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Fringe ideologies attract fringe people
(hexbear.net)
This is what happens when we dont have basic rights like universal healthcare or stable jobs. And the "lesser evil" political party has nothing to offer besides vague phony optimism.
More and more people are being pushed to the fringe right due to the failures of capitalism.
We need better.
I have a hot take. This person is not entirely wrong. I do think men to a certain degree have been ignored or vilified. In some cases it is rightfully justified however every unjust case adds to the fringe and outcast. I think this thread is a good example of this as most comments are thinking with emotion and calling this person childish or someone with no claims to 'birthright' (I'll admit it sounds stupid to me too). As for hobbies I will say that games for example have gotten worse. Which could be due to 'woke' being added in or more likely due to shitty companies making worse games with diverse themes hastily slapped on to hide its problems. Rather than addressing this in a balanced manner critics are told to grow up or that the games are for 'modern audiences' (basically the same story repeated in other hobbies. No wonder they are defensive). And most importantly I think men have lost their original role in society as the providers. This isn't a bad thing as more equal is more good, but it leaves a large portion of the population with no purpose and a general feeling of being lost. If things are to change we should be open to finding and considering other possibilities to convince young men to pursue, rather than heading down the path to extremism. Maybe work towards a more frictionless situation to avoid such a massive divide.
Tldr; I think by shutting this down without any consideration is part of what contributes to this rampart extremist crowd.
Part of the problem is that we haven't really progressed towards equality. There are plenty of women workers, yes. Not sure if it's 'more' than before, taking into account all types of paid work, nevermind all the unpaid work. But women are often still seen in the workplace primarily as women and will be pushed out quicker than you can blink as soon as a 'women's issue' comes up.
Unfortunately, women are still expected to do 'women's' work. If the are in paid employment, they rarely get time off for childcare, child illness, school pick up, maternity leave, the menopause, etc. It's either cut down hours if the employer will allow it or leave work. If women rarely get that kind of time off, it's worse for men who don't want the women in their lives doing all the housework, etc. Men in a 'nuclear family' can try to 'support' their wives but the system will beat them back into submission as the patriarch. Due to gender pay gaps and the cost of living, the choice between who cuts down their hours or stays at home is a superficial choice.
Men still generally are treated as if they're the breadwinner. But they have none of the opportunities and even the good ones who question the patriarchy will run face first into a brick wall unless they or their partner is already highly privileged.
GOOD post
Death to America
I pretty much agree with this sentiment. However its a stance that's a fallacy. Deciding that the first problem isn't solved yet isn't a reason to completely dismiss other issues, as all that does is create a new problem generations later. My concern is people are too quick to shut down what others feel even if rationally its not a valid stance, rather than trying to educate or understand. It is true after all no one is 100% right 100% of the time. That includes you and me.
As for Mr death to america, I think you underestimate the importance of not treading over things that feel important to others. Just because you may not care doesn't mean that it won't matter to them. Basically I would say individuals like you are some of the forefronts of pushing people further and further apart, and I would implore you to reconsider this approach.
Hmm, I wasn't responding to contradict what you said so much as to add to it. Maybe there is a partial disagreement. Let me unpack it.
To put it another way, men can't be free until women are free and vice versa. I was trying to explain the problem that men face and recognising that its root lies in the very ways and structures that privilege men and through which women are oppressed.
Here's one contradiction. It may seem like privilege to be paid more – until that gender pay gap becomes the reason why a man must become the breadwinner in a household that is single-income by necessity, e.g. where childcare costs more than one partner's salary. In this situation, the man has an immediate and obvious interest in demanding a higher wage. If that comes at the expense of higher wages for women, however, the problem will simply compound for man and woman. (We need to think about abstract classes, here, unless we pretend that the example mother-father couple work at the same place.)
It's only gendered friction if the participants are dead-set on upholding gender norms. Otherwise, gender is an antagonistic relation but it is one that can be undone by different genders working together. The antagonism can be switched from that between genders to that between classes (recognising that gender is class). (I've partially opened up the rhetoric, here, because I want to come away from a dichotomy of man/woman – i.e. adding in scope for more genders)
What this means for our alienated gamer-boy is complex (I'll run with that as a stand-in for men attracted to the (alt-)right). I think we're in agreement that telling him to F-off for being/becoming reactionary isn't a viable solution. The expletive may be needed, don't get me wrong, but it should be delivered constructively and it should come from close friends if possible so that it's clear to the gamer that it comes from a place of love. Otherwise, it may push them further to the right.
The fuller solution – and I think this generally accords with your comment but it wasn't clear from mine – is to find a way to reach alienated gamers to explain that all the things they're complaining about are (a) terrible things to complain about (e.g. respecting women) and if they are suitable things to challenge (e.g. shallow tokenism), then (b) if they want things to improve they should recognise that it will not be possible through reaction.
Improvement can only come through anti-racist, anti-imperialist, feminist socialism. Luckily, that is also the solution for giving dignity back to the alienated gamer. There may even be a way, by addressing the way that studios do 'woke', to influence the ideas that will encourage the masses to demand revolution.
