Idk I see the people on here acting like the left has no room for straight white cis men, and it frustrates me because I know that a lot of them feel abandoned and rejected, but also we canāt just prioritize them like the right does because weāre asking them to join the rest of us as equals.
This particularly pisses me off, personally. As a white South African that grew up learning about how fucking terrible white people were (and sometimes still are) throughout school, and who didnāt turn into a racist nazi misogynist because of it, these people are full of shit. And weak. And probably not actually good people to begin with if other races and genders being represented or focused on once in a while is such an awful, alienating thing that makes them feel abandoned and rejected.
Iām not sure how to really feel about spoilt brat, first world kiddies that have had everything handed to them and who get 90% of representation in media turning into right wing assholes because video games arenāt giving them as much wanking material anymore. Or because gasp politicians tried to focus on actual marginalized and oppressed groups without giving white men participation trophies too. Poor babies, how awful for them.
To me itās selfishness. Theyāre welcome in the left wing. But itās not a club where we wear stupid red hats, ignore science and objective reality and tell each other how superior we are to everyone else. They had the opportunity to do something right for their mothers and their sisters and their daughters but they didnāt because that would mean doing something good for someone else instead of just whining about how hard life is because Lara Croftās boobs arenāt big enough. So Iām not sure if they even really want to be left wing.
And yeah I canāt imagine how pissed off people would get if women started saying ānot enough menā about good behavior
Yup. And this is why I struggle to see a solution. Because we somehow have to simultaneously guide them or whatever because theyāre so sad and fatherless and lost, while also not ever actually mentioning what theyāre doing wrong in the first place or else youāre a misandrist feminazi. Weāre supposed to tackle the āloneliness epidemicā, but tell them that theyāre lonely because they listen to Andrew Tate and treat women like shit and once again, youāre a misandrist feminazi. Because they donāt want to actually fix their problems, they just want everyone to tell them there is no problem.
I donāt know. I think my post maybe got more angry and hopeless as it went on because I got a notification of someone calling me a sexist while I was in the middle of typing this. Lol. I wish I knew the solution but feel like Iām trying to reason with toddlers.
Yeah my opinions on the loneliness epidemic begin with a question I rarely see from them: āwhy isnāt there one for women.ā Iām sure the answers will be varied from āwomen have a ton of support alreadyā (somewhat yes, but largely from other women), to incel ramblings, to saying women are dating each other instead. And it seems like so much of when I see that loneliness epidemic talk itās referring to wanting romantic partners, and to a certain degree itās fair, but also what is going on thatās causing one gender of straight people to increasingly choose to be single rather than partnered while the other doesnāt feel that way? And also is romance the solution to their loneliness or would they be better served with more friendships and social hobbies?
And beyond that question, what do they think is the cause and the solution? Because I think in a lot of ways theyād be better served fighting for workers rights to have more time with friends, hobbies, and family than anything the right offers.
Like I donāt disagree with you about the men who go right wing over all this, but i also do think we need to remember that there was a dedicated propaganda campaign aimed at disaffected and alienated young men to push them to the right and to ensure that they remain disaffected, alienated, and angry at the wrong people. Thatās gamergate and the alt right pipeline and the manosphere and all the other bullshit this has morphed into. And so here I am, threatened by the rubes in this con. Am I angry? Obviously. But my responding in anger will be used to further radicalize them. Itās a trick the alt right picked up from the Jehovas witnesses and westboro baptists.
So here we are, anger will be used to further my oppression, hand holding will just tire me out. But I think thereās a third option here: to be the side of solutions. When they bring up circumcision as an example of menās oppression, we bring up that the left sometimes protests against it and that those protests could use their voices. When they talk about men working long hours to support their families we talk about workers rights, fighting for better wages and hours, and fairer distribution of parental labor so that dads get to have more time dadding. When men talk about sexual and domestic violence we say that no matter who is the victim these things are wrong and that we should have more men organizing to combat stigma against these things. Etc.
