Both Musk and Zuckerberg have made public announcements that they have Asperger syndrome. That seems to add another layer to the conversation.
I think of the Greatest Generation, the quiet Midwestern WWII veteran. The great-grandpas now. This proposed “masculinity” that we see offered today is so completely foreign to these folks--and yet we are supposed to believe that masculinity is this eternal unchanging thing.
Every time I see some dude on the internet talk about Founding Fathers, I think, “You mean the portly guys with the stockings and the powdered wigs?”
John, I’ve always admired your work so much, but this piece is amazingly spot on. My main takeaway from what you say is that the foundation of being a good man is being a good human being. We draw people to us not, in the long run, by being powerful but by learning to be decent. To treat others as not here to serve our desires and needs but as human beings--whatever their gender--with their own desires hopes and dreams.
Men who really want to know “what women want” can find out by *actually making friends with them*. With a wide variety of women (since, like men, different women want different things). It helped me tremendously to be mentored by women along the way: teachers, bosses, co-workers. Because I’ve found women *eager* to talk to men they know will listen.
It really isn’t rocket science, but it requires a level of humility that many men are raised to resist if not reject. And if there’s one thing that needs to change it’s the idea that being a man means always being in charge. Never being vulnerable.
I don’t know how to get more men to see this, but I think a piece like the one you’ve written is a great place to start.
Your point about it not being rocket science is exactly it. It's not necessarily that's it's easy, but it isn't complicated or mysterious. It takes effort, but it's also effort that's rewarded.
Im surprised at you John. What you are talking about has been going on since Adam tried to cram the apple (or was it something else with a reddish tinge and a tart taste) down Eve's throat, if you believe that bestselling ancient anthology of fairy tales some call The Bible.
You like me are a white privileged male, like just about every white male in your article albeit almost all of them are far richer, far crueller, far more narcisstic, and just plain very wealthy ROAD SPACE HOGS who in the essential infantile devlopment stage must be the centers of attenton as much as they can and asmuch as their money can purchase and influences tv, newsspapers, and the flow ofmaking the "most talked about " people. I would REALLY """"RECOMMEND" that you STOP, or at least find THE DECENT MEN, THE MILLIONS OF US WHO WORK OUR ASSES OFF AND FOCUS ON GIVING OUR WIVES< LOVERS< KIDS< FAMILies MoMs DADS, grandfoks, neighbors our generous frienddship and help and knowledgewhenever and whereeve wecan, and be ressponsiblewith with what is stilll the good earth and the still blue sky.
Y:ou know, would it be the worst thing if all of these men on their way to a hugeconfeenceon ThePolicy WeNeed For Most Peoplle and then cut and paste in the protagonist KURTZ from The Heart ofDarkness, maybe in neon in so it is visible as possible. Do you remember KURTZ's last writings, the idealistic adventurer who sets up his reign of profit and terror smack in the middle of the Afrcan ungle - he's after rubber, and if workers dont bring him the high amounts he demands, what does this idealistic progressive capitaliist entrepeneur DO? Well, what else CAN he do, but cut off their HANDS ! Gee whiz Joseph Conrad. You learned well some of the essentials of writing canonical literature. Make your hero a basic bumpkin who unravels as the novel proceeds. oh yeah.
I really enjoy your way of viewing the world through the lens of books and literary references. I think it really helps bring a broader variety of perspectives into a conversation than when people just talk about what the pundits of the day are saying (noting that a lot of the people you mentioned as currently opining publicly on this topic are privileged white men).
As always, you've given me a lot to think about, and about this specific topic I feel like I have a lot to add. As a white man of a similar background to yourself, but born in the 90s, I think I have a more hands-on experience of coming of age in the internet age. However, as someone who currently runs after-school programs and works with high schoolers on a daily basis, I can see many different pressures facing high schoolers now than even 10-15 years ago when I was in their place.
