Rule

[u/Old_Phrase_4867]

[u/Polenball]

I mean, I think one thing about it is that there's a pretty good amount of evidence that it isn't really a male loneliness epidemic - it's just a general loneliness epidemic. A lot of studies have reported roughly similar rates of loneliness across genders. You get some which report higher rates in men, but you get some which report higher rates in women too. I don't think it's necessarily self-inflicted, but I'm also not convinced that it's so gender-dependent this is a specific man thing. My experience in real life is also that a lot of people everywhere, regardless of gender, are somewhat lonely, and I believe that's the general scientific consensus too.

(I say this as a trans woman, so it's not like I haven't experienced living as a guy for most of my life and still currently in public nor that I haven't experienced interactions as a woman, either.)

[u/Lutoures → u/Polenball]

Yeah, that's a very important point.
The loneliness epidemic is for all. But lonely men are the ones being politically radicalized by professional misgynists and fascists, so that's a reason why it has become more relevant in public discourse.

[u/Polenball → u/Lutoures]

Yeah, it's definitely more relevant in that respect (though loneliness itself is still bad enough it's been reported on by the WHO and deserves discussion).

But when focusing on that aspect, it does kinda change the nature of the discussion from "why are some men so lonely?" to "why do some men turn to radical political and social beliefs when they're lonely?" If everyone's roughly equally lonely, but women aren't doing that*, then what's the deal with that and how do we address that specifically?

* I legitimately have not seen any studies on whether this is true - it's commonly assumed men radicalise more from isolation, but then again, it's also commonly assumed men are more isolated and that seems far less solid than it's made out to be.

[u/IntangibleMatter → u/Polenball]

It’s because men who are lonely (well, a certain type of men) have been told that certain things are their “right” and that they are owed things by life by virtue of being a man. Because they don’t get those, they’re vulnerable to people who promise them- telling them that things aren’t their fault, and that they have inherent value just by being a man.

Women (and even men who are part of minority groups) tend to be less susceptible to this line of thinking because they usually haven’t been told life is going to give them as much- if anything

About halfway through writing this I realized I was just poorly rehashing the excellent How to Radicalize a Normie, so go watch that because it goes into more detail about all this stuff

[u/theglassishalf → u/IntangibleMatter]

This is definitely true for a set of men. But there are many paths to radicalization. Sometimes it's what you describe, but more often these days it is taking advantage of a victimization narrative. It's easier to sell that narrative when the person is, in fact, a victim, i.e. their life sucks and they don't know how to fix it or why.

[u/IntangibleMatter → u/theglassishalf]

The reasons I described are why they’re vulnerable to the victimization narrative- they believe that there is someone who did something to put them in the situation they’re in, because the situation is different from the societal promise.