A New Masculinity

Mark Manson's long essay asking whether there is a universal masculinity, and what men should do now that the old paths to manhood no longer work. His answer is a "post-masculinity": define your own rite of passage and prove yourself through action.

Masculinity is partly cultural

In the pick-up community, Manson learned to be dominant, assertive and boundary-setting, and it worked with women in the US. Then he travelled. In parts of Asia he came across as intimidating; in Russia, Ukraine and Argentina women liked him because he seemed sensitive compared with local men. A behaviour that reads as macho in one place reads as gentle in another.

Assortment theory

Your behaviour attracts people who like that behaviour and repels the rest. Party guys attract party girls, intellectual snobs attract intellectual snobs. When Manson tried being more open and vulnerable back home, he attracted women who valued that, often the same kind of women showing a different side. No single style appeals to everyone. The one near-universal: men are still expected to initiate.

But biology still matters

Men have far more testosterone on average: bigger, stronger, more risk-taking, more driven by sex and achievement. And there's a widespread sense that Western men have lost something in recent generations. So masculinity is part biology, part culture.

Rites of passage

Camille Paglia: a woman simply is, but a man must become, and his manhood is confirmed by other men. Psychologists describe a man's core task as becoming emotionally independent from the comfort of his mother. Anthropologist David Gilmore (Manhood in the Making) found that every culture has some test of manhood: brutal initiations in some, academic pressure or early independence in others. The severity tracks how dangerous the environment is. Harsh, resource-scarce societies need warriors and enforce strict gender roles; safe, abundant ones relax them. (Jared Diamond makes similar arguments about how environment shapes culture.)

The crisis of the Western man

Women now outnumber men at university and in parts of the workforce, and many young men are drifting: single, unemployed, gaming. Manson argues feminism isn't the root cause. Technology freed women from full-time homemaking first, and women's identity crisis came generations earlier. Now the same is happening to men: the stable lifelong career that used to define a man has largely vanished. A man who dutifully works a job he hates, does what he's told and hands over the pay was once a model citizen. Today he's widely seen as stuck. The old rite of passage, being a provider, no longer proves independence.

Post-masculinity

Current answers mostly fail: self-pity, odd men's-movement rituals, women-and-gadgets magazines, and TV anti-heroes like Don Draper and Hank Moody, admired but emotionally broken. Instead Manson proposes:

Keep the traditional masculine strengths (ambition, achievement, leadership, pursuit) without being boxed in by fixed roles.
Create your own rite of passage: build a boat and sail it, publish a novel, volunteer abroad. The common thread is proving your independence through action.
This needs classic masculine traits (courage, skill, drive) and ones men are less used to: self-reflection, emotional awareness, vulnerability, willingness to fail.
As Fight Club puts it, you are not your job or your bank balance.

This may be the first generation of men without a ready-made path. That's a burden, but also a freedom: set your own standard, then surpass it.