A lot of what you said resonated with me. I think healthy social relationships are key, but as an avid gamer, I think that those relationships can be found online and in other places. The issue to me is how the reaction and anger-hungry algorithms lead people without proper internet literacy to dark places. Teens of course have their own agency and make their own choices, but it can be easy to fall into the rabbit hole of what YouTube pitches to young men (the internet is vastly different than when I grew up, and its workings are much more obscured than they were for me starting at the time of dial-up). I know a few male high schoolers I have worked with who enjoyed fitness and working out and watched Andrew Tate and didn't realize there was anything wrong with his messaging until we had a frank conversation about what he was saying (this was of course before he was arrested for sex-trafficking, but I hope that made my points clearer). These are not simple problems, but as many positive male role-models as possible, and models of positive relationships in real-life I think can have a great impact.
This feeds into the point you shared about the fields men should study. I straddled both worlds mentioned above, studying physics and Spanish in college. I can thankfully say that I am a much different person than I was in high school, and I attribute that in part to my college experience. My physics and math classes often had only one or two women in them. And in my Spanish and Spanish history classes I was often one of only a few men. This meant that even if I had been one to speak up a lot, I would still have heard much more of the perspective of my female classmates in my Spanish classes than if I had only studied physics. I can only imagine that Musk and Zuckerberg rarely (if ever) were put in a situation where they were vastly outnumbered by equally intelligent women in a discussion. I have at times felt ashamed of things I did or said in high school, realizing many years later how sexist they were, in some cases reaching out to someone specific to apologize. However, I think it speaks to the sexist culture that we have in the US that I considered myself to be tame and respectful compared to many of my friends and classmates.
Having open-minded parents and a strong-willed older sister obviously played a role. Reading both Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew novels together when I was little, and hearing my parents explicitly reject gender roles over and over primed me to overcome the prejudices I was introduced to in high school after I left that environment, but I wouldn't say my high school environment was conducive to forming respectful men. One book series that I read probably earlier than I should have was R.A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms books about Drizzt the dark elf. Thinking back, that was probably more formative than I realized. The entire series reverses social expectations, and encourages a great deal of introspection. The main character is a male growing up in an incredibly violent matriarchal society where men are treated as second-class citizens, and every race that isn't dark elves hates his race (rightfully for their cruelty and treachery). However, Drizzt sees the world differently and has to work hard to earn the trust of others and carve an independent path of decency and humanity.
My final point is one piece that I think was lacking in your analysis. I believe a major thread that runs through all of the men and all of the examples you listed above is the culture of supremacy in the U.S. As a broad cultural undercurrent, it is very hard to pin down, but I think it impacts the "crisis" some are claiming exists among men. We of course know there is white supremacy in the U.S., but I think the ideology of supremacy taints much of how people interact with regard to sexism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice. The reason I say this is because if men saw women as their equals, as human beings just like themselves, with their own autonomy and worthy of respect just by their very existence, we could easily predict how they would act and it would not be the ways incels, or Musks, or coworkers, or men in many situations act. This is a massive problem to solve, but I don't think it's solvable without naming it. Several of the examples of bad behavior you've given seem clear to me to be from a position of supremacy. And several of the good examples you've given from your personal life seem clearly to come from a sense of equality and respect for the personal autonomy of women. A.R. Moxon breaks down the concept of supremacy in the clearest and most logical way I've seen it done. https://twitter.com/JuliusGoat/status/1602270727931060224
As an aside - Palahniuk talks about people attributing the insult "snowflake" to fight club in this short interview which is worth a read. https://ew.com/books/2017/11/17/chuck-palahniuk-snowflake-insult/ I've always felt conflicted about his books because of how easily people use them. As a guide rather than a warning, but I guess that goes for a lot of dystopian fiction as well. "Don't build the torment nexus"
Still thinking about this and I think the algorithm thing is possibly more important than I first realized. So much of a young person's life is trying to figure out what the culture is and how to fit in. It is very easy to get sucked into a different, fully-enclosed world online and think "everyone is doing it", or "everyone believes this". That then has the potential to have an outsize impact in the real world on people who are trying to fit in and know that most of their friends spend as much time online as they do.
Books can be an answr but you are looking in too many wrong places. You have what I call "PUNDITITIS" a disease affecting millilons of people who want quicky easy anwers, who love to quakc and quibble at bout profound problems and disturbances and power/class CHASMS,,BABY, they are NOT gaps.
