Mark Zuckerberg on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast
(The Joe Rogan Experience)

‘Masculine energy is good’: A social media mogul wants more masculinity in modern workplaces

'The Social Network' was, indeed, a biopic.

Everyone, say “Thank you, David Fincher!” Mark Zuckerberg is calling for more masculinity in corporate America, proving once again that Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of the Facebook creator in The Social Network wasn’t too far off, after all.

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Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO behind Facebook and Instagram, was a recent guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast in a nearly three-hour episode. This comes after the tech head scrapped DEI initiatives and announced fact-checking will be removed from Meta platforms and replaced with X-style community notes. Having dubbed fact-checking “too political,” it’s no surprise the guy who started a social media platform with the intent to rate women’s looks would also feel “neutered” in the modern workplace, but he still sat down with the red pill movement’s favorite podcaster to tell us all about it.

Rogan and Zuckerberg covered a range of topics circling back to Meta, from the inevitability of AI integration to censorship on social media. Between these talks, Zuckerberg spoke of corporate culture becoming “neutered,” a conclusion he reached largely because of his interest in martial arts, which he claimed is “a much more masculine culture,” despite attempts to be an inclusive practice. (In actuality, women’s involvement in martial arts dates back to ancient civilizations, but that’s another conversation.)

Like a lot of guys who are about to say something totally sexist, Zuckerberg prefaced the core of his statement by saying he has sisters and daughters, swearing he’s been “surrounded by girls and women” his whole life, but feels that corporate culture is moving away from “masculine energy.” Although he recognized that our society certainly has enough of that, he thinks “having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive,” and likes to have guy things that he can do with his guy friends, like “beat each other a little bit.” I’m not laughing, I swear.

Even Rogan pushed back a bit here, citing that corporate culture has been masculine and “hyper-aggressive.” I never thought I’d say it, but he’s right. Men still hold roughly 90 percent of CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies. While we’re seeing more women in these spaces today than ever before, it’s not as though men’s place is being undermined while they still hold an overwhelming majority of those positions.

Somehow, Zuckerberg was able to acknowledge that, if you’re a woman going into these spaces, “it probably feels like it’s too masculine” and “biased against you,” but insisted that efforts to provide women and non-binary people with the means to be safe, heard, and successful in the workplace “can go a little far.”

In Zuckerberg’s eyes, the problem here is the idea that “masculinity is bad.” The social media mogul isn’t the first to misunderstand the term “toxic masculinity,” but, given he believes aggression in the workplace is not only appropriate but “positive,” it seems necessary to break down this issue. When we talk about toxic masculinity, we’re referring to the experience of performing stereotypical traits of masculinity to the detriment of yourself and others—yes, this includes behaving aggressively in situations when men might be expected to do so.

At its core, though, the discussion attempts to deconstruct conditioned gender roles and biases, which have historically disadvantaged women and LGBTQIA+ people by placing a different set of expectations on men, especially when you factor in race, ethnicity, and social and economic class. If Zuckerberg really believes “masculine energy” is what’s under attack, it’s no wonder he slashed DEI programming to suck up to President-elect Donald Trump.


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Olivia Rolls
Olivia Rolls is a freelance contributor at The Mary Sue. She's been writing professionally since 2022, covering gaming news and guides at a handful of outlets. Her work has appeared at Screen Rant, GameSkinny, N4G Unlocked, and VideoGamer, but you can also find her at The Escapist. A lover of cozy games, all things horror, and the modern anthropological study that is dissecting and participating in online pop culture spheres, Olivia dedicates both her work and downtime to writing about current interests, big and small. For deep dives on everything from NPC Studio's blushing farm sim, Fields of Mistria, to women's place in the horror genre and trending talking points on TikTok, she's your girl.