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The data are clear: The boys are not all right

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

#411

Post by betwixthewires »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #196
zozbot234 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being awkward around women in High School is a given, but as a thirty-something it can be profoundly uncomfortable and off-putting. Males should be fixing that by making some female friends. Don't go the "creepy incel who hates all women and Chads" route.

>" Don't go the "creepy incel who hates all women and Chads" route" Absolutely. I am on the autism spectrum so part of the difficulty I have can be attributed to that. However I accept that my social shortcomings are my own responsibility. I think a big part of the problem is finding new friends now that I am in my 30's and life is very stagnant.

Anecdotal, but I had this problem for many years, I stuck to my existing (small) social circle which included no single women, and that social circle got increasingly small over the years as people moved away, settled down, etc. I moved somewhere where I didn't know anyone at all, and after a few months of just spending every waking moment alone, I just started going to the same place where people are and doing the same thing every day.

I think all it takes is going somewhere where people are and being friendly, somewhere that doesn't include existing friends and acquaintances, just sticking with it and not really caring who thinks what about you. Anywhere but a bar would be my criteria, and ideally not a commercial establishment. For me it was the local swimming pool in my community.

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

#412

Post by johnny22 »

cedws wrote: post #270
zozbot234 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely one's romantic prospects should not be set in the teenage years. Or even be affected all that much by contingent employment status, when future potential might be far more relevant.

As another reply touches on, there's a developmental process to romance. A guy in his thirties dating for the first time will have a seriously hard time because of his inexperience. I'm not saying that it's impossible at that point but missing the boat in your teenage years can stunt this development. I think Jordan Peterson has described this in one of his lectures (it's an interesting idea regardless of what you th…

a guy in his thirties dating for the first time will have troubles IF he didn't have good friendly social interactions BEFORE that with both women and men.

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

#413

Post by astrange »

giantg2 wrote: post #119
decafninja wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do many married men really want that kind of life though? It's one thing to be single and roaming the world carefree. But my observation has been that most men who are married, especially if with children, have some innate desire to provide for the family and not being able to do so (due to unemployment, underemployment, etc.) causes them stress even if the wife is earning more than enough. Those that don't seem to b…

Regardless of gender, it seems rare that only one partner would be making more than enough to support the family. It's very difficult to make ends meet with a family on a single salary these days (without assistance; and what about saving for retirement? ).

A dual-income family isn’t necessarily evidence that you need two incomes to survive. Rather, it just means there’s a lot of things out there to buy, so it's worth paying for childcare to earn more money.

It’s also a sign that the gender income gap decreased, because it’s worth both people’s time to work. It’s not worth womens’ time to work either when the family is poor (because they can’t earn much and might as well do home/childcare labor) or rich (because the amount one partner can add with a job effectively doesn't matter).

This means the easiest way to get back to a one-income family is to lower womens’ wages again, so you probably shouldn’t wish for it.

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

#414

Post by rmellow »

luckydata wrote: post #311
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…

This is such a weird take. You really don't need to be all that special or beautiful to find a partner, I've always been a stocky guy all my life and I never had a real issue finding sexual partners and now I'm happily married with kids. Get yourself a personality, don't be weird, dress decently and talk to people. That's really all you need, no matter what you look like there's someone out there that's into it. Don'…

At the height of a loneliness epidemic, it's hard to get a personality and talk to people.

Don't get me wrong, your conclusion is spot on. Getting there is the hard part.

Another factor is we live in a period in time where we have so much choice on how to spend our time, products that are personalized to each of our own tastes, that creates sparsity of shared experiences.

No longer is there a movie like Star Wars, that you could throw a stick and find someone who shares that experience. Now unless you're suckling from the teat of mainstream media, you need to go out of your way to find someone who shares your taste in film, music, art, games and ideas.

I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been an experiment adding a social component to Netflix.

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

#415

Post by paul1134 »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #393
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…

And pointing to the decline of religion isn't very helpful for us atheists. I can't really buy into a religion I don't believe in for the sake of making society better. I'd rather try to make society better directly, I don't want to do a "noble lie". I'll gesture vaguely at "the suburbs". Low trust and alienation describes my childhood in a place where you needed a car to do anything and even when my parents let me w…

No post body was provided.

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

#416

Post by R0b0t1 »

_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…

They're not usually working off of a broken model, they legitimately get no positive interaction with women.

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

#418

Post by scarmig »

diordiderot wrote: post #406
scarmig wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers also give boys lower grades and girls higher grades when their gender is evident; anonymous grading greatly reduces the gender gap in primary and secondary school.

Do you have a link to a study etc? V interested

For example,

https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents...

https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v48y2013i1p236-264.html

(Not the exact studies I remember seeing.)

It's a common finding and one of the rare effects in the social sciences that are very reproducible.

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

#419

Post by ReactiveJelly »

> we must stop defining masculinity as necessarily toxic

I know "toxic masculinity" is a dumb academic term that never should have become a slogan, but Andrew, Mr. Yang, that's not what it means.

It's like "async functions". Not all functions are async. It's okay if a function is sync. Adjectives modify nouns to make them refer to a specific subset.

It's fine to be masculine. I don't know what it means to be masculine (are monster trucks masculine? I like them anyway), but if it's safe, sane, and consensual, it's fine to be very very masculine and I support boys being masculine.

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

#420

Post by ceasesurthinko »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #239
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…

I think the obesity problem is linked to the fact that many people have to work 60 hours a week to survive and don't have the time/energy to get in shape. Capitalism has taken a large swath of people out of the dating game just due to working to survive.

The obesity problem is overwhelmingly because of the amount of sugar/HFCS pumped into our foods. We are working less today than 50 years ago, yet those times no one was morbidly obese. Obesity is caused by food, not by the amount you exercise or move.
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