This article is part of the Men’s Therapy series on masculinity and mental health.
The Crisis That Never Ends: Why Masculinity Always Feels “Under Attack”
As a male therapist in San Francisco, I help men explore how masculinity shapes their mental health—and how therapy supports emotional connection and self-worth.
MEN'S THERAPY
“Masculinity is in crisis.” You’ve heard that line a thousand times. It was true (supposedly) when industrial machines “stole” men’s work. It resurfaced when wars shifted our ideas of masculine glory. It reappeared when white‑collar jobs rose, when feminism challenged traditional gender roles, and when the internet democratized voice and power. If the story keeps repeating, maybe the crisis is part of the story masculinity tells about itself.
As a male therapist in San Francisco working with men (straight, bi, gay, trans, cis,and queer), I think it’s more useful to ask: What about masculinity keeps producing the feeling of crisis—and what would it look like to build a version of masculinity that doesn’t need to be defended all the time?
The Generational Echo: A Crisis Passed Down
Across time, men have inherited scripts about what it means to be a “real man.” Often, these scripts are saturated with fear—fear of irrelevance, vulnerability, softness, or being mistaken for something outside the dominant norm. Each generation rewrites the masculine script with slightly new language, but the core anxiety remains: Am I enough? Am I doing this right? Do I matter?
In your grandfather’s era, the threat may have been communism. In your father’s, it was feminism. Today, it might be cancel culture, economic instability, or gender fluidity. But underneath all those headlines is often a subtler truth: many men feel emotionally starved, relationally unknown, and unsure of where to place their longing.
A recent video essay on the band IDLES—a post-punk group that treats rage, grief, and tenderness as compatible—argues that the line “masculinity is under attack” is less a new emergency and more a generational refrain. Their work suggests that what’s labeled a crisis is often masculinity’s resistance to evolving—an echo that repeats because something essential keeps being left out.
The Cultural Conditions That Sustain the Crisis
(Theorists: Judith Butler, Raewyn Connell, Michel Foucault, James Mahalik, Michael Addis, Jackson Katz, Ronald Levant, bell hooks)
Binary identity formation: Masculinity is often built as the opposite of something else: not feminine, not queer, not vulnerable, not needy. This kind of oppositional framing is widely discussed, including the work of Judith Butler (1990) This creates a rigidity that can be internalized and leaves little room for the actual complexity of being human.
Hegemonic expectations: The cultural ideal of the man who is dominant, rational, competitive, self-reliant, and emotionally in control becomes both aspirational and oppressive. This concept is rooted in Connell’s (1995) theory of hegemonic masculinity. These expectations are internalized through media, family, school, and peer interactions.
Shame as a disciplinary force: Deviating from the masculine norm—showing fear, crying, failing, asking for help—isn’t just discouraged; it’s punished, often through ridicule, erasure, or internalized contempt. Michel Foucault’s (1977) concept of disciplinary power helps frame how shame operates socially—not just as an emotion, but as a tool of regulation. In the case of masculinity, it becomes a behavioral leash that punishes “softness” or non-conformity..
Research consistently shows that the tighter men cling to traditional masculine norms—emotional control, dominance, self-reliance—the more likely they are to report psychological distress, including depression and anxiety (Hamilton & Mahalik, 2009). This phenomenon is not unlike the paradox of change in therapy which I've previously written about.
The Crisis in the Therapy Room
When men enter therapy, they often don’t say, “I’m in crisis.” More commonly, they report feeling flat, numb, angry, ashamed, or stuck. They’re not always able to locate their distress in a cultural story of masculinity—but it shows up in other ways: (please note that these are hypothetical examples informed from multiple case studies, research, and years of clinical work. Client identity and content, which is held in sanctity, is not mentioned in this article)
A man in his 30s who can’t sleep because his career success still leaves him feeling empty.
A gay man in therapy who has learned to split off vulnerability to remain palatable to others.
A recently retired man whose identity was so wrapped in work that he now feels like a ghost.
