Rhyme And Unreason

[BaronOfHair]

Looking for Mr. Right : The Readership Battle Among Men's Magazines Is Also an Identity Crisis

The "Museum of Modern Male Art" in the offices of Esquire magazine, features neatly mounted trout and salmon flies, spoked wheel covers, an electric drill, billiard balls and a martini glass.

www.latimes.com

Excerpt: "NEW YORK — The “Museum of Modern Male Art” in the offices of Esquire magazine, features neatly mounted trout and salmon flies, spoked wheel covers, an electric drill, billiard balls and a martini glass.

Back in the simpler era that collection represents, it was easy to define the American man. Everyone knew what kind of man read Playboy. Or Argosy. Or True.

But in the wake of the feminist and sexual revolutions, general and special-interest women’s magazines overran the newsstands and their male counterparts languished.

Now, 25 years later, publishers are trying to corral male consumers and readers with general-interest men’s magazines....

“Billions of dollars have been made off the feminist and women’s movements,” said Asa Baber, who has written a column about men for Playboy since 1982. Books, movies, television shows, and magazines have all profited from the culture’s focus on women, he said"


But now, Baber believes, the women’s movement is fading and “people are looking around for what’s next. It’s clear to me that for 25 years we’ve had very unbalanced reporting in the area of sexual politics and gender studies,” he says. “Men have gotten either bad press or no press. I think that is about to be rectified . . . . In a marketing sense, a vacuum was created.”





We can only hope and pray that Wokeness is receding just enough for something similar to happen today. The Manosphere being our only "press" from '16-forward hasn't been remotely beneficial

 

[Scaramouche]

Hi Barren,
Baber is right,2025 will see massive changes,what I see and feel I know is a trickle compared to the coming tzunami .....For the first time in quite a few years I feel optimistic....Good to be alive!

 

[BaronOfHair]

Hi Barren,
Baber is right,2025 will see massive changes,what I see and feel I know is a trickle compared to the coming tzunami .....For the first time in quite a few years I feel optimistic....Good to be alive!

Part of the article I didn't quote:

"This autumn, despite the worst advertising climate in ages, publishers launched four new general-interest men’s magazines: Men’s Life, M-Inc., Details and Forbes’ FYI

Within a few weeks, Men’s Life, a quirky new publication produced by a former editor at Playboy, had gone belly up. But at least two more magazines--Smart for Men and Rolling Stone’s as yet unnamed publication--are champing to join the fray

Smart for Men, he says, will give men what they want.

“Basically, men are adolescent and over-sexed. We always have been and always will be,” says Kimball, a tall, thin man wearing spectacles and a bow tie. Moreover, he adds, most of the women he knows are increasingly willing to accept that. “They’re sick of the wimpy ‘80s image.”

As a result, the days when women’s magazines might feature the question, “Why Can’t a Man be More Like a Woman?” may be over, Kimball thinks

Men’s Life” went so far as to turn those stereotypical headlines around. In a brief humor item, it suggested that if men’s magazines were to handle gender-sensitive issues the way so many women’s magazines do, they would run stories such as “Raising Consciousness: Why Can’t She Raise the Toilet Seat?” or “Hey, How About My G-Spot?”

Or, as the magazine’s editor and creator, Barry Golson, a 17-year veteran of Playboy, said in his editorial: “Many of us have this suspicion we’re not the jerks some women say we are . . . . Welcome back, guys...

Men, on the other hand, were simply confused, and wondered aloud why women had urged them to be more sensitive, then turned around and “bashed them” for their vulnerability, Cooper said.

Magazines like Men’s Life, he continued, are ignoring the complexities of today’s life"

Now as back then, the path forward will be messy... A fair few of whichever websites and forums attempt to succeed The Manosphere will likely be short-lived, just as Men's Life and some of those other publications were. I do look forward to a day though where we're not confined to the most obscure corners of social media(as has been the case from late '15-today), and the culture at large is once again Post-PC, to the degree that it was between the late 90s-the mid 10s

Days where pre-Woke Askmen was writing from an unapologetically pro-male viewpoint https://www.askmen.com/editor/51_100/72b_editor_letters.html

 

[BaronOfHair]

Women can be bad at explaining what they want. Women wanted men to be sensitive to their feelings. Except 'their feelings' didn't mean men's feelings, but women's feelings.
Men used to be callous and insensitive about women's feelings: "Is it that time of the month again, woman?" and women just wanted men to show a bit more empathy for the female plight. Instead, the media told men they had to show more sensitivity by showing their (men's) emotions.
So men started to behave like women and cry at the drop of a hat. And now the tone changed, "I know you're on your period, but I'm hurting too." Instead of empathy, women got competition in who could cry the hardest. That was not the intention, so women wanted the stoic barbarians again.

And I'm sorry to say, but men don't read that many magazines anyway. If these publishers want to reach men, they might have to do something different than a 'magazine'.

To your first point: https://www.wpr.org/shows/central-t...ory-through-clothing-argument-against-empathy Listen the fourth story

To your second: Yeah: This article was written in 1990, so no one today will be starting a print magazine

 

[BaronOfHair]

“Basically, men are adolescent and over-sexed. We always have been and always will be,” says Kimball, a tall, thin man wearing spectacles and a bow tie. Moreover, he adds, most of the women he knows are increasingly willing to accept that. “They’re sick of the wimpy ‘80s image.”

Oddly enough, THAT decade(One in which 'roided out He-Men like Arnie, Stallone, Van Damme came to prominence. And mainstream cinema generally carried The Regan Administration's pro-police, pro-military line)is now venerated by many Red Pillers as something of a golden age


"...Or, as the magazine’s editor and creator, Barry Golson, a 17-year veteran of Playboy, said in his editorial: “Many of us have this suspicion we’re not the jerks some women say we are . . . . Welcome back, guys..."

Whatever good intentions The Manosphere began with, it's ultimately STRENGTHENED every last stereotype about men in our culture

 

[BaronOfHair]

“They’re sick of the wimpy ‘80s image.”

The way out of this dilemma we've found ourselves in since '16 is likely similar: More men need to start breaking from the man-baby image of the past decade, the likes of which has been reflected in our entertainment

*



*It's almost certainly NOT a coincidence that cape and Star Wars flicks consumed the entertainment industry, right around the time a substantial portion of our fellow citizens started declaring themselves either Woke or Red Pill... Adopting such identities allows one to PRETEND they're more special(perhaps even metahuman?)than the rest of us "non-supes" they share the planet with. Coming to grips with the fact you're just a regular person, like everyone else i.e. A Normie... THAT'S tough

 

[Sophisticator]

That post you quote:

Women can be bad at explaining what they want. Women wanted men to be sensitive to their feelings. Except 'their feelings' didn't mean men's feelings, but women's feelings.
Men used to be callous and insensitive about women's feelings: "Is it that time of the month again, woman?" and women just wanted men to show a bit more empathy for the female plight. Instead, the media told men they had to show more sensitivity by showing their (men's) emotions.
So men started to behave like women and cry at the drop of a hat. And now the tone changed, "I know you're on your period, but I'm hurting too." Instead of empathy, women got competition in who could cry the hardest. That was not the intention, so women wanted the stoic barbarians again.

I remember reading so many of theses 'articles' about 'let's get men to share their feelings' instead of 'have a little bit more empathy for your woman's issues'. And some guys becoming crybabies to show their sensitive side.

I wonder what a Men's Magazine would prescribe nowadays...

P.S. Why is the link to the original post gone?

 

[Bokanovsky]

Hi Barren,
Baber is right,2025 will see massive changes,what I see and feel I know is a trickle compared to the coming tzunami .....For the first time in quite a few years I feel optimistic....Good to be alive!

God willing, 2025 will be a turning point in human history.

 

[Travel memoir21]

I use to read ' Men's health magazine'......and man those advices they got were spiritually detrimental and had no substance.

They need to really need to have new magazines out there to find ways for Men how to cultivate a sense of Inner Game without needing social validation but only from God, his angels and themselves.

Yes, work out. Yes, have a sense of personal style. Yes, have a badass lifestyle. But do it for you and your creator not for the validation of a woman or other people.

You want to be in a state of mind where you're not needing approval but at the same time you're also in a GIVING mood to give out your personal joy and inner peace that you've found to the world and your community around you.

 

[BaronOfHair]

They need to really need to have new magazines out there to find ways for Men how to cultivate a sense of Inner Game without needing social validation but only from God, his angels and themselves.

Wasn't long ago https://nypost.com/2025/08/14/lifestyle/maxim-slammed-over-resurfaced-guide-to-curing-feminists/ that mainstream publications were saying-without apology and in frank language-everything The Manosphere drapes in jargon and buzzword salad, all for the sake of SOUNDING a lot smarter than we are

We can have a social atmosphere similar to the one we enjoyed, back when that article ran, once again. We just need to start ridding ourselves of The MGTOW-esque belief which goes something like:

"The Gynocentric Social Order screwed me over, therefore I shouldn't have to sweat "winning anyone over"... I should be able to to look, speak, and behave like a basement dwelling keyboard warrior, and not be reviled by the human race at large"

 

[SW15]

The article in the first post is from 1990. The media landscape has changed a lot since 1990.

Legacy print publications that publish periodically (weekly, monthly, etc.) of all kinds are struggling now.

There is a market in the 2020s for content surrounding masculine topics. There have been content creators that have created a following online with content around seduction and the red pill.

 

[BaronOfHair]

The media landscape has changed a lot since 1990.

Ya don't say?! Next, we'll be hearing that The Plains Tribes have ceaed armed resistance against The US government, and are now languishing on reservations that make rural Nicaragua look like The French Riveria

 

[BaronOfHair]

There is a market in the 2020s for content surrounding masculine topics

Yeah, if GQ and Esquire have been/still continue to be the voice of stick-up-the rear yuppies

, and much of The Manosphere is essentially a Gender Studies course in reverse, we need a resurrection of media for men that delivers frank, jargon-free conversations on potentially uncomfortable topics + Places more emphasis on practice rather than theory

 

[BaronOfHair]

Baber is right,2025 will see massive changes,what I see and feel I know is a trickle compared to the coming tzunami

The following https://x.com/PopBase/status/1694132865699840259 was published in '99, and note the title of one of those articles advertised on the front cover: "Can I have my life back now? Torpeodo her hidden agenda" Every difficulty men face today was alive and well back then