Submitted 1 day ago by IloveyouMF@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
I think progressives never thought about this because we banked on immigration and demographic change allowing us to win culturally and electorally but the issue is immigrants tend to be overwhelmingly male, that is how Trump won actually he won over a lot of Hispanic,Black,Asian and indigenous men who feel humiliated by a new culture, economy and world.
So what can we do rhetorically and policy wise to win more young men over ?
Maybe stop labeling them the “enemy” with posts like these?
for most especially now days are very disconnected from reality, just what they see on the internet, being more so raised by it then even their parents, and it very heavily influences them.
I’ve said it several times on Lemmy. The American left consists of:
The DNC establishment, the Pelosis and Schumers of the world who are mostly in it for the insider trading. Their stance on issues falls somewhere between Hitler and Nixon, Israel is their #1 priority, and I’m not sure they care about the wellbeing of the average American citizen anymore than a typical seven-armed octopus does. This group holds all the political power of the “left.”
The rainbow hair collective. The gay trans vegan gender blender ambiguously brown righteous indignation victim complex crowd. Amongst them they agree on very little, there’s actually a significant amount of infighting, basically the only thing that unites them is their mutual hatred of straight white men. This group wields basically no political power; they’re nominally represented by Ocasio-Cortez in the House and Sanders in the Senate and that is literally it. But, this is the cohort has a lot of control over the party’s campaigning and messaging, and they’ve also basically got control of Hollywood.
The result of this is the DNC’s messaging is often centered around identity politics. There was that meme floating around that read:
“Can we have some help?”
🐘 - No.
🫏 - No. #BLM #🌈
Which…sums it up. Neither party will vote to help the citizens at large but the Democrats will pay empty lip service to the non-white and non-male.
During the Harris campaign, there was a pretty big emphasis on finding a straight white preferably Southern male running mate for Harris. My own state’s lame duck governor, Roy Cooper, was mentioned, before it went to midwesterner Tim Walz. They then proceeded to have this straight white man cosplay as…the caricature of a straight white man acceptable to the gender studies majors in charge. Remember the live stream of him doing some repair task to a classic pickup truck?
Everything I heard about Tim Walz was good. I distinctly remember reading about some of the student athletes he coached talking about how much they liked him. Everything they showed me about him was as cringe worthy as Ghostbusters 2016. Harris herself was caught on an open mic acknowledging that they weren’t going to win the election without men, and then they came out with the “I’m man enough to vote for a woman” campaign. Because the people they got to write the commercials just couldn’t fucking help themselves.
I held my nose and voted Harris. Because while I’m unabashedly vocally critical of feminists and the rest of the identity politics left, I’m very much not a Retard Nazi. The Identity Politics left will accuse me of being a Retard Nazi because I score less than a 110% on their purity test, but I’ve voted in every election since 2008 and I haven’t cast a vote for any Republican in my life. That’s not good enough for the voice of the Democrats. Nothing in the universe can be.
Just…keep yelling at teenage boys that the last 300+ years of history which they had no possible way to impact was their personal fault. That’ll start working one of these decades.
Yawn. Anybody writing anything this long is clearly pushing an agenda so skip
Okay, so men should vote Republican. Got it.
Young men are not some new phenomenon. Their desire, in a word, is agency.
As the world has grown more interconnected, the world has become more visible. This has created a crippling awareness of their place in the grand scheme. Nietzsche’s void has opened beneath them and, in the ignorance expected of youth, they grasp at what is presented to them. Selling hope to the desperate, even false hope, is lucrative, so there is no shortage of hucksters and charlatans offering it to them.
The ultimate problem is that there is no pleasant truth. When faced with the existential horror of being, the truth doesn’t help. You cannot focus on learning to be a better version of yourself when facing raw terror. A comforting lie will get you to tomorrow. Truth will send you to the long, dark night.
So, when offered a pretense of agency, in almost any form, they take it. Some pretend that the problem is simply women. Some say it’s other ‘races.’ Some say it’s this or that ideology, whether economic, social, sexual, psychological, or anything else. They all just want to feel like they can make a difference, just like everyone else.
A lot of fancy words to say nothing
I think a big part of the issues end up being economic. Things are obviously not great for a vast majority of middle and lower income people. You spend all day working your 1-3 jobs and in the background there’s all the culture war battles going on.
