This I agree with, young men need guidance. Clear messaging, good roll models, a clearly defined place within an equality based system. I think those things exist but there has been a failure to get that message out to young men versus the loud bray of the “manosphere” and the suppression of dissent from the religious/conservative/old money power.
Cross post with NormalDan so I’ll respond to his post here:
I agree. From reading this thread I have a better understanding of what Galloway is proposing. We do a poor job of defining what a good human is and we have failed at recognizing that a shift away from patriarchy to equality leaves a void for young men and boys. Take away all the cowboys and what’s a young boy with a horse and a rope to do.
There are biologic differences maturing males and females that causes traits and behaviors to manifest (heh) differently. Those differences aren’t universal but are significant enough that ignoring them is just as wrong as claiming they are universal. Allowing or even encouraging a young boy that feels strong and protective to be strong and protective in a good way is positive. I think this is were individualism is key. Be the best person, man, that you can be and don’t demand everyone else conform to your choice.
This seems like a secondary point though. The primary point is that young men aren’t getting to the starting line as many give up and follow a path that ties their self worth to the internet. Focusing on “being a man” is a bit of a clickbait headline and alternative to that.
Does Galloway define the rest accurately? It’s going to piss off both the feminists and MAGA as it sits somewhere in the middle. Avoiding the extremes is usually a safe place to start.
Good post. One thing I would add to this that relates back to US politics is the point that Democrats need to be more willing to talk about something like this. They have been silent thinking the safe place to be is to avoid saying something that the liberal extreme will be upset about. That’s a problem with the Democrats on many topics - immigration is another and why they get accused of supporting open borders. There needs to be space to talk about these issues without going to the opposite end of the spectrum.
I think the crux of it is the need to actually define what a virtuous man is. Saying a virtuous man is a virtuous human who is a man is a circular definition.
This gets back to my point, marketing targets vulnerability. the internet is an addictive marketing box. Young men are targeted because they are easy marks for the gaming industry and the manosphere. It is a less profitable road to use online means to grow better men as you are driving your audience away.
What is a virtuous human? America has two completely opposed views of what humanity is vying for control of society. One assumes humans are equal with universal virtues the other assumes two sets of virtues, the rules for thee not for me crowd.
If we define a set of virtues for all humans. Are there special other virtues that say I am a man? I don’t see it. In a fantasy example where all humans agree on a set of virtues and all people are virtuous men’s actions may be clustered in a few virtues and be sparsely distributed in others. Are those virtues manly due to the clustering? No they are universal virtues, defining them as manly implies those men in the sparsely populated virtues are less manly.
In other words. To say something is manly implies the opposite of that something is not manly.
To be athletic is manly, to be unathletic is unmanly. That’s fine.
I think this is where our core disagreement is, you’d abolish the notion of gendered virtues entirely. I think that’s nbd for mature adults but is damaging to teenagers and young adults looking for identity.
Only at extremes. Unless you’re trying to be hurtful I think women would generally just be described as womanly and men as manly. Men can be more or less manly and women more or less womanly. If a woman is athletic that’s great. If she’s a bodybuilder I might quietly think she’s a bit manly.
Maybe we need to define this, maybe we don’t. The issue I see is there is a (recent) historical definition that has sort of broken down, so young men just checked out after a few tries at meeting that historical definition and failing.
If you go back far enough, being a man meant being able to hunt for the family’s next meal. At some point that became irrelevant, so being a man took on something new and different, but that still checked some boxes as far as being a provider of resources and stability for a family unit. Money became the focus for 200 years. Now, money is less important when women can fill that role, so it is changing again.
How we end up defining it looks different but will check those same fundamental boxes. Galloway’s message is for young men to step up their game and figure it out, along with providing some suggestions that transcend the ages. That’s really not that different from what a role model might do in a situation. Trying to be the exact same thing that made dad successful is rarely the answer, but translating that into core principles is the important part.
I find the word “virtue” to be pretty annoying, and I think it’s distracting from this conversation.
There is only one virtue and it is love. (Or, if you’re more Dawkinsy, it is increasing utility.) Being good is about helping others. Nothing else.
Other virtues – beauty, strength, wisdom, fortitude, courage, etc. have no moral component. They are actually forms of power (or d&d stats). You can use them for good or evil or nothing. We want that power for ourselves, and we want that power in our mates. It is a symbol of fitness in a darwinian sense. It is sexiness.