I worked in hospitals all through college and met some of the most dedicated men Ive ever met, Irish, Phillipino, African American, Italian, Chicano, and a few Jews like me. We had the tough thankless dulller than dishwater jobs of being part of machine that tried to keep people alive and/o r find out why they were sick. Then I taught for twenty three years, three in my homeplace of New York City at the main middle school in Chinatown where I worked with the one outstanding priincipal in my entire career ( the rest were soso to awful). But Ive known many young men who did not have a whole of advantages or as everyone likes to SAY but no one ever wants to LOOk at: PRIVILEGE. And the schools of this country to their onging and still everlastlilng disgrace are STILL mainly teaching English and Literature classes geared to the middle lto upper white middle class of you, nme, and our college buds and friends. ANDYET AND YET the mmentous civil rights moveEments , not only here in thee US with some of our bravest people in our history Dr. King Fanni e Lou Hamer, John Lewis, Toni Cade Bambara, my wife and her first husband, Diane Nash, Henry Dumas ( murdered by New York subway police). there is so MUCH that is still not widely known. I mean America schools focus on nonfictin, linear linear linear five paragraph essays ( and I dont think our greateest two essayists JamesBaldwin and Cynthia Ozick EVER wrote a five paragraph essay because it was just too easy to see the utter rigidity and stupdity of it"
I guess what Im saying is, many of us do not have a clue what happens in working class America, among ANYgroup but especially the most embattleld group - The African American Community. And let us now powderpuff the conversation with cowturd euphemisms as "diversity" ( if you think what you are writing and explaiing is diverse, then dont show me the best).
I’d add to your book roundup, the word of God. Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of how men ought to conduct themselves in an increasingly dark world. He is the benchmark and creator of all things. The more we drift away from that and towards our own devised syncretism, the more desperate our search becomes to fill those voids in our spirit that lead men to seek masculinity defined by an ever expanding media driven toxic culture. We are witnessing the harvest of such choices.
John, I like this composition very much. The topic is as essential as climate change, feminism, diversity/inclusion, recognizing the humanity of all, and so on. A friend shared with me the excellent article by Christine Emba, and I appreciate your reference to it. Naturally, I share your enthusiasm for reading as a way to help these directionless, disaffected young men, realizing that men in different communities have concomitantly different needs. A book I would add to the shelf you assembled is King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Douglas Gillette and Robert L. Moore. It's kind of oogly boogly, but if you can take the right message, it speaks to how the ancient archetypes of masculinity have been distorted and made toxic by the pressures of modern life. We can reclaim healthy ways to be a man, and thereby benefit individuals and society as a whole.
One surprisingly good "how to be a good man" book that I read fairly recently is the epic *Njal's Saga.* It presents two men who are best friends and respected in their society for different reasons: Gunnar is a great warrior, while the titular Njal is wise. Both of these are presented as flawed but valid ways of being.
Some might be hesitant to recommend this book, as the main conflict is that their wives Hallgerd and Bergthora have an ongoing feud, but I think that this feud is one of the reasons young men *should* read *Njal's Saga.* It presents two women with agency but no real authority and shows how their use of informal side channels nearly destroys their society, something anyone in high school should find rather prescient. Most translations are fairly clear: Hallgerd *actively chooses* to be manipulative and Bergthora is forced to respond in kind as their society does not allow women to hold formal power.
Additionally, the public coupling of power and masculinity feels like it could have been written yesterday. Every insult to one's masculinity must be answered with immediate violence. (One of the best examples of this is that Njal is constantly called "beardless"--does this sound like the flip side of those billionaire muscle photos?) The saga presents this very neutrally, but it's very easy to trace a line from all of these small insults to the literal pile of dead bodies at the end of the book, and Njal's own death.
This is really thoughtful and engaging. My little kids are girls, as far as we're aware, so the issues we face are different - but I know many parents of boys who are grappling with these concerns, and it's nice to have suggestions like these in my pocket when we're fretting over school and playground dramas.
