No Stupid Questions

Look at what men are missing and how the right is selling it to them.

Men aren't doing so hot right now, emotionally and mentally. They feel like they are not manly, and criticized for trying to be manly or liking manly things. There's a lack of transitions into manhood, and the bar that is seen as a successful man with a good career is pretty much impossible.

If you have a poor paying job, you're not manly. If you have a well paying job but it's blue collar you're not manly because you're a dumb working stiff. If you have a white collar job you're not manly because you're not doing anything tough with your body. Maybe if you're a CEO who owns the company but also does rock climbing and bear fighting are you seen as manly enough, maybe.

Then you have these guys, your Andrew Tates and so on, who act very manly and tell you it's ok to be a man and then spout off some of the most toxic, asinine shit saying that's how you be a man. And young guys fall for it because they aren't shown any alternative.

Then on the left you have people who speak ill of men as a whole, and manliness as a whole. Sometimes the criticisms are correct, but a lot of times it's presented as men overall. If you try to say that it's not every man out there who's a monster, you get blasted with criticism for saying "not all men". They also don't provide anything positive or solutions for feeling manly, with the best they can be offered is to be more like women.

So young men, especially young cishet men, are actively pushed away from leftist spaces, leaving them feeling demonized by those spaces, and actively pandered to by the right which are offering mind poison dressed up as solutions.

So what do we do? There's a few things to fix.

1. leftist media has to stop demonizing men and start demonizing actions. Instead of saying "men are rapists" start saying "rapists are bad". When people start to say things like "cis people are shit" other people need to call them out of it, because if you're supposed to be the side that accepts people's gender identity, it should be for all gender identities. It can feel cathartic to rail against the majority demographic, especially when people of that demographic have hurt you, but if you feel that it's unfair to rail against a group because of the actions of a few members of it, that should apply to all groups. Things like "what's wrong with the straights" doesn't help build bonds with allies, and it turns young men away from leftist spaces.

2. there needs to be validation and recognition from the left for problems men have, like suicide, workplace death and heavier prison sentencing. The left needs to show that they are trying to fix these problems, too, instead of telling young men to suck it up and be a man about it because they are the oppressor demographic.

3. there needs to be people who counter toxic masculinity, not with telling men to be more like women, but with positive masculinity. If a man is having emotional or mental problems, toxic masculinity says to push that down. Femininity says it's ok to be soft and vulnerable. Positive masculinity would say that a real man is true to himself and his feelings and expresses then freely, even if others might ridicule him for it. There's a subtle difference, and the end result of femininity's and positive masculinity's tactic might be the same, i.e. the man expresses those feelings, but the way that they get there is very different. The former makes the man feel less validated in his identity, while the latter uplifts it. The memes where they say stuff like "I always tell my homies I love them before they go to bed" actually work.

4. leftist influencers need to make fighting for the rights of minorities seem manly. Badass. Like a hero. Worthy of praise and celebration.

5. while they won't get the financial and political backing that the toxic male influencers get, there needs to be positive male influencers who talk about masculinity in a positive way, while promoting the ideas above. There needs to be an alternative, who acts manly but in the fun, positive way, that validates young men's feelings of inadequacy, frustration, and isolation, while promoting an egalitarian perspective.

6. there needs to be a cultural shift in what makes a man. A shift away from dying in battle or becoming a tycoon, and a resurgence of the working class hero. Mass media itself needs to change and promote positive male figures. It can work and be popular, like in Avatar the Last Airbender. We need to show men that they are still men, and still worthy of love, respect and adoration, even if they aren't a super soldier or a wealthy elite. A lot of this is counter to capitalistic goals, so it may have to be subversive, but eventually it needs to be made the norm.

7. other men need to continue to step up and speak out about injustice towards minorities and against toxic masculinity behaviors in the day to day, and start decrying those behaviors as unmanly. People need to call Andrew Tate and the like unmanly.

8. ideally, the men's rights movement should be absorbed by the left and the toxic incels kicked out. It should be done in the name of gender equality. Fixing only woman's problems won't solve the patriarchy (which could be changed to a different term so everyone feels like it's less of an us vs them) and feminists should try to help solve men's problems directly rather than indirectly. Young men would see feminism as more appealing if feminists actually focused on men's problems as well, rather than ignoring or worse, demonizing them. Feminism could be rebranded as an egalitarian movement for all sexes and genders, maybe get a name change. If the patriarchy affects everyone, then the focus should be on everyone. Maybe it would have to be a whole new movement entirely.

