This is yet another editorial that rehashes cliches about "toxic masculinity" and the "loneliness epidemic." Not to say these cliches don't have a basis in reality, but let's remember that this is an editorial whose purpose is to drive sales of the guest author's book.
The author, Ruth Whippman, is a "current affairs" journalist and documentary maker. In other words, she has made a career of picking trending pop-psychology topics and writing fluff commentary on them. Her books have subtitles like "Why are we driving ourselves crazy and how can we stop?"
Having said this, one pattern in how adult men behave emerges very clearly, at least to me, living in a middle-class US suburb. Men don't have a habit of building community. Women do.
For example, my suburb and neighboring ones have subreddit communities. Those subs regularly get posts from new arrivals who have trouble finding friends.
On average, female posters mostly get responses from other women, and most of the responses are about making plans to exchange contacts, get together as a group, and try activities together.
On average, male posters get grouchy responses from other men telling them that they aren't trying hard enough or creatively enough.
Women in my area have built social organizations that reach out to female newcomers and try to pair them up with other women looking for activity partners. Men have not.
If you're a man living in the suburbs and don't like "man" things (sports, cars, hunting and/or fishing in the South), you're in for a very rough time. 2x difficulty if you don't have kids.
> We have spent the past half-decade wrestling with ideas of gender and privilege, attempting to challenge the old stereotypes and power structures.
I think it's worth considering how this approach has differed for girls and boys.
For girls, the predominant approach seems to be positive messaging along the lines of 'you can do anything' and 'girl power'. It's an approach of encouragement.
For boys, the message is largely 'don't be toxic'. It's an approach that appears to assume masculinity is unappealing and something to be fought.
I'm not going to argue that our culture doesn't encourage some very unhealthy and frankly antisocial ideas about what it is to 'be a man', but I question what is being achieved by focusing so much on these without balancing the message. Part of the reason for the emphasis I think comes from the way the encouragement is presented to girls - e.g. 'men and boys are holding you back and you should focus on how in order to fight it' (not untrue in many cases).
I have a young son and I worry about the messages he will take on board as he grows up. I will do my best to make sure he doesn't adopt an unhealthy version of masculinity, but at the same time I don't want him to grow up thinking that there is something inherently wrong with him (i.e. just by virtue of being male he is somehow 'toxic').
I also have a friend with a son who is now a teenager. I've known her son since they were two and watched them grow up. At about age 13 they let us know that they were not 'male'. Fair enough. Still, they haven't adopted some sort of feminine identity instead. Rather, it seems to me that they have essentially looked at what they thought 'being male' meant and decided they did not want to be that. Many of their peers did the same (some even changing their name).
I can't help but think that - at least in the case of my friend's son - this is not some example of 'being born in the wrong body', but a reaction to a widespread derogatory narrative about what it means to be male. I know that as a teen I was very uncomfortable with some of the expectations around that (being aggressively competitive, being stronger than others, etc). Had I been in an environment where the idea of gender was being questioned and criticised so widely, maybe I would have rejected my gender in the same way. I'm glad I didn't, because with time I have come to realise that I define what 'being a man' is by virtue of being one.
It's a difficult path for boys today. I see it in the young people around me. There are some young people I know will do well in this world - it is easy to recognise from a relatively early age. Confidence, a positive attitude, intelligence, competence, etc. The interesting thing to me is that when I think about the young people I know and who has these qualities there is a clear bias towards the girls and young woman and I can't help thinking that this is directly related to the messages we are giving young people about who they are.
As a parent of two young children confronting many of the same issues and questions I really appreciate your comment. One part I might quibble with is that I'm not sure the messages girls are getting will really prove all that much more helpful in the long run. As an example, for the longest time, Taylor Swift's music would just go in one ear and out the other for me, as it always just seemed like the most straightforward, bland, inoffensive pop. I finally took a closer look when my kids started getting interested after hearing about her on the playground. I was amazed at how consistently she strikes this tone of affected victimhood -- this sort of self-contradictory pose of "I'm so over you I wrote a whole song about it."
Also, it's much more disproportionately girls who are rejecting their assigned gender in early adolescence. I think I agree with the common take that this is often a rejection of pornified culture and the premature and hyper-sexualization of young girls, but there also seems to be something hollow and missing in the ostensibly more well meaning "girl power" role models.
There are many people who choose not to ignore the challenges faced by young men but grow weary of being shouted down or dismissed.
The number one, single most important thing every young man MUST do is not go more than one week without leaving the house and meeting other groups of people in an environment conducive to conversation and learning. It doesn't matter why, it only matters that it happens.
I was one of those young men, I spent a decade in the army moving constantly and deployed or TDY constantly then I got out and went to college that wasn't really college because I was working full time and taking a full course load. Then I got a job where I traveled 50%, minimum, per year.
My house was just where I stored my luggage between trips and I had no friends. Some days I would wake up and not know where I was and I would have to pull out my phone to look at Google Maps. I had nobody to call except my parents who were 1,200 miles away, no emergency medical contact, nobody to pick me up from the airport or give me ride if I needed to take my car to the shop.
