Can Parents Prevent Their Sons From Sliding to the Right?
Can Parents Prevent Their Sons From Sliding to the Right?
It might feel dangerous to let a teen explore reactionary and unformed pseudo-ideologies. But no one should get canceled at the dinner table.
I enjoyed this article
I will say it’s very easy to accept that victim attitude. I did. I don’t any longer, I’d consider myself a humanist with the belief we need to make society better for everyone.
I’m going to whine for a bit, I’m in my mid 30s now, and when I was in high school social media was new and Facebook was pretty much at its peak. I don’t know what growing up is like for kids these days, but I do know my 11 year old nephew is like the kids in the article and he knows all about “red-pill” alpha/beta/sigma shit (but not how incorrect it is).
As a teenager it felt like being a white straight male meant I was being pushed backwards to make room for helping push women forward (I saw felt like because sometimes how somethings feels outweighs reality).
As an example, to pay for university I went through lists of scholarships and almost all of them were focused on minorities and women, and so I was ineligible. I worked 30+ hours a week after school school and I worked really hard to get up to an A average so that I could get some scholarships to help afford tuition (and I still ended up with debt). It was a really tough time and I was filled with fear about the future. At the time I felt that that I had to put in more effort to get less than my peers did because I was a straight white boy. My girlfriend at the time ended up getting so many scholarships and bursaries that she could afford her tuition, and her residence, and fun money leftover, and she never had to take on any debt to pay for her even more expensive university. I only got one scholarship (not for lack of trying) based on my grade cutoff, and I ended up taking on debt which took years to pay off. It felt very unfair by comparison, and I know her experience did not reflect the average, but that’s what I saw as my comparison.
I also was a frequent 4chan user at the time, I joined for the memes, but there was a lot of commentary about how the education system had been changed to favour girls and that when it was more adversarial boys performed better. By then the statistics had already swung so that more girls were getting accepted into university, and they were more likely to graduate. I still have no idea how true the things I read on 4chan were vs reality, they definitely excluded the narrative of sexism against women in the old days, but they felt real, they matched with real statistics, and it was a cohesive narrative. I got sucked in, and I was bitter, and I saw all the ways in which I was the victim.
Obviously I never experienced any of the downsides of being a minority or being a woman. I never got the perspective of why things were harder for them and why they deserved help. I only saw there was help for them while I was struggling to keep afloat. I only saw the still present expectations on men to be providers, all the bad sides of patriarchy without knowing what patriarchy was (except meaning male and bad). Also at the time, there was stuff like anti-rape pledges that schools were making boys take, and it sorta felt like being treated like a criminal for crimes you knew you would never commit.
Anyways, I’ve meandered a lot. The discourse has evolved but I still don’t think men’s issues get the discussion they need, and I don’t think we’ve seriously focused much effort on the question of “how do we help boys too”.
Now that alarm bells are ringing and it feels like we’re still not adequately discussing men’s issues, and sadly it feels like the only people who actually are, are those alt-right red-pill influencers (who are massively warping the truth to fit a narrative) because they’re not afraid to get labelled over it.
And just to sign off, over 15 years after high school I now see a lot of the privilege I actually had, I’m more aware of the realities minorities and women face, and I know I was a whiny teenager with blinders on to all of the benefits and luck I actually had.
I remembered being the only Asian kid in school on Long Island. It was awful. The constant fights/bullying I was in were so frequent that my parents sent me to defense training.
My teachers would put me down and one of my teachers even physically abused me. The vice principal saw it and didn't do anything either.
But I felt privileged because I wasn't the only black kid in my school. He was my best friend. He had it way worse.
My point is that it is all about perspective. My life sucked because I knew what my friend was going through.
The scholarship thing, and lack of social support for men in general, is still a massive problem IMO. I'm all for lifting those up who need it, but many people, myself included, were too "rich" to get financial aid, too poor to afford anything other than community college (which is great, but it has challenges of its own), and too straight and white and male to quality for 95% of scholarships. I'm very aware I inherently have some level of privilege, and I'm sure there's even more I'm unaware of, but the single greatest contribution to your chance of success in life is the zip code you were born in.
