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No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

robkhenderson.substack.com

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Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#551
post #82
post #3

This is an important read, especially this part. > This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability. I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public—imposing a double standard between “us” and “Americans.”…

I hate to be "that guy", but you guys have this whole thing backwards. What men do is based on what men want. What men want is sex. If sex is free then you can have all the liberal or conservative values you want, but it won't cause those men to work harder. Why? Because sex is free. Full stop. If sex costs more than most men will ever have, then you can have all the liberal or conservative values you want, most men…

>What men do is based on what men want. What men want is sex.

That may be true in your experience, but in my experience what men mostly want is to build things and dig really cool tunnels.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#552
post #322

> basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. (One of us characterized this in a previous work as, ‘If women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks.’) This makes it sound like it is just men who need sex and have to do things to get it. One would think that everybody needs sex and thus women need it too. And it would stan…

What does "less fortunate women" mean specifically? Looks? Desirability? That assumption would mean that the group of "more fortunate" women don't really have problem with jerks, which I don't really see as being true.

Yes, many things play into who is desirable but essentially physical characteristics, skin color whatever else society influences upon you as being desirable. More fortunate women do obviously have problem with jerks and some of them may have a preference even but the difference is that they have options that the less fortunate ones don't or at least not to the same extent.

The single black mother problem is illustrative of what I am trying to say here. (Not making any generalizations or making the case that they are unattractive but merely pointing out that number of complicated reasons including being perceived as less desirable contribute towards the overall problem.)

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#553
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What men want is sex. If it were that simple, there would be more goats and less stress.

I’m not sure if you’re trying to be funny or making a lazy dismissal of the point you quoted. Either way, suggesting men fuck goats isn’t productive.

The point quoted is a pretty lazy effort that simplifies "what men want" down to something that is highly incomplete and obviously inaccurate. I think a sarcastic reply is sometimes the best response to low-quality, reductive comments.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#554
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Watching and hearing about the family instability in these communities is heartbreaking. Half or more of everyone’s parents are divorced. The kids float around seeking stability and the adults can’t provide it. You seem to be attributing the cause of this to 'Telling men and boys it's cool and fine to divorce' and not attributing to say... declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth…

> Also, divorce sucks when kids are involved, I don't think anyone on earth, left or right, would dispute that. Tons of people dispute this. The thinking is that people staying married when they don’t want to stay married is worse for kids than people getting divorced and creating two separate households the kids float between. I don’t agree with this thinking, mostly because I’m the product of divorce that saw the a…

>> Also, divorce sucks[1] when kids are involved, I don't think anyone on earth, left or right, would dispute that.

> Tons of people dispute this.

Divorce with children clearly does suck, statistically and practically. Those who dispute it are simply wrong, for whatever reason they wish to assert. That's obvious, with the data we have today.

[1] "sucks" is a fairly broad word, but graciously, it can be considered "not good".

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#555
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Watching and hearing about the family instability in these communities is heartbreaking. Half or more of everyone’s parents are divorced. The kids float around seeking stability and the adults can’t provide it. You seem to be attributing the cause of this to 'Telling men and boys it's cool and fine to divorce' and not attributing to say... declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth…

> Also, divorce sucks when kids are involved, I don't think anyone on earth, left or right, would dispute that. Tons of people dispute this. The thinking is that people staying married when they don’t want to stay married is worse for kids than people getting divorced and creating two separate households the kids float between. I don’t agree with this thinking, mostly because I’m the product of divorce that saw the a…

My parents no longer being married did nothing to me. Zero.

My parents trying to get me to hate the other parent caused severe damage and was entirely ineffective at its goal.

Not being able to spend much time with one of my parents, especially the one with the most life survival skills was bad. I had a relative that could have stood in, but they declined to really be there regularly.

An amicable divorce with some mitigation of the parenting structure would have turned out just fine. And, maybe part of that would have been achieved with an earlier divorce.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m affluent but grew up in an inner city. I NEVER had a positive experience with the police. Neutral was as good as it got. Wanting more policing and wanting to defund the current system are not oppositional. I want more cops doing shit that matters and less of the current police department.

I grew up in rural America and I would describe my experiences with police in the same terms. Of course, the purpose of policing is to deter crime, not give “positive experiences”. And thanks in large part to these luxury beliefs, police departments are doing less preventative policing (routine traffic stops, etc) especially in communities of color for fear of being the next Ferguson, and consequently violent crime i…

Thinking back on it, I never had a positive experience in terms of outcome. Positive experience in terms of interaction would have been the consolation prize.

Pulling over more people for expired tags and other pretext stops is hardly what we needed more of. I once had an officer decline to take a copy of video of my vehicle being stolen since he said it wasn’t going to be investigated anyway. How does a department like that still have time to hand out turn signal tickets, and pop people for going 10 over at the bottom of a hill?

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#557
post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its innumeracy propaganda. There are no minimum wage jobs where I live anymore, and I live in a lower cost of living area (not Manhattan or silicon valley, LOL). I'm not surprised no one can afford rent at $7/hr when no one can find a job paying $7/hr. Costco has a sign up paying $19/hr to empty trash cans and they can't hire people at that low of pay and the article claims its a tragedy that a middle tier single bed…

2% of hourly workers make federal minimum wage or lower according to BLS numbers. Many lower paying jobs (Walmart, McDonalds, etc) pay about $10 an hour. They generally don't provide benefits. So even if you get two jobs to fill a 40hr week, you're stuck with the medical costs. Good luck paying for housing and medical coverage (transportation, taxes, retirement, etc) at $20k per year in most areas. Hopefully you can…

That 2% consists of people like my teenagers, both of which cannot afford housing and medical coverage by themselves and as Dad, I'm personally quite well acquainted with how they get financial assistance (LOL).

And no, McD does not pay $10/hr, I live in a low cost of living area away from the coasts and the sign on the door opposite my grocery store lists $15/hr right next to the sign that they're cutting hours due to lack of employees. On the coasts I'm sure its higher although cost of living is probably higher.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#558
post #440
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO outrage about incels is just a socially acceptable way to bully. It's a way to find an excuse to express their superiority over others while masquerading it with concern over women's safety. You're never going to see someone mock a successful man who beats his wife.

It's confusing to me that it's socially acceptable these days to bully those who lack a sexual partner.

Hm, wasn't that always acceptable and common? The only difference today is that there's a shorthand to mock those people.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#559
post #3

This is an important read, especially this part. > This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability. I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public—imposing a double standard between “us” and “Americans.”…

The implication of "liberal values = high divorce. Conservative values = low divorce" might make sense intuitively (as one group claims to put more shame on it than the other), but until it is backed with data it is just "an impression".

Here's my 2 minutes attempt:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm#state_tab...

I have sorted that list several ways (rate of divorce in 2000, in 1990 and average). Of the top five (Nevada, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Idaho) only Wyoming voted Democrat in 2020. The lowest five (Pennsylvania, Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusets) Iowa and Louisiana voted Republican, the rest voted Democrat.

That seems to go against the "intuition" that divorce is less prevalent amongst conservatives.

The list also seems to show a steady general decline across all of the states in divorce rates between 1990 and now.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#560
post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People tend to be absolutist about whether it’s better for kids if unhappy parents get divorced, but as the saying goes every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Some marriages are hell for everybody involved and need to end. I put abuse situations in that category of course and also marriages that have so much animosity that they can’t stop fighting. On the other end of marriages that may end in divorce are si…

Quoted post unavailable.

Divorce is a legal proceeding. The Government is ipso facto involved, and even more so when kids enter the picture since otherwise there would be no one to stand for their interest.
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