Recently, there were some statistics by healthcare
company Cigna indicating that men are the loneliest generation.
In fact 18 to 24 year olds are lacking friends, intimate partners,
they're feeling increasingly alienated from society.
And when you look at statistics in regard to their education, whether or not they're
working, more and more of this data reinforces, but there is something awry.
And addressing It doesn't mean that you turn your back on issues pertaining to
women.
But it does mean that we should be focused on what it is in society
that is leading to this epidemic.
What the left can do to offer solutions and
how we can basically fight back against the more nefarious figures.
Who have filled the void that men are struggling with
people like Jordan Peterson and what have you.
Now recently, Vaush who's a popular streamer had tweeted this thread
that I think is really important to address.
He writes, I cannot stress enough how important it is to understand that 12
year old white boys on Twitch.
Are not being pulled into fascism because of some Machiavellian desire to preserve.
And expand their privileges, It's because the right talks to them and
the left doesn't.
He continues to argue that leftists and progressives have absolutely no idea
how unnecessarily repellent they come off to so many people.
And they get angry at the idea of being a more effective social movement.
Because they don't want to share their social spaces with people who might have
gone another way.
But the criticism for leftists continue and to be honest,
I agree with a lot of what Vaush says here.
He says leftists will write master's
thesis on the effect of socioeconomic conditions on crime.
And then shrug when 10 million more young men fall into
fascism because their boy brains must just be innately fascist.
And they choose to be evil and there's no way this could have been prevented.
And then the final tweet because I want to make sure you guys get a full look at what
he's thinking here.
This is always a good topic to feel smug over because the replies and
quote tweets are saturated with people who literally think quote.
We should care about men's problems and offer them advice is a dog whistle for
we should build a fire fourth Reich thus proving the problem.
Now joining us today to talk about this is the man behind the twitter thread Vaush.
And I want to thank you josh for taking some time to talk to us about this today.
>> It's an absolute delight, don't mind the cam by the way, like young men.
My camera encoder is alienated just in this case from Skype,
It's a pleasure to talk with you about this.
>> So this is something that I've been thinking about a lot because I've been
just noticing it in the community around me.
Just like the loneliness and how atomized men are and
I don't see it as, addressing it isn't in my opinion,
a right wing perspective or right wing task.
I think that there are issues that the left would do a far better job in
addressing as opposed to more nefarious right wing figures like,
let's say Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson.
So before we get to all of that, what the potential solutions could be,
talk to me about what you see.
What you think the problem is right now with young men feeling alienated in
the United States.
>> Well, I think a lot of it comes down to something left us tend to be more
comfortable talking about, which is toxic masculinity.
Male loneliness is often emergent property of toxic masculinity,
which is by the way nobody likes this term, right?
The right gets really upset when you say toxic masculinity because it sounds you're
upset with masculinity in general, and it's a really vague term.
So let's just say, I think a lot of guys can be kind of antisocial
because they're taught that sort of independence is a masculine virtue.
They're taught that, there's value in keeping your feelings bottled up now,
obviously pretty harmful makes people feel kind of lonely.
It makes them bad at reaching out to others, connecting,
sharing their interests, building friendships.
I think it's one of the reasons why guys tend to view dating as sort of
adversarial.
Because they don't think of a woman is well, maybe we'll just get along and
shared interests, maybe we'll have something in common.
They think of it as this like a mating battle, which I don't think it has to be.
As a product of that, a lot of guys feel they have no social inroads and
they're kind of drifting through life without connections to people.
That really sucks and the left could use that as an opportunity to
maybe improve some people's lives, introduce them to some other ideas.
>> So just full disclosure, when the statistics first started coming out and
they focused primarily on the lack of intimate partners.
To be fair and completely honest with the audience,
I was definitely more dismissive.
But then when you see the other statistics, including the lack of friends,
workforce par participation for prime working age men.
Between the ages of 25 and 55 has actually decreased significantly and
specifically in the United States.
And so there have been some arguments that it's the advancement of technology,
It's because of video games.
Well, all of these technologies exist in other countries and
they're not experiencing the same decline in workforce participation.
In fact to give you a specific number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
about seven million prime working age men.
Are not working and they're not looking for work,
they're all also self medicating quite a bit.
A huge portion of them have reported that they're taking painkillers,
daily deaths of despair are very prominent.
And pronounced among the male population versus the female population,
these are huge issues.
In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also noted that when it comes
to unemployment among working age men, we have a 1937 economy, okay.
