Can you blame them, though? I can’t think of a single person speaking for young men who is also widely accepted by the liberal left - or however you want to define the “good guys.” Even here on Lemmy, anyone slightly deviating from the narrative is met with extreme hostility. It’s not that young men are naturally drawn to figures like Andrew Tate - they’re being pushed there.
This is an age group that does need guidance through, and it’s looking for it, and if not provided with a positive role model will latch on to any that they can find.
As an example, look at “Gregory’s Garden Goofballs” episode from Abbott Elementary. A group of the older kids start hanging out in Gregory’s classroom because he’s the “cool teacher” and he gets uncomfortable with it, especially when they start asking him advice about girls and because he doesn’t have his free time anymore. But then he realizes this can be a good thing and that if they are hanging out with him and he’s giving them advice, at least they are with a positive role model. So he sacrifices his free time to be the positive force for the older kids that aren’t even his students, because otherwise they might gravitate to a less positive source.
I don’t know anyone who specifically targets that audience. There are those who talk about men’s issues (among other topics) and those who don’t, and the ones who do tend to lean more to the right and are almost universally labeled as bad people by everyone else. Even someone like Chris Williamson has mentioned how he couldn’t order merch for himself from a company in San Francisco because the staff refused the order simply because of who he is. I imagine Scott Galloway is treated more or less the same.
I dont know the people you mentioned so I cant comment on them specifically, but as I see it theres a huge difference between ‘talking about mens issues’ and indoctrinating them into mysoginists by saying stuff like ‘bitches wont fuck you because you are weak and poor, you need to dominate them, thats what theyre attracted to’
Making your target audience 14yo boys is kind of fucked up on its own.
Is it just me, or does that statement just not hold up to scrutiny? Are 14 year old boys supposed to just be complete pariahs from society? At what age does it start being unacceptable to address them, and at what age if any does it become okay to speak to males again? What do you expect a teenage boy’s life to be like?
I’m increasingly convinced that being anti-man is a defining trait of being on The Left in America. The Left has no monopoly on progressive social issues. If you poll Americans on issues alone, they’ll overwhelmingly come down in favor of progressive issues, things like higher minimum wages, medicare for all etc. The Left exists to play identity politics, largely against each other. Seeing men as the source of all their problems is the only uniting factor they share.
Depending on exactly who on The Left you ask, it is either a waste of time or outright immoral to talk to men and boys in good faith. The people posting about “Instead of gender reveal parties, you should have anti-heteronormativity lectures with rainbow cake” cannot stand the thought of saying to an adolescent boy “Here’s how our social policies will benefit you.” Because they cannot stand the thought of males benefiting from anything. That sentence sticks in their throat.
Most of my life I’ve heard “Girls need positive female role models in media.” Is this somehow not true for boys as well? “Even if it is, it’s not what we do here, and we’d rather it wasn’t done anywhere else either.”
Well it is being done somewhere else. There’s a whole media empire out there who are perfectly happy to fill that niche. Nobody on The Left will even try to compete in that market because the culture war is too important to them.
Im not saying boys shouldnt be addressed and they shouldnt have role models. Im saying that people shouldnt target them specofically because they are young insecure men. Why cant people just consume media that fits them individually indenpendent of their age and gender?
Why do we feel the need to shape people into roles they arent meant for just because of their gender? This is a leading cause of depression in young adults and it sgetting worse
Im saying that people shouldnt target them specofically because they are young insecure men
This is precisely why they SHOULD be targeted, why there should be programming and messaging specifically for them. They need mentoring and guidance through a strange, transitional period in their lives as they become the adults they will be for the rest of their lives. It’s why sitcoms with a “family” or young adult audience often had those “very special” episodes in the 80’s.
Why cant people just consume media that fits them individually indenpendent of their age and gender?
Yeah, why can’t 5 year old girls just be happy watching Game of Thrones? Why should there be an entire industry devoted to making children’s media when they could just watch what everyone else does?
Beyond that, this topic goes beyond entertainment. People turn to social media for everything from shortbread recipes to news to tax advice. And get this, this is probably going to be a new concept to a leftist: your demographics do indeed inform what you are interested in. There are topics, themes and messages that are relevant to 40 year old women that aren’t relevant to 14 year old boys and vice versa. It’s why we developed more than three TV channels.
Why do we feel the need to shape people into roles they arent meant for just because of their gender?
