A Global Dialogue on Masculinity: 33 Men Speak Out

Chapter 1 : Men’s Changing Roles

The Hazards of Precarious Masculinity

When I got into men’s work, I was stunned by the male deprivation that most of the guys I was working with had experienced growing up, observed George Simons,* who was one of the fortunate minority of our changemakers who had intimate bonds with male relatives. Updating his observation from France, where he now lives, he commented, I lecture in Finland and other countries, and, generally, at least half the students are from all over the world. What I see is that the guys are not doing very well. Owen Marcus* agrees, Guys are lost, they don’t have anyone to connect to, anyone to explain it to them. They feel trapped because they don’t see a way out of what’s called the man box. He observes, Young men are hungry for what they never got--models and direction.

It’s not enough to just have a male body, as masculinity is seen as precarious. As Ashanti Branch* said about being a teenager, You’re always in that space of questioning yourself. Are you man enough? The Boy Scouts were founded (in 1908 in the UK and in 1910 in the US) to re-masculinize teen boys and these youth groups spread quickly around the world. A former Eagle Scout observed, You might even call scouting ‘Masculinity for Dummies,’ but only for heterosexual boys.³ However, over 60,000 former Scouts sued over sexual abuse by adult scout leaders and reached an $850 million settlement in 2021, the first of many such lawsuits.⁴

Poet Robert Bly popularized the critique of American men as too soft and feminized in his 1990 book, Iron John: A Book About Men. His approach sparked the mythopoetic men’s movement and his book spent 62 weeks on the best-seller list. Bly said men need to recover their inner strength to be nurturing fathers and mentors and was concerned about boys growing up without their fathers.

More recently, other popular writers spread the same message to man up. International best-selling author and Canadian Jordan Peterson tells men in 12 Rules for Life to Toughen up.⁵ He told boys to be more boyish and stated that male oppression of women is a myth. He warns, If men are pushed too hard to feminize, they will become more and more interested in harsh, fascist political ideology.⁶ And, If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of. His YouTube channel has more than four million subscribers and almost 500 videos.

In 2021, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley made one of his campaign themes the crisis of the decline of traditional masculinity (defined as being independent and assertive).⁷ He blamed the Left and Hollywood for a deliberate attack on masculinity which he claims led to the deconstruction of American men. Hawley states that this plot caused men to withdraw into video games, pornography, idleness, and substance abuse, as well as to avoid fatherhood and suffer from mental health problems. He calls on young men, in particular, to get a job and be who you were meant to be, while simultaneously opposing job bills like the Build Back Better Act.

On the other side, Ronald Levant, Ed.D., (co-author of The Tough Standard: The Hard Truth about Masculinity and Violence) argues that masculinity is harmful to us all and that What we need to learn--and teach our children--is how to be a man without masculinity.⁸

Femininity is seen as dangerous to precarious masculinity. Tucker Carlson, the most-watched US cable news host, said (December 7, 2021, on his Fox News show) about British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Somebody who knows him told me…that getting Covid emasculated him, it changed him, it feminized him, it weakened him as a man.⁹ When my son was a baby, people got upset if he was dressed in pink onesies handed down from friends with girls. Brazilians call President Jair Bolsinaro the Trump of the Tropics; he revealed in 2017, I’ve got five kids but on the fifth, I had a moment of weakness and it came out a woman.¹⁰ (His daughter Laura.) From Kenya, Jeffer Kinoti* reported, Femininity or any sign of weakness is regarded as very negative. You’re supposed to be this uptight, no emotion-showing kind of an animal, not to show any form of emotional weakness like crying.

Emails from Raiders football coach Jon Gruden surfaced in 2021, in which he uses words such as faggot to disparage men who disagreed with him, labeling then-Vice President Joe Biden a clueless pussy.¹¹ He also shared photos of almost naked women. Donald Trump said of French President Emmanuel Macron, He’s a wuss guy, made fun of his height (5’8″), and called Senator Marco Rubio Little Marco.¹²

All too common are shooting rampages by boys and men in the US and Canada, which adds to the anti-male rhetoric about toxic masculinity. Some in the men’s movement trace the heavy criticism of men to the period after World War II and the continuing warfare in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Some elements of the Second Wave of the woman’s movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s criticized male chauvinist pigs. Some separatists said men weren’t necessary as in the slogan, A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Theologian and former Catholic nun Mary Daly told me during a conference that men are a mutation as seen in their smaller Y chromosome, a pseudo-theory put forth by Valerie Solanas in her book, The S.C.U.M. Manifesto, published in 1968, the year she shot and wounded Andy Warhol.¹³

The incontrovertible facts are that men generally die earlier than women, are more likely to commit suicide, take more risks, and more often commit and receive violence.¹⁴ It’s ironic that the most advantaged groups can also be disadvantaged, like wealthy celebrities with drug problems and divorces, or men as a group. Because we live in a patriarchy where a relatively small group of men controls governments and finances, a natural assumption is that they have more power in all aspects of life. Most men probably don’t feel very powerful as they work hard to provide for their families. When they’re not able or needed to protect and provide for women and children, where do they find traditional male identity and men’s power and privilege?

In his book Is Masculinity Toxic?, Andrew Smiler,* Ph.D., concludes the answer to the title’s question is yes because gender beliefs are hazardous for men’s health. Miles Groth and others advocate tonic masculinity to build on positive traits such as creative risk-taking,¹⁵ and men’s support groups emphasize dedicating a mission to serve others. Perry Garfinkel explained in our interview, What we’re really trying to gain is understanding of the beauty of man power, the life-giving aspects of that male power, rather than the destroying aspects of it. George Simons* also emphasizes traditional male virtues such as protectiveness and hard work, as do the weekend trainings for men discussed in this book.

