A global feminist organization whose idea of “healthy manhood” is the promotion and “allyship” of feminist ideals expressed worry in its 2023 report, which revealed that fewer young American men are supportive of feminism.
Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice was distressed to learn some of the results of its online survey of 2,022 American men between the ages of 18 and 45.
The survey found 40% of all the men showed symptoms of depression, while 44% had recent thoughts of suicide.
The group’s primary concern, however, appeared to be that the number of men who said “feminism has made America a better place” dropped by nine percentage points between the group of “elder millennials” (age 38-45), at 56%, and the 18-23 “Gen Z” group, at 47%.
Additionally, 40% of all men said they trust at least one “men’s rights” or “anti-feminist” source.
Equimundo touts itself as having “worked internationally and in the US since 2011 to engage men and boys as allies in gender equality, promote healthy manhood, and prevent violence.”
The organization seeks to alter “masculine” men by “transforming intergenerational patterns of harm and promoting patterns of care, empathy and accountability among boys and men throughout their lives.”
Among the corporations and organizations funding Equimundo are the United Nations Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Archewell – the organization founded by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Equimundo’s most recent report delivered the sobering news that “men in the U.S. are in trouble.”
“Many feel that their futures are uncertain and their identities are threatened,” the organization declared. “This situation is especially acute now, but this anxiety has always been built into boyhood and manhood.”
But Equimundo’s perception of why American men “are in trouble” is not surprising:
Told to “man up” or “be a real man,” boys and men who inevitably cannot meet the impossible overlapping standards of toughness, self-sufficiency, dominance, or stoicism have their very identity withheld from them.
Masculine norms such as these that govern every aspect of men’s and boys’ lives – and are woven into family life, schools, sports and other community spaces – deprive young men of more caring alternatives, ways to confidently own their identity as caring, emotionally connected, cooperative people.
The group’s reasoning showed its true concern is a feminist agenda that includes the tenets of Critical Race Theory:
Some may find solace in misogyny and white supremacism. Certainly, too many men ignore or oppose the necessary action we all need for women’s equality and racial justice. Some men’s anger and their clinging to harmful ideas about manhood is hurting all of us.
Equimundo attempted to explain how its feminist agenda could be losing to what it called the “manosphere” that “echoes and reinforces” the notion that feminism exists at a cost to men:
#MeToo, Title IX, and the necessary changes in institutional cultures resulting from greater attention to sexual assault and men’s violence against women have all affected how men see themselves in relation to women’s rights and women’s equality in complex ways. The results from our research indicate that many men are confused in the face of this social upheaval and social advances. Some men are receiving and accepting the messages of – and demand for – respect, equality, and full dignity of women. Others are clearly threatened by these messages, or the online voices of misogyny are helping convince these men that they should feel threatened.
The men surveyed also responded to the statement “In America today, men have it harder than women.”
Among the 18-23 group, 55% agreed with the statement, while 59% of 24-30-year-olds, 52% of 31-37-year-olds, and 44% of the 38-45 group did the same.
The survey also found that the youngest group of men reported the lowest levels of optimism and experience of social support.
In response to the statement “No one really knows me well,” 65% of men in the 18-23 group and 62% of the 24-30-year-olds agreed.
Perhaps in keeping with that finding, 48% of all men said their lives online are “more engaging and rewarding” than their real-life social interactions, with about 60% of men in all age groups revealing they view online pornography once per week or more often.
Equimundo said its “emerging conclusion” as a result of its study is that “those of us who promote gender equality have not done a particularly good job of engaging men in general in any kind of concrete action for racial justice, social justice, or gender equality.”
But Aaron M. Renn, co-founder and senior fellow at American Reformer, who highlighted the Equimundo survey in a piece published recently at the Institute for Family Studies, observed the feminist organization “treats men primarily as instruments, wanting them to become allies in support of their own cause”:
Equimundo also appears to view men primarily as objects of therapeutic reconstruction rather than people with their own ideas about what they want out of life (something, by the way, the researchers did not ask about). Equimundo wants to redefine masculinity, for example, even at the expense of taking away men’s sense of purpose.
Renn explained that, as a feminist organization, “Equimundo is keen for men to escape what they call the ‘Man Box’ or traditional masculinity, in favor of female allyship,” and “those who hold to their dreaded ‘Man Box’ have the highest sense of purpose in life, according to the survey.”
“Masculinity is not a problem to be solved, as Equimundo seems to think, but a way of being that needs to be channeled in directions that are both good for men themselves and for society,” he added. “We do need a more expansive vision of what it means to be a man, but replacing the ‘Man Box’ with a different yet highly restrictive and less natural idea of masculinity is not the answer.”
Psychiatrist Mark McDonald, M.D., author of Dissident MD, wrote a December 2022 piece titled “The Disappearance of the American Man” that “the American man has become an endangered species, as masculinity has been systematically uprooted from American society.”
Observing this “uprooting” also in the context of COVID-19 policies, McDonald asserted the process has been “decades-long,” but that “over the past three years the American man has fallen victim to a cultural genocide led by feminists, the educated elite, and proponents of the manufactured medical panic of 2020”:
Everything deemed masculine is under attack. Any expression of courage, strength, risk-taking, leadership, pragmatism, or reason is condemned, cancelled, and punished. Standing up to bullies is deemed “abusive.” Supporting traditional (and natural) gender roles is criticized as “patriarchal.” Using force to fight evil is decried as “toxic.” Expressing sexual desire for a woman, a necessity to keep the human species alive, is dismissed as nothing more than “objectification.” The attack on the masculine now extends into the realm of children, as boys are encouraged to dress like girls, adopt female names, and submit to the will of emotions dictated to them by unhappy, angry, resentful women.
“This is an exercise in mass suicide, made possible by a decadent society protected from the reality of suffering and delivered by a vehicle of emergency mandates, orders, and dictates no nation of real men would ever have accepted,” McDonald wrote.
