Hey there, welcome to That Dang Dad, my name is Phil and tonight…
I’m stepping into The Discourse.
I didn’t want to have to do this (I actually have another script 90% done that I was planning on filming next) but the online left-o-sphere is in shambles right now and there’s only one cure: another guy giving his opinions.
I anticipate a couple different audiences watching this video. If you’re one of my regulars, sit back and relax, you know how I roll. If you’re checking me out for the first time (especially if you’re on the conservative end of the spectrum), here is my request: please watch until the end before you roast me in the comments. I don’t make long videos and I try not to be a jerk on here. So hear me out, feel free to disagree with me, just do me the courtesy of hearing the full point before you demolish me with facts and logic.
Also, I imagine this topic is going to feel REALLY weird for trans men watching. Because, this discussion often treats men and maleness as a monolith, but trans guys have a way different experience of masculinity than cis guys do. Anytime people are arguing about What To Do About The Men, trans men are always an afterthought or even worse, made to feel like they are some kind of spinoff that “doesn’t count” when we talk about The Men.. So, to my trans brothers out there, I don’t know how much of what I want to talk about will speak to your specific experience of masculinity, after all, I’m cis and 95% of the men in my life are too. However, I have plans for you later in the video, so hang in there…
Anyway, enough fiddle-fuckin’ around, let’s get into it.
Recently, a man named Andrew Tate was arrested for allegedy being involved in rape and human trafficking. He has often bragged about allegedy emotionally manipulating women into sex work and several women have come forward to press charges against him.
Unfortunately for the world, Andrew Tate is a big name in what you might call the man-o-sphere, the loose confederation of websites, blogs, video channels, and influencers all centered around men, men’s issues, male empowerment, that kind of thing.
After Tate’s arrest, people were reflecting upon his influence among men, particularly young men in their teens and early 20s. And the question naturally arose: why was his brand so attractive to young guys all around the world? Or, more to point, what can be done about young men getting radicalized by a man-o-sphere that disregards women’s issues, is frequently hostile to queer and disabled people, and is often animated by a smouldering love of violence, often associated with rape threats, death threats, doxxing, harassment campaigns, and even the occasional mass shooting?
And, at least on my side of the internet, two factions began to form:
One faction claimed that men were in crisis, that men’s issues were being ignored, that men felt humiliated and alienated from the social justice-minded left and that we needed to do more to bring them in. We should be addressing the loneliness crisis and the hurtful experience of losing status, we should be creating spaces for men to air their grievances without fear of being ridiculed or being branded a bigot for asking honest questions.
They said that the right-wing man-o-sphere was chock full of guys presenting themselves as male role models here to show you how to be a real man, and that the Left needed their own version with a more positive take on masculinity. In short, this faction claimed the Left was failing men and in so doing, ceding ground for ringt-wingers to come scoop them up with promises of a return to glory.
This faction was met with a vehement backlash from another group that claimed men were not entitled to coddling by the communities they’ve been harming. We live in a patriarchy that centers men’s feelings in everything! This opposing side said that men needed to take responsibility for their own growth and that telling, say, left-wing women that they weren’t doing enough for men was reinforcing the harmful entitlement animating male violence in the first place.
This group said that men’s problems come from capitalism and patriarchy and that the Left should be focused on destroying those systems, not centering men as victims, and certainly not accommodating individual men who make the community feel unsafe because they won’t listen to women, queer people, disabled people, and so on. This group said that the Left didn’t need guys presenting themselves as male role models because men need to learn from lots of sources, not just other men, and besides that, there’s no shortage of left-wing men making content out there.
Well, as someone whose entire channel is named after a, ah, quintessentially male role, I followed this discourse with some interest. As many of you know, I’m also someone who grew up very conservative and believed a lot of harmful things for a long time. I used to be the thing the No Coddle Faction is upset with and I’ve since become the thing the Male Outreach Faction wants to see more of.
So which side am I on?
Would that it were so simple!
