Men Without Work (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#121

Post by judge2020 » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

Damogran6 wrote: post #57

blahblah1234567 wrote: post #53

I think "Men Without Work" is a euphemism. The problem is: - Men without Skills in-demand-- skills which are at least somewhat fulfilling & interesting to those men. Solution: Research labor data for careers in high demand, then cross reference those careers with skills a person is interested in. Then identify resources & a roadmap for learning those skills. And sit down, and put the time in to learn & apply those sk…

Unspecified in all of this is: Society at large needs less labor to function. What happens when all of the production is automated to the point we don't NEED 'Men to work'? What do we do with them? What mischief do they get into when they have idle hands?

Even if something like food service at McDonald's is automated, it's tough to argue that we should be getting humans to work on things that can be automated.

Imagine working 40 hours a week then seeing that the machine both prepared more product and made fewer mistakes than you, or feeling like you're doing work just because someone (the government) pities you enough to force some jobs to remain non-automated.

Working with more complex, higher-skilled work that makes you feel like you're improving the lives of others is what our brains crave, not repeating menial tasks over and over again.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#122

Post by TylerE » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:46 PM UTC

tonightstoast wrote: post #92

TylerE wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that hard to understand the difference between a historically oppressed minority and the minority that historically was doing the oppressing?

> the minority that historically was doing the oppressing? Is it so difficult to realize those oppressors are dead and these men weren’t alive in 1920?

[flagged]

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#123

Post by Eumenes » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:46 PM UTC

chowells wrote: post #105

Clent wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some men's right subreddits that do not have allow the self-pity but they do not make it to the front page. I will not share specific subreddits for the sanity of the moderators but they are out there that focus on men's mental health specifically. Toxic Masculinity is men on men hate.

"Toxic Masculinity" is an idea created by men's groups [1] to describe the stresses on them that make them unhealthy and come from some cultural ideal of manhood. It was literally created by men as language to separate discussion the good parts of societal expectations from the damaging parts. A large number of people (that is, everyone who wants to talk about it sincerely) still use precisely that meaning. It's only…

I don't know a single man that uses or embraces that term. It seems to be used exclusively by arm chair psychiatrists or terminally online twitter people.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#124

Post by triceratops » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:47 PM UTC

marcusverus wrote: post #52

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…

> I'd also add: a lot of this societal pressure against men being accepted as stay at home parents comes from men. Maybe men are just more vocal about their opinions regarding stay-at-home dads? Women may not exert "societal pressure" against stay-at-home men, but they're ~30% more likely to divorce them than working men (a 3.3% chance of divorce in a given year vs. 2.5%)[0]. > For marriages formed after 1975, husban…

An unemployed (not by choice), frustrated guy can't be fun to be married to. I could see it causing problems in the relationship.

Lo and behold, in the paper they say this too:

"It is possible that husbands’ less than full-time employment is associated with marital disruption more strongly than wives’, not because of gendered interpretations of lack of full-time employment, but because husbands’ part-time employment or nonemployment is more likely to be involuntary. Involuntary nonemployment may negatively affect marriages more strongly than voluntary nonemployment, by affecting outcomes like partners’ mental health. It is not possible to evaluate this perspective with the current data, because voluntary specialization by men in unpaid labor is rare: in 2012, only about one-fifth of stay-at-home fathers were home primarily to care for the family (Livingston 2014). Future research is needed to explore the experiences of deliberately nontraditional households, although their rarity illustrates the consistency of the male-breadwinner norm."

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#125

Post by blahblah1234567 » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:47 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #70

blahblah1234567 wrote: post #53

I think "Men Without Work" is a euphemism. The problem is: - Men without Skills in-demand-- skills which are at least somewhat fulfilling & interesting to those men. Solution: Research labor data for careers in high demand, then cross reference those careers with skills a person is interested in. Then identify resources & a roadmap for learning those skills. And sit down, and put the time in to learn & apply those sk…

There's also a third, or subset under your refuse to work category. Some people who check out do so because the system is stacked against them. These could be people with criminal records, health issues, etc. Good luck getting a good job if you have any sort of record, mental illness, etc. Even stuff like delinquent child support can prevent your hiring. How about that - can't pay your support because you don't have…

Great point. I didn't think of that, but it's so true.

Felony records, Health problems, etc. prevebting people from working.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#126

Post by wpietri » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:48 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #74

javajosh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in theory I'd like and participate in the "men's rights" subreddit, in reality it's a pit of toxicity. Indeed, but so is the equivalent feminism subreddit (try "r/askafeminist" for example). And yet "women's rights" don't have the same stigma as "men's rights". What explains this asymmetry? Why is it some movements get defined by their extremists, and others don't? >: a lot of this societal pressure against men bein…

I’d argue that women’s rights, from Suffragettes on, has a widely documented history of… reasonableness, for want of a better term. Men’s Rights doesn’t yet. It’s a much newer movement, things may change. But right now I’m struggling to think of the sane, sensible organisations out there promoting men’s rights. I’d also question whether /r/askfeminists is “the equivalent”. It has 100k followers, /r/twoxchromosomes ha…

Exactly. I think there's a pretty simple answer to this question:

> What explains this asymmetry?

