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Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It

jacobin.com

61–70 of 327 posts

Re: Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It

#61

The left does talk about it. Ridiculous article from jacobin.

Yeah. Wage stagnation, gender roles which become increasingly impossible to meet in the modern world, the price of property, commuter town hell, social alienation, lack of third places, even toxic masculinity, all of these are conversations about things that hurt men. And with gender roles expected of men, to be economically successful, to look a certain way and wear certain things and have certain kinds of jobs and a certain kind of car, none of which you can afford anymore, not in a million years – that's a place where maleness, masculinity and despair comes in very explicitly into economic questions and which is talked about a lot.

Maybe don't stick your head in the sand the moment someone says "toxic masculinity". It means something which hurts men, too. Every economic conversation and conversation on gender roles touches on this specific kind of despair and anxiety in the universe. If you look hard enough, even consumerist vanilla and milk-toast pieces like the Barbie movie take on talking about the expectations placed on men by themselves and what it feels like to wake up to a society where nobody meets those anymore.

For Jacobin to write this is absolutely bizarre. It's almost as if it's aimed more towards people on the right than on the left, except it vindicates the idea that the left never touches the concept of men, as if women were the only thing that existed on the left, which just isn't true. It's always been an everyone club, it's always been a club for those who work for their money and for those sympathetic to them. And it's a place where those people talk about those problems which hurt them. That includes and has always included men.

Re: Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It

#62
post #11

The left talks about this all of the time, as do the middle and right. Pretending otherwise makes me question whether the author is actually trying to help or simply sell his book.

>The left talks about this all of the time They absolutely do NOT. The right has Jordan Peterson and a raft of people discussing men's issues. The left has NO equivalent. The silence is deafening. If you dare to bring up men's issues in education, parental rights, etc, you get lumped in with the MRA wackadoodles. The left is especially harsh in silencing dissent, and frankly every time it happens, you're pushing peop…

Agreed. The left is all about addressing minorities and feminism. While I support that, they do not talk about men's issues, about men for men.

Re: Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It

#63
post #28
post #18

[flagged]

> What I really want, is women to show they can overpower a society of competitive values (which is typically male), with more values of mutual help, and I mean this in the political realm, as in socialism and a society made of collectives, not a society made of owners. Wouldn't "overpowering" those "competitive values" be using a competitive mindset and sabotage the effort for "values of mutual help"?

the competitive mindset pits every individual against every other individual. this is different from a group of people combining their forces to push out an unwanted trait.

Re: Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It

#65
post #11

The left talks about this all of the time, as do the middle and right. Pretending otherwise makes me question whether the author is actually trying to help or simply sell his book.

>The left talks about this all of the time They absolutely do NOT. The right has Jordan Peterson and a raft of people discussing men's issues. The left has NO equivalent. The silence is deafening. If you dare to bring up men's issues in education, parental rights, etc, you get lumped in with the MRA wackadoodles. The left is especially harsh in silencing dissent, and frankly every time it happens, you're pushing peop…

This just doesn’t line up with my experience whatsoever. For my friends on the left it’s a common topic, and I see it discussed in left leaning publications all the time.

I wonder when I see these characterizations of the left if they are coming from social media. I’m not on any social media aside from this site I guess, so I’m not sure if that’s what’s going on. The folks on the left that I interact with in real life are definitely a very big tent group.

Re: Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It

#66
post #20
post #11

The left talks about this all of the time, as do the middle and right. Pretending otherwise makes me question whether the author is actually trying to help or simply sell his book.

I'm curious, can you give examples? I hear this issue pretty loudly from the right, but not really much from the left. I know ordinary people talk about this issue, but it isn't the same as people in positions of power or influence.

Only took a few min to find these. But regardless, it is very loud on the right because they feel its a problem or a source of a problem. Where the left looks at it as just a sign of the times or a progression or even a phase.

Things were pretty non-masculine back in the late 70s and early 80s but nobody seems to care about that. I hate using the catch all of blaming social media but it does play a part in the attention to "issues".

I could post a bunch of links but here are two relevant ones: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/masculinity-for-the-modern... https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/boys-arent-growi...

Also the article tries to pin male graduation rates to masculinity but makes no mention of 300% tuition and crippling debt.

I hate these types of articles that try take one issue and make it the scapegoat for all these complex problems. This over simplification of lifes complexities and how much things suck really need to stop.

Re: Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It

#67
post #11

The left talks about this all of the time, as do the middle and right. Pretending otherwise makes me question whether the author is actually trying to help or simply sell his book.

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.

[flagged]

Re: Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It

#68
post #20
post #11

The left talks about this all of the time, as do the middle and right. Pretending otherwise makes me question whether the author is actually trying to help or simply sell his book.

I'm curious, can you give examples? I hear this issue pretty loudly from the right, but not really much from the left. I know ordinary people talk about this issue, but it isn't the same as people in positions of power or influence.

They're referencing the common "toxic masculinity" talking points. I, personally, have always seen that more as displacing/blaming versus addressing legitimate issues.

A common example would be the topic of male suicide, which is usually addressed as either "well, women try to kill themselves more often and that's totally not an indicator of attention seeking behavior versus genuine depression and fatigue with life" or "toxic masculinity and the patriarchy creates all of the problems for men". Both of which ignore pangender expectations and influences on the average (versus in-power) male experience.

There's no doubt that the American left (and other Western nations' equivalents) diminishes male issues or treats them as unimportant due to the perspective that men created and control all of those issues. Useful for political influence, but useless for discourse or problem solving.

Re: Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It

#70
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an odd reaction to Reeves who specifically criticizes the MRA types.

I think Renn's point is that Reeves is (perhaps unwittingly) agreeing with certain aspects of the MRA viewpoint.

Surely anyone approaching this topic is going to find some sliver of agreement, right? How could you avoid it?
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