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Notes on Being a Man
- jakelazaroff 1y ago> Donald Trump pulled off a stunning political comeback because of … young men. If you break exit poll data down by race [1], Black men 18-29 supported Harris by a whopping 55 percentage points. So even though Scott pays lip service to Black male educators being particularly underrepresented, he can't explain why this alleged phenomenon affecting young men is so vastly different between demographics. [1] https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/exit-polls/national-results/general/president/20 https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/exit-polls/national-result...
- wakawaka28 1y agoOnly 55 percentage points? Did you mean "whopping" in an ironic sense? I expected that stat to be higher. This speaks to just how bad of a candidate Harris was.
- jakelazaroff 1y agoI'm not commenting on Harris as a candidate, just saying that election exit polls actually show the opposite of what Scott is claiming.
- wakawaka28 1y agoOh.... I couldn't stay interested to read the whole article. Yes, that is indeed a male demographic that voted for a woman as a whole. Men as a whole didn't reject Kamala because she was a woman. Her entire party embodies anti-man, anti-white policies. She had no definite principles and would have said anything to get power. Our best guess at her actual principles is that she is a communist. The Democrat machine basically forced her on voters, which says a lot about the party as well.
- jakelazaroff 1y agoThat is untethered from reality and still has nothing to do with what I'm saying. Maybe actually read the article before joining a discussion about it?
- wakawaka28 1y ago[flagged]
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- namanyayg 1y agoI agree and see these antisocial patterns in my younger male relatives, but the question is: what is the actual solution?
- rexpop 1y agoThe solution to the struggles of boys and men, masked by patriarchal pseudo-solutions, is fundamentally tied to a revolution of values, the elimination of patriarchy as an organizing principle, and the reclamation of male emotional integrity and humanity. Men and women must work together to dismantle systems of domination, embrace feminist thought, and foster genuine selfhood rooted in love and connection. This means transforming the cultural architecture that defines gender roles and power, because the crisis facing men is the crisis of patriarchal masculinity, and the only resolution is the ending of patriarchy. "Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit," and men cannot be truly free as long as its underlying principles are in place. To end patriarchy, we must challenge both its psychological and concrete manifestations in daily life. Everywhere we must replace the dominator model with a partnership model that humbly recognizes interbeing and interdependency as the organic relationship of all living beings. Given theses requirements, Feminist thinking and practice are the only way to truly address the crisis of masculinity. A feminist vision embraces a masculinity rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. Feminism teaches men how to love justice and freedom in ways that affirm life, so we can choose loyalty to justice over manhood. The deepest wound of patriarchy is psychic, so the solution involves internal recovery and the rejection of the "false self". To heal, men must learn to feel again. We must break the silence and speak the pain that patriarchal culture has forced us to suppress. If men cannot feel, we cannot connect or be intimate. If we cannot connect, we cannot operate in a society. Feminist masculinity defines strength not as "power over" others, but as one's capacity to be responsible for self and others. Its core constituents include integrity, self-love, emotional awareness, assertiveness, and relational skill, including the capacity to be empathic, autonomous, and connected. Men must be valued for simply being, rather than having our value determined by what we do or perform (which is the patriarchal standard). We must reclaim masculinity and not allow it to be synonymous with domination or the will to do violence.
- luciferin 1y agoI vehemently reject the idea that the left believes, or even phrases their policies to imply, that men, young men, or white men are "the problem". There is a portion of society experiencing persecution bias, and I'm not singaling out any group(s) with that statement. We will never again progress as a society as long as we continue to view the success of someone else as our failure. This goes both ways. The article lists a number of issues, and 90% of them apply to everyone in our society, not just men, not just the young, not just white people. Why do these young white men read "we the people" and not see it literally applying to all humans? Martin Luther King Jr's speech was as much about little black boys and girls holding hands with little white boys and girls. This isn't exclusion.
- darrmit 1y agoYou lost me at “the left”.
- mikestew 1y agoIn which case I think you've misread OP. It's not a well-written opening sentence, but it might not mean what you think it does.
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- luciferin 1y agoI find that ironic. I was specifically referencing a line in the second paragraph of the article. The author used the same terminology.
- krapp 1y ago>Why do these young white men read "we the people" and not see it literally applying to all humans? Because we live in a society in which white supremacy still holds real political and cultural power due to the the structures of systemic racism and colonialism on which it was founded, and because we've accepted the asinine "pendulum" premise that implies both sides (in this case, pro and anti racist) of any political axis are equally valid. No one is claiming that men or white men are the problem per se except maybe some rage baiters online. Patriarchy and white supremacy are problems, however. Rape culture and toxic masculinity are problems. There are many aspects of our modern capitalist society in which the success of someone comes at the cost of another's failure, because it was designed to be so. And often, although not always, the current of oppression to power leads from female to male, and non-white to white. That's just a fact. Speaking of MLK Jr, read what he had to say about well meaning white liberals. He thought they were worse than the Klan. The last thing he would have advocated was a "color-blind" way of seeing the world.
