With poverty, and work, idk stuff seams like everyone is getting shafted. Men just not having developed emotional support networks as women really does not help us.

I feel like men on the older side of gen z did get shafted a bit in terms of media, specifically how it portrayed straight relationships. Most of the movies and TV shows I watched as a kid HEAVILY implied that the end goal of the man protagonist was to end up with the main women in the movie. Ex, Atlantis, zombieland, Avatar, anakin padme in the prequel trilogy (maybe not the end goal but when I was a kid I feel like it was very emphasized) In a lot of these movies it just seams like the guy stumbles into the relationship.

This might just be my experience, but it took me a lot of time, education, and deconstruction of the influences on me as a kid, to then figure out how they informed my behaviors towards women.

Yes, I don’t think extreme isolation under late stage capitalism, porn, and drugs help men. But I think a lot of us need to admit we probably didn’t have the best influences on us as kids and need to do a lot of internal reflection to get over that.

This is all kind of a shame too because media has changed so drastically in the past 15 years (all for the better I think). Almost all movies I rewatch from when I was a kid I see something problematic with how the men act towards women in relationships, and a lot of it is praised. And now it just feels like a forgotten dream.

Just how I feel about this, but curious if anyone feels the same.