[edit: I thank everyone for their comments and time. A lot of very interesting opinions and view points. Unfortunately also a lot of things that went away from the actual answer. So I’m thinking maybe this thread can be closed without deleting it?]
The more I hear people talk about it who aren’t cis-het men, the more I hear criticism about the concept. But so far, I’ve only heard people say that it’s stupid, that it’s not a thing, that it’s men’s own fault etc. But I’ve yet to understand where that criticism comes from. I don’t want to start a discussion on whether or not it’s real or not. I just want to understand where the critics are coming from.
Men, by and large, create toxicity within their own circles. Male culture has a lot of issues and a lot of unrealistic expectations are put in men in US society. Some external, but the majority come from inside. The whole alpha male culture bullshit that permeantes it. There’s a lot, and I mean a LOT of good that can come from healthy male culture. But right now it’s like men have a branding issue where the loudest among them are also the worst (the Andrew Tates of the world).
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Lots of men out there just being men
True. But nobody cares about them because they aren’t bothering anyone. But they do get lumped in with the controversial men.
Like I don’t have much of a clue about Tate or any of that stuff. But if I tell people that then I’m guilty of ignorance or something and I need to ‘educate’ myself about that stuff so I can… denounce it? Because apparently just not knowing or caring is complicity or something.
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No. We don’t. We don’t have a duty to do anything anymore than women do.
Other people’s ignorance isn’t my obligation to fix. It’s their own. I am not responsible for other people’s behavior and anyone who blames me for it is an asshole. Guilt by association is a fallacy.
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Calling out shitty behaviour gets you shitcanned from the group. It doesn’t change the behaviour. Do you socialize much? You don’t make friends or get popular by calling out bad behaviour. You get ostracized. The rest of the group calls you an asshole and circles the wagons and enables the behaviour further.
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I think part of it also depends on were you live. Just as a personal experience I live in a very rural part of northern Nevada, I’m born a raised here. The population is about 4k and honestly I would say 90% of the population are hardcore conservatives. Even as a kid I knew that I didn’t fit in with anyone else. I would usually just keep to myself all throughout school and even now as a 42 year old man I barely speak to anyone. It is lonely but the alternative is a no go for me especially now with politics being such a big part of peoples identity.
On a related note, I wish we would acknowledge that men socialize different and that guys doing stuff together is therapeutic. Ruminating on emotions can have a negative effect in men, while work therapy can be much effective that talk therapy.
that would be acknowledging that men and women are different and that’s bad in 2025, apparently.
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I have no idea but thought I’d throw out that, as a 58yr old cis white guy I’ve never been lonely in my life, i have literally no idea what that’s like and don’t get involved in hypotheses about it all because I have nothing to bring to the debate. I do find human behaviour interesting (and mostly bizzare) though.
The more time I spend with people the more I crave being alone but that’s a different thing.
I now live on the edge of a tiny village in the middle of no where Australia and lived in a small cottage off grid in the bush for 10 years previously bit alos loved in an apartment in the sky in a largish city.
One thing I noticed, I found the car free existence ina city bought me into contact with people all the time, even walking you’d see people people and say hello. Stop at a crossing and have a small conversation occasionally etc. i even said hello to women and was never called a pervert ;)
Who says this? I am not a cis-het man and have not heard the criticism. I thought it was a known thing? Are you literally hearing it doesn’t exist, or is it more like they need to suck it up and/or that they are losers that need to go outside?
If it’s the second, that’s sexism. That’s where it comes from. Illogical ideas about men. Believe it or not, we have not overcome that yet. People have very twisted ideas about how men and women should behave and feel.
Oh my god STOP WITH THE GENDER DEBATES
I kind of assume it’s the juxtaposition of “I as a white man have immense social privilege” with “I can’t get anyone to play with me”. Like, other people are worried about being abducted on the street and you’re sad you can’t play basketball with your bros?
The sadness of loneliness can be real but in contrast to other things it can feel like it needs to be triaged into a lower priority. And then some men lose their shit over that, which makes people take them less seriously.
most white men don’t have much social privileged.
it’s only the top 5-10% who have the privledge
For example, white men will generally have an easier time in public spaces. Police and shops are less likely to bother them.
privilege doesn’t mean “you have a yacht” or “you’re rich”
and if you’re black/Hispanic and you dress in a suit they won’t bother you either. esp if you hold yourself like a rich douchebag
but if you’re white and tattooed and look homeless, they will totally bother you.
