Why Men Are Hard to Help(nationalaffairs.com)
nationalaffairs.com
Why Men Are Hard to Help
https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/why-men-are-hard-to-help
425 comments
People here who pretend this is not case are deluding themselves and others.
100%. Many data points in my own life and lifes of other people I know. What woman say they will do and what the actually do are two completely different things. They can very easily rationalize about anything with "feelings".
It's not exactly about crying per se, but psychological weakness. If you shed a tear on a funeral of your parent etc it's ok.
But the moment guy seems like a wimp, they loose all attractiveness. They will get to hear that things got boring, or relationship is not fulfilling enough or something else like that at the first convenient opportunity (a more promising candidate has shown up).
100%. Many data points in my own life and lifes of other people I know. What woman say they will do and what the actually do are two completely different things. They can very easily rationalize about anything with "feelings".
It's not exactly about crying per se, but psychological weakness. If you shed a tear on a funeral of your parent etc it's ok.
But the moment guy seems like a wimp, they loose all attractiveness. They will get to hear that things got boring, or relationship is not fulfilling enough or something else like that at the first convenient opportunity (a more promising candidate has shown up).
I think there may be a misunderstanding. From my experience, women do feel closer to a man who is able to share his feelings, and, yes, cry. But expressing feelings is a very different thing from complaining and/or giving up responsibility. I’d argue the problem is that men are often weaker in the area of handling emotions in general, hence they tend to “flip” from “I’m feeling nothing at all” to “I’m useless and the world is going to hell”. That’s what freaks women out, because they feel they can no longer predict your actions. It scares them.
(Expose the generalizations. Am on my phone here with no proper keyboard.)
(Expose the generalizations. Am on my phone here with no proper keyboard.)
“I’m feeling nothing at all” to “I’m useless and the world is going to hell”
I don't see anything wrong with people feeling like any of those 2 from time to time. If it is continuous and long term, then it's a matter of concern.
I don't see anything wrong with people feeling like any of those 2 from time to time. If it is continuous and long term, then it's a matter of concern.
Its the transition from one extreme to the other with no gradient that makes it emotionally weird.
It's unreasonable for people to ask men to be better about emotions and then expect them to immediately go from being socialized to suppress them to being emotionally mature without some growing pains. Growth takes time and support, and they're less likely to try again if the support vanishes when they try to grow.
Men are being held up to unreasonable emotional standards in general. No weakness, no crying, no feeling like shit ever.
These standards lend more and more credence to the thing that Chris Rock said, "Only women and children are loved unconditionally. Men need to provide something to be loved."
Of course, these standards are being enforced by men too, not just women. But it does not surprise me that so many men I know have checked out of one or more aspects of life.
These standards lend more and more credence to the thing that Chris Rock said, "Only women and children are loved unconditionally. Men need to provide something to be loved."
Of course, these standards are being enforced by men too, not just women. But it does not surprise me that so many men I know have checked out of one or more aspects of life.
What Chris Rock said there is the textbook excuse of a person with an avoidant attachment style: Pushing the other person away and not allowing them to get closer by telling yourself that they can only need you, but never ever love you. If you hear that voice inside of you, it‘s „the devil talking“.
I say this as someone who has gone through all of this, and a lot more. Instead of seeing these feelings as proof that the world is out to punish you, it‘s much more useful to see that pain as a signal. A signal that tells you that you‘re likely carrying some deep bullshit around from your past and early childhood. And that dating and relationships are here for you not as consumables to fill a need, or as a measure for your own self-worth, but as a challenge, a „task“ in your life that gives you the chance to grow beyond your childhood patterns, and to take an active role in redefining not only your relationships to „woman“, but to mankind as a whole.
If you‘re on HN, you‘re very likely an intelligent, resourceful, curious person. You have most likely solved problems in your life that have been much, much tougher. It would be a pity if you ran away from this one.
I say this as someone who has gone through all of this, and a lot more. Instead of seeing these feelings as proof that the world is out to punish you, it‘s much more useful to see that pain as a signal. A signal that tells you that you‘re likely carrying some deep bullshit around from your past and early childhood. And that dating and relationships are here for you not as consumables to fill a need, or as a measure for your own self-worth, but as a challenge, a „task“ in your life that gives you the chance to grow beyond your childhood patterns, and to take an active role in redefining not only your relationships to „woman“, but to mankind as a whole.
If you‘re on HN, you‘re very likely an intelligent, resourceful, curious person. You have most likely solved problems in your life that have been much, much tougher. It would be a pity if you ran away from this one.
You should read stories of what happened to a lot of men when they opened up to their wives or other long term partners.
It just seems rare that women can maintain attraction after seeing a man be weak and vulnerable.
It just seems rare that women can maintain attraction after seeing a man be weak and vulnerable.
If anybody has had such a story, feel free to message me and we can talk about it. I won’t claim that this is always the case, but the interpretation that it is opening up and showing vulnerability that is causing a loss of attraction is almost always a misinterpretation. And a very dangerous one at that, because it prevents learning and solidifies the very problem that caused the relationship breakdown in the first place.
Of course! Growth takes time. And it‘s normal that beginners start out with very little refinement. That‘s true of any endeavor in life.
But what is also unreasonable is to expect that someone else out there („people“? „society“? „women“?) should be responsible for your growth. That might have been true in tribal societies („It takes a village to raise a child“). But live in an individualistic society. And just as people on the street won‘t go out of their way to help you learn, say, regular expressions, they won‘t do that to help you get laid, or find love, or make your marriage work.
With Regex, if you had books or articles that made it sound like an intractible problem, you‘d ditch those sources and find better ones. With women and relationships, though, guys just seem to happily accept the conclusion that things are rigged against them because they are men. Like some mirror-feminist ideology where it becomes a badge of honor to demonstrate that a man needs a woman as much „as a fish needs a bicycle“. What a silly game!
I once read about a psychologist who said that, in America, people mentally map the concept of „sex“ to the idea of „war“. „Battle of the sexes“ - that kind of thing. But one makes a mistake when one takes that map to be the territory. This „battle of the sexes“ thing is just one way of ascribing meaning to observations (and of filtering them). It‘s just a story. An ideology. You only have to play by its rules if you subscribe to it.
But what is also unreasonable is to expect that someone else out there („people“? „society“? „women“?) should be responsible for your growth. That might have been true in tribal societies („It takes a village to raise a child“). But live in an individualistic society. And just as people on the street won‘t go out of their way to help you learn, say, regular expressions, they won‘t do that to help you get laid, or find love, or make your marriage work.
With Regex, if you had books or articles that made it sound like an intractible problem, you‘d ditch those sources and find better ones. With women and relationships, though, guys just seem to happily accept the conclusion that things are rigged against them because they are men. Like some mirror-feminist ideology where it becomes a badge of honor to demonstrate that a man needs a woman as much „as a fish needs a bicycle“. What a silly game!
I once read about a psychologist who said that, in America, people mentally map the concept of „sex“ to the idea of „war“. „Battle of the sexes“ - that kind of thing. But one makes a mistake when one takes that map to be the territory. This „battle of the sexes“ thing is just one way of ascribing meaning to observations (and of filtering them). It‘s just a story. An ideology. You only have to play by its rules if you subscribe to it.
s/expose/excuse
> women might say it's okay to tell them about a problem and/or cry, but as soon as you do, they are immediately turned off by it and no longer see you as a strong man who can provide for her
From an evolutionary lens they are presenting you with a sneaky test and when you cry you fail the test :)
From an evolutionary lens they are presenting you with a sneaky test and when you cry you fail the test :)
Have you ever told them this in response to being told it’s ok to cry? Have you interrogated your assumption or are you operating on inferences without sufficient evidence?
“Women” aren’t some sort of psychosexual Kobayashi Maru where every choice is just a different wait to fail. They might surprise you if you’re willing to engage with them on the topic of how society is engineered to oppress those with feelings and compassion, like women, in places like the workplace, etc…
“Women” aren’t some sort of psychosexual Kobayashi Maru where every choice is just a different wait to fail. They might surprise you if you’re willing to engage with them on the topic of how society is engineered to oppress those with feelings and compassion, like women, in places like the workplace, etc…
Psychology is closer to Pseudoscience than clinical psychology and medical science.
Women don’t belong to some secret organisation that go around testing men for their viable “genetic strength”.
Women don’t belong to some secret organisation that go around testing men for their viable “genetic strength”.
Sample size 1, but I also had a relationship go downhill and eventually end after constant requests for me to be more vulnerable. I am convinced that people like the superficial appearance of vulnerability when it doesn’t matter and it’s low stakes. But not when it matters and gets messy
Men cry when the situation calls for it. I don’t understand why there is a need to change the best force for civilization the world has ever seen. Not giving into trivial sadness and breaking down crying and giving into self pity is a genetically imbued superpower. Women just want to bring us down to their level.
Can’t tell if sarcasm or wrong, or worse… I don’t even know where to begin engaging with this opinion… I’m trying to do this sort of thing less often because it’s better to try converse so you set up the opportunity for the other party to discover the truth themselves… but you are wrong and I would encourage you to go and try and learn enough to back up your assertion from an individual psychological standpoint as opposed to a group psychology or sociological poi;t, what is advantageous for the group can be deleterious for the Individual and possibly even individuals around them.
> Women just want to bring us down to their level.
Sounds like someone’s giving in to self pity.
Sounds like someone’s giving in to self pity.
It’s pity for women and that’s called empathy.
cool, then don't date them?
Why? How about they turn down their histrionic behavior, isn’t that a better solution?
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Yep, I lost a relationship because I thought it would be alright to open up to her and be vulnerable. I won't make that mistake again.
>In particular, the dramatic rebalancing of power relations between men and women over the last few decades has rendered old modes of masculinity — especially men's role as family breadwinner — obsolete.
They aren't obsolete. The mere notion of this is laughable to anyone spending a bit of time looking around.
What happened was the standards cranking up to 11 and either the rewards aren't visible, or they simply aren't there. In addition, there's far more entertainment available and children are no longer seen as an automatic achievement. Some might even say, having kids is actively discouraged in the upper circles.
>Feminist writer Susan Faludi has pointed out that many men are "clinging to a phantom status." She's right, of course.
Based on what? I don't necessarily see men clinging onto a "phantom status" as much as their (potential) lover, family, friends and business network not giving a hoot unless their status is deemed great. Men are still primarily judged on status, not the other way around.
>He is not the only one. A common thread running through many of the challenges facing men is the culture shock of women's economic independence.
The article really misses nuance on this whole "economic independence" thing. Yes, women got "more economically independent". No, they can't just start families on their own and get by. In many countries, they can't even get a decent home (dual income households say hello). Check the demands of typical college-educated women, and then compare with the available pool of men. Now compare to the current education system, the way society works and what is happening with starting wages. There simply aren't enough men for all those women, and it's evident most women aren't willing to drop their standards yet. Meanwhile, men aren't willing to "step up", as popular lingo would like to claim.
The author correctly identifies so many things, only to come to the most safe conclusion. The same conclusion which has yet to be proven correct.
They aren't obsolete. The mere notion of this is laughable to anyone spending a bit of time looking around.
What happened was the standards cranking up to 11 and either the rewards aren't visible, or they simply aren't there. In addition, there's far more entertainment available and children are no longer seen as an automatic achievement. Some might even say, having kids is actively discouraged in the upper circles.
>Feminist writer Susan Faludi has pointed out that many men are "clinging to a phantom status." She's right, of course.
Based on what? I don't necessarily see men clinging onto a "phantom status" as much as their (potential) lover, family, friends and business network not giving a hoot unless their status is deemed great. Men are still primarily judged on status, not the other way around.
>He is not the only one. A common thread running through many of the challenges facing men is the culture shock of women's economic independence.
The article really misses nuance on this whole "economic independence" thing. Yes, women got "more economically independent". No, they can't just start families on their own and get by. In many countries, they can't even get a decent home (dual income households say hello). Check the demands of typical college-educated women, and then compare with the available pool of men. Now compare to the current education system, the way society works and what is happening with starting wages. There simply aren't enough men for all those women, and it's evident most women aren't willing to drop their standards yet. Meanwhile, men aren't willing to "step up", as popular lingo would like to claim.
The author correctly identifies so many things, only to come to the most safe conclusion. The same conclusion which has yet to be proven correct.
>The article really misses nuance on this whole "economic independence" thing. Yes, women got "more economically independent". No, they can't just start families on their own and get by.
To be pithy, we went from men having economic independence and women not to a situation where neither (save the highest earners) has economic independence. Couples are now interdependent and single people often need roommates. If you're economically independent, by definition you don't have to concern yourself with your partner's income.
To be pithy, we went from men having economic independence and women not to a situation where neither (save the highest earners) has economic independence. Couples are now interdependent and single people often need roommates. If you're economically independent, by definition you don't have to concern yourself with your partner's income.
Agreed. In many ways the conclusion about outdated status is ass-backwards. The men being left behind are opting out--skipping a career and a (planned) family. Successful men are the ones still clinging to the "outdated" view that they are the breadwinner.
If I didn't feel like I had to provide for a family, I'd get drunk at night and play video games all-day. Certainly better than working 60 hours a week.
If I didn't feel like I had to provide for a family, I'd get drunk at night and play video games all-day. Certainly better than working 60 hours a week.
Yeah a lot of this was women assuming what happens with guys. A richer guy gets a hotter wife, so a richer woman should get a better guy right? Nope.
That's not quite accurate. A rich man gets a hotter wife by most men's standards because most men's standards of "a hot woman" are very similar. The same is true for rich women, but women's standards for what "a hot man" is vary far more. Both are attaining what they think is hot though.
A few years ago OK Cupid released data that flies in the face of your narrative, and it showed based on their research that men have a far wider range of acceptable looks than women do, at least of the user of their app
That’s not the full context on the data OK Cupid released.
Men tended to rate women in a normal distribution, but they also mostly messaged women in the uppermost range of attractiveness.
Women tended to rate men more harshly, rating most men below average attractiveness, but they also tended to message those "below average" men regardless of their assessment.
Men tended to rate women in a normal distribution, but they also mostly messaged women in the uppermost range of attractiveness.
Women tended to rate men more harshly, rating most men below average attractiveness, but they also tended to message those "below average" men regardless of their assessment.
I struggle to think that data from a dating app represents the majority of women accurately.
Most women don't use dating apps to find long term partners, at least among my peers and online circles. The common use case is casual hookups, which would certainly place a higher emphasis on physical attributes.
Conversely, I have met/seen many men looking for long term partners on those same sites, which should place a higher emphasis on compatibility.
Most women don't use dating apps to find long term partners, at least among my peers and online circles. The common use case is casual hookups, which would certainly place a higher emphasis on physical attributes.
Conversely, I have met/seen many men looking for long term partners on those same sites, which should place a higher emphasis on compatibility.
Men on a dating site will message pretty much everyone. That doesn't mean those are the people they find hottest. In fact, men are often reluctant to approach really hot women because they think they'll be rejected.
>>That doesn't mean those are the people they find hottest. In fact, men are often reluctant to approach really hot women because they think they'll be rejected.
Pretty sure that is a result of experience not just some miss placed belief
>Men on a dating site will message pretty much everyone
While true, the data was not just placed on messaging. Other data seems to back this result as well.
Pretty sure that is a result of experience not just some miss placed belief
>Men on a dating site will message pretty much everyone
While true, the data was not just placed on messaging. Other data seems to back this result as well.
In order to use your money to help you on the dating market, you have to approach. Nobody is going up to people in bars and asking "will you buy me a drink?". However, social norms are nowhere near making this practical for most women.
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> There simply aren't enough men for all those women
A man I know is attempting to add a new wife to his household every 5 years...
A man I know is attempting to add a new wife to his household every 5 years...
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I was hopeful for this article, as it touched on some aspects that are important. Most CEOs being men doesn't help the welder. In the one program, there were no male counselors.
But it fell back into the familiar trope: if men aren't succeeding, it's entirely their fault. They don't have the motivation, etc. When people use this line of thinking for Black communities we rightfully call them racist, but how can you look at these numbers for men and boys, especially in the lower class and not see something structural?
The cynical side of me thinks it's because the people who could study it don't care. There's a notion that a group that has had power for centuries is now losing it, and so it's just providing balance. But making individuals of today worse off won't provide justice to those long passed.
I will give credit to this article for not making the case that we should do something because if we don't then it will harm women in finding mates, like you see in so many other similar articles. Men's well-being should be worthwhile on its own.
But it fell back into the familiar trope: if men aren't succeeding, it's entirely their fault. They don't have the motivation, etc. When people use this line of thinking for Black communities we rightfully call them racist, but how can you look at these numbers for men and boys, especially in the lower class and not see something structural?
The cynical side of me thinks it's because the people who could study it don't care. There's a notion that a group that has had power for centuries is now losing it, and so it's just providing balance. But making individuals of today worse off won't provide justice to those long passed.
I will give credit to this article for not making the case that we should do something because if we don't then it will harm women in finding mates, like you see in so many other similar articles. Men's well-being should be worthwhile on its own.
>...it's entirely their fault. They don't have the motivation...
I think this is a leap, or maybe we have different ideas about motivation. Seems to me motivation and direction exist at the interface of an individual and their environment. Sometimes forming over the course of a lifetime, and sometimes changing with the wind, but always connected to the environment.
I think this is a leap, or maybe we have different ideas about motivation. Seems to me motivation and direction exist at the interface of an individual and their environment. Sometimes forming over the course of a lifetime, and sometimes changing with the wind, but always connected to the environment.
This is part of a greater trend in the United States for higher education. Women now enroll in college and I believe matriculate at a rate of two to one when compared against men.
Most articles, like this one tend to lay the blame at the feet of boys and men in a way that would be obscene if it were applied to women or minorities. EG they are just lazier and unmotivated. This is a superficial answer that fails to get at the deeper question: why are they less motivated. Of course I don't have an answer for why, but I I think it is a very pressing question. It is tied to higher rates of depression, suicide, low productivity, and antisocial Behavior
Most articles, like this one tend to lay the blame at the feet of boys and men in a way that would be obscene if it were applied to women or minorities. EG they are just lazier and unmotivated. This is a superficial answer that fails to get at the deeper question: why are they less motivated. Of course I don't have an answer for why, but I I think it is a very pressing question. It is tied to higher rates of depression, suicide, low productivity, and antisocial Behavior
Some ideas:
• Lack of father figures affect's men's educational success more than women
• Feelings of helplessness due to impossibly high standards beyond just education
• Lack of males employed by the education system mean fewer role models
• Less attention given to them by adults as boys than as girls
• Easily satisfied by pornography
• Lack of success with women causes men to give up on dating and self-care
• Need for more physical activity during childhood and adolescence which school prohibits
• Lack of freedom in the education system puts off even intelligent boys
• Declining social spaces means that men and women participate in society less
I have no proof of any of these, just anecdata
• Lack of father figures affect's men's educational success more than women
• Feelings of helplessness due to impossibly high standards beyond just education
• Lack of males employed by the education system mean fewer role models
• Less attention given to them by adults as boys than as girls
• Easily satisfied by pornography
• Lack of success with women causes men to give up on dating and self-care
• Need for more physical activity during childhood and adolescence which school prohibits
• Lack of freedom in the education system puts off even intelligent boys
• Declining social spaces means that men and women participate in society less
I have no proof of any of these, just anecdata
Plus, the education system is more suited for girls. It has been shown that boys learn best by doing and there is a real lack of practical work in schools.
I think, laying blame to a demographic and then considering the cased closed is a dumb kind of logic anyway.
Even if they were just lazy and unmotivated, if an entire demographic suddenly becomes lazy and unmotivated, that's a problem for society to solve and not some individual character flaw.
Even if they were just lazy and unmotivated, if an entire demographic suddenly becomes lazy and unmotivated, that's a problem for society to solve and not some individual character flaw.
> Most articles, like this one tend to lay the blame at the feet of boys and men in a way that would be obscene if it were applied to women or minorities. EG they are just lazier and unmotivated.
But surely, we can acknowledge that there are at least some intrinsic behavioral differences between men and women. For example men are intrinsically more violent than women. 90%+ of violent crime is committed by men. This holds true across every human society ever studied. Another example, it's probably also a human universal that men have a higher predisposition to substance abuse than women.
So the fact that men commit far more murders at women, we can probably lay the blame at the feet of men. It's not that society has let them down. It's that testosterone increases the propensity to violence. So, we can't categorically rule out that men are intrinsically less suited to productive participation in a post-industrial economy. (For example getting in bar fights and going to jail during prime earning years.)
But surely, we can acknowledge that there are at least some intrinsic behavioral differences between men and women. For example men are intrinsically more violent than women. 90%+ of violent crime is committed by men. This holds true across every human society ever studied. Another example, it's probably also a human universal that men have a higher predisposition to substance abuse than women.
So the fact that men commit far more murders at women, we can probably lay the blame at the feet of men. It's not that society has let them down. It's that testosterone increases the propensity to violence. So, we can't categorically rule out that men are intrinsically less suited to productive participation in a post-industrial economy. (For example getting in bar fights and going to jail during prime earning years.)
Suggesting that high testosterone being correlated with higher rates of violence implies that men are " intrinsically less suited to productive participation in a post-industrial economy" is an enormous logical leap.
Higher testosterone I would guess (this is not my area of expertise so I emphasize "guess" here) is probably also correlated with higher competitiveness, leadership, and work drive, all perfectly suited for a post-industrial economy. Men are significantly more likely to pursue entrepreneurship and be competitive within companies (in fact studies show that the wage gap is the result of women prioritizing temporal flexibility, ie. greater work/life balance).
If you're going to suggest that men aren't suited to productive participation, you need to consider more variables than simply violence rates, which in practice is only relevant to a tiny fraction of the population.
Higher testosterone I would guess (this is not my area of expertise so I emphasize "guess" here) is probably also correlated with higher competitiveness, leadership, and work drive, all perfectly suited for a post-industrial economy. Men are significantly more likely to pursue entrepreneurship and be competitive within companies (in fact studies show that the wage gap is the result of women prioritizing temporal flexibility, ie. greater work/life balance).
If you're going to suggest that men aren't suited to productive participation, you need to consider more variables than simply violence rates, which in practice is only relevant to a tiny fraction of the population.
There are absolutely intrinsic differences between men and women.
I think it is a valid question if men have gender specific challenges they face in modern society, economies, and cultures.
It is important to remember that the purpose of society is to serve men and women, not the other way around. If there is a problem, we should look at society with a critical lens to see if there are areas to reform to create a better fit.
Sure, men are probably always going to commit murder at a higher rate. That said, if men are depressed due to a lack of competitive and physical outlets, that is something worth consideration.
I think it is a valid question if men have gender specific challenges they face in modern society, economies, and cultures.
It is important to remember that the purpose of society is to serve men and women, not the other way around. If there is a problem, we should look at society with a critical lens to see if there are areas to reform to create a better fit.
Sure, men are probably always going to commit murder at a higher rate. That said, if men are depressed due to a lack of competitive and physical outlets, that is something worth consideration.
Black people have a higher murder rate than white people worldwide. That does not mean black people are more intrinsically violent than white people or "intrinsically less suited to productive participation in a post-industrial economy".
Often these problems are cause by systems we have set up rather than by innate character qualities.
Often these problems are cause by systems we have set up rather than by innate character qualities.
Women aren't certainly more productive in a post industrialized economy. Its only due to government mandated favoritism and hand outs that women gain economic independence. After all, if the old claim of women doing more for less were true, no one would be forced to hire them. Any venture primarily manned by women fails for all the usual unmentionable reasons, and we have to pretend this isn't true. They sometimes say women are better represented in successful companies, but as with all consequences of regulatory capture, its more that they are able to carry the burden to suppress the competition.
I don't know if there's a causal link between testosterone and violence. I'm on feminizing HRT, so my T is lower than it used to be, and I still get angry about as much as I did before.
And I don't see a lot of trans men throwing rage tantrums when they increase their T.
Maybe the correlation appears after sampling bias - If men are bigger on average, they might feel safer acting violent than a smaller person.
And I don't see a lot of trans men throwing rage tantrums when they increase their T.
Maybe the correlation appears after sampling bias - If men are bigger on average, they might feel safer acting violent than a smaller person.
my suspicion would be that male violence is linked very strongly to dating/sex/mating. though that's probably true for both genders. women w/ more inward domestic violence, men more violent against competitors.
In current society I suspect a man being abused by a woman is considered "a joke" (the words "man up" come to mind)
There is no reliable evidence that testosterone increases the propensity to violence in humans.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2019.104644
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2019.104644
I read this and interpret this with "men communicate more with the body than with words", rather than "more violent". Yes the communication can be hostile.
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I am a male and I am sick and tired of seeing males moan about how hard they have it and that they would rather play video games all day long than work to improve their future. Grow a spine, put on your big boy pants, and get to work!
The alternative is to be a looser the rest of your life. You might never succeed in becoming wealthy or get the pretty girl or whatever but that’s not the point. The point is to do the best you can. It’s the struggle against the perceived odds that makes you respected. Not the end result.
The alternative is to be a looser the rest of your life. You might never succeed in becoming wealthy or get the pretty girl or whatever but that’s not the point. The point is to do the best you can. It’s the struggle against the perceived odds that makes you respected. Not the end result.
>Most articles, like this one tend to lay the blame at the feet of boys and men in a way that would be obscene if it were applied to women or minorities.
Which is problematic because minorities are a subset of men. When you legitimize saying men are statistically for dangerous, that disproportionately ends up hurting black and brown men more as they are more likely to be assumed to be dangerous. It's implicit racist and it's crazy that it's acceptable in the mainstream just because no of wants to consider PoC
Which is problematic because minorities are a subset of men. When you legitimize saying men are statistically for dangerous, that disproportionately ends up hurting black and brown men more as they are more likely to be assumed to be dangerous. It's implicit racist and it's crazy that it's acceptable in the mainstream just because no of wants to consider PoC
I don't think that is the problem for a number of reasons.
First off, something can be bad for simply hurting all men. You don't have to resort to a racial analysis.
Second, something can be statistically true in practice, but not intrinsically true. I don't think Arguments that say men are intrinsically lazy hold up under scrutiny anymore than claims that POC are intrinsically lazy.
Lastly, even if men are intrinsically more violent, which I think is plausible, that doesn't mean it's appropriate to blame men for their genetics. If it's a biological fact, I don't think it is something that can be weeded out of men. It is something that we simply need to understand and control. Maybe that means encouraging men to channel that energy into healthy and productive outlets.
At the end of the day, if journalists and policy makers are trying to say boys and men in America are falling behind because they are just naturally lazy and unmotivated, they are simply wrong. We can look across cultures and time and see that it is obviously not the case. There is something about our modern society and culture that is leading to these outcomes
First off, something can be bad for simply hurting all men. You don't have to resort to a racial analysis.
Second, something can be statistically true in practice, but not intrinsically true. I don't think Arguments that say men are intrinsically lazy hold up under scrutiny anymore than claims that POC are intrinsically lazy.
Lastly, even if men are intrinsically more violent, which I think is plausible, that doesn't mean it's appropriate to blame men for their genetics. If it's a biological fact, I don't think it is something that can be weeded out of men. It is something that we simply need to understand and control. Maybe that means encouraging men to channel that energy into healthy and productive outlets.
At the end of the day, if journalists and policy makers are trying to say boys and men in America are falling behind because they are just naturally lazy and unmotivated, they are simply wrong. We can look across cultures and time and see that it is obviously not the case. There is something about our modern society and culture that is leading to these outcomes
>First off, something can be bad for simply hurting all men. You don't have to resort to a racial analysis.
But that's the thing-- I'm not "resorting" to that argument. I'm a PoC and I really think that really matters. But people handwave that away every time. Because it's not interesting to the majority of people, because the majority of people don't really care about these things.
