Men are Found - Not Lost
The hysteria about American males has everything backwards
I feel almost compelled to apologize for adding yet another hot take onto the pile about American men. But I’m pretty sure you haven’t heard this one yet and I’ll at least try to make a short, fun read out of it.
If you’ve tuned into the ongoing national dialogue for even a tiny peek you’ll be overwhelmed. Everyone is scrambling to opine about the state of the American man in wake of their perceived revolutionary uprising. Conservatives appeal that the more right drifting youthful males yearn to form traditional families and that the wicked machinations of Big Government, feminazism, and the modern world in general conspires to stop them. Liberals seem to be infighting with one wing, pearls clutched and throats sore from keening like banshees, insisting that more authoritarian measures need to be used to crack down on the dong-wielding orcish horde. Throw Andrew Tate in jail! Void Dylan Hogg’s legitimate Democratic Vice Chair election! Joy Behar insisted that we had to remind boys that they’re sexist (just in case they didn’t get the memo yet). This liberal faction is having an ultimate passive aggressive-duel with the other liberals who meekly appeal for a more diplomatic but Jane Goodall-studying-chimpanzees tact to bring these rogue males into the fold. Spend $20 million to study male syntaxes, feature a leftist gym bro in The New York Times, and appoint a men’s czar (who is a queer disabled Latina) to “speak to them”! The solution to all problems is to write fat consultant checks, more academic lexicon, and messaging. There’s strong Steve Buscemi “how do you do, fellow kids?” meme vibes.
But all the brawling factions agree. There is a “crisis”! The men and boys are “lost”! Like George W. Bush’s WMDs; where are they?! They aren’t hitting the clubs or dating as much as the good old days. Lonely young women are flocking to social media like TikTok, begging for the “good guys” to show themselves and inhaling romance novels as heartsick medication. Crying in cars over wanting a boyfriend is a whole genre—one can watch never-ending hours of it. Yet, despite getting tangled up with girls less, these guys are also somehow perverts! Porn addicts the lot of them! Loveless untouched lechers! The sins continue. According to Dazed, they are reading “red flag” books like The Clockwork Orange—not the Oprah or Reese Witherspoon book club approved titles we want them to. Just love Sally Rooney, silly dangerous gross hot please love me go away ewww boys! Why don’t you like the shows we’ve started to make for you like Adolescence? Fictional series Adolescence is about a scrawny white British preteen who listens to naughty podcasts that inspire him to brutally knife a girl to death. See guys, we made a show that speaks to you! Don’t you relate? He’s just like you! If you don’t consume our message, the knifey hateful ways will surely emerge.
And on.
And on.
And on.
What’s the rebuttal from these American men, who actually exist in their millions as breathing human beings and not a nebulous ghost hovering over the nation like a storm cloud? It’s hard to tell because none of these excited socio-political factions and ladies doing all the yacking really seem interested in bringing on any of these guys for a listen. So the rebuttal, outside of a handful of media personalities who opine for a living, has been simple.
Silence.
Sweet. Powerful. Perfect silence.
What gives? Well, I’ll tell ya.
The Masculine Trait
I’ve been around, worked for, and met some extremely masculine and awesome American men. My high school English teacher was also my martial arts sensei; a noble father and gentleman intellectual I recall fondly to this day. I’ve worked at sea and, although often rough around the edges, my sea captain bosses were all extremely masculine and commanded respect. I worked as a paddle guide under a kind but stern Mennonite who resembled a canoe-bound wizard with a thick German accent. His moral compass was iron.
But I also know more cosmopolitan “modern” men who I consider extremely masculine. A dear friend of mine is a proud gay bear and father. Emotive but articulate with lots of life under his belt, he has the spirit. I know an elder who is a very active community builder behind the scenes, guiding kids onto career paths and supporting positive fundraising efforts. I call him “Saint” X as a nickname. Another is a very gentle and kind piano teacher who leaves a path of smiling faces wherever he goes. Unbeknownst to them, he struggles through severe mental health issues stoically. Too stoically if I’m being honest.
All this is to say that masculinity manifests in all sorts of forms. But I’ve come to believe the core driving force that makes all these men masculine, and ignites my masculine soul, is simply thus:
The Masculine Trait is making up your own damn mind about the world, forming an ethos, and living that ethos through noteworthy action.
You cannot expand upon it into a self help book or pick it over endlessly as a complex intellectual endeavor. That’s it, right there. If this is news to you, read it again. Absorb it. Take it in.
Notice how The Masculine Trait has no bearing on morality. Herein lies the rub for “modernity”. I’ve hated a few men I’ve met or heard about with all my guts, but their masculine characters were not in doubt. Tamerlane’s conquests might’ve killed 5-10% of the entire world’s population, but his masculinity is secure. “I am the progeny of Chinggis Khan! I am destined by the sky to rule the world and I shall!” and then proceeding to win real battles is masculine. I’m sorry contemporary thinkers who may launch into some thought piece that posits a “real man” cries and pets bunnies. The crying man with bunnies may very well be a less harmful person than Tamerlane, but The Masculine Trait is something different. I’m not making the rule or venerating Tamerlane, just observing. There’s also more to life than this trait, but it is inexorably related to one’s masculinity.
