I agree with the premise that defining one’s gender as “what the other gender doesn’t/can’t do” is limiting and will inevitably conflict as said other gender makes gains, but I disagree that this is an aspect of capitalism.

History is chock full of men bemoaning the current state of manhood and how modern (whatever age that is) man is actually modern woman, regardless of whether they barter, bow to a king, or buy stocks.

In the 18th century, men (like George Washington) wore make-up, frilly clothes, fancy wigs and stockings. Why do they hate our founders so much?

I overall liked the article, but feel the ending failed and it doesn’t do any better at finding a solution than the Yang article it talks about.

Like many such pronouncements, Yang’s argument supposes that male identity is effectively served up at a cultural condiment bar. Wounded and hostile men can simply order up different core elements of their identities, now that the undifferentiated forces of gender affiliation are granting permission for them to cry, to go to therapy, and have feelings. In lieu of adopting Yang’s model of masculinity as a glorified college elective, many young men gravitate toward Shapiro and Peterson’s masculinist politics of all-purpose cultural affront.

The article then goes on the end basically the same thing…

It’s admittedly hard to envision such a thing in a culture-war discourse so heavily invested in the idea of imperiled maleness, but a good place to start might be a frank acknowledgment of how much of this peril is self-imposed among gender-anxious men. Indeed, pace Reeves and Yang, boys and men in America are not all right—not because women are outearning them or outperforming them in some mythic sphere of gender fluidity. No, American boys and men are suffering because an American culture that outlines how to perform manliness following a solitary, stoic script of violent self-assertion is ruinous. If men relieve themselves from shackles of masochism and chauvinism anchored in this gendered ideology, they might learn that the most crucial role we could play in society is to free ourselves from this fundamentally unrewarding and self-harming image of ourselves

cool, but as mentioned the men that need to hear it won’t be doing that, so it isn’t actually a solution.

this article’s kinda glossing over everything it’s saying. claim after claim with little pausing to explain or cite. I dont know if they meant to say it but they did at least accidentally imply women are being given too much power. And then they quickly move on from that as if it’s a natural given. And some mess talking about economics, and then giving a school shooting as an example that never references economics in any way. They’re kinda just throwing fancy sounding terms haphazardly.

What masculinity crisis?

Oh. Another long winded, pretentious diatribe on how the right can’t accept modernism and capitalism caused it all. Jesus fuck get new material.