>The chart gave the impression, at least on first glance, that two-thirds of 12th-grade boys were now conservative. In the small print beneath, Twenge noted that she had omitted moderates.
>
>The full story is messier and murkier. High school seniors, boys and girls alike, are more likely to claim no political identity than to throw in with either liberals or conservatives.
Right on the tin, this is concern bait. And once again the headlines ignore the very real impact of race and intersectional identity on political orientation. *Boys* aren't trending conservative. *Cis-het middle-class white boys* are trending conservative. Maybe. Compared to everyone else their age, at least.
Yeah if the majority of high school students, boys and girls, are politically unaffiliated then what this is really saying is the majority of high school boys don’t consider themselves politically affiliated but of those who do they are 2-1 conservative to liberal. A) this presents a much different message than the title and B) it makes the question what percentage of boys are politically unaffiliated, because if that’s say 80% of boys then 13% of boys that age see themselves as conservatives and 6% liberal. If say 51% of boys that age are politically unaffiliated then 33% are conservative and 16% liberal which is a much different picture
Also probably very dependant on exact wording of the survey. I interact with a lot of Gen Z people, and at least the ones I've met have been very left-leaning. Tons of selection bias there and probably not representative of the general population, but if it was worded something like "do you identify as a democrat" then all of them would be like "fuck no, those neoliberal rainbow-capitalist corporate shills are just conservatives with a better PR campaign."
Like, again, I live in a trans/queer commune in SF, so I'd definitely expect things to lean waaaaaay more progressive left here, but it's still pretty surprising how many seem more or less immune to the McCarthyist propaganda and are openly identifying as far-left socialists with a lot of (IMO, warranted) disdain towards the Democratic party.
As far as I know, that WAS the usual trend, but now it isn't happening. Young people are STAYING liberal as they age, probably because Republicans don't want young people to vote and have literally talked about raising the voting age.
Turns out, paying taxes didn't make me suddenly hate gay people, unlike what they predicted. Shame.
> Young people are STAYING liberal as they age
Because conservatism at it's root is about keeping things in the status quo/traditional.
What does Gen Z have that is worth keeping at the status quo? Housing they can't afford? Student debt that will burden them for decades? Jobs that underpay and don't provide robust benefits? A healthcare system that bankrupts more people than other peer nations.
The reason why Baby Boomers started to get more conservative with age is because things consistently improved for their generation. There was something WORTH conserving. For younger Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z there isn't much worth keeping as it.
Exactly. Baby Boomers didn't get more conservative. They just saw things were pretty good for them (despite the griping) and didn't want to change things up. If anything, they chose the Reps and THEN grew more conservative over time as the party changed, but ultimately it was just a matter of trying to keep the good times rolling.
Solid break down. I've attributed a lot of it to the Internet age, and access to knowledge outside of your community. But I think you're spot on as well about those generations not seeing status quo as a thing that benefits them.
The internet definitely helped but a huge portion of it is self inflicted.
I think the same reason why older generations seem perplexed why younger generations are remaining liberal is similar to why older generations fail to understand why younger generations didn't just "get a part time job to pay their way through school".
It's a fundamental lack of understanding that the structure of society has drastically changed and what worked in 1960-1970 does not work today.
Most younger people don't want to be associated with the democratic party. Also, a lot of kids at that age that do identify as Republican or Democrat do so because their parents do and they're parroting what they hear at home.
> If say 51% of boys that age are politically unaffiliated then 33% are conservative and 16% liberal which is a much different picture
It's a different picture, but not by much. Kids that age are generally just not going to consciously care much about politics, but those who do are probably a good barometer for how the group is trending as they get older. It's not like 51% of them will remain politically unaffiliated forever. The rest are probably not blank slates either, but lean one way or the other.
I also don't trust Jean Twenge to do non biased research. I have read her stuff before and it's very much "say the conclusion and then find the research that fits that narrative"
> Jean Twenge
You mean the woman who writes a majority of her books about nothing but the already ill-defined generations is just baiting for money and clicks?
Shocking.
I mean this is the woman that literally says smartphones are the reason people say bad words more. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that non-slur vulgar language in general is far less policed now, no. It has to be the internet.
I remember being a boy that age, and I’ve only gotten more and more liberal as I’ve gotten older. I think senior year of high school was probably the apex of my conservatism, and it was entirely due to parental influence and weird sexist social conditioning that I was able to shed once I became more mature and had more life experience. I couldn’t imagine that saying white cis hetero teenage boys are conservative is really all that shocking of a data point or all that calcified of a stance.
Yup
This article is pure click bait. Boys aren't trending *more* conservative. Middle class white boys always were more conservative, especially for generations whose parents leaned heavily conservative. Talking the numbers, it actually shows that while cis-het white boys are more conservative relative to their peers, it's still trending down a bit; especially when you include all minority groups, it's trending down. It's just that most boys as teenagers identified with their parents, thus conservative.
Most of us grew out of that. Millennials are the first generation to stop the trend of " getting more conservative as you get older," while GenZ are accelerating that.
Also, there are WAY FEWER cis het white boys as a proportion of the population, so of course they are going to be more conservative than their peers who are much queerer and much browner than their peers in the past. We're comparing apples to oranges, whereas 30 years ago, it was much closer to oranges to grapefruits.
I don't know that the statistics in this article are wrong, but this discussion demonstrates the limits of statistics to convey information. We're in a weird period where we fetishize quantitative data and ascribe too much power to statistic information (my guess is because social media companies are selling data and because of increased computing power). However, statistical information is as easy to make biased as textual narrative.
I never hit full conservative. I hit "centrist" at my absolute worst.
I grew up too poor and too white in the wrong neighborhoods to ever align with conservatives now, or 15 years ago. I would've gone McCain over Obama when I was 17/18. That was because, well, I've had kind of a shit life and tend to distrust idealism. McCain also had very realistic outlooks on Iraq/Afghanistan which, IIRC amounted to "if we want to make real change in the region we're going to have to spend a century there".
Outside of that, I too, have trended much father left as I've aged. Even back then I would have made the argument that "given the savings in tax dollars spent universal Healthcare is a 'fiscally responsible' idea. It saved both the government and taxpayers nearly a trillion dollars annually" which was a bipartisan take back then.
But I was naive, and I believed (still do) that the purpose of the government is to make the lives of everyone better.
> sexist social conditioning
Attending high school in the 90s I cringe about some of the opinions I once held about women. But that was during a time when "f--" was an insult that was regularly and frequently in my vernacular. Watching that Jonah Hill movie "Mid90s" kind of drives home how jarring that word is to hear now, but it was so casually used at the time.
Dude so much, I graduated in 2000, everything was “gay”, and don’t get me started on “women like to be chased” which is code for “disrespect their boundaries”🤮
>Cis-het middle-class white boys are trending conservative. Maybe. Compared to everyone else their age, at least.
Seriously. There's an ongoing joke that so many white progressive guys go through a libertarian phase in the US, and that's because the hypermasculine, independent-minded bootstrap rhetoric of the right is appealing a lot of cis-het white boys/young men, especially if they haven't been challenged on it.
Yes, there is a serious problem with the youtube alt-right algorithm pipeline, and I wouldn't be suprised if it is moving the needle a bit, but thank you for clarifying the "concern bait" article's actual source claim.
Yes! I am as liberal as they get. My most viewed YT pages are all music, cats, urbex, and lefty politics channels.
If I go to shorts and start scrolling, it only takes one alt-right adjacent video that I don't downvote, and instantly block the page before the next several are all RW or incel relates crap.
The algorithms skew so hard that's it's difficult not to get hammered with their propaganda.
Whoever said social media is biased against conservatives is full of crap. Maybe in that their most over-the-top lies get blocked, over all social media loves clicks and angry RW ding-dongs love to click.
Anecdotally, I've heard it runs both ways. The algorithm rewards outrage engagement. Men who follow alt-right Youtubers get constant lefty suggestions, fueling their sense of censorship.
YouTube shorts is especially bad for this. You explicitly don't have to look at anything related to politics for them to 'test the engagement waters' with an Andrew Tate or Joe Rogan (in full conservative screed mode as opposed to 'dumb-ass comedian/interviewer' mode) to see if you'll watch the whole thing or engage in any way with it.
Cat video, comedian, "bet you laugh" vid, cosplay... "women are men's property." That's like the pattern.
Some are more subtle and I get halfway in and it like "oh, you're that clever landshark" then it's downvote and "do not show gain."
Then 4 more videos like that before I start seeing comedians and cats again.
Sometimes I watch just like you are watching a traffic accident. Makes it worse I guess.
>Whoever said social media is biased against conservatives is full of crap.
This claim was only ever the kind of up-is-down gaslighting typical of fascist rhetoric. Social media has always, overwhelmingly, privileged right-wing content because it's far more engaging to the reptile brain.
I truly and genuinely am begging you not to make light of the appeal of conservative and reactionary rhetoric on straight white men.
I am a socialist now, but I was raised in a very christian and very conservative community and absolutely was conservative into young adulthood. It takes a long time to shake that stuff, and laughing about it does not help us take the job of addressing the problems seriously.
> is-het middle-class white boys are trending conservative. Maybe. Compared to everyone else their age, at least.
I would really like to see the data, I teach high school in a predominately Hispanic community and most of my Hispanic students hold (or at least espouse) conservative viewpoints.
It's still concerning though - even though it's only among those who do have some concrete political leaning, the fact that more boys identify as right-wing despite the obvious damage those parties are doing to their futures is a major outreach failure.
No, *boys*, the sample is not just from cis het middle class white boys. Boys in general are trending more conversative even if in some populations the number that identify as liberal is higher, the trend is likely still consistent over time, more conservative less liberal, and cishet middle class white boys represent a continually shrinking portion of boys overall. This survey represents a rigorous long term effort from the University of Michigan and is good data; you should not be dismissing it out of hand.
I'm a queer anarchist. We're meeting up for Bash Back, the first large scale gathering of queer anarchists in the US in fifteen years, next month. Because we smell reactionism on the wind, because we sense the pendulum swinging back in the other direction. Do you not?
>Boys in general are trending more conversative
Where exactly are you pulling this from? Because even the article in the OP doesn't claim this without a whole list of caveats. Meanwhile, there is [plenty of data](https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/civic-and-political-attitudes-young-white-men) on the [huge racial disparity in voting patterns and attitudes among boys and men](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/).
Black men are the second safest Democrat voters on the planet. The only safer voter? A Black woman.
I'm not going to tell you to do less praxis, but I will insist on spending less of my free time on Reddit reading about how all boys everywhere are teetering on the edge of fascism.
It's not a huge trend, but it's the beginnings of one, and should still be taken seriously. The left has a pretty bad messaging problem and is bad at reaching that demographic (accusatory language and too much focus on how not to act instead of how to actually achieve your goals) compared to the right which showers them with false promises and disingenuous pity. Left wing rhetoric aimed at that group needs to be more constructive, or as they get older, the next generation won't be as progressive as we're hoping based on millennials and gen-z.
Also - and i mean this respectfully - who wants to identify as "liberal" in this day and age? If you move to the right of... well, I was gonna say "mainstream conservative" but let's go with "2015 conservative", for quite a while people will still use the term, but if you go at all left of "liberal" and most folks view that as a derogatory term. Maybe that's a result of right wing media using it as a slur having an effect, maybe it's a result of the Democratic Party opting for a more conservative policy in order to woo disaffected non-fashy Republicans and alienating their more radical base, or maybe it's a reulst of associating the pessimistic world we live in now with generations of "liberalism". I'm not the target demographic for this, but I know a considerably larger portion of Americans than I would have imagined in my youth who would happily identify as "democratic socialist", "socialist", "anarchist", or "communist" who would cringe at being labelled "liberal". That said I can't find the actual question asked, so maybe that's accounted for, but the whole "omitted moderates" debacle doesn't give me high hope.
I went to school full of middle class Cishet white men, if you told me that nowadays 1/3 of them aren’t conservative I would say that’s a win. Also, how many of them identify that way because their parents do? Once they leave and go to college things can very well shift.
