The ‘Masculinity Crisis’ Is Real.

[MsAmerica]

The ‘Masculinity Crisis’ Is Real. This Forgotten Book Explains Why.
Why do men find it so hard to connect with other people, and their own emotions?
By Parul Sehgal

Where are we exactly, in this deathless debate about the crisis of masculinity? We stand splattered in discourse, ears ringing from the unceasing alarm over men and their prospects — their lack of education and lack of friends, their porn and gambling, their suicide rates. This while tech elites, sporting their bulgy new bodies, call for an infusion of “masculine energy,” and a hideous new sport is born: “sperm racing.” Is it any wonder that a stance has emerged of principled contempt? The so-called crisis, according to its critics, is actually a crisis of accountability, a refusal on the part of men to regulate themselves emotionally and behave like adults. In this view, men aren’t in crisis, America is in crisis, and to suggest otherwise is to engage in a kind of “himpathy” — to show excessive concern for men’s feelings — and to co-sign a reactionary pushback.

Amid all this conversation, simultaneously so bloated and thin, an old book has been exhumed. Eccentric and a bit embarrassing even in its own time, it is also oddly appealing in its open curiosity and lack of inhibition, even as it exemplifies how any idea, passed through the fun-house mirror of discourse in our moment, gets reflected back in its most grotesque form.

Its author, the journalist Norah Vincent, has been anointed as something of a godmother to the manosphere. In her book “Self-Made Man” (2006), she recounted an 18-month social experiment in which she disguised herself as a man and infiltrated male-only spaces. As “Ned,” she dated, applied for jobs, did a stint in a monastery. She joined a bowling league and lurked at dank strip clubs. Vincent assumed her project would reveal that men moved through life with a kind of ease that women could scarcely imagine. She was brutally disabused. The men she met were lonely and unhappy. Their pain became her own. When she tried to date as a man, the cruelty of women left her shaken and humiliated...

At first it was the world of masculine subtext that felt so exotic, the micro-intimacies she traced, small moments of warmth and deference between men. Even a handshake felt like a revelation: “Receiving it was a rush, an instant inclusion in a camaraderie that felt very old and practiced.” But slowly she began to find the communication between men painfully awkward — “bumper cars trying to merge.” The men she met had a palpable need for one another’s company; they seemed starved for closeness, but they could not speak of anything personal. She wrote of one: “I could feel his loneliness, his need for intimacy so long suppressed, pushing out like the palms of someone’s hands against the window of a sinking car. He was still alive in there, intact behind the dejection and neglect.”

It wasn’t merely that they didn’t choose to speak about their emotions. Some of them couldn’t name them; others weren’t conscious of having feelings at all, as one shared at a men’s rights retreat...

As a child she had envied boys their abandon, but living as Ned, in his narrow emotional register, felt constricting. “I curtailed everything: my laugh, my word choice, my gestures, my expressions. Spontaneity went out the window, replaced by terseness, dissimulation and control. I hardened and denied to the point almost of ossification.” She missed the emotional range women enjoyed — “women get octaves, chromatic scales of tears and joys and anxieties and despairs and erotic flamboyance.” Men had irony and silence and rage. The scrutiny and self-surveillance proved exhausting. “Someone is always evaluating your manhood. Whether it’s other men, other women, or even children.”

For the whole article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/magazine/masculinity-crisis-norah-vincent.html

https://www.scribd.com/document/970865185/The-Masculinity-Crisis-Is-Real

@OtterlyAstounding
I think my second post, which crossed, addresses quite a few of the issues in your one.

Prove your claim. Given that men interact far more emotionally in other cultures, and throughout history: prove that they are biologically evolved to be less capable of communicating their emotions.

You prove yours!

I've offered lots of nuance to what I'm claiming and what I'm not. I'm making a claim that differences are partly nurture and partly nature.

You seem to be making the claim that they are entirely nurture and that any contrary view is absurd.

Yours seems like a more extreme claim. I'm here for discussion. If what you demand from a thread is proof, then you go first.

