The gender wars continue 🥹
This is not my personal opinion, I know Gen Z men who voted for Harris. But the voter demographics really speak for themselves, and maybe now people will look at the radicalization of young men as a serious (but solvable) issue.
I’m a gen z male, raised in a far right Republican household. I’m a social democrat. I am progressive.
Good on you. No group is a monolith
Unironically, congrats on breaking free of the brainwashing. I grew up in an insanely red rural area and a very conservative religious family, unlearning all that shit has been a decades long process (and still continues).
Same man. It was wild when middle school rolled around and I finally gained awareness of the world beyond myself and learned what the Republicans actually were and wanted. A friend who knew more about politics than me explained some stuff, and suddenly I had to question why my family was against progressive beliefs.
Same. I live on a ranch in a deeply red area. Voted Kamala. I'm also happy to say my conservative parents are ex-republicans.
Same here. I've cut my entire family out of my life over this shit.
Mostly the same, i was raised to be a worthless red neck. I'm not. The issue with using our experiences is that we are people, we have an inner world and are capable of free thought. Trump's followers aren't.
I'm also a Gen Z male, raised in an evangelical household at a Christian school that supported Christian nationalism, and was supposed to be a strong conservative Christian but ended up turning into an atheist socialist instead. It's kind of funny to read that Gen Z is going radical right when for me it was the opposite.
Can you please tell your entire generation to get it together worldwide? That'd be great, thanks.
Leaving this here just in case: /s
According to the voter demographics, you’re a minority there.
There is a lot to be said here. I'll use my own experience as an example.
I'm a millennial male who had a terrible time as a young adult through my mid 30s. I grew up in a fairly religious/conservative area of the US, and I didn't have the ability to even start questioning that before my college years because literally everyone I knew was either a vocal supporter of or tacitly accepted that cultural status quo. Mental health issues were either not discussed or not recognized in any serious fashion. It wasn't until my late 20s that I finally understood that I had severe depression and anxiety and sought help, despite suffering from it since my early teenage years.
Socially, I never felt like I was cool enough or good enough. I didn't understand women, and the endless series of rejections and confusing encounters only served to erode my low self confidence further. I had no idea what a healthy relationship looked like because my parents were just going through the motions at that point, and the relationships I saw in TV shows and movies were incredibly shallow. The few people I considered friends did not support me in any positive way. I eventually kicked them to the curb, preferring solitude to being the butt of their jokes.
I was a prime target for recruitment for the alt-right: depressed, alone, disaffected, and ready to lash out. The only thing that kept me from going in that direction was a keen sense that the rhetoric was bullshit and its leaders only cared to take advantage of the rank-and-file to accumulate money and power. Many people I knew were not so perceptive and became victims of that movement.
My only saving grace was that I had a decent job with healthcare benefits, which allowed me to get the therapy I needed to overcome these challenges. Again, most people I knew did not have such resources. Nearly a decade later, I am now a family man with a wife and child. I am far happier than I have been at any other point in my life. Despite that, there is still plenty I don't understand. I don't have a good grasp of what positive masculinity looks like. I cannot point to anyone who has served as a good, male role-model in my life. I still don't have any close male friends with whom I can share my feelings and challenges.
However, I do understand how easily young men can be swayed to far-right crusades. Social media warped my view of reality, and it's far worse now than it was 10-15 years ago. Moreover, there is no alternative to far-right echo chambers for young men to commiserate and get help. Those spaces simply do not exist on the left. If you dare to complain or vent, you will immediately be told your problems don't matter and called a misogynist. I can readily call multiple conversations I had with liberals and feminists who rejected my problems, even being told that I was "living life on easy mode" because I was a man.
For all the women who are reading this, I get it. As a man, I don't have to worry about the government meddling in my bodily autonomy. For the most part, I don't have to worry about walking alone at night or being accosted or raped. I don't have to worry about being taking seriously at my job or being passed over for promotions because of my gender. However, none of that negates the challenges that young men are facing. Their gender does not save them from broken homes, abuse, mental health issues, a bad job market, degrading standards of living, student debt, double-standards, confusing and contradictory narratives surrounding dating and relationships, etc. Yes, privileged men with no right to complain do exist, but they are an extreme minority. The vast majority of young men are in a bad place, and the only people reaching out to help have ulterior motives. If you want things to change, try having some empathy. Maybe you will get empathy for your problems in return.
This. Men are more often victims of violent crime, homelessness, mental illness, suicides, do worse in school, incarceration, die in wars, work dangerous jobs. Classic male institutions, structures, and spaces don’t exist anymore like they used to.
Add to that that men showing emotions is still seen as weakness.
These issues aren’t addressed or even mentioned.
Men are more often victims of violent crime, homelessness, mental illness, suicides, do worse in school, incarceration, die in wars, work dangerous jobs.
The victims of other men. That's the joke of it all. And the folks screaming loudest about being victimized are inevitably the ones quickest and most eager to take their own pound of flesh at the first opportunity.
Add to that that men showing emotions is still seen as weakness.
Primarily among other men. This isn't a gendered issue nearly so much as it is a socio-economic hierarchy. The "excess males" problem is what's driving the violence, the poverty, and the declining health. Young men are pressed into the social hierarchy by their elders, often from an extremely young age, through physical, emotional, and sexual violence. They climb the social ladder by proving their tolerance for abuse by those above, while exhibiting a sufficient capacity for sadism on those below. Anyone who cannot endure the abuse and find their own cohort to abuse in turn becomes the social excrement that the system exudes.
This is literally "The Patriarchy" that feminists rant about and seek to abolish. But efforts to abolish the system invoke its most violent tendencies. The result is a youth population that is selected for the most sniveling and cruel to lead it into the next generation.
