The Global Crisis of Masculinity

The situation of the men is frightening.

Chances are you are not the man your father was.

Especially not the one that your grandfather was.

Numerous studies speak a clear language: Men became less and less masculine, weaker, and less successful with women over the last decades. This article will focus on these shocking developments as well as their underlying causes.

How does the crisis of masculinity reveal itself?

Men have less and less sex

I recently came across a shocking statistic.

After thinking about it for a bit, I could confirm the described developments from my own experience. Some of my friends have great difficulty talking to women.

Accordingly, their dating success is very limited, to put it nicely…

The fact that surprised me the most was that the number of men between 18 and 30 years old tripled from 2008 to 2018.

A tripling.

You have to think about that.

I’m pretty sure the Corona pandemic has exacerbated this trend. Unfortunately, I could not find more current data.

As you can see in this chart, the percentage of sexless women has increased much less than that of men. Moreover, I dare say that a larger proportion of women do not have sex voluntarily. Among men, one must assume that most would like to have sex.

Tinder data

Data from the dating app Tinder shows that for most men it is extremely difficult to attract the interest of women.

A man of average attractiveness is “liked” by approximately 0.87% of women on Tinder. This is a whopping 1 in 115.

The average woman “likes” only 12% of men. However, this does not mean that every man is liked by 12% of women. If that were the case, the ratio of 1 in 115 would no longer be correct. In addition to the fact that women are extremely choosy, the likes are also very unevenly distributed. You can say that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) compete for the bottom 20% of women.

The top 80% of women, on the other hand, all want the top 20% of men. Looks like the winner (in this case the most attractive male) takes it all. So for the most attractive men, this is a blessing. For the average man, however, rather less.

The average man has become unattractive.

From an evolutionary point of view, this makes perfect sense. Women have to try to find the best man they can get to ensure the survival of the offspring. Especially in the past, that was crucial. An interesting statistic says that our current population has about twice as many females as male ancestors. This means that men have a harder time choosing a mate, but the most attractive men have access to many women.

Decreasing testosterone levels

Several studies show that masculinity is also on the decline from a hormonal point of view. In recent decades, the levels of the male sex hormone in men have fallen drastically.

What exactly is testosterone?

Testosterone is the hormone of masculinity. It is the most important sex hormone of a man. It is mainly formed in the testicles, more precisely in the so-called Leydig cells of the testicle.

Testosterone is responsible for a masculine appearance. Among other things, it is very important for muscle building and sperm production.

Studies prove the decline in T-levels

• A 2007 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that testosterone levels in men have declined significantly since the 1980s. To be more precise, by about 1% per year.
• This development was also noted in Denmark. The study showed that men born in the 1960s had 14% lower testosterone levels than men born in the 1920s.

Low testosterone levels have bad health consequences, such as chronic fatigue or loss of sex drive. In this article, I have described the effects in more detail.

Men have become weaker over the decades

A study found that young men aged 20 to 34 in 2016 had significantly weaker arms and hands than men of the same age in 1985. Grip strength was measured for this purpose and the results are fascinating.

While the average participant in the study in 2016 was able to exert 98 pounds of force with his right hand, men 31 years earlier were able to apply 117 pounds.

Given this data, is it an exaggeration to speak of a crisis of masculinity?

I do not think so…

But how did all this happen?

What are the reasons for this crisis?

I think in a nutshell you can say that we’re doing too well these days. Masculine qualities are less and less needed in everyday life, and we need to get out of our comfort zone more and more rarely. Before I describe what I mean in more detail and with specific examples, here’s a quote that I think sums it up perfectly.

Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times- G. Michael Hopf

Porn

Especially for the decreasing number of sexually active men, porn is probably the main reason. Pornhub went online in 2007. Take another look at the statistics above regarding sexless men. Maybe you can see a connection…

Men are no longer forced to go out and interact with real women in real life in order to get to see naked women. Since it’s more comfortable, more and more men stay in their comfort zone and settle for their right hand and artificial intimacy behind their screens.

The regular consumption of porn has devastating consequences, as you can read in this article.

In recent years, the platform Onlyfans became famous and another confession of failure of the male world. On Onlyfans, you can sign up for paid subscriptions to nudes. So many men seem to need it so much that rows and rows of women got rich there.

Here is one of those crazy stories:

Deteriorating fitness

Various factors, such as decreasing physical labor, have led to more and more people being fat. For men, this has multiple bad consequences such as these two: being fat is bad for the testosterone supply and it makes them unattractive to women.

Other reasons:

Surely there are many other reasons, such as social norms or the easier and more comfortable life, that most have today compared to men a few decades ago.

What reasons can you think of?

Thanks for reading!

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