7 ms·

The experience of young men is that they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male pri

by btilly 11mo ago

The experience of young men is that they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege. Doubly so if the men have white or Asian ancestry. Reactions to this vary. The ones described in the article have sought out addictions to escape this reality. Many others, including my son, have essentially said, "Well if this side rejects me, I'll go to the other side." The result is a rapid rise in conservatism, as documented in polls. See https://www.realclearpolling.com/stories/analysis/young-americans-especially-men-fuel-gop-gains https://www.realclearpolling.com/stories/analysis/young-amer... for an example. It is very easy, particularly for those who are very progressive, to blame the men themselves for these reactions. But it is a natural overreaction to the systematic rejection to a lifetime of being told that they are the problem. "You think I'm the problem? I'll show YOU what it looks like if I BECOME the problem!" I firmly believe that these problematic behaviors and politics would be greatly softened if our society showed more empathy to these struggling men. But in our polarized society, their choices and beliefs label them as the enemy. Which causes some to double down into toxic extremism like siding with incels, or MGTOW. Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization.

deleted 11mo ago
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immibis 11mo ago
> they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege. This is not me. This is not anyone I know. This is not anyone I've ever known. However, this is what I see people say online about other people who they've never met. Did you grow up consistently being told that every single thing is your fault because you have male privilege, or are you repeating something you read online or in the media?
- ryandv 11mo ago
  This sentiment seems to be especially common with white progressive women in urban metropolitan areas and their (so-called) "allies." It is the first setting in which I encountered these ideas being regularly and shamelessly circulated. As a visible and ethnic minority I did not encounter such rhetoric growing up in predominantly immigrant socially conservative suburban environments.
  - immibis 11mo ago
    I've not seen anyone express this sentiment, beyond a few internet trolls, either. I've only seen a certain kind of men claiming that it's always expressed towards them. It appears to be mostly imagined in their heads, though I'm open to seeing the evidence that every time you walk down the street you are heckled for not using your male privilege to solve climate change.
    - ryandv 11mo ago
      Well I guess I won't be heard here either then, when my lived experience as a visible and marginalized ethnic minority is being literally erased.
      - kjkjadksj 11mo ago
        How is that the conclusion you draw from the post you replied to?
      - freejazz 11mo ago
        litrally
      - btilly 11mo ago
        As DBT teaches, "Two things can be true at the same time." My son's lived experience doesn't invalidate yours. Just as it also doesn't invalidate my half-brother Tom's, who lives on a native reservation, nor my nieces, who are members of that tribe. You are wrong if you believe that I would not be willing to hear your experience. Remember, I'm the one saying, "Polarization is bad, we have to be willing to hear each other!" Sure, I'm sharing my son's experience. Which may be a hard experience for you to accept. But that really doesn't mean that I'm unwilling to hear your experience. Just as I have heard the experience of other family members with vastly different life stories.
- graemep 11mo ago
  It is something a lot of people say online, and some aspects of it happen in real life.
  - ryandrake 11mo ago
    "A lot of people say" all sorts of stupid things online. That doesn't mean it's some sort of societal movement. I'd love to see actual concrete examples of "they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault." Not imaginary slights conjured up by people with a persecution complex. Actual social institutions actually telling men that everything is their fault. If they are growing up "in this world" then there must be plenty of examples of this somewhere.
    - btilly 11mo ago
      Actual concrete examples as judged by whom? Any concrete example can be dismissed as imaginary slights conjured up by people with a persecution complex. You just indicated your willingness to do so. Doing so creates a version of a No True Scotsman fallacy. You demand examples, but any example you are provided with, you will dismiss. In this discussion you've had the opportunity to hear several concrete examples. For example my description of my son's experience, and JulianChastain's in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918197. If you're opening to listening, there are plenty of young men out there who are willing to share their stories. Granted, the men doing so are generally hurt. And hurt people overgeneralize. So you need to listen, with empathy, for the hurt. And not dismiss because of the overgeneralization.
      - ryandrake 11mo ago
        I look at that thread and I see "some people" (who?) and "a conversation" (with whom??). This stuff doesn't generalize to something that's happening in the world at large, and the OP even admits that himself. When I went to high school there were a handful of bullies and I could tell you I have personal experience with bullies, but that doesn't mean that in general, people are growing up in "a world of bullying" or that there is some kind of institutional push to increase bullying. What's more likely? The entire world is actually persecuting young men, or: people are having a handful of bad personal experiences, extrapolating them to the whole world, going online to find validation of this world view, and then finally finding the exact SubReddit dedicated to that world view endlessly pumping out examples of it?
- JulianChastain 11mo ago
  I grew up with the sentiment that forms of masculinity are some of the chief evils of society being the dominant narrative. I grew up learning that the US is patriarchal culture, and that it must continue to evolve and progress in order to truly provide equal opportunity to women. This narrative always seemed to view men as a kind of primordial oppressor. I remember in high school and college it was common for some people to say, "Kill All Men!" as a half joking slogan. I'm 24 for reference.
  - kjkjadksj 11mo ago
    No, it is only referring to men who are, you know, evil to other people. Of which there are plenty of examples. One of them is our president.
    - Uhhrrr 11mo ago
      I confess, I'm not very bright and am having trouble decoding the subtleties of "Kill All Men!" as you have done. Could you explain how you got from "All" to "just the bad ones"? Would you interpret "Kill All Women" in the same manner? Tangential question: do you advocate death for all bad people, a group which according to you includes the president?
      - neutronicus 11mo ago
