“Dashed Hopes” (Credit: Shawn Haquail)
There is a lot of talk around young men and their role in reelecting Donald Trump. To put it bluntly, it scares me. There is a large part of me that feels anger and disgust towards these young men who should know better. Who should prioritize dignity. Who should feel shame for gleefully supporting the destruction of rights for women, the LGBT community, people of color, and so on.
There is also a part of me that feels a great deal of pity and sadness for these men. It’s easy to look at them with derision and dismissiveness, painting them as petty little pathetic losers with fragile egos. And on the surface, they are. But I also think they were set up for failure by the society we live in and cast as villains before they even really knew what it meant.
My mother tried her best to raise me well. She was a saint, to say the least. She taught me the value of women, their place in our society, and the discrimination they face every day. My dad made sure to reinforce those lessons, and both of my parents taught me to treat everyone with respect. I am grateful for my upbringing.
It still didn’t save me from starting to go down the path towards being one of these men when I was too young to know any better. It did help me pull myself out of that situation and realize what was going on. And it helped me realize how difficult it is to escape that toxic mindset when it gets reinforced before you know what’s going on.
When I was in high school, I stumbled across the early forms of the online pipeline to the alt right. I wasn’t quite a Joe Rogan listener, but I was a gamer. Now, I tried to pay more attention to the world than a lot of my classmates were doing at the time, but I was always a bit of an outsider. So, when this scandal which was given the name ‘Gamergate’ spooled up, it won my attention.
Ostensibly, the movement was about ethics in gaming journalism. That was a cause I could get behind, especially if the incident which started the movement was true. The only issue was that the entire movement was built off a giant lie and morphed into a harassment campaign against prominent women in gaming and gaming journalism. And it would be a frightening glimpse into the future of the alt-right movement.
Gamergate started when an ex-boyfriend of game developer Zoe Quinn made a long blog entry with details about their relationship and insinuated that Quinn’s game received favorable reviews because she had a sexual relationship with the gaming journalist who had reviewed the game. The ex-boyfriend (who shall remain unnamed so as to not give him more notoriety) admitted the claims were baseless much later. The journalist had never reviewed Quinn’s game, nor did they start dating until after the only article published by Kotaku which mentioned her game was pushed live.
As a result of this baseless accusation, Quinn was subjected to a coordinated harassment campaign from perpetually online internet losers. It would grow to include game developer Brianna Wu, and feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian among others who spoke up in defense of Quinn. Harassment included the usuals: slurs, generalized hate, sexist comments, rape threats, death threats, etc.
This movement was already underway by the time I stumbled across it. The internet has always had a right-leaning habit to it. In the early days, the disaffected scumbags who didn’t know how to make friends could congregate in online forums where they got to share their worst beliefs anonymously. 4chan, many corners of reddit, and other message boards and chatrooms were wretched hives of the worst of humanity. Feminists with valid gripes became hysterical women trying to shoehorn diversity into everything, for example.
The 2010s saw immense backlash to media and entertainment poorly executing their efforts for diversity and inclusion. For example, there was a category on Netflix at one point named, “Action Movies with Strong Female Leads.” The problem was that most of the movies on said list sucked. Not because they had a woman, but because they were poorly written, horrifically acted, terribly directed, awfully scored, or any combination thereof including all of the above. They were bad movies, and they would have been bad movies if a man was the lead. To me, my criticism of them was always that these bad movies should have been shamed for being bad because I wanted to see great movies starring women. Movies which would show the complex, nuanced characters women deserved to represent them on the silver screen.
However, amongst men on the internet, I was in the minority. So, it should come as no surprise that the spaces I was seeing the criticism of these movies for being bad wasn’t from a storyteller’s eye who wanted to see better stories, but from people who hated women being represented at all. We both said the movies sucked, but my reasons and their reasons were very different.
So, when I found Gamergate’s more populous subreddit, r/KotakuInAction, I felt like I was amongst my people. I mean, ethics in gaming journalism was a good cause to fight for because I cared both about ethics in both the writing and gaming spheres. I wanted my reviews of games to be as ethical as possible, not for anyone to meddle in the process. I was just as opposed to development companies openly buying good reviews, so why wouldn’t I be opposed to this?
Well, as I came to find out, a lot of the people on r/KotakuInAction were not as earnest with their beliefs. The subreddit’s name is a play off of r/TumblrInAction, which was a space to mock and deride radical third wave feminists by cherry picking their craziest, most anti-men posts from Tumblr and then painting the whole third-wave feminist movement as a bunch of crazy man-haters. I didn’t realize what any of this was as an edgy idiot teenager on the internet.
That’s the insidious part.
Being surrounded by this environment at a formative age started to warp my sense of reality a bit. At my core, I believed in equal rights for everyone. I still do. However, at that time, I was beginning to see the feminist movement view me as part of the problem despite the fact that I agreed with the stated goals of said movement. If these people disdained my very existence, then I felt uncomfortable supporting them. Even though I agreed with their stated goals, I felt my presence was more of a detriment than a help. I didn’t want to throw my lot in with the other side, the active misogynists, so it left me feeling a little socio-politically adrift.
I was just a high schooler who couldn’t vote, who always tried to be considerate of the women I knew and made up half of the most loved couple amongst my social circles. My girlfriend’s friends thought highly of me because of how I treated her. I maintained strong platonic friendships with multiple women. To me, I was doing what I was supposed to do for someone who believed in equal rights: treating women equally. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong that made these people hate me so much.
I didn’t see that I was being shown a small section of the painting and told it was the entire work. My perspective was so off-kilter because I didn’t realize how big or nuanced that world was. We protect kids from the “horrors” of the real world, so they’re woefully unprepared when they get flung into it with the force of an aircraft carrier catapult. They don’t know how to discern truth and fact from someone’s pointed interpretation when they’re trying to make a point or push an agenda. They see something like, “All men are trash” and take it personally because everything is personal at sixteen.
Now I recognize that it was never personal. At the time, I couldn’t make the distinction to find the nuance because kids don’t do that. Now I know that the expressions of hatred for men, and the inherent distrust of men come from places of fear and pain, both on the individual and collective levels. But I didn’t get that at sixteen. All I knew was that I was supporting people who thought of me as a threat. And despite the talk about not taking anything personally, again, you take everything personally at sixteen.
I ended up feeling very lost.
I believe this marks a fundamental failure of the American education system. We refuse to teach our children the values of critical thinking. We refuse to teach our children history in its proper context. We refuse to relate history to the modern day in ways which manner. I spent more time on pre-Columbian civilizations in what would become the Americas when I took American History in high school than on landmark events of the 20th century. Explain to me why we cared so much about the Incan, Aztec, and Mayan civilizations when none of them existed in what became the United States that we spent weeks learning that material. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan’s presidency, which was 20-30 years old by the time of my school years, was “too recent to be taught” because it would be “too political.” September 11th, 2001 barely got mentioned. The civil rights movement in America was framed as a bunch of isolated events like the Bus Boycott and the “I Have A Dream” speech on the National Mall and then legislation was passed that guaranteed equal rights for African Americans. ‘Twas ever thus.
We talked a lot about World War II in the context of what battles were fought when and where, but we never discussed the major impact the wartime economy which necessitated women in the workforce at unprecedented levels had on the women’s rights movements in the country. I was never taught the historical context of how we treated women in the past, and why the feminist movements operated the way they did and held the beliefs they held. This left me terribly vulnerable to influence from the alt right figures at sixteen.
I understand why young men feel undervalued in this society if we keep telling them their only destiny is to be a rapist or a monster. That their feelings of insecurity are nothing but weakness and they need to toughen up. I realize now that I could have easily ended up that way myself. I think, at a certain level, it goes beyond just how one’s parents raise them. To be blunt, most men do not have good role models these days.
