Toxic masculinity and red pilling boys and young men

[superrific]

I think this thread has been a lot more productive since we got off the sexual stuff. I don’t think that is nearly as important as economic factors. It’s fine that you think that, but it’s clear a lot of people don’t agree.

Well, that's the point of having discussions. I would respond that you think it's more productive because you are a priori favoring the economic factors. It's more in your wheelhouse of discussion. I do not think that's what the evidence shows. Again, it reminds me of the "productive" discussions of how economic anxieties were responsible for MAGA when in reality it never was about that.

How many red-pilled guys have you talked to? Some of my son's friends were startlingly angry at women. They were straight A students at top colleges studying engineering and who appear to be setting themselves up for great careers. I have a friend whose son (a few years older than mine) went through an Andrew Tate phase. My friend is an asset manager, who had previously earned a PhD in comp sci from Princeton. There's no economic anxiety going on there, or if there is, it's the result of the Tate stuff rather than the cause.

 

[superrific]

This kind of political culture is making things worse, IMO:

Yeah, I just don't see this low-T and alpha/beta nonsense as the result of poor economic opportunities or educational struggles. Certainly the folks peddling it don't have those issues. We tend to think of Jordan Petersens or Andrew Tates as grifters who are doing nothing more than selling what their audience wants to hear. I don't see it that way at all. I think the psychologist Jordan Petersen became influencer Jordan Petersen because he actually believes it (note: some of his early academic work had weird sexual dimensions, including IIRC something of an obsession about pheremones). Andrew Tate quite obviously believes it, I think, or he wouldn't be in a Romanian prison.

That's why these right-wing "alphas" have a following. They aren't selling anything. They are speaking from the heart, and the young kids can see it. It's part of the appeal. They tell it like it is.

 

[Paine]

Well, that's the point of having discussions. I would respond that you think it's more productive because you are a priori favoring the economic factors. It's more in your wheelhouse of discussion. I do not think that's what the evidence shows. Again, it reminds me of the "productive" discussions of how economic anxieties were responsible for MAGA when in reality it never was about that.

How many red-pilled guys have you talked to? Some of my son's friends were startlingly angry at women. They were straight A students at top colleges studying engineering and who appear to be setting themselves up for great careers. I have a friend whose son (a few years older than mine) went through an Andrew Tate phase. My friend is an asset manager, who had previously earned a PhD in comp sci from Princeton. There's no economic anxiety going on there, or if there is, it's the result of the Tate stuff rather than the cause.

The sexual factors that you talk about have always been present. Men have always had anxiety about that sort of thing. What has changed it that regard in the last two-three decades?

How would talking about sex with these young men you mention tackle their startling angriness at women? Are you sure that these young men wouldn’t have been misogynistic prior to the red pill trend?

In my opinion, there is no way that this trend takes off without some worldwide paradigm shift. I think that’s a lot more compelling than attributing it all to young men not knowing how to talk about having sex.

This is a shift that has transcended cultures and nations. The rise of global capitalism and women in the workforce makes a lot more sense to me as the contributing factor to men’s turn towards red pilling.

The sexual factors make it more appealing for men to buy into this type of content, but it doesn’t drive men to the content.

 

[UNCatTech]

This discussion has taken a turn, which is fine but it's important to distinguish between two issues:

A. Red-pilling and the embrace of toxic masculinity;
B. Stagnating economic or educational opportunities for boys

1. I think there are a lot of people on this thread contending, with various degrees of explicitness, that these two phenomena are linked, and specifically that A is a reaction to B. That's not necessarily true, right? It's an optimistic theory that XY individuals will become "men" -- that is, respectful, caring and supportive of other people -- when their economic anxieties are resolved and they find stable, satisfying employment. Until then, they are vulnerable to being red-pilled by people taking advantage of those anxieties.

But that's not necessarily the relationship between those two factors. It could be that A is causing B, which is an unsettling prospect, but one that I think is probably a significant causal pathway. Or it could be that both are happening, but there's no causality between them.