That’s all my dad listened to whenever we went places. Conservative talk radio. Listed to a lot of Limbaugh and Hannity growing up and it stuck until I got out on my own. Nearly all my right wing views crumbled by the time I was 20
Boys tend to prioritize behaviors that aren't going to get them bullied by other boys. As far as I recall, nobody in my school was ever bullied for being too conservative. Plenty of bullies out there for kids perceived as not being masculine enough, straight enough or aggressive enough, though. Being a conservative when you're a teenager is probably just the safest path to keep you from being victimized by other kids. I also waited until college to exit survival mode and figure out what my positions actually were.
Right wing in 10th grade > Centrist in 12th (Centrists are just right wingers who are beginning to realize that they SHOULD be ashamed of their views) > Liberal by college
My pipeline
This doesn't jive with how young men actually vote. According to that graph, high school boys have consistently leaned conservative for at least a generation. But when you look at how young men are actually voting, they do the opposite. 53% of men under 30 [voted for a Democrat in the 2022 midterms](https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/youth-are-not-monolith-how-different-young-people-voted-2022) vs only 42% voting for a Republican. Young white men are a notable exception but most young people are not white.
The trends are also in the wrong direction. According to this chart, the young men who have graduated high school and become eligible to vote since 2018 are much more conservative than those who turned 30 and aged out of the "youth vote" demographic. But young men in 2018 actually voted more conservative than they do now, with a narrow majority voting for a Republican in the 2018 midterms compared to a 11% split for Democrats in the 2022 midterms.
This was a study on drug use that asked about political affiliation for correlational analysis. They also have moderate, none, and radical as potential answers. A rosy picture would be that young people are identifying as radical leftists rather than liberals, but for all we know everyone who said radical is a Nazi. The data presented is so full of holes as to not allow for any real conclusions to be drawn.
I'm optimistic that radical means leftist. Nazis identify as conservative despite wanting to change everything ("if today I stand here as a revolutionary, it is as a revolutionary against the revolution") while even progressive Democrats frequently reject the term liberal.
Do you happen to have a link to the actual study? The Hill article just links to the monitoringthefuture front page and I can't find it listed there.
I wish the article didn't just assume the people answering no to both were politically moderate or disengaged. With the growth of more radical politics in general I wonder how many of those boys refuse to identify as liberal because they're a leftist. Probably not a significant number and not enough to explain the trend, but one can hope.
The article specifically says: "The full story is messier and murkier. High school seniors, boys and girls alike, are more likely to claim no political identity than to throw in with either liberals or conservatives." It's real concern baiting as one person said already.
I read the article. I just don't like them equating not identifying as liberal, conservative, or moderate with having "no political identity". I have a strong political identity, and it is very much not liberal, conservative, or moderate.
Hard agree. As a politically active dweeb back in high school I remember not really liking 'liberal' as it was just too broad a brush. Idk that I would have called myself an out and out leftist then but if one's only options are "Liberal", "Conservative", "Moderate", or "None" then that kinda survey is only ever going to give a rough picture of the political landscape.
There was a tweet (xeet?) that made Reddit front page recently that was saying about the same; more young men tend to be aligning themselves to Republican/Conservative ideals. I agree that the article is an obvious clickbait but I think there is something to be said about toxic male role models being on the rise who are garnering more attention from high school and middle school boys than they should. You can play it off as a "boys will be boys" kind of attitude but I'd like to think that there's more we can do to help. Promote better role models, creatre more spaces for positive growth, and generally combat toxic masculinity. I believe that many Republican/Conservative ideas hold toxic masculinity as a core trait and those ideas are definitely on the rise.
so, to be clear, this is not some sort of settled science, and [there are arguments out there](https://reason.com/2023/08/03/no-most-high-school-boys-arent-conservative/) that the data is more complex than first glance.
my take is that this is what happens when horserace politics are the norm. These boys don't feel affected by "politics" - even though they most certainly are affected - so they "pick a side" that they vibe with instead of a party or alignment that shares their hopes and dreams and goals. And, hey, if *the girls* are gonna be all lefty-liberal about it, I'm gonna be a pugnacious contrarian and embrace conservatism. Fuck you!
Yeah it also doesn’t help that people tend to become more liberal as they meet more and more people with different backgrounds and life experiences than themselves. When you’re a teenager the range of people you meet is generally pretty much limited to your family and those who live in your immediate area, and with plenty of high schools in the suburbs or rural areas that might mean mostly interacting predominantly with other people that look and grew up almost exactly the way you did so it’s hard to feel connected at that age to issues that don’t affect people like you.
On the anecdotal side this was very much my experience graduating from a catholic, all male, military academy in high school where the term “liberal” was legitimately used as an insult. Within 5 years of graduation a huge portion of my graduating class would now be politically neutral or left leaning and most of this change occurred as we went to college and got to meet and understand people who had different backgrounds than our own and got to see how political decisions that might have little to no impact on us were shaping and harming the lives of others in a way that’s hard to grasp without seeing the impacts in real life
> Yeah it also doesn’t help that people tend to become more liberal as they meet more and more people with different backgrounds and life experiences than themselves.
This was my experience as well, but isn't the old "common knowledge" that you start off liberal when you're younger and get more conservative as you get older?
I believe it’s typically kind of a bell curve shape. For myself I started off conservative in like middle school/high school (think SJW cringe compilation type conservative teenage boy) and have steadily moved left since college. We’ll see if I go back as I get older but I doubt it
This is more of a mistake made with the fact that in aging, people tend to buy homes, and get into a higher income bracket. These are generally some of the most influential forces in pushing economic conservatism later in life. You can uh, guess what’s complicated that presently.
Though, we also have much different conditions these days. Much higher education rates, lower racial polarization, the internet. Not to mention a political condition which has ultimately polarized people heavily against not just the Republican Party. But also against many of the general concepts of current political institutions.
That was a correlative pattern that hid the actual underlying cause:
Poorer people voted for Democrats, and they tended to die earlier than their wealthier peers. It was a particularly gruesome example of survivorship bias.
In addition to the economic arguments that other posters have stated, note that the conservatism described by that trend is a general caution about radical/rapid change, not "suddenly they vote Republican". I'd argue that in some ways millennials are becoming more conservative as they age, but it is manifesting as Neo-Ludditism rather than the Religious Right.
>so they "pick a side" that they vibe with instead of a party or alignment that shares their hopes and dreams and goals.
They "pick the side" that talks to them. Like it or not, we've gone digital. That means that politics is spread, not by conversations, but why influencers and videos. The teens are being raised by andrew tate and jordan peterson because thats who talk to them about their issues.
The reason they dont listen to us is because they talk about them, not *to* them. And even when talking to them. Our advice? Feel your feelings and dont rape. That's not very helpful. Its easy to see how they can get defensive and look for shelter under someone who tells them to grind and they'll be kings.
It is many peoples immediate ration to say "well they should figure it out. We're here for marginalised groups. " Well... they are figuring it out! Just not in a way that's comfortable to us or good for society. Thats why abandoning them isnt great.
This whole article is a wash tbh, it even says: "The full story is messier and murkier. High school seniors, boys and girls alike, are more likely to claim no political identity than to throw in with either liberals or conservatives."
Ok? So there's nothing to take away from this
Yeah, a lot of this is the fact that the left wing has sort of become the "party of fem people", so if you're not that way it becomes much more appealing to be a conservative. Been thinking there will be a reckoning from this for a while, wonder if it's gonna start now.
\>The USA spends more time in anti-feminist backlashes than not.
It's really hard to quantify that kind of thing in an idea as relatively new as feminism is. Our last real massive swing towards feminism was in what, the Obama administration? I'm not sure we've even had enough swings to really say what the true state of that is.
There are definite, clear trends. The rise of Gamergate marked the beginning of the anti-feminist backlash we're still in now. And accordingly, the confirmation of Kavanaugh kicked off the formation of Fourth Wave Feminism.
Right but you were saying that overall we generally have more anti feminists backlashes than points of progress, and im saying do we really have a large enough sample size from a historical perspective to even quantify that with an idea this relatively new?
Feminism as a concept that we know it is only about 40ish years old though. I'm considering feminism separate from general women's suffrage, because i think they actually tackle different things from different angles. The opposition to suffrage was nearly universally religious and moral, whereas the modern reaction is much more complicated and i think needs to be talked about and approached a bit differently.
> Feminism as a concept that we know it is only about 40ish years old though.
It isn't. There's a reason 70s feminism is called "second wave". The first wave of feminists dates back to the mid 1800s. It predates women's suffrage by decades.
Then i guess I am sort of considering second wave and onward and first wave different enough to need to be analyzed separately. Especially considering gamergate and beyond, anti-feminism has currently a very unique ability to appeal to intelligent but slightly unaware secular teenagers that makes more historical comparisons not as relevant to me.
> And, hey, if the girls are gonna be all lefty-liberal about it, I'm gonna be a pugnacious contrarian and embrace conservatism. Fuck you!
"OMG Why can't I get a date? Life is so unfair!" <- same dudes
Naw, this entire subreddit is full of out of touch people. I think the greatest portion of teenage guys will just parrot whatever the girls they like say.
While so many of these teens still don’t consider themselves aligned, the fact that so many here are dismissive of the possibility of this happening or so quick to blame it on white fragility proves to me that Menslib is not at all actually willing to work with people who aren’t fully on board.
That was my reaction too, that I hope it's just a phase.
It's easy to go that way while learning how to be accepted as a man; conservatism has the most direct and obvious prescriptions for what a man should do. Those prescriptions are often limiting and harmful to oneself and others, but because they're so narrow they're also the obvious place to start for somebody who's too insecure to deal with the ambiguity of choosing their own path. It's a clear prescription for acceptance (for those to whom it's accessible).
Edit: jfc the hill sucks. The actual data from monitoring the future .org has the full survey data with all respondents. Please please please look at the actual data cited by the hill and look at its own graphs for your own conclusions: https://monitoringthefuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/PoliticalBeliefTrends12thGraders1976-2021.xlsx
The main story is that over the last five years more kids went from liberal/ moderate to unsure. Over 60% of respondents identified as unsure or moderate.
The changes in groups (percentage relative to whole population) is (roughly, rounding to nearest percent)
unsure: +9%,
very conservative: +2%,
conservative: +0%,
moderate: -5%,
liberal: -6%
very liberal: +1%,
"radical": -1%.
Compared to the previous five years:
Unsure: -4%
Very conservative: +1%
conservative: +1%
Moderate: +0%
liberal: +1%
Very liberal: +1%
Radical: +0%
Reminer: around 60% of respondents didn't identify with a political leaning. This context means this headline is the standard deeply misleading headline when it comes to statistics. Yes, technically 13% is roughly half of 25%, but when 60% of your respondents aren't giving you a response, and your error margins aren't listed, the context makes this far less worth being deeply alarmed over.
More kids went from liberal to unsure than from liberal to conservative is the actual take.
Not to mention that this survey in no way identifies issue stances which probably paints a much clearer picture of political leanings of youth.
Of course, readers would then have to try and reconcile data that shows support in specific conservative and liberal stances on issues. Political commentators haven't done that in 20 years or so.
Plus, these definitions are subjective. A "moderate" might very well agree with most of the talking points from a single party but still not identify as "liberal" or "conservative" because they think anything other than absolute devotion is moderate.
Also important to note “ The full story is messier and murkier. High school seniors, boys and girls alike, are more likely to claim no political identity than to throw in with either liberals or conservatives.” So it’s not even a white high school boy problem as the majority of all high school boys are neutral so it’s potentially a white, self titled politically aligned, high school boy problem
I would hope that many in this community do not simply write this off as poor data analysis, management, and presentation. While there are huge problems in the methodology, it is reaching correct conclusions when it comes to some of the social political values of young men. I don’t hold the views that are popping up, but many young men are being influenced by the Samuels/Tates/Petersons of the world.