But that's the thing-- I'm not "resorting" to that argument. I'm a PoC and I really think that really matters. But people handwave that away every time. Because it's not interesting to the majority of people, because the majority of people don't really care about these things.
I think people (like me) react because they feel it is dismissive of the harm done to non-POC people.
It is not "problematic because minorities are a subset of men".
It already was problematic for hurting men. Your statement implies that it would not be a problem if it were just non POC being hurt.
To take a hyperbolic example, If someone shoots up a school, we don't say it is bad because there were children of color in it. It is bad whomever is hurt. It might also hurt POC, and it might especially hurt POC, but it was always bad.
It is not "problematic because minorities are a subset of men".
It already was problematic for hurting men. Your statement implies that it would not be a problem if it were just non POC being hurt.
To take a hyperbolic example, If someone shoots up a school, we don't say it is bad because there were children of color in it. It is bad whomever is hurt. It might also hurt POC, and it might especially hurt POC, but it was always bad.
Because men are bullied when they ask for it. This is what Brene Brown found:
> Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men: We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust.
I've experienced this firsthand, and I think most men have, with their girlfriend or wife (or even mother or sister). Your value as a male romantic partner relies on you being that "rock," and anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet. Women, even Margaret Atwood-quoting feminists like my ex, are repulsed by male vulnerability.
> Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men: We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust.
I've experienced this firsthand, and I think most men have, with their girlfriend or wife (or even mother or sister). Your value as a male romantic partner relies on you being that "rock," and anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet. Women, even Margaret Atwood-quoting feminists like my ex, are repulsed by male vulnerability.
If you act your gender, age and confident you'll be better off in most scenarios.
That may sound like a strange statement, but our programming is strong and no matter how much we debate it in the society it doesn't change. We are what we are. We may be able to evolve, but you can't snap your fingers and have that happen in a century. Arguably, I don't see us evolving past it either, as our programming likely gives us some advantage in reproduction.
In terms of "helping men" I used to work with troubled youth (13-17yrs); young men need role models and a place in society. They'll ask for help and the role models can help them. They do much better in apprenticeship type roles. I don't really think it can be force, but a bit of encouragement and guidance goes a LONG way.
Today our society coddles everyone, young men need responsibility, guidance and hard work. Everyone has the desire to be respected, show them how to fit into society and be respected and they'll follow your lead. Many of the issues we face in society today is we don't have high expectations coupled with mentorship. Sports do this to a degree, but it needs to be through all walks of life.
The main issue IMO is that we have removed male and female only spaces and are attempting to homogenize. We also coddle children and young adults to the point they are offended when someone uses their wrong pronoun. It's good to have roles in society it helps optimize and provides guidance to those who need it. It's also good to have a thick skin, so you can roll with the punches and still succeed. Men and women alike are attracted to the traditional roles of the opposite gender because it helps both partner. There's a good reason for that, historically and today. That's not to say other configurations aren't possible, but biologically, societally and economically the traditional roles make sense to most people internally.
That may sound like a strange statement, but our programming is strong and no matter how much we debate it in the society it doesn't change. We are what we are. We may be able to evolve, but you can't snap your fingers and have that happen in a century. Arguably, I don't see us evolving past it either, as our programming likely gives us some advantage in reproduction.
In terms of "helping men" I used to work with troubled youth (13-17yrs); young men need role models and a place in society. They'll ask for help and the role models can help them. They do much better in apprenticeship type roles. I don't really think it can be force, but a bit of encouragement and guidance goes a LONG way.
Today our society coddles everyone, young men need responsibility, guidance and hard work. Everyone has the desire to be respected, show them how to fit into society and be respected and they'll follow your lead. Many of the issues we face in society today is we don't have high expectations coupled with mentorship. Sports do this to a degree, but it needs to be through all walks of life.
The main issue IMO is that we have removed male and female only spaces and are attempting to homogenize. We also coddle children and young adults to the point they are offended when someone uses their wrong pronoun. It's good to have roles in society it helps optimize and provides guidance to those who need it. It's also good to have a thick skin, so you can roll with the punches and still succeed. Men and women alike are attracted to the traditional roles of the opposite gender because it helps both partner. There's a good reason for that, historically and today. That's not to say other configurations aren't possible, but biologically, societally and economically the traditional roles make sense to most people internally.
Most people aren't offended when someone accidently uses the wrong pronoun. They do get offended when people purposefully use the wrong pronoun to intentionally offend. Pretending that those are the same thing is part of the problem.
> They do get offended when people purposefully use the wrong pronoun to intentionally offend. Pretending that those are the same thing is part of the problem.
"the problem"...
You don't get to choose what other people call you. Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a common phrase school children say. I've been called a plethora of names, that doesn't define me, why let others define you (so to speak)?
This is exactly the coddling I was discussing.
The purpose of pronouns are to help others understand who you're talking about. It's not to validate the individual being discussed. Confident people don't need validation.
"the problem"...
You don't get to choose what other people call you. Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a common phrase school children say. I've been called a plethora of names, that doesn't define me, why let others define you (so to speak)?
This is exactly the coddling I was discussing.
The purpose of pronouns are to help others understand who you're talking about. It's not to validate the individual being discussed. Confident people don't need validation.
> "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"
That does not make it true. It is also not great to put the onus on the victim of bullying.
As someone who was bullied quite severely, I always preferred a fist fight over words. Still do; feels more honest, less manipulative getting-in-your-head but more visceral and present. To each their own perhaps, underlining the fact that words can and perhaps should hurt as much as sticks and stones; if you think words mean something, well, then they mean something.
Confidence only gets you so far, there are no simple solutions. Any study on bullying will elucidate that fact.
That does not make it true. It is also not great to put the onus on the victim of bullying.
As someone who was bullied quite severely, I always preferred a fist fight over words. Still do; feels more honest, less manipulative getting-in-your-head but more visceral and present. To each their own perhaps, underlining the fact that words can and perhaps should hurt as much as sticks and stones; if you think words mean something, well, then they mean something.
Confidence only gets you so far, there are no simple solutions. Any study on bullying will elucidate that fact.
I was severely bullied both verbally and physically. I would take verbally 10/10 times any day. Words hurt, but the fear of being severely physically hurt or accidentally killed is worse by miles.
Thanks for sharing. It's important to understand these experiences and coping mechanisms are highly personal. You can't bless one way of dealing with it over the others, because not everybody experiences it the same. Also, you only learn those things by experiencing them. I for instance appea to be fearless, but sensitive. I don't think me getting less sensitive is the answer, nor you sucking up your fear. The solution will be personal, but should involve us and bystanders to correct the bully, whether they throw punches or words.
“You don’t get to choose what other people call you”
What? That’s literally the definition of a legal name change, which happens all the time. If someone continued to, intentionally, refer to my wife’s maiden name after she went through the nightmare process of changing it, you can bet she’d be offended, and rightfully so. Being offended by behaviour being done specifically to offend isn’t being coddled or a sign of weakness, and it’s frankly kind of weird that you think it is.
Sure, she can’t technically “choose” if someone continues to be a jerk and call her by the wrong name, but the social convention of respecting given names has existed forever, and extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me.
You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you? (I’m assuming you’re male, I find it hard to believe a woman would have written this) I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve met plenty of men who like to think they’re that confident, but yet to meet a man who actually is.
What? That’s literally the definition of a legal name change, which happens all the time. If someone continued to, intentionally, refer to my wife’s maiden name after she went through the nightmare process of changing it, you can bet she’d be offended, and rightfully so. Being offended by behaviour being done specifically to offend isn’t being coddled or a sign of weakness, and it’s frankly kind of weird that you think it is.
Sure, she can’t technically “choose” if someone continues to be a jerk and call her by the wrong name, but the social convention of respecting given names has existed forever, and extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me.
You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you? (I’m assuming you’re male, I find it hard to believe a woman would have written this) I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve met plenty of men who like to think they’re that confident, but yet to meet a man who actually is.
>>What? That’s literally the definition of a legal name change, which happens all the time.
No, that is choosing what the GOVERNMENT calls you, largely for the purpose of ensuring they can extract a large portion of the labor for redistribution.
There is nothing requiring me or any other person from using your legal name, and in fact in some situations today using a persons legal name would be met with outrage and offense (i.e dead naming)
>If someone continued to, intentionally, .... you can bet she’d be offended
Seems like an odd thing to be offended over, maybe annoyed, or even feel disrespected. Offended nah... My first name has a commonly used short name that I dislike, people use it for me all the time but I am not offended by it it is just annoying
>extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me.
One big difference in language is pronouns are not directed at the target of their use, where names are.
Normal use of pronouns is used when describing a person to a 3rd party. "Go find Jim, he has your report"
He/She etc are outward expressions of secondary sex characteristic to aid people in their observation of the world. to use a another example
"Go find Sam, she has your report", I would go looking for a human with outwardly female characteristic. where as "Go find Sam, he has your report" I would look for a human with male characteristic. "Go find Sam, they has your report" is not only grammatically incorrect, it gives no indication on the type of human I should be looking for so I would just go down the hallway yelling Sam at everyone
>You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you?
I have a problem if people refer to me as Sir but it has nothing to do with the gender. /s
>but yet to meet a man who actually is.
Nice to meet you. Call me Ma'am, I dont care. Call me asshole I dont care, call me anything you want except late for dinner
No, that is choosing what the GOVERNMENT calls you, largely for the purpose of ensuring they can extract a large portion of the labor for redistribution.
There is nothing requiring me or any other person from using your legal name, and in fact in some situations today using a persons legal name would be met with outrage and offense (i.e dead naming)
>If someone continued to, intentionally, .... you can bet she’d be offended
Seems like an odd thing to be offended over, maybe annoyed, or even feel disrespected. Offended nah... My first name has a commonly used short name that I dislike, people use it for me all the time but I am not offended by it it is just annoying
>extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me.
One big difference in language is pronouns are not directed at the target of their use, where names are.
Normal use of pronouns is used when describing a person to a 3rd party. "Go find Jim, he has your report"
He/She etc are outward expressions of secondary sex characteristic to aid people in their observation of the world. to use a another example
"Go find Sam, she has your report", I would go looking for a human with outwardly female characteristic. where as "Go find Sam, he has your report" I would look for a human with male characteristic. "Go find Sam, they has your report" is not only grammatically incorrect, it gives no indication on the type of human I should be looking for so I would just go down the hallway yelling Sam at everyone
>You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you?
I have a problem if people refer to me as Sir but it has nothing to do with the gender. /s
>but yet to meet a man who actually is.
Nice to meet you. Call me Ma'am, I dont care. Call me asshole I dont care, call me anything you want except late for dinner
> Nice to meet you. Call me Ma'am, I dont care. Call me asshole I dont care, call me anything you want except late for dinner
I don't believe you. What if I called you Pedo?
I don't believe you. What if I called you Pedo?
That would be slightly different than mis-gerndering me, or calling me by the wrong name, or using a premarital name wouldnt it?
That would be accusing me of crime, and accusing me of victimization of others. These are actions that one would have to take.
That is a far different statement than simply calling someone the wrong name, pronoun, etc.
One could be arrested, jailed, fired, etc for being a "pedo", Referring to a "they" as "she" or "he" would not result in that person being arrested, jailed or fired. if anything today the person using the incorrect pronoun would have higher legal jeopardy than the person being "mis-gendered"
Calling someone Ma'am if they wanted Sir or vice versa is not going to result in the person the incorrect salutation was directed at being fired or jailed
Your "gotcha" is both insane and idiotic, raising to the level is disbelief anyone would even make that as a analog comparison
That would be accusing me of crime, and accusing me of victimization of others. These are actions that one would have to take.
That is a far different statement than simply calling someone the wrong name, pronoun, etc.
One could be arrested, jailed, fired, etc for being a "pedo", Referring to a "they" as "she" or "he" would not result in that person being arrested, jailed or fired. if anything today the person using the incorrect pronoun would have higher legal jeopardy than the person being "mis-gendered"
Calling someone Ma'am if they wanted Sir or vice versa is not going to result in the person the incorrect salutation was directed at being fired or jailed
Your "gotcha" is both insane and idiotic, raising to the level is disbelief anyone would even make that as a analog comparison
I capitalized it, meaning I would use it as your name, not an accusation.
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> If someone continued to, intentionally, refer to my wife’s maiden name
My wife didn’t take my last name, 2 of her aunts keep intentionally sending cards and such, addressed only to her, with my last name. It’s been 13 years.
My wife didn’t take my last name, 2 of her aunts keep intentionally sending cards and such, addressed only to her, with my last name. It’s been 13 years.
There's such a thing as respecting other peoples' preferences or quirks, even if you don't agree with them. I have friends who smoke, and no matter how much I think that smoking is outrageously dumb, I just accept that this is what they do - and the same applies to a whole range of other behaviours, too, such as religious or dietary preferences etc.
You don't have to have a particular stance on trans issues to have the common decency to use the correct pronoun. Mind you, I'm talking about reasonable things here: I am not necessarily sympathetic to wholly invented pronouns (because that doesn't come very naturally), although I think "they" is fine, and of course, it would be ridiculous if (hypothetically) a person switched pronouns every day, but in the cases I have experienced, someone communicates that they now identify as the other gender, and that's fine. Usually it's also accompanied by enough outwards changes that it's also not too hard to do; I've met trans men that I didn't know were not biological men at first.
So, idk, to me "please refer to me as man/woman in the future" sounds like a simple, easily satisfied request and getting worked up over it to me signals that one prefers emphasising their political opinion over just being decent and accomodating.
You don't have to have a particular stance on trans issues to have the common decency to use the correct pronoun. Mind you, I'm talking about reasonable things here: I am not necessarily sympathetic to wholly invented pronouns (because that doesn't come very naturally), although I think "they" is fine, and of course, it would be ridiculous if (hypothetically) a person switched pronouns every day, but in the cases I have experienced, someone communicates that they now identify as the other gender, and that's fine. Usually it's also accompanied by enough outwards changes that it's also not too hard to do; I've met trans men that I didn't know were not biological men at first.
So, idk, to me "please refer to me as man/woman in the future" sounds like a simple, easily satisfied request and getting worked up over it to me signals that one prefers emphasising their political opinion over just being decent and accomodating.
In some sense I agree. But on the other hand I also don't think we should be OK with rampant bullying. Many lives have been lost just because a group of people determined they want to bullying someone.
> You don't get to choose what other people call you. Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them.
What on Earth? Yes you do. Do you not tell people what your name is? When someone asks you for your name, what do you say? I don't understand how you have human conversations with other people and make this claim.
What on Earth? Yes you do. Do you not tell people what your name is? When someone asks you for your name, what do you say? I don't understand how you have human conversations with other people and make this claim.
> Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"
Just naive. Like saying the bible or the koran is "just words" rather than the foundation of societies and the cause of wars.
Just naive. Like saying the bible or the koran is "just words" rather than the foundation of societies and the cause of wars.
> Like saying the bible or the koran is "just words" rather than the foundation of societies and the cause of wars.
It _is_ just a collection of words though, it's people that take it very seriously and get offended that start the wars. Had they learned this credo when they were young, they might not have escalated it to war. Anyone can just shout words out, you going to get offended at everyone ?
It _is_ just a collection of words though, it's people that take it very seriously and get offended that start the wars. Had they learned this credo when they were young, they might not have escalated it to war. Anyone can just shout words out, you going to get offended at everyone ?
Many people feign offense at benign things to gain power over others.
I have experienced this too.
People will play on social cues to gain benefit, it doesn't matter which social cue.
The idea that every person with non-standard pronouns is a good person is misguided, even if it was an overwhelming majority.
The capacity for self-centeredness and/or bullying behaviour exists in all demographics.
People will play on social cues to gain benefit, it doesn't matter which social cue.
The idea that every person with non-standard pronouns is a good person is misguided, even if it was an overwhelming majority.
The capacity for self-centeredness and/or bullying behaviour exists in all demographics.
Everyone is out to benefit themselves and those they like no matter the consequences for others. People ignore that at their own peril.
That’s reductionist.
All people have morals; the ones to be fearful of are the ones that allow their morality to bend depending on the recipient.
All people have morals; the ones to be fearful of are the ones that allow their morality to bend depending on the recipient.
Its a hueristic, its quite literally wrong but it is a quick and useful guide.
Useful in some contexts, disastrous in others. The challenge with all heuristics is having the wisdom to know when to apply them.
I think the self interest heuristic is generally overused.
I think the self interest heuristic is generally overused.
I guess I disagree, self interest is generally underestimated to disastrous result. The reason being that if you assume someone is out only for themselves and are wrong you lose very little. If you assume the opposite wrongly it is very costly.
The way I see it we are fundamentally the same species which committed all of the atrocities of the 20th century, 19th century, heck all of the extremely violent and callous behavior in recorded history. To believe that human nature has changed much from that in only the span of a few decades is foolhardy.
The way I see it we are fundamentally the same species which committed all of the atrocities of the 20th century, 19th century, heck all of the extremely violent and callous behavior in recorded history. To believe that human nature has changed much from that in only the span of a few decades is foolhardy.
How many wars and atrocities of the 20th century were caused by this heuristic as well?
If you assume most people are out for themselves, the rational solution is usually to violently suppress or exterminate your opposition whenever possible. Kill them before they have a chance to kill you.
If you assume most people are out for themselves, the rational solution is usually to violently suppress or exterminate your opposition whenever possible. Kill them before they have a chance to kill you.
it's not that simple. if i just assume that someone is out for themselves, and as a result i reject or ignore them then i'll never find any friends.
so i need to assume that most people are not just out for themselves and engage others hoping that they are not, but maybe just be cautious until i know them better.
so i need to assume that most people are not just out for themselves and engage others hoping that they are not, but maybe just be cautious until i know them better.
Nope. Sociopaths don’t have morals. And most people will do immoral things if the value/cost is high enough.
Same here. My wife calls herself a feminist. Yet, when I cried one time in front of her, instead of comforting me, she told me - stop crying, you are making me angry.
Another time, she told me that the only value I bring to her life is 'to provide for our kid until they turn adult'.
I don't think we will be together much longer lol.
Another time, she told me that the only value I bring to her life is 'to provide for our kid until they turn adult'.
I don't think we will be together much longer lol.
Man, I'm sorry to hear that. That's a terrible thing to hear.
I don't know the best way to proceed, since you no doubt have entanglements such as your children to consider, but I wish you all the best in finding your way out of that relationship. You deserve better than someone who would treat you that way.
I don't know the best way to proceed, since you no doubt have entanglements such as your children to consider, but I wish you all the best in finding your way out of that relationship. You deserve better than someone who would treat you that way.
I would not recommend divorcing. She has said she will remain married to you until the kids are adult. This is a GREAT commitment.
Appreciate that she has made this commitment. Confirm it to her and tell her you are on board, and you will make life as easy as possible for the both of you until then. See if she is willing to make the same commitment out loud.
I have a suspicion, perhaps too romantic, that once you and her are broken from the bonds of obligation, you will discover yourselves again and will voluntarily decide to stay together.
But then again, some people just shouldn't be married.
Appreciate that she has made this commitment. Confirm it to her and tell her you are on board, and you will make life as easy as possible for the both of you until then. See if she is willing to make the same commitment out loud.
I have a suspicion, perhaps too romantic, that once you and her are broken from the bonds of obligation, you will discover yourselves again and will voluntarily decide to stay together.
But then again, some people just shouldn't be married.
>> I would not recommend divorcing. She has said she will remain married to you until the kids are adult. This is a GREAT commitment.
So where I live, the standard for alimony is 1 year for every 3 that you are married. On top of that, if you're married 20+ years they think you should pay for life. There is no law that states this and couples are free to decide whatever they can agree to, but once layers are involved you're at a more significant financial risk the longer you stay married.
In short, if you honestly believe it will not work you should get out sooner rather than later. It will be better for both of you. Not sure about the kids though, but living under a broken relationship isn't good for them either.
So where I live, the standard for alimony is 1 year for every 3 that you are married. On top of that, if you're married 20+ years they think you should pay for life. There is no law that states this and couples are free to decide whatever they can agree to, but once layers are involved you're at a more significant financial risk the longer you stay married.
In short, if you honestly believe it will not work you should get out sooner rather than later. It will be better for both of you. Not sure about the kids though, but living under a broken relationship isn't good for them either.
You make a good point. It seems like society is disincentivizing long term marriages.
I feel for you. Nobody should have to put up with this kind of treatment. Take care of yourself and your kid.
As a man, I find myself increasingly detesting other men who whine. Our society now wants all men to be able to cry just like women can and everyone should applaud. But we have a billion generations of evolution behind us pushing men who don't cry in the face of problems, but fight and overcome. Maybe I am just a backwards throwback, but maybe not. All of the men who cry in front of women (even women who claim crying is okay) that I've heard of are not embraced, but reviled. That is just biology. Toughen up.
I'm sorry for your situation. It's beyond crappy. If it's any comfort, know that there are people who don't assume you're the one at fault.
Your wife is closed minded, something often correlated with lower general cognitive ability.
But after that second quote about value, that is a big, fluttering red flag signal for you to leave. That is no longer a functioning relationship.
But after that second quote about value, that is a big, fluttering red flag signal for you to leave. That is no longer a functioning relationship.
how does gender even play into this? seems a lot more like you married a shitty person who has more rigid ideas about gender norms than you. this situation can just as easily apply to two men.
In fact I’ve watched it play in reverse many times. Men telling their partners to overcome psychological barriers to perform certain tasks to their preference for example.
A guy I knew once told his girlfriend “just be a mom!” when she was tired and their son was crying. Rather than be a dad, he demanded that she resume a role and shamed her for wanting a break.
And yet I’ve experienced the same as a man. The sort of “just be a man” mentality and rhetoric you can encounter is widespread and ranges through all depths of relationships. Ever been unemployed as a man? People can be absurdly insensitive and unkind about it. It really makes people uneasy sometimes… Like there must be something wrong with you. Never mind why you’re unemployed; there could be any number of valid reasons, but people seem to assume that’s not the case.
The point is that this isn’t a gendered problem. I suppose it’s a people being selfish problem first, coupled with many possible issues leading to the selfishness and the gendered presumptions we make about our partners. We do the same thing with genderless accusations though. We just want certain behaviours from our partners and use all kinds of means to justify it, gendered or not.
A guy I knew once told his girlfriend “just be a mom!” when she was tired and their son was crying. Rather than be a dad, he demanded that she resume a role and shamed her for wanting a break.
And yet I’ve experienced the same as a man. The sort of “just be a man” mentality and rhetoric you can encounter is widespread and ranges through all depths of relationships. Ever been unemployed as a man? People can be absurdly insensitive and unkind about it. It really makes people uneasy sometimes… Like there must be something wrong with you. Never mind why you’re unemployed; there could be any number of valid reasons, but people seem to assume that’s not the case.
The point is that this isn’t a gendered problem. I suppose it’s a people being selfish problem first, coupled with many possible issues leading to the selfishness and the gendered presumptions we make about our partners. We do the same thing with genderless accusations though. We just want certain behaviours from our partners and use all kinds of means to justify it, gendered or not.
Not sure if you are waiting for an incentive, but here we go: leave her.
Well, I wouldn't advise that without knowing the full details of the situation, and especially how sensitive the kid is. I've heard many discussions on that point, with divorced parents arguing "it's better for the kid if they don't see us quarrel all the time" and those still being couples saying "a kid needs both parents."
My personal observation is that if the parents love the kid more than they dislike themselves, they are going to stay, at least until the kids become adults.
My personal observation is that if the parents love the kid more than they dislike themselves, they are going to stay, at least until the kids become adults.
My personal experience says that it's way better for the kid not to grow up in a dysfunctional household: they will grow up not even knowing what a functional relationship looks like. Just "being civil" to the other is not enough, kids will form their attachment models on how they see their parents interact.
If you want your kid to have successful relationships when they grow up, FFS don't let your kid grow up in an unsuccessful one.
If you want your kid to have successful relationships when they grow up, FFS don't let your kid grow up in an unsuccessful one.
right, but once you have a failed relationship, either choice (stay together or separate) will have a negative impact. so really, the best way to salvage the kids future is to actually repair the relationship.
Kids need role models. One saying is roughly about: boys grow up wanting to be like their dads, and girls grow up wanting to marry similar men.
If kids are exposed to frequent arguments, spirals of primitive abuse, hatred, emotional coldness etc. they won't end up faring well in adulthood, and all the efforts of parents trying to stay together for them are pointless.
But yeah its a shitty situation where everybody loses.
If kids are exposed to frequent arguments, spirals of primitive abuse, hatred, emotional coldness etc. they won't end up faring well in adulthood, and all the efforts of parents trying to stay together for them are pointless.
But yeah its a shitty situation where everybody loses.
That personal observation is an excellent point of wisdom.
I would replace "dislike" with "incompatible" though.
You can be very attracted physicslly to someone who is your intellectual and economic equal, to then not be able to hold it together because that person's personal traits ans preferences are so far off one's own. It goes beyond "he liked to watch tv instead of going out to eat w me"
That being said, your observation should be a heuristic, and it should be repeated more often.
I would replace "dislike" with "incompatible" though.
You can be very attracted physicslly to someone who is your intellectual and economic equal, to then not be able to hold it together because that person's personal traits ans preferences are so far off one's own. It goes beyond "he liked to watch tv instead of going out to eat w me"
That being said, your observation should be a heuristic, and it should be repeated more often.
We have enough information, though. The wife doesn't respect him. Regarding the kid, s/he will be fine. Even if there is some turmoil on the kid's life, your life as an adult also matters. You deserve to be happy. Don't sacrifice yourself to make what you think are the best decisions to your son. You really don't have all that power you think you have to influence their lifes.
That sacrifices the kids. It is at least worth a salvaging attempt.
Her treatment of you is absolutely disgusting. She should be told that in those terms, and you should demand an apology.
While I agree that nobody should have to put up with that sort of treatment, demanding an apology is not going to work. Couple's therapy might help if you manage to find a good one, but frankly chances are low and he should mentally prepare himself to move out and potentially fight for custody.
Or just accept that's his role as man, even though matte modern feminism tries to tell you otherwise
Some people might be happy with that role, and sure, if it works for them, great!
But I do think it's quite reasonable to expect more from life and relationships. Women tend to expect more, and society doesn't tell them not to.
It's possible to have a self-consistent worldview that does tell both men and women to expect less, but personally I think that would make for a worse society.
But I do think it's quite reasonable to expect more from life and relationships. Women tend to expect more, and society doesn't tell them not to.
It's possible to have a self-consistent worldview that does tell both men and women to expect less, but personally I think that would make for a worse society.
> Her treatment of you is absolutely disgusting
I mean, this is par for the course for nearly every married man in the West, myself included. We are objectified as wallets, we are treated very poorly, and when they inevitably leave to "find myself", they collect 50% of the assets we've earned and saved, and we collect 50% of the debts they've racked up in their instagram-influenced spending.
You can characterize the situation as "disgusting", but it's reality for millions of us.
Reality doesn't care about our moral judgements. It is what it is. The best we can do is attempt to educate our sons on the risks inherent in contractually obligating oneself to people who hate you.
I mean, this is par for the course for nearly every married man in the West, myself included. We are objectified as wallets, we are treated very poorly, and when they inevitably leave to "find myself", they collect 50% of the assets we've earned and saved, and we collect 50% of the debts they've racked up in their instagram-influenced spending.
You can characterize the situation as "disgusting", but it's reality for millions of us.
Reality doesn't care about our moral judgements. It is what it is. The best we can do is attempt to educate our sons on the risks inherent in contractually obligating oneself to people who hate you.
