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Using Research to Push a Narrative
October 03, 2024
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Using Research to Push a Narrative

There’s a noticeable trend in research about men and women that often tells only part of the story. A prime example is domestic violence studies that falsely claim women are the sole victims, while ignoring men’s experiences. This happens in other areas too—like reproductive coercion, teen violence, healthcare, and others. Women’s troubles are spotlighted, while men’s are overlooked. Once you see this pattern, it’s hard to unsee it.

In this post, we’ll look at a study published in July of 2024, that employs a similar strategy—not by lying, but by omission. The researchers present only the part of the story that supports the narrative they want to push. And in this case, it’s clear.

___________________________

I came across a media article about boys and threats to their masculinity. From the picture below that  accompanies the article, I anticipated some dramatic findings on violence or hostility. 

 

The research claimed to investigate adolescent boys' responses to threats to their masculinity. Here's a quick summary of the study:

The study was simple. 207 boys, ages 10-14, were given two quizzes—one on stereotypically feminine topics like flowers, makeup, and dresses, and one on masculine topics like tools, guns, and cars. Regardless of their actual scores, the control group was told they had scored high on the masculine test and were congratulated. The boys in the experimental group, however, were told they scored well on the feminine quiz but poorly on the masculine one. In other words, they were told they were more like the girls—meant as a threat to their masculinity. The boys then took a third quiz, a word completion test designed to measure their level of aggression. The parents took a series of questionnaires to assess their parenting.

The researchers aimed to see if this perceived threat would spark aggression. (One might also ask if the boy's aggression might be sparked simply because they were lied to. After all, they probably were well aware that they knew more about guns and cars than makeup and dresses.)

This type of response has been studied before and has been identified as "threat vigilance," a common reaction to status threats among men and boys, often linked to testosterone levels. Studies show that when a male's status is challenged, he is more likely than a female to respond aggressively, partly due to higher testosterone. However, prepubescent boys typically don't display this aggression, as they have not yet reached the higher testosterone stage of life. Curiously, despite examining what appears to be this same phenomenon, the study in question makes no mention of the previous research about threat vigilance. As we will later discover, the researcher was aware of this concept but chose not to include it in the study.

The media article I first read didn't mention threat vigilance or even mention testosterone, though it's a key factor in this type of research. Thinking I might have missed something, I searched for other articles on the study and found many—but still, no mention of testosterone in any of the articles.

What I did find were media portrayals showing angry, hostile boys, even though the researchers themselves didn’t claim the boys were violent.

 

Here's a quote that appeared in many of the articles: “Beyond just aggression, manhood threats are associated with a wide variety of negative, antisocial behaviors, such as sexism, homophobia, political bigotry, and even anti-environmentalism,” said the researcher, Adam Stanaland. Wait, what? How did we jump from threats to status to sexism, homophobia, political bigotry, and even anti-environmentalism? This felt like a massive leap, though it's worth noting the researchers didn’t directly say boys were violent. It seems the media exaggerated that part as seen in the photos, and I doubt the researchers did much to correct it.

Somewhat confused about this, I decided to find the actual study and read it. Testosterone was mentioned—once—in the limitations section, suggesting that future studies could explore its role. This made no sense, given that existing research clearly links testosterone to threat vigilance and status defense. This puzzled me and I was determined to find out what was going on so I wrote to the researcher with some questions.  He got right back to me and we carried on a conversation.  He was a very nice fellow and I do appreciate his initially taking the time to field my questions.  The sense I got was that he was interested in pushing the "it's all about socialization" ideas.  I looked  up his history and his graduate work was done at Duke University and he was a member of the Duke "Identity and Diversity Lab" for 5 years. The name says it all.  I think my assumptions were pretty close.  He was likely to follow the ideas that socialization is the most critical element of human development.  

 

When I asked him, "Isn't threat vigilance related to testosterone levels?" he responded: “Basal testosterone and aggression are certainly related, but here our focus was figuring out whether a social mechanism (i.e., typicality/masculinity threat) could also cause aggression among adolescent boys (as it does among men), as well as when/why.”

