We Need a Release Valve on Young Men's Anger
Erika Kirk, in her now famous eulogy for her husband, declared that Charlie wanted to save the lost boys of the West. We should all volunteer for that mission. If we don’t we will later be conscripted into it by dire circumstance.
The stats are familiar by now:
The suicide rate for men is four time higher than it is for women
47% of women 25-34 now have a bachelor’s degree vs. only 37% men
On and on.
I was recently invited onto Leslie Boyce’s “Radical Center” podcast to discuss how some of these issues might be addressed. I was asked to be a guest, in part, because I have so much experience being the target of these boy’s vitriol.
Anyone who has ever addressed gender matters on Twitter has probably shared the experience. Swarms of anonymous young men flow into the comment thread leaving the vilest words behind. The spirit is venomous, often disgusting. Nothing is off limits, no name that can’t be called, no attack on one’s appearance too personal. Little is as repugnant as a storm of these guys.
And yet, I understand where they’re coming from.
One of the points I made on the podcast is that the viciousness of their behavior arises from frustration at not being able to have their legitimate concerns heard by anyone outside of their tribe.
This is easily observed online. Many women easily turn to their social media audiences for reassurance and support. A woman can post about a personal struggle or social concern and, though she may experience some push-back, there will also inevitably be a flow of supportive comments from men seeking her approval and from commiserating women.
The same dynamic applies in real life settings. Many schools and other public institutions are particularly sensitive to the concerns of women and devote significant resources to addressing them. All this contributes to women’s now outstripping men in both educational and professional contexts.
Now, consider what happens when men voice a concern online. In many threads on Twitter, for example, men can share their loneliness, their pain, their sense of powerlessness only to be greeted by multiple comments from women telling them they deserve to suffer, and from men telling them to buck up.
This isn’t going to work much longer. If we, as a society, want to make progress toward a less strained and divided future, we are going to have to hear young men out. Let them vent about every perceived injustice. But, and this is the hard part, we will have to enact changes based on what we hear.
That’s going to rub against the widespread conviction that men are all privileged oppressors who are already unduly privileged, an assumption that has largely led to the current situation.
We don’t have to change, but the consequences of not changing—an ever-growing underclass of frustrated, hate-filled, resentful young men increasingly opposed to the core convictions of our culture and eager to challenge them in increasingly violent and explosive ways—are worrying.
This is just one of the points addressed in the podcast above. I invite you to listen in and respond to this nuanced discussion by commenting here.
P.S.