It’s still a stupid way to look at it.

First of all: male feminists can indeed feel entitled to women as well as men who aren’t feminist can just feel socially lonely and not being obsessed with women who don’t date them.

I think it is dumb to have leftist and feminism as a criteria for a man being a good person or not. It is a reductive way to think about the issue and very tribalistic.

Second of all: There are many people out there, not just men, who aren’t obsessed with the culture war, who still struggle with loneliness and the problem is multi faceted. Off the top of my head these are some of the issues I spot in the developed world that causes the loneliness epidemic:

• long workdays and lower pay than in the past. People are exhausted and poorer than they were in the past. There is not much energy left after work to go be a productive, social member of society.

• phones and social media. Today it is easier to connect with people than ever before, but it is also a time waster and it opens the door to people forming friendships and romantic connections with people who are geographically very far away.

• this leads to physical loneliness. I am partially guilty of this myself. Most of my close friends live very far away from me and I don’t get to see them often as a result. I miss having friends close by that I can just walk down the street to hang out with or go on picnics with. I don’t spend time with people in my local area because I don’t have as much in common with them, nor do I have the energy to form new friendships when I’m off the clock.

• the lack of investment in local communities. People don’t want to invest time and effort into their local communities by volunteering for clubs and gatherings. Most people would love to have these clubs where people meet and hang out, but no one want to carry their load to make it work.

• this is of course a mix of the aforementioned exhaustion from long work days but it is also due to the individualistic ideology that has gradually replaced the communal ideology that used to be much more prominent back in the day. There is no willingness to sacrifice one’s own comfort for the comfort of the collective. “Screw you, I got mine” is a very in fashion mindset and we all do it to some extent.

• institutions. I like institutions as a concept and I think they are important to have, but I also have to admit that the more institutionalized our society has become, the wider the gap has become between us. Someone is mentally ill? Throw them in a clinic. Someone is getting old? Off to the retirement home? Having kids? To kindergarten and daycare they go while mommy and daddy work themselves to the bone. In the olden days the community took care of each other’s sick, elderly and the kids. It wasn’t perfect then either, the tendency to just drop burdens off on institutions has contributed to us distancing ourselves from the familial and community based system that we used to live by for thousands of years.

• governments prioritizing economic growth and technological advancement over families. This is just a fact. South Korea is the prime example of what happens when an advanced society systematically prioritizes growth over stability. The encouragements to get educated and get a career and climb the ladder and push push push for excellence utterly destroys and isolates youths from forming important lifelong friendships and romantic relationships. They do not have the time. Also, due to the cost of living crisis which is part of the growth priority, there is close to zero actual investment in giving people the time, breathing room and finances to start a family.

These are just the first few issues that pop into my mind as part of the bigger issue with the loneliness epidemic.

To boil this issue down to “men outside of leftist and feminist circles are just mad they can’t get laid” is so fucking stupid I don’t even have words for it. My point still stands.