Telling Men’s Side of the Story

It’s not a big secret to say that men are not great at talking about their problems. For one thing, whining isn’t manly. Second, and more importantly, most men have correctly concluded that almost no one gives a sh*t about their problems. The attitude is, “If you have a problem, then you should ‘man up,’ tough it out, and solve it.”

Maybe it’s because I’m a man, but I don’t even think that’s a bad thing much of the time. That way of thinking is one of the reasons men have always been the hunters, the fighters, and the leaders. It’s because if you’re going to be in tough situations, you better be able to just handle whatever is in front of you because the weak, the soft and the people that crack under pressure aren’t going to be able to hack it.

On the other hand, because of this attitude, men often do a poor job of explaining their problems and when they do, they tend to not be taken seriously. For example, men’s rights advocates have talked about men’s problems and if you’ve ever read, for example, Warren Farrell, he does some very thoughtful work. Yet, many men’s rights advocates are treated like crybabies by the culture and are not taken seriously.

Although few of them would probably think of themselves that way, pick-up artists and Red Pill advocates are, at least to an extent, filling a similar niche in a way more acceptable to men. They’re not telling the world about their problems, they’re talking amongst other men, saying “Here are the issues we men have to tackle, and here’s my plan to do it.”

We could also point to the “Men Going Their Own Way,” movement (men’s separatism from women), incels (involuntarily celibate men), and Andrew Tate fans that are doing the same kind of thing in an unhealthier way.

I want to do something a little different than all of these people.

I want to try to explain to you what many men are saying in private about why life is difficult for them without asking you to fix it, asking you to sympathize with men, or worst of all, asking you to join my MEN OF WAR roundtable where we’ll teach you how to be a real man for the low, low price of $299 per month.

As a starting point, let’s break out one of my favorite quotes about the roots of masculinity and manhood:

“Masculinity is tragic. Masculinity is a lifelong struggle; a gauntlet run against nature and other men to demonstrate virility and prove one’s worthiness as a man in the eyes of other men. Masculinity is a challenge to honor that ends only in death - a challenge to win coupled with a guarantee that, eventually, even the best man will lose." -- Jack Donavan

Men naturally want to be respected. They want to prove themselves to be worthy. They want to be thought of as exceptional both by other men and women.

This has become increasingly difficult for many men in the modern world for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, more men than ever before are growing up without a male role model around. For them, mom and dad got divorced and dad’s mostly out of the picture. Single moms can do a lot of things for their kids, but they can’t teach them how to be a man.

What about teachers? Well, that’s become a much more female-dominated profession in recent years. Roughly three-quarters of teachers are now women. Because of child molestation scandals, our society has also become more suspicious of men who are around boys and teenagers, so there are fewer opportunities to learn from other men on that front.

On top of that, we’re all growing up slower. For much of history, 13- and 14-year-olds often had full-time jobs. After the Industrial Revolution, there were for a time young boys doing sometimes dangerous work with grown men. That’s obviously not something we want to return to as a society, but it hammers home the point that we now live in a world where a lot of men start out with few, if any male role models in their personal lives.

In addition, what’s expected of us – all of us actually, both men and women – has changed a great deal. Up until a certain point, it was fairly easy for a teenage boy to know what being a “good man” meant in their culture.

Maybe it was putting in a hard day’s work, being tough enough to hold his own in a fight and treating his wife well. Maybe it was being a skilled hunter and warrior. Maybe it was owning his own plot of land, having a lot of children, and being a valued member of his church. The last time that kind of simple definition of being a “good man” was part of American culture was probably during the John Wayne era:

Since then, things have changed. Today, what is being a “good man?” It’s not so simple anymore.

Do you need to hunt? Lift weights? Be good with a gun? Know how to fight? Do you need to know how to build your own house and work on a car? Do you need to be a feminist who shows his emotions at every opportunity? Do you have to be a patriot or someone who proves his “patriotism” by criticizing his country? Is a good man gay? Can a straight, white Christian who isn’t liberal be a good man at all? Does it require obedience to God or are those men suckers? Is a good man the leader of his household or part of a fifty/fifty power-sharing arrangement? Should a man embrace traditional values or be open-minded to a fault? Is a man supposed to be chivalrous or is it condescending to open a door for a woman? Does a man need to be tough and strong, or should he be regularly opening up about his feelings?

You may read all of those questions and say, “I know the answers to those questions,” but my guess is if this were the comment section of the New York Times, the majority of the responses would be radically different opinions.

