The experience of young men is that they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege. Doubly so if the men have white or Asian ancestry.
Reactions to this vary. The ones described in the article have sought out addictions to escape this reality. Many others, including my son, have essentially said, "Well if this side rejects me, I'll go to the other side." The result is a rapid rise in conservatism, as documented in polls. See https://www.realclearpolling.com/stories/analysis/young-amer... for an example.
It is very easy, particularly for those who are very progressive, to blame the men themselves for these reactions. But it is a natural overreaction to the systematic rejection to a lifetime of being told that they are the problem. "You think I'm the problem? I'll show YOU what it looks like if I BECOME the problem!"
I firmly believe that these problematic behaviors and politics would be greatly softened if our society showed more empathy to these struggling men. But in our polarized society, their choices and beliefs label them as the enemy. Which causes some to double down into toxic extremism like siding with incels, or MGTOW.
Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization.
I think the underlying issue that the article briefly mentions but is likely a much more prominent cause is that we have destroyed local, physical communities over the past 30 years.
The same community where I grew up biking, walking, and wandering around as a child now has police who say that they must respond if an adult calls in about unsupervised children anywhere in town.
A combination of rising costs, privatization, social media, and smart phones has made it so children can't spend time together without adults monitoring them. They literally are not engaging with each other in physical space the way that many of us engaged with each other as children up until the 2000s. We can see and feel that things are different as adults, but for children the real impact is socially and emotionally stunting. Children no longer have any low-stakes space where they can experiment and learn. And when we destroy the physical, in-person community where children can find support and comfort, should we be surprised when they latch onto the loudest people on the internet?
I absolutely agree with the role of social media on our rising polarization.
Many people have talked about and analyzed this. But the analysis that I find most insightful is also the first one that I read. https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulato.... It not only discusses how the dynamics of what goes viral leads to polarization, it also explains how the economics of how news is delivered today mirror those that created the yellow press over a century ago. And why both wind up delivering polarizing conspiracy theories with limited factual accuracy.
I have no idea what to do about the problem. But at least I feel that I can understand it.
Society is kinetic and disparate because of social media
We're all on top of one another, and different cross tabs feel different ways about the same thing. So there is room for empathy and antipathy to coexist
If you read the New York Times and The Atlantic there is lots of empathy for the male loneliness crisis
I am in between the age of you and your son it seems. As a man who has not missed any of the "misandry", I think the overly online conservative young men are an embarrassment and I hope they grow out of it
> It is very easy, particularly for those who are very progressive, to blame the men
What it means to be progressive became so distorted, it’s almost as bad as conservative, in most cases “progressive” groups and parties are places for willing and thinking people to defuse and not actually do or contribute anything.
> Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization.
It doesn't matter how polarized "both sides" are. Both sides is a subset of the whole society. As they become more and more insane in their polarization, more and more of society realizes that they are insane, and becomes repulsed. The pendulum is restored not by the other side becoming dominant. The pendulum swings back by the middle looking at the extreme and saying "No, you're insane, we aren't going to walk down your road."
> Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization.
It may not have to. There are societies where men and women can vote, and there are societies where men can vote. If there is enough male anger at the left then men can disenfranchise women (heavily correlated with Democrats) and the left loses viability due to lack of votes. And that can be the new stable equilibrium.
It is true that both sides are working to disenfranchise the other. Mostly through gerrymandering. Like how California just decided to screw democracy with Proposition 50, because Texas chose to screw democracy the other way.
But the real risk isn't an attempt to appeal the 19th amendment. It is that an authoritarian executive abolishes democracy entirely. That this is the risk has been obvious for a long time. Latin America is full of countries who adopted constitutions based on the US Constitution when they threw off Spanish rule. Those democracies consistently fell when legislative deadlock and judicial corruption created a window for an authoritarian executive to declare a state of emergency and override both.
We have the legislative deadlock, and a court system that is rapidly losing public respect. We have an authoritarian leaning President who is already teasing about an unconstitutional third term. He probably doesn't have the popular support to actually abolish democracy. But if we remain this polarized for another decade or two, we're likely to go the same way as every other democracy whose constitution was based on ours.
In the US, there would have to be a constitutional amendment, and no amendment proposed after 1971 has been ratified, and getting 38 states to ratify disenfranchisement of women could only happen in a very different political landscape than we have today.
I won't pretend I understand your situation or your circumstances. I sympathize in that raising a son is challenging, I struggle with it quite a lot myself.
My personal experience is that I have not seen "You are the problem" very often, but I have seen "THEY say YOU are the problem!" coming from conservative circles, very often. It's a very blatant tactic. Make "the other" an enemy, and then the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Again, nothing I said invalidates what you are saying. Both could very well be true at the same time. I live in Europe, if it helps. In any case, I wish you good raising that son.
> they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege.
This is not me. This is not anyone I know. This is not anyone I've ever known. However, this is what I see people say online about other people who they've never met.
Did you grow up consistently being told that every single thing is your fault because you have male privilege, or are you repeating something you read online or in the media?
I grew up with the sentiment that forms of masculinity are some of the chief evils of society being the dominant narrative. I grew up learning that the US is patriarchal culture, and that it must continue to evolve and progress in order to truly provide equal opportunity to women. This narrative always seemed to view men as a kind of primordial oppressor. I remember in high school and college it was common for some people to say, "Kill All Men!" as a half joking slogan. I'm 24 for reference.
