Can Parents Prevent Their Sons From Sliding to the Right?
Can Parents Prevent Their Sons From Sliding to the Right?
It might feel dangerous to let a teen explore reactionary and unformed pseudo-ideologies. But no one should get canceled at the dinner table.
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I will say it’s very easy to accept that victim attitude. I did. I don’t any longer, I’d consider myself a humanist with the belief we need to make society better for everyone.
I’m going to whine for a bit, I’m in my mid 30s now, and when I was in high school social media was new and Facebook was pretty much at its peak. I don’t know what growing up is like for kids these days, but I do know my 11 year old nephew is like the kids in the article and he knows all about “red-pill” alpha/beta/sigma shit (but not how incorrect it is).
As a teenager it felt like being a white straight male meant I was being pushed backwards to make room for helping push women forward (I saw felt like because sometimes how somethings feels outweighs reality).
As an example, to pay for university I went through lists of scholarships and almost all of them were focused on minorities and women, and so I was ineligible. I worked 30+ hours a week after school school and I worked really hard to get up to an A average so that I could get some scholarships to help afford tuition (and I still ended up with debt). It was a really tough time and I was filled with fear about the future. At the time I felt that that I had to put in more effort to get less than my peers did because I was a straight white boy. My girlfriend at the time ended up getting so many scholarships and bursaries that she could afford her tuition, and her residence, and fun money leftover, and she never had to take on any debt to pay for her even more expensive university. I only got one scholarship (not for lack of trying) based on my grade cutoff, and I ended up taking on debt which took years to pay off. It felt very unfair by comparison, and I know her experience did not reflect the average, but that’s what I saw as my comparison.
I also was a frequent 4chan user at the time, I joined for the memes, but there was a lot of commentary about how the education system had been changed to favour girls and that when it was more adversarial boys performed better. By then the statistics had already swung so that more girls were getting accepted into university, and they were more likely to graduate. I still have no idea how true the things I read on 4chan were vs reality, they definitely excluded the narrative of sexism against women in the old days, but they felt real, they matched with real statistics, and it was a cohesive narrative. I got sucked in, and I was bitter, and I saw all the ways in which I was the victim.
Obviously I never experienced any of the downsides of being a minority or being a woman. I never got the perspective of why things were harder for them and why they deserved help. I only saw there was help for them while I was struggling to keep afloat. I only saw the still present expectations on men to be providers, all the bad sides of patriarchy without knowing what patriarchy was (except meaning male and bad). Also at the time, there was stuff like anti-rape pledges that schools were making boys take, and it sorta felt like being treated like a criminal for crimes you knew you would never commit.
Anyways, I’ve meandered a lot. The discourse has evolved but I still don’t think men’s issues get the discussion they need, and I don’t think we’ve seriously focused much effort on the question of “how do we help boys too”.
Now that alarm bells are ringing and it feels like we’re still not adequately discussing men’s issues, and sadly it feels like the only people who actually are, are those alt-right red-pill influencers (who are massively warping the truth to fit a narrative) because they’re not afraid to get labelled over it.
And just to sign off, over 15 years after high school I now see a lot of the privilege I actually had, I’m more aware of the realities minorities and women face, and I know I was a whiny teenager with blinders on to all of the benefits and luck I actually had.
the morning light hit my stove’s greasy backsplash in just the right way to reveal a finger-traced drawing of a dick ’n’ balls spraying a few fingertip-dots of jizz.
Us mere mortals can only dream of writing this perfect, for indeed here we have an example of prose from an artist at the pinnacle of the form.
Yes, by not introducing trauma of being micromanaged, parented too much and by allowing them personal space.
By understanding that this doesn't mean kids don't need help, they need a lot of it, but you don't come arrogantly with your mind made up about what kind of help exactly they need.
By being respectful of their borders in interests also, because when a kid is interested in anything at all, and the parent thinks it's cool to just intervene "helping" in that interest and "participating" without being invited, especially publicly, that's worse than bullying.
And also doing that thing which may seem stone age - never ever support anybody from the outside against your kid. Teachers, other kids' parents, neighbors, anybody. If your kid does something wrong, you talk. But you don't turn it into something you discuss and judge behind their back together with teachers or whoever else and then come to your kid with your opinion. That's called family values and it really is important.
In short, respect.
Militant right ideologies are attractive for people who feel themselves disrespected. Idealistic ideologies (not only right) are attractive for people who lack happiness. Repressive ideologies (again not only right) are attractive for people who feel themselves weak. Conspiracy theories are attractive for people who feel lost. Reactionary ideologies are attractive for people who feel rejected.
I had conservative parents and I might have grown up the same... but I slid WAY to the left which I attribute to one very specific and pivotal event: watching the news and protests around Trump getting elected while I was sitting in a McDonald's in Thorncliffe Park. Until that day I was pretty indifferent to politics and stuff, but this had me question: what injustice in this world led to this crazy person to take power?
Teach empathy.
Make them the helpers.
There is a problem that creates a hostility towards feminism as it stands now and minorities.
Look at how positive discrimination has progressed.
The goal is roughly 50/50 representation. But to get there from where we were we have positively discriminated in favour of girls and women.
Desirable entry level jobs do not end up in a 50/50 hire pattern because the starting point was skewed to begin with. Hiring over represents women.
