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Instead of this material reality, the left often talks about masculinity as a cultural or ideological construct. But for many working-class men, masculinity is tied to their everyday lives: how they earn respect, support families, or find purpose at work. Masculinity has long been structured around functions—provider, protector, builder—that still shape how many men understand their place in the world. As those roles have eroded, particularly in places where stable work has disappeared, the left has offered few alternatives that feel tangible or aspirational. Meanwhile, masculinity remains one of the only frameworks that confers dignity: so much so that it's being used to position a return to manual labor as more meaningful than upward mobility.

This disconnect often falls along class lines. Some of us are afforded the emotional and social freedom to distance ourselves from masculinity without fearing a loss of our identity or belonging. For men who have been raised to see work as a central part of who they are, performing the masculinity they were taught to admire is important to them, even if the labor market no longer supports it. Young men also want to know where they fit, growing up as the first digital natives where societal goalposts keep shifting. The task isn't to dismiss or idealize masculinity—but to take seriously the ways it still functions as a source of value to prevent its weaponization

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
This ..

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Instead of this material reality, the left often talks about masculinity as a cultural or ideological construct. But for many working-class men, masculinity is tied to their everyday lives: how they earn respect, support families, or find purpose at work. Masculinity has long been structured around functions—provider, protector, builder—that still shape how many men understand their place in the world. As those roles have eroded, particularly in places where stable work has disappeared, the left has offered few alternatives that feel tangible or aspirational. Meanwhile, masculinity remains one of the only frameworks that confers dignity: so much so that it's being used to position a return to manual labor as more meaningful than upward mobility.

This disconnect often falls along class lines. Some of us are afforded the emotional and social freedom to distance ourselves from masculinity without fearing a loss of our identity or belonging. For men who have been raised to see work as a central part of who they are, performing the masculinity they were taught to admire is important to them, even if the labor market no longer supports it. Young men also want to know where they fit, growing up as the first digital natives where societal goalposts keep shifting. The task isn't to dismiss or idealize masculinity—but to take seriously the ways it still functions as a source of value to prevent its weaponization

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When economies fail and meaningful work can't be found, men suffer. They drink, or drug, spend endless hours on the internet, or join gangs or the military or terror groups. It happens so often, in so many places and so many cultures, that I suspect its biological not cultural.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
This ..

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Instead of this material reality, the left often talks about masculinity as a cultural or ideological construct. But for many working-class men, masculinity is tied to their everyday lives: how they earn respect, support families, or find purpose at work. Masculinity has long been structured around functions—provider, protector, builder—that still shape how many men understand their place in the world. As those roles have eroded, particularly in places where stable work has disappeared, the left has offered few alternatives that feel tangible or aspirational. Meanwhile, masculinity remains one of the only frameworks that confers dignity: so much so that it's being used to position a return to manual labor as more meaningful than upward mobility.

This disconnect often falls along class lines. Some of us are afforded the emotional and social freedom to distance ourselves from masculinity without fearing a loss of our identity or belonging. For men who have been raised to see work as a central part of who they are, performing the masculinity they were taught to admire is important to them, even if the labor market no longer supports it. Young men also want to know where they fit, growing up as the first digital natives where societal goalposts keep shifting. The task isn't to dismiss or idealize masculinity—but to take seriously the ways it still functions as a source of value to prevent its weaponization

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When economies fail and meaningful work can't be found, men suffer. They drink, or drug, spend endless hours on the internet, or join gangs or the military or terror groups. It happens so often, in so many places and so many cultures, that I suspect its biological not cultural.

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I share that suspicion.

Men, in general, are goal oriented and are lost if they don't have any purpose.

Fortunately, I never joined the military or any gangs or terrorist groups. A lot of that was luck. First, I started dating a girl right around the time I was in the process of joining the Marines just tell my parents to go fuck themselves. That girl saved me from the biggest preventable mistake of my life. Second, I hung around with some real dipshits in my late teens and early 20's, but even the poorest of us weren't surrounded by gang culture, even if they tended to gravitate toward it. Third, there really isn't much reason or opportunity for most Americans to ever consider turning to terrorism unless they're in prison or currently in the process of getting their college "education".

But I've done plenty of drugs and drank enough booze for 3 lifetimes. And to this day I spend WAY too much time staring at shiny rectangles, whether I'm watching YouTube, playing a video game or scratching that OCD itch and working months on end while neglecting everything else to finish a project that could never be finished in my lifetime.

Sometimes I do real good for a long time. I get some shitty employment for a while and/or I put a lot of work into my house. Then other times I don't, and I spend nearly an entire year making something really awesome, but that can and will never be monitarily beneficial to me, and at the end of the year all I've really done is burnt off one more year's worth of gasoline in the tank that saw a dip below the half-empty mark arguably a decade ago already.

It's difficult sometimes keeping yourself focused, on-point and making "progress" for yourself when you've put yourself into a situation where you hardly ever need to do any real work for yourself, and you don't have anybody else you need to support.

My aunt is one who bucks the trend as far as generalities with femals go, and has been a hard working physical gal all of her life. Even when she was married she never stopped working full time. For the last few years I could tell that the grind is really starting to get to her because of her age, but now that the one year to retirement mark has passed she's already talking about staying on part time since her boss really doesn't want to lose her and he'd be basically willing to give her whatever hours she wants. When she said he told her she could work 2 days a month if she wanted to I told her that she has to take that. That way they can't take away any of her raises, or possible higher work hours to PTO ratios, or other benefits she still might get even as a part-time over the years, which is what I'm sure they would do if she retired for six months and then said she wanted to come back to work part time. Right back to square one she'd go for everything along with the rest of the new hires.

I never really "knew" her when we were both living together at Grams' place and it's funny how much we got under each other's skin during that time. It turns out that in many ways we are very much alike. My fear is that she's not going to take retirement well, and she will not be happy when she doesn't have a purpose, and may find it pretty difficult to make one for herself. Like I said the other day in the Garden, I really admire your persistence and your perseverance. And I'll bet sometimes you feel like everything you do on top of your own physical health issues can be a real thankless job. And I can almost guaranty that you probably aren't getting the amount of appreciation you deserve a lot of the time because we're all just humans and that's what we do... and it's easiest to hurt the ones you love too, which is the real bitch of it all, innit?

I know that sometimes every day can feel like a struggle, but you do have one thing that it is very unlikely that my aunt or I will ever have in our old age, and that is a whole freakin' boatload of external purpose guiding your way and keeping you constantly motivated, all the while really earning those little hits of dopamine and serotonin in all the right and healthy ways we were biologically designed to earn them.



I think the problem is that even in 2025 we can't really explain ourselves, no matter how many people profess that they can and that is what they are doing.

How are we supposed to "understand men" or "understand women" when we're all so different from each other if you take the time to strip away all the superficial political stuff and societal conditioning?

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Third, there really isn't much reason or opportunity for most Americans to ever consider turning to terrorism unless they're in prison or currently in the process of getting their college "education".

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It's difficult sometimes keeping yourself focused, on-point and making "progress" for yourself when you've put yourself into a situation where you hardly ever need to do any real work for yourself, and you don't have anybody else you need to support.

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