Notice above I used the phrase "economic anxieties." I think that's a fair encapsulation of much of the discussion in the last page or two. If that reminds you of the exhausting conversations from 2016-18, when we read countless profiles of run down rural areas where the jobs left and the people only turned to Trump because of the bitterness created by the lack of economic opportunities -- well, that's the point. And I think most people have come to accept that the appeal of MAGA isn't really about that at all. That's merely a symptom.

I'm not any more convinced that incels or the red-pilled more generally are economically anxious. By and large, incels are not economically desperate. The stereotype of guys who live in basements with little education and no job isn't wholly false, but those also aren't the guys slurping up Andrew Tate's misogyny. The majority of incels or "bros" have college degrees and above salaries. Some have graduate or professional education.

2. It's worth considering the primacy of Asian men in incel culture. I have no idea whether Asians are actually disproportionately incel (good data is hard to find about this community, not surprisingly), but they are prevalent enough to have their own moniker: ricecels. And it was a ricecel who killed all those people in California (Isla Vista).

These men often have good jobs and good educations, and feel as though they should be successful with women. Why aren't they? By their telling, it's because people think they have small penises. According to my son, whose male friends are almost all East or South Asian, this is a persistent fear. I've also talked with Asian men, and seen them on incel forums, and the small dick anxiety is real. It probably creates a feedback loop, in which stereotypes about SDs create unattractive SDE. It sure doesn't help that Asian men are shorter than average in the U.S.

And Asian men are also angry about interracial dating because they think that white men steal their ladies. They think black dudes have it great, because they have a whole pool of women to choose from. After all, white guys rarely go after black women (that's one of the rarest interracial combos), and studies of dating sites have shown that black women are the least sought-after demographic. Asian women, by contrast, were found to be the most attractive -- while Asian men are often found to be the least sought-after group. So short black guys can find a lady; short Latino guys can find a lady; but Asian men are at the bottom.

To me, this suggests that red-pilling is less about economic or professional anxiety, and more about sexual or romantic anxiety.

I believe there is an overlap between the lack of opportunity and males being susceptible to the those pushing the red pill phenomenon.

 

[wmheel1287]

I think this thread has been a lot more productive since we got off the sexual stuff. I don’t think that is nearly as important as economic factors. It’s fine that you think that, but it’s clear a lot of people don’t agree.

No freaking doubt. The sexual shit is just plain weird. Relevant or not, I can't say, but it's just odd and counterproductive to any sort of rational discussion from my view.

 

[Paine]

No freaking doubt. The sexual shit is just plain weird. Relevant or not, I can't say, but it's just odd and counterproductive to any sort of rational discussion from my view.

Super is right in that a large portion of the red pill community is obsessed with this type of stuff, but he’s conflating incels/black pill with red pill in general. There is overlap, but they are distinct.

Redpill content definitely has a sexual flavor do it, but again, I think that is secondary in terms of what draws men to the content in the first place.

 

[superrific]

The sexual factors that you talk about have always been present. Men have always had anxiety about that sort of thing. What has changed it that regard in the last two-three decades?

Some things that changed:

1. The sexual revolution. That's not super-recent, but if we're talking about things that have "always" been there, that hasn't.
2. Social expectations about masculinity. What we call "toxic" these days was the norm three decades ago. Trump described his pussy-grabbing as locker room talk, and while that's a ridiculous explanation for what he actually said, it's not entirely wrong that a man of Trump's age grew up with permission to talk about women in demeaning terms.
3. The internet.
4. The widespread availability of porn.

I think we should also have a discussion about the changing nature of porn. Now, I'm pretty far from an expert, as the only porn I've watched in my life has been 1) something I saw while stoned at a frat party when I was 14, and 2) the videos they had in the IVF clinic. But my understanding is that the porn of yesteryear wasn't nearly as graphic as today. In the 19th century, a picture of a scantily clad woman was porn. In 20th century mags, porn focused on women as objects, almost always posing for the camera. I don't think mags showed much in the way of participation. Strippers show off their bodies. Peep shows show off women.

