Hit the nail on the head:
Many commentators have noted that it is predominantly the political right that is talking about how to be a man in the first place.
From the socially progressive perspective, there is a lot written about how not to be a man, but far less on how to be one.
That second link is actually great
It’s really easy, on the left and just in politics generally, to think of things as being zero-sum. So there’s this fear that if we start helping men, then we’ll just have forgotten about women and there won’t be space or time for women anymore. I think that’s a mistake. We should be able to do two things at once. We can recognize that both women and men are members of our society and we should want to help everyone.
100% this is how I see it.
There’s also the fact that because progressives in the mainstream have not really taken up the masculinity question, the people who have taken it up tend to be on the right and often they tend to be problematic figures. You see incels and men’s rights activists and Ben Shapiro burning Barbies, and there’s a fear that if you speak up for men, everyone’s going to be like, You seem too interested in this. Are you one of them? It’s a branding problem.
I really hate that “men’s rights activist” is automatically a bad thing, and is even written here as bad. When you push that it’s sexist to put forward men’s issues, it feels inevitable it will turn men away. We have issues, we suck at building community lately, but we need to be able to talk about them without being shamed or chastised or branded. To the point above, it does not take away from women, at all, to let men have a space too.
We kind of created this space where the good men were too scared to talk, and the ones who did are Andrew Tate types pushing the most vapid interpretation of masculinity.
i.e. Tate exists because he’s such a piece of shit he wasn’t worried about speaking out. Tate thinks his counter culture is good and truthfully it’s why he’s been successful. He’s effectively a voice in an empty space which gets him lots of ears.
With Tate, unlike Peterson, there’s no pretension to anything virtuous. It’s just, Hey, the world hates you. The world wants to make you weak, wants to make you soft, so take what you can get, crush your enemies, abuse women, double down on everything they hate about you. It’s the weak person’s vision of a strong person. It’s the 19-year-old Nietzsche reader who didn’t make it past the preface.
That’s exactly how I feel. It’s empty junk food masculinity.
Masculinity to me is to build and mold yourself, to care about the right things and people, to be confident in your own inner strength, and to be supportive to those around me. It’s a perspective rooted in archetypes yes, and also Augustan stoic philosophy.
It’s okay to want fast cars and hot girls, but I think it’s pretty weak to make those outward rewards the core of yourself.
Yes, there is a gender divide in the polls, which is concerning. It is not as big a divide, though, as between urban and rural, white and black, or old versus young. I think we need to be careful about finger pointing like this.
If we play up these divisions too much, how then will everyone be able later to come together to somehow again blame the left for the failings of the two parties?
I mean, i don’t have to ask how to be a man or “masculine” because I don’t care about gender roles
That’s the power of embracing the social construction of gender. You can be whatever you are and feel comfortable with yourself. That has given me far more life satisfaction than meeting any masculinity litmus test ever. Also leaves more time and emotional capacity for things and people that matter.
Gender roles aren’t just something you adopt, it’s something others try to put you in. It’s great that you don’t care, but the people around you still care and will annoy you with how they think you should behave based on some gender role they think you should fit into.
Anybody who’s a real man isn’t gonna have to try that hard to be something already are.
“Kill all men” - Lauded, celebrated, even encouraged.
“Kill all women” - Misogyny and hatred of the highest order.
In a fair and equitable society, you cannot have both. Either both are lauded and celebrated, or both are examples of gender bigotry and hate that should be widely repulsive and actively shamed.
The fact that the two above exist in society, exactly as I have characterized them, demonstrates the massive, pervasive, cancerous, and corrosive anti-male gender bigotry that has already infested our society at all levels.
Sure, a tiny percentage of men are still “at the top”. Whoop-de-doo. Are we to judge and persecute the lower 98% by the status of the top 2%?
And sure, a tiny percentage of men still behave badly. Again: whoop-de-doo. Are we to judge and persecute the vast majority of well-behaving men, and treat them as if THEY were behaving in the exact same way, based on that vocal minority?
This is how you push men away, to isolate and to alienate them.
