That Viral Essay About the Masculinity Crisis Was Actually a Useful Addition to the Discourse

 

By Stacy Lee Kong

 
 

Image: Simone Pellegrini/Unsplash

 

Last weekend, the New Yorker published an essay titled, “What Did Men Do To Deserve This?” I first saw it going around on X, and I admit it: when I read the headline, I rolled my eyes a little. Another entry into the male loneliness crisis discourse that, as usual, paints men as unwitting victims of the cruel, cruel world around them, all the while ignoring the increasing frequency with which they tend to behave in anti-social ways? Okay, I guess. But that was not writer Jessica Winter’s thesis at all. Instead, she quickly dismantles the idea that men are uniquely lonely, then turns her attention to the way ‘we’—that is, the political left—talk about this loneliness, and how much of the dominant framing is predicated on women’s degradation. 

It is, to be fair, not so different from what we’ve been reading in feminist publications for the past three to five years. What makes it notable here is the mainstreaming of this analysis. Suddenly, it’s not a fringe take to ask why men’s feelings are so societally important that they must become everyone’s problem to solve. And that’s actually what I find most compelling about this piece; it doesn’t pretend that men aren’t lonely, or that boys aren’t at ever-higher risk for terrifying radicalization. Instead, it asks why we don’t expect the same social, economic, cultural and political factors that are pushing boys and men toward loneliness, and sometimes fascism, to negatively impact women—and it answers that question by reminding us that our society accepts women’s suffering in a way that it refuses to accept men’s.

Often, conversations about the masculinity crisis depend on the notion that, unlike women, men shouldn’t have to tolerate misery

And that means even the left-leaning parts of that society. In fact, Winter’s essay digs into two really important and timely issues, I think: the overarching centre-left desire to create its own version of the manosphere, and the ways people of all genders and political stripes participate in upholding patriarchy. On the first point, this piece is pegged to the release of Scott Galloway’s new book, Notes on Being a Man. Galloway, a marketing prof at NYU’s Stern School of Business and a serial entrepreneur, has an audience of millions thanks to what the New York Times once described as “a heady cocktail of data-driven analysis, bold-to-brash bets, center-left politics, dirty jokes and sudden emotional vulnerability that appeals to his core audience of men, and helps him stand out in a world of bland talking heads.” That article, which was published in 2022, went on to list his favourite topics of conversation, including “‘failing young men’ (they need role models),” and, fittingly, cited a Fast Company article that called him a “progressive Jordan Peterson.” (As an aside, can I tell you how vindicated I felt when I read that? Because truly, that’s exactly what Galloway gives, down to the no-nonsense, ‘just make your fucking bed’ tone.) Fast-forward three years and Galloway has written a whole book on the dearth of positive role models for men and boys, who he says need nothing so much as an “aspirational vision of masculinity.”

On the surface, this sounds fine. While I don’t love the language of being a “provider” or a “protector,” which is what Galloway espouses, I don’t disagree with the idea that men, like all adults regardless of gender, have a responsibility to contribute to their households in the way that makes the most sense for their families and to protect more vulnerable members of society. I do think it’s a little ridiculous that he points to cops as an example of protectors, what with all that abuse of power, police brutality and gender-based violence, but superficially, his ideas about what makes a ‘good man’ are not the worst thing I’ve heard a man say. And boys today shouldn’t look up to Donald Trump or Andrew Tate, agree!

The problem lies in what he doesn’t explicitly say; as Winter argues, “Galloway presents masculinity not as one side of a fixed binary but as a state of mind and a life style, one equally available to men and women, and therefore impossible to define… Within this amorphous framework, men’s biggest problem is, likewise, a feeling—an unreachable itch, or a marrow-deep belief—that men should still rank above women in the social hierarchy, just not as much as before. This belief may be misguided or unconscious, but it is nonetheless insuperable, and it must be accommodated, for the good of us all. What these pundits are nudging us to do, ever so politely, is accept that women, in the main, are accustomed to being a little degraded, a little underpaid and ignored and dampened in their ambitions, in ways that men are not and never will be.” 

I think this is so important to emphasize: the scaffolding for any conversation about a masculinity crisis, or male loneliness crisis, or whatever we want to call it, is that women are used to being oppressed, debased, abandoned and seeing our ambitions thwarted, but men are just not. As if experiencing subjugation under patriarchy and white supremacy has somehow erased from women the natural human need for respect, dignity, recognition and belonging. I hate this, obviously! But I especially hate what proponents of this type of masculinity—who, Winter suggests, would like to build their very own manosphere with ever so slightly less overt misogyny but exactly the same desire to maintain the status quo—see as solutions.

