Very powerful, very interesting post Latham. It’s amazing how difficult it is to talk about “maleness” or “masculinity” - like trying to figure yourself out makes you right-wing or something. I really appreciate this. Feel like I’m just waking up to how deep the “crisis of men” really cuts.
Thank you Sam. You're right, it was so difficult to talk about masculinity without checking every one of my biases. The entire time I was writing I was preparing for how I would be misinterpreted and what it would take to defend that.
That being said, I think we need models of masculinity that span both sides of any political aisle. Conservative and liberal, a healthy society built off healthy minds transcends politics. It can't be about power or special interests any more. We've seen the end result of those conversations and it's not pretty.
I appreciate you all giving me a platform to write this. And I also need to check out The Unmade Bed as Josh mentions below.
Sep 16, 2023Liked by Latham Turner, Joshua Doležal
Commenting on this took the same amount of caution. I felt like I had to check a thousand boxes before I simply said ‘I like men and feel for you guys’. This was well written. Good luck, fellas.
Not only masculinity, but basically anything that past generations would have found normal to talk about or share universally for millennia is now right-wing. The difference between me and others who are called that is that even though I'd fall in the middle somewhere in normal times, I just don't care about labels anymore because they're all so meaningless. Anybody reading this is welcome to call me right-wing at this point: I don't care. It says more about the labelers than it says about me.
There's a lot I could say about this topic. But as a fallacy, toxic masculinity falls under the category of poisoning the well. The well has to be purified before you can tell someone to drink from it again; in the meantime, many young men prefer to drink from a well named Andrew Tate. When the masculinity argument strikes you as right-wing, that's your senses sniffing the poison in the well water; a poison that was dumped into the well by left-wingers. As long as the poison is there, no attempt by the left to rehabilitate masculinity will be successful. To do so would require that they get the feminists to renounce that argument and admit they were wrong, in a public manner: something I don't think many on the left will do in case it gives the "evil right-wingers" new talking points. Better to believe in a damaging fallacy than to do that!
I have to believe that there are ways to have a more nuanced conversation than that. I see it in personal conversations with friends working in the feminist movement, in the environmental movement, in corporations and governments. They all respond to real conversations without devolving into name calling or attacks. Now how we move that beyond personal touch points to bigger stages, I'm still not sure.
Sep 15, 2023·edited Sep 16, 2023Liked by Latham Turner
Right on Latham and thanks for tagging me. The more of us writing and speaking in our own voices, the better. I for one choose not to participate in the 'crisis' or even the 'men are suffering' point of view and see our current juncture as an opportunity for a renewal of what masculinity is and can be. I used to be more lonely and angry and hurt (and sometimes still am) but I feel I can do more speaking and writing my own truth as a man, doing my own best to expand into my self, and showing the positive.
and there are a LOT of writers (not just on the fringes) doing good work on the subject (including yourself!) many of which reference in the reading list at the end of the last piece cited above ⬆️ and in particular, most recently, in @Sophie Strand's extraordinary book The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine, which I recommend very highly, along with The Descent of Man, by Grayson Perry and Man Uncivilized, by Traver Boehm.
Btw, I think the reason it's hard to talk about "masculinity" or a men's movement without getting coded as anti-female, or right-wing, or something, is that that's part of the price we are (all) paying for (all) having created such a narrow, shallow, performative, and obsolete "masculinity" so far. We do have a bit of a hill to climb—and, for our own, and everyone's sake, let's make it a celebration of growth and expansion.
I was excited to be able to share your work more broadly. It's really powerful to see so many men taking control of the narrative, and it's pushed me to be more intellectually daring in my writing.
I don't think it's fair to characterize masculinity in terms of a 'crisis' or 'men are suffering' as you say, any more than I think it's fair to say 'men have it easy.' There is real nuance in all of those conversations. But I have a lot of friends, men who gave 20+ years of their lives to serve the country in some of the most 'manly' professions and in some of the most elite units, who don't feel like they have it figured out anymore. They're looking for that sense of community that guided them as young men, and when you give them a beer or two they open up in ways that make it hard to say 'everything is great.' I know you know this, so maybe I'm just stating it for anyone that reads these comments.
I ordered The Flowering Wand and am excited to read it. Thanks for a good conversation.
