Young Men Lost This Election

 

By Jack Yordy, guest-posting:

Given what women lost in this election, what queer and trans people are likely to lose, among many other groups, and given the urgency of the impacts of these losses, young men should be at the bottom of our list for sympathy. In an election post-mortem meeting, I razed young white men’s propensity for bigotry and betrayal of their peers. But after giving it some thought and remembering one of my biggest hopes about the effect of a Harris presidency, I think young men have lost much as well. 

If you’re a young man with any hobbies or interests and a connection to the internet, much of your life is spent being exposed to right-wing content. A sizable portion of this content is radical and incredibly bigoted toward queer people, black and brown people, and women. Many of these men have been lied to -- that their prospects are dwindling, DEI has taken their job opportunities, feminism has taken their dating options, LGBTQ+ people are trying to take their masculinity. These myths have formed young men’s bigotry, but they have also had an impact on their view of themselves. Ironically enough, young men have been indoctrinated with what conservative influencers would call a “Victim Mentality.” 

Once this mentality has supplanted the self esteem of these young men, no longer believing they can be successful or happy, the influencers swoop in with advice: Go to the gym and buy my multivitamins to get big, learn how to hustle and grind with my online course, isolate yourself  -- swear off women -- and read my self-help book. These recommended behaviors actually do instill in some young men a sense of purpose through effort. But that trajectory also comes with a vindication of hatred. They begin to believe the only way to be happy is to follow the advice of wise right-wingers and practice the same ideological rituals of bigotry. The influencers never take credit for "helping" these young men, which allows the young men to believe that the reason they began to feel better about themselves is because they did it themselves, without help from anyone else. They can believe that they did all that alone while hating women and other marginalized groups. So why would they ever stop being hateful? 

Consider what Doug Emhoff and Tim Walz as role models could have done for these young men. We had a chance to show them, by example, that they could be happy and successful without being bigoted and angry. They might have asked themselves, “If the vice president of the United States can be happy without being hateful, can I?” They might have asked, “If a man can be happy taking a back seat to his powerful wife, can I?” Instead, they are alienated, isolated, and strangely vindicated. They look up and see the most powerful person in the world is a man who hates women, a man who rapes women, a man who gleefully oppresses and bullies people with less power. They will see him and want to be like him. Many of them will live unhappily, chasing validation from grifters, finding enjoyment in hurting others. They don’t know it yet and maybe some never will, but young straight men, like the rest of us, lost everything in this election.