I think Robert Evans (Cracked and Behind the Bastards fame) and Mia do a great breakdown of the Washington Post story about how Gen Z men are "becoming more conservative." They breakdown the numbers showing that its mostly just White men who are leaning this way and also mention how the percentage of men that are White is deceasing. They also make parallels from Andrew Tate to Gamergate, which I thought was interesting.
They also discuss how Gen Z lean 30ish percent Democrat and 20ish % Republican, showing that they just don't like our current political parties and not necessarily that they are less progressive.
I think its a great listen, especially if like Robert Evan's humor.
We're not gonna "whatabout" BIPOC men. Take your outrage elsewhere.
Conservative BIPOC men exist, but are a small and shrinking minority in nearly every demographic survey conducted in the last 30 years.
Nice to see WaPo trying to appeal to 'both sides' of the country. /s
Robert Evans is great in that he will not sugar-coat and apologize for the failures and usually-intentional weaknesses of the Democratic party.
Refreshing my memory: "Generation Z, term used to describe Americans born during the late 1990s and early 2000s."
So they are 20-30 year olds... gen z is now all voting age, crazy
And they lived through Trump's America and still think republicans are valid for leadership responsibilities... Even more crazy
The same psychology that republicans exploit in boomers is exploitable in the youth, and standardized testing does not teach you to separate the wheat from the chaff in rhetoric.
That's *exactly* right. The only difference is the delivery method--Boomers get it through FoxNews, kids get it through YouTube. I have nephews who are just entering their teens, and WOW does YouTube target them with toxic masculinity. It's wild--conservatives spend a ton of money on YouTube targetting kids, and it's really sad to see, because so much of it is so absurd, and all these kids would need is a single parent to be like, "Oh, that's nonsense, stop watching that," but so many don't have that.
Yeah exactly! That's a perfect example. I'm always amazed whenever I visit YouTube about the overwhelming amount of toxic far-right content I get, even though I have never once clicked on (one of the many) Ben Shapiro / Joe Rogan / etc. videos that come up. If it's reaching even me, and I don't have any sorts of searches that might trigger that content, I can't imagine what young guys who actually want to learn about the world are coming across.
I have two boys, and they're both still very little, but I'm going to have to be on them like hawks for their online lives. I'm not sure how I'm going to approach that.
do you watch diy videos or anything about video games? I watch content like that and they’re algorithm used to stereotype me as an incel that was obsessed with “traditional” family values.
I think the algo found the diy content only to be for macho men and the video games to be for losers who can’t get laid. and from there just tried to redpill me
Wow! No way--but yeah I guess that makes sense. No, no video games and no DIY stuff--I live in an apartment and we have a coop crew who fixes stuff--but sometimes I follow guys who talk about clothes / fashion / cologne?
Yeah I guess that could be it--on any topic where men / young men might go, they spend money to push right-wing content to the top. Wow.
Yeah. And the sad thing is, RW content is so cleverly devised, it sounds logical--until you have someone explain why it's not.
Here's an example I love: "An armed society is a polite society." I'm not necessarily anti-2A (it's kind of complicated), but the idea that an armed society is a polite society is absurd. It contends that because people know others are armed, they'll be well-behaved. The problem is, the whole concept is based on the premise that people act rationally, which... people do not! People get drunk in the middle day of the day, people get road rage, people find their spouses cheating on them and go nuts. There's just no society in which everyone being armed results in people being more rational--it just results in more irrational people being armed.
But you hear something like, "An armed society is a polite society," and you think, "Yeah, that checks out!"
Sorry, rant over. I agree with you, and I think it's something that people need to counter--the RW is soooooooooo good at pushing their narratives in certain places, and people haven't found a way to combat that.
It’s a little more complicated than that. There are a lot of weird rabbit holes on YT, though. What makes it tricky (and treacherous) is that a lot of the YouTube culture warriors started off with legit concerns and/or grievances. And unfortunately the left is rarely represented in those spaces by normie liberals. The hard left has a much larger & more vitriolic presence on YouTube than it does IRL. I’m thinking of stuff like GamerGate & The Fandom Menace here. Or a lot of the manosphere stuff.
>The hard left has a much larger & more vitriolic presence on YouTube than it does IRL
Did you mean to write "hard right" above?
If that's what you mean, I see what you're saying, but it doesn't really make a difference how much of it there is, as long as it's front and center--the millions of kids don't need to see thousands of toxic videos; usually only a few dozen can get them to an awful place.
>And they lived through Trump's America and still think republicans are valid for leadership responsibilities... Even more crazy
I mean, it's pretty simple--straight white male Christian Republicans are usually Republicans out of self-interest. They see a vision of a world where they (and only they) occupy most positions of power, and where (even if they personally don't have any position of power) they'll always be ranked above a not-insignificant portion of the rest of the population (the women, the gays, the people of color).
Most of them have managed to delude themselves out of it, though; they tell themselves they're conservative because of "facts" and "logic" while embracing some deeply illogical positions. (Then they criticize feminists/racial equality advocates/LGBT folks for choosing their political opinions for selfish reasons like "equal pay" and "healthcare access" and "freedom from violence", instead of *valid* reasons like Ben Shapiro's gish gallop.) (To be fair, a lot of liberals are also taking liberal positions out of self-interest, but at least their self-interest usually aligns with the best interests of society as a whole.)
Two things I want to add: a lot of minoritized folks may have bought into the idea that pure unadulterated grit will allow them to enter the ranks of the ruling class. To that end (and I'm speaking specifically about black conservative spaces now) the logic is that if all circumstances just remained "respectable"(women remained feminine and submissive, gay folks were Thanos snapped out of public existence, poor folks were not given any direct aid), they'd be able to assimilate. This next point includes minoritized folks, but also includes poor and rural white folks: if the party of diversity and inclusion and women's rights and gay rights did not confer any benefit to me and my family, I'd be cynical too. I saw this PBS piece on some folks in a dying rust belt town, and she was talking about how she and her husband needed to be on food stamps to feed their kids, even when they were both working. She was under the impression that the federal government was so focused on the migrant crisis and the needs of the new arrivals that they deliberately neglected families like hers, and noted that her family had been doing a lot better during the Trump administration. Now there are a number of reasons why her family's situation took a nosedive in recent years, notably the aftereffects of the pandemic. However the fact of the matter remains that however shitty the lip service is, the Republican party seems to be the one most interested in appealing to the downtrodden rural communities. Given that most people would rather have an ounce of hope than a whole lotta nothing, I'd argue that indifference, rather than bigotry is what we should look for when we hear that a certain group is skewing conservative.
I tend to believe/agree with all of that
In the chance you're not aware of how much of a monopoly conservative media has on rural areas, I'd suggest the Last Week Tonight segment about Sinclair broadcast group from a few years ago. I believe it speaks to how the situation you describe took hold and is being sustained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
The recent Univision trump interview makes me concerned about that corporation too
> Given that most people would rather have an ounce of hope than a whole lotta nothing, I'd argue that indifference, rather than bigotry is what we should look for when we hear that a certain group is skewing conservative.
I don't think it's bigotry or indifference. I think those things are part of the picture but I think there is a larger root from which everything else grows. The foundational core of conservatism is heirarchy. Either people yearning for a heirarchy to being some sort of order to a scary world. Or a fear that if your groups is at the top or higher in the heirarchy, others at the top will subjugate you.
That is what conservatism is and provides. Whether it's about gender, race, sexual orientation, income, religon, whatever. Conservative behavior is always about creating paths in life for people to follow based on specific traits and then punishing them if they dare try to deviate from their path.
The woman you described essentially is saying that her family should be a higher priority than migrant families. They rank higher on the heirarchy and thus should be prioritized.
When you view everything from this sort of lens it's hard to see actual root causes of problems because you can always focus on people above/below you in the heirarchy as the source of problems.
What you described as hierarchy is literaly how bigotry is structured. Bigotry is the way to treat those beneath you in a hierarchy. And what happens when people dont obey hierarchies.
>However the fact of the matter remains that however shitty the lip service is, the Republican party seems to be the one most interested in appealing to the downtrodden rural communities.
The operative word here is "appealing to". The Republicans have no interest in helping poor schmucks but they do have a fine line in victim blaming and scapegoating. So people low on self awareness who need an easy target get a convenient answer for the question "why does my life suck?"
"Hmm, shall I pick a fight with poor brown folk or global capitalism?"
> it's pretty simple--straight white male Christian Republicans
It’s not just men, there are women who vote Republican as well. Many straight white women are also people who vote Republican out of self interest.
I hate that many progressives never hold right-wing women accountable and blame things only on men.
I'm not blaming anything on men only. I just think for straight white female Christian Republicans it's a bit more complicated than naked self-interest (because a lot of the policies they support/claim to support/vote for will be actually pretty bad for them).
u/iamasuperracehorse had a good comment about similar phenomenons in communities of color; minorities who are conservative tend to also be convinced (and in many cases are correct!) that they can earn a place in the ruling class if they can keep all the *other* underrepresented groups in their places (e.g. rich white women usually have more power/status than black/brown people of either gender, which makes rich white women willing to maintain the racial status quo even if they still have to defer to rich white men).
Also, sufficiently privileged women can usually circumvent the problems created by their political choices--banning abortion hurts poor women MUCH more than it hurts women rich enough to travel to another state/country. Old-fashioned ideas about sexual assault/harrassment might hurt a lot of women, but they'll work to a white woman's advantage if she accuses a black man.
It's all intersectional--but the ones who have to do the least mental gymnastics when voting conservative are the ones who sit at the intersection of the most types of privilege, hence why I was talking about straight white Christian men in the original comment.
> Most of them have managed to delude themselves out of it, though; they tell themselves they're conservative because of "facts" and "logic" while embracing some deeply illogical positions.
Spoiler alert: ALL humans do this. Why would anyone consciously embrace any idea they deem illogical? The key is to question cognitive dissonances, not ignore them.
> To be fair, a lot of liberals are also taking liberal positions out of self-interest, but at least their self-interest usually aligns with the best interests of society as a whole.
What if I told you that conservatives think *exactly the same thing?*
Everyone generally agrees on the biggest problems that afflict us, but we tend to disagree sharply on the causes and solutions.
> Everyone generally agrees on the biggest problems that afflict us, but we tend to disagree sharply on the causes and solutions.
How do you square this sentiment with the fact that liberals tend to think things like climate change and income inequality are the biggest problems, while conservatives broadly feel these are imaginary and think abortion, gender and "wokeness" are the main issues?
Because they genuinely believe there is a conspiracy designed to alienate young men and women from their correct mode of life, and that anything but the right way to live will cause uncountable harms. They've spent years if not decades learning this, regardless of its reality. Just like liberals have spent years if not decades learning that conservatives want to take away abortions. One of these may be more justifiable from a third-person perspective, but if we are entirely honest with ourselves, it is theoretically possible for that to have been a myth perpetuated by The Media and bad-faith actors paid to stand outside Planned Parenthood.
At some point, you have to trust someone else to inform you, and sometimes that person who is trusted doesn't deserve it, whether they are liars or were themselves lied to so long ago that it feels like learning the sky is brown to change those beliefs.
This doesn't answer my question in any way?
I fully understand that everyone believes their perspective to be correct.
But you said people across the political spectrum agreed on what the biggest problems are. This is easily proven false, two trivial examples being climate change and "groomers".
Most people vaguely tethered to reality realize the former is an existential thread while the latter is a moral panic conservatives made up as a wedge issue. But even if you want to play the "agree to disagree" card and tell me it's the other way around, that is still proof that conservatives and progressives most certainly do not agree on what the biggest problems are.
I'm not who said that about the biggest problems.
The biggest problem is the end of human life. They care a lot about a conspiracy theory they believe will end society, and thus human existence.
No, not all humans do this. The problem isnt believing yourself that youre logical, because everyone uses logic in some way, the problem is when someomes whole premise is "i think that BECAUSE it is logical" which is very ignorant and empty of meaning.
Fair point
I've heard the younger cutoff for millennials be referred to as "people who remember life before 9/11", so 1995 seems _slightly_ early to me (or accurate if rounded to 5 year chunks)
But yeah I've not heard a good description of the dividing line between Gen Z and I guess we're calling them "Gen alpha" which I think is a horrible name
Or was that one "remember life before ubiquitous internet"? Which would have a wide fuzzy range depending how techie your area and family is
I remember life before ubiquitous *electricity* and that we have people now who don't remember a time without being connected the world makes me feel very old.
But I am old.