This is my favorite passage. Right on the mark: "Many of us can’t stand aside any longer. We see our friends, colleagues, and loved ones longing for something real. We’re begging in the streets with them after abandoning the old narrative of total work. We see through “self-fulfillment” gurus, companies that want us to live our best lives, and the horsemen of hyper-individualism promising a return to the glory days. Yet we refuse to give up on a deeper purpose. We’re facing more complex problems than our parents' generation ever faced, but we also know we can make things better. If we can figure out how."
Thanks Josh. As we've spoken about, I had to walk away from my career because I couldn't stand it any more. But that hasn't always been easy on my family, much less on my ego. It's especially hard when I know, in my bones, that what I see on Youtube or in articles isn't it, but I don't yet feel like I can point to the thing and say "this is the answer."
There is no definitive answer except the mutually reinforcing community you describe. We evolved to be social creatures. We’ll always care to some extent about what others think. It’s possible to defy convention. But no one can do it alone.
Sep 15, 2023Liked by Latham Turner, Joshua Doležal
This is such an important topic, thank you for writing about it. I’ve always felt very ill-served by our models for masculinity. They can be stifling. Especially the midwestern ethos of the “man of few words.”
I love to talk and need to connect. I’ve been very fortunate to be a member of a fellowship that meets often and is centered on the idea of sharing experiences and caring for each other.
In my experience, we must make community, connection and support a priority. But without the support of society that’s difficult. I go out three nights a week to spend time with a group. I take several calls a day and make three or for each day. Forming a community of men who actively care about each other requires time and effort, but it’s as necessary for survival as food and air.
This, I believe, is why entire towns used to shut down on Sundays. Church was a way to fill this need. When I was a kid, there were a million societies of men who met in clubhouses on a weekly basis. The Lions Club, the Shriners, Knights of Columbus. I have no idea what they did besides wear funny hats in parades.
Could you imagine having a clubhouse where you and your friends could just hang out in? It seems like a foreign country! I wonder if we don’t need new masculine myths and stories as much as we need the space and time to be with each other and put caring for one another and having fun together first?
We have a dearth of love. We need to share our lives with each other.
Stephen Marché points out in his important book, The Unmade Bed, that few fathers are spending their Saturdays at the golf course anymore. There was a dark side to those clubby places for men -- children felt their absence at home, and the domestic labor inequities were clearly worse then. Even so, I agree with your point that men don't have many natural gathering places. This remains elusive in my own life, but I wholeheartedly agree: "Forming a community of men who actively care about each other requires time and effort, but it’s as necessary for survival as food and air."
Sep 15, 2023Liked by Latham Turner, Joshua Doležal
Great point. I will read The Unmade Bed. My father left my mother when I was young. A lot of men weren't very present for their children and families, it's true. Those of us who tried to be different faced similar difficulties to what women deal with.
I was the stay at home parent with our son, and as a result my career took an enormous hit. I'm fine with how things turned out, but I definitely could not have a robust career and be present for my family in the way that I wanted.
Thank you for sharing Sean. I agree that community is such an important part of the challenge. However, the communities that I have joined can, at times, feel uninspiring. Communities that help need to be grounded in leadership and principles that will work to help others. I think of one community in particular which sounded great on paper but ended up being the bling leading the blind right into despair.
I think we need elders who have done their own work and have stories to work from that can then form supportive communities that will help each other. At least that's my vision, and something I'm actively thinking a lot about how to grow. I don't have the answer, yet. But I believe it's possible. It won't look like golf clubs and it won't look like boot camps. And I agree we have to figure out how to make sure men are involved and present in their families, and that our whole life is integrated into these communities in some ways. Otherwise we repeat the mistakes of the past.
I'm grateful for the conversation and the perspective. It helps me refine my own learning too.
Very true. And the particular pain of being there for your kids but being judged as less successful by others is a bitter pill. I made the same choice two years ago and the peace of being present to my kids in ways my father was not to me has been shaken by those enduring and harmful tropes about what a man should be.
its such BS that we're stuck feeling less than because of the decision to break the cycle of parental neglect. We should have examples who lift us up, hold us up as examples and inspire us to be there for our kids and be of service to ourselves and others. That's the kind of eldership I dream of seeing in society.
Many of the civic groups you allude to, as well as early organizations like Odd Fellows, were founded as mutual assistance societies; a prototype for this might be something like Ben Franklin’s lending library in Philadelphia. Nowadays, government serves much of this role.
