon.Because Allie never saw Noah’s letters at the time when they were written, Allie believed that Noah did not love her. Moreover, because Noah assumed that Allie had received the letters, but chose not to respond to them, he assumed that Allie did not love him and did not want to communicate with him. Thus, contrary to Schober’s position, there was no reason for Noah to continue to actively pursue Allie. Noah’s decision to no longer pursue Allie was also reinforced, when, several years after last communicating with Allie, Noah incidentally saw her with Lon in the restaurant in Charleston.Nevertheless, even after all that, Noah still built the house that he had promised Allie, and his physical actions in building the house were likely the masculine expressions of his emotions.Finally, if Schober was broadly suggesting that Noah was not adequately devoted to Allie, then her understanding of The Notebookis wildly out of touch. Noah’s devotion to Allie was one of movie’s central themes! Two Great ChoicesThe reality is that Allie had two great men to choose from, and the evidence that Allie chose well with Noah is written into the story. The movie depicts the moment that Allie and Noah first met, the moment they died together, and many moments in between. Allie and Noah remained married until their simultaneous deaths, and they had three children together. Thus, an odd aspect of Schober’s position is that the story itself shows viewers the evidence that Allie made a great choice, because the movie depicts their relationship until its very end.Had Allie chosen Lon, she would have also likely had a generally good life. In fact, the script is so well written that it informs viewers of what this counterfactual situation would have been. The movie suggests that the relationship between Allie and Lon will be like the relationship between Allie’s mother and Allie’s father, with Lon turning out to be like Allie’s father. We know that this is the likely counterfactual situation because of the scene where Allie’s mother drives Allie to the construction site. In that scene, Allie’s mother shows Allie the man that she passionately loved when she was Allie’s age. Allie’s mother admits that she sometimes drives to the site just to watch the man work and to contemplate about how different her life might have been had she married that man rather than Allie’s father.This scene also connects back to the scene where Allie was younger and was caught being out late with Noah. During that scene, Allie’s mother calls Noah “trash” and tells Allie that she needs to stop seeing Noah. Young Allie fired back at her mother, telling her mother that she does not look at, touch, or play with Allie’s father the same way that Allie does those things with Noah. Without knowing it at the time, young Allie was reminding her mother about what her mother used to feel when she was previously in the relationship with the man from the construction site.Schober ignored the importance of the construction site scene, as well as the subsequent scene when Allie’s mom gives Allie the letters that Noah wrote. These two scenes are crucial in understanding the causal pathway that led to Allie to choose Noah over Lon.Importantly, Allie’s mom does not tell Allie which of the two men to choose. Instead, she hands Allie the letters and says, “I hope you make the right choice.” This is impressive script writing from the standpoint of romantic realism. The final climatic decision still rests with Allie, and the decision is difficult. The difficulty stems from the fact that Allie has two great men to choose from, and this is part of what makes The Notebook a heart-grabbing story. If Allie’s decision were easy, the movie would amount to a cheesy romance story where everything goes perfectly from start to finish, with characters never presented with challenges and difficult decisions.Allie’s life would have likely turned out okay with Lon, but the script is clear that there is something deeper in Allie that keeps drawing her back to Noah. For example, at the very moment that Allie said “yes” to marrying Lon, Noah’s face came to her mind. Also, in the scene where Allie was being fitted for her wedding dress, she faints as soon as she sees the photograph of Noah in the newspaper.Allie kept thinking of Noah because she sensed something was missing with Lon. This was communicated in the story multiple times. In the scene where Allie visits Lon at his work, she has a confused and lost look on her face and says, “I don’t paint anymore. I used to paint all the time. I really loved it.” Lon then replied that he did not know that Allie liked painting. Then, later in the movie, when Allie is in the room at the Seabrook Inn with Lon, she tells him that she feels like a completely different person when she is with him compared to when she is with Noah. And then there is the scene where Noah confronts Allie, saying to her, “You’re bored! You’re bored and you know it! You wouldn’t be here if something wasn’t missing.”The missing piece for Allie – the thing that made her feel different with Noah and drawn back to him – is something called sense of life.Sense Of LifeNovelist-philosopher Ayn Rand described sense of life as the “integrated sum of a man’s basic values.” She explained that a sense of life is “involved in everything about that person, in his every thought, emotion, action, in his every response, in his every choice and value, in his every spontaneous gesture, in his manner of moving, talking, smiling, in the total of his personality. It is that which makes him a “personality.”Rand also noted that there are “two aspects of man’s existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.”Regarding love, Rand explained:“Love