I enjoyed this article
I will say it’s very easy to accept that victim attitude. I did. I don’t any longer, I’d consider myself a humanist with the belief we need to make society better for everyone.
I’m going to whine for a bit, I’m in my mid 30s now, and when I was in high school social media was new and Facebook was pretty much at its peak. I don’t know what growing up is like for kids these days, but I do know my 11 year old nephew is like the kids in the article and he knows all about “red-pill” alpha/beta/sigma shit (but not how incorrect it is).
As a teenager it felt like being a white straight male meant I was being pushed backwards to make room for helping push women forward (I saw felt like because sometimes how somethings feels outweighs reality).
As an example, to pay for university I went through lists of scholarships and almost all of them were focused on minorities and women, and so I was ineligible. I worked 30+ hours a week after school school and I worked really hard to get up to an A average so that I could get some scholarships to help afford tuition (and I still ended up with debt). It was a really tough time and I was filled with fear about the future. At the time I felt that that I had to put in more effort to get less than my peers did because I was a straight white boy. My girlfriend at the time ended up getting so many scholarships and bursaries that she could afford her tuition, and her residence, and fun money leftover, and she never had to take on any debt to pay for her even more expensive university. I only got one scholarship (not for lack of trying) based on my grade cutoff, and I ended up taking on debt which took years to pay off. It felt very unfair by comparison, and I know her experience did not reflect the average, but that’s what I saw as my comparison.
I also was a frequent 4chan user at the time, I joined for the memes, but there was a lot of commentary about how the education system had been changed to favour girls and that when it was more adversarial boys performed better. By then the statistics had already swung so that more girls were getting accepted into university, and they were more likely to graduate. I still have no idea how true the things I read on 4chan were vs reality, they definitely excluded the narrative of sexism against women in the old days, but they felt real, they matched with real statistics, and it was a cohesive narrative. I got sucked in, and I was bitter, and I saw all the ways in which I was the victim.
Obviously I never experienced any of the downsides of being a minority or being a woman. I never got the perspective of why things were harder for them and why they deserved help. I only saw there was help for them while I was struggling to keep afloat. I only saw the still present expectations on men to be providers, all the bad sides of patriarchy without knowing what patriarchy was (except meaning male and bad). Also at the time, there was stuff like anti-rape pledges that schools were making boys take, and it sorta felt like being treated like a criminal for crimes you knew you would never commit.
Anyways, I’ve meandered a lot. The discourse has evolved but I still don’t think men’s issues get the discussion they need, and I don’t think we’ve seriously focused much effort on the question of “how do we help boys too”.
Now that alarm bells are ringing and it feels like we’re still not adequately discussing men’s issues, and sadly it feels like the only people who actually are, are those alt-right red-pill influencers (who are massively warping the truth to fit a narrative) because they’re not afraid to get labelled over it.
And just to sign off, over 15 years after high school I now see a lot of the privilege I actually had, I’m more aware of the realities minorities and women face, and I know I was a whiny teenager with blinders on to all of the benefits and luck I actually had.
I remembered being the only Asian kid in school on Long Island. It was awful. The constant fights/bullying I was in were so frequent that my parents sent me to defense training.
My teachers would put me down and one of my teachers even physically abused me. The vice principal saw it and didn’t do anything either.
But I felt privileged because I wasn’t the only black kid in my school. He was my best friend. He had it way worse.
My point is that it is all about perspective. My life sucked because I knew what my friend was going through.
I’m sorry you went through that.
That’s the kind of thing I didn’t think about growing up, which was in a primarily white area, and I only really made non-white friends in university.
I feel embarrassed at what I thought back then sometimes.
Obviously it’s not your fault. You’re the product of your environment. Racism is sorta built into everything in our society.
I’ll give you an example that relates to your post.
I work in a small startup and manage a marketing team. Our team is growing and I’m constantly hiring people.
Our founder plans to go public, but our diversity % is awful. We have 2000 employees, 8 blacks, 14 Asians and 80% men. The vast majority of them are white men. The head of HR is a friend of mine and asked me for help.
I told her one of the many reasons was the college graduate and masters preferred line we have on all our postings. It didn’t even matter that it’s a junior position. That was added because they wanted “educated” people. But we inadvertently homogenized all our candidates.
As a test, we changed all marketing positions to just say high school or GED. And with that simple trick, marketing is the most diverse department in the company.
The only thing we can all do as a society is to just try our best to bring diversity to our lives. I was a “don’t bother me and I won’t bother you” type of person when it came to LGBTQ people until I found myself living in West Hollywood and making friends with mostly gay people.
The scholarship thing, and lack of social support for men in general, is still a massive problem IMO. I’m all for lifting those up who need it, but many people, myself included, were too “rich” to get financial aid, too poor to afford anything other than community college (which is great, but it has challenges of its own), and too straight and white and male to quality for 95% of scholarships. I’m very aware I inherently have some level of privilege, and I’m sure there’s even more I’m unaware of, but the single greatest contribution to your chance of success in life is the zip code you were born in.
I’m extremely privileged and make more than enough money for a comfortable living, but the road here was very difficult, and it’s pretty damn easy to see why young boys are leaning right so hard. I’m left as fuck and id even be considered left wing in Europe, but the left in the US has alienated the fuck out of young men and provides almost 0 role models for them. The constant media messaging and sentiment of men are evil, they need to go die in wars, and #killallmen on social media being celebrated is super damaging. If I didn’t end up decently successful and couldn’t take a step back and get a top down view of everything I don’t know if I’d end up nearly as left as I am.
It’s only recently I’ve seen some sentiment change around this, but it’s going to take a long time as all social change does. We really ought to stop telling young boys what to not be and instead SHOW THEM what they should strive to be. This is why people like Andrew Tate get such a cult following. Despite being an absolute dog shit human being, he focuses on uplifting oneself and provides an ideal person who you should strive to be. By comparison that positive male role model who young boys should strive to be is completely absent on the left and leaves many boys, myself included at the time, lost as fuck and surrounded by what they should not be instead of what they should.
There is really easy solution - socially financed education and income based support.
But then how will we get young people to join the military for our unpopular unnecessary wars?
100%
It is a lot easier to see where you’ve struggled than where you are privileged.
But I would like to see more make role models. I didn’t really have many growing up.
Yes, by not introducing trauma of being micromanaged, parented too much and by allowing them personal space.
By understanding that this doesn’t mean kids don’t need help, they need a lot of it, but you don’t come arrogantly with your mind made up about what kind of help exactly they need.
By being respectful of their borders in interests also, because when a kid is interested in anything at all, and the parent thinks it’s cool to just intervene “helping” in that interest and “participating” without being invited, especially publicly, that’s worse than bullying.
And also doing that thing which may seem stone age - never ever support anybody from the outside against your kid. Teachers, other kids’ parents, neighbors, anybody. If your kid does something wrong, you talk. But you don’t turn it into something you discuss and judge behind their back together with teachers or whoever else and then come to your kid with your opinion. That’s called family values and it really is important.
In short, respect.
Militant right ideologies are attractive for people who feel themselves disrespected. Idealistic ideologies (not only right) are attractive for people who lack happiness. Repressive ideologies (again not only right) are attractive for people who feel themselves weak. Conspiracy theories are attractive for people who feel lost. Reactionary ideologies are attractive for people who feel rejected.
I had conservative parents and I might have grown up the same… but I slid WAY to the left which I attribute to one very specific and pivotal event: watching the news and protests around Trump getting elected while I was sitting in a McDonald’s in Thorncliffe Park. Until that day I was pretty indifferent to politics and stuff, but this had me question: what injustice in this world led to this crazy person to take power?
people seem to blame boys for everything without realizing how the world has changed.
I have a problem with the inherent hypocrisy in this article. The author presents the issue of her sons “sliding to the right” as a problem in itself, rather than explaining why she thinks it is a problem.
If you, as a parent, see a shift in your child’s belief system or political preferences as a problem, you need to do some introspection and be able to fully articulate why it’s a problem other than “I don’t like it.”
if you’re a person who has any kind of sympathy to queer people, poor people, people of color, women, men, disabled people, immigrants, recognize the verifiable facts of climate change and its effect on our biosphere, are even vaguely interested in a better world, or are just baseline concerned for the health and wellness of your kid, right wing ideologies are self-evidently a problem.
the world that right wing politicians want is bad, the things they think about other people are cruel, and only people who already believe the stupid, evidence poor bullshit right wingers believe would look at the shit online right wing communities get up to and not immediately be concerned for the welfare of their child. i mean, even being a mom is explanation enough. right wing ideologies treat women poorly. its not complicated, and most people reading an article like this are not seriously examining whether or not “equal rights”, “feminism”, and “human kindness” are things to be debated. they aren’t.
You reduced “sliding to the right” to “becoming a racist, sexist, misogynist” and completely missed the point. Rather than dictating to our kids what they should believe, we should teach them principles that will allow them the best chance of choosing correctly for themselves.
Honestly, attitudes like yours are a huge contributor to the rightward shift of young men.
sure buddy. expressing my resentment towards a set of ideological principles that have directly harmed me and the people i love, and are continuing to pursue even greater harms towards me and my loved ones right now, that’s the real problem, not the ideologies that are pushing for those harms!
i don’t buy your marketplace of ideas bullshit. if you vote for or associate with modern right wing political movements? you are in action a racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobe, transphobe, climate denialist, book burner, and christian nationalist, because the people you are putting in power are actively pursuing policy which is verifiably all of those things, and the people doing them are not shy about saying what they believe. it’s not a debate, its not a matter of opinion.
i flirted with right wing politics when i was young, i think a lot of people do, but there’s a reason why boys specifically are falling for the bullshit, and its because men are the beneficiaries of the systems of oppression that we’ve built up over the centuries, and oligarchs are pouring money into bolstering fascist movements that see democracy explicitly as a barrier to their supremacy. that just isn’t an attractive political perspective for people who aren’t already on the top of the hierarchy. its not because left wing people aren’t more attentive to the precious little feelings of people who can’t see beyond their own personal comfort, its because right wing ideologues can piggy back on hundreds of years of patriarchy to convince impressionable teen boys that they should strive to maintain their supremacy over all the people who aren’t like they are.
You’ve become radicalized, friend: Your extremist rhetoric makes that clear. I hope you can find your way out.
“extremist rhetoric” eh? was it the mere recognition of systemic oppression that got you? or am i supposed to play nice with folks who are actively trying to make life worse for me? i’m expressing political perspectives that are informed by the modern realities of life for people like me. queer people are fleeing red states. right wing politicians are actively stripping away peoples’ rights as we speak. there’s nothing neutral about your position, there’s nothing “moderate” about standing at the sidelines and turning away from the ongoing human cost of the politics you are right here making accommodations for.
your refusal to recognize the clear and present danger that right wing politics and policy poses to the lives of people worldwide is a kind of radicalism. there is proof, exhaustive bodies of academic literature indicating that so many common right wing positions do not align with observed reality. to presume “moderation” in your politics is to deny that evidence, and that is a deeply political act.
What is extreme about your talking points is the implicit assumption that a person taking any position right of center is a “racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobe, transphobe, climate denialist, book burner, and christian nationalist”. Spewing bigoted and divisive rhetoric like this alienates even centrists like myself. It’s a hateful worldview that could easily lead to violence. I hope you find the help you need.
the assumption i’m making is if you’re broadcasting “any position right of center”, that you’re voting for politicians right of center. and if you’re doing that, then you’re supporting people who are actively pursuing all the things i am describing, especially if you’re in the united states. trying to attribute hate, bigotry, and violence to that assertion is wholly projection. you do not tolerate intolerance. no matter how much you fearmonger about how “violent” this rhetoric is, the stats are clear. it ain’t lefties who are shooting up schools, storming the capitol, and showing up to queer community events with guns and nazi flags.
With all due respect, I think your child deviating from what you’ve tried to teach them is the most natural thing in the world to be concerned about. I don’t think it’s hypocritical.
How many conservative christian parents see their kid not wanting to go to church or reading books like The Selfish Gene and intervene? (I know this is kind of a strawman, but just trying to get the point across that if you shift the perspective to a right wing parent with left wing children, you get kind of the same result).
Besides, I think the author is rather honest with their own beliefs:
For those of us (like me) very firm in our political beliefs, it feels good to stake your position and defend it well. But as adults, we need to figure out a way to help our young people work through confusion without feeling shunned by their own families
The actual issue the author has are: the growing divide between male vs female beliefs seems like a bad thing, and the beliefs that boys are increasingly adopting is increasingly a victim complex.
Giving your children self confidence and educating them also on more philosophical topics is definitely something parents can/should do. The problem arises when parents can’t fulfill that task.
What is rightthink and what is wrongthink is already predetermined before conversations start. So someone who is young and wants to think for themselves cannot hold a position that is not already predetermined, they cannot even talk something through to get the right answer because even holding the wrong answer is liable for attack.
Not even that but not holding the right answer and advocating for it aggressively is already aggressively wrong.
And who is responsible for most of these issues? You guessed it white men. No only do they have to hold the right position they have to defend that position more than anyone else.
The world is getting a lot more competitive but I think the thinks most guys care about is getting girls and getting money do to things like by a house. Sex has gotten horrifically competitive with some guys getting laid loads and some guys not getting any. It pays to be the best and guys know that, lying about it doesn’t help anyone. Theoretically evening out that somehow is probably better for society but I can’t even conceive of how that would happen, but might be an explaination of how marriage for life became the norm.
In terms of money it’s difficult for everyone, but then for everyone else to get a leg up when you are struggling is aggravating. All anyone wants is a level playing field and white guys don’t get that. Also girls still like guys with money whereas it isn’t the same the other way around.
Sure you can say something like women liking guys with money is all part of the patriarchy and pushes that back onto men. But serious, how are the current generation going to fix that? It’s okay for women to feel money makes a man but not to change, but it’s not okay for men to let that happen. That just doesn’t make sense.
Then the mental health aspect is men don’t have anything. They get attacked, they get told they need to be strong, countless examples of women abusing men for being weak (that’s seems the norm in relationships) I guess that’s somehow not women’s responsibility either it’s the patriarchy. So men find comfort and support in other men but that is also not okay. There are no man days in work, no male only spaces, no one trying to push men into a career for teaching. Men even having a normal guy only friendship group gets attacked in ways that women only friendship groups don’t.
I’m sure this comment will do poorly because it doesn’t fit the narrative and people will gloss over it but that’s the explaination of what’s going wrong in guys lives today.
And another hard fact for a lot of people here is the right actually have some points. Can you believe that a huge contingents of different attributes supported by ~50% of the population has some things going for it. I am left wing, probably very left wing. But the way the left act is pushing a lot of people to the right. Conversations with the right are much more open, much more free. The left is so aggressive and unopen to discussion it pushes people away. If the right offers equality and tells young boys they are not born with oringal sin for being boys, then people are going to listen. We need a party that is left economically but individually right.
Tldr
Boys are told how to think and they must advocate for that position or they are wrong. No discussion.
White men are the cause of issues, even for things like women abusing men because it’s due to the patriarchy.
The world is actually competitive for sex and money. More so than ever.
Men getting the blame, not having any help, not being allowed things that help their mental health pushes them to the right because the right has more open conversations and more equality for all. (Well with the exception of financially).
Lmao.You live in a fantasy world
Can you believe that a huge contingents of different attributes supported by ~50% of the population has some things going for it. I am left wing, probably very left wing. But the way the left act is pushing a lot of people to the right. Conversations with the right are much more open, much more free. The left is so aggressive and unopen to discussion it pushes people away. If the right offers equality and tells young boys they are not born with oringal sin for being boys, then people are going to listen. We need a party that is left economically but individually right.
I was with you until this part.
No, 50% of the population isn’t on the current political right, not even 50% of the voting population is on the political right. In Canada it’s much closer to a third of the population. Just because there are two mainstream political sides, does not mean they divide the population accurately.
And second, Conservative conversation spaces tend to have a lot of censorship as well. Look at the conservative subreddits, or Twitter right now, or Truth Social, or Parlor, or any other “conservative” space. Dissent gets you banned. Maybe it feels like you can have more conversation there because the opposition just disappears and you never have to think about it. That’s not to say primarily left wing spaces or online social justice warriors are perfect, there are a ton of very very active anti-car/capitalism/whatever people who will aggressively harass people too.
I think this article may shed some interesting context and complement OP’s linked article nicely: https://theconversation.com/gen-z-boys-attitudes-to-feminism-are-more-nuanced-than-negative-222532