Gen Z is two generations, not one
January 27, 2024 5:56 PM Subscribe
In the US, Gallup data shows that after decades where the sexes were each spread roughly equally across liberal and conservative world views, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. That gap took just six years to open up. Germany also now shows a 30-point gap between increasingly conservative young men and progressive female contemporaries, and in the UK the gap is 25 points. from A new global gender divide is emerging [Financial Times; ungated]
More from the article's author, John Burn-Murdoch, in an X thread [Nitter]
More from the article's author, John Burn-Murdoch, in an X thread [Nitter]
No matter the generation, a majority of men will always be convinced they are hard done by.
posted by Kitteh at 6:10 PM on January 27 [69 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 6:10 PM on January 27 [69 favorites]
> I feel like that's maybe a better statement of the problem
Noted Silicon Valley dimwit Paul Graham posted on Twitter on this trend of increasingly conservative men: "If people choose spouses with similar beliefs, as they tend to do, then straight women who don't identify as liberal will have a huge advantage."
To which someone replied, "Funny how he doesn't frame this as conservative men being at a disadvantage."
posted by AlSweigart at 6:10 PM on January 27 [172 favorites]
Noted Silicon Valley dimwit Paul Graham posted on Twitter on this trend of increasingly conservative men: "If people choose spouses with similar beliefs, as they tend to do, then straight women who don't identify as liberal will have a huge advantage."
To which someone replied, "Funny how he doesn't frame this as conservative men being at a disadvantage."
posted by AlSweigart at 6:10 PM on January 27 [172 favorites]
Outside of the weird "oh the poor men" framing that some people are clearly giving it, this seems like it would make finding dating/relationships harder for everyone. I'm well older than Gen Z and I don't personally know anyone my age who is in a relationship across a wide political divide. (Center left and center right, yes, but not progressive and MAGA, say). I've known some older couples with a medium-sized divide, but that was where the men were country club Republicans and the wives were mainstream Democrats, and that was also years ago when those didn't feel so far apart.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:21 PM on January 27 [17 favorites]
posted by Dip Flash at 6:21 PM on January 27 [17 favorites]
> straight women who don't identify as liberal will have a huge advantage.
> "Funny how he doesn't frame this as conservative men being at a disadvantage."
IMO the best way to word this would have been to say "liberal men who date women are at a huge advantage." The questionable connotations of turning women into dangled carrots are an acceptable tradeoff! That is my hot take.
posted by MiraK at 6:27 PM on January 27 [47 favorites]
> "Funny how he doesn't frame this as conservative men being at a disadvantage."
IMO the best way to word this would have been to say "liberal men who date women are at a huge advantage." The questionable connotations of turning women into dangled carrots are an acceptable tradeoff! That is my hot take.
posted by MiraK at 6:27 PM on January 27 [47 favorites]
C'mon, mass Lysistrata-based movement
posted by Flunkie at 6:31 PM on January 27 [65 favorites]
posted by Flunkie at 6:31 PM on January 27 [65 favorites]
There are fewer straight women these days so I’m not too worried, the gay agenda is winning
Also, the progressive-conservative gender gap in Korea is absolutely wild, it will be very interesting to see what happens there.
posted by catcafe at 6:44 PM on January 27 [20 favorites]
Also, the progressive-conservative gender gap in Korea is absolutely wild, it will be very interesting to see what happens there.
posted by catcafe at 6:44 PM on January 27 [20 favorites]
The media polarization idea is an interesting one, but a lot of men’s media has always been conservative and misogynist, so I don’t know.
I do think the dating stuff is just kind of goofy when we don’t even really understand what’s going on. Like, imagine if the rise is conservative men is really due to fascist blackpill theories based on evolutionary pseudoscience, and it turns out that the majority of the conservative young women that are out there are devout Christians looking for a similarly religious man. Those ladies might still be out of luck.
posted by smelendez at 7:03 PM on January 27 [18 favorites]
I do think the dating stuff is just kind of goofy when we don’t even really understand what’s going on. Like, imagine if the rise is conservative men is really due to fascist blackpill theories based on evolutionary pseudoscience, and it turns out that the majority of the conservative young women that are out there are devout Christians looking for a similarly religious man. Those ladies might still be out of luck.
posted by smelendez at 7:03 PM on January 27 [18 favorites]
Like, imagine if the rise is conservative men is really due to fascist blackpill theories based on evolutionary pseudoscience, and it turns out that the majority of the conservative young women that are out there are devout Christians looking for a similarly religious man. Those ladies might still be out of luck.
The blackpilled not-so-crypto fascist/devout evangelical overlap is pretty high. And note I didn't say devout evangelical Christian.
posted by thecjm at 7:13 PM on January 27 [7 favorites]
The blackpilled not-so-crypto fascist/devout evangelical overlap is pretty high. And note I didn't say devout evangelical Christian.
posted by thecjm at 7:13 PM on January 27 [7 favorites]
The beneficiaries of the status quo are against change. Yeah that tracks.
posted by Horkus at 7:16 PM on January 27 [31 favorites]
posted by Horkus at 7:16 PM on January 27 [31 favorites]
I don't really see how that makes it "goofy". If a conservative young woman is a devout Christian who is looking for a similarly religious man, I think it would behoove her to consider what "conservative", "devout Christian", and "similarly religious" really mean to her. A fascist blackpilled conservative man either meets her definitions or not. If not, fuck* that dude. She may be "out of luck", but she's in better luck than the hypothetical alternative - i.e. getting into a relationship with some truly horrible person.
* by which I mean "don't fuck"
posted by Flunkie at 7:28 PM on January 27 [10 favorites]
* by which I mean "don't fuck"
posted by Flunkie at 7:28 PM on January 27 [10 favorites]
This seems like it could be a very self-reinforcing cycle, too.
posted by gottabefunky at 7:31 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]
posted by gottabefunky at 7:31 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]
Harvard Youth Poll, Fall 2023 (A national youth poll)
posted by Brian B. at 7:40 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]
posted by Brian B. at 7:40 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]
I'm fascinated by the number of people who can treat "Women don't want to date men who think they're lesser beings not entitled to basic rights" as some weird riddle to crack.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:41 PM on January 27 [215 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:41 PM on January 27 [215 favorites]
If young men following this trend can't find anyone to date them, perhaps this could lead to some rethinking of priorities and attitudes.
posted by emjaybee at 7:48 PM on January 27 [14 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 7:48 PM on January 27 [14 favorites]
Straight women and girls will still date crappy men, just like they do now.
posted by tigrrrlily at 7:53 PM on January 27 [13 favorites]
posted by tigrrrlily at 7:53 PM on January 27 [13 favorites]
> Straight women and girls will still date crappy men, just like they do now.
To a decreasing extent, I'm sure, just as they do now. Women's patience with shitty men is waning fast. That is one of the reasons why men get angry and seek out right wing ideologies for solace. Sigh.
posted by MiraK at 8:01 PM on January 27 [33 favorites]
To a decreasing extent, I'm sure, just as they do now. Women's patience with shitty men is waning fast. That is one of the reasons why men get angry and seek out right wing ideologies for solace. Sigh.
posted by MiraK at 8:01 PM on January 27 [33 favorites]
Gen Z's gender divide is huge — and unexpected
A fascinating deep dive into public opinion. Excerpts don't reflect the full story, but a taste: "among women, no event was more influential to their political development than the #MeToo movement....As women's political priorities have solidified, young men's priorities have melted into mush. ...young women expressed statistically significant greater concern for 11 out of 15 different issues, including drug addiction, crime, climate change, and gun violence. There was not a single issue that young men cared about significantly more than young women. ... could be because Gen Z men have their own issues. ... Men at the highest rungs of the economic ladder are still advantaged by a system that perpetuates gender inequality, while men on the lower rungs of society face unique challenges because they are men. ... Out of a sense of increased insecurity, more young men are adopting a zero-sum view of gender equality — if women gain, men will inevitably lose. ... Based on our interviews, there appears to be a growing eagerness among both young men and women to blame their problems on each other. And a society in which men and women see their interests as irrevocably opposed is not one that can last."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:12 PM on January 27 [14 favorites]
A fascinating deep dive into public opinion. Excerpts don't reflect the full story, but a taste: "among women, no event was more influential to their political development than the #MeToo movement....As women's political priorities have solidified, young men's priorities have melted into mush. ...young women expressed statistically significant greater concern for 11 out of 15 different issues, including drug addiction, crime, climate change, and gun violence. There was not a single issue that young men cared about significantly more than young women. ... could be because Gen Z men have their own issues. ... Men at the highest rungs of the economic ladder are still advantaged by a system that perpetuates gender inequality, while men on the lower rungs of society face unique challenges because they are men. ... Out of a sense of increased insecurity, more young men are adopting a zero-sum view of gender equality — if women gain, men will inevitably lose. ... Based on our interviews, there appears to be a growing eagerness among both young men and women to blame their problems on each other. And a society in which men and women see their interests as irrevocably opposed is not one that can last."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:12 PM on January 27 [14 favorites]
This is how you get to The Screwfly Solution.
posted by meehawl at 8:35 PM on January 27 [15 favorites]
posted by meehawl at 8:35 PM on January 27 [15 favorites]
Given the social media saturation of these age cohorts (is that right? over 1/3rd of waking hours for 17yo?!)...what does the research say about gender differences response to the Jordan Peterson algorithm pipeline? Is there a reactionary female equivalent?
If rage is all the elixir these days, what are the young girls raging about?
[basically I'm with DirtyOldTown]
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 9:03 PM on January 27 [4 favorites]
If rage is all the elixir these days, what are the young girls raging about?
[basically I'm with DirtyOldTown]
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 9:03 PM on January 27 [4 favorites]
Welp, looks like nitter.net's cert just expired.
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:46 PM on January 27 [2 favorites]
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:46 PM on January 27 [2 favorites]
As Oppenheimer showed us, the best way for nerdy men to meet women is to join a leftist political group.
posted by javelina at 9:55 PM on January 27 [24 favorites]
posted by javelina at 9:55 PM on January 27 [24 favorites]
Maybe this helps explain why we have an increasingly visible incel contingent.
posted by abraxasaxarba at 10:49 PM on January 27 [5 favorites]
posted by abraxasaxarba at 10:49 PM on January 27 [5 favorites]
This will persist until the parents of sons get off their asses and raise those sons.
Stop bragging to all and sundry about how glad you are to have a boy, because girls are so much work (read: boys require no work because they did the whole world a favor just by being born). Take the time to find out what’s in his media diet. Hold him to actual standards of behavior/learning/hygiene, just as you would a daughter. Stop kissing his ass, and pull your thumb out of yours.
Good on Gen Z women for increasingly recognizing that these guys are lonely for very good reasons, and for being less inclined to hold their noses about it. We older cohorts should be taking notes.
posted by armeowda at 11:08 PM on January 27 [60 favorites]
Stop bragging to all and sundry about how glad you are to have a boy, because girls are so much work (read: boys require no work because they did the whole world a favor just by being born). Take the time to find out what’s in his media diet. Hold him to actual standards of behavior/learning/hygiene, just as you would a daughter. Stop kissing his ass, and pull your thumb out of yours.
Good on Gen Z women for increasingly recognizing that these guys are lonely for very good reasons, and for being less inclined to hold their noses about it. We older cohorts should be taking notes.
posted by armeowda at 11:08 PM on January 27 [60 favorites]
If people choose spouses with similar beliefs, as they tend to do, then straight women who don't identify as liberal will have a huge advantage.... if you believe that advantages come from quantity irrespective of quality.
posted by pulposus at 11:16 PM on January 27 [13 favorites]
As Oppenheimer showed us, the best way for nerdy men to meet women is to join a leftist political group.
And as Barbie showed us, when men can't figure out what they're good for they double down on patriarchy toxicity and everyone loses.
They're basically documentaries.
posted by klanawa at 11:26 PM on January 27 [45 favorites]
And as Barbie showed us, when men can't figure out what they're good for they double down on patriarchy toxicity and everyone loses.
They're basically documentaries.
posted by klanawa at 11:26 PM on January 27 [45 favorites]
And as Barbie showed us, when men can't figure out what they're good for they double down on patriarchy toxicity and everyone loses.
... as long as we allow them to brainwash the women into thinking this is inevitable and there's nothing to do but accept it. Sadly, I think the Barbie-solution - using feminine wiles to set them against each other and just hope the spirit will magically move them to act out their agitation in the form of a dance battle instead of descending into horrific violence - is not particularly feasible in real life. And that's the hard part. Telling him his Kenough only works after he has again lost the house and has to admit defeat. Difficult to see how current men could get to that point.
posted by sohalt at 12:24 AM on January 28 [8 favorites]
... as long as we allow them to brainwash the women into thinking this is inevitable and there's nothing to do but accept it. Sadly, I think the Barbie-solution - using feminine wiles to set them against each other and just hope the spirit will magically move them to act out their agitation in the form of a dance battle instead of descending into horrific violence - is not particularly feasible in real life. And that's the hard part. Telling him his Kenough only works after he has again lost the house and has to admit defeat. Difficult to see how current men could get to that point.
posted by sohalt at 12:24 AM on January 28 [8 favorites]
... if you believe that advantages come from quantity irrespective of quality.
If they're identifying as super conservative, quality might just not mean the same thing as to you or I.
posted by Dysk at 1:17 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]
If they're identifying as super conservative, quality might just not mean the same thing as to you or I.
posted by Dysk at 1:17 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]
This will persist until the parents of sons get off their asses and raise those sons.
This is the biggest part of the puzzle. I have some younger relatives who are stunned when you challenge their 'views' of gender formed by Peterson and Tate. It's a fail of society to even get to that point, but these kids love their self pity crack party and it's a real chore to try and fix this. So yes, I blame youtube and parents who don't pay attention (probably hard to tell your kid something is bad when you reeeallly aren't sure about them vaccines, there must be something to it etc).
posted by mayoarchitect at 1:19 AM on January 28 [18 favorites]
This is the biggest part of the puzzle. I have some younger relatives who are stunned when you challenge their 'views' of gender formed by Peterson and Tate. It's a fail of society to even get to that point, but these kids love their self pity crack party and it's a real chore to try and fix this. So yes, I blame youtube and parents who don't pay attention (probably hard to tell your kid something is bad when you reeeallly aren't sure about them vaccines, there must be something to it etc).
posted by mayoarchitect at 1:19 AM on January 28 [18 favorites]
I'm no sociologist but this feels obvious to me, looking at the past decade.
Gen Z has lived through global recessions, a pandemic, not to mention perpetual wars and climate change and income inequality has never been greater. Politically, the main parties at least in the US have rarely been further apart and there's been a push further left and right with less and less common ground.
Then add in mainstream and social media that focuses on engagement & profit over everything and is primarily in control of (white, male, conservative) billionaires. There has never been a better conduit and format for populist rhetoric that serves the status quo.
This both pulls in young men who are told that conservatism is the answer as well as pushing women away for the same reasons.
On the positive side, since profit is ultimately more important than politics, social media remains a democratised tool for engagement to get opposing messages to large audiences as well.
I'm a filthy leftie so I believe that this is fundamentally a class-based problem, with the rich & powerful advocating for conservative systems of control and using the same system to drive wedges between people who are all getting exploited by that system. Women tend to have a better understanding and live-in experience with just how inequitable the current system is and know that it wasn't better in the past.
posted by slimepuppy at 1:27 AM on January 28 [28 favorites]
Gen Z has lived through global recessions, a pandemic, not to mention perpetual wars and climate change and income inequality has never been greater. Politically, the main parties at least in the US have rarely been further apart and there's been a push further left and right with less and less common ground.
Then add in mainstream and social media that focuses on engagement & profit over everything and is primarily in control of (white, male, conservative) billionaires. There has never been a better conduit and format for populist rhetoric that serves the status quo.
This both pulls in young men who are told that conservatism is the answer as well as pushing women away for the same reasons.
On the positive side, since profit is ultimately more important than politics, social media remains a democratised tool for engagement to get opposing messages to large audiences as well.
I'm a filthy leftie so I believe that this is fundamentally a class-based problem, with the rich & powerful advocating for conservative systems of control and using the same system to drive wedges between people who are all getting exploited by that system. Women tend to have a better understanding and live-in experience with just how inequitable the current system is and know that it wasn't better in the past.
posted by slimepuppy at 1:27 AM on January 28 [28 favorites]
abrasaxasarba: Maybe this helps explain why we have an increasingly visible incel contingent.
They don't yet know that the promises of status and power are for other people than them, lies that are told by grifters who don't need a scheme any more complicated than "tell your listener what he wants to hear."
posted by k3ninho at 1:50 AM on January 28 [8 favorites]
They don't yet know that the promises of status and power are for other people than them, lies that are told by grifters who don't need a scheme any more complicated than "tell your listener what he wants to hear."
posted by k3ninho at 1:50 AM on January 28 [8 favorites]
How about a recruitment campaign targeting Gen-Z conservative men:
"You're already broke. Go woke! It's where the women are!"
posted by otherchaz at 1:59 AM on January 28 [19 favorites]
"You're already broke. Go woke! It's where the women are!"
posted by otherchaz at 1:59 AM on January 28 [19 favorites]
I have two questions:
- What's going on with young men in Korea? I assume they aren't listening to Joe Rogan or going to Trump rallies.
- What effect will this have on churches? Women have long been the backbone of church attendance. I have a niece who joined a church a few years ago for the music and community, but left after a couple of years when she figured out how they felt about LGBTQ+ people. I'm not sure if she's still looking for a new church.
posted by clawsoon at 3:22 AM on January 28 [8 favorites]
- What's going on with young men in Korea? I assume they aren't listening to Joe Rogan or going to Trump rallies.
- What effect will this have on churches? Women have long been the backbone of church attendance. I have a niece who joined a church a few years ago for the music and community, but left after a couple of years when she figured out how they felt about LGBTQ+ people. I'm not sure if she's still looking for a new church.
posted by clawsoon at 3:22 AM on January 28 [8 favorites]
Or, to rephrase, men aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more conservative than their female contemporaries. I feel like that's maybe a better statement of the problem.
Worth looking at the graphs in the article if you didn't. There's no one pattern.
In the US, men have become more conservative over the past decade or so, but only back to the aggregate level they were around 1990, while women moved sharply to the left. In South Korea, women have held a relatively consistent ideological mix while men moved to the right of dr strangelove. In the UK, men moved sharply to the left but a gender gap still opened up because of how breathtakingly left the women moved. In Germany, men and women had both been drifting right, and men arrested that movement while women reversed it.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:28 AM on January 28 [43 favorites]
Worth looking at the graphs in the article if you didn't. There's no one pattern.
In the US, men have become more conservative over the past decade or so, but only back to the aggregate level they were around 1990, while women moved sharply to the left. In South Korea, women have held a relatively consistent ideological mix while men moved to the right of dr strangelove. In the UK, men moved sharply to the left but a gender gap still opened up because of how breathtakingly left the women moved. In Germany, men and women had both been drifting right, and men arrested that movement while women reversed it.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:28 AM on January 28 [43 favorites]
The article says:
No mention at all of right-wing radicalization pipelines. No mention of the world's most powerful leader demonstrating a morality of "grab 'em by the pussy, rape 'em, then make 'em carry the pregnancy to term." No mention of misogynistic Christian Nationalism. No mention of well-funded right-wing propaganda networks.
Nope, instead it blames young women for turning young men into fascists. "If only women allowed men to abuse them, we wouldn't have to create a political system organized around men abusing women."
posted by clawsoon at 4:09 AM on January 28 [81 favorites]
In Poland last year, almost half of men aged 18-21 backed the hard-right Confederation party......and then it says that the reason is:
In [South Korea's] 2022 presidential election... young men swung heavily behind the right-wing People Power party...
The #MeToo movement was the key trigger, giving rise to fiercely feminist values among young women...So it's blaming young women for the votes of young men? Typical.