In other words, he didn’t answer the question.  He acknowledged the biological link but chose to focus only on the social aspect. To me, this is like studying a car engine but only looking at the spark plug and ignoring fuel, air, and combustion. A well-rounded study would acknowledge that both testosterone (biological) and socialization play important roles. Omitting one side feels like an intentional way to push a narrative.

I asked the researcher again if he was aware of studies showing testosterone’s role in threat vigilance, and he responded: “Yes, I’m familiar with the complex role between testosterone, threat vigilance, status-seeking, and aggression. My previous explanation was all to say that there is definitely a biological component to aggression, but our results provide evidence that there is also a notable social component.”

Basically, he’s saying, "Yes, testosterone matters, but we’re focusing on the social side." And that’s how narratives are built, by telling only a part of the story. Unfortunately, this study—like many others—implies that boys could be “fixed” if only they were taught to be less aggressive when their masculinity is threatened. But this ignores the biological factor. Once boys hit puberty, higher testosterone levels biologically predispose them to defend their status. Yet, this crucial piece of information is left out of the conversation.

Puberty

The study focused on 10-14 year old males from pre-puberty through mid- and late-puberty stages. The researchers made several statements that highlighted their views on puberty, including this one:

"We contend that puberty represents a developmental shift in boys' psychological relationship with societal definitions of their gender."

The researchers acknowledged that puberty is an important factor in these behaviors, but what does puberty primarily signal? It highlights the increase in testosterone levels in young males. However, the researchers never mention testosterone. Instead, they describe puberty like this:

"We contend that puberty represents a developmental shift in boys' psychological relationship with societal definitions of their gender. Puberty causes boys to recognize themselves—their bodies, their relationships, and so forth—as being adult-like, which means they must now contend with newly discovered societal expectations of manhood: a precarious status that is earned, can be lost, and is only regained by conforming to rigid norms, such as aggression."

Their interpretation suggests that boys, upon recognizing their maturing bodies, must now face "societal prescriptions about manhood." The focus here is entirely on socialization, asserting that boys must conform to rigid societal norms. There's no mention of testosterone—it's all framed around societal pressures, leaving biological factors out of the discussion entirely.

The Word Completion Test

Another issue I had with this study was their method of measuring aggression: a word completion test. The boys were asked to fill in blanks like "GU_" (which could be "gum" or "gun") and "_UNCH" (which could be "punch" or "lunch"). The number of aggressive words chosen supposedly indicated their level of aggression.  I find it hard to believe this test accurately measures aggression, but the researcher assured me it had been validated in other studies.  It seems to me that they are taking a cognitive response and then expecting that cognition to predict an actual behavior.  Seems wonky to me.  I was fairly new to the word completion tests and poked around a bit and found that there is considerable controversy about this.  As there should be. 

I continue to think this is a very weak indicator but the study got magazines to print pics like this based on choosing gun rather than gum:

 
 

These pictures, like the other pictures in this post, imply not only aggressiveness but hostility.  Seems like a jump to me.  There is a big difference between aggressively defending your status, which is what threat vigilance does, and overt hostility or violence.  Looks like they are trying to imply the later.  But this is what the media wants.  Give them some research that shows the men and boys are aggressive and they will put violence on the front page.  Whatever happened to the word assertive which is similar to aggressive?  I think assertive might be a better word for men defending their status.  Their defense in some cases might get aggressive but the norm might be simply responding to the challenge in a strong, rational, and assertive manner.

The Sample 

The sample used in the study also raised some questions. Nearly 90% of the parents involved were mothers, and more than two-thirds were single parents. This is far above the national average for single-parent households, which hovers around 20-25%. Research shows that boys raised by single mothers are more likely to exhibit aggression, yet the study doesn’t address how this may have influenced the findings.

"Regarding the parents themselves, 87.4% identified as women (mothers) and 12.6% were men (fathers). Most parents were the sole primary caretaker of the participant (68.6%) or shared caretaking responsibilities equally with another person (30.0%)." 

I asked the researcher about the chances of a biased sample due to the large number of single mothers and here is what he said:

"I’m not sure that it’s fair to say that our sample comprising a majority of mothers is "strong indication that [we] had a biased sample.” Research has shown that although dads are more involved now in their child’s caregiving than they used to be, moms are still vastly overrepresented (hyperlink) as the child’s primary caretaker. It makes sense, then, that our sample would comprise more mothers than fathers—i.e., it’s representative and not biased (in fact, a sample with half mothers and half fathers would be biased against the reality of parenting in the U.S.)." 

Maybe so, but he doesn't address the over-abundance of single mothers in the sample and how that is far from the norm for parenthood in the US today. I  specifically pointed out the single mothers issue and he simply avoided it and focused on mothers doing the majority of child care.  The link he provided was not about single mothers, it seemed to be about two parent families.  If he had 87% mothers in his sample and they were all from two parent families, then that would be a different story.  But that was not the case.  It was 87% mothers and 2/3rds single parents.  This tells us that it is likely most of those mothers were single parents.  A predominance of single mothers should be a red flag, but not in his view.  Could the excess of single mothers have had an impact on the findings?  I do wonder.

Framing Parents as the Problem

One key takeaway from the study was that boys from conservative, less wealthy families with parents teaching “hegemonic masculinity” were more aggressive in response to the threat. The tool used to assess this was the Male Role Norms Inventory, which includes statements like these:

  • Men should know how to fix cars.

  • Men should be physically tough.

  • It would be awful if a man enjoyed dressing like a woman.

  • A man should be able to fix most things around the house.

  • A man should always be the boss.

  • Men should lead their household.

  • A man should always be ready for sex.

If the parents score high on this questionnaire they are assumed to be teaching their boys to be "hegemonic".  Hegemonic is seen as something bad. It's meant to say that men are controlling and dominant.   It comes from the writing of R. Connell who some time ago became a transwoman.  Many academics seem to find Conell's book as the essential word in Masculinities. The parts I have read seem highly anti-male.  Connell's book brought a great deal of change into the research on men where many of his ideas were unceremoniously and artificially planted into studies like in the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI).  I did a report on the CMNI and the very suspect manner that it was developed with a focus on how Connell's ideas magically appeared.  You can see that one here.

The researchers seemed to focus on the parental pressure (hegemonic attitudes) as being a prime motivator for the boy's aggressive responses.  They titled that variable pressured motivation (PM).  When reading the media articles it seemed that this parental pressure was being portrayed as being a large part of the reasons for the aggressive responses. This would lend credence to the idea that boys could be fixed if parents would just stop teaching them to be hegemonic males.  But wait a minute.  The PM variable (parental pressure) when paired with the threat variable (the word completion test) only had a significance score of p=.835.  Usually a score of .05 or below is considered to be significant so this one was far off the mark.  But they also had a variable that indicated the Degree of Puberty for the Boys (PDS) which showed that the only boys to appear aggressive in response to the word completion were boys who were in mid to late puberty.  When that PDS variable was paired with the threat variable (the word completion test) it came up with a score of p=.095.  Still not considered significant but surely more significant than the parental pressure variable.  When both the PM and the PDS were paired with the threat variable, voila!  They get a significance of <.001. 

Simply put, the data suggest that puberty (and its associated changes) has a stronger influence on the boys' aggression than social pressure alone.  This reinforces the idea that biological factors, like testosterone, may be important drivers for these aggressive responses, even if the study didn’t say so directly.

If puberty is so closely linked to aggression, and testosterone is one of the primary hormones behind puberty, doesn’t it stand to reason that testosterone might be a key factor? The fact that the puberty variable shows a stronger effect than pressured motivation only strengthens the argument that the biological side of adolescence is critical here.

 

One does tend to wonder if defending one’s status as a male is such a bad thing as it is being portrayed in this research.  There are some good reasons for it.  Men are reinforced and rewarded for independence and for their ability to protect.  Being seen as independent and able to protect is a part of the male hierarchy. But in a highly gynocentric atmosphere these once highly valued traits are framed in a negative manner. If you think about it, maybe the boys who failed to defend their status are actually the ones who need help?  

Conclusion

In the end,  I never got answers to all my questions. It’s been a month and a half since the researcher stopped responding, but I’m left thinking this study was designed to push a particular narrative, one that minimizes biological factors and highlights social ones. This leaves people pushed towards the narrative that boys can be fixed (and be more like the girls) if only the parents and the culture would stop teaching them to be aggressive.

