The data are clear: The boys are not all right • Hacker News Board

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

#741

Post by artificialLimbs » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:53 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #738

artificialLimbs wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birth control has created favor for less masculine men. When women are ovulating, they are statistically more likely to select men with higher testosterone levels and of course the physical qualities that go along with that (bigger/more muscular, stronger jawline, more aggressive, etc...).

Let me try rephrasing that for you. When women are horny, they are statistically more likely to select men based on appearance. "When horny, men are statistically more likely to select women with big tits" is banal and adds nothing to the conversation. I don't understand why these references to ovulation get a pass.

"I don't understand..." Yep.

Before birth control, women normally always had ovulation roughly every month.

After birth control, not as much.

I don't have any idea why you're talking about men.

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

#742

Post by antishatter » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:54 AM UTC

Yeah well no shit, school is taught mostly by women in manners that reinforce attributes of young girls. Coupled with the constant assault on masculinity and this pressure to put women forward you get young men trapped in a system not built to their strengths. Then you add in progressive gibberish and here we are.

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

#743

Post by TeeMassive » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:54 AM UTC

As a F'ing "straight cis White male", here's my experience:

WTF can I do? Work is sparse and obtaining one is never clear. Being stronger is not even an advantage now. Now I'm a programmer and now workers are in short supply but that was hell back in the days.

In primary school a lot of female teachers would explicitly felicitate the "girls for being better than the boys" and give them privileges for being "better".

School is clearly designed for girls. 8 hours on a chair listening patiently and being nice? Please.

Most things that seems fun and worth doing are "dangerous for you and others".

Lifting weights is "dangerous"

Nothing to do except eating and playing video games (if any).

When young, being strong, resilient and stoic is boring and even frowned upon. Being a victim or in a victim group is celebrated and pretty much the only way to get attention and getting ahead.

Violence and insults are always bad, including rough and tumble play that could go "too far", but somehow girls will go for these kind of assholes.

"Who hurt you? / You can't see because you're privileged (except for those with the proper ideological goggles) / You're angry, your emotions are invalid / You're mad because you can't get women"

If you get abused nobody will believe you as a boy/man (we were explicitly told this by the social workers making speeches at school). If you get accused everybody will believe you are guilty as charged however.

The dating market has been ruined by dating apps and OnlyFans. I'm in my 30s and it's getting easier, but man I wouldn't want to be a 20 years old guy in my parents' basement.

Saving for having a house. Haha.

There's a limit to the number of men ruined by family courts that you can see before simply giving up entirely on relationships and starting a family.

As a personal anecdote, I have met and befriended a few Africans over the years. They more or less express the same concerns about their children growing up here and dating North-American women. They all tell me I should go in Africa, make great money and have "beautiful metis children in a traditional marriage". Somehow I'm tempted haha.

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

#744

Post by trees101 » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:55 AM UTC

nautilius wrote: post #711

rayiner wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think cultural legacy is more deeply intertwined with morals than people appreciate. It’s just hard to see it because you’re surrounded by it. It’s easier to notice when you compare between countries and across religious traditions. My dad was raised very religious (Muslim) in Bangladesh. His grandfather was an imam. He is non-religious and I grew up non-religious, but I joined a Christian church after I got marrie…

Obsession about equality as a central tenet in Christianity? You may want to read up on the crusades, slavery, the 30 year war, how even other Christian immigrants (Irish, Italian, etc) were welcomed into the US etc. Also, just because some Christians share some of the morals of your humanist friend does not imply any relation whatsoever. There appears to be that desire from religious groups to often exaggerate and e…

Christianity subsumed some pagan traditions. It's hardly a secret "gotcha", it's open for all to see. In the same way that when I eat an apple, the apple becomes part of me, I don't become an apple.

There are critical differences between Paganism and Christianity. For example, the philosopher Rene Girard showed that many traditions had stories of mimetic desire and scapegoating, but Christianity showed the crucial end of that story, the fact that the killing of the scapegoat to save the community is a lie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSzF2OG2ejI.

GK Chesterton has a lot of interesting things to say about Pagans also http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/heretics/12/, and his book The Everlasting Man is worth reading for the way that it uses pagan tropes to point towards Christianity.

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

#745

Post by nautilius » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:57 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #682

nautilius wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that 'cultural legacy' is completely different from 'organized religion'. Celebrating 'Christmas' as a family get-together is completely different from celebrating the arrival of the messiah and deriving your complete moral compass from that.

