Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks | Hacker News Reader

Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

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663 pointslucasv071,229 comments

All: obviously this topic brings up strong feelings (it does for me too), but if you're posting under the influence of someone's comment provoking you, please wait until that activation subsides before posting. We want curious conversation here, and this thread is veering too much into flamewar.

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Here's a thought and I am writing this as I don my kevlar flame retardant jacket.

For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity.

However with parenting we have nothing and the result it seems is we pay with a ton more resources downstream in the way of therapy, detention centers, jails etc.

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. Potentially break the cycles of bad parenting that have been running in families for a long time (I write this as one such person).

I expect it will be hard (nay impossible) to institute a parenting license (like a driving license) in a democratic society. So instead have a strong incentive in the way of a financial grant for every parent who clears a parenting curriculum sometime before their child turns 1 (or some appropriate marker). Keep the freebees /incentives piling on during the kids childhood so parents are motivated to undertake "continuing education"

Parenting is truly important stuff - for many parents it is the most important responsibility we'll ever have in our lives- but we seem to leave it to chance to get the right outcomes.

The daylight between instituting a parenting license and eugenics is not very much.

that's a hell of a leap - saying take some basic classes (likely not that much unlike how catholic churches require couples classes prior to marrying folks) to understand how to properly care for a child is nothing like eugenics and gene manipulation.

All eugenics requires is reducing to fertility of a target undesired population to below sustenance. It's actually extremely easy to do because of how 'invisible' it is. Imagine there was a society where literally every single woman had an average of 1 child. It'd be quite weird to claim they were being driven extinct as everybody loads up on diapers, yet that society's population would indeed be trending towards 0 at an exponential rate, but with an 80 year 'lag' in the first wave of deaths that would mask the impact.

And country after country has demonstrated how relatively easy it seems to be to reduce fertility. Iran is a not so well known example. Back in the 80s Iran started to feel that their fertility was a problem. Their population was growing far faster than they had the resources to sustain, so they instituted birth control availability and mandated 'marriage classes' [1], not entirely unlike what's being suggested here. And in these classes they worked to try to reduce overall fertility.

It succeeded far beyond any expectation. Their fertility went from 6+ to 2 in less than a decade. And then it just kept dropping. Today it's down to below 1.7 and it keeps falling. They've long since tried to reverse this trend and started an equal but opposite pro fertility program, but like China also showed - it's far easier to reduce a population's fertility, than it is to bring it back up. These sort of programs work as a perfectly viable proof of concept of a practically invisible eugenics program, and that's quite dangerous.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran

> Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population.

What you described is not eugenics though.

Eugenics is generally carried out not through selective breeding, but by removing the populations you do not want to breed. Same thing in 20th century America where the main effort was simply on removing elements from society that "we" didn't want breeding - which has the same effect while reducing the constraints on liberty, which would not be well received otherwise.

See, for instance, the famous quote from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Interestingly enough, the ruling from that court case (Buck v Bell) was never formally overturned. It's simply that eugenics fell out of fashion, following it being taken to extremes by a certain vegetarian artist in Germany with a knack for rhetoric.

People have this weird thing where, if something comes about as an emergent property of a market system, then it’s fine, but otherwise a much more carefully organized result is not fine. Like if corporations raced towards an AI apocalypse then there’s no one to blame but if a central planner did it, then that would be an evil plan that should be stopped. Same with non biodegradeable plastic, destruction of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity, and so on. (By contrast to all these, fossil fuels are a slowpoke.)

For example — we don’t particularly need to do anything to reduce birth rates of technologically advanced societies societies with human rights. That’s because women choose to study and work on their career in their 20s, while men try hard to save up to afford the sky-high real estate prices. The market does the eugenics for everyone.

If anything, the fear that uneducated populations or those in low-cost-of-living countries are going to “replace us” is a result of that simple fact. Comparing continents, Africa is expected to continue to have a ton of kids per woman compared to, say, Europe or USA.

Religion, of course plays a role. When the condoms are off, the religion doesn’t matter — you’re going to have a lot of babies. The only difference is, how early do you get married? Religions tend to frown on premarital sex.

> Comparing continents, Africa is expected to continue to have a ton of kids per woman compared to, say, Europe or USA.

Fertility is most strongly correlated with child mortality IIRC. The more likely your kid is to die young, the more likely you are to have lots of kids. Very low child mortality in developed nations, so very low fertility.

Correlation doesn't imply causation. Child mortality in Africa has now approached the same as in other countries. Women going to school is a big one.

You're assuming an immediate effect. We didn't see such an immediate effect in the developed world either. I suppose we'll see in time.

> we don’t particularly need to do anything to reduce birth rates of technologically advanced societies societies with human rights.

Other than the hard work put in to scaring would-be parents. Indeed, the birth control pill put people in control, but it it is only since the "16 and Pregnant" movement, which campaigned on demonizing having children and stressed the importance of not being saddled by a child, that we've seen below replacement levels.