It would be disingenuous to pretend that the interests, attributes and behaviours associated with being male are not afforded higher status than those associated with being female.
The issue isn't one of moral worth, as arguably stereotypical female traits are more 'moral', involving nurturing, care for others over vain glory.
Its about value. Stereotypical male interests and abilities are the big picture stuff that makes the money, wields s the power, builds things we need to progress. Stereotypically female interests are the small picture, the domestics, the fluff.
There is no hope at all that society is genuinely going to give equal weight to these things. For one thing is perfectly obvious that being able to design a bridge is more challenging and skilled than baking a cake.
Claiming our compliance with sex based stereotypes is biological simply affirms the idea women are less capable of the things we all know are more highly valued and therefore the second rate, support humans by nature. Pretending to equally value the things women are steered towards is just gaslighting aimed at keeping us doing the small stuff that facilitates men doing the big stuff.

Yes, in this kind of discussion, I am rigorous in the pursuit of women's best interests, to ensure that women are not unfairly maligned in studies that are all too often sexist and flawed.
Men are not my concern, so no, I'm not going to be caping for them.

I think the fact the same patterns recur across countries and contexts suggests to me that they are at least in part innate, and thus difficult to change durably.

In what way? As other posters have pointed out, men will freely show their emotions in other cultures, Middle Eastern or Mediterranean cultures being the first that come to mind. Why is it so impossible, if western men are lonely and wanting to reach out, for them to emulate other cultures and do so?
I wouldn't argue with the claim that men are generally less disposed towards emotional expressiveness than women on a daily level, but they should absolutely be capable of connecting emotionally when the moment arises.

Can one create a society where women know far more about servos and howitzers and men know more about taffita and doulas?

Personally I think one should know all four of those words, at least to use in context. They're not particularly esoteric.

And no, I don't care if men as a demographic are 'social-verbal', but apparently they do. And my opinion is that, if that is the case, they should do something about it. It's not the concern of women, and so really doesn't belong on the FWRs section of Mumsnet. As someone said, why not post this article to Dadsnet?

My claim is merely that men are not emotional retards, evolutionarily incapable of communicating their feelings to others.

I'm not saying that they're as predisposed to it as women might be, and I'm not saying that nature (for eg. testosterone) doesn't have an effect. I'm simply saying that they can do it if they want to.

The very fact that they open up and share with women (as mentioned in the article) means that they are capable! They just refuse to do so with other men.

So, no, I'm not making any extreme claims.

If we were to wake up in the supposed utopia that postmodernists stupidly think they’re bringing into existence, a world without money, without material need, where every person is given what they need to thrive, what would men be expected to do in order to thrive?

If women are carers and men are providers, and the state assumes the role of universal provider, then what meaningful role remains for men at all?

Although this pie-in-the-sky utopia will never come to pass, men would be wise to start thinking about what the could do to thrive in a changing world. The state might not become a universal provider, but AI and other advances might rob men of their role as providers by making worker surplus to requirement.

Women will be able to adapt, because they've shown themselves capable of doing so. Will men be able to adapt because considering they haven't coped very well with women 'taking their jobs', how they are they going to react to an autobot 'taking their jobs'.

It's not for women to solve men's problems but when men take their problems out on women, it's in women's best interest to help men adapt, which women have being trying to do doing for decades, and men have being resisting for decades.

What I'm saying @GeneralPeter is that there are two ways of looking at this.
One is to assume an inate difference in the aptitudes and interests of the two sexes based in our biology, and that this results in roles being female or male coded. And that inequality arises from the wrongful devaluation of female coded activities. And that the answer is to elevate female coded roles and interests to the status of male coded ones.
The other is to assume that the ability of a person to perform a particular role is based on their individual ability and their access to opportunities, not their sex. So rather than try to artificially elevate female coded roles so women are more valued in them, we ensure women are given equal access to the male coded ones, and vice versa.
The problem with the first approach is its never going to stick. Because the roles that make the biggest profit and difference in the outside world are inevitably going to carry higher status, influence and power than those that operate in the domestic sphere.
The path to equality does not lie in being praised for facilitating men to run the world. And I don't believe that women's biology predisposes us to do this.

My claim is merely that men are not emotional retards, evolutionarily incapable of communicating their feelings to others.

If that's your only claim then we agree totally. You have been pushing back at more than that though, and quite often at claims that I'm explicitly not making.

I also don't know why this was first posted on FWR. I think in advocacy or in what one cares about it's totally fine and good to be partial.