So it's a larger problem than just getting more leftist male influencers, and some of those problems are systematic. Some can get worked on today. Talking about masculinity in a positive way, promotive equity, stop both their side and your side from bigotry, and, probably the thing that would get young men on board the most:

Actually trying to solve the problems young men are going through.

1. Stop dismissing that men have problems which require addressing

A lot of people say things like "men have it the best, they don't need help!" That's nonsense. Everyone who is dealing with problems and is suffering needs help. Helping men doesn't mean you stop helping women, we should help everyone who needs help.

2. Stop purity tests and infighting

Progressives today are truly awful when it comes to this. I'm not talking about including nazis, I'm talking about attacking people who agree with you on 90% of topics. Like if someone thinks trans people should be totally treated as the gender they express in every facet of society, except they shouldn't be allowed to compete in women's physical sports competitions.

3. Messaging needs HUGE improvement

This is another one that progressives have a terrible problem with. They do a terrible job of letting people know how they're being helped, and they also use language that gives the impression that they're against you. For example "the patriarchy" is a terrible term that makes men feel attacked, even though that's not what it's about at all. What most people actually mean to refer to is "gender norms", meaning concepts like 'men should fuck a lot of women and not express their emotions'. "Gender norms" is a much more accurate term and it doesn't make men feel like they're being attacked.

Talk about issues that affect the working class. Not the white working class, not working class men, just everyone who makes a living by drawing a wage. Progressive movements are formed by solidarity, and we have more in common with other working class people than any of the politicians or business leaders who set the tone of this debate.

Start by no longer telling men who have done nothing wrong they are responsible for the misdeeds of others. It breeds resentment and closes people to anything else you have to say.

Be nice and respectful to them and masculinity. Like "It's masculine to protect the oppressed"

Don't belittle anyone for that matter, such as based on race, gender or religions, even if you're upset at that grouping.

Man it's like the majority of people here don't have 'regular guy' friends.

The way to get to regular dudes, is to make them feel fucking included. Yes, diversity is fucking awesome. Yes, having women in leadership roles is fucking awesome. But for your average guy... who do they have to look up to on the left side of things? In the news? In congress? Who is on the national stage for these things? Who is talking to those people?

There isn't anyone. There are tons of people talking to other groups of people, but there has been flat out no courting of the white dude demographic outside of White Dudes for Harris (which was brilliant but came too late).

Speak to the issues these guys are facing. Talk about dating. Talk about career struggles. Talk about feeling alone, and feeling vulnerable. And then, talk about solution based problem-solving for these things.

Why do you think the right wing latched onto guys who do the whole personal betterment thing? It's the same shit that white supremacist groups do. They'll get you with things that anyone can agree with like 'Hey man if you work hard you'll succeed. I fucking believe in you when no one else will.' Then they go into the right wing bullshit because now they have you at an emotional level.

There is no online left presence doing these things, and there are multiple right wing people doing this shit.

Make a left wing Joe Rogan, and bro-dudes will watch that shit like shit on velcro. But it has to be a dude-bro talking to them. It can't be Rachel Maddow or AOC, it has to be someone who comes from that background.

The reality of this all is rather complex but I think the greatest issue is fundamentally the empathy gap. Men's issues are not recognized as issues, they're just dismissed out of hand. I'm talking about the easy things like the sentencing and education gaps.

We need to start the discourse that these are very real problems that are worth addressing.

Another problem I personally run into is how it's acceptable to discriminate against men, "kill all men" is acceptable but "kill all race" isn't. Neither should be and we don't recognize it as a problem, instead defaulting to arguments that are considered horrendous in another context.

I don't follow the media and the debate where you live, but over here left leaning politicians and media tends to frame it as: women, minorites etc have a problem. Men are the problem.

You're basically pushing any undecided man over to the right.

Well it would be a good starting point if we actually had progressive politicians. The Democrats lose because they have no substantive platform for actually helping people because doing that would go against their donors. To be clear, it’s the same for Republicans. There’s a reason why the government just ping pongs between the two parties. The only reliable base either party has is the one that’s more culturally aligned with them, whatever that means at the time.

If they literally ever credibly ran on basic issues like housing, food, healthcare and the elections were fair, they would win. But they don’t, because they can’t, so they will never have consistent support.