Society puts such a show of sex being the top priority in all avenues, so it makes sense as to why so many “male role models” are making social media content about how to get laid, or who you’re sleeping with, or how to win approval of people you want to sleep with. Men don’t have close friends. They are taught from birth to not talk about their emotions. The perception is that you’re weak if you don’t keep things together, both in the eyes of your fellow men and the women you want to be with.
A lot of the jokes at men’s expense that are made from the perspective of more secure twenty-somethings don’t always land with their target audience. The teenagers and pre-teens don’t understand that the derision is coming from a place of amused frustration with the imperfections of the world, they take it to heart because everything is more meaningful at that age. Social media has allowed this mentality to flourish where the only things young boys see talking about masculinity are either self-hating women who are trying to reinforce traditional gender roles to win male approval, or cretins like Andrew Tate who are manipulating a vulnerable population with their toxic idea of what a “real man” is supposed to act like.
I’m not saying that men have it worse than women, there are numerous points where men get advantageous treatment, and get extended the benefit of the doubt where women do not. There are numerous areas of society in which women are still extremely disadvantaged. What I am saying is that there are issues with the way we treat men in society that are perpetuating issues which affect everyone, and our ways of addressing those issues are not helping the situation.
I am sympathetic to the argument that, “Men have had everything handed to them, they need to sort this out.” I agree with the statement, but the evidence is showing that the current approach isn’t working. The number of men proudly proclaiming, “Your body, my choice” towards women in the aftermath of the election this past November is staggering. It tells me that I was one of the lucky ones to have avoided going down that path. It disheartens me. It angers me. I hold a great deal of frustration with these young men who should know better.
And if they were in the minority, I’d say it’s just their problem that they cannot get with the times. However, it is not a minority, and so I must ask why these men find themselves enthusiastically agreeing with some pretty objectively atrocious beliefs. More importantly, I ask how they got there. Finally, I ask how we can do better as a collective. Then men who already hold these beliefs are a little more beyond reach, but there are young boys who we cannot leave to the wolves if we want to fight the epidemic of privileged, sexist, entitled, hateful men. So much of my perspective on this issue is shaped by what I wish people would have told me when I was younger.
Even believing strongly in what I believe, I found myself being drawn in by some of the right wing figures because I was hearing from the liberal people I agreed with that men were “the enemy.” To me, this translated to the fact that every man should be held responsible for the patriarchy and that even at my best, I’d still be considered a threat and not worthy of being treated with respect in those spaces. That wasn’t the message, but young boys already struggling with self-esteem issues don’t make that distinction.
I gravitated towards people like Ian Miles Cheong who were speaking up against these “crazy SJWs” and painted them as though they represented all feminists. When the people on “my side” were telling me that I was a threat even if I did everything right to support them, it wore on my already poor self-esteem at a young and impressionable age. These figures told me that it was okay for me to embrace being a man, that I wasn’t bad for existing, and that “those people saying otherwise are crazy.” They use affirmations such as these, and some solid logic and reasoning to draw people into their orbit and then push increasingly troublesome narratives. Before you realize it, you’re down the rabbit hole, and you feel more at home because of the community that you overlook the things you’re uncomfortable with.
At that time, it was almost a blessing in disguise that Donald Trump had shattered the norms for societal and political discourse. It meant many of these petty men dropped their masks entirely and went full tilt into the sexism, racism, and homophobia. They took their points far enough that the spell was broken, and I was able to walk away, only to look back in horror at what the movement I had been part of was truly about. In the years since, I have been trying to work out what happened and realized that young boys are taught by society to only ever express their anger and rage, and their feelings of isolation and loneliness and inadequacy are tapped into and the flames are fanned by the kind of pathetic losers who never got anywhere in life and now want to take revenge on the world. Instead of responding to their own shortcomings with humility and empathy, they lash out and teach others to lash out with them. They take disillusioned young men and mold them into a cultish following. It’s ingenious and insidious, predatory, and perilous, deplorable and devious.