is a response to values. It is with a person’s sense of life that one falls in love—with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul…It’s is one’s own sense of life that acts as the selector, and responds to what it recognizes as one’s own basic values in the person of another. It is not a matter of professed convictions (though these are not irrelevant); it is a matter of much more profound, conscious and subconscious harmony.”Psychologist Nathaniel Branden, who was Rand’s one-time understudy and lover, added years later:“Romantic love entails, at its core, a profound and shared sense of life. A sense of life is the emotional form in which we experience our deepest view of existence and our relationship to existence…reflecting the subconsciously held sum of our broadest and deepest attitudes and conclusions concerning the world, life, and ourselves.”The Notebook repeatedly portrays Noah and Allie’s shared sense of life, and a key difference between Lon and Noah is that Noah understands Allie’s sense of life better than Lon does. Though Allie and Lon were not entirely mismatched, Allie and Noah were more intimately connected at a deeper subconscious level, which amplified the lock and key of their masculine and feminine energies.Noah’s understanding of Allie’s sense of life is first depicted during their walk home from their first date at the cinema. In that scene, Allie remarks that she had forgotten how much she enjoys the cinema. She confesses that she had not been to the cinema in several years, because her parents organise a busy schedule for her. Noah then asks Allie what she likes doing for herself rather than for her parents. Initially, Allie does not have an answer. Her lack of answer then causes Noah to challenge her about how free she feels in her life.Noah then convinces Allie to lie with him on the road to look up at the traffic lights. Allie is reluctant to participate in the activity, but eventually she submits. After she relaxes, Allie turns to Noah and finally answers his question, saying that painting is an activity that she enjoys doing for herself. She then tells Noah that when she has the paint brush in her hand, her thoughts calm and the world gets quiet. After a bit of silence, a car then speeds toward Noah and Allie, causing them to jump to the sidewalk. After the road dust settles, Allie starts laughing hysterically. She enjoyed the thrill. Noah had made her feel noticed and alive at all levels, and this is what Lon was unable to give to Allie. It was the same thrill and release that Allie felt years later when she reconnected with Noah and they were in the canoe. They get poured on by rain, and Allie again feels the release, thrill, and comfort in being with Noah. After they reach the dock, Allie’s passion for Noah comes bursting out: “Why didn’t you write me? Why? It wasn’t over for me. I waited for you for seven years. And now it’s too late.” At this point, Noah tells Allie about the 365 letters that he wrote for her, but that she never received. Then, the begin kissing and Allie stays the night with Noah.One important sense of life aspect that unfolds that night is the remark that Allie made Noah after they had sex. With a smile on her face, she says: “All this time, that’s what I have been missing?” This statement is important because it again illustrates that something was missing for Allie in her relationship with Lon. At its highest potential, sex is the ultimate celebration of romantic love. Thus, shared sense of life is also important for amazing sex. Nathaniel Branden once said:“Sex is unique among pleasures in its integration of body and mind. It integrates perceptions, emotions, values, and thoughts. It offers us the most intense form of experience in our own total being, of experiencing our deepest and most intimate sense of self.”Two days later, after Allie wakes up from her second night staying with Noah, she is guided by a bedside note and several arrows taped to the floor to a room in the house that has paints, paint brushes, and a canvas. Noah had kept his promise in building a place in the house where Allie could paint. This scene reinforces the idea of art as an important aspect of matched sense of life, and here, one should remember that Noah was well read in poetry, and this was also something that Allie liked about Noah. Thus, both Noah and Allie appreciated art, and they likely enjoyed most of the same art due to their shared sense of life. Any interest that Lon had in art was not depicted in the movie, but he was depicted as being entirely unaware of Allie’s interest in painting.Allie and Noah’s shared sense of life is then carried through to the end of the movie, when they parish together in their elderly and ill years. Noah sneaks into Allie’s room in the nursing home and lies in bed with her. Allie eventually asks him, “Do you think our love can create miracles? Do you think our love can take us away together?” Noah replies, “I think our love can do anything we want it to.” The next morning, a nurse walks into the room to find the two of them lying in the bed, holding hands, dead.The reason that this final scene is a tear-jerker for many viewers is because it reflects the deepest possible connection between two lovers that one can possibly imagine. It is both sad and profoundly moving.ConclusionGetting the theme and characters of the movie The Notebook correct is important because the movie itself is important. In my opinion, The Notebook is the best concretization of romantic love that has ever been depicted on the big screen. The story emphasises the importance of a shared sense of life, and the causal pathways of the characters’ decisions are tightly linked throughout the movie’s plot. The