I am going to tell you what I believe. But I think it goes without saying, I’m just one guy. I have an extremely narrow experience in the world and there’s a lot of male experiences I can’t speak to:
I didn’t play football, I’ve never been hunting, I’ve never been sexually abused by an older woman and had everyone treat it like sexy mischeif, I’ve never been an Asian man being mistreated on dating sites, I was never a Muslim man living in the wake of 9/11, I was never a gay teen boy kicked out of his house and doing whatever it takes to survive, I was never a Black ten year old boy with a cop holding him at gunpoint.
There is no definitive male experience and I don’t claim I represent even the half of it.
But here’s what I think.
I do believe cisgender men, particularly in the United States, particularly straight men, particularly younger men, are having a tough time. I believe many men are suffering. They’re lonely, they’re struggling financially, the future doesn’t feel like it’s full of promise any more, there are expectations foisted on them that they never opted into, and everyone treats men as if they don’t need any help, as if it’s their job to just suck it up and deal with it.
Do we live in a world built on patriarchy, built on protecting male power, built on protecting male ego? Undisputably. Do we live in a world where men have been the default human for centuries, where things are built for male bodies and organized to maximize male success? Yeah, buddy.
Ironically, I believe this is why many men are suffering.
Because while the system has been built by men and for men, many individual men are getting crushed by it and being made to feel that this is evidence of their unworthiness. Within the patriarchy, masculinity is something fragile, something that can be built up and squandered, something that can be bestowed and taken away. Within the patriarchy, masculinity is something that must be policed, enforced, guarded, and surveilled. In a patriarchy, if you’re not being a man in the correct way, you lose out on access to the privileges and benefits the system was hoarding for you.
But what IS masculinity? It can’t be purely biological because otherwise how could it be reinforced or taken away? If it was purely biological, men wouldn’t have to prove their manliness or protect it.
In the interests of time and simplicity, I am NOT going to attempt to drop some gender theory into the mix. Long-time fans of the channel know I’m a Butler-Bro, if ya know ya know…
Instead, I’m going to tell you my theory of what masculinity isn’t.
First and foremost, masculinity isn’t a disease. It’s not a character defect. It’s not a soul sickness. It’s not something to be ashamed of and not something to be stamped out of people.
But more to my main point, there’s something that masculinity is being confused with, often intentionally by bad actors online, and this confusion, this lie about masculinity is making men fucking miserable. Are ya ready?
Masculinity is not control.
When I think back on the informal “male education” I received from men in my family, men in my childhood churches, male friends, and men on talk radio thinking the big deep thoughts, again and again, I come back to the idea that to be a good man, a proper man, is to be in control.
Sometimes, this is inward-focused. A real man is in control of his emotions, in control of his passions, he is the master of his body, pushing it to feats of strength, he is the master of his mind, unwavering, unbending, unbroken. Other times, this is outward-focused. A real man is in control of his environment, the life of the party making people laugh, the suave lover enticing the one he desires, the respected boss, the bread-winning husband, the protector of his domain, the wise captain steering the ship.
If I’m a man and it’s my duty to maximize my own masculinity, then it must be my duty to take control. I must be entitled to control.
And here’s the funny thing about control: it’s a finite resource. There’s only so much to go around, particularly when it comes to external control. For some to have it, others must not. So if I don’t have it, I’ve gotta go get it. And if I have it, someone might try to take it from me and I have to be stronger, richer, and more powerful (or at least LOOK like I am) so that I’m not an easy target.
And unfortunately, somewhere along the way, men picked up the idea that while being too emotional wasn’t manly, there was one emotion that didn’t really count against you, especially if someone is trying to target you: anger. When a man sees injustice, when a man sees someone taking something that doesn’t belong to them, when someone is threatening a man’s castle, the only proper response is righteous anger.
I am someone who personally struggles with anger. It ignites in me almost instantly, like oily rags just spontaneously combusting in an old warehouse. And as I’ve spent time reflecting on this side of myself, I’ve come to realize that what makes me explode is when I’m feeling like I’m not in control of a situation, when I feel powerless. To be angry, to smash something, to yell or to slam a door, this feels like taking control back. What’s that, Ikea bookshelf? You don’t want to assemble easily? Well now you’re a pile of rubble, howdalike that, fuck you, I win.
