Commentary

Living in quiet desperation

March 27, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Anthony Carnovale

I blame Calvin Klein and Antonio Sabato, Jr.! Remember the CK ads from the 90s? I’ll give you a minute to look them up. On second thought, don’t. You may never feel the same way about yourself ever again. I mean, when I first saw those ads, I knew I was done for: that pose, those abs. The hair. How I could I compete with that look? That level of sexy? There was a lot of pressure on boys like me to look a certain way, act a certain way. What about the rest of my male friends? How come I was reading about girls and their body issues, but nothing about young men and theirs? Was it because we just didn’t talk about these things? I had questions; I wanted answers.

When I left home for university, I was a little more mature, a little more comfortable in my own skin. But the pressure to look, walk and talk a certain way was still there. At the same time, conversations around gender, masculinity, and femininity exploded — literally and figuratively.

I learned that identity was a social construct defined and enforced by traditional thinking and patriarchal power structures. I remember a friend telling me about Judith Butler and how gender could be defined around a broader sense of fluidity. What I took from it was that there was more than one way to be a man, more than one way to be a woman, and plenty of ways to be in between. Nobody could tell me how to be a man. I could be whatever type of man I wanted to be.

I wanted to be more like Ethan Hawke than G.I Joe. I didn’t want to do chin-ups. I wanted to read. I didn’t want to run, so I wrote. I didn’t flex my biceps, I used words. I skipped going to the club and went to poetry readings and bookstores, instead. It felt healthier. Safer. I didn’t need abs or know how to fix a lock or unclog a sink or know how to work a power drill. I learned how to use my mind, and wasn’t afraid to tell others what I thought or how I felt. One day I woke up, and I was the man I wanted to be.

My whole life I’ve heard, read about, and witnessed the misogyny, sexism, and patriarchy that women faced, and continue to face, in society. I’ve learned that I am a part of the problem. I’ve tried my best to ameliorate that. I’m working on being a better friend. A better father. A better husband. The truth is most of what I have learned about being a friend has come from women. For many of us, our fathers were too busy being fathers to teach us how to be fathers, how to be men. It was assumed that we would watch, and we would learn. After all, do men ever really talk about these things?

Today, I’m worried about our young boys and men. You should be, too. Over the past 30 years, and rightfully so, there’s been a concerted effort to end the patriarchal system. I’m glad we shifted our gaze. I’m glad we made space and tried imagining something new, something more inclusive. It was urgent, necessary.

But something else also happened: boys started falling behind in education, in the workplace. More boys are dying from overdoses and suicides. It was as if we couldn’t take care of everybody at the same time.

The fact is, we have an alarming number of lonely, alienated, and disaffected young men in this country. And whatever the reasons may be for it, we have to address it. And because we haven’t, that void has been filled by the likes of Andrew Tate (“I think women belong to men.”) and other male influencers in the manosphere. There’s a reason why so many people have suggested that Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ is much watch TV. I’m not expecting a lot of sympathy here, but is there anything more dangerous than a lonely, alienated man? Watch ‘Adolescence’ and see for yourself.

When we talk about masculinity in my classroom, I always reference a scene in “Macbeth” that always strikes a nerve. After Macduff’s family has been slain by Macbeth, Malcolm encourages Macduff to seek revenge. Macduff responds with: “I shall do so/But I must also feel it as a man.” A warrior not afraid to feel, to grieve, to mourn. There’s strength in that. There’s strength in admitting needing that.

Macduff wasn’t afraid to ask for that space. And we need to do more to open that space, and show our young boys what feelings, compassion and introspection look like and what it can lead to. We need to make space for all voices, including young men. We need to make space for these stories in our classrooms, on our bookshelves. We need to hear what these young men are thinking and feeling.

Feminist scholar Bell Hooks once wrote: “There remains a small strain of feminist thinkers who feel strongly that they have given all they want to give to men; they are concerned solely with improving the collective welfare of women. Yet life has shown me that any time a single male dares to transgress patriarchal boundaries, the lives of women, men and children are fundamentally changed for the better.”

In the end, if we fail our young men, we are failing our young women.

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