I confess, I'm not very bright and am having trouble decoding the subtleties of "Kill All Men!" as you have done. Could you explain how you got from "All" to "just the bad ones"? Would you interpret "Kill All Women" in the same manner?
Tangential question: do you advocate death for all bad people, a group which according to you includes the president?
I am not claiming my experience generalizes here. But my experience was absolutely saturated by a narrative that men are oppressors who are the cause of many/most of the ills of society. The nuance of only including men who are "evil" was not present in my experience. A conversation might go like:
A: "Kill All Men! They are disgusting"
B: "Well, surely not all men, some men are noble or allies to your cause"
A: "When I look at who the evil people are, they are almost all men, and they are supported by many men. Men are responsible for the evil and for failing to stop the evil. For every man that commits date rape, there's 5 men that hear about it and don't do anything. They are all responsible, and just as guilty."
I'm certainly not claiming that there is widespread oppression towards men, but at least in my generation (particularly in higher education) the overton window includes denigrating masculinity but doesn't include admiring it.
If I was a conservative activist and I wanted to persuade you to join me, something I would consider is trying to use social media to convince you that my political opponents or society at large are your enemy.
There's a nuance here: a lot of times, it's people hearing "male privilege is a problem" and immediately being told that this means "you personally are at fault!" So it's very understandable that people believe that they're being told "everything is their fault because they have male privilege" when they're not.
This is a strawman argument, which is already answered in my comment.
My impression is not based on something I read online or in the media. Nor is it based on my experiences back when I was growing up in the 1980s.
My impression is based on the lived experience of my children, as consistently described by them. And particularly of the opinion of my son, who has become radicalized against it.
His radicalization started with outrage that when he applied to college, his excellent SAT scores were not allowed to be submitted to most of the colleges that he wanted to go to. "Because the tests are racist and sexist." Luckily he managed to get into UC San Diego. But there he found a requirement for taking a series of courses that he saw as straight up DEI indoctrination. The content of which often outraged him.
It didn't help that his very real struggles were often dismissed by the very same people who were lecturing him about his privilege. He learned that he will never be heard, and he is mad about it.
Do you have any more takes demonstrating your unwillingness to hear the lived experiences of people you disagree with? Demonstrating the dismissiveness that my son is overreacting against?
> But there he found a requirement for taking a series of courses that he saw as straight up DEI indoctrination. The content of which often outraged him.
Oh no, having to take courses he didn't like. And content of which we just have to take his word for is enough to be outraged about.
Is college not a place to go to open yourself to other ideas?
"A lot of people say" all sorts of stupid things online. That doesn't mean it's some sort of societal movement.
I'd love to see actual concrete examples of "they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault." Not imaginary slights conjured up by people with a persecution complex. Actual social institutions actually telling men that everything is their fault. If they are growing up "in this world" then there must be plenty of examples of this somewhere.
Most of the people who say so online have a business model of farming the very outrage and polarization people are talking about. Most of the rest are just following a trend.
This sentiment seems to be especially common with white progressive women in urban metropolitan areas and their (so-called) "allies." It is the first setting in which I encountered these ideas being regularly and shamelessly circulated.
As a visible and ethnic minority I did not encounter such rhetoric growing up in predominantly immigrant socially conservative suburban environments.
There is a certain group of women who cannot accept that women can be at fault, for example that a woman can be an abuser, regardless of the facts.
> As a visible and ethnic minority I did not encounter such rhetoric growing up in predominantly immigrant socially conservative suburban environments.
Not even social liberal ethnic members of minorities seem to be as inclined to do it was affluent white women.
I think some people who are actually privileged play up being women (or being gay, or ethnic minority, or whatever) in order to play at belonging to an oppressed group. Its a bit like people claiming to be working class because they were as children, even if they are now living in a mansion.
I am visible ethnic minority but did not grow up in a predominately immigrant or socially conservative area in the UK. I have lived elsewhere though.
I've not seen anyone express this sentiment, beyond a few internet trolls, either. I've only seen a certain kind of men claiming that it's always expressed towards them. It appears to be mostly imagined in their heads, though I'm open to seeing the evidence that every time you walk down the street you are heckled for not using your male privilege to solve climate change.
I disagree entirely with this narrative that somehow keeps get repeated. The mere existence of white men has never been vilified. You know what has? Assholes. Perverts. Bigots. Racists. That is it. That’s all it is. For some reason, there is a subset of white men who see that as a direct attack on themselves.
Hillary was exactly right when she spoke of deplorables. The mask is off these days.
Not all young men got butthurt about a reexamination of whether white men should have the world handed to them by default. Some were just more prone to a mindset of victimhood about it.
It's taking it way too personally for anyone to feel they're being blamed for history. That's a choice, and a convenient justification for raging against it.
The experience of young men is that they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege. Doubly so if the men have white or Asian ancestry.
The advice my father gave still applies today, though few people (in this case, white males) have the stomach to hear it:
I don't think I would exactly call these men "monks". It has been pretty normal throughout history for a fairly large proportion of men, especially those lower down the economic ladder, to be permanently single or not marry until pretty late in life. These days, they don't have to work as much to avoid complete destitution or starvation, they're not as likely to die young, and they've largely replaced visiting cheap prostitutes with gooning, but otherwise this is not any unprecedented phenomenon.
