Masculinity is a fragile thing.
Where in the Western World is there a fitting place for a man who feels he is not quite a man?
Young men strive to be real men—successful, tough, and admired. Women are expected to recognize them. Their children must respect, honor, and praise them and their ideas rather than ignore or mock them.
We live in a moment when grievance is widespread. A man who doesn’t meet the cultural standard for maleness shies away from publicly feeling sorry for himself. Instead, he blames others, who, he states, have taken his place or gotten an edge that eludes him. The fellow has been displaced from the spot he deserves, or so he believes.
All of the above is consistent with Masculine Discrepancy Stress. Whether conscious or not, when a man falls short of societally expected manliness or his own sense of what he should be, he is ripe for unhappiness and anger. While this syndrome is not yet well-researched, it does fit into our current moment.
Politicians play on this. They identify with such an individual’s sense of unfairness and fuel his rage, maintaining that it is just.
Promises follow. Their anointed defender says he will put things right for this otherwise unseen group of men. Indeed, these politicians recognize the vulnerability of those men who want to be seen and sided with, but without saying so.
He might be your father, brother, uncle, friend, or neighbor. He might go off like a roadside bomb or sit and simmer. He could also be you: a grumpy, irritable, angry old white man or a younger version who diminishes women and “others,” including members of minority groups.
He needn’t be the kind of creature whose head revolves like a searchlight, looking for something or someone to piss him off, the guy who yells, “Get off my lawn!” But he could be.
Endocrinologists point to low testosterone as a possible cause, especially past 60, when some males begin the hormonal decline. I’ll focus on the human rather than the chemical equation: what it feels like to be a disadvantaged white male. Don’t discount the hormonal changes, but research them elsewhere.
Let’s start with what constitutes a young man.
Males pass through a stage of feeling almost invulnerable and immortal, at least on occasion. They rush to fight wars, compete for mates, and try to climb higher than others. Women perform a selection of these tasks, but few teenage girls believe themselves indestructible.
I was neither a great athlete nor the most intelligent person I knew at any point in life. Yet, I know of which I speak. There are moments when many young men believe they can do almost anything.
For some, hubris comes in athletics or academics. The babe-magnets fancy themselves as sex machines.
Kids I knew took pride in intimidation, rocket-like racing, placing first in fierceness, or towering over classmates as regents of recklessness. Even those who broke the rules grew in foolish conceit. Boasts were heard about consuming the most beer in the bar.
This silliness seems built-in, tied to the need of early men to attract females and save their skin from beasts and enemies. Ambition and power fed your chance of spreading your genetic seed, an evolutionary but unconscious imperative. From a survival standpoint, wars wanted winners, and trees needed climbing for their fruit.
Among my youthful acquaintances, I’m sure much of this was already present in the watery womb. But I am not talking about angry kids; instead, the sense of immortality and competitiveness necessary in youth sets some men up for disappointment when the contemporary world offers few places where a big man can dominate a small pond.
If a man lived through injustices and disappointments early or late, his rage—once bottled up or transformed into ambition—would now go nowhere productive, at least to no meaningful arena for a staged competition.
If he is retired, the battles he fought at work and on the athletic field are foreclosed. You can still be an award-winning bodybuilder at 65, but all the comparisons are with people your age. A real man of the old school knows the difference.
The indignities of aging seem to cause women less trouble or at least less public aggravation. They are better sports and, ironically, superior at manning up to the depredations of time. The suicide rate of old bucks skyrockets. Data from the CDC indicates that in 2022, males committed suicide four times more often than females. While males make up 50% of the population, they account for 80% of suicides.
Unless you are a rare man, you’ve lost a step, an edge, a bit or more of your balance and grace by middle age. The IQ and neuropsychological tests display the results; so does the mirror. Even the beer-drinking boaster takes longer to recover from his hangover.
Some domains are uniquely problematic for the male. My physician tells me there are only two categories concerning an enlarged prostate: those men who have one and those who are going to get one. Nor does the sexual trigger work as dependably. A 55-year-old male former patient proclaimed: “I’m not the man I once was, but once I’m the man I was.”
I could go on to infinity about aches, pains, loss of hair and color, sun damage to the skin, and more frequent urination. The sixty-something male is sexually less relevant (his studly days having passed), evolutionarily irrelevant for the same reason, invisible to almost everyone (including young women), and gets called “sir” much too often for comfort.
The twenty-first century adds to this list: frustration over mastering the exponential growth of technological change, the supreme domain of youth. You are probably sick of reading my catalog of slow decline, so just imagine the poor guys who are living the descent and whose age-related sleep problems give them more time to stew.
Retirement or unsatisfying employment is perhaps the most significant loss and driver of a man’s ire.
Concerning the former, job site friendships tend to fade unless he is extroverted and has nurtured intimacy outside his family. Too many men lack an identity beyond labor. Women suffer labor pains in childbirth, but men suffer them by the absence of meaningful work. By 60, unless you are so grandiose as to run for public office or be a significant CEO, your working future is foreshortened. Perhaps even sooner.
