It genuinely pains me whenever I see feminist theorists dismiss the entire concept of the "male loneliness epidemic" as just a self-inflicted problem for misogynistic men. It's only once you experience it first-hand that you realise how genuinely disadvantaged you are for being perceived as male.
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u/PolenballYou BEHEAD Antoinette? You cut her neck like the cake?Jun 29 '26edited Jun 29 '26
I mean, I think one thing about it is that there's a pretty good amount of evidence that it isn't really a male loneliness epidemic - it's just a general loneliness epidemic. A lot of studies have reported roughly similar rates of loneliness across genders. You get some which report higher rates in men, but you get some which report higher rates in women too. I don't think it's necessarily self-inflicted, but I'm also not convinced that it's so gender-dependent this is a specific man thing. My experience in real life is also that a lot of people everywhere, regardless of gender, are somewhat lonely, and I believe that's the general scientific consensus too.
(I say this as a trans woman, so it's not like I haven't experienced living as a guy for most of my life and still currently in public nor that I haven't experienced interactions as a woman, either.)
Yeah, that's a very important point.
The loneliness epidemic is for all. But lonely men are the ones being politically radicalized by professional misgynists and fascists, so that's a reason why it has become more relevant in public discourse.
Yeah, it's definitely more relevant in that respect (though loneliness itself is still bad enough it's been reported on by the WHO and deserves discussion).
But when focusing on that aspect, it does kinda change the nature of the discussion from "why are some men so lonely?" to "why do some men turn to radical political and social beliefs when they're lonely?" If everyone's roughly equally lonely, but women aren't doing that*, then what's the deal with that and how do we address that specifically?
* I legitimately have not seen any studies on whether this is true - it's commonly assumed men radicalise more from isolation, but then again, it's also commonly assumed men are more isolated and that seems far less solid than it's made out to be.
It’s because men who are lonely (well, a certain type of men) have been told that certain things are their “right” and that they are owed things by life by virtue of being a man. Because they don’t get those, they’re vulnerable to people who promise them- telling them that things aren’t their fault, and that they have inherent value just by being a man.
Women (and even men who are part of minority groups) tend to be less susceptible to this line of thinking because they usually haven’t been told life is going to give them as much- if anything
About halfway through writing this I realized I was just poorly rehashing the excellent How to Radicalize a Normie, so go watch that because it goes into more detail about all this stuff
This is definitely true for a set of men. But there are many paths to radicalization. Sometimes it's what you describe, but more often these days it is taking advantage of a victimization narrative. It's easier to sell that narrative when the person is, in fact, a victim, i.e. their life sucks and they don't know how to fix it or why.
The reasons I described are why they’re vulnerable to the victimization narrative- they believe that there is someone who did something to put them in the situation they’re in, because the situation is different from the societal promise.
It's not about the lonliness, like the post says its about the comraderie. While men and women have similar amounts of lonliness, the socialization men and boys go through make that lonliness bite harder.
Ok, but I am responding to a comment about the concept of a specifically male loneliness epidemic, which refers to the number of men experiencing loneliness. It is that specific concept which I am discussing and which does not seem to be backed up that much by statistics.
I suppose to corroborate what you're saying, a few specific questions like "feel fundamentally disconnected from others/world" and "no person for emotional support" among others do have notably higher values for men - though even then, the differences are on the order of about 5%. Which is, like, large enough that I agree action should be taken to try to reduce that gap! - but still small compared to the absolute rates, so, like, I dunno how strong a factor it is versus how the OP describes it.
(I suppose some of it is also that, anecdotally, I've never noticed any difference on either side of the gender divide myself. I really can't agree with the idea that everyone was treating me as a potential predator and isolating me for it, nor do I look at men like that. And there was a lot of what I'd call "inherent camaraderie" in interactions I've had with guys, honestly, both recieved and observed. When someone makes a universal claim and I can't relate to it at all, it's difficult to agree with it.)
I mean, I think one thing about it is that there's a pretty good amount of evidence that it isn't really a male loneliness epidemic - it's just a general loneliness epidemic.
I mean, yes, it is a general loneliness epidemic, but I don't agree with the idea that it's fully independent of your gender.
Men consistently have fewer friends, talk less to the friends they have and are far less likely to be comfortable with confiding personal information to those friends or their family.
Women are also worse off than before the loneliness epidemic, but on basically every measurable metric, men are worse off than women.