Few regular people have the mental space to even engage with the nuance required to navigate some progressive talking points when they can barely keep a roof over their heads. Toxic masculinity just turns into masculinity = toxic. You’ve lost these people, even if there’s an actually good message in there.
The Right is amazing at drawing a direct line between, “These are the problems we know you’re having” and “This is exactly what you can do about it today”. And for the Right, they actually deliver results. Do the kids turn into insufferable dickheads? Sure. But does the rhetoric sometimes get them what they want? Yeah, it does.
Where does the Left even come close? Almost everything is a delayed effect. Protest for a good cause? Wait to see if the politics catch up. Be nice to people? Great start, but that doesn’t help these guys get people-skills to have good platonic and romantic relationships. Be more open emotionally? What happens when your friends don’t accept that from you?
The Left is full of high risk, upfront demands from people who aren’t already affiliated with potentially little to no reward. Granted, the desired outcome is a better and more just society. But like, carrots and sticks people. You need something that regular people can get behind besides just ideology. Especially when mainstream media has a lock on those that are tuned out of progressive spaces and every now and then see something leak through from the culture war.
We need an actual vision for the future. Not a list of things we don’t like about the present, but what do we see people doing one day. If you don’t have a place for any group of people in your society, they will be indifferent if it burns. You can’t build a progressive future without having an actual, honest to God idea of what opportunities you can provide to legitimately everyone. If your best plan is, “Conservatives get with the program or rot in hell”, don’t be surprised when they take you down with them.
Young adults needs stronger world frameworks that don’t feel forced on them.
IMO that’s a virtue system!
I’ve been a Stoic for over 20 years now and managed to convert dozens of people to progressive thought just by discussing virtues that are inherit to human nature (justice, courage, wisdom, temperance). People like abstract virtues because they’re easy to incorporate to their personal world models with very little friction and friction is the real thought killer.
Most people are truth seeking but can be very slow learners and some really rebel against strong friction so there’s a need for more abstract approaches like - using “colorblind” instead of arguing race, using “cosmopolitan” when argueing geopolitics, using “secular” when arguing religion etc etc. Every other argument can follow afterwards.
This is the way.
Punching nazis can be nice and masculine if you like.
We could show them the Letter Kenny episode where they beat up the neoNazis.
Or dome old captain america comics. A certain tarentino movie. Biography of any of a hundred oss/sas guys. Like a million soviet films on the subject.
There’s options.
the universalizing ideology of feminism for men is incoherent
and if you react with anger to the fact that feminism is for women, you’re part of the problem, shut up.
feminism is full of lessons on how feminism helps women, men should read feminists
but it’s stupid to expect feminism/feminists to advocate for men’s issues
and it’s insulting to ask men to believe that all they have to do is be good feminists and they’ll get what they need.
if you’re a man and you want to write about how actually feminism is good for you, seriously shut the fuck up.
if you’re a woman and you want to write about how actually feminism is good for men, seriously shut the fuck up:
stop centering a tool for helping women, feminism, stop centering women, when men is the topic. do you understand? can you understand? the topic is men.
male feminists are just simping. male allies are good and proper, but men shouldn’t co-opt women’s issues by taking up the feminist label.
A little out of the blue but I watched an episode of a German cooking show today where strangers are coupled in groups of five for a week and every day one of them has to cook for the rest of them. They then vote who was the best host.
This week was ALL 30-38 year-old straight Dads. Nobody talked about football.
Nobody chestbumped anyone. Nobody was mansplaning anything. Instead, they were all swooning over each others’ cooking skills, making each other cry over how much they love their kids and hugging each other for feeling insecure about their cooking. In other words it was the most realistic and “manly” portrayal of the male reality that I have seen in the media ever.
It’s easy to blame the media and the “culture war” for male alienation but I strongly believe that our perception of ourselves is largely influenced by our peer group’s portrayal in society. In other words: if I feel antagonized, I tend to overreact. If I am being told by Hollywood or social media to “stop being a mansplaning patriarch” I will be imprinted with the very idea to identify as such.
So long story short: non-toxic masculinity needs more representation AND it needs to come from a place of positivity, not judgement or condescension.
what is this cooking show because it sounds delightful. statesians have lost the plot when it comes to cooking shows
It’s called “Das perfekte Dinner”, it’s been on the air for 20 years and is one of those shows that defies the death of classic television.
It can appear quite boring if you come from watching things like chef’s table or hell’s kitchen, as there is little drama, its unscripted and it’s mostly very positive and no-nonsense.
