MARCH 27, 2025 | OPINION | By Fiona Frankel (Staff Writer)
In an interview with political commentator Ezra Klein, writer and social scientist Richard Reeves stated that, in his opinion, “all scholarship is at least partly autobiographical.” Reeves has made a career out of studying the contemporary “crisis of men,” an issue in which he attributes his interest to fathering three sons within a growing climate of toxic masculinity, decline in male success and shifting gender roles. This crisis refers to the growing challenges faced by men, particularly those from underprivileged backgrounds, regarding education, careers and mental health.
My interest is similarly autobiographical, though from a much different lens than Reeves. American women, myself included, are rightfully scared. I’m scared for my friends, my family and myself — and I should be.
I often find myself giving my male friends far too much credit for behaving as respectful, considerate people. I’m consistently impressed when men openly state that they voted blue, when they express interest in women’s lives with solely platonic interests and when they refrain from punctuating their discourse with casual slurs. Simultaneously, I find myself and my female friends expecting the worst from men and accommodating their consequent actions. Over Winter Break, a friend of mine shared with a group of women that she stopped hooking up with someone after he kept trying to choke her nonconsensually. “Yeah, but everyone’s doing that now,” another friend remarked.
This attitude may sound derisive, negative and just sad, but it is also realistic. It’s difficult to expect anything but the worst from a population growing up inundated with porn perpetuating sexual violence, misogynistic influencers like Andrew Tate being catapulted into fame and wealth and an accused rapist in the Oval Office.
Simultaneously, men are underperforming in education, both in terms of academic performance and enrollment. Male suicide rates are increasing annually at four times the rate of women. In 2020, men died from opioid overdose at two to three times the rate of their female counterparts.
Still, the contemporary spotlight on the crisis of men raises a clear objection. Men are struggling, yes, but so are women, predominantly at the hands of men.
For centuries in Western culture, women have been denied education, careers, bodily autonomy, freedom of speech, suffrage and so on. As women gain access to equitable treatment, there is an inevitable anxiety among men that these opportunities are inherently zero-sum, with this progress occurring at the expense of men’s rights. And the moment that there is any decline in male wellbeing and domination, there is a scramble to deem it a crisis and find a solution. I hear a similar sentiment echoed by my female peers, arguing that men have had enough focus. Men may be suffering, but the majority of that struggle can be attributed to the systems created and perpetuated by men themselves.
Despite this, and my personal inclination to turn a blind eye to the matter, we must care about the crisis of men. For one, it truly is not zero-sum. Especially in the United States, a nation priding itself on a somewhat problematic abundance of resources, closing the education gender gap will not be intrinsically negative for anybody. Furthermore, the crisis of men is devastating for women. Sexual violence has become entirely normalized by a generation of young men seeing its prominence and popularity in pornography, leading young women to believe that they are at fault for not complying with sexual aggression. A political chasm is dividing gender as well; as men shift further to the right and women to the left, the latter grows increasingly unwilling to bridge the ideological gap, a factor in the decline of marriage rates in the U.S. as well as part of a broader partisan divide. The progress made by feminism and the women’s rights movement is and will be incrementally destroyed by men in positions of power who are mere products of this crisis.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy addressed the plight of men in a 2023 essay in which he argues that the transition of gender norms and the ensuing power dynamic shift causes an inevitable shock that must be acknowledged and addressed. “We need look no further than Charlottesville, January 6th, the prevalence of violence against women, and the rising threat of domestic extremism to see the potential consequences of allowing this resentment to fester.” Indeed, the consequences of ignoring men’s precarity at this time will predominantly impact women and other marginalized groups that fall victim to the resulting violence and discrimination.
The inclination to care does not come naturally, at least in my experience. My well-being is actively worsened by the fragility of young men and their treatment of women. But ideally, I do want to live alongside a population of thriving, progressive men and I believe that most women would say the same. The efforts towards solving the crisis of men are not mutually exclusive to the interests of women’s rights.
Working towards creating a male generation that is mentally healthier, more educated and more comfortable in their roles as men would be broadly beneficial and likely lead to a more liberal society that appeals to the equitable treatment of all genders and demographics.
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