this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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Explain Like I'm Five
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How about the hundreds speaking to 'people' in general instead of young men? Making your target audience 14yo boys is kind of fucked up on its own.
Is it just me, or does that statement just not hold up to scrutiny? Are 14 year old boys supposed to just be complete pariahs from society? At what age does it start being unacceptable to address them, and at what age if any does it become okay to speak to males again? What do you expect a teenage boy's life to be like?
I'm increasingly convinced that being anti-man is a defining trait of being on The Left in America. The Left has no monopoly on progressive social issues. If you poll Americans on issues alone, they'll overwhelmingly come down in favor of progressive issues, things like higher minimum wages, medicare for all etc. The Left exists to play identity politics, largely against each other. Seeing men as the source of all their problems is the only uniting factor they share.
Depending on exactly who on The Left you ask, it is either a waste of time or outright immoral to talk to men and boys in good faith. The people posting about "Instead of gender reveal parties, you should have anti-heteronormativity lectures with rainbow cake" cannot stand the thought of saying to an adolescent boy "Here's how our social policies will benefit you." Because they cannot stand the thought of males benefiting from anything. That sentence sticks in their throat.
Most of my life I've heard "Girls need positive female role models in media." Is this somehow not true for boys as well? "Even if it is, it's not what we do here, and we'd rather it wasn't done anywhere else either."
Well it is being done somewhere else. There's a whole media empire out there who are perfectly happy to fill that niche. Nobody on The Left will even try to compete in that market because the culture war is too important to them.
Im not saying boys shouldnt be addressed and they shouldnt have role models. Im saying that people shouldnt target them specofically because they are young insecure men. Why cant people just consume media that fits them individually indenpendent of their age and gender? Why do we feel the need to shape people into roles they arent meant for just because of their gender? This is a leading cause of depression in young adults and it sgetting worse
I don’t know anyone who specifically targets that audience. There are those who talk about men’s issues (among other topics) and those who don’t, and the ones who do tend to lean more to the right and are almost universally labeled as bad people by everyone else. Even someone like Chris Williamson has mentioned how he couldn’t order merch for himself from a company in San Francisco because the staff refused the order simply because of who he is. I imagine Scott Galloway is treated more or less the same.
I dont know the people you mentioned so I cant comment on them specifically, but as I see it theres a huge difference between 'talking about mens issues' and indoctrinating them into mysoginists by saying stuff like 'bitches wont fuck you because you are weak and poor, you need to dominate them, thats what theyre attracted to'