- buckle8017 1y agoWe've constructed a society where an average man with an average job will get married, have kids, get divorced and spend the next decade working a job that doesn't materially or otherwise benefit him. Is it really surprising that men are opting out?
- munificent 1y ago> Why are we so averse to identifying and celebrating what’s good about men and masculinity, and why does it matter? Because we won’t prosper if we convince boys and young men that they’re victims, or that they don’t have to be persistent and resilient, or that their perspective isn’t valuable. If we do, we’ll end up with a society of old people and zero economic growth. It's much worse than that. History shows that young men are the free radicals of society. If a society doesn't have systems in place that enable them to form stable relationships with partners, peers, and esteemed communities, they will burn the thing to the ground out of rage at being thrown into a system that doesn't want them.
- lesuorac 1y agoEh, society gave women a pretty shitty end of the stick and they took away everybody's alcohol for a bit in the US. Any segment can be a free radical if given the motivation but right now the motivation is very heavily male dominated. Male employement is down like 15% while female employement is up nearly 30% [1]. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/cps/demographics/women-labor-force.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/demographics/women-labor-force.htm
- Noumenon72 1y agoIn history they didn't have video games, porn, or mass surveillance of what you and your angry friends are getting up to. I would not expect things to play out by any historical pattern.
- bluGill 1y agoThey had plenty of porn like opportunities. Prostitutes are known throughout history. Usually a double standard where the males were accepted but females not
- twiclo 1y agoSurely you're not saying that young men in history were sleeping with prostitutes at the same rate young men today look at porn.
- moomin 1y agoThinking there’s a lot of true things in here being pulled into a narrative that doesn’t really make sense in context. Not saying young men don’t have problems, but even with all those problems they’re still earning ten percent more than women in the same age bracket.
- twiclo 1y agoNo one is going to take you seriously if your argument is the tired, long debunked, wage gap argument. Women make less than men because they choose to. In recent years when you compare single working men to single working women, women are out-earning men. They're graduating college at higher rates. There are countless other statistics that paint a clear picture that men are struggling. At what point will you actually care?
- cauch 1y agoNo one is going to take you seriously if your argument is the very reductive "because they choose to" (being tongue-in-cheek here, don't take it seriously) It is very clear that public image has a huge impact on what people choose. For example, people who consider themselves introvert choose, in majority, to avoid fields that have a strong extrovert vibe. Similarly, people will tend to not choose fields if the field "gives a vibe" they don't feel they belong to. So, if there is an initial bias toward men, the fact that some people don't choose the field is in no way a proof that there is no bias. I agree that the 10% number is not the best, but the "corrected" number where you take the samples in same job and position does the same mistake. In fact, there are arguments that in these cases, you have a selection bias (some of the men in the field are seeing this field as their calling, but some of the men are just doing it as a job without being overly passionated, while the women that are not overly passionated just don't choose this job) and that using this methodology, women should overperform because there is a gap. The "real" number is probably in between.
- michaelt 1y ago> they’re still earning ten percent more than women in the same age bracket. Both things can be true. To use an exaggerated example, if you pay the top 20% of people six figures and leave the bottom 80% to starve, the average earnings would look great, but you’ll soon have an angry mob on your hands. Now imagine if your average man used to be able to do skilled factory work and support a family, but those jobs have gone and growth sectors like care don’t pay enough to support a family. Then imagine an electoral system where a 4% margin separates the winner and the loser. Doesn’t take 80% of the population being disaffected to flip the results.
- close04 1y agoThere are some problems brewing in society for quite some time now. A demographic for which things changed too much, too fast, and not at all for the better will sooner or later react in a way nobody will like. I remember reading an article [0] a few years ago that was surprising at first and then when I looked around it wasn’t so surprising anymore. [0] https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/why-boys-and-men https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/why-boys-and-men
- vharuck 1y agoI haven't read that book, but I might now. It's refreshing to see such a realistic assessment of the problems. IMO, the most important line from that page: >The problems of boys and men are structural in nature, rather than individual; but are rarely treated as such. This is why shame does nothing productive, whether it's shaming boys for displaying "masculine" traits or displaying "feminine" traits. We can't address a social problem by asking every individual to change. That's just not feasible, even if there weren't a "man-o-sphere" and "radical feminism movement" working against it. Heck, even if the root problem was a personal one that each man could solve for himself, our options would still be a society-wide solution or tossing our hands up in resignation and hoping for the best.
