Connor Beaton argues that decades of cultural demonization has driven young men away from education, relationships, and work. College attendance and sexual activity among young men are declining. He says positive role models and real-life adventures can help them regain purpose.
Why are men in such decline? Why are so many young men checking out of work, more men living at home than ever before? You know, less young men are having sex than ever before, going to college. Like less young men are going to college than ever before. Why is this happening? I think there's many reasons. I've talked about a few of them before. But the one that I don't think has gotten enough attention is the decades long campaign of demonizing men and speaking to men and about men as the fundamental problem with every issue in existence. Basically, and I'm going to use a relationship analogy, okay? Imagine that you're dating somebody and that person starts to tell you that you are a problem, that you're causing them harm, that you're damaging them, that you're a problem in the relationship, that any type of dysfunction that happens in the relationship is your fault. And then it gets worse, right? They start to say they don't need you, they don't want you, you. They actually would be better off without you. The world at large would be better off without you. That you're a piece of garbage, that you know that so many of the issues that they face in life are because of you. You would either move into a very defensive and attack oriented stance and position or you would just start to slink out of that relationship. Like you'd either, hopefully you'd exit that relationship entirely, you'd be like, why the hell am I here? Or you would just, you would check out, right? You would literally just check out of that relationship and be like, why in the hell am I in this relationship with you? What you're seeing is the consequences of blaming men for absolutely everything, demonizing men for absolutely everything for decades. And when you do that, there will be consequences. Men will check out, men will start to go into decline as they have, they'll stop showing up into college spaces because I mean, let's face it, I, I probably wouldn't want to go to college if I was a 19 year old kid in today's world, especially if I was a 19 year old conservative kid. Like I would not want to go to a college space, you know, and even if I was, and I mean I was very liberal as an early, I went, got a music degree, you know, but If I was 19 or 20 again and I was looking at going back to college or going to college, I mean, I'd have some real reservations about whether or not I was welcome on that college campus, whether I would be wanted in that space. And we as human beings are Creatures of belonging. And we don't generally want to go into spaces and places where we do not feel like we belong or that we have to fight for a sense of belonging. And, you know, places like college campuses have always meant to be. They've always been a little bit more liberal leaning, but they've always meant to be a place for discourse of difference. And we've lost any type of capacity to disagree without being highly disagreeable. We've lost any capacity to disagree with somebody and say, you know what, I don't agree with what you're saying, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to try and annihilate you and de person you online and get you completely canceled. But this has been the modality that we've taken. But the main piece here that I really want to drive home is, is we are creating a narrative where it's become socially acceptable to hate on men in a way that we would never allow with women. We would never, ever allow individuals on any side of the political spectrum to just point blank say women are the fundamental problem and to spew hatred around women. I mean, misandry has become so commonplace and so socially acceptable that I literally have young men reaching out to me, saying things like, I grew up in a household where my mom just hated men and she told me how bad men were and she told me how I. She hoped I. I never became like my father or any of the men that I was around. And so I never really had any kind of role model or idea of what type of man I should be because it just seemed like she just hated men all the time. And so this type of blatant misandry has become so commonplace that a lot of men don't even. It's not even that they don't even know how to become a good man. It's that they don't even want to take the risk to do that because it seems like there's no winning. There's no possibility that you could ever develop yourself into a man that society and culture is going to approve of. And that's problematic, right? That's problematic. I mean, on the one hand, with women, what we're saying right now is you do whatever it is that you want. We're sort of giving women a, again, this sort of like blank check of go be whoever and whatever you want. We're not going to put any labels on it. We're going to define anything. If you never want to have kids and stay single and work a job for the rest of your life and have five cats like cool power to you. A man's ability to contribute to family, to friends, to society, to culture is incredibly important to him. And when we take that away and we say, you're not wanted, you're not needed, I'm going to reject the opportunities for you to develop the skills to contribute, to provide, to add value for your life and the people around you. Then men will fundamentally suffer. And we see this happening, and so we need to create more positive visions, role models, opportunities for men to step into second. Guys, if you are out there watching this and you are somebody that is struggling personally and you've got caught up in this rhetoric of men are all men bad, all men. The problem, you know, world would be better off without men. And you're not really too sure where to start. Start to pursue some type of adventure irl in real life. Get off of the the online forums, get off of the online conversations. Pursue adventure in real life. Like go hike in the woods, go camp, go touch grass, go sleep under the stars, Plan a solo trip somewhere that, you know, seems wild. Like, you know, motorcycle through Thailand, backpack through Italy. I don't know what it is for you, but go pursue some adventure in real life. Maybe that just means that you go to the local bar and you talk to a woman, you know, and like, that's, that's the adventure that you pursue just to see what happens, just to see how it goes. Start to pursue some real adventure in your life so that you have some aliveness. The world would literally collapse in a matter of hours if men just disappeared. Everything would fall apart immediately because men are necessary and so are women. And, um, so anyway, leave your thoughts and comments below. I'd love to hear why you think men are in decline. I'd love to hear your take and your thoughts on this conversation, specifically about the demonization of men over the last few decades. And don't forget to man it forward. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel until next week. Connor Beaton signing off.
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