Assumptive Masculinity, Tragic Levels Of Alienation, And Its Impact On Work
Lot to potentially unpack here, so let’s take it step-by-step.
“The Masculinity Box, or Prison”
You can learn a bit more about this concept in this article, but it basically summarizes out as:
The man box concept summarizes in elegant metaphor the pressures that “attempt to control, manipulate, and shame men into being a certain way,” the psychologist Heather Stevenson tells Lifehacker. “Anything that falls outside of the man box, [such as] being emotional, vulnerable, or showing compassion, is not only not allowed, but will strip men of their masculinity card or reject them from the tribe.”
Now, if you think about how important tribal identity is in general, but especially right now — more in the political vein, but definitely in the gender vein too around #MeToo and supposed “cancellations” — you realize that a risk of being outcast from the tribe is a big risk for people. So even if you’re not that type of alpha-dude, you might flex and try to be because it’s easier psychologically than being your real self. Your real self might get you booted, and most people don’t want to get booted.
Now it becomes more complicated: Male traits and depression
Those who show more male traits are less susceptible to depression, per 40 years of research.
This is where it gets complicated, especially in a work sense. It’s easy to look at women at work and scoff and say “They cry” or “They focus on issues that aren’t biz issues” and “It’s no wonder they get depressed more easily, they’re not warriors like us.”
In reality, dudes get depressed crazy easily, but dudes aren’t supposed to discuss being depressed (see above), and the dichotomy — or the gap in self, really — is what causes the real issues. Men feel anyway like they can only express via anger, or maybe sex or weights or something, and the gap in self intensifies it. So I’m depressed, but I’m trapped in the Masculinity Prison and can’t discuss it, and here’s a study saying if I act more masculine then I’ll feel less depressed, supposedly. The cognitive dissonance associated with these different aspects of being a guy are insane to even consider.
More on masculinity
Is this about definitions of success?
Somewhat, yes. More broadly it’s about definitions of success, how you prioritize different trappings in your life (an element of success), definitions of gender, and your various network of relationships. It’s interesting that we’ve somehow turned gender discussions into culture wars discussions, without having real discussions about masculinity and its constraints. It feels like we did the order wrong; we needed to figure out what was wrong with masculinity, and what was wrong with expectations for females, and then we can turn it all into a giant culture wars mesh of bullshit. It’s hard to be both a man and a woman in terms of societal “expectations,” “conditions,” or “responsibilities.” It’s also easy to argue “Well, average people don’t think about this stuff, they just go live their life.” That’s not untrue either. Maybe I’m weird for even considering it. But don’t, in some ways, we need a whole-scale new approach to masculinity and how to define male success?
Teach young boys about crying, about different versions of success, about sex: Don’t create warriors. We don’t need those anymore. Create men who can feel and discuss. I legitimately know dudes for 20+ years and I call/text them and say “My wife and I are getting divorced.” They respond: “Oh, that sucks.” Like, gimme a little fucking slice of something, my man. Raise the bar an inch. If you’re a father, even of daughters, strive to create that. Create that in dudes that play with your daughters if you must. Create that in Little League. It should be your goal that no man you encounter will get to that moment with a friend and say “Oh, that sucks.” Make men work harder at what actually matters to life.
Takes?
What about “tragic levels of alienation?”
That above screenshot is from a New Yorker article on toxic masculinity, which is essentially a review of a couple of books about gender relations at present. I’ve written a literal crap ton about masculinity in the last couple of years, including this thing on evolving masculinity, this ditty on assumptive masculinity, why masculinity can suck, and how to lean into the idea of toxic masculinity.
I do think the phrase “tragic level of alienation” pops here. A lot of dudes are depressed. The number is probably higher than anyone realizes. There’s a whole thing about males leading “quiet lives of desperation.” I think “obligatory model of virility” pops too. That might be a so-called trigger for me, because of my own infertility issues, but I also think a lot of guys I know or have met race up to 2–3 kids, because that’s what they think they want or their spouse really wants, and after Kid 3, they’re like “Whoa, is this it?” And, simultaneously, they often feel like a relic in their own home.
So maybe the virility path is … reductive in a way?
I always feel like there’s a bigger picture here that very few people talk about. First of all, we have deeply-embedded gender roles, and while some of that stuff is adjusting at the Gen Z and below level, it hasn’t adjusted for most of society. And while things like “pronouns” are valuable, they haven’t been explained well enough to most people to really shift thinking; in a lot of cases, with men over about 33 right now, they elicit eye rolls, not “awareness.” So that’s one thing: we’ve got these deeply-embedded roles and I don’t know if we’ve really done much around switching them.
At the same time, since the advent of the Pill or even just the last 10 years, work has really “evened out” in some ways. It’s still (often unfortunately) very much a man’s world, but more women get bachelor’s degrees nowadays, and more women are in the workplace writ-large I think. The whole “mom at home” deal is 18% of the population of America, last I saw. I know some far-right guys want to make that 75% of households, but where we’re at economically, we’re not going to get there.
