This is not my personal opinion, I know Gen Z men who voted for Harris. But the voter demographics really speak for themselves, and maybe now people will look at the radicalization of young men as a serious (but solvable) issue.
There is a lot to be said here. I'll use my own experience as an example.
I'm a millennial male who had a terrible time as a young adult through my mid 30s. I grew up in a fairly religious/conservative area of the US, and I didn't have the ability to even start questioning that before my college years because literally everyone I knew was either a vocal supporter of or tacitly accepted that cultural status quo. Mental health issues were either not discussed or not recognized in any serious fashion. It wasn't until my late 20s that I finally understood that I had severe depression and anxiety and sought help, despite suffering from it since my early teenage years.
Socially, I never felt like I was cool enough or good enough. I didn't understand women, and the endless series of rejections and confusing encounters only served to erode my low self confidence further. I had no idea what a healthy relationship looked like because my parents were just going through the motions at that point, and the relationships I saw in TV shows and movies were incredibly shallow. The few people I considered friends did not support me in any positive way. I eventually kicked them to the curb, preferring solitude to being the butt of their jokes.
I was a prime target for recruitment for the alt-right: depressed, alone, disaffected, and ready to lash out. The only thing that kept me from going in that direction was a keen sense that the rhetoric was bullshit and its leaders only cared to take advantage of the rank-and-file to accumulate money and power. Many people I knew were not so perceptive and became victims of that movement.
My only saving grace was that I had a decent job with healthcare benefits, which allowed me to get the therapy I needed to overcome these challenges. Again, most people I knew did not have such resources. Nearly a decade later, I am now a family man with a wife and child. I am far happier than I have been at any other point in my life. Despite that, there is still plenty I don't understand. I don't have a good grasp of what positive masculinity looks like. I cannot point to anyone who has served as a good, male role-model in my life. I still don't have any close male friends with whom I can share my feelings and challenges.
However, I do understand how easily young men can be swayed to far-right crusades. Social media warped my view of reality, and it's far worse now than it was 10-15 years ago. Moreover, there is no alternative to far-right echo chambers for young men to commiserate and get help. Those spaces simply do not exist on the left. If you dare to complain or vent, you will immediately be told your problems don't matter and called a misogynist. I can readily call multiple conversations I had with liberals and feminists who rejected my problems, even being told that I was "living life on easy mode" because I was a man.
For all the women who are reading this, I get it. As a man, I don't have to worry about the government meddling in my bodily autonomy. For the most part, I don't have to worry about walking alone at night or being accosted or raped. I don't have to worry about being taking seriously at my job or being passed over for promotions because of my gender. However, none of that negates the challenges that young men are facing. Their gender does not save them from broken homes, abuse, mental health issues, a bad job market, degrading standards of living, student debt, double-standards, confusing and contradictory narratives surrounding dating and relationships, etc. Yes, privileged men with no right to complain do exist, but they are an extreme minority. The vast majority of young men are in a bad place, and the only people reaching out to help have ulterior motives. If you want things to change, try having some empathy. Maybe you will get empathy for your problems in return.
This. Men are more often victims of violent crime, homelessness, mental illness, suicides, do worse in school, incarceration, die in wars, work dangerous jobs. Classic male institutions, structures, and spaces don’t exist anymore like they used to.
Add to that that men showing emotions is still seen as weakness.
These issues aren’t addressed or even mentioned.
As a Gen Z man who statistically should have fallen down the incel and alt-right pipeline but didn't, this echos exactly what I see in my generation. We don't have positive examples of Masculinity, and the left just yells at us that we're trash, when we struggle with things and most don't have many (or any) good friends to lean on. So of course they go to the alt right.
I’m a gen z male, raised in a far right Republican household. I’m a social democrat. I am progressive.
Good on you. No group is a monolith
Unironically, congrats on breaking free of the brainwashing. I grew up in an insanely red rural area and a very conservative religious family, unlearning all that shit has been a decades long process (and still continues).
Same man. It was wild when middle school rolled around and I finally gained awareness of the world beyond myself and learned what the Republicans actually were and wanted. A friend who knew more about politics than me explained some stuff, and suddenly I had to question why my family was against progressive beliefs.
Same. I live on a ranch in a deeply red area. Voted Kamala. I'm also happy to say my conservative parents are ex-republicans.
It seems counter intuitive but I don’t think Gen Z is as good with technology as most people assume they are.
I think they just believe everything they see on YouTube and TikTok. Those algorithms just feed people what they want to see and don’t challenge anyone.
Who thinks they're good with technology? They've never had technology that requires any more knowledge than how to swipe. They're shit with technology.
