18
votes
Why young men sound "less manly"
Link information
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- Title
- Why Young Men Sound "Less Manly": The Masculinity Crisis and the Linguistics Explained
- Authors
- languagejones
- Duration
- 13:09
- Published
- Jun 12 2026
Tl;dr: because women and girls drive linguistic change.
Despite the accurate and helpful tldr, I'd highlight that the video is shy of 15 minutes and pretty interesting in content and presentation (if you like your presentation quite dry).
I like the style, personally. The whole video was a good watch/listen, my only note is i wish he had given a few side by side examples to illustrate how the pronunciation has shifted. Though without them, it won't date the video, the same breakdown will be just as true no matter when someone watches it.
They're putting estrogen in the goddamn water supply
The chemicals in our water make the frickin' frogs gay!
So, I may notice young men talking like this but it doesn't register as "feminine" or "effeminate" or any of that and it feels like that's the only actual problem here. Wtf is it weird for men and women to talk similarly? It's only weird if you assume the "male" speech is the default and normal and that men sounding like the women who raise them or who they're in school with is a negative.
Is this just "once women do it now it's not ok for men to do it because it's gay (derogatory)?" I don't understand the perception of even this guy.
That's pretty much exactly what he says in the video.
He never even remotely hints that this is stance and pretty clearly steers the other way.
No he says they sound kind of effeminate to him. (From the transcript, spelling errors not mine). And I know he's going into a deeper explanation, but I'm saying, it doesn't clock as effeminate/feminine/queer to me.
He does absolutely explain clearly why this phenomenon occurs, But I'm talking about the perception of this phenomenon by people who think that men sound effeminate in the first place, which does include himself. I'm not even saying this derogatorily, I'm saying I don't "get" this perception.
So more so I'm going back one step further in examining the phenomenon - why is it considered notable or effeminate for men and women to talk similarly in the first place. Another example is that once a name becomes more popular for girls, parents stop giving it to their boys. Sidney, Loren/Lauren, Courtney, Lindsey, Blair are just some examples. I see this pattern in a number of areas of society and I'm curious if that is why the same speech patterns being used by men and women flags as femme, especially using the model he described where older teen girls pass language to younger teen girls and boys. These are the same generation receiving the same language at functionally the same time - why is it effeminate in this context vs just being "language girls and boys use."
Why is it a "problem" that needs an explanation, if not actually to him, maybe this is just his hook, but to the other people who he's a/b testing his thumbnail for.
I'm curious if there's anything linguistically to the history of this happening. I'm of an age now that I often feel the loop of history, like I've been around this bend before. My grandfather used to say "everything old is new again," and more and more I just see how right he was. I grew up in a time that people were opining about how there were "no real men anymore". How men weren't like Humphrey Bogart or Clint Eastwood any more. How their grandfather built their home with his own two hands and talked with gravel in his throat or whatever.
And honestly, my answer then was the same in the end as it is now: who cares? Seriously, who cares? Being manly is doing anything that a man does. Men can braid their daughter's hair, men can dance, men can sing any music they like, men can tell their mother they love her and hug their brother, or say the same phrases that their wives or sisters say. I will say, if anyine honestly judges people as good, bad, masculine, feminine, gay, straight, or whatever for that, they're taking actions that are representative of a bad person. That's not to say they are one, we all do things that make up bad people in the moment sometimes. But we can acknowledge it, learn from it, and grow as humans to be more accepting.
Linguistically, sure this is an interesting video. Ultimately I agree with you: framing it as feminine/masculine is playing into a very loaded diatribe. Even if its just a clickbait framing, it's giving creadance to a very negative stereotype
I have to disagree. I think it falls into the category of challenging your own assumptions. The author acknowledges their own biased preconception, then explores whether there is any logical or scientific support for this preconception, and concludes that there is not. Would it be better if people never acknowledged their implicit biases?
I don't think we should conclude that starting the conversation by listing your socially conditioned biases is somehow wrong, when the actual conclusion of your argument is that those very biases are incorrect. That's just needlessly vilifying people who weren't "correct all along." I think it's much better to actually engage with common misconceptions and biases and stereotypes, and show why they're incorrect, rather than just pretending they never existed in the first place. That's the sort of thing that's gonna turn potential allies into enemies. You're basically declaring that if your starting point isn't ideologically acceptable, it's not even worth it to convince you otherwise. It's the sort of smug intellectually superior attitude that turns people who would absolutely be open to progressive viewpoints away, simply because you weren't willing to start the conversation by meeting them halfway.
I don't think there's "smugness" here and that goes beyond disagreeing with that final point.
I do.think we're both saying that it would be nice not to just acknowledge the initial bias but also to say "why do we even have the bias in the first place." And he may not be a specialist in that area or have thought about it, but it was a glaring absence to me. And maybe that's because I sit in a different space than he does when it comes to gendered assumptions. Idk him beyond this video, so it's all a bit of vague guessing. He explained why the phenomenon actually happens (or the major hypotheses) well, but not why this language is considered femme coded just because women also use it. And I think his lack of examples hurt him there.
I don't think the framing is necessarily a problem - he had a feeling and then he analyzes it. I think the a/b testing of his thumbnails isn't great - he's got one with very "girly" letters and one someone in his comments describes as having manosphere vibes in a way that made their friends wary of it.
So I don't like the marketing in this way, but mostly I wish he'd maybe taken that one step further back and asked the "why does this register at all" not just "how does this happen".
I'm maybe out of the discourse but does anyone have any links to examples of what he's referencing? I can't say I've noticed this but also I'm relatively young and don't have much interaction with where I imagine this is most noticeable (large chunks of youtube and tik tok)