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

Still, mustn't grumble.

Perhaps male/female linguistic/emotional abilities are naturally about the same? What a surprising suggestion on a feminist forum!

I'm quite sure men's abilities in areas not directly effected by body size, strength, and testosterone-driven sexual and other aggression are the same as women's. And vice versa. I remember that being a core feminist argument back when we were complaining about the lack of attention paid to women writers and artists in the past.

It's important to remember though, that, as this says:

"The research suggests that perceived or actual differences in cognitive performance between males and females are most likely the result of social and cultural factors. For example, where girls and boys have differed on tests, researchers believe social context plays a significant role."

There's no evidence that boys and men are innately worse at verbal communication.

True, but unfortunately the end result is the same.

Nor any that there isn't.

It's really difficult to pull apart nature vs nurture.

However, not being able to do so does not mean that Nurture is some neutral answer.

We don't call our native language our 'mother tongue' for no reason.

Females tend to use language to build relationships whereas males tend to use language more for information and instruction.

Generalisations of course, but i do think they have truth in them.

Isn't there evidence that the connections between the hemispheres in the brain are more developed in females?

Mother tongue was historically used to differentiate between the everyday language used domestically which varied by location, and the common languages used in formal institutions, church, law, academia that were the preserve of educated men.
So rather than the phrase linking higher levels of communication skills with women, it was actually used to denote lower status communication in the domestic sphere. The every day language you learn from your mother to discuss the mundane, as oppose to the language of learning that enabled men to understand and express complex (and superior!) thinking.

My point about mother tongue is that it refers to our native tongue. Our first ever communication and vocalisation experiences - which come from the mother. The cooing and modulated sounds the mother makes form the basis for our language skills.

That there is now such a, reported, decline in early language acquisition amongst toddlers is now being put down to the parent's over-focus on their screen and a subsequent and complete lack of engagement with the child. You see this all of the time.

How interesting. I'd never thought of it like that.

The 'mother tongue' mistake aside...which to further expand on what the other poster said, is also called that because sexed roles at the time meant that the mother was the one to teach a child to speak, not the father, who was off doing more important things...

I think that's a ridiculous generalisation. Most cult leaders, most great orators, most con artists, most 'Casanovas', most authors, script writers, and poets, most charming sociopaths, most persuasive abusive partners, and most pleading, sob story using cocklodgers are men, historically speaking.

So if anyone tries to tell me that the average man cannot communicate their emotions to a reasonable and perfectly sufficient level, I think they're full of shit, quite frankly.

Men don't want to, for reasons I've already been over on this thread; because to express emotion makes them vulnerable, and for the most part, they don't want to be vulnerable when they don't have to be.

To my mind you are overly focusing on the idea that female language is under-valued as compared to male language ( in order to make a 'feminist' point about 'equality'), I'm focusing more on the elementals of how language develops. Of course it is mainly going to be the mother that vocalises with a new born for all of the obvious reasons. Whether we like it or not, or think it doesn't conform to equality concepts, it is mothers, in general, have far more to do with language developments and skills.

Motherhood can also be valuable and important.....even if it is often devalued, even by other women. The reasons for this are obvious....but 'equality' can only go some of the way because differences will always remain. You don't have to throw the baby out with bath water.

Why do you think it is that males, according to your example, don't like to be vulnerable?

I made no mistake about 'mother tongue'...my explanation of it is valid, even if someone else has used to it to try to explain disparities in equality between the sexes, and have that conform to feminist theory.

"A mother tongue, also known as native language is
the first language a person is exposed to from birth or during the critical early childhood period, playing a vital role in cognitive development, identity, and social connection. The term is believed to have originated around 1425 in Middle English, possibly rooted in the concept of language learned directly from the mother". It has comparators in most languages

Lots of us have read Dale Spender's 'Man Made Language' but it still doesn't change this fact.

Lingua materna was used with the meaning I posted from long before the 15th century.

I am a man also undiagnosed but almost certainly autistic. Yes I recognise the emotional inarticulacy and struggles for connection. But these can be overcome. They have to be, and it's nobody's job but mine.

I really do think that Men as a whole, have a lot of work to do. On themselves, and to help each other, especially their brothers who find themselves basically emotional cripples.

It's not for our mummies and sisters to do this : fixing men is not women's work. If a man wants to do the work, there are guides and leaders and brothers and books. Plenty of them. Tate, etc. al, to be clear, are the exact opposite of what lost men need : he's just telling men how to exploit their disconnection rather than address it.

This has been my Ted talk, thanks for reading.

As I said in a previous comment:

Perhaps men are extremely opposed to opening up emotionally and being vulnerable to other men, because they perceive other men as a threat, and wish to maintain a show of strength around them.

They are less opposed to opening up to women, because they perceive themselves as being stronger than women, both physically and socially, which means women are not a threat to them.

Women are probably less opposed to opening up emotionally, partially because we exist in a state of awareness of our own constant vulnerability, in a way that men do not. We are more accustomed to being vulnerable, and strong in spite of it, while men fear it far more.

You didn't actually address any of the main points I made, but okay.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything? Mothers don't ignore their sons and only teach their daughters to talk. And women who aren't mothers aren't terrible at communicating.

As for your last paragraph, I have no idea what you're talking about. I never said motherhood isn't valuable, and no one is throwing any babies out with the bathwater.

You mentioned in your post that women still did the bulk of the childcare because men wanted to do something "more important", or words to that effect.

The fact that women's roles in the home and with children have been devalued is one of the reasons women's liberation/feminism arose. Because women's work was not paid ( valued) leaving women dependent on a male provider, who in many cases was not very dependable. 'Staying at home with the children' was not seen as important, or as valuable, as having a career or being in paid employment. It also made you less of a success and less of an individual - according to the dominant orthodoxy.

I didn't say women ignored their sons and only vocalised with female infants, did I?

The misunderstandings and our failure to connect meaningfully is probably down to us adopting to differnt approaches to language acquisition and use. You seem to want to frame everything in terms of the idea that female language is of lower status than male language; whereas I'm more interested in how language develops and how our language skills are very much shaped and influenced by our earliest interactions with our primary caregiver, which in most cases is primarily the mother.

If the foundations are not in place it is going to be very difficult indeed to build higher level language skills.

"You seem to want to frame everything in terms of the idea that female language is of lower status than male language"

Erm... You do realise it's all the same language, right? You're the one going on about value and status, and male vs female language (huh?), and claiming that because mother's teach children language, women are better at communicating than men?

I'm the one saying that it's all just language, and mothers (and fathers) teach their sons just the same as their daughters, so why would boys/men be worse with language than girls/women? They're just as capable!

Perhaps the two examples you give are not automatically negative marks in the male playbook, though, they are simply indicators of a different way of prioritising and focusing on what is important?

If you look at the biological essentials of the two sexes the female is necessarily more open and porous to others because of the fact of pregnancy, childbirth and the necessity of forming relationships that support those things.

Males tend not to band together so much because their survival and wellbeing depends more on being succesful, able, strong, showy, impressive etc. Males are also very vulnerable to attack from other males.

Sorry, I think this post probably relates more to another poster - who seemed particularly focused on the low status of women's language as compared to male language.

It was an extremely sarcastic 'more important'. I should've made that more obvious.

I think men and women have different communication styles, generally. Different priorities, interests and focus.