When wasn't masculinity in crisis?
A conversation between Sarah Pines (Correspondent at Germany's conservative newspaper, Die Welt) and Angelica Ferrara on why masculinity is presented as "in crisis."
Bizarrely, my work is having a moment in Germany. Over the last several weeks, I was able to speak to Die Welt and Die Ziet, two of the nation’s largest conservative and liberal papers, about the status of men and masculinity, along with men’s desire for deeper emotional relationships and the skills that go along with them. If you’re not a German reader, neither of those articles will be of much interest to you, but this English translation might. I explored a different facet of my thinking with Die Welt that hasn’t been covered in the mainstream press on my research on how women often facilitate men’s emotional and social worlds. That idea is about whether masculinity is “in crisis,” as we’ve apparently been told, and what this framing achieves and leaves behind. I wanted to make sure a record of the conversation existed in English.
When Sarah Pines, a reporter at Die Welt, contacted me to ask me what I think about the masculinity crisis, and I told her I wouldn’t be much help for her angle as I reject that framing entirely. We ended up speaking anyway. The conversation was far ranging and deep, and I hope you enjoy it.
Sarah: Masculinity, that which defines a man biologically and socially, is, according to the prevailing opinion, “in crisis.” You reject this framing of “crisis.” Why? Could we say that “masculinity” has never been a static construct to begin with, but is very nuanced and embraces many different aspects/types?
I think a good point to start here is defining masculinity, which is at its core essence the meaning that culture attaches to manhood. In my forthcoming book Men Without Men, which will be published by Hanserblau in Germany, I talk about how the meaning assigned to manhood has changed significantly across history in the Global North. While it is a common belief that men have ‘natural,’ immutable traits when it comes to their close relationships or lack of them, the historical record upends a view of static male traits entirely. When we speak about masculinity, we’re speaking about a shapeshifting social norm: what a culture finds politically, socially, and economically expedient for men to express at a given time becomes the dominant “masculinity” of the day. For example, in the post-war United States when a booming economy required a devoted workforce and the re-stabilization of men’s value on the domestic front, men were rewarded for becoming stoic providers whose emotional life was subordinated to his function within the economy and nuclear family. In Renaissance France, such as for men like Michel de Montaigne, elite men were rewarded for the cultivation of an examined inner life through philosophical reflection and intimate male friendships where men endeavoured to know each other’s souls without suspicion. Between those two eras and in others, writers have lamented various ‘crises’ of masculinity. Articles panicking over men becoming too “soft” and becoming “like women” — lamenting that men are in a state of vertigo— are not new in any sense. In the years 1893, 1909, 1936, as well as after WWII, writers expressed concern about men becoming unmoored and “less manly” as society advanced. The researcher Paul Fairie at The University of Calgary has posted some excellent threads showing the evidence of this sentiment appearing in newspapers over time. I’m linking one here.
You asked if there’s ever been a binding construct of masculinity. There are continuities across time and place in what society asks from men, but there is no static definition of what traits make a man ‘masculine.’ What is consistent, though, is masculinity’s existence as a precarious, highly unstable status that can be gained, lost, regained, or re-lost. It is a status that can be bestowed typically from men to other men with certain acts, but that can fall apart at a moment’s notice if one crosses a line. Those lines change within and across lifetimes. The boundaries of manhood are historically flexible: at some times those boundaries have held close, expressive male friendships within them, for example, whereas that was later renegotiated for reasons I describe in my book.
Today, the things men have shared with me that call their masculinity into question can be as small as liking pottery, ordering a ‘girly’ drink, or crying at a film. It can stretch to much larger perceived ‘failures’ like not making enough money, or needing to rely on another person for help. The list of things apparently capable of emasculation is infinite. Crossing your legs the wrong way, having a friend who is seen as emotionally too close, these are all things that can renegotiate a man’s status in the presence of other men today. Womanhood as a concept is a far more stable identity rooted in the idea that anyone with a womb, and who appears feminine, is a de facto woman. While men find that the status of ‘real man’ can be proved or disproved, our society has made womanhood a permanent status rooted in an anatomical, not behavioural, reality. Anyone interested in this should read Ann Fausto-Sterling’s “Sexing the Body.” The issues with an anatomically rooted framing are a separate conversation. However, the very construction of an unstable and ultimately earnable masculinity is why the concept feels perpetually in crisis. It will continue to be until men’s value in society is de-coupled from how they do or don’t perform their gender role.
Sarah: And where does the feeling in our societies – that masculinity is in crisis – come from? What is real and what is imaginary about this feeling of masculinity in crisis?