> this is par for the course for nearly every married man in the West
Good grief, I hope not. My wife is nothing like that. At all. And very few of my friends and acquaintances have experienced a relationship like that. How sad to think that this is what marriage ought to be. That's horrifying. I'd be single and celibate before I'd let someone treat me that way.
Good grief, I hope not. My wife is nothing like that. At all. And very few of my friends and acquaintances have experienced a relationship like that. How sad to think that this is what marriage ought to be. That's horrifying. I'd be single and celibate before I'd let someone treat me that way.
You wouldnt even hear about it in most cases.
Certainly not the case for any of the married couples I know. What a ridiculous assertion.
Idk, I think it's pretty common. Certainly not for healthy relationships; but I'd wager there are a really really high number of not healthy relationships at any given moment, even if they don't usually last that long. There are toxic people all over the place, and not everyone is good at recognizing toxicity.
While I’m sure you’re right, the comment I replied to specifically said “nearly every married man.”
Not to discount the lived experiences of men in this thread, but the discussion in here reeks of bitter manosphere ideology. Maybe people need to stop extrapolating their toxic relationships to an entire gender, or blaming them on biology.
Not to discount the lived experiences of men in this thread, but the discussion in here reeks of bitter manosphere ideology. Maybe people need to stop extrapolating their toxic relationships to an entire gender, or blaming them on biology.
I would argue that a majority of men have encountered a potential partner that viewed them that way, but yeah applying that to all marriages is just... not even remotely true.
But you chose to marry this woman, so at that time you thought it would turn out well, and that the legal contract and possibility of paying alimony was fair?
Marriage is, unfortunately, not a rational decision for many of us. In my specific case, she got pregnant, and I "did the right thing" for the sake of a stable home for my child(ren).
And on that specific front, things are fine. The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household. I've accepted my fate, but I will raise my son with different lessons than I had.
That said, I have (multiple) friends whose fiances turned from "Perfect Angel" into "Literally Hitler" the day after marriage, so even if my situation was a proper evaluation of my life partner, it should be noted that many men are defrauded by that particular trap as well.
And on that specific front, things are fine. The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household. I've accepted my fate, but I will raise my son with different lessons than I had.
That said, I have (multiple) friends whose fiances turned from "Perfect Angel" into "Literally Hitler" the day after marriage, so even if my situation was a proper evaluation of my life partner, it should be noted that many men are defrauded by that particular trap as well.
> did the right thing
That's optimistic naïveté speaking. Marrying someone you got pregnant just because it's the right thing to do, is in fact very much the wrong thing.
> The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household
Maybe when they are very young. Kids aren't stupid, and you can't fake a warm, loving relationship accurately enough nor consistently enough to keep them fooled very long. At some point way before they become adults they realize exactly what is going on. At best they'll pity you. At worst they'll resent you for subjecting them to your inability to adult.
That's optimistic naïveté speaking. Marrying someone you got pregnant just because it's the right thing to do, is in fact very much the wrong thing.
> The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household
Maybe when they are very young. Kids aren't stupid, and you can't fake a warm, loving relationship accurately enough nor consistently enough to keep them fooled very long. At some point way before they become adults they realize exactly what is going on. At best they'll pity you. At worst they'll resent you for subjecting them to your inability to adult.
You are of course spot on with your comment, just:
>> The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household
> Maybe when they are very young.
Ehh, even a one year old is very good at sensing their parents' emotions.
>> The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household
> Maybe when they are very young.
Ehh, even a one year old is very good at sensing their parents' emotions.
I'd be curious to hear from an experienced marriage counselor how often this kind of situation can be salvaged.
Not myself, but channeling another: "Research on toxic communication patterns in relationships shows that contempt is an accurate predictor of divorce."
https://www.emberrelationshippsychology.com/blog/the-mistake...
> She should be told that in those terms, and you should demand an apology.
And how exactly this should help? It's clearly past that point already.
And how exactly this should help? It's clearly past that point already.
It also doesn't sounds like a sufficiently manly way to address the issue, in his wife's view.
[deleted]
As a happily married man (I say this only to pre-empt the aspersions of being a frustrated, involuntarily celibate man), I believe modern feminism has some logical inconsistencies, such as the above, to work out if it's to be a sustainable movement. I have my doubts, as fertility rates are higher in more conservative areas of the U.S. [0]. Another major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/fertility_rate/fer...
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/fertility_rate/fer...
The critical flaw in contemporary popular feminism is the inability to acknowledge both that women have agency and that women use that agency to enforce gender roles.
E.g. the pay gap. The pay gap opens up only after marriage and especially children; in the majority of major metropolitan areas today, young single women actually earn more than men.
Heterosexual women's mate choice is what drives this: they have a strong preference for a male who makes more over one who earns less. Everyone wants to earn more money, but men have the additional incentive of needing to earn more to attract a mate. Given this incentive structure, it's inevitable that men as a group will outearn women.
Most individual women have an easy way to contribute to the pay gap statistic: either by not pairing at all, or by pairing with a man who wants to play a supportive role at home instead of being the "breadwinner." The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.
Men, of course, also use their agency to create this world with restrictive gender roles. But everyone recognizes this; point out that women also bear responsibility for their use of agency to create it and you get, at best, called nasty names.
E.g. the pay gap. The pay gap opens up only after marriage and especially children; in the majority of major metropolitan areas today, young single women actually earn more than men.
Heterosexual women's mate choice is what drives this: they have a strong preference for a male who makes more over one who earns less. Everyone wants to earn more money, but men have the additional incentive of needing to earn more to attract a mate. Given this incentive structure, it's inevitable that men as a group will outearn women.
Most individual women have an easy way to contribute to the pay gap statistic: either by not pairing at all, or by pairing with a man who wants to play a supportive role at home instead of being the "breadwinner." The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.
Men, of course, also use their agency to create this world with restrictive gender roles. But everyone recognizes this; point out that women also bear responsibility for their use of agency to create it and you get, at best, called nasty names.
Finally somebody has had the courage to point out the "critical flaw" in contemporary modern feminism, a philosophy noted for it's static nature and universally shared beliefs!
Your thoughts and ideas are reasonable enough but you should have a little more intellectual humility when presenting them.
My only counter to what you've said is that I think while you acknowledge the inertia of the status quo makes on current gender dynamics, you are not appreciating how making even the slightest decision against the prevailing culture is incredibly difficult.
For example, I have a male, married friend who had a child and they used the mother's last name. This seemingly minor, insignificant little protest has already caused him like 10 problems because nobody can imagine a child not having their father's last name. Going against the status quo is not easy!
Your thoughts and ideas are reasonable enough but you should have a little more intellectual humility when presenting them.
My only counter to what you've said is that I think while you acknowledge the inertia of the status quo makes on current gender dynamics, you are not appreciating how making even the slightest decision against the prevailing culture is incredibly difficult.
For example, I have a male, married friend who had a child and they used the mother's last name. This seemingly minor, insignificant little protest has already caused him like 10 problems because nobody can imagine a child not having their father's last name. Going against the status quo is not easy!
Not normally something I'd get involved in (and I don't necessarily agree with OP), but I think you need to take a hard look at how you interpreted that. When you say sarcastically say "noted for it's static nature" and OP has already added the "contemporary, modern" qualifiers, well you're pretty much straw-manning them. They've already addressed the point that they don't think it's static, that they're pointing to specific ideas at a particular time in the best way they can.
So like, OP predicted your argument and tried their best to explain that's not what they meant, and you ran with that interpretation anyway. Unless there's some edit shenanigans going on that I don't see, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out a polite way to say this, but like from where I'm sitting you don't look like you're responding to OP, you look like you're responding to a straw-man that OP went out of their way to explain was not what they were actually saying.
So like, OP predicted your argument and tried their best to explain that's not what they meant, and you ran with that interpretation anyway. Unless there's some edit shenanigans going on that I don't see, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out a polite way to say this, but like from where I'm sitting you don't look like you're responding to OP, you look like you're responding to a straw-man that OP went out of their way to explain was not what they were actually saying.
> Men, of course, also use their agency to create this world with restrictive gender roles.
> The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.
As I said, the OP has reasonable points but to skate over these two obviously connected points while pointing out a "critical flaw" in feminist theory is very incomplete.
It it also a disingenuous argumentative technique to say that his points are so dangerous that to bring them up would get somebody called names. Most if not all academics would be happy to argue any of these points without name calling.
And also it is ridiculous to say that "contemporary, modern feminism" is a well defined term that means the same thing to everybody. What's modern conservatism mean? Modern liberalism?
> The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.
As I said, the OP has reasonable points but to skate over these two obviously connected points while pointing out a "critical flaw" in feminist theory is very incomplete.
It it also a disingenuous argumentative technique to say that his points are so dangerous that to bring them up would get somebody called names. Most if not all academics would be happy to argue any of these points without name calling.
And also it is ridiculous to say that "contemporary, modern feminism" is a well defined term that means the same thing to everybody. What's modern conservatism mean? Modern liberalism?
Nothing is a well defined term that means the same thing to everybody, so if those are the standards you keep it's going to be impossible to have any kind of discussion. None the less it is possible for people to communicate, even given the vagaries of language, if you're willing to extend people the benefit of the doubt and try to actually understand what they're saying. I think you were remiss in your duty to extend that benefit of the doubt, to try to understand what OP was saying, and I think that's why you were dismissed and they're not responding to your more substantive arguments.
You might benefit from a read through of these articles: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-th...
Particularly the bit on "The Cluster Structure of Thingspace"
>>A verbal definition works well enough in practice to point out the intended cluster of similar things, but you nitpick exceptions. Not every human has ten fingers, or wears clothes, or uses language; but if you look for an empirical cluster of things which share these characteristics, you'll get enough information that the occasional nine-fingered human won't fool you.
You might benefit from a read through of these articles: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-th...
Particularly the bit on "The Cluster Structure of Thingspace"
>>A verbal definition works well enough in practice to point out the intended cluster of similar things, but you nitpick exceptions. Not every human has ten fingers, or wears clothes, or uses language; but if you look for an empirical cluster of things which share these characteristics, you'll get enough information that the occasional nine-fingered human won't fool you.
Ok, what's the generally agreed on definition of popular modern conservatism?
There isn't one, and yet we still manage to have conversations about the alt-right and republicans and overturning abortion.
Also I'm not from the US so this really isn't my fight at all, I'm not arguing with you about this I'm just trying to point out where you're making a mistake that is going to make it difficult to communicate.
Here's an example, instead of saying "you can't point at contemporary modern feminism because language is hard and ideas are fuzzy" you can say "I don't think that the vice you're accusing these people of really comes up that often". Instead of trying to debate whether true feminists are whatever OP accused them of, you can just say that you don't think whatever OP accused them of is really a big deal that affects very many real people. Skip the definitional debate (you know what group they're trying to point at) and get right to the meat of the argument, whether that issues actually shows up in real life.
Also I'm not from the US so this really isn't my fight at all, I'm not arguing with you about this I'm just trying to point out where you're making a mistake that is going to make it difficult to communicate.
Here's an example, instead of saying "you can't point at contemporary modern feminism because language is hard and ideas are fuzzy" you can say "I don't think that the vice you're accusing these people of really comes up that often". Instead of trying to debate whether true feminists are whatever OP accused them of, you can just say that you don't think whatever OP accused them of is really a big deal that affects very many real people. Skip the definitional debate (you know what group they're trying to point at) and get right to the meat of the argument, whether that issues actually shows up in real life.
Note I said contemporary popular feminism. Obviously feminism contains multitudes, but what dominates the mass and social media is much less sophisticated take that doesn't do justice to the thinkers who conceptualize it.
[deleted]
> The critical flaw in contemporary popular feminism is the inability to acknowledge both that women have agency and that women use that agency to enforce gender roles. [...] point out that women also bear responsibility for their use of agency to create it and you get, at best, called nasty names.
This isn't accurate: Contemporary feminism has long been obsessed with this topic; specifically, how some women contribute to their own oppression. Books have been published debating whether or not this is an inherently bad thing. You're conflating feminism and society, but society isn't feminist. Sure, libertarianism exists, but our current governments aren't libertarian, even if they pay lip service to the ideas and ideals; the same applies to feminism.
This isn't accurate: Contemporary feminism has long been obsessed with this topic; specifically, how some women contribute to their own oppression. Books have been published debating whether or not this is an inherently bad thing. You're conflating feminism and society, but society isn't feminist. Sure, libertarianism exists, but our current governments aren't libertarian, even if they pay lip service to the ideas and ideals; the same applies to feminism.
Contemporary popular feminism treats women as reactive objects; slightly more sophisticated takes grant that women contribute to their own oppression, but usually through the lens of being duped by the patriarchy. And it has frighteningly little to say about how women contribute to oppressive gender roles placed on men, with many variants denying gender based oppression is even a valid category for men.
Eloquently put, you can add height on top of that. Any close woman I've talked to about this admitted that man needs to be higher, or cca same height. Otherwise he needs to be one hell of a charmer.
Another point is overall physique. Almost no woman admits it, but ask good looking gym builders who don't overdo it, how easy is for them to get a date. I don't mean from all women, but finding some decent looking one, often smart is simply much easier. Or even better - ask a smart well earning guy who was weak and pale who went through proper gym/sport transformation (while remaining smart well earning) - the change of interest from women is ridiculous. I can attest to that, I've changed few personal opinions after putting in enough time with free weights. Its not so much about muscle mass per se, but overall posture, confidence, happiness and projection of strength.
Women, much more than men, like to feel they are above primitive emotions and impulses. Well sometimes only till they aren't.
Another point is overall physique. Almost no woman admits it, but ask good looking gym builders who don't overdo it, how easy is for them to get a date. I don't mean from all women, but finding some decent looking one, often smart is simply much easier. Or even better - ask a smart well earning guy who was weak and pale who went through proper gym/sport transformation (while remaining smart well earning) - the change of interest from women is ridiculous. I can attest to that, I've changed few personal opinions after putting in enough time with free weights. Its not so much about muscle mass per se, but overall posture, confidence, happiness and projection of strength.
Women, much more than men, like to feel they are above primitive emotions and impulses. Well sometimes only till they aren't.
> Women, much more than men, like to feel they are above primitive emotions and impulses. Well sometimes only till they aren't.
Women have been ostracized, sometimes killed, for not appearing virtuous for thousands of years. Women strongly retain a defense mechanism of virtue signaling in sexual relations. It's overwhelming and suppresses true sexual preferences among women of all types (education, income level, age, cultural background and so on). Always keep this in mind when reading what heterosexual women say they want in a potential partner.
Women have been ostracized, sometimes killed, for not appearing virtuous for thousands of years. Women strongly retain a defense mechanism of virtue signaling in sexual relations. It's overwhelming and suppresses true sexual preferences among women of all types (education, income level, age, cultural background and so on). Always keep this in mind when reading what heterosexual women say they want in a potential partner.
[deleted]
The thing is, I think we are just in a time of social rediscovery. Everything seems chaotic because there were a lot of repressed people in society who are just now finding the freedom not to hide themselves. Nobody really knows what it means to integrate all these new elements and we are trying to figure it out. Combined with larger geopolitical issues like economic inequality, immigration and climate change it seems like the whole world in in turmoil.
My point is that I feel like it's not necessary to hold these groups to the standard of being logically consistent and rational all the time. The movements are still in their infancy. They will make mistakes. It's all experimental right now. We will figure it out, but it may take generations so the best thing to do is just relax and be supportive.
My point is that I feel like it's not necessary to hold these groups to the standard of being logically consistent and rational all the time. The movements are still in their infancy. They will make mistakes. It's all experimental right now. We will figure it out, but it may take generations so the best thing to do is just relax and be supportive.
Not sure why you’re downvoted so hard, but I absolutely agree that we are in a transitional state and so inconsistencies can exist (but not persist). Eventually, modern feminism will need to figure out how to empower women and convert (or create) more to sustain the movement. Otherwise, the default appears to be some form of religious fundamentalism.
The society I can think of that has made the most progress is Israel, as it is modern but also has a TFR of 3 and generally is an outlier on plots of TFR and GDP per capita
The society I can think of that has made the most progress is Israel, as it is modern but also has a TFR of 3 and generally is an outlier on plots of TFR and GDP per capita
> We will figure it out, but it may take generations so the best thing to do is just relax and be supportive.
This sounds weird to me, like "support damaging behavior because that's how people find themselves". Because, after all, damaging behavior is what this thread is about. Sure, maybe someone will grow out of being an ass, but maybe they won't. If you support them "no matter what" instead of calling them out, you're prolonging that behavior.
This sounds weird to me, like "support damaging behavior because that's how people find themselves". Because, after all, damaging behavior is what this thread is about. Sure, maybe someone will grow out of being an ass, but maybe they won't. If you support them "no matter what" instead of calling them out, you're prolonging that behavior.
> it's not necessary to hold these groups to the standard of being logically consistent and rational all the time
Not that we can't forgive and make mistakes, but aiming for other than "being logically consistent and rational" is likely a road to Hell, or rudderless at best.
Not that we can't forgive and make mistakes, but aiming for other than "being logically consistent and rational" is likely a road to Hell, or rudderless at best.
They are actively teaching and promoting said freedoms to children. Its not just chain breaking but also bias building.
> Another major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.
But this is not an inconsistency in feminism, this is a discrepancy between feminism and what many women actually want.
But this is not an inconsistency in feminism, this is a discrepancy between feminism and what many women actually want.
But then it's a movement by a minority of women who profess to speak for a majority of which the demonstrably do not represent
>But then it's a movement by a minority of women who profess to speak for a majority of which the demonstrably do not represent
I wonder how many analogues to that beyond feminism I can come up to that in a minute?
I wonder how many analogues to that beyond feminism I can come up to that in a minute?
A person can want to earn their own living while also wanting a viable and optimal partnership with a qualified person.
If you see people as at least partially rational actors, "Have enough income on your own that you're not trapped in a situation with anyone," and, "Have a partner that is successful," aren't two opposed concepts.
It's not a logical inconsistency, it's actually rational. I think you may be falsely equating "consistency" and "fairness," or "equability," but they're distinct concepts: A person can want to be successful and still find a successful partner more attractive. This isn't inconsistent.
If you see people as at least partially rational actors, "Have enough income on your own that you're not trapped in a situation with anyone," and, "Have a partner that is successful," aren't two opposed concepts.
It's not a logical inconsistency, it's actually rational. I think you may be falsely equating "consistency" and "fairness," or "equability," but they're distinct concepts: A person can want to be successful and still find a successful partner more attractive. This isn't inconsistent.
The inconsistency is when someone complains that their career is considered secondary to their partner's, when they intentionally sought after a partner with a more developed career.
> Another major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.
And here is why there is not a single feminism. I made two categories, but there is more, it is just easier for my brain. You have the "liberal" feminism, targeting equality, and the "traditional" feminism (inherited from Emma Goldman and other marxist and Marxist-adgascent like Beauvoir, so maybe calling it traditional is wrong. Postmodern Feminism?) targeting emancipation. Emancipation is not equality, it is just asking to have the possibility to do what you are able to do (aka firewoman, general, or pornstar).
Short story about emancipation and empowerment:
At first, i thought it was the same. That the French "émanciper" was translated as "empowered", and did not go further. Then like 8 years ago (i was still a lib at the time), i've heard at the radio "We don't have an equivalent in French, this is the idea of empowerment". So i looked into the difference between emancipation and empowerment. Empowerment is practices to reach freedom for the self within the institutional structures, and emancipation, is a process of freedom for the self and others in society through challenging and changing the existing structures of power. Giorgia Meloni and Simone Veil.
And here is why there is not a single feminism. I made two categories, but there is more, it is just easier for my brain. You have the "liberal" feminism, targeting equality, and the "traditional" feminism (inherited from Emma Goldman and other marxist and Marxist-adgascent like Beauvoir, so maybe calling it traditional is wrong. Postmodern Feminism?) targeting emancipation. Emancipation is not equality, it is just asking to have the possibility to do what you are able to do (aka firewoman, general, or pornstar).
Short story about emancipation and empowerment:
At first, i thought it was the same. That the French "émanciper" was translated as "empowered", and did not go further. Then like 8 years ago (i was still a lib at the time), i've heard at the radio "We don't have an equivalent in French, this is the idea of empowerment". So i looked into the difference between emancipation and empowerment. Empowerment is practices to reach freedom for the self within the institutional structures, and emancipation, is a process of freedom for the self and others in society through challenging and changing the existing structures of power. Giorgia Meloni and Simone Veil.
> major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.
Women's preferences don't define feminism. I think the Feminism is not a good word to describe feminism because it creates associations like these.
Women's preferences don't define feminism. I think the Feminism is not a good word to describe feminism because it creates associations like these.
Perhaps unrelated, but there's the large problem of unaddressed spousal abuse that victimizes men. Self-reported data from here in Canada[0] shows that men are more likely to experience spousal violence overall, albeit roughly half as likely to experience sexual assault or a serious beating.
But there are no shelters for men in most provinces, and many shelters that accept children will reject male children over a certain age. Moreover, based on court-enforced outcomes, men who leave an abusive home face a serious risk of significantly diminished custody and access in the future[1].
The fact is, a lot of Canadian men are living in abusive homes with nowhere to turn and the knowledge that if they leave their children will be left to face their abuser alone.
0: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article...
1: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/jf-pf/2017/nov02.html
But there are no shelters for men in most provinces, and many shelters that accept children will reject male children over a certain age. Moreover, based on court-enforced outcomes, men who leave an abusive home face a serious risk of significantly diminished custody and access in the future[1].
The fact is, a lot of Canadian men are living in abusive homes with nowhere to turn and the knowledge that if they leave their children will be left to face their abuser alone.
0: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article...
1: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/jf-pf/2017/nov02.html
>>But there are no shelters for men in most provinces
People have tried, the last person I am aware of that tried to get a mens shelter off the ground was harassed to the point of suicide, and faced extreme resistance and protesting in attempting to fund it. There is lots of government funds for womens shelters, and zero government funds for mens shelters
People have tried, the last person I am aware of that tried to get a mens shelter off the ground was harassed to the point of suicide, and faced extreme resistance and protesting in attempting to fund it. There is lots of government funds for womens shelters, and zero government funds for mens shelters
Violence against men by women isn't socially considered violence.
Similarly, circumcision is not regarded with the disgust and horror as FGM is.
I spent valuable credits in my degree arguing that it should be. Clearly I didn't make a good argument, as I didn't get a good grade ;)
Interestingly, both reduce the pleasure for women.
In all fairness though, these don't really seem comparable considering that FGM is only done to reduce/eliminate sexual pleasure for females and that's not the case for male circumcision.
It literally is done to reduce sexual pleasure. Circumcision was popularized in the US as a way to stop masturbation, which doctors believe was responsible for various social and medical problems.
From Wikipedia’s bios on two of the people responsible for the spread of the practice, Lewis Sayre and John Harvey Kellogg:
> In 1870, Sayre began using circumcision as a purported cure for several cases of young boys diagnosed with paralysis or significant motor problems. He thought the procedure ameliorated such problems based on a "reflex neurosis" theory of disease, which held that excessive stimulation of the genitals (i.e., masturbation) was a disturbance to the equilibrium of the nervous system and a cause of systemic problems.
>Kellogg did promote extensive measures to prevent masturbation addiction. He circumcised himself at age 37. His methods for the "rehabilitation" of masturbation addicts included measures up to the point of cutting off part of the genitals, without anesthetic, on both sexes; he wrote men who did should be circumcised and women that did should have carbolic acid applied to their clitoral glans.
From Wikipedia’s bios on two of the people responsible for the spread of the practice, Lewis Sayre and John Harvey Kellogg:
> In 1870, Sayre began using circumcision as a purported cure for several cases of young boys diagnosed with paralysis or significant motor problems. He thought the procedure ameliorated such problems based on a "reflex neurosis" theory of disease, which held that excessive stimulation of the genitals (i.e., masturbation) was a disturbance to the equilibrium of the nervous system and a cause of systemic problems.
>Kellogg did promote extensive measures to prevent masturbation addiction. He circumcised himself at age 37. His methods for the "rehabilitation" of masturbation addicts included measures up to the point of cutting off part of the genitals, without anesthetic, on both sexes; he wrote men who did should be circumcised and women that did should have carbolic acid applied to their clitoral glans.
You can say the same for most cases of male circumcision. No, it's not that hard to wash the weewee properly. No, most men will not suffer problems. The adult world outside the US isn't having massive health problems over the lack of circumcision.
>You can say the same for most cases of male circumcision.
No you can't. Do you think circumcised men don't fully enjoy sex? Where did you get that idea from?
No you can't. Do you think circumcised men don't fully enjoy sex? Where did you get that idea from?
You said "reduce/eliminate". It most certainly reduces, as far as I know.
I also don't see your point in being pedantic. Both are procedures which do not benefit the majority and are an active effort to make most lives worse (be it unknowingly or knowingly). The only case for male circumcision, is the extreme minority of men who would suffer otherwise.
Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.
I also don't see your point in being pedantic. Both are procedures which do not benefit the majority and are an active effort to make most lives worse (be it unknowingly or knowingly). The only case for male circumcision, is the extreme minority of men who would suffer otherwise.
Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.
>It most certainly reduces, as far as I know.
That would be news to hundreds of millions of men.
>Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.
I think any sane person would see removal of the clitoris to be quite different.
That would be news to hundreds of millions of men.
>Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.
I think any sane person would see removal of the clitoris to be quite different.
There are several variants of FGM, and not all involve removal of the clitoris. The most benign forms involve a symbolic pin prick that is certainly less damaging to the genitals and future sexual pleasure than removal of the foreskin. And yet all types of "female circumcision" are literally referred to as mutilation, and considered bad. Will you argue in favor of allowing the pin-prick variant for baby girls, since you support a more traumatic operation for baby boys?
>Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.
It's called pilpul and he obviously will.
It's called pilpul and he obviously will.
There are multiple types of FGM, one of them involves removing the clitoris and the other is extremely similar to circumcision.
> anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet
The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet, that serves as a blank check for the partner to harm the relationship as a passive-aggressive feedback mechanism to discourage subsequent behavior like it, be that withdrawal, or avoidance, or picking fights over inconsequential things.
Thus, men should constantly be striving for more value (read: status), or risk losing leverage with those they love. In a sense, projected status anxiety ensures that it is impossible for men to fully escape the evaluative sphere.
Internalizing this will age your soul, and not in a good way.
The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet, that serves as a blank check for the partner to harm the relationship as a passive-aggressive feedback mechanism to discourage subsequent behavior like it, be that withdrawal, or avoidance, or picking fights over inconsequential things.
Thus, men should constantly be striving for more value (read: status), or risk losing leverage with those they love. In a sense, projected status anxiety ensures that it is impossible for men to fully escape the evaluative sphere.
Internalizing this will age your soul, and not in a good way.
> mattgreenrocks 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [–]
> anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet, that serves as a blank check for the partner to harm the relationship as a passive-aggressive feedback mechanism to discourage subsequent behavior like it, be that withdrawal, or avoidance, or picking fights over inconsequential things
the devalue phase of an unhealthy narcissistic relationship is not representative of most healthy relationships. a healthy compassion based relationship would see a value plummet met with support.
I hate that I speak from experience on the matter.
> anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet, that serves as a blank check for the partner to harm the relationship as a passive-aggressive feedback mechanism to discourage subsequent behavior like it, be that withdrawal, or avoidance, or picking fights over inconsequential things
the devalue phase of an unhealthy narcissistic relationship is not representative of most healthy relationships. a healthy compassion based relationship would see a value plummet met with support.
I hate that I speak from experience on the matter.
I'm sorry you speak from experience, but it does give insight and a small feeling of not-being-alone to read this.
Thank you.
Thank you.