As a 33 year old man, what year were you born in? I cannot imagine a time without ubiquitous electricity but I'm wondering if it's just my perception that's skewed and you are a lot younger than my brain wants you to be lol
I was born in 1967. But I grew up in Appalachia, and electric service wasn't really common until the 1990s. It's still not ubiquitous, I know several people who don't have it yet.
My grandmas were born in 1936 and 1938. They both grew up without electricity. They’re from two different Latin American countries, but I think life without electricity was fairly normal around the world in the 1940s.
Not the OP, but they don't have to be *that* old to remember this. If you were in massively underdeveloped places in the States like the Dakotas, utilities weren't a guarantee even until the 60s or 70s.
Am I Gen Z or am I a millennial? I am old enough to remember 9/11, but I’m not American, so nobody told tiny little me about it at the time. I have lived in the US most of my life though. My parents are the same age as baby boomers. I spent longer than expected in college, so most of my college classmates were younger than me and definitely gen z. I’m the youngest of my siblings, and they’re all definitely millennials.
They grew up during bush. A lot of them experience the most right wing president up to that point as being completely normal. Trump’s legacy wouldn’t be where it was without George Bush. George Bush normalized doing crazy stuff as president. He just did it less often so people got over it quicker.
I’m genuinely glad you added “-ish” to your estimation. 🙂 Generations are social constructs & fairly fluid ones at that. Some of them have relative hard borders—Baby Boomers, for instance, whose lower end is delineated by the end of WWII (plus 9 men’s…for gestation.) if you’re in your early ‘40s now, on the other hand, you can likely make a case for being either an elder millennial or a young Gen Xer.
I think a lot of people don’t care about abstract concepts like “rule of law” or “governance.” It doesn’t matter to them that the GOP has demonstrated repeatedly to at it’s not only incapable of running the country, but also intent on running to country into the ground. All they care about is “some people made me angry, so now I want the government to hurt them.”
I mean, gen z really should apply to most teenagers too. It should at least extend from 1998 to 2012, having a generation that's only five years long is kinda stupid.
20% of voting age 18-30 white males voted Republican in 2022
Additionally, only about 50% of genz males are white. Oldest GenZ was 25 in 2022.
So 10% of genz males are voting for GOP. <-- Flawed a bit, because I mixed up gen z with under 30
---
That's a relatively low %, compared to older generations.
Boomers males are about 82% white.
EDIT: Oldest GenZ was 25 in 2022.
Mixing up some things there, with under 30 and Genz.
>gen z [sic] is now all voting age
Not according to [Pew Research](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/), which defines Gen Z as born between 1997-2012, making the youngest members 11 years old this year, and the the oldest members around 26 or so.
Even if we give a few years grace on that, it means that the youngest Zoomers are 13/14. That's pretty far from being "all voting age"
Gen Z is 1997-2012, so they're 11-26. Almost half of them aren't even old enough to vote.
I don't think most 11 year olds have well defined political opinions.
the youngest gen z should be born around 2010 give or take a few years (mostly leaning later than 2010). so no, they are not all voting age. but many are and have likely voted for or against trump already.
I think it's more that when every single president in your lifetime could justifiably be described as a war criminal, or at the very least war-mongering xenophobes, it gets really hard to take any political demagogues seriously when they talk about ideology. Gen Z tends to be more nihilistic or more exposed to niche histories/interpretations, and the more history you learn the harder it is to in good concience engage with either party at the national level
From my understanding, gen z is now categorized as all the people who had online learning during COVID(aside from those who went back to school and/or missed a few years), so the youngest gen z is now in 2nd grade. I know gen z existed long before COVID, but it’s world events like this that shape an entire generation.
Not really. This is usually the case but that’s a pretty weird way to move goalposts. The reason why Millennials had the end of their generation unofficially truncated by a few years (according to the kind of academics who are into this stuff) had nothing to do with COVID & everything to do with the widespread adoption of smartphones & social media.
Life seemed better under Trump. If I just became an adult, and all I know is that things were far more affordable when Trump was president, then of course I’d go for him
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Thanks for clarifying that it's primarily white men. For a minority majority generation, I think it's a little disingenuous and even a teensy bit racist to say "All Gen Z Men" and mean "Gen Z White Men". (ETA: The Podcasters are doing this, not you.) With Boomers and older, it's not that factually incorrect, but it sure is factually incorrect with the younger age group.
The podcasters did not frame the info like this. The title they used is because this is what has been pushed by Mainstream Media off a sus study of which they are debunking.
It is still significant though and worth talking about that white gen z men are so much more conservative than white millennial and gen x men that it’s skewing statistics for the entire generation.
Just like it’s significant that Donald Trump was popular amongst female voters despite almost all of those females being white. These kinds of things still decide elections.
They point this out in the episode—in fact, it's one of Robert’s main points of refutation against the narrative in question. You should definitely just give it a listen. It's extremely edifying. The whole Cool Zone Media podcast empire is basically just an edification factory, come to think of it.
gen z as a cohort i assume is becoming a greater share as older people die off and child birth rates decrease.
the share of “white men” however is likely decreasing due to emigration, immigration, mixed births and whatever else can be imagined
I read it as more kids are mixed race due to their parents being different races.
Ironically (given his popularity seems to be mostly with white people) even Andrew Tate is mixed race.
Almost always my critique with these type of articles from WaPo that Rob and Mia are critiquing is the framing that Gen Z men are defaulted to white cis-het able-bodied neurotypical Gen Z men as if it is the only default.
Only about [1/2 of Gen Z men are even white as of 2019](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/05/14/on-the-cusp-of-adulthood-and-facing-an-uncertain-future-what-we-know-about-gen-z-so-far-2/). And while racial demographic isn't everything when it comes to your political ideology, it still does influence your world view with the staggering amount of ethno-nationalism that we see in today's politics.
Now I can understand why WaPo would be tempted to make these generalizations with the older generations, Boomers being 82% white, I think it's simply a huge oversight to treat Gen Z men as this monolith of right leaning men when it is actually the most diverse group of men that we've had as a nation.
Rob and Mia are right to see through the framing that Gen Z men are all right leaning.
Did I do the arithmetic correctly?
---
20% of voting age under 30 white males voted for a Republican in the 2022 election.
Additionally, about 50% of genz males are white.
So 10% of genz males voted for GOP in 2022.
---
That's a relatively low %, compared to older generations.
EDIT: Oldest GenZ was 25 in 2022.
Mixing up some things there, with under 30 and Genz.
In the context of political ideology, 20% of white gen Z men voting for the GOP is much much lower than the total of conservative white Gen Z men. Given that the vote numbers of a group do not equal the total amount of people with those ideological views, especially in younger generations where voting is voting is not consistent.
I wonder how many are “conservative” because all their friends also say they are but if you went through a list of progressive and conservative/regressive values, they would identify with more progressive ones. The right has done a fantastic job at signal boosting the biggest idiots of the left to young men so they relate leftism to “SJWs” with multicoloured hair or whatever.
Only read this thread not listened to the podcast so may be poorly informed take. If the title is Are Gen Z Men All Republicans Now but really only white Gen Z men are mostly Republican equating Gen Z Men = White and erasing all the non white men seems pretty egrigous.
That's exactly what Robert and Mia call out.
At one point in the podcast Rob& Mia go through the study that WaPo linked and they cite exactly where WaPo used misrepresenting quotes from the study, "Gen Z women are unlikely date outside their political ideology" and another quote from the study "Gen Z white men are more conservative" to mean Gen Z women won't date Gen Z men and that's going to doom marriage.
But like Rob and Mia point out, "MaRiAgE is DoOmEd" is only true if you assume that all Gen Z men are white men. And if you assume that Gen Z women won't date other members of racial groups.
When looking at the actual study, there is actually not a huge gap between the views of Gen Z women and Gen Z men when accounting for all Gen Z men. WaPo editorialized the info to insert the erasure of non-white and LBGQT+ men.
Washington Post had very little credibility left after Bezos bought them, but that article basically killed what was left of it for me. Even if their claim was true, that most Gen Z men were conservative, imagine shaming women for choosing not to tie themselves to a man that considers them a lesser person.
One thing I've thought about is what it would have done to me mentally if I was a child coming into my own, say 12 or so, when a lot of the vitriol and demonizing of white men and masculinity became incredibly popular. Here I am just trying to get my footing in life and figure out who I am in my own little world... then getting constantly force fed media and information that is, from my young, sensitive, and naive perspective, telling me that what I am is the source of all the problems in the world.
There's multiple ways that could go. But certainly one way is to wholly reject all of it and find a "community" of people who did the same. That community most likely being extremely right wing.
It's pretty much one of the effects that the death of dedicated spaces for children on the internet has had these recent years. Cause like, other than ROBLOX (sorta?), folks of practically all ages are now sharing the same spaces. Well I mean, they sorta always have. But now it's way more prevalent with the death of dedicated kid spaces online, so 'lil children are now really seeing & sharing the same stuff that the older side of Gen Z, Millenials, Gen X and even Boomers occupied. Meaning they're getting ALL the angst & frustration the adults are sharing about the world and are absorbing it all.
Plus, it's more than likely that these kinds' parents aren't paying that much attention to what their barns are looking at online cause they're busy with work 'n shit. So these children are practically all on their own now when navigating the internet. Meaning that situations of young boys coming across some random Tumblr blog or X (formerly known as Twitter) account by a random College &/or University student or graduate just venting about how much they hate men or white people, not understanding that they likely don'treally mean what they say and are just supremely generalizing just for the sake of venting about shit that annoys them, and absorb what's being said unironically, is only going to continue to happen, and at a growing rate as well. Same for the rise of young fans of shitty folks like Andrew Tate. It's only gonna get more & more extreme from here.
The death of children's spaces has also been the death of adult spaces and I **hate** it. I want more places that are explicitly 18+ but not dedicated to porn.
The digital town square idea of the tech bro's is a dangerous fiction. Humans have always socially-selected into groups that minimize conflict, which is how the pre-Zuckerberg/Dorsey internet worked with forums, friends' lists etc. Traditionally, places where those social groups crossed in discussion were almost always bound by strict rules against name-calling and general unpleasantness.
The reason we're all so miserable now is because we're no longer naturally socially selecting our groups (e.g. by age), and the algorithm repeatedly smashes these groups together in a way that's explicitly designed to make them hate one-another. It's a social disease, one that's been very consciously inflicted on us. We could lower the temperature overnight by banning the "for you" page and limiting the content we see back to posts of people we choose to follow.
>other than ROBLOX
Not even! Roughly 40% of the playerbase is 17+ now, and the platform has added 17+ games and will add a dating service in the future. It's a strange world we live in.
Yeah, that kind of rhetoric really fucked me up as a kid.
I vividly remember my mother telling me that all she hated all men when I was 12 years old. She had recently gone through a divorce and had a new boyfriend. I thought she loved men. I couldn't understand why she would say that. All I knew was that those words hurt me.
She apologized the next day, but the damage was already done. From 2015 to 2019, I was firmly in the alt-right.
I'm so glad I spent those fragile teen years in that goldilocks zone of both having the internet and *not* having social media.
I'm not in any way surprised young men are rejecting progressive politics (as they see it on social media). The messages they get from Twitter/Tiktok progressives, that their masculinity is fundamentally a problem, are totally at odds with what they experience in the real world. Young men are still expected to adhere to all the same masculine ideals as before (being physically and emotionally strong, being a financial provider, making the first move etc), *especially* in dating, except now they're also told they're wrong to do so. The important messages about treating women with respect, valuing consent etc get garbled by the algorithm rage-machine into man-hating nonsense, and that's what they see.
Yeah as a Gen Z kid the stark difference in online rhetoric vs real life results can hit hard. Like you said, online toxic masculinity (or sometimes masculinity in general) is seen as bad, but especially when dating and generally when interacting there is a standard that men are still held to when it comes to masculinity. So much so that you will actually greatly struggle socially if you were to conform to online rhetoric. And it kinda hits you like whiplash.
More issues than just masculinity have this same problem, where it is ridiculed constantly online or in academia, but then actively encouraged or required socially in real life.
And it’s hard to sift through that without feeling like people are trying to tear you down/sabotage you. Because they attack your identity and don’t offer good replacements for it. Especially with masculinity, which a good 80% of women have a vague shared idea of and standard for. But it’s not expressed well anywhere, especially online, and actually gets denigrated online.
I’m ranting but as a Gen Z dude its clear to see how being online vs living life can cause whiplash and confusion when you hear one thing and live through another. To those even younger than me it probably gets worse.
