Men Without Work (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#41

Post by garettmd » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:02 PM UTC

dbingham wrote: post #18

afavour wrote: post #8

I'm very far from a red-pilled anti-feminist but I do think this is a hugely overlooked problem. Perhaps too much of an aside but I was lucky enough to be able to take an extended parental leave when my child was born, being a "stay at home dad" for the best part of a year. It was incredibly hard work, incredibly rewarding but also a real eye opener at how society still doesn't know what to do with a full-time parent…

Yeah, this is real. Men still tend to get erased from the parental equation to a large degree. And this doesn't just affect stay at home dads. Much of the dialog around pregnancy loss and childloss seems to forget that there's often a father involved as well, and that the loss impacts both parents. When we lost our first child to a still birth, people would often focus entirely on my wife when offering sympathy and c…

I remember during most interactions with healthcare providers during my wife and I's pregnancies, hardly anyone ever talked to me, sometimes never even looking at me. I get it, I'm not the one carrying a baby to term, but I would have thought the fact that I was showing up to all these appointments, staying by my wife's side, taking part in decisions, and supporting her and the baby through the whole thing would have granted me a bit of acknowledgement of my role and investment in the whole process. But many times people acted like I wasn't even there.

I can't imagine having to deal with that dynamic with what you went through, and am so sorry for your loss.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#42

Post by ZGDUwpqEWpUZ » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:03 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #29

afavour wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The American Zeitgeist around gender issues is distorted to dehumanize men and alienate anyone who even dares to recognize this fact. I'm conflicted about that. Not denying that what you've said is true but I specifically chose the term "red pilled" because there are huge toxic (predominantly online) communities that are openly misogynistic. e.g. in theory I'd like and participate in the "men's rights" subreddit, i…

[flagged]

In my experience, what you're saying is complete nonsense. Feminists spend much more time lying about men's issues than they do attempting to meaningfully rectify them.

Even a simple statement like "boys are falling behind in education" can get you implicated as a misogynist. Here's a lovely pull-quote from a recent report, The State of UK Boys:

> There's often an underlying assumption that boys should be attaining higher than girls, and if girls attain higher, then that's a problem. - Louise Archer

I could give examples on a range of issues: from suicide, discrimination in the court system, domestic violence/sexual assault. There's a set of knee-jerk responses (e.g. men only commit suicide more due to firearms/violence) that simply aren't true (men also die more from intentional overdoses). For each and every thing MRAs complain about, there's a knee-jerk, half-baked, feminist reaction.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#43

Post by beyond_based » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #24

afavour wrote: post #8

I'm very far from a red-pilled anti-feminist but I do think this is a hugely overlooked problem. Perhaps too much of an aside but I was lucky enough to be able to take an extended parental leave when my child was born, being a "stay at home dad" for the best part of a year. It was incredibly hard work, incredibly rewarding but also a real eye opener at how society still doesn't know what to do with a full-time parent…

I had this exact experience as well. Returning to my career was strange. People were half glad to hear that I prioritized my family, and half disconcerted that I’d set my career aside. Our culture wants men to be extremely productive and committed to wealth generation. Women are increasingly treated this way too though. Women were shunned for choosing their career. Now if they choose family, their career still suffer…

[flagged]

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#44

Post by Swizec » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #21

javajosh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you need to apologize and explain why you care about issues that might affect men is telling in and of itself. The American Zeitgeist around gender issues is distorted to dehumanize men and alienate anyone who even dares to recognize this fact. I'm a pretty hardcore liberal and I I'm totally astonished on a daily basis at the hate in vitriol directed at men that go without comment, let alone castigation…

> The American Zeitgeist around gender issues is distorted to dehumanize men and alienate anyone who even dares to recognize this fact. I'm conflicted about that. Not denying that what you've said is true but I specifically chose the term "red pilled" because there are huge toxic (predominantly online) communities that are openly misogynistic. e.g. in theory I'd like and participate in the "men's rights" subreddit, i…

> I'd also add: a lot of this societal pressure against men being accepted as stay at home parents comes from men.

Funnily there’s also research showing that a lot of gender discrimination towards women comes from women.

