Galloway suggests that the previous denial of the problem, especially by the political left, might even have put Donald Trump back in the White House. “Let me offer that the reason we elected [him] is because of struggling with men.” Two groups that pivoted hardest towards Trump in 2024, he says, were young men, and women aged 45 to 64, and “my thesis is that’s the mothers of young men.” While Trump embraced the manosphere, the Democrats championed the interests of virtually every special interest group except young men, he argues.
Well I think it was important to start the thread. It’s a taboo subject but I think it needs to be addressed because I think it had a nontrivial role in getting Trump elected and also because of the potential for violence and social unrest in the near future.
I think it is accurate to say that our Glorious Leader’s campaigning in the manosphere, and the reaction of the Dems’ attempt to embrace inclusivity were a significant element of his electoral success.
I think that referring to a “masculinity crisis” connotes something overhyped / insufficiently nuanced to reflect an arguably objective interpretation of reality.
I think that a challenge in attempting to move society towards a more inclusive/diverse basis, there is a perception of those in previously-advantaged demographics as being disadvantaged, and managing those perceptions through the transition is an extremely difficult challenge that doesn’t work well in a polarized environment where everything must seemingly be black/white or them/us.
I think there are some individuals for whom it is good to be guided by some traditional stereotypes of masculinity. However, I think it is extremely harmful to expect that every person who was born with a penis should embrace those stereotypes.
I mean I can relate. When I was a kid, trusted adults in my life told me wildly inaccurate, old-timey things about how to attract a partner and then I had to later discard all that and figure out how to adapt to changing societal norms. It really made me resent those authority figures later on for having lied to me so I can see where a lot of the rage is coming from.
I think Scott Galloway is talking about something fundamentally different, and I think he might be on to something important.
We have spend the last few decades trying to raise up the status of “not men” to be equals in society. Progress has been made as women, minorities, and other groups have closed the gap between the financial achievements between them and white men. This is a good thing.
But something unintended is happening. Women historically chose partners that provided them (financial) security, and men chose partners based on their physical qualities (fertility). By giving women the ability to provide their own financial security, this has disrupted the natural sorting that happened in the mating. Security (financial) has become less important for women, and women are competing for a smaller share of men that can extend their security, and check the boxes on looks (6ft+). The result is a large share of young men simply can’t attract a partner.
Galloway will argue that this male will give up, isolate, and find extremism through social media, because that is what lonely young men do, and social media companies know this, and target them specifically through their algorithms.
Women apparently don’t go down these rabbit holes, and with their self obtained security, are content with being single. They don’t remove themselves from society, they just find something else to focus on. Mating is less important to them than it is for men.
This all makes a lot of sense in what you see with that overhyped masculinity bullshit from the right. They are just trying to solve this problem, thinking this will make men more marketable and able to find mates in spite of this system enabled by the left. You don’t need to believe a single thing about anything else in politics, if you are a young, singple, male, than to be pulled in to this. Or, for the mothers of the lonely you men, searching for something that will help.
I tend to think this is the problem. Our society has become more individualist and isolated over the last 50 years. Men tend to be isolated than women in my experience.
Also, in my experience, a man has trouble finding a woman because he is an emotional wreck, not because he does not make enough money. If this would have been different a couple generations ago, it’s because the woman would have needed him to provide for her. But this is not the same as not being able to provide enough now.
Certainly true when you get to the individual level, but men that are emotional trainwrecks have always existed.
At the societal level, we may now have more of these men that exist in the dating pool that combined with the lower security they could provide is no longer meeting marketable thresholds. And since they can’t qualify for even a first date with anyone, there is no learning mechanism to get out of the hole.
I had a close friend in high school. He was a smart good looking guy, but just awkward enough that dating was a challenge. Spent a lot of time in his early 20s cruising Stormfront forums. First marriage lasted a few months where his wife just took all the money and sent it off to a family member. He eventually moved away and found friends offline through hiking in Colorado, but to this day he will still spout off some weird stuff on Facebook and is all in on MAGA.
