Funny, people are mostly blaming the left for not adressing young boys mental health, but not the right for manipulating them into becoming sexist and violent.
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
1 points (100.0% liked)
Politics
10178 readers
814 users here now
In-depth political discussion from around the world; if it's a political happening, you can post it here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The rate of girls identitying as liberal is significantly higher and unlike the conservative boys, the rate hasn't started dropping off. Probably because the girls face actual threats to their freedoms, while the conservative boys' complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.
But of course it's boys who get the headline. The hill is a right wing dumpster bin.
while the conservative boys’ complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.
The verbalized complaints, yes.
The passive misandry that's pushing boys right is a very real thing.
load more comments
(21 replies)
I suspect it’s less due to the rhetoric of Donald Trump & more due to the influence of Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson & Joe Rogan.
No, those personalities rose due to the mainstream (mainly left) not being able to discuss normal masculinity and overall only portraying masculinity as something toxic. When you go in one radical direction, you get radical response (Tate, etc).
We need normal, non-partisan discussion and stance towards masculinity.
Normal masculinity is simply existing and not giving a fuck how other people expect you to live. There's almost no point in discussing it more as the left is already very comfortable with discussing the idea that you are who you are and you can be proud of that. That message is literally everywhere.
Toxic masculinity has to be discussed because people are being made to confuse being toxic with being "strong" which is something the right is creating. Their image of a "real man" is toxic.
It's like the whole "racist right winger" or "neonazi" labels given to a politician, but then some random right winger gets all bent out of shape as if they were called a Nazi... They weren't even part of the conversation, they decided to take on that guilt. It's the same with toxic masculinity. If you're not expressing the things that are discussed within that subject then they aren't talking about you, you're more than likely "performing" normal masculinity. It's not the fault of the people having the conversation that someone else chose to feel offended by it when it wasn't about them at all.
I was a card carrying Libertarian after high school, before my sense of empathy developed more fully.
Same. The world seemed so simple back then, until I matured. I suspect a lot of people are emotionally stuck
I can also relate, a classic libertarian utopia sounds great until you realise poor people exist. I think a lot of individuals are just afraid of personal growth because it often means admitting you were wrong.
In many ways I still consider myself libertarian, but moreso in anti authority leaning than Republican but with a cooler label. Many of my peers in highschool and university clicked with the pro guns, pro expression sentiment, but when it came actually letting queer people and religious minorities live their lives, or allowing women control over their own bodies and healthcare, they always seemed to side with the Authoritarians in power threatening the to restrict these people. Not to mention many of them had no problem with authority as long as it came from a corporate entity or oligarch.
I still identify with the term Libertarian, but have stopped using it because it truly doesn't represent what it was supposed to mean anymore.
yeah it’s a shame that libertarian basically means closeted republican these days
is there a better term?
I’d consider myself pretty libertarian-minded in the whole ‘you live your life and I live mine’ style, but not in the ‘let corporations do whatever they want to workers and the environment’ style
I often go with Anti-Authoritarian when describing my beliefs. I've played around with the Anarchist label as well, though it seems to have the same affect on Communists who want an edgier label (which is ironic, considering both groups have clashed with each other throughout history)
I like many concepts of Anarchy, but until we have Star Trek levels of free unlimited power and food, I don’t think it would work.
There have been examples of anarchy working. Unfortunately, most of the ones I know of were around during World War 2 and got crushed between 2 larger opponents, or backstabbed by one of them.
-
Anarchists - and other socialists in Catalonia - during the Spanish Civil War, were stuck between the fascists and the republicans (Soviets), sided with the Soviets and ended up being betrayed. Homage to Catalonia by Orwell is a good book about the civil war and the anarchists.
-
Korean People's Association in Manchuria were destroyed by Japan a few years before WW2 during a war between China and Japan IIRC, and apparently some of its leaders were also killed by "Korean communists" (the same ones that ended up forming North Korea).
-
The Black Army of Ukraine fought the Red and White armies at separate times; one time they joined the Red Army against the White Army, and were betrayed.
You might have noticed a pattern there, which is also why a lot of anarchists are not found of Marxist-Leninists or Stalinists.
The left needs to own healthy masculinity and properly address very legitimate issues that disproportionally hurt boys in our society.
Otherwise we will lose a whole generation to toxic male role models in the manosphere.
I read a great WaPo article on this recently. Basically on the left, no one can define healthy masculinity and it's really opened up a spot for the right wing to swoop in and define it for us.
This, want it or not, it is not hard for boys to feel incredibly alienated in the left hemisphere. We gone from "girls have issues too" to "only girls can have issues". It's ridiculous, and even more ridiculous when you remember that girls reach their growth spurt sooner than boys, effectively eliminating many of the purported advantages of boys over girl, making them feel even more alienated.
