When “Helping Men” Comes With a Hidden Asterisk
A new article in the American Psychological Association’s Monitor magazine, titled “Rethinking Masculinity to Build Healthier Outcomes,” looks, at first glance, like progress. The author, Efua Andoh, highlights many of the crises men’s advocates have been warning about for decades: higher male suicide rates, educational decline, loneliness, and the massive toll of economic insecurity. It’s a relief to see mainstream psychology finally acknowledge that men and boys are struggling.
But as you read on, a familiar pattern emerges. The compassion is there — but it’s conditional. The sympathy comes wrapped in ideology.
And beneath the glossy language of “healthier masculinities” runs an unmistakable undercurrent of misandry.
The Frame: Men’s Problems as Men’s Faults
The piece centers on the claim that men’s suffering largely stems from their “rigid gender norms.” This “man box,” we’re told, traps men in emotional stoicism, dominance, and self-reliance — all of which supposedly lead to loneliness and self-destruction. The solution, according to the experts quoted, is to “deconstruct masculinity” or “redefine” it in more emotionally expressive, prosocial terms.
But this framing quietly does something damaging: it pathologizes masculinity itself. It treats male distress not as the product of a culture that devalues men but as a symptom of how men behave.
Nowhere does the article mention the broader social neglect of men — the fatherlessness epidemic, male-biased education systems, family-court disparities, or the stigmatization of male vulnerability. These aren’t small oversights. They’re central to understanding why men feel adrift. Yet in this “rethink masculinity” framework, male pain is repackaged as a self-inflicted wound.
That’s not empathy. That’s therapy-speak misandry.
The Experts: One View Allowed
Most of the voices quoted — Smiler, Wong, Addis, Hoffmann, and others — belong to the same ideological circle that helped craft the APA’s Div 51 2018 Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men. Those guidelines were widely criticized for implying that “traditional masculinity” is inherently harmful.
There are other scholars — Mark Kiselica, John Barry, Warren Farrell, and countless clinicians who’ve spent careers understanding men’s psychology from a balanced, non-ideological perspective — who see things differently. They view masculine strengths such as stoicism, protection, and risk-taking as potentially healthy traits that can be used for good when understood in context.
And she briefly mentions Kiselica and Englar-Carlson’s Positive Psychology/Positive Masculinity Model but then swiftly pivots back to “deconstruction” — the view that masculinity itself should be dismantled as an identity.
Imagine telling any other group that the path to healing begins with dissolving their sense of self.
The Language: Gentle Words, Sharp Edges
The article’s tone is polished, inclusive, and sprinkled with compassion. Yet phrases like “manosphere,” “hostility toward women,” and “hypermasculinity” reframe large numbers of men as potential threats rather than people in need of understanding.
This rhetorical move — concern on the surface, suspicion underneath — has become the default stance of establishment psychology toward men. The message to boys is: “We care about your pain — as long as you agree it’s your fault.”
It’s hard to imagine a less effective therapeutic approach.
The Core Problem
The crisis in male well-being is real and urgent. Men are dying younger, lonelier, and more disconnected than ever. Yet when institutions like the APA approach that crisis through a feminist lens, they end up moralizing it rather than understanding it.
The truth is simpler: most men’s struggles are not caused by being “too masculine.” They’re caused by a culture that no longer values what men naturally offer. When men’s roles as protectors, builders, and providers are dismissed as relics, when their achievements are mocked as privilege, and when their emotional pain is politicized, men withdraw — not because of “toxic norms,” but because they no longer feel welcome.
That’s not pathology. That’s heartbreak.
What a Genuinely Male-Friendly Psychology Would Do
A psychology that truly helps men would start with respect, not suspicion. It would recognize the adaptive strengths of masculine behavior — courage, duty, persistence, loyalty — and build from there. It would invite men to heal without demanding that they surrender their identity in the process.
It would also take seriously the biological realities that shape male psychology. Research has long shown that testosterone — so often caricatured as the hormone of aggression — is in fact primarily linked to status-seeking and social hierarchy navigation. Men’s drive to compete, to achieve, and to earn respect among other men arises from this deep biological impulse. Far from being pathological, this striving for status underlies much of men’s cooperation, innovation, and willingness to shoulder responsibility within male hierarchies.
When understood through this lens, many so-called “problem behaviors” make sense as expressions of an ancient human drive to contribute, excel, and be valued by one’s peers. A healthy psychology of men would not shame this drive but would help men channel it toward purpose, service, and integrity — recognizing that status, when earned honorably, is not vanity but meaning.
And it would acknowledge that masculinity, like femininity, is not a pathology to fix but a deep and necessary part of human wholeness.
“Rethinking Masculinity” claims to offer compassion. But what it really offers is conditional acceptance — a quiet insinuation that men will be worthy of empathy only after they stop being who they are.
That isn’t progress. It’s the same old prejudice, just with better PR.
Men Are Good