It’s true that research often focuses on a specific, narrow aspect of psychology. I’ve read many studies that follow this pattern. However, in those studies, there was always a section that reviewed previous research on the topic and acknowledged earlier work in the field. This study, unfortunately, did not do that at all.

But there’s something important that can be gleaned from this study that even the researchers missed: pre-puberty boys didn’t respond aggressively to threats to their masculinity. This strongly suggests that puberty—and by extension, testosterone—is key to understanding these behaviors. Yet testosterone was never discussed in any meaningful way.

Just as an engine needs both a spark and fuel to run, adolescent boys’ aggressive responses to threats to their masculinity likely involve both social triggers and biological factors like testosterone. By including both in the analysis, we can move beyond a one-dimensional explanation and start to understand the complex interplay of factors that drive behavior during this critical period of development.

In the end, it’s not just about what makes the engine run — it’s about understanding all the components that come together to make it work smoothly. And when it comes to adolescence, testosterone is a big part of that equation.

Men Are Good

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July 14, 2025
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Why Men Struggle to Stand Together
How competition, culture, and gynocentrism keep men from standing together

It’s no secret that men and women are different—but one of the lesser-known differences, and one of the most socially consequential, is found in how each sex relates to their own group.

Women consistently show strong in-group bias. They support each other socially, emotionally, and politically. They instinctively identify with the struggles of other women. This solidarity forms the backbone of movements, activism, academic departments, and public policy. When a woman sees another woman being mistreated, her response is often immediate: “That could’ve been me.”

Men, by contrast, tend to show weaker and more conditional in-group bias. Their loyalty to other men is context-dependent, usually tied to shared purpose or external threat. A man will stand with another man on the battlefield, on the job site, or on the basketball court—but outside of those types of goal-oriented bonds, that sense of male unity often fades.

Why is that?

Part of it is biological and evolutionary. For men, life has always been a mix of coalition and competition. Throughout history, men had to work together in tribes or hunting parties—but within those groups, they also competed for rank, dominance, and access to mates. That means male bonding has always existed alongside male rivalry. The result? Male loyalty is real, but fragile.

Even today, many men see other men as rivals first, allies second. If another man struggles—loses his job, breaks down emotionally, or gets mistreated in a custody battle—he may not get support. He may get silence. Or worse, blame. Because in the male psyche, weakness often reads as threat. It disrupts the unspoken expectation that men must be strong, self-reliant, and in control. In male hierarchies, weakness can be seen as a liability—something that drags down the group or exposes it to risk. And for many men, seeing another man suffer can stir up buried shame or fear about their own vulnerabilities, leading them to distance themselves rather than lean in. It’s not cruelty—it’s biology and conditioning.

This fragile in-group bias creates a massive hurdle for any effort to advocate for men. Men’s rights movements, fatherhood initiatives, male mental health campaigns—they all struggle not just because society ignores them, but because men themselves often fail to show up for one another. And this problem isn’t just internal. It’s magnified by something even larger: gynocentrism.


Gynocentrism: The Cultural Blind Spot

Gynocentrism is the cultural tendency to prioritize women’s needs, feelings, and safety—often at the expense of men. It’s not just a personal bias; it’s institutional, ideological, and deeply embedded in our narratives about right and wrong. From early childhood, boys are taught to protect girls, to defer to their emotions, and to take responsibility for female wellbeing. “Never hit a girl.” “Be a gentleman.” “Sacrifice for your wife.” These messages, ​no matter how well-meaning, train boys to associate virtue with serving women. They are rarely taught to protect or serve each other. This conditioning only deepens with age. In politics, education, and media, men gain status by defending women—not by defending men. A man who speaks up for women is seen as noble and progressive. A man who speaks up for men is seen as angry, bitter, or fragile—even by other men.

In a gynocentric culture—where women’s needs are prioritized and viewed through a moral lens—advocating for women is seen as virtuous, while advocating for men is viewed with suspicion or hostility.

🟣
 

“Women’s advocacy is empathy”

When women advocate for women (or when men advocate for women), the culture responds with compassion, validation, and support. It’s framed as morally good, emotionally sincere, and socially necessary. Example: “We need to hear women’s voices.” “Support women’s mental health.” “Believe women.”

