The Masculinity $cam
It’s no crisis. It’s a hustle, spread for profit by promoters and used to fuel Trump’s culture war. Men aren’t broken. We’re evolving to meet a modern world, and redefining ourselves on our own terms.
These days, I find myself constantly, endlessly being psychoanalyzed. Well, not me personally, but men in general. And as a guy with three sons and two grandsons, the issue hits home.
In today’s polarized climate, the very idea of masculinity—the simple fact of being a man—has become the subject of endless books, scientific papers, and media op-eds telling us what’s wrong with us and how we need to change. In the last week alone, two New York Times articles explored this fetid idea.
One asked why, when she went out to eat, she didn’t see more men sitting with women at restaurants. The second sought to understand why men no longer read novels. First of all, the writers explored their ideas in upscale Manhattan, a world unto itself. And secondly, neither is particularly true, at least not in the way they were presented, or in the bottom-line conclusions drawn.
I could go into why on each, but why take the time? The Times has always been the paper of Manhattan intellectuals wrapped up in their own unique lifestyles, and I can live with that. But what I find particularly disturbing is how this onslaught of psycho-babble has been weaponized in the soul-sucking, politics-based culture wars increasingly upending our nation.
The left sees “toxic masculinity” in the right’s rigid gender norms, its “father knows best” nostalgia, and almost any display of aggression or authority. The right blames “emasculation by liberal elites” for everything from mental health struggles to falling birthrates, basically for anything that doesn’t end in a touchdown or a tax cut for the suffering millionaires and billionaires they so love.
Meanwhile, the men in the middle—the ones who aren’t particularly ideological, who just want to care for their families and enjoy their lives —are caught in the crossfire, targeted as potential converts to be bribed with beer ads and macho sports talk, or coaxed into culture war allegiance with appeals to their patriotism, their victimhood, or their desperate longing for a culture now long gone.
The frightening bottom line here: American men are losing their ability to define themselves, the central tenet of our God-given humanity.
Let’s be clear here: There isn’t a masculinity crisis. I know too many good men to believe such a thing exists. It’s just one more marketing strategy, with therapists, authors, newspaper columnists, politicians, and podcasters all cashing in as the coastal elites anxiously clutch their pearls in, and insecure men elsewhere clutch their guns.
For wont of a better way to describe it, let’s think of this as the “masculinity scam,” just one more engineered crisis designed to empty our pockets and nail down our political support. Heck, if he weren’t so busy taking advantage of it, Trump would call it “fake news.”
I’m not going to define “masculinity” here. I can’t, there is no one definition. It’s defined by how each of us lives our lives.
I get it. We’re in a time of transition, particularly for white men in America. Throughout history, societies have held men as superior to women, giving them more rights and more standing. But now, things are changing quickly. Women are earning more college degrees, holding more leadership positions, and asserting more influence in public and private life. Immigrants of color are reshaping the workforce and the electorate.
Meanwhile, too many men —white men, in particular — are measuring themselves against outdated yardsticks, expecting the world to reward muscle, stoicism, and dominance in the same way it once did, when we were hunters in the wild. And it’s so much easier to grouse about these changes online than to compete in a real world that seems to be changing by the minute.
That’s what the so-called “manosphere,” the catchall label for the digital spaces where male grievances fester and metastasize, is all about.
Enter Donald Trump …
What began as a mix of fitness tips, sports and entertainment talk, dating advice, and self-help jargon hardened over the last few years into something more doctrinaire and more dangerous.
Instead of helping men navigate a changing world, this online culture—strengthened by the algorithms that shape social media—offers them a prefab identity and an easy solution: be more macho, trust no one, and vote for Trump, the ultimate macho man.
Once online, these new “influencers,” as we now call them, discovered that the more outrageous they became, the more views they racked up. And of course, the more views they racked up, the more money they made. Masculine anxiety, they quickly realized, was a revenue stream. The ads alone tell the story: testosterone boosters, online gambling, crypto get-rich-quick schemes, tactical gear, “alpha mindset” masterclasses, and MAGA merchandise.
