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I volunteer with the homeless in the Bay Area and am tapped into the "scene" as it were and so can speak to this.

Absolute numbers of homelessness are on the rise, in the Bay Area there was a dramatic uptick in COVID. This is in part due to rising housing costs and because homelessness is a "cumulative" problem. The most common outcomes for homeless people are either get it together after 2-4 years or become so damaged they're never able to re-enter society. We've been accumulating at an ever increasing rate since the 90s.

Visibility is also due to "management" side as you called it. IMO the driving force is the Supreme Court decision Martin v. Boise which forbids criminalizing homelessness. Previously a lot homeless were hidden out of necessity, being visible meant that police would confiscate your belongings and either jail you or move you forcefully. It's now quite easy to get restraining orders against cities who try to do this and people are doing it. For an example of how this can go see this article[0] on a Sausalito homeless encampment. The city spent north of $2 million trying and failing to disperse a homeless encampment.

> If culturally we found homelessness intolerable then we would be more motivated to solve it.

Plenty of people are deeply intolerant of the homeless, but the reaction is usually to hurt not help. Homeless people I know are regularly brutalized by the police and even by ordinary citizens.

The blocker here is that a large number of Americans don't believe that the state has a role in providing the necessities for life. This means its hard to fund programs and even if you do there's no institutional expertise to run them with any competency.

IMO we're decades away from a solution.

[0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sausalito-homele...

Homeless people are majority men, and we are a long way to having social discussion about helping men. At least in the US, the predominant view is that homeless men on the streets is a good thing, a sort of superiority/inferiority complex in our society. Not good like "we like this social problem" but good like "they deserve it" and the solution is to eliminate it from your eyes and city, a sort of homeless genocide of inferior men who do not deserve support. My brother was homeless and he'd send me pictures of all the spikes that cities built just to prevent homeless people from resting (US-biased)

> At least in the US, the predominant view is that homeless men on the streets is a good thing

I've been homeless a lot and literally never heard this view until now. Asserted and dismissed without evidence.

> we are a long way to having social discussion about helping men.

Are we? Which men? With which problems?

I hear this argument all the time from anti-feminists. MRM propagandists often make an argument like, "Almost all the domestic violence shelters are for women. You feminists only care about women." The response from feminists is generally, "Feel free to get to work." But of course, MRM people don't care about men's suffering under sexism, they care about bashing feminists, so they don't do any organizing. This dynamic would be funnier if it weren't so sad.

So what are you personally doing to address the suffering of men under sexism? I mean, aside from alienating your natural allies?

> I hear this argument all the time from anti-feminists. MRM propagandists often make an argument like, "Almost all the domestic violence shelters are for women. You feminists only care about women." The response from feminists is generally, "Feel free to get to work." But of course, MRM people don't care about men's suffering under sexism, they care about bashing feminists, so they don't do any organizing. This dynamic would be funnier if it weren't so sad.

Painting the above poster with an anti-feminist brush is uncharitable.

Disposable male theory isn't incompatible with a feminist perspective. I realize it's a mens rights talking point, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

My take: Patriarchy reinforces male supremacy which puts men in positions of power, and prioritizes the needs of men at a societal level; but men without power (as well as non-white, non-straight, non-"traditionally masculine" men) are also victims of patriarchy, and face challenges specific to men.

I'd point you to the /r/menslib subreddit which was a great, anti-men's rights, intersectional, and feminist-allied discussion forum for men's issues, but they've unfortunately gone dark. For a brief introduction, there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_liberation_movement at least

edit: Here's a fascinating video essay deconstructing the toxic masculinity of Andrew Tate, and how patriarchy affects men: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6_TOFy3k6k I found it on /r/breadtube, but it's definitely the type of fare common on /r/menslib

Right so your comment is full of the sorts contextualization it would certainly occur to you to make if you were looking at homelessness through a gender, but not anti-feminist, lens.