On the other side, former Major League baseball player Aubrey Huff wrote, I support Toxic Masculinity on his Twitter biography. He also is against bullshit requirements to wear masks during the pandemic. Brazil’s President Bolsonaro agreed that masks are for fairies, before he contacted Covid.¹⁶

The traditional masculine belief system is limiting. Sociologist Walt Schafer defined the limitations in our interview; You can show the joy of succeeding or anger, but you don’t dare show vulnerability or weakness or self-doubt. A key belief is that if you’re not struggling, you’re probably not making it. Your self-worth is determined by your achievement.

Fred Hayward* explained, Our roles are basically competitive, in a way that the female role is not, which inhibits intimate friendships and nurturance among men. Homophobia is a particularly potent fear that keeps men too distant from each other, as seen in recent studies of boys by Niobe Way and Peggy Orenstein (discussed later). Gordon Clay* agrees that homophobia put us in an incredible box and keeps us apart as men.

Being in the man box limits men’s range of expression,¹⁷ one of the reasons robots like Sophia and virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana are portrayed as female to convey helpfulness. In a meta-analysis of five studies, Professor Sylvie Borau discovered that women are perceived as more human than men!¹⁸ Therefore, we may be more upset when women soldiers are killed than when their male comrades are sent home in body bags, although they’re equally human.

Limiting our range of emotion and behaviors to stereotypes of proper masculinity or femininity cuts off the full range of human expression and achievement, as shown in research based on Sandra Bem’s Sex Role Inventory. The test measures include nurturant and instrumental traits (and neutral). She found that androgynous people who score high on both are more flexible and mentally healthy than people who score traditionally--with especially better mental health than those who score low on both, called undifferentiated.¹⁹

Naming these hazards of being male, as psychologist Herb Goldberg titled his 1976 book, helped spark the men’s movement (his subtitle was Surviving the Myths of Masculine Privilege). Seeing the problems facing boys and men, one would expect a men’s movement as lively and influential as the Second Wave of the women’s movement, which began in the 1960s when Betty Friedan named the problem that had no name--sexism, but it’s not prominent. Despite their internet presence, when was the last time you heard about men’s rights, fathers’ rights, mythopoetic, pro-feminist, masculinities studies, or men’s inner work?

Relationships and Sexuality

We hear a lot about toxic masculinity, (Shepherd Bliss* is credited with coining the term), as personified by former President Donald Trump. He infamously said his wealth and status allowed him to be a chick magnet and molest women. Despite Trump’s admitted lack of respect for women, as he told radio host Howard Stern,²⁰ a majority of white women voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. This vote is validation that many women (and men) are attracted to ‘bad boys’ or rich men, or expressions of powerful masculinity, states Canadian Robert Samery (active in the Canadian Centre for Men and Families²¹). Professor and co-author of books about misandry, Paul Nathanson adds that women still prefer to marry up, as portrayed in romance novels written by and for women. How will this expectation play out as globally more women than men achieve college educations?

About 25% of women (more so for women of color and LBGTQ+ people) and 10% of men have been victims of violence or stalking by a partner, according to Amy Butcher in Mothertrucker.²² Samery cites data that finds a range of 10% to 55%.²³ In the country with the world’s highest incarceration rate, 93% of the US Federal Bureau of Prison inmates are male.²⁴ Samery points out that men don’t often see male mental health providers, partly because in 2019 70% of US psychologists were female and the gap is increasing yearly.²⁵ He reports that most male suicide victims didn’t receive a mental health diagnosis or treatment.

Expectations for men to initiate relationships with women can also be burdensome and intimidating. Fred Hayward* reported, My job is to figure out what she wants in a man and show her that I’m better than other guys, up to her standards. Physiologically, men are more likely to feel swamped and to shut down during emotional disagreements with women, as found in psychologist John Gottman’s research in what he calls the Love Lab. A common pattern is the woman presses for more closeness, the man pulls away, the woman gets angrier, and he retreats further. Both of them feel frustrated and lonely (these attachment patterns are discussed by psychologist Sue Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Therapy and in my book Happy Marriages). Studies show that men in the US are more lonely than in Europe because of our definitions of masculinity: The Survey Center on an American Life found that 15% of men have no close friendships.²⁶

In all the English-speaking countries, women are much more likely to initiate divorce. In the US, women are more likely than men to ask for divorce (70% overall and 90% of college-educated women initiate the divorce) according to an American Sociological Association study.²⁷ Also, divorced women are more likely than men to blame their ex-spouse (64% of women blamed them compared to 44% of the men in an Avvo study).²⁸ I was surprised to learn from the recent interviews that many men feel disadvantaged in relationships with women, saying that women have superior verbal and emotional skills. This can be explained by the way we raise boys to fear being like girls and perhaps due to some physiological differences discussed later.