It wasn't until the VHS revolution in porn of the 1980s that men, en masse, saw men and women having sex. That's what produces the sexual anxieties in spades. Every teenage boy wonders, "am I big enough"? And the answer to that question can be yes, if you're getting off to a nude model posing suggestively. But when you see Jon Holmes banging three women, it's harder. For whatever reason, porn seems frequently to involve guys with huge penises who can pleasure women indefinitely, and thus do the women lust after their manliness. How much porn features dudes with small dicks?

 

[rodoheel]

I think some of the red-pilling stuff is even more general than sexual or romantic anxiety, though that's definitely a big factor - it's just general social anxiety that has been exacerbated by COVID and the increasing digital nature of relationships (social and romantic alike). People are not as comfortable talking to other people any more, and men (who were already not renowned for being great communicators, as a gender) seem to be impacted the most by that. Everyone experiences a lot of social anxiety as a teen - which certainly is closely related to puberty and sexuality - but it seems way worse than it used to be. Social media and the omnipresent devices have supercharged all the most anxiety-inducing parts of being a teen (body image concerns, rumors/gossip, peer pressure, bullying, etc) and simultaneously reduced the amount of time people spend actually talking to each other. Constant exposure to social media really gives teens a warped idea of how we should communicate and behave around each other, because the algorithms reward and promote the most outlandish, exaggerated behavior to show to people (much in the same way porn presents a caricatured image of sex that is inconsistent with what most people - especially women - are looking for in sexual encounters).

So much of this modern social media stuff seems to encourage young people - especially males - that they should ignore the feelings of others and simply focus on their own gratification when it comes to social interactions. Any vulnerability or empathy or openness about feelings is derided as weak and feminine. So the result is all these young men who are frankly off-putting to young women because they swagger around like bulls in china shops, metaphorically trampling everything in their path. They've been trained by dipshit influencers to think that this is what women (or even other men, in a social sense) are looking for - an "alpha male" who is physically and mentally superior to those around him, flaunts his supposed superiority in any way he can, and expects to be treated as a superior being. So then, when young women naturally recoil from this sort of behavior, the men are hurt and confused (because they were assured this is what women were really looking for; so what's the problem?) and end up bitter and lashing out at the women (or at the concept of "wokeness" which is often blamed as a cause of the women being brainwashed against the idea of a true "alpha male").

it's almost enough to make one want to return to Victorian codes of chivalry and civility; which were chauvinistic and paternalistic but at least generally encouraged men to be polite and caring towards women (and other men) rather than aggressive, crass, and domineering.

 

[Paine]

Some things that changed:

1. The sexual revolution. That's not super-recent, but if we're talking about things that have "always" been there, that hasn't.
2. Social expectations about masculinity. What we call "toxic" these days was the norm three decades ago. Trump described his pussy-grabbing as locker room talk, and while that's a ridiculous explanation for what he actually said, it's not entirely wrong that a man of Trump's age grew up with permission to talk about women in demeaning terms.
3. The internet.
4. The widespread availability of porn.

I think we should also have a discussion about the changing nature of porn. Now, I'm pretty far from an expert, as the only porn I've watched in my life has been 1) something I saw while stoned at a frat party when I was 14, and 2) the videos they had in the IVF clinic. But my understanding is that the porn of yesteryear wasn't nearly as graphic as today. In the 19th century, a picture of a scantily clad woman was porn. In 20th century mags, porn focused on women as objects, almost always posing for the camera. I don't think mags showed much in the way of participation. Strippers show off their bodies. Peep shows show off women.

