While many believe young people are becoming more liberal, data shows that 12th grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative compared to liberal. Around 25% of high school seniors identify as conservative while only 13% identify as liberal. In contrast, the share of 12th grade girls identifying as liberal has risen to 30%. Many factors may contribute to this trend, including the rhetoric of Donald Trump which appealed to disaffected young men, and the focus of progressive movements on issues of gender and racial equality which some young men perceive as a “matriarchy.” However, most high school seniors claim no political identity, and many boys in high school do not actively discuss
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.
This is definitely right-wing trash. However, we should be using headlines like this to fire up the country. Everyone knows that “republican” men think they have the last say about reproductive rights. Let’s use their own “reports” to show those women that their boyfriends/husbands/fathers think they own them.
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.
A dismissal or lack of consideration for the unique issues facing men and boys and the unique solutions they require. Focusing exclusively on women and girls. Viewing boys as defective girls.
In this thread, here’s a few specific examples
Let’s use their own “reports” to show those women that their boyfriends/husbands/fathers think they own them.
The rate of girls identitying as liberal is significantly higher[…]Probably because the girls face actual threats to their freedoms, while the conservative boys’ complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.
I was a “Fox News”-viewing turd in high school, too[…]then I grew up.
It’s passive because it’s not direct and focused. It’s more neglect than abuse. Men’s problems are not just secondary; they’re not even worth consideration, and men should just Fix It Themselves.
Schools in particular are extremely geared towards focusing on girls and their successful development.
while the conservative boys’ complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.
Ah yes, the education gap is imaginary nonsense.
Are you hearing yourself? Because what you’re saying is not only gross but grossly dismissive. Be better.
Oh shit an education gap? Better attack minorities, take away women’s rights, burn a bunch of books and accelerate full speed into the brick wall of climate change.
The reality is that conservatives aren’t trying to address any actual problems facing young men, they’re just trying to turn their disillusionment into votes and gun sales.
Calmly approach anyone in the education sector with this study, without the “nobody cares about men anymore!” theatrics and you’ll have millions of people – mostly “leftists” – with thoughts on how to improve things.
I suspect it’s less due to the rhetoric of Donald Trump & more due to the influence of Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson & Joe Rogan.
Well, think about it. Who is the most confused, scared, and angry about women not throwing themselves at their feet? Pubescent boys. The entire right wing media sphere is aimed at someone with the temperament and unleashed anger and horniness of high school boys, in a time when kids are having less sex. These perpetually online kids are being fed into the ecosystem through YouTube, then they hear it normalized on fox/literally any right wing outlet, and then they get those poisonous ideas reinforced when they go to school and don’t get laid by the hottest girl they know.
I don’t think these things were planned, by any means. But they sure did work out for them.
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.
Interesting to assume people like Tate didn’t exist before. They just changed their rhetoric and added “anti-feminist” to their agenda since that’s trendy in certain circles now. These people existed already in much greater numbers in the past.
Masculinity is not the centre of the discussion of the left or even feminism, though. It’s just what certain people want to make out of it, which is exactly what the quote above is referring to.
Advancing rights for women in general spans a broad spectrum of intersectionality with masculinity just being one fraction of it. You can look up how many feminists are actually talking about masculinity unprompted and you’d be surprised how infrequent it is. It is a certain group of people with an often anti-feminist agenda who try to make it seem as if masculinity was somehow the main hook of feminist discussion.
Most leftists and feminists want emancipation for men as well, with that they mean the emancipation from gender roles for everyone.
You know, protecting your wife and kids if it comes to that, not being an domestic abuser, etc.
I grew up in a Calvinistic worldview where every week you were reminded you were utterly disgusting in the eyes of God and simply by being born you deserved to be tortured more brutally than the English language can adequately express because you had by virtue of being human inherited original sin, and the only way you could get rid of it is if you had been predestined to be saved by Jesus (who did not come to save everyone, only a select few). Anyone can imagine the horrible effect this polar opposite of therapy has on rates of mental illness in that community. This kind of worldview was popular with the English Dissenters (those famous ‘persecuted pilgrims’ belong to this category) who later crossed the Atlantic in large numbers and I think I can see its unpleasant legacy in American political thought both left and right.
