The masculinity revolution is a quiet one. Don't trust its loudest critics.
Men are under attack. Everything that makes masculinity sacred — valor, honor, chivalry, leadership — is under siege.
What else could explain a recent commercial for a Gillette razor blade suggesting that men should spare each other from bullying and hold each other accountable for sexual harassment? How else should we interpret guidelines recently issued by the American Psychological Association to help therapists more effectively work with their male clients by better understanding the social pressure they face to be so-called real men?
Masculinity is having a moment. There's a movement for a more expressive, more inclusive definition of manhood, but its critics see something more nefarious. If you listen to Piers Morgan or New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, skeptics of the Gillette ad and APA guidelines, you might mistake that movement as an assault waged by feminists and liberals when it's really a quiet revolution staged in large part by men of diverse backgrounds who are tired of living by the very narrow, unforgiving standards of stereotypical masculinity. Read more...
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