I'll admit to being real mixed on masculinity, as a white dude. The instant credibility has been helpful, even if I'm not thrilled about it coming at the expense of everyone else. But objectively, masculinity is on fire and heading off a cliff. Men die sooner, are more likely to be involved in crime and political extremism, have fewer friends, and less happiness in life. And personally, I've noticed my own problems maintaining social connections and a lack of positive male role models.

Plank's argument is that a particular model of toxic masculinity is trained into boys and girls, of emotional unavailability and resorting to violence, and that while the feminist revolution has succeeded in dramatically opening up traditionally male professions, social roles, and even masc styles to women, the converse opening of traditionally female professions, roles, and femme styles to men haven't happened. A man who speak softly, cries, or even likes bright colors will be branded as queer.

Some parts of this book will age like milk. I cannot describe how fantastically uninterested I am in hearing D-list rightwing grifter Tomi Lahren's boyfriends' views on how we have to double down on traditional macho cowboy bullshit, though to be fair to Plank, that's probably more pleasant than a deep dive into Jordan Peterson's oeuvre for the same point.

The basic stress fracture that we need to push on is that people will give very different answers when describing a good man and a real man, and we'd all prefer to have good men in our lives over real men. Gender roles will always be performances, ideals which we do not reach, but there's no reason they also have to be a prison.