        I think GP is more in response to "view[ing] men as a kind of primordial oppressor", then the "Kill All Men" statement. In any case - "Kill All Men" was always just a shibboleth. Treating it as an actual policy recommendation is prima facie risible. Throwing it out there to see who is oblivious enough to object is the point.
        JulianChastain 11mo ago
        When I grew up, I was taught that if someone in your friend group makes a racist joke, you should stand up to them, and inform them that casual racism leads to normalizing racism. Even if "Kill All Men" was just a shibboleth of a specific online culture, it seems like objecting to it would be a kind of moral duty (for the same reasons), as long we are in agreement that normalized misandry is bad. But again, in my generation I don't think there was any kind of consensus that misandry is wrong. That's why objecting to a shibboleth like this would be evidence of how "oblivious" and behind the times you are
- BryantD 11mo ago
  There's a nuance here: a lot of times, it's people hearing "male privilege is a problem" and immediately being told that this means "you personally are at fault!" So it's very understandable that people believe that they're being told "everything is their fault because they have male privilege" when they're not.
- btilly 11mo ago
  This is a strawman argument, which is already answered in my comment. My impression is not based on something I read online or in the media. Nor is it based on my experiences back when I was growing up in the 1980s. My impression is based on the lived experience of my children, as consistently described by them. And particularly of the opinion of my son, who has become radicalized against it. His radicalization started with outrage that when he applied to college, his excellent SAT scores were not allowed to be submitted to most of the colleges that he wanted to go to. "Because the tests are racist and sexist." Luckily he managed to get into UC San Diego. But there he found a requirement for taking a series of courses that he saw as straight up DEI indoctrination. The content of which often outraged him. It didn't help that his very real struggles were often dismissed by the very same people who were lecturing him about his privilege. He learned that he will never be heard, and he is mad about it. Do you have any more takes demonstrating your unwillingness to hear the lived experiences of people you disagree with? Demonstrating the dismissiveness that my son is overreacting against?
  - miltonlost 11mo ago
    > But there he found a requirement for taking a series of courses that he saw as straight up DEI indoctrination. The content of which often outraged him. Oh no, having to take courses he didn't like. And content of which we just have to take his word for is enough to be outraged about. Is college not a place to go to open yourself to other ideas?
  - ranger_danger 11mo ago
    A quick look at their post history will tell you exactly what kind of person they are.
  - drivebyhooting 11mo ago
    Can you elaborate on the SAT score interdiction?
    - layer8 11mo ago
      For example: https://publiccounsel.org/press-releases/milestone-settlement-in-higher-education-reached-between-students-and-university-of-california/ https://publiccounsel.org/press-releases/milestone-settlemen...
- tshaddox 11mo ago
  If I was a conservative activist and I wanted to persuade you to join me, something I would consider is trying to use social media to convince you that my political opponents or society at large are your enemy.
- neutronicus 11mo ago
  "Grow up", no. In college 2006-2010 none of this was in the zeitgeist. In middle school in the 90s and aughts we (I included) casually used slurs that would get your business boycotted if you used them today. I first became of it online (through ShitRedditSays, for anyone who remembers that) ~2011. Studying Physics in graduate school 2012-2018 my female contemporaries used basically the same lexicon I'd become familiar with through lurking online gender wars ("patriarchy", "male privilege", "rape culture"). In parallel to this I was involved with a competitive card game community that was initially composed of standard gamer dude types unfamiliar with the above lexicon but that eventually became very proud (in online spaces) of adopting it. This transition was sort of messy - old-guard gamer-dude types were often uncomfortable with their freshly-politicized gaming community and left for other communities. There was more ... jejune drama where guys liked their semi-horny anime-girl card-game accoutrements (playmats, card sleeves) and there was much bickering over the decision to ban this type of thing. And then, in-my-view more-serious drama over whether to ban MAGA attire from tournaments. Pre-Trump-victory people thought it was funny to do it ironically, afterwards there was again all kinds of bickering of how much MAGA stuff needed to be banned in order for the community to be sufficiently LGBT/minority-inclusive. "All of it" was the viewpoint that eventually won out. A lot of this was online but everybody had thoughts on it and talked about it at in-person tournaments, of which I attended a lot. In general there was an implicit invitation for young men like myself to learn this lexicon and accompanying intellectual framework and distinguish ourselves from "incels" (this term was sort of late in the game, I guess its predecessor was "neckbeard"? who remembers) by using it frequently and taking the opportunity to declaim its importance to other young men who weren't yet on board. Public and vitriolic denunciation of the gaming community was expected. You can probably tell from my above recap that I engaged with all this enough to understand the main perspectives being voiced and restate them in a way that made me seem at least open-minded and thoughtful, if not fully convinced. I also believed at every point that this was pretty much necessary in order to be in good standing socially speaking. This was pretty much orthogonal to getting laid, which occurred through other channels and with women who didn't seem particularly aware of any of this (or, in the case of my now-wife, just not all that bought-in). I am 37 and now married with kids and the vibe has changed a lot. Women of my acquaintance use these terms a lot less but when they are used they are completely uncontroversial. Husbands now have more right to kind of push back on the whole intellectual superstructure in spots without being slapped down. Having young sons changes the texture of things, as does living in a city (Baltimore) where young (black) men are mistreated in ways that privileged women feel duty-bound to confront and discuss. So. w/r/t your question. That specific framing is hyperbolic. But I do think that I viewed as necessary for me to publicly affirm my unconscious participation in Patriarchy and Rape Culture, and the importance of educating other young men on these topics, and the importance of participating in the ostracism of young men who didn't display openness to making the same kinds of affirmations, for a good decade or so of my life. I also think that the necessity I describe was something that came primarily from online spaces and bled over to interactions with hyper-online people (Physics grad students and competitive card game players). Make of that what you will.
- _DeadFred_ 11mo ago