I suppose what galloway is describing feels pretty spot on with seeing that.
The thing that is new today is social media. Behavior no longer has a self correcting mechanism when men now simply drop out of the process and attach themselves to this narrative of anger and resentment that they find online.
Patriarchy made life for men easier, finding a woman is easier when every woman is told she is incomplete without a husband, finding a job and getting a promotion is easier when the majority of the population cannot hold jobs based on sex/ethnicity/religion.
An increase in equality weakens the patriarchy and thus makes it harder for men.
A large cohort of young men, primarily those raised in environments that cling to the traditional patriarchy, are unable to compete.
How I see the exploitation.
It is as easy as hell to sell “it’s not you, it’s them” versus “you need to change.”
Social media provides a deeper, wider, and more individualized reach for marketing than was previously available.
Social media also provides a significant profitable return if you can reach and hold an audience.
Anger and negative emotions bind individuals to a group better than acceptance and contentment.
Young men struggling with the changes in society are prime for exploitation using the above.
Notes:
“the natural sorting that happened in the mating” Should be “the traditional sorting that happened in mating.”
“Mating is less important to them than it is for men.” Why? If women are content as single why aren’t men?
I think MAGA exploits easy marks associated with changing social norms by using hyperexaggerated messaging of what was traditional norms. Hypermasculinity with men as masters, hyperchristianity, hypermilitarism, etc. Men fall for the “men as masters” line as it’s easier than working at being equal.
I challenge this. It may have been easier, or perhaps, maybe how to find a woman was just better understood. Having a job was basic step 1. Now, that job needs to exceed what the woman can provide on her own. Just throwing people into random matches, 50% will fail the test.
This is true of social media, and it happens with MAGA on social media, but I think we should be careful about conflating those things. The MAGA winners are outcomes rather than conscious abusers of these left behind males.
Right now, Republicans are the only option that is even close to recognizing there is a problem. Democrats just tell men they need to change. Galloway is getting attention because he is saying these things out loud, and they sound controversial to the side that has been unwilling to acknowledge the consequences that enabling women has led to.
How we choose to address the problem remains important. MAGA offers only what has worked in the past. They will continue to win elections as long as young men isolate and their mothers watch in despair.
Note: I am not arguing that MAGA has this right in their “solution” - just that a healthy step 1 needs to be to recognize the problem and not continue to hide from this because of a fear that it might “upset progress”. Democrats do the same thing on immigration - since we should be accepting people of all colors, that means we can’t ever talk about negatives that integrating people from various backgrounds might cause. These things will continue to happen and right now, one side offers hyper-everything as a solution, and the other is hyper silent about it.
This reminds me of the struggle that a lot of the refugees fleeing communist countries have when settling down in a capitalist country. The idea of having to apply for a job on the basis of your skill set and facing the possibility of rejection and homelessness is an extremely foreign concept to them.
In a communist country, you can be the most inept person and still be entitled to a job and place of residence, allocated to you by the government. It may be the shittiest job and apartment ever, but you’ll still have one and you have a place in society.
In a capitalist county, you are not entitled to those things at all. You have to prove your worth which, although obvious to those raised in the USA, is an extremely difficult concept to grasp for someone raised under communism. Many of them wind up on welfare because that’s what they know.
For us Americans on the other hand, it takes an entire decade of formal education and exposure to capitalist society to barely be qualified for a job at McDonald’s, so knowing the ropes on how to live life here isn’t as straightforward as it seems.
Concerning masculinity - there are parallels to the sense of being entitled to a relationship. I don’t think our society has come to grips yet to the reality that many (most?) pre-1950s marriages were based out of financial necessity and not love, and many women simply put up with unhappiness until they had the financial means to leave those marriages and live life on their own terms. Not being able to use their financial leverage to secure a relationship is a big blow to males who are accustomed to that way of life.
For men who are raised in progressive environments and have 20 years+ to modern ways of thinking, this comes as a no shit sherlock revelation, but to those who aren’t, it’s a big shock and not easy to adjust to so they just drop out of society or fall prey to the manosphere.
