The End of the Line for Men

This is not a feminist rant. More like a draft obituary.

Let us prepare ourselves for a future that ushers in a radical transformation in the roles of men. We have heard so much about women’s challenges when it comes to dating, living with, working with, and in so many ways tolerating the presence of men. We’ve read and likely personally experienced women deciding that they simply do not need men any more. Not for financial reasons, not for raising children, not for fixing things around the house, not for romance. And certainly not when a relationship morphs into “mankeeping.”

On the heels of feminism, women have successfully taken on nearly all of the positive tasks and duties outlined here. This is compounded by the fact that women appear sick and tired of emotionally immature man-children who cannot or will not look after themselves, contribute to household duties, maintain their own social lives, and participate in a fully engaged emotional way.

“Mankeeping” is one of those curious tendencies that has not really changed. But women have changed in response to it. The essential key to understanding mankeeping involves men in long-term relationships gradually looking to their female partners as the couple’s social organizers. It is very common for men to give-up or slowly lose contact with their own friends in favor of letting their partners manage social life. One result is that men lose social connections with other men. Another is that women feel oppressed by the expectation that they should take on these duties for their men.

The rhetoric has risen to such extremes that many men and women no longer trust what we used to think of as a reasonable compromise in a relationship. Jonathan Morris Schwartz points out that:

“Now…it’s as if men and women are stuck in a foolish, defeatist, self-sabotaging pissing contest to see who can demonize the other to the point of no return.”

So why do we need men?

These arguments are no longer fringe. To the contrary, they appear relentlessly across social media, and now have made it to the front page of the New York Times.

The Challenges of a Marriage No One Wants

The classic notion of marriage handed down to us from western history is man as protector and provider, woman as nurturer and homemaker. That began to change in the 1980s as men started inspecting and enlarging their marital roles in response to Second Wave Feminism.

Throughout the early 2000s and 2010s, much progress was made by men developing their emotional skills, building up their roles as fathers and in general becoming more insightful and freely emotional, although it must be said that for many women, these new skills were not necessarily welcomed.

As women successfully pursued careers, built up financial stability and inhabited Third Wave Feminism, they often found themselves contributing significant income to the marital household, working full time jobs, maintaining a clean and orderly home, raising the children and even planning social engagements for the couple. This coincided with the rise of domestic conflict and intimate partner violence, as many men regarded these achievements as unfair and unjust.

Men perceived that women were in many ways taking over, taking charge, and becoming leaders in the family instead of mere housemaids and sex objects. To some men who are naturally violent, this resulted in conflict leading too frequently to abuse and violence.

The death of romance was inspired by the #MeToo movement whereby so many men were exposed as abusers or serial rapists. This behavior also was not new, but the news became public knowledge and spread like wildfire through the newly emergent social media networks. Women reacted with fury and fear, rejecting very nearly every man for fear that he was one of them.

Still today we see fears of male predators in posts throughout the internet. Predators of children, of young women, even dating predators who pose elaborate schemes to capture their victims. We know that this activity is sometimes true, but clearly it has also made its way into the collective imaginations of women. So we are led to ask, To what extent is fearfulness realistic versus obsessive?

Even when long-term relationships begin to fail, it is the women who seem to get “dramatic and needy,” as one coach puts it, acting with “anxious attachment connected to grief.” It is rarely men who initiate couple’s therapy for fear that they may need to talk about themselves, although honestly men are often the problem.

Cancel culture arose into the public sphere in large part as a result of post-MeToo public discourse about predators, pedophiles, and abusive men generally. All men, all the time. Even though the number of relationships that fail due to mentally unstable or even abusive female partners was also on the rise.

Sometimes rephrased as “accountability culture,” no doubt there are genuine risks from those who are cancelled, but at the same time this concept has creeped into public discourse as a throw-away accusation or threat.

Regarding actual violence by men against women, this is indeed an epidemic that needs our attention. Whether domestic violence, predatory date rape, or criminal assault, there is nothing about any of these situations that can be blamed on women victims, whatever the manosphere talking heads say. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline and support network, currently in the United States, “nearly 3 in 10 women (29%) and 1 in 10 men (10%) in the US have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by a partner.” Yes, there are male victims, is that surprising?

Nevertheless, when men attack women, there is far more physical damage inflicted. The ultimate calling for men’s groups everywhere is how we as men may work to reduce the numbers of DV and IPV victims? And work with men to address their responsibility for intimate partner violence.

So why do we need men?

Dating Risks

For many women, the risks of intimate partnership began to overwhelm any benefits they may have seen previously in marriage. Romance was suddenly a high-risk enterprise. Dating was an exercise in personal safety as women sought protection by remaining in groups, walking with keys in hand, and sharply upping their standards for a man whom they could possibly trust.

Instead, at least among young women, hook-up culture became a thin replacement for romance, satisfying sexual desire without any of the messy relationship issues.

Dating apps have destroyed the actual, flesh and blood activity of seeking a partner or even a friendly date. The apps are a grim reminder of the ubiquity of false presentation, and what feels ultimately like a game of self-preservation. Users have come around to realizing that these apps are not designed to help them find their perfect match. They are designed to keep you swiping just in case you miss someone better.

And what are the alternatives to dating apps? We have lost many of the third places formerly associated with meeting people including bars, clubs and social organizations. Many women have returned to the old standard of relying on girlfriends to connect them with potential partners. This is generally a reliable approach, although it depends entirely on the perceptive skills of the referring girlfriend.

