You don’t hate women and feminism. You hate capitalism.

Why so many men feel threatened today.

A young man at the Million MAGA March in November 2020 (Photo by: Elvert Barnes)

On New Year’s Eve night, I found myself talking with someone about my favorite subject these days: What’s going on with men?

She’d recently seen a play with her husband about the women’s suffragette movement. Her husband said afterwards that the play was “man-hating.” She was confused. And curious about why so many men—even liberal men—feel like society is increasingly “man-hating,” despite our relatively privileged place in society.

I could sense her interest in my opinion, as a therapist who works mostly with men. It felt really good that someone cared what I think about a subject I spend so much time thinking and writing about for this newsletter. Like most things on the internet, it often feels like I’m shooting these posts off into a void. Except for when people occasionally send me kind emails. That feels really good too.

She asked, “Why do men feel so threatened by women and others who are finally getting a seat at the table?”

I responded with a meandering answer that went something like this: I think men feel threatened because we don’t have a story for where we fit into society.

Today’s men are lost, holding an outdated script that only sort of worked for our fathers and grandfathers, but barely worked for them too. That script says all we need to do is provide for and protect our family. Yet, the majority of women today also work and provide. And feminism has exposed that what women most often need protection from is men.

Everyone else might be oppressed to greater or lesser degrees, but they have a story. Women are fighting back against patriarchy. Queer people are fighting back against heteronormativity. People of color are fighting back against white supremacy. People with disabilities are fighting back against ableism. And so on.

What should men be fighting back against? The vast majority of us are suffering too. Because in our hierarchical, hyper-individualist, economically lopsided, time-strapped, burned out, overly violent, environment-destroying capitalist society, everyone who isn’t extremely rich and powerful is suffering more than we should.

As writer and organizer

Garrett Bucks

recently wrote, “We are in one of those moments when the one thing that everybody—across lines of ideology—seems to agree upon is that the world is crooked, rigged, and full of heartbreak for all but a select few.”

Who should men blame?

Who is causing us to feel so lost, so lonely, so disconnected, so burned out, so anxious, so depressed, so willing to take our own life?

Liberalism doesn’t seem to have answers to those questions. When I turn on MSNBC (or actually, when I see it on my parents’ TV while visiting), I hear—besides all the attention on Trump—diverse voices blaming things like “toxic masculinity,” “ableism,” and “white supremacy.” When I look at the New York Times opinion page, I see praise for things like “DEI” and “feminist foreign policy.” Social media is rife with liberals blaming men (especially cisgender, straight, white men) for everything under the sun.

Let me be clear: These are important and necessary things to be talking about. And men do have relative privilege that we need to own up to.

But the liberal story that all men are at the top of the food chain simply for being men is incomplete. It leaves out the “c” word you rarely hear on MSNBC or read in the New York Times: class. The vast majority of men are members of the class of people in capitalism who must work for a living. Only a small handful are members of the other class, the capitalists who exploit everyone else who must work.

Feminist scholars have documented how capitalism has over time replaced men’s formal, political power with private power over families. Think of the 1950s Don Draper-esque businessman. He had a decent job and was paid well but had a boss who really called the shots. Yet, he could dominate his wife and kids because he made the money and thus had all the power. He might not have been fully free at work, but he could pretty much do whatever he wanted at home.

Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser write in Feminism for the 99% (one of my favorite books; go buy it now!):

“A key development was the shift from the extended kin-based households of an earlier time—in which male elders held the power of life and death over their dependents—to the restricted, heterosexual nuclear family of capitalist modernity, which vested an attenuated right of rule in the ‘smaller’ men who headed smaller households.”

I think of this as a deal that capitalism has made with men. Similar to the one capitalism has made with white people, which gives us relative privilege over people of color in place of a more equal society where everyone has what they need—what W.E.B. Du Bois called a “psychological wage.” White people get relative power, wealth, and safety, but as Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs All of Us and How We Can Prosper Together, says:

“Racism [gets] in the way of all of us having nice things … things like truly universal affordable health care, or world-class, or even just reliable, modern infrastructure. A public health system to tackle pandemics with efficiency and scale. A well-funded school in every neighborhood.”

A few men who own corporations, manage Wall Street banks, and run the government get to lord over everyone else, including other men. Those other men justifiably feel disadvantaged and disempowered at work and in the economy, so they lord over their families at home.

Except, more and more women have entered the workforce and are becoming economically independent. In some cities, women are even out-earning their male counterparts. The power dynamics of the average American family is shifting. The script men have been handed that says to simply provide and protect is no longer matching the reality.

Boys wearing Trump gear (Photo by André-Pierre du Plessis)

This is probably why so many men are shifting rightward politically.

Or at least losing interest in the Democratic Party’s liberalism. Billionaires like Trump and Elon and influencers like Andrew Tate are giving men a story. They’re acknowledging that something is wrong. That something is out of whack. That something needs to change. That something is causing the vast majority of people to suffer or at least feel like they’re not getting a fair shake.

The story they’re selling is that men just need to go back to the 1950s. Back to when men had relative power over women. Back to when men could at least feel powerful at home even if they didn’t feel powerful anywhere else. Back to when America was “great”—because men had a story.

They’re also giving men someone to blame for being in the way: independent women, feminists, immigrants, trans people, radical leftists, liberal “elites.”

It makes sense to me, then, that so many men feel threatened right now. We’ve lost that 1950s story that gave us a sense of power, purpose, and meaning—even if it was just an illusion for many, particularly poor men and men of color.

My friend Todd Brogan, an organizer in the labor movement, once wrote (in a blog post that’s no longer online):

“Many men look around their communities and see what they’ve been taught are ‘lesser than me’ people [women, trans people, immigrants] succeeding ... The only explanation for this has to be that the system has been corrupted. It’s been rigged somehow against ‘men like me’ ... Perhaps the only moments they feel in control are those when they are emotionally or physically in control of someone else, most often a woman.

Of course, the system has been rigged but not solely against ‘men like them.’ That system, capitalism, is inherently rigged against all working- and middle- class people, especially those who aren’t straight, white, American, Christian men, since the beginning. Capitalists fueled 20th century imperialism, created the blowback we call international terrorism, crushed indigenous efforts at democracy and replaced them with dictatorships, and generated the waves of asylum-seekers we see today. It also created and destroyed the middle class across the U.S. in a never-ending cycle of growth, consumption, and destruction.

But there’s been no one talking to these men about that for a very long time.”

A big reason I launched this newsletter was to talk to men. To figure out what to say. To figure out what our story needs to be today, a story very different than the 1950s cartoon rich men like Trump and Elon are selling, that in reality is harmful to the vast majority of men.

I didn’t have that new story to tell on New Year’s Eve.

I fumbled through something about the importance of a strong labor movement and transforming society away from capitalism. She didn’t seem all that convinced. But the conversation clarified what I’m trying to do with this newsletter.

Men have to figure out our new story. And we have to figure it out together.

There’s a quote that goes around right-wing “manosphere” social media: “A young man who is not embraced by the village will burn it down just to feel its warmth." I hate to say it, but I agree. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my few years as a therapist, all humans require connection to heal, change, and grow. We need to feel like we belong to something larger than ourselves. We need a story.

Now, a question for the comments below (or email me at jeremy@mohler.coach): What should men be aspiring to be today?

(P.S. If you become a paid subscriber for $5/month, you’ll get my weekly Friday Q&A posts with tips for relationship issues, healthier communication, self-care, and more—plus the warm feeling of supporting my writing!)