I’m not sure that this was always supposed to be the story though. The existence of the welfare state must show that it was not the whole story, at least.
I see the story (true or false) as more one of meritocracy. Work harder and have more material wealth. Of course, this did not extend to some minority groups.
I do think that the US seems to have turned more towards libertarianism in the 1980s. Now people explicitly wonder whether immigrants “pay for themselves”.
I think we are paying for that turn. Incorporation into larger communities strengthens individualism, while autonomy taken to its limits weakens individualism as much as communism does. They both seem to meet “around the bend” in authoritarianism.
I think the connection to marriage is this: love in marriage does not fit into the categories of need and choice. But, in my opinion, as a human being you cannot fully love a partner without giving up autonomy. Note that this should strengthen you as an individual; clearly in the 1950s, this did not always happen due to rigid gender roles, which makes that an unhealthy loss of autonomy.
Yes, and no. Yes, women now realize they have choices. If anything, I’d argue the “tough, masculine, 6ft+” male cohort and its subsets have more issues attracting women because women can choose someone who truly connects with them on other stuff, or choose not to have a spouse / significant other at all, as you later mention.
I’m not sure there’s a general decrease in masculinity [except in how some people want it defined in the traditional sense]. I do buy that masculinity isn’t pushed at every turn like it was in the 50s and 60s, and maybe even into the 70s, so there’s a [strong] perception that masculinity is on the decrease. How much of that is tied to female empowerment vs. how much is decrease in manufacturing jobs that traditionally signaled masculinity and financial security vs. other things, I’ll leave to sociologists to discuss.
Do I think it would be a good thing to go back to the days of the 50s and 60s with muscle cars screeching down streets, guys carrying switchblades to look tough, settling every disagreement with a fistfight, and all the other things typically equated with “being really masculine?” No, just like I don’t think we need to go back to the 1890s and people are working in sweatshops or on farms with oxen-pulled plows, women are barefoot in the kitchen popping out 10, 12, 15+ kids where at least a couple never make it past a few months and a few others don’t make it past a few years, and guys are falling over dead of heart attacks and strokes at age 48 leaving women to figure out how to care with the surviving 9-12 kids. But, that’s what some people in this country want to go back to because that’s back when men were men, that was a manly time, we need more manly energy today, stand up men and fight for your rightful place again, and their voices are louder than others and way too many people get peer-pressured to fall in line with it.
I have sympathy for men and their loneliness. I wonder if my sons will have a hard time finding love.
But what’s the answer? Everything I’ve heard from these lonely men puts the onus on women to fix this for them. Some even go so far as to call dating in today’s world eugenics against men; there’s so much hatred for women because they won’t sleep with them. Ultimately, regression seems to be the only option for many of these people, and my sympathy stops there.
I guess the point is less about what is masculine and what roles men should play, and more that there has been two disruptive changes that have coincided: 1) the empowerment of women and 2) social media that has exploited the resentment that has caused for profit.
Whether Trump and MAGA are exploiting this or simply rose to power because of it might be noteworthy as we should likely expect this to continue until the problem works it’s way through.
Meanwhile, having a large resentful male population has not historically been great for democracy. Ignoring it completely until it goes away seems dangerous.
Back in the day, sometime in history, men stopped hunting, picked up tools, and started building things to sell. I’m sure many men were left behind then, and complained that they were no longer respected.
Key difference is back then they talked to another guy and they figured out a solution. Today, that guy is in his basement complaining to another guy online with the same problems and concluding it’s a problem with women. On a platform that encourages and monetizes their clicks.
At what point can the algorithmic manipulation share in the blame for the shitty outcome?
#1 is a good thing, the other needs to be dealt without giving up the progress that we’ve made. Not sure the right path forward, but regression to the old days is not an option imo.
Agree. The challenge I see with democrats right now is there isn’t a lot of room in the conversation to acknowledge that men have a problem that needs to be addressed. It’s all the guys fault, or someone will assume that that pointing out the problem means they are advocating for reversing that progress. You’ll find plenty negative reactions out there on Galloway’s position.