“Men’s advocacy is grievance”

When men advocate for men, it’s often framed as whining, resentment, or a push to reclaim lost power. Instead of evoking empathy, it triggers defensiveness, mockery, or accusations of misogyny. Example: “Why are you complaining?” “This sounds like toxic masculinity in disguise.” “You just want to take us back to the 1950s.”

Say the phrases out loud “We need to hear men’s voices“ or maybe “Believe men.“ Can you feel the difference?

⚖️
 

So the double bind is:

  • Women can talk about their pain and gain moral authority.

  • Men talk about their pain and risk losing moral credibility.


    In other words:

    If you advocate for women, you’re seen as compassionate.
    If you advocate for men, you’re seen as angry.

    That’s the trap—the double bind—created by gynocentrism. So male in-group bias—already fragile—is further fractured by gynocentric incentives.


The Costs of Division

This has enormous consequences.

When a man is falsely accused, other men don’t rally to his defense—they distance themselves.

When a father loses access to his children, he’s often blamed rather than supported.

When men talk about depression or suicide, they’re often met with discomfort, not compassion.

Meanwhile, female solidarity flourishes. Women have entire university departments, legal protections, and billion-dollar initiatives devoted to their advancement. And they have what men lack: a deep, culturally accepted instinct to care for each other.

The result is a lopsided world: female pain is collectivized and acted upon; male pain is individualized and ignored. It should now be obvious that working as a men’s advocate, a fatherhood proponent, or in any male-focused cause is an uphill battle—while those promoting women’s causes are coasting downhill with cultural tailwinds, institutional funding, and moral permission at their backs.

 

Rebuilding Male Solidarity

If men are to thrive—not just as individuals, but as a group—they must begin to reclaim something long buried: a sense of mutual loyalty. A belief that other men are not your enemy. That another man’s pain is not a sign of his failure, but of a culture that has failed us all.

This doesn’t mean abandoning competition or suppressing masculine traits. It means building solidarity around them. Men’s greatest strength has always been in what they can do together—on the battlefield, in a brotherhood, on a team. The challenge now is to transfer that loyalty into emotional and cultural arenas, where men are bleeding quietly in the shadows.

Men don’t need to become women to support each other. They just need to recognize that being on the same team means protecting the players who are getting crushed—by courts, by culture, by silence.

Male pain is real. Male sacrifice is real. Male disposability is real.

But male brotherhood can be real too—if we decide to make it so.

Men Are Good

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July 08, 2025
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The Right Length to Reach the Floor: Why Being Offended Matters


At a White House Christmas party, President Abraham Lincoln was mingling with guests, exchanging laughter and good cheer. He came upon a group that included a woman known for her biting tongue. Looking at Lincoln’s tall frame, she quipped, “President Lincoln, don’t you find your legs are far too long?”

Without missing a beat, Lincoln smiled and replied, “No, madam, I have always found them jus the right length to reach the floor.”

The crowd laughed, the moment passed, and the party went on. But in that brief exchange, Lincoln showed something important: there are many ways to respond to offense—and one of the best is humor.


Being Offended Is Part of Growing Up

We tend to treat offense today as a kind of harm. But in truth, being offended is part of life—and even more, it’s part of maturity. Boys in particular seem to intuit this. Watch a group of young males and you’ll see it play out: teasing, poking, sarcasm, verbal sparring. It’s not (usually) meant to hurt—it’s meant to test.

And those tests serve a purpose.

When a boy is told he’s stupid, or too slow, or mocked for his hair or clothes, he learns to respond. He might crack a joke. He might sharpen his wit. He might challenge the premise with logic or brush it off with a shrug. What he’s doing is learning to handle adversity—on his feet and with others watching.

It’s practice for the world.


The Skills Boys Learn Through Being Offended

  • Humor – defusing tension, maintaining dignity

  • Repartee – learning to think and speak quickly

  • Logic – pointing out flaws in the jab

  • Grace – choosing to let it slide

  • Strength – not needing validation to hold his ground

These are not small things. They’re the building blocks of workplace confidence, relational resilience, and emotional independence.


