This is not my personal opinion, I know Gen Z men who voted for Harris. But the voter demographics really speak for themselves, and maybe now people will look at the radicalization of young men as a serious (but solvable) issue.
This is not my personal opinion, I know Gen Z men who voted for Harris. But the voter demographics really speak for themselves, and maybe now people will look at the radicalization of young men as a serious (but solvable) issue.
There is a lot to be said here. I’ll use my own experience as an example.
I’m a millennial male who had a terrible time as a young adult through my mid 30s. I grew up in a fairly religious/conservative area of the US, and I didn’t have the ability to even start questioning that before my college years because literally everyone I knew was either a vocal supporter of or tacitly accepted that cultural status quo. Mental health issues were either not discussed or not recognized in any serious fashion. It wasn’t until my late 20s that I finally understood that I had severe depression and anxiety and sought help, despite suffering from it since my early teenage years.
Socially, I never felt like I was cool enough or good enough. I didn’t understand women, and the endless series of rejections and confusing encounters only served to erode my low self confidence further. I had no idea what a healthy relationship looked like because my parents were just going through the motions at that point, and the relationships I saw in TV shows and movies were incredibly shallow. The few people I considered friends did not support me in any positive way. I eventually kicked them to the curb, preferring solitude to being the butt of their jokes.
I was a prime target for recruitment for the alt-right: depressed, alone, disaffected, and ready to lash out. The only thing that kept me from going in that direction was a keen sense that the rhetoric was bullshit and its leaders only cared to take advantage of the rank-and-file to accumulate money and power. Many people I knew were not so perceptive and became victims of that movement.
My only saving grace was that I had a decent job with healthcare benefits, which allowed me to get the therapy I needed to overcome these challenges. Again, most people I knew did not have such resources. Nearly a decade later, I am now a family man with a wife and child. I am far happier than I have been at any other point in my life. Despite that, there is still plenty I don’t understand. I don’t have a good grasp of what positive masculinity looks like. I cannot point to anyone who has served as a good, male role-model in my life. I still don’t have any close male friends with whom I can share my feelings and challenges.
However, I do understand how easily young men can be swayed to far-right crusades. Social media warped my view of reality, and it’s far worse now than it was 10-15 years ago. Moreover, there is no alternative to far-right echo chambers for young men to commiserate and get help. Those spaces simply do not exist on the left. If you dare to complain or vent, you will immediately be told your problems don’t matter and called a misogynist. I can readily call multiple conversations I had with liberals and feminists who rejected my problems, even being told that I was “living life on easy mode” because I was a man.
For all the women who are reading this, I get it. As a man, I don’t have to worry about the government meddling in my bodily autonomy. For the most part, I don’t have to worry about walking alone at night or being accosted or raped. I don’t have to worry about being taking seriously at my job or being passed over for promotions because of my gender. However, none of that negates the challenges that young men are facing. Their gender does not save them from broken homes, abuse, mental health issues, a bad job market, degrading standards of living, student debt, double-standards, confusing and contradictory narratives surrounding dating and relationships, etc. Yes, privileged men with no right to complain do exist, but they are an extreme minority. The vast majority of young men are in a bad place, and the only people reaching out to help have ulterior motives. If you want things to change, try having some empathy. Maybe you will get empathy for your problems in return.
half joke first. nobody’s trying to meddle in our bodily autonomy, yet.
edit: i havent looked too close at it but the mensliberation space on lemmy.ca may interest you? cancermancer down bellow has a rec for r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates that looks to have another good perspective in the topic. so im sticking it right here with the other.
I’ll try to approach the topic from my perspective as well. my gender has never really be part of my internal view of myself. but it is an inescapable part of how other people will see me, and the rules are always whatever the other person wants. so maybe not the poster child for speaking on masculinity. i’m literally the default charater generator in every videogame, but it’s just a hallucinating meat suit.
talking about gender concepts and social roles was a norm growing up because i did that growing up in the weird outside groups the christian kids chased. any reference to maculinity was done at me as an attack, even when i was doing it according to the rules. i agree, there are few places for young men to explore their way out of those strict views. especially in the early years. i’ve often seen them jump straight into spaces meant to be safe for people who’ve had not great experiances with the topic, especially women. and press other people to do all the work, explain things to them and navigate their often* harsh language. and i get it. when you’ve only ever been allowed to express 3 levels of the same emotion, it’s gonna be rough sorting that out.
it’s going to be on people who have worked their way through that mind set to make those places for kids to start the process. most importantly, people who share their experiance and perspective. yes folls like me can and really need to come in there and talk openly. but my own experiance is never going to line up in a way that will connect with those kids. even when i look exactly like our experiance should line up.
…if theres more spelling mistakes then there are more spelling mistakes. fuck it thats too much text for a phone
Bodily autonomy? What’s this scar on my cock again?
Have also heard people talking about giving men vasectomies at 16 (people who don’t understand they can’t actually be undone)
FWIW I’ve only seen that used to illustrate how ridiculous it is that we find it essentially normal to have laws controlling what women can do with their reproductive systems but not men. I’ve not seen a single credible example of someone seriously suggesting this.
Funny a man has said this twice this week. Women have higher EQ than men in general - how do you think they developed this?
Extending empathy to men is not what helps men feel empathy, though. That’s not how empathy is developed. If it was, movie actors and kings etc who have empathy extended to them constantly, would be the most empathetic people on the planet. Yet they are the least empathetic.
The thing that gets men to feel empathy, is the man feeling empathy. It’s like a mental weight - you have to choose to lift it. I can’t make you do that by rolemodeling. You have to actually take time and do the work. Actually sit down and think and perspective take without projecting or objectifying. Just radical acceptance. You have to do that work. Your comment asking women to once again bear your emotional burden of empathy is silly. We can’t. It’s a skill you gotta develop. And the sooner you do it instead of thinking it’s women’s work (which is why you just asked us women to be empathetic - our assumed role), the sooner the world is less shit.
And only then can you be truly caring, empathetic, or a feminist - by examining your own actions as a man. It’s great to allow men to have a sense of community outside of toxic masculinity, but this isn’t how men develop empathy or Feminism and that’s weird to phrase it like that,as if it’s valid for men to punish women by removing rights, voting for Trump, removing empathy, and not being prosocial. In fact, that’s quite controlling and abusive.
I once saw a gif on Reddit of a little girl being forcibly kissed by a little boy (both about 6), and she shoved him off and he looked sad. The entire thousands of comments focused on the little boy’s first rejection. No one even noticed it was the little girl’s first sexual assault. She even wiped the kiss off, reminiscent of victims cleaning themselves after assaults.
When I pointed this out, people were angry. How dare I suggest that little boy is a monster. But I wasn’t. I was entirely focused on the little girl’s experience and I wasn’t advocating for anything relating to the boy. In fact, I think an appropriate “punishment” would be to explain to him to not touch people without asking etc. And that’s it. I just wanted to see her experience and make sure she was okay. Her situation is more important and critical in this moment than the little boy’s. But these men heard ‘sexual assault,’ and instead of empathizing with the victim, they empathized with the assaulter, so much so they started defending him from a nonexistent attack. Do you not see the clear problem here? Do you see the issue?
But men were so unable to extend empathy to a girl, to a woman, that they literally couldn’t absorb this information or perspective take as her. It was impossible for them to imagine what she felt like. This was like 3 years ago. It was astonishing. No, men do NOT empathize with women. Men empathize with themselves as an idealized version of who they would be as a woman - that’s projection by definition and is entirely how they feel entitled to control women and objectify them.