Why Conservative Masculinity Feels So Fake
Mental Health Awareness Month arrives in America not as a moment of reflection, but as an indictment. The data’s no longer ambiguous. Mental health is deteriorating. Anxiety and depression continue to climb, and among young men, the numbers are frightening: rising isolation and suicide rates that now sit among the leading causes of death. This isn’t a messaging problem. It’s a structural failure. And yet, when men go looking for guidance, the most prominent voices offering answers have remarkably little to say.
This is especially true on the right. Conservatives love masculinity the way middle managers love “leadership.” In theory, loudly. In practice, vaguely. Masculinity, we’re told, is in crisis. Masculinity must be restored. And then—nothing. Just platitudes. Get married. Have enough kids to make dinner a logistical exercise. Be a provider. Stop watching porn. Pray harder. It’s masculinity as a bumper sticker. Masculinity as a motivational poster featuring a bearded man staring at a mountain he’ll never climb.
It’s no surprise so many young men stop listening. I learned to do the same. Rather than confront their own failures, the conservative priesthood has seized on Nick Fuentes, turning him into a convenient negative exemplar. He’s held up as the antithesis of masculinity, the embodiment of everything un-American and unacceptable.
By pointing to Fuentes, they reassure themselves that whatever they represent must be virtuous by contrast. This is convenient. It's also dishonest. Pretending he’s merely a cartoon villain misses something important. Fuentes isn’t an alien. He’s a man reflecting anxieties many men already have. Especially white men. Economic insecurity. Social dislocation. Sexual humiliation. Paralyzing confusion. A sense of being despised by the culture and scolded by the institutions meant to guide them.
You don’t have to endorse the diagnosis to recognize the symptoms. Conservatives keep shouting “man up” without ever explaining what that means beyond a checklist. They confuse masculinity with milestones. Marriage. Mortgage. Minivan. Masculinity, apparently, is a spreadsheet you complete by 35. Miss a box, and you’re defective.
Real masculinity isn’t a life script. It’s a disposition. It’s the ability to bear responsibility without applause. To act when it would be easier not to. To endure without broadcasting. To build something real—work, family, craft, community—without turning it into content.
Most conservative commentators fail this test spectacularly. They posture and scold endlessly. They issue vague directives from podcast thrones while outsourcing every risk in their own lives. They talk about courage while hiding behind institutions. They preach discipline while living lives padded by platforms and sponsors, comfortable inside echo chambers of their own making.
Young men see this immediately. They hear “be a provider” from men who’ve never faced economic precarity. They’re told to “start a family” by pundits who outsource their parenting to schools they also complain about. They’re urged to “take responsibility” by people whose entire career depends on never being accountable to anyone but an audience. Then conservatives act shocked when those men roll their eyes and drift elsewhere.
Fuentes fills the vacuum. I won’t relitigate the worst things he has said. They’re well-known. I’ll explain why men my age and younger gravitate toward him. For years, he was banned across nearly every major platform. He was de-platformed, de-monetized, and at one point reportedly unable even to hold a bank account. He endured sustained public vilification, threats, and attempts on his life. He didn’t disappear. He adapted. At 27, he’s already lived through pressures that would break most men twice his age. You can despise his views and still recognize resilience when you see it.
Contrary to the caricature, he’s articulate, composed, and intelligent. He speaks in complete thoughts. He holds eye contact. He sounds like someone who’s been tested by the world, not sheltered from it. That matters to young men who feel talked down to by figures who preach toughness from protected heights.
Fuentes speaks directly to resentment, even if he sometimes weaponizes it recklessly. For years, conservatives have rightly blasted the left for demonizing men, pathologizing male ambition, and treating masculinity as a social problem to be managed. But what are they offering instead? Beyond vague talking points, there’s little there. Platitudes dressed up as guidance. Slogans mistaken for solutions. Responsibility is demanded without any effort to restore the conditions that once made responsibility possible.
Telling men to “get married” when dating has become transactional, adversarial, and quietly humiliating isn’t helpful. Telling them to “have kids” when they can’t afford rent, childcare, or a stable future isn’t wisdom. Telling them to “be providers” while AI steadily automates them out of existence is cruel.
The conservative class prefers to rage at the left because it’s easier than reckoning with its own emptiness. Condemning excess costs nothing. Building alternatives requires sacrifice and imagination. Until that gap is filled, young men will keep gravitating toward figures who, for all their flaws, at least acknowledge the wreckage and speak to it plainly.
Fuentes gains ground because he treats young men as agents, not problems. Conservatives lose ground because they oscillate between scolding and sentimentalism. One minute it’s “boys will be boys,” the next it’s “behave or else.” No vision or seriousness. You can reject Fuentes without dismissing the men drawn to him. You can condemn his conclusions while acknowledging the failures that made his rise possible. Doing otherwise will guarantee that men like me keep tuning out.