  And I've watched my boy go from doing City Year and being very liberal to wanting to move to Texas to be with people he can be comfortable around because of this.
bgilroy26 11mo ago
Society is kinetic and disparate because of social media We're all on top of one another, and different cross tabs feel different ways about the same thing. So there is room for empathy and antipathy to coexist If you read the New York Times and The Atlantic there is lots of empathy for the male loneliness crisis I am in between the age of you and your son it seems. As a man who has not missed any of the "misandry", I think the overly online conservative young men are an embarrassment and I hope they grow out of it
BJones12 11mo ago
> Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization. It may not have to. There are societies where men and women can vote, and there are societies where men can vote. If there is enough male anger at the left then men can disenfranchise women (heavily correlated with Democrats) and the left loses viability due to lack of votes. And that can be the new stable equilibrium.
- btilly 11mo ago
  It is true that both sides are working to disenfranchise the other. Mostly through gerrymandering. Like how California just decided to screw democracy with Proposition 50, because Texas chose to screw democracy the other way. But the real risk isn't an attempt to appeal the 19th amendment. It is that an authoritarian executive abolishes democracy entirely. That this is the risk has been obvious for a long time. Latin America is full of countries who adopted constitutions based on the US Constitution when they threw off Spanish rule. Those democracies consistently fell when legislative deadlock and judicial corruption created a window for an authoritarian executive to declare a state of emergency and override both. We have the legislative deadlock, and a court system that is rapidly losing public respect. We have an authoritarian leaning President who is already teasing about an unconstitutional third term. He probably doesn't have the popular support to actually abolish democracy. But if we remain this polarized for another decade or two, we're likely to go the same way as every other democracy whose constitution was based on ours.
- randallsquared 11mo ago
  In the US, there would have to be a constitutional amendment, and no amendment proposed after 1971 has been ratified, and getting 38 states to ratify disenfranchisement of women could only happen in a very different political landscape than we have today.
- BeFlatXIII 11mo ago
  This is why it is vital to teach women how to build ANFO bombs.
reaperducer 11mo ago
The experience of young men is that they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege. Doubly so if the men have white or Asian ancestry. The advice my father gave still applies today, though few people (in this case, white males) have the stomach to hear it: Man up. Life isn't fair. Get over it.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- JuniperMesos 11mo ago
  One way someone can man up is by using aggressive force, or even physical violence, against those who act against him.
otikik 11mo ago
I won't pretend I understand your situation or your circumstances. I sympathize in that raising a son is challenging, I struggle with it quite a lot myself. My personal experience is that I have not seen "You are the problem" very often, but I have seen "THEY say YOU are the problem!" coming from conservative circles, very often. It's a very blatant tactic. Make "the other" an enemy, and then the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Again, nothing I said invalidates what you are saying. Both could very well be true at the same time. I live in Europe, if it helps. In any case, I wish you good raising that son.
- btilly 11mo ago
  The narrative starts with, "People who look like you are the problem, and your success is because you benefit from it." If the targeted person fails to completely agree with that narrative, they become labeled as the problem. This happens so quickly and consistently that hearing "people who look like you are the problem" short-circuits to "I was just told that I am the problem." When this is a young man's lived experience, he feels heard when he hears, "THEY say YOU are the problem!" from a vocal conservative. And this emotional validation makes it comfortable and easy to try to fit into this new group by adopting various of their attitudes and beliefs. This is exactly how I'm seeing this play out with my son. It started with experiences which felt like him being told that he is the problem. It lead to him being receptive to conservative rhetoric. I'm trying to undermine that rhetoric. But it is an uphill battle, against an emotionally comfortable slope.
  - ryandrake 11mo ago
    Nothing in the article mentions anything about misandry or societal shaming of men. Instead, the author points to the many and various online addiction-machines being marketed towards men and being built with very little regulation. I think if we want our boys to grow up and avoid being these "Monks" the author talks about, the key is to help them to avoid addiction and gambling, and to help them to avoid these persecution complexes that come from isolated online culture.
    - 11mo ago
kjkjadksj 11mo ago
I disagree entirely with this narrative that somehow keeps get repeated. The mere existence of white men has never been vilified. You know what has? Assholes. Perverts. Bigots. Racists. That is it. That’s all it is. For some reason, there is a subset of white men who see that as a direct attack on themselves. Hillary was exactly right when she spoke of deplorables. The mask is off these days.
yannyu 11mo ago
I think the underlying issue that the article briefly mentions but is likely a much more prominent cause is that we have destroyed local, physical communities over the past 30 years. The same community where I grew up biking, walking, and wandering around as a child now has police who say that they must respond if an adult calls in about unsupervised children anywhere in town. A combination of rising costs, privatization, social media, and smart phones has made it so children can't spend time together without adults monitoring them. They literally are not engaging with each other in physical space the way that many of us engaged with each other as children up until the 2000s. We can see and feel that things are different as adults, but for children the real impact is socially and emotionally stunting. Children no longer have any low-stakes space where they can experiment and learn. And when we destroy the physical, in-person community where children can find support and comfort, should we be surprised when they latch onto the loudest people on the internet?
- btilly 11mo ago
  I absolutely agree with the role of social media on our rising polarization. Many people have talked about and analyzed this. But the analysis that I find most insightful is also the first one that I read. https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator/dp/1591846285 https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulato.... It not only discusses how the dynamics of what goes viral leads to polarization, it also explains how the economics of how news is delivered today mirror those that created the yellow press over a century ago. And why both wind up delivering polarizing conspiracy theories with limited factual accuracy. I have no idea what to do about the problem. But at least I feel that I can understand it.