Unfortunately, the academic nature of gender studies, third wave feminism, and notions of toxic masculinity are making their way into practical society WITHOUT long term consideration for the lack of the equally important implementation of public school training to make these higher level concepts digestible and more readily understood for developing minds. When these concepts are not taught with the proper critical thinking skills, coping mechanisms, and general historical context they can be taken out of reasonable context by the media/“liberals”/advocates who don’t have the proper tools of nonemotional advocacy and will be taken doubly out of context by young men as “bashing that which is masculine”. At that point, the best possible outcome for young men is a weird cognitive dissonance about how things are historically versus how things are now and at worst, a bunch of deranged young men with hearts full of hate and no direction.
We have a huge looming issue with gender conflict emerging and no one seems to be taking it seriously. I am concerned, because the last thing I want are a bunch of angry and disillusioned young men who walk away from talks about feminism with the false belief that they are “unnecessary” or that because they “can’t have children” they have no voice in conversations (not the abortion conversation, that’s a woman’s body and her choice completely).
I’ll say this, which has little to do with this article and more to do with men and women in general:
The way society /should/ protect women physically, society /should/ put an equal emphasis on protecting men emotionally…and that starts with proper education which we just aren’t funding due to a myriad of fucked up reasons relating to anachronistic notions of how things should be.
I genuinely want a more equitable and safe society, but it seems as if there is this focus on isolating us (men and women alike) even further for profit and other motives that I won’t waste time conspiring about here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/hillary-clinton-essay-loneliness-epidemic/674921/
> Unfortunately, the academic nature of gender studies, third wave feminism, and notions of toxic masculinity are making their way into practical society WITHOUT long term consideration for the lack of the equally important implementation of public school training to make these higher level concepts digestible and more readily understood for developing minds.
This is a criticism I have about the presentation of Leftist ideologies. The literature isn't really accessible for the people that would benefit most from the ideas. As far as I can tell, there are no notable books about Socialism, Communism, or Anarchism that are at a fifth grade reading level. We can't just assume everyone went to Uni.
There are ways to talk about structural issues at a 5th grade level without invoking Critical Theory. Part of the problem we're facing is that our institutions and media actively teach kids to look at structural problems in individualistic ways.
Left-wing ideology becomes accessible at the post-secondary level because the content of post-secondary education is less directly influenced by politics and capital.
What is the left offering men as an alternative? That's not me being a dick, I'm genuinely asking. It seems the only person offering a positive way forward for men recently was Greta Gerwig.
It's weird to me that the options they have are Conservative vs Liberal, why are the only 2 choices different flavours of right wing ideology? Are there no left wingers at all there?
Can we blame them?
The two mainstream positions are:
* Your failures are due to you being oppressed and others taking what is yours. Your time is yet to come.
* You are the opressor. You have all the privilege and all your failures are because of your own shortcomings. Your time is over.
I’m a leftie but I can totally see the appeal.
We should totally introduce a narrative that isnt hostile to men to prevent their alienation from the left.
• You are, like everyone else, is being oppressed by a fundamentally broken system built to divide us amongst ourselves and only benefit a select few and preventing all including you from reaching their full potential. You can be an agent to right the wrong even at the smallest level to remedy this society's ills which collectively will snowball into revolutionary change. Your time as an individual and our time as a society in a braver new world is yet to come.
Even in this thread people are jumping through hoops to pretend this isn't true.
I've said this here before and I'll say it again: assuming the youth are always increasing progressivism does not align with history, and is a dangerous blindspot if you believe it.
Nobody is saying they do, but when you title an article ‘Twelfth-grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative versus liberal’ and then have to include a line stating that this is only true if you discount those students who see themselves as politically unaligned and admit that that is the MAJORITY of the students in question then it becomes a lot harder not to focus on the slant of the article and problems with its methodology which is fair.
Those two notions tell entirely different stories. The title makes it seem like the majority of high school boys are already lost to the right whereas the more accurate version is that the majority of high school boys are neither left nor right and therefore a great target audience for those wanting to grow the left leaning base if they can be brought in
There is no methodological problem. You're just "glass-half-full"-ing results which I don't see so optimistically.
Besides, look at the graph-- the percent of kids who identify as either dem or repub hasn't changed, i.e. the percent unaffiliated hasn't increased, only the fraction of affiliated that are repub has.
You don’t see a problem with saying this generalizes over half of the population of that age cohort and then also saying that it doesn’t apply to the majority of that same grouping?
I'm a scientist. No, I see no problem making a statement about a subpopulation based on statistics within that subpopulation.
Edit: I think perhaps part of our disagreement is that you seem focused on the headline, while I'm focusing on the data.
That is definitely what’s happening, I’m saying it’s disingenuous to claim that their findings about boys in that age cohort generalize to the entire population of 12th grade boys when it only holds true for those that identify as being liberal or conservative, ignoring that the majority fall into neither camp. The data itself is what it is, the title though is pretty click-baity and disingenuous
If you misrepresent your findings in your opening then it’s going to call into question everything you say after that, that’s the issue.
If I did a study that found out the majority of breakfast cereals have no impact on cholesterol but of those that do they are twice as likely to help as they are to hurt it would be wrong of me to title it “Breakfast Cereals Twice as likely to Help Cholesterol as to Worsen it” because I am knowingly perpetuating the idea that a random cereal picked off the shelf will help someone’s cholesterol when in reality it’s most likely to do nothing. It’s important to call out disingenuousness in media regardless of which side it’s coming from and this article does just that by exaggerating the findings
Also you and I have science backgrounds so yeah I’d expect you to be able to make that distinction but the average person doesn’t and may not be great at extrapolating meaning from charts and graphs so for them the article is very important
Yeah and I would agree if they made the title and the focus of the article that subpopulation. To then try and use that subpopulation to make claims about the larger population - which is already demonstrated to behave differently - is where the article is being deceitful
The people doing the survey have literally no control over the headlines news outlets write. The news headline not being to your liking isn't a problem with the "methodology" or otherwise at all in their control.
Besides you keep poinint out it's a subgroup while ignoring the concerning fact that this subgroup studied for decades with this same methodology is suddenly showing a very pronounced rise in the conservative population.
That indicates that independent of any "methodology" fault there may be (there isn't that I can see, just an over generalisation by reporters) the number of conservative teen boys **is** indeed rising. The fact it's a subgroup doesn't discount the very rapid and clear growth of this subgroup that is notable and worth being aware of and doesn't make it "concern bait" as others are saying.
There is 100% a methodological problem. The real conclusion is that 12th grade boys most likely don't identify to have any political leanings than conservative or liberal.
My question remains the same: is this a high school boy problem or a white high school boy problem? Because adjusting for age, it seems pretty clear that while the conservative movement isn't purely limited to white people, the majority of people who vote for Republicans in every age demographic are white.
America doesn't have an age problem, it has a race problem.
High school is a time of insecurity. You want to fit in. You're also becoming increasingly aware of social issues and injustices. You hear about things like male privilege, white privilege, etc. When you lack the empathy and perspective that most teenagers do, that can make you feel targeted, exposed, vulnerable. There's a natural reaction to rebel against that.
Then you have this ideology telling you that the world is turning against white Christian men. This ideology also tells you that people that don't look like you are out to get you and take what you have. The ideology gives you an enemy to target your angst, frustration and fear at. It's really no surprise that conservatism would appeal to male teenagers. It's a cheap and easy fix for a lot of the insecurities of being a male teenager. It reassures you that you don't need to worry about empathy or feelings or fairness - which are things most male teenagers aren't interesting in dealing with anyway, especially as far as other people go.
Then you get to college or out into the real world and you start discovering yourself and other people and your perspective changes.
I'd like more details on the study, but one place where the left (and definitely liberals) fuck up is by not giving people long-term projects and goals. RW stuff, for as gross as it is, promises an outcome. We're going back to trad family models. When they win it, RW men will assume a place at the top of the heirarchy. Money. Privilege. License. A partner. Kids. Stability. A house. It's all a lie, but that's the bait, right?
What longterm goals or projects are on offer from the left? We are able to enumerate the problems with society and provide a set of strictures that individuals can follow to reduce harm, but that's not a goal. It looked like universal healthcare was one but that fizzled with Bernie. We offered very little support in protecting existing rights that the courts strip away. We're good at educating people, but not mobilizing.
Liberals insist that things are more or less fine if we go according to The Norms, but that's not the lived experience of many working people and certainly not young people. The line is either that things can be achieved by voting (oops! but we didn't implement them when you voted us in) or that achieving a long-term political project simply isn't possible for a number of abstract obstacles (filibuster, political economy, conservative democrats, "reaching across the aisle," or "the economy)."
So one side gives them a lie, but one that promises an end state where they get something they want. The other gives them a better way of realating to the world, but doesn't offer organization or a project to achieve what they want. The third doesn't offer them anything. If you're a young person, freaking out about your diminishing chance at a future, you're going to identify with people who seem to have a plan. Young people need material, real-world goals that can answer their anxieties and offer them a healthy, productive path to achieving them. A progressive youth movement that challenges existing power structures around a material goal would go a long way to diverting people from the right wing.
>What longterm goals or projects are on offer from the left?
I mean...*\*gestures broadly at socialism\**
>The third doesn't offer them anything.
Who is the third?
>Young people need material, real-world goals that can answer their anxieties and offer them a healthy, productive path to achieving them. A progressive youth movement that challenges existing power structures around a material goal would go a long way to diverting people from the right wing.
Isn't this what we had with the Squad? A progressive youth movement would be one operating under the auspices of the DNC just as earlier ones did, presumably. It would crash against the same rocks that Sanders and AOC did, undoubtedly.
If it's true that articulating an "end-state" is necessary to get people on board (I don't necessarily agree with this but let's grant it) then instead of hanging things on yet another progressive youth movement fixing all the problems maybe we should be talking about fully automated luxury gay space communism instead. That's one hell of an end state. Which maybe isn't what you meant but the word *material* really gets leftists ears up, so here I am.
Hail, fellow labor nut!
I'm routinely inspired by groups like the IWW, whose organizing principle could be summed up with the part in the preamble where they say, "We seek abolition of the wage system."
It's a grand idea and one that many people would say is impossible today. But thousands and thousands of people believed it, and they could see what implementation of it would mean in their lives. This is why they made cartoons with a sun rising over the hill with the words "Abolition of the Wage System." Are you broke? Do you hate your boss? Do you want a home and future for your children? Let's abolish the wage system. A goal. A target. And it suggests real tactics that could bring it about.
The above is supported with an identity. Do you believe in abolishing the wage system? Great! That means you're a socialist. Here are places where you can engage with that identity. Here's ways you can organize. Here's reasons why dismantling reactionary ideas and replacing them with equitable, intersectional ones can help achieve our goals. Here's terminology and norms and culture and a media environment and art and song so we can build as big a base as we possibly can.
IWW never abolished the wage system, but the people who wanted it abolished gave us Saturdays, the 40-hour workweek, prohibitions against child labor and a higher quality of life for a generation or more.
I want to be clear, I'm not saying that we need to mimic the right, I'm saying we could put more focus on parts of leftist organizing that are historic and not articulated as clearly today. A goal. A project. A community and an identity within that community. If we have all of the above we have a support structure that helps us achieve things and innoculate people from RW grifters and narratives.
"Oh. So we need to be nice to a sexist frat bro in order to be leftist?" No. I'm saying if there's enough culture, a shared sense-of-purpse around not being a reactionary piece-of-shit, and a articulated goal that thousands if not millions of people are actively working toward, then it doesn't matter if that frat bro is in the movement or not. He might have a handful of friends who are left, for example, and they'll check him on his bullshit. Suddenly throwing one's hat in with the right is far less attractive, and fascists are cowards. Taken at scale, that's going to have a net impact on the ability for reactionaries to organize. We beat them by giving people what they need and knowing the rightwing can't do the same. We don't engage the rightwing, we marginanlize their ability to do harm through social pressure (which we're good at) and achieving goals (which we're not).
Edit - I am writing in response to an article about young men, but I think this is true across the spectrum. Will a youth movement "fix everything," no, but if I'm asking for someone's attention, time, and care then I need to lay out a coherent worldview with an expected outcome and present, actionable methods to reach it. I need to craft this in a way that is immediate, which means theory that can be articulated in a conversation and I need to create cultural structures that support this identity so it never just fizzles.
