Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

psypost.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 131 posts

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#41

Post by piva00 »

yetihehe wrote: post #21
sunrunner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we can all be schooled in the important manly things such as the '6 Card Games Every Many Should Know' or 'The Dale Carnegie That Will Instantly Improve Your Relationships'?

No, so we can all be schooled in "Why Every Man Should Be Strong"[0], "How to Set a Table"[1], "9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches"[2] or "Win the War on Debt: 80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money"[3]. You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves. That's not a "good" manly behavior. [0] https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/fitness/why-ev... [1] https://www.artofma…

I think there might be some of that happening on YouTube, James from Speeed[0] (who used to be in Donut Media before) has been mixing the usual car-related content with wholesome masculinity stuff, and I feel that should be the future of making masculinity be seen less as "being tough" to being a resilient, dependable, empathetic person.

I don't think his channel is the only one, it's the only one I'm exposed to so kinda tells me there should be quite a bit more of those around, hopefully that way of masculinity gets traction instead of Andrew Tate-esque buffoons.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/@SpeeedCo

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#42

Post by FranzFerdiNaN »

pjc50 wrote: post #23

Whole bunch of factors involved in this which HN is ill-equipped to deal with. But I think paranoia about "grooming" should probably be counted as a factor as well. A lot of people are going to be suspicious about an adult man who wants to hang out with children. So everything gets tangled up and shut down in the name of safeguarding. If you ask the question "what proportion of girls and young women have a male mento…

Yeah, this is also a huge part of it. Society has made it incredibly dangerous for any man to be around children, because a single allegation is enough to destroy a life.

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#43

Post by philipallstar »

ml-anon wrote: post #39
philipallstar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't understand much if you think that to fight the lack of mentors for men, you have to put down women The reverse of this has been what's been dominating for a decade. Anything pro-men (or even just neutral) can be accused of being anti-woman, which creates a chilling effect as female-dominated HR departments can make life very difficult for men looking to provide for their families.

Discrimination along protected attributes such as gender would be highly illegal though, so no doubt you’d have tons of evidence to present beyond “gossipy HR ladies”.

I didn't mention gossip at all. Are you pretending to quote something I never said, to just perfectly illustrate the bad faith nonsense that is ever-injected into even simple conversations about this topic?

It might be worth Googling James Damore as an early example of this chilling effect.

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#44

Post by FranzFerdiNaN »

lelanthran wrote: post #6
Urahandystar wrote: post #2

One of the saddest things I heard was a young kid say he's never heard the word masculinity unless it was paired with the word toxic before it. With that kind of attitude is this any wonder?

It is difficult to get society to accept that maybe it's time to balance the constant public and media validation of women with some public and media validation of men. Disney has seen a bunch of Marvel flops since they switched the focus to Marvel properties that target women (they've since publicly indicated a course correction on this). Take a bunch of IP that primarily males are interested in (super-heros), water…

> It is difficult to get society to accept that maybe it's time to balance the constant public and media validation of women with some public and media validation of men.

But its up to men to do the work. Women needed decades and decades to figure out what it meant to be a women and how to get what they wanted. They took the time and effort to organise, resulting in suffragettes and women's clubs and feminism and all that. Men could so far skip this all and just coast by on being the default. And now we're stuck with the situation that there are barely any male role models (except incredibly vile and toxic ones like Tate and Peterson), and trying to figure out what it means to be a man in a world that is rapidly changing, where men no longer can just be the breadwinner.

Not only that, but women are also demanding more from men (more emotional maturity, more support with chores and child raising, having a fully developed personality). And too many men seem either incapable or unwilling to change, preferring to lash out against 'woke' and voting for extreme rightwing politics that aims to put women back in the kitchen.

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#45

Post by sunrunner »

yetihehe wrote: post #21
sunrunner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we can all be schooled in the important manly things such as the '6 Card Games Every Many Should Know' or 'The Dale Carnegie That Will Instantly Improve Your Relationships'?

No, so we can all be schooled in "Why Every Man Should Be Strong"[0], "How to Set a Table"[1], "9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches"[2] or "Win the War on Debt: 80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money"[3]. You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves. That's not a "good" manly behavior. [0] https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/fitness/why-ev... [1] https://www.artofma…

> You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves

Those examples you posted that actually are good would also seem to me to be universally important for everyone across all genders. '80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money' seems useful for everyone, and while I doubt a lot of people are going to need '9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches' immediately, what makes that specifically 'manly' and not good for anyone either going seriously outdoors or prepping.

