Are we really examining American men?

Although it's October, I think most of us would agree that President Volodymyr Zelinsky of Ukraine should be Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2022.

My father has been deceased since 1993, but I am sure that he would agree. Dad was a writer for Time before he lost his job in the early days of the Great Depression. I should add that he would likely also agree that the women of Iran currently protesting in the streets may well deserve equal billing, perhaps as Women of the Year to Zelinsky's man.

Last Monday I watched a clip on CNN of an organized group of female Kurdish fighters, pledging to liberate Iran. I was listening to hear a quote from one of them to match Zelinsky’s “I need ammunition, not a ride.” She’s there, we just haven’t heard her yet.

While I reiterate my previous grandfather-like warning — "be careful young people" — that I wrote during the prior Green Revolution in Iran and during the more recent widespread protests in Hong Kong, I applaud their courage. More than merely wishing them well, I hope outside special forces help them. Now is the time to liberate Iran and save us all from nuclear weapons in the hands of another terrorist regime.

What I believe my father wouldn’t agree with would be the magazine award if it was given to any American this year. As he liked to call himself a “word man,” he would also likely agree, and approve my word choice describing the situation. American men — perhaps men everywhere — are currently too often discombobulated.

While voices such as the poet Robert Bly and the writer Warren Farrell have been essentially saying for decades that men need to get their stuff together, other writers such as myself have perhaps been too timid. It has not been politically correct to say that men are falling behind, and that the reality of a male malaise hurts everyone. While I have more granddaughters than grandsons, I want them all to be successful and joyful.

However, the recent chorus of writers who have sounded the alarm about men — most recently Kay Hymowitz ("Manning Up") and Warren Farrell and John Gray ("The Boy Crisis") have a new, and perhaps even more likely-to-be-listened-to entry. (As an aside, John Gray, who gained widespread readership for his series beginning with "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus," has perhaps implicitly acknowledged the rapid cultural change since his landmark book was published in 1992. Maybe it’s just tougher to see what has happened on cloud-shrouded Venus.)

The brand new entry is a book published this year by Richard V. Reeves, "Of Boys and Men." Reeves is a 1990 graduate of Wadham College, Oxford with a PhD from the University of Warwick. He is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Of his personal life, all I am aware of is that he is in his early fifties, a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States, and from references in the book, he apparently has several sons.

"Of Boys and Men" has already attracted some notable attention. Two opinion columnists for the New York Times have written columns on the book.

David Brooks, on September 29, commented that the book “…is a landmark, one of the most important books of the year, not only because it is a comprehensive look at the male crisis, but also because it searches for the roots of that crisis and offers solutions.” Brooks notes that boys are struggling in classrooms and that “By high school, two-thirds of the students in the top 10 percent of the class, ranked by G.P.A.. are girls, while roughly two-thirds of the students at the lowest decile are boys.”

In previous columns I have noted that when I went to law school in the early 1970s there were only a few women in my class. In contrast, when our daughter went to law school about 20 years ago, two-thirds of her class were women, and our granddaughter is now in law school. Brooks picks up on this trend, noting that at the top law schools, all the prestigious law review editors in 2020 were women.

Brooks also notes that men are struggling in the workplace, more likely than women to die of suicide or drug overdoses, and more hindered by “challenging environments than girls.”

In a column, “Boys and Men are in Crisis Because Society Is,” published October 3, Michelle Goldberg wrote more critically. She criticizes Reeves' “wonky moderation…Dismissive of partisanship, Reeves elides the political and economic decisions that have made American life brutal, in different but overlapping ways, for women and men both.”

I plan to write more about Reeves’ book in future columns. I especially welcome readers’ comments on the book, and the extent of discombobulation.

Contact Larry Little at larrylittle46@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Larry Little: Are we really examining American men?