  - freejazz 11mo ago
    > polarizing conspiracy theories with limited factual accuracy Huh? Like the idea that young men are widely being told that "everything is their fault because they have male privilege?"
    - btilly 11mo ago
dostick 11mo ago
> It is very easy, particularly for those who are very progressive, to blame the men What it means to be progressive became so distorted, it’s almost as bad as conservative, in most cases “progressive” groups and parties are places for willing and thinking people to defuse and not actually do or contribute anything.
- btilly 11mo ago
  The meaning of political terms are always shifting. The mainstream political beliefs within either political party circa the 1990s were in stark conflict with what they are today. The gulf between the 1960s and the 1990s is just as big. To minimize confusion, unless I say otherwise, I try to use political terms in accord with how they are generally used today.
add-sub-mul-div 11mo ago
Not all young men got butthurt about a reexamination of whether white men should have the world handed to them by default. Some were just more prone to a mindset of victimhood about it. It's taking it way too personally for anyone to feel they're being blamed for history. That's a choice, and a convenient justification for raging against it.
- rcpt 11mo ago
  ^^ this comment is exactly what OP is talking about.
deleted 11mo ago
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AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
> Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization. It doesn't matter how polarized "both sides" are. Both sides is a subset of the whole society. As they become more and more insane in their polarization, more and more of society realizes that they are insane, and becomes repulsed. The pendulum is restored not by the other side becoming dominant. The pendulum swings back by the middle looking at the extreme and saying "No, you're insane, we aren't going to walk down your road."
- aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
  > The pendulum swings back by the middle looking at the extreme and saying "No, you're insane, we aren't going to walk down your road." Why do you believe that this will happen?
  - AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
    Because I believe that there are online zealots, and those zealots are very loud, and they are persuading people to agree (or at least go along), but most of those people are not themselves zealots. As they have to live with the consequences of the zealotry, they're going to not like it - not like it enough to be persuaded that it is not the answer. At that point you still have a bunch of zealots yammering online, but with a lot fewer people listening, and a lot fewer people voting the way the zealots want.
    - btilly 11mo ago
      I consider this optimistic. The usual response for people whose ideologies have lead to problems, is to double down on their ideologies. After which cognitive dissonance makes it easy to reject all evidence of their own mistakes. But your point is that most people are not zealots. True. But we live in a country which, thanks to gerrymandering, mostly sees politicians lose re-election in the primary. And since primaries bring out the most motivated people in your own party, that means that you are most likely to be replaced by someone who is more to the taste of zealots. And the sight of the other party becoming more extreme, breeds future zealots to continue the process. This dynamic is one of the key reasons why politicians have become more extreme over the last couple of decades. With the result that, despite the fact that most of us would gladly vote for a more moderate person, in an election we're forced to choose between extremes. And for over 80% of us, our choice truly doesn't matter. We live in districts that have a sufficient partisan lean that the outcome is essentially predetermined.
Apocryphon 11mo ago
I have to wonder that these sociocultural theories are still refusing to acknowledge material realities and economics. Cost of living in many nations have raised in ways not commensurate with salaries. Every major urban area with economic opportunities is suffering from real estate issues. That is going to close off doors and force people to crawl into windows. Online living becomes a salve. Culture war becomes a proxy for being able to engage with "real life." The post-Cold War Clinton years was the rise of political correctness. "It's the '90s!" was a popular cultural catchphrase. Rush Limbaugh and the talk radio shock jocks who are the forefathers of today's anti-woke talking heads cut their teeth on anti-PC culture warmongering. Yet, society didn't seem all that fragmented. Maybe it was because people were well-fed and not in fear of existential issues. In fact, the late '90s became suffused with entertainment searching for new threats and fears- disaster movies, hero's journeys about white-collar cubicle drones finding enlightenment and adventure. Then 9/11 happened, American society- and much of the West- became afraid, constantly looking over its shoulder. And that fear never went away. It simply shifted to different bogeymen. And what I would argue is the most corrosive thing about the War on Terror is that it polarized the divisions in American society, became an "us or them" thing, where being them meant becoming an existential threat to your fellow countryman. So now we see the same tired '00s cliches repackaged along different political fault-lines and social demographics. Woke/anti-woke debates, gender wars, etc. are simply updates of the same cultural struggles from the '90s- or from the '50s? ratcheted up with War on Terror paranoia and polarization. We are still living in the shadow of that era. We never depolarized from that era. Toss in the ubiquity of the internet and here you have the present.
- btilly 11mo ago
  In very real ways, the median American is richer today than throughout history. But in some ways we are clearly worse off, and going downhill. The cost of housing is one of the most important of those. Unfortunately both sides blame each other. While neither side takes action on the thing that is important - building more housing. If your population grows and your housing doesn't, the cost of housing must go up. While there is growing support for "yes in my backyard", overall we're headed the wrong way. We have not enough housing, and we are not building it as fast as demand is growing. We have thickets of regulations that make building housing very difficult. And little appetite for fixing that. Even in cases that desperately need it - such as to rebuild properties that were destroyed in California fires early this year.
deffyweffy 11mo ago
I disagree with your framing this within a 'both sides' and 'male privilege' framework, but what you are alluding to is the psychological study referred to as 'Labeling Theory'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory
throwawaypath 11mo ago
The replies you've received can be summarized as: "It's not happening but I'm glad that it is."