- afavour 1y agoAs a man in my 40s I do wonder how I'd fare as a 17 year old today. Back in my teenage years I was deeply awkward, spent a ton of time in my room on my computer (IRC, baby!) and was pretty directionless. Eventually I realised that I needed to do something. Talk to girls. Absolutely crashed and burned the first few times I did it but slowly got better. I started attending the parties kids in my school were throwing rather than sitting at home all night. But there wasn't a highly motivated and profitable enterprise targeted at me telling me I was a victim. If the "manosphere" existed back then and I was plugged into all the podcasts telling me how the modern world hates men and treats us all unfairly I might have never left that bubble and would have probably spiraled into bitterness. I can't help but feel like we've cursed younger generations (both genders, different effects) with social media and the influencer economy that has a financial interest in their continued isolation.
- ryuhhnn 1y agoEvery time the author mentions a problem that young men face, he explains it away by saying that it stems from a society that's built against serving the needs of men, even though the outcomes affect women all the same. He mentions the college debt crisis and it's affects on men merely one breath after explaining that women outnumber men in higher education. The housing affordability crisis is also not exclusive to men. Workforce participation of men can also be explained by relaxed gender roles and more women entering the workforce while their male counterparts take on domestic work. Pretty much the only thing he rightfully identifies as a uniquely male issue is suicide. Nobody is averse to identifying the issues that men face, but be correct in what you're identifying as a uniquely male issue. This author has been making the rounds in popular culture lately and I can't help but feel like it's because he's offering an oversimplified solution to a problem that runs much deeper than how we treat men and young boys. Society consistently asks women and non-White people to take ownership of their own problems, why can't we ask the same of men?
- IncreasePosts 1y agoNot only are more women in college, but average starting salary out of college is $12k more for men than women: https://www.naceweb.org/job-market/compensation/nace-research-pay-inequity-based-on-gender-begins-at-the-start-of-career/ https://www.naceweb.org/job-market/compensation/nace-researc... Women also on average go into slightly more debt: https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-gender https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-gender
- bradlys 1y agoYeah, says it right there: women choose lower paying professions. That’s literally all it is. The pay gap mostly has to do with what careers women choose. Most men and women earn the same given the same credentials, years of experience, and job.
- afavour 1y ago> women choose lower paying professions Do they actively choose lower paying professions or do they unwillingly end up in those professions? It seems to be you're making a logical leap without citation. Why would a gender choose en masse to earn less money?
- bradlys 1y agoThe three issues that I think affect men more: 1. blue collar jobs (mostly men) aren’t abundant. Simply put, we’re not building much of anything in the US. So, why would they be. Tech is mostly men but is importing most of the labor (at least for Silicon Valley). So, tech isn’t helping American men. 2. Dating norms have completely changed. Looks have become a much bigger percentage of the reason why women choose their partner than ever before. Dating apps being the main way for educated grads to meet partners is just a symptom - not the cause. Looksism was taking off before apps caught fire - the apps just accelerated it. 3. Costs have skyrocketed while expectations around men being providers have not changed. While there are a decent amount of men who probably are toxically attached to some idea of being a provider - most men I’ve met would kill for a wife who made significantly more than them. Men typically hate working too. Almost all have resigned and have just accepted that the only way she will contribute is either by her parents giving a ton of money or she will work her job that pays nowhere near as much as his. There are, of course, a good amount of similarly earning couples but for single men - you’re not often choosing your equal when out dating. Hypergamy, etc.
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- teddyh 1y agoRelated: <https://jasonpargin.substack.com/p/to-save-the-world-save-yourself https://jasonpargin.substack.com/p/to-save-the-world-save-yo...>
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- fud101 1y agoGalloway is a zionist, I lost complete respect for him that I had upto to that point. I was a former Pivot listener etc. Guy is a joke.
- silexia 1y agoDiscrimination against men is at epic proportions and is justified by falsified studies showing a wage gap that does not exist. The American government is picking winners at very high rates. If you are a native American, here's money and jobs and special rights. If you're a black woman, here is a paid for down payment and mortgage, highly paid jobs, etc. We need to shrink the government dramatically to get back our individual rights and freedoms. Or young men will continue to opt out of the unfair game.
- satisfice 1y agoAny solution that doesn’t offer men maximum power will be ignored. Any solution that doesn’t address our capacity for violence is irrelevant.