The Battle For The Minds of Men

We men find ourselves at a metaphysical fork in the road. Our place in the modern, twenty-first century world seems more tenuous than it has ever been. Sixty years ago, a young boy on the precipice of manhood had a good sense of who, or what, he was supposed to be. The content of masculinity, for better or worse, was relatively straightforward. Be hard-working. Be a good provider. Be strong and stoic in the face of adversity. Persevere. Young men were instilled with the sense that, if they did those basic things they would be rewarded with a wife, a family, security, and prosperity. They would be masters of their own destiny.

But then the world moved on. Society shifted, leaving old definitions of masculinity behind. And yet, every day, good taste is bludgeoned by the intransigent, childish behaviour of grown, adult men intent on resisting these realities. Powerful, accomplished men behave in ways that are unhinged, leaving the rest of us incredulous as to how they were able to function as adults given their obvious incapacity to conduct themselves in emotionally intelligent fashion.

For generations, young boys were told to model a narrowly defined construct of masculinity; to abandon their inner lives, and internalize the collective idea of what it was to be a man. They were raised not to become emotionally resilient, stable adults, but to focus all their energy building the skills to put a roof over their heads and provide for a family. What they didn’t learn was how to also build strong, close relationships with the people they loved, for whom they spent their lives toiling away. In the process of becoming a man they actively denied or negated the person they really were, deep down. In effect, young boys learned they had to bury their souls to become a man. The result: entire generations of men disconnected from themselves and those closest to them, emotional straw men hiding behind stone-cold facades.

The failure of past generations to teach its growing boys to prioritize their emotional and psychological development while at the same time encouraging acts of self-negation to erect a rigid, male persona lies beneath the mental health struggles and anti-social behaviours so many men exhibit as adults. We are in a world that no longer accepts as true the old constructs of “man” and “woman”; no longer is able to laugh off male problem behaviours as “boys being boys”; no longer willing to countenance emotional, physical, and other forms of abuse by grown men who never learned how to conduct themselves in emotionally intelligent ways. Old gender distinctions rooted in patriarchy are dissolving, but scores of men cling tightly to gender dichotomies out of step with current norms. It is shocking for men of a certain generation who modelled themselves around an idea of masculinity that is no longer legitimate, that is in flux. Many men struggle with the cognitive dissonance between the values they learned to adopt as men, which conflict at every turn with modern expectations of pro-social behaviour.

The previous view of masculinity failed to instill young boys with the emotional tools any human being requires to confront a changing, complex world that often refuses to give what we want. It failed to teach them to be self-reflective about this: to critically interrogate their aspirations and outlooks and gain insight about how emotion shapes the way they perceive and behave (or misbehave) in the world. It failed to teach young men to be sensitive, not only to their own feelings and emotions, but to those of others.

Generations of men became adults without really knowing who they were, without having a solid, stable self-concept; with fragile egos incapable of handling adversity and conflict with grace and emotional intelligence. Lacking a stable psychological grounding, men see perceived threats everywhere, but lack the internal resources to maintain their sense of stability. In response they do what they were trained as men to do: to either bury the discomfort with distractions (addictions and compulsions), project the fear with neurotic behaviours (passive aggressiveness and narcissism), or engage in outbursts of anger and aggression to assert control (violence, ideological zealotry).

There is general agreement about one thing: modern men, and the concept of masculinity, are in crisis. Adult men are falling behind in the educational and financial outcomes of previous generations. Mid-life men are dying by suicide in alarming numbers. Scores of young men are joining the ranks of “incels.” Increasing numbers of men are gravitating toward retrograde ideas of manhood and pathologically lashing out in angst against society. Scores of women are swearing off men altogether, done with mothering grown men incapable of being respectful or responsive to their emotional needs while still expecting on-demand sex, who deal with the emotional ups and downs of relationships, or adulthood, by compulsively retreating into work, substances, pointless distractions, toxic behaviours, or extramarital affairs. Modern men need to right the emotionally sinking ship of masculinity.