In scrutinising claims about what is true though, it's a bad idea to hold claims that produce 'unfavourable' results to a higher standard to others. It also can end up with unintended consequences as I've noted above.

Then why on earth did you disagree with me, and push back at me, when all I said to you initially was this:

But in regards to your last three [paragraphs], I think that's because women are actually physically smaller, weaker, and less athletic than men, as a demographic. They are incapable of running faster. Whereas men are not incapable of sharing their emotions with people should they wish to, and I don't think there's any evidence that men are innately worse at social communication.

(You have yet to produce evidence that men are innately worse to any significant degree, btw.)

You've been talking in circles, introducing entirely irrelevant analogies and claims, avoiding proving anything, and generally wasting my time. I feel disinclined to waste any more on you.

I don't want to get embroiled in this but...
If the data one is studying is flawed to begin with - such as survey questions being framed around issues that men are more likely to find relevant than women, which has been noted as an issue - I find myself wary of the results.
I entirely agree particularly as in this kind of study you will find many more that show no convincing difference filed in desk drawers.

@TheywontletmehavethenameIwant
If women are carers and men are providers

Where is this assumption coming from? That doesn't sound in any way like utopia to me, and certainly not a place I would be able to thrive in.

The general consensus is there the roles that have been assigned to women and men since the year dot apparently.

It's a useful distinction but where it doesn't work is that both can be true at different levels.

e.g. I think at macro level, the first description is closer to the truth (there are broad differences, when looked at in broad population terms).

At individual level (i.e. what roles could/should someone do), the second one is crucial, i.e. breaking down barriers.

When we break down individual barriers, we shouldn't be surprised to see the big macro divides reinforce rather than weaken. (Could go either way, depending on what other forces were in place before we broke the barriers).

I think we should do both. I genuinely think the first analysis is the right one at macro level, and we should try to elevate female-coded roles, and the second is right at the individual level, we should break down barriers.

I also don't think that the first approach is never going to stick. Or rather (perhaps more depressingly), I think relative value of the roles can change, but is largely shaped by big forces beyond our control.

In a violent, dangerous, manual society/situation, I think men's roles are likely to be more highly valued. I think a more 'civilised' context relatively favours women, trait-wise. Obviously this is painting with a very broad brush. But let's say (total hypothetical example) AI replaces the currently most-high-status, most-male occupations like engineering, coding, finance, etc. What can be automated gets devalued. I can see (as a possibility, not a prediction) that men's status might end up structurally devalued very significantly. If what matters, and what gets remunerated, is what can't be automated, then human connection, emotional intelligence, network-building, and also in-person services like caring, could be the last remaining island of value, which would reverse the sex-status gradient.

I think men are split into two groups. The aggressive alpha types and the more sensitive arty, poetic types. The alpha males can be toxic and look down on more sensitive men. The Alphas are unhappy in their own way and not in touch with their own emotions or the emotions of others. The more sensitive men are unhappy because they feel looked down on and attacked (sometimes physically) by other men.
Going off at a tangent, I think sometimes the guys who think they "feel like a woman" and get drawn into trans culture are these more sensitive men (obviously not the AGPs). I guess fathers should be teaching their sons to be more in touch with their emotions, but often they don't have emotional intelligence themselves.

I don't know how this can be solved, not by women though. Although it has to be said that women can be bloody awful too. I've never felt "the sisterhood". Mums bringing up ND girls often see this starkly, women who don't fit the mould are often viciously excluded too.

Society as a whole now values monetary success, two parents working, family time is not valued. You only need to read the threads on MN to see how little having a parent at home is valued (and that parent doesn't have to be the Mum). I don't think emotional intelligence is learnt being in a nursery from 6mths old. Probably not a popular opinion.

Basically I think society is fucked if we continue to value the wrong things.

Basically I think society is fucked if we continue to value the wrong things.

Yep, totally FUBAR.

Hang on a minute. Talking of irrelevant sidetracks:

You first mis-understood my claim that "men tend to be more knowledgeable about current affairs than women" as a claim that "men tend to be more knowledgeable than posters on MN" and took exception to it. Any going round in circles wasting time was entirely self-inflicted at that point.

You posted a single study and demanded an apology from me, while complaining about the dangers of poor research practice.

