Young Men Are in Crisis Mode and Fox News Abandons Pretense of News
Southern Baptists Boot Women, School Superintendent Boots Education, AI Can Make You Lonely and Drink, Gerry & The Pacemakers Sing
The Overlooked Crisis of Being a Young Man in America
[Caution: I am well aware that when discussing any large group, it necessitates making certain generalizations that aren’t true of everyone in that group. But studies and research show that we are right to be concerned.]
When we talk about marginalized groups, we usually mean groups that mainstream society treats as if they are less valuable and therefore are undeserving of the same rights and opportunities: women, People of Color, immigrants, LGBTQ+, and non-Christians. Part of the marginalization is to view members of these groups in a one-dimensional way based on unflattering cultural stereotypes. Though young men aren’t discriminated against in the same way these other groups are (unless they are also members of those groups), they are facing a tough struggle these days to find a way to live up to what is expected of them, yet discover who they want to be outside the cliched stereotypes.
In practical terms, young men are truly marginalized. And the results have been devastating—for them as well as the rest of society. Women are getting educated at a much higher level and higher rate than men. Because of this, women are formidable competition in the job market, making it harder for them to find career-oriented jobs. Today, 40% of women earn more than the average male, and 40% are the main source of income in the U.S. This is the country moving in the right direction. But growth always brings growing pains.
Young cis-gender men still see their worth as being measured by income potential. Pop culture still pays homage to wealthy men as being prize catches for women, even much younger women. What these young men see on TV, in movies, and hear in songs creates an expectation that if you want to attract women, you need money.
It doesn’t matter if it’s true; to them, it feels true.
Richard Reeves, author of Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters and What to Do about It, refers to the problem of “a death of despair,” which is death from suicide, drug overdose, or alcohol, all of which are three times higher among males than among women. In the last 20 years, the rate has increased by more than 50%. Add to that young men committing mass shootings with the intention of killing themselves or being killed by cops.
This lack of a chromosomal GPS telling them where to go, what to do, and who to be after so many decades of strict rules and regulations concerning manhood has sent some young men spiraling. This has resulted in less dating, less marriage, less sex, and fewer children. For chromosomal (involuntary celibates), their resentment of women has turned their frustration into online abuse and sometimes violence. Though dating apps work for some, others feel a growing sense of worthlessness as they are overlooked or rejected on a daily basis.
Spiraling is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s an opportunity to throw out the baggage of the past to select what they want to be. The process might be uncomfortable and take some time—like most things worthwhile—but the end result of the independence of mind, body, and spirit is worth it.
But there are also dangers. Many young men look to someone to lead them, to offer sage advice to lift them out of their despair. Sadly, many of those who they have turned to are hollow men, emotional and intellectual voids more eager to monetize their followers’ despair than to help them. Jordan Peterson wrote several books and encouraged his millions of eager adherents with religious platitudes wrapped in pseudo-intellectual ramblings about as healthy as week-old sushi found under your car seat.
Former kickboxer Andrew Tate also incoherently blathered on, using religion to justify “owning” women. He made millions bragging about his fancy cars and many women. Now he’s under investigation for rape, organized crime, and human trafficking. His desperate young followers (five million Twitter followers) are undaunted and even cheer him on. In the twenty-four hours after his arrest on December 29, 2022, rose from 3.4 million to 3.8 million. After being accused of heinous crimes against women, he picked up 400,000 new followers because…well, you know.
GOP U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, an ultra-conservative known for his irrational statements and misinformation, has written a book called Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, also a thinly disguised Christian text that rambles about manliness. Let’s go back to the fifties when the world was great—unless you were Black, gay, or a woman. Then you were a punchline.
They’re all trying to answer the question: What is it to be a Man? The problem is that most of the people I mentioned answering the question have a simplistic answer that relies on tradition and religion, ignoring that many of those traditional values led to generations of toxic masculinity, which poisoned others they interacted with—but also themselves. These Manhood Messiahs start with the premise that males are being brainwashed away from those wood-chopping values by liberals and feminists rather than actually examining the data that shows the staggering discontent and insecurity those values wrought for decades.
