https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/1i26hp6/hypothesis_there_no_culturecommunity_for_working/
created by MrIrishman1212 on 15/01/2025 at 20:08 UTC
174 upvotes, 25 top-level comments (showing 25)
I don’t think this is 100% truth, just my working hypothesis.
Upon watching “Death of a Salesman[1]”, watching multiple F.D Signifier[2]’s videos, and just mulling over my life in general.
1: https://youtu.be/Y7lGIUzUKOE?si=rT8C5EE26GQRw34l
2: https://youtube.com/@fdsignifire?si=42kzpSsp2hNh9X95
The sense of belonging and having purpose appears to be a very normal part of a human experience. However, a lot of men in the US are experiencing a high rate of not belonging and no purpose. In a sense, part of the issue is a form of existentialism. This tends to be conquered by becoming one with your culture. But there seems to be a lack of culture for a lot of American men. There is black culture, LGBQT+ culture, “girl” culture, but since white straight men are the “norm” there isn’t a “boy” culture.
A lot of Americans try to find culture with their heritage like a lot of immigrants are able to do. However, most white Americans have been so detached from their ancestry that it is undistinguishable from the US “norm” culture. This also results in people being from the current country of American’s heritage, rejecting all Americans who attempt to engage with that culture (most likely, rightfully so). For example, the stereotypical Irish-American knowing nothing about true Irish culture.
For a lot of minorities, they are outcasted from “norm” of society and even oppressed. To maintain their existence and wellbeing they rally together and unite against their oppressors. However, the ruling class is white men so this results in white men who have been outcasted unable to connect with other oppressed groups and have no where to go.
We know that this is a class war, that this is the US’s ruling class making a caste system. However, the cast system is ill defined so everyone not at the top believe either they can achieve the top or those who are must’ve gotten there due to their “hard work” and are rightfully on top. So there is no active culture within the lower castes cause everyone is trying to “get to the top” or defending the top.
This once again leaves white straight men with no where to go and no culture to belong to and leaving them helpless and alone.
Once again, this isn’t an absolute. We have finance bros, race traitors, trans for trump, incels, juggalos etc. who all don’t fit a lot of the molds I addressed or could be considered a form of culture that straight white men tend to take part of. Even so there isn’t an over arching “straight white men” culture that individuals can take part in the same way that a gay person who believes gay people shouldn’t have rights can still be part of the lgbqt+ if they just stopped hating the community.
Comment by Gorlitski at 15/01/2025 at 20:14 UTC
438 upvotes, 3 direct replies
There's no overarching "straight white man" culture, because straight white men are not a monolith.
There is absolutely a strong working class white culture in America, I'm not sure why you're acting like that doesn't exist at all.
Straight white men may be facing a cultural exclusion because a lot of traditionally working class masculine cultural elements are increasingly viewed as "toxic", but that doesn't mean the culture doesn't exist.
Comment by MiataCory at 16/01/2025 at 14:16 UTC
26 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Even so there isn’t an over arching “straight white men” culture...
Football.
Soccer.
Baseball.
Racing.
Trucks.
Welding.
Country Music.
Skydiving...
I'm saying this to point out that there is no "Gentlemans club" for straight white guys (oh shit, wait...) because straight white guys literally have every place. We have every community. I can walk into a gay club as a straight white guy and find acceptance. I can live in the hood and find acceptance. It's usually not exclusion keeping the white guys away. Usually it's just the own internal choice of that one white guy who's saying "I can't go there, that's not my people, I feel so alone." instead of just opening the door and making friends.
It's like saying "There's no place for humans, when we have all these special dog parks!" When in reality the space for humans is "Everywhere, even the dog park, and the dog park was actually made for humans who own dogs, not dogs".
Most gay bar owners are straight. Wealthy, straight, white land-owning males. Even if they're not, the bank they're mortgaged through is. We are everywhere. It's exhausting.
Comment by Unistrut at 15/01/2025 at 21:58 UTC*
115 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I'm a fifty year old straight white dude.
I'm an entertainment electrician. I climb ladders and hit lights with a wrench. I carry piles of massive electrical cabling. I weld and saw and have a forklift certification. The last book I read I was on hydraulic system maintenance.
I work in college theater in southern California. You could never hope to find a more ~~wretched hive of scum and villainy~~ diverse, queer, feminist, multicultural group to possibly be part of.
I fit in just fine. I don't expect any special treatment 'cause I'm a middle aged white dude and I try be polite and understanding to those around me. I do sometimes use my loud dude powers to smash into a conversation and then go "hey, the short quiet one had a good point (that you all just talked over)" and that's appreciated.
