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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

#611

we'll fix all these gender inequality problems once parents stop making such a big deal about gender. girls are not respected because they are raised to be shiny princesses with no real power while boys often have violence issue as in the article because they are raised to be "tough". the parents need to fix this because it starts from day 1

This is so hilariously wrong. Let's dig in to why:

> we'll fix all these gender inequality problems once parents stop making such a big deal about gender

Citation needed. Gender matters. It's possibly the most fundamental component of the ego. Different genders react differently to stimuli.

> girls are not respected because they are raised to be shiny princesses with no real power

Massive, massive generalization here. Girls are respected (among men, which I assume is your grievance) when they show up and work hard. My wife was raised in an ultratraditional Christian environment, wasn't allowed to wear pants until she was 18, and had to wear a headscarf whenever she left the house. Talk about taking someone's agency. She's the blue-collar worker between the two of us, and she's well-respected at her job because she puts in the work and is helpful.

> boys often have violence issue as in the article because they are raised to be "tough"

You need to hear this: boys tend to be more violent. That's what testosterone does. It raises aggression, lowers empathy, and lowers agreeableness. This is normal, boys fight. This is where the phrase "boys will be boys" comes from—not rape apology. Boys have anger issues at a higher rate than girls, but oddly, it happens more when they don't have a good father figure, one who will teach them how to bottle it up when it needs to be bottled up. I'm sick and tired of women with no experience of being male trying to tell men how we should deal with our emotions. Sometimes, being raised to be "tough", as you so eloquently put it, is absolutely necessary.

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

#612
post #609

> Many boys are thus often growing up raised by single mothers, the share more than doubling between 1980 and 2019, from 18 percent to 40 percent. This is surprising to me when the reduction in crime in NY in the 1980s/1990s is often attributed to allowing abortions, i.e. a reduction in single mothers.

The mechanism of action here is that a bunch of males who would otherwise exist and perpetrate crime ... don't exist.

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

#613

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.

But to get obese..you actually need to eatmany more calories than you need for a lot of time. If obese people cannot stop eating unhealthy food the problem is mental.

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

#614

The crisis, if there is one, is that society has less use for males who have IQs between 90-105 or so, who cannot cut it in STEM, and who are finding it hard to cope with increasingly competitive economic conditions and higher overall costs like rent, and is why many men are delaying family formation or moving back with parents (but also due to careerism for women). Men are just dropping out rather than doing low-pai…

I'm 33, Ive got a fairly high IQ, make $340k in a STEM field and enough to retire tomorrow, I'm not unattractive, and put a huge amount of effort over many years into online dating. I've pretty much given up on dating. I have a total inability to find anyone I'm interested in that is interested in me. When I was younger and I wanted to go to bars and get drunk and be an idiot I had plenty of attractive sexual partner…

> anyone I'm interested in that is interested in me.

Perhaps this is your problem? I've seen this with folks at work. They're middle aged, successful, extremely bright and they want to find a mate. The problems as I see it:

1. They insist on living in "Man Jose" aka SiValley. There is a serious lack of demographic diversity here.

2. They want to find a bright, attractive woman with an amazing career, 10/10 body who is wowed by their lack of life balance, an obsession with career and status, and lack of fun/joy in their lives.

If these guys would live practically anywhere but the valley and accept that, even though they make a lot of money and are great at their tech jobs, they are just average in terms of what a woman looks for in a mate, well, they might get somewhere.

Lonely nerds: you've got to accept that in all likelihood your mate will disappoint you in some way and vice-versa. Don't just marry the first girl you find, but consider lowering your standards to match with reality.

> I had plenty of attractive sexual partners.

This sentence is a serious red flag. If you think your ability to bang hot women who hang out in bars bears any relation to your fitness as a mate then you need to check your beliefs about what women want in a relationship. I'd like to hope this is just an insensitive way of you telling us that you're not a hideous monster and hopefully that's all it is. If not, I don't know, maybe stop trying to date, take a break from the tech world, and just work on your social skills for a while.

> tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear

Jesus... so many red flags. Really man, you have a condescending attitude towards women and you wonder why you can't find a mate?

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

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The degree is irrelevant. I don't doubt that men have privilege — but the "but women have it worse!" comment often shows up on articles like these, and since it's just whataboutism, it feels like it's suggesting that we shouldn't care about these issues. Shouldn't we care about how society is treating people, no matter who they are, instead of getting into a pissing contest about who society is _really_ screwing over…

> but the "but women have it worse!" You're jumping to a bit of a conclusion here. Most people seem to be reading this comment as re recognition that this particular guy is privileged compared to most people, not a blanket argument that women have it worse. Consider why you reacted so defensively to such an anodyne self-reflection.

He's not jumping to a conclusion, and I would suggest you add to the arguments instead of patronizing.

