so overtime i have been seeing the left after the convo’s about men’s place in society, and it has been dismal. There was this video of a trans man talking about the loneliness of men went viral on TikTok and A channel named Aba and Preach covered it from their perspective (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZF7k9nVNRw&t=1088s) but it brings up a point i want to touch on
Which is that we will only listen to men’s issues when it is someone who politically agrees with the right things, (patriarchy, toxic masculinity, feminism) but if it was someone like Jordan Peterson, who has actually pulled young men from the brink of suicide, and has been someone who has been someone very critcal of feminists in the past, they do this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZxz7WrW2Yo) literally laughing at the man for crying about men’s issues. Aba and preach also covered this actual video and the responses. heres that video too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abQo5wWkMxs&t=532s)
Or when Dr Michael Reeves, made a video about male inequality, which is linked here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBG1Wgg32Ok&t=1s), when he want on the we are man enough podcast, a feminist podcast about men’s issues, Liz Plank, A feminist, essentially wasn’t actually concerned about the actual argument but rather the language of calling men not being represented in HEAL Jobs (Heath, education, admistration and language) as seen in this clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVo-sCPR5CA&t=44s)
But what i want to discuss about these two things is that on one end of the spectrum, a trans man rightfully talks about the void of lacking the connections that he had when was still a woman, and because he said men should take advice from women to become more emotionally vunerable. but when someone, Jordan Peterson has an emotional moment and cries at the plights of disaffaceted young men, The Left cant help but point and laugh at him.
Which is the point i want to make is that when it comes to all the talk about toxic masculinity and men being emotional, it seems to only be for a specific sect of the population, ie, Leftist or Liberal men who curtail the line of being serious about men"s issues but never focus on how society plays a hand in those issues, which includes women, or if they do focus on society, it is quick to blame men.
And even if a man is vunerable with their emotions, ie like Jordan Peterson, because he is a right winger, they just will make fun of him, which reinforces “toxic masculinity” and the gendered stereotypes and expectations that they claim to want to get rid off. And helps not only make Jordan Peterson a viable alternative to them. Or even if they agree with the inequality that men can face, they are often critical of the language or the imprecise nature of what they are saying.
And with the often times toxic and very hypocritical nature of their arguments, the mass generalizations, and painting of men as the bane of existance of women, queer folk, and minorities, dispite the fact that men with in these groups are vicimized much like them. Young men are just deciding to be done with the left, as they really offer no solution other than some false class conciousness as with these 2 videoes by a youtuber named That Dang dad
1 is a critique of a song by Dax, named to be a man (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN3-32AcQMQ&t=764s) which just to me, dismisses alot of what men go through and tells men to essentially build community with women, minorities and queer people, (which isnt a bad idea but ill get into why i think it and his other video are a kinda tacit dismissal of what men feel and also just a very bland way of what i like to call the “give a man a mission” play)
2 which is his attempt to answer the question, is the left failing men?, an answer with a resounding yes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVXZo1ld5Nc)
The second reason as to why i feel that young men are essentially not aligned with the left, and feminism which i highlighted earlier is called the “give the men a mission play”, which is essentially, though used by both the right and the left, we are talking about the left which is like this.
“What you are mad at is late stage capitalism, which is fucking us all over so join with us and it will make life easier for not just you but everyone else” Or as it is most commonly used like in this tiktok, where the woman responds to a strawman of man who is frustrated with the current dating market, and feminism with the perils of living under “late stage capitalism”
(This is the tiktok in question https://www.tiktok.com/@elisse.01/video/7198671535073316142?lang=en)
but this is a broader sentiment on the left as stated, mostly in jokes, that if men could instead of “being mad at women” could focus on destroying capistalism and patrarchy, the world would be better, but that is built on 2 false premisies
1 that a communist or socialist revolution would better the lives of anyone, as in history, it truly hasnt and in fact has been more destructive to peoples lives.
2 the presumtion that men have any privilage that men have some one up over women. and have never been the victims of a society that they themselves built to benefit themselves, but has them suffering.
but the entire left does this with mens issues, which is why young men dont really find the left appealing, as the only solutions for men are to either mire in depression, join one side if the political isle that want to use you to enforce a fascist christian theocracy, or the one that will constantly tell you you are privilaged and must sit down shut up, and maybe die in a class war that probably wont liberate people at all, and might make life worse.
I am not prepared to let go of my left-wing values the way most of the people claiming to be left-wing have been doing. I am an egalitarian, and I am not prepared to treat men as less deserving of human rights, of care and consideration, of protection against discrimination, and so on.
But yeah, if you are on the left and care about men, you often have to carve your own way and swim against the stream of normalized misandry. But that’s why we have this community.
