#32: The great man shortage of 2025
Why is there such a gender imbalance in social spaces?
In my last post I wrote a bit about a phenomenon I discovered while planning my Valentine’s Day singles soirée. "Where are all the men? I'm hosting a v-day soirée for singles this Friday, and see something interesting happening with the rsvps. Women appear to be buying their tickets immediately, while men are all hovering at 'maybe.’” Well the event has now come and gone (pretty successfully I will say), but I’ve been pondering about gender imbalance in different event spaces as a whole.
Also want to acknowledge that I’m primarily discussing hetero dating dynamics through a fairly binary lens of men and women in this post. It’s partially because my event (where everyone of all sexualities and gender expressions were welcome) was still mostly attended by straight women seeking men. So the pattern I’m exploring here is particularly pronounced in hetero dating contexts, but I recognize that gender and sexuality exist on spectrums, and many of these observations may not apply across all dating experiences.
All day right up to the moment the event started, I kept refreshing the guest list with growing anxiety. We were selling a bunch of last minute tickets, but all to women, while we were barely hitting our minimum target with with men’s tickets. A majority of our attendees were hetero women looking to meet men, so the dearth of men’s tickets sold was becoming a problem.
I knew a bunch of the men who put ‘maybe’ on the event page and felt many of them would totally be into the babes coming to the event so I individually texted each of them. A few of them were actually deciding between whether to attend my event or go on last minute dates. “Who wants to be asked on a date mere hours before the date???” I asked Louis genuinely. He laughed at me with this reality check “yeah you date but you haven’t been single in a lonnng time so you don’t understand the desperation of being lonely on a Friday night. And it’s Valentine’s Day! People would love to be asked on a last minute date.” He might be right, but I kept texting every eligible single guy friend to bring friends. As the women started arriving early, excited and ready to connect, I kept wondering why a bunch of straight men were interested in attending the event but at the last min decided not to come out.
As I mentioned in my last post this is a widespread trend. My feed started serving up videos to me of other people hosting events and asking and even offering to pay single men to join. I heard about a coffee shop in Williamsburg throwing their own speed dating vday event and how they were struggling to find men while their tickets for women sold out. I saw another post from Suede, a popular r&b event who also lamented how women bought up tickets quickly while men always decided at the last minute.
Apparently this phenomenon extends far beyond dating events. I came across this IG thread where someone noted attending a dinner at Soho House in Chicago hosted by chefs. It wasn’t a dating event at all but a food one, and observed tons of attractive women and barely any men (even though plenty of men are members of Soho House). Comment after comment confirmed this is happening at art shows, museum openings, wellness events, cooking classes. Basically anywhere that involves leaving the house for a social experience not centered around sports or bars, you’ll see this trend. I started noticing it myself at all the event I attended.
I wanted to get to the bottom of this so over the last couple of weeks at every social event or catch up call with friends I’d bring up this topic. Through about a dozen conversations, some really interesting theories emerged. One straight male friend said while he thinks this sucks, open-ended social events where you’re just there to meet people are inherently catered toward female interests (socialized ones, not intrinsic ones, but still). Similarly, another straight male friend said maybe my future events should have a competitive aspect, because men like to have a goal or something to accomplish. A bro-y friend said that while he could easily get dates on apps, dating itself has become really fraught and frustrating and he could easily see why men would swear off dating altogether.
An astute female friend pointed out that women’s biological clocks creates an imperative to find a partner sooner, so they push themselves to go to events more, which I’ve observed to be true. Many of the women at my event were in their 30s and explicitly stated they were looking for monogamy, marriage, and children, and they wanted it soon. Men I’ve spoken to in this age range seem to want these things eventually but don’t have the same urgency, but at the same time they do all claim to be lonely and want to be in relationships.
Louis pointed out that men aren’t going to college at the same rate as women nor are they earning as much, but gender expectations demand that they still pay for dates and earn more than their partners in relationships. This creates a dynamic where men may feel economic anxiety about dating seriously, yet still crave connection. When I brought this up to a group of guy friends this week one of them said “yeah, I wish it could be like a security deposit I could get back if the date doesn’t work out.”
Another guy friend made a point that really struck me. He said the happiest social groups he’s been a part of featured a strong core of fraternal friendships. He observed that women seem to easily find community with each other (like look at all these Galentine’s Day events), but men rarely consider going to an event just to meet more male friends. People have sad joked online that men mistake kindness from women as romantic/sexual interest mostly because they would never consider being nice to someone they don’t want to sleep with. Savage, but kinda true? Yikes.
One of my guy friends also pointed me to this enlightening IG post about ‘the male loneliness epidemic’ and the burden of “mankeeping.” You really, really should read through all the fantastic slides but I’ll summarize. According to studies over the last 30 years, men’s social networks have shrunk significantly compared to women’s. Women can usually rely on friends, community networks, as well as romantic partners for emotional support while it seems that men, (mostly straight men, that is) and especially those with fewer friendships, rely solely on their wives or girlfriends for this emotional support. This is called a “romantically centered support system,” and it creates an imbalance where women end up compensating for the losses in men’s social networks.