In each of these cases, masculinity isn’t the only story—but it’s a powerful subtext: a set of inherited expectations about who they’re supposed to be and how they’re supposed to cope.
Psychological Effects of Chronic Masculine Crisis
(Key ideas informed by Connell, Foucault, Mahalik & Jackson, van der Kolk, Maté)
Internalized surveillance: Men can sometimes live with a kind of inner watchman, constantly monitoring how they sound, appear, and emote. This can be an unconscious monitoring of one's own voice, posture, clothing, hobbies, emotions — an internal “panopticon” rooted in fear of shame or rejection (Foucault, 1977; Connell, 1995). This can feel like a prison of self-consciousness and can manifest as a form of social anxiety.
Emotional restriction: Many men only feel allowed to express anger, stoicism, or pride. Emotions like grief, fear, longing, and tenderness can be deeply unfamiliar — leading to a limited emotional literacy and restricted affect (Mahalik & Jackson, 2021).
Blocked intimacy: The performance of invulnerability becomes the barrier to connection. “No one really knows me” is a common refrain. As Rudden (2022) notes, many men today are not socially alone but emotionally undernourished—starved for intimacy without the language, permission, or models to ask for it. Difficulty trusting others, expressing needs, or allowing closeness — all collateral damage of emotional suppression (Real, 1997; Brown, 2012).
Somatic symptoms: Repressed feelings don’t just disappear. They show up in the body. As the title of the NY Times Best Seller clearly states: "The body keeps score," And, it does so through migraines, gut issues, sleep disruption, or chronic muscle tension. Unfelt feelings often become phyically manifested pain — a process deeply explored in somatic trauma theory (van der Kolk, 2014; Maté, 2003).
These are not innate traits. They’re adaptations — survival strategies developed in response to a culture that narrowly defines what it means to be “a man.”
What Happens When Men Drop the Performance?
Psychologist Catherine Jackson (2021) describes masculinity as a performance—a role many men don’t believe in, but still feel compelled to play under cultural pressure. Healing doesn’t require men to discard their masculinity. It asks them to reclaim authorship. To stop outsourcing their identity to an outdated script, and start asking questions like:
What kind of man do I want to be?
What do I value more than fitting in?
Where am I performing, and where am I authentic?
Who gets to see the parts of me that don’t match the ideal?
In therapy, these questions become tools for loosening the grip of inherited shame. Many men learn how to feel fully with others, not just for them. They learn that strength and softness can coexist. That you can be tender without being fragile—and assertive without being dominating.
Practices for a Post-Crisis Masculinity
Identify the “invisible curriculum.” Make a list of what you were taught—explicitly or implicitly—about being a man. Who taught it? Do you still believe it?
Expand your emotional vocabulary. Shame thrives in vagueness. Use the Emotional Vocabulary for Men → to identify and name what’s happening beneath the surface.
Find a circle where you can stop performing. Whether it’s a men’s group, therapy, or a close friendship, experiment with naming your fears, needs, and regrets out loud.
Redefine strength. Strength might mean repair. Or asking for help. Or saying “I don’t know.” Or choosing softness over control.
If You’re Feeling This in Your Bones
This “crisis” may not be personal, but the impact is real. If you're exhausted by trying to live up to someone else's version of manhood, you're not alone. I offer individual and group therapy for men who want to step off the stage and into something more real.
Sources
Hamilton, C. J., & Mahalik, J. R. (2009). Minority stress, masculinity, and social norms predicting gay men’s health risk behaviors. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 56(1), 132–141.
Jackson, C. (2021). Sometimes it’s hard to be a man. Therapy Today, 32(6), 22–26.
Rudden, M. G. (2022). Misogyny and Gender Role Straight-Jackets: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 42(7), 557–566.
Video essay on IDLES and masculinity .
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.Hamilton, C. J., & Mahalik, J. R. Wong, Y. J., et al. (2017). Meta-analysis of the relationship between conformity to masculine norms and mental health-related outcomes. Journal of Counseling Psychology.
