Gen Z’s Sexual Catastrophe Brought Us The Crisis At Cornell

There is little dispute that something is missing from the mindset of America’s younger generations. From headlines about young people — especially young women — waving away marriage, kids, even simply engaging in meaningful relationships, to becoming engrossed in a social media pathology that glorifies gender role aesthetics and extreme versions of what it means to be masculine or feminine, it appears the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the digital revolution of the 1990s and 2000s did little to revolutionize sex and more to confuse and even discourage healthy relationships. In this weekend’s Punch interview, Ben Domenech talks with Bethany Miller, director of communications at NRB, managing editor of The Conservateur, and senior fellow at Concerned Women for America, about the troubles with modern dating, if the feminist girlboss is the real villain of the story, why men are blamed for societal ills, and what connects the Lindsay Clancy case and the Cornell 7.

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Ben Domenech: Bethany, I wanted to talk to you about some of the things we see going on in the lives of younger Americans today that are of concern to a lot of us who feel like the next generation is taking an attitude toward relationships that is really unhealthy and that isn’t actually informed by the experience or the historical lessons that we’ve learned about relationships between men and women that lead to solid families, happiness, success in life, et cetera. First off, let me just ask you, how many of those trends that you see conservatives, particularly social conservatives, worry about actually bother you, and which ones, if any, are, in your view, overblown?

Bethany Miller: I’m actually seeing a divide within the genders. I think a lot of us are seeing this online, and as a member of Gen Z and being online myself, I’m seeing the more unhealthy trends that conservatives are concerned about trending with young women. And of course, we know that young women right now are the predominant demographic voting liberal, and are tuning into the feminist narratives.

Many of us have been concerned about the state of young women in general, given the Lindsay Clancy case, the Cornell 7, and how women respond to online narratives outside of dating. So I would say from my personal perspective, I’m more concerned about how women are responding than men. We know that since 2024, we’ve seen men turn more and more conservative and find more interest in religion.

So we’ve seen men trend that way in general, but what I’m not seeing is women trend that way at all. Otherwise, I’m seeing the two sexes polarizing in two different directions. So I resonate with the conservative concern that Gen Z as a whole is more tuned into modern dating and less into the traditional courtship you often hear about. I’m talking about this new study that said 72% of Gen Z does want to marry. So I think at the same time, while we’re seeing this polarization of the two sexes, there is an overall sentiment of Gen Z pushing back on this Millennial chaos that I think they’ve inherited and saying, okay, this is not really what we wanted. We do actually want to marry. I think what we’re seeing is the lack of understanding of how to date and how to date properly.

I would argue that both genders do indeed want something more lasting, but aren’t necessarily sure how to date one another and then do it in a way that is… It’s like they’re miscommunicating, it’s like they’re they’re missing each other in a sense. So that’s what I’m seeing.

BD: I want to get into the advice on the dating front, but let’s stick with the men for a moment. One thing that really stuck out to me was seeing polls come through with counterintuitive lessons in them. For a very long time, the argument of the Left as it related to abortion in particular was one that said the problem essentially is that men don’t want to have kids, men don’t want to support kids, men don’t want to be part of a family with kids. And so it creates a negative incentive. And so all the advice from the Left for men was wrap it up or that kind of attitude toward things. When you look at the polling data today, we see that among younger men, that cohort is more interested in having children than younger women; younger women are less supportive of doing that; and younger men are more interested in getting married and having kids.

That’s something that has shown up in a couple of different polls, and I think it always tends to surprise people. What do you think is going on there? Is it part of them becoming more conservative, or has there been a change given the dominance for so long of the abortion narrative and everything else, where women now view the act of having kids or joining into an actual lifelong marriage as being the end of something as opposed to the beginning of something?

BM: I think you hit on it right at the end there. I think the narratives are trending differently for each sex, of course. Now with men specifically, that’s why we saw them respond the way they did in ’24 in the polls. Men have been told that they are the oppressors for so long. For so long, our culture has said that. Young men have told me themselves that they were tired of that. I mean, naturally, you’ve got left-wing institutions saying it; you’ve got the media and entertainment saying it; you’ve got movies even making the woman the heroine. Entertainment even went that direction. So men, especially white men, were becoming the oppressors. They were the villains in every story, whether it was entertainment, education, or society in general.

So I think that is the sentiment that was going on. And so naturally, when they had somebody like a Donald Trump going on podcasts who spoke to their frustrations and just said the quiet part out loud, naturally had men go in that direction. And then once they were brought into more conservative-leaning institutions, brought into the pews, into churches, whether Catholic or Protestant, then they were being taught and given these ideas of a family, of future, of the American Dream as we once knew it. And so naturally I do think that there was a desire because again, we had this crazy culture trending within… We surrendered the entertainment, and everything, to the Left, and so young men were turned off by it naturally.

