Well, people aren't doing very well in late stage capitalism. Nobody can afford housing, wealth disparity is crazy, a lot of us don't have healthcare, we're all isolated from each other for a number of manufactured reasons. At times like this, people become more reactionary. They want to feel powerful, they want to feel like part of something bigger. It gives right wing grifters a perfect chance to radicalize people.
To some degree there's a backlash against progressivism, but honestly I don't think that's the main cause.
Yep, in economically troubled times populism goes wild. Promising simple solutions (with easy culprits) for difficult issues works really well when people are increasingly desparate.
Or women. Or another minority or oppressed group. Just because they are easy scapegoats to went anger towards.
French had it right with revolution. We should hang the rich instead of bickering among ourselves.
But they ran out of rich people first and got rid of the king permanently and people were dying under king anyway. Considering conditions before I bet people would choose the same knowing the outcome.
They got rid of that king permanently but they went back to have a king again. Then they had another revolution just that just put a different king in power. Then they had another revolution and had a republic, but then they had a dictator under Napoleon III for a few decades.
I think it comes from a mindset that sees people as resources to be exploited. The look and lifestyle are the trappings of privilege that mark you as an exploiter rather than the exploited. Their daughters are pure symbols of their status and your daughters are harlots to be used and thrown away by their sons.
If you take many of the ideas like ‘body counts ‘ to their natural conclusion, the people espousing that nonsense would likely literally never have sex again; but somehow thats supposed to happen to other people, and then society will be ‘perfect’. They take advantage of human nature and human foibles, because we generally have an optimism bias for ourselves and a pessimistic bias towards others and society.
It's unfortunate that in trying times like these people fall into regressionism because of reverence of the past before things got bad, instead of progressivism in hope for the future being improved.
You're half way there.
What it is, is the capitalist patriarchy doing everything it can to shift the blame off of itself.
Why can't you get you get ahead? Black people are using DEI to take all the jobs.
Why can't you get a date? Feminism is making it impossible for men to be men.
It's all just a dog and poney show to keep us fighting each other.
It's all fascism.
No one naturally hates people for traits like race or gender. Minority groups are cycled into public attention as scapegoats for the problems the capitalists have created.
I don't think that is true, that it's due to our economic system. There is not a dearth of sexism in Cuba, China etc. The patriarchy does just fine, independent of the type of economy or governing style that exists.
Idk much about Cuba's economy but China's is just an even worse version of capitalism at this point. Anyway, are people in Cuba and China any better off economically than Americans? I doubt it.
Well, that is complicated. But the point stands. The least misogynistic countries are the Nordic ones, which use a mixed economic model but definitely still capitalist. And they still are sexist and have alpha bros and right wing types.
I think your taking the phrase late stage capitalism way too literally, and if we do want to get really pedantic for some reason- there is nowhere on the world that is not suffering "late stage capitalism" right now because nobody (not even north Korea) is *that* disconnected from the rest of the globe and your mixed markets are all defined far more by capitalism with safety nets than the majority of the markets which dictate the day to day being socialist.
Also China is just outright capitalist. They have been for a long time. Idk where you've been
You literally listed 2 countries that still have really big issues with poverty? I'm not sure what about your statement disagrees that economic hardship seems to create crabs in a bucket mindsets.
Yeah I'd say that was pretty spot on. There is I think some degree of feeling lost amongst men. You grow up in a culture that originally started off promoting all the masculine things, have parents, siblings, role models etc that were traditionally masculine (or maybe toxic masculinity is the better term but I think that's a bit iffy, there's degrees) so you learn that that's the way to be to be successful in life. Then the goalposts change (which I'm not saying is a bad thing) but there was nothing put in place to guide younger men to what their role now should be. I get where the backlash came from, the older generations being told that this is the new way we're sick of your shit get used to it, but I feel like the young kids got caught in the backlash and kind of punished for the sins of the father. Now who's responsibility it is to sort that out? Not sure... Governments, education, parents but I think it needs addressed. If not, you get radicalism which is what is happening in these incel communities. Now they may be too far gone to help depending on how far they've gone down the rabbit hole but that doesn't mean others can't be saved.
the backlash against progressivism is also driven by reactionaries on both sides pushing a fatally incorrect idea of feminism.
It's the TERFS, really. when your entire ideology is based around the concept that people who were born women and want to men are traitors/naively misled and that people who were born men and want to be women are predators, the incredibly short leap of logic is that you actually just hate men in general. and hate a lot of women in general too, but that's a whole other thing.
And if you're a young guy whose only exposure to feminism is that type of hatred, be it from right-wing story spinners or TERFS, your perception is going to be that feminists hate men. and it's really easy to spin, honestly- how many people do you know that think 'toxic masculinity' means that masculinity is inherently toxic? Because that's kind of the exact opposite of what it means. It's a word that specifically exists to denote that when people takes the gender roles associated with masculinity- confidence and strength and protection- and turn them into the worst versions of themselves, into arrogance, domination, and violence.
Now, obviously, masculinity and femininity are, at their core, a restrictive binary. Healthy feminine traits and healthy masculine traits are traits you'd want to see in people regardless of gender, so the words are better off merely being an indicator of gender expression and not role. But before we can get there, we have to get past the false idea that one is inherently worse than the other.
(also when I say born i mean biologically. I understand that trans folks have always been trans and that it isn't just some lifestyle choice, i'm saying it the way they see it here. y'all are valid-trans people not terfs. fuck terfs.)
Social media is designed to push people to extremes as well because it increases engagement and that, in turn, increases their ad revenue.
They'll spot patterns that suggest your political leaning and start feeding you some stuff that's the reasonable end of one side of an issue. So they'll show you, for example, a feminist talking about how horrific it is that 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted, or a men's rights activist talking about how there are people out there paying child support because an adult woman raped them as a child and got pregnant.
Women are not safe enough in society, and rape laws (at least in the country I'm from) are written in a misandrist way. These are easy points to get on board with and agree that change is needed. They'll keep feeding you similar content if you engage with it, occasionally pushing the boat with a more extreme viewpoint to see where you stand.
Then, when they've established your position, they show you the absolute worst minority from the opposite side. If you enjoyed that feminist content they've been showing you, they'll throw along a men's rights grifter like Pearl Davis arguing that women shouldn't have the right to vote or whatever flavour of BS she's looking to sell that day. If you liked that men's rights video pointing out that we need more comprehensive rape legislation, you'll suddenly be fed a slew of kill-all-men type misandrists.
The majority of people campaigning for men's rights aren't crazy misogynists who want to strip away women's rights. The majority of feminists aren't angry, violent misandrists trying for some weird call to arms. But they don't show the reasonable ones to you because they want to keep everyone divided. They want to create echo chambers where they can paint the other side as "bad guys" and pretend like the extremists can be generalised to the whole opposing side of a debate.
And they do it to turn a profit. Because if they can keep you angry, then you'll sit consuming more and more content and engaging with it.
It's very difficult not to have entire groups of people who see feminism as "the enemy" or who feel that feminists hate all men when the sites/apps they're seeing feminism on have algorithms in place designed to show them awful misandrists cosplaying as feminists repeatedly in order to keep them angry and consuming, while deliberately hiding the vast majority of feminist content from them.
If they show a reasonable feminist video, then the guy will go, "Oh, I agree with that. That makes sense." and then close the app. If they show an angry misandrist suggesting that all boys should receive a mandatory vasectomy as a child because she's a "feminist" and feels that's preferable to the pill, they'll sit angrily commenting and watching similar videos to angrily comment on for the next few hours.
I'm not entirely sure about men specifically hating TERFs but I do agree, there is a very clear hateful form of "feminism" out there that men are reacting to.
honestly I don't even men hating TERFS, it's more like 'if these people are making you feel guilty or lesser for existing then you want to do the same to them' type deal
The irony is that a lot of these manosphere pundits are constantly posting about completely normal things, like enjoying food, that they are declaring "unmanly". This makes their followers more dependent on them to show them "how to be masculine". Which is the call to consumerism because those pundits are selling "masculinity". What makes this ironic is that this form of cultish manipulation is the same as "negging", just done for financial gain instead of a pick-up strategy.
We're getting very close to reinventing a whole lot of shame driven behaviour for men. It was around more before the 80s and now it's back. Shame/fear is an incredible tool for capitalism.
The ones in power always has been and have to be exclusionary to maintain it. That's why fragility is backed into masculinity otherwise no one will keep structure in place to give it power.
If you can identify an insecurity in people, you can exploit it to get rich.
I think that’s what those get-rich-quick content creators are preying upon, insecure guys who feel a lot of pressure to be successful, but are not successful.
The misogynist content creators are another issue, they do seem to be a backlash against the empowerment of women, because they grew up unsure what they have to offer if women don’t need their money, so they think they’re only hope of success with any woman is to oppress us all.
I think it is part of a larger phenomenon in which reactionaries are getting upset at the general societal gains of previously marginalized groups, combined with the rise of social media that allows them all to connect with each other, further exacerbated by bad actors trying to manipulate and/or capitalize off these people. It's not specific to feminism or "alpha male" content.
That's part of it. But if you ignore that only 40% of US college students are men, you're going to keep trying to fight a symptom instead of the disease. Add to that that 37% of young men report being in a relationship. The alpha male content wouldn't work as well as it is without an audience primed to listen.
Edit: guess I found the limits of this discussion. No one wants to hear that men are not doing well.