Angelica: A version of an “Are men lost” article has been published by nearly every mainstream press source within the last five years. I reject the crisis framing, but not because I believe masculinity isn’t in a status of crisis or that many men aren’t lost—more on this later. Because the historical perspective is rarely engaged with, and because most of us haven’t lived long enough to see this conversation appear and reappear ad nauseum in the media, we forget the more effective framing is ‘when was masculinity not in crisis?’ The masculinity in crisis idea occurs predictably at specific times in history—it is not random. We know that a few sociocultural events precede it. To quote my colleague Tristan Bridges, “three primary factors are commonly taken to give rise to the “crisis”: (1) shifts in the relative positions of women and men in social, cultural, and economic life, (2) shifts in patterns of work and the labor market, and (3) transformations in intimacy, family formation practices, and family life more generally.” All of these conditions have been met today, meaning the crisis dialogue is right on time.
For me, the crisis is that many men feel constrained by these historically elastic rules of masculinity and that these rules typically set them up for an uphill battle in their health, happiness, and relationships. We know without a shred of empirical doubt that men who are more invested in today’s vision of masculinity—one encouraging hyper independence, toughness, and objectification of women—are the most vulnerable to enduring struggles in relationships, mental wellbeing, and physical health. That we ask men to deny such essential parts of their personhood, like their care and tenderness and weakness, is indeed a crisis, and one that is facing unique challenges as the algorithmic radicalization of boys and men becomes more prevalent through “masculinity influencers” and the manosphere. I come back to wondering when has an ideology that is fundamentally rooted in ideas of domination not been a crisis for humankind? The feminist writer bell hooks put this very clearly in 2004: “The crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity; it is the crisis of patriarchal masculinity. Until we make this definition clear, men will continue to fear that any critique of patriarchy represents a threat.”
Sarah: Your work (from what I understand) focuses on men and friendship in globalized economies. Your finding: To a far greater degree than women, men struggle with deep same gender bonds (which causes ruptures in their emotional development) to which they mostly react in two ways: They emotionally rely on their female partners or they turn to the so-called “manosphere” of online communities that celebrate certain kind of masculinity. What kind of “masculinity”? Is it valid for men of any social background, or is it more a working class or an upper middle class “problem”? Why have men become so lonely and since when?
Angelica: There’s a lot here and I’ll do my best to break it down. Let’s start with the last question. We know from large survey-based research that men in many large western economies are struggling with forming and maintaining close friendships, but that loneliness is something that has increased for all genders. However, the rate at which men report having fewer close friendships appears to be growing faster for men than women in surveys covering the last 30 years. On top of this, men report at significantly higher rates than women that they can’t or would not go to a friend for a problem—47% of men in the US and UK, according to some estimates from my colleagues at the Movember Institute for Men’s Health. While some studies indicate that loneliness isn’t very different between genders (this may be due to under-reporting in men), we know that the quality of social support experienced in friendships is often very different than the closeness men describe wanting and needing with others. When it comes to psychological safety with disclosure, the ability to show affection verbally and physically, being listened to and knowing how to listen to friends, these are all areas where men describe struggling more in comparison to women. I see the question less as ‘when did men become so lonely’ and more as ‘how do we better support men in cultivating and sustaining deeper bonds?’
In this question you mention that men respond in two ways to difficulties in developing close relationships outside of romance. I can speak to the first way extensively, but for the second on the ‘manosphere,’ I recommend speaking to an expert like Emily Kiyoko Carian or Cécile Simmons who are experts on online misogyny. In my research and those of others, men’s social support systems tend to be more centrally focused on their romantic partners than we see in women. For example, many of the men in my research have one or two women they disclose all deeply personal issues to, such as a wife or girlfriend, whereas that same wife or girlfriend is often disclosing and receiving support from many people. Public health research shows that two factors most profoundly shape our emotional health when it comes to our social lives: the diversity of our networks and the ability to disclose our problems within them. Men tend to struggle more with developing a network that contains multiple “nodes” of support where they can enjoy both companionship and disclosure. In my work, these patterns were most emphasized in men who did not have access to models of masculinity that allowed for emotional tenderness and expressiveness. That sometimes differed by race and class, but the primary issue was demonstrated across class and race groups. However, the majority of men I work with are from the roughly similar cultural contexts of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe.
Sarah: Male isolation and their turning to their partners for emotional disclosure has consequences for women and for female autonomy as well: in being there for their partners they carry the burden of emotional work – a work which is not acknowledged or rewarded by society. Is what you call “mankeeping” a sign of patriarchy?