> The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet
A more disgusting thing to me is the idea that people see their partners (or believe their partners see them) as having “value” like they’re a breathing stock ticker symbol.
A more disgusting thing to me is the idea that people see their partners (or believe their partners see them) as having “value” like they’re a breathing stock ticker symbol.
"What people call "love" it's just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, then it slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage. I did it, your parents are gonna do it, break the cycle Morty, focus on science."
The harsh reality of life is that all relationships are necessarily about value transference. If we're not stronger together than we are apart, then what the hell are we doing together. If you're sucking more value out of me than you're giving back, then you're a parasite and I'd be better off without you.
If you're not doing the calculation of whether a relationship is and will continue to be mutually beneficial, you're almost certainly going to become a host for a parasite.
The harsh reality of life is that all relationships are necessarily about value transference. If we're not stronger together than we are apart, then what the hell are we doing together. If you're sucking more value out of me than you're giving back, then you're a parasite and I'd be better off without you.
If you're not doing the calculation of whether a relationship is and will continue to be mutually beneficial, you're almost certainly going to become a host for a parasite.
Who is Morty?
From "Rick and Morty": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m1s2NFOGyg
Oh geez. Isn’t that the show where the fans threw tantrums at McDonalds to get a special nugget sauce? Probably not where I’d look for life advice.
Based on the behavior of the fans? That doesn't make much sense.
In general it's not intended to offer advice, but there are some moments that invite thought, for sure.
In general it's not intended to offer advice, but there are some moments that invite thought, for sure.
Isn’t the creator also a bit of a narcissistic creep?
Are you going somewhere with these questions? If you disagree with the quote just say so, and say why. Discrediting the show, its fans, or its creator is just an ad hominem attack. And not a very good one at that, since you seem to be guessing.
TV show character (Rick and Morty)
I say value to mean "status," but for either word, I fully agree.
Something's profoundly wrong when people put so much importance on what is an externally mediated measure. I don't know what it points to other than a sort of spiritual void, but the status game is one you are statistically almost guaranteed to lose.
It is the thing I hate most about my 30s and 40s: the utter seriousness with which status is regarded.
Something's profoundly wrong when people put so much importance on what is an externally mediated measure. I don't know what it points to other than a sort of spiritual void, but the status game is one you are statistically almost guaranteed to lose.
It is the thing I hate most about my 30s and 40s: the utter seriousness with which status is regarded.
> It is the thing I hate most about my 30s and 40s: the utter seriousness with which status is regarded.
There are some sad stories in these threads.
I just want to add that not all partners are like this.
But the ones we attract in certain parts of our lives are definitely prone to it! When our self-identity (or at least our time and energy) is wrapped up in material success, or job prestige or some other externality, we attract people who agree with us.
It's a delicate edge, because most of us want to build, accomplish, achieve something that makes us proud of our efforts, and we dump a lot of that into "work" in our most-eligible years.
So if we "succeed", or move toward success, we attract those that see us the same way we imagine that part of ourselves.
And then the rest of life starts happening. I want to live in a van and see the national parks! I want to take the modest exit and move to the Caribbean. I want to get a dog and stop running in place in BigCity. I've saved enough and don't want to deal with issue X. Etc.
This new status is not always met with the same enthusiasm as the climbing part of our journey. We created the fiction, so maybe it's not completely fair to be disappointed when our focus shifts and theirs does not.
(I don't mean to suggest that I know anything about your life, I'm just riffing on your last sentence.)
There are some sad stories in these threads.
I just want to add that not all partners are like this.
But the ones we attract in certain parts of our lives are definitely prone to it! When our self-identity (or at least our time and energy) is wrapped up in material success, or job prestige or some other externality, we attract people who agree with us.
It's a delicate edge, because most of us want to build, accomplish, achieve something that makes us proud of our efforts, and we dump a lot of that into "work" in our most-eligible years.
So if we "succeed", or move toward success, we attract those that see us the same way we imagine that part of ourselves.
And then the rest of life starts happening. I want to live in a van and see the national parks! I want to take the modest exit and move to the Caribbean. I want to get a dog and stop running in place in BigCity. I've saved enough and don't want to deal with issue X. Etc.
This new status is not always met with the same enthusiasm as the climbing part of our journey. We created the fiction, so maybe it's not completely fair to be disappointed when our focus shifts and theirs does not.
(I don't mean to suggest that I know anything about your life, I'm just riffing on your last sentence.)
> I want to get a dog and stop running in place in BigCity.
I can't recommend this enough!
I can't recommend this enough!
If I want to break up with a woman, without me doing the breaking up? I have a moment of vulnerability over something, even allow myself to cry. She'll do the rest.
You're allowed to cry when your mother dies or your dog dies. Anything else and you may as well be wearing a dress. The constant encouragement to be vulnerable and express feelings is merely a test to make sure you're still "masculine enough."
You're allowed to cry when your mother dies or your dog dies. Anything else and you may as well be wearing a dress. The constant encouragement to be vulnerable and express feelings is merely a test to make sure you're still "masculine enough."
A social hacker! You never had to initiate the hard conversation. Just indulge your feelings a bit, it's even a little therapeutic, and then the burden for ending things is on her.
If you want a moment of nastiness, during the Breakup Speech, you whirl around and say, "It's really because I cried over X, isn't it?" and there's this uncomfortable squirm and outright denial, because they will never admit it.
>Anything else and you may as well be wearing a dress.
I've always found it strange how women wearing men clothes is normal and just a style choice, while men wearing women's clothes is perverse and emasculating. Even many of the pro equality people feel this way
I've always found it strange how women wearing men clothes is normal and just a style choice, while men wearing women's clothes is perverse and emasculating. Even many of the pro equality people feel this way
I’m not saying it’s fair, but it’s pretty obvious why this is the case.
A 200lb man, who has the physical ability kill someone with their bare hands crying over an emotional vulnerability is scary. The issue isn’t “men aren’t allowed to have feelings”, but men are expected to have self-control over how they express themselves.
A 200lb man, who has the physical ability kill someone with their bare hands crying over an emotional vulnerability is scary. The issue isn’t “men aren’t allowed to have feelings”, but men are expected to have self-control over how they express themselves.
This is the one and only answer. Every other comment in this thread can be deleted.
Many - if not all - of the difficult modern sociological problems we face are rooted in the inability for people to accept that while our technological understanding is, frankly, unfathomable compared to 100,000 years ago, our biology, our neurobiology, etc., is all still running under the software that was developed hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Many - if not all - of the difficult modern sociological problems we face are rooted in the inability for people to accept that while our technological understanding is, frankly, unfathomable compared to 100,000 years ago, our biology, our neurobiology, etc., is all still running under the software that was developed hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Or as I like to say, our Software might be up to date but our OS and BIOS are still legacy.
Is your idea that Software could be an analogy for our worldview, OS could be an analogy for instincts and BIOS an analogy for genes or do you mean something entirely different to my interpretation?
Precisely. There is a (now outdated) model called Truine Brain model which proposes three layers of intelligence: the cortex which is responsible for higher thinking/planning/executive functions, the limbic system responsible for 4Fs/emotions, and the basal gangalia/brainstem responsible for basic functions like movement, homeostasis and etc. It's uncanny how this matches closely with the Software/OS/BIOS analogy.
This is great. I'm putting this in my favorite comments.
You have no idea how much this software can be changed with an consistent effort exerted over many decades.
Funny how the results of polyamory and responsible nonmonogamy in the Bay Area was “high status men having more sex with more people”. Wonder how that happened.
Yes we all know grooming works and it doesn't take decades. Though the government tries similar at the slower rate of decades.
I'm skeptical that biology plays a significant role in this, it seems much more likely that it is a purely societal and cultural artefact.
I think the answer is almost always “both”, and there should be a high bar for evidence if someone is going to posit that either one is the sole driver.
Take our social norms around sleep, for instance. We call bad dreams “nightmares”, we set our business hours to 9-5, etc etc. All of this is social, but clearly there is a biological link because we’re not inherently nocturnal animals.
Take our social norms around sleep, for instance. We call bad dreams “nightmares”, we set our business hours to 9-5, etc etc. All of this is social, but clearly there is a biological link because we’re not inherently nocturnal animals.
Not everything has a biological link though. Why is the color pink associated with girls and blue with boys? Purely an artefact of cultural zeitgeist, pink used to be masculine.
IIRC the invention of agriculture caused a huge shift in cultural dynamics as regards sex and gender world wide, favoring men. It is not unreasonable to think that an age that lasted 10kyrs might have some lingering affects on how we view the world.
IIRC the invention of agriculture caused a huge shift in cultural dynamics as regards sex and gender world wide, favoring men. It is not unreasonable to think that an age that lasted 10kyrs might have some lingering affects on how we view the world.
The pink/blue thing is low hanging fruit because it’s (at least apparently) obvious that we don’t have any biological predisposition towards sex-based color choices. Also, I’m not aware of any culture that’s free from western influence that has similar color norms.
But most other norms are more complicated. So the idea of the man as a physically strong provider - it’s not universal but it’s extremely common across the world.
But most other norms are more complicated. So the idea of the man as a physically strong provider - it’s not universal but it’s extremely common across the world.
I just got done reading Jesus and John Wayne. A century or more of hammering it into boys and men that we're inadequate if we're not virulent warrior providers had to have predictable consequences, didn't it?
Where are the cultures that didn't hammer that into men?
Cultures and societies are subject to the same kind of natural selection as individuals and species. Cultures that are self sustaining, defensible, and expansionary are the ones that win out in the end.
Cultures and societies are subject to the same kind of natural selection as individuals and species. Cultures that are self sustaining, defensible, and expansionary are the ones that win out in the end.
I suspect the commonalities have to do with essentially all of our cultures being agricultural for thousands of years. Before that was half a million years of being hunter gatherers, a completely different lifestyle. And now we are moving into an era when almost all of us will be city dwellers. I expect our culture will change a lot during that transition.
I don't think city dwelling is going to be the driver of change. We've been doing that for thousands of years.
It's the automation of force that will drive change to how we view maleness. The increasing reality is that strong, aggressive males aren't nearly as necessary in the battlefield for the defense of societies. A 100lb woman can pilot a drone and drop bombs just as well as a 300lb linebacker of a male. Humanoid robots are rapidly entering the scene and will start to replace human soldiers and police officers as the ground units of power projection. eSports will start to overshadow the NFL as we start socially valuing individual human strength less and less in favor of tactical and strategic ability to control robots.
Societies have always used young males as disposable members who are thrown into the most dangerous and lethal jobs for the simple biological reality that wombs are scarce and sperm is not. If all of the lethal work gets automated away (a fantastic thing!) then that will be one of the most drastic changes to human social order that has ever happened.
It's the automation of force that will drive change to how we view maleness. The increasing reality is that strong, aggressive males aren't nearly as necessary in the battlefield for the defense of societies. A 100lb woman can pilot a drone and drop bombs just as well as a 300lb linebacker of a male. Humanoid robots are rapidly entering the scene and will start to replace human soldiers and police officers as the ground units of power projection. eSports will start to overshadow the NFL as we start socially valuing individual human strength less and less in favor of tactical and strategic ability to control robots.
Societies have always used young males as disposable members who are thrown into the most dangerous and lethal jobs for the simple biological reality that wombs are scarce and sperm is not. If all of the lethal work gets automated away (a fantastic thing!) then that will be one of the most drastic changes to human social order that has ever happened.
> A 100lb woman can pilot a drone and drop bombs just as well as a 300lb linebacker of a male.
You are making the same mistake as the clowns that cry how you “can’t use your AR15 to stop the government”.
Ignoring the reality of asymmetrical warfare, and failure of the strongest military or universe has ever seen failing to secure a state of uneducated farmers and merchants for the last 20 years…
If your goal is to glass something - sure the 100lb recruits in the drone program are your go-to. We leveled two parts of Japan and it ended things, then the math changed with mutually assured destruction.
But that isn’t how you actually take something over.
You take things by putting your people on street corners. Going door to door. Preventing undesirable assembly. Securing travel and trade.
Tanks and drones really suck at standing on the corner. The soldier isn’t as outdated as you suggest.
You are making the same mistake as the clowns that cry how you “can’t use your AR15 to stop the government”.
Ignoring the reality of asymmetrical warfare, and failure of the strongest military or universe has ever seen failing to secure a state of uneducated farmers and merchants for the last 20 years…
If your goal is to glass something - sure the 100lb recruits in the drone program are your go-to. We leveled two parts of Japan and it ended things, then the math changed with mutually assured destruction.
But that isn’t how you actually take something over.
You take things by putting your people on street corners. Going door to door. Preventing undesirable assembly. Securing travel and trade.
Tanks and drones really suck at standing on the corner. The soldier isn’t as outdated as you suggest.
I have experienced this first hand as well and will never commit that naive mistake again.
See also the responses of women learning their partner is bisexual or their dating racial preferences.
Their mating strategy optimizes for status and in the process creates and reinforces the very structures they claim to oppose. What they are really opposing is the negative effects these structures have on them.
They are not evil or man-hating, but all of us are ruled by instinct way more than we would like to admit. And the people self aware enough to recognize and avoid reacting to them, specially when they relate to something as important as romantic relationships, are not very common.
See also the responses of women learning their partner is bisexual or their dating racial preferences.
Their mating strategy optimizes for status and in the process creates and reinforces the very structures they claim to oppose. What they are really opposing is the negative effects these structures have on them.
They are not evil or man-hating, but all of us are ruled by instinct way more than we would like to admit. And the people self aware enough to recognize and avoid reacting to them, specially when they relate to something as important as romantic relationships, are not very common.
To be fair, there are women out there who are consistently feminist and whose revealed relationship preferences match the rhetoric.
But of course cherrypicking just the convenient parts of feminism is common, and it's not always easy to tell early on what kind of person the other one is.
But of course cherrypicking just the convenient parts of feminism is common, and it's not always easy to tell early on what kind of person the other one is.
Good point. The features women are attracted to: confidence, money, physical prowess, etc. all go hand in hand with the masculine behaviors society is
rallying against. It is a bit confusing to me as an adult with a long time relationship, I can't imagine how you would navigate that as a 13 year old. At 13 I was basically doing backflips trying to get girls to notice me lol.
It is also possible that all the modern pressures and beliefs won't really override physical attraction. In general if someone is pretty to look at they have a lot of slack personality wise, whether they are a chest thumping mansplainer or an emotional crybaby.
It is also possible that all the modern pressures and beliefs won't really override physical attraction. In general if someone is pretty to look at they have a lot of slack personality wise, whether they are a chest thumping mansplainer or an emotional crybaby.
There's good advice for an individual and good advice for a society, and as a young person it's hard to tell these things apart.
Good for society: People should not be harassed or mugged when they walk at night. Good advice for an individual: Stay aware of your surroundings and make situational choices about your clothes and behavior.
Good for society: Men should also express their feelings, including their bad ones. Good for individuals: Know who is safe to express your feelings to, and who is not.
There was a big revelation that maybe we should try to improve society instead of all the victim blaming of the 70s-90s. I think it's great that we focus on perpetrators more than victims, but we forgot to tell individuals that they still live in a imperfect world, and that even though it's not their fault when they get targeted, they could still take action to protect themselves while waiting for society to improve.
Good for society: People should not be harassed or mugged when they walk at night. Good advice for an individual: Stay aware of your surroundings and make situational choices about your clothes and behavior.
Good for society: Men should also express their feelings, including their bad ones. Good for individuals: Know who is safe to express your feelings to, and who is not.
There was a big revelation that maybe we should try to improve society instead of all the victim blaming of the 70s-90s. I think it's great that we focus on perpetrators more than victims, but we forgot to tell individuals that they still live in a imperfect world, and that even though it's not their fault when they get targeted, they could still take action to protect themselves while waiting for society to improve.
> There's good advice for an individual and good advice for a society, and as a young person it's hard to tell these things apart.
This is an awesome way to put it and applies to so many more topics of public debate. Consider as a simple example:
Good for society: Close tax loopholes. Good for individuals: Exploit tax loopholes.
We should all be mindful that this distinction exists, and acknowledging it openly should be part of healthy debate culture.
This is an awesome way to put it and applies to so many more topics of public debate. Consider as a simple example:
Good for society: Close tax loopholes. Good for individuals: Exploit tax loopholes.
We should all be mindful that this distinction exists, and acknowledging it openly should be part of healthy debate culture.
> The features women are attracted to: confidence, money, physical prowess, etc. all go hand in hand with the masculine behaviors society is rallying against.
I think this is wrong - like 180 degrees wrong. The mode of failure I see most often for men is low EQ - misreading the wants / needs of the woman and delivering the wrong things with no awareness of where they are going wrong.
The reason why women find confidence attractive is because low self esteem / insecurity is often the root cause of negative and harmful behaviors. See pride and envy occupying the lowest circles of hell.
Many guys totally misread this as women want assholes, rather than incessant approval seeking behavior indicates low self esteem / insecurity which has the potential to make her life hell. It’s not that you can’t be kind to women, you just need to be doing it for the right reasons - because you feel this is the right way to conduct yourself - and not because you are scared that you are unworthy of love or admiration.
I think this is wrong - like 180 degrees wrong. The mode of failure I see most often for men is low EQ - misreading the wants / needs of the woman and delivering the wrong things with no awareness of where they are going wrong.
The reason why women find confidence attractive is because low self esteem / insecurity is often the root cause of negative and harmful behaviors. See pride and envy occupying the lowest circles of hell.
Many guys totally misread this as women want assholes, rather than incessant approval seeking behavior indicates low self esteem / insecurity which has the potential to make her life hell. It’s not that you can’t be kind to women, you just need to be doing it for the right reasons - because you feel this is the right way to conduct yourself - and not because you are scared that you are unworthy of love or admiration.
Society is very clearly railing against men trying to be assertive to the point that many would opt to not try at all. At the same time, we see research with token correlations coming out, specifically mentioning Western women respond positively to men with "dark triad" attributes.
Even the "quit dating assholes" stereotype is obvious, with women falling for the typical cocky jerk who goes against what society claims a man should be. Then it turns out, that guy ended up being problematic and scarred the girl for life.
Does that mean assertiveness has to be dark? No. But frankly, society is doing a lot to kill the "dark assertiveness" while not doing anything to insert "light assertiveness", if you're willing to view it that way. We're not exactly raising boys to be cowboys and gentlemen, we're raising them to be doormats and appeal to women in ways which clearly aren't dropping panties.
Even the "quit dating assholes" stereotype is obvious, with women falling for the typical cocky jerk who goes against what society claims a man should be. Then it turns out, that guy ended up being problematic and scarred the girl for life.
Does that mean assertiveness has to be dark? No. But frankly, society is doing a lot to kill the "dark assertiveness" while not doing anything to insert "light assertiveness", if you're willing to view it that way. We're not exactly raising boys to be cowboys and gentlemen, we're raising them to be doormats and appeal to women in ways which clearly aren't dropping panties.
There is a difference between being assertive and being unaware / insensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others. Being kind and compassionate does not mean that you are a doormat - because kindness and compassion spreads from within starting with kindness and compassion for yourself.
The seven virtues provides a useful framework to think about this. Prudence (emotional intelligence) gives rise to justice (knowing what is owed to whom), which gives rise to fortitude (assertiveness), which gives rise to moderation. Moderation without fortitude is cowardice. Fortitude without justice is tyranny. And justice without prudence is injustice. A little esoteric, but St Augustine knew a few things about life :)
The seven virtues provides a useful framework to think about this. Prudence (emotional intelligence) gives rise to justice (knowing what is owed to whom), which gives rise to fortitude (assertiveness), which gives rise to moderation. Moderation without fortitude is cowardice. Fortitude without justice is tyranny. And justice without prudence is injustice. A little esoteric, but St Augustine knew a few things about life :)
You're conveniently talking past me. Let me make it simple.
It is very evident that [confident jerk] > [lacking confidence]. Kindness and compassion are not substitutes for confidence and assertiveness, as far as both anecdotes and token evidence goes.
As far as society goes, it is removing [confident jerk] in boys. It is not replacing it with [confidence]. It is also not teaching girls to actively value any of your other supposed virtues. Congratulations, most boys are now [lacking confidence], one of the few measuring standards.
Your "useful framework" does not align with the reality of the western world.
It is very evident that [confident jerk] > [lacking confidence]. Kindness and compassion are not substitutes for confidence and assertiveness, as far as both anecdotes and token evidence goes.
As far as society goes, it is removing [confident jerk] in boys. It is not replacing it with [confidence]. It is also not teaching girls to actively value any of your other supposed virtues. Congratulations, most boys are now [lacking confidence], one of the few measuring standards.
Your "useful framework" does not align with the reality of the western world.
I think there are a couple of points where we misunderstand each other.
1. In my view “confident jerk” == lacking confidence. The confident jerks usually have the lowest self esteem. Their “confidence” tends to be a facade - a lie they tell themselves - which is why they seem to always have something to prove.
2. Assertiveness is not necessarily indicative of confidence. Again, it is clear that some of the most assertive wanna be dominant people are deeply insecure and simply acting out to assuage their internal feelings of low self esteem.
3. Compassion and kindness require true self confidence.
You can be assertive without being a jerk. Society and moral philosophy generally encourage this; and they discourage being a jerk. The difference is that constructive assertiveness is kind and compassionate and comes from a place of confidence. Destructive assertiveness comes from a place of low self esteem (pride/envy). Moral philosophers have written about this for over a thousand years so I don’t think that these values are especially modern.
The writing of St Augustine are a key part of the foundations of modern western (Judeo Christian) moral philosophy. This they offer many insights into moral reasoning in modern western society.
1. In my view “confident jerk” == lacking confidence. The confident jerks usually have the lowest self esteem. Their “confidence” tends to be a facade - a lie they tell themselves - which is why they seem to always have something to prove.
2. Assertiveness is not necessarily indicative of confidence. Again, it is clear that some of the most assertive wanna be dominant people are deeply insecure and simply acting out to assuage their internal feelings of low self esteem.
3. Compassion and kindness require true self confidence.
You can be assertive without being a jerk. Society and moral philosophy generally encourage this; and they discourage being a jerk. The difference is that constructive assertiveness is kind and compassionate and comes from a place of confidence. Destructive assertiveness comes from a place of low self esteem (pride/envy). Moral philosophers have written about this for over a thousand years so I don’t think that these values are especially modern.
The writing of St Augustine are a key part of the foundations of modern western (Judeo Christian) moral philosophy. This they offer many insights into moral reasoning in modern western society.
> In my view “confident jerk” == lacking confidence. The confident jerks usually have the lowest self esteem.
I find this to be a very convenient belief, in the same vein as "criminals are stupid" or "[not my political party] is stupid" or "good things happen to good people" or "bullies are insecure." I don't see any evidence or have any reason to believe that confident jerks are secretly harboring internal conflict, as satisfying as it may be to believe.
I find this to be a very convenient belief, in the same vein as "criminals are stupid" or "[not my political party] is stupid" or "good things happen to good people" or "bullies are insecure." I don't see any evidence or have any reason to believe that confident jerks are secretly harboring internal conflict, as satisfying as it may be to believe.
Most criminals are kind of stupid though - at least the ones who commit crimes that don’t involve some form of financial gain. Note: this is the belief among criminals themselves.
I mean the convergence of beliefs across a bunch of religions and moral philosophies is probably pretty good evidence. They were not exactly running randomized controlled trials; but they were smart people who thought a lot about this stuff. I’m not sure that the methods of modern behavioral science are so much more advanced :)
Otherwise this is just like one of those “obvious”, self evident things (i.e. obvious to some not to others). I do concede that there are a subset of jerks who have Dunning Kruger syndrome as well as a small number of true sociopaths out there.
I mean the convergence of beliefs across a bunch of religions and moral philosophies is probably pretty good evidence. They were not exactly running randomized controlled trials; but they were smart people who thought a lot about this stuff. I’m not sure that the methods of modern behavioral science are so much more advanced :)
Otherwise this is just like one of those “obvious”, self evident things (i.e. obvious to some not to others). I do concede that there are a subset of jerks who have Dunning Kruger syndrome as well as a small number of true sociopaths out there.
Criminals who get caught are often stupid. We know nothing about the ones that don't get caught. The ones that don't get caught might actually make up the majority of criminals.
180 degrees wrong? So women are attracted to shy, poor, unhealthy guys? Why did I waste my 20s in the gym!! Damn I wish I had your pearls of wisdom back then.
Women don’t want assholes, they want security, and the traits I listed are all indications of security, whereas being emotionally sensitive is less so. Hell everyone wants security, it’s why confidence is so attractive.
Women don’t want assholes, they want security, and the traits I listed are all indications of security, whereas being emotionally sensitive is less so. Hell everyone wants security, it’s why confidence is so attractive.
A shy, unhealthy, broke guy who is comfortable in his own skin will have happier more fulfilling relationships with women than a swole, rich, narcissist. Narcissism btw, is a one of those negative behaviors whose root cause is insecurity / low self esteem.
If your time in the gym was a path to being more comfortable with who you are then it wasn’t a waste of time. Maybe you were good enough all along and just didn’t realize / believe it
If your time in the gym was a path to being more comfortable with who you are then it wasn’t a waste of time. Maybe you were good enough all along and just didn’t realize / believe it
You may be right, but the point is that guy would have no shot at finding a relationship. Being comfortable with who you are would naturally stem from being wealthy, handsome, social, and fit.
Being comfortable with who you are would naturally stem from being wealthy, handsome, social, and fit
there are a lot more factors that help with being confident with yourself.
i am none of these things: wealthy, handsome, social, and fit yet i am quite confident with myself. i'd say that with all the mistakes my parents may have made, this is one of the positive things i got out of my childhood. it probably also helped that i grew up in an environment where these things didn't matter. there was noone wealthy in my school, noone telling me that i had to be handsome, or that not being social or not being fit were bad.
there are a lot more factors that help with being confident with yourself.
i am none of these things: wealthy, handsome, social, and fit yet i am quite confident with myself. i'd say that with all the mistakes my parents may have made, this is one of the positive things i got out of my childhood. it probably also helped that i grew up in an environment where these things didn't matter. there was noone wealthy in my school, noone telling me that i had to be handsome, or that not being social or not being fit were bad.
> Narcissism btw, is a one of those negative behaviors whose root cause is insecurity / low self esteem.
[citation needed] (no snark intended)
[citation needed] (no snark intended)
I mean a quick Google search brings up a lot of results. Here is one cherry picked news release / article.
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2021/march/...
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2021/march/...
Not able to fully read everything in the actual paper [1], but here are some things I found as notable:
> We are interested in the nature of narcissism. Narcissism is a personality disorder that is conceptualized as excessive self-love and manifests as a grandiose sense of self-importance, entitlement, and superiority (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Auerbach, 1993; Freud, 1914).
> More recently, two subtypes of narcissism have been distinguished. “Vulnerable narcissism” characterized by low self-esteem, anxiety about attachments and extreme sensitivity to criticism and “grandiose narcissism”, which manifests as high self-esteem, self-aggrandizement and self-importance (Dickinson & Pincus, 2003; Rohmann, Neumann, Herner, & Bierhoff, 2012; Wink, 1991). This distinction has shown itself to be fruitful - vulnerable narcissism is associated with low self-esteem, life-satisfaction, and interdependent self-construct. Conversely, grandiose narcissism is associated with high self-esteem and life-satisfaction and an independent self-construction (Rohmann, Hanke, & Bierhoff, 2019; Rose, 2002). These differential attitudes also present behaviorally. Both grandiose and vulnerable narcissists have a tendency to deliberately induce jealousy in their romantic partners, but for different reasons - a vulnerable narcissist is motivated by insecurities and seeks reassurance to compensate for low self-esteem whereas a grandiose narcissist induces jealousy primarily to gain power and control in the relationship (Tortoriello, Hart, Richardson, & Tullett, 2017).