Talk about issues that affect the working class. Not the white working class, not working class men, just everyone who makes a living by drawing a wage. Progressive movements are formed by solidarity, and we have more in common with other working class people than any of the politicians or business leaders who set the tone of this debate.
Perfect.
Look at what men are missing and how the right is selling it to them.
Men aren’t doing so hot right now, emotionally and mentally. They feel like they are not manly, and criticized for trying to be manly or liking manly things. There’s a lack of transitions into manhood, and the bar that is seen as a successful man with a good career is pretty much impossible.
If you have a poor paying job, you’re not manly. If you have a well paying job but it’s blue collar you’re not manly because you’re a dumb working stiff. If you have a white collar job you’re not manly because you’re not doing anything tough with your body. Maybe if you’re a CEO who owns the company but also does rock climbing and bear fighting are you seen as manly enough, maybe.
Then you have these guys, your Andrew Tates and so on, who act very manly and tell you it’s ok to be a man and then spout off some of the most toxic, asinine shit saying that’s how you be a man. And young guys fall for it because they aren’t shown any alternative.
Then on the left you have people who speak ill of men as a whole, and manliness as a whole. Sometimes the criticisms are correct, but a lot of times it’s presented as men overall. If you try to say that it’s not every man out there who’s a monster, you get blasted with criticism for saying “not all men”. They also don’t provide anything positive or solutions for feeling manly, with the best they can be offered is to be more like women.
So young men, especially young cishet men, are actively pushed away from leftist spaces, leaving them feeling demonized by those spaces, and actively pandered to by the right which are offering mind poison dressed up as solutions.
So what do we do? There’s a few things to fix.
leftist media has to stop demonizing men and start demonizing actions. Instead of saying “men are rapists” start saying “rapists are bad”. When people start to say things like “cis people are shit” other people need to call them out of it, because if you’re supposed to be the side that accepts people’s gender identity, it should be for all gender identities. It can feel cathartic to rail against the majority demographic, especially when people of that demographic have hurt you, but if you feel that it’s unfair to rail against a group because of the actions of a few members of it, that should apply to all groups. Things like “what’s wrong with the straights” doesn’t help build bonds with allies, and it turns young men away from leftist spaces.
there needs to be validation and recognition from the left for problems men have, like suicide, workplace death and heavier prison sentencing. The left needs to show that they are trying to fix these problems, too, instead of telling young men to suck it up and be a man about it because they are the oppressor demographic.
there needs to be people who counter toxic masculinity, not with telling men to be more like women, but with positive masculinity. If a man is having emotional or mental problems, toxic masculinity says to push that down. Femininity says it’s ok to be soft and vulnerable. Positive masculinity would say that a real man is true to himself and his feelings and expresses then freely, even if others might ridicule him for it. There’s a subtle difference, and the end result of femininity’s and positive masculinity’s tactic might be the same, i.e. the man expresses those feelings, but the way that they get there is very different. The former makes the man feel less validated in his identity, while the latter uplifts it. The memes where they say stuff like “I always tell my homies I love them before they go to bed” actually work.
leftist influencers need to make fighting for the rights of minorities seem manly. Badass. Like a hero. Worthy of praise and celebration.
while they won’t get the financial and political backing that the toxic male influencers get, there needs to be positive male influencers who talk about masculinity in a positive way, while promoting the ideas above. There needs to be an alternative, who acts manly but in the fun, positive way, that validates young men’s feelings of inadequacy, frustration, and isolation, while promoting an egalitarian perspective.
there needs to be a cultural shift in what makes a man. A shift away from dying in battle or becoming a tycoon, and a resurgence of the working class hero. Mass media itself needs to change and promote positive male figures. It can work and be popular, like in Avatar the Last Airbender. We need to show men that they are still men, and still worthy of love, respect and adoration, even if they aren’t a super soldier or a wealthy elite. A lot of this is counter to capitalistic goals, so it may have to be subversive, but eventually it needs to be made the norm.
other men need to continue to step up and speak out about injustice towards minorities and against toxic masculinity behaviors in the day to day, and start decrying those behaviors as unmanly. People need to call Andrew Tate and the like unmanly.
ideally, the men’s rights movement should be absorbed by the left and the toxic incels kicked out. It should be done in the name of gender equality. Fixing only woman’s problems won’t solve the patriarchy (which could be changed to a different term so everyone feels like it’s less of an us vs them) and feminists should try to help solve men’s problems directly rather than indirectly. Young men would see feminism as more appealing if feminists actually focused on men’s problems as well, rather than ignoring or worse, demonizing them. Feminism could be rebranded as an egalitarian movement for all sexes and genders, maybe get a name change. If the patriarchy affects everyone, then the focus should be on everyone. Maybe it would have to be a whole new movement entirely.
