Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Trust_Fund

They could do all sorts of things in their spare time, from watching tv shows, movies, youtube, anime, browsing reddit/twitter/instagram/tiktok, etc.

This is not to say that you should never play video games. I've found that they've been great for staying in touch with friends I would've otherwise lost touch with. A few hours a week isn't bad at all. It's just that it can snowball very quickly if you're not mindful about how you spend your time.

I luckily never really became addicted to any video games, but I'm concerned for my future children who will undoubtedly encounter video games in the future some day.

Of course, the parents played a part in enabling this. Their mom (my sis) will often suggest I buy them video games for their birthday/Christmas but I refuse to do that. What they need is a kick in the ass to get them outside.

I don’t think it directly causes issues as much as it enables or locks in certain behaviorally patterns such as being a NEET or similar. It’s really more of a symptom of a lack of support system in a person’s life, the same way social media overuse or drug abuse comes about.

Real addictions have severe physical consequences like chemical withdrawals that can lead to death.

I find that Self-Determination Theory is a good model to look at this with. Modern school and work life provide little autonomy, little relatedness, and little (desirable/appreciated) skill for the vast majority of people whereas video games do the opposite by providing essentially an ideal playground.

I worried about my own son playing video games incessantly through his teens and twenties, but now at 28 he has been holding down a stable job for a year and I have got good reports from his employer. He's still a loner IRL though.

Would I worry so much if he were a gym rat or ultramarathoner-- an "exercise addict"? Good question.

An ideal situation requires pressure to succeed, while also providing resources and guidance to be successful.

I will tell you it is a LOT more complicated than this. This type of single point simplification and pronouncement about 'coddling' is decidedly unhelpful.

For starters, if you grow up in two working parent household, both parents can easily come home completely exhausted and unable to provide the extended engagement necessary to help a child develop. Add in the social pressures of school where EVERYONE has an iphone and games where it is socially isolating not to do these things - which carries its own set of risks. Add in a public education system that doesn't focus on development and instead focuses on learning material. Add in an economy designed to optimize extraction of capital from individuals through psychological programming and ads and more stuff to buy.

None of this has to have a single source of blame, much of its realistically structural and cultural. It isn't one bad actor or one failed thing...it is a large number of individuals, groups, and organizations individually performing Goodhart's law and the result is some get cast aside.

When all the goals are chosen for you, it does not matter if you were over-protected or not. You cannot build true self esteem and confidence if you don't succeed and/or fail at a dream of your choice. There is no point learning to drive a car if you do not know where you want to go, to earn money if you don't know what you want to buy, and to get into a career if you have no sense of purpose.

Videogames are addictive not only because they are fun, they provide you with a goal and 'achievements'. In my humble opinion, sex for the sake of sex (real or porn), promotions for the sake of promotions or else are all caused by the same emotional male problem ; the inability to feel emotions and learn from them what is truly important for yourself. The % of young men in the labour force is just a symptom of that.

It worked for me when my parents kicked me out. Took around a decade though.

Or they end up as homeless drug addicts.

Both outcomes have a none neglible likelihood.

To be eligible in your own right, you have to have paid into Social Security for a total of 40 quarters before becoming disabled. Given child labor laws, it's rare that you could accumulate enough quarters before age 26 or so.

The other way is to be eligible on a parent's social security, as a "disabled child", which is defined as someone who became disabled before age 22. If you suffered a permanent disability at age 21, and have a parent who paid enough into SS to be eligible, you can receive "child" benefits from their account even as an adult: https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/disability/qualify.html#anchor7

This leaves an unfortunate gap for people who genuinely become permanently disabled due to an accident or medical condition that happens around age 22-25, because they can't qualify through either route.

The flip side is this person is hurting society significantly less than some committing crimes - even worse crimes that are sentenced to jail time (which is very expensive).

Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror. Life is meant to be lived; the purpose of life is at least eudaimonia, not slowly rotting away in front of a computer.

I see a lot of Jordan Peterson-esque BS professing these “no biological father == neet” rules, and I’m not saying that’s the point you’re leading with your question, but am jumping at any opportunity to dispel it, just in case.

There is an incredible amount of shame and self-directed anger and fear in men who have found themselves in this position.

All of those feelings are heavy to carry, but they can be shoved aside and ignored by constant entertainment (video games, tv binges etc). Shoved aside they don’t hurt as bad.

