this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2025
669 points (98.0% liked)
Political Memes
9061 readers
2499 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean, ya gotta be careful. Are they conservative because they are lonely, or are they lonely because they are conservative
There are a lot of progressive men that are lonely. I'd say, I fall under that category. And woof, dating as a progressive man ain't no walk in the park.
Here I am going to be the distasteful contrarian progressive, but it's because I'm desperately hoping people see that the difference isn't dating.
Because yes, you are right, as a single progressive man, dating is no walk in the park. Plenty of good reasons for this on the side of women.
Are you lonely as termed by the actual problem of male loneliness? Do you have at least a couple of friends who you can get to lunch with? Do you have a brother, sister, cousin, parents, etc. nearby? Do you have someone to help you if you get sick? Do you have an active social group you feel included in?
If the answer to them is no, then yes, definitely you are in the loneliness group. Sure, dating can help with it - but what happens if/when you break up: you don't have the support there.
I'm really worried about how people are continuing to separate and blame things that aren't the root of problems on distractions.
Like I get it. I'm there. I'm divorced, I'm coming to terms that I was in a 15 year abusive relationship, I'm hurt by her cheating on me twice, I'm hurt by her rejecting my joys and attempts at connecting and reconnecting, I miss the idea of being with her. It's been over two years since I slept next to her, or anyone.
She tried to isolate me. She love bombed me. She gaslit me. She threatened me.
But I had a kid, I have my parents, my brother, several friends, a couple of regular groups I meet up with. I desperately want the love life I pretended to have. But if it weren't for that support system in place, I would have killed myself two years ago.
Instead I lost the weight that was actually killing me. I put muscle on where I've had none. There are physical features I cannot change that affect my physical attractiveness that I get that will impede my ability to date via apps.
That's how I was able to figure this all out. The fact that you are progressive means that you see the value in other people, and see the value in connection.
There has been narratives pushed for decades to try and isolate us, gaslight us, and threaten us as humans. We need to put our oxygen mask on first before helping others.
I agree with a lot of what you said. But I'll address things point by point.
I have friends and family I spend time with. But when I say I'm lonely, it's the kind that can't be filled by friends and family. Additionally, all my friends and family are just as exhausted with the state of things. So our time isn't quality time because damn near everyone is financially stretched, social energy depleted, and working none stop to keep a roof over our heads.
Yes, I'm active and all that jazz. If I spend anymore time at the state parks they'll probably name one after me.
My main issue is the commoditficaion of everything. Even dating seems to be more about money then actually getting to know the person across from you. (Yes not all women) I've date several different kinds of women (bbw, curvy, nonconventionally attractive women, and trans women) and the main issue is we both were more trauma bounding because of the grind and not actually getting to know each other.
Absolutely, on putting the mask on yourself first. But as a Black American the everyday barriers leaves very little left after to heal and grow.
I suspect that women aren't dating conservative men, not because they want to punish them, but because they would personally rather not date a horrible person.
It's a pretty bad spiral. Lonely men develop more extremist views, which makes them less attractive to women, which makes them lonelier, and they get even more extremist views, etc.
Like, if you lined all of the single men up who vote against women's rights, and asked an equal number of women to sacrifice their own happiness to date them, a certain number of those horrible men would turn a corner and start to act like a human. But who is going to give up their own happiness to fix some broken asshole stranger? Very few people.
BUT, exceptions also occur, woman do date horrible men, if they are horrible themselves or they make some poor choices themselves. thats why incels have no excuse there something for everyone. they are just looking in the wrong place, looking for woman in areas that are more liberal of course they will have more resistance, or they are looking for woman that are only interested income/attractiveness maybes a little harder poc-wise.
You can't put that on the women. Men have got to get their shit together. Just show a bit of empathy, bro! It's not that hard, humans are literally wired for it. It's just that capitalism is reinforcing humankind's worst impulses.
There is a whole industries to radicalize men. They try to get them hooked with "women don't want to date me" and get them on the social media conveyor belt towards becoming a good right wing radical that's immune to any logic.
Pick up scenes, and now right wing grifters sole job is to gather as much conservative voters as possible to sustain conservative governments.
There's a concept from the autism community called the double empathy problem which posits that counter to the mainstream narrative that people with autism are lacking/missing empathy, autistic people do have empathy. The theory suggests that the brains of autistic individuals processes information and stimuli so dramatically differently from 'neurotypical' people that neurotypical people are typically unable to accurately understand what is going on in the neurodiverse mind and vice versa. It suggests that empathy seems to most easily work neurodiverse-to-neurodiverse and neurotypical-to-neurotypical which to me makes sense.
Now there are certainly plenty of people in the modern world who seem unable to display any form of empathy, but this theory does highlight that empathy isn't a binary and depends on your ability to understand the mind of another.
There is no single way to be empathetic, and it is entirely possible that one person thinks they are being empathetic when in fact they are being antagonistic to the other. My point is that empathy can look different to different groups.
I wasn't putting it on the women. The idea that women can have personal preferences and prefer certain men over others is not "putting it on the women". I think that sort of interpretation is dangerous thinking, the sort of thing a person would say if they saw themselves as an "incel".
