What happened to men?
A common thread I’ve noticed over the past decade on dating apps, matrimony sites, and the likes is that bar a handful, every single guy I talked to lacked long-term goals. It was the cavalier shrug paired with a “Nothing” that intrigued me when I asked them what their long-term goals were. I found this to be particularly curious when the guys I talked to through the matrimony setting expressed the same – you’re telling me you want to get married but you have no long-term goals? “What do you want from a wife or marriage then?” “Nothing much really”. Another shrug. It seemed strange to me. Because it wasn’t “Let’s see where life takes me, I like to go with the flow” in the way they expressed their opinions of their future, it was the way they looked ahead and saw nothing. A recent episode from Neeya Naana had the host asking the men, “Why is there a general sense of tiredness and exhaustion among men these days?” And I remember thinking, that’s it. Nine out of ten guys I talk to seem tired in general, a simple conversation seemed to require too much effort, and I can’t tell if they’re bored, disinterested, or indifferent. Naturally, I wonder if I’m the problem, but females I talk to and on the Internet in general say the same - most men just seem sluggish.
Which is a curious contrast to women - many women of today have become women on steroids, simultaneously exceling at work, family, and the thousands of burdens that come with being in heterosexual relationships. Women who are single are actively creating lives that just don’t need men. Financial independence? Check. Social circle? Check. Social standing? Check. Children? Check. To take this to the extreme are the divorced women who are single parents. “Leaving him was the best thing I did. Not just for my and my daughter’s sake. But also because of the time I save from not having to pick up after him, cook him his favourite meal while also cooking my daughter’s, and do his chores. In fact, I have so much more time now that can be shared with my daughter or for myself. My daughter and I are a better unit.” This was a “success after divorce” story I saw on Instagram recently. The top comments were from divorced women agreeing they were better off without a partner.
It seems there’s just less and less women need men for. So, what then is the modern man supposed to offer? Or, what does he offer?
If you ask me, one of the biggest contributions to the current state of South Asian men, especially young men, is movies and the film industry. It’s high time filmmakers stop claiming they’re just making what audience want to see and take some responsibility over the messages they put out. I just don’t see how they can turn a blind eye to the fights, fires, destruction to properties and deaths that happen during fan “wars” over which of their “heroes” are superior at this point. Tamil movies are omnipresent in the Tamil society. Now, many of the current generation directors who are touted as the next big thing make movies for men. Who exactly are the heroes of their films? Vagrants, prisoners, the unemployed, the rogue. Who miraculously get a chance to prove themselves and then life seemingly takes off in a grandiose manner as the movie ends. This has been the plot for a good decade now across movies by mainstream heroes. Songs, memes, social media discussions, and the plethora of content that stems from a lone movie present the same, causing men to be in an echo chamber of how life should be. Now, those who have matured and have had world experiences know the chance to prove yourself does not come knocking on your door, you have to hunt it down. Except, this is not what’s portrayed. Nor do they show much of life beyond proving yourself. The result? Boys who have yet to mature thanks to not venturing out into the real world or having been knocked down enough times to have some character development. They claim they’re waiting for the right opportunity to show up. And even if they do make it by chance and luck, they simply don’t know what to make out of the rest of their lives. Get married/ find a woman is shown in movies, so perhaps that’s the next step? It’s almost like men are disillusioned with life. A hero becoming wealthy within a five-minute song circa nineties to early two thousands is a hot meme. I long for these songs these days for the sole reason that at least those men had goals and worked towards something. Do you know how many of us tied a towel around our waists, reciting Rajni’s promise to surpass their friend financially and societally in the nineties? Now, kids hold unlit cigarettes in their mouth, recreating the steps of a certain song that has way too many references to smoking, alcohol, and drugs than it should sung by a certain actor vying for his political career - a song that came out not long after the actor hosted an educational award show. I hate how this comparison makes me seem like a boomer but honestly, where are the songs with “good” messages? At least kids back then had the decency to flip lollipops and rolled up papers into their mouths.
And how are women portrayed in the movies where heroes are worshipped as Gods? An afterthought, a dance number, a shadow in the background. Leaving men to be shocked that the women they like (or stalked) don’t feel the same way or “worse yet”, is put off by their advances. Or that independent women they woe in efforts to take her down a peg or two in their relationships are not a fan of such antics. Or women’s mindsets can’t be swayed to fit their agenda. But hold on, there’s songs and movie scenes for that too - “இந்த பொண்ணுங்களே இப்படி தான்”/ “Women are always like this”.
The topic of caste in movies, and in conjunction, Periyar, are having somewhat of a renaissance right now. Many of Periyar’s messages calling for the abolition of the caste system and equal treatment of people are spreading like wildfire on print, visual and social media. I want to know if the many men who ardently share his messages are familiar with or choose to ignore Periyar’s stance on women. Considered radical for his time (1879 – 1973), Periyar:
was against child marriages
criticised arranged marriages as a system that enslaves women
was against dowry
criticised the standard of “chastity” for women, deeming either both genders or neither should be held up to the standards of chastity
advocated for space for women in schools and the workforce
stated that unless there was a radical overhaul to empower Indian women to work in the armed forces and police, owing to the fact that we had women with the courage, competency and desire to do so, we would be talking about Draupathi and Sita for years to come (side-eyes Adipurush)
AND advocated for – get this – birth control to keep a nation’s population in check, to keep women’s health in check and to let women live their lives.