But those feelings don’t go away. They get bigger as each year goes on & they flare up when confronted with having to do something they aren’t capable of doing (or think they aren’t capable) like moving out, getting a job, getting a better job, having an adult relationship etc.

Those feelings of inadequacy have to be taken on and grace & forgiveness has to be granted to oneself in order for them to spread their wings / leave the nest and not come back.

For me, the question is how do you get someone so deep into a dark emotional morass to take on the emotional dragons they’ve been hiding from?

You're not wrong generally, but this one costs about $1000 where I live, which is close to average national monthly salary and approximately twice the minimum salary.

Not pocket change for someone who has trouble finding work (and many jobs require driver's license).

(The previous comment used to include something about people wanting to quit their jobs and just play games all day) For your point about playing games all day — there’s definitely some aspect of “having a purpose” that makes some hold down a job even if they are already rich. So for some it’s definitely their life dream to sit in their room all day, and for some having something that you can point to saying “I contributed this” is an invaluable part of their lives

My life was held back by time spent gaming for so long and later in life I realized TV was doing the same. Moderation in all things right? For me it is easier to cut them out period.

I'm happier and have a far more productive life as a result. I'm now in my 40s and have productive life and career but this didn't start until my mid 30s.

I guess part of it is the fact that my circumstances didn't even make that lifestyle an option. By my late teen years it was increasingly obvious that I had to go in the kind of direction I did if I wanted my family to have a decent life. If I had a middle class nuclear family, is it likely that I would've tore through CS classes and leetcode as much as I did? I kinda doubt it.

So I did what I would have wanted. I walked over to the neighbor kid and asked "Would you take $550 to fix up our lawn?". He looked at me like I was an alien. He said one word, "no", then awkwardly walked away.

I would have killed to get a job offer like that in my early twenties, probably two days of work for $550! Would have grabbed a friend, six pack of beer and finished it -- that day -- and used the money for books!

Plenty of people will read this comment and think that is not them but if there is not a point in your day when your phone is not on you, out of sights and out of reach for at least an hour you're not as "present" as you think.

People pick degrees based on the advice of counselors who seem to know of 8 kinds of job, and half of them are not something you can advise a kid in a striving high school to follow (binman, factory worker, etc) .

It's actually nuts how people will do an internship and then decide this is the thing they want to do. Or they get a visit from someone at school and now they're gonna be an author.

If there's one thing we need in society, it's experiential information about jobs.

For instance I've known many people who went into management consulting. None of them think it has any value. If I was a kid I'd want to know that.

Accountants come across many types of business and are employable in many types of firms. The job is closer to a lawyer than many people expect, esp irl to tax. Your math degree is minimally useful.

Recruiters talk to people all day and are paid in proportion to the salary of the placed person.

Anyway those are just jobs that I don't do, and I know a tiny bit about them through contact with real world people.

Kids need these contacts.

Yet poorer developing nations have higher birth rates than developed nations. Is it because they have lower expectations for what their children need to live a "good" life, that they just have more hope that things will work out somehow, or that they somehow don't care about these concerns?

This gets said so much on fora with men who regard themselves as “redpilled”, but it makes no sense to me personally. As a bookish and arts-inclined person, so much of my worldview, the things that occupy my thoughts during the day, has been formed by the canon of literature, music, films. No woman would seem dating and marriage material to me if she weren’t similarly erudite and we would have some common ground in that respect. It has been the number-one factor driving all my relationships over my life.

Often the man claiming that men don’t care about a woman’s education, goes on to say that what matters is that the woman knows, for example, how to cook. That, too, has never made sense to me. I live in a country where for the childless, eating out good healthy food is not appreciably more expensive than cooking at home, and a woman who chooses to take advantage of that and use her valuable time for other pursuits, would seem more attractive.

The common male complaint I see isn't "all these women I date are simply not going to fulfill what I need," it's "no women will date me at all" which points at a breakdown in the process way before the point of "what are these men looking for." Hard to imagine these men even have any idea of what they're actually looking for in a relationship, with that lack of experience. You only find out one way...

