This article made me sad. Not because it was mean or at some level wrong but because I feel that while it touched on the core issue here, it missed the chance to directly confront it. Here is an example.

"The infrastructures of intimacy — slowness, curiosity, accountability — have been eroded by haste, convenience and a kind of sanctioned emotional retreat."

I loved her writing but I really wished she had gone on to ask "Why?" Why have men retreated as she says not with hostility but with indifference?

I'm in a decades long loving marriage and have a bunch of loving kids who all want to get married and raise their own families. I am proud as a father to have been a good role model in that manner. I married a woman who was sure she never wanted to marry or have kids. We were married just prior to what I feel was the popularization of the term "toxic masculinity" first coined in the 80s to name (and counter?) the rise of the men's metal health movement. A movement that I freely admit has hyper-toxic off-shoots today.

Here is the thing though. For a generation boys and men have been told that masculinity is toxic not that some extreme elements and fringe behaviors are toxic just as some fringe beliefs of many sub-cultures are toxic but all masculinity. We were told that women didn't need men and in fact preferred if we did not interact with them at all under almost any circumstance. Girls were better off in gender segregated classrooms, boys needed to be medicated at school just to be teachable. Women just wanted to go out in public and do their own thing without being "creeped on". Are there creeps out there? Is sexual assault a problem, sure, absolutely but again, the message from society was not that fringe inappropriate behavior was toxic, but that everything male was toxic.

So, what did men, particularly the "good" ones, do? They retreated, not with hostility but indifference. The last thing "good men" wanted was to offend or be label as a toxic problem. Since any interaction with a stranger was bad and sometimes you needed a written contract to kiss after a date, good men got the message and heeded it. I'm not saying an unwanted kiss is a good thing, but what was the larger message being sent to the "good guys" who might actually care how women feel? The message to those "good guys" was "we don't need you, we don't want you around, you're disruptive in the classroom and at work and we would all be better off if you did not exist.".

One of the more positive vestigial remnants of the men's mental health movement teaches/talks about Stoicism. The retreat of men from social places and society is not due to a desire for haste or convenience. It is a stoic reaction to being told for a generation that being a man was bad for society. The sad truth today is that men don't need women or in fact other men to find purpose or diversion. A hard lesson well taught to us by society.