I think progressives never thought about this because we banked on immigration and demographic change allowing us to win culturally and electorally but the issue is immigrants tend to be overwhelmingly male, that is how Trump won actually he won over a lot of Hispanic,Black,Asian and indigenous men who feel humiliated by a new culture, economy and world.
So what can we do rhetorically and policy wise to win more young men over ?
The same as it always has been. Punk Rock. Conservative shit is so goddamn cringe it’s really hard to imagine how it has convinced anyone that it is any kind of counterculture.
Easy
Every time there is a conversation regarding men issues, dismiss them as talking about something that clearly DOESN’T EXISTS, demean them, if they are emotionally intelligent enough to defend themselves from the TOTALLY NOT aggressive rhetoric, compare them to something else, preferably, something weaker and less smart than them, bonus points if you attack their sexuality in the same phrase, that always gets them riled up to support you!
Even more so if you treat them like complete imbeciles with a memory span of seconds and assume they forgot about all the years you have been doing this exact same thing!
And whatever you do, don’t forget to bring up how women have and keep having BIGGER issues
That’ll work wonders
I genuinely believe that more empathy is needed in both directions for people to come out of their trenches. Problem is, it"s hard to feel empathy for those who have no empathy in return. It’s a locked position reinforcing itself with every bad interaction. To break out of this we would have to listen and show that we care, while not getting the same things back. It feels bad. Unfair. Again, this goes both ways.
Do what you say you’re going to do when you get elected. Quit finding just enough no votes and making excuses. You promise, we vote, you don’t deliver. Then you ask “why does no one want to vote for us? We promised to be marginally less terrible than our opponents!”
Doesn’t that Hasan guy do this?
Yes Hasan piker does support terrorists in all their forms, specially domestic ones
Good thing he’s a Nepo baby! Imagine the horror of having him complying with a platform rule’s. Absolute insanity
Guess I’m out of the loop. He seemed pretty normal on Endless Thread, except for streaming 7 days a week. [Endless Thread] The Stream is Up 🅴 #endlessThread https://podcastaddict.com/endless-thread/episode/194201483 via @PodcastAddict
Maybe stop hating their guts…
deleted by creator
Reframe spending as stimulating the economy.
Create jobs through a green new deal that allows for upeard mobility for the motivated. Small business grants.
Create tax incentives for, endorse and give loam grants to businesses that provide workers with a share of a company. Whether co-op type thing or convoluted stock share program.
Young men want to matter, and they want to see the results of their effort.
The reality of this all is rather complex but I think the greatest issue is fundamentally the empathy gap. Men’s issues are not recognized as issues, they’re just dismissed out of hand. I’m talking about the easy things like the sentencing and education gaps.
We need to start the discourse that these are very real problems that are worth addressing.
Another problem I personally run into is how it’s acceptable to discriminate against men, “kill all men” is acceptable but “kill all race” isn’t. Neither should be and we don’t recognize it as a problem, instead defaulting to arguments that are considered horrendous in another context.
Every time I have heard someone say “kill all men” I have immediately dismissed everything else they are saying because their logic is just as rotten as other racists/sexists
How did you dismiss all the leftists in one fell swoop?
If they wanted to address the education gap, wouldn’t they? Why would they want to when trades provide more money, no lost income for 4-5 years, or a crippling debt? Women are at a disadvantage there. I mean, I definitely don’t want to minimize overlooked hardships, but…
You’re paying with your body, the work can be very dangerous, and it takes a while to ramp up to decent pay. On top of that the pay isn’t always going to be better than a degree (iirc research has concluded that lifetime earnings for trades are behind degrees), ignoring countries with sensible tertiary education options.
Trades are not equivalent. And education is still a significant indicator of political alignment.
Honestly, this is a great example of the empathy gap.
Maybe like, one day you are gonna need the social safety net, even if you’re a very strong cis het guy.
One you’re gonna be old. One day you’re gonna be fired without notice when your car breaks down. One day your girlfriend might have a surprise pregnancy you can’t deal with.