Our culture is experiencing the usual social pains as we transition from the simplistic and cruel gender roles of the past into a new era that recognizes differences don’t mean superiority or inferiority and that everyone deserves the same opportunities. What’s causing the increased anxiety and depression isn’t that the roles are evolving; it’s that those holding on to those traditional, overly strict religious-based role models are keeping young men from a much healthier and happier point of view. Tate, Peterson, and Hawley are like men after a shipwreck, unable to swim on their own, grabbing onto young men and dragging them under too. A quick peek under the hood of their muscle-car mentality reveals nothing more than scared hamsters running on a wheel.
A recent example of hamster-for-brains masculinity is the Elon Musk tweet about Taylor Swift in which he compares her face to the goofy character of Napoleon Dynamite.
Musk has 140 million Twitter followers, and the message he wants to tell them is: Taylor Swift ain’t all that. Boys have been making fun of girls’ appearance for decades because our society has made women’s looks their main value. Cyberbullying of women by men has focused on criticizing their faces and bodies (without any awareness that in doing so, the cyberbully has announced to the world that they aren’t very smart). The usual defense of this kind of misogyny is to claim it was just a joke and that women being abused have no sense of humor. Elon Musk is a successful businessman that many young men look up to. And this is how he treats that responsibility. (And no, it doesn’t matter that he hired a woman to run Twitter because he just tweeted to 140 million people that girls have cooties.)
Joe Rogan is another stone-cold monument to the broken past (the kind that is so acidly parodied by John Cena in the TV series Peacemaker). Here’s one example: In 2019, Gillette ran an ad campaign entitled We Believe: The Best Men Can Be that addressed destructive male stereotypes that led to even more destructive behavior. Watch:
Rogan’s flex reaction was predictable. Watch:
Rogan and his cohort scoff and smirk and taunt the commercial, ironically acting like the simple-minded bullies portrayed in the ad. These guys aren’t much on insight. They actually embody the knee-jerk defensiveness without logic that is one of the worst characteristics of male toxicity—as if being belligerent and snarky is the same as being right.
Rogan grins as he points out that most rapists and murderers won’t be deterred by a Gillette commercial. That’s his big takeaway? Of course they won’t. The ad isn’t designed to appeal to them because they—like Rogan and his cohort—are beyond reason. The ad is merely meant to sensitize us to the problem so that, in the future, we might all act more responsibly when raising our boys.
He also complains that Gillette, being a razor blade company, has no business getting involved. Huh? This reminds me of Fox personality Laura Ingraham responding to LeBron James discussing politics in an interview by saying he should “Shut up and dribble.” What does it matter what the source of a message is? If a positive voice is added to the conversation, why complain at all? He just doesn’t like the message, but offers no evidence that what they are saying is flawed. And, most importantly, this ad can’t do any harm, but it could do good. So, why knock it?
The real scary part isn’t what Rogan says, it’s the comments from his loyalists. They chortle in blind obedience in everlasting bro-hood. The conservative backlash from the ad echoes Rogan’s. To which journalist Andrew P. Street responded by saying that the negative reaction to the ad was “a living document of how desperately society needs things like the [ad]", and that "if your masculinity is THAT threatened by an ad that says we should be nicer then you're doing masculinity wrong.”
Young people need adults that they can look up to as role models. We must display the values that we want them to embrace as adults: honesty, integrity, critical thinking, compassion, and commitment to community. We don’t want to regress to the lone-wolf macho maniacs of the past, which demanded silent suffering, violent responses to slighted pride, and a need to solve all problems.
Whether we like it or not, actors, musicians, and athletes are often hoisted onto youthful shoulders as icons to be emulated. It is both an honor and a burden. I have tried to live a life worthy of being an influence—and when I was younger, I failed on occasion (maybe even when I became older). But I continue to accept that responsibility and try harder. All of us who are placed on that pedestal need to try harder.
When I was a boy, one of the things I looked to help guide me was the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling. It was also a favorite of Coach Wooden, who quoted it often. I still think it has an important message of humility, balance, and ambition. Despite Kipling’s troubling politics, the poem still resonates—for boys and girls.
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Of course, a single poem isn’t enough to guide anyone through the perils of coming-of-age. It’s not a solution to a complex problem that was thousands of years in the making. But it’s a start.