So where am I going with this?
To go back to our two debating factions from earlier, I agree with the Male Outreach faction that many men are in crisis. Cisgender straight men are watching the world change before their eyes as many institutions explicitly state their desire to diminish the influence and power of cisgender straight men. And the days where an unremarkable guy from a small town could get a decent union job right out of high school, get married almost by default, and afford a house and three kids on a single salary, oh baby those days are long dead. Thanks to globalization and automation, employers have more options. Now that women are allowed to have, y’know, credit cards and bank accounts and careers and dating apps, potential mates have more options too.
We still live in a capitalist patriarchy and rich men still control everything, but many individual men feel more powerless than ever, and at a time where no one has much sympathy for them.
And boys, I know that sucks. Legitimately, that sucks. But there’s a reason people aren’t showing a lot of sympathy and you have to get your head around it: that powerlessness you feel is something that everyone else has been feeling for a looooong time. That sense of being ignored, passed over, stepped on, disregarded, disrespected, and devalued? How do you think women have been feeling, how do you think queer and trans people have been feeling?
And are you sitting there saying, but that’s not my fault? You’re right, it’s not your fault. But it is your responsibility to deal with the world you and I inherited.
This is where I agree with the No Coddling faction. Because they’re right: the systems making men miserable
today are the same ones that have been making everyone else miserable since forever.
Boys, you are suffering under systems of domination. They used to work better for you and now they don’t. The problem is the domination, not your decreasing access to it. The solution to your unhappiness and your insecurity is to dismantle these systems, not rebuild them. They’re just gonna fuck you again.
Because remember, the lie you’ve been fed about masculinity is that it hinges on individual dominance, on control, control which is finite, which not everyone can have, and which is always being threatened and challenged.
There is another resource that keeps people safe, that builds people up, that gets hard work done, and not only is it not a finite resource, it actually works better the more people that have it. It’s called solidarity.
Solidarity can mean a lot of things, but for our purposes it is a social relationship that values you not because you are strong or smart or funny or handsome or rich, not for what you can do, but because of what you are and will always be: a fellow human who needs food, clothing, shelter, autonomy, and dignity.
The lie you’ve been sold about masculinity tells you that you must always be on guard, always ready to take, always ready to fight, that your value as a man is fragile and changeable and forever at risk. Solidarity says that’s bullshit: your value as a man, as a human, is eternal. You don’t have to earn your dignity, you were worthy of it the day you were born.
So, returning to the big debate, this is why I reject the notion that the broadly-defined left doesn’t care about men’s issues and doesn’t provide male role models to help guide young men towards healthier paths. We care, but we recognize that the issues men are experiencing are part of a larger network of oppressive forces.
And the male creators and influencers doing the best work in my opinion understand this very key truth: the people who know the most about surviving and thriving against those oppressive forces are the ones that have been fighting them the longest: racialized people, indigenous people, disabled people, queer people, and so on. The male creators doing the best work know that we have a lot of lessons to learn about solidarity, how to do it, how to magnify it, how to preserve it, and that the people who can teach us the most about solidarity are the ones who it has been keeping alive for hundreds of years.
Boys, if you’re straight and cis and white, your pain and your oppression matters, but in the grand scheme of solidarity politics, you’re the new kid and you would be wise to link up with people who already have the lay of the land and listen to them. And sometimes that means closing your word hole for a while and just marinating on what they told you, even when it stings, even when it feels extreme, even when it feels like they aren’t considering your unique trials and tribulations. Men are not always great at sitting with discomfort but take it from me, sometimes, that’s where life-changing lessons are hiding.
But, even though I think men need to learn from non-men, I understand the male impulse to seek out role models and heroes to aspire to. So, when I think about some of the seasoned cis guys I admire in the left or left-adjacent creator community, I think about people like Beau of the Fifth Column, a military veteran, LegalKimchi, a lawyer who loves tabletop RPGS, Damon Garcia, a socialist christian, FD Signifier, a Black media critic and essayist, Mike Rugnetta, a tabletop GM and filmmaker, Steven Spohn, a gaming accessibility critic, or Dan Olson, an indie documentarian, to say nothing of like 50 other guys I could have named doing amazing work on Youtube and elsewhere.
