Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It
jacobin.com
jacobin.com
This experience of a researcher starting by caring deeply about inequality, and starting with feminism, and then identifying male issues and finding a total lack of community interest has occurred before. This is exactly what happened to Warren Farrell, who a was once a major figure in feminism (and then largely ignored once he started talking about the issues facing men) (see his Wikipedia page for details).
I think part of what makes getting sociatal buy in on men's issues is that one of the biases men face is a lack of care for men in need of help, and this relates to the idea of male disposability.
For reference, there is a quite shocking list of statistics where men have significantly worse outcomes than women: longer jail for the same crime, higher rates of homelessness, higher rates of suicide, lower educational outcomes, shorter life spans, less friends on average, ...
Obviously women suffer from other issues, but as Ezra Klein is keen to emphasize to any listeners of the interview, empathy is not a zero sum game.
For example, I've had it told to me that I shouldnt have my son help me with changing my car's oil because thats putting some sort of burden on him at an early age. Does this sound like something a sane person would say? I would go as far to give the benefit of the doubt and say no, most people are sane and the ones that would make this type of argument are drawn into a social mania.
Having feelings is natural and good, learning to feel the feelings without reacting without thought is something you can do. Talking about life is good, but complaining about everything is bad.
Independence is great, but relying on others in a community is also great! Being tough is awesome, ignoring others feelings all the time and making fun of people who are struggling is bad.
If you want to find out what toxic masculinity is, why haven't you read about it or watch any of the numerous videos about the subject?
A good example is if you your son is allowed help change the oil but you don't allow your daughter or wife to help because it's "man's work".
Or if you force your son to help because it's expect of him as a man.
But, if little dude is curious/eager and wants to hold the flashlight and maybe turn a wrench, go for it.
This seems like a really flawed and backwards take. What evidence do you have that supports your incredibly vague statement that women’s ability to vote is “the root of most of our current problems.”
The American socialist movement began in the early 19th century and peaked in the early 20th. 1900-1920 saw the height of socialist sentiment in the US. The Socialist Party of America began to lose it’s influence in the 1920’s as socialism began to decline in popularity. Women gained the right to vote in 1920.
Would that not then indicate that women gaining the right to vote led to a decline in socialist sentiment? Saying this is just as disingenuous as saying that women gaining the right to vote massively shifted the political spectrum towards socialism.
A rise in socialism is historically very often a reaction to some sort of societal upheaval (i.e. war, economic crises, high levels of inequality, exploitation, etc).
Forgive me if I’m wrong in assuming that you’re speaking about the US, but my point stands regardless of what country you’re referring to because blaming a century’s worth of problems on women gaining the right to vote (regardless of the country) is not a serious nor intelligent argument.
Go look at the polling records across time and you see women voting for bigger government by way of voting for groups that have policies that ensure larger government (they are not the only group doing this, they are just the group we are talking about now. Single men also lean problematic in their voting patterns for example).
Talking about the Socialist party here is the wrong metric to use because it encompassed truly nutty groups that had no chance of being elected (from agricultural commune supporters to straight up communists). If you look at the subsets that actually got elected (i.e. the sewer socialists) they ran on policies like old age pensions, employment insurance, public housing, public health care and other big government welfare programs. Pretty much all this stuff had been subsumed into the big parties by the 1960's and was actually being implemented, so why would you ever expect the Socialist party to continue existing? All their electable policies (that became much more electable with women gaining the right to vote) were adopted by mainstream, usually democrat candidates who subsequently were elected. Subsequently all these programs form part of the big government problem we have today.
You see the above in the USA but you also see it in my home country of Canada, most recently with the current oaf running things federally, who has been kept in power by women voters not changing their vote when it became obvious he was doing likely criminal things while pursuing a suicidal spending platform at home and making us the laughing stock of the world stage with his antics.
Anyways, this is not to say women shouldn't have the vote, they very clearly should have the vote. My original post was mostly about how we integrate the clearly correct idea that women should be able to vote with the clearly correct idea that their voting patterns are causing a lot of our current problems. I think the actual correct solution is some other system of limiting suffrage to only those who clearly have long term skin in the game, as to what that would look like I am not certain. It could take the form of limiting voting to citizens who currently have at least 50 % custody/responsibility for a child of theirs or have X number of years of at least 50% custody/responsibility for a child of their under their belts. Or perhaps requiring citizens to post an income adjust long term bond to vote and have that bond be the first risk of loss if the government runs a deficit of a certain amount for more than 1 year. The challenge with limiting suffrage is having the rule be simple enough that gaming it is very difficult, while being strong enough to actually cut out enough of the people with no incentive to think long term about the country that they can't drive us into bureaucratic ruin.
>When all the men got together and voted for women to also have the vote, that was toxic masculinity at work. (this is a joke, but also not really. Women shifting the political map towards larger government and more socialism seems to be the root of most of our current problems.
Not sure how your statements (and “joke”)above and my statement below are all that much different. Ultimately you’re saying that women gaining the right vote led to the “issues” we have today. What issues? You don’t really say.
>What evidence do you have that supports your incredibly vague statement that women's ability to vote is "the root of most of our current problems.'
It’s not exactly a wonder why women might prefer socialist policies. Women couldn’t even open their own bank account until 1974 (1964 in Canada). If someone’s only recourse from a bad situation is to rely on the state, then socialist policies are going to look all that more appealing.
But that’s even if the premise is true that Canada (or the US for that matter), is being ruined by socialist policy. And I’m sure many would debate you on that.
I can tell you from experience from living large portions of my life in both the US and Canada, having access to universal healthcare is a net benefit.
>You see the above in the USA but you also see it in my home country of Canada, most recently with the current oaf running things federally, who has been kept in power by women voters not changing their vote when it became obvious he was doing likely criminal things while pursuing a suicidal spending platform at home and making us the laughing stock of the world stage with his antics.
