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

151–160 of 327 posts

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

#151

Post by klipklop »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #132
quantified wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stacked against them more than girls? Explain please.

Girls mature faster, and learn differently. Frankly, a lot of boys simply cannot sit still in a classroom and listen to a boring lecture. They're going to be inattentive and they're going to have more behavioral issues. The solution is more hands on learning, and more physical activity. Gym class isn't even available to many kids anymore. Pretty much everyone should be getting an hour of physical activity a day and y…

This mirrors my k-12 experience as well.

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

#152

Post by norwalkbear »

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…

It's why I am hard right now. I'm tired of being gaslighted and demonized.

I grew up in Europe and was ultra liberal most of my youth.

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

#153

Post by gaganyaan »

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.

That just doesn't match my reality. Maybe I run in the wrong circles, but I've never heard any leftists I know discuss societal issues with sympathy towards men in general. There's sympathy for individuals facing their problems, but nothing like the article.

What discourse I've seen that focuses on men's issues from the left tends to not really get it. If they just tsk tsk harder at Jordan Peterson and criticize toxic masculinity harder, surely the incels will realize the error of their ways. Meanwhile, other groups are offering a sense of purpose in life that doesn't require feeling ashamed of yourself. Even if that purpose is not a good one, don't be surprised that people sign up for it.

It's hard to think that even centrists are interested in fixing the problem when there's headlines like this:

> Biden criticizes ‘white man’s culture’ as he talks violence against women

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/27/politics/joe-biden-white-mans...

That's just a random example. The article adds a bit more color, but not much. Do you think rhetoric like that will draw in any white men that don't have a shame kink? I don't, and a few weak hand-wringing articles here and there don't make up for it.

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

#154

Post by asking4fren »

tw04 wrote: post #79
adamwong246 wrote: post #53

“Only women, children, and dogs are loved unconditionally” ~ Chris Rock Lots of yakking it up about how sad men are but it's all so disingenuous. My experience leads to me to believe that the moment a man asks for help is the moment he has lost the respect of his peers and, should he be so lucky, his female partner. Evolutionarily, men are disposable, and the workplaces and dating arenas we must inhabit reinforce it…

>My experience leads to me to believe that the moment a man asks for help is the moment he has lost the respect of his peers and, should he be so lucky, his female partner. Honestly, it sounds like you need some new friends and to stop listening to Jordan Peterson. When I was going through a divorce, my closest friends were there day or night to take a call and let me vent. Heck my current wife actually was a soundin…

>Honestly, it sounds like you need some new friends and to stop listening to Jordan Peterson.

And what about those who experience this effect, and have always actively avoided Peterson and his ilk?

When you find out rumours are spreading about you after you've opened up, you can separate yourself from that community, but where does that leave a person? What do you think happens when someone tries to join a new community, who has rumours circulating about their “mental health”?

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

#155

Post by valbaca »

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.

> it's healthcare.

And healthcare is NEVER politicized.

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

#156

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

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…

> The right has Jordan Peterson and a raft of people discussing men's issues. The left has NO equivalent. The silence is deafening.

And this is a great pity. The left needs someone understanding male problems, able to discuss them and offer some concrete plan forward. The deafening silence you mentioned causes the gap go wider and decreases the chances of mutual understanding, as exemplified by many comments under this article.

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

#157

Post by bloopernova »

nerdjon wrote: post #135

I find this a bit hard, the author is clearly framing this from an anti left prospective but I also think isn't 100% wrong in some of the discussion around men from the left. However, I also think it is complicated. We can't talk about progressive policies while ignoring the very real advantages that men (largely white men, which I am one) have had for many years. That doesn't mean that men should suffer while we wor…

We're wrung out by society, every drip of productivity or money grabbed by a mad free for all struggle to... be comfortable and not have to struggle.

Men and women in the USA are used up by industry and capital to the point of damaging their bodies. People turn to mood-altering substances to try to dull the mental, emotional, and physical pain.

In parallel to the efforts to make society better for both men and women, we should be attacking the root causes of oppression. We can only fix that by attacking inequality, poverty, lack of access to mental/physical healthcare, and injustice. If you reduce the stressors, fewer people will turn to the toxic aspects of society that promise easy answers and simple actions.

We do need to be listening to everyone, with no exceptions. However there's no guarantee that those ideas will be good or moral, and some segments or ideologies forget that. There's no right to have your ideas accepted or to never receive criticism.

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

#158

Post by valbaca »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #17

They immediately talk, twice!, about poorer people's wages stagnating compared with the rich, and just skate on past that to talk about men. I'm not sure I'd say i'd expect better from Jacobin, but it's still kind of weird to just let that slide past without comment. > My overall understanding of these labor market trends over the last few decades is that we’ve seen a narrowing of the gender wage gap, for the reasons…

Using the "culture wars" to 1) sell books and 2) hide the real problem: which is class warfare.

Billionares sucking the life out of our planet and people and are happy that we're squabbling over how "the left treats men" instead of looking up to ones that are causing a global mental health crisis

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

#159

Post by Racing0461 »

BryantD wrote: post #39
Racing0461 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only from a 4th wave feminist lens which is unhelpful to male only issues. When Obama tried creating "My Brothers Keeper" program to help struggling AA boys, who got it shut down? Certainly wasn't the right wing.

Can you unpack this a bit? My recollection is that the program was initiated in 2014, with substantial contributions from private organizations. It was further funded in 2015 with more private sector contributions. I believe it was shut down when Trump was inaugurated.

Drawing a parallel between "left talking to boys" and "my brother's keeper being originally hyper-targeting AA boys in inner city areas but then being expanded to every group under the sun" calling out why its not effective. Through the 4th wave feminist lens, anything that helps men (or a subgroup of men) alone is by definition evil. Making it all inclusive kept the name only but it lost the ability to help those in need the most. This also ignores the 100s of other interest groups that target the other demographics.

We can always make the claim that why artificially limit it to just that subgroup or why can't these specific group of men find help in the all inclusive programs we have already, but then we get back to where we started, that is "see we are talking to men".

This is also an allagory at every other attempt of the left wing lens trying to help men. Society is very quick to shove in my face "black patient with black doctors and female patient with female doctors have better outcomes" but for some reason an issue faced by men needs to be watered down or not addressed completely.

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

#160

Post by valbaca »

kamray23 wrote: post #61
diogenes4 wrote: post #3

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…

Exceptionally well-put. Thank you
Post reply on HN