> . . .
> Grandiose narcissism seems to resemble psychopathy in many respects, which raises the possibility that the tessellation of these conditions could be improved. It appears to be the case that grandiose narcissism might be better understood as a manifestation of psychopathy. This notion is supported by the finding that individuals who strongly exhibit psychopathic traits also tend to have a grandiose sense of self-worth (Gustafson & Ritzer, 1995; Miller, Sleep, Crowe, & Lynam, 2020). Conversely, vulnerable narcissism might be better conceived of as “narcissism proper” or “primary narcissism”.
Looks like they are pretty much trying to rebrand grandiose narcissism to psychopathy as you might suggest. Not really sure I see any value in changing the widely understood definition. I also didn't see any numbers about which type was actually more prevalent, however. Again, I was only able to do a cursory review. At this point, I think it's fair to conclude that there's more than one type of narcissism and that one of them probably has nothing to do with low self esteem, while the other probably does.
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188692...!
> We are interested in the nature of narcissism. Narcissism is a personality disorder that is conceptualized as excessive self-love and manifests as a grandiose sense of self-importance, entitlement, and superiority (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Auerbach, 1993; Freud, 1914).
> More recently, two subtypes of narcissism have been distinguished. “Vulnerable narcissism” characterized by low self-esteem, anxiety about attachments and extreme sensitivity to criticism and “grandiose narcissism”, which manifests as high self-esteem, self-aggrandizement and self-importance (Dickinson & Pincus, 2003; Rohmann, Neumann, Herner, & Bierhoff, 2012; Wink, 1991). This distinction has shown itself to be fruitful - vulnerable narcissism is associated with low self-esteem, life-satisfaction, and interdependent self-construct. Conversely, grandiose narcissism is associated with high self-esteem and life-satisfaction and an independent self-construction (Rohmann, Hanke, & Bierhoff, 2019; Rose, 2002). These differential attitudes also present behaviorally. Both grandiose and vulnerable narcissists have a tendency to deliberately induce jealousy in their romantic partners, but for different reasons - a vulnerable narcissist is motivated by insecurities and seeks reassurance to compensate for low self-esteem whereas a grandiose narcissist induces jealousy primarily to gain power and control in the relationship (Tortoriello, Hart, Richardson, & Tullett, 2017).
> . . .
> Grandiose narcissism seems to resemble psychopathy in many respects, which raises the possibility that the tessellation of these conditions could be improved. It appears to be the case that grandiose narcissism might be better understood as a manifestation of psychopathy. This notion is supported by the finding that individuals who strongly exhibit psychopathic traits also tend to have a grandiose sense of self-worth (Gustafson & Ritzer, 1995; Miller, Sleep, Crowe, & Lynam, 2020). Conversely, vulnerable narcissism might be better conceived of as “narcissism proper” or “primary narcissism”.
Looks like they are pretty much trying to rebrand grandiose narcissism to psychopathy as you might suggest. Not really sure I see any value in changing the widely understood definition. I also didn't see any numbers about which type was actually more prevalent, however. Again, I was only able to do a cursory review. At this point, I think it's fair to conclude that there's more than one type of narcissism and that one of them probably has nothing to do with low self esteem, while the other probably does.
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188692...!
> low self esteem / insecurity is often the root cause of negative and harmful behaviors.
Low self esteem and insecurity aren't the problem. Lots of people suffer from it through little fault of their own and, frankly, people who think they're always right and never question themselves can be just as toxic.
The problem is people repressing their insecurities, acting out and making other people responsible for their pain, instead of facing their insecurities head on e.g. through therapy.
Low self esteem and insecurity aren't the problem. Lots of people suffer from it through little fault of their own and, frankly, people who think they're always right and never question themselves can be just as toxic.
The problem is people repressing their insecurities, acting out and making other people responsible for their pain, instead of facing their insecurities head on e.g. through therapy.
My mother had cancer when I was in high school. My Dad ended up crying when my grandmother was around over it. My grandmother then told my Mom that she didn't think he was up to being her husband through difficult times.
I have a lot of female friends. They will rip their boyfriends apart for vulnerable moments or emotional needs or economic inadequacies. One complained about him having to visit his dying aunt and leaving her alone for a weekend. Another called her boyfriend a loser for not making enough money for them to live in Vancouver proper (an expensive place). Heck, my mother has called my father as loser for "only" making about 250K a year (my parents live in a 1 million person LCOL city).
I have a lot of female friends. They will rip their boyfriends apart for vulnerable moments or emotional needs or economic inadequacies. One complained about him having to visit his dying aunt and leaving her alone for a weekend. Another called her boyfriend a loser for not making enough money for them to live in Vancouver proper (an expensive place). Heck, my mother has called my father as loser for "only" making about 250K a year (my parents live in a 1 million person LCOL city).
Find better people to hang out with. Not everybody is like that. Do all you can to cut that sort of toxic behavior from your life.
This isn’t “normal”, or at least it’s not in my experience. They sound like immature spoiled brats.
Surprisingly more normal than people realize. Most don’t ever air their dirty laundry like this.
You go through this as a man and it reinforces your suppression of feelings and desires to never open up to anyone because of the humiliation.
No wonder men kill themselves 4x as often as women.
You go through this as a man and it reinforces your suppression of feelings and desires to never open up to anyone because of the humiliation.
No wonder men kill themselves 4x as often as women.
Man, I am sorry to say but you have some f**ed up people around you, care to maybe let some of them off your life? Quality over quantity of relationships as in everything else
Curious how much your mother makes and the girlfriend as well.
My mom is a stay at home mom. My friend is a non profit manager. I don’t know what she earns, but I don’t imagine it is six figures.
Oooof. OK, thanks for delivering.
I come from a conservative Muslim country, and there is no doubt that we’re well behind America in terms of gender equality when considering the whole picture. But I think there are areas where we are distinctly ahead. The women in my family are all highly educated and accomplished. But at the same time, none grew up being fed a narrative that what will make them happy is to find a sensitive man who shares their taste in music. And none believe that. American society by contrast feeds women all these false narratives. And then it leaves them holding the bag—raising children alone, etc.—when ideals don’t match reality.
but the problem is that those ideals are the result of the western model of gender equality. maybe they are false narratives, but the current alternative is going back to the inequality of the past.
the question then would be, how does gender equality look like that doesn't rely on these narratives?
if on the other hand we assume that these ideals are good, then the problem is not that the narratives are false, but that we haven't yet actually achieved equality.
the question then would be, how does gender equality look like that doesn't rely on these narratives?
if on the other hand we assume that these ideals are good, then the problem is not that the narratives are false, but that we haven't yet actually achieved equality.
I think that’s a false dichotomy. First, greater equality today isn’t only, and possibly isn’t even primarily, a function of “ideals” but instead economic change. Women are more equal to men today because “good jobs” involve knowledge work, instead of putting up utility polls are lifting up heavy things on an assembly line.
Second, you can have “moral equality” without assuming “fungibility.” My cousin just got married. The wife is brilliant—she’s civil engineer. The aunties are all impressed. But if they have a baby and her priorities shift and she decides she wants to stay home (which happens to many women!) those same aunties will 100% expect my cousin to take up the slack and support the family, because he’s the man. Morally equal, but not fungible.
Second, you can have “moral equality” without assuming “fungibility.” My cousin just got married. The wife is brilliant—she’s civil engineer. The aunties are all impressed. But if they have a baby and her priorities shift and she decides she wants to stay home (which happens to many women!) those same aunties will 100% expect my cousin to take up the slack and support the family, because he’s the man. Morally equal, but not fungible.
yes, that's true, but that is not the equality we seem to want in the west. statistics show that female engineers are still a stark minority in the west. we are far from achieving equality here. in muslim countries and in china there are way more women in those fields. there is a school of thought that believes that the reason for that is because in the east, women can't get equality at home, so they find it at work. whereas in the west, women are expecting to get equality at home and are therefore not looking for it at work. my personal guess is that in the west career is more important to men than family, whereas in the east family matters more, and women only achieve equality in the areas that matter less.
traditionally picking up the slack would mean for the man to go earn more money. but women want to keep working. and, this is part of the issue, in middle to lower income families they have to. we have created a situation where a single income is no longer enough to support a family. the economic change is not financial freedom for women as much as a financial dependency on both parents working.
and the narrative we are creating and that we seem to want is that men help in the household and with childcare. and that too is happening but only just enough so that everyone supporting that narrative can point to an example, but not as much as everyone thinks. even in households where both parents are working, most of the housework is still done by women.
traditionally picking up the slack would mean for the man to go earn more money. but women want to keep working. and, this is part of the issue, in middle to lower income families they have to. we have created a situation where a single income is no longer enough to support a family. the economic change is not financial freedom for women as much as a financial dependency on both parents working.
and the narrative we are creating and that we seem to want is that men help in the household and with childcare. and that too is happening but only just enough so that everyone supporting that narrative can point to an example, but not as much as everyone thinks. even in households where both parents are working, most of the housework is still done by women.
Huh? Connect the dots between the narrative of pairing up with a partner who shares your taste in music and raising children alone? This reads like a parody. Are the men spurning their children because of the woman's scorn for Post Malone?
In Bangladesh, parents select men (90% of marriages are arranged) based on earning power/education, family reputation, and looks, in that order. American culture by contrast immerses women in this narrative that what’s important in a man is sense of humor, sensitivity, impulsive romanticism, etc. Indeed, American culture portrays women who prioritize the things that Bangladeshi moms tell their daughters to prioritize quite negatively.
This hurts women in two ways. First it makes them more likely to select shiftless men who will run out in their families to pursue their dreams of being YouTube stars. Second, by setting cultural expectations and incentives, it increases the supply of such men.
This hurts women in two ways. First it makes them more likely to select shiftless men who will run out in their families to pursue their dreams of being YouTube stars. Second, by setting cultural expectations and incentives, it increases the supply of such men.
I read "shares taste in music" as "will have extensive common interests / be best friend".
When the narrative of "the one" breaks down, marriages dissolve. Children get custodial_parents -= 1.
When the narrative of "the one" breaks down, marriages dissolve. Children get custodial_parents -= 1.
I'm confident children are better off in two-parent households, but I also have plenty of friends who've gone through divorces, and not one of them fails to care for their children. It's just a mystifying thing for Rayiner to have said. Women have been sold a bill of goods, he claims, and as a result, men are abandoning their children. The tragedy of it all!
I'm also confident that servers are better off with passwordless SSH, but I know plenty of companies with passworded SSH who respond well to security concerns, and would in all cases be available and sincere in their attempts to prevent their infrastructure from being compromised.
Some times, one way is objectively better than another way. And yes it may be ego-bruising for those doing things the "less good" way, but we don't need to throat-clear so obnoxiously whenever these things are discussed.
I do think you should also take an honest approach to the valuable points Rayiner has made, here and elsewhere. Not everything is correct, but recently it seems like you're just jeering and nervously trying to change the subject when actual discussion of the issue would be uncomfortable for certain current orthodoxy.
In this case, American women (and men!) have been told, through the media, their peers, and reinforced through modern corporate culture, that behaving, acting, and expecting things in a certain way will make them happier. But that's not bearing out in reality. So are they being setting up for ego death, when reality doesn't match expectations, if the expectations are wholly unrealistic and perhaps even wrong?
Some times, one way is objectively better than another way. And yes it may be ego-bruising for those doing things the "less good" way, but we don't need to throat-clear so obnoxiously whenever these things are discussed.
I do think you should also take an honest approach to the valuable points Rayiner has made, here and elsewhere. Not everything is correct, but recently it seems like you're just jeering and nervously trying to change the subject when actual discussion of the issue would be uncomfortable for certain current orthodoxy.
In this case, American women (and men!) have been told, through the media, their peers, and reinforced through modern corporate culture, that behaving, acting, and expecting things in a certain way will make them happier. But that's not bearing out in reality. So are they being setting up for ego death, when reality doesn't match expectations, if the expectations are wholly unrealistic and perhaps even wrong?
Some divorced moms don't do a great job of letting the dad remain involved in a significant way. "Every other weekend" kind of thing. To the detriment of the children, sometimes.
I don't want to generalize, but that's a common narrative also. I have no direct experience.
I don't want to generalize, but that's a common narrative also. I have no direct experience.
Basically put, i think they're saying something along the lines of: The person that you have common interests with isn't necessarily the person you want to raise a family with. But that's what people are conditioned to focus on, rather than more practical things
Yes, the part where having unrealistic expectations of a partner can lead the end of a relationship is coherent, if obvious, The part where the women is left raising a child alone is neither.
It should also be obvious that maintaining two households is significantly more expensive than one. So excepting the cases where both parties reconstitute a household, these folks are on average poorer than their married counterparts in societies with minimal divorce. Further, the rate of failure to pay full child support in the US is high, like over 50%.
I’d recount some of my own experiences here, but since my actual name is connected to this account, I’d rather not. But I have also experienced this first-hand, many times throughout my life.
create a throwaway account?
As a man I also feel repulsed by it, if it's too much. Even when I am being vulnerable, I unconsciously make sure to stay in the "strong because vulnerable and facing hell" zone instead of the "weak and pathetic cry-baby" zone.
Sadly, I've had a similar experience.
I had a friend whose mental health always seemed a little precarious. One time he told me that he'd broken down and just hugged one of his kids and cried.
Intellectually, I knew he deserved pity. But my gut reaction was revulsion at showing such weakness to one of his kids. In retrospect, what most bothered me was probably the inversion of caregiving burden between a parent and a young child.
I had a friend whose mental health always seemed a little precarious. One time he told me that he'd broken down and just hugged one of his kids and cried.
Intellectually, I knew he deserved pity. But my gut reaction was revulsion at showing such weakness to one of his kids. In retrospect, what most bothered me was probably the inversion of caregiving burden between a parent and a young child.
> I'm retrospect, what most bothered me was probably the inversion of
caregiving burden between a parent and a young child.
Sorry for going off-thread a little, as I appreciate the subject here is men experiencing negative behaviours when showing vulnerability.
But I wrote about the issue of "inversion of caregiving" (good compact phrase) in Digital Vegan in respect to technology.
It's become perfectly acceptable for parents/adults to lionise the supposed skills of children around tech. They say things like: "Oh well kids just instinctively know about technology don't they", or feel perfectly happy recounting with a laugh how "My five year old has to show me how to use the TV remote".
If adults are too lazy or stupid to understand any technology and its attendant risks, handing it to children under their care is neglect.
I think this is part of a wider problem of shrugging abdication of agency under condition of "convenience" worship.
Sorry for going off-thread a little, as I appreciate the subject here is men experiencing negative behaviours when showing vulnerability.
But I wrote about the issue of "inversion of caregiving" (good compact phrase) in Digital Vegan in respect to technology.
It's become perfectly acceptable for parents/adults to lionise the supposed skills of children around tech. They say things like: "Oh well kids just instinctively know about technology don't they", or feel perfectly happy recounting with a laugh how "My five year old has to show me how to use the TV remote".
If adults are too lazy or stupid to understand any technology and its attendant risks, handing it to children under their care is neglect.
I think this is part of a wider problem of shrugging abdication of agency under condition of "convenience" worship.
I think it's possible to be proud of your children for adapting to modern interfaces more quickly and easily than you, while simultaneously remaining cautious about risks those technologies can present. I don't think the straw-parent in your example needs to know how to work the remote (or the computer) to understand most of the important risks, e.g. of unmoderated content consumption. I'm pretty sure it's still unacceptable in most spheres for parents to admit no boundaries or limitations to TV or internet usage, especially conditioned on age or subject matter.
Understanding the technology and understanding its attendant risks aren't completely orthogonal, but neither does one imply the other - or else the kids who "instinctively know about technology" would also instinctively know the risks. On the other hand, it's probably faster and easier for someone who understands the technology to learn about the attendant risks, and understanding the technology may be required to personally validate the risks or to invent the best remediation strategies. But a considerable amount of parenting is, and always has been, received wisdom, for better or worse. I can see an argument to describe "lazy" as neglectful, but I take issue with "stupid": the scope of a parent's best reasonable effort to understand and mitigate technological risks for their children should be conditioned on what level of understanding they can realistically achieve, or else "neglect" is reduced to an IQ test.
Understanding the technology and understanding its attendant risks aren't completely orthogonal, but neither does one imply the other - or else the kids who "instinctively know about technology" would also instinctively know the risks. On the other hand, it's probably faster and easier for someone who understands the technology to learn about the attendant risks, and understanding the technology may be required to personally validate the risks or to invent the best remediation strategies. But a considerable amount of parenting is, and always has been, received wisdom, for better or worse. I can see an argument to describe "lazy" as neglectful, but I take issue with "stupid": the scope of a parent's best reasonable effort to understand and mitigate technological risks for their children should be conditioned on what level of understanding they can realistically achieve, or else "neglect" is reduced to an IQ test.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
It is possible to be simultaneously cautious and proud of one's children for quick adaptation, but it is far from common. In fact it's rare in my observation, and the pride is misplaced.
These "straw parents" are very real and embodied. I talk to them often through Digital Self Defence classes and have a first hand feel for their struggles (while also being a parent myself).
> Understanding the technology and understanding its attendant risks aren't [s] completely orthogonal, but neither does one imply the other
This is a very interesting point you make. My opinion is that they are very much orthogonal right now, and that is a major problem. Much of what passes for "understanding" is shallow marketing hype, at best dangerously incomplete, but more typically misleading, deception and propaganda. I quite agree with comedian Stuart Lee's assessment of Vodafone's guide to online child safety as "Mr. Fox's Guide to Hen-house Security".
We are in desperate need of a renaissance in digital literacy. I have called for Digital Literacy 2.0 as a movement to repair much of the cavalier and avoidant half-arsed education around technology these past 30 years.
Despite the likelihood that the implementation will be a shitshow - regressive for many necessary forms of speech to challenge technofascism - in the UK our "Online Safety Bill" contains much good stuff in the margins and has my broad support.
I get the sense that you are neither defending bad technology nor bad parenting. But together these the things feed off each other - and the results are self-evident in depressed, suicidal, distracted states of anxious acedia and nihilism so many children suffer today, along with the frustration and confusion of parents who feel their children "need" to engage in technologies and habits that are clearly harmful to them.
EDIT: My main point stands though - that ot is unacceptable for parents to transfer the burden of responsibility to their children. That is neglect, however you frame the abilities and knowledge of the parties.
respects
It is possible to be simultaneously cautious and proud of one's children for quick adaptation, but it is far from common. In fact it's rare in my observation, and the pride is misplaced.
These "straw parents" are very real and embodied. I talk to them often through Digital Self Defence classes and have a first hand feel for their struggles (while also being a parent myself).
> Understanding the technology and understanding its attendant risks aren't [s] completely orthogonal, but neither does one imply the other
This is a very interesting point you make. My opinion is that they are very much orthogonal right now, and that is a major problem. Much of what passes for "understanding" is shallow marketing hype, at best dangerously incomplete, but more typically misleading, deception and propaganda. I quite agree with comedian Stuart Lee's assessment of Vodafone's guide to online child safety as "Mr. Fox's Guide to Hen-house Security".
We are in desperate need of a renaissance in digital literacy. I have called for Digital Literacy 2.0 as a movement to repair much of the cavalier and avoidant half-arsed education around technology these past 30 years.
Despite the likelihood that the implementation will be a shitshow - regressive for many necessary forms of speech to challenge technofascism - in the UK our "Online Safety Bill" contains much good stuff in the margins and has my broad support.
I get the sense that you are neither defending bad technology nor bad parenting. But together these the things feed off each other - and the results are self-evident in depressed, suicidal, distracted states of anxious acedia and nihilism so many children suffer today, along with the frustration and confusion of parents who feel their children "need" to engage in technologies and habits that are clearly harmful to them.
EDIT: My main point stands though - that ot is unacceptable for parents to transfer the burden of responsibility to their children. That is neglect, however you frame the abilities and knowledge of the parties.
respects
Do you know why you are repulsed, if I may ask? We have completely different ways to tackle this, apparently! :D
I'm like you, totally stoic. But if one of my mates has problems or is obviously in a dark place and wants to talk, it doesn't bother me at all, even if it is a, from my perspective, petty reason - we're humans and not rational machines, after all.
I'm like you, totally stoic. But if one of my mates has problems or is obviously in a dark place and wants to talk, it doesn't bother me at all, even if it is a, from my perspective, petty reason - we're humans and not rational machines, after all.
Well it's a spectrum.
If someone's opening up about something truly traumatic or difficult, they get all my attention and respect.
But if I feel like they're being a cry-baby (e.g. being hurt by words rather than their meaning, complaining with a plank in their eye, complaining without making efforts, being dramatic over a small difficulty/fear/etc., not pushing their limits, etc.) I cannot but feel repulsed.
Edit: as for the why, I guess because as men I think we should always strive to improve, face the abyss, and overcome dragons on a frequent basis. If someone cannot overcome the tiniest of dragon eggs, they seem weak and not worth my time. It's the antithesis of someone I want to emulate or associate with.
If someone's opening up about something truly traumatic or difficult, they get all my attention and respect.
But if I feel like they're being a cry-baby (e.g. being hurt by words rather than their meaning, complaining with a plank in their eye, complaining without making efforts, being dramatic over a small difficulty/fear/etc., not pushing their limits, etc.) I cannot but feel repulsed.
Edit: as for the why, I guess because as men I think we should always strive to improve, face the abyss, and overcome dragons on a frequent basis. If someone cannot overcome the tiniest of dragon eggs, they seem weak and not worth my time. It's the antithesis of someone I want to emulate or associate with.
This is 100% accurate in my experience. It is good to know that others have also experienced this. At least the more old-fashioned women are honest about their needs. The feminist type pretends to like sensitive men but is disgusted when they open up. If you're a straight man you should never open up to your SO (easier said than done of course).
This is too simplistic. Life is better when you can open up, and there are women who welcome it for real and not just with words.
The hard part is that it's something you can only really learn about your partner with certainty once it really matters.
So in a way it's actually better to open up early, when the cost of being disappointed isn't too high yet.
The hard part is that it's something you can only really learn about your partner with certainty once it really matters.
So in a way it's actually better to open up early, when the cost of being disappointed isn't too high yet.
Also have experienced it first hand. Show real emotion and they immediately start to distance themselves, and stop talking, and physically move away from you.
As someone who divorced last year and is now in a relationship with a wonderful woman who identifies as a feminist: not all women are like this.
I’ve been open and emotional on multiple occasions with my partner, including to the point of crying. I’m open about my doubts, flaws, and weaknesses. It hasn’t diminished her desire or commitment in the slightest.
And if it did, I’d much rather lose her than lose myself like I did in my marriage.
Living your life behind a mask to earn the approval of someone else is the path to the life of “quiet desperation” that Thoreau wrote about. You’ll never feel loved and accepted for who you are, because you won’t have truly revealed yourself.
Why be with someone if you can’t be truly known by them?
I’ve been open and emotional on multiple occasions with my partner, including to the point of crying. I’m open about my doubts, flaws, and weaknesses. It hasn’t diminished her desire or commitment in the slightest.
And if it did, I’d much rather lose her than lose myself like I did in my marriage.
Living your life behind a mask to earn the approval of someone else is the path to the life of “quiet desperation” that Thoreau wrote about. You’ll never feel loved and accepted for who you are, because you won’t have truly revealed yourself.
Why be with someone if you can’t be truly known by them?
After reading the replies I believe this dynamic is real, but from my own opposite experiences, not universal. I asked my feminist wife about this and she said the reason she isn't put off by vulnerable men is partly because her father was a sensitive man and traditional gender roles were not enforced by her mother either. And that feminists are not immune to the pathriarchy.
So I think this reaction can change but it will take time.
So I think this reaction can change but it will take time.
Did you read the article? It's about social/educational/economic programs that have profound impact for women but little to no impact for men. Programs that include both men and women, but where men aren't seeing any real improvements from them. It discusses men and women both having the same opportunities, but men are not seizing them like women are, due to what is cited as a lack of drive/ambition/motivation. It mentions that research into understanding this gender gap is not being done, but is paramount for effective program and policy design, and that continuing to spend money on these programs that don't work for half of the population is irresponsible.
I don't know if I see the connection to emotional vulnerability in a romantic relationship.
I don't know if I see the connection to emotional vulnerability in a romantic relationship.
> Because men are bullied when they ask for it. This is what Brene Brown found:
>> Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men: We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust.
How is that relevant? Supposedly men are not good at asking for and receiving help because of their traditional gender role.
>> Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men: We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust.
How is that relevant? Supposedly men are not good at asking for and receiving help because of their traditional gender role.
I have experienced this all too well.
You have to be an extraordinary man to have an ordinary life these days.
You have to be an extraordinary man to have an ordinary life these days.
Women are like rats, first to flee a sinking ship. A man needs male friends, counting on your spouse to be your support system is the biggest mistake man can make.
My mom is filing for divorce right now and my dad has been entirely financially dependent on her for the past 30 years. He was a homemaker, after all. I have been reflecting on this exact thought (specifically, women are not "loyal" and will abandon a partner that doesn't produce income or has some other shortcoming much more readily than men will). I used the "rats fleeing a sinking ship" metaphor when talking about it with my wife the other day.
That isn't to say I don't think they should be divorced. It's just what's on my mind.
That isn't to say I don't think they should be divorced. It's just what's on my mind.
the problem is that not being able to ask for help also makes finding this kind of friends that can be your support system very difficult. so i have to disagree. i need my partner to be my support system, and i want to be hers.
it is still good to have friends, but for me this is the definition of an ideal relationship. a fortress of well-being where both partners support each other.
it is still good to have friends, but for me this is the definition of an ideal relationship. a fortress of well-being where both partners support each other.
Chiming in on a throwaway account to confirm that this behavior toward men who've shown vulnerability is 100% not limited to current or potential romantic partners and may be displayed by supposed friends and family. People you've known for years, maybe for nearly your whole life, can turn and treat you as worthless human trash for having shown yourself to be "less of a man". Maybe they cut you off as a friend. Maybe they fail to call 911 when you need medical attention, neglect you after major surgery, and then gaslight you about it while still making sure to remind you how worthless you are. And people wonder how toxic masculinity perpetuates.
Bingo. “Ask for help” and get ignored at best, or stigmatized at worse.
Exactly this. Specifically in the U.S. we have a self righteous moralist problem. People say words about how they want equality. In action they're just following discriminatory culture all the same.
It's not new, it's influenced from American Christian culture where the social perception of individuals is more important than the truth. The perception of holiness to buy ones way.
In reality the overwhelming majority of those that say it's "okay" for men to be vulnerable and emotional will react negatively when it happens.
Unfortunately that in itself is an unacceptable opinion by the moralist because it paints woman in a poor light. Again, caring about perceptions, not the truth. In truth its universal, woman+man relationships just happen to be the majority.
It happens in all other forms. It's something about the power dynamic of relationships.
It's not new, it's influenced from American Christian culture where the social perception of individuals is more important than the truth. The perception of holiness to buy ones way.
In reality the overwhelming majority of those that say it's "okay" for men to be vulnerable and emotional will react negatively when it happens.
Unfortunately that in itself is an unacceptable opinion by the moralist because it paints woman in a poor light. Again, caring about perceptions, not the truth. In truth its universal, woman+man relationships just happen to be the majority.
It happens in all other forms. It's something about the power dynamic of relationships.
> It's not new, it's influenced from American Christian culture where the social perception of individuals is more important than the truth.
This isn't a uniquely Christian thing, and it's definitely not something that suddenly popped up in the last century. Here's Jesus rebuking the 1st century jews for this exact behavior:
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward." Matthew 6:5 ESV
I think this is more of a "human" problem than a uniquely Christian problem.
