For one reason or another, people like to debate with me at bars. Ok – maybe “like” is a strong word, and maybe I start my share of the debates.
Quite often, the conversation begins innocently enough. They’ll ask what I do for a living. I’ll tell them nonprofit work – hunger, housing, poverty. They’ll tell me that’s admirable or that I’m doing important work. And then there’s usually a caveat, or it becomes their opening to espouse on why we should ship the homeless off somewhere or arrest them, or why supporting people who are financially insecure makes them lazy, etc. etc. etc. Sometimes, they’ll tell me to make sure I’m helping “the right people” as though they know who is deserving of help and who isn’t… as though only some humans deserve compassion and care.
Overwhelmingly, it’s men who take up these arguments. Quite a few of them are my age, some of them invest in crypto, listen to Joe Rogan, obsess over their fantasy sports and parlay bets, and seem susceptible to conspiracy theories. They’ll use phrases like “I do my own research” and they’ll poo-poo traditional media reporting. The worst outcomes from these debates have resulted in strangers hurling slurs at me. One couple called me a pedophile because I support LGTBTQ+ rights. One guy repeatedly called me a fraud and cheat. One guy shouted that he hates bums and walked away. The best outcomes are that we agree to disagree – this usually happens when we already know each other in a somewhat neighborly way.
I don’t hide being a political lefty. If anything, in the age of Tr*mp and the growing billionaire class, I’ve embraced it more. That is in all but one area: the left’s tendency to try to be everything to everyone and the ensuing circular firing squad that forms when they fail to meet a specific demographic’s agenda.
Not long ago, I found myself trading shots with another member of the firing squad. A woman I sort of know, a friend of my bartender friend, had asked the bartender (our mutual friend), why there’s an “inspirational” quote in the women’s bathroom: “Be the woman who fixes another woman’s crown without telling the world that it was crooked.” She wanted to know what was hanging in the men’s room. she wanted to know if we received similar advice to be better in the world? The bartender said no, there’s a picture of local comedy legend Robin Williams, and posters of old-timey baseball cards. My mistake was adding, “I’m not sure the men around here can read – inspirational posters might be lost on them.” I was trying to be funny and somewhat self-effacing on behalf of my gender, many of whom I don’t hold in high regard. I was trying to acknowledge, men suck. Missing the humor (or ignoring it), she fired her first shot wanting to know why I’m willing to let men off the hook… why I don’t want to hold them to the same expectations of being responsible for making the world a better place. It was a battle I was never going to win. She wanted to know why I didn’t want men to be better. I said, that I very much want men to be better, but that I’m old, I’ve watched them heading in the wrong direction for the past 20 years, and I don’t have much hope. My daughter grew up in the age of anonymous online harassment and unsolicited dick pics (acts that are overwhelmingly committed by men). The best I can do is model the behavior I wish to see and hope for better outcomes. She might have said fuck you for giving up… or something like that.
I’m not sure that I’ve given up, but based on my conversations with other men at the bar, I do see them (American men) heading in the wrong direction. I think they’re overly focused on sports (and sports betting/fantasy sports), video games, and basically being man-children. Very few of the men I talk with talk about trying to be better in the world or trying to be kinder or softer or more understanding. They’re cock-sure, brash, and often loud – especially the young ones coursing with testosterone. At its worst, I’ve overheard men objectifying some of the women at the bar – talking with their bros about how hot someone is or what they’d do to “that chick.” There’s one guy who spends an inordinate amount of time between two local bars. I see him in the bars during the day when I walk by on my errands. He’s usually semi-drunk and talks about things like woman’s tits. He’s married with two very young children at home. He doesn’t talk much about them. Less insidious, I hear guys flexing their manliness by bragging about sales quotas, money, cars, travel, or how much they can and have drank. “Bro, I got so shitfaced last night.” “Dope, right on, 100%, that’s sick.” I’ve had guys tell me about how they lie to their girlfriends and partners about how much they gamble or drink or flirt. None of this behavior is new. To some degree, men have always behaved this way. Which is why I don’t think inspirational posters in the men’s bathroom are going to do the trick.
