Personal background: I strongly feel just about everyone grows up and has something shitty about them. I know growing up I definitely thought and said some less-than-ideal jokes about women, minorities, etc. And while some of that was the proverbial ‘the times’, and some was growing up in a sheltered hyper Christian southern American conservative situation, I regret my actions and am happy I grew past that. And I do think people, especially younger, can grow past their shittiness, especially with the help of others, which was true for me too… When I got my first W2 job a superior I looked up to helped mold me into a better person by calling me out on things and modeling a better behavior.
Current situation: I’m now the supervisor position, have been for a decade (retail is a trap) and I’ve taken that to heart, calling out jokes that aren’t funny, etc. But recently we hired a new kid who acts really incel-ish, and who apparently has attached himself to me instantly. I’ve had moderate success so far just telling him his ‘lol women dumb’ jokes aren’t funny, and modeling how working with women is… normal? Anyways, I don’t wanna screw this up so do y’all have any suggestions for me to help keep him from going down an unfortunate path? I know at the end of the day I’m not responsible for others’ routes in life, but I feel we should all do our parts.
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I have an gaming buddy that is waaaaaaaaay down the conspiracy rabbit hole, I wish I had the energy and position to help him. Another friend of mine that is closer to him says he’s gone, she’s been trying for years to talk him out of it. He has a constant stream of right wing insanity on in the background of his house.
You’re doing a wonderful thing for this young man
I think being clear that the behavior is wrong is good. I think framing it as a “you’re better than that” is better than just telling them it is unacceptable though. It helps to paint other people they hear that shit from as being pathetic and not who they should model their behavior after. Ok not sure how to do that in a practical sense but everytime someone has criticized my behavior with disappointment rather than anger it has left a stronger impact I think.
But I’ve never done this so I don’t know what’s best. Bare minimum is definitely not letting them get away with it. Make your disdain known. Don’t just distance yourself.
The disappointment approach is my jam! It’s what helped me turn things around, and it’s what has worked so far with this kid. I’m just calling it out here because this was way better worded than mine, and needs the ups so if anybody else is looking for ideas they know this one is great!
You ultimately aren’t responsible for this person’s behavior, but I understand wanting to help them. Calling him out for bad behavior is definitely a good way to go, try not to be harsh though. Maybe push him to try and become friends with a female coworker. If they’re friends with a girl they aren’t necessarily sexually attracted to, it’s a great way to teach him to view girls as regular people.
Maybe push him to try and become friends with a female coworker.
Please ask her before you use her to teach a lesson.
Encouraging them to seek out a female friend isn’t using the seeked out person as a lesson. What an weird way to interpret that.
You gotta admit, you did specify female coworker. You sound well intentioned but I cant say your plan is not without its issues
You should really have the decency to contemplate why a woman would not want that before you tell her she’s wrong for not wanting it.
Don’t know why you think I didn’t. I work with people and have a lot of girl friends. I know very well how they think and empathize well. I’m responding to a random username who’s likely perpetually online so I don’t exactly value their opinion.
You also have no idea who I am or my experiences before you assume I’m wrong, just like you say I am doing to them.
All I know about you is this conversation, and your response here sounds a lot like “I’m not sexist, I have women friends”.
Wow now I’m apparently sexist for disagreeing with you. Maybe you should have the decency to contemplate why anyone claiming to be female online must be automatically right. That’s pretty sexist to tie truth to gender. You know literally nothing about me, so don’t draw any conclusions.
Maybe you should have the decency to contemplate why anyone claiming to be female online must be automatically right. That’s pretty sexist to tie truth to gender. You know literally nothing about me, so don’t draw any conclusions.
what the fuck are you talking about
you said a dumb thing online and people are calling you out on it
there’s nothing more to it than that
It sounds like you’ve never had the experience of being the woman used as a lesson, and I’m really glad for you. I’m sorry you think my lived experience is weird! Blessed be.
That’s awesome, but it’s literally a “hey, you should go to talk her”
I feel this comment is brushing off the important point the commentator above is making. I understand that you wanted to clarify or defend your original statement. But if you don’t respond appropriately to what the person you’re talking to has said, you’re not really having a conversation. Instead you’re just talking at someone.
This is such a lovely question. Thank you for being you.
I’d say that it would be important to talk positively about the women you know. If you have a female SO, for example, tell him how smart and curious and funny she is. Make a point to be open about the respect you feel for the contributions of your female co-workers. Tell him stories about when girlfriends were clever, and so on.
I don’t recommend talking about SOs. Incels may (appear to) be misogynistic but in the end, they turned out that way because they are (or feel) completely unwanted, for whatever reason they come up with, valid or not. Talking about your girlfriend or wife to them will probably remind them what they are missing, make them more envious and aggravate them more, despite claiming to hate women.
I mean it’s a good thing he’s found you as a helpful mentor.
One online personality who I know is fairly good at explaining things in terms even people caught in right-wing pipelines can understand: Beau of the Fifth Column on YouTube.
Take this video for example on the topic of masculinity. Here Beau talks about the current trend of projecting masculinity and “being manly” through things like posture, limiting yourself to specific hobbies, talking certain ways and making yourself appear stoic to attract girls. He says it’s not unlike how women were trained to behave in the 19th century in order to court a man.
His style is patient, and he speaks in a way that can resonate with a lot of people, including those who are confused about certain progressive people movements, and even those that are settled deep in the conservative tar pit.
You’ll want to avoid sounding too preachy all the time, and be sure you recognize and empathize with anything he might be struggling with.
Huh, that’s an interesting route to take. I worry it’ll become too similar to the trap of “pink isn’t a girl’s color, it’s actually a boy’s color and they switched in the XX’th century and it’s the color of blood so it’s manly” that I’ve seen a lot of people fall into (kicking myself because I was one of them). It’s not a bad step to be in, in that it helps normalize normally “feminine” actions/dress/etc. as things men can wear, but it’s also just… still gendered unnecessarily?
To be clear, I haven’t watched it yet and still intend to, I just worry about that from your description of it.
Yeah one of the big things that helped me snap out was male role models teaching me that all of that masculinity crap doesn’t matter. The BEST phrase I heard was when someone said something stupid like “real men don’t like Taylor Swift” my mentor responded “Real men don’t care”. That stuck with me.
Having a man I look up to tell me that real men do whatever they like and don’t let others dictate what they can or can’t so succinctly was just a game changer. No one had worded it like that to me. Real men don’t care.
I try to avoid directly saying the phrase “toxic masculinity” because some have incorrect preconceived notions about what that means, and it often invites a tangent into that side discussion, but I like to still reinforce the core idea there: that society expects men to be a certain way, including by enforcing norms of telling men what they’re not allowed to do or be. Gatekeeping what “real men” are and what manhood means is itself toxic, and has done lots of harm to men. And by explaining these concepts to men, and focusing the discussion on how these outdated gender norms are harmful and dangerous to men can help open up the dialogue about how gender norms are also harmful to women, too. And about how men who have been forcing themselves to fit a particular vision of manhood are also harmful to those around them (regardless of gender), as it affects their relationships with others, and their ability to regulate emotions.
oh for sure, you can’t tell them they’re being toxic, they’ll take that as a badge of pride. Personally that’s probably why that statement hit me so hard, it wasn’t anything that I could latch onto to say “Well that’s just some feminist idea” or some other BS, it was just a man that I looked up to, so casual, just brushing it off. He didn’t even care about it. It just blew my entire worldview up. and not in the “Whatever man fuck society way” but in a “eh they can judge if they want, I don’t care”.
