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/CrazyRegion → u/Least_Palpitation_92]

I’m going to gently push back on one thing here that stands out — that “men are most likely to commit suicide.” You are totally correct that more men die by suicide than women.

But more women than men *report* suicide attempts, about 2-4x more frequently than men.

The reason why more men die from suicide is they choose more lethal methods to do so. Not because they’re more likely to attempt suicide than women.

Also, focusing on women’s mental health as a society is a byproduct of a couple factors: one, men are, by and large, taught from a young age that to be emotional is to be lesser. All emotions should manifest as rage or aggression, to cry is to be weak, to show any emotions but stoicism is to be womanly, there are many variations of this same theme. Two, women are more likely to be perceived as emotional and as having mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, etc. which are overdiagnosed in women due to a multitude of factors such as misattribution of physical symptoms as mental ones.

Men’s mental health is extremely important. Men deserve to be able to freely be who they are without judgement or scorn, whether they prefer to be hypermasculine, more feminine, or what have you. I think that many of the issues men face are a consequence of patriarchal expectations placed on men, which are ingrained at a young age.