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Gen-Z: We must stand as equals
The world we live in means someone in power will lie to someone they need the support of, by scapegoating a third, often innocent party
- PUBLISHED: Fri 27 Dec 2024, 9:33 AM
In the wake of the rising success, wealth, professional development, and accolades earned by Generation-Z women, men have the opportunity to do the same.
Too often, the conversation surrounding the swings in hard and soft influence of different groups involves one ceding to the other or at least taking a back seat. I see it differently, that instead of forcing women behind us, men can and should stand shoulder to shoulder with women.
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I see the issue entirely as economic, and not isolated to the West and the promises one generation of leaders makes to young people to get that swing in votes.
Indeed, the world we live in means someone in power will lie to someone they need the support of, by scapegoating a third, often innocent party.
Women are often the scapegoat-whether in the case of America's far-right stripping protections and rights from women and gender and sexual minorities, or in the state of what has been referred to as gender apartheid in Afghanistan under the Taliban.
Men end up coasting by, and for Generation-Z's men I believe it's because we were coddled.
Having and finding our own communities on the Internet and social media meant that young people had support and friends, people who share their views and have had similar experiences despite the distance between them.
Communities of boys and men facing similar problems - such as a lack of emotional regulation, romantic experience, or guiding ideological forces - found one another and formed uncivilised groups centred on harming women. Concepts like the “trumpet of amplification” illustrate how these fringe online ideologies transition into mainstream political discourse, further harming women and exacerbating the gender divide.
Most women, as a result, chose the bear-'If a bear attacks you, you don't blame the bear.' Journalists like Elle Reeve, who study these communities (check out her awesome book Black Pill), have found that nearly everyone attempting to disrupt gender dynamics has failed to address the underlying financial causes of the divide.
I know a guy - a man and a military veteran with sons - who said past generations of men 'needed a few years chewing barbed wire in the trenches' to teach them humility, conviction, honour, brotherhood, and all those things that have defined healthy masculinity for millennia.
I disagreed: that more war and violence is not what Gen-Z's men and boys need - it's just education. It's unpacking the nonsense everyone's consumed from the Internet since a young age and holding to account the wealthy and powerful elites that drum up the gender divide by taking away people's rights rather than addressing the lack of housing, jobs, education, or simple cash-in-hand.
Most people need one or more of those things at this very moment. When it comes to romance, I simply echo what women often say: 'The bar is so low, it's in hell.'
Men who remain forever woeful that they can't find a girlfriend when they have failed to address their own flaws are an important part of this, and a lack of community and emotional intimacy, which is built into the relationships most women build with one another, is entirely absent from the lives of most men.
I can thus only advocate that men need therapy, to hug their friends, and look beyond finding a girlfriend and posting about your inability to find a girlfriend as their sole method of finding romance.