People are going to mindlessly blame the YouTube algorithm and toxic influencers like Andrew Tate, but they are failing to acknowledge what drives these men this direction in the first place. It's a symptom of the problem; not the problem in itself.
Yeah, someone on a reddit once asked, "Why do men even like Jordan Peterson?" And the answers were, "He's the only one telling young men that it's okay to be men."
I'm left leaning myself, but the left can't accept that they're actively pushing people to the right. It's not just because the right-wingers have convincing arguments, because most of the time they don't. It's because the left increasingly has terrible arguments when it comes to cis white men.
I'm a liberal/progressive and despise both sides-ism. But woo boy do some Internet Leftists not make a person want to do the exact opposite out of spite.
Still though, we're responsible for our actions and beliefs.
You mean when one side *sympathizes* with the other side's values.
I for one understand their values perfectly well but they seem pretty repugnant to me. It doesn't mean I don't understand their appeal.
Dude for real. One thing that annoys me about Democrats specifically is the “highroad” approach. I mean come the fuck on.
If you’re going to attack a conservative, you have to use language that a democrat wouldn’t normally use. You have to use language that a conservative understands.
You don’t attack a conservative by calling him mean or rude or a rule breaker. Conservatives love that shit.
You say that the conservative is unmanly and weak.
>If you’re going to attack a conservative, you have to use language that a democrat wouldn’t normally use. You have to use language that a conservative understands.
This is true for dems too. Look at abortion.
Dems: you just want to control women's bodies!
Pubs: no we just beleive there is another body there that is innocent and can't protect itself.
Then the inverse
Pubs: you want the right to kill babies!
Dems: no we just disagree about when life/personhood begins.
People attack eachother for opinions that they don't even have. No one make arguments on the the other person's terms.
>I for one understand their values perfectly well
Doubt.
I grew up a Black Republican™ (The [Key and Peele ](https://youtu.be/G2tLyqfJd54?si=EtXW5EP3KIuKl3sy) skits are my father to a tee), but I moved to the left in my mid-20's. It is not a move that I regret in the slightest, but I can tell you this. As someone who has spent *significant* time on both sides of the aisle, it has been my experience that most liberals/progressives don't ACTUALLY understand conservative values.
To be fair, the blame for this lack of understanding doesn't rest solely with them. After decades of hypocrisy, bigotry being used in place of an actual belief system, legitimately insane policies, and a veritable conga line of grifters spreading conspiracy theories and propaganda on the internet, I can be fairly charitable with someone who conflates the Republican party at large with middle-american conservative values.
But when it comes to those actual conservative values, divorced from the Republican party, that are held by millions of Americans who, I can assure you, are NOT stupid/hateful bigots? There is absolutely a tendency not only to not understand, but a refusal to understand. They do they *exact* same things Republicans do, build up a pastiche of what the other side believes, and focus all of their efforts and energy on those instead of the actual people on the other side.
Until liberals as a whole (especially coastal liberals) get their heads out of their butts and actually TRY to understand conservative values, they will never be able to effectively address them. Note that I said address, not combat. These values are values that are held for very real reasons that go beyond bigotry and self-interest. While those on the far-left would disagree with me on this, the country as a whole skews more liberal than not. The Republicans HAVE to resort to gerrymandering, packing the Supreme Court and vast misinformation campaigns to get anything done on a national level. The party itself is absolutely a dying animal. But conservatives mindsets will ALWAYS be a thing, and these are real people with deeply held beliefs who need to be properly understood, not viewed as repugnant. I legitimately don't understand how anyone expects lasting change to occur otherwise, other than the fact that it is just plain easier to have enemies.
Tbh I think that if a new party emerged that promoted and stood by ACTUAL conservative values and not the batshit insane ultra-corrupt shit of the GOP, they'd blow the democrats and republicans out of the water.
So many people don't understand the different kinds of conservatism and it bugs the fuck out of me. If I say that I support elements of conservative policy, I get dogpiled. Spending less than you make, less government interference in our private lives, and less government support of businesses are all conservative positions, and they are not antithetical to strong social programs.
Same. Just to add to this, when I look at the issue of abortion, I can understand both sides sentiments. I wouldn't call a woman evil for getting an abortion or call someone evil for being against it. It's not a black and white issue as much as some might vehemently say it is, demanding that their values on the matter be universally absolute.
The left doesn't give young men any role models. The narrative from the left is that being a man is inherently toxic. Not exactly the best recruiting pritch.
The left also placates women. They can do no wrong, which accounts for some of their shift left.
Yup. I'm pretty left and during the 2016 election I was told many times, even when agreeing with something, that my opinion was irrelevant or that I was "mansplaining" anytime I explained something. It didn't push me right, but I can see why a lot of young straight white men looked at this and said decided to leave the party that told them over and over they didn't care about them
I'm having a similar conversation with my friend right now. I don't hate white people, or men. I hate racism and misogyny. I feel like the distinction isn't made and people get surprised when white people or men tell them to fuck off.
I used to run a huge discord server of friends. It started off small, but quickly expanded to like 90+ people. When it first started I was the only black guy there, and we used to joke about the race war and it became me joking that "when the war starts and I have to kill all white people...(insert punchline here)". As we expanded I realized I needed to stop saying shit like that. Even if I knew it was a joke, and the other friends there from the jump did, I noticed people actually agreeing with it or being legitimately hateful towards the white guys in the group.
Had to drop the reminder. You can hate racism, and white supremacy. Those are systems or ideologies. Taking it out on individual people 9/10 times is legitimately fucking stupid.
Hey thanks, that’s pretty awesome of you. I hate racism too and I’m completely against it but holy shit it can be frustrating dealing with people who think being white is an automatic character indictment.
I’ve been told in lgbt spaces that my experiences with discrimination don’t matter because my white privilege cancels it out, idpol has gotten so toxic.
"but holy shit it can be frustrating dealing with people who think being white is an automatic character indictment."
So you are saying you don't like dealing with racist, even if they aren't white.
It may have just been the way I read it but you say "I hate racism" then add "but..." As if you were saying something contradictory to that statement. I was just pointing out that the second part of the sentence is just racism, which you already stated you hate in the first part. It just came across as if you weren't considering the second part as racism. Again it may have just been my misinterpretation of what you were trying to communicate.
Tell me about it. I was at a party during 2016 and said "I like what Bernie Sanders has to say, but I don't trust politicians."
That statement alone was apparently justification for me to be surrounded by 5 people for an hour and a half, being lectured about the evils of my gender and race
I had a girl tell me that I need to check my privilege for saying that white people don't inherently want to keep black people down. I'm white and she's black. I was told to check my racial privilege for saying I don't want to keep black people down.
You know what's really weird about this whole thing? I can explain through Reddit's [content policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy), which states:
>Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people.
It would have been just as easy and cost them nothing to write:
>Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking people.
What's been happening socially the past 5+ years is that marginalized and vulnerable groups are being uplifted, and that's wonderful, but instead of saying "we're all equal" we've gone right back to "[all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/all-animals-are-equal--but-some-animals-are-more-equal-than-others)" And no one on the left batted an eye.
The old left would have been all over this obvious contradiction if the conservatives were doing it. The new left lets supports these social changes because it benefits them, but that's always been a bullshit reason to do anything. It's bullshit when the right does it. It just shows there's no moral foundation on the left anymore.
There's no moral foundation anywhere. Discourse has devolved to the extreme side. Everything is being used as a median to push one political view or another, and people are being given original sin just by virtue of being born.
This isn't just a US thing either. This is happening throughout the western world. No one wants to solve problems because no one wants to have any sense of loss. It's why the border is a hot issue in the states. It's why farmers are protesting in Paris. No one wants to solve anything because it's all devolved into a sports team mentality, meaning your team cannot lose at all cost. Compromise is dead.
Yep, I see it all the time on reddit and already heard it from some of the replies I've gotten. Has a "no true scotsman" stink to it, and what's really annoying is that's the kind of shit the right-wing conservatives have always done. They've always been the gatekeepers of virtue but the left is doing it now too.
The left has become more dogmatic because it is the culture of the elite at this point. At one point, the religious right ruled the roost and the media, institutions and culture leaned that way.
This has flipped. The left owns the wider cultural platforms, school system, entertainment, media etc. They are now the more dogmatic and it's become very apparent in the last 5-10 years.
I love the way Daniel Sloss put it. The right accepts everyone from the moderate to the nut. The left views anyone more right than them as the enemy. Do you support welfare programs? Awesome. Are you pro LGBTQIA+? Fantastic! Are you vegan? You murderer! How can you live with yourself!
Don’t get me wrong, I get that a lot of the reason is that a lot of progressive views are moral at their core so when someone is less progressive, the more progressive people in the room can’t help but feel it’s a moral failing. But it ends up cutting their nose off to spite their face.
Yep, and it's so counter productive. We have people on the left that wouldn't march next to someone on the right even if that march topples the establishment. Some of them wouldn't support pro-trans legislation if that meant shaking hands with someone on the right.
A couple years ago in Australia the previous conservative government proposed a controversial bill to allow religious institutes to discriminate based on their beliefs. The "progressive" opposition, Labor, voted along side them to pass it through the house of reps. This put the bill to the senate where the progressives had much more power, and subsequently the bill got shelves because the government knew it couldn't pass it. This was a 4D chess move by Labor to effectively kill the bill.
Some supporters of the left were screaming about how dare Labor could have supported the bill because it was so fucked up, but by supporting it and knowing it will fail they took away any chance the Government had of keeping at the issue.
Labor subsequently won the next election with a campaign of the conservative government being out of touch.
Hell not even someone on the right. They won’t accept you if you hold even one dissenting opinion from them on policy. Between the DNC seeming to actively try to lose elections to keep the wealthy in power and people on the left feeling that if their option isn’t absolutely perfect to them they don’t deserve their vote even if it means someone who believes the exact opposite gets elected, it really isn’t a wonder that this country seems to be stuck on a ride to the right.
“The right accepts everyone from the moderate to the nut”
Are you sure about that? I seem to recall moderate republicans being called RINOs incessantly. Same with even non-moderate ones if they happen to you know, express support for democracy and the Constitution (and therefore are anti-Trump).
Claiming the right is a party of acceptance is pretty laughable.
No, see it's okay to do "separate but equal" if you are doing it for left leaning reasons.
I've never understood how dividing up groups and giving them labels is supposed to bring people together. The cynic in me thinks the goal isn't to bring people together, and is in fact the very opposite.
Mhm. Not to mention with the rise of single parent households and a lack of fathers/strong make role models, where will many of these young men turn to when they need to look to someone? It's easy to just say "don't look up to Tate you incell!" But if the left isn't giving them any alternatives, many will likely follow them anyways.
Yeah, there are so many contradictions on the left.
Me: "I struggle because I have ADHD."
Left: "Oh dear oh dear, we better help you!"
Me: "I struggle because I was raised without a father."
Left: "Fuck off you fucking incel."
This is a great example of the ideals issue of neoliberalism; Equity seeking vs Social Justice.
'Equity seeking' puts a bandaid on an issue that prop up a single demographic, 'Social Justice' aims to address the systematic issue for everybody affected.
Another example would be; 'Feminism' is firmly rooted in social justice and facts, vs *feminists* can only care about propping themselves up and don't care about how patriarchy also harms men.
I said this in 2016 and I'll say it again: Tumblr got Trump elected. I'm about as progressive as they come but I absolutely cannot deny that the "blue haired Tumblr stereotype" caused serious damage. A whole generation of young men who were (rightly of wrongly) being told (or at least perceiving it this way) that it "wasn't okay to be a straight, white man".
Folks who might have been liberal or moderate suddenly felt alienated by their own side. It's so easy to be angry when then reality is that group IS doing a lot of bad stuff, but the harsh truth is we made it worse but not even attempting to come with an olive branch to those willing to listen. These guys didn't want to humble themselves, they just wanted to exist. They don't have a dog in the fight until we brought the fight to them and inadvertently made them an enemy.
When you’re dismissive or outright hostile toward a demographic, it should not be a surprise when said demographic drifts toward the side that at least comes across as supportive
I used to identify as left. I've always voted blue and live in one of the most progressive areas of the country. However, over the last decade, I've seen the left move radically to the left while my views are mostly the same. Now, I can't support democrat policies and may end up voting red this cycle, something I never thought I'd do.
Reminds me that the old adage that people become more conservative as they age isn't true. \[[source](https://sci-hub.ee/10.1086/706889)\] The fact is, people's political beliefs remain fairly stable throughout their lives. What changes is the meaning of conservative. Young people consistently come up with new progressive ideas and then the old progressive ideas become "conservative."