This isn't a uniquely Christian thing, and it's definitely not something that suddenly popped up in the last century. Here's Jesus rebuking the 1st century jews for this exact behavior:
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward." Matthew 6:5 ESV
I think this is more of a "human" problem than a uniquely Christian problem.
The only way I can read that that makes sense is to say that "American Christian" is used to distinguish from actual Christianity. Because indeed, the Bible is extremely explicit, repeatedly and at considerable length, that appearances are either irrelevant or inversely correlated with things that actually matter.
Lots of people in this discussion are misunderstanding what is happening here with this dynamic where men "finally have the courage to be vulnerable" but are then immediately seen as unattractive.
It's not the vulnerability itself that is the problem- it's that the vulnerability is revealing what is perceived as a huge character flaw: emotional weakness. When guys are admitting that they feel afraid, helpless, scared, etc. it's demonstrating that they are lacking strength, courage, and emotional maturity to deal with hardships constructively. They probably really are lacking these things, and the women didn't realize it before because they kept silent.
Ironically, vulnerability is actually one thing women find most attractive in men, as explained in Mark Manson's book models- it is really an impressive and attractive thing when done properly, it shows that you aren't afraid of the woman's rejection.
However, to be attractively vulnerable you also need to be strong, brave, and emotionally mature. You can't really fake this, it comes from hard work and life experience. It takes a lot of work and time for most people, and yes, crying over little things might be a valuable first step in being aware of your own emotions and starting to work on these issues.
What women are looking for in a vulnerable man, is a man that has overcome some really difficult stuff, and is tough and stable as nails in the face of adversity. He might be upset about something, and share that, but he also has a plan for what he is going to do about it. He isn't much afraid of her, or of sharing his inner feelings and challenges, because he has a lifelong habit of directly facing his fears in a courageous way with circumstances much more difficult.
I do share my inner challenges and feelings with my girlfriend, and she finds it attractive. I have also been through some really terrible shit in my life, and always have that in mind that the current challenge is tiny in comparison, and something that will make me even stronger once I overcome it. I also plan to fix the problem myself, and let her know that I have such a plan.
Vulnerability revels inner truths about a person. Are those truths about you attractive or unattractive? If your inner truths are unattractive is that her fault or yours?
It's not the vulnerability itself that is the problem- it's that the vulnerability is revealing what is perceived as a huge character flaw: emotional weakness. When guys are admitting that they feel afraid, helpless, scared, etc. it's demonstrating that they are lacking strength, courage, and emotional maturity to deal with hardships constructively. They probably really are lacking these things, and the women didn't realize it before because they kept silent.
Ironically, vulnerability is actually one thing women find most attractive in men, as explained in Mark Manson's book models- it is really an impressive and attractive thing when done properly, it shows that you aren't afraid of the woman's rejection.
However, to be attractively vulnerable you also need to be strong, brave, and emotionally mature. You can't really fake this, it comes from hard work and life experience. It takes a lot of work and time for most people, and yes, crying over little things might be a valuable first step in being aware of your own emotions and starting to work on these issues.
What women are looking for in a vulnerable man, is a man that has overcome some really difficult stuff, and is tough and stable as nails in the face of adversity. He might be upset about something, and share that, but he also has a plan for what he is going to do about it. He isn't much afraid of her, or of sharing his inner feelings and challenges, because he has a lifelong habit of directly facing his fears in a courageous way with circumstances much more difficult.
I do share my inner challenges and feelings with my girlfriend, and she finds it attractive. I have also been through some really terrible shit in my life, and always have that in mind that the current challenge is tiny in comparison, and something that will make me even stronger once I overcome it. I also plan to fix the problem myself, and let her know that I have such a plan.
Vulnerability revels inner truths about a person. Are those truths about you attractive or unattractive? If your inner truths are unattractive is that her fault or yours?
goes well with the primitive reactions at the apparent foundation of seduction (something I don't like btw)
good old triggers are more potent than any progressist concept that popped up in the last century
good old triggers are more potent than any progressist concept that popped up in the last century
Strongly disagree. Very dangerous conclusion to draw. There is a difference between vulnerability and being “a rock”. Being “a rock” is helpful in terms of being reliable and safe. But repressing emotions and giving the impression that you always are in control is what eventually kills many marriages.
Yeah I definitely remember the "i didn't marry an emotional man" talk from my wife.
I agree
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I think it is more that many men don't consider the benefits worth the effort. Plenty of men are happy living in an old building playing video games all day. Don't need a lot of money for that.
They need a better reward than just a nicer career to consider it worth it.
They need a better reward than just a nicer career to consider it worth it.
Honestly fellow throwaway, that sounds pretty nice.
Admittedly, if I end up never having a relationship/family, I could walk away from anything intense in 5-10 years pretty easily.
“Don’t Worry Darling” screams this out loud.
>He is torn between being the kind of man he has been told to be and the kind of man the world seems to want now.
Ironically, I think many men seem to experience this in the opposite direction implied by the article. Men are told to be obedient male feminists, and they find a world in which that mentality sets them up for failure. Women on the otherhand are encouraged to pursue the "toxic masculinity" mindset that men have been chastized for.
So it seems that masculinity itself is a winning strategy, just the sex pursuing that strategy has partially reversed.
Ironically, I think many men seem to experience this in the opposite direction implied by the article. Men are told to be obedient male feminists, and they find a world in which that mentality sets them up for failure. Women on the otherhand are encouraged to pursue the "toxic masculinity" mindset that men have been chastized for.
So it seems that masculinity itself is a winning strategy, just the sex pursuing that strategy has partially reversed.
For any young people reading this and feeling hopeless - it's not universal. There are friend groups, companies, and places where people are kind to each other, and if someone comes in playing dominance hierarchy games (is this what you mean by 'toxic masculinity?) they will be politely redirected, and eventually shown the door.
There are good situations out there, and as you get older you may gain the ability to explore more and find one.
There are good situations out there, and as you get older you may gain the ability to explore more and find one.
Any young man who is confused should read this series: https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Male-Rollo-Tomassi/dp/149277...
It will give you peace of mind and it will take away that "wtf?!" anxiety you feel (in time; it's not immediate so be patient). Just read the books and consider the ideas, don't get sucked into the manosphere bs (there are a lot of idiots who grift on these ideas—the only guy who actually backs up his points is the author of this series).
It will give you peace of mind and it will take away that "wtf?!" anxiety you feel (in time; it's not immediate so be patient). Just read the books and consider the ideas, don't get sucked into the manosphere bs (there are a lot of idiots who grift on these ideas—the only guy who actually backs up his points is the author of this series).
The ability to survive as a species is a powerful driver and not easily removed. It might for some, but the majority of boys will become men.
The education system itself is a huge part of the problem in my opinion. Women are naturally more obedient, while men are more skeptical of authority. The education system is designed to reward the most obedient - those who can sit still in class for lecture after lecture and complete homework assignments. Add to that the fact that most teachers are women, and it is not surprising to me at all that boys lag girls in school. Boys outperforming girls on standardized tests shows that they're not stupid, just working within a system not suited to them.
As a male I always hated school because I thought it was tyrannical, being forced to learn and do things I didn't care about. Luckily I still complied enough to get by, but had I been more principled I might've just withdrawn from it altogether. I think a lot more men would relate to my experience than women. A better education system I believe would better facilitate independent thinking, real world problems, and entrepreneurship.
> "The cost-benefit analysis showed an overall gain of $69,000 per female participant — a return on investment of at least 12% — compared to an overall loss of $21,000 for each male participant. In short, for men, the program was both costly and ineffective."
I wonder how they calculated this. If they are referring to post-graduation earnings, this does surprise me. I wonder how many years after graduation they are using to calculate these values.
As a male I always hated school because I thought it was tyrannical, being forced to learn and do things I didn't care about. Luckily I still complied enough to get by, but had I been more principled I might've just withdrawn from it altogether. I think a lot more men would relate to my experience than women. A better education system I believe would better facilitate independent thinking, real world problems, and entrepreneurship.
> "The cost-benefit analysis showed an overall gain of $69,000 per female participant — a return on investment of at least 12% — compared to an overall loss of $21,000 for each male participant. In short, for men, the program was both costly and ineffective."
I wonder how they calculated this. If they are referring to post-graduation earnings, this does surprise me. I wonder how many years after graduation they are using to calculate these values.
Cost-benefit is easy to explain. Men with a low-tier liberal arts college degree fare far worse than men in the trades. A woman with any college degree at all, is a shoe-in for government or administrative jobs, and a woman with no college degree is likely claiming almost zero income in a tip-based role.
Reading this article I'm once again struck by how, as with so many problems in the U.S. is so rare to look outside their borders to learn from what is working in other countries.
Americans seem to have an almost pathological blindness to seeking out the experience of other countries.
Americans seem to have an almost pathological blindness to seeking out the experience of other countries.
The average American doesn't have much representation in systemic decisions these days.
It's not obvious that cross-country comparisons are useful for the kinds of problems the article describes. They seem cultural, and you can't really just decide that the US is going to have the cultural norms of some other country even if you think you'd get good results.
There's also other factors - almost all other countries are a lot more culturally, racially, and religiously homogeneous than the US. Obviously a lot of that is upstream from the resultant culture, but it still makes comparison hard. It's easy to point to things the US is "doing wrong" that it's famous for, but it's important to remember that very few cultural dividing lines are actually a majority in the US, and almost everyone is some melange of different traditions and identities compared to most other countries.
> almost all other countries are a lot more culturally, racially, and religiously homogeneous than the US.
That's not even true in the developed world, much less so in the rest (where ethnic or religious conflicts often lead to disastrous consequences). It's just that Americans sometimes have a narrow lens when it comes to diversity: "they're all white (or all black), so they must all think the same, speak the same language, have the same religion, etc." Linguistic diversity, for example, is much greater even in individual European countries than in the US.
That's not even true in the developed world, much less so in the rest (where ethnic or religious conflicts often lead to disastrous consequences). It's just that Americans sometimes have a narrow lens when it comes to diversity: "they're all white (or all black), so they must all think the same, speak the same language, have the same religion, etc." Linguistic diversity, for example, is much greater even in individual European countries than in the US.
Do you have a source for that? Most of the demographic charts I've seen for the "developed world" are a fair bit more homogeneous, though a lot of that seems to also be that European census numbers are much less in depth about this sort of thing.
I'm certainly not making the absurd claim you're proposing that "they're all white so they're the same thing". What I am claiming is that, partially due to the relative population sizes, the "white" population of somewhere like France is more homogeneous in cultural tradition. Obviously there's some amount of cross-migration between EU countries, but most of the US's "white" population is, obviously, non-native within the last 3-6 generations, and from all over Europe mostly. Obviously not all of China or India is exactly the same culturally, but those are both countries who have a core cultural history for their residents that goes back far before the US was even a thing, and that tends to provided a basis for the more specific cultures that are different, providing some commonalities.
Same with religion - while the US is predominantly Christian, it's essentially the breeding ground for almost every major denomination of Protestant church/new faith movement, compared to countries that have a strong Catholic-specific background. Just structurally, the teachings and culture of US Protestant/Evangelical churches are more different from each other than what I've seen within more top-down Catholic or Muslim communities I've interacted with.
You're certainly right about countries with a history of ethnic conflict, "developed" or otherwise, but many of those are majority religions/cultures fighting minority ones in an attempt to create a homogeneous state, and separately, I'm assuming OP didn't imply that the US should be looking to Yemen or Ethopia for examples on how to solve problems of cultural issues at this point.
I'm not even sure about the linguistic part. Per US Census in 2017, only 78% of US households speak English at home, compared to 90% of residents in Germany speaking German at home according to a 2019 Pew Survey, or 92% of people in England and Wales speaking English per a 2011 Census there.
I'm certainly not making the absurd claim you're proposing that "they're all white so they're the same thing". What I am claiming is that, partially due to the relative population sizes, the "white" population of somewhere like France is more homogeneous in cultural tradition. Obviously there's some amount of cross-migration between EU countries, but most of the US's "white" population is, obviously, non-native within the last 3-6 generations, and from all over Europe mostly. Obviously not all of China or India is exactly the same culturally, but those are both countries who have a core cultural history for their residents that goes back far before the US was even a thing, and that tends to provided a basis for the more specific cultures that are different, providing some commonalities.
Same with religion - while the US is predominantly Christian, it's essentially the breeding ground for almost every major denomination of Protestant church/new faith movement, compared to countries that have a strong Catholic-specific background. Just structurally, the teachings and culture of US Protestant/Evangelical churches are more different from each other than what I've seen within more top-down Catholic or Muslim communities I've interacted with.
You're certainly right about countries with a history of ethnic conflict, "developed" or otherwise, but many of those are majority religions/cultures fighting minority ones in an attempt to create a homogeneous state, and separately, I'm assuming OP didn't imply that the US should be looking to Yemen or Ethopia for examples on how to solve problems of cultural issues at this point.
I'm not even sure about the linguistic part. Per US Census in 2017, only 78% of US households speak English at home, compared to 90% of residents in Germany speaking German at home according to a 2019 Pew Survey, or 92% of people in England and Wales speaking English per a 2011 Census there.
It's true that the US has a lot of immigrants speaking various languages, but they're all bound together by their need to speak English to function in US society (at least in most parts, I guess). And while there is a certain religious diversity, it has not so far led to violent conflict.
Countries like Switzerland, Belgium etc. are linguistically divided with no one language common to all. Even countries with one dominant language (e.g. Germany) have regional minority languages (e.g. Danish). Russian-speaking people live in Ukraine (without being "Russian" in any political sense) or in Belarus. Swedes live in Finland. Yugoslavia fell apart because of ethnic tensions between groups of people that are linguistically close, but religiously diverse (Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim), and there are still Serb minorities in Croatia and vice versa. In general, the history of Europe is littered with people that are not that culturally different going at war with each other, or treating each other like shit, without the need for there being a difference in skin colour (just consider the 30 years war, for example). It's calmed down in the last century, but it still reverberates throughout society.
edit: Forgot to mention Spain with its decades-long tension between the central government and Basque or Catalan separatists.
edit2: You mentioned India. India has 23 official languages.
Countries like Switzerland, Belgium etc. are linguistically divided with no one language common to all. Even countries with one dominant language (e.g. Germany) have regional minority languages (e.g. Danish). Russian-speaking people live in Ukraine (without being "Russian" in any political sense) or in Belarus. Swedes live in Finland. Yugoslavia fell apart because of ethnic tensions between groups of people that are linguistically close, but religiously diverse (Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim), and there are still Serb minorities in Croatia and vice versa. In general, the history of Europe is littered with people that are not that culturally different going at war with each other, or treating each other like shit, without the need for there being a difference in skin colour (just consider the 30 years war, for example). It's calmed down in the last century, but it still reverberates throughout society.
edit: Forgot to mention Spain with its decades-long tension between the central government and Basque or Catalan separatists.
edit2: You mentioned India. India has 23 official languages.
> need to speak English to function in US society (at least in most parts, I guess).
But the data doesn't seem to point to this, at least any more than other countries. More households, almost definitely by absolute numbers but also in percentage, in the US are predominantly speaking a language other than the official language of the country than almost anywhere in Europe.
The fact that Europe has a history of strife among culturally similar people seems to, if anything, prove my point? A lot of Europe is culturally similar, and yes, often the dividing lines are arbitrary and strange, but that diversity is a little different than the US. It's not as if Oregon is just all of the people in one cultural minority in the US, whereas sub-groups in Europe are often geographically distinct to some degree. Scotland, Calalan, plenty of bits of Eastern Europe, while a part of a larger country legally, are distinct cultural units. In the US, there's almost never that stark of a division larger than a specific neighborhood in a larger city.
Yes, Swedes live in Finland and countries like Austria have multiple official languages, but my original point is that, culturally, most people in Finland and Austria have more cultural similarity to their neighbors than I do with the 2nd generation Chinese immigrants that live on one side of me and the French-Creole couple on the other side.
I feel like we've gotten a bit afield from the original dispute though. The OP was implying that the US was being ignorant for not seeking counsel from other countries about cultural topics like gender differences. My issue with that is that it implies that there's an obvious solution to the US's cultural problems in some other country, when it's likely that the reason men or women may be struggling in the European/Protestant immigrant community may be different from why they're having issues in the Indian/Hindu immigrant community, which is likely different from the Indian/Muslim community and the Central American/Catholic community or the 5th generation Gen Z Caucasian Atheist community.
Handling and diagnosing each of those are likely different, and at a whole-country level, the US probably can't just try to import a solution that worked in the UK and think it will work broadly here. On the other end, I'd imagine groups in the US probably are looking at what groups in the home country of various immigrant populations are doing and sharing ideas, but that's likely happening at a level you won't know about unless you're in those communities.
In general, the US, even regionally or locally, isn't as close to being a monoculture in the same way many of the towns and regions in Europe or Asia are. I don't mean this to say that either way is better or worse, but that when it comes to values and culture, there's often much less of a shared understanding and history, which can make sharing large-scale social initiatives harder.
But the data doesn't seem to point to this, at least any more than other countries. More households, almost definitely by absolute numbers but also in percentage, in the US are predominantly speaking a language other than the official language of the country than almost anywhere in Europe.
The fact that Europe has a history of strife among culturally similar people seems to, if anything, prove my point? A lot of Europe is culturally similar, and yes, often the dividing lines are arbitrary and strange, but that diversity is a little different than the US. It's not as if Oregon is just all of the people in one cultural minority in the US, whereas sub-groups in Europe are often geographically distinct to some degree. Scotland, Calalan, plenty of bits of Eastern Europe, while a part of a larger country legally, are distinct cultural units. In the US, there's almost never that stark of a division larger than a specific neighborhood in a larger city.
Yes, Swedes live in Finland and countries like Austria have multiple official languages, but my original point is that, culturally, most people in Finland and Austria have more cultural similarity to their neighbors than I do with the 2nd generation Chinese immigrants that live on one side of me and the French-Creole couple on the other side.
I feel like we've gotten a bit afield from the original dispute though. The OP was implying that the US was being ignorant for not seeking counsel from other countries about cultural topics like gender differences. My issue with that is that it implies that there's an obvious solution to the US's cultural problems in some other country, when it's likely that the reason men or women may be struggling in the European/Protestant immigrant community may be different from why they're having issues in the Indian/Hindu immigrant community, which is likely different from the Indian/Muslim community and the Central American/Catholic community or the 5th generation Gen Z Caucasian Atheist community.
Handling and diagnosing each of those are likely different, and at a whole-country level, the US probably can't just try to import a solution that worked in the UK and think it will work broadly here. On the other end, I'd imagine groups in the US probably are looking at what groups in the home country of various immigrant populations are doing and sharing ideas, but that's likely happening at a level you won't know about unless you're in those communities.
In general, the US, even regionally or locally, isn't as close to being a monoculture in the same way many of the towns and regions in Europe or Asia are. I don't mean this to say that either way is better or worse, but that when it comes to values and culture, there's often much less of a shared understanding and history, which can make sharing large-scale social initiatives harder.
> most people in Finland and Austria have more cultural similarity to their neighbors than I do with the 2nd generation Chinese immigrants that live on one side of me and the French-Creole couple on the other side.
Do you think there are no Chinese immigrants in European countries?
My examples were about people who have been living natively in certain areas for centuries. Of course, on top of that, we have had immigrants from all over the world in recent decades: Turkish people came to Germany in large numbers in the 50s, Tamil people fleed Sri Lanka in the 90s and came also to Europe, then all the refugees from the Balkan Wars and more recently from Syria and Ukraine, ...
Is NYC more ethnically and culturally diverse than a random mountain village in Austria? Yes, for sure. But Berlin is also more diverse than some random town in Montana. That's just a feature of big cities.
As a whole, though, I feel you're severely underestimating the cultural diversity in Europe.
We have the exact same problems with different cultural segments of the population having distinct discourses about important issues such as gender roles, LGBTQ, COVID, the war in Ukraine, etc.
Do you think there are no Chinese immigrants in European countries?
My examples were about people who have been living natively in certain areas for centuries. Of course, on top of that, we have had immigrants from all over the world in recent decades: Turkish people came to Germany in large numbers in the 50s, Tamil people fleed Sri Lanka in the 90s and came also to Europe, then all the refugees from the Balkan Wars and more recently from Syria and Ukraine, ...
Is NYC more ethnically and culturally diverse than a random mountain village in Austria? Yes, for sure. But Berlin is also more diverse than some random town in Montana. That's just a feature of big cities.
As a whole, though, I feel you're severely underestimating the cultural diversity in Europe.
We have the exact same problems with different cultural segments of the population having distinct discourses about important issues such as gender roles, LGBTQ, COVID, the war in Ukraine, etc.
Is this a natural thing that occurs in other countries? I honestly don't think so. Cross country idea exchange like this usually happens due to geography - the citizens themselves see what works in other countries by visiting them on trips & vacations and they bring these ideas back. Otherwise you can't force stuff like this, the people will reject it as foreign and alien. Simply watching videos or being told how great things are in other countries isn't enough, you have to go there and actually experience it.
I would argue the current anti-car movement in the U.S is a result of more americans going abroad for vacation to Europe and Asia and seeing what works there and bringing those ideas back. But how easy is it for Americans to go abroad? Most can't.
I would argue the current anti-car movement in the U.S is a result of more americans going abroad for vacation to Europe and Asia and seeing what works there and bringing those ideas back. But how easy is it for Americans to go abroad? Most can't.
> "For what it's worth, I think Jonathan is onto something crucial. Women have fought a long battle against misogyny from without; now men are struggling to find motivation from within. Rather than external pressures, the challenge facing men is one of internal drive and direction."
...
> "These gender differences in academic performance become apparent early. Girls are 14 percentage points more likely than boys to be "school ready" at age five"
Is the theory being presented that 5 years old boys have inherently lower internal drive and direction than 5 years old girls? In my world, providing motivating and directions to 5 years olds is generally the responsibility of adults.
...
> "These gender differences in academic performance become apparent early. Girls are 14 percentage points more likely than boys to be "school ready" at age five"
Is the theory being presented that 5 years old boys have inherently lower internal drive and direction than 5 years old girls? In my world, providing motivating and directions to 5 years olds is generally the responsibility of adults.
No, but statistically small boys are more physically active, more distractible, have a harder time sitting still, etc. Statistically girls are more verbal at a young age, and spend more time talking, reading books, etc. and less time playing sports or video games. Some differences are probably biological, and some are due to different socialization.
Either way, when kids get to school, the young girls are (on average) better prepared and more likely to follow teachers’ directions. Then school systematically rewards well prepared (and “well behaved”) students while punishing under-prepared or troublesome students. For many students and their families, rather than leading struggling students to seek additional help and work harder to catch up, it just causes emotional pain and feeds apathy or resentment towards schoolwork.
Either way, when kids get to school, the young girls are (on average) better prepared and more likely to follow teachers’ directions. Then school systematically rewards well prepared (and “well behaved”) students while punishing under-prepared or troublesome students. For many students and their families, rather than leading struggling students to seek additional help and work harder to catch up, it just causes emotional pain and feeds apathy or resentment towards schoolwork.
If the answer is no then the theory being presented by the article is false. Good to have that cleared up.
The problem is not then that men are struggling to find motivation, but rather that school are designed at early age for the statistically small girl. An external pressure we should fix.
In the case that this isn't biological but culturally, we should fix the culture, an external pressure.
Either way, fixing that children at the age of 5 already get unequal outcomes based on gender seems like a problem we should address, not 10 or 15 years later when those factors can multiply and compound. For example, if science and statistics can prove that boys are more physically active at that age, then the school system should adapt and incorporate more physical activity for boys in order to create better motivation. It is just as much discrimination to not do that as if schools were to measure muscle mass and give girls a lower grade, and then be surprised that women motivation later in education would be lower.
The problem is not then that men are struggling to find motivation, but rather that school are designed at early age for the statistically small girl. An external pressure we should fix.
In the case that this isn't biological but culturally, we should fix the culture, an external pressure.
Either way, fixing that children at the age of 5 already get unequal outcomes based on gender seems like a problem we should address, not 10 or 15 years later when those factors can multiply and compound. For example, if science and statistics can prove that boys are more physically active at that age, then the school system should adapt and incorporate more physical activity for boys in order to create better motivation. It is just as much discrimination to not do that as if schools were to measure muscle mass and give girls a lower grade, and then be surprised that women motivation later in education would be lower.
I don’t think school is designed for small girls per se. More like it’s designed for societal convenience / cost savings, and the chosen compromises tend to be a bit less challenging for girls than boys.
There have been other big societal changes of the past 50–100 years feeding in here: kids are more often under close supervision, are more tightly scheduled, are given fewer freedoms and fewer real responsibilities, live in smaller families with fewer siblings and cousins, spend less time unscripted with their friends, etc.
Children in general would benefit from more play, more autonomous peer interactions, more time outside, and more physical activity from age 5–10 than they get from many schools and homes.
It’s an uphill fight though, because there are many who insist that children need to be forced to do lots of academic work (with particular focus on stuff like memorizing arithmetic facts and spelling lists) from the earliest age whether or not they are interested.
If it were up to me we’d also spend a lot more time reading aloud to/with children and teaching children to solve increasingly difficult puzzles (but not under time/performance pressure), play increasingly complicated games, make things out of a wide variety of materials, and experiment with as many parts of the physical world as practical, with a general focus on supporting the children’s own goals and ideas. (All of the above both in and out of school.)
There have been other big societal changes of the past 50–100 years feeding in here: kids are more often under close supervision, are more tightly scheduled, are given fewer freedoms and fewer real responsibilities, live in smaller families with fewer siblings and cousins, spend less time unscripted with their friends, etc.
Children in general would benefit from more play, more autonomous peer interactions, more time outside, and more physical activity from age 5–10 than they get from many schools and homes.
It’s an uphill fight though, because there are many who insist that children need to be forced to do lots of academic work (with particular focus on stuff like memorizing arithmetic facts and spelling lists) from the earliest age whether or not they are interested.
If it were up to me we’d also spend a lot more time reading aloud to/with children and teaching children to solve increasingly difficult puzzles (but not under time/performance pressure), play increasingly complicated games, make things out of a wide variety of materials, and experiment with as many parts of the physical world as practical, with a general focus on supporting the children’s own goals and ideas. (All of the above both in and out of school.)
Naturally, societal convenience / cost savings / chosen compromises are part of the structural discrimination that occur, similar how those effects influence discrimination in other areas of society. As an example, profiling by the police is a fairly common cost savings tactic, but we have rule in place to prevent the police from using it. If it wasn't convenient, cultural, or saved money, then most problems of discrimination would not exist in the first place. It is a bit however about how we frame it. If cost saving efforts create discrimination, then we call the system as being designed in a discriminating way. Call it a naming convention in social science.
In general I agree with all those things you say that we should provide to children. Most of that is what my own country laws says that school should provide, and to add, it should be adapted based on the individual child needs and ability. I would add to it what the article just briefly mention, which is that matching gender between teacher and student has a fairly long history of showing improved results. There is still need to do more research on the subject, but there has been studies done since the 70s that shown how gender of those around a person can influence behavior. I have even remember reading in one study that the conclusion should be uncontroversial by now.
In general I agree with all those things you say that we should provide to children. Most of that is what my own country laws says that school should provide, and to add, it should be adapted based on the individual child needs and ability. I would add to it what the article just briefly mention, which is that matching gender between teacher and student has a fairly long history of showing improved results. There is still need to do more research on the subject, but there has been studies done since the 70s that shown how gender of those around a person can influence behavior. I have even remember reading in one study that the conclusion should be uncontroversial by now.
