Society does not care about male problems. Let's just label them incels or terrorists and be done with it. Also at the same time let's wonder why Andrew Tate and similar are easily getting such a huge following.
I think social media amplifies the extreme minorities voices that state that they don't care about male problems, that men are incels and far-right terrorists and other unsavory takes. I don't think most people label males as such. But I do think social media is extremely good at bringing up these takes - because they create a lot of engagement (particularly from the opposing side).
I think social media affects 30 year old males in the exact same way as teenage girls get body image problems from looking at "perfect" lives on Instagram. Men get served toxic and outrage based content that shows the extreme outliers - multiple times a week, for multiple years in a row.
I think most people are reasonable. I think most people care about male problems. I think a minority label men as incels or terrorists. I think the internet exaggerates this position greatly, and it's at least partly overblown.
Here's something I've seen happen. A couple of women in a corporate Slack channel says, hey CEO, what are you going to do to celebrate International Women's Day? Some dudes respond and say, cool, good idea but if we do something for that can we also celebrate International Men's Day? The women reply with angry face and eyeroll emojis before saying: no we should not, because "every day is international men's day".
This is the type of casual misandry and anti-male sentiment that is an everyday experience when dealing with feminists. Were these women the "reasonable" type? They weren't literally tweeting #KillAllMen but when it came to the crunch they wanted special privileges for women and justified this sexism with shallow, untrue meme-based kneejerks.
So the OPs point is accurate. Nobody cares about men being depressed or angry, especially not in government, academia or the media. Phrase it in terms of teen girls and the floodgates of tax money open. Let that affect strategy or don't, but that's how it is.
OTOH, introducing men's day sounds fair as then everyone is treated equally (in this aspect)
I really don't know which side of this particular debate we should support more. What I'm sure is that the topic is more delicate and complicated than having a one-sentence answer to it.
Firstly, every day is clearly not a celebration of men. This is exactly the same lie that the feminists pushed in the Slack channel. A "celebration" has lots of very specific aspects to it, for example they wanted the company doing public announcements, praising female employees (for existing, more or less), talking about how important it is to hire more women and so on.
Secondly, men don't receive higher salaries when controlling for the work done and age. When you control for those things women now earn higher salaries, reflecting feminist biases in hiring. This insistence that work and motherhood should be ignored is also a feminist meme that's been repeatedly debunked since the 1980s. It never goes away because if feminists were to accept this, they'd have to also concede that different choices lead to different outcomes, that men and women make different choices, and therefore that disparate outcomes is not oppression. And that would undermine the whole premise of feminist ideology. So feminists can never be honest about salaries, if they were, they'd no longer be feminists.
In fact, it's a very practical holiday that encourages male bonding and keeping long-term friendships, something lacking these days, so it's not just symbolic.
Other initiatives such as November 19 and Movember also have a lot of practical stuff, related to health.
I really don't see what's the controversy.
Jumping into these "reactionary" mens rights positions as a counter to feminist issues is the wrong way to do it and understandably makes people a bit angry. Just as in if real life someone is telling you about an issue - countering with a "buuut, group Y has it bad too..." would probably make someone double take a bit. It's unproductive, but normal on social media because it's engaging and creates a hot comment section.
In my opinion some major male problems are related to:
* Mental health, suicide and the lack of services and support for men.
* How the education system works better for females than males.
* How platonic relationships with males have been systemetically decreasing.
* How in rural societies women are more likely to move to the cities and get an education leading to men having way less romantic options.
If you bring these topics up with women they'll probably sympathise and maybe also agree that these are issues that our society should be assisting with solving. How it should be "solved" may be up for debate. But framing it as a counter position to the feminist movement isn't the right way to do it. But very normalised online, which feeds into my point of the internet exaggerating issues as most debates you see online is controversial by design of the algorithms and content creators trying to get engagement.
Disclaimer: I'm from Norway, which gives some context. But I think these issues are pretty common across the westernized world.
It's the old standard of not wanting to appear weak or needy. This is a real thing with men (as a generalized group, exceptions exist) and also plays a powerful role is shaping how society treats men's versus women's problems in this context.
The focus only being on teen girls is objectively false. We literally have no idea what this technology is doing to us, and the research communities are scrambling to figure out the effects of social media and technology on all of us. But these are extremely time consuming and hard things to do conclusive studies on.
I do concede that girls were the first group to be broadly reported though. Probably because that age and gender group is especially vulnerable to the damages caused by social media and signs clearly starting showing up in 2012-2017 in a greater degree than boys of the same age group. Also it doesn't surprise me that a group who is constantly monitored by authority (parents and schools) are the first to be reported on. Males aged 20-60 are more likely to isolate themselves and not reach out creating far greater "dark cases".
My original point is that the internet exaggerates and selectively filters for engagement. If your knowledge on this topic is primarily from online sources optimised for engagement you have an incomplete view on the area. I'm not trying to change your mind on this topic in particular. I'm just saying that the internet inherently exaggerates and removes nuance (and I've felt a bit of that lack of nuance in your comments) and that this affects everyone and every single topic online today. Including me.
I gotta ask because you seem to be disagreeing with the thesis of this thread, but then it appears like you keep rephrasing the points:
TheLoafOfBread says: "Society does not care about male problems. Let's just label them incels or terrorists and be done with it."
Your response: "there's tons of research being done on men as well. Incels and Japanese Hikikomori, conspiracy theories and online extremism is more male oriented"
Yes that's what he said?? Academics research girls to solve their problems, they research men as problems. Put another way, if this is really the view of only a tiny minority that is exaggerated by social media engagement optimization, how can there also be "tons of research" on these things?
Ok, I'll spell it out clearly for you then.
Research is being done on both girls and boys, adults and children. There are rational explanations for why you mostly hear about the girls (the numbers there are insane, and more likely to bubble up into your feed).
But the comment thread here seems to take the stance that men are being profiled and biased by this research through a political and an ideological stance. There is no/little research being done on men or boys - and the research that is being done is attributed to ideological and political reasons and to suppress boys and men through stamping them as "extremists, incels and such".
Women don't care about men. #killallmen. This is absolutely absurd and doesn't mirror real life in the slightest. It's an extreme position you've been fed through the information you consume online. It's a position based on vicitimisation and outrage. Your talking points lack nuance.
The reason you haven't heard about research is not because it doesn't exist - but because the information sources you consume online doesn't filter it up to you. There are rational explanations for why boys and men are underreported in this research, you just aren't picking it up, and you're attributing it to malice and conspiracies.
This is what the internet does. It polarizes people.
But it seems like this thread was removed from HN. I won't be returning.
DoctorRandomercam plug XD
The main problem men have when it comes to medical outcomes is their absolute refusal to seek help. I can name multiple men I know who died or came close to it because they refused to see a doctor. I intend to go out the same way, for what it is worth. Seems likely that attitude carries over to mental health.
Besides, we'd probably expect strictly gendered disease problems to be biased towards spending on women. Men have a prostrate and a penis to keep tabs of, women have an entire reproductive system that looks mighty complex and delicate. Given the amount of money that is hopefully sloshing around to make it safe for women to have kids, maybe some of it spilled over into breast cancer funding. It is a reasonable situation.