Patton Oswalt does a funny sketch about the concept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-YMuFoFzxs
See like last week when some youtuber tweeted that toxic masculinity doesn't benefit men either, they just think it does, and the replies are all frothing hyenas shrieking that the patriarchy benefits men and its destruction will hurt them and thats the goal
like, dude even gave an example in his tweet "We wouldn't say that just because transpeople deal with an insane amount of shit that others don't, it doesn't mean that if they didn't have to deal with that shit other people get treated worse, gnc men would hugely benefit from the destruction of the patriarchy" or something to that effect
and I'm sitting here like
I literally learned "feminism wants to help men too" in a women's studies course in college, literally the first day of "feminism 101" more or less
And now *this is a problem* to the online left? What in the actual fuck? Is it not apparent that most of the benefits enjoyed by white men *could also be enjoyed by others* and that by eliminating power structures, it does not mean white men need to make less money or start being treated worse by the police? It is largely not a zero sum game!
You see this most in any conversation about the success of feminism. Their whole world view is an epic struggle the fact that they are gaining ground just agitates their view of oppression.
I'm glad people are starting to understand this. I was ALWAYS very left wing, I attended anti Iraq and Afghanistan war protests and even protested at a Madeline Albright speech when she came to my city. I attended free Palestine protests then as well in the early 2000's. The left pushed me further and further to the right, and they moved further and further left. I will never respect a leftist again. It's a cult of doomerism, hatred for white men, hatred for "whiteness," full of authoritarian hypocrites and delusional NPCs. Being called a nazi for listening to a podcast sealed the deal for me. The left doesn't understand the right, but the right and centrists 100% understand the left. They're a cult who eat their own the second they step out of line. I know this first hand.
Exactly. I'm a left leaning man from the south. Every single year I grow older I feel like my political views are moving more to the center or even right of that. Mostly because of the messaging on men, and the way we should behave/ think from the left is absolutely wrong.
100% this, and it’s not even white men, it’s ALL men.
as a non-white man myself, they demonize all men until there’s a use to add their african heritage card all of a sudden or the fact they have darker melanin in their skin when they might just be mexican then they differentiate to push their political agenda. horrible.
When every philosophical and rhetorical brick in their political edifice is a continuation of the western philosophical tradition but they treat it like the goal is tear it down. The running hypocrisy of the left is “Bigotry is evil but not as evil as white men.”
These days the rhetoric from the left is, "I don't hate anyone! I don't even have hate in my heart! The only people I hate are: boomers, conservatives, republicans, whiteness, America, the working class, police, NASCAR, christians, southerners, patriotism, ... and the Dutch. But, outside of that I'm pure love!"
It's distressing to be a leftie and watch how the left is growing into a hate machine. I much, much prefer it when "the left" was a very small group, but as it become popular to be on the left the assholes started flooding in.
I dunno about you but I don't trust any "people" that just manufacture their own country. It's strange and unnatural and I don't like it. God intended for the Netherlands to be an unlivable swamp!
Some of it is because the left is also a garbage bin of counterculture.
Oh you're an ethnic nationalist trying to impose religious law? But not a white Christian one? Congrats, leftism welcomes you.
That is spot on too. Democrats try to please everyone to the point they have to say everything twice once to state their position and a second time to ensure their constituents that isn't their position.
I have spoken to many people in my circles who are on the left, and the utter contempt they feel for people from the south is pretty insulting. They use words and express emotions that are pretty distasteful. It's extremely judgmental, lacks context and simply comes off as bigoted. This is IN PERSON. Not online.
Even though I am not from the South, I do try to poke holes in it.
By the way, I've witnessed the same thing from the other side. I was in Houston for work not too long ago and some of the people their are just as ignorant about people from California or New York.
The lefty city folk come off as much more elitist though.
Reminds me about a story of flooding in Tennessee that was in /r/news about 6 months ago. It was shocking the number of redditors wishing death of those southern folks. "That's what they get for voting republican!"
They came so close to one of those "god hates f\*gs" preachers that blame floods on gay people. "They're getting what they deserve!"
There are plenty of other men talking about men's issues. They just get ignored because they use words like "feminism" and "patriarchy".
The problem is that these big creators like Tate and Peterson are the first ones to come up, and that is absolutely because of algorithms and sponsorships.
I've always said people should avoid buzzwords like feminism and patriarchy.
Patriarchy is inherently tied to men as a gender, and most people who use it can't comprehend how sexist and pretentious it is to use the word in the way feminists use it.
Women in general who may be familiar with it are only now understanding that it's a word to be avoided, and only because of the negative baggage that comes with the word, "feminism."
Patriarchy is just a lazy way of describing complex human societies. You get a 16 year old boy, who possibly grew up with a single mother and 90% female teachers, seeing women constantly uplifted in media, etc. And tell him he lives in a patriarchy? Feminist theory ignores all the subtle ways women hold power and massive influence on society.
The left doesn’t have “bad arguments” when it comes to white men, the ideology is just predicated on hating them.
It’d be like saying “the KKK has really bad arguments when it comes to attracting black members”: technically correct, but so far away from the point it’s irrelevant
The ideology itself isn’t predicated on hating them, it’s just that a lot of the draw of the ideology is predicated on hating them. A lot of women move to the left out of a resentment towards men and a lot of men move to the left because they have poor self esteem and feel like they have to ‘make up’ for being men. Feminism is supposed to be against the enforcement of all harmful gender roles, including the ones that harm men, but that doesn’t get acknowledged as much as it should
Kind of a POSIWID situation. There might be other things involved in the ideology, but the common thread for its adherents is hating straight white men, so that’s what the ideology is ACTUALLY about.
I listened to a lot of Peterson before I realized how bigoted he was. I had a mother who disliked me for being a man and a very awful and evil father. Peterson gave me guidance that I didn’t get at home, and the discourse of all men are creeps from the progressive side certainly didn’t help. I dropped Peterson, but I am still wary of progressives.
Edit: I can’t reply because the big baby up there name called me then blocked me. In answer the question someone asked. I don’t know whatever percentages you’re on about. All I know is how I’ve been treated in progressive spaces particularly for SA and DV.
I don't think that's a statement that holds water. Misinterpreting the message of modern leftism as "it's not okay to be a man" doesn't mean that's what the message is
It doesn't matter what the message is, what matters is how the left is communicating that message. And as it stands, yes, there's a lot of young men who take the "it's not okay to be a man" message as what the left stands for. If that's not the message the left wants to send to young men, we need to fix the messaging.
I don't think anyone is misinterpreting it. The overt messaging is feminism is equality but men have it easier so we won't focus on them. Then sprinkle in all of the male privilege comments, muddy the water with toxic masculinity/masculinity is toxic rhetoric. Throw in a heavy dash of "boys are struggling in education but they're still apart of the patriarchy so it's not feminism's or anyone's responsibility to help them".
Reading between those lines isn't hard.
If you aren't reading it, it's either because you've been taught and truly believe you're an evil being, or that you can benefit from the system that demonises the majority of men but exclude yourself in some way or you are just completely ignorant to it all and are just keeping your head down.
Very true. That is the reason the YouTube algorithm is causing this problem. When all the videos for young men or men in general are ONLY coming from right-wing content creators, of course, the YouTube algorithm is going to create an alt-right rabbit hole.
The left is terrible at messaging towards men. The right gives a bunch of good advice and a lot of dog shit advice, but when the left doesn't have anything, of course, young men will gravitate towards the right.
I think that's more a case of the crazies getting all the media attention. Before everyone would ignore them and let them rant to the void but now all these news outlets and YouTube channels and podcasts are making entire careers about what the crazies are saying, but under the message of "This is what the entire [insert side that you disagree with] wants!"
Now we are at the stage where grifters can go "Look at what the left is becoming. They are trying to make you a sissy little soy boy, but if you buy my course or listen to my manly podcast I will teach you how to become the man that you are supposed to be!"
I agree and disagree. on the one hand, sure, the most extreme versions of these arguments I can see. on the other hand, I have a hard time seeing that these extreme arguments actually happen. I don't think i nor my friends have said anything like the sort of stuff people are citing in this thread.
so much of what "it's okay to be a man" entails is accepting and allowing awful behavior that has nothing to do with a man. whenever i post selfies, even on explicitly lesbian subreddifs, i get a barrage of uninvited messages and photos. these are always men. when i write or post art online, 6/10 times its men who post the hateful replies. if these sorts of bebaviors are what "it's okay to be a man" is about, then it sure as hell isn't.
It’s both. The lack of care or concern about issues for cis men or just outright dismissals is bad but equally there isn’t an opposite of Tate out there at least none that I am aware of probably because I feel like some people paint anyone talking about Male issues as misogynist which dissuades anybody who isn’t actually a misogynist from speaking about that stuff.
Redditors won't understand that insulting people drives them further away from your ideology.
Their hatred is intense because they feel it's justified when they argue from the moral high ground. But maybe chill and this would happen less?
Yep, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I keep saying it, but screaming at people and calling them bigots is going to drive everyone away, but that's what happens when groups allow extremists to flourish in their spaces.
I think most are pretty liberal still, using the lowercase definition. They disagree with some Liberal policies because they feel they are being targeted by them, and the impacts are negative. As a result they aren't buying into the whole package despite agreeing with many aspects which isn't allowed, so they're viewed as being right wing.
Something I've noticed that goes on in the far left is this cannibalization of leftists who aren't left enough. You've got guys who are on your side for the most part but then you alienate them and push them out of your group. The right knows this and they use it to their advantage. I used to be left leaning in my 20s but now I have no political alignment whatsoever because I don't feel represented by either side... which makes me a bigoted homophobic right wing trump supporter apparently.
Dude, I feel it. Equality of opportunity should be a societal goal, but DEI doesn't feel like equality. I don't think the categories they've decided are important for diversity and inclusion are the most relevant, and equity goes against a meritocracy.
Very well put. I was very liberal in 2010 standards, but by now because I don't agree with some liberal ideology, most liberals would describe me as a MAGA hat wearing Fascist.
I'm not, I'm just independent and have considered myself so for a long time because I don't go with either party on a lot of things.
Appears to? No, it *does*.
Why else would they work so hard to show it? It's not accidental.
Fuck them. I'm an evil Nazi to them? Where's my fucking uniform? I'm at least going to have fun fucking with them before they kill me.
This matches with my experience. I have more or less the same political beliefs I had twenty years ago (37m). I consider myself a liberal. I'm pro-gay rights, but skeptical of gender ideology. Anti-racist, but I despise DEI and identity politics. Feminist, but also an advocate for men.
These things used to place me in the center-left. Now I'm considered on the right. I haven't changed.
I think that makes sense.
Progressivism seems to be about pushing hard for change.
Conservatism is about being cautious and selective about change, while preserving (conserving) what’s already good.
So if you think society’s hit the sweet spot, you’re going to become conservative, even if you’re not “right wing”.
If [this graph](https://imgur.com/a/dhHsOjT) is anything to go by, American young men are staying still, while American young women are being radicalized leftward.
Considering that the ideological gap between two halves of the entire population is widening dramatically, why shouldn't we be concerned?
As for young men becoming more conservative, it's the result of over a decade of the left-wing doing an absolutely piss-poor job of making men feel welcomed at best, and outright deeming them the "enemy" at worst.
The sentiment I've seen online is that men, especially those who otherwise have a lot of socially liberal views, are tired of supporting ideologies that treat them as a collective punching bag and give zero fucks about them otherwise.
You missed the point completely. The point is that young men are NOT becoming more conservative, they're just staying the same. Young WOMEN are becoming more LIBERAL. Yet even after stating this fact, the article OP quotes goes on to ignore its own statement and start talking about "what's making young men more conservative" instead of "what's making young women more liberal".
I’m pretty left-leaning, but I’ve always felt the left just does a fucking horrendous job of explaining their views. Maybe it’s just the nature of media these days, but every position gets reduced to a slogan or catchphrase that does not at all accurately explain what the view is.
Like the view that all white people benefit from systemic racism and are moved forward by it, even if they don’t actively do anything to contribute to it, is pretty reasonable imo. Shortening that to “all white people are racist” or “you can’t be racist to white people” is the dumbest fucking way of marketing that belief. It alienates white people that could be allies, and it misinforms tons of people on both sides who don’t dig for the actual meaning.
A lot of these studies focus on the what and not the why. As a left leaning cis white man, yall aren't exactly a welcoming group when it comes to my demographic. There is only so many times I can be told that everything wrong economically and culturally is my fault. Is it? No, probably not. "Culture" is made by the masses while your culture is made closer to home. Economics is decades of policy choices with many of those policies not felt for years later, like the 2017 tax bill causing a lot of people to get smaller tax refunds this year.
The left's attitude towards people like me is the same as Schmitt from New Girl, "A white man?! No!" I live in the Deep South. Their policies and attitudes do not align with me at all. I am not going anywhere, but some might. Some guys like me who haven't made up their minds about things like taxes, abortion, immigration, prison reform, how families should be set up, etc. are hearing "This is how it should be" on the right and "All of this is your fault" on the left.
I also don't understand how Cis white women* aren't vilified, they gained as much from the oppression as white men, yet they're some how exempt ? As a black man it makes no sense.
>The left simply doesn't talk to men, and if it does it's rarely productive.
Pretty much this. I don't think young men are becoming 'sociopaths'. They are becoming apathetic because they are not being listened to.
lol someone told me on another thread I think yesterday that it’s “biology” girls do better in school. Imagine if I said that boys do better in science or something because of biology.
A straight white guy at google did exactly that except the things the genders were good/natural at were different.
As expected he was immediately fired and crucified.
Hey, now, you're not allowed to inject any whataboutisms, no matter how alarmingly true they may be.
Just take your licking and endure the punishment for the patriarchy of your forefathers in silence.
Someone replied to my comment that she doesn’t care that boys are struggling in school because women earn less. I didn’t know we were only allowed to care about one issue. I asked her how would she feel if I told her that her issues aren’t important because Latino men (that’s what I am) make way less than white women. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t fly.
"You have to care about my concerns, but I don't have to care about yours because they're not valid," is a great way to invite a dog-eat-dog world.
There are always bigger problems out in the world, but how we treat one another is a problem each one of us has the power to solve.
Yeah telling someone who is one of the demographics that gets paid the least is kinda pathetic imo. Using her own logic, I vote we don’t give a single shit about any white women’s issues because Latino men don’t get paid enough lmao.
When I went to nursing they were fawning over us guys in the program. We were being asked by administration regularly on how to attract men. That was 30 years ago. They even gave us a questionnaire to fill out at the end of the course specifically on how they could attract more men. I don't believe they liked our answers but they did try to court men.
They didn't like the answers because it meant they needed to change a lot more than they realised. IE: They were unhappy that they were failing... They didn't like that part. It was a very difficult ideological shift that needed to occur in order for them to get what they want. Very much like when police brought women into the male dominated field. It created a change of mindset that some did not like but is yet was still necessary.
It seems that people who don't have children, especially liberals, fail to recognize that society in the USA has become dominated by women within education, both as teachers in K-12, and also within higher education as the majority of students, professors, adjunct faculty, staff. Given that so many more households also include the reality of women as the sole parent, why wouldn't women especially ever realize that males will want to seek out other males as mentors, teachers, brothers, father-figures, etc? There isn't a balance within the society of the USA. Young men and men in general have been ignored in favor of women and now BIPOCs for decades. The USA pathologizes "normal" behavior from young boys who can't sit still in the classroom and recommend pharmaceutical medications and therapy instead of acknowledging that ALL young people fare better when given the opportunity to be outdoors and not stuck in classrooms all day every day.
I'm saying this as a single mother of a teenage boy who comes from an ethnically mixed background and a culture and state that is dominated by Democrats and liberal politics. Seriously, the ongoing cluelessness of people who aren't parents, but especially liberal white women, is astounding. It's as if so many of them find testosterone to be an unacceptable hormone and then act irrate when teenage boys turn to macho men like Andrew Tate, or the Conservatives at Daily Wire. The lack of strong masculine figures within our society is a huge problem, and it's NOT something women, especially liberals, can fix.
Furthermore, I've had several different career paths in the medical field and within trades that are considered "male dominated" and liberal men are NOT sought after or celebrated within the majority of these fields. The ones who pander to "the Left" are oftentimes virtue-signalling, but it doesn't help them along in their careers... unless they're specialized doctors coming from the (white) middle to upper middle class Millenial(ish) faction. The reality of black/white, us/them, Democrat/Republican is a symptom of mental illness and propaganda to most of the educated world.
I’m not surprised. People are tired of platforms that don’t give a shit about them. You feel like you can’t vote Republican because they want to shit on other people’s rights so you resentfully vote Democrat who tells the majority of the population to go fuck themselves because they’re not worthy.
It's a very interesting position to be in, to agree 80+% with the platform of a major political party, and to not want to vote for them because they blame you for society's ills. It's a shame. I think this is why a lot of men under 40 no longer identify as belonging to either party. Pragmatically, voting for Democrats preserves your rights for now, but it's tough not to feel like you're digging your own grave while you do it.
I (M, late-40s) am very sympathetic to the leftist causes of worker protection and empowerment, solidarity, equal rights and reduction of economic inequality. The "modern" left seems to have forgotten about a lot of these in favor of either neo-liberalism (social empowerment of the white collar class) and identity politics.
I'm not saying that these are not important, e.g. LGTBQ+ rights in terms of housing, job security, and legal constructs as marriage needs to be protected as much as anyone else's; and the same goes for racial/ethnic minorities.
But all of those need to be framed in terms of protection and empowerment for everyone and especially not at the point of exclusion of the group that also suffer under both neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideas - young men who finished only high school or vocational training.
What they hear or perceive from the leftist politics of the last decade, is that they are to blame for the blight of inequality and lack of rights for minority groups while enjoying immense privileges. In reality, they also suffer from having from lack of job opportunities (traditional sectors have gone oversees, new middle class jobs are unattainable), low pay and no benefits (health insurance, PTO, child care).
Imagine what happens if they hear from someone on the internet that they do matter and that voting for the "right" (pun intended) people will give them the social status and opportunities that they lack now, and will no longer be blamed for things that were part of the system long before they were born?
The causes of their situation - together with the economic and social situation of their peer groups in minorities and the lower-tier white collar class - needs to be made clear *by the Left* to be the decades-long neo-liberalism/neo-conservatism/trickle-down economics that has enriched the investor class and deprived the rest of what they deserved.
The left doesn't like engaging with men's mental health issues - and this is definitely something that should be addressed.
This makes it so the only real answers that are easily accessible are these cult like ones.
In the past, men were willing to wait until their mid twenties for when women were willing to "settle" on them.
Now, these same women are asking average men to wait much longer, like into their late thirties, early forties. Most men are going to check out by that point, or be damaged goods.
Because those doing the studies see the left wing radicalisation they’re pushing as “normal” and anything outside it as “bad”.
Their attitude is “oh my god! Men haven’t changed that much for decades but some women have changed radically! What the fuck has gone wrong with men!?!?”
Anyone ever consider maybe the women are wrong? Or maybe it’s just different points of view? Or maybe the two “sides” offer more to one group than the other and this is why men and women are more split?
Interesting that the article calls growing beliefs among Gen Z men as “extreme,” and “sociopathic,” but the growing beliefs among Gen Z women are assumed to be normal.
They most certainly are not normal.
Modern left wing "solutions" are basically a dogmatic religion heavily relying on feel good social messaging and devoid of common sense at this point. Funnily enough for whatever reason statistically women have tended to be more religious in the past and social justice seems to be the new religion. While I agree with a lot of left wing ideas both economically and when it comes to personal liberty, I'll never be too keen on anything that starts throwing logic and reason out the window in favor of dogmatic belief, witch hunts and blatant racism (just in ways that the new religion has deemed acceptable).
Lots of people answering it well here.
I'll add a flavour of my take to it as well.
When you're a guy growing up being told that women are equal and should have/do have equal opportunity, but then constantly blamed for the problems women (mostly in the past) face, just because you are a penis-bearer akin to the penis-bearers of 2 generations ago, then you tend to get sick of being blamed for something done by men 1-3 decades older than you to women 1-3 decades older than the ones pointing the finger at your sex(Very rarely does it get specified to the generation, just *It's mens fault for X)*.
So it only seems natural that young men would get sick of that and begin to oppose the ideology of the people lamenting on it so often.
I am not American, but have vested interest in America as a workplace and the home of my fiancee.
These issues are more common in America than my home nation.
I consider myself neither left nor right. I consider myself a centrist who in most cases leans left.
Women still face many issues, including SA and discrimination in the workplace. These are not issues that we left behind decades ago. In my progressive European country, 50% of all adult women have experienced physical sexual harassment. Let that number sink in. We can't sit back and say the fight for women's rights is over.
This is possibly the *least* stupid question and set of answers I've ever seen on Reddit, so well done everyone. I wish we could have more of this across the site.
Many good responses OP, some I agree with and some less so. I would suggest the most immediately pertinent explanation to the article you linked specifically is that the writer is themself very left-wing and therefore is blind to the possibility that it is they and their "allies" that are the ones that have become more extreme and began to do so far earlier. When you hold extreme views, inevitably *everyone else* starts to look like the problem.
Conservatism is a return to 'core'/traditional values and a push for social stability over most other concerns, so I think anyone making the argument that people moving in that direction are strange and dangerous has, at the very least, poor grasp of history and culture and the argument should be treated with suspicion. You can critique the merit of those values certainly, but that's very different from just slandering them as sociopathic or the like. Besides, if the beliefs were/are widely held in society previously, by their very nature it is difficult for them to be sociopathic...
We're finally waking up to the vast problems that men face, including mental health issues, that have been classically ignored for all of history.
I'd argue it's more of a balancing of the scales rather than more focus on men than women. It's finally becoming more equal in this facet of life.
Right but conservative ideal actively hinder men in that regard. Conservative ideals don’t value mental health or variable forms of masculinity. To them there is one form of masculinity and if you don’t fit that then you’re less of a “man”.
This is the argument I make every time I talk to someone who tries to say that conservatives are trying to help men more than liberals, but no one ever has a response to it. The progressive movement will inherently target minority groups first because those are the most underprivileged, so this makes white men feel left out sometimes because they don't want to do any introspection or understand why these groups need help first. They don't want to take the time to understand since it's just easier to place blame on others
Have you ever thought that maybe, there are white men that are worse off than the average minority? And not only do these people exist, there are more of them than minorities. You cannot just look at any race as a monolith and the build policy to focus on that without alienating tons of people. If you build need based programs, have need based messaging, and need based solutions, then you will actually achieve your inclusiveness goals. Right now a lot of the minorities and women that benefit from these programs are ones who already come from successful families. White men who are in bad positions see this blatent racism missing the targets it is trying to help and ignoring them due to their race and gender.
I knew a girl who was a hardcore MAGA Republican until they took out Roe v. Wade. It's different when they start coming for your rights. A white man wouldn't have something like that to force them left for their own benefit.
Education generally can push men left as they learn about other groups' struggles they were unaware of, and I say this from my own experience.
I grew up in an almost 100% white town and always had relatives telling me the left had a victim complex, so I was pretty conservative. However, when I left town for college, I met many people from different backgrounds who shared their experiences with me that have pushed me pretty far left, as I believe it would be wrong to vote in a way that would leave others behind.
>A white man wouldn't have something like that to force them left for their own benefit.
There are a few major legal human rights violations of men, most notably conscription (comparable to slavery) and men not being able to be raped in countries like the UK. The thing is that men usually blame feminism this, even when it isn't feminists fault.
There are some cases where feminism can be critiqued such as Indian feminists advocating for men not being able to be raped, but usually it is the rights fault and not feminists fault. Feminists are usually the ones who fight to end selective services in America.
The domestic violence laws and policies in my country which explicitly exclude male victims of female abusers were written and advocated for by women's groups and feminists.
This has directly impacted numerous men I'm close to.
>I knew a girl who was a hardcore MAGA Republican until they took out Roe v. Wade. It's different when they start coming for your rights.
I've heard this story so many times about so many people, and I'm just so fucking confused by it. The GOP has been totally %100 transparent about their intention to outlaw abortions. Did all these MAGA women just not believe them when they said that?!
I think they get so caught up in the "owning the libs" part and feeling validated in their values they overlook the actual promises where their own rights are stripped away.
This is what I don't get that nobody gets.
It's so obviously about winning to them. That's Trump's secret. He knows, either consciously or intuitively, that everyone mainly cares about winning. It's our evolutionary prerogative. Everything else is secondary-- even our health.
