I don’t really know what you want ~the left~ to do about this? Are you asking the same people who tweet “men are trash” to get together and write some children’s TV programming aimed at 12 year old boys?

I see how reading those mean things could be alienating, but the larger issue is folks like Andrew Tate are indoctrinating young boys and men by preying on their loneliness and insecurities.

No one is saying these 12 year old boys are secretly reading about power and privilege and trying to centralize their authority. They start by telling these boys what they want to hear (boys are better than girls) and with time developing that into more extreme opinions. That is why it’s indoctrination.

I want to specifically address the sentence "I don't really know what you want ~the left~ to do about this?"

Because I think the left, as a whole, has no problem talking out their asses while also heavily leaning into purity politics. They're really good at it, honestly. But what they are not good is organizing on local and community levels.

Nobody is asking ~the left~ to set up some sort of anti or counter indoctrination pipeline. The point of indoctrination is that it's subtle and you don't know it's happening, and if you ever realize how deeply embedded in it you are, it is difficult to extract yourself and challenging to unlearn habits and lies that you have been presented with and internalized.

The most frustrating thing for me in watching the discourse over this specific tweet thread (and it was a thread, I'm not even gonna touch on why I think nobody has mentioned that or linked to it or provided screencaps for the rest of it because I'm trying to be succinct as possible right now) has been the sheer amount of leftists who have responded to this with some variation on "well what do you want the left to DO about it? Are you putting the onus on the victims to fix their oppressors? There is just nothing we CAN do and putting it on the oppressed is basically gaslighting/victim blaming/abusive/manipulative/etc."

Are all of you so stuck on purity politics that you don't have a Single Fucking Idea? Here, I'll get the ball rolling!

Things you can do on a personal level:

Do you have a young boy in your life? A son? A brother? A nephew? Someone you have an academic or activity related relationship with? Talk to them! Treat them like a whole person whose opinions matter, whose feelings matter. Be their friend! Be a safe sounding board for even their dumbest thoughts, and don't judge them. Learn to say, "and why do you think that?" and give them chances to explain themselves. If they have clearly taken something sexist or gross or blatantly untrue or mean about another type of person at face value, ask them why they think that and learn learn to couch your response with sentences like, "I can see how someone might come to that conclusion, and no judgement on you for that. Do you want to know what I think?"and then give them a chance to say yes to that.

Twelve year old boys have already had twelve whole years to absorb their parents' opinions, no matter what those opinions are. So when you get a group of twelve year old boys at school, all sitting around regurgitating the truths they have learned about the world we live in that they have unquestioningly absorbed either direclty or indirectly from their parents, some shitty opinions and habits are bound to pop up. Kids don't question the things they absorb form their parents, because being that well of information about the wider world is literally a parent's job, and not everyone does a great job, and some people do observably terrible jobs. If you are going to teach kids, because they are KIDS, to question the messages they are absorbing, you cannot approach it from a position where you are shaming them, because shaming people to get them to change their behaviour generally doesn't work, and usually results in them doubling down on the habit you are trying to change.

Things you can do on local and community levels:

• Get involved in your local school board/community outreach/after school activities and programs through your local public schools, libraries and community centres/coaching/nature programs/etc.
• keep an eye on local pushback that would eliminate these programs and conversations and workshops in your local schools and community outreach, and actively talk about it with other parents and mentors. Fight back!
• If you are in a position to do so, work with local leaders of programs that generally skew to boys or girls to make those spaces welcoming for all genders--kids absolutely have a hard time seeing each other as the same if they never interact and stick to same sex friend groups and gendered activities. If your local cubs program accepts ANYONE, activities and programs like that usually skew male, opening up the space to make everyone feel welcome means kids are having direct interactions with each other in spaces where they all have a common interest as a baseline. Write up expectations/codes of conduct that emphasize treating everyone with kindness and respect, and when kids inevitably break those rules because kids are dumb and make mistakes and say things they don't really mean, you treat them like actual people and have earnest conversations with them about how their actions have been hurtful, and what they can do to make up for it. Kids as a group can be nightmares, but if you sit an indivual kid down and talk to them, unless something really wrong is going on at home? No kid wants to be mean on purpose. No kid wants to be a bad guy, and kids are generally eager to apologize when they genuinely understand that they have hurt someone in a way they don't if you just force them to apologize.
• fight to keep workshops and guest speakers in schools that introduce concepts like queer people, racism, sexism, etc. in a way that isn't pointing any fingers and allows kids to lead with empathy. We had a local conservative leader a few years back who just fucking nuked our relatively new sex ed program and wanted to open a snitch line where people could tattle on teachers who dared to bring up 'sensitive topics' because riling up the voter base got him elected. It was baffling to see people in local parent groups so goddamn certain that their children were not old enough to learn that gay people exist and would NEVER learn about them until they deemed it age appropriate, some time in their teens. They very much did not appreciate my response that it was already too late, and that every kid in my kid's class became aware that gay people existed on the first week of kindergarten when the kids talked about their families and my kid was like "I have two dads!" Kids will learn things whether the school teaches them or not, and it's important to introduce these concepts in a way that normalizes them, even just for anti-bullying reasons.

I'm sure there are more things I can list if I sit here and think about it for a bit, but this is already basically an essay.

tl;dr: There is lots we can all be doing, and the point isn't that we are all the right person to be doing all of them. The point is to find out what you can do, what suits you, what connections you have to your own community, town, city, county, local government, etc., and do only what you feel comfortable doing. If that's being a cub leader? Cool. If that's hosting mixed classes for ages 9 to 12 as an intro to your hobby at your local library? Nice. If this means being a pain in the ass at the parent council of your kid's school and showing up to meetings to bring a specific kind of input and perspective that nobody else is considering? Super! If that's just taking a real interest in your little brother's day and being someone he can talk to who won't judge him or punish him for his thoughts? Also fantastic!

Do only what you think will help, don't feel pressured to do more than you can handle and if you can't do something but see a need for it, help find someone who IS the kind of person who can fill that niche. That's actual activism, babey! And purity culture bullshit has no place in it if you actually want it to work!

like oh yeah man i have these 60 OCs and a whole plot about the ethical and moral implications of meeting your alternate timeline self and if it's worth sacrificing a whole artificial timeline to get back to your own time. no you cannot see them