Man Bashing, and what Men should do about it

after a while endless studies by endless groups just seems to be so much mental masturbation

in my mond, men have always been more responsible for crime than women

i also think that in this economic downturn, the jobs that are available are not what people think of as male oriented jobs, service industry etc, i think the employment situation has more to do with economics than anything related to some plot by women to keep men down, in the depression, many men couldn't find work, their wives found work in restaurants, took in laundry, why didn't the men take in laundry to support their families, because the job was seen as women's work, by whom, a male driven society, not really a woman's fault

i know a couple of guys who've started their own businesses since losing jobs, stop blaming or looking for blame and just do something

Who said that it was? My view is that the men who cave into women are just as much to blame as are the women who set out to be in charge. My view is that men we just as much the drivers of prioritizing young women over young men, and are equally to blame.

I do however think that men are going to have to drive the fixing of this problem.

One must figure out the problem before one can devise solutions to the problem. You want to skip the step because you dont want to hear about it. In other words you will not be part of the solution.

perhaps we blame tuition's, you come out of university already behind the 8 ball, for years we heard that university graduates earn more than folks who didn't go, but that only works if you get a job in your filed of study, not a sure thing, plus your maybe up to 100 grand in debt and you haven't even thought about a house and kids and all that happy crap, the guy who skips university and gets a decent job, at least when he's 100+ grand in debt he has the equity of a house to fall back on, not a nice frame on the wall

i was forged by those same eras, and frankly, we suck, the tail end of disco, the yuppies of the 80's, the corporate scum that made the mess were in, yeah, we should really be helping teach the youth, they'd be better off raised by wolves

i guess i'm not buying the problem as you're presenting it

and sometimes the world changes, and there's nothing you can do about it, but make the best as you see fit

Yes, you have a really valid point. My son apprenticed four years as a plumber-gas fitter and got paid the entire time - even his two months' annual schooling (thanks to his dad's RESP), so he came out with practical, hands on experience and no debt. My daughter became a social worker and because she lived at home and worked the entire time (part time, of course), wound up having no debt. But most people who go to university owe some debt... here in Canada it's a lot less for tuition, so after 4 years, on a full debt allotment, they could owe more or less about $40K. And if they do a degree in something absolutely useless (unless they go on to grad school) like English or History, they're rarely going to get work in their field and make decent money.

It's all about the choices you make. I don't think kids should go to post-secondary school right away unless they know for sure what they want to do. What do you know when you're 18?? You could 'waste' four years doing something you realize you don't really want to do.

As an example, I have a friend whose son did Linguistics for four years, graduated, worked as a what, I don't know, then became a bush pilot, which he loves. There you go.

What men cave to women, where and how? What the hell are you talking about? Cave to women? Good Lord. What women set out to be in charge? Where and how? When? Who? Good Lord.

see i knew giving you broads the vote was a bad idea, should of kept you all barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen

Another indication that men are in trouble. These numbers are from 2001, I am not finding any more recent, but I have no doubt that the current numbers are bad. I take particular interest in the 20 something numbers, as this is when it would first show up that young adults are not prepared for life, and not prepared to continue to live. This represents a failure to raise them properly

http://www.familyfirstaid.org/suicide.html

I was rewiring my folk’s electrical and electronic devices around the age of nine and building my own relays and transformers and Jacob ladders.

I did have a short love affair with civil and chemical engineering but that did not last.

I think my parents was more concern about my manufacturing gun power then rewiring their radios and TV or even creating high voltages devices so they took my chemicals away from me and purchase my first tube VOM for me.

In any case there was no question in my mind by ten less alone eighteen concerning the future course of my life.

I didn't know that about suicide rates. I knew males are more likely to commit suicide by violent means than females.

Interestingly, white males have a reputation for puniness in neonatal intensive care units. We call them wimpy white boys. Alternately, you never bet against a black girl. It's actually not always true... sometimes white males do just fine in spite of their poor prognosis. That's the problem with generalizations.