I think cultural legacy is more deeply intertwined with morals than people appreciate. It’s just hard to see it because you’re surrounded by it. It’s easier to notice when you compare between countries and across religious traditions. My dad was raised very religious (Muslim) in Bangladesh. His grandfather was an imam. He is non-religious and I grew up non-religious, but I joined a Christian church after I got marrie…

No post body was provided.

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

#746

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:58 AM UTC

adriand wrote: post #441

skinkestek wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault. Of course! The problem is not women! The problem is media, schools, companies, everyone buying into this in a collective delusion. Men also think this, but unlike women we are even encouraged to strengthen these insane ideas that we are somehow inferior (gets imprisoned more often, less academic success despite supposedly being ext…

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…

[deleted]

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

#747

Post by MetricExpansion » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 5:00 AM UTC

pcmoney wrote: post #579

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years. Socialism has failed every time it has been tried. (Also stop describing everything you don’t like as “Capitalism”, it is intellectually lazy, instead describe what aspect of Capitalism caused the thing you don’t like directly and provably and with a clear alterna…

I have increasingly noticed this general trend (here, on Reddit, and elsewhere) to just blame a myriad of societal ills on “Capitalism”. Sometimes it’s related to economics or whatever, but more often it’s really a non-sequitur. Some of the problems blamed on Capitalism, it’s not at all clear how communism or socialism or any other system would result in a different outcome. It’s become a thought-ending cliche.

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

#748

Post by joshuamorton » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 5:03 AM UTC

throwaway48375 wrote: post #739

joshuamorton wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no part of our culture where X is allowed to have the value of "blackness" or "gayness" or "femininity". I don't think this is as true as you claim. While the word toxic isn't used, black culture and to a lesser extent gay culture are often described as toxic or harmful, either to those groups or to society more generally. This is even more true if you look at, e.g. transness, where an article about how it…

I haven't heard about the NYT article. Do you have a link?

I apologize, I appear to have just been totally wrong, I think I crossed like three wires and ended up turning a recent article not in the NYT into an NYT oped in my head. My mistake, it wasn't my intention to mislead.

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

#749

Post by trees101 » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 5:04 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #682

nautilius wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that 'cultural legacy' is completely different from 'organized religion'. Celebrating 'Christmas' as a family get-together is completely different from celebrating the arrival of the messiah and deriving your complete moral compass from that.

I think cultural legacy is more deeply intertwined with morals than people appreciate. It’s just hard to see it because you’re surrounded by it. It’s easier to notice when you compare between countries and across religious traditions. My dad was raised very religious (Muslim) in Bangladesh. His grandfather was an imam. He is non-religious and I grew up non-religious, but I joined a Christian church after I got marrie…

Yours is a really valuable perspective on this issue, and probably gives you more clarity than those of us who have grown up immersed in the values of the West like fish in water. I had a Muslim friend who used to comment on how "Christian" my country was, whereas I'd always seen it as highly secular.

The British historian Tom Holland is very good on this topic. His recent book "Dominion" is basically an examination of how Christianity so pervasively shaped the West. He's got some good interviews on YouTube if anyone wants a shorter introduction to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIJ9gK47Ogw,https://www.yout....

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

#750

Post by bradlys » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 5:04 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #581

symlinkk wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The selection process is on Tinder, not the maternity ward, and the bar is brutally high there for men.

> The selection process is on Tinder, not the maternity ward, and the bar is brutally high there for men. I’ve been seeing this exact trope repeated more and more on HN lately: Some vague assertion that Tinder is the only place for matchmaking and that only a tiny number of men are getting all of the matches. It’s an objectively ridiculous claim for anyone who has experience in the real world where, yes, even “normal…

> It’s an objectively ridiculous claim for anyone who has experience in the real world where, yes, even “normal” men can find partners. It doesn’t even stand up to the most basic tests of logic.

> Are only attractive people getting married and having kids? Of course not.

Have you considered that men are just having less partners than women? Many more men go childless (25%) than women (14%). As far as we can tell - men are having less sex overall. It's obvious that the majority of men eventually get a partner and settle down with someone but that's generally less than the number of partners a woman has before she settles down.

Here's a fun source - and this is BEFORE COVID. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-ame... I cannot imagine how much more grim it is post-COVID.

I find it weird that you didn't think about that. Men and women generally have very different journeys to their destination. One is usually more consistent in sexual experience whereas the other is wildly varying. The amount of men who have 50+ sexual partners completely dominates the amount of women who do. This doesn't mean that men are having more sex than women though. This means that a few men are having more sex than most women.

This is what feeds into the whole online discussion. It's obvious to anyone who has done online dating or talked to the women. They'll be like, "Oh yeah, I matched with that guy too." It's clear that many women are sleeping with the same select group of men. I don't know how this is a surprise to anyone...