As a Gen Z man who statistically should have fallen down the incel and alt-right pipeline but didn't, this echos exactly what I see in my generation. We don't have positive examples of Masculinity, and the left just yells at us that we're trash, when we struggle with things and most don't have many (or any) good friends to lean on. So of course they go to the alt right.
and the left just yells at us that we’re trash
I'm a millenial and I never got this. There must be a split somewhere when people fell into different echo chambers or algorhythms. Like 7 years go I used to frequent reddit subs like MGTOW and pussypassdenied, looking for something to connect to because of clinical single-ness. These were the only spaces I would find comments like that. On my other, left wing, socialist Internet spaces this wasn't present. That is why those pro-men/anti-women subs never connected to me. The work on yourself, improve yourself and keep reading was great, but the insane amount of hatred and religion pushing was crazy.
Yet it feels like men in my situation these days don't have alternatives. It's sad when Andrew Tate is considered masculine. Terry Crews or Keanu Reeves are much better. Sure they're not podcasters, but they give off a much better vibe.
It's a shame that the space these men find themselves is pushing against freedom of expression for others.
There is only really Noel Deyzel from social media as a positive role model
Thanks for relating all that - lots of information but worth the read. You largely summed up my own early existence in the first few paragraphs. My therapy came in the form of getting involved in theatre, which exposed me to all kinds of people and ideas, revamped my attitudes and saved me from embracing radical ideas that are more or less based on rejecting a society that rejects you. I think that same cynicism is common in people from many different backgrounds, who share the same alienation for all kinds of reasons.
I'll even add one - throughout my software career doing contract jobs, finding a new gig always took me 2-3 weeks and was very routine. When I turned 50 the 2-3 weeks abruptly and permanently became 2-3 months, and took a lot more effort. Apparently in that community I was suddenly too old. Only one recruiter let slip that age was the reason a potential client rejected me, but the sudden difference at 50 was stark. So I don't know what you do for a living but you might be facing that yourself when it's your time.
Anyway I totally agree about empathy. I don't know what it is but people seem to be constantly on guard nowadays. Their go-to assumption is to look for evil and refuse to accept simple mistakes. That and permanently crucifying anybody who does anything morally unacceptable, or ever did in their past. If somebody Likes the wrong tweet it's unforgivable and irredeemable. I don't recall another time when so many people were so militant about this attitude. Forgiveness used to mean compassion, now it means you're complicit, enabling, a shill, "just as bad," etc. I think we need to think of the glass houses analogy and stop pretending to be morally impeccable.
there is no alternative to far-right echo chambers for young men to commiserate and get help
I feel like there's an adjacent issue where any space like that without a clear political lean quickly gets pushed rightwards by shitters
ugh I remember my last straw on Facebook was my high school alumni group becoming a shit-storm of sea-lioning and a couple folks blocking people and also spamming nostalgia-posts to drown out and push down more serious discussion. A high school famous for it’s science-focus but alas, the older (but not much older) folks were openly commenting about that black-people-crime-percentage “statistic” and gay people.
That was a very thoughtfully written response. I can relate to a lot of your story and agree with your conclusions. There needs to be more outlets for men as an alternative to right wing communities. I hope you meet more liberals and feminists that are open-minded to men's hardships. I have to believe there are more reasonable people out there on the left than not.
I have to believe there are more reasonable people out there on the left than not
There are, but online is where the psychopathic man haters feel free to let their colors fly. At union conventions and community meets, I only ever hear tame comments from the very obvious radfems.
half joke first. nobody's trying to meddle in our bodily autonomy, yet.
edit: i havent looked too close at it but the mensliberation space on lemmy.ca may interest you? cancermancer down bellow has a rec for r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates that looks to have another good perspective in the topic. so im sticking it right here with the other.
I'll try to approach the topic from my perspective as well. my gender has never really be part of my internal view of myself. but it is an inescapable part of how other people will see me, and the rules are always whatever the other person wants. so maybe not the poster child for speaking on masculinity. i'm literally the default charater generator in every videogame, but it's just a hallucinating meat suit.
talking about gender concepts and social roles was a norm growing up because i did that growing up in the weird outside groups the christian kids chased. any reference to maculinity was done at me as an attack, even when i was doing it according to the rules. i agree, there are few places for young men to explore their way out of those strict views. especially in the early years. i've often seen them jump straight into spaces meant to be safe for people who've had not great experiances with the topic, especially women. and press other people to do all the work, explain things to them and navigate their often* harsh language. and i get it. when you've only ever been allowed to express 3 levels of the same emotion, it's gonna be rough sorting that out.
it's going to be on people who have worked their way through that mind set to make those places for kids to start the process. most importantly, people who share their experiance and perspective. yes folls like me can and really need to come in there and talk openly. but my own experiance is never going to line up in a way that will connect with those kids. even when i look exactly like our experiance should line up.
...if theres more spelling mistakes then there are more spelling mistakes. fuck it thats too much text for a phone
mensliberation space on lemmy.ca
I appreciate your otherwise quality comment but I have to say that I don't intend to use a space that only views men's issues through a feminist lens.
On Reddit, LeftWingMaleAdvocates is a solid lefty men's space.
I have to imagine if the democrats had not largely ignored these problems they would've won by a landslide
If you want things to change, try having some empathy. Maybe you will get empathy for your problems in return.
Funny a man has said this twice this week. Women have higher EQ than men in general - how do you think they developed this?
Extending empathy to men is not what helps men feel empathy, though. That’s not how empathy is developed. If it was, movie actors and kings etc who have empathy extended to them constantly, would be the most empathetic people on the planet. Yet they are the least empathetic.
The thing that gets men to feel empathy, is the man feeling empathy. It’s like a mental weight - you have to choose to lift it. I can’t make you do that by rolemodeling. You have to actually take time and do the work. Actually sit down and think and perspective take without projecting or objectifying. Just radical acceptance. You have to do that work. Your comment asking women to once again bear your emotional burden of empathy is silly. We can't. It's a skill you gotta develop. And the sooner you do it instead of thinking it's women's work (which is why you just asked us women to be empathetic - our assumed role), the sooner the world is less shit.