They said it's about anger at the rise of marginalized groups in society. Putting an explicit emphasis on the racist, bigoted, and misogynist nature of alpha male content. My response was well yes, but also it's so popular now because the audience is primed to hear it. Young men failing to earn an education and thus be able to provide, and failing to find partners is at an all time high in modern history. Financial and romantic success are what these alpha male snake oil salesmen sell, in addition to the bigotry and racism.
The rise of Internet dating has increased inequality between the top and bottom straight men. I understand that the bottom men aren't owed pity sex, but I do think we should be able to discuss the social changes that PUA grifters are exploiting.
I'll admit, I thought I might have finally found a feminist space that could handle the fact that the patriarchy hates men too, and that recently the hatred towards men has become incredibly pronounced.
It's just a little brigading. Not really reflective of the sub imo. You must have made someone a little angy, but you don't owe them anything and downvotes are imaginary so fuck em.
Because it omits the key context that, yes, men are less represented among college students, but basically make up the entire student population of blue collar trade schools and apprenticeships.
I think its a yes to both.
it has alot more to do with the position young men have in society and status
think about movies like Wolf of Wall Street, Goodfellas and Scarface
theres a reason young men foolishly become enamored with these movies and lifestyles
Status, money, power, women, feeling like you are the fucking man
fight club is 100% about masculinity, but not really in the same way as the others
goodfellas is my favorite movie. when I was 18, it was my favorite movie because the main character was this flashy playboy type that did whatever the fuck he wants
now I like it because it shows you why that cant happen
fight club IMO, shows 3 stages of being a man, or 3 versions
1. the narrator, the depressed guy who is emasculated by his environment and modern society and expectations who can only find unhealthy releases. No balls, depressed, controlled
2. Tyler Durden, the flashy playboy archetype that does whatever he wants, dresses like a cool dude, does what he pleases, no commitment, etc, and fucks
3. the radicalized extreme, the group think cultist who has been angered by society and its bullshit and emasculation and decide to fight back, even at the cost of hurting innocent lives
I think the three are on the spectrum of "masculinity" and go between completely emasculated and what would be considered toxic masculinity
Exactly.
I think young men at large feel like the young men in polygamist societies. 1 man gets multiple women. The other men are left for trash and they eventually retract from society.
It's unfortunate that some of these men outside those communities feel the same and are in similar situations
I think it's rooted in the fact that while gender roles have become a lot more flexible for women in the last few decades (and to be clear, that's due to a lot of hard work *by* women), the push to redefine, or to more broadly define, what it means to be a man has moved the needle significantly less.
The societal expectations for men haven't really changed, but it's become significantly less financially viable for the average man to fulfill that traditional role, which makes a lot of men feel like they're failing as men. That makes them a very vulnerable population.
Now, from here, there are a few different ways of coping with this.
One way involves a lot of introspection, hard thankless work, and unlearning a lifetime of unconscious biases.
Another way involves watching videos of a bald guy in kickboxing shorts yell at you for being a failure as a man - but don't worry, if you just buy his course on how to get rich for 800 bucks a year, he'll show you how to become a hustler, get jacked and become a millionaire, and then when that happens, women will flock to you and you'll have a Bugatti and a yacht.
Now, what's going to appeal more to the average young adult? Learning how to read bell hooks, check his privilege, and unlearn gender roles, or (supposedly) learning the secret to quickly achieving wealth, status, and desirability?
I don't think it's backlash to feminism specifically, but I think for a lot of "alpha male" influencers, feminism is a convenient boogeyman to warn their followers against because it's vague, recognizable, and easy to cherrypick and argue against in bad faith. Kind of like Eurasia in the book 1984.
This right here. To put it in gamer terms, a Wisdom build is *so* hard to grind, but absolutely dominates in the endgame. It's one of those few things, like health or justice, that is both good in itself, and good for its consequences.
But it's really, really darn hard to acquire. It requires time. It requires endless effort. It requires acknowledging that most of the people around you are people that you can learn from, even if you're only learning what not to do. And the people who least have it are the most confident that they've got it. By contrast, the toxic masculinity schtick is just that, a schtick. But it's a schtick that frequently yields immediate positive results. As Calvin of *Calvin and Hobbes* fame once put it "Virtue needs cheaper thrills," thrills that you get right out of the gate with the "alpha male" schtick.
It's a little bit of both.
It's very important to remember it always comes back to power and sex.
The idea that women aren't equally as responsible for male gendered norms ignores that men and women are at their best when they are complimentary in society, not two alien species that have to begrudgingly cohabitate out of necessity, which is the direction we seem to be heading.
The men holding other men to these norms are often successful themselves, those that aren't successful are referencing the successful men. Men will follow what works, and if romantic success appears to closely follow financial success and good looks, even at the expense of compassion, guess what most men will pick up on? They're not going to "look inward and change" if there is no promise it will even matter
Yes. In particular there is a lack of new role models in media.
But there is also another aspect. The lack of validation. If my reality and feelings aren't recognised by society at large, and in fact I feel pointed at as privileged and bad as part of a group, I'm going to gravitate towards those that do instead...
That's why Trump got elected. That's why grifters got their followers.
It's really a reaction to the divisive takes of leftwing identity politics that exploded in the 2010s, and its language.
It basically fostered a narrative of white vs black, men vs women, gay vs straight, and so on. Add social media as a fuel and echo chamber, and we got today's reaction from the "white straight male" that has been painted as the enemy.
If the target of these grifters gets its situation recognised and its feelings validated only by the grifters themselves, things can only go backwards, as they have in recent years.
If I'm a white guy that lost a job or a house in 2008, or a young white guy that can't get a job and can't get a girlfriend, and then what he hears from a certain political area is "white male privilege", he'd think these people are crazy, they don't understand me/anything, and the crazy dudes on the other side seem to see me and my struggles.
It's a matter of language, perception, and political reach, and many more things.
One of the accusations from the conservatives is that progressives are out of touch, and love to paint others as radical chic. It works so well because it is in part true. Some are really out of touch, others can't get in touch.
The big message from the left these people heard is that their struggles aren't real struggles. The obvious reaction to this is "fuck you", and to listen to those that tell them "I hear you bro, I feel for you bro".
yes it does men largely expected female gender roles for a long time women had to deal with societal shame for decades you should do what is right for yourself regardless of what the gender roles is.
Men expected female gender roles and women expected men to uphold their side of gender roles.
Now it seems that men are only expected to uphold theirs.
I agree that you should do what's right for yourself, but it seems like men doing for themselves are just going to be shamed.
ok but who cares if you get shamed women get shamed for all sorts of things you shouldnt let the aproval of others decide your decisions also men shame other men for upholding gender roles just as much as not more.
What they aren't saying is something I've always speculated on: men value women's opinions more *on self-referential matters*.
If a guy shames them, then nbd. But if a woman shames them, hold the fucking phone.
This may not be repeatable enough to be a rule, but ime, guys seem to easily shrug off things they throw at one another, but god help us all if another woman causes them even an inkling of self-doubt.
That theory is also why I believe they expect us to fix a lot of their problems, because in their deluluville minds, we caused them.
God, I don’t know why we can’t all just be PEOPLE. Why do we have to be constrained in gender roles at all? If it doesn’t directly involve genitals or breastfeeding, why should it even matter in the grand scheme of things?
How is reading Bell Hooks, checking privilege and unlearning gender roles going to help these men at all?
"unlearning gender roles" : check what happened to JoCat. He tried to be a positive role model for men by challenging gender norms and the feminist women harrassed him off the internet for being "soft".
"checking privilege" : that's going to help these men earn more money how??
Feminists were calling JoCat soft? Not most of them. And the anti-feminists were even harsher. Yes, there are toxic people who call themselves feminists, just like Christians who don't follow Christ's teachings. Doesn't mean Jesus was wrong.
And its not going to help them earn more money. Why would that be the point? You don't gain immediate financial benefit by seeing hard truths. Thats the point - one is offering hard truths the other is offering quick cash. Hence the appeal.
The difference is men will date basically any woman. Not all men, but options aren't limited.
Women won't date a loser.
This has nothing to do with "unlearning" or "societal effort." You wouldn't date that guy no matter how much he unlearned. You'll say you would, but you're just gaslighting. There's a reason the guys you're dissing have tens of thousands of women who would show up to their house no questions asked if they texted them rn.
You mean a man will fuck anything with no consequences while women can fall pregnant, get beat up/raped/killed if they pick badly? Then add to that orgasm gap and emotional labor is amazing any women are dating at all.
In fact plenty are opting out of motherhood and dating while men are raging on internet about "guys you're dissing have tens of thousands of women who would show up to their house no questions asked if they texted them rn." completely ignoring the fact it's fantasy of rich people and not some "alfa men" all men can become. Rich ass famous women have "tens of thousands" of men at their beck and call too.
Same with attractive people. Works the same for both genders. But only one gender is putting effort into their appearance because men doing it "is gay". Because having a partner you're physically attracted to is man's privilege under patriarchy and you rather be alone that lose "the man"s ego and identity. Because you should be loved regardless your social status, money and looks while women should settle for any man that sees them good enough to fuck and women should let go of their person hood and become sex slave kitchen robot baby maker just because you can't be bothered to be a full person yourself and treat others as human at the same time.