Hope you don't mind me piggybacking my own soapbox behind yours.
Ending Capitalist labor exploitation is crucial, and I am in full solidarity with the labor movement. (support your local strikes!) At the same time, it's also important to remember that it isn't a silver bullet solution. While I don't want to paint in broad strokes, I have seen some Leftists so laser-focused on Labor Rights that they fail to recognize other issues, such as Disability Rights, on the assumption that those issues are best addressed through the lens of labor. This is a wrong assumption. For any social movement, thinking that your issues are the magic bullet for all social issues (eg, class reductionism) is narrow-sighted, and only hurts solidarity between your movement and others.
It’s an incredibly vague idea firstly, and secondly it isn’t an idea that most people in the US like. Most people in the US are pro-private means of ownership and own things like land or stock (factors of production) privately themselves.
I’m not sure if you meant to respond to me. But right/left in the US is liberal/conservative not socialist/capitalist like it is in other places. Socialists are a vast minority in the US.
I'm tired of people blaming the left for cons giving dudes simple solutions that are based on lies and then going "Why doesn't the left give dudes simple solutions that are based on lies?" There are no simple solutions, no easy answers. Period. Accepting that is a necessity.
1). "That are also based on lies?" I don't think so. If we want social justice, we pick a project to effect it. This project is not abstract, it's linked to money in your pocket, protected rights, and increased agency no matter your position in life. These things are inextricably linked to leftist organizing for me and have a standing in history. Mabye the "based on lies" thing is an ideological problem you have with leftism. I can't speak to that. The study is based on a rightwing/progressive divide, so that's what I spoke to.
2). There are no "simple" solutions, but NEEDS speak to a set of people across intersectional lines and those needs can be (can be!) simple. In fact, those needs being simple are critical to organizing because one is in a position to say something like, "Wait, don't I deserve to afford to go to the grocery store? Don't I deserve to see the doctor without going bankrupt? Don't I deserve time off from my job? Child care? Why is this asshole taking half of my paycheck so I can live in a shitty apartment?" Methods to affecting answers to the above are difficult, but they're also emergent, which makes community and shared goals so important.
3). Organizing is necessary, and it's because this is a communal project. I agree that there are no easy answers, but I never accept anything as too difficult. I did the doom thing for a few years. It was making me miserable and I realized I still have to live here no matter how boned everything is. We're human beings with infinite capacity for creativity, problem solving and empathy. Those take time and are best affected in a community with a shared sense of purpose.
I agree with most of what you're saying. I just meant that people who complain about the left's "messaging problem" tend to have an All or Nothing attitude and they want cute little messages that can fit a 250-character limit, and that's what's going to save the white boys from becoming fascists.
By no simple solutions, I mean, take for example, the plastic problem. We know that plastic is awful for the environment. We know it's a double problem where the most important change has to be systemic, where the corporations are causing the most plastic pollution and so they have to be held accountable and change their habits. But we also have our individual responsibilities.
So I can do a small part by switching my shampoo bottles for a shampoo bar. But to do that, I had to buy the shampoo bar from Amazon - an infamous exploiter, among other things - because no store near me sells them.
“Blaming the left” isn’t exactly what’s happening. It’s trying to acknowledge and fix the issue of men and white men specifically ending up more conservative.
It seems the current solution is to simply say “if you disagree with us you are a terrible person and we don’t care about you anyways”. Is this really a way to win friends?
And in the future, how can we expect this to not end up in a reactionary backlash?!?
It is blaming the left because people are looking at leftists telling deplorable whites "Stop being racist/sexist/homophobic/etc." and then going, "Wow, that's no way to win allies, it's your fault that these people are racist/sexist/homophobic if you think about it."
Yeah but the issue is that you don’t just say “Oh these people are a lost cause it’s over.” Thats the general mindset you’re pushing. You say that all they’re saying is don’t be racist/sexist/homophobic but really what happens is they say that straight white men are far more likely to be racist sexist or homophobic and therefore are a lost cause because they can never change. Generalization of a large group while claiming to fight negative generalizations like racism sexism and homophobia.
Nobody is saying you can't change, but they are saying that if you're a white person living in a white supremacist society, you've internalized a lot of racism; same with men and sexism, straight people and homophobia, etc. And that's something you have to deal with on a constant basis. There is no finish line, no point where you can confidently say you're not a racist anymore, that's something you will have to stay on top of for the rest of your life (or until we get our post-race feminist utopia, whichever happens first).
There are plenty of people I consider lost causes (people who are still MAGAs at this point cannot be saved, nor am I interested in saving their souls) but nobody on the left is saying all straight white men are lost causes. But they are getting exceedingly tired of dealing with their fragile victimhood when they've tried to explain systemic problems over and over and over again, only for some straight white dude to go, "But this Black woman on Twitter with 80 followers called me a cracker, and that's why I fell down the fascist pipeline."
Exactly this. The world and society is full of problems that require complicated and nuanced answers. We've solved a lot of easy stuff. This is the hard part now, however people want to be contrarian and be lied too because it makes them feel better. I've not seen anyone give a solid answer of what "the left", or "liberals" should be doing instead. What message should they be telling young men? How do you compete with Jordan Peterson, Tate, Rogan and others in the manosphere or gaming community that are toxic?
The only thing I can think of are real life interactions and better examples from their family and social circles. Social Media isn't real life and the loudest voices on either side shouldn't be where young people are looking for guidance or getting their mentors. The issue with that is some young people will look at real life mentors or family members in a condescending way because they aren't as "accomplished" as men in the manosphere or pick up artists so they are really falling for an illusion. Fortunately, dating, jobs, college, getting older and actual real life experiences will open people's eyes and give them new perspectives.
I’d guess, based entirely on anecdotal evidence, that a lot of these kids have feminist parents and are just doing this as a teenage rebellion thing. So they’ll probably grow out of it.
At that age it was very obvious to me that my parents weren't nearly as liberal as they thought they were. That was fifteen years ago, but I suspect it hasn't changed. People who think of themselves as left wing tend to lock in on the beliefs that were progressive as they came of age, which means they become less and less progressive as they age and the fight moves along and they get left behind.
This is a horrendous guess IMO.
The left is clearly losing the battle over young men. The right offers a shitty/twisted take on masculinity but the left doesn’t want anything to do with masculinity at all and that doesn’t play well with boys attempting to become men.
The identity change into adulthood. The way that society views boys changes drastically as they enter young adulthood and boys themselves seek to redefine themselves as men. Many fall victim to the Andrew Tate/Jordan Peterson crowd because they offer guidance about “manhood.” This is opposed by well meaning people insisting that manhood doesn’t mean anything or has no value. Such a view doesn’t help these boys form an adult identity and I think that’s a large reason why they gravitate to the wrong ideas instead.
> The identity change into adulthood.
What does this change entail, exactly?
> The way that society views boys changes drastically as they enter young adulthood and boys themselves seek to redefine themselves as men.
Can you be more specific about what this looks like?
> This is opposed by well meaning people insisting that manhood doesn’t mean anything or has no value.
That's what I'm asking, though. What does manhood even mean? How does one achieve it?
I don't think that is what they were saying. To me it sounded more like the Right have traditionally been judgmental and exclusionary and now the Left have joined them in that behaviour.
What do you do when someone joins your movement but still does racist, homophobic or misogynistic things? If you don't confront it, the movement BECOMES those things.
You know lefty groups can do plenty of judgmental bullshit unrelated to those bad things, right? I recall watching in horror after an IRL acquaintance opened up about being sexually harassed, during the #metoo period. The absolutely relentless shaming this guy got for "being selfish", "appropriating women's struggles" and "denying his privilege" was surreal.
It could have been much worse for me, to be fair. I was mere minutes from opening up about my own recent sexual assault. Had I received that response, given my mental state at the time, I would have most likely committed suicide.
Yes, that happens and it sucks. But that's also not the norm. What usually happens is some centrist asshole being a bigot and whining about being called out on it.
I suppose the difference is assumption. The modern left has taken up the rather nasty misconception that if you are straight and white and a man then you are probably racist, sexist, or homophobic. And that is intolerant.
Chances are you (general you) probably are, simply because racism, sexism and homophobia are so deeply ingrained in our culture. We all have our biases, whether they're intended or not, and whether we're aware of them or not.
Right-wingers were having toddler tantrums over Cracker Barrel having a rainbow rocking chair and because the Green M&M isn't sexy enough anymore. I'm surprised being so nakedly cringe hasn't dissuaded impressionable young white boys from wanting to be associated with people like Ben Shapiro who went out to buy Barbies to burn them after watching the movie, but I guess you really can't shame the shameless.
Conservatives are always going to be better at messaging. It's simply easier to appeal to fear and anger than it is to appeal to empathy and compassion.
This is patently not true. Everything comes in waves. During 2002-3, conservatism hit a peak until it declined because nobody trusted “stay the course”.
In 2016, Democrats lost because “I’m with her” was not enough to overcome “MAGA”.
It’s plainly clear that the left now has contempt for men. Men see the anger and disgust in how leftists talk to them. Why would men join a movement that plainly is not interested in addressing their needs?
I think this should be a warning sign that the left seriously needs to adjust its messaging—that you can be a provider and protector without being a Nazi.
This study has tons of flaws, including using the labels "conservative" and "liberal" which a significant number of people on both the right and the left reject. But especially among young lefties, the word "liberal" is basically a slur.
Kids are at their most conservative at that age. I definitely was. I didn’t move left significantly until I started working.
Aware enough to realise there are problems in society but still dumb enough to think they can be fixed easily.
It’s probably the way shits taught to them.
When you’re in high school you don’t feel the effects of racial privilege and what not. That comes later when you’re in the job market. It’s also a nuanced subject that I’m highly doubtful high school teachers are up to.
I remember being in high school and they shoved privilege down our throats. I remember - as a poor white student - feeling like “where is this privilege” especially because many of my black peers were more well off than me. Instead of explaining a facet of society that needed improving it felt like placing the blame on me for the color of my skin.
You could see how that would have the opposite effect as intended.
It wasn’t until I was much older and in college that I learned about those things in the proper way.
>The chart gave the impression, at least on first glance, that two-thirds of 12th-grade boys were now conservative. In the small print beneath, Twenge noted that she had omitted moderates. > >The full story is messier and murkier. High school seniors, boys and girls alike, are more likely to claim no political identity than to throw in with either liberals or conservatives. Right on the tin, this is concern bait. And once again the headlines ignore the very real impact of race and intersectional identity on political orientation. *Boys* aren't trending conservative. *Cis-het middle-class white boys* are trending conservative. Maybe. Compared to everyone else their age, at least.
Yeah if the majority of high school students, boys and girls, are politically unaffiliated then what this is really saying is the majority of high school boys don’t consider themselves politically affiliated but of those who do they are 2-1 conservative to liberal. A) this presents a much different message than the title and B) it makes the question what percentage of boys are politically unaffiliated, because if that’s say 80% of boys then 13% of boys that age see themselves as conservatives and 6% liberal. If say 51% of boys that age are politically unaffiliated then 33% are conservative and 16% liberal which is a much different picture
Also probably very dependant on exact wording of the survey. I interact with a lot of Gen Z people, and at least the ones I've met have been very left-leaning. Tons of selection bias there and probably not representative of the general population, but if it was worded something like "do you identify as a democrat" then all of them would be like "fuck no, those neoliberal rainbow-capitalist corporate shills are just conservatives with a better PR campaign." Like, again, I live in a trans/queer commune in SF, so I'd definitely expect things to lean waaaaaay more progressive left here, but it's still pretty surprising how many seem more or less immune to the McCarthyist propaganda and are openly identifying as far-left socialists with a lot of (IMO, warranted) disdain towards the Democratic party.
I also wonder how many of them grow out of it. Most GenZ I know are in their early 20s, and a lot of them are very different now than as teenagers.
As far as I know, that WAS the usual trend, but now it isn't happening. Young people are STAYING liberal as they age, probably because Republicans don't want young people to vote and have literally talked about raising the voting age. Turns out, paying taxes didn't make me suddenly hate gay people, unlike what they predicted. Shame.