That’s an extremely good question. Why should we treat every boy in the nation as if he was queer? That’s what we’re dancing around here, isn’t it? “Heteronormativity” is a dirty word on the Left, after all, the idea of a “normal male” upbringing is seen as distasteful if not offensive. The idea of helping adolescent boys grow up to be straight men is a non-starter on the Left. So there are only right-wing voices speaking on that subject.
Thanks for your comment. I admit age-dependent media needs to exist to account for cognitive differences, of course a 5yo cant watch complicated content. I was being hasty with my comment.
For the rest of your comment, you are strawmanning so hard I cant even answer to that. I never said anything about sexual orientation and I dont know why you suddenly brought that up, we were talking about gender. Should I start talking about why you like Hitler? Just because someone has a left-leaning opinion on one topic doesnt mean they support whatever right-wing media are claiming leftism to be about. Noone wants to raise all kids as if they were queer, that is pure propaganda.
Okay look, the word “gender” has been so overused and misused at this point, it’s like the words “patriarchy” and “woke” at this point. It means whatever you need it to mean right now to make the other person wrong. I’m pretty sure this notion of gender being anything other than another word for sex was invented on Tumblr some time in the last 8 years or so, it apparently doesn’t refer to which kind of crotch you have or what you prefer to do with said crotch so…it refers to something that can’t be measured or experienced about a person so it’s a useless concept.
These people are no longer worth talking to or about. I leave them to their fate.
Can you blame them, though? I can’t think of a single person speaking for young men who is also widely accepted by the liberal left - or however you want to define the “good guys.”
There are plenty of social media personalities with massive followings that specifically aim some or all of their contents at men with a positive vision of what men can be. I watch FD Signifier personally. There are also plenty of articles showcase positive male social media personalities with millions of followers. You should have done a 5 second Google search before saying something so easily debunked. You can’t think of them because you are not looking.
Even here on Lemmy, anyone slightly deviating from the narrative is met with extreme hostility.
Welcome to social media, first day? You’ll get that same extreme hostility in Andrew Tates comments if you deviate from being misogynistic.
It’s not that young men are naturally drawn to figures like Andrew Tate - they’re being pushed there.
You’re right, just not in the way you’re claiming. They are being pushed by social media algorithms that reward toxicity and simple answers. That’s not the fault of the lefts “groupthink” it’s on those companies.
“If you’re over 6 get tall you’re taller than me” - I’m not accusing you of being tall.
“If you think bigoted things I’m going to treat you poorly” - also not an accusation. Just a fact.
That said, if you’re feeling like it’s an accusation, you might internally be worried that you are a bigot. But that’s a problem for you and your subconscious to sort out. Nothing to do with me.
There you go making assumptions about people again. You’re rather aggressive aren’t you? Why so angry? Why are you always looking for confrontation? What a sad pathetic life you have.
There is no such thing as a “liberal” left. Liberalism is a right-wing ideology - that’s why they are constantly “reaching across the aisle” to their fascist brethren.
(Apart from that I do agree with your point, though.)
That just shows that one axis is too few to categorize political opinions. The opposite of liberal is authoritarian and while I definitely would say I’m a leftist, I’m not pro authoritarian.
Sadly, “liberal” partys nowadays are mostly economically liberal (i.e. freedom for corporations, deregulation etc.). But you can also be socially liberal, i.e. support individual freedom.
(N.B.: I’m not from the US, maybe the definition of liberalism taught in school here is different, or the literal translation is used differently)
I’m afraid not. Liberalism is about as “authoritarian” as it gets - or do you classify the ongoing genocide the (so-called) “liberal democracies” are sponsoring in Palestine as (somehow) “non-authoritarian?”
Sadly, “liberal” partys nowadays are mostly economically liberal (i.e. freedom for corporations, deregulation etc.)
That is what they have ALWAYS been.
I’m not from the US
That doesn’t matter. Liberalism is a right-wing ideology - even in Antarctica, on Mars, or on the other side of the galaxy.
I just can’t take anyone seriously who refers to liberalism as “the liberal left.” Liberals absolutely have not treated young men well, but for fuck sakes man read a fucking book or something just once in your life.
I literally don’t know how to describe the userbase of a platform like Lemmy any other way but maybe you can suggest me a better term then. I’m not talking about liberalism. I’m talking about a group of people.
Liberalism, which is a centre right ideology if we’re using that idiotic left right scale, is fundamentally different from leftism and conflating the two is disingenuous at best and willfully ignorant at worst.
What’s wrong about calling it liberal left then when literally 100% of those people are left wing leaning? Isn’t that like saying “the conservative right”?