It’s about class. class trumps race and sex, everytime.
Please go read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_privilege and the related articles, such as https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
Both is kinda true. Yes, a poor black man will be worse off than a poor white man and a middle-class black man will be worse off than a middle-class white man and so on.
But a poor white man will be worse off than a middle-class black man and a rich white man will be better off than a middle-class white man.
That’s what intersectionality means: All these things stack together instead of wiping eachother out.
If intersectionality wasn’t a thing, then any black man will always have less privilege than any white man, no matter any other circumstances. And that’s obviously crap, considering that clearly someone like Barak Obama or Will Smith has much more social privilege than any random white homeless guy.
No. I have a minor in gender studies. You can pretend Wikipedia is some sort of definitive source of truth all you want because it fits your simplified narrative of race and sex.
Reality is far more complex than that though.
I don’t believe you. Sorry.
I don’t believe you. Not sorry.
I think it has to do with the death of 3rd spaces which used to be an outlet for socialization. But as a man, I’m also not lonely. I have friends and acquaintances and I get to go outside sometimes.
This right here. But even for our parents this is true.
I remember back when we could easily get some beers and sit at the local park or at the riverbed. But now? Everything’s private property and the bars are way too expensive to spend 5 hours in. I don’t know the last time I played Billard - or even have seen a pool table itself.
In the 2000s I could go out drinking for an entire night for like $20. Or I could hang out in a cafe with a sandwich and a coffee for $10.
Now two beers is $25 and that’s an hour if you nurse them slow. Wanna hang out for 2+ hours anyplace? Goign to cost you probably $50-100. Even bowling a frame is now like 75/pp in my city
Can we please leave gender war slop back at the old site please?
A lot of people can’t see things from any perspective beyond their own limited worldview. If they don’t experience a problem, it doesn’t exist or it’s not that bad and everyone should focus on their problems instead or if they are experiencing something it must be happening to everyone. I think this is causing a lot of the conflict around this issue. There is also the fact that a lot of the men complaining about this issue come at it not so much as “I’m lonely” but as “I’m not getting laid”. Which loses them a lot of sympathy.
Or it’s more about the inability to form community/family units that are so essential for human flourishing. For men and women both. And yet we have created all these biases and expecations of each other that handicap people from connecting.
I had no issue with connecting with most people I met 10+ years ago. But now it’s a struggle to even have a polite conversation with anyone under 50 for me, because their brains are so warped and they can’t take anything as is. I’ve had so many innocuous comments blow up in my face by younger folks who just leapfrog to the worst conclusions. For example I love reading classic literature… a lot of older pre 20th century stuff. That used to be something people admire. Now I get a lecture about how it makes me racist/sexist because the authors back then were all racist and sexist and if I am reading it i’m endorsing those views.
It’s insane. All the sudden my harmless hobby is now evil. I am also into cycling and I can’t talk about that now without being lectured or told how problematic it is for me to enjoy it. 10 years ago people would go ‘oh, that’s cool’. Now everything is a ‘problem’.
It’s also an issue to have this form of generation fight. We as older men, also have an obligation to question the old ways and listen to the young people. Because yes, a lot of it is a problem. And refusing to see the problem doesn’t make it not a problem. It just makes you part of it. Doesn’t make you evil to consume certain things. But it doesn’t help if you’re not compassionate with the current views and the emotions of the younger people around you. Most people don’t even want to make anyone stop doing something, but they’d be happy to know that you’re questioning it.
It’s also an issue to have this form of generation fight. We as older men, also have an obligation to question the old ways and listen to the young people
No we don’t. I am an older man and I am dealing with all this nonsense myself. the old ways were objectively better for connecting and forming relationships. The new ways only foster shallow connections. I’d rather live in analog reality than some delusional social media bubble also.
Yeah…we are so well connected and socialised. The old ways have really proved themselves…
people want to be well connect and socialized generally are.
those who don’t, aren’t.
It’s an individual choice.
the only big difference is how much internet content is anti-male and how many sad dudes internalize it.
Or it’s more about the inability to form community/family units that are so essential for human flourishing. For men and women both. And yet we have created all these biases and expecations of each other that handicap people from connecting.
