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Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

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Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#971
post #878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spotted the American! Seriously though, it does absolutely no good to anyone if you make such a snide remark. Even if you'd be right, what's to be done next from that statement?

I'm Polish.

Sure, I also made a snide remark that didn't contribute anything to the discussion.

I meant though that your concepts seem anchored in the US public debate.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#972
post #969

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Horse crap, a huge amount of parents genuinely believe violence is a necessity for child rearing (including frequent repetitions of "spare the rod, spoil the child") to the point that they've even pushed to bring it back into public schools! The effects of corporal punishment are small compared to the effects of molestation and physical abuse. If corporal punishment were our only "issue", we'd be much better off. I…

What are you saying here? Corporal punishment is physical and psychological abuse. It is in the title: punishment is a judgement and corporal is the violence. There is no such thing as corporal punishment that is also not an abuse. Maybe there is a scale of it but it is abuse.

> It is in the title: punishment is a judgement and corporal is the violence

Are you suggesting that judging your child's actions as wrong is psychological abuse?

> There is no such thing as corporal punishment that is also not an abuse.

That's incorrect, and the legal precedent has been clear on the legality of spanking and the distinction from abuse:

https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/can/defining/disc-abuse/

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#973
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> majority of the hetero/bi female dating pool selects in favour of features that are often red flags for toxic masculinity This is so insane. Anyone who's been enough a player of the dating game and treed to optimise your strategy known you will end up becoming or (in my case) pretending to be "toxic masculinity" because it work so much more on girls.

Gee, it's almost as if women were biologically programmed to like powerful men and "toxic masculinity" was just an invention to denigrate men for being men.

Putting it that way implies that women deserve it when the men they're attracted to treat them like shit.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#974

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Middle Easterner, we reject that notion.

How is middle-eastern not hostile to women? Can you share this perspective? AFAIK women don't even have the right to show their skin in most of middle-east.

We don't see showing skin as a right, and that applies to both men or women, with respective differences of course. We're a conservative traditional society. We're well aware that our values don't align with the liberal and secular views, and we reject the labels they use on us. Reducing a complex topic to just showing skin or a few points that are always repeated blindly up by the adversary is overly simplistic, and frankly, naive. The picture they try to paint is that our countries are somehow completely oppressing women, making their lives miserable and unhappy, and that they are treated as cattle or something. All that is absolute nonsense.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#975
post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eugenics is a vile and repugnant subject to be supporting. Nobody is qualified to state whether another human being should be allowed to live on the basis of 'faults' in their person. It is a totalitarian-authoritarian dogma that must die. EDIT: downvoters showing their roots. Come on, engage in the dialog and defend eugenics ...

[flagged]

> Eu-genics is literally good-birth.

This is a reverse straw man argument [0]. You present your position as something easy to defend (good birth, choice of mates, good diet, etc.), even though some parts of it (forced sterilizations, genocide, etc.) are difficult or impossible to defend.

[0] https://en.liberpedia.org/Reverse_straw_man

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#976

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we know some behaviours which are typically harmful (molestation, violence), but everyone already knows that Horse crap, a huge amount of parents genuinely believe violence is a necessity for child rearing (including frequent repetitions of "spare the rod, spoil the child") to the point that they've even pushed to bring it back into public schools! Even the very basics are not accepted as fact by many.

> Horse crap, a huge amount of parents genuinely believe violence is a necessity for child rearing (including frequent repetitions of "spare the rod, spoil the child") to the point that they've even pushed to bring it back into public schools! The effects of corporal punishment are small compared to the effects of molestation and physical abuse. If corporal punishment were our only "issue", we'd be much better off. I…

> The effects of corporal punishment are small compared to the effects of molestation and physical abuse.

That even worse abuses such as molestation, rape, and murder exist is not a justification for corporal punishment (physical discipline), which has been shown to cause negative emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes in children. Corporal punishment is a form of physical abuse, considering these negative outcomes.

> The Resolution on Physical Discipline of Children By Parents, adopted by APA’s Council of Representatives in February, relies on strong and sophisticated longitudinal research that finds physical discipline does not improve behavior and can lead to emotional, behavioral and academic problems over time, even after race, gender and family socioeconomic status have been statistically controlled.

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/physical-discipline

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#977
post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If no one will have kids these 8 billion will go to zero in about 100 years.

That assumes there are no fit and willing parents.

Yes, sure. My point is that absolute numbers don't matter and the population can plummet faster than people usually imagine.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#978

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a different perspective on this: I'm a man who's currently deeply lonely, depressed, and struggling with poor self-esteem. I hear feminists talking about "toxic masculinity". But none of what they say feels applicable to me. I've never been violent; I'm currently trying therapy for the third time; and I can't remember even a single time when someone told me to "man up". So, while I'm sure toxic masculinity is…

I appreciate your thoughtful and heartfelt reply. I can relate so much to what you're saying. I too am depressed, deeply lonely, and struggling with poor self-esteem. I've dealt with chronic illness, PTSD from watching a few people die badly and one living death [worse], poverty, and frequent homelessness. On "Men suck!" I can understand how hurtful could be, but it never personally bothered me. Oppressed people let…

> The fact is that waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many men do suck... Rapey, dominating, violent, criminal, oligarchic, etc. People who have been harmed by such men have an absolute right to vent.

It's true that some men are rapey, dominating, etc. Those men have deeply hurt many people. This is a real problem. The victims of those men have a right to vent about those things, and society needs to listen and hold the those bad men accountable.

But the vast majority of men are decent people who aren't rapey, dominating, violent, criminal, or oligarchic. (Many men aren't even particularly sexist! Every man internalizes some amount of sexism, but that's true of every woman too.) So the victims of bad men don't have a right to make generalizations like "men suck". In fact, that's misandrist hate speech.

