In recent months, there has been a lot of media attention and commentary around what has been defined as a “male loneliness epidemic.” Now, if we are going by the technical definition of the term, that would mean the males are infecting each other with the quick spread of their loneliness. While I don’t think this is the intention of the use of the word here, I think it may be technically true. As much as society would love to blame women, the reality may be more true to the word, that men are socializing each other, or anti-socializing each other, in their isolation.
In actuality, what is being called (through a patriarchal media lens) as the male loneliness epidemic, is truly a male violence epidemic. Or perhaps, widespread loneliness is a direct result, or the evolution of, a deeply embedded social problem: the male violence epidemic. The male violence epidemic is much more deadly and contagious than its inevitable outcome for men–feeling lonely when their violent behaviors led them away from rather than into connection.
It is true that suicide rates are higher for men than women. There is also a lot of research which shows how detrimental loneliness can be to our overall health as humans. It is important to acknowledge these facts because the point is not to dismiss the risks of loneliness or the mental and emotional wellbeing of men.
The point is that the social situation of collective male loneliness is actually a direct result of collective male violence, which has been raging through society for thousands of years, and is much more likely to spread than loneliness. In recent years, it has become a podcast-borne epidemic. Before that the pathogen was spread through locker room talk and boys-will-be-boys allowances.
Male loneliness caused by male violence? It shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to understand, but let’s break it down.
Don’t Want to Feel Lonely? Stop Killing Your Loved Ones!
First of all, at the fundamental level, perhaps some men wouldn’t be lonely if they hadn’t killed their partners or families. Globally, around 50,000 women per year are murdered by their intimate partners, ex-partners, or family members. I wonder if those 50,000 men are counted in the epidemic of lonely men?
But beyond that, it is quite easy to understand how the collective experience of male loneliness is actually just the obvious evolution of patriarchal violence.
Male violence has always been normalized in a patriarchal world. In societies where men carried the power to define reality, they defined it to support and justify their own behaviors. As such, their bad behaviors could easily be labeled normal–by them. Hence, violence has been normalized and women have been conditioned to tolerate it, and in a world where women have been dependent upon their relationships to men for their literal survival, they were required to tolerate it. If your husband beats you, but you don’t have a legal option for divorce, nor the right to have a bank account, nor the ability to live alone or return to your family, what could you do but tolerate the beating?
Among women, who have also been socialized by patriarchal conditions, there are varying levels of internalized misogyny, different degrees to which we have normalized our own oppression, romanticized male domination over us, and internalized abuse as love. Not all women, naturally. Some of us have fought hard to deconstruct what it means to live and love, and dare I suggest laugh, in the face of patriarchy.
So for as long as male violence has been normalized by men in a male-dominated world, and their bad behaviors have been absorbed by women, men have continued to engage in relationships with women. Even if they hated their partners, they still generally had a wife to come home to and kids as well. If their marriages lacked love and were built on unbalanced power dynamics, men could still find love and affection outside of their marriages–generally, without consequence. What was a wife with no bank account to do? (Certainly not respond emotionally–that would get a woman institutionalized or lobotomized in certain eras.)
In fact, the institution of marriage was, in many cultures, more about political and social alliances than it was about love. Love was for the extramarital landscape. Men weren’t lonely because they had their wives at home who were forced by societal conditions to care for them and incubate and care for their offspring, and they had their lovers outside the home. On top of that, they had each other to validate the fairness of these social conditions. Men had public space. Guess who they met out there? Other men whose miserable wives were also at home. They had friends. They had wives for service, lovers for pleasure, and public space for fraternizing–just as they designed it.
The Ongoing Gaslighting of Women by Patriachy
After years of burnings and drownings and lobotomies and femicides and generations of widespread cultural gaslighting to convince us we are crazy for having needs, hysterical for having emotions, not smart enough to go to school, not strong enough to work certain jobs or ride on trains because our uterus would fall out or whatever, women fought to have access to the spaces and services that men had withheld from us—education, work (a win for capitalism), bank accounts, property ownership, political office, the right to not be raped by our husbands, among others. I mean, they still rape us, but now we’re able to file a report about it. Likely, nothing will happen more than our own retraumatization by some male police officer or judge, but there is some kind of societal agreement about how men are not supposed to rape. Even if the alpha boy babies are trying to convince us otherwise.
(Now, if all this submission and servitude came natural to women, there probably wouldn’t have been so many witch hunts or lobotomies or evolving waves of feminism. If it were natural to us to submit to men and stay silent doing it, the alpha bro podcast culture probably wouldn’t have even spawned itself, after all. Who are they trying to convince of our submissiveness?)