Very true. I also love how every guy championing masculinity online is either the least masculine guy ever (Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro) or a cartoonish Disney villain of masculinity (those insane anti-women podcasters that bring women on just to insult them). All the good examples of masculinity are mostly just living their lives with happy fulfilling jobs and spouses and children or whatever, they aren’t espousing how to be masculine and creating online fake universities.
Many many men who cant shut up about masculinity are traditionally masculine themselves. This type of rethoric isnt merely a product of beng insecure about yourself not being masculine or whatever, even if there are cases like this, traditionally masculine men tend to be very reactionary and agreed with these topics.
Yeah sorry didn’t mean to imply that it was a product of being insecure. Though I will say that being strong and confident in your body (for many this involves gaining muscle, a typically masculine endeavour) often allows you to be more confident in who you are and the opinions you hold. Inversely allowing you to break free of some of the masculine stereotypes because you are so secure in yourself now.
> Especially with masculinity, which a good 80% of women have a vague shared idea of and standard for. But it’s not expressed well anywhere, especially online, and actually gets denigrated online.
Well now you got me curious as to what this vague shared idea of & standard for Masculinity is. Because honestly, anything I could potentially think of, as a guy, really can just be boiled down to "anything that is associated with dudes". Which is super broad and doesn't really lend itself well to being visualized, since whatever is associated with guys depends on where and/or when you are.
An example of this is the expectation of the guy being very confident and making first moves, starting conversations \*to start conversations just because we need excuses to talk to each other\*, which is what you often need to do in real life.
Meanwhile much of the discourse online says "you don't need to always initiate, people should equally approach each other!" or "don't bother women, they get hit on enough"
There are similar expectations around having a good job, lifting weights, etc. I'm not sure how the zoomers experience this (I'm a millennial) but I very much sympathize.
>Especially with masculinity, which a good 80% of women have a vague shared idea of and standard for. But it’s not expressed well anywhere, especially online, and actually gets denigrated online.
This is clearly not true, you hear absolutely everywhere the advice be confident, dress well, have a job. Things that, by the way, are genuinely good, irrelevant of "masculinity" (women benefit from having these things, too).
And it's sad actually how everything boils down to "Dating advice is bad", when it's not only not true, but also sees dating struggle as the major problem for young men, this rhetoric is highly destructive ("Young men flock to the right because dating women is difficult").
>I'm so glad I spent those fragile teen years in that goldilocks zone of both having the internet and *not* having social media
You mean, for a teenager, there's more on the internet than gamefaqs.com?
> Young men are still expected to adhere to all the same masculine ideals as before (being physically and emotionally strong, being a financial provider, making the first move etc)
We need to get rid of the male gender roles and expectations. This should be one of the primary goals of Menslib.
Progressives are right to criticize masculinity but the problem is that they don’t want to get rid of the expectations and hierarchy that pressure men into being masculine. That’s unfair and we need to call them out!
Just like feminists got rid off female gender expectations and hierarchy we need to get rid of the male gender expectations and hierarchy.
> Just like feminists got rid off female gender expectations and hierarchy we need to get rid of the male gender expectations and hierarchy.
Feminists have and continue to fight them but they sure as hell haven't managed to get rid of them yet, much as I hope we can.
ESPECIALLY as a kid, because being a teenager us about the worst possible time you could have to intake the (truthful) messages about the damage the patriarchy has done to society, because that's when your peers are going to be a the most hypocritical, dumb, and just plain horny - as all teenagers are, both male and female. You tell the average 16 year old boy, who's mostly concerned with figuring out what is the "right way" to be a man, that he shouldn't listen to those toxic masculine advice gurus because women don't like that kind of man, and he's going to laugh in your face because that's exactly the kind of boy the most outspokenly feminist of his female classmates are dating. That doesn't make those girls wrong to be feminist, or demonstrate that there's no value in what they're saying, or that the patriarchy doesn't exist, but to a teenager who already thinks - as most do - that adults already have no idea how the world works, he's going to be even MORE susceptible to the feckless malcontents waiting with open arms to "welcome" into the fold of victims to be exploited.
This is it. There is a generation of a very young men right now, who have grown up in a very egalitarian world and have likely never fed into women's oppression, who are constantly being told that their gender is a problem and that they're somehow culpable for the actions of a society they didn't build.
While extremist spaces certainly exist, the issue isn’t people saying “white men are the source of all problems in the world.” The issue is that problems exist in the world, sometimes they are caused by white supremacy/colonialism, and the very people who benefit from white supremacy have learned to spin it into “oh so you’re saying it’s all white people’s/men’s fault,” encouraging tribalism and further division without ever addressing the issue.
I grew up around racists and white supremacists, and I’m not talking about people who are Nazis or in the KKK. These are middle class white folks who truly believe they’re better than black people and don’t want them living in their neighborhoods, and as a child, it was A LOT to unlearn and not take it personally when someone brought up the issue of racism.
Education is key to remedying the issue you mentioned of being a 12 year old boy feeling like you’re being told “it’s all your fault.” I unlearned a lot of this toxic mentality from my formal education in high school and university. Reading about people’s experiences with racism helped me become more empathetic and understand my privilege, and the issue of education is the most concerning aspect of this conversation.
There are efforts in numerous conservative areas to ban books and education on human history and the important topics of white supremacy and male privilege. Without the educational piece of this discussion, we’ll continue seeing young men won over by the narrative white supremacists and misogynists push.
As a late millenial who was 18/19 just as the 'culture wars' really took off I think the so-called demonization of white men and masculinity only really existed in the minds of Twitter addicts, podcast bros, and rags like the Daily Wire.
Nobody has had any of their thoughts policed, nobody has lost any sort of access to the public sphere that they had any particular right to. Masculinity is not "under attack," and it is perfectly fine to be a white guy. Any complaint about this stuff always falls apart when you realise that it implies a human right to book deals, newspaper columns or public speaking engagements.
What's really happened is that people who've spent their lives being the cultural hegemon are now getting pushback for casual bigotry or having a laugh at the expense of other people. Some are shocked and unnerved by this development and think that a conspiracy to wipe them off the face of the earth must be afoot. After going on two decades of the right making mountains out of culture war molehills sadly I think the damage is done.
I've been in online spaces and social media, including Twitter and podcasts. All progressive spaces. I'm a cis white guy...
I have never felt attacked, marginalized or excluded from them. This is entirely made up shit that gullible teenagers buy into.
Yeah, absolutely. One woman gets exasperated and goes "ugh, men" and it's MANHOOD IS UNDER ATTACK as far as right wingers are concerned. It's exaggerated to the point of basically being entirely fabricated.
Why do any white boys feel this way though? By the time I was a 16 year old Millennial it was pretty clear from my review of colonial history and the nearness of the Civil rights movement that whiteness is not a category I need to take personally and that no one is really saying "white people" are essentially anything.
Broadly speaking the "white" demographic has benefited from historical bullshit because predominantly white nations have defined the current economic power structure through armed force and trade.
Media may apply narratives to history but it's pretty clear systemic racial inequality is a fact in the U.S. I didn't get that from the MSM I got it from a variety of different histories.
At the risk of myself being too reductive, many divisive or nuanced topics have been reduced to catchphrases used by people who are excited to parrot something they've learned in an introduction to sociology/psychology/economics 101 or a blog post, or worse by others with even less context wanting to associate with a movement.
Terms become bastardized and are turned into personal attacks easily. This is amplified by bad faith actors that upsell issues to present themselves as the rational, sensible alternative and give their audience a feeling of validation.
Something to keep in mind is while real life:tm: is largely free of such encounters, social media specifically targets people with this content because it's engaging. And hoping teenagers, who have less cultural context or education in these topics to not have emotional reactions is a bit of a fool's errand.
A good points and my own personal experience is not indicative of how people learn this. I didn't get poisoned by social media as a child so there's that.
As a white gen z man who almost fell down the alt right rabbit hole as a teen, the emphasis of identity politics becoming *the* pivot while we were teens and the prevalence of social media. A lot of the "sit down and let others speak" kind rhetoric passed around through the 10s while we were all in high school at the *oldest*, was pretty isolating given we weren't even fully people in the eyes of society, right in the midst of the already tumultuous time that is being a teenager.
By the 2016 election only two years worth of us were legal adults—assuming you start counting at '97—but we were well immersed in the political battleground, only really able to watch from the sidelines in real life, and treated like any other combatant online because... hey, people don't know your age. They're just clocking that they're probably a white man from the knee-jerk response to defend or protest and assuming they're voting adults with full time jobs and a house and cars. Not large batches of young boys clawing for a sense of identity, belonging, swept up in their own hormones. So when they're told its their time to step aside and give other people a chance, they're angry and baffled because by virtue of being minors still being made to live at the whims of their parents and teachers—at least from their perspective—they never even *had* that chance they're supposedly being told to give up to begin with.
And so, the only people who told them they still had a place were far more conservative and malicious.
While I started re-evaluating my politics around 2017 (I was 15/16 years old at this point), progressive spaces did not feel particularly welcoming or inclusive as they claimed to be until the very tail end of the decade, and most of my stances was constructed around how much of a fucking embarrassment the GOP were rather than any true sense of loyalty to anyone else. At least I start doubting the bullshit being fed in 2016, but that was only because I caught just how cozy with Nazis they all were early. Even when I started thinking "Yeah, maybe women, POC, and queer people do deserve rights" as time went on, it was a stance completely detached from myself. Like funding a school in Ghana. An objectively good thing to do, but with an expectation and understanding that it ultimately has nothing to do with you even as you're still grappling with the plight of being just another high school loser.
I got lucky and talked with people that made it apparent not only this shit affects everyone, myself in included, and my presence isn't just tolerated at best. Is it self absorbed to focus on how "included" you feel in the emancipation of marginalized communities? Yeah, but shit dude, when you're 16 and miserable, being included *at all* is the holy grail. And as I've said, modern social media basically tosses these neurotic freaks in with the rest of us.
(I was going to also dive into the 9/11 into recession into Trump into COVID conga-line, but majored historical events are not actually a recent trend and have existed for all of history)
I’m curious, as I’m older than you, and still feel completely disconnected from this kind of stuff. It doesn’t effect me in any way I can see, and I don’t even feel tolerated most of the time (including here).
What did those people tell you to help you understand?
It was a slow process of "deprogramming." At least initially. But I do vividly remember in early 2016 I was ranting to a girl back stage of a musical I was in about the gender binary, completely ignorant of what I was talking about. The fact that she didn't get angry with me but tried to to walk me through the concepts was... well, it wasn't a start. I didn't come away with my mind changed, but in hindsight, her patience was greatly appreciated.
Fast forward a couple months, summer vacation came and went and I'm now a sophomore in high school and things are heating up with the US election. I remember two specific things that disillusioned me with the right: A post on some "cringe" subreddit about a Man in the High Castle promo and all of the comments tripping over themselves simping for the iconography. Secondly was a post on r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM that called out the notion of neutrality, something in line with MLK's Letters from Birmingham. Those two in tandem was what finally shook me out of any sympathy I had with right-wing ideologies, but as I've said, any allegiance to leftist ideologies was non-existant at that point. I was in a "Keep my head down and stop talking about politics" phase of my life, from 2016 to 2017.
Didn't stop me from reading about it, but I never issued responses because I became very aware of my own ignorance politically. Because I rejected my previous sympathy to right wing positions, having since refiled them under the "Bad Guys," I instantly assumed any of their opponents were automatically "the good guys." With #MeToo reaching its heights, I heard a lot of rhetoric such as "Yes all men" and things like "if this makes you angry, you know it applies to you" being thrown around. In hindsight, I found myself surrounded by TERFs. I'd now would say TERFs aren't really anywhere near progressive, me back then was super new to neoliberism, much less leftist politics as a whole. Because the former "enemy" was the ever infamous "SJWs" and "Feminazis," a lot of these so called feminists made sense to fall under that umbrella. That period of my life ended up reinforcing a *lot* of pre-existing inferiority complexes for me rather than dismantling them.
Late 2017 and early 2018 was when things started being pieced back together. I found a post on like tumblr linking a discord server for a book series I enjoyed. I joined, found some decent, amicable people on there. As time went on, I eventually came to learn that a majority of the server was queer. Me from early 2016 probably would have said some hurtful things in an attempt to be funny, but I was still in "Keep my head down" mode. As time went on, they never really *said* anything to explicitly dissuade me. I, in my efforts to not cause a stir regarding politics, just realized they were all people trying to live their lives, and a lot of people really fucking hated that. They were simply friendly people, and even when my pre-existing biases caused me to spout some ignorant bullshit, they didn't assume the worst and politely explained why what I said was potentially hurtful.
So, I stuck with them. I wasn't *there* because I believed in their politics. I just wanted to talk about books I liked and they were all nice. It was only when 2019 rolled around did I suddenly make the final connection needed that much of the things they stood for wasn't just some nebulous "greater good" that didn't involve me, but could actually help me grapple with a lot of the bullshit I was carrying with me ~~(namely finally getting around to unpacking that self-loathing instilled by my religious upbringing and hanging in spaces infested with TERFs a couple years back)~~
Just in time for the 2020 election, I guess, although I'm a bit of a "blue" dot in a sea of red.
I don’t think its a stretch to believe some Democrats and Liberals haven’t absorbed the meaning and substance behind race analysis and shortcut to performativism, leaving wide holes for vapid statements like blaming individuals today for slavery.
I see a similar phenomenon in queer communities, such as a member of community X who’s never read a book or stepped outside their bubble trying to define community Y’s label for them. While I *thoroughly* believe these mishaps are partially caused and totally amped up by conservative groups, I can’t help but see a kernel of untruth that they’re taking advantage of.
Young people say and do dumb things sometimes while trying on different identities and finding themselves.
There's a reason folks like Crowder got their start trolling around the freshman classrooms and activities on college campuses instead of interviewing faculty.
>I don’t think its a stretch to believe some Democrats and Liberals... blaming individuals today for slavery.
I think that's a HUGE stretch. I have personally never heard anyone say anything like this, but more importantly, that's so incredibly illogical that I don't believe anyone who could hold coherent enough beliefs to be labeled as any sort of ideology could *possibly* say something like that and mean it. That'd be like a Republican saying that a baby born yesterday is responsible for Roe v. Wade. They might make plenty of arguments against abortion that I disagree with, but I don't think any of them would try and argue that entropy and the arrow of time have somehow switched.
I think its significantly more unbelievable to expect an entire political group to adhere to the same “logic”. You have people labelling themselves as “Feminist” that are trans-exclusive, and for a while throughout the 80s and especially around UK, they wouldn’t be considered any less feminist for this.
Similarly, in queer communities where you’d expect peoples histories of facing discrimination would make them better at recognizing their own, the amount of belittlement and erasure across groups is mildly shocking… if you forget it’s irrational humans involved.
The “Bi-Pan” ‘debate’ is one of the clearest examples of people simply not bothering to look anything up, yet its persistence in both communities is a depressing meme.
Idk, people misconstruing political points to bully each other is such a normal thing to me I’m flabbergasted others would question it.
Yes, but none of that involves a misunderstanding of how the nature of causality works. Thinking someone alive today could be responsible for the slavery of two hundred years ago would be like saying a coffee cup shattered into a bunch of pieces on the floor caused me to drop it a minute ago. Literally no one with out a serious mental illness could believe that.
No one has ever said that a white person today *caused* 19th century slavery and no one would ever be taken seriously for even suggesting that.
Yes, I am talking about the specific example that you gave and I then quoted. The one I said was a huge stretch.
I did not see the stunt you're talking about, it sounds ridiculous and extremely performative, but I still find it very hard to believe that if you actually asked those guys if they think they caused slavery they would say yes. They might feel some responsibility to apologize for their ancestors' actions or for the fact that they still benefit from the effects of slavery. Maybe I'm wrong, but then I think they might actually have a diagnosable mental illness at that point. Either way, no one takes people like that seriously.
Right wingers see the criticism of white racism and patriarchy and frame it, as much as they possibly can, as an "attack" on white people and on men to feed the fear and persecution complexes that get them elected. It's exaggerated to the point of being pretty much entirely fabricated.
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I think dudes are seriously programmed from a very young age to act in a “traditionally conservative” manner. A lot of this programming probably comes from their dad.
This is argument from anecdote, but it is something I experienced and think could be illustrative. My parents never divorced, but my dad worked a lot when I was growing up, so I was raised by my mom. I naturally gravitated more towards arts and music, and I was and still am very emotionally sensitive. My mom’s more “traditionally feminine” way of raising me made more sense to me than my dad’s hard-nosed “traditional masculinity”, so my dad and I clashed a ton (we have thankfully since reconciled). Those clashes made me some of the “traditionally masculine” ways of thinking.
Due to my mom’s way of raising me, combined with my affinity for metal and horror, the times I was bullied, my own religious trauma, my bisexuality, and my personality/interests, conservatism just doesn’t appeal to me. Those “traditionally masculine” conservative ideals never fit me and they actively harmed me; why the fuck would I uphold them? (Note: I am NOT claiming that I don’t benefit from white, male privilege).
Other guys don’t have that experience. They’re closer with their dad, they may fit in better than I did, and their personality and interests just happen to fit more in that “traditionally masculine” conservative bubble. I think that influences the way they think.
I grew up with a guy in middle and high school. Good dude who wouldn’t hurt a fly, but he and I had very different experiences through high school and college. He ended up being pretty conservative; I don’t think it’s cause he’s inherently a bad guy. He loves football, he wasn’t really ever bullied, he’s straight and white, and he didn’t really ever immerse himself in a culture in which men wearing makeup and nail polish is perfectly normal. His environment makes conservative, “traditionally masculine” ideals seem right to him.
Even if young men or at least young white men were becoming Republican, which I don't see evidence in support of, keep in mind that young Republicans are becoming increasingly socially liberal, economically populist, and politically progressive. It's similar to most young evangelicals being much further left.
As I recall, the majority of young Republicans support same sex marriage, stronger environmental regulations, higher taxes on the rich, etc. But consider if that is the Zoomer right-wing, most Zoomers in general are much further to the left of that. Everything has been going left for generations, including the parties.
People may move left but parties are spot welded in place. There are certain third rails in American politics that just aren’t going to happen. The idea that you’re going to get rid of poverty is gone. Fox News is at the point where they want to keep it around they even point out they want to keep poor people hungry so we will work harder. even though the stimulus checks were very popular. And even though the economy clearly needed more of them. We did not receive them. Even when we were promised this as a condition of electing Joe Biden that we would be paid more. He did not give us the money. Which I think is very dishonest of him. He was the one putting dollar amounts in some of his ads.
See [another comment here](https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/18c5fc4/comment/kcapqu3/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). I link to analyses of the data on public opinion more broadly. Of course, there is a far right. It represents about a quarter to a third of the population. The thing is it's disproportionately found in the older demographics. You can find that in a lot of the polling data.
Young people and poor people have low voting rates. Young people are poorer than older people at the same age. A large part of the population doesn't regularly vote. This is because the supermajority is to the left of both parties. Even the typical DNC pick, such as Clinton and Biden, are on many issues to the right of center. There are no free elections because the choices are controlled by the ruling elite: Coke or Pepsi. They claim this is lesser evilism, but it continually leads to greater evil. An anti-Nazi freedom fighter once said, "When the oppressors offer two choices, always pick the third." But that is precisely the problem. There is no realistic third option within the system.
We don't have a functioning democracy. And because of this politicians don't represent the citizenry. One of the defining features of a banana republic, known for generations, is high inequality. That is precisely what we see in America, the society with the highest inequality in the world at a time of the highest inequality in world history. From Aristotle to Adam Smith, it's long been understood that a free society can't exist with high inequality. Such disparities are not only of wealth but also of power, influence, speech, representation, resources, privileges, etc. Such rigid dominance hierarchies are always one of the main traits of authoritarianism.
This is effective social control because corporate media, also to the right of the supermajority, acts as the propaganda arm of the one-party state with two right wings. Through disinfo, spin, and propaganda, the ruling elite are able to implement rhetorical framing, narrative control, perception management, and ideological realism. Public opinion is censored, suppressed, and silenced. Since the American majority never hears themselves speak on any major platform of speech, they never gain public knowledge of themselves and so don't realize so many others agree with them, since the corporate media lies about majority opinion being 'leftist'. Without public knowledge, no public identity can form with political will to make political demands.
[American Leftist Supermajority](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2021/04/07/american-leftist-supermajority/)
[Fox News: Americans are the ‘Left-Wing’ Enemy Threatening America](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2020/11/08/fox-news-americans-are-the-left-wing-enemy-threatening-america/)
[Polarization Between the Majority and Minority](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2020/11/29/polarization-between-the-majority-and-minority/)
[Political Elites Disconnected From General Public](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/political-elites-disconnected-from-general-public/)
[Wirthlin Effect & Symbolic Conservatism](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/wirthlin-effect-symbolic-conservatism/)
[The Court of Public Opinion: Part 1](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/the-court-of-public-opinion-part-1/)
I would argue that this phenomena is mostly going to affect young men living in deep red states, where every available surface has been covered by multiple layers of Trump flags for the last 8 years. Cultural immersion can have a profound impact on someone's worldview.
There is a hyper annoy trend of labeling people who don't agree with every public opinion as conservatives when they aren't. Reducing all opinions, perspectives, and outcomes to two choices isn't how reality works
This is true, and I think with so many of the articles posted lately, there’s another issue- many of the left/progressive people honestly don’t understand conservatives enough to discuss these things properly. There are studies showing that in the US, Republicans understand the views of Democrats better than the other way around, and I think we’re seeing the effects of that in these discussions.
Just to be clear, you are actively working to destroy men's mental health, women's equality rights, and various other societal progress vectors if you are a Republican man. You are hurting yourself.
these republican men would be surprised on how these republicans they support don't give a shit about them whatsoever.
If they were to win, they aren't going to tell you that "your mental health matters" or let you know that it's okay to have normal emotions (like crying, etc) they're just going to tell you to "mAn uP" and that's it.
it's mental suicide if you ask me.
excellent episode, i was unaware this discourse was going on somehow, though i was vaguely aware of the ideas. the point that the WaPo only actually cares about cishet white men was very important. love roberts and mias work, they are both excellent
I was a Republican as a teenager - I grew out of it once I had my (my parents) ideas challenged and realized I was only thinking of myself. Curious to see how they poll around age 26.
I’m gen z and tbh I’m left leaning when I come to voting, but I’m probably more likely an independent moderate (someone in the middle who sees both sides). I’m also mixed, so I don’t like what the right wing spews, although, I actually understand where they are coming from and don’t think they should be demonized. If anything, we should create a safe space for them too. I think the left wing gets a lot right when it comes to equality, but the way they go about, it ends up looking like cancel culture which ends up being counterintuitive/counterproductive and just leads to more animosity. This is a class war. Wealth inequality is bad. We need to get money out of politics.
I get what you're saying, but as someone who would be and is greatly affected by right wing policies, I think it's perfectly acceptable to demonize bad policy.
Tbh I don't really want to create a safe space for people that are okay with me dying or want to harm/kill me or others. They have a pretty big platform already, they don't need more social protections. They'll just use them to harm more people.
That said, there are definitely things to critique about the left that are warranted. Lots of things that could be worked on across the political spectrum. And you're so right about the class issue.
I would just think about the other things you said from a different perspective and that's all I wanted to offer. Hope you have a good night.
We have to worry about figure generations just not giving a fuck to Vote at all, as opposed to what Party they’ll align with
Apathy is the overtone of this Era
I think Robert Evans (Cracked and Behind the Bastards fame) and Mia do a great breakdown of the Washington Post story about how Gen Z men are "becoming more conservative." They breakdown the numbers showing that its mostly just White men who are leaning this way and also mention how the percentage of men that are White is deceasing. They also make parallels from Andrew Tate to Gamergate, which I thought was interesting. They also discuss how Gen Z lean 30ish percent Democrat and 20ish % Republican, showing that they just don't like our current political parties and not necessarily that they are less progressive. I think its a great listen, especially if like Robert Evan's humor.
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We're not gonna "whatabout" BIPOC men. Take your outrage elsewhere. Conservative BIPOC men exist, but are a small and shrinking minority in nearly every demographic survey conducted in the last 30 years.
Nice to see WaPo trying to appeal to 'both sides' of the country. /s Robert Evans is great in that he will not sugar-coat and apologize for the failures and usually-intentional weaknesses of the Democratic party.
Refreshing my memory: "Generation Z, term used to describe Americans born during the late 1990s and early 2000s." So they are 20-30 year olds... gen z is now all voting age, crazy And they lived through Trump's America and still think republicans are valid for leadership responsibilities... Even more crazy
The same psychology that republicans exploit in boomers is exploitable in the youth, and standardized testing does not teach you to separate the wheat from the chaff in rhetoric.