It wasn't until the VHS revolution in porn of the 1980s that men, en masse, saw men and women having sex. That's what produces the sexual anxieties in spades. Every teenage boy wonders, "am I big enough"? And the answer to that question can be yes, if you're getting off to a nude model posing suggestively. But when you see Jon Holmes banging three women, it's harder. For whatever reason, porn seems frequently to involve guys with huge penises who can pleasure women indefinitely, and thus do the women lust after their manliness. How much porn features dudes with small dicks?

I’m still not seeing a compelling reason why any of that would push men across the globe towards the type of content we are talking about here.

Based on your own thread about your sexual experiences and anxieties, I think you might have your own set of prior assumptions about what is causing this trend.

The discussion on the thread has naturally moved towards other factors, and now you come in and declare that the thread has taken a turn and try to get it back on what you want to talk about.

 

[superrific]

No freaking doubt. The sexual shit is just plain weird. Relevant or not, I can't say, but it's just odd and counterproductive to any sort of rational discussion from my view.

Yes, it's weird that someone might be talking about "sexual shit" in relation to a topic of men behaving badly on sexual topics. It would be like talking about weird shit like racism when discussing politics in the South.

I don't know how you can talk about a culture that celebrates sexual conquest, champions supposed "high-T" guys with virulent sperm counts who are good at impregnating ladies, laments the drop in T and sperm count obsessively, and all the other weird obsessions, without talking about sexual shit. I mean, we're asking a question and there's one answer just staring you in the face -- but instead of addressing it, you're running around to something else entirely and hoping to bring it back to something like what we see.

My explanations at least account for what we actually see in the world. It's kind of a long way to go from "my job prospects are poor," to "women are bitches" to "low-T betas are losers; and while maybe I am one, I worship the high-T alphas", which is what we see and were talking about. Isn't it much easier to start with "I'm insecure about my sexual abilities, so I worship guys who seem to be above all that"?

 

[lawtig02]

This kind of political culture is making things worse, IMO:





Soy boy???

He’s a freaking high school football coach military veteran with a wife and kids who appear to love him. What the fuck kind of testosterone are these people looking for?

 

[superrific]

Super is right in that a large portion of the red pill community is obsessed with this type of stuff, but he’s conflating incels/black pill with red pill in general. There is overlap, but they are distinct.

Redpill content definitely has a sexual flavor do it, but again, I think that is secondary in terms of what draws men to the content in the first place.

I would say that there is a lot of overlap, though you are correct that incels aren't co-extensive with red-pilled.

I guess we focus on what we see, and that's in part determined by availability and tolerance. For whatever reason, I can tolerate incel content. Perhaps that's because I struggled with sexual insecurity a lot when I was younger. I was late to puberty but early to college (started at 15), and the first two years of my college experience were full of despair. I lived in a suite my sophomore year. We once threw a party that we advertised with fliers. I don't remember what theme I was pushing, but my roommates styled it as "the never ending party; we're going until super gets laid." Ha ha. Funny stuff. So while I was never an incel, never sexist or misogynist, I can understand the mindset.

By contrast, I just can't deal with Jordan Petersen content. He makes me sick. All the bullshit about how rape doesn't really happen on college campuses, and if it does, it's the women's fault, and if it's not, then it's the fault of alcohol. I can't watch, read or listen to that bullshit at all. I wouldn't be able to watch more than 30 seconds of Andrew Tate before reaching my frustration limit.

So maybe I see what I'm looking at, whereas you see what you're looking at.

 

[Calheel]

He’s a freaking high school football coach military veteran with a wife and kids who appear to love him. What the fuck kind of testosterone are these people looking for?

A man who wears eyeliner. Duh.

 

[Paine]

I would say that there is a lot of overlap, though you are correct that incels aren't co-extensive with red-pilled.