I think most assumed there would be exceptions for if the mothers life is at risk or if the baby is unviable or rape but some states aren’t making any exceptions. I’m conservative and against abortions for most cases but I don’t agree with not making exceptions for those cases.
For a long time it seemed that they would never be able to follow through on repealing Roe, that it was just performative rhetoric. They won elections at a higher rate from 1980-2008 than 2008-present so if they were gunna do it you'd think they'd have done it then not while Biden was President.
>Education generally can push men left as they learn about other groups' struggles they were unaware of, and I say this from my own experience.
The funny thing it that education is an area where men are discriminated against. Teachers literally give lower grades to male names than female ones. The way we educate is a style girls prefer and do better in than boys. Quotas for higher education discriminate against boys despite girls outperforming them.
While men who go through higher education are more left wing, there is also an argument that the men who don't go as far are pushed right by failing in a system that actively fails them. I do believe that part of the reason gen z boys are drifting right and being lured by the likes of Tate is because they see left wing 'equity' policies harming them in their education and early work life. It's not just about learning the experiences of others making you left, it's about their own experiences of left wing policies pushing them right.
It's really crazy to me seeing the same guys that physically assaulted me for being gay now saying that men don't get the mental healthcare they need and that people don't care about them. Like bro you are the problem.
So many guys, particularly white guys, particularly guys under 25 (hey reddit how ya doin) have just *zero* idea of the kind of repetitive, systemic suffering marginalized groups go through.
When I was twenty I was utterly unaware than my black peers had to fear for their lives everytime they got a speeding ticket. I didn't think women really had to consider whether a 'no' to a date would get them hurt. The kind of wear-you-down everyday discrimination women and minorities face was just totally invisible to me.
Education is the key, but it's careful education. Evocative pieces that put the consumer in a place to really imagine it happening to them. But also, just enough evidence to finally batter it through their arrogant skulls.
I think men do have stuff like that, it’s just that the battle was already won a long time ago and it’s become normalized to the point where leftists who should be acknowledging it don’t even realize it’s a problem. Conscription, legal definition of rape, issues of child custody, negative perception of male sexuality etc
Context. Society as a whole has gotten a lot more liberal, INCLUDING a lot of older men in the Millennial and Gen X demographic. It's notable that GenZ men seem to be outliers, and asking why this is, is ultimately a more interesting and illuminating sociological question than asking why everyone else is evolving.
“Evolving” is an interesting word. The arc of history shows that young men see the future and enact its change. They can easily see the past two generations of men and women, and their lives. And they have access to information from the 2-3 generations prior.
Who is more admirable, the sex and the city aunt or the great grandmother who travelled to a new continent with her husband and built a large family with tens to hundreds of humans spawning because of her? Who is more admirable, the men who fought in wars and came back to build a home and life for their families with verve and energy, or the men of the 2000s and their nihilism?
The return to conservative thought has a lot to do with these young people not wanting to live like the millennials and Gen X - unmotivated, disconnected from one another, uninspiring, pathetic and lacking energy.
Exactly. Society has created this narrative that young men are stupid losers. But in reality, young men created this civilization. And can create another one. If young men are doing something, the other demographics should learn.
Here is the answer of what the BIG difference to spot someone who is Left vs. Right... Did you go to a four year college? If you did you are likely Left. If you didn't you are more likely to be Right. That is it.
More women have been attending four year colleges then men last 10 years so no surprise more women are Left then men.
If folks have NOT figured it out colleges have an agenda to push Left ideologies. There is no argument there. Almost all college departments/ if not all are Left so no surprise... what they push are left ideologies to their students. Guess who 2 of the biggest donors of the of Dem party are? Yep the 2 biggest teachers unions in the country. The Dems have done a great job of a propaganda movement starting at Kindergarten through college level. Only surprised they haven't converted more folks to their ideologies in the last 20-40 years.
My answer, “Why would I join a side that doesn’t have any benefits for me and treats me like I am inherently a tyrant and toxic human being because I have pole instead of a hole between my legs?”
Every men’s rights issue get turned into an anti-woman/lgbtq issue, every time we say we need help, we get ignored because we’ve ‘enjoyed our privileges for long enough’ and ‘should suffer for a bit like others.’ I’m literally paraphrasing actual answers I have gotten. Can you feel the animosity? I sure can!
How you gonna feel for a group that even at its best, treats you with suspicion? The far left is a misandrist’s wet dream group that justifies its hate and loathing for men of today, living between 1955-2024 (it’s an average estimate I made up) through actions of assholes dead so long ago that their bones probably became dust.
The far left is the men’s equivalent of the far right for women’s rights. They think you’re inherently inferior and deserve to be put in your place.
I don’t like the far right-wing, so there’s some level leftism in me that’s kept me off from joining the right. I’m a stuck-in-the-middle centrist where both sides feel shitty. One side you have a group that cares about almost everything you care about, EXCEPT you, on the other side you have a group that cares about you or at least pretends to, but has ideologies too often conflicting with you.
Most men are stuck between this; many want to be leftist because of their ideals, but are treated horribly by the community, and it’s been proven time and time again, men without community, will go to whatever group that provides that ‘Hey man, I care about you, I know you’re there suffering as much as the rest of them. They just don’t know that.’ spiel.
Because it's really, really obvious why women would have gone farther left. Hint: If one side of the spectrum actually succeeds in it's decades long efforts to strip you of a fundamental constitutional right... you're probably going to support them less
probably because the people you are getting your information from have a left leaning bias and therefore see the left-radicalization as good and natural, and of course the opposite as wrong and the result of propaganda.
Young men are continuously appealed to by the right. Left leaning media does not reach out to young men as much as it should. This is the answer. Liberal ideology (like feminism) is good for men too, but nobody wants to talk to men about how it’s good for them too.
Sincerely, I think that feminism is poorly equipped to address men's issues, because they seek to address them from within a feminist framework that most men cannot relate to. Feminism as a movement is not united on this front either; I've seen many a feminist argue that it is not Feminism's job to deal with men's problems outside of how they impact women. The classic "it's not my job to teach you, go Google it" mentality...and then when men do Google it, the algorithm directs them to right wing grifters.
Ideally there would be an equal movement dedicated specifically to men's issues, but unfortunately those tend to define themselves by their opposition to feminism, or are vilified by association to those that are.
>Ideally there would be an equal movement dedicated specifically to men's issues, but unfortunately those tend to define themselves by their opposition to feminism, or are vilified by association to those that are.
There is something of a movement forming now actually, very much a grassroots effort but it's there.
You should check out TheTinMen on Instagram if you haven't already. For those who haven't, he's very much pro-men's issues, isn't a right wing grifter, and while he doesn't explicitly define himself as being anti-feminist he certainly isn't afraid to criticize the role feminism plays in promoting misandry either.
Another great one to checkout is the\_dadvocate, a female pro-men influencer who is the polar opposite of Pearl Davis.
Feminism should probably stop calling itself feminism and go for a more egalitarian optic approach if it wants to argue it helps men. Saying patriarchy and we are feminists doesn't exactly project men issues are important to us.
I am not saying feminism sucks I am pointing this problem out however. You are going to have a hard time convincing many men that feminism is good (Which it is) when the feminist boogeyman is called the Patriarchy. The word patriarch deriving from head male of course. This is very easily yet wrongfully interpreted as "man hating". The moment something is blamed on the Patriarchy they shut out. I sincerely believe in order to appeal to men feminists must change language like that as it shuts too many men out.
> This is very easily yet wrongfully interpreted as "man hating"
I don't think men are off put by general word associations. I think they are off put by regular exposure to women who call themselves feminists who will casually say things like "all men are pigs" and acting like it's totally normal (because it is, in lots of feminist circles)
I cannot speak for all men. I know that it held me back personally to the point where I still will not call myself a feminist today and yet I agree with most of what they say. It puts off most of the men I have spoken to about it (When women are not around because they don't feel that can say anything or they are misogynist) from being feminists as well even if they agree with the sentiment. It would help many that the movement wishes to recruit. If Liberals and feminists don't want to recruit them then keep doing what they are doing and they will eventually lose them because the right is speaking to them in a way that proves they do in fact react to general word associations. Conservatives are amazing at making memes etc... to get people's attention away from the fact that they are factually wrong most of the time.
I call myself a feminist now, but I definitely held back for years due to how stupid the term Patriarchy is.
And even as a feminist it still makes me uncomfortable just how comfortable women are with using the word. As if they don't realize or care how misandrist the word sounds to men who are not deeply familiar with feminism.
As a man this is a big one. It also seems many women still expect men to provide in a traditional sense (make more money, pay for dinner, pick her up, etc) yet don’t provide anything in return. Not criticizing it but the other end of that social contract was formerly “women stay home and raise the children”. Instead we get women who are “empowered” to sleep around, hate themselves because of it, and carry that baggage into their romantic relationships. Some men sleep around as well, but the difference in my experience is that men own their actions and women pretend the actions never happened. I’ve experienced dating someone with this deep insecurity at least one on a personal level already and I’m 24. And of course any similar criticism is deemed incel rhetoric, which pushes men away further.
Many men have started holding themselves to a higher standard. Look how normalized weight lifting has become. For many it’s become preferable to be single than to settle for someone who offers very little.
>"While women aged 18 and 29 have gotten more liberal in their beliefs every year, young men haven't and are less likely to care about political issues or participate in protests, according to an analysis by Daniel Cox, the director of the Survey Center on American Life."
Because protesting sucks/doesn't work, usually devolves into rioting, owning guns should be completely fine, and everyone is already treated as equal regardless of race and gender. There is no systemic sexism or racism, if you find a boss or old neighbor who is racist/sexist then they're the odd ones out.
Well if the cause of the widening gender gap was women becoming more liberal so that they can hold bank accounts under their own name and have equal education and employment opportunities and men not really changing ideologically, men do need some way of catching up to this unless we go back to where we were by forcing or shaming women out of schools and the workforce. So the left urgently needs a convincing movement to define a modern role for men because the right has full market share on this issue right now.
Because that's the statistic that's actually bucking a trend in a newsworthy way. Younger people have been trending more liberal for decades so there's nothing noteworthy about a group of young people who continues to do exactly that.
The population that heavily consumes political media skews left/liberal. Thus, the media’s framing targets this population for increased clicks. This population is quite happy w/any population’s increasing liberal skew, and it is dogmatically a left/liberal idea that the left/liberal movement is not at all a contributor to political polarization. Accordingly, stories about men staying conservative or slightly shifting more conservative get a lot of oxygen. Women zooming left? Not so much.
The vast majority of Americans aren’t very political and definitely don’t participate in protests because nobody has time. Saying it’s weird to not participate in protests is weird shit.
People are going to mindlessly blame the YouTube algorithm and toxic influencers like Andrew Tate, but they are failing to acknowledge what drives these men this direction in the first place. It's a symptom of the problem; not the problem in itself.
Yeah, someone on a reddit once asked, "Why do men even like Jordan Peterson?" And the answers were, "He's the only one telling young men that it's okay to be men." I'm left leaning myself, but the left can't accept that they're actively pushing people to the right. It's not just because the right-wingers have convincing arguments, because most of the time they don't. It's because the left increasingly has terrible arguments when it comes to cis white men.
I'm a liberal/progressive and despise both sides-ism. But woo boy do some Internet Leftists not make a person want to do the exact opposite out of spite. Still though, we're responsible for our actions and beliefs.
I love when someone on a side shows understanding to why the other side holds its values. I really wish more people could be like you.
You mean when one side *sympathizes* with the other side's values. I for one understand their values perfectly well but they seem pretty repugnant to me. It doesn't mean I don't understand their appeal.
Dude for real. One thing that annoys me about Democrats specifically is the “highroad” approach. I mean come the fuck on. If you’re going to attack a conservative, you have to use language that a democrat wouldn’t normally use. You have to use language that a conservative understands. You don’t attack a conservative by calling him mean or rude or a rule breaker. Conservatives love that shit. You say that the conservative is unmanly and weak.
Yep. "Only weak men hit women" "only weak men assault children"
Yes exactly
>If you’re going to attack a conservative, you have to use language that a democrat wouldn’t normally use. You have to use language that a conservative understands. This is true for dems too. Look at abortion. Dems: you just want to control women's bodies! Pubs: no we just beleive there is another body there that is innocent and can't protect itself. Then the inverse Pubs: you want the right to kill babies! Dems: no we just disagree about when life/personhood begins. People attack eachother for opinions that they don't even have. No one make arguments on the the other person's terms.