Sex, sports, and earning money are other areas where men often face pressure to perform. Over a third of US adults surveyed report having experienced some type of sexual dysfunction (43% of women and 31% of men in one study).²⁹ Fewer young adults are having casual sex than they did a decade ago, partly because they are now more likely to live with their parents (43%³⁰). Women in their 20s in the US are more likely to reject exclusive heterosexuality than men, perhaps linked to some feminist arguments against what Adrienne Rich called compulsory heterosexuality.³¹

Male sexuality, including addiction to pornography, is explored by researchers like Justin Lehmiller (Tell Me What You Want and The Science of Human Sexuality) and David Ley (Ethical Porn for Dicks). Some young men substitute video games for relationships and are doing less partying.³² In a 2021 survey, 28% of US men between ages 18 to 30 said they hadn’t engaged in sex during the past year.³³

Psychologist Herb Goldberg observed, We have created this fantasy of a sex life when there is no such thing as a sex life; there is our sexual response. Masters and Johnson reinforced that mechanistic orientation. (Note that this famous couple is part of the divorce statistics.) He advocated that instead of men thinking of their penis as a performance tool, somehow separate from their feelings, that they should pay attention to the wisdom of the penis in the context of relationships. His solution was to understand that:

Both masculinity and femininity are psychological disorders in the sense that they’re defensive strategies against certain inner experiences. I think one of the best things that can happen to men, if they could accept it, would be feminism. If they could expect equal responsibility and equal privilege, and no longer feel guilty when things go wrong, that in itself would be tremendous.

The narrator of our Men’s Changing Roles video, Randy Crutcher* explained, Men are faced with confusing images about masculinity, split between Rambo on one side and the wimp on the other. Randy and I led workshops with college students where men said that women tend to be attracted to tough guys rather than to nice guys. The male students expressed appreciation for women initiating relationships.

A man who critiqued this chapter suggested adding what it means to have a male body, so I asked him. Dan Clifford is a Gen X therapist:

As part of a generation where male was interpreted as a dominating force to overthrow and humble, I grew up confused. I was not marginalized by sexuality, gender, or race in a day when those marginalized were necessarily highlighted and celebrated. I was often one of the smartest, strongest, loudest people in the room, all of which was frowned upon because as a white male, I was privileged, and in the eyes of culture it was time for that privilege to end. Not knowing it was a cultural aspect, I took it personally and diminished myself in order for others to feel comfortable. I learned that, metaphorically, my penis was the antagonist in most everyone’s victim story and that any assertion of my hopes, needs, or wants was an infringement upon their rights. As a white male, I was a scary person to most and eventually embodied that projection internally without ever knowing it.

The pressure to be masculine is associated with the fear of being seen as queer or feminine, which causes many boys to feel lonely in adolescence, as Niobe Way describes in The Crisis of Connection. Peggy Orenstein also interviewed boys and reported in Boys and Sex that her subjects were eager to talk to her because nobody talks to boys, nobody listens to boys. For example, they only get about 10 minutes of sex talk during their adolescence, mostly from their mothers, so they learn about sex from peers and pornography.³⁴ (Her website provides guidance for parents.³⁵) As Ashanti Branch* said, I learned more sex ed in the back of 9th -grade Algebra class than anywhere else.

Orenstein found that just as girls are cut off from their bodies (as in feeling insecure about their attractiveness), boys are cut off from their hearts by not being allowed to express vulnerability. They told her, I trained myself not to feel, and All I’m allowed is happiness and anger, etc. They were afraid to be seen as unmasculine or gay; for example, it would be seen as gay to have a female friend, although they weren’t homophobic. Orenstein concludes that we’re 25 years behind assisting boys with the kind of support that we give to girls. Many of the men featured in this book would agree.

These social pressures to achieve and perform are stressful for young people. Studies indicate that youth anxiety and depression are increasing, especially for young women. A 2021 Harvard poll of people between 18 and 29 reported that 27% of men and 28% of women had suicidal thoughts and 48% of men and 54% of women had felt depressed in the previous two weeks.³⁶

A consequence of masculinity training is that men are less likely to seek help, and more likely to take risks, and drink and smoke heavily, which are all behaviors that can lead to illness and to dying sooner than the average woman (76 vs. 81 years in the US). A recent example is women are more likely to get vaccinated against the Covid virus than men and less likely to die from it. Men are more likely to be Republicans and to more often hear warnings that vaccine and mask mandates interfere with their autonomy and masculinity.

Boys’ Disadvantage in Education

With major consequences for their families, boys are less likely to go to college around the world, except in sub-Saharan Africa.³⁷ Between 1959 and 2021, the number of male students for every 100 women fell by 62%. An alarming fact is that young men make up only 40.5% of US college students (as of June 2021) and more women complete their degrees. This gap has slowly widened since the 1970s and, if the trend continues, two women will earn a degree for every man. The implications are broad since educated men are more likely to earn high salaries and to stay married, which correlates with well-being for the adults and their children. Blacks are the only US ethnic group that has more married men than married women.

I interviewed Andi for a future book on young feminists, a college senior in New York City (seen on YouTube). She said when she was in secondary school, it was clear that the teachers didn’t like the boys because they were troublemakers. Her girlfriends said to each other, I hate boys, unless they were dating one. Tristan Glosby* had a similar observation about his schoolteachers favoring girls and reported, In my social circles, men and women generally do not get along and stick to their own gender. I generally find that women tend to be more verbal but less direct, while men tend to be more direct but less verbal. Perhaps this correlates with boys being only 30% of high school valedictorians.