I guess we focus on what we see, and that's in part determined by availability and tolerance. For whatever reason, I can tolerate incel content. Perhaps that's because I struggled with sexual insecurity a lot when I was younger. I was late to puberty but early to college (started at 15), and the first two years of my college experience were full of despair. I lived in a suite my sophomore year. We once threw a party that we advertised with fliers. I don't remember what theme I was pushing, but my roommates styled it as "the never ending party; we're going until super gets laid." Ha ha. Funny stuff. So while I was never an incel, never sexist or misogynist, I can understand the mindset.

By contrast, I just can't deal with Jordan Petersen content. He makes me sick. All the bullshit about how rape doesn't really happen on college campuses, and if it does, it's the women's fault, and if it's not, then it's the fault of alcohol. I can't watch, read or listen to that bullshit at all. I wouldn't be able to watch more than 30 seconds of Andrew Tate before reaching my frustration limit.

So maybe I see what I'm looking at, whereas you see what you're looking at.

I’m very familiar with the incel cast of characters, as well as the various other flavors of right-wing influencers. I try to intentionally consume the content to counter the arguments that they put out among men my age.

My extensive viewing and reading of this content has only cemented my belief that economic change has driven men to this content.

 

[superrific]

I’m still not seeing a compelling reason why any of that would push men across the globe towards the type of content we are talking about here.

Based on your own thread about your sexual experiences and anxieties, I think you might have your own set of prior assumptions about what is causing this trend.

The discussion on the thread has naturally moved towards other factors, and now you come in and declare that the thread has taken a turn and try to get it back on what you want to talk about.

I'm not trying to push it back to what I want to talk about. I was just pointing out that, to me, it's gone somewhat astray. If y'all want to keep talking about economic factors, it's a free country and anyway some of it is interesting. I have a bunch of the links from previous pages open on my browser right now.

But can you at least admit that you're making an assumption that economic factors lead to the content we see? You're seeing the confluence of two factors and picking one of them as the cause. You haven't given any reason for that hierarchy. You've just said, you think the economic factors are primary. Fine. I can't prove you wrong, but neither can you really support it.

And can you see the parallels with discussions of MAGA? If I recall, you see yourself politically somewhat in the Bernie camp, is that right? Well, the Bernie explanation of MAGA was economic anxiety. We need to get good jobs for working class men, and strong labor unions, and decent wages, and then MAGA will dissipate. It wasn't a terrible thesis. I just think experience and research have proven that it's not really correct. MAGA is about racism and in-group prejudice and Christian nationalism and much less about labor unions or factory jobs closing.

 

[UNCatTech]

Some things that changed:

1. The sexual revolution. That's not super-recent, but if we're talking about things that have "always" been there, that hasn't.
2. Social expectations about masculinity. What we call "toxic" these days was the norm three decades ago. Trump described his pussy-grabbing as locker room talk, and while that's a ridiculous explanation for what he actually said, it's not entirely wrong that a man of Trump's age grew up with permission to talk about women in demeaning terms.
3. The internet.
4. The widespread availability of porn.

I think we should also have a discussion about the changing nature of porn. Now, I'm pretty far from an expert, as the only porn I've watched in my life has been 1) something I saw while stoned at a frat party when I was 14, and 2) the videos they had in the IVF clinic. But my understanding is that the porn of yesteryear wasn't nearly as graphic as today. In the 19th century, a picture of a scantily clad woman was porn. In 20th century mags, porn focused on women as objects, almost always posing for the camera. I don't think mags showed much in the way of participation. Strippers show off their bodies. Peep shows show off women.

It wasn't until the VHS revolution in porn of the 1980s that men, en masse, saw men and women having sex. That's what produces the sexual anxieties in spades. Every teenage boy wonders, "am I big enough"? And the answer to that question can be yes, if you're getting off to a nude model posing suggestively. But when you see Jon Holmes banging three women, it's harder. For whatever reason, porn seems frequently to involve guys with huge penises who can pleasure women indefinitely, and thus do the women lust after their manliness. How much porn features dudes with small dicks?

Typical porn only adds to the anxiety.

Not that I have any first hand knowledge, but yes there is small penis porn. There's every type of porn that one can imagine.