So men, who often defined themselves via work, can’t do that as easily. And as work has become more intellectual, and a lot of the strength work has been outsourced, there’s this whole “relevance of males” aspect. That got even messier with #MeToo and the like. Now a lot of that seems to be back-sliding in the aftermath of Roe and Amber Heard, but it’s really a more complicated burrito than that. Men are seeking relevance and finding alienation, seeking purpose and finding “Can u code? Well maybe DoorDash needs drivers…”, seeking a new definition and finding a weird push/pull of “WE NEED STRONG MEN!” vs. “SHOW YOUR FEELINGS, TIMMY!”, etc, etc. It’s complicated. It’s complex. There are no binary (ha!) answers to the current state and future of masculinity.
I don’t have any answers for any of this stuff, honestly. Most guys need to find a path to relevance, and it’s not usually “more kids,” and maybe it’s “woodworking,” but I don’t think anyone truly knows.
I can tell you, though, that another thing that pops in here is ideology wars and convenience-seeking. Ideology has defined virtually everything since about March 17, 2020, if not before that. It’s definitely gotten sharper in that time. Ideologies about masculinity — see above, i.e. “WE NEED STRONG MEN NOT PORNO LOSERS!” vs. “WE NEED MEN OF EMPATHY AND IMPACT!” — have been sharpened in this time. It’s hard to be friends with some dudes if they drastically look at “masculinity” as your mile time + your amount of kids + your salary. That’s not masculinity to me (it’s part of it, yes), but for some guys, that’s all there is. In those cases, those friendships or acquaintanceships often wither.
Convenience-seeking is a big part of it too. Convenience is ostensibly the goal of modern American life. Many want the gated community and the good school district. It’s aspirational, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I do think men fall prey to some of this stuff, though, and it drives depression. If you ask 100 guys randomly, from all walks of life, how they’re doing, the response is always something like: “Well, wife is happy, kids are healthy, I’m employed, so… good?” That’s seemingly the only ways guys can define success or convenience, and the notable thing that it strips out is, well, Mr. Man, how do you feel about life? You just put it in terms of your wife, your kids, and your employer. What about you? Done anything with your hands recently? Taken a walk? Meditated? Thought about stuff beyond just the next Little League practice?
Like, here’s a semi-interesting example. For a while I was doing a lot of stuff with F3 Nation (cool group), including newsletters for them. Here’s something I put in one newsletter about guys, quiet desperation, being men of action, etc:
Circle of Trust Highlights
Sandia shared that we should be men of action, not men of words. (Sandia also recently brought out Garfield, one of his 2.0s, who has been a semi-regular on the Parker County circuit.)
Ebert talked about how Cinco was relentless in getting him to keep coming back out — and remember, Cinco and Ebert live almost nowhere near each other. Ebert was completely gassed at his first workout, and now has become one of the most reliable Qs and leaders in the entirety of the group.
Mamma Mia talked about how the notion of “picking up the six” goes well beyond the workout. You need to ask for help if you need it, but some of us are physically wrong and mentally weaker, and some of us are mentally strong and physically weaker, and sometimes we’re weaker on both — and “the six” is a social/emotional concept as much as a running one.
Clifford talked about how he fart-sacked on Drought five times, came once, got beat down to nothing by Sensei, and assumed he’d never come back again. Instead he now leads in Qs for 2022. What happened? Fellowship drove him.
If you’ve been missing the bonds and the BDs and have been gone for a second, come on back. We’d love to see you at any AO!
“AO” means “place you work out” and “BD” means workout, above. CC on that one to F3 , Tommy Darnell , Gabe Deale .
Seems pretty decent in terms of reducing male alienation, right?
Last week, this got sent out:
The difference between those two things above was essentially that I did two things “wrong” — sometimes I’d get drunk (my issue) and post dumb shit on their Slack channel, which I’m sure was annoying. But as you can see in that screenshot, apparently there was “inappropriate personal information” (never mentioned anyone’s wife or kids by name minus 2–3 times, and never used an address) and “overall negative tone.” Now look, I absolutely made mistakes. But what I really did was cross these guys’ sense of convenience and comfort. I crossed their walls into stuff they didn’t want to talk about. One of the leaders of that world, real name Kevin and F3 call sign “Cinco,” used to tell me before the shit hit the proverbial fan that he liked the emails because “you talk about real stuff, stuff guys need to think about and act on, while weaving in the workouts.” That attitude unfortunately didn’t last and I believe he’s currently got me blocked on Facebook. LOL.
Don’t cross comfort and convenience, especially among affluent guys. I wrote a little bit about that here.
That’s all part of the male alienation set too — and again, not saying I lack problems (I have dozens) — but there’s a ton about ideology and convenience that you need to navigate to be a “successful” guy with “friends” these days.
Why did I put “friends” in quotes? Well, there’s a reason this thing has 4.2 million views on YouTube:
Quiet desperation, alienation, etc.
Takes?