PHOENIX, Ariz.—Brian Viera doesn’t pull any punches when discussing his future in boxing.
After a year of intense training at Central Boxing Gym in Phoenix, Arizona, he confidently proclaims his destiny to become the world’s next lightweight champion.
“You heard it in here first,” Viera said wryly. “Though I might be a middleweight—I don’t know.”
You could see in his determined eyes that he was feeling pumped about his prospects.
At 20, Viera has the youthful energy and skill to go far in the sport. He has the sleek athletic frame of a Ryan Garcia, the power of a Devin Haney or Roberto Duran, and the lightning speed of a Sugar Ray Leonard dressed in loose-fitting sweatpants and a T-shirt.
Viera stepped into the boxing ring to prove he was the real deal. He began moving about the squared circle, throwing jabs and left hooks, ducking, bobbing, weaving—part dancer, part warrior.
“The healthiest part [of boxing] is just being comfortable in your body and knowing what your body is capable of doing. How much work do you have to put in to attain the goals you want?” Viera said, stopping for a quick photo as he flexed his biceps.
Some people might consider Viera’s male competitive spirit politically incorrect—toxic even.
Viera brushes off the words “toxic masculinity” like so much trash talk. He believes the term’s purpose is to cast a dark spell on true masculinity.
“It meshed at a certain point where real masculinity is now associated with that term,” Viera told The Epoch Times. “Real masculinity is a whole different thing on its own.”
“It’s not a bad thing—it’s natural. Boxing is one of the best sports to display that masculinity, I'd say.”
What better place than a dim, noisy boxing gym to learn traditional masculine values like strength, honor, respect, and fair play?
In the boxing gym, real men don’t shrink from a challenge, and they don’t drink soy milk lattes. They guzzle water or Gatorade and take care of business. Then they shake hands when it’s over.
The problem is, there are fewer spaces for men these days, like the boxing gym, observed Jeremy Slayden, a former professional baseball player with the Philadelphia Phillies.
Slayden said a prime example is the former Boy Scouts of America, rebranded as the gender-neutral “Scouts BSA”, which recently celebrated its first girl Eagle Scout.
Today, women in health clubs segregate themselves in gender-specific “safe spaces” while surrounded by men. Due to threats of boycotts and legal challenges, only about a dozen exclusively men-only private golf clubs still exist but face extinction, much like the Neanderthals did.
Slayden said with so much disdain aimed at men it’s no wonder they are afraid to speak out in their defense.
“When you can only whisper about what you believe and who you are, and the other side is shouting from all angles, who’s going to get to play?” Slayden told The Epoch Times.
“Who’s going to be the dominant driving force?”
As the founder of Warrior MBS, a website promoting men’s well-being, Slayden believes the American man is in an existential crisis.
It’s also an identity crisis; men don’t know who they are or where they belong in a world gone “woke.”
Slayden feels some “mansplaining” might be in order.
“Generally speaking, there is a multi-pronged attack on men in general and masculinity in particular,” Slayden argued.
It all started harmlessly with television sitcoms like “Married With Children” and “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Shows which portrayed male breadwinners Al Bundy and Ray Romano as naive, gullible buffoons—“if nothing else, a kind of a goober,” Slayden said.
Fueled by feminism, amplified by the legacy media, and reinforced by higher education and progressive politics, the message that men are useless in today’s inclusive society became ingrained in the American male psyche.
Slayden said traditional men feel lost, having few men’s spaces to fall back on for support.
“So you keep adding these layers, and men do not know how to define themselves. They don’t know their role or what to do with their strength,” Slayden said.
“Many have taken the bait—especially the youth.”
Slayden said globalism is another threat as it pushes forward with a social agenda to weaken men and male institutions.
“What they’re doing is overwhelming,” he said. “We are up against it in a sense,” as leftists and progressives believe men should just “shut up and be quiet.”
Slayden said men could choose not to participate in a mainstream culture that derides them based on gender. They could form new groups and ignore the legal challenges.
“I think there are fewer spaces where men can be themselves,” Slayden said. “It’s really on us as men to speak up confidently and begin to see ourselves confidently.”
“That permits other men to do the same.”
Tom Golden, creator of the website “Men Are Good,” believes that men and boys need “shoulder-to-shoulder spaces” to grow and mature.
“Think Boy Scouts. Title IX [anti-sex discrimination legislation] has been a great loss for males since it is usually on sports teams that boys make friendships. That and work,” said Golden, author of “Swallowed By A Snake: The Gift of the Masculine Side of Healing.”
From a traditional viewpoint, Golden said toxic masculinity is “truly bizarre” and is just a fantasy created by the Left.
Scientists now understand that “men are different,” Golden told The Epoch Times. “But the media refuses to touch this.”
Golden said the Australian Men’s Shed movement that revolutionized male spaces in Australia is one way men have tried to hold the line against feminism. The organization boasts offshoots in 14 countries since its founding in 2007.
“For years, Australian men were gathering in sheds, shoulder-to-shoulder in an informal environment and enjoying each other’s company,” Golden said.
“Then the feminists came along and demanded including women.”
Mark Winston, founding director of the American Men’s Shed Association, said the movement recognizes men need a common space to share goals and interests. A men’s shed could be a church or senior center—any place where men can feel at ease working together on projects.
Call it the adult male equivalent of a tree house. Only in Australia, it began with men puttering in the backyard shed, looking for interesting things to do.
There are now 1,180 men’s sheds and about 100 women’s sheds in Australia.
Winston said men quickly “lose their social connectedness” when they lose their sense of purpose in relation to other men.
“Guys—we’re different from women. We have a saying that women talk face to face, but guys talk shoulder to shoulder,” he said.
“Men need a reason to do something. For us, it’s the primary thing for being there.”