So in my 30s I decided to change that. It was hard but hard is not a synonym for "impossible". I took a position where I didn't have to travel and decided to finally put down roots.
I joined a yoga studio and started going almost every day. Precisely and exactly zero people gave me, a fat hairy man, any grief for sucking at yoga. After a couple of months of seeing the same people often I started to make friends with both the instructors and the other students. Now some of the few men who go and I meet up for coffee every Sunday after Yin for a casual "yoga men's group" and a small group of teachers and students and I go on retreats every year.
That's friend group number 1.
After a while I was no longer fat, so I started volunteering at my local volunteer fire station. Every emergency service everywhere is short staffed, volunteer services especially. I went through EMT training and Firefighter I and II and now I drive the ambulance or staff the engine 12 hours per week. It's like I have 40 brothers and sisters now.
That's friend group number 2.
Finally in what little time I have spare I roller skate and am a member of a local astrophotography and amateur radio club. An old man circling the rink draws attention so I've made friends at the skate zone and meet up with fellow nerds once or twice a month to talk radio and telescopes, and sometimes radio telescopes.
Those comprise a third group of more distant, but still very important, friends.
edit: damn I forgot my scuba friends. Many years ago while on a retreat I paid for a scuba lesson through the hotel when the ladies were out shopping. I fell in love with it and linked up with a local dive shop a little later. Now when the weather is nice I go on quarry dives locally and the shop runs weekend trips to Florida. My yoga ladies now specifically try to find retreats with scuba opportunities to accommodate me.
My scuba buddies are yet another friend group because you tend to get to know people while on a cramped dive boat for hours or doubling up in a hotel room to save cash on a weekend trip.
I'm also a local watershed steward, clomping around in boots along the shore of the Chesapeake Bay to make sure there's no trash in MY water and giving presentations to local civic groups about watershed preservation and an election judge (been doing that so long I'm a chief judge).
Now when I am out and about I constantly recognize people I don't know and I have to be careful because often I don't know HOW I know them: did I help them during an election? Have I seen them around the yoga studio? Did I give a presentation to a group they're in? Or did I take them to the ER one night after they got too drunk, pissed their pants, and fell and hit their head?
It was difficult to do all that and it took many years.
I fully, freely, and earnestly admit that it was hard.
What I didn't do is fall into a black hole of video games and isolation, which back then I was dangerously close to doing.
One of my elective liberal arts classes that HN and certain men like to shit on covered the risks of social isolation and it stuck with me, so I suppose I was extremely fortunate that it was one of the only options that fit my tight schedule.
When I say "no matter where you live, with no exceptions, everywhere in the country there are groups of people you can join in order to make friends for little or even no cost except for time" people dismiss me: "oh it's not that easy" (it really isn't but it is possible) or "not around here" (I guaran-god-damn-tee it, give me your zip code and I will personally find something).
Even if in your zip code the only thing I can find is a Thursday night knitting group, if your only choice is either isolation or knitting you'd better put aside all preconceptions of masculinity and learn to fucking knit with a bunch of old ladies.
The only trick to all of this is you have to not act like an asshole.
The number of people I've met among my wide and varied NOT TERMINALLY ONLINE friend groups who have even uttered the phrase "toxic masculinity" can be counted on zero fingers and I am a hairy-assed, tall-as-hell, combat veteran infantryman, current firefighter, EMT, and aerospace engineer and I consider myself pretty goddamned manly.
> Kind of sucks to be assumed that people with my views would have the idea that males should suffer in silence.
Your only friends are women and you would feel conversations about your feelings and emotions would be inappropriate with other men
So what do you think men who only have male friends do?
They suffer in silence
You may not feel like they "should" suffer in silence, but your beliefs are such that if you didn't have your close female friends who you spoke with, you would be doing exactly that
Anyways, I'm likely further right than you. I have more male friends than female friends, and I don't think it's inappropriate to talk about your feelings with other men.
> I don't think it's inappropriate to talk about your feelings with other men.
Nor do I. Yet those times when I have tried the results have too often been negative.
Once the topic is broached some guys get stuck in downward spirals during conversation. And it's hard to make it clear you hear them without reinforcing their insecurities.
Others will go and tell mutual friends that you over share or are too emotional.
Changing cultural problems like this will take time and tact.
> Changing cultural problems like this will take time and tact.
It starts with men not caring if other men say they're too emotional, or that they over share or whatever else. It starts with men allowing themselves to be vulnerable and setting an example for one another, especially older men showing younger men that's ok
> This feels accusatory but I'm unsure if you mean it that way
A little yes
You are complaining about "toxic masculinity" while also still practicing the parts that are truly toxic, like not having male friends or being open with your feelings to other men
> "Don't wait for someone to post the link, just go to archive.is and paste the NYT link there yourself."
Yes and also paste the link back in the thread for other readers! I see it as sort of maintaining the commons, a very simple courtesy to others. You spend two extra clicks yourself to save hundreds or thousands of clicks for others.