I then gave you a meta-study of 106 surveys that supported my position, even once the methodological issue you'd highlighted is considered. I refrained from citing studies that support my claim until after I'd managed to find decent meta-studies and had a chance to consider if your claim that removing 'don't knows' eliminate the effect held up. It didn't hold up, and I shared my source.

Then you picked exaggerated claims I hadn't made to argue against, even when I'd from the outset made clear I wasn't making any such claim (e.g. that men are "incapable of sharing their emotions" that you are still straw-manning with).

We then get onto nature-nurture, where you demand that I "prove" my position that it's both, while declining to "prove" yours.

You then re-state your claim as a much, much narrower one than you have been making through this thread (the claim that "men are not emotional retards, evolutionarily incapable of communicating their feelings to others") and one that I have explicitly, from my first or second post, made clear I agree with.

Then got cross because I agreed with you!

I don't think you need much help from me to waste your time.

I don't think I buy the idea that men can just be like women emotionally if they want to. I think they are differernt and that's ok. I don't think the answer is to make men behave more like women.

I suspect that on average men do relate to things like friendship differently, they manage their personal relationships differently, their companionship looks different. But I also think that there have been times in the past where there were better opportunities for them to develop relationships in a way that suits their psychologies. And for various reasons those areas are less available now.

That's partly of course because a healthy social network is less available for everyone. And most demographics are struggling.

Not being a man I can only observe what I see in the men around me, but I've noticed a few things about seemingly successful male friendships and relationships. A big one to me is that they often don't revolve around just getting together to visit or talk, which is often how I visit with my friends. We decide to have a visit, meet up, maybe we do something or maybe we just have tea and chat.

Men on the other hand seem to have the activity first, and the companionship is built around that. So maybe they meet up with a buddy to help him move his car or to watch a sporting event, or they go to a meeting for volunteer firefighters. I know a group of men who work monthly together at a soup kitchen. Some workplaces also serve that role, and I think that was more true in the past. When I was in the military it still functioned that way to a large degree.

Relationships seem to come out of these kinds of structured activity and may involve some personal talk, but it's typically way more restrained that what women talk about. But I don't think that means it isn't supportive.

Anyway - there has been a major lessening of all people involved in social institutions like volunteer organisations, sports teams, churches, and social clubs. So that I suspect affects men a lot. And I think maybe workplaces are less useful in many cases for forging deep friendships, people don't spend as long in the same workplace, and for most it's not like they are farming, or down the mine or on a fishing boat, where you really depend on those around you to have your back.

but poets

and novelists

Why are we being asked to pretend emotionally literate men don't exist?

such nonsense

My feminist foundation in the 1970s was about liberation. Égalité is a very slippery concept as is fraternité. Neither of them ever offered much if anything to women, as a glance in the direction of 2020s France will demonstrate. Anyone banging on about equality as an aspect of feminism is at best naive.

Me: Whereas men are not incapable of sharing their emotions with people should they wish to, and I don't think there's any evidence that men are innately worse at social communication.

You: Introducing irrelevancies that I let myself get bogged down in, plus a total lack of proof that men are innately worse to any significant degree.

This is a great example of why women shouldn't bother with men's issues. They'll pick an argument, get sidetracked, insist it's your fault, and then claim that they basically agree with what you originally said, despite not initially doing so. And they won't help themselves one bit.

Your plan won't work if men and women do in fact have some degree of biologically based difference in this area. You can try and socially engineer that stuff out, but it takes a lot of effort and isn't usually very effective.

And then where are you - just telling people who notice that they are wrong, even if they aren't? That's quite authoritarian and post-truthy. Or maybe they can notice but have to keep quiet to be socially acceptable? Same thing.

Or is the idea to convince ourselves that what we want to be true is true, and just suppress noticing things that don't seem to fit our approved narrative?

These all seem like extremely bad ideas on a larger social level and I would say that they are the kinds of approaches that have fucked up a lot of left wing parties in the UK and elsewhere, notably the Democrats in the US are totally fucked by that kind of mindset on issues.

I think its impossible to say that biology predisposes us to certain interests and skills because we have not been able to conduct studies on unsocialised human beings, so can never consider difference in a way that is uncontaminated by socialisation.
Your point about AI is an interesting one. However, should it be the case that the biggest threat is to the value of male coded work, rather than this result in the elevation of women by way of their representation in roles that are now deemed valuable, I think it is more likely that men will suddenly decide they too had the required skills for those roles all along, move into them, and turn them male coded.