I said unless you know for sure. Not everyone KNOWS. Duh.

dj - I think i'ma gonna haveta visit you next time I go east. If, indeed, you even live back East

First you need to prove things like:

Young males have a negative view of females.
Young males are "so" averse to marriage and committed relationships.
Females are in charge of the relationship.
Young males do poorly at handling women.
Young males are incapable of looking after their own well being.

You're assuming facts that are not in evidence, counselor.

I have already stated that this problem has not been properly studied, we do not currently have proof that the situation that I describe is the reality. I believe that it is, and call for more study, if you dont believe that it is then are at a standstill unless you can prove that young men are just fine. I challenge you to try to prove it, and when you fail I call on you to join me in requesting more study.

Perhaps you failed. Many, nay, I would venture most of us do not consider that we failed and fortunately do not view the world and women in the same skewed way that you do.

You keep referring to the collective. That may be your problem. In the real world, we look after ourselves and our families and do not look to the "collective" to forge our way.

Maybe you cleared up one thing. I thought you were looking at young men the same way you do young women.

"Demeted Misogyny," now that's a great tag--high-larious!

Hawkeye, you are probably one of the worst people who could present this topic in a manner which might actually foster thoughtful discussion. That's because your basic premises are always extremely biased--i.e. if men are having problems it's always due to something that women are doing. You seem unable to disconnect from your "war of the sexes" stance long enough to view any gender related issues with enough objectivity to actually recognize existing problems and consider some of the causes.



You don't do research to try to demonstrate a questionable premise. That is absolutely idiotic. The situation you describe, that an entire generation of young man are failing, or doing poorly, in all areas, is both too broad and over-generalized to even permit hypotheses to be developed. First you should identify specific areas where boys and young men seem to be demonstrating difficulties as an entire group. Then you look into the variables which might account for such effects.

And there is already a great deal of literature and research on the subject of why so many boys and adolescents might be doing poorly academically--and it is considerably more complex than anything you have suggested, and the problem hardly begins when young men enter college. Why you have been too lazy to look into any of the literature on this topic, beyond the mere propaganda
hype posted on "men's rights" Web sites, is a really good question. If you are so interested in this problem, why haven't you looked into it more?

Several hypotheses have been suggested for the generally poorer academic performance of boys:

1. As a group, boys enter kindergarten with typically less developed verbal and pre-reading skills than girls. Because they may be less well equipped to master the very basic reading and writing skills in the first few grades, some may experience early frustration and dissatisfaction with school which causes a loss of interest. In addition, past the third grade, it becomes very difficult to make-up for deficiencies in reading and writing, and those who continue to experience such problems will have increasing academic difficulty, and loss of interest, and lack of motivation, and this contributes to lower grades, enhanced interest in non academic activities (i.e. video games), and higher school drop out rates.

2. The typical school environment and schedule might not meet optimal conditions for the boys learning experience, particularly in the early grades. Boys might need more breaks for physical activity, rather than having to sit for extended periods. Boys might need to be placed in smaller groups with more recognition for participation. Boys might need more "hands-on" projects which are not as dependent on reading and verbal skills. Boys might need more reading materials geared to their interests (i.e.books about trucks rather than butterflies).

3. Cultural notions of "masculinity" or the "boys code" may be at odds with viewing academic success as valuable, desirable, or worthy of praise. While prowess at sports, for instance, is seen as good and "manly", academic achievement may be seen as nerdy, or weak, or feminine, and the "heroes" chosen by boys (i.e.sports stars) tend to reflect this. The jocks at school will gain all the attention. Those who prefer to spend time studying, and getting good grades, may be ridiculed by peers. Academic achievement may suffer the more the boy tries to adapt or fit in with traditional, cultural, macho notions of "masculinity", which simply do not recognize the worth of such activity, and the child may opt for the "boys code" in order to gain peer acceptance.

I think that all of the above factors are likely to be most prevalent among the lower socio-economic groups, and it is within those groups that we do see young men failing the most dramatically as measured by school drop out rate, under-employment, drug use, criminal activity, etc. Among the middle and upper middle classes, these factors might still be at play, but I think that there are more resources available to these children to help neutralize their influence.

