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Satiate this with combat sports? A young man might feel generally better if he goes to a martial arts gym twice a week. I sure did.
Nothing has been hit as hard with the istphobe hammer than groups of men trying to compete with each other in physical activity. The horse's mouth will plainly tell you that such things are rooted in white supremacy and that anyone who lifts weights is inherently suspect of being far right.
There is even some truth in this, in that such groups of competitive men would eventually tend to build enough rapport to collectively seek their own group interest. And fix society in the process I might add. But there is no world where intersectionals can tolerate such organization if they want to keep power. And so they can't solve this problem.
Literally who cares what anyone else thinks. If society at large is having a masculinity crisis that likely includes many men who speak on TheMotte. Average testosterone levels have dropped dramatically since the 1980s. Frequent time sitting at computers does us no favors in this regard. Taking up a martial art is one of the best things a man can do to counteract this trend. Learning to be cool-headed in direct physical confrontation goes a long way toward establishing an emotional base for further success.
I'm not saying you should not still do it, but you should mind that people are trying to prevent you from doing it. Otherwise you will end up win weird places, asking yourself how that happened. Ask Enrique Tarrio.
By all means grow stronger and more connected as much as you possiblity can. Just don't advertise it to the Eye of Sauron.
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I am not aware of this being a significant factor at all. Who is saying this and how many people are listening to them?
MSNBC, for one.
The Guardian, for another. Does that count? I understand they're very well left-leaning, but it's atleast a glimpse into what left-leaning individuals are telling each other.
Here's an older opinion article that shows it's not a new trend. A single data point, sure, but a data point is a data point.
Funny enough, this seems to be a theme for her. Here's a much more recent article from the same individual. Money quote: 'The more self-actualised you become, the higher you are on self-righteousness, blaming other people’s problems on their failure to be as healthy as you.' Interesting take, I'll admit.
Was the MSNBC article mocked? Yes. But it's telling it was voiced at all; liberals tend to be more insular with little understanding of how conservatives think. The concerning part isn't wether it's true or not(color me skeptical), the concerning part is that liberals are telling one another that this is a thing.
And the political divide widens.
In the MSNBC article, maybe some dog-whistling there (e.g. "Physical fitness has always been central to the far right.") but that's not the same as saying that "such things are rooted in white supremacy and that anyone who lifts weights is inherently suspect of being far right".
The Zoe Williams articles are closer, though it's "more right wing" rather than "white supremacist". (She confesses to having recommended "every activity and pursuit, every wellness wheeze and rejuvenation exercise the modern world has dreamed up.") And I doubt that she is a sufficient influence to stop "A young man [feeling] generally better if he goes to a martial arts gym twice a week." (The original controversial claim by @TIRM.)
My general model of happiness is that it directly or indirectly comes from hard work to pursue goals that are subjectively meaningful. Exercise slows ageing, helps protect against horrific fates like dementia, aids one's sex life (even if partnered) and many other benefits. A major problem, though, is that it's tempting and popular to think that happiness comes from ease and choice, rather than from striving. Happiness from ease and choice is largely an effect of relaxing from mental and/or physical striving...
Huh, that does sound a bit fascist, I admit, but I am happy to agree with fascists on that much.
The MSNBC article has a photoshop of a German youth rally throwing Nazi salutes with the subtitle 'Physical fitness and violent hypermasculinity have always been central to the far right' as a header to said article.
That's less a 'dog whistle' and more an airhorn going off behind you.
You won't hear me argue against the benefits of exercise, though.
It's association, but association is not always dog whistling. "Punk rock is an important part of skinhead culture" doesn't imply "Punk rock is a skinhead thing."
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I think the istphobes are a small and frankly irrelevant faction. They make a lot of "X is racist/white supremacist" articles. But I have as yet to see the consequences in real life. And I work for a woke corporation.
I may be lucky in some sense not being woke-policed too much. Or maybe the median working professional can say he likes going to the gym and practicing jiu-jitsu and no one has a negative word against it. I've never seen pushback outside of loony articles about how being fit is the fascist aesthetic.
You haven't seen pushback because you're not organizing youth clubs around the practice that may have any political salience.
People who do make the connection and actually try to give people structured lives based on this stuff get shellacked in the media. Who can forget what happened to Peterson for suggesting exactly this?
I think that Jordan Peterson was shellacked for things other than "men should be physically active". I am in the UK, not the US, and certainly not in the deep Blue parts of the US where wokestupid dominates the culture, but over here youth sport (for both sexes, and people are entirely comfortable with the fact that you get more natural interest from boys than girls) is a motherhood-and-apple-pie issue and the main reason why we don't get more of it is that it is politically impossible to say no when some idiot says "Did you know that you could divert even more resources from actually providing youth sport to generating a paper trail proving that the parent-volunteers aren't paedophiles?"
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It's a matter of the cart and the horse. To achieve what you suggest, it'd first be necessary to socially normalize the practice of groups of young single men banding together and visiting martial arts gyms that exist to serve only them. Which...well, I think you get my point.
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