Absolutely don’t put that on women, but it is a mental illness so you can’t ask them to get their shit together they need help.
mental illness is when you have actual disorder that is diagnosed bya proper physician, lonely is a mental illness
other men need to step in to provide the help they need
Being the same sex as someone who needs help with mental health doesn't magically make you a qualified therapist/psychiatrist for them.
This is a ridiculous statement.
Lonely people need all sorts of help. Sometimes just having someone to talk to is enough. Plus, a lot of men have a hard time asking for help, especially for something as “unmanly” as loneliness. This can make someone offering help significantly more effective. Additionally, for a number of people, it’s just easier to open up to someone of the same sex.
except t hey are opening in places where right wing groups fester, or they only do it with pick up groups, which reinforces thier insecurities.
So it's a societal issue rather than men not pulling their bootstraps enough?
Well, there are plenty of conservative women too, so that can't tell the whole story, can it?
Looks like conservative men and liberal women are in similar boats, statistically:
This implies the liberal men are dating the conservative women, lol.
over here in Real World Land, what will happen is those women will get abused, physically and sexually
these men have a violent hatred for women. they don’t need a girlfriend, they need therapy and, failing that, a life of imprisonment far from the people they’re a danger to
I wasn't talking about that because it was an impossible hypothetical designed to show one aspect. Just the idea of forcing women to date men is abusive in itself. You don't need to expound on the other consequences. It was already horrible, but I was making a point about something else.
It's like how people learn logic in elementary school. If I say, "Some birds are red," that doesn't imply that I'm saying, "No birds are blue". I said, "A certain number" of those men would turn a corner. That doesn't imply that "none" of those men would become abusive. In fact, conversely, the way that you're saying it could be read that you're saying "all" of those men would become abusive. I mean, that's what you're literally saying, but I'm sure you don't mean it, because I think there is nobody who would actually believe that.
I'm just going to leave this here, it's a good book that might be worthwhile reading: Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic - James Gilligan
That's not what women consider when choosing dates. Even the nicest (as a person) women.
They consider safety, reliability, how fun or not the person is, everything, but that everything is more practical than moral. Especially since evaluating someone by moral criteria from the first glance is an almost impossible task. Since women are in bigger danger from making mistakes, they usually know that.
Even when they share stupid posts from dating apps or whatever, the focus is on stupidity and awkwardness, not on someone being a douche, because honestly sex is not like other spheres of life and a woman being like "sorry, below 2 meter tall is not for me, and also I like guys with blue eyes and a car" is pretty normal, which, well, in other circumstances is being a douche.
And the proportion of good and bad people among men and women is the same, a reminder in case someone forgot this, ahem.
I don't think this has much to do with the conservative\liberal category at all.
More like vulnerable\healthy, or insecure\content. The vulnerable and insecure parts of population in our time and situation might be more likely to feel conservative, but in essence this is not important.
I mean, OK, somewhere around 50s there were plenty of stats how women actually strongly prefer conservative men, while in average more men were liberal than conservative. Today this seems to be reverted.
The ideologies are secondary, just if a man talks too much of their ideology to a potential date, they need some therapy first, and if a man can't manage some tact about their ideology when that correlates with misogyny, they are not trying hard enough to get that date, and if both are wrong but the other side wants to kill them with fire for their mind having been touched with that impure abomination of thought, then probably the other side needs some therapy. And - I know it's hard to consider, but maybe, - some people are just not meant for each other, there's that.
Being conservative is mutually exclusive with being safe.
In your specific situation maybe. Even in mine maybe.
Ah yes, the lonely man® with the agency of a fucking houseplant.
There is absolutely a systemic pressure radicalizing these men. It's always partly their fault, but nowhere near fully
Remember that this process almost always happens before they turn 20, and usually to young teens
Not just systemic, but intentional. People who want to recruit for Nazi groups will hang around and give advice on "incel" forums.
They are conservative because they are stupid
It's both. Young men are being pushed right because much leftleaning messaging has decided to, uncharacteristically, broadly paint men in general as bad, instead of being more focused with their targets. This is unlike every other things where it fights against stereotyping.
The right is [falsely] promising solutions to their concerns.
The left is telling them it's their fault and to fuck off because other people have worse problems and blaming men [in general] for those other people's problems. And then wondering why they lost the young men in the last election. Young men are just as poor as everyone else, stop blaming them for shit old ass billionaires did before they were born.
thats not even remotely true at all, nowhere have been telling men is at fault for why there are problems lol. thats sucha mysogynistic view of the right wingers. i suspect you are only looking from a right wing prospective, because thats how conservative see the left. but the right love to place blame ON WOMEN for not dating conservative men, and plus for rightfully accusing them of SA/ or some other form of violence.
This sounds like a misrepresentation of left wing politics.
It sounds more like how the right defines the left which brings us to the real issue.
Outrage narratives have grown increasingly popular with social media and the right spends endless time blaring sirens on representing the left a certain way.
The left has in response, done little, to influence the narrative.
I personally have not heard the left as a whole admonishing individual men simply for being men.
I think an honest assessment of society, historically and now, should lead to the conclusion that we live in a male centric society that is gradually becoming less male centric. This is a good thing if you believe in fairness and egalitarianism (ie. not fascism).
It was a little more than 50 years ago that women could not hold credit and were expected to be subservient to their husbands or else be institutionalized for "mental illness".
I think many women see this backlash / desire to go back from conservative men as a skill issue so I'm not suprised they're looking elsewhere.