“b-but bears are actually dangerous!” Shut the hell up.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    can we stop antagonizing populations that feel disenfranchised by society and therefor giving the truly evil fucks out there an easy population to brainwash and feed extra scummy ideologies to?

    Young nerdy men who feel excluded from society that dont have any strong female figures in their life are barraged by a constant stream of messaging that could easily be interpreted as “(white) men are evil and the source of all problems with society”

    I think it’s a two-pronged problem.

    Young men are encouraged to be aggressive, thin-skinned, and superficial. They’re sold this idea of sex as a reward for climbing to the top of some nebulously defined social hierarchy rather than an expression of intimacy with a romantic partner.

    Meanwhile, young women are victims of the Madonna/Whore complex, simultaneously expected to be sexual and virginal, model-esque and down-to-earth, your plaything and your mom. They’re this thing men are expected to fight over, but also personally responsible for the drama created by this social expectation.

    And so much of this engineered conflict revolves around selling you something. Gym memberships or diet supplements or fashion accessories or self-help classes or luxury status symbols are all supposed to be a thing we can buy into in order to climb the ladder to an ideal romantic life. All to commodify the idea of love.

    By constantly antagonizing them for not being able to navigate the political nuance of those messages, we give an incredibly easy pathway to the more toxic ideologies that the Tates of the world will pull them into to profit off of them

    Guys like Andrew Tate are ultimately just bullies. And bullying is a tool that one class of people use to force the others to conform and submit. So much of this boils down to Tate inducting new members of his cult of personality by sending older members out to jump them in.

    The only real remedy is to shut these guys down. Stand together. Stick up for your friends and neighbors in the face of fascist bullying. Push back.