Promote and get behind actual progressive candidates, not corporatist shills like Hillary or Kamala. I like Kshama Sawant because she calls shit like she sees it.

Easy

Every time there is a conversation regarding men issues, dismiss them as talking about something that clearly DOESN'T EXISTS, demean them, if they are emotionally intelligent enough to defend themselves from the TOTALLY NOT aggressive rhetoric, compare them to something else, preferably, something weaker and less smart than them, bonus points if you attack their sexuality in the same phrase, that always gets them riled up to support you!

Even more so if you treat them like complete imbeciles with a memory span of seconds and assume they forgot about all the years you have been doing this exact same thing!

And whatever you do, don't forget to bring up how women have and keep having BIGGER issues

That'll work wonders

A little out of the blue but I watched an episode of a German cooking show today where strangers are coupled in groups of five for a week and every day one of them has to cook for the rest of them. They then vote who was the best host.

This week was ALL 30-38 year-old straight Dads. Nobody talked about football.

Nobody chestbumped anyone. Nobody was mansplaning anything. Instead, they were all swooning over each others' cooking skills, making each other cry over how much they love their kids and hugging each other for feeling insecure about their cooking. In other words it was the most realistic and "manly" portrayal of the male reality that I have seen in the media ever.

It's easy to blame the media and the "culture war" for male alienation but I strongly believe that our perception of ourselves is largely influenced by our peer group's portrayal in society. In other words: if I feel antagonized, I tend to overreact. If I am being told by Hollywood or social media to "stop being a mansplaning patriarch" I will be imprinted with the very idea to identify as such.

So long story short: non-toxic masculinity needs more representation AND it needs to come from a place of positivity, not judgement or condescension.

As a mom of men, it has always concerned me that, while we were supporting our girls, we left our boys to flounder a bit. We spent so much time telling girls that they could do anything and they could be 'just as good as the boys' and talking to women about glass ceilings and 'don't let the man keep you down.' What did we tell our boys or rather what did they hear?

Legit I think it's to shift the focus away from helping other people for the sake of being nice and onto uniting together to fight a common enemy - the bosses, corporations, etc. Dale the machinist from Alabama isn't going to go to the protest to protect trans latinx PoC out of the kidness of his own heart but he might if he realizes it's part of a larger project to go out to take back his rights from the people fucking him over, and fuck over his boss. Young men are drawn to masculinity and militaristic language right now, and left wing politics can be easily framed in those terms. Yes, being good to other people should be good in its own right but a lot of people don't see it that way and we need to get them on our side too.

Reframe spending as stimulating the economy.

Create jobs through a green new deal that allows for upeard mobility for the motivated. Small business grants.

Create tax incentives for, endorse and give loam grants to businesses that provide workers with a share of a company. Whether co-op type thing or convoluted stock share program.

Young men want to matter, and they want to see the results of their effort.

This is all from the perspective of a non-american from a country where thankfully we are still liberal at heart and only entertain some progressive ideas, instead of buying it wholesale, meaning the right has yet to completely cannibalise the government over the mistakes of the left.

1. Move away from equity and return to equality of opportunity as the main goal. Equity demands lack of competition, and men love competition.

You can want everyone to receive equal opportunity and dignity, but people are not equal and will not end in the same place once the race is over. You can't demand equality of outcome and onboard the most competitive demographic, there is a reason if the stereotype of leftist men is passive wimps. This is completely compatible with prgressive ideas, but it's incompatible with progressive brains, apparently.

2. Actually understand what intersectionality looks like, stop treating it like a hierarchy of oppression.

The core idea of intersectionality is that each demographic has its own issues and they manifest differently if more demographics overlap in the same individual (e.g. sexism against white women vs sexism against black women exhibit different tropes and connotations).

This does not mean whoever has the least minoritary traits is the most acceptable target, that is some marxist "oppressor vs oppressed" horseshit and, while it was probably the intended idea, it is massively counterproductive and doesn't have to be the actual application of the issue.

Men have issues that women don't have, women have issues that men don't have. As soon as your movement decides to prioritise one they have lost the other.

The reason this does not happen with race is that no movement in the US can realistically exist politically without white people simply by virtue of how huge the white slice of the demo pie is, and because this whole thing was started by highly educated, economically mobile, overwhelingly white, college grads who live in very specific coastal bubbles, hence the endemic hatred of farmers and factory workers, the actual working class of the US, as hicks and racists, and the lionisation of serving staff like baristas and waiters (the only working class most large city dwellers ever interact with).

