It creates such a weird environment because women bashing men has become a very socially accepted if not encouraged thing. In some cases that’s not bad, but it’s putting young men just emerging into a world of social media in a position where they feel they’re being viewed as the bad guy.
That’s why you have all these far right influencers scooping up young guys and feeding them all the validation they aren’t getting in a positive way from the society around them.
Idk I don’t have a solution but I do have a little boy and trying to teach him to navigate the world keeps me awake at night.
It creates such a weird environment because women bashing men has become a very socially accepted if not encouraged thing. In some cases that’s not bad, but it’s putting young men just emerging into a world of social media in a position where they feel they’re being viewed as the bad guy.
Women: treat young men like they're an asshole by default
Men: act like an asshole because they're treated like one regardless
I mean it’s not really about who started it. The goal is to create a more equitable society right? So demonizing men-young men in particular—doesn’t really achieve that goal.
I’d even argue that doing so will do exactly the opposite. Young men with delicate identities aren’t receiving positive reinforcement about their being from any direction unless they already have a strong role model.
There is the big big big underlying issue that a lot of men really, really suck and make it impossible to create systems that will provide that reinforcement… so guys just have to figure it out.
Women: treat young men like they're an asshole by default
This is different than demonizing young men.
An asshole would maybe do things like sexually harassing a woman, or give her unwanted attention, or be dangerous to her.
The issue is that women sometimes have to expect that a man could do these things for their own safety.
Like a man offering to give a woman a ride when she's walking down the street. Or a man offering a woman a drink at the bar that she didn't see poured.
Those could be nice gestures if the man isn't an asshole. But if the man is an asshole, the woman could get herself killed or worse. So women have to anticipate that ANY man could be an asshole because their lives literally depend on it.
And if that translates to anticipating that ALL men are assholes, and treating all situations as such, until proven otherwise... that's going to be upsetting to some men.
Men need to recognize that this problem is not caused by women, but instead caused by assholes. If you're not an asshole, and someone anticipates that you are, the answer is to react with understanding and to figure out how to adjust your behaviour so that it doesn't look like something that the evil assholes would do. (E.g. if you want to buy her a drink, let her see the server pour it)
I know that it's hard for men to figure it out, because we don't really have many positive role models or even instructional videos. Someone needs to bring back those instructional videos for social norms they had in the 50's, but adjust them for modern times...make some TikToks or something, lol
And it shouldn't need to be said, but I'm not saying that women should be throwing refused drinks in the faces of strange men. But I don't think that's what the original commenter meant is happening.
I think that, when women are mad at the things men do, men need to be mad at asshole men for doing those things, not at women for being victims of the assholes.
Let's talk about dogs. You want to raise your kid to not be terrified of dogs, but dogs kill and main a lot of kids every year. So you have two choices. First, any time a dog comes near your kid, you can shout, "Stay away from that dog! They're dangerous and could kill you!" Or you could explain to them that dogs can be dangerous. They're tough, they have sharp teeth and strong jaws, and some are taught to be particularly dangerous for a variety of reasons. You should be wary when you meet a new dog, and should watch for signs that the dog is friendly or not, and approach it in stages if you want to be friends with it, while being wary that things can change quickly.
One says all dogs are bad, the other says any dog could be bad, and you shouldn't assume differently before they make their intentions clear. One demonizes dogs, the other promotes due caution. Neither one gives the dog the benefit of the doubt, but one does leave the door open for the dog to be friendly.
Bro, let’s stop pretending that men are in the driver’s seat for women’s behavior. They are grown adults. I’m not saying you’re all wrong, this kind of behavior is often understandable. Having said that, lot of the toxicity I see has nothing to do with men’s actions, it’s just people bullying other people and getting a dopamine rush from it.
Stuff like saying how stupid and simple minded the male mind is in a story about boys underperforming girls in school. Things that are rooted in resentment but not directly tied to any asshole in particular, and wouldn’t be considered acceptable if they were flipped the other way around. Another one I saw recently was that men should be subjected to genital mutilation so they know what it’s like (which is a good one considering how normalized circumcision is). Cruelty for the sake of cruelty. Does it come from resentment? Maybe, but since when was it appropriate behavior to take our grievances out on everyone?
What I’m saying is that there’s a lot of genuine bullying out there that can’t be justified as a reaction to others.
Grownups of all genders aren’t taking responsibility for things they say. It’s like everyone’s turning into their own little Donald trump and can say whatever fucked shit that’s on their mind, and their in-group immediately validates, excuses and reinforces it.
How many black folks do you see bragging on social media about committing crimes and getting endorsements from other black people? The way posts like KillAllMen or any other such posts get traction on social media?
Based on your statements, I'd say "Enough" means at least one so that you can claim some moral high ground.
Which in turn make some men feel alienated and push them towards content creators like Peterson or Tate.
Which, as you say, is a choice. Their choice. They can either suck it up and not take a minority of vocal extremists as gospel, or they can become the same because they're insecure.
Listen, if I have to specifically follow what these feminists say about 'man-hating' content that is going viral, then that's not very useful.
Because even if I know these feminists don't agree what's being posted, their views have low visibility compared to misandrist content which doesn't help the victimization that other young men are feeling.
If a black person robs your house and he says "I robbed your house because I'm black", you're gonna hate black people because they commit crimes. The thing is, no one says "I robbed your house because I'm black" because it doesn't make sense and it's not true.
However, the feminists that hate men do say "I hate men because I'm feminist", which make a lot of men think that feminism is about hating men, before they have to chance to learn what feminism is really about. Specially considering that the "I hate men" feminists are very loud.
The name doesn't make it easier though. This doesn't happen in English, but in spanish (my language) when a man does sexism it's called "machismo". And we say "machismo" way more often than "sexismo". To someone unaware, "feminist" seems like "the women version of machismo".
In my opinion we should stop using the term "feminism" and change to a more accurate term that isn't misleading. In the western modern society (not the USA, abortion banning troglodytes) women don't really need that radical of change anymore, we're almost there in gender equality, can't risk going back by making young men afraid of the movement just because the name is no longer accurate.
However, the feminists that hate men do say “I hate men because I’m feminist”, which make a lot of men think that feminism is about hating men, before they have to chance to learn what feminism is really about.
Then maybe they should stop wallowing in ignorance and listen to something other than an extreme. It's still their choice to react rather than think about their positions. Making someone else change because you're too scared to do it first is lazy and cheap. There's no way to scream a rational position like there is an extreme position, and you're never going to get rid of them by reacting as they do.
Stop using them as an excuse for your unwillingness to change. They're not at fault for your choices.
I suggest you read my comment again. It seems like you are replying to another dude. I don't know what my "unwillingness to change" refers to.
I am a feminist suggesting that we should change the name from "feminism" to any other thing like "gender equality" or whatever.
Because a lot of people are politically lazy. They don't care to inform themselves about what "feminism" means, they just heard their Andrew tate telling them that it's a women-run society or whatever bullshit. Which would make sense if it's the first time you heard the term, it's right there "fem-something".
It's much easier to convince people that A means equal rights if A is called "equal rights". It works too well, some people even think that china is communist because it's ran by the communist party, and that the DPRK is democratic because the D stands for democratic.
I agree, but words are important. Men will find it hard to relate to a movement called feminism. It's not just being uninformed. It's being excluded by the language.
I don't think so. The Hispanics would have to travel a long way to be an illegal immigrant in my country to steal my job. Why wouldn't they just go somewhere closer to LATAM?
This is true, but it’s just like how the alt-right morphed. With the internet these days, and with social media more specifically, there are these identities wherein people try to out-____ each other: out-“leftist” each other, out-“conservative” each other, etc. So, with feminism, people wanted to “out feminist” the other feminists. For strangers. On the internet. To think they’re more hardcore. It’s fuckin dumb, but it’s fuckin everywhere, and within every ideology. You think women deserve equal rights? Well I believe women deserve REPARATIONS! You think women deserve reparations? Well, I hate MEN!
Similarly: “you think we should stop immigration? Well I think we should kill all non whites!”
No ideology is immune. I’ve seen it in every circle.
There will always be idiots, trying to claim an ideology for their own image, and who utterly misunderstand the idea itself. To be fair, though, some of those people just have really personal reasons for being drawn to an idea in the first place, and their emotions get the best of them. However, that doesn’t excuse the behavior. Because racists use the same logic. “I was robbed by black men…BLACK MEN ARE ALL CRIMINALS!” It’s boiler plate prejudice. Those feminists that hate men are falling into the same trap as racists. They generalize and slip under the current of hate. Now, it’s hard to start at the same place, because feminism has some logical backbone while racism doesn’t. But the catalyst is the same: prejudice and hate.
Yeah, some feminists hate men, but they’re small minded people who like the concept of claiming an ideology for themselves and who bastardize and undercut the goals. It’s sad, but it’s true. And it’s everywhere. The problem with it is that people who dislike the original, sound idea, will use those idiots as effigies to paint the entire idea with the worst brush available. It’s a shame.
I hate it, I consider myself a feminist because I want to claw the term back, not give it up to some assholes. It's feminist to give men grace and understanding because vulnerability isn't a feminine trait, it's a human one. It's feminists to demand paternity leave because new mothers shouldn't be carrying the entire weight of child rearing along with a job while men are obligated to miss formative years of their child's existence. Etc, etc
I wish I could push that message and blot out all the genuine misandrists (who almost invariably are also transphobic), but it's an uphill battle when the assholes on the other side only give voice to those people to prove their point.
They used to just be on the Internet, but that brainrot is reaching gen z. Half of my younger female coworkers openly talk shit about men.(then pull the "oh I don't mean you" card when I give them the side eye. Like that's less offensive)
If the possibility that a man will treat a woman badly (everything between belittling and straight up murder) is high enough, it is a life insurance to expect every man to be dangerous until proven otherwise. Its the same logic as "don't talk to cops".
I've seen other men giving me answers to questions my wife asked to many times. Of course thats not dangerous, but thats still asshole-behaviour and you can recognise a whole lot of this behaviour everyday, if you just listen to your female coworkers instead of giving them the side eye.
They probably wouldn't feel the need to "not-you" you, if they KNEW you are not a possible asshole.
If the possibility that a man will treat a woman badly (everything between belittling and straight up murder) is high enough, it is a life insurance to expect every man to be dangerous until proven otherwise. Its the same logic as "don't talk to cops".
No, it's not life insurance. It's pathological paranoia that doesn't effectively improve one's safety. If you go through life with an incredibly simplistic model of judgement, where any interaction with men or cops is dangerous until proven otherwise, you are simply trading one set of risks for another. There are many situations where a certain cop or man could be in a position to help or protect you, and you might fail to recognize that.
If you're not making any distinction between "belittling and straight up murder", then you're really just handicapping your ability to distinguish people who are actually violently dangerous from people who are just normal people. Most people act like assholes on a regular basis, but that doesn't make them dangerous.
The fear of men is vastly over exaggerated. Men are still far more likely to be assaulted or murdered than women. Even when women are attacked, it's rarely a stranger.
Tons of men I've known endlessly talk shit about women. It's a standard feature of our species to talk shit about the opposite gender. It's a standard of our species to talk shit in general really.
Talking shit about a person is one thing, grouping people into categories and denigrating or dehumanizing the whole category is another.
I'm not saying either are good, but the whole grouping people and creating an us vs them attitude is very harmful to society. Much more than talking shit about Joe because he's being a dick. There are very few situations where it's useful such as when one group by its definition harms the other, such as slave owners, corporate executives with a fiduciary duty for profit over employees and customers, etc... In any situation where there is nuance it's best to avoid making groups.
Hate misandry or misogyny without projecting it as a feature common to all men or women or feminists even if you feel a large portion of them exhibit that feature.
My problem isn't per se in the fact that Cleese is transphobic, it's the fact that saying to a transphobe "hey, you're like this moronic character that was created by a transphobe" might be taken as a compliment by said transphobes, and so not have the intended effect.
You’re just discounting the entire portion of people who don’t want families. So more people are looking for others who are independent enough to bring in a second income and live their completely self-sufficient financial life (up until the point they join their financial life, that is) next to themselves.
You’re acting like it’s 1950 where men want a woman to stay home and poo out some tykes, have dinner on the table after we leave our office jobs that support an entire family of four—but in 2024. Where none of that can really exist in this economy. Not to mention, people want different things these days. Sure, there are some retrogressive men, maybe you’re one of them, but the majority are looking for an equal partner.
You’re just discounting the entire portion of people who don’t want families.
No, I'm simply saying I don't know any men like that personally. I know they exist, of course. It's just that in my circle of influence I only know family-focused men. My whole point was that such men aren't necessarily a rarity, but now I'm starting to think that was the point all along.
"Everyone wants a super hero who can give them everything. So yeah, both sides want an irrational fantasy character"
This is all part and parcel of a larger social ill. For all of the(often justifiable)griping we indulge in, regarding contemporary "Woke Entertainment", Hollywood has been flooding our societal atmosphere with increasingly dysfunctional messaging, for well over 30 years now https://moviesupclose.com/2019/06/09/avengers-endgame-and-the-childishness-of-the-mcu/
As the article points out, this took root with Disney movies in The 90s
Far from being overrun with gaggles of enlightened men in clothes covered with baby sick and badges saying “World’s greatest dad”, the father quota is, in my own limited experience, disappointing.
In 1963, The Feminine Mystique, a seminal book by Betty Friedan, helped launch the second wave of feminism by positing that American women faced “a problem that has no name”: they had essentially become typecast as uber-feminine mothers, home-makers, cake bakers and sexual slaves to their husbands.
The question is this: 50 years later, are men facing their own “problem with no name”, a “masculine mystique” which imposes rigid cultural notions of what it is to be male – superior, dominant, hierarchical, sexually assertive to the point of abuse – even though society is screaming out for manhood to be something very different?
Writers, actors and performers, including Robert Webb, Alan Hollinghurst and Simon Amstell, will explore the relentless levels of expectation heaped on men and assess whether this is responsible for statistics that suggest it is truly dismal these days to have a Y chromosome.
Then there are our role models: misogynist presidents, groping politicians, narcissistic sports stars, self-satisfied billionaires, airbrushed actors, heroic superheroes, alpha men, all of them.
Thus far “masculinism” has manifested itself principally in niche areas such as custody law or male victims of violence, or simply as strident misogynist voices pushing back at feminism.
The original article contains 2,690 words, the summary contains 230 words. Saved 91%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I think these are some good points particularly as they reflect on the idea of 'redefining' Masculinity. While i would argue our current conception of Masculinity is much more deeply rooted (certainly much much older) than neoliberalism, Masculinity is similarly dependent on the idea of competition as the primary means of expression. This is why i believe it is somewhat missing the point to try to define a positive Masculinity. If you've got a group of people who've existed since birth in an intrinsically competitive environment, it is not enough to say the new ideal is not competitive. When the cultural notions of the group are already set in place, a supposedly less competitive ideal will result in almost no actual social change. Deconstructing the competitive instincts of Masculinity should be the primary project.
A system that demands infinite growth from a saturated market leaves no options other than making things consistently worse than they were in the previous quarter. Anyone who would drink Coca-Cola is already drinking it. So how do they produce growth? They do it by cutting wages, demanding more productivity during the same number of hours, cutting benefits, raising prices, decreasing the amount of product you get for the same price, stiffing distributors, using cheaper ingredients, moving jobs to third world countries, killing labor activists, and all sorts of other abhorrent behavior. This same concept is true for every other saturated market, which is almost every market this late in the game.
My favorite thing about this book is that it covers every right and left wing talking point about men. All the concerns about men I've ever heard were at least mentioned in this book. In most cases, they were resolved satisfactorily.
The issue is that most people in despair are inclined to vote for a massive change. They just want anything different than the current status quo.
At the moment in the USA, only the right is offering substantial, systematic change. As awful as it sounds to centrists and the left (I.e. the majority of the population), they don't offer any substantial alternative.
We're basically at a point where the current status quo/political center WILL be replaced by something else. Centrists need to realise that the only alternative to right wing change is left wing change...
Those people don't want "left wing change" because it helps the people that they hate as well as helping them. They'd rather shit their pants so we have to smell it.
I agree, they don't currently. The problem is that most also don't want right wing change, they just haven't realised that one or the other is inevitable.
They'll probably realise too late, but many would prefer left wing change to right wing change. The problem is, that there just isn't any substantial left wing options being offered, so they'll go with the right wing option by default.
