This is not my personal opinion, I know Gen Z men who voted for Harris. But the voter demographics really speak for themselves, and maybe now people will look at the radicalization of young men as a serious (but solvable) issue.
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Alienation caused by economics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation
Fascists have a message for them, the liberals don’t because they are committed to the current economic and political system
the Democrats will just pander to this by getting an endorsement in 2028 from Andrew Tate.
Lmao there won’t be elections in 2028.
My friend, do not speak this into existence 😭
it’s either being that or a concubine, gen z was the after millennial hope that died
Lemmy wonders… But what about the menzzzz!!!
I hate my gender so fucking much. If every man in the US dropped dead on the 4th the world would be a better place.
45% of Gen Z men still voted Harris, there’s tonnes of you that aren’t alt-right.
Instead of dropping dead, it’s time you guys started reclaiming what it means to be a “man”. It’s not like shitty women don’t exist, but most women band together in times of need/stress. Men need to start doing that too.
Unfortunately that will never happen. I honestly don’t think we are capable of thar. I lay in bed and wonder if I am just kidding myself in thinking I am liberal while deep down I am just another fascist.
Being a man doesn’t automatically make you a fascist, that’s misandrist talk. I am a man, voted for Harris, and I’m very disappointed in our nation, our DNC, and a good amount of the world now. Focus on making changes locally, start as local as possible (home) and then expand outwards (the neighborhood, city government, county government, etc).
It sounds kinda silly, but there’s truth in that if you can’t make improvements in your own bedroom like cleaning up wires or making sure there are no clothes on the ground, this will impact other areas of your life.
I’m here for you!
Again, you are dismissing 45% of your brothers. People like you, people who probably think the same negative things as you about themselves.
Unironically young men need positive solidarity from each other. You are not biologically designed to be fascist. You’re lonely and self-hating by social engineering. And the more you believe that social engineering, the more the toxic men win.
We don’t have time for that.
Fuck you, I didn’t vote for the fucker eother.
Cool. But most men did. What’s our lives compared to the fucking planet?
Cite data
“Harris has a significant lead among young registered voters in the NBC News Stay Tuned Gen Z Poll powered by SurveyMonkey. But a yawning gender gap is dividing Gen Z.”
That being said, we all know how inaccurate polls can be sometimes.
Maybe because they’ve been demonized since they were children?
“demonized” - GOP propaganda lmao
Well that’s how they feel. You can laugh about it, but that’s not really going to improve anything.
They’ve been told since they were kids that there being less of them is the highest improvement society can make. Imagine if they open taught that to black kids that in public school.
Cite your source. No where are they told that less of them is better.
My mind skipped over the word ‘the’ in the tweet. And yet it makes sense either way.
As a zoomer that’s old enough to be working class now. Man, my childhood was fucked. At school, being a right wing troll was the norm, at least for boys. I was too.
The worst part is no-one cared, fucking “they’ll grow out of it” and now everyone is suddenly in shock. When I talk about it to my friend today he’s even in fucking denial about it, “Oh they didn’t actually mean that, it was all jokes”.
And our education system doesn’t do anything to combat this shit either. Quite the opposite, the dogmatic authoritarian approach schools take coupled with zero-tolerance policies pretty much ensures people shouting this hateful shit get away with it.
After all saying “Hitler did nothing wrong” only gets annoyed looks, gets completely brushed off as “edgy” or something. But then when someone points out that person’s shit, suddenly that’s an attack???
“Oh they didn’t actually mean that, it was all jokes”.
Because those were jokes.
The problem we have today is not that it was socially acceptable to be a psychopath online in 2014. The problems are, in my opinion:
- Rapidly decreasing standards of living
- Social media making people more stupid
- Governments being too large and intransparent
- Pointless governmental spending without explaining the why to the population
The right-wing shift is part of a global failure of established governments.
The right-wing shift is part of a global failure of established governments.
Yes! Thank you.
Just as the next left-wing shift won’t be a result of humanity getting smarter somehow, it will be a result of right-wing policies failing. And that shift won’t lead to any improvement either.
It’s a pendulum.
People are willing to tolerate a failing system longer, when it aligns on surface with their own views. This is similar to people on the right defending Pinochet and death squadrons.
And people on the left 20 years ago would defend a lot of things about USSR or Che Gevara or stuff like this, even not being tankies.
Tribalism leads to degeneracy.
Get that logical crap out of here!!
I begged my admin to do something about my boy students sexually harassing my girl students. Instead, my some of my boy students discovered I was trans and outed me.