My observation is that little boys - on average - tend to be more mischievous than little girls. I think it is useful having integrated classrooms because they can learn from each other, especially when they are young.
For something like college I don’t think it would be a horrible idea for parents to have their sons take a couple of gap years to mature.
For something like college I don’t think it would be a horrible idea for parents to have their sons take a couple of gap years to mature.
Totally not my area to wade in on, but the fact that a 5-15% gender deficit starts before age 5 and stays roughly stable through graduation seems to imply it's not something that the school system is getting wrong:
* Girls are 14 percentage points more likely than boys to be "school ready" at age five" "a seven percentage-point gender gap in reading proficiency in the fourth grade widening to an 11-point gap by the end of eighth grade" ~7% more girls graduate high school in 4 years (88%/82%) * gender gap in bachelor's degrees was 15 points
* Girls are 14 percentage points more likely than boys to be "school ready" at age five" "a seven percentage-point gender gap in reading proficiency in the fourth grade widening to an 11-point gap by the end of eighth grade" ~7% more girls graduate high school in 4 years (88%/82%) * gender gap in bachelor's degrees was 15 points
Except that standardized test scores show the opposite objective reality.
Children may be (generally) equally motivated and driven, but without equitable assistance and opportunities they're going to experience differentiating outcomes that are dependent upon the behaviour of adults around them.
So the only (weak) conclusion mentioned is the possibility that men are less ambitious/driven/motivated, meandering around from major to major; from job to job, while women know what they want and do everything possible to achieve it.
Which is odd, it seems like almost a reversal of the typical gender stereotypes (men are strong, ambitious, career driven; women are fragile lilies who don't really know what they want).
I'm curious, is this limited to the United States? And is it possibly something biological? (declining testosterone?)
Which is odd, it seems like almost a reversal of the typical gender stereotypes (men are strong, ambitious, career driven; women are fragile lilies who don't really know what they want).
I'm curious, is this limited to the United States? And is it possibly something biological? (declining testosterone?)
It's because women are given far more advantages in the corporate workplace. I'm a woman in tech, who is now a full time manager part-time developer.
I'm under extreme pressure to hire and promote female, lgbt, or poc developers (even if under qualified). Resumes are filtered by third party contractors before they even get to me, so our company has plausible deniability. We have third party diversity groups give seminars, that are borderline insidious because they imply all men are just handed their positions and money or there is a global conspiracy to keep women out of tech.
This causes me EXTREME difficulty because my team is extremely high performance highly technical and critical team. I cannot compromise on skills or allow a hire that would demoralize the team.
I'm under extreme pressure to hire and promote female, lgbt, or poc developers (even if under qualified). Resumes are filtered by third party contractors before they even get to me, so our company has plausible deniability. We have third party diversity groups give seminars, that are borderline insidious because they imply all men are just handed their positions and money or there is a global conspiracy to keep women out of tech.
This causes me EXTREME difficulty because my team is extremely high performance highly technical and critical team. I cannot compromise on skills or allow a hire that would demoralize the team.
The same thing happens at my company as well. Preference is given to women or ppl from minority groups before hiring others (American males really). Hiring managers have to go through a period of only interviewing from these groups first, they will only then hire outside if the period passes and they don’t find a candidate.
I personally have worked with new hires that most certainly did not meet the bar but were hired because of their minority group to increase diversity. I really wondered how they passed their interview because their technical ability clearly did not meet the standard.
I was also involved in an interview with a candidate that was not qualified however the other interviewer passed them and said they’re giving them the benefit of the doubt because they were POC!!!
I’m all for diversity and increasing chances of folks from minority groups, but not at the cost of lowering the bar. Note that I’m not saying that ppl from minority groups are less competent, just that the bar is lowered for them when it’s not for others.
I myself am from a POC background and I really wonder if that was the case with me. Does it mean that Im less qualified and would not have been hired if I was not POC? It’s really not fair to me if so.
I personally have worked with new hires that most certainly did not meet the bar but were hired because of their minority group to increase diversity. I really wondered how they passed their interview because their technical ability clearly did not meet the standard.
I was also involved in an interview with a candidate that was not qualified however the other interviewer passed them and said they’re giving them the benefit of the doubt because they were POC!!!
I’m all for diversity and increasing chances of folks from minority groups, but not at the cost of lowering the bar. Note that I’m not saying that ppl from minority groups are less competent, just that the bar is lowered for them when it’s not for others.
I myself am from a POC background and I really wonder if that was the case with me. Does it mean that Im less qualified and would not have been hired if I was not POC? It’s really not fair to me if so.
While I agree that your experience is real, I don't think it is sufficient to explain the phenomenon described in the article. The actual phenomenon must be much wider in scope if elementary and middle school boys already have a significant motivational gap.
What you describe is but one symptom.
What you describe is but one symptom.
Can you define what you mean by "extreme" pressure (eg. any examples)? Where does this pressure originate from?
This all sounds insane to me and I wouldn't have believed this if not for the fact that I was once asked by the (female) founder of a company I worked for if I knew any female engineers looking for work because another friend of hers was looking to hire specifically female engineers. I was surprised and mentioned that being sexist and she didn't seem to see anything wrong with it. It's incredible what a double standard there is when it comes to sexism because if the genders were reversed, it'd be national news.
This all sounds insane to me and I wouldn't have believed this if not for the fact that I was once asked by the (female) founder of a company I worked for if I knew any female engineers looking for work because another friend of hers was looking to hire specifically female engineers. I was surprised and mentioned that being sexist and she didn't seem to see anything wrong with it. It's incredible what a double standard there is when it comes to sexism because if the genders were reversed, it'd be national news.
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> I'm under extreme pressure to hire and promote female, lgbt, or poc developers
Out of curiosity; how would lgbt developers be identified in this case? Since sexual orientation is not visible per se and I guess you cannot ask, is one just looking for specific patterns of behavior or dressing etc?
Out of curiosity; how would lgbt developers be identified in this case? Since sexual orientation is not visible per se and I guess you cannot ask, is one just looking for specific patterns of behavior or dressing etc?
It's easy. People mention being part of various LGBT groups on their resumes, or they put rainbow flags on their social media.
Sexual orientation is actually very visible these days.
Staffing agencies even have facets in their CRMs/spreadsheets list/search system to quickly identify candidates.
Staffing agencies even have facets in their CRMs/spreadsheets list/search system to quickly identify candidates.
>Sexual orientation is actually very visible these days.
Well, obvious selection bias at play-- only some lgbt people do this.
If any founders/managers/HR people are reading this: I say this as a member of the lgbt community: if sexual orientation is completely irrelevant to the actual work (don't kid yourself, it probably is), then promoting careerist opportunism over irrelevant aspects of one's identity is not helpful. We don't need handouts, we actually need the same level of respect as everyone else. Please stop treating sexuality as being up for exploitation.
Well, obvious selection bias at play-- only some lgbt people do this.
If any founders/managers/HR people are reading this: I say this as a member of the lgbt community: if sexual orientation is completely irrelevant to the actual work (don't kid yourself, it probably is), then promoting careerist opportunism over irrelevant aspects of one's identity is not helpful. We don't need handouts, we actually need the same level of respect as everyone else. Please stop treating sexuality as being up for exploitation.
Does this sort of thing actually help your career development in a meaningful way? This may sound fucked up but I'd happily put myself down as LGBT if I knew it would speed up my career ladder climbing.
At my job, we have 3 separate bonus referral rates. One for standard hire, an increased bonus if they are a veteran, and a higher one for poc/lgbt.
How big is this corporation? I haven't seen this at my small company.
I have a theory that it comes down to women's biological clock. They know they will only have the option of having a child between certain age ranges (ideally) and that's close enough in the future to plan for.
They need good grades to get into college, they need college to have a career and establish themselves before they hopefully find a partner and have a child around 30ish?
Might not go according to plan, but it's a template of sorts.
Men really don't have anything like that, in the past perhaps there was, an expectation of getting educated and established by a certain age in order to attract a wife and provide for her and the family.
I think it probably leaves some men unanchored with no real direction or ambition, no clue even what they should do.
They need good grades to get into college, they need college to have a career and establish themselves before they hopefully find a partner and have a child around 30ish?
Might not go according to plan, but it's a template of sorts.
Men really don't have anything like that, in the past perhaps there was, an expectation of getting educated and established by a certain age in order to attract a wife and provide for her and the family.
I think it probably leaves some men unanchored with no real direction or ambition, no clue even what they should do.
Seems like it's mostly driven by changes to the composition of the job market. 50 years ago many more good paying jobs required a degree of physical labor that heavily favored men. The economy today has shifted from manufacturing to the service sector, which favors cooperation and communication.
Women, even a hundred years ago, have always been more pro-social than men. They tend to have more friends, talk to their friends and family more often, know and ask more about the personal lives of the people around them. This far predates modernity, and has probably been true going all the way back to the neolithic era. The only difference is that in an age where email jobs have replaced the factory floor, the economic premium to these skills has gone way up.
Women, even a hundred years ago, have always been more pro-social than men. They tend to have more friends, talk to their friends and family more often, know and ask more about the personal lives of the people around them. This far predates modernity, and has probably been true going all the way back to the neolithic era. The only difference is that in an age where email jobs have replaced the factory floor, the economic premium to these skills has gone way up.
Yet women are barely present in high-paying STEM fields, despite hundreds of incentives, while STEM jobs typically pay well and are relatively safe options career-wise. Furthermore, we see the differences in income primarily in the 20-30 bracket, where most would get their first job.
Despite the whole "cooperation and communication" argument, most individuals aren't going to be in such a position for quite a few years, where the income differences are. During those times, most individuals are stuck doing grunt work.
Call me crazy, but things don't add up here.
Despite the whole "cooperation and communication" argument, most individuals aren't going to be in such a position for quite a few years, where the income differences are. During those times, most individuals are stuck doing grunt work.
Call me crazy, but things don't add up here.
STEM is a pretty small subset of total employment, only about 5% of Americans. And it's not like most of the jobs pay astoundingly high.
By contrast healthcare is more than 3X the size of STEM, and when looking at new entrants is just as skewed towards women as STEM is to men. When you step outside STEM and healthcare, and look at high-paying jobs that actually employ at scale, you see that most of them heavily favor "soft skills". Attorneys, real estate agents, middle management, marketing, sales, speech pathology, graphic design. All of them are much more about working with people than working with things.
By contrast healthcare is more than 3X the size of STEM, and when looking at new entrants is just as skewed towards women as STEM is to men. When you step outside STEM and healthcare, and look at high-paying jobs that actually employ at scale, you see that most of them heavily favor "soft skills". Attorneys, real estate agents, middle management, marketing, sales, speech pathology, graphic design. All of them are much more about working with people than working with things.
Most of them heavily favor "soft skills" a few years in. You're not getting into middle management right off the bat without being given a priority lane (read: network / family favor). Graphic design is years of grunt work and pays shoddily. Marketing and sales aren't remotely about "cooperation and communication" as much as you claim they are. The only things remaining are speech pathology, attorneys and real estate agents, for which I have no anecdotal experience nor knowledge, and can only infer real estate agents behave similarly to sales.
Ultimately the point still stands. "Cooperation and communication" are not the super valued soft skills you claim they are in the initial years, which is about the only period women outperform men in earnings. Afterwards, women are left behind in the dust as a whole.
It's blatantly obvious there's more going on here than "women are better in the post-modern labor market".
Ultimately the point still stands. "Cooperation and communication" are not the super valued soft skills you claim they are in the initial years, which is about the only period women outperform men in earnings. Afterwards, women are left behind in the dust as a whole.
It's blatantly obvious there's more going on here than "women are better in the post-modern labor market".
In my experience women have much better emotional control. I've seen so many women clearly express no interest in university classes but still be able to put the work in to pass. For men, I've seen that if they have no interest in something, they have a hard time getting themselves to see something through. On the other hand, I've also seen a small group of men become obsessive over something and pretty much neglect everything in pursuit of this obsession which I'm sure in the long term leads some of these men to be at the top of their fields.
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I'm glad it's increasingly possible to discuss intersections of sexism that primarily affect men/boys without it turning into an ideological sparring match. Although it's not how I identify these days, I was raised as one, and I really needed help in K-12. I was mostly treated with anything ranging from indifference to contempt by teachers for asking or even appearing to need help.
The article correctly identifies the result of experiences like mine:
>> "Rather than external pressures, the challenge facing men is one of internal drive and direction."
But then fails to identify this. It was hard not to notice girls were treated better by a faculty made up almost entirely of women. This kind of lopsided representation leads to the exact same sorts of problems when it goes the other way. We're just not accustomed, as a culture, to recognizing it when it fails to match our well-developed heuristics for identifying sexism. Recognizing the fact that this lopsided representation is due to the undervaluing of teaching due to sexism doesn't actually help the kids it affects.
The internal drive is crushed early, and it's not easily fixed. All the lovely ideas presented by the article won't amount to anything, and don't by the presented data, when we shove kids into a room where half of them are destined to be treated as uncontrollable monsters in training at worst and future leaders who don't and shouldn't need help by dint of birth assignment at best at five years old.
Women get cut down later in the pipeline by shitty bosses, sexist work cultures, etc. Men get cut down as boys and, if they're lucky, they may find some support later in life if they're willing to conform to toxic norms.
The article correctly identifies the result of experiences like mine:
>> "Rather than external pressures, the challenge facing men is one of internal drive and direction."
But then fails to identify this. It was hard not to notice girls were treated better by a faculty made up almost entirely of women. This kind of lopsided representation leads to the exact same sorts of problems when it goes the other way. We're just not accustomed, as a culture, to recognizing it when it fails to match our well-developed heuristics for identifying sexism. Recognizing the fact that this lopsided representation is due to the undervaluing of teaching due to sexism doesn't actually help the kids it affects.
The internal drive is crushed early, and it's not easily fixed. All the lovely ideas presented by the article won't amount to anything, and don't by the presented data, when we shove kids into a room where half of them are destined to be treated as uncontrollable monsters in training at worst and future leaders who don't and shouldn't need help by dint of birth assignment at best at five years old.
Women get cut down later in the pipeline by shitty bosses, sexist work cultures, etc. Men get cut down as boys and, if they're lucky, they may find some support later in life if they're willing to conform to toxic norms.
I expect to get flamed for this, maybe rightfully, so apologies for any unintended insensitivities. Here goes: In my personal life, the mtf women that I have known best, have very strong negative views of how men and boys are treated, especially in their own experience. This seems to me, essentially indistinguishable from gender as a social construct. I’m wondering, do you feel like your experience has anything to do with your identity?
I'm not MTF, so I can't comment on that. I do know that the clash between what I heard from cis dudes and what I experienced/how I felt was part of figuring out I was nonbinary. They seem to revel in the positive expectations and seek out the validation and feel bad when they fall short of those expectations. They just didn't mesh with what I felt I wanted.
I also don't mesh with most of the experiences and feelings I hear about from trans women. I knew about trans people, but had no idea about nonbinary as an identity until the 2010s, so I was pretty much listless and confused identity-wise until then. Now I keep meeting enby after enby whose experiences mesh with my own.
>> "I’m wondering, do you feel like your experience has anything to do with your identity?"
Identity is just a tag you put on a collection of experiences. You can take the tag off, add others, and make your own. Gender is a social construct, but it also seems to have a biological aspect that every culture we have meaningful records of found a way to apply socially.
I also don't mesh with most of the experiences and feelings I hear about from trans women. I knew about trans people, but had no idea about nonbinary as an identity until the 2010s, so I was pretty much listless and confused identity-wise until then. Now I keep meeting enby after enby whose experiences mesh with my own.
>> "I’m wondering, do you feel like your experience has anything to do with your identity?"
Identity is just a tag you put on a collection of experiences. You can take the tag off, add others, and make your own. Gender is a social construct, but it also seems to have a biological aspect that every culture we have meaningful records of found a way to apply socially.
> Women get cut down later in the pipeline by shitty bosses, sexist work cultures, etc. Men get cut down as boys and, if they're lucky, they may find some support later in life if they're willing to conform to toxic norms.
If (as you say) the support comes from conforming to toxic norms, does the lack of support come from conforming to non-toxic norms?
Then wouldn’t the toxic norms, providing support, actually be less toxic - at least in terms of receiving support?
If (as you say) the support comes from conforming to toxic norms, does the lack of support come from conforming to non-toxic norms?
Then wouldn’t the toxic norms, providing support, actually be less toxic - at least in terms of receiving support?
Support in the same way extremist groups "support" disenfranchised young men by telling them how to buy guns and build bombs while confirming all their beliefs about who's keeping them down with propaganda.
I bounced off a tech career track because of all the sexism and, for lack of a better term, "bro shit" in the classes.
I bounced off a tech career track because of all the sexism and, for lack of a better term, "bro shit" in the classes.
> I bounced off a tech career track because of all the sexism and, for lack of a better term, "bro shit" in the classes.
It sounds like you let a group of 'bros' decide your career track. The world is full of shitty people both men and women, you can't let their behavior drive yours.
It sounds like you let a group of 'bros' decide your career track. The world is full of shitty people both men and women, you can't let their behavior drive yours.
Doesn't seem like it's much different anywhere along the way after that. I did look. I only get one life. I didn't want to waste it in a field with no interest in changing. Very little seems different ~15 years later.
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Men still 100% rule the world and always will. It's just now a small group of elite men rather than power being more distributed. The entire "feminism" project is mostly just social engineering for elite men to castrate their competition and consolidate power under the guise of equality.
I've always figured a lot of the pressure for the status elevation of women has come from the elite men in order to make room for their daughters and mistresses. A few of my exes went on to be mistresses of elite men and were gifted executive roles at prestigious companies. They now advise women on how to be successful but somehow leave out the important details.
This seems common. I was surprised to discover at my last employer how many of the girls in marketing were the daughters of the rich CEO or his equally 'elite' friends. One of them was an extreme sjw feminist to the extent that she objected to men asking that men's day be celebrated as well as women's day. Needless to say they weren't especially good at their jobs, not that it mattered much.
> It's just now a small group of elite men
It was ALWAYS just a small group of men. The group of men doing the ruling is the largest and most distributed in history.
It was ALWAYS just a small group of men. The group of men doing the ruling is the largest and most distributed in history.
And every powerful woman is a man for all intents and purposes, because "men have power"? Or do powerful woman simply not exist in your theory of reality and it's all a charade where some secret society hires women and everyone including them pretends that they are powerful?
Yes, that's why companies prioritize diversity over meritocracy
Thatcher or Merkel were famously elected because their respective parties prioritized diversity?
You think she was elected for merit? That’s not how politics works in the UK
She was elected how every other politician ever got elected: by maneuvering smartly, building alliances, having a strong network and being lucky with getting the timing right and not getting tossed out because of circumstances beyond their control.
And yet they obviously did get elected and had real power. "Men rule the world" as a serious statement is obviously nonsense and it's so easy to disprove I'm amazed that it was even claimed, unless it's with the modern sociological twist of "power is male, therefore these women were men while in power" and similar attempts to destroy all capability of language transporting information.
And yet they obviously did get elected and had real power. "Men rule the world" as a serious statement is obviously nonsense and it's so easy to disprove I'm amazed that it was even claimed, unless it's with the modern sociological twist of "power is male, therefore these women were men while in power" and similar attempts to destroy all capability of language transporting information.
> The entire "feminism" project is mostly just social engineering for elite men to castrate their competition and consolidate power under the guise of equality.
How so ?
How so ?
At the tech companies I worked at in San Francisco, we set up diversity hiring initiatives aimed at increasing the share of women and PoC engineers. Recruiters were given bonuses and quotas for hiring favored demographics.
In practice, this meant that men who didn't go to Ivys, MIT, Stanford, and other top colleges didn't even get interviewed. Most women were interviewed, and they got multiple chances to pass interviews. The end result of this system is that elite men were hired exclusively, while women of various classes were hired.
I don't think this was some moustache-twirlingly evil plot to exclude non elite men. I think leadership just responding to pressure to increase the share of women, and the end result was this set of double standards. The end result of mandating a specific percent of women is that companies get more selective when choosing men.
And FWIW, most women didn't like this situation. I'd say at most 1/3rd were supportive of these practices. The double standards were open secrets, and many women worried that this would affect perceptions of competence. Especially when equal promotion rates were also enforced. Since now you have a double standard at hiring and both groups were guaranteed equal numbers of promotions, which inevitably led to different standards in promotions too.
In practice, this meant that men who didn't go to Ivys, MIT, Stanford, and other top colleges didn't even get interviewed. Most women were interviewed, and they got multiple chances to pass interviews. The end result of this system is that elite men were hired exclusively, while women of various classes were hired.
I don't think this was some moustache-twirlingly evil plot to exclude non elite men. I think leadership just responding to pressure to increase the share of women, and the end result was this set of double standards. The end result of mandating a specific percent of women is that companies get more selective when choosing men.
And FWIW, most women didn't like this situation. I'd say at most 1/3rd were supportive of these practices. The double standards were open secrets, and many women worried that this would affect perceptions of competence. Especially when equal promotion rates were also enforced. Since now you have a double standard at hiring and both groups were guaranteed equal numbers of promotions, which inevitably led to different standards in promotions too.
Because women compare to themselves with the chosen few high power men while ignoring tge low caste men that are invisible. It's a numbers game. There are more women well off than men despite looking at some averages per sector. If course the men beneath them feel resentment.
Not endorsing the argument, but for example 'The Case Against the Sexual Revolution' by Louise Perry could give you the opinions behind this.
Her opinion is that men have co-opted and subverted feminism to ironically increase exploitation of women.
Her opinion is that men have co-opted and subverted feminism to ironically increase exploitation of women.
As a difficult masculinist, who criticizes every article on the topic, I can assess that at least in this article, the journalist did their job and didn’t resort to simplet answers like “muh men don’t cry”. Look at the balls it takes to write the following:
> I asked Hershbein what was behind the massive gender gap in Kalamazoo. Because he is a true scholar, his answer was, "we don't know."
When you see that, you know that you’re facing a good scientist. Someone who listens and looks at the world. Real science is dirty and doesn’t bode simple explanations.
> I asked Hershbein what was behind the massive gender gap in Kalamazoo. Because he is a true scholar, his answer was, "we don't know."
When you see that, you know that you’re facing a good scientist. Someone who listens and looks at the world. Real science is dirty and doesn’t bode simple explanations.
If he did know would he feel safe to say it? What's the probability that true rational fits within our ever diminishing Overton window. Reality wasn't created with our moral sensibilities in mind - to presuppose that it was has rather religious connotations to it.
Even in the face of 2:1 female to male college student ratios, look up the ratio of sex specific scholarships that still very very very heavily favor females. As if now wasn't the time to proclaim victory for female enrollment and at least move those scholarships to be sex agnostic.
Even in the face of 2:1 female to male college student ratios, look up the ratio of sex specific scholarships that still very very very heavily favor females. As if now wasn't the time to proclaim victory for female enrollment and at least move those scholarships to be sex agnostic.
People talk about enrollment favoring women. But from what I found men still dominate engineering, some sciences and are close to equal in medicine(more men pursue surgery). In blue collar trades men predominate. I don't see how the increase in women obtaining psychology or public health degrees means they are surpassing men. No criticism intended I have a useless degree(economics) myself.
> Look at the balls it takes to write the following: ... When you see
that, you know that you’re facing a good scientist.
But it's more than that isn't it. There are many great scientists. What you see here is the courage to speak the truth. Not to be afraid. Not to turn your back on it. In a bullshit culture run by imposters, that is as close to heresy as you can get. Lesser scientists find the truth and know they would be better to bury it to protect their selfish short-term ambitions. Those kind of "good scientists" are ten a penny.
But it's more than that isn't it. There are many great scientists. What you see here is the courage to speak the truth. Not to be afraid. Not to turn your back on it. In a bullshit culture run by imposters, that is as close to heresy as you can get. Lesser scientists find the truth and know they would be better to bury it to protect their selfish short-term ambitions. Those kind of "good scientists" are ten a penny.
Except that they withheld even the very core data of their argument, which is the four numbers that comprise the two ROI estimations. It’s not brave or insightful to throw away the evidence and declare the crime unsolved.
"Meanwhile, the labor market has become a more hostile place for many men — especially those with less education. In 1970, the wage of the typical American man who completed his education with a high-school diploma was over $50,000 in today's dollars. Now, it's less than $35,000. While the gender gap in earnings has narrowed, the class gap has widened. In fact, the wages of most men are lower today than they were in 1979, while women's wages have risen across the board."
The US's industrial world has been hollowed out, so there's literally far less things to do. Drive & ambitious besuits a nation doing things. But our nation has offshored a vast amount of what it used to do, & the cost of living & risk of starting small businesses stack up to a huge lack of opportunity.
I love computers & coding, but it makes me so bloody sad how America is only good at "movies, micro-code, & pizza delivery". We have some other fronts for innovation & advanced works, huzzah, but we are so uncompetitive (given our absurd costs of living, adversarial legalism, & extremely acquisitive mega-corporations), that so much doing stuff, making stuff is inordinately hard to support.
What id there to be ambitious & driven for in a world where so few have roles & jobs where they get to be a real & significant part of making stuff? That post-war post-depression era, of building a country anew was such fresh & wide opportunity, & that wont come again, but making a competitive internal economy with things to do, rather than a fistful of megacorps & nearly everyone somewhere deep deep deep down the org chart.... it's the choice between vitality & forever rot. Men wont get better under the prevailing economic dominance by juggernaut corporations using offshore labor.
The new EV tax-credits being tied to onshore labor is interesting. But these are still micro scale incentives, an isolationist policy assuming sparseness. Creating a more open competitive economic competition at home, finding ways to tackle extreme cost of living crunches & supporting new ventures, enabling new industrial growth... there's much to do to heal & restore America to a place with things worth doing. This challenge isnt American; we all share making affordable life with things worth doing tennable.
I love computers & coding, but it makes me so bloody sad how America is only good at "movies, micro-code, & pizza delivery". We have some other fronts for innovation & advanced works, huzzah, but we are so uncompetitive (given our absurd costs of living, adversarial legalism, & extremely acquisitive mega-corporations), that so much doing stuff, making stuff is inordinately hard to support.
What id there to be ambitious & driven for in a world where so few have roles & jobs where they get to be a real & significant part of making stuff? That post-war post-depression era, of building a country anew was such fresh & wide opportunity, & that wont come again, but making a competitive internal economy with things to do, rather than a fistful of megacorps & nearly everyone somewhere deep deep deep down the org chart.... it's the choice between vitality & forever rot. Men wont get better under the prevailing economic dominance by juggernaut corporations using offshore labor.
The new EV tax-credits being tied to onshore labor is interesting. But these are still micro scale incentives, an isolationist policy assuming sparseness. Creating a more open competitive economic competition at home, finding ways to tackle extreme cost of living crunches & supporting new ventures, enabling new industrial growth... there's much to do to heal & restore America to a place with things worth doing. This challenge isnt American; we all share making affordable life with things worth doing tennable.
I think there is another distinction to be made here, and that is around sexuality. Gay men seem to be immune to the problems mentioned in this article. They are much more educated and do seem to make the most of the opportunities available (at least that is a trend established from my anecdotes). I think this new generation of problems affecting men is a straight men phenomenon.
It's easier to get internships these days by being LGBT, or poc.
In an increasingly ultra competitive environment, I can't say I haven't thought about claiming to be gay.
In an increasingly ultra competitive environment, I can't say I haven't thought about claiming to be gay.
I doubt that explains much of it. This advantage already starts in college, and there is no affirmative action for LGBT at this stage.
Because if they need help, or want help, or seem like they might need or want help, they isn't a man.
har har har.
