more on manhood and whether there's actually a crisis
more on manhood and whether there's actually a crisis
Because what if we're just gaslighting ourselves?
Writing my last post on the crisis of manhood gave me much to think about—including whether there’s actually a crisis. Because I gotta be honest: until I was confronted with the idea of a crisis, I hadn’t considered it. Sure, there are good and bad male influences, and young men aspire after one or the other. This is normal. But this collective calling into question of how boys arrive at manhood seems relatively avant-garde.
I’m old enough to remember the “metrosexual” craze, when it came, as a surprise to many, that some men enjoyed shopping, fashion, and “manscaping”—interests deemed stereotypical of women and gays. This came alongside plenty of conversation about men getting in touch with their “feminine side” and whether that made them more or less attractive to a potential spouse. (Women on Facebook gushing over how amazing your husbands are at baking, you’re not helping!) In the hyper-patriarchal, conservative bubble in which I spent my formative years, such ideas were anathema because men were supposed to be totally masculine. Any feminine traits in a man made him morally suspect.
All that to say, this conversation about manhood cannot be divorced from larger conversations about shifts in generational, social, and cultural expectations. It’s all connected.
I’m going to call into question a couple of ideas that are generally taken for granted: a) that millennials suffer from an epidemic of delayed adulting, and b) that there’s a genuine mental health crisis broadly engulfing the general populace and especially younger generations from millennials on down to Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
About millennials. You’ve seen the headlines:
Home ownership for millennials is basically impossible.
Millennials are delaying marriage by a decade or more compared to their parents.
Millennials, dubbed “the unluckiest generation in U.S. history” by The Washington Post, have lived through crisis after crisis (“unprecedented events”), making real career and economic progress less likely.
Millennials can’t obtain jobs or pay on par with their education.
Etc.
And we can’t forget the countless memes of millennials realizing, astoundingly, that being a grownup is not always fun. Surprise!
Statistically, all those bullet points bear a raw truth. Yes, far fewer millennials own homes compared to their parents. And, yes, far fewer millennials are married by thirty compared to their parents. But to think about (and report on) these trends as a sort of crisis is where we go wrong.
A crisis is “a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.”
Not being married or having kids at the same age as your parents did isn’t a difficulty—in fact, some would argue, it’s a tremendous lessening of difficulty. Not owning a home because prices and salary make it impossible, and renting a place with a couple of friends instead is not a crisis; it’s a different way of making a life amidst a particular set of circumstances. Living through “unprecedented events” is nothing new—every generation has their own crises. Thanks to mass communication media, we know more about such events than we did before.
Now, for the much-apprised mental health crisis. This one’s a harder nut to crack because lots of people do have genuine, medically-verifiable mental health struggles—struggles that can be addressed by prescribed medication and treatment. (Struggles which, in decades past, have been wrongly dismissed.) However, today, there seems to be a mass pathologizing of every aberrant mental whim. One of every eight American adults is taking antidepressants. However, only 27% of those taking antidepressants have been diagnosed with depression.1 Plenty of people are simply thinking they’re depressed and choosing medicine as a solution.
Those folks, at least, are the wiser of the bunch—wiser anyhow than those who choose to shape their entire identity around their depression, anxiety, or other unpleasant mental tics. The latter group begins to think of these not-so-uncommon challenges as an abiding element of their existence. To paraphrase a recent Real Time segment:2 Folks don’t simply worry anymore; they have “chronic anxiety.” People who obsess over neatness and order have a “disorder.” (Funny that, right?) Those who feel less than chipper when it’s rainy or cold or dark outside suffer from “seasonal depression.” We aren’t shy anymore; we have “social anxiety disorder.”
We have begun to treat mere facts of life, some of them faddish fancies, as permanent attributes of our being.
When Taylor Tomlinson, in her latest comedy special,3 asks, “Anybody have anxiety? Anybody struggle with panic attacks?” the audience resounds with cheers and enthusiastic applause. Something’s up here.
The more we begin speaking of and thinking about these normalities of life as chronic and unavoidable—the more we begin celebrating them and ordering our self-image around them—the more they actually become chronic and unavoidable. This is basic psychology, and it’s become almost taboo to talk about. We are self-fulfilling prophets. If I say I’m sad and treat myself as if I’m sad, then I will be sad. (Our parents were on to something when they told us to smile even if we didn’t feel happy.) Gallup’s latest World Happiness Report reveals the “happiness gap” between people thirtyish and under and those sixtyish and over has widened significantly in the U.S. and Canada. This has as much to do with the way the younger set thinks about their mental state as it does with outside forces that might weigh on that mental state.
