"I mean, there are certain attributes around masculinity that we should embrace. Men think about sex more than women. Use that as motivation..."

"... to be successful and meet women. Men are more impulsive. Men will run out into a field and get shot up to think they’re saving their buddies.... Where I think this conversation has come off the tracks is where being a man is essentially trying to ignore all masculinity and act more like a woman. And even some women who say that — they don’t want to have sex with those guys. They may believe they’re right, and think it’s a good narrative, but they don’t want to partner with them.... And so men should think, 'I want to take advantage of my maleness. I want to be aggressive, I want to set goals, go hard at it. I want to be physically really strong. I want to take care of myself.... My view is that, for masculinity, a decent place to start is garnering the skills and strength that you can advocate for and protect others with. If you’re really strong and smart, you will garner enough power, influence, kindness to begin protecting others. That is it. Full stop. Real men protect other people."

Said Scott Galloway ("author, entrepreneur and professor at New York University’s Stern Business School [who] has made a specialty of talking about the crisis of unattached, rudderless young men and helping them aspire to more"). 

Quoted in "Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness" by Christine Emba (WaPo). There's much more at the link, discussing many other people, including Jordan Peterson, so don't make assumptions about what's not in the article.

"Peoplehood is the spiritual practice of connected conversation. Our Gathers are 55 minute group conversation experiences led by trained Guides in our digital sanctuary."

Says the Instagram page of Peoplehood, quoted in "From the founders of SoulCycle, a new (flawed) kind of church." 

The link goes to a column by Christine Emba in WaPo. She writes:

Peoplehood’s tone is studiously nondenominational and stringently open-ended, without a hint of judgment or expectation.... The occasional Martin Luther King Jr. quote shows up, signaling social justice bona fides without being too alienating. “The problem isn’t you,” Peoplehood’s website coos, “it’s just life.” 

Here’s the thing: The religious structures Peoplehood is attempting to emulate kindle purpose by asking things of their adherents — hard things. They cultivate meaning by providing ethical frameworks and moral visions to strive for that are not solely opt-in consumables.... 

For all its trendy branding, Peoplehood’s commoditized church is merely religion in an impoverished, attenuated form. If it succeeds? It’ll only confirm the depth of our collective desperation.

But a lot of people do traditional church in a lightweight fashion. I think I'd be more upset by a bullshit commoditized church that did ask hard things of its devotees.

I will say that I find the use of "gather" as a noun irritating. It's easy to see what it means, but I sense some weird pride in cutting the "-ing" of "gathering" and offering what you're doing as something deeper and cooler.

Here's a doggedly uncool alternative:

"[M]illennials and Gen Z in particular seem wedded (old monogamy alert!) to the idea that the 'normal' way of doing things is almost always oppressive and must be either reclaimed or disavowed."

"Especially in the sexual realm, anything that could be viewed as traditional or average is passé. As the lecturer and essayist Phil Christman wrote in a Substack post, his students 'have a bias, so strong that I wonder if it’s hard-wired, to believe that complexity itself is new. In the past, people were drones who acted on the tenets of Religion, or Society, or The Way Things Were Then, whereas now people think about what they do.'... So for generations coming of age today... unprotected sex becomes the appropriately mysterious (if vaguely nauseating) 'fluid bonding.' If you need an emotional bond to want sex with someone, it sounds more inscrutable, and thus tolerable, if you call yourself 'demisexual.'... And monogamy, the most old-fashioned arrangement of all, must be smuggled into acceptability via the label 'radical.'"

Writes Christine Emba in "How radical is ‘radical monogamy,’ really?" (WaPo). 

She's bouncing off this Vice article by Nick Levine, "What Is 'Radical Monogamy'?" Levine tells us there's "reflexive monogamy" — "blindly accepting that it is somehow morally superior to have just one sexual partner" — and then there's "the more informed and conscious choice" of monogamy that gets the spicy label "radical monogamy." 

Levine quotes an activist, Jericho Vincent, who declares that the "old monogamy of our parents and grandparents [that] doesn’t really work today.... because it is often predicated on heteronormativity and misogyny and very frequently breeds boredom, disloyalty and stagnation."

“Radical monogamy works for me because I've always wanted a gigantic love. I wanted to be one person’s joy and delight and I wanted them to be mine,” they say. "Then I grew up and I was told that was ridiculous, unrealistic and unhealthy, so I gave up on monogamy and practised polyamory. But now I’ve come around to believing that all those other people’s messages were wrong. If approached with intentionality, effort and a willingness to grow, it is possible to have a love that’s big and magical.”

I spent some time trying to figure out who "they" referred to before realizing that Levine was still quoting Vincent and Vincent must use "they" as their pronoun. That was confusing! Apparently, the notation that an individual goes by "they" is now dispensable. That was boring! Vice has moved on to demanding that the reader step up and figure it out. 

But about the substance of that indented quote. It made me laugh because of the way it ended with the dream of "a love that’s big and magical." In the end, for all that straining to be radical, it comes back around to a puffy romantic vision. 

I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! 

It's okay, you can still have your "intentionality." The intentional pursuit of magical love!