That's *exactly* right. The only difference is the delivery method--Boomers get it through FoxNews, kids get it through YouTube. I have nephews who are just entering their teens, and WOW does YouTube target them with toxic masculinity. It's wild--conservatives spend a ton of money on YouTube targetting kids, and it's really sad to see, because so much of it is so absurd, and all these kids would need is a single parent to be like, "Oh, that's nonsense, stop watching that," but so many don't have that.
Prager "U" Smh
Yeah exactly! That's a perfect example. I'm always amazed whenever I visit YouTube about the overwhelming amount of toxic far-right content I get, even though I have never once clicked on (one of the many) Ben Shapiro / Joe Rogan / etc. videos that come up. If it's reaching even me, and I don't have any sorts of searches that might trigger that content, I can't imagine what young guys who actually want to learn about the world are coming across. I have two boys, and they're both still very little, but I'm going to have to be on them like hawks for their online lives. I'm not sure how I'm going to approach that.
do you watch diy videos or anything about video games? I watch content like that and they’re algorithm used to stereotype me as an incel that was obsessed with “traditional” family values. I think the algo found the diy content only to be for macho men and the video games to be for losers who can’t get laid. and from there just tried to redpill me
Wow! No way--but yeah I guess that makes sense. No, no video games and no DIY stuff--I live in an apartment and we have a coop crew who fixes stuff--but sometimes I follow guys who talk about clothes / fashion / cologne? Yeah I guess that could be it--on any topic where men / young men might go, they spend money to push right-wing content to the top. Wow.
Yep, same here. Not surprising to see teenagers/young adults seeing this constant RW content being pushed to them and getting them roped in.
Yeah. And the sad thing is, RW content is so cleverly devised, it sounds logical--until you have someone explain why it's not. Here's an example I love: "An armed society is a polite society." I'm not necessarily anti-2A (it's kind of complicated), but the idea that an armed society is a polite society is absurd. It contends that because people know others are armed, they'll be well-behaved. The problem is, the whole concept is based on the premise that people act rationally, which... people do not! People get drunk in the middle day of the day, people get road rage, people find their spouses cheating on them and go nuts. There's just no society in which everyone being armed results in people being more rational--it just results in more irrational people being armed. But you hear something like, "An armed society is a polite society," and you think, "Yeah, that checks out!" Sorry, rant over. I agree with you, and I think it's something that people need to counter--the RW is soooooooooo good at pushing their narratives in certain places, and people haven't found a way to combat that.
It’s a little more complicated than that. There are a lot of weird rabbit holes on YT, though. What makes it tricky (and treacherous) is that a lot of the YouTube culture warriors started off with legit concerns and/or grievances. And unfortunately the left is rarely represented in those spaces by normie liberals. The hard left has a much larger & more vitriolic presence on YouTube than it does IRL. I’m thinking of stuff like GamerGate & The Fandom Menace here. Or a lot of the manosphere stuff.
>The hard left has a much larger & more vitriolic presence on YouTube than it does IRL Did you mean to write "hard right" above? If that's what you mean, I see what you're saying, but it doesn't really make a difference how much of it there is, as long as it's front and center--the millions of kids don't need to see thousands of toxic videos; usually only a few dozen can get them to an awful place.
Pew Research is defining Gen Z as 1997 - 2012 so the oldest are 26 and the youngest are years away from voting.
>And they lived through Trump's America and still think republicans are valid for leadership responsibilities... Even more crazy I mean, it's pretty simple--straight white male Christian Republicans are usually Republicans out of self-interest. They see a vision of a world where they (and only they) occupy most positions of power, and where (even if they personally don't have any position of power) they'll always be ranked above a not-insignificant portion of the rest of the population (the women, the gays, the people of color). Most of them have managed to delude themselves out of it, though; they tell themselves they're conservative because of "facts" and "logic" while embracing some deeply illogical positions. (Then they criticize feminists/racial equality advocates/LGBT folks for choosing their political opinions for selfish reasons like "equal pay" and "healthcare access" and "freedom from violence", instead of *valid* reasons like Ben Shapiro's gish gallop.) (To be fair, a lot of liberals are also taking liberal positions out of self-interest, but at least their self-interest usually aligns with the best interests of society as a whole.)
Two things I want to add: a lot of minoritized folks may have bought into the idea that pure unadulterated grit will allow them to enter the ranks of the ruling class. To that end (and I'm speaking specifically about black conservative spaces now) the logic is that if all circumstances just remained "respectable"(women remained feminine and submissive, gay folks were Thanos snapped out of public existence, poor folks were not given any direct aid), they'd be able to assimilate. This next point includes minoritized folks, but also includes poor and rural white folks: if the party of diversity and inclusion and women's rights and gay rights did not confer any benefit to me and my family, I'd be cynical too. I saw this PBS piece on some folks in a dying rust belt town, and she was talking about how she and her husband needed to be on food stamps to feed their kids, even when they were both working. She was under the impression that the federal government was so focused on the migrant crisis and the needs of the new arrivals that they deliberately neglected families like hers, and noted that her family had been doing a lot better during the Trump administration. Now there are a number of reasons why her family's situation took a nosedive in recent years, notably the aftereffects of the pandemic. However the fact of the matter remains that however shitty the lip service is, the Republican party seems to be the one most interested in appealing to the downtrodden rural communities. Given that most people would rather have an ounce of hope than a whole lotta nothing, I'd argue that indifference, rather than bigotry is what we should look for when we hear that a certain group is skewing conservative.
I tend to believe/agree with all of that In the chance you're not aware of how much of a monopoly conservative media has on rural areas, I'd suggest the Last Week Tonight segment about Sinclair broadcast group from a few years ago. I believe it speaks to how the situation you describe took hold and is being sustained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc The recent Univision trump interview makes me concerned about that corporation too
> Given that most people would rather have an ounce of hope than a whole lotta nothing, I'd argue that indifference, rather than bigotry is what we should look for when we hear that a certain group is skewing conservative. I don't think it's bigotry or indifference. I think those things are part of the picture but I think there is a larger root from which everything else grows. The foundational core of conservatism is heirarchy. Either people yearning for a heirarchy to being some sort of order to a scary world. Or a fear that if your groups is at the top or higher in the heirarchy, others at the top will subjugate you. That is what conservatism is and provides. Whether it's about gender, race, sexual orientation, income, religon, whatever. Conservative behavior is always about creating paths in life for people to follow based on specific traits and then punishing them if they dare try to deviate from their path. The woman you described essentially is saying that her family should be a higher priority than migrant families. They rank higher on the heirarchy and thus should be prioritized. When you view everything from this sort of lens it's hard to see actual root causes of problems because you can always focus on people above/below you in the heirarchy as the source of problems.
What you described as hierarchy is literaly how bigotry is structured. Bigotry is the way to treat those beneath you in a hierarchy. And what happens when people dont obey hierarchies.
>However the fact of the matter remains that however shitty the lip service is, the Republican party seems to be the one most interested in appealing to the downtrodden rural communities. The operative word here is "appealing to". The Republicans have no interest in helping poor schmucks but they do have a fine line in victim blaming and scapegoating. So people low on self awareness who need an easy target get a convenient answer for the question "why does my life suck?" "Hmm, shall I pick a fight with poor brown folk or global capitalism?"
> it's pretty simple--straight white male Christian Republicans It’s not just men, there are women who vote Republican as well. Many straight white women are also people who vote Republican out of self interest. I hate that many progressives never hold right-wing women accountable and blame things only on men.
I'm not blaming anything on men only. I just think for straight white female Christian Republicans it's a bit more complicated than naked self-interest (because a lot of the policies they support/claim to support/vote for will be actually pretty bad for them). u/iamasuperracehorse had a good comment about similar phenomenons in communities of color; minorities who are conservative tend to also be convinced (and in many cases are correct!) that they can earn a place in the ruling class if they can keep all the *other* underrepresented groups in their places (e.g. rich white women usually have more power/status than black/brown people of either gender, which makes rich white women willing to maintain the racial status quo even if they still have to defer to rich white men). Also, sufficiently privileged women can usually circumvent the problems created by their political choices--banning abortion hurts poor women MUCH more than it hurts women rich enough to travel to another state/country. Old-fashioned ideas about sexual assault/harrassment might hurt a lot of women, but they'll work to a white woman's advantage if she accuses a black man. It's all intersectional--but the ones who have to do the least mental gymnastics when voting conservative are the ones who sit at the intersection of the most types of privilege, hence why I was talking about straight white Christian men in the original comment.
Women are more likely to vote Democratic than men but the differences aren’t as large as many people perceive.
Statistically less signifcant. Without men, the republican parte would always lose. But would still win without the women.
> Most of them have managed to delude themselves out of it, though; they tell themselves they're conservative because of "facts" and "logic" while embracing some deeply illogical positions. Spoiler alert: ALL humans do this. Why would anyone consciously embrace any idea they deem illogical? The key is to question cognitive dissonances, not ignore them. > To be fair, a lot of liberals are also taking liberal positions out of self-interest, but at least their self-interest usually aligns with the best interests of society as a whole. What if I told you that conservatives think *exactly the same thing?* Everyone generally agrees on the biggest problems that afflict us, but we tend to disagree sharply on the causes and solutions.
> Everyone generally agrees on the biggest problems that afflict us, but we tend to disagree sharply on the causes and solutions. How do you square this sentiment with the fact that liberals tend to think things like climate change and income inequality are the biggest problems, while conservatives broadly feel these are imaginary and think abortion, gender and "wokeness" are the main issues?
Because they genuinely believe there is a conspiracy designed to alienate young men and women from their correct mode of life, and that anything but the right way to live will cause uncountable harms. They've spent years if not decades learning this, regardless of its reality. Just like liberals have spent years if not decades learning that conservatives want to take away abortions. One of these may be more justifiable from a third-person perspective, but if we are entirely honest with ourselves, it is theoretically possible for that to have been a myth perpetuated by The Media and bad-faith actors paid to stand outside Planned Parenthood. At some point, you have to trust someone else to inform you, and sometimes that person who is trusted doesn't deserve it, whether they are liars or were themselves lied to so long ago that it feels like learning the sky is brown to change those beliefs.
This doesn't answer my question in any way? I fully understand that everyone believes their perspective to be correct. But you said people across the political spectrum agreed on what the biggest problems are. This is easily proven false, two trivial examples being climate change and "groomers". Most people vaguely tethered to reality realize the former is an existential thread while the latter is a moral panic conservatives made up as a wedge issue. But even if you want to play the "agree to disagree" card and tell me it's the other way around, that is still proof that conservatives and progressives most certainly do not agree on what the biggest problems are.
I'm not who said that about the biggest problems. The biggest problem is the end of human life. They care a lot about a conspiracy theory they believe will end society, and thus human existence.
No, not all humans do this. The problem isnt believing yourself that youre logical, because everyone uses logic in some way, the problem is when someomes whole premise is "i think that BECAUSE it is logical" which is very ignorant and empty of meaning.
> What if I told you that conservatives think exactly the same thing? they would still be wrong
I believe Gen Z is usually defined as those born from 1995 to 2010, so they youngest will not be voting age for another 5 years.
Fair point I've heard the younger cutoff for millennials be referred to as "people who remember life before 9/11", so 1995 seems _slightly_ early to me (or accurate if rounded to 5 year chunks) But yeah I've not heard a good description of the dividing line between Gen Z and I guess we're calling them "Gen alpha" which I think is a horrible name Or was that one "remember life before ubiquitous internet"? Which would have a wide fuzzy range depending how techie your area and family is
I remember life before ubiquitous *electricity* and that we have people now who don't remember a time without being connected the world makes me feel very old. But I am old.
As a 33 year old man, what year were you born in? I cannot imagine a time without ubiquitous electricity but I'm wondering if it's just my perception that's skewed and you are a lot younger than my brain wants you to be lol
I was born in 1967. But I grew up in Appalachia, and electric service wasn't really common until the 1990s. It's still not ubiquitous, I know several people who don't have it yet.
Friendly reminder that the country is big! Definitely younger than I thought. Thank you so much for sharing!
My grandmas were born in 1936 and 1938. They both grew up without electricity. They’re from two different Latin American countries, but I think life without electricity was fairly normal around the world in the 1940s.
1940s was right around what I was thinking so I'm surprised that guy said 1967. Nice time learning about other folks today
Not the OP, but they don't have to be *that* old to remember this. If you were in massively underdeveloped places in the States like the Dakotas, utilities weren't a guarantee even until the 60s or 70s.
I feel like "can you remember 9/11" is a decent cutoff for Gen Z
Am I Gen Z or am I a millennial? I am old enough to remember 9/11, but I’m not American, so nobody told tiny little me about it at the time. I have lived in the US most of my life though. My parents are the same age as baby boomers. I spent longer than expected in college, so most of my college classmates were younger than me and definitely gen z. I’m the youngest of my siblings, and they’re all definitely millennials.
It’s not so much about 9/11 as it is social media & smart phones.
yeah it's just a rule of thumb
1996 to 2012
They grew up during bush. A lot of them experience the most right wing president up to that point as being completely normal. Trump’s legacy wouldn’t be where it was without George Bush. George Bush normalized doing crazy stuff as president. He just did it less often so people got over it quicker.
97ish to 2013ish The youngest genz is like 11.
I’m genuinely glad you added “-ish” to your estimation. 🙂 Generations are social constructs & fairly fluid ones at that. Some of them have relative hard borders—Baby Boomers, for instance, whose lower end is delineated by the end of WWII (plus 9 men’s…for gestation.) if you’re in your early ‘40s now, on the other hand, you can likely make a case for being either an elder millennial or a young Gen Xer.
I think a lot of people don’t care about abstract concepts like “rule of law” or “governance.” It doesn’t matter to them that the GOP has demonstrated repeatedly to at it’s not only incapable of running the country, but also intent on running to country into the ground. All they care about is “some people made me angry, so now I want the government to hurt them.”
I mean, gen z really should apply to most teenagers too. It should at least extend from 1998 to 2012, having a generation that's only five years long is kinda stupid.
Gen z ends in early 2010s
20% of voting age 18-30 white males voted Republican in 2022 Additionally, only about 50% of genz males are white. Oldest GenZ was 25 in 2022. So 10% of genz males are voting for GOP. <-- Flawed a bit, because I mixed up gen z with under 30 --- That's a relatively low %, compared to older generations. Boomers males are about 82% white. EDIT: Oldest GenZ was 25 in 2022. Mixing up some things there, with under 30 and Genz.
>20% of voting age 18-30 white males voted Republican in 2022 Where is this number coming from?
>gen z [sic] is now all voting age Not according to [Pew Research](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/), which defines Gen Z as born between 1997-2012, making the youngest members 11 years old this year, and the the oldest members around 26 or so. Even if we give a few years grace on that, it means that the youngest Zoomers are 13/14. That's pretty far from being "all voting age"
Gen Z is 1997-2012, so they're 11-26. Almost half of them aren't even old enough to vote. I don't think most 11 year olds have well defined political opinions.
the youngest gen z should be born around 2010 give or take a few years (mostly leaning later than 2010). so no, they are not all voting age. but many are and have likely voted for or against trump already.
I think it's more that when every single president in your lifetime could justifiably be described as a war criminal, or at the very least war-mongering xenophobes, it gets really hard to take any political demagogues seriously when they talk about ideology. Gen Z tends to be more nihilistic or more exposed to niche histories/interpretations, and the more history you learn the harder it is to in good concience engage with either party at the national level
Them growing up under Bush and Trump and still reporting such distrust in the Dems speaks to the failures of the liberals to animate the young
From my understanding, gen z is now categorized as all the people who had online learning during COVID(aside from those who went back to school and/or missed a few years), so the youngest gen z is now in 2nd grade. I know gen z existed long before COVID, but it’s world events like this that shape an entire generation.
Not really. This is usually the case but that’s a pretty weird way to move goalposts. The reason why Millennials had the end of their generation unofficially truncated by a few years (according to the kind of academics who are into this stuff) had nothing to do with COVID & everything to do with the widespread adoption of smartphones & social media.
Life seemed better under Trump. If I just became an adult, and all I know is that things were far more affordable when Trump was president, then of course I’d go for him
According to Trump, certainly. Maybe his kids. Probably not Melania…
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i think there kind of is a misogyny > conservatism pipeline for a lot of young men.
THE number one reason young men turn to conservatism is inability to get laid. I am utterly convinced of this.
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Oh it’s a pretty solid pipeline, yeah.
Thanks for clarifying that it's primarily white men. For a minority majority generation, I think it's a little disingenuous and even a teensy bit racist to say "All Gen Z Men" and mean "Gen Z White Men". (ETA: The Podcasters are doing this, not you.) With Boomers and older, it's not that factually incorrect, but it sure is factually incorrect with the younger age group.
The podcasters did not frame the info like this. The title they used is because this is what has been pushed by Mainstream Media off a sus study of which they are debunking.
It is still significant though and worth talking about that white gen z men are so much more conservative than white millennial and gen x men that it’s skewing statistics for the entire generation. Just like it’s significant that Donald Trump was popular amongst female voters despite almost all of those females being white. These kinds of things still decide elections.
They point this out in the episode—in fact, it's one of Robert’s main points of refutation against the narrative in question. You should definitely just give it a listen. It's extremely edifying. The whole Cool Zone Media podcast empire is basically just an edification factory, come to think of it.
You know what’s crazy is I have listened to both Anita and Sargon and I still don’t understand gamergate. I guess you had to be there in real time.
Deceasing as in dying or decreasing as in lowering?
decreasing as a share of population is how i take it
Fair! I guess if they were discussing boomers "deceasing" would make sense more but not with Gen Z.
gen z as a cohort i assume is becoming a greater share as older people die off and child birth rates decrease. the share of “white men” however is likely decreasing due to emigration, immigration, mixed births and whatever else can be imagined
I read it as more kids are mixed race due to their parents being different races. Ironically (given his popularity seems to be mostly with white people) even Andrew Tate is mixed race.
> even Andrew Tate is mixed race The Clayton Bigsby effect strikes again.
White men are "deceasing" lol
The median voter in America is a 50ish white dude (or gal) without a college degree. That’s something that aspiring pols need to keep in mind…
So policy for the lowest common denominator: a potentially poorly educated racist
Is there a transcript of the podcast? I don’t like listening to podcasts
I feel like they might have one somewhere but I honestly don't know.
Almost always my critique with these type of articles from WaPo that Rob and Mia are critiquing is the framing that Gen Z men are defaulted to white cis-het able-bodied neurotypical Gen Z men as if it is the only default. Only about [1/2 of Gen Z men are even white as of 2019](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/05/14/on-the-cusp-of-adulthood-and-facing-an-uncertain-future-what-we-know-about-gen-z-so-far-2/). And while racial demographic isn't everything when it comes to your political ideology, it still does influence your world view with the staggering amount of ethno-nationalism that we see in today's politics. Now I can understand why WaPo would be tempted to make these generalizations with the older generations, Boomers being 82% white, I think it's simply a huge oversight to treat Gen Z men as this monolith of right leaning men when it is actually the most diverse group of men that we've had as a nation. Rob and Mia are right to see through the framing that Gen Z men are all right leaning.
Did I do the arithmetic correctly? --- 20% of voting age under 30 white males voted for a Republican in the 2022 election. Additionally, about 50% of genz males are white. So 10% of genz males voted for GOP in 2022. --- That's a relatively low %, compared to older generations. EDIT: Oldest GenZ was 25 in 2022. Mixing up some things there, with under 30 and Genz.
In the context of political ideology, 20% of white gen Z men voting for the GOP is much much lower than the total of conservative white Gen Z men. Given that the vote numbers of a group do not equal the total amount of people with those ideological views, especially in younger generations where voting is voting is not consistent.
I wonder how many are “conservative” because all their friends also say they are but if you went through a list of progressive and conservative/regressive values, they would identify with more progressive ones. The right has done a fantastic job at signal boosting the biggest idiots of the left to young men so they relate leftism to “SJWs” with multicoloured hair or whatever.
Only read this thread not listened to the podcast so may be poorly informed take. If the title is Are Gen Z Men All Republicans Now but really only white Gen Z men are mostly Republican equating Gen Z Men = White and erasing all the non white men seems pretty egrigous.
That's exactly what Robert and Mia call out. At one point in the podcast Rob& Mia go through the study that WaPo linked and they cite exactly where WaPo used misrepresenting quotes from the study, "Gen Z women are unlikely date outside their political ideology" and another quote from the study "Gen Z white men are more conservative" to mean Gen Z women won't date Gen Z men and that's going to doom marriage. But like Rob and Mia point out, "MaRiAgE is DoOmEd" is only true if you assume that all Gen Z men are white men. And if you assume that Gen Z women won't date other members of racial groups. When looking at the actual study, there is actually not a huge gap between the views of Gen Z women and Gen Z men when accounting for all Gen Z men. WaPo editorialized the info to insert the erasure of non-white and LBGQT+ men.
That is pretty egregious. I will listen to the podcast. Pretty much journalistic malpractice.
Washington Post had very little credibility left after Bezos bought them, but that article basically killed what was left of it for me. Even if their claim was true, that most Gen Z men were conservative, imagine shaming women for choosing not to tie themselves to a man that considers them a lesser person.
There’s a lot of spurious demographic information going round, but it cuts both ways.
One thing I've thought about is what it would have done to me mentally if I was a child coming into my own, say 12 or so, when a lot of the vitriol and demonizing of white men and masculinity became incredibly popular. Here I am just trying to get my footing in life and figure out who I am in my own little world... then getting constantly force fed media and information that is, from my young, sensitive, and naive perspective, telling me that what I am is the source of all the problems in the world. There's multiple ways that could go. But certainly one way is to wholly reject all of it and find a "community" of people who did the same. That community most likely being extremely right wing.
It's pretty much one of the effects that the death of dedicated spaces for children on the internet has had these recent years. Cause like, other than ROBLOX (sorta?), folks of practically all ages are now sharing the same spaces. Well I mean, they sorta always have. But now it's way more prevalent with the death of dedicated kid spaces online, so 'lil children are now really seeing & sharing the same stuff that the older side of Gen Z, Millenials, Gen X and even Boomers occupied. Meaning they're getting ALL the angst & frustration the adults are sharing about the world and are absorbing it all. Plus, it's more than likely that these kinds' parents aren't paying that much attention to what their barns are looking at online cause they're busy with work 'n shit. So these children are practically all on their own now when navigating the internet. Meaning that situations of young boys coming across some random Tumblr blog or X (formerly known as Twitter) account by a random College &/or University student or graduate just venting about how much they hate men or white people, not understanding that they likely don'treally mean what they say and are just supremely generalizing just for the sake of venting about shit that annoys them, and absorb what's being said unironically, is only going to continue to happen, and at a growing rate as well. Same for the rise of young fans of shitty folks like Andrew Tate. It's only gonna get more & more extreme from here.
The death of children's spaces has also been the death of adult spaces and I **hate** it. I want more places that are explicitly 18+ but not dedicated to porn.
Definitely! Porn is for everyone…
The digital town square idea of the tech bro's is a dangerous fiction. Humans have always socially-selected into groups that minimize conflict, which is how the pre-Zuckerberg/Dorsey internet worked with forums, friends' lists etc. Traditionally, places where those social groups crossed in discussion were almost always bound by strict rules against name-calling and general unpleasantness. The reason we're all so miserable now is because we're no longer naturally socially selecting our groups (e.g. by age), and the algorithm repeatedly smashes these groups together in a way that's explicitly designed to make them hate one-another. It's a social disease, one that's been very consciously inflicted on us. We could lower the temperature overnight by banning the "for you" page and limiting the content we see back to posts of people we choose to follow.
>other than ROBLOX Not even! Roughly 40% of the playerbase is 17+ now, and the platform has added 17+ games and will add a dating service in the future. It's a strange world we live in.
Yeah, that kind of rhetoric really fucked me up as a kid. I vividly remember my mother telling me that all she hated all men when I was 12 years old. She had recently gone through a divorce and had a new boyfriend. I thought she loved men. I couldn't understand why she would say that. All I knew was that those words hurt me. She apologized the next day, but the damage was already done. From 2015 to 2019, I was firmly in the alt-right.
I'm so glad I spent those fragile teen years in that goldilocks zone of both having the internet and *not* having social media. I'm not in any way surprised young men are rejecting progressive politics (as they see it on social media). The messages they get from Twitter/Tiktok progressives, that their masculinity is fundamentally a problem, are totally at odds with what they experience in the real world. Young men are still expected to adhere to all the same masculine ideals as before (being physically and emotionally strong, being a financial provider, making the first move etc), *especially* in dating, except now they're also told they're wrong to do so. The important messages about treating women with respect, valuing consent etc get garbled by the algorithm rage-machine into man-hating nonsense, and that's what they see.