My nephew is 14. His dad is, to put it diplomatically, a meathead. And I don't want his son to follow that path. I found out recently that my nephew had fallen into the toxic social media shithole that is the manosphere, thanks to unprompted regurgitation of talking points that seemingly had no end. I talked to him for a good solid hour after that, asking him questions, listening to his answers, trying to show him the big-picture view of how there's a lot of money to be made keeping him angry and engaged, and exploring how much of these things that anger him he's actually experienced vs how much is him just echoing influencers.
He's an intellectually curious kid, and that absolutely works in his favor. I know I can appeal to that, explain how I think, ask him how he feels, and just kind of work through things. But I only get to see him a few times a year. And he's getting fed this nonsense daily. I hope I can be a positive influence for him, because the last thing my family needs is another bigot.
Well, of course. Conservatism (and authoritarianism) at least pays lip service to addressing their concerns. From their perspective, the Left have ignored and devalued them for years.
When a man is disadvantaged but is constantly told he is the beneficiary of the patriarchal system, he feels dismissed and unsupported, and his actual needs aren't met.
From their perspective, the Left have ignored and devalued them for years.
This is a very important point: the current technocratic left (and I'm really reluctant to call them "the left" because, frankly, they're right-centrists who don't care what you ingest or who you fuck) has been absolutely terrible about talking to people's fears and anxieties. At best they push concerns away with neoliberal knob-twiddling; at worst they demonize them, but in general they/we/the left have been extremely unwilling to be empathetic to working-class anxieties, either because no one wants to touch the status quo because it works well, or because playing to feelings is seen as crass and manipulative.
The reactionary right, on the other hand, as no such scruples: they've had this playbook ready since 1933 and are more than willing to talk about people's fears and anxieties.
It says a lot that the most successful and engaging left-wing politicians (Sanders, Corbyn; even Obama, to a degree early in his term) have spoken to these feelings. It's also telling that those politicians were ruthlessly attacked by their own party.
Various countries' intelligence services have started ringing alarm bells about this: disgruntled young men who feel like they don't have a future is, well, a national security risk.
It's a real shame, how we mortgage young people's future for tax cuts for the old & rich today.
What's a real shame is we're not doing anything about it simply because young men are people.
Feminism didn't arrive because women were "a source of trouble" or anything. It's because women deserve a life of freedom of choice, independence, and inclusion in society.
Why aren't we striving to provide young boys and men with the same sense of purpose and ideal? Shouldn't be borne out of a sense that they'll be a problem later but rather because it's just right.
Feminism absolutely arrived because women made themselves a source of trouble.
I just came back from the National Park at Seneca Falls NY about women’s liberation. Women are even still today working for equal rights, and women’s right to vote came after 70 years of activism and fight.
We will get improvements to housing, wages, health care, and every other good action we need from our leaders and wealthy powerful society, when we make it more uncomfortable for them to keep helping themselves than to change and help the rest of us — and not one minute before.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
The worst part is the guy they’ll vote for to “shake things up” will be taking even more from them. It’s a combined failure of education and success of social media disinformation and misinformation.
I don't think that's true (well, your second sentence; your first is absolutely correct).
This kind of thing has been happening before the advent of mass and social media: this is just basic human tribalism at play. The only difference is scale.
People want to feel like they belong, and the political Left has done a really bad job at talking to the anxieties of the poor, especially young, male poor. The populist Right, meanwhile, has had a plan and has welcomed these people with open arms.
The Left abandoned the poor because it's political leaders fell in love with neoliberalism. And I don't think I can blame them, because triangulation worked very well and made a lot of people very rich while also cutting the traditional right-wing parties off at the knees. The problem is that it left the Left vulnerable to being flanked by right-wing populists who were ready to give comfort and validation to disadvantaged people; answers that were simple, easy and appealing, and make them feel like they were being listened to.
I can see how the leadership of, eg, the US Democratic party, or the Liberals in Canada, might be shocked by this, but for anyone involved on the ground this has been brewing since at least 2000. The real warning signs should have been when people of colour and LGBTQ folk started getting nervous about how progressive governments were big on empty gestures but very quiet when money was on the line, but the loss of young, working-class men happened a couple decades before that.