It does mean that the economic growth that allowed most men to be a plausible marriage partner in the mid-20th century no longer obtains, which is a bad thing, despite the small comfort of consumer goods being cheap enough to alleviate some of this pain.
Economics aside most women aren't plausible marriageable partners these days either. The key difference is they are in control of the culture. Men cannot flourish in a culture that demonizes them.
Marriageable men are canceled if they don't play by the women's rules.
Fortunately, these days, men who don't want to play by "the women's rules" are free to find (and even have legally recognized) companionship with other men with similar concerns.
Ehhh- if these men really wanted companionship, they could find it. It only takes a little social courage, and accepting others (as they wish to be accepted). They are not being canceled because they don’t play by women’s rules.
The fact is, these men are deeply confused and push away as they pull in.
My suggestion would be to lean into monasticism and not just use the term ‘monk’ as a euphemism for not having female relationships. I don’t think anyone should be a monk long-term, but use it as a transitional period to examine and explore why they are so confused and come to terms with it.
Blaming women for their problems just makes it intractable because their problem is within themselves
> Ehhh- if these men really wanted companionship, they could find it. It only takes a little social courage, and accepting others (as they wish to be accepted). They are not being canceled because they don’t play by women’s rules.
I know at least one guy who refuses to "settle" for anything but his ideal woman - and frankly, that ideal woman is out of his reach, mostly but not entirely due to his personality.
So yes - men could absolutely find companionship. But a lot of them refuse to accept anything that's not a supermodel whose day consists of administering on-demand blowjobs.
I do think the original commenter could've elaborated more, but asking for citations in this type of thread seems strange. It's not like politics where you can link to a statement from <representative of political party> to prove a point. There is no single representative of men or women.
I indirectly know one or two people who match this lonely home gambling archetype (friends of a friend) and every day I feel gratitude that I am (for the most part) socially well-adjusted and supported.
The handful of men like this who I've spoken to I find to be pretty self-aware and somewhat self-loathing. I often find that what they need is someone who can listen to them, give them some tactful encouragement, and occasionally help them find a strategy that will help them to overcome the troubles that they're facing. Be that therapy or a debtors anonymous meeting.
It's a challenging world that is often overwhelming to manage by yourself. It's easy to feel dis-empowered when you don't have a solid social circle that you can lean on, or who can help to re-direct your bad tendencies. Helping folks find their own social group can be immensely helpful for people who are trying to course correct.
Risk-aversion in the social sphere has combined with their risk-chasing in the market
I'd argue that it's a little different: The perceived risk/reward ratio of social interaction has simply fallen so low that it seems like even more of a fool's game than gambling.
The skinner box gives unpredictable rewards, but at the same time the user can be certain that a reward will come. Whereas (for those poor unfortunate souls), the expected reward for putting themselves out there is zero, zilch, nada. That's what it means to be hopeless.
I feel like the internet/social media has taken over the communication paradigm, and there are conversations that simply cannot and do not take place on social media in any real depth. Deep communication between parties needs those parties to allow for the possibility of recontextualization - telling another story.
If I say that somesuch social movement is causing problems, then people in that social movement will feel attacked. Even bringing up somesuch social movement is a great way to increase vitriol on social media. It just makes people angry because people already feel justified in their anger at the demons on the 'other side'
It feels there there are too many things that are 'Agree with me 100% or we have to fight'.
I feel like the true luxury good of the future is human attention, and specifically careful emotional validation.
My criticism with this article is that the author seems to lump all time alone behavior into the 'bad' category. What about the guys spending time alone to work on their guitar solo, dive deeper into a branch of AI math, or how about spending hours reading plato?
I too was surprised by the author's tendency to suggest that alone time is inherently bad. If you aren't particularly interested in the society you live in, there is nothing wrong with spending time alone. I don't really suggest you take up gambling, smoking, or drinking to pass the time. But spending time alone is just fine.
Fixed typo! Yeah, alone time is inherently a male thing, and is probably what drove a lot of the historical breakthroughs in the past. This need to always be socializing is a very feminine construct and probably does more damage in the long run than people realize (i.e. to deep breakthroughs, case in point how science has now become a popularity game rather than a search for the truth). A more nuanced article would have delved deeper into the types of alone behavior that are beneficial vs those that are destructive.
An interesting take, but I think it goes a bit too far; you don't need to be a porn or gambling addict for increasingly available screen-based entertainment/interaction to "leech" time and motivation that you would otherwise spend with humans instead.
I'd be hesitant with value judgements, but this is most certainly going to affect our society massively (from decreased reproduction rates alone if nothing else).
I feel there must have been smaller similar trends in the past with easily obtainable written entertainment (books).
I don't see a problem here. And as long as they're hurting nobody IDGAF.
> "The experience of young men is that they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege."
Men had and have privilege, that's a simple sociological and sociohistorical fact. That, because of that fact, "everything is their [i. e. men's] fault" is a reductio ad absurdum.
> "'You think I'm the problem? I'll show YOU what it looks like if I BECOME the problem!'"
Ah, the old classic: threats and blackmail. Trad dudes just don't get, do they? After hundreds, if not thousands, of years of "I'll show YOU!1!!", that song and dance is stale. People become more empowered individually, with more individual freedom(s). So they are less inclined to settle for bad compromises.
> I’ve been thinking recently about these guys who are dating less, socializing less, and leaving their home less, while filling their media with more porn and betting parlays. They seem to prefer the financial discomfort of losing a bet to the social anxiety of being rejected on a date. They find intimacy scary and gambling exciting. They furnish their rooms like high-tech monasteries and gravitate toward media that works like a slot machine.
