What’s wrong with modern men? Depending on whom you ask, this is a question that can yield wildly different answers. On one side is a crisis in masculinity marked by the sexual impropriety of the kinds highlighted by the #MeToo movement; by campaigns of harassment against women such as Gamergate’s—for daring to exist in spaces some men consider their sole domain; by the emergence of ever more troubling internet subcultures such as incels or “involuntary celibates” (whose expressions of frustration with their lack of sexual success take the form of extreme misogyny), brought to light for much of the world through Alek Minassian, the alleged perpetrator of the Toronto van attack. On another side is a crisis in what constitutes acceptable male identity, a crisis that encompasses men who squirm at a model defined by public figures such as Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, and Milo Yiannopoulos, but also those with more conservative or traditional views on gender, who lament what...
Jack Urwin is a journalist and humour writer whose work has appeared in the Guardian, McSweeney’s and Vice. His first book, Man Up: Surviving Modern Masculinity, was published in 2016.
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