The problem is that we don’t choose what traits our mates find sexy. They don’t choose either. The traits just are. Different individuals find different things sexy, but only to a degree. If you want a mate, you need to have some traits that your potential partners find sexy. So we (most of us anyway) take on a role that involves increasing those traits while also trying to be a good person… And the tricky part is when our mates change their minds, about what they want, or what they offer.
I think this illustrates part of the difficulty in answering this question.
Suppose virtues are dispositions that help us achieve excellence in being according to an external standard. Manly virtues will help a man be what a man should be. (Incidentally I largely agree with your comment about love as the main virtue.)
This is a conservative viewpoint. The external standard is supplied by God, or maybe nature. There is a liberal suspicion of this that it is not authentic because it is external. A person must find authenticity within, not in some external standard.
After this liberal criticism, what is left of being a “good man” as distinct from being a “good person”? Something that resembles the economic market, apparently. The “external standard” becomes the market place. The question becomes: how does a man “add value” and be worth a mate? But i think this is dehumanizing. I think the question must be asked in the first, conservative way. This probably explains why more liberal people are in a poor position to try to answer it.
Sounds to me as if his definition is "Masculinity = “A male having sex – consensually – with someone else.”
OK, that is an interesting start. Now, that means there another person (or a group) deciding on the masculinity of a person. Most of the time, that means women.
So, are women causing the problem? To conservatives, yes (IMO), so beat them down, also minorities to shallow the pool a little more. To the rest of society? No. Be a better person. Work harder to be more sexually attractive. Broaden your reach, which means outside your mom’s basement.
Now, did we, as a society, tamp down sexual drive in droves of boys and young men over the past few decades? Eh. Might be something in the food and the air and the water. Conservatives don’t want to consider that. Easier to blame “the other side” in order to gain and/or keep power.
I’m not sure if this is a reasonable claim. One of the claims I hear about kids today is that they are heavily over scheduled with all sorts of activities. You’d think they’d have a few options between teachers, coaches, group leaders, etc.
Looking at my own nephews, I wonder if a bigger issue is distracted parenting where parents are too busy playing on their phones to direct kids towards stuff.
Maybe this is an aside, but I think that claim about being over scheduled is way overblown. It probably true about a very small subset of rich white kids and so their rich white parents write about it in the national media and the issue gets over discussed.
Kids with places to go and things to do are less likely to zone out on their phones or do other misery inducing things simply because of lack of time.
I guess over scheduling is supposed to be bad because kids are supposed to have time to free roam around then neighborhood with their friends. That’s a nice thought, but 95% of America and probably 99% of places that are affordable to live, is completely car-dependent.
Getting anywhere, be it the rec center, the library, or a mall, is like a huge ordeal, trekking across infrastructure that is made for cars traveling 50 MPH.
So you pick your poison. My poison is driving the kids to the rec center on weekends for various classes taught by teen girls who may or may not know what they’re doing while I read a book. Because the alternative is being at home and trying to come up with non screen ways to entertain them. The scheduling is sanity saving.
I think the problem here is not really that young men need a role model, but rather they want a role model. Or really, they want someone who will tell them how to get laid.
But for some reason, the only guys able to sell that advice are overwhelmingly MAGA and misogynistic.
We have an increasingly consumer relationship with sex. Sure, men in particular have always paid for sex. However, pervasive porn has taken this to new levels.
And AI seems to offer the perfect “woman” who exists exactly to satisfy the consumer who creates her. Teen boys have always imagined female students naked, but now AI can do it for them.
Finally, polyamory seems to be in the national consciousness. I don’t pretend to know what it means to everybody, but it’s a good guess what it means to teens and young men: the potential for a consumer style conveyor belt of women.
It does not surprise me that many, or most, men would not be successful if they are looking for a product rather than a person. Some will succeed of course.
The misogynists do have an obvious advantage. Which is nobody wants to be told they are to blame for their own failings. Or that they vaguely need to “try harder.” That’s not an acceptable solution for any other ethnicity. And on an individual level you might be talking to someone who is already trying. So, like, of course they are going to blame women.
That said, it doesn’t take an anti-vaxxer to tell you to do lots of pushups, get off the internet, and buy a chick a beer.