I think progressives never thought about this because we banked on immigration and demographic change allowing us to win culturally and electorally but the issue is immigrants tend to be overwhelmingly male, that is how Trump won actually he won over a lot of Hispanic,Black,Asian and indigenous men who feel humiliated by a new culture, economy and world.
So what can we do rhetorically and policy wise to win more young men over ?
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.
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.
It’s a tricky situation.
I think a lot of men, particularly rural men, want someone in their corner. I think a lot of people are underestimating how angry and hopeless many of these men feel. The study a couple years ago from NPR about how many families are living paycheck to paycheck, have less than like $400 in savings, and have nobody to call in during a financial emergency was astounding.
Most Americans are in a desperate situation. And they aren’t used to it. And they feel they don’t deserve it. And because of that, they’re going to vote for whoever promises to fix it, whether they fix it or not.
The issue is that neither party is willing to fix the wealth desparity and class oriented labor practices that cause it. They’re only interested in playing the same game we are now that keeps them paid, and grinds everyone else into the dirt.
Punching nazis can be nice and masculine if you like.
We could show them the Letter Kenny episode where they beat up the neoNazis.
Or dome old captain america comics. A certain tarentino movie. Biography of any of a hundred oss/sas guys. Like a million soviet films on the subject.
There’s options.
Young adults needs stronger world frameworks that don’t feel forced on them.
IMO that’s a virtue system!
I’ve been a Stoic for over 20 years now and managed to convert dozens of people to progressive thought just by discussing virtues that are inherit to human nature (justice, courage, wisdom, temperance). People like abstract virtues because they’re easy to incorporate to their personal world models with very little friction and friction is the real thought killer.
Most people are truth seeking but can be very slow learners and some really rebel against strong friction so there’s a need for more abstract approaches like - using “colorblind” instead of arguing race, using “cosmopolitan” when argueing geopolitics, using “secular” when arguing religion etc etc. Every other argument can follow afterwards.
This is the way.
I’m so sorry, genuinely, what? Could you further explain what you mean? I understand your first sentence, and then I got lost
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.
what is this cooking show because it sounds delightful. statesians have lost the plot when it comes to cooking shows
It’s called “Das perfekte Dinner”, it’s been on the air for 20 years and is one of those shows that defies the death of classic television.
It can appear quite boring if you come from watching things like chef’s table or hell’s kitchen, as there is little drama, its unscripted and it’s mostly very positive and no-nonsense.
My wife has watched too much great British baking show and this sounds right up our alley
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.
Seeing a lot of flags in the No Kings protests was very satisfying. We have to take genuine patriotism back from MAGA faketriots.
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.
What a childish take.
You want to believe that young men are more complicated than they actually are. Your childish notions of men as complicated feelings creatures who need to open up and express their feelings oh wait not those feelings are part of the problem.
Imo, more childish to deny people’s basic needs and desires. They aren’t that complicated.
Well yes, you’re trying to reach out to literal non adults.
Literally says “young men” in the title. Do you need a dictionary?
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.
Maybe stop labeling them the “enemy” with posts like these?
Where did it call them “the enemy”?
It didn’t, it’s asking how we can reach them and help support them, no?
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.
liberal politicians and liberal MSM frame it that way, because they have nothing else to offer but toxic culture wars.
Liberal politicians do it because it’s been pushed by the left. It’s how they keep leftists voting more centrally. They take left wing ideas, then water them down enough to appeal for centrist voters. Centrists find common sense ideas appealing, while those on the left get a dog whistle.
I lean quite to the left and have rarely, if ever, heard many boogie-man talking points in this comment thread that people are obsessed over. And in terms of “centrists” equating patriarchy with men, for me it’s an intelligence/education issue, combined with refusal to have real life human contact with women, and, of course, choosing to blame literally the oppressed for all the harm that patriarchy causes them or their fellow men
So we should lie?
Men are the problem. The patriarchy, the racism, the discrimination? Men.
And if you are too braindead to understand this, you’re too far gone anyway.
I have more respect for open misandry than you might expect, but if your emotions are preventing you from crafting worthwhile politics, remove yourself from the situation.