So it’s a larger problem than just getting more leftist male influencers, and some of those problems are systematic. Some can get worked on today. Talking about masculinity in a positive way, promotive equity, stop both their side and your side from bigotry, and, probably the thing that would get young men on board the most:
Actually trying to solve the problems young men are going through.
I get that this is upvoted a lot due to being constructive but it also reflects a lot of Republican media tropes about the left that aren’t really true - and that’s why trying to “fix” these things won’t work - because it misses the real problem.
Examples: No significant figure on the left is saying “men are rapists”, or telling men to be more like women, etc. Reducing suicide, safer workplaces, and reducing excessive prison sentences are all priorities for the left and not for the right.
I think the real problem is quite simple: Republicans have invested heavily in portraying themselves as the “masculine party”, and in driving the narratives I’ve mentioned. And because Republican leaders like the Murdochs and Elon tend to be men, they’re best at driving those narratives.
Which goes to the real underlying problem with the left as a whole - no ability to drive or counter a media narrative. The right has Fox news and Elon’s control over Twitter, which they can and do regularly use to create whatever narrative they want. Notice how for example they just made white south African farmer killings a topic all of a sudden. The left has a bunch of corporate media whose top priority is selling truck ads. Sure, maybe the reporters themselves are left leaning, but they have no top down guidance as to what narratives to build.
And until the left creates some sort of media capability to create and control narratives, the right will always have a leg up. And because of that, none of the well intentioned ideas here will actually work. If the left tries to appeal to men, the right will decide how those appeals will be interpreted.
You hit the nail on the head AND provided clear action items. Excellent post
This is a great solution but it has two big problems that make it functionally impossible.
Depends on what part of the left you’re talking about, but yeah, these are things which have to change in order for it to work well.
W-Wait, what is this? A well-thought out, constructive, sympathetic comment? Here? I don’t believe it!
Real talk, though: This is an incredibly solid post and I really appreciate you taking the time to actually write all of these points out. It’s rare (or, subjectively, it feels rare) to see an admission that a major shift in how this topic is approached is needed, and I feel just a bit more hopeful seeing someone else put in the time to go this deep on it.
I would only make two add-on comments to your points:
With regard to point #6, I agree with the concept - but I wonder if “working class hero” is the right target to be aiming at. Unless it comes with a major effort to utterly restructure our economy in such a way that either a man’s value is no longer measured in his ability to be successful in a paid position, and/or we restructure our economy to make success more viable, I fear that efforts to support “working class heros” are doomed to become awkward failures as automation continues to steamroll the viability of those positions.
One point I don’t see brought up here, though it is touched at in (1) and (8), is that we’ve got to modulate how we discuss so-called “toxic” behavior. When so many seemingly minor behaviors are met with the same levels of disdain, villainization, and even punishment as things like actual sexual assault, it ends up feeling deeply isolating, undermines the point that is trying to be made, and pushes men towards the worst actors.
For #6, I don’t think we necessarily have to move away from the idea that being a man means being a provider and a protector. At least to me those are some of the core tenants of being a man.
The person above you mentioned the men in Avatar the last Airbender. But I also want to add in the men in LOTR, Gomez Adams, Ted Lasso, Kratos in the newer god of war games, and Steve Rodgers.
These are men who are caring, loving, emotional and they are (mostly) able to show those emotions, capable of growth, and able to admit when they are wrong. But they are still men. Men who struggle with anger, men go to war and protect their families, men who are incredibly strong in the face of struggle, men who sometimes make “inappropriate” (to the left) jokes, and men who strive for nothing else but bettering the lives of those in their care.
I sometimes hate that what counts as “positive masculinity” is really just feminity but dressed up in a blue bow. Men are not women and telling them that they can’t be super competitive, can’t be angry, and can’t fail is just setting them up to fall into toxic masculinity. This might just be me talking about the culture I was raised in but those things aren’t necessarily a bad thing, and erasing what a “man” has been for generations isn’t going to win you any extra fans.
Thanks, I’m glad you liked it!