Systemic Changes

Until quite recently, gradual changes in employment, education, and women achieving personal financial stability have collectively conspired to throw men under the bus. We have seen repeated reports of the ascendance of women in higher education, and the rise of women in employment positions formerly dominated by men (with the notable exception of the C-suite). In addition, traditional employment opportunities for men, particularly in manual and semi-skilled labor fields, have sharply diminished as manufacturing was outsourced to less expensive overseas locations.

In her 2012 book The End of Men and The Rise of Women, Hanna Rosin states, perhaps prematurely, that women have won the gender war, having “pulled decisively ahead [of men] by almost every measure.” This includes rising college graduation rates among women, steady employment, and an increased presence of women in male-dominated fields such as politics and business.

At the time, a New York Times review of Rosin’s book by Jennifer Homans pointed out that Rosin was missing important aspects of contemporary history, especially “when we are faced with public officials actively working to undermine access to birth control, abortion, [and] equal pay for equal work.”

Speaking in opposition to Rosin at the 2013 Munk Debate on Gender, British journalist Caitlin Moran suggested that men would never be obsolete because women would not let them “slouch off into the dustbin of history.” Instead she presents a more positive future:

“Men and women are moving forward to create gender identities that are not only more fluid, but also more cooperative than in the past. Women can and will have equality with men, and both sexes will benefit from a rebalancing of the power relationship [between men and women.]”

Richard V. Reeves, author of the 2022 book Of Boys and Men and founder of the think tank American Institute for Boys and Men, has become a major spokesperson for the declining franchise of boys and men. In his book, he explores the multiple crises facing modern boys and men, detailing on a systems level how societal shifts have led to educational underachievement, economic struggles, the ascendency of the political right, and family instability, while offering tentative solutions that address many of these issues. A future not dissimilar to Moran’s.

The Politics of Gender Extremism

It is safe to state that the Evangelical Christian Right and the retrograde president they swept into power in 2016 and again in 2024 have massively eroded gains made by American women. This is true at least as far as women’s rights are concerned. We are currently seeing efforts to further undermine access to abortion, along with the awkward promotion of so-called “traditional families” and more babies.

Arguably, Black and Hispanic women are facing the brunt of the Trump revolution, although reduced funding for pre-school and after-school programs will sharply curtail the financial viability of these women as well as everyone who is not among the most wealthy families.

In a recent preview of 2026 by The Good Men Project, the editors argue that masculinity is splitting, with one path leading to a more “relational masculinity — men building capacity for empathy, accountability, partnership, fatherhood as presence, strength as steadiness, not dominance.” And a second path based on “grievance masculinity — status, anxiety, resentment, gender-war framing, ‘you’ve been cheated’” ideology and celebrating men’s aggression, anger and warmongering spirit.

While I do not have a crystal ball — and wouldn’t know how to use it if I did — I believe it fairly obvious to anyone who has been awake during the last couple of years that grievance masculinity is on the rise, while relational masculinity is on a sharp decline. To the extent grievance masculinity is connected to grievance politics, then relational masculinity appears to be going down with the ship as grievance-based political extremists occupy Washington and increasingly, the streets of your town.

There is perhaps no better example of this trend than the ongoing, relentlessly gradual release of the Epstein files. Many women have commented that one of the most disturbing things about this material, other than the shocking depravity involved, is the variety of men involved with Epstein’s predatory, sex trafficking secret enterprise. Other than wealth, there was nothing extraordinary about these men. Kate Cassidy points out that they would be ordinary joes, neighbors, mailmen, grandfathers and teachers. Not ‘monsters,’ just men:

“It’s not monsters who feel entitled to our [female] bodies, who seek to control and abuse and violate — it’s your terrifyingly average run-of-the-mill men.”

The Manosphere Goes Mainstream

It was not long ago when no one with the exception of a few nerdy teenagers had ever heard of the “manosphere.” Today, the trend that began on the dark web has now moved firmly onto mainstream platforms like YouTube, Reddit and TikTok. According to Equimundo, the manosphere is actually a loose collection of content “influencers” espousing a spectrum of ideas, “from extreme misogyny on incel forums to more mainstream biological essentialism in dating advice TikToks.”

The essential notion pitched by these influencers is that men are the new oppressed class, and that women and feminism are to blame for men’s disadvantages. But rather than fatherly types offering mature advice to young men, these influencers offer young men compelling stories that frame social changes as a direct threat to their status and identity, and offer strict guidelines for their becoming successful and achieving power in society and over women.

Among these bits of advice are virulent strains of anti-feminist hatred and violence directed at women. The content becomes increasingly extreme because of the built-in capitalist incentives of algorithms that enrich the content creators. The more extreme and sensationalized the rhetoric, the more viewers are captured, dramatically increasing the value of these programs.

But the key point here is that this once fringe content has now moved firmly into the mainstream, influencing more young men, and more politicians, than ever before. Based on Equimundo’s research, 69% of boys aged 11–14 are exposed to this online content.

So why do we need men?

Not a Zero-Sum Game

Richard Reeves has pointed out on numerous occasions that our efforts toward the advancement of boys and men should not in any way reduce our efforts to continue pursuing advancement for girls and women. Here is a hopeful version of gender equality leading us into a brighter future.

We must act to dismantle the systemic barriers, protect women and girls from violence, and recognize equal dignity for all regardless of gender. If we can accomplish this, then we would be heading toward a future that benefits everyone. But we had better act soon.

Previously published on Substack. Want to see more writing like this? Or if you would like to support the Shine a Light Men’s Project, please consider buying the author a cup of coffee.

Vic Caldarola is the founder and lead facilitator of the Shine a Light Men’s Project, a men’s mindfulness program, and a member of the Still Water Mindfulness Practice Center. He holds a PhD in Communication Studies.