I think progressives never thought about this because we banked on immigration and demographic change allowing us to win culturally and electorally but the issue is immigrants tend to be overwhelmingly male, that is how Trump won actually he won over a lot of Hispanic,Black,Asian and indigenous men who feel humiliated by a new culture, economy and world.
So what can we do rhetorically and policy wise to win more young men over ?
A lot of people say things like “men have it the best, they don’t need help!” That’s nonsense. Everyone who is dealing with problems and is suffering needs help. Helping men doesn’t mean you stop helping women, we should help everyone who needs help.
Progressives today are truly awful when it comes to this. I’m not talking about including nazis, I’m talking about attacking people who agree with you on 90% of topics. Like if someone thinks trans people should be totally treated as the gender they express in every facet of society, except they shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s physical sports competitions.
This is another one that progressives have a terrible problem with. They do a terrible job of letting people know how they’re being helped, and they also use language that gives the impression that they’re against you. For example “the patriarchy” is a terrible term that makes men feel attacked, even though that’s not what it’s about at all. What most people actually mean to refer to is “gender norms”, meaning concepts like ‘men should fuck a lot of women and not express their emotions’. “Gender norms” is a much more accurate term and it doesn’t make men feel like they’re being attacked.
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I get what you’re saying, but every rights movement has worked the opposite way. It’s not about giving up ground, it’s about picking one battle at a time. Gay people fought to be not killed, then fought to be accepted, then fought to be able to marry. It wasn’t a single “equality” battle, it was a series of battles in a longer war. They didn’t slide back immediately when they couldn’t get married, they fought the next fight.
Some people really suck, but for a lot I think it’s more misunderstanding or reluctance to let things change. There’s many reasons. Labeling everyone who doesn’t get on board with every facet of what you want means you’re reducing your allies. And those people who are comfortable with one thing but uncomfortable with another may become more comfortable when they see that the first thing doesn’t lead to the collapse of society.
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I think I misunderstood what you were originally saying and we’re more or less on the same side. My point was that it’s not about saying “okay we’ll stop caring about this” but about saying “this isn’t the thing we need to be focusing attention on right now.” I worded it very poorly.
That’s probably the right strategy. I think there is room for academic discussion of how trans sports should be handled, but we spend too much time talking about that and aren’t saying enough of importance for me to believe that the discussion is currently effective.
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