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Comment by gearhart | Hacker News Reader

I agree with your sentiment, but I think the author would as well. I'd argue he's not saying that working-class men are failing anyone, rather that being a working-class man is becoming a mentally and morally exhausting pursuit, as well as a physically exhausting one. I'm not old enough or well-read enough to know if the halcyon days when this wasn't the case are actually disappearing, or if they were always a myth (as perhaps the last paragraph implies), but the author seems to be arguing that these men are suffering on a much deeper level than society gives them credit for.

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>these men are suffering on a much deeper level than society gives them credit for

As a man I don't want society to give me credit for suffering. I also don't want pity or empathy. Help? Maybe, but only if you let me pay it back.

What I want is to be allowed to solve my own problems. And then a chance to contribute to society. All this while not denouncing my manhood. I'm pretty sure most men feel the same deep down.

Maybe the help is owed to you, not the other way around.

It doesn't matter. If my identity is not about owing.

Owing is one of the bases of all relationships. You are free to say that you do not wish to be owed anything, but that does not actually free society from its obligations to you, nor you from your obligations to it.

Just sayin'.

You would love this novel. http://www.amazon.com/Independent-People-Halldor-Laxness/dp/...

Independent People is one of those rare books that manage to make bad choices relatable to the reader.

>I'm pretty sure most men feel the same deep down.

No, actually. If I wear my body down so much that I'm dying of work-inflicted wear-and-tear, I damn well do want society's empathy and help. "Manhood" and "self-glorifying martyrdom" are not synonyms.

One's ordinary contribution to society shouldn't be cast-from-hitpoints, especially not when it will get you an unremembered early grave. This is the year 2015, not D-Day.

But human genetics mostly unchanged from the days we hunted mammoths.

I'm not advocating sacrifice. I just think most guys need the feeling of contributing to stay sane.

Not actually true! Human adaptation has accelerated in the last 50,000 years, recording more changes than in the previous million. Adapting to crowded cities, monotonous diets, close socialization, rote work has marked our genetics in profound ways.

I guess I don't get what's so great about "manhood". Seems to be more trouble than it's worth.

The author is a woman. Which seems typical these days with regards to articles talking about men. Or maybe it's just that more sociologists are women (?).

My apologies - I didn't even check. I'm not sure that changes my view on the piece though, it felt remarkably objective.

> I'm not sure that changes my view on the piece though,

In the spirit of gender equality, it shouldn't in any case. ;)

The discussion is around gender, the gender of the author does actually make a difference in how the article is received (as it should).

People get stupid around gender. If this were an article about christian and muslims, no one would blink at using the religion of the author to help decipher intent.

Why are you interested in deciphering intent in the first place?

Because pure objectivity in social sciences is a myth, a utopic state at the best of times? We all have biases when it comes to deciphering human behaviour -- the best scientists will try to shed them harder than others, but they'll likely still retain some.

On top of that, you have to consider that social sciences (including economics) are "Schrodinger objects": as you observe and describe them, they change. Once you understand that, you can leverage the dynamic for personal or political gain, which is extremely common.

Womansplaining?

Completely anecdotal but I intentionally took a number of sociology courses (despite majoring in a vastly different field) and this was my impression as well. While many of the 101 and low-level courses were closer to 50/50 higher level courses seemed to have a larger and larger majority women.

So it would make sense that more sociology-styled articles are indeed written by women.

Still anecdotal though.

Do you know if there was some correspondence with seniority and teaching higher or lower level courses? One way or the other.

It seems to be that some things that are female dominated at lower levels, like undergraduate studies, might still be either more gender balanced or male dominated at higher levels, like research. Whether that is due to a glass ceiling or whatever else, I don't know; you'd have to ask a sociologist about that.

Generation effect

This was the case for me, during my UG and PG studies in psychology.

90% female undergraduate (approx 36 girls, 4 guys including me).

Around 80% female postgraduate.

About 75% male lecturer/senior lecturer/professor.

One of our lecturers brought it up, and I suggested that it might be due to more guys doing psychology in the past, but he refuted this, saying that the gender skew had been like that since he started in the field.

My only real explanation for this is unconscious/institutional sexism.

Wonder no more. The American Sociological Association reports data from the National Science Foundation in the U.S. showing over 20 consecutive years of enrollment skewed about 2:1 in favor of women [1].

[1] http://www.asanet.org/research/stats/gender/graduate_enrollm...

BTW, this is a hell of an article. It describes an "intransigent masculinity," yet women are not supposed to let men define their femininity?

And it blames mass shootings on "masculinity." But take a look at this hocky-stick graph of the frequency of the history of mass-shootings in the U.S. [2]. There's something more than "masculinity" going on here:

[2] http://thesocietypages.org/feminist/files/2015/07/Mass-Shoot...

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