International Men's Day 2025: The brotherhood crisis: Where have all the men’s spaces gone?

Annabel's.

Photo credit: Hann Khalil

My observation comes from proximity. As a woman who's spent considerable time in male-dominated spaces - family businesses, social circles - I've witnessed what happens when men have nowhere to go to simply be themselves among their own.

They fragment. They isolate. They perform masculinity rather than inhabit it.

The modern man exists in a peculiar limbo. The traditional male spaces - clubs, lodges, even something as simple as the neighborhood workshop - have either vanished or been deemed problematic. What's replaced them? Nothing substantial. Just the hollow suggestion that men should "open up" and "be vulnerable," but with no actual sanctuary to do so safely.

Here's what most commentary misses: men don't process emotions the way we women do. This isn't weakness - it's difference. Men often work through difficulties side-by-side rather than face-to-face. Through shared activity rather than direct conversation. In the presence of other men who understand what remains unspoken.

When my brother lost his business, he didn't need therapy circles or emotional deep-dives. He needed his friends to show up, take him out on the boat, fish in silence, and occasionally say something bracingly honest without wrapping it in sensitivity. That's brotherhood. That's how men heal.

But where do men go for this now? The gym has become performance space for social media. Bars are for dates or professional networking. Sports clubs are competitive rather than communal. Even online spaces that attempt to create male community are quickly labeled as either toxic masculinity havens or self-help grift operations.

Photo credit: Tuxedo Society

We've created a culture where any exclusively male space is immediately suspect. The assumption is that men gathering alone must be plotting playboy lifestyle, rather than simply existing as men, with men, for men. This suspicion has left an entire gender without refuge.

The cost is measurable. Male suicide rates remain catastrophically high. Loneliness epidemic disproportionately affects men. Friendship atrophy accelerates after thirty. Men report having fewer close friends than ever, fewer people they can confide in, fewer spaces where they feel truly seen.

And before anyone suggests that mixed-gender spaces should suffice (hint: they don't). Not because women are the problem, but because the presence of women (or the possibility of women) changes male behavior. Men perform differently in mixed company. There's a particular ease, a specific kind of honesty, a depth of vulnerability that only emerges in the sanctuary of masculine space.

Women have understood this instinctively. We've fought for and maintained women-only spaces - not because we hate men, but because we need room to exist without male gaze, without performance, without explanation. We gather for book clubs, wellness retreats, professional networks. No one questions this need.

Men deserve the same courtesy.

GC X STYLO Gentlemen Weekend 2020.

What I'm advocating for isn't regression but recognition. Modern men need spaces that honor how they actually connect, process, and heal. Not therapy circles modeled on female emotional expression. Not corporate team-building exercises. Real brotherhood - the kind built on shared silence, occasional wisdom, and the understanding that sometimes a man just needs other men who get it without him having to explain it.

To the men reading this: create these spaces again. Unapologetically. Weekly card games. Monthly fishing trips. Standing workshop sessions. Running groups that end at the same coffee shop. Men's reading circles. Whatever works. Make it consistent, make it sacred, make it yours.

And to everyone else: let them have it. Men gathering exclusively as men isn't a threat to equality - it's a requirement for wholeness. Brotherhood isn't about excluding women; it's about including the parts of masculine experience that only make sense in masculine company.

My father's generation had their Thursday evenings. They were better men, better fathers, better husbands for it.

Your generation deserves the same.