This is such an insightful way to articulate the issue. The conversation mostly revolves around individuals (“men are bad”). This is one of the few times that men are talked about in a way that acknowledges the system at play, that they are a product of an environment and society that has shaped them a certain way.
I’ve lost the podcast source that talked about “there is no good way to be a man currently”. Even for someone who wants to be a better man, there aren’t role models or celebrations of " good manliness". There’s no positive road map, only a list of “don’ts” and stereotypes to avoid.
The best example of good manliness in media I can think of is Bandit from Bluey.
The options are pretty slim if a cartoon dog from a children’s show is humanity’s best example of being a good man.
We, as a society, are still trapped within the “feminist revolution”, there’s fighting going on and no new normal emerged.
Both sides are ripped apart by two often contradicting sets of expectations, the traditional role and the progressive role.
What makes it so hard for a lot of men is, that it’s a willful surrender of privileges. Men lost a ton of privileges over the last decades and it takes a bit of reflection to understand that these privileges were never legitimate in the first place. Instead, they frame women’s rights as weakness, because it directly contradicts their narrative of a strong man.
And that also reflects on women, to put it extremely bluntly, he’s expected to pay for dinner, but she still wants equal pay. It will take decades to sort all of that out.
It sucks. As a dude, I feel it’s almost impossible to balance being confident and approaching women you don’t know and also not being a creep or bothering them. I’m not the best but not the worst when it comes to looks, I have many friends of different genders (shoutout to my enby fellows who have to deal with this mess and also discrimination) and I’m confident in most things I do aside from dating. It’s gotten to the point I just won’t ask women out due to anxiety over coming across as a creep or bothering them, and instead endure loneliness. Which is not great, but it is what it is.
What makes it so hard for a lot of men is, that it’s a willful surrender of privileges. Men lost a ton of privileges over the last decades and it takes a bit of reflection to understand that these privileges were never legitimate in the first place. Instead, they frame women’s rights as weakness, because it directly contradicts their narrative of a strong man.
the important distinction here is that these privileges were the reason that men did what they did. Without them now men don’t really have an overall driving force through life. Without the expectation of “being a strong man” they literally have nothing to live for in society.
That’s what the post above mine meant by there not being a positive manliness.
Progressive manliness is described as a substraction from the old ideal. We simply have not yet formed a positive, progressive male identity.
Being a good human being is an option for everyone.
And I know this is from a kids cartoon, but Uncle Iroh from Airbender embodies benevolent masculinity pretty well. If we want children and young men to be socialized better, a good place to start is with our media depicting more characters like that.
What?? So when you were a kid ,you just wanted to be a “strong man” when you grew up??
Even for someone who wants to be a better man, there aren’t role models or celebrations of " good manliness". There’s no positive road map, only a list of “don’ts” and stereotypes to avoid.
Bluey.
bluey is great, but it’s only one example in a sea of no ships. It’s also aussie, so it’s not even super culturally relevant to most of the west, it’s also focused at really young children.
Beyond young children you have shows like, full house, which is literally fucking ancient.
Or they’ll all fall down the Andrew “Sex Trafficker” Tate pipeline instead.
there aren’t role models
What would you expect from a “role model”? Just a person who does good for its own sake? Doing so would be something that’s not publicized, so it’s hard to show off good behaviour.
Robin Williams was always a standup guy, Keanu Reeves seems like a nice guy, Ryan Reynolds seems to be a standup guy (but he has a hard monetary incentive to keep this image), the guys from Cinema Therapy seem to be decent. Do these people count as role models?
What would you expect from a “role model”? Just a person who does good for its own sake? Doing so would be something that’s not publicized, so it’s hard to show off good behavior.
people that are the stereotypical mr rogers of the real world. We really do just need more people that are such good people that just they instill goodness in others on a fundamental level. That and people willing to spend time educating others.
if you aren’t a stereo-typically perfect individual, that’s fine, you almost certainly have something useful that you can teach someone young that’s around you.
