I think that a debate over comparative suffering would be a mistake, Corona. That's what both academic victimology and its fallout in ideologies that rely on identity politics boil down to: competing for the grand prize of who suffers most. Whether you intended to play that game or not, I refuse to do so. It's unnecessary and counterproductive from my perspective as someone who wants to replace inter-sexual debate (in which one side loses and other wins) with inter-sexual dialogue (in which both sides win by acknowledging a complementarity that is rooted in nature). In short, I'd say that BOTH sexes are succumbing to identity crises for similar but not identical reasons.

It's true that men can still do the heavy lifting, but that has for many centuries been characteristic of the lower classes, first as serfs and then as proletarians. Upper class men--aristocrats, say, and gentlemen--were precisely those who did NOT have to rely for identity on their brute strength or to earn money in any other way. On the contrary, men with the highest status were those who relied on their physical strength. Even in ancient times, though, middle-class men brought something else to the table: skills that could be learned. It was culture, not nature, that assigned and taught these skills to men instead of women and consequently conferred masculine identity. These skills allowed men to earn money as merchants, traders, artisans, scribes, priests, professionals and so on.

In our time, none of these jobs confers a desirable masculine identity. Society does ascribe masculinity to men who work by the sweat of their brow--men who work in the fields, let's say, or on factory loading docks--but not in a good way. Sports figures do gain masculine identity, sure, along with fame and fortune in some cases. But what they do is vestigial and ornamental, not necessary. And women have their own sports figures (or would if it weren't for transgender women).

That leaves us with two possibilities. One confers masculine identity on soldiers. It's true that society now allows women to enter combat, but forcing them by law to do so, as it forces men, is another matter entirely at least in the United States. So, yes, soldiers still gain masculine identity and even public respect. But combat is a lethal activity and not all men, by any means, believe that the risk of being maimed or killed is worthwhile--certainly not without the promise of privileges over women (and other non-combatants) that earlier generations of men could assume.

The other possible source is fatherhood. To make the case--and it's no longer self-evident--I argue that fatherhood is (a) distinctively both male and masculine, not merely assistant motherhood; (b) necessary for both their children and society as a whole; and (c) should be, but often isn't, publicly valued.

I won't add much to what you say about women. For the time being, at least, women can still choose to be mothers and the identity that motherhood entails. It might be very hard to do so in this lamentable cultural climate, but they can make that choice and most do no matter what feminists tell them. Moreover, no man, by definition, can be a mother. There is a rough parallel, therefore, between mothers and fathers in our time. Both have distinctive functions. Both are necessary. But neither is assured of being publicly valued--and therefore of being a reliable source of identity.

Not being a fortune teller, I can't predict the future. Maybe artificial wombs will make women obsolete as mothers. Maybe drones will make men obsolete as soldiers. Maybe Western civilization will collapse due to a combination of ideological stupidity and self-loathing neuroticism. But I'm not ready to give up.