But once we do that we then stop. Make the moral statement of willingness to support them actually working to solve their problems, then donāt let them turn this into a fight about how they want women to hand them this on a platter or who has it worse. The powerful want us at each otherās throats. They want young men thinking of the left as just as pointlessly angry as the right, because the alternative is to accept that the left might have a world thatās better for everyone in mind. At least thatās the solution I think may be best.
That and encouraging those who can speak to them and reason in a way that they might be willing to listen to. The far right has been focusing on defining the narrative and directing propaganda for a while. And the fact is weāll always have reactionaries and bigots. Our goal is not to save their souls, only they can, but we might be able to hinder the effectiveness of their propaganda machine.
Or maybe Iām really wrong, and just went on a long ramble for no good reason and am just being too generous with people who arent acting in good faith, I do that sometimes. But I will say this, nobody should be sleeping with right wingers. Theyāre worse than nothing.
Nah, I think you might be on to something with the third option and itās something to keep in mind. In fact I might even need to copy and paste your comment to remind myself about it because I think sometimes my anger gets the better of me in these situations.
But it can be so fucking hard to keep the anger at the bay. Just last night, discussing the fact that a poll in Germany showed that 26% of young men support the nu nazi party versus 11% of women, I had someone say to me āoh but women believe in horoscopes, so theyāre just as bad.ā How do you not flip your shit when coming across that kind of ālogicā?
And this brings me to another thing, seeing as this place is supposed to be all left wing and shit. There are a lot of supposed left wing people that will speak in the exact same way and have all the exact same points as right wing people when it comes to this discussion about men falling for right wing grifters at over twice the rate as women (as revealed by those Germany stats and many many other stats). A lot of supposed left wing people that will clutch their pearls and cry āsexist!ā at the slightest suggestion that 26% of men versus 11% of women means that thereās a problem that needs to be addressed.
So it actually feels a little bit like being stuck between a rock and hard place. Itās not in my nature to just hold my tongue when I can see thereās something wrong but I kinda wish it was because trying to have a constructive conversation about this anywhere other than in specific Reddit subs where youāre preaching to the choir feels like banging your head against the wall.
So unfortunately, it seems to me that itās not just right wing men that need toddler reasoning in order to convince them but left wing men too. Remember thereās a reason that twoxchromosomes and any other large womenās spaces on Reddit have never been able to take off here on Lemmy. Not even WitchesvsPatriarchy survived this place. And that reason is downvote brigading. The same reason why LGBTQ+ communities need an instance with downvotes disabled. This is why I said earlier that I think women in leadership are the future. At least as far as progressive politics go. Because even progressive men seem to be further behind than women.
I hope you donāt mind if I ask your advice about something. I was going to post this in the non-binary community but it feels safer to do this here. I identify as non-binary / genderqueer but am amab. But Iāve been thinking of doing some shape shifting in these conversations and referring to myself as a man. I feel like it would be a lot more effective to have a āmanā saying these things rather than keeping it neutral and vague like I have been. Although this idea makes me feel like a liar too. What do you think?
I understand the anger and unfortunately the way I and many other women have been taught to control it is by being taught to prioritize others above ourselves. But if you donāt control your emotions theyāll control you, and your emotions will usually make less wise decisions than your mind. Thereās a time and a place to let it out. Sometimes I need to blast some riot grrl and scream it out, but I know what undirected anger gets me, more pain.
In your scenario you mentioned there was an opportunity to come off as the reasonable person or as the unreasonable person. Arguing with idiots and bigots should always be a performance. This isnāt the west wing, nobody will clap, all that anyone will take away is who thought what and how they felt about each arguer. Honestly it was wojack memes that made that sink in to me. Iād recommend watching the alt right playbook series to better understand right wing political rhetoric. The guy who created it is great and insightful. One of the big takeaways is that they arenāt bothering with being accurate, consistent, etc, but you can learn to tilt them.