I know men who do have their own clubhouses, sort of a detached man-cave I suppose. But I can’t help but think the craft brewpub that most towns now have already serves that purpose pretty well: comfort food, outdoor seating, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, with an informal atmosphere.
Men’s groups could be important, I suppose, but I think groups would be more effective if they were cross-gender or, perhaps more importantly, cross-generational. I don’t see very much of that. For example, I meet every month for lunch with a small group of men (6-8), but I sometimes feel our collective point of view is too limited; despite our diverse backgrounds, we’re close to the same age, with a similar mental picture of the past and where we are on the grand timeline.
I’m not sure what you mean by a “midwestern ethos”? I live in the Midwest (Gass’s heart of the heart of the country). Do you mean something like Clint Eastwood’s laconic characters? I would call that a Western ethos, not a Midwestern one.
Thank you so much for writing this, Latham. I am the mother of five children. Two of whom are 20 and 18yo males. Thus this demographic group is thus extremely important to me.
Thank you Zina. It was a pleasure to write. Good luck to your children. It's not easy being a young man right now, but that also doesn't mean it's hopeless. There are people and organizations that want to empower young men to rise above the old narratives and challenges. I hope your boys find their way.
Actually I would love to actually chat about this on Zoom or something because this is a huge concern for me. I have been drafting a post about this in relation to my current study of The Odyssey right now, and how the absence of a mature male role model has been a preoccupation for a long time. The crisis of manhood is a long one, and defining what it means to be a man was often aided by institutions that are not longer effective (like religious organizations, etc.). The American preoccupation with freedom and independence means that the most powerful have freedom and those who are are just average joes to those who are worse off are at a huge disadvantage. My sons have disabilities and they will likely be living with us for a long time, but they are still men. However, they live in a culture that so readily strips people of their dignity. More than most people they need good men to help them in this world. I have seen what is going on in the world and have a hard time not despairing. I would love to talk to someone about this.
I'd be happy to chat some time. I agree that the loss of those institutions (in importance if not in existence) has been so hard. And for men who don't check every box (my own son has a disability as well), it can feel like there isn't a lot of hope.
Do you want to send me an email to latham@substack.com and we can find a time to chat?
Excellent piece. Restacked it. You make many solid points. Also, thanks for the shoutout. It looks like my link is not working though?
The angry feminist anti-men sector and the anti-women Mens’ Rights groups are both absurd. They’re in truth a tiny fraction of Americans who stupidly get all the media attention. It’s just like the fringe left and fringe right in politics. The truth is that most women and most men are in the rational middle.
Men and especially boys ARE struggling, and that’s going to backfire big time on women...because most women want a male partner. Meghan Daum just did a very interesting interview with a young feminist about this: https://meghandaum.substack.com/p/free-what-can-a-man-do-christine-emba
It looks like the link is working on my end. Thank you for linking it anyways, it's worth everyone reading and thinking about.
I'm excited to listen to the interview. The more we can highlight and bring forth nuanced conversations, the more we can help people rise above the media attention.
This is good stuff. I find I always have to check myself about what I say regarding masculinity. The interesting thing is that I find most of my short stories and my novels ends up being about fathers and sons. Really, they are about the need for fathers to be role models of what it means to be a man.
It reminds me a lot of the saying "fiction tells the truth that can't be told." I think when we talk about masculinity nowadays, a lot of us end up looking for ways to protect ourselves/silence our detractors preemptively.
I'm hopeful more of us can start talking about it directly. And I'm hopeful more of us can start taking our masculinity and our places in society seriously.
I enjoyed parts of this but was left wondering what exactly I had read or what exactly the problem is. I even wondered about the opening statement: “It’s never been harder to be a man than it is right now.” Is that even true?
For example, what about the years of anxiety and fear that potential draftees experienced in the 60s or a generation earlier?
Or what about the huge number of unemployed young men roaming the country in the 30s, living in hobo camps or “jungles,” sometimes having left home simply to free up food for younger siblings?
As for mental health, the introduction to my edition of Of Mice and Men says this about California’s itinerant farmworkers in the 30s: “One study concluded that about twenty-five percent were feeble-minded, forced out on the road.”
Surely those were periods of more acute challenge to manhood than now.
Fair questions, Frank, but I think Latham is talking about conflicts that can't be dismissed just because they represent a different level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Not minimizing the draft or those periods of economic devastation, but those men weren't necessarily reading essays about how much they sucked at equitable domestic labor or how they represented centuries of patriarchal oppression. I'm not sure the two struggles are really comparable. Military service and physical survival might be traumatizing, but they present a very clear existential purpose. Someone who has enough to eat and no imminent threat to their life has other totally valid concerns, such as whether they feel valued in their relationships, whether they feel they are setting a good example for their children, whether they feel like they belong to a social community they feel good about and that affirms them. First-generation immigrants also often have more acute physical and economic struggles than the second or third generations. But that doesn't make a second-generation immigrant's questions about identity and belonging frivolous. In fact, the more I think about it, the more your response sounds like a refrain I heard often growing up: Suck it up, buttercup. I'm not sure that line ever worked. All it did was shame other men into avoidance, isolation, and denial.
I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment on the source of gender as a creation or not.
I look at my own experience and those of friends and family, and I see people who feel stifled by the rigidity of the narratives but also feel enlivened by the power of some of those narratives. Whether it's a creation or not, many of them (myself included) feel drawn to the divine masculine and becoming a spiritually whole person. Which is what I really think is far more important then comparison of the sexes or trying to classify people as one of two genders or any of the other cultural conversations which I spent the first 15 years of my adult life trying to avoid.
That's true enough in the abstract, but we all know the power of master narratives. I know all too well that conceptualizing freedom from those narratives is far easier than truly living independently of them.
Yes Josh and that's what makes it so hard. It's impossible to live independently of some cultural narrative. The cultural narrative is literally what gives meaning to human thought
Very powerful, very interesting post Latham. It’s amazing how difficult it is to talk about “maleness” or “masculinity” - like trying to figure yourself out makes you right-wing or something. I really appreciate this. Feel like I’m just waking up to how deep the “crisis of men” really cuts.
Thank you Sam. You're right, it was so difficult to talk about masculinity without checking every one of my biases. The entire time I was writing I was preparing for how I would be misinterpreted and what it would take to defend that.
That being said, I think we need models of masculinity that span both sides of any political aisle. Conservative and liberal, a healthy society built off healthy minds transcends politics. It can't be about power or special interests any more. We've seen the end result of those conversations and it's not pretty.
I appreciate you all giving me a platform to write this. And I also need to check out The Unmade Bed as Josh mentions below.
Commenting on this took the same amount of caution. I felt like I had to check a thousand boxes before I simply said ‘I like men and feel for you guys’. This was well written. Good luck, fellas.
Thanks Kat. It’s not easy, but the more people that are willing to evolve the conversation, the better off we’re going to be.
Sam, I know you wrote about Richard Reeves a while back. I'd add Stephen Marché's The Unmade Bed as recommended reading.
Not only masculinity, but basically anything that past generations would have found normal to talk about or share universally for millennia is now right-wing. The difference between me and others who are called that is that even though I'd fall in the middle somewhere in normal times, I just don't care about labels anymore because they're all so meaningless. Anybody reading this is welcome to call me right-wing at this point: I don't care. It says more about the labelers than it says about me.
There's a lot I could say about this topic. But as a fallacy, toxic masculinity falls under the category of poisoning the well. The well has to be purified before you can tell someone to drink from it again; in the meantime, many young men prefer to drink from a well named Andrew Tate. When the masculinity argument strikes you as right-wing, that's your senses sniffing the poison in the well water; a poison that was dumped into the well by left-wingers. As long as the poison is there, no attempt by the left to rehabilitate masculinity will be successful. To do so would require that they get the feminists to renounce that argument and admit they were wrong, in a public manner: something I don't think many on the left will do in case it gives the "evil right-wingers" new talking points. Better to believe in a damaging fallacy than to do that!
👍👍
Part of the crisis is that you can't talk about masculinity without coding as right wing of the worst sort
I have to believe that there are ways to have a more nuanced conversation than that. I see it in personal conversations with friends working in the feminist movement, in the environmental movement, in corporations and governments. They all respond to real conversations without devolving into name calling or attacks. Now how we move that beyond personal touch points to bigger stages, I'm still not sure.
Right.
Right on Latham and thanks for tagging me. The more of us writing and speaking in our own voices, the better. I for one choose not to participate in the 'crisis' or even the 'men are suffering' point of view and see our current juncture as an opportunity for a renewal of what masculinity is and can be. I used to be more lonely and angry and hurt (and sometimes still am) but I feel I can do more speaking and writing my own truth as a man, doing my own best to expand into my self, and showing the positive.
