I think progressives never thought about this because we banked on immigration and demographic change allowing us to win culturally and electorally but the issue is immigrants tend to be overwhelmingly male, that is how Trump won actually he won over a lot of Hispanic,Black,Asian and indigenous men who feel humiliated by a new culture, economy and world.
So what can we do rhetorically and policy wise to win more young men over ?
Idk how do you “sell” being a decent fucking person?
A little out of the blue but I watched an episode of a German cooking show today where strangers are coupled in groups of five for a week and every day one of them has to cook for the rest of them. They then vote who was the best host.
This week was ALL 30-38 year-old straight Dads. Nobody talked about football.
Nobody chestbumped anyone. Nobody was mansplaning anything. Instead, they were all swooning over each others’ cooking skills, making each other cry over how much they love their kids and hugging each other for feeling insecure about their cooking. In other words it was the most realistic and “manly” portrayal of the male reality that I have seen in the media ever.
It’s easy to blame the media and the “culture war” for male alienation but I strongly believe that our perception of ourselves is largely influenced by our peer group’s portrayal in society. In other words: if I feel antagonized, I tend to overreact. If I am being told by Hollywood or social media to “stop being a mansplaning patriarch” I will be imprinted with the very idea to identify as such.
So long story short: non-toxic masculinity needs more representation AND it needs to come from a place of positivity, not judgement or condescension.
Simple. What do young men care about? Getting laid and getting paid. Promise them that, and you’ll get their votes.
You’ll need to use coded language, of course. But using coded language is politicians’ whole job.
I KNOW! Let’s make June Men’s Mental Health month instead of… wait was it again?
You need to make it fun and engaging for them. That is what the far right is doining. You and I might find it reprehensible, but they het som much traction bu having fun and giving young men a purpose and the feeling that they are doing something to netter themselves and their commuity.
How you go about that I dont know. In my local area we are focusing on having fun partiets and going out together as a group instead of just being political nerds in our own little grottos. Som far it seems to be working.
Tl;dr: Have fun visibly and invite them to join you. It takes forever, but at least you have fun while doing it.
Quit trying to make young white men feel guilty for existing. I come from poor white trash. As near as I can tell, my family never benefitted from slavery in any possible way. So fuck you. I dont feel bad about something I didn’t do, no one in my family did, and we aint gonna pay for it.
I don’t know where this “white guilt” stuff comes from. I’m the same demo as you, but never felt that.
Oh boy you surely never were a part of the target then
You are losing the class war, that’s what matters. Not you being young, or white, or a man.
Promote and get behind actual progressive candidates, not corporatist shills like Hillary or Kamala. I like Kshama Sawant because she calls shit like she sees it.
Hasan Piker basically
Education. You will never be able to explain taxes in a way that can counter propaganda if the person is an idiot. You just won’t. And until then it’s an uphill battle.
Talk about issues that affect the working class. Not the white working class, not working class men, just everyone who makes a living by drawing a wage. Progressive movements are formed by solidarity, and we have more in common with other working class people than any of the politicians or business leaders who set the tone of this debate.
Perfect.
Well it would be a good starting point if we actually had progressive politicians. The Democrats lose because they have no substantive platform for actually helping people because doing that would go against their donors. To be clear, it’s the same for Republicans. There’s a reason why the government just ping pongs between the two parties. The only reliable base either party has is the one that’s more culturally aligned with them, whatever that means at the time.
If they literally ever credibly ran on basic issues like housing, food, healthcare and the elections were fair, they would win. But they don’t, because they can’t, so they will never have consistent support.
Christ - some of these replies are exactly what a lot of women talk about when we say that Lemmy has a misogyny problem.
Blokes really don’t recognize how much harder shit actually is for women, overall. It would be lovely to just sit on a bench for 5 mins without a stranger coming to chat me up, or if people would stop crediting men for my work when they don’t even ask for it.
I don’t think you understand how politics works in a democracy.
A good politic should not be sold.
People should chose it by themselves because that’s the best thing for them.
Ok.
Have fun losing.
Wining is not sitting in a particular chair. Much less having some asshole that doesn’t care about you sitting on a chair because they convince you to vote them.
Wining is having a society worth living in.
- Erect such high standards of moral purity that you cannot possibly win elections.
- Lose elections.
- Complain about how those in power never make anything better.
- Maintain your sense of moral superiority, since if you never have power, you can never fuck up.
- Win elections without caring how you win.
- Elected representatives do nothing for you , because they only care for wining and they don’t even know how to improve people’s lives.
- Proceed lo lose elections to the worst opposition candidates because wining without substance left people out of any hope for the electoral system.
- Left wing party straight up disappears as it has happened in several european countries because voting for them and make them win achieved anything.
