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The data are clear: The boys are not all right

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#371

Post by zozbot234 »

_bkr9 wrote: post #307
R0b0t1 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is people, including women, get to pick their friends. If you're branded as awkward or ugly all women will avoid you leading to a self-perpetuating cycle. Since women can pick their friends and generally pick gregarious, outgoing, and socially competent men for their friend groups, they ignore and do not understand the type of man who is labelled an incel.

No, these are false premises. All of my female partners have had the feedback from someone that "you're just like a guy". The so called "girl next door" wearing sweats, and rocking a bad-hair-day ponytail because she's late for her lab may be way hotter when she dresses up than the median film actress. She may be an awesome friend. She may be a frickin' monster in bed, without giving off any porn-star vibes. Incels a…

> Incels are fundamentally working off a broken model of women, attraction, dating, and sex.

That broken model is unfortunately widespread in both genders. Some "girls next door" can basically feel like failures in the dating/relationships sphere, which ends up making them even less appealing to others. It's worth trying to fix this of course, but it's not always easy.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#372

Post by wolverine876 »

N1H1L wrote: post #301
ytwombly wrote: post #150

US-based cis-hetero white man here. The data reinforce the impression you get glancing at the headlines or spending a day out anywhere in America observing other men. Dare I say it even reinforces what I know from painful firsthand experience as a man, at the lowest points in my life. I was lucky though, with a supportive family who helped me through the confusing years of early adulthood. You can point to the declin…

The purpose of a man's life is meaning and the search for it. For years, centuries even, this meaning in a man's life was provided by being a provider. This order was enforced through society. And you can use society and religion interchangeably here because the distinction between the two is only a century or two old. And this order enforced the role of a child-bearer and nurturer to women. Obviously, such an order…

Why do you get to say what someone's purpose is? Why is being a provider necessarily the purpose in life? People might have done it before (I'm dubious of sweeping, golden-age claims like that), but for almost all of human history we lived short, brutal, illiterate lives as hunter-gatherers. I don't feel that is necessarily my purpose in life.

Find a meaning that is important to you; be a provider if you like. IMHO, people are spending a lot of time getting wrapped up in these questions, debating what is possible, participating in trendy despair - it's all a parlor game, like worrying about whether your car will start because you don't understand the physics and some people online say it can't possibly. Just stop talking to them and they will fade quickly; get up, turn the ignition, and go.

> The people who desire to go back are actually who are rebelling; the rest of the men are either locked up in prison, or overdosing on opioids, or being incels or numbing themselves with video games.

There are a lot of males - most of them, really - doing other things.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#373

Post by someguydave »

_bkr9 wrote: post #294
thrway99 wrote: post #61

My observation is that we are going to have a radical rebalancing of who reproduces and who doesn’t. Lot of men and women who are generally not too motivated to seek out a companion, lose weight, put in the work to make it happen just…won’t pass on genetics. Children are a lot of work and energy. I’m highly introverted and high earning. My wife was the aggressor in my case. She pretty much made it all happen. I think…

A note on fitness. Any pressure I've had to lose weight or whatnot has come from me . All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on. That said, they have commented favourably on other physical features, and I'm not particularly overweight. I say all this just to try and fight the idea that crops up that if you're male and don't fit some jacked or "Cha…

Height is way more important than fitness to women.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#374

Post by AussieWog93 »

Not disagreeing with the main point of this article (boys are struggling), but I don't think men's losses have been women's gains. (I'm aware this wasn't stated in the article, but this type of article invariably brings up "Men vs. Women" debates in a way that ignores how intertwined our successes and failures are.)

Rather, the pissing up the wall of men's potential in the name of "equality" has made life more arduous, stressful and anxiety-inducing for everyone.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#375

Post by [deleted] »

marcellus23 wrote: post #225
kevinob11 wrote: post #82

I'm a white straight male, grew up middle class near Seattle. I'm now in my mid-30s and have 3 kids. Semi-recently I had an (maybe my first?) experience where I wasn't the favored party in a situation. My kids have made focus more difficult, and I work in an industry (tech consulting) where focus is a big deal, and the idea that I'm not the perfect person for the job was a foreign feeling. I no longer felt "I was mad…

> Semi-recently I had an (maybe my first?) experience where I wasn't the favored party in a situation You're mid-30s and you might have just experienced your first thing like that? Man or woman, that's hard to believe. And more importantly, I'm not sure your experience can be generalized to all men. As someone who has experienced situations like that frequently, and knows other men who have, it's a bit frustrating to…

[deleted]

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#377

Post by bradlys »

dlsa wrote: post #346
johncessna wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners. and > Research shows that one significant factor women look for in a partner is a steady job. As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Unsurprisingly, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from 1960 to 2010, the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just ove…

If most women are optimising unemployed men out of dating / marriage then men being unemployed has far more significant consequences for men than women. Women are all about equality for access to employment but then complain that there aren't enough suitable men with jobs. The more a woman earns the smaller her dating pool becomes. Perhaps she could be more flexible in partner selection? There are outliers but the da…

> The more a woman earns the smaller her dating pool becomes. Perhaps she could be more flexible in partner selection?

This will take more than a generation to solve. Culturally this is not acceptable for women. Women are looked down upon for dating men who make less than them.

For the next 20-30 years, women will continue to shame themselves and others for dating men of “lower” or even equal value.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#378

Post by su6652 »

The only problem I see if that white, straight men are far more likely to be armed and use violence in response to their perceived plight. If I had to pick one group to not be subject to declining economic and romantic opportunities, it would be straight, white men, but only out of fear.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#379

Post by nanomonkey »

bluecalm wrote: post #316
irrational wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling, hiking, going to the beach, reading, working on hobbies, learning new skills, cooking, etc.

Homemaker role doesn't mean spending your days travelling, hiking or going to the beach.

Metaverse Homemaker Addition allows you to do what every you want between wash cycles.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#380

Post by betwixthewires »

tharne wrote: post #246
bmj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the father of 18 year old who is not going to college and instead working as a carpenter, I don't think lumping 18 year olds with 25+ year olds makes much sense. Perhaps I have an antiquated view of family, but I don't feel his "independence" has everything to do with where he lives. I'm more than happy to have him around the house if it allows him to save money and live a better life at, say, 21.

This is spot on. Multigenerational housing used to be the norm, not a symbol of failure. Why we all think it's a great idea to leave our families at 18 and pay high rents so that we can live with strangers we found on the internet is beyond me.

The thing is, the people that do the systems planning of our economy and social structure have an incentive for every man to move into a productive lifestyle the minute he turns 18. But there's a misalignment of incentives; what appears productive for society is not productive for the young men in question.

So of course, in print, there's a crisis of young men staying at home with their parents til they're 30. But for young men, there's a crisis of incentive. Why on earth would a young man want to go give half his waking life to barely pay his own rent, then run on the treadmill that is modern online dating for, at best, meaningless hedonistic interactions with maybe, maybe not, women he's attracted to?

What it comes down to is that men have no incentive to do anything other than low effort, intangible self service, because the other alternative is just a more expensive version of the exact same thing.

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