>Anyways, this is not to say women shouldn't have the vote, they very clearly should have the vote. My original post was mostly about how we integrate the clearly correct idea that women should be able to vote with the clearly correct idea that their voting patterns are causing a lot of our current problems. I think the actual correct solution is some other system of limiting suffrage to only those who clearly have long term skin in the game, as to what that would look like I am not certain.
You seem to me a bit biased here. You use the term correct a lot here, but just because this position is you’re opinion does not in fact make it “correct.”
>It could take the form of limiting voting to citizens who currently have at least 50 % custody/responsibility for a child of theirs or have X number of years of at least 50% custody/responsibility for a child of their under their belts. Or perhaps requiring citizens to post an income adjust long term bond to vote and have that bond be the first risk of loss if the government runs a deficit of a certain amount for more than 1 year.The challenge with limiting suffrage is having the rule be simple enough that gaming it is very difficult, while being strong enough to actually cut out enough of the people with no incentive to think long term about the country that they can't drive us into bureaucratic ruin.
You are advocating that only parents and rich people should be allowed to vote. Believe it or not, you can, in fact be poor and childless and still care about the future of your country. This scheme would essentially cut out the voices of young people, arguably the people with the most skin in the game in regards to the future.
Your bond scheme would likely result in people (even those who have the means) to not bother with voting. Or the government cutting spending, even when it’s needed.
Do you have to pay every time you vote, in this pay-to-vote scheme of yours? What if the party you voted for loses, do you still have to give up your bond if the other party runs a deficit? What if every party no matter who you vote for runs a deficit? What’s to keep the parties accountable if the citizens are now solely responsible to fund any deficit with their forgone bond? What if every party, no matter who you vote for, runs a deficit? I mean, most governments do run a deficit regardless of the party. The last time the US ran a surplus was in 2001 and since then there have been an equal amount of Republican and Democrat presidents (with the Republicans arguably having more representation in Congress since then). The liberals in Canada had a pretty decent surplus before they lost the election in 2006 and the deficit ballooned massively under the Conservative Harper Government and only until 2018 has Canada seen a surplus, (this year is on track for a surplus as well). So then, would every American lose money every time they vote? Would Canadian conservatives lose more money than everyone else when they vote? Regardless of who they vote for, the citizens are the only losers in this scenario.
So either only rich people vote. Even price adjusted, people who don’t have a lot of money don’t have the luxury of putting “voting” money aside to just sit there waiting to lose it. And if rich people end up losing money enough times, I’m sure they’ll stop bothering to vote as well and instead sink their money into lobbying and back room dealing (even more so).
Or the government cuts spending to save their base from being financially penalized, even if it’s spending the country needs to maintain itself (and even if you might not agree that people need access to healthcare, we still need roads and infrastructure to run as a functioning society).
I highly doubt this would work in a direct democracy but it will absolutely not work in a representative democracy.
So whether you posit that only the rich and people with children (i.e. older) should be allowed to vote or that women can’t be trusted with their vote— either way they are both bad takes, and pretty antithetical to democracy.
I think you’re completely off base in trying to make “respond rationally and with no emotion, ever” a universal rule, especially with regards to interacting with other people. It’s weird and robotic.
I did not say don't be sad. I sad don't react emotionally, instead understand the emotion you are feeling, identify the why and respond rationally to the why. It's not bad to be sad, it's bad to allow the sadness to force you into a stupid reaction. In your example the actual good advice dictates it's fine to cry, but don't let your sadness dictate doing something stupid like drinking too much, getting behind the wheel and getting a dui or worse.
In my reply I acknowledged that someone saying what the op posted was almost always trying to communicate what I have said above and failing at it.
Whatever you were trying to add was within that context, thus my reply. “Real men don’t cry” is not well-intentioned, nor is it just a poorly worded version of good advice.
Four common patterns
* Recruitment techniques based around achieving worth by emulating some "alpha" male, usually physical and financial, sometimes spiritual
* Approval associated with risk taking behavior. Binge drinking, criminal activity, extrajudicial punishment, etc
* Complicity through witness and increasing levels of participation
And especially
* Code of silence
A heinous fifth pattern is commingling this behavior with family / work culture, creating tension between "the code" and actual codes and relationships.
Ultimately these systems let sociopaths, narcissists, and other mentally unwell men to flourish and prosper precisely because they can easily adhere to these artificial "codes" and power structures vs traditional ones.
Edit: at the risk of coming across of overanalyzing, asking your son to help with the oil potentially contributes to this behavior. You as a male he looks up to is "recruiting" him to do something he has no interest in doing otherwise.
In a vacuum it's benign of course and not toxic but some awareness of the power dynamics and making sure your son knows the difference between a "good" ask and a "bad" ask and how to say no is important.
This line is complete trash: "recruiting him to do something he has no interest in doing otherwise". This is probably the greatest example of the lefts insanity nowadays. How do you know he isn't interested? You know nothing about my family but you assume and then push for policy using said assumptions. And you try to absolve yourself from criticism by saying "I'm just overanalyzing"!
But we are biased to empathize more with women than men, both women and men are biased that way. That is the core of "toxic masculinity", we need everyone to empathize more with men, but instead due to low empathy for men all they say is "just work on your own problems, it isn't that bad for you!!".
There isn't much you can do in that situation, the low empathy burden men are shouldered with isn't something society wants to deal with, neither the left nor the right.
What they need is to be emotionally "nursed" back to wellness, but their sheer wealth has isolated them so much that nobody can connect with them on a "normal" human level anymore.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-...
And outcomes are worse for Black men in almost all categories and have been so for some time. Yet the response to negative outcomes for Black people is to blame "black culture." Yet there's no blaming of white culture. Instead this is a crisis we have to do something about. C.f. crack vs fentanyl epidemics.
That both parties neglect the cause of black men is (in my opinion) an outcome of a two party system that is so divisive that it leaves no space for nuance (and poor policies and extra needless human misery is the result).
