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The rate of girls identitying as liberal is significantly higher and unlike the conservative boys, the rate hasn't started dropping off. Probably because the girls face actual threats to their freedoms, while the conservative boys' complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.
But of course it's boys who get the headline. The hill is a right wing dumpster bin.
This is definitely right-wing trash. However, we should be using headlines like this to fire up the country. Everyone knows that "republican" men think they have the last say about reproductive rights. Let's use their own "reports" to show those women that their boyfriends/husbands/fathers think they own them.
while the conservative boys’ complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.
The verbalized complaints, yes.
The passive misandry that's pushing boys right is a very real thing.
I suspect it’s less due to the rhetoric of Donald Trump & more due to the influence of Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson & Joe Rogan.
Well, think about it. Who is the most confused, scared, and angry about women not throwing themselves at their feet? Pubescent boys. The entire right wing media sphere is aimed at someone with the temperament and unleashed anger and horniness of high school boys, in a time when kids are having less sex. These perpetually online kids are being fed into the ecosystem through YouTube, then they hear it normalized on fox/literally any right wing outlet, and then they get those poisonous ideas reinforced when they go to school and don’t get laid by the hottest girl they know.
I don’t think these things were planned, by any means. But they sure did work out for them.
No, those personalities rose due to the mainstream (mainly left) not being able to discuss normal masculinity and overall only portraying masculinity as something toxic. When you go in one radical direction, you get radical response (Tate, etc).
We need normal, non-partisan discussion and stance towards masculinity.
Normal masculinity is simply existing and not giving a fuck how other people expect you to live. There's almost no point in discussing it more as the left is already very comfortable with discussing the idea that you are who you are and you can be proud of that. That message is literally everywhere.
Toxic masculinity has to be discussed because people are being made to confuse being toxic with being "strong" which is something the right is creating. Their image of a "real man" is toxic.
It's like the whole "racist right winger" or "neonazi" labels given to a politician, but then some random right winger gets all bent out of shape as if they were called a Nazi... They weren't even part of the conversation, they decided to take on that guilt. It's the same with toxic masculinity. If you're not expressing the things that are discussed within that subject then they aren't talking about you, you're more than likely "performing" normal masculinity. It's not the fault of the people having the conversation that someone else chose to feel offended by it when it wasn't about them at all.
The left needs to own healthy masculinity and properly address very legitimate issues that disproportionally hurt boys in our society.
Otherwise we will lose a whole generation to toxic male role models in the manosphere.
I read a great WaPo article on this recently. Basically on the left, no one can define healthy masculinity and it's really opened up a spot for the right wing to swoop in and define it for us.
John Oliver, John Iadorola from the damage report, Mike Figuredo from the Humanist report, Kyle Kulenski from secular talk, David Doel from the rational national, Sam Seder from the majority report, Lance from the Serfs, Matt Binder from the majority report. Left leaning positive male role models. I'm sure there is more but they stand out as I watch them every week.
This, want it or not, it is not hard for boys to feel incredibly alienated in the left hemisphere. We gone from "girls have issues too" to "only girls can have issues". It's ridiculous, and even more ridiculous when you remember that girls reach their growth spurt sooner than boys, effectively eliminating many of the purported advantages of boys over girl, making them feel even more alienated.
I keep feeling that there's a disaster being brewed there, the only people paying attention to young boys seems to be the alt right, and there's a need for this which everybody seems to dismiss, every single one of the old style support structures for masculinity have been dismantled over decades, and while they were right to be dismantled all these boys still need the support to actually grow into decent people, and no one is giving it, and these crazies have noticed and are using it as breeding ground for soldiers for their cause. The decent people side must create something for them even if it's to avoid them falling into these dens of craziness.
Exactly. The response among the left seems to be "ha, fuck em" which is a terrible plan
That's something I have argued about with my liberal friends often. You don't make allies by telling people that their opinions don't matter, or that they're wrong based purely on their sex or color. The left has been dismissive towards men, no... It has been hostile towards men for at least a decade. Masculinity isn't inherently negative and not all masculinity is toxic. Spreading the belief that it is will only make enemies of people who otherwise would be allies. It is incredibly short sighted to reject normative people and make them feel that they're less important or that there's something wrong with them just based off their birth. Also, that is the exact same mentality that the left supposedly wants to overcome, but rather than working towards its end, they've just shifted the target. To be clear, I say "liberal" and "left" and that may cause an assumption that I'm a right-wing conservative. I am not.
Maybe kid watching too much Andrew Turd or Lobster cult? That's why de-platforming is so important. These people are genuinely harmful to the world.
Grifters are a symptom, not the cause. I agree with getting rid of them, but more will follow.
I was a "Fox News"-viewing turd in high school, too.
Conservativism mirrored what my parents viewed at the time. Seemed edgy. And offered simple solutions to all of life's problems.
Then I grew up. Five years later, I was voting for Barack Obama and terrified of Sarah Palin.
That is actually an easy trap to fall into because that was the environment you were raised in. I am glad you got out of that trap when many do not.
Then I grew up.
No one just "grows up". You had a set of experiences that allowed you to think beyond the confines of what your parents taught you.
Most never do.
It's not a natural process.
I was a card carrying Libertarian after high school, before my sense of empathy developed more fully.
Same. The world seemed so simple back then, until I matured. I suspect a lot of people are emotionally stuck
I can also relate, a classic libertarian utopia sounds great until you realise poor people exist. I think a lot of individuals are just afraid of personal growth because it often means admitting you were wrong.
They’ll grow out of it when they enter the job market. I was conservative in high school too until I moved out of mom and dads and realized that our society has created nothing worth conserving for anyone under the age of 50. Nothing will make you radical like realizing you will likely never be able afford a home and children.
