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Despite the triggering headline, this is a pretty good article that talks about how younger men are falling for this horseshit
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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 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.
You see, that’s exactly the kind of discourse that leave a highway for fascist to convert those people. Your wrote all this text to basically say fuck you to these men, I won’t help you, help yourself.
Now the far right does tell these men what to do, unlike the left. Obviously they will go with them, because that’s the only support they get.
Feminist movement will not succeed if it doesn’t incorporate men. And women need to be involved in creating a model for men. Otherwise men will simply fall back on the conservative misogyny like they’re doing, and this model do have something for women. Feminist won’t like it though.
I don’t like it either. I like the feminist model. But there’s absolutely nothing for men within it. And this is causing the backlash we can see today.
BTW individual responsibility is the liberal philosophy. Phylosophy that is perfectly fine with fascism if it must come to it. Fascists understand it perfectly, and their misogynistic philosophy is full of individualism. Feminism will not win if it embrace individualism.
I am sorry that you do not see my POV and with the danger to repeat myself: In order to get help, people need to seek help. It requires action. And that’s the same for everyone: Men and women.
That’s why places like Men’s Lib exist: Some men took action and created a forum for men to discuss such matters, but these things will not come to someone who doesn’t seek it.
Yes, that’s because feminism is a movement for the emancipation of women.
Pretty sure intersectionality is a big part of modern feminism.
That’s true and I am a big fan of it, but in order to find a place within insectional feminism, men have to create them. Men’s Lib is one of those places.
I would agree that it’s on liberal men, especially ones who had a “toxic” past and therefore can relate to the experience, to reach out, create media and engage in conversations.
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.