I do believe that sexual anxiety is a variable in the current state of masculinity.

I also believe some of the anger comes from sex being more mutual than male dominated.

I was listening to a podcast that mentioned how the right were negative toward female singers, like Megan Thee Stallion, but are positive about the hock tuah girl.

The big difference, you ask? Megan is talking about women enjoying sex, hock tuah girl is talking about servicing men .

 

[Paine]

I'm not trying to push it back to what I want to talk about. I was just pointing out that, to me, it's gone somewhat astray. If y'all want to keep talking about economic factors, it's a free country and anyway some of it is interesting. I have a bunch of the links from previous pages open on my browser right now.

But can you at least admit that you're making an assumption that economic factors lead to the content we see? You're seeing the confluence of two factors and picking one of them as the cause. You haven't given any reason for that hierarchy. You've just said, you think the economic factors are primary. Fine. I can't prove you wrong, but neither can you really support it.

And can you see the parallels with discussions of MAGA? If I recall, you see yourself politically somewhat in the Bernie camp, is that right? Well, the Bernie explanation of MAGA was economic anxiety. We need to get good jobs for working class men, and strong labor unions, and decent wages, and then MAGA will dissipate. It wasn't a terrible thesis. I just think experience and research have proven that it's not really correct. MAGA is about racism and in-group prejudice and Christian nationalism and much less about labor unions or factory jobs closing.

I think you make the same assumptions about all Trump voters being MAGA as you make about all redpilled young men being worried primarily about performance in bed.

Is there a segment of Trump voters that are going to vote for him purely based on the hate and anger that he espouses? Yes, absolutely. That being said, in 2016 and 2020, we know for a fact that not everyone that voted for Trump subscribed to this worldview. We’re seeing it in this election with low information voters who say their primary concern is the economy.

These people have had their communities and opportunities decimated by forces outside of their control. This leads to a lot of anger and resentment. Anger and resentment drives people towards Trump and drives young men towards red pill content.

Without the economic distress, it becomes a lot harder to appeal to people’s capacity for anger and vitriol.

The argument that Trump voters are all racist deplorables is equally absurd as the argument that all of his voters are just economically distressed.

The two issues interplay heavily, that is how Trump built a winning electoral coalition. That is how right-wingers are on the rise globally.

The rise of global capitalism has muted any conversation about class. These issues are created by the domination of capital, but that is not a factor that any Western pol really wants to discuss.

Meanwhile, right wing politicians are very eager to blame the problems of global capitalism on women, migrants, whatever.

 

[UNCatTech]

From what I've read there is also anxiety in the traditional role where men are the leaders and providers of the family.

Education and financial success are key factors here.

 

[hedge]

Should be able to bypass the pay wall with 12ft.io or a similar tool.

Thanks for this, Paine. Works like a charm...

 

[superrific]

I’m still not seeing a compelling reason why any of that would push men across the globe towards the type of content we are talking about here.

We should also mention hip-hop, which absolutely is global and also full of sexism and misogyny (not all of it, of course).

I admire hip-hop. I'm not a huge fan; I dig Public Enemy and Rakim and the occasional De La Soul, but I can't listen to it for a long time without getting bored. But how can you not respect what it represents? Punk often gets credit for being DIY, but hip-hop was even more so. Rock, which was originally black, was becoming super-white by the 1970s. Motown had hit the mainstream, but that was the primary opportunity for black artists and it's not infinitely deep. There was also funk, but by the end of the 1970s, funk had developed big barriers to entry. Not every Kool kid had a Gang, and trying to compete with P-Funk was just impossible. So the early rappers took those funk beats and riffs, and put something different on top. It's marvelous and a testament to artistic spirit.

But we can't ignore the gender assumptions and roles built into the genre. Explaining that is for another thread. I think it's fair to say, though, that hip-hop has amplified certain types of messages in ways that were not possible two generations ago.