They do, although I think I have noticed that you don't seem to see the same kinds of manly men writing things as we used to. My grandfather was a manly man, and a writer and poet, and I'm not sure I can imagine him in journalism today the same way he was in the 60s to early 90s.

But it seems to me it's in interpersonal relationships that men are struggling. So not about capacity so much as environment?

In my work I have really noticed a lack of young people reading, of both sexes, but boys more than girls. I think that is a factor for sure in terms of emotional range.

They are only bad on a societal level if they are untrue. If you believe in biological determinism obviously you will consider it harmful to deny that it exists and tell people who have 'noticed' it that they are wrong.
However if you don't believe in biological determinism you will think that challenging boxing people into a set of expectations based on sex, (which invariably results in a poor deal for those of the female sex) is a good thing. And that those who 'notice' that women are better at baking than chairing a board are simply displaying confirmation bias.

My impression as a parent is that there’s a huge problem in terms of the way we expect young males to behave. When my partner (now in his 60s) was 16 he was messing around on motorbikes, repairing things, playing team sports and most importantly in doing those things hanging out with older men who gave him a sense of what it might mean to be a man, a ‘way of being’ that went beyond watching porn & buying things to encompass making things and understanding how things work & supporting others in practical ways.

My own sons on the other hand have been subject to continuous assessment at school from y10 onwards, NEAs, GCSEs over 2 years, AS levels, then A levels. They’re expected to study mandatory topics in which realistically most teenage boys will have no interest at all (stand up unseen poetry at GCSE) while being discouraged from practical studies. In their little spare time, they’re mostly staring at phones (despite my best efforts) imbibing consumer culture - both because phones are addictive, & because there’s little else for them to do - the men who once ran football clubs and took lads to motorsport are home themselves looking at their phones.

Our expectations of young men are completely at odds with the human evolutionary processes that have shaped their bodies and minds - and yes, to a great degree, those expectations in schools, in terms of what & how they learn, are feminised- so it is no wonder what emerges is often septic and unhealthy. A boy who finds a strong active male role model nowadays is unusual.

Women remain explored and sexualised & brutalised - perhaps in some ways more do than ever: and at the same time being a young man is hard. Two nasty things can be true at once, unfortunately.

We were having a pretty good natured and useful conversation about the degree to which mens' lower social-verbal ability was like a physical difference, or like maths, etc. The train of which (and the reason I preferred the maths example) was that people who are poor at maths are not incapable of improving, i.e. it's not impossible. We both seemed to agree that the maths example was reasonable, and differed in our interpretation of what that meant for men and how much they can 'just change'.

I then had a different conversation with a different poster who took exception to my claim about current affairs, which you also commented on.

You then commented to say my view on men was "patently ridiculous, frankly".

Your engagement since the the 'patently ridiculous' post has been with a series of claims that I've never made and don't believe, and which you must surely recognise as straw men, given the maths example we discussed at the start.

Characterising my position as that men are "incapable of social-verbal communication", then later "men are somehow incapable of learning to communicate their feelings and be emotionally expressive".

I set out my claim from the outset, which is nothing like the ones in those two paragraphs. I gave an example (maths) that shows why I think they are capable and can learn

I've even tried repeatedly to point out where you've overstated what you are objecting to (e.g. 10:40 "This really isn't my claim. My claim (which I thought I'd been quite specific about in my early posts) was that men can do this [...])

You've really not wanted to hear that, because you want to have an argument with an imaginary position.

You did indeed let yourself get side-tracked by this strong claim about "incapable" that I haven't made, not from the outset of this thread. Just as you don't like excuse-making, I think you need to realise that this one is on you.

Did anyone here see the Harris/Walz approved ad campaign for men ahead of the American election? This was to counter the toxic masculinity of the likes of Trump on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
It was full of men (apparently) saying to camera:
"I'm a real man, but that doesn't mean I feel uncomfortable in the company of women"
"I'm a real man, but that didn't mean I feel ashamed I cried when my baby was born"
Etc etc.
I always thought if the left could combine this ad with the Sadiq Khan "Maaate!" video, they could alienate every man to MAGA and Reform.