I kinda agree on your points. I feel that working class heros could make a comeback if done well, though.
Hell ideally I’d like to see more historical stuff based on labor history, Blair Mountain was crazy and could totally be an action movie.
Thank you for taking the time to write that. That was very well thought out and I really can’t see much or anything to quibble about.
I am a gay man raised in a conservative culture and I really know quite a lot of men in their 30s and 40s who are straight and accepting of me, but still deeply deeply troubled and confused about what it means to be a man. They struggle to identify and articulate their emotions quite a lot.
The fact that those in same-sex relationships have to invent their own ways of dividing the work in a partnership without reference to pre-defined gender roles makes their insight incredibly useful to the world at large. A lot of the struggles that men experience are due to rigid gender roles that do not allow for healthy expression.
I get a little bit angry because it’s like we were expected to accept that provisional approval from the Supreme Court, which as we all know is a very fragile victory.
Why? Because frankly, I think gay men and lesbians have a lot to teach about relationships just by existing visibly. Transgender people do too, but they do not yet enjoy the patchy and tentative acceptance that same sex relationships between cis people have achieved in the large parts of the USA. Their struggle is very intense right now and the LGBQs can help by getting loud again.
Why did we give up on the fight so early? The struggle for existence is not quite as dire for gay and lesbian people as it used to be, but it is still quite a struggle as nothing is assured. But it is not just for our benefit that we must be visible. Frankly, our experience gives us a great deal of wisdom and insight that our society, and men especially, desperately need.
l feel that the acceptance of LGBT people has actually had a beneficial effect on cishet men in ways most people aren’t aware of.
Dating is a good example. Traditionally the guy asks the girl out and pays for everything. This system sucks. It means men feel desperate and have to prove their worth (financial and otherwise) feeling lonely and worthless and women are stuck with the constant stream of guys trying to hit on them, dealing with harassment and worse.
But with more acceptance of homosexual relationships, that traditional method of dating doesn’t apply. The old “but who’s the guy” confusion goes away, and people as a whole realize that it’s stupid. If you see a post about a woman insisting a guy pays for everything or a guy insisting on ordering for his date they seem old fashioned and weirdly demanding. Most people wouldn’t bat an eye about a girl asking a guy out on a date now, and I’ll bet there’s some old newspaper headlines about some lady doing that in the past.
By your nature you’re helping to break down these dysfunctional systems and it’s actually helping people, so thanks a lot for that!
You can’t help men and hang on to feminism. Feminism is inherently anti-male.
Wrong. Feminism is anti-patriarchy, for everyone. Educate yourself, read a little.
I don’t think that’s inherently true for all feminism, though there’s definitely been some bad actors. Actresses.
brb gotta tell my sone I love him
All these things already exist and maybe just need more exposure.
Most things already exist. What we need is for this to become the dominant understanding/goals of the left.
I want “manly-ness” to go extinct. Honestly I bet mods might delete my comment. But I feel the issue is we as a species are figuring out (slowly) that we all need to go extinct. Human brain architecture is fatally flawed. Greed and selfish notions, always striving for power, and the destruction of basically all other life in this planet, tells me we all need to simply accept that we are empherial, transient and temporary. Nothing is sacred, there is no gods or meaning. Ultimate Nihilism essentially. MISANTHROPIC ANTI-NATALISM. But also negative-utilarianism, which states that those who choose to stay living need to focus on reducing other people’s suffering. Honestly, it’s almost fascist itself, my beliefs. Here’s one: those who cause other people suffering should be executed! No tolerance for intolerance… start by burning all the churches down. Outlaw religion, the mind sickness. Only allow what can be proven scientifically. But yeah, basically we need to genocide the genociders… no forgiveness. Cull the conservatives. No more nations or governments. No patriotism or nationalism or exclusive cultures… above all though, we humans are garbage and we have poisoned the entire planet. We must go extinct. Never get off this planet! Kill any who try to leave, gotta contain the cancer!
I mean, if you really were the ultimate nihilist, you wouldn’t have a problem with manliness because it wouldn’t matter anyway.
That’s some eco-fascism-adjacent thinking, at best. You’re using your negative opinion of humanity to justify mass murder.
doomer to the nth degree.
i hope you get better <3
The elimination of ghost jobs, for a start. If you have to jump through hoops for a job that doesn’t exist, that instills a strong distrust in society. People need money to make headway in their life, and shit like ghost jobs corrode the feeling of hope.
