Scott Galloway needs to stop talking about Men and Boys
He's awful at it
If you don’t know who Scott Galloway is a marketing professor from NYU who has suddenly positioned himself as an advocate for young men and boys. Leveraging his large network from the marketing world, he's been everywhere lately discussing the plight of young men—from major podcast appearances on The Diary of a CEO and The View to writing extensively on the topic, including his upcoming 2025 book "Notes on Being a Man." Galloway has also been a key supporter of the Brookings Institute, where Richard Reeves (author of "Of Boys and Men") works, and I suspect Galloway's marketing savvy has helped amplify Reeves' recent prominence in this space.
As far as I know, Galloway is not a researcher, nor a sociologist, nor a gender specialist. He’s a marketer. He’s a public speaker, he cares about brands and tech, and he has a consultant background. And yet here he is. Talking about why toxic masculinity is “bad” and how men need to be masculine. He brings about real stats about suicide rates and education which are true, yet brings upon this non informed conclusions that come from things that Reeves already has talked about. Or he talks from his own point of view conclusions that are so traditionally masculine but framed in the most liberal way.
Frankly, he is not equipped to talk about gender issues. I want him to stop.
Let me show you the why.
I wanted to talk about Galloway because one of my friends Dr Brendan Kwiatkowski-Hartman (@re.masculine on Instagram) made this Instagram post
In Brendan's post, he breaks down Galloway's "how to be masculine" advice and shows how Galloway doesn't know what he's talking about—it's worth reading for his detailed analysis especially since Brendan talks specifically about the research. But while Brendan kindly suggests having a conversation with Galloway, I want to be more direct: Galloway is doing more harm than good with his constant defensive attitude about boys and men. Like Reeves, he frames pushback as proof that his ideas are somehow "dangerous," when in reality they're not dangerous, they're just stupid.
The conclusions they both give not only come from this specific Gen-X / Baby Boomer point of view, but for Galloway specifically, it comes from a view of a business person.
I looked up the post that Brendan is referring to and it’s this one:
But to save you the click, he talks about “How to be Masculine” in his eye. I want to break this down for you.
I love these posts from people like Galloway because this is where the rubber meets the road. When you ask anyone talking about masculinity how someone can be “masculine” you will find out how their mind is shaped. And through this I can tell that Galloway doesn’t know what he’s talking about (I’m sure his new book will show that as well).
Make Money
Now Brendan has a good opinion as to why this is a weird one to start with however Brendan is nicer than I’m going to be, because I’m going to say if you start your “How to be Masculine” by “making money” you should just shut it down. You should not be allowed to talk about masculinity and boys and men anymore.
Brendan talks about this point relating to how making money comes at a cost of relationships. However I know the reason why Galloway starts with this and that’s because Galloway believes that the biggest core tenant for a man is to be a “provider."
And with that lens in mind if you pair being a provider with “making money” and not have the inkling to pair that up with suicide statistics for men when unemployment rate goes up, then you’re looking at this like a marketer and business person instead of sociologist.
The pursuit of making money is the reason why a lot of men struggle, it’s also the reason why young men and boys were attracted to things like crypto, and gambling which Galloway mentions. Again without any specific analysis as to why young men reach to gambling and get rich quick schemes.
The provider tag is the most traditionally masculine idea of being a man, and it’s something that has caused the most pride and also the biggest downfall for men and boys. Because if you extrapolate this further, for a man that has connected their value of provider to their value as a man, if you can’t make the money, then who are you as a man?1
This making money idea gets filtered a lot through men’s coaching when they talk about helping them through business goals, or when people use Men’s Work to support for profit enterprises. The Men’s Work space is FULL of business bros wanting to create “deep masculinity.” Galloway speaks their language. And every time this happens I roll my eyes.
Don’t get me wrong, financial literacy has it’s place and it is important. But it has nothing to do with being a man.
Get Super Strong
This is where Galloway gets into the stupid traditional masculinity thought that you as a guy need to feel like you can physically overpower anyone in that room. To fill the whole “protector” mindset. In his words:
“In your mind and in the gym, you should be able to walk into any room and know. You could kill and eat everyone or outrun them”
He then clarifies “not suggesting you do that.” And I think that’s the catch for him because he still believes in the kill or get killed mentality that I would us as a human race have dropped that ages ago. You know, when murder became illegal.
Brendan is a bit more good faith that this maybe tounge in cheek but also pushes him to say “if you push this thought further it comes into some nasty territory.” Again I’m going to go further than Brendan to say that Galloway will not think about this further, this is what he thinks a core part of masculinity is and it’s frankly stupid and awful. It steers so close to the manosphere bullshit.
But it is Galloway’s vision, a version of masculinity he saw most likely through the business world, through his possible view of “non fit people” as lazy or sloth-like (my speculation), and again this stems from a Gen X/Baby Boomer view of the world.
Galloway has a connection of fitness with masculinity, because it has all to do with physical protection. Not emotional. Not spiritual.
Fitness has it’s place, especially for young boys and young men who are more sedentary and especially ones who struggle with mental health. But once again, physical fitness is good for everyone, and it has nothing to with wanting to kill and eat everyone in the room. Nothing to do with being “masculine.”