And for that situation, a woman complaining "so few of these men I see have their shit together" and a man complaining "so few of these women are willing to date me at all" are two sides of the same coin. I think at a societal level, though, you'd be hard pressed to push the view "everyone should simply give up on contributing to society in traditional ways" so the coverage is going to look negatively at the "freeloaders" in the same way it disapproved of someone like Paris Hilton. You see it through a lens of sexism, I see it through a lens of it being hard to sympathize with someone drifting through life chatting meaninglessly on the internet and playing games. BATNA comes into play, too - the person with no options at all seems to be the one with the incentive to make changes. (While for the women here, and the men they are currently dating while ignoring these stay-at-home-and-do-nothing men, there's other, plenty-well-trod advice about compromise being necessary, etc, that's been repeated to death in media of all sorts.)

Maybe we should encourage these men to go become nannies for a few years, to both give them a job and boost their dating profile that way AND to prepare them for being a full-time homemaker if traditional employment simply isn't what they want! I certainly think that should be an option for both genders.

> Given that the vast majority breakups are initiated by women

Citation please? I would LOVE to know if your number here also includes stuff like "he slept with me and then ghosted me," too.

Alternative talk shows like Kevin Samuels are gaining traction.

The queen is naked.

The audience here is (wrongly) responding to you by thinking that you're somehow targeting women in your questioning, but I get what you're trying to say - you see a strange imbalance of personalities being portrayed in popular media and it's setting off alarms in your head, like someone is trying to sell you something or they're trying to push an agenda on you that you don't quite buy into. They are, but you're resisting. Keep doing this. Eventually, find out who the owners are of all these channels and products that are being pushed on you. What do they have in common, and what would they stand to gain from this. Follow the money.

Hey, there's actually a study [1] about this!

> The author uses a new longitudinal study of relationships in the US, the How Couples Meet and Stay Together surveys, to examine the gender of who wanted the breakup for both marital and nonmarital heterosexual relationships for the first time. The results show that only in marriages are the majority of breakups wanted by the female partner. Men and women in nonmarital heterosexual relationships in the US are equally likely to want to break up. Furthermore, wives report lower relationship quality than husbands, while men and women in nonmarital relationships report more similar relationship quality.

[1] https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_gender_of_break...

The displacement of men from the labor markets has created a lack of stable patrimonial family formation, which is consistent with the Marxian doctrine’s intellectually revolutionary advocacy and its propagation into the American educational institutions over the last century in time. See the top cited references in the last century in the Western World for corroboration.

[For those unaware, Marx was violently opposed to family creation as necessarily female enslavement (see the second chapter of the Communist Manifesto).]

Patrimony has natural merit for creating principled savings and investments demonstrative in civilized record. Yet most American children are educated by the Nanny State and lack the proper tools to learn how to survive and thrive at being human - a universally patrilineal hereditary trait known as culture.

This form of culture is distinct from one which is unnaturally formed, such as by profit-motivations or ultimately temporal, metabolic functions rather than spiritual contemplation. This is seen consistent with decline in the American population’s affirmation of a transcendental existence conferred by the rise of an Atheistic population. What quantity of atheists were raised not simply with a spiritual life, but a natural one, existing outside of the metabolic motivations of federally legislated education? How does this correspond with the growth of Marxian publications in Academia compared to British Enlightenment literature including the great works of the Occident, such as Aristotle? We ought to be able to compare catalogs over time of the shift and denial of Western Patrimony as good. And I believe the shift exists, demonstrating a disintegrated sexually dimorphic society with transsexual cultural phenomenon as manufactured. Viz, unnaturally formed and therefore biologically morbid. See the overweight phenomenon as further evidence of the morbid nature of the civil authorities.

We can also draw inspiration from the cultural change that we have seen for women. How often do you see in movie a person say to a woman "Are you happy? Is this really what you want...". Lifting personal motivation as an actually question is a early good step towards making people think about it.

There seems to also be a possible error in how people perceive the problem. In the absent of video games you would not suddenly get motivation. Even if you would throw them out on the street with no money, food or shelter, the result would not be a sudden aspiration to become what society expect men to be.

Finding what motivate oneself can either be done through the help by others, or alone. It not as much of a question about what is easier as all hobbies are more work than no hobby at all.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/05/24/will-birt... (Will births in the US rebound? Probably not.)

People respond to incentives. Living and having children in the US is expensive, so the results are what you’d expect.

Maybe we don’t need replacement rate, except for the part of an economic system that requires unending growth. I’d like to submit a bug report.

Better yet, who takes care of all the old people? Nobody.

Nah, lots of people just tend to follow the path of least resistance at the moment. They don't assume that others will support them forever, they just aren't thinking about it since it is bothersome. If they were forced to do other things then they will do other things, since the force changed what path has the least resistance.

