Address the Problems, NOT the Symptoms
On July 17, 2023 by beelzerog
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Originally Published on Tumblr on Jul 17, 2023
Excuse me, but I’m going to start using some of my accounts that have larger text counts to do some ranting. I know you might be following me for video games with titties, but, trust me, this all links together.
If this link works correctly, it will start at a part where ol’ Morning Joe gets on his high horse and complains about young men being obsessed with porn and video games again. If you listen to the rest of the piece, it sounds like a good starting point of addressing men, especially young men’s, problems in today’s world. But he had to drag these talking points into the conversation and this is far from the first time he’s done it and he’s is far from the only one.
First of all: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH PORNOGRAPHY AND VIDEO GAMES!
At worst, the overindulgence (and we can argue what constitutes overindulgence) is simply a symptom and not the problem. If you remove porn and video games, they will be replaced with something else and potentially something far more destructive. And that can lead to an even larger problem.
Because nothing can cause social turmoil like bored, angry, frustrated young men. It is how you end up with biker gangs and brown shirts. And certain groups, a lot of hate groups especially, know this and capitalize on this. Young men are regularly recruited into gangs, into terrorist groups, and into extreme political movements. Those groups also frequently back efforts to keep young men angry and frustrated (especially sexually) so they make it easier to recruit them.
We do need a long and honest conversation about the roles of men in modern society, but that will take time. If you want to help in the short term, there’s a few things that can be done.
- Raise wages & compensation like vacation time
- Help with debts, especially student loans & medical insurance
- Make rents and the ability to buy a house more affordable
OK, so this looks weird, right? This is all financial. Doesn’t talk about men’s place in society. Well, a lot of current problems are based on finances. Can’t go on dates if you don’t have money. Can’t exactly take a girl home if you’re living with your parents or if you have 3 roommates because none of you can afford the rent on a 1 bedroom apartment. Don’t have time for dates if you’ve got 2 jobs and a side-hustle to be able to pay your student loans.
Dating takes hours, money, and energy you might not have, so you pull up porn for an hour. Can’t exactly travel, going on even a long weekend trip will cost you vacation time you may need for illness or family holidays, plus the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in travel, lodging, food, and entertainment that a ‘proper vacation’ may cost. Easier to spend $70 and get hours and hours of time, broken into bite-sized chunks, to explore Skyrim or Hyrule or The Commonwealth or the vastness of space. You want them in the ‘real world’? A living wage is freedom. Financial security breeds confidence.
Helping with finances is, of course, only a stopgap to the larger issues of the place of men in modern society and what this looks like and it will take all of us, men & women, gay & straight, cis & trans, and all cultures and ethnicities, to join in that conversation. But this would be a good start and maybe help staunch the bleeding.
