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Comment by haburka | Hacker News Reader

It’s worrying that people really don’t understand the appeal of pseudo philosophers like Tate and Jordan Peterson. It’s not the same as gambling. It’s really much more complex than that. Gambling is an irrational, desperate act that takes advantage of magical thinking.

The new “manosphere” exists and is popular because they actually are speaking to and engaging with men. Men have issues and frankly there’s no one (that I know of) on the left who’s giving any kind of antidote or guidance on the problems.

Personally I can’t stand the likes of Tate, simply because they embrace a form of masculinity that I find to be repulsive. But when they speak, I find a direct sense of empathy that’s just completely missing from any other talking head. I also feel the same empathy in many fictional movies like “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)” or “Good Will Hunting.”

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You're completely right..

The left is afraid to invest in men's issues out of fear of suppressing efforts of uplifting women. It's a fallacy.

To thread this needle, the left can and should frame men's advocacy as a form of women's health issues. Men and women are obviously interdependent... healthy men means healthy women.

Another good first step is acknowledging the biological differences that influence men to behave the way they do (testosterone, being one major factor).. but things like this starts to complicate other ideologies about sex and gender.. it's a mess..

Hear hear.

(warning - politics below)

Although if left tried to frame men’s issues as female issues, I personally would be offended.

A better way would be to start with non-controversial male issues (mental help to prevent suicides? homelessness?), and work up from there (equal taxation & riterement, military, equal treatment in family courts, support in domestic violence cases…)

As a side note - I don’t get why left is so afraid of pissing radical feminists off. It’s not like they will begin to vote right wing.

I don’t think the left is afraid of pissing radical feminists off. Also the left already advocates for at least some of the things you mentioned like mental health and homelessness. I don’t think those topics are particularly popular in the “manosphere”.

I think the main problem is the men invested in the manosphere want comforting lies and the left won’t give it to them because in reality it’s much more complicated than what any of the influencers say.

Hm, what country?

In Poland during the last elections the only party that said anything about men’s issues was a far right party (konfederacja).

From mid-right I wouldn’t expect a thing, and the main mid-left (KO) had first three sections dedicated to women, elderly and children, with men completely missing - in 100 issues they had covered not a single one touched upon the subjects we’re discussing.

> I don’t get why left is so afraid of pissing radical feminists off. It’s not like they will begin to vote right wing.

They're not. Embracing trans people runs completely counter to radical feminism. The left currently subscribes to liberal feminism, not radical feminism.

> They're not. Embracing trans people runs completely counter to radical feminism.

Trans exclusionary radical feminists are a radfem niche; they’re not necessarily the radical feminist mainstream. Note that most people identified by the media as ‘TERFs’ are not; they’re transphobes who may claim to be some sort of feminist, but few subscribe to radical feminism as an ideology (there are a handful of _actual_ TERFs left in the broader modern transphobic movement, though many of them, unsurprisingly, have difficulty with that movement’s dubious bedfellows.)

> the left

As in, the global left? Whose left are we talking about here? Biological differences are well acknowledged in modern diversity programs, but it's exactly those programs that are now being questioned. A less 'zero sum' view of social progress may be a better way forward, we all lift up one another.

Something that I find funny is that in my experience trans people are often pretty upfront about the biological differences between "men" and "women". After all, many of them have experienced both male and female hormone profiles.

Tate is also literally selling get-rich-quick scams to a vulnerable population, though. Like, the author is not just using that as a metaphor: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/aug/20/andrew-tate-mo...

I think that an additional factor might be the feeling of being part of something. I grew up very conservative and only became progressive later in life. A lot of my friends on the left are shocked when I say that there's a sense in which I miss the sense of purpose, mission, and community that the right provided. Even just watching Fox News there was constant messaging that you're part of the "real Americans" who are fighting back against "the liberals".

I'm very glad that my life experiences opened my eyes and I moved to the left, but that doesn't mean I don't still miss some aspects of being on the right.

> frankly there’s no one (that I know of) on the left who’s giving any kind of antidote or guidance on the problems.

I'm not deeply knowledgeable about the following community but are spaces like HealthyGamerGG doing the right thing?

Check out Prof G. - Scott Galloway. He's a big advocate for young men.

There are people on the Left discussing the real root causes of the current societal de-valuation of young men (and everyone else), but "you're a victim of the capitalist raiding of our social coffers by oligarchs, who at the same time tell you it's women's fault to misdirect your anger away from they who are the real reason your job pays as little as it can, and you can't afford a house" requires so much more foundational work to explain than the people blaming women and 'wokeness' have to do.

It also, as you alluded to, doesn't make them out as some direct main-character-esque target of this system, just collateral damage, which doesn't feel like empathy the same way that saying, "you're right, you are being personally attacked. People do hate you as an individual just for who you are." feels like.

Telling someone that they need to stand together and fight the top-down dismantling of our society for profit is also a much larger ask than telling them it's fine to stew in their hate, watch another JBP video on YouTube, and "clean your room".

Rhetoric against easy scapegoats often wins out over truth: it did so in WW2 Germany, and it's well on its way to doing so again here.

>It’s worrying that people really don’t understand the appeal of pseudo philosophers like Tate and Jordan Peterson

Rather than gatekeeping the quality of being a philosopher, it may be better to criticize the issues with their philosophies.

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