It's Hard Out There for the Boys

I intend to raise my son to honorable manhood. To respect others. To be a pillar of his community. I only hope that’s enough.

A conversation I had with a female colleague after the Super Bowl has been on my mind lately.

We were discussing the NFL’s “FLAG 50” ad aimed at making girl’s flag football a varsity sport across the country. The spot is the you-go-girl content that seems almost ubiquitous these days: boorish men belittle a female athlete, female athlete destroys them on the field, girls rule men drool.

I made the point that I was getting a little tired of these girlboss ads. The ad is fighting a phantom; no authority figure would discriminate against women on the basis of their sex.

Many would clamor for women to join their teams, boards, and businesses to show off their diversity credentials, and there exist a plethora of perks exclusively for women including scholarships and special shout-outs for female owned businesses.

My colleague very much disagreed, arguing that it’s still much easier for the boys than the girls and, by the way, girlboss is offensive.

I bring this up because of a new Netflix series called Adolescence, which follows a young boy who murders his female classmate after being drawn into so-called manosphere forums.

The series takes place in the U.K. and has already spawned several government-level conversations on how to combat “toxic influencers” and “incel culture” poisoning the minds of the nation’s men.

Parliament’s solution to the supposed scourge of misogynistic voices like Andrew Tate, a name that actually appears in Adolescence’s script, is to show the program in British classrooms as an educational tool. Some MPs have decided that schools should force boys to sit through anti-misogyny seminars to really drill down on how bad such influencers are.

These efforts are destined to fail because they fundamentally don’t understand the appeal of individuals like Tate and the manosphere as a whole. Tate et all are abhorrent, but they’re not entirely off the mark on the struggles facing young boys.

Boys are falling behind at school. Men are more likely to die doing the most dangerous jobs in society. Issues that disproportionately affect men like suicide are often framed by how they impact women.

And when these issues are brought up, the response tends to be one of scorn and not understanding. Men had it so good for so long, most CEOs are men, male privilege yada yada yada.

Is it any shock then that young men, ignored by an increasing feminized social order, are flocking to the only people who seem to give a shit about their problems?

Everywhere else they’re either told to shut up because they're privileged or given woke platitudes about dismantling their patriarchal advantages and toxic masculinity. Neither of these offers a real solution towards the brewing disconnect and indignation that young boys face. In their own ways, both blame men for their issues and tell them to figure it out for themselves.

Consider dating. Mainstream progressive ideology is hostile towards straight men and demonizes the often awkward forays into romance many young boys face. Speaking personally, I absolutely made embarrassing advances on girls when I was first looking to date.

But that’s part of the process in growing up; you fuck up and then you get better. Now boys are told that their perfectly understandable want for love and companionship are entitled and wrong. And each screw-up can be caught on camera and shared with the whole school or posted online.

Tate, by contrast, tells these boys he understands their struggles. He offers them advice. He tells them their failures aren’t entirely their fault and blames external forces. Unfortunately, this frequently devolves into anti-woman rhetoric, but the key point is he’s listening to them when no one else will.

The solution to the crisis facing young men isn’t to churn out pro-male propaganda in the same vein as the NFL’s girlboss ads. But part of the solution is to stop the relentless demonization of men simply for being men.

As I sit at my desk writing this, I think of my young son. He’s just a baby now, but one day he’ll grow up and face these challenges, too. Will the world continue to paint him as a monster simply because of his sex?

I’m not hopeful. The politicians and activists driving this narrative seem too far gone to consider that maybe the gender pendulum has swung too far.

But I intend to raise my son to honorable manhood. To respect others. To be a pillar of his community. To be a good man, just as my father taught me, and his father before him.

Andrew Tate will not be his role model.

I only hope that’s enough.