The problem is, for generations men have been raised to view emotions and psychology as things women do, as aspects of vulnerability and weakness, which men were conditioned to avoid. As a result, men are not seeking the help they need; they are not receiving the interventions that offer the best chance of positive change. Instead, men are flocking to social media looking to blow off steam and, in their emotionally vulnerable state (which they don’t acknowledge), are enticed by a cesspool of ideas vying for their attention.

Two conflicting camps are battling for the minds of men, each with vastly different explanations of what happened to the concept of masculinity and how to help men out of their existential rut. On the one side, there are influencers encouraging men to engage in critical self-reflection about some of the ethically questionable values (like misogyny) we were raised with. They are mindful of the feminist challenges to past ideas of masculinity, and working to bring them into the twenty first century. They also encourage men to begin the internal work – to start the project of emotional and psychological discovery with the aim of gaining insight on where unhealthy ideas and habits of masculinity exist within ourselves and how they cause problems in our lives.

This group of influencers is trying to convince men to challenge old tropes of traditional masculinity. These have kept men stuck in emotionally unintelligent patterns of thinking that ruin their intimate relationships and make them prone to self-sabotaging behaviours to cope with adversity. Most of these influencers are Millennials and Gen-Z, and it is heartening to see they have gained a lot of traction with their generational peers. Unfortunately, these cohorts wield very little social, political, or economic power at the moment. Their attempt to shift ideas of masculinity have failed to uproot the entrenched views of many Boomers and Gen-Xers.

On the other side are influencers of the “Manosphere” who are doubling-down on tropes of masculinity from the past. This concept of masculinity upholds the oppressive, exploitive, misogynist, chauvinist values that were, at one time, foundational to patriarchal, capitalist societies. These influencers blame feminism for most of modern men’s problems; for blurring the simplistic, reductionist gender constructs delineating man from woman, and deigning to carve out a space for women in social, political, and economic spheres of power. They attribute none of men’s problems to the fact that generations of men were discouraged from becoming emotionally intelligent adults. In fact, the thrust of their solution for struggling men is to encourage them to be more childish, more emotionally unintelligent, more truculent in asserting old paradigms of masculinity. They are literally shouting down the gains of feminism in their attempt to reinstate a society where women were marginalized as a rule and (white) men could behave in misogynistic, anti-social ways without consequence.

It is mind-boggling, but these ideas are holding sway, particularly among reactionaries in the Gen-X and Boomer generations who feel alienated by challenges to the concept of masculinity from feminism and other progressive social movements. The successful election of the current U.S. President, unapologetically toxic for decades, attests to how strong the grip of outmoded ideas of masculinity is in the minds of men.

According to the Manosphere, the way out of the crisis for men is to resist all attempts to modify our concept of masculinity in response to the times. Purveyors of the Manosphere assert the social gains for women, people of colour, immigrants, and others besides hyper-masculine, Western men have come at great cost: they have all conspired to transform the traditional concept of masculinity into something akin to a “pussy.” The way back to ourselves as men, so it goes, is to behave as though our societies have not evolved politically and embrace a caricature of the ideal man of bygone days.

In this false, nostalgic rendering of masculinity, the Manosphere valorizes an abusive, misogynist, racist, and emotionally stunted cardboard cut-out of a human being who is vastly at odds with the progressive shifts of the last several decades. The Svengalis of the Manosphere label anyone a “simp” or a “beta” for suggesting men develop their capacity to get in touch with their feelings to avoid the lure of self-destruction; to increase their skills in fostering long lasting, healthy relationships with the women they purport to love. Instead, they implore men to tap into their base, instinctive feelings of rage and entitlement to force reality into line when the going gets tough, no matter how catastrophic the implications for their lives or those around them. These self-proclaimed “alphas” have no idea how decidedly they confirm everything Freud theorized about what happens when stunted male children become adults.

As infuriating as this is, it is also incredibly sad and ironic that men with serious mental health issues embrace out-dated patriarchal notions of masculinity that make them oblivious to the unresolved traumas and emotional wounds that underlie their struggles. These ideas discouraged past generations of young boys from actively engaging and experiencing their feelings, learning how to process their emotions, and made them vulnerable to self destructive ways of dealing with their problems. Modern psychology has given us insight into the pathological behaviours of men as projections of unresolved childhood traumas. Men can’t begin to solve their problems without delving deeply into their emotional selves with an eye to healing these wounds.

