Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

jacobin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 327 posts

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

#101

Post by wing-_-nuts »

tomtheelder wrote: post #96
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're seeing is the support amongst your bros. That's great. That doesn't equate to discussion on 'the left'. You don't see it being discussed much in books, podcasts, blog posts, documentaries etc, except on the right.

But I see it discussed in left leaning media all the time. Topics like male suicide rates, loneliness, and social pressure against showing emotion come up over and over again.

Interesting, where do you see this discussed? I sub to r/bropill, they're a very positive men's support sub on reddit.

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

#102

Post by happytoexplain »

junofan wrote: post #86
crazygringo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically all of the liberal publications treat it as a major topic every so often. A hugely shared article from 2 months ago in WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/10/christine... Also in the Atlantic last year: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/10/21-r... This is just off the top of my head, but it's easy to do a Google search.

Opinion pieces are cool, but have you seen any politicians in positions of power advance debate? What’s the Biden administration’s agenda for men?

First, a president's administration is not "the left" or "the right". In fact, it's frequently just "the lesser of two evils", as we so often hear from the voters, depending on the particular policy topic.

Second, an administration not having "an agenda" for an issue as intractable/abstract as mental health is not a sign that they don't genuinely care.

That said, I certainly agree that the president - in fact, all presidents, left or right - have paid no more than lip service to men's societal struggles, image issues, mental health, etc, but that is clearly not the driving thesis in this thread.

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

#103

Post by NickC25 »

Honestly, although I don't agree with everything the article says, it does have a very good point.

Trump won in 2016 due to populism, on the belief that the American male was forgotten and left behind. As too, was rural America.

The left could easily win election after election by coming out and saying "yeah, we've done a lot for women, for people of color, for sexual minorities, etc...but here's a bunch of things we're doing for men, for the lower class, for the middle class, for rural America. Feminism is great, and masculinity is great too.".

If you get out in front of the messaging, and control it, right wing shock-jock culture warriors have no ammo. The GOP has won lots of elections simply because their media messaging is on point, consistent as hell, and repetitive. The left has ignored all their successful tactics instead of copying them, for some odd reason. I don't quite get it.

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

#104

Post by gopherthon »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #44
acdha wrote: 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.

as someone who has largely progressive values, I hesitate to call myself liberal anymore because of a lot of the downright embarrasing shit comming from the left these days. > The left talks about this all of the time, every time I've seen leftists talk about this. its always in the form of gaslighting men into blaming themselves for their failures. as if the k-12 educational system isn't currently stacked against th…

[dead]

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

#105

Post by dr_orpheus »

lesuorac wrote: post #13
diogenes4 wrote: post #3

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

I mean, his point is that the Left doesn't actually drive home all the things they do that benefit men. > You have an infrastructure bill that will create jobs largely for men. Two-thirds of the jobs in the infrastructure bill will go to men: black men as much as white men, and Hispanic men a little bit more, because they’re so represented in the construction industry. Don’t hide from that fact, as the administration…

> And then also things that are cut and dry worse for men (i.e. suicide rate)

Not trying to dilute your point, because if you look at the "Data and Statistics" tab of the page you linked the disparity between male/female is clearly obvious. So I agree that the fact that is not talked about in the disparities is crazy. But, one thing I remember hearing when I was in high school was that suicide attempts were higher amongst women, but the suicide rate was higher amongst men. There is a mention of this in the article for youth, so maybe it was specifically mentioned because of that age group because I can't seem to see if that applies across age groups.

"In 2021, 9% of high school students reported attempting suicide during the previous 12 months. Suicide attempts were reported most frequently among girls compared to boys (12.4% vs. 5.3%)"

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

#106

Post by Freedom2 »

sdvnwsdf wrote: post #51
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #4

Or - crazy idea - don't politicize mental health at all ?? I don't read the news or social media, so it's bizarre to me when someone tries to divert a basic human concern into a political agenda. Mental health is important no matter what political spectrum you're on, and treatment isn't political, it's healthcare.

Is hacker news not social media? Serious question. I always thought it was. Not that Wikipedia is authoritative or anything but it seems to meet their definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

HackerNews is elevated above regular social media, in no small part thanks to dang's excellent moderation. I wouldn't be surprised if it loses its 'classification' due to this.

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

#107

Post by flutas »

majormajor wrote: post #26
hosh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some links to articles about this topic from the left? I typically hear this from the right and have yet to hear something from the left, and I'm curious about how it's framed and understood.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/30/whats-the-matt... Here's an example from earlier this year. The primary difference from the most common ways I hear about it from the right is the lack of a "one simple trick to fix it" prescription. It is more limited to a survey of some of the proposed causes and actions.

For context, I wouldn't say I'm left or right, because both parties have good and bad things about them.

That being said, the first thing I noticed with that link was the title. Why is it implying it's Men's fault?

> What's the matter with Men?

Imagine if on a similarly gendered topic, say abortion, someone published an article with the title "What's wrong with Women." Everyone would be up in arms over it.

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

#108

Post by dragonwriter »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #4

Or - crazy idea - don't politicize mental health at all ?? I don't read the news or social media, so it's bizarre to me when someone tries to divert a basic human concern into a political agenda. Mental health is important no matter what political spectrum you're on, and treatment isn't political, it's healthcare.

> so it’s bizarre to me when someone tries to divert a basic human concern into a political agenda.

Why (ethically) would a political agenda be based on anything else?

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

#109

Post by happytoexplain »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #32
acdha wrote: 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…

There is an overwhelming amount of noise from both sides on all issues. That atmosphere essentially dictates two high-level outlooks you can have: Define parties by their reasonable people (benefit of the doubt), or define parties by their unreasonable people ("look at what this leftwing/rightwing nutjob said").

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

#110

Post by wing-_-nuts »

wait_what wrote: post #77
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't go that far. I think he's just reflecting typical blue collar culture which tends to be more conservative

No, he doesn't. He straight up attacked Bernie on the College for All saying that we all don't need college, which is true. But the College for All bill included non-college related education and secondary education like trade schools and training programs. But he decided to ignore all of that to squeeze his head up Trumps ass and bitch about a program designed to give America blue collar people a fighting chance.

> the College for All bill included non-college related education and secondary education like trade schools and training programs

This is not commonly known. If they had emphasized trade school and training, I feel like it would have had much less pushback from the right.

Post reply on HN