Andrew Tate is a symptom, not the problem’: why young men are turning against feminism
‘Andrew Tate is a symptom, not the problem’: why young men are turning against feminism
Despite the triggering headline, this is a pretty good article that talks about how younger men are falling for this horseshit
I posted this elsewhere:
This is not a coincidence, this is the result of a long-term, political strategy. Anyone remember GamerGate? There has been an extreme backlash against feminism since the mid-2010s which GamerGate was a part of. (GamerGate in itself was part of a wider strategy that the far-right began to use on 4chan in the late 00s.)
Steve Bannon (then EIC at Breitbart) pushed GamerGate’s anti-feminism into the mainstream right-wing politics because he saw it as an opportunity to recruit young men. Unfortunately he was right and his strategy has paid off, forming an anti-feminist alliance that has become a core belief of right-wing parties all around the world. It has creeped into the mainstream with figures like Andrew Tate who fulfill the role of recruiting young men for even more extreme anti-feminist, far-right content.
This was the background noise that these young men grew up in. Many of the influencers they followed would tell them endlessly how feminism is to be blamed for bad games (during GamerGate) and - in general - how feminism is to be blamed for most ills of modern society. That young men were effed over by capitalism and patriarchy was - of course - deliberately omitted.
I agree with you. But I have another blame to this: the far right is the only political side that works on young men, especially on the romantic side of things.
Feminist is the other group that talks about sexuality and men/women relationships. Their fight is the good one, but they vomited men when it comes to #metoo and the consequences, and sometimes men were even excluded.
The outcome is that when you're a men struggling with women, and this is especially a problem with gamers, long time single men, and young men discovering everything about this kind of things, when you're struggling, feminism is basically abandoning you and sometimes even blaming you.
The only solution you can find about this is from far right with the most toxic and conservative philosophy there is. But it is the only one you can find, as a man, to try to get better about this. Or at least it was.
Those men were politicaly abandoned. And even here on lemmy you can easily read about people arguing that if a man can't find a woman, it's because he is a shitty person and not respectful of women.
So indeed on the one hand the far right led a political fight for this result. But on the other hand no one else was fighting on this ground. The left need to stand up and fight this fight too, rather than to send people seeking help to the far right.
I mostly agree with you, but not with this...
feminism is basically abandoning you and sometimes even blaming you.
Yes, that's because feminism is a movement for the emancipation of women. Why should a group that is fighting for its own emancipation waste its limited resources for another group that is not fighting on their own? For better or worse, there is no political or ideological group out there which isn't prioritizing the interests of its own members first and foremost. So why should feminism be any different? Why should women have to do the work for the men who - for whatever reason - aren't acting in their own interests?
Yes, the left has offered no coherent answer to the problems of young men, but it isn't the case that they offered no answers at all: Brotherhood and comradeship, international solidarity, self-organization and the fight against the oppressors have been core values of the left for ages. Unfortunately the left was ground to dust by capitalism and the last remnants of unions and other such movements which were always meant to empower individuals are struggling. They recently saw an upsurge again, but it remains to be seen if they can make a difference in the long run.
Unfortunately as long as men, such as the gamers you mention, sit behind the computer screen and think that good things should come to them without them having to do something themselves, they will always fall for the far-right's false promises of power and riches.
The movie Magnolia predicted this in 1999. Remember "respect the cock and tame the cunt"? Tom Cruise is basically playing Andrew Tate in this movie.
Doesn’t seem super well theorized to me. How exactly is porn playing into it? I do think the black and white language around metoo (yesallmen, believewomen) marginalized a lot of guys and contributes to this mindset. People who took it literally found the moral imperative it implied absurd and decided they’d need to find another narrative that they could be proud of themselves inside of. This is what they found when they looked. Invalidating all expert opinion as liberal makes it hard to bring sense into the conversation.
I do think apps like tinder are directly responsible for all the self published bullshit they read mixing terms from economics to analyze the ‘sexual marketplace’ and seem mostly premised on the idea that some woman owes you in particular because of statistics.
Some will, but when you are fighting to change norms language and optics are an important part of that. I think the movement would have been stronger had it avoided language implying gender essentialism.
But yesallmen/believeallwomen DID, as you say, come with widely available explanation and purpose.
...and you don't think that choice of language played a part in the reaction to things like when Jimmy Bennett accused Asia Argento of statutory rape and she paid him off to shut him up? I mean, she more or less literally did what #metoo was accusing powerful men of doing, had done it recently at that point, and didn't get half the shit most #metoo targets got as a consequence. Or that aide that accused a CA legislator of being inappropriate with him, so she investigated herself and found no wrongdoing on her part.
And even the people who claim to be all about #metoo and #believewomen get...picky about that when a woman accuses the wrong person - see Tara Reade's accusation against Biden.
It absolutely did not. It came with shouting down anyone who wanted to question women who came forward with rape accusations. That's how some of these highly-publicised cases, like Matress Girl, resulted in immediate expulsion of those accused. Had they done actual investigating into the matter, they would have seen the woman absolutely should not be believed, but that went against the slogan.
