Boys Get Everything, Except the Thing That's Most Worth Having

If you're a man living in the suburbs and don't like "man" things (sports, cars, hunting and/or fishing in the South), you're in for a very rough time. 2x difficulty if you don't have kids.

As a parent of two young children confronting many of the same issues and questions I really appreciate your comment. One part I might quibble with is that I'm not sure the messages girls are getting will really prove all that much more helpful in the long run. As an example, for the longest time, Taylor Swift's music would just go in one ear and out the other for me, as it always just seemed like the most straightforward, bland, inoffensive pop. I finally took a closer look when my kids started getting interested after hearing about her on the playground. I was amazed at how consistently she strikes this tone of affected victimhood -- this sort of self-contradictory pose of "I'm so over you I wrote a whole song about it."

Also, it's much more disproportionately girls who are rejecting their assigned gender in early adolescence. I think I agree with the common take that this is often a rejection of pornified culture and the premature and hyper-sexualization of young girls, but there also seems to be something hollow and missing in the ostensibly more well meaning "girl power" role models.

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You’ll know the pendulum has actually shifted when “toxic femininity” appears in print.

There are many people who choose not to ignore the challenges faced by young men but grow weary of being shouted down or dismissed.

The number one, single most important thing every young man MUST do is not go more than one week without leaving the house and meeting other groups of people in an environment conducive to conversation and learning. It doesn't matter why, it only matters that it happens.

I was one of those young men, I spent a decade in the army moving constantly and deployed or TDY constantly then I got out and went to college that wasn't really college because I was working full time and taking a full course load. Then I got a job where I traveled 50%, minimum, per year.

My house was just where I stored my luggage between trips and I had no friends. Some days I would wake up and not know where I was and I would have to pull out my phone to look at Google Maps. I had nobody to call except my parents who were 1,200 miles away, no emergency medical contact, nobody to pick me up from the airport or give me ride if I needed to take my car to the shop.

So in my 30s I decided to change that. It was hard but hard is not a synonym for "impossible". I took a position where I didn't have to travel and decided to finally put down roots.

I joined a yoga studio and started going almost every day. Precisely and exactly zero people gave me, a fat hairy man, any grief for sucking at yoga. After a couple of months of seeing the same people often I started to make friends with both the instructors and the other students. Now some of the few men who go and I meet up for coffee every Sunday after Yin for a casual "yoga men's group" and a small group of teachers and students and I go on retreats every year.

That's friend group number 1.

After a while I was no longer fat, so I started volunteering at my local volunteer fire station. Every emergency service everywhere is short staffed, volunteer services especially. I went through EMT training and Firefighter I and II and now I drive the ambulance or staff the engine 12 hours per week. It's like I have 40 brothers and sisters now.

That's friend group number 2.

Finally in what little time I have spare I roller skate and am a member of a local astrophotography and amateur radio club. An old man circling the rink draws attention so I've made friends at the skate zone and meet up with fellow nerds once or twice a month to talk radio and telescopes, and sometimes radio telescopes.

Those comprise a third group of more distant, but still very important, friends.

edit: damn I forgot my scuba friends. Many years ago while on a retreat I paid for a scuba lesson through the hotel when the ladies were out shopping. I fell in love with it and linked up with a local dive shop a little later. Now when the weather is nice I go on quarry dives locally and the shop runs weekend trips to Florida. My yoga ladies now specifically try to find retreats with scuba opportunities to accommodate me.

My scuba buddies are yet another friend group because you tend to get to know people while on a cramped dive boat for hours or doubling up in a hotel room to save cash on a weekend trip.

I'm also a local watershed steward, clomping around in boots along the shore of the Chesapeake Bay to make sure there's no trash in MY water and giving presentations to local civic groups about watershed preservation and an election judge (been doing that so long I'm a chief judge).

Now when I am out and about I constantly recognize people I don't know and I have to be careful because often I don't know HOW I know them: did I help them during an election? Have I seen them around the yoga studio? Did I give a presentation to a group they're in? Or did I take them to the ER one night after they got too drunk, pissed their pants, and fell and hit their head?

It was difficult to do all that and it took many years.

I fully, freely, and earnestly admit that it was hard.

What I didn't do is fall into a black hole of video games and isolation, which back then I was dangerously close to doing.

One of my elective liberal arts classes that HN and certain men like to shit on covered the risks of social isolation and it stuck with me, so I suppose I was extremely fortunate that it was one of the only options that fit my tight schedule.

When I say "no matter where you live, with no exceptions, everywhere in the country there are groups of people you can join in order to make friends for little or even no cost except for time" people dismiss me: "oh it's not that easy" (it really isn't but it is possible) or "not around here" (I guaran-god-damn-tee it, give me your zip code and I will personally find something).

Even if in your zip code the only thing I can find is a Thursday night knitting group, if your only choice is either isolation or knitting you'd better put aside all preconceptions of masculinity and learn to fucking knit with a bunch of old ladies.

The only trick to all of this is you have to not act like an asshole.

The number of people I've met among my wide and varied NOT TERMINALLY ONLINE friend groups who have even uttered the phrase "toxic masculinity" can be counted on zero fingers and I am a hairy-assed, tall-as-hell, combat veteran infantryman, current firefighter, EMT, and aerospace engineer and I consider myself pretty goddamned manly.