As you know I've written a lot about masculinity and identity in my memoir https://open.substack.com/pub/bowendwelle/p/an-ordinary-disaster as well as in pieces like
Anxious Masculinity https://open.substack.com/pub/bowendwelle/p/anxious-masculinity-things-fall-apart
The Truth About Love https://bowendwelle.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-love
The Man Pays https://bowendwelle.substack.com/p/the-man-pays
Less Warrior, More Clown https://bowendwelle.substack.com/p/less-warrior-more-clown
and No, It's Not a Struggle to Find Good Male Models https://open.substack.com/pub/bowendwelle/p/there-is-no-struggle-to-find-good
and there are a LOT of writers (not just on the fringes) doing good work on the subject (including yourself!) many of which reference in the reading list at the end of the last piece cited above ⬆️ and in particular, most recently, in @Sophie Strand's extraordinary book The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine, which I recommend very highly, along with The Descent of Man, by Grayson Perry and Man Uncivilized, by Traver Boehm.
Btw, I think the reason it's hard to talk about "masculinity" or a men's movement without getting coded as anti-female, or right-wing, or something, is that that's part of the price we are (all) paying for (all) having created such a narrow, shallow, performative, and obsolete "masculinity" so far. We do have a bit of a hill to climb—and, for our own, and everyone's sake, let's make it a celebration of growth and expansion.
I was excited to be able to share your work more broadly. It's really powerful to see so many men taking control of the narrative, and it's pushed me to be more intellectually daring in my writing.
I don't think it's fair to characterize masculinity in terms of a 'crisis' or 'men are suffering' as you say, any more than I think it's fair to say 'men have it easy.' There is real nuance in all of those conversations. But I have a lot of friends, men who gave 20+ years of their lives to serve the country in some of the most 'manly' professions and in some of the most elite units, who don't feel like they have it figured out anymore. They're looking for that sense of community that guided them as young men, and when you give them a beer or two they open up in ways that make it hard to say 'everything is great.' I know you know this, so maybe I'm just stating it for anyone that reads these comments.
I ordered The Flowering Wand and am excited to read it. Thanks for a good conversation.
This is my favorite passage. Right on the mark: "Many of us can’t stand aside any longer. We see our friends, colleagues, and loved ones longing for something real. We’re begging in the streets with them after abandoning the old narrative of total work. We see through “self-fulfillment” gurus, companies that want us to live our best lives, and the horsemen of hyper-individualism promising a return to the glory days. Yet we refuse to give up on a deeper purpose. We’re facing more complex problems than our parents' generation ever faced, but we also know we can make things better. If we can figure out how."
Thanks Josh. As we've spoken about, I had to walk away from my career because I couldn't stand it any more. But that hasn't always been easy on my family, much less on my ego. It's especially hard when I know, in my bones, that what I see on Youtube or in articles isn't it, but I don't yet feel like I can point to the thing and say "this is the answer."
There is no definitive answer except the mutually reinforcing community you describe. We evolved to be social creatures. We’ll always care to some extent about what others think. It’s possible to defy convention. But no one can do it alone.
This is such an important topic, thank you for writing about it. I’ve always felt very ill-served by our models for masculinity. They can be stifling. Especially the midwestern ethos of the “man of few words.”
I love to talk and need to connect. I’ve been very fortunate to be a member of a fellowship that meets often and is centered on the idea of sharing experiences and caring for each other.
In my experience, we must make community, connection and support a priority. But without the support of society that’s difficult. I go out three nights a week to spend time with a group. I take several calls a day and make three or for each day. Forming a community of men who actively care about each other requires time and effort, but it’s as necessary for survival as food and air.
This, I believe, is why entire towns used to shut down on Sundays. Church was a way to fill this need. When I was a kid, there were a million societies of men who met in clubhouses on a weekly basis. The Lions Club, the Shriners, Knights of Columbus. I have no idea what they did besides wear funny hats in parades.
Could you imagine having a clubhouse where you and your friends could just hang out in? It seems like a foreign country! I wonder if we don’t need new masculine myths and stories as much as we need the space and time to be with each other and put caring for one another and having fun together first?
We have a dearth of love. We need to share our lives with each other.