The worst part is no-one cared, fucking “they’ll grow out of it” and now everyone is suddenly in shock. When I talk about it to my friend today he’s even in fucking denial about it, “Oh they didn’t actually mean that, it was all jokes”.
Most edgy teens do grow out of it. I roll my eyes at embarrassment at some of the stuff I wrote in college, and high school me was even stupider.
But one difference in my high school years (in the 90’s), edginess wasn’t inherently politically coded. Some of it was racist, sexist, or homophobic, but plenty of the targets were also Republican constituencies: rural/small town people, Christians, fat people, old people, prudes, etc. In a conservative suburban area, jokes about abortion, sex, drugs, etc. were often designed to elicit shock and disgust.
I think we’ve seen a cultural shift in which edginess is seen as right wing in itself, in part because the right, which used to get offended at things like Harry Potter and Howard Stern and Disney movies, has fallen in line with edgy Gen X comedians who somehow didn’t grow out of it, and made room for people who smoke weed and mock the Bible.
in the 90s you attacked whatever was around cause you were a piece of shit, now you got the internet so pieces of shit worldwide can band together and hate a specific cause.
A lot of millennials were pro war back in 2001+ a bunch of people I went to school with joined the military. People would say “support our troops!” When you criticized the wars. This is nothing new, just brainwashing.
I graduated from a Christian high school a few years ago, and now they have a Discord server that’s basically their own version of 4chan and they post a bunch of edgy racist/queerphobic/etc stuff. Then the person running it went to MIT. It still exists and I’m pretty sure the staff knows about it and doesn’t give a shit. Of course the school itself promotes racist and queerphobic political ideologies as well so that’s not exactly helpful either.
A lot of this are encouraged under the table. Any plans on it is usually talked rather than texed, so there will be less chance of it that it could surface, and is between the most trustworthy people.
I have seen teachers say that hitler was right, that walls were invented by aliens and that giants existed and were romanian
giants existed and were romanian
Wait, what? I didn’t see any giants in my high school. Are they invisible giants or something?
Also, where were those giants during the 2nd Dacian war? Romans must have been superheroes or something to take on giants and win.
We were told that there were only bones on romanian territory, not alive ones
Also, why do you think there were multiple Dacian wars?
The main source of this recent trending fascism, anti-scientific thinking and so on is social media or the web in general. To resist or refute the mass of false information and find out what’s likely true and what’s not, requires education, literacy, media competency, things like that. I guess current generations are lacking this so they fall easy prey to “funny” fascist memes, fakes and rhetoric, then vote for rightwing extremists, destabilizing their own country as a result, not realizing that this leads to big disadvantages for everyone including themselves. We failed to protect these younger generations from misinformation, and now they are turning the world into what they are misled to believe is true.
We used to have relatively high living standards in the Western democracies. This will soon all crumble and we (most people who aren’t rich) will suffer from it, regardless of who you voted for. And on top of that, climate change will finish us all off, because battling that isn’t even on the radar for those fascists because they don’t even believe in it. So instead of doing too little, we’ll do literally zero and even accelerate the problem, meaning it’ll affect us all much sooner already and with higher intensity.
So enjoy your still existing relatively privileged life while it still lasts. It’s ging to get much, MUCH worse before it’s going to be better again. Buckle up and prepare yourselves.
With the levels of anti-intellectualism, it’s also quite hard.
You write more that 3 lines? You used a “buzzword”? Congratulations, your refutation won’t be read, but will met with ridicule!
My mother’s boyfriend often “reads” articles from more liberal-leaning news sources, and he just laughs at the buzzwords. Cannot tell what the articles were about.
A buzzword being one with three syllables or more, I presume?
(Syllables are probably woke nowadays)
map of climate change outcomes. 2.7 warming. Violet - unhabitable*looks at Russia*
Well, I knew we are fucked.
Russia is going to be a bit busy with a massive influx of climate migrants. America will also have this issue, so they will both have that much bigger problem to deal with.
I guess the lonelyness epedemic plays a part in it which hits younger people harder then older ones and mans stronger then woman.
Indeed, and it’ll get worse. Plenty of women (on popular dating sites, at least) have already been swearing off dating Republicans. Now, with a higher likelihood of a national abortion ban, don’t be surprised if straight women become even choosier. After all, every man we think of sleeping with must now also be viewed as a potential father.
Forget about casual flings or one-night-stands. Why would I risk a lifetime of supporting an entire human being just to have one night of fun?