I’d say they’re doing it to themselves. Feminism doesn’t come across as inclusive, and has a “fall in line or get left behind” mentality.
Even something dumb like Sokka’s character growth from being a sexist 12 year old to respecting & appreciating women was said to have gotten removed from Netflix’s Avatar TLA remake.
At some point, that rigidity is going to push people away, and it appears that it didn’t take much to push people to villainize feminism.
I’d say they’re doing it to themselves. Feminism doesn’t come across as inclusive, and has a “fall in line or get left behind” mentality.
And on this I'd say I blame the parents most of all. I consider myself a feminist and grew up in an extended family of strong female figures. At no point was feminism (the word) discussed. What was, was an understanding that women are equal to men and deserve everything that a man has be it good or bad.
The problem is that many people fell on feminism as an ideal to latch on to without better understanding and espousing the core principles behind it.
Fast forward to now where I am a 46 year old man with a daughter and 2 boys I have far more concern for the boys than the girl and I make sure as often as possible to stress the principles of feminism and not just the word.
For women, "a rising tide lifts all boats". Just as many men (I like to include myself) are doing all we can to bring women to a place of equality, women must also be beholden on themselves to ensure men do not get left behind.
No True Feminism
The right are radicalizing young men. It's as simple as that.
To be fair, work dedicated to reaching young men from a feminist perspective has been pretty limited in recent decades.
Most certainly. They are exploiting issues in masculinity that have been here for decades.
One of the ones they like to use is the 'strong man' and a callback to our forefathers (eg., miners from the 1800s. Typical 'manly' men). There is nothing wrong with being strong, determined, or ambitious, provided you're a decent human being beforehand. These grifters, though seem like it's the only thing that validates a guy, and that we must achieve it no matter the cost. If we don't, we are failures and must find someone or something to blame
On the one hand, sure, you're not wrong. On the other, why are young men entirely passive in your analysis? "The right", neither the talking heads nor the nebulous concept, can radicalise anyone without some level of their consent in being so radicalised.
Maybe it's shitty pop politics and it isn't only just feminism or any other hot marketed divisive-styled news topic, it's all the pop politics, whether they are left or right.
I'm convinced people hate the pop news system and are too consumed in it to understand that's their enemy and not the topics that the news markets. I swear mass media is building anti LGBT and anti feminism on purpose by never shutting the fuck up about it. In turn people blame feminists and LGBT when it's the news system shoving shit in people's faces and gaslighting everyone to hate everyone.
Marketing is the enemy of all of us.
Not saying you are wrong. In my view, having grown up under the system of being a disposable male, seeing something like “mens mental health day cancelled because of lack of female representation” https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/17/row-after-university-of-york-cancels-international-mens-day-event is right on par with what I grew up with and honestly what we should be working against.
I do agree media has their hand on the scale making things worse. That said, media isn’t the sole contributor to the problem. Foisting the responsibility onto an amplifier ignores the baseline sentiment.
The media is owned and controlled by the same untra wealthy people that are pushing for far right policies.
Do the math.
I think it goes deeper.
Overall wage growth has remained stagnant for a while, but we are seeing greater wage equality and an increase in education requirements for jobs. I wouldn't be surprised if the economic conditions for high-school educated men dropped significantly and the economic conditions for college educated men remained stagnant.
So if you are a working class white male angry at the system, you may end up angry that all these women came in to change the system for them instead of at the economic elites not paying their fair share.
And they may hear stories about how men a few generations ago were still "kings of their homes", where women were unable to leave bad situations. The power sounds a lot nicer than today.
So you've got a lot of young guys looking at the old system and wanting that.
Thanks for sharing
We absolutely need to be doing more on this front and I think the best solution is actually pretty simple: men should read feminist literature (or discourse) that has their interests in mind. If you take nearly any one of these people and make them read bell hooks (this is the hard part), it will almost certainly change their lives for the better. What's more, a lot of that just comes down to having their pain validated and it's relation to patriarchy exposed.
First you would have to actually write feminist books that are targeting angry young men
At the risk of oversimplifying, I don't think men need to read feminist literature. Nothing wrong if you do, but I think men in general need to stop smelling their own farts and take a long, hard, and uncomfortable look in the mirror.
Figure out who exactly it is you want to be. What traits does this version of yourself have? Chances are, 'intolerant shit sack' aren't the words we want to describe ourselves with. Then we start to ask if we are said shit sack, and if so, how do we stop from being one.
The point I am trying to make is that we far too often focus on small things, and lose sight of the big picture.
I think men in general need to stop smelling their own farts and take a long, hard, and uncomfortable look in the mirror.
Figure out who exactly it is you want to be. What traits does this version of yourself have? Chances are, ‘intolerant shit sack’ aren’t the words we want to describe ourselves with.
I think this mentality is why so many men have a problem with feminism. When you start your conversation with "you're the problem", you're going to alienate the group you're attempting to reach out to. Men have real problems that deserve to be noticed and recognized, and not all of them are a result of patriarchal culture. Telling them that they're to blame for their problems because they're "intolerant shit sacks" is just going to convince them that the problem is feminism.
Your point is basically: why don't all assholes just stop being assholes. That is not how any of this works.
