Young men are spoiled: give me $20 mil
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On Friday, David French published his 1,000,000th article about the crisis of the American man. Well let’s back up. His main topic is Democrats’ hilarious $20 million endeavor, “Speaking With American Men: A Strategic Plan.” It’s designed to reach young men online—to “study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality” in male-dominated spaces online (such as video games).”
In other words, the “manosphere.”
French points out that Democrats have it backwards. It’s not politics that draw men into the manosphere, it’s the manosphere—which makes them feel welcome and loved in a cold, harsh world—that makes them prone to embracing the weirdo politics of their favorite writers and podcasters.
The constellation of writers, podcasters and influencers didn’t arise as part of a conscious strategy for seizing political power (though that certainly became part of the program), but rather in response to a genuine void in many young men’s hearts.
French lists the familiar litany of problems that have left men feeling lost in a world in which “the future is female.”
More girls are enrolled in college than boys, and girls have higher G.P.A.s. More boys are suspended from school than girls.
Boys commit suicide at a much higher rate than girls. A higher percentage of boys have mental health problems than girls, and boys are, The Upshot noted, “roughly twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed with A.D.H.D. or autism.”
At the same time, there’s considerable evidence that fatherlessness has a terrible impact on young men. In other words, boys have a desperate need for male role models and mentors.
Enter the manosphere.
Let me tell you about my friend Ali. He’s in the manosphere. In this case the manosphere is the three dudes he shares a tiny shack with that looks like a jail.
One morning when he was 15 his mother sent him to the market in Idlib, Syria. A missile struck; he passed out, but not before seeing burned, charred corpses everywhere.
He woke up in the hospital covered in shrapnel. After a few weeks he got out and decided he needed to be alone. His father, who’d died when Ali was six, had owned a small, broken-down farm. “I went into the wilderness,” Ali tells me.
He bought a few chickens and planted some trees. He spent his days hunting and fishing.
“Before I got injured, I was not afraid,” he says. “After the injury I became a coward.”
I point out that a 15-year-old boy who goes to live in the woods, alone, after a bomb dropped on him, is hardly a coward, but he brushes this off. “No problem. It’s nothing.”
After a few months in the woods he went back home. He had to work to take care of his mother. Also, his sister’s husband had been killed in a missile strike. So he had to take care of her and her three small kids as well.
In his early 20s he began to save to cross from Syria to Turkey and Turkey into Bulgaria. He borrowed money from a cousin. The journey was harrowing and took seven days, during which he ran out of food and developed a horrifying skin condition exacerbated by the heat, humidity and bugs. He drank water from the muddy side of the path.
He’s 26. His “fitness routine” isn’t chugging protein powder and pumping iron, it’s working construction six days a week to pay off his loan and send money to his family. He does not read Jordan Peterson or listen to Joe Rogan. He does not worship the alleged rapist Andrew Tate.
I do not detect a “crisis of masculinity.”
Maybe the problem with US young men isn’t a hostile world (I’d describe the above as a hostile world) it’s entitlement and being spoiled? Maybe pandering to that isn’t worth the $20 million price tag?
I have lots of thoughts on this as a grandmother of a 13 year old boy. His parents limit and supervise his online time. He knows about the manosphere, and so far is not drawn to it at all. His father is a nurse, does all of the cooking and definitely his share of housework. His dad knows his friends, and his teachers. His mom is a very competent and accomplished person. But, when I'm around his friends, I can see a level of privilege that is so much part of the air they breathe that it's assumed that their life should be easy and what they want should be given to them. One friend, whose mother is a cardiologist, makes disparaging comments about women. All of them have trouble working toward goals, and even sports require too much discipline and effort.
Another interesting thing I've noticed about these kids is their class prejudice. They are all upper middle class, and very much look down on boys from working class families - they're not considered cool or fun, and the parents feed into it by saying they're "uncomfortable" with these kids' home and families. A lot of it comes to the surface with birthday parties - the lower income kids can't afford parties at the expensive venues, so they can't be part of the same social milieu.
Recently, grandson has been socially excluded from this group. He doesn't know why, but he's been "iced out." He's hurt and confused. We're all trying to help him through this because it might be at a vulnerable point like this that kids get into some of the toxic online stuff.
Most of the writing on the problems of young men focuses on women, but I wonder how much of it is how they're treated by other men. I've also read that American kids have more competitive and unstable friendships than other cultures because of our form of capitalism, but that's a whole other subject. Sorry for the long post, but I've been reading and thinking about this a lot on a social and personal level.