This is less a question than a meme — an observation on the quality of heterosexual men today, who seem to be responding to the erosion of traditional male entitlements with a defensive insecurity that’s hard for the women around them not to notice. Men are debating muscle-building creatine stacks, obsessing over jawlines, reframing inclusion as “reverse exclusion” and helping boost the Turkish economy through its multi-million-dollar limb-lengthening surgical industry.

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And that’s before you ask the women dating them, many of whom have been texted a polemic grievance for the mortal crime of declining a second date. More than any media, dating apps have given women unprecedented insight into the very average man — and by most accounts, he is not okay. It’s no wonder that some men can only seem to find true joy in catching a modestly sized fish.

But “not okay” doesn’t quite capture what’s going on. What these encounters are really exposing is a deeper uncertainty — from both men and women — about what it means to be a “good man.” And more broadly, what it means to be a man at all.

The scripts that once defined a good man were relatively clear: hard-working, economically stable, honest and devoted to his family. Some version of that heterosexual ideal has held across cultures, but in retrospect these were merely decent men.

We were not expected to be emotionally fluent, self-interrogating or conscious of our power in the ways demanded of us now. Nor were we expected to take the same share of domestic responsibilities, put in equal parenting hours, speak more than just one love language, show an openness to watching Heated Rivalry but also a willingness to leave the house so our partners can watch it with their girlfriends, have our own friends (real ones, not just “buds”) with whom we can discuss our problems, thus removing some of the emotional labour women are expected to carry for us, plan a vacation, afford a vacation and take some pride in our appearance.

Third-wave feminism has raised the standard for “a good man” — and faster than we can keep up. The result is a kind of conceptual lag: we’ve outgrown the old definition of a good man, but we haven’t agreed on what should replace it.

In some ways, it’s never been a better time to be a man. The traditional model of masculine strength and stoicism comes at a social cost: higher rates of suicide, premature death, substance abuse, criminality. But men are no longer confined to the “man box” — that narrow prison of toughness, self-reliance and emotional repression. Of course, queer communities have long pushed against rigid gender roles and modelled more varied ways of living, loving and belonging, even while carrying their own burdens under masculinity’s rules and often suffering most for challenging them. For many straight men, that broader script is only now becoming legible. It’s a privilege far better than anything offered by traditional patriarchy, and one I’m trying to pass on to my six-year-old son. But truth be told, even at 40 it feels like I’m still trying to convince myself of this, because the data suggests that in reality, men are less okay than ever.

We still exclude and undervalue dads. That hurts moms too.

Russel Brand, Andrew Tate and the performance of faith

As we approach the future of feminism, this is the new masculinity

While the expanded definition of womanhood over the past 60 years has improved women’s lives by narrowing income and employment gaps and fully reversing the education gaps, the expanded definition of manhood hasn’t done much in reverse for male well-being. As a demographic, men appear to be falling further behind economically, academically, socially and emotionally.

They are still more than twice as likely to struggle with — or die from — addiction and report significantly higher levels of loneliness. Since 1999, male suicide rates have climbed sharply — first among middle-aged men and more recently among younger men, with deaths rising by roughly 30 percent among those aged 25 to 34.

But perhaps the statistic that best captures men’s shrinking sense of status shows up in dating patterns. Scott Galloway, a New York University professor and author of Notes on Being a Man — one of several recent books attempting to pin down a definition of modern masculinity — points out that only one in three men under 30 reports having a girlfriend, while two in three women under 30 report having a boyfriend. At first glance, it sounds mathematically impossible. But women, on average, are dating older, explains Galloway.

They’re seeking partners who are more economically and emotionally stable, which has left a large cohort of younger men effectively locked out of the most basic form of social belonging. “Men are not attaching to school; they’re not attaching to relationships;........

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