How Boys Lost Their North Star to Manhood

Western culture has spent decades dismantling restrictive ideas about manhood. Much of that work was necessary. Boys should not be taught that emotion is weakness, domination is leadership or economic provision is their only measure of worth.

But removing a bad map does not remove the need for direction. Boys still ask what adulthood requires of them. When parents, schools and institutions answer mainly with prohibitions, the loudest online men can present aggression, wealth and sexual conquest as a complete philosophy.

In brief

• Boys need positive standards, not merely warnings about harmful masculinity.
• Influencers gain power when healthier models of strength are unclear or unconvincing.
• Mature manhood integrates courage and tenderness under conscious choice.

The old script and its limits

For much of history, men’s social roles were shaped by physical labour, war, provision and protection. These expectations varied enormously between cultures and classes, and real men never fitted them uniformly. Still, the public script was relatively clear: become useful, withstand hardship, support a household and defend the group when required.

The script offered status and direction. It also imposed severe costs. Men who could not provide were shamed. Fear and grief were hidden. Violence could be rewarded. Women’s lives were restricted by the complementary roles assigned to them.

Industrialisation, two world wars, women’s economic participation, urbanisation and the growth of service work changed the practical foundations of that model. Later movements rightly challenged the idea that biology should determine occupation, temperament or authority.

The old rulebook was not simply torn up by ideology. The world that had made many of its rules appear inevitable had already changed.

Freedom arrived faster than formation

The gain was enormous. Men acquired permission to be more emotionally expressive and involved as fathers. Women gained access to education, careers, property and public power. Individuals were less confined by the accident of sex.

Yet culture proved better at criticising the old model than articulating a credible new passage from boyhood to manhood. “Do not be controlling”, “do not suppress emotion” and “do not behave like a stereotypical man” may all be useful warnings. They do not tell a boy what responsibility, courage or integrity look like in practice.

Confusion is not always a tragedy. It can open space for freedom. But prolonged ambiguity leaves identity available to whoever supplies the strongest symbols.

The Irish identity lesson

At the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, I once saw a campaign designed to broaden the meaning of Irishness. Photographs showed people of different backgrounds accompanied by the message that being Irish did not require one appearance, accent or behaviour.

The inclusive intention was sound. But it raised a question that applies equally to manhood: after explaining what an identity does not require, what positive relationship still gives the word meaning?

An identity can become so open that it functions only as personal declaration. That may protect freedom, but it offers little guidance. A developmental identity such as manhood needs more than membership. It needs standards by which growth can be recognised.

Why certainty sells

Young men do not follow extreme influencers only because they have absorbed misogyny. Some are hungry for order. They encounter men who speak confidently about discipline, money, fitness, sex and hierarchy, then mistake confidence for competence and dominance for strength.

The appeal grows when the available alternatives appear embarrassed by masculine ambition or unable to distinguish assertiveness from oppression. Presented with a choice between being powerful and being harmless, many boys will choose the first, even when the model of power is corrupt.

I understand the temptation. Given only the caricatures of macho and wimp, I would probably have chosen macho too. At least it appears to act.

What Tantra offered me

In my late twenties, Tantra gave me another framework. It treated masculinity and femininity as meaningful tendencies or principles without pretending that every man and woman must express them identically.

Its language was traditional: consciousness, direction, protection and discernment were associated with the masculine; receptivity, intuition, empathy and eros with the feminine. These associations can become stereotypes if applied mechanically. What helped me was the insistence that each person contains both and must develop access to the full range.

The goal was not to flatten difference or turn one quality into a permanent identity. It was to become stable enough to choose what the moment required.

The sword and the rose

The image I use is the sword and the rose. The sword represents clarity, boundaries, courage and the capacity to act. The rose represents love, beauty, tenderness and empathy.

An uneducated sword becomes aggression. A man cuts because he can. An isolated rose becomes sentimentality or appeasement, unable to protect what it loves. Mature masculinity requires both.

A man may need to remain composed during a crisis and grieve openly afterwards. He may set a firm boundary without humiliating the person on the other side. He may lead in one context and receive guidance in another.

The integration is not achieved by performing softness to prove modernity or hardness to prove masculinity. It depends on conscious choice.

A compass, not a cage

A healthy account of manhood should not prescribe one career, family form, sexuality or personality. It should describe qualities that can be embodied across very different lives.

I would begin with responsibility: the willingness to answer for one’s choices and impact. Add truthful speech, courage in the presence of fear, discipline in relation to appetite, protection without possession, service without self-erasure and emotional honesty without making others responsible for regulation.

These standards do not belong exclusively to men. Women need many of them too. Their relevance to manhood lies partly in the particular challenges boys encounter while developing male bodies, male sexuality and a social identity that remains powerful even when its meaning is contested.

Initiation through contribution

Traditional societies often marked the movement into adulthood through initiation, work and public responsibility. Modern societies tend to use age, education or consumption. A boy may gain legal rights without receiving a meaningful invitation to become necessary.

Initiation need not involve invented rituals or romanticised tribal practices. It can mean adults giving boys real responsibilities, mentoring them through failure and recognising demonstrated character rather than performance.

A young man needs to experience that his strength can serve, not merely impress. He needs adults who can challenge him without contempt and love him without lowering every standard.

Giving boys a better North Star

The answer to destructive masculinity is not nostalgia for rigid roles. Nor is it the removal of every specifically male aspiration. It is formation.

Boys need examples of men who can act decisively without becoming tyrants, love women without either using or idealising them, admit pain without surrendering agency and hold power without needing constant proof of superiority.

Without such examples, they will continue borrowing direction from whoever speaks most loudly. A North Star does not dictate every route. It gives the traveller enough orientation to stop following every bright object in the dark.