3. Move away from "patriarchy".

It's just a fucking L on its face isn't it? "Yes come join the party that thinks men being in power is the problem" fat fucking chance lol.

And when they do join, the parodies write themselves.

I don't care if you think it's "just a name" (especially in light of what progs consistently do over "just a name" and "just a statue" and so on) it's a massive optics L that shows all of the horseshit about microaggressions and non-confrontational language and whatnot are entirely performative.

You have the most obvious othering language in the core ideas of the movement and then complain about microaggressions? And you wonder why people don't take you seriously?

And while we're on that:

4. Politeness is baseline, respect is earned. Confrontation is necessary and men are more likely to thrive in confrontational spaces.

You can't have a political movement that does not tolerate dissent and confrontation, or only tolerates it in one direction. See the implosion of the "Unfuck america tour" as a good example of this.

The whole point of politics is to create a critical mass of people who align on some goal to push for it, you don't have to agree with them on every point, if you had enough people who agree with you, you would be already in the majority and would not need to participate in politics.

Easy example from the last decade: TERFs.

Now, I don't like TERFs, on account of them being radfems and thus automatically hostile to me due to the circumstances of my birth (i.e. penis), but you know what? I reckon they probably want women to have better salaries and fewer barriers to entry into professional fields.

Let them force themselves into political irrelevance if they refuse to play ball, don't make a big fucking show of kicking them out of the movement, because then you end up on the back foot of having to explain "trans women are women" to the mass population and the TERFs simply need to say "look at these brainwashed biology deniers, they think males and females have no differences" and you end up eating your own ass in public, when the point is that trans women ought to be treated as women for their own good and a more welcoming society.

(side note: if you are in that brainless chunk of progs who do believe there is no difference between the sexes, I highly encourage you to look at the world records in any discipline with easily measured metrics such as 100m dash and freestyle swimming. Not a single male record is under the women's record, in some cases every historical male record eclipses the current female one. Males and females are different, this should be acknowledged, and it should not be a barrier to equal dignity in treatment.)

A movement that can't include anyone but the most in-line and pure of the ideological adepts is doomed to be irrelevant, and on that the progressives have an almost complete lock.

The same as it always has been. Punk Rock. Conservative shit is so goddamn cringe it's really hard to imagine how it has convinced anyone that it is any kind of counterculture.

Quit trying to make young white men feel guilty for existing. I come from poor white trash. As near as I can tell, my family never benefitted from slavery in any possible way. So fuck you. I dont feel bad about something I didn't do, no one in my family did, and we aint gonna pay for it.

Maybe stop hating their guts..

Reclaim patriotism. Republicans love to wrap themselves in the flag, progressives need to do the same thing. It's just a piece of the whole, but seeing pics of the LA protests with Mexican flags flying - that doesn't help bring American voters to a cause.

I don't know. How do you teach empathy?

I think a big part of the issues end up being economic. Things are obviously not great for a vast majority of middle and lower income people. You spend all day working your 1-3 jobs and in the background there's all the culture war battles going on.

Few regular people have the mental space to even engage with the nuance required to navigate some progressive talking points when they can barely keep a roof over their heads. Toxic masculinity just turns into masculinity = toxic. You've lost these people, even if there's an actually good message in there.

The Right is amazing at drawing a direct line between, "These are the problems we know you're having" and "This is exactly what you can do about it today". And for the Right, they actually deliver results. Do the kids turn into insufferable dickheads? Sure. But does the rhetoric sometimes get them what they want? Yeah, it does.

Where does the Left even come close? Almost everything is a delayed effect. Protest for a good cause? Wait to see if the politics catch up. Be nice to people? Great start, but that doesn't help these guys get people-skills to have good platonic and romantic relationships. Be more open emotionally? What happens when your friends don't accept that from you?

The Left is full of high risk, upfront demands from people who aren't already affiliated with potentially little to no reward. Granted, the desired outcome is a better and more just society. But like, carrots and sticks people. You need something that regular people can get behind besides just ideology. Especially when mainstream media has a lock on those that are tuned out of progressive spaces and every now and then see something leak through from the culture war.

We need an actual vision for the future. Not a list of things we don't like about the present, but what do we see people doing one day. If you don't have a place for any group of people in your society, they will be indifferent if it burns. You can't build a progressive future without having an actual, honest to God idea of what opportunities you can provide to legitimately everyone. If your best plan is, "Conservatives get with the program or rot in hell", don't be surprised when they take you down with them.