I like to believe the more palatable (if no less misguided) of the Manosphere influencers like Canadian psychologist-turned-demagogue Jordan Peterson genuinely set out to address the profound decline of men’s mental health. From a clinical standpoint, I imagine he saw first hand how past ideas of masculinity did a huge disservice to men by failing to give them the basic psychological and emotional tools they needed to cope with the many adversities of adult life. For generations, men have been made to feel insufficient for not meeting the masculine ideal and to feel weak if they acknowledged their feelings about this. Peterson’s earlier social media content focuses more on helping men tackle these issues. Unfortunately, Peterson went off the rails when he decided to cash in on his rising influencer status to legitimize disreputable political views rooted in toxic masculinity.

Other, more crass, less erudite, infinitely more cretinous influencers are garden variety man-children posing as strong men and encouraging others to do the same. They are unable to see the ridiculousness and hollowness of the quasi-human, masculine ideal they tout. It’s unbelievable how many men are drawn to these ideas, but not surprising given the causal relationship between the inability to regulate emotions and a diminished capacity for intellectual discernment.

Men deserve real sources of wisdom and insight to help them deal with their emotional issues. They don’t need throngs of Pied Pipers leading them off an emotional cliff by perpetuating dubious notions of masculinity that make them undesirable as men and dysfunctional as human beings. These ideas further degrade the health and well being of men by more deeply entrenching thought patterns that weaken emotional stability. All of this makes men less well equipped to handle adversity.

No amount of posturing and primal screaming from adherents of the Gospel According to the Manosphere is going to scale back the aspirations of modern women. Women do not want to return to a state of existence where their economic security and social status were entirely dependent on a man. Women are not nostalgic for the time when they had to regularly endure emotional abuse, sexual assault, rape, or extreme violence by men incapable of regulating their emotions at work, at the bar, on college campuses, or at home in their intimate relationships. Women do not want their humanity to be reduced to an object of male gratification and treated as fleshy sex toys by men. Instead of having tantrums about it, men need to accept modern reality and do what it takes to adjust their behaviour accordingly.

Sadly, the Manosphere has claimed a recent victory in its goal of re-establishing the patriarchy – the Supreme Court did just over turn Roe v Wade, after all. They won that battle, but the war for basic human decency is a long game. Convincing decrepit, blinkered judges to allow the state to control women’s bodies does nothing to change the day-to-day reality for regular men who aren’t white, rich, powerful, and don’t sit on the Supreme Court: they must learn how to conduct themselves in step with modern norms. If they don’t, they will be lonely and miserable.

Those of us who are feminist allies and advocate for a healthy collective concept of masculinity to go with it must redouble our efforts to halt the regressive wave of the Manosphere from gaining ground among vulnerable men. Not only are their ideas damaging to social cohesion, they are also destructive to male psychology. The lies and false promises of late-stage, crony capitalism and the fictions young boys of a certain generation were taught about masculinity ultimately clashed with changing social realities, the cognitive dissonance playing a role in the tragic rates of death by suicide among middle-aged men. Aside from marginalizing women, these endemic ideas also failed men in countless ways. Young boys were never taught how to functionally cope with adversity. Their minds were plied with sexist lies about women as they were taught a reductive construct of “woman” the vast majority of women rejected a long time ago. This undermined their ability to properly relate to their girlfriends and wives. The fundamental conflict has proven disastrous for the institution of marriage. Many men are struggling to cope with the fallout.

The tropes of masculinity prevalent in the past – that men don’t have to “feel” or be “sensitive”, that men should not cry or acknowledge their fears, or that men are entitled to specific things from women (sex, children, domestic support) – set the stage for the anti-feminist backlash the Manosphere trades on. Thanks to the Manosphere, countless men are blaming feminism for the breakdown of marriage and re-asserting crude, patriarchal constructs of masculinity to cope with their shock. Rampant homophobia and the reactionary backlash against transgender rights are the most despicable, retrograde manifestations of this phenomenon.