The situation is different (but no less frustrating) if you remain on the career treadmill due to financial necessity or a failure to accomplish long-term goals. Few of us are like Warren Buffett, Picasso, Stravinsky, or Frank Lloyd Wright, producing wonders late in life.
Voltaire said, “Work saves a man from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.” He is in trouble once his formal working life ends or declines unless the old man possesses enough cash, interests, and friends. A narrow vocational focus sets him up for a painful retirement or unemployment.
Labor provides a sense of worth and accomplishment. A man needs to be useful. A job normalizes and distracts him, keeps depression at bay while dissipating the “fight” in the surly chap we are describing.
There is considerable data linking an early retirement to an earlier death: Retirement kills. A vocation orders any life, providing a timetable and a list of tasks.
Retirement or unemployment can be disorienting and frustrating without the scaffolding that structures perhaps 50 hours or more a week (if we include travel to and from the job). It is only a short step to depression, alcohol abuse, anger, or all three. Think again about the place of vice on Voltaire’s list of “three evils” and remember: one of the “seven deadly sins” is wrath.
Time is a cruel and ironic jester to the angry old white male. The latter is idle during the day and imagines too little of a lifetime ahead. Moreover, the years pass with a psychological rapidity unknown to the young. Three-hundred-sixty-five days still make a year, but somehow, the revolutions around the sun go faster.
The irrelevant elder must either reinvent himself or suffer an internal upset that has eyes: it looks for a target. Neighbors, politicians, friends, relatives, children, young people, and minority groups are the usual suspects.
The partisan broadcast media stirs the political pot and fuels the sense of unfairness. Their incentives, whether a genuine belief in how to right the lopsided world or the lure of big money and influence, spell trouble for those whom they transfix.
Exasperated white men are their white bread and butter, regardless. The bunch admires those running for office who carry the Y chromosome, project masculine authority and toxic certitude, and disparage women. Female candidates need not apply for their approval.
Once king of his castle, he finds his loyal subjects (his children) have their own lives. Perhaps his proud and mighty fortress is both emptier and shabbier over time. Since it is not manly to weep, he rants.
None of this is good for blood pressure or happiness. Nor is the irritable and ancient buck likely to read this or anything else for advice. His anger seems righteous. The problem is perceived to be elsewhere. A spouse hesitates to complain or utter worries about the mental state of a man who resembles Caligula, the insane Roman tyrant.
Still, a family intervention might be needed, with relatives and friends reinforcing each other’s concerns about their kinsman. A trusted physician is another possible source of advice, diagnosis, and treatment of any contributory medical issues.
Therapy or retirement coaching is indicated, but only if you can get this injured soul to submit with an open heart. The odds do not favor a trip to a counselor. Regardless, our subject has a selection of possible tasks to complete for a better life:
- Develop hobbies if they are absent.
- Join community organizations or volunteer for causes he believes in.
- Serving as a mentor to the young can give value to the experience of a little time or a lifetime.
- Erect a new structure for his days to keep him focused away from his grievances and on something to give him meaning.
- If possible and necessary, get back to work part-time or start a new business.
- Learn cognitive-behavioral methods to control rage.
- Make new friends or search out old companions, especially if they can make him laugh.
- Learn to take the aging process as a less personal affront. Life has not singled anyone out.
- Go back to school. Take a free MOOC (massive open online course) like those at Coursera, join a lifelong-learning program (Osher Lifelong Learning), or something like the University of Chicago Basic Program. The latter two examples stimulate learning and face-to-face interaction with same-aged peers who might become new friends.
- Limit exposure to the news stories or political pundits whose job is to fan the glowing, incendiary embers inside.
- Join a story-telling group. Old men with a gift for performance can deliver some beautiful reminiscences, so they might as well be put to good use with a receptive audience.
- Stretch and exercise regularly. Take good care of the body.
- Any excavation underneath the anger of an elderly person’s hurt is a dangerous business. Grieving is the work of the young and middle-aged. The old rarely have enough future time or opportunity to redeem the past. Some can handle grieving the failure to achieve early goals and life’s losses, but many can’t. For those carrying too much disappointment, age dictates a more supportive therapy rather than one to search the depths of the soul.
- Learn to appreciate what remains.
- Consider antidepressant medication.
Lost time, diminished abilities, and the realization of mortality drive a few people mad — mad in both senses of the word.
There is no time to waste. Most men are offered two opportunities for heroism: the risk-taking of a robust youth and a walk into the twilight of life.
Dylan Thomas’s recommendation to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (listen to him below) doesn’t serve most of us well.
Twilight can be beautiful or terrifying, depending on luck and attitude. Since we control only one of these, the only realistic choice is to change the latter from terror and anger to gratitude for what we still have, acceptance of what we don’t, and pride in a life well-lived.
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The image of the Angry Man is by Emery Way. It is followed by two dazzling photographs of Laura Hedien: Sunset with Train Tracks, S. Texas, May 2024, and Sunrise in August 2024 in Utah. They are offered with her kind permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.
The first cartoon is Grumpy of the Seven Dwarfs. The second is the Ensign of the 21° Gruppo (Angry Wasp) of the Italian Air Force by F l a n k e r. The Angry Man and the Angry Wasp are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