The calm, reasonable people are talking, and histrionic performance like this is a step away from panicking.
Your trauma response may be valid, but that does not mean it is productive.
Yes, I am telling you to calm the fuck down.
Troll grade: C-.
Does Trump pay you by the hour or per post?
I’m not payed, I just don’t see a reality where we can improve the world and not mention the hundreds of years of oppression by men at the same time, which, as you already said, will drive away the republicans. So you really gotta start thinking „should we ignore the obvious problem why woman are to this day fighting for human rights so we can find a compromise with Nazis?” and my answer is obviously no.
You should be paid because you’re basically campaigning for the republicans.You don’t drive away any core republican voter, they would never vote D. You drive away the ones who voted democrat last election.
You’re making an excellent point here. I’ll bring it up at the next Council of Men that we should stop oppressing women. Good thing we figured that out - top notch work!
You’re conflating a lot of things here
I KNOW! Let’s make June Men’s Mental Health month instead of… wait was it again?
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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leftist influencers need to make fighting for the rights of minorities seem manly. Badass. Like a hero. Worthy of praise and celebration.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
I get that this is upvoted a lot due to being constructive but it also reflects a lot of Republican media tropes about the left that aren’t really true - and that’s why trying to “fix” these things won’t work - because it misses the real problem.
Examples: No significant figure on the left is saying “men are rapists”, or telling men to be more like women, etc. Reducing suicide, safer workplaces, and reducing excessive prison sentences are all priorities for the left and not for the right.
I think the real problem is quite simple: Republicans have invested heavily in portraying themselves as the “masculine party”, and in driving the narratives I’ve mentioned. And because Republican leaders like the Murdochs and Elon tend to be men, they’re best at driving those narratives.
Which goes to the real underlying problem with the left as a whole - no ability to drive or counter a media narrative. The right has Fox news and Elon’s control over Twitter, which they can and do regularly use to create whatever narrative they want. Notice how for example they just made white south African farmer killings a topic all of a sudden. The left has a bunch of corporate media whose top priority is selling truck ads. Sure, maybe the reporters themselves are left leaning, but they have no top down guidance as to what narratives to build.
And until the left creates some sort of media capability to create and control narratives, the right will always have a leg up. And because of that, none of the well intentioned ideas here will actually work. If the left tries to appeal to men, the right will decide how those appeals will be interpreted.
I agree with you for the most part, but there is a thread you missed.
While there might not be a significant leftist media personality which says misandrist things, there are a lot of smaller people who do. There’s an air of “men are not welcome here, specifically cishet men” in lefty spaces. And people who try to speak out against it tend to be ousted. (Case study Erin Pizzey) There wouldn’t be a demand for “male tears” mugs out there if there wasn’t a demand for them.
Whether you think this behavior is acceptable or not, it doesn’t make the left seem appealing to young men, especially because it’s not called out by people.
But yeah, the top down media? A huge machine that’s a problem. The left will have a hard time replicating it, especially because when you live in hyper capitalism, it’s not really in the benefit of capitalists to try to fix it.
You hit the nail on the head AND provided clear action items. Excellent post.
I do think that it would be difficult to rebrand “feminism” and “patriarchy” because the terms are inherently gendered and are sometimes still being used for gendered purposes. We should definitely find new terms and be more accurate about the egalitarian movement being a new movement, or a rebrand of the more general parts of feminism, rather than trying to reuse the old movement’s terms when it doesn’t make sense.
W-Wait, what is this? A well-thought out, constructive, sympathetic comment? Here? I don’t believe it!
Real talk, though: This is an incredibly solid post and I really appreciate you taking the time to actually write all of these points out. It’s rare (or, subjectively, it feels rare) to see an admission that a major shift in how this topic is approached is needed, and I feel just a bit more hopeful seeing someone else put in the time to go this deep on it.
I would only make two add-on comments to your points:
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With regard to point #6, I agree with the concept - but we have to be careful of how we phrase this. Unless it comes with a major effort to utterly restructure our economy in such a way that either a man’s value is no longer measured in his ability to be successful in a paid position, and/or we restructure our economy to make success more viable, I fear that efforts to support “working class heros” are doomed to become awkward failures as automation continues to steamroll the viability of those positions.