Stephen Marché points out in his important book, The Unmade Bed, that few fathers are spending their Saturdays at the golf course anymore. There was a dark side to those clubby places for men -- children felt their absence at home, and the domestic labor inequities were clearly worse then. Even so, I agree with your point that men don't have many natural gathering places. This remains elusive in my own life, but I wholeheartedly agree: "Forming a community of men who actively care about each other requires time and effort, but it’s as necessary for survival as food and air."
Great point. I will read The Unmade Bed. My father left my mother when I was young. A lot of men weren't very present for their children and families, it's true. Those of us who tried to be different faced similar difficulties to what women deal with.
I was the stay at home parent with our son, and as a result my career took an enormous hit. I'm fine with how things turned out, but I definitely could not have a robust career and be present for my family in the way that I wanted.
Thank you for sharing Sean. I agree that community is such an important part of the challenge. However, the communities that I have joined can, at times, feel uninspiring. Communities that help need to be grounded in leadership and principles that will work to help others. I think of one community in particular which sounded great on paper but ended up being the bling leading the blind right into despair.
I think we need elders who have done their own work and have stories to work from that can then form supportive communities that will help each other. At least that's my vision, and something I'm actively thinking a lot about how to grow. I don't have the answer, yet. But I believe it's possible. It won't look like golf clubs and it won't look like boot camps. And I agree we have to figure out how to make sure men are involved and present in their families, and that our whole life is integrated into these communities in some ways. Otherwise we repeat the mistakes of the past.
I'm grateful for the conversation and the perspective. It helps me refine my own learning too.
Very true. And the particular pain of being there for your kids but being judged as less successful by others is a bitter pill. I made the same choice two years ago and the peace of being present to my kids in ways my father was not to me has been shaken by those enduring and harmful tropes about what a man should be.
its such BS that we're stuck feeling less than because of the decision to break the cycle of parental neglect. We should have examples who lift us up, hold us up as examples and inspire us to be there for our kids and be of service to ourselves and others. That's the kind of eldership I dream of seeing in society.
Many of the civic groups you allude to, as well as early organizations like Odd Fellows, were founded as mutual assistance societies; a prototype for this might be something like Ben Franklin’s lending library in Philadelphia. Nowadays, government serves much of this role.
I know men who do have their own clubhouses, sort of a detached man-cave I suppose. But I can’t help but think the craft brewpub that most towns now have already serves that purpose pretty well: comfort food, outdoor seating, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, with an informal atmosphere.
Men’s groups could be important, I suppose, but I think groups would be more effective if they were cross-gender or, perhaps more importantly, cross-generational. I don’t see very much of that. For example, I meet every month for lunch with a small group of men (6-8), but I sometimes feel our collective point of view is too limited; despite our diverse backgrounds, we’re close to the same age, with a similar mental picture of the past and where we are on the grand timeline.
I’m not sure what you mean by a “midwestern ethos”? I live in the Midwest (Gass’s heart of the heart of the country). Do you mean something like Clint Eastwood’s laconic characters? I would call that a Western ethos, not a Midwestern one.
Church masculinity is it's own type
Thank you so much for writing this, Latham. I am the mother of five children. Two of whom are 20 and 18yo males. Thus this demographic group is thus extremely important to me.
Thank you Zina. It was a pleasure to write. Good luck to your children. It's not easy being a young man right now, but that also doesn't mean it's hopeless. There are people and organizations that want to empower young men to rise above the old narratives and challenges. I hope your boys find their way.
Please reach out if they ever need anything.
Actually I would love to actually chat about this on Zoom or something because this is a huge concern for me. I have been drafting a post about this in relation to my current study of The Odyssey right now, and how the absence of a mature male role model has been a preoccupation for a long time. The crisis of manhood is a long one, and defining what it means to be a man was often aided by institutions that are not longer effective (like religious organizations, etc.). The American preoccupation with freedom and independence means that the most powerful have freedom and those who are are just average joes to those who are worse off are at a huge disadvantage. My sons have disabilities and they will likely be living with us for a long time, but they are still men. However, they live in a culture that so readily strips people of their dignity. More than most people they need good men to help them in this world. I have seen what is going on in the world and have a hard time not despairing. I would love to talk to someone about this.
I'd be happy to chat some time. I agree that the loss of those institutions (in importance if not in existence) has been so hard. And for men who don't check every box (my own son has a disability as well), it can feel like there isn't a lot of hope.
