This little entry is about being a man. If you’re a woman reading this article, be very welcome, but you are probably not the target audience.
Now. Try talking about any issue in a man’s life. Try talking about what it’s like having a man’s life experience. What is the immediate response? The notion that “Women have it worse.” Right, sure, granted. For all I know, that might be completely correct. But I’m talking about something specific here. Being a man in 2026.
I was about to write a whole article about chosen loneliness. The ever-present feeling of failure. The absence of hope. The sensation of being completely unwanted, undesired.
And I would have written such an article, but really? General society doesn’t care. If you’re a man and you’re struggling, you should care on an individual level, by yourself in the safety of your own home. If you’re dealing with negative emotions, there are things you can do by yourself. Journaling, therapy, meditation, all valid options when practiced privately. Things change drastically when you go public.
If you’re a man, it’s not very rewarding to let other people in. If you’re a man reaching out, you might just get very specific combination of humiliation, pity and apathy. “Why would a man reach out for help? Don’t men already have all the power? What are they complaining about?“
The default assumption seems to be that men, as a demographic group, have to be kept in check. That society is worse for having men in it, and that we should focus our efforts on stopping men from causing harm instead of helping them. An evergreen notion seems to be that men don’t need any help, and any help men do receive from the community is misapplied. The men who just so happen to fall by the wayside are seen as an acceptable sacrifice.
Thing is, a lot of men are falling by the wayside. Large swaths of men are drawn to extremist male subcultures. Andrew Tate comes to mind, but also political extremism or black-pill culture. If these options don’t make your hair stand on end, I don’t know what will. For the guys who fail to find a group of their own, prospects are even worse.
There is a reason that the concept of a “safe space for men” gets you laughed out of the room. In practice, a safe space tends to be a place where men are not allowed, or just not welcome at the very least. That does send a message, doesn’t it?
The first half of the 21st century is turning out to be the longest, most drawn-out humiliation ritual that the male gender has ever seen. There doesn’t seem to be any correct way to be a man. Any attempt to identify as masculine nets you an immediate “potentially right-wing” red flag. Any attempt to explore positive masculinity, no matter your intentions, inadvertently railroads you to a plethora of toxic spaces. Andrew Tate, red-pill communities, the man-o-sphere, you name it.
By now, enough time has passed for masculinity to almost just be a shorthand for toxic masculinity. The association with misogynist culture has built up so much that general society might as well declare war on the entire male gender.
Now, let’s talk about GamerGate.
Right. I’ve decided to mention GamerGate. Yes, -that- GamerGate, the whole debacle from 2014 going on to 2015. You might be wondering where I’m going with this.
I’m just going to come out and say it. GamerGate was a formative experience for me. It taught me a number of valuable lessons. Going by the Wikipedia article on it right now, the article starts with the incredibly malicious claim that GamerGate can be primarily defined as a large-scale misogynist harassment campaign. The page seems to be protected against editing as well, which seems purposely obstructive on the part of the page’s administrators as well. Correcting the page seems impossible right now, and the administrators seem perniciously dedicated to maintaining the vicious smears, starting with the blatant disinformation at the top of the article.
For anyone who wasn’t around, reading the article does paint a heinous picture. A small number of innocent women were violently harassed by an irrationally hateful, misogynist internet mob of typically male gamers. Open and shut case, right? Except that’s really not what happened.
GamerGate was about ethics in games journalism. A video game developer, who just so happened to be a woman, decided to sleep with a reviewer in order to get a good review on a terribly lackluster game.
Consumers quickly became aware of the obvious conflict of interest, resulting in a far-reaching breach of trust between consumers and the journalists who are supposed to protect them from bad purchases. Never before has corruption in games media become such a viscerally immediate scandal of corruption. The video game developer at the heart of this issue, however, blew up the fairly limited “GamerGate” affair at the time by approaching the mainstream press with her own story. I’m sure this was her version of damage control, were it not for what she exactly told the press. She portrayed the sizeable backlash from “gamers” against her actions as unwarranted misogyny, coming from hatred based on her gender instead of what she had done.
And so, the mainstream media ran with the video game developer’s side of the story. When it reached the public, the narrative was set in stone before even bothering to check what the other side of the debacle was. By then, it was too late for the media channels to change stories without losing face. Not that they really cared for the people who’s reputations they were destroying, which was still by and large male gamers. In 2014 and 2015, by sheer force of repetition in the mainstream media, it became heavy-handed “common sense” that most male gamers are misogynists. Nuance be damned, the truth has been unilaterally decided upon by the press.
Men and boys are easy targets of slander, after all, and there was little point in apologizing to them or correcting the narrative. Men were seen as obvious aggressors at the time, and by sheer cultural resonance, the idea of men as mindlessly irate misogynists has been deeply entrenched in western culture. The deeply misandrist lie is maintained and repeated to this day, least of all on Wikipedia, and by proxy it has served as a notable source of blanket hatred against men to this day.
If there is anything to learn from this, it is that malicious narratives might just stick around longer than they should, and that it’s not always the right people who are in charge of the information. The damage done to the reputation of men as a whole was severe, in large part due to careless reporting from the mainstream media. Even today, the venomous and misandrist versions of the narrative persist, while the truth remains buried on mostly unread blogs.
In today’s society, the broad concept of “men’s issues” is treated with a scarcely held back sneer. This is one of the things we have inherited as a culture from failing to stand up for what is right. Leaving kindhearted men in the dust for failing to meet impossible standards, blaming them for their own suffering, and worst of all, ignoring them when they ask for help.
How to respond to this as a man with dignity
So what do you do? You walk away. You keep your head held high. The cavalry has decided long ago that no help is coming. You move on with dignity, and even as you do so, you’ll probably be met with the same scorn. The realization has to finally set in that there very little you can do to be acknowledged as a man. According to general perception, you’re in the wrong no matter what you do. Misogynist. Macho hotshot. Wrong for even existing. And so, you leave that behind. You uphold your own morals, your own standards, and you don’t quit for anything. Even if the whole world is against you for reasons you can’t help, it doesn’t matter. Walking away was always allowed.
Sadly, toxic narratives are all too common. “Zero-sum” narratives where bettering your own well-being as a man is seen as an indirect attack on the well-being of women or other groups of people. Decisively walking away from such toxic narratives is an act of self‑respect, nothing more, nothing less. Here’s my advice; Draw your boundaries as a man and stand by them. Beware of voices that dismiss your experience as a privilege problem, and seek out those who listen without judgment.
Men deserve to be in a space that affirms their humanity, values, and capacity to belong somewhere in this world. All you need as a man is the willingness to create that space yourself, and to stand by that space wholeheartedly. You can build your sanctuary by your own principles, with or without anyone else’s approval.
That may sound defiant, and it is. True strength often grows from within, and true strength is recognized. Yet strength does not have to be solitary. When you feel ready, you can invite people in who respect your boundaries. Your community should be a place that lifts you up, and where you can lift up those around you. Being a man in 2026 is about being a force for good, no matter what comes your way.
If today’s day and age is a test of one’s character, know that any test can be passed. After all, the measure of a man is determined by the quality of their heart.