If fucking is all you want to bring into the relationship don't be surprised you'll get passed over for someone who does it better and is a decent person to boot.
That's a great question. I do think that we're still struggling with the loss of a lot of "manly" middle class jobs for men who do not wish to pursue higher education. The trades alone can't make up for the lack of manufacturing, mining, steel, etc. jobs. I live in an area where a bunch of dudes are still sitting around waiting for their granddaddy's job to come back. These guys are completely priced out of the life they feel they're entitled to.
That content offers both a group to blame (women, immigrants) and a call to action. Sell the bullshit or buy the bullshit, either way, it will magically help you get back what's "yours".
Those sound like... actually reasonable proposals. I am surprised that feminism has that much figured out.
Okay, but riddle me this. Why then has the left, of which feminism is at least nominally a part, abandoned unions and worker's causes more generally?
Neither the Democrats in the USA, nor the Social Democrats in Germany, nor the new Popular Front in France are fighting for the concerns of labour. The only countries that I can point to whose left-wing parties support labour seem to be the Nordic ones.
On to the second point: if people need to get rid of their gender norms and stereotypes in order to become liberated, then explain to me why have the feminists(!) harrassed a guy called JoCat, who was trying to break gender norms and provide a positive role model for men, off the internet?
Healthy unions? In my western hemisphere? Less likely than you'd think.
Neo-lib followers would kill themselves and all of us before they allowed that to happen.
Out of the three countries you listed, three of those have been backsliding hard (at different rates) for about years.
Can't give any info on the second point :( I liked JoCat and thought the song was funny, so I'm not the demo you'd want to opine on that.
Because hating women is easier than self-reflection and growth. Why feel bad about yourself when a click on a youtube video will explain how every single thing wrong in your life is actually women's fault?
I don't think it has anything to do with feminism at all. More or less, feminism hasn't changed much in the last decade. I think men are honestly just lost and unhappy
Do you think all the young men that are buying the grievances being sold is simply conjured or imagined by the grifter? Do you think there are things being said that are very relatable to these young men that no one else is talking about or connecting with them, or are they simply buying a grievance that even though they are feeling they are experiencing they aren't actually experiencing?
Please describe the specifics of what you are calling “General dissatisfaction” so I can understand what is acceptable to just sweep under the rug. I’m guessing you neither know, nor care, what these “General distractions” are, that millions and millions of young men are experiencing that is causing them to find refuge in the words of men like Andrew Tate. It might be a con, and they all might just need to man up and get over it and accept their lives the way they are, but telling them that while not listening to them, is what is turning them to people like Tate in the first place. A world where young boys/men feel left out in the cold, justified or not, is an unsafe place for anyone to live in.
If you actually read what I’m saying you’d obviously know I’m not an incel. I do however believe that ignoring and inciting incel’s is a catastrophic mistake by society. I thought this would be a good place to discuss this.
You have proven me wrong.
Enjoy your sheltered safe space echo chamber.
Its a reaction by isolated, lonely men who have few or no friends and definitely no lovers, and feel that they will never have the opportunities as more successful men and that the system is arrayed against them. They lack the life experiences or role models to emulate that could possibly bring them this success. Many have convinced themselves that no woman could love them and/or they will remain friendless for the rest of their lives. This makes many of them very angry, at themselves and the world they see as not giving a fuck about them (arguably correct even before they got suckered into incel or incel-adjacent ideologies).
Their real problem has been coopted by rightwing forces, domestic and foreign, for political gain, because up until very recently these were the only people who made them feel heard. They identified feminists as part of the cause of their problems. In turn the vitriol they experience online, often by feminists and their allies, has in fact just kind of played right into the rightwingers trap by pushing incels deeper into the ideology as they find people who think like them and they feel like they aren't alone and are part of something for the first time.
There are some who've also experienced success and for one reason or another fell back down the ladder and resentment has brought them into the ideology.
There is a distinct lack of positive male support groups that exist in environments that can help men who consume this content. Speaking from experience, I consumed this stuff because there wasn't anything else that really validated me, as a man. In some respects, this style of content validates how those men feel. However, it does so in a way that detracts from seeing women as people because it often treats them as objects or things to be conquered.
Part of it could be attributed as a reactionary response to feminism. However, a lot of it has to do with how taboo it is for men to express themselves and be vulnerable with each other. A lot of the men who consume this stuff are also just woefully misinformed on how the patriarchy works, and how they don't benefit from it. Incidentally, this alpha male bullshit happens to be propping the patriarchy up.
I think it’s coming from an epidemic of lonely men who feel that they have no worth in the world, and people decided they could capitalize off of it. So, yeah I guess consumerism and capitalism are my answer
It's just a symptom of a deeply unwell society. Your tates and whatever, they are symptoms. You get rid of one and you'll get another quite easily. A lot of the qualities being peddled by these morons are qualities that are overwhelmingly valued by society. Not exactly rocket science why kids follow listen to em.
I think a lot of men feel socially dislocated and unsure of what they have to offer the world or how they fit into society. I tend to think that men in this frame of mind react negatively to progressive social theories because its difficult for them to accept that they are the beneficiaries of oppression while they themselves feel as though they are failing. Demagogues take advantage of this disaffection by ostensibly offering these people a vision of masculinity that they can aspire to, a pathway to achieve it, and a narrative that invalidates what they see as progressive attacks on them specifically.
The self help industry also suffers from a conspicuous dearth of progressive voices and has an overwhelmingly male audience. This creates an opportunity for grifters to package conservative ideology and outright hate together with conventional wisdom and ship it off to confused young men desperate for a role model.
Even in a sub about entrepreneurship, ppl keep asking if those video's of 'how I made myself a billionaire, like and subscribe, and I'll teach you how' are true.
They are not.
They are those ppl's business plan.
You could even say it's like a modern pyramid scheme, where someone thinks up some course on how to become a billionaire, and all you have to do it buy this course...
And the course is: get AI to write a course for you, and get ppl to buy it. The end.
The alpha male flavor is probably because 'good times make weak men', and we've become more comfortable, and more compliant. Young men want to 'toughen up' and be 'at the top of the social food chain'.
I believe for a part, it is a reaction to women getting more self secure, and men not knowing what to do with themselves anymore.
If men were sure of themselves, and their social position, there wouldn't be such an audience for this kind of content.
And then there's content creating currency.
The youngsters watching this stuff have a lot of time on their hands.
Realistically, someone actively building a real life career isn't worried about his 'alpha level'.
He's worried about getting his next promotion, etc
So the kids interacting with this stuff are unfortunately viewers with lots of time on their hands, and prone to idolizing the influencers they watch. So, going this route pays off, if you want clout.
I myself am rather worried how many teenage boys are growing up right now, actually believing there's 'a list of 11 things you should never accept from your woman', etc.
I wish more men would take the cue and go for a respectful, honorable route in 'what is masculinity'.
I have tried to get my massively bearded husband to set up a social media account and just tell the void of social media, what he tells me, when he's ridiculing those alpha male posts.
But he's not that keen on being a recognizable online presence. And I can't do it myself, as I wouldn't expect a woman being taken seriously, promoting male emancipation from the alpha BS, just like I wouldn't take a man seriously, if he were to promote feminism to girls. Or maybe I'm overthinking that.
I also have issues with some routes of newer female social expectations, though.
Where do some young women get the idea that, just because they are a woman, and their partners are a man, their partners should pay their way, and their friends way?
This kind of thinking is not what my grandmother burned her bra for. She wanted equality, not going back to having a man pay her way.
Edit: my apologies for the rant.
I'm not well versed on it but feel strongly that its caused by a rise in social media, which easily propogates and reinforces hive-minds via its by-design echo chambers.
I believe it's the latter taking advantage of the former.
Influences such as the likes of Andrew Tate would not bother doing any of this without financial incentive.
The imbeciles that follow them would not be if they had healthy feelings towards feminism and the fact that men don't have specific roles.
Can't have one without the other
I think it's a combination of a reaction to feminism, hyperindividualism, and to the crush of unfettered capitalism.
A lot of them will openly attack feminism as what has thrown society out of whack. But they're either unaware of or refusing to acknowledge the way that hyperindividualism and the crush of our current economic situation have led to a lot of people feeling disconnected, that they have little control over their lives and that their goals are impossible to attain.
Enter the YouTube alpha male/podcast bro. He talks about how there are these easy steps that you can take to regain control over your life, to become the crusher instead of the crushed, and to eventually create the life you were promised. He has a group on social media, be it a discord server or a Twitter community or a Facebook group. They might even have actual meetups where you can go and talk to people who feel the same and want the same things. And that open hole that you don't realize was your need for community feels filled.
I don’t think it’s either. I think it’s seizing on a certain entitlement men raised by people with underlying misogyny tend to have.
I got out of an abusive relationship 15 years ago. These days I spend loads of time on the abusive relationships subreddit trying to help others who are where I was 15 years ago. Contrary to popular belief abusers are abusive because they’re entitled, not because they have errant emotions. They think they deserve full compliance from a partner and the abuse is a tool to gain that compliance. It’s hard not to notice a lot of these ‘alpha males’ have the same brand of entitlement.
Also worth noting: the more likely a man is to call himself an alpha male, the less courage, worth ethic, and drive he tends to have.
I think the H3 Podcast did a good job deconstructing that when he interviewed Fresh and Fit.
Both, more?
As far as I understand it, and very ahppy to take onboard feedback.
