Intro

Don’t blame women. Men are failing spectacularly and it’s totally their own fault. In What Is Wrong with Men, cultural critic Jessica Crispin borrows from Michael Douglas movies to dissect how masculinity devolved from Seventies style vulnerability into today's aggressive displays of insecurity. While billionaires like Musk compulsively impregnate women and Zuckerberg learns jujitsu to feel "manly," basement-dwelling incels worship sex traffickers like Andrew Tate. The old patriarchy died in the 1980s, Crispin argues, but men refuse to adapt, expecting the world to revolve around them instead of building female-style support systems. It’s the Michael Douglas Trap. From Gordon Gekko's greed to crypto-gambling bros, modern masculinity has degenerated into a grotesque performance of insecurity—and it's getting worse.

1. Modern masculinity is trapped between dead patriarchy and refusal to adapt Crispin argues that traditional patriarchal structures collapsed in the 1980s, but men still expect the world to revolve around them instead of building new support systems like women did.

KEY QUOTE: "The world is supposed to adapt to men. Men are not supposed to adopt to the world."

2. Billionaire masculinity reveals desperate insecurity despite ultimate success Even the world's richest men obsessively seek validation through physical transformation and procreation, proving that external markers of success no longer provide masculine identity.

KEY QUOTE: "Nothing is ever enough anymore. And so that's why you see Elon Musk will never stop having children, never stop fathering children. Jeff Bezos will never have enough money to be satisfied."

3. The 1980s created a fantasy of male rejection to mask female-initiated abandonment As women initiated two-thirds of divorces, Hollywood created the "midlife crisis" narrative where men chose to leave, protecting male ego from the reality of being unwanted.

KEY QUOTE: "There was this sort of fantasy that was being created at the time of the male midlife crisis, where a kind of, you can't fire me, I quit. Fantasy was being generated."

4. Today's male influencers have inverted basic human connection into pathology The evolution from 1970s male vulnerability to Andrew Tate's misogyny represents a complete rejection of emotional intimacy and romantic love.

KEY QUOTE: "Andrew Tate does not fall in love, you know, he sexually violates, he's charged with sex trafficking... You can't hold a woman's hand, that's gay. You can have sex with women, that is gay."

5. The crisis requires material solutions, not emotional band-aids Rather than teaching boys to cry, society needs to address the gambling-based economy and lack of meaningful work that creates destructive masculine behaviors.

KEY QUOTE: "You're not gonna be able to fight against that just by learning how to cry... This is about making sure people have steady employment, making sure that people have study income, making sure the people have health care and community."

Nothing explains everything. Not even Michael Douglas movies. But just as women like setting traps, men love stumbling into them. I’m not convinced by Crispin’s reading of Hollywood movies. Men have always been making fools of themselves on screen - from Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo to the equally pathetic Douglas in Wall Street. Everything is supposed to be in crisis in America these days: from democracy to capitalism to masculinity. But if crisis means that men (or women) aren’t quite sure how to behave around the other sex, then they’ve been in crisis forever. So I’m unconvinced. No doubt because I’m in crisis. What would Michael Douglas do/think?

Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe