Thoughts on masculinity and men
"The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel it's warmth"
Young men are struggling, and I don’t think we are ready for the consequences.
I have long taken issue with how masculinity is understood by both ends of the political spectrum, and I suspect things will only worsen.
Scarcely a week passes without a broadsheet opinion piece trotting out familiar refrains: a left-wing writer decrying “Andrew Tate, toxic masculinity, misogyny” or a right-wing one yearning for “the good old days – stiff upper lip, men must be men”.
Masculinity is extremely hard to understand; it is a complex construct with many different attributes. Yet discussions about it grow trite, recycling the same points and dismissals. People lean on stereotypes, reducing men to cookie-cutter traits rather than recognising their humanity.
Boys today are caught in a tug-of-war between ideologies that, frankly, care little for them as individuals. The right sees them as cogs in a machine – when they falter, the answer is blunt: “Grow up, stop whining, face life.”
For all its talk of compassion, the left can be just as callous. Phrases like ‘kill all men’ or ‘men are trash’, alongside constant nods to male privilege, silence any talk of men’s struggles – yet men are still expected to lend their votes.
For a man witnessing this, it could breed deep despair. No one seems eager to help; instead, everyone views your personal struggle as a way to grift about their grand ideology for society.
The problem is exacerbated as there is no shared vision of what makes a ‘good man’.
What does goodness even mean?
Is it clinging to the a theoretical past – a stoic ‘provider’, yet places toxic expectations on women?
Or is it embracing a modern ideal aligned with the left, yet tethered to an ideology that seems to scorn him?
If I asked everyone reading this what constitutes a ‘good man’ and what masculinity is, every single person would likely give a different answer.
This lack of shared vision around what masculinity is, and men’s place in society, naturally has consequences.
At a time when young women are led by their desires to excel, to build a career, to have a life their grandparents could only dream of. Boys seem to be in a society that scorns the past but doesn’t provide a plan for their future.
What complicates the discussion further is that those leading it are mostly women and people over the age of 40.
Much as it would be hard for a 25-year-old man to comment credibly on the big issues facing female pensioners – because, for all I can intellectually understand, I do not have the lived experience – the same applies here.
Why should the conversation be led by women – who have no conception of what masculinity is – or by people who haven’t grown up with the messaging of the current generation?
Some would say, “Well, I was 21 once, so I know the struggle” – which, while true, fundamentally misunderstands the era we live in.
Lived experience is often overblown in politics, but to understand Gen Z, I believe it is essential.
The disconnect between the current generation and those before, caused by the internet, is vast. This was highlighted in a recent interview between Victoria Derbyshire and Lily Philips – a 24-year-old porn star. Lily revealed she had watched porn at the age of 11. Victoria was, by all accounts, aghast at the concept, with numerous news articles expressing shock.
Yet the 2023 Children’s Commissioner report found that half of children have watched porn by 13, while 27% have seen it by 11, and 10% of children have encountered it by just nine years old.
The entire culture of Gen Z is foreign to arguably anyone over the age of 30. There are many parts of the internet they would be incapable of finding, much less browsing and understanding.
The culture moves so fast that without deep immersion, your insights will be dated. For example, the ongoing outrage about influencers like the Tate brothers.
The moral panic around them has only grown, yet among young boys, Tate is old news – they know of him, probably make fun of him, but don’t associate with him; to them, ‘he’s so 2023’.
The pace of youth culture is far faster than many realise. Trends come and go; ‘memes’ can be conceived, spread, and die within weeks, if not days.
Yet to truly understand the humour and decipher what is real and what is ironic, you need almost encyclopaedic knowledge of what has come before.
The consequence of this speed and necessary cultural immersion is a huge in-group effect that can generate extremely humorous moments, where references make jokes funnier than the sum of their parts. But the really worrying element is that most people will miss what Gen Z are truly saying.
Among young men, a profound despair prevails – a loss of meaning, place, community, and hope.