Notebook exemplifies Romantic Realism, because the movie neither depicts life as overly easy nor as overly deterministic. Instead, The Notebook shows characters learning and navigating challenging situations in pursuit of their values, namely romantic love. The movie climaxes when Allie makes her final decision and chooses Noah to be her lifelong partner.Before she launched into a non-objective attack on the character Noah Calhoun from the movie The Notebook, Evie Magazine contributor Carmen Schober said that readers need to “step back” and “assess [the movie] with a little more clarity.”Given Schober’s character analysis and her interpretation of the movie’s theme, I would like to close by recommending one thing to her.Take one more step back and fall into the arms of Noah.Related Content at The Nuzzo LetterSUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTERIf you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you.Thanks for reading The Nuzzo Letter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jameslnuzzo.substack.com

In April of 2025, the Journal of Academic Ethics published a paper titled, “Exercise Science Students as Research Participants in Faculty-Led Research: An Ethical Dilemma.” The paper was written by two kinesiologists or biomechanists in the United States: Nicole Rendos and Christopher Wilburn. In their paper, which was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, Rendos and Wilburn put forward the idea that exercise science students are vulnerable to coercion to participate in research experiments because those experiments are often conducted by the students’ lecturers or supervisors.I agree with the overall premise of Rendos and Wilburn’s paper. For many years, I have observed some exercise science faculty and postgraduate students coercing students to participate in experiments. I have never witnessed overt coercion that involved students being punished or threatened with punishment for not participating in experiments. Instead, the coercion has been more subtle. It has been more like “nudges” that ramp up the pressure to participate or strategies that “trap” the individual into feeling that they need to participate. On multiple occasions, I have witnessed researchers (often postgraduate students) directly approaching other students or researchers at their desks and asking if they want to participate in a specific experiment. In these cases, I have never witnessed someone being threatened with punishment if they reject the offer. But clearly there is a difference between being approached spontaneously in person versus reading about a volunteer opportunity through an advertisement. The direct approach is further problematic because students are sometimes approached while sitting in offices that they share with other students. The student who is approached might be feel pressured to say “yes” because they know others are overhearing their response. In fact, the researcher may be approaching all the students in the office. Thus, a student may feel pressured to say “yes” because other students in the office are saying “yes.”Another technique that is sometimes used to ratchet up the pressure to participate in a study is to email individual people requesting their participation. I have received several emails like this over my time in academia.A key reason why these pressure-to-participate techniques sometimes occur in exercise science departments is because postgraduate student researchers are under pressure to finish projects by thesis deadlines, and most exercise science projectes are not funded by big research grants. Consequently, these departments have little or no money to pay individuals to participate in experiments. Then, because there is little incentive for individuals to take time out of their schedules to run on a treadmill until exhaustion or get their nerves zapped, finding participants becomes difficult. Professors and postgraduate students then apply pressure on students to participate.Poor project management and decision making also play a role. For example, professors often put their postgraduate students in binds by asking them to complete projects that are unfeasible given the lack of money, resources, and individuals who are willing and eligible to participate.Thus, I commend Rendos and Wilburn for discussing the issue of coerced participation in exercise experiments, though I think the argument would be strengthened by survey data of exercises science students, asking them how often they have felt coerced to participate in experiments. Rendos and Wilburn cite relevant findings from psychology students, but they represent a unique cohort, because, somehow, the field of psychology has, for many years, been allowed to have students participate in experiments as part of their requirements.Nevertheless, I want to call out Rendos and Wilburn on the aspect of their paper that dealt with the sex of exercise research participants. A main driver of their paper was an observation that women are now more frequently serving as participants in exercise studies than in the past. Consequently, the authors want to ensure that female exercise science students are protected and treated ethically.