Checking in on the Masculinity Crisis

If masculinity really is in crisis — and that’s a big if — we should at least be able to agree that it’s not women’s responsibility to fix it.

Time to Read: 15 min.

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This is an article that is a synthesis of various speakers, articles, studies and two books (Boys: What it Means to Become a Man by Rachel Giese & Man Out: Men on the Sidelines of American Life by Andrew L. Yarrow) in the recent past on the subject of men, and the appeal of “Masculinity in Crisis”. I think it does a great job showing not just the issues of gender, but also its intersections with race and class. It does a good job (as much as I can tell from not reading the mentioned books) to boil down these author’s points into salient and digestible sections that introduce concepts like the “school to prison pipeline” without requiring either extensive fore-knowledge of the reader, or being bogged down into the minutia and complexity these issues come with.

It also wrestles with how different perspectives of whatever the flavor the former “crisis” relate. Whether it’s loneliness, dating, custody or success in education, these issues can be attacked from many different perspectives. When I’m reading texts on these subjects I don’t always agree with every point, (much like this author), but much of what I read can still be insightful. I remind myself to walk away with what feels useful to my life and understanding, or what language finally agrees with what I’ve been unable to articulate myself – sending the rest back to the compost of ideas.

It’s a moderate length read but is able to move through a lot of the current dissatisfaction coming from men, whether it is lack of success and the “precariousness” of men’s identity wrapped up inside their gender roles, or how we have a service oriented workforce that prefers “feminine” traits over an older manufacturing and industrial economy. This article does a great job about at raising not criticism but concern for men in a way that doesn’t feel like men are being attacked and need to defend themselves. There’s societal and cultural change that men are failing to navigate because their modern framework is underdeveloped or they are simply unaware.

You'll notice that the tagline of the article "If masculinity really is in crisis — and that’s a big if — we should at least be able to agree that it’s not women’s responsibility to fix it." is still a little antagonistic but I think the framing within the article is great. It understands the critical relationship between the sexes/genders and how it's fundamentally evolved without even opening the door into feminist theory - keeping the issues squarely were they are relevant, with men.