What's Tony Thinking

Sacrifice and The Crisis in Masculinity

Here’s an unlikely conversation: one between Fleming Rutledge, preacher and biblical scholar, whose work I highlighted in my last post, and Ted Gioia, musician, music critic and blogger, who publishes “The Honest Broker” on Substack.

In that post I mentioned Fleming’s emphasis on “The Unpopularity of Sacrifice in Today’s Culture.” In contemporary culture there is, she notes, “an absence of any sense of the value of sacrifice in ordinary life.”

Part of this owes to a justifiable protest against a cultural expectation that women are to do most of the sacrificing. That critique is justified. But I’m not sure it’s wise to throw out the baby, the value of sacrifice in ordinary life, with the bathwater, the gender gap in sacrifice.

More to the point, I would argue that “the contemporary crisis in masculinity” owes something to the general downgrading of sacrifice in contemporary culture, and men not having things in their lives worthy of sacrifice.

Enter Ted Gioia and his post on “How James Bond Can Fix the Crisis of Masculinity.” This is prompted by the recent acquisition of the Bond franchise by Jeff Bezos. Gioia wonders what will happen to 007 under new ownership and if Bond can help with the problems of contemporary males. This would require, says Ted, a remake of Bond. Hint as to the extent of the remake: Gioia thinks a new 007 probably ought to be married.

But the larger topic is “the crisis of masculinity.” What’s it mean to be a man, and where are role models to be found for decent, even worthy, forms of masculinity today? Men re-discovering the value of sacrifice is part of the answer.

But before we go there, here’s Gioia on his deep dive into what contemporary culture is serving up for and about guys.

“I’ve spent the last few months doing a deep dive into books, movies, TV series, and various studies on contemporary masculinity. And they are a hot mess.

“For a start, I bought a stack of novels by young male writers who are redefining manhood in the current day. I was looking for insights, but all I got was an education in contemporary dysfunction and pathology. I won’t even mention the names of the authors and books. I certainly don’t want to recommend them. Even worse, I’m ashamed to admit I read them.

“The characters are a sad assortment of wimps, losers, wannabes, incels, nerds, simps, scroll-and-swipers, round-the-clock gamers, wankers, and half-baked hipsters. I couldn’t find anything resembling a role model for a young man today.”

That pretty much squares with what I’m seeing and have been seeing for quite a while: ordinary men presented as doofuses, morons and sad-sacks on TV, in movies, in advertisements. It all leaves us wondering, where in the world does any 18-year-old male do in this environment?

As with many things, what we have on offer are dumb extremes. On one hand, lost boys and isolated men in a culture of victimization. Or, on the other, Andrew Tate and assorted misogynists, along with cage-fighters.

While Gioia offers ideas for a Bond re-make, he also points to the work of Taylor Sheridan, the actor, director and writer, who gave us the popular “Yellowstone” series on Paramount (which I’ve actually not seen, but no matter). A friend of Gioia’s sums up what Sheridan offers as a model for men.

“There’s one person in Hollywood who has actually figured out a different formula for modern masculinity. And it works. I’m talking about Taylor Sheridan—just look at Yellowstone, Landman, and his other shows.

“His heroes are tough and rugged, but they also have deep loyalties—to their core values, their family, their community. They will break the rules, and even do bad things, but only for these higher causes.

“These are men on a mission. They are men who make sacrifices—and they’re not frivolous or narcissistic. We allow them to be manly because we trust their allegiance to things that really matter.”

Underscore those words: They are men who make sacrifices. That ties back to Fleming’s lament for, the “absence of any sense of the value of sacrifice in ordinary life” in contemporary culture.

That said, I think there are actually lots of guys, more than you’d think, who do live by such values and who make sacrifices for their families, for excellence in the work they do, for their friends, communities and nation. But we do desperately need more representations of such men in contemporary cultural offerings.

Back to Gioia, who goes full-Uncle, as he sums it all up:

“Here’s the one big thing that movies and TV shows will never tell you about masculinity. But you need to learn it.

‘A man achieves happiness in life by delivering on his responsibilities. You have no idea how important this one thing will be to your mental health, your sense of self-worth, your relationships, and your ability to find meaning and purpose in your life. I’m talking about your responsibilities to your family, your colleagues, your teammates, your friends, your  communities and groups, your country—and even to total strangers. (Yes, you have responsibilities to them, too.)

“But above all I’m talking about your responsibility to yourself. And when I say you owe something to yourself, I mean your higher image of who you should be. Living up to these demands is what makes a man happy. It’s also what makes him manly. A real man goes out into the world and gets things done in order to fulfill these obligations. And this is where traditional masculine values come in—toughness, perseverance, endurance, vitality, ruggedness, and all the rest.”

To sum up my own thoughts on this topic and for this conversation;

1. Women may not need any more emphasis on the value of sacrifice, but men do. And our culture does.
2. Not having worthy things for which to sacrifice is a problem in the lives of contemporary guys, but it is a solvable problem.
3. There are already plenty of men who conduct their lives this way. Almost by definition, such men are not self-promoting performatives. They are steady, solid types. We need to pay heed to them.
4. You don’t need to be a cowboy to be such a man. You can be a truck driver, an insurance salesman, a lawyer, a tech worker, a teacher or a guy who runs a construction crew. You can be a librarian, a social worker, or bartender. You can be a doctor or a cop or a guy who reads (or writes) books.
5. Such men also have a capacity to ask for and accept help, though that is often a challenge. They are capable of acknowledging mistakes and taking responsibility for them.
6. We need more representations of these men in books, movies and on TV. We need places and spaces where boys and girls can see these kinds of men being men.

I’ll even close with a quote from John Wayne, “Having a big mouth doesn’t make you a big man.”