The perception of the problem IS the problem
I could say “rock music is dead” and a bunch of fans will crawl out of the woodwork to list all their favorite rock bands. And I’m sure they’re all good! But that doesn’t fix the problem.
If I point out that young men are wildly underrepresented in YA fiction, people will pop out of a hole in the ground to talk about all their favorite YA fiction books with male main characters.
And if I say to a politician “most of the country doesn’t believe what you’re saying”, they might point to all the facts and statistics and graphs that show they’re right.
Music listeners will still choose rap or pop, young men will still watch TV or play video games, and those politicians will still lose their elections. Even though it’s all true. Because the perception of the problem is the problem. In other words, it’s all down to marketing.
Humans are not entirely rational, logical beings. We can’t be. This world is so much bigger than we are able to comprehend, and so much more complex than we could ever begin to know. We’ll never have all the information, so we have to rely on gut feeling, instinct, intuition, extrapolation. And if I turn on the radio and hear Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, and AC/DC, I’m going to assume that there’s no good new rock. When I see the Best Metal Performance award at the Grammys going to a 70+ year old artist, I’m going to assume there’s no good new rock music. When I put on a rock playlist and it’s full of artists who had #1 hits 20-30 years ago with a smattering of newer artists with a sound I don’t care for… you get the idea. But pop and rap and other genres are out there with hot new artists with hot new sounds pushing the envelope to great effect. It doesn’t matter the reality, because the perception is the reality.
Likewise, if I’m told there’s tons of young adult books for young men but the only books displayed at the library are about 17 year old girls learning an ancient magic while navigating a love triangle, I might be skeptical. If the librarian points me to Eragon, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter… you know, 20-30 year old books… I might be skeptical. This isn’t to take anything away from young women and BIPOC readers who have fought so long for representation. This is an understanding that everyone deserves representation from good role models who look and act like they do. And right now there is a large cohort of young people who are being ignored by everyone who teaches empathy. But they’re not being ignored by those who teach hate.
And for the politician, it does not matter if anyone is actually eating cats and dogs in the suburbs. A crazy person said it, and crazy people believed it. Unfortunately you can’t ignore that. And you can’t say “they’re crazy, that’s crazy” because they said the same thing about you. When 50%+ of Americans read at less than a 5th grade level, they’re not going to be able to suss out the truth. They’re just going to go with whatever feels right. The perception of the problem is the problem.
It’s not enough just to make good rock music. It needs to be accessible, and easily accessible. It needs to be there when someone needs it, not just when someone is looking for it. The gatekeepers of rock, the tastemakers who we look to for the Next Big Thing, need to be pushing it. Same with books. If you want them to be read, it’s not enough for them to sit on the shelf, spine out. They need to be given to the reader when the reader needs it, not just when the reader is looking for it. Young men don’t want to read Harry Potter, a book from 1997, when everyone else is reading this year’s hottest new spicy release.
Because if we’re not pushing positive role models to young men… there are people out there who are pushing their morals and ethics to young men. Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson. Donald Trump. We can give up and abandon an entire generation of men to these people, or we can provide a counter to their poison. Depends on what kind of young man we want to share a country with.
But saying “there’s no problem” is ostrich behavior. Head in the sand. It might be true, but when has the truth ever mattered? This isn’t Field of Dreams, if we built it they don’t necessarily come. We have to meet them where they are, and where they are is the perception of a problem.