And women were the ones that were being catered to. Women were given the education spots; women were given the CEO spots over men, whether or not they even had the merit. And so we had that switch, and all of a sudden it was only women; it was women were first, women this, women that, the future is female. That was all the slogans that they were being taught. So naturally, we had men turned off to that, men wanting to pursue more of the traditional roles, which is, I think, why we had more of that surge in the manosphere. At the same time, we had the feminists going more and more and more the way that we see it today, which is giving us the divide in the dating realm.

So I’m not surprised at all that young men are more interested in having children than young women, because I think young women are still tuning into the “Sex and the City” narrative. They’re still wanting and reaching for that feminist narrative and seeing children as a step back, and seeing being submissive to a husband or submissive even to children and having to provide for or be a part of a family, be under someone’s care as an oppressive state when, in fact, that is not true. But that is what we’re seeing right now.

BD: The Lindsay Clancy case is something that animated a cohort of women online who were very defensive of her, I think in some ways that surprised people. The joke’s been done to death, but it’s setting back gender relations to 100 years ago in terms of its effect, the way that men respond to it, and the way that I think normal women respond to it. But it does indicate where things have gone. Is this a situation where the level of social media power that has been directed against traditional motherhood, against the honor and the glory of being able to raise children who are a gift, is something that has been eradicated to some degree by the presence of these arguments against basically every aspect of motherhood, of homemaking, and things like that on TikTok, and trying to turn that type of depiction into something that is a tradwife in a box kind of scenario as opposed to still being something where you can be the person that you want to be.

BM: I think this is where the conservatives may have, I guess in a blunt way, shot ourselves in the foot where we’ve given conservative women a dichotomy. You have either the girlboss or you have the trad wife. The girlboss is exactly that. Speaking for myself, I’m in my mid-20s, I’m a working woman, and I am unmarried, and I live in a metropolitan area. I’m exactly what the Left hopes for and often wins. Naturally, I am conservative. And so I am that exact demographic, but I can’t put myself in the tradwife box because I’m not married and so I’m not literally a traditional wife. But I’m not a girlboss either because I do desire those things. But I do think there are women like myself who are responding to the way the media, social media, is covering the Clancy case because women are elevated to just our emotions.

That’s all that they’ve become, which is interesting. As you said, this does set feminism back because there is no equality. All of a sudden, you are equal in every aspect until you have to have autonomy and actually have to take responsibility. And all of a sudden it’s, oh, she just struggled with her postpartum psychosis, whatever it may be, and it’s always believed the woman. So I think that the algorithm right now is trending towards more of that. It is pushing more of this toxic empathetic narrative. But at the same time, you can open TikTok today, and you will see women make videos talking about how their husbands are abusive or that marriage is the most oppressive thing you could do.

And I do think that the aesthetic of tradwife right now is not something that you see on TikTok. Instead, you see “Sex and the City”; you see the liberation of having a job and working in the office and being a character on “Suits.” It is the “I can do anything a man can do,” just like that Annie Oakley song — and I can do anything you can do better. That is the trend right now, and it is not trad wife because it doesn’t fit the aesthetic. And so like you said, motherhood is not an aesthetic thing right now on social media. And if it is, it trends more with this far-right-wing circle than with the broader American public. Social media caters more to women who are told to believe all their emotions.

And that is why we have the digital response we do to the Cornell 7 and to Lindsay Clancy right now. And now you’re seeing clips of women telling their boys, “This is how you’re supposed to treat women, and you’re never supposed to treat women the way that happened in Cornell 7.” And I just think it’s absolutely ridiculous what we’re seeing right now.

BD: You mentioned the word aesthetic. It seems to me that the aesthetic here is incredibly powerful because it’s largely an illusion. It’s one that, when it’s effective, is effective for a reason — it connects with people. But you also have this false choice where, as you said, it’s basically either you’re going to be a girlboss or you’re going to be a tradwife when the truth is that the vast majority of women in America are neither of those things in terms of the way that they live their lives and raise kids and work and all the different choices that they make. Is this a situation where the aesthetic has basically taken over and replaced the argument that basically it’s in an era when we don’t have any patience for anything beyond the short video scroll that never ends, that we don’t actually have the conversations around the choices that we make in life?

Are we instead just driven toward “You like this aesthetic, so you’re just going to get more and more and more of it until you can’t take anymore”?

