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The End of Men

theatlantic.com

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Re: The End of Men

#31

Post by sabat »

pohl wrote: post #15
hugh3 wrote: post #9

For a fun exercise, try replacing "men" with "black people" and "women" with "white people" throughout this article, and speculate on whether The Atlantic would have published it. "What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to white people?" "White people live longer than black people. They do better in this economy. More of ’em graduate from college. They go into space and do everything black peo…

That exercise may be fun, but aren't gender differences in cognition pretty well established? OK, maybe the experiences of Erik Von Markovik (et. al.) are not exactly rigorous, but then there's Helen Fischer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ewvCNguug

Maybe, but they're often wildly overstated. There are many more exceptions and variations than those who would generalize will admit. This is anecdotal, but I'm an example of what I'm talking about: higher verbal scores than math, as right-brained as I am left-brained -- and I'm male.

Re: The End of Men

#32

Post by rubashov »

axle wrote: post #10
Groxx wrote: post #5

What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply hostile to males in return for all the past hostility to females? edit: apparently axle replied while I had my lament on the state of scholarships. Summarized: out of literally thousands available after pre-filtered (however poorly), I had to toss out all but a dozen or two because I'm white and m…

The problem is really that you likely have not been anything else apart from a male WASP. See, there is no institution working against you. These things you are complaining about not getting are not the main product, they are shortcuts. A scholarship is not the normal way of studying, it's a shortcut way, for people who have something working against them. A woman (and a black guy) have institutions against them. The…

> the white will likely get more jobs than the black guy.

All else held equal, that is simply not true in modern America. There are very powerful incentives to hire the equivalently qualified black guy in order to avoid lawsuits.

Anyway, all this affirmative action stuff will have to be dismantled in the next twenty years when whites are a minority. It will simply become impossible for institutions to function if they have to make sure their loans/admissions/hires correspond to the new population profile.

Re: The End of Men

#33

Post by amock »

codingthewheel wrote: post #25

This article is okay, somewhat sexist. I'm surprised it passed the first round of editorial review. Imagine the uproar if a man published an article flirting with "the end of women" in a major publication. This is a feminist claptrap with a lot of anger behind it, and intended to push buttons. It amounts to "girls are better than boys HAHA!" I'm quite sure men will do just fine over the coming decades, thank you kind…

Or maybe you'll get downvoted for saying "I'm sure I'll get downvoted."

Re: The End of Men

#34

Post by lukev »

Who gives a crap? Even if there are measurable statistical differences in competence at various activities between the sexes (which is far from proven), the average variation between two individuals is far, far more than the average variation between the sexes at large.

In other words, treat people like the individuals and stop ANY form of discrimination based on irrelevant categories, sex-based or otherwise.

Also, the article makes much of the fact that women are getting more education. But this is probably because it is both harder and less necessary for them to jump into the workforce straight out of high school, not because they're any better or more prone to academia. I have no hard data to back this up, but I strongly suspect that your average woman in her 20s is FAR more likely to be at least partially dependent on a husband or parents than a man of the same age.

Re: The End of Men

#35

Post by sliverstorm »

dfranke wrote: post #22
sliverstorm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue not failing but carefully emasculating. Old-fashioned masculinity has been systematically devalued, and many of its' traits demonized.

I've seen this asserted dozens of times before, and even though I agree with the observation, the way I see it phrased invariably drives me nuts. Out of all the traditionally "masculine" traits that are in decline, the ones most worth saving are ruggedness and personal responsibility, yet the subtext of your assertion is a portrayal of men as helpless victims. Social change is not a conspiracy. There's nothing "caref…

How would you phrase it?

I know it's not a conspiracy, and I know there's no orchestrating hand. I was phrasing it the same way as the 'Invisible Hand' theory of economics. There sure as hell is no Invisible Hand, but we call it that because that's what it sometimes looks like.

Re: The End of Men

#36

Post by illumin8 »

axle wrote: post #21
cageface wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A woman (and a black guy) have institutions against them. They go somewhere, and they are instantly assumed to be less competent. That's why these things are given to them - to help out the weak, not to push YOU down. Those things are legs-up to equalise the playing field - you, as a WASP already are at the starting line, asking to get those things is to get another 10 yards. Allowing this for the sake of argument, a…

When the playing field is very clearly level. And right now, it's really not. Go to small towns in the U.S south and see how black people live. And go ask women how they are treated in companies.

I agree, there's a lot of racism and sexism in small southern towns. Unfortunately, we can't do much about that until all of the older generation living there die off and younger people are born without being taught their ignorant ways.

What I disagree with is the idea that we can cancel this racism and sexism out by giving them advantages in the big cities. Life should be based on merit, not genetics.

Re: The End of Men

#37

Post by Alex3917 »

rubashov wrote: post #30
Alex3917 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the New York Times: "Their [research] also suggests that the disadvantages that poverty imposes on children aren’t primarily about material goods. True, every poor child would benefit from having more books in his home and more nutritious food to eat (and money certainly makes it easier to carry out a program of concerted cultivation). But the real advantages that middle-class children gain come from more elusiv…

This ignores the nature over nurture reality of the situation, I'm afraid. Genes matter.

Not it doesn't. The Hart & Risley study the article is addressing looked at the possible influence of genes, and found that the maximum influence they could have over verbal ability was maybe 20-30%. (I don't have the book in front of me, so I don't know the exact amount, but it was relatively small.)

Re: The End of Men

#38

Post by hugh3 »

sabat wrote: post #31
pohl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That exercise may be fun, but aren't gender differences in cognition pretty well established? OK, maybe the experiences of Erik Von Markovik (et. al.) are not exactly rigorous, but then there's Helen Fischer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ewvCNguug

Maybe, but they're often wildly overstated. There are many more exceptions and variations than those who would generalize will admit. This is anecdotal, but I'm an example of what I'm talking about: higher verbal scores than math, as right-brained as I am left-brained -- and I'm male.

Some of them are often wildly overstated, others are kept hidden. In polite society you can only mention a difference between male and female cognition if it either (a) advantages females or (b) it is strictly neutral. See also: Larry Summers.

Also there's some evidence of differences in cognition between different races; you definitely can't mention these in polite society so I'm not going to. See also: The Bell Curve, and that chick at Harvard Law who got reprimanded by the Dean for something she said in a private email.

Of course all these actual cognitive differences don't really matter since intragroup variability vastly swamps intergroup variability. The only interesting and significant differences between male and female minds are not in the way they solve abstract problems but in ... pretty much all the other stuff (emotional makeup, desires, responses to events, sociability, et cetera).

Re: The End of Men

#39

Post by ontheroad »

sbt wrote: post #13

being a white male sometimes feels like the entire fucking universe is suffering from some sort of inferiority complex.

that's funny, because it seems to me like the entirety of white males have some sort of superiority complex.

Re: The End of Men

#40

Post by dfranke »

sliverstorm wrote: post #35
dfranke wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this asserted dozens of times before, and even though I agree with the observation, the way I see it phrased invariably drives me nuts. Out of all the traditionally "masculine" traits that are in decline, the ones most worth saving are ruggedness and personal responsibility, yet the subtext of your assertion is a portrayal of men as helpless victims. Social change is not a conspiracy. There's nothing "caref…

How would you phrase it? I know it's not a conspiracy, and I know there's no orchestrating hand. I was phrasing it the same way as the 'Invisible Hand' theory of economics. There sure as hell is no Invisible Hand, but we call it that because that's what it sometimes looks like.

I'd phrase it by more carefully separating the "is" from the "ought". "Modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women" gets the "is" part pretty close, though I'd say it as "modern, postindustrial society is less well-suited to men than what preceded it", because the former misleadingly implies a men-against-women zero-sum game. The "ought" part is what I said in my previous comment: men ought to recognize that the trend exists, and when they hear masculine virtue demonized, ought to stand up for it by word and by example.
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