Weekly Digest: What Is Healthy Masculinity?

Welcome to my weekly digest for May 20, 2022.

For new subscribers, this contains a roundup of my recent writings and podcasts, as well as links to the best articles from around the web this week. You can control what emails you get from me by visiting your account page.

Matthew Stanley is being gracious enough to give a webinar for Subscribers with an introduction to crypocurrency, including a live demo of creating and using a crypto wallet. It will be Thursday the 26th at 8pm ET, with a recording to be added to my Subscriber Knowledge base. As someone who doesn’t know much about crypto, I’m looking forward to this myself. Click over for details on how to register.

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What is Healthy Masculinity?

The Institute for Family Studies is running a series of perspectives on the nature of healthy masculinity. My entry was the kickoff essay. Here’s an excerpt:

Healthy masculinity is when men flourish first for themselves, then for their families, posterity, and communities. A man embodying healthy masculinity knows who he is. He is physically healthy and strong. He is pursuing and developing his skills and capabilities to make him more competent and able to take action. He has a sense of agency, drive, and desire to make his mark on the world, not just have the world make its mark on him. He is someone who exists in a world where it is realistically possible for him to develop his potential, fulfill his own ambitions, and leave a posterity and a legacy for the future. 

…

Healthy masculinity understands the identity and legacy a man has inherited, and seeks to extend that, in turn, to engage in “praiseworthy competition with one’s ancestors,” as has been attributed to Tacitus. A man’s legacy is most often his family, his descendants, his community or tribe. He seeks to create this legacy, to build it up, and even to sacrifice himself for it at times. But while sacrifice for the sake of legacy is a part of healthy masculinity, it is not reducible to that. The man who simply blots out his own well-being, ambitions, and fulfillment for the sake others is not exhibiting a healthy masculinity. 

Click over to read the whole thing.

You might also be interested in the entry from Delano Squires.

More Content and Media Mentions

Jason Riley mentioned my 2015 article on Buffalo in his latest Wall Street Journal column.

A professor at the Quaker college Earlham University takes issue with my use of E. Digby Baltzell’s claims about the link between Quakerism and poor development of public education.

It doesn’t mention me specifically, but Trevin Wax wrote a nice piece also looking at the past 30 years of evangelicalism, using a mix of biography and analysis to trace some of the same groups and dynamics from my three worlds piece. I’ll be interested in seeing where he takes this series.

New content this week:

• I wrote about why you should never underestimate the power and danger of eros (Subscriber Only).

• I responded to the criticism of David French and others of my three worlds model.

• I also published this month’s deep dive newsletter #64 on why you shouldn’t allow people to manipulate you into moral debilitation about the problems of America.

• David Haines has a great piece at American Reformer about why Protestants need natural law.

You can listen to my podcast on Apple, Google, or YouTube.

Best of the Web

MSNBC writes a hit job on homeschooling.

Michael Foster writes about the kind of people who tend to get obsessed with one issue.

Freddie deBoer: Can an Unattractive Person Be Attractive? (Note: Contains swimsuit photos)

NYT: With Plunging Enrollment, a ‘Seismic Hit’ to Public Schools - Districts with long term school closures saw big drops in enrollment. Controversies over content certainly didn’t help. Where I live, even top ranked suburban districts saw unplanned drops in enrollment.

Nice Geoffrey Kabaservice podcast with scholar of American conservatism Joshua Tait on whether conservatism can ever become sensible again. (Transcript available).