You cannot treat all men as a monolith of evil, responsible for everything and anything that ills not just women, but society as a whole. You cannot punish men for every perceived benefit of “teh patriarchy”, especially when those men (most under 40) no longer receive any benefit whatsoever from said patriarchal structures. You cannot provide benefits and help and services to exclusively women, locking out male sufferers of those same systems, especially when women are no longer the majority of sufferers under those structures. You cannot give lopsided advantages to women, artificially raising them above men, in systems that are supposed to be merit-based or performance-based.
Otherwise, why call it “equality”, when it clearly isn’t in any way, shape, or form?
Look at both sides in the same light, with each as deserving the same rights and protections and responsibilities as the other, and the rightward-shift of men becomes blatantly reasonable and obviously expectant. Because the alt-right is the only group which is “giving” men anything to hope for, even though it is nothing more than empty promises and snake-oil salesmanship; a bait-and-switch meant to use men as pawns in a class war (Parasite Class vs working class) that will ultimately hurt them far more than help.
Final note: I have absolutely no problem with the vast majority of the things female supremacists are demanding. My problem is that they are wanting only women to benefit from these things, and are doing their best to deny men the same benefits at every turn. Which is why I take deep offense at anyone calling me a “feminist” – to me, that is a slur, an anti-male pejorative. I am an egalitarianist, first and foremost. Equality of outcome and equality of opportunities is the foundation of where I stand. And I will call out hypocrisies and inequalities where and when I see them.
“Kill all men” - Lauded, celebrated, even encouraged.
Do you have an example of this? Because as someone whose suggested death would be celebrated, I’ve not seen those reactions myself.
Sigh. Defending OP I can’t believe I’m doing this … It’s “handwaves” everywhere.
College enrollments of men are dropping. High school attendance is dropping. Schools are not designed for boys. Society has grown to empower women which is good, but in some ways it’s been at the expense of boys.
Now that in itself is not a problem if these boys were represented by healthy role models but in the erosion of traditional families many boy are raised with no, or poor representation which is exacerbating the issue. I’m not just talking about single parent homes. I’m talking about toxic adults that have dug into the battle of the sexes.
My boys will be alright because I’m a great dad and I love women and want to be the rising tide that lifts all ships be they women, lgbt, poc, etc.
I know men my age however who have lost the plot and are more toxic today than they were 20 years ago. These men have kids… Shit is generational.
Good parents raise good kids as a generalization.
I fully agree with what you are saying, but are you sure you responded to the intended comment? I was asking for examples of calls to kill all men being lauded, celebrated and/or encouraged.
It was a whole thing on Twitter apparently. #killallwhitemen was a story some time ago.
I don’t have any details about it, but it’s likely where that comment came from.
Is anyone surprised when women say they want bears over men, and other stuff? I understand the meaning of that whole thing too, but c’mon, don’t act too surprised.
When I did a Google search of #killallwhitemen, I found plenty of articles about how controversial it was, not celebrations and encouragements.
And there is a giant leap between a thought exercise about how women feel unsafe around men, and encouraging calls to kill all men.
I understand why you feel uncomfortable with the word “feminist”. I personally don’t believe that feminism is inherently anti-male, but I also can’t ignore the people whose behaviour doesn’t fit inside my definition of that term; to do otherwise would be doing the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. For me, identifying as a feminist means having to contend with that — that is to say that if I want feminism to account for the ways that men are fucked over by the patriarchy, then it’s important that I challenge hateful rhetoric in supposedly progressive spaces.
I also call myself an egalitarian for the reason that I believe all people are created equal, and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
I was in high school when things like making boys take anti-rape pledges and saying “not all men” would get you in trouble. It really felt like I was reduced by my gender to a rapist and an abuser by default.
There were also men’s rights groups that got massively shutdown and harassed, which upset me as a man who has issues. It felt like there wasn’t and still isn’t a place to discuss things like men’s mental health, suicide rates, declining male education rates, societal double standards, and how family law can be biased and where it can be improved. Specifically issues like how men get punished for taking parental leave to a much higher degree than women, or that my single-father brother wasn’t able to take his son to curricular activities because they were run by “mommy groups”, and being a single dad isn’t being a mom (sure there’s a place for mom focused groups, but they were the default).
The people pushing the “kill all men” aren’t feminists, they’re just sexists/supremacists. If they were in the position of men for the last X hundred years they’d be exactly like the patriarchy.
