The more I hear people talk about it who aren’t cis-het men, the more I hear criticism about the concept. But so far, I’ve only heard people say that it’s stupid, that it’s not a thing, that it’s men’s own fault etc. But I’ve yet to understand where that criticism comes from. I don’t want to start a discussion on whether or not it’s real or not. I just want to understand where the critics are coming from.
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Men, by and large, create toxicity within their own circles. Male culture has a lot of issues and a lot of unrealistic expectations are put in men in US society. Some external, but the majority come from inside. The whole alpha male culture bullshit that permeantes it. There’s a lot, and I mean a LOT of good that can come from healthy male culture. But right now it’s like men have a branding issue where the loudest among them are also the worst (the Andrew Tates of the world).
I’d say there’s some unavoidable bias there. If we judge the dominant masculine culture by the degree to which people emphasize masculinity then of course the loud ultra masculine people will seem like the representation.
Lots of men out there just being men
Lots of men out there just being men
True. But nobody cares about them because they aren’t bothering anyone. But they do get lumped in with the controversial men.
Like I don’t have much of a clue about Tate or any of that stuff. But if I tell people that then I’m guilty of ignorance or something and I need to ‘educate’ myself about that stuff so I can… denounce it? Because apparently just not knowing or caring is complicity or something.
It’s true that men as a broad group have a duty to confront and correct that behavior within their social groups and families etc. and that might be where that sentiment is coming from, but we live in a world where people can and do live in bubbles.
No. We don’t. We don’t have a duty to do anything anymore than women do.
Other people’s ignorance isn’t my obligation to fix. It’s their own. I am not responsible for other people’s behavior and anyone who blames me for it is an asshole. Guilt by association is a fallacy.
If you’re not calling out that kind of behavior when you encounter it among your social group then you are definitely complicit. Is it a morally corrupt position? Not necessarily, but you’re complicit and you’re enabling it.
I kind of assume it’s the juxtaposition of “I as a white man have immense social privilege” with “I can’t get anyone to play with me”. Like, other people are worried about being abducted on the street and you’re sad you can’t play basketball with your bros?
The sadness of loneliness can be real but in contrast to other things it can feel like it needs to be triaged into a lower priority. And then some men lose their shit over that, which makes people take them less seriously.
most white men don’t have much social privileged.
it’s only the top 5-10% who have the privledge
For example, white men will generally have an easier time in public spaces. Police and shops are less likely to bother them.
privilege doesn’t mean “you have a yacht” or “you’re rich”
and if you’re black/Hispanic and you dress in a suit they won’t bother you either. esp if you hold yourself like a rich douchebag
but if you’re white and tattooed and look homeless, they will totally bother you.
It’s about class. class trumps race and sex, everytime.
Please go read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_privilege and the related articles, such as https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
No. I have a minor in gender studies. You can pretend Wikipedia is some sort of definitive source of truth all you want because it fits your simplified narrative of race and sex.
Reality is far more complex than that though.
I don’t believe you. Sorry.
A lot of people can’t see things from any perspective beyond their own limited worldview. If they don’t experience a problem, it doesn’t exist or it’s not that bad and everyone should focus on their problems instead or if they are experiencing something it must be happening to everyone. I think this is causing a lot of the conflict around this issue. There is also the fact that a lot of the men complaining about this issue come at it not so much as “I’m lonely” but as “I’m not getting laid”. Which loses them a lot of sympathy.
Or it’s more about the inability to form community/family units that are so essential for human flourishing. For men and women both. And yet we have created all these biases and expecations of each other that handicap people from connecting.
I had no issue with connecting with most people I met 10+ years ago. But now it’s a struggle to even have a polite conversation with anyone under 50 for me, because their brains are so warped and they can’t take anything as is. I’ve had so many innocuous comments blow up in my face by younger folks who just leapfrog to the worst conclusions. For example I love reading classic literature… a lot of older pre 20th century stuff. That used to be something people admire. Now I get a lecture about how it makes me racist/sexist because the authors back then were all racist and sexist and if I am reading it i’m endorsing those views.
It’s insane. All the sudden my harmless hobby is now evil. I am also into cycling and I can’t talk about that now without being lectured or told how problematic it is for me to enjoy it.
Or it’s more about the inability to form community/family units that are so essential for human flourishing. For men and women both. And yet we have created all these biases and expecations of each other that handicap people from connecting.
100% that is the root of the loneliness epidemic and I agree that there is a problem. I was just trying to stick to answering OPs question about why we see opposition to the concept.
Being a man is tricky. Full grown males can be physically dangerous and I think there is a subtle undercurrent of worry with all men they may be dealing with a hostile moron, or a worry someone may try to assert dominance. Men are organically closed off past a certain age because of this.
Men also experience allot of these weird power dynamics growing up. Both men and women kind of seek to control and bully youger boys and men until they come into their own…and suddenly they are grown and terrifying if some respects and everyone magically backs the f*** off
I think part of it also depends on were you live. Just as a personal experience I live in a very rural part of northern Nevada, I’m born a raised here. The population is about 4k and honestly I would say 90% of the population are hardcore conservatives. Even as a kid I knew that I didn’t fit in with anyone else. I would usually just keep to myself all throughout school and even now as a 42 year old man I barely speak to anyone. It is lonely but the alternative is a no go for me especially now with politics being such a big part of peoples identity.
