The man speaking has a handsome, sensitive face. His eyes look soulful – not like those of someone dead inside. But then, Ben Bidwell has broken free from his past, and now helps other men do the same.
Enlightenment came via a hypnotherapist. Bidwell had anorgasmia, a difficulty in achieving orgasm, and sought help for the condition. “I wasn’t looking to change. I was just intrigued to see if I could enhance my sexual experiences,” he writes on his website. But the hypnotherapist showed him that pursuing “financial success and female adoration” were bringing no fulfilment.
The revelation that money and sex aren’t everything sounds trite, but for Bidwell it was huge.
Now, Bidwell is a self-described “human potential coach” who focuses on masculinity and men’s mental health, promising men a life of wellbeing and emotional fulfilment.
“I came out of the military after 10 years. I was 26, and I was dead. I was a zombie. I couldn’t feel anything.”
It’s probably no coincidence that Bryan Reeves uses similar language to Bidwell when describing his past. Reeves, a “life and relationship insight ninja”, also charts his journey from emotionally stunted high achiever – US air force captain turned successful businessman – to a contented “spiritual warrior” helping men become their best selves.
Reeves and Bidwell are part of the growing life coaching industry, helping men deal with the emotional pain and dissatisfaction the manosphere – misogynistic online communities and their influencers – has successfully identified and exploited to monetise an anti-feminist message.
Life coaching is unregulated and has no governing body or set of ethical standards. Anyone can call themselves a life coach and no specific requirements are needed, although many institutions now offer a range of courses. Unlike therapists, coaches do not offer advice on clinical conditions such as anxiety or depression but help clients lead more satisfactory lives.
Reeves and Bidwell are not short of customers. The demand for their services shows that men are in search of guidance on everything from relationships to careers. The market research company IBISWorld estimated that coaching was a $2.1bn industry in the US, and more and more men are customers. Both coaches feel that men are feeling lost, and evidence supports this theory. The pandemic has exacerbated an already growing crisis of male connection: in the US, the number of men who had six or more close friends halved between 1990 and 2021, a phenomenon that particularly affected single men.
This has been blamed on a complex set of factors, from socio-economic and work pattern changes to the decline of traditional community structures – as well as dominant masculinity norms, which don’t encourage men to nurture friendships with other men into adulthood. In the UK, research by Movember found that a quarter of British men had no close friends.
As their friendships have declined, men have found networks on digital platforms. The 2023 State of American Men report by the gender equality organisation Equimundo found that nearly half of the men polled considered their online lives more rewarding than their offline lives and that only 22% had three or more close connections in their local area that they could depend on. Forty per cent of respondents said they trusted one or more figures from the manosphere; for young men, the proportion was almost half.
Male malaise and moral panics about the disappearance of men are not new. The postwar period was marked by anxious discussion about allegedly declining masculinity both in Europe and in North America. These days, plenty of airtime is devoted to what ails men, and the “crisis of masculinity” regularly features in media headlines. (...)
According to Reeves, men are threatened with “cultural redundancy” – falling behind in education, dropping out of the workforce, and failing as fathers. These shifts feed their feelings of irrelevance, and there is no consensus about what a healthy model of masculinity looks like.
By most metrics, men as a class, particularly straight white men, are doing OK. Men still out-earn women significantly and dominate political leadership. Yet in an era in which societal norms have changed rapidly, many men do feel adrift, a change partly driven by socio-economic factors and the decline of manufacturing jobs in favour of services-based roles, some of which men are reluctant to take. While men at the top continue to thrive, others are struggling with “aggrieved entitlement” – a term coined by the sociologist Michael Kimmel to describe the wounded feelings of a person who feels entitled to something and fails to receive it.
Reeves and others have rightly cautioned against confusing the success of a handful of powerful men and the broad trend with the lived experience of the many young men whose status is less rarefied. A minority may be thriving, but countless men are suffering and need attention, so the argument goes.
This sits uneasily with some progressives and feminists. In the face of persistent gender inequality and continued violence against women, there is understandable reticence about paying attention to men’s problems. Many feminists rightly argue that it is not women’s job to “fix men”. Figures like Bryan Reeves and Ben Bidwell fill a need: they are men that other men can turn to.
By addressing male distress and insecurity, however, they share space with Pickup Artists (PUAs) – misogynistic dating coaches – and red-pilled influencers of all kinds, such as Myron Gaines, co-host of the dating podcast Fresh and Fit, who regularly calls women “hoes” and promises to “help men transform from simps to PIMPS”. Or Rollo Tomassi, founder of the life and relationship advice website The Rational Male, who argues that “[men] coddle and cater to the feminine”. (...)
Bidwell avoids directly talking about the manosphere – both in his work and our conversation. But Reeves positions himself more openly as an alternative to it. “I’ve always been suspicious of that community,” he says. “These guys – they know how to get the girl, but they have no idea how to have a healthy relationship.”
By most metrics, men as a class, particularly straight white men, are doing OK. Men still out-earn women significantly and dominate political leadership. Yet in an era in which societal norms have changed rapidly, many men do feel adrift, a change partly driven by socio-economic factors and the decline of manufacturing jobs in favour of services-based roles, some of which men are reluctant to take. While men at the top continue to thrive, others are struggling with “aggrieved entitlement” – a term coined by the sociologist Michael Kimmel to describe the wounded feelings of a person who feels entitled to something and fails to receive it.
Reeves and others have rightly cautioned against confusing the success of a handful of powerful men and the broad trend with the lived experience of the many young men whose status is less rarefied. A minority may be thriving, but countless men are suffering and need attention, so the argument goes.
This sits uneasily with some progressives and feminists. In the face of persistent gender inequality and continued violence against women, there is understandable reticence about paying attention to men’s problems. Many feminists rightly argue that it is not women’s job to “fix men”. Figures like Bryan Reeves and Ben Bidwell fill a need: they are men that other men can turn to.
By addressing male distress and insecurity, however, they share space with Pickup Artists (PUAs) – misogynistic dating coaches – and red-pilled influencers of all kinds, such as Myron Gaines, co-host of the dating podcast Fresh and Fit, who regularly calls women “hoes” and promises to “help men transform from simps to PIMPS”. Or Rollo Tomassi, founder of the life and relationship advice website The Rational Male, who argues that “[men] coddle and cater to the feminine”. (...)
Bidwell avoids directly talking about the manosphere – both in his work and our conversation. But Reeves positions himself more openly as an alternative to it. “I’ve always been suspicious of that community,” he says. “These guys – they know how to get the girl, but they have no idea how to have a healthy relationship.”
by Cécile Simmons, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Ben Bidwell
Image: Ben Bidwell
