>These are all stories about what makes for a good man. They are adapted to a certain material reality—the world of the patriarchal bargain. A world where women need men for economic or physical security. But mostly, we are not being taken hostage by elite European terrorists. We live in a safe world; indeed, the modern world has some of the lowest rates of violence (murder, assault, rape) [ever recorded](https://www.amazon.com/War-Human-Civilization-Azar-Gat/dp/0199236631). More and more, women don’t need men. And men haven’t figured out how to adapt to that.
>We need new stories. We need a new archetype. You gotta be worth choosing, not because she needs you, but because she wants you. The trick of gender is the trick of the modern world: learning to live together as free and equal citizens. Which is to say: telling a story in which we can be free and equal together despite our differences. A story about how men are useless and don’t have worth and aren’t worth wanting isn’t really going to cut it, not as long as men remain half the human population.
>To return to the rents/exclusion analysis, Francis Fukuyama [argues](https://www.amazon.com/Political-Order-Decay-Industrial-Globalization/dp/0374227357) that most successful reforms of such systems involve not the destruction but the extension of elite privileges to the masses. The aristocrat doesn’t lose; the commoner gains. England did not abolish its royal courts; it allowed more and more people to use them, and an aristocratic privilege was transformed into a [common right](https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Social-Orders-Conceptual-Interpreting/dp/1107646995). You might think what I am saying is “just coddle men more.” But what Fukuyama’s analysis also suggests is that this process also involves elites consciously accepting equality, rather than digging in their heels and refusing to let go of their relative status. Our ability to build new narratives depends, in the end, on those narratives being embraced by both men and women.
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>These are all stories about what makes for a good man. They are adapted to a certain material reality—the world of the patriarchal bargain. A world where women need men for economic or physical security. But mostly, we are not being taken hostage by elite European terrorists. We live in a safe world; indeed, the modern world has some of the lowest rates of violence (murder, assault, rape) [ever recorded](https://www.amazon.com/War-Human-Civilization-Azar-Gat/dp/0199236631). More and more, women don’t need men. And men haven’t figured out how to adapt to that.
>We need new stories. We need a new archetype. You gotta be worth choosing, not because she needs you, but because she wants you. The trick of gender is the trick of the modern world: learning to live together as free and equal citizens. Which is to say: telling a story in which we can be free and equal together despite our differences. A story about how men are useless and don’t have worth and aren’t worth wanting isn’t really going to cut it, not as long as men remain half the human population.
>To return to the rents/exclusion analysis, Francis Fukuyama [argues](https://www.amazon.com/Political-Order-Decay-Industrial-Globalization/dp/0374227357) that most successful reforms of such systems involve not the destruction but the extension of elite privileges to the masses. The aristocrat doesn’t lose; the commoner gains. England did not abolish its royal courts; it allowed more and more people to use them, and an aristocratic privilege was transformed into a [common right](https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Social-Orders-Conceptual-Interpreting/dp/1107646995). You might think what I am saying is “just coddle men more.” But what Fukuyama’s analysis also suggests is that this process also involves elites consciously accepting equality, rather than digging in their heels and refusing to let go of their relative status. Our ability to build new narratives depends, in the end, on those narratives being embraced by both men and women.