Shine a little light on the bitter and broken and they will become fervent adherents to whatever gospel you preach all to feel as though they belong somewhere.
I think so much comes down to the language we use to talk about things. We have become a blast radius society with our language in that we get “close enough” and it’s seen as acceptable when it truly shouldn’t be. The specificity of language is part of its beauty and its utility. It’s important to make statements that hit their targets precisely. I think the rather cavalier attitude towards specificity when expressing our beliefs provides the environment for people twist and warp and take advantage of those who don’t know better.
A lack of knowledge about the intricacies of language and the ability to logically deconstruct an argument pave the way for people like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro to make their case against liberal values with “logic and reason” which paves the way for more insidious beliefs. It means that the more predatory and abrasive people like Andrew Tate and Ian Miles Cheong can spread their misogyny more openly, and have it accepted. “I mean, a world where women go back to being homemakers makes sense from an economic and social perspective, right? Because the smart guys told me so. And guys like Andrew Tate aren’t being serious, they’re totally being satirical, right?” The thin line between satire and reality is often breached so early that insanity becomes normalized before you become one of the lunatics running the asylum, and you can’t remember why you were committed in the first place and wearing your underwear on your head and speaking in pig latin totally makes sense.
I can identify all of this now because I’m in my late twenties. I’ve seen enough of people, and watched half of the country’s voting population fall under the spell of a charlatan. I can realize what happened to me because I saw it happen to others. It scares me because under different circumstances, I could have been among them. I think how I would have reacted had I been met with the rage and violence I feel towards these men who make the women in my life feel unsafe. Would being hated and beaten make me any less likely to believe what I believe at that point? Doesn’t harsh resistance typically just get people to dig their heels in harder?
I don’t excuse their actions. This isn’t my way of saying that these boys should never be held to account for what they do or say. This isn’t me saying that they are blameless. However, wanting to take my rage at their actions out on them is more for my own edification. It’s about my own feelings, not about addressing the root of the problem.
I am attempting to reach the reasons why they behave the way they do with empathy and compassion. To understand why boys gravitate towards these figures espousing the ideas of toxic masculinity. I think social media is to blame, I think parents are to blame, I think there is a lot of blame to go around. I think boys not being willing to be vulnerable is causing so many more problems than we realize. I think we are failing generation after generation of men by not addressing the issues they are facing in addition to confronting the issues women are facing. We didn’t handle female empowerment as an “and” we handled it as an “instead of” and that’s the biggest misstep we made as a society. We framed the equality movements about settling old scores rather than building the world where everyone is able to reach their highest potential without the chains of this warped and archaic system holding them back. Everyone is a product of their environment to some extent. It doesn’t excuse their actions at all, but it does make the outcome a much more ambiguous shade of gray.
Honestly, I can’t say that I blame women for wanting nothing to do with men, but it also makes me just want to withdraw completely. I never want to make anyone uncomfortable, and I feel as though my existence is a burden. Sometimes, this fight is exhausting to undertake. Personally, hearing these men talk like this disgusts and enrages me. I don’t think any of it is right, and I do hold negative opinions of people who think and act like this. I also think about how I could have ended up as one of them, how easy it would have been.
I think back to who I was in high school, and how I was struggling to comprehend the world and the society I existed within. All I wanted at that time was to be loved and accepted for who I was at a time when I felt like an outcast. That movement, during my flirtation with it, gave me an enemy to fight. It was all smoke and mirrors, but I felt part of some greater movement that appreciated me. I approach the boys spouting hateful things with rage and frustration and disappointment and disgust. Then I have to force myself to try and find compassion for all the things which must have gone wrong to get them to that point. To find empathy for what they must have been as naïve teenagers who didn’t know better being funneled down this path by predatory figures pushed by algorithms designed to be addictive and overly influential. These conversations in society require a level of nuance and cultural understanding which simply isn’t being taught. My heart breaks for the people affected by our collective failings, and my heart breaks for the ones they go onto hurt. It’s a cruel cycle of violence and misery and it feels so impossible to break in a lasting way. To build a positive way of doing things that isn’t just a violent, defensive, kneejerk reaction.