There are plenty of places you are welcome, as long as you are willing to just try and accept other people. I've fucked up people's pronouns and name pronunciations and you just go "Fuck! Sorry. <correction>" and move on. As long as you're trying and learning they're generally fine with it.
You can absolutely hang out with LGBTQIA+ folks despite not being one. The Warhammer 40K group I interact with the most is a LGBTQIA+ group. If it comes up (which is quite rarely to be honest) I just say that I'm a straight dude I just like being somewhere I don't have to deal with people spouting random bigotry out of nowhere (which is *absolutely* a goddamn problem in other 40K groups) and the response is "cool! Glad to have you!"
EDIT - for example, one of the things I enjoy is WWII history. Yes, I know, basic bitch old white guy interest. However what I'm really enjoying is reading the new information that's coming forward about just how diverse the people fighting WWII really were. We have an image of "all white dudes all the time" because that's what the movies looked like and that's the history we were given when we were trying not to offend fragile white people.
Like seriously, you can get a hugely diverse group of theater kids interested in your WWII ramblings just by learning a bit more and explaining that yes, people who looked like you *also* were involved.
Comment by greyfox92404 at 15/01/2025 at 20:52 UTC*
102 upvotes, 3 direct replies
What you are describing is the flattening that happens to the white identity and to white people when our country decided to make this country exclusively for white people. This is a process that started at the inception of our country.
And what it did, was to create the idea that "white", as we know it, is the distinguishing trait that decides if you are power-holding citizen or a less-than citizen (or not even a citizen). And that "white" would include a variety of other arbitrary cultures. But always was this idea meant to exclude less desirable people. This hierarchy is a cornerstone of "whiteness".
That means there's a real incentive for German born immigrants to lose their german-ness to adopt whiteness. White was the norm on purpose. It's continued until the point that we can't really distinguish american culture from white culture. We also can't separate the idea that "whiteness" is built on excluding others. Several supreme court decisions actually determined who and who could not be considered white, one drop rule etc.
That also means that a white person today didn't really put into place the things that promote this sense of whiteness but has to deal with the effects of that. That's why there's a feeling that by celebrating whiteness, we're also kinda celebrating the exclusion of others. That's not a way to make white people feel guilty, that's just how "whiteness" has been used to exclude other people. We can all *feel* that, right?
And while there isn't such a strict interpretation of power disparities between white people and non-white people, it does still exist in some places. We still use white as the cultural norm. Race is still one of the largest factors in a person's life experiences. And there exists people today who *want* whiteness to still be the trait that create a hierarchy.
There is I'm sure LOTS of white people who are amazing examples of humanity that would love just to share their cultural identity with other and that's awesome. It's not their fault that we live in a society that flattened their identity. Whiteness happens to white people too.
This once again leaves white straight men with no where to go and no culture to belong to and leaving them helpless and alone.
Well yes and no.
Like yeah, you lost something too and I don't want to downplay that. But each of us has the ability to reclaim what we lost. I'm a big advocate of us reclaiming our cultural roots prior to this country. Or if that's not possible or something you're interested in, go regional. "white" may have been flattened, but the Deep South sure isn't. You can't tell me that the white folks in Alabama are like the white folks in Washington. Or you can't tell me that New England (or Yankeedom) isn't completely different in culture then either of those.
In all the ways that matter, the Deep South is so very culturally different than these other separate cultures of white people. And I'm fully on board with the idea that someone wants to celebrate that as a part of their identity.
We only get stuck when we cling onto this idea that we want all the benefits of normalizing white as the default (white habitus) and celebrating whiteness while also not quite understanding the inherent exclusionary attachment to whiteness.
Comment by Jealous-Factor7345 at 16/01/2025 at 00:41 UTC
29 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I've thought about this a fair bit, and I'll give you my perspective on the topic, through a bit of a story.
I met my now-wife in college back around 2009/2010. She's black, I'm white and up to that point had gone to an almost entirely white tiny private elementary and high school around a ton of people who would today be considered "crunchy." It was a pretty large university so it was a pretty huge change for me, and I always felt way out of my depth.
I actually can't remember if it was the same year I met her or if it was the next year, but there were some pretty racist incidents at the college. A noose was found hung in the library, and I think a few other things happened. There were a lot of protests and a lot of dialogue around campus. I did my best to engage with it, but I'd never really thought much about race and I spent an absolutely stupid amount of time and mental energy trying to figure out how to interact with the concepts. If you've ever had a conversation with a well-meaning white person who is discovering racism for the first time, you can imagine how it went (though I like to think I did most of the work internally and didn't harass my girlfriend too much about it).
