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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

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in a society where leadership is based on challenges of physical strength (i.e. 1v1 combat for the right to rule). But that hasn’t been true of most cultures for millennia. It goes deeper than that.

You are saying that women are inherently 'less wise' or 'mentally weak' or some such? What are you saying?

To put it bluntly, men are dumber. They're wired for task-to-task thinking, and their purposes are heavily motivated by challenges.

Women, by contrast, are wired for safety, which is a far more holistic approach to purpose because they consider connections men wouldn't even _consider_.

The downside of being smarter, though, is more unease about things you see that may present as a risk. It keeps females away from the bottom of the performance bell curve (men rank lowest in most metrics), but also from the top (men rank highest as well).

All of it is reprogrammable by operant conditioning (a large part of it often happening within marriage), but those are the biological primitives.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#363

It is absolutely true that boys have been neglected. But the contempt of men is a recent phenomenon. Feminism has a great deal to do with it, demonizing masculinity by construing all men as brutes and promoting the false doctrine that men are unnecessary, that women are self-sufficient, that the patriarchy is some kind of evil oppressive thing. All of that is false. Men and women are complementary , which is to say t…

It's embarrassing for Hacker News that this is the top-rated comment.

> All children need fathers

> Father[s] have an authority no mother can have

> There's a reason virtually every culture is patriarchal. Patriarchy exists in service of the common good

Really?? Where's the research that supports any of this? If you're going to make charged statements like this, you better at least bring some research to the table.

Let's all take a good long hard look at ourselves. Just because we might feel frustrated, or displaced, or ignored, doesn't mean that we (and I'm talking to the men on this site who upvoted this comment) need to abandon the truth-seeking parts of us that desire the gold standard of logical, evidence-supported arguments. If you blindly support any statement in favor of "your side" just because it feels good to you emotionally, regardless of how speculative or questionable the reasoning is, then you have little right to criticize the "other side" for doing the same.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#364

It is absolutely true that boys have been neglected. But the contempt of men is a recent phenomenon. Feminism has a great deal to do with it, demonizing masculinity by construing all men as brutes and promoting the false doctrine that men are unnecessary, that women are self-sufficient, that the patriarchy is some kind of evil oppressive thing. All of that is false. Men and women are complementary , which is to say t…

> There's a reason virtually every culture is patriarchal. It's because men are physically stronger than women. That's it. That's all it is.

[flagged]

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#365
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wanna ask whoever wrote that if trans men are included

Speaking of which, I felt [1] was a rather interesting article on that. Multiple people are interviewed and their experiences differ, but stuff like this really stands out, and especially that last paragraph is pretty relevant here: Prior to my transition, I was an outspoken radical feminist. I spoke up often, loudly and with confidence. I was encouraged to speak up. I was given awards for my efforts, literally — it…

>I’m not sure I understand why the men did not respond, but it made a lasting impression on me.

Because male intra-gender solidarity is viewed as the first step to neo-Nazism, so we grin and bear it in mixed company.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#366

It is absolutely true that boys have been neglected. But the contempt of men is a recent phenomenon. Feminism has a great deal to do with it, demonizing masculinity by construing all men as brutes and promoting the false doctrine that men are unnecessary, that women are self-sufficient, that the patriarchy is some kind of evil oppressive thing. All of that is false. Men and women are complementary , which is to say t…

> There's a reason virtually every culture is patriarchal

The Americas has strong, persistent matriarchies. And even Sparta had a politically-active group of heiresses who rivalled the Kings for power.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#367

It is absolutely true that boys have been neglected. But the contempt of men is a recent phenomenon. Feminism has a great deal to do with it, demonizing masculinity by construing all men as brutes and promoting the false doctrine that men are unnecessary, that women are self-sufficient, that the patriarchy is some kind of evil oppressive thing. All of that is false. Men and women are complementary , which is to say t…

Yeah, I'm going call bullshit on this. Almost every society is historically patriarchal because for thousands of years, human attributes tied to testosterone (strength, endurance, athleticism, aggression) were extremely valuable. The world is changing, and we need to change with it by developing a new, healthy society, not retreating into traditional structures and patterns that no longer serve us as a species.