Once you cannot feel love for living anymore, that is a great deal of space in one’s heart to be filled with hatred.
Quit trying to make young white men feel guilty for existing. I come from poor white trash. As near as I can tell, my family never benefitted from slavery in any possible way. So fuck you. I dont feel bad about something I didn’t do, no one in my family did, and we aint gonna pay for it.
The world is not America - so how come this is an issue in other places?
I don’t know where this “white guilt” stuff comes from. I’m the same demo as you, but never felt that.
Oh boy you surely never were a part of the target then
You are losing the class war, that’s what matters. Not you being young, or white, or a man.
Promote and get behind actual progressive candidates, not corporatist shills like Hillary or Kamala. I like Kshama Sawant because she calls shit like she sees it.
Reclaim patriotism. Republicans love to wrap themselves in the flag, progressives need to do the same thing. It’s just a piece of the whole, but seeing pics of the LA protests with Mexican flags flying - that doesn’t help bring American voters to a cause.
Seeing a lot of flags in the No Kings marches was very satisfying. We have to take genuine patriotism back from fake MAGA patriots.
Simple. What do young men care about? Getting laid and getting paid. Promise them that, and you’ll get their votes.
You’ll need to use coded language, of course. But using coded language is politicians’ whole job.
What a childish take.
Well yes, you’re trying to reach out to literal non adults.
Well it would be a good starting point if we actually had progressive politicians. The Democrats lose because they have no substantive platform for actually helping people because doing that would go against their donors. To be clear, it’s the same for Republicans. There’s a reason why the government just ping pongs between the two parties. The only reliable base either party has is the one that’s more culturally aligned with them, whatever that means at the time.
If they literally ever credibly ran on basic issues like housing, food, healthcare and the elections were fair, they would win. But they don’t, because they can’t, so they will never have consistent support.
If they literally ever credibly ran on basic issues like housing, food, healthcare and the elections were fair, they would win. But they don’t, because they can’t, so they will never have consistent support.
Exactly. Lack of election reform - lack of representative government for minorities and less funded groups - is blocking so many kinds of progress.
Education. You will never be able to explain taxes in a way that can counter propaganda if the person is an idiot. You just won’t. And until then it’s an uphill battle.
I don’t follow the media and the debate where you live, but over here left leaning politicians and media tends to frame it as: women, minorites etc have a problem. Men are the problem.
You’re basically pushing any undecided man over to the right.
liberal politicians and liberal MSM frame it that way, because they have nothing else to offer but toxic culture wars.
Liberal politicians do it because it’s been pushed by the left. It’s how they keep leftists voting more centrally. They take left wing ideas, then water them down enough to appeal for centrist voters. Centrists find common sense ideas appealing, while those on the left get a dog whistle.
So we should lie?
Men are the problem. The patriarchy, the racism, the discrimination? Men.
Men are the problem. The patriarchy, the racism, the discrimination? Men.
Ultra rich men are the problem. We’re losing a class war.
You can’t have a post like this and then wonder “Why do so many men go to the right?”
Maybe men are sick of being painted with a broad brush. We all have our own thoughts, beliefs and feelings.
Troll grade: C-.
Does Trump pay you by the hour or per post?
Idk how do you “sell” being a decent fucking person?
This is all from the perspective of a non-american from a country where thankfully we are still liberal at heart and only entertain some progressive ideas, instead of buying it wholesale, meaning the right has yet to completely cannibalise the government over the mistakes of the left.
You can want everyone to receive equal opportunity and dignity, but people are not equal and will not end in the same place once the race is over. You can’t demand equality of outcome and onboard the most competitive demographic, there is a reason if the stereotype of leftist men is passive wimps. This is completely compatible with prgressive ideas, but it’s incompatible with progressive brains, apparently.
The core idea of intersectionality is that each demographic has its own issues and they manifest differently if more demographics overlap in the same individual (e.g. sexism against white women vs sexism against black women exhibit different tropes and connotations).
This does not mean whoever has the least minoritary traits is the most acceptable target, that is some marxist “oppressor vs oppressed” horseshit and, while it was probably the intended idea, it is massively counterproductive and doesn’t have to be the actual application of the issue.
Men have issues that women don’t have, women have issues that men don’t have. As soon as your movement decides to prioritise one they have lost the other.
