Young men feel under siege – and it’s driving them to dark places

When I first turned up at university, a fresh-faced (well, pimply faced) fledgling man, I ventured into the campus’s outdoor social hub and was confronted by two bracing pieces of graffiti.

ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS, in giant black capitals on a wall, chastened me. But the second felt sharper: Women Walk. Men Stalk. Just making my way around campus made me creepy and exploitative.

Andrew Tate, the reigning king of toxic masculinity, has made a small fortune by encouraging young boys to become what he calls “Top Gs”.Credit: AP

These were provocations – they were designed to get a response. And it worked. Anger was my first impulse, then curiosity. I was at uni, so I had the time to try to work it out. I talked to female friends and read up on feminism, trying to understand the long history of struggle behind it.

It was the late 1980s, the birth of the “sensitive new-age guy”, or SNAG – the idea that a man should be in touch with his feelings and pay attention to those of the women around him. It was a daggy appellation even then, but the idea felt powerful.

I briefly wondered if my generation could be the one to address institutional inequality and, relatedly, to ease the male emotional constipation of my father’s generation – to take on the rigid gender roles, the pay gap, the lot.

Oh, the naivete of youth.

I had cause to reflect on this recently because of conversations I’d been having around the newsroom, with friends and family members about what’s happening in the battle of the sexes in 2023, and who, as Boomer musician Joe Jackson lyrically wondered, the real men are.

It’s clear from those conversations that some young men feel they have been bombarded since childhood by messages from their feminist friends, from young women on social media and in the real media which, taken together, convey to them that all men are irredeemable.

This makes them feel terrible and angry and resent feminism. Fighting back risks cancellation or ridicule, so some young men – too many – seek comfort in the toxic arms of the “manosphere”.

Girls, meanwhile, point out that they have been bombarded since childhood by the harassment and misogyny of male classmates who have sexualised them from before puberty. They still censor themselves in the classroom. Taken together, this conveys to them that the world is not a safe place to inhabit.

It makes them feel terrible and angry and wary of men, and they have little faith that society can redress it – not to mention the pay gap, rigid gender expectations and so forth.

If this seems bleak, I turned to TikTok which, I’m reliably informed, has plenty of advice on what a real man is. I watched slick, well-produced video after video featuring oiled abs and husky-voiced athletes talking about the #grindset – the grinding mindset. Under this #philosophy, a man’s job is to #hustle – get up early, work hard, work out, be mentally and physically #disciplined and earn big money so that he can look after “his” woman.

“Love your suffering,” extolled one deep-voiced hyper-man under the hashtag #stoic. “Do not resist it. Do not flee from it.”

According to influencer and accused rapist and human trafficker Andrew Tate, a man “should have absolutely no interest in whether he’s actually happy or not … how I feel has absolutely no impact on how I live my life”. This TikTok had 197,000 likes, and comments calling Tate “a true scholar for our times”.

In the nomenclature of the manosphere, men are divided into Alpha, the top dogs, and Beta, those who make no impact. But there is also a third man-type– Sigmas, those who sit outside the hierarchy.

“Sigmas are silent. They never really talk about the little things in their lives. Which makes women naturally find you mysterious and attractive,” one influencer writes. While he claims they are “the rarest males on Earth”, his comment section is full of people diagnosing themselves as Sigmas.

Two observations: women in these depictions are vacuous, manipulable commodities to be impressed, feared, seduced, bragged about or conquered. They are not funny, or smart, kind, hard-working or interesting, and they certainly aren’t your equal. Also, everyone is selling something. Stoic is a tattoo brand. Someone else is flogging men’s clothes. Everyone’s got a book, or a YouTube channel or a podcast or some other angle.

Nearly 40 years after the SNAG encouraged men to open up, risible notions such as a Sigma are telling them to close down again. The pre-war generation of my father had a term, and admiration, for this: they were “strong, silent types” and medical science tells us they are at greater risk of physical and mental health problems (which they will no doubt stoically ignore).

Old patriarchal notions like this do no favours for either men or women. Already, men kill themselves at three times the rate of women.

Real-world boys, your sons and brothers and nephews, with all their complexities and insecurities, their delightfulness and darkness, feel sandwiched. On one hand, they see the attainment and assertiveness of girls at school and university; they see traditional male jobs disappearing and the economy skewing towards work in the traditionally female caring economy. On the other hand, is the #grindset expectation that they should be rich, sexually irresistible and ripped through joyless self-discipline.

Girls, meanwhile, are sandwiched between their increasing educational attainment and assertiveness and the persistent patriarchal realpolitik that means their work is undervalued and their bodies are subject to harassment, assault and intimate partner violence.

A general patina of fury and mistrust overlays it all, turbocharged by social media. I saw two bits of provocative graffiti painted on university walls – our kids cop a video blizzard.

And yet, I believe in discourse. Surely, these provocations can still be worked out by talking to each other, arguing, laughing, listening, thinking, reading, and a dose of goodwill.

Oh, the naivete of middle age.

Michael Bachelard is a senior writer and former deputy editor and investigations editor of The Age. He has worked in Canberra, Melbourne and Jakarta, has written two books and won multiple awards for journalism, including the Gold Walkley.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.