I wonder where you get the impression that "the left" is saying "only girls can have issues"? It feels to me like people have spun this reactionary tale in the backlash to feminism but no one is actually saying that.
It is like every time someone tries to talk about issues women face this is seen as an attack on men. Which I find frankly ridiculous. At the same time, in many cases when people bring up boy's or men's issues they will only do so while simultaneously attacking feminist talking points. This is especially prevalent on social media platforms like Reddit and YouTube.
It does seem like anti-feminists and sometimes straight up misogynistic people have monopolized the entire discussion surrounding men's issues. When you look up information regarding issues men face it is really hard to not end up in a hateful corner of the internet. Some of these sources do not actually have the people looking for help at heart, they are simply anti-feminist and will even go so far as to provide inaccurate information or withhold information just so that they can keep up their narrative.
in many cases when people bring up boy's or men's issues they will only do so while simultaneously attacking feminist talking points.
This is very much a talking point by "only girls can have issues" people.
"Men don't have issues, men's rights groups only exist to spread misogyny!"
That is a key point of why the idea that men's issues are not taken seriously is spreading, because simply talking about / focusing on men's issues quickly gets people labled as misogynists.
This both gets people to stop caring about the idea of misogynism, because "apparently simply talking about men's issues is misogyny", and thereby also pushes people to develop more problematic views.
because simply talking about / focusing on men’s issues quickly gets people labled as misogynists.
This is simply not true.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I keep feeling that there's a disaster being brewed there, the only people paying attention to young boys seems to be the alt right, and there's a need for this which everybody seems to dismiss, every single one of the old style support structures for masculinity have been dismantled over decades, and while they were right to be dismantled all these boys still need the support to actually grow into decent people, and no one is giving it, and these crazies have noticed and are using it as breeding ground for soldiers for their cause. The decent people side must create something for them even if it's to avoid them falling into these dens of craziness.
Exactly. The response among the left seems to be "ha, fuck em" which is a terrible plan
Bullshit. That's what neo-liberals and squawking millionaire pundits do. Leftists believe in solidarity. It's why people like Sanders resonated so much with groups of voters that Fox thought its town hall would support Republicans without question.
Leftists understand that poverty and desperation act as fertile ground for demagogues to jump in and offer up scapegoats to those who neo-liberal and Republican policies alike have harmed.
Leftists know that if you provide the actual reasons as to why inequality occurs, those who might otherwise vote for fascists can be turned to vote for true left-leaning figures.
You also have issues where high-school educated men have not seen any major benefits to any typical liberal or conservative ideology within the past generation.
On the conservative end, the jobs that the men would have gone into have seen wages and benefits stagnate or drop.
On the liberal end, the status of white men in society has dropped to a more level playing field with class status or wealth being a more defining factor, something which they don't have.
Alt-right conservatives are addressing the economic issues by restricting the work force (anti-immigration) and increasing the jobs in resource extraction (trashing all environmental laws). On social issues, the alt-right head of family is the man.
Leftists could address these issues better by supporting unions more.
I partially blame the Left for not addressing mental health issues for our younger boys and men and not doing a better job at expressing what healthy, happy masculinity actually looks like. So the likes of Andrew Taint, Joe Rogan, Matt Walsh and the likes basically swooped in and took that over.
I've got a 15 year old nephew who's starting his Sophomore year in like a week. I've already heard him say some rather disturbing extremist right-wing shit, and sadly his father fucking sucks at being a father so correcting him hasn't been easy for me (I'm the aunt, his mother is not currently in the picture). And he says this shit with his little sister around too.
Because the right does such a good job addressing male mental health?
Maybe his parents (you and his dad I suppose) should monitor who he follows on social media a bit better?
I would love it if his father bothered to put in effort in raising my eldest nephew, but that isn't going to happen sadly.
And I never insinuated the right was doing a good job???
Well you blamed the left when honestly that's about two people in Congress, the liberals are centrists whose job it is to keep another general strike from happening.
Why not blame the right? They're the ones literally pushing toxic shit on our kids and wanting to start child labor back up.
I sure as hell don't blame the left. Without the left my kid and your nephew would be working in a mine or factory. And you and I would still be working 80 hours a week to survive.
You completely misunderstood my original post, and from the looks of it, you're doing it on purpose. Bye.
Makes sense to me. Treat whole groups of people as your enemy and find out that people don't like you very much.
Are you saying that teenage boys are actually being targeted by "other" groups? Is this happening outside social media? Is this actually happening at all or is it just rhetoric the manosphere is spewing?
load more comments
(2 replies)
Makes sense to me too: a bunch of self-absorbed, uneducated, man-children lashing out with impotent rage as contrarians just to feel important and relevant. Source: me. It was me. I was one of those man-children.
view more: next ›