And only then can you be truly caring, empathetic, or a feminist - by examining your own actions as a man. It’s great to allow men to have a sense of community outside of toxic masculinity, but this isn’t how men develop empathy or Feminism and that’s weird to phrase it like that,as if it’s valid for men to punish women by removing rights, voting for Trump, removing empathy, and not being prosocial. In fact, that’s quite controlling and abusive.
I once saw a gif on Reddit of a little girl being forcibly kissed by a little boy (both about 6), and she shoved him off and he looked sad. The entire thousands of comments focused on the little boy's first rejection. No one even noticed it was the little girl’s first sexual assault. She even wiped the kiss off, reminiscent of victims cleaning themselves after assaults.
When I pointed this out, people were angry. How dare I suggest that little boy is a monster. But I wasn’t. I was entirely focused on the little girl’s experience and I wasn’t advocating for anything relating to the boy. In fact, I think an appropriate “punishment” would be to explain to him to not touch people without asking etc. And that’s it. I just wanted to see her experience and make sure she was okay. Her situation is more important and critical in this moment than the little boy's. But these men heard 'sexual assault,' and instead of empathizing with the victim, they empathized with the assaulter, so much so they started defending him from a nonexistent attack. Do you not see the clear problem here? Do you see the issue?
But men were so unable to extend empathy to a girl, to a woman, that they literally couldn’t absorb this information or perspective take as her. It was impossible for them to imagine what she felt like. This was like 3 years ago. It was astonishing. No, men do NOT empathize with women. Men empathize with themselves as an idealized version of who they would be as a woman - that’s projection by definition and is entirely how they feel entitled to control women and objectify them.
Theredpill is banned on reddit but they leave redpillwomen online. Weird reddit...
So much fucking this
It seems counter intuitive but I don’t think Gen Z is as good with technology as most people assume they are.
I think they just believe everything they see on YouTube and TikTok. Those algorithms just feed people what they want to see and don’t challenge anyone.
Who thinks they're good with technology? They've never had technology that requires any more knowledge than how to swipe. They're shit with technology.
Yep. Older people (Millennial, Gen X) grew up with PCs that could be heavily modified, run any program, even repurposed to run Linux if you were brave. Later generations who grew up with phones only get to use the apps that Apple / Google approve of. There's no hacking the system, so you get whatever the algorithm says you get.
Older people grew up on BBSes and later "Bulletin Boards", which were mostly the same thing just with prettier graphics, also with email, and sometimes instant messengers. Communities were smaller, and there was no mediator. Younger ones are stuck in apps that are designed around engagement, with a "celebrity" vs "fan" content model where it's all geared around followers and likes. It's all parasocial relationships from the "fan" side, and trying to keep up with whatever the algorithm wants from the creator side.
It really fucking sucks that platforms that used to be designed to allow 2-way communication between equals have flopped so hard trying to follow the exact model you just outlined. For all its faults, Facebook used to be a really great place to keep in contact with long distance friends and family. Now it won't even show you anything anyone in your friends list posts, and the options for interacting are completely neutered on their mobile site. It went from being a site I enjoyed, to a site I despise. And there aren't any alternatives. The era of a platform for friends and family is over.
Xennial here, you speak pure facts.
Sure are some glass-tappin motherfuckers
This made me actually laugh out loud. I’m calling gen z that from now on
My son is in his early 30s and hardly a day goes by that I don't have to help him with a software issue.
I don't know if he'll even be able to keep the media server running when I die. Probably won't be for about 20 years so we'll see.
I’m in my mid 30s and I know a lot of people my age who are like that too. They just aren’t curious about how things function. That’s okay, though. They have other talents that I don’t have.
I was actually wondering how the gender gap changed in this election, and it wasn't at all what I was expecting:
According to exit polls by CNN Trump gained +2% of the male vote, and +5% of the female vote compared to 2020 - though women were still more likely to support Harris, of course.
An analysis by the AP found similar results, with the support from men under 45 increasing +7%, and women under 45 +6%, while for older men it decreased -1%, and for older women stayed the same.
Surprisingly, Trump's support among racial minority groups increased while white and older Americans increased support for Harris.
After thorough analysis and much thought I have ultimately concluded that I have absolutely no fucking clue what is going on with American politics.
It’s the economy. Look at the numbers for voters without a college degree, rural voters, and lower income voters. Trump won all of these groups. In the WaPo exit polls the issues are included, not just the demographics. For voters who think the economy is the most importantly issue and for voters who think the US economy is doing badly: Trump dominated.
The Democrats continue to fail at shedding their reputation for being out of touch with working class Americans. The only income bracket that Harris won was the $100,000+ group. This tells us that the Democrats are an upper middle class and upper class party.
Wow, that’s crazy.
I wonder how much of that is demonization of unions. If a big piece of Democrat support for working class is support for unions, does that actually matter when so many people of all incomes are taught to hate unions?
Then there’s the student loan fiasco. By all rights the Biden administration should have gotten kudos for finding so many ways to attempt student loan forgiveness, and for focusing it on lower income people (for example, people in income based repayment with less than $10k left). However the right succeeded in making that seem elitist or not independent and the left seemed to blame Democrats for not being more successful in the face of Republican obstruction
the real metric that matters is that way way less people voted. not many people changed their votes from last time. many people are simply convinced to stay home, and as always, that results in a Republican win. the propaganda that was most effective was all of the "Kamala is no true Scotsman, so you should just not vote". i believe this was lost by the people that "refused to vote for genocide". i think that's what accelerated the genocide.
I really doubt double-digit millions of voters sat out because of Gaza.
Kamala's vote total is roughly in line with what would be expected looking at 2008, 2012, and 2016. The massive turnout in 2020 on the Dem side appears to be an abberation - it was unique circumstances with COVID and all that. On the Republican side, Trump ran slightly ahead of his 2020 performance, and well ahead of 2016.
It's basic electoral politics: Trump has succeeded at expanding his base of support and turning them out to vote reliably. The Democrats have not. No single issue is responsible for that.
