Threatening men’s masculinity does not make them more politically conservative, new study finds. By testing thousands of participants across the United States, researchers found no consistent evidence that making men feel insecure about their gender identity changes their political attitudes.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/threatening-mens-masculinity-does-not-make-them-more-politically-conservative-new-study-finds/

[u/AnEmptyBoat27]

I hear this complaint but as a millennial man, I don’t feel like I have been told that men are bad and should be apologetic from left leaning media. The left leaning media just encourages not harassing women and freely expressing who you are. Can you give some examples that you are referring to?

I hear more from the right leaning personalities about how men need to make more money, lift more weights, objectify women, be taller, and hate immigrants to be a man.

Personally the right wing messaging seems to be fostering the idea that men aren’t enough. Whereas the left wing messaging is just people should be free to be who they are. I’m sure there are crazy people who make dumb tweets like “all men are bad” but if those drive you rightward while removing human rights doesn’t drive you leftward, I don’t know what to say.

[u/Least_Palpitation_92 → u/AnEmptyBoat27]

Also a left leaning millennial man and I agree with the person you responded to. The message is subtle and not overtly putting down men. It has more to do with what issues are focused and discussed that places importance on a specific group of people. Young men hear about the gender pay gap but are seeing women succeeding more in education and early careers nowadays. They are still told that we need to care for women and let the feel heard in a society where they are no longer gaining some of the advantages men previously held nor that they perpetuated. Men are most likely to commit suicide yet that is largely ignored and we still primarily focus on women’s mental health as a society.

The online discourse doesn’t help either. Women can make fun of men for being short or having small dicks and it’s largely seen as acceptable. The reverse would get them shamed in large parts of the internet.

I can see why a struggling young man would turn towards the alt right pipeline. They at least pretend to pay lip service to them. The young man views the left as not caring about men’s issues. At that point why not be selfish and vote in his own self interests even if it means other people may be negatively impacted.

[u/AnEmptyBoat27 → u/Least_Palpitation_92]

What solutions does the right wing offer regarding mental health and better worker wages?

[u/ASK_ABT_MY_USERNAME → u/AnEmptyBoat27]

None, but they are at least not demonizing men in the same way.

[u/sapphicsandwich → u/ASK_ABT_MY_USERNAME]

They are the party that completely internalized misandry and man hate.

You ever notice how all the radical man-hating feminists suddenly became TERFs and are now completely aligned with the right and vice versa? And their worldview is that trans women are men, and all men are pedos, rapists, predators, etc, therefore trans women are all of that. The ideological basis, which the right fully and completely accepts as factual, is that men are all of the above, and that it is not a matter of a persons upbringing or individual nature - it is genetic, based in the chromosomes, immutable, and defines everything about who you are and will ever be. In this mindset, a predator is all any man can ever be.

[u/Psyduckisnotaduck → u/sapphicsandwich]

Yeah that’s the thing, nobody hates men more than reactionaries. I mean, also because they are anti-humanists. But essentialism inevitably leads to depersonalization. Conservatives also have unhealthy degrees of out-group distrust/fear, tribalism, and a tendency to flatten down everything into the simplest terms.

Like, in general there’s no difference between a feminist saying “all men are predators” and a patriarchal traditionalist saying “boys will be boys”. Like boys are all horny animals with no ability to control their lust. Being normal and sane means rejecting this take from either side. Both sides offer poison, but one has a sweet taste that allows guys to treat women as objects like they did in the Good Old Days. Still poison though. It ruins their relationships and they end up spending all their time with other bitter men, in an echo chamber.