America Has a Masculinity Crisis

A much-needed, nuanced conversation about masculinity and feminism today.

By Nadja SpiegelmanFrederick Joseph and Ruth Whippman

Produced by Vishakha Darbha

Young men are in crisis. While the left tells men to stay in their lane, members of the manosphere and the far right are welcoming them with open arms. In a conversation about masculinity in a post-#MeToo world, the Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman talks to the authors Ruth Whippman and Frederick Joseph about what a healthier version of manhood could look like — and how we can get there.

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The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Nadja Spiegelman: I wanted to have a conversation about masculinity in a post-#MeToo world.

So today I’m talking to Ruth Whippman, the author of “BoyMom,” a book about raising young men, and Frederick Joseph, the author of “Patriarchy Blues.”

Frederick, Ruth — thank you so much for being here with me today to talk about masculinity. First, a little table setting. Where are we now? How would you describe the state of young men in this country right now?

Frederick Joseph: I think that we are in an abysmal state.

I think the reality is that we’ve always had patriarchy at the intersection of capitalism and white supremacy, and how those things feast on one another and lift one another. But I think right now, more times than not, the role models that these young boys and young men have are not only divisive and toxic but insidious and heinous, disgusting. Truly, I mean, the president of the United States is an alleged rapist. What does that mean? You know, the popular thing that boys are watching is largely M.M.A., right? So I think we’re in a horrible place.

Ruth Whippman: Yeah, I would agree. I feel like young men are kind of caught between these two competing but harmful narratives. Like, one of them is this — what you’re describing, this caricatured masculinity. These things that have always been in existence — this tough guy, bulletproof man — but just taken to this caricatured extreme.

And you’re seeing it almost on the left as well as on the right. But then, on the other extreme — more from the progressive left — I think you’ve got this “shut up” narrative, which is like: Your problems aren’t real. They don’t matter. You have so much privilege, you know. You have everything. Time for everybody else to have a voice and for you to be quiet. And I think it’s just really hard to navigate. I think they feel shut down from all directions, honestly.

Spiegelman: Before we get deeper into things, I want to hear a little bit from each of you. Just the highlight reel/nut graph of how you would approach a conversation about masculinity. Ruth, you’ve done a lot of reporting on the subject, and you also wrote a book about raising sons. Can you tell us where you’re coming from when you’re talking about masculinity?

Whippman: I think, when we talk about masculinity, we have to talk about the patriarchy. And I think we see this as this system which harms everyone, including men. I think often people take a gender studies class in college or whatever, and they learn, like, “Patriarchy harms men,” and then they’re like, “Well, great. OK, put that aside and then move on. Forget about it.” And I know that when we’re triaging these issues, like, is harm to men the worst abuse of patriarchy? No, probably harm to women and trans people and people of other genders is more urgent. But I think if we can see ourselves as part of a system of patriarchy that harms all of us, and we are allies in this fight rather than men versus women, men oppressing women, then I think we can have a more productive conversation.

Spiegelman: Frederick, you wrote a book of essays and poems called “Patriarchy Blues.” You also spend a lot of time talking to men in the world. Where are you coming from when you’re talking about masculinity?

Joseph: I think, for me, I look at patriarchy in the same way that many people during the 2020 moment were looking at racism and white supremacy. You can’t dismantle patriarchy without an anti-patriarchy movement, right? And the thing that we were telling people was largely that there was a return on investment for dismantling white supremacy.

There was a return on investment for dismantling racism, and that’s my argument as well for the patriarchy. I tell young men all the time: You’re not, in these systems, allowed to be a whole human being. You know, the thing that you are entitled to, they teach you, is your rage, and then even that you’re not really entitled to. They don’t teach you how to cry. They don’t teach you how to laugh. They don’t want you laughing. They don’t want you crying because they actually do, in capitalism, want to monetize that rage of yours. That’s how you get the manosphere. And I think we often teach it as a sort of charity. This isn’t charity that you’re doing for women by dismantling patriarchy, and it’s not charity by dismantling misogyny. This is actually the work of self. You know?

Spiegelman: I really relate to that. I mean, as you were saying, in my own thinking around white supremacy, I had to come to, like — this is just being a narcissistic millennial in the world — but what do I stand to gain from dismantling white supremacy, a system that seems to benefit me in so many ways? And for me, the answer to that is the fullness of my humanity. And I really was thinking a lot, when approaching this conversation, about: How do we do the same thing for patriarchy?

Because one of the questions I think a lot of young men have is, what does positive masculinity look like? I know the image that the manosphere posits for masculinity, and I think it’s one that also encompasses a lot of misogynistic ideas. And I know so many men who are not misogynists, and who want to be living in a gender-equal world, but who are still men, who still need an idea of masculinity that feels positive to them. Have you thought about this question and how to answer it, and how do we get to a place where there are so few answers for it?

Whippman: Positive masculinity as a sort of framework is not my preferred framework for thinking about this issue, or like, what to do for young men. In the same way that if someone was trying to sell any hypothetical daughter positive femininity instead of feminism, I think I would push back on that as well, because I think it’s already setting the terms in quite a restrictive way that ends up slightly reinforcing gender stereotypes.

So I think I would rather that we sort of move toward giving boys and men a vision of being a full person, a full human. And rather than gendering qualities and being like, “These qualities are masculine and these qualities are feminine,” and how do we navigate and pick and choose between those — and what’s the minimum amount of femininity that we can choose in order to not emasculate ourselves totally — I’d rather we’re just like, “OK, just be a person,” you know? These are minimum standards and minimum qualities that we expect from every adult, and they don’t need to be different ones for men than for women.

Joseph: I hear that, and I think, for me, you have to have a sense of positive masculinity only because we do live in the boxes of the society that we currently live in. I think that this vision would be beautiful if it wasn’t for the fact that we have femicide and all these different things.

And I think there is so much toxic masculinity, and I hear boys all the time say, “I literally do not know what it means to be a good boy or man.” Because I think, on the one hand, all you see is these terrible role models who aren’t role models at all. On the other hand, you have people saying what isn’t good, but you have to tell people what can be good, right? Looking at race, right? And they’re not a one-for-one, but you actually have to have positive ideas of what it means to be a decent white person, right? And that was one of the things in my first book that I pushed heavily — that you can be a decent white person, and being a decent white person is not going to be the same as being a decent Persian or a decent Black person or a decent Asian person, because the systems and institutions prop up and lift and are owned by — run by and controlled by — white people.

So while, again, you’re 100 percent right, patriarchy impacts us all in various ways, but men are the issue, in large part, with patriarchy. So I do think that we have to show what a decent man is.

Spiegelman: One of the things that made me really want to have this conversation is that I just feel like everyone is siloed into their own social media spaces, but for me, when I’m looking at social media, so much of what I see online and so much of what I hear women say is, “Men are trash.”

Sabrina Carpenter said that the key to her songwriting is just to call men stupid in as many ways as you can. I really understand where women’s anger comes from. I have lived it. But I also feel so much tenderness for my brother, for other men I know. And if I were hearing the same kinds of messages in reverse that were just, “Women are trash,” I wouldn’t know how to begin to approach the world. And so I wonder how — specifically on the left, because I think that there are different answers to this on the right — specifically on the left, which is where I hear men are trashed the most loudly, what effect is this having on boys? Do........

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