Both Musk and Zuckerberg have made public announcements that they have Asperger syndrome. That seems to add another layer to the conversation.
I think of the Greatest Generation, the quiet Midwestern WWII veteran. The great-grandpas now. This proposed “masculinity” that we see offered today is so completely foreign to these folks--and yet we are supposed to believe that masculinity is this eternal unchanging thing.
Every time I see some dude on the internet talk about Founding Fathers, I think, “You mean the portly guys with the stockings and the powdered wigs?”
A brilliant and honest analysis, john. I greatly admire that.
John, I’ve always admired your work so much, but this piece is amazingly spot on. My main takeaway from what you say is that the foundation of being a good man is being a good human being. We draw people to us not, in the long run, by being powerful but by learning to be decent. To treat others as not here to serve our desires and needs but as human beings--whatever their gender--with their own desires hopes and dreams.
Men who really want to know “what women want” can find out by *actually making friends with them*. With a wide variety of women (since, like men, different women want different things). It helped me tremendously to be mentored by women along the way: teachers, bosses, co-workers. Because I’ve found women *eager* to talk to men they know will listen.
It really isn’t rocket science, but it requires a level of humility that many men are raised to resist if not reject. And if there’s one thing that needs to change it’s the idea that being a man means always being in charge. Never being vulnerable.
I don’t know how to get more men to see this, but I think a piece like the one you’ve written is a great place to start.
Your point about it not being rocket science is exactly it. It's not necessarily that's it's easy, but it isn't complicated or mysterious. It takes effort, but it's also effort that's rewarded.
Im surprised at you John. What you are talking about has been going on since Adam tried to cram the apple (or was it something else with a reddish tinge and a tart taste) down Eve's throat, if you believe that bestselling ancient anthology of fairy tales some call The Bible.
You like me are a white privileged male, like just about every white male in your article albeit almost all of them are far richer, far crueller, far more narcisstic, and just plain very wealthy ROAD SPACE HOGS who in the essential infantile devlopment stage must be the centers of attenton as much as they can and asmuch as their money can purchase and influences tv, newsspapers, and the flow ofmaking the "most talked about " people. I would REALLY """"RECOMMEND" that you STOP, or at least find THE DECENT MEN, THE MILLIONS OF US WHO WORK OUR ASSES OFF AND FOCUS ON GIVING OUR WIVES< LOVERS< KIDS< FAMILies MoMs DADS, grandfoks, neighbors our generous frienddship and help and knowledgewhenever and whereeve wecan, and be ressponsiblewith with what is stilll the good earth and the still blue sky.
Y:ou know, would it be the worst thing if all of these men on their way to a hugeconfeenceon ThePolicy WeNeed For Most Peoplle and then cut and paste in the protagonist KURTZ from The Heart ofDarkness, maybe in neon in so it is visible as possible. Do you remember KURTZ's last writings, the idealistic adventurer who sets up his reign of profit and terror smack in the middle of the Afrcan ungle - he's after rubber, and if workers dont bring him the high amounts he demands, what does this idealistic progressive capitaliist entrepeneur DO? Well, what else CAN he do, but cut off their HANDS ! Gee whiz Joseph Conrad. You learned well some of the essentials of writing canonical literature. Make your hero a basic bumpkin who unravels as the novel proceeds. oh yeah.
I really enjoy your way of viewing the world through the lens of books and literary references. I think it really helps bring a broader variety of perspectives into a conversation than when people just talk about what the pundits of the day are saying (noting that a lot of the people you mentioned as currently opining publicly on this topic are privileged white men).
As always, you've given me a lot to think about, and about this specific topic I feel like I have a lot to add. As a white man of a similar background to yourself, but born in the 90s, I think I have a more hands-on experience of coming of age in the internet age. However, as someone who currently runs after-school programs and works with high schoolers on a daily basis, I can see many different pressures facing high schoolers now than even 10-15 years ago when I was in their place.