Can you blame them, though? I can’t think of a single person speaking for young men who is also widely accepted by the liberal left - or however you want to define the “good guys.” Even here on Lemmy, anyone slightly deviating from the narrative is met with extreme hostility. It’s not that young men are naturally drawn to figures like Andrew Tate - they’re being pushed there.
How about the hundreds speaking to ‘people’ in general instead of young men? Making your target audience 14yo boys is kind of fucked up on its own.
This is an age group that does need guidance through, and it’s looking for it, and if not provided with a positive role model will latch on to any that they can find.
As an example, look at “Gregory’s Garden Goofballs” episode from Abbott Elementary. A group of the older kids start hanging out in Gregory’s classroom because he’s the “cool teacher” and he gets uncomfortable with it, especially when they start asking him advice about girls and because he doesn’t have his free time anymore. But then he realizes this can be a good thing and that if they are hanging out with him and he’s giving them advice, at least they are with a positive role model. So he sacrifices his free time to be the positive force for the older kids that aren’t even his students, because otherwise they might gravitate to a less positive source.
I don’t know anyone who specifically targets that audience. There are those who talk about men’s issues (among other topics) and those who don’t, and the ones who do tend to lean more to the right and are almost universally labeled as bad people by everyone else. Even someone like Chris Williamson has mentioned how he couldn’t order merch for himself from a company in San Francisco because the staff refused the order simply because of who he is. I imagine Scott Galloway is treated more or less the same.
I dont know the people you mentioned so I cant comment on them specifically, but as I see it theres a huge difference between ‘talking about mens issues’ and indoctrinating them into mysoginists by saying stuff like ‘bitches wont fuck you because you are weak and poor, you need to dominate them, thats what theyre attracted to’
Is it just me, or does that statement just not hold up to scrutiny? Are 14 year old boys supposed to just be complete pariahs from society? At what age does it start being unacceptable to address them, and at what age if any does it become okay to speak to males again? What do you expect a teenage boy’s life to be like?
I’m increasingly convinced that being anti-man is a defining trait of being on The Left in America. The Left has no monopoly on progressive social issues. If you poll Americans on issues alone, they’ll overwhelmingly come down in favor of progressive issues, things like higher minimum wages, medicare for all etc. The Left exists to play identity politics, largely against each other. Seeing men as the source of all their problems is the only uniting factor they share.
Depending on exactly who on The Left you ask, it is either a waste of time or outright immoral to talk to men and boys in good faith. The people posting about “Instead of gender reveal parties, you should have anti-heteronormativity lectures with rainbow cake” cannot stand the thought of saying to an adolescent boy “Here’s how our social policies will benefit you.” Because they cannot stand the thought of males benefiting from anything. That sentence sticks in their throat.
Most of my life I’ve heard “Girls need positive female role models in media.” Is this somehow not true for boys as well? “Even if it is, it’s not what we do here, and we’d rather it wasn’t done anywhere else either.”
Well it is being done somewhere else. There’s a whole media empire out there who are perfectly happy to fill that niche. Nobody on The Left will even try to compete in that market because the culture war is too important to them.
Im not saying boys shouldnt be addressed and they shouldnt have role models. Im saying that people shouldnt target them specofically because they are young insecure men. Why cant people just consume media that fits them individually indenpendent of their age and gender? Why do we feel the need to shape people into roles they arent meant for just because of their gender? This is a leading cause of depression in young adults and it sgetting worse
This is precisely why they SHOULD be targeted, why there should be programming and messaging specifically for them. They need mentoring and guidance through a strange, transitional period in their lives as they become the adults they will be for the rest of their lives. It’s why sitcoms with a “family” or young adult audience often had those “very special” episodes in the 80’s.
Yeah, why can’t 5 year old girls just be happy watching Game of Thrones? Why should there be an entire industry devoted to making children’s media when they could just watch what everyone else does?
Beyond that, this topic goes beyond entertainment. People turn to social media for everything from shortbread recipes to news to tax advice. And get this, this is probably going to be a new concept to a leftist: your demographics do indeed inform what you are interested in. There are topics, themes and messages that are relevant to 40 year old women that aren’t relevant to 14 year old boys and vice versa. It’s why we developed more than three TV channels.
That’s an extremely good question. Why should we treat every boy in the nation as if he was queer? That’s what we’re dancing around here, isn’t it? “Heteronormativity” is a dirty word on the Left, after all, the idea of a “normal male” upbringing is seen as distasteful if not offensive. The idea of helping adolescent boys grow up to be straight men is a non-starter on the Left. So there are only right-wing voices speaking on that subject.