Something that came up frequently which I just had trouble figuring out how to interact with, was the idea that many of the black folks on campus didn't feel welcome there. I was like, dude, who the fuck feels welcome on campus? I've never felt welcome here. And yet y'all have affinity groups built specifically for you. I have nothing like that. I'm completely invisible to everyone, and not a single part of the university would even notice if I disappeared tomorrow.
Similar topics come up when it comes to "culture." There is frequently the sense that my wife has a culture she wants to make sure she honors and remembers. On campus, there were all sorts of other things like that. Cultural heritage events of all kinds. That's not to say they were all cultural heritage events from people of color, but they mostly were, and the ones from white cultures weren't *my* cultures anyway.
Eventually I realized that being a particular kind of white male in the US, and at least in my circles, just meant that I interacted with other people and institutions and cultures in a different way. Institutions like the university aren't hostile to me, they're just indifferent. But I'm also not walking into the university library where there is an implicit death threat against me in the form of a noose either. I don't really have a cultural heritage to protect or preserve, but I also don't have anything in particular anyone else is trying to erase.
Often times when I've heard other people talk about certain things that they really care about, there is a tendency to take it to mean implicitly that those things should be important to me too. Like, when folks would talk about how important their cultural heritage is, there was a way in which I would take that to mean I should care about my own culture and want to preserve it.... But... I don't actually have something like that, and ultimately I don't actually really care. It took me a long time to make peace with that, but any other response would be me pretending to care about it simply because other people care about their own ethnic heritage.
I often wonder how much of this weird asymmetry plays out for other people. I don't want to project too much, but I always get these vibes from some white men online that they wish they had something like this but don't. From the outside looking in, it always *looks* like a great way to feel like part of default community which is something I will never have. But by the same token, nothing like this *can* really exist for me and the only reason why it ever bothered me was because other people said it mattered to them. Not because I actually want white men affinity group.
I forget where exactly I was going with all of this, and I've already gone on way too long.
Comment by FrankieLeonie at 15/01/2025 at 20:21 UTC
142 upvotes, 8 direct replies
Disagree. There is plenty of community and space for us straight white men as long as we are not looking for one that puts us above everyone else. I am a progressive male in my 40s who is an outcast from the traditional male dominated groups because I don't agree with societal norms around male dominance. I've always found a home in woman and queer spaces because I want to support their goals and help raise them up. I recognize what privileges I have and use them to help others. In turn they listen to my hardships and feelings and welcome me in their space.
Comment by Ciceros_Assassin at 15/01/2025 at 23:22 UTC
20 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I don't disagree that there's no monolithic straight white man culture, but the question becomes "do we need one?" I've no more in common with the average guy I see at the bar or the gym than I have with a black 50-year-old gal I see at work. What "culture" are we talking about? Fortnite?
Comment by mylesaway2017 at 16/01/2025 at 03:45 UTC
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
If straight white males don’t have a culture then how do you explain Phish?
Comment by yeah_youbet at 16/01/2025 at 10:37 UTC
13 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I really don't mean to be rude of presumptuous, and a lot of what I'm about to say is targeted at a broad group of people, and not necessarily you in particular, but to be brutally honest, a lot of people who echo the "there's no culture or community in America anymore" aren't watering their own gardens, and going outside to participate.
Being stuck in your bedroom doom scrolling social media all day and then wondering why there's no sense of purpose or identity. Most people find community within hobbies these days rather than sociopolitical/cultural identity, and there's plenty out there. You don't need to create a local group of "straight white men" in your neighborhood because it's just going to turn into a hate group, so just find something positive in your life, put the phone down, and put yourself out there.
Comment by dorito_llama at 16/01/2025 at 04:05 UTC
29 upvotes, 0 direct replies
As a white, conservative looking trans male who is assumed to be cis, this is absolutely false. I have gotten nothing but support when seen as a conservative or politically neutral white cis male. I have been in quite a few male dominated/exclusive communities, including several sports teams, martial arts, boys scouts, and just freind/peer groups. To say these things arent out there is just flat out wrong, and its choosing to wallow in misery. I've seen an uptick of people claiming straight white guys are particularly alienated right now, it's not true. Other groups creating support for their community isnt at the detriment of cis straight men. These guys would not last a day as a queer person, I have gotten so much more shit for being trans than I ever have for looking conservative or being a white guy.
Comment by ice_prince at 15/01/2025 at 20:54 UTC
29 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Isn’t straight white men culture the American world we live in?
Comment by VimesTime at 16/01/2025 at 21:08 UTC
13 upvotes, 2 direct replies
You should give "Stiffed" by Susan Faludi a read. It's a book she wrote in the 90s to try and figure out why many men are antifeminist, and it ended up being a deeply empathetic and thoughtful exploration of men's economic and emotional malaise.
