WomensStuff

While I'm reading though this, I can't help but see all of these issues not as, the author concludes, a failure in the way men are raised and socialized, but the consequences of capitalism and american urban planning.

The man who is not, had a social life that was fine in college. College is the one time in the american life where you get to live somewhere designed primarily for pedestrian travel. A student lives on campus, walks to classes and/or job, and fulfills their needs in community spaces, where you will run into other people, and naturally develop friendships. University is often described as by americans as the best time in their lives.

This man then graduates, gets a job, and subsequently becomes very lonely and disconnected. This isn't a surprise. In america, we do not have work life balance. There is little time to interact with the people around you, even if the built environment were designed to encouraged it. Urban planning, zoning laws, and treating housing as a profitable investment means he cannot live near to his job, so he has a commute. All his other co-workers also have commutes home after work, so they don't have time to socialize after, even if it were not for the office culture which is often hostile to socializing. He travels immediately from his isolating job, alone in his car to his home.

His home, in american fashion is designed to be his everything space. Your house is your place to sleep, to eat, to exercise, and to be entertained. The home is in a neighborhood zoned for residences only, so there is nothing else. There are no destinations nearby, no coffee shop at the corner, no nearby park, no place to go to socialize nearby. Going anywhere requires at minimum an hourlong commitment, just to get there because nowhere is accessible without taking the car. This is why the home must be the place for work, study, sleep, and leisure all at once. And it is fundamentally isolating, by design.

America is often criticized for lacking third places. Places that are neither the home, nor work, for socializing with others around you. These places really don't exist. The people he sees in passing are mainly service workers, whom its a bit rude to reach out to, because they're just there doing their job. Also there's a line forming behind you hurry up.

I can't read the article without seeing the underlying, yet unstated cause. American urban design and culture is behind most of the issues raised by the author. Giving men clear guidance on how to man better will do nothing to make the environment we live in any less hostile to those living in it.