The reason this does not happen with race is that no movement in the US can realistically exist politically without white people simply by virtue of how huge the white slice of the demo pie is, and because this whole thing was started by highly educated, economically mobile, overwhelingly white, college grads who live in very specific coastal bubbles, hence the endemic hatred of farmers and factory workers, the actual working class of the US, as hicks and racists, and the lionisation of serving staff like baristas and waiters (the only working class most large city dwellers ever interact with).
It’s just a fucking L on its face isn’t it? “Yes come join the party that thinks men being in power is the problem” fat fucking chance lol.
And when they do join, the parodies write themselves.
I don’t care if you think it’s “just a name” (especially in light of what progs consistently do over “just a name” and “just a statue” and so on) it’s a massive optics L that shows all of the horseshit about microaggressions and non-confrontational language and whatnot are entirely performative.
You have the most obvious othering language in the core ideas of the movement and then complain about microaggressions? And you wonder why people don’t take you seriously?
And while we’re on that:
You can’t have a political movement that does not tolerate dissent and confrontation, or only tolerates it in one direction.
The whole point of politics is to create a critical mass of people who align on some goal to push for it, you don’t have to agree with them on every point, if you had enough people who agree with you, you would be already in the majority and would not need to participate in politics.
Easy example from the last decade: TERFs.
Now, I don’t like TERFs, on account of them being radfems and thus automatically hostile to me due to the circumstances of my birth (i.e. penis), but you know what? I reckon they probably want women to have better salaries and fewer barriers to entry into professional fields.
Let them force themselves into political irrelevance if they refuse to play ball, don’t make a big fucking show of kicking them out of the movement, because then you end up on the back foot of having to explain “trans women are women” to the mass population and the TERFs simply need to say “look at these brainwashed biology deniers, they think males and females have no differences” and you end up eating your own ass in public, when the point is that trans women ought to be treated as women for their own good and a more welcoming society.
(side note: if you are in that brainless chunk of progs who do believe there is no difference between the sexes, I highly encourage you to look at the world records in any discipline with easily measured metrics such as 100m dash and freestyle swimming. Not a single male record is under the women’s record, in some cases every historical male record eclipses the current female one. Males and females are different, this should be acknowledged, and it should not be a barrier to equal dignity in treatment.)
A movement that can’t include anyone but the most in-line and pure of the ideological adepts is doomed to be irrelevant, and on that the progressives have an almost complete lock.
Harsh to hear but I believe this perspective to be both mostly true and very important to accept/understand
Keep in mind I’m not saying to accept TERFs, I’m saying to be smart about letting them cut themselves off instead of forcing them out.
wow. most of what you write creates culture that completely excludes and alienates women. See: hostility of current male dominated fields towards women. Blows my mind that you consider going backwards, rather than male culture evolving to be better human beings, to be a solution.
A competitive spirit is not morally wrong and calling men worse human beings for having one is so fundamentally wrong that I can only ask you to reread and reconsider the above post.
It’s amazing how well he articulated the problem and pointed out potential solutions just for you to give a perfect example of the type of rhetoric he is talking about that drives people away from the left. Like his link, the parody writes itself…
I have a bit of a preconceived notion as to why you are saying this, however I would rather ask you to be more specific before jumping to conclusions. Can you give concrete examples as to how my suggestions would alienate women?
TERFs are “radfem” in nothing but name.
They were here before you, just because you disagree with them doesn’t make them not feminists.
This is a great example of what I meant, btw: progressives act like every protestant denomination, calling eachother “not real christians” not realising they are all the same brand of sanctimonious.
Christ - some of these replies are exactly what a lot of women talk about when we say that Lemmy has a misogyny problem.
Blokes really don’t recognize how much harder shit actually is for women, overall. It would be lovely to just sit on a bench for 5 mins without a stranger coming to chat me up, or if people would stop crediting men for my work when they don’t even ask for it.
“How do we get young men into progressive politics?”
I know! I know! Make every conversation including this one about women!
What are you even talking about
I apologize in advance if I missed some very bad0 comments by not going into the deeply down voted comments.
But at least some of the concerns are about the young men being declared the “villains” and the other side declaring them to be the victims of injustice and they will gravitate toward the more workable message.
Like bystanders seeing the people making life hard for women and being jerks, but not themselves participating and the commentary is less “that guy is a dick” and more “why are all men so terrible?”