Perhaps as a social species we all try to keep our group from straying too far from core values.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#45

Post by goldenchrome » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

tejohnso wrote: post #38

> Statistically, the labor force involvement for men twenty and older fell from 86% to 68% between 1948 and 2015 So what are they doing instead? How are they surviving?

They’re NEETs. Likely live with their parents. May sell odd things here and there to make a buck. Likely invested in cryptos which until recently was enough to get by. Often getting some government gibs like unemployment or disability benefits.

American society doesn’t know how to use low skilled men so we keep ‘em fed and put them to the side.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#46

Post by JKCalhoun » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #13

afavour wrote: post #8

I'm very far from a red-pilled anti-feminist but I do think this is a hugely overlooked problem. Perhaps too much of an aside but I was lucky enough to be able to take an extended parental leave when my child was born, being a "stay at home dad" for the best part of a year. It was incredibly hard work, incredibly rewarding but also a real eye opener at how society still doesn't know what to do with a full-time parent…

The fact that you need to apologize and explain why you care about issues that might affect men is telling in and of itself. The American Zeitgeist around gender issues is distorted to dehumanize men and alienate anyone who even dares to recognize this fact. I'm a pretty hardcore liberal and I I'm totally astonished on a daily basis at the hate in vitriol directed at men that go without comment, let alone castigation…

> The American Zeitgeist around gender issues is distorted to dehumanize men and alienate anyone who even dares to recognize this fact.

I must be living under a rock then — this Zeitgeist you talk of is alien to me. I am a male who does not feel in any way dehumanized, nor have any of my male friends expressed as much.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#47

Post by chasd00 » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #24

afavour wrote: post #8

I'm very far from a red-pilled anti-feminist but I do think this is a hugely overlooked problem. Perhaps too much of an aside but I was lucky enough to be able to take an extended parental leave when my child was born, being a "stay at home dad" for the best part of a year. It was incredibly hard work, incredibly rewarding but also a real eye opener at how society still doesn't know what to do with a full-time parent…

I had this exact experience as well. Returning to my career was strange. People were half glad to hear that I prioritized my family, and half disconcerted that I’d set my career aside. Our culture wants men to be extremely productive and committed to wealth generation. Women are increasingly treated this way too though. Women were shunned for choosing their career. Now if they choose family, their career still suffer…

> Women were shunned for choosing their career

in my experience raising two kids women are much more looked down on for choosing family over career. My wife wanted to be a stay-at-home mom but many of her friends, and especially online, thought she was "too good for that" with some even being hostile to the very concept. If a woman has an established career and then chooses to be a stay-at-home mom she's likely to pay a heavy price socially.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#48

Post by subradios » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #29

afavour wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The American Zeitgeist around gender issues is distorted to dehumanize men and alienate anyone who even dares to recognize this fact. I'm conflicted about that. Not denying that what you've said is true but I specifically chose the term "red pilled" because there are huge toxic (predominantly online) communities that are openly misogynistic. e.g. in theory I'd like and participate in the "men's rights" subreddit, i…

[flagged]

This is true and false, the "blue haired feminist" crowd tends to have the most sympathy on this topic, but has solutions or ideas that treat men as broken women - which is a major problem that most men deal with all the time.

Even in the schoolyard in a progressive area in the 90s, most teachers and social workers were women and literally didn't get it.

It's like, the exact definition of what I would call "implicit bias".

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#49

Post by afavour » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #42

eropple wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

In my experience, what you're saying is complete nonsense. Feminists spend much more time lying about men's issues than they do attempting to meaningfully rectify them. Even a simple statement like "boys are falling behind in education" can get you implicated as a misogynist. Here's a lovely pull-quote from a recent report, The State of UK Boys: > There's often an underlying assumption that boys should be attaining h…

> Feminists spend much more time lying about men's issues

Not sure if there’s a name for this fallacy but you see it all the time: attributing the opinions/actions of an extreme minority to a whole group. No denying there are some feminists about there spending all their time lying about men’s issues but feminists as a whole don’t.

Same applies almost every time someone says “leftists”, “the right wing” etc etc etc

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#50

Post by asperous » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

I wrote the original wikipedia article for this! I haven't read the book just thought it was notable.

It was a little tough getting past the editors (the section referencing all those news articles they made me put in to reach notability). I also got called a shill for the publisher.