There either is no “crisis of masculinity” or it has been there since forever. Hard to say. Either way, it looks like it’s manufactured. As people talk about it a lot these days, I decided to make it the topic of my discussion group, What About Men?
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The crisis that never quite goes away
Every few decades someone announces that men are in crisis. But this time feels a bit different. Amidst the conservative resurgence and backlash against ‘woke culture’ (a.k.a. progressive values), there is a growing number of men who seem quite set on playing up this crisis to a point where it erupts into a war. And not just a culture war or a gender war — I mean a proper let’s-kill-each-other war.
And there are people who seem quite set on making it happen, fueling populist movements by stoking resentment and grievance. Think pieces appear, podcasts bloom, and before long the same lament echoes again: what’s wrong with men?
The crisis of masculinity isn’t new. It keeps recurring, so it’s less of a crisis and more of a chronic condition. I think bell hooks was right when she said it’s not masculinity that’s in crisis — it’s patriarchal masculinity that is. That’s because its defining characteristics — constantly needing to prove yourself, dominate, exploit, establish hierarchies — is bound to make most men unhappy. After all, we can’t all be on top of the ladder, and those on the top will definitely make sure to keep the others down.
The crisis now is harder as being high up the ladder is harder than ever. The roles through which men once established their place on it have eroded: provider, protector, fixer of things, hero. Nothing replaced them and what we got is not freedom but formlessness.
When the script disappears, you either write your own or go searching for someone else’s. Many choose the latter. Maybe that’s why people treat Andrew Tate and Charlie Kirk as messiahs. It’s not so much a cult as a market. Tate, Kirk, and the other peddlers of swagger sell certainty: they tell men who they are, who stole their place, and who must now be punished for it. The product is not virtue but direction — a quick hit of purpose with the side-effects omitted from the label.
Meaning for sale
It’s easy to sneer at the men who buy into this, but if you’ve ever been lost, you know the attraction of a signpost, even a wrong one. The modern mantra of ‘create your own meaning’ sounds empowering until you realise there’s no manual and no customer service line. Some people thrive in that freedom. Others freeze.
That hunger for a story bigger than yourself isn’t a moral failing; it’s the human condition. The problem is that the people now selling stories do so with the precision of a casino architect. They know exactly how to keep you playing. Algorithms feed us outrage like breadcrumbs through a maze, and the prize for finding the exit is another maze.
Meanwhile, we call this “choice.”
The irony is that the patriarchy these guys want to take us back to — so often imagined as the rule of all men — never really was. The word literally means rule of the fathers, the few who inherited power while the rest were told to be grateful for obedience. The nostalgic fantasy that “real men once had it better” confuses hierarchy with dignity. The ladder never served those who were at the bottom of it, and those on top never wanted to pass a helping hand. Neither do they want to do it now.
The politics of grievance
If anger feels global these days, that’s because it is. Populism used to rise from the street; now it trickles down from the boardroom with a marketing budget. Wealthy actors and media machines manufacture outrage, targeting the lonely and disoriented with stories that flatter their wounds. It works spectacularly. The easiest way to make people feel better is to give them someone to blame for their problems. You don’t need to actually solve the problems, that’s the best part. People don’t want their problems solved as much as they want to have someone to blame for them. This tendency has no gender, by the way.
And because platforms have no borders, these narratives hop continents overnight. A culture-war influencer in Texas can ruin the family dinner conversation in Malmö by Tuesday. The grievances mutate but the business model remains the same: sell attention, harvest data, repeat.
Beneath the noise, though, sits an older, quieter reality — economics. Many men are not enraged; they’re exhausted. Work is unstable, housing absurd, meaning scarce. Yet progressive politics, eager to fix representation, often neglects subsistence. Visibility matters, but rent is still due. When life becomes unaffordable, demagogues have an easy pitch.
And for the demagogues, a crisis is great. A crisis means people feel overwhelmed, tired, angry, and much, much more likely to listen to anyone who has the confidence and charisma to promise them a magic pill that will solve their problems. The more unsafe, uncertain, and complex the world is, the bigger the market for promises of safety, certainty and simplicity. Remember, you don’t need to deliver on those promises — you just need to sound confident enough making them and then blame failure on the ‘woke people’.
Meanwhile, the ‘woke people’ are way too busy arguing with each other over minute details of identity politics to actually put up a fight. Or to create and implement a viable economic strategy which would reduce the lack of safety and certainty which fuel the crisis of masculinity.
Can we end the crisis of masculinity?
If critique was enough to improve anything, Twitter would be a paradise. What’s missing are credible alternatives: ways of being men that are not patriarchal, but that also sound attractive to most men. Ways that allow them to feel respected and safe. Ways that are simple enough to be understandable to men who, between the two jobs they’re working, have little mental capacity to go through a complex and deeply critical identity reinvention.
Of course, no amount of promoting personal improvement will save us if the systems stay rigged for insecurity. The platforms that monetise outrage and the economies that reward precarity have to be redesigned, not just endured. The same technology that isolates us can also connect us — if we design it that way. And the same men drawn to grifters are capable of loyalty, creativity, and decency once given a context that honours those things.
The question What about men? is not defensive. It is a call to include men in the project of building a fairer world — not as obstacles, not as relics, but as partners who are learning, sometimes clumsily, how to be both strong and kind at the same time. And not in crisis, for a change.
If there is a new definition of manhood to be found, it probably won’t come from manifestos. It will emerge from the unremarkable daily work of men who keep their promises, tell the truth, and fix what’s broken — including, when necessary, themselves.
This reflection is based on a recorded discussion I had at the second “What About Men?” discussion group. My thanks to Mustafa and Rob for their candour and provocations that shaped these pages. As the discussion was plagued by technical difficulties, I only managed to save a part of it for the recording, but you can watch it in full here:
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