Where we once lived in a society in which men in particular participated by being useful in public life, we now are surrounded by a culture that encourages people to play almost no functional public roles, only decorative or consumer ones. The old model of masculinity showed men how to be part of a larger social system; it gave them a context and it promised them that their social contributions were the price of admission to the realm of adult manhood. That kind of manhood required a society in order to prove itself. All of the traditional domains in which men pursued authority and power— politics, religion, the military, the community, and the household— were societal.
She leans less on the idea of "culture", and especially what I think in your post is more like identity, and more into the concept of feeling useful, connected, and above all, a Man instead of a Boy. I think she would refer to a lot of the things that you point to as more superficial performance, as opposed to a deeper sense of meaning.
The book sets out to show that purpose comes from feeling socially useful. And that usually comes from having a frontier to conquer, an enemy to fight, and a brotherhood to fight with. And that above all, that that was in service of building a society that they would then have a place of belonging in. The problem is that as labour becomes more and more alienated, there isn't really much else to replace it with, and the struggle against patriarchy/capitalism is...more complicated for men, which helps explain the difficulty in truly feeling at home in spaces built around women/queer experiences.
Women had discovered a good fight, and a flight path to adult womanhood. Traveling along the trajectory of feminism, each “small step” for a woman would add up finally to a giant leap for womankind, not to mention humankind. The male paradigm of confrontation, in which an enemy could be identified, contested, and defeated, was endlessly transferable. It proved useful as well to activists in the civil- rights movement and the antiwar movement, the gay- rights movement and the environmental movement. It was, in fact, the fundamental organizing principle of virtually every concerted countercultural campaign of the last half century. Yet it could launch no “men’s movement.” Herein lies the bedeviling paradox, and the source of male inaction: the model women have used to revolt is the exact one men not only can’t use but are trapped in. The solution for women has proved the problem for men. The male paradigm is peculiarly unsuited to mounting a challenge to men’s predicament. Men have no clearly defined enemy who is oppressing them. How can men be oppressed when the culture has already identified them as the oppressors, and when they see themselves that way?
It's a very good, very long book that has a very nuanced and complicated message, so just a few quotes don't really do it justice.
Comment by cruisinforasnoozinn at 15/01/2025 at 21:46 UTC*
28 upvotes, 2 direct replies
A lot of spaces and communities are straight/white or male dominated, to the point where women and queer people have often been forced to build their own safe spaces around them. I think its not a case of "straight white men have no community" but rather "there is no community outspokenly centered around specifically being a straight white male". This *does not* mean there are no communities that are mostly made up of straight white men - walk into a working class neighbourhood, visit a bar. Visit a sports club. Walk by a construction site. Go to a bookies. A metal bar. Tattoo studio. Skate park. Even head across town and go to a golf club.
Straight white men do not need communities centered around those specific qualities because the world is designed to support them. They have most spaces available to them without an issue based on their identity - except for spaces specifically designed for minorities, who do need a community centered around the qualities that set them apart from the majority. I would argue that women don't neccesarily have a culture or community any more than men do, I'm not sure what leads you to believe that.
Edit: Something to remember here is that anyone outcasted from *all* social groups available to them, despite not falling into a disenfranchised group (including autism) may be causing this phenomenon themselves purely through some form of intolerable behaviour. There's a community for that. It's called group therapy.
Comment by ConsultJimMoriarty at 15/01/2025 at 22:31 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
A great community outreach is Men’s Sheds.[1].
This is an Australian initiative, but they are across twelve countries!
Men - especially straight men - need to organise these things themselves, which I’ve found is by far and away the biggest hurdle.
Comment by TheRealSatanicPanic at 16/01/2025 at 18:21 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Sure there is. Punk rock, board games, LARPing, heavy metal, etc. They just don't like those things.
Comment by armchairarmadillo at 15/01/2025 at 21:42 UTC
10 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I think I understand what you're saying. If I go on meetup, there is a gay tech meetup, and a women who code meetup. If I'm gay in tech or a woman who codes then those groups are for me. There is no corresponding straight white man tech meetup.
But the run club I go to is definitely a straight white person run club, and it is mostly straight white men. There are gay people and people of color who go there, but maybe one or two of 10-20 on any given week. The tech meetup I go to is a predominantly straight ,white, and male tech meetup. My experience has not been that straight white men spaces are rare.
But you might be right that spaces are more fragmented and harder to access. My run club is 20 people and my tech meetup is maybe 30 people and it meets once a week or once a month. Both of them are about half an hour to an hour away by transit. If you compare that to the church my parents went to, which was huge and right in their neighborhood, it was much easier for people to access that space.
So from that perspective, what you say makes sense to me. When my parents were growing up, college was practically free. Community spaces were right in the neighborhood. There were a lot fewer barriers to access than there are today. Those barriers to access affect everyone, but they are newer for straight white men.
Another factor is the delayed age of marriage. I think most straight white men feel a decent sense of community in school. My parents married literally five months out of college so they went straight from school community to married. That doesn't happen anymore for hardly anyone and that definitely makes things harder.
Comment by larkharrow at 15/01/2025 at 23:44 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Bars, rec sports leagues, hunting clubs, skate parks, tattoo parlors, cookouts, super bowl parties, liquor stores, shooting ranges, fishing boats, golf courses, whiskey tastings, the list can go on and on for white straight male culture.
Now, it's a different question whether any particular white straight man identifies with any of those things. But every time I walk into a restaurant that's showing The Game on the TV, I'm seeing the dominance of white male culture. It doesn't feel like it because it's so normalized as being the dominant culture that it's invisible.
Comment by Erewhynn at 15/01/2025 at 23:32 UTC
17 upvotes, 0 direct replies
That's an awful lot of words to say "poor straight white men lost class consciousness because of the American Dream meritocratic myth"
Comment by Empero6 at 15/01/2025 at 21:34 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Go join a hunting class. They’re practically begging people that aren’t straight white men to join.
Comment by [deleted] at 15/01/2025 at 21:59 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
the ruling class is white men
I'm not sure you know what the word 'class' means
Comment by Kurac02 at 20/01/2025 at 16:52 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I think this post is a little to sweeping in it's assumptions.
For a lot of minorities, they are outcasted from “norm” of society and even oppressed. To maintain their existence and wellbeing they rally together and unite against their oppressors.
This is a good example of what I mean by sweeping assumptions - sure, that is why movements which advocated for these groups were started. I don't think that today the average gay person is joining a queer reading group (for example) as an act of self preservation, I think they are just enjoying the company of people they share things in common with. Prejudice is part of it but I'm not sure if it's as explicitly ideological as you imply.
We know that this is a class war, that this is the US’s ruling class making a caste system.
I don't know that. I'm unsure what the caste system they are creating even is here, or what actions they are taking to make it. It's not an assumption to be fair, but I just fail to see the connecting logic here from white men struggling to find community to a top down campaign for creating a caste system.
However, the cast system is ill defined so everyone not at the top believe either they can achieve the top or those who are must’ve gotten there due to their “hard work” and are rightfully on top.
Do people believe this generally? It's like a breadtube talking point about how meritocracy is a lie and it's always meant to be mind blowing, but I don't think this is a commonly held belief. Like sure there are some rags to riches stories people like however the default without this info isn't "they worked hard and earned everything they have". Nepo baby jokes have existed siince long before that term existed.
Comment by LordNiebs at 15/01/2025 at 20:21 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This is an interesting idea, but I think you're overemphasizing the role of identity in finding community. Certainly, identity is relevant, and as you said there are many communities based on identity, and to that extent straight white men are excluded from having a community for straight white men (or else, are members of far right groups like the KKK).
However, there isn't just one social hierarchy (despite the prominence that money has in American culture), but there are many social hierarchies based on different attributes. It's possible to be a member of a sports community, of a volunteer community, of hobby communities, all of which have very little to do with identity.
Of course, economics do play a role in your ability to play sports, have time for volunteering, or have money for hobbies.
I think this is a great criticism of American culture which might resonate with straight white men, and might help convince people to reject wealth and status as such important parts of their lives, but we shouldn't limit our imaginations of what community can be to that of economic success. There are many avenues for finding community.
Comment by BoskoMaldoror at 24/01/2025 at 07:15 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The only real community I've ever been able find of guys my age with similar interests is the /lit/ literature board on 4chan, which obviously isn't a progressive place but I'm just being honest. Everywhere else is either openly hostile or just not for me for whatever reason. Irl I have small groups of friends but there's no 'community'.
Comment by skynyc420 at 15/01/2025 at 20:38 UTC
0 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I agree to a point. There is a human culture based in nature and our relationship to it that everyone is free to tap into but society doesn’t allow anyone to do that for the most part.
Find yourself and who you are within the life of planet Earth and that will be your culture. We’re all made of the same stuff when you think about it🤷♂️
Comment by PersonOfInterest85 at 20/01/2025 at 22:48 UTC
-1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Abled cishet white males are waking up to the fact that privilege is an unsatisfying substitute for community.