Man-up!
The Male Identity Crisis and a Manifesto for Positive Masculinities
Greetings friends and lovers-of-wisdom, and welcome to back to the Wisdom Workshop newsletter, with quotes, ideas, and invitations to live a life worth examining. 🍂
“Everything meaningful in life is about others. Nothing profound is achieved in isolation.”
– SCOTT GALLOWAY
The Male Identity Crisis
About three years ago, I was talking with a smart and caring woman in her early forties. Our conversation about living the good life turned to her dating life, and she rolled her eyes. “The dating pool,” she said, “is abysmal.”
Forget fish in the sea. There was no sea. Just a shallow pool of shallow men who were jobless or miserable at work. Was it true? Were good men really that hard to find?
Fast forward to last summer, when a friend shared this interview where Scott Galloway outlines the dangerous contours of the modern “male identity crisis:”
Richard V. Reeves’ book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It goes further. In May, Reeves announced that Melinda French Gates asked him to help direct $20 million of the $2 billion her foundation set aside to advance gender equality … to address the challenges faced by boys and men.
In my writing classes at C.S.U., I’m noticing a widening gap in both the social skills and the academic acuity of young men and young women. Last semester, six of my students failed. Five of them were young men. With a couple of exceptions, students doing the best work, students asking the best questions, did not identify as men.
Where do we go from here?
I was so pleased to be handed Sam McKegney’s Carrying the Burden of Peace: Reimagining Indigenous Masculinities Through Story.
A scholar in gender studies and indigenous literary criticism, McKegney wonders: “can a critical examination of indigenous masculinities be creative, inclusive, erotic?” He says:
“To deny the beauty, vulnerability, and grace that can be expressed and experienced as masculinity is to concede to settler colonialism’s limiting vision of the world; it is to eschew the creativity that is among our greatest strengths.”
I welcome the “beauty, vulnerability and grace” of indigenous masculinities here, just as I praise Scott Galloway for getting emotionally vulnerable on big stages, nearly crying at the end of future-of-tech keynotes.
McKegney and Galloway move us beyond a too-limiting masculine too often tied to the domination of feelings and identities.
A Manifesto for Positive Masculinities
Here’s to celebrating the power boys and men have to relate, to care and to engage in meaningful ways, to give more than take, to contribute to something greater. Far from being toxic, here’s to a healthy, hopeful, and perhaps even symphonic masculinity. To man-up and embody a positive masculinity in our own ways, we might:
(1) Commit to an Ethics of Care
We are attentive, responsible, competent, and responsive. We are respectful towards the plurality of cultures and languages. We know that self-awareness is impact-awareness. We take radical responsibility for our actions, our words, and the ways we impact our environments. We care about caring.
(2) Exercise Embodied Presence
We exercise our capacity to be truly present. We know that being “somewhere else,” distracted by something else, is a turn-off. We practice mindfulness of the body. We develop attentional capacities and awareness throughout our physical fitness, emotional fitness, and attentional fitness.
(3) Sharpen Mental Acuity
We go to the wisdom of the mind-gym. We read. We write. We reflect. We ask beautiful questions. We stay up-to-date on the sciences we care about. Perhaps we seek a nuanced understanding of dopamine, evolutionary anthropology, or group psychodynamics. We resist easy binaries and celebrate ambiguity and uncertainty.
(4) Advocate for Equity in the Boardroom and the Bedroom
We know that the pay gap is real, and that the orgasm gap is real. We support equity because we care for others and we know that equity work is not a zero sum game. To quote Richard Reeves, “we can be passionate about women’s rights, and compassionate towards the struggles of boys and men.”
(5) Develop Financial Security
We work to develop our economic viability as good partners and supporters of the people we care about. We dedicate as much of our resources to our friends and family as we are able. We improve our abilities to support ourselves and others in as many ways as we can.
(6) Practice Humility
We seek to understand systems, and our place in them. We know how much space we’re taking up in a conversation. We make room for other views. We don’t put ourselves above anyone else. We understand that different people have different ways of communicating. We’re curious.
(7) See Vulnerability as a Kind of Strength
We know there’s strength in being vulnerable. We get better at asking for help when we might need it. We see the strength in support networks. We cherish opportunities to witness others share their vulnerabilities, knowing we don’t need to “fix” or “solve.”
That’s it.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments, by email, or…
Acknowledgements
Acknowledging the first stewards and peoples of this land where I write these words, the traditional territories and ancestral homelands of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute, Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Pueblo and Shoshone Nations.
This piece took about four months to complete. Thanks, Mike Kimball, for offering inspiring conversation and early feedback. Thanks Drew Stegmaier for the constructive editing assist. Thank you mom, for everything.
And thank you, dear subscribers, for your support and your nutritive correspondence. Here’s to heroic, healthy, and positive masculinities!
Further Reading
“We Need to Redefine Manhood. Our Warped Ideas are Causing a Mental Health Crisis.” JJ Bola in the Guardian (2020).
“We Need More Mister Walzes.” Richard V. Reeves in his Of Boys and Men Substack (2024).
“Healthy Masculinity, How to Achieve Financial Security, and Why Vulnerability is Power.” Rich Roll #837 with Scott Galloway (2024).
“In Praise of Heroic Masculinity.” Caitlin Flanagan in the Atlantic (2023).
With gratitude for your feminine and masculine, hope you enjoy,
Sean
Synchronicity Post-Scripts
As I was writing the first draft of this essay over the summer, I received, via email, an “exciting paid opportunity” from a TikTok influencer agency “looking for creators like you” to promote a supplement from a brand who “helps men live vigorously.” How did they know!? Should I see if their product boosts my strength and stamina? Should I see if it helps me care for others?
As I was polishing this essay today (on its fourth draft for the writing-process-curious), a current student sent me this Kendrick Lamar interview in Harper’s Bazaar. In his email to me: “I thought you'd enjoy it based on the things you've said about masculinity. It's a man who has found growth and success through curiosity about himself.” Thanks Frank for the tip and the synchronicity!
“For what I do, there is certainly no growth without vulnerability.”
– KENDRICK LAMAR
Bonus book recommendation, writing invitations, and a Friday afternoon gathering link behind the paywall.
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