As one might expect, they concluded that there's disparities between demographics. And so they dutifully listed them: LGBTQ+, indigenous people, vets, various other groups.
Except for that one stat staring them in the face. The chart to crush all other charts. MEN. Whom commit suicide at a rate of 5x compared to women, and rising.
That chart was not included nor was even the word "men".
Which perfectly fits the totem pole of victim hierarchy in modern identity politics. Where men do not even exist, or only as oppressors.
Men killing themselves from despair does not fit the narrative. A micro aggression towards a minority though is like a Waterloo moment.
There's no first principles. No objectivity. No proportionality. Only narratives.
This Richard Reeves guy is one few people amidst progressives getting it on the agenda. Read his articles and note how every other paragraph he's almost apologizing to his peers for caring about men at all, as if they're about to eat him alive.
Don't get me wrong. Nobody ever cared about men. Neither men nor women do. Disposable utilities. But the problems and its harmful outcomes are growing.
https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html
It appears that your comment is false?
Lots of yakking it up about how sad men are but it's all so disingenuous. My experience leads to me to believe that the moment a man asks for help is the moment he has lost the respect of his peers and, should he be so lucky, his female partner. Evolutionarily, men are disposable, and the workplaces and dating arenas we must inhabit reinforce it at every step. For a long time, we were given a medal for our sacrifices which read "You Are A Good Man" but now even that worthless consolation prize is gone. They may fret over lost economic output or the dearth of marriable men, but make no mistake, they care far more about what you could provide than how you feel.
"Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat." - Hillary Clinton
Men: not even the primary victims of their own gruesome battlefield deaths.
Blatantly ignoring the 80% of men of course.
Not to mention, who are they talking to anyway? Do you think people killing journalists will now say: OK, sorry, I'll stop. Or maybe pick only men?
I guess if a country invades another, you're saying that the men in the invading force have themselves to blame? Although sometimes they're threatened and forced, get shot if refusing.
But there's also the ones defending their own people. They didn't start any war
This is real, it does happen. But for the sake of anyone reading this, please be aware. There are plenty of women who are not like this. Finding them can feel overwhelming, but when you land the right one, it makes life so much better.
I'm kidding, but only slightly, when I say this: I think the best advice for young men is to skip the dating scene altogether until you're about 30. Things settle down, everyone more mature and less mercenary, and women will look at you more for your good manly qualities rather than the shallow ones.
until then, i would very much agree with you.
Honestly, it sounds like you need some new friends and to stop listening to Jordan Peterson. When I was going through a divorce, my closest friends were there day or night to take a call and let me vent. Heck my current wife actually was a sounding board as I navigated shared custody later on.
If the people around you are shunning you for asking for help and expressing your emotional trauma, you need to surround yourself with new people. And I say that with genuine concern for you, not out of spite or judgement.
I will also add the people I worked with eventually heard what was going on and were more supportive than I ever could have asked for.
Need a day off? Take it. Need more time to get that project done? We understand. Never a word of judgement from any of them and quite frankly the whole experience turned a few of those relationships from "just coworkers" to close friends.
And what about those who experience this effect, and have always actively avoided Peterson and his ilk?
When you find out rumours are spreading about you after you've opened up, you can separate yourself from that community, but where does that leave a person? What do you think happens when someone tries to join a new community, who has rumours circulating about their “mental health”?
If you're a grown adult and have rumors following you around, just find a new friends group. If your town is so small that you can't escape that, seriously just move? If it's a job and the culture is gossip, it's probably time to just find a new job.
I get that uprooting your whole life is a VERY BIG DEAL but you only live once. There's no way you're ever going to be happy dealing with constant gossip, and that isn't normal. That's a very, very abnormal situation you're in if you're a grown adult.
Congrats, you have just advocated for what's called "toxic masculinity".
No, I've just advocated for: high school sucks. It has literally nothing to do with being a guy. I would and have said the same thing to girls dealing with asshole classmates. At some point your options are find a new school, or just grin and bear it because your life is a different place after HS. Most high schoolers don't have the option of a different school.
However, the funny thing about people like you is
you would never say "though it up" to a woman
yet you would claim "women and men are equal"
disingenuous
I've been lucky for the most part with good friends, but periodically rebooting your life situation has other benefits too. I recommend it heartily, if you're in a position to do so. Keep your old friends if they're good, in that case.
For both obvious and non-obvious reasons, I don't want to get into specifics in order to provide an existence proof that this is a problem, but consider that switching jobs/moving city/rebuilding a social network is something that depends a great deal on having resources available to do that with, not having obligations preventing that, having the means to evade the pervasive social media that encourages exactly the sort of “reconnection” that is anathema to the task.
But I do recommend it when appropriate and feasible. Some of the best changes I've made to my life came because I was able to shake things up and go somewhere with no ruts.
So anyone who wants to advance the experience of people regardless of gender has got to fight that framing as well as advance possible solutions.
Stopping referring to traditional gender roles as a far-right evangelical viewpoint is a good start.
Do you have a better way to phrase that, based on your own suggestion?
For the severity of issues that men are facing, it is not getting anywhere near the coverage that it needs to be fixed. They barely scratched the surface with this article and it hardly gets into how hopeless so many young men feel. The deaths of despair being so much higher for men should be an indication of why things are not going so well for men and how they feel overall.
It doesn’t help that the resources available are also not catered towards men either. 60-70% of therapists are women and most therapists use talk therapy - which was developed to treat women. Yes, it can still help men but many therapists are under equipped to deal with how men think and act. Talk therapy is often about listening to someone talk but many men want/need therapy that involves active direction and problem solving. Talking it out just doesn’t work for many men.
Does this get talked about in the media or by “the left”? Nope. People will just parrot “go to therapy” without realizing it’s not going to help many men because the methodology doesn’t fit how men currently work.
I’ve dealt with plenty of therapists who ask how I want to work, then they slot in around that. If I tell them that just talking about something isn’t working, they almost always move to “okay, well what can we do about this?”.