And again, this is not happening in other rich developed countries, right?
So there is a crisis happening and
I'm trying to figure out what is it exactly, right?
The right wing will say it's feminism, It's because women and
don't want to stay at home and raise kids, they want to be independent.
They don't want to enter romantic partnerships, I don't buy that for
a second, I do agree that some of the rhetoric is a problem.
Statements about toxic masculinity, a lot of generalizing about people.
I also think that there's a misconception that this is an issue that predominantly
impacts white males, but that's actually not the case.
The largest population that this impact is actually black men in America,
and so this is a huge problem.
And what do you think we need to say or or frame or
how can we frame this issue, so it's more palatable to the left.
Who generally do want to ensure that every community is looked after,
that everyone feels that they're living a happy, prosperous life?
>> It's a tough sell, people feel these issues in their gut, when we talk about
the kinds of things that drive people out to vote or even to throw revolutions.
We're usually talking about very basic gut level problems that political
analysis gets added to.
For a long time in this country and many others anti immigration sentiment has been
built on the anxiety of working class people.
Who feel their jobs are threatened by immigrants,
often the data doesn't bear that out.
But it's their fear that's used as a catalyst to push those politics,
the anxiety, the loneliness of young men.
This is a historically been used as catalysts for well, I mean,
basically everything from the Bolsheviks and Russia to the Brownshirts in Germany.
It's just a large and often unaddressed demographic,
this isn't a competition thing.
We're not talking about giving up on feminist analysis or or saying it's well,
actually men have it worse than women, right?
It's not about that, it's just you want to reach out to people where they are and
to start that process with a lot of young guys.
I think it would help if lefties were willing to acknowledge this sort
of natural conclusion of toxic masculinity as a mode of social analysis.
Which is if men are socialized in certain ways and treated in certain ways socially.
It necessarily follows, they must have specific problems and if those problems
are the product of social systems that are out of their control.
I don't know why we wouldn't apply the same basic sociological lens of analysis
to that as we would with literally anything else.
Patriarchy, racism, transphobia, no individual has control over these systems.
And we try to interweave analysis with our compassion for and
respect for the individual problems.
People have we do this all the time with other issues and
to an extent we do it with men.
But I feel we lean off that a little bit maybe because men's rights as
sort of a nominative thing.
How it's referred to usually refers to misogynist or insular communities online.
So it's well men's rights, you actually mean like this or that well,
leaving aside the baggage, right?
You can call it what you want, men's advocacy whatever, just common decency,
It's still worth pursuing.
>> Yeah, I think the phrasing men's rights activists, it does unfortunately
make one recall some of the most unsavory individuals imaginable, right?
Some who think that rape should be legalized, so
I don't like thinking about that group, when it comes to this particular issue.
Because I don't I don't think this is about male entitlement,
I don't think this is about men feeling or fighting for a system.
In which men get to feel entitled to certain things in society,
including certain sexual acts, whatever it is.
This is really about making sure that people don't feel lonely,
feel that they have purpose in life, that's the other thing.
An increasing number of young men feel they have no purpose in life.
And I think that it has to do with the fact that for
the longest time they were conditioned to believe that they are supposed to be
the breadwinner in a family.
And when they are lacking this educational attainment
necessary to get the kind of career.
That makes the kind of money, that makes them feel like the breadwinner.
Well then it makes them feel they're not really worth anything,
I see a lot of that going on as well.
When you look at the number of college educated men that has declined
significantly.
And so some of the solutions that I've heard from people who do take this
seriously on the left.
Is that hey, there's a lack of male role models in the public education system.
There's a huge disparity between female and
male educators in the public school system, curious what you think about that.
>> Yeah no I agree, It is I do think it's unfortunate that we consider education
such a feminist profession.
Not because there's anything wrong with female teachers or whatever, but
obviously people take a lot from their education.
And any significant disparity in representation is going to reflect some
kind of social value.
So I mean, we can see the need for this reflected in the fact that the two
of the largest breakout conservative figures in the past five years.
Respectively, Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate,
both became powerful in exactly the same way.
That is to say they postured as self help gurus for young men who felt they had
been failed by society and left no options to better themselves otherwise.
Now the prescriptions those to offer are garbage and completely irredeemable.
I think Jordan Peterson said you should clean your room, you can do that.
But apart from that don't listen, but it shows what people are going for, right?
And frankly, it doesn't take a lot of internet sleuthing to find out that
a lot of people are feeling really listless these days.
You have to give people identities and aspirations,
I see a lot of this discussion with young women.
