Richard Reeves’s work is important. Still, I wish Daniel McDermon’s interview [“Under Construction,” June 2025] had ended without Reeves’s statement “but we still need men.” The status of women cannot be trivialized in any sense. How have we “arrived” when women make up merely 15 percent of the engineering workforce? His statement isn’t useful when we’re all struggling with white patriarchy.
While I appreciate Richard Reeves’s attempt to show how our education system fails boys and men, I was disappointed by the lack of research, insight, and thoughtfulness in Daniel McDermon’s interview. Our education system was designed by privileged white men to serve their male offspring, to the exclusion of girls and women, people of color, and poor white people. When this system stops serving those for whom it was designed, and instead better serves girls and women, the question is: What changed? It’s not that we tell girls they can be anything they want, and aren’t giving boys the same message.
One major factor seems clear to me: The No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2002—an ill-considered effort to improve academic outcomes that forces children to read, write, and complete math problems when they’re in kindergarten, before it’s developmentally appropriate. Still falling behind after a full day of academics? Stay inside to do more schoolwork. By the time these kids reach third grade, they’re already convinced they’re failures.
It ramps up from there: Cram in as many advanced-placement tests as you can in high school. Participate in sports and extracurricular activities. Start a club. Play an instrument, and write for the school paper, all while managing four-plus hours of homework each night.
Yes, it turns out girls are better at these things—but at what cost? Reeves talks about how successful girls have become, but he doesn’t consider their exhaustion, anxiety, and mental health issues. Are these young women who are graduating from college being hired, paid, and promoted at anywhere near the same levels as men? Are they being treated with respect?
My partner and I frequently discuss how we’ve failed the men in our country by telling them to step back and make room for others, but never telling them what else they should be doing. These conversations get particularly tricky when one believes, as I do, that gender is a spectrum. But it’s as Richard Reeves says: We’re in the midst of a men’s health crisis. In the last ten years, three people dear to me committed suicide. All were men.
Reading “Under Construction,” I couldn’t help but wonder: What sort of men are going to rebuild masculinity for the youth? There was a recent Sun interview with Paul K. Chappell on “peace literacy” [“The Best Defense,” interview by Leslee Goodman, November 2021], which helped me understand why certain males hold fast to strength, control, and violence, rather than intellect and compassion. Instead of adhering to outdated traditions, perhaps we should promote this concept as a way forward for young men.
I was in college in the early 1990s when political correctness was coming into full force. It was there I embraced feminism and even became a women’s studies major. I was angry about so much of our male-dominated culture: a dearth of information about women’s health; domestic violence; pornography; even the way men seemed always to dominate class discussions. But this anger toward men was confusing because I also really liked men: the men I dated, the men in my family, my male friends.
Thirty years later, as a stepmother to a thirty-two-year-old man and mother to a sixteen-year-old boy, I fear they are the ones feeling silenced. Cancel culture is strong on college campuses. I worry my teen son won’t feel he can contribute to class discussions, especially if his viewpoint differs even slightly from the majority.
Time was when I would have thought, Good—men are getting a taste of what women have endured for years. Now it’s clear to me what a vengeful and short-sighted take that is, and I’m grateful to Richard Reeves and Daniel McDermon for their conversation. Each new generation is an opportunity to change patterns of inequality for the better. Our goal shouldn’t be to even the score. Condemning boys for being male will not create positive change.
Shaul Magid’s reflections on the destructive impact of Zionism is an act of love for the Jewish people—and should serve as a model for the West, particularly those of us in the US [“Long Shadows,” interview by Judith Hertog, July 2025]. In his book The Necessity of Exile, Magid writes that a nation “built on both colonization and erasure creates a situation whereby a truly democratic, equitable, and just society has become all but impossible.” He calls for Zionism to be “set aside, along with Manifest Destiny, colonialism, and other chauvinistic and ethnocentric ideologies of the past.”
Magid expresses horror at Israel’s destruction of Gaza, but maintains that Israel had a “duty to respond to a horrendous, murderous act.” This ignores the historical context of Hamas’s October 7 attack. Israel’s actions today are a continuation of the Zionist project to dispossess and displace the indigenous Palestinians: not a response to a threat, but the inevitable outcome of a colonial enterprise.
With two bananas headed for the compost, I decided to give Sara Spurgeon’s recipe a try [“Start with Overripe Bananas,” August 2025]. I followed her instruction to the letter, and all I can tell you is: It was the best banana bread I’ve ever had. I was, of course, also moved by Spurgeon’s essay, in which the recipe was so artfully embedded.
Sara Spurgeon’s “Start with Overripe Bananas” stimulated a hankering to bake banana bread, but it’s August, and who turns on the oven in triple-digit weather? I’ll save it to reread in October.
While I’m usually not a fan of second-person writing, Spurgeon’s essay, peppered throughout with the bittersweet realities of life, filled the air with warm kitchen scents, exciting the senses.
Vida Skerk’s photo on the Contents page of your August 2025 issue would’ve been an excellent candidate for the “A Thousand Words” feature. The more I looked, the more there was to see: A woman in the bathtub, scrubbing her back. A preoccupied man sitting on the toilet, smoking a cigarette and working a crossword puzzle. A clothes washer serving as a countertop. Washed linens hanging from a clothesline. A tiny sink and mirror. The window slightly ajar.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
The ending of Tatiana Swancy’s essay “Driftless” [July 2025] sent shivers up my spine. To be accepted for who you are, including the unknown parts of you, is the best definition of love that I’ve encountered in my seventy-five years.
