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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, there's an inherent conflict between what institutions want people to want, and what individuals want for themselves. No one wants to a worker bee, but we can't all be the queen.
For a "role model" that is actually attainable for normal people in society, what about Homer Simpson? He has many, many flaws. He's dumb, fat, uneducated, bald, loses his temper, borderline alcoholic, eats like a pig, and lazy at his job. Nonetheless he's a good guy who loves his family and holds down the same job for his whole life, which provides enough for his family to have a nice house and two cars. He's not a very good father, putting very little time or effort into it, but he still does it which seems better than just never having kids at all because "it's too much work." He's vaguely Christian, in the sense that he doesn't really know or care about the bible, but he does shows up to church once a week and occasionally asks God for help when he can't think of anything else. He doesn't really agree with his daughter Lisa on any of her leftist political views, but he's willing to support her and seems to accept that she's smarter than he is. He gets dumb ideas on how to make money, and they never work, but he still has fun trying them and going on adventures with his friends. He has a wife who loves him, and seems generally happy with his life. It doesn't take much to keep him happy either: He's pretty happy with just his average wife, weird kids, cheep beer, cheep junk food, and watching junk TV or hanging out at the dive bar with his work friends.
That seems like a role that could actually work for society, instead of holding up some impossible ideal (rich famous movie star), castigating them as monsters, or expecting them to live as a silent sexless "ally."
I don't think that's better at all. The kids whose parents put no effort in generally grow up to be a serious drain on society.
For Homer it's not like he's completely no-effort. He does occasionally do things for them like buying Lisa her saxophone, or going to Bart's parent-teacher conferences. Plus he has Marge as a full-time homemaker. It's just that he's happy to let them do their own thing most of the time while he watches TV or whatever.
But yes, of course you have to make some effort as a parent or it turns very bad.
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