As a Liberal, I Agree There’s a Serious Crisis of Masculinity
The appeal of Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and why the left is losing men
So what do we do about men?
If young men supporting a self-admitted misogynist and alleged sex trafficker in Andrew Tate, or the constant need to turn to daddy figures in Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson isn’t a cry for help, then what is?
Obviously, there is a crisis of masculinity going on.
Many men across America are suffering from record levels of severe depression, lack of motivation, suicide, and loneliness; many are checked out of society. Other men are turning to right-wing grifters disguised as self-help gurus to help find their purpose in this world.
With the contemporary deconstructing of traditional gender norms and the destabilizing of traditional power that men have historically held in society, many men are struggling to find their identity in this world.
This leads us to the existential question: What does it mean to be a man in modernity?
The left’s lack of ability and effort to address this question is causing men to flock to right-wing spaces for answers. If we don’t provide healthy solutions to men’s issues then, we will continue to see men flock to the right for solutions. Which benefits no one in the long run.
I understand the resistance to center men’s issues in left spaces because men historically have been centered in all conversations. However, the hesitancy to talk about men’s issues on the left fails to account for the intersectionality of identities that makes up men.
Sure, it may be hard to empathize with an identity crisis of “wealthy white cis-men” but men’s issues also impact Black men, Hispanic men, queer men, trans men, poor men, and any combination of those marginalized communities. Even when referring to “wealthy cis-white men” we still have to sympathize with the fact that these are still suffering individuals with individual experiences.
A society that fosters healthier versions of masculinity becomes a better society for all. So it’s in all of our own best interests to bring men’s issues into left spaces. That doesn’t mean we have to center men's issues in discourse but the consequences of ignoring it all together are what created men who turn to Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and other right-wing grifters for answers.
Men turn to these right-wing grifters for the same reason people turn to religion or any other ideology; for a sense of identity.
Gender norms and roles have changed more in the past couple of hundred years than probably the thousand years before that. Shaking men’s traditional domination over women and critiquing toxic masculinity is a good thing, but stopping there leaves men without a framework to understand their place in the world.
We need conversations and dialogues to teach men how to identify and perform masculinity in a healthy way that doesn’t cause suffering to themselves and others. We also need to teach them why the behaviors of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers aren’t something that is necessarily meant to be modeled or revered.
Women had the benefit of the feminist movement to help them recenter themselves and adapt to the changing world and gender norms. Men were blinded by the comfort of power and never really had the opportunity to really adapt to the rapidly changing world that they found themselves unprepared for.
The feminist movement was led by great thinkers such as Simone De Beauvoir, Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Judith Butler, and Maya Angelou who guided women’s identities. These women, and other great women like them, constantly thought about what it meant to be a woman in this new world.
Fighting oppression also works as a blessing and a curse when it comes to identity and purpose. Being oppressed obviously is not a desired identity but fighting against a common oppressor does create group purpose and identity. It gives meaning to one's suffering.
For women, fighting the patriarchy helped created a sense of identity around womanhood and feminity. Most importantly, it gave meaning to the suffering and a cause to rally around. With the guidance of brilliant feminist thinkers, improving status in society, and a common enemy of fighting the patriarchy, women were able to redefine their identity in the new gender culture.
Men had the complete opposite situation of being blinded to the changing world by their own place in the hierarchy, not many men intellectuals contemplated men’s role and identity in the new world, and finally without a common oppressor uniting them their identity.
This leads us to the current existential crisis that men and specifically young men are in today: men today don’t understand what it means to be a man.
The only people speaking to this question are right-wing grifters like Tate and Peterson, but men are turning to them because they are the only ones speaking on this issue. Tate and Peterson provide men with a purpose and identity; it is not a healthy masculine identity but for many men the other option is nihilism.
Right-wing grifters use the same models that have worked for religion and any other ideology. They give men common advice that is universally applicable to living a good life such as: taking care of their personal hygiene, finding a community, and finding a hobby (usually exercising).
For some people, this may seem like common sense advice, but for the thousands of men who previously accepted nihilism and despair, this is like Christians discovering the gospel. This advice for some men is life-changing and is the only thing that gets them out of their room.
However, with any other ideology, there has to be a villain sprinkled in for the followers to rally around. For Abrahamic religious followers, it’s often queer people, and for these right-wing masculinity personas, it’s often women.
Right-wing grifters rally around the anti-feminist movement in order to define their own sense of identity. They tell men that women's liberation is what causes men’s suffering and the greater suffering of society through challenging the “natural way”. Therefore in order to save their masculine identity, men must return to the hierarchal world of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers back when men were still men.
This is why Tate and Peterson sell two different but very unhealthy ideas of traditional masculinity with roots in return for men’s power in society.
Tate sells masculinity as violence, muscles, and money and uses those traits to gain power and influence over the world, especially over women. This form of masculinity is unhealthy because it’s just caricatures of 70s and 80s fiction action movies heroes. This form of masculinity is unachievable because it never existed in any society and just reduces masculinity down to the concept of power.
Peterson’s version of masculinity is far more nefarious. He disguises his call for traditionalism behind pseudo-intellectualism and gender essentialism. He calls for power hierarchies through the disguise of nature without any evidence and implies these arguments to gender relations. Peterson, through many metaphors and big words, just argues that patriarchy, and man’s place in it, is natural.
Their pitch is basically misogynist scapegoating with a cry for traditional patriarchal power structures. The issue is that many men are finding community, purpose, and identities in these concepts which are creating a masculinity movement like the one we saw feminity go through over the past couple hundred years.
The difference is that the feminist movement was centered on women’s liberation and challenging the traditional and historical subjugation that they were placed under. While in comparison, this modern masculinity movement is not a call to redefine masculinity so that it is complacent with the modern world, but a call to return the world to when men had an identity through traditional oppressive gender roles.
The current men’s movement argues this modern world isn’t good for them, with complaints about societal norms such as men’s lives being disposable in society and men being coerced into being economic providers for their partners. The ironic part of this movement is that these traditional gender roles are the same roles that oppressed most men, too.
The concept of men's disposability, the idea that men’s lives aren’t valued and are more willing to be sacrificed in war and dangerous jobs for the benefit of society, is rooted in traditional gender roles.
The same with men being economic providers because women weren’t allowed to work or own wealth. In reality, one full-time working partner should be able to provide for a partner and a family, but then the enemy becomes capitalism and not modern gender norms and women.
Instead of the enemy of the movement being women and modernity, the movement’s true enemy is placed on the systems that truly exploit and subjugate men.
Instead of blaming women for men’s economic hardship, this movement blames capitalism, greedy CEOs, and greedy landlords. Instead of blaming society in general for men’s life being expendable, this movement blames the politicians and corporations that get’s men killed in wars.
Instead of creating rigid ideas of masculinity that subjugate men from personal expression, this movement creates a version of masculinity that creates a healthy idea of masculinity where men get to pick and choose what traits they want and what traits make them feel oppressed. A masculinity that’s inclusive of feminity, trans-identities, fluid sexualities, and anything else that someone who identifies as a man would want.
Most importantly this masculinity movement doesn’t view women as opposition but as an essential part of their community whose well-being contributes to a healthy and good life for all.
