A Message To All The Bitter Young Dudes, From A Former Young Dude

By just about any measure, I’m a typical American male. I grew up in a middle class neighborhood with nothing much to distinguish it from thousands of other neighborhoods. I played sports year round – baseball, football, basketball, tennis. I took part in summer camps where we’d go fishing, hiking and swimming. I never wanted for much of anything. It was a life of privilege, straight out of central casting.

We had a decent-sized family (four kids) during an era of decent-sized families. Our last name was hard for others to pronounce, and most of our family had darker skin than the other neighbors. But those were the only things that really set us apart.

I had many friends and no real enemies. I got into a few fights (though not too many). I raised some hell as a teen (though not too much), and dabbled in various vices (though not the worst ones). I went to college and became the prototypical underachieving student, then entered the working world filled with a weird cocktail of ambition and indifference.

Many (if not most) of the best students at my high school and university were female. Our high school class valedictorian was female. Many were student leaders. Some went on to successful careers. I personally stumbled around for a decade-plus, through a series of dead-end jobs for soon-to-be-bankrupt companies, before hitting my stride professionally.

It was frustrating, but I knew better than to blame anyone but myself. I had every advantage in the world, yet I was nearly 40 years old before I figured out a decent life trajectory (which I have blogged about before). The fact that it took so long was a testament to my own inability to get there sooner. There was nobody else to blame — and even if there were, I was raised to own up to my mistakes and not make excuses. Most of my friends, male and female, were raised the same way.

So imagine my surprise — and disappointment — when I read this new Esquire article – titled “How Do Young Men See the World? We Asked Them.” – that dives into the apparently tortured existence of males (mainly American) in their 20s. Here’s the central theme, addressed in the second graf:

“Young men today are angry. They’re lonely and friendless. The data shows that they are falling behind young women in school and at the workplace, living with their parents longer, playing too many video games, watching too much porn, getting married much later in life (or not at all), having fewer kids (or none at all), and facing a lifetime of student-loan debt, credit-card debt, and medical debt. As a result, many of them are adopting increasingly extreme beliefs, getting hooked on opioids, and killing themselves at alarming rates. They feel ignored by politicians, blamed for society’s ills, and forced to keep their toxic, privileged, microaggressive mouths shut about it.”

The article then provides first-person accounts from about a dozen “regular, everyday guys.” A couple of the accounts provide keen insights into what it’s like to be young and male in 2025. But most have the familiar ring of Aggrieved Male Privilege that is long on complaints but short on accountability.

Much of the talk centers around gender politics, the culture wars, and the 2024 presidential election, won by Donald J. Trump, a standard bearer of Aggrieved Male Privilege if there ever was one. American men ages 18 to 29 voted for Trump over Kamala Harris by a margin of 56–42 in 2024, essentially flipping the numbers from 2020, when Joe Biden won a 56–41 margin over Trump among the same voters.

Here’s a partial rundown of what some of the young lads had to say:

• “I think this [election] shift happened not necessarily because of anything Trump was doing. It’s because of what the Democrats did. They decided to let in all this [transgender] pronoun stuff and this whole idea of censoring young men and emasculating them.”
• “For thousands of years, men have been the rock of society. And now because there have been so many tyrannical leaders, people want to take that power away from men and say it’s for everybody.”
• “I used to work in construction, so I see all these Hispanic folks that are working for nine or ten bucks an hour, and they’re doing double the work the Americans are doing, because they have to survive. Like, they actually are taking our jobs.”
• “In this election, it seemed like the Democrats were focusing on just women’s issues and women’s rights, we need a woman in office, everything just centered around women—and I am in no way degrading women, that’s fine—but they left out the entire other gender. There wasn’t anything for young men or pretty much men in general.”
• “We’re all holding ourselves back from our natural behavior. We’ve ceded so much power. Voting for Trump has made me more unyielding. I don’t necessarily care who I offend. I’m not doing it to harm you. I’m doing it because sometimes ideas have to offend people.”

*****

The comments listed above were all part of a general narrative in which young men feel alienated, left behind, discriminated against, etc. They claim to be under constant assault from women, minorities, immigrants, transgender people, liberals, Democrats, feminism, woke politics, the global order, DEI, whatever.

And into this apocalyptic nightmare comes Trump and his henchman, Elon Musk, telling all these aggrieved dudes that they have every right to be pissed off. It’s not your fault that you feel left out – you’re the real victims here. The world has conspired against you.

