Cathy reads books: The Masculinity Manifesto

I am not the target audience

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Hm. Well. So the first thing I should say about The Masculinity Manifesto: How a Man Establishes Influence, Credibility and Authority, is that I am well aware that I am not the target audience. In a sense, bashing this book would be like someone who doesn’t like candy bashing on the latest Haribo confection. As I’ve explained, I have a complicated relationship with self-help as a category. I am also not, as it turns out, a man.

It’s funny though. I actually really liked most of this book.

Let’s talk about what I liked, what I didn’t like, and my overall thoughts.

What I liked

None of the advice was in any way new to me. But, again, I read a lot of psychology and some amount of self-help. It wasn’t quite as obvious as “clean your room.” But most of it was close. However obvious the advice might be, however, it was solid.

Michler does a good job identifying strategies most people could stand to do some or more of. The main messages are excellent. Be a servant leader. Do hard, meaningful things with your life. Don’t try to go it alone.

Michler (or his ghostwriter) is an excellent writer. The prose is accessible, clear, and compelling. While there was a little bit of repetition and some interesting organizational choices, it wasn’t terrible. And he’s a great storyteller, deftly using narrative to amplify his points. Overall, it was a fast, pleasant, engaging read.

What I didn’t like

Michler has an unfortunate habit of peppering the otherwise helpful text with unnecessary, jarring, culture-war bullshit. For instance, he claims that body positivity means accepting an inferior version of yourself, which is very stupid and fatphobic. First, fat isn’t inherently worse than thin. I would really hope that someone giving life advice would realize that the thing everyone would likely want, even in a society that wasn’t fundamentally fatphobic, is health. Guess what? Healthy habits aren’t weight-dependent! I can eat well and move my body at any weight. While weight and health are correlated, they’re not the same thing. Focusing on weight really isn’t that helpful and for many is extremely harmful.

And the reality is that body positivity, at base, doesn’t discourage healthy choices. “Society shouldn’t hate people for their size” and “You should eat a lot of sugar and never move” are fundamentally difference statements and stances.

Sure, you can find zealots who claim to be “body positive” who actively encourage habits that will make the average person fatter and less healthy. But unless Michler is ready to accept that Richard Spencer represents all of conservatism he needs to stop claiming the worst, most fringe elements of movements he’s told to dislike represent those movements as a whole.

He also curiously blames BLM for “riots” rather than… you know… the fact that police murder more than 1,000 people per year without trial and 99% of the time see no real consequences.

And he blames “defund the police” for a recent rise in crime, conveniently ignoring that the vast majority of police departments have seen their budgets expand in recent decades, police clearance rates are abysmal, and that in most departments police spend more of their time on revenue generating activities such as traffic enforcement and waging the drug war than on quickly responding to calls and investigating crimes.

Aaaand of course he misconstrues the term “toxic masculinity” to mean “masculinity is toxic.” What is it with the conservative need to make up definitions to words and then get bent out of shape about them? What a weird and counterproductive habit. He cites the APA’s Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Boys and Men, which literally doesn’t use the word “toxic” on any one of its 36 pages. And, in fact, on the first page uses the word “masculinities” to indicate there is no one masculinity which is inherently toxic because masculinity is not a monolith. The term “toxic masculinity” actually refers to the ways in which some masculinities end up being corrosive in practice.

Besides being misleading and divisive, these asides are also totally unnecessary. If anything, they distract from the good points he makes in the text.

My other main beef with the book is that it suffers from an occasional simplistic, pollyanna-ish, meritocratic framing. For example, it positions the majority of fights as cooperative and positive-sum. His view seems to be that in most ways and in most times, the good guys win and the bad guys lose, at least in the big picture and over the long-term.

But, if we’re going to talk about gender differences in behavior, and apparently we are. And if we’re going to talk about competition and dominance, and apparently we are. Then it seems weird to position the majority of fights as cooperative and positive-sum.

Especially when research indicates men more than women tend to like to play status games (which are zero-sum by definition) and many competitions in life are more coercive than cooperative.

What I have mixed feelings about

When thinking about the good advice in the book, I kept wondering: Why gender any of this? Owning a vagina doesn’t seem to have precluded me from wanting more influence, credibility, and authority. Should it preclude me from getting more?

I guess the main reason to gender your advice is to get men to actually read it. Society punishes men more than women for violating gender norms. Asking for help is coded feminine. And reading a self-help book is dangerously close to asking for help. And we know from marketing that if you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one.

The other thing I thought about is the left-wing equivalent of this kind of advice.

To vastly oversimplify, the left is great at acknowledging structural barriers to achievement. But it’s not great at motivating everyday people to do the work required to make their lives better. The right is terrible at acknowledging structural barriers to achievement. But it’s great at at least trying to motivate everyday people to do the work required to make their lives better.

Here’s one of my main issues with self-help.

Which is more likely to improve more lives to a larger extent:

A. 5 million people read a book where some Iraq war vet with an impressive beard tells them to do something meaningful with their lives.

B. One Governor reads my post about occupational licensure and decides to streamline requirements in their state.

I really don’t know! I think it’s an interesting question. I hope people keep doing both. Ideally with fewer dumb culture-war asides. I do think it’s entirely possible most people who read this book will not see any measurable improvement in their lives while it would be really difficult to not see a lot of benefit from reducing barriers to employment. That’s my hunch.

But if just a few people do a few things to invest in their relationships, be more vulnerable, get healthier, take more responsibility for their lives, engage in meaningful work, etc. then hats off to Michler. Thank you for your service, bestie.

Anyhoods, my babies. Those are some of my thoughts on this book. What else should I read in this vein? I tried 12 Rules for Life and I regret to inform you that I simply do not hate myself enough to finish it.

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