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Notes -
Society vs Male Radicalisation II - Male Role Models/Surely This Time Our Plan Will Work
I was on the internet this week, and I found this:
Labour to help schools develop male influencers to combat Tate misogyny
It is interesting to note that there is an increasing shift towards talking about "role models" for young men and boys as a means of cooling the gender kerfuffle, rather than by repeating feminist talking points at males until they concede as was the case when I was a teenager. The Labour Party, the UK's apparent next government, has come up with policy to reduce the influence of Andrew Tate among schoolboys with the intended aim of safeguarding women and girls. It means to do this by creating counter role models to whom boys can look up to. This would not even the utterly embarrasing 30 year old boomers trying to guess what resonates with children, but would consist instead of older volunteer boys taken from within the same school. This if it is implemented, will have educators select the real life version of Will from Inbetweeners as its senior male role model and think themselves of sound mind for doing so. You are only ever going to get uncool loser types volunteering, and it is the fear of becoming an uncool loser (or worse) that motivates young men to go and consume manosphere content.
Feminism's defenders will counter that there are many existing role models available for men, often listing real or fictional people like Ryan Gosling, Marcus Rashford or Ted Lasso. These men are either fake or literal one percenters whose lifestyle an average young man has no hope of to attaining. This betrays a complete lack of understanding about why men choose the role models they do and how they attempt to emulate them. These role models are deliberately or implicitly chosen as role models for young men by people who aren't young men often because they display qualities that are useful, rather than valued, to society. This is because almost all policy dreamt up by institutions concerning Men and Boys is not to their benefit, but instead to neuter a perceived threat against Women, Girls and the wider society. For every Marcus Rashford, there are multiple Mason Greenwoods or Kurt Zoumas who continue to receive all the signifiers of male success and receive no punishment for any of their transgressions.
It is clear that what educational and social institutions want are meek, inoffensive and productive men who do not question the rules of society. This is in direct contrast to what young men want, which is to be outspoken, to be popular with women, to be socially and economically successful. No role model ever produced or selected by the state could manage this, particularly not when operating under the notion that it must maintain women's liberation, which itself requires the stifling of men. I question for how much longer this approach will be kept in place. There are hundreds of people like Andrew Tate across SM, each ready to teach boys what society is unable to teach them. Educators can more easily dispel Tate because of the sex trafficking offences and because Tate himself is a clown, but people like Hamza, whose lived experience is much closer to the boys he is trying to proselytize to than that of Tate's, they have no counterargument.
I agree with your premise but I disagree with your conclusion. I think it's too far of a jump to say this:
The fundamental flaw with any line of reasoning that puts agency into "educational and social institutions" is that it assumes way too much competence from those "educational and social institutions." The administrators in charge of school boards and government departments do not comb the web to identify thought-patterns that might move society in a dangerous dangerous direction so they can neutralize them with insidious social engineering campaigns. The administrators in charge of school boards and government departments read their Facebook feeds and uncritically absorb whatever their (overwhelmingly left-wing) social circles are talking about.
Accept this premise: Andrew Tate is a Bad Influence on Young Men.
Put five 30-60 year old out of touch midwits in a room and tell them to brainstorm a solution. By 'solution,' what you actually mean is some vaguely pro-social program you can announce to make it seem like you're doing something - the question of whether the problem can be solved never comes up. Also unmentioned are the question of whether the framing of the problem is useful, or even whether the problem exists in the first place. The metric of success is the amount of positive attention generated divided by the cost of the program - or likes/dollar, if you prefer.
What you'll get is something like, "Let's make our own influencer to be a positive influence and counter out the negative influence."
I suspect the reason why this is the case has nothing to do with people not being able to imagine a solution. The obvious ones on the table would get them ran out of the room with the tiki torches if any of them dared to say what it was, because it's antithetical to the progressive agenda.
Progressives can't forward a solution to the problem because they don't have a sensible take on gender in the first place. It reminds me of Thomas Sowell's axiom, "Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good." If the benchmark to judge a successful solution to the problem hangs on whether or not it makes people happy, then you're never going to able to come to a resolution. Most of life is about making your way in the world, doing a thousand things every day that you don't want to do. Tate is a moron in my opinion, but his side of the aisle can provide better male role models than almost anything the left can field.
What are Tate's young followers often drawn to about his message? "Subjugate the bitches, keep them in the kitchen, get that paper and work them muscles out." And it isn't just his message they like. A lot of young men can 'relate' to that message, experientially.
Hard disagree here. That's not what draws people to his message - that IS the message. What draws people to his message, especially young males, is the promised benefits/rewards. Tate positions himself as a teacher who can guide young men out of a state of lack/want/need - what you're describing is how they get there. He's promising young men a way that they can get laid, paid and (more importantly) respected, and his message is resonating precisely because young men can see that following the socially approved pathways will probably result in them becoming losers.
Lifting weights is an activity undertaken not for the pleasure and joy of lifting weights but for the positive outcomes that result - being swole and physically capable. Tate (presumably, I haven't read any of his content beyond that one post from ages ago about how star wars sucks) tells people that "actually, physical instrumentality is important for men and you will have an easier time getting laid and respected if you are in good physical shape" and the message resonates because that's straightforwardly true. At the same time, his message doesn't attract men because he's telling them "you need to keep women in the kitchen" but because he's promising them sexual success (which is incredibly meaningful for young men!).
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Holy shit, that's a good quote. Is it from anything in particular, like a book of his or something?
It's from Is reality optional?.
Thank you!
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