No mention at all of right-wing radicalization pipelines. No mention of the world's most powerful leader demonstrating a morality of "grab 'em by the pussy, rape 'em, then make 'em carry the pregnancy to term." No mention of misogynistic Christian Nationalism. No mention of well-funded right-wing propaganda networks.
Nope, instead it blames young women for turning young men into fascists. "If only women allowed men to abuse them, we wouldn't have to create a political system organized around men abusing women."
posted by clawsoon at 4:09 AM on January 28 [81 favorites]
this seems like it would make finding dating/relationships harder for everyone.
Not if you lie to get laid.
posted by pracowity at 4:23 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]
Not if you lie to get laid.
posted by pracowity at 4:23 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]
The comments on that article are particularly dire, even given the topic.
Just a complete deluge of men who have somehow convinced themselves that there is, amongst other things, widespread employment discrimination against men for being men.
posted by Audreynachrome at 5:10 AM on January 28 [13 favorites]
Just a complete deluge of men who have somehow convinced themselves that there is, amongst other things, widespread employment discrimination against men for being men.
posted by Audreynachrome at 5:10 AM on January 28 [13 favorites]
I struggle to articulate a description of "masculinity" that isn't bioessentialist, or just a bunch of reductive stereotypes. "Positive Masculinity" is even trickier. Basically any quality that you can say "makes a good man" is just something that a good person does.
So, what can be done in terms of role models? Why are young men taking their cues from disgraced pseudointellectuals and sex criminals? I think it's because masculinity is having an identity crisis, and loathsome hucksters like the Tates and Petersons of the world are trying to cash in by telling guys that it's okay to be toxic, because that's what being a Man is.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 5:20 AM on January 28 [12 favorites]
So, what can be done in terms of role models? Why are young men taking their cues from disgraced pseudointellectuals and sex criminals? I think it's because masculinity is having an identity crisis, and loathsome hucksters like the Tates and Petersons of the world are trying to cash in by telling guys that it's okay to be toxic, because that's what being a Man is.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 5:20 AM on January 28 [12 favorites]
mrjohnmuller: I think that you're getting lose to the root of the problem. Boys are taught male supremacy from birth, so to them part of being a "good man" will always be not being a woman, and just being a good person is not sufficient, because even a woman can be a good person. We're stuck until we start raising boys to be good people.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:34 AM on January 28 [24 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 5:34 AM on January 28 [24 favorites]
mrjohnmuller: and loathsome hucksters like the Tates and Petersons of the world are trying to cash in by telling guys that it's okay to be toxic, because that's what being a Man is.
I would broaden that thought.
The Tates and Petersons and the ideas they espouse are being amplified by powerful men with lots of money, because those powerful men are threatened in their ability to get away with abuse. In order to maintain their positions of abusive power, they need to get young men on board. They need to convince young men that the things which threaten powerful men's ability to abuse also threatens young men's ability to get any relationship at all.
(It's a lie, but it's working, because making yourself into a loathsome young man who believes that women are responsible for all your problems does, in fact, threaten your ability to get any relationship at all, while blinding you to the real reasons for it.)
posted by clawsoon at 5:43 AM on January 28 [24 favorites]
I would broaden that thought.
The Tates and Petersons and the ideas they espouse are being amplified by powerful men with lots of money, because those powerful men are threatened in their ability to get away with abuse. In order to maintain their positions of abusive power, they need to get young men on board. They need to convince young men that the things which threaten powerful men's ability to abuse also threatens young men's ability to get any relationship at all.
(It's a lie, but it's working, because making yourself into a loathsome young man who believes that women are responsible for all your problems does, in fact, threaten your ability to get any relationship at all, while blinding you to the real reasons for it.)
posted by clawsoon at 5:43 AM on January 28 [24 favorites]
Huh. The implication of the South Korea data--or, at least what the author's pretty clearly trying to say without saying--is that it will be badly struggling as a society in a generation or two, if not collapsing. Often those sorts of critiques come from a very conservative perspective. Do any MeFites located in South Korea have an opinion on that?
So it's blaming young women for the votes of young men? Typical.
I would encourage anyone with this opinion to re-read TFA. Or to read it, if you have not done so. The article claims #MeToo was the cause of the shift, and it states that it's what caused this realignment, but I don't see any actual description in the article of what is motivating male conservatism. The closest I can see to that in the article is that males are "standing still," along with a note that in some cases (Germany) statistically significant numbers of men are moving to the right. There is no actual explanation offered. If I missed something, I'd appreciate it being pointed out.
Yes, I can surely see potential influences here from Trump, Peterson, etc., but that's an inference, not (apparently?) in the research. I feel like the very loud voices, here on MetaFilter and elsewhere on this issue, drown out the possibility of understanding. This thread is full of Men Are Bad, Actually, and while I understand (see: the article; see: the world) the sources of it, it is exhausting.
(Note: this is not an invitation for you to attempt to explain to me gender, gender relations, gender history, your understanding of those topics, the lived experience of girls, women, or gender minority groups in the U.S. or the world, or to share one or more anecdotes about men being awful to you. I know about those things and am sympathetic, and I regularly spend time working on projects aimed at improving gender equity in the U.S.)
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:59 AM on January 28 [16 favorites]
So it's blaming young women for the votes of young men? Typical.
I would encourage anyone with this opinion to re-read TFA. Or to read it, if you have not done so. The article claims #MeToo was the cause of the shift, and it states that it's what caused this realignment, but I don't see any actual description in the article of what is motivating male conservatism. The closest I can see to that in the article is that males are "standing still," along with a note that in some cases (Germany) statistically significant numbers of men are moving to the right. There is no actual explanation offered. If I missed something, I'd appreciate it being pointed out.
Yes, I can surely see potential influences here from Trump, Peterson, etc., but that's an inference, not (apparently?) in the research. I feel like the very loud voices, here on MetaFilter and elsewhere on this issue, drown out the possibility of understanding. This thread is full of Men Are Bad, Actually, and while I understand (see: the article; see: the world) the sources of it, it is exhausting.
(Note: this is not an invitation for you to attempt to explain to me gender, gender relations, gender history, your understanding of those topics, the lived experience of girls, women, or gender minority groups in the U.S. or the world, or to share one or more anecdotes about men being awful to you. I know about those things and am sympathetic, and I regularly spend time working on projects aimed at improving gender equity in the U.S.)
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:59 AM on January 28 [16 favorites]
Korea’s is an extreme situation, but it serves as a warning to other countries of what can happen when young men and women part ways. Its society is riven in two. Its marriage rate has plummeted, and birth rate has fallen precipitously, dropping to 0.78 births per woman in 2022, the lowest of any country in the world.
Ohhhhhh no!!! Why is this always presented like such a tragedy? (I know why)
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:07 AM on January 28 [12 favorites]
Ohhhhhh no!!! Why is this always presented like such a tragedy? (I know why)
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:07 AM on January 28 [12 favorites]
- What effect will this have on churches? Women have long been the backbone of church attendance. I have a niece who joined a church a few years ago for the music and community, but left after a couple of years when she figured out how they felt about LGBTQ+ people. I'm not sure if she's still looking for a new church.
I think this is one of the roots of the big "he gets us" advertising campaign, which aims to promote Christianity as inclusive and justice-focused, but in a really evasive and mealy-mouthed way, because ultimately it's funded by conservative evangelicals, so the message ends up being "Christianity is about love and acceptance and justice, oh please please please don't force us to make any straightforward statement about gay people." I get the impression that this is the marketing strategy of most of the evangelical megachurches that are trying really hard to capture more gen-Z and Millennial people.
There are also the churches that are genuinely trying to be inclusive, at least at the local level, and the churches that don't hesitate to tell you how they really feel about gay people, but those have been around for a long time. The "please don't ask us about our homophobia!" megachurch feels like something relatively new.
posted by Jeanne at 6:07 AM on January 28 [16 favorites]
I think this is one of the roots of the big "he gets us" advertising campaign, which aims to promote Christianity as inclusive and justice-focused, but in a really evasive and mealy-mouthed way, because ultimately it's funded by conservative evangelicals, so the message ends up being "Christianity is about love and acceptance and justice, oh please please please don't force us to make any straightforward statement about gay people." I get the impression that this is the marketing strategy of most of the evangelical megachurches that are trying really hard to capture more gen-Z and Millennial people.
There are also the churches that are genuinely trying to be inclusive, at least at the local level, and the churches that don't hesitate to tell you how they really feel about gay people, but those have been around for a long time. The "please don't ask us about our homophobia!" megachurch feels like something relatively new.
posted by Jeanne at 6:07 AM on January 28 [16 favorites]
cupcakeninja: I would encourage anyone with this opinion to re-read TFA. Or to read it, if you have not done so. The article claims #MeToo was the cause of the shift, and it states that it's what caused this realignment, but I don't see any actual description in the article of what is motivating male conservatism.
I read the article twice before I made that comment. :-) It's offering feminism and #MeToo as the explanation for the whole phenomenon, with no suggestion that a separate explanation is required for male conservatism.
You might have a separate explanation, but the article doesn't.
posted by clawsoon at 6:10 AM on January 28 [15 favorites]
I read the article twice before I made that comment. :-) It's offering feminism and #MeToo as the explanation for the whole phenomenon, with no suggestion that a separate explanation is required for male conservatism.
You might have a separate explanation, but the article doesn't.
posted by clawsoon at 6:10 AM on January 28 [15 favorites]
[facetious]
the gen-zedders who were gonna get counted in the "liberal men" bucket are all transitioning instead
[/facetious]
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 6:10 AM on January 28 [9 favorites]
the gen-zedders who were gonna get counted in the "liberal men" bucket are all transitioning instead
[/facetious]
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 6:10 AM on January 28 [9 favorites]
I'll just point out that there's a crucial distinction between this thread is full of Men Are Bad, and this thread is full of Our Society That Prefers and Favors Men is bad.
It's the difference between anti-male, and feminist opinions. It's disappointing when they are confused.
posted by Dashy at 6:14 AM on January 28 [23 favorites]
It's the difference between anti-male, and feminist opinions. It's disappointing when they are confused.
posted by Dashy at 6:14 AM on January 28 [23 favorites]
Yeah, even as a person who is generally somewhat sensitive on this point, I haven't seen much Men Are Bad here. Although, given that the article is about how an alarming number of young men are deliberately choosing to become execrable human beings, maybe some of this depends on one's point of view.
On a perhaps related topic, in some previous thread someone linked to an argument about how misreading "toxic masculinity" as "masculinity, which is always toxic" was associated with a certain way of processing language that was linked to other cognitive features associated with conservatism ... anybody remember something like that?
posted by Not A Thing at 6:33 AM on January 28 [4 favorites]
On a perhaps related topic, in some previous thread someone linked to an argument about how misreading "toxic masculinity" as "masculinity, which is always toxic" was associated with a certain way of processing language that was linked to other cognitive features associated with conservatism ... anybody remember something like that?
posted by Not A Thing at 6:33 AM on January 28 [4 favorites]
I concur with you wholeheartedly, Dashy. I am not confusing the two, as I am indeed a proponent of the Our Society That Prefers and Favors Men Is Bad, Actually view. I do share that opinion with others online and IRL, attempting in my own little way to help improve society. I am also a Gen X-er who has carefully listened to and reflected for thirty years on discourse in this area. And, in fact, some of it really does seem to me to be, directly or tacitly, Men Are Bad, Actually discourse. Sometimes that view is expressed seriously, sometimes facetiously, but it's a constant. For structural reasons, of course it does not have the same societal impact as misogyny, but it's not a thing that should go entirely uncommented-on, especially in threads like this.
Clawsoon, I take your point. I'm not going to invest too much brain power into analyzing an FT article on this issue, but I guess I thought the article had more of a gap than an explanation. In the absence of an explanation, I can understand drawing the "feminism and #MeToo" conclusion, but this seems to me more like a weakness in the article or gap in the research. Perhaps I'm too sheltered, working in academia, but I just don't bump into many people my age or younger who are willing to express support for Trump's terrible ways or Peterson and the like. Obvs they are out there, I just don't tend to have those interactions, and I am interested in things that don't sound like social media sound bites.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:46 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]
Clawsoon, I take your point. I'm not going to invest too much brain power into analyzing an FT article on this issue, but I guess I thought the article had more of a gap than an explanation. In the absence of an explanation, I can understand drawing the "feminism and #MeToo" conclusion, but this seems to me more like a weakness in the article or gap in the research. Perhaps I'm too sheltered, working in academia, but I just don't bump into many people my age or younger who are willing to express support for Trump's terrible ways or Peterson and the like. Obvs they are out there, I just don't tend to have those interactions, and I am interested in things that don't sound like social media sound bites.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:46 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]
Somewhere along the way I read/heard/absorbed that at a young age women are 5 years more mature than men of the same age (and that gap maybe never closes?). As part of a sport I’ve done for years, I interact with a lot of high school kids and for at least the last 20 years I think the 5 year maturity gap is pretty accurate. I don’t have a working theory how this ties into the liberal/conservative split, but I think its along the lines of “Hey, as a woman, if I go to college, work hard, avoid some poverty traps like having kids very young, I can have a pretty successful, independent life where I don’t need to rely on anyone else.”
Part of it’s also that all the 16+ boys think they know everything about everything and don’t have the slightest doubt that they’re wrong. And they’re drowning in media that supports their views. It doesn’t help that they all come from some level of privilege (the sport isn’t cheap) so they’re all starting off on third base thinking they hit a triple. Of course I was like this till I went to college and realized I didn’t know anything about anything (A+ student suddenly failing). I don’t think this cohort ever gets that wake-up call.
Note - CIS male here, I read the article; change is hard, news at 11:00
posted by Farce_First at 7:05 AM on January 28 [10 favorites]
Part of it’s also that all the 16+ boys think they know everything about everything and don’t have the slightest doubt that they’re wrong. And they’re drowning in media that supports their views. It doesn’t help that they all come from some level of privilege (the sport isn’t cheap) so they’re all starting off on third base thinking they hit a triple. Of course I was like this till I went to college and realized I didn’t know anything about anything (A+ student suddenly failing). I don’t think this cohort ever gets that wake-up call.
Note - CIS male here, I read the article; change is hard, news at 11:00
posted by Farce_First at 7:05 AM on January 28 [10 favorites]
Rebecca Solnit writing on feminism and the metoo movement among other things:
Something had shifted. What’s often overlooked is that it had shifted beforehand so that this could happen. Something invisible had made it possible for these highly visible upheavals and transformations. People often position revolution and incrementalism as opposites, but if a revolution is something that changes things suddenly, incrementalism often lays the groundwork that makes it possible. Something happens suddenly, and that’s mistaken for something happening out of the blue. But out of the blue usually means out of the things that most people were not paying attention to, out of the slow work done by somebody or many somebodies out of the limelight for months or years or decades.
/so thanks to Gloria Steinem and all of the women (and men) who have quietly and loudly moved the world.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:08 AM on January 28 [22 favorites]
Something had shifted. What’s often overlooked is that it had shifted beforehand so that this could happen. Something invisible had made it possible for these highly visible upheavals and transformations. People often position revolution and incrementalism as opposites, but if a revolution is something that changes things suddenly, incrementalism often lays the groundwork that makes it possible. Something happens suddenly, and that’s mistaken for something happening out of the blue. But out of the blue usually means out of the things that most people were not paying attention to, out of the slow work done by somebody or many somebodies out of the limelight for months or years or decades.
/so thanks to Gloria Steinem and all of the women (and men) who have quietly and loudly moved the world.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:08 AM on January 28 [22 favorites]
Just a note on interpreting the graphs in TFA: They do not show only Gen Z! I'm a Boomer and my attitude is purportedly shown in the US graph, since I was in the 18-29 group up through 1990.
Additionally, looking at the US graph it looks like it starts about 1982. A 29 year-old in 1982 would have been born in 1953, and would be 71 years old now (which is right at the current age expectancy). So, one way to think about it is that US graph includes almost everyone alive in the US today except the under-18s. Now think about the fact that the trend lines are all on the liberal side. Integrate all that area (between the 0 and the trend lines) and ask yourself whether this matches with the current political split as their data implies that the US, for all our lives, and skewed significantly liberal. Which doesn't seem quite right to me. I suppose a big explanation would be the general people-get-more-conservative-as-they-age.
posted by achrise at 7:14 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
Additionally, looking at the US graph it looks like it starts about 1982. A 29 year-old in 1982 would have been born in 1953, and would be 71 years old now (which is right at the current age expectancy). So, one way to think about it is that US graph includes almost everyone alive in the US today except the under-18s. Now think about the fact that the trend lines are all on the liberal side. Integrate all that area (between the 0 and the trend lines) and ask yourself whether this matches with the current political split as their data implies that the US, for all our lives, and skewed significantly liberal. Which doesn't seem quite right to me. I suppose a big explanation would be the general people-get-more-conservative-as-they-age.
posted by achrise at 7:14 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
I guess I’d add that I have been on the receiving end of too much Orwellian doublethink on this issue. Thousands of times have I seen or heard “men are trash” or the equivalent, offered as a serious or facetious statement. Any number of times, I’ve likewise heard (broadcast or in one-on-one conversation) “oh, that actually means toxic masculinity is a problem,” often coupled with “but even if it was literally meant, the history of misogyny means you and other men need to be OK with it.” Again, this is my lived experience, not a hypothetical straw man. I don’t think it’s anything as bad as the problems faced by women in a misogynist society, but, again, exhausting. And being gaslit about that, here or elsewhere, is also exhausting.
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:16 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:16 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
this seems like it would make finding dating/relationships harder for everyone
Yeah, this is one of the two major problems here - the other big one is that unpartnered men cause enormous social instability.
It's not actually a good thing when you have a major portion of the population - it's hard to guess, because that population is averaged, but even 1/5 of the heterosexual population unable to be partnered is a major, major shift. Countries have had major difficulties even from just 1/20th of the population having demographic shifts. This is really, really bad.
And no, you can't just say "oh, well, naturally the young men will realize that their views are turning off women and just change their views" or "ah, well, parents will parent their sons differently and it will change the problem" because those are pie-in-the-sky idealism solutions that aren't and haven't actually been happening or where they have been happening can't correct for the actual problem.
One of the major problems that I see happening - I was actually just talking about this at a party last night with some other GenX/Millenial couples - is that we on the left/liberal sphere of things who are in older generations have kind of vacated our responsibilities in terms of creating new gender norms in terms of how exactly people court each other these days. We (correctly) said that some of the old ways of doing things were wrong, but we never really provided examples of what exactly was right.
In part, I suppose mentally it's because we just thought of the norms we grew up with "but without the bad stuff", but forgetting that new people have to make their own mores existing in this world. What *does* sexy, respectful flirting look like in the modern era? Particularly, what does it look like for a man to initiate? In what settings is it appropriate to initiate? How far is it appropriate to initiate? To be honest, I would have no way how to explain to a kid the rules because I have no fucking clue what the new rules are. I'm just genuinely grateful to be GenX and have a GenX partner who looked into my eyes from several inches away and held the pause and saw I was still smiling so he kissed me. But the kids absolutely cannot do that. So what do they do?
And I can well, easily imagine that it leads them to worlds of resentment and pain if they are growing up - as I see them doing, as a parent - without really having experimental relationships. One of my kids once told me "Everyone's afraid to ask anyone out because you have to know what kind of relationship you're asking them out to." All of my and my partner's kids are in college, and between the three of them, they've had five total relationships between them in their entire lives. I had five relationships by the time I was out of high school, which meant I was kind of prepared and knew what I wanted as I moved into my twenties.
And that leaves them easy fucking marks for people who tell them "The problem is the complainers, the liberals who are just making a big deal about things" rather than "Sorry kids, our entire generation freaked out, realized a full half our generation could be damned by these standards, and dropped the fucking ball and ran away."
posted by corb at 7:24 AM on January 28 [39 favorites]
Yeah, this is one of the two major problems here - the other big one is that unpartnered men cause enormous social instability.
It's not actually a good thing when you have a major portion of the population - it's hard to guess, because that population is averaged, but even 1/5 of the heterosexual population unable to be partnered is a major, major shift. Countries have had major difficulties even from just 1/20th of the population having demographic shifts. This is really, really bad.
And no, you can't just say "oh, well, naturally the young men will realize that their views are turning off women and just change their views" or "ah, well, parents will parent their sons differently and it will change the problem" because those are pie-in-the-sky idealism solutions that aren't and haven't actually been happening or where they have been happening can't correct for the actual problem.
One of the major problems that I see happening - I was actually just talking about this at a party last night with some other GenX/Millenial couples - is that we on the left/liberal sphere of things who are in older generations have kind of vacated our responsibilities in terms of creating new gender norms in terms of how exactly people court each other these days. We (correctly) said that some of the old ways of doing things were wrong, but we never really provided examples of what exactly was right.
In part, I suppose mentally it's because we just thought of the norms we grew up with "but without the bad stuff", but forgetting that new people have to make their own mores existing in this world. What *does* sexy, respectful flirting look like in the modern era? Particularly, what does it look like for a man to initiate? In what settings is it appropriate to initiate? How far is it appropriate to initiate? To be honest, I would have no way how to explain to a kid the rules because I have no fucking clue what the new rules are. I'm just genuinely grateful to be GenX and have a GenX partner who looked into my eyes from several inches away and held the pause and saw I was still smiling so he kissed me. But the kids absolutely cannot do that. So what do they do?
And I can well, easily imagine that it leads them to worlds of resentment and pain if they are growing up - as I see them doing, as a parent - without really having experimental relationships. One of my kids once told me "Everyone's afraid to ask anyone out because you have to know what kind of relationship you're asking them out to." All of my and my partner's kids are in college, and between the three of them, they've had five total relationships between them in their entire lives. I had five relationships by the time I was out of high school, which meant I was kind of prepared and knew what I wanted as I moved into my twenties.
And that leaves them easy fucking marks for people who tell them "The problem is the complainers, the liberals who are just making a big deal about things" rather than "Sorry kids, our entire generation freaked out, realized a full half our generation could be damned by these standards, and dropped the fucking ball and ran away."
posted by corb at 7:24 AM on January 28 [39 favorites]
The idea that men are inherently bad is interesting in that it's actually conservative. Some gender essentialist TERFy type feminists may hold that view, but it's much more likely to be expressed as:
Women complaining about crappy male partners but also believing that men are just "like that."
Men and women asserting that rape and violence are things men simply can't help doing ( and that they are incapable of emotional maturity).
Feminism in general posits that men are fully capable of decency and emotional maturity and wants them to achieve it. Conservatism is the ideology that says that is foolish and naive, because men are inherently violent. The Petersons, etc. then try to tell you why that's good, actually.
posted by emjaybee at 7:35 AM on January 28 [33 favorites]
Women complaining about crappy male partners but also believing that men are just "like that."
Men and women asserting that rape and violence are things men simply can't help doing ( and that they are incapable of emotional maturity).
Feminism in general posits that men are fully capable of decency and emotional maturity and wants them to achieve it. Conservatism is the ideology that says that is foolish and naive, because men are inherently violent. The Petersons, etc. then try to tell you why that's good, actually.
posted by emjaybee at 7:35 AM on January 28 [33 favorites]
Ctrl-F: 'boys will be boys' -- no results.
There's no inevitability to a young man emerging as a bad person, but there is flattering messing and a learned sense of entitlement. Every time I hear people excusing incivil behaviour as being 'perfectly natural' I realise I'm hearing someone less invested in our shared society and more invested in doing what they want to whomever they want.
achrise: I suppose a big explanation would be the general people-get-more-conservative-as-they-age.
People regress to the mean, but progressive attitudes can outpace their adherents' views so that the world has changed beyond what would our hypothetical adherent can bear.
posted by k3ninho at 7:48 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]
There's no inevitability to a young man emerging as a bad person, but there is flattering messing and a learned sense of entitlement. Every time I hear people excusing incivil behaviour as being 'perfectly natural' I realise I'm hearing someone less invested in our shared society and more invested in doing what they want to whomever they want.
achrise: I suppose a big explanation would be the general people-get-more-conservative-as-they-age.
People regress to the mean, but progressive attitudes can outpace their adherents' views so that the world has changed beyond what would our hypothetical adherent can bear.
posted by k3ninho at 7:48 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]
unpartnered men cause enormous social instability
I wonder how much of this is due to inherent qualities in men, versus societal conditioning (mononormative, cisnormative, heteronormative etc) that teaches us men that our primary purpose in this life is to "provide for a family".
I wish we taught boys that choosing to have a partner is not inherently better or morally superior in any way to being single, and I wish we had more positive venues for single men to find community and purpose.
Monasteries should make a comeback, basically.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 7:48 AM on January 28 [11 favorites]
I wonder how much of this is due to inherent qualities in men, versus societal conditioning (mononormative, cisnormative, heteronormative etc) that teaches us men that our primary purpose in this life is to "provide for a family".
I wish we taught boys that choosing to have a partner is not inherently better or morally superior in any way to being single, and I wish we had more positive venues for single men to find community and purpose.
Monasteries should make a comeback, basically.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 7:48 AM on January 28 [11 favorites]
You know what else I've heard a lot on social media, as a white person? White people are bad/risible/stupid/dirty/ugly/etc. And yet it would be utterly despicable and morally bankrupt for me to take those statements at face value as universal arguments made from a position of power, or to take those statements and use them to explain that white people are racist because our feelings are hurt, or to say that negative evaluations of whiteness are driving whites to white nationalism.
And if I did a lot of national handwringing about how sad it was that white nationalism was on the rise because white people were being criticized in popular culture? Or how sad it was that people of color didn't want to hang out with white nationalists and how this was hurting national unity?
People absolutely do take those positions and they are roundly mocked anywhere not actually far right, and that's because those positions are nothing more than a bunch of motivated reasoning, conscious or not.
White nationalism isn't on the rise because Black people criticize white people on the internet. It's on the rise because material conditions are worsening for everyone but white people have been told that we're always supposed to be doing just great because of our whiteness, and so instead of organizing or moving left, we go fascist. Similarly, men who are drawn to gender bigotry and violence see conditions worsening but choose chest-beating rather-rule-in-hell logic over solidarity.
Racism and patriarchy aren't identical, but they chime and they're bound up in each other. There is no "it's so sad for the incel/sexual violence types" that isn't basically "it's so sad for white people".
~~~
Further, on an individual level either you've got morals or you don't. If someone says something insulting or unfair about you in the heat of moment or to score points or out of personal trauma, that doesn't mean you get to throw up your hands and say "well, you were mean, so I'm okay with bigotry now". Things are right or they're not.
posted by Frowner at 7:53 AM on January 28 [45 favorites]
And if I did a lot of national handwringing about how sad it was that white nationalism was on the rise because white people were being criticized in popular culture? Or how sad it was that people of color didn't want to hang out with white nationalists and how this was hurting national unity?
People absolutely do take those positions and they are roundly mocked anywhere not actually far right, and that's because those positions are nothing more than a bunch of motivated reasoning, conscious or not.
White nationalism isn't on the rise because Black people criticize white people on the internet. It's on the rise because material conditions are worsening for everyone but white people have been told that we're always supposed to be doing just great because of our whiteness, and so instead of organizing or moving left, we go fascist. Similarly, men who are drawn to gender bigotry and violence see conditions worsening but choose chest-beating rather-rule-in-hell logic over solidarity.
Racism and patriarchy aren't identical, but they chime and they're bound up in each other. There is no "it's so sad for the incel/sexual violence types" that isn't basically "it's so sad for white people".
~~~
Further, on an individual level either you've got morals or you don't. If someone says something insulting or unfair about you in the heat of moment or to score points or out of personal trauma, that doesn't mean you get to throw up your hands and say "well, you were mean, so I'm okay with bigotry now". Things are right or they're not.
posted by Frowner at 7:53 AM on January 28 [45 favorites]
This thread is full of Men Are Bad, Actually, and while I understand (see: the article; see: the world) the sources of it, it is exhausting.
It's only exhausting if you feel like you need to engage with it every time you hear it. I'm a dude, and feel no urge whatsoever to argue with statements like this, because they're self-evidently true as a general rule. If the generalization is triggering to you, it is perhaps worth unpacking why that is so.
posted by Mayor West at 7:57 AM on January 28 [33 favorites]
It's only exhausting if you feel like you need to engage with it every time you hear it. I'm a dude, and feel no urge whatsoever to argue with statements like this, because they're self-evidently true as a general rule. If the generalization is triggering to you, it is perhaps worth unpacking why that is so.
posted by Mayor West at 7:57 AM on January 28 [33 favorites]
Monasteries should make a comeback, basically.
Why not give partible paternity a try instead?
posted by clawsoon at 8:02 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]
Why not give partible paternity a try instead?
posted by clawsoon at 8:02 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]
Boston marriages for men.
posted by eviemath at 8:04 AM on January 28 [8 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 8:04 AM on January 28 [8 favorites]
Yeah, this is one of the two major problems here - the other big one is that unpartnered men cause enormous social instability.
I hear this quite a bit (heard it used to make dire predictions about the future of China and India 15 years ago, for instance), but is there a historically analogous situation we can look to?
Why not give partible paternity a try instead?
Stepdads barely work as a concept in this country.
posted by Selena777 at 8:07 AM on January 28 [5 favorites]
I hear this quite a bit (heard it used to make dire predictions about the future of China and India 15 years ago, for instance), but is there a historically analogous situation we can look to?
Why not give partible paternity a try instead?
Stepdads barely work as a concept in this country.
posted by Selena777 at 8:07 AM on January 28 [5 favorites]
On the complaint/observation that men hear “men are bad” type complaints - I’m sure that’s true for many men, but pay attention to the source and don’t conflate all women into a single blur. I’ve also heard such comments… but mainly from non-feminist or milquetoast liberal feminist women (or terfs), not your more non-terfy, radical or intersectional feminists. So then the question is, ok, where does that sentiment come from, and what sort of politics does it support? It often serves the role of a Dilbert-style safety valve (complain about the bosses without challenging the status quo power structure). So what’s the solution for a man who feels uncomfortable hearing such things? I would argue: more feminism.
posted by eviemath at 8:09 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 8:09 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
Brief shout-out to all of the parents trying hard to raise sons who are decent human beings in [gestures broadly at everything].
I have spoken before about how deceptively difficult this can be.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:09 AM on January 28 [19 favorites]
I have spoken before about how deceptively difficult this can be.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:09 AM on January 28 [19 favorites]
Thousands of times have I seen or heard “men are trash” or the equivalent
I believe you. And this is exactly how you (we all) are programmed to reject feminism.
posted by Dashy at 8:24 AM on January 28 [9 favorites]
I believe you. And this is exactly how you (we all) are programmed to reject feminism.
posted by Dashy at 8:24 AM on January 28 [9 favorites]
Similarly, men who are drawn to gender bigotry and violence see conditions worsening but choose chest-beating rather-rule-in-hell logic over solidarity.
So I view you as an extremely thoughtful poster, and so I want to engage with this point of view specifically, because I don't think this is actually what's happening - or at least, it may be happening with some outliers, but I don't think it's what's happening in the broad sectors that are causing the actual problems.
I think that for a long, long time, part of the way that the patriarchy functioned has been to celebrate certain ways of performing masculinity over other ways of performing masculinity. And that hasn't always been the same way - we can look back a few hundred years and find the most socially eligible men having rosette-decorated high-heeled shoes, elevating the writing of poetry, and viewing physical violence with horror, for example. But the way that it has functioned within living memory is to celebrate physical and sexual aggression as the way of performing masculinity, to such an extent that we associate those things almost indelibly with the patriarchy. And so, when we started shaking at the roots of the patriarchy and coming after the patriarchy, I think that we often made the mistake of associating those methods of expressing gender with patriarchy itself, and we thus often made the mistake of creating negative associations with them, instead of with the power dynamics.
Physical aggression - even to the point of violence - is not always a bad thing, if it is engaged in either consensually, such as in sparring, or protectively, in defense of others. Nor is sexual aggression necessarily a bad thing, if it is engaged in with consent and with people with equal power and the ability to decline - as a number of happy BDSM practitioners might tell you. And the markers or aesthetics associated with these things are not inherently bad.
I have a lot of social contact with men who are of different political types than me, and a number of the complaints and motivating factors that I hear are not gender bigotry, but actually a very familiar and relatable complaint, though they might not describe it that way - that they feel their preferred forms of gender expression are being devalued, suppressed, and controlled. That just as twenty or thirty years ago, men were socially excluded and discriminated against for things like wanting to engage in caring labor, or wanting to wear clothing or have hobbies coded as 'feminine', or wanting to be sexually submissive in their relationships, these men now feel socially excluded, stereotyped, and discriminated against for wanting to engage in protective labor, or wanting to wear clothing or have hobbies now coded as 'hypermasculine', or wanting to be sexually dominant in a relationship. Now they may refer to it in unpalatable ways - they may say "men are being forced to be emasculated" or "men are being forced to be feminized" and those words may annoy and upset us, but their complaints are functionally the same as complaints that we have taken as valid and that I think are still valid.
I don't think these men are choosing not to engage in solidarity. I don't think that they are, at the moment, being offered the choice to engage in solidarity. I would like to figure out a way that we can offer them the choice to engage in solidarity - to say that it doesn't matter what aesthetic of masculinity they want to perform, as long as they aren't harming anyone else - that *that* is what matters, the not harming anyone else piece. But I think that it requires us to let go of some of our own prejudices about what type of people they are.
posted by corb at 8:26 AM on January 28 [28 favorites]
So I view you as an extremely thoughtful poster, and so I want to engage with this point of view specifically, because I don't think this is actually what's happening - or at least, it may be happening with some outliers, but I don't think it's what's happening in the broad sectors that are causing the actual problems.
I think that for a long, long time, part of the way that the patriarchy functioned has been to celebrate certain ways of performing masculinity over other ways of performing masculinity. And that hasn't always been the same way - we can look back a few hundred years and find the most socially eligible men having rosette-decorated high-heeled shoes, elevating the writing of poetry, and viewing physical violence with horror, for example. But the way that it has functioned within living memory is to celebrate physical and sexual aggression as the way of performing masculinity, to such an extent that we associate those things almost indelibly with the patriarchy. And so, when we started shaking at the roots of the patriarchy and coming after the patriarchy, I think that we often made the mistake of associating those methods of expressing gender with patriarchy itself, and we thus often made the mistake of creating negative associations with them, instead of with the power dynamics.
Physical aggression - even to the point of violence - is not always a bad thing, if it is engaged in either consensually, such as in sparring, or protectively, in defense of others. Nor is sexual aggression necessarily a bad thing, if it is engaged in with consent and with people with equal power and the ability to decline - as a number of happy BDSM practitioners might tell you. And the markers or aesthetics associated with these things are not inherently bad.
I have a lot of social contact with men who are of different political types than me, and a number of the complaints and motivating factors that I hear are not gender bigotry, but actually a very familiar and relatable complaint, though they might not describe it that way - that they feel their preferred forms of gender expression are being devalued, suppressed, and controlled. That just as twenty or thirty years ago, men were socially excluded and discriminated against for things like wanting to engage in caring labor, or wanting to wear clothing or have hobbies coded as 'feminine', or wanting to be sexually submissive in their relationships, these men now feel socially excluded, stereotyped, and discriminated against for wanting to engage in protective labor, or wanting to wear clothing or have hobbies now coded as 'hypermasculine', or wanting to be sexually dominant in a relationship. Now they may refer to it in unpalatable ways - they may say "men are being forced to be emasculated" or "men are being forced to be feminized" and those words may annoy and upset us, but their complaints are functionally the same as complaints that we have taken as valid and that I think are still valid.
I don't think these men are choosing not to engage in solidarity. I don't think that they are, at the moment, being offered the choice to engage in solidarity. I would like to figure out a way that we can offer them the choice to engage in solidarity - to say that it doesn't matter what aesthetic of masculinity they want to perform, as long as they aren't harming anyone else - that *that* is what matters, the not harming anyone else piece. But I think that it requires us to let go of some of our own prejudices about what type of people they are.
posted by corb at 8:26 AM on January 28 [28 favorites]
I'm confused by the sentiment that this thread is full of 'men are bad'. I don't think men are bad. I think the system that promotes gender inequality is bad. I think the requirement that men must behave in a gender stereotyped way is bad (similarly for women). I think that it is downright terrifying for some people when the system you grew up in is challenged, and that those who are challenging the system seem to be challenging you as a person when people (most people) not at the top of the hierarchy just want a fair shot.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:34 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
posted by bluesky43 at 8:34 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
What *does* sexy, respectful flirting look like in the modern era? Particularly, what does it look like for a man to initiate? In what settings is it appropriate to initiate? How far is it appropriate to initiate? To
I mean this seems like a pretty good question, especially as we have the (probably facetious?) suggestion "As Oppenheimer showed us, the best way for nerdy men to meet women is to join a leftist political group." Idk, I haven't seen the movie, maybe I'm misreading that.
I personally think that people using political movements as their dating space is kind of like asking out co-workers, yes it does happen, but to have that intent is actually *wrong*, and a terrible, immoral way to engage with a space or group. Particularly with politics I've seen it go bad so many times, fracturing organising groups, even when relationships end fairly amicably.
I'd even branch that out further! Local co-ed sporting competition? You should be in it for the sports, it's devious and manipulative to be in it for the dating opportunities. Board game nights at a pub? People are there to roll dice and draw cards, not fend off advances. I'm 27, idk if that's relevant, but I view joining social groups with an eye to finding a partner as... wrong, basically.
I wish we taught boys that choosing to have a partner is not inherently better or morally superior in any way to being single
I mean, most of the men upset about this state of affairs, as far as I know, are not *choosing* not to have a partner. They just can't. Most people won't even believe that the ones who are choosing are being honest about that. And to my eye, our framework here completely does reinforce the idea that it's a good indicator of moral failing to be unable to be in a relationship, far more comprehensively than some system where relationships are "earned" based on holding down a job and drinking at the pub instead of at home.
I'm fascinated by the number of people who can treat "Women don't want to date men who think they're lesser beings not entitled to basic rights" as some weird riddle to crack.
...
If young men following this trend can't find anyone to date them, perhaps this could lead to some rethinking of priorities and attitudes.
Just because I agree with these comments doesn't not make them a moral judgement? The thinking behind "women aren't dating men because the men suck" is very much that those men suck! So anyone who is able to maintain a relationship is probably morally better on some level. I may not trust my friend's boyfriends much, but I really sure as hell don't trust a single guy without real dating history, because I've been taught since I was a teenager that it probably means he's morally suspect in some way.
posted by Audreynachrome at 8:36 AM on January 28 [5 favorites]
I mean this seems like a pretty good question, especially as we have the (probably facetious?) suggestion "As Oppenheimer showed us, the best way for nerdy men to meet women is to join a leftist political group." Idk, I haven't seen the movie, maybe I'm misreading that.
I personally think that people using political movements as their dating space is kind of like asking out co-workers, yes it does happen, but to have that intent is actually *wrong*, and a terrible, immoral way to engage with a space or group. Particularly with politics I've seen it go bad so many times, fracturing organising groups, even when relationships end fairly amicably.
I'd even branch that out further! Local co-ed sporting competition? You should be in it for the sports, it's devious and manipulative to be in it for the dating opportunities. Board game nights at a pub? People are there to roll dice and draw cards, not fend off advances. I'm 27, idk if that's relevant, but I view joining social groups with an eye to finding a partner as... wrong, basically.
I wish we taught boys that choosing to have a partner is not inherently better or morally superior in any way to being single
I mean, most of the men upset about this state of affairs, as far as I know, are not *choosing* not to have a partner. They just can't. Most people won't even believe that the ones who are choosing are being honest about that. And to my eye, our framework here completely does reinforce the idea that it's a good indicator of moral failing to be unable to be in a relationship, far more comprehensively than some system where relationships are "earned" based on holding down a job and drinking at the pub instead of at home.
I'm fascinated by the number of people who can treat "Women don't want to date men who think they're lesser beings not entitled to basic rights" as some weird riddle to crack.
...
If young men following this trend can't find anyone to date them, perhaps this could lead to some rethinking of priorities and attitudes.
Just because I agree with these comments doesn't not make them a moral judgement? The thinking behind "women aren't dating men because the men suck" is very much that those men suck! So anyone who is able to maintain a relationship is probably morally better on some level. I may not trust my friend's boyfriends much, but I really sure as hell don't trust a single guy without real dating history, because I've been taught since I was a teenager that it probably means he's morally suspect in some way.
posted by Audreynachrome at 8:36 AM on January 28 [5 favorites]
As a 49 year old I'm still sussing out what it means to be masculine, I'm also still de-programming or unlearning in some ways, change is hard - it's also ongoing and constant.
To cease to change is to cease to adapt, the longer one spends not-adapting the more conservative one may appear to the world around you.
posted by djseafood at 8:40 AM on January 28 [5 favorites]
To cease to change is to cease to adapt, the longer one spends not-adapting the more conservative one may appear to the world around you.
posted by djseafood at 8:40 AM on January 28 [5 favorites]
It's really hard to ready much about toxic masculinity without seeing that it also greatly harms men. To discuss it is to care about men and what happens to them.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:42 AM on January 28 [12 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:42 AM on January 28 [12 favorites]
The Tates and Petersons and the ideas they espouse are being amplified by powerful men with lots of money, because those powerful men are threatened in their ability to get away with abuse.
I want to emphasize this. These ideas are being amplified at a level you might not know about if you aren't in the target area of the firehose of fash/incel/"pill" content.
The almighty algorithms on both YouTube and Facebook should know by now, with over a decade of data on me, that I am a leftie. From the kinds of posts I make, to the groups I follow, and what I've stated in my Bio/About pages on various sites, it should be pretty obvious what I'm all about. I also constantly ask both FB and YT not to suggest certain kinds of content to me.
Nevertheless, YT still really, really, really wants me to watch Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, and Andrew Tate videos and videos from their followers, as well as videos where some "Alpha" BLASTS/DESTROYS/UTTERLY HUMILIATES (always one of those words and always in all caps) a BLM supporter/feminist/Biden/etc.
FB still really, really, really wants me to see content from Back The Blue groups, rightwing militias, meat eaters who think male vegans are effete losers and female vegans are shrill harpies, anti-LGBTQ+ groups, and folks who think "Try That in a Small Town" wasn't fascist/frontier-justice enough.
What terrifies me about this, besides the implications about the reach and power of toxic groups, is that high-school aged me would have been extremely vulnerable to these streams of garbage, because my life from 6th to 12th grade felt like what TV Tropes calls a "Humiliation Conga" of being bullied by dudes and mocked by young women every school day. I would have clicked on a video with a tough-looking Tate type telling me I could turn all that around so fast.
Consequently, I have to constantly ask my 14 year old son about what he's watching and what's being suggested to him. It's awful having to monitor my feeds and his like that, but, again, it is very much a 24/7 onslaught of "Here's why you should hate women and liberals" on so many of these sites.
posted by lord_wolf at 8:43 AM on January 28 [52 favorites]
I want to emphasize this. These ideas are being amplified at a level you might not know about if you aren't in the target area of the firehose of fash/incel/"pill" content.
The almighty algorithms on both YouTube and Facebook should know by now, with over a decade of data on me, that I am a leftie. From the kinds of posts I make, to the groups I follow, and what I've stated in my Bio/About pages on various sites, it should be pretty obvious what I'm all about. I also constantly ask both FB and YT not to suggest certain kinds of content to me.
Nevertheless, YT still really, really, really wants me to watch Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, and Andrew Tate videos and videos from their followers, as well as videos where some "Alpha" BLASTS/DESTROYS/UTTERLY HUMILIATES (always one of those words and always in all caps) a BLM supporter/feminist/Biden/etc.
FB still really, really, really wants me to see content from Back The Blue groups, rightwing militias, meat eaters who think male vegans are effete losers and female vegans are shrill harpies, anti-LGBTQ+ groups, and folks who think "Try That in a Small Town" wasn't fascist/frontier-justice enough.
What terrifies me about this, besides the implications about the reach and power of toxic groups, is that high-school aged me would have been extremely vulnerable to these streams of garbage, because my life from 6th to 12th grade felt like what TV Tropes calls a "Humiliation Conga" of being bullied by dudes and mocked by young women every school day. I would have clicked on a video with a tough-looking Tate type telling me I could turn all that around so fast.
Consequently, I have to constantly ask my 14 year old son about what he's watching and what's being suggested to him. It's awful having to monitor my feeds and his like that, but, again, it is very much a 24/7 onslaught of "Here's why you should hate women and liberals" on so many of these sites.
posted by lord_wolf at 8:43 AM on January 28 [52 favorites]
Also the worse men get, the *more* it seems like, well, if that guy's single, sure he seems okay, but given how many of his "competition" are obvious complete and utter shitheads, what's wrong with him? Seems pretty sus. "Just be a decent person and you'll find someone" makes it pretty clear that anyone who can't is not a decent person.
posted by Audreynachrome at 8:45 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]
posted by Audreynachrome at 8:45 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]
I would argue: more feminism.
Speaking only for myself, this is probably not the answer. :-) That said, there are areas where I'm actively trying to learn more -- particularly gender in Indigenous contexts, which has been very useful. For the curious, a good article I read in the last year was Eve Tuck, Haliehana Stepetin, Rebecca Beaulne-Stuebing & Jo Billows' "Visiting as an Indigenous feminist practice," which pushes back against patriarchal, colonizing ideas baked into academia, among other places.
corb, I appreciate that comment.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:47 AM on January 28 [4 favorites]
Speaking only for myself, this is probably not the answer. :-) That said, there are areas where I'm actively trying to learn more -- particularly gender in Indigenous contexts, which has been very useful. For the curious, a good article I read in the last year was Eve Tuck, Haliehana Stepetin, Rebecca Beaulne-Stuebing & Jo Billows' "Visiting as an Indigenous feminist practice," which pushes back against patriarchal, colonizing ideas baked into academia, among other places.
corb, I appreciate that comment.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:47 AM on January 28 [4 favorites]
In other words, intersectional feminism speaks to you when you read it?
Kind of my point, but happy if you get there by another route.
posted by eviemath at 9:06 AM on January 28 [9 favorites]
Kind of my point, but happy if you get there by another route.
posted by eviemath at 9:06 AM on January 28 [9 favorites]
I’m confused by the sentiment that this thread is full of 'men are bad'.
I don’t think the poster was specifically talking about in this thread, but rather his general life experience.
posted by eviemath at 9:07 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]
I don’t think the poster was specifically talking about in this thread, but rather his general life experience.
posted by eviemath at 9:07 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]
You can bet good money that there will be comments aplenty whenever the artificial GenXYZ, Boomer et al generations plus horrible men are in a thread.
posted by DJZouke at 9:20 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]
posted by DJZouke at 9:20 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]
corb: to say that it doesn't matter what aesthetic of masculinity they want to perform, as long as they aren't harming anyone else
"As long as" carries a lot of weight here, I think, because of the long history of "being able to harm other people and not worry about the consequences" being an important part of the dominant aesthetic of masculinity.
"Sexual dominance as long as everybody involved consents to it" is a lot of emotional labour, and part of what's great about being a guy in a patriarchal culture is not having to do emotional labour.
You might convince a small number of people to play-act these roles without crossing lines of consent, but what feels good about dominance for most people is the dominance. It's the part where you don't have to do the emotional labour to care about how the other person feels.
posted by clawsoon at 9:23 AM on January 28 [18 favorites]
"As long as" carries a lot of weight here, I think, because of the long history of "being able to harm other people and not worry about the consequences" being an important part of the dominant aesthetic of masculinity.
"Sexual dominance as long as everybody involved consents to it" is a lot of emotional labour, and part of what's great about being a guy in a patriarchal culture is not having to do emotional labour.
You might convince a small number of people to play-act these roles without crossing lines of consent, but what feels good about dominance for most people is the dominance. It's the part where you don't have to do the emotional labour to care about how the other person feels.
posted by clawsoon at 9:23 AM on January 28 [18 favorites]
I don't think anyone's arguing against that fact that the men who are bristling at being asked to let go of masculine traits they have adopted as part of their identity were raised to think that those traits were what they were supposed to have.
We've just figured out that that turns them into higher-risk individuals in multiple aspects. Just like they were risky to have around for those men they were busy bullying for going into feminine-coded jobs a couple decades earlier.
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:27 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]
We've just figured out that that turns them into higher-risk individuals in multiple aspects. Just like they were risky to have around for those men they were busy bullying for going into feminine-coded jobs a couple decades earlier.
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:27 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]
We live in a society of, by, and for killers. That's the whole answer.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:34 AM on January 28 [4 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 9:34 AM on January 28 [4 favorites]
The almighty algorithms on both YouTube and Facebook should know by now
A big part of the problem is the leftists are terrible at making short to-the-point material. The algorithms are at this point largely self-tuning, and they optimize for engagement because that is directly connected to money flowing in. People are, statistically, far more likely to engage with short to-the-point material, because it's something they can finish during a moment of downtime. Short pieces are viewed more often, forwarded more often, and re-linked more often. As a consequence, they dominate, and any attempt to re-tune for less braindead material has thus far produced a nearly-instantaneous drop in income so those experiments get dropped with a quickness.
Similarly, it's easier to crank out fifty pieces of entirely incorrect loudmouth propaganda, rather than one well-reasoned discussion at length, so the former ends up dominating. People, as an aggregate group across the entire planet (remember the scale of the systems we're talking about here) are VERY strongly in favor of short blunt units of content and they don't particularly care if it's True as long as it makes them feel good.
The Right knows this, and supplies material at scale. The Left, meanwhile, moans about it and tries to produce a nine-part documentary series spanning three hours of talking heads with the occasional graph. If your content is longer than a pop song, it's too long for 98% of people. Sorry.
If you wanna redirect YouTube, FB, and so on in more Left direction, then the Left is gonna need to start producing a shitload more short-form propaganda and you're gonna have to stop caring quite so much about whether it's technically entirely correct. By all means, feel free to continue not doing that, just recognize that you've elected to quit playing the game while your opponents are dominating the field and there are very significant real-world consequences to that decision.
posted by aramaic at 10:29 AM on January 28 [19 favorites]
A big part of the problem is the leftists are terrible at making short to-the-point material. The algorithms are at this point largely self-tuning, and they optimize for engagement because that is directly connected to money flowing in. People are, statistically, far more likely to engage with short to-the-point material, because it's something they can finish during a moment of downtime. Short pieces are viewed more often, forwarded more often, and re-linked more often. As a consequence, they dominate, and any attempt to re-tune for less braindead material has thus far produced a nearly-instantaneous drop in income so those experiments get dropped with a quickness.
Similarly, it's easier to crank out fifty pieces of entirely incorrect loudmouth propaganda, rather than one well-reasoned discussion at length, so the former ends up dominating. People, as an aggregate group across the entire planet (remember the scale of the systems we're talking about here) are VERY strongly in favor of short blunt units of content and they don't particularly care if it's True as long as it makes them feel good.
The Right knows this, and supplies material at scale. The Left, meanwhile, moans about it and tries to produce a nine-part documentary series spanning three hours of talking heads with the occasional graph. If your content is longer than a pop song, it's too long for 98% of people. Sorry.
If you wanna redirect YouTube, FB, and so on in more Left direction, then the Left is gonna need to start producing a shitload more short-form propaganda and you're gonna have to stop caring quite so much about whether it's technically entirely correct. By all means, feel free to continue not doing that, just recognize that you've elected to quit playing the game while your opponents are dominating the field and there are very significant real-world consequences to that decision.
posted by aramaic at 10:29 AM on January 28 [19 favorites]
In other words, Youtube and Facebook are the Master's tools.
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:41 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:41 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
My guess is that the guys are moving right because the women are not interacting with them. It used to be worth noting that guys with sisters were MUCH better prospects for dating than guys without sisters. And it used to be worth noting that guys who went to all boy schools were not worth dating. They just didn't have the social skills to be worth spending time with them. There were certainly guys who had sisters and went to coed schools where were not worth dating but those were a minimal number of unsalvagable jerks - the ones that girls had to point out to each other, broken stairs that could only date really insecure girls or new girls or girls of such low status the whisper network failed to include them.
For a guy to be worth a high school girl's time he needed to have plenty of experience interacting with girls and women, so he didn't just default to the competitive bullying thing that guys tend to do, just to survive in an environment with mainly guys.
Basically, the less time boys spend with girls, the less practice they have behaving in prosocial ways, and the less positive reinforcement they get for behaving that way. Prosocial behaviour is even punished in many all male environments, as it is seen as being weak, and makes you a target of the other guys who are trying to gain social position by being tougher and more scary. They learn there that if they help others it won't be reciprocated. Doing work is low status. Someone else you can jeer at is supposed to be suckered into doing the work. All male groups almost always turn into something a lot like the small band of all male monkeys that have been expelled from the troop.
Not that girls are perfect and don't take advantage of each other, but the ones with that much entitlement and nastiness are the mean girls, that live in their own clique and hold themselves aloof from the greater group so that they don't lose their privileges. They don't actually contribute, and are feared and envied, and very seldom liked.
With the Me Too movement a lot of young women and girls internalized the idea that if they had to submit to being sexually used, they should get out of the situation instead of letting it happen to them. So instead of laughing weakly at the guy making sexist statements and wishing he wouldn't but not speaking up because no one else does, they now easily exclude him. I think social media is part of this. If you have a study group and one guy tells a nasty story, you simply ignore it, but the algorithm notices and throws up more stories by the people that you have reacted to... and the nasty guys are being steadily dropped. The women don't even have to block or unfriend the guys, they just disappear.
This means that many guys are being excluded from making useful social connections with women. One or two sexist comments, and they don't get included in the link for last years test answers, nor do they get to see the advice over which teacher writes good recommendations, or the paid work moving stage sets on Thursday night... And they don't get dates either. If all fifteen girls in the group are ignoring you as The Jerk it doesn't matter how much you post, they're not going to see any of them.
Guys with poor skills at making other people comfortable and happy end up in a group that tolerates their clumsiness and lack of good contributions, a group that will reinforce antisocial behaviour, and will steadily route them towards turning into incels and into hard done by conservatives. It funnels them steadily towards the extreme end, with the AI happily throwing up links for groups no person who doesn't want to wallow in misery would hang out in.
It's the lack of women turning them conservative, because the lack of women is a economic disaster for them. You need a support network, not a network of haters who tell you that misogynistic behaviour is your right. They fall prey to Andrew Tate because that's the only help they are being offered.
I was reading a fascinating study about the birth rate, that showed that it was closely linked to the marriage rate - If women are married they are far, far more likely to have kids - and fewer and fewer women are willing to be married. That in turn is linked to gendered income inequality. Women would marry IF there was a genuine economic incentive to them to marry, but there isn't so they don't. It appears that for most women to tolerate men, men have to bring something to the table that women can get no other way.
If rage is all the elixir these days, what are the young girls raging about?
They're not raging, they are blocking. They honestly don't have as much to rage about, because people are being much nicer to them, because they only hang out with people who are nice to them. If you are a seventeen year old girl today, you are probably hanging out on groups that are bonding over things you all like, not bonding over things you all hate.
I see a lot of men in a rage on line, and they are in a rage because they need to achieve and need to make other people lose and somehow they don't feel successful even when they do succeed. It's really pronounced in the gaming forums I am in, where they think there are no women, even tho based on forum, anonymous polling and playing behaviour I'd say at least 70% of the people are female and lurking or posting carefully so their gender isn't obvious. The angriest, most sadistic guys are the top players. Those ones regularly devolve into rants and take up a LOT of bandwidth. Their role as biggest fish in a small pond, feeding on the smaller fish, seems to be making them utterly miserable.Of course they don't need to be happy. In this case being angry and miserable seems to be a necessary trait to achieve success in the completely useless displacement environment of gaming. Meanwhile hundreds of smaller closed chat groups on the forum are mutual support groups, where people appear to be having loads of fun.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:46 AM on January 28 [29 favorites]
For a guy to be worth a high school girl's time he needed to have plenty of experience interacting with girls and women, so he didn't just default to the competitive bullying thing that guys tend to do, just to survive in an environment with mainly guys.
Basically, the less time boys spend with girls, the less practice they have behaving in prosocial ways, and the less positive reinforcement they get for behaving that way. Prosocial behaviour is even punished in many all male environments, as it is seen as being weak, and makes you a target of the other guys who are trying to gain social position by being tougher and more scary. They learn there that if they help others it won't be reciprocated. Doing work is low status. Someone else you can jeer at is supposed to be suckered into doing the work. All male groups almost always turn into something a lot like the small band of all male monkeys that have been expelled from the troop.
Not that girls are perfect and don't take advantage of each other, but the ones with that much entitlement and nastiness are the mean girls, that live in their own clique and hold themselves aloof from the greater group so that they don't lose their privileges. They don't actually contribute, and are feared and envied, and very seldom liked.
With the Me Too movement a lot of young women and girls internalized the idea that if they had to submit to being sexually used, they should get out of the situation instead of letting it happen to them. So instead of laughing weakly at the guy making sexist statements and wishing he wouldn't but not speaking up because no one else does, they now easily exclude him. I think social media is part of this. If you have a study group and one guy tells a nasty story, you simply ignore it, but the algorithm notices and throws up more stories by the people that you have reacted to... and the nasty guys are being steadily dropped. The women don't even have to block or unfriend the guys, they just disappear.
This means that many guys are being excluded from making useful social connections with women. One or two sexist comments, and they don't get included in the link for last years test answers, nor do they get to see the advice over which teacher writes good recommendations, or the paid work moving stage sets on Thursday night... And they don't get dates either. If all fifteen girls in the group are ignoring you as The Jerk it doesn't matter how much you post, they're not going to see any of them.
Guys with poor skills at making other people comfortable and happy end up in a group that tolerates their clumsiness and lack of good contributions, a group that will reinforce antisocial behaviour, and will steadily route them towards turning into incels and into hard done by conservatives. It funnels them steadily towards the extreme end, with the AI happily throwing up links for groups no person who doesn't want to wallow in misery would hang out in.
It's the lack of women turning them conservative, because the lack of women is a economic disaster for them. You need a support network, not a network of haters who tell you that misogynistic behaviour is your right. They fall prey to Andrew Tate because that's the only help they are being offered.
I was reading a fascinating study about the birth rate, that showed that it was closely linked to the marriage rate - If women are married they are far, far more likely to have kids - and fewer and fewer women are willing to be married. That in turn is linked to gendered income inequality. Women would marry IF there was a genuine economic incentive to them to marry, but there isn't so they don't. It appears that for most women to tolerate men, men have to bring something to the table that women can get no other way.
If rage is all the elixir these days, what are the young girls raging about?
They're not raging, they are blocking. They honestly don't have as much to rage about, because people are being much nicer to them, because they only hang out with people who are nice to them. If you are a seventeen year old girl today, you are probably hanging out on groups that are bonding over things you all like, not bonding over things you all hate.
I see a lot of men in a rage on line, and they are in a rage because they need to achieve and need to make other people lose and somehow they don't feel successful even when they do succeed. It's really pronounced in the gaming forums I am in, where they think there are no women, even tho based on forum, anonymous polling and playing behaviour I'd say at least 70% of the people are female and lurking or posting carefully so their gender isn't obvious. The angriest, most sadistic guys are the top players. Those ones regularly devolve into rants and take up a LOT of bandwidth. Their role as biggest fish in a small pond, feeding on the smaller fish, seems to be making them utterly miserable.Of course they don't need to be happy. In this case being angry and miserable seems to be a necessary trait to achieve success in the completely useless displacement environment of gaming. Meanwhile hundreds of smaller closed chat groups on the forum are mutual support groups, where people appear to be having loads of fun.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:46 AM on January 28 [29 favorites]
personally think that people using political movements as their dating space is kind of like asking out co-workers, yes it does happen, but to have that intent is actually *wrong*, and a terrible, immoral way to engage with a space or group. Particularly with politics I've seen it go bad so many times, fracturing organising groups, even when relationships end fairly amicably.
I'd even branch that out further! Local co-ed sporting competition? You should be in it for the sports, it's devious and manipulative to be in it for the dating opportunities. Board game nights at a pub? People are there to roll dice and draw cards, not fend off advances. I'm 27, idk if that's relevant, but I view joining social groups with an eye to finding a partner as... wrong, basically.
So….in your opinion, there is no setting besides, say, speed dating events, singles events, and possibly nightclubs where it would be acceptable to go with the intent of looking for someone to date?
posted by bq at 10:51 AM on January 28 [13 favorites]
I'd even branch that out further! Local co-ed sporting competition? You should be in it for the sports, it's devious and manipulative to be in it for the dating opportunities. Board game nights at a pub? People are there to roll dice and draw cards, not fend off advances. I'm 27, idk if that's relevant, but I view joining social groups with an eye to finding a partner as... wrong, basically.
So….in your opinion, there is no setting besides, say, speed dating events, singles events, and possibly nightclubs where it would be acceptable to go with the intent of looking for someone to date?
posted by bq at 10:51 AM on January 28 [13 favorites]
A big part of the problem is the leftists are terrible at making short to-the-point material.* The algorithms are at this point largely self-tuning, and they optimize for engagement because that is directly connected to money flowing in. People are, statistically, far more likely to engage with short to-the-point material, because it's something they can finish during a moment of downtime.
It's not just that the leftists are terrible at making short to-the-point material, it's that things that make us anxious engage us much more than things that make us happy. We are much more likely to react to things that make us angry and insecure than we are to anything else. But anger and insecurity are not prosocial.
Post a meme about protecting trans kids and you'll get a thousand likes and some shares and it gets forgotten by tomorrow. But post a meme that talks about a threat to trans kids and you'll get a host of rants and arguments, with people getting so upset they turn on each other for not being supportive in the right way. The thread may go on for weeks. You'll get far more engagement. And you will driving the people to the right, because they will be feeling mean, combative and isolated. They will be hating The Other - which is the basic value of far right fascism.
Getting people upset doesn't seem to lead to them being more understanding and kind. It leads to them being meaner. But if you don't get them upset they ignore you. I wish I knew a solution to this, but it goes with our basic wiring.
* I feel personally called out here. *snickers at self
posted by Jane the Brown at 11:05 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
It's not just that the leftists are terrible at making short to-the-point material, it's that things that make us anxious engage us much more than things that make us happy. We are much more likely to react to things that make us angry and insecure than we are to anything else. But anger and insecurity are not prosocial.
Post a meme about protecting trans kids and you'll get a thousand likes and some shares and it gets forgotten by tomorrow. But post a meme that talks about a threat to trans kids and you'll get a host of rants and arguments, with people getting so upset they turn on each other for not being supportive in the right way. The thread may go on for weeks. You'll get far more engagement. And you will driving the people to the right, because they will be feeling mean, combative and isolated. They will be hating The Other - which is the basic value of far right fascism.
Getting people upset doesn't seem to lead to them being more understanding and kind. It leads to them being meaner. But if you don't get them upset they ignore you. I wish I knew a solution to this, but it goes with our basic wiring.
* I feel personally called out here. *snickers at self
posted by Jane the Brown at 11:05 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]
So….in your opinion, there is no setting besides, say, speed dating events, singles events, and possibly nightclubs where it would be acceptable to go with the intent of looking for someone to date?
I mean... kinda yes? It's not *good* as such, but it does minimise harm. Or do what everyone I know does, which is use the internet tools which define all our lives to find people with the specific programs which are designed for that. Which all suck and are horrible but at least matching on Tinder is a sort of concrete "I might be interested" signal. If we could trust people to read those signals IRL, that would change things, but an awful lot of people are asd and even more just a little socially incompetent, and a lot of men are kinda trained to be oblivious/self-serving when it comes to reading people. The whole "guy asks the waitress out because she smiled at him for a tip" thing is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to misreading signals.
I mean, it's icky to go into a social space which has a specific purpose and be waiting there like a croc in the mangroves. The whole "incels and excel, mistaking things for dates" meme, all of that shit.
I actually decided for length not to add in "out dancing" as another space where it would be icky to be just there for the potential hookups. I know that's pretty extreme but like... dancing is something people do enjoy in and of itself. Someone being out dancing is no guarantee that they're looking for a date, and that means its kinda weird to be treating the situation like it's a cattle auction. I've literally never gone out dancing with friends who had the "ooh, hope I meet a sweet hunk" intention that permeates sitcoms. Rarely people met and connected, but that was never the goal of the evening.
posted by Audreynachrome at 11:23 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]
I mean... kinda yes? It's not *good* as such, but it does minimise harm. Or do what everyone I know does, which is use the internet tools which define all our lives to find people with the specific programs which are designed for that. Which all suck and are horrible but at least matching on Tinder is a sort of concrete "I might be interested" signal. If we could trust people to read those signals IRL, that would change things, but an awful lot of people are asd and even more just a little socially incompetent, and a lot of men are kinda trained to be oblivious/self-serving when it comes to reading people. The whole "guy asks the waitress out because she smiled at him for a tip" thing is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to misreading signals.
I mean, it's icky to go into a social space which has a specific purpose and be waiting there like a croc in the mangroves. The whole "incels and excel, mistaking things for dates" meme, all of that shit.
I actually decided for length not to add in "out dancing" as another space where it would be icky to be just there for the potential hookups. I know that's pretty extreme but like... dancing is something people do enjoy in and of itself. Someone being out dancing is no guarantee that they're looking for a date, and that means its kinda weird to be treating the situation like it's a cattle auction. I've literally never gone out dancing with friends who had the "ooh, hope I meet a sweet hunk" intention that permeates sitcoms. Rarely people met and connected, but that was never the goal of the evening.
posted by Audreynachrome at 11:23 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]
Im actually kind of sympathetic to this view but there’s no debate that facilitating courtship has been one of the major functions of every large-scale social institution that I can think of. One of the basic goals of society is to get people to fuck each other and reproduce. Relegating courtship behavior to mostly one not-in-person venue is unprecedented. I don’t want to get hit on at board game night either, but….people are people, I feel like this is in danger of veering off into ‘all humans are stupid and should stop being stupid’ territory. There must be appropriate ways for people to engage in group activities even when they are single and would like to not be single.
posted by bq at 11:30 AM on January 28 [19 favorites]
posted by bq at 11:30 AM on January 28 [19 favorites]
I move that humans should stop being stupid
posted by bq at 11:30 AM on January 28 [9 favorites]
posted by bq at 11:30 AM on January 28 [9 favorites]
Seconded
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:35 AM on January 28 [6 favorites]
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:35 AM on January 28 [6 favorites]
I really sure as hell don't trust a single guy without real dating history, because I've been taught since I was a teenager that it probably means he's morally suspect in some way.
"Just be a decent person and you'll find someone" makes it pretty clear that anyone who can't is not a decent person.
Audreynachrome, you're obviously welcome to feel any way you like about single guys, but there are a whole spectrum of reasons why any given guy might be single or not have much dating history, and sure some of them are "he's trash", but some of them are not. And "anyone who can't find someone is not a decent person" seems to come down to, the only guys eligible to date (single guys) aren't actually eligible to date (because they're sus, because they're single). Or am I missing something?
I'm never going to tell anyone not to trust their lived experience in areas like this, so please don't read this as a personal attack or suggestion that you change anything. Stick with what works for you and makes you feel safe, obviously. But I'd hope that women in general might condemn men more for the awful things they do or can control (e.g., toxic masculinity, misogyny, creeping conservatism, regressive attitudes and behaviors) and not the things they don't or can't, necessarily (i.e., whether or not they're single or for how long).
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 11:38 AM on January 28 [12 favorites]
"Just be a decent person and you'll find someone" makes it pretty clear that anyone who can't is not a decent person.
Audreynachrome, you're obviously welcome to feel any way you like about single guys, but there are a whole spectrum of reasons why any given guy might be single or not have much dating history, and sure some of them are "he's trash", but some of them are not. And "anyone who can't find someone is not a decent person" seems to come down to, the only guys eligible to date (single guys) aren't actually eligible to date (because they're sus, because they're single). Or am I missing something?
I'm never going to tell anyone not to trust their lived experience in areas like this, so please don't read this as a personal attack or suggestion that you change anything. Stick with what works for you and makes you feel safe, obviously. But I'd hope that women in general might condemn men more for the awful things they do or can control (e.g., toxic masculinity, misogyny, creeping conservatism, regressive attitudes and behaviors) and not the things they don't or can't, necessarily (i.e., whether or not they're single or for how long).
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 11:38 AM on January 28 [12 favorites]
It does look like the US trend could be potentially spurious, driven by a change in sampling methodology in 2022: https://github.com/James-Traina/Polar-Check
posted by rishabguha at 11:39 AM on January 28 [10 favorites]
posted by rishabguha at 11:39 AM on January 28 [10 favorites]
I'm going to reflect that the male shift right ward is harmful to men seeking platonic relationships with other men as well. Even for Canada I'm pretty lefty and the trend aggressively right ward away from the middle is hampering my ability to maintain friendships. Like I'm not going to hang around with people socially who are anti any of the LGBTQIA2S+. Or people who are anti any tax libertarians, or express their desire to have carnal relationships with the Prime Minister via truck decals. It used to be tolerable but I've moved left and the right has gotten so vocal.
posted by Mitheral at 11:39 AM on January 28 [10 favorites]
posted by Mitheral at 11:39 AM on January 28 [10 favorites]
I'm extremely sympathetic to the view that this model of social interaction has pretty severe costs, but I don't know how to promote another model while also maintaining every woman's (and everyone else's, I just read a book by a woman considered the model of Australian progression where a woman wildly harasses and sexualises men fire-fighters in a way I find totally unacceptable) right to go about their daily lives without having to constantly deal with an onslaught of advances.
The workplace is a gimme, the political space quite reasonable and practical, the recreational hobby space harder (but how often have we talked about how hard it is for women to find a place of respect and avoid sexualisation in literally any cultural space), the nightclub harder, but the principle seems the same to me in all.
posted by Audreynachrome at 11:39 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]
The workplace is a gimme, the political space quite reasonable and practical, the recreational hobby space harder (but how often have we talked about how hard it is for women to find a place of respect and avoid sexualisation in literally any cultural space), the nightclub harder, but the principle seems the same to me in all.
posted by Audreynachrome at 11:39 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]
If people could trust each other to be chill about handling rejection, I think it would be far less of an issue to ask people out at social events. It's just that if once or twice "He asked me out" turns into "and then he kept being weird about it and I had to stop playing Dungeons & Dragons with that group," it turns into a dread of ever getting asked out because you just don't know who's going to be weird about it.
And, in a broader sense... I feel like we don't change any of this unless women stop experiencing male desire as something predatory, and that seems like something the right wing keeps doubling down on by trumpeting patriarchy as the only thing that protects women from sexual assault, and by trying to whip up fears about immigration and trans acceptance as threats to cis women.
posted by Jeanne at 11:46 AM on January 28 [24 favorites]
And, in a broader sense... I feel like we don't change any of this unless women stop experiencing male desire as something predatory, and that seems like something the right wing keeps doubling down on by trumpeting patriarchy as the only thing that protects women from sexual assault, and by trying to whip up fears about immigration and trans acceptance as threats to cis women.
posted by Jeanne at 11:46 AM on January 28 [24 favorites]
As much as I was fine with taking my romantic life online as an individual, I’m not going to expect the entire culture to conform to something wholly unprecedented.
posted by Selena777 at 11:50 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]
posted by Selena777 at 11:50 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]
I have a lot of social contact with men who are of different political types than me, and a number of the complaints and motivating factors that I hear are not gender bigotry, but actually a very familiar and relatable complaint, though they might not describe it that way - that they feel their preferred forms of gender expression are being devalued, suppressed, and controlled.
I feel like this is half true, but for the most part those aren't the guys who turn into women-hating fascists. Like, I've definitely talked to working class men in middle class scenes about the differences in gendered behavior and feeling like they don't know how to act right for the setting and if they do act right they feel fake, but those guys weren't jerks. In those situations, to merge your comment and Audreynochrome's concerns, I think that some of the solution is for people to have small, real-world shared projects where people can like each other, because in those settings the stakes are lower and it's possible to sort of figure out how to maintain your own personality and values modulated for the setting.
So many things are worse right now because we spend all our time on the internet in ways that are isolating, performative and organized around an idol. The internet doesn't have to work that way, of course, but also just being able to be around friends in person and do stuff together is so important and one of the worst things about the world is the way that third spaces, time and money have dried up. It's better to have social media than to be totally lonely and isolated, but it's better to have only moderate social media and a real, complex life out in the world.
In re dating and all this:
1. An awful lot of Think of the Men! rhetoric is about men wanting largely unchecked sexual access to women. Men want to be able to turn any encounter with women into a romantic/sexual interlude without needing to pay attention to what the women want, hence all the "I guess I just can't FLIRT with anyone anymore" stuff. Like, no, you cannot assume without using your emotional intelligence that you should be able to chat up any woman who catches your eye. Women don't assume that they can be sexually forward with any man they want. Queer people, god knows, don't assume this. Sexual resentment underlies so much of this garbage, and frankly people should be embarrassed. I would be pretty embarrassed if I were so sexually desperate that I turned into an entitlement monster every time I opened my mouth.
2. There's a difference between going to meetings to meet people and meeting people at meetings, so to speak. I met the vast majority of my friends and met a number of people I dated as a side effect of activism, volunteering and book groups. But my primary purpose in doing those things was the thing itself - I didn't go in thinking "I am only vaguely interested in this topic but I will lurk around in the hopes of meeting attractive people", I went in thinking "I want to work on this project and it's good to get out and be around people, hopefully they will be cool".
I also think that you've got to consider the meeting - some sorts of activism and volunteer work have a big social component and there's a lot of churn, so it's not disruptive to the project if some people are friends outside of it and some aren't, or two people meet in the project and start dating. A small, tightly focused project where three people being friends and two not, or there being a pair of people who flirted with each other a lot and didn't focus, or serious work being derailed into merely socializing or posturing to seem impressive - that would be bad, and that would be a situation where a pro-social type person would make sure to focus more on the work than the people.
posted by Frowner at 11:53 AM on January 28 [18 favorites]
I feel like this is half true, but for the most part those aren't the guys who turn into women-hating fascists. Like, I've definitely talked to working class men in middle class scenes about the differences in gendered behavior and feeling like they don't know how to act right for the setting and if they do act right they feel fake, but those guys weren't jerks. In those situations, to merge your comment and Audreynochrome's concerns, I think that some of the solution is for people to have small, real-world shared projects where people can like each other, because in those settings the stakes are lower and it's possible to sort of figure out how to maintain your own personality and values modulated for the setting.
So many things are worse right now because we spend all our time on the internet in ways that are isolating, performative and organized around an idol. The internet doesn't have to work that way, of course, but also just being able to be around friends in person and do stuff together is so important and one of the worst things about the world is the way that third spaces, time and money have dried up. It's better to have social media than to be totally lonely and isolated, but it's better to have only moderate social media and a real, complex life out in the world.
In re dating and all this:
1. An awful lot of Think of the Men! rhetoric is about men wanting largely unchecked sexual access to women. Men want to be able to turn any encounter with women into a romantic/sexual interlude without needing to pay attention to what the women want, hence all the "I guess I just can't FLIRT with anyone anymore" stuff. Like, no, you cannot assume without using your emotional intelligence that you should be able to chat up any woman who catches your eye. Women don't assume that they can be sexually forward with any man they want. Queer people, god knows, don't assume this. Sexual resentment underlies so much of this garbage, and frankly people should be embarrassed. I would be pretty embarrassed if I were so sexually desperate that I turned into an entitlement monster every time I opened my mouth.
2. There's a difference between going to meetings to meet people and meeting people at meetings, so to speak. I met the vast majority of my friends and met a number of people I dated as a side effect of activism, volunteering and book groups. But my primary purpose in doing those things was the thing itself - I didn't go in thinking "I am only vaguely interested in this topic but I will lurk around in the hopes of meeting attractive people", I went in thinking "I want to work on this project and it's good to get out and be around people, hopefully they will be cool".
I also think that you've got to consider the meeting - some sorts of activism and volunteer work have a big social component and there's a lot of churn, so it's not disruptive to the project if some people are friends outside of it and some aren't, or two people meet in the project and start dating. A small, tightly focused project where three people being friends and two not, or there being a pair of people who flirted with each other a lot and didn't focus, or serious work being derailed into merely socializing or posturing to seem impressive - that would be bad, and that would be a situation where a pro-social type person would make sure to focus more on the work than the people.
posted by Frowner at 11:53 AM on January 28 [18 favorites]
Also, as a weirdo I seldom have people hitting on me no matter my gender presentation, so the whole "you seem cool, let's get coffee sometime, that was fun, maybe we should date" thing is more my experience in activist spaces rather than lurking men waiting to see if they can hook up with any new person.
posted by Frowner at 11:58 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 11:58 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]
My guess is that the guys are moving right because the women are not interacting with them
In the US, the story is more about women moving left than men moving right. Men have moved right a little bit since ~2008 and are about as conservative as they were in the early 90s.
It does look like the US trend could be potentially spurious, driven by a change in sampling methodology in 2022: https://github.com/James-Traina/Polar-Check
The relatively mild trend towards conservatism among American men has been going on since around 2008 by the graphs in the article.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:01 PM on January 28 [2 favorites]
In the US, the story is more about women moving left than men moving right. Men have moved right a little bit since ~2008 and are about as conservative as they were in the early 90s.
It does look like the US trend could be potentially spurious, driven by a change in sampling methodology in 2022: https://github.com/James-Traina/Polar-Check
The relatively mild trend towards conservatism among American men has been going on since around 2008 by the graphs in the article.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:01 PM on January 28 [2 favorites]
Gen X here, but I will say that, anecdotally, I had a slightly younger partner for a while (just outside the millennial cusp) who turned out to be...um...kinda MAGA, and who kept her politics quiet in the early stages of a relationship because it was a turnoff to the kinds of guys she wanted to date...in other words, not MAGA guys.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:24 PM on January 28 [4 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:24 PM on January 28 [4 favorites]
I guess what I'm saying is, even conservative women don't actually want to fuck conservative men.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:30 PM on January 28 [25 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:30 PM on January 28 [25 favorites]
The relatively mild trend towards conservatism among American men has been going on since around 2008 by the graphs in the article.
The linked replication suggests that this may be due to the smoothing used in the article fitting to an outlier at the end of the sample. This is not definitive, given the lack of replication code attached to the original article (which, IMO, is kind of suspicious if the underlying data is all public domain), but seems reasonably convincing to me as an empirical social scientist with experience with this kind of time-series analysis.
Edit: Another replication fails to reproduce the trend
posted by rishabguha at 12:44 PM on January 28 [16 favorites]
The linked replication suggests that this may be due to the smoothing used in the article fitting to an outlier at the end of the sample. This is not definitive, given the lack of replication code attached to the original article (which, IMO, is kind of suspicious if the underlying data is all public domain), but seems reasonably convincing to me as an empirical social scientist with experience with this kind of time-series analysis.
Edit: Another replication fails to reproduce the trend
posted by rishabguha at 12:44 PM on January 28 [16 favorites]
How does the movement of the Overton Window affect these stats?
I started to write a comparison of the political positions of ‘when I was i college’ vs now (Gen X here) but I got depressed and had to stop. Suffice it to say that ‘conservative’ seems to mean something a lot weirder now than it did then and it includes a whole pile of vocally anti-woman hatred. OF COURSE it’s going to be nearly 100% men who sign onto that brand of ideology -
I started to write out some examples of the anti-woman stuff I have caught glimpses of when Tate popped onto global radar and then I got depressed and had to stop doing that too.
Anyhow YKWIM. Overton window. Have women’s positions changed radically or has the political compass been re-oriented? When I was in college I held a set of moderate liberal beliefs like ‘abortion rights/LGBT rights/affirmative action are good’ and ‘welfare is a necessary function of society bc we don’t let children go hungry’ and ‘corporations shouldn’t have too much influence in politics’ and ‘Nazis are bad’ and somewhere along the way these have turned into radical liberal beliefs.
posted by bq at 12:50 PM on January 28 [6 favorites]
I started to write a comparison of the political positions of ‘when I was i college’ vs now (Gen X here) but I got depressed and had to stop. Suffice it to say that ‘conservative’ seems to mean something a lot weirder now than it did then and it includes a whole pile of vocally anti-woman hatred. OF COURSE it’s going to be nearly 100% men who sign onto that brand of ideology -
I started to write out some examples of the anti-woman stuff I have caught glimpses of when Tate popped onto global radar and then I got depressed and had to stop doing that too.
Anyhow YKWIM. Overton window. Have women’s positions changed radically or has the political compass been re-oriented? When I was in college I held a set of moderate liberal beliefs like ‘abortion rights/LGBT rights/affirmative action are good’ and ‘welfare is a necessary function of society bc we don’t let children go hungry’ and ‘corporations shouldn’t have too much influence in politics’ and ‘Nazis are bad’ and somewhere along the way these have turned into radical liberal beliefs.
posted by bq at 12:50 PM on January 28 [6 favorites]
In South Korea, the super low birth rate is more influenced by the lack of affordable housing and the absurd cost of raising a child (e.g. all the tutoring/private cram schools etc that are considered mandatory by middle class and well-to-do couples). From the English language edition of the liberal newspaper Hankyorek:
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:04 PM on January 28 [5 favorites]
Newly married couples who owned their own home were shown to have more children than their peers who did not own their home.There is definitely a political chasm, the current South Korean president proposed abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality while campaigning, using the rationale that focusing on inequality was actually now causing the inequality.....
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:04 PM on January 28 [5 favorites]
The dating sidebar is interesting. Every week on my city’s subreddit, there is at least one “I am lonely, how do you date in this city?” and one “I am lonely, how do you make friends in this city?” These seem, by and large, to come from people in their late 20s (so, mostly past the built-in social opportunities younger folks tend to have) up through people into their late 40s, with the occasional 50s folks. The suggestions tend to be a blend of volunteering, board games, team sports, politics, taking classes, etc., along with a side order of “my God, actual dating is horrible and does not work, and the apps are the pits.” How that might map to individuals’ politics, I don’t know, but the askers seem to be at least somewhat politically diverse.
posted by cupcakeninja at 1:05 PM on January 28 [6 favorites]
posted by cupcakeninja at 1:05 PM on January 28 [6 favorites]
In South Korea, the super low birth rate is more influenced by the lack of affordable housing and the absurd cost of raising a child (e.g. all the tutoring/private cram schools etc that are considered mandatory by middle class and well-to-do couples)
I am pretty sure that the tutoring/private cram schools ARE mandatory because if you are middle class or well-to-do you are both working and not getting home until eight PM. You have to pay to send the kids somewhere, and cram schools are a decent choice.
The cost IS absurd. I remember a friend living in Asia who had just had a baby, in the nineties remarking upon the fact that he could not find any baby strollers for less than $1,000. I have never wondered why the birthrate in Asia is dropping so precipitously, but I have wondered why he went on to have a second kid.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:42 PM on January 28 [3 favorites]
I am pretty sure that the tutoring/private cram schools ARE mandatory because if you are middle class or well-to-do you are both working and not getting home until eight PM. You have to pay to send the kids somewhere, and cram schools are a decent choice.
The cost IS absurd. I remember a friend living in Asia who had just had a baby, in the nineties remarking upon the fact that he could not find any baby strollers for less than $1,000. I have never wondered why the birthrate in Asia is dropping so precipitously, but I have wondered why he went on to have a second kid.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:42 PM on January 28 [3 favorites]
"Just be a decent person and you'll find someone" makes it pretty clear that anyone who can't is not a decent person.
this particular advice may work for lots of people, but the offer is generally not valid if you're neurodivergent
posted by BungaDunga at 2:13 PM on January 28 [3 favorites]
this particular advice may work for lots of people, but the offer is generally not valid if you're neurodivergent
posted by BungaDunga at 2:13 PM on January 28 [3 favorites]
not that ND folks don't find people but boy, the set of people you easily get along with is really substantially smaller than if you're not.
posted by BungaDunga at 2:13 PM on January 28 [2 favorites]
posted by BungaDunga at 2:13 PM on January 28 [2 favorites]
As long as we have a capitalist growth economy where resources are very unevenly divided, it's hard to teach about cooperation, listening, kindness, etc. and have those values survive contact with the real world. For men specifically, time spent in the "tough world out there" needs to be balanced by time spent in non-competitive, supportive, diverse, long-lasting communities.
I have two teenagers who are great, but they are in a near-vacuum as far as social engagement. There's no church (not a believer), no local teams or groups they're in, no multi-generational or extended family wisdom being passed on. So their inputs and context are something like:
* (40%) Time online watching videos, playing games, and sometimes interacting with online friends
* (40%) Public school, but neither has close friends that they see outside school
* (15%) Interactions with each other
* (5%) Interactions with parents (both working and busy)
If I project into the future, where after some years of this my son moves away to get a tech job where everyone is left-brain-dominant, competitive, and mainly cis male, and doesn't have strong social habits, I worry about some sort of turn to the right. Introverted, isolated twenty-something males living along = not great.
posted by caviar2d2 at 2:13 PM on January 28 [6 favorites]
I have two teenagers who are great, but they are in a near-vacuum as far as social engagement. There's no church (not a believer), no local teams or groups they're in, no multi-generational or extended family wisdom being passed on. So their inputs and context are something like:
* (40%) Time online watching videos, playing games, and sometimes interacting with online friends
* (40%) Public school, but neither has close friends that they see outside school
* (15%) Interactions with each other
* (5%) Interactions with parents (both working and busy)
If I project into the future, where after some years of this my son moves away to get a tech job where everyone is left-brain-dominant, competitive, and mainly cis male, and doesn't have strong social habits, I worry about some sort of turn to the right. Introverted, isolated twenty-something males living along = not great.
posted by caviar2d2 at 2:13 PM on January 28 [6 favorites]
Feminism in general posits that men are fully capable of decency and emotional maturity and wants them to achieve it.
I agree. And yet, there are many people who claim to be feminISTS who will cheerfully trot out "men are trash", because while they may claim virtue, they're terrible people who, just like a lot of conservatives, profit (financially and/or discursively) from that sort of rhetoric
I'm very glad I'm a parent only of daughters. Even before the eldest was born, I was crossing my fingers hoping it would be a girl. There are a shit ton of resources and support for raising strong, high-achieving, no-shit-taking girls, and absolute fuck all for raising boys who aren't loud, dumb assholes—and tons of Boy Moms and other garbage who absolutely encourage their sons to the be the loudest, most poo-throwing ape in the neighborhood. This is still true fifteen years later; in fact, it's even worse now, because of what everyone's said about the online algorithm feeding them a Ranch Dressing Hose of fascist propaganda.
Mine are both on the swim team, so I'm around the kids all the time, mostly the girls, but even the boys are OK for boys, because they're actually competing over racing times instead of hunched over social media listening to that whiny bitch* Peterson. The girls, especially the middle-class ones, do NOT want to date the boys in general, and are especially vehement about any hint of Trump, Tate or Rogan being an automatic disqualification. They all warn one another when they hear a particular guy spout propaganda.
So there are essentially no boys they can date: you've got Tater Tots, boys who are too otherwise unattractive or awkward, a good 10% of the boys are gay anyway, and then there are a real small fringe of boys who are cute, not super masculine (macho is regarded as very unattractive) and—and this is important—politically left of center, which given that they are Gen Z is quite left by American standards. There's one, Harley, that my oldest has a crush on: he has long hair, painted nails and does theater, but is still totally hetero. He really is cute: I told mine she probably has a queue in front of her, and she's like don't I know it.
The girls all cope with this by claiming to be gay/bi. Not all of them: like 2/3, including mine. All of them are super queer-friendly. They have little relationships where they're "dating" each other, but there's no sex, cuddling, touching, anything like that, even when they're well away from someone else's dad. My eldest had one of these for awhile, and it was cute—I had no problems leaving them alone together, not only because I think 15 is a fine age to start experimenting, but also because I knew they would just be sitting next to each other, not really cuddling, watching movies or sharing memes. Mine was in the car with me the other day, she's like "I'm thinking about trying to date again, but there's four people that I think are cute and can't make up my mind." All four are boys. I've not met any of them. It's definitely a lot different from when I was her age in 1983: there was a lot more sex, everything non-heteronormative was kept deeply hidden, and a fair amount of it was in hindsight likely coercive.
Whoever said upthread that it's all about the oligarchy keeping us divided was absolutely right.
* Sorry about the language, but that's the only thing to call that motherfucker.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 3:50 PM on January 28 [9 favorites]
I agree. And yet, there are many people who claim to be feminISTS who will cheerfully trot out "men are trash", because while they may claim virtue, they're terrible people who, just like a lot of conservatives, profit (financially and/or discursively) from that sort of rhetoric
I'm very glad I'm a parent only of daughters. Even before the eldest was born, I was crossing my fingers hoping it would be a girl. There are a shit ton of resources and support for raising strong, high-achieving, no-shit-taking girls, and absolute fuck all for raising boys who aren't loud, dumb assholes—and tons of Boy Moms and other garbage who absolutely encourage their sons to the be the loudest, most poo-throwing ape in the neighborhood. This is still true fifteen years later; in fact, it's even worse now, because of what everyone's said about the online algorithm feeding them a Ranch Dressing Hose of fascist propaganda.
Mine are both on the swim team, so I'm around the kids all the time, mostly the girls, but even the boys are OK for boys, because they're actually competing over racing times instead of hunched over social media listening to that whiny bitch* Peterson. The girls, especially the middle-class ones, do NOT want to date the boys in general, and are especially vehement about any hint of Trump, Tate or Rogan being an automatic disqualification. They all warn one another when they hear a particular guy spout propaganda.
So there are essentially no boys they can date: you've got Tater Tots, boys who are too otherwise unattractive or awkward, a good 10% of the boys are gay anyway, and then there are a real small fringe of boys who are cute, not super masculine (macho is regarded as very unattractive) and—and this is important—politically left of center, which given that they are Gen Z is quite left by American standards. There's one, Harley, that my oldest has a crush on: he has long hair, painted nails and does theater, but is still totally hetero. He really is cute: I told mine she probably has a queue in front of her, and she's like don't I know it.
The girls all cope with this by claiming to be gay/bi. Not all of them: like 2/3, including mine. All of them are super queer-friendly. They have little relationships where they're "dating" each other, but there's no sex, cuddling, touching, anything like that, even when they're well away from someone else's dad. My eldest had one of these for awhile, and it was cute—I had no problems leaving them alone together, not only because I think 15 is a fine age to start experimenting, but also because I knew they would just be sitting next to each other, not really cuddling, watching movies or sharing memes. Mine was in the car with me the other day, she's like "I'm thinking about trying to date again, but there's four people that I think are cute and can't make up my mind." All four are boys. I've not met any of them. It's definitely a lot different from when I was her age in 1983: there was a lot more sex, everything non-heteronormative was kept deeply hidden, and a fair amount of it was in hindsight likely coercive.
Whoever said upthread that it's all about the oligarchy keeping us divided was absolutely right.
* Sorry about the language, but that's the only thing to call that motherfucker.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 3:50 PM on January 28 [9 favorites]
It does look like the US trend could be potentially spurious, driven by a change in sampling methodology in 2022: https://github.com/James-Traina/Polar-Check
posted by rishabguha
that's a super interesting data set! You can look at political views and see that males have been tracking more conservative since the 70s (last date available) and that younger groups have been moving towards away from conservativism since the 90s. You can't plot by gender and age unfortunately. There's a treasure trove of information in that website.
posted by bluesky43 at 3:52 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]
posted by rishabguha
that's a super interesting data set! You can look at political views and see that males have been tracking more conservative since the 70s (last date available) and that younger groups have been moving towards away from conservativism since the 90s. You can't plot by gender and age unfortunately. There's a treasure trove of information in that website.
posted by bluesky43 at 3:52 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]
I (gen x) also find the dating sidebar in this thread fascinating. It's the sign of a profound cultural shift, I think. To me it's totally alien for there to be such a strong social norm against people joining volunteer activities with the potential to make friends or romantic attachments---if what you want is to find people with a specific set of values and behaviours, how else will you find places where they're required to show them? In other words, to let you know who they are?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:03 PM on January 28 [8 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:03 PM on January 28 [8 favorites]
That was just a couple of commenters here who held the strong social norm. There's no proof that gen Z has that.
posted by Selena777 at 4:06 PM on January 28 [4 favorites]
posted by Selena777 at 4:06 PM on January 28 [4 favorites]
I do think it's a far more common perspective now than it has been in the past, and I've absolutely seen it expressed many a time on Mefi and in Ask.
posted by sagc at 4:13 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]
posted by sagc at 4:13 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]
> That was just a couple of commenters here who held the strong social norm. There's no proof that gen Z has that.
I think just one person has suggested this. Plus Frowner's excellent point that yeah, don't go to groups and activities *just* to hit on people, but if you go to groups because they are something you want to do, and you happen to meet someone you're interested in, acting on that in non-creepy ways is normal.
posted by gingerbeer at 4:23 PM on January 28 [8 favorites]
I think just one person has suggested this. Plus Frowner's excellent point that yeah, don't go to groups and activities *just* to hit on people, but if you go to groups because they are something you want to do, and you happen to meet someone you're interested in, acting on that in non-creepy ways is normal.
posted by gingerbeer at 4:23 PM on January 28 [8 favorites]
I know I’ve mentioned it before here, but my limited anecdata on the topic is a few years of post-divorce online dating in my 40s, specifically how vastly different my experience was from that of almost every one of my (awesome) female friends, many of whom I met online.
I basically never had a bad experience. Many times there wasn’t any spark, but every woman I met was at the very minimum a decent person with social skills, a job, self-confidence and enough interesting things to say for at least one date. It was fun! It’s how I met my current partner.
But my female friends, wow…the horror stories. Guys showing up drunk (or not at all), talking about Getting Laid, sleeping on a mattress in an empty room, or just holding forth endlessly on stupid shit. This is in their 30s and 40s, when you’d hope someone would have developed at least passable skills at not being crap company. But no. Bad dates far outweighed the good ones. (And this in a city with supposedly good pickings!)
The whole thing always puzzled the hell out of me. I’m waayyyy from perfect, but apparently just from being able to show up on time, be courteous and listen more than yap puts you in the upper percentiles. (It sure was great for starting to rebuild my crushed self-confidence.) What’s wrong with dudes?
posted by gottabefunky at 4:37 PM on January 28 [15 favorites]
I basically never had a bad experience. Many times there wasn’t any spark, but every woman I met was at the very minimum a decent person with social skills, a job, self-confidence and enough interesting things to say for at least one date. It was fun! It’s how I met my current partner.
But my female friends, wow…the horror stories. Guys showing up drunk (or not at all), talking about Getting Laid, sleeping on a mattress in an empty room, or just holding forth endlessly on stupid shit. This is in their 30s and 40s, when you’d hope someone would have developed at least passable skills at not being crap company. But no. Bad dates far outweighed the good ones. (And this in a city with supposedly good pickings!)
The whole thing always puzzled the hell out of me. I’m waayyyy from perfect, but apparently just from being able to show up on time, be courteous and listen more than yap puts you in the upper percentiles. (It sure was great for starting to rebuild my crushed self-confidence.) What’s wrong with dudes?
posted by gottabefunky at 4:37 PM on January 28 [15 favorites]
It's an interesting conversation, but it's funny that the thread has a big sidebar now about dating men, and about dating in general, when the subject of the OP is the supposed political divergence between young men and women, considering that the Petersons and Tates of the world want young men to consider it a political issue if they can't get dates. As rishabguha has pointed out in a couple of comments, this statistical divergence may not even hold up to closer scrutiny.
In any case, meeting people is hard, truly ethical and virtuous behavior is difficult to determine and sometimes difficult to put into practice, and "just be decent" is necessary but insufficient advice without specifics on how to be positively good and a positively good match for someone out there.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:52 PM on January 28 [4 favorites]
In any case, meeting people is hard, truly ethical and virtuous behavior is difficult to determine and sometimes difficult to put into practice, and "just be decent" is necessary but insufficient advice without specifics on how to be positively good and a positively good match for someone out there.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:52 PM on January 28 [4 favorites]
what feels good about dominance for most people is the dominance. It's the part where you don't have to do the emotional labour to care about how the other person feels.
Men want to be able to turn any encounter with women into a romantic/sexual interlude without needing to pay attention to what the women want, hence all the "I guess I just can't FLIRT with anyone anymore" stuff. Like, no, you cannot assume without using your emotional intelligence that you should be able to chat up any woman who catches your eye.
These two comments might seem unrelated, but I think that they're not; I'm going to address the specific first one before broadening out to address the latter, because I think it's one that I'm placed to speak to, as, well..eh, fuck it, I'll go for it, a bit of a sexual switch myself, but also a woman and thus someone who has been historically marginalized and disenfranchised by society and thus not perceived as a predatory threat in this way, and I think it will make the latter easier to understand.
So, for some people, of whom I am one, so please be kind in this conversation, their brain is just hardwired to respond sexually in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with how things work outside of the bedroom; sexual dominance is not relational dominance. For myself, the person I am currently sleeping with, and other similar people, what feels good is absolutely not "not doing the emotional labor". Engaging in those kinds of sexual dynamics, for the majority of people who do it on a regular basis, is actually a fuck-ton of emotional labor for the person inhabiting the dominant role because you have to understand what makes the other person happy and satisfied.
Now, of the set of people who enjoy holding sexually dominant roles, there is a subset of creepy dudes who made the same assumption as the first poster: that sexual dominance is relational dominance and they don't have to do the emotional labor. No one likes them and almost no one wants to have sex with them; unfortunately they tend, in my experience, to assume the problem is that they're Not Dominant Enough and double down on being assholes, rather than working to get the emotional intelligence to actually please a potential partner.
Similarly, I think that there is a set of men who want to flirt with women, and of that set of men, there is a subset of them who have at least the rudimentary emotional intelligence to look for expressions of interest from women before they do so. In part, from my perspective, that's what flirting is when done well - it's a way of making an opening gambit based on initial signs in order to ascertain potential interest, that can either be responded to or rejected, without ever having to have an open conversation about the response or rejection. And I think that most of the time, when engaged in by people who are practiced at it and who possess the emotional intelligence to do it well, it's actually not a problem. However, the problem comes with the subset of men who don't have the emotional intelligence to recognize the 'soft rejection', or who have been trained by idiotic schools of pickup artists to keep pushing past the 'soft rejection', thus turning 'flirting' into 'hitting on' and making it unbearably annoying to wade through. And as those men who aren't succeeding, start failing, they get more and more desperate and double down on their failed strategy, causing more and more harm.
Except that in this case, instead of just walling off those guys and not having sex with *them*, I think it seems we are somehow condemning the entire group or tactic, rather than recognizing that the problem is a lack of: emotional intelligence, willingness to accept rejection, and desire to make others happy. And those things can be taught. We don't have to just gate off all the good things that bring joy - not just to the men but to het and bi women as well - rather than just teach the ones who are being fuckers not to be fuckers.
posted by corb at 5:18 PM on January 28 [7 favorites]
Men want to be able to turn any encounter with women into a romantic/sexual interlude without needing to pay attention to what the women want, hence all the "I guess I just can't FLIRT with anyone anymore" stuff. Like, no, you cannot assume without using your emotional intelligence that you should be able to chat up any woman who catches your eye.
These two comments might seem unrelated, but I think that they're not; I'm going to address the specific first one before broadening out to address the latter, because I think it's one that I'm placed to speak to, as, well..eh, fuck it, I'll go for it, a bit of a sexual switch myself, but also a woman and thus someone who has been historically marginalized and disenfranchised by society and thus not perceived as a predatory threat in this way, and I think it will make the latter easier to understand.
So, for some people, of whom I am one, so please be kind in this conversation, their brain is just hardwired to respond sexually in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with how things work outside of the bedroom; sexual dominance is not relational dominance. For myself, the person I am currently sleeping with, and other similar people, what feels good is absolutely not "not doing the emotional labor". Engaging in those kinds of sexual dynamics, for the majority of people who do it on a regular basis, is actually a fuck-ton of emotional labor for the person inhabiting the dominant role because you have to understand what makes the other person happy and satisfied.
Now, of the set of people who enjoy holding sexually dominant roles, there is a subset of creepy dudes who made the same assumption as the first poster: that sexual dominance is relational dominance and they don't have to do the emotional labor. No one likes them and almost no one wants to have sex with them; unfortunately they tend, in my experience, to assume the problem is that they're Not Dominant Enough and double down on being assholes, rather than working to get the emotional intelligence to actually please a potential partner.
Similarly, I think that there is a set of men who want to flirt with women, and of that set of men, there is a subset of them who have at least the rudimentary emotional intelligence to look for expressions of interest from women before they do so. In part, from my perspective, that's what flirting is when done well - it's a way of making an opening gambit based on initial signs in order to ascertain potential interest, that can either be responded to or rejected, without ever having to have an open conversation about the response or rejection. And I think that most of the time, when engaged in by people who are practiced at it and who possess the emotional intelligence to do it well, it's actually not a problem. However, the problem comes with the subset of men who don't have the emotional intelligence to recognize the 'soft rejection', or who have been trained by idiotic schools of pickup artists to keep pushing past the 'soft rejection', thus turning 'flirting' into 'hitting on' and making it unbearably annoying to wade through. And as those men who aren't succeeding, start failing, they get more and more desperate and double down on their failed strategy, causing more and more harm.
Except that in this case, instead of just walling off those guys and not having sex with *them*, I think it seems we are somehow condemning the entire group or tactic, rather than recognizing that the problem is a lack of: emotional intelligence, willingness to accept rejection, and desire to make others happy. And those things can be taught. We don't have to just gate off all the good things that bring joy - not just to the men but to het and bi women as well - rather than just teach the ones who are being fuckers not to be fuckers.
posted by corb at 5:18 PM on January 28 [7 favorites]
I'm very glad I'm a parent only of daughters. Even before the eldest was born, I was crossing my fingers hoping it would be a girl. There are a shit ton of resources and support for raising strong, high-achieving, no-shit-taking girls, and absolute fuck all for raising boys who aren't loud, dumb assholes
This makes me sad. I have two sons and raising them has been great. There has been a lot to navigate - my oldest opted out of a social group that was very trash-talking boytown, but he found other friends, mostly via art classes; my youngest is more apt to go along on say the basketball court but his best friend is non-binary. It is extremely possible to find groups of like-minded parents. Both have some kind of fandom-based friends (anime and d&d). They are pretty kind and caring.
I do think some young men in my oldest’s age range (18) have a hard time decoupling “toxic masculine power grab” from “high-achieving.” They tend to opt out of some competitive things that reminds me of how it used to go for girls.
Anyways…I think my kids’ friends are a bit outside the norm but the boys I know, plus most of the young men I used to work with in martial arts, are pretty positive, good eggs. Maybe it’s our area.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:36 PM on January 28 [15 favorites]
This makes me sad. I have two sons and raising them has been great. There has been a lot to navigate - my oldest opted out of a social group that was very trash-talking boytown, but he found other friends, mostly via art classes; my youngest is more apt to go along on say the basketball court but his best friend is non-binary. It is extremely possible to find groups of like-minded parents. Both have some kind of fandom-based friends (anime and d&d). They are pretty kind and caring.
I do think some young men in my oldest’s age range (18) have a hard time decoupling “toxic masculine power grab” from “high-achieving.” They tend to opt out of some competitive things that reminds me of how it used to go for girls.
Anyways…I think my kids’ friends are a bit outside the norm but the boys I know, plus most of the young men I used to work with in martial arts, are pretty positive, good eggs. Maybe it’s our area.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:36 PM on January 28 [15 favorites]
As far as dating people through activities, I guess I've always thought the norm was generally not to ask people out during the activity itself? Like, usually there's a smaller subgroup who gets food or a drink after the activity, or someone from the group has a party over the weekend, and sometimes two people end up talking mostly to each other and going off together or exchanging phone numbers.
Also, for a lot of types of activities, at least in bigger cities, it feels like there will be multiple leagues or teams or whatever with different focuses. Like, you can find running clubs or kickball teams that are more into the sport, and ones that are more into the social aspect, including (or especially) dating.
posted by smelendez at 7:54 PM on January 28 [6 favorites]
Also, for a lot of types of activities, at least in bigger cities, it feels like there will be multiple leagues or teams or whatever with different focuses. Like, you can find running clubs or kickball teams that are more into the sport, and ones that are more into the social aspect, including (or especially) dating.
posted by smelendez at 7:54 PM on January 28 [6 favorites]
I'm very glad I'm a parent only of daughters...
I don't want to pile on this comment, because I wouldn't doubt that the poster is a good, hard-working parent... so keep up the good work, outgrown_hobnail.
That being said, I also find this sentiment rather sad. Ideally we just wouldn't care about the sex/gender of our kids. My wife and I are happy that we have a boy and a girl, just for the sake of variety, but our strategy for raising them is just... to raise them the same way? To be good people. Gender norms and expectations are fine up until they come into conflict with that. Which they often do, in which case we actively try to guide our kids away from them.
I'm not trying to say it's easy... my kids are just shy of 5 and 8 and I've no doubt these things will get harder to manage once they become teenagers. But if I'm honest with myself, and everyone here, my outlook when it comes to gender is: the best way to win is not to play (to the extent that it's possible).
Anyway, thanks for the discussion everyone. This has been really interesting.
posted by Alex404 at 8:10 PM on January 28 [10 favorites]
I don't want to pile on this comment, because I wouldn't doubt that the poster is a good, hard-working parent... so keep up the good work, outgrown_hobnail.
That being said, I also find this sentiment rather sad. Ideally we just wouldn't care about the sex/gender of our kids. My wife and I are happy that we have a boy and a girl, just for the sake of variety, but our strategy for raising them is just... to raise them the same way? To be good people. Gender norms and expectations are fine up until they come into conflict with that. Which they often do, in which case we actively try to guide our kids away from them.
I'm not trying to say it's easy... my kids are just shy of 5 and 8 and I've no doubt these things will get harder to manage once they become teenagers. But if I'm honest with myself, and everyone here, my outlook when it comes to gender is: the best way to win is not to play (to the extent that it's possible).
Anyway, thanks for the discussion everyone. This has been really interesting.
posted by Alex404 at 8:10 PM on January 28 [10 favorites]
some very loose thoughts on the huge gap in south korea, from the point of view of a member of the diaspora:
korea has been, at core, a phenomenally patriarchial, neo-confucian society for as long as anyone can recall; it's so entrenched that one folk etymology for the common korean word for "wife" (아내) is from the word "inside", as in "inside the house". as one can imagine, the introduction of christianity during late joseon dynasty and it being catapulted into a weak plurality during and the aftermath of of japanese colonialism and american imperial influence* did not help matters much as the tenor of a lot of it tended towards conservative flavors.
before korea's rise to first-world prominence and the hallyu wave, the country went through a couple decades of poverty before the massive waves of industrialization as america felt it needed more asian industrial partners to serve as bulwarks against communism; dictators were supported, and in exchange for manpower (troops in vietnam--and we will revisit this whole military aspect in a few paragraphs) vast sums were given to greate that industrial base (chaebol/conglomerates like samsung, daewoo, hyundai, lg, sk, and hanhwa, among others, who used men for heavy industry and women for textiles, wigs and other light industry). the fundamental national myth during this time was one of masculine brawn building the industrial might and feminine toil raising the heroes of tomorrow**. a form of kinder, küche, kirche***, if you will, but transplanted from the miracle on the rhein to the one on the han. as one can imagine, as korea got wealthier, and more modern, korean women found themselves less satisfied with being boxed into the domestic sphere, and so korean feminism started becoming louder and more prominent.
by the turn of the century, korea found itself having gone through many of the same cultural shocks that the west had, but in the span of about half a century compared to the west's century, which led to a lot of things being almost unstuck: korean women would agitate for better pay and more rights, but the cultural inertia made it difficult to effect change, though the massive shocks that the imf crisis (also known as the 1997 asian financial crisis) and the democratization of the 90s helped create space for massive amounts of change.
as the internet, technology, and social media became more and more influential in korea, it led to the formation of a lot of powerful movements, but also more or less amped up the pressure on this already tense situation, which by the 2010s became a full-blown culture war along gendered lines. the situation then was:
1. mandatory conscription for men only, which forced men to give ~18+ months of their life to serve in often abusive situations during their prime educational or early professional years
2. message board sites like the noxious, right-wing 8ch-like ilbe having been a major thing for a decade, having cultivated large numbers of disaffected men, and the 2010-era radical feminist sites megalia and womad
3. extreme pressures in trying to get into good colleges, so as to get good jobs, and then a good partner, and ostensibly open to men and women
4. double standards dramatically impacting women (baek ji young) who often were filmed without knowledge or consent thanks to miniaturized cameras
5. while women are provided opportunities, they are still expected to be wives and mothers first, and give up their careers once they find a husband and bear a child
6. cost of living skyrocketing, and opportunities for employment and advancement dwindling for younger cohorts as older cohorts haven't been able to progress as far yet
women naturally found a lot of this intolerable; one early flashpoint was the book and movie 82년생 김지영 (Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982)**** in 2016-2019, which led to couples breaking up (as barbie did for some chinese and western couples four years later). this more vibrant, vocal, and visible feminism led to movements like #metoo in korea, 탈코/"escape the corset" (which rebelled against beauty standards, for example: skincare, cosmetics), and 4B or "four nos"*****, all of which are more radical in nature.
meanwhile, men were finding the success they were promised evaporating as good jobs became harder to find, which impacted their ability to find partners and live up to the expectations patriarchy put on them; instead of pushing back on that a lot of them decided it was easier to fall to the noxious voices of places like ilbe and dc inside. rather than look at a bitter, poisonous system of conscription, higher youth un- and underemployment, an economy overrun by massive megaconglomerates that suffocate smaller businesses (there's no real mittelstand in korea) reducing opportunities, and toxic masculinity/patriarchy, the answer they found was to, essentially, try and smash women and what little they've managed to gain. (korea regularly ranks near the bottom of the oecd for gender equality.) additionally, given how perpetually online korean culture is, you have groups of young men creating massive scandals out of thin air: for instance, the phrase "girls do not need a prince" is seen as tantamount to hate speech; anything resembling the 🤏 sign is seen as an insult; and anyone supporting feminism or even looking like they might is an enemy of the people (men)
this is what helped lead to the election of yoon suk yeol in 2022. that corrupt, yeot-eating shitfucker promised to abolish the ministry of gender equality among many other terrible, hard-right promises (among even stupider ones, like moving out of the blue house) leveraged a lot of disaffected young men and recruited two left-wing feminists (who both regretted it almost immediately) to sow discord among the center left, who had coalesced around a mediocre, uninspiring candidate who expressed a "distaste" for the "madness" of feminism and speaks favorably of former dictator park chung hee. (this candidate, lee jae-myung, was the one who was stabbed this year, but he pulled through). he was so uninspiring that many korean women spoke of "two kinds of men": the terrible ones of the right, or the disappointing ones of the center-left.
anyway, yes. it's bad in korea. you're seeing entire generations of young princes finding out that the silver spoons they were promised were never actually there to begin with and they've fallen for the easy answer of misogynistic hate.
---
* christianity for many represented western learning, as opposed to eastern learning, which some saw as having been somewhat responsible for joseon's weakening and eventual destruction; it eventually also became synonymous with the resistance for many, as resistance groups tended towards two faiths--christianity or socialism; and finally, under the influence of american armed forces and anti-communist christian missionaries led to many megachurches, some with syncretic beliefs, many with prosperity gospel influences (unification church, yoido full gospel)
** one example of how the bias showed up is the imbalance between live births of boys vs. girls; sex-selective abortion, while legally prohibited, occurred with some frequency. this was in part because lineage in family registries was traced (until the 2000s) patrilineally and families often wanted to continue their tree through their sons rather than that of the son's wife, who was expected to forgo hers. also, men could earn more outside of the home and thus provide for the parents more easily in their old age, though the men's wives were expected to do the actual caring.
*** there's the phrase "賢母良妻", or "good wife, wise mother", which, while originating in imperial japan fit korean ideals as well
**** if one wants to be hopeful, watch the movie. gong yoo portrays the husband, and he's one of the good ones, who really cares, struggling to understand as his wife has a crisis due to the patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism baked into korean culture. if one is ready for something more bracing, read the book. the husband, while not necessarily malicious, is at best oblivious. oh, and while it's fiction, it has footnotes with depressing statistics and the writer has said it was an easy book for her to write because she didn't have to make anything up, just tell her story and the story of all her friends and peers. the name ji-young is super common, as is the surname kim (think an anywoman name like "jessica smith"), and women born in 1982 were among the first to have breathed some amount of freedom in the wake of democratization, the imf crisis, and first-world status.
***** no sex with men, no kids, no dating men, and no marriage with men, or rendered in korean: 비섹스, 비출산, 비연애, 비혼. romanized: bisekseu, bichulsan, biyeonae, bihon. the initial 'b' sound is where the "4B" comes from. that said, while 4B gets a lot of press, it remains a fringe movement--it's not like the vast majority of korean women are doing this--the low birth rate is more due to the fact that it's unaffordable to raise children and women are still expected to sacrifice their careers, so they're delaying that time for longer and longer and for fewer and fewer kids.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:57 PM on January 28 [76 favorites]
korea has been, at core, a phenomenally patriarchial, neo-confucian society for as long as anyone can recall; it's so entrenched that one folk etymology for the common korean word for "wife" (아내) is from the word "inside", as in "inside the house". as one can imagine, the introduction of christianity during late joseon dynasty and it being catapulted into a weak plurality during and the aftermath of of japanese colonialism and american imperial influence* did not help matters much as the tenor of a lot of it tended towards conservative flavors.
before korea's rise to first-world prominence and the hallyu wave, the country went through a couple decades of poverty before the massive waves of industrialization as america felt it needed more asian industrial partners to serve as bulwarks against communism; dictators were supported, and in exchange for manpower (troops in vietnam--and we will revisit this whole military aspect in a few paragraphs) vast sums were given to greate that industrial base (chaebol/conglomerates like samsung, daewoo, hyundai, lg, sk, and hanhwa, among others, who used men for heavy industry and women for textiles, wigs and other light industry). the fundamental national myth during this time was one of masculine brawn building the industrial might and feminine toil raising the heroes of tomorrow**. a form of kinder, küche, kirche***, if you will, but transplanted from the miracle on the rhein to the one on the han. as one can imagine, as korea got wealthier, and more modern, korean women found themselves less satisfied with being boxed into the domestic sphere, and so korean feminism started becoming louder and more prominent.
by the turn of the century, korea found itself having gone through many of the same cultural shocks that the west had, but in the span of about half a century compared to the west's century, which led to a lot of things being almost unstuck: korean women would agitate for better pay and more rights, but the cultural inertia made it difficult to effect change, though the massive shocks that the imf crisis (also known as the 1997 asian financial crisis) and the democratization of the 90s helped create space for massive amounts of change.
as the internet, technology, and social media became more and more influential in korea, it led to the formation of a lot of powerful movements, but also more or less amped up the pressure on this already tense situation, which by the 2010s became a full-blown culture war along gendered lines. the situation then was:
1. mandatory conscription for men only, which forced men to give ~18+ months of their life to serve in often abusive situations during their prime educational or early professional years
2. message board sites like the noxious, right-wing 8ch-like ilbe having been a major thing for a decade, having cultivated large numbers of disaffected men, and the 2010-era radical feminist sites megalia and womad
3. extreme pressures in trying to get into good colleges, so as to get good jobs, and then a good partner, and ostensibly open to men and women
4. double standards dramatically impacting women (baek ji young) who often were filmed without knowledge or consent thanks to miniaturized cameras
5. while women are provided opportunities, they are still expected to be wives and mothers first, and give up their careers once they find a husband and bear a child
6. cost of living skyrocketing, and opportunities for employment and advancement dwindling for younger cohorts as older cohorts haven't been able to progress as far yet
women naturally found a lot of this intolerable; one early flashpoint was the book and movie 82년생 김지영 (Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982)**** in 2016-2019, which led to couples breaking up (as barbie did for some chinese and western couples four years later). this more vibrant, vocal, and visible feminism led to movements like #metoo in korea, 탈코/"escape the corset" (which rebelled against beauty standards, for example: skincare, cosmetics), and 4B or "four nos"*****, all of which are more radical in nature.
meanwhile, men were finding the success they were promised evaporating as good jobs became harder to find, which impacted their ability to find partners and live up to the expectations patriarchy put on them; instead of pushing back on that a lot of them decided it was easier to fall to the noxious voices of places like ilbe and dc inside. rather than look at a bitter, poisonous system of conscription, higher youth un- and underemployment, an economy overrun by massive megaconglomerates that suffocate smaller businesses (there's no real mittelstand in korea) reducing opportunities, and toxic masculinity/patriarchy, the answer they found was to, essentially, try and smash women and what little they've managed to gain. (korea regularly ranks near the bottom of the oecd for gender equality.) additionally, given how perpetually online korean culture is, you have groups of young men creating massive scandals out of thin air: for instance, the phrase "girls do not need a prince" is seen as tantamount to hate speech; anything resembling the 🤏 sign is seen as an insult; and anyone supporting feminism or even looking like they might is an enemy of the people (men)
this is what helped lead to the election of yoon suk yeol in 2022. that corrupt, yeot-eating shitfucker promised to abolish the ministry of gender equality among many other terrible, hard-right promises (among even stupider ones, like moving out of the blue house) leveraged a lot of disaffected young men and recruited two left-wing feminists (who both regretted it almost immediately) to sow discord among the center left, who had coalesced around a mediocre, uninspiring candidate who expressed a "distaste" for the "madness" of feminism and speaks favorably of former dictator park chung hee. (this candidate, lee jae-myung, was the one who was stabbed this year, but he pulled through). he was so uninspiring that many korean women spoke of "two kinds of men": the terrible ones of the right, or the disappointing ones of the center-left.
anyway, yes. it's bad in korea. you're seeing entire generations of young princes finding out that the silver spoons they were promised were never actually there to begin with and they've fallen for the easy answer of misogynistic hate.
---
* christianity for many represented western learning, as opposed to eastern learning, which some saw as having been somewhat responsible for joseon's weakening and eventual destruction; it eventually also became synonymous with the resistance for many, as resistance groups tended towards two faiths--christianity or socialism; and finally, under the influence of american armed forces and anti-communist christian missionaries led to many megachurches, some with syncretic beliefs, many with prosperity gospel influences (unification church, yoido full gospel)
** one example of how the bias showed up is the imbalance between live births of boys vs. girls; sex-selective abortion, while legally prohibited, occurred with some frequency. this was in part because lineage in family registries was traced (until the 2000s) patrilineally and families often wanted to continue their tree through their sons rather than that of the son's wife, who was expected to forgo hers. also, men could earn more outside of the home and thus provide for the parents more easily in their old age, though the men's wives were expected to do the actual caring.
*** there's the phrase "賢母良妻", or "good wife, wise mother", which, while originating in imperial japan fit korean ideals as well
**** if one wants to be hopeful, watch the movie. gong yoo portrays the husband, and he's one of the good ones, who really cares, struggling to understand as his wife has a crisis due to the patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism baked into korean culture. if one is ready for something more bracing, read the book. the husband, while not necessarily malicious, is at best oblivious. oh, and while it's fiction, it has footnotes with depressing statistics and the writer has said it was an easy book for her to write because she didn't have to make anything up, just tell her story and the story of all her friends and peers. the name ji-young is super common, as is the surname kim (think an anywoman name like "jessica smith"), and women born in 1982 were among the first to have breathed some amount of freedom in the wake of democratization, the imf crisis, and first-world status.
***** no sex with men, no kids, no dating men, and no marriage with men, or rendered in korean: 비섹스, 비출산, 비연애, 비혼. romanized: bisekseu, bichulsan, biyeonae, bihon. the initial 'b' sound is where the "4B" comes from. that said, while 4B gets a lot of press, it remains a fringe movement--it's not like the vast majority of korean women are doing this--the low birth rate is more due to the fact that it's unaffordable to raise children and women are still expected to sacrifice their careers, so they're delaying that time for longer and longer and for fewer and fewer kids.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:57 PM on January 28 [76 favorites]
This makes me sad. I have two sons and raising them has been great.
Not to pile on, but I really have to agree here. I don't have kids of my own (and at this point in my life, I likely never will) but I have two nephews who are 12 and 15 and they have developed into very kind, caring souls. The youngest in particular has always been the one who is more of a sensitive type and kind of went his own way on, well, everything but nobody seems to give him grief for it. It's nice to see kids grow up that way vs the relentless bullying and hate I received (and victim-blaming from teachers and parents) when I was their age because I wasn't athletic, popular, or a crush-other-people over the top high achiever.
posted by photo guy at 11:06 PM on January 28 [3 favorites]
Not to pile on, but I really have to agree here. I don't have kids of my own (and at this point in my life, I likely never will) but I have two nephews who are 12 and 15 and they have developed into very kind, caring souls. The youngest in particular has always been the one who is more of a sensitive type and kind of went his own way on, well, everything but nobody seems to give him grief for it. It's nice to see kids grow up that way vs the relentless bullying and hate I received (and victim-blaming from teachers and parents) when I was their age because I wasn't athletic, popular, or a crush-other-people over the top high achiever.
posted by photo guy at 11:06 PM on January 28 [3 favorites]
they feel their preferred forms of gender expression are being devalued, suppressed, and controlled
When you lose a dominant position, it is easy to feel that way. Are they right though, or have they just been reduced to something more like equal footing? The latter looks a lot more like the reality where I am at least - it's not like "trad" masculine men can't get dates or friends, or respect, just not from everyone all the time anymore. It's no more respectable to be a hardman than a soft nerd, but it also doesn't seem to be significantly less respectable. To a degree, it's a different crowd, but really, I think they're is an element of expecting to be treated better not because everyone else is, but because that type used to be tested better everyone else.
posted by Dysk at 12:47 AM on January 29 [5 favorites]
When you lose a dominant position, it is easy to feel that way. Are they right though, or have they just been reduced to something more like equal footing? The latter looks a lot more like the reality where I am at least - it's not like "trad" masculine men can't get dates or friends, or respect, just not from everyone all the time anymore. It's no more respectable to be a hardman than a soft nerd, but it also doesn't seem to be significantly less respectable. To a degree, it's a different crowd, but really, I think they're is an element of expecting to be treated better not because everyone else is, but because that type used to be tested better everyone else.
posted by Dysk at 12:47 AM on January 29 [5 favorites]
From the businessinsider article :
As women's political priorities have solidified, young men's priorities have melted into mush. Surveys consistently show that young men are far less likely than women to say any particular issue is personally important to them.
This doesn't sound like a political gap at all. It sounds more like a passion gap. It's not that men and women are more likely to disagree — it's more that women are more likely to care passionately about the issues. Maybe... that's not so bad though? Personally I wouldn't mind having a partner who was more motivated than I about issues we both agree on. Likewise, I wouldn't mind having a partner who was less motivated than I about issues where we both agree. As long as they're not preventing me from acting on my political motivations, I don't see the harm.
Is it even fair to expect your partner to be equally motivated about the issues where you both agree? I suppose that's a question for the individual. I'm sure some folks here in this thread could never be with someone who wasn't absolutely furious about the status quo. But not everybody is like that.
Really I just wanted to add a bit of color here. It's not merely a matter of disaffected young men being lured to the incel life by the MAGA pied piper — although I'm sure that is happening in some cases. I just think the larger picture is a more nuanced.
posted by panama joe at 2:23 AM on January 29 [2 favorites]
As women's political priorities have solidified, young men's priorities have melted into mush. Surveys consistently show that young men are far less likely than women to say any particular issue is personally important to them.
This doesn't sound like a political gap at all. It sounds more like a passion gap. It's not that men and women are more likely to disagree — it's more that women are more likely to care passionately about the issues. Maybe... that's not so bad though? Personally I wouldn't mind having a partner who was more motivated than I about issues we both agree on. Likewise, I wouldn't mind having a partner who was less motivated than I about issues where we both agree. As long as they're not preventing me from acting on my political motivations, I don't see the harm.
Is it even fair to expect your partner to be equally motivated about the issues where you both agree? I suppose that's a question for the individual. I'm sure some folks here in this thread could never be with someone who wasn't absolutely furious about the status quo. But not everybody is like that.
Really I just wanted to add a bit of color here. It's not merely a matter of disaffected young men being lured to the incel life by the MAGA pied piper — although I'm sure that is happening in some cases. I just think the larger picture is a more nuanced.
posted by panama joe at 2:23 AM on January 29 [2 favorites]
Flagged i used to be someone else's comment as fantastic. Thanks for going deep on this, so much here that I didn't know about.
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:37 AM on January 29 [7 favorites]
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:37 AM on January 29 [7 favorites]
First, thank you i used to be someone else for the explanation about Korea. I knew there were issues, but I had no idea how bad they were.
Second, and I say this as someone who has spent too much of his life playing video games, I wonder how much gamer culture has to do with this with boys and young men. Not in terms of fostering the horrible attitudes (there are communities that do so), but more in terms of not really learning how to interact with mixed social groups and not forming interests outside of them.
Almost all of my high school relationships were long distance with people I had met at CTY or through people they knew. Three or six weeks of intensive interaction with fellow nerds (some of who were of my preferred gender and to my eyes, quite attractive) helped me learn to interact with girls (and later women) as people. So, in both a pre and post-pandemic world (as post as it is, but that's for a different thread), how much do kids interact in clubs and extra curricular activities, especially in mixed gender groups? I honestly don't know, although I suspect that it is less than it was, as the need to find things to do is not as strong as it once was, given the internet and games. At the same time, my friends who are teachers are running robotics clubs with boys and girls, so maybe I am extrapolating from personal views and not much else.
This ties in with the decrease in third spaces that people talk about when decrying how difficult it is for adults to make friends. I wonder how many third spaces are left for teenagers to learn to socialize.
posted by Hactar at 4:23 AM on January 29 [4 favorites]
Second, and I say this as someone who has spent too much of his life playing video games, I wonder how much gamer culture has to do with this with boys and young men. Not in terms of fostering the horrible attitudes (there are communities that do so), but more in terms of not really learning how to interact with mixed social groups and not forming interests outside of them.
Almost all of my high school relationships were long distance with people I had met at CTY or through people they knew. Three or six weeks of intensive interaction with fellow nerds (some of who were of my preferred gender and to my eyes, quite attractive) helped me learn to interact with girls (and later women) as people. So, in both a pre and post-pandemic world (as post as it is, but that's for a different thread), how much do kids interact in clubs and extra curricular activities, especially in mixed gender groups? I honestly don't know, although I suspect that it is less than it was, as the need to find things to do is not as strong as it once was, given the internet and games. At the same time, my friends who are teachers are running robotics clubs with boys and girls, so maybe I am extrapolating from personal views and not much else.
This ties in with the decrease in third spaces that people talk about when decrying how difficult it is for adults to make friends. I wonder how many third spaces are left for teenagers to learn to socialize.
posted by Hactar at 4:23 AM on January 29 [4 favorites]
THE STUDY THAT ALL THIS REPORTING IS BASED ON IS BOGUS, and all this discourse is irrelevant because we're talking about something that doesn't exist in reality.
"You saw the headline, now look at what happened when scientists actually evaluate the headline"
"If you look at the average trend across countries, it’s not that the genders are dividing so much as that women are becoming more liberal. Trend for men is basically flat since 2000 in US and Germany, and men actually becoming more liberal in UK, just not as fast as women."
From the posts:
Issues with the "study"?
1. Online respondents via webpage form, no effort to remove botnet or multiple replies
2. Biased wording of questions
3. Insufficient responses from some countries to provide accurate statistical analysis where study claims definitive results
4. Study summary claims "both men & women are becoming more conservative but men are changing at a faster rate"; published data shows both are becoming more LIBERAL.
5. Study summary claims conservatism by men and women is being led by an increase in active religion among Gen Z. There are literally no questions within the study about religion so even if the rest of the study were accurate it would be impossible to tell if religion was a factor.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:17 AM on January 29 [16 favorites]
"You saw the headline, now look at what happened when scientists actually evaluate the headline"
"If you look at the average trend across countries, it’s not that the genders are dividing so much as that women are becoming more liberal. Trend for men is basically flat since 2000 in US and Germany, and men actually becoming more liberal in UK, just not as fast as women."
From the posts:
Issues with the "study"?
1. Online respondents via webpage form, no effort to remove botnet or multiple replies
2. Biased wording of questions
3. Insufficient responses from some countries to provide accurate statistical analysis where study claims definitive results
4. Study summary claims "both men & women are becoming more conservative but men are changing at a faster rate"; published data shows both are becoming more LIBERAL.
5. Study summary claims conservatism by men and women is being led by an increase in active religion among Gen Z. There are literally no questions within the study about religion so even if the rest of the study were accurate it would be impossible to tell if religion was a factor.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:17 AM on January 29 [16 favorites]
it's tough in korea--there's a reason why koreans sometimes call it "hell joseon". ideals for men and women are high, which is why cosmetics and beauty are used by all genders, why rates of plastic surgery are high, why the cram schools are even a thing: perfection is to be attained. add in a housing crisis in the major cities as the country becomes ever more urbanized... so far as i've looked i haven't seen anything akin to the right-wing tradwife movement in korea, because now that women can get an education none of them want to move to the rural areas, which is also driving increasing rates of mail-order brides and foreign laborers, which is adding more volatility to an already unstable mix, in a country whose modern conception is that it has historically been a monoethnic state.
it's why it's wild to see those with privilege opt out and send their kids to the united states, not because the education is better (not at the primary or secondary levels, anyway) but because the opportunities are not as... limited. when the american ivies and elites are sometimes seen as safety schools compared to the three sky universities and elite schools like kaist and ewha, and even then that it does not guarantee a successful career, you know something's gone terribly wrong.
i'm also sure i'm missing a bunch of things and giving short shrift to others, but i don't know how much i'd read into the situation in korea as being a leading indicator for how fucked the rest of the world is. i'm not saying korea is sui generis but also there are a lot of very specific things that amp up the situation that, while they may be present elsewhere, haven't amalgamated into the same mix.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:22 AM on January 29 [9 favorites]
it's why it's wild to see those with privilege opt out and send their kids to the united states, not because the education is better (not at the primary or secondary levels, anyway) but because the opportunities are not as... limited. when the american ivies and elites are sometimes seen as safety schools compared to the three sky universities and elite schools like kaist and ewha, and even then that it does not guarantee a successful career, you know something's gone terribly wrong.
i'm also sure i'm missing a bunch of things and giving short shrift to others, but i don't know how much i'd read into the situation in korea as being a leading indicator for how fucked the rest of the world is. i'm not saying korea is sui generis but also there are a lot of very specific things that amp up the situation that, while they may be present elsewhere, haven't amalgamated into the same mix.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:22 AM on January 29 [9 favorites]
“Maybe young men and women aren’t so ideologically different,” John Sides , Good Authority, 29 January 2024
A viral graph isn't the full story.posted by ob1quixote at 4:40 PM on January 29
If you look at the average trend across countries, it’s not that the genders are dividing so much as that women are becoming more liberal.
That does sound like a divergence, though?
posted by Dysk at 1:14 AM on January 30 [2 favorites]
That does sound like a divergence, though?
posted by Dysk at 1:14 AM on January 30 [2 favorites]
No matter the generation, a majority of men will always be convinced they are hard done by.
Perhaps you should find another article to support your sexist confirmation bias, since this one is about how younger guys are the ones who have gotten politically shittified. The studies do not say that men, as a group, are sliding into fascism. It's the boys who are in freefall.
Stop kissing his ass, and pull your thumb out of yours.
Young men don't turn to fascism (or go on shooting sprees) because their asses have been kissed too much. Patriarchy is fucking brutal to young men, and it's driving a lot of them insane.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:09 PM on January 30 [4 favorites]
Perhaps you should find another article to support your sexist confirmation bias, since this one is about how younger guys are the ones who have gotten politically shittified. The studies do not say that men, as a group, are sliding into fascism. It's the boys who are in freefall.
Stop kissing his ass, and pull your thumb out of yours.
Young men don't turn to fascism (or go on shooting sprees) because their asses have been kissed too much. Patriarchy is fucking brutal to young men, and it's driving a lot of them insane.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:09 PM on January 30 [4 favorites]
It's not even clear that young men are becoming more conservative! Other data says they're also becoming more liberal, just not as much!
posted by Justinian at 1:39 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
posted by Justinian at 1:39 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
(in the US of course; there are other countries like South Korea where it's different.)
posted by Justinian at 1:40 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
posted by Justinian at 1:40 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
The studies do not say that men, as a group, are sliding into fascism
The study doesn't need to say it. Any image of a Dumpster Fire (rally), especially the one on 1/6, makes it clear that older men are the biggest demographic pushing fascism.
posted by Dashy at 5:02 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
The study doesn't need to say it. Any image of a Dumpster Fire (rally), especially the one on 1/6, makes it clear that older men are the biggest demographic pushing fascism.
posted by Dashy at 5:02 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
“Stop blaming male alienation on female liberation,” lyz, Men Yell At Me, 31 January 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 8:41 AM on January 31 [6 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 8:41 AM on January 31 [6 favorites]
I'm coming in entirely too late on this but I see some of this as an effect of the shift to hyper-segmented marketing. Take good old LEGOs as an example. In the 1970's they were a unisex toy. As the marketing of toys started to split, the company had to decide whether to go all-in on selling to boys or selling to girls. They went all in on boys, and a couple of decades later, LEGOs were a boy's toy and girls would not touch them, to the point where they had to invent an entirely new product line for girls to get that market share back. The core product is the same, but girl building blocks go to the pink aisle and boy building blocks go to the blue aisle. By the time kids enter kindergarten there are no shareable toys. In an older market, I saw shows in the 1990's killed because they pulled the 18-35 female market instead of the intended 18-25 male market. Marvel/Disney resisted making superhero toys or clothes for girls for a long time because it would have interfered with their Disney Princess market. Overlap makes targeted marketing hard, so the solution is to make media and entertainment as stratified as possible. And then we wonder why men and women of the same cohort have mutually exclusive views of the world.
posted by Karmakaze at 5:04 PM on February 2 [7 favorites]
posted by Karmakaze at 5:04 PM on February 2 [7 favorites]
“Boys vs Girls,” Matt Alt, Pure Invention, 06 February 2024
There’s an emerging gender divide everywhere but Japan. Why?posted by ob1quixote at 6:13 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]
hell joseon
...this seems like a giant, huuuuuge, red flag.
To the point that I'm wondering WTF is going on that I've missed (I guarantee there are things I've missed, also I was already expecting a certain negative attitude for perfectly reasonable causes!) because OMG I knew things were bad but, um, anyway, things are worse?
I mean, quite literally, that if a nonzero percentage of your youth say things like this, you should probably rejigger your entire society because OMG.
posted by aramaic at 7:11 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]
...this seems like a giant, huuuuuge, red flag.
To the point that I'm wondering WTF is going on that I've missed (I guarantee there are things I've missed, also I was already expecting a certain negative attitude for perfectly reasonable causes!) because OMG I knew things were bad but, um, anyway, things are worse?
I mean, quite literally, that if a nonzero percentage of your youth say things like this, you should probably rejigger your entire society because OMG.
posted by aramaic at 7:11 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]
the movie 기생충 might have struck a chord globally but it is fundamentally an analysis of korean society.
it's a term that's been around over a decade, and it's not like many see a happy future if you weren't born with a golden spoon or above; so many end up being part of the 삼포세대. and that's before we talk about gender, because while i mentioned 82년생 김지영, i didn't mention books like 엄마를 부탁해 or 채식주의자. the gender divide is so harsh that as a trans woman it's one of the only places where i have some sympathy forlady vengeance non-inclusive terfs.
south korea is in some ways a country that is defined by trauma and trauma reactions: that of repeated invasions, brutal occupation and genocidal tactics that led to the destruction of history and culture en masse, and then genteel occupation by an imperial ideology that became embedded into the modern fabric. it is remarkable what a country the size of indiana and a population of 50 million has done in 70 years, but it has done so with so much blood, sweat, tears, and broken bodies and souls.
it won't change at least before 2027, and even then it might not change appreciably because it's either a terrible right-wing party or a milquetoast centre-left. y'know, like the bigger country that saved it with napalm, god, and capitalsm.
posted by i used to be someone else at 2:23 PM on February 7 [4 favorites]
it's a term that's been around over a decade, and it's not like many see a happy future if you weren't born with a golden spoon or above; so many end up being part of the 삼포세대. and that's before we talk about gender, because while i mentioned 82년생 김지영, i didn't mention books like 엄마를 부탁해 or 채식주의자. the gender divide is so harsh that as a trans woman it's one of the only places where i have some sympathy for
south korea is in some ways a country that is defined by trauma and trauma reactions: that of repeated invasions, brutal occupation and genocidal tactics that led to the destruction of history and culture en masse, and then genteel occupation by an imperial ideology that became embedded into the modern fabric. it is remarkable what a country the size of indiana and a population of 50 million has done in 70 years, but it has done so with so much blood, sweat, tears, and broken bodies and souls.
it won't change at least before 2027, and even then it might not change appreciably because it's either a terrible right-wing party or a milquetoast centre-left. y'know, like the bigger country that saved it with napalm, god, and capitalsm.
posted by i used to be someone else at 2:23 PM on February 7 [4 favorites]
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posted by wanderingmind at 5:59 PM on January 27 [108 favorites]