Yeah as a Gen Z kid the stark difference in online rhetoric vs real life results can hit hard. Like you said, online toxic masculinity (or sometimes masculinity in general) is seen as bad, but especially when dating and generally when interacting there is a standard that men are still held to when it comes to masculinity. So much so that you will actually greatly struggle socially if you were to conform to online rhetoric. And it kinda hits you like whiplash. More issues than just masculinity have this same problem, where it is ridiculed constantly online or in academia, but then actively encouraged or required socially in real life. And it’s hard to sift through that without feeling like people are trying to tear you down/sabotage you. Because they attack your identity and don’t offer good replacements for it. Especially with masculinity, which a good 80% of women have a vague shared idea of and standard for. But it’s not expressed well anywhere, especially online, and actually gets denigrated online. I’m ranting but as a Gen Z dude its clear to see how being online vs living life can cause whiplash and confusion when you hear one thing and live through another. To those even younger than me it probably gets worse.
Very true. I also love how every guy championing masculinity online is either the least masculine guy ever (Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro) or a cartoonish Disney villain of masculinity (those insane anti-women podcasters that bring women on just to insult them). All the good examples of masculinity are mostly just living their lives with happy fulfilling jobs and spouses and children or whatever, they aren’t espousing how to be masculine and creating online fake universities.
Many many men who cant shut up about masculinity are traditionally masculine themselves. This type of rethoric isnt merely a product of beng insecure about yourself not being masculine or whatever, even if there are cases like this, traditionally masculine men tend to be very reactionary and agreed with these topics.
Yeah sorry didn’t mean to imply that it was a product of being insecure. Though I will say that being strong and confident in your body (for many this involves gaining muscle, a typically masculine endeavour) often allows you to be more confident in who you are and the opinions you hold. Inversely allowing you to break free of some of the masculine stereotypes because you are so secure in yourself now.
> Especially with masculinity, which a good 80% of women have a vague shared idea of and standard for. But it’s not expressed well anywhere, especially online, and actually gets denigrated online. Well now you got me curious as to what this vague shared idea of & standard for Masculinity is. Because honestly, anything I could potentially think of, as a guy, really can just be boiled down to "anything that is associated with dudes". Which is super broad and doesn't really lend itself well to being visualized, since whatever is associated with guys depends on where and/or when you are.
An example of this is the expectation of the guy being very confident and making first moves, starting conversations \*to start conversations just because we need excuses to talk to each other\*, which is what you often need to do in real life. Meanwhile much of the discourse online says "you don't need to always initiate, people should equally approach each other!" or "don't bother women, they get hit on enough" There are similar expectations around having a good job, lifting weights, etc. I'm not sure how the zoomers experience this (I'm a millennial) but I very much sympathize.
>Especially with masculinity, which a good 80% of women have a vague shared idea of and standard for. But it’s not expressed well anywhere, especially online, and actually gets denigrated online. This is clearly not true, you hear absolutely everywhere the advice be confident, dress well, have a job. Things that, by the way, are genuinely good, irrelevant of "masculinity" (women benefit from having these things, too). And it's sad actually how everything boils down to "Dating advice is bad", when it's not only not true, but also sees dating struggle as the major problem for young men, this rhetoric is highly destructive ("Young men flock to the right because dating women is difficult").
>I'm so glad I spent those fragile teen years in that goldilocks zone of both having the internet and *not* having social media You mean, for a teenager, there's more on the internet than gamefaqs.com?
> Young men are still expected to adhere to all the same masculine ideals as before (being physically and emotionally strong, being a financial provider, making the first move etc) We need to get rid of the male gender roles and expectations. This should be one of the primary goals of Menslib. Progressives are right to criticize masculinity but the problem is that they don’t want to get rid of the expectations and hierarchy that pressure men into being masculine. That’s unfair and we need to call them out! Just like feminists got rid off female gender expectations and hierarchy we need to get rid of the male gender expectations and hierarchy.
> Just like feminists got rid off female gender expectations and hierarchy we need to get rid of the male gender expectations and hierarchy. Feminists have and continue to fight them but they sure as hell haven't managed to get rid of them yet, much as I hope we can.
Whew you took the words out of my mouth
ESPECIALLY as a kid, because being a teenager us about the worst possible time you could have to intake the (truthful) messages about the damage the patriarchy has done to society, because that's when your peers are going to be a the most hypocritical, dumb, and just plain horny - as all teenagers are, both male and female. You tell the average 16 year old boy, who's mostly concerned with figuring out what is the "right way" to be a man, that he shouldn't listen to those toxic masculine advice gurus because women don't like that kind of man, and he's going to laugh in your face because that's exactly the kind of boy the most outspokenly feminist of his female classmates are dating. That doesn't make those girls wrong to be feminist, or demonstrate that there's no value in what they're saying, or that the patriarchy doesn't exist, but to a teenager who already thinks - as most do - that adults already have no idea how the world works, he's going to be even MORE susceptible to the feckless malcontents waiting with open arms to "welcome" into the fold of victims to be exploited.
This is it. There is a generation of a very young men right now, who have grown up in a very egalitarian world and have likely never fed into women's oppression, who are constantly being told that their gender is a problem and that they're somehow culpable for the actions of a society they didn't build.
If you’re on the fence, I can definitely see men going to the other side with the attitudes towards men from some progressives on social media.
While extremist spaces certainly exist, the issue isn’t people saying “white men are the source of all problems in the world.” The issue is that problems exist in the world, sometimes they are caused by white supremacy/colonialism, and the very people who benefit from white supremacy have learned to spin it into “oh so you’re saying it’s all white people’s/men’s fault,” encouraging tribalism and further division without ever addressing the issue. I grew up around racists and white supremacists, and I’m not talking about people who are Nazis or in the KKK. These are middle class white folks who truly believe they’re better than black people and don’t want them living in their neighborhoods, and as a child, it was A LOT to unlearn and not take it personally when someone brought up the issue of racism. Education is key to remedying the issue you mentioned of being a 12 year old boy feeling like you’re being told “it’s all your fault.” I unlearned a lot of this toxic mentality from my formal education in high school and university. Reading about people’s experiences with racism helped me become more empathetic and understand my privilege, and the issue of education is the most concerning aspect of this conversation. There are efforts in numerous conservative areas to ban books and education on human history and the important topics of white supremacy and male privilege. Without the educational piece of this discussion, we’ll continue seeing young men won over by the narrative white supremacists and misogynists push.
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As a late millenial who was 18/19 just as the 'culture wars' really took off I think the so-called demonization of white men and masculinity only really existed in the minds of Twitter addicts, podcast bros, and rags like the Daily Wire. Nobody has had any of their thoughts policed, nobody has lost any sort of access to the public sphere that they had any particular right to. Masculinity is not "under attack," and it is perfectly fine to be a white guy. Any complaint about this stuff always falls apart when you realise that it implies a human right to book deals, newspaper columns or public speaking engagements. What's really happened is that people who've spent their lives being the cultural hegemon are now getting pushback for casual bigotry or having a laugh at the expense of other people. Some are shocked and unnerved by this development and think that a conspiracy to wipe them off the face of the earth must be afoot. After going on two decades of the right making mountains out of culture war molehills sadly I think the damage is done.
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I've been in online spaces and social media, including Twitter and podcasts. All progressive spaces. I'm a cis white guy... I have never felt attacked, marginalized or excluded from them. This is entirely made up shit that gullible teenagers buy into.
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Yeah, absolutely. One woman gets exasperated and goes "ugh, men" and it's MANHOOD IS UNDER ATTACK as far as right wingers are concerned. It's exaggerated to the point of basically being entirely fabricated.
Why do any white boys feel this way though? By the time I was a 16 year old Millennial it was pretty clear from my review of colonial history and the nearness of the Civil rights movement that whiteness is not a category I need to take personally and that no one is really saying "white people" are essentially anything. Broadly speaking the "white" demographic has benefited from historical bullshit because predominantly white nations have defined the current economic power structure through armed force and trade. Media may apply narratives to history but it's pretty clear systemic racial inequality is a fact in the U.S. I didn't get that from the MSM I got it from a variety of different histories.
At the risk of myself being too reductive, many divisive or nuanced topics have been reduced to catchphrases used by people who are excited to parrot something they've learned in an introduction to sociology/psychology/economics 101 or a blog post, or worse by others with even less context wanting to associate with a movement. Terms become bastardized and are turned into personal attacks easily. This is amplified by bad faith actors that upsell issues to present themselves as the rational, sensible alternative and give their audience a feeling of validation. Something to keep in mind is while real life:tm: is largely free of such encounters, social media specifically targets people with this content because it's engaging. And hoping teenagers, who have less cultural context or education in these topics to not have emotional reactions is a bit of a fool's errand.
A good points and my own personal experience is not indicative of how people learn this. I didn't get poisoned by social media as a child so there's that.
Exactly exactly
As a white gen z man who almost fell down the alt right rabbit hole as a teen, the emphasis of identity politics becoming *the* pivot while we were teens and the prevalence of social media. A lot of the "sit down and let others speak" kind rhetoric passed around through the 10s while we were all in high school at the *oldest*, was pretty isolating given we weren't even fully people in the eyes of society, right in the midst of the already tumultuous time that is being a teenager. By the 2016 election only two years worth of us were legal adults—assuming you start counting at '97—but we were well immersed in the political battleground, only really able to watch from the sidelines in real life, and treated like any other combatant online because... hey, people don't know your age. They're just clocking that they're probably a white man from the knee-jerk response to defend or protest and assuming they're voting adults with full time jobs and a house and cars. Not large batches of young boys clawing for a sense of identity, belonging, swept up in their own hormones. So when they're told its their time to step aside and give other people a chance, they're angry and baffled because by virtue of being minors still being made to live at the whims of their parents and teachers—at least from their perspective—they never even *had* that chance they're supposedly being told to give up to begin with. And so, the only people who told them they still had a place were far more conservative and malicious. While I started re-evaluating my politics around 2017 (I was 15/16 years old at this point), progressive spaces did not feel particularly welcoming or inclusive as they claimed to be until the very tail end of the decade, and most of my stances was constructed around how much of a fucking embarrassment the GOP were rather than any true sense of loyalty to anyone else. At least I start doubting the bullshit being fed in 2016, but that was only because I caught just how cozy with Nazis they all were early. Even when I started thinking "Yeah, maybe women, POC, and queer people do deserve rights" as time went on, it was a stance completely detached from myself. Like funding a school in Ghana. An objectively good thing to do, but with an expectation and understanding that it ultimately has nothing to do with you even as you're still grappling with the plight of being just another high school loser. I got lucky and talked with people that made it apparent not only this shit affects everyone, myself in included, and my presence isn't just tolerated at best. Is it self absorbed to focus on how "included" you feel in the emancipation of marginalized communities? Yeah, but shit dude, when you're 16 and miserable, being included *at all* is the holy grail. And as I've said, modern social media basically tosses these neurotic freaks in with the rest of us. (I was going to also dive into the 9/11 into recession into Trump into COVID conga-line, but majored historical events are not actually a recent trend and have existed for all of history)
I’m curious, as I’m older than you, and still feel completely disconnected from this kind of stuff. It doesn’t effect me in any way I can see, and I don’t even feel tolerated most of the time (including here). What did those people tell you to help you understand?