Just brainstorming but I would start with saying, sure this doesn’t benefit you right now, cause you got the luck of the draw, but one day we will all need help
Legit I think it’s to shift the focus away from helping other people for the sake of being nice and onto uniting together to fight a common enemy - the bosses, corporations, etc. Dale the machinist from Alabama isn’t going to go to the protest to protect trans latinx PoC out of the kidness of his own heart but he might if he realizes it’s part of a larger project to go out to take back his rights from the people fucking him over, and fuck over his boss. Young men are drawn to masculinity and militaristic language right now, and left wing politics can be easily framed in those terms. Yes, being good to other people should be good in its own right but a lot of people don’t see it that way and we need to get them on our side too.
Just a small educational heads up, the majority of Hispanic people hate “Latinx”. It’s not even pronounceable in Spanish.
Oh I know, I was just using super stereotypical language. Every Latino I know just says Latino or Hispanic.
- Stop dismissing that men have problems which require addressing
A lot of people say things like “men have it the best, they don’t need help!” That’s nonsense. Everyone who is dealing with problems and is suffering needs help. Helping men doesn’t mean you stop helping women, we should help everyone who needs help.
- Stop purity tests and infighting
Progressives today are truly awful when it comes to this. I’m not talking about including nazis, I’m talking about attacking people who agree with you on 90% of topics. Like if someone thinks trans people should be totally treated as the gender they express in every facet of society, except they shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s physical sports competitions.
- Messaging needs HUGE improvement
This is another one that progressives have a terrible problem with. They do a terrible job of letting people know how they’re being helped, and they also use language that gives the impression that they’re against you. For example “the patriarchy” is a terrible term that makes men feel attacked, even though that’s not what it’s about at all. What most people actually mean to refer to is “gender norms”, meaning concepts like ‘men should fuck a lot of women and not express their emotions’. “Gender norms” is a much more accurate term and it doesn’t make men feel like they’re being attacked.
Look at what men are missing and how the right is selling it to them.
Men aren’t doing so hot right now, emotionally and mentally. They feel like they are not manly, and criticized for trying to be manly or liking manly things. There’s a lack of transitions into manhood, and the bar that is seen as a successful man with a good career is pretty much impossible.
If you have a poor paying job, you’re not manly. If you have a well paying job but it’s blue collar you’re not manly because you’re a dumb working stiff. If you have a white collar job you’re not manly because you’re not doing anything tough with your body. Maybe if you’re a CEO who owns the company but also does rock climbing and bear fighting are you seen as manly enough, maybe.
Then you have these guys, your Andrew Tates and so on, who act very manly and tell you it’s ok to be a man and then spout off some of the most toxic, asinine shit saying that’s how you be a man. And young guys fall for it because they aren’t shown any alternative.
Then on the left you have people who speak ill of men as a whole, and manliness as a whole. Sometimes the criticisms are correct, but a lot of times it’s presented as men overall. If you try to say that it’s not every man out there who’s a monster, you get blasted with criticism for saying “not all men”. They also don’t provide anything positive or solutions for feeling manly, with the best they can be offered is to be more like women.
So young men, especially young cishet men, are actively pushed away from leftist spaces, leaving them feeling demonized by those spaces, and actively pandered to by the right which are offering mind poison dressed up as solutions.
So what do we do? There’s a few things to fix.
-
leftist media has to stop demonizing men and start demonizing actions. Instead of saying “men are rapists” start saying “rapists are bad”. When people start to say things like “cis people are shit” other people need to call them out of it, because if you’re supposed to be the side that accepts people’s gender identity, it should be for all gender identities. It can feel cathartic to rail against the majority demographic, especially when people of that demographic have hurt you, but if you feel that it’s unfair to rail against a group because of the actions of a few members of it, that should apply to all groups. Things like “what’s wrong with the straights” doesn’t help build bonds with allies, and it turns young men away from leftist spaces.
-
there needs to be validation and recognition from the left for problems men have, like suicide, workplace death and heavier prison sentencing. The left needs to show that they are trying to fix these problems, too, instead of telling young men to suck it up and be a man about it because they are the oppressor demographic.
-
there needs to be people who counter toxic masculinity, not with telling men to be more like women, but with positive masculinity. If a man is having emotional or mental problems, toxic masculinity says to push that down. Femininity says it’s ok to be soft and vulnerable. Positive masculinity would say that a real man is true to himself and his feelings and expresses then freely, even if others might ridicule him for it. There’s a subtle difference, and the end result of femininity’s and positive masculinity’s tactic might be the same, i.e. the man expresses those feelings, but the way that they get there is very different. The former makes the man feel less validated in his identity, while the latter uplifts it. The memes where they say stuff like “I always tell my homies I love them before they go to bed” actually work.