And that’s only for straight women. Bisexual/pansexual women can choose to straight up stop dating men entirely.
In a lot of ways, lonely young men who voted for Trump just shot themselves in the dick.
Straight women can choose not to date men either. Of course I’m older but quite enjoy living alone.
You mean to tell me that using birth control or even practicing abstinence is the best way to avoid getting pregnant and removes the need to use abortion as birth control?!
And that perhaps having reckless one night stands all the time is risky and probably not a great idea?!!
Gen z girls are a lot less into sex than girls in my generation were, I wonder if that is a factor.
PragerU was started to indoctrinate Gen Z when the realized the Millenials were Far Left and the Boomers were dying out
Mission Accomplished…
Can’t the same be said of turning point usa?
I’m a Gen Z male, from what I can tell it seems like older generations tend to rely more on cable or traditional news outlets while younger generations tend to get their news from social media platforms like Instagram. Cable news tends to be more corporate and “normal”/consistent, while Instagram tends to feed news from a larger variety of sources that tend to be more anti-corporate and radical, but those sources also tend to optimize for very short bursts to get the point across quickly so the user can quickly move on to the next piece of news, and there’s also quite a bit of low effort content and reposts and misinformation and that sort of stuff. So I think it’s social media that’s the main driving factor in causing Gen Z to be more radical - which in some ways is a good thing since they have more awareness of the events in Palestine (and radical leftism is based), but the platform can also put them into far-right fear-mongering bubbles and cause serious problems.
It seems counter intuitive but I don’t think Gen Z is as good with technology as most people assume they are.
I think they just believe everything they see on YouTube and TikTok. Those algorithms just feed people what they want to see and don’t challenge anyone.
My son is in his early 30s and hardly a day goes by that I don’t have to help him with a software issue.
I don’t know if he’ll even be able to keep the media server running when I die. Probably won’t be for about 20 years so we’ll see.
Who thinks they’re good with technology? They’ve never had technology that requires any more knowledge than how to swipe. They’re shit with technology.
I mean that many people just assume younger generations are better with technology.
Do they? That’s what I’m asking, who thinks that? I don’t know anyone who thinks zoomers are good with technology.
My 80 some year old dad was better at some technology than my 30 year old son.
It’s absolutely a belief and it used to be true. For millennials especially it was true. We grew up with technology around us, but they required effort from the user to make them work. These created a lot of self-learned resourceful technologically literate people.
Modern technology almost all wants to prevent you from messing with them. They function out of the box and limit your ability to modify them. This has created a lot of people who can’t understand how technology works beyond the user interface. They’re great at using a touch-screen, but they don’t understand what the device is doing beyond that.
Millennials aren’t zoomers though. The original statement was specifically about zoomers, and idk anyone who thinks they’re good with technology, and from what I’ve seen, they are not.
Gen X and older millennials are the only generation who knows stuff on average. We had to teach our parents, and then we had to teach our kids (who don’t care to learn). We’re sandwich meat!
That’s why I worded it the way I did. There’s still a sentiment that younger people should be better with technology, since they’ve interacted with it their whole life also. Their interaction was much different than ours though.
I personally don’t, but it’s a sentiment I hear around me from time to time in the workplace or on TV.
That’s been a common and roughly true trope for a long time, but I think we may have hit the point where high technology has been ubiquitous for multiple generations now and it’s probably not quite as true as it once was (that the younger generation is always better with technology than the previous)
Who thinks they’re good with technology?
Millennials, it’s the only thing we’re good at, we suck at everything else…
I meant who thinks zoomers are good with technology.
We killed napkins motherfucker
Also stigma about depression, no stigma when you’re the majority.
We killed napkins
Do you use your sleeve? I don’t understand.
Apparently millennials prefer paper towels over napkins and it’s affecting the napkin industry.
“tissues” vs “kitchen rolls” for anyone wondering what a paper towel is compared to a napkin.
I gotta say, I always found tissues just sub-par for the job. A kitchen roll (towel? sleeve? paper?) you just need to fold it once and it will hold against a storm
You could literally search “millennials killed napkins” and get your answer
Maybe napkins is some kind of influencer or something
You could literally search “millennials killed napkins” and get your answer
Ok, the first article says “Millennials killed the paper napkin industry” then says they’re using paper towels instead
WTF is the difference between a paper napkin and a paper towel? I thought they were the same thing? 😂
Yep. Older people (Millennial, Gen X) grew up with PCs that could be heavily modified, run any program, even repurposed to run Linux if you were brave. Later generations who grew up with phones only get to use the apps that Apple / Google approve of. There’s no hacking the system, so you get whatever the algorithm says you get.