> These young men seem to me like modern ascetics who find themselves somehow trapped on the betting floor of the economy. They are like monks, yes. But more than that: They are monks in a casino. Risk-aversion in the social sphere has combined with their risk-chasing in the market, and it’s created a genuinely berserk modern life script.
This seems like a bad take. There's no preference there, these people have crippling addictions, it's a form of mental illness. It's like saying schizophrenics prefer talking to voices than having a home, or that people who are clinically depressed prefer napping over going to work.
It's also weird to have friends who have spent time in actual monasteries and then read an article that calls people suffering from compulsive behaviors "monks". They seem awfully attached to the vices of the modern life to be anything remotely monk-like to me.
That party graph is unholy. I live my life to reverse it and I really think one of the only meanings of life is just to party and have fun. I want the rest of my life to be filled with parties, both hosting them and attending them. If you can’t tell, I love parties. Discovering that later in life was really a lightbulb moment. Humans were meant for parties. That’s what we were doing around the fire every night with our friends and family and it is just gone now. The horrible mental health and depression you see is from that. We haven’t evolved to not need that and I hope we never do.
This is funny because I feel the complete opposite. I am in my mid-40s now, and I go to maybe one 'party' a month, usually at a family friend's house for a pool party or a dinner.
When I was younger, I thought I was SUPPOSED to want to party, so I went out with friends many nights a week. Sometimes I would have fun, but I would always dread it. I hate the noise, the crowded feeling, bumping into other people, trying to make small talk with people I was not that interested in talking to. I much preferred being home by myself, playing games or working on hobby projects. I remember in college I loved when I was too young to go to the bars; we would pre-party at our apartment and I would enjoy it for an hour or two, and then they would leave for the bars and I would stay home and do my own thing. It was perfect.
I just thought I was supposed to like parties and going out.
Then I got older, and I met my now-wife at work. On one of our first dates, we were going to pick up her cousin from a bar. We get there, and it is HAPPENING. Loud music, people dancing, people waiting in line to get in. It looked miserable to me, but I was getting ready to act like I enjoyed it... and then I look over to my future wife and she sighs and says "that looks awful". I knew right there she was the woman for me.
We have been married for over 10 years now, and we still hate going out to loud events. We don't mind socializing in smaller groups, but we are comfortable that we don't like going to loud bars or clubs or big parties. We like staying home with the kids, quietly playing games or reading. We have also learned, through having our kids diagnosed and then ourselves, that we are both on the autism spectrum. We are no longer ashamed of who we are, and don't pretend we are the same as everyone else.
I think people are different, and need different things. We can't assume that what we need will work for everyone else.
But... you have autism? It's practically a symptom of that condition that you wouldn't like parties. It's like a person with acid reflux criticizing spicy food--like, how are we supposed to accept this as a criticism of spicy food and not just a personal issue?
Socializing with a small group is still a party in the sense of the ur-human gathering around a campfire. Not every party is something out of Animal House.
This message is never going to go over well among those that the young men are reacting against.
The fact that they don't get listened to causes them to double down into extremism.
Our current levels of extremism have put us in danger of sliding into becoming a totalitarian state. That risk will not lessen unless both sides recognize that extremism itself is the danger. Underneath the anger, angry people are often hurt people. Labeling them enemies and hurting them further certainly feels good in the moment. But in the long run it is counterproductive.
What exactly are people not hearing? Say the quiet part out loud already. It is the fact they can no longer openly shit on women and minorities and homosexuals and trans people that they have issues with. The fact that being white and having a white name are not enough to be granted a favorable job. That is all that is changing these days. Now consider what it says about the men who are kicking and screaming about this.
When I grew up, my dad always yelled at me every day before school about how climate change is my fault because of my white male privilege and I need to chow down ze bugs or I'm a racist.
That didn't happen. I just made that up. Was that also your first instinct upon reading it - that I made it up?
But I see men saying things like this happened to them, and that is my first instinct: it didn't happen and they made it up.
Am I supposed to stop doing that? Am I supposed to believe them?
Listening to real problems is good - are you saying I should listen to obvious trolls as well? That is what "bad faith" means - it's a euphemism for "obviously trolling".
Perhaps you even think I'm lying when I say I see people saying things like this online - but if that's the case, that means you're part of the same problem you cite, since you're not listening what I'm saying. So what solution do you propose to all this?
The experience of young men is that they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege. Doubly so if the men have white or Asian ancestry.
Reactions to this vary. The ones described in the article have sought out addictions to escape this reality. Many others, including my son, have essentially said, "Well if this side rejects me, I'll go to the other side." The result is a rapid rise in conservatism, as documented in polls. See https://www.realclearpolling.com/stories/analysis/young-amer... for an example.
It is very easy, particularly for those who are very progressive, to blame the men themselves for these reactions. But it is a natural overreaction to the systematic rejection to a lifetime of being told that they are the problem. "You think I'm the problem? I'll show YOU what it looks like if I BECOME the problem!"
I firmly believe that these problematic behaviors and politics would be greatly softened if our society showed more empathy to these struggling men. But in our polarized society, their choices and beliefs label them as the enemy. Which causes some to double down into toxic extremism like siding with incels, or MGTOW.
Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization.