So along comes some level of economic liberation for women, and with contraceptives, some amount of agency over our reproductive habits, (both wins in a capitalistic system at least) and suddenly–in an evolutionary sense–women were no longer dependent on our relationships to men for our literal survival the reality that men created.
With access to public spaces, education, the workforce, bank accounts of our own, and the ability to rent or own property, we didn’t have to tolerate abuse within our relationships. It still happens, of course. Societal conditioning doesn’t deconstruct that easily. But as women left the isolation of their houses, cut the chains that tied them to the stove, began speaking with other women and realizing we could indeed survive without relationships that make us hate ourselves, many of us started designing lives that weren’t centered around our relationships to men. A lot of women still want to be with men, still want partnerships and families, romance, and love, but their expectations and needs have levelled up. And, by reading the comments on almost any social media post at all, it would seem that men have not.
Enter…male loneliness epidemic.
Male violence has driven women away from them. This is not a failing of women. If you treat the people around you violently, they won’t want to be around you. Use some logic, fellas. It’s not that we failed to submit or to be feminine. It’s not that we are “too in our masculine energy” or any other gaslighting narrative, whether it be red pill derived or pseudo-spiritual new age nonsense. When we fought and won access to our own resources, we started avoiding male violence. And the men are angry about it. And the more angry they get, the more violent, the more violent, the more we avoid them.
This isn’t to say that only violence causes loneliness.
Loneliness comes from lack of connection. Violence, among other things, creates disconnection.
What About Female Loneliness?
I can’t speak for them, but I can imagine. I can imagine that the women from generations passed, those isolated in their homes, those trapped in abusive marriages with no economic opportunity to leave, those in loveless marriages whose husbands could seek extramarital love, I can imagine that all those women felt lonely too.
No media outlet would report about that loneliness. We can barely get them to report about when our partners murder us. (It feels important to mention that when there is media attention about a femicide, it is always a young, white woman, while Indigenous and Black and Latina women are murdered and missing at much higher rates.)
Globally, men murder 137 women each year. But actually, it’s probably more. One in three women has been or will be sexually abused or assaulted in her life by a man. But actually, it’s probably more. And this isn’t just a gendered situation either. Male violence is not just directed at women. When men and boys are the victims of violence, the perpetrators are generally men as well.
How many women have been killed, drowned, burned at the stake, raped, lobotomized? How many have had their work stolen and credited to some man instead? How many have lived entire lives without consenting to any of it?
You think women haven’t been lonely? Of course we have been. But we didn’t get interviewed for the Washington Post or whatever about it.
We got cats. And brunch. And therapy. Pilates and pelatons. Book clubs and moon circles and Taylor Swift. We got with the girls and the gays and the theys. (Because, as it turns out, you can be friends with any human who you like and who likes you! It’s incredible!)
And the men hated it. They’re telling us to go die alone with our cats and then whining about their loneliness.
Do they want us to die alone? Or do they us to be with them?
When women finally got ourselves out of our houses and into public life, when we stopped believing the narratives that other women were our greatest competitors and betrayers and started confiding in and building meaningful relationships with each other, we started creating connection. We began remembering the ways our ancestors connected. And that connection wasn’t dependent on having a male partner.
This isn’t to say that many women don’t still want a male partner, or crave connection with men–but many of us are tired of dealing with the risk of violence that it comes with. And it seems that instead of becoming less violent, men are becoming more lonely.
But here’s the thing–not all men are lonely! Some men like their wives! Some men make friends with other men and even women! Some men go to therapy! Some men are willing to deconstruct the conditioning that has normalized their violent behaviors.
And if they aren’t willing to do the work it takes to build connection in their lives, maybe they should get cats.
While we humans are social beings that need each other, it would seem that loneliness is part of the human condition. Fleeting, or acute, moments of loneliness are natural, normal human emotions. Just as we are meant to feel connection in our lives, I believe, we are meant to feel loneliness too. Like all feelings and emotions that show us something, loneliness shows us (if we let it) where we need to build or create connection. Long-term, chronic loneliness is bad for our health. We know that it leads to poor health outcomes and decreased longevity. We also know that male violence directly causes many deaths per year: 50,000 women. Plus all the men that are killed by men. Plus all the male-led wars and genocides. Wihtout minimizing the health risks and causes of chronic loneliness, I belive we must get serious about addressing male violence, because loneliness is a product of disconnection, and it is impossible to connect through violence.
Amy Schmidt is a writer, editor, facilitator, and feminist activist. She is from North Carolina and currently lives in Costa Rica. She teaches empowerment self-defense and communication and leadership courses for women and teens. All of her work comes through a trauma-informed and intersectional feminist lens. She seeks justice for all beings and the earth and loves dancing, sunshine, and juicy, tropical fruit.
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