Don’t ever go into a therapy session without knowing what you’re trying to do.
I don't read the news or social media, so it's bizarre to me when someone tries to divert a basic human concern into a political agenda. Mental health is important no matter what political spectrum you're on, and treatment isn't political, it's healthcare.
Not that Wikipedia is authoritative or anything but it seems to meet their definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
"The personal is political." It's a phrase originating in second-wave feminism and continuing onwards in current cultural issues.
Why (ethically) would a political agenda be based on anything else?
And healthcare is NEVER politicized.
So if you're not a conservative who's picked this up as a thing to push forward your career with, you can't "not politicize" it because once something is politicized you can't put it back in the jar.
EDIT: And if those politicians, however disingenuous, are successful in politicizing it... well doesn't that just mean it resonates with a lot of people and then the left should talk about it because it's important to people?
Very much an advocate for the working man, there.
“There is a ladder of success that people climb,” he continued. “Some of those jobs that are out there for seven, eight, nine dollars an hour, in my view, they're simply not intended to be careers. They're not intended to be full-time jobs. They're rungs on a ladder."
"[Those jobs] are ways for people to get experience in the workforce doing a thing that might not necessarily pay you as much as you'd like, but nevertheless serves a real purpose,"
And picking up where it left off: "So to me, the brightest line needs to be drawn between skilled and unskilled work. We need to encourage more people to learn a skill that's actually in demand."
> Some of those jobs that are out there for seven, eight, nine dollars an hour, in my view, they're simply not intended to be careers. They're not intended to be full-time jobs.
This is a huge conservative talking point - the federal minimum wage was intended to be a liveable wage, not "for teenagers/high schoolers/part timers" - this whole spin of "these jobs are not meant to be liveable" is a wholly after-the-fact revisionism.
jobs that are not meant to be livable should never be fulltime.
people stuck in a fulltime non-livable job don't have the time or resources to upgrade.
e.g. CANCELS $1.6 TRILLION IN STUDENT DEBT FOR 45 MILLION AMERICANS
The fact sheet says it would pay for all of this (in total $2.2 trillion) by taxing Wall Street speculation. So, somehow create a tax that represents almost 10% of total US GDP to cancel student debt and allow all future college to be almost free.
I can't imagine any world where that would actually happen. Bernie is living in the clouds.
This isn't giving anyone a fighting chance because it's not an actual, feasible solution.
Ref: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/college-fo...
This is not commonly known. If they had emphasized trade school and training, I feel like it would have had much less pushback from the right.
I can't think of many other public figures that have spent as much time as him, advocating for blue collar work.
The trick is not advocating for the work but the worker. Employment, without fail, sucks ass.
Welding is a "shitty job?" I'd disagree entirely, and I think that would be Mike Rowe's position as well, and I think he directly cautions against the mentality you're attempting to take to these careers. You're also seemingly leaving no space for owner operated businesses.
> I can't think of any other reason to do this—I don't know many men who long for dirtier jobs so they're seen as more manly.
Doesn't that just undercut your own thesis, then? Or are you operating on the presumption that the advice being given by Mike Rowe is meant to be universal and you should upend your life in order to chase it? I don't see that at all.
I'm still baffled as to how you'd see any of this as "anti-labor."
Maybe don't stick your head in the sand the moment someone says "toxic masculinity". It means something which hurts men, too. Every economic conversation and conversation on gender roles touches on this specific kind of despair and anxiety in the universe. If you look hard enough, even consumerist vanilla and milk-toast pieces like the Barbie movie take on talking about the expectations placed on men by themselves and what it feels like to wake up to a society where nobody meets those anymore.
For Jacobin to write this is absolutely bizarre. It's almost as if it's aimed more towards people on the right than on the left, except it vindicates the idea that the left never touches the concept of men, as if women were the only thing that existed on the left, which just isn't true. It's always been an everyone club, it's always been a club for those who work for their money and for those sympathetic to them. And it's a place where those people talk about those problems which hurt them. That includes and has always included men.
The left however tends to shun the fact that a lot of the toxic masculinity comes from women and their expectations on men and boys. There isn't anything men can do to stop toxic masculinity until women stops propagating it, and the left sees no problem with women and teachers propagating toxic masculinity, at least I've never seen them talk about it as a problem that needs fixing.
This just isn't true. The fact that men AND women are taught this "manly man" crap by both their mothers and fathers is commonly discussed. It's often reported that women don't self reflect but follow any prominent feminist and you'll hear them talking about this often.
> There isn't anything men can do to stop toxic masculinity until women stops propagating it
This is both false and a poor human excuse for bad behavior. You can have better conversations. You can model better behavior. You can call out misogyny. It's fun or comfortable or do but it's with your control. Don't push all the hard work to others. Do it yourself. (I do. It's not fun but it's important.)
> the left sees no problem with women and teachers propagating toxic masculinity, at least I've never seen them talk about it as a problem that needs fixing.
Be honest with yourself. Where are you looking? Articles like this that make it seem like we should over index on self inflicted wounds or aces where women talk about the difficulties they face because of heavily patriarchal society?
For example women and queer in armed forces are routinely mocked by the right as feminization and weakening of the military
Of course the gate is rising
I'm not sure what you're trying to prove though. It seems like whataboutism
> You have an infrastructure bill that will create jobs largely for men. Two-thirds of the jobs in the infrastructure bill will go to men: black men as much as white men, and Hispanic men a little bit more, because they’re so represented in the construction industry. Don’t hide from that fact, as the administration does when they’re challenged on it.
And then also things that are cut and dry worse for men (i.e. suicide rate) you don't see a gender breakdown showing that [1]. And even when the press material has a gender breakdown its part of the "Age" section even though being male is a 3x affect while the age is ~0.25x [2].
Jacobin's point is about messaging and not that "The Left" doesn't do anything.
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/index.html
[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/disparities-in-suicide.htm...