I think the underlying issue that the article briefly mentions but is likely a much more prominent cause is that we have destroyed local, physical communities over the past 30 years.
The same community where I grew up biking, walking, and wandering around as a child now has police who say that they must respond if an adult calls in about unsupervised children anywhere in town.
A combination of rising costs, privatization, social media, and smart phones has made it so children can't spend time together without adults monitoring them. They literally are not engaging with each other in physical space the way that many of us engaged with each other as children up until the 2000s. We can see and feel that things are different as adults, but for children the real impact is socially and emotionally stunting. Children no longer have any low-stakes space where they can experiment and learn. And when we destroy the physical, in-person community where children can find support and comfort, should we be surprised when they latch onto the loudest people on the internet?
I absolutely agree with the role of social media on our rising polarization.
Many people have talked about and analyzed this. But the analysis that I find most insightful is also the first one that I read. https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulato.... It not only discusses how the dynamics of what goes viral leads to polarization, it also explains how the economics of how news is delivered today mirror those that created the yellow press over a century ago. And why both wind up delivering polarizing conspiracy theories with limited factual accuracy.
I have no idea what to do about the problem. But at least I feel that I can understand it.
Society is kinetic and disparate because of social media
We're all on top of one another, and different cross tabs feel different ways about the same thing. So there is room for empathy and antipathy to coexist
If you read the New York Times and The Atlantic there is lots of empathy for the male loneliness crisis
I am in between the age of you and your son it seems. As a man who has not missed any of the "misandry", I think the overly online conservative young men are an embarrassment and I hope they grow out of it
> It is very easy, particularly for those who are very progressive, to blame the men
What it means to be progressive became so distorted, it’s almost as bad as conservative, in most cases “progressive” groups and parties are places for willing and thinking people to defuse and not actually do or contribute anything.
> Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization.
It doesn't matter how polarized "both sides" are. Both sides is a subset of the whole society. As they become more and more insane in their polarization, more and more of society realizes that they are insane, and becomes repulsed. The pendulum is restored not by the other side becoming dominant. The pendulum swings back by the middle looking at the extreme and saying "No, you're insane, we aren't going to walk down your road."
> Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization.
It may not have to. There are societies where men and women can vote, and there are societies where men can vote. If there is enough male anger at the left then men can disenfranchise women (heavily correlated with Democrats) and the left loses viability due to lack of votes. And that can be the new stable equilibrium.
It is true that both sides are working to disenfranchise the other. Mostly through gerrymandering. Like how California just decided to screw democracy with Proposition 50, because Texas chose to screw democracy the other way.
But the real risk isn't an attempt to appeal the 19th amendment. It is that an authoritarian executive abolishes democracy entirely. That this is the risk has been obvious for a long time. Latin America is full of countries who adopted constitutions based on the US Constitution when they threw off Spanish rule. Those democracies consistently fell when legislative deadlock and judicial corruption created a window for an authoritarian executive to declare a state of emergency and override both.
We have the legislative deadlock, and a court system that is rapidly losing public respect. We have an authoritarian leaning President who is already teasing about an unconstitutional third term. He probably doesn't have the popular support to actually abolish democracy. But if we remain this polarized for another decade or two, we're likely to go the same way as every other democracy whose constitution was based on ours.
In the US, there would have to be a constitutional amendment, and no amendment proposed after 1971 has been ratified, and getting 38 states to ratify disenfranchisement of women could only happen in a very different political landscape than we have today.
I won't pretend I understand your situation or your circumstances. I sympathize in that raising a son is challenging, I struggle with it quite a lot myself.
My personal experience is that I have not seen "You are the problem" very often, but I have seen "THEY say YOU are the problem!" coming from conservative circles, very often. It's a very blatant tactic. Make "the other" an enemy, and then the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Again, nothing I said invalidates what you are saying. Both could very well be true at the same time. I live in Europe, if it helps. In any case, I wish you good raising that son.
> they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege.
This is not me. This is not anyone I know. This is not anyone I've ever known. However, this is what I see people say online about other people who they've never met.
Did you grow up consistently being told that every single thing is your fault because you have male privilege, or are you repeating something you read online or in the media?
I grew up with the sentiment that forms of masculinity are some of the chief evils of society being the dominant narrative. I grew up learning that the US is patriarchal culture, and that it must continue to evolve and progress in order to truly provide equal opportunity to women. This narrative always seemed to view men as a kind of primordial oppressor. I remember in high school and college it was common for some people to say, "Kill All Men!" as a half joking slogan. I'm 24 for reference.
No, it is only referring to men who are, you know, evil to other people. Of which there are plenty of examples. One of them is our president.
I confess, I'm not very bright and am having trouble decoding the subtleties of "Kill All Men!" as you have done. Could you explain how you got from "All" to "just the bad ones"? Would you interpret "Kill All Women" in the same manner?
Tangential question: do you advocate death for all bad people, a group which according to you includes the president?
I am not claiming my experience generalizes here. But my experience was absolutely saturated by a narrative that men are oppressors who are the cause of many/most of the ills of society. The nuance of only including men who are "evil" was not present in my experience. A conversation might go like:
A: "Kill All Men! They are disgusting"
B: "Well, surely not all men, some men are noble or allies to your cause"
A: "When I look at who the evil people are, they are almost all men, and they are supported by many men. Men are responsible for the evil and for failing to stop the evil. For every man that commits date rape, there's 5 men that hear about it and don't do anything. They are all responsible, and just as guilty."