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One point I don’t see brought up here, though it is touched at in (1) and (8), is that we’ve got to modulate how we discuss so-called “toxic” behavior. When so many seemingly minor behaviors are met with the same levels of disdain, villainization, and even punishment as things like actual sexual assault, it ends up feeling deeply isolating, undermines the point that is trying to be made, and pushes men towards the worst actors.
For #6, I don’t think we necessarily have to move away from the idea that being a man means being a provider and a protector. At least to me those are some of the core tenants of being a man.
The person above you mentioned the men in Avatar the last Airbender. But I also want to add in the men in LOTR, Gomez Adams, Ted Lasso, Kratos in the newer god of war games, and Steve Rodgers.
These are men who are caring, loving, emotional and they are (mostly) able to show those emotions, capable of growth, and able to admit when they are wrong. But they are still men. Men who struggle with anger, men go to war and protect their families, men who are incredibly strong in the face of struggle, men who sometimes make “inappropriate” (to the left) jokes, and men who strive for nothing else but bettering the lives of those in their care.
I sometimes hate that what counts as “positive masculinity” is really just feminity but dressed up in a blue bow. Men are not women and telling them that they can’t be super competitive, can’t be angry, and can’t fail is just setting them up to fall into toxic masculinity. This might just be me talking about the culture I was raised in but those things aren’t necessarily a bad thing, and erasing what a “man” has been for generations isn’t going to win you any extra fans.
Sorry, I think maybe my point was misunderstood. Trust me, I’m in full agreement with you: Like the comment I was responding to was saying, trying to simply frame “positive” masculinity in terms of feminine traits doesn’t seem like a good idea. There needs to be a positive reference for actually masculine role models and ideals.
Like, literally everything you said is something I totally agree with.
My concern is that, specifically, initiatives which idealize working-class providers and fail to recognize the way automation and computerization have significantly flattened the jobs market (especially well-paying, working-class jobs), are intrinsically doomed because we don’t have an economy which widely supports men acting as supporters for a family. If we idealize a working provider but simultaneously leave things in a state where a man can’t provide for his family, what I fear we’re actually left with is swaths of men feeling unfulfilled and angry at those in charge for bringing them to this point.
Thanks, I’m glad you liked it!
I kinda agree on your points. I feel that working class heros could make a comeback if done well, though.
Hell ideally I’d like to see more historical stuff based on labor history, Blair Mountain was crazy and could totally be an action movie.
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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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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:
- 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.
Harsh to hear but I believe this perspective to be both true and very important to accept/understand (with the exception of the terf topic)
Keep in mind I’m not saying to accept TERFs, I’m saying to be smart about letting them cut themselves off instead of forcing them out.
Fair. IMO it depends on how much you value being morally correct vs overall effectiveness of the movement. It could be worth it to compromise the integrity slightly if it will be much more effective. Not everyone would make that trade but I’m not here to argue against people who would.
IMO it depends on how much you value being morally correct vs overall effectiveness of the movement.
And this entire thought process is why the left gets weaker every round of elections.
See for instance: Abandon Harris, a movement thought by absolute winners at the brain lottery, who thought that undermining the candidate who didn’t ban middle easterners from entering the US was the smart choice because Biden was “too lenient against Israel.”
Politics is about seizing and wielding power, morality has nothing to do with it.
For one, any grifter can pretend to be more morally correct than you or I and once they get in power they will do whatever they want anyway. I would much rather side with someone who disagrees with me on some things but does so in earnest than someone who is suspiciously always somehow more moral and more correct than me or them.
For two, morality is literally incompatible with politics, because it is downstream from the body politic.
For instance: It is considered immoral to own slaves, today. It used to be allowed and to the mores of the time, uncontroversial.
Then enough people who disagreed with that stance pushed to gain power and made it illegal, once that became the status quo for long enough it is now controversial to hold a position that was the default and viceversa.
Something becomes a matter of morality once it is no longer a matter of politics.