I spent a mere year after college living with my parents, a very long and sad year, wondering if this was going to be the rest of my life. My next real job came somewhat out of sheer luck and I'm thankful for it because I could totally see myself having given up, still back there to this day, still having no idea how to take my first step in a direction that actually motivated me beyond the baseline survival mode of wage-slavery. Not for one second during that time did I want to live like that, but it could have very well been the case anyway. Narcissism is far from the truth

The cultural pedestal of "working hard" is tragically misplaced. Market promotes those that work smart or gable at the right opportunity, corporate politics promotes the well connected, people that support their family or community the most deserve respect, but the poor folks stocking amazon warehouses 12 hours a day get screwed.

"In their minds, it's not really their fault that they are failures and they go to great lengths to convince other people of these lies."

sometimes it is really not their fault, but one day their parents will not be able to provide for them, and that's when the real tragedy will begin.

Go to a place like Italy or India or Pakistan and you'll find 30+ year olds living with their parents and it's no big deal at all.

This is not narcissism. This is sloth.

Narcissim is a active behavior/disorder that seeks out positive and negative attention through manipulation.

Also, a lot of jobs that would employee these men are disappearing. Retail in particular is the employer of last resort, but physical shops are slowly dwindling in numbers. People are a lot more aware of how bad the military is to be in, too; there is much less glamour around it culturally.

Sounds like, in lieu of anything else, you should try and buy a rental property or two. Start slow, eventually FIRE, that whole thing.

That said, yeah, the same sentence could then be applied but with time: "why retire when I have nothing to do with my time?"

I'm 30 and still don't have a great answer for either, whether it be time or money.

>Who knows, maybe I'll end up retiring before my 40th birthday.

Does not compute

Also do you realize that billions of people on this planet have a far worse life than you? You have the luxury of having problems like these. However purpose and meaning don't just appear out of nowhere, you have to actively go find them.

As for what to do with the money. Invest it, retire early if you want and if nothing else give yourself the freedom to make work whatever you want it to be.

That being said you can buy a house right more at negative real interest rates. If your salary keeps up with inflation you will be making money on it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.#Powell_Mem...

The timing also coincides with the idea of neoliberal economics starting to take hold. Most famously in NYC when the city almost went bankrupt.

I've spoken about what REITs do for years on HN. I've worked for them a couple of times as well, so I've seen what goes on first hand.

Yeah, someone could do that for any system. "A horrible thing happened somewhere" or even "this part of the market is totally screwed up" are facts about every plausible alternative. So though they may be facts about the current system, they don't tell us how to improve the situation.

You can make an argument that the problem is systemic, but having one example of a problem doesn't do anything except score rhetorical points in a game where evidence and argument don't really matter.

The culture has changed dramatically since the 50s when these trends started. For the men, their role has gone from default “protector, provider, head of the home, in charge, theist, conservative, married young” to “equal bread winner, often oppressive, too often toxic, without innate greater purpose or role, etc”.

Obviously these are broad generalizations, but we would probably agree that men get a worse wrap now than then (even if that came at the expense of others). Does that large cultural shift have a large effect? Are men lacking purpose now and how much of the current problem men face is because of that cultural shift? The economic is important, but the cultural factors are huge too

This line of thinking in my opinion is the problem. Before I start, I will admit I have survivorship bias.

The points you mentioned are problems, but in my opinion that's not an excuse. One of your points you mentioned that it's now harder than ever to buy a home because Blackrock is scooping all of them up. While I agree that it certainly makes getting a home harder. I think if anyone truly wants a home and is willing to do whatever they need to in order to get it, they can get it. Same goes for just about everything else, if you want something, and you're willing to do whatever it takes to get it, you can do it.

All the problems you mentioned are roadblocks, not showstoppers. I think these days it's easier to just make the excuse that there are all these things standing in our way thus making it impossible for us to do the things our parents did.

The emotion of dependency seems less likely to be developed by an economic system than of culture. One might claim that it is difficult to separate one from the other. Taking a cultural or an economic point of view I can see how a hierarchical culture would see participation as zero-sum but not an economic system. An economic system by itself, capitalist pig, pinko commie, feudal manorialism, whatever, is enhanced by participation and a sense of interdependency.