I'm certainly not claiming that there is widespread oppression towards men, but at least in my generation (particularly in higher education) the overton window includes denigrating masculinity but doesn't include admiring it.
If I was a conservative activist and I wanted to persuade you to join me, something I would consider is trying to use social media to convince you that my political opponents or society at large are your enemy.
There's a nuance here: a lot of times, it's people hearing "male privilege is a problem" and immediately being told that this means "you personally are at fault!" So it's very understandable that people believe that they're being told "everything is their fault because they have male privilege" when they're not.
This is a strawman argument, which is already answered in my comment.
My impression is not based on something I read online or in the media. Nor is it based on my experiences back when I was growing up in the 1980s.
My impression is based on the lived experience of my children, as consistently described by them. And particularly of the opinion of my son, who has become radicalized against it.
His radicalization started with outrage that when he applied to college, his excellent SAT scores were not allowed to be submitted to most of the colleges that he wanted to go to. "Because the tests are racist and sexist." Luckily he managed to get into UC San Diego. But there he found a requirement for taking a series of courses that he saw as straight up DEI indoctrination. The content of which often outraged him.
It didn't help that his very real struggles were often dismissed by the very same people who were lecturing him about his privilege. He learned that he will never be heard, and he is mad about it.
Do you have any more takes demonstrating your unwillingness to hear the lived experiences of people you disagree with? Demonstrating the dismissiveness that my son is overreacting against?
A quick look at their post history will tell you exactly what kind of person they are.
> But there he found a requirement for taking a series of courses that he saw as straight up DEI indoctrination. The content of which often outraged him.
Oh no, having to take courses he didn't like. And content of which we just have to take his word for is enough to be outraged about.
Is college not a place to go to open yourself to other ideas?
It is something a lot of people say online, and some aspects of it happen in real life.
"A lot of people say" all sorts of stupid things online. That doesn't mean it's some sort of societal movement.
I'd love to see actual concrete examples of "they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault." Not imaginary slights conjured up by people with a persecution complex. Actual social institutions actually telling men that everything is their fault. If they are growing up "in this world" then there must be plenty of examples of this somewhere.
Most of the people who say so online have a business model of farming the very outrage and polarization people are talking about. Most of the rest are just following a trend.
This sentiment seems to be especially common with white progressive women in urban metropolitan areas and their (so-called) "allies." It is the first setting in which I encountered these ideas being regularly and shamelessly circulated.
As a visible and ethnic minority I did not encounter such rhetoric growing up in predominantly immigrant socially conservative suburban environments.
I noticed the same thing in the UK.
There is a certain group of women who cannot accept that women can be at fault, for example that a woman can be an abuser, regardless of the facts.
> As a visible and ethnic minority I did not encounter such rhetoric growing up in predominantly immigrant socially conservative suburban environments.
Not even social liberal ethnic members of minorities seem to be as inclined to do it was affluent white women.
I think some people who are actually privileged play up being women (or being gay, or ethnic minority, or whatever) in order to play at belonging to an oppressed group. Its a bit like people claiming to be working class because they were as children, even if they are now living in a mansion.
I am visible ethnic minority but did not grow up in a predominately immigrant or socially conservative area in the UK. I have lived elsewhere though.
I've not seen anyone express this sentiment, beyond a few internet trolls, either. I've only seen a certain kind of men claiming that it's always expressed towards them. It appears to be mostly imagined in their heads, though I'm open to seeing the evidence that every time you walk down the street you are heckled for not using your male privilege to solve climate change.
Well I guess I won't be heard here either then, when my lived experience as a visible and marginalized ethnic minority is being literally erased.
How is that the conclusion you draw from the post you replied to?
I disagree entirely with this narrative that somehow keeps get repeated. The mere existence of white men has never been vilified. You know what has? Assholes. Perverts. Bigots. Racists. That is it. That’s all it is. For some reason, there is a subset of white men who see that as a direct attack on themselves.
Hillary was exactly right when she spoke of deplorables. The mask is off these days.
Not all young men got butthurt about a reexamination of whether white men should have the world handed to them by default. Some were just more prone to a mindset of victimhood about it.
It's taking it way too personally for anyone to feel they're being blamed for history. That's a choice, and a convenient justification for raging against it.
^^ this comment is exactly what OP is talking about.
The experience of young men is that they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege. Doubly so if the men have white or Asian ancestry.
The advice my father gave still applies today, though few people (in this case, white males) have the stomach to hear it:
Man up. Life isn't fair. Get over it.
I don't think I would exactly call these men "monks". It has been pretty normal throughout history for a fairly large proportion of men, especially those lower down the economic ladder, to be permanently single or not marry until pretty late in life. These days, they don't have to work as much to avoid complete destitution or starvation, they're not as likely to die young, and they've largely replaced visiting cheap prostitutes with gooning, but otherwise this is not any unprecedented phenomenon.
It does mean that the economic growth that allowed most men to be a plausible marriage partner in the mid-20th century no longer obtains, which is a bad thing, despite the small comfort of consumer goods being cheap enough to alleviate some of this pain.
Economics aside most women aren't plausible marriageable partners these days either. The key difference is they are in control of the culture. Men cannot flourish in a culture that demonizes them.
Marriageable men are canceled if they don't play by the women's rules.
Fortunately, these days, men who don't want to play by "the women's rules" are free to find (and even have legally recognized) companionship with other men with similar concerns.