What explains it is an asymmetrical history: millennia of oppression of women, often violently enforced. E.g., if you read the Iliad, it's basically a who-stole-my-woman story inside a who-stole-my-woman story; at the time, women were pretty close to property with opinions. An easy way to see the through-line to today is the history of "marital rape", where society did not see married women as being able to choose whether or not to have sex with their husbands. That was always the case under English common law, and was not fully outlawed in the US until 1992: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape#Legal_aspect

We may have removed most of the gross legal infrastructure of patriarchy, but the cultural aspects are still only slowly dissolving. We have generations more work to do there. The reasonableness you mention is exactly what amazes me. Think of all the men who haven't been murdered as the slept.

And I think this history also explains why the Men's Rights movement is so bonkers. A shift toward fairness is a loss for the people who used to benefit from the unfairness. This has left a lot of men upset that they aren't getting what they feel they are due. Some handle that well, but the ones who don't are going to fight to turn the clock back. And as Corey Robin points, out, reactionaries like that often cloak their efforts in the progressive language of the day. So we end up with "men's rights" as a bizzaro-world mirror of women's rights. And one of their heroes, one with 4 million Twitter followers, getting arrested as an abusive sex trafficker and international pimp.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#127

Post by hallway_monitor » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:49 PM UTC

chasd00 wrote: post #47

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

It's literally insane that people would consider working at a company to be more important than someone raising their own children instead of paying someone else to raise them for most of the day. I'm thankful the mother of my children could stay at home with them while I worked.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#128

Post by blahblah1234567 » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:51 PM UTC

chasd00 wrote: post #83

blahblah1234567 wrote: post #53

I think "Men Without Work" is a euphemism. The problem is: - Men without Skills in-demand-- skills which are at least somewhat fulfilling & interesting to those men. Solution: Research labor data for careers in high demand, then cross reference those careers with skills a person is interested in. Then identify resources & a roadmap for learning those skills. And sit down, and put the time in to learn & apply those sk…

many many people simply won't work if they don't have to. If they're able to live off parents or significant others and can get enough entertainment/stimulation online to keep them satisfied then that's all they're going to do.

Indeed. I know a couple folks in that situation

- A 30 year old guy who lives at his mothers house. He's a part time videographer. For the last 5 years, hasn't proactively built any other skillset. Currently he says he'll work on getting into the construction industry. The irony is that he studied through calculus recently at a community college, but isn't enthused by the non-social work of a IT professional. Like other gig workers I know, he's only recently wised up to the fact that maybe he can't support himself on gig work, and that lacking business skills/knowledge he's unlikely to be a entrepreneur. Reality is beginning to dawn on him: he's getting older, and women will be less and less likely to see him as an adequate provider.

- a 32 year old guy who has a family trust he lives off of. Dropped out of college around age 19 or 20 to spend the next decade smoking marijuana and playing video games nearly as though it's a full time job. Fortunately he recently returned to finish college and will soon have a science degree. He'll be about 33-34 and start working at a career level of a typical 22-23 year old. The difference though is that he lacks common sense developed by resource scarcity & the existential need to become a professional. So, at 33, he'll be a less mature version of a 23 year old. It's sad to see. (I firmly believe young adults shouldn't be given free money-- they'll end up without a proper incentive structure. It's a bit like getting cheat codes to a game: there's no longer a reason to work at it.)

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#129

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:51 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #55

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…

a lot of this, at least in the united states, is due to a deep-seated dichotomy of heteronormative gender roles in suburban life. new mums groups have learned to be welcoming, but not inclusive to newcomers and that may largely be due to puritanical influences present in a lot of the cultures that oversee these groups. one could go so far as to say such patronisation and strict gender conformity serve to ostracize an…

> First, we decided 30 years ago everyone had to go to college, and in doing so found most degrees hardly worth the paper they were printed on while landed gentry reaped the windfall of college loan income. conversely tradecraft like welding, carpentry, HVAC, engine repair, and plumbing fell by the wayside with many of these crafts given a scarlet letter and left to beg and plead for any help whatsoever. there is still plenty of work, its just been made obscure and wicked by a hand that cant reap any lending profit from it.

If welding, carpentry, HVAC and so on were clearly strong career paths, people would have figured this out and ignored the college advice. Skilled trades have the potential to be great careers, but fall short. 1. They just don't pay enough. You can go to college and learn computer science and at 22 years old have a shot at making $100K+ or even more in expensive COL areas. In the trades, you have lots of training, apprenticeships, seniority... how many years does it take to get to $100K as a welder? 2. The work is tough on your body, which has a shelf life. As opposed to an office worker who can sit in his office chair, collecting a salary, until he dies of old age. I supposed these two points can be mitigated by learning the business and eventually running your own contracting company, where you siphon your profits and employ younger bodies. But not everyone can/will go down that path.

I agree with you about the drug and background checks. I'm sure they don't help either.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#130

Post by s1artibartfast » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:51 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #25

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…

Sharing my thoughts, a recent idiom I ran across that I increasingly find useful in situations like this is "two things can be true at once." There can be people who are extremely misogynistic - but they can also have completely valid concerns and grievances that make them feel that way. "They might be idiots at best, but they might have decent reasons why they got there." Just ask any dad who has lost his children,…

A similar thought I find helpful to internalize is that "hurt people hurt other people". That is to say, many victims are themselves assholes and abusive.

It is important to remember that fair justice should be extended to all people, independence of their individual moral or sympathetic valence.

It cuts both ways. Despicable people deserve a fair treatment, and victims themselves must be held accountable for their actions.