The people being discussed here are people without jobs who have a place to live rent free. There is not an economic system holding them back from being able to find a way to contribute because their expenses are very close to $0. For all practical purposes, they have the equivalent of universal basic income. If they would like to write poetry instead of playing video games they could. If they would prefer to paint or write code, they could.

It was my experience that young women in general were asking for too much when I was in my early 20s. They wanted someone who had it "all together," and that's just not where most people are in their early 20s. There doesn't seem to be any appreciation anymore for the fact that young couples grow up together. Instead, people seem to think that you grow up first and establish who you are independently, then find someone else to bring into your life. But realistically, you don't finish growing before dating, and in life who you become is based on the interactions not just with your significant other, but your friends and family, too.

Lastly, all of my dating experiences online lead me to women who wanted to be "entertained." And not in the sort of "wined and dined" sense which seems obvious to me, but rather most women I came across didn't want to get to know men, they just wanted entertainment value out of the experience of dating. This was a sharp contrast from interactions with young women in real life. The dating world for both young men and women online seems to create some strange scenarios that don't play out well for anyone involved. I see this manifest the most in online dating where most men are naturally led to play pickup artist lines. I personally find it extremely off-putting. I'm not a jester.

So my idea is to put all the incentives the other way. The tool is designed to operate on a budget of ~$0. I would accept donations, but otherwise have no monetization and therefore no desire to increase "engagement" of any kind. My incentive is such that I actually don't want you to interact with the tool, because that will cost me bandwidth and processing time. I will allow you to have a profile of text and one single image of restricted size, because I don't want to have to host anything else. You will fill out a multiple choice questionnaire with as few questions as I feel I can get away with to ensure at least some level of basic compatibility, and then you do nothing.

Periodically, a cron job will run and see if anyone matches, then it will send you both each others profiles (through good old-fashion email) and ask if you'd like to go on a date. If you've both agreed, there will be a sequence of messages from the system proposing date ideas, locations, and times until consensus is reached. Then it's all up to you. This is designed to ensure that you make a real human connection to the person in a real life interaction before any contact information is ever exchanged.

It probably sounds as though this sort of thing would have a hard time attracting users. I consider that a feature, because it means it'll cost less to run and it will avoid attracting ego-inflation seekers, low effort numbers gamers, and other ungenuine people.

As envisioned, I would expect this sort of thing could cover a moderately sized state on a raspberry pi.

I don't think dating apps/sites favor either sex more so than dating in general does. Women, in general, don't really have to try to get solicitations. Their issue is in trying to weed through all of the solicitations to find those worth responding to. It's basically the hiring problem. But there's no Hackerrank for compatibility.

And then there's the issue that even those that feel the system is tilted against them in general don't understand that it's just them. They're not successful because they aren't as kind, nice, or desirable as they think they are. Or they keep making the same bad choices in romantic pursuits and wonder why they keep getting the same outcome.

The problem with all of these apps and gimmicks and what not and certain segments of tech in general is that it assumes that deep down, people are making rational choices. We aren't.

Men spray low-effort messages at lots of women hoping for a bite. Women don't message because they have options.

Quality men trying to find any sort of extra have to work extra hard on selling themselves. Women looking for quality men have to work extra hard on creating a profile that deters the poor options they get (hard) _and_ deal with more subpar dates.

So as a computer programmer with a LinkedIn profile, I can at least empathize a bit: I get an average of 3 job offers a week, even though I haven't really expressed any interest in changing jobs. A lot of these offers would be a major step down for me, and that's pretty clear from my profile. I still feel obligated to take the time to politely decline because I do have some sympathy for the recruiters who are just doing their best, but it's also clear they're just blasting out offers to anybody who meets a basic set of requirements.

That said - I'm much happier being in the position I'm in of too much interest than at the other end of the spectrum.

Every woman can put herself in a man's position of no matches - just delete Tinder. Every rich person can become poor - just give away all their money.

Yet they don't. It's called revealed preferences. Because having options, no matter how bad, is better than not having options.

Under that model.. it's common for the first message to be "hi" or ".". Not much has changed.

Now that Vegas is more young-focused, it's all age groups on the slots. Then I think, multiply those giant floors by 1000X and that's the gaming population.

I enjoy reading and occasionally posting comments on Hacker News. u up?

No, you probably won’t get an office job in the next 5 years. Maybe in the next 10. No, you won’t have enough money to move out the next 5 years, but maybe in 10. Nope, you aren’t get laid anytime soon. Few people can accept the timeline and the sheer effort it will take, and the sheer time. That’s the crux of the problem, that they are truly behind and cannot deal with the time investment required.

Enough with the lies, and start from zero. The effort it takes to be just mediocre in this world is understated.

Talking to various people this seems to be very common. I know it was the case for me.

It is the exact opposite of what you are claiming. Affordability of essentials has become so much worse that many people can't afford to live a decent life with their own home even if they are working the jobs that they can actually acquire.

These people aren't privileged because they "choose not to work and have everything paid for them by people who work like me", it is generally emotionally devastating to be stuck living with your family while your youth evaporates. Further, the money to do this is coming from the family (for those lucky enough to have a family wealthy enough). You're not paying for it with your taxes.

Wouldn't someone that is able to spend most of their time playing video games (instead of e.g. farming) want society to continue as it exists today? Without that society, wouldn't they be forced to fight/work for sustenance?

Augustine, Civitate Dei

But, thinking of dating like a resume, as well as making dates feel like interviews has made relationships nothing but a chore nowadays. It feels wholly like a business relationship without any contractual guarantees between the parties.

Nothing exposes that more than writing video games yourself, as well as having a job testing them.

    10 print "Walter is Great!"
    20 goto 10

The fake courtesy of software irks me, too.

Some video games are essentially the same as that. For instance, creative-mode minecraft seems to be arts and crafts as much as it is a game.

7 years working in startups -> long dry spells between a few one night stands. Eventually I gave up trying to form a connection with anyone. I had plenty of cash but life just felt empty and lonely.

One day I had enough and picked up a remote job and started traveling. The dating pool gets a lot better when you leave the united states. I had met a great girlfriend within a month of staying in Colombia.

Bay area -> make your money and get out as soon as you have the connections. its not worth staying.

But I also can't help but feel commenters are conflating 'attack on masculinity' !== 'attack on toxic masculinity.'

There is not some organized movement trying to make young boys 'less of a man.'

I'm guessing a very large % of HN is male so would be nice to amplify any female voices who want to chime in.

I think you're right that the real issues are economic. In fact I'd say that this is part of a larger, more general tendency to use cultural conflict to distract from class conflict.

For whatever reason, women will go into debt or be allowed to go into debt to get useless degrees and there is no countervailing force to say: “uh marine biology is cool but…$500,000?”

This has lead to a situation where women have gotten 13 million more colleges degrees than men over the last few decades.

Meanwhile I think a lot of men go: “eh; yeah no.”

In all seriousness, if we are to succeed as a society, then ignorantly maintaining what are mostly over generalizations and stereotypes related to gender is a failing proposition. And that involves anything that existed pre-the-whole-world-is-now-connected.

That means

> It's not a binary decision, people. We don't need to decide which gender/sex is "better" or "more right".

But, for most of our parents it was binary and decision was obvious.

People fantasize about going back to that. Even the young kids, Gen Z, which is most concerning. Something alarming is that this comes from a feeling of helplessness. That and similar feelings explains the increase in massacres, hatred, and even why terrorists traditionally came from countries in turmoil. The kids need to be feeling hopeful not helpless.

“Hey, society and the media and politicians, institutions have all decided your nature is a problem and that you are assumed guilty, to be viewed with suspicion at all times. Oh and for some reason, you should still want to support this structure with your hard work and taxes, and shut up and never mention it.”

Honestly - I don’t know why I would tell him he should accept this society, why he shouldn’t move to another country and why he should stick around. It isn’t showing any signs of changing.

It sickens me, I don’t believe in my own country anymore.

In commercial and entertainment media, it’s the woman in the kitchen, buying the groceries, raising the children, and holding down a 80 hour week job at her law firm. The man is playing ball in the yard, or is doing business in a suit. He definitely expects dinner to be on the table when he gets home from his 1950’s day job.

Then there’s other people. Women get asked “when are you having a baby” and “why is your husband so thin don’t you feed him”, and men get “so what do you do?”.

Women are now in the position where they are expected to do all of the things a woman would traditionally do, and hold down a career. The expectation of men has barely shifted - I know precious few guys who do all the cooking and cleaning and child rearing.