Because of feminism, more women are self-sufficient and have choices about how they organize their lives. The Manosphere instructs men that this is the fundamental moral failing of modern society. Even women who choose to be a “traditional wife” – which mirrors patriarchal ideas about the role of women – are unwilling to stay in a marriage to an abusive man who self-destructs in response to life challenges. Women are no longer willing to tolerate being married to an adult child incapable of carrying their share of the emotional weight of an intimate relationship. Women want careers and want their spouses to be equal domestic partners to ensure that happens. Instead of blaming feminism for these shifts, which occurred to better the lives of hundreds of millions of women, men need to adjust. Men need to see their role as a partner more holistically, as encompassing emotional intelligence, so they can support and relate to women in healthy, mutually beneficial ways.

The Manosphere influencers are doing their best to propagate widespread male denial of modern cultural realities, to the continued detriment of men’s mental health. They encourage men to strengthen their attachment to a stultified ideal of masculinity that was fundamental to patriarchal, homogenous societies but is anathema in a diverse, pluralistic society that no longer accepts misogyny as legitimate. They are doing their best to perpetuate a notion of masculinity where men can be as emotionally unintelligent as they want so long as they are a good provider. They are conning young men into believing they can be abusive, disrespectful, contemptuous, and unfaithful to their spouses and feel entitled to enjoy all the benefits of a doting wife – so long as they are “high value” or “alpha” men. It’s beyond absurd, and profoundly detrimental to male mental health for the distorted reality it instills in men’s minds.

Challenging outdated ideas of masculinity is not synonymous with hating men. It is chipping away at a gender construct that has been damaging to male mental health. It needs to vanish, not only in response to legitimate feminist critiques of its oppressiveness, but because it is also no good for men. It discourages young boys from growing into functional adults able to succeed and thrive amidst the emotionally taxing realities of existence. It is tragic, the scores of suffering, confused men gravitating to fraudulent ideas of masculinity that perpetuate all the problems that got us into the trouble we’re in right now. The echo chamber of the Manosphere is not going to help men who can’t cope with their emotions; who possess self-destructive behaviours that have ruined their lives and sabotaged their most important relationships. The Manosphere perpetuates the culturally-ingrained habit that propels men to deny their struggles and suppress their feelings about it. Both of these inclinations have been catastrophic for men’s lives and their mental health. For far too many men, it has proven deadly.

Men looking to have a more solid, stable sense of self, must confront their deepest feelings about what they experience, not suppress them, as we were encouraged to do in the past. The way to be strong is to acknowledge your feelings, sit with the vulnerability that entails, and see where it leads. Only from that vantage point can a man gain insight about who he is and what matters most to him. Only from accepting and acknowledging his feelings about life’s struggles can a man hope to become strong, stable and, most importantly, learn to navigate life’s challenges constructively. Bloviating, acting out, obnoxiously asserting our manhood, bedding random women, and shouting down our opponents may be a source of fleeting satisfaction, but it does not actually solve any of our problems. If anything, these coping strategies make our problems much worse.

Men cannot become whole human beings, the best version of ourselves, if we lack a strong, core sense of self and do not learn how to process and regulate our emotions. That starts by looking deeply inward with an eye to reconnecting with our inner spirit, and opening up to the vulnerability and discomfort that sometimes involves. We will never be strong men by looking outside ourselves for answers and adopting pathetic renderings of masculinity that draw inspiration from animals lacking a pre-frontal cortex and the capacity for meta-cognition. These ideas are so obviously ridiculous, and such an utter disservice to struggling men. They should have no bearing in the twenty-first century. The fact they are gaining ground testifies to the desperate mental state of so many men.

We men were never taught how to properly deal with our shit, and so we must now learn. This starts with abandoning the idea that acknowledging we have a problem and seeking help are signs of weakness. But it is also essential we learn to support and help each other in constructive ways. For far too long, men have willingly reinforced each others’ emotionally unintelligent coping strategies; abetted each others’ destructive ways of “blowing off steam”; re-affirmed maladaptive cultural tropes about “toughing it out” through crisis to friends in times of need. It has backfired horrifically for all of us. Any man who touts these ideas now, given twenty-first century realities and modern psychology, is a man who has not dealt with his shit and wants to bring other men down with him. If you are battling with demons, don’t make the Faustian bargain with the Manosphere. Be a real man instead: know thyself.