> Two-thirds of the jobs in the infrastructure bill will go to men: black men as much as white men, and Hispanic men a little bit more, because they’re so represented in the construction industry.
If I perceived the government as only capable of offering jobs and no other support I would also be pissed and feel alienated. I don't see much evidence that this is how people view the world outside of the Brookings institute.
Not trying to dilute your point, because if you look at the "Data and Statistics" tab of the page you linked the disparity between male/female is clearly obvious. So I agree that the fact that is not talked about in the disparities is crazy. But, one thing I remember hearing when I was in high school was that suicide attempts were higher amongst women, but the suicide rate was higher amongst men. There is a mention of this in the article for youth, so maybe it was specifically mentioned because of that age group because I can't seem to see if that applies across age groups.
"In 2021, 9% of high school students reported attempting suicide during the previous 12 months. Suicide attempts were reported most frequently among girls compared to boys (12.4% vs. 5.3%)"
Here's an example from earlier this year.
The primary difference from the most common ways I hear about it from the right is the lack of a "one simple trick to fix it" prescription. It is more limited to a survey of some of the proposed causes and actions.
That being said, the first thing I noticed with that link was the title. Why is it implying it's Men's fault?
> What's the matter with Men?
Imagine if on a similarly gendered topic, say abortion, someone published an article with the title "What's wrong with Women." Everyone would be up in arms over it.
Similarly, if you saw Johnny or Suzy crying on the playground, you might ask, “what’s the matter?” That’s not implying they did something bad, it’s asking what hurt them or upset them, in a slightly colloquial way.
I think jumping straight to “why are they implying this is men’s fault” is, ultimately, the perspective you’re already bringing to a very benign article title, and the fact you reacted immediately that way instead of assuming good intentions and reading a bit of the content is a reflection on how some folks have decided that “toxic masculinity”, for instance, is a vile attack on men instead of a descriptor for vile things perpetuated on men.
Here is one: https://youtu.be/dxdlR_ESJFA?si=tGaUPLTzoh5oNQCh
When Obama tried creating "My Brothers Keeper" program to help struggling AA boys, who got it shut down? Certainly wasn't the right wing.
He didn’t try, he succeeded in 2014, and it remained in place as long as he was President, then it stopped being an Administration priority under Donald Trump and went away in 2017 (though the Obama Foundation then launched a similarly named grant program with similar purpose in 2018 which is still active.)
> Certainly wasn’t the right wing.
Except it absolutely was.
My recollection is that the program was initiated in 2014, with substantial contributions from private organizations. It was further funded in 2015 with more private sector contributions.
I believe it was shut down when Trump was inaugurated.
We can always make the claim that why artificially limit it to just that subgroup or why can't these specific group of men find help in the all inclusive programs we have already, but then we get back to where we started, that is "see we are talking to men".
This is also an allagory at every other attempt of the left wing lens trying to help men. Society is very quick to shove in my face "black patient with black doctors and female patient with female doctors have better outcomes" but for some reason an issue faced by men needs to be watered down or not addressed completely.
This is absolutely absurd nonsense. Good god.
Check the production values of most socialist-inclined (not liberal, big difference) content on youtube/podcasts vs those coming from the right.
I mean, look at those Lex Fridman videos. Like, sure, dude is probably going to support the cause for a new All-American Übermensch or something like that - But he looks coool while doing it, can't deny that.
More than 70 years ago Pasolini explicitly said "The right is back again because they scream louder than us" and we're yet far from fully internalizing this concept.
In reality you have families or aspiring families competing against each other. It is good that women get better career options, but it would be entirely self-defeating if this comes at the expense of men's career options. The wife does not want to steal her husband's job. She is not going to be happy with a husband who earns less or has worse career options than her. She is not going to cheer for feminism when her husband gets out-competed for a promotion by a woman.
For the first time in history, men aren't the end-all-be-all of economic impact and I don't think this is a problem. Women have been getting the short end of the economic stick for awhile. The fact is the economy is changing and the traditional jobs that men have had in the past are no longer as high paid or necessary due to advancements in technology. Here's a perfect example:
"You have an infrastructure bill that will create jobs largely for men. Two-thirds of the jobs in the infrastructure bill will go to men: black men as much as white men, and Hispanic men a little bit more, because they’re so represented in the construction industry. Don’t hide from that fact, as the administration does when they’re challenged on it."
I think is just wrong. We shouldn't be making bills for men we should be making bills for _people_ that _need work done_. If "shovel jobs" aren't economically valuable and men want to pick up shovels and women want to pick up computer keyboards, does that mean we have some kind of crisis of the gender that happens to pick up shovels more often? I don't buy it. We have a crisis where _people_ are picking up the wrong tools if their goal is to make maximum economic output. Men should pick a lane. Either they are content with doing "shovel jobs" or they can go to school like everyone else and get a non-shovel job that pays well. We don't support the horse economy anymore other than niche areas because horses are, besides ranching or farming, useless for economic output. Why would we subsidize an entire class of jobs which don't make economic sense for the benefit of men only? That's against the market forces that run our economy and it's also against equality women have been fighting for for _generations_
Trump won in 2016 due to populism, on the belief that the American male was forgotten and left behind. As too, was rural America.
The left could easily win election after election by coming out and saying "yeah, we've done a lot for women, for people of color, for sexual minorities, etc...but here's a bunch of things we're doing for men, for the lower class, for the middle class, for rural America. Feminism is great, and masculinity is great too.".
If you get out in front of the messaging, and control it, right wing shock-jock culture warriors have no ammo. The GOP has won lots of elections simply because their media messaging is on point, consistent as hell, and repetitive. The left has ignored all their successful tactics instead of copying them, for some odd reason. I don't quite get it.
I don't think those 2 points match up. You can get out in front of the messaging but you will not deprive right wing shock jock culture warriors of ammo. As you say, their messaging is consistent and repetitive, and it doesn't really matter if it's true or counteracted by reality. It'll get repeated often enough that it's assumed to be true. (For a tiny example, consider the "Sleepy Joe" meme. It has been clearly disproven by anybody paying attention to the last few years, but nevertheless it keeps getting trotted out as if it were obviously true).