You can blame protests or Gaza or third parties or whoever else you want - the truth remains that the Dem base from the Obama years is not large enough and not appropriately distributed to win an election against Trump's base; whatever else you think of the man, he has been very good at gaining and retaining support.
True but I think that's probably more of deep red state residents seeing their vote not matter live on TV every fucking election. I've seen the federal turnout but I haven't compared state to state turnout yet and I would imagine that's probably a better metric since like 30% of the population live where their vote makes no difference.
After thorough analysis and much thought I have ultimately concluded that I have absolutely no fucking clue what is going
The statements above seem to suggest it's no longer about identity politics. The habitual way of labeling people no longer explains political results.
Harris just offered little to get voters excited. Mostly ran as a status-quo candidate. Racial minorities, for the most part, are not happy with the status-quo. By being ignored, it allowed right-wing propaganda on media (social and traditional) to do its work. One thing I've heard is, "well, at least Trump sent me some checks." Many people I've talked to weren't happy with Biden's involvement with the crime bill, or Harris' being a DA that proudly prosecuted cannabis offenders. Some people I've talked to liked that Trump pardoned Lil Wayne, Kodak Black, and that woman who had an extremely long sentence for cannabis. One person I've talked to was upset about "libtards" removing black faces from grocery store products (using Aunt Jemima as an example). Some younger men I know (some racial minorities) have started going deep into the Jordan Peterson, Fresh and Fit, Andrew Tate, etc pipeline, which I'm guessing is rooted in sexual insecurity.
Yep, Trump's popularity went down with white voters (albeit only 2-4 points depending on male or female) but gained ground in Latino and "other unidentified" minorities. He also actually lost older voters too.
But I think the biggest surprise for me is that Trump gained more of the new voters than Harris. And while I don't have a gender breakdown from that, I wonder if a lot of those were males.
The guy that can't shut the fuck up about eliminating minorities, got minority votes? If America is that suicidal, why can't they just take a collective bullet? Would save the rest of the world a lot od trouble...
So many pundits were leaning into the gender gap so hard, I really expected a blowout landslide for Harris. This is the last time I pay any attention to commentators, forecasters or polls. My current theory of American politics is that we've become a full-on Idiocracy. There are always idiots in any society, but I really feel like if we can elect the Orange Sack of Shit a second time, our collective stupidity has passed a tipping point. We almost made it to 250 years too. But nothing lasts forever. Hang onto your seat, I don't expect swirling down the drain to be fun.
As a zoomer that's old enough to be working class now. Man, my childhood was fucked. At school, being a right wing troll was the norm, at least for boys. I was too.
The worst part is no-one cared, fucking "they'll grow out of it" and now everyone is suddenly in shock. When I talk about it to my friend today he's even in fucking denial about it, "Oh they didn't actually mean that, it was all jokes".
And our education system doesn't do anything to combat this shit either. Quite the opposite, the dogmatic authoritarian approach schools take coupled with zero-tolerance policies pretty much ensures people shouting this hateful shit get away with it.
After all saying "Hitler did nothing wrong" only gets annoyed looks, gets completely brushed off as "edgy" or something. But then when someone points out that person's shit, suddenly that's an attack???
I graduated from a Christian high school a few years ago, and now they have a Discord server that's basically their own version of 4chan and they post a bunch of edgy racist/queerphobic/etc stuff. Then the person running it went to MIT. It still exists and I'm pretty sure the staff knows about it and doesn't give a shit. Of course the school itself promotes racist and queerphobic political ideologies as well so that's not exactly helpful either.
A lot of this are encouraged under the table. Any plans on it is usually talked rather than texed, so there will be less chance of it that it could surface, and is between the most trustworthy people.
The worst part is no-one cared, fucking "they'll grow out of it" and now everyone is suddenly in shock. When I talk about it to my friend today he's even in fucking denial about it, "Oh they didn't actually mean that, it was all jokes".
Most edgy teens do grow out of it. I roll my eyes at embarrassment at some of the stuff I wrote in college, and high school me was even stupider.
But one difference in my high school years (in the 90's), edginess wasn't inherently politically coded. Some of it was racist, sexist, or homophobic, but plenty of the targets were also Republican constituencies: rural/small town people, Christians, fat people, old people, prudes, etc. In a conservative suburban area, jokes about abortion, sex, drugs, etc. were often designed to elicit shock and disgust.
I think we've seen a cultural shift in which edginess is seen as right wing in itself, in part because the right, which used to get offended at things like Harry Potter and Howard Stern and Disney movies, has fallen in line with edgy Gen X comedians who somehow didn't grow out of it, and made room for people who smoke weed and mock the Bible.
"Oh they didn't actually mean that, it was all jokes".
Because those were jokes.
The problem we have today is not that it was socially acceptable to be a psychopath online in 2014. The problems are, in my opinion:
The right-wing shift is part of a global failure of established governments.
The right-wing shift is part of a global failure of established governments.
Yes! Thank you.
Just as the next left-wing shift won't be a result of humanity getting smarter somehow, it will be a result of right-wing policies failing. And that shift won't lead to any improvement either.
It's a pendulum.
People are willing to tolerate a failing system longer, when it aligns on surface with their own views. This is similar to people on the right defending Pinochet and death squadrons.
And people on the left 20 years ago would defend a lot of things about USSR or Che Gevara or stuff like this, even not being tankies.
Tribalism leads to degeneracy.
Get that logical crap out of here!!
I begged my admin to do something about my boy students sexually harassing my girl students. Instead, my some of my boy students discovered I was trans and outed me.
I have seen teachers say that hitler was right, that walls were invented by aliens and that giants existed and were romanian
White women as a majority still voted for Trump. Why just blame men?
The result of telling women they could vote for someone their husband didn't vote for was the right flipping out and essentially calling them property. How likely do you think speaking up is when you are stuck financially to someone who sees you as a servant rather than a person?
What the fuck? Where? Not where I am.