A 16 year old will fall into those alt-right spaces and not get why they’re bad, then they’ll turn into a 26 year old who doesn’t think for themselves. If we don’t get into these spaces and start teaching boys that empathy is a positive quality, and that it’s okay to cry and show emotions, and that you can be good platonic friends with girls, then we’ll keep losing them to the cretins who talk them up for being men and fill them with delusions that they are “rightful kings” and everyone else should submit. Nature may play a part, but nature can be overcome if those tendencies are properly nurtured. Right now, we as a society are setting boys up to be the villains and then demonizing them when they are. I understand logically all of the arguments as to why this isn’t actually the case, but I simply must insist that emotions don’t care about logic.
To be frank, men need to compliment and support each other more. Healthy male friendships need to be supported, where they challenge each other to be better, and not just support their worst instincts. Personally, I don’t have many guy friends anymore. Many of the ones I knew from high school turned out to be okay with sexually harassing or even assaulting women, or they were racist, or homophobic and they just weren’t people I wanted to associate with. And the most depressing part is that a lot of guys who act these ways know when other guys would disapprove of their actions, so they’ll clean up their acts. People from high school I thought were chill actually harassed women and bragged about it, but they never did so while I was around because they knew I’d call them out on it.
I dropped people very quickly once I found out they were scumbags. It continually disappointed me that men didn’t hold other men accountable. I just became an oversensitive, weak loser to them for practicing some empathy and basic human decency. Maybe I’m partially at fault and didn’t do enough. I didn’t challenge and push back and go looking for the fight with them when I should have. I let my own feelings of being hurt and disappointed in people I once respected overpower my responsibility to society at large. I drifted away instead of doing what I should have done for the women in my life and tell those guys that they should be doing better because what they were doing was reprehensible.
Then I question whether or not the direct confrontation method would have worked all or just driven these men further into their beliefs because they felt “under siege.” So much of the modern conservative worldview is casting themselves as the perpetual victim under threat to justify hatred they show other groups. Things like the “War on Christmas” or the erroneous assertation that “Christians are the most persecuted religion in the world” and so on. These stances are outrageous and combative and invite confrontation because it justifies a further dive into their beliefs. They want to feel hurt so they can be comforted by what they already hold as the truth.
And I don’t know how to win against that.
Somewhere along the way in society, we failed. We failed our kids. We failed to build a society that prioritizes dignity, respect, empathy, and compassion. It scares me that the Andrew Tates and Joe Rogans of the world have such outsized influences, especially on matters in which they have no practical expertise. It saddens me that we live in a society where men actively want to pull us back, where women gaining equality is seen as an existential threat. It enrages me to see a society which sets boys up to be harmful and then protects them from the repercussions of their actions.
I try to always offer solutions when I write about an issue such as this. Truth be told, I don’t really have one here. I was lucky I was equipped with enough tools to be able to crawl my way out of things. I’ve allowed my beliefs to change as I grew up and took in new information and heard new perspectives. I don’t know how to tackle the epidemic of boys growing up with some shocking and abhorrent beliefs. Calls to mind the old adage: “If one or two students fail, they didn’t do enough. If the whole class fails, the teacher didn’t do enough.”
This article has been more an attempt to get people to understand how boys fall into the alt right space and maybe spark some thoughts about how we can address it together. If anything, I ask you to approach situations with a critical eye, a strong sense of justice, an open perspective, and a large helping of empathy. These are troublesome times, and it is very hard to see the calm waters outside of the storm.
It’ll be even harder to reach them.
Ark of the Lost Angels 
Leave a comment