I wonder if these messages don’t take as much because they’re in direct opposition to everything men have been taught and have experienced since the day they were born. Be that as it may, here’s the fallacy in this approach: While all these statements still hold true and women are still struggling with nearly the same societal issues a century since Periyar said these things, what are the issues and solutions for the modern day men? Periyar said these things to indicate a woman’s position in society. What do you cite to say, “This is what a ‘good’ man is supposed to look like today”? Women, through generations of trauma and stigma, know what they have to overcome, know what no longer works for them and know where they need to be headed towards. Do we have anything that even presents the things men need to set aside or cultivate to fit in the current world where the beliefs and systems they were raised on is becoming obsolete? More importantly, are such conversations even taking place? While what a woman should look like has been slowly, but steadily and surely evolving in the South Asian community, ideas of “manliness”, “manhood”, and “duties” of a man remain largely patriarchal, with systems and “values” that are starkly outdated. Men are still taught that women need to be handled with care and taken care of (like a baby, no less) becuase she’s soft, and any woman who’s anything other than soft needs to be ordered, belittled, or controlled. This is clearly not working. And it won’t.
If the theory that unjust criticisms are merely projections of your individual insecurities on others is true, then I believe it might offer us some insights as to why men are so rampant with their bemoaning of women losing our “culture”, women needing to preserve “tradition” by knowing how to use antiquated kitchen equipment which were probably last used by their grandmothers, women wearing sarees, women cooking, serving, you can fill in the rest of it. Men are lost. It’s easy to retaliate with “If a woman’s evolutionary role is to be in the kitchen, it’s NO ONE’s evolutionary role to be deskbound for at least eight hours a day in the name of a ‘job’, Kumar.” But is that the answer to men not adapting, learning, or even knowing what women of today want from them? And for some reason, rather than doing so, many modern men focus on feeling like their “manhood” and all of their masculinity in its glory is threatened, ignored, and sidelined. Pair that with feeling unwanted, and in many cases, intimidated as systems that were put in place for them to thrive start to crumble, and it seems it has caused men to be lost, come across as unmotivated, get hyper defensive when speaking about anything that’s remotely gender related, and to take their points of view to the extreme: feminism is toxic, if we treat women equally, they will tend to over assert their position in society, feminists smoke, etc. The all holy movies present the same. So men slot themselves even in women-centric conversations, and problems that are unique to women. “No one is listening to us because we are women.” is countered unironically with “No one listens to men either.” The interesting juxtaposition is, nearly a third of the guys I've interacted with claim they have never met such "regressive" guys or that this only happens in the movies. I don’t know if this comes from a lack of awareness, protecting their brotherhood, or if they actually don’t know such guys.
Society is no better with people around men enforcing them to keep their wives in check, under control, to get their sisters to bring them food and drinks, and that women around them exist for them. For every video on social media of a young boy cooking with his mum or bringing his sister food, there’s a video of a boy throwing a tantrum, demanding if he’s a servant for being asked to do chores and disrespecting their mothers. Dialogues spoken by heroes from movies asking their parents if they’re shoving their responsibilities onto him can be found in the captions or comments; dialogues used seemingly in jest have become catchphrases.
I believe it goes without saying that as much as men cling on to their fading grasps of power and dominant positions in the societal hierarchy, lamenting, “It’s HARDER to be a man now” in response to “It’s hard to be a woman”, we are FAR from the era of women. Yet, the subtle shifts in societal structure is already intimidating them.
I think a huge part of the problem comes from men not having enough role models that show them doing the right thing. Leaders like APJ Abdul Kalam are joked for his bachelorhood and his voice, while thanked for his service. Not enough are asked to aspire like him in advancing themselves in their field. Or why not even go back to the actor I gave as an example earlier – he keeps fit for the action scope of his movies, releases one to two movies every year, has developed a formula that works for him, tries different genres while sticking to his schticks and comfort zone, and in doing so, has built himself up to be the current most bankable star yet largely keeps to himself and his family away from the media spotlight. If you ask me, that takes discipline of sorts. Why doesn’t he say as much to his fans during audio launches or through his movies? Why is the focus instead about showing gethu for the smallest things like lighting a cigarette?
I’m not here to present a solution, I really don’t have the means for it. Nonetheless, let me tell you one thing - many heterosexual, single, woman who seem perfectly content in their lives will tell you they still want a man. The problem as many of us will tell you, however, lies in the fundamental presentation of the two genders as a dichotomy and as an antithesis of the other; masculinity is the antithesis of femininity. So, while women should be submissive and gentle, men are aggressive and assertive. That these two different personality types cannot exist in the same person. Now, women have learned to assert themselves, have been called “bitch” for doing so, and whether we actually process being called such names or we simply cry in the privacy of toilets and beds, we pick ourselves up and move on. We break out of the boxes the world puts us in. Meanwhile, men who cooked and cleaned by themselves when they had to live away from home drop these practices like a hot rod the minute they have a wife. Men who seem incapable of peeling an apple, show astounding capabilities when it comes to chores and running errands ONLY when the females in their lives can't do them. Many men still weaponise their incompetency, unlearning what they have learned and stick to their ingrained programming of how a man should be. Then there are the men who try to evolve and break out of their boxes by becoming a stay-at-home dad, by being an equal parent, or by simply valuing their relationships - they are mocked as “whipped”, taunted, and made to feel insecure. When what there needs to be is openness and empathy. More importantly, and urgently, for that matter, what there needs to be is a safe space for men to hash out where and how they fit in society today; on the definitions of “man” and “masculinity”. Because gender is more like a Newton’s cradle then a dichotomy - you really can’t speak about one gender without its implications on the other. In fact, I struggled to write this piece by excluding women altogether. And so, modern men insisting women shrink themselves and acting out with a victim complex is really not working for anyone. It’s time to change the narrative.
This was written as an addition of sorts to this op-ed: Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness.
