A few years ago, I wrote Patriarchy Blues: Reflections on Manhood, a book that emerged from a question I had been carrying for years: what does patriarchy actually do to us?
We often talk about patriarchy as though it is merely a system that harms women, and of course it does. It structures inequity, violence, and exclusion in ways that have shaped societies for centuries. But what interested me while writing the book was the exploration of how patriarchy also leaves deep wounds on the people it trains to uphold it. It teaches boys that vulnerability is weakness, that care is feminine, that dominance is strength, that intimacy must be earned through performance rather than honesty. It narrows the emotional vocabulary available to men and then punishes them for being unable to express what they feel.
What I tried to explore in that book, through essays, poetry, reporting, and personal reflection, was not merely how patriarchy operates in the world around us, but how it operates within us. How it shapes our relationships, our friendships, our understanding of love, our ideas about success, and even our capacity to understand ourselves.
But writing a book about these questions does not place you beyond them.
In many ways, the book was less a declaration than a document of an ongoing struggle. It was written by a man trying to make sense of the lessons he inherited and the damage some of those lessons caused, both to himself and, at times, to others. I have been wrong in my life. I have seen the world too narrowly. I have carried assumptions that needed to be challenged and behaviors that needed to change. The work of writing has often been less about teaching than it has been about giving myself a place to interrogate who I am and who I hope to become.
That is part of why I recently joined The New York Times for a conversation about what many people are calling a crisis of masculinity.
I am increasingly convinced that many of our conversations about men begin in the wrong place. We ask why men are lonely, angry, withdrawn, or susceptible to the promises of the manosphere without first asking what conditions produced that loneliness, that anger, that hunger for belonging. We talk about outcomes while avoiding the architecture that helped create them.
The conversation touches on many of those questions, but it is also, for me, a continuation of the same inquiry that led to Patriarchy Blues years ago. How do we become better men? How do we resist the versions of masculinity that require domination, emotional isolation, or certainty at all costs? How do we build lives rooted in care, accountability, and genuine connection?
I do not claim to have answers. In fact, I distrust anyone who approaches these questions with too much certainty.
What I have is curiosity, a willingness to examine my own contradictions, and a belief that growth requires honesty before it requires expertise.
A few options to tune into the conversation in these ways:
Read: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/opinion/young-men-masculinity-crisis.html
Watch:
