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

121–130 of 131 posts

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

#121

Post by Yoric »

vacuity wrote: post #105
Yoric wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have data on that? All the abusers I've heard of by name were in the category of "some we unfortunately didn't know about" (with the exception of the Epstein clique, I imagine, which were more in the category of "some we collectively didn't want to know about").

No data, and I imagine there isn't much to say either way, since collecting the data is difficult at best. I think part of the discrepancy is that you're talking about abusers you've "heard of by name". The other is that people like Weinstein and Epstein clearly have power, and by default the powerful are left to their own devices (of course their victims and many others around are aware, but don't speak up). I think…

I don't think it's that easy.

A friend of mine was sexually abused by a family member. To this day, the family refuses to believe it. I've heard of other stories among people I know. None of the abusers were flagged out as creeps until the story came out.

Almost all the only cases I've heard of easy-to-spot creeps doing the abuse are among the rich & powerful, and it's possible they might be considered easy-to-scope solely because it was already known that they were abusers.

The one case of abuse by easy-to-spot creep I've heard of among my circle was that that of a rape in a high school, by a 15yo who had been flagged as dangerous in his previous high school, and nobody acted upon it in the new high school because the file had apparently been lost in transfer (possibly at the behest of the parents).

So, my anecdata suggests that profiling is hard.

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

#122

Post by lelanthran »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #68

Why is this flagged?! dang, mods, this is getting ridiculous. A couple of people are deciding what the community is discussing. Something needs to change.

> Why is this flagged?!

A quick look through some of the responses here will reveal the reason - for some people, any discussion of an exclusively male problem is perceived as anti-female.

Those people (who have been active in this thread) are probably the ones who have flagged it.

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

#123

Post by piva00 »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #108
piva00 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inherently? I'd say almost none except for the obvious physical ones and their higher order effects. Culturally there's a lot of differences that won't be patched for generations, social expectations can come from parenting and/or environment, including their society, interactions between genders shaped by those cultural differences from an early age, so on and so forth. Such expectations shape their worldview and pl…

Well but the physical difference must account for some natural social differences, my naive thinking is: other animals do act like that. A simple example is that I can lift my wife's body but she cannot lift mine. Wouldn't that affect our social behavior in some form? My thinking is going to how other animals have different behavior based on sex

We're entering the treacherous path of determining nature vs nurture, other animals act like that but we're also not like other animals, there might be biological reasons to account for some baseline differences while the exaggeration of those traits can also be mostly cultural.

Reducing the comparison to other animals don't really make sense since our societies are many orders of magnitude more complex than other animals, e.g.: the fact of being physically stronger don't explain why until some 100-150 years ago women were considered less intelligent and unsuitable for intellectual work compared to men.

There will be different behaviours due to biological differences, it's just not possible to reduce the vast range of gendered pigeon holing into that, culture is a much higher drive of those, and is empirically visible in societies that moved away from traditionalist views of genders.

Could it be that at some point the biological sex differences sown the gendered culture? I can see that, doesn't mean the perpetuation of it in modern times is due to physical/biological differences.

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

#124

Post by vacuity »

Yoric wrote: post #121
vacuity wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No data, and I imagine there isn't much to say either way, since collecting the data is difficult at best. I think part of the discrepancy is that you're talking about abusers you've "heard of by name". The other is that people like Weinstein and Epstein clearly have power, and by default the powerful are left to their own devices (of course their victims and many others around are aware, but don't speak up). I think…

I don't think it's that easy. A friend of mine was sexually abused by a family member. To this day, the family refuses to believe it. I've heard of other stories among people I know. None of the abusers were flagged out as creeps until the story came out. Almost all the only cases I've heard of easy-to-spot creeps doing the abuse are among the rich & powerful, and it's possible they might be considered easy-to-scope…

You may be right. I made too strong of a statement; there is too much variability even if some good predictive features are used. I believe that it is not too difficult to identify groups where one group has significantly higher risk of being abusive than another group. In particular, people tend to be sexually abused by people close to them[0]. Especially in the context of family, there are probably some people who know and cover up the abuse. I don't believe that most people can hide their inner selves from everyone. For instance, I sometimes hear that celebrities who are rotten on the inside were actually known to be so for years by staff and some ordinary people. If we could conduct honest interviews of people, I imagine a lot of not-so-secrets would come out.

[0] https://womens-safety.com/blog/rapists-often-familiar-faces-...

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

#125

Post by imtringued »

satisfice wrote: post #114
lelanthran wrote: post #4

This will not change anytime soon; the "women are wonderful" talk is as relevant as it has ever been. Regardless of the criteria you choose to establish a ranking, males dominate the bottom of that ranking.

We are number one on the rankings of type of people most likely to take over a country by force. Or did something change since I last saw the news?

You won't see men quietly building society in the news or in toxic internet communities (specifically the anti male ones). That's what you're missing.

The force needed to stab someone is the same force needed to hammer nails or lift 30kg bags. If you fear the former then you also don't deserve the latter.

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

#126

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

akimbostrawman wrote: post #119
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My son wants to be female because every super hero that's interesting to him, it's female (he is 4). We learned to coast with this, but I did complain about the lack of cool male characters for young kids: the female ones seems to be better curated and more abundant

>My son wants to be female That's the plan

I actually want him to not differentiate between the two. I find concerning that he distinguishes female as "being better".

Now of course he has a bigger sister he deeply loves and that's probably a big part of the deal

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

#127

Post by satisfice »

akimbostrawman wrote: post #117
satisfice wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are number one on the rankings of type of people most likely to take over a country by force. Or did something change since I last saw the news?

We are also number one on the ranking of saving children out of a burning building or otherwise sacrificing ourself for others. I am tired of this self-righteous self hatred.

Damn straight.

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

#128

Post by hyperman1 »

cal_dent wrote: post #109
em-bee wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except new zealand where men can't even be hired as teachers because parents don't trust them. at least that is what i was told by a friend who ran a school there.

think you've been led down a garden path there...this is not true, based on my equally anecdotal takes from family who are teachers there. There is a problem about lack of male teachers in NZ but that is more as a result of men not wanting to be teachers rather than parents not wanting it. Most schools are desperate to get more teachers and the govt as also tried schemes to get more men to teach.

A father I know took was sitting in the bar of a swimming pool, his daughter swimming. He saw something wrong in the pool, grumbled, and took a picture to request repairs. He now, as a side effect, had a picture of zillions of 12 year old boys and girls in swimsuits. Some mother saw this happen and called him out, then the rumors started, and he ended up critiqued everywhere.

The good news: He still has a job. This took several weeks of negotiating, and he got the biggest possible warning the job could give him. The police is not prosecuting anymore.

Consensus of fathers here is: He's not a pervert, just someone who did not think things trough for a moment. But everyone agreed in him taking an extremely dumb risk. This is Western Europe, BTW.

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

#129

Post by satisfice »

imtringued wrote: post #125
satisfice wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are number one on the rankings of type of people most likely to take over a country by force. Or did something change since I last saw the news?

You won't see men quietly building society in the news or in toxic internet communities (specifically the anti male ones). That's what you're missing. The force needed to stab someone is the same force needed to hammer nails or lift 30kg bags. If you fear the former then you also don't deserve the latter.

In a world where men are depressed and without direction, the world suffers and then dies. Birthrates drop and wars rage. Society spins to pieces.

A wise feminist would be doing everything she could to create a world of strong men who lead compassion. A world of confused, frustrated men will never be safe or sustainable.

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

#130

Post by snapplebobapple »

glimshe wrote: post #34
benterix wrote: post #30

I used to work for a short time as an IT teacher. The kids there were wonderful, even the troublemakers weren't that bad. What struck me is that clearly for some of the boys I seemed to be the only male figure they could related to in their lives: direct, available, happy to just be there and listen, sharing a common passion. They would come to me very often to talk about anything, not just computers. The younger one…

"which of course I had to stop". I want to go back to a world where I can be affectionate toward children without an implication of something more sinister.

I would like that as well, however I doubt it will happen because we can't even have honest conversations about blatantly obvious things like that there are pretty clearly different flavors of trans out there and some of them are concerning in some contexts (i.e. the men that get their rocks off wearing women's clothes who will only never do the surgery in the context of being allowed in women's locker rooms as one example). We need more honesty all around, it would make compassion a lot easier for those that need it.
Post reply on HN