Angelica Ferrara, a feminist psychologist at Stanford, makes an argument that initially seems counterintuitive: men’s loneliness is a feminist issue.
Here is the logic. When men have no close friendships — no one they call, confide in, process difficulty with — their romantic partners become their entire social and emotional infrastructure. Therapist. Event planner. Social coordinator. Emotional regulator. The unpaid labor of managing a man’s interior life falls to the woman closest to him by default, because there is no one else.
Robert Putnam documented in Bowling Alone how this happened structurally: the collapse of civic organizations, unions, and religious communities removed the contexts in which male friendships formed naturally. Men stopped building their own social networks. The emotional burden shifted onto romantic partners. The Atlantic has written about how women become “emotional support humans” for isolated men — carrying work that is exhausting, invisible, and uncompensated.
Melinda French Gates invested $40 million in men’s issues in 2024 — $20 million to Richard Reeves’ American Institute for Boys and Men, $20 million to Gary Barker’s Equimundo — as part of her broader gender equality initiative. The decision reflects something she understands and Ferrara has documented: women’s empowerment and men’s wellbeing are not in competition. When men build their own friendships and communities, women are not required to be everything. That is better for everyone.
Bréné Brown writes: “We can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly.” Men who cannot access their own emotional interior cannot bring genuine presence to their relationships. They bring performance, management, and the specific kind of neediness that comes from having no other outlet. Building male friendship is not a retreat from relationship. It is what makes relationship sustainable.
Sharon Salzberg writes about loving-kindness as the recognition of common humanity. Men building their own communities of support is not the rejection of partnership — it is the recognition that no single relationship can carry the entire weight of a human life. That recognition helps everyone.
