Is Masculinity Under Attack? The Battle Every Man Is Facing

Men in today’s society are bombarded with conflicting messages about masculinity. From cultural and political pressures to personal expectations, men often feel under attack and confused about how to navigate their identities. 

We discuss the extremes of toxic masculinity and overly-aggressive alpha ideals, advocating instead for a balanced approach centered around the 5 Marks of Manhood: strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance. 

Join us as we explore how to build strong male friendships, adopt healthy masculine traits, and move forward with confidence. 

00:00 The Modern Man's Dilemma
02:12 The Cultural and Political Attack on Masculinity
03:55 Extremes of Masculinity: Toxic vs. Alpha Male
09:18 The Middle Ground: Finding a Balanced Masculinity
11:59 The 5 Marks of Manhood
15:28 Conclusion: Embracing a New Vision of Manhood

💪 Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly. 💪

Transcript

0:01

Everywhere we turn these days, men, it can feel like we are being told what not to be. Every part of our culture seems to have some idea of how we as men are doing it wrong and what we ought to be doing to be getting it right. So. In the cultural and political spheres, we're getting it from the right and the left about what it means to be a man and how should we be doing it differently and in the family. Sphere. We're being told that being a man means we should be doing these things or not be doing these things In the work arena, we're being told how much we should make and how many hours we should work, and whether or not we should work from home or work in an office. We're being told how fit we should be, how we should perform in the bedroom, what our hormone levels should be. There's all kinds of stuff being thrown at us as men to tell us what we should and should not be. Most of us, I think are just feeling a little bit under attack. Like there's no clear way to be able to figure out a way through all of this nonsense. And that's what a lot of it just feels like is nonsense. I think a lot of us guys, if we're honest, would just kind of like to get on with our lives and leave all of these debates behind us. But the truth of the matter is. We don't really know how to do that in spite of all the vitriol and in spite of all the attack and the aggression that's going on from one side to the next for men, I think it really kind of feels like I don't wanna have to deal with all that, but I don't know what the path forward actually is. Maybe I don't want to be involved in all of the combat and the aggression that's going on and the debate around masculinity. But when it comes to just having to show up as a man. What does that actually look like? How do I do it in a way that I'm doing it well? Here at the Manhood Tribes Channel, my name is Don, and I'm trying to help us be able to navigate those things. My job at this channel is to try to give you a clear vision of what it means to be a man, a clear challenge to build strong male friendships, and a clear path on how to do both of those things. So today I want to really talk to us about what it feels like as men who are under attack when masculinity as a concept is kind of under attack in our world, we as men can sort of feel like that we are under attack. It starts to feel really personal because it's not just about the concept of masculinity, it's about how men show up in the world and when it bleeds down from just that level of ideas. To actually how we function on a day-to-day basis. It does start to get personal. How should we be acting? How should we be thinking? How should we be relating to others? All of those things are a part of our day-to-day world. And when masculinity comes under attack, it's not that long before all of those things come under attack as well. And we as men start to feel the pressure of. Should we be acting that way? Should we be handling ourselves differently? Is the way that I'm functioning as a man, not okay anymore? That's what it feels like to be under attack. I. And so today I want to try to just acknowledge what the attack is, where it's coming from, what we as men are dealing with, and maybe even just a little bit of how do we find a way forward? How do we get through all of the nonsense and all of the aggression and figure out what does it look like to actually just show up as a man who doesn't have to deal with all of that aggressive. Vitriolic dialogue from one side to the next that maybe none of us really want to be a part of in the first place, but we're living in a culture that just can't help itself. So let's talk about the debate. Let's talk about the war. Let's talk about the fact that masculinity is under attack and from all sides. On one side of the cultural debate, you've got this issue of masculinity is something that is toxic. Now, to be honest, there's not actually a whole lot of people who are saying this. It's kind of become a buzzword and it gets thrown around a whole lot these days. But there is an element to our culture that considers. Everything about traditional manhood to be bad. It's not just something that maybe needs to be tweaked a little bit. It's actually something that needs to be completely thrown out the window and, and maybe we should throw men out the window with it. Like maybe we don't need men as a part of our society at all. We're. Perfectly okay to just have women ruling things or honestly, wouldn't it be better if we didn't really have ideas of women and men in general, and we just had people, or we just had humans. This is kind of the idea that this one side of our culture really wants to buy into is that these traditional ideas of masculinity are actually counterproductive to society as a whole. They're toxic, and so we should just cast them aside and men should think less about being men and more about simply being humans. That means that we should let go of some of the things from past versions of masculinity, like