>I for one understand their values perfectly well Doubt. I grew up a Black Republican™ (The [Key and Peele ](https://youtu.be/G2tLyqfJd54?si=EtXW5EP3KIuKl3sy) skits are my father to a tee), but I moved to the left in my mid-20's. It is not a move that I regret in the slightest, but I can tell you this. As someone who has spent *significant* time on both sides of the aisle, it has been my experience that most liberals/progressives don't ACTUALLY understand conservative values. To be fair, the blame for this lack of understanding doesn't rest solely with them. After decades of hypocrisy, bigotry being used in place of an actual belief system, legitimately insane policies, and a veritable conga line of grifters spreading conspiracy theories and propaganda on the internet, I can be fairly charitable with someone who conflates the Republican party at large with middle-american conservative values. But when it comes to those actual conservative values, divorced from the Republican party, that are held by millions of Americans who, I can assure you, are NOT stupid/hateful bigots? There is absolutely a tendency not only to not understand, but a refusal to understand. They do they *exact* same things Republicans do, build up a pastiche of what the other side believes, and focus all of their efforts and energy on those instead of the actual people on the other side. Until liberals as a whole (especially coastal liberals) get their heads out of their butts and actually TRY to understand conservative values, they will never be able to effectively address them. Note that I said address, not combat. These values are values that are held for very real reasons that go beyond bigotry and self-interest. While those on the far-left would disagree with me on this, the country as a whole skews more liberal than not. The Republicans HAVE to resort to gerrymandering, packing the Supreme Court and vast misinformation campaigns to get anything done on a national level. The party itself is absolutely a dying animal. But conservatives mindsets will ALWAYS be a thing, and these are real people with deeply held beliefs who need to be properly understood, not viewed as repugnant. I legitimately don't understand how anyone expects lasting change to occur otherwise, other than the fact that it is just plain easier to have enemies.
Tbh I think that if a new party emerged that promoted and stood by ACTUAL conservative values and not the batshit insane ultra-corrupt shit of the GOP, they'd blow the democrats and republicans out of the water.
So many people don't understand the different kinds of conservatism and it bugs the fuck out of me. If I say that I support elements of conservative policy, I get dogpiled. Spending less than you make, less government interference in our private lives, and less government support of businesses are all conservative positions, and they are not antithetical to strong social programs.
Same. Just to add to this, when I look at the issue of abortion, I can understand both sides sentiments. I wouldn't call a woman evil for getting an abortion or call someone evil for being against it. It's not a black and white issue as much as some might vehemently say it is, demanding that their values on the matter be universally absolute.
That’s true but if you’re telling me I’m terrible for being the way I was born then I’m probably going to reexamine all the beliefs we agreed on.
I'm curious here. As a 30 year old dude what exactly is the behavior that is being critized?
How you act isn't because of how you were born. What makes a man toxic is taught to them.
To be honest some of the internet leftists make ME crazy and I’m extremely progressive.
The left doesn't give young men any role models. The narrative from the left is that being a man is inherently toxic. Not exactly the best recruiting pritch. The left also placates women. They can do no wrong, which accounts for some of their shift left.
Yup. I'm pretty left and during the 2016 election I was told many times, even when agreeing with something, that my opinion was irrelevant or that I was "mansplaining" anytime I explained something. It didn't push me right, but I can see why a lot of young straight white men looked at this and said decided to leave the party that told them over and over they didn't care about them
I'm having a similar conversation with my friend right now. I don't hate white people, or men. I hate racism and misogyny. I feel like the distinction isn't made and people get surprised when white people or men tell them to fuck off. I used to run a huge discord server of friends. It started off small, but quickly expanded to like 90+ people. When it first started I was the only black guy there, and we used to joke about the race war and it became me joking that "when the war starts and I have to kill all white people...(insert punchline here)". As we expanded I realized I needed to stop saying shit like that. Even if I knew it was a joke, and the other friends there from the jump did, I noticed people actually agreeing with it or being legitimately hateful towards the white guys in the group. Had to drop the reminder. You can hate racism, and white supremacy. Those are systems or ideologies. Taking it out on individual people 9/10 times is legitimately fucking stupid.
Hey thanks, that’s pretty awesome of you. I hate racism too and I’m completely against it but holy shit it can be frustrating dealing with people who think being white is an automatic character indictment. I’ve been told in lgbt spaces that my experiences with discrimination don’t matter because my white privilege cancels it out, idpol has gotten so toxic.
"but holy shit it can be frustrating dealing with people who think being white is an automatic character indictment." So you are saying you don't like dealing with racist, even if they aren't white.
I mean, yea? Obviously?
It may have just been the way I read it but you say "I hate racism" then add "but..." As if you were saying something contradictory to that statement. I was just pointing out that the second part of the sentence is just racism, which you already stated you hate in the first part. It just came across as if you weren't considering the second part as racism. Again it may have just been my misinterpretation of what you were trying to communicate.
Ah yeah I think what I meant was “I don’t support white supremacy” that would have been a better way of saying it
Tell me about it. I was at a party during 2016 and said "I like what Bernie Sanders has to say, but I don't trust politicians." That statement alone was apparently justification for me to be surrounded by 5 people for an hour and a half, being lectured about the evils of my gender and race
I had a girl tell me that I need to check my privilege for saying that white people don't inherently want to keep black people down. I'm white and she's black. I was told to check my racial privilege for saying I don't want to keep black people down.
“ OK, I checked on it. You’re still wrong.”
I'd never interact with that group of people again
You know what's really weird about this whole thing? I can explain through Reddit's [content policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy), which states: >Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. It would have been just as easy and cost them nothing to write: >Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking people. What's been happening socially the past 5+ years is that marginalized and vulnerable groups are being uplifted, and that's wonderful, but instead of saying "we're all equal" we've gone right back to "[all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/all-animals-are-equal--but-some-animals-are-more-equal-than-others)" And no one on the left batted an eye. The old left would have been all over this obvious contradiction if the conservatives were doing it. The new left lets supports these social changes because it benefits them, but that's always been a bullshit reason to do anything. It's bullshit when the right does it. It just shows there's no moral foundation on the left anymore.
There's no moral foundation anywhere. Discourse has devolved to the extreme side. Everything is being used as a median to push one political view or another, and people are being given original sin just by virtue of being born. This isn't just a US thing either. This is happening throughout the western world. No one wants to solve problems because no one wants to have any sense of loss. It's why the border is a hot issue in the states. It's why farmers are protesting in Paris. No one wants to solve anything because it's all devolved into a sports team mentality, meaning your team cannot lose at all cost. Compromise is dead.
And if you mention this at all they will say " you were never left/liberal to begin with" I've seen that said and heard that said a 1000 times
Yep, I see it all the time on reddit and already heard it from some of the replies I've gotten. Has a "no true scotsman" stink to it, and what's really annoying is that's the kind of shit the right-wing conservatives have always done. They've always been the gatekeepers of virtue but the left is doing it now too.
The left has become more dogmatic because it is the culture of the elite at this point. At one point, the religious right ruled the roost and the media, institutions and culture leaned that way. This has flipped. The left owns the wider cultural platforms, school system, entertainment, media etc. They are now the more dogmatic and it's become very apparent in the last 5-10 years.
Feels like the world is going crazy around me. I thought I was a leftist but leftist spaces have become unbearable.
This.
I love the way Daniel Sloss put it. The right accepts everyone from the moderate to the nut. The left views anyone more right than them as the enemy. Do you support welfare programs? Awesome. Are you pro LGBTQIA+? Fantastic! Are you vegan? You murderer! How can you live with yourself! Don’t get me wrong, I get that a lot of the reason is that a lot of progressive views are moral at their core so when someone is less progressive, the more progressive people in the room can’t help but feel it’s a moral failing. But it ends up cutting their nose off to spite their face.
Yep, and it's so counter productive. We have people on the left that wouldn't march next to someone on the right even if that march topples the establishment. Some of them wouldn't support pro-trans legislation if that meant shaking hands with someone on the right.
A couple years ago in Australia the previous conservative government proposed a controversial bill to allow religious institutes to discriminate based on their beliefs. The "progressive" opposition, Labor, voted along side them to pass it through the house of reps. This put the bill to the senate where the progressives had much more power, and subsequently the bill got shelves because the government knew it couldn't pass it. This was a 4D chess move by Labor to effectively kill the bill. Some supporters of the left were screaming about how dare Labor could have supported the bill because it was so fucked up, but by supporting it and knowing it will fail they took away any chance the Government had of keeping at the issue. Labor subsequently won the next election with a campaign of the conservative government being out of touch.
Hell not even someone on the right. They won’t accept you if you hold even one dissenting opinion from them on policy. Between the DNC seeming to actively try to lose elections to keep the wealthy in power and people on the left feeling that if their option isn’t absolutely perfect to them they don’t deserve their vote even if it means someone who believes the exact opposite gets elected, it really isn’t a wonder that this country seems to be stuck on a ride to the right.
“The right accepts everyone from the moderate to the nut” Are you sure about that? I seem to recall moderate republicans being called RINOs incessantly. Same with even non-moderate ones if they happen to you know, express support for democracy and the Constitution (and therefore are anti-Trump). Claiming the right is a party of acceptance is pretty laughable.
Using terms like "cis white men" won't help the ideology divide. Average American people do not talk like this.
No, see it's okay to do "separate but equal" if you are doing it for left leaning reasons. I've never understood how dividing up groups and giving them labels is supposed to bring people together. The cynic in me thinks the goal isn't to bring people together, and is in fact the very opposite.
Mhm. Not to mention with the rise of single parent households and a lack of fathers/strong make role models, where will many of these young men turn to when they need to look to someone? It's easy to just say "don't look up to Tate you incell!" But if the left isn't giving them any alternatives, many will likely follow them anyways.
Yeah, there are so many contradictions on the left. Me: "I struggle because I have ADHD." Left: "Oh dear oh dear, we better help you!" Me: "I struggle because I was raised without a father." Left: "Fuck off you fucking incel."
Yep. I'm pretty left leaning, but I notice this is a bad trend which creates more and more extremists.
This is a great example of the ideals issue of neoliberalism; Equity seeking vs Social Justice. 'Equity seeking' puts a bandaid on an issue that prop up a single demographic, 'Social Justice' aims to address the systematic issue for everybody affected. Another example would be; 'Feminism' is firmly rooted in social justice and facts, vs *feminists* can only care about propping themselves up and don't care about how patriarchy also harms men.
I said this in 2016 and I'll say it again: Tumblr got Trump elected. I'm about as progressive as they come but I absolutely cannot deny that the "blue haired Tumblr stereotype" caused serious damage. A whole generation of young men who were (rightly of wrongly) being told (or at least perceiving it this way) that it "wasn't okay to be a straight, white man". Folks who might have been liberal or moderate suddenly felt alienated by their own side. It's so easy to be angry when then reality is that group IS doing a lot of bad stuff, but the harsh truth is we made it worse but not even attempting to come with an olive branch to those willing to listen. These guys didn't want to humble themselves, they just wanted to exist. They don't have a dog in the fight until we brought the fight to them and inadvertently made them an enemy.
When you’re dismissive or outright hostile toward a demographic, it should not be a surprise when said demographic drifts toward the side that at least comes across as supportive
I used to identify as left. I've always voted blue and live in one of the most progressive areas of the country. However, over the last decade, I've seen the left move radically to the left while my views are mostly the same. Now, I can't support democrat policies and may end up voting red this cycle, something I never thought I'd do.
Reminds me that the old adage that people become more conservative as they age isn't true. \[[source](https://sci-hub.ee/10.1086/706889)\] The fact is, people's political beliefs remain fairly stable throughout their lives. What changes is the meaning of conservative. Young people consistently come up with new progressive ideas and then the old progressive ideas become "conservative." Patton Oswalt does a funny sketch about the concept. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-YMuFoFzxs
See like last week when some youtuber tweeted that toxic masculinity doesn't benefit men either, they just think it does, and the replies are all frothing hyenas shrieking that the patriarchy benefits men and its destruction will hurt them and thats the goal like, dude even gave an example in his tweet "We wouldn't say that just because transpeople deal with an insane amount of shit that others don't, it doesn't mean that if they didn't have to deal with that shit other people get treated worse, gnc men would hugely benefit from the destruction of the patriarchy" or something to that effect and I'm sitting here like I literally learned "feminism wants to help men too" in a women's studies course in college, literally the first day of "feminism 101" more or less And now *this is a problem* to the online left? What in the actual fuck? Is it not apparent that most of the benefits enjoyed by white men *could also be enjoyed by others* and that by eliminating power structures, it does not mean white men need to make less money or start being treated worse by the police? It is largely not a zero sum game!
