Men Suck

Here at Trying! HQ, we prefer not to state the obvious. If you readers are going to invest your time and your money in these essays, we feel that the insights and reportage you find here should feel fresh. Even if they are perhaps a little creaky and ripe, they should be wearing new clothes, as it were. But sometimes, the old verities deserve to be trotted out in the threadbare, if comfortable, outfits in which we know them best. And so, today, men. They suck.

I bring you this revelation via The New York Times’ Jessica “Can’t Spell Gross” Grose, whose Saturday morning newsletter began with a rundown of Companion, the “sex robot murder comedy” (a phrase I may need to write about later this week), then brought out a slew of studies about how women in these United States feel about men and marriage:

On top of that, Grose notes, other studies show that women bear the brunt of maintaining social relationships within marriage, and that the financial benefits that marriage once brought young women have been vanishing as the pay gap between younger men and women has narrowed. In short, marrying a man has never looked worse for women, nor less necessary.

And while Grose concludes that not all men want fembots they can control, it’s my responsibility as Trying!’s resident Cynic to point out that while that may be technically true, more and more men (if not yet most) want exactly that: women who will do what they say. We see this everywhere, from the tradwife movement to the demotion of Usha Vance from up-and-coming corporate lawyer to mom and immigrant fashion plate. The bros pushing crypto and fascism don’t seem particularly interested in doing chores, perhaps because they’re following in the footsteps of their hero Elon Musk, whose skills as a partner and father have earned him three divorces and the ire of his trans daughter. The men who are in power now, and who are waging a sexist culture war on the rest of us, and who are recruiting to their cause horny, greedy young men (which is, I’m guessing, 80% of young American men), seem unlikely to change young women’s view of men, partnership, and marriage. Those men, whether they’re self-declared incels or just your run-of-the-mill tech-lord wannabes and date-rapists, will continue to terrify most women, who will prefer to remain single rather than face the prospect of life with these jerks.

Look, I don’t know why I’m even bothering to say all this. You know it already, and it’s not like any incels-on-the-cusp or crypto bros are reading this reasonably high-quality newsletter for philosophical insights on how to live better lives. But sometimes I just have to say them, so we have something out there that we can refer to, to agree on.

Still, all of this weighs on my mind, largely because of Ann Friedman’s excellent weekly newsletter. The most recent edition began with what sounded like an intriguing plea:

I clicked, of course, expecting a few simple multiple-choice questions. Instead I got:

1. How do you define masculinity?

2. Who are your masculine role models? (They don't have to be famous people!) Bonus Q: Why?

3. What do you like about being a man (or, a masculine person)?

4. What do you dislike about being a man (or, a masculine person)?

5. Is there a book/article/film/tv show that represents your masculinity? (Could be a character or a description, anything that made you feel seen.) 

To be clear, those are all top-notch questions. But um, like, how much time do you have for the answers, Ann Friedman? Time for, I don’t know, maybe 2,000 to 3,000 words in response to each of those?

Frankly, this is a nightmare scenario for me, because I won’t be able to get any of those questions out of my head until they’re answered, but I’m so conflicted about every single idea they cover that I can barely even get started. So let’s get started on the first one:

How do I define masculinity? Can we just switch that to “Do I define masculinity?” Because I’d rather not: Any definition feels like torture, binding me with centuries of inherited images and stories, needling me from every side by political interests both radical and reactionary, gagging me on my own inability to commit to a path, drowning me under a lifetime of failures and contradictions. From the outside, I guess, I look like a normalish 50-year-old man. Balding head. Crap mustache. Just under 5-foot-7, down an inch or so from 30 years ago. Generally trim, with the occasional visible muscle in the warmer months (and the occasionally visible belly in the colder ones). I wear jeans most of the time, and a lot of black, white, gray, and indigo clothing—even the pink T-shirt I’ve got on right now isn’t very flashy. I’m a goddamn paragon of Caucasian heteronormativity.

But did I choose any of that apart from the mustache? Am I trying to show off some concept of what I think a man should be—what I think masculinity is? Oh god, does anyone really think this [waves hands at body, room, life] is what I was going for?

No, no, no: This is me doing the best I could with what I was given—and maybe, honestly, not even the best I could. Maybe not even a B+/A-. This is camouflage, an image crafted to allow me to survive in a world where everyone else has (or seems to have) a rock-solid definition of masculinity in their heads. It’s a head-to-toe costume of myself that conceals, well, nothing at all. There’s no secret inner me dying to break free and, I don’t know, show off my dazzling colors. The inner me is right here on this page, in these words, a million light-years from any sense of a body, a face, a gendered presentation, a mustachioed attitude. I mean, obviously, some of that is in there, in here—I’ve existed for half a century as a cishet guy, and that leaves its scars—but the last thing I want to do is come up with some spurious definition that no one needs. All these notions do is make us—which is to say me—unhappy.

But fine, I will, just because this is yet another thing that I need to get out and onto the screen. My definition of masculinity? Masculinity is a trap. Worse, it’s a trap in which we ensnare not only those foolhardy enough to believe our definitions but ourselves as well: Reacting to everything we’ve ever been taught, we create expectations and obligations—whether traditional or newfangled—that we can never live up to, no matter how hard we try.

The only way to escape that trap is not to set it in the first place. Do not define masculinity or femininity, for yourself or for anyone else. Live your life, be who you want, and allow me to do the same. It’s hard out here for all of us without yet another set of strictures, some of the oldest in human civilization, limiting our freedom of expression. The sooner we dump these ideas, the sooner that men—specifically, the men who suck—can realize they just don’t have to be like that. 🪨🪨🪨

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