I’m not gonna be the “not all men” guy because this person does have a point,
But I will say, if all you look for is negatives, that’s all you’re gonna find.
Ah yes, you look at the entirety of the male population, say “there’s no positives”, and still think you have a point 😂😂😂.
It’s like you can’t even wrap your own head around the sheer amount of misandry oozing from your mouth.
For several years I hated women because subconsciously I was angry that they are allowed to express their femininity and I’m not. Now that I’ve matured I hate the system that keeps me oppressed. I think if “alpha males” stopped taking out their anger on women and instead on the capitalist class we would start seeing some true progress.
For several years I hated women because subconsciously I was angry that they are allowed to express their femininity and I’m not.
Wouldn’t the equivalent rather be women being allowed to express masculine traits? Which to be fair is well-accepted nowadays.
However, I don’t give a shit if people see some of my traits as feminine. I was born male and 100% identify as male. If others see my traits as feminine, it doesn’t change my identity because I define it. Think I shouldn’t wear long hair? Who asked for your opinion? And why should be awesome traits like empathy or openness be strictly female and not human?
Some masculine traits in women are accepted to some extent. But, look at the backlash against that Algerian boxer.
For someone who really cares about fitting in with society, the pressure to conform can be pretty brutal. There’s probably more freedom to be who you want to be now than ever before. In the past not only gender roles, but every role in society was extremely rigid. People didn’t even have the freedom to decide whether or not to wear a hat outside. The expectation was that everyone wore a hat, and if you didn’t you were a real oddball.
I strongly suspect that some of the people who think they’re trans are just people who have interests/passions/attitudes/personalities that don’t conform to their stereotypical gender roles.
they are allowed to express their femininity and I’m not.
A man expressing masculinity? “That’s violently toxic!”
A man expressing femininity? “That’s disgustingly pathetic!”
Now that I’ve matured I hate the system that keeps me oppressed
Except… who reinforces those oppressive rules?
It ain’t men, that’s for sure. We just passively submit and nod our heads yes to whatever women say, least we are painted with the same brush by association, and be labelled misogynistic or “not a man” for disagreeing.
[rant (with memes!)]
This is a particularly sore spot for me. I was an incel in the 1980s, long before the term incel was coined, and I was odd and a misfit, and fit nicely in this pile…
alleged link << I’m still new to Lemmy-linking.
… and my inability to manage my own teenage libido figured into my suicidality then. Society’s failure to do better after another thirty-five years figures into my suicidality now.
To be fair, I suffer from major depression, largely tied into a childhood of neglect (I was a stereotypical latchkey kid) but then since the eighties, US society has required all adults to work full time, and everyone’s parents were exhausted and didn’t have much time or inclination to parent… and it’s only getting progressively worse. So I’m thinking this is intergenerational dysfunction and mental illness. Madness takes its toll.
One of the things that kept me going in my twenties was the hope things would get better for future generations, but instead the US opted for abstinence-only sex ed, which is still (in 2024) mandated in twenty six states, and pushes some really hard Christian stereotypes, e.g. that sex is transactional, men are obligate providers and women have no value other than their virginity and capacity to bear kids (in case you want to know what J. D. Vance’ rhetoric is all about.)
In contrast, only three states (the west coast) mandate comprehensive sex ed, which talks about contraception in a positive way, but it doesn’t (officially) talk about consent, boundaries, the patriarchy, the slut-shaming epidemic and so on. If you’re a teen, an incel, or know one, or otherwise want some serious sex and relating to other humans in a functional way info, check out Planned Parenthood, who has materials (and I believe they’re free). Despite what Jon Kyl said – #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement – Planned Parenthood spends more on their educational materials than they do on abortions, so go get some!
