Richard, thanks for this article and your continued work in this space. I do want to address one portion of your piece with some data. As you mention, "many boys and men are in fact struggling, and most of all in working class and Black families." More accurately, White, Black, and Hispanic males from the lowest economic quartiles are suffering equally in educational attainment. An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data (https://gibm.substack.com/p/education-in-black-and-white) on educational attainment and income from 2012 to 2020 disaggregated by race, sex, and four income quartiles reveals that black males and white males (followed by Hispanic males) from the lowest economic quartile are the least likely to participate in college by nearly the same margins. I know it's unpopular, but talking about White males is necessary at a time when they too are taking it on the chin. It's also important to look at out-of-wedlock births and the critical role it plays across all racial lines when it comes to boys and measurable outcomes. Thanks, and keep up the good work.
Richard, thank you for drawing attention to these issues. I agree with all of your substantive points, but your off-hand dismissal of the term "toxic masculinity" seems wrong-headed to me. There are many forms of masculinity and some are toxic, so we should call those forms toxic masculinity to distinguish them from others. In fact, doing so helps to emphasize the very diversity of masculinity. To suggest retreating from that term because some people say it implies that all masculinity is toxic (it doesn't, because that's not how adjectives work) seems analytically and rhetorically muddled. It's also bad political strategy, as it cedes the terms of debate to the regressive forces pushing back on gender equality. Anyways, I wrote more here: https://dalgoso.medium.com/saying-toxic-masculinity-doesnt-imply-all-masculinity-is-toxic-because-adjectives-are-a-thing-2df1c065f5c
When you compensate me for the likely $2mm lost in earnings and wealth appreciation over my almost 30 years of working on Wall Street and in tech because I was underpaid relative to them (literally had a recent boss say the quiet part out loud that he promoted someone over me even though I outworked that person bc they had a family and were the single bread winner), then maybe I'll be a bit more open minded to your argument.
Right now, it doesn't resonate bc women have always had to figure it out and always have to pander to men's egos to make them feel special. Do you want to even know how many times I have been mansplained? Probably not.
Please spare me the rising up together narrative. When women are promoted at a rate equal to men and are paid the same (and oh, have civil rights), then we can talk. Otherwise, go get a clue about ppl like me who are sick and tired of being told that they have to make room for men and boys because they are helpless in figuring out how to handle adversity.
Great article. Left leaning parties need to realise that this is an important issue if they are to regain power. The Labour Party in the UK was more heavily rejected by men than by women at the last election and if it is to have any chance of being elected it needs to improve its standing with men. There is more to this than keeping Jess Phillips in the background come election time. There is also a need for specific man and more importantly boy friendly policies.
Hello Richard across the mists of time! I wrote a pamphlet on the gender debate around twenty years ago you were kind enough to be kind about. I was at - or about to join - The Future Foundation, as was. Great to know you are still thinking, writing, acting.
On this piece, I agree. Entirely. As a long time feminist activist (Tho fwiw, feminism to me never was a zero sum game….).
What I observe is the social and political discourse moving to a clear and compelling focus on women and girls (great!) but without a balancing recognition of what this means - positively - for men and boys. I have a pigeon pair sample of a son and a daughter and see this in their lives, and that of their friends (all in South London comps).
Class cuts through all, of course. As does our unhealthy, academic target driven ‘education’ system.
That said, the structural inequalities remain for women, and the cultural norms around roles seem to have deepened through Covid. Is there something here about difference between discourse and practice? I know in my son’s school, really only boys being disciplined and excluded. Of the latter, almost all of colour.
So, complex as ever but an important question to ask and debate to raise. Keep going!
I do believe that viewing this issue exclusively through a contentious political lens is unlikely to get us where we want and need to go. It's both more basic and much bigger than that. So it misses the mark if the goal is to actually help enlighten people and bring change.
Keep up the important work, Richard! This is a challenging time for your message to gain traction but it's crucial to the wellbeing of the USA. Thank you for having the courage to speak out.
