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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

#921

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also haven’t invented or built anything meaningful in several hundred years…

The English or rich kids? If the former, it might be worth remembering that ARM, which many consider the be the next big leap in computing (there was a thread saying it just yesterday) is an English company. Of course I could give many more examples, the technology you're using to post this comment for one, but I think I've made my point. If the latter, I imagine thats too generic a group to say

The aristocracy. The staleness at the top has made Europe globally weak and bordering on irrelevant. (Not that the US in its current trajectory is all that far behind)

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

#922

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…

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…

Thanks for the book reference.

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

#923

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this actually true? This feels a bit like a post-facto generalization from specific situations. "I was a nerd and didn't go on dates. Being a nerd got me into software and now I make a lot of money. Therefore people who are on the path to high earning are not getting dates." My experience has been that a lot of the stereotypical jocks ended up in finance and are doing quite well and that software is no longer domi…

The meme is not about income or physical fitness, it's about psychological aggressiveness. Highly un-aggressive men are considered emotionally unattractive and don't get dates because, for one thing, they're afraid to ask, but they're nice and dependable and will take care of you forever. Highly aggressive men come across as dynamic and interesting, and turn out to have five mistresses in three states and a warrant o…

Why does HN have the weirdest pseudo-incel takes masquerading as genuine science or something?

I don't think any of this is true.

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

#924

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? This is already happening. And in general single mothers are becoming the norm, as the article already mentions.

He meant have some respect for youself and don't get involved with such women.

I wasn't talking about myself. But men might increasingly not have the choice, if they want to have children. That's also by design of the laws.

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

#925

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again - unpopular opinion - but I've noticed men tend think of a potential wife's wealth or earning potential much less than vice a versa. Even when choosing a career, men seem to place a lot of importance on compensation, while women seem to place just as much, if not more, importance on other non-financial factors too. I am also an example. I make much more than my wife, and it made zero impact on my decision to da…

> Again - unpopular opinion - but I've noticed men tend think of a potential wife's wealth or earning potential much less than vice a versa. My personal experience and from what I've learned from other men: It's because most men know they won't receive a dime from their partner. It starts with how a man almost always pays for the dates or at best they split it. (Or they have a rule like - "whoever asks X out has to p…

This is because we live in a time of transition. Humans always try get the best of two worlds, XX humans are no different. Men need to learn to speak up.

As I said in the other comment, I am moderately optimistic because some indicators are already moving e.g. you mentioned that more men will go childless. This is already happening.

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

#926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>" 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.

Would you be open to advice? Regardless I wish you luck in your endeavors.

Yes, I welcome advice and would be happy to reflect on it.

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

#927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now try proposing a space that caters to men and helps them learn and feel better.

Not to be flippant, but have you seen somebody try this and fail or be stopped? What would be the purpose of the group? Why would it need to cater to men? These aren't rhetorical questions. I'm genuinely asking.

(throwaway for obvious reasons of the culture war. /sigh)

One example might be the Isbister v. Boys' Club of Santa Cruz case, in which the Supreme Court of California ruled that, according to civil rights laws, no space could be legally barred to women. (imagine that same justification banning women-only spaces; it simply wouldn't happen, because of course it wouldn't).

Or, more famously, Earl Silverman's attempt to open a shelter for male domestic abuse survivors in Canada, for which he was ridiculed and ostracised and eventually, when the government refused to fund such a thing (male domestic abuse victims? Perish the thought!) had to shut it down, ending his own life in despair. Erin Pizzey, who founded the first women's shelters in the UK, faced similar harassment (including bomb threats serious enough that the police decided that they needed to intercept all of her mail to check it for explosives) when she began discussing the same thing, and was eventually driven out of her home country.

In fact, the dearth of male-focused help in general, even in situations where men are the overwhelming majority of the at-risk population. See, for example, homeless shelters in the UK. Ironically, some women in need of assistance escaping their abusers sometimes get turned away from these places because they come with male children.

