Masculinity honestly isn’t something I spend a whole lot of time thinking about. For all I’m an effete lefty who preaches about cooperation, I fit the traditionally masculine aesthetic pretty well. I like blacksmithing (though it’s hard to find a smithy), I’m above average (which isn’t saying much) when it comes to stuff like wilderness survival, I’m big and stronk, and I have a pretty masc presentation, as you can see:

The image shows me, being manly. You can tell how manly I am by the beard, the aggressive facial expression, and the edged weapon. You could argue that the mohawk/ponytail is also a pretty masculine look, but in this picture it just looks like I have a little tuft of hair on top of my head.

I’ll give you all a moment to recover.

Anyway, my point is that I do actually like some aspects of masculinity, and they feel comfortable and right for who I am. When I think about it, which isn’t often, it’s a thing I like about myself. Unfortunately, there are some guys for whom masculinity is a constant source of insecurity and effort, and they’re constantly trying to prove their masculinity to each other. I think I might have shared a couple videos about the “manosphere” and manliness in the past, but it’s never really been something that seemed worth writing about I might change my mind on that in the future, but I’m afraid today is no exception.

That said, it is something worth thinking about, because for a sizable number of my fellow men, masculinity is apparently in crisis. I don’t care that much about the crisis itself, but it does matter to me that a lot of men are feeling insecure, scared, and lonely. It matters, because I’ve absolutely felt that way myself, and I absolutely will feel that way again. The fact that the world is a scary, unfair, and isolating place is a pretty big topic on this blog, even if it’s not the sole subject of many blog posts. You won’t be surprised to learn that I think that most of these problems facing men are problems that face everybody, because of the way society is organized, it’s just that some men feel they were promised more.

The reality is that the promises of patriarchy have always been lies for 99% of the population, just like the promises of capitalism, and most of the stuff that has so many men being insecure is actually a fairly recent invention, that seems to have been at least partly designed to make men view working for the profit of other men as an act of manliness. It is all, in my opinion, silly bullshit. Unfortunately, it’s also a force in our society that is making men be Not OK, so here’s Sam from We’re In Hell to talk about the (fairly silly) history of men not being OK in America: