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[rant (with memes!)]
This is a particularly sore spot for me. I was an incel in the 1980s, long before the term incel was coined, and I was odd and a misfit, and fit nicely in this pile...
alleged link << I'm still new to Lemmy-linking.... and my inability to manage my own teenage libido figured into my suicidality then. Society's failure to do better after another thirty-five years figures into my suicidality now.
To be fair, I suffer from major depression, largely tied into a childhood of neglect (I was a stereotypical latchkey kid) but then since the eighties, US society has required all adults to work full time, and everyone's parents were exhausted and didn't have much time or inclination to parent... and it's only getting progressively worse. So I'm thinking this is intergenerational dysfunction and mental illness. Madness takes its toll.
One of the things that kept me going in my twenties was the hope things would get better for future generations, but instead the US opted for abstinence-only sex ed, which is still (in 2024) mandated in twenty six states, and pushes some really hard Christian stereotypes, e.g. that sex is transactional, men are obligate providers and women have no value other than their virginity and capacity to bear kids (in case you want to know what J. D. Vance' rhetoric is all about.)
In contrast, only three states (the west coast) mandate comprehensive sex ed, which talks about contraception in a positive way, but it doesn't (officially) talk about consent, boundaries, the patriarchy, the slut-shaming epidemic and so on. If you're a teen, an incel, or know one, or otherwise want some serious sex and relating to other humans in a functional way info, check out Planned Parenthood, who has materials (and I believe they're free). Despite what Jon Kyl said -- #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement -- Planned Parenthood spends more on their educational materials than they do on abortions, so go get some!
For me, I got lucky. At twenty five, I figured I might be able to recover my way into society, and joined a random AA meeting which had pamphlets about local meetings for other recovery and 12-step meetings. I found my way to CoDependents Anonymous and through a coincidence segued my way into the kink community. In Choke Chuck Palahniuk gets into a slightly different path which is getting into the Sex and Love Addicts community, where peers are slightly too eager to fall off the wagon with each other. This is as dysfunctional as hate-fucking, but hey, we are already truly gone fishing crazy in a society that is also dysfunctional.
Even in the early 1990s, when we were still just trading copypasta on Usenet and Wikipedia was still a WiP, it was clear then it was a bad idea to leave all our young men sexually frustrated, pretend like it's not a problem and then try to teach them integral calculus. It wasn't the era of suicide terrorists (lonely, angry young men in the Middle East) and it wasn't yet the age of rampage shooters (lonely, angry young men in the US). But we did have a run of spree killers, and Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Lonely and sexually frustrated to the last.
To be fair, the US Armed Forces really likes lonely, angry sexually frustrated young men. This is their primary tap for recruits, and until recently, we've been fighting the International War on Terror.
And an awful lot of them, especially those who never figure out how to relate to
womenanyone trickle their way into the many alt-right factions, not just incels but the alpha male community, the seduction community, gamergaters, MGTOW, the manosphere, militias, 4Chan/b and so on. Piles and piles of guys (and some gals) who are losers, and they know it. In a shit world that dealt them a shit hand, and do a sine-wave dance between wanting to fade out and wanting to watch the world burn. I know the steps to this jig.Connected ones go into law enforcement.
Essentially, US culture has created this giant pool of Immorten Joe's war boys, all looking to be witnessed all shiny and chrome into Valhalla. And they are all voting for Trump in 2024 and are eager to join Röhm's Sturmabteilung as soon as a recruiter tells them to stand back and stand by.
I don't know what the solution is, and I've put a lot of thought into it. The US hates its teens. It seems to be a fixed action pattern (an instinct) to lock our adolescent women up and to evict our adolescent men, once they respectively start showing signs of puberty. I wonder if it's related to those gorilla species that evict their adolescent females during their first estrus, but then welcome strange females.
Regardless, it's much the way our administrators side with bullies over their victims when they can (an affect of dominance hierarchy, the thing that drives us to worship athletes and sports stars). In my old age, I wonder if we're just driven to rationalize obeying instincts rather than recognizing that an advance society sometimes requires non-intuitive solutions.
We need to find a way to actually respect our teens while they're still in that threshold between cute kid and responsible adult. Just as we need to find a way to actually respect folks that are not simultaneously white, Christian, male and rich enough to have a stock portfolio. If we don't, it'll kill us.
In the meantime, Millennials are having few kids, and Zoomers, fewer still. After the anti-abortion thing, they're just not even bothering to date, and feel undriven to do so since there's little to no hope for the future.
During the German Reich, when the population rate imploded, they just rounded up pretty young German women who fit the master race mold and required them to serve in the Leibensborn program, as breeding slaves for the Schutzstaffel what inspired Margaret Atwood's handmaid program in A Handmaid's Tale. And considering J. D. Vance's obsession about childless women whether teachers or cat-ladies, this sounds like a thing he'd be happy to spearhead once the Project 2025 agenda sends the US into one-party autocracy.
I suspect there is some undiscovered sociological magic we might be able to use to change the way we interact with power hierarchy and in the meantime give our teens more guidance and less constraint. But if we don't, it's a problem that will resolve itself within the next century (more or less). In the meantime, when see Eleanor Rigby or Father McKensie lost and forgotten in their solitude, a check in and a friendly pint (or ice cream cone) might be in order.
[/rant]
I can't, so I asked Gee Pee Tea to. Howd it do?
Society's failure to support teens, especially those struggling with loneliness and sexual frustration, has only made things worse over the decades. Abstinence-only sex ed and a culture that neglects young people have contributed to this mess, creating a cycle where exhausted parents can’t provide the guidance teens desperately need.
Lonely, angry young men are often funneled into harmful ideologies or destructive paths. The future looks bleak, with fewer people having kids and growing fears that political movements could exploit this desperation. It’s crucial to find better ways to respect and guide youth before things spiral even further.
It's pressure on the workforce to over exert that has cost us parents. It's right-wing ideology that gives us AO education programs, and allow them to focus on teaching that ideology, rather than informing about sex, love and intimacy.
I'm not a psychologist or sociologist, so I am guessing (hypothesizing) that authorities over pubescent adolescents responding to incidents of sexual expression (including flirting, courting, sexting, not just making out † ) has more to do with instincts than what would best serve the teens or the community. But this is consistent with dominance hierarchy and the behavior of other social primates.
AssAs I said, I don't have a societal solution, but we can act locally by acknowledging that everyone, from our disregarded teens to untrained adults are all commonly products of a dysfunctional system that raised dysfunctional kids who are now dysfunctional adults. So yes, cut everyone some slack, including yourself.† or K-to-9 kids for that matter, who are prone to interest and experimentation, which parents and guardians respond to by freaking out and punishing those kids who are involved.
Quite an oversimplification, but it hit some of the high points. It’s a good little opinion piece, and worth the time, I think.
Oh man, good rant! My comprehension lost track about 1/3 of the way down just past the Choke reference, but I identified with a lot of it and I frequently think of the mentally ill koala comic in my daily life.
The sad truth I've found though is that the mentally ill koala comics context is what is used to automatically dismiss that final Twitter reference. -and that's why mental illness has a stigma. People use it as an excuse to invalidate other people.