The other comment is using undiluted MRA & anti-feminist talking points without compromise or condition. The only way to read it charitably is to insert statements they didn't make, but easily could have and chose not to.

The other comment was pointing out that society is stacked against marginalized men. The support systems aren't there, people are less likely to extend empathy, and society isn't ready to treat mental health issues faced by men, since they're told from a young age that their emotions are invalid and unimportant (ok, this last bit admittedly is my own editorialization).

The person seemed to be commenting from a place of anger at how their brother was treated adversarially in his time of greatest need.

I volunteered with homeless people for years, and 80% or more were men. This issue is close to my heart as well and I absolutely think the commenter was pointing out relevant systemic issues, including touching on toxic masculinity and its attitude of treating other men adverserially

> The only way to read it charitably is to insert statements they didn't make, but easily could have and chose not to.

By the same token, can you explain how it can be read uncharitably without inserting statements they didn't make? Because as you said, they "easily could have" included misogynistic commentary "and chose not to"

Because this topic doesn't exist in a contextless vacuum. It's certainly possible that an internet commenter happened upon the same arguments, using the same language, as popular online anti-feminist movements use. But believing that unlikely coincidence is far beyond benefit of the doubt and we have no obligation to extend that far.

You yourself were enough aware of this context and dynamic that you carefully phrased your comment to avoid it. It's dog whistle shit, intentionally plausibly deniable neutral-seeming language. Corin called it out and you're saying "but plausibly, couldn't they deny this?" Yes! That's the point of it.

The original post said nothing about being anti-feminist.

I do not have any anger inside me -- just looking forward to helping more people. I support the health of women and men. The thread above is a perfect example of my point. It is literally impossible to talk about caring for men. If you talk about trying to save homeless men, people will get upset at you.

I talked about caring for men. It makes them so angry to care about men. When we talk about men freezing to death on the streets, the topic extends to "toxic patriarchy". I not participate in these abstract conceptual fictitious wars of mainstream though on any side. I care about helping life. Men are your brothers and need to be saved.

One day the world will wake up from their trance. I am optimistic.

Hey, it's time to stop the war.

I give out food, hygiene kits and money to homeless communities (predominately men). I stop and tell them where to access warming shelters and provide information on groups where they can find case workers to secure jobs and housing. I tell people it's safe to talk about saving men, that it does not make you a radical or an enemy of women. I try to give people hope by showing that you can save freezing men and still care about everybody, that they aren't opposites. It is time we give up abstract fictitious mainstream war philosophies so we can be effective.

They are wonderful people and deserve it.

I came to HN for the tech discussion but stay to watch the train wreck whenever tech workers try their hand at humanities. Sure, maybe if we were even more cruel to one of societies most hated groups, we could make them disappear from view. Perhaps we should just move fast and disrupt homelessness with a solution that removes their suffering and provides a real benefit to normal, respectable people. Let's turn the homeless into into protein bars and hand them out at the Google HQ commissary.

Kidding aside, don't speculate--educate yourself. Then you would at least recognize when you say ridiculous and cruel things about people you don't like, don't know, and never bothered to understand.

What are you going on about? Please get off your high horse. Your disparaging comments have contributing nothing to the conversation except to virtue signal your alleged moral superiority. Perhaps instead of going online and lecturing people you could take a moment to read more critically. To extend my original comment further, my commentary was in regards to the phenomenon of homelessness rather than an attack on homeless individuals. We tolerate homelessness in so much as that when we come across a homeless individual we might be give them some money, a warm meal, some clothes or other things. This doesn't solve their troubles, this only continues their state of being. If homelessness as a state of being was truly culturally intolerable then we would be forced to find solutions to the root problem rather than simply making platitudes towards those suffering from homelessness.

You are correct that there was a legal change in what cities could do to punish homeless folks: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/23748522/tent-encampments-m...

I don’t think homelessness should be tolerated. That said, homeless people definitely deserve our tolerance and compassion.