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Andrew Tate is a symptom, not the problem’: why young men are turning against feminism

www.theguardian.com ‘Andrew Tate is a symptom, not the problem’: why young men are turning against feminism

Teachers describe a deterioration in behaviour and attitudes that has proved to be fertile terrain for misogynistic influencers

Despite the triggering headline, this is a pretty good article that talks about how younger men are falling for this horseshit

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77 comments

  • I posted this elsewhere:

    This is not a coincidence, this is the result of a long-term, political strategy. Anyone remember GamerGate? There has been an extreme backlash against feminism since the mid-2010s which GamerGate was a part of. (GamerGate in itself was part of a wider strategy that the far-right began to use on 4chan in the late 00s.)

    Steve Bannon (then EIC at Breitbart) pushed GamerGate’s anti-feminism into the mainstream right-wing politics because he saw it as an opportunity to recruit young men. Unfortunately he was right and his strategy has paid off, forming an anti-feminist alliance that has become a core belief of right-wing parties all around the world. It has creeped into the mainstream with figures like Andrew Tate who fulfill the role of recruiting young men for even more extreme anti-feminist, far-right content.

    This was the background noise that these young men grew up in. Many of the influencers they followed would tell them endlessly how feminism is to be blamed for bad games (during GamerGate) and - in general - how feminism is to be blamed for most ills of modern society. That young men were effed over by capitalism and patriarchy was - of course - deliberately omitted.

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    • I agree with you. But I have another blame to this: the far right is the only political side that works on young men, especially on the romantic side of things.

      Feminist is the other group that talks about sexuality and men/women relationships. Their fight is the good one, but they vomited men when it comes to #metoo and the consequences, and sometimes men were even excluded.

      The outcome is that when you're a men struggling with women, and this is especially a problem with gamers, long time single men, and young men discovering everything about this kind of things, when you're struggling, feminism is basically abandoning you and sometimes even blaming you.

      The only solution you can find about this is from far right with the most toxic and conservative philosophy there is. But it is the only one you can find, as a man, to try to get better about this. Or at least it was.

      Those men were politicaly abandoned. And even here on lemmy you can easily read about people arguing that if a man can't find a woman, it's because he is a shitty person and not respectful of women.

      So indeed on the one hand the far right led a political fight for this result. But on the other hand no one else was fighting on this ground. The left need to stand up and fight this fight too, rather than to send people seeking help to the far right.

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      • I mostly agree with you, but not with this...

        feminism is basically abandoning you and sometimes even blaming you.

        Yes, that's because feminism is a movement for the emancipation of women. Why should a group that is fighting for its own emancipation waste its limited resources for another group that is not fighting on their own? For better or worse, there is no political or ideological group out there which isn't prioritizing the interests of its own members first and foremost. So why should feminism be any different? Why should women have to do the work for the men who - for whatever reason - aren't acting in their own interests?

        Yes, the left has offered no coherent answer to the problems of young men, but it isn't the case that they offered no answers at all: Brotherhood and comradeship, international solidarity, self-organization and the fight against the oppressors have been core values of the left for ages. Unfortunately the left was ground to dust by capitalism and the last remnants of unions and other such movements which were always meant to empower individuals are struggling. They recently saw an upsurge again, but it remains to be seen if they can make a difference in the long run.

        Unfortunately as long as men, such as the gamers you mention, sit behind the computer screen and think that good things should come to them without them having to do something themselves, they will always fall for the far-right's false promises of power and riches.

        -5

    • The movie Magnolia predicted this in 1999. Remember "respect the cock and tame the cunt"? Tom Cruise is basically playing Andrew Tate in this movie.

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  • Doesn’t seem super well theorized to me. How exactly is porn playing into it? I do think the black and white language around metoo (yesallmen, believewomen) marginalized a lot of guys and contributes to this mindset. People who took it literally found the moral imperative it implied absurd and decided they’d need to find another narrative that they could be proud of themselves inside of. This is what they found when they looked. Invalidating all expert opinion as liberal makes it hard to bring sense into the conversation.

    I do think apps like tinder are directly responsible for all the self published bullshit they read mixing terms from economics to analyze the ‘sexual marketplace’ and seem mostly premised on the idea that some woman owes you in particular because of statistics.

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  • I’d say they’re doing it to themselves. Feminism doesn’t come across as inclusive, and has a “fall in line or get left behind” mentality.

    Even something dumb like Sokka’s character growth from being a sexist 12 year old to respecting & appreciating women was said to have gotten removed from Netflix’s Avatar TLA remake.

    At some point, that rigidity is going to push people away, and it appears that it didn’t take much to push people to villainize feminism.

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    • I’d say they’re doing it to themselves. Feminism doesn’t come across as inclusive, and has a “fall in line or get left behind” mentality.

      And on this I'd say I blame the parents most of all. I consider myself a feminist and grew up in an extended family of strong female figures. At no point was feminism (the word) discussed. What was, was an understanding that women are equal to men and deserve everything that a man has be it good or bad.

      The problem is that many people fell on feminism as an ideal to latch on to without better understanding and espousing the core principles behind it.

      Fast forward to now where I am a 46 year old man with a daughter and 2 boys I have far more concern for the boys than the girl and I make sure as often as possible to stress the principles of feminism and not just the word.

      For women, "a rising tide lifts all boats". Just as many men (I like to include myself) are doing all we can to bring women to a place of equality, women must also be beholden on themselves to ensure men do not get left behind.

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    • Well here is the fucking thing, you can never "win" with feminists cause they all slightly believe something else to be of utmost importance. Every women that does not agree is brainwashed by patriarchy but as soon as you got a penis your deviation from their believes makes you a sexist or even anti feminist. This is of course not true for all feminists, maybe its even a minority but it is a very vocal one and it does not help to have your sister be one... help😭

      -11

  • The right are radicalizing young men. It's as simple as that.

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  • Maybe it's shitty pop politics and it isn't only just feminism or any other hot marketed divisive-styled news topic, it's all the pop politics, whether they are left or right.

    I'm convinced people hate the pop news system and are too consumed in it to understand that's their enemy and not the topics that the news markets. I swear mass media is building anti LGBT and anti feminism on purpose by never shutting the fuck up about it. In turn people blame feminists and LGBT when it's the news system shoving shit in people's faces and gaslighting everyone to hate everyone.

    Marketing is the enemy of all of us.

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  • Thanks for sharing

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  • We absolutely need to be doing more on this front and I think the best solution is actually pretty simple: men should read feminist literature (or discourse) that has their interests in mind. If you take nearly any one of these people and make them read bell hooks (this is the hard part), it will almost certainly change their lives for the better. What's more, a lot of that just comes down to having their pain validated and it's relation to patriarchy exposed.

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