“American manhood is a fragile and precarious thing, shattered by the slightest deviation from ever-shifting norms — eating the wrong taco, tasting tofu, not eating meat, or maybe eating too much meat.”
—The Atlantic, “The Masculinity Scam”
Reading these lines from The Atlantic, I controlled my eye-rolling enough to read the rest of the hit-piece from author Adam Serwer.
This screed against modern masculinity is not the first or the last we will have to endure. And for all the progressive padding Serwer’s latest article provides, it’s a thinly veiled attack on the true enemy of his preferred progressive ideology: white American men.
Serwer’s rhetorical flourishes are unrelenting. They find landing on figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump, the Tate brothers, and Doug Wilson for how they are each participating in what Serwer calls “internet-brain-rotted masculinity.”
But Serwer backs up his “logic of this male-doomer industry” with quotes and facts, right?
Well, he makes sure to cite not one, but two feminist writers and some group called the “Young Men Research Project” which, with a simple search, you will find itself described as providing data to “pro-democracy” and “pro-equality” organizations to “counter divisive narratives, and advocate for a more inclusive society” — in my account, hardly a neutral arbiter on the issue.
I, too, can point to stats and data. Here are just two articles — one from Helen Andrews and another from Jacob Savage (both published in Compact) — on how the entirety of American professional life, everything from hiring, promotion, and prestige in fields stretching from media, academia, entertainment, medicine, law, and technology have overtly excluded not just men, but masculinity itself.
Open conflict, blunt disagreement, hierarchy, competition, risk-taking, reconciliation after conflict, individualism, adherence to formal rules, and the pursuit of a concrete task or external goal? Those are all no-go. In their place? Racial fellowships, gender scholarships, DEI statements, land acknowledgments — and an entire cultural ethos constructed around femininity.
Serwer’s claims “manosphere hucksters” are creating a “male-doomer industry” that is bad for women, minorities and immigrants. He winks at the idea that “manly jobs” have been offshored, but Sewer eventually goes back to the well of blaming the internet and social media: “Extremism draws attention, so it’s not surprising that we’re seeing more extreme ideas about what it means to be a man… And they are using the psychological lever of male insecurity to win political support for that program.”
The problem with Serwer, The Atlantic, and the countless other attacks on modern masculinity is in their devilish intentions. Their attacks are an attempt to create a new mythology, a world that dispenses with any notions of difference, desire, morality, glory, and duty. It’s a myth entirely built upon a suspicion toward male power.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news: Masculinity seeks distinction, takes pleasure in skill, and embodies a desire to be known. The fundamental male archetype includes a heroic urge. It is an ancient form of ambition that seeks greatness, even if it may appear vain or domineering to our modern, feminine-coded morality. Masculinity incurs its own civic weight. Men must be courageous, pursue excellence, have the ability to find and restore order — even when the culture has a reluctance to encourage such types of action.
And if Serwer wants to quote feminist authors to make a point about masculinity; so can I. This is from feminist scholar Camille Paglia: “There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.”
Our modern critics misunderstand masculinity because they seek sameness. Masculinity is a volatile mix of biology, sexual drive, risk, ambition, aggression, invention, duty, and self-sacrifice. Our culture has inverted the hierarchy of morality to elevate social cooperation and conformity. And then, masculinity appears as a defective form of femininity.
In the debates on masculinity, so much of it is reduced to purely aesthetic principles. The arguments remain devoid of authenticity, where the critique itself is another song and dance in the cultural ritual of being for “this” or “against that.”
Despite the attempt to demystify present masculinity, the more permanent truths of human nature remain. Masculinity, for whatever it means to “be a real man,” remains in its historical forms. To offer flattening solutions to masculinity’s intrinsic potentialities of action is to deprive what is the fundamental essence of being a man.