A lot of what you said resonated with me. I think healthy social relationships are key, but as an avid gamer, I think that those relationships can be found online and in other places. The issue to me is how the reaction and anger-hungry algorithms lead people without proper internet literacy to dark places. Teens of course have their own agency and make their own choices, but it can be easy to fall into the rabbit hole of what YouTube pitches to young men (the internet is vastly different than when I grew up, and its workings are much more obscured than they were for me starting at the time of dial-up). I know a few male high schoolers I have worked with who enjoyed fitness and working out and watched Andrew Tate and didn't realize there was anything wrong with his messaging until we had a frank conversation about what he was saying (this was of course before he was arrested for sex-trafficking, but I hope that made my points clearer). These are not simple problems, but as many positive male role-models as possible, and models of positive relationships in real-life I think can have a great impact.
This feeds into the point you shared about the fields men should study. I straddled both worlds mentioned above, studying physics and Spanish in college. I can thankfully say that I am a much different person than I was in high school, and I attribute that in part to my college experience. My physics and math classes often had only one or two women in them. And in my Spanish and Spanish history classes I was often one of only a few men. This meant that even if I had been one to speak up a lot, I would still have heard much more of the perspective of my female classmates in my Spanish classes than if I had only studied physics. I can only imagine that Musk and Zuckerberg rarely (if ever) were put in a situation where they were vastly outnumbered by equally intelligent women in a discussion. I have at times felt ashamed of things I did or said in high school, realizing many years later how sexist they were, in some cases reaching out to someone specific to apologize. However, I think it speaks to the sexist culture that we have in the US that I considered myself to be tame and respectful compared to many of my friends and classmates.
Having open-minded parents and a strong-willed older sister obviously played a role. Reading both Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew novels together when I was little, and hearing my parents explicitly reject gender roles over and over primed me to overcome the prejudices I was introduced to in high school after I left that environment, but I wouldn't say my high school environment was conducive to forming respectful men. One book series that I read probably earlier than I should have was R.A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms books about Drizzt the dark elf. Thinking back, that was probably more formative than I realized. The entire series reverses social expectations, and encourages a great deal of introspection. The main character is a male growing up in an incredibly violent matriarchal society where men are treated as second-class citizens, and every race that isn't dark elves hates his race (rightfully for their cruelty and treachery). However, Drizzt sees the world differently and has to work hard to earn the trust of others and carve an independent path of decency and humanity.
My final point is one piece that I think was lacking in your analysis. I believe a major thread that runs through all of the men and all of the examples you listed above is the culture of supremacy in the U.S. As a broad cultural undercurrent, it is very hard to pin down, but I think it impacts the "crisis" some are claiming exists among men. We of course know there is white supremacy in the U.S., but I think the ideology of supremacy taints much of how people interact with regard to sexism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice. The reason I say this is because if men saw women as their equals, as human beings just like themselves, with their own autonomy and worthy of respect just by their very existence, we could easily predict how they would act and it would not be the ways incels, or Musks, or coworkers, or men in many situations act. This is a massive problem to solve, but I don't think it's solvable without naming it. Several of the examples of bad behavior you've given seem clear to me to be from a position of supremacy. And several of the good examples you've given from your personal life seem clearly to come from a sense of equality and respect for the personal autonomy of women. A.R. Moxon breaks down the concept of supremacy in the clearest and most logical way I've seen it done. https://twitter.com/JuliusGoat/status/1602270727931060224
As an aside - Palahniuk talks about people attributing the insult "snowflake" to fight club in this short interview which is worth a read. https://ew.com/books/2017/11/17/chuck-palahniuk-snowflake-insult/ I've always felt conflicted about his books because of how easily people use them. As a guide rather than a warning, but I guess that goes for a lot of dystopian fiction as well. "Don't build the torment nexus"
Still thinking about this and I think the algorithm thing is possibly more important than I first realized. So much of a young person's life is trying to figure out what the culture is and how to fit in. It is very easy to get sucked into a different, fully-enclosed world online and think "everyone is doing it", or "everyone believes this". That then has the potential to have an outsize impact in the real world on people who are trying to fit in and know that most of their friends spend as much time online as they do.
Books can be an answr but you are looking in too many wrong places. You have what I call "PUNDITITIS" a disease affecting millilons of people who want quicky easy anwers, who love to quakc and quibble at bout profound problems and disturbances and power/class CHASMS,,BABY, they are NOT gaps.