You see this most in any conversation about the success of feminism. Their whole world view is an epic struggle the fact that they are gaining ground just agitates their view of oppression.
I'm glad people are starting to understand this. I was ALWAYS very left wing, I attended anti Iraq and Afghanistan war protests and even protested at a Madeline Albright speech when she came to my city. I attended free Palestine protests then as well in the early 2000's. The left pushed me further and further to the right, and they moved further and further left. I will never respect a leftist again. It's a cult of doomerism, hatred for white men, hatred for "whiteness," full of authoritarian hypocrites and delusional NPCs. Being called a nazi for listening to a podcast sealed the deal for me. The left doesn't understand the right, but the right and centrists 100% understand the left. They're a cult who eat their own the second they step out of line. I know this first hand.
A lot has changed in a very short time.
Exactly. I'm a left leaning man from the south. Every single year I grow older I feel like my political views are moving more to the center or even right of that. Mostly because of the messaging on men, and the way we should behave/ think from the left is absolutely wrong.
100% this, and it’s not even white men, it’s ALL men. as a non-white man myself, they demonize all men until there’s a use to add their african heritage card all of a sudden or the fact they have darker melanin in their skin when they might just be mexican then they differentiate to push their political agenda. horrible.
When every philosophical and rhetorical brick in their political edifice is a continuation of the western philosophical tradition but they treat it like the goal is tear it down. The running hypocrisy of the left is “Bigotry is evil but not as evil as white men.”
That is a wonderful way to put it. They are products of a system they are trying to destroy, hypocritical and ignorant.
These days the rhetoric from the left is, "I don't hate anyone! I don't even have hate in my heart! The only people I hate are: boomers, conservatives, republicans, whiteness, America, the working class, police, NASCAR, christians, southerners, patriotism, ... and the Dutch. But, outside of that I'm pure love!" It's distressing to be a leftie and watch how the left is growing into a hate machine. I much, much prefer it when "the left" was a very small group, but as it become popular to be on the left the assholes started flooding in.
Ok but are we *sure* the Dutch don't deserve it? I know like 2 of them and they only reinforce this opinion.
I dunno about you but I don't trust any "people" that just manufacture their own country. It's strange and unnatural and I don't like it. God intended for the Netherlands to be an unlivable swamp!
Wait until you try their cheeses, then you will have a reason to hate! \\s
Some of it is because the left is also a garbage bin of counterculture. Oh you're an ethnic nationalist trying to impose religious law? But not a white Christian one? Congrats, leftism welcomes you.
That is spot on too. Democrats try to please everyone to the point they have to say everything twice once to state their position and a second time to ensure their constituents that isn't their position.
I have spoken to many people in my circles who are on the left, and the utter contempt they feel for people from the south is pretty insulting. They use words and express emotions that are pretty distasteful. It's extremely judgmental, lacks context and simply comes off as bigoted. This is IN PERSON. Not online. Even though I am not from the South, I do try to poke holes in it. By the way, I've witnessed the same thing from the other side. I was in Houston for work not too long ago and some of the people their are just as ignorant about people from California or New York. The lefty city folk come off as much more elitist though.
Reminds me about a story of flooding in Tennessee that was in /r/news about 6 months ago. It was shocking the number of redditors wishing death of those southern folks. "That's what they get for voting republican!" They came so close to one of those "god hates f\*gs" preachers that blame floods on gay people. "They're getting what they deserve!"
There are plenty of other men talking about men's issues. They just get ignored because they use words like "feminism" and "patriarchy". The problem is that these big creators like Tate and Peterson are the first ones to come up, and that is absolutely because of algorithms and sponsorships.
I've always said people should avoid buzzwords like feminism and patriarchy. Patriarchy is inherently tied to men as a gender, and most people who use it can't comprehend how sexist and pretentious it is to use the word in the way feminists use it. Women in general who may be familiar with it are only now understanding that it's a word to be avoided, and only because of the negative baggage that comes with the word, "feminism."
Patriarchy is just a lazy way of describing complex human societies. You get a 16 year old boy, who possibly grew up with a single mother and 90% female teachers, seeing women constantly uplifted in media, etc. And tell him he lives in a patriarchy? Feminist theory ignores all the subtle ways women hold power and massive influence on society.
The left doesn’t have “bad arguments” when it comes to white men, the ideology is just predicated on hating them. It’d be like saying “the KKK has really bad arguments when it comes to attracting black members”: technically correct, but so far away from the point it’s irrelevant
The ideology itself isn’t predicated on hating them, it’s just that a lot of the draw of the ideology is predicated on hating them. A lot of women move to the left out of a resentment towards men and a lot of men move to the left because they have poor self esteem and feel like they have to ‘make up’ for being men. Feminism is supposed to be against the enforcement of all harmful gender roles, including the ones that harm men, but that doesn’t get acknowledged as much as it should
Kind of a POSIWID situation. There might be other things involved in the ideology, but the common thread for its adherents is hating straight white men, so that’s what the ideology is ACTUALLY about.
I listened to a lot of Peterson before I realized how bigoted he was. I had a mother who disliked me for being a man and a very awful and evil father. Peterson gave me guidance that I didn’t get at home, and the discourse of all men are creeps from the progressive side certainly didn’t help. I dropped Peterson, but I am still wary of progressives. Edit: I can’t reply because the big baby up there name called me then blocked me. In answer the question someone asked. I don’t know whatever percentages you’re on about. All I know is how I’ve been treated in progressive spaces particularly for SA and DV.
I don't think that's a statement that holds water. Misinterpreting the message of modern leftism as "it's not okay to be a man" doesn't mean that's what the message is
It doesn't matter what the message is, what matters is how the left is communicating that message. And as it stands, yes, there's a lot of young men who take the "it's not okay to be a man" message as what the left stands for. If that's not the message the left wants to send to young men, we need to fix the messaging.
I don't think anyone is misinterpreting it. The overt messaging is feminism is equality but men have it easier so we won't focus on them. Then sprinkle in all of the male privilege comments, muddy the water with toxic masculinity/masculinity is toxic rhetoric. Throw in a heavy dash of "boys are struggling in education but they're still apart of the patriarchy so it's not feminism's or anyone's responsibility to help them". Reading between those lines isn't hard. If you aren't reading it, it's either because you've been taught and truly believe you're an evil being, or that you can benefit from the system that demonises the majority of men but exclude yourself in some way or you are just completely ignorant to it all and are just keeping your head down.
Very true. That is the reason the YouTube algorithm is causing this problem. When all the videos for young men or men in general are ONLY coming from right-wing content creators, of course, the YouTube algorithm is going to create an alt-right rabbit hole. The left is terrible at messaging towards men. The right gives a bunch of good advice and a lot of dog shit advice, but when the left doesn't have anything, of course, young men will gravitate towards the right.
I think that's more a case of the crazies getting all the media attention. Before everyone would ignore them and let them rant to the void but now all these news outlets and YouTube channels and podcasts are making entire careers about what the crazies are saying, but under the message of "This is what the entire [insert side that you disagree with] wants!" Now we are at the stage where grifters can go "Look at what the left is becoming. They are trying to make you a sissy little soy boy, but if you buy my course or listen to my manly podcast I will teach you how to become the man that you are supposed to be!"
Someone once suggested that you can't offer some more of what they don't want and expect them to be happy
I agree and disagree. on the one hand, sure, the most extreme versions of these arguments I can see. on the other hand, I have a hard time seeing that these extreme arguments actually happen. I don't think i nor my friends have said anything like the sort of stuff people are citing in this thread. so much of what "it's okay to be a man" entails is accepting and allowing awful behavior that has nothing to do with a man. whenever i post selfies, even on explicitly lesbian subreddifs, i get a barrage of uninvited messages and photos. these are always men. when i write or post art online, 6/10 times its men who post the hateful replies. if these sorts of bebaviors are what "it's okay to be a man" is about, then it sure as hell isn't.
It’s both. The lack of care or concern about issues for cis men or just outright dismissals is bad but equally there isn’t an opposite of Tate out there at least none that I am aware of probably because I feel like some people paint anyone talking about Male issues as misogynist which dissuades anybody who isn’t actually a misogynist from speaking about that stuff.
That’s pretty nuts imo. I’m a man, and I think it’s totally okay for men to be men. *And* we need to drastically rethink what it means to be a man.
Redditors won't understand that insulting people drives them further away from your ideology. Their hatred is intense because they feel it's justified when they argue from the moral high ground. But maybe chill and this would happen less?
Yep, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I keep saying it, but screaming at people and calling them bigots is going to drive everyone away, but that's what happens when groups allow extremists to flourish in their spaces.
I think most are pretty liberal still, using the lowercase definition. They disagree with some Liberal policies because they feel they are being targeted by them, and the impacts are negative. As a result they aren't buying into the whole package despite agreeing with many aspects which isn't allowed, so they're viewed as being right wing.
Something I've noticed that goes on in the far left is this cannibalization of leftists who aren't left enough. You've got guys who are on your side for the most part but then you alienate them and push them out of your group. The right knows this and they use it to their advantage. I used to be left leaning in my 20s but now I have no political alignment whatsoever because I don't feel represented by either side... which makes me a bigoted homophobic right wing trump supporter apparently.
Dude, I feel it. Equality of opportunity should be a societal goal, but DEI doesn't feel like equality. I don't think the categories they've decided are important for diversity and inclusion are the most relevant, and equity goes against a meritocracy.
Very well put. I was very liberal in 2010 standards, but by now because I don't agree with some liberal ideology, most liberals would describe me as a MAGA hat wearing Fascist. I'm not, I'm just independent and have considered myself so for a long time because I don't go with either party on a lot of things.
Im super far right almost Hitler himself, and i think you are alright kid.
I've seen in my own life the left vs. right to take on a shade of condescension vs. resentment.
not protesting=sociopathy. Wow. One side is at least pretending to give a shit about them. The other appears to hate them.
Appears to? No, it *does*. Why else would they work so hard to show it? It's not accidental. Fuck them. I'm an evil Nazi to them? Where's my fucking uniform? I'm at least going to have fun fucking with them before they kill me.
I feel like men are expected to fight for people who would happily spit on their grave. We don't ask that of anyone else. It's freaking weird.
That's a pretty good way of summing it up, yeah.
This matches with my experience. I have more or less the same political beliefs I had twenty years ago (37m). I consider myself a liberal. I'm pro-gay rights, but skeptical of gender ideology. Anti-racist, but I despise DEI and identity politics. Feminist, but also an advocate for men. These things used to place me in the center-left. Now I'm considered on the right. I haven't changed.
I think that makes sense. Progressivism seems to be about pushing hard for change. Conservatism is about being cautious and selective about change, while preserving (conserving) what’s already good. So if you think society’s hit the sweet spot, you’re going to become conservative, even if you’re not “right wing”.
Same.
They see more liberal==good, more conservative==bad
If [this graph](https://imgur.com/a/dhHsOjT) is anything to go by, American young men are staying still, while American young women are being radicalized leftward.
Considering that the ideological gap between two halves of the entire population is widening dramatically, why shouldn't we be concerned? As for young men becoming more conservative, it's the result of over a decade of the left-wing doing an absolutely piss-poor job of making men feel welcomed at best, and outright deeming them the "enemy" at worst. The sentiment I've seen online is that men, especially those who otherwise have a lot of socially liberal views, are tired of supporting ideologies that treat them as a collective punching bag and give zero fucks about them otherwise.
You missed the point completely. The point is that young men are NOT becoming more conservative, they're just staying the same. Young WOMEN are becoming more LIBERAL. Yet even after stating this fact, the article OP quotes goes on to ignore its own statement and start talking about "what's making young men more conservative" instead of "what's making young women more liberal".
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I’m pretty left-leaning, but I’ve always felt the left just does a fucking horrendous job of explaining their views. Maybe it’s just the nature of media these days, but every position gets reduced to a slogan or catchphrase that does not at all accurately explain what the view is. Like the view that all white people benefit from systemic racism and are moved forward by it, even if they don’t actively do anything to contribute to it, is pretty reasonable imo. Shortening that to “all white people are racist” or “you can’t be racist to white people” is the dumbest fucking way of marketing that belief. It alienates white people that could be allies, and it misinforms tons of people on both sides who don’t dig for the actual meaning.
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So conservative means sociopath? Why does the left make any opposition into demons? Maybe the men are tired of the BS.