“…the push for increased female representation in exercise science research and the perception that female exercise science students are more willing participants - make these students a prime recruitment target by faculty principal investigators. However, when these faculty members also hold an evaluative position over female exercise science students, such targeted recruitment may create a coercive dynamic, pressuring students to participate rather than allowing them to make a fully voluntary decision.”The authors continued:“The power imbalance between faculty researchers and students…may unintentionally pressure students to volunteer to participate in exercise science research. Female exercise science students may be even more vulnerable, as their interest in exercise aligns with the efforts to address the historical under-representation of women in exercise science research.”I highlight Rendos and Wilburn’s comments for two reasons. First, within exercise science, there continues to be a lack of appreciation for what men from the past have done for the field – both as researchers and participants. Rendos and Wilburn’s article fits within this trend because, if indeed there are issues regarding coercion in exercise experiments, then presumably these issues were just as bad if not worse in the past, when men were more often the participants.In 2025, the Journal of Applied Physiology – one of the most important journals in the history of exercise science – published an audit of its archives. The auditors found that males were 66% of participants. From this, the auditors went on to predict how many years would be required to have a level of female participation that would make up for all “missing” female data from earlier years. However, the auditors’ view was one of the glass being half empty. The auditors took the all-too-common position that their findings reflect some form of female victimization or disadvantage, as early researchers were supposedly not concerned about women’s health. Such auditors never seem to consider what life today would be like without all the men who volunteered in, or perhaps were coerced into participating in, the earliest and riskiest experiments. Such auditors never seem to consider that what happened in the past was not so much about female discrimination – though some may have existed – instead, it demonstrates the uniqueness of men. This uniqueness of men is the glass half full perspective of this research history. It acknowledges that history is not perfect but that much knowledge obtained from male participants is indeed applicable to women, and many men were the first to serve as participants in the earliest and riskiest research.The second reason why I have highlighted Rendos and Wilburn’s article is that I think we will see more articles like theirs in the future. As more women coordinate and participate in exercise experiments, concerns over participant safety is likely to be heightened, which may result in further research ethics bureaucracy. Moreover, we are likely to continue to see more audits of female representation in exercise experiments. If current trends remain, when researchers discover lower female than male representation, they will likely say that early researchers did not care about women and their health. Along the way, these future auditors will fail to acknowledge the importance of male participation in experiments and what it would have meant to participate in earlier, riskier experiments.Moving forward, my hope is that the new wave of female exercise scientists, who seem dedicated to auditing every nook and cranny of the exercise science literature to identify female “underrepresentation”, will take a moment to reflect upon all the men from decades gone by who have driven exercise research – both as researchers and participants. By studying the history of the field with an open mind – and not one hellbent on declaring discrimination against women – one will likely learn to express humility and gratitude toward the men who built the field. Moreover, by studying the history of the field’s researchers and participants, this new wave of female exercise scientists can also learn many interesting things about the history of female researchers, female participants, and women’s health. They can learn that girls and women were not ignored in early exercise-related research. Their frequent participation has been documented.ConclusionRendos and Wilburn proposed policies that they believe will reduce the likelihood of exercise science students feeling coerced to participate in experiments. They recommended that institutions implement polices that “prohibit faculty from recruiting students they directly evaluate; require third-party recruitment and data collection methods, such as research offices or neutral faculty members; provide truly equivalent alternatives to research participation, ensuring participants do not perceive them as more burdensome; and educate students on their right to decline participation without academic consequence.”I will add the following recommendations. First, recruitment of participants should occur in a generalized not individualized manner. Directly approaching individuals, whether in person or via email, should be discouraged. Instead, recruitment should occur via paper advertisements posted around campus, digital advertisements sent out via department, school, or university mass email lists, and digital advertisements posted on social media. General announcements made in classes are also appropriate so long as the experiment being advertised is not the lecturer’s and so long as the students understand that participation in the experiment is not linked to grades. The larger issue of how psychology departments can require psychology students to participate in psychology studies, while other departments are not allowed to do the same, is an issue that universities should also address.Another way to alleviate the problem of difficulty in finding participants, which is part of what leads to participant coercion, is for universities to invest in a research registry. In the registry, researchers can advertise their experiments, and students can sign up for the experiments via the online portal. The registry would also give students the opportunity to voluntarily sign up to be contacted by researchers about new participation opportunities. If a university tries to argue that they do not have the staff, resources, or infrastructure to implement such a system, then they should be reminded about how much money and resources they have wasted on DEI and other administrative misadventures.Related Content at The Nuzzo LetterSUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTERIf you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you.Thanks for reading The Nuzzo Letter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jameslnuzzo.substack.com

