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“We’re under a lot of scrutiny,” said Gentlemen’s Expo attendee Rowan Bastiansz, a 27-year-old banker in Toronto. “You don’t want to be an idiot, you never want to say something stupid because, obviously, I’m very mindful of the image I put out of myself.”

But he’s also aware that he alone is not going to change the larger culture of masculinity. He is, after all, standing five feet from pinup girls selling calendars, at an event that promotes the idea that to be a man you need the right drink, the right girl and the right car. And this is the genteel version of marketing aimed at men.

“You go somewhere like Cancun on spring break, there’s always going to be wet T-shirt contests, there’s always going to be bikini contests,” Mr. Bastiansz said. “If that fosters a culture of rape or a culture of objectifying women, I hate to say this, but that’s never going away.”

These conflicting notions of manhood are leaving many men unsure about how to behave, or how to be “real men.”

“We’re in a moment where there’s a lot of prophets,” says Prof. Kimmel. “Why? Because we’re confused and we don’t know how to navigate this world.”

It’s a confusion that routinely leads men to one of the most popular articles on AskMen.com: Traits of a Real Man. These include points such as: ‘A Man Makes His Own Fortune’ and ‘A Real Man Can Defend Himself.’

But AskMen.com publisher James Bassil admits that some of these messages can be taken the wrong way.

“A lot of those traits convey that a man is in control of himself, in control of his life and on top of everything. That’s a dangerous perspective, I think, if you take too broad an approach to it,” he says, pointing to Ghomeshi and Cosby as examples of “control gone amok.”