Social media has come alive in recent years with a growing masculinity movement. Influencers like Chris Bumstead, Noel Deyzel, and Andrew Tate offer relationship guidance, fitness motivation, and life advice to young men.
In many respects, this is an encouraging change. Third-wave feminism has attempted to replace our appreciation of strong, capable men with a bitter war between the sexes. Rather than giving up on masculinity altogether, we need a standard of selfless masculine strength that goes beyond the current vision of the masculinity movement.
The pro-masculinity movement responds to modern feminism with a bold celebration of physical brawn, business savvy, and success with women. These influencers have many worthwhile things to say about the value of discipline, self-respect, and hard work. They encourage young men to channel their competitive wiring toward worthy goals, such as success in the gym or workplace. They stand against the lie that strong men are inherently threats to society.
What’s worrying, though, about many of these influencers, is their misunderstanding of the purpose of strength: the foundation of masculinity. These influencers carry great responsibility for their words, for many of the young men watching their content lack other positive male role models. Men like Andrew Tate and Justin Waller exemplify a strength based on wealth, physical excellence, and discipline: positive characteristics, but incomplete. Self-serving strength ultimately leaves men hollow and unfulfilled.
Masculine strength is not meant to stand alone. Rather, masculinity attains its meaning and value precisely when it is put at the service of others.
Pro-masculinity media often lauds the image of the “sigma male,” a successful man who works alone. However great the value of self-reliance, no man (or woman) can grow and flourish apart from relationships with others.
Podcast host Chris Williamson asked award-winning professional bodybuilder Chris Bumstead in a July 2023 interview whether Bumstead achieved his goals on his own.
“No, none of them,” Bumstead said. “I wouldn’t be the man who I am without my dad. I wouldn’t have gotten through my stress as a teenager without my sister. The people I have in my life are everything.”
Men like Bumstead demonstrate that the most stable masculinity is founded on an attitude of grateful interdependence. Strength on behalf of others finds its source in secure friendships and community.
In their skewed ideas of masculine strength, Tate and Waller mistake what it means to be a provider. They, and others like them, adopt a rhetoric which goes too far in equating masculine fulfillment with monetary success and material goods: perfect bodies, perfect cars, perfect houses, etc. A masculinity founded upon impermanent physical achievement and social approval will never be secure.
To them, it takes only a deep wallet to be a five-star provider. Waller argued for this wealth-based view in his May 2023 interview on the Whatever podcast. The now-viral episode featured a tense exchange between Waller and Lila Rose, the founder of Live Action. Waller argued he could be a good father to multiple families with different women if he supports his children financially.
“If my daughters that are overly spoiled and educated in every way and have friends all over the world have a problem with me at the end of the day, then they can kick rocks,” Waller said.
The model of providership Waller embodies leads to the very cycle of deadbeat dads, divorce, and role model absence that creates Waller’s young audience.
Financial support is not enough to be a good provider. Good fathers selflessly invest in their families’ spiritual and emotional lives, teaching their children by example the beauty of masculine strength. Even men without families of their own are called to provide in this way.
Chris Pusalan is a 30-year-old musician and runner who takes care of his 97-year-old grandma full-time. His YouTube videos chronicle their daily life: unglamorous, yet full of shared humor and friendship.
“Taking care of grandma is your current life’s purpose,” Pusalan said in a message to his younger self. “You’ll be rewarded for your sacrifice not in the form of money or material things but in a way you won’t understand until later.”
The kind of tender caregiving and providership Pusalan models heightens, not compromises, masculinity.
Having grown up without a father himself, bodybuilder Noel Deyzel started making videos with the life advice he wished he had heard as a young man. One such video features Deyzel giving advice on finding love while preparing for a date.
“You must practice loyalty, respect, and honesty, and embody what you look for in a partner,” Deyzel said.
Following in Deyzel’s footsteps, men have the opportunity to mentor boys and teens, repairing some of the ravages of the fatherlessness crisis through friendship and firm example.
At times, pro-masculinity influencers lean toward treating women well in order to win them as trophies. A temporary show of strength on behalf of others wins them the prize of a woman’s affection. Waller described one strategy he uses to get the attention of a beautiful woman at the grocery store.
“I make sure I get into the same line as her, and I talk to the most unattractive woman nearby,” Waller said. “The pretty woman can see how you handle the other girl.”
While Waller is right to give women he finds unattractive the same respect as those he does find attractive, his motives are not commendable. Treating women with honor must be a constant, not a pickup strategy. Truly masculine men treat women well not to get something out of them, but because they recognize women’s inherent dignity.
Life is not a zero-sum game between the sexes, either in the way feminists imagine it or in the manner of Tate and Waller. Men and women flourish together and because of each other.
The beauty of this issue is that we are precisely the generation capable of fixing it. By embodying strength on behalf of others as a young man or supporting brothers and friends in this as a young woman, we will all benefit from true masculinity.
