Trump's Losing Tug-Of-War for Manliness

Note to the vast majority of male voters across the country: Donald Trump does not represent you.

In fact, if he had the ability to see and process reality even for just one day, the thing that would shock him the most is how out-of-step he is with American manliness.

In every calculable way, his constant lying, boorish behavior and anachronistic sexism put him at odds with the lives and choices of today's men -- particularly those who, like him, have young children at home.

For my book, All In , I ignored the myths and popular rhetoric about men, and went looking for facts. The goal was to shed light on the real lives of America's fathers as a key step toward building gender equality. Piecing through raw data and methodologies behind numerous studies, and conducting 150 hours of interviews, I found an unmistakable truth: macho stereotypes no longer apply.

For example, virtually all men who live their kids bathe, diaper and dress them at least several days a week. Many do all this every day, according to the CDC.

Trump considers it women's work. "I don't do that," Trump told the Opie and Anthony radio show in 2005 when asked about changing diapers. Other men do so because "there's a lot of women out there that demand that the husband act like the wife," he added, according to Buzzfeed .

Most men these days believe being "present" and a good partner or spouse is more important than making money, according to a Hart Research study for The Shriver Report. (Maria Shriver and I discussed this in a Huffington Post column .) Working fathers spend an average of three hours a day caring for their children, according to the Families and Work Institute.

Six in ten Americans say the most important role of a father is to teach morals and values to his children. Most also say dads should provide emotional support and discipline. Only four in ten believe making money is among a father's most important responsibilities, Pew Research found.

Trump doesn't relate.

"I won't do anything to take care of them," he said of his kids, in an interview with Howard Stern. "I'll supply funds and (Melania will) take care of the kids. It's not like I'm gonna be walking the kids down Central Park," he added.

Today's men, in fact, specifically state that the images of masculinity -- including those in politics and pop culture -- are not in keeping with the masculinity they believe in.

In a study across several countries, including the United States, 86% of men said masculinity has changed from their father's generation, and nine-in-10 said they view their caring side as a strength. Only 7 percent said they relate to media depictions of masculinity. In a separate study, the overwhelming majority of men said the male friendships they see, including in politics, are unrealistic and leave out the caring and support those friendships really entail. (These studies came from Dove Men+Care, a brand I now work with to encourage positive, realistic images of fathers.)

Unfortunately, there are no clear statistics on just how often men engage in or hear the kind of horrifying remarks Trump spewed with Billy Bush. This leaves an opening for Trump to argue that such casual, boastful descriptions of sexual assault are par for the course "locker room banter."

Many men like me, who work out, spend time in locker rooms, and hang out with groups of male buddies have never heard anything like Trump's proud, flippant excitement for uninvited kissing and grabbing women's vaginas. Some members of fraternities have never heard anything like it.

But there are some men who believe Trump's demented banter is probably common. And given both the frequency of sexual assault and the instances of young men videotaping gang rapes, there's no doubt that some men praise each other for assaulting women.

Most white men without college degrees continue to support Trump. So it's clear that, at the very least, many men fail to be adequately repulsed by his actions. (Opposition to Hillary Clinton is not enough to justify a vote for Trump. There are other choices.) It's incumbent on the rest of us to speak up anytime we hear or see anything that even remotely seems like pride of, and support for, sexual assault.

But there's also a role we have in the public sphere: to speak out loudly and proudly about modern manliness.

We must openly and vociferously reject the objectification of women that Trump engages in repeatedly, including against his political opponents. We must show that bullying is not manly behavior. And we absolutely must show that his callous pride in boasting about sexual assault disqualifies him from representing us.

It's a tug-of-war. Trump and his fellow Neanderthals are trying to pull us back to the Mad Men era. It's up to us to pull harder, until he and his cohorts end up flat on their faces, dragged into the 21st century.