The Cultural Shift: A World Where Offense Is Forbidden

But we now live in a time where being offended is treated as a kind of assault—especially if the offended belongs to a “protected group.” Entire institutions—from universities to HR departments—have adopted the idea that certain people must not be offended, and if they are, someone else must be punished.

But what happens when a group is shielded from offense?

They may never learn to develop the inner muscles that others do. They may never build the grace, wit, or confidence that comes from surviving discomfort. Like the body that withers in the absence of challenge, their maturity is stalled.

In the name of protection, we end up infantilizing them.


The Asymmetry of Offense

Let’s be honest: not everyone gets the same protection. Boys and men are fair game. So are Christians. So are people with dissenting views on political, medical, or cultural issues. These groups are expected—often required—to endure offense without complaint.

Meanwhile, others—especially women, certain minority groups, and favored ideological stances—are shielded from offense. The rules shift depending on who’s talking and who’s listening. But one thing is clear: there is a deep asymmetry in how offense is allowed and punished.

This disparity starts early.

Boys are more likely to be offended because they’re less protected. In fact, they often grow up in environments where ridicule, teasing, and verbal jousting are common—and not discouraged. In contrast, girls are more likely to be shielded from offense. Schools, parents, and media tend to be quicker to intervene when girls are targeted. The result? Boys get toughened. Girls get guarded.

Some call this compassion. But what if it’s something else? What if we’re unknowingly denying girls a chance to build the same emotional endurance we demand of boys?

This has serious implications.

Being offended, and learning how to respond constructively, builds the skill set necessary for leadership. Leaders must take criticism, navigate hostility, and remain calm under pressure. That doesn't come naturally—it comes from experience.

So if we raise boys to expect offense and learn to handle it—but raise girls to expect protection and institutional outrage on their behalf—we shouldn't be surprised if more boys grow into leaders. They’ve been trained for conflict, while girls may have been trained to avoid it.

And here’s the twist: when we limit offending women, we may also be limiting their capacity to lead.

This isn’t about discouraging kindness. It’s about understanding that discomfort is the engine of maturity. If we teach one group to handle offense and deny another that chance, we create a lopsided playing field—not by talent, but by tolerance.

We also send a subtle but damaging message: this group is strong enough to be offended, but that group isn’t. That’s not respect. That’s condescension.


“Offense becomes a weapon, not a wound.”

Traditionally, being offended was understood as a personal emotional response. Someone says something, you feel hurt, insulted, or challenged—it’s unpleasant, maybe painful. A wound. But it’s something you deal with, like Lincoln did, through humor, logic, or resilience.

But in today’s culture, offense is often treated not as an emotional experience, but as a moral accusation.

Now, when someone says, “I’m offended,” they’re not just saying, “That hurt my feelings.” They’re saying:
“You’ve done something wrong, and I now have the right to punish you.”

  • Careers are destroyed over tweets.

  • Public apologies are demanded for misstatements, jokes, or even factual claims.

  • Institutions overreact, fearing backlash—not because harm was caused, but because someone claimed harm was felt.

This turns offense into a strategic tool—a weapon to silence disagreement, gain status, or assert dominance. And here’s the deeper truth: this behavior often stems from an inability to respond maturely to the offending message. When someone lacks the internal tools—humor, logic, composure—they may externalize the discomfort instead. Rather than engaging the message, they attack the messenger.

The more ruthlessly someone wields this strategy, the more power they acquire in certain environments—media, academia, HR departments, online culture. And the more others scramble to appease them.

Society begins to bend not to the wise or the strong, but to the emotionally volatile. This doesn’t promote dignity or equality. It promotes fragility and fear.


Real Maturity: Offense and Reciprocity

True equality means that everyone has:

  • The right to offend

  • The duty to withstand offense

Lincoln didn’t file a complaint. He didn’t lecture the woman. He made a joke and moved on. That’s what strength looks like.


Conclusion: Offense as an Opportunity

When we forbid offense, we shut down an ancient and necessary process. Human beings grow not by being protected from all discomfort, but by facing it and finding a way through.

Let’s stop pretending that offense is violence. It’s not. It’s a signal, a chance, a test. And if we meet it well—like Lincoln did—we just might reach the floor with our dignity intact.

