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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38199 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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I'm flirting with a rather incendiary view.

Over the COVID era and the recent excessive developments in the LGBT movement, I've been looking into radical feminist worldview where my gripes with a lot of society overlaps with some of theirs. At least, a section of theirs. I can't help but think that they are at least partially correct in their analysis of gender dynamics, regardless of the solutions they purport. I also agree with them that men are by default degenerates that need tons of rigorous external tempering to get right. And that access to porn is a bad idea, I've personally seen what crippling porn addiction can do to a man. Now I don't buy into the rest of the grift attempting to promote what they regard as feminine features in men, and indeed such attempts at social engineering can be pretty disastrous. I watched this video last night about what it means to be a man in a sedentary, urbanite lifestyle that doesn't really key into our more primal instincts like before, say, the Second World War. A lot of cult classics like Fight Club and Taxi Driver had already impended signs of a male crisis. Combine with this the growing wealth inequality. The consumption of various media that bring to life our escapist fantasies across all genres like high fantasy or superheroes or science fiction or even highly romanticised high school dramas, actually serves to remind them exactly how mundane our life really is. Going forward, I think it'll only get worse as it festers with no easy solutions. Worse still, we're pursuing the wrong solutions by regurgitating the myth that all behaviour is socialised and not evolutionary, that we could get men to "unlearn" masculinity and "learn" femininity. In the end, such attempts will not only push the rejects over the edge, it might also risk creating more rejects. In many ways, I see Tyler Durdan as the "proto-red pill" media in how the persona gives the rejects what they desire and giving them an opportunity to pursue hightened competition in dominating in actual fights. The more woke the culture gets, and the more progressives freak out over the "red pill media" gaining traction and blame it as the source of "male entitlement" rather than a symptom of something a bit more complicated, the more these rejects' perception of society will overlap with the red pill crowd's. I realise the second part of my comment seems completely contradictory to what I'd said in the beginning, but what I'm trying to say is that radfems are correct in their analysis that the "degenerate phase" is the default phase of men and it requires significant external pressures to correct. Part of the problem could be that young boys being coddled might potentially give way to the mentality that life is a template where a series of events fall into place like they're a given like so: school -> girlfriend -> college -> job -> success. But if the habit of actively working towards your every goal isn't imbibed into you since a very young age, once reality confronts you, you become a doomer and just give up like you could do nothing about it. Like you were just born in the wrong household/class/society/whatever. I don't think the mainstream media is ever going to address this head on without being bogged down by what goes within the overton window of the culture war.

I know its a rather chaotic hodge podge stream of thoughts, but I hope I made sense in getting my point across.

I can feel the emotional appeal of this kind of "men in trouble" narrative, but I don't think it matches empirical reality all that well. Consider one of Fight Club's most famous quotes:

We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

Sounds like a real crisis of masculinity. But where's the data? Male suicides per capita have been largely static or declining in almost all Western countries including the US. Reported mental health issues have increased, but this increase is driven more or less exclusively by worsening mental health in women; male mental health as measured by referrals has been relatively stable over the last twenty years - link to some UK data here.

I feel like this pattern is borne out among my friends and acquaintances too. I'm in my 30s, and I know quite a few women who have had serious mental health crises (usually associated with high stress jobs, especially in combination with parenting), whereas my male friends have mostly thrived, and now are happily ensconced in their careers and having kids. Quite a few of them had rocky spells in their 20s, but that's a normal part of growing up, especially for men where risk-taking is more common.

I don't know why so many right-wing Zoomers are obsessed with the evils of porn. I don't think porn is necessarily a great thing, in the same way that watching loads of TV isn't ideal for you, but I've yet to see anyone blow up their life with (legal) porn, whereas I've known people blow up their lives with alcohol, opiates, cocaine, gambling, and reckless driving, none of which are exactly new (though the opiates are getting worse). And when I look at subreddits like /r/loveafterporn, I'm much more inclined to see the person with the mental illness as being the controlling/BPD or psychodrama-seeking wife who is treating her husband's porn use as an existential threat to the relationship, rather than the poor guy who's jacking off to legal teens behind his wife's back.

More broadly, I think some of the male Zoomer doomerism (Zoomerism?) is just a matter of people looking for a romantic narrative around their gender generation. Which is fine, Palahniuk was doing it for GenX in Fight Club. But absent supporting data, I'm inclined to view it as a narrative rather than fact.

