Are the Boys All Right?

Every March my academic calendar becomes a blur. Grant proposals, dissertation defenses, conferences, and manuscript deadlines stack up all at once, layered on top of the Spring chaos of parenting: showcases, recitals, and concerts. It’s the time of year when most of my writing energy gets poured into technical work, if anything. And yet, almost on cue, the pop culture moments that intersect most directly with my research start appearing in the headlines. Normally my reaction is, I should write about that. This year my reaction has been different: please make it stop.

The stories keep coming. The cultural buzz around Heated Rivalry and its portrayal of intense male bonding was nice. But then came the release of the Epstein files and the unsettling reminder that some of the most powerful men can also be the most predatory. That was followed by yet another controversy about “locker room talk” involving our president and this time, the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team.

I realize that my reaction for all of this to stop isn’t because I am too slow to weigh in on these pop culture moments. I am exhausted that these moments keep happening at all. Masculinity discourse seems to return again and again, bringing us the same troubling questions: What are boys learning about power, status, and relating to women? And who is teaching them?

We are, in many ways, swimming in headlines about young men. But the headlines rarely capture the deeper currents shaping their behavior. Much of that culture forms in places that adults rarely see. Online forums, private group chats, gaming servers, and anonymous message boards have become spaces where ideas about masculinity are tested, exaggerated, and reinforced among peers.

One recent example is the phenomenon known as “looksmaxxing,” a trend circulating across social media platforms and male-focused forums (e.g., reddit and 4chan). The idea stems from gamming terminology geared at leveling up different skills. In this case, it is to treat physical appearance as a kind of competitive optimization problem. They share strategies for building muscle, reshaping facial features (with a hammer!), maximizing testosterone, and increasing sexual desirability. Protein powders, workout regimens, supplements, jawline exercises, and carefully calibrated grooming routines become tools in what is framed as a personal transformation project.

On its surface, this might look like ordinary self-objectification. But beneath the language of optimization often sits a worldview in which a man’s worth is measured by dominance, physical superiority, and sexual success. The same worldview animates much of what we now call the manosphere, a loose network of influencers, podcasts, and online communities that frame masculinity as something under siege and encourage boys to reclaim status through competition and control. A recent Netflix documentary takes a deeper dive into and reveals absolutely nothing postive at all.

The extreme ideas that are highlighted do not remain confined to the internet among those only with keyboard courage. They travel easily into schools, sports teams, workplaces, and social groups. Indeed, recent survey results revealed (among other awful things) that 31% of GenZ men (as opposed to only 13% of Baby Boomers) believe that a wife should always behave her husband. In the US, these ideas escalate into something far more serious. The overwhelming majority of mass shootings are perpetrated by boys and men who often express misogynistic beliefs long before they ever murder anyone.

At this point, you may be thinking, there is no way that my son believes any of this stuff! But I am here to tell you that there is not a great way to ensure that he doesn’t believe this stuff. These beliefs do not emerge overnight. They tend to grow across many environments, often private ones, where contempt for women becomes a bonding ritual.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, many Americans became familiar with the phrase “locker room talk” when Donald Trump dismissed his comments from the Access Hollywood tape as the kind of crude language men supposedly use in private. The phrase carried a clear implication: men say degrading things about women when they are alone together, and that is simply part of male culture. Men know how to act in public, it is the nature of the secrecy that creates a bond.

But locker room talk rarely stays inside locker rooms. It appears in group chats among teenage boys. It surfaces in gaming communities and private social media pages. It circulates in workplaces and friend groups. What matters is not the location but the dynamic: men bonding with other men through the objectification or humiliation of women and girls.

In my own research on what teens sometimes call “slut pages,” “burn pages,” or “expose pages,” boys share or repost nude or semi-nude images of girls in private digital spaces (e.g., listserves, private social media pages) where others comment, rate, and circulate them. Participants often frame these pages as jokes or gossip, but their function is unmistakable. They create a shared arena where boys build social status through the public degradation of girls.

The disturbing details about the sadistic crimes that were committed by powerful men against young girls The Epstein Files is enough to make anyone’s stomach turn. But what is key in this case, is the bonding over these crimes that occurred between very powerful men who we look up to in society. A digital locker room, where men bond over dominating girls. The settings may differ dramatically from a high school finsta account or snapchat, but the social dynamic can look familiar: secrecy, commentary, and male bonding organized around what they did or what they would do to women’s bodies.

Social scientists have long studied these dynamics under concepts like Male Peer Support Theory and Homosociality, which describe how men form bonds with other men in ways that can sometimes reinforce misogynistic attitudes or behaviors. The key insight is that the behavior itself is often less important than the reward structure surrounding it. When degrading women earns laughter, approval, or belonging, it becomes a powerful social glue.

During the height of the #MeToo movement, I wrote about the public backlash to a Gillette advertisement that encouraged men to challenge bullying and harassment when they saw it happening. Critics argued that the commercial was attacking masculinity itself. But a closer reading suggested something quite different. The men in the ad were portrayed using traditionally masculine traits, strength, confidence, decisiveness, to intervene when other men crossed a line. In public health research, we call this active bystander behavior, which is one of the only effective strategies for preventing sexual assault and harassment.

​In my own work, we went to Twitter to examine this new national dialogue of holding men accountable for sexual harassment and assault. First, we did an analysis of the #NotOkay campaign (which called out Trump on his degrading commentary from the Access Hollywood tape). In this analysis, we uncovered a subset of tweets urging men to engage in the prevention of sexual assault. We also uncovered a subset of tweets where men were condemning Trump’s excuse for his commentary as ‘locker room talk”. For example,

“Men dont talk like this. Pathologically lying misogynists do but not men. Narcissistic orange scum bags do but not men.#notokay.”

