Bloomberg offers a valuable, well-documented discussion of the key role that a number of YouTube "influencers" played in pushing young males towards Donald Trump in the last election:
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@EllenJS @lucybeahere @wdlindsy @paco
Reeves is an interesting character. His work is regarded as good in identifying the problem, but flawed in his prescriptions for addressing it, and too closely aligned with MRA (mens rights activist) thinking:
Right Diagnosis, Wrong Prescription: Richard Reeves' Of Boys and Men
It’s not exactly unknown that boys and men are struggling in America. A number of books have already been written on the topic from Warren Farrell’s The Boy Crisis to Kay Hymowitz’s Manning Up. But much of this work to date has come from people who are somewhat marginal to the mainstream conversation (often conservatives). Richard Reeves’ new book on the topic, Of Boys and Men, is different in that, while it covers much of the same ground, it’s from a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, the most establishment center-left think tank. Which makes it a mainstream book.
Institute for Family Studies (ifstudies.org)
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bouriquetreplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@wdlindsy It’s a fear of poorly educated males who are afraid of being dominated or led by a woman, whether in a relationship, job or government.
That explains the difficulty Kamala Harris (and Hillary Clinton) had in getting males (not just white males) to vote for them, even despite the TV ad by Sam Elliott telling them to “man up” and “Be a man and vote for a woman” produced by the Lincoln Project. -
America is an immature violent country that has never moved on from its Wild West days. Largely terrorised by men, violated by men, ruled by men, corrupted by men, perverted by men, armed by and for men, preached to by men. And now it's telling its young men that they have been emasculated and need to be heard again.???
I would propose that we've heard enough of these male voices over the centuries.
Noteworthy that the religious leader who boldly spoke against Trump in church was Mariann Budde - a woman - and she was right to speak up.
#mercy #uspol #fascism
#trump2025 #trump #toxicmasculinity -
@mastodonmigration
Have his prescriptions been tried? If so did they fail or succeed? If they’ve not been tried it’s early to say they’re flawed. -
Mastodon Migrationreplied to EllenJS last edited by [email protected]
@EllenJS @lucybeahere @wdlindsy @paco
No real opinion. Just passing along some of the critique. The question of how to address this problem is a very interesting discussion and spans the gamet. A lot of the debate is about how much to coddle these young men vs. treat them as miscreants.
Feel like the thing that resonates about this criticism of Reeves is that much of his language is similar to the MRM, which despite the innocuous sounding title is a gateway to a pretty toxic set of ideas.
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@EllenJS @lucybeahere @wdlindsy @paco
Men's Rights Movement
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Godfrey642 last edited by
@Godfrey642 @bouriquet That's right. If you haven't read Heather Cox Richardson's book on how the South won the Civil War and the role a certain mythology of the West has played in making that possible, you might find her book really interesting.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to bouriquet last edited by
@bouriquet Yes, that's right. I very much agree.
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@sb Thank you so much. That's actually how I accessed the article, and I should have noted that for readers of the thread.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to The Sleight Doctor 🃏 last edited by
@ApostateEnglishman @mastodonmigration Excellent analysis. I couldn't agree more.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK last edited by
@vfrmedia @mastodonmigration @paco I wonder if they're discouraging those activities because these influencers cannot, themselves, work on cars/trucks, DIY projects, etc. I always find the gender distinctions many people see re: such activity a little funny, since my father was hopeless at fixing anything that broke around our house, but my mother was talented in doing so. No one can do carpentry, plumbing, electric work, car repairs better than my (gay) husband, too.
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It’s been months since I listened to the conversation with Reeves I linked to. I also, by chance, heard another, elsewhere, later. In neither case did I get a hint that it might make sense to think of him as this sentence from the ADL article suggests: “Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) are a part of the manosphere, a broad set of male supremacist, anti-feminist, misogynist and sometimes violent movements that exist largely online.”
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Mastodon Migration last edited by
@mastodonmigration It's interesting, isn't it, that people tend to construe loss of privilege as deprivation instead of expanding possibilities for everyone. I think of how, growing up in the white South in the Civil Rights period, I saw many bitter white citizens ranting about loss of privilege when people of color gained long-denied rights, and their very ranting and bitter resistance harmed them as much as it tried to harm those obtaining rights at long last.
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Mastodon Migrationreplied to EllenJS last edited by [email protected]
@EllenJS @lucybeahere @wdlindsy @paco
Have no opinion. Just passing along different perspectives. Did not say he was an Men's Rights Activist. Said that the criticism of him is that he adopts a lot of their language and framing. There is a wide array of opinion on how to address this crisis and his prescription is not universally acknowledged. Others think a much harder line that doesn't acknowledge the persecuted male framing is a better way to go.
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@EllenJS @lucybeahere @wdlindsy @paco
To be clear MRA spans a wide array. The article describes the extreme, but something you read about is how the indoctrination into these beliefs is gradually and progressive. That is one reason some reject any prescription that plays into the idea of male victimhood.
It's a super complicated subject and very interesting to read some of the expert literature.
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David Mitchell :CApride:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
Yes, absolutely this
… and not just in the US, young men in Canada are being caught up in this propaganda and being pushed hard to the right. -
Mastodon Migrationreplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by [email protected]
It's not engines and tools in these videos it's fast cars and lots of casual sex that these guys are selling as the aspirational male ideal.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Mastodon Migration last edited by
@mastodonmigration Yes, I seem to recall having seen photos the beyond-odious Andrew Tate has posted of himself with fast cars, women he wants us to think he owns, cigars — all the shibboleths gathered together.