And yeah I really miss girl reddit. Iād often find some conflicts with twox as it and I had differences in certain opinions, but yeah. Like the only reason I really stuck with lemmy is that I saw reddit getting worse, while also being extremely disrespected by Hoffman as a moderator who had given quite a bit of my mental health in the process of modding. And itās not just online left wing spaces where I find myself frustrated at times. I volunteer with irl left wing shit and have had to learn to walk away.
And like I totally get your struggle to hold your tongue, but I think itās worth learning discernment. The right wants to mentally put all feminists in the category of ācringe compilation video participantsā.
And I canāt tell you what to do there. Iām a very binary trans woman who transitioned quite a while ago. You may find benefit in discussing it with other non binary people.
You may find benefit in discussing it with other non binary people.
Iāve been thinking about it and honestly it would make me feel too much like a liar. And I donāt think I would be able to bring myself to do it, even if I decided right now that itās what Iām going to do. I actually feel kinda shitty even for just asking that question, it feels wrong for multiple reasons. So Iām sorry for laying that question on you.
Youāve given me a lot to rethink here though. I definitely need to do a bit of homework regarding alt right tactics, in order to know the enemy better. Iām bad at homework and following directions and tend to just wing it but this is important and if Iām going to be involving myself in these conflicts, Iād better be armed appropriately.
Thank you very much for this awesome conversation. Iāve honestly been looking forward to your replies because you seem to get exactly what Iām talking about and your solutions make 100% sense to me. I hope to see you around here often, people like you make me feel a little less like running away from this place. Hope you have a great morning / day / night / whatever the time is where you are.
Glad to help. And I definitely see a lot of who I once was in your replies and so Iāve been giving myself time and mulling over things before replying because it does matter.
I think one of the biggest things I can say here is that we are always going to argue from two rhetorical disadvantages: 1) and this is honestly probably the smaller of the two, but people are generally more willing to listen to people similar to themselves unless theyāve been trained to take other groups as authoritative, and 2) we believe in things, which unfortunately is a huge disadvantage as we are bound to our beliefs, whereas they can adapt their position to whatever they think is advantageous at the moment and claim that you just misunderstood or theyāre trolling.
Theyāre trying to tilt you and theyāre better at it. But being dismissed tilts them.
This particularly pisses me off, personally. As a white South African that grew up learning about how fucking terrible white people were (and sometimes still are) throughout school, and who didnāt turn into a racist nazi misogynist because of it, these people are full of shit. And weak. And probably not actually good people to begin with if other races and genders being represented or focused on once in a while is such an awful, alienating thing that makes them feel abandoned and rejected.
Iām not sure how to really feel about spoilt brat, first world kiddies that have had everything handed to them and who get 90% of representation in media turning into right wing assholes because video games arenāt giving them as much wanking material anymore. Or because gasp politicians tried to focus on actual marginalized and oppressed groups without giving white men participation trophies too. Poor babies, how awful for them.
To me itās selfishness. Theyāre welcome in the left wing. But itās not a club where we wear stupid red hats, ignore science and objective reality and tell each other how superior we are to everyone else. They had the opportunity to do something right for their mothers and their sisters and their daughters but they didnāt because that would mean doing something good for someone else instead of just whining about how hard life is because Lara Croftās boobs arenāt big enough. So Iām not sure if they even really want to be left wing.
Yup. And this is why I struggle to see a solution. Because we somehow have to simultaneously guide them or whatever because theyāre so sad and fatherless and lost, while also not ever actually mentioning what theyāre doing wrong in the first place or else youāre a misandrist feminazi. Weāre supposed to tackle the āloneliness epidemicā, but tell them that theyāre lonely because they listen to Andrew Tate and treat women like shit and once again, youāre a misandrist feminazi. Because they donāt want to actually fix their problems, they just want everyone to tell them there is no problem.
I donāt know. I think my post maybe got more angry and hopeless as it went on because I got a notification of someone calling me a sexist while I was in the middle of typing this. Lol. I wish I knew the solution but feel like Iām trying to reason with toddlers.