But let’s not stop there. Because I want to go back to something I said earlier: even though men have been sold a lie about masculinity, masculinity in and of itself is not toxic, not diseased, not depraved, and not something to hate. So yes, you can learn about masculinity from men who have worked to unlearn the harmful messages they’ve been told, but I think there’s a group of men with invaluable insight on this topic, and it’s a group of men who almost never get handed the mic.
Obviously, it’s trans men. Who is more equipped to lead a conversation about healthy, positive masculinity than the men who have had to fight tooth and nail to live it? As a mentor with a queer teen outreach, I know trans men of all ages, as well as nonbinary people trying to work out whether they might be men in real time, and you know what they seem to have in common? None of them act like their masculinity entitles them to domination and control in our spaces. You know what else they seem to have in common? None of them have decided their masculinity prevents them from being vulnerable with their community or prevents them from listening with humility and curiosity.
I hope it’s fair for me to say that no group of men on the planet has put more thought, reflection, and intentionality towards being a man than trans men have. And, I suspect many of them cherish and rejoice in masculinity much more powerfully than anyone in the man-o-sphere.
The Andrew Tates of the world project happiness, but deep down, you can feel the insecurity eating away at them. These are miserable people terrified of being exposed, terrified of not measuring up, terrified that other men are going to dominate them and that they’ll deserve it because they weren’t manly enough. And you want to pay them thousands of dollars to teach you to be as scared as they are, and just as phony?
I have a better idea and it won’t cost you anything. Boot up your personal computer, activate your modem, doubleclick on Netscape Navigator, and navigate your ass on over to the Finntastic Mr. Fox’s channel and watch his video on Positive Masculinity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX9TJBvLxe0&ab_channel=FinntasticMr.Fox
And then keep going.
To the men watching this, especially the conservative men who made it this far, I want to be crystal clear about this: I want you to be a man, the best kind of man you can be. And while I can’t speak for every single person who identifies as left-wing, I can tell you that the vast majority of people I know don’t want to erase your manhood (trust me, some of us enjoy manhood quite a bit<wink>). We want to erase the system that is lying to you about what that manhood is and means, the system using that lie against you to keep a handful of people rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else (especially YOU).
And, boys, that means we are asking you to let go of things you have been tightly clutching to your chest since you could walk. And that is going to feel uncomfortable for a lot of you. For a lot of you, your body doesn’t know how to untense, your brain doesn’t know how not to be afraid, how to stop competing. Unfortunately, we can’t take your hand if you’re still clinging to domination, still grasping for control. But our hand is outstretched and you can take it when you’re ready.
And, to bring it back to the debate we’ve been discussing one last time, I think this is the fundamental misunderstanding some people are having.
The Male Outreach faction is correct: there is a vast network of right-wing influencers promising to teach boys the secret rituals that can unlock true masculinity for them and there isn’t really a non-toxic leftwing version of this kind of content.
But this critique misses the key point, one made brilliantly by Mr. Fox: Positive Masculinity is whatever we want it to be. It is what men build together and model for boys to give them a brighter, happier future.
The real secret to true masculinity is that there is no true masculinity. There is no one right way to be a man. Masculinity can be whatever men want it to be. It can be an engine of solidarity and love rather than a depressing panoptican prison of insecurity.
Unfortunately a lot of men aren’t ready to hear that because it’s abstract and it’s hard and it’s open-ended. The right-wing grift machine has easy answers: buy a big cigar, buy a big gun, buy expensive scotch, buy this diaper bag that looks like military crap, buy a gym membership, buy a big truck, buy this aggressive t-shirt, and buy this seminar that shows you how to walk around cock-first and bully other men and cajole women for sex.