On December 22 of 2025, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published a tweet about paternity leave and its purposes. In the tweet, the OECD said: “Paid leave for fathers is expanding, but it remains underused. When fathers take paternal leave, it leads to more equal caregiving, higher workforce participation among mothers, and greater gender equality at work.”Similarly, on July 25, 2023, OECD published a tweet that said: “Women often do the brunt of unpaid work at home, making it harder to advance their careers. Governments should grant paternity leave and employers should encourage fathers to take it. This would help create a more equal workplace.”A link embedded in the 2025 tweet takes one to an OECD policy brief in October 2025, which provides more details on the group’s views on paternity leave. The policy brief, is titled “Paid leave for fathers: Recent OECD policy trends,” expresses the same sentiments as in the tweets. For example, one of the brief’s “key messages” is that “[f]athers’ leave benefits not only parents and children but also promote gender equality.” This point is expanded upon later in the brief: “Fathers’ use of leave benefits not only parents and children but also promotes a more equal division of care responsibilities and other unpaid work at home and supports gender equality in the workplace, fairness and women’s economic self-efficiency.”Besides these stated benefits of greater “gender equality” at work and more equal sharing of care responsibilities, the OECD also proposed the following as benefits of paternity leave: improved communication and stronger emotional bonds between fathers and their children; greater overall life satisfaction for both parents, especially mothers; greater mobilization of women’s labour to underpin economic growth; and reduced gender-based discrimination in the workplace and reduced likelihood that only women take leave, thereby mitigating the “motherhood penalty.”Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA)The OECD’s tweets and brief reminded me of similar information that I had recently seen on the website of Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency when I was conducting research on the sex composition of their employees. On their webpage, titled “Paternal Leave for Men,” the Agency has a section labelled, “Benefits for men taking paid parental leave.” The Agency then lists the following benefits for men:1. helps normalise working fatherhood, reducing stigma and penalties faced by working mothers;2. greater engagement with children and stronger relationships partners;3. improved mental health for fathers and their partners;4. potential to reduce employers’ gender pay gaps;5. would lead to a boost to national GDP…due to increased women’s workforce participation;6. employers benefit from attracting and retaining talent.Remarkably, in the list of six items that were apparently intended to convince men about how paternity leave would benefit them, Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency only listed three that are direct benefit to fathers. These included “greater engagement with children and stronger relationships with partners,” “improved mental health for fathers,” and “normalising working fatherhood.” However, even those items had caveats about how mothers would also be helped. Then, there were the three items on the “benefits for men” list that were clearly not benefits for men. They were benefits for women and employers.On the same webpage, the Agency took a stab at discussing “barriers to men taking paternity leave.” However, the Agency ultimately laid blame on “persistent gender norms,” which is somewhat insulting to husbands and wives who make conscientious decisions about how to structure their lives in ways they deem best. They do not make decisions based on the desires of feminist theorists or the staff at Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency, who are 77% female.Gynocentric Versus Androcentric Approach to Men’s Well-BeingIn 2023, I wrote an essay in which I warned about the gynocentric approach to men’s issues, including paternity leave. The gynocentric approach involves using a men’s issue to advocate for better outcomes for women. I warned that this abuse of men’s issues would become more frequent because the epidemiological data on poor outcomes in men are becoming increasingly known, and this leaves academics and health officials scrambling to find ways to realign these data with their pre-existing ideology, and to ensure that women are still the primary beneficiaries of policies. The content published by the OECD and Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency reveal that these two groups have adopted the gynocentric approach to paternity leave, as both groups framed paternity leave primarily as a women’s well-being issue.The opposite to the gynocentric approach to men’s issues is the androcentric approach. The androcentric approach views men and their well-being as ends in themselves. In the androcentric approach, men are not used as pawns to improve