Do what you say you're going to do when you get elected. Quit finding just enough no votes and making excuses. You promise, we vote, you don't deliver. Then you ask "why does no one want to vote for us? We promised to be marginally less terrible than our opponents!"

What you've described is every complaint I've had with centrists and neocons in the democratic party. I don't really know where the progressive part comes in.

Bernie did amazing with men to the point where "bernie bros" were being mocked in media, so has Mamdani in NY in polls.

If anything, I would argue that the Democratic party should be more populist and progressive. Focusing on things that pull up everybody, because everyone is struggling right now.

Education. You will never be able to explain taxes in a way that can counter propaganda if the person is an idiot. You just won't. And until then it's an uphill battle.

Simple. What do young men care about? Getting laid and getting paid. Promise them that, and you'll get their votes.

You'll need to use coded language, of course. But using coded language is politicians' whole job.

Young men are not some new phenomenon. Their desire, in a word, is agency.

As the world has grown more interconnected, the world has become more visible. This has created a crippling awareness of their place in the grand scheme. Nietzsche's void has opened beneath them and, in the ignorance expected of youth, they grasp at what is presented to them. Selling hope to the desperate, even false hope, is lucrative, so there is no shortage of hucksters and charlatans offering it to them.

The ultimate problem is that there is no pleasant truth. When faced with the existential horror of being, the truth doesn't help. You cannot focus on learning to be a better version of yourself when facing raw terror. A comforting lie will get you to tomorrow. Truth will send you to the long, dark night.

So, when offered a pretense of agency, in almost any form, they take it. Some pretend that the problem is simply women. Some say it's other 'races.' Some say it's this or that ideology, whether economic, social, sexual, psychological, or anything else. They all just want to feel like they can make a difference, just like everyone else.

I think instead of focusing on how to sell this product, we focus on the product itself because it's impossible to sell something that Democrats keep pulling off the shelf as "defective." Like any other item that people buy, committing to something only to have the "company" do a 180 and stop supporting it immediately after your "purchase" is just going to drive people away.

Most Democrats only seem interested in pushing progressive policies right up until they get elected and then it's always "not the right time" after the election.

Edit: also the product would sell itself if they actually implemented them and improved people's lives. It's kind of hard to deny things that exist right in front of your face, but we never seem able to get to that point because corporations and genocidal "allies" always take precedence over the American people regardless of which of these two parties hold office.

I honestly don't think progressive politics is the problem. When it comes to the US. The only other party is the democrats and at best they are center at best but really they are just Republicans from 20 years ago. From a fiscal sense.

Both times they sold the American people to pick them just because the other side is worse. The problem is most people don't want to pick the lesser of two evils. They want to pick something that will change their lives for the better.

The problem is when Democrats don't really have a platform or communicate that platform effectively. But the other guy is saying he will fix the problems in people's lives even if they are lies. Most low information voters will roll the dice on the chance he is not lying. Because the other side has brought nothing to the table at all.

The logic i have seen with a man like that broke my heart was this. He said i care about the plate of Trans folks and other minorities but like on an airplane you have to put on your own mask on first before you help others. So when you are out of work or can't afford to live. The culture wars feels like less a priority for those type of people.

When looking with that lense it makes sense how people voted. People with higher education and income voted Dem becase they wanted to help others.

People with lower income voted Republican out of desperation and was easy for Republicans to sell the snake oil of. If we hurt these small group of people. All your problems will be solved. Then those same people are hurt more when they find out it was all a lie.

Read up on history and how Germany was after World War I. It's like having a crystal ball of what's going to happen next.

It's not a rhetorical problem. It's a propaganda problem. People aren't being reasoned into right wing politics. It's being beaten into their heads day and night by talk radio, cable news, local news, and YouTube; and this has been going on very deliberately for decades. The right wing powers-that-be have been busily, patiently, creating a massive, pervasive propaganda machine for a long time while the left sat on their hands. We're now seeing the results: a world where the right can do and say literally anything they want without consequence. Their base is very literally brainwashed through brute force repeated messaging that nobody can compete with.

We needed the Democrats to do something about this propaganda machine before it became unstoppable. They already didn't do that.

The best thing any of us can do is try to steer kids away from the propaganda before they get sucked in.