For me, I got lucky. At twenty five, I figured I might be able to recover my way into society, and joined a random AA meeting which had pamphlets about local meetings for other recovery and 12-step meetings. I found my way to CoDependents Anonymous and through a coincidence segued my way into the kink community. In Choke Chuck Palahniuk gets into a slightly different path which is getting into the Sex and Love Addicts community, where peers are slightly too eager to fall off the wagon with each other. This is as dysfunctional as hate-fucking, but hey, we are already truly gone fishing crazy in a society that is also dysfunctional.
Even in the early 1990s, when we were still just trading copypasta on Usenet and Wikipedia was still a WiP, it was clear then it was a bad idea to leave all our young men sexually frustrated, pretend like it’s not a problem and then try to teach them integral calculus. It wasn’t the era of suicide terrorists (lonely, angry young men in the Middle East) and it wasn’t yet the age of rampage shooters (lonely, angry young men in the US). But we did have a run of spree killers, and Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Lonely and sexually frustrated to the last.
To be fair, the US Armed Forces really likes lonely, angry sexually frustrated young men. This is their primary tap for recruits, and until recently, we’ve been fighting the International War on Terror.
And an awful lot of them, especially those who never figure out how to relate to women anyone trickle their way into the many alt-right factions, not just incels but the alpha male community, the seduction community, gamergaters, MGTOW, the manosphere, militias, 4Chan/b and so on. Piles and piles of guys (and some gals) who are losers, and they know it. In a shit world that dealt them a shit hand, and do a sine-wave dance between wanting to fade out and wanting to watch the world burn. I know the steps to this jig.
Connected ones go into law enforcement.
Essentially, US culture has created this giant pool of Immorten Joe’s war boys, all looking to be witnessed all shiny and chrome into Valhalla. And they are all voting for Trump in 2024 and are eager to join Röhm’s Sturmabteilung as soon as a recruiter tells them to stand back and stand by.
I don’t know what the solution is, and I’ve put a lot of thought into it. The US hates its teens. It seems to be a fixed action pattern (an instinct) to lock our adolescent women up and to evict our adolescent men, once they respectively start showing signs of puberty. I wonder if it’s related to those gorilla species that evict their adolescent females during their first estrus, but then welcome strange females.
Regardless, it’s much the way our administrators side with bullies over their victims when they can (an affect of dominance hierarchy, the thing that drives us to worship athletes and sports stars). In my old age, I wonder if we’re just driven to rationalize obeying instincts rather than recognizing that an advance society sometimes requires non-intuitive solutions.
We need to find a way to actually respect our teens while they’re still in that threshold between cute kid and responsible adult. Just as we need to find a way to actually respect folks that are not simultaneously white, Christian, male and rich enough to have a stock portfolio. If we don’t, it’ll kill us.
In the meantime, Millennials are having few kids, and Zoomers, fewer still. After the anti-abortion thing, they’re just not even bothering to date, and feel undriven to do so since there’s little to no hope for the future.
During the German Reich, when the population rate imploded, they just rounded up pretty young German women who fit the master race mold and required them to serve in the Leibensborn program, as breeding slaves for the Schutzstaffel what inspired Margaret Atwood’s handmaid program in A Handmaid’s Tale. And considering J. D. Vance’s obsession about childless women whether teachers or cat-ladies, this sounds like a thing he’d be happy to spearhead once the Project 2025 agenda sends the US into one-party autocracy.
I suspect there is some undiscovered sociological magic we might be able to use to change the way we interact with power hierarchy and in the meantime give our teens more guidance and less constraint. But if we don’t, it’s a problem that will resolve itself within the next century (more or less). In the meantime, when see Eleanor Rigby or Father McKensie lost and forgotten in their solitude, a check in and a friendly pint (or ice cream cone) might be in order.
[/rant]
I can’t, so I asked Gee Pee Tea to. Howd it do?
Society’s failure to support teens, especially those struggling with loneliness and sexual frustration, has only made things worse over the decades. Abstinence-only sex ed and a culture that neglects young people have contributed to this mess, creating a cycle where exhausted parents can’t provide the guidance teens desperately need.