BM: It is exactly that. It’s almost like we let the digital aesthetic speak for what exactly it is. We let Pinterest and TikTok and Instagram tell women what femininity is without actually being able to say what femininity is and actually have the argument of what is the difference between the two sexes? Men are providers and protectors and they are the stronger vessel. Whereas women are the weaker vessel, and women are nurturers and softer, and they provide an aspect that men do not have, and that’s why they’re meant to complement each other. But if I were to even say that publicly, that’s considered inflammatory and controversial, because that’s where our culture is primed right now. But 100%, it’s almost even trivial to say out loud, but the aesthetic is the forerunner to the argument. And all of a sudden, the further and further the aesthetic is allowed to run, the further back the argument is, and no one’s even able to tell you what femininity is.

I think that’s why you’re either a girlboss or you’re a tradwife, and there’s nothing in between. And you just cannot narrow down women and femininity, and men too, into an aesthetic like that. Motherhood is sacrifice and responsibility. It’s children and bills and sickness and forgiveness. Nothing about that is aesthetic. It never was meant to be. Same with men, and the aspect of what it means to be masculine was never meant to be that. But it’s funny, we talk so much about toxic masculinity. We never talked about toxic femininity. What we’ve only ever talked about was the aesthetic parts of it. But because we’ve not been able to define the argument of what it means to be a woman, which we can’t even answer that, funny enough, but then we can’t even answer what it means to be feminine.

All we’ve seen is the unhealthy version of it, which is what we’re seeing in the headlines. And so it doesn’t surprise me. We’ve let the aesthetic define what it means to be a woman. And then now we’ve got this outrage that we’re seeing with these women, the state of women and how they respond to headlines and how they are allowed to run with completely unrestricted emotion. And then it is all the unhealthy versions of women. And so what we’re seeing on display is that unhealthy femininity and not healthy femininity because no one has stopped and talked about what it means to be a healthy and beautiful and flourishing woman. And it’s been unfortunate to see the conservative outlook on life not be able to communicate that because now we’ve let the Left say we are the pro-women party, we are the pro-woman movement.

And now women have found a “home within the Left,” thinking that they are pro-woman, when it’s the conservative outlook on life that actually provides that flourishing, that femininity. And exactly like I said, 72% of Gen Z does want to marry. Some women are lying to themselves. They do want to marry. And if you ask them, they’ll say, “Yeah, we do want a man to pay for dinner. We do want a man to open the door.” And they’re naming all of these things that are exactly what true textbook masculinity is. So they still want to, which is why it’s kind of contradictory. But yes, 100%.

BD: The thing that is obviously the equivalent on the male side is the aesthetic of the manosphere. It didn’t surprise me at all, but I also thought it was hilarious that, as I suspected, every fancy car Andrew Tate had was leased. And so it’s the equivalent on the male side as well. It’s that you are LARPing as something that you are not. But I do think that there is a follow-on effect to that as well. And for many young men, they fall into a trap. And I do think that this number is exaggerated, but it is real, of the manosphere aesthetic, which I think contributes to things that lead to incidents like the Cornell 7 that you’re talking about. Whether it was a direct follow-on or not, that attitude toward women comes from it, and it’s framed as, “This is what you should aspire to; this is what you should aim to achieve as a man; this is what will make you feel more like a man.” I obviously don’t know. I mean, I haven’t read anything that would indicate that that’s something that factored into this directly, but it does contribute to this idea that even as men struggle with the relationships that they have with women, they struggle with what they’re supposed to do and their obligations when it comes to dating and what’s in line and what’s out of line, and when to seek consent, and what risks they have in terms of just having basic relations with women, even if it’s friendly. It seems to me that that awkwardness has led to a spike in the number of men who are willing to just treat women very poorly and in ways that no father would want their son to treat any woman.

What is your attitude toward this storyline, which has obviously taken over the conversation nationally? And what are you seeing as the lessons to take away from it, both the negative and perhaps maybe something positive or a silver lining about this can be a teachable moment in some way?

BM: Specifically with the Cornell 7 case?

BD: Yes.

BM: We’re still getting the facts out, but for me personally, I’ve seen people respond to different aspects. We’ve seen the public respond to the Greek life, the men, how they should have responded, how they didn’t respond. And then what I’ve been kind of zeroed in on is Jane Doe’s story. Given the fact that in 2024, her transcript and her story have changed to today, and seeing the public respond — I’ve already got TikTok comments just flooding that say, “I am Jane Doe,” all over again. And we haven’t even seen the facts yet. So I’m very, very just frustrated because it’s the Lindsay Clancy response all over again. I’m frustrated at the state of our media that we are jumping to respond without getting all of the facts. And now, as we’re getting the facts, all of mainstream media have already made up their minds. And if any type of woman cries rape or sexual assault — this is the downside of the Me Too movement. The Me Too movement has created more harm than good because now it’s that, if a woman cries rape or sexual assault, you must always believe the woman and must never question her. And that’s what you saw in Lindsey Clancy. This woman had postpartum psychosis; therefore, a bunch of other women who were mothers and had postpartum whatever it may be, they also never questioned her. She was struggling. No one reached out to her. And then, of course, every villain of every story that we see, it’s a man.

