What Do Men Want? Masculinity and Its Discontents

Oh boy, I came into this one with some preconceived harsh thoughts. And I left it with renewed hope for a better understanding of the gender divide that's been fomented by a value-destroying culture.

Power meanders a bit, goes off-topic here and there, and you're at times pondering whether she'll come back to bring it all home. She does.

It's quite a breeze to read, and something you'll get through in a day. Do revisit the book later. There's mentions of Jordan Peterson, online hate culture, and capitalism-spoiled movements; these are put into an interesting context where we come to see both genders as struggling for meaning and a deeper, shared value system.

What do men want? Power isn't very clear at times; but the ending pays off massively, so I won't spoil it.

In her writing I found parts of myself I couldn't identify before, vague contours of some dissatisfaction — and at times anger —, which I think can be explained by her later arguments in the book.

I'm glad to be ‘oh so very wrong' in my initial approach to the book. Nina Power brought about a book that I can cherish, something far less poisonous or trivializing than most of today's literature about what men could possibly be all about.

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Edit: I'm going through it a second time, now taking notes and stopping to reflect on my own life.

I have to say this has been more transformative than I initially thought it might. Power has been doing a lot for my guilt-ridden relationship with masculinity. She's also prompted me to read into some of the positive modes of being a man that she highlights: the mythopoetic movement, strands of modern masculinity with a focus on nurturing male relationships, and — most importantly — the notion of male courage and male self-care as being of service to the greater society.

Normally I'm not someone that would whole-sale recommend a book (taste is intensely subjective), but the vast majority of men would certainly find in Nina Power's words the stimulus to look for the healthy version of who we are/can be, and a few pointers towards the role models that we are most definitely lacking.

I'm disappointed that a number of reviews focus — in the negative sense — on aspects that Power herself tries to explain early in the book. Are we no longer capable of discussing things without ‘whataboutism'? Even as an intersectionalist, I think it's sensible to dissect such a heated topic with a narrower scope; so as not to fall prey to vagueness and ineffectual theoreticizing. More importantly, Power actually offers a view on the interconnectedness of minority issues and the broader impact stemming from male behavior; but not that she had to, and in fact starts the book by talking about her narrow focus.

To wit: male suffering and cultural expectations, translated into certain behaviors we want to get rid of, are ultimately linked to the suffering of the female population, of the non-binary population, of the non-conforming population, etc. Oppression and suffering are universal. The pain of specific label-bound categories of people is going to end up being more or less connected to that of other categories; but the point is that these separations are arbitrary. Power specifically makes that case early in the book. Her aim seems to be explaining why certain modes of oppression and cultural norms surrounding the male construct generate echoes of pain that ripple through persons that are not within the male construct but negatively impacted by it.

Does Power also offer a better way of males and females living together? Yep. Does that somehow detract from the quality of life of, say, non-binary individuals? No, I don't see how that would be possible. Didn't we spend loads of time telling conservatives that “human rights aren't like pie”?

Now I've gotta go deal with 33 years of guilt and shame about having been born a male...