Have good relationships (so you can have Sex)
This one is super weird to me. He starts off strong by going “You need to get out there and join groups of people like church groups, softball leagues and meet people…” Cool, good start, I have no problem with that. Relationships are one of the things that men and boys uniquely are not good at (for the most part) and we have all noted that. In fact there’s a pretty good essay about how male friendships are really tough
Hell there’s a new comedy about that out right now.
So in general I agree that relationships are important and that getting out there and doing that is great. However, Galloway finishes with this:
“You need to get out there and join groups of people like church groups, softball leagues and meet people…and try to have sex”
What?
So upon further research I noticed that Galloway has a real bug up his ass about declining birth rates in America. He thinks that guys not having more sex is bad for America and therefore a crisis. He’s worried about this for everyone, but in general about guys. He has written and spoken about it extensively . The reason why he cares about this a lot can be summed up with this sentence. Galloway says:
“First, less partnering and propagation means fewer babies. Declining birth rates are toxic for economic health.”
Economic health. There it is, the connection of money and masculinity. If you’re not pumping out babies it’s bad economically, and if it’s bad economically it means you’re not a man. This is a straight connection to the “make money” point.
Again this is the way Galloway thinks “real men” should behave. The “code” that he talks about in The View.
It’s overall very frustrating that THIS guy is out there even talking about men and boys.
Business People are not Experts Outside of Business
Galloway comes from a long line of business people who think they should talk more about boys and men. Or relationships. Or sociology at large. I personally have met local ones here in Edmonton, and I also know a bunch of them outside of this network. All of them I can say are successful at marketing themselves, but when talking about the issues at large, are usually awful at it. Not only that, they share the same type of code that Galloway has and if challenged about this, they share the same defensiveness, they dig in more, and pretend that the push back is more proof that what they are saying is right. All of them do this. Because in their hubris, they think they’re the only ones talking about this. From Diary of a CEO podcast, Galloway says:
“We’ve decided when it comes to men, compassion is a zero-sum game. And if you feel bad for men, it immediately kind of ‘outs’ you as someone who might be anti-women.”
This is a mirror of what Reeves said in his book “Of Boys and Men” when he recalled that others thought he was wading with snakes when defending boys and men.
But this is entirely wrong. There have been decades and decades of people who made it their life mission to help young boys and men, and did it in a way that were not labelled “anti-women.” I know this because I have been one of those guys, I have NEVER gotten push back that I was “anti-women” for talking about men. In fact, women have been some of the biggest supporters of these initiatives.
These issues have not been taboo. They have an incredible history to them, something that Galloway has no idea about. But god, even an ounce of self-awareness would see how incredibly popular both Galloway and Reeves have become to note that talking about boys and men is not dangerous and taboo, it’s actually profitable and successful. Both of them get invited to gender conferences, both have talked with female and non-male feminists, have been invited to major galas and places that are female centered, and yet they still say this shit?
Having him talk about boys is not a Net Positive
So even if you agree that Galloway sucks about talking about men and boys, there’s a prevailing thought that “well at least he’s making people aware of the issue right?”
I want to push back on this idea, because it’s still bad that he talks about it.
Galloway and in other parts Reeves is sucking up the air for this issue. Any time we have conversations about manhood and masculinity you will hear Reeves and Galloway’s name come up as people who are “good” about talking about men and boys2 . But all of their ideas about manhood and masculinity are liberal status quo nonsense. They skim the line of being “healthy masculinity” but providing conclusions that are at their best minimally controversial and at their worst something that Andrew Tate might want to say. I have never heard Galloway talk and agreed with his conclusions or be fired up about what he says. He’s usually either parroting points that have been discussed at length by others who are better equipped to do so, and then providing solutions that steer close to manosphere talk but with a liberal bent.
He’s not adding to the conversation, he’s polluting it.
That’s why he needs to stop. I don’t want to discuss it with him like Brendan wants to, I want him to end.
I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking tired of business people thinking that because they are successful in business and have some talent in public speaking, that they think they have answers about sociology. Or sociological things.
You don’t see this the other way right? You don’t see sociologists or social science people talking about the intricacies of economic and business drivers right? Why do we let these morons get away with this all the time?
Unfortunately we’re going to get more of him, because his book about men and boys comes out in November and he’s making the rounds of media already. But just be aware of what I said, I want to get ahead of it.
And if you know of any business dudes who all of sudden want to do a TedTalk or do a podcast about healthy masculinity, just tell him to start reading others before he gets up on the mic. Maybe we can all be spared another one of these fools.
and we’re living in a society where that is becoming increasingly hard
There’s another one out there who is Dr K, which I will dedicate another post about. But he also sucks at it.
What do you have to offer men and boys, though? Some of Reeves and Galloway's ideas are incredibly dangerous - such as red-shirting boys, which is basically societally enforcing the idea that boys are intellectually inferior to girls. The people criticizing them, however, are either traditionalists on the right or people who think that men and boys don't have problems and don't deserve help.