From a quick google search. It's about 53% for Trump, 45% for Harris.
It may not be true for those you regularly interact with, but that doesn't make it untrue overall.
They went for Trump by 2%. Calm the fuck down. Go after millennial men, we went for Trump by something like 10%.Gen X men went for Trump by 22%. And Boomers were actually better than X at 11%.
So if you want to go after someone go after Gen Z's parents.
Gen X men went for Trump by 22%
"They won't be able to ignore us, now! Now everyone will remember Generation X!"
Ugh, I hate that I laughed.
I think Harris had a 2 point lead among male voters age 18 - 29. Where is the 2% stat from, I would like to learn more (if it's convenient to share).
NBC exit polling, link
Alienation caused by economics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
Fascists have a message for them, the liberals don't because they are committed to the current economic and political system
Social media. Gen Z grew up with youtubers and influencers pushing their beliefs.
in the age of misinformation and grifting mind you. it's not just the technology, we've had youtube for 20 years
I can see why some young men might feel like the Democratic party is prioritizing women's issues over those affecting men, especially young men. In fact, it might seem like the Democratic party is not only indifferent to struggling young men, but hostile to them. I can understand why someone might not want to vote for a party that thinks of them as deplorable, pathetic losers.
Issues affecting young women:
Issues affecting young men:
How exactly can a political party address what is for men essentially a collection of toxic culture issues?
Issues affecting young men:
It should be empathy for all. Asshat.
How exactly can a political party address what is for men essentially a collection of toxic culture issues?
I don't necessarily know, and neither does the Democratic party, which is at least part of the reason why Trump just got reelected.
Talk about diving people, what a prime example. What would you say if I name fashion as one of the primary female problems? Or having good pictures on Instagram?
This is the exact kind of attitude they meant
I think many men, whether they realize it or not, feel specifically persecuted by trans rights. They might say that allowing trans women in women’s sports is cheating and that it would allow the trans women to be successful in the sport over less merit than they as cis males would have to. The deconstruction of the gender/sex binary also threatens cis males’ historic position as self-assigned protectors, leaders, and winners of the “weaker sex”. There is also the phobia among men of discovering that the woman whom they want to romance is trans, which really comes down to masculine fragility and conformity that leads to homophobia (in the sense of XY + XY, not gender) and transphobia. As a cis male, these men need to get over themselves.
Many men also believe that gun control is a threat to them. They need these guns in case a fascist power ever seizes the government and they need to fight back, so they are actively voting for the fascist powers to seize the government so that they can keep their guns.
There are also men who hold prejudice against any religion except Christianity so leftwing inclusivity efforts and anti-prejudice efforts come across as welcoming these perceived threats. These men aren’t simply just the redneck Bible thumpers or even devout or practicing Christians, but they just see the most common belief system around them as the default.
It’s not that these issues are a threat to men, but that they perceive them as threats.
The main source of this recent trending fascism, anti-scientific thinking and so on is social media or the web in general. To resist or refute the mass of false information and find out what's likely true and what's not, requires education, literacy, media competency, things like that. I guess current generations are lacking this so they fall easy prey to "funny" fascist memes, fakes and rhetoric, then vote for rightwing extremists, destabilizing their own country as a result, not realizing that this leads to big disadvantages for everyone including themselves. We failed to protect these younger generations from misinformation, and now they are turning the world into what they are misled to believe is true.
We used to have relatively high living standards in the Western democracies. This will soon all crumble and we (most people who aren't rich) will suffer from it, regardless of who you voted for. And on top of that, climate change will finish us all off, because battling that isn't even on the radar for those fascists because they don't even believe in it. So instead of doing too little, we'll do literally zero and even accelerate the problem, meaning it'll affect us all much sooner already and with higher intensity.
So enjoy your still existing relatively privileged life while it still lasts. It's ging to get much, MUCH worse before it's going to be better again. Buckle up and prepare yourselves.
With the levels of anti-intellectualism, it's also quite hard.
You write more that 3 lines? You used a "buzzword"? Congratulations, your refutation won't be read, but will met with ridicule!
My mother's boyfriend often "reads" articles from more liberal-leaning news sources, and he just laughs at the buzzwords. Cannot tell what the articles were about.
A buzzword being one with three syllables or more, I presume?
(Syllables are probably woke nowadays)
map of climate change outcomes. 2.7 warming. Violet - unhabitable “More suitable” than what? I live in a green area: both this phrasing and a scan of sources added below, make it look like I benefit from 2.7°C global warming. Bring it on!
I blame social media and algorithms. My teen son for the longest time was leaning further and further right due to the content he was getting served on YouTube. He was making disparaging comments about women and how stupid they are. My wife and I who lean left had to sit down and have a talk with him about what he was saying and videos that he was getting served by YouTube (that popular red pill girl, I can't remember her name and andrew tate among other red pill stuff). He's a pretty smart kid, once we showed him data and articles that directly proved all the things he was watching wrong, he started to come around. He's been careful to believe things that he sees or hears on the internet more now. Occasionally, he'll bring things to us that we have to double take and fact check to see if it's wrong.
that popular red pill girl
brett cooper? I literally got it on my recommended yesterday and holy shit people are braindead
I had to go digging. It's Pearl or something.
You mean fem shapiro.
Exactly why we nixed youtube at my house. It's a right wing disinformation machine. A shame because there are some genuinely good content creators on that platform. My kids are younger, but their attitudes get out of whack when they watched YT. Fuck that platform.
I feel like any social media platform you start a fresh new account on has a built in right leaning bias unfortunately. Then on top of that rural am radio is mostly GOP talking points.
Nice. I really can't say much more but I will. Great oversight.
Women asked for some basic goddamn respect and when they got “uppity”(because us men weren’t listening) they really got a “you were mean to me so I’m gunna elect Hitler again”. Millions of people alive today want women strip women of the rights they fought for and women are supposed to be polite about it?!
It’s crazy how weak they are and I’m sad sharing a gender with them.