In our first paper on the concept, my collaborator Dylan Vergara and I argued that mankeeping is part of how patriarchy persists in people’s private lives. What we’ve been discovering is that an imbalanced reliance on women for social support puts a burden on women’s time and wellbeing. This finding wasn’t entirely different from what the sociologist Carolyn Rosenthal called ‘kinkeeping,’ or the invisible work that women undertake to bring harmony to their families. Because the phenomenon we were seeing—women taking on a lot of work to compensate for men’s lack of close friendships and its effect on women—we adapted Rosenthal’s term to mankeeping. We’ve learned that mankeeping appears to have three main components: there’s social facilitation—when women act as behind-the-scenes managers of men’s friendships. An example could be a girlfriend telling her boyfriend “You should call your friend back,” or “Let’s invite your old roommate over for dinner.” Second is emotional outsourcing: men receiving disproportionate emotional support from women because they’re not getting it from their friends. The third is emotional education: women teaching men the skills of relational intelligence like empathy and question asking—all of which are core competencies of human development that are typically learnt and refined in close friendships. These components often blur together, but they all speak to an imbalance in how care circulates across gendered lines. We think it’s a part of patriarchy’s structure—like how women’s greater domestic labor and exposure to gendered violence and harassment is baked into the very system that ensures women’s lesser power in society.
Sarah: Were you surprised to see that the term you coined took off online? The concept seems to have taken a life of its own, with some claiming it has changed dating etc.
Angelica: Feminist scholars have talked a great deal about the burden of women’s greater ‘emotion work’ in relationships of all kinds, but there hasn’t been enough work investigating women’s experiences that result from men’s struggles with close friendship formation. I see the construct as a very low hanging fruit: something that was very much in plain sight but not yet named. Because mankeeping sadly doesn’t seem uncommon in relationships (though we’re testing that empirically right now!), we weren’t surprised to see that it resonated for a lot of people, specifically women. We couldn’t have predicted the scale of that resonance, though. We’ve spoken specifically about how the term has been misinterpreted, or stretched entirely too far, in this article for Scientific American. People seem eager to speak about how the phenomenon is changing dating and marriage. Weighing in on that isn’t how I see my role in the field. I slip sometimes, but at the end of the day I’m here to be a reliable translator of people’s experiences through a psychological lens. I listen for a living and tell the story that listening closely reveals. The mankeeping phenomenon is exactly what women and men described to us interview after interview.
Sarah: What differences in conceptions of masculinity do you see between generations, when you compare, say, Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z and Alpha?
Angelica: One of the most concerning things we’re seeing in my field is early indications that attitudes about masculinity are trending more extreme in younger generations. A new report at the King’s College Global Institute for Women’s Leadership showed 24% of Gen Z men supported the idea that women shouldn’t appear too self-sufficient of independent, in comparison to 12% of Baby Boomer men. A paper I recently reviewed for a major Australian psychological journal showed that teenage boys’ ideas about men’s emotional expression and women’s role in society were more conservative than their father’s and their grandfather’s views. This isn’t the first report of this I’ve come across, marking a possible reversal of longstanding generation trends towards more progressive values that most thought was irreversible. It’s a rapidly developing part of the field, and although we might be able to tie this to the enormous proliferation of masculinity influencers online, such as Andrew Tate, it’s a developing story and one we’re tracking closely. In terms of friendships, we see varying results by generational cohorts. To speak very generally with a few granularities missing, it’s older and younger men who appear to struggle the most with deep and satisfying friendship bonds. In a longer conversation we could speak more about why that might be.
Sarah: The term “mankeeping” seems to highlight the need for men to invest emotionally in friendships. Why is it so difficult for men to be more open and vulnerable?
Angelica: It’s difficult because the values that most boys and men are asked to embody are directly at odds with the skills that create satisfying relationships. The behaviours involved in close friendships, like listening, empathizing, interpersonal curiosity, and the giving of attentiveness and care, are fundamentally human and have no gender. It’s important for men to cultivate skills like vulnerability and supportive listening with each other because doing so is a human need—it’s one of the primary ways our species gets social support. When all of men’s deepest emotional needs are met through women without the reverse being true, this is unlikely to serve either party in the long term. Like I’ve said above, though: society has made it an uphill battle for men to meet these needs with other men due to notions that “real men” don’t share their inner worlds, specifically among other men.
Sarah: And what makes masculinity – in the eyes of those who criticize it – “toxic”? What does it mean to be a “good”, non-toxic man; what is considered a “positive” masculinity?
