Where it went wrong for Gen Z men: a Gen Z man’s perspective

There’s been a lot of talk about my generation of men recently as many are becoming radicalised, and sadly, not just against healthcare CEOs. As someone who had friends almost fall down the right-wing nutjob pipeline, and lost friends who did, I want to provide a perspective to this conversation that I am scared and uncomfortable entering.

Disclaimer: when many men do this they usually say their ‘solution’ is to abandon feminism and make demands about what women say/do. I want to say that I think those people are being fucking ridiculous. We need to make things better, and better means progress for women and a society where they can vent their frustrations.

When it comes to messaging and engaging with young men, it feels like alt-right grifters are playing chess while progressive movements are writing academic papers on the theoretical possibility of making a checkers move.

When the alt-right pipeline is discussed, what is described never matches the reality. Many paint the pipeline as something that starts with men being sexist trolls online and ends with men saying women should have no rights at all. But in reality, all that appears late into the pipeline.

The actual pipeline masquerades as a productive outlet for young men. With messages of wanting to support men’s mental health and help them grow into ‘good men’. When in reality it is a targeted attack that feeds on the deep insecurities of these boys.

Do you feel uncool? Lonely? Awkward about puberty? Scared about your financial future? Do you have trouble speaking to people you are attracted to? Do you have deep trauma you don’t know how to express or unpack? Well these ‘alpha male’ scam artists are here to help themselves while pretending to help you.

The pipeline tries to sell ‘solutions’ to problems. Whether it be courses on how to be ‘cool’, get rich quick schemes, or even just a sense of community amongst others in the pipeline. Once these boys are in the system, it creates a feedback loop of making the problems worse while telling them that what is actually making the issues worse are women.

For example, in 2019 a tweet went viral getting internationally mocked. It was some guy bragging about how he doesn’t watch Star Wars, claiming that led him to a life where he is cool enough to own a sports car. Something ridiculous that would only appeal to completely insecure teen boys. The poster was Andrew Tate.

Early pipeline content is much more subdued and that is intentional. The message of ‘be cool like me’ is a much easier sell than the violent misogyny he actually sells and allowed him to go ‘that’s not what I’m selling’ for years.

So how do progressives respond to these snake oil salesmen? Well, typically with some lectures. Now imagine you are a teen boy and you are presented with two options to listen to. Which would you take in:

• A school lecture on an academic debate on ‘multiple masculinities’ presented by a guy with the charisma of a youth pastor posting on LinkedIn. 

• Or a video of a charismatic guy saying he can make you cool while he smokes a cigar in a sports car surrounded by models that you don’t know are only there because they were either paid or kidnapped.

A lot of people point to the US election in their criticism of men my age, which is valid, although one key aspect that is overlooked is that the Democrats did not run a single campaign aimed at winning young male voters.

Democrats dismissed young men entirely, choosing instead to hold massive campaigns only targeting young women. And while I think they must continue to try to bring in women and have those campaigns, they left the door open: Trump in turn launched massive campaigns targeting young men.

That failure is a sign of the far bigger issue. One ‘side’ lectures at these boys while offering nothing to actually bring them in, while the other pretends to be listening to them. And then we get posts from respected leaders and activists feigning shock that this lack of effort with men has failed once again.

Many leaders in the space, who I respect, post about the need to change about once a month. But their ‘change’ is writing another academic book these boys won’t read or slightly tweak the font on a Canva slide put on a page that is almost exclusively read by women. All while keeping all the stuff the alt-right weaponises against them. 

Progressive leaders treat this problem as less of an immediate issue, and more of an academic thought experiment. 

Years ago, there was a well intentioned push to add gender studies terms like ‘toxic masculinity’ into high school educational resources. Since then, researchers and experts now argue that the term needs to be removed and that including it is harming the intended outcome. Essentially, some boys are internalising a false, harmful message from the term, which leads them to shut off from the rest of the content regarding consent, respect and mental health. But, instead of listening, activists are going ‘nuh uh’ and instead suggest the solution is a debate on the idea of ‘multiple masculinities’. Addressing the complexity issue, by making it more complex!

Let’s say we let them have that debate for the next 5-10 years, what that means is 5-10 years of boys not taking in information that can help tackle the actual issues. As much as we should be able to trust respected activists and leaders, sometimes they are wrong, and we need to push them to be pragmatic and goal focused, not focused on their pride about being ‘correct’.

Another area where we need to readjust our positions is the notion that we should ‘never do emotional labour’. That the best way to reach these men is to not talk to them and leave it up to the educators they aren’t listening to, and the therapists they don’t trust.

Some of the insecurities that the alt-right pipeline exploits are rational, others are irrational, all of them are real. And while you should care for your mental load, if we all refuse the ‘emotional labour’ of a conversation, then what they are left with is a dangerous pipeline that says they will do it.

A mate of mine, who is a feminist, was once fed information that made them think that when a woman frustratingly says ‘men’ they were talking about him. He was falling for the ‘not all men’ bullshit. What it took to combat that was to take him aside and discuss that I understand why he feels insecure, but he needs to look at women venting in the context of why they are mad at ‘men’ as a societal group; usually discussing sexism, sexual violence, gendered violence, their trauma being dismissed or some douchebag being annoying in her replies online.

I have also experienced this regarding men feeling lonely, insecure about rejections and even the term ‘toxic masculinity’ that we discussed earlier. Again emphasising that women don’t need to stop venting about the issues women face, we just need to be ready to talk to the male bystanders to make sure they don’t internalise a false harmful message from it.

On the flip side, there were times when I was younger and scared to have those conversations, thinking to myself that those boys should just try therapy, and like I said before, I have lost friends to the alt-right pipeline.

The best way to solve these issues is a systematic approach addressing the underlying issues that lead people to dangerous ideologies. Things like income inequality, access to mental health care and actually doing something about our doomed planet. Sadly those all require major political action and our politicians are completely useless. So all we can do there is pressure them. 

But where we can change how we approach these boys on a personal level, we need to ASAP. At the end of the day, the guys who are trying to turn these boys into incels are already well funded and good at it. The longer we wait, the more they grow.