Boys are also more likely to have learning disabilities such as ADD/ADHD, including 13% of boys in the US and 7% of girls.³⁸ Males also comprise about one-third of eating disorder cases.³⁹ Nathanson noted, The ADD diagnosis itself, however, is somewhat controversial. Teachers--mainly female ones--are troubled by the unruly behavior of boys in class. But those boys are not necessarily ‘sick.’ That kind of behavior is natural for boys. For the boys of color whom Ashanti Branch* works with in the San Francisco Bay Area, and that Jerry Tello* works with in Los Angeles and nationally, it’s often uncool to get good grades. This is scorned as acting white and not masculine. (The Asian model minority is different, as Lee Mun Wah* explains.)

MIT Economics Professor David Autor addresses this issue of boys’ education problems and their cloudy future, especially as low-skill workers.⁴⁰ He reports that in almost every industrialized country, women are about 30% more likely to get a college degree than men, partly because women face fewer barriers than before. He’s concerned about the loss of jobs for uneducated men and the resulting instability experienced by children in low-income single-parent homes. Education is the best way to promote economic mobility, but the US faces increasing inequality between children in less-educated and minority households.

Autor finds it’s particularly disadvantageous for boys’ education in resource-poor, single-mother families--but not for girls when single mother households have doubled in the past 50 years.⁴¹ Mothers tend to spend more time with their daughters and feel closer to them. Important evidence is that in families where the father is present and has some college education, boys and girls are about equally likely to complete college.⁴² Thus, the formula is: loss of earnings for uneducated men leads to single-parent families, which inhibits boys’ education and thus future earnings and stability. This of course influences the women and children in their lives.

Jon Marcus explains that men are the minority of college students in the US because boys are more concerned about making money right after they graduate from high school, college is expensive, boys in low-income areas don’t have role models of successful college graduates, girls get more encouragement, and worldwide girls are better readers beginning in kindergarten.⁴³ I’ve had male students tell me their first week in college they were made to feel like potential rapists, reported Jim Shelley, manager of the Men’s Resource Center at an Ohio community college.

To encourage students who identify as male, Professor Miles Groth formed a research center and arranged for groups and retreats for male undergraduates at Wagner College. He taught a Psychology of Boys and Men course for many years and founded two peer-reviewed journals on male studies.

Nathanson believes that boys and men are subjected routinely to identity harassment, by mockery and denunciations of boys and men that damage their collective identity. Identity protection cognition occurs when people dismiss facts that challenge their beliefs and cultural identity. An example is 56% of men surveyed by Pew Research don’t believe that gender biases make life more difficult for women, despite facts like women’s salaries are less than men’s globally and that the motherhood penalty in the workforce is not experienced by fathers.⁴⁴ Men were more likely than women to believe Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s denial of assaulting Christine Blasey Ford when they were teens. Women opposed his nomination to the Supreme Court by 20 points, while men supported him by four points more than women.⁴⁵

Global studies report that the main reason (79%) employees quit their jobs has less to do with earnings and more to do with lack of recognition or appreciation, which indicates how important identity can be.⁴⁶ Writing in the online newsletter Medium, Colter Whitlock charged, Modern society is destroying young men… they are made to be ashamed to be male.⁴⁷ What they need, he says, is encouragement. Another Medium writer, Jason Helton observed, We’ve ruined society by telling men they are toxic.

Literature contributes to disparaging men. Leslie Fiedler pointed out in Love and Death in the American Novel that US classic fictional heroes are boys who avoided being civilized rather than men who relate to women--like Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Ishmael.⁴⁸ Yet, these fictional young men often have close male friends, including the hobbits in Lord of the Rings like Merry and Pippin and Frodo and Sam. A.O. Scott argued more recently that, All American fiction is young-adult fiction, as are popular TV shows about bro culture or monstrous men.⁴⁹ He calls the men in TV shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men the last of the patriarchs, but with regret; It seems that, in doing away with patriarchal authority, we have also, perhaps unwittingly, killed off all the grown-ups.

Cross-Cultural Socialization

Felix Mbewe,* in Zambia, reports that his community praises men’s stewardship (considering women the weaker sex although they do the majority of hard work on farms) and watches out for him and his wife. They selected watchful mentors to help long-term with his new marriage and will send a relative to live with them for months after they have a baby. This form of mentorship is a lifelong commitment. However, Jeffer Kinoti* said that in Kenya there’s growing concern that we have started losing the boy child in the process of empowering the girl.

From South Africa, Professor Robert Morrell was a pioneer of Critical Masculinity Studies in South Africa.⁵⁰ His path to the study of men and masculinities began in 1989 when he was teaching feminism to Education students at the University of Natal (now UKZN) in Durban. He said this started a journey of exploration and discovery which ended with opening up a new field in research in South Africa.

Morrell observed, Where Africa comes up in its own right, it generally is to identify the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa as not following global trends regarding, for example, improved female performance. He summarizes African debates on men and masculinity.⁵¹

The lived reality of men in Africa varies a great deal. Among the determining factors are wealth and employment and connections with value systems that predate colonialism, which still exercise influence on understandings of gender roles and norms. In Southern Africa, where an industrial economy emerged on the basis of diamond and gold mining in the late 19th century, a racialised labour market emerged with black African men often drawn into badly-paid wage labour. White settlers (varying from 17th century colonizers from the Netherlands and France to 19th century immigrants from the UK) developed an urban, waged lifestyle retaining close ties with Europe.

While the black middle class grew, its growth was stunted by apartheid and it has only been since 1990 (when the ANC was unbanned and steps towards democracy were taken) that a substantial black middle class emerged. It is among the educated (black and white) middle classes that feminism has had the strongest influence, which stimulated a women’s movement in South Africa. Black African women have been involved in political protest for over a century while some white women supported the Suffragette Movement in the early 1900s.