Trump is the perfect voice for this anger and bitterness because he has never shown an ounce of accountability for anything in his life. All of his failures – and there have been plenty – were somebody else’s fault, never his. He even lied about losing a stolen election in 2020 even though anyone with a gram of brain matter knows he lost and lost decisively. His basic life philosophy is that you never apologize for anything bad, you always take credit for everything good, and you attack anyone who does not cater to your every whim or agree with your every idea.

Trump has become a cult hero to aggrieved men everywhere. He puts a face and a fist to their struggle. He’s the fake-macho blowhard who will lead them to the Promised Land. Never mind that Trump himself was born rich, never had to hustle for a wage or struggle to pay a bill, never missed a meal, and has been awash in brass rings and silver platters his entire life.

The same can be said of Elon Musk, by the way, who might actually be calling the shots in the White House in his quest to restore white male dominance across the globe.

*****

I cannot tell you how angry I got reading about these young men and their laundry list of complaints. I’m as compassionate as the next person, and when somebody has a real grievance, I lend them an ear. But these dudes? These dudes?

They act like the world owes them the brass ring just because they were born with a penis. They expect to be in charge, to run things. They demand respect and admiration whether they have earned it or not. They cannot possibly imagine that their problems are their own doing. Nah, it’s gotta be society or women or politics or immigrants or liberals or the monster under the bed.

But here’s what really bothers me: These fellas are too blind and/or stupid and/or willfully ignorant to realize just how easy they have it compared to others. They should wake up every single day and thank their lucky stars that they were born male in a rich country, where (mostly white) men still dominate every corridor of power.

Here are some quick facts for you to chew on between your bouts of self-pity, my dudes:

• There has never been a female president in the 250-year history of the United States. Only twice have women even headed up the presidential ticket of a major political party.
• Women make up only 25% of the U.S. Senate and 29% of the U.S. House of Representatives, even though they comprise more than half of the U.S. population.
• Women hold only 26% of the 50 U.S. governorships.
• Women account for only one-third of all active judges across the federal court system.
• As of 2023, only 10% of Fortune 500 companies were run by female CEOs.
• The median earnings of women are about 17% less than those of men across all job categories, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Labor.
• As of 2022, only 33% of all college presidents in the U.S. were women.

Read those numbers again, lads. Females represent the majority population in the United States – but there is not a single corridor of power where they hold more than one-third of the most important jobs. They never have. And God knows if they ever will.

So, kindly allow me to ask: Just what the fuck are you complaining about? What are your grievances? How exactly has the world dealt you a bad hand? Why are you so convinced that life has conspired against you?

Do you feel like the odds are not in your favor? Do you feel cast aside by society? Have you been treated unfairly? Do you wonder why you aren’t further along in life?

Well, so do lots of other people. Probably most people, at one time or another. Maybe all people, I don’t know.

So grab a ticket and stand in line, boys.

Better yet, do this: Read what one of your peers – Carter Plantinga – had to say in the Esquire article. Plantinga is a prelaw student at Boston University who hails from Nashville, Tennessee. Here’s his partial take on some of the grievances young men face right now:

“There’s a lot of talking points in the world right now about a male loneliness epidemic. And for the most part, I would venture to say the people who focus on it tend to be right-wing grifters trying to make a buck off of male rage…

I try not to associate with people who harbor real bitterness for women, but I mean, I think about the way that some of them talk in my classes—men who take a gender-studies class just to dunk on the feminist talking points they hear. They view themselves as on some kind of crusade to be the logical voice of reason in the room. Like, in a moment of social reckoning, a moment of reorganization where there are more women in college than men, they view themselves as a last bastion, a final crusader in the quest to defend masculinity from an emasculating society.

It’s a really sad thing. It’s embarrassing to watch. And if you asked those men in those lectures what they’re so angry about, they’d say they’re mad that their side of the story is not being told, when in fact their side of the story is the most well-­reported, well-documented, well-studied thing in the history of the world.”

Carter, wherever you are: God bless you, brother…..

Note: The Young Dude photo in this blog is yours truly, from way back back back in the day, sending a middle finger to the camera – but with a smile on my face! This was at my grandmother’s house, of all places. Maybe early to mid-80s. I’m guessing Nana was not there at the time, otherwise she would have ripped me a new one….