100% that is the root of the loneliness epidemic and I agree that there is a problem. I was just trying to stick to answering OPs question about why we see opposition to the concept.
I think there is definitely a male loneliness epidemic but I think there is also an equally bad female loneliness epidemic that nobody talks about enough
I think what’s happening is:
40% of men are good people
40% of women are good people
The remaining 20% are pieces of shit that demonize and demean the other sex, which has caused the 80% to become scared and reclusive.
Social media makes it seem like the percentages are flipped but they are not!
The numbers are made up but you get my point.
Modern online incel and radfem movements were created to pit them against each other and prevent them from uniting and creating positive social change.
Created by whom? I’m actually curious.
themselves
I can’t prove anything, but:
- There’s evidence that billionaires are taking much more than they earn, and that we (everyone else) would be dramatically better off without them (whether we tax them away or… Come to some other compromise.)
- Billionaires own most media outlets and social media sites, even those these don’t actually make much money compared to everything else the billionaires own. This makes some people ask why they bother…
- There’s a noticable tendency in billionaire owned media to focus daily on divisive topics. The specific topic changes, but the divisiveness continues.
- There is history of powerful authoritarians investing heavily in divisive propaganda, primarily to break apart and distract groups of people who could overthrow them.
What I have laid out is not proof that today’s billionaires are directing their staff to verbally attack minorites at any opportunity.
But it certainly is something to think about next time a vicious rumor about a minority group comes along.
Edit: Yes. I do understand that neither men nor women are minorities. But there’s still enough differences to allow pushing a divisive narrative, which I suspect is enough reason for certain motivated people.
And to the “could just be a shitty set of incentives” argument. Fair enough. It could be. It’s highly suspicious, but it could be.
Woah, I thought you were talking about a conspiracy of wealthy people that are pitting the sexes against each other. That is interesting and I want to study this some more.
Somehow you ended on wealthy people hating on minorities. Let me make this clear. This happens all the fucking time. Even our POTUS is guilty of this multiple times with instances like the Central Park Five.
I mean the whole anti-woke movement is just a bunch of rich racist assholes pushing a toxic message.
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Eliminating billionaires would do far more to harm fascism than all the DEI initiatives combined.
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they both exist. but the male one makes people angry so it gets more engagement. it’s also framed as ‘men are losers who need to do better in life’
the female one is often framed as ‘women are too successful for men’.
the truth is there is a huge gender disparity emerging in certain demographics. my own included. most single women I meet in my 30s/40s are living radically different lives than the men. and frankly i haven’t had a relationship in half a decade because none of the women I meet anymore have anything in common with me, and often they view our differences in a very negative light. 10 years ago those differences were seen as positive.
there are also no common spacers for us to mingle anymore. esp not as equals.
I felt all bitter like you did but I met a girl recently who completely stole my heart, they do exist for sure
Very good point about common spaces. The best we got in north america is basically just the mall at this point
Also there are no safe spaces for men outside of wilderness and AA meetings hahaha
Am I bitter that we are entering a recession? Or is it just a fact of the world?
I’ve seen three sides to it.
Side 1: “boo hoo nobody will fuck me because I don’t think other people should have rights”
Side 2: not having strong friendships/relationships because our society is built around capitalism, cars, and social media (this obviously applies across genders, this side therefore is a generalized loneliness epidemic, not a male gendered one)
Side 3: men get socially punished for being vulnerable
In my mind only the second & third side is worth listening to.
Side 2 has not actual relevance to the problem itself. These societal tropes are not why men are having a hard time finding women. It’s just a societal trope posing as an explanation.
Side 3 is the only relevant issue. Men are constantly told they need to be more vulnerable or their masculinity is toxic, and yet when they express themselves vulnerably, they’re punished for it.
The issue, as I see it, is that some advocates of the “toxic masculinity” narrative often don’t fully acknowledge the ways in which women can also reinforce those same patterns.
A deeper concern is that many feminists present themselves as speaking on behalf of all women, when in reality most women don’t identify as feminists. As a result, what’s being represented is more of a particular set of progressive gender beliefs than the broader experiences of women in general.
To be clear, I actually agree with many feminist perspectives overall. However, I find that the movement’s messaging is often counterproductive—it can come across as unnecessarily divisive and, at times, dismissive of men. Because of this, even when the arguments are largely valid, they struggle to gain wider support.