I think it has to do with the death of 3rd spaces which used to be an outlet for socialization. But as a man, I’m also not lonely. I have friends and acquaintances and I get to go outside sometimes.
This right here. But even for our parents this is true.
I remember back when we could easily get some beers and sit at the local park or at the riverbed. But now? Everything’s private property and the bars are way too expensive to spend 5 hours in. I don’t know the last time I played Billard - or even have seen a pool table itself.
In the 2000s I could go out drinking for an entire night for like $20. Or I could hang out in a cafe with a sandwich and a coffee for $10.
Now two beers is $25 and that’s an hour if you nurse them slow. Wanna hang out for 2+ hours anyplace? Goign to cost you probably $50-100. Even bowling a frame is now like 75/pp in my city
On a related note, I wish we would acknowledge that men socialize different and that guys doing stuff together is therapeutic. Ruminating on emotions can have a negative effect in men, while work therapy can be much effective that talk therapy.
that would be acknowledging that men and women are different and that’s bad in 2025, apparently.
I have no idea but thought I’d throw out that, as a 58yr old cis white guy I’ve never been lonely in my life, i have literally no idea what that’s like and don’t get involved in hypotheses about it all because I have nothing to bring to the debate. I do find human behaviour interesting (and mostly bizzare) though.
The more time I spend with people the more I crave being alone but that’s a different thing.
I now live on the edge of a tiny village in the middle of no where Australia and lived in a small cottage off grid in the bush for 10 years previously bit alos loved in an apartment in the sky in a largish city.
One thing I noticed, I found the car free existence ina city bought me into contact with people all the time, even walking you’d see people people and say hello. Stop at a crossing and have a small conversation occasionally etc. i even said hello to women and was never called a pervert ;)
Oh my god STOP WITH THE GENDER DEBATES
Who says this? I am not a cis-het man and have not heard the criticism. I thought it was a known thing? Are you literally hearing it doesn’t exist, or is it more like they need to suck it up and/or that they are losers that need to go outside?
If it’s the second, that’s sexism. That’s where it comes from. Illogical ideas about men. Believe it or not, we have not overcome that yet. People have very twisted ideas about how men and women should behave and feel.
Can we please leave gender war slop back at the old site please?
I think there is definitely a male loneliness epidemic but I think there is also an equally bad female loneliness epidemic that nobody talks about enough
I think what’s happening is:
40% of men are good people
40% of women are good people
The remaining 20% are pieces of shit that demonize and demean the other sex, which has caused the 80% to become scared and reclusive.
Social media makes it seem like the percentages are flipped but they are not!
The numbers are made up but you get my point.
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Modern online incel and radfem movements were created to pit them against each other and prevent them from uniting and creating positive social change.
Created by whom? I’m actually curious.
I can’t prove anything, but:
- There’s evidence that billionaires are taking much more than they earn, and that we (everyone else) would be dramatically better off without them (whether we tax them away or… Come to some other compromise.)
- Billionaires own most media outlets and social media sites, even those these don’t actually make much money compared to everything else the billionaires own. This makes some people ask why they bother…
- There’s a noticable tendency in billionaire owned media to focus daily on divisive topics. The specific topic changes, but the divisiveness continues.
- There is history of powerful authoritarians investing heavily in divisive propaganda, primarily to break apart and distract groups of people who could overthrow them.
What I have laid out is not proof that today’s billionaires are directing their staff to verbally attack minorites at any opportunity.
But it certainly is something to think about next time a vicious rumor about a minority group comes along.
Woah, I thought you were talking about a conspiracy of wealthy people that are pitting the sexes against each other. That is interesting and I want to study this some more.
Somehow you ended on wealthy people hating on minorities. Let me make this clear. This happens all the fucking time. Even our POTUS is guilty of this multiple times with instances like the Central Park Five.
I mean the whole anti-woke movement is just a bunch of rich racist assholes pushing a toxic message.
I’m not the original person you were speaking to but this is a good example of systemic issues. You don’t need individuals to be racist or sexist or conspire to do bad things if there’s a systemic trend that people in powerful positions are a homogeneous class with their own relatively aligned interests and social circles.
Billionaires don’t know poor people, billionaires are usually white men, billionaires have similar self interest. Billionaires wield a huge amount of power. BOOM. systemic racism and sexism without requiring everyone to scheme and coordinate.
This is why liberals fixate on gender and race representation in higher positions, and this is why I and other leftists just want to dismantle unbalanced power structures that give billionaires everything and allow them to exist.
Eliminating billionaires would do far more to harm fascism than all the DEI initiatives combined.
100%, liberals won’t let go of the root causes of the problems and will keep patching and reforming and patching and reforming all the while every little crisis brings fascism back from the shadows
they both exist. but the male one makes people angry so it gets more engagement. it’s also framed as ‘men are losers who need to do better in life’
the female one is often framed as ‘women are too successful for men’.
the truth is there is a huge gender disparity emerging in certain demographics. my own included. most single women I meet in my 30s/40s are living radically different lives than the men. and frankly i haven’t had a relationship in half a decade because none of the women I meet anymore have anything in common with me, and often they view our differences in a very negative light. 10 years ago those differences were seen as positive.
there are also no common spacers for us to mingle anymore. esp not as equals.