In another one of our projects (lead by Morgan PettyJohn), we examined the #HowIWillChange campaign, which was a response to #MeToo. People (mostly men) used the hashtag to affirm how they would react or behave differently; like this dad,

“One thing I want to do better is teach my son limits, boundaries, respect and kindness. And learn them with him. #HowIWillChange”.

However, there were also subsets of tweets that showed hostile masculinity and indignant misogyny declaring that they would never change, or even treat women worse (particularly sexually). For instance,

“#howiwillchange i wont “accidently” put it in her ass when we do doggy. i will now do it on purpose.”

I suspect this backlash is partly due to interpretation of the term, ‘toxic masculinity’. Toxic masculinity does not mean that masculinity is toxic! Toxic masculinity refers to a level of aggression, competition, and domination that becomes harmful to the self or others. This harm is almost always violence, but it can also fester into depression. In response to record-breaking suicide rates among men, the American Psychological Association announced toxic masculinity as a mental health crisis. I think we can all agree that we do not want our boys and men feeling pressured to be violent or non-emotional to prove their worth.

What’s worse is that masculinity becomes harmful when it is synonymous with homophobia, misogyny, and racism. In fact, you can often decipher plain old masculinity from toxic masculinity when bigotry presents. Toxic masculinity includes the fear of gay, black or brown men disrupting the power structure of white male dominance. Real, confident, secure masculinity is not threatened by diversity.

Masculinity can look like leadership. It can look like loyalty, courage, protection, and responsibility. Those qualities have always been admired, and they should be. The problems arise only when masculinity is framed as a competition for dominance, where proving one’s worth requires humiliating or harming someone else.

Many boys already understand this instinctively. They know how to behave respectfully in public settings. They know when a line has been crossed. The real question is whether they feel empowered to act on that knowledge when the audience changes and the room becomes private.

Sometimes the difference between reinforcing harm and interrupting it is surprisingly small. A joke that doesn’t land. A comment that goes unacknowledged. A friend who simply says, “that’s not cool.”

Moments like that rarely make headlines. They do not trend on social media or inspire viral debates. But they shape the culture boys live in every day.

And in the long run, they may matter far more than the scandals that dominate the news cycle.

If you spend anytime around teen boys, it’s easy to feel like the internet has already won the conversation about masculinity. The voices shaping boys online can be relentless.

But research consistently shows that trusted adults still matter more than influencers. Boys pay attention to the standards the adults around them set, especially when those standards are clear and consistent.

So how can we help them?

We need to educate ourselves first.

My colleague, Christopher Pepper wrote a book with Joanne Schroeder, Talk To Your Boys. I recommend starting there. The book provides conversation starters, scripts, and expert advice.

I was interviewed for To Raise A Boy which is also a great resource that unpacks this masculinity stuff in a meaningful way for those raising sons.

Next, get clear about the manosphere lingo yourself. Then go ahead and talk to boys about what they know or think about the language. Here are some humorous, but accurate definitions from Meg Keene, author of Field Notes for the Brave.

Incel: Once this meant involuntarily celibate, but now is more shorthand for “misogynistic asshole”. (But also, half of the men in Gen Z may actually be incels? Get laid, 20-somethings, it will reduce your anxiety, I swear.)

Red-Pill: Probably a more accurate term than incel. A way to describe men who have succumbed to the manosphere, and think the world is a feminist conspiracy that’s out to get them. (If… only?)

A Cope: This term is KEY. It’s what you throw around when you disagree with someone, and claim they’re only holding an opinion to cope with the miserable failures of their own life. See: “That’s just a cope.”

Body Count: This is how we describe the number of partners someone has had sex with, but make it sound like we’re a bunch of middle school boys.

Pump and Dump: (Shudders.) If there is one term I could happily never hear again, it’s this one. It means… what you are really hoping it doesn’t mean. It describes a man having casual sex with a woman that he thinks of as trash.

Wife Guy. Also known as husbands.

Looksmaxxing: Making yourself look hotter. Which, you know, I’m into kind of generally. But it also describes a sub-culture of young red-pill men who are taking body dysmorphia to new heights. If you don’t know who Clavicular is, congratulations, and now let me ruin it for you by sending you to this New York Times article.

Hagmaxxing: Whatever, you can -maxx literally anything, but I thought this was a particularly fun when it was thrown at me this week, because, you know, I’m 45 now and hence a hag, also, useless trash.

Teaching boys how to recognize harmful dynamics and step away from them may be one of the most important forms of prevention and most promising practice for positive change that we have.

It’s not enough to just avoid being harmful.

Boys and men need to learn how to recognize harmful dynamics when they appear.

That includes helping boys identify locker room talk wherever it shows up:

• In group chats and email

• On social media and online forums

• While gaming or on gaming platforms

• During practice

• At the lunch table

Most people who challenge toxic masculinity are not asking men to stop being masculine.

We’re asking boys and men to use their power differently.

• Masculinity can look like leadership.

• It can look like protection.

• It can look like courage.

  • Sometimes that courage means stepping between two boys who are about to fight.

  • Sometimes it means calling out a friend who is degrading a girl.

  • Sometimes it means refusing to laugh at a joke.

And that last one is more powerful than it sounds.

Refusing to laugh disrupts the social reward that keeps harmful talk going.

In fact, when boys push back against sexist or degrading comments, their social standing often rises rather than falls. The quiet authority of someone who says “that’s not cool” can reshape the tone of an entire group.

Masculinity itself isn’t the problem.

The problem is when masculinity gets twisted into a competition for dominance that requires humiliating others to prove your worth.

Healthy masculinity looks different.

It looks like loyalty without cruelty.
Confidence without contempt.
Strength without domination.

And sometimes, the most powerful masculine act in the room is simply refusing to laugh.