I disagree. Things are the same today as they were thousand of years ago, and they'll be the same for the next thousands of years. Believing this period of unusual prosperity and extended peace in human history will last for long is delusional. The only thing that matters is that we're still biologically the same.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#369
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brene Brown studied it. It does not turn out well for men: > I was not prepared to hear over and over from men how the women — the mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives — in their lives are constantly criticizing them for not being open and vulnerable and intimate, all the while they are standing in front of that cramped wizard closet where their men are huddled inside, adjusting the curtain and making sure no one see…

i'd suggest the total opposite: do talk about your feelings, and if she can't handle it then she isn't the right partner for you.

Potential partners are one thing. Replacing mothers, sisters, and female family members tends to be more difficult to manage.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#370

It is absolutely true that boys have been neglected. But the contempt of men is a recent phenomenon. Feminism has a great deal to do with it, demonizing masculinity by construing all men as brutes and promoting the false doctrine that men are unnecessary, that women are self-sufficient, that the patriarchy is some kind of evil oppressive thing. All of that is false. Men and women are complementary , which is to say t…

With respect, there are some errors in your thesis. Specifically, you're attacking some strawmen.

Here's the steelmanned version of the ideas you're saying are causing issues:

- Instead of defining men / women, think of each human as a person. There are no strong men, sensitive boys, intelligent women, vulnerable girls - there are only strong people, weak people, hard people, soft people. Our job as society is to compassionately accept people as they are and encourage them to be their best authentic selves, instead of arguing there is some role they must force themselves to fulfill because they were born with a set of genitalia, because this promotes individual happiness and is the kind thing to do.

- People's virtues are learned, not innate. Independent people can learn to accept help. People who are unsure of themselves can gain confidence. People are allowed to be vulnerable, but also to have the space to find roots, solidarity, strength and growth. Roles that traditionally would have gone to someone with a penis - head of household, soldier, provider - are achievable and manageable by anyone, because the virtues needed to hold those positions are learnable and not rooted in biology. The same holds in reverse - roles that would traditionally have been held by women are open to everyone.

- People should be given freedom to flourish as they best see fit. They have rights to their bodily autonomy, securing their financial futures, achieving scholastic pursuits, respect and equality for their contributions, and more. Historically, this has not been the case, and this does not just apply to women's rights here - it applies to anyone who has had these opportunities denied.

- Some human but deleterious attributes we should all grow beyond. Brutishness is an excellent example - as is shallowness, closed-mindedness, entitlement, ignorance, greed, dishonesty, and more. Some attributes are contextually awful - being stoic, for example, is a boon when you need to handle stressful situations, but it can also manifest as a lack of empathy for other's emotional lives.

Note that none of these are attacking masculinity - if anything, point two contradicts exactly that, literally anyone can learn the virtues associated with masculinity and is why trans men are supported even conceptually. Rather, point four holds - there are a subset of awful virtues that are unacceptable or contextually awful from anyone that have been attached to being a man, such as entitlement to sex, resorting to anger in lieu of healthy expressiveness, and assuming they must shoulder all burdens instead of being allowed to seek help. In other words, mainstream movements are attempting to abolish toxic masculinity, not masculinity itself.

You discuss the emotional needs of boys and girls as being different (which may or may not be valid, depending on the best available evidence), but then you argue that treating boys like girls is not the right thing to do, which is not what anyone is proposing at all. Again, the idea is that people are people, not their bodies. Girls and boys are people, capable of feeling, wanting and expressing the full range of emotions. People want to treat children in ways that allow them to be emotionally expressive and mature adults.

Further, when you talk about the patriarchy, you are again not taking point one and two into account. Nobody wants authority, strength, boldness, vitality, etc. to go away - these are all great virtues. Rather, they want the idea that these qualities are somehow gendered to go away. If you want strong leaders, find them in both genders. Additionally, historically, the patriarchy you are discussing has tended to enshrine point four virtues rather than eliminated it - it's the same system that inflicted foot binding tortures, made Indian women throw themselves into funeral pyres when their husband passed, allowed female infanticide to flourish, and so on. These are all terrible things and bundled into a parcel of ideas about what men "should" be: not just protectors, but architects of their offspring / wives / sister's fates. We have managed to overcome many of these core underpinning beliefs, but there still remain a lot that should not go unchallenged.

So, respectfully, I would ask you to at least attack the right thing. It is possible your value systems are opposed to all the points above, and that's fine. But if a value system has to reach towards attacking strawmen of other viewpoints, then it is not a good sign that that value system has been arrived at fairly.

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