The biology of male fragility is interesting in itself. One hypothesis is that the only biologically useful male apes are the high status ones, as the rest don’t procreate. That is consistent with the fall in male/female births when pregnant women are severely stressed (eg after 9/11) and thus a rise in the ratio when women are content, ie. 'high status'. (In England and Wales the highest male/female birth ratios ever recorded were at the end of each of the world wars, and in 1976.)
I think the left has lost this one. You can't spend years fanning the flames of misandry and then expect men to pay attention. When the left abandoned rationality and caved in to the radicals, (the third wave feminists, the intersectionalists, the Neo-Marxists, and the woke ideology cultists), it rejected the needs of most of the population - especially the men. I say let the left keep digging itself in deeper. With so much radicalism and pettiness on both sides of the isle, perhaps there is finally enough distance between left and right for a strong center party to emerge and break the two party stalemate we've been locked in.
important message. The old rules of masculine success generally backfire today, yet neither older men nor anyone else has anything constructive to offer. Young men continue to receive mixed messages that confuse. The research on white working class men indicates a pile of problems that have to be taken seriously, because, together, they support a 'victim' identity that easily leads to worship of authoritarian leaders. Modernizing masculinity is a social project, not an individual one. Yet, most believe men should quietly fix themselves as lone individuals. My blog will be publishing soon on fresh research about how entrenched this individualist solution bias still is.
Richard, thanks for this article and your continued work in this space. I do want to address one portion of your piece with some data. As you mention, "many boys and men are in fact struggling, and most of all in working class and Black families." More accurately, White, Black, and Hispanic males from the lowest economic quartiles are suffering equally in educational attainment. An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data (https://gibm.substack.com/p/education-in-black-and-white) on educational attainment and income from 2012 to 2020 disaggregated by race, sex, and four income quartiles reveals that black males and white males (followed by Hispanic males) from the lowest economic quartile are the least likely to participate in college by nearly the same margins. I know it's unpopular, but talking about White males is necessary at a time when they too are taking it on the chin. It's also important to look at out-of-wedlock births and the critical role it plays across all racial lines when it comes to boys and measurable outcomes. Thanks, and keep up the good work.
Richard, thank you for drawing attention to these issues. I agree with all of your substantive points, but your off-hand dismissal of the term "toxic masculinity" seems wrong-headed to me. There are many forms of masculinity and some are toxic, so we should call those forms toxic masculinity to distinguish them from others. In fact, doing so helps to emphasize the very diversity of masculinity. To suggest retreating from that term because some people say it implies that all masculinity is toxic (it doesn't, because that's not how adjectives work) seems analytically and rhetorically muddled. It's also bad political strategy, as it cedes the terms of debate to the regressive forces pushing back on gender equality. Anyways, I wrote more here: https://dalgoso.medium.com/saying-toxic-masculinity-doesnt-imply-all-masculinity-is-toxic-because-adjectives-are-a-thing-2df1c065f5c
I just saw a picture of the incoming National Honor Society class at my local high school and it was about a 2:1 ratio of girls:boys. 😕
When you compensate me for the likely $2mm lost in earnings and wealth appreciation over my almost 30 years of working on Wall Street and in tech because I was underpaid relative to them (literally had a recent boss say the quiet part out loud that he promoted someone over me even though I outworked that person bc they had a family and were the single bread winner), then maybe I'll be a bit more open minded to your argument.
Right now, it doesn't resonate bc women have always had to figure it out and always have to pander to men's egos to make them feel special. Do you want to even know how many times I have been mansplained? Probably not.
Please spare me the rising up together narrative. When women are promoted at a rate equal to men and are paid the same (and oh, have civil rights), then we can talk. Otherwise, go get a clue about ppl like me who are sick and tired of being told that they have to make room for men and boys because they are helpless in figuring out how to handle adversity.
