That shift might have been a factor in the 2016 presidential race. 'There's a paradigm shift occurring in our country regarding what it means to be masculine, and many men have had difficulty adjusting to that transition.' 'What it means to be a man today is different than what it meant 20 years ago,' says James O'Neil, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut who studies gender role conflict. Economically, physically and emotionally, many American men are fighting to maintain a foothold. But as society changes and culture evolves, the ground beneath that hill is growing shaky. For as long as America has been a country, the straight white American man has been king of the hill.
