This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
For this not to apply to the men you are talking about they must be psychologically healthy. Just cause they are willing to compromise with a different way of living, doesn't mean that they are happy and fulfilled doing so. Are the men you are referring to psychologically healthy?
Both those who were successful and lost it and those who weren't to begin with, neither are psychologically healthy.
Generally, when I am saying more successful than women, I am not referring to the atypical men like the one the OP is about.
I concede that this kind of careerism is rare in general and among men in particular. But both for OP and for men on average, success is related with self worth in a way more fundamental than for women. They are also judged in that manner, as you also have done.
Reddit has two selection effects. First it has more unsuccessful people around due to being the people more likely to spend plenty of time in such discussions.
And obviously it probably had even originally some leftist bias but became very leftist due to the moderators purging dissent.
It is part of leftism to signal opposition to gender roles and also to conform with discrimination in favor of women and against men. Leftists are more likely to live contrary to gender roles and lets assume that is a worse way to live your life as it goes against part of your biological programming and against behaving in a manner conductive for fulfilling success for the individual and collective. That might be a reason why the left shows greater prevalence of mental illness.
You are judging these men you mentioned negatively for example.
I can't judge things from your anecdotes. You could very well be self serving there. I definitely find your general perspective self serving in favor of women and against men since in responses to opposing discrimination for women, and into deflecting with the situation as huge (i.e associated with most) amount of men being content without success. And how it is because of women that men care about success.
With the implication being that we shouldn't care about pro women discrimination.
Men abandoning their gender role is something that can change. And same applies to women.
We should also be concerned about the effects on society in general, rather than caring only about men or women as individuals.
And we have societies that are failing, in fact irredeemably so as they can't even sustain their own demographics with bellow replacement rate which alone is a huge issue, are promoting an ideology of self hatred and cultural self destruction, fail to protect their borders as they are replaced by foreigners who retain foreign identities and hostility to the natives, and the rise of authoritarianism in favor of very delusional excessive tribalism for all sorts of sexual or other identities and in favor of the current course and against opposing or modifying it.
The trend of males who don't participate much in society has also increased as has general lack of dating and sex among both men and women.
The above fundamentally proves the lack of legitimacy of the "cope" mentality and the current direction of society. Things need to change, and the obvious template to change things towards is the one with the more workable mores of before. Although we can retain aspects of modernity and going back to say the norms of some previous decades would be retaining plenty of influence from feminism for example.
I don't object to consider not going to far in one or the other direction, but we are too far in the feminist direction today. The female perspective and way of thinking is also too pervasive. It isn't acceptable to let things persist as they are.
Yes, male self worth is related to their relationship with good women. Ideally as a team men and women make each other better. Men and women having complimentary role is how good relationships work and society benefits from.
There are other things going on of course, men care about their hobbies and this can also be steered in a more pro social and pro individual men direction, or in a direction that is less so. Maybe men by nature as more obsessive over things than people are more prone to the influence of certain superstimuli?
So do you support, or object to institutional discrimination in favor of women?
Much of liberal/left wing discourse is deflecting from real problems and real solutions by complaining about the far right or when the issue has to do with feminism and male/female issues, the deflection is just to complain about low social status men and their conclusion is to do nothing. The liberal agenda being an oppositional agenda to right wing or pro male changes or critiques. This agenda can be supported also for directly tribal reasons. We would be better off with less one sided complaining about men.
What should be done in your view?
More options
Context Copy link