Vice President JD Vance sent a message to young men during day two of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
The former senator from Ohio dove into a stereotype-laden defense of “masculine urges” while speaking to conservative commentator Mercedes Schlapp at the Washington, D.C., event on Thursday.
“I think our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge,” he claimed. “You should try to cast aside your family, you should try to suppress what makes you a young man in the first place.”
“Don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man,” the vice president continued. “Because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends or because you’re competitive.”
At that point the crowd chimed in to endorse his ideas with loud applause.
“The cultural message,” Vance went on to claim, is that today’s culture wants to turn both men and women “into androgynous idiots who think the same, talk the same and act the same.”
Alluding to some of the Trump administration’s signature stances on gender, Vance added, “We actually think God made male and female for a purpose, and we want you guys to thrive as young men and as young women, and we are going to help with our public policy to make it possible to do that.”
Donald Trump and allies have made attacks on so-called “gender ideology” a centerpiece of their policy goals.
On his first day in office, the returning Republican president issued an executive order declaring the government will only recognize two, unchangeable genders. That order followed with a number of moves to try to curtail transgender rights.
During the road leading up to the 2024 election, Trump and Vance tailored much of their campaign toward young men, pairing regular interviews on the conservative digital media circuit with appearances on less politically focused podcasts and streaming shows with mostly male audiences.
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Their push to appeal to that demographic paid off when it was time to go to the polls.
According to an analysis of The Associated Press’ post-election VoteCast poll, 56% of men under 30 voted for Trump while only 40% of young women swung to the right in 2024.