Yeah my opinions on the loneliness epidemic begin with a question I rarely see from them: āwhy isnāt there one for women.ā Iām sure the answers will be varied from āwomen have a ton of support alreadyā (somewhat yes, but largely from other women), to incel ramblings, to saying women are dating each other instead. And it seems like so much of when I see that loneliness epidemic talk itās referring to wanting romantic partners, and to a certain degree itās fair, but also what is going on thatās causing one gender of straight people to increasingly choose to be single rather than partnered while the other doesnāt feel that way? And also is romance the solution to their loneliness or would they be better served with more friendships and social hobbies?
And beyond that question, what do they think is the cause and the solution? Because I think in a lot of ways theyād be better served fighting for workers rights to have more time with friends, hobbies, and family than anything the right offers.
Like I donāt disagree with you about the men who go right wing over all this, but i also do think we need to remember that there was a dedicated propaganda campaign aimed at disaffected and alienated young men to push them to the right and to ensure that they remain disaffected, alienated, and angry at the wrong people. Thatās gamergate and the alt right pipeline and the manosphere and all the other bullshit this has morphed into. And so here I am, threatened by the rubes in this con. Am I angry? Obviously. But my responding in anger will be used to further radicalize them. Itās a trick the alt right picked up from the Jehovas witnesses and westboro baptists.
So here we are, anger will be used to further my oppression, hand holding will just tire me out. But I think thereās a third option here: to be the side of solutions. When they bring up circumcision as an example of menās oppression, we bring up that the left sometimes protests against it and that those protests could use their voices. When they talk about men working long hours to support their families we talk about workers rights, fighting for better wages and hours, and fairer distribution of parental labor so that dads get to have more time dadding. When men talk about sexual and domestic violence we say that no matter who is the victim these things are wrong and that we should have more men organizing to combat stigma against these things. Etc.
But once we do that we then stop. Make the moral statement of willingness to support them actually working to solve their problems, then donāt let them turn this into a fight about how they want women to hand them this on a platter or who has it worse. The powerful want us at each otherās throats. They want young men thinking of the left as just as pointlessly angry as the right, because the alternative is to accept that the left might have a world thatās better for everyone in mind. At least thatās the solution I think may be best.
That and encouraging those who can speak to them and reason in a way that they might be willing to listen to. The far right has been focusing on defining the narrative and directing propaganda for a while. And the fact is weāll always have reactionaries and bigots. Our goal is not to save their souls, only they can, but we might be able to hinder the effectiveness of their propaganda machine.
Or maybe Iām really wrong, and just went on a long ramble for no good reason and am just being too generous with people who arent acting in good faith, I do that sometimes. But I will say this, nobody should be sleeping with right wingers. Theyāre worse than nothing.
Nah, I think you might be on to something with the third option and itās something to keep in mind. In fact I might even need to copy and paste your comment to remind myself about it because I think sometimes my anger gets the better of me in these situations.
But it can be so fucking hard to keep the anger at the bay. Just last night, discussing the fact that a poll in Germany showed that 26% of young men support the nu nazi party versus 11% of women, I had someone say to me āoh but women believe in horoscopes, so theyāre just as bad.ā How do you not flip your shit when coming across that kind of ālogicā?
And this brings me to another thing, seeing as this place is supposed to be all left wing and shit. There are a lot of supposed left wing people that will speak in the exact same way and have all the exact same points as right wing people when it comes to this discussion about men falling for right wing grifters at over twice the rate as women (as revealed by those Germany stats and many many other stats). A lot of supposed left wing people that will clutch their pearls and cry āsexist!ā at the slightest suggestion that 26% of men versus 11% of women means that thereās a problem that needs to be addressed.
So it actually feels a little bit like being stuck between a rock and hard place. Itās not in my nature to just hold my tongue when I can see thereās something wrong but I kinda wish it was because trying to have a constructive conversation about this anywhere other than in specific Reddit subs where youāre preaching to the choir feels like banging your head against the wall.