Generally speaking, most "assistance" actually primarily aimed at men treats them like shit. See, for example, the Duluth model, the most common batterer intervention program in use in the United States. It explicitly pre-concludes that any domestic dispute is caused by men trying to dominate women. Ellen Pence, its creator, has even gone on record stating, "By determining that the need or desire for power was the motivating force behind battering, we created a conceptual framework that, in fact, did not fit the lived experience of many of the men and women we were working with. [...] Speaking for myself, I found that many of the men I interviewed did not seem to articulate a desire for power over their partner. Although I relentlessly took every opportunity to point out to men in the groups that they were so motivated and merely in denial, the fact that few men ever articulated such a desire went unnoticed by me and many of my coworkers. Eventually, we realized that we were finding what we had already predetermined to find." (emphasis added) This has not lessened its popularity as an intervention mechanism for domestic disputes.

I mention this not as an example of a male-only space being destroyed, but as an example of why they may be needed. Many men, emotional illiteracy aside, do in fact realize when the chips are stacked against them. They do not learn to socialize with other men in school, nor in the manner that men have historically been socialized. They are allowed in the public forum, but most attempts to share their perspective, at least in the more woke circles, are met with hostility - after all, they are the historical beneficiaries of the social order, and therefore they cannot also be allowed to be even perceived as victims, especially when being a victim confers social status. No matter that "privilege" is not uniformly distributed.

Philosophically speaking, men ought to have a male-only space if only for the benefit of being able to calibrate themselves against other men, rather than having to constantly downplay their own difficulties and miseries by the standards of women; a man ought to be able to feel bad about losing his job without having to also remind everyone that he still has it better than a woman who would be jobless and also facing sexism. He ought to be able to exult in a promotion or other achievement without "checking his privilege" and feeling guilty about how his success closes the doors for others who have not had the opportunities he has.

If men should be more emotionally intelligent, they need a safe space where they can express their emotions. It has become abundantly clear to many of them that gender-integrated spaces are not safe, for the same reason that I'm posting this comment from a throwaway account.

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

#928
post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You prove my point. You won't find many atheists (if any) that will take Jesus as in any shape or form a historical person. These are two different worlds. Atheists don't derive their morals from these stories, that's the difference. That there is some superficial overlap (a tree? presents?) doesn't allow you to claim the morality of atheists as religion-derived. That's ludicrous. It's like saying the local butcher t…

> In fact, the source of morals among atheists seems to be a permanent puzzle for many people with religious background, simply claiming them as religion-based misses the point completely. I don’t have a religious background and it’s still a puzzle for me. Best I can manage to explain it is through a combination of tradition and genes (“human nature”), and tradition is often indeed derived from historical religious e…

I don't think moral is universal at all - 'You shall not kill' vs cannibal societies and honor killings, monogamy vs polygamy, eating animals vs vegetarianism, slavery vs abolitionism, democracy vs. tribalism, patriarchy vs. equality, mothers' rights vs unborn rights, etc.

It's not only not universal, but it's highly fluid (which it couldn't be if it was universal).

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

#929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That must have been a former polytechnic. I'm willing to be most university students in the UK would say they are middle class. Oxbridge is full of the upper class (although that is slowly changing).

The definition of "middle class" in the UK is different... Unintuitively middle class denotes a social standing well into the top decile - members of the middle class would be typically educated with a graduate or professional degree, top-5% salary, multiple properties, children in private schools. (Whereas in the US, any white collar person - so basically half the population - is "middle class".) Yes, the UK middle…

>top-5% salary

Well that's hardly the middle is it.

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

#930

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The meme is not about income or physical fitness, it's about psychological aggressiveness. Highly un-aggressive men are considered emotionally unattractive and don't get dates because, for one thing, they're afraid to ask, but they're nice and dependable and will take care of you forever. Highly aggressive men come across as dynamic and interesting, and turn out to have five mistresses in three states and a warrant o…

Why does HN have the weirdest pseudo-incel takes masquerading as genuine science or something? I don't think any of this is true.

Poe's law, sorry. (Although some truth snuck in with the parenthetical about not asking.) The arrest warrants were supposed to give away the joke...

If you're wondering why people see it that way, just imagine a world where a large number of people had undiagnosed social anxiety, and another large group of people had undiagnosed sociopathy, and they both got pushed out of normal society into the same place. Then the ones with social anxiety look at the ones with sociopathy and associate their slightly greater success with short-term relationships with the condition they do have, rather than the one they don't.

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