I’ve seen two sides to it.
Side 1: “boo hoo nobody will fuck me because I don’t think other people should have rights”
Side 2: not having strong friendships/relationships because our society is built around capitalism, cars, and social media (this obviously applies across genders, side therefore is a generalized loneliness epidemic, not a male gendered one)
In my mind only the second side is worth listening to.
Side 2 has not actual relevance to the problem itself. These societal tropes are not why men are having a hard time finding women. It’s just a societal trope posing as an explanation.
Side 3 is the only relevant issue. Men are constantly told they need to be more vulnerable or their masculinity is toxic, and yet when they express themselves vulnerably, they’re punished for it.
The problem is that the people touting the toxic masculinity narrative (feminists) don’t take into account how much women reinforce toxic masculinity.
The deeper problem: feminists think they represent women to a far greater extent than they actually do. The fact of the matter is that most women don’t identify as feminists, and therefore feminists are representing liberal gender beliefs, rather than most women. Don’t get me wrong: I actually agree with feminists on balance, but their messaging is garbage, divisive, bullshit. Feminism is far too consumed by misandry to effectively argue their points in a way that could persuade the majority of men and women to support them. This is why they encounter so much failure when their cause is actually 90% right.
Side 2 is very relevant. If you are lonely you get easily into very terrible sides of society and mindsets. I speak from experience. If you dont have a sense of belonging you also have no sense of self, but then come people that tell you to have a part in their group because of race, religion, nationality, or any other extremist reason.
If you dont have a sense of belonging you also have no sense of self,
Not sure I agree with that. I don’t have much sense of belonging but I know exactly who I am. If anything that’s why I usually feel like I don’t belong.
Fair enough, I should have been clearer. I recognize that social isolation has deleterious effects on people. The part I was dismissing was the attribution to capitalism. Capitalism does not cause this effect. Other factors are responsible.
Would you accept “under-regulated capitalism” or “capitalism treated as an ideal rather than a tool” as a more specific root cause?
No, because it’s just not related to capitalism at all. Lemmings love to blame capitalism for everything, and you see it in every bad thing in the world.
Capitalism does though. Atleast to an extend. Car centered city though that kills social connections a lot!
No. That is not an effect of capitalism. That is just a fact of rural living. God, Lemmings love to blame capitalism for everything.
What made the car industry big? What convinced them to tear down everything and make everything cardepended? Why does the oil and car industry lobby so hard and spread missinfo about public transport and closer living together?
There’s basically a lot of modern “feminists” who have decided that two wrongs make a right.
It’s good that women feel comfortable expressing themselves and trying to dismantle the patriarchy since it hurts us all. But many of them don’t stop there and end up crossing the line into misandry and blind hatred of men.
This results in these “feminists” saying some pretty bigoted shit like “white men can’t experience racism and sexism” as well as harassing men for seeking support.
This group mocks the male loneliness epidemic out of spite like other bigot groups.
“white men can’t experience racism and sexism”
A big problem here is that not everyone has a common definition for racism and sexism. Some definitions take existing power structures and historical context, and others don’t. A discussion about this topic should be started with what specifically each participant believes these terms mean. Otherwise you have two people talking about “sexism” but they are just talking past each other because they lack a shared understanding of the term as it is used.
Usually, only bigots want to redefine the definitions of racism and sexism.
It’s pretty easy not to be a bigot if you aren’t an asshole.
The “white people” idea has some merit when you consider that whiteness has usually been an arbitrary group of races and cultures that define the dominant group in western society. The whole “Italians and Irish weren’t once considered white” thing.
Obviously individuals can experience hardship and you might even argue that preferring non-white candidates or other affirmative action is harmful (I’m not going to, but you can).
My position on this is that everything is a patch on fundamental inequality and I’d rather just get to anarcho-communism so we don’t have to solve 100 individual problems caused by historical racism and the capitalist machinery that lets that manifest as unjust distribution of wealth.
Regardless of age and gender and familial success in past generations we should all be equal.
(I’m not gonna argue that either)
Anarcho-communism is the way.
Yeah, I agree. Wealth redistribution would fix most social and economic problems overnight.
Well, if any caucasianswanna experience a taste of racism/discrimination, just head down to certain areas of Richmond, BC Canada
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Signage only in Chinese (violates language laws)
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Restaurants that won’t even acknowledge your presence (if non Chinese)
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Realtors that won’t show you housing (if non Chinese)
But if course nobody will do anything because to address the issue said seem… racist.
And that’s the funny thing. Because people at the top of the racist pyramid generally share the same skin color, ethnicity and/or pants-contents as you, you get to be grouped in as “the oppressor”. Even if you share a lot more in common with victims of the same system, complaints are met with decision and ignored.
That’s because it’s easier to divide and conquer by skin and gender to hide the real class war that exists.
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