Lonely, angry young men are often funneled into harmful ideologies or destructive paths. The future looks bleak, with fewer people having kids and growing fears that political movements could exploit this desperation. It’s crucial to find better ways to respect and guide youth before things spiral even further.
It’s pressure on the workforce to over exert that has cost us parents. It’s right-wing ideology that gives us AO education programs, and allow them to focus on teaching that ideology, rather than informing about sex, love and intimacy.
I’m not a psychologist or sociologist, so I am guessing (hypothesizing) that authorities over pubescent adolescents responding to incidents of sexual expression (including flirting, courting, sexting, not just making out † ) has more to do with instincts than what would best serve the teens or the community. But this is consistent with dominance hierarchy and the behavior of other social primates.
Ass As I said, I don’t have a societal solution, but we can act locally by acknowledging that everyone, from our disregarded teens to untrained adults are all commonly products of a dysfunctional system that raised dysfunctional kids who are now dysfunctional adults. So yes, cut everyone some slack, including yourself.
† or K-to-9 kids for that matter, who are prone to interest and experimentation, which parents and guardians respond to by freaking out and punishing those kids who are involved.
Oh man, good rant! My comprehension lost track about 1/3 of the way down just past the Choke reference, but I identified with a lot of it and I frequently think of the mentally ill koala comic in my daily life.
The sad truth I’ve found though is that the mentally ill koala comics context is what is used to automatically dismiss that final Twitter reference. -and that’s why mental illness has a stigma. People use it as an excuse to invalidate other people.
Any individual who make blanket comments about whole sections of society will loose my respect pretty quickly.
Substitute women, blacks, Asians, Latinos, the Dutch, and just about every other subsection for the word “male” in that statement and this thread would be having a completely different conversation.
It was implied (if not outright said, which I believe they did but whatever it’s a possibly made-up sister from a random person on the internet.)
okay but we’re not talking about another subsection… we’re talking about men. you can insert whatever qualifier in front that makes you feel better about it, but you wouldn’t be making this comment if they were talking about another group. this is a problem among young men. we need to be able to talk about it if we want anything to change.
obviously if you insert a marginalized group in place of a dominant one it will be different. that is how that works, yes. this type of comment only derails from genuine concerns.
There’s nothing genuine about your rotten misandry. Take it, and yourself, out of here.
misandry? sure buddy, I really hold some deep hatred for men. or maybe the messaging men grow up on is toxic and ends up leading to women facing actual discrimination and violence. no such thing is happening in the other direction. women avoiding men for their own safety may hurt, but it’s not the same thing.
and why are we pretending that there’s some anti men agenda here? because a woman wasn’t careful enough with her phrasing, she didn’t say “some” men? everybody knows the numbers on inter gender violence. nobody is saying you are personally responsible. but anytime women express that men make them feel unsafe, every man in the room makes it about him. I love men, but I need to approach carefully to ensure they haven’t been Tatepilled before I get close. many women are just sticking with their girlfriends. why is this controversial?
it’s really frustrating to me honestly. I’m a trans woman. I’ve been on both sides of this conversation, and I’ve been on both sides of the equation. I’ve been a problematic man. I’ve been a healthy man. and now I’m not a man. I know how painful it is to constantly be perceived as a threat, and it hurt even more because I didn’t even want to be a man in the first place. but this argument comes up anytime a woman talks about her experiences and resulting outlook, and it’s just not productive because ultimately women are the ones in danger, while men are lonely and upset. not every man is a threat, but it’s enough of them that women need to be careful, and most of them got better at hiding their problems rather than actually going to therapy. women would love just as much as men to stop having these gendered associations and live and love freely. men need to hold each other accountable, we need to change the way we teach them, and importantly, they need to listen when women talk about these things instead of talking over them.
