High school boys are trending conservative
High school boys are trending conservative
A popular narrative suggests young people are liberal and getting more liberal. Thus, social media buzzed when a chart surfaced in spring that seemed to suggest 12th-grade boys had become overwhelm…
While many believe young people are becoming more liberal, data shows that 12th grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative compared to liberal. Around 25% of high school seniors identify as conservative while only 13% identify as liberal. In contrast, the share of 12th grade girls identifying as liberal has risen to 30%. Many factors may contribute to this trend, including the rhetoric of Donald Trump which appealed to disaffected young men, and the focus of progressive movements on issues of gender and racial equality which some young men perceive as a "matriarchy." However, most high school seniors claim no political identity, and many boys in high school do not actively discuss
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I keep feeling that there's a disaster being brewed there, the only people paying attention to young boys seems to be the alt right, and there's a need for this which everybody seems to dismiss, every single one of the old style support structures for masculinity have been dismantled over decades, and while they were right to be dismantled all these boys still need the support to actually grow into decent people, and no one is giving it, and these crazies have noticed and are using it as breeding ground for soldiers for their cause. The decent people side must create something for them even if it's to avoid them falling into these dens of craziness.
Exactly. The response among the left seems to be "ha, fuck em" which is a terrible plan
You're confusing the Left with Dems. Dems are not Left. They are squarely Center.
Actually, just don't fuck em.
I'm sure the 25% figure will plummet when they enter the adult world, realise Andrew Tate is just a sad, loud little man who never found a way to proccess his fathers abuse and that imitating him does the opposite of getting you laid.
At least give them a reach-around
That's something I have argued about with my liberal friends often. You don't make allies by telling people that their opinions don't matter, or that they're wrong based purely on their sex or color. The left has been dismissive towards men, no... It has been hostile towards men for at least a decade. Masculinity isn't inherently negative and not all masculinity is toxic. Spreading the belief that it is will only make enemies of people who otherwise would be allies. It is incredibly short sighted to reject normative people and make them feel that they're less important or that there's something wrong with them just based off their birth. Also, that is the exact same mentality that the left supposedly wants to overcome, but rather than working towards its end, they've just shifted the target. To be clear, I say "liberal" and "left" and that may cause an assumption that I'm a right-wing conservative. I am not.
You also have issues where high-school educated men have not seen any major benefits to any typical liberal or conservative ideology within the past generation.
On the conservative end, the jobs that the men would have gone into have seen wages and benefits stagnate or drop.
On the liberal end, the status of white men in society has dropped to a more level playing field with class status or wealth being a more defining factor, something which they don't have.
Alt-right conservatives are addressing the economic issues by restricting the work force (anti-immigration) and increasing the jobs in resource extraction (trashing all environmental laws). On social issues, the alt-right head of family is the man.
Leftists could address these issues better by supporting unions more.
I'm wearing a tshirt that I bought to support a union drive now, actually. Over the weekend, I spotted a table with volunteers supporting the UPS drivers and walked up and asked how I could show support. I poster went in my window. I was wearing a sticker supporting Amazon workers trying to unionize at the time, which they noticed.
It's a very unique time during my lifetime where union activity seems to be on the rise. A local Trader Joe's recently formed a union so I went there and individually approached workers and congratulated them. I had a strong sense of who voted yes vs no based on their responses. The ones that were please were really appreciative of the support.
Push hard for unions. Show support for unions in other industries. This is a moment where we might be able to show regular people that we can have collective power.