Great article. Left leaning parties need to realise that this is an important issue if they are to regain power. The Labour Party in the UK was more heavily rejected by men than by women at the last election and if it is to have any chance of being elected it needs to improve its standing with men. There is more to this than keeping Jess Phillips in the background come election time. There is also a need for specific man and more importantly boy friendly policies.
Hello Richard across the mists of time! I wrote a pamphlet on the gender debate around twenty years ago you were kind enough to be kind about. I was at - or about to join - The Future Foundation, as was. Great to know you are still thinking, writing, acting.
On this piece, I agree. Entirely. As a long time feminist activist (Tho fwiw, feminism to me never was a zero sum game….).
What I observe is the social and political discourse moving to a clear and compelling focus on women and girls (great!) but without a balancing recognition of what this means - positively - for men and boys. I have a pigeon pair sample of a son and a daughter and see this in their lives, and that of their friends (all in South London comps).
Class cuts through all, of course. As does our unhealthy, academic target driven ‘education’ system.
That said, the structural inequalities remain for women, and the cultural norms around roles seem to have deepened through Covid. Is there something here about difference between discourse and practice? I know in my son’s school, really only boys being disciplined and excluded. Of the latter, almost all of colour.
So, complex as ever but an important question to ask and debate to raise. Keep going!
I do believe that viewing this issue exclusively through a contentious political lens is unlikely to get us where we want and need to go. It's both more basic and much bigger than that. So it misses the mark if the goal is to actually help enlighten people and bring change.
It's a huge issue you're tackling, Richard. In some ways, it appears to me that 'men's liberation' is where 'women's lib' was half a century ago. In that vein... check out these dudes making some excellent progress: https://www.thesecuredad.com/post/conflict-resolution-at-home-with-jason-kreidman-of-dad-university
Keep up the important work, Richard! This is a challenging time for your message to gain traction but it's crucial to the wellbeing of the USA. Thank you for having the courage to speak out.
The biology of male fragility is interesting in itself. One hypothesis is that the only biologically useful male apes are the high status ones, as the rest don’t procreate. That is consistent with the fall in male/female births when pregnant women are severely stressed (eg after 9/11) and thus a rise in the ratio when women are content, ie. 'high status'. (In England and Wales the highest male/female birth ratios ever recorded were at the end of each of the world wars, and in 1976.)
I think the left has lost this one. You can't spend years fanning the flames of misandry and then expect men to pay attention. When the left abandoned rationality and caved in to the radicals, (the third wave feminists, the intersectionalists, the Neo-Marxists, and the woke ideology cultists), it rejected the needs of most of the population - especially the men. I say let the left keep digging itself in deeper. With so much radicalism and pettiness on both sides of the isle, perhaps there is finally enough distance between left and right for a strong center party to emerge and break the two party stalemate we've been locked in.
important message. The old rules of masculine success generally backfire today, yet neither older men nor anyone else has anything constructive to offer. Young men continue to receive mixed messages that confuse. The research on white working class men indicates a pile of problems that have to be taken seriously, because, together, they support a 'victim' identity that easily leads to worship of authoritarian leaders. Modernizing masculinity is a social project, not an individual one. Yet, most believe men should quietly fix themselves as lone individuals. My blog will be publishing soon on fresh research about how entrenched this individualist solution bias still is.
I frequently ask my male patients to name some good things about men and they can almost never name a single one.
Thank you for your leadership.
thank you Richard
the problem is not simply a cultural one. The male fetus is more vulnerable than the female in very many ways. If he survives, because he is full of testosterone he looks stronger than a girl, but is weaker in almost every other way as detailed in this BMJ paper http://www.sebastiankraemer.com/docs/Kraemer%20the%20fragile%20male.pdf and in a follow up note http://www.sebastiankraemer.com/docs/Kraemer%20notes%20on%20the%20fragile%20male%202017.pdf
Sebastian Kraemer (Dr)
www.sebastiankraemer.com