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

#616

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…

While a lot of the west is “post Christian” in that very little actual worship happens, the mythology which is the lens people view reality though is very much pervasive. The biggest examples are Christian sexual morality and the separation of things into good vs evil. Look at all of our popular culture or politics and find examples of struggles which aren’t some form of a struggle between good and evil, good guys vs…

You focus on sexual morality, but I don't think Christian sexual morality is particularly unusual. (Confucian sexual mores look a lot like Christian sexual mores). To me what makes the cultural background of Christianity unusual is that it focuses on individuals striving to follow abstract virtues. 'Sinners' recognizing that they have done harm and then seeking to do less harm. The lazy believer is slothful, and so confesses their faults to the priest (acknowledging personal faults), repents (promises to act differently) and expects their god to hold them accountable (feels obligation to follow through). Repeat once per week for ten years and they will either become industrious or neurotic. Same thing with all the seven deadly sins. So the cultural focus is on individuals adopting pro-social abstract virtues. It seems to me that in other cultures there is less focus on abstract virtues, and more emphasis on social heirarchies (son obeying Father) or specific actions that must be taken (one must pray 5 times per day and follow a specific diet). One might also argue that the history of belief in personal sin makes European cultures more self-depreciating, but I feel the Japanese are more self-depreciating than the Europeans.

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

#617
post #539

Regarding manufacturing jobs I really loved this freakonomics podcast[1] > Interviewer: Ah, the lovely language of economics once again. “Costlessly reallocate to their next best opportunity,” meaning that some American who loses his manufacturing job just hops over to the next good job, which just happens to be available, near where he’s already living, and for which he just happens to be perfectly qualified for… >…

Well if your looser your job will your wife and kids follow you to the next one? Mine probably won’t so what do I do? Live alone and send money home or do I hop Between low wage jobs?

It gets bad. In Janesville, Wisconsin when the GM plant closed:

>The fabric of hundreds of families unravels, as an itinerant class of fathers — “Janesville Gypsies,” they call themselves — start commuting to G.M. factories in Texas, Indiana and Kansas, just so they can maintain their wage of $28 an hour. Those who stay home invariably see their paychecks shrink drastically. One of the men Goldstein follows, Jerad Whiteaker, cycles through a series of unsatisfying, low-paying jobs, finally settling in one that pays less than half his former wage and offers no health insurance. His twin teenage girls — to whom I’d also like to send awed notes — share five jobs between them, earning so much money for their family that they compromise their eligibility for student loans.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Foodforthought/comments/67lg2q/in_j...

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

#618

“ Not just coincidentally, “deaths of despair” — those caused by suicide, overdose and alcoholism — have surged to unprecedented levels among middle-aged men over the past 20 years.” The vast majority of those suicides are coming from a specific “ethnic category”. But if you say which one, it makes you a domestic terrorist. What is the motivation to live in a world where you’re not even allowed to talk about what’s h…

This comment really takes you on a roller coaster. To mirror the title here, this comment is clear: this boy is not all right. Domestic terrorists? Social justice warrior nursing home staff? Patriot Act? Incel-oriented divorce court angst? Epstein? > And yet what is the national conversation about? It’s only about how all straight men of a particular “ethnic category” are racist and evil and they all need to focus on…

There's clearly hyperbole in the gp post, but there's also truth. Per HN guidelines try to take his post in good faith instead of writing him off. Be part of the solution not the problem.

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

#619
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been more women than men in college in the US since the 80s. It varies from college to college and from subject to subject (e.g. STEM is much more male, MIT more male, humanities-focused colleges more female). A graph from a random internet search result: https://educationalpolicy.org/hello-world/

There's a huge body of education research about this, this has been the case for of years. There's even data from the pre-1900s, especially in the primary school years. Only recently have we stripped away a lot of the sexism however, providing a successful transition to higher education. It all boils down to: Girls are more likely to do their damn homework when the teacher tells them. Therefore they out-perform in fo…

Another way to look at it is that educational systems are setup to favour girls over boys.

Typically when we see outcome differences between two groups in a system, most people will blame the system... unless they think it's good/natural for one group to do worse than the other.

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

#620
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a son, and am moderately optimistic this has peaked already. As the other commenter said, we see different families in very different mindsets. I have been personally affected by sexism type B: was expected to work, to be a provider someday, to pay my own way to university, if you want a car you buy it, etc. etc. My sister had the second family car at disposal and the tuition was paid for. There was this under…

> We are in 2022 and a nice, wealthy and rational guy won't commit to someone without a career and finances in order. This is more often false than true. I know many men who have or are marrying women who make 1/2 or less what they do. Nice, wealthy, and rational folks. They however need a woman. And there is a strong lack of women who are anywhere near where many men are in compensation and wealth. I am example of t…

But would you sleep better at night if you had a daughter, than if you had a son, because of that?

To my son, I teach that there are no gender roles set in stone. If in doubt, stay single and childless; he has many, many decades to opt out if the Right One shows up.

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