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The data are clear: The boys are not all right

washingtonpost.com

521–530 of 1001 posts

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

#521

> 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 masculin…

How often do the people who use "toxic masculinity" have any word other than "toxic" in front? About never?

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

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, me too. But, would you still feel the same if you had to stay home to take care of kids and a working spouse ?

And having very few adults to talk to, no status, no career advancement (in fact, the opposite), and little recognition.

Having no career advancement is sometimes like not having cancer: a net positive. Most people have no career at all, they retire on the same job (just more "senior") they started with. For them, there is no loss.

Also a stay at home wife was traditionally not isolated from society; in my family one generation ago almost everyone was in that situation and I can tell that social interactions were much stronger and more frequent than my generation.

Recognition? That stuff people look for in Facebook likes, Twitter shares and LinkedIn "achievements"? That is attention seeking, not recognition.

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

#524
post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result. But I don’t think it’s really a gender thing, I think it’s a power and money thing. That is, I don’t think mainly white, rich and powerful men set out to disadvantage other men. I think they were more focused on advantaging themselves to the exclusion of everyone else. What I find…

> Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result. I find gender blaming conversation to be reductive. The decline of men and boys is not men's fault nor is it women's fault. Dare I say there's little data to show either way, nor is it really helpful in healing from a dysfunctional society that has failed you on a systemic and in…

It’s true feminism provides a second set of safety net for women that does not exist for men. Also the rhetoric in media as part of feminism is that women are better than men at everything and a large percentage of people believe it.

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

#525

Some people say a man is made outta mud A poor man's made outta muscle and blood Muscle and blood and skin and bones A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong "Sixteen Tons", Tennessee Ernie Ford There are few Real Men jobs like that any more.

How can civilization cope with the fact that those jobs might never come back? A cognitive surplus [1] can be dumped into projects like Wikipedia, but where does the physical surplus go? Supposing we are omnipotent deities who want to make people happy and free and avoid unrest. Encourage people to build henges and pyramids for the hell of it? We can't pay them to do that without a global welfare system... Russia wou…

How can civilization cope with the fact that those jobs might never come back?

Don't know. It's the underlying cause of much of the unrest in the US.

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

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My observation is that we are going to have a radical rebalancing of who reproduces and who doesn’t. I think the idea that everyone has the option to settle down and have kids is a relatively recent phenomenon. It used to be that most men never had kids. Nowadays most men do have kids. That said - 25%+ of men will never have children. Kinda wild when you think about that. 1/4 of all men will never have children. Wh…

No doubt. It is so counter intuitive on the surface that the broad family tree has more women than men. I think it is that we have a bias when having this discussion that children are the product of this Hollywood love story lifelong marriage. Google says 28 percent of all U.S. women with two or more children have children by more than one man. It is an incredible statistic.

Shit sells products. Straight men are a vulnerable audience to sell to. They want sex as much or more than most women and yet they have the least access to it of all people. Sell an image - get them invested in it and sell products that aim to get them somewhere. Yet - it ultimately does nothing.

I think Japan is a pretty decent model of where most of the US is going. Anime weebs and what not with waifu pillows will become much more normalized and other various forms of NEETs. But with more violence, unfortunately. I think shootings, suicides, and “accidental” deaths are going to stay the course or get worse. We’ll find ways to skew the statistics to cover this up so that we never have to address it (cause that’s require a different way of thinking about capitalism) but I don’t think this problem is going away for a few generations.

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

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of that comes down to 1.5-2x the income compared to a single parent household, versus the beneficial effect of two role models.

Seems like an easy thing to test, just adjust for income in single parents and compare outcomes. Easy enough that it's likely been done before and didn't materially change the outcomes of this kind of analysis

> this kind of analysis

This was an op-ed by a politician, not any kind of analysis.

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

#528
post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result. I find gender blaming conversation to be reductive. The decline of men and boys is not men's fault nor is it women's fault. Dare I say there's little data to show either way, nor is it really helpful in healing from a dysfunctional society that has failed you on a systemic and in…

Women as an "interest group" have been incredible at PR this last century. Men, on the other hand, have yet to realize that they can't coast on the existing historic momentum and have to start speaking up. It doesn't help that folks who attempt to represent men's rights are instantly smeared as either pathetic incel losers, or as alt-right oppressor misogynists. There's no in-between that I'm aware of. From what I ca…

Yep mens right is a cesspool of toxicity but so is much of the modern women’s movement one is just tolerated and the other crushed

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

#529

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…

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

#530
I would guess this is yet another side effect of the rich gaining more and more power, controlling the government, the law, law enforcement, the money supply, and employment. It's not about men, but you can point at men as a group that suffer, simply because most people suffer, as the minority are rich. HN-ers, in terms of wealth, are probably hanging around either side of the event horizon.
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