dagblog - Comments for ""Men on the Sidelines of American Life""

Something I wanted to add on

Orion — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 12:13:28 +0000

In reply to "Men on the Sidelines of American Life"

Something I wanted to add on this topic.

I actually tie the loosening of traditional gender roles to the end of the military draft. The movement to get rid of the draft thanks to the unpopularity of the Vietnam war seems to coincide with a dramatic change in nearly every element of how men and women looked at each other in American society. Likewise, the long general peace in Europe saw a loosening of gender norms, as well.

I also think people are beginning to see how much things changed for the worse given events that require collective effort. We are hit with a pandemic, increasing war footing with a major nuclear power in Russia, and a polarized, atomized society and we finally realize just how estranged we are from one another. We don't know our brothers and sisters and, in turn, we don't really know ourselves apart from what we put in our bank accounts.

From the Works Progress Administration to the military draft, men worked and performed duties largely because they were told to. It wasn't optional. Women already know what they want to do but men have to be told. Men are wandering around, isolating themselves and generally not participating because no one tells them what to do. Forcing their way in to someplace is generally looked down upon, as well. Why show up where you're not invited?

I don't think we're about to go back to a military draft. We use robots for military missions now. However, I do think that men will suddenly find themselves compelled to do things for the national community. It will be called something different from a draft but it will be that general concept. Pete Buttigieg floated the idea around when he ran for president.

I am a direct product of this phenomenon but that's really about all that I have to say about it.

It is something that he

Orion — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 20:16:30 +0000

In reply to Noticed Andrew Yang is doing

It is something that he noticed.

I tried talking about it here years ago and people saw it as an attack on feminism and, logically, women themselves. It is what it is. Identity in America is a zero sum game, so if you say one group has an issue, well, that logically means you must hate the other group, right?

They hold that boys are told to value themselves for external attributes – strength and self-sacrifice, embodied in a heroic ideal – that end up running afoul of long-term Emotional Intelligence. This can be encapsulated in a pretty simple phrase: “I’m fine, leave me alone.” They also write about the high incidence of ADHD accompanied by medication.

It's surreal to hear people talk about this out loud in the mainstream media. ADHD is now actually being marketed at girls primarily, as is medication. In a generation, we might be talking about the sad state of women as society does a 180. It's more artificial than it seems.

I grew up without a dad. I got told a lot of very negative, scary things about him and was only recently told by a sibling that those things weren't really true. There were men around but they were just around. I was the subject of violence, bullying and abuse and I returned in kind because, to be blunt about it, women don't really know what to tell men about dealing with such things. A bunch of guys threw barbells at my face in weight training class the year before I graduated - when you don't have a man around, you make up your own rules about how to deal with things like that.

I turned out all right in the end but it shouldn't have been like that. I graduated college, started a family and even was awarded a medal for service in a hospital during Covid-19. On paper, I did what all men of all generations do, so the nutty and nasty parts can fade in to memory. Nevertheless, it was nutty and nasty like that for a lot of men in my generation and I think it was set up that way.

This is not at all to negate the struggles of women. Childlike simplistic thinking will interpret it that way. Men and women compliment each other - they are yin and yang. Because the average men exited mainstream society, women have been left taking on extreme demands and having to deal with school, finances, work, children and/or predatory men completely on their own. It seems like a recipe for burnout, and there will conveniently be a whole bunch of starving men ready to go once a bunch of overeducated and overworked women burn out.

When I was living in the suburbs, I had a roommate who brought multiple girls over and went at it with all of them, only for none of them to show up again. Without strong men around, women are more likely to discover such men and to then, after being burned, associate such men with men as a whole. It's no wonder things are toxic as they are.

It's not really a healthy situation for anyone. Also, just because most successful/powerful spaces are filled with women doesn't mean that all women are in successful/powerful spaces.

America usually only talks about a problem when it is a bit obvious. Women and older men who screamed at younger men to get off of the couch now feel bad since they've realized that nearly alot of men are on the couch. Big universities now seem to be nearly 60% female, with men attending teaching schools or opting out of education completely. I've also noticed a whole industry of online courses that seem to be aimed a bit more at men than what is available at the in person research campus.

Okay, a whole lot of them are

Orion — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 20:13:28 +0000

In reply to nearly all men are on the

Okay, a whole lot of them are on the couch.

It's worth noting that that article was published before Covid-19.

nearly all men are on the

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 20:04:46 +0000

In reply to It is something that he

nearly all men are on the couch

Sorry, but think you're overdoing it a bit

Noticed Andrew Yang is doing

artappraiser — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 13:54:06 +0000

In reply to "Men on the Sidelines of American Life"

Noticed Andrew Yang is doing a lot on the "boy crisis" recently:

https://t.co/qHUbjIdSO3
— Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) February 21, 2022

Additional:

Orion — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 22:02:50 +0000

In reply to Andrew Yang:

Additional:

Between 1999 and 2019, the percentage of 16 to 24 year old males participating in the workforce fell 17% and that number is projected to decrease even more over the next 10 years. Other countries, like Italy, France, Spain, Sweden, and Japan, have all seen more than a five-fold increase in young men not employed. The OECD records show that the average unemployment rate for men in their late twenties and early thirties jumped from 2% in 1970 to 9% in 2012.11 That is an enormous increase and means millions of young men are not working.

Most men, when they realize that this is happening, get mad about it, which certainly makes sense.

It's also easy to point at men and say they are lazy but when you're talking about millions of people, that is a social phenomenon.

However, the thing is that before our modern economy, the average man was called to military service, government employment, etc. Things like that. This is ironically a result of an interconnected free market economy, something conservatives advocate.

There's going to be a return to such things. The current order is a bit shakier than it seems - not all these men want to be bums, that's just how society treats them, and not all of these women want to have the weight of the professional world on their shoulders 24/7.

Meanwhile, modern men are a nation of Forrest Gumps - certainly charming and entertaining but generally appearing stupid and incompetent in the face of a complex technological society. Plenty of fun to talk to on the bench but you're not going to edit your magazine or work your front desk.

Andrew Yang:

artappraiser — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 21:38:05 +0000

In reply to "Men on the Sidelines of American Life"

Andrew Yang:

Wrote an Op-Ed for @washingtonpost about the struggles of American boys and men as a crisis that should be acknowledged and faced. https://t.co/BliuRy6sdg
— Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) February 8, 2022

I got served coffee by the

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 21:52:00 +0000

In reply to Keeping and maintaining files

I got served coffee by the office girl the other day. Turned out she's a crack physics/chemist - but guests still feel more at home with the barista. Glad at least I asked her to stay before I knew (and my smart-ass comment actually respectfully elicited that knowledge rather than getting caught as a condescending fool)

Keeping and maintaining files

artappraiser — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 21:36:00 +0000

In reply to Beneath Maytag repairman for

Keeping and maintaining files in folders in cabinets and archives is really the same thing as data management. Think: all corporate records, all professional records like for doctors, lawyers & accountants. The "gals" were the ones who knew how to get you the data you needed.

Beneath Maytag repairman for

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 21:13:23 +0000

In reply to You got me thinking about all

Beneath Maytag repairman for sure. Yes, databases were for girls, data lakes and data science are for guys. Go figure. I think Big Data and data warehouses screwed it all up. If they'd only stuck to data kitchens and data boutiques...