This background explains the emergence and success of gender organisations in the 1990s that began to take men’s issues seriously and research on men and masculinity in South Africa was undertaken. These two forces supported one another and meant that Sonke Gender Justice, one of the largest gender NGOs in the world (founded in South Africa but with work across the sub-continent), was a founding member of MenEngage. In fact, the story of MenEngage can be told as a story of South-South collaboration between Brazil (Gary Barker* and Promundo) and South Africa (Sonke Gender Justice).

Profeminist gender work in South Africa has been embraced by government but this is not the only approach to gender in South Africa. Large parts of the population do not support feminism and draw on indigenous understandings of gender to make sense of intimacy, marriage, child-rearing, etc. We see convergence on some issues such as the recognition of widespread gender-based violence and a society-wide commitment to reduce levels of violence.

To see if masculinity is as precarious in India as in the US, I interviewed Jayesh Tombe, 33, who grew up in an educated family in Mumbai and came to the US for graduate school when he was 28. He heard a few don’t be like a girl comments in elementary school if a boy complained when he was injured playing sports, but didn’t hear anything like that during his teen years. Homophobia isn’t a driving force keeping boys from close friendship; Indians are accustomed to seeing village men--who come to the city to work--walking hand-in-hand. In contrast, he was advised when dating in California not to order a fruity sweet drink for fear of being seen as feminine.

In both India and the US, Jayesh found that women want to marry a man with higher incomes and that having an expensive car adds to his appeal. Women are respected as deities like Lakshmi and Durga (their images are on taxis, in stores, in homes) and mothers: Jayesh would reach for both parents’ feet to ask for a blessing before exams. However, traditional Hindus rely on the oldest son to perform important rituals, such as funeral ceremonies, and grandparents are more likely to live with a son than a daughter. Street harassment of women, bride burnings, rape, and domestic violence are common. Perhaps it’s obvious that men have more power so it doesn’t have to be proven. (See Ashanti Branch’s* observation after spending eight months in India.).

The men’s rights movement spread to India where it’s called Meninism, to protest problems like false accusations of rape or child custody issues after divorce (which is uncommon). Thus, in Jayesh’s observation, masculinity in India isn’t threatened by what a man drinks but men are success objects. Single women still advertise themselves on marriage sites as homely meaning domestic, and light-skinned, as well as stating their education level.⁵²

In the UK, Members of Parliament formed a group to study boys’ and men’s issues (similar to problems they face in the US) because areas of male disadvantage are ignored or hidden and masculinity is too often viewed as negative.⁵³ They pointed out the ill effects of father absence, as found in various studies showing children do better in two-parent homes.⁵⁴ Their report focused on the need for positive male role models and developing programs to alleviate educational underachievement, crime, and health and mental health problems.

The Canadian Association for Equality identified similar issues in their 2021 Momentum Conference: the boy crisis, workplace problems, men’s health, fathers’ rights, violence, and cultural and academic misandry.⁵⁵ Looking at 20 pages of masculinity book titles available on Amazon, I found the main themes are how to nullify toxic masculinity, ethnic and national masculinities, history, Christian men, and how to attract women.

These pressures help explain why many men don’t feel privileged or powerful. In a World Bank 2013 survey of gender norms in 20 countries, focus groups of 4,000 adults reported the women felt their power was surging while men said they were stagnating or sliding backward.⁵⁶

Demonstrating further lack of progress, in the fall of 2021, the Chinese government started a campaign against sissy men, celebrities said to be too effeminate or girly and morally flawed. However, men dominate government, as seen in the fact that only one woman is represented on the powerful 25-member Politburo.⁵⁷ Beijing states that the masculinity crisis stems from effeminate entertainers with abnormal aesthetics that are corrupting a generation. A rule prohibited their appearance on TV and video streaming sites. Previously, Beijing had banned images of men kissing and holding hands with each other.

In South Korea, groups of young men launched an anti-feminist campaign in what’s called gender wars, calling women protesters ugly feminist pigs, while making pig sounds and chanting Stop the misandry.⁵⁸ They use social media and demonstrations to pressure the government and businesses to roll back gender equality programs. In Kenya, Jeffer Kinoti* reports that on Twitter’s #MasculinitySaturday men express all sorts of toxic masculinity sentiments towards women.

Without male mentoring, boys turn to peers and media superheroes to learn about masculinity, including animated video fathers, or action films about fathers rescuing their adult children, as played by actors Liam Neeson and Jackie Chan. Others turn to gangs, fan clubs, and fraternal or religious organizations for support. Programs like Big Brothers need to be multiplied and gender issues included in teacher education. Denmark, one of the happiest nations, teaches programs like the Step by Step, My Circle, and the CAT-kit to children as early as preschool. They learn to identify emotions, empathy, problem-solving, and self-control, as explained in The Danish Way of Parenting by Jessica Alexander and Iben Dissing Sandal.

Definitions of Masculinity

How exactly is masculinity defined? In the 2021 film The Tender Bar, the boy called J.R. learns about being a man from his uncle (played by Ben Affleck). He emphasizes it’s about how to relate to women: hold doors open for women, don’t hit women even if they come at you with scissors, and take care of your mother. A man should also know how to change tires.

Robert Brannon and Samuel Juni developed the Brannon Masculinity Scale in 1984: avoid femininity (no sissy stuff), conceal emotions, be the breadwinner, be admired and respected (a big wheel), be tough (a sturdy oak), be a male machine (don’t ask for help or show weakness), and go for violence and adventure (damn the torpedoes and some team sports). When boys and men violate these unspoken rules, they may be told to man up, or grow a pair, resulting in boys learning fewer social skills. This problem is discussed in books like Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson and Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax. Most reasonable people would agree that it’s advantageous to help boys to develop positive male identities.

Honor is associated with masculinity, so that in many cultures if a woman is raped, the main offense is to her father’s or husband’s honor. Men fought duels over offenses to their honor until the 19th century, especially in the US South. The families of US soldiers who die are honored (e.g., Gold Star families of dead soldiers). Since honor seems to be a major value for men, especially those with a military background, I interviewed a Marine named Jeremy Starkey. His father taught him a man’s word is his bond; you shake hands, look a man in the eye, and give him your word.

Starkey also learned about honor from comic book superheroes (as other men reported in Redefining Masculinity by Davidson Hguyen Hang) and from being in the military. He reported the three values drummed into Marines were honor, courage, and commitment; plus duty to God, Country, and the Corps--not necessarily in that order. He explained that honor means having the self-discipline to serve others, be chivalrous, and know the difference between right and wrong in order to be able to win the battle of your emotions (note the military approach).

Starkey believes the hardest job in the world is being a good person. This code of ethics, plus his knowledge of combat, enables him to hold his head up high and be proud. He believes that enemies shudder when they think of fighting Marines and this identity will always be part of him.

George Simons* and colleagues surveyed over 700 adults from 70 countries about gendered values, reported on in Culture Detective: Men and Women.⁵⁹ They found men are believed to value being protective, productive, logical, brave, honorable, and competitive. Women are believed to value nurturing relationships, aim to be inclusive and helpful, and are less direct (as seen in questioning or qualifying speech like perhaps and don’t you agree?)

These views of masculinity haven’t changed much: A Pew Research Center poll in 2017 asked adults what traits society values most for men: honesty, financial success, leadership, and toughness.⁶⁰ For women: physical attractiveness, kindness, intelligence, and honesty. The Millennial men surveyed were much more likely than older men to report feeling pressure to fight, to talk with other men about women disrespectfully in a sexual way, and to brag about having many sexual partners, indicating the staying power of old definitions of masculinity.

Is Gender Fluid or Essential?

Some academics emphasize gender fluidity versus essentialism. Jed Diamond* and Nathanson argue that men have essential or distinctive physiologies that influence their behavior. On a spectrum of gender identity, some people are gender diverse, non-binary, queer, or trans, while less than two percent of babies are intersex anatomically. Gender refers to cultural norms and social roles, so that masculinity and femininity vary across cultures, while sex refers to our physiology as male or female. Some professors use the term Male Studies rather than Men’s Studies to highlight the importance of our bodies. Sex and gender are more complex than previously assumed, concluded American Medical Association board member Dr. William E. Koble in 2018.⁶¹

Essentialism is the belief that there are intrinsic qualities of being male or female e.g., a trans woman always retains her XY sex chromosomes. The often-quoted Professor Judith Butler maintains in her theory of gender performativity (see Gender Trouble) that gender identity is established through various behaviors or performances. Therefore, it’s changeable and fluid and is not an essence. John Stoltenberg* favors this viewpoint, as do most men’s studies scholars. When I checked with him, he concurred, "My concept of gender identity as an ethical construction, i.e., not inscribed by biology."

Some essentialist feminists believed in what I called the women are wonderful approach in my two books on women’s culture. This theme was recently repeated by many of the Gen Z climate activists interviewed for Climate Girls Saving Our World (2021). These Boomer to Gen Z women believe that women and mothers are closer to nature and her cycles and therefore more caring and peaceful than men. Many of the young women also believe they’re braver than their male peers in speaking up against climate change. The debate is how much of gender role is socialized and how much is due to having male or female bodies, but none of the men featured in this book consider men superior.

An essentialist issue, a major controversy for UK and US feminists, is whether to include transwomen in women’s groups, as Stoltenberg* and Barker* advocate. Gender-essentialist comedian Dave Chappelle’s The Closer, an October 2021 special show, stirred up a storm when he said, gender is a fact and he’s team TERF. This refers to trans-exclusive radical feminists like author J. K. Rowling. She doesn’t believe that trans women should be accepted as women; If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives.⁶²

If masculinity is not biologically determined, it’s possible to create a new way of being, states Davidson Nguyen Hang, the editor of Redefining Masculinity. One of his solutions is to encourage intimate conversations with other men.⁶³ Stephen Whitehead argues in Toxic Masculinity: Curing the Virus, that collapsed masculinity is harmful but we have ways to make men smarter, healthier, safer.⁶⁴ He sees the solution as becoming feminists, meaning embracing gender equality, similar to what Herb Goldberg advocated.

Professor Robert Jensen agrees with them, finding that, Feminism is a threat to holding on to normal guyness, a gift to us.⁶⁵ He emailed that, as a young, skinny, nerdy guy, he thought he wasn’t man enough, and other men were doing fine. Doing my best to be a normal guy, I dated, told sexist jokes, and used pornography, until he discovered self-acceptance through feminism, as explained in his TED talk.

Masculinity is an ideology, defined as a series of beliefs that groups buy into, according to Todd Reeser in Masculinities in Theory.⁶⁶ He explains that if gender is not binary, it’s always changing, so there is no masculine being, but only a series of becomings. Norms change like views towards male intimacy in ancient Greece or in the Middle East. The editors of Constructing Masculinity agree that masculinity is not a monolithic entity, because it’s always ambivalent, always complicated, dependent on the exigencies of personal and institutional power.⁶⁷ Academics look at gender through the lens of power relations.

Some indigenous tribes recognize a third gender, usually biological men who identify as female. An internet poll of more than 19,000 people of various ages in 27 countries reported that Gen Z is more likely than people over 40 to identify as gender-nonconforming--18% compared to 9% of all respondents.⁶⁸ Fashion designers reflect this trend with clothes presenting gender fluidity or gender neutrality or dual-gender hybrids, such as men wearing skirts.⁶⁹ Some have called ours a post-gender era and think that gender has been over-emphasized and the influence of our bodies neglected in terms of their influence on our attitudes--such as men being protective about external genitals.

Influential Australian sociologist R.W. Connell emphasized the importance of using the plural masculinities to indicate there are many ways to be a man, as explained in her 1995 book of that title and her blogs.⁷⁰ She also developed the concept of hegemonic masculinity, meaning male dominance reinforced by homophobia and physical force, which is mutable and changing. Subordinated and marginalized masculinities refer to low-income men and men of color. (Connell transitioned to becoming a woman in her 60s, from Robert to Raewyn.)

Recently, toxic masculinity is frequently discussed. Changes in hybrid masculinities are explored by scholars such as Tristan Bridges to challenge systems of inequality (he’s also researching homes with man caves, mass shootings, and men’s images in advertising).

Regarding terminology, Daniel Ellenberg* explained that men’s roles is not a term that Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities would use these days, and that they research precarious masculinity, meaning the belief that it can be lost and has to be proven (the linchpin of what harms men). Nathanson thinks misandry is the current problem due to what he calls identity harassment, which is the fallout from feminist and woke ideology (refers to a slang word advocating being alert to injustice, especially racism). Men’s Studies and Masculinity Studies are terms that have been debated for some while and in many contexts rejected in favor of Critical Studies on Men. Feminists aim for non-normative masculinity leading to equality.

Branches of the Men’s Movement or Men’s Work

Men’s Peer Support Groups

Some say there isn’t a men’s movement as men of various ages are increasingly turning to peer-led men’s groups to find support in expressing a range of feelings and enhancing positive male qualities, such as leading community service. These groups evolved from feminist consciousness-raising groups and from the Jungian mythopoetic viewpoint. This branch of the men’s movement was led by Shepherd Bliss,* poet Robert Bly (author of Iron John: A Book About Men) who advocates Zeus and Wildman energy,⁷¹ and others who help men find their deep masculine. They emphasize the importance of fathers in the development of boys’ and men’s ways of communicating side-by-side but are criticized by other men for lack of political activism.

Examples of these organizations featured in this book are The ManKind Project, EVRYMAN, National Compadres Network (and its curricula for boys and for fathers), and Ever Forward Club. The Oakland Men’s Project developed trainings for boys. The Good Men Project was founded in 2009 by Tom Matlack to provide a space for men to tell stories about their lives and define enlightened masculinity.⁷²

Evangelical Christian men’s groups include the Promise Keepers who filled stadiums with large numbers of men. Barker* reports, "Promise Keepers are a much smaller movement than they were once were partly because of the push toward militaristic, muscular Christianity, but it’s staging a modest comeback, as described by Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez."

Men’s Sheds started in Australia during the 1980s with a national clearinghouse and spread around the world to provide support groups with a focus on men’s health. Their motto is, Men don’t talk face to face, they talk shoulder to shoulder, as Shepherd Bliss taught.⁷³ Participants are called shedders. (There’s also an Australian Institute for Male Health and Studies.) Lee Mun Wah,* Chinese American counselor, author, documentary filmmaker, and diversity trainer,⁷⁴ led the first Asian men’s group in the San Francisco Bay Area, which he describes in Chapter 6.

Online groups include an app called Whoop used by about 85,000 teams to keep track of each other. One of the team members reported that if he sees on the app that his friend is sleeping only three hours a night, he contacts him and says, Hey, want to get a beer?⁷⁵ (Beer and bars/pubs seem to be a major lubricant for male friendship.) A website called Self-Himprovement was founded by Blake Reichenbach who observed that as men struggle with isolation, these support groups are increasing around the world.

Some young men get support from other online communities, including mental health support forums like Reddit’s r/Anxiety, as Benjamin Kaveladze* discusses. A carpenter named John who participated in men’s groups and gatherings for years told me they talked about their relationships in their group but were most likely to feel free to cry over the deaths of their dogs. In contrast, Gordon Clay* said his decades-old group doesn’t often discuss relationships, and Crutcher* said his group often talks about work/life balance. Nathanson commented that these groups don’t address the relentless barrage of misandry and the institutionalized preoccupation with only women’s problems. No personal or group therapy can solve that problem.

There’s a lot of very progressive, appropriately politicized pro-feminist men’s work that looks on the inner work of such men’s groups as almost blasphemous, said Barker.* He adds, On the progressive, political side we can often get into this precious mode of saying it’s all structural and systemic. Jack Straton* advocates, more bonding together to try to figure out: how do the most activist men find a better center and how do those most interested in centering find more activism?