Analogy: Many socially awkward nerds have been deeply hurt in their lives. They have a right to vent about the pain they've experienced, and society should listen, and should hold accountable the people who are hurting them. But that doesn't give the victims a right to become hateful incels who make generalizations like "women suck".

The key is to distinguish the good men from the bad men: treat the good men with respect and decency, while holding the bad men accountable.

And society does hold many of the bad men accountable. Every single day, society sends men to prison for rape, violence, and crime. And men regularly get censured or fired for sexism. It's true that society doesn't always hold bad men accountable, and this is a real problem; but society really does hold many of the bad men accountable.

> One of the rules for good debate is to argue against the best possible version of your opponent's argument. ... And yet, there are plenty of coherent and internally-consistent feminisms

I agree there are many good feminists out there, and I support them. But there are also many bad feminists out there, and they've hurt me deeply.

By analogy to above: Some feminists are misandrists. Those misandrists have deeply hurt many men (including me). Men like me have a right to vent about those misandrists, and society needs to listen and hold the misandrists accountable. At the same time, I know that most feminists are decent people, which is why I'm careful not to make generalizations like "feminists suck".

The key is to distinguish the good feminists from the bad feminists: support the good feminists, while holding the bad feminists accountable.

Unfortunately, what I've seen is that most feminists make excuses for the bad feminists, rather than holding them accountable. For example, you just now made excuses for the feminists who say "men suck"! Throughout your post, you put the onus on me to tolerate being hurt, instead of putting the onus on the bad feminists to stop hurting me! And this is a pattern throughout the feminist movement: Most feminists, even otherwise-good feminists, are unwilling to acknowledge that the bad feminists are causing real harm, and that men have a right to be upset that the bad feminists are hurting them.

> So if you feel like feminism isn't focused on you, you are absolutely correct.

It's fine that feminism isn't focused on me. The problem is that bad feminists are actively hurting people like me; and the broader feminist movement is enabling that behavior.

Did you read the link I posted above? https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2091#comment-326664 Scott Aaronson wrote a very thoughtful and introspective post about the issues facing socially awkward men, while also being careful to respect women. His post resonated with me deeply; he put into words many of the things I had been struggling with. This is exactly the kind of thing we need more men to do. And yet, he received some extremely toxic responses from feminists -- e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20150113081455/http://www.rawsto.... And in the end, the harassment was too much, so he stopped talking publicly about these issues, and nothing got better for me or other socially awkward men.

This kind of misandry needs to stop happening. I know most feminists aren't personally saying horrible misandrist things. I'm not saying "feminism sucks". Yet, the misandry needs to stop. Do you agree the misandry needs to stop? Will you stop making excuses for misandry?

(P.S. I know you touched on a lot of other issues, but this post was getting pretty long, so I wanted to focus on the core issue and leave the other issues for some other time.)

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#979
post #311

It is not a father's job to be the person a child goes to for emotional support. A father is indeed supposed to pass down masculinity and how to manage it and how to become a socially functional and acceptable man. Mothers on the other hand are supposed to be the primary person that provides emotional support and care. But, the immediate community is supposed to provide that support as well. This is how human society…

> It is not a father's job to be the person a child goes to for emotional support. A father is indeed supposed to pass down masculinity and how to manage it and how to become a socially functional and acceptable man. Mothers on the other hand are supposed to be the primary person that provides emotional support and care. This reads like satire. "ChatGPT, please write a paragraph that embodies the concept of toxic mas…

> It's astounding to me that anyone could believe it's possible to be truly masculine while neutering one's experience of human emotion. Being too afraid of emotion to ever express it, and making your child suffer for your fear, is cowardice, not masculinity.

I did not claim that fathers should be devoid of emotion or neuter their emotion. You added that strawman on your own. This is the 3rd or 4th comment in this thread where someone made a similar claim.

Clearly even in your quote I said "the person a child goes to" as in the person responsible for that. Just because your child does not come to you first for emotional support, does that mean you have to be cold and unapproachable to your child? When did I claim that or why would you assume one extreme or the other?

Why do you people insist that parents should not have specific responsibilities based on their abilities. If you honestly believe you can support your child better than their mother emotionally then take on that role. No problem there. So long as the mother is able to exchange masculine responsibilities with you.

Why do you insist that fathers should be responsible for everything and mothers should do whatever they feel like doing? It sounds to me like 80% of parenting is done by the father according to you.

A son needs someone to teach them how to be strong and manly as well as gentle and kind and intouch with their emotions. Why so you insist thr father should do all these things? Why do you resist havig to share the responsibility with the mother?

This is basic human organizational structure. You can't have the CEO and CFO have the same exact job. You can't have two commanding officers responsible for the same subordinates in the military. Lookup "tyranny of the structureless".

In your attempt to do everything on your own, you rob your child the opportunity to get close to both parents bot worse than that, you rob them of structure and clarity which are essential to healthy development.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#980

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about some minimal coaching so that all parents are aware of the state of the art in child psychology and techniques to do better as parents. 1. We don't know as much as people think we do about what constitutes "good parenting". At best, we know some behaviours which are typically harmful (molestation, violence), but everyone already knows that, and the people exhibiting those behaviours need therapy themselve…

>we know some behaviours which are typically harmful (molestation, violence), but everyone already knows that Horse crap, a huge amount of parents genuinely believe violence is a necessity for child rearing (including frequent repetitions of "spare the rod, spoil the child") to the point that they've even pushed to bring it back into public schools! Even the very basics are not accepted as fact by many.

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