They are strikingly alone. In 2023, Equimundo – a charity dedicated to men’s issues – surveyed American men, revealing that two-thirds of those aged 18–23 felt, “No one really knows me well.” Furthermore, 30% of the youngest men reported seeing no one outside their homes each week, and around 40% had contemplated suicide in the prior fortnight.
Young women, by contrast, often outshine their male peers, propelled by strengths in education, socialisation, and developmental pace.
Young men, however, feel bitter – as if society has cast them aside. They have a point: many have abandoned education at alarming rates, their job prospects have crumbled, and they feel mired in stagnation while others advance. They bear the brunt of knife crime, die by suicide more frequently (despite a gender suicide paradox), and face greater odds of dying in war.
The recent tariff controversy sheds light on this. To most, glimpsing the issue through news reports, tariffs just seemed a dubious call by the US president.
Yet, venture onto online platforms – Twitter, in particular – and a starkly different view emerges, shaped by thousands of men whose only ideology is a desire to torch the system.
These voices echo a generation of men who feel betrayed by society.
Consider the person pictured above, a young construction worker who argues that American society has been gutted by self-serving politicians, letting rivals – namely China – dismantle vital industries like manufacturing, enriching only baby boomers.
He believes his generation faces a bleaker future than their parents’, with no prospects. In a system that seems to offer them nothing, they see no risk in tearing it all down.
Some dismiss these men as failures, their stance reduced to, “I’m poor, jobless, lonely, and wretched – why shouldn’t everyone else suffer too?” Their anger is branded as envy, their complaints petty and baseless.
The problem is the legitimacy of their grievances does not matter.
Politicians and pundits, with a cursory wave, miss the deeper crisis.
This isn’t just about men shirking work or harbouring resentment – those are mere symptoms of a far graver issue.
As more men are ignored and pushed away, society’s foundations are eroded. At best, this could spark a Bolshevik-style uprising, reshaping the social contract on their terms. More chilling is the chance they simply withdraw, letting society slide back to a ‘natural state’.
People often assume our society as unshakeable, a flawless structure built to last. Yet, modern society is young. The norms we take as universal are absent in much of the world and were unknown here until recently.
In End Times, Peter Turchin frames the American – and perhaps global – predicament through two lenses. First, immiseration – economic poverty. Despite America’s wealth and its technological, social, and economic leaps over the past three decades, many lives are deteriorating. Deaths of despair – from suicide, alcohol, or drugs – are surging. Life expectancy has dipped, regions like Upstate New York, Appalachia, and the Midwest lie hollowed out, and wages for those without degrees have shrivelled. Inequality ensures some Americans thrive while others languish.
At the other extreme, Turchin points to ‘elite overproduction’ – society churning out more would-be elites than it can accommodate.
Children of the affluent expect prestigious roles, but as more – including those from humbler roots chasing better lives through university – compete for these positions, some driven, educated individuals are inevitably sidelined from power and status.
These are Turchin’s ‘counter-elite’, they are fuelled by contempt for a system that rejected them and are likely to take revenge on that system. Donald Trump fits this mould, as did Robespierre, Lenin, Castro, and Mao.
Turchin even ties the 2011 Arab Spring less to President Mubarak than to an oversupply of graduates in an economy unable to absorb them, igniting revolutionary fire. He warns that societies rarely sidestep such tensions without revolution.
Significant numbers of the thought leaders on the right - who propelled Trumps victory - fit this mold. They are the counter-elite who in a world that doesn’t seem to want them, have turned towards the extremes.
I remain relatively optimistic society will manage to avoid severe consequences. But society has to contend with a whole series of questions for that to be true:
What is masculinity in the modern day?
What is it to be a ‘good man’?
How do we reverse the trend of despair amongst young men?
How do young men build a community in a culture deprived of connection?
Do we have the guts required to fix inequality?
How do we fix the issue of elite overproduction?
How do we progress the cause of men, whilst still helping other groups who need it?
There are some credible answers to the above - military service is probably the way to build community - but will society be able to fix the problem in time?