Side 2 is very relevant. If you are lonely you get easily into very terrible sides of society and mindsets. I speak from experience. If you dont have a sense of belonging you also have no sense of self, but then come people that tell you to have a part in their group because of race, religion, nationality, or any other extremist reason.
Fair enough, I should have been clearer. I recognize that social isolation has deleterious effects on people. The part I was dismissing was the attribution to capitalism. Capitalism does not cause this effect. Other factors are responsible.
Capitalism does though. Atleast to an extend. Car centered city though that kills social connections a lot!
No. That is not an effect of capitalism. That is just a fact of rural living. God, Lemmings love to blame capitalism for everything.
What made the car industry big? What convinced them to tear down everything and make everything cardepended? Why does the oil and car industry lobby so hard and spread missinfo about public transport and closer living together?
Dude, seriously, calm down and connect with reality a bit more. Not everything is a conspiracy.
Would you accept “under-regulated capitalism” or “capitalism treated as an ideal rather than a tool” as a more specific root cause?
No, because it’s just not related to capitalism at all. Lemmings love to blame capitalism for everything, and you see it in every bad thing in the world.
If you dont have a sense of belonging you also have no sense of self,
Not sure I agree with that. I don’t have much sense of belonging but I know exactly who I am. If anything that’s why I usually feel like I don’t belong.
feminist has never been a coherent set of beliefs of messages. it’s a clusterfuck of viewpoints. many of which are contradictory.
especially 3rd/4th wave stuff that is mostly about social norms. earlier feminist was focused on political goals.
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There’s basically a lot of modern “feminists” who have decided that two wrongs make a right.
It’s good that women feel comfortable expressing themselves and trying to dismantle the patriarchy since it hurts us all. But many of them don’t stop there and end up crossing the line into misandry and blind hatred of men.
This results in these “feminists” saying some pretty bigoted shit like “white men can’t experience racism and sexism” as well as harassing men for seeking support.
This group mocks the male loneliness epidemic out of spite like other bigot groups.
“white men can’t experience racism and sexism”
A big problem here is that not everyone has a common definition for racism and sexism. Some definitions take existing power structures and historical context, and others don’t. A discussion about this topic should be started with what specifically each participant believes these terms mean. Otherwise you have two people talking about “sexism” but they are just talking past each other because they lack a shared understanding of the term as it is used.
they are well-defined terms.
where people argue about it is who can be racist/sexist. a lot of people think it can’t exist against white men or form minority group to minority group. most of the people thinking this way are clueless white people trying to score virtue points. in those people’s minds being sexist against men is a positive thing.
truth is sexism/racism is rampant everywhere. and in some societies its far worse than it is in the USA/Europe.
YOU might think they are well defined terms, but there are people claiming with a straight face that “race X can’t be racist, because racism needs power structures” or all this other exceptionalism. They use every definition but the one in the dictionary.
Usually, only bigots want to redefine the definitions of racism and sexism.
It’s pretty easy not to be a bigot if you aren’t an asshole.
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Anarcho-communism is the way.
Yeah, I agree. Wealth redistribution would fix most social and economic problems overnight.
Well, if any caucasianswanna experience a taste of racism/discrimination, just head down to certain areas of Richmond, BC Canada
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Signage only in Chinese (violates language laws)
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Restaurants that won’t even acknowledge your presence (if non Chinese)
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Realtors that won’t show you housing (if non Chinese)
But if course nobody will do anything because to address the issue said seem… racist.
And that’s the funny thing. Because people at the top of the racist pyramid generally share the same skin color, ethnicity and/or pants-contents as you, you get to be grouped in as “the oppressor”. Even if you share a lot more in common with victims of the same system, complaints are met with decision and ignored.
That’s because it’s easier to divide and conquer by skin and gender to hide the real class war that exists.
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Being a man is tricky. Full grown males can be physically dangerous and I think there is a subtle undercurrent of worry with all men they may be dealing with a hostile moron, or a worry someone may try to assert dominance. Men are organically closed off past a certain age because of this.
Men also experience allot of these weird power dynamics growing up. Both men and women kind of seek to control and bully youger boys and men until they come into their own…and suddenly they are grown and terrifying in some respects and everyone magically backs the f*** off. The threat is gone but the history is still there and it closes men off emotionally.