physical strength or physical aggression, or standing for things like. Honor and courage and we, we certainly should no longer look towards combat or standing up for things with force as a way to be able to handle the world around us. Those are relics from a past society and those things are considered toxic. Certainly any kind of sense of privilege or leadership that once belonged to manhood is not something that men should aspire to. Instead, that should just be something that is generally available to all humans, and we as humans should pursue it no differently than any other humans do. It's not something that men should pursue or think of being done better because they are men. These things are unhealthy for men and unhealthy for society, and we should let those things go. Now, all of that is, well, it's a theory, but I don't find it to be a particularly helpful theory, and I don't think most men, and frankly, I don't think most women do either. It's just. One idea about how to be able to handle some of the difficulties that have been true in our society. Look, let's be honest, men in different stages and at different places in our cultural history have abused their power. I. Men have taken advantage of women. Men have taken advantage of the workplace. Men have taken advantage of other cultures. Men have done all kinds of things that aren't necessarily good, but just because men have done some things wrong doesn't mean that we need to throw out the entire idea of masculinity. But this is what some people would want us to do. And because of that, some men have reacted very strongly and have presented a version of masculinity on the other side of this conversation that's getting increasingly difficult for the culture to tolerate. It's a version of masculinity that's entirely focused on power and subjugating others. It's about winning the day through force. It's about treating. Other people, and especially women as objects, it's about accumulating as much material wealth and possession as a man can for himself. It's about experiencing as much pleasure and as much personal satisfaction as a man can. It's about a man who. Optimizes himself, he biohacks his way to the best physique he can possibly have, and to the best ultimate athletic performance that he could possibly achieve because somewhere down the line, someone told him that that's what it looks like to be a man, to be at his peak self and to show everyone else around him how much better he is than they are. This is a version of masculinity that is essentially just about building this alpha male, about building the man who exists. At the top of whatever pyramid he thinks he's supposed to be at the top of, and letting everyone else know that they are at the bottom now. I don't think this version of masculinity is any better than the what The people on the other side of the conversation are trying to suggest that men should be. It's a complete pendulum swing in the other direction. It's not helpful and in a lot of ways it is exactly the toxic kind of man that the other side of the conversation is accusing us of. It's the kind of man who only seeks gain for himself. Sees himself at the center of the world and of the universe and wants everything to come his direction and work in his favor, and that everyone else should, if not completely bow before him, at least get out of his way so that he can accomplish what he wants to accomplish for his life. It's a total 180 from. Other versions of masculinity from our past that have seen manhood really be about sacrificing for others around us, about seeing men give of themselves so that the world around us as men can actually become better. This version of men isn't interested in others at all. It's completely interested in himself and making the best version of himself that he possibly can be, even to the exclusion and to the detriment of others. Now, whatever side of that equation you might be drawn to or interested in, I'll just simply say on this channel, neither of those versions of masculinity is helpful. Neither of them are things that we need to head towards, and I'm not gonna promote either version of those types of masculinity. But just because neither of those things is right doesn't mean that every version of masculinity is wrong. Both of those versions of masculinity are what I would call extremes. They are things that are pushed to the far sides of the conversation, and it's like there's nothing that's left in the middle that's worth talking about. I don't think that's helpful. I don't think most men think that's realistic, and I don't think most men live at either of those extremes. Most of us are just trying to get along. We're trying to figure out how to exist in a world that wants to push us to extremes when we just don't see a need for that. And in the meantime, we're feeling bombarded by these messages coming from the extremes and wondering why it's so hard to live somewhere in the middle and just move forward with life. But because of that, it has created this kind of internal war for most of us as men. It's left us feeling like, am I enough? Am I too much? Am I doing this right? Am I just completely failing? We as men are second guessing ourselves. All the time because we're just not sure. There's nobody standing up and saying, this is what it does look like to be a man who is good and healthy, and here's how to move forward through life. As that kind of man, all of the loud voices about masculinity are coming from the extremes, which most men. Aren't drawn to, but we don't have some kind of other model to move towards. And so we're left just feeling confused. How do we actually do this? How do we navigate through life in a way that actually feels good and feels effective as men, but we feel guilty? At times for kind of wanting to be men, because to want to be a man according to one side of the extreme is a bad thing. Uh, it's, it's something that is toxic or detrimental to society, but to