A couple of excerpts that summarize Renn's viewpoint:
>> The directional similarity of Reeves’ recommendations to the MRA agenda shows why it won’t get much traction. The MRA vision never inspired a material number of men, and neither will Reeves. In part, this is because he wants men to become more like women, a project that will never appeal to ordinary guys. He cites David Gilmore’s very interesting book Manhood in the Making, which is an anthropological survey of how a diverse set of cultures around the world have defined manhood as a distinctive identity that builds on men’s strengths rather than seeks to minimize them. But Reeves rejects Gilmore’s insights. His agenda would be more compelling to ordinary men if he had worked with the grain of Gilmore’s findings on the common themes of manhood rather than against them.
>> The second half of his book, then, exemplifies a major problem in American public life—one where ideology prevents us from honestly addressing our biggest social issues—that is not specific to Reeves’ book. The same ideological straightjacket affects pretty much every other area of society as well, from opioids to homelessness. Which is why we have not been able to successfully address any of them. As a society, we must find a way to create the space in which the real sources of and potential solutions to serious social issues can be publicly discussed and ultimately confronted if we actually want to make progress in fixing any of them.
Is it just me or does this reduce to the idea that ordinary men are stupid? Not on board with that at all.
This is not only a very western perspective but a very modern one. Regardless, the principles of liberating people from gender roles applies just as well to a gender role applied only to men.
The whole concept of intersectional feminism is that there are different classes of privilege and exploitation that are relative to each other. To say that modern feminism doesn't think men are exploited is to misunderstand modern feminism.
Are young men exploited? Absolutely. They are exploited by capitalists to extract as much value out of their labor, their bodies be damned.
Are they exploited by people in power? Absolutely. The entire manosphere exploits their loneliness and keeps them isolated as emotionless rugged individuals.
Men are humans just as women are humans, and men have the same human need to connect and socialize. Toxic masculinity strips them of fulfilling that need.
Feminism gets caricatured so much by people who have something to benefit from that lampooning. Rather than dogpiling on the "feminism is mean to men" bandwagon, actually read modern feminist literature on masculinity.
Numerous studies have shown that liberals have higher rates of depression and worse mental health in general compared to people with more conservative views. For the biggest bang for the buck, this is the place to look for improvement.
Liberals don’t talk about these issues because liberals aren’t the left. Democrats are not the left. At best they are center-right.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
The latter is a valid perspective, but dominates the discourse which is hardly a balanced approach.
The problem is that a lot of people, many of them journalists and "influencers" writing for a lay audience, decided they could just cross out the "socially expected" part, which results in a completely different concept that puts the onus for the behavior entirely on the individual — hardly a socially enlightened perspective — and that amounts to the appropriation of academic jargon for the speaker's use as a rhetorical bludgeon. And sure, a lot of these writers were left-leaning self-described feminists who may have assumed they could do no wrong. And yes, many of these term-abusers would go on to propagate real toxic masculinity while decrying the failures of the target of the week from their position of presumed revolutionary thought.
But don't blame the sociologists. They used a reasonable term to describe a real problem. And now they've had to go pick a new term — I think it's something like "male role behavior syndrome" but I don't remember exactly.
Sure 20 years ago the sides were reversed but now the hypocrisy is mostly on the left ( I didnt say all), specifically when it comes to how we treat both sexes.
In particular you see pointless bashing of young men. Who are actually at the very bottom of the patriarcal order, completely disposable and a seen mostly as fodder. So punching at young men is actually punching down and reinforcing the patriarcal order.
Examples?
>the quasi-marxist idea that men are a separate species that exploits women
How is that quasi-marxist?
One of Marxism's core tenets is class struggle: The bourgeois vs the proletariat. Feminism offers a similar narrative, only the proletariat is patriarchy. A group or institution that allegedly serves to advance the interests of men at the expense of women; placing men into positions of power and leadership so that they can enjoy social benefits and privileges intentionally not offered to women.
Most "*-isms" offer this type of narrative. The only thing that changes are the particular power groups vs oppressed. It's not a "left" or "right" phenomenon. Nazism offered the same story and used its ideological bullshit to justify persecution of the Jews: by painting them as a self-serving group that was occupying institutions of power.
The most effective way to get people to hate others is to make the others look both powerful and self-interested.
> The left talks about this all of the time,
every time I've seen leftists talk about this. its always in the form of gaslighting men into blaming themselves for their failures. as if the k-12 educational system isn't currently stacked against them.
And they continue to wonder why the right has enjoyed such a resurgence across the world. Looking for any reason, any explanation that does not require a mirror.
I grew up in Europe and was ultra liberal most of my youth.
Sentence structure man, sentence structure!
They act more mature because they're pressured to by society. I won't bombard you with articles but I urge you to look into the causes behind that saying.
No facts about it, just some random assertion. Schools aren't going to change the way males relate to playing games, sports, and farting around in general compared with actually studying.
What other part of the article did I miss? Oh, this:
> the education system isn’t doing very well by lots of our boys and men now. We have a ten percentage point drop in the share of male teachers, incredible underinvestment in apprenticeships and vocational forms of learning, and all kinds of changes in school environments that mean that we’re not serving them very well.
What changes in environments? Vocational means simply that boys don't do desks and paper well- is that true? Do male teachers make that much difference? The thrust here is that the economy has left men behind. Maybe that's true, which is more important.
You would be surprised. A boy having a male mentor is extremely helpful. Oftentimes an adult male can connect with boys in ways that an adult female might have trouble with. Teachers, for better or worse, are mentors. They are who kids spend the most time around during school semesters, and where they receive the most instruction, outside of parents.
Now don't get me wrong. Boys can absolutely succeed without a male teacher in their lives, and it's great that we have lots of female teachers. But it is absolutely helpful for a boy to have a man to look up to in some fashion.