And many of those people who voted to "elect Hitler again" were woman. I think it is wild that people keep minimizing the role of the single largest voting demographic into victims.
I thought the Harris campaigns ads to encourage female voters in red counties was incredibly demeaning.
"What happens at the polls stays at the polls"
I'm male, but I cringed hard at those ads.
I wonder if the had good reception at focus groups or something. Maybe it really did play well, I don't know. But it made it seems like women were too weak to own their opinions or vote.
Which would forget the huge amounts of indoctrination that subset of that group has experienced, both religious and just cultural by way of hearing “it’s a woman’s place” for their entire lives. And just because they can be stupid, too, doesn’t mean they aren’t victims and just because they’re victims doesn’t mean they can’t be stupid.
We’re all getting fucked by the right economically and it’s not even hidden a little but but they keep getting into power. It’s the same shit, different pile.
the data does not support this conclusion. more young men did not vote for Trump, less people in total voted. almost no one changed their vote from last election. people were just convinced to stay home, which always results in Republican wins. both candidates got less votes total than last year, by a lot. i blame this on the "i refuse to vote for genocide" people that have just successfully accelerated that genocide.
More like men don't want to elect someone who actively and publicly tells them they're the problem based on a minority that believe those things
Man. I get being disappointed. I really do get it.
But tarring all these guys with "hitler youth" when just like every other group, at worst it's a 45-55% split... Come on. That's a hell of an insult to throw towards people, many of whom are doing their best and didn't vote Trump. Doing your best, doing everything that you can do, and still being met with scorn... I know how bad that hurts. I know how it sucks the will right out of you. I know it drives people away. And even if it doesn't drive them to Trump because they're good people, it sure isn't going to drive them towards finding a solution.
Don't worry, the youth will only become further right-wing.
Here's the result of a local German state election from September. It displays the results for people aged 18-24, divided into male (light) and female (dark). AfD is openly fascist. No other age group voted for them as much. Getting 46% in a system with proportional representation is basically unheard of by the way.
I very much suspect this trend will continue.
Doesn't need to continue but probably will because as other people have mentioned the left pushes them away and the right welcomes them
I am Gen Z male and please do not let my blond hair, blue eyes, and German lineage deceive you. I’m as appalled as one can be with all of this. I never connected with my boomer dad or my millennial elder brothers over machismo or sports nor did I ever pick up TikTok and my social media consumption elsewhere was limited or gated by my own doing. From my experience, the pressure to conform to masculinity and male dominated in-groups; the perceived onus to keep males in power and powerful; and the propagandists’ weaponization of media such as TikTok, Facebook, podcasts, and Fox News and their ilk on TV and radio are the main depreciators of character in these cases.
Don't apologize for the way you look. You didn't choose that.
I only mentioned those characteristics because of the Hitler Youth descriptor used in the screenshot and I wanted to underscore that there are strangers who don’t want to be seen as the enemy but the enemy has co-opted their innate look. I know not to judge a person’s character by their appearance and I hope those on this side of the situation all know that as well.
PragerU was started to indoctrinate Gen Z when the realized the Millenials were Far Left and the Boomers were dying out
Mission Accomplished...
Can't the same be said of turning point usa?
I was today years old when I found out they were different groups
Except Millennials were worse than Gen Z. Exit polling has Gen Z men as the most democratic generation of men in this election. I don't know where the fuck people are getting this idea that they're right wing?
Right Wing Millenials? Haha, I laugh at that very idea
Because the Republicans succeeded at fully killing education. It's dead.
I am morbidly curious to see what happens over the next generation or two. The innate anti-intellectualism that seems to be a required component of right-wing policy will heavily affect red states, but blue states are still prioritizing their school systems. Is the "states' rights" party going to sic the fed on state-controlled school systems in blue states to prevent the spread of thoughtcrime?
If it's only blue states that continue funding education, what does that do long-term in a nation that has shifted away from being a manufacturing superpower to now primarily making its capital on knowledge industries? It is already the case that college applicants from states like Massachusetts and Connecticut get inherent bonus points in their transcripts just by virtue of where they graduated high school, because earning an A in Boston means more than earning an A in Baton Rouge. We've got a brain drain of doctors and nurses, and teachers and college professors, all leaving red states because the laws there are getting too oppressive for them to work. Most of the finance and technology sectors remains in the (blue) northeast and west coast states as well.
What is the long-term plan for the Republican party to empower their own constituents in these red-state strongholds when their old industries are gone, never to return, and they refuse to invest in the education and welfare of their citizens?
My prediction is that we're going to have plaques and monuments that say "In memory of 2026, thousands of American citizens deported - and its the Democrats fault btw"
Any semblance of resistance will be labelled as "radical leftists trying to subvert the will of America"... with how over half of voters made their decision, the will of America seems far different than I remembered.
I'm not doubting you OP, just asking if anyone has the voter demographics data that shows Gen Z males voted for Trump because I'm interested in the #'s of the issue.
As to the question of the post: I think part of the issue is that what it means to be a strong, mentally healthy male has been left unspecified or even attacked in recent years and that's left a lot of young men confused and upset. Men get all sorts of advice on what's wrong to do, but not enough on what's right. Contradictory advice makes the confusion worse.
Are you supposed to chase a girl or is that creepy? How do you navigate increased romantic isolation and dating apps in a healthy way? What are expectations about being the sole income provider a la tradition? In that vacuum confident, opinionated, clear voices are persuasive, and a lot of those voices are the jackasses pushing a toxic masculinity and telling males to reclaim it. We need more strong, positive male role models and visible social support of them if we want to win young men back - they have to know that being better will yield rewards.
No you're fair to do so, here's the demographic breakdowns and differences between 2020 and 2024 from NBC exit polls.
The particular thing to note is that Trump support jumped from 36% to 42% in the 18-29 demographic, while the other age groups remained steady, this is what I think the tweet is going off of.
Sometimes it feels like a man need to feel guilty just for being a man, even if they have done absolutely nothing wrong.