Do you want to send me an email to latham@substack.com and we can find a time to chat?
Excellent piece. Restacked it. You make many solid points. Also, thanks for the shoutout. It looks like my link is not working though?
The angry feminist anti-men sector and the anti-women Mens’ Rights groups are both absurd. They’re in truth a tiny fraction of Americans who stupidly get all the media attention. It’s just like the fringe left and fringe right in politics. The truth is that most women and most men are in the rational middle.
Men and especially boys ARE struggling, and that’s going to backfire big time on women...because most women want a male partner. Meghan Daum just did a very interesting interview with a young feminist about this: https://meghandaum.substack.com/p/free-what-can-a-man-do-christine-emba
Here’s my recent piece on manhood: https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/what-is-a-man
Michael Mohr
Sincere American Writing
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
It looks like the link is working on my end. Thank you for linking it anyways, it's worth everyone reading and thinking about.
I'm excited to listen to the interview. The more we can highlight and bring forth nuanced conversations, the more we can help people rise above the media attention.
This is good stuff. I find I always have to check myself about what I say regarding masculinity. The interesting thing is that I find most of my short stories and my novels ends up being about fathers and sons. Really, they are about the need for fathers to be role models of what it means to be a man.
It reminds me a lot of the saying "fiction tells the truth that can't be told." I think when we talk about masculinity nowadays, a lot of us end up looking for ways to protect ourselves/silence our detractors preemptively.
I'm hopeful more of us can start talking about it directly. And I'm hopeful more of us can start taking our masculinity and our places in society seriously.
I wrote this from memory several years ago and never did the intended follow-up. Might be time to revisit it.
https://steemit.com/books/@plotbot2015/10-025th-anniversary-of-iron-john-oh-and-the-punisher-too
I enjoyed parts of this but was left wondering what exactly I had read or what exactly the problem is. I even wondered about the opening statement: “It’s never been harder to be a man than it is right now.” Is that even true?
For example, what about the years of anxiety and fear that potential draftees experienced in the 60s or a generation earlier?
Or what about the huge number of unemployed young men roaming the country in the 30s, living in hobo camps or “jungles,” sometimes having left home simply to free up food for younger siblings?
As for mental health, the introduction to my edition of Of Mice and Men says this about California’s itinerant farmworkers in the 30s: “One study concluded that about twenty-five percent were feeble-minded, forced out on the road.”
Surely those were periods of more acute challenge to manhood than now.
Fair questions, Frank, but I think Latham is talking about conflicts that can't be dismissed just because they represent a different level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Not minimizing the draft or those periods of economic devastation, but those men weren't necessarily reading essays about how much they sucked at equitable domestic labor or how they represented centuries of patriarchal oppression. I'm not sure the two struggles are really comparable. Military service and physical survival might be traumatizing, but they present a very clear existential purpose. Someone who has enough to eat and no imminent threat to their life has other totally valid concerns, such as whether they feel valued in their relationships, whether they feel they are setting a good example for their children, whether they feel like they belong to a social community they feel good about and that affirms them. First-generation immigrants also often have more acute physical and economic struggles than the second or third generations. But that doesn't make a second-generation immigrant's questions about identity and belonging frivolous. In fact, the more I think about it, the more your response sounds like a refrain I heard often growing up: Suck it up, buttercup. I'm not sure that line ever worked. All it did was shame other men into avoidance, isolation, and denial.
But the truth of gender is that there is no truth. That's what makes it so hard. It's an act of ex nihilo creation. We are our own gods.
I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment on the source of gender as a creation or not.
I look at my own experience and those of friends and family, and I see people who feel stifled by the rigidity of the narratives but also feel enlivened by the power of some of those narratives. Whether it's a creation or not, many of them (myself included) feel drawn to the divine masculine and becoming a spiritually whole person. Which is what I really think is far more important then comparison of the sexes or trying to classify people as one of two genders or any of the other cultural conversations which I spent the first 15 years of my adult life trying to avoid.
That's true enough in the abstract, but we all know the power of master narratives. I know all too well that conceptualizing freedom from those narratives is far easier than truly living independently of them.
Ps this is thoroughly been explored in existentialism
Yes Josh and that's what makes it so hard. It's impossible to live independently of some cultural narrative. The cultural narrative is literally what gives meaning to human thought