Men my age are in serious trouble. As young women have seen tremendous barriers to entry removed in sectors from STEM to the C-suite and gained tremendous personal and social capital as a result of this upward mobility, their male counterparts aren’t exactly following the trend.
On average, men my age are underperforming academically and taking fewer specialized courses — if they pursue higher education at all, which we’re also doing less on average. In three decades, the number of men reporting having zero close friends has jumped fivefold, while suicide rates among men 25-34 years old have risen by 34%. My generation’s tragic decline is, in far too many cases, quite literally a matter of life and death.
Such are the trends, and you’d be forgiven for thinking the problems end there. However, the proposed solutions are no less controversial. Many a think piece has cataloged the rise of the manosphere: a largely online world in which young men gravitate to outspoken cultural voices, ranging from kickboxer Andrew Tate and his university of hustlers to Ben Shapiro’s brand of fast-talking religious conservatism. Such voices call men to resist doom-and-gloom trends and take personal ownership, a fact that becomes slightly less comforting when you realize how disparate their worldviews are.
A glance down a list of the manosphere’s superstars reveals irreconcilable differences regarding what successful masculinity looks like. There’s a vast gulf between Shapiro’s Judeo-Christian worldview and Tate’s philosophy of Top-G-ism. There are obvious gradations of quality in the people men my age view as cultural models. There’s a time and place to parse such things. But if you’re actually trying to reach men my age who see the fringes of the manosphere as worth emulating, here’s one tip: Stop trying to scold us into agreeing with you.
“The appeal of a grievance-based identity makes it hard to convince straight white boys that they in fact have plenty going for them, and that they have no reason to feel aggrieved,” one columnist for the Cut writes in a piece about her children that, for their sake, they hopefully never read.
Statements such as these are the easiest way to make sure men my age stop listening to you altogether. Young men gravitate toward uncouth role models. What else did you expect? Offering progressive platitudes about male rage or, worse yet, shaming boys for being on the losing end of modern gender disparity does nothing to help young men who are hurting.
You don’t have to validate Tate or agree with Joe Rogan to look at the struggling young man in your life and see him as capable of excellence instead of a malfunctioning cog in a machine.
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Pickup artists get it wrong when they say that being a man is merely fulfilling what women want. That’s no more true than it would be if you switched the genders. The manosphere gets it wrong when its most controversial voices imply that the demise of young men is the inevitable result of the success of young women. However, the progressive laptop class gets it wrong when it treats the plight of young men as unimportant or secondary in hierarchy to the plight of young women.
Men my age are checking out and becoming incels, pornography addicts, and suicide victims, and it’s not a problem that society is rushing to address. It’s time to set aside preconceived notions about young men and treat them as capable of being the virtuous, heroic people they’ve always been capable of being. And, for the love of all that’s holy, just stop with the scolding.
Isaac Willour is an award-winning journalist focusing on race, culture, and American conservatism and a corporate relations analyst at Bowyer Research. He can be found on X @IsaacWillour.