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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

#871

Post by yes_really »

jms55 wrote: post #165
Spooky23 wrote: post #26

Of course. We treat females like they are a marginalized minority. My son’s school has a “Girls Can Code” program. All collateral features women and girls. (Boys are welcome though) I worked at a place where a C-level executive hosted company endorsed dinners at her home for female managers to mentor them for executive roles. If I setup a boys club for computers at school or hosted a men’s IT society at work, that wo…

My CS lectures barely have any women. 1/10 students in a class of 200-300 are women. In more difficult/less mainstream classes (operating systems, networking, sometimes PL theory), it's 1/20. The game development club I'm in has 2 woman in it (including me) out of the ~20 people that regularly show up. This is in 2019-2022. My school also hosts a hackathon for women and underrepresented gender minorities every year (…

> There's a real need for these groups. Whether men needs their own groups is a separate discussion that I have no real stance on.

That doesn't imply there is a need for women-only groups. There can be a CS group for all genders and we just teach girls to stop being sexist and be part of that group (if they want to).

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

#872

Post by helpfulmandrill »

phtrivier wrote: post #850

> Here’s the simple truth I’ve heard from many men: We need to be needed. We imagine ourselves as builders, soldiers, workers, brothers — part of something bigger than ourselves. We deal with idleness terribly. Interesting to read that from a vocal proponent of UBI - which would, by design, allow people, including men, _not_ to get a job.

On the contrary, UBI removes perverse anti-work incentives in means-tested benefits (the "if I get a job I'll lose my benefits and be no better off / barely better off" problem).

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

#873

Post by dragonwriter »

helpfulmandrill wrote: post #872
phtrivier wrote: post #850

> Here’s the simple truth I’ve heard from many men: We need to be needed. We imagine ourselves as builders, soldiers, workers, brothers — part of something bigger than ourselves. We deal with idleness terribly. Interesting to read that from a vocal proponent of UBI - which would, by design, allow people, including men, _not_ to get a job.

On the contrary, UBI removes perverse anti-work incentives in means-tested benefits (the "if I get a job I'll lose my benefits and be no better off / barely better off" problem).

Sometimes, given multiple means tested benefits with their own cliffs and clawbacks, materially worse off, not just no better off, because of outside income.

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

#874

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

bradlys wrote: post #762
twayt wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a mid-20s male I can completely relate. Have spent way too much time trying to optimize the amount of matches I can get on these apps. You might feel like your achievements and positive qualities are not being valued by women and you've worked so hard to improve yourself for nothing. Trust me, this is not true. There are other factors at play that make online dating unreasonably unfair for you. 1. If you are in th…

In case anyone doesn't know: > If you are in the Bay Area, you are at a distinct disadvantage. The male-female-ratio This is just true in the entire USA under age 35. If you're a man - you have a distinct disadvantage. More men (107:100) are born than women. This evens out around age 40 because men killed themselves at a much higher rate than women have. (Think about that - women kill themselves too but 7% of men hav…

Practically speaking, you're going feel the gender ratio of your geographical region/metropolitan area. Sure, men will be at a ratio disadvantage more often than not in the US, but there are definitely zones where the ratio is inverted. I spent half my 20s in NYC and half in SF and the wow was the difference glaring.

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

#875

Post by dragonwriter »

phtrivier wrote: post #850

> Here’s the simple truth I’ve heard from many men: We need to be needed. We imagine ourselves as builders, soldiers, workers, brothers — part of something bigger than ourselves. We deal with idleness terribly. Interesting to read that from a vocal proponent of UBI - which would, by design, allow people, including men, _not_ to get a job.

> Interesting to read that from a vocal proponent of UBI - which would, by design, allow people, including men, _not_ to get a job.

UBI replacing means tested support doesn't (unless benefit levels are also boosted) help people with no outside income, but it does make it easier to improve one’s condition by earning outside income.

It enables people to work and benefit from that work compared to the status quo, it doesn't enable people not to work.

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

#876

Post by native_samples »

t-3 wrote: post #737

It's strange to me that most of the comments here seem to be focused on gender relations rather than what the article was talking about - educational and occupational attainment. I don't think romantic aspirations have anything to do with why young men are not achieving. Rather, we have grown up in a fearful and repressive society, with 9/11 and the wars, 2008, Snowden, and now Covid. Many have grown up being drugged…

Well, partly it's because discussing that means discussing the causes, and the most robust claims out there about what's going on boil down to "it's the fault of female teachers".

For example why are boys being diagnosed with ADHD so much more than girls, why are they on so many more drugs, well, supposedly it's because female teachers - who have very clear and proven biases towards girls - are much more likely to react to normal boyish energy by getting frustrated and being unable to handle it. So once the psychiatric world gave them this neat excuse-in-a-box that let them blame boys, and even better, an off switch for children, instead of learning how to handle boys they started just telling parents their children were neurotic and broken.