Older people grew up on BBSes and later “Bulletin Boards”, which were mostly the same thing just with prettier graphics, also with email, and sometimes instant messengers. Communities were smaller, and there was no mediator. Younger ones are stuck in apps that are designed around engagement, with a “celebrity” vs “fan” content model where it’s all geared around followers and likes. It’s all parasocial relationships from the “fan” side, and trying to keep up with whatever the algorithm wants from the creator side.
It really fucking sucks that platforms that used to be designed to allow 2-way communication between equals have flopped so hard trying to follow the exact model you just outlined. For all its faults, Facebook used to be a really great place to keep in contact with long distance friends and family. Now it won’t even show you anything anyone in your friends list posts, and the options for interacting are completely neutered on their mobile site. It went from being a site I enjoyed, to a site I despise. And there aren’t any alternatives. The era of a platform for friends and family is over.
The only reason Facebook was at all successful is that they made it easy to migrate over from MySpace.
Before Facebook people weren’t locked into their social networks. In the early days of BBSes you were mostly on your local BBS, but you could sometimes communicate with another BBS if your BBS was part of FidoNet. When instant messengers like ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, etc. became popular, it was common to use a unified program that logged into all of them at once. But, already there was corporate consolidation. BBSes were often run by people out of their own homes, or at least by hobbyists. The early messengers were all commercial products.
Then there were the early social media websites: SixDegrees.com, Classmates.com, Friendster, (LinkedIn), MySpace, Orkut, and in 2004 Facebook. At first Facebook was closed to anybody who wasn’t a US university student. You even had to have an email address from a US university to register. But, when they wanted to grow, they made it easy to migrate from other sites, especially MySpace. They released a tool that allowed you to basically stay in touch with your MySpace friends from Facebook, but not the other way around. That slowly drained people away from MySpace until it eventually collapsed. These days, thanks to section 1201 of the DMCA, if you tried to release a tool that allowed people to migrate away from Facebook, you’d be nuked from orbit.
Now, every social media site is a walled garden protected by a moat and an electric fence. Every one is owned by companies worth more than $1b. People can’t leave because the FOMO is too strong, but they don’t want to stay because the sites are pure shit. You see that especially with Twitter. It is absolute shit since Musk took over, but many people feel like they can’t leave. And, when people do leave, do they go to Mastodon, which isn’t owned by a corporation? Nope, they mostly go to Threads, owned by Meta, or Bluesky, owned by a lot of the same people behind Twitter.
Unless the governments of the world step in and either break up the tech giants, or require that they are interoperable, I don’t know how we back out of this shitty situation.
I lived through those early days, and although they were glorious, those boards, and forums, and ICQ chats weren’t filled with friends and family.
MySpace was the first place where everyone was. It was the first time in history where you could go find out what happened to all of your old friends and rekindle a relationship if you wanted to.
I remember going through basic training when the Drill Sergeants told us we’d make the best friends of our lives, that we’d never see again. And that held true for 10 years after I got out. Then suddenly MySpace became hugely popular and I found them all again! Because of Facebook I’m still friends with several of them today.
Facebook got really lucky with the timing of their public launch. They still kind of just sat around being empty until MySpace started massively changing the platform under new ownership from NewsCorp. I think that acquisition was the worst in history up until Twitter.
Anyways, in their infinite corporate wisdom, they wiped everyone’s profiles. Like seriously, WTF? They deleted everyone’s pictures, all of their blog posts, comments, and just about everything. Talk about not understanding what they bought. They did release a tool to get your pictures back, but why the heck would anyone trust the site after that. People were already checking out Facebook, so they all just jumped over there. Plus the clean design, with lots of white space (which is completely gone now), was very Web 2.0 and people liked it.
Anyways, like I originally said, and like you confirmed, that era is over. We both know the government is never going to split them up, and even an exact clone of a service today would fail. Social sites need people to succeed, and people don’t have any interest in creating a new community when there’s all of these ready-made communities that they already understand, regardless of how bad they have become.
The only reason TikTok succeeded is because it had backing from CCP and basically infinite money to market and attract new people. No start-up would ever have those types of funds these days. If somehow through a miracle a start-up did acquire enough funding to be a threat to meta or Xitter, then the billionaires at the heads would make an irresistible offer, buy it, and kill it. It’s over. The free Internet is dead.
Xennial here, you speak pure facts.
