The Demonization of Male Ambition, the force that built civilization. By Lisa Britton.
We’ve spent decades treating male ambition not as a force that built civilization, but as a problem to be solved. It’s time to stop. …
For decades, we’ve systematically demonized male ambition under the banner of “equity.” In schools, we pour resources into girls’ STEM programs, leadership groups, and other career success initiatives while boys are left to fend for themselves. We tell young men to “step up” while simultaneously demanding they “step aside” so women can shine. We urge them to “open up” about their emotions, only to shame them the moment those emotions don’t align with progressive rhetoric.
Boys learn early that their drive, their competitiveness, their desire to build and conquer is suspect and something to be shamed away rather than celebrated.
Fortunately there are still exceptions. But Elon Musk did not grow up in America, but rather in Apartheid-era South Africa.
The results of this are predictable and heartbreaking. Young men today are struggling with purpose, direction, motivation and hope. Suicide rates for males remain tragically high. Workforce participation among men in their prime is dropping. A growing group feels angry, bitter, and invisible.
We chant about “toxic masculinity” and then act shocked when the boys we raised without positive outlets for their natural energies turn inward or lash out. We’ve told an entire generation of males that their ambition is bad for society, then wonder why so many check out. …
Let’s be real. Male ambition is the engine that brought humanity out of the dirt and into modernity. Throughout history, men have been driven to protect, provide, and achieve status, often to win the admiration of women and secure their place in the social order. That drive built cities, invented technologies, crossed oceans, and even split the atom — with the love, help and support of women, of course.
Nikola Tesla, the visionary inventor and a mind a century ahead of his time, understood this. … He argued that much of our progress stemmed from men’s deep-seated desire to provide and impress, and he worried that forcing men and women into identical roles would stifle the ambition that powers innovation. Tesla saw the complementarity of the sexes, not their sameness.
Camille Paglia, the brilliant and fearless cultural critic who I’ve admired for years, put it even more bluntly: If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.
If women had remained in charge…
She wasn’t insulting women but stating a truth about our evolutionary paths. Women, on average, excel at nurturing, relationship-building, managing and sustaining communities. Men, on average, have driven the innovation, provision, risk-taking, and large-scale problem-solving that define our progress. Both are amazing and essential for humanity. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make us more enlightened; it makes us delusional.
We’re living in the world male ambition built. The phones we use to tweet about “the patriarchy,” the airplanes that let us travel and post on Instagram, the medical advances that slashed maternal mortality, and the internet that allows anti-men memes to go viral are the fruits of restless, ambitious men who refused to accept the status quo. To demonize their ambition while enjoying its benefits is the height of ingratitude.
And yet here we are, in an economy that now increasingly rewards feminine-coded traits like collaboration and nurturing. Male-dominated sectors like manufacturing and construction are shrinking or being automated away. Women have surged into higher education and the white-collar workforce, which is wonderful. But instead of cheering male excellence in the areas where men still lead, we shame it. We frame every male success as a woman’s loss. Every boardroom with more men than women becomes proof of systemic bias rather than evidence of different interests, risk tolerances, or life choices. This zero-sum thinking is poison.
I think the truth is more hopeful: men’s successes are not women’s failures. Our fates are intertwined!
A society that produces strong, ambitious, successful men is a society that creates safer streets, more stable families, greater prosperity, and more opportunity for everyone — including women. When men have purpose and direction, they build wealth that funds things like schools and hospitals, curing diseases. They create technologies that ease women’s lives. They defend the borders and communities that allow us all to thrive and be safe.
The belief that we must tear men down to lift women up is not equality; it’s self-defeating spite.
We need a narrative change, and we need it now. We have to stop teaching boys that their ambition is toxic and start teaching them that it’s noble (when channeled responsibly.) We should celebrate male excellence in male-dominated fields just like we celebrate female excellence in female-dominated ones. We should provide boys the same targeted support and encouragement we’ve given girls for decades. And we should reject the lie that the sexes are interchangeable. …
The alternative is dark. Keep shaming male ambition, and we’ll continue to watch our young men disengage — from education, from work, from society itself. We’ll breed resentment where there should be love and gratitude. And we’ll stall the very progress that lets us debate these issues from the comfort of heated homes and screens.