WHERE ARE THE MEN?

Distraction, Responsibility, and the Call to Transform.

I’ve wrestled with this question for months: Where are the men?

It’s the title of an essay by Danielle Coates-Connor in the Crush Life Manifesto (Fall 2024), which offers liberatory frameworks like Holistic Vision and surfaces a painful truth—that something in men, and in our culture at large, is deeply broken. She writes, “Do they even know how much emotional work people are doing in the wake of them?”

The question stayed with me, not just because of what it exposed, but because of what it demanded.

At first, I wanted to talk about systems. To defend us. To explain why so many men shut down, lash out, or disappear. But the deeper truth lived in my body, not in my arguments. And my body would not let me lie.

So I turned inward. I started to ask myself harder questions about what I consume, how I show up, and where I still hide. I noticed how the so-called “gender war” has wormed its way into so many of the conversations, algorithms, and content streams I swim in—some loud and hateful, some quiet and hollow. I noticed how often men talk about women with resentment or detachment and how often women talk about men with pain.

So again: where are the men?

Short answer: we are traumatized, distracted, and disconnected by the constant pressure to perform. We chase perfection and fear being exposed. We numb our shame with porn, alcohol, sex, gambling, overwork, and disconnection. The enemy has three tricks: lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, and the pride of life.

I’m just telling the truth as I’ve lived it.

The Inheritance

For me, it started with conquering my first bully in kindergarten. Being told, “If you don’t whoop their ass, you’ll have another ass whooping waiting when you get home,” by my father. Or when I was in fourth grade, my father called me into the living room to watch a pornographic scene from the late-night Showtime catalogue, tainting the windows to my soul without any consideration or second thought. My dad was firm when he said, “...cause I’m not raising no fags in my house!” There was the time he taunted me, saying, “Damn, I wish I had never named you after me,” because I preferred painting, video games, and basketball over working on cars. I became uncertain whether the talents I had been gifted would hold any value at all.

And then, as a high school freshman, I was beaten until my face was unrecognizable for being caught stealing. I watched my mother in panic, telling me I had to stay home to heal—because if I went to school, Child Protective Services would be called. Whether from my damaged rib cage, swollen eye, or dislocated jaw, the truth was undeniable. She couldn’t even look me in the face. My face—her first and only baby boy—was morphed into someone she did not recognize by the man she had him with. Yes, that is where it started. With trauma.

Living Through the Echo

Brené Brown describes trauma as an experience that disconnects individuals from their core sense of self, leaving them fragile and untethered from their bodies, social selves, and sense of belonging.

In early adulthood, that trauma translated into a broken home. Gradually, “losing my smile,” as my mother describes it, my mind and heart searched for home in any place that felt familiar. My GPA plummeted from honor roll territory into near failure. It never truly recovered. Alternative schooling led to boot camps, which ultimately led to military school. I was recognized as a leader until an altercation—triggered by bullying—ignited a brawl. I pounded a peer’s face in until their teeth protruded through their lips. Because “I ain’t gone be no bitch.” Or really, “... ‘Cause I’m not raising no fags in my house!” echoed in my mind.

As guilty and embarrassed as I am to share these experiences, I must admit: I was proud in that moment of violence. And in many others like it. It felt like leadership.

The lack of brotherhood meant I had no map for healing. I didn’t know how to lean into another man’s care, or offer mine. So I stumbled through college, abusing sex and alcohol, looking for a crutch. To be numb for a moment. In hindsight, it’s alarming to know how many men in my demographic shared the same sentiments. We were clouded by excuses like, “It’s not like I need it. It just takes the edge off.” Or: “Everybody does it.”

I told myself that since I was only sleeping with one person, I wasn’t as bad as those sleeping with many. I dismissed the fact that those women didn’t even like me. I had learned to mask my true identity, becoming who I thought they wanted me to be. This is how babies have babies. And I did.

Looking back, I realize what I needed most wasn’t more advice or discipline—it was connection. A circle of men willing to witness my pain without turning away.

Women at the Center

From the moment we’re conceived in the womb, we begin to embody the effects of our parents’ circumstances. “Children are like watching our hearts run around outside of our bodies.”

The cycle of life starts with a woman. It was a woman who gave birth to me. A woman who taught me to read and write. A woman who accepted me into my college program. A woman who gave me my first job. When I was “in between blessings” (my mom’s way of saying broke), it was a woman—my mother, grandmother, relative, or romantic partner—who sheltered me. It was a woman who bailed me out of jail. A woman who gave me a second chance at sentencing.

Others offered a mirror, not to shame me, but to help me see myself more clearly. They mentored me. Challenged me. Invited me into spaces of care and creativity. When I think about community—real community, the kind that holds and grows us—I see women at the center. They saw my potential before I could. They have set an example of what brotherhood should embody.

It is not lost on me that the very people many men (myself included, once) are conditioned to resent, fear, or dominate, are the ones who’ve made space for our healing.

“Are you in community with people who can and do hold you accountable?” —adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

The Portal

To heal is to pass through a threshold that asks everything of us.

In more recent years, I’ve found the old saying “men are stronger than women” to be false. As I type this, I can hear the uproar of denial from those who associate strength with emotional suppression, toughness, and control. They affirm themselves with outdated sayings and red-pill regurgitation.

Jason Wilson calls this “emotional incarceration”—being stuck in an inhumane spectrum of emotion. It manifests as self-condemnation, the rejection of affirmation, and the inability to love oneself. Instead of starting inward, many of us begin with performance: ministry, work, community service: giving to the world what we have not yet given ourselves.

What does love look like in the absence of performance?

It looks like saying “I love you,” “I appreciate you,” “I’m here,” to another man and not flinching. It looks like checking in on our brothers: “How’s your mental?”

It looks like not shaming each other for softness, or reducing vulnerability to weakness, queerness, or a joke. It looks like mourning. Playfulness. Sadness. It looks like men reintroducing themselves to the parts of them they’ve exiled to survive.

Practice is the portal to transformation.” —Prentis Hemphill, What It Takes to Heal

Brotherhood, Reimagined

So again, where are the men?

Some of us are here. Some of us are still hiding behind the wall, trying to figure out how to come out whole. Some are crawling. Some are running. Some are building altars from their grief.

This post is rooted in the vulnerability and courage that healing demands. To name the pain. To stay with it. To look at it with sober eyes and say: “You are not the end of me.” To have the audacity to use my voice and proclaim my presence at the table. Even if my voice shakes.

And we need each other. Men who will meet us in truth, not performance. Brothers who will say, “You don’t have to carry that alone.” Who will remind us of our softness when the world tries to harden us. Who will challenge us without shaming us. We don’t just need more “good men,” we need whole ones. And we won’t get there alone.

The men are here. Still waking up. And daring to stay awake.

And if we stay awake, if we stay together, then we begin again. We begin again with the courage to raise our children differently, to reimagine our brotherhood, and to reclaim what’s been hidden in plain sight all along: our full humanity.

With tenderness. With truth. With accountability. With love.