The overwhelming way the left talks about it is in terms of "toxic" masculinity or through the perspective of feminism.
The latter is a valid perspective, but dominates the discourse which is hardly a balanced approach.
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.