Yes, I picked those examples deliberately, but I don't see why any of the qualitatively good ones are 'manly'.

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#46

Post by lelanthran »

ml-anon wrote: post #35
lelanthran wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is difficult to get society to accept that maybe it's time to balance the constant public and media validation of women with some public and media validation of men. Disney has seen a bunch of Marvel flops since they switched the focus to Marvel properties that target women (they've since publicly indicated a course correction on this). Take a bunch of IP that primarily males are interested in (super-heros), water…

Yeah “society” had millennia of that. It’s quite telling that perhaps less than a decade of taking women seriously led to a a vitriol filled backlash full of Tates, Trumps and the manosphere. It’s also quite telling that your main complaint is Disney superhero movies. It’s difficult to think of something more juvenile and unimportant.

> It’s quite telling that perhaps less than a decade of taking women seriously led to a a vitriol filled backlash full of Tates, Trumps and the manosphere.

1. It's been about 30 years since the "strong independent women" meme first started in popular media.

2. Where is the vitriol and backlash in my post to which you are referring to?

Your response looks like a canned one that can be inserted into any discussion about males.

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#47

Post by lelanthran »

fzeroracer wrote: post #11

People are going to misread the article and go off in their own direction but the problem is clearly capitalism. It's always been capitalism. Lower income boys have drastically less access to male mentors than higher income ones and the article even states this. Low family income means less options. Most of your mentors at a young age are going to come from schooling, which still generally has a gender tilt towards w…

> People are going to misread the article and go off in their own direction but the problem is clearly capitalism. It's always been capitalism.

Of course it is, because as we all know capitalism only affects males /s

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#48

Post by Jgoauh »

I think there is a big problem around "man things" and "girl things" that has cost a lot to society, the women scientists who thought it wasn't for them, the men teachers and nurses who thought the same, and all the knowledge kept from people seen as being the wrong gender for it (cooking, cleaning, car repair ...) and i think the solution and a necessary step for the advancement of humanity is the recognition that the importance of sex is overinflated in society, and that a lot of things attributed to sex are actually social constructs, like gender.

In other words i think a post gender society would allow the distribution of occupations and knowledge to better match the populations skills and interest and children having access to better mentors.

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#49

Post by lelanthran »

sunrunner wrote: post #45
yetihehe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, so we can all be schooled in "Why Every Man Should Be Strong"[0], "How to Set a Table"[1], "9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches"[2] or "Win the War on Debt: 80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money"[3]. You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves. That's not a "good" manly behavior. [0] https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/fitness/why-ev... [1] https://www.artofma…

> You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves Those examples you posted that actually are good would also seem to me to be universally important for everyone across all genders. '80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money' seems useful for everyone , and while I doubt a lot of people are going to need '9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches' immediately, what makes that specificall…

> Those examples you posted that actually are good would also seem to me to be universally important for everyone across all genders. '80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money' seems useful for everyone, and while I doubt a lot of people are going to need '9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches' immediately, what makes that specifically 'manly' and not good for anyone either going seriously outdoors or prepping.

For the same reason "Be strong and independent" is a message targeted only at women, even though it can easily double as a universal message.

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#50

Post by lelanthran »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #44
lelanthran wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is difficult to get society to accept that maybe it's time to balance the constant public and media validation of women with some public and media validation of men. Disney has seen a bunch of Marvel flops since they switched the focus to Marvel properties that target women (they've since publicly indicated a course correction on this). Take a bunch of IP that primarily males are interested in (super-heros), water…

> It is difficult to get society to accept that maybe it's time to balance the constant public and media validation of women with some public and media validation of men. But its up to men to do the work. Women needed decades and decades to figure out what it meant to be a women and how to get what they wanted. They took the time and effort to organise, resulting in suffragettes and women's clubs and feminism and all…

> But its up to men to do the work.

What work would this be? Any organisation to the benefit of males would instantly be shutdown.

What do you have in mind that won't get backlash? I mean, after all, even just a quantitative study has elicited, in this thread, much anti-male sentiment in the form of strawmen.

So I am curious how you see male-advocacy groups proceeding in a manner that has no or limited backlash.

Post reply on HN