If only sexuality was a choice, I wouldn't have suffered as much in life.
(Gay, single, in my 30's, heh.)
Ehhh- if these men really wanted companionship, they could find it. It only takes a little social courage, and accepting others (as they wish to be accepted). They are not being canceled because they don’t play by women’s rules.
The fact is, these men are deeply confused and push away as they pull in.
My suggestion would be to lean into monasticism and not just use the term ‘monk’ as a euphemism for not having female relationships. I don’t think anyone should be a monk long-term, but use it as a transitional period to examine and explore why they are so confused and come to terms with it.
Blaming women for their problems just makes it intractable because their problem is within themselves
Everyone's problem is with themselves.
Companionship is easy to find, but finding someone who respects you is not. Most women do not respect the men they are with.
Without male-only spaces and strong male leadership more men and women will grow up lost and confused.
> Most women do not respect the men they are with.
I very much doubt this is true. Do you have any evidence for this claim?
Or, is it possible that you mean something else when you say "respect" than I do? If so, please elaborate. I'm curious.
I'm thinking OP is just vague-booking the "which opinions, mfer???" goose meme.
> Ehhh- if these men really wanted companionship, they could find it. It only takes a little social courage, and accepting others (as they wish to be accepted). They are not being canceled because they don’t play by women’s rules.
I know at least one guy who refuses to "settle" for anything but his ideal woman - and frankly, that ideal woman is out of his reach, mostly but not entirely due to his personality.
So yes - men could absolutely find companionship. But a lot of them refuse to accept anything that's not a supermodel whose day consists of administering on-demand blowjobs.
> The key difference is they are in control of the culture
Big ol' [citation needed] on that one.
I do think the original commenter could've elaborated more, but asking for citations in this type of thread seems strange. It's not like politics where you can link to a statement from <representative of political party> to prove a point. There is no single representative of men or women.
No, but this is the sort of thing you'd expect the social sciences to have published research on if it were at all true.
Not op but there is some evidence emerging that women have an advantage in hiring in media and academia.
https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/rethinking-sexism-in-...
Whaaaat.
I indirectly know one or two people who match this lonely home gambling archetype (friends of a friend) and every day I feel gratitude that I am (for the most part) socially well-adjusted and supported.
The handful of men like this who I've spoken to I find to be pretty self-aware and somewhat self-loathing. I often find that what they need is someone who can listen to them, give them some tactful encouragement, and occasionally help them find a strategy that will help them to overcome the troubles that they're facing. Be that therapy or a debtors anonymous meeting.
It's a challenging world that is often overwhelming to manage by yourself. It's easy to feel dis-empowered when you don't have a solid social circle that you can lean on, or who can help to re-direct your bad tendencies. Helping folks find their own social group can be immensely helpful for people who are trying to course correct.
The skinner box gives unpredictable rewards, but at the same time the user can be certain that a reward will come. Whereas (for those poor unfortunate souls), the expected reward for putting themselves out there is zero, zilch, nada. That's what it means to be hopeless.
I feel like the internet/social media has taken over the communication paradigm, and there are conversations that simply cannot and do not take place on social media in any real depth. Deep communication between parties needs those parties to allow for the possibility of recontextualization - telling another story.
If I say that somesuch social movement is causing problems, then people in that social movement will feel attacked. Even bringing up somesuch social movement is a great way to increase vitriol on social media. It just makes people angry because people already feel justified in their anger at the demons on the 'other side'
It feels there there are too many things that are 'Agree with me 100% or we have to fight'.
I feel like the true luxury good of the future is human attention, and specifically careful emotional validation.
My criticism with this article is that the author seems to lump all time alone behavior into the 'bad' category. What about the guys spending time alone to work on their guitar solo, dive deeper into a branch of AI math, or how about spending hours reading plato?
I think you meant "guitar solo".
I too was surprised by the author's tendency to suggest that alone time is inherently bad. If you aren't particularly interested in the society you live in, there is nothing wrong with spending time alone. I don't really suggest you take up gambling, smoking, or drinking to pass the time. But spending time alone is just fine.
Even if you are interested in the society, solitude isn't an inherently negative thing.
Fixed typo! Yeah, alone time is inherently a male thing, and is probably what drove a lot of the historical breakthroughs in the past. This need to always be socializing is a very feminine construct and probably does more damage in the long run than people realize (i.e. to deep breakthroughs, case in point how science has now become a popularity game rather than a search for the truth). A more nuanced article would have delved deeper into the types of alone behavior that are beneficial vs those that are destructive.
An interesting take, but I think it goes a bit too far; you don't need to be a porn or gambling addict for increasingly available screen-based entertainment/interaction to "leech" time and motivation that you would otherwise spend with humans instead.
I'd be hesitant with value judgements, but this is most certainly going to affect our society massively (from decreased reproduction rates alone if nothing else).
I feel there must have been smaller similar trends in the past with easily obtainable written entertainment (books).
I don't see a problem here. And as long as they're hurting nobody IDGAF.
> "The experience of young men is that they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege."
Men had and have privilege, that's a simple sociological and sociohistorical fact. That, because of that fact, "everything is their [i. e. men's] fault" is a reductio ad absurdum.
> "'You think I'm the problem? I'll show YOU what it looks like if I BECOME the problem!'"