I'm extremely privileged and make more than enough money for a comfortable living, but the road here was very difficult, and it's pretty damn easy to see why young boys are leaning right so hard. I'm left as fuck and id even be considered left wing in Europe, but the left in the US has alienated the fuck out of young men and provides almost 0 role models for them. The constant media messaging and sentiment of men are evil, they need to go die in wars, and #killallmen on social media being celebrated is super damaging. If I didn't end up decently successful and couldn't take a step back and get a top down view of everything I don't know if I'd end up nearly as left as I am.
It's only recently I've seen some sentiment change around this, but it's going to take a long time as all social change does. We really ought to stop telling young boys what to not be and instead SHOW THEM what they should strive to be. This is why people like Andrew Tate get such a cult following. Despite being an absolute dog shit human being, he focuses on uplifting oneself and provides an ideal person who you should strive to be. By comparison that positive male role model who young boys should strive to be is completely absent on the left and leaves many boys, myself included at the time, lost as fuck and surrounded by what they should not be instead of what they should.
I really get this feeling. I remember at uni seeing adverts for scholarships and internships from huge and exciting companies that, in only a few more words, essentially said 'if you're anything other than a straight white male, sign up!'. I won't speak to the value of effectiveness of these programs, but I can really understand how that could create a feeling of unwantedness that the alt right tries to give an answer for.
the morning light hit my stove’s greasy backsplash in just the right way to reveal a finger-traced drawing of a dick ’n’ balls spraying a few fingertip-dots of jizz.
Us mere mortals can only dream of writing this perfect, for indeed here we have an example of prose from an artist at the pinnacle of the form.
"Us" can't dream, but we can.
I think it's hilarious that his praise of prose contains errors, perhaps intentionally, but pointing out the irony of such errors causes people to react negatively with down votes.
It's like you're the only one who got the joke and everyone else is mad they didn't understand.
The appeal of a grievance-based identity makes it hard to convince straight white boys that they in fact have plenty going for them, and that they have no reason to feel aggrieved.
Yeah, but they do have reason to feel aggrieved. Patriarchy is fucking boys and men over too.
Yeah this part stuck out to me too. It's really difficult to see all that's left on the table when we refuse to acknowledge that boys are absolutely still forced into damaging masculine roles.
Grievance-based identity… Interesting that it is attributed by the author to straight white males; on the right “oppression olympics”, i.e., grievance-based identity, is attributed predominantly to the left.
You do bring up an interesting point there. It does make me wonder how much each “side” is attributing behaviours to strawman versions of the other vs not seeing what they have themselves.
I personally strongly related to the article, I think there’s a crisis in finding meaning in masculinity these days. I think the red pill alt-right types are promoting an easy but unhealthy version of masculinity (fulfilling yourself by status symbols, or min-maxing something, or really falling into the alpha/beta/sigma nonsense).
I’ll add to this the lack of male only spaces throughout life. There used to be scouts, boys sports, working men’s clubs, veterans clubs etc. Almost all of it is mixed now because that was sexist. The opposite has happened in female areas with charity leagues, coding clubs, sports, gyms, etc.
Yeah, seeing this in the article:
"It might feel dangerous to let a teenager argue that sexism works both ways"
made me hesitate a bit. Any man with a decent chunk of life experience knows that this sexism cuts both ways. Still, I sympathize with the primary message. I wouldn't want my children to fall into extremist politics either.
At the same time providing the fundamentals of critical thinking is becoming more and more challenging with how many different actors want to hijack our emotions for their own purposes and bypass rational thinking.
What is the need for male-only spaces? I can see the need for positive male role models for sure, and those would've often been found in those male-only spaces you mentioned. But what is lacking from not having them be male-only?
