The blockbuster series has created a powerful pathway for conversations about the misogynous manosphere, and its pernicious influence in the lives of boys and young men.
You have much good to say in this article but I am appalled at some of it, 1) men have outsourced their responsibilities to their sons to women. So the implication there is that they are the corporate heads who find others to do their work - unfortunately a fairly accurate description but the implication is also that their contract workers do a bad job. And who are those contract workers - women. So instead of saying fathers have outsourced their responsibility why not say that they've been callously indifferent, criminally negligent, delusionally oblivious, much more interested in why they don't make more money, why more young women aren't interested in them even though they're over 50, and why they feel so aggrieved even though they have much more than they need and haven't provided their wives with any sexual satisfaction for the last 20-30 years and they are in their sons well-being?
Great article. But I do take issue with the part where you blame porn for boys' problems. It's just not true that porn is on-net harmful to the average consumer. It's a puritanical moral panic, just like video games and movies in the 80s and 90s. Blaming porn just hurts people and wastes energy that could go toward all the actual causes of harm https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/porn-and-mens-problems
I don’t think that treating boys and men as a problem to be solved is going to work. They will rightly see through that as an exercise in power, no matter how just it is that men change. And they will distrust any messenger or authority that doesn’t treat them as ends in themselves, and view those authorities with suspicion. That’s already where we are.
I say this an atheist myself, and as someone who recognizes that many (most?) religious communities are patriarchal, but I suspect that the best/most effective answers will be found in studying religious communities. What other communities still exist that simultaneously offer community, norms, and physically present, accessible, pro-social, attainable (non-elite/non-meritocratic) aspirational role models?
I don't have Netflix so the show is new to me. I really like Stephen Graham. No show is going to get it all. This is the kind of through line that seems to me an inevitable result of dominant culture indoctrinating their sons.
As far as it takes a village, there are many women leaving houses where this dominant culture exists.
There is a great fight going on now, both in the Supreme Court of Canada (Family Violence Tort) and Coercive Control criminalization, that seek to change the outcome when someone strikes out on their own.
That is in divorce. These people who are changing the system are not responsible for the turning away. Deaths are the 8th step in Coercive Control, the 7th step is planning that death. So the show is really showing how this pattern is being taught actively, by culture. (data Gruev-Vintila, 2023)
You have much good to say in this article but I am appalled at some of it, 1) men have outsourced their responsibilities to their sons to women. So the implication there is that they are the corporate heads who find others to do their work - unfortunately a fairly accurate description but the implication is also that their contract workers do a bad job. And who are those contract workers - women. So instead of saying fathers have outsourced their responsibility why not say that they've been callously indifferent, criminally negligent, delusionally oblivious, much more interested in why they don't make more money, why more young women aren't interested in them even though they're over 50, and why they feel so aggrieved even though they have much more than they need and haven't provided their wives with any sexual satisfaction for the last 20-30 years and they are in their sons well-being?
“Adolescence” is open anti-White male bigotry - a product of leftist sexism against men.
Great article. But I do take issue with the part where you blame porn for boys' problems. It's just not true that porn is on-net harmful to the average consumer. It's a puritanical moral panic, just like video games and movies in the 80s and 90s. Blaming porn just hurts people and wastes energy that could go toward all the actual causes of harm https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/porn-and-mens-problems
We shouldn’t have laughed at porn going mainstream is that a takeaway yet ?
I don’t think that treating boys and men as a problem to be solved is going to work. They will rightly see through that as an exercise in power, no matter how just it is that men change. And they will distrust any messenger or authority that doesn’t treat them as ends in themselves, and view those authorities with suspicion. That’s already where we are.
I say this an atheist myself, and as someone who recognizes that many (most?) religious communities are patriarchal, but I suspect that the best/most effective answers will be found in studying religious communities. What other communities still exist that simultaneously offer community, norms, and physically present, accessible, pro-social, attainable (non-elite/non-meritocratic) aspirational role models?
I don't have Netflix so the show is new to me. I really like Stephen Graham. No show is going to get it all. This is the kind of through line that seems to me an inevitable result of dominant culture indoctrinating their sons.
As far as it takes a village, there are many women leaving houses where this dominant culture exists.
There is a great fight going on now, both in the Supreme Court of Canada (Family Violence Tort) and Coercive Control criminalization, that seek to change the outcome when someone strikes out on their own.
That is in divorce. These people who are changing the system are not responsible for the turning away. Deaths are the 8th step in Coercive Control, the 7th step is planning that death. So the show is really showing how this pattern is being taught actively, by culture. (data Gruev-Vintila, 2023)
Also, what makes you think that thoroughly conditioned misogynist men can educate their sons to be different?