Leadership and management often needs a correction from 100% male to 50%.
That means promotions favour women.
But it goes further back. Educational programs, university places etc. As well as other areas of life. Sport funding, healthcare interventions.
All these areas we're correcting for social injustice against women and we aren't impacting those who are already at the top of the ladder.
Instead we're disproportionately helping women up the ladder to eventually get to equality.
That's justifiable looking at society as a whole. I'm not generally against positive discrimination.
But add on to that the same mechanisms to help minorities and you do have a weight of advantages that can lead to an overcorrection or at the very least feel like one.
Then take it another step.
In the UK there was a program which targeted additional funding for disadvantaged children in education. It recognised girls and helped them, it recognised minorities and helped them.
The program was designed to be agnostic and look at demographics and attainment to determine where funding would go.
At the point at which the metrics used to determine funding pointed to white working class boys, after the pendulum had swung, the Conservatives cut funding for it.
There is privilege. There are reasons to correct for privilege and ways to do that to make a more equal society.
But the way we've chosen to get there as quickly as possible has reversed privilege in small, key areas, rather than eliminating it.
In a world where we have a generation that has spent their entire political lives pulling up the ladder. That right wing generation has found support amongst the young in promising to pull up the ladders only put back down for the select few.
The most desirable jobs and areas for social mobility have been targeted for positive discrimination. To try and create representation of the unrepresented as the first step.
There is increasing inequality overall.
There are those who cannot get onto the ladder seeing the left help people not like them. Just because they aren't women and aren't a minority themselves.
The left has fundamentally failed to target root causes of inequality and lack of social mobility.
Who are you going to vote for. The side taking away your privilege while doing nothing for you?
Or the side who promises not to take that privilege from you?
If the left wants young men's votes it needs to tackle inequality and social mobility directly. Otherwise it may be the correct, albeit distasteful, conclusion, that a culture war benefits young white men. After that it's only a matter of cognitive dissonance to justify the harm to society as a whole for personal benefit and young men vote right wing.
If you're good enough with philosophically questioning and deconstruction of ideas in a non-militant manner, you could deradicalise someone. I could not find the news, but there is a father who deradicalised his son by engaging his son's thoughts. The natural instinct is to quickly react and be angry but father kept questioning where his son got the ideas and explained why they're wrong. The son's view did not change over night but it worked.
Giving your children self confidence and educating them also on more philosophical topics is definitely something parents can/should do. The problem arises when parents can't fulfill that task.
I think this article may shed some interesting context and complement OP’s linked article nicely: https://theconversation.com/gen-z-boys-attitudes-to-feminism-are-more-nuanced-than-negative-222532
What is rightthink and what is wrongthink is already predetermined before conversations start. So someone who is young and wants to think for themselves cannot hold a position that is not already predetermined, they cannot even talk something through to get the right answer because even holding the wrong answer is liable for attack.
Not even that but not holding the right answer and advocating for it aggressively is already aggressively wrong.
And who is responsible for most of these issues? You guessed it white men. No only do they have to hold the right position they have to defend that position more than anyone else.
The world is getting a lot more competitive but I think the thinks most guys care about is getting girls and getting money do to things like by a house. Sex has gotten horrifically competitive with some guys getting laid loads and some guys not getting any. It pays to be the best and guys know that, lying about it doesn't help anyone. Theoretically evening out that somehow is probably better for society but I can't even conceive of how that would happen, but might be an explaination of how marriage for life became the norm.
In terms of money it's difficult for everyone, but then for everyone else to get a leg up when you are struggling is aggravating. All anyone wants is a level playing field and white guys don't get that. Also girls still like guys with money whereas it isn't the same the other way around.
Sure you can say something like women liking guys with money is all part of the patriarchy and pushes that back onto men. But serious, how are the current generation going to fix that? It's okay for women to feel money makes a man but not to change, but it's not okay for men to let that happen. That just doesn't make sense.
Then the mental health aspect is men don't have anything. They get attacked, they get told they need to be strong, countless examples of women abusing men for being weak (that's seems the norm in relationships) I guess that's somehow not women's responsibility either it's the patriarchy. So men find comfort and support in other men but that is also not okay. There are no man days in work, no male only spaces, no one trying to push men into a career for teaching. Men even having a normal guy only friendship group gets attacked in ways that women only friendship groups don't.
I'm sure this comment will do poorly because it doesn't fit the narrative and people will gloss over it but that's the explaination of what's going wrong in guys lives today.
And another hard fact for a lot of people here is the right actually have some points. Can you believe that a huge contingents of different attributes supported by ~50% of the population has some things going for it. I am left wing, probably very left wing. But the way the left act is pushing a lot of people to the right. Conversations with the right are much more open, much more free. The left is so aggressive and unopen to discussion it pushes people away. If the right offers equality and tells young boys they are not born with oringal sin for being boys, then people are going to listen. We need a party that is left economically but individually right.
I have a problem with the inherent hypocrisy in this article. The author presents the issue of her sons "sliding to the right" as a problem in itself, rather than explaining why she thinks it is a problem.
If you, as a parent, see a shift in your child's belief system or political preferences as a problem, you need to do some introspection and be able to fully articulate why it's a problem other than "I don't like it."