In practice, you don’t actually need support for all your ideas, you need enough good ideas to get you enough support that you can then push through your less popular pet issues. Even better if the pet issues themselves are popular, that’s when you get explosive successes like Trump getting re-elected by hammering the inflation button (despite anyone who knows anything about econ knowing he would be literally unable to do anything about it).
As long as people are not actively against your pet issues they’ll re-elect you just fine, that’s how croneyism skates by unnoticed.
Yes, but there is a point at whoch your movement is compromised so much that winning doesn’t matter because the common goals of the movement are no longer desirable. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that-- we’re pretty firmly in “come on guys stop bikeshedding and work together” territory-- but it is important to know that it can swing too far the other way. That’s how we got people saying “violence is bad, you have to hear the nazi out”.
there is a point at whoch your movement is compromised so much that winning doesn’t matter because the common goals of the movement are no longer desirable.
That’s why movements should be built around goals and not allegiance/morality.
“This is the movement to achieve X.”
“X has been achieved.”
“Aight, job well done, time to move on.”
This is what the right does (or tries to, anyway), and they’re eating the left alive, maybe it’s worth taking this very non-partisan strategy from their playbook?
violence is bad, you have to hear the nazi out
AKA the same provision that protects everyone with an unpopular opinion, yourself included, yes. That’s what liberal democracies do.
The state has a monopoly on violence, you don’t get to decide who doesn’t get rights, nor do the nazis.
The US is a bit of an exception obviously, you guys love your political violence (one could say you are built on it) and who am I to stop you, but Europe does not work that way and thank fuck for that, lol.
So yeah you have to let the nazi speak, that doesn’t mean you can’t talk over them, mock them, goad them into striking first so the cops will crack down on them, etc.
I’m Italian so I guarantee you I know that it’s a complex landscape to navigate, with actual fascists (the roman salute kind, not the “we’re cops and we will do our job” ““fascists””) in a lot of police strike teams, and in the current government (Thankfully I live abroad, shit’s bad at home right now), I know it’s no picnic to actually maintain a liberal society, but other countries consistently succeed, like France and the Netherlands, or the nordics.
It takes effort and a lot of education from early on, and that the population appreciates the importance of that education and the values it is supposed to impart.
Conversely it was “me ne frego” and the widespread apathy towards it that condemned italy to Mussolini’s rule, not civil debate.
Moreover, allowing and embracing political violence doesn’t work when one side is already chomping at the bit and better at it than your side, but that’s a practical consideration rather than an ethical/moral one.
Mind you this does not mean “don’t defend yourself” it means “don’t strike first”
Embrace the Roman doctrine: we will never pick up arms first, but if forced to we will only lay them second.
wow. most of what you write creates culture that completely excludes and alienates women. See: hostility of current male dominated fields towards women. Blows my mind that you consider going backwards, rather than male culture evolving to be better human beings, to be a solution.
A competitive spirit is not morally wrong and calling men worse human beings for having one is so fundamentally wrong that I can only ask you to reread and reconsider the above post.
competitive spirit is very healthy, however we have decades of very well documented evidence of how keeping it unchecked and alienating anyone with emotional intelligence plays out in real life. I also never called men as worse human beings - case in point that anyone pointing out the toxicity in **male only **culture is labeled as hating men
I have a bit of a preconceived notion as to why you are saying this, however I would rather ask you to be more specific before jumping to conclusions. Can you give concrete examples as to how my suggestions would alienate women?
the universalizing ideology of feminism for men is incoherent
and if you react with anger to someone, me, stating this fact, that feminism is and ought to be for women, you’re part of the problem, shut up.
feminism is full of lessons on how feminism helps women, men should read feminists
but it’s stupid to expect feminism/feminists to advocate for men’s issues
and it’s insulting to ask men to believe that all they have to do is be good feminists and they’ll get what they need.
if you’re a man and you want to write about how actually all men need to do is understand patriarchy, seriously shut the fuck up.
if you’re a woman and you want to write about how actually feminism is good for men, seriously shut the fuck up:
stop centering a tool for helping women, feminism, stop centering women, when men is the topic. do you understand? can you understand? the topic is men.
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male feminists are just simping. male allies are good and proper, but men shouldn’t co-opt women’s issues by taking up the feminist label.
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