by btilly 11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

immibis 11mo ago

> they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege. This is not me. This is not anyone I know. This is not anyone I've ever known. However, this is what I see people say online about other people who they've never met. Did you grow up consistently being told that every single thing is your fault because you have male privilege, or are you repeating something you read online or in the media?

ryandv 11mo ago
This sentiment seems to be especially common with white progressive women in urban metropolitan areas and their (so-called) "allies." It is the first setting in which I encountered these ideas being regularly and shamelessly circulated. As a visible and ethnic minority I did not encounter such rhetoric growing up in predominantly immigrant socially conservative suburban environments.
- immibis 11mo ago
  I've not seen anyone express this sentiment, beyond a few internet trolls, either. I've only seen a certain kind of men claiming that it's always expressed towards them. It appears to be mostly imagined in their heads, though I'm open to seeing the evidence that every time you walk down the street you are heckled for not using your male privilege to solve climate change.
  - ryandv 11mo ago
    Well I guess I won't be heard here either then, when my lived experience as a visible and marginalized ethnic minority is being literally erased.
    - kjkjadksj 11mo ago
      How is that the conclusion you draw from the post you replied to?
    - freejazz 11mo ago
      litrally
    - btilly 11mo ago
      As DBT teaches, "Two things can be true at the same time." My son's lived experience doesn't invalidate yours. Just as it also doesn't invalidate my half-brother Tom's, who lives on a native reservation, nor my nieces, who are members of that tribe. You are wrong if you believe that I would not be willing to hear your experience. Remember, I'm the one saying, "Polarization is bad, we have to be willing to hear each other!" Sure, I'm sharing my son's experience. Which may be a hard experience for you to accept. But that really doesn't mean that I'm unwilling to hear your experience. Just as I have heard the experience of other family members with vastly different life stories.
graemep 11mo ago
It is something a lot of people say online, and some aspects of it happen in real life.
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  "A lot of people say" all sorts of stupid things online. That doesn't mean it's some sort of societal movement. I'd love to see actual concrete examples of "they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault." Not imaginary slights conjured up by people with a persecution complex. Actual social institutions actually telling men that everything is their fault. If they are growing up "in this world" then there must be plenty of examples of this somewhere.
  - btilly 11mo ago
    Actual concrete examples as judged by whom? Any concrete example can be dismissed as imaginary slights conjured up by people with a persecution complex. You just indicated your willingness to do so. Doing so creates a version of a No True Scotsman fallacy. You demand examples, but any example you are provided with, you will dismiss. In this discussion you've had the opportunity to hear several concrete examples. For example my description of my son's experience, and JulianChastain's in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918197. If you're opening to listening, there are plenty of young men out there who are willing to share their stories. Granted, the men doing so are generally hurt. And hurt people overgeneralize. So you need to listen, with empathy, for the hurt. And not dismiss because of the overgeneralization.
    - ryandrake 11mo ago
      I look at that thread and I see "some people" (who?) and "a conversation" (with whom??). This stuff doesn't generalize to something that's happening in the world at large, and the OP even admits that himself. When I went to high school there were a handful of bullies and I could tell you I have personal experience with bullies, but that doesn't mean that in general, people are growing up in "a world of bullying" or that there is some kind of institutional push to increase bullying. What's more likely? The entire world is actually persecuting young men, or: people are having a handful of bad personal experiences, extrapolating them to the whole world, going online to find validation of this world view, and then finally finding the exact SubReddit dedicated to that world view endlessly pumping out examples of it?
JulianChastain 11mo ago
I grew up with the sentiment that forms of masculinity are some of the chief evils of society being the dominant narrative. I grew up learning that the US is patriarchal culture, and that it must continue to evolve and progress in order to truly provide equal opportunity to women. This narrative always seemed to view men as a kind of primordial oppressor. I remember in high school and college it was common for some people to say, "Kill All Men!" as a half joking slogan. I'm 24 for reference.
- kjkjadksj 11mo ago
  No, it is only referring to men who are, you know, evil to other people. Of which there are plenty of examples. One of them is our president.
  - Uhhrrr 11mo ago
    I confess, I'm not very bright and am having trouble decoding the subtleties of "Kill All Men!" as you have done. Could you explain how you got from "All" to "just the bad ones"? Would you interpret "Kill All Women" in the same manner? Tangential question: do you advocate death for all bad people, a group which according to you includes the president?
    - neutronicus 11mo ago
      I think GP is more in response to "view[ing] men as a kind of primordial oppressor", then the "Kill All Men" statement. In any case - "Kill All Men" was always just a shibboleth. Treating it as an actual policy recommendation is prima facie risible. Throwing it out there to see who is oblivious enough to object is the point.
      - JulianChastain 11mo ago
        When I grew up, I was taught that if someone in your friend group makes a racist joke, you should stand up to them, and inform them that casual racism leads to normalizing racism. Even if "Kill All Men" was just a shibboleth of a specific online culture, it seems like objecting to it would be a kind of moral duty (for the same reasons), as long we are in agreement that normalized misandry is bad. But again, in my generation I don't think there was any kind of consensus that misandry is wrong. That's why objecting to a shibboleth like this would be evidence of how "oblivious" and behind the times you are
