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

jacobin.com

181–190 of 327 posts

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

#181

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…

> 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.

I don't think those 2 points match up. You can get out in front of the messaging but you will not deprive right wing shock jock culture warriors of ammo. As you say, their messaging is consistent and repetitive, and it doesn't really matter if it's true or counteracted by reality. It'll get repeated often enough that it's assumed to be true. (For a tiny example, consider the "Sleepy Joe" meme. It has been clearly disproven by anybody paying attention to the last few years, but nevertheless it keeps getting trotted out as if it were obviously true).

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

#182
post #89
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men have the rights to do all of those things.

in new zealand men can't get a job as a kindergarten or primary school teacher (not sure about middle or high school) because parents won't have it.

Male parents too ?

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

#183

[flagged]

I’m not even struggling, a loyal wife that cooks, cleans and takes care of the kids but I’m here for the boys.

If I have any advice for men, it’s a watertight prenup drafted by a lawyer who knows what he is doing.

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

#184
Richard Reeves is originally from the left, and there is a podcast interview of him by Ezra Klein (titled "the boys are not alright"). In the interview he describes how he was drawn to feminism and looking at gender inequality, and by looking at the data became convinced that boys and men were a neglected cause. He was then frustrated as other researchers and policy people had no interest in that form of inequality.

This experience of a researcher starting by caring deeply about inequality, and starting with feminism, and then identifying male issues and finding a total lack of community interest has occurred before. This is exactly what happened to Warren Farrell, who a was once a major figure in feminism (and then largely ignored once he started talking about the issues facing men) (see his Wikipedia page for details).

I think part of what makes getting sociatal buy in on men's issues is that one of the biases men face is a lack of care for men in need of help, and this relates to the idea of male disposability.

For reference, there is a quite shocking list of statistics where men have significantly worse outcomes than women: longer jail for the same crime, higher rates of homelessness, higher rates of suicide, lower educational outcomes, shorter life spans, less friends on average, ...

Obviously women suffer from other issues, but as Ezra Klein is keen to emphasize to any listeners of the interview, empathy is not a zero sum game.

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

#185

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…

> Maybe don't stick your head in the sand the moment someone says "toxic masculinity". It means something which hurts men, too.

The left however tends to shun the fact that a lot of the toxic masculinity comes from women and their expectations on men and boys. There isn't anything men can do to stop toxic masculinity until women stops propagating it, and the left sees no problem with women and teachers propagating toxic masculinity, at least I've never seen them talk about it as a problem that needs fixing.

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

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's why I am hard right now.

Sentence structure man, sentence structure!

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

#187
post #89
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men have the rights to do all of those things.

in new zealand men can't get a job as a kindergarten or primary school teacher (not sure about middle or high school) because parents won't have it.

Do you have more information about that? I know there’s a big gender skew but that’s nowhere near as simple as “men can’t get a job” and has multiple causes.

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

#188
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…

> They absolutely do NOT. The right has Jordan Peterson and a raft of people discussing men's issues. The left has NO equivalent.

The left doesn't have an equivalent of Jordan Peterson in general—there aren't any well-known celebrity spokespeople on the left. It's just not how they do things. So if that's what you're looking for, to understand what people on the left think about anything, really, you're going to be disappointed.

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is so full of crap it’s nothing but sheer fantasy. Majority of male health issues? By your own description you had a personally bad experience (sample of one) during childhood that you compare to your wife, someone you chose likely BECAUSE of your experiences during adulthood. Your comparison is so off-base and sample size so small as to be meaningless.

I'm surprised my comment triggered you so easily. Obviously my personal experience will be sample size of one and I'm not invested enough in an internet discussion to try to support my comment but trying to deny things that are easily observable is just laughable.
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