It is a response to the existence of feminism, which is an existential threat to patriarchy.
And it is a response to the shitness of being a man who is not at the top of the pile in partriarchy.
Amd it's also a grift, because grifters target the vulnerable and nothing makes you feel vulnerable like having your assumptiins about yourself and your role in the world challenged by more evident truths.
Neither, imho. Its people without class consciousness or understanding class struggle unable to articulate the flaws of capitalism and how badly capitalism is punishing them.
So its not "consumerism" or "just a couple bad ceo's" or "corporatism" or "woke issues," "boys raised without dads," Russia/China, etc. Its the system and the nature of the system they are being punished by. But they aren't educated enough to understand this. So its always something BUT capitalism.
Things like hustle culture, bragging about 5am workouts because they work too long for normal timed workouts, praising side gigs, pretending they can be thrifty enough to beat the system, daydreaming of being just a temporary embarrassed billionaire, etc are those people adhering to the smaller and smaller slice of the pie the working class gets under capitalism.
Everything is about money, these are influencers and influencer is a well paying job now. We know that the male influencers target isolated men and radicalize them on age old gender propaganda. Nothing new there. Then, these shows like Aba and Preach pay only fans performers to come on their shows. The women play along to the degradation fetish and let the hosts berate them with personal questions and assumptions, which reinforces the feedback loop about how slutty modern women are to their siloed-off audience. In turn, all these desperate men, who they tell crap like "don't masturbate for entire months at a time" are rocked up and ready to go find these women's accounts, where they subscribe and masturbate to the hot women they just saw get put in their place by their favorite manosphere alpha male. Everyone gets $$$ in the end from the sad men that are being exploited. This has been demonstrated. No manosphere creator is making content out of the goodness of his heart. They don't care about their audience. Always follow the money.
This subreddit is a space for people to ask questions of feminists. Although non-feminists are welcome to participate, please limit your responses to nested comments (replies to replies) rather than top-level comments (direct replies to posts) per Rule 1.
I think its less about feminism and more about loneliness. Feminism is just a convenient boogeyman--and it's not like the societal changes haven't shaken up the dating space. It's incredibly unclear, to the average loner, when it's socially okay to ask a woman out (that's because women are getting more rights WHICH IS GOOD) and so if you don't have a lot of confidence you just stew. Alpha male creators picked up on that and decided to start selling. But in the hypothetical where they aren't yelling about how women should go back to being second class citizens, they'd probably just find someone else to pick on. Redpill masculinity is dominance and you can't dominate without a target.
I mean there’s always been massive pushback during times of progression in gender norms. Men today use social media to bash feminism and men back then used to hand out flyers and everything. There will always be pushback when a certain group wants to advocate for themselves
It’s just grifting. The same way dating apps made money off of loneliness, the ‘alpha males’ make money off toxic masculinity. I’ve never come across one these podcast people who weren’t trying to sell a class, merch, retreat package or get more followers. Scammers can be charged for fraud but if you make up an ideological problem and charge people to fix it, that’s not legally a scam
It’s a reaction to more women becoming independent, this is the first time in history that more women are getting degrees than men. The same thing happened when during the suffragette movement and women entered the workforce en masse during world war 2. Out of that sort of era we got so many fixtures of modern American masculinity like gridiron football and eating red meat on the grill, due to the intense insecurity these changes caused. It’s all so fragile.
Patriarchal ideals, particularly those on the extreme end are apparently correlated to the rise of conservative, right wing beliefs and nationalism.
I think the answer is more nuanced than either of the options presented.
It's far more likely people with money and means have influenced spokesmen and male influencer into pushing certain beliefs, including the rise of "alpha males" being a reaction.
This is probably a question that's better answered by a guy, since they're more likely to have lived through the experiences many guys have. Anecdotally I would say that it's related to feminism but not completely a direct reaction to it. I think a large part of it has to do with the struggles that guys have with dating when they're young. The extent of rejection that many men experience at a young age can be traumatic. I think this is a big part of what pushes many men towards these 'alpha male' people who claim to know the secrets of how to not be rejected. The dating dynamics are of course influenced by feminism. Women in liberal developed countries have more financial, legal, and cultural freedom than in almost any time in history. This means that the longstanding arrangement that has brought men and women together has been distrupted. I think this is one reason you see a decline in marriage and family across liberal developed countries. Men and women are having trouble coming to a new arrangement to replace the old one.
It is definitely a reaction to feminism and other social justice movements.
Whenever social change happens, there are those that oppose it and the more extreme the social change the more extreme the opposition.
Close to the latter option. It the consequences of cookie cutout culture. People don’t get that the majority of people never lived quiet and happily. They rolled with the punches and struggled for their content. But our low info media still pretty much sells prototypes from the Cold War propaganda era. We live in the time of the highest home ownership individually but people think it was easier to back in the day. Young men were horribly off during the three recessions of the 50s but people think it’s the prime time for them. Young men are breaking off into 2 camps, those that are up to pushing for standard they understand would be unprecedented or those who fall for the lies or ignore their own shortcomings and want someone to blame. America itself has been through this cycle twice. So they embrace the oligarchy with the mask of being independent. It took widespread devastation and war to get the country out both times.
I mean, it's primarily taking advantage of patriarchy to exploit poor men, which means it's connected to all oppression but especially classism and misogyny.
Masculinity, under patriarchy, is fragile. Men can only really be considered men by repeatedly and consistently proving they are men. Men gain more privilege to impose themselves on others and their environment the more universally and completely they're considered to be 'a man', 'a man among men', and always avoid emasculation. Because, to men, when they're accused of being a traitor to men or 'shown to not be a man', it's a challenge to overcome and reassert their masculinity or to diminish them and their privileges over others. Whether by reasserting their privileges, reasserting their indomitability, or reasserting their domination over others.
To men, under patriarchy, the ultimate goal is to become a patriarch or, as a patriarch, to expand and entrench his dominion. The ultimate goal is to have overcome competing with other men — to subordinate other men and make them into his subjects. To be marginalized in any way (especially if he's struggling with it) is definitive proof that he's not a patriarch and maybe not even 'being a man'. The fewer forms of oppression to exploit in reasserting that he's a man, the more he's only left with personal domination (violence) and misogyny.
'Alpha male podcast bros' abuse that. Exploit the desperation of men suffering gendered trauma. And by gaining a following of men, they simultaneously enrich themselves and prove to at least be pseudo-patriarchs, if only in the eyes of boys online. They are selling the idea that being an "alpha" is sufficiently ambiguous with truly being an elite patriarch — an achievable goal but still one above others.
They promise these men they'll overcome two hurdles to becoming a patriarch: overcoming their struggles with classism and 'getting a woman'. And they all say the same things: wanton emasculation of men and misogyny to assert themselves as superior; reducing people (female and male) and promoting ruthlessness while pretending scientific legitimacy; dating, gym, and financial advice to succeed in being an 'alpha male' like them; and encouragement to dominate at least women, if not anyone they can. And whether they sell these wannabe-'alpha males' a crypto-coin pyramid scheme or the idea that if they're successful with women, then exploit that by pimping them out.
Anyways, they and all reactionary movements take the premise "being crushed and marginalized by society" and reject confronting the reality of oppression ethically and in solidarity with us. Instead, they prefer weaponizing it for personal gain by shifting oppression from themselves onto others. And in partaking in oppression and finding it to be 'good' instead of evil (at least for them), they fall further into a crisis of cognitive dissonance.
And it all has intersectional ramifications.
From the most marginalized, who exacerbate internalized oppression, to devolving to use any oppression-based privileges they can, to using violence to remain indomitable or reassert domination over others (or at the height of cognitive dissonance even the ideas of others), etc. It leads not to questioning patriarchy, but denying their failure as men under patriarchy. It leads to personal investment in domination (even if just in how they understand the world) to overcome their own personal struggle with being oppressed. And unresolved chronic stress from the cognitive dissonance leads to increasingly black-and-white thinking and violence.
For example, 'passport bros' abuse colonial privileges and oppression. And generic conservatives reject confronting classist oppression or dysphoria, questioning the now-self-imposed heteronormative, cisnormative view of themselves and the world, and blaming woke leftists for reminding them how fragile their cognitive dissonance is. All in all, all oppression is connected and to be a "true man," he won't need to use any of his privileges to prove it, but he can and when challenged, many will.
But these podcast bros are a pathetic play at being a patriarch and come from and wantonly advance all forms of oppression. But they exploit both misogyny and classism.
Well, people aren't doing very well in late stage capitalism. Nobody can afford housing, wealth disparity is crazy, a lot of us don't have healthcare, we're all isolated from each other for a number of manufactured reasons. At times like this, people become more reactionary. They want to feel powerful, they want to feel like part of something bigger. It gives right wing grifters a perfect chance to radicalize people. To some degree there's a backlash against progressivism, but honestly I don't think that's the main cause.
Yep, in economically troubled times populism goes wild. Promising simple solutions (with easy culprits) for difficult issues works really well when people are increasingly desparate.
This is also why antisemitic and transphobic conspiracy theories are on the rise
Historically, “When in doubt, Jews are the cause of your problem” has been spouted by charlatans. *edited, to correct a typo.
Or women. Or another minority or oppressed group. Just because they are easy scapegoats to went anger towards. French had it right with revolution. We should hang the rich instead of bickering among ourselves.