Former health club owner Lysander Caligo of Tempe, Arizona, said men perform at their best interacting with other men in a mutual endeavor. Lifting weights. Raising skyscrapers. Building civilizations.
As a former U.S. Marine working counterintelligence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Caligo currently works in executive protection and security for high-end clients throughout the United States.
It’s a manly profession, he said. But some women like it too.
Caligo said being in the military required strategic thought and planning. In time, he became increasingly disillusioned with military service.
What did PowerPoints on transgenderism have to do with counterintelligence?
“We in the military aren’t supposed to have an identity,” Caligo said. “We’re not supposed to have any special labels attached to us to make us stand out from the pack. That was frowned upon.”
“If you showed you weren’t playing the game, they wanted you out. That’s what started happening. Some of the best men I ever met in the military started getting forced out.”
Having seen the “writing on the wall,” Caligo said the problem was identity politics in the military.
Slowly, they started “flushing masculine men—competent men—out of the military” in favor of more political and bureaucracy-minded recruits.
“I no longer wanted to belong to a bureaucratic institution. I wanted to do my own thing. I was tired after nine years of deployment, training, and this other stuff,” Caligo said.
Caligo, 38, said he had become “jaded” when he left the Marine Corps in 2013. He later ran a successful health club in San Diego until the pandemic forced him out of business in 2021.
At 6 feet, 2 inches tall, Caligo has kept his muscular body builder’s physique in top shape, lifting weights daily and practicing Brazilian jujitsu, arms, and torso covered in tattoos.
Inked on his right bicep is the iconic image of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, the all-seeing eye of the Federal Reserve’s one-dollar note etched on his left forearm.
Caligo said there’s humor and irony in contradictory tattoos, though he’s not a Marxist.
At a busy Tempe restaurant one sunny afternoon, Caligo lamented the “feminization” of men in the service industry.
“Now, the model for being in service is to be effeminate and considered nice and not offend to get better customer results. I would say that has infiltrated the security industry as well.”
Strong opinions, indeed.
Caligo admits his ideas sometimes go over poorly with women and even with some men. But he stands by his beliefs.
When the discussion turned to time-honored men’s spaces, Caligo said good luck finding them in 2023.
Once there were men’s spaces everywhere, back when men had respect and status as providers and protectors, he said.
As time moved on, Caligo watched in dismay how leftist “outrage culture” removed men from their social spaces under the guise of inclusiveness.
However, the goal, he asserted, was not equality.
“You can’t let boys go into the Girl Scouts, can you?” Caligo said. “If it weren’t for double standards, the Left wouldn’t have any standards. That’s what it’s come down to—rules for thee, not for me.”
Caligo blamed feminism and cancel culture for pushing traditional men out of the mainstream and into the blogosphere to avoid discrimination lawsuits.
But even in cyberspace, Caligo ran afoul of the censors with his social media project, “Master Your Masculinity,” designed for young men in their 20s.
He was eventually banned on Twitter and shadow-banned on Facebook.
“They’ve thwarted me every step of the way trying to help men become better men,” Caligo told The Epoch Times.
“At some level, Elon Musk believes [cancel culture] has been a blight on our society. That was why he decided to make Twitter a free-speech platform.”
In depriving men of their traditional spaces, society has entered into a “state of insanity,” Caligo said, and thrown “the baby out with the bath water.”
“Why is there so much depression and suicide? Why are we so neurotic today? It’s because we’ve strayed too far away from our natural progression,” Caligo said.
To “turn the ship around,” men must now create a “tribe” of their own.
“Why do I care?” Caligo said. "At a deep level, I want to be a father. I want to have the best children possible.
“We'd see fewer societal issues if we invested in our children correctly.”
Caligo said men “thirst for information” on how to navigate the cultural minefield. While he believes change is inevitable, the solution could come at a price.
He said he expects pushback from leftists and feminists who want traditional men to disappear as they struggle to reclaim their place in society.
“The fact of the matter is when we have men who live with a purpose, driven men, strong, capable, and competent men—that’s the biggest threat to any [woke] institution out there.”
Caligo is the author of “A Patriarch’s Vision: Purging Feminism,” a book for men that unapologetically dissects what’s wrong with modern feminist society.
At This Old Barbershop in Phoenix, owner Luis Bermudez said being a traditional barbershop, most of his customers happen to be men.
“I would say it’s 99 percent men,” said Bermudez, smoothing a dollop of shaving cream on the back of customer Jacob Silvertest’s neck.
“We have a few ladies come in to get a hairstyle.”
Bermudez, 45, said he built the business from scratch four years ago. Though he doesn’t necessarily view it as a last bastion for men.
“I don’t know if it’s a last bastion, but it’s where people feel comfortable speaking freely,” Bermudez said.
“It used to be said that you shouldn’t talk about God or politics. That’s changed a lot. Especially in the political climate today. It’s something me and my clients speak about—my other barber and me when he’s here.”
Politically conservative, Bermudez said if a customer leans to the Left, “we’re going to agree to disagree.”
It’s about mutual respect.
Bermudez confessed he enjoys being around other men, sharing stories, and talking about manly things, like hunting and fishing.
“We talk about marriage and relationships. We talk about politics, the election, and who knows what’s happening. You walk into my shop, and you see an American flag here. We are 100 percent red-blooded American,” Bermudez told The Epoch Times.
“I get to talk to men all day. They know what I’ve gone through and vice-versa. I’ve got guys coming in seven or eight years, coaching them on marriage. We discuss how we feel, how the system has been against us for a long time.”
Bermudez said it’s a different story with younger men compared to when he was growing up, trained to be resourceful and self-reliant.
“I know men that don’t know how to change a tire. These are simple things our dads taught us. It’s crazy. Now, AAA shows up in a van and fixes your tire for you,” Bermudez said.