I mean that many people just assume younger generations are better with technology.
Yep. Older people (Millennial, Gen X) grew up with PCs that could be heavily modified, run any program, even repurposed to run Linux if you were brave. Later generations who grew up with phones only get to use the apps that Apple / Google approve of. There's no hacking the system, so you get whatever the algorithm says you get.
Older people grew up on BBSes and later "Bulletin Boards", which were mostly the same thing just with prettier graphics, also with email, and sometimes instant messengers. Communities were smaller, and there was no mediator. Younger ones are stuck in apps that are designed around engagement, with a "celebrity" vs "fan" content model where it's all geared around followers and likes. It's all parasocial relationships from the "fan" side, and trying to keep up with whatever the algorithm wants from the creator side.
I was actually wondering how the gender gap changed in this election, and it wasn't at all what I was expecting:
According to exit polls by CNN Trump gained +2% of the male vote, and +5% of the female vote compared to 2020 - though women were still more likely to support Harris, of course.
An analysis by the AP found similar results, with the support from men under 45 increasing +7%, and women under 45 +6%, while for older men it decreased -1%, and for older women stayed the same.
Surprisingly, Trump's support among racial minority groups increased while white and older Americans increased support for Harris.
After thorough analysis and much thought I have ultimately concluded that I have absolutely no fucking clue what is going on with American politics.
It’s the economy. Look at the numbers for voters without a college degree, rural voters, and lower income voters. Trump won all of these groups. In the WaPo exit polls the issues are included, not just the demographics. For voters who think the economy is the most importantly issue and for voters who think the US economy is doing badly: Trump dominated.
The Democrats continue to fail at shedding their reputation for being out of touch with working class Americans. The only income bracket that Harris won was the $100,000+ group. This tells us that the Democrats are an upper middle class and upper class party.
As a zoomer that's old enough to be working class now. Man, my childhood was fucked. At school, being a right wing troll was the norm, at least for boys. I was too.
The worst part is no-one cared, fucking "they'll grow out of it" and now everyone is suddenly in shock. When I talk about it to my friend today he's even in fucking denial about it, "Oh they didn't actually mean that, it was all jokes".
And our education system doesn't do anything to combat this shit either. Quite the opposite, the dogmatic authoritarian approach schools take coupled with zero-tolerance policies pretty much ensures people shouting this hateful shit get away with it.
After all saying "Hitler did nothing wrong" only gets annoyed looks, gets completely brushed off as "edgy" or something. But then when someone points out that person's shit, suddenly that's an attack???
White women as a majority still voted for Trump. Why just blame men?
They went for Trump by 2%. Calm the fuck down. Go after millennial men, we went for Trump by something like 10%.Gen X men went for Trump by 22%. And Boomers were actually better than X at 11%.
So if you want to go after someone go after Gen Z's parents.
Alienation caused by economics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
Fascists have a message for them, the liberals don't because they are committed to the current economic and political system
Social media. Gen Z grew up with youtubers and influencers pushing their beliefs.
I can see why some young men might feel like the Democratic party is prioritizing women's issues over those affecting men, especially young men. In fact, it might seem like the Democratic party is not only indifferent to struggling young men, but hostile to them. I can understand why someone might not want to vote for a party that thinks of them as deplorable, pathetic losers.
The main source of this recent trending fascism, anti-scientific thinking and so on is social media or the web in general. To resist or refute the mass of false information and find out what's likely true and what's not, requires education, literacy, media competency, things like that. I guess current generations are lacking this so they fall easy prey to "funny" fascist memes, fakes and rhetoric, then vote for rightwing extremists, destabilizing their own country as a result, not realizing that this leads to big disadvantages for everyone including themselves. We failed to protect these younger generations from misinformation, and now they are turning the world into what they are misled to believe is true.
We used to have relatively high living standards in the Western democracies. This will soon all crumble and we (most people who aren't rich) will suffer from it, regardless of who you voted for. And on top of that, climate change will finish us all off, because battling that isn't even on the radar for those fascists because they don't even believe in it. So instead of doing too little, we'll do literally zero and even accelerate the problem, meaning it'll affect us all much sooner already and with higher intensity.
So enjoy your still existing relatively privileged life while it still lasts. It's ging to get much, MUCH worse before it's going to be better again. Buckle up and prepare yourselves.
With the levels of anti-intellectualism, it's also quite hard.
You write more that 3 lines? You used a "buzzword"? Congratulations, your refutation won't be read, but will met with ridicule!
My mother's boyfriend often "reads" articles from more liberal-leaning news sources, and he just laughs at the buzzwords. Cannot tell what the articles were about.