They'll only accept help as a favor to you. But they'll call in that favor some time down the line, by making you accept their help, which you'll only accept as a favor to them, of course.
har har har.
They'll only accept help as a favor to you. But they'll call in that favor some time down the line, by making you accept their help, which you'll only accept as a favor to them, of course.
I have a gut feeling that this is because of parenting. I think parenting methods these days dont work. I think it is perfectly okay to use fear of punishment to discipline kids. From what I see today, most kids dont have a limit that they wouldn’t cross. There is no fear from their father/mother/authority figure that can set them on the right track.
My gf works with kids, the stories I hear are absolutely mind boggling. Children show up to school with only cookies/chocolate for lunch/breakfast. Discipline at home is nonexistent. Parents give their kids an ipad and call it good.
Girls are generally calmer and have an easier time focusing than boys.
so maybe its a case of boys having exacerbated effects because of their natural tendencies.
My gf works with kids, the stories I hear are absolutely mind boggling. Children show up to school with only cookies/chocolate for lunch/breakfast. Discipline at home is nonexistent. Parents give their kids an ipad and call it good.
Girls are generally calmer and have an easier time focusing than boys.
so maybe its a case of boys having exacerbated effects because of their natural tendencies.
I wonder if men just have a different perceived utility from these changes of status. Maybe men only want to do something if they think it might take them from 30th percentile to the 99th percentile, but aren't interested in something that is guaranteed take them from 30th percentile to 60th percentile.
Nonprofits and assistance programs are often unenthused about helping men, which may account for some of that difference in results.
I helped a lost homeless man near my home. There is a YMCA nearby, and you'd think an organization that has "Young Men" in their name would be a place I could point him to get help, but nope. It's a "family" YMCA: https://www.ymcasf.org/locations/peninsula-family-ymca
I helped a lost homeless man near my home. There is a YMCA nearby, and you'd think an organization that has "Young Men" in their name would be a place I could point him to get help, but nope. It's a "family" YMCA: https://www.ymcasf.org/locations/peninsula-family-ymca
this article ignores the elephant in the room, boys are being ignored in the education system, while only focusing on girls, this can have many problems for boys when when they grow up
I wonder if educators have trouble making the trade-off between "Do I spend a little effort to make sure the just-good-enough kids stay clear above that good-enough line? Or do I spend a lot of effort to bring almost-good-enough kids above that line?"
If girls have a head start at 5 years old, there may be a compounding effect. It is sad to think about.
I guess if you can afford private schooling and tutoring, you can decide how to allocate those resources. In public school you're a little bit at the mercy of your zipcode.
If girls have a head start at 5 years old, there may be a compounding effect. It is sad to think about.
I guess if you can afford private schooling and tutoring, you can decide how to allocate those resources. In public school you're a little bit at the mercy of your zipcode.
Hiding in plain sight:
> In 1972, Congress passed Title IX — a landmark statute to promote gender equality in higher education. Quite rightly, too: At the time, there was a 13 percentage-point gap in the proportion of bachelor's degrees going to men compared to women. Just a decade later, the gap had closed. By 2019, the gender gap in bachelor's degrees was 15 points — wider than it had been in 1972, but in the opposite direction. Today, women far outperform men in the American education system.
When debugging a system, you look for what changed. The above change may have had necessary components, but like any change, it also had unwanted side effects.
> In 1972, Congress passed Title IX — a landmark statute to promote gender equality in higher education. Quite rightly, too: At the time, there was a 13 percentage-point gap in the proportion of bachelor's degrees going to men compared to women. Just a decade later, the gap had closed. By 2019, the gender gap in bachelor's degrees was 15 points — wider than it had been in 1972, but in the opposite direction. Today, women far outperform men in the American education system.
When debugging a system, you look for what changed. The above change may have had necessary components, but like any change, it also had unwanted side effects.
I mean, the article has all the answers.
It's an economic problem and the fact is lower class men are, for lack of a better word, fucked.
It's an economic problem and the fact is lower class men are, for lack of a better word, fucked.
And yet, for the men who go to (the right) universities, and choose to join a fraternity:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/10/sex-ratio-college-c...
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/10/sex-ratio-college-c...
I really don't like the framing of this article. The framing (to me) is as if the fault is with the men, and the solution must come from men.
Many activist groups have spent generations influencing almost all systems (education, industry, politics, etc) to promote minorities, but instead of raising females to the level of males, they instead removed opportunities from males. I can give tonnes of examples. There are scholarships at schools only for females, there are job application events where only females can attend and there are now positions in political office where only females can apply. There are no opposite example I'm aware of. These are not additional opportunities, these are removed from men and given to women.
Anecdata for schools: I know multiple teachers (read: more than 6) that thought it appropriate that they purposely bias their attention in classrooms towards the girls in their classes to "correct the balance". I heard in some cases they would even say "I don't want to hear from a boy", or purposefully pick any girl over a boy to answer a question. In a room full of teachers, not a single one objected to this.
In modern times we are told that systemic bias is bad and that more should be done to stop it. And yet, we systematically see bias in the name of "positive discrimination" and simply ignore the extremely obvious fact that young boys and subsequently men have been suffering for a long time as a result.
Let's go back to basics. We know how to treat people fairly and promote desirable behaviour. We used to live in a meritocracy and we apparently stopped it to address historic bias. Surely this is now done (for females vs males)? When can we return to a meritocracy?
Many activist groups have spent generations influencing almost all systems (education, industry, politics, etc) to promote minorities, but instead of raising females to the level of males, they instead removed opportunities from males. I can give tonnes of examples. There are scholarships at schools only for females, there are job application events where only females can attend and there are now positions in political office where only females can apply. There are no opposite example I'm aware of. These are not additional opportunities, these are removed from men and given to women.
Anecdata for schools: I know multiple teachers (read: more than 6) that thought it appropriate that they purposely bias their attention in classrooms towards the girls in their classes to "correct the balance". I heard in some cases they would even say "I don't want to hear from a boy", or purposefully pick any girl over a boy to answer a question. In a room full of teachers, not a single one objected to this.
In modern times we are told that systemic bias is bad and that more should be done to stop it. And yet, we systematically see bias in the name of "positive discrimination" and simply ignore the extremely obvious fact that young boys and subsequently men have been suffering for a long time as a result.
Let's go back to basics. We know how to treat people fairly and promote desirable behaviour. We used to live in a meritocracy and we apparently stopped it to address historic bias. Surely this is now done (for females vs males)? When can we return to a meritocracy?
I don't know about fault.
The article says that boys and men have less motivation, less persistence, and less ability to plan. These are synthetic facts being pointed out.
The article repeatedly says that no-one knows why these things are so: they are symptoms, not causes.
The article also says figuring out the causes is a fairly urgent and important problem, yet it is being ignored.
> Let's go back to basics. We know how to treat people fairly and promote desirable behaviour. We used to live in a meritocracy and we apparently stopped it to address historic bias. Surely this is now done (for females vs males)? When can we return to a meritocracy?
This was never true. That is pure nostalgia.
The article says that boys and men have less motivation, less persistence, and less ability to plan. These are synthetic facts being pointed out.
The article repeatedly says that no-one knows why these things are so: they are symptoms, not causes.
The article also says figuring out the causes is a fairly urgent and important problem, yet it is being ignored.
> Let's go back to basics. We know how to treat people fairly and promote desirable behaviour. We used to live in a meritocracy and we apparently stopped it to address historic bias. Surely this is now done (for females vs males)? When can we return to a meritocracy?
This was never true. That is pure nostalgia.
Maybe 'fault' is too strong, but it appears to at least lay the burden on men.
> The article repeatedly says that no-one knows why these things are so: they are symptoms, not causes.
Well, I have some ideas as I suggested. I'm not going to claim it fully explains the current situation we are in, but I think it could be at least partly be attributed to these biased systems that were supposed to address bias.
I'm mostly against the use of "positive discrimination" (putting 'positive' in front of something terrible doesn't make it good), but one of the largest concerns is that there is no plan in place to either measure acceptable levels of balance or a system to transition into after.
For example, if we now find men are struggling (which they are), do we now implement "positive discrimination" until men are equally represented in education? Do we reject perfectly capable females from the application process in order to address the balancing, eventually over correcting and needing to re-balance again? Where does this end?
> The article also says figuring out the causes is a fairly urgent and important problem, yet it is being ignored.
And it will continue to be ignored. The many systems involved have zero incentive to change. They quiet the small vocal activists by implementing their bias. You may ask "well, why don't men become activists?". They tried, look at how the men's rights activist groups were treated.
> This was never true. That is pure nostalgia.
I'm not suggesting meritocracy was implemented fairly across all people everywhere in the past, but for small pockets of society it has been. Like many systems, it cannot work without some oversight, but the nudges should be minimalist.
> The article repeatedly says that no-one knows why these things are so: they are symptoms, not causes.
Well, I have some ideas as I suggested. I'm not going to claim it fully explains the current situation we are in, but I think it could be at least partly be attributed to these biased systems that were supposed to address bias.
I'm mostly against the use of "positive discrimination" (putting 'positive' in front of something terrible doesn't make it good), but one of the largest concerns is that there is no plan in place to either measure acceptable levels of balance or a system to transition into after.
For example, if we now find men are struggling (which they are), do we now implement "positive discrimination" until men are equally represented in education? Do we reject perfectly capable females from the application process in order to address the balancing, eventually over correcting and needing to re-balance again? Where does this end?
> The article also says figuring out the causes is a fairly urgent and important problem, yet it is being ignored.
And it will continue to be ignored. The many systems involved have zero incentive to change. They quiet the small vocal activists by implementing their bias. You may ask "well, why don't men become activists?". They tried, look at how the men's rights activist groups were treated.
> This was never true. That is pure nostalgia.
I'm not suggesting meritocracy was implemented fairly across all people everywhere in the past, but for small pockets of society it has been. Like many systems, it cannot work without some oversight, but the nudges should be minimalist.
The grading system is fairly meritocratic - essays are graded off syllabi and fixed points are deducted for wrong math answers. The girls and boys in a school are coming from the same cross-sections of society, so if the girls get better grades maybe they are just winning at the meritocracy? I have a hard time believing there is an actual inequality of opportunities across genders past maybe a superficial level.
I am skeptical interventions actually help - the students who do the right things in their own time will get better grades.
I am skeptical interventions actually help - the students who do the right things in their own time will get better grades.
It's not really meritocratic. There was a clever study on this some time ago that proved female teachers systematically give higher grades to girls. There's a prevailing culture that women help women get ahead by fair means or foul, and that this is "moral". So it starts early and the result is a systematically sexist society Inc which women are constantly being given quiet or not so quiet benefits, usually by blocking out discriminating against men. It's definitely not that women benefit from meritocracy. Indeed what I've seen over my whole life is that many women are determined to eradicate meritocracy of any kind.
I agree with most of this.
> It's not really meritocratic. There was a clever study on this some time ago that proved female teachers systematically give higher grades to girls.
To add anecdata, I did some marking of written and typed work, and I found I was extremely accurate in determining whether the writer was a male or female.
> It's definitely not that women benefit from meritocracy.
We really don't know yet. There was a time when females were kept out of education (and poor males too). The claim is made that "women bias to counter historic bias". Based on this, now that females now perform better than males in education, is this not now a completed task?
> Indeed what I've seen over my whole life is that many women are determined to eradicate meritocracy of any kind.
Equality was simply never the goal. We don't see surges of females becoming construction workers or hauling trash. We don't see males encouraged to enter into female dominated fields such as sociology or language studies. What we see almost exclusively is females encouraged into historically male dominated fields - that's all.
> It's not really meritocratic. There was a clever study on this some time ago that proved female teachers systematically give higher grades to girls.
To add anecdata, I did some marking of written and typed work, and I found I was extremely accurate in determining whether the writer was a male or female.
> It's definitely not that women benefit from meritocracy.
We really don't know yet. There was a time when females were kept out of education (and poor males too). The claim is made that "women bias to counter historic bias". Based on this, now that females now perform better than males in education, is this not now a completed task?
> Indeed what I've seen over my whole life is that many women are determined to eradicate meritocracy of any kind.
Equality was simply never the goal. We don't see surges of females becoming construction workers or hauling trash. We don't see males encouraged to enter into female dominated fields such as sociology or language studies. What we see almost exclusively is females encouraged into historically male dominated fields - that's all.
I won't disagree with the "men have it hard" crowd but as a man myself my observation of the root cause is complacency. Blame "male privilege" or "men rights don't exist" or whatever but I have not seen this problem in poor countries or in immigrants from poor countries.
i.e.: in the US at least you can get just enough to be complacent as a man by doing bare minimum stuff.
So why endure hostile environments, places where you don't feel like you belong, etc... when the benefit is "you can afford just a little more stuff", especially when you are not planning for long term success.
Contrast this with east asia or india where you have the other end of the extreme where mostly men kill themselves when they get bad grades or fail standardized tests because it means they can't get any job that matters or pays well and subsequently lose social perks like getting married.
i.e.: in the US at least you can get just enough to be complacent as a man by doing bare minimum stuff.
So why endure hostile environments, places where you don't feel like you belong, etc... when the benefit is "you can afford just a little more stuff", especially when you are not planning for long term success.
Contrast this with east asia or india where you have the other end of the extreme where mostly men kill themselves when they get bad grades or fail standardized tests because it means they can't get any job that matters or pays well and subsequently lose social perks like getting married.
>i.e.: in the US at least you can get just enough to be complacent as a man by doing bare minimum stuff.
Why aren't women in the US complacent? Couldn't they just get by doing the bare minimum?
Why aren't women in the US complacent? Couldn't they just get by doing the bare minimum?
I can't speak for women but they face greater challenges if for example they don't have a degree since blue collar work is not female friendly and even if it is, women don't tend to get satisfaction out of those jobs. It also has to do with ambition, women get pregnant or plan to get pregnant so for those women they typically have to plan for child care/future much earlier than men. Just in society as well, women who earn less are often forced to rely on a man which makes them feel less independent. So to be complacent as a woman, I would imagine being able to guarantee a future where men and children don't control your life or force you to give up your ambitions as well as for many women avoiding "nursing/caring" stereotypes and "physical labor" would be some of the things they desire before being complacent. Of course I am talking about women who pursue college, there are many women who are happy with depending on a man that is well to do but their daughters see how their mothers fare when older and usually want the opposite.
These are just my observations, there couldn't be anyone who is less qualified to comment about women than myself, so if any woman reads this, please educate on things I have gotten wrong.
These are just my observations, there couldn't be anyone who is less qualified to comment about women than myself, so if any woman reads this, please educate on things I have gotten wrong.
Just to add something here: Beautician (of various forms including but not limited to: hairdressing, waxing, nailcare) and shop work (selling at the register, stocking) are blue collar jobs and are overrepresented by Women.
You're right, I forgot about that. There are women who aspire to do those jobs and there is nothing wrong with that. I suppose if you dig deeper all of this has to do with how your brought up and what you expect out of life. Media and the internet play a big role in this.
Required reading for discussing any of this is "Is there anything good about men"?
According to this, there's a preference (genetic and societal) to condition men to take risks, and that risk skews the distribution outward, with more failures and successes.
One of the main punchlines is that comparing means is useless. Men just have way more outliers in both directions, and grades (maximum-capped) will tend to be lower on average, while income (no maximum cap) will tend to be higher on average.
According to this, there's a preference (genetic and societal) to condition men to take risks, and that risk skews the distribution outward, with more failures and successes.
One of the main punchlines is that comparing means is useless. Men just have way more outliers in both directions, and grades (maximum-capped) will tend to be lower on average, while income (no maximum cap) will tend to be higher on average.
Simplified answer that is not flippant: Testosterone. Hormones have an enormous impact on how we think and behave. Testosterone numbers is a ‘ratio’ and not an absolute number. So this keeps changing all the time. For women, this skews wildly during PMS when they have a surfeit of testosterone as a ratio. Which gives rise to all the lame jokes about ‘that time of the month’.
But men deal with that elevated testosterone as a ratio throughout until middle age. Men go through ‘andropause’ too, but don’t get enough support.
Women get used to mood swings and wild variations in their hormone level right after menarche. This is also why while gender transitioning, MtF is more brutal on mental health than FtM.
But men deal with that elevated testosterone as a ratio throughout until middle age. Men go through ‘andropause’ too, but don’t get enough support.
Women get used to mood swings and wild variations in their hormone level right after menarche. This is also why while gender transitioning, MtF is more brutal on mental health than FtM.
The PHD authored book "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Dr. Robert Glover actually goes into this topic. He's provided counseling to hundreds of men. He lies the blame at several societal factors but one that sticks with me is that 100+ years ago the predominant occupation was farming.
In farming, men taught boys how to work and corporate with other men. Then the shift to manufacturing meant the men were gone all day away from the kids. It's now common for women to play a bigger role in raising boys. In addition, in the modern education system women outnumber men. So boys are now being raised and taught more by women then men compared to other parts of human history.
Anyway it's a good book and written by a PHD with real world counseling experience, not some pick up artist or right wing activist. I recommend reading it if you struggle with your own masculinity in today's society.
In farming, men taught boys how to work and corporate with other men. Then the shift to manufacturing meant the men were gone all day away from the kids. It's now common for women to play a bigger role in raising boys. In addition, in the modern education system women outnumber men. So boys are now being raised and taught more by women then men compared to other parts of human history.
Anyway it's a good book and written by a PHD with real world counseling experience, not some pick up artist or right wing activist. I recommend reading it if you struggle with your own masculinity in today's society.
Interesting article with a clear analysis of the problem, just wish the author would have gone more in-depth on possible causes. Even if there is no clear statistical evidence for why men are doing worse, it can still be helpful to explore possible reasons, rather than just stating 'we don't know'.
Why do we still have Title IX in law if it has achieved it's goal and swung the other way?
My theory for the gender performance gap... Men need productive work to be happy and motivated. Schoolwork, mostly filling in worksheets, is not productive work.
My theory for the gender performance gap... Men need productive work to be happy and motivated. Schoolwork, mostly filling in worksheets, is not productive work.
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Porn, video games, drinking and other forms of entertainment. I believe most of these disproportionately affect males in negative ways while females are not affected nearly as much. The overall acceptance that it’s okay to keep doing these things when they clearly have negative impacts is always going to cause more issues for men then women
I've always heard that girls/woman do mature faster, they're something around 3 years ahead
and it felt reasonably cuz I've noticed that majority of relationships in my circle are like that - woman is 2-4 years younger.
I think it could explain successed in formal education
I feel like this gap starts closing around 20s
and it felt reasonably cuz I've noticed that majority of relationships in my circle are like that - woman is 2-4 years younger.
I think it could explain successed in formal education
I feel like this gap starts closing around 20s
Maybe all these programs to help students are just a cash grab and tackle pointless non issues.
I wonder how much of this correlates to being raised without a father in the home.
It was refreshing that the researchers interviewed did not speculate reasons for the phenomenon.
As a laymen though, I’m free to guess. I do think boys propensity to binge video games is a explanatory factor. Based off my experience, playing progress- oriented games tricks your brain into thinking you are accomplishing something tangible. I think the only thing that steered me away from heading down a dark path was athletics, which grounded me in the real world growing up
As a laymen though, I’m free to guess. I do think boys propensity to binge video games is a explanatory factor. Based off my experience, playing progress- oriented games tricks your brain into thinking you are accomplishing something tangible. I think the only thing that steered me away from heading down a dark path was athletics, which grounded me in the real world growing up
Video games are essentially hamster wheels for human men. Just wait until the modern text2img or text2video ML models become text2videogame models... I know that for me personally, I'm practically racing against the clock to try and get my relationship / social life in order, because once I can procedurally generate unlimited excellent gaming content from my home computer I'll pretty much never be bored again.
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Some thoughts, probably a bit ramble-y: For whatever reason, I don't know why, it seems like young boys have less 'intrinsic motivation' to learn and gain skills than girls. This means that if a boy wants to grow up into some career... then they need someone to guide them and provide a trajectory with a series of tangible accomplishments to get there. Without that guidance, very few boys have the ability to manage it themselves, and even fewer if the accomplishments are amorphous concepts, like 'learning' and 'understanding'. They need to see an effect of what they're learning in the real world, somehow. I don't know why... maybe to compare themselves against other students? To feel like they exist?
In the past, maybe 20-30 years ago, it seems like parents or the school system would have identified the boys lacking intrinsic motivation, and track them into something else. For example, if a boy wants to become a pilot, but doesn't know any actual pilots, there's no flight school nearby or they can't afford it, and the school doesn't have any teachers who know anything about flying, and he doesn't seem focused enough to learn on his own... then he would have been nudged into something else. Probably toward a trade or other blue collar job, which inherently have defined training programs with tangible steps of accomplishment that can keep students interested and motivated (or they won't require much training at all).
For whatever reason, that kind of tracking and nudging isn't as prevalent anymore? I don't know... Part of it is probably the push to send everyone to college, but also a general disdain for trades in the education system. Though it is true that blue collar jobs mostly don't pay as much as they used to, relative to white collar degree-requiring jobs, so I can understand that sentiment... But, no tracking/nudging means that more students are essentially being left to fend for themselves in terms of motivation, and harder today than 20 years ago. Why spend time studying a topic that won't provide any tangible sense of accomplishment for maybe 5 to 10 years... when you can play a video game with a literal 'Accomplishment' badges?
Yes, it's unfortunate that the boy who wanted to become a pilot wasn't really given that opportunity... but is it worse for him to be nudged into a different career than him for him to play video games through his teens, drop out of college, and then working sporadic service jobs? I don't know...
From my own life, I know that I was pretty unmotivated throughout school up until my junior year when I was able to take a basic programming course (not actual BASIC... it was C console apps). I didn't have the intrinsic motivation to learn coding on my own... I just wanted to play Counter-Strike and WoW. After that class though, my grades all started improving, and I did well through my CS degree and afterwards. Without that one programming course... who knows what would have happened? Or, what if I could have taken it earlier in high school? Or if my school had more than one programming course?
What's my point here? Not sure... maybe we as as a society should realize (again) that kids need real guidance in their education. Especially boys. They need to feel a sense of direction beyond just learning for learning's sake. If we're going to give every kid the opportunity to chase their dreams, then we'll need to re-think the structure of our education system. More investment to expand topics being taught, more structured curricula with periodic tangible accomplishments, more student tracking/nudging, more specialized magnet schools, maybe even boarding schools to bring students to certain training programs.
For whatever reason, a lot of girls seem to be doing fine in the system as it is. The article has some thoughts, but I can't come up with any theories myself.
In the past, maybe 20-30 years ago, it seems like parents or the school system would have identified the boys lacking intrinsic motivation, and track them into something else. For example, if a boy wants to become a pilot, but doesn't know any actual pilots, there's no flight school nearby or they can't afford it, and the school doesn't have any teachers who know anything about flying, and he doesn't seem focused enough to learn on his own... then he would have been nudged into something else. Probably toward a trade or other blue collar job, which inherently have defined training programs with tangible steps of accomplishment that can keep students interested and motivated (or they won't require much training at all).
For whatever reason, that kind of tracking and nudging isn't as prevalent anymore? I don't know... Part of it is probably the push to send everyone to college, but also a general disdain for trades in the education system. Though it is true that blue collar jobs mostly don't pay as much as they used to, relative to white collar degree-requiring jobs, so I can understand that sentiment... But, no tracking/nudging means that more students are essentially being left to fend for themselves in terms of motivation, and harder today than 20 years ago. Why spend time studying a topic that won't provide any tangible sense of accomplishment for maybe 5 to 10 years... when you can play a video game with a literal 'Accomplishment' badges?
Yes, it's unfortunate that the boy who wanted to become a pilot wasn't really given that opportunity... but is it worse for him to be nudged into a different career than him for him to play video games through his teens, drop out of college, and then working sporadic service jobs? I don't know...
From my own life, I know that I was pretty unmotivated throughout school up until my junior year when I was able to take a basic programming course (not actual BASIC... it was C console apps). I didn't have the intrinsic motivation to learn coding on my own... I just wanted to play Counter-Strike and WoW. After that class though, my grades all started improving, and I did well through my CS degree and afterwards. Without that one programming course... who knows what would have happened? Or, what if I could have taken it earlier in high school? Or if my school had more than one programming course?
What's my point here? Not sure... maybe we as as a society should realize (again) that kids need real guidance in their education. Especially boys. They need to feel a sense of direction beyond just learning for learning's sake. If we're going to give every kid the opportunity to chase their dreams, then we'll need to re-think the structure of our education system. More investment to expand topics being taught, more structured curricula with periodic tangible accomplishments, more student tracking/nudging, more specialized magnet schools, maybe even boarding schools to bring students to certain training programs.
For whatever reason, a lot of girls seem to be doing fine in the system as it is. The article has some thoughts, but I can't come up with any theories myself.
Curious, how many others are finding the comments here depressing? All the way from feminism is a plot by elite men, through fear of emasculation (literal castration, or declining testosterone), through men losing out because of incentivised quotas, and.... so on. Many of which are portrayed as "the problem" without any scrutiny, or appeal to evidence, or just a cursory consideration of whether these opinions actually take the conversation in productive directions.
It looks a lot like the intersection of the Dunning-Kruger effect and (deep breath, I had to look this up) ultracrepidarianism [0] and oh yeah, fragile egos.
It frankly makes me lose yet more confidence in HN as a place of remotely well-conceived opinion.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutor,_ne_ultra_crepidam
It looks a lot like the intersection of the Dunning-Kruger effect and (deep breath, I had to look this up) ultracrepidarianism [0] and oh yeah, fragile egos.
It frankly makes me lose yet more confidence in HN as a place of remotely well-conceived opinion.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutor,_ne_ultra_crepidam
Modern feminism has definitely been taken over by PMCs to disenfranchise workers from uniting. You’d have to be blind to not notice the “if you critique anything we say/make/do then you are the enemy!” type of division being spread throughout modern feminism and most identity politics. It’s also used as a nice defense against any critiques in general. “Our movie doesn’t suck - it’s because you’re racist and sexist that you didn’t like it!” Why do you think the government back in the 60s started really narrowing in on MLK when he started talking about class? You think that was a coincidence…?
Also the quotas thing is def real. Idk where you work (I work in SV) but I’ve seen them and I’ve seen how they affect men directly.
Also the quotas thing is def real. Idk where you work (I work in SV) but I’ve seen them and I’ve seen how they affect men directly.
are you saying here that people here are not competent to talk about their own experience? sure, some of the speculations for the reasons of the experience may be over the top, but that doesn't negate the experience itself. part of the problem there is of course that every individual only has their own limited experience to draw on. this is not a topic generally studied.
and it's also not a surprise that a larger crowd of HN readers are struggling socially. (and not to forget that the topic is likely self-selecting and attracting people who have a story to tell, or feel strongly about it.)
so yes, HN is not representative of the average world, but some of the stories shared are indicators of serious problems in our society. and some are not new problems either.
if you disagree with some of the points made here, please do provide counterpoints that we can discuss.
and it's also not a surprise that a larger crowd of HN readers are struggling socially. (and not to forget that the topic is likely self-selecting and attracting people who have a story to tell, or feel strongly about it.)
so yes, HN is not representative of the average world, but some of the stories shared are indicators of serious problems in our society. and some are not new problems either.
if you disagree with some of the points made here, please do provide counterpoints that we can discuss.
I'm so glad this article made the front page, whereas my latest article upload that was actually about programming on Hacker News was shadowbanned so it wouldn't receive any votes.
Some of the aforementioned male friends have even been broken up with due to such an incident. It's of course nonsense because every human being regardless of gender should be able to express one's feelings and cry if needed, but perhaps not everyone sees it that way.
It is an interesting example of a revealed preference in the sociological space [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference