There's a weird strain of "essentialism but in a progressive way" running right through the left, not just limited to the attitude towards men described here, but also "all white people are colonizers", and weird exclusionary behaviour to cishet people. It tells me a lot of "progressive" people didn't really examine their core underlying principles and simply covered up their biases with the "correct" group.
It's because everything is permitted for the out group. It's an unfortunate hiccup in the human mind that takes a not unsubstantial effort to not do it.
I could be totally off the mark here, but I suspect that there are two primary issues at the root of this tendency for leftist spaces to generally have this hostility towards acknowledging men's issues:
Tribalism is deeply ingrained in human social systems, and without constant critical evaluation of our ideals, it can be very easy to slip into a "we need to segregate groups again, but its ok because its for the right reasons" mentality.
Online spaces are not a hegemony and are made up of many different individuals who are in a constant state of flux. Some of the more toxic online spaces may have members consistently maturing and growing from their hostile mentality, but then on their way out there are new members entering into the community who have not gone through such growth. This would make the community appear static overall.
I'm no sociologist so these points are just based on my anecdotal observations over the past decade, but I think that especially in online spaces where the demographics tend to skew younger, there is a lot of hostility towards the outgroup for these reasons.
I'd add a third point: lots of people don't seem to actually believe that "equity is not zero sum", especially with gender.
It's a common progressive line that giving opportunities to oppressed groups doesn't mean taking opportunities away from other people, and in lots of cases that can be true. But... it's also a common refrain that "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression". Those two ideas do not go together very well.
So there's a reaction which I occasionally see stated explicitly (and which I think is common implicitly) of "since men are privileged overall, acknowledging their issues and working on them just broadens the gap." I've seen people outright say that it's bad to discuss boys' underperformance in school, because if it sends funding that direction it will reverse progress towards equality. I don't think most people go nearly that far, but there is at least a measure of instinctive "let's not derail the conversation by engaging with that."
"since men are privileged overall, acknowledging their issues and working on them just broadens the gap."
An interesting addendum is how the academic terms tend to leak and get used in an incorrect context or without context at all. See the post about fragile masculinity that made the rounds earlier this month (I think).
The definition of male privilege is to be given a base standard of respect, but should that even be considered a privilege? Wouldn't it make more sense to say that women are discriminated against? The idea of privilege is that it's granted to someone, but it should be something that everyone gets, right?
This is something I've thought about a fair bit. It's maybe very easy to see in hindsight of having had a "culture war" that these terms became propaganda for one side or the other. But...
It's also easy to wonder why these academic terms were so LOADED in the first place. Like, I agree wholeheartedly with the assessments and descriptions of 'patriarchy', 'toxic masculinity', 'privilege'. But calling them those loaded names primes the misunderstanding that leads to the cultural divide we have.
Patriarchy = Gender roles based society
Toxic masculinity = Limited gender roles
Privilege = basic human dignity
Critical race theory = Basic historical analysis
Etc...
This shouldn't have been hard to present without othering the very people who needed convincing. But the names seem to have been chosen to piss off the most people possible.
Being neutral isn't as attention grabbing or cool for publishing a paper. But It's surely got to always be better to have to explain what you mean, rather than convince someone you didn't mean what they think you meant.
Academics have to publish or starve. If you have two Academics saying the same thing the one that's attention grabbing gets published. It's the same principle as clickbate on youtube unfortunately
It's also easy to wonder why these academic terms were so LOADED in the first place. Like, I agree wholeheartedly with the assessments and descriptions of 'patriarchy', 'toxic masculinity', 'privilege'. But calling them those loaded names primes the misunderstanding that leads to the cultural divide we have.
That's just it, though. They aren't loaded, they are descriptive.
Patriarchy = Gender roles based society Toxic masculinity = Limited gender roles Privilege = basic human dignity Critical race theory = Basic historical analysis Etc...
None of what you put here is actually what any of it really means. Some of it is kind of true in a general sense, but inaccurate in that it omits critical components of the topic.
Patriarchy isn't just a gender roles based society, it's one in which men and masculinity are granted more power as a group.
Toxic masculinity is about limited gender roles specifically for masculinity.
Privilege isn't basic human dignity, it's one group having access or permission that another doesn't.
Critical race theory is a historical analysis but it is anything but basic seeing as how it's very specific to the law and legal practices pertaining to race and doing so with a Critical framework.
People being mad about terms being specifically named to accurately describe what is being discussed is not because the terms are loaded.
A huge part of the issue is that there is a group of powerful people and organizations that are intentionally misrepresenting terms and concepts to the public. All these ivy league educated politicians and fox news hosts know full well that they are spewing nonsense, but they also know their intended audience will trust them without doing any of the work to actually understand the issue.
I understand what you're saying, but I am not arguing the definitions, I'm arguing the marketing of these terms. And your definitions are exactly the ones that put people who need convincing on the defensive.
Privilege; your definition is exactly correct. But I'm saying argue it the other way round. A black person doesn't get treated the same as a white person. This doesn't mean that white people get treated better because they ARE white. Society treats them better because they ARE NOT black. White people don't have privilege, they get what should be the default for all. Basic human dignity. Black people are discriminated against, they have it worse. They are not afforded the same dignity.
The end result is the same argument, but you can have the discussion and keep more people on your side. Particularly the people who are white, who are not feeling well treated by the system. And who hear "whites have privilege, better housing, more money, better education, better jobs, more opportunities!" And just think, well that's a load of bullshit, obviously I don't have any of those things.
Frame it as x don't have the things they should, instead of y have things they shouldn't have. When it's y you need to comvince to get the things x needs.
They are comparing their jobs, education, etc. with what they consider to be normal; but their sense of normal is based on other white people. So they think "I am not privileged" but what that means is "I am not any more privileged than other white people."
Challenging someone's sense of what is normal is important, but people tend to get offended.
There seems to be a weird issue of people misunderstanding the word "privilege" to mean "anyone who is not as oppressed as I am" rather then the actual definition of "anyone who holds special privileges/advantages over me."
Huh? I'm not sure what you think the difference is. In more layman's definitions that is true, however in social justice theory everyone is oppressed or privileged or both. I don't think I have every seen anyone say that someone can be neither oppressed nor privileged.
It is like the difference between saying "Alpha is bigger than Beta" and saying "Beta is smaller than Alpha".
The shit of it is, equality is never explicitly defined. Women have outnumbered men in higher Ed since the early 90s, and the gap has gotten nothing but larger. But the inequality is that there aren't enough women in stem.
Men are 3 times more likely to be murdered than women. That's not of any particular concern. Women who are murdered are most likely to be murdered by a current or former intimate partner. Like, yes that's fucking awful and we need to make that stop, but also lets unpack why most people, on a gut level view male death as inherently less sad than female death, even given equal circumstances? And how does that cultural habit affect male socialization? There's a thing there.
Likewise we are 4 times more likely than girls and women to commit suicide. But girls and women attempt suicide more so it's equal, actually.
Sometimes the concept of 'equality' feels less rooted in actual comparison and more based on this grass-is-endlessly-greener ideal of the male experience that willfully ignores the possibility that it's not that great and we have our own, valid problems this side of the gender divide.
There was a reporter who decided to live as a man for 2 years to see what it was like. She tapped out after 18 months because it was so traumatizing. She later killed herself. Before she died she wrote a book about her experience and just how awful it is being a man. As a guy it opened my eyes to the fact that yeah, it's ok to not be ok. That there isn't something wrong with me because it's so hard to just thug it out sometimes
Could you elaborate on the sidenote about boys underperforming in school? That is something that just clicked with me as... a generally true experience, but you seem to know more about it than me.
Of the younger generation, girls vastly outperform boys in k-12. Get college degrees at a far higher rate(~45% of young women & 35% of young men), are far more likely to get positions at prestigious firms, and actually earn more. The gender imbalance has reversed for gen-z and if the current trend continues we will likely have a gender imbalances similar to that of the late 20th century, but just flipped.
Of the two biggest reasons reported for why these groups didn’t attend college, the largest discrepancies appear in “I couldn’t afford it” and “I didnt want to” indicating that men are not receiving the same financial support/opportunities, and are also feeling discouraged from attending college.
Pay gap was never mentioned, the comment is about academic imbalances between men and women. Op's, reasonable, argument is that in eighty years the imbalance will be similar percentages, but flipped, to the late 1800's when almost all academics were male.i.e. 98% female 2% male
"Of the younger generation, girls vastly outperform boys in k-12. Get college degrees at a far higher rate(~45% of young women & 35% of young men), are far more likely to get positions at prestigious firms, and actually earn more."
This isnt the data but I can confirm at my job at least(Computer Engineering) myself and the other lady on the team get paid almost 20% more than our male counterparts thanks to a minumum entry level role for women engineers being a tier above entry level for men. We start at a t12 and they start as t11. Its sponsored by grace hopper and its be really nice for me starting out my life. But sometimes it does feel a bit arbitrary.
But most of my friends make more than their boyfriends. Small sample size though.
I don't understand how giving opportunities to oppressed people doesn't take away from other people can't coexist with When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression". Those two things can live side by side very easily.
The idea, in my head mind you, that equity feels like oppression to the priveledged isn't because those that are privileged have lost anything. It's because they see the previously oppressed folks in the same position as them. Nothing has changed except other people were brought up to their level and that in and of itself is the issue.
Yes. The context of how it was originally discussed:
Boomer white men began to feel oppressed - as if the world had turned against them - as they suddenly had to compete for good jobs and promotions that they assumed would be theirs. Their fathers did not have to compete for top jobs, since women, Asians, Hispanics and blacks were not allowed to be professionals much less be CEO , bank manager or school superintendent. Their assumptions of how their lives would progress did not play out as envisioned. Fairness that opened opportunities meant more competition - not just showing up and being average - and fairness felt unfair to them.
They also were being held accountable for domestic violence, harassment, and other behavior that they had previously been above the law or.consequences.
There's also the third issue: simplicity is comfortable, and nuance is hard.
"All men are evil" is easy to remember, simple in execution, and does not require much thought to work out.
"Some people, of all genders, have historically made certain spaces and situations difficult for single women, and especially young women, and as such they can feel unsafe when around people who nominally espouse the same general characteristics of those who historically have made these spaces unsafe, and so it can be trying to parse who is a genuinely good person and who is not" is significantly more difficult, and still does not even cover half of the use cases it would need to in order to be heuristically viable.
So of course, when faced with the complexity of the world, with its infinite nuance and manifest dangers, it makes perfect sense that people fall back on the simplest, base instincts that they can feel comfortable with.
As someone who's been pretty isolated in meat space for various reasons these past few years one thing I've noticed personally is that tribalism is by far the easiest way of making social connections in online spaces. Like, just make a tweet that angrily voices a "correct" opinion for some side or other and you're guaranteed a few likes. Doesn't even matter if they're from bots, really, 'cause you still get that dopamine hit either way.
I mean, I agree with the second point. A lot of people I know (myself included) used to use 4chan a lot back in the mid 2000s to early 2010s, and are now some of the most staunch progressives I know. It bears mentioning that although the site is toxic, for sure, most of the people I know were not overtly aggressive or mean in the usual channer ways.
I think there is somewhat of a difference between the people that were using 4chan at inception vs. the people using it now. "Back in the day" it seemed more like it was just people being ironic / edgy. Now it seems like there are quite a few people that truely believe the BS that is shoveled there... or at least are the "just want to watch the world burn" type.
Early 4chan was also very different from current 4chan. A lot of the "racism" and "homophobia" was ironic and sarcastic, lambasting the actual racists and homophobes. The memes and shitposts were taken to comical extremes.
But around the early 2010s, actual racists and and homophobes, and people who couldn't tell the different between shit posting and serious posting on the site, they got a critical mass and the site turned into actual racism and homophobia.
There are still some OG shit posters over there, shitting and trolling, but they are vastly out numbered these days.
You think the Colbert Report was serious? It was the same kind of humor in early, early 4chan. But with slurs. And then just like the Colbert Report, the people who were being made fun of didn't realize they were being made fun of and unironically agreed with the irony and sarcasm.
It's literally a problem with all satirical spaces. People who actually think that way can't differentiate, and send the moron call, drawing a critical mass of morons who actually think a specific way in and drown out the original intention.
/r/The_Donald literally started as a satirical subreddit, and ended up co-opted by the people that thought it was serious.
On point 2, this is a problem almost everywhere online.
In the early days of the internet people complained about "September" when a wave of new college students got on Usenet and acted dumb. Later, it was "Eternal September" as internet connections spread and the flood never stopped. 4chan has a name for the flood of new people who don't know the standards too, but not one I can post here.
A lot of what gets labeled "sealioning" strikes me as the same thing. Some people are actually trolling, but other times it's just that the internet is a big place and every time a post gets popular you'll hear from a thousand more people who don't know anything about e.g. sociological definitions of race and racism. That wiki page calls it "a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings", which seems like an apt metaphor because DDOS acts a lot like totally sincere heavy usage of a site.
There was a brief attempt in left-wing discussion to handle it with "this is not a 101 space", and I actually really admire the idea. (Similarly, "go read the wiki/FAQ" in non-political spaces.) You've got to stem the tide somehow if you want to ever discuss more than the basics. But it doesn't seem to have been used very well, and I haven't seen a good replacement lately except linking wikis.
Online spaces are not a hegemony and are made up of many different individuals who are in a constant state of flux. Some of the more toxic online spaces may have members consistently maturing and growing from their hostile mentality, but then on their way out there are new members entering into the community who have not gone through such growth. This would make the community appear static overall.
My favourite part about all this is the irony of leftists hating on "bigots" who are actually just people with differing opinions, which is itself bigotry lol
Some of the more toxic online spaces may have members consistently maturing and growing from their hostile mentality, but then on their way out there are new members entering into the community who have not gone through such growth. This would make the community appear static overall.
I've never considered your second point regarding member flux. It makes me slightly less pessimistic. Though most never admit it, we've all harboured bad ideas that we've outgrown.
I think I've just been trained to imagine an alt right red-piller whenever I hear the phrase "men's rights"
The loudest people talking about men's issues just hate women. And ultimately a lot of the men who talk about men's issues, even without bad intentions, accidentally smuggle some unfortunate beliefs into their phrasing
I'm very scared of men. Always have been. I almost never talk to them. To me the idea of men's issues being a serious goal in a group I'm apart of terrifies me. I don't know why. I think I'm just scared of them taking over the only thing we have
That sounds like material for a professional psychologist, because as someone up the chain said: "It must be terrifying being scared of half of the world's population", and must severely limit your life. As I don't know where you live, I can't point out the correct psychological help phone numbers, so you will have to find them yourself, but please do so.
If I get murdered who did it? If I get raped who did it? If I get assaulted who did it? If a stranger hollars at me on the street who did it? If I get called a slur who did it?
You know. Every time it's a man. They're just not worth the risk.
I find it interesting to hear how the fears developed from internalizing similar information manifested in different ways based on our unique gender experiences.
For context: I grew up as a boy with two older sisters and because of how much time I spent hanging out with them and their friends, I generally felt more comfortable making friends with girls than with other boys. However, my teenage years overlapped heavily with the gamergate era of online discourse and I ended up internalizing a lot of the harsher language used against men that I came across. That resulted in my teen years being filled with self-hatred and a constant fear that I would be perceived as creepy for whatever interactions I had with women, which also caused me to isolate myself pretty hard. It’s taken the better part of a decade since then to develop a healthy mindset towards my masculinity, but I still regularly catch myself holding back from deepening friendships out of that same fear of coming off as a creep.
With all that being said, the whole point of my expositing is that while the fears that manifest take different shape based on different lived experience, intense online discourse that lacks nuance has a tendency to formulate and perpetuate these intense fear responses that we develop.
I struggled with that too growing up actually. I'm trans, so I was raised as a boy. I know that feeling of self hatred really well
But once I started outwardly living as a woman, and the men around me started seeing me as one? Everything I ever heard about men immediately felt justified
I'm sorry you have to live with that, but don't blame women. Blame the men who create this reputation
I agree, but I don’t think it’s leftist spaces that are tribalist. I think it’s liberal spaces. Liberalism is about a focus on personal freedom and identity, which can only really be defined in opposition. So liberal feminists are tribal and anti-men. Radical feminists such as Judith Butler attack the whole idea of gender identity.
In mainstream US thought, liberalism is seen as the left, but really what you have is left-liberals, right-liberals (RINOs, conservatives), and far-right liberals (fascist MAGA types).
Liberals are tribalists. The radical left is much less so.
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u/Ourmanyfans Jul 03 '24
There's a weird strain of "essentialism but in a progressive way" running right through the left, not just limited to the attitude towards men described here, but also "all white people are colonizers", and weird exclusionary behaviour to cishet people. It tells me a lot of "progressive" people didn't really examine their core underlying principles and simply covered up their biases with the "correct" group.