want to be a man on the other side of the equation is seen as somehow weak because we're not just shoving our way into manhood. We're left wanting and confused, and somehow that means that we're less of a man than we should be. Neither of those things is helpful. But it does leave us all with feelings of guilt, of feelings, of insecurity, of feelings of, gosh, I just don't know. Am I getting this right? I'm not sure how I would know if I was getting it right. And so we need to try to figure out a way through all of this mess, a way through all of the nonsense towards something that is actually helpful. So what I want us to do is to what I talked about at the beginning, one of my purposes with this channel is to try to provide you with a clear vision of what it means to be a man. I've talked about that in some of my previous videos. As I've discussed the five marks of manhood, those are the things that I believe all men should possess in order to demonstrate to the world what it means to be a man. They are things that have been true of men across time, periods and cultures. Wherever you have found men, those five marks of manhood are what I would call strength. Courage, skill, honor and allegiance. Again, those are things that all men can exhibit, and they are things that men can grow in. Wherever you're starting from, in any one of those five things, you can get better at them simply through challenging yourself. Those areas. So we don't need to abandon masculinity just because we're confused about it or because we feel guilty about whatever version of masculinity we're trying to practice. We don't need to abandon trying to be men. We just need a path towards being a man that's worth being. And that's what I think the five marks of manhood actually do for us. They give us a vision of what it means to be a man. That's not only attainable for every man. But it's something that we can get better at. We can actually grow in all of those areas and demonstrate to the world how to be better at being men. So we need to embrace some of those traditional things like strength, like courage, and like honor. But we need to figure out the ways of practicing those things that actually do encompass some of what the modern world is. Asking from us things like gentleness and empathy and vulnerability and wisdom. All of those things go into painting a better vision of masculinity. Even our, even if they aren't necessarily at the core of what it means to be a man, they are things that we can learn to incorporate into our version of manhood. So we do need this kind of new vision, this new code. We need something that is gonna help us be able to stay grounded. We need something that is gonna help us be able to push forward. We need something that's gonna challenge us. These things are hard to attain in and of themselves. They are. Things that we will work at for the rest of our lives. Being strong as a man isn't something that you just accomplish once and you never have to worry about again. Any man who's ever been to the gym knows that if you go and you get strong, but then you stop going, you lose your strength over time. As men, we need to continue to develop these things in our lives. We need to work at being strong, at being courageous, at being skilled. We need to develop what it means to have honor and to show allegiance to authorities in our lives. These are things that all men can do and should do, and need other men around us to help us get better at those things. And that's one of the things that I think is most important about a vision of manhood that is good for us in the modern era, is that it has to require us to be around other men who are living that same way. We need other men who are a part of a community who are calling us up into these five marks of manhood. We need other men who are saying, yeah, I want to live that way, and I want to get better at being a man, and I want to demonstrate to other men how to be able to do that. We need to call men into this kind of community, and the five marks of manhood provides us with a vision of how to be able to do that. So I want to leave you with a sense of, it's okay that you might feel under attack. It's okay that it might feel like the world is stacked against you right now, because frankly, our culture kind of is, it's throwing all kinds of messages at us that really aren't helpful. I. But that doesn't mean that you need to buy into any of those messages. It just simply means that you need a vision of something that threads the needle through those competing versions of masculinity and helps you see a way forward to something that is good, healthy, attainable, and strong. The five marks of manhood can do that for you, and you need to begin practicing them not only for yourself, but with other men as well. You don't have to fight against the culture. I. But you do need to be a man who fights for something, and this vision of manhood is worth fighting for. All right. If you like this kind of content, I would love for you to like this video and to subscribe to this channel. We will continue to talk more about it. If you would like to figure out how you can get better at those five marks of manhood, I've got a free quiz for you that will help you evaluate where are you in each of those areas. It's called How Manly are you? And you can download it for free and help evaluate where you are in the five marks of manhood. Just go to manhood tribes.com/manly and you can download your free quiz right there. Now to leave you, I want to encourage you to comment on this video below and just say, what is an aspect of manhood that you know you would like to get better at? Maybe it's one of those five marks of manhood. Maybe it's something else that you heard me mention in this video, but what is something about manhood that you would like to get better at? That comment that down below, and I look forward to engaging with your comments, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.