Sure are some glass-tappin motherfuckers
White women as a majority still voted for Trump. Why just blame men?
The result of telling women they could vote for someone their husband didn’t vote for was the right flipping out and essentially calling them property. How likely do you think speaking up is when you are stuck financially to someone who sees you as a servant rather than a person?
We went from voting privately to “speaking up”. Why?
What was keeping them from voting for Harris besides their own shitty views?
Nothing, lots of people just didn’t know they could.
We found out tons of people just don’t keep up regardless of party, where to vote for Biden shouldn’t have been so popular but it was and is kinda sad.
Lmao so women have no agency?
Fucking spare me. You’re a miserable sap that can’t stop slinging shit/blame 😂
They have it all they want, I’m going to guess a lot just don’t want to deal with a pissed off significant other. Would you?
Calm down and make some limited amount of sense and try to make a point.
Lmao, ‘it was the husband’s fault’, good one.
Seems to me a little belittling to not attribute responsibility to women when shit hits the fan.
Let me guess, the “responsibility” we have to take is to “double down on moving to the right”.
No, I’m talking about the responsibility of voting
What the fuck? Where? Not where I am.
From a quick google search. It’s about 53% for Trump, 45% for Harris.
It may not be true for those you regularly interact with, but that doesn’t make it untrue overall.
According to your link it looks like it was the other way around, women were 53% Harris and 45% trump. Assuming that’s what the blue and red bars mean.
They’re talking about specifically white women, not all women, which the link (and exit polling from other major sources) also reports had a 53% vote for Trump.
The Exit Polls that were a verbal conversation upon leaving might not be accurate if they are asking women in front of their partners, right?
I’m not USian, so IDK how those polls work. I’m just dismayed that that many women would vote for a pedo rapist who took away their bodily autonomy.
Fair enough. I just talk to a lot of women, all are aghast no matter their race. Men are less so, though many are disappointed, they are more blase.
There is a lot to be said here. I’ll use my own experience as an example.
I’m a millennial male who had a terrible time as a young adult through my mid 30s. I grew up in a fairly religious/conservative area of the US, and I didn’t have the ability to even start questioning that before my college years because literally everyone I knew was either a vocal supporter of or tacitly accepted that cultural status quo. Mental health issues were either not discussed or not recognized in any serious fashion. It wasn’t until my late 20s that I finally understood that I had severe depression and anxiety and sought help, despite suffering from it since my early teenage years.
Socially, I never felt like I was cool enough or good enough. I didn’t understand women, and the endless series of rejections and confusing encounters only served to erode my low self confidence further. I had no idea what a healthy relationship looked like because my parents were just going through the motions at that point, and the relationships I saw in TV shows and movies were incredibly shallow. The few people I considered friends did not support me in any positive way. I eventually kicked them to the curb, preferring solitude to being the butt of their jokes.
I was a prime target for recruitment for the alt-right: depressed, alone, disaffected, and ready to lash out. The only thing that kept me from going in that direction was a keen sense that the rhetoric was bullshit and its leaders only cared to take advantage of the rank-and-file to accumulate money and power. Many people I knew were not so perceptive and became victims of that movement.
My only saving grace was that I had a decent job with healthcare benefits, which allowed me to get the therapy I needed to overcome these challenges. Again, most people I knew did not have such resources. Nearly a decade later, I am now a family man with a wife and child. I am far happier than I have been at any other point in my life. Despite that, there is still plenty I don’t understand. I don’t have a good grasp of what positive masculinity looks like. I cannot point to anyone who has served as a good, male role-model in my life. I still don’t have any close male friends with whom I can share my feelings and challenges.
However, I do understand how easily young men can be swayed to far-right crusades. Social media warped my view of reality, and it’s far worse now than it was 10-15 years ago. Moreover, there is no alternative to far-right echo chambers for young men to commiserate and get help. Those spaces simply do not exist on the left. If you dare to complain or vent, you will immediately be told your problems don’t matter and called a misogynist. I can readily call multiple conversations I had with liberals and feminists who rejected my problems, even being told that I was “living life on easy mode” because I was a man.