I’m starting to realize that even in the localized leftist communities we’re involved, we need to start creating spaces where men can freely talk about these issues in a leftist environment. Unfortunately, we don’t have much power to be open with it in our own communities due to how they’ll react. Even more dangerous when they’re brainwashed by ideas of men that make them automatically distrustful of men, even at the start.
yeah i agree. i found this space on reddit and it has helped me greatly. thanks for all you do.
The modern political left has become extremely anti-egalitarian on the gender axis: they discriminate against men.
And they do it relatively openly, though they rarely, if ever, explicitly admit to it and they often claim to be gender egalitarians.
But if you’re going to make a post talking about the misandry found in the left, without mentioning the equal amounts of misandry found on the right, then I find that to be a little disingenuous.
Many of men’s greatest issues like effective access to mental health care, effective social safety net, accessible and welcoming social environments of neurodivergent men etc… Are all things that are being fought against by the right.
This is going to be speculative, but when you recognize the amount of money in government and how the left has historically been trying to provide social safety nets for everyone, you can see that this creates certain social pressures. If there’s a lot of money in helping people, then there’s going to be a feedback loop of people financially interested in promoting even more investments in helping people.
The right tends to stand in opposition to this. And what the left has learned is that while the right will be willing to burn everything down just to stop a tiny little welfare project that helps everyone, it turns out that if this welfare project only helps women, then the right won’t stand in its way, it may even be supportive of it. This has created a massive industry that focuses on helping only women. Some of the money involved ends up for the promotion of misandrist ideologies that help to legitimize programs that help exclusively women, because that’s where the money is.
My perspective is that leftist type people want to help men and women equality. But the right makes it impossible. Over time, this situation combined with the sustained power of money has warped leftist ideology away from what they’d ideally want to see.
The right is just as much to blame for all this as the left. I would argue it is even more to blame for it.
I do see that and I am working on a post like this for the right wing, I took me months to work on this post.
It is actually this sort of toxic nonsense that is the problem.
can you explain why you feel this way?
first off, Jordan Peterson is like, King of the Incels. Basing a moral argument around him is pretty sus
I wasn’t basing an argument around him but the hypocrisy that we want men to be emotionally vulnerable, until they have politics we don’t like the it is fuck them.
That is what I was highlighting, not that I like Jordan Peterson, as I hate his politics, but If you want men to be vulnerable, it can’t be just men who align with what the left inherently agrees with. It has to be extended to everyone
Maybe Kbin should add rewards like Reddit had /s. We could give our fellow visitor a Constructive Comment Award.
The Right wins by default on men’s issues not because they have anything to offer men, but because the Left is so sandbagged by misandry and anti-male paranoia that simply doing nothing is an appealing alternative.
Left wing feminists have the most abhorrent views of men. I’m a left winger, but I disagree with most left wingers and feminists about men’s issues.
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The patriarchy has never existed in north American history. Most of the gendered oppression have been caused by the monarchy, specifically coverture practices. We had kings and queens (both of whom who have equal powers to create laws before it got taken away). You’re also using the apax fallacy to judge men as a whole by the actions of a few men and women in power who are in the minority. The only reason we consider it a patriarchy is due to patriarchy theory (most positions in power are held by men, therefore men oppress women) which is not only rooted in apax fallacy, it’s designed to encourage misandry on a societal level.
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Feminism has never been about equality. Many ‘proto-feminists’ such as Mary Wollstonecraft who actually written books about the rights of women and men never called herself a feminist. It was academic feminists from 1848 and onwards who claimed them as such. The ideology of feminism where it classifies men as the oppressor class of women (thanks Elizabeth cady staton) and developing concepts such as the patriarchy theory (kate miller, andrea dworkin and the like) that IS misandry, yet it gaslight everyone into thinking it’s about equality.
“Men saying “it’s not fair” rings hollow when men have been oppressing women for millennia, and all women want is to be treated equally.” Rich people in power have been oppressing everybody else for millennia of history, it just shows up differently based on gender. That’s how these things have always been.
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I never said that I like Jordan Peterson but emotional vulnerability from a man you disagree with isn’t worthy of denigration.
Also what about all of the men who have been oppressed over the years alongside these women? All the men that have been treated differently?
Also when men complain about any issue, there is someone like you chiming in saying this kinda stuff.
I don’t know much about Jordan Peterson. I had help from other figures before I discovered peterson personally. Aba and preach I’ve seen a lot of their channels and I like how nuanced they are with their takes. Of course I don’t agree with all of them, but they were the first dudes who got me on the right mental track.
The left has a good ideology of egalitarianism. In practice, the Left is bad. They have become gynocentric, which is not egalitarian.
I don’t know much about Jordan Peterson. I had help from other figures before I discovered peterson personally. Aba and preach I’ve seen a lot of their channels and I like how nuanced they are with their takes. Of course I don’t agree with all of them, but they were the first dudes who got me on the right mental track.