BryantD 11mo ago
There's a nuance here: a lot of times, it's people hearing "male privilege is a problem" and immediately being told that this means "you personally are at fault!" So it's very understandable that people believe that they're being told "everything is their fault because they have male privilege" when they're not.
btilly 11mo ago
This is a strawman argument, which is already answered in my comment. My impression is not based on something I read online or in the media. Nor is it based on my experiences back when I was growing up in the 1980s. My impression is based on the lived experience of my children, as consistently described by them. And particularly of the opinion of my son, who has become radicalized against it. His radicalization started with outrage that when he applied to college, his excellent SAT scores were not allowed to be submitted to most of the colleges that he wanted to go to. "Because the tests are racist and sexist." Luckily he managed to get into UC San Diego. But there he found a requirement for taking a series of courses that he saw as straight up DEI indoctrination. The content of which often outraged him. It didn't help that his very real struggles were often dismissed by the very same people who were lecturing him about his privilege. He learned that he will never be heard, and he is mad about it. Do you have any more takes demonstrating your unwillingness to hear the lived experiences of people you disagree with? Demonstrating the dismissiveness that my son is overreacting against?
- miltonlost 11mo ago
  > But there he found a requirement for taking a series of courses that he saw as straight up DEI indoctrination. The content of which often outraged him. Oh no, having to take courses he didn't like. And content of which we just have to take his word for is enough to be outraged about. Is college not a place to go to open yourself to other ideas?
- ranger_danger 11mo ago
  A quick look at their post history will tell you exactly what kind of person they are.
- drivebyhooting 11mo ago
  Can you elaborate on the SAT score interdiction?
  - layer8 11mo ago
    For example: https://publiccounsel.org/press-releases/milestone-settlement-in-higher-education-reached-between-students-and-university-of-california/ https://publiccounsel.org/press-releases/milestone-settlemen...
tshaddox 11mo ago
If I was a conservative activist and I wanted to persuade you to join me, something I would consider is trying to use social media to convince you that my political opponents or society at large are your enemy.
neutronicus 11mo ago
"Grow up", no. In college 2006-2010 none of this was in the zeitgeist. In middle school in the 90s and aughts we (I included) casually used slurs that would get your business boycotted if you used them today. I first became of it online (through ShitRedditSays, for anyone who remembers that) ~2011. Studying Physics in graduate school 2012-2018 my female contemporaries used basically the same lexicon I'd become familiar with through lurking online gender wars ("patriarchy", "male privilege", "rape culture"). In parallel to this I was involved with a competitive card game community that was initially composed of standard gamer dude types unfamiliar with the above lexicon but that eventually became very proud (in online spaces) of adopting it. This transition was sort of messy - old-guard gamer-dude types were often uncomfortable with their freshly-politicized gaming community and left for other communities. There was more ... jejune drama where guys liked their semi-horny anime-girl card-game accoutrements (playmats, card sleeves) and there was much bickering over the decision to ban this type of thing. And then, in-my-view more-serious drama over whether to ban MAGA attire from tournaments. Pre-Trump-victory people thought it was funny to do it ironically, afterwards there was again all kinds of bickering of how much MAGA stuff needed to be banned in order for the community to be sufficiently LGBT/minority-inclusive. "All of it" was the viewpoint that eventually won out. A lot of this was online but everybody had thoughts on it and talked about it at in-person tournaments, of which I attended a lot. In general there was an implicit invitation for young men like myself to learn this lexicon and accompanying intellectual framework and distinguish ourselves from "incels" (this term was sort of late in the game, I guess its predecessor was "neckbeard"? who remembers) by using it frequently and taking the opportunity to declaim its importance to other young men who weren't yet on board. Public and vitriolic denunciation of the gaming community was expected. You can probably tell from my above recap that I engaged with all this enough to understand the main perspectives being voiced and restate them in a way that made me seem at least open-minded and thoughtful, if not fully convinced. I also believed at every point that this was pretty much necessary in order to be in good standing socially speaking. This was pretty much orthogonal to getting laid, which occurred through other channels and with women who didn't seem particularly aware of any of this (or, in the case of my now-wife, just not all that bought-in). I am 37 and now married with kids and the vibe has changed a lot. Women of my acquaintance use these terms a lot less but when they are used they are completely uncontroversial. Husbands now have more right to kind of push back on the whole intellectual superstructure in spots without being slapped down. Having young sons changes the texture of things, as does living in a city (Baltimore) where young (black) men are mistreated in ways that privileged women feel duty-bound to confront and discuss. So. w/r/t your question. That specific framing is hyperbolic. But I do think that I viewed as necessary for me to publicly affirm my unconscious participation in Patriarchy and Rape Culture, and the importance of educating other young men on these topics, and the importance of participating in the ostracism of young men who didn't display openness to making the same kinds of affirmations, for a good decade or so of my life. I also think that the necessity I describe was something that came primarily from online spaces and bled over to interactions with hyper-online people (Physics grad students and competitive card game players). Make of that what you will.
_DeadFred_ 11mo ago
And I've watched my boy go from doing City Year and being very liberal to wanting to move to Texas to be with people he can be comfortable around because of this.