I blame social media and algorithms. My teen son for the longest time was leaning further and further right due to the content he was getting served on YouTube. He was making disparaging comments about women and how stupid they are. My wife and I who lean left had to sit down and have a talk with him about what he was saying and videos that he was getting served by YouTube (that popular red pill girl, I can't remember her name and andrew tate among other red pill stuff). He's a pretty smart kid, once we showed him data and articles that directly proved all the things he was watching wrong, he started to come around. He's been careful to believe things that he sees or hears on the internet more now. Occasionally, he'll bring things to us that we have to double take and fact check to see if it's wrong.
Women asked for some basic goddamn respect and when they got “uppity”(because us men weren’t listening) they really got a “you were mean to me so I’m gunna elect Hitler again”. Millions of people alive today want women strip women of the rights they fought for and women are supposed to be polite about it?!
It’s crazy how weak they are and I’m sad sharing a gender with them.
And many of those people who voted to "elect Hitler again" were woman. I think it is wild that people keep minimizing the role of the single largest voting demographic into victims.
Man. I get being disappointed. I really do get it.
But tarring all these guys with "hitler youth" when just like every other group, at worst it's a 45-55% split... Come on. That's a hell of an insult to throw towards people, many of whom are doing their best and didn't vote Trump. Doing your best, doing everything that you can do, and still being met with scorn... I know how bad that hurts. I know how it sucks the will right out of you. I know it drives people away. And even if it doesn't drive them to Trump because they're good people, it sure isn't going to drive them towards finding a solution.
I am Gen Z male and please do not let my blond hair, blue eyes, and German lineage deceive you. I’m as appalled as one can be with all of this. I never connected with my boomer dad or my millennial elder brothers over machismo or sports nor did I ever pick up TikTok and my social media consumption elsewhere was limited or gated by my own doing. From my experience, the pressure to conform to masculinity and male dominated in-groups; the perceived onus to keep males in power and powerful; and the propagandists’ weaponization of media such as TikTok, Facebook, podcasts, and Fox News and their ilk on TV and radio are the main depreciators of character in these cases.
PragerU was started to indoctrinate Gen Z when the realized the Millenials were Far Left and the Boomers were dying out
Mission Accomplished...
Because the Republicans succeeded at fully killing education. It's dead.
I guess the lonelyness epedemic plays a part in it which hits younger people harder then older ones and mans stronger then woman.
Indeed, and it’ll get worse. Plenty of women (on popular dating sites, at least) have already been swearing off dating Republicans. Now, with a higher likelihood of a national abortion ban, don’t be surprised if straight women become even choosier. After all, every man we think of sleeping with must now also be viewed as a potential father.
Forget about casual flings or one-night-stands. Why would I risk a lifetime of supporting an entire human being just to have one night of fun?
And that’s only for straight women. Bisexual/pansexual women can choose to straight up stop dating men entirely.
In a lot of ways, lonely young men who voted for Trump just shot themselves in the dick.
That's a pretty ignorant way to overgeneralize about a whole generation. I hoped I was leaving this kind of bullshit behind on reddit.
Every flag-emoji in a user's profile name is a red-flag for a different mental illness.
But this is pure scapegoating. Even the most straightforward read on the turnout demographics tells us where the problem is.
Trump won the White People.
the Democrats will just pander to this by getting an endorsement in 2028 from Andrew Tate.
I'm not doubting you OP, just asking if anyone has the voter demographics data that shows Gen Z males voted for Trump because I'm interested in the #'s of the issue.
As to the question of the post: I think part of the issue is that what it means to be a strong, mentally healthy male has been left unspecified or even attacked in recent years and that's left a lot of young men confused and upset. Men get all sorts of advice on what's wrong to do, but not enough on what's right. Contradictory advice makes the confusion worse.
Are you supposed to chase a girl or is that creepy? How do you navigate increased romantic isolation and dating apps in a healthy way? What are expectations about being the sole income provider a la tradition? In that vacuum confident, opinionated, clear voices are persuasive, and a lot of those voices are the jackasses pushing a toxic masculinity and telling males to reclaim it. We need more strong, positive male role models and visible social support of them if we want to win young men back - they have to know that being better will yield rewards.
No you're fair to do so, here's the demographic breakdowns and differences between 2020 and 2024 from NBC exit polls.
The particular thing to note is that Trump support jumped from 36% to 42% in the 18-29 demographic, while the other age groups remained steady, this is what I think the tweet is going off of.
Obviously in their lives they've been massively influenced by social media starting from a younger age than any previous generations. And you know what kind of garbage is out there.
Because the democrats haven't made a serious appeal to them in a decade. We need to turn bell hooks into actionable political messaging.
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