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

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

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> The left is all about addressing minorities and feminism.

they are all about addressing feminists and female minorities. I can tell you from my own experience, the vast majority of the left don't give a shit about minority men either.

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

#112
Where the left goes wrong with their narrative is when they present issues like the gender pay gap in a way that implies that men and women are two separate groups competing against each other. That is not at all what happens in reality.

In reality you have families or aspiring families competing against each other. It is good that women get better career options, but it would be entirely self-defeating if this comes at the expense of men's career options. The wife does not want to steal her husband's job. She is not going to be happy with a husband who earns less or has worse career options than her. She is not going to cheer for feminism when her husband gets out-competed for a promotion by a woman.

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

#114

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.

Has the Overton window shifted to the right so much that The Atlantic is now considered liberal? It always seemed pretty centrist.

This media bias chart[0] seems to put them squarely in the left.

Disclaimer, I'm not very familiar with either The Atlantic, nor who runs allsides.com and whatever biases they may have.

https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

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

#115
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…

Stacked against them more than girls? Explain please.

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

#116
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you dare to bring up men's issues in education, parental rights, etc, you get lumped in with the MRA wackadoodles The only time I’ve seen that happen is when the proposed solutions are things like rolling back women’s independence or trying to excuse things like harassment as “boys will be boys”. I’ve otherwise read tons of things about helping build healthy relationships, having non-sexual friendships, improvin…

I'm not trying to be disagreeable or abrasive, but this does not track with my experience. Bring up a women's issue, and it's societies problem. Bring up a men's issue and you'll quickly be invalidated or told 'men need to fix this issue themselves!'

That’s vague but it sounds like there may be differences in scope: if the problem you’re talking about is, for example, women not being hired at the same pay as equally-skilled men, that is a structural problem requiring systemic solutions. If on the other hand the problem is something like men not getting therapy because their peers will mock them (repeat for drinking too much, disrespecting women, etc.) there is some room for governmental action but a lot of it does have to be social change at a smaller scale. All the DARE posters in the world didn’t stop anyone from using drugs - but addressing economic and healthcare issues do, and that’s pretty frequently mentioned in conversations I’m part of.

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

#117
People here are mentioning that “the left” (ambiguous as to what that is) does talk about men’s issues. They then cite an article or two. I’m not sure if one article every three to six months by some publication is really “talking” about it.

For the severity of issues that men are facing, it is not getting anywhere near the coverage that it needs to be fixed. They barely scratched the surface with this article and it hardly gets into how hopeless so many young men feel. The deaths of despair being so much higher for men should be an indication of why things are not going so well for men and how they feel overall.

It doesn’t help that the resources available are also not catered towards men either. 60-70% of therapists are women and most therapists use talk therapy - which was developed to treat women. Yes, it can still help men but many therapists are under equipped to deal with how men think and act. Talk therapy is often about listening to someone talk but many men want/need therapy that involves active direction and problem solving. Talking it out just doesn’t work for many men.

Does this get talked about in the media or by “the left”? Nope. People will just parrot “go to therapy” without realizing it’s not going to help many men because the methodology doesn’t fit how men currently work.

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

#118

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…

Stacked against them more than girls? Explain please.

Did you read the article you are commenting on? He mentions that schools don't service men very well and that most dropouts are men

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

#119
IMO this article is in response to the controversy generated as a result of the August 7 YouTube video by Shoe0nHead, The Male Loneliness Epidemic[0]. The video got a lot of heat on Twitter and other social media places. Right wing commentators on YouTube had a lot of positive responses. A follow-up [1] was uploaded 2 days prior to the article.

[0] https://youtu.be/rQv8VuLpKN4

[1] https://youtu.be/qVKvEaokV6I

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

#120
post #94
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The left talks about stagnate wages, rising costs of college, and healthcare all the time. They talk about it as issues for everyone and not just men. Raising minimum wage helps everyone including men. Making college cheaper and easier to access helps everyone including men. Free healthcare helps everyone including men.

They do, but they also vote in politicians who don't really do much to help those issues beyond giving them lip service.

Multiple Democratic presidents have not done anything substantial to address some of the issues you mentioned. Not saying that the GOP is better, they are objectively far worse. But the Democrats have squandered every chance to really help this country in meaningful drastic ways.

Shit, Biden was THE biggest friend to Corporate America while he was in the senate, and that didn't stop while he was VP, nor as President. You think someone who was completely bought and paid for by the healthcare lobby was going to allow Obama to deploy a government-backed healthcare option, instead of the mess we got with the ACA?

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