bgilroy26 11mo ago

Society is kinetic and disparate because of social media We're all on top of one another, and different cross tabs feel different ways about the same thing. So there is room for empathy and antipathy to coexist If you read the New York Times and The Atlantic there is lots of empathy for the male loneliness crisis I am in between the age of you and your son it seems. As a man who has not missed any of the "misandry", I think the overly online conservative young men are an embarrassment and I hope they grow out of it

BJones12 11mo ago

> Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization. It may not have to. There are societies where men and women can vote, and there are societies where men can vote. If there is enough male anger at the left then men can disenfranchise women (heavily correlated with Democrats) and the left loses viability due to lack of votes. And that can be the new stable equilibrium.

btilly 11mo ago
It is true that both sides are working to disenfranchise the other. Mostly through gerrymandering. Like how California just decided to screw democracy with Proposition 50, because Texas chose to screw democracy the other way. But the real risk isn't an attempt to appeal the 19th amendment. It is that an authoritarian executive abolishes democracy entirely. That this is the risk has been obvious for a long time. Latin America is full of countries who adopted constitutions based on the US Constitution when they threw off Spanish rule. Those democracies consistently fell when legislative deadlock and judicial corruption created a window for an authoritarian executive to declare a state of emergency and override both. We have the legislative deadlock, and a court system that is rapidly losing public respect. We have an authoritarian leaning President who is already teasing about an unconstitutional third term. He probably doesn't have the popular support to actually abolish democracy. But if we remain this polarized for another decade or two, we're likely to go the same way as every other democracy whose constitution was based on ours.
randallsquared 11mo ago
In the US, there would have to be a constitutional amendment, and no amendment proposed after 1971 has been ratified, and getting 38 states to ratify disenfranchisement of women could only happen in a very different political landscape than we have today.
BeFlatXIII 11mo ago
This is why it is vital to teach women how to build ANFO bombs.

reaperducer 11mo ago

The experience of young men is that they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege. Doubly so if the men have white or Asian ancestry. The advice my father gave still applies today, though few people (in this case, white males) have the stomach to hear it: Man up. Life isn't fair. Get over it.

deleted 11mo ago
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JuniperMesos 11mo ago
One way someone can man up is by using aggressive force, or even physical violence, against those who act against him.

otikik 11mo ago

I won't pretend I understand your situation or your circumstances. I sympathize in that raising a son is challenging, I struggle with it quite a lot myself. My personal experience is that I have not seen "You are the problem" very often, but I have seen "THEY say YOU are the problem!" coming from conservative circles, very often. It's a very blatant tactic. Make "the other" an enemy, and then the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Again, nothing I said invalidates what you are saying. Both could very well be true at the same time. I live in Europe, if it helps. In any case, I wish you good raising that son.

btilly 11mo ago
The narrative starts with, "People who look like you are the problem, and your success is because you benefit from it." If the targeted person fails to completely agree with that narrative, they become labeled as the problem. This happens so quickly and consistently that hearing "people who look like you are the problem" short-circuits to "I was just told that I am the problem." When this is a young man's lived experience, he feels heard when he hears, "THEY say YOU are the problem!" from a vocal conservative. And this emotional validation makes it comfortable and easy to try to fit into this new group by adopting various of their attitudes and beliefs. This is exactly how I'm seeing this play out with my son. It started with experiences which felt like him being told that he is the problem. It lead to him being receptive to conservative rhetoric. I'm trying to undermine that rhetoric. But it is an uphill battle, against an emotionally comfortable slope.
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  Nothing in the article mentions anything about misandry or societal shaming of men. Instead, the author points to the many and various online addiction-machines being marketed towards men and being built with very little regulation. I think if we want our boys to grow up and avoid being these "Monks" the author talks about, the key is to help them to avoid addiction and gambling, and to help them to avoid these persecution complexes that come from isolated online culture.
  - 11mo ago

kjkjadksj 11mo ago

I disagree entirely with this narrative that somehow keeps get repeated. The mere existence of white men has never been vilified. You know what has? Assholes. Perverts. Bigots. Racists. That is it. That’s all it is. For some reason, there is a subset of white men who see that as a direct attack on themselves. Hillary was exactly right when she spoke of deplorables. The mask is off these days.

yannyu 11mo ago

I think the underlying issue that the article briefly mentions but is likely a much more prominent cause is that we have destroyed local, physical communities over the past 30 years. The same community where I grew up biking, walking, and wandering around as a child now has police who say that they must respond if an adult calls in about unsupervised children anywhere in town. A combination of rising costs, privatization, social media, and smart phones has made it so children can't spend time together without adults monitoring them. They literally are not engaging with each other in physical space the way that many of us engaged with each other as children up until the 2000s. We can see and feel that things are different as adults, but for children the real impact is socially and emotionally stunting. Children no longer have any low-stakes space where they can experiment and learn. And when we destroy the physical, in-person community where children can find support and comfort, should we be surprised when they latch onto the loudest people on the internet?