To Galloway, it’s “provide, protect and procreate,” which gives me the ick x3. However, to former Chicago mayor, former White House Chief of Staff and potential presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel, it’s acknowledging how the existing system is rigged—against young men specifically, of course—and proposing ways to tweak that system. Like, you know, tax credits for first-time home-buyers. But, he asserts, the solution is definitely not very progressive policies like the ones espoused by newly elected New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani; those are way too much, per a letter he wrote to the Wall Street Journal, which bluntly says his party’s future is not Mamdani’s democratic socialist vision for the city. Even though those policies were extremely popular with people of all genders and age groups. Because the Democrats love to lose, apparently! (But that’s another newsletter.)

Denying women dignity, even in these philosophical or theoretical conversations, contributes to their dehumanization 

I’ve written before about both the male loneliness crisis and the larger masculinity crisis and how men and boys are being indoctrinated into misogyny, racism, homophobia and transphobia, ableism and generally anti-social behaviour, and have always been really clear that this is a real thing that’s happening and does require intervention, care and attention. But, I do think it’s important to acknowledge that there is a reason so many men behave in anti-social ways, and it is because they are allowed to do so. Here’s a small sample of my social feeds from the past few days: a conversation about how often men weaponize food against the women in their lives, with very infuriating examples; a mother of a pre-K son who proudly recounted how she ignored her child’s teacher when they raised concerns about his “social emotional growth,” because he’s good at math, and that’s all that matters; and a man who took to the internet to complain that his wife wants him to listen to her rather than try to problem-solve when she’s upset about something that’s going on in her life, and got annoyed when people told him he was kind of being an asshole. This goes back to the second thing I thought Winter did very well in her essay, which was to highlight how our society is literally structured to discourage everyone, but particularly men, from engaging in pro-social behaviour in favour of individualism, selfishness and prioritizing power over connection.

We see this in family structures, the workplace and politics—“Ezra Klein has lately suggested that Democrats consider running anti-abortion candidates in red states, even though more than three-quarters of Gen Z women support abortion rights,” Winter points out. “Rights, like jobs, can be gender-coded, and these rights are valued accordingly.”

But we especially see it in capitalism. It was really interesting to read this essay the same week I read two others, both by men and both making connections between (often but not exclusively male) anti-socialness and the rise of financial speculation: former Gawker EIC Max Read recently argued that the sports betting sector is built on the “suckerfication” of young men, and author and Atlantic contributing writer Derek Thompson wrote a newsletter on the rise of “monks in a casino,” which is how he describes young people who find the friction of real-life unbearable, but seek out thrills in digital spaces.

From Read: “We talk a lot about the ‘male loneliness crisis’ but in my estimation we don’t talk enough about the ‘male suckerfication crisis’: The process by which young men are continuously cultivated—by politicians, influencers, podcasters, sportscasters, and the very structure of social networks—as dupes and suckers, both for the enrichment and empowerment of Trumpist politicians and movements but also in service of the profits of an ever-expanding roster of gambling and gambling-adjacent industries, among them app-enabled retail day-trading, crypto speculation, predictions markets, and of course, actual sports betting.”

And from Thompson: “Just as poor people buy lotto tickets when they feel their income is ‘low relative to an implicit standard,’ perhaps young people today are drawn to get-rich-faster schemes precisely because middle-class hallmarks, such as home ownership and children, feel like luxuries that require the sort of unlikely windfalls that only come from risky speculation. The pro-social script—date around, marry, settle down, buy a house, have a kid—feels more like a luxury every year.… This shift has moral as well as economic consequences. When a society pushes its citizens to take only financial risks, it hollows out the virtues that once made collective life possible: trust, curiosity, generosity, forgiveness.”

I don’t know if Read and Thompson would agree with Winter’s thesis, but their pieces both speak to an important throughline of her essay: there is nothing particularly gendered about loneliness, nor do we require some special, for-men-only solution, especially one that depends on women’s labour. Rather, what we all need is genuine self-reflection, an ongoing practice of unlearning misogyny and no small dose of collectivism. Which, okay, isn’t easy or simple, but does have the added bonus of not dehumanizing half the world’s population.

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MediaStacy Lee KongScott Galloway, Jessica Winter, Jordan Peterson, Zohran Mamdani, Rahm Emanuel, Ezra Klein, Max Read, Derek Thompson