Angelica: I think what people who use this term are speaking to is that the qualities men have been taught to embody often do themselves and others a profound disservice when it comes to long term happiness and fulfillment. The traits commonly listed as toxic involve a hyper investment in qualities like dominance, aggression, risk taking, stoicism, and individualism. An imbalanced embodiment of these traits is antithetical to the skills that intimacy requires, and which men ultimately want and need to live as self-actualized adults with close relationships. We all benefit from the skills of close listening, caretaking, affection, and the ability to show and be shown weakness. Unfortunately, masculine norms are constructed in almost perfect, contrasting opposition to norms of human development that lead to thriving. What people are referring to when they use that term are performances of manhood that are rooted in domination and the avoidance of soft or tender emotions. Up above, we spoke about how masculinity is the meaning assigned to manhood. Those who support the development of “positive masculinities” are advocating for a linking between manhood and traits that are empirically supported to facilitate human thriving: interpersonal curiosity, kindness, interdependence, among many other traits which have historically been associated with either womanhood or a general idea of positive personhood, broadly defined.
Sarah: Do we need to raise sons differently?
Angelica: In many parts of the world, boys are still raised—especially by the media—with the idea of the archetypal man as a hyper-independent, emotionally stoic winner-take-all risk-taker who seeks to amass capital in the form of homes, cars, women, businesses, etc. This archetype invests little in his own inner world or the inner world of others. Ironically, few men ever reach the archetype our society has defined as aspirational, but many end up working for—submitting to—the companies and military regimes run by men who have amassed great amounts of power and capital. We know empirically across a broad and diverse body of literature stretching from public health to child development studies that boys and men who value and try to embody these archetypes are at greater risk for mental health problems, relationship problems, domestic violence, and early death especially in the form of taking their own lives. Yet we know so clearly, from a separate body of evidence, what circumvents this: human happiness and longevity are most profoundly shaped by the quality of our close relationships.
Boys deserve to be set up for social and emotional thriving, which means raising them to be who they are in the absence of harmful and constraining stereotypes about the limits of manhood. In developmental research, boys show us—just as girls do—that they are caring, attuned, emotionally articulate, interdependent, silly, and fundamentally relationship oriented; anything that gets in the way of this natural human development process is an affront to boys’ wellness. We could have a long conversation about exactly how boys should be raised differently, but one thing stands above the rest. The biggest gift that parents, teachers, media makers, and all stakeholders in boys’ lives can give is to provide counter examples to the influences that teach and reward boys for embodying harmful masculine norms. We honour boys’ lives and protect their emotional selves from harm when we educate boys about these narratives, as they will inevitably encounter them.
Sarah: Do we even still need “masculinity” as a concept?
Angelica: This is where I differ from my colleagues the most. I do not believe boys and men need a code of conduct that is rooted in manhood, but rather one in personhood. I understand the weight of this statement and I do not mean to say that boys and men don’t need a proliferation of healthy models for how to live their lives. I just don’t believe those models need to be attached to gender. A colleague of mine, Jindy Mann, says there are 4 billion ways to be a man. I agree with him. Any aspirational masculinity, even if those aspirational traits promote wellbeing, is still a way of saying one can be “more” or “less” masculine. The house of cards of the masculinity paradigm is revealed when we say that masculinity is any set of defined traits, because if a man rejects them, is he not masculine? Is he no longer a “real” man?
Even if we define masculinity positively, telling boys that this is “who a man is” means that some boys and men will always fall short of that definition. This brings us right back to asking males to prove their manhood. Asking anyone for a gender performance will never lead us where we want to go. This is wildly transparent with women as a result of the feminist movement: defining femininity for women, even if it is done in a way that allows women to escape their narrowly defined roles, is still defining it for them and measuring them against a type of ruler. It’s the ruler that isn’t helpful. One of my favorite Judith Butler quotes is “feminism asks the question of ‘what is a woman’ and refuses to answer it.” The same is not true for men: we are always in desperate search of an answer.
Men have yet to have a movement that lays bare the plain ridiculousness of asking them to perform gender in a particular way. As organizations, schools, and self-help books try to say that re-defining masculinity is the answer, I try to emphasize that not only is this wrong, it’s been done many times to no avail, leading us right back to the drawing board when the events of history re-arrange what society “needs” men to be. It’s misled and will continue to be. While it may appear that I’m relatively alone in my view on this, it might be that I’m among those who are early. In ten years, I believe seeing any pre-determined set of masculine norms as harmful will be the prevailing opinion and “best practice” line of advice from other psychologists. The legendary feminist thinker bell hooks put this most lucidly, and most beautifully, over two decades ago:
She said “to create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined notions of male identity. Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being. When we love maleness, we extend our love whether males are performing or not. Performance is different from simply being. In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an anti-patriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved.”
Creating new or better versions of masculinity is a version of loving males only if they perform—of loving men only if they do “maleness” right.