So unfortunately, it seems to me that itās not just right wing men that need toddler reasoning in order to convince them but left wing men too. Remember thereās a reason that twoxchromosomes and any other large womenās spaces on Reddit have never been able to take off here on Lemmy. Not even WitchesvsPatriarchy survived this place. And that reason is downvote brigading. The same reason why LGBTQ+ communities need an instance with downvotes disabled. This is why I said earlier that I think women in leadership are the future. At least as far as progressive politics go. Because even progressive men seem to be further behind than women.
I hope you donāt mind if I ask your advice about something. I was going to post this in the non-binary community but it feels safer to do this here. I identify as non-binary / genderqueer but am amab. But Iāve been thinking of doing some shape shifting in these conversations and referring to myself as a man. I feel like it would be a lot more effective to have a āmanā saying these things rather than keeping it neutral and vague like I have been. Although this idea makes me feel like a liar too. What do you think?
I understand the anger and unfortunately the way I and many other women have been taught to control it is by being taught to prioritize others above ourselves. But if you donāt control your emotions theyāll control you, and your emotions will usually make less wise decisions than your mind. Thereās a time and a place to let it out. Sometimes I need to blast some riot grrl and scream it out, but I know what undirected anger gets me, more pain.
In your scenario you mentioned there was an opportunity to come off as the reasonable person or as the unreasonable person. Arguing with idiots and bigots should always be a performance. This isnāt the west wing, nobody will clap, all that anyone will take away is who thought what and how they felt about each arguer. Honestly it was wojack memes that made that sink in to me. Iād recommend watching the alt right playbook series to better understand right wing political rhetoric. The guy who created it is great and insightful. One of the big takeaways is that they arenāt bothering with being accurate, consistent, etc, but you can learn to tilt them.
And yeah I really miss girl reddit. Iād often find some conflicts with twox as it and I had differences in certain opinions, but yeah. Like the only reason I really stuck with lemmy is that I saw reddit getting worse, while also being extremely disrespected by Hoffman as a moderator who had given quite a bit of my mental health in the process of modding. And itās not just online left wing spaces where I find myself frustrated at times. I volunteer with irl left wing shit and have had to learn to walk away.
And like I totally get your struggle to hold your tongue, but I think itās worth learning discernment. The right wants to mentally put all feminists in the category of ācringe compilation video participantsā.
And I canāt tell you what to do there. Iām a very binary trans woman who transitioned quite a while ago. You may find benefit in discussing it with other non binary people.
Iāve been thinking about it and honestly it would make me feel too much like a liar. And I donāt think I would be able to bring myself to do it, even if I decided right now that itās what Iām going to do. I actually feel kinda shitty even for just asking that question, it feels wrong for multiple reasons. So Iām sorry for laying that question on you.
Youāve given me a lot to rethink here though. I definitely need to do a bit of homework regarding alt right tactics, in order to know the enemy better. Iām bad at homework and following directions and tend to just wing it but this is important and if Iām going to be involving myself in these conflicts, Iād better be armed appropriately.
Thank you very much for this awesome conversation. Iāve honestly been looking forward to your replies because you seem to get exactly what Iām talking about and your solutions make 100% sense to me. I hope to see you around here often, people like you make me feel a little less like running away from this place. Hope you have a great morning / day / night / whatever the time is where you are.
Glad to help. And I definitely see a lot of who I once was in your replies and so Iāve been giving myself time and mulling over things before replying because it does matter.
I think one of the biggest things I can say here is that we are always going to argue from two rhetorical disadvantages: 1) and this is honestly probably the smaller of the two, but people are generally more willing to listen to people similar to themselves unless theyāve been trained to take other groups as authoritative, and 2) we believe in things, which unfortunately is a huge disadvantage as we are bound to our beliefs, whereas they can adapt their position to whatever they think is advantageous at the moment and claim that you just misunderstood or theyāre trolling.
Theyāre trying to tilt you and theyāre better at it. But being dismissed tilts them.