The Conversation Liberal Parents Still Aren’t Having With Their Sons
There are mixed reviews of the UFC spectacle that took place on the White House south lawn for the President’s eightieth birthday. And then there are altogether oblivious reviews of the event even if they come from a loving place. Hope Reese’s essay about taking her two youngest sons to UFC Freedom 250 at the White House is the latter of those reviews.
Reese’s article is meant to be a piece of liberal parental surprise. Her boys, raised by a feminist mother and activist grandparents, are somehow fascinated by UFC. Her fifteen-year-old has gone from watching clips and absorbing the online culture around the sport to witnessing, up close, the thrill and brutality of men kicking the hell out of each other. Her younger son is so overcome by meeting his favorite fighters that he is overjoyed with excitement. Reese notices all of this. She is struck by it and even moved by it. But what surprised me was not that her sons were drawn to the UFC. What surprised me is that she seemed so surprised and also confused.
I say that as a single father raising two teenage boys in the same age bracket as hers. My sons were very much aware of the fight on the White House lawn. Of course they were. Teen boys do not need tickets to the South Lawn to know what is moving through the culture. The clips and the jokes find them anyway. That is why Reese’s essay frustrated me. She is in exactly the parental position many of us are in, but she seems so absorbed by the fact of her sons’ fascination that she misses the deeper question: What are they learning about being men from the experience and culture created by and for them? This is the question Democrats and liberals keep failing to ask.
Too many liberals still treat boys’ interest in UFC, anti-woke comedy, and the manosphere streamers like Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate as some mysterious contamination. As if a feminist household or activist lineage should automatically protect boys from the appeal of strength, dominance, hierarchy, aggression, and male belonging. I come from a feminist upbringing. I also consider myself a feminist as well. But none of that protects my teenage sons from toxicity like we saw this past week.
Boys are not wrong to be interested in strength. They are not wrong to admire courage, discipline, physical mastery, and fearlessness. They are not wrong to wonder what kind of man can enter a cage and face another human being without running away. These are not illegitimate questions. They are human questions. They are also masculine questions, whether liberals are comfortable saying that out loud or not.
But the problem is not that boys are asking them. The problem is that the right, the manosphere, and the UFC-adjacent media world are often the only ones answering them without embarrassment.
That is where Reese’s essay falls short. Her son sees the pain and cruelty of combat. Why not ask him: What he thought he was watching? What is the difference between courage and domination? What makes one fighter honorable and another cruel? What happens to a man when everyone cheers for violence? What does strength require outside the cage? These are parenting as much as they are civic questions.
The White House setting should have made the types of questions and conversations unavoidable. This was not just another UFC card. UFC Freedom 250 was staged on the South Lawn of the White House as part of Trump’s birthday and America’s 250th-anniversary spectacle. For teenage boys, that setting matters. It tells them something. It says this is what national celebration looks like. This is what power honors. This is what gets invited into the symbolic center of American life.
And Reese’s sons were not merely watching from home. They were there because a family connection helped get them access to the event. That detail should have raised the stakes. When children are brought close to power through family proximity, the parental responsibility is not only to observe their awe. It is to help them interpret it:
What does it mean that the White House became a backdrop for sanctioned violence, celebrity masculinity, and political theater? What does it mean when a private fighting empire is wrapped in the language of patriotism? What does it mean when boys see political power, male aggression, fame, money, and national identity braided together into one dazzling show?
These are not abstract questions. They are exactly the questions we should be asking boys who are being formed by this culture in real time.
The omission becomes even sharper when Josh Hokit enters the picture. Hokit, who arrived at his pre-fight weigh-in hungover and vomiting on himself, also used his post-fight moment to call Michelle Obama a man. Dana White condemned the comment, and good for him. But White’s condemnation does not erase the fact that Hokit said it in that space, in front of the home of the former First Lady (!) used to live in, in that atmosphere, on that stage, after a victory, in front of a crowd primed for spectacle.
How does a feminist mother write about her sons’ love of that event and not ask them about Josh Hokit? Not to shame them. Not to ruin their excitement. To parent them.
What did you hear? Why do you think he said that? Why would a man use a triumphant moment to humiliate a Black woman? Is that strength, or is that insecurity? Why did some people laugh? What does a good man do when the crowd enjoys cruelty?
The same applies to her son’s excitement over fist-bumping Shane Gillis. Again, the issue is not that a teenage boy was excited to meet a famous comedian. The issue is that Gillis occupies a very particular place in young male culture: anti-woke, proudly offensive, celebrated by many as someone who says what liberal culture supposedly forbids. His past controversies include racist, homophobic, and antisemitic jokes. That does not mean a parent has to deliver a sermon in the moment. But it does mean the moment deserves a conversation.
What makes him funny to you? When does a joke tell the truth? When does a joke train people to laugh at humiliation? When does being “anti-woke” become an excuse not to care about anyone else?
These are the questions liberals are not asking clearly enough. And because we do not ask them, we leave boys to be discipled elsewhere.
Democrats keep treating the manosphere as a messaging problem. It is not only a messaging problem. It is an initiation problem. Boys are looking for a way into manhood. They are looking for models of strength, sex, anger, humor, loyalty, risk, friendship, physical confidence, and status. The manosphere gives them a script. UFC gives them bodies. The President, and in this case, Donald Trump, gives them permission. Rogan gives them an atmosphere. Anti-woke comedians give them laughter. And liberals too often give them a vocabulary of apology, critique, and concern. That is not enough.
A healthy liberalism has to be able to speak to boys without being embarrassed by them. It has to say that masculinity is not a disease. Strength is not a moral failure. Competition is not inherently toxic. Anger is not always dangerous. Brotherhood is not automatically exclusionary. But all of those things need moral formation. Strength without dignity becomes domination. Courage without empathy becomes cruelty. A brotherhood without conscience becomes a mob. Humor without responsibility becomes humiliation.
That is the conversation Reese was standing right next to. And somehow the essay mostly settles for amazement.
As a father, I do not want my sons to be ashamed of being drawn to combat sports or masculine energy. I want them to know what they are looking at. I want them to admire discipline without worshiping cruelty. I want them to respect strength without degrading women. I want them to laugh without joining in someone else’s humiliation. I want them to feel the pull of the crowd and still know when to stand apart from it. That is how we raise upstanders instead of bystanders.
The question is not why boys raised by feminists and activists might be drawn to UFC. The question is why so many feminists, activists, liberals, and Democrats still do not know what to say to boys once they are.
