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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

#831

Post by anotherman554 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #131
caditinpiscinam wrote: post #29

As a black guy I don't remember a friend ever saying "black people suck" to my face. But I've heard people I'm close with, both women and men, say that "men suck" countless times. I think a lot of people who don't see themselves as "biased" still carry a lot of bias when it comes to gender, and it has an impact.

Misandry is normalized in society. Whenever you encounter a baseless attack on men just reverse the roles and you'll realize that there'd be pitchforks for treating women as anything other than paragons of virtue. Entire entertainment genres are built around portraying men as inept fools who can be looked down upon by the opposite sex. Seinfeld is one of the few sitcoms where a female character is as flawed as the me…

I don't watch many sitcoms these days. Someone else mention It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. If you really believe the media treats women as paragons of virtue there should be no female villains in sitcoms, right?

Velma and Clone High have women as bad as the men and female villains. Wednesday is pretty removed from it's Adams Family roots and is only occasionally a comedy, but also features at least one female villain.

The recent Beavis and Butthead made for TV movie had a subplot where a female politician is chasing Beavis and Butthead through the country and trying to murder them to cover up a scandal. That's certainly not treating women as "paragons of virtue."

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#832

Post by [deleted] »

ianai wrote: post #695
_xnmw wrote: post #593

OK, this is going to sound extremely controversial, but as a person who lived for many years in three different worlds: 1. The Western world (born/raised/educated in Canada) 2. The Arab world (lived for years in Jordan, have Muslim/Arab roots) 3. Eastern Europe (currently living in Ukraine for many years, now volunteering in the war) My observation is that 1. has an overly effeminate culture and harmfully stifles mas…

I’m reminded of a general trend I heard of from sociology decades ago-societies birthed around plenty of water tend to be more sexually liberal than those from dryer places. The US is somewhat a mix of that while UA seems to have consistent water access. Are people as glued to social media in EE as they are in the US? Have they had a #metoo movement? How about religious zealots? Granted, in UA it goes a long way to f…

[deleted]

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#833

Post by ineedasername »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #818
ineedasername wrote: post #95

This plays out at all levels. I felt extremely insulted just a few days ago when my youngest’s preschool held a gathering to celebrate their “graduation” to pre-school. At least 4 times mothers were called on to step forward— once to have a song sung to them, another to receive a flower, etc. Fathers were not mentioned at all. This prompted me to look around, get a rough sense of the distribution… Counting the kids &…

It is annoying ( effectively being excluded ), but do we need social validation to do our job ( raising kids )? Now, if the teacher is withholding information, that is a different story.

It’s not only about how the father feels in a situation like this. It’s also about the message that sends to the child, who has now seen (and will continue to see throughout their childhood) subtle messaging about the role and responsibilities that each parent takes on, and the perceived value of each parent in caring for them. A message that is heavily imbalanced, yet will influence their own view on things as they grow up.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#834

Post by infamouscow »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #649
plewd wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Jordan Peterson is doing a decent job at this though, his stance on helping young men is quite similar to Tate's, albeit less delusional.

> I think Jordan Peterson is doing a decent job at this though Is he? Nuking a prolific academic career to write terrible self help books, that you yourself ignore and giving yourself brain damage while you endlessly rant on twitter about mostly made up terminally online nonsense seems like the complete opposite of "doing a decent job" to me...

It turns out directly helping people matters more than writing hifalutin papers about helping people.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#835

Post by naasking »

zkelvin wrote: post #830
naasking wrote: post #770

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…

Is childbirth an innate human right? Why don't you think you need your unborn child's consent before birthing them?

> Why don't you think you need your unborn child's consent before birthing them?

That question is incoherent.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#836

Post by anotherman554 »

WalterBright wrote: post #273
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misandry is normalized in society. Whenever you encounter a baseless attack on men just reverse the roles and you'll realize that there'd be pitchforks for treating women as anything other than paragons of virtue. Entire entertainment genres are built around portraying men as inept fools who can be looked down upon by the opposite sex. Seinfeld is one of the few sitcoms where a female character is as flawed as the me…

Blondie, Honeymooners, Flintstones, Family Guy, Simpsons, King of the Bronx, Bewitched, Munsters, Jeffersons, All in the Family, Married with Children, etc., are all the same premise: Oafish bumpkin of a husband, the wise and understanding wife always coming to the rescue.

I don't think that's quite right... Married with Children is more like the husbands and the wives are constantly fighting, and its a battle of the sexes. (Granted I've not seen the whole show.) I Love Lucy also had that formula of men vs women, where Lucy and Ethel are plotting a prank or scheme against Richy and Fred or vice versa.