For all the women who are reading this, I get it. As a man, I don’t have to worry about the government meddling in my bodily autonomy. For the most part, I don’t have to worry about walking alone at night or being accosted or raped. I don’t have to worry about being taking seriously at my job or being passed over for promotions because of my gender. However, none of that negates the challenges that young men are facing. Their gender does not save them from broken homes, abuse, mental health issues, a bad job market, degrading standards of living, student debt, double-standards, confusing and contradictory narratives surrounding dating and relationships, etc. Yes, privileged men with no right to complain do exist, but they are an extreme minority. The vast majority of young men are in a bad place, and the only people reaching out to help have ulterior motives. If you want things to change, try having some empathy. Maybe you will get empathy for your problems in return.
there is no alternative to far-right echo chambers for young men to commiserate and get help
I feel like there’s an adjacent issue where any space like that without a clear political lean quickly gets pushed rightwards by shitters
ugh I remember my last straw on Facebook was my high school alumni group becoming a shit-storm of sea-lioning and a couple folks blocking people and also spamming nostalgia-posts to drown out and push down more serious discussion. A high school famous for it’s science-focus but alas, the older (but not much older) folks were openly commenting about that black-people-crime-percentage “statistic” and gay people.
I have to imagine if the democrats had not largely ignored these problems they would’ve won by a landslide
This. Men are more often victims of violent crime, homelessness, mental illness, suicides, do worse in school, incarceration, die in wars, work dangerous jobs. Classic male institutions, structures, and spaces don’t exist anymore like they used to.
Add to that that men showing emotions is still seen as weakness.
These issues aren’t addressed or even mentioned.
Men are more often victims of violent crime, homelessness, mental illness, suicides, do worse in school, incarceration, die in wars, work dangerous jobs.
The victims of other men. That’s the joke of it all. And the folks screaming loudest about being victimized are inevitably the ones quickest and most eager to take their own pound of flesh at the first opportunity.
Add to that that men showing emotions is still seen as weakness.
Primarily among other men. This isn’t a gendered issue nearly so much as it is a socio-economic hierarchy. The “excess males” problem is what’s driving the violence, the poverty, and the declining health. Young men are pressed into the social hierarchy by their elders, often from an extremely young age, through physical, emotional, and sexual violence. They climb the social ladder by proving their tolerance for abuse by those above, while exhibiting a sufficient capacity for sadism on those below. Anyone who cannot endure the abuse and find their own cohort to abuse in turn becomes the social excrement that the system exudes.
This is literally “The Patriarchy” that feminists rant about and seek to abolish. But efforts to abolish the system invoke its most violent tendencies. The result is a youth population that is selected for the most sniveling and cruel to lead it into the next generation.
I agree that much of the problem is men on men and this patriarchy - men who do not want to uphold patriarchal values can often be ostracized and demonized by those who do - but I believe OP was specifically noting that then those men who get abused and ostracized cannot speak out of seek help because many people will simply snap back at them saying that they are part of the problem and resources need to be given elsewhere. They cannot endure the abuse, and their own cohort becomes abusive, and the only way to avoid the abuse from all sides (in their view) becomes joining the “social excrement” they wanted to escape in the first place.
Angry screams tend to mask sad and lonely tears. Hatred does not end hatred; hatred ends through non-hate alone. Non-hate is not inaction, though. If we do not look at them, and ourself, with empathy and kindness and understanding and patience, they will continue living in a world devoid of and therefore ignorant to empathy and kindness and understanding and patience.
primarily among other men
Tell that to my ex lol
And if Feminists could differentiate between a homeless man down on his luck and a bigoted billionaire asshole, “The Patriarchy” would actually get fought, but they both have dicks and are therefore identical.
This entire comment is exactly the kind of lack of empathy that the gentleman was talking about.
Primarily among other men.
The worst I ever got for showing emotions in front of other men was being called sensitive. Women on the other hand dismissed me with fury, insulting my manhood and even hitting me.
They climb the social ladder by proving their tolerance for abuse by those above, while exhibiting a sufficient capacity for sadism on those below.
Where did you learn this fucking nonsense, gender studies?
The Patriarchy
Interesting name for it given how many men will tell you it is women upholding men’s gender roles. Men are still expected to pay for dates, to be able to support families, to have a home and a car before they’re even worth attempting to date…
When Terry Crews came out about his sexual assault. So many men publicly derided him. I felt so bad for Terry.
For the record, fifty cent, Vlad from VladTV, DL Hughley were those that made fun of Terry and some even insinuated he was possibly gay.
