Photo by Daniil Onischenko on Unsplash
Please note that what I’m going to write here relates heavily to the United Kingdom and is not about other countries, regions or cultures, which may be very different. It also contain things you might disagree with. So if you get very upset when you don’t hear your own exact opinions echoed back at you, then please don’t read on.
As I explained in a previous series of articles (“changing gender roles for men”) over the last 100 years, women have been successful in getting to a place where they can shift in and out of their gender roles as they desire, MOST of the time.
I’m not saying there isn’t still sexism and there aren’t people around who’d dearly love to push them back into their traditional gender roles as they were in 1961 (more on that later). But for the most part, women now flick between traditional/new as they wish it seems.
At 10am a “normal” woman can be the caring and nurturing mother, feeding their child and taking them to nursery. By 12pm, a C-level executive, making decisions about enormous budgets in the corporate world. At 7pm, a kick boxing expert at their local gym. At 9pm, demanding the help of their husband to kill a spider.
British society now, for the most part accepts this. The above wouldn’t be a massively unusual story. There are people who don’t accept this of course and I’ll come to some of those soon. But I’d expect those people are mostly shouted down and disagreed with.
The above would seem extremely normal in 2023.
The conclusion in the series I wrote was that men really need to get to the same place. I don’t believe, as a group, we are yet. Not quite anyway.
If you’ll excuse the simple binary concept for a moment (not ignoring those who feel neither man nor women or both at once), what we’ve done is changed one side of the coin of humanity, but not the other.
This has led to problems. Where as men once had a very clear purpose based on their traditional gender role (essentially, disposable protectors/providers) half of this meaning for men, has become redundant.
We are increasingly, less likely to be the breadwinner for a family. The idea of getting married early, having kids and a wife and having to provide for them is seemingly, not a very common thing any more.
Women generally have their own jobs now and for the most part are financially independent. And so the “provider” part of a mans existence has mostly gone. See – https://workingfamilies.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/UK_MFI_2018_Long_Report_A4_UK.pdf which suggests that:-
I know there are people who prove the exception out there. But young men either being single, or in a relationship where both partners work is much more the normal situation in the UK nowadays.
Despite losing the “provider” part of their gender role though men have mostly retained the “disposability” part.
As I touched on in “Happy International Mens day” – men are still massively over represented in jobs which are dirty, unhealthy and dangerous, with the three most dangerous jobs in the UK according to some being held overwhelmingly by men. There is also massive representation of men in victims of violent crime figures. Both facts contributing heavily to the rarely talked about gender life gap. Male sacrifice is still seemingly as common as ever and men are still as disposable as they’ve ever been.
As a result of losing half their gendered expectations, there has been a loss of (or rather, reduction in) purpose. And with that loss of purpose there has been a loss of guidance – of steering and of centering.
For many men, particularly young men, a clear steer on how you should approach your life is missing.
Back to Part 1 of my series, it used to be quite clear what was expected when you were a man. The guidance and enforcement came from everywhere. Other people mostly but also media – particularly film and television.
People like the writer Richard Reeves (https://www.persuasion.community/p/reeves#details and https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/11/11/richard-reeves-gender-equality-boys-school-men) have said that this loss of purpose and its associated loss of guidance has lead to a vacuum :-
“And the problem is that for different reasons, neither left nor right are taking that cultural task seriously. And because of that, there’s a lack of a script, honestly, for a lot of men, a lot of men will say they know what they’re not supposed to do. But actually, when you ask them, what are you supposed to do? They don’t ever have a good answer, that creates a massive vacuum.”
I don’t think what we have is exactly a vacuum though.
The conversation space around “what should a man do” is absolutely flooded with people giving their opinions. It’s just that nobody seems to yet quite have the answer.
Or to put it more accurately, lots of people have the answer, but not everyone can agree what the right one is?
Into this melee of ideas, comes many different factions, each having it’s own ideological axe to grind.
Like everything on the internet and in our political discourse in general nowadays of course, everything is often very binary in discussion. And so the two “loudest” ideologies that come through are often the most extreme.
At one side of these extremes in the debate around this question, you have feminism. Feminism however doesn’t really offer much of an answer to the question other than just continuously pointing out bad things that men do (or radical feminism which essentially posits the idea that men are irredeemable and should all be killed) and does this with a side helping of “never mind men, these are all the ways women suffer.”
Needless to say, this doesn’t really help the situation. If anything, it makes it worse perhaps? But I will write on this more separately.
At the other extreme you have Red Pill ideologists and people like Andrew Tate – selling the idea that the world is a game to be played and won and that to do so requires “strong” men. They spend most of their days going to the gym and highlighting bad things women do.
I don’t think this side helps either.
But if you can tune out the two extremes there are lots of others there too with a spectrum of opinions.
Heck, even I’m part of it too I guess!
I have no data to support this opinion but I think the biggest group in the debate are actually those selling “tradition” as the answer to the question. It’s essentially the idea that everything would be ok if everyone would revert back to original gender roles – both men AND usually women.
You can see this frequently online but also increasingly in books, news and media in general in the rest of the world.
There are PLENTY of Twitter accounts for example which, to one extent or another, push the idea that everything would be ok if everyone would just adhere to the old standards again.
You can identify these easily enough. You’ll hear them regularly using terms like – “traditional masculinity” / “traditional femininity” or “embracing your traditional masculinity” and publishing tweets suggesting happiness is only really found in the responsibility of being “the head of” a family. There are often traditional suggestions around dating and interaction with women too. You’ll often hear suggestions that men and women shouldn’t have sex before marriage (or in some cases they shouldn’t even live together) might come up.
Some are more concerned with self improvement, which revolves around the old notions of how a man should look/act? Strong, with muscles and able to fight if needed. Men should have cold showers, eat more red meat and lift weights to become “the best version of themselves” that they can. They should also do everything they can to get as rich as possible (and unsurprisingly, there are lots of other men who will tell them how to do it, for a fee of course).
These suggestions for “what men should do” and “what men should be” as you can see, differ a little, but generally stem from beliefs in the same thing – that we should revert to traditional gender roles again and traditional (and often stereotyped) ideals of what men should be.
These people are sometimes called “Tradcons” – traditional conservatives, although, I don’t think this is a good label for everyone who may have these types of ideas. Not all of them are politically conservative and sometimes it can be hard to actually apply this label accurately as other ideas beyond the “traditional” have often been bolted on to the ideology.
However, if you want a flavour of what I’m talking about, you could check out @SeekMasculinity , @SirPascal01 or @AOMasculinity for some examples. The comments on the Tweets will tell you a great deal about the searching/seeking a lot of men are doing for the answer to what their purpose is or what they should do.
You can also see plenty of “traditional conservatism” in talks by Jordan Petersen too and of course, American conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro.
“I think one of the reasons god put man on earth was to protect women”
There are also lots of podcasts out there which promote a “tradition is the way to go” position too – ten a penny in fact. @Guildofdads is one such example, who unfortunately didn’t much like me, genuinely, asking why the “traditional” ideology they push to men was better than any other ideology out there :-
What was extremely interesting about this exchange was (other than highlighted how thin skinned and delicate Joe clearly is with his ideas) it demonstrates how the traditional roles are seen as the default? “Mature masculine influence” (whatever that might be exactly) is not seen as an “ideology” but the “default” or “correct” setting clearly. Everyone else is giving a “version.”
If only everything would just go back to how it was I guess?
I won’t get too far into my own views on WHAT the answer to the question is myself here and now. I will tackle that in another post.
What I wanted to say here though is – I am quite adamant I know what the answer ISN’T
The single panacea for all men is NOT traditionalism.
It might be the right answer for SOME men perhaps and I do think it should be an option left open for people to take without prejudice.
However, I think rather than pushing ALL men as a group backwards into their old roles continuously and policing them with shame and fear, the answer lies more in showing them their options and just letting them choose?
We need men to be able to slip in and out of their traditional roles and activities and be able to adopt totally new ones at a moments notice, just like women now can.
At 10am a “normal” man can be the caring and nurturing father, feeding their child and taking them to nursery. By 12pm, a corporate CEO, making decisions about enormous budgets in the corporate world. At 7pm, attending a dress making class and learning embroidery. At 9pm, demanding the help of their wife to kill a spider.
There are no laws or rules stopping any of this now. That’s the good thing. All we’re missing is a wider understanding. We just need guys to understand they can make their choices and that nobody will bully them for it.
It’s not then just that I disagree with the view of traditionalists and tradcons but also that actually, I just don’t think what they want is even really practically possible?
Often they may point to the fact that, traditional gender roles were how the world ran (across cultures also) for thousands of years of human history and that therefore, this is the best working model we have. But to this I say, even if it’s true, we are surely by now, too far gone to change?
Many of them may WANT men to get married early, have families and be providers. But these opportunities are increasingly rare for men? It’s been too long?
If we look specifically at marriage and families, the number of single adults exceeded the number of married adults in the UK in around 2003. The gap has just increased since then.
People are getting married less and those that are, are getting married older. The average age of a man marrying a woman in 2018 in the UK was 38.1. It was 27.2 in 1968.
Marriage of course is just one measure and is affected by many factors. So too is the related field of child birth. This is also decreasing in the UK. Despite an uptick in 2012 and in 2021, overall the total fertility rate of the UK has slowly reduced from 2.93 children per woman in 1964 to 1.58 children per woman in 2020.
There are a great many complex reasons for this of course. But in the midst of them, surely has to be a large contributing factor from the change in gender roles for women?
Being a mother and a wife and being dependant on a husband was a role that was rejected steadily since the 1960’s. Women now don’t want this. They want to be financially independent and have the option to participate in the economy and workforce exactly as men do. Marriage therefore means something else in today’s world to most women.
Whether I, or anyone else thinks this is a good thing or a bad thing overall, actually does not really matter a damn. I’m not taking a position here at all on whether I think this is a good thing or a bad thing. It just is.
The vast majority of women are not going to accept undoing this and return back to how things were pre 1964. Most mothers and fathers don’t want this for their daughters either.
No matter how many videos traditionalists may release extolling the virtues of traditional society structures and pointing out flaws in where we are now, we simply cannot turn back? It just won’t work.
And so it isn’t even practically POSSIBLE to implement a roll back as traditionalists would like?
The changes to women’s gender roles have been made. It’s done.
My conclusion is that, rather than constantly looking for a way back, or lamenting a lost world, we need to be looking at how we get out of the spot we are in? We have to find a way forward from where we are, not constantly talking about where we were.
People are, of course, entirely able to express their own views and opinions and say whatever they want.
I just wish that there were more men supporting different options for the future for us?
Perhaps spending more time highlighting the under representment of men in certain fields of work and proactively pushing to get those numbers corrected? Supporting each other with struggles directly. Encouraging expression, compassion and brotherhood? Coming up with better suggestions for what men should do and be, rather than endlessly posting about lifting weights, fighting and the 100 different ways you need to be a stoic disposable provider to your wife or girlfriend.
Simply put, the genie is out of the bottle. It isn’t going back in.
And rather than spend our time trying to find a way to do that, we’ve got to find a way to live with it now its out.
https://workingfamilies.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/UK_MFI_2018_Long_Report_A4_UK.pdf
https://www.statista.com/statistics/621325/marital-status-in-england-and-wales/