Men Are Good.

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July 06, 2025
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NYTimes Article Men Where Have You Gone? Two Men Respond


I recently read a New York Times article by Rachel Drucker titled “Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back.” The subtitle reads: “So many men have retreated from intimacy, hiding behind firewalls, filters and curated personas, dabbling and scrolling. We miss you.”

In the article, Drucker shares a personal story about meeting a man named James online. Things started off well—but then James disappeared. From there, she explores her ideas of why so many men seem to be withdrawing from relationships and intimacy.

Here’s a link to the article if you’d like to take a look:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/style/modern-love-men-where-have-you-gone-please-come-back.html

I wanted to share two responses to the article—both from men, and both striking in their own way. One is by Jim Nuzzo, my favorite researcher, and the other is by Paul Nathanson, co-author of the most comprehensive and fascinating series ever written on misandry.

Enjoy the creativity—and insight—of men!

First a tweet from Jim Nuzzo.

 

https://x.com/JamesLNuzzo/status/1940296998072226262

Next, a written response from Paul Nathanson that I saw on a mutual mailing list. I think it captures this woman’s ignorance of men and our present situation very well:



This article makes me angry. For many years, I have tried to foster inter-sexual dialogue, a project that seems like utopian science-fiction for the time being. With that in mind, I read the author’s discussion of one woman’s deceptive plea for men to “come back.”

Rachel Drucker claims to understand what drives men away from women. “I get it,” she says. But she clearly doesn’t. Otherwise, she’d be “interrogating” women instead of complaining about men. Listen, I’m a gay man. I’ve never played mating games with women and have no personal stake at all in the rules—old or new. But even as an outsider—or maybe for that very reason—I can see the depressing reality that’s becoming more and more obvious to straight men. It’s true that many men, at least in the most articulate and influential circles, are withdrawing from women. But that’s mainly because women have already withdrawn from men. And no one who reads the Times does so without being aware of its historical and cultural context. For half a century, these women have made it clear that they, as a class, consider men the inferiors of women at best and the evil oppressors of women at worst. In other words, they have indulged publicly in subtle condescension at best—this article being one example—and open contempt or revenge at worst. Consider an article, both famous and infamous, for the Washington Post. In it, Suzanna Danuta Walters openly abandons the most basic moral principle of all by asking, “Why Can’t We Hate Men?” (8 June 2018).

Okay, maybe many men are unaware of what’s going on. They’ve never actually read feminist denunciations of marriage as legalized prostitution, for instance, or as legalized rape. (According to feminist theorists such as Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, women are incapable of consenting to the sexual advances of men due to the “eroticization of power,” which supposedly makes women capable of sexual arousal only in the patriarchal context of submission to rape.) But most men are indeed aware by now that women have organized themselves politically as enemies of men, at least of those men who don’t convert to feminism (and not even those men deserve redemption according to the woke version of feminism). This hostility is as obvious in the relatively safe context of casual entertainment, moreover, as it is in the riskier contexts of friendships or “relationships” with women. Why would any reasonably healthy man be willing to put up with the lurking possibility of incessant complaining, relentless insinuating or implacable ranting? Enough already.

Explaining the current state of affairs is one thing, and recommending an alternative is something else. I’m not advocating the position of either Men Going Their Own Way (who have reasonable grounds for fearing entanglement with women despite the high cost to themselves) or the “incels” (who cannot attract women and therefore have unreasonable grounds for hostility toward women). I mention all this for two reasons. First, men and women are biologically programmed to unite not only for purely reproductive reasons but also for childrearing purposes. Because no society can endure the estrangement of men and women, reciprocity lies at the heart of any social contract. Second, human existence would be meaningless and unendurable without at least the hope of moving beyond cynicism toward altruism. Striving for reconciliation between any groups in conflict is also, therefore, a moral imperative.

Some women really do “get it” by now. Janice Fiamengo sure does, for example, and she’s not alone. Being explicitly anti-feminist, though, they have a long road ahead. I doubt that I’ll live long enough to see the dawn of genuine inter-sexual dialogue, but I’ll do anything that I can to join them in that effort.

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Thank you Paul and James! Men Are Good!

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