All of that said, I don’t think millennials are in a real crisis, nor do I think there’s a genuine mental health disaster on our hands. We’ve merely gaslit ourselves into believing such. And the same goes for the manhood crisis. These problems run deeper than what statistics suggest about marriage or home ownership or depression or how many degrees men are getting compared to women. What we are dealing with is a generational crisis of perception. We’re tackling the problem from the wrong end, treating buckets of symptoms instead of figuring out what’s poisoning the well.
The millennial must figure out how to live in this world, not the world of his parents. He will never become upwardly mobile (economically, socially, physically) if he is always looking behind him and comparing his state of being with that of his parents.
The anxious young person must decide whether he wants to take the easy path and wholly succumb to temporary negativities soothed by sympathy, groupthink, and medication or discipline his mind and let that discipline flow into his body (his actions) and thereby shape his emotions.
The boy trying to become a man must decide whether he will waste time mewling and capering about what it means to be a man or step on the stage and perform. Will he fall and fail in public? Will he rise and try again? Will he steel himself as much against the whims of his emotions as he must against the whims of fate?
None of this is to say that the conversation about manhood and masculinity (crisis or not) is a waste of time. It simply isn’t a conversation usefully held in isolation from other conversations in the zeitgeist. (Because to talk about what manhood is or isn’t is to say something about what womanhood is or isn’t, etc.)
By the same token, I don’t think we should keep quiet about the obvious generational mental dilemmas that persist in our society. But the solution is not always medicine and therapy. Alternatives should be proposed: maybe you aren’t depressed—maybe you just feel sad today and that’s normal for human animals. Maybe you need some sleep. Maybe you need to escape into a movie for a couple hours and you’ll be all right. Every feeling south of happiness isn’t meant to be avoided. Don’t let every sick bird that flies by make a nest in your hair. Maybe you should do the things that make you happy and worry about feeling all right afterward.
The same goes for uniquely millennial concerns. We need a mental reset more than we need housing costs to go down.
The mind is a powerful muscle, and we weaken it by buying into messaging that tells us every circumstance of our existence is fatal. No, we aren’t amid crises. It’s just the course of our present. Time and chance have beset every soul that’s walked the earth.
So, I am going to write about manhood a bit more. Hopefully, in a way that is beneficial to those wondering how to be a man or what a man looks like or how to identify a good one. And maybe later I’ll talk about conquering our personal mental health “crises.” I have some experience in that area, and I feel very strongly about certain things (as, perhaps, you can tell). But first, manhood.
Here’s some of what we’ll discuss in no particular order and in accordance with no particular schedule:
Masculine traits and feminine traits, and how closely these approach the reality of gender
The biblical manhood conundrum
Men and their looks: on the male appearance
The sort of men we need in our particular time
Passion as a manly trait
Examples of (good) manhood from popular stories
Whatever else comes to mind + whatever you guys come up with
Hope you’re along for the ride.
asides + signal boosts
Everyone should watch
. Despite looking at things from a social and political perspective, it sheds valuable light on the mental health “crisis” and the way young people are being conditioned to think in incredibly damaging ways.Lauren Mayberry’s new single “Change Shapes” is especially groovy.
I’m quite the fan of The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes! It’s a very good story of How a Bad Man Became Bad. Although it would have been more of a tragic gut-punch if it ended after “Part II,” because it had been giving me a reason to hope. Overall, a pretty cool film.
Check out
’s post on the pursuit of originality in tech innovation and how, for many of Silicon Valley’s top dogs, “originality—ideas untethered to material reality, to cultural production, to human relationship—becomes the mark of godhood; those humans who have made themselves (or their startups) properly original take on the roles of demigod or mage.” Interesting stuff!
Melinda Wenner Moyer, “How Much Do Antidepressants Help, Really?” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/well/antidepressants-ssri-effectiveness.html
Real Time with Bill Maher, Season 22, Episode 8 (HBO, March 15, 2024)
Taylor Tomlinson: Have It All (Netflix, 2024)