Why is this downvoted, but not the comments its responding to; wtf? But yeah, you could not be more right on the patriarchy bit. All the things being cited here are things actual feminists have known for a century. What men need, beyond positive role models, is a rebranded classical feminism. The reason you cant just call it feminism is kinda the problem. The term has been associated with misandrists, who feminist advocates tolerate way more they tactically should. Because us vs them narratives are very appealing
Feminist in general is the wrong word because it inherently sounds like placing women first, rather than treating men and women equally
I would also say that everyone regardless of gender is treated pretty shittily at the moment
I’m using the term because it…is the word for that philosophy. I’m not exactly campaigning here
You are right about that though. Men and women both get shitty treatments, the funny thing is they’re almost polar opposite experiences and both manage to suck monkey farts
As a Gen Z man who statistically should have fallen down the incel and alt-right pipeline but didn’t, this echos exactly what I see in my generation. We don’t have positive examples of Masculinity, and the left just yells at us that we’re trash, when we struggle with things and most don’t have many (or any) good friends to lean on. So of course they go to the alt right.
and the left just yells at us that we’re trash
I’m a millenial and I never got this. There must be a split somewhere when people fell into different echo chambers or algorhythms. Like 7 years go I used to frequent reddit subs like MGTOW and pussypassdenied, looking for something to connect to because of clinical single-ness. These were the only spaces I would find comments like that. On my other, left wing, socialist Internet spaces this wasn’t present. That is why those pro-men/anti-women subs never connected to me. The work on yourself, improve yourself and keep reading was great, but the insane amount of hatred and religion pushing was crazy.
Yet it feels like men in my situation these days don’t have alternatives. It’s sad when Andrew Tate is considered masculine. Terry Crews or Keanu Reeves are much better. Sure they’re not podcasters, but they give off a much better vibe.
It’s a shame that the space these men find themselves is pushing against freedom of expression for others.
I think it depends on a lot of real-life interactions, too. I had coaches and teachers and older work colleagues (including in heavily male dominated workforces, like the military) who were strong masculine role models. So when it came to media consumption I tended to gravitate towards celebrities or famous characters who already fit the worldview.
Nick Offerman played a libertarian Ron Swanson on TV, but in that fictional work the core cultural markers of manhood were explicitly presented as non-political, and seem largely shared with the left-leaning actor himself.
Terry Crews is similar, as you’ve pointed out. On Brooklyn 99 his character was presented as a loving father of young girls, who was in connection with his feelings, but also loved working out and sports and, you know, was a cop with a gun. In real life, in interviews, he seemed very much in tune with healthy masculinity and his place in the world.
Steve Kerr and Greg Popovich give off positive male leader vibes and often speak up about political and cultural issues, while largely being protective and supportive of the younger men who essentially work for them.
George Clooney is funny because he came off as a bit of a womanizer for years, but dove right into his long term relationship with a woman whose own career would arguably overshadow his. He is unabashedly and vocally a supporter of Democrats and other causes associated with the left in the United States.
Nobody is perfect, or deserves to be put on a pedestal. But there are little nuggets of positive examples all around us, including traditionally masculine men who support ideals that are more culturally and politically associated with the cultural left.
George Clooney is funny because he came off as a bit of a womanizer for years, but dove right into his long term relationship with a woman whose own career would arguably overshadow his.
George C- oh, you mean Amal Clooney’s husband. He’s some sort of actor, right? Anyway, Amal Clooney is awesome and a hero.
There is only really Noel Deyzel from social media as a positive role model
So much fucking this
Thanks for relating all that - lots of information but worth the read. You largely summed up my own early existence in the first few paragraphs. My therapy came in the form of getting involved in theatre, which exposed me to all kinds of people and ideas, revamped my attitudes and saved me from embracing radical ideas that are more or less based on rejecting a society that rejects you. I think that same cynicism is common in people from many different backgrounds, who share the same alienation for all kinds of reasons.
I’ll even add one - throughout my software career doing contract jobs, finding a new gig always took me 2-3 weeks and was very routine. When I turned 50 the 2-3 weeks abruptly and permanently became 2-3 months, and took a lot more effort. Apparently in that community I was suddenly too old. Only one recruiter let slip that age was the reason a potential client rejected me, but the sudden difference at 50 was stark. So I don’t know what you do for a living but you might be facing that yourself when it’s your time.
Anyway I totally agree about empathy. I don’t know what it is but people seem to be constantly on guard nowadays. Their go-to assumption is to look for evil and refuse to accept simple mistakes. That and permanently crucifying anybody who does anything morally unacceptable, or ever did in their past. If somebody Likes the wrong tweet it’s unforgivable and irredeemable. I don’t recall another time when so many people were so militant about this attitude. Forgiveness used to mean compassion, now it means you’re complicit, enabling, a shill, “just as bad,” etc. I think we need to think of the glass houses analogy and stop pretending to be morally impeccable.