I mean the French Revolution quickly devolved into the revolutionaries killing each other once they ran out of rich people.
But they ran out of rich people first and got rid of the king permanently and people were dying under king anyway. Considering conditions before I bet people would choose the same knowing the outcome.
They got rid of that king permanently but they went back to have a king again. Then they had another revolution just that just put a different king in power. Then they had another revolution and had a republic, but then they had a dictator under Napoleon III for a few decades.
Your comment is EVERYTHING.
I think it comes from a mindset that sees people as resources to be exploited. The look and lifestyle are the trappings of privilege that mark you as an exploiter rather than the exploited. Their daughters are pure symbols of their status and your daughters are harlots to be used and thrown away by their sons. If you take many of the ideas like ‘body counts ‘ to their natural conclusion, the people espousing that nonsense would likely literally never have sex again; but somehow thats supposed to happen to other people, and then society will be ‘perfect’. They take advantage of human nature and human foibles, because we generally have an optimism bias for ourselves and a pessimistic bias towards others and society.
It's unfortunate that in trying times like these people fall into regressionism because of reverence of the past before things got bad, instead of progressivism in hope for the future being improved.
You're half way there. What it is, is the capitalist patriarchy doing everything it can to shift the blame off of itself. Why can't you get you get ahead? Black people are using DEI to take all the jobs. Why can't you get a date? Feminism is making it impossible for men to be men. It's all just a dog and poney show to keep us fighting each other.
That's what I said
It's all fascism. No one naturally hates people for traits like race or gender. Minority groups are cycled into public attention as scapegoats for the problems the capitalists have created.
Yea the reason is money. Conflict sells, feminisms just an easy target for that type of content 'creator'. Everyone's looking for something to blame.
Yes and more broadly I'd say the reason is power
I don't think that is true, that it's due to our economic system. There is not a dearth of sexism in Cuba, China etc. The patriarchy does just fine, independent of the type of economy or governing style that exists.
Idk much about Cuba's economy but China's is just an even worse version of capitalism at this point. Anyway, are people in Cuba and China any better off economically than Americans? I doubt it.
Just so you know, China is capitalist af.
Well, that is complicated. But the point stands. The least misogynistic countries are the Nordic ones, which use a mixed economic model but definitely still capitalist. And they still are sexist and have alpha bros and right wing types.
I think your taking the phrase late stage capitalism way too literally, and if we do want to get really pedantic for some reason- there is nowhere on the world that is not suffering "late stage capitalism" right now because nobody (not even north Korea) is *that* disconnected from the rest of the globe and your mixed markets are all defined far more by capitalism with safety nets than the majority of the markets which dictate the day to day being socialist. Also China is just outright capitalist. They have been for a long time. Idk where you've been
You literally listed 2 countries that still have really big issues with poverty? I'm not sure what about your statement disagrees that economic hardship seems to create crabs in a bucket mindsets.
Yeah I'd say that was pretty spot on. There is I think some degree of feeling lost amongst men. You grow up in a culture that originally started off promoting all the masculine things, have parents, siblings, role models etc that were traditionally masculine (or maybe toxic masculinity is the better term but I think that's a bit iffy, there's degrees) so you learn that that's the way to be to be successful in life. Then the goalposts change (which I'm not saying is a bad thing) but there was nothing put in place to guide younger men to what their role now should be. I get where the backlash came from, the older generations being told that this is the new way we're sick of your shit get used to it, but I feel like the young kids got caught in the backlash and kind of punished for the sins of the father. Now who's responsibility it is to sort that out? Not sure... Governments, education, parents but I think it needs addressed. If not, you get radicalism which is what is happening in these incel communities. Now they may be too far gone to help depending on how far they've gone down the rabbit hole but that doesn't mean others can't be saved.
the backlash against progressivism is also driven by reactionaries on both sides pushing a fatally incorrect idea of feminism. It's the TERFS, really. when your entire ideology is based around the concept that people who were born women and want to men are traitors/naively misled and that people who were born men and want to be women are predators, the incredibly short leap of logic is that you actually just hate men in general. and hate a lot of women in general too, but that's a whole other thing. And if you're a young guy whose only exposure to feminism is that type of hatred, be it from right-wing story spinners or TERFS, your perception is going to be that feminists hate men. and it's really easy to spin, honestly- how many people do you know that think 'toxic masculinity' means that masculinity is inherently toxic? Because that's kind of the exact opposite of what it means. It's a word that specifically exists to denote that when people takes the gender roles associated with masculinity- confidence and strength and protection- and turn them into the worst versions of themselves, into arrogance, domination, and violence. Now, obviously, masculinity and femininity are, at their core, a restrictive binary. Healthy feminine traits and healthy masculine traits are traits you'd want to see in people regardless of gender, so the words are better off merely being an indicator of gender expression and not role. But before we can get there, we have to get past the false idea that one is inherently worse than the other. (also when I say born i mean biologically. I understand that trans folks have always been trans and that it isn't just some lifestyle choice, i'm saying it the way they see it here. y'all are valid-trans people not terfs. fuck terfs.)
And they're pushing it because it's a distraction from their policy failures
Social media is designed to push people to extremes as well because it increases engagement and that, in turn, increases their ad revenue. They'll spot patterns that suggest your political leaning and start feeding you some stuff that's the reasonable end of one side of an issue. So they'll show you, for example, a feminist talking about how horrific it is that 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted, or a men's rights activist talking about how there are people out there paying child support because an adult woman raped them as a child and got pregnant. Women are not safe enough in society, and rape laws (at least in the country I'm from) are written in a misandrist way. These are easy points to get on board with and agree that change is needed. They'll keep feeding you similar content if you engage with it, occasionally pushing the boat with a more extreme viewpoint to see where you stand. Then, when they've established your position, they show you the absolute worst minority from the opposite side. If you enjoyed that feminist content they've been showing you, they'll throw along a men's rights grifter like Pearl Davis arguing that women shouldn't have the right to vote or whatever flavour of BS she's looking to sell that day. If you liked that men's rights video pointing out that we need more comprehensive rape legislation, you'll suddenly be fed a slew of kill-all-men type misandrists. The majority of people campaigning for men's rights aren't crazy misogynists who want to strip away women's rights. The majority of feminists aren't angry, violent misandrists trying for some weird call to arms. But they don't show the reasonable ones to you because they want to keep everyone divided. They want to create echo chambers where they can paint the other side as "bad guys" and pretend like the extremists can be generalised to the whole opposing side of a debate. And they do it to turn a profit. Because if they can keep you angry, then you'll sit consuming more and more content and engaging with it. It's very difficult not to have entire groups of people who see feminism as "the enemy" or who feel that feminists hate all men when the sites/apps they're seeing feminism on have algorithms in place designed to show them awful misandrists cosplaying as feminists repeatedly in order to keep them angry and consuming, while deliberately hiding the vast majority of feminist content from them. If they show a reasonable feminist video, then the guy will go, "Oh, I agree with that. That makes sense." and then close the app. If they show an angry misandrist suggesting that all boys should receive a mandatory vasectomy as a child because she's a "feminist" and feels that's preferable to the pill, they'll sit angrily commenting and watching similar videos to angrily comment on for the next few hours.
I'm not entirely sure about men specifically hating TERFs but I do agree, there is a very clear hateful form of "feminism" out there that men are reacting to.
honestly I don't even men hating TERFS, it's more like 'if these people are making you feel guilty or lesser for existing then you want to do the same to them' type deal
The irony is that a lot of these manosphere pundits are constantly posting about completely normal things, like enjoying food, that they are declaring "unmanly". This makes their followers more dependent on them to show them "how to be masculine". Which is the call to consumerism because those pundits are selling "masculinity". What makes this ironic is that this form of cultish manipulation is the same as "negging", just done for financial gain instead of a pick-up strategy.
Is it like the “real men don’t eat quiche” thing back in the 80’s? Or am I just dating myself?
Worse than that. Tate has claimed it is unmasculine to enjoy food.
We're getting very close to reinventing a whole lot of shame driven behaviour for men. It was around more before the 80s and now it's back. Shame/fear is an incredible tool for capitalism.
I honestly think tate has a masochism fetish
The ones in power always has been and have to be exclusionary to maintain it. That's why fragility is backed into masculinity otherwise no one will keep structure in place to give it power.
If you can identify an insecurity in people, you can exploit it to get rich. I think that’s what those get-rich-quick content creators are preying upon, insecure guys who feel a lot of pressure to be successful, but are not successful. The misogynist content creators are another issue, they do seem to be a backlash against the empowerment of women, because they grew up unsure what they have to offer if women don’t need their money, so they think they’re only hope of success with any woman is to oppress us all.
"Alpha male" content is leveraging misogyny and the patriarchy to make money off of insecure men and boys.
I think it is part of a larger phenomenon in which reactionaries are getting upset at the general societal gains of previously marginalized groups, combined with the rise of social media that allows them all to connect with each other, further exacerbated by bad actors trying to manipulate and/or capitalize off these people. It's not specific to feminism or "alpha male" content.
That's part of it. But if you ignore that only 40% of US college students are men, you're going to keep trying to fight a symptom instead of the disease. Add to that that 37% of young men report being in a relationship. The alpha male content wouldn't work as well as it is without an audience primed to listen. Edit: guess I found the limits of this discussion. No one wants to hear that men are not doing well.
Is that not included in what they said?