Some solutions to the above problems might be relatively simple. For instance, from a very young age, more fathers could spend more time reading to their children, or with them, rather than tossing them baseballs or footballs. How about dad taking his son on a weekly trip to the public library and helping him to pick out books that might interest him, and then talking with him about the book after it has been read. Encourage reading on the computer, rather than playing games. Limit TV viewing and video game playing in favor of other activities that involve learning or which stimulate interest in learning something in an active or interactive way. Provide boys with pre-school programs to help develop verbal skills. Fathers need to show as much interest in their child's academic skills, and devote as much time to helping them develop such skills, as they do in following the progress of that child's soccer or baseball team. By doing this, the father becomes a male role model for valuing such academic activities and learning, and for cultivating leisure pursuits that enhance such activities.

The idea that traditional cultural notions of "masculinity" may be at odds with encouraging academic success might be the hardest pill for Hawkeye to swallow. But where in that tough guy, power-oriented, non-emotional, muscle-flexing, actions-speak-louder-than-words, male persona of "masculinity" does academic success fit in? Aren't the he-men the ones making fun of the intellectual "sissies"? Even our politicians do this with their scorn of the intellectual elite. Traditional notions of "masculinity" value brawn over brains. They value the man who wins the Heisman Trophy over the man who wins the Nobel prize. To raise sons with traditional gender notions of "masculinity"--and to have these notions continually reinforced in every action flick and video game that male child gets his hands on-- may be a recipe for disaster if we want to raise males who are motivated to succeed in school, and who are able to succeed academically, and who then are able to go on to live satisfying and fulfilling lives in harmony with women. Even for those young men who choose to go on to college, if "masculinity" means a lot of hard partying and drinking, as much sex as possible, and hours and hours of video game playing, so that insufficient time is devoted to studying and focusing on the future, we will see them eclipsed by their female counterparts, both in college and beyond, and no one should really wonder why that's happened. Feeling like a failure to live up to traditional notions of "masculinity" may well contribute to male rates of depression and suicide, so these out-dated cultural constraints may be downright unhealthy, as well as counter-productive to personal and academic success.

For an interesting article on why males fall behind in school, which touches on some of the issues I've mentioned, you might read this.
http://open.salon.com/blog/theron_mcinnis/2010/06/07/socialization_and_male_academic_performance
While the author of the above article is addressing the situation in Jamaica, W.I., the points mentioned are the same as those generally emphasized in U.S. discussions of this same issue. It is particularly applicable to the situation for many African American boys and adolescents in the U.S.

So, Hawkeye, before you call for studies to be done, like a lone voice in the wilderness, try reading the literature first. Studies are being done all the time. You're just not interested enough to actually read them.

And, if you are genuinely interested in finding solutions, I'd suggest you take a long hard look at your own concept of "masculinity" as part of the source of the problem. Rather than defending it, as you always do, or insisting that it must be re-captured and re-strengthened, you might find that it is a negative influence, and even a primary reason that young men might be falling behind, because it is at odds with the world we actually live in now, and the personal qualities one needs to succeed in that world.

So your imagined solution to a problem that you admit that you don't understand is to mother boys more, just have the fathers do it.....leave it to Firefly to float such an obvious lame idea. You seem to hate men and masculinity, but we knew this already, I go the other way. I suspect that more bonding with mature males will help, but I would expect that this should be of the masculine variety.

I reject the notion that young males as a group are not in trouble, that it is individual. When collage admission would be as skewed as badly as 80/20 female/male if done on academic merit then we have a systemic problem that effects males as a class. We dont need to look any further than this to know that we have a problem, though we should look further to get a better idea how bad it is.

I don't know what the solution is, but I suspect that we are looking at primarily a spiritual problem here. I suspect that it is some combination of the attack on masculinity perpetrated by the feminists as well as a general message that females are more important than males that accounts for why young males are doing so poorly.