That was a very thoughtfully written response. I can relate to a lot of your story and agree with your conclusions. There needs to be more outlets for men as an alternative to right wing communities. I hope you meet more liberals and feminists that are open-minded to men’s hardships. I have to believe there are more reasonable people out there on the left than not.
I have to believe there are more reasonable people out there on the left than not
There are, but online is where the psychopathic man haters feel free to let their colors fly. At union conventions and community meets, I only ever hear tame comments from the very obvious radfems.
half joke first. nobody’s trying to meddle in our bodily autonomy, yet.
edit: i havent looked too close at it but the mensliberation space on lemmy.ca may interest you? cancermancer down bellow has a rec for r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates that looks to have another good perspective in the topic. so im sticking it right here with the other.
I’ll try to approach the topic from my perspective as well. my gender has never really be part of my internal view of myself. but it is an inescapable part of how other people will see me, and the rules are always whatever the other person wants. so maybe not the poster child for speaking on masculinity. i’m literally the default charater generator in every videogame, but it’s just a hallucinating meat suit.
talking about gender concepts and social roles was a norm growing up because i did that growing up in the weird outside groups the christian kids chased. any reference to maculinity was done at me as an attack, even when i was doing it according to the rules. i agree, there are few places for young men to explore their way out of those strict views. especially in the early years. i’ve often seen them jump straight into spaces meant to be safe for people who’ve had not great experiances with the topic, especially women. and press other people to do all the work, explain things to them and navigate their often* harsh language. and i get it. when you’ve only ever been allowed to express 3 levels of the same emotion, it’s gonna be rough sorting that out.
it’s going to be on people who have worked their way through that mind set to make those places for kids to start the process. most importantly, people who share their experiance and perspective. yes folls like me can and really need to come in there and talk openly. but my own experiance is never going to line up in a way that will connect with those kids. even when i look exactly like our experiance should line up.
…if theres more spelling mistakes then there are more spelling mistakes. fuck it thats too much text for a phone
Bodily autonomy? What’s this scar on my cock again?
Have also heard people talking about giving men vasectomies at 16 (people who don’t understand they can’t actually be undone)
FWIW I’ve only seen that used to illustrate how ridiculous it is that we find it essentially normal to have laws controlling what women can do with their reproductive systems but not men. I’ve not seen a single credible example of someone seriously suggesting this.
I’ve known a person who took that seriously and thought it was a good idea
I mean, yes, I’m sure there are people who do. There are people who think the earth is flat. They don’t influence policy though.
Edit - my point is, no one is coming for your testes, and knowing someone who thinks it’s a good idea is no better an example here than it would be for me to say I’m worried a flat earther is going to influence space exploration policy.
Fair point
fair point. sounds like theres a need for a space to have these conversations. with people effected by the topic and moded by people on the otherside of the joirney, who could have empathy in the difficult moments. anyone know of a space? i’ll try engaging where i can.
mensliberation space on lemmy.ca
I appreciate your otherwise quality comment but I have to say that I don’t intend to use a space that only views men’s issues through a feminist lens.
On Reddit, LeftWingMaleAdvocates is a solid lefty men’s space.
i spent all of a minute poking around. not a topic i deep dive in really. more hoping to pose the question of “hey do we maybe have a space like this?”. someplace where people having a shared perspective would have the patience for eachothers early questions they once had.
i’m not on reddit but a few minutes poking around there it doesn’t look crazypants. so i’ll add it to my comment too.
No that’s fair, I don’t want you to feel like I’m saying you’re acting in bad faith because I absolutely do not believe that.
nah i get it, i assumed good faith on your part as well. i skimmed through some threads in that sub and all i wanted to do was start jumping saying “guys just pause a second so we can talk about some of this language”. but thats absolutely not the place for me to do that.
it would be as productive as the guys who’d go into r/twoxchromosomes posting “explain like i’m 5 why my wife left over not doing the dishes enough”. assumimg good faith, i get he’s thinking “ok this is where other women who have done this talk, i’ll ask them”. there wasnt anyplace else to send the dude, so a few people would try responding. but it always devolved into language policing, because not doing so in that space would forfit the sub to the people it was designed to be safe from. i never commented in that space specifically because it was their sub and i was just there to understand perspectives. i was a guest in their home.
people need to be able to use the only words they know with the meaning they understand them to have. before they can do any self reflection or understand why it becomes important to adjust our language for eachother sometimes.