Sure a lot of guys are terrible, but the generalizations can make it feel like you can’t win.
at least some of the concerns are about the young men being declared the “villains” and the other side declaring them to be the victims of injustice and they will gravitate toward the more workable messag
That’s because people are framing this as a false dichotomy. All the masculinity warriors all try to frame the world as men are warriors under attack, and if you don’t think so you’re a man hating feminist.
In reality the majority of young dudes are just spending too much time being manipulated online and are blaming hardships created by our form of economics on wokeness.
Sure a lot of guys are terrible, but the generalizations can make it feel like you can’t win.
Only if you are weak of mind. I’m a dude, when someone says all men are bad…which never really happens. I don’t really take them literally, and even if I someday do run into someone who means it literally. Who cares, people are allowed to have opinions.
generalizations can make it feel like you can’t win.
Says the person who based their rebuttal by believing in a fabricated false dichotomy.
Easy
Every time there is a conversation regarding men issues, bring up how women have and keep having BIGGER issues
That’ll work wonders
The same as it always has been. Punk Rock. Conservative shit is so goddamn cringe it's really hard to imagine how it has convinced anyone that it is any kind of counterculture.
The reality of this all is rather complex but I think the greatest issue is fundamentally the empathy gap. Men’s issues are not recognized as issues, they’re just dismissed out of hand. I’m talking about the easy things like the sentencing and education gaps.
We need to start the discourse that these are very real problems that are worth addressing.
Another problem I personally run into is how it’s acceptable to discriminate against men, “kill all men” is acceptable but “kill all race” isn’t. Neither should be and we don’t recognize it as a problem, instead defaulting to arguments that are considered horrendous in another context.
Start by no longer telling men who have done nothing wrong they are responsible for the misdeeds of others. It breeds resentment and closes people to anything else you have to say.
Be nice and respectful to them and masculinity. Like “It’s masculine to protect the oppressed”
Don’t belittle anyone for that matter, such as based on race, gender or religions, even if you’re upset at that grouping.
Reframe spending as stimulating the economy.
Create jobs through a green new deal that allows for upeard mobility for the motivated. Small business grants.
Create tax incentives for, endorse and give loam grants to businesses that provide workers with a share of a company. Whether co-op type thing or convoluted stock share program.
Young men want to matter, and they want to see the results of their effort.
Legit I think it’s to shift the focus away from helping other people for the sake of being nice and onto uniting together to fight a common enemy - the bosses, corporations, etc. Dale the machinist from Alabama isn’t going to go to the protest to protect trans latinx PoC out of the kidness of his own heart but he might if he realizes it’s part of a larger project to go out to take back his rights from the people fucking him over, and fuck over his boss. Young men are drawn to masculinity and militaristic language right now, and left wing politics can be easily framed in those terms. Yes, being good to other people should be good in its own right but a lot of people don’t see it that way and we need to get them on our side too.
AnalogNotDigital@lemmy.wtf 3 hours ago
Man it’s like the majority of people here don’t have ‘regular guy’ friends.
The way to get to regular dudes, is to make them feel fucking included. Yes, diversity is fucking awesome. Yes, having women in leadership roles is fucking awesome. But for your average guy… who do they have to look up to on the left side of things? In the news? In congress? Who is on the national stage for these things? Who is talking to those people?
There isn’t anyone. There are tons of people talking to other groups of people, but there has been flat out no courting of the white dude demographic outside of White Dudes for Harris (which was brilliant but came too late).
Speak to the issues these guys are facing. Talk about dating. Talk about career struggles. Talk about feeling alone, and feeling vulnerable. And then, talk about solution based problem-solving for these things.
Why do you think the right wing latched onto guys who do the whole personal betterment thing? It’s the same shit that white supremacist groups do. They’ll get you with things that anyone can agree with like ‘Hey man if you work hard you’ll succeed. I fucking believe in you when no one else will.’ Then they go into the right wing bullshit because now they have you at an emotional level.
There is no online left presence doing these things, and there are multiple right wing people doing this shit.
Make a left wing Joe Rogan, and bro-dudes will watch that shit like shit on velcro. But it has to be a dude-bro talking to them. It can’t be Rachel Maddow or AOC, it has to be someone who comes from that background.
13igTyme@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Why do we need a role model anyway? I’m a straight white married male with no kids and very progressive. I don’t need a role model to not be a piece of shit.
notastatist@feddit.org 1 hour ago
Nice for you bro!
But you should also think that a lot of people dont have the luck to see life as you and struggle with much stuff.