So this all leads to what is being termed “mankeeping,” which is derived from “kinkeeping,” the emotional work that women traditionally do to maintain family cohesion and connections. The work is gendered and often not equally balanced so much so that women with male partners often seek emotional support outside the relationship because they don’t feel their partners possess the skills to be caring in the way they want.
You’re probably seeing the term ‘male loneliness epidemic’ a lot more now, and the alt-right has discovered this is excellent bait for recruiting and exploiting socially isolated men. They tell them the world is out to get them, that we’re anti-men and that masculinity is under threat.
With more women choosing to stay single, men are realizing they have no emotional support system. The author of this IG post points out that calling it an epidemic makes it seem like it’s just happening to men without their agency, and that instead we should be calling it a skills gap. Men are victims of the patriarchy too, and haven’t been taught the importance of building friendships and communities the way women have. A good example of this skills gap is what’s known as “side-by-side” or “shoulder to shoulder” communication. While women often meet up or get on the phone specifically to talk, men usually have to meet at an organized event so that talking can happen as a secondary part of the activity. Louis is always gaming with online friends who live across the country, and he gets on Discord to talk with them while they game. Many of these men will use these gaming sessions as an opportunity to vent about their finances, jobs, or relationships under the guide of mostly gaming. Men do this because these activities don’t require eye contact or put pressure on the talking part.
I quote Magdalene J Taylor’s newsletter a lot because she writes about many adjacent topics, and she just wrote about “The Future Childless Cat Guys,” where she highlights the statistic that 63 percent of men under 29 report being single, which is up from 51 percent in 2019. It’s a significantly higher percentage than women in the same age group, and if these trends continue, she thinks the cultural archetype of the lonely older person will shift from “cat lady” to single men with no partners or children. Obviously it’s okay to be single by choice, but we’re talking about the broader trend of men who want to be in relationships but remain single.
I think all of the theories my friends’ shared hold water. I also think all of this has a lot to do with rejection and vulnerability. When you get left swiped on an app, it’s not a real person saying no to your face. Real life doesn’t offer that buffer, and there’s a lot of emotional risk with showing up and talking to (and possibly getting rejected by someone) in person. We’re also still feeling the aftermath of the isolation of the pandemic, which accelerated our retreat from in-person socializing. Men’s friendships often revolve around shared activities, and when those structured activities fade away, connections become harder to maintain.
I tried, I really tried, but we didn’t achieve gender balance at my singles soiree. But the women weren’t even disappointed. We played some fun games and everyone was happy to make friends with each other, exchanging numbers, venting about the state of dating in NY, and building connections that had nothing to do with dating. If it were the other way around and men who came to an event to meet women saw few women, I feel like they would be way less adaptive and much more disappointed. That also reveals so much about how we approach social spaces. Also there were a handful of guys at my event, and they were great and contributed to all our games and conversations with gusto and earnestness.
I was going to say I ultimately don’t have answers here, but writing this post and talking with so many friends really opened my eyes to the different ways men and women occupy social spaces. We all have this sense that something is off in the way we’re connecting. Maybe just naming it and talking about it is the first step to understanding it.
I will be doing more research because I want to host more events for people wanting to find connection! Maybe one where you can pitch your single/open to dating friends to the audience? I’m here for all the ideas.
Q: I see this same pattern playing out in my friend group. The women plan everything and the men just show up…or they don’t. How to get them to plan things?
A: Classic mankeeping problem. The cycle continues because it works for them. Just state upfront to the men of the group “I’ve planned the last three hangouts. Now it’s your turn to organize something.” For men who seem clueless and not just lazy, you can do it on rails. Ask them to handle one aspect of the planning “Can you find me three options for restaurants that have available reservations on the night we’re all free?” or “Can you find a bar near the restaurant for us all to go to after dinner?” Some guys haven’t had to develop these skills because the women in their lives have always done it. Also, if they end up planning something and it’s whack, maybe you should still reward the effort, at least at first. If you just take over, the cycle will start again. Appreciate the attempt and offer a specific suggestion for next time.
I was trying to get through watching all the Oscar nominated films, but I ditched watching some of the 3 hour ones in favor of a non-Oscar nommed film that was still 3 hours but very good! It’s called The Seed of the Sacred Fig. It was filmed in secret in Iran and actively criticizes the morality police in the country.
If you didn’t scroll through the IG post by @vulgadrawings about mankeeping I referenced earlier I implore you to check it out now. She’s a cartoonist and feminist writer and makes it visually appealing and easy to read.
Really enjoyed this piece on The Myth of Writer’s Block to shake me out of my own.
“There’s a certain entitlement in the “writer’s block” concept. God help me, some immovable object has come to stand in between me and my unstoppable force of creative genius. If only this hulking disgrace could move out of the way, then I could easily access my greatest ideas, which flow to me like a constant river of divine inspiration. I’m sorry, but I don’t think the block is to blame. Sometimes you will have genuinely good, thoughtful things to say and will find it easy to transmit them to words. Sometimes you won’t.”
This shakshuka flatbread, and carrot cake, and speculoos monkey bread from Hani’s Bakery, opened by longtime Gramercy Tavern pastry chef. There was a short line on Saturday morning but it went quickly and was totally worth it. Thanks for reading!
Another brilliant piece. I agree with all of the points outlined here. I'll be sharing this with other folks that I know.