However! You know who else is extremely masculine? Jesus Christ. I’m not a practicing Christian, but even the story without a belief in the miraculous is extremely masculine. Jesus forms his own damn mind about the universe and an ethos—there is a divine path to love and bliss that’s for everyone to tread. He lives it, wandering the land barefoot preaching and helping the downtrodden. Ultimately he even dies for his beliefs at the hands of the Romans as a, yes very manly, sacrifice.
So there you have it. From my personal acquaintances to Tamerlane and Jesus, The Masculine Trait stands immortal. It was true 10,000 years ago when we were in caves and will be true in 10,000 years wherever we end up (maybe in caves again). You cannot defeat it. Suppressing The Masculine Trait at a population level is inherently villainous. At best you can pour endless wealth and bring massive civilization-level forces to keep it at bay for a limited time. But this is the way of dictators and, as Charlie Chaplain so (masculinely) stated in The Great Dictator, “…the hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people return to the people, so as long as men die, liberty will never perish...” (full speech here).
The American Male is Found, Not Lost
More accurately than found, a large percentage of men (especially under age 45 or so) are in a process of finding, not losing, themselves. Times are scrappy economically and frankly life has not returned to “normal” since the pandemic era for most of us. That the bipartisan CARES Act was one of the, if not the, largest upward transfer of wealth in history came right out of our pockets. Bottom line we got hit with a disease and the rich pillaged the place—and got away with it in style. The same young guys who missed prom due to COVID and are skipping college because it’s too expensive without tangible reward at the other end are prioritizing staying sane and getting their lives in order—not political projects, women, or recreation. Emotional hatches are battened. Castles fortified. Housing is so unaffordable it’s a macabre joke. The world is getting dark and violent from the fields of Ukraine to the tunnels of Gaza. The gray hairs cheer at images of dead Russian soldiers on the news—I see guys not unlike me dying for failed diplomacy from the gray hairs who cheer. These things are not so abstract to those of us under 50, most of us with $1,000 or less in savings. I know a few unmarried dudes here in Seattle in their early forties who are quietly plotting their escapes and career pivots. It’s just too damn expensive and the jobs they are holding down just aren’t fulfilling. Their mostly healthy relationships with their pseudo girlfriends are meh—fine but not “it”.
I don’t see an ocean of “lost” or “broken” men—I see early stage seekers of The Masculine Trait during objectively shitty times. Western civilization has not been particularly kind to us lately. The immortal need to make up our own damn minds seems to enrage the powers that be of 2020s America. No, in this era every person must assimilate into the program. The Borg. We dudes under 45 or so are landless wage slaves to a geriatric oligarchy that increasingly does not tolerate individualism, civil disagreement, or the exercising of basic freedoms. Some of those rich old coots want us to depopulate, so they exacerbate a pyrrhic gender war (Democrat aligned mostly). Others want us to breed like rabbits—more taxes and soldiers (Republican coded).
Despite what they ask of us, there is no partisan force in America right now that can even act as reliable stewards of the First Amendment—they have all failed on historic levels (left and right). Something so basic as the words coming out of our mouths are now a battlefield. And yet, the commentariat wants us young bucks to do… what? Drink and flirt more? Vote predictably? DoorDash or train AI with a big smile on our faces? Dive into forever debt for a degree we’re not sure how to benefit from? The call to action here is hard for me to decipher. Call me crazy fellas, but it’s almost like The Borg doesn’t care about us.
So the Found Men stay silent. They have more pressing matters to attend to—their souls. A noble pursuit in my estimation.
Quick sidenote, as a man I also hate how everything has to be a “crisis” in the national dialogue. All these actors with agendas trying to “save” us feels infantilizing to me. We’re men—not widdle kitties. What’s more, few reactions are less appealing to a masculine soul than a hysteric panic. Even if the continent splits open and demons from hell pour out to kill us all, a weepy breakdown from all our leaders about the “demon crisis” would be off-putting. I’ll follow the steely nerved holy man with a solid plan and a bunch of shotguns, thank you very much.
The Takeaway
Please, for the love of god, don’t “speak to us”. Just leave us alone. Take that jack boot off our necks. Cease blockading us from publishing fiction. Don’t appoint yourself an irreproachable moral authority and give us lectures, ever—who do you think you are, our mom? Ana Navarro recently declared on The View to audience applause that “all men are useless.” Perhaps we should take Ana Navarro on a tour of Arlington National Cemetery and she can stop by each soldier’s grave and screech “USELESS!” on live TV, hmmm? When compared to these heroic men, Navarro is clearly the useless one.
Don’t hold us back professionally because of immutable characteristics, I don’t care how enlightened you think you are. Don’t shove our faces in media that presumes we’re all on the cusp of violent murder. The list goes on, but I think you get the point. Not a word needs to be said. Just step off. We’ll notice and appreciate it. You’ll probably feel better too, to be honest.
Do not speak at us—just leave us alone. Remember The Masculine Trait where we make up our own damn minds, form our ethos’s, and act. Whomever does these things, or helps us in these things, will reap fabulous rewards. The mostly quiet Found Men will buy your stuff, support your goals, vote for you, etc. Hell, they may even become your friends! They’re just people, after all. The return of the Found Men could be a friendly, uneventful, overwhelmingly positive development if broader society wants to go that way. They actually have a lot to bring to the table.
Consider buying my award-winning book, Salmon in the Seine: Alaskan Memories of Life, Death, & Everything In-Between. Available wherever books are sold. Leaving reviews on Amazon and Goodreads helps a ton too.