btilly 11mo ago
I absolutely agree with the role of social media on our rising polarization. Many people have talked about and analyzed this. But the analysis that I find most insightful is also the first one that I read. https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator/dp/1591846285 https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulato.... It not only discusses how the dynamics of what goes viral leads to polarization, it also explains how the economics of how news is delivered today mirror those that created the yellow press over a century ago. And why both wind up delivering polarizing conspiracy theories with limited factual accuracy. I have no idea what to do about the problem. But at least I feel that I can understand it.
- freejazz 11mo ago
  > polarizing conspiracy theories with limited factual accuracy Huh? Like the idea that young men are widely being told that "everything is their fault because they have male privilege?"
  - btilly 11mo ago

dostick 11mo ago

> It is very easy, particularly for those who are very progressive, to blame the men What it means to be progressive became so distorted, it’s almost as bad as conservative, in most cases “progressive” groups and parties are places for willing and thinking people to defuse and not actually do or contribute anything.

btilly 11mo ago
The meaning of political terms are always shifting. The mainstream political beliefs within either political party circa the 1990s were in stark conflict with what they are today. The gulf between the 1960s and the 1990s is just as big. To minimize confusion, unless I say otherwise, I try to use political terms in accord with how they are generally used today.

add-sub-mul-div 11mo ago

Not all young men got butthurt about a reexamination of whether white men should have the world handed to them by default. Some were just more prone to a mindset of victimhood about it. It's taking it way too personally for anyone to feel they're being blamed for history. That's a choice, and a convenient justification for raging against it.

rcpt 11mo ago
^^ this comment is exactly what OP is talking about.

deleted 11mo ago

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AnimalMuppet 11mo ago

> Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization. It doesn't matter how polarized "both sides" are. Both sides is a subset of the whole society. As they become more and more insane in their polarization, more and more of society realizes that they are insane, and becomes repulsed. The pendulum is restored not by the other side becoming dominant. The pendulum swings back by the middle looking at the extreme and saying "No, you're insane, we aren't going to walk down your road."

aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
> The pendulum swings back by the middle looking at the extreme and saying "No, you're insane, we aren't going to walk down your road." Why do you believe that this will happen?
- AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
  Because I believe that there are online zealots, and those zealots are very loud, and they are persuading people to agree (or at least go along), but most of those people are not themselves zealots. As they have to live with the consequences of the zealotry, they're going to not like it - not like it enough to be persuaded that it is not the answer. At that point you still have a bunch of zealots yammering online, but with a lot fewer people listening, and a lot fewer people voting the way the zealots want.
  - btilly 11mo ago
    I consider this optimistic. The usual response for people whose ideologies have lead to problems, is to double down on their ideologies. After which cognitive dissonance makes it easy to reject all evidence of their own mistakes. But your point is that most people are not zealots. True. But we live in a country which, thanks to gerrymandering, mostly sees politicians lose re-election in the primary. And since primaries bring out the most motivated people in your own party, that means that you are most likely to be replaced by someone who is more to the taste of zealots. And the sight of the other party becoming more extreme, breeds future zealots to continue the process. This dynamic is one of the key reasons why politicians have become more extreme over the last couple of decades. With the result that, despite the fact that most of us would gladly vote for a more moderate person, in an election we're forced to choose between extremes. And for over 80% of us, our choice truly doesn't matter. We live in districts that have a sufficient partisan lean that the outcome is essentially predetermined.

Apocryphon 11mo ago

I have to wonder that these sociocultural theories are still refusing to acknowledge material realities and economics. Cost of living in many nations have raised in ways not commensurate with salaries. Every major urban area with economic opportunities is suffering from real estate issues. That is going to close off doors and force people to crawl into windows. Online living becomes a salve. Culture war becomes a proxy for being able to engage with "real life." The post-Cold War Clinton years was the rise of political correctness. "It's the '90s!" was a popular cultural catchphrase. Rush Limbaugh and the talk radio shock jocks who are the forefathers of today's anti-woke talking heads cut their teeth on anti-PC culture warmongering. Yet, society didn't seem all that fragmented. Maybe it was because people were well-fed and not in fear of existential issues. In fact, the late '90s became suffused with entertainment searching for new threats and fears- disaster movies, hero's journeys about white-collar cubicle drones finding enlightenment and adventure. Then 9/11 happened, American society- and much of the West- became afraid, constantly looking over its shoulder. And that fear never went away. It simply shifted to different bogeymen. And what I would argue is the most corrosive thing about the War on Terror is that it polarized the divisions in American society, became an "us or them" thing, where being them meant becoming an existential threat to your fellow countryman. So now we see the same tired '00s cliches repackaged along different political fault-lines and social demographics. Woke/anti-woke debates, gender wars, etc. are simply updates of the same cultural struggles from the '90s- or from the '50s? ratcheted up with War on Terror paranoia and polarization. We are still living in the shadow of that era. We never depolarized from that era. Toss in the ubiquity of the internet and here you have the present.

btilly 11mo ago
In very real ways, the median American is richer today than throughout history. But in some ways we are clearly worse off, and going downhill. The cost of housing is one of the most important of those. Unfortunately both sides blame each other. While neither side takes action on the thing that is important - building more housing. If your population grows and your housing doesn't, the cost of housing must go up. While there is growing support for "yes in my backyard", overall we're headed the wrong way. We have not enough housing, and we are not building it as fast as demand is growing. We have thickets of regulations that make building housing very difficult. And little appetite for fixing that. Even in cases that desperately need it - such as to rebuild properties that were destroyed in California fires early this year.

deffyweffy 11mo ago

I disagree with your framing this within a 'both sides' and 'male privilege' framework, but what you are alluding to is the psychological study referred to as 'Labeling Theory'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory

throwawaypath 11mo ago

The replies you've received can be summarized as: "It's not happening but I'm glad that it is."