It's fair I guess so I apologize for what I represent to all these people who had oppressed ancestors, but I'm not sure they're actually resolving much of what people who looked like me did to them: poverty, lack of empowerement, inability to operate in a modern world etc, they can spend their time making me acknowledge my associated responsibility but I wish they'd just let me help instead :D

I remember telling a "philipino" (culturally/parents born there) born in the country that I was an immigrant here, he could not even compute it. He felt HE was, while obviously he was born here and a full right citizen, while my associated identity made him believe I was a sort of powerful lord instead of the scraping by immigrant I am, who has mostly the right to shut up and be useful... in HIS country. It's just weird.

Equality of outcome is not possible or even desirable. That is the problem. The more people try to force some completely unnatural result, the more terrible things they'll have to do (e.g., discrimination on the basis of body attributes, as if there is some good way to do it) and the worse things will get.

I know that whenever I've seen women only projects I did feel a sting in my heart, because what if I wanted to participate?

The only way to be able to participate would be to abandon manhood and transition into womanhood...

Where as there are no 'men-only' projects and things. Not that there should be. We all should have the freedom to whatever we desire (as long as it's not hurting others of course).

Having doors closed to me just because of the factors over which I have no control is very painful and maybe I've been exposed to that more due to having stunted growth and being born with cleft lip. Luckily I can speak without any troubles which is quite uncommon. But because my mustache does grow around where the stitching is, it's still somewhat noticeable and due to the nose also being affected I've also received my share of beating and being called a goblin in schools.

I've been without a goal for most of my life, and have thus tried to take my life multiple times, but after reading about finance I've decided to work and invest as much as I can, so that I can reach a point where I can live from the passive income so that I'll finally have peace (and in a way be able to reduce my interactions with the society to the bare minimum).

((Please don't tell me that my goal isn't achievable because I already get enough of that from my father and pretty much anyone I talk to about finances, and it's really disheartening...))

Interestingly enough, elder people were always the most kind to me, maybe because they judge less by the looks or because many mistook me for a woman. (Or maybe they just don't see as well and thought that I was a kid)

1. What would be the ratio of male vs. female degrees if everyone had the access to higher education? Maybe by their own volition men would choose to get a higher education less often than woman? The writer seems to think 50/50 is "fair" but I don't think he would agree that equality of outcome is a metric we should strive for.

2. How much of the shift in the ratio has been due to Woman's Centers? There are a huge number of relevant societal/economic/logistical factors that have changed in the last 40 years that would have an impact on woman having the means/desire/permission to attend college.

3. How many woman are there that previously did not go to college (for the reasons above) that are now making that choice? Could these woman's centers still be relevant for assisting woman in "making up for lost time"?

I don't claim to have the answers to these questions but I think anyone who isn't considering them is probably missing something from the larger picture - this is a complex issue after all.

It changes the narrative around financial aid when you view it as communities putting in the work to ease the burdens of folks who are like them. Maybe it says something about how difficult it is to "make it" for them that they're disproportionately more willing to donate back to their community.

Everything you listed is correct, but I think both of your statements can be true. Men aren't in need of societal advantages, but they are in need of some societal support. And that doesn't have to compete with very real things women require either.

I'd be weirdly worried about a boy feeling like crap without a big career or needing our help. I know a daughter would be much less humiliated at the prospect.

What do you mean? Of course those are optional. If you don't want a career, you're not going to have one. If you don't want to get married and support a family, then you don't have to.

I mean, "saddle up to a breadwinner" is an extremely demeaning thing to say about a whole class of people. The reality is that men dominate all desirable, successful professions, so the probability of a man "saddling up" to a woman that makes significantly more than him is very small.

If you are going to let yourself be hammed in by such a traditionalist view of family and your inability (or maybe: lack of initiative) to get a footing in life, sounds like your setting yourself up as a victim.

I live and work across Europe, and I have never encountered men or women being held back like that. Couples I know stick together because they want to, not because of economic reasons or outdated economic views on family. Hell I've been holding down the fort while my wife was working. And vice versa. I mean, its 2021, our parents were hippies! My dad was out of work for half of his life but my mom not a single day.

My real world seems utterly unrelated to what these men seem to think. Perhaps they just need to get out there a bit more?

We have never had symmetry as humans in this area. Low status males don't get to fuck as much. That has always been the case for all human history. This is nothing new.

And she's paid more than me, and has a PhD. She still consider me a breadwinner who must win and herself a disempowered victim who need support :D

Only half? My exp is more like 80% shack up with a breadwinner. Even with half of women that means max 25% of men get this option.

It looks like schools are performing better for men than women.