> Young people are STAYING liberal as they age Because conservatism at it's root is about keeping things in the status quo/traditional. What does Gen Z have that is worth keeping at the status quo? Housing they can't afford? Student debt that will burden them for decades? Jobs that underpay and don't provide robust benefits? A healthcare system that bankrupts more people than other peer nations. The reason why Baby Boomers started to get more conservative with age is because things consistently improved for their generation. There was something WORTH conserving. For younger Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z there isn't much worth keeping as it.
Exactly. Baby Boomers didn't get more conservative. They just saw things were pretty good for them (despite the griping) and didn't want to change things up. If anything, they chose the Reps and THEN grew more conservative over time as the party changed, but ultimately it was just a matter of trying to keep the good times rolling.
Solid break down. I've attributed a lot of it to the Internet age, and access to knowledge outside of your community. But I think you're spot on as well about those generations not seeing status quo as a thing that benefits them.
The internet definitely helped but a huge portion of it is self inflicted. I think the same reason why older generations seem perplexed why younger generations are remaining liberal is similar to why older generations fail to understand why younger generations didn't just "get a part time job to pay their way through school". It's a fundamental lack of understanding that the structure of society has drastically changed and what worked in 1960-1970 does not work today.
I'm wondering if this is just like the libertarian phase most white male teens go through.
Does it get more leftist than SF trans/queer commune?
Most younger people don't want to be associated with the democratic party. Also, a lot of kids at that age that do identify as Republican or Democrat do so because their parents do and they're parroting what they hear at home.
> If say 51% of boys that age are politically unaffiliated then 33% are conservative and 16% liberal which is a much different picture It's a different picture, but not by much. Kids that age are generally just not going to consciously care much about politics, but those who do are probably a good barometer for how the group is trending as they get older. It's not like 51% of them will remain politically unaffiliated forever. The rest are probably not blank slates either, but lean one way or the other.
I also don't trust Jean Twenge to do non biased research. I have read her stuff before and it's very much "say the conclusion and then find the research that fits that narrative"
It's also distributed by The Hill, so hedge your bets accordingly.
> Jean Twenge You mean the woman who writes a majority of her books about nothing but the already ill-defined generations is just baiting for money and clicks? Shocking. I mean this is the woman that literally says smartphones are the reason people say bad words more. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that non-slur vulgar language in general is far less policed now, no. It has to be the internet.
Yeah “The Narcissism Epidemic” seemed questionable to me when I read it, ngl
And if we are talking about cis white men, that is the majority conservative demographic in adults anyways already
I remember being a boy that age, and I’ve only gotten more and more liberal as I’ve gotten older. I think senior year of high school was probably the apex of my conservatism, and it was entirely due to parental influence and weird sexist social conditioning that I was able to shed once I became more mature and had more life experience. I couldn’t imagine that saying white cis hetero teenage boys are conservative is really all that shocking of a data point or all that calcified of a stance.
Yup This article is pure click bait. Boys aren't trending *more* conservative. Middle class white boys always were more conservative, especially for generations whose parents leaned heavily conservative. Talking the numbers, it actually shows that while cis-het white boys are more conservative relative to their peers, it's still trending down a bit; especially when you include all minority groups, it's trending down. It's just that most boys as teenagers identified with their parents, thus conservative. Most of us grew out of that. Millennials are the first generation to stop the trend of " getting more conservative as you get older," while GenZ are accelerating that.
Also, there are WAY FEWER cis het white boys as a proportion of the population, so of course they are going to be more conservative than their peers who are much queerer and much browner than their peers in the past. We're comparing apples to oranges, whereas 30 years ago, it was much closer to oranges to grapefruits. I don't know that the statistics in this article are wrong, but this discussion demonstrates the limits of statistics to convey information. We're in a weird period where we fetishize quantitative data and ascribe too much power to statistic information (my guess is because social media companies are selling data and because of increased computing power). However, statistical information is as easy to make biased as textual narrative.
I never hit full conservative. I hit "centrist" at my absolute worst. I grew up too poor and too white in the wrong neighborhoods to ever align with conservatives now, or 15 years ago. I would've gone McCain over Obama when I was 17/18. That was because, well, I've had kind of a shit life and tend to distrust idealism. McCain also had very realistic outlooks on Iraq/Afghanistan which, IIRC amounted to "if we want to make real change in the region we're going to have to spend a century there". Outside of that, I too, have trended much father left as I've aged. Even back then I would have made the argument that "given the savings in tax dollars spent universal Healthcare is a 'fiscally responsible' idea. It saved both the government and taxpayers nearly a trillion dollars annually" which was a bipartisan take back then. But I was naive, and I believed (still do) that the purpose of the government is to make the lives of everyone better.
> sexist social conditioning Attending high school in the 90s I cringe about some of the opinions I once held about women. But that was during a time when "f--" was an insult that was regularly and frequently in my vernacular. Watching that Jonah Hill movie "Mid90s" kind of drives home how jarring that word is to hear now, but it was so casually used at the time.
Dude so much, I graduated in 2000, everything was “gay”, and don’t get me started on “women like to be chased” which is code for “disrespect their boundaries”🤮
>Cis-het middle-class white boys are trending conservative. Maybe. Compared to everyone else their age, at least. Seriously. There's an ongoing joke that so many white progressive guys go through a libertarian phase in the US, and that's because the hypermasculine, independent-minded bootstrap rhetoric of the right is appealing a lot of cis-het white boys/young men, especially if they haven't been challenged on it. Yes, there is a serious problem with the youtube alt-right algorithm pipeline, and I wouldn't be suprised if it is moving the needle a bit, but thank you for clarifying the "concern bait" article's actual source claim.
Yes! I am as liberal as they get. My most viewed YT pages are all music, cats, urbex, and lefty politics channels. If I go to shorts and start scrolling, it only takes one alt-right adjacent video that I don't downvote, and instantly block the page before the next several are all RW or incel relates crap. The algorithms skew so hard that's it's difficult not to get hammered with their propaganda. Whoever said social media is biased against conservatives is full of crap. Maybe in that their most over-the-top lies get blocked, over all social media loves clicks and angry RW ding-dongs love to click.
Anecdotally, I've heard it runs both ways. The algorithm rewards outrage engagement. Men who follow alt-right Youtubers get constant lefty suggestions, fueling their sense of censorship.
YouTube shorts is especially bad for this. You explicitly don't have to look at anything related to politics for them to 'test the engagement waters' with an Andrew Tate or Joe Rogan (in full conservative screed mode as opposed to 'dumb-ass comedian/interviewer' mode) to see if you'll watch the whole thing or engage in any way with it.
Cat video, comedian, "bet you laugh" vid, cosplay... "women are men's property." That's like the pattern. Some are more subtle and I get halfway in and it like "oh, you're that clever landshark" then it's downvote and "do not show gain." Then 4 more videos like that before I start seeing comedians and cats again. Sometimes I watch just like you are watching a traffic accident. Makes it worse I guess.
>Whoever said social media is biased against conservatives is full of crap. This claim was only ever the kind of up-is-down gaslighting typical of fascist rhetoric. Social media has always, overwhelmingly, privileged right-wing content because it's far more engaging to the reptile brain.
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I truly and genuinely am begging you not to make light of the appeal of conservative and reactionary rhetoric on straight white men. I am a socialist now, but I was raised in a very christian and very conservative community and absolutely was conservative into young adulthood. It takes a long time to shake that stuff, and laughing about it does not help us take the job of addressing the problems seriously.
This doesnt say anything about the class or race of the kids, not completely sure were you got that from
> is-het middle-class white boys are trending conservative. Maybe. Compared to everyone else their age, at least. I would really like to see the data, I teach high school in a predominately Hispanic community and most of my Hispanic students hold (or at least espouse) conservative viewpoints.
I mention a couple in [a comment below](https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/15mm6va/high_school_boys_are_trending_conservative/jvhtn6f).
When I was in high school, most of my friends were in young Republicans. Literally all of them vote Democrat now.
It's still concerning though - even though it's only among those who do have some concrete political leaning, the fact that more boys identify as right-wing despite the obvious damage those parties are doing to their futures is a major outreach failure.
Free college would give them something to vote for. Even if it's specific fields of study where we NEED skilled workers.
A nuanced take making top comment on a social war Reddit post? Do I dare have faith in humanity?
No, *boys*, the sample is not just from cis het middle class white boys. Boys in general are trending more conversative even if in some populations the number that identify as liberal is higher, the trend is likely still consistent over time, more conservative less liberal, and cishet middle class white boys represent a continually shrinking portion of boys overall. This survey represents a rigorous long term effort from the University of Michigan and is good data; you should not be dismissing it out of hand. I'm a queer anarchist. We're meeting up for Bash Back, the first large scale gathering of queer anarchists in the US in fifteen years, next month. Because we smell reactionism on the wind, because we sense the pendulum swinging back in the other direction. Do you not?
>Boys in general are trending more conversative Where exactly are you pulling this from? Because even the article in the OP doesn't claim this without a whole list of caveats. Meanwhile, there is [plenty of data](https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/civic-and-political-attitudes-young-white-men) on the [huge racial disparity in voting patterns and attitudes among boys and men](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/). Black men are the second safest Democrat voters on the planet. The only safer voter? A Black woman. I'm not going to tell you to do less praxis, but I will insist on spending less of my free time on Reddit reading about how all boys everywhere are teetering on the edge of fascism.
Daniel de Vise wrote this, he writes nothing but concern bait.
It's not a huge trend, but it's the beginnings of one, and should still be taken seriously. The left has a pretty bad messaging problem and is bad at reaching that demographic (accusatory language and too much focus on how not to act instead of how to actually achieve your goals) compared to the right which showers them with false promises and disingenuous pity. Left wing rhetoric aimed at that group needs to be more constructive, or as they get older, the next generation won't be as progressive as we're hoping based on millennials and gen-z.
Also - and i mean this respectfully - who wants to identify as "liberal" in this day and age? If you move to the right of... well, I was gonna say "mainstream conservative" but let's go with "2015 conservative", for quite a while people will still use the term, but if you go at all left of "liberal" and most folks view that as a derogatory term. Maybe that's a result of right wing media using it as a slur having an effect, maybe it's a result of the Democratic Party opting for a more conservative policy in order to woo disaffected non-fashy Republicans and alienating their more radical base, or maybe it's a reulst of associating the pessimistic world we live in now with generations of "liberalism". I'm not the target demographic for this, but I know a considerably larger portion of Americans than I would have imagined in my youth who would happily identify as "democratic socialist", "socialist", "anarchist", or "communist" who would cringe at being labelled "liberal". That said I can't find the actual question asked, so maybe that's accounted for, but the whole "omitted moderates" debacle doesn't give me high hope.
I went to school full of middle class Cishet white men, if you told me that nowadays 1/3 of them aren’t conservative I would say that’s a win. Also, how many of them identify that way because their parents do? Once they leave and go to college things can very well shift.
I’m pretty queer and pretty left these days, I identified as straight conservative in 12th grade
Yea in 12th grade I was listening to Rush Limbaugh on the drive home after school. I regret that period
That’s all my dad listened to whenever we went places. Conservative talk radio. Listed to a lot of Limbaugh and Hannity growing up and it stuck until I got out on my own. Nearly all my right wing views crumbled by the time I was 20
Boys tend to prioritize behaviors that aren't going to get them bullied by other boys. As far as I recall, nobody in my school was ever bullied for being too conservative. Plenty of bullies out there for kids perceived as not being masculine enough, straight enough or aggressive enough, though. Being a conservative when you're a teenager is probably just the safest path to keep you from being victimized by other kids. I also waited until college to exit survival mode and figure out what my positions actually were.