I came to say the same as many other replies. For older men, it doesn’t matter as much, they can simply create their own spaces, but for boys they really can’t, they are pushed into mixing in most situations. Boys are more boisterous, so need the organized outdoor spaces. They can’t get that male space from sleepovers like girls at that age do.
For another example, think of how a group of teenagers act on their own, now how does that change when you add an adult? It is obviously unhealthy for them to always be around an adult.
To add to this - the most important thing is the community. Yes, girls are given special organizations. But the cause of this rightward lurch is a world wide withdrawal from community. We're not spending time together and calling each other out on their shit. Rightwing nutjobs used to be known to be rightwing nutjobs and they were called out for being that way. They knew what they were and they knew the community disapproved. Now everyone is siloed at home on the internet with no social fabric to error check them and tell them that they are being pushed towards nutjobism.
I had conservative parents and I might have grown up the same... but I slid WAY to the left which I attribute to one very specific and pivotal event: watching the news and protests around Trump getting elected while I was sitting in a McDonald's in Thorncliffe Park. Until that day I was pretty indifferent to politics and stuff, but this had me question: what injustice in this world led to this crazy person to take power?
Teach empathy.
Make them the helpers.
There is a problem that creates a hostility towards feminism as it stands now and minorities.
Look at how positive discrimination has progressed.
The goal is roughly 50/50 representation. But to get there from where we were we have positively discriminated in favour of girls and women.
Desirable entry level jobs do not end up in a 50/50 hire pattern because the starting point was skewed to begin with. Hiring over represents women.
Leadership and management often needs a correction from 100% male to 50%.
That means promotions favour women.
But it goes further back. Educational programs, university places etc. As well as other areas of life. Sport funding, healthcare interventions.
All these areas we're correcting for social injustice against women and we aren't impacting those who are already at the top of the ladder.
Instead we're disproportionately helping women up the ladder to eventually get to equality.
That's justifiable looking at society as a whole. I'm not generally against positive discrimination.
But add on to that the same mechanisms to help minorities and you do have a weight of advantages that can lead to an overcorrection or at the very least feel like one.
Then take it another step.
In the UK there was a program which targeted additional funding for disadvantaged children in education. It recognised girls and helped them, it recognised minorities and helped them.
The program was designed to be agnostic and look at demographics and attainment to determine where funding would go.
At the point at which the metrics used to determine funding pointed to white working class boys, after the pendulum had swung, the Conservatives cut funding for it.
There is privilege. There are reasons to correct for privilege and ways to do that to make a more equal society.
But the way we've chosen to get there as quickly as possible has reversed privilege in small, key areas, rather than eliminating it.
In a world where we have a generation that has spent their entire political lives pulling up the ladder. That right wing generation has found support amongst the young in promising to pull up the ladders only put back down for the select few.
The most desirable jobs and areas for social mobility have been targeted for positive discrimination. To try and create representation of the unrepresented as the first step.
There is increasing inequality overall.
There are those who cannot get onto the ladder seeing the left help people not like them. Just because they aren't women and aren't a minority themselves.
The left has fundamentally failed to target root causes of inequality and lack of social mobility.
Who are you going to vote for. The side taking away your privilege while doing nothing for you?
Or the side who promises not to take that privilege from you?
If the left wants young men's votes it needs to tackle inequality and social mobility directly. Otherwise it may be the correct, albeit distasteful, conclusion, that a culture war benefits young white men. After that it's only a matter of cognitive dissonance to justify the harm to society as a whole for personal benefit and young men vote right wing.
he left has fundamentally failed to target root causes of inequality and lack of social mobility.
If the left wants young men’s votes it needs to tackle inequality and social mobility directly.
What are you talking about? The left has found and implemented solutions to those problems (not perfect but better than nothing) in places where the left had power - northern Europe for example.
I'm speaking from an anglocene perspective I admit.
The "left" in the UK and US has had power. But they didn't contradict right wing economic policy from the 80s when they had the chance.