If there is one idea I could delete out of existence it’s this notion of original sin in both its religious and secular forms. I would make it unlawful to tell a child that they were born guilty of anything simply for existing or that guilt can be inherited from anyone because of how psychologically harmful this is. While it’s usually not the intention there exists a trend that de facto results in telling boys they’re guilty of various things simply for existing, and then in the same breath we act surprised when scumbags like Tate are hoovering up their attention instead of everyone telling them what a piece of crap they are for being born. Manly qualities in my mind are qualities like physical and mental strength in the face of adversity, having the moral courage to make difficult decisions for the good of a group, a deep sense of good sportsmanship, being willing and able to take risks when required, that sort of thing. The left should be all over that as its history is littered with such examples!
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.
The left side of politics has always struggled to bring people along for the journey, they can advocate for people but building a coherent argument and inspiring people to come along for the ride will always be their downfall. They cannot achieve progressive change if they fail to recognize the concerns of the right.
The left side of politics has always struggled to bring people along for the journey, they can advocate for people but building a coherent argument and inspiring people to come along for the ride will always be their downfall
You’re right. Nothing that’s truly valuable in legislation is simple. It’s hard to turn something complicated into a sound byte without making shit up, and the Left in most countries have to be careful alienating the intellectuals if they start making shit up. We don’t vote for bullshit.
The Right has no problem making shit up and those who vote for them are not really affected by it. When the Notch Baby bullshit was going on (a US thing… there was basically a big hoax about a generation being owed money, and a lot of politicians ran with it), I didn’t know a single right-leaning voter who would give the least bit of a shit that they were voting for people who were willfully taking advantage of the elderly. I guarantee a left-party candidate who pulled that shit would lose by a landslide.
So the Right can bad-faith point out a concern that “toxic masculinity” is just “masculinity” and a good thing. They know the Left can’t soundbyte their way out of it because it’s not a one-liner to say “it’s not about masculinity or feminity, it’s about not being a dick and all of us helping the underdog”. It’s VERY easy to sell people who aren’t the underdog on victim complexes.
John Oliver, John Iadorola from the damage report, Mike Figuredo from the Humanist report, Kyle Kulenski from secular talk, David Doel from the rational national, Sam Seder from the majority report, Lance from the Serfs, Matt Binder from the majority report. Left leaning positive male role models. I’m sure there is more but they stand out as I watch them every week.
Jon Stewart, Trae Crowder, and Beau of the Fifth Column are three more excellent examples of positive male role models.
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’m pretty far left and in my entire life I’ve never experienced “only girls can have issues” as more than an extreme fringe statement.
What I tend to see regarding men is how they, too, are victims of toxic masculinity, taught to internalize their emotions until they have literal breakdowns. The Left gives a fuck about that, and it’s one of the cited reasons they have problems with toxic masculinity.
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.
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
Actually, just don’t fuck em.
I’m sure the 25% figure will plummet when they enter the adult world, realise Andrew Tate is just a sad, loud little man who never found a way to proccess his fathers abuse and that imitating him does the opposite of getting you laid.
Andrew Tate isn’t anywhere near the whole problem. Then entirety of the alt-right isn’t even the whole problem.
That’s something I have argued about with my liberal friends often. You don’t make allies by telling people that their opinions don’t matter, or that they’re wrong based purely on their sex or color. The left has been dismissive towards men, no… It has been hostile towards men for at least a decade. Masculinity isn’t inherently negative and not all masculinity is toxic. Spreading the belief that it is will only make enemies of people who otherwise would be allies. It is incredibly short sighted to reject normative people and make them feel that they’re less important or that there’s something wrong with them just based off their birth. Also, that is the exact same mentality that the left supposedly wants to overcome, but rather than working towards its end, they’ve just shifted the target. To be clear, I say “liberal” and “left” and that may cause an assumption that I’m a right-wing conservative. I am not.
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.
I’m wearing a tshirt that I bought to support a union drive now, actually. Over the weekend, I spotted a table with volunteers supporting the UPS drivers and walked up and asked how I could show support. I poster went in my window. I was wearing a sticker supporting Amazon workers trying to unionize at the time, which they noticed.
It’s a very unique time during my lifetime where union activity seems to be on the rise. A local Trader Joe’s recently formed a union so I went there and individually approached workers and congratulated them. I had a strong sense of who voted yes vs no based on their responses. The ones that were please were really appreciative of the support.
Push hard for unions. Show support for unions in other industries. This is a moment where we might be able to show regular people that we can have collective power.
Maybe kid watching too much Andrew Turd or Lobster cult? That’s why de-platforming is so important. These people are genuinely harmful to the world.
Grifters are a symptom, not the cause. I agree with getting rid of them, but more will follow.