I don't know in America. Here in Spain there is a trend in which to be "feminist" somehow you have to admit that you are a little sexist, because are men are sexist even a little. It is an absolute. It's not even "a majority of men.." its all, no other opinions accepted.
And if you decline that premise, and just say "I'm not sexist, I treat everyone the same despite gender" you are somehow lying and trying to hide your sexism, which makes you a bad person or something.
And I refuse that. I refuse to accept having done things that I have not done. Same I reject accepting responsibility for things I have not made or enabled. And some people still want me to accept that guilt.
That trend needs to die. I know that it creates sorority making the "all of us vs all of them" rhetoric, but my humble believe is that that path do not lead to the desired destination.
Edit: I was going to start the comment with "As a man" as it was my assigned at birth gender. But in all true and while for confort I just let most people treat me with masculine gender I just do not believe in gender as a social construct. Not that I do not believe as in I do not believe it exist, I do not believe that gender is a desirable social construct we need to keep in our society. But that's just my opinion.
I understand what you mean, and it sucks. I've been accused of being antisemitic because I post against Israeli policy and I've never cared about ethnicity or birthplace. Sometimes because I put up a post talking about supporting Jews that oppose Netanyahu's Zionism. It doesn't matter to some folks - if you have a problem with certain people it's not because of what they do or say, it's sexism, racism, etc.
Here in Canada it's not automatically assumed men are sexist. There are folks who will say that but they are a small group. I can only imagine it's maddening to have to defend yourself constantly, especially if most people won't believe you no matter what. It kind of reminds me of an old Dave Chappelle sketch (NSFW language) about being accused of sleeping with someone and having people assume it happened.
And if you decline that premise, and just say “I’m not sexist, I treat everyone the same despite gender” you are somehow lying and trying to hide your sexism, which makes you a bad person or something.
We all have implicit biases, this is undeniable. Denying this doesn't make you a bad person, but you are denying reality. Having the biases doesn't make you a bad person either - again we all do. But you can't be mindful of them if you deny they exist.
That's a pretty ignorant way to overgeneralize about a whole generation. I hoped I was leaving this kind of bullshit behind on reddit.
Every flag-emoji in a user's profile name is a red-flag for a different mental illness.
But this is pure scapegoating. Even the most straightforward read on the turnout demographics tells us where the problem is.
Trump won the White People.
Trump was expected to dominate the white vote. Hispanic voters were expected to be way more blue tho, especially after the recent "porto reeko" fiasco. I read that Hispanic males tended to prefer Trump but women liked Harris. The geography stats are unsurprising - more dems live in urban areas and more repubs in the smaller towns and wide open spaces. The huge surprise is that younger voters are so evenly divided. Maybe I'm just used to the constant noise on reddit that blames Trump on boomers. Now it will probably shift to "BuT ThEy GoT HiM StArTeD!"
Just curious, do we get these breakdowns from exit polling or some other source?
I guess the lonelyness epedemic plays a part in it which hits younger people harder then older ones and mans stronger then woman.
Indeed, and it’ll get worse. Plenty of women (on popular dating sites, at least) have already been swearing off dating Republicans. Now, with a higher likelihood of a national abortion ban, don’t be surprised if straight women become even choosier. After all, every man we think of sleeping with must now also be viewed as a potential father.
Forget about casual flings or one-night-stands. Why would I risk a lifetime of supporting an entire human being just to have one night of fun?
And that’s only for straight women. Bisexual/pansexual women can choose to straight up stop dating men entirely.
In a lot of ways, lonely young men who voted for Trump just shot themselves in the dick.
Straight women can choose not to date men either. Of course I'm older but quite enjoy living alone.
You mean to tell me that using birth control or even practicing abstinence is the best way to avoid getting pregnant and removes the need to use abortion as birth control?!
And that perhaps having reckless one night stands all the time is risky and probably not a great idea?!!
Gen z girls are a lot less into sex than girls in my generation were, I wonder if that is a factor.
The lonelyness epedemic is not only about sex, lack of friendships and romantic interactions outside of sex play a huge part (arguably a bigger one because sex can be compensated with porn, but a hug can't).
the Democrats will just pander to this by getting an endorsement in 2028 from Andrew Tate.
My friend, do not speak this into existence 😭
Lmao there won't be elections in 2028.
Obviously in their lives they've been massively influenced by social media starting from a younger age than any previous generations. And you know what kind of garbage is out there.
Because the democrats haven't made a serious appeal to them in a decade. We need to turn bell hooks into actionable political messaging.
Well go ahead, what's the messaging/appeal that would have swung the Hitler youth away from Hitler?
How do you “appeal” to future domestic terrorists when they believe it's their calling to tear down everything good in society?
I'm not trying to be sarcastic or dramatic, but they are drawn to Trump because he embodies all the horrible things they aspire to become.
How can a political party that speaks of equality and justice even possibly make a connection with them? It sounds nice, but how would it happen without making your current base feel like you only want to help the worst behaved?
Men are isolated from a young age and told to be strong at all costs, you can only live that way so long before pain turns to hate, because hate hurts less to carry alone
How do you “appeal” to future domestic terrorists when they believe it’s their calling to tear down everything good in society?
I mean, how do you not hear yourself sounding exactly like a MAGAt here explaining why some books need to be banned, or why the left needs to be silenced?
Men have already long been abused by the patriarchy alongside with women. In the last couple of years the so-called "liberals" claiming to fight against the patriarchy have joined in the abuse by denying men any escape from that situation
I'm a Gen Z male, from what I can tell it seems like older generations tend to rely more on cable or traditional news outlets while younger generations tend to get their news from social media platforms like Instagram. Cable news tends to be more corporate and "normal"/consistent, while Instagram tends to feed news from a larger variety of sources that tend to be more anti-corporate and radical, but those sources also tend to optimize for very short bursts to get the point across quickly so the user can quickly move on to the next piece of news, and there's also quite a bit of low effort content and reposts and misinformation and that sort of stuff. So I think it's social media that's the main driving factor in causing Gen Z to be more radical - which in some ways is a good thing since they have more awareness of the events in Palestine (and radical leftism is based), but the platform can also put them into far-right fear-mongering bubbles and cause serious problems.