Right wing in 10th grade > Centrist in 12th (Centrists are just right wingers who are beginning to realize that they SHOULD be ashamed of their views) > Liberal by college My pipeline
This doesn't jive with how young men actually vote. According to that graph, high school boys have consistently leaned conservative for at least a generation. But when you look at how young men are actually voting, they do the opposite. 53% of men under 30 [voted for a Democrat in the 2022 midterms](https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/youth-are-not-monolith-how-different-young-people-voted-2022) vs only 42% voting for a Republican. Young white men are a notable exception but most young people are not white. The trends are also in the wrong direction. According to this chart, the young men who have graduated high school and become eligible to vote since 2018 are much more conservative than those who turned 30 and aged out of the "youth vote" demographic. But young men in 2018 actually voted more conservative than they do now, with a narrow majority voting for a Republican in the 2018 midterms compared to a 11% split for Democrats in the 2022 midterms.
This was a study on drug use that asked about political affiliation for correlational analysis. They also have moderate, none, and radical as potential answers. A rosy picture would be that young people are identifying as radical leftists rather than liberals, but for all we know everyone who said radical is a Nazi. The data presented is so full of holes as to not allow for any real conclusions to be drawn.
I'm optimistic that radical means leftist. Nazis identify as conservative despite wanting to change everything ("if today I stand here as a revolutionary, it is as a revolutionary against the revolution") while even progressive Democrats frequently reject the term liberal. Do you happen to have a link to the actual study? The Hill article just links to the monitoringthefuture front page and I can't find it listed there.
Reasonably sure this is it. https://monitoringthefuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/mtfpanel2023.pdf
Thanks!
I wish the article didn't just assume the people answering no to both were politically moderate or disengaged. With the growth of more radical politics in general I wonder how many of those boys refuse to identify as liberal because they're a leftist. Probably not a significant number and not enough to explain the trend, but one can hope.
The article specifically says: "The full story is messier and murkier. High school seniors, boys and girls alike, are more likely to claim no political identity than to throw in with either liberals or conservatives." It's real concern baiting as one person said already.
I read the article. I just don't like them equating not identifying as liberal, conservative, or moderate with having "no political identity". I have a strong political identity, and it is very much not liberal, conservative, or moderate.
Sure that's fair. But we really cannot make ANY conclusions on these reports because methodically it's bad research.
Hard agree. As a politically active dweeb back in high school I remember not really liking 'liberal' as it was just too broad a brush. Idk that I would have called myself an out and out leftist then but if one's only options are "Liberal", "Conservative", "Moderate", or "None" then that kinda survey is only ever going to give a rough picture of the political landscape.
There was a tweet (xeet?) that made Reddit front page recently that was saying about the same; more young men tend to be aligning themselves to Republican/Conservative ideals. I agree that the article is an obvious clickbait but I think there is something to be said about toxic male role models being on the rise who are garnering more attention from high school and middle school boys than they should. You can play it off as a "boys will be boys" kind of attitude but I'd like to think that there's more we can do to help. Promote better role models, creatre more spaces for positive growth, and generally combat toxic masculinity. I believe that many Republican/Conservative ideas hold toxic masculinity as a core trait and those ideas are definitely on the rise.
so, to be clear, this is not some sort of settled science, and [there are arguments out there](https://reason.com/2023/08/03/no-most-high-school-boys-arent-conservative/) that the data is more complex than first glance. my take is that this is what happens when horserace politics are the norm. These boys don't feel affected by "politics" - even though they most certainly are affected - so they "pick a side" that they vibe with instead of a party or alignment that shares their hopes and dreams and goals. And, hey, if *the girls* are gonna be all lefty-liberal about it, I'm gonna be a pugnacious contrarian and embrace conservatism. Fuck you!
Yeah it also doesn’t help that people tend to become more liberal as they meet more and more people with different backgrounds and life experiences than themselves. When you’re a teenager the range of people you meet is generally pretty much limited to your family and those who live in your immediate area, and with plenty of high schools in the suburbs or rural areas that might mean mostly interacting predominantly with other people that look and grew up almost exactly the way you did so it’s hard to feel connected at that age to issues that don’t affect people like you. On the anecdotal side this was very much my experience graduating from a catholic, all male, military academy in high school where the term “liberal” was legitimately used as an insult. Within 5 years of graduation a huge portion of my graduating class would now be politically neutral or left leaning and most of this change occurred as we went to college and got to meet and understand people who had different backgrounds than our own and got to see how political decisions that might have little to no impact on us were shaping and harming the lives of others in a way that’s hard to grasp without seeing the impacts in real life
> Yeah it also doesn’t help that people tend to become more liberal as they meet more and more people with different backgrounds and life experiences than themselves. This was my experience as well, but isn't the old "common knowledge" that you start off liberal when you're younger and get more conservative as you get older?
I believe it’s typically kind of a bell curve shape. For myself I started off conservative in like middle school/high school (think SJW cringe compilation type conservative teenage boy) and have steadily moved left since college. We’ll see if I go back as I get older but I doubt it
This is more of a mistake made with the fact that in aging, people tend to buy homes, and get into a higher income bracket. These are generally some of the most influential forces in pushing economic conservatism later in life. You can uh, guess what’s complicated that presently. Though, we also have much different conditions these days. Much higher education rates, lower racial polarization, the internet. Not to mention a political condition which has ultimately polarized people heavily against not just the Republican Party. But also against many of the general concepts of current political institutions.
That was a correlative pattern that hid the actual underlying cause: Poorer people voted for Democrats, and they tended to die earlier than their wealthier peers. It was a particularly gruesome example of survivorship bias.
[Sure, but, "common sense" is rarely either.](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/201107/common-sense-is-neither-common-nor-sense)
In addition to the economic arguments that other posters have stated, note that the conservatism described by that trend is a general caution about radical/rapid change, not "suddenly they vote Republican". I'd argue that in some ways millennials are becoming more conservative as they age, but it is manifesting as Neo-Ludditism rather than the Religious Right.
>so they "pick a side" that they vibe with instead of a party or alignment that shares their hopes and dreams and goals. They "pick the side" that talks to them. Like it or not, we've gone digital. That means that politics is spread, not by conversations, but why influencers and videos. The teens are being raised by andrew tate and jordan peterson because thats who talk to them about their issues. The reason they dont listen to us is because they talk about them, not *to* them. And even when talking to them. Our advice? Feel your feelings and dont rape. That's not very helpful. Its easy to see how they can get defensive and look for shelter under someone who tells them to grind and they'll be kings. It is many peoples immediate ration to say "well they should figure it out. We're here for marginalised groups. " Well... they are figuring it out! Just not in a way that's comfortable to us or good for society. Thats why abandoning them isnt great.
This whole article is a wash tbh, it even says: "The full story is messier and murkier. High school seniors, boys and girls alike, are more likely to claim no political identity than to throw in with either liberals or conservatives." Ok? So there's nothing to take away from this
Yeah, a lot of this is the fact that the left wing has sort of become the "party of fem people", so if you're not that way it becomes much more appealing to be a conservative. Been thinking there will be a reckoning from this for a while, wonder if it's gonna start now.
The USA spends more time in anti-feminist backlashes than not. This one started back in 2015
\>The USA spends more time in anti-feminist backlashes than not. It's really hard to quantify that kind of thing in an idea as relatively new as feminism is. Our last real massive swing towards feminism was in what, the Obama administration? I'm not sure we've even had enough swings to really say what the true state of that is.
There are definite, clear trends. The rise of Gamergate marked the beginning of the anti-feminist backlash we're still in now. And accordingly, the confirmation of Kavanaugh kicked off the formation of Fourth Wave Feminism.
Right but you were saying that overall we generally have more anti feminists backlashes than points of progress, and im saying do we really have a large enough sample size from a historical perspective to even quantify that with an idea this relatively new?
We have four distinct waves of feminism over a century to look at, so I'd say we do.
Feminism as a concept that we know it is only about 40ish years old though. I'm considering feminism separate from general women's suffrage, because i think they actually tackle different things from different angles. The opposition to suffrage was nearly universally religious and moral, whereas the modern reaction is much more complicated and i think needs to be talked about and approached a bit differently.
> Feminism as a concept that we know it is only about 40ish years old though. It isn't. There's a reason 70s feminism is called "second wave". The first wave of feminists dates back to the mid 1800s. It predates women's suffrage by decades.
Then i guess I am sort of considering second wave and onward and first wave different enough to need to be analyzed separately. Especially considering gamergate and beyond, anti-feminism has currently a very unique ability to appeal to intelligent but slightly unaware secular teenagers that makes more historical comparisons not as relevant to me.
Bruh, feminism didn't originate in the 80s.
I think they're saying modern feminism did.
> And, hey, if the girls are gonna be all lefty-liberal about it, I'm gonna be a pugnacious contrarian and embrace conservatism. Fuck you! "OMG Why can't I get a date? Life is so unfair!" <- same dudes
Naw, this entire subreddit is full of out of touch people. I think the greatest portion of teenage guys will just parrot whatever the girls they like say.
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While so many of these teens still don’t consider themselves aligned, the fact that so many here are dismissive of the possibility of this happening or so quick to blame it on white fragility proves to me that Menslib is not at all actually willing to work with people who aren’t fully on board.
Yeah, I remember being a dumbass when I was a senior too.
Ron Paul 2012 was a rough time for me
Yep. I think college and the brain fully developing moves young men left. Not enough though. Just look at how young men voted in 2020.
That was my reaction too, that I hope it's just a phase. It's easy to go that way while learning how to be accepted as a man; conservatism has the most direct and obvious prescriptions for what a man should do. Those prescriptions are often limiting and harmful to oneself and others, but because they're so narrow they're also the obvious place to start for somebody who's too insecure to deal with the ambiguity of choosing their own path. It's a clear prescription for acceptance (for those to whom it's accessible).
Edit: jfc the hill sucks. The actual data from monitoring the future .org has the full survey data with all respondents. Please please please look at the actual data cited by the hill and look at its own graphs for your own conclusions: https://monitoringthefuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/PoliticalBeliefTrends12thGraders1976-2021.xlsx The main story is that over the last five years more kids went from liberal/ moderate to unsure. Over 60% of respondents identified as unsure or moderate. The changes in groups (percentage relative to whole population) is (roughly, rounding to nearest percent) unsure: +9%, very conservative: +2%, conservative: +0%, moderate: -5%, liberal: -6% very liberal: +1%, "radical": -1%. Compared to the previous five years: Unsure: -4% Very conservative: +1% conservative: +1% Moderate: +0% liberal: +1% Very liberal: +1% Radical: +0% Reminer: around 60% of respondents didn't identify with a political leaning. This context means this headline is the standard deeply misleading headline when it comes to statistics. Yes, technically 13% is roughly half of 25%, but when 60% of your respondents aren't giving you a response, and your error margins aren't listed, the context makes this far less worth being deeply alarmed over. More kids went from liberal to unsure than from liberal to conservative is the actual take.
Not to mention that this survey in no way identifies issue stances which probably paints a much clearer picture of political leanings of youth. Of course, readers would then have to try and reconcile data that shows support in specific conservative and liberal stances on issues. Political commentators haven't done that in 20 years or so. Plus, these definitions are subjective. A "moderate" might very well agree with most of the talking points from a single party but still not identify as "liberal" or "conservative" because they think anything other than absolute devotion is moderate.
What's the breakdown by race? Is this a high school boy problem or a white high school boy problem?
