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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7210 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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So "Into The Manosphere" is a netflix documentary, that im sure many here have heard of.

Here is a video on it that I watched, by a psychiatrist. Although I enjoyed it enough, there is a common sentiment that deserves to critiqued, one that was echoed in the video, that i will simplify with a youtube comment (note: this comment is in response to another comment, the context of which i will be representing by {} brackets):

See, this is what has always genuinely confused me, too.{Why should we be good men? Just be a good person bro?} Why is there so much emphasis on the man part{of male role-modes} (except maybe that's literally part of patriarchy, too)? I didn't grow up thinking about how to be a woman, I grew up thinking about wanting to be a scientist and wanting to travel and be a generally good and mostly happy person. The whole being a woman thing was just something society forced on me that I mostly resented. Just teach people to be good, healthy, functional people.

But a lot of men, including people I genuinely respect and agree with on sociopolitical issues still seem to think there's value in some type of male identity. And maybe there is, but no one has been able to explain it to me. But the need for some kind of masculine identity just seems like insecurity and needing a set of rules to live by from the outside, instead of doing the work of learning to be a whole, messy, beautiful human being.

And don't get me wrong. I think men get confined to a tighter box in terms of acceptable behavior than women, even as that box often comes with higher social standing. Sometimes, I feel really sad for boys that have to grow up in this mess. But also, how hard is it to just learn to be yourself without all the weird, gendered expectations? I'm really very baffled by it all.

I think this gender abolitionist framing is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Men & Women are judged and valued by society differently. Men are valued based on their ability to climb up social hierarchy to obtain status. Women's value is more reflected by their attractiveness, and reproductive capabilities. Masculinity (attempts) to provide useful guidelines and structure to achieve this end. Women simply do not exist in the same space, so their variation of being a role model wouldn't be a good representation of the male position. It would be a kin to a white man trying to be a role model for black boys - the critical social context is not there.

Women don't grow up thinking about how to be woman, because much of what defines femininity is there by default. You are simply born a sexy girl - you simply gestate a fetus - and then give birth to it. There is little to no skill barrier required in comparison.

EDIT: Ok, the above statement was hasty initially. There are some aspects that are require skill in some capacity. Not all women are born pretty butterfly's, you need make up, nails, hair, ect, and this requires skill in its own right. But none the less, i wouldn't say this is equivalent to the skills sets required for Masculinity.

The problem with "being yourself" as so often espoused by liberal types is that, it provides 0 road map to achieving the traits that women (and people in general) value in men. & this is the same general issue I take with the manosphere opponents - Many of these individuals believe completely asinine and reality denying ideas like "Looks don't matter" or "You just need to be a good person to be attractive". The manosphere, for all its misogyny and toxicity, is at least calling out the reality of the situation: If you are poor, fat, and socially inept - as a man, you will be harshly judged and looked down on within our society. This is - arguably - one of the main appeals of the manosphere to begin with. If one really wants to see the manosphere go away - we need to start looking at these realities of life straight to the face. Only then can one begin to provide meaningfully positive alternatives.

I think this gender abolitionist framing is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The problem with the gender abolitionist framing is that when push comes to shove virtually no one actually believes it. There are a lot of culturally contingent ideas about femininity and masculinity and associated gender roles and there's some heated disagreement over how much the behavioral differences between men and women are rooted in biology(/natural order) vs indoctrination, but the number of people who think we should actually get rid of gender distinctions is close to zero. What is passed off as gender abolitionism tends to merely be a rebellion against perceived male supremacism and heteronormativity. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of women like being women. When they chafe against the strictures of womanhood, they're not (generally) saying "I wish I could be a man," they are saying "I wish I didn't have to put up with all this bullshit."

All of which is to say, I don't think hostility to the development of any sort of masculinist/male-specific movement descents from a serious belief in gender abolitionism. Rather, there are two main motives:

a) a zero-sum view of gender relations, under which any sort of men's movement is a problem because men's gain is women's loss and vice versa.

b) the (usually correct) fear that any men's movement or space will rapidly become anti-woman.

However, you can't just come out and say "men shouldn't be allowed to advocate for their interests because they'll inevitably become a threat to women." That sort of gives the game away. Instead the issue is dressed up in gender abolitionist rhetoric wherein men's interest in masculinity is held to be illegitimate/mistaken in and of itself (as illustrated in the quoted excerpt). However, this doesn't get great traction with men because it's transparently one-sided (and also bullshit). You can't make a big deal about the importance of representation for women and then turn around and say it's not important for men.

(There is also the separate reality that modern liberalism is very hands off on the question of what it means to live well, which makes it averse to highly prescriptive social norms. This includes strongly defined gender roles.)

Women don't grow up thinking about how to be woman, because much of what defines femininity is there by default.

I can't speak from firsthand experience due to not being a woman, but from what I can observe and have been told, this is very much not true. Girls have their behavior policed from a young age, and while the framing (and content) may be different across social contexts, the basic idea of needing to learn feminine ('ladylike') behavior and skills is omnipresent. Even in the purely physical domain, feminine beauty is, while helped along to a great degree by genetics, heavily artificial. Often in ways men are hilariously blind to (e.g. many men are comically bad at noticing when women are wearing makeup)

many men are comically bad at noticing when women are wearing makeup

I think this depends on our definition of 'makeup'.

b) the (usually correct) fear that any men's movement or space will rapidly become anti-woman.

Hold up. Men's spaces rapidly become anti-woman? Where is the historical evidence of that? Depending on our definition of 'anti-woman', that is.

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of women like being women. When they chafe against the strictures of womanhood, they're not (generally) saying "I wish I could be a man," they are saying "I wish I didn't have to put up with all this bullshit."

I'd say the basic sentiment/vibe that 'men have it better', that men's lives are easier is and was very much a driving force of feminist activism, which is usually middle-class and suburban.

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