This article makes a lot of good points about it, though its more about mentorship in general instead of male mentorship:
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/boys-need-power-of-mentoring-b...
lets flip this around. lets say we live in an alternative universe where primary school is primarily male dominated. just drawing from your own life experience, would you ask if not having female teachers affects female students?
Sounds like you have already thought about this and came to a sexist conclusion.
A hugely shared article from 2 months ago in WaPo:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/10/christine...
Also in the Atlantic last year:
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/10/21-r...
This is just off the top of my head, but it's easy to do a Google search.
Disclaimer, I'm not very familiar with either The Atlantic, nor who runs allsides.com and whatever biases they may have.
Second, an administration not having "an agenda" for an issue as intractable/abstract as mental health is not a sign that they don't genuinely care.
That said, I certainly agree that the president - in fact, all presidents, left or right - have paid no more than lip service to men's societal struggles, image issues, mental health, etc, but that is clearly not the driving thesis in this thread.
It's precisely about how while liberals are recognizing the negative effects of the crisis of masculinity, they haven't been able to converge on solutions. And how that's a problem.
Why this is relevant to the discussion:
The gun suicide rate is up for teens: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/07/27/guns-s...
Men are far more likely commit suicide by gun: https://preventfirearmsuicide.efsgv.org/about-firearm-suicid...
Unfortunately, the news tends to focus hard on the "mass shooting" angle instead of the suicide rate when discussing safe storage and red flag laws.
This is the crux of 90% of fallacious criticisms of political parties. A lot of people in power are immoral and don't care about certain issues for identity-politics reasons, but as well there are reasonable people in power who can only give so much attention to so many topics at any given time, and some issues naturally become more associated with one party than another. In a perfect world that would be fine and everybody would understand that just because the news articles and speeches concerning a particular party don't divvy their focus on particular issues in the same manner as one personally would given one's own specific politics, that doesn't mean "the left" or "the right" "don't care" about X issue or are "silent on" issue X. That phrasing is usually an oversimplification used as an excuse to bash a party disliked by the writer/speaker for other reasons. The two specifics reasons this pattern is fallacious is:
A. It implies that the people in power generally don't care about the issue, which may only appear true if you do not have a holistic sample of their opinions and policies, which is not something the media facilitates.
B. It implies that the voter base of those people must generally agree with them on the particular issue.
Multiple Democratic presidents have not done anything substantial to address some of the issues you mentioned. Not saying that the GOP is better, they are objectively far worse. But the Democrats have squandered every chance to really help this country in meaningful drastic ways.
Shit, Biden was THE biggest friend to Corporate America while he was in the senate, and that didn't stop while he was VP, nor as President. You think someone who was completely bought and paid for by the healthcare lobby was going to allow Obama to deploy a government-backed healthcare option, instead of the mess we got with the ACA?
Are you talking about Biden, or every single Republican here?
I'm well aware that the GOP sucks, but the corporate wing of the Democratic party has put their foot down and voted with the GOP for way too long...especially on issues that are popular across the country even among different political demographics. Drug reform, immigration, education, healthcare, gun control, etc... Corporations donate lavishly to both parties because it's just too easy and cheap to do so, plus the promise of having whatever party is in power completely subservient to your interests is quite appealing if you're a CEO.
I'd love a president who actively goes out of their way to fuck Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, Bio Oil, etc... but the last politician to attempt to do that on the national level was Bernie, and he got shafted.
Things were pretty non-masculine back in the late 70s and early 80s but nobody seems to care about that. I hate using the catch all of blaming social media but it does play a part in the attention to "issues".
I could post a bunch of links but here are two relevant ones: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/masculinity-for-the-modern... https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/boys-arent-growi...
Also the article tries to pin male graduation rates to masculinity but makes no mention of 300% tuition and crippling debt.
I hate these types of articles that try take one issue and make it the scapegoat for all these complex problems. This over simplification of lifes complexities and how much things suck really need to stop.
A common example would be the topic of male suicide, which is usually addressed as either "well, women try to kill themselves more often and that's totally not an indicator of attention seeking behavior versus genuine depression and fatigue with life" or "toxic masculinity and the patriarchy creates all of the problems for men". Both of which ignore pangender expectations and influences on the average (versus in-power) male experience.
There's no doubt that the American left (and other Western nations' equivalents) diminishes male issues or treats them as unimportant due to the perspective that men created and control all of those issues. Useful for political influence, but useless for discourse or problem solving.
The usual rhetoric I hear about toxic masculinity is very far away from the contents of that book. It is really easy to use that phrase in an aggressive way. Though, interestingly enough, Pixar’s Buzz Lightyear movie was written by someone who has thoroughly studied this. By that token, so can the contrast between Iron Man and Captain America in the MCU.
Ironically enough, some of the very problems brought up by the right can be understood in an insightful way with this lens.
For example, the fact that males disproportionately commit suicide is blamed on toxic masculinity - lack of vulnerability, cultural self esteem issues or whatever. Ok, fair enough; now the counterfactual is, what if females disproportionately committed suicide? It's pretty clear that it would be diagnosed on the left as related to toxic masculinity too (like e.g. women being less assertive asking for raises is).
The left talks about these issues like that, all the time, indeed - that makes it easier to dismiss the issues or to blame them on the "victim". It appears that the author thinks some other approach is needed.
This is not at all clear to me.
Women are actually more likely to attempt suicide then men, yet men are more likely to succeed. If what you say is true we should already be able to observe the phenomenon you describe. So where is it?
An institution that is barely left leaning describes one of the major causes of female depression (in turn a major cause of suicide) as being, to use a shorthand, patriarchy - i.e. some problem with men. The causes of increased suicides in men, as far as I've read, are also various problems with men.
Which is exactly the point I was making... see also, violence and incarceration, etc.
