In a recent opinion piece published for the Yale Daily News titled “Save young men,” Joshua Danziger ’28 opens with an eye-catching line: “How are young men doing? Terribly.” 

According to him, young men “are unemployed, depressed and sexually inactive.” They are “struggling in education, job placement and social flourishing,” and, not to mention, the “perpetrators of our country’s recent mass shootings and political attacks.”

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the truth is that us young men are also lazy, apathetic and of course, chopped. We are the perpetrators of violence and hurt throughout the country, and it’s nobody else’s fault but our own.

For most of our entire country’s history, society has catered itself to benefit men. Now, with our culture moving away from solely caring about us, some have turned to “violence, despair and withdrawal,” as Danziger aptly puts it. Men have gotten used to having it easy, and now that times are changing, some think that it’s society’s job to stop them from lashing out.

I’m not going to sit here and act like men have never struggled in history. Of course they have. Which is exactly my point. Do you think the soldiers in Normandy, fighting against facism, whined that “society” was making life too difficult for them? Absolutely not. They bucked up and did what they had to do, because real masculinity is about doing the hard thing.

I’m also not going to act like men do not face unique and novel issues in our modern day. It is true that women are dominating education, while boys are dominating high school detention. It is true that there is a crisis of poorly treated mental health among men. It is just factually true that many men are lonely and struggle to find employment. But real masculinity means taking change into our own hands.

I hate how some men throw a pity party and blame everyone else instead of actually doing something to improve their lives. You want to hear the truth? As a man, it is rarely that hard. If you are a young man in America, let alone a young man at Yale, you are in a damn good position. I understand how that may be hard to see when employment or girls continue to evade you, but it is true nonetheless. Acting as if the world owes you anything more just because you’re not given everything on a silver platter screams of entitlement. Entitlement is not masculine.

No one disagrees that certain issues do need addressing. The problem arises when idiots with an agenda to push propagandize these issues instead of actually addressing them. It’s misguided for some to blame the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO on Luigi Mangione not picking up enough girls or some kind of “disenfranchisement.” This line of thinking forgets that Mangione was a fellow Ivy League student who is also notable for being extremely hot. Regardless, this rhetoric about his being a “lost boy” distracts from looking at the larger political issues that are the real causes of violence.

If we really want to do something about problems that young men face, that “something” doesn’t have anything to do with not “teaching that masculinity itself is bad.” Nobody is doing that. It doesn’t have to do with being forced to die in a foreign country for no one’s benefit but wealthy stakeholders. In order to save American men, we need to address our poorly designed education system or a waning job market in male dominated industries. We need to craft a generation of independent, emotionally and intellectually intelligent, and hopeful men.

Here are my alternative steps to stop this loser crisis. Curb the promotion of morons like Joe Rogan and the Nelk Boys and instead popularize positive role models for young men. Revive the national education system, including a robust federal Department of Education, to ensure that our schools encourage all children to think critically. That means teaching men to analyze issues rationally, so that they don’t end up writing misguided opinion pieces for the News. It is imperative that parents teach emotional maturity — to both sons and daughters. Remind men that they should strive to be strong, determined, but also kind, so that one day we may replace the hatred in our world with love and understanding.

To more directly address the catching lines that we began with, men need to try harder. Not even that much. Just a tiny bit. Start filling out job applications and locking in for our upcoming exams. So what if you flunk your first midterm or blow your first interview. Keep trying. Seek out help without shame when your mental health becomes overwhelming.

At Yale in particular, there is an abundance of resources waiting at your fingertips. No one here is ever alone. And maybe spend a few minutes fixing your hair in the morning. Yale unfortunately does not offer personal stylists, so you might just have to figure that out yourself. A skincare routine won’t hurt. It’s not that hard to avoid looking chopped.

The only ones capable of taking these steps to save young men, and the world, are young men. No one is going to save you; young men need to save themselves.

ARIQ RAHMAN is a first year in Pauli Murray College. He can be reached at ariq.rahman@yale.edu.