The alternative, left-wing vision of masculinity doesn’t have anything for you to buy. There’s no book of rules for boys because there’s no gender police to enforce them because masculinity is what you create, not what you obey. I don’t want to help you be a good man so much as I want to help you be good, man.
The idea that the left’s only message for men is that they aren’t entitled to sex or dates and just have to accept dying alone is, I’m sorry, asinine. The left’s message for men is that autonomy and dignity is everyone’s right, including their’s, and true solidarity and true companionship and true intimacy can only be achieved when that autonomy and dignity is respected by all parties.
I once heard a speaker at a conference say “People don’t fear change, they fear loss.” And I absolutely believe that many young (and not so young) men today are afraid that they are losing status, losing opportunities, losing agency. They’ve been immersed in a system of domination with winners and losers and it looks like society is trying to help people besides them win.
What I and the rest of my comrades offer men is not some nonsense about becoming an Epsilon Male who can compete better, but rather an entirely different framework: we want to help them become someone who can cooperate with those who need the same things as them so that everyone can thrive.
Boys, you have heard it said you must fight for your piece of the pie, but I say until you, we can make more pies, bigger pies, apple tarts, and Moroccan pastilla. We just have to do it together and there’s a place for you right next to me. Make pie with me, won’t you?
Anyway, let’s wrap this up. This script is a mess. If you’re a content creator watching this, I hope this doesn’t sound like me saying we shouldn’t address men’s issues. Of course we should.
I just reject the idea that we aren’t already doing that. Many men are suffering because capitalism treats them like garbage and tries to keep them poor, many men are suffering from racism constantly trying to scapegoat them and grind them down into a permanent underclass, and many men are suffering from ableism that excludes them from spaces and punishes them for their own bodies and minds. Trust me: the left is talking about these axes of oppression constantly.
One of the benefits of solidarity politics is that it recognizes how powerful it is when diverse communities band together to take care of each other. And, as someone with a marketing background, I always advocate for having a variety of material that meets people at multiple stages in a buyer’s journey, from “never heard of this” to “I’m all in.”
So by all means, let’s have a diverse community of writers, thinkers, essayists, filmmakers, streamers, and content creators speaking to their passions in the unique ways they bring to the table, speaking to the communities they feel close to, including the community of straight, cisgender men out there. We certainly can’t expect everyone who’s been harmed by patriarchy and male violence to feel comfortable speaking directly to men or being in tight community with them right away, so if that’s your calling, great, go and do.
Let’s just not pretend that we aren’t trying to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy systems of oppression and domination. Let’s not show men the “soft bigotry of low expectations” by pretending they aren’t perfectly capable of understanding how these systems are harming them and making a mockery of their masculinity. And let’s stop assuming that men cannot be expected to respect boundaries, keep people safe, or be held accountable in our communities.
I’m living proof: men can get their shit together without being pandered to.
Anyway, hot damn, that was a lot. I think the main reason I wanted to weigh in is because I see friends on both sides arguing past each other and I’m hoping I can maybe help reframe this discussion a little so that we’re at least all talking about the same thing. I don’t expect everyone to agree instantly, but I just hate seeing arguments where it feels like the sides haven’t even agreed on what the argument is about.
Anyway, what do you think? Which side are you on? What do you believe? What’s to be done with these suspicious MEN characters? Is there a gap in leftist content that you believe we need to fill that can help young men WITHOUT downplaying their responsibility to respect the dignity and autonomy of others? Or, alternatively, who do you think is producing good content for younger guys out there? Let us know in the comments.
And, speaking of setting boundaries, you can disagree and debate down there, but if I see anyone getting nasty about feeeemales or whatever, it’s off to the shadow zone with you.
Anyway, if you made it this far, especially if this is your first time here, thank you for spending time with me and navigating through all those choppy waters. Please give the video a like, subscribe if you haven’t, and, if you think this is a worthwhile addition to the discourse, please share this video with people that might be interested.
Thanks for trusting me with your time, I really appreciate getting to work out some of this complicated stuff with you. I should have something fun for my next video barring some newer, spicier intraleft kerfuffle. Hope to see you then. Goodniiiight!