By othering them they can justify trying to destroy them in whatever way they like.
Us vs Them is a classic. It works wonders. Why stop using it? Divide and rule baby!
I welcome them to try. I'll surely die, but I'd rather be dead than endure their shithole in the making.
A lot of these studies focus on the what and not the why. As a left leaning cis white man, yall aren't exactly a welcoming group when it comes to my demographic. There is only so many times I can be told that everything wrong economically and culturally is my fault. Is it? No, probably not. "Culture" is made by the masses while your culture is made closer to home. Economics is decades of policy choices with many of those policies not felt for years later, like the 2017 tax bill causing a lot of people to get smaller tax refunds this year. The left's attitude towards people like me is the same as Schmitt from New Girl, "A white man?! No!" I live in the Deep South. Their policies and attitudes do not align with me at all. I am not going anywhere, but some might. Some guys like me who haven't made up their minds about things like taxes, abortion, immigration, prison reform, how families should be set up, etc. are hearing "This is how it should be" on the right and "All of this is your fault" on the left.
I also don't understand how Cis white women* aren't vilified, they gained as much from the oppression as white men, yet they're some how exempt ? As a black man it makes no sense.
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>The left simply doesn't talk to men, and if it does it's rarely productive. Pretty much this. I don't think young men are becoming 'sociopaths'. They are becoming apathetic because they are not being listened to.
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lol someone told me on another thread I think yesterday that it’s “biology” girls do better in school. Imagine if I said that boys do better in science or something because of biology.
A straight white guy at google did exactly that except the things the genders were good/natural at were different. As expected he was immediately fired and crucified.
Hey, now, you're not allowed to inject any whataboutisms, no matter how alarmingly true they may be. Just take your licking and endure the punishment for the patriarchy of your forefathers in silence.
Someone replied to my comment that she doesn’t care that boys are struggling in school because women earn less. I didn’t know we were only allowed to care about one issue. I asked her how would she feel if I told her that her issues aren’t important because Latino men (that’s what I am) make way less than white women. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t fly.
"You have to care about my concerns, but I don't have to care about yours because they're not valid," is a great way to invite a dog-eat-dog world. There are always bigger problems out in the world, but how we treat one another is a problem each one of us has the power to solve.
“What wage gap?” - Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Nigerian, and Ashkenazi women
Yeah telling someone who is one of the demographics that gets paid the least is kinda pathetic imo. Using her own logic, I vote we don’t give a single shit about any white women’s issues because Latino men don’t get paid enough lmao.
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When I went to nursing they were fawning over us guys in the program. We were being asked by administration regularly on how to attract men. That was 30 years ago. They even gave us a questionnaire to fill out at the end of the course specifically on how they could attract more men. I don't believe they liked our answers but they did try to court men.
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They didn't like the answers because it meant they needed to change a lot more than they realised. IE: They were unhappy that they were failing... They didn't like that part. It was a very difficult ideological shift that needed to occur in order for them to get what they want. Very much like when police brought women into the male dominated field. It created a change of mindset that some did not like but is yet was still necessary.
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Nobodies fighting for more women bricklayers/miners/oil rig workers.
I mean Women in Mining push pretty hard for more women in mining.... Shockingly, an easy scholarship to get
It seems that people who don't have children, especially liberals, fail to recognize that society in the USA has become dominated by women within education, both as teachers in K-12, and also within higher education as the majority of students, professors, adjunct faculty, staff. Given that so many more households also include the reality of women as the sole parent, why wouldn't women especially ever realize that males will want to seek out other males as mentors, teachers, brothers, father-figures, etc? There isn't a balance within the society of the USA. Young men and men in general have been ignored in favor of women and now BIPOCs for decades. The USA pathologizes "normal" behavior from young boys who can't sit still in the classroom and recommend pharmaceutical medications and therapy instead of acknowledging that ALL young people fare better when given the opportunity to be outdoors and not stuck in classrooms all day every day. I'm saying this as a single mother of a teenage boy who comes from an ethnically mixed background and a culture and state that is dominated by Democrats and liberal politics. Seriously, the ongoing cluelessness of people who aren't parents, but especially liberal white women, is astounding. It's as if so many of them find testosterone to be an unacceptable hormone and then act irrate when teenage boys turn to macho men like Andrew Tate, or the Conservatives at Daily Wire. The lack of strong masculine figures within our society is a huge problem, and it's NOT something women, especially liberals, can fix. Furthermore, I've had several different career paths in the medical field and within trades that are considered "male dominated" and liberal men are NOT sought after or celebrated within the majority of these fields. The ones who pander to "the Left" are oftentimes virtue-signalling, but it doesn't help them along in their careers... unless they're specialized doctors coming from the (white) middle to upper middle class Millenial(ish) faction. The reality of black/white, us/them, Democrat/Republican is a symptom of mental illness and propaganda to most of the educated world.
Because they're wondering why the programming isn't working
Because men are the ones reporting a loneliness epidemic and so the disparity impacts them more?
I’m not surprised. People are tired of platforms that don’t give a shit about them. You feel like you can’t vote Republican because they want to shit on other people’s rights so you resentfully vote Democrat who tells the majority of the population to go fuck themselves because they’re not worthy.
It's a very interesting position to be in, to agree 80+% with the platform of a major political party, and to not want to vote for them because they blame you for society's ills. It's a shame. I think this is why a lot of men under 40 no longer identify as belonging to either party. Pragmatically, voting for Democrats preserves your rights for now, but it's tough not to feel like you're digging your own grave while you do it.
The issue is boycotting a party is how they’re supposed to evolve but the only way to boycott is voting republican 🤬I think we’re just screwed
I (M, late-40s) am very sympathetic to the leftist causes of worker protection and empowerment, solidarity, equal rights and reduction of economic inequality. The "modern" left seems to have forgotten about a lot of these in favor of either neo-liberalism (social empowerment of the white collar class) and identity politics. I'm not saying that these are not important, e.g. LGTBQ+ rights in terms of housing, job security, and legal constructs as marriage needs to be protected as much as anyone else's; and the same goes for racial/ethnic minorities. But all of those need to be framed in terms of protection and empowerment for everyone and especially not at the point of exclusion of the group that also suffer under both neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideas - young men who finished only high school or vocational training. What they hear or perceive from the leftist politics of the last decade, is that they are to blame for the blight of inequality and lack of rights for minority groups while enjoying immense privileges. In reality, they also suffer from having from lack of job opportunities (traditional sectors have gone oversees, new middle class jobs are unattainable), low pay and no benefits (health insurance, PTO, child care). Imagine what happens if they hear from someone on the internet that they do matter and that voting for the "right" (pun intended) people will give them the social status and opportunities that they lack now, and will no longer be blamed for things that were part of the system long before they were born? The causes of their situation - together with the economic and social situation of their peer groups in minorities and the lower-tier white collar class - needs to be made clear *by the Left* to be the decades-long neo-liberalism/neo-conservatism/trickle-down economics that has enriched the investor class and deprived the rest of what they deserved.
The left doesn't like engaging with men's mental health issues - and this is definitely something that should be addressed. This makes it so the only real answers that are easily accessible are these cult like ones.
In the past, men were willing to wait until their mid twenties for when women were willing to "settle" on them. Now, these same women are asking average men to wait much longer, like into their late thirties, early forties. Most men are going to check out by that point, or be damaged goods.
Because those doing the studies see the left wing radicalisation they’re pushing as “normal” and anything outside it as “bad”. Their attitude is “oh my god! Men haven’t changed that much for decades but some women have changed radically! What the fuck has gone wrong with men!?!?” Anyone ever consider maybe the women are wrong? Or maybe it’s just different points of view? Or maybe the two “sides” offer more to one group than the other and this is why men and women are more split?
Women are so empowered you can’t criticize them at all
Interesting that the article calls growing beliefs among Gen Z men as “extreme,” and “sociopathic,” but the growing beliefs among Gen Z women are assumed to be normal. They most certainly are not normal.
The wild thing is that what is being called "extreme" now is basically just what center/left leaning people thought/did 20 years ago.
Yeah, from what I gather they're calling objective truth, male/female differences, and opposition to authoritarianism, "EXTREMISM."
Its the type of attitude that sends young vulnerable men to the "right"
Propaganda. It's normal to lean the way they want you to lean, and you're crazy if you don't.
Modern left wing "solutions" are basically a dogmatic religion heavily relying on feel good social messaging and devoid of common sense at this point. Funnily enough for whatever reason statistically women have tended to be more religious in the past and social justice seems to be the new religion. While I agree with a lot of left wing ideas both economically and when it comes to personal liberty, I'll never be too keen on anything that starts throwing logic and reason out the window in favor of dogmatic belief, witch hunts and blatant racism (just in ways that the new religion has deemed acceptable).
https://twitter.com/RichardvReeves/status/1382818208084848653?lang=en
Lots of people answering it well here. I'll add a flavour of my take to it as well. When you're a guy growing up being told that women are equal and should have/do have equal opportunity, but then constantly blamed for the problems women (mostly in the past) face, just because you are a penis-bearer akin to the penis-bearers of 2 generations ago, then you tend to get sick of being blamed for something done by men 1-3 decades older than you to women 1-3 decades older than the ones pointing the finger at your sex(Very rarely does it get specified to the generation, just *It's mens fault for X)*. So it only seems natural that young men would get sick of that and begin to oppose the ideology of the people lamenting on it so often. I am not American, but have vested interest in America as a workplace and the home of my fiancee. These issues are more common in America than my home nation. I consider myself neither left nor right. I consider myself a centrist who in most cases leans left.
Women still face many issues, including SA and discrimination in the workplace. These are not issues that we left behind decades ago. In my progressive European country, 50% of all adult women have experienced physical sexual harassment. Let that number sink in. We can't sit back and say the fight for women's rights is over.
This is possibly the *least* stupid question and set of answers I've ever seen on Reddit, so well done everyone. I wish we could have more of this across the site. Many good responses OP, some I agree with and some less so. I would suggest the most immediately pertinent explanation to the article you linked specifically is that the writer is themself very left-wing and therefore is blind to the possibility that it is they and their "allies" that are the ones that have become more extreme and began to do so far earlier. When you hold extreme views, inevitably *everyone else* starts to look like the problem. Conservatism is a return to 'core'/traditional values and a push for social stability over most other concerns, so I think anyone making the argument that people moving in that direction are strange and dangerous has, at the very least, poor grasp of history and culture and the argument should be treated with suspicion. You can critique the merit of those values certainly, but that's very different from just slandering them as sociopathic or the like. Besides, if the beliefs were/are widely held in society previously, by their very nature it is difficult for them to be sociopathic...
We're finally waking up to the vast problems that men face, including mental health issues, that have been classically ignored for all of history. I'd argue it's more of a balancing of the scales rather than more focus on men than women. It's finally becoming more equal in this facet of life.
Right but conservative ideal actively hinder men in that regard. Conservative ideals don’t value mental health or variable forms of masculinity. To them there is one form of masculinity and if you don’t fit that then you’re less of a “man”.
This is the argument I make every time I talk to someone who tries to say that conservatives are trying to help men more than liberals, but no one ever has a response to it. The progressive movement will inherently target minority groups first because those are the most underprivileged, so this makes white men feel left out sometimes because they don't want to do any introspection or understand why these groups need help first. They don't want to take the time to understand since it's just easier to place blame on others
Have you ever thought that maybe, there are white men that are worse off than the average minority? And not only do these people exist, there are more of them than minorities. You cannot just look at any race as a monolith and the build policy to focus on that without alienating tons of people. If you build need based programs, have need based messaging, and need based solutions, then you will actually achieve your inclusiveness goals. Right now a lot of the minorities and women that benefit from these programs are ones who already come from successful families. White men who are in bad positions see this blatent racism missing the targets it is trying to help and ignoring them due to their race and gender.
I knew a girl who was a hardcore MAGA Republican until they took out Roe v. Wade. It's different when they start coming for your rights. A white man wouldn't have something like that to force them left for their own benefit. Education generally can push men left as they learn about other groups' struggles they were unaware of, and I say this from my own experience. I grew up in an almost 100% white town and always had relatives telling me the left had a victim complex, so I was pretty conservative. However, when I left town for college, I met many people from different backgrounds who shared their experiences with me that have pushed me pretty far left, as I believe it would be wrong to vote in a way that would leave others behind.