I don't think the Munsters is about the wife rescuing the husband. The humor is often about the family thinking they are normal, and the reaction they get from interacting with actual normal people. None of the characters are "wise" they all misunderstand the basic nature of what a normal family looks and acts like and fail to realize they are scaring normal people.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#837

Post by haswell »

space_fountain wrote: post #820
rich_sasha wrote: post #769

This comment will probably be lost but hey maybe someone will read it: We inherited a world where for many generations, men were hostile to women. It was unfair and needed rectifying. But increasingly, we fixed it by normalizing hostility to men. Overemphasis on "toxic masculinity", hyper focus on promoting outcomes for girls while doing nothing of the sort for boys. Plenty of various "Women in X" supporting each oth…

Imo I think this comment would have had more weight behind it for me before recent political events and before Roe vs Wade was overturned. I don’t believe in easy answers and I don’t claim to be able to experience life from the other gender, but cat calling is still common in the US. Women still get payed significantly less than men. Women still have much higher risks of sexual assault. We just decided to roll back c…

This is not a zero sum game. We can acknowledge that there has been regression or no change in some areas without any bearing on the negative outcomes of over corrective attitudes towards men.

Food for thought: the types of men who are likely to rely on macho masculinity and the abuse of power dynamics are the least likely to be phased by an undercurrent of anti-male sentiment.

Sensitive men, the men who are not propagating these patterns are the men who take such sentiment seriously, and are more likely to be harmed/held back by it.

The issue is not “men”. The issue is bad behavior. But as long as the framing is men vs. women, people who are not exhibiting the targeted behavior get caught up in the broader backlash, leading to a very hostile situation that does little to address the real issues in a sustainable way.

It may be that the pendulum swing was necessary for a time, and indeed there have been times in our history where this was obvious, e.g. the women’s suffrage movement.

And there are still clear wage gaps and the issue of bodily autonomy among others that remain critical to solve. But those can be addressed without perpetuating a culture that demonizes boys for being born male. This is a shift in thinking that we must make.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#838

Post by commandlinefan »

prepend wrote: post #780
rich_sasha wrote: post #769

This comment will probably be lost but hey maybe someone will read it: We inherited a world where for many generations, men were hostile to women. It was unfair and needed rectifying. But increasingly, we fixed it by normalizing hostility to men. Overemphasis on "toxic masculinity", hyper focus on promoting outcomes for girls while doing nothing of the sort for boys. Plenty of various "Women in X" supporting each oth…

I have a similar sentiment. I remember growing up with jocks and bullies and really not identifying with the whole “group showers and snapping towels at asses” masculinity not pleasant and spent a lot of time getting beaten up or avoiding being beaten up. So at first I liked the pushback against toxic masculinity as I didn’t like jerk men. But then the concept expanded to everything. “Mansplaining” isn’t something un…

> not identifying with the whole “group showers and snapping towels at asses” masculinity

Me, neither. And, in fact, I've never met anybody who did. Have you ever noticed how many of the movies we grew up watching were about a "shy, sensitive boy" who "wasn't like the jocks" who ended up getting the girl in the end? Ever notice how that trope appealed to almost everybody? That's because that's how everybody remembers their teenage years, too - even the guys who actually were on the football team taking group showers.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#839

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

midoridensha wrote: post #487
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe, as a culture, we should emphasize MORE the health of the family, of the duty and honor it brings to raise kids and less on the "perfect" romantic relationships of the parents? That ship has sailed. We live in a culture that not only has doubled down on the idea that the happiness/romance of the marriage is far more important than children, but even tells us that the marriage itself must dissolve when unhappy…

Ask anyone who grew up with parents that stayed together "for the kids": they'll tell you it's a miserable experience growing up in such a home.

I'd be hard-pressed to ever find such a person. The ones you're thinking of didn't stay together for the sake of the kids, they stayed together for some other reason... that's just the excuse they used. Maybe they did it to avoid the scorn of their own parents, or the shame of it (mostly gone in the late 20th century but still found in tiny little pockets, Catholic communities, etc.).

People who were doing it for the sake of the children wouldn't admit it to anyone, for fear that their children might overhear whispered gossip, thus defeating the whole purpose.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#840

Post by teddyh »

lapcat wrote: post #826
rich_sasha wrote: post #769

This comment will probably be lost but hey maybe someone will read it: We inherited a world where for many generations, men were hostile to women. It was unfair and needed rectifying. But increasingly, we fixed it by normalizing hostility to men. Overemphasis on "toxic masculinity", hyper focus on promoting outcomes for girls while doing nothing of the sort for boys. Plenty of various "Women in X" supporting each oth…

> But increasingly, we fixed it by normalizing hostility to men. Overemphasis on "toxic masculinity" "Toxic masculinity" is self-criticism. We men are harming ourselves, and the article discusses this. For example, "Fathers are also more likely to sing to and soothe their toddler daughters at night when they cry." Both girls and boys have emotional needs, but we're ignoring the emotional needs of boys. We expect boys…

That is true, and the term could reasonably be interpreted that way, but it’s often a motte-and-bailey tactic. When the term is criticized, your definition is waved, forming an easily defensible motte. But in casual use, the term is very commonly used in its most obvious meaning, i.e. “men are toxic” (forming the bailey).
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