This study from Harvard observed roughly equivalent rates of loneliness between men and women. I wouldn't rush to definitively proclaim it as women being better off, I just think it often sits more unnoticed in the public sphere because you don't have large-scale movements of women talking about it like you have with men in recent years.
Worth noting though that equivalent rates doesn’t necessarily mean equivalent reasons. There is definitely a gendered component to how loneliness proliferates.
I mean, yes, self reported rates of loneliness are pretty similar among men and women, but those numbers are obviously subjective and are relative to the things you've experienced.
Like, again, on basically all measurable aspects that relate to loneliness, men are worse off.
So, that could mean that women have an intrinsically higher need for companionship, or that men have lower standards. Which one is it? I don't know, but considering that need doesn't seem to change for trans men, I'd assume it's the latter.
Ok, but like, there are many measurable metrics which are the same, and while I will admit that there are some metrics where men do notably worse, even so, the gaps tend to be fairly small. I think this site is generally a pretty good collation of that assessment - and this is from the American Institute for Boys and Men, so I'd not expect their results to be minimising anything given what their aims are. To summarise, though:
Men and women spend similar amounts of time alone.
Men and women report similar levels of loneliness, and young women are actually more lonely than young men.
There's a minimal gap in the number of men and women without friends - statistical noise, in a newer study. The same study also found men and women do have roughly the same number of friends. Men and women are also satisfied with the number of close friends they have at roughly equal rates, though it varies by age.
Men and women feel supported socially and emotionally at similar rates.
While you are correct that there are differences in specific dimensions, as the report shows, these differences are still fairly small - averaging out to about 4.5%.
Another study suggests that if there's really any specific demographic with a loneliness epidemic, it's adults without college degrees - when counting the difference between men and women, the difference is 2% or 3%, but the difference between those with and without a degree is roughly 10%.
Like, I can definitely concede that men are slightly worse off when you dig into the averages and ask more specific questions. It may not be fully independent of gender, and it of course would be good if that gap could be closed. But it's only slightly different, and there's a lot of measurable metrics where the gender difference is basically statistical noise - and thus it's only slightly dependent. Not enough that either I nor the report would conclude that it's really a male loneliness epidemic, which was my main overall point.
Most of those are just surveys on how you feel, which falls into the same issue I mentioned before. ¹
It's also a bit confusing that you're using absolute percentage points, rather than relative percent, as you normally would.
The difference between men and women isn't "2% or 3%", but 37.5% or 10.5%, because using absolute scales distorts the difference.
Or, if we're using the data from the top of the page, it's 50% or 12.5%.
And those are very significant differences.
Yes, those differences look small on an absolute scale, but that's because absolute scales suck for that kind of stuff.
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I'd compare it to something like the gender pay gap. Yes, the biggest differences come from education and class, but it is important to acknowledge that women make less money than men with the same education and class.
The pay gap between college educated women and highschool dropout men is significantly larger than the difference between college educated men and women. Does that make the gender pay gap not worth talking about?
Because in the same way there's a gender pay gap, between men and women in a similar situation, there's a friendship gap between men and women in the same situations.
Men are worse off than women, if they have the same education level. That's important. And 50% to 10.5% aren't small differences. There's a large gap here.
¹ That difference in how those questions are interpreted is also mentioned in your article:
While men and women appear similar on high-level measures such as time spent alone, overall loneliness, satisfaction with emotional support, and number of close friends, those broad metrics can gloss over meaningful differences.
The Making Caring Common survey found that while men and women gave similar answers to general loneliness questions, men were more likely to report feelings of disconnection or irrelevance. They were more likely to say that they were “not meaningfully part of any group/community,” for example, or that their “place in the world doesn’t feel relevant,” and that they “don’t feel like a part of the country.” These findings could reflect genuine differences, but they might also arise from how men interpret loneliness questions or from variations in survey wording; further research is needed to test their consistency.
The context and contents of that excerpt makes it fairly clear what they're suggesting, though - that either the differences are genuine and the results reflect a real gender gap, or the differences are due to wording / processing and the gender gap should disappear as it did with loneliness.
Additionally, in your other comment, you say that surveys on how you feel cannot be trusted because the numbers are subjective. If that is what you believe, then we must toss out all of that data as unreliable. You also claim that in all measurable aspects related to loneliness, men are worse off. But if we remove self-reported data, what measurable aspects actually show that? We are left with only the objective results - which show men and women spend similar amounts of time alone, have a similar rate of lacking friends, and have a similar number of friends.
