"male loneliness epidemic" is misleading because it implies that men are suffering because they can't get girls when I feel like the actual problem is that pretty much any online content that's aimed specifically at men conceptualizes the masculine ideal as what I call the Buff Scammer. there are only two things in this world that matter, says the Buff Scammer: being jacked and making money. how you get to either of those things doesn't matter, you just need to be as rich and as buff as possible or you have failed as a man. Get into drop shipping. Eat nothing but raw meat. Rugpull a memecoin. Remove seasonings from your diet. Sell an online course. Go to the gym daily. Starve yourself so your body will achieve ketosis and start burning fat. Attend a seminar on real estate investing. Work 80 hours a week. Take steroids but don't let anyone know about that part. Flip a YouTube channel after 10xing the subs. Sell AI art on Etsy and AI audiobooks on Amazon. What's that? You're trying to do this to get girls? Why would you care about women? Women are all stupid whores who don't help you get richer or buffer. The only people you should be paying attention to are other rich, buff men. If you do hang out with women you should be pimping them out on Chaturbate so you can at least get an ROI off your time spent not thinking about men. Male friends? You don't have time for friends. You should be hustling and grinding 24/7 365. And if you absolutely do need to spend time around other men you should only be spending time with other buff scammers so you can collaborate on entrepreneurial ventures. Like Jesus Christ even writing this is exhausting I feel like trying to be this dude would be fucking miserable like not only did you turn yourself into a friendless, materialist, misogynistic asshole who can only conceptualize the world in terms of value extracted but you're NOT EVEN HAVING FUN DOING IT!!!!!!
At some point in my transition, the "hate yourself, get an eating disorder, buy product" messaging I get switched from woman flavor to man flavor, and omfg. What the hell is this shit!
The "woman" version would often disguise itself as self care. There's this facade of softness and gentleness. ("indulge yourself: buy skincare! do what's right for YOU: starve yourself and smile emptily at zucchini noodles! this is empowering. your body is a temple, divine feminine chakra mother!!!") In the man version, no such thing. Self compassion is not allowed. You've got to brutally grind yourself into the shape of a Real Man or die trying, but you don't get to *enjoy* being the Real Man because comfort is for girrrrrrlllssss.
My dangerous trans gender ideology is that being a man should be enjoyable. If there's nothing fun about it, change your approach or stop being a man.
I think this is an important aspect to look at broadly Male isolation and the male loneliness epidemic are real. The issue is not that men can't get women, the issue is men have no companionship or outlets for emotion - Especially not emotion expressed in ways men are comfortable with. For years, men were just sort of expected to deal with their emotions in silence. This compounds with a lot of societal trends. Our culture's gender roles are such that men have traditionally defined themselves by their careers, their wives, and their work. Well, how does that play into a society where a worker is increasingly transient? When work does not value your loyalty in the same way it did 50 years ago? Other issues also exist culturally, such as male sexuality being seen as uniquely predatory and regressive while others are seen as empowering, creating a lot of issues in people. So men feel isolated - that's what the 'male loneliness epidemic' actually is. And, when people bring this up, it is often dismissed - "Oh, boo hoo, the mens are so oppressed because they lack companionship" kind of stuff. The idea that a man could feel isolated for their gender's anxieties, or face problems because of that societal role, is a concept which a lot of people are quite uncomfortable with. Some people think that sort of thing gets in the way of a feminist view of the world; others think that men being emotional is a sign of weakness and of men no longer being the 'Real Men' which existed in the past. It sorta seems like no matter where you look, a whole lot of voices are telling men they are inadequate...
So, a whole lot of people exploit this status quo. Political grifters emerge, selling this idea that what you are missing is a tradwife and property and right-wing traditional values. The "Manosphere" gives people a lot of legitimately terrible advice about how this is all feminism's fault. Techbros are 'bros' for a reason - This thing where you live for the grind and invest all you have is absolutely appealing to a certain type of man who needs this kind of goal in his life. Men have a lot of spaces to tell them how to be masculine, but seldom are those spaces actually healthy So it's like... If a man is lost and needs emotional support (and a lot of them are,) they may have to turn to these spaces for any support at all. And these spaces don't actually exist for men's benefit, even if some have the illusion of it. Many of these spaces are very right-wing and reactionary, and men can easily fall into them because these are the places you find if you need affirmation in your masculinity at all. I think the solution cannot just be about men being able to expand their gender role. I'm not saying to discount that - Of course we need spaces where men can be caregivers, or creatives, or countercultural femboys or whatever. But we also need spaces where men can be traditionally masculine and not have that be a weird radicalization chamber created with the goal of exploiting them. For example, if a man wants to improve physically and grow stronger... You know, there's no reason that has to be about deadlifting and eating raw meat and not like, cleaning a river or learning home improvement.
an awkwardly big part of the Male Loneliness Epidemic is that male homosocial relationships used to be an important part of masculinity, and have been severely pruned back over the last several generations in reaction against the increasing visibility of homosexuality. setting up that status quo discussed in the above addition.
the idea that emotional intimacy between men is de facto kind of gay is a relatively modern product of homophobia. which served to increase male emotional dependency on female romantic partners, even as the modern convenience age cut down on the traditionally high level of practical dependency.
like, the idea that Man Is Stoic isn't new, but the That's Gay reaction to being close with male friends is a late 20th century phenomenon. it's abnormal. it's reactionary. it's modern.
this is something i keep seeing people struggle with; there's this teleological view of history that assumes all social developments move along a given vector consistently always, so if a given view is old-fashioned it's obviously also ancient.
(a lot of old-fashioned approaches to 'male friendship good' were deeply misogynistic, ofc, but due to various historical forces you don't see a lot of modern sexist reactionaries pushing the idea that because women are intellectually inferior you can only have a really satisfying, emotionally meaningful personal relationship with another man. except in parody, where the joke is that the only reason a guy would say that is because he's secretly gay.)
but concurrently with this pathologization of male friendshp, feminism was reducing the practical dependency of women on men, so even as the need for female emotional support got thoroughly locked in as a social norm, the supply of women willing to do that kind of work for a partner unreciprocated was dropping.
leaving increasingly large numbers of guys crammed into an impractical corner where there is no realistic, survivable course that doesn't give them some kind of goddamn gender dysphoria.
so anyway i think one of the most important things we can do as a society, that doesn't even require anyone to take on the burden of Managing Dudes' Feelings For Them, and which is conveniently a much smaller target than Fix Manhood Systemically, is to stop validating the unhinged reactionary narrative that Male Intimacy Is By Definition Gay.
because like. it's funny when it's fiction. but when a real guy who is not gay, which is statistically gonna be most of them, is getting barraged from both sides of the political aisle with the message that he can't have an emotional connection of any significance with a male friend without Proving that the world Knows Better Than He Does and he's clearly gay and just lying to himself about it.
that creates a context where a significant chunk of young people are getting gaslighted into either giving up on having any kind of emotional support ever, or getting radicalized into bigots just to stop feeling insane.
that's bad. we shouldn't be doing that.