It's like we have an entire political class that slept through how the 1930s and 1940s happened. Which is of course, facetious, but it seems true, and the reason is because they didn't, and still don't, want to see it because they have been making too much money off of the problem.
Just so I’m reading this correctly, young women are almost at the turning point to becoming more right wing as well, right? With what appears to be only a .01 or .02 difference from young men.
Sounds like the article should be more focusing on why everyone in the world except the boomers are feeling more despair and the young are rapidly trending towards “control”.
I don’t think you’re reading it correctly. Men 18-34 were the only group that trended towards the control axis compared to 2014. Both women and men 18-34 went much lower on the despair axis compared to 2014, but women still moved towards the freedom axis instead of the control axis.
Look at young women, they went from 3.69 to 3.70, a rapid slow down and only 0.02 point off from a complete reversal.
The next age of women went from 3.45 to 3.55, a much larger move to “freedom”, but they also barely grew despaired.
Young women are almost at the turning point of being more control oriented as well.
In a few more years young women will be more to the control side as well.
What’s alarming is that both young age groups have a massive increase in despair and both are trending towards control, with men leading the path by only a 0.02 difference.
If you extrapolate from that, it will be on the control side in short order. That is a trend, we can predict what will happen based on the observed changes.
You could also interpret those results as young women hitting a wall on how much towards freedom they will go. Every other group was much lower on the freedom scale, so they had more room to move.
I'm not sure I follow. Freedom is a huge issue for young American women, which is why we lean so much towards freedom on the scale. I would imagine the lack of hope would move young women to push for freedom, since a lot of this 'control' stuff involves controlling women. I think it's just as likely if not more likely that the increase in despair didn't change the political leanings because they are already so freedom leaning rather than the young women are a few bad days away from embracing fascism.
Went toward freedom in any amount of time, extrapolated to any other time, will still be in the same direction, aka toward freedom. The direction cannot change when you have two data points and linearly extrapolate
If they went up 0.1 in 10 years, if you extrapolate 10 more years, they'll go up 0.1. If you extrapolate 5 years, they'll go up 0.05. They'll always go up at the rate of 0.1/10 years
Not if you look at the rate of change as well as the change. If it’s trending towards zero, it can be a curve rather than straight line. That can then trend negative.
Think of a car going fast, then applying the brakes. It slows down until it eventually stops.
Now think of a boat. It doesn’t have a brake. It has a reverse throttle. When you want to slow down, the motor goes backwards. When you hit zero, you start to then go backwards. That’s what they are extrapolating.
There's only 2 points, not 3. You can't look at the change of the change with only 2 points. For all we know, if they had done the survey in 2005, women would have been further towards freedom and moved towards control for 2014 and the change of the change would show they're accelerating towards freedom.
The problem, for the likes of Reuters (who is owned by the Thompson family, who are the richest people in Canada) that the problem is the very system that's enriched them and people like them over the last fifty or so years.
They'd need to admit they were wrong in their desires to dismantle the post-WW2 New Deal era, and that while neoliberalism has worked out just dandy for them, it's been a net loss for a lot of people and is only getting worse. And that admission would mean they'd have to make do with less. Not that they'd be poor, but they'd need to be less obscenely rich.
And because this is such a hard admission to make, and because neoliberal technocracy has been working great for them so far, they'll nibble at the edges of the problem, maybe scapegoat a group or two, or fret about culture wars or indulge in the macroeconomic version of bikeshedding instead of dealing with the core issue.
Upton Sinclair was bang on with "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
For anyone who read to the end of the comment above, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is one of the most powerful books of the 20th century. It is credited with the formation of the FDA and the growth of labor movements throughout the United States. If you have not read it before, read it now.
He also ran as a socialist, and it was the first time in history when the Republicans and Democrats banded together publicly to defeat a 3rd party candidate. They didn't care which of them won, as long as a socialist didn't win. He still won something like 35% of the votes.
Note that the younger generations here (18-34) are primarily comprised of people who were not in that cohort the last time this survey was done. Only 18-24 from the first dot is still in that cohort.
Most of that cohort moved into the middle aged group already.
Men's Liberation
Hot