I keep seeing posts mentioning this phenomenon more and more often.
For instance:
‘Andrew Tate phenomena’ surges in schools - with boys refusing to talk to female teacher
Like, why? Why now? Why even? I really wish I had a time machine where I could go to the future and ask them what the general reasons were for this social development. But I feel like I’m looking for the specific thorn on a cactus that popped my balloon.
Because society simply has mixed standards and very little empathy for men.
Our culture has (thankfully) shifted very far from the idea of the male role as sole protector and provider for the family. While that’s great for women’s independence, society hasn’t changed the expectation that men should still primarily fill that role.
Young men are still expected to grow up to be financially successful, physically fit, willing to sacrifice their lives and happiness for their future families all while being completely emotionally invulnerable about all of it. Society is clear (and correct) that women can do any or all of that if they so choose, but it’s totally also fine if they want to be a “traditional” woman.
We’re at this halfway point where (compared to our traditional/conservative past) young women can choose any path they desire and it’s acceptable and celebrated (which is a great thing). We just need to have that same expectation for young men, and make it clear.
When young men have problems, they very often are told to man-up or change themselves in some way (get a job, go to the gym, buy an expensive car)in order to fix it, when they need to be told it’s okay to be upset, it’s okay to share your feelings, it’s okay to be vulnerable.
We can’t send mixed signals that women are primarily attracted to rich, ripped, emotionally invulnerable soldiers. We’ve got to stop only celebrating men who are billionaires or professional athletes. Boys need to see their nerdy English teachers or average looking artists as role models.
I don’t know how we can get there, but until we do our young men are going to continue this regression into toxic masculinity and far right ideologies.
This ended up way longer than intended, lol.
I don’t think our brains have caught up with our society lol…
I remember reading somewhere that in Nordic countries where the gender equality rates are highest in the world, women tend to take on More gender stereotypical jobs and roles than they do in less gender equal countries, even though they generally have more opportunities to do whatever they want compared to other less equal countries.
There are billions of us on this planet and none of us fit into that average cog, but I’m fairly certain that in general and among cis people men are attracted to traditionally “feminine” women and women are attracted to traditionally “masculine” men… obviously we are (hopefully) more enlightened as far as our acceptance of lgbtq and other non cis lifestyles etc, but part of what makes academic sociology so interesting is looking at stuff like this…
The main problem we all have is income inequity and the wealth gap.
For example, it’s a fact that when more people are covered by Medicaid and Medicare in a region, that region has lower crime, and the Medicare coverage is a better predictor of crime rates than police funding by a very large degree.