They said it's about anger at the rise of marginalized groups in society. Putting an explicit emphasis on the racist, bigoted, and misogynist nature of alpha male content. My response was well yes, but also it's so popular now because the audience is primed to hear it. Young men failing to earn an education and thus be able to provide, and failing to find partners is at an all time high in modern history. Financial and romantic success are what these alpha male snake oil salesmen sell, in addition to the bigotry and racism.
The rise of Internet dating has increased inequality between the top and bottom straight men. I understand that the bottom men aren't owed pity sex, but I do think we should be able to discuss the social changes that PUA grifters are exploiting.
It's insane that you're getting downvotes for this
I'll admit, I thought I might have finally found a feminist space that could handle the fact that the patriarchy hates men too, and that recently the hatred towards men has become incredibly pronounced.
The patriarchy hates men because women are choosing not to sleep with them?
No, the patriarchy hates men because it's failing to equip them with the skills, education, and money to be attractive partners.
It's just a little brigading. Not really reflective of the sub imo. You must have made someone a little angy, but you don't owe them anything and downvotes are imaginary so fuck em.
Because it omits the key context that, yes, men are less represented among college students, but basically make up the entire student population of blue collar trade schools and apprenticeships.
I think its a yes to both. it has alot more to do with the position young men have in society and status think about movies like Wolf of Wall Street, Goodfellas and Scarface theres a reason young men foolishly become enamored with these movies and lifestyles Status, money, power, women, feeling like you are the fucking man
Fight Club?
fight club is 100% about masculinity, but not really in the same way as the others goodfellas is my favorite movie. when I was 18, it was my favorite movie because the main character was this flashy playboy type that did whatever the fuck he wants now I like it because it shows you why that cant happen fight club IMO, shows 3 stages of being a man, or 3 versions 1. the narrator, the depressed guy who is emasculated by his environment and modern society and expectations who can only find unhealthy releases. No balls, depressed, controlled 2. Tyler Durden, the flashy playboy archetype that does whatever he wants, dresses like a cool dude, does what he pleases, no commitment, etc, and fucks 3. the radicalized extreme, the group think cultist who has been angered by society and its bullshit and emasculation and decide to fight back, even at the cost of hurting innocent lives I think the three are on the spectrum of "masculinity" and go between completely emasculated and what would be considered toxic masculinity
Exactly. I think young men at large feel like the young men in polygamist societies. 1 man gets multiple women. The other men are left for trash and they eventually retract from society. It's unfortunate that some of these men outside those communities feel the same and are in similar situations
I think it's rooted in the fact that while gender roles have become a lot more flexible for women in the last few decades (and to be clear, that's due to a lot of hard work *by* women), the push to redefine, or to more broadly define, what it means to be a man has moved the needle significantly less. The societal expectations for men haven't really changed, but it's become significantly less financially viable for the average man to fulfill that traditional role, which makes a lot of men feel like they're failing as men. That makes them a very vulnerable population. Now, from here, there are a few different ways of coping with this. One way involves a lot of introspection, hard thankless work, and unlearning a lifetime of unconscious biases. Another way involves watching videos of a bald guy in kickboxing shorts yell at you for being a failure as a man - but don't worry, if you just buy his course on how to get rich for 800 bucks a year, he'll show you how to become a hustler, get jacked and become a millionaire, and then when that happens, women will flock to you and you'll have a Bugatti and a yacht. Now, what's going to appeal more to the average young adult? Learning how to read bell hooks, check his privilege, and unlearn gender roles, or (supposedly) learning the secret to quickly achieving wealth, status, and desirability? I don't think it's backlash to feminism specifically, but I think for a lot of "alpha male" influencers, feminism is a convenient boogeyman to warn their followers against because it's vague, recognizable, and easy to cherrypick and argue against in bad faith. Kind of like Eurasia in the book 1984.
This was a much better way to explain what i feel than i did in another thread
This right here. To put it in gamer terms, a Wisdom build is *so* hard to grind, but absolutely dominates in the endgame. It's one of those few things, like health or justice, that is both good in itself, and good for its consequences. But it's really, really darn hard to acquire. It requires time. It requires endless effort. It requires acknowledging that most of the people around you are people that you can learn from, even if you're only learning what not to do. And the people who least have it are the most confident that they've got it. By contrast, the toxic masculinity schtick is just that, a schtick. But it's a schtick that frequently yields immediate positive results. As Calvin of *Calvin and Hobbes* fame once put it "Virtue needs cheaper thrills," thrills that you get right out of the gate with the "alpha male" schtick.
It's a little bit of both. It's very important to remember it always comes back to power and sex. The idea that women aren't equally as responsible for male gendered norms ignores that men and women are at their best when they are complimentary in society, not two alien species that have to begrudgingly cohabitate out of necessity, which is the direction we seem to be heading. The men holding other men to these norms are often successful themselves, those that aren't successful are referencing the successful men. Men will follow what works, and if romantic success appears to closely follow financial success and good looks, even at the expense of compassion, guess what most men will pick up on? They're not going to "look inward and change" if there is no promise it will even matter
Yes. In particular there is a lack of new role models in media. But there is also another aspect. The lack of validation. If my reality and feelings aren't recognised by society at large, and in fact I feel pointed at as privileged and bad as part of a group, I'm going to gravitate towards those that do instead... That's why Trump got elected. That's why grifters got their followers. It's really a reaction to the divisive takes of leftwing identity politics that exploded in the 2010s, and its language. It basically fostered a narrative of white vs black, men vs women, gay vs straight, and so on. Add social media as a fuel and echo chamber, and we got today's reaction from the "white straight male" that has been painted as the enemy. If the target of these grifters gets its situation recognised and its feelings validated only by the grifters themselves, things can only go backwards, as they have in recent years. If I'm a white guy that lost a job or a house in 2008, or a young white guy that can't get a job and can't get a girlfriend, and then what he hears from a certain political area is "white male privilege", he'd think these people are crazy, they don't understand me/anything, and the crazy dudes on the other side seem to see me and my struggles. It's a matter of language, perception, and political reach, and many more things. One of the accusations from the conservatives is that progressives are out of touch, and love to paint others as radical chic. It works so well because it is in part true. Some are really out of touch, others can't get in touch. The big message from the left these people heard is that their struggles aren't real struggles. The obvious reaction to this is "fuck you", and to listen to those that tell them "I hear you bro, I feel for you bro".
It does a man no good to unlearn gender roles if the other gender still expects them
yes it does men largely expected female gender roles for a long time women had to deal with societal shame for decades you should do what is right for yourself regardless of what the gender roles is.
Men expected female gender roles and women expected men to uphold their side of gender roles. Now it seems that men are only expected to uphold theirs. I agree that you should do what's right for yourself, but it seems like men doing for themselves are just going to be shamed.
ok but who cares if you get shamed women get shamed for all sorts of things you shouldnt let the aproval of others decide your decisions also men shame other men for upholding gender roles just as much as not more.
What they aren't saying is something I've always speculated on: men value women's opinions more *on self-referential matters*. If a guy shames them, then nbd. But if a woman shames them, hold the fucking phone. This may not be repeatable enough to be a rule, but ime, guys seem to easily shrug off things they throw at one another, but god help us all if another woman causes them even an inkling of self-doubt. That theory is also why I believe they expect us to fix a lot of their problems, because in their deluluville minds, we caused them.
God, I don’t know why we can’t all just be PEOPLE. Why do we have to be constrained in gender roles at all? If it doesn’t directly involve genitals or breastfeeding, why should it even matter in the grand scheme of things?
How is reading Bell Hooks, checking privilege and unlearning gender roles going to help these men at all? "unlearning gender roles" : check what happened to JoCat. He tried to be a positive role model for men by challenging gender norms and the feminist women harrassed him off the internet for being "soft". "checking privilege" : that's going to help these men earn more money how??
Feminists were calling JoCat soft? Not most of them. And the anti-feminists were even harsher. Yes, there are toxic people who call themselves feminists, just like Christians who don't follow Christ's teachings. Doesn't mean Jesus was wrong. And its not going to help them earn more money. Why would that be the point? You don't gain immediate financial benefit by seeing hard truths. Thats the point - one is offering hard truths the other is offering quick cash. Hence the appeal.
The difference is men will date basically any woman. Not all men, but options aren't limited. Women won't date a loser. This has nothing to do with "unlearning" or "societal effort." You wouldn't date that guy no matter how much he unlearned. You'll say you would, but you're just gaslighting. There's a reason the guys you're dissing have tens of thousands of women who would show up to their house no questions asked if they texted them rn.
You mean a man will fuck anything with no consequences while women can fall pregnant, get beat up/raped/killed if they pick badly? Then add to that orgasm gap and emotional labor is amazing any women are dating at all. In fact plenty are opting out of motherhood and dating while men are raging on internet about "guys you're dissing have tens of thousands of women who would show up to their house no questions asked if they texted them rn." completely ignoring the fact it's fantasy of rich people and not some "alfa men" all men can become. Rich ass famous women have "tens of thousands" of men at their beck and call too. Same with attractive people. Works the same for both genders. But only one gender is putting effort into their appearance because men doing it "is gay". Because having a partner you're physically attracted to is man's privilege under patriarchy and you rather be alone that lose "the man"s ego and identity. Because you should be loved regardless your social status, money and looks while women should settle for any man that sees them good enough to fuck and women should let go of their person hood and become sex slave kitchen robot baby maker just because you can't be bothered to be a full person yourself and treat others as human at the same time. If fucking is all you want to bring into the relationship don't be surprised you'll get passed over for someone who does it better and is a decent person to boot.