outcomes for women or to create “gender equality.”In the case of paternity leave, the androcentric approach would state unapologetically what a man gains from taking paternity leave. This involves first explaining to the father how his time off work with his child and wife is important to his life. Second, this involves explaining to the father that his unique contributions qua father also benefit his child and wife. In other words, the father’s selfish interest in taking paternity leave is linked to him knowing that his contributions qua father actually matter to his child, wife, and society. The pitch of his voice; the way he looks at the baby; the way hisstrong hands touch, hold, and play with the baby – these are all things that are unique to him as a father. Then, there is the unique way that he can care for his recovering wife. These are all irreplicable contributions that a father can make. Yet, because the OECD and Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency are beholden to feminist theory, neither are willing to communicate these things to fathers in an explicit and unapologetic way. Any attempts that are made are done in half-hearted way, layered in qualifiers or subclauses about “gender equality.”Importantly, the androcentric approach to men’s issues does not mean “bad for women.” Quite the contrary. If a man understands his unique role in child development, and he feels that his role is valued, he will, presumably, be more inclined to take paternity leave and feel a high level of self-efficacy after he successfully completes the mission. The benefits received by women and society are secondary consequences of the man acting in his own interest. A man taking paternity leave out of his own interest is an important philosophical distinction from the gynocentric approach to men’s issues because it protects men from being viewed as a sacrificial animal across various domains of life.ConclusionIn conclusion, the gynocentric approach to paternity leave is bad marketing. Telling a man to take paternity leave to reduce the “gender pay gap” is not an effective communications strategy. It amounts to virtue signalling from the group putting it forward, and it misunderstands incentives for human action. It indicates to the father that he is not truly valued, which will likely cause him to become resentful about the idea. Instead, if the goal is to get more men to take a certain action, the reasons for taking that action should be communicated to him in an explicit and male-centric way. Framing paternity leave in a gynocentric way is disrespectful to men. Faming it in an androcentric way has the greatest potential to help men, their wives, their children, and society.Related Content at The Nuzzo LetterSUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTERIf you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you.Thanks for reading The Nuzzo Letter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jameslnuzzo.substack.com

On the same day that United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would no longer fund United Nations (UN) Women and several other UN entities, Foreign Affairs published an article by Saskia Brechenmacher, titled “How to Save the Fight for Women’s Rights: The Backlash Against Democracy Calls for New Strategies.”Brechenmacher, who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, started her article by discussing the “backlash” against feminist movements in 2025, citing a press release from the UN along the way. Brechenmacher then presented a “new template for action” to counter this backlash. Brechenmacher’s template consisted of the following recommendations for feminist groups":1. Use “multilateral forums.” (By this, Brechenmacher presumably means the UN and ideologically similar international organizations.)2. Focus on local level collaborations rather than efforts that are “solely technical and elite-driven.” (That Brechenmacher mentioned the “elitist” nature of previous “gender equality” efforts is an interesting admission.)3. Invest in initiatives that include men and boys.4. Connect messaging about women’s empowerment to family well-being, community resilience, and economic stability.5. Strengthen democratic institutions.6. Engage with “coalitions of the willing,” which Brechenmacher defines as “smaller circles of governments, civil society groups, and private sector actors that collaborate to tackle specific hurdles to gender equality.” Brechenmacher then lists specific issues that she believes these smaller coalitions should focus on. The examples included: “expanding access to reproductive health care, improving childcare and eldercare systems, tackling young men’s online radicalization, and ensuring artificial intelligence tools are designed and deployed with attention to their different effects on women and men.” Here, Brechenmacher also highlighted the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse, which started under the Biden White House in 2022 as a coalition of governments, international organizations, and private companies whose aim was to combat technology-facilitated gender-based violence.Though not stated explicitly, a likely key player in Brechenmacher’s new template for action is UN Women. UN Women was one of the informers of the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse, and at the end of 2025, UN Women, and the UN more broadly, went on a biased, weeks-long “digital violence” campaign, which refused to acknowledge that boys and men face just as much online abuse and harassment as girls and women.Brechenmacher and UN Women also share broadly similar views on the “backlash against gender equality.” In 2025, UN Women regularly commented on X about this “backlash,” and toward the end of the year, the UN co-sponsored a meeting of the International Gender Champions (IGC) network. The aim of the meeting was to have a “critical conversation on advancing equality amid a rising tide of organized opposition.” The meeting centred around a report that was published by UN Women and the UN Research Institute for Social Development titled, “Understanding Backlash Against Gender Equality: Evidence, Trends and Policy Responses.” Similar, to Brechenmacher’s article, the report says what the feminist playbook is going to look like in 2026.Before revealing that playbook, UN Women’s report first defined what the backlash is. According to UN Women, the backlash is “deliberate, organized attempts to roll back established commitments, rights and achievements in gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment as defined in a given local, national, regional or global context.”UN Women then identified the people behind the backlash as “networks of old and new conservative actors and men’s rights activists,” who are “rallying around the fight against “gender ideology”” and who are funded by faith-based organizations, conservative religious institutions, far-right politic parties and actors, philanthropic foundations, civil society organizations and high-net-worth individuals. Then, in an ironic act of projection, UN Women accused these groups of using “emotionally laden slogans” that “exploit” the public’s concerns and “[feed] a sense of ‘moral panic’ in societies around highly sensitive…social and economic problems..” The report continues along these lines:“After instilling a sense of urgency and stoking a moral outcry, anti-gender campaigns position the strengthening of the “traditional family” and/or “the nation” as the solution to social and economic ills. Their vision proposes a return to a real or imagined past where gender hierarchies were accepted and “traditional family models” were based on what they consider to be “natural”, binary and complementary gender roles and identities. Candidates and authorities strategically use these slogans and campaigns to gain or perpetuate themselves in power and divert public attention from their failures in other areas.”Finally, in the report, UN Women provided its readers with recommendations on how to counter the backlash against “gender equality.” Their recommendations were broadly similar to those proposed by Brechenmacher. A few examples included:1. “Strengthen broad-based coalitions across countries and in intergovernmental spaces to win over leaders in the “moveable middle””;2. “[E]nsure human rights and gender equality language is preserved and advanced”;3. “[S]afeguard gender issues from undue polarization”;4. “Eliminate, prevent and respond to all forms of intimidation, persecution and violence directed at women in public life, including politicians, journalists and activists, in online and offline spaces”;5. “Promote and cultivate capacities to develop positive narratives on strategic issues that can expand the reach of feminist and human rights ideas… Positive narratives can, for instance, highlight the benefits gender equality gains bring to wider communities or cast key terms such as “family”, “life” or “care”, used by conservative actors in narrow ways, in a new light”;6. “Reinforce and create new safe spaces to boost solidarity where feminists can share innovative practices of resistance and assess their effectiveness across settings”;7. “Support and amplify emerging research on feminist strategies and practices to resist and push forward for gender equality, to understand what works, in which contexts and why.”In conclusion, feminist leaders are saying out loud what their plan is for 2026. Their base will continue to be large international organizations, and they will target specific issues at a local level. They are going to modify their messaging to be more family friendly, and they are going to continue to try to “engage with boys and men,” with continued focus on “young men’s online radicalization.” They are also planning to continue their campaign on “digital violence” against girls and women. This campaign is going to try to protect female politicians and journalists from justified criticisms of poor performance and will reframe such criticisms as harassment or misogyny.However, the problem for feminist groups in 2026 is going to be their continued unwillingness to listen, learn, and genuinely reform. Framing legitimate criticisms of their work as “backlash” against “gender equality” is not going to work, and no new “template for action” is going to resolve their unwanted messages, their untenable ideas, their tone deafness, and their misdirected moral compass.The U.S. is leading the way in saying that “enough is enough” from these groups. In January of 2026, the U.S. announcedthat it would no longer fund UN Women. Later in the month, Israel followed suit, and perhaps some other countries will now also find it easier to cut ties with UN Women. This stranglehold on the money supply to entities like UN Women is the fundamental solution to having more rational and fair discussions about both men’s and women’s issues.Related Content at The Nuzzo LetterSUPPORT THE NUZZO LETTERIf you appreciated this content, please consider supporting The Nuzzo Letter with a one-time or recurring donation. Your support is greatly appreciated. It helps me to continue to work on independent research projects and fight for my evidence-based discourse. To donate, click the DonorBox logo. In two simple steps, you can donate using ApplePay, PayPal, or another service. Thank you.Thanks for reading The Nuzzo Letter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jameslnuzzo.substack.com