If so then I must have missed your point. Because it seemed like you were making a point about the left jumping to conclusions. Not accepting studied medical literature. Does "the right" not think any of the causes the Mayo clinic lists are legitimate causes? Which ones? Where can I learn about this?
> If this is the "institutional" view, imagine the actual left-wing view
No. Plenty of people spend lots of time imaging what "the others" believe. It's rarely leads to an accurate view.
I argue that's the whole of the left discourse.. any new issues would be handled similarly regardless of the outcomes to be discussed. Can you provide any issues as counter-examples?
I mean left in US context. The further to the left, the more issues/the more the issues are diagnosed like this, as far as I can tell
They absolutely do NOT. The right has Jordan Peterson and a raft of people discussing men's issues. The left has NO equivalent. The silence is deafening. If you dare to bring up men's issues in education, parental rights, etc, you get lumped in with the MRA wackadoodles. The left is especially harsh in silencing dissent, and frankly every time it happens, you're pushing people further into the arms of the right wing.
Edit: exhibit A. This is the fastest I've had an innocuous comment go negative on hackernews. Tow the party line or be silenced I guess...
I wonder when I see these characterizations of the left if they are coming from social media. I’m not on any social media aside from this site I guess, so I’m not sure if that’s what’s going on. The folks on the left that I interact with in real life are definitely a very big tent group.
What people mean here is talking about problems imposed on men by society and how to fix that, not discussion that merely boils down to repeating feminist talking points. For example, one issue affecting men is the way they are vulnerable to immediate and vicious punishment if any woman anywhere makes allegations regardless of whether they are substantiated or even eventually proven false. Try bringing that up with your friends and see what happens.
they are all about addressing feminists and female minorities. I can tell you from my own experience, the vast majority of the left don't give a shit about minority men either.
I'm not rushing towards the right, I'm being pushed away from the left.
The only time I’ve seen that happen is when the proposed solutions are things like rolling back women’s independence or trying to excuse things like harassment as “boys will be boys”. I’ve otherwise read tons of things about helping build healthy relationships, having non-sexual friendships, improving educational options, bolstering employment options which don’t require college degrees, helping with unreasonable expectations and mental health/substance abuse traps, etc. and have never seen the dynamic you describe.
And this is a great pity. The left needs someone understanding male problems, able to discuss them and offer some concrete plan forward. The deafening silence you mentioned causes the gap go wider and decreases the chances of mutual understanding, as exemplified by many comments under this article.
The left doesn't have an equivalent of Jordan Peterson in general—there aren't any well-known celebrity spokespeople on the left. It's just not how they do things. So if that's what you're looking for, to understand what people on the left think about anything, really, you're going to be disappointed.
Modern capitalistic practices are terrible for mens health. The previous paradigm was terrible for women. Any real solution has to address both.
What discourse I've seen that focuses on men's issues from the left tends to not really get it. If they just tsk tsk harder at Jordan Peterson and criticize toxic masculinity harder, surely the incels will realize the error of their ways. Meanwhile, other groups are offering a sense of purpose in life that doesn't require feeling ashamed of yourself. Even if that purpose is not a good one, don't be surprised that people sign up for it.
It's hard to think that even centrists are interested in fixing the problem when there's headlines like this:
> Biden criticizes ‘white man’s culture’ as he talks violence against women
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/27/politics/joe-biden-white-mans...
That's just a random example. The article adds a bit more color, but not much. Do you think rhetoric like that will draw in any white men that don't have a shame kink? I don't, and a few weak hand-wringing articles here and there don't make up for it.
I'm not sure I'd say i'd expect better from Jacobin, but it's still kind of weird to just let that slide past without comment.
> My overall understanding of these labor market trends over the last few decades is that we’ve seen a narrowing of the gender wage gap, for the reasons we just discussed, and _a sharp widening of the class wage gap_. They’re pulling in different directions. So _the gap between the median and the top has gotten much wider_, but the gap between men and women at each level has gotten narrower.
That's the "centrist" (maybe, by US standards) think tank guy (with my emphasis) and the Jacobin guy complaining about what the left isn't talking about replies with:
> I want to ask about the maleness part of this...
Billionares sucking the life out of our planet and people and are happy that we're squabbling over how "the left treats men" instead of looking up to ones that are causing a global mental health crisis
However, I also think it is complicated. We can't talk about progressive policies while ignoring the very real advantages that men (largely white men, which I am one) have had for many years.
That doesn't mean that men should suffer while we work towards a more equal society. But to some degree there may be a need to take a back seat and there will be some unavoidable pain along the way especially while what you have been conditioned towards changes.
But there are pieces that I agree with. Mental health being a big one. There is still a lot of stigma around mental health for men. A lot of this comes from a toxic masculinity view (which to be clear I have seen some women contribute to this view as well) that it makes you "less of a man" or whatever and men not getting the help that they need. This does go beyond just mental health but just the idea of asking for help making it seem like you are some sort of failure.
I feel like a lot of us here are likely in a more progressive environment. I mean just Monday I was out with dinner with friends, I happened to have a psych evaluation and got my results that day and I mentioned it because I was curious about others thoughts and opinions. I can say the same thing about coworkers or even my Boss. But having family and friends in far less progressive parts of this country does make me believe that attitudes like this are still the exception in the US.
We still have a long way to go for mental health for everyone in this country and (based on my experience) there is still a ton of stigma for men and it really is ignored my the left for the most part.
Men and women in the USA are used up by industry and capital to the point of damaging their bodies. People turn to mood-altering substances to try to dull the mental, emotional, and physical pain.
In parallel to the efforts to make society better for both men and women, we should be attacking the root causes of oppression. We can only fix that by attacking inequality, poverty, lack of access to mental/physical healthcare, and injustice. If you reduce the stressors, fewer people will turn to the toxic aspects of society that promise easy answers and simple actions.
We do need to be listening to everyone, with no exceptions. However there's no guarantee that those ideas will be good or moral, and some segments or ideologies forget that. There's no right to have your ideas accepted or to never receive criticism.