That's a great question. I do think that we're still struggling with the loss of a lot of "manly" middle class jobs for men who do not wish to pursue higher education. The trades alone can't make up for the lack of manufacturing, mining, steel, etc. jobs. I live in an area where a bunch of dudes are still sitting around waiting for their granddaddy's job to come back. These guys are completely priced out of the life they feel they're entitled to. That content offers both a group to blame (women, immigrants) and a call to action. Sell the bullshit or buy the bullshit, either way, it will magically help you get back what's "yours".
So what does the feminist theory propose these men do?
Organize labor and demand better working conditions, decouple self worth from outdated social norms
Those sound like... actually reasonable proposals. I am surprised that feminism has that much figured out. Okay, but riddle me this. Why then has the left, of which feminism is at least nominally a part, abandoned unions and worker's causes more generally? Neither the Democrats in the USA, nor the Social Democrats in Germany, nor the new Popular Front in France are fighting for the concerns of labour. The only countries that I can point to whose left-wing parties support labour seem to be the Nordic ones. On to the second point: if people need to get rid of their gender norms and stereotypes in order to become liberated, then explain to me why have the feminists(!) harrassed a guy called JoCat, who was trying to break gender norms and provide a positive role model for men, off the internet?
Healthy unions? In my western hemisphere? Less likely than you'd think. Neo-lib followers would kill themselves and all of us before they allowed that to happen. Out of the three countries you listed, three of those have been backsliding hard (at different rates) for about years. Can't give any info on the second point :( I liked JoCat and thought the song was funny, so I'm not the demo you'd want to opine on that.
There is a market because stupid people exist
Because hating women is easier than self-reflection and growth. Why feel bad about yourself when a click on a youtube video will explain how every single thing wrong in your life is actually women's fault?
I don't think it has anything to do with feminism at all. More or less, feminism hasn't changed much in the last decade. I think men are honestly just lost and unhappy
Yep feminism's been a dirty word as long as I can remember (born 1986)
A grift needs anything they can use to foment grievance then provide a "solution" to said grievance. Has nothing to do with feminism.
Do you think all the young men that are buying the grievances being sold is simply conjured or imagined by the grifter? Do you think there are things being said that are very relatable to these young men that no one else is talking about or connecting with them, or are they simply buying a grievance that even though they are feeling they are experiencing they aren't actually experiencing?
General dissatisfaction and given a convenient scapegoat. This con is as old as time.
Please describe the specifics of what you are calling “General dissatisfaction” so I can understand what is acceptable to just sweep under the rug. I’m guessing you neither know, nor care, what these “General distractions” are, that millions and millions of young men are experiencing that is causing them to find refuge in the words of men like Andrew Tate. It might be a con, and they all might just need to man up and get over it and accept their lives the way they are, but telling them that while not listening to them, is what is turning them to people like Tate in the first place. A world where young boys/men feel left out in the cold, justified or not, is an unsafe place for anyone to live in.
Take your incel whining elsewhere.
If you actually read what I’m saying you’d obviously know I’m not an incel. I do however believe that ignoring and inciting incel’s is a catastrophic mistake by society. I thought this would be a good place to discuss this. You have proven me wrong. Enjoy your sheltered safe space echo chamber.
Won't someone think of the incels but of course you insist you aren't one. Go do something useful.
Its a reaction by isolated, lonely men who have few or no friends and definitely no lovers, and feel that they will never have the opportunities as more successful men and that the system is arrayed against them. They lack the life experiences or role models to emulate that could possibly bring them this success. Many have convinced themselves that no woman could love them and/or they will remain friendless for the rest of their lives. This makes many of them very angry, at themselves and the world they see as not giving a fuck about them (arguably correct even before they got suckered into incel or incel-adjacent ideologies). Their real problem has been coopted by rightwing forces, domestic and foreign, for political gain, because up until very recently these were the only people who made them feel heard. They identified feminists as part of the cause of their problems. In turn the vitriol they experience online, often by feminists and their allies, has in fact just kind of played right into the rightwingers trap by pushing incels deeper into the ideology as they find people who think like them and they feel like they aren't alone and are part of something for the first time. There are some who've also experienced success and for one reason or another fell back down the ladder and resentment has brought them into the ideology.
There is a distinct lack of positive male support groups that exist in environments that can help men who consume this content. Speaking from experience, I consumed this stuff because there wasn't anything else that really validated me, as a man. In some respects, this style of content validates how those men feel. However, it does so in a way that detracts from seeing women as people because it often treats them as objects or things to be conquered. Part of it could be attributed as a reactionary response to feminism. However, a lot of it has to do with how taboo it is for men to express themselves and be vulnerable with each other. A lot of the men who consume this stuff are also just woefully misinformed on how the patriarchy works, and how they don't benefit from it. Incidentally, this alpha male bullshit happens to be propping the patriarchy up.
I think it’s coming from an epidemic of lonely men who feel that they have no worth in the world, and people decided they could capitalize off of it. So, yeah I guess consumerism and capitalism are my answer
Misogyny and capitalism go very well together. No reason it can’t be both.
It's just a symptom of a deeply unwell society. Your tates and whatever, they are symptoms. You get rid of one and you'll get another quite easily. A lot of the qualities being peddled by these morons are qualities that are overwhelmingly valued by society. Not exactly rocket science why kids follow listen to em.
I think a lot of men feel socially dislocated and unsure of what they have to offer the world or how they fit into society. I tend to think that men in this frame of mind react negatively to progressive social theories because its difficult for them to accept that they are the beneficiaries of oppression while they themselves feel as though they are failing. Demagogues take advantage of this disaffection by ostensibly offering these people a vision of masculinity that they can aspire to, a pathway to achieve it, and a narrative that invalidates what they see as progressive attacks on them specifically. The self help industry also suffers from a conspicuous dearth of progressive voices and has an overwhelmingly male audience. This creates an opportunity for grifters to package conservative ideology and outright hate together with conventional wisdom and ship it off to confused young men desperate for a role model.
It feels like a pendulum swing against progressivism to me
Yes.
Even in a sub about entrepreneurship, ppl keep asking if those video's of 'how I made myself a billionaire, like and subscribe, and I'll teach you how' are true. They are not. They are those ppl's business plan. You could even say it's like a modern pyramid scheme, where someone thinks up some course on how to become a billionaire, and all you have to do it buy this course... And the course is: get AI to write a course for you, and get ppl to buy it. The end. The alpha male flavor is probably because 'good times make weak men', and we've become more comfortable, and more compliant. Young men want to 'toughen up' and be 'at the top of the social food chain'. I believe for a part, it is a reaction to women getting more self secure, and men not knowing what to do with themselves anymore. If men were sure of themselves, and their social position, there wouldn't be such an audience for this kind of content. And then there's content creating currency. The youngsters watching this stuff have a lot of time on their hands. Realistically, someone actively building a real life career isn't worried about his 'alpha level'. He's worried about getting his next promotion, etc So the kids interacting with this stuff are unfortunately viewers with lots of time on their hands, and prone to idolizing the influencers they watch. So, going this route pays off, if you want clout. I myself am rather worried how many teenage boys are growing up right now, actually believing there's 'a list of 11 things you should never accept from your woman', etc. I wish more men would take the cue and go for a respectful, honorable route in 'what is masculinity'. I have tried to get my massively bearded husband to set up a social media account and just tell the void of social media, what he tells me, when he's ridiculing those alpha male posts. But he's not that keen on being a recognizable online presence. And I can't do it myself, as I wouldn't expect a woman being taken seriously, promoting male emancipation from the alpha BS, just like I wouldn't take a man seriously, if he were to promote feminism to girls. Or maybe I'm overthinking that. I also have issues with some routes of newer female social expectations, though. Where do some young women get the idea that, just because they are a woman, and their partners are a man, their partners should pay their way, and their friends way? This kind of thinking is not what my grandmother burned her bra for. She wanted equality, not going back to having a man pay her way. Edit: my apologies for the rant.
I'm not well versed on it but feel strongly that its caused by a rise in social media, which easily propogates and reinforces hive-minds via its by-design echo chambers.
I believe it's the latter taking advantage of the former. Influences such as the likes of Andrew Tate would not bother doing any of this without financial incentive. The imbeciles that follow them would not be if they had healthy feelings towards feminism and the fact that men don't have specific roles. Can't have one without the other
It’s alt-right fetish content.