What makes this digital universe so insidious is how easily accessible it is. All you need is a smartphone. It uses sports, gossip, and guy-talk to ease men into politics and grievance. And it preys on young men caught in the churn of modern life, those left behind by shuttered factories, priced out of college, or spinning their wheels in dead-end jobs.
These sites have been around since the early 2010s, but the rise of Donald Trump as a political force gave them a new center of gravity. In Trump, they found a man who spoke not of sacrifice or responsibility, but of domination, comeback, and punishment, a man who never apologized, never backed down, never reflected for a moment about how important he was to the world.
He was a walking middle finger to every teacher, therapist, boss, or woman who ever lorded over their followers or cut them loose. There’s no “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country” anymore. Now it’s: They tried to screw you. Screw them first. Elect Donald Trump.
The manosphere didn’t just boost Trump. In many ways, it helped to cultivate the worldview that made his second term possible. It trained a generation of young men to see the world as a rigged game, their failures as someone else’s fault, and masculinity as something to be wielded like a weapon. In Trump, they didn’t just find a candidate, they found a champion.
And the message they carried was pure rocket fuel for the algorithms that run modern social media. A lonely or frustrated young man might search YouTube for tips on dating or confidence, or even his favorite sports team. What he gets, increasingly, is a firehose of commentary and discussions that reframe his struggles as proof of a vast societal betrayal.
And yes, perhaps more than any other factor, this helped elect Donald Trump in 2024. White men overall backed Trump by a 20‑point margin, with much of this support coming from those without college degrees, a demographic steeped in online culture and often invisible to mainstream political outreach.
While Democrats focused on reproductive rights and student debt, Trump’s campaign fed a sense of betrayal, humiliation, and revenge, the core emotional currencies of the manosphere. The message is seductive because it reframes pain as power. And unlike therapy or traditional self-help, it offers a clear-cut mythos: there are heroes, and there are villains.
Masculine Recovery
Right-wing influencers like Andrew Tate—a former kickboxer turned social media provocateur with more than 10 million followers on X—peddle “masculine recovery” as a rebellion against what they frame as a soft, feminized, globalist culture that punishes strength and rewards submission.
He’s not alone. Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist with nearly 8.6 million YouTube subscribers, preaches a return to “order,” traditional gender roles, and anti-woke values. Meanwhile, podcasts like Fresh & Fit reach over 1.5 million YouTube subscribers by mixing fitness, finance, and hardcore misogyny.
“Is there a crisis of masculinity? I think there's really a lot of evidence that many men are suffering,” sociologist Michael Kimmel said in a 2023 CBC radio interview. “The question for me is: are men suffering because women are succeeding, or are they suffering because they've inherited an ideology of masculinity that no longer works for them the way it did for their grandfathers?”
The data backs him up. Men are dropping out of the workforce in greater numbers, addiction rates are rising, and they’re three times more likely to die by suicide than women. In the 21st century, masculinity isn’t a stable identity. It’s a product for sale. And for Trump and MAGA America, it’s a grievance waiting to be weaponized.
So what’s a man to do? First of all, let’s stop letting other people define us. Just ignore them. We’re not victims of women, or immigrants, or “wokeness.” We’re living through a time of profound transition. And yes, the easy road for white men is starting to slide away.
That’s not oppression, it’s a simple reality.
And, honestly, I don’t want my three sons or my grandkids to retreat from that. I want them to compete, to be able to adapt as times change. I want them to define manhood for themselves, not through anger or fear or online posturing, but through purpose and the quiet, steady work of showing up, standing tall, competing when they need to, and in the end, choosing on their own who they want to be.
Think about it: If we don’t define manhood for ourselves, someone else will. That’s the goal of the far-right shock troops online, and it’s how our masculinity is constantly, endlessly being marketed, becoming little more than a quick-hit profit center.
Not in my house, but how about yours? What do you think?