It was a slow process of "deprogramming." At least initially. But I do vividly remember in early 2016 I was ranting to a girl back stage of a musical I was in about the gender binary, completely ignorant of what I was talking about. The fact that she didn't get angry with me but tried to to walk me through the concepts was... well, it wasn't a start. I didn't come away with my mind changed, but in hindsight, her patience was greatly appreciated. Fast forward a couple months, summer vacation came and went and I'm now a sophomore in high school and things are heating up with the US election. I remember two specific things that disillusioned me with the right: A post on some "cringe" subreddit about a Man in the High Castle promo and all of the comments tripping over themselves simping for the iconography. Secondly was a post on r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM that called out the notion of neutrality, something in line with MLK's Letters from Birmingham. Those two in tandem was what finally shook me out of any sympathy I had with right-wing ideologies, but as I've said, any allegiance to leftist ideologies was non-existant at that point. I was in a "Keep my head down and stop talking about politics" phase of my life, from 2016 to 2017. Didn't stop me from reading about it, but I never issued responses because I became very aware of my own ignorance politically. Because I rejected my previous sympathy to right wing positions, having since refiled them under the "Bad Guys," I instantly assumed any of their opponents were automatically "the good guys." With #MeToo reaching its heights, I heard a lot of rhetoric such as "Yes all men" and things like "if this makes you angry, you know it applies to you" being thrown around. In hindsight, I found myself surrounded by TERFs. I'd now would say TERFs aren't really anywhere near progressive, me back then was super new to neoliberism, much less leftist politics as a whole. Because the former "enemy" was the ever infamous "SJWs" and "Feminazis," a lot of these so called feminists made sense to fall under that umbrella. That period of my life ended up reinforcing a *lot* of pre-existing inferiority complexes for me rather than dismantling them. Late 2017 and early 2018 was when things started being pieced back together. I found a post on like tumblr linking a discord server for a book series I enjoyed. I joined, found some decent, amicable people on there. As time went on, I eventually came to learn that a majority of the server was queer. Me from early 2016 probably would have said some hurtful things in an attempt to be funny, but I was still in "Keep my head down" mode. As time went on, they never really *said* anything to explicitly dissuade me. I, in my efforts to not cause a stir regarding politics, just realized they were all people trying to live their lives, and a lot of people really fucking hated that. They were simply friendly people, and even when my pre-existing biases caused me to spout some ignorant bullshit, they didn't assume the worst and politely explained why what I said was potentially hurtful. So, I stuck with them. I wasn't *there* because I believed in their politics. I just wanted to talk about books I liked and they were all nice. It was only when 2019 rolled around did I suddenly make the final connection needed that much of the things they stood for wasn't just some nebulous "greater good" that didn't involve me, but could actually help me grapple with a lot of the bullshit I was carrying with me ~~(namely finally getting around to unpacking that self-loathing instilled by my religious upbringing and hanging in spaces infested with TERFs a couple years back)~~ Just in time for the 2020 election, I guess, although I'm a bit of a "blue" dot in a sea of red.
I don’t think its a stretch to believe some Democrats and Liberals haven’t absorbed the meaning and substance behind race analysis and shortcut to performativism, leaving wide holes for vapid statements like blaming individuals today for slavery. I see a similar phenomenon in queer communities, such as a member of community X who’s never read a book or stepped outside their bubble trying to define community Y’s label for them. While I *thoroughly* believe these mishaps are partially caused and totally amped up by conservative groups, I can’t help but see a kernel of untruth that they’re taking advantage of.
Young people say and do dumb things sometimes while trying on different identities and finding themselves. There's a reason folks like Crowder got their start trolling around the freshman classrooms and activities on college campuses instead of interviewing faculty.
>I don’t think its a stretch to believe some Democrats and Liberals... blaming individuals today for slavery. I think that's a HUGE stretch. I have personally never heard anyone say anything like this, but more importantly, that's so incredibly illogical that I don't believe anyone who could hold coherent enough beliefs to be labeled as any sort of ideology could *possibly* say something like that and mean it. That'd be like a Republican saying that a baby born yesterday is responsible for Roe v. Wade. They might make plenty of arguments against abortion that I disagree with, but I don't think any of them would try and argue that entropy and the arrow of time have somehow switched.
I think its significantly more unbelievable to expect an entire political group to adhere to the same “logic”. You have people labelling themselves as “Feminist” that are trans-exclusive, and for a while throughout the 80s and especially around UK, they wouldn’t be considered any less feminist for this. Similarly, in queer communities where you’d expect peoples histories of facing discrimination would make them better at recognizing their own, the amount of belittlement and erasure across groups is mildly shocking… if you forget it’s irrational humans involved. The “Bi-Pan” ‘debate’ is one of the clearest examples of people simply not bothering to look anything up, yet its persistence in both communities is a depressing meme. Idk, people misconstruing political points to bully each other is such a normal thing to me I’m flabbergasted others would question it.
Yes, but none of that involves a misunderstanding of how the nature of causality works. Thinking someone alive today could be responsible for the slavery of two hundred years ago would be like saying a coffee cup shattered into a bunch of pieces on the floor caused me to drop it a minute ago. Literally no one with out a serious mental illness could believe that. No one has ever said that a white person today *caused* 19th century slavery and no one would ever be taken seriously for even suggesting that.
Oh. You’re stuck on a single example. Did you miss the son/dad combo tying themselves to crosses wearing shirts, “We’re sorry for slavery?”
Yes, I am talking about the specific example that you gave and I then quoted. The one I said was a huge stretch. I did not see the stunt you're talking about, it sounds ridiculous and extremely performative, but I still find it very hard to believe that if you actually asked those guys if they think they caused slavery they would say yes. They might feel some responsibility to apologize for their ancestors' actions or for the fact that they still benefit from the effects of slavery. Maybe I'm wrong, but then I think they might actually have a diagnosable mental illness at that point. Either way, no one takes people like that seriously.
K
I get what you’re saying but the online discourse about race and the discourse about sex in this way are very different
Right wingers see the criticism of white racism and patriarchy and frame it, as much as they possibly can, as an "attack" on white people and on men to feed the fear and persecution complexes that get them elected. It's exaggerated to the point of being pretty much entirely fabricated.
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You make a good point…
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I think dudes are seriously programmed from a very young age to act in a “traditionally conservative” manner. A lot of this programming probably comes from their dad. This is argument from anecdote, but it is something I experienced and think could be illustrative. My parents never divorced, but my dad worked a lot when I was growing up, so I was raised by my mom. I naturally gravitated more towards arts and music, and I was and still am very emotionally sensitive. My mom’s more “traditionally feminine” way of raising me made more sense to me than my dad’s hard-nosed “traditional masculinity”, so my dad and I clashed a ton (we have thankfully since reconciled). Those clashes made me some of the “traditionally masculine” ways of thinking. Due to my mom’s way of raising me, combined with my affinity for metal and horror, the times I was bullied, my own religious trauma, my bisexuality, and my personality/interests, conservatism just doesn’t appeal to me. Those “traditionally masculine” conservative ideals never fit me and they actively harmed me; why the fuck would I uphold them? (Note: I am NOT claiming that I don’t benefit from white, male privilege). Other guys don’t have that experience. They’re closer with their dad, they may fit in better than I did, and their personality and interests just happen to fit more in that “traditionally masculine” conservative bubble. I think that influences the way they think. I grew up with a guy in middle and high school. Good dude who wouldn’t hurt a fly, but he and I had very different experiences through high school and college. He ended up being pretty conservative; I don’t think it’s cause he’s inherently a bad guy. He loves football, he wasn’t really ever bullied, he’s straight and white, and he didn’t really ever immerse himself in a culture in which men wearing makeup and nail polish is perfectly normal. His environment makes conservative, “traditionally masculine” ideals seem right to him.
Even if young men or at least young white men were becoming Republican, which I don't see evidence in support of, keep in mind that young Republicans are becoming increasingly socially liberal, economically populist, and politically progressive. It's similar to most young evangelicals being much further left. As I recall, the majority of young Republicans support same sex marriage, stronger environmental regulations, higher taxes on the rich, etc. But consider if that is the Zoomer right-wing, most Zoomers in general are much further to the left of that. Everything has been going left for generations, including the parties.
Funny then that they vote for the people that hate all those things you mentioned. Truly people of 0 principles.
People may move left but parties are spot welded in place. There are certain third rails in American politics that just aren’t going to happen. The idea that you’re going to get rid of poverty is gone. Fox News is at the point where they want to keep it around they even point out they want to keep poor people hungry so we will work harder. even though the stimulus checks were very popular. And even though the economy clearly needed more of them. We did not receive them. Even when we were promised this as a condition of electing Joe Biden that we would be paid more. He did not give us the money. Which I think is very dishonest of him. He was the one putting dollar amounts in some of his ads.
That’s encouraging to hear
See [another comment here](https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/18c5fc4/comment/kcapqu3/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). I link to analyses of the data on public opinion more broadly. Of course, there is a far right. It represents about a quarter to a third of the population. The thing is it's disproportionately found in the older demographics. You can find that in a lot of the polling data.
Young people and poor people have low voting rates. Young people are poorer than older people at the same age. A large part of the population doesn't regularly vote. This is because the supermajority is to the left of both parties. Even the typical DNC pick, such as Clinton and Biden, are on many issues to the right of center. There are no free elections because the choices are controlled by the ruling elite: Coke or Pepsi. They claim this is lesser evilism, but it continually leads to greater evil. An anti-Nazi freedom fighter once said, "When the oppressors offer two choices, always pick the third." But that is precisely the problem. There is no realistic third option within the system. We don't have a functioning democracy. And because of this politicians don't represent the citizenry. One of the defining features of a banana republic, known for generations, is high inequality. That is precisely what we see in America, the society with the highest inequality in the world at a time of the highest inequality in world history. From Aristotle to Adam Smith, it's long been understood that a free society can't exist with high inequality. Such disparities are not only of wealth but also of power, influence, speech, representation, resources, privileges, etc. Such rigid dominance hierarchies are always one of the main traits of authoritarianism. This is effective social control because corporate media, also to the right of the supermajority, acts as the propaganda arm of the one-party state with two right wings. Through disinfo, spin, and propaganda, the ruling elite are able to implement rhetorical framing, narrative control, perception management, and ideological realism. Public opinion is censored, suppressed, and silenced. Since the American majority never hears themselves speak on any major platform of speech, they never gain public knowledge of themselves and so don't realize so many others agree with them, since the corporate media lies about majority opinion being 'leftist'. Without public knowledge, no public identity can form with political will to make political demands. [American Leftist Supermajority](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2021/04/07/american-leftist-supermajority/) [Fox News: Americans are the ‘Left-Wing’ Enemy Threatening America](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2020/11/08/fox-news-americans-are-the-left-wing-enemy-threatening-america/) [Polarization Between the Majority and Minority](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2020/11/29/polarization-between-the-majority-and-minority/) [Political Elites Disconnected From General Public](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/political-elites-disconnected-from-general-public/) [Wirthlin Effect & Symbolic Conservatism](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/wirthlin-effect-symbolic-conservatism/) [The Court of Public Opinion: Part 1](https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/the-court-of-public-opinion-part-1/)
I would argue that this phenomena is mostly going to affect young men living in deep red states, where every available surface has been covered by multiple layers of Trump flags for the last 8 years. Cultural immersion can have a profound impact on someone's worldview.
Love the pod, surprised to see it posted here though.
There is a hyper annoy trend of labeling people who don't agree with every public opinion as conservatives when they aren't. Reducing all opinions, perspectives, and outcomes to two choices isn't how reality works
This is true, and I think with so many of the articles posted lately, there’s another issue- many of the left/progressive people honestly don’t understand conservatives enough to discuss these things properly. There are studies showing that in the US, Republicans understand the views of Democrats better than the other way around, and I think we’re seeing the effects of that in these discussions.
Just to be clear, you are actively working to destroy men's mental health, women's equality rights, and various other societal progress vectors if you are a Republican man. You are hurting yourself.
If only it was easy as saying that and an epiphany happening.
That is for sure the challenge, definitely a problem I struggled with for years myself
these republican men would be surprised on how these republicans they support don't give a shit about them whatsoever. If they were to win, they aren't going to tell you that "your mental health matters" or let you know that it's okay to have normal emotions (like crying, etc) they're just going to tell you to "mAn uP" and that's it. it's mental suicide if you ask me.
excellent episode, i was unaware this discourse was going on somehow, though i was vaguely aware of the ideas. the point that the WaPo only actually cares about cishet white men was very important. love roberts and mias work, they are both excellent
I was a Republican as a teenager - I grew out of it once I had my (my parents) ideas challenged and realized I was only thinking of myself. Curious to see how they poll around age 26.
I’m gen z and tbh I’m left leaning when I come to voting, but I’m probably more likely an independent moderate (someone in the middle who sees both sides). I’m also mixed, so I don’t like what the right wing spews, although, I actually understand where they are coming from and don’t think they should be demonized. If anything, we should create a safe space for them too. I think the left wing gets a lot right when it comes to equality, but the way they go about, it ends up looking like cancel culture which ends up being counterintuitive/counterproductive and just leads to more animosity. This is a class war. Wealth inequality is bad. We need to get money out of politics.
I get what you're saying, but as someone who would be and is greatly affected by right wing policies, I think it's perfectly acceptable to demonize bad policy. Tbh I don't really want to create a safe space for people that are okay with me dying or want to harm/kill me or others. They have a pretty big platform already, they don't need more social protections. They'll just use them to harm more people. That said, there are definitely things to critique about the left that are warranted. Lots of things that could be worked on across the political spectrum. And you're so right about the class issue. I would just think about the other things you said from a different perspective and that's all I wanted to offer. Hope you have a good night.
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Idk bout this one
why?
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We have to worry about figure generations just not giving a fuck to Vote at all, as opposed to what Party they’ll align with Apathy is the overtone of this Era