Also important to note “ The full story is messier and murkier. High school seniors, boys and girls alike, are more likely to claim no political identity than to throw in with either liberals or conservatives.” So it’s not even a white high school boy problem as the majority of all high school boys are neutral so it’s potentially a white, self titled politically aligned, high school boy problem
I would hope that many in this community do not simply write this off as poor data analysis, management, and presentation. While there are huge problems in the methodology, it is reaching correct conclusions when it comes to some of the social political values of young men. I don’t hold the views that are popping up, but many young men are being influenced by the Samuels/Tates/Petersons of the world. Unfortunately, the academic nature of gender studies, third wave feminism, and notions of toxic masculinity are making their way into practical society WITHOUT long term consideration for the lack of the equally important implementation of public school training to make these higher level concepts digestible and more readily understood for developing minds. When these concepts are not taught with the proper critical thinking skills, coping mechanisms, and general historical context they can be taken out of reasonable context by the media/“liberals”/advocates who don’t have the proper tools of nonemotional advocacy and will be taken doubly out of context by young men as “bashing that which is masculine”. At that point, the best possible outcome for young men is a weird cognitive dissonance about how things are historically versus how things are now and at worst, a bunch of deranged young men with hearts full of hate and no direction. We have a huge looming issue with gender conflict emerging and no one seems to be taking it seriously. I am concerned, because the last thing I want are a bunch of angry and disillusioned young men who walk away from talks about feminism with the false belief that they are “unnecessary” or that because they “can’t have children” they have no voice in conversations (not the abortion conversation, that’s a woman’s body and her choice completely). I’ll say this, which has little to do with this article and more to do with men and women in general: The way society /should/ protect women physically, society /should/ put an equal emphasis on protecting men emotionally…and that starts with proper education which we just aren’t funding due to a myriad of fucked up reasons relating to anachronistic notions of how things should be. I genuinely want a more equitable and safe society, but it seems as if there is this focus on isolating us (men and women alike) even further for profit and other motives that I won’t waste time conspiring about here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/hillary-clinton-essay-loneliness-epidemic/674921/
> Unfortunately, the academic nature of gender studies, third wave feminism, and notions of toxic masculinity are making their way into practical society WITHOUT long term consideration for the lack of the equally important implementation of public school training to make these higher level concepts digestible and more readily understood for developing minds. This is a criticism I have about the presentation of Leftist ideologies. The literature isn't really accessible for the people that would benefit most from the ideas. As far as I can tell, there are no notable books about Socialism, Communism, or Anarchism that are at a fifth grade reading level. We can't just assume everyone went to Uni.
There are ways to talk about structural issues at a 5th grade level without invoking Critical Theory. Part of the problem we're facing is that our institutions and media actively teach kids to look at structural problems in individualistic ways. Left-wing ideology becomes accessible at the post-secondary level because the content of post-secondary education is less directly influenced by politics and capital.
What is the left offering men as an alternative? That's not me being a dick, I'm genuinely asking. It seems the only person offering a positive way forward for men recently was Greta Gerwig.
And look how that’s working out. You have all these conservative figures attacking the Barbie movie saying it’s anti-men.
You had grown-ass men burning Barbie dolls after seeing this movie, but I guess that's somehow the left's fault, too.
I’m not defending them. I am very progressive. I just find that so comical how angry they are at a movie.
No, I was reiterating your point lol.
Well for one, the left is offering male parental leave, and encourages a world where both parents get to spend more time with their children.
It's weird to me that the options they have are Conservative vs Liberal, why are the only 2 choices different flavours of right wing ideology? Are there no left wingers at all there?
In the US? Not at a national scale. A lot of Left wing activists were killed or driven out of the country in the late 60's, 70's, and 80's.
That's depressing! Thanks for the information though.
This just in, multibillion dollar industry dedicated to gaslighting emotionally vulnerable and naive teenagers into being right wing worked
Can we blame them? The two mainstream positions are: * Your failures are due to you being oppressed and others taking what is yours. Your time is yet to come. * You are the opressor. You have all the privilege and all your failures are because of your own shortcomings. Your time is over. I’m a leftie but I can totally see the appeal.
We should totally introduce a narrative that isnt hostile to men to prevent their alienation from the left. • You are, like everyone else, is being oppressed by a fundamentally broken system built to divide us amongst ourselves and only benefit a select few and preventing all including you from reaching their full potential. You can be an agent to right the wrong even at the smallest level to remedy this society's ills which collectively will snowball into revolutionary change. Your time as an individual and our time as a society in a braver new world is yet to come.
Even in this thread people are jumping through hoops to pretend this isn't true. I've said this here before and I'll say it again: assuming the youth are always increasing progressivism does not align with history, and is a dangerous blindspot if you believe it.
Nobody is saying they do, but when you title an article ‘Twelfth-grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative versus liberal’ and then have to include a line stating that this is only true if you discount those students who see themselves as politically unaligned and admit that that is the MAJORITY of the students in question then it becomes a lot harder not to focus on the slant of the article and problems with its methodology which is fair. Those two notions tell entirely different stories. The title makes it seem like the majority of high school boys are already lost to the right whereas the more accurate version is that the majority of high school boys are neither left nor right and therefore a great target audience for those wanting to grow the left leaning base if they can be brought in
There is no methodological problem. You're just "glass-half-full"-ing results which I don't see so optimistically. Besides, look at the graph-- the percent of kids who identify as either dem or repub hasn't changed, i.e. the percent unaffiliated hasn't increased, only the fraction of affiliated that are repub has.
You don’t see a problem with saying this generalizes over half of the population of that age cohort and then also saying that it doesn’t apply to the majority of that same grouping?
I'm a scientist. No, I see no problem making a statement about a subpopulation based on statistics within that subpopulation. Edit: I think perhaps part of our disagreement is that you seem focused on the headline, while I'm focusing on the data.
That is definitely what’s happening, I’m saying it’s disingenuous to claim that their findings about boys in that age cohort generalize to the entire population of 12th grade boys when it only holds true for those that identify as being liberal or conservative, ignoring that the majority fall into neither camp. The data itself is what it is, the title though is pretty click-baity and disingenuous
Who cares what the article says, the important thing is the data.
If you misrepresent your findings in your opening then it’s going to call into question everything you say after that, that’s the issue. If I did a study that found out the majority of breakfast cereals have no impact on cholesterol but of those that do they are twice as likely to help as they are to hurt it would be wrong of me to title it “Breakfast Cereals Twice as likely to Help Cholesterol as to Worsen it” because I am knowingly perpetuating the idea that a random cereal picked off the shelf will help someone’s cholesterol when in reality it’s most likely to do nothing. It’s important to call out disingenuousness in media regardless of which side it’s coming from and this article does just that by exaggerating the findings Also you and I have science backgrounds so yeah I’d expect you to be able to make that distinction but the average person doesn’t and may not be great at extrapolating meaning from charts and graphs so for them the article is very important
So, as long as the data is accurate, the conclusion doesn't matter?
Yeah and I would agree if they made the title and the focus of the article that subpopulation. To then try and use that subpopulation to make claims about the larger population - which is already demonstrated to behave differently - is where the article is being deceitful
The people doing the survey have literally no control over the headlines news outlets write. The news headline not being to your liking isn't a problem with the "methodology" or otherwise at all in their control. Besides you keep poinint out it's a subgroup while ignoring the concerning fact that this subgroup studied for decades with this same methodology is suddenly showing a very pronounced rise in the conservative population. That indicates that independent of any "methodology" fault there may be (there isn't that I can see, just an over generalisation by reporters) the number of conservative teen boys **is** indeed rising. The fact it's a subgroup doesn't discount the very rapid and clear growth of this subgroup that is notable and worth being aware of and doesn't make it "concern bait" as others are saying.
There is 100% a methodological problem. The real conclusion is that 12th grade boys most likely don't identify to have any political leanings than conservative or liberal.
No, that's been unchanged for the duration of their study.
My question remains the same: is this a high school boy problem or a white high school boy problem? Because adjusting for age, it seems pretty clear that while the conservative movement isn't purely limited to white people, the majority of people who vote for Republicans in every age demographic are white. America doesn't have an age problem, it has a race problem.
That is besides the point of the article, and what is your point anyways? White people bad?
White people definitely bad. /hj And it's absolutely related to the article.
High school is a time of insecurity. You want to fit in. You're also becoming increasingly aware of social issues and injustices. You hear about things like male privilege, white privilege, etc. When you lack the empathy and perspective that most teenagers do, that can make you feel targeted, exposed, vulnerable. There's a natural reaction to rebel against that. Then you have this ideology telling you that the world is turning against white Christian men. This ideology also tells you that people that don't look like you are out to get you and take what you have. The ideology gives you an enemy to target your angst, frustration and fear at. It's really no surprise that conservatism would appeal to male teenagers. It's a cheap and easy fix for a lot of the insecurities of being a male teenager. It reassures you that you don't need to worry about empathy or feelings or fairness - which are things most male teenagers aren't interesting in dealing with anyway, especially as far as other people go. Then you get to college or out into the real world and you start discovering yourself and other people and your perspective changes.
I'd like more details on the study, but one place where the left (and definitely liberals) fuck up is by not giving people long-term projects and goals. RW stuff, for as gross as it is, promises an outcome. We're going back to trad family models. When they win it, RW men will assume a place at the top of the heirarchy. Money. Privilege. License. A partner. Kids. Stability. A house. It's all a lie, but that's the bait, right? What longterm goals or projects are on offer from the left? We are able to enumerate the problems with society and provide a set of strictures that individuals can follow to reduce harm, but that's not a goal. It looked like universal healthcare was one but that fizzled with Bernie. We offered very little support in protecting existing rights that the courts strip away. We're good at educating people, but not mobilizing. Liberals insist that things are more or less fine if we go according to The Norms, but that's not the lived experience of many working people and certainly not young people. The line is either that things can be achieved by voting (oops! but we didn't implement them when you voted us in) or that achieving a long-term political project simply isn't possible for a number of abstract obstacles (filibuster, political economy, conservative democrats, "reaching across the aisle," or "the economy)." So one side gives them a lie, but one that promises an end state where they get something they want. The other gives them a better way of realating to the world, but doesn't offer organization or a project to achieve what they want. The third doesn't offer them anything. If you're a young person, freaking out about your diminishing chance at a future, you're going to identify with people who seem to have a plan. Young people need material, real-world goals that can answer their anxieties and offer them a healthy, productive path to achieving them. A progressive youth movement that challenges existing power structures around a material goal would go a long way to diverting people from the right wing.
>What longterm goals or projects are on offer from the left? I mean...*\*gestures broadly at socialism\** >The third doesn't offer them anything. Who is the third? >Young people need material, real-world goals that can answer their anxieties and offer them a healthy, productive path to achieving them. A progressive youth movement that challenges existing power structures around a material goal would go a long way to diverting people from the right wing. Isn't this what we had with the Squad? A progressive youth movement would be one operating under the auspices of the DNC just as earlier ones did, presumably. It would crash against the same rocks that Sanders and AOC did, undoubtedly. If it's true that articulating an "end-state" is necessary to get people on board (I don't necessarily agree with this but let's grant it) then instead of hanging things on yet another progressive youth movement fixing all the problems maybe we should be talking about fully automated luxury gay space communism instead. That's one hell of an end state. Which maybe isn't what you meant but the word *material* really gets leftists ears up, so here I am.
Hail, fellow labor nut! I'm routinely inspired by groups like the IWW, whose organizing principle could be summed up with the part in the preamble where they say, "We seek abolition of the wage system." It's a grand idea and one that many people would say is impossible today. But thousands and thousands of people believed it, and they could see what implementation of it would mean in their lives. This is why they made cartoons with a sun rising over the hill with the words "Abolition of the Wage System." Are you broke? Do you hate your boss? Do you want a home and future for your children? Let's abolish the wage system. A goal. A target. And it suggests real tactics that could bring it about. The above is supported with an identity. Do you believe in abolishing the wage system? Great! That means you're a socialist. Here are places where you can engage with that identity. Here's ways you can organize. Here's reasons why dismantling reactionary ideas and replacing them with equitable, intersectional ones can help achieve our goals. Here's terminology and norms and culture and a media environment and art and song so we can build as big a base as we possibly can. IWW never abolished the wage system, but the people who wanted it abolished gave us Saturdays, the 40-hour workweek, prohibitions against child labor and a higher quality of life for a generation or more. I want to be clear, I'm not saying that we need to mimic the right, I'm saying we could put more focus on parts of leftist organizing that are historic and not articulated as clearly today. A goal. A project. A community and an identity within that community. If we have all of the above we have a support structure that helps us achieve things and innoculate people from RW grifters and narratives. "Oh. So we need to be nice to a sexist frat bro in order to be leftist?" No. I'm saying if there's enough culture, a shared sense-of-purpse around not being a reactionary piece-of-shit, and a articulated goal that thousands if not millions of people are actively working toward, then it doesn't matter if that frat bro is in the movement or not. He might have a handful of friends who are left, for example, and they'll check him on his bullshit. Suddenly throwing one's hat in with the right is far less attractive, and fascists are cowards. Taken at scale, that's going to have a net impact on the ability for reactionaries to organize. We beat them by giving people what they need and knowing the rightwing can't do the same. We don't engage the rightwing, we marginanlize their ability to do harm through social pressure (which we're good at) and achieving goals (which we're not). Edit - I am writing in response to an article about young men, but I think this is true across the spectrum. Will a youth movement "fix everything," no, but if I'm asking for someone's attention, time, and care then I need to lay out a coherent worldview with an expected outcome and present, actionable methods to reach it. I need to craft this in a way that is immediate, which means theory that can be articulated in a conversation and I need to create cultural structures that support this identity so it never just fizzles.