Male suicides per capita have been largely static or declining in almost all Western countries including the US.

OBJECTION! Break it down by age group:

https://sprc.org/scope/age

Suicide among the ages of 15-34 demographic has increased, if there's an overall decrease it is because rates among 50+ demos (i.e. boomers) is decreasing.

But young people killing themselves is, ceteris paribus, MUCH more concerning than older people offing themselves. It should be extremely alarming if there is any significant increase in suicide rates among teens and young adults. And there is. This cannot be shrugged off.

The CDC confirms that the AGE ADJUSTED suicide rate has increased in the past 20 years!

For 2000–2016, the age-adjusted suicide rate increased 30%, from 10.4 to 13.5 per 100,000 population, increasing on average by about 1% per year from 2000 through 2006 and by 2% per year from 2006 through 2016.

For females aged 10–74, suicide rates in 2016 were higher than in 2000.

For males aged 15–74, suicide rates in 2016 were higher than in 2000.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db309.htm

INCREASED 30 fucking percent.

THERE'S the data.

/images/16632506901989577.webp

Thanks for going through the data, I thought something smelled fishy about doglatines post.

Boomers and gen x males suicide rates are dropping and that’s also interesting. I guess when your economic status has never been higher, and you’re thriving and flush with cash looking forward to retirement, life feels pretty good, even if you left society a burning wreck for the youngins

Man, I'm resisting the urge to spew data all over the place in response to that comment because in my research I've concluded that the masculinity crisis, focusing on young men, is WAY WORSE than you'd think if not paying close attention.

I'm giving Doglatine benefit of the doubt that he's arguing in good faith, he probably is!

But, I mean, look at this:

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/10/05/rising-share-of-u-s-adults-are-living-without-a-spouse-or-partner/

The economic outcomes of prime-working-age men differ substantially by partnership status. In 2019, 73% of men without a partner were employed, compared with 91% of partnered men. The gap in employment among women, which is more modest, goes in the opposite direction: 77% of single women held a job in 2019, compared with 74% of women with a partner.

and

In 2019, the median earnings of men without a partner were $35,600, lagging far behind those of partnered men ($57,000).

I have EXTREME concerns about what happens to a nation when the young male population isn't able to 'buy in' to the long-term success of the population, because said nation gives them nothing to live for and doesn't reward their efforts towards improvement. Why should such a man continue to participate and play 'by the rules' and produce wealth and value?

Suicide is just one indicator of this. There are others.

Another likely signal is the popularity of cryptocurrency speculation and reddit's /r/wallstreetbets which is largely dominated by young men literally gambling their life's savings trying to vault out of their shitty current standard of living.

Well, TIL. This is both startling and rather depressing, as 1) I'm somewhat certain that this is the first I've heard of this, and 2) I'm definately in the unpartnered category with little chance of that changing any time soon.

Atleast they try and give a reason as to why this all may be later in the article;

Researchers have considered why this relationship between partnership status and economic outcomes exists, particularly for men. Is it driven by the fact that men with higher levels of education, higher wages and better prospects for the future are more desirable potential spouses? Or is there something about marriage or partnership that gives a boost to a man’s economic outcomes? The research suggests that both factors are at play. Married men earn more because high earners are more likely to marry in the first place. Cohabiting men also receive a wage premium. In addition, marriage or partnership may make men more productive at work, thus adding to the wage premium that already exists.

None of which speak well of possible solutions, though. Christ.

It is still possible to find success on the individual level, the stats shouldn't hamper you from putting efforts into improving your own life!

But its clear that there's something failing in the current system that is showing a strain in the young male population, and I don't like where this is going to take us.

You could also look at the labour participation rate for young men, which is dropping at historically unprecedented rates.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/beyond-bls/mens-declining-labor-force-participation.htm

During the 1996–2016 period, the nonparticipation rate increased the most for younger men of prime working age, those age 25 to 34. In terms of education, the largest increase in nonparticipation was seen among men with the middle levels of educational attainment—those with either (1) a high school diploma but no college, (2) some college, or (3) an associate’s degree.

This links data was from before the pandemic, which likely worsened things even further.

Ooh, how about college enrollment and completion?

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/10/08/the-male-college-crisis-is-not-just-in-enrollment-but-completion/

Although this might not be all that negative, on net.

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