In the 2022 Monitoring the Future survey, the largest group of senior boys, more than two-fifths, claimed no politics at all, answering the liberal-conservative question with “none of the above” or “I don’t know.” Nearly one-fifth identified as moderate. Only 36 percent selected liberal or conservative as an ideology, and only there did the trend emerge.
I'm not as sold on "trending conservative" as I am "undecided on political ideology" +/-60% didn't say liberal or conservative.
When I was in high school I was convinced I was conservative. It actually was the reason for a relationship ending at the time. But after I graduated I realized how left leaning I actually was. No one knows who the hell they are in high school.
I partially blame the Left for not addressing mental health issues for our younger boys and men and not doing a better job at expressing what healthy, happy masculinity actually looks like. So the likes of Andrew Taint, Joe Rogan, Matt Walsh and the likes basically swooped in and took that over.
I've got a 15 year old nephew who's starting his Sophomore year in like a week. I've already heard him say some rather disturbing extremist right-wing shit, and sadly his father fucking sucks at being a father so correcting him hasn't been easy for me (I'm the aunt, his mother is not currently in the picture). And he says this shit with his little sister around too.
It's not the fault of the left that the right creates propaganda.
Propaganda is really effective on everyone and they've had the help of algorithms that boost anger inducing material which leads one from "self help" alpha jerk all the way to "the left are demons that want to kill babies."
It's not the fault of anyone other than the propagandists. :/
My first election out of high school I voted for a right wing candidate because that's what my Dad voted for, but also because I was entrenched in Christian ideaology and patriarchal propoganda.
After that I started paying a bit more attention to politics and slowly moved to the left with a few leaps along the way. Nowadays I find the Labor party of Aus to be about as conservative as I can stand. I can barely hide my disgust with anything to the right of them.
Real life experience can be far more radicalising than any immature ideas you inherent in high school.
Edit: My major leaps were: Having an employer illegally underpay me, seeing my friends lose 'stable' jobs in 2008, having a close friend come out as gay, leaving the church, volunteering with unhoused people, living in the UK, living in a rental controlled by a landlord with over 100 properties, and doing disaster relief work.
Yeah living through the fifth once-in-a-generation crisis in this generation is powerful left-wing propaganda.
Right but 62% are neither which is more important because both parties are ass and the kids know it.
Yeah ok, but highschool boys are fucking dumb as shit too. It's probably the same bunch of idiots that followed Andrew Taint
I mean that's the problem, isn't it? What is it about these assholes like Tate that appeals to young men?
The same thing fascism seemingly has to offer: easy solutions to complex problems.
I'm not saying (especially white) young men are treated unfair but as one myself it's easy to come to the conclusion as you do feel a rift between fulfilling conservative societal norms you grew up with and learned from your elders for which isn't really a space left anymore except of conservative circles so you do kinda feel like being privileged is a burden because you think you have to fulfill more expectations than other groups and I think there's a lack of addressing this in public discourse without simply demonizing young males for trying to find their identity in a way that also includes a healthy relationship with one's own masculinity. If you discuss this I feel like you're quickly drifting into incel and alpha bullshit territory because they're the only ones addressing those problems but of course they don't offer actual solutions because that's not really part of their business model.
Power fantasies.
I've been a pubescent young man once and we have all been idiots laughing at stupid shit, trying to be edgy. I guess that number will change once they'll get more mature.
College (if they go), is when these boys pulled out of their comfort zone and thrown into a huge mixer with a huge variety of new people and ideas. I imagine there's a reason they only see this trend in "high school boys".
Colleges are also seeing less men succeed in the environment. Men are struggling in the classroom and with mental health.
I think we all agree young people are getting a shitty deal with today's society. It's hard to think positively for them.
I understand that self identification is more convenient than a list of policy questions, but I kind of wonder how many of them count as conservative by the standards of twenty years ago, or even by the standards of people twenty years older than themselves
Do these conservative teenagers believe that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry? That a war against Islam is a good idea? That wives should submit to their husbands?
I had a young woman, maybe 17 last semester, turn in a paper --it was a 12 page research/argumentative paper about why gender complementarianism (ie woman and men have different, distinct roles with men at the top). She's a good student, a good writer, but literally she's heard this set of morals from the pulpit her whole life... So like... Yeah. I read another young man's paper where his takeaway from 12 Years a Slave was "wow, not all slave owners were abusive monsters--some were pretty kind and treated their slaves like family." The kids are as alright as the rest of us are.
The trend shows identification to either label is falling. Really reads as a way to spin what is likely a move even more left by many high schoolers as a move right by pretending no other axis exist than conservative/liberal. Only 35% said either label. The overwhelming majority didnt pick a label.
That's not surprising since high school boys think they have it all figured out and think they're special. Plus they still believe the lies they've been taught in school. I was conservative around that age. When you think that the world is fair, the government benevolent, and failure a result of laziness, then conservative makes a lot of sense. When you grow up and get some real world experience, you learn just how high the chips are stacked against average people. You learn some empathy.
It's absurd, yes, but nothing new. Many of the kids at my own school are leaning to the far right, without ever stopping and wondering if it even profits them. All they see are a couple of Instagram reels and hear "global leader" and "country's decade" and decide they'll follow the government blindly even if the most harm will be done to them. Worshipping your political idols is a way of life, and anyone who doesn't see the very same line as yours is an anti-nationalist. You might have guessed by now, alas, I speak of India.
Theory: Entertainment propaganda - like Fox News and (for the non-elderly) performative alt-right influencers/male-rights-douchebags - succeeds for the same reasons as addictive drugs. They introduce a quick dopamine rush of easy answers, validation, and a feeling of euphoric purpose.