In the debate with the woman, I shared that I think the problems run deep (perhaps too deep to address) – that they exist at the societal level, historical level, and the family level. They stem from who is, and has been, in charge of our institutions and businesses and who gets to make the decisions. They stem from centuries of defining manliness as brute strength, providers, protectors, warriors, etc. etc. etc. By this time, she had already written me off as an apologist for men or simply “part of the problem.” I said, I get it, we have to start somewhere – maybe poster in the men’s room would be a starting point.
What she doesn’t know is that it’s in the other debates, the ones I have with men, where I try to make a difference, where I try to change minds, soften attitudes, shift perceptions.
During one such conversation, a young, mid-twenties, bro type, asked, upon learning what I do, how he could get more involved in the community. He said he really wants to work with kids. Wants to toss around the football with poor kids who might not have dads. Brushing aside the awful stereotype, I gave him some options and gently suggested that the kids may need more support than tossing the ball around. Of course, he understood that, but then as he talked about the kids he hopes to someday raise as his own, he again returned to tossing the football and toughening them up. When I suggested he might find himself with a daughter (because suggesting he might have an artistic son seemed too nuanced), he said he’d teach her football if she wanted that. I pivoted and said that as a father and teacher, my advice is to listen to your kid, let them explore on their own, and support them in whatever they choose – football, the arts, science. Most importantly, I said, try not to have any preconceived notions of who or what they “should” be. This broke through in the slightest way.He talked about he wanted to be a skater and a guitarist and how his father mocked him for it – insisted he play football. With a yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s a good point, he said it was good talking to me, asked for my number to connect some other time, and stumbled out the door on his way to the next bar.
In a different conversation with a guy I know from the neighborhood things were a little more contentious. We had gotten on to the topic of billionaires and tech and AI. He was arguing that M*sk made Twitter better by making it a bastion for free speech. I asked if he was aware of the Nazi accounts Twitter had boosted (leading to a brief boycott from Disney) or the informative / critical accounts that Twitter was banning under M*sk (especially the one that tracked M*sk’s plane). I asked him if he was aware that Grok (Twitter’s AI) was not only polluting one of the poorest neighborhoods in Memphis with illegally installed gas turbines, but that it recently released a “spicy” mode that allowed users to undress photos of people (without their knowledge or consent). He didn’t believe me on this last point (because he uses Grok) and wanted to know my sources. I pointed to PBS, The Guardian, The New York Times. I told him that it’s serious enough (because users were using this feature to create sexually explicit photos of children) that the UK and other European countries were considering banning the app. He said those sources weren’t reputable or were politically motivated. At this point I said there’s no debate to be had. If he can’t accept reporting from legitimate sources, we have no common ground over which to establish truth. (He feels the same way about the COVID vaccines and climate change and won’t accept scientific consensus). He does his own research.
I don’t actually expect to change anyone’s mind in these conversations. The best I can hope for is to plant a seed of doubt or encourage more curious and softer approaches to their certitude on how the world is or should be. But far too often, I walk away concluding that men are the problem, have always been the problem, and that the problem may be getting worse. Men control the money in the world (in 2025, only 406 of the world’s 3,028 billionaires were women – just over 13%). Men control the business of the world (women make up about 11% of the fortune 500 CEOs). As such, men decide the agenda. They decide which problems get addressed and what products are made – which is why we get deep fake porn and spicy mode as opposed to useful products designed to improve society. With their control/ownership of major media outlets and most of tech/venture capital (Twitter, Facebook, Washington Post, CBS) they increasingly decide where we invest our resources along with what we see and hear.
I don’t know how we turn these things around. I don’t know how we blunt the impacts of the manoshpere and forces like Tr*mp, M*sk, Rogan, et. al. I don’t know how we attempt the cultural shift that might at least mitigate, if not cure, the brain rot that infects so many men. Maybe it’s one debate, one conversation, one inspirational poster at a time.