I do think you have a point that encountering a lot of anti-male sentiment will alienate some men and drive them towards alt-right anti-female groups.
The same mechanism can probably explain why encountering a lot of anti-female sentiment will alienate some women and drive them towards anti-male groups
Both these things are understandable but bad. If you’re actually in favour of equality, you should probably call out both these extremes. Don’t excuse men OR women for having extreme and destructive views.
Every one of those chuds should have to put his decrepit ball sack in their mouth for ten seconds. Shameful bigots.
American machismo is tied to American militarism which is tied to American imperialism which is tied to American capitalism. If you want to reimagine a different masculinity, be prepared to unpack a whole lot more.
Because they are whiny pussies that blame everyone but themselves in their victim complex.
Just like trump
No MEN are supporting trump. Those are cowardly boys.
Interesting strategy, just keep throwing insults instead of discussing the issues causing men to favor Trump and his brand of authoritarianism.
I mean it’s their fault they don’t like your candidate…
“Look what you made me do”
Wow we are sooo close here, you seem to almost get it but then fall back.
Imagine treating a group of strangers like shit and hurling insults at them… Then for some reason they don’t have any interest in supporting your candidate of choice.
:gasp: It’s like people react to the energy you put out…
"That’s the one, mommy! That’s the man that caused me to favor trump!!!"
The left: “All men are rapists!” “Kill all men!” Men: Drift further and further to the right The left: surprised Pikachu face
I think men treating women like sex objects happened long before anyone said “All men are rapists” seriously. How does anyone address the historical (and current) context of subjugation and oppression women face under men (who do hold a large majority of positions of power)? I think reducing the conversation to what you said is, frankly, the tactic of the right, and it’s really easy to give up on learning that context if one takes a victim complex, like when anyone attacks white people or Christians or straight people or cis people or cops, and ignore everything related to why those groups might have that hate towards them.
How can you address that context if you say “Not all men” and then do nothing to address the original critiques in the first place? If you pretend like the conversation starts and stops at the logical disproving of “All men are rapists,” then will you simply ignore that marital rape exists? Will you ignore that women do have higher rates of being sexually assaulted and that we make it hard to do anything about those assaults?
I, sadly, think of “All men are rapists” as a defensive mantra. That we, as a society, have to teach girls and women to fear men because we failed at multiple other points. It isn’t true, and it probably isn’t a great attitude to take, but I don’t know that I can fault anyone for having that view.
False dichotomies and flat truisms don’t start conversations tho, they end them. Yes, men have been treating women like sex objects since forever, but men have also NOT been treating women like sex objects - it depends on which men you’re talking about. And that sentiment does NOT equal simply ignoring that marital rape exists. The world doesn’t consist solely of extremes.
Think if you said getting AIDS was something gay men did. Statistically pretty true - the vast majority of AIDS cases among men are gay man - but do you think that would be a productive way to approach the subject?
But it was an issue before. And it’s an issue now. So the phrase isn’t really the issue. It’s an excuse to do nothing because you aren’t the problem, whereas before the excuse to do nothing was that you didn’t know about the problem. And if they say “Some men are rapists” to make you feel better, fuck if it isn’t an excuse to do nothing because you’re not one of them.
It is the responsibility of all people (and thus all men) to stop sexual assaults, and to blame people that are far more likely to be the victims of those assaults for making rhetoric that is extreme in response is to expect a perfect victim that did, does, and will do nothing wrong.
If you would like to use the AIDS epidemic as an example, it would be to treat the gay men as wrong when they said they should seize control of the FDA. It’s, technically speaking, not helpful, and there were many working in the public health sector trying their hardest to help those affected by AIDS… But, like, you understand why they said that, right? There were definitely protests before that where nothing happened, where their issues were ignored, and their were people in the government who were to blame.
Yes I understand why people say antagonistic things when they’re angry or passionate about something. What I’m saying is that it does no good to turn potential allies into adversaries by hitting their hot buttons. Unless you want your content to only be read by people who are already on your side. Not that echo chambers are all bad - tbh sometimes we need them. The issue before was that there have always been men who treated women like objects. It’s also always been true that there have been other men who didn’t. The phrasing isn’t THE issue but it is AN issue, and it’s avoidable by not hanging onto the idea that there’s only one conceivable way to say something.