A related issue is grading. Girls get better grades than boys. There's a neat experiment out there that appears to show this is caused by teachers having a built-in bias towards children of their own gender, but, the bias is much more extreme in women. This would be totally expected - feminism practically insists that female-female loyalty is a a moral virtue and to NOT give the sisters a helping hand makes you a bad woman. Women routinely discriminate in all sorts of ways against men and in favour of women, so much so that feminism is currently ripping itself apart through debates on whether trans women should be treated as women or not (often, for the purposes of allocating perks!). That it happens in education too is only to be expected. Until people start routinely classifying feminism as an unacceptable form of hatred, boys outcomes won't start improving. Going back to gender segregated schools might even help, although I'm a bit shocked to see myself typing that, because I never supported such schools before. It's just so unclear what can be done about these sorts of cultural problems except keeping vulnerable boys away from places where women can discriminate against them.

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

#877

Post by insanejudge »

symlinkk wrote: post #538
eropple wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think that. I genuinely did. I thought that the bar was all the way up in space and that it’s impossible to reach it. I was pretty lonely. Of course, I used to also think that my value was in my net worth and you could have seen all the way from space the “I’m an asshole and I don’t know why nobody will date me” vibes radiating off of me. Then I grew up, I chilled out, and I put conscious effort into things…

> listening, and exercising my capacity for empathy, and trying to be pleasant to be around None of that matters if you aren’t attractive. You have to be attractive for girls to swipe right on you and start a conversation in the first place.

what a wild single standard

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

#878

Post by pjc50 »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #586
wwweston wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. A total lack of belief to the point of nihilism is a crisis of meaning, to be sure, but it tends to collapse towards either hedonism or depression rather than monomaniacal infliction of harm on the rest of the world. True determined harm usually requires ideological zeal.

> True determined harm usually requires ideological zeal. That's not what I think motivated all the US school shootings in the last 25 years. Ideological zeal that pursues actively harming others is something I don't think the US has much of, culturally speaking. No one preaches "those people need to die" or "we need to harm those people".

> No one preaches "those people need to die" or "we need to harm those people".

.. yes they do? It's not usually spelled out in those words, at least not on the "respectable" side of the preaching, but when there's a mass shooter manifesto the shooter usually makes clear their influences and sometimes gives them thanks and citations.

It's also often done in the past tense. Whenever there's a controversial shooting, hundreds of commentators will turn up to say "that person deserved to be shot".

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

#879

Post by native_samples »

valdiorn wrote: post #600
mrjangles wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>huge amount of effort over many years into online dating My god I hope you aren't talking about tinder are you? You are totally clueless about women and dating if that is what you are talking about. Go out to bars, talk to people, do activities and meet lots of people. stop doing 'online' dating (of any kind) Seriously, myself and everyone I know found that upon reaching 33 the interest from women in their 20s sky r…

Literally everyone I know who is around my age (~34), if I ask them how they met their partner, the will say they met their partner online, myself included. "go out to bars" is advise that's about 20 years out of date, mate. However, being successful at online dating is non-intuitive and takes skill. Of course, if you're in your mid 30's and you want to bang college chicks half your age with daddy issues, maybe "goin…

I would tell you to take that with a pinch of salt.

I've met people online and dated them. I've also met girls in other ways and dated them, now marrying one. Once or twice, well, we didn't quite want to tell other people how we met. So we didn't. We just said we met online. It's the perfect blow-off justification when you don't want to get into a perhaps complicated and messy story.

People meet in all sorts of ways. I used online dating for years but it was never the most successful strategy. What did work - meeting girls at events, in bars, ideally at events in bars, one or two less conventional ways, and never giving up.

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

#880

Post by piaste »

tpxl wrote: post #815
antisthenes wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "Lump of Labor" fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic gains are not zero-sum. Frankly, I'm very tired of debunking the zero-sum trope. Not only are many things in the economy zero-sum, in the case of labor, even if the economy is humming at 150%, it's trivial to imagine a scenario where the man and the woman are both earning 75% of what they would have without the other sex in the labor force. Both are wors…

> Not only are many things in the economy zero-sum, in the case of labor, even if the economy is humming at 150%, it's trivial to imagine a scenario where the man and the woman are both earning 75% of what they would have without the other sex in the labor force. Both are worse off, yet the capital owners are better off and it gives the illusion that everything is going great. Can you elaborate further on this please…

Women entering the workforce en masse did double the supply of labor, regardless of any other merits of that change.

And increasing the supply reduces prices.

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