A middle-aged man takes a sick day off from work even though he is not sick. His job is going well enough. He just needs a break. At home his partner is at work and the kids are at school. He is alone, but he cannot seem to relax. He watches something on Netflix but wanders away uninterested. He is feeling restless, a little moody, and wondering where his life is going. He thinks briefly about starting up a hobby or dusting off his violin from the garage, but can't bring himself to rally for any of these options. Tomorrow, when he returns to work, things will feel more-or-less okay again. Not great, just okay.

Many young men imagine that one day they will become great men. Some young women also imagine one day becoming great women, and there have been many great women to be sure. But men seem to possess a far greater tendency to think this way - to possess an imagination of greatness - and usually without much insight, to perceive themselves as great men in the making.

The manosphere is the neighborhood next door where women are not welcome and good guys know they don’t belong.

Why anyone would care to marry a person whom he or she loves is beyond me. Okay, there are a few good reasons: children, certain legal advantages, family expectations. Am I missing anything?

There is an utterly false mythology about self-criticism among men. Many of us have been led to believe that being a harsh self-critic makes us strong, provides motivation, boosts self-esteem and protects us from immature and selfish behavior. In short, it makes us more manly. But like many so-called “manly” traits, the self-perception produced by your inner critic is delusional, arising from an ego too fragile to undertake rigorous self-assessment. But we’re men, we can take it, right? Okay, let’s get real.

These five words can make the difference between simply expressing yourself and casting painful suffering upon your friend or partner. So the next time you find yourself honestly expressing your feelings (men are encouraged to do this more, right?), you’d better check your language. 

Men need male friends. For most of human history, male fraternity has been paramount in men’s lives. Yet as we have seen, many of the social factors underpinning men’s friendships have worn away in the current era. What once was taken for granted - men’s place in the social order - is now enmeshed in challenges. Friendship within the clan is a major casualty.

Men are stuck in the past. We have a tendency to hold on to painful as well as joyful experiences as if we are unable to confront the present without them. And our ill founded loyalty to societal expectations only further complicates this tendency.

When I was five years old I developed tonsillitis and my tonsils were removed. Back home after the surgery and facing a period of recovery, I found to my delight a master Lego block set. Overwhelmed by the gift, I asked my father for advice on how to use these building blocks. He demonstrated by snapping together a few blocks and said encouragingly, “just build things, whatever you want.” A brilliant man my dad, and a very high level of emotional intelligence for his time. He understood how much I enjoyed discovering how things work.

The tugboat cruises smoothly through the harbor and into the sunset. A pleasant breeze cools the evening as a lone passenger standing on deck tosses overboard one life preserver ring, and then another, and another. They float and bob in the boat’s wake like a line of discarded Coke cans, each a bit of the past that distracted him from the present moment. They were all memories fixated on deeply flawed experiences: bullying as a kid, painful first loves, serious errors of judgment, missed career opportunities, bouts of addiction, failed relationships - a list too long to name.

Just weeks after Shane Murnan was hired as an elementary school principal in Oklahoma’s Western Heights School District, the twenty-six year career educator was placed on administrative leave. An anonymous newsletter in late August revealed Murnan’s side gig as a drag performer, and this was picked up by the right-wing social media influencer Libs of TikTok which promptly posted the news to its national audience.

A man strolls into a liquor store and picks up a bottle of Absolut vodka and a bag of chips. He hurries out so as not to be late for his Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Liquor stores, like convenience stores and bars, are places of anonymity where folks may visit and be assured that no one is paying much attention to their identity. Store clerks observe this unspoken rule in most cases. Many men rely on anonymity to carry on activities which they may wish to keep private, away from partners and family, or about which they feel ashamed.

She-Ra and He-Man action figures  from Mattel's Masters of the Universe series.

If things were not already strange enough in the world of modern masculinity, there is yet another dimension of toxic behavior we need to confront. While this dimension is (usually) not openly misogynistic, nor openly antagonistic toward positive masculinity, it is sufficiently common to distort relations between men and between men and women. Let’s get to know our Nice Guy before sorting through the various means for killing him off.

John Wick is a lonely man. Having once found love and married his beautiful partner, Wick invests his entire social life in the relationship and even retires from a career he deems dangerous to his health. But when his wife dies of cancer, Wick is devastated. At the funeral attended by a handful of people we see quite clearly that Wick has zero friends and no one to whom to turn for solace. The only person offering condolences is a work associate. In his bereavement Wick is consumed by grief and anger, even as both are held in check by a flat emotional facade. Wick spends these days driving his beloved 1969 Mustang Mach 1 at dangerous speeds and performing near-suicidal maneuvers.

Many men would like to believe that mansplaining is a joke. But women almost universally despise this behavior, inevitably feel trapped, devalued and victimized. We should add that many beta men are also frequently victimized by the alpha male seeking to establish his presence. According to Wikipedia, “mansplaining…is a pejorative term meaning (for a man) to comment on or explain something, to a woman, in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner”.

The development of Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo has been well documented over the years and yet appears counter to the trajectory of traditional masculinity over the same span of time. The iconic action character gripped the American imagination over a span of four motion pictures from 1982 to 2008, not including the 2019 Rambo: Last Blood. Worldwide distribution of the first four films - First Blood 1982, Rambo: First Blood Part II 1985, Rambo III 1988, and Rambo 2008 - grossed $819 million at last count.

"Some people think that the masculinity crisis exists because men are becoming feminized." This is from a 2022 survey published in The Egalitarian, an online publication promoting gender equality. The term "feminization" appears to have two meanings. One is serious pushback by pundits in reaction to those men who have chosen to move away from traditional notions of "manliness" either in appearance, behavior or both. The other, perhaps more obscure, refers to men who follow a feminine partner's wishes to make certain adjustments in appearance or behavior to benefit a romantic relationship. Since the later appears to harm no one, let us address the former.

The feminist movement is often measured as a series of waves as social issues coalesced and technologies evolved. From the late 19th century to the early 21st century, feminism changed with the times. Fourth-wave feminism was driven by the #MeToo experiences of millions of women combined with the evolution of social media technologies. We find that not only was fourth-wave feminism inclusive of men's rights but that the men's movement appears to have followed along either as a supportive or reactive companion.