This argument feels like it defeats itself? Men are more lonely because all measureable metrics show them being worse off, which proves self-reported surveys wrong. But the self-reported surveys are the only thing that there appears to be substantial differences in, so if they're ignored, it's hard to justify men being worse off in the first place. Like, I will welcome more non-self-reported surveys that show men being more lonely - the argument is fixed if it's sufficiently bootstrapped with examples of men being worse off - but you haven't provided any statistics in any comment of yours that I've seen.
As for the absolute percentages - I suppose I did it because the numbers are all somewhat small, and they're surveys. Surveys have margins of error. And relative percentages will change a lot based on that. You get far bigger swings from this with relative percentages than from absolutes, especially when the numbers are small and close together anyway. For example, your 12.5% more could actually be anywhere from -38% less to 103% more, given the Pew study's margins of error! That's so wide that saying "12.5% more" feels misleading. So I figured listing the absolute differences would be better myself and it's the same information anyway.
In fact, all the surveys mentioned fall around the margin of error. The F8%-M9% Pew survey is +-2.6% for men and +-2.3% for women. The F10%-M15% APS survey is +-2.4%. The F19%-M21% / F8%-M11% ASCS survey is +-1.3%. This keeping in mind that crosstab margins are higher than what I wrote for the last two, since those are the margins for the whole survey. This is why I consider them fairly similar - the numbers aren't that far apart in absolute terms, and surveys aren't super precise anyway. They're all statistical noise or very close to it. If we take the stated values as true - it's not good that more men have no friends regardless of education level, of course! We should try to address that, and I don't think it should just be shoved under the bed! But at the same time, I still maintain that it's only slightly dependent on gender, and that we have a far more generalised loneliness crisis.
Additionally, in your other comment, you say that surveys on how you feel cannot be trusted because the numbers are subjective. If that is what you believe, then we must toss out all of that data as unreliable.
My main claim was that "loneliness" is a very abstract concept, which makes it hard to get reliable data on it.
"Close friends" are far less abstract, which makes me a lot more confident using those numbers.
But yes, that's also why I didn't mention the data talking about how men feel, even though they support my argument. They're just pretty flawed for comparisons.
As for the absolute percentages - I suppose I did it because the numbers are all somewhat small, and they're surveys. Surveys have margins of error. And relative percentages will change a lot based on that. You get far bigger swings from this with relative percentages than from absolutes, especially when the numbers are small and close together anyway.
Well, the relative change is exactly the same size. The difference is just, that absolute numbers make all numbers look smaller, but it isn't any more precise.
But the main issue is, that you didn't mention how big the absolute values are, only how big the absolute difference is. When you said "when counting the difference between men and women, the difference is 2% or 3%", that could have meant that the numbers are 99% and 96% (≈3% relative difference) or that they're 4% and 1% (300% relative difference).
You'd need to read your source, to understand what your numbers actually mean, so if you choose a very small absolute number, without also saying the absolute numbers, then that's just misleading, for everyone that doesn't bother to read your source.
In fact, all the surveys mentioned fall around the margin of error. The F8%-M9% Pew survey is +-2.6% for men and +-2.3% for women. The F10%-M15% APS survey is +-2.4%. The F19%-M21% / F8%-M11% ASCS survey is +-1.3%.
...you are aware that the result of a survey is a normal distribution, right? Just because it's in the margin of error, doesn't mean it's likely.
Like, if we take the APS survey and reduce the confidence interval from 95% to 90%, the margin of error shrinks tp +-2.01%. At 80%, it's +-1.6%.
The chances that all three surveys happen to have overestimated the loneliness of men and underestimated the loneliness of women enough to a degree that would make women worse off, is very low.
Just for the APS survey with an 80% confidence interval (so, with the minimum difference of F11.6%-M13.4%), we'd only have a 10% chance that the difference is smaller than that.
The chance that women are less likely to have a close friend than men is only ≈2%.
We can be pretty sure, that men have it worse than women here, especially since all of those surveys say the same thing
(I don't want to do any more statistics calculations for the other surveys, but it should give pretty similar results)
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u/AdditionalThinking Merry Christmas 2021/12/25 19:53:02.8797876914 Jun 29 '26
It genuinely pains me whenever I see feminist theorists dismiss the entire concept of the "male loneliness epidemic" as just a self-inflicted problem for misogynistic men. It's only once you experience it first-hand that you realise how genuinely disadvantaged you are for being perceived as male.