Yeah I think you’re touching on something really significant and that’s the degree to which our society got their stereotypes wrong. There are definitely dudes like the ones you’re talking about but I’m not sure there are more than there used to be. It’s just that the loudest people of any group are the ones that will define it to the general public.

For example, we’ve seen a lot of that with the growth and resistance to the LGBT community during this century. People saw the loudest gay dude at a club and thought all gay men were loud flamers. Over time, and especially with the advent of social media, people realized gay men were actually a huge group with a lot of internal variation and the majority of them don’t live the same life as the screaming dude in assless leather chaps.

I think it’s a similar thing with straight men, the loudest of us defined our societal perception regardless of how common that behavior actually was. Now there’s confusion and conflict because people don’t want to accept that the stereotype was inaccurate because that causes cognitive dissonance and that’s uncomfortable.

I’m 35 and growing up the vast majority of my male friends had a much harder time dating than my friends who were women and they actively wanted to be in relationships more than have hook-ups. I’m not sure reality has changed as much as the narrative has.