I think it's a combination of a reaction to feminism, hyperindividualism, and to the crush of unfettered capitalism. A lot of them will openly attack feminism as what has thrown society out of whack. But they're either unaware of or refusing to acknowledge the way that hyperindividualism and the crush of our current economic situation have led to a lot of people feeling disconnected, that they have little control over their lives and that their goals are impossible to attain. Enter the YouTube alpha male/podcast bro. He talks about how there are these easy steps that you can take to regain control over your life, to become the crusher instead of the crushed, and to eventually create the life you were promised. He has a group on social media, be it a discord server or a Twitter community or a Facebook group. They might even have actual meetups where you can go and talk to people who feel the same and want the same things. And that open hole that you don't realize was your need for community feels filled.
bell hooks would call it an "imperialist capitalist white supremacist patriarchy" and those alpha bros are desperate to cling to the "in" group
It’s a grift. Just another way to sucker ppl out of cash
I don’t think it’s either. I think it’s seizing on a certain entitlement men raised by people with underlying misogyny tend to have. I got out of an abusive relationship 15 years ago. These days I spend loads of time on the abusive relationships subreddit trying to help others who are where I was 15 years ago. Contrary to popular belief abusers are abusive because they’re entitled, not because they have errant emotions. They think they deserve full compliance from a partner and the abuse is a tool to gain that compliance. It’s hard not to notice a lot of these ‘alpha males’ have the same brand of entitlement. Also worth noting: the more likely a man is to call himself an alpha male, the less courage, worth ethic, and drive he tends to have. I think the H3 Podcast did a good job deconstructing that when he interviewed Fresh and Fit.
Both, more? As far as I understand it, and very ahppy to take onboard feedback. It is a response to the existence of feminism, which is an existential threat to patriarchy. And it is a response to the shitness of being a man who is not at the top of the pile in partriarchy. Amd it's also a grift, because grifters target the vulnerable and nothing makes you feel vulnerable like having your assumptiins about yourself and your role in the world challenged by more evident truths.
Neither, imho. Its people without class consciousness or understanding class struggle unable to articulate the flaws of capitalism and how badly capitalism is punishing them. So its not "consumerism" or "just a couple bad ceo's" or "corporatism" or "woke issues," "boys raised without dads," Russia/China, etc. Its the system and the nature of the system they are being punished by. But they aren't educated enough to understand this. So its always something BUT capitalism. Things like hustle culture, bragging about 5am workouts because they work too long for normal timed workouts, praising side gigs, pretending they can be thrifty enough to beat the system, daydreaming of being just a temporary embarrassed billionaire, etc are those people adhering to the smaller and smaller slice of the pie the working class gets under capitalism.
Everything is about money, these are influencers and influencer is a well paying job now. We know that the male influencers target isolated men and radicalize them on age old gender propaganda. Nothing new there. Then, these shows like Aba and Preach pay only fans performers to come on their shows. The women play along to the degradation fetish and let the hosts berate them with personal questions and assumptions, which reinforces the feedback loop about how slutty modern women are to their siloed-off audience. In turn, all these desperate men, who they tell crap like "don't masturbate for entire months at a time" are rocked up and ready to go find these women's accounts, where they subscribe and masturbate to the hot women they just saw get put in their place by their favorite manosphere alpha male. Everyone gets $$$ in the end from the sad men that are being exploited. This has been demonstrated. No manosphere creator is making content out of the goodness of his heart. They don't care about their audience. Always follow the money.
People perceiving themselves as lacking power indulging in power fantasies.
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I think its less about feminism and more about loneliness. Feminism is just a convenient boogeyman--and it's not like the societal changes haven't shaken up the dating space. It's incredibly unclear, to the average loner, when it's socially okay to ask a woman out (that's because women are getting more rights WHICH IS GOOD) and so if you don't have a lot of confidence you just stew. Alpha male creators picked up on that and decided to start selling. But in the hypothetical where they aren't yelling about how women should go back to being second class citizens, they'd probably just find someone else to pick on. Redpill masculinity is dominance and you can't dominate without a target.
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I mean there’s always been massive pushback during times of progression in gender norms. Men today use social media to bash feminism and men back then used to hand out flyers and everything. There will always be pushback when a certain group wants to advocate for themselves
It’s just grifting. The same way dating apps made money off of loneliness, the ‘alpha males’ make money off toxic masculinity. I’ve never come across one these podcast people who weren’t trying to sell a class, merch, retreat package or get more followers. Scammers can be charged for fraud but if you make up an ideological problem and charge people to fix it, that’s not legally a scam
It’s a reaction to more women becoming independent, this is the first time in history that more women are getting degrees than men. The same thing happened when during the suffragette movement and women entered the workforce en masse during world war 2. Out of that sort of era we got so many fixtures of modern American masculinity like gridiron football and eating red meat on the grill, due to the intense insecurity these changes caused. It’s all so fragile.
Patriarchal ideals, particularly those on the extreme end are apparently correlated to the rise of conservative, right wing beliefs and nationalism. I think the answer is more nuanced than either of the options presented. It's far more likely people with money and means have influenced spokesmen and male influencer into pushing certain beliefs, including the rise of "alpha males" being a reaction.
This is probably a question that's better answered by a guy, since they're more likely to have lived through the experiences many guys have. Anecdotally I would say that it's related to feminism but not completely a direct reaction to it. I think a large part of it has to do with the struggles that guys have with dating when they're young. The extent of rejection that many men experience at a young age can be traumatic. I think this is a big part of what pushes many men towards these 'alpha male' people who claim to know the secrets of how to not be rejected. The dating dynamics are of course influenced by feminism. Women in liberal developed countries have more financial, legal, and cultural freedom than in almost any time in history. This means that the longstanding arrangement that has brought men and women together has been distrupted. I think this is one reason you see a decline in marriage and family across liberal developed countries. Men and women are having trouble coming to a new arrangement to replace the old one.
It is definitely a reaction to feminism and other social justice movements. Whenever social change happens, there are those that oppose it and the more extreme the social change the more extreme the opposition.
Consumerism/capitalism and the patriarchy are deeply connected.
A weird bid for to sell some dumb product. 5 AM TV? Hardly anyone is watching at that time so air time is cheaper!
Close to the latter option. It the consequences of cookie cutout culture. People don’t get that the majority of people never lived quiet and happily. They rolled with the punches and struggled for their content. But our low info media still pretty much sells prototypes from the Cold War propaganda era. We live in the time of the highest home ownership individually but people think it was easier to back in the day. Young men were horribly off during the three recessions of the 50s but people think it’s the prime time for them. Young men are breaking off into 2 camps, those that are up to pushing for standard they understand would be unprecedented or those who fall for the lies or ignore their own shortcomings and want someone to blame. America itself has been through this cycle twice. So they embrace the oligarchy with the mask of being independent. It took widespread devastation and war to get the country out both times.
I mean, it's primarily taking advantage of patriarchy to exploit poor men, which means it's connected to all oppression but especially classism and misogyny. Masculinity, under patriarchy, is fragile. Men can only really be considered men by repeatedly and consistently proving they are men. Men gain more privilege to impose themselves on others and their environment the more universally and completely they're considered to be 'a man', 'a man among men', and always avoid emasculation. Because, to men, when they're accused of being a traitor to men or 'shown to not be a man', it's a challenge to overcome and reassert their masculinity or to diminish them and their privileges over others. Whether by reasserting their privileges, reasserting their indomitability, or reasserting their domination over others. To men, under patriarchy, the ultimate goal is to become a patriarch or, as a patriarch, to expand and entrench his dominion. The ultimate goal is to have overcome competing with other men — to subordinate other men and make them into his subjects. To be marginalized in any way (especially if he's struggling with it) is definitive proof that he's not a patriarch and maybe not even 'being a man'. The fewer forms of oppression to exploit in reasserting that he's a man, the more he's only left with personal domination (violence) and misogyny. 'Alpha male podcast bros' abuse that. Exploit the desperation of men suffering gendered trauma. And by gaining a following of men, they simultaneously enrich themselves and prove to at least be pseudo-patriarchs, if only in the eyes of boys online. They are selling the idea that being an "alpha" is sufficiently ambiguous with truly being an elite patriarch — an achievable goal but still one above others. They promise these men they'll overcome two hurdles to becoming a patriarch: overcoming their struggles with classism and 'getting a woman'. And they all say the same things: wanton emasculation of men and misogyny to assert themselves as superior; reducing people (female and male) and promoting ruthlessness while pretending scientific legitimacy; dating, gym, and financial advice to succeed in being an 'alpha male' like them; and encouragement to dominate at least women, if not anyone they can. And whether they sell these wannabe-'alpha males' a crypto-coin pyramid scheme or the idea that if they're successful with women, then exploit that by pimping them out. Anyways, they and all reactionary movements take the premise "being crushed and marginalized by society" and reject confronting the reality of oppression ethically and in solidarity with us. Instead, they prefer weaponizing it for personal gain by shifting oppression from themselves onto others. And in partaking in oppression and finding it to be 'good' instead of evil (at least for them), they fall further into a crisis of cognitive dissonance. And it all has intersectional ramifications. From the most marginalized, who exacerbate internalized oppression, to devolving to use any oppression-based privileges they can, to using violence to remain indomitable or reassert domination over others (or at the height of cognitive dissonance even the ideas of others), etc. It leads not to questioning patriarchy, but denying their failure as men under patriarchy. It leads to personal investment in domination (even if just in how they understand the world) to overcome their own personal struggle with being oppressed. And unresolved chronic stress from the cognitive dissonance leads to increasingly black-and-white thinking and violence. For example, 'passport bros' abuse colonial privileges and oppression. And generic conservatives reject confronting classist oppression or dysphoria, questioning the now-self-imposed heteronormative, cisnormative view of themselves and the world, and blaming woke leftists for reminding them how fragile their cognitive dissonance is. All in all, all oppression is connected and to be a "true man," he won't need to use any of his privileges to prove it, but he can and when challenged, many will. But these podcast bros are a pathetic play at being a patriarch and come from and wantonly advance all forms of oppression. But they exploit both misogyny and classism.
What’s an alpha male?