Patrick Clancy must have had an astrology sign. Patrick Clancy must have done it. With Cornell 7, again, like you had said, these men are awful. You read what happened, what they did — awful. It’s a terrible situation. It’s a frat party. Everyone’s drunk. Terrible situation nonetheless. But for Jane Doe to come out and say, “I was raped, and it was not consent,” when it changed what she had originally said.

The case is disgusting, and I am grieved by the public’s response to it — because even someone like myself who has a history of S.A. — it frustrates people like us who are true survivors because it doesn’t help tell our story. It doesn’t advocate for us more. It actually makes us more fearful to come out because we’re going to probably find out that Jane Doe might have been a hoax. A lot of the time, they are. And then you unravel and you find out that one of the Cornell 7 lost their jobs over this because it’s always taken that seriously on the male side and over the female side. So I would say that this further tells us the state of young women today and where they are mentally and their ability to view everything through an empathetic lens. It’s always, “I have to attach my story to it. I have to belong to this in some way. I have to resonate with this. I am her.” It’s always that, over and over again. I have to belong and hook arms with this girl, even if her truth isn’t fully true. So I’m grieved by that.

With Lindsay Clancy, we had so many men break up with their girlfriends over it, asking, “Hey, how did you feel about the Lindsay Clancy case? What’s your perspective on it?” And I very much commend those young men who ended relationships with prospective wives because these women had come out in solidarity with Lindsay Clancy. And it’s unthinkable that someone that you’re looking to date and become the mother of your children would come out in solidarity with the woman who killed her children. So I commend them for that, but I also agree with them as they fear walking up to women in a coffee shop because they don’t want to be the next TikTok story. And that’s kind of our current state.

And it’s hard to find the silver lining right now, especially as this Cornell 7 story is just now coming out and we’re seeing the public’s response. But I will say that I am encouraged by this 72% of Gen Z is open to marriage. I am encouraged that young men are seeking more marriages that produce children and want that outlook. I do think that we have that uprising. I think what the charge is, is to not let the men find a home in the manosphere because we would be foolish to think that we run over the young men and then not continue to disciple that. We do need to encourage men to not be afraid of their masculinity, even if the culture continues to push against that. And we need to be encouraging women to find what is healthy femininity, and that it is not just conservative; women do not fit into one box, and it is full seasons of life.

So I do think that there is hope. I think our midterms will tell us where exactly they fall in the polls. But I will say that this response to the Cornell 7 case is just another Lindsay Clancy response. And we really need to stop this feminist angle and this whole Me Too movement continuing to run because it’s getting worse and worse.

BD: The thing that really sticks out to me about American culture today is that there are precious few examples of young, loving fathers and husbands in our culture. I understand that part of that has to do with the dynamics of narrative television and things like that, but the assumption tends to be one that runs the direction of fathers who abandon their kids, particularly their daughters. It’s astonishing when you start listing the movies, for instance, that are about men abandoning their daughters for either noble or ennoble reasons. The number of positive figures that we have who are basically young, loyal, hardworking husbands and dads is pretty few and far between in terms of the nature of our culture. How much of this is a problem that you think matters within this space? Because to me, it is one where you see people trying to live examples and they follow examples that they see in front of them.

And unfortunately for a lot of men, you’re either an anti-hero or you’re a doofus or you’re an idiot or you’re someone who abandons your family. It’s overwhelmingly negative depictions. Do you think that matters on a certain level? Is it something that needs to change just to give people some kind of image of young fatherhood or just fatherhood generally that could be a positive reflection for these young men to look at?

BM: One hundred percent. I really do think the way that our institutions at large, whether it is our education, or even our churches and our entertainment, have really put men down and have made men the reason that our society is the way it is. Sure. Is there a percentage of that that is true? Yes. But I also think that there is — I really do believe that feminism has paved the way to wokeism, and that what we have today is socialism knocking on the door of the West because women have let it in. Men, on the other hand, are becoming the villains in even entertainment? I mean, yes, if you’re a young boy growing up today and watching movies today, you sure don’t feel like a hero anymore like you did when I grew up in the early to late 1990s, early 2000s, where you had Prince Charming, and you had the man on the white horse, and you had “Gladiator,” and you have all these incredible narratives where men were rising to the occasion and being exactly what they were meant to be: providers and protectors.