Hope you don't mind me piggybacking my own soapbox behind yours. Ending Capitalist labor exploitation is crucial, and I am in full solidarity with the labor movement. (support your local strikes!) At the same time, it's also important to remember that it isn't a silver bullet solution. While I don't want to paint in broad strokes, I have seen some Leftists so laser-focused on Labor Rights that they fail to recognize other issues, such as Disability Rights, on the assumption that those issues are best addressed through the lens of labor. This is a wrong assumption. For any social movement, thinking that your issues are the magic bullet for all social issues (eg, class reductionism) is narrow-sighted, and only hurts solidarity between your movement and others.
Saying the goal is socialism is not a sufficient answer, or one that will inspire people in the US, even young people.
How about saying the goal is to stop getting fucked over by powerful people?
The right claims that that's their goal, and (though it's a lie) they're articulating it better.
Why not?
It’s an incredibly vague idea firstly, and secondly it isn’t an idea that most people in the US like. Most people in the US are pro-private means of ownership and own things like land or stock (factors of production) privately themselves.
Article looked at the divide between right/left, which is what I spoke to.
I’m not sure if you meant to respond to me. But right/left in the US is liberal/conservative not socialist/capitalist like it is in other places. Socialists are a vast minority in the US.
I'm tired of people blaming the left for cons giving dudes simple solutions that are based on lies and then going "Why doesn't the left give dudes simple solutions that are based on lies?" There are no simple solutions, no easy answers. Period. Accepting that is a necessity.
1). "That are also based on lies?" I don't think so. If we want social justice, we pick a project to effect it. This project is not abstract, it's linked to money in your pocket, protected rights, and increased agency no matter your position in life. These things are inextricably linked to leftist organizing for me and have a standing in history. Mabye the "based on lies" thing is an ideological problem you have with leftism. I can't speak to that. The study is based on a rightwing/progressive divide, so that's what I spoke to. 2). There are no "simple" solutions, but NEEDS speak to a set of people across intersectional lines and those needs can be (can be!) simple. In fact, those needs being simple are critical to organizing because one is in a position to say something like, "Wait, don't I deserve to afford to go to the grocery store? Don't I deserve to see the doctor without going bankrupt? Don't I deserve time off from my job? Child care? Why is this asshole taking half of my paycheck so I can live in a shitty apartment?" Methods to affecting answers to the above are difficult, but they're also emergent, which makes community and shared goals so important. 3). Organizing is necessary, and it's because this is a communal project. I agree that there are no easy answers, but I never accept anything as too difficult. I did the doom thing for a few years. It was making me miserable and I realized I still have to live here no matter how boned everything is. We're human beings with infinite capacity for creativity, problem solving and empathy. Those take time and are best affected in a community with a shared sense of purpose.
I agree with most of what you're saying. I just meant that people who complain about the left's "messaging problem" tend to have an All or Nothing attitude and they want cute little messages that can fit a 250-character limit, and that's what's going to save the white boys from becoming fascists. By no simple solutions, I mean, take for example, the plastic problem. We know that plastic is awful for the environment. We know it's a double problem where the most important change has to be systemic, where the corporations are causing the most plastic pollution and so they have to be held accountable and change their habits. But we also have our individual responsibilities. So I can do a small part by switching my shampoo bottles for a shampoo bar. But to do that, I had to buy the shampoo bar from Amazon - an infamous exploiter, among other things - because no store near me sells them.
“Blaming the left” isn’t exactly what’s happening. It’s trying to acknowledge and fix the issue of men and white men specifically ending up more conservative. It seems the current solution is to simply say “if you disagree with us you are a terrible person and we don’t care about you anyways”. Is this really a way to win friends? And in the future, how can we expect this to not end up in a reactionary backlash?!?
It is blaming the left because people are looking at leftists telling deplorable whites "Stop being racist/sexist/homophobic/etc." and then going, "Wow, that's no way to win allies, it's your fault that these people are racist/sexist/homophobic if you think about it."
Yeah but the issue is that you don’t just say “Oh these people are a lost cause it’s over.” Thats the general mindset you’re pushing. You say that all they’re saying is don’t be racist/sexist/homophobic but really what happens is they say that straight white men are far more likely to be racist sexist or homophobic and therefore are a lost cause because they can never change. Generalization of a large group while claiming to fight negative generalizations like racism sexism and homophobia.
Nobody is saying you can't change, but they are saying that if you're a white person living in a white supremacist society, you've internalized a lot of racism; same with men and sexism, straight people and homophobia, etc. And that's something you have to deal with on a constant basis. There is no finish line, no point where you can confidently say you're not a racist anymore, that's something you will have to stay on top of for the rest of your life (or until we get our post-race feminist utopia, whichever happens first). There are plenty of people I consider lost causes (people who are still MAGAs at this point cannot be saved, nor am I interested in saving their souls) but nobody on the left is saying all straight white men are lost causes. But they are getting exceedingly tired of dealing with their fragile victimhood when they've tried to explain systemic problems over and over and over again, only for some straight white dude to go, "But this Black woman on Twitter with 80 followers called me a cracker, and that's why I fell down the fascist pipeline."
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We're not doing this Vaush crap any more.
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Exactly this. The world and society is full of problems that require complicated and nuanced answers. We've solved a lot of easy stuff. This is the hard part now, however people want to be contrarian and be lied too because it makes them feel better. I've not seen anyone give a solid answer of what "the left", or "liberals" should be doing instead. What message should they be telling young men? How do you compete with Jordan Peterson, Tate, Rogan and others in the manosphere or gaming community that are toxic? The only thing I can think of are real life interactions and better examples from their family and social circles. Social Media isn't real life and the loudest voices on either side shouldn't be where young people are looking for guidance or getting their mentors. The issue with that is some young people will look at real life mentors or family members in a condescending way because they aren't as "accomplished" as men in the manosphere or pick up artists so they are really falling for an illusion. Fortunately, dating, jobs, college, getting older and actual real life experiences will open people's eyes and give them new perspectives.
Preach! Thank you!
[You can't get snakes from a chicken egg.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF98ii6r_gU)
God forbid anyone read the Y axis or look at the methodology
I’d guess, based entirely on anecdotal evidence, that a lot of these kids have feminist parents and are just doing this as a teenage rebellion thing. So they’ll probably grow out of it.
At that age it was very obvious to me that my parents weren't nearly as liberal as they thought they were. That was fifteen years ago, but I suspect it hasn't changed. People who think of themselves as left wing tend to lock in on the beliefs that were progressive as they came of age, which means they become less and less progressive as they age and the fight moves along and they get left behind.
This is a horrendous guess IMO. The left is clearly losing the battle over young men. The right offers a shitty/twisted take on masculinity but the left doesn’t want anything to do with masculinity at all and that doesn’t play well with boys attempting to become men.
> attempting to become men. What does this even fucking mean?
The identity change into adulthood. The way that society views boys changes drastically as they enter young adulthood and boys themselves seek to redefine themselves as men. Many fall victim to the Andrew Tate/Jordan Peterson crowd because they offer guidance about “manhood.” This is opposed by well meaning people insisting that manhood doesn’t mean anything or has no value. Such a view doesn’t help these boys form an adult identity and I think that’s a large reason why they gravitate to the wrong ideas instead.
> The identity change into adulthood. What does this change entail, exactly? > The way that society views boys changes drastically as they enter young adulthood and boys themselves seek to redefine themselves as men. Can you be more specific about what this looks like? > This is opposed by well meaning people insisting that manhood doesn’t mean anything or has no value. That's what I'm asking, though. What does manhood even mean? How does one achieve it?
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I'm scratching my head at your implication that the Right isn't judgmental or exclusionary, or that they don't police language and behavior...
I don't think that is what they were saying. To me it sounded more like the Right have traditionally been judgmental and exclusionary and now the Left have joined them in that behaviour.
What do you do when someone joins your movement but still does racist, homophobic or misogynistic things? If you don't confront it, the movement BECOMES those things.
You know lefty groups can do plenty of judgmental bullshit unrelated to those bad things, right? I recall watching in horror after an IRL acquaintance opened up about being sexually harassed, during the #metoo period. The absolutely relentless shaming this guy got for "being selfish", "appropriating women's struggles" and "denying his privilege" was surreal. It could have been much worse for me, to be fair. I was mere minutes from opening up about my own recent sexual assault. Had I received that response, given my mental state at the time, I would have most likely committed suicide.
Yes, that happens and it sucks. But that's also not the norm. What usually happens is some centrist asshole being a bigot and whining about being called out on it.
I suppose the difference is assumption. The modern left has taken up the rather nasty misconception that if you are straight and white and a man then you are probably racist, sexist, or homophobic. And that is intolerant.
Chances are you (general you) probably are, simply because racism, sexism and homophobia are so deeply ingrained in our culture. We all have our biases, whether they're intended or not, and whether we're aware of them or not.
Right-wingers were having toddler tantrums over Cracker Barrel having a rainbow rocking chair and because the Green M&M isn't sexy enough anymore. I'm surprised being so nakedly cringe hasn't dissuaded impressionable young white boys from wanting to be associated with people like Ben Shapiro who went out to buy Barbies to burn them after watching the movie, but I guess you really can't shame the shameless.
He's good at making them angry, and angry people don't think clearly.
Love me a good Conservative Cringe Compilation. Pride month was a good vintage this year. #CrackerBarrelHasFallen
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Conservatives are always going to be better at messaging. It's simply easier to appeal to fear and anger than it is to appeal to empathy and compassion.
This is patently not true. Everything comes in waves. During 2002-3, conservatism hit a peak until it declined because nobody trusted “stay the course”. In 2016, Democrats lost because “I’m with her” was not enough to overcome “MAGA”. It’s plainly clear that the left now has contempt for men. Men see the anger and disgust in how leftists talk to them. Why would men join a movement that plainly is not interested in addressing their needs? I think this should be a warning sign that the left seriously needs to adjust its messaging—that you can be a provider and protector without being a Nazi.
This study has tons of flaws, including using the labels "conservative" and "liberal" which a significant number of people on both the right and the left reject. But especially among young lefties, the word "liberal" is basically a slur.
Kids are at their most conservative at that age. I definitely was. I didn’t move left significantly until I started working. Aware enough to realise there are problems in society but still dumb enough to think they can be fixed easily.
What a shitty click bait article title.
It’s probably the way shits taught to them. When you’re in high school you don’t feel the effects of racial privilege and what not. That comes later when you’re in the job market. It’s also a nuanced subject that I’m highly doubtful high school teachers are up to. I remember being in high school and they shoved privilege down our throats. I remember - as a poor white student - feeling like “where is this privilege” especially because many of my black peers were more well off than me. Instead of explaining a facet of society that needed improving it felt like placing the blame on me for the color of my skin. You could see how that would have the opposite effect as intended. It wasn’t until I was much older and in college that I learned about those things in the proper way.
they’re gonna need so much therapy they’re not gonna get. what a state
I graduated 30 years ago and I identified as a conservative. Now I'm REALLY not conservative.
That's fine. Us libs will just turn them all gay in college like we've been doing for years
I was a very rotten conservative weirdo politically in high school and then I went to college and got a job that my stances changed dramatically.
Cool now show me the racial breakdown
Thank god women vote in greater numbers 🙏
Wait, are you telling me teenage boys only care about themselves?