Ah, the old classic: threats and blackmail. Trad dudes just don't get, do they? After hundreds, if not thousands, of years of "I'll show YOU!1!!", that song and dance is stale. People become more empowered individually, with more individual freedom(s). So they are less inclined to settle for bad compromises.
> I’ve been thinking recently about these guys who are dating less, socializing less, and leaving their home less, while filling their media with more porn and betting parlays. They seem to prefer the financial discomfort of losing a bet to the social anxiety of being rejected on a date. They find intimacy scary and gambling exciting. They furnish their rooms like high-tech monasteries and gravitate toward media that works like a slot machine.
> These young men seem to me like modern ascetics who find themselves somehow trapped on the betting floor of the economy. They are like monks, yes. But more than that: They are monks in a casino. Risk-aversion in the social sphere has combined with their risk-chasing in the market, and it’s created a genuinely berserk modern life script.
This seems like a bad take. There's no preference there, these people have crippling addictions, it's a form of mental illness. It's like saying schizophrenics prefer talking to voices than having a home, or that people who are clinically depressed prefer napping over going to work.
There are a lot of things I dislike about this article.
"Porn addiction" is a paleologism that caused a lot of harm so the scientific community has largely abandoned it. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/2018...
It's also weird to have friends who have spent time in actual monasteries and then read an article that calls people suffering from compulsive behaviors "monks". They seem awfully attached to the vices of the modern life to be anything remotely monk-like to me.
That party graph is unholy. I live my life to reverse it and I really think one of the only meanings of life is just to party and have fun. I want the rest of my life to be filled with parties, both hosting them and attending them. If you can’t tell, I love parties. Discovering that later in life was really a lightbulb moment. Humans were meant for parties. That’s what we were doing around the fire every night with our friends and family and it is just gone now. The horrible mental health and depression you see is from that. We haven’t evolved to not need that and I hope we never do.
This is funny because I feel the complete opposite. I am in my mid-40s now, and I go to maybe one 'party' a month, usually at a family friend's house for a pool party or a dinner.
When I was younger, I thought I was SUPPOSED to want to party, so I went out with friends many nights a week. Sometimes I would have fun, but I would always dread it. I hate the noise, the crowded feeling, bumping into other people, trying to make small talk with people I was not that interested in talking to. I much preferred being home by myself, playing games or working on hobby projects. I remember in college I loved when I was too young to go to the bars; we would pre-party at our apartment and I would enjoy it for an hour or two, and then they would leave for the bars and I would stay home and do my own thing. It was perfect.
I just thought I was supposed to like parties and going out.
Then I got older, and I met my now-wife at work. On one of our first dates, we were going to pick up her cousin from a bar. We get there, and it is HAPPENING. Loud music, people dancing, people waiting in line to get in. It looked miserable to me, but I was getting ready to act like I enjoyed it... and then I look over to my future wife and she sighs and says "that looks awful". I knew right there she was the woman for me.
We have been married for over 10 years now, and we still hate going out to loud events. We don't mind socializing in smaller groups, but we are comfortable that we don't like going to loud bars or clubs or big parties. We like staying home with the kids, quietly playing games or reading. We have also learned, through having our kids diagnosed and then ourselves, that we are both on the autism spectrum. We are no longer ashamed of who we are, and don't pretend we are the same as everyone else.
I think people are different, and need different things. We can't assume that what we need will work for everyone else.
But... you have autism? It's practically a symptom of that condition that you wouldn't like parties. It's like a person with acid reflux criticizing spicy food--like, how are we supposed to accept this as a criticism of spicy food and not just a personal issue?
Socializing with a small group is still a party in the sense of the ur-human gathering around a campfire. Not every party is something out of Animal House.
Sure, but even that is a once a month thing for us. If we hang out with others two nights in a row, we need recovery time.
You can listen to what men are saying, or continue to suppress and label their speech as "bad faith" or otherwise.
When men are not heard they simply seek other audiences and other avenues. It is the incentive structures that will tell them where to go.
This message is never going to go over well among those that the young men are reacting against.
The fact that they don't get listened to causes them to double down into extremism.
Our current levels of extremism have put us in danger of sliding into becoming a totalitarian state. That risk will not lessen unless both sides recognize that extremism itself is the danger. Underneath the anger, angry people are often hurt people. Labeling them enemies and hurting them further certainly feels good in the moment. But in the long run it is counterproductive.
You are right of course, but given the subject matter I thought it was worth a try.
It turned out not to be.
What exactly are people not hearing? Say the quiet part out loud already. It is the fact they can no longer openly shit on women and minorities and homosexuals and trans people that they have issues with. The fact that being white and having a white name are not enough to be granted a favorable job. That is all that is changing these days. Now consider what it says about the men who are kicking and screaming about this.
When I grew up, my dad always yelled at me every day before school about how climate change is my fault because of my white male privilege and I need to chow down ze bugs or I'm a racist.
That didn't happen. I just made that up. Was that also your first instinct upon reading it - that I made it up?
But I see men saying things like this happened to them, and that is my first instinct: it didn't happen and they made it up.
Am I supposed to stop doing that? Am I supposed to believe them?
Listening to real problems is good - are you saying I should listen to obvious trolls as well? That is what "bad faith" means - it's a euphemism for "obviously trolling".
Perhaps you even think I'm lying when I say I see people saying things like this online - but if that's the case, that means you're part of the same problem you cite, since you're not listening what I'm saying. So what solution do you propose to all this?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.