And America today is such an interesting place because we don’t have lions and bears in the streets anymore where we can see masculinity full on display unless you are to enlist or be in law enforcement, which I do think that a lot of men today really do need to find ways to have that outlet for testosterone and find a way to do what it is to be a man, even though you don’t want to limit masculinity down to just those physical things. It is also the way they think strategically in black and white in a way that is very much more orderly than women often do. That’s just the difference in the way our brains are made and structured. But I do think that entertainment putting men down, even with just our storylines, has absolutely taken down the perception of men in general.

And yes, we do have a fatherless problem. We also have a male mental health problem. So many more of our suicides in the West are men. And I just don’t think that we’ve allowed them to have those… We haven’t had those hard conversations.

We’ve not let men just open up and be vulnerable about those things in a way that they need. But yes, I really do think this 20th century has, especially in our entertainment, taken down the public perception of men and what good masculinity does, and how truly good masculinity has built this nation from the ground up and has provided an incredible civilization that we inherit today. And that is because of good men, good fathers, good sons that fight for our country and all of those things. But absolutely, I do think that our entertainment and our arts contribute to that.

BD: The dating question, you mentioned it before. I can’t even imagine, I’m 44 years old, navigating the minefield of today’s dating situation. It seems impossible. It seems like everything is demanded of you and also nothing. The expectations seem to be perfection, and basically the running joke with “Seinfeld” back in the day was Jerry constantly dumping very good-looking women over very minor complaints. And it seems like at the time, that was the butt of the joke. Today, it seems like that’s how everybody lives, at least from the outside. If there’s a flaw, if there’s a mistake, you’re off the cliff. What do you think that we can do to help make dating in America today better for young people?

BM: I really do think the sexual revolution, the dating apps, all of that has absolutely contributed to what we have today. The digital age continues to run forward and forward and forward, which is all great. It’s just quite ironic that we’ve never been more connected than ever, yet more disconnected than ever. I do think that we should encourage young people to just go out, be able to set their phones aside, go out to a coffee shop or to a restaurant or a bar, even when they’re riding on the metro, and just be willing to connect with people in general, romantic or not romantic. I get in the elevator in my apartment, and I’m in there with five other young people, and everyone’s on their phone. No one wants to just look up and have a conversation, even about simple things like the weather. We just don’t do that anymore.

And I do know the digital age has impacted that so much. So if we can just get back to being able to have a conversation with people. Gen Z, Gen Alpha, are one, illiterate, but then not even capable of having conversations with peers, let alone adults and then other people in their lives that they can just talk to — you don’t even have a conversation with a cashier anymore. So I do think human connection needs to improve across the board. And I think that starts with being able to have a conversation with a stranger out and about — you’re ordering coffee, have a good conversation. In the dating world, we can’t just have a conversation, which is why situationships are so popular: they’re temporary, and you’re not owing somebody anything. And of course, in the dating apps and separation and hookup culture, naturally situationships are the end result.

But we do know that so many 20-somethings do want to be married. And I think that they are sitting here, and I know I actually speak from experience, sitting here feeling a little hopeless because it’s become like shopping. And you open an app and there’s so many options and there’s this illusion that the perfect person is just one swipe away or just out there and I just haven’t found them yet and you just kept having to shop and shop and shop, but then you’re just sitting on your couch on your phone looking through a catalog of people and you’re not even doing the hard work of just going out, meeting somebody and willing to have a conversation and then willing to ask the hard questions. So many times I’ve seen people get married and then end up in a divorce and say, “Well, we didn’t have hard conversations.” Just like Charlie Kirk used to say all the time, “If you can’t talk headlines with a future spouse, then don’t get married to that person.” We’re not even willing to have those hard conversations because things are so inflammatory today.

But I would say that the encouragement would be, if you have somebody in your life that is dating, single in their 20s or whatever age they are, and want to connect with somebody, my encouragement would be just to go out and be willing to have a conversation and connect with people. Because I’m telling you, I go out and I practice this myself. I go to a bar on the weekend to watch a game, and I’m sitting next to somebody, and I’m going to try to converse with them and ask them what they do for work and whatever it may be. And it can be light and simple, but I do think the human connection aspect has given us what we have today. We are just so chronically online, and we are just missing one another. If you ask people, they do want it.

They do want to date; they do want to be married. They’re not willing to do the work to do it. My answer is to get off the apps, get offline, and get outside.