I worked in hospitals all through college and met some of the most dedicated men Ive ever met, Irish, Phillipino, African American, Italian, Chicano, and a few Jews like me. We had the tough thankless dulller than dishwater jobs of being part of machine that tried to keep people alive and/o r find out why they were sick. Then I taught for twenty three years, three in my homeplace of New York City at the main middle school in Chinatown where I worked with the one outstanding priincipal in my entire career ( the rest were soso to awful). But Ive known many young men who did not have a whole of advantages or as everyone likes to SAY but no one ever wants to LOOk at: PRIVILEGE. And the schools of this country to their onging and still everlastlilng disgrace are STILL mainly teaching English and Literature classes geared to the middle lto upper white middle class of you, nme, and our college buds and friends. ANDYET AND YET the mmentous civil rights moveEments , not only here in thee US with some of our bravest people in our history Dr. King Fanni e Lou Hamer, John Lewis, Toni Cade Bambara, my wife and her first husband, Diane Nash, Henry Dumas ( murdered by New York subway police). there is so MUCH that is still not widely known. I mean America schools focus on nonfictin, linear linear linear five paragraph essays ( and I dont think our greateest two essayists JamesBaldwin and Cynthia Ozick EVER wrote a five paragraph essay because it was just too easy to see the utter rigidity and stupdity of it"
I guess what Im saying is, many of us do not have a clue what happens in working class America, among ANYgroup but especially the most embattleld group - The African American Community. And let us now powderpuff the conversation with cowturd euphemisms as "diversity" ( if you think what you are writing and explaiing is diverse, then dont show me the best).
F
I’d add to your book roundup, the word of God. Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of how men ought to conduct themselves in an increasingly dark world. He is the benchmark and creator of all things. The more we drift away from that and towards our own devised syncretism, the more desperate our search becomes to fill those voids in our spirit that lead men to seek masculinity defined by an ever expanding media driven toxic culture. We are witnessing the harvest of such choices.
John, I like this composition very much. The topic is as essential as climate change, feminism, diversity/inclusion, recognizing the humanity of all, and so on. A friend shared with me the excellent article by Christine Emba, and I appreciate your reference to it. Naturally, I share your enthusiasm for reading as a way to help these directionless, disaffected young men, realizing that men in different communities have concomitantly different needs. A book I would add to the shelf you assembled is King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Douglas Gillette and Robert L. Moore. It's kind of oogly boogly, but if you can take the right message, it speaks to how the ancient archetypes of masculinity have been distorted and made toxic by the pressures of modern life. We can reclaim healthy ways to be a man, and thereby benefit individuals and society as a whole.
One surprisingly good "how to be a good man" book that I read fairly recently is the epic *Njal's Saga.* It presents two men who are best friends and respected in their society for different reasons: Gunnar is a great warrior, while the titular Njal is wise. Both of these are presented as flawed but valid ways of being.
Some might be hesitant to recommend this book, as the main conflict is that their wives Hallgerd and Bergthora have an ongoing feud, but I think that this feud is one of the reasons young men *should* read *Njal's Saga.* It presents two women with agency but no real authority and shows how their use of informal side channels nearly destroys their society, something anyone in high school should find rather prescient. Most translations are fairly clear: Hallgerd *actively chooses* to be manipulative and Bergthora is forced to respond in kind as their society does not allow women to hold formal power.
Additionally, the public coupling of power and masculinity feels like it could have been written yesterday. Every insult to one's masculinity must be answered with immediate violence. (One of the best examples of this is that Njal is constantly called "beardless"--does this sound like the flip side of those billionaire muscle photos?) The saga presents this very neutrally, but it's very easy to trace a line from all of these small insults to the literal pile of dead bodies at the end of the book, and Njal's own death.
This is just terrific - thank you for writing it!
This is really thoughtful and engaging. My little kids are girls, as far as we're aware, so the issues we face are different - but I know many parents of boys who are grappling with these concerns, and it's nice to have suggestions like these in my pocket when we're fretting over school and playground dramas.