-
leftist influencers need to make fighting for the rights of minorities seem manly. Badass. Like a hero. Worthy of praise and celebration.
-
while they won’t get the financial and political backing that the toxic male influencers get, there needs to be positive male influencers who talk about masculinity in a positive way, while promoting the ideas above. There needs to be an alternative, who acts manly but in the fun, positive way, that validates young men’s feelings of inadequacy, frustration, and isolation, while promoting an egalitarian perspective.
-
there needs to be a cultural shift in what makes a man. A shift away from dying in battle or becoming a tycoon, and a resurgence of the working class hero. Mass media itself needs to change and promote positive male figures. It can work and be popular, like in Avatar the Last Airbender. We need to show men that they are still men, and still worthy of love, respect and adoration, even if they aren’t a super soldier or a wealthy elite. A lot of this is counter to capitalistic goals, so it may have to be subversive, but eventually it needs to be made the norm.
-
other men need to continue to step up and speak out about injustice towards minorities and against toxic masculinity behaviors in the day to day, and start decrying those behaviors as unmanly. People need to call Andrew Tate and the like unmanly.
-
ideally, the men’s rights movement should be absorbed by the left and the toxic incels kicked out. It should be done in the name of gender equality. Fixing only woman’s problems won’t solve the patriarchy (which could be changed to a different term so everyone feels like it’s less of an us vs them) and feminists should try to help solve men’s problems directly rather than indirectly. Young men would see feminism as more appealing if feminists actually focused on men’s problems as well, rather than ignoring or worse, demonizing them. Feminism could be rebranded as an egalitarian movement for all sexes and genders, maybe get a name change. If the patriarchy affects everyone, then the focus should be on everyone. Maybe it would have to be a whole new movement entirely.
So it’s a larger problem than just getting more leftist male influencers, and some of those problems are systematic. Some can get worked on today. Talking about masculinity in a positive way, promotive equity, stop both their side and your side from bigotry, and, probably the thing that would get young men on board the most:
Actually trying to solve the problems young men are going through.
All these things already exist and maybe just need more exposure.
W-Wait, what is this? A well-thought out, constructive, sympathetic comment? Here? I don’t believe it!
Real talk, though: This is an incredibly solid post and I really appreciate you taking the time to actually write all of these points out. It’s rare (or, subjectively, it feels rare) to see an admission that a major shift in how this topic is approached is needed, and I feel just a bit more hopeful seeing someone else put in the time to go this deep on it.
I would only make two add-on comments to your points:
-
With regard to point #6, I agree with the concept - but we have to be careful of how we phrase this. Unless it comes with a major effort to utterly restructure our economy in such a way that either a man’s value is no longer measured in his ability to be successful in a paid position, and/or we restructure our economy to make success more viable, I fear that efforts to support “working class heros” are doomed to become awkward failures as automation continues to steamroll the viability of those positions.
-
One point I don’t see brought up here, though it is touched at in (1) and (8), is that we’ve got to modulate how we discuss so-called “toxic” behavior. When so many seemingly minor behaviors are met with the same levels of disdain, villainization, and even punishment as things like actual sexual assault, it ends up feeling deeply isolating, undermines the point that is trying to be made, and pushes men towards the worst actors.
-
Thank you for taking the time to write that. That was very well thought out and I really can’t see much or anything to quibble about.
I am a gay man raised in a conservative culture and I really know quite a lot of men in their 30s and 40s who are straight and accepting of me, but still deeply deeply troubled and confused about what it means to be a man. They struggle to identify and articulate their emotions quite a lot.
The fact that those in same-sex relationships have to invent their own ways of dividing the work in a partnership without reference to pre-defined gender roles makes their insight incredibly useful to the world at large. A lot of the struggles that men experience are due to rigid gender roles that do not allow for healthy expression.
I get a little bit angry because it’s like we were expected to accept that provisional approval from the Supreme Court, which as we all know is a very fragile victory.
Why? Because frankly, I think gay men and lesbians have a lot to teach about relationships just by existing visibly. Transgender people do too, but they do not yet enjoy the patchy and tentative acceptance that same sex relationships between cis people have achieved in the large parts of the USA. Their struggle is very intense right now and the LGBQs can help by getting loud again.
Why did we give up on the fight so early? The struggle for existence is not quite as dire for gay and lesbian people as it used to be, but it is still quite a struggle as nothing is assured. But it is not just for our benefit that we must be visible. Frankly, our experience gives us a great deal of wisdom and insight that our society, and men especially, desperately need.
brb gotta tell my son I love him
I want “manly-ness” to go extinct. Honestly I bet mods might delete my comment. But I feel the issue is we as a species are figuring out (slowly) that we all need to go extinct. Human brain architecture is fatally flawed. Greed and selfish notions, always striving for power, and the destruction of basically all other life in this planet, tells me we all need to simply accept that we are empherial, transient and temporary.
Nothing is sacred, there is no gods or meaning. Ultimate Nihilism essentially. MISANTHROPIC ANTI-NATALISM. But also negative-utilarianism, which states that those who choose to stay living need to focus on reducing other people’s suffering. Honestly, it’s almost fascist itself, my beliefs. Here’s one: those who cause other people suffering should be executed! No tolerance for intolerance…
Start by burning all the churches down. Outlaw religion, the mind sickness. Only allow what can be proven scientifically. But yeah, basically we need to genocide the genociders… no forgiveness. Cull the conservatives. No more nations or governments. No patriotism or nationalism or exclusive cultures… above all though, we humans are garbage and we have poisoned the entire planet. We must go extinct. Never get off this planet! Kill any who try to leave, gotta contain the cancer!
EDIT: to answer the question of what could we do to win over more young men? Tell them and everyone else this, “we are going to Eat the Rich, and fucking slaughter Nazis!”
I mean, if you really were the ultimate nihilist, you wouldn’t have a problem with manliness because it wouldn’t matter anyway.
doomer to the nth degree.
i hope you get better <3
-
Be nice and respectful to them and masculinity. Like “It’s masculine to protect the oppressed”
Don’t belittle anyone for that matter, such as based on race, gender or religions, even if you’re upset at that grouping.
I think you can refocus the modern aggressive threatening behaviour of young men into either a physical or psychological aspect of masculinity that celebrates being respected and admired for the safety projected by them. A ‘real man’ is someone who makes sure everyone is heard, everyone is safe, everyone can rely upon, and that no one can get away with shit around. They should be beacons of safety, strength of character, and patience. I believe our ancestors gained this by survival, team bonding through necessity and respect for the danger of nature. Humility needs to come back in a big way.
Exactly. Men want to feel important as well. I think taking away masculinity has led us to this dangerous place.
That, or if they insist on being agressive shits, enlighten them to the time honored tradition of punching nazis.
My great grandfather shot nazis for King and Country 😎🇬🇧
Real men are woke
Real men wear cat ears, maid dresses, and share their gf with other men
I like this actually
Start by no longer telling men who have done nothing wrong they are responsible for the misdeeds of others. It breeds resentment and closes people to anything else you have to say.
Rich old dudes fuck every everyone over…
21 years old kid gets the blame…
US “liberals” are a useful tools of the regime who are too smug to figure out that they are part of the problem
They have become the coastal educated elite through the years and it’s hard for them to accept it doesn’t resonate with the wider population
This comes up a lot, and I really don’t know where it comes from. Who is telling you that you’re responsible for the misdeeds of others? Seriously, point that out, because I’m in my mid forties, I’m a white cishet American man, and I’ve never felt like I was being blamed for the sins of people who look and fuck like me. Really, it just sounds like a conservative strawman talking point, because nobody does this.
Literally the talk about how privileged men are is that
As a mom of men, it has always concerned me that, while we were supporting our girls, we left our boys to flounder a bit. We spent so much time telling girls that they could do anything and they could be ‘just as good as the boys’ and talking to women about glass ceilings and ‘don’t let the man keep you down.’ What did we tell our boys or rather what did they hear?
To your point, I think that there is a fundamental issue with how we talk about success and failure. We effectively target white straight cis men setting them up so that they can never really succeed. As the majority, at least in terms of social and political power, we recognize that they have significant privilege in our culture. We weaponize that privilege such that all successes are external (the system is pushing them up) and all failures are internal (must be something wrong with them if they can fail despite having all of those advantages). Everyone else, to varying degrees depending on how much social and political power we perceive them to have, has the opposite logic applied to them. We say that their success is personal and special because they do it in spite of the system working against them and we blame their failures on the system.
There is of course legitimacy to that reasoning. There are many roadblocks that, especially visible, minorities face that white straight cis men do not. That doesn’t make this mindset not problematic though. The biggest issue with it is that we apply the general to the individual. Does a rural white kid whose parents both work retail have more privilege than Jaden Smith just because of his skin color? That’s of course an extreme example but the point is that the totality of a person’s circumstances is more than just how their biology is perceived by the culture. Privilege does make success easier as compared to people in otherwise similar circumstances but it certainly doesn’t guarantee success or mean that successes don’t have to be worked for.
I was at a college graduation last month, and at least 90% of the awards announced from the podium (significant accomplishments for a graduating class of hundreds) were given to women. The graduating class itself is probably 55% women or so. Women of course still face many barriers, but men are falling behind at some levels.
Thanks I agree and this is a valuable perspective
Male stereotypes have to be culturally broken first. Men are being taught that showing any emotions other than anger and hate is effeminate. They’re being taught that empathy is weakness, that education is stupidity, that freedom is slavery.
Everything that makes men human is being stripped away, leaving a husk of burning hate awaiting marching orders. They need to reconnect to humanity.
Frankly, I was going to say almost the opposite. Conservatives are appealing to young men by decrying the “woke” process of breaking down those stereotypes. It’s a reaction to those “traditional” masculine traits being challenged by a more enlightened society.
The key is not breaking down those gender norms, but rechanneling that masculine energy and “gender pride” into something healthy and beneficial. We need to reframe the conversation, because when you attack, people instinctively defend. Instead, we should model the new masculinity, one where being tough means being confident enough to stand out or be yourself. Where being a bro means being a friend, not a douchebag. Real men have the strength to admit their faults and ask for help. Real power is punching up, not down, and real bravery is accepting people for who they are.
Contrast someone like Joe Rogan with Pedro Pascal. Which one is a “Real Man™”? Which one should we celebrate and focus on? Boys need role models, because we don’t know how to handle our hormones at an age when everything is confusing. If you tell them their instincts are wrong, they will retreat to a safe space where someone else will tell them that society is wrong and they should be as gross and misogynistic as they can be.
Real men are creative. Real men are kind. Real men are curious. Real men are sincere. Real men admit mistakes and accept consequences. Real men lift others up. Real men are able to ask for help. Real men are comfortable with their sexuality, and are not afraid of exploring their preferences.
All children are born selfish and frightened. We have to learn to be better through empathy. Without positive role models, we cannot learn to overcome those selfish impulses, and we cannot stand up to the bullies that will try to sell the red pill.
Because no matter what we do, there will always be conservative dipshits talking about how oppressed they are because they can’t insult people by calling them “girly” or “gay” or “retarded” anymore. There will always be angry gym rats who think big biceps and a fast car will fix their insecurities. There will always be bullies, and we should always stand up to them.
Also, every boy should watch Ted Lasso. Seriously, there has never been a better breakdown of male stereotypes than that show.
I am going to be honest, I think women need to be a a part of this. We are used to being right in regards to gender conflict because usually we are but one thing I agree with men on is that every woman says they want men to share their feelings more but many women lose respect for a man they see as weak.
Bell Hooks talks a lot about this so you can go read her.
I do not find that to be the case at all in my circles, it’s usually the guys giving shit to other guys for expressing emotion and the emotionally expressive people (including women) riffing them for back for being assholes. There’s certainly a song and dance to doing this effectively.
I don’t really think it should be a gendered expectation but rather an everyone expectation. If someone is being vulnerable with you that wouldn’t otherwise, don’t be an asshole. If someone needs to be called out for exhibiting rude behaviour to someone else, do so in the way that works for your circumstances.
40 something male that has struggled to overcome toxic masculinity. I mean I was literally slapped silly by my parents and grandparents for crying when I was 5 and told “boys dont cry”. I mean I’ve cried 3 times in my life before coming to terms with needing to change. Eventalking to my wife it’s taken years for her to accept that Im allowed to feel more emotions than anger and laughter.
Im a foster parent now and it’s been a lot of work to internalize my stuff but damn im supportive if the boys we have want to feel their feelings. 3 year old wanted a rainbow shirt and I got it for him but his dickehad machismo father called him a faggot. Oh boy I made sure he wore his favorite shirt for every visit.
Who is “teaching” them this?