People regularly vote against their own interests
And the best way to vote against your interest is vote just by following propaganda instead of thinking by themselves what they should do.
Thinking on “how to sell” instead of “what do they need from us” (or even better “what do they tell us to do”) is setting a path for people not thinking and just following propaganda, which makes them more susceptible for falling into other parties propaganda.
The path for good democracy is not enlightened despotism. Is not the representatives telling the people what to do, is the people telling representatives what to do.
That’s why it’s important to be able to convey your message so people know what you are trying to accomplish with the 2000 page bill
And what if what you try to accomplish or the way you try to do it is not the way they want it done?
A common problem with the left movements these days is that they put more effort in convincing that in listening, because everyone who becomes politically active automatically thinks they know better than everyone else.
people who learn about politics think they know more about politics
Yeah no shit
Why you change my words?
Anyway, they think they know, but they don’t. They don’t know better than anyone else, due the nature of politics their opinion on matters should not have any more weight than the common folk, that’s why we chose democracy as a form of government anyway. If we do not believe in the fact that everyone opinion matter the samy I don’t know why would we pretend it does, let’s stablish an aristocracy and be done with it.
Everyone’s opinions don’t matter the same. If I take the time and energy to understand a topic, my opinion has more weight than Joe Schmo who looked it up on Facebook. As Isaac Asimov said:
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’
Then you don’t get elected…
What I find funny is I have the exact opposite opinion that the left spends more time trying to appeal to voters than actually communicate what they are trying to do. So we end up with things like 250B to boost American manufacturing that got completely ignored
Maybe no political party should have more than 5% of the votes. The fact that 50% of the population could agree on all issues doesn’t feel possible to me.
Help them to break down. Encourage them to be soft and show them that that softness is strength. So many of these young men are like this because they feel alone. We need to bring them together in positive ways.
I don’t follow the media and the debate where you live, but over here left leaning politicians and media tends to frame it as: women, minorites etc have a problem. Men are the problem.
You’re basically pushing any undecided man over to the right.
liberal politicians and liberal MSM frame it that way, because they have nothing else to offer but toxic culture wars.
Liberal politicians do it because it’s been pushed by the left. It’s how they keep leftists voting more centrally. They take left wing ideas, then water them down enough to appeal for centrist voters. Centrists find common sense ideas appealing, while those on the left get a dog whistle.
I lean quite to the left and have rarely, if ever, heard many boogie-man talking points in this comment thread that people are obsessed over. And in terms of “centrists” equating patriarchy with men, for me it’s an intelligence/education issue, combined with refusal to have real life human contact with women, and, of course, choosing to blame literally the oppressed for all the harm that patriarchy causes them or their fellow men
combined with refusal to have real life human contact with women,
It’s quite possible it’s the other way around on that one. I’ve certainly had periods of my life where I had to branch out pretty far in my social circle to meet women because the things I enjoyed doing are either solo activities or of little interest to women (at least around here). Some of that has gotten better in the last decade or so as nerdy shit has become more socially acceptable and ive built up a more diverse social network for myself but it was a rocky start and if I didn’t get lucky with the people I had around me it could have turned out much worse.
So we should lie?
Men are the problem. The patriarchy, the racism, the discrimination? Men.
And if you are too braindead to understand this, you’re too far gone anyway.
You can’t have a post like this and then wonder “Why do so many men go to the right?”
Maybe men are sick of being painted with a broad brush. We all have our own thoughts, beliefs and feelings.
“the group that lived through obscene levels of violence and abuse throughout dozens of centuries is incorrectly (that part is true) labeling all members of said group as abusers, let me join the group advocating for more abuse” - how the hell does one justify this unhinged statement is beyond me. I would like to clarify, I completely disagree with the comment you replied to, I think it’s deeply incorrect and unfair, in addition to ignorant, but that’s really not grounds forresorting to fascism and treating women as animals. Because if that justification of a minor uneducated subgroup being ignorant was honest, the extreme on the right are soo much more evil.
Troll grade: C-.
Does Trump pay you by the hour or per post?
I’m not payed, I just don’t see a reality where we can improve the world and not mention the hundreds of years of oppression by men at the same time, which, as you already said, will drive away the republicans. So you really gotta start thinking „should we ignore the obvious problem why woman are to this day fighting for human rights so we can find a compromise with Nazis?” and my answer is obviously no.
You’re making an excellent point here. I’ll bring it up at the next Council of Men that we should stop oppressing women. Good thing we figured that out - top notch work!
You should be paid because you’re basically campaigning for the republicans.You don’t drive away any core republican voter, they would never vote D. You drive away the ones who voted democrat last election.
You’re conflating a lot of things here