One of the discourse bits that are comes up, it's how do you be a good feminist,
but also what about this feminine wiles thing?
Or how do I balance my progressive attitudes on gender with this,
that the other attitude I have on what it means to be a woman?
It's an interesting topic, I have no skin in the game good luck right,
I don't know how often that gets resolved in left spaces with guys.
Because it is a good question,
how do you resolve progressivism with well being a masculine guy?
A lot of women you might want to date kind of do like manly guys,
at least some of them, right?
But what does it mean to be manly in a context that isn't Andrew Tate or
Jordan Peterson?
Just having the conversation might get a lot of folks invested or
they might understand that the left is interested in these issues.
Beyond a sort of token, surface level political skim,
where they're trying to get people off the top compassion.
>> Yeah, compassion is the right word, I think and you got a lot of backlash for
talking about this and you might tweet about it.
But where I've heard you actually talk about this issue at length is on
your streams and I think you're thoughtful and the way you talk about this issue.
But you still get hit with,
you're just a secret right winger from your critics, right?
>> It's been known to happen, I know, >> What's behind that,
because I feel that is what most of at least the online left,
I don't know if I can say that about the left in general.
They seem to spend a lot of time going after one of their own who might have
some idea.
That are a little different or
might have concerns that are a little different from their own.
>> Well, the gatekeeping tendencies of the left or how you're a leftist, right?
If you're a good leftist, the people you hate most should be other lefties,
that's the only way to know.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> [LAUGH] We are phenomenal leftists,
I think there's kind of I don't wanna overuse the term or
maybe use it lightly the term trauma.
But I feel after the past decade of online discourse,
people are very sensitive, especially on the left.
People are very sensitive to the idea that we need to treatment better,
not necessarily because they disagree with the idea of treating them better.
That seems like a nice thing to do broadly,
I hope a lot of people would agree with that.
But rather because we need to treatment men better has often been couched in
this very ideologically loaded set of policy and social prescription.
That usually have to do with undoing the gains of feminism or
at the very least negating the harms that women experience socially.
Because of well, the patriarchy or inequality,
I fully sympathize with the sensitivity.
I mean, I've been online for a while, I see how the discourse tends to go.
But we have to be strong enough to understand when a dog whistle isn't
a dog whistle, when it's just a term.
I would hope that a lot of lefties could understand, you may have an aversion
to the capital M capital R men's rights movement, a justified one.
But to the outside,
when you seem to be taking a stance against the concept of men's rights.
People who aren't as familiar with the context of that discourse, might interpret
that as you literally, politically being opposed to men doing all right.
Which doesn't do great for the recruitment numbers,
we could really use those things in the country aren't going great right now.
And bereaved masculinity is basically the front line,
It's the bulwark of the fascist movement that's growing in this country.
Steve Bannon was specifically recruiting from Insull forums,
those Andrew Tate 12 year old Tiktok flossing twins or whatever.
Are not going to grow up to vote for Biden when he's 105 years old,
there is a trend that's happening right now.
There is a group of people looking for answers and
that's young men who do feel listless.
And you can watch them be pulled away by a multimillion dollar
effort from the right to appeal to their insecurities.
Or you can try to do something about it, and to me,
there is an obvious right answer here.
>> I agree with you on that, I'm gonna leave you all with one final statistic and
this is incredibly alarming.
A May 2021, pull from the survey center on American
life revealed the number of American men.
Who view themselves as having no close friends, quintupled over
the last 30 years increasing from 3% in 1990 to 15% in 2021.
So for anyone who thinks that this is just about male entitlement to sexual activity,
you're mistaken, open your eyes look a little harder.
Because if you consider yourself a progressive or leftist,
the whole ideology is to want to uplift people, pick people up when they're down.
And immediately dismissing this very clear issue that continues to grow in
the country, I don't think it's the right way to go.
I think the left needs to offer better solutions and to be completely frank,
I don't know exactly what those solutions are yet.
But I want to have more of these conversations moving forward and Vaush,
I'm grateful that you took the time to talk to us today.
>> And I'm incredibly grateful that you reached out and gave me the opportunity.
Thank you very much and yeah, it's not a zero sum game, It's really not.
We lose nothing by trying and the advice, the engagement, It's just that it is at
par with what we're willing to do with basically every other group,
every other social issue.
Just the decency to give it a little bit of a sociological look over and
maybe arrive at some prescriptions.
I think we can do that and
I think people want to do that too once they get past the cloud.
>> Absolutely.