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Comment by seandoe | Hacker News Reader

I don't think parent's comment was combative at all. Simply, their opinion and/or observation. If you don't think we live in a time when men's (white especially) interests are being attacked you're delusional. They are at the bottom of the identity politics war. Ideas of toxic masculinity, undeserved privilege, power, etc. are being touted as gospel by the educated, political class.

Maybe it's all deserved. Paying for generations of misbehavior or something. It doesn't really matter. The reality is that political popularity and public "good graces" _are_ a zero sum game. Politics are currently very much us vs them. And men are very much them right now.

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> If you don't think we live in a time when men's (white especially) interests are being attacked you're delusional.

Nonsense. This is just a rhetorical technique to try to dismiss people who hold opinions that differ from yours without having to actually engage them.

It's interesting that you claim my statement is nonsense. That seems hypocritically dismissive. Ask for evidence or simply disagree. By saying nonsense are you implying that it's not possible that men's interests could be discounted by the popular opinion of today? How about the amount of funding and attention that breast cancer gets vs prostate cancer? Once again I'm not interested in why, just the current state.

I think you misunderstood the part that I was calling "nonsense". It was the part where anyone who disagrees with you must be delusional.

I wasn't commenting on your opinion about men one way or the other.

ah ok, that's fair.

I'll cover up their rhetorical technique with statistics:

Women have outpaced men in Bachelor's degree completions since 1981, and Master's degrees since 1986. At present they are 57.7% of Bachelor's degree recipients and 60.7% of Master's degrees [0]. You might argue that most of the advance women made was prior to the year 2000, so it isn't reflective of trends today.

Women have a "struggle for reproductive rights". Abortion and contraceptives are "critical reproductive healthcare services", according to the White House [1]. Men cannot have abortions, cannot take birth control pills, cannot receive birth control shots or implants, cannot obtain IUDs, and (mostly) cannot choose to have a child without the support of their partner. I suppose, then, men do not even have a chance at having what is a "critical reproductive healthcare service" and are thus inherently deprived.

Women are the heads of four out of five single parent households [2]. Put differently, four out of five men do not obtain custody of their children in situations where the parents do not live together.

Male life expectancy is more than five years less than female life expectancy in the US [3].

The bigger issue than all of this, to me, is the psychological aspect of this discussion that I cannot quantify with large-scale statistics. When men's disadvantages are brought up, society generally shouts "shut up". Since I left my original comment, I have been told that my post was a "hollow unsubstantiated rant", an "incredibly sexist framing", "disingenuous" and "not constructive", "combative" and "alienating". Can you imagine similar attacks being levied against a woman arguing in support of abortion? I sure cannot. Again, I do not know how to quantify this, but the experience of never mentioning an issue which impacts men for fear of being similarly shot down is in the back of my mind every day, and I'd imagine many men face similar thoughts. The thought police hold far more sway over my discourse than I'd like.

[0]: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_318.10.a...

[1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-action...

[2]: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

[3]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr71/nvsr71-01.pdf

How long does it take to filter up? White men remain over-represented amongst the rich and powerful, and in senior positions. Is there some level in society where this flips around and suddenly white men are at the top, or is this some kind of time delay effect and in a century or so, we'll see white men at the bottom at all levels?

>White men remain over-represented amongst the rich and powerful, and in senior positions.

If you live in a majority white country, why is this a problem? Statistically it's inevitable you'll get mostly white people at the top if those are your demographics.

Also in my country women are often in top leadership positions, and out of merit, not out of some pro-feminist corporate PR agenda.

“Over-represented” means (obviously) out of proportion to their prevalence in the population.

Meanwhile the majority of white men who are neither rich nor powerful find themselves at the bottom of the politically correct social order. Not that anyone cares anymore. /s

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