Young men grow up bombarded with all of these competing, often contradictory ideals and then they set out to make a mark in a world where social media makes all of us feel like we’re competing with the whole planet: “Oh, you made a million dollars? Cool… I guess. I just watched a video from a billionaire in his 50-million-dollar mansion on YouTube this morning. You benched 225 pounds? Super. I follow the world record holder in bench pressing on Instagram. He has a 1,400-pound bench. Oh, you think you’re cool? Neat. I just saw a video where IShowSpeed was talking to a bunch of celebrities and then 200 of his followers mobbed him when he was walking down the street. All my friends were talking about it.”

For a long time, you could be the “strongest guy in the village,” the owner of the local grocery store or mayor of your small town and legitimately be a big deal to most of the people you knew.

Not anymore.

Perhaps worst of all to a lot of men, the dating market in America is broken. Certainly not hopelessly broken for everyone, but it’s bad enough that for a big part of the male population, perhaps even a MAJORITY, it’s completely dysfunctional. How else do you describe something like this?

A recent Pew Research study suggests a tectonic shift in the dating and sex life of men. The study found that among men under 30 years old, over 60 percent are single, almost double that of women in the same age bracket. Not only are more young men single but their opportunities for developing a relational and sexual repertoire have all but vanished, as levels of sexual intimacy across genders appear to have hit a 30-year low (Lei & South, 2021).

So many men have the same basic dreams as their fathers and grandfathers. They want to get married, have kids, provide for their family, and be respected. Meanwhile, a large percentage of American men feel like this dream, this very basic, very traditional dream has been locked away from them. Not only are they nowhere near making it happen, the level of effort they feel it would take to achieve it seems so extraordinary to them that it comes across as practically magical or superhuman.

If you want to know why so many modern men are essentially “giving up” on their responsibilities as men and spending all their time playing video games, watching pornography, going to furry or anime conventions, becoming obsessed with children’s toys like Legos, etc., it’s because there’s some version of this kind of thinking going through their heads. It’s essentially, “Being a man has become a thankless, pointless, punishing grind that ends with me not being good enough, never being able to create a loving family, and realizing any effort I put in was completely wasted.”

Do I agree with that take? No, but there’s a sizable chunk of the male population that does, and even many of the men that don’t agree at least UNDERSTAND WHERE THEY’RE COMING FROM.

Against this grim backdrop, men can’t help but notice both the abusive way they’re treated and the ways the system is rigged against them.

What is DEI really? It’s outright discrimination against straight, white males. If a man gets married and his wife chooses to divorce him, is he going to get a fair shake in divorce court? Absolutely not. He’s going to be looted like a pirate’s treasure chest while his wife, usually even if she’s a screw-up who’s responsible for destroying the marriage, is likely to get custody of his kids. In every situation, women get to choose between being the “You go, girl, you can do anything a man can do” hero and being the dainty, little flower with no more agency than a child, depending on what benefits her most at the time.

A man’s life can be ruined by 100% unproven sexual allegations made by a woman, but if men respond to that by not wanting to be alone with women, we’re treated to worries about what the lack of male mentors might do to women’s careers. Just being an attractive woman is the equivalent of being an extremely accomplished man in almost every area of life.

When women were behind in schooling, we pulled out all the stops to help them, but now that women get (by some accounts) 59% of college degrees, nobody cares about helping the men catch up.

Perhaps worst of all, there’s this assumption made not just by a lot of women, but by much of society, that somehow men have all the advantages, “Yes, we live in a patriarchy!” Do you realize how insane that sounds to most men? Personally, I’ve never heard a man in private agree that men have it easier than women or that there’s some kind of “patriarchy.” Think about how illogical and yes, just dumb, that whole concept is. “Oh Chris Hemsworth, Logan Paul, J.D. Vance, and Bill Gates have amassed a lot of power and fame, so therefore the auto-mechanic down at Joe’s Garage is part of a male societal structure that’s keeping women down somehow.”

Yet, this mindless, stupid concept drives a spiteful attitude toward men in many places. You know, “Awwww, so you’re being discriminated against for your gender. Men have it so tough! Hahahaha” or “Who cares if men get falsely accused of sexual assault? They deserve it.”

Now, you might buy all this, and you might not. You might think it’s all self-serving bullsh*t. However you look at it, you should understand that although guys choose different ways to respond to this situation, this is the lens through which a large percentage of men in our country view modern life.

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