Men’s Rights

The men’s rights branch is fueled by fathers, like Fred Hayward,* who feel the courts discriminated against them in custody arrangements. However, women don’t do well in family courts when they allege domestic violence, especially when the father charges her with parental alienation.⁷⁶ The British author of Sex Differences Explained and The Woman Racket, Steve Moxon disagrees with this conclusion, You misrepresent ‘men’s rights’ in saying it is all through male divorce experience, but it’s through a whole range of inter-related topics. A critic of feminism, his research finds biology is the basis of gender roles, as he explains on my blog.⁷⁷

The men’s rights activists focus on the harms to boys of father absence after divorce or due to long work hours. Gordon Clay* calls this absence the father wound. It’s common sense that children of both sexes benefit from positive fathering. Gerhard Amendt, German Sociology Professor, thought the importance of mothers’ influence should be added to this chapter. He’s in the men’s rights branch.⁷⁸

Boys are formed by their identification and interaction with mothers as much as by their fathers. I have researched the mother-son relationship for 20 years. Neither the public nor the scientific community was delighted by my research findings since the victim-perpetrator dichotomy would have gone down the drain!

One of my major findings was that mothers often try to shape their sons as a better version of their husband, or try to make the sons into an idealized version of what they consider to be good manhood. This perspective turns the widespread opinion of gender relations (i.e., that how boys develop depends mostly on how their fathers raised them) upside down. My two volumes of research have been published in German, translated as How Mothers See Their Sons and Yearning for the Father .

Perry Garfinkel, author of In a Man’s World, told me, In solving the issues of how men can relate better to each other, we have to first resolve our relationship with our fathers and then move forward into the relationships with other men from that. From our fathers, our primary male role models, Garfinkel said, Men learn about lack of communication, lack of expression of feelings, and about competition, power, hierarchy, and territoriality. He reports this leads to a feeling of inferiority to other men.

Rather than father absence, Boysen Hogson* traces uncertainty to the fact that In the last 200, or the last 20 years, we’re doing things that human beings have not done in our entire conscious history. It’s a massive social experiment we’re doing on ourselves, so it’s not surprising some are floundering. Since the end goal is the same for our changemakers, dialogue seems both reasonable and helpful. Crutcher* refers to The Third Alternative, by Stephen M. Covey, to see multitudes of examples where people in different groups came up with solutions together that were better than either group could do on their own.

Men’s rights activists reject the concept of a patriarchy where men have privilege and emphasize instead how traditional gender roles harm men’s physical and mental health. (The concept was developed by Karl Marx and Max Weber to explain women’s subordination and unpaid labor.) Hayward* explained his disagreement with my statement that we live in a patriarchy:

The feminist perspective misses the complexity of what we are really dealing with, such as a woman with eight children by different fathers has one family, but a man with two children with two different women has two families. Male politicians and business executives have to appeal to the mostly female electorate [10 million more women voters in recent elections⁷⁹] and customers [women control or influence 85% of US consumer spending⁸⁰ ] . I see men and women as equally powerless and having equally numerous and serious problems.

He added, You and I are like those couples who each feel they do most of the housework. (Fortunately, my partner, Barbara, has no trouble acknowledging that I do.) You feel I have more power and I feel you have more power, but the important thing is that it leaves us equally motivated to end all double standards and bring real equality to humanity. What fair person couldn’t agree with this goal?

Feminists

When egalitarian social supports such as family leave are provided, fathers spend more time with their children. For example, Canadian fathers average 14 hours a week on caring for their children, compared to only eight hours averaged by US fathers.⁸¹ Out of the 40 weeks of Canadian parental leave since 2019 five weeks are reserved for dads. Their studies show that taking parental leave is good for marriages and for children. Although the richest countries offer an average of eight weeks of paid paternity leave, the US offers none.⁸²

Scandinavians are in the forefront of policies encouraging gender equality and work-life balance, which results in being one of the happiest nationalities.⁸³ Sweden was the first country to provide paid parental leave to fathers. Currently, 90 days of the total 480 leave days are reserved for each parent. This national policy of balance and enjoyment of life is called lagom by the Swedes, hygge by the Danes and Norwegians, and sopivasti by the Finns. It results in the highest scores on World Happiness Reports.⁸⁴

Feminist men, such as pioneering Professor Michael Kimmel (author of Guyland, etc.), aim to alleviate problems caused by patriarchy, such as violence. (Mentors in Violence Prevention was co-founded by Jackson Katz. For domestic violence prevention see Ingólfur Vilhjálmur Gíslaso* and Crutcher.*) Some feminists are reluctant to be associated with men’s rights leaders. An Australian feminist academic said about this chapter, Having looked briefly at the text you sent has reinforced that reluctance, as much of that text seems to repeat a series of problematic ‘men’s rights’ claims about male disadvantage.

After reading the list of men included in this book, feminist co-chair of NOMAS (National Organization of Men Against Sexism), Moshe Rozdial emailed:

I have a problem with any discussion of masculinity that does not address deep-seated misogyny and sexism: That masculinity is embedded in a male supremacist/entitled ideology relative to the disrespect, oppression, and degradation of the feminine. Most of the men’s movements, other than the pro-feminist, are different versions of men’s rights/violence and are not invested in the future of the human male, but rather in protecting the privileged supremacist role of the MAN of the past and present.

Our feminist analysis understands that men pay a price for collusion in the patriarchal supremacist ideology, but are NOT disadvantaged by them. Men, as a group, benefit from maintaining the system. I also believe that as long as masculinity is defined, by that construct, as the misogynistic opposite of woManKind,