The ‘Male Loneliness Epidemic’ – Manufactured Machination by the Performative Male? An Argument for Understanding.
- Hitesh M.
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
The Male Malaise
‘Male loneliness epidemic’, a phrase you may have heard repeated online by feminists and men’s rights activists alike.
Simply put, the ‘male loneliness epidemic’ is an alleged phenomena of the rise in social isolation and lack of meaningful human connections among men, young and old alike.
Depending on who you ask, the ‘epidemic’ encompasses various struggles: emotional suppression, high male suicide rates, the struggle to find a partner, celibacy, singledom, or alleged romantic selectivity amongst women. Netflix’s Adolescence gives us a very recent depiction of the catastrophic outcomes of male loneliness amongst the youth diaspora. A 13 year-old boy is triggered by his female classmate labelling him an incel (involuntary celibate) on social media, leading to him murdering her.
The Veracity
A 2021 survey by the American Survey Center found that 15% of men reported having no close friends compared to 10% of women reporting the same. This is a significant rise from 1990 where the exact metric stood at a mere 3% of men. A Pew Research Study also found that only 38% of men expressed an inclination to turn to a friend for emotional support compared to 54% of women, revealing a startling gender gap. The common denominator here is increasing loneliness amongst both men and women, though the distinction lies in the subsequent stage of addressing this loneliness which is where men are falling behind. Currently, men in the United States are 4-times more likely to commit suicide compared to women, and twice as likely in South Korea.
So…yes there is a loneliness epidemic, but not one specific to males. The real ‘epidemic’ men currently face is the emotional deficit epidemic, let’s call it the ‘male coping crisis’.
In The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, feminist scholar bell hooks says that “patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves”. Men simply are not, and have not been equipped with the emotional capital to process their own grievances in healthy ways, leaving them vulnerable to destructive outlets that feel like the only language they were ever taught.
Take Andrew Tate, who says that “one of the trademarks of masculinity is the ability to control your emotions”, but are emotions under control or just swept under the rug? “Patriarchal masculinity insists that real men must prove their manhood by idealizing aloneness and disconnection,” says bell hooks. If the patriarchal blueprint equates emotional openness with weakness, then silence becomes survival and isolation becomes identity. In this framework, men are not choosing detachment so much as inheriting it, performing emotional self-erasure because they have never been shown an alternative.
“Men are Trash” – TikTok Feminism
This existing stigma isn’t limited to patriarchal ideology, but has somehow manifested within progressive spaces mocking men’s emotions, quickly dismissing and satirising it on social media. Just find any video about the ‘male loneliness epidemic’ (or ‘male coping crisis’) and the comment section will almost likely always be filled with comments like “If men are suffering in silence, then why am I always hearing about it” or “They’re not lonely enough”. Very quickly, issues with men are prescribed as issues of men.
People are quick to jump on the bandwagon that men are the cause of every problem. While amusing, it further ruptures the crisis and somewhat victim-blames men indoctrinated by the patriarchal structures which inject toxic masculinity as a vaccine against vulnerability. These structures manufacture the behaviours we later pathologise as individual moral shortcomings rather than structural outcomes. If a demographic is seemingly struggling, surely the answer is to address the problem rather than diminish it as trivial. It’s capitalist dogma to tell people to sort themselves out, when there is a larger structural issue at play; we don’t live in silos and must strike a balance of supporting men emotionally and whistleblowing misogynistic behaviour, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
The line, however, needs to be drawn somewhere. Emotional openness does not mean trauma-dumping on the first date, nor does it excuse weaponising vulnerability as a shield for bad behaviour. There is a difference between being honest and unloading, between seeking connection and demanding emotional labour from strangers. Wanting men to talk about their feelings is not an invitation for them to outsource accountability.
Polling Patriarchy – the politics of it, and why we should care.
As a result of the ‘male coping crisis’, men resort to more extremist and misogynistic alternatives like Andrew Tate. Echo chambers of the ‘manosphere’ encourage isolation and to simply ‘man up’, which simply conceives capitalistic individualised attitudes. Men are thus shifting further right on the political spectrum, whilst women to the left. A study by the European Election Study showed that 21% of young men expressed support for far-right parties, contrasted with 14% of women.
This widening gender-political divide is not just a statistical curiosity, but has real consequences. A generation of young men feeling alienated, angry, and unheard is fertile ground for reactionary movements that promise belonging through dominance. Meanwhile, women and gender-diverse people who disproportionately bear the brunt of misogyny, naturally gravitate towards more progressive politics that safeguard their rights and civil liberties. If this trend continues, we risk entrenching a cycle where men’s loneliness fuels further radicalisation, which in turn deepens gender tensions and political polarisation. For women, the weaponisation of ‘male loneliness’ in politics is also fertile ground to police women’s lives and curb reproductive rights, or at the very least propagate anti-women rhetoric.