We'll see what they do next time they get a chance but looking at the UK we haven't had a left wing government that would help since the 70s and it's hard to start a conversation about who to vote for by talking about things that happened before someone was born.
The track record of Labour in the UK and the Democrats in the US is not good enough in the living memory of the voters they want to turn out for them.
If the left wants young men’s votes it needs to tackle inequality and social mobility directly.
sure as hell isn't going to be fixed by the right now, is it?
embody the improvement you want to see in the world.
If you're good enough with philosophically questioning and deconstruction of ideas in a non-militant manner, you could deradicalise someone. I could not find the news, but there is a father who deradicalised his son by engaging his son's thoughts. The natural instinct is to quickly react and be angry but father kept questioning where his son got the ideas and explained why they're wrong. The son's view did not change over night but it worked.
I heard of Street Epistemology as a concept to lead those questioning conversations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1e4HZfHSRQ
Hear hear! Meaningful discourse can be very powerful.
people seem to blame boys for everything without realizing how the world has changed.
The main point of the article is how it changed? And women are going left and men right.
still treating them like oppressors
I have a problem with the inherent hypocrisy in this article. The author presents the issue of her sons "sliding to the right" as a problem in itself, rather than explaining why she thinks it is a problem.
If you, as a parent, see a shift in your child's belief system or political preferences as a problem, you need to do some introspection and be able to fully articulate why it's a problem other than "I don't like it."
Because sliding to the right is a problem. If you dont see the problem with the current right than that's a you problem.
Isn't the key words though "the current right"? The right & left of 2003 where both different from today, why would young rightists or leftists grow up to be mirrors of their forbears?
Assuming that just because your son is (for example) whining about video game journalists, that doesn't mean he's automatically going to call for abortion bans in all 50 states. He's a thinking human being with an intact rational faculty, give him some credit.
if you're a person who has any kind of sympathy to queer people, poor people, people of color, women, men, disabled people, immigrants, recognize the verifiable facts of climate change and its effect on our biosphere, are even vaguely interested in a better world, or are just baseline concerned for the health and wellness of your kid, right wing ideologies are self-evidently a problem.
the world that right wing politicians want is bad, the things they think about other people are cruel, and only people who already believe the stupid, evidence poor bullshit right wingers believe would look at the shit online right wing communities get up to and not immediately be concerned for the welfare of their child. i mean, even being a mom is explanation enough. right wing ideologies treat women poorly. its not complicated, and most people reading an article like this are not seriously examining whether or not "equal rights", "feminism", and "human kindness" are things to be debated. they aren't.
You reduced "sliding to the right" to "becoming a racist, sexist, misogynist" and completely missed the point. Rather than dictating to our kids what they should believe, we should teach them principles that will allow them the best chance of choosing correctly for themselves.
Honestly, attitudes like yours are a huge contributor to the rightward shift of young men.
So you didn't read the article? Seems pretty clear to me why they feel like it's a problem and tackle the specific topics.
With all due respect, I think your child deviating from what you’ve tried to teach them is the most natural thing in the world to be concerned about. I don’t think it’s hypocritical.
How many conservative christian parents see their kid not wanting to go to church or reading books like The Selfish Gene and intervene? (I know this is kind of a strawman, but just trying to get the point across that if you shift the perspective to a right wing parent with left wing children, you get kind of the same result).
Besides, I think the author is rather honest with their own beliefs:
For those of us (like me) very firm in our political beliefs, it feels good to stake your position and defend it well. But as adults, we need to figure out a way to help our young people work through confusion without feeling shunned by their own families
The actual issue the author has are: the growing divide between male vs female beliefs seems like a bad thing, and the beliefs that boys are increasingly adopting is increasingly a victim complex.
Giving your children self confidence and educating them also on more philosophical topics is definitely something parents can/should do. The problem arises when parents can't fulfill that task.
I think this article may shed some interesting context and complement OP’s linked article nicely: https://theconversation.com/gen-z-boys-attitudes-to-feminism-are-more-nuanced-than-negative-222532