Cite data
"Harris has a significant lead among young registered voters in the NBC News Stay Tuned Gen Z Poll powered by SurveyMonkey. But a yawning gender gap is dividing Gen Z."
That being said, we all know how inaccurate polls can be sometimes.
9/11 was 23 years ago.
The nationalism that arose implanted itself in the children of that era.
Those kids are now in the voting booth.
9/11 is the new Red Scare?
No, not even close. Where did you even get Red Scare from? A soviet era propaganda textbook?
it was a new Pearl Harbor.
you obviously werent around for the flag waving and sticker epidemic that i was refering to.
Yeah well if you ignore and ridicule young men asking for help this is what you get
I had a look on scholar.google.com, but alas, all research after 2020 was either related to young male athletes, or related to gender/sexual health. There seems to be little attention given to young males.
Yes, we should definitely move to address their issues, which begin and end with the fact that young men are entitled uneducated macho losers who love expensive cars and worship illiteracy.
What exactly do you want the government to do about that?
EDIT: downvoting me will not alter reality.
I mean, kinda yeah, but that doesn't really mean anything to the comment you replied to.
Gen Z is the Hitler youth because all you parents told them art school is a waste of time and they took that to heart! Clearly it's important to be hard and the world is about competition and being better than everyone else! You can't make enough money if you're not dominant and respected because we pay for leverage instead of value around these parts!
Aaaaand those parents of those Gen Z kids probably said what they said because when they were kids, their parents told them to follow their dreams and do whatever they wanted to do, so they believed them and they went to art school and didn't work hard, then they got to the recession and lost their job (or never got it in the first place) because their degree was irrelevant for almost any job out there, and then they had to compete and improve in order to get a decent job to make ends meet as they tried their best to raise their little Gen Z kid.
We have an oscillating Hitler effect.
You don't become Hitler by not going to art school. You become Hitler by going to art school and getting rejected from it.
Yeah but your parents can do the rejecting in their place.
it's either being that or a concubine, gen z was the after millennial hope that died
"Solidarity forever" applies across gender lines as well as race and other sources of disparity. I wish this could have been made more apparent to our young men, social media has them in its clutches unfortunately. Billionaires did that.
blaming one demographic or another is incredibly stupid. america as a whole voted for trump, dude won the popular vote. the majority wanted this
There is no war but class war.
The culture wars are about the class war indirectly. Women are famously the first large underclass, worse than workers who don't own the means of production: workers who don't even own themselves, workers who do a second shift at home which goes unpaid and unrecognized in pensions and healthcare.
Failure to understand how these are connected translates into failure to achieve solidarity.
Hell yeah. I got nothing else to say, I'm just really impressed.
thumb war
The only thing you can be absolutely sure of as a liberal white male is that no one likes you or wants to hear from you.
I can see that. I'm not a white guy but I'm raising a son. And we've gotten to the point where a boy can't express his needs and feelings, without being told "women have it worse", add to this the constant talk of men being dangerous, scary, the cause of all ills, and I can see how that would damage a young guy's self esteem and frustrate him. I have to constantly teach both my son and daughter to value others and don't judge them for what their entire gender did before they were born. I dunno if that made any sense, but yea it feels like boys just get told to "man up" and deal with it
Because they're being indoctrinated by Kick streamers like I was by YouTubers in 2015. It's so disappointing to see the same shit that ruined me for years ruin them.
You would be too if you were raised by the YouTube algorithm
Hey I was raised exclusively by the YouTube algorithm, and I came away from it with a deep appreciation for animation, an incredibly stupid sense of humor, and a sexuality on the spectrum of "Yes, please." It can't be the only reason!
It's counterculture. Young people, particularly young males, have always been obsessed with counterculture movements. Now why they View progressivism as the culture they need to counter I'm not sure, but they do.
You know the innocent but in context messed up movie I watched right before this election because of a song? The Sound of Music. Know the young girls "love interest?" Goes full Nazi by the halfway point.
That's your Gen Z men looking to fit in a new Nazi order.
My mind skipped over the word 'the' in the tweet. And yet it makes sense either way.
Among other things, they've been raised to comply with an authoritarian government since 9/11, so their whole lives.
I am a gen z man that voted for Harris. I’m sorry the majority of us are morons
Because they're young and naive enough to be fooled by a conman who made impossible promises that will never be fulfilled
So glad that doesn't happen with the older ones
...uhhh...we're not?
Apparently the Incels outnumbered the Beehive and Swifties put together!
Because they have a bunch of dumb opinions no one tried to address - feminists are trying to destroy video games. Women won't date short men. Liberals are stealing girls breasts and making them trans too easily. Or giving them tattoos and making them fat. One or two chads every generation are getting all the sex, leaving them as lonely incels. Dating apps don't work anymore. They feel insecure about masculinity.
They blame women for all this, so they're not going to vote for one. Especially if no one's listening or appealing to them except the orange raisin and his American exceptionalism and edgy humor.
Get someone who appeals to them if you want thier vote, don't just sit around calling them fascist idiots, and laughing at them for being incels or Jordan Peterson fans. They need fathers and role models who actually give them structure, meaning, purpose, closure.
...someone who appeals to them. Someone who joins their story, and makes it feel coherent with their America.
Wonder if it has anything to do with oligarchs taking over the internet so only a select few sites run by them are popular. It can't be just like television was to the boomers, no way.
Accidentally checked out /r/GenZ today. Yikes.
This can't be true, can it?
Many of them are low prospect, so it’s not a surprise. They’re hoping a male supremacy will help them survive financially, but most will still suffer as that’s just how number games work in a callous system. If they’d voted for Harris they’d at least get some benefits while being low prospect
Ashamed of my fellow young men.