Let’s face it, capitalism’s ‘survival of the fittest’ and privatisation dogma is simply just a glamoured way of saying “we prefer you being alone because it lets us exploit your insecurities without you even noticing!”. Red-pill content may seem like a prima facie case of helping men, but if so then why is it monetized? Tate’s platform, The Real World, sells online courses at $99 per month to educate men on financial freedom.
The gym and hustle culture, or even the ‘finance bro’ stereotype, are all just a repackaging of patriarchal norms that purport to be a solution to men’s mental health. But in case you haven’t noticed, none of these proposed solutions actually tap into neurological processes but instead harp on the hyper-individuality of capitalism’s competition culture.
Mending Masculinity
Men, first and foremost, need to reframe traditional notions of masculinity. It’s not just as simple as getting the check on a first date, holding the door for a woman, or being the provider in a relationship. These are rooted in machismo, money, and power. Men begin to feel threatened, emasculated, and alienated without these, and narrow down their social purpose to one goal: romantic validation. This archaic view of the nuclear family is a thing of the past and is barely a solution for the future, if at all.
Men need to decenter women from their lives.
In Of Boys and Men, social scientist Richard Reeves claims that whilst feminism has taught women to be independent of men, it has failed to teach men to be independent of women. Whilst contestable, the crux of Reeves’ argument is that a recalibration of ‘purpose in life’ should happen for men as it has for women. A repurposing of masculinity away from the pillars of marriage is a crucial one, and we need to make the distinction that romantic connection doesn’t equal meaningful platonic ones. Without healthy pre-existing platonic relationships, men prematurely thrust themselves into a romantic relationship, only to be a time bomb waiting to explode, and almost always at the expense of women.
Collective Accountability
Patriarchy permeates our daily interactions without us even noticing. The expectation for a man to pay on the first date is innately a construction by the patriarchy to position men as the breadwinners of the family unit whilst positioning women as docile beings under the financial, emotional, and physical subjugation of men. Money and income is often used as a metric to measure mascuilinity by both men and women; the higher you earn, the more of a man you are, another one of capitalism’s indoctrination.
While seemingly harmless, it perpetuates the stereotype that a man becomes more ‘gentlemanlike’ simply by earning more, lowering the bar for emotional intelligence and signals to men that financial success alone is enough, allowing them to neglect the rest of their character. In doing so, women unintentionally enable this emotional deficit by treating a man’s ability to pay for the first date as more valuable than the quality of the connection or the experience itself.
Now… don’t get me wrong, women’s anger towards men is substantiated and justified. After decades of campaigning, protesting, and making policy reforms, misogyny is still enabled by many saying ‘boys will be boys’ to excuse men’s despicable behaviour. It’s therefore unsurprising that online sentiment from women is as mentioned previously, given that traditional masculinity still places the burden of emotional labour, patience, and understanding on women. Women are expected to tolerate emotional unavailability, manage the emotional climate of relationships, and absorb harm quietly. This imbalance breeds resentment, not because women are inherently hostile, but because they have been historically overburdened by a system designed to prioritise men’s comfort over women’s safety.
Societally, we need to start taking this matter seriously. Taking it seriously doesn’t mean we need to all be therapists to the men in our lives, women especially should not be held accountable for ‘fixing’ men after decades of subjugation and paying for the mistakes of men. But we can all make a small change by discrediting and putting aside patriarchal views permeating our everyday lives. Men and women propagate patriarchy without knowing it, the sooner we internally deconstruct these ideals, the sooner we are rid of a hierarchy that stunts men and suffocates women.
Writer’s Note:
I was first inspired by this issue when I read Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It by Richard Reeves about a year ago. This topic is one I’ve played in my head over and over again, and the way we as Gen-Z have decided to address it online or through interpersonal connections has just never sat right with me. If anything, making a mockery out of the issue only exacerbates it and pushes men further to the right which is counterproductive. People who consider themselves feminists and progressives often dismiss the issue, though I see an opportunity for understanding and empathy. As someone interested in politics, I think addressing this is also politically beneficial for left-wing and progressive politics given that the right has weaponised this to the point of hyper-masculine mutation.
I should note that everything written intentionally assumes heteronormativity, as the ‘male loneliness epidemic’ is heteronormative by nature in claiming that men’s problems all lead to women. I find that queer men tend to maneuver emotional hardships much better given they don’t fit into binary gender roles and thus often refute these expectations from the get go.
Comments