If men want to be free they better work to dismantle the patriarchy because it does not serve their interests. The work to free everyone from patriarchy cannot fall on the shoulders of women alone.
PS: A caveat— I've not discussed the point at which a gamer's rejection of a game, etc, is simply it's lack of boobs, nor the problem that someone describable as a gamer is already too far gone. I think most people can change but some cannot and will not. Different strategies will be needed for that demographic. And I'm not really talking about how to engage with randos on the internet.
Hey, you hit the nail on the head. I guess I was reading into the comment wrong lmao. Thanks for bothering to clarify your original reply :).
Men are ignored and vilified because of the patriarchal systems that are created to serve them; specifically ones are rewarded for viewing society as a zero-sum game with other people; especially women and minorities; as stepping blocks to power. Did all men participate and create this? No. Do all men inadvertently benefit from this? Somewhat.
So, in order to deal with these problems...it takes a huge chunk of self-reflection. It takes a lot of criticism; accepting it from others and actually taking time to do it to yourself. What's the old saying? You can lead a horse to water? That most certainly applies here. You can try to be a constructive, deal with the problem gently; but a good chunk of these types are irredeemably in the "women-hating, blame-all-minorities" national libertarian phase.
"I will say that games for example have gotten worse. Which could be due to ‘woke’ being added in or more likely due to shitty companies making worse games with diverse themes hastily slapped on to hide its problems." Concorde wasn't bad because of woke or diverse themes. Concorde was bad because it was a shit game. Most of these games are just shit.
"Rather than addressing this in a balanced manner critics are told to grow up or that the games are for ‘modern audiences"" Companies not listening to consumers? Say it ain't so. Critics in this field are also usually hopped up on national libertarian bullshit. If they're using "woke" and "diversity" as angles to critique instead of the actual gameplay/mechanics itself, then they have an obvious agenda.
"And most importantly I think men have lost their original role in society as the providers. This isn’t a bad thing as more equal is more good, but it leaves a large portion of the population with no purpose"
“The word Familia did not originally signify the ideal of our modern philistine, which is a compound of sentimentality and domestic discord. Among the Romans, in the beginning, it did not even refer to the married couple and their children, but to the slaves alone. Famulus means a household slave and familia signifies the totality of slaves belonging to one individual. The expression was invented by the romans to describe a new social organism, the head of which had under him wife and children and a number of slaves, under Roman paternal power, with power of life and death over them all.” ― Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
"If things are to change we should be open to finding and considering other possibilities to convince young men to pursue"
We do. We have. I'm GenZ. We don't shut down these things without consideration. You're on a communist shitposting instance; none of these GenZ "right-wing males" are on here. Generally, we will vocalize disgust or make memes mocking them because this isn't a space to convert twitter-terminally-online warhammer fans who think woke means different skin colors. Most of that work we do in real life, with our neighbors/community or at the organizations we work in. As one user said...this is the "bar that communists go after a meeting".
I do think you make valid points yet I would hesitate to say all men benefit from the patriarchy as I personally know individuals who have had it about as bad as it gets, from having a single mother to low income and bad education and being forced to be a breadwinner for the family just to survive. Is this the norm, no but patriarchy is also not the end all be all, and pretending it is would be a disservice to those who are in the worst situations. Its no wonder the voter demographics for right wing young men were overwhelmingly of the lower income and uneducated sector. (Again this would be valid for women as well, but pretending someone's problems don't exist is sure to win their support...)
You hit the nail on the head for concord and I absolutely agree about the agenda, however the industry is not clean with sbi and other degenerate problems that lead to identity politics and such being dragged in. So they cannot be dismissed as just companies being bad, there are definitely individuals who misguidedly defend and propogate this due to feeling they owe the game for including diverse themes. The solution to this I don't know, but attacking critics of it hardly helps those who have watched franchises from their memories die a painful death. As a show of faith I would say a game that does diversity well is Metaphor Refantazio. They don't make their characters unlikeable to fit a narrative but they heavily talk about discrimination and heavy topics without it feeling forced. So maybe figure out how they managed it and try and replicate it?
I do appreciate your quote by Engels, I've never heard of it but its a very interesting factiod, so thanks :) and you're right. I'm preaching to the bar, but I was pretty surprised at how one-sided it was, about as bad as twitter sometimes. So yeah, I just wanted to provide a different perspective.
I don't get why everyone in gaming has to be so obsessed with the brand new stuff. It's so expensive paying $70 for the latest whatever, and that's before adding the "battle pass" and DLC and having to upgrade your PC or go for a new console.
Dudes have literally tens of thousands of games that cater to them available right now across decades of hardware and consoles!
No one is forcing you to play the new Dragon Age... go play Sonic. Or Peggle. Or read a book?
fuck that, anybody who's become even 1% misogynistic because of the change in quality in fucking video games should be thrown in prison
Death to America