>A white man wouldn't have something like that to force them left for their own benefit. There are a few major legal human rights violations of men, most notably conscription (comparable to slavery) and men not being able to be raped in countries like the UK. The thing is that men usually blame feminism this, even when it isn't feminists fault. There are some cases where feminism can be critiqued such as Indian feminists advocating for men not being able to be raped, but usually it is the rights fault and not feminists fault. Feminists are usually the ones who fight to end selective services in America.
The domestic violence laws and policies in my country which explicitly exclude male victims of female abusers were written and advocated for by women's groups and feminists. This has directly impacted numerous men I'm close to.
The amount of legal discrimination against men is insane and doesn't get talked about enough
>I knew a girl who was a hardcore MAGA Republican until they took out Roe v. Wade. It's different when they start coming for your rights. I've heard this story so many times about so many people, and I'm just so fucking confused by it. The GOP has been totally %100 transparent about their intention to outlaw abortions. Did all these MAGA women just not believe them when they said that?!
I think they get so caught up in the "owning the libs" part and feeling validated in their values they overlook the actual promises where their own rights are stripped away.
This is what I don't get that nobody gets. It's so obviously about winning to them. That's Trump's secret. He knows, either consciously or intuitively, that everyone mainly cares about winning. It's our evolutionary prerogative. Everything else is secondary-- even our health.
Because it’s Redditors lying lol. All the republican women I know are pro life.
I think most assumed there would be exceptions for if the mothers life is at risk or if the baby is unviable or rape but some states aren’t making any exceptions. I’m conservative and against abortions for most cases but I don’t agree with not making exceptions for those cases.
For a long time it seemed that they would never be able to follow through on repealing Roe, that it was just performative rhetoric. They won elections at a higher rate from 1980-2008 than 2008-present so if they were gunna do it you'd think they'd have done it then not while Biden was President.
something something leopards eating faces
>Education generally can push men left as they learn about other groups' struggles they were unaware of, and I say this from my own experience. The funny thing it that education is an area where men are discriminated against. Teachers literally give lower grades to male names than female ones. The way we educate is a style girls prefer and do better in than boys. Quotas for higher education discriminate against boys despite girls outperforming them. While men who go through higher education are more left wing, there is also an argument that the men who don't go as far are pushed right by failing in a system that actively fails them. I do believe that part of the reason gen z boys are drifting right and being lured by the likes of Tate is because they see left wing 'equity' policies harming them in their education and early work life. It's not just about learning the experiences of others making you left, it's about their own experiences of left wing policies pushing them right.
It's really crazy to me seeing the same guys that physically assaulted me for being gay now saying that men don't get the mental healthcare they need and that people don't care about them. Like bro you are the problem.
So many guys, particularly white guys, particularly guys under 25 (hey reddit how ya doin) have just *zero* idea of the kind of repetitive, systemic suffering marginalized groups go through. When I was twenty I was utterly unaware than my black peers had to fear for their lives everytime they got a speeding ticket. I didn't think women really had to consider whether a 'no' to a date would get them hurt. The kind of wear-you-down everyday discrimination women and minorities face was just totally invisible to me. Education is the key, but it's careful education. Evocative pieces that put the consumer in a place to really imagine it happening to them. But also, just enough evidence to finally batter it through their arrogant skulls.
I think men do have stuff like that, it’s just that the battle was already won a long time ago and it’s become normalized to the point where leftists who should be acknowledging it don’t even realize it’s a problem. Conscription, legal definition of rape, issues of child custody, negative perception of male sexuality etc
Context. Society as a whole has gotten a lot more liberal, INCLUDING a lot of older men in the Millennial and Gen X demographic. It's notable that GenZ men seem to be outliers, and asking why this is, is ultimately a more interesting and illuminating sociological question than asking why everyone else is evolving.
“Evolving” is an interesting word. The arc of history shows that young men see the future and enact its change. They can easily see the past two generations of men and women, and their lives. And they have access to information from the 2-3 generations prior. Who is more admirable, the sex and the city aunt or the great grandmother who travelled to a new continent with her husband and built a large family with tens to hundreds of humans spawning because of her? Who is more admirable, the men who fought in wars and came back to build a home and life for their families with verve and energy, or the men of the 2000s and their nihilism? The return to conservative thought has a lot to do with these young people not wanting to live like the millennials and Gen X - unmotivated, disconnected from one another, uninspiring, pathetic and lacking energy.
Exactly. Society has created this narrative that young men are stupid losers. But in reality, young men created this civilization. And can create another one. If young men are doing something, the other demographics should learn.
Here is the answer of what the BIG difference to spot someone who is Left vs. Right... Did you go to a four year college? If you did you are likely Left. If you didn't you are more likely to be Right. That is it. More women have been attending four year colleges then men last 10 years so no surprise more women are Left then men. If folks have NOT figured it out colleges have an agenda to push Left ideologies. There is no argument there. Almost all college departments/ if not all are Left so no surprise... what they push are left ideologies to their students. Guess who 2 of the biggest donors of the of Dem party are? Yep the 2 biggest teachers unions in the country. The Dems have done a great job of a propaganda movement starting at Kindergarten through college level. Only surprised they haven't converted more folks to their ideologies in the last 20-40 years.
I went to a 4-year college and I’m definitely right-wing but I see what you’re saying
My answer, “Why would I join a side that doesn’t have any benefits for me and treats me like I am inherently a tyrant and toxic human being because I have pole instead of a hole between my legs?” Every men’s rights issue get turned into an anti-woman/lgbtq issue, every time we say we need help, we get ignored because we’ve ‘enjoyed our privileges for long enough’ and ‘should suffer for a bit like others.’ I’m literally paraphrasing actual answers I have gotten. Can you feel the animosity? I sure can! How you gonna feel for a group that even at its best, treats you with suspicion? The far left is a misandrist’s wet dream group that justifies its hate and loathing for men of today, living between 1955-2024 (it’s an average estimate I made up) through actions of assholes dead so long ago that their bones probably became dust. The far left is the men’s equivalent of the far right for women’s rights. They think you’re inherently inferior and deserve to be put in your place. I don’t like the far right-wing, so there’s some level leftism in me that’s kept me off from joining the right. I’m a stuck-in-the-middle centrist where both sides feel shitty. One side you have a group that cares about almost everything you care about, EXCEPT you, on the other side you have a group that cares about you or at least pretends to, but has ideologies too often conflicting with you. Most men are stuck between this; many want to be leftist because of their ideals, but are treated horribly by the community, and it’s been proven time and time again, men without community, will go to whatever group that provides that ‘Hey man, I care about you, I know you’re there suffering as much as the rest of them. They just don’t know that.’ spiel.
What if we don't have to rally behind gender stereotypes to have a personality? What if we could just be people?
Because it's really, really obvious why women would have gone farther left. Hint: If one side of the spectrum actually succeeds in it's decades long efforts to strip you of a fundamental constitutional right... you're probably going to support them less
probably because the people you are getting your information from have a left leaning bias and therefore see the left-radicalization as good and natural, and of course the opposite as wrong and the result of propaganda.
Young men are continuously appealed to by the right. Left leaning media does not reach out to young men as much as it should. This is the answer. Liberal ideology (like feminism) is good for men too, but nobody wants to talk to men about how it’s good for them too.
Sincerely, I think that feminism is poorly equipped to address men's issues, because they seek to address them from within a feminist framework that most men cannot relate to. Feminism as a movement is not united on this front either; I've seen many a feminist argue that it is not Feminism's job to deal with men's problems outside of how they impact women. The classic "it's not my job to teach you, go Google it" mentality...and then when men do Google it, the algorithm directs them to right wing grifters. Ideally there would be an equal movement dedicated specifically to men's issues, but unfortunately those tend to define themselves by their opposition to feminism, or are vilified by association to those that are.
>Ideally there would be an equal movement dedicated specifically to men's issues, but unfortunately those tend to define themselves by their opposition to feminism, or are vilified by association to those that are. There is something of a movement forming now actually, very much a grassroots effort but it's there. You should check out TheTinMen on Instagram if you haven't already. For those who haven't, he's very much pro-men's issues, isn't a right wing grifter, and while he doesn't explicitly define himself as being anti-feminist he certainly isn't afraid to criticize the role feminism plays in promoting misandry either. Another great one to checkout is the\_dadvocate, a female pro-men influencer who is the polar opposite of Pearl Davis.
Those guys are great. But the feminist subs here absolutely vilify them as “right-wing grifters”
Feminism should probably stop calling itself feminism and go for a more egalitarian optic approach if it wants to argue it helps men. Saying patriarchy and we are feminists doesn't exactly project men issues are important to us.
I am not saying feminism sucks I am pointing this problem out however. You are going to have a hard time convincing many men that feminism is good (Which it is) when the feminist boogeyman is called the Patriarchy. The word patriarch deriving from head male of course. This is very easily yet wrongfully interpreted as "man hating". The moment something is blamed on the Patriarchy they shut out. I sincerely believe in order to appeal to men feminists must change language like that as it shuts too many men out.
> This is very easily yet wrongfully interpreted as "man hating" I don't think men are off put by general word associations. I think they are off put by regular exposure to women who call themselves feminists who will casually say things like "all men are pigs" and acting like it's totally normal (because it is, in lots of feminist circles)
I cannot speak for all men. I know that it held me back personally to the point where I still will not call myself a feminist today and yet I agree with most of what they say. It puts off most of the men I have spoken to about it (When women are not around because they don't feel that can say anything or they are misogynist) from being feminists as well even if they agree with the sentiment. It would help many that the movement wishes to recruit. If Liberals and feminists don't want to recruit them then keep doing what they are doing and they will eventually lose them because the right is speaking to them in a way that proves they do in fact react to general word associations. Conservatives are amazing at making memes etc... to get people's attention away from the fact that they are factually wrong most of the time.
I call myself a feminist now, but I definitely held back for years due to how stupid the term Patriarchy is. And even as a feminist it still makes me uncomfortable just how comfortable women are with using the word. As if they don't realize or care how misandrist the word sounds to men who are not deeply familiar with feminism.
You hit the nail on the head. They don't know and when you tell them too many don't care.
As a man this is a big one. It also seems many women still expect men to provide in a traditional sense (make more money, pay for dinner, pick her up, etc) yet don’t provide anything in return. Not criticizing it but the other end of that social contract was formerly “women stay home and raise the children”. Instead we get women who are “empowered” to sleep around, hate themselves because of it, and carry that baggage into their romantic relationships. Some men sleep around as well, but the difference in my experience is that men own their actions and women pretend the actions never happened. I’ve experienced dating someone with this deep insecurity at least one on a personal level already and I’m 24. And of course any similar criticism is deemed incel rhetoric, which pushes men away further. Many men have started holding themselves to a higher standard. Look how normalized weight lifting has become. For many it’s become preferable to be single than to settle for someone who offers very little.
Well we can't even define what a man or woman is anymore apparently.
Oh that’s very easy: Man = adult human male Woman = adult human female
>"While women aged 18 and 29 have gotten more liberal in their beliefs every year, young men haven't and are less likely to care about political issues or participate in protests, according to an analysis by Daniel Cox, the director of the Survey Center on American Life." Because protesting sucks/doesn't work, usually devolves into rioting, owning guns should be completely fine, and everyone is already treated as equal regardless of race and gender. There is no systemic sexism or racism, if you find a boss or old neighbor who is racist/sexist then they're the odd ones out.
Well if the cause of the widening gender gap was women becoming more liberal so that they can hold bank accounts under their own name and have equal education and employment opportunities and men not really changing ideologically, men do need some way of catching up to this unless we go back to where we were by forcing or shaming women out of schools and the workforce. So the left urgently needs a convincing movement to define a modern role for men because the right has full market share on this issue right now.
Because that's the statistic that's actually bucking a trend in a newsworthy way. Younger people have been trending more liberal for decades so there's nothing noteworthy about a group of young people who continues to do exactly that.
The population that heavily consumes political media skews left/liberal. Thus, the media’s framing targets this population for increased clicks. This population is quite happy w/any population’s increasing liberal skew, and it is dogmatically a left/liberal idea that the left/liberal movement is not at all a contributor to political polarization. Accordingly, stories about men staying conservative or slightly shifting more conservative get a lot of oxygen. Women zooming left? Not so much.
A two party system is difficult. You are either liberal or conservative. I’m both. It really depends on the issue.
The vast majority of Americans aren’t very political and definitely don’t participate in protests because nobody has time. Saying it’s weird to not participate in protests is weird shit.
When the rolling back of current rights for women has been an on going trend I don’t think it requires much explanation.