This is more of a brainstorming topic than a pressing issue - I definitely think there are bigger fish to fry than this more "identity politics"-adjacent topic of cultural discourse around masculinity (see the topic on issues we'd like to see addressed in the 2020s).

However, seeing all the the culture war talk about "toxic masculinity", and how "traditional masculinity" is attacked and demonized by the left and glorified and hegemonized by the right, and how efforts are being undertaken to celebrate women and femininity in culture ('The Future Is Female', 'girl power', 'girlboss', 'slay kween' etc.) while men and masculinity are criticized and problematized, I think it's interesting to talk about how we could talk about masculinity.

Now, ultimately the individual matters more than the gender box they are put into, and not every man is going to be terribly interested in identitarian masculinity talk, and that's fine. Insofar there might be societal (and perhaps, controversially, some biological) average differences between men and women, we can address these without essentializing the individual based on which gender they happen to belong to.

However, gender identity does seem to play some role in how individuals relate to the world. In that sense, I think talking about multiple valid 'masculinities' is a good compromise between adhering to arbitrary gender roles and abolishing gender entirely for everyone.

One critique I have of /r/MensLib discourse is that it focuses so much on rebelling against the so-called hegemonic 'traditional' or toxic masculinity that it almost seems to create a new gender role of its own: that of the woke male ally who is liberated by painting his fingernails and wearing frilly dresses when he damn well please. I do think that fighting against the stigmatization of men who want to engage in these practises is important. However, some men are simply less interested in this kind of thing. Those who are more comfortable adhering to more traditional (non-toxic) forms of masculinity needn't feel like they're accidentally perpetuating some oppressive stereotype just because of how they are themselves.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, we have a kind of idealized hypermasculinity, the alpha Chad stereotype.

I think it would be an interesting idea to talk about and value multiple masculinities. Even though I think celebrity worship is somewhat 'problematic' (God I hate that word), I'll name some quite random male celebs off the top of my head, who differ quite a lot in terms of how close to 'traditional masculinity' or 'unconventional masculinity' they are, but yet are all well-loved and valued in their own ways:

  • Mr. Rogers

  • Bernie Sanders

  • Alan Turing

  • Terry Crews

  • Mahatma Gandhi

  • Freddie Mercury

  • Eddie Izzard

  • Bruce Lee

  • Robert Smith

  • Arnold Schwarzenegger

  • Martin Luther King

  • David Bowie

Again, sorry for the extremely random and maybe somewhat banal list of individuals (I'm not in any way implying that Schwarzenegger's contribution to humanity is comparable to MLK's, for example). Also, I'm often skeptical of discourse that assumes "role models" to be celebrities instead of fathers, brothers, uncles, male friends, male teachers, etc. But it's merely to demonstrate the variety that exists.

You can say "these men are already praised, so what's the difference?" It's a fair point, but I'd argue that men being treated as the 'default gender', it seems like we don't talk about these guys much in terms of masculinity, but in terms of personhood (except maybe the more hypermasculine guys like Arnie). Now, this is mostly a good thing (we want to talk about all people in terms of personhood), but I think framing masculinity in terms more sophisticated than how James Bond-like or un-James Bond-like you are, and promoting variety, could help boys reconcile their masculinity with their individuality.