Man Lessons
Today's masculinity gatekeepers are scary. But they are also a sign of progress.
Andrew Tate shouts at you. He says should be ashamed of yourself because you are so far beneath him. He is a real man, and you are not. He’ll show you how if only you have the courage to admit you’ve failed and need help. His message and his tone clearly let you know: You’re lucky he is even willing to make time for someone as pathetic as you. He sends this message in videos with driving music while showing off his muscular, waxed, and tanned body, and surrounding himself with fancy cars, private jets, and yachts.
Tate has amassed a huge fan base. In 2023, he had 4.5 million followers on Twitter and 8 in 10 teenage boys in the UK had seen his videos.
This is representative of the ongoing patriarchal backlash. Hatred of women and gender non-conforming people, along with calls for a return of rigid patriarchy are the staples of a cultural “manosphere.” Some of the denizens of this space and its leaders are now pillars of the Republican party and it can easily feel like they are winning.
I’ve been listening to some of the men leading this masculinist “rebirth” and noticed something interesting. It appears the standards of white masculine performance have changed in dangerous ways. But, to my surprise, I see a sign of progress behind this change.
Men like Tate now directly assert their manhood and give guidance to other men about how to do the same. Tate and his brother, Tristan, operate two websites, Hustler’s University and The Real World, where subscribers pay up to $99 a month for man lessons. Similarly, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth proclaims in his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, that he is a real man because he served in war and claims making men is the point the military. Fox News host, Jesse Watters, has a growing list of rules for men to follow to demonstrate their manhood. (Among the rules: Don’t drink with a straw!) And former Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, encouraged men to tan their testicles.
Hearing these messages brought to mind an experience I had as a teenager learning to perform masculinity.
There was a group of white boys in my high school that my friends and I—also white—derided and saw as rivals. The feeling, I think, was mutual. There was a class dimension to this conflict—we saw ourselves as the working-class whites and saw them as the rich whites. We overstated the class dimension, however. Both groups were in fact class mixtures. But seeing our conflict through the prism of class war suited our self-concepts.
As you might imagine, this struggle displayed all the basics of white masculine competitive performance—misogynistic and homophobic insults, conspicuous displays of bravado, and, on occasion, violence. We constantly tried to prove we were the real men, and they were not.
There was a boy in the other crew that often attempted loud demonstrations of his toughness. But either he wasn’t right for the part, or he didn’t read the script. In any case, his attempts to prove he was a real man backfired. In one case, he was in a standoff with a friend of mine at a party and he lifted his shirt to reveal his tanned and toned abs, shouting, “See this? You don’t want any of this!”
We found this hilarious. He seemed to think his act revealed his superiority. But for us it was obvious that it did the opposite—it was an act of self-feminization. The issue wasn’t the state of his body. He was quite muscular and handsome, though perhaps overly so. The problem was his display was too vain, too self-conscious, too direct an assertion of his self-worth. For us, that was not how you won contests of manhood.
Masculine competition, as we understood it, was about undermining the other’s masculinity. To win, you degrade your opponent by proclaiming or demonstrating his weakness. You question his masculinity verbally or physically. You do not say “I am the straightest,” “I am the strongest,” “I am the most virile.” Instead, you always put the burden of proof on him. You treat your own manhood as unquestionable.
(This may be specific to white masculinity. It occurs to me that hip hop of the time was filled with overt claims of masculinity.)
This reflects the myth of masculinity. Men are supposed to be masculine by nature. It is the default, the given. Our bodies are supposed to secrete it. A real man therefore carries his masculinity with ease. It is something that he just expresses without thinking.
Obviously, this is impossible. Masculinity must be proven constantly. Men learn how to perform it. Hence my teenage self’s need to dominate others. And to appear casually masculine men must dissociate from all the parts of their psyche’s that don’t fit the mold. Real men are forever battling to show themselves and the world that they are naturally masculine when in fact they are not. So, this unconsciously natural man is itself a performance.
This is why it can seem off for a man to prove his masculinity by directly asserting it, as opposed to questioning the manhood of others. To say, “I am a real man!” is to admit that it is not a given. Statements like that are answers to questions that are not supposed to be asked of real men. By insisting you are masculine you are letting everyone know that there are doubts. It pulls back the curtain and reveals the stage of masculine performance.
The new cultural trope mockingly called the “performative male” frustratingly misses the point. These so-called performative males are men who conspicuously display their anti-masculine gender transgressions. The fact that this type of man is held out for his inauthenticity shows a worrisome attachment to the myth of masculinity. Masculinity has always been performative.
It is tempting to respond to the current masculinity gurus the way my teenage friends and I did to the boy with the abs. These men are clumsily revealing their gender insecurities. They are telling us that masculinity does not come naturally to them and they must demonstrate it. In other words, they are not real men. Or, as young people might say today, they have small dick energy.
But this would merely double-down on the nefarious standards of masculine competitive performance. The expectation to be a “real” man is harmful to us all. Even if these men are performing it badly, it is the demand that it be performed in the first place that we should object to. What we want is a world where men are free to be themselves without the need to prove they are superior to anyone else. Telling anyone they are not a “real” man is not the way forward.
Still, the new acceptability of men proclaiming their manhood reveals that there is more uncertainty about how to be man than there was in the past. That there is a cottage industry of self-proclaimed masculinity overseers is indicative of the fact that men are not expected to perform masculinity the way they used to. It is now acceptable for men to transgress the traditional standards in myriad ways. The new demand to “man up” is predicated on the fact that men need to first be made aware of their wayward affectations. You shout, “I am a real man!” only if your audience is unsure if masculinity matters anymore. It serves as a reminder, a wake-up call.
The reactionary nature of the new masculinism is worrisome. Now that they cannot assume that men buy-in to masculine competition and masculinity is treated openly as a costume, the exhibitions of masculinity are becoming more extravagant. Since it can’t be treated as a given, masculinity must assert itself in ever more threatening ways. Cartoonish figures like Andrew Tate make sense in this context. To make the case for their masculinity they have to excessively display their homophobia, misogyny, and dominance over other men.
Nevertheless, the new masculinity industry is a sign of progress. It exists because the attachment to masculinity is waning. Now, the performative nature of masculinity is unabashed. The myth of masculinity’s naturalness is impossible to take seriously when everyone understands that men need to be conditioned to exhibit it. If it’s so natural, how could there be—as Tate often claims—a cultural “red pill” that destroys it? The absurdity of the “real” man is now there for all to see.
The next time you hear a man proclaim his manhood, you should fear what he is capable of but also hear the fear of manhood losing its grip. We are in a moment with the potential for even more grotesque patriarchal abuses and for new, more promising gender possibilities.