Thanks for your comment. I admit age-dependent media needs to exist to account for cognitive differences, of course a 5yo cant watch complicated content. I was being hasty with my comment.
For the rest of your comment, you are strawmanning so hard I cant even answer to that. I never said anything about sexual orientation and I dont know why you suddenly brought that up, we were talking about gender. Should I start talking about why you like Hitler? Just because someone has a left-leaning opinion on one topic doesnt mean they support whatever right-wing media are claiming leftism to be about. Noone wants to raise all kids as if they were queer, that is pure propaganda.
Okay look, the word “gender” has been so overused and misused at this point, it’s like the words “patriarchy” and “woke” at this point. It means whatever you need it to mean right now to make the other person wrong. I’m pretty sure this notion of gender being anything other than another word for sex was invented on Tumblr some time in the last 8 years or so, it apparently doesn’t refer to which kind of crotch you have or what you prefer to do with said crotch so…it refers to something that can’t be measured or experienced about a person so it’s a useless concept.
These people are no longer worth talking to or about. I leave them to their fate.
There are plenty of social media personalities with massive followings that specifically aim some or all of their contents at men with a positive vision of what men can be. I watch FD Signifier personally. There are also plenty of articles showcase positive male social media personalities with millions of followers. You should have done a 5 second Google search before saying something so easily debunked. You can’t think of them because you are not looking.
Welcome to social media, first day? You’ll get that same extreme hostility in Andrew Tates comments if you deviate from being misogynistic.
You’re right, just not in the way you’re claiming. They are being pushed by social media algorithms that reward toxicity and simple answers. That’s not the fault of the lefts “groupthink” it’s on those companies.
What narrative would that be? That all people, regardless of gender, ethnicity etc. deserve equal rights?
“You disagree with our narrative? You must be a sexist racist then.”
Thanks for illustrating my point.
By refusing to answer my question you’ve given your answer.
If you disagree that all people should be equal then I won’t treat you as an equal.
This doesn’t require a ted talk. It’s just fairness.
And why do you think I disagree with that?
I don’t. I was simply restating what you said, but in a way that was less pointlessly confrontational.
It’s pretty confrontational when you accuse me of something I’ve never said.
Where’s the accusation? I simply stated a fact.
“If you’re over 6 get tall you’re taller than me” - I’m not accusing you of being tall.
“If you think bigoted things I’m going to treat you poorly” - also not an accusation. Just a fact.
That said, if you’re feeling like it’s an accusation, you might internally be worried that you are a bigot. But that’s a problem for you and your subconscious to sort out. Nothing to do with me.
There you go making assumptions about people again. You’re rather aggressive aren’t you? Why so angry? Why are you always looking for confrontation? What a sad pathetic life you have.
‘you should’
There is no such thing as a “liberal” left. Liberalism is a right-wing ideology - that’s why they are constantly “reaching across the aisle” to their fascist brethren.
(Apart from that I do agree with your point, though.)
That just shows that one axis is too few to categorize political opinions. The opposite of liberal is authoritarian and while I definitely would say I’m a leftist, I’m not pro authoritarian.
Sadly, “liberal” partys nowadays are mostly economically liberal (i.e. freedom for corporations, deregulation etc.). But you can also be socially liberal, i.e. support individual freedom.
(N.B.: I’m not from the US, maybe the definition of liberalism taught in school here is different, or the literal translation is used differently)
I’m afraid not. Liberalism is about as “authoritarian” as it gets - or do you classify the ongoing genocide the (so-called) “liberal democracies” are sponsoring in Palestine as (somehow) “non-authoritarian?”
That is what they have ALWAYS been.
That doesn’t matter. Liberalism is a right-wing ideology - even in Antarctica, on Mars, or on the other side of the galaxy.
I just can’t take anyone seriously who refers to liberalism as “the liberal left.” Liberals absolutely have not treated young men well, but for fuck sakes man read a fucking book or something just once in your life.
I literally don’t know how to describe the userbase of a platform like Lemmy any other way but maybe you can suggest me a better term then. I’m not talking about liberalism. I’m talking about a group of people.
Liberalism, which is a centre right ideology if we’re using that idiotic left right scale, is fundamentally different from leftism and conflating the two is disingenuous at best and willfully ignorant at worst.
What’s wrong about calling it liberal left then when literally 100% of those people are left wing leaning? Isn’t that like saying “the conservative right”?
No, because liberals are not leftists.
‘The left’ ‘leftists’