As a result, the youth of today in their prime rearing years look negatively upon having children, and by the time they "snap out of it" they are into their geriatric child birthing years and biologically don't have much time left, putting tight constraint on how many children can be birthed.

> That’s because women choose to study and work on their career in their 20s

Trouble is that, thanks to the same campaigning, those who choose to have children in their 20s (or earlier) have to face the scorn of society. Unless you are strong-willed, you have little choice but to study and work on your career, even if children is what you truly want, because everyone else is going to try and make your life miserable if you don't.

Isn't there a MASSIVE difference between "you are not allowed to breed because we don't want you and think you're inferior" vs "you did a course and have worked hard and have clearly demonstrated your commitment to rearing a child carefully and thoughtfully, here is some state-sponsored fund to help you "

Drawing an equivalence between these two is like saying a school system that punishes mistakes with physical abuse as a matter of policy to make a smarter population is identical, morally speaking to society at large, as a school system that just rewards good and hard work as a matter of policy to make a smarter population.

It makes no sense. I can't believe anyone could actually believe rewarding parents who have demonstrated a commitment to rearing a child well is identical to enforcing undesirables not have children.

... and if you fail the class?

Well there already is eugenic like behavior going on. Partners select for money, tall and handsome. It's just not framed that way. End result is the same.

The media perpetuates certain ideals deemed desirable, the masses follow. You don't need a vegetarian artist somewhere in Europe spewing nonsense. You can still achieve the same thing. I would even go as far to say that modern day advertising and public relations borrowed a lot from Goebbels.

As much as I loathe advertising, I think this assessment is provably wrong. We're genetically driven to pick out mates most likely to produce fertile, healthy, and effective offspring. Even in relatively isolated tribes with 0 access to advertising of any sort, preferences like low waist-to-hip ratios are ubiquitous [1] (random study that also references a bunch of others - this is not a controversial statement). The reason is that low waist-to-hip ratios correlates with all sorts of health, fertility, and genetic strengths. So we are genetically attracted to such.

I think you could also make an argument in reverse here as well. An increasingly large chunk of Western advertising is actively seeking to push values like contravening said genetic proclivities, yet it seems to have had little to no impact on what people find attractive. That's even more telling as obesity is rapidly becoming the norm rather than the exception.

[1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01916-9

"Preventing births within a group" is one of the definitions of a genocide.

Along this same thought - if you know anyone who has ever adopted the process and review procedures of the adoptive parents can be intense... and this is for people who desperately WANT to be parents, meanwhile at least in the USA you have a ton of people not being able to terminate a pregnancy that they are not prepared for and this leads to children raising children, hurting both.

High School class?

This already exists if you wish to adopt in the US - just doesn't apply to the other method

interesting - one way to test the efficacy of something like this might be to compare median outcomes of adopted kids (whose parents went through some parenting education) with that of the non adopted general population (after controlling for other factors).

Now which PhD candidate will bite :)

Hard to imagine how to design such study: (close to) 100% of people that adopt kid WANTED to have kid, and planned for them. Some XX% number of people having kid via pregnancy wasn't planning for them, and some even smaller YY% number doesn't want the kid at all.

Not to mention that unless the adoption of kids are done blind by parents, there has to be some biases there. As an example out of my ass, kids with behavioral problems might have way less adoption rate, and potentially those are the one with below median outcome in any case.

Compare adoptions of infants (handles the behavior issue) with parents who took blatant processes to improve pregnancy odds (IVF, etc).

That gets you two categories of people do definitely want kids, and only one is subject to the classes, interviews, and checkups.

There's certain to be natal/genetic/etc differences in the kids, though. (Are infants put up for adoption more likely to have been born to mothers who are in poverty? Who smoke, drink or use drugs? Who are younger or older? Does IVF itself have positive or negative effects? Etc)

Really the ideal test would be, in order of preference:

1. randomization (some parents get the classes, some do not, chosen randomly)

2. geographic (parents in state/area A get classes, rest do not)

3. temporal (parents after year X get classes)

4. twins (parents of twin A get classes, twin B do not)

Obvious way to remove that bias would be to start by recruiting couples who are not parents but want to become parents and then follow them through their lives and their childrens lives. Within that cohort you would have a large number who would conceive naturally, some would go for IVF etc, some would adopt and some would not end up having children.

Would you be surprised to learn that there is something similar in Japan? Though not necessarily required, there are "mama papa" classes done by the government with the basics covered. And there are checkups (1 month, 3 months, 6, 1 year, 2, 3) which have some involvement in checking the child's health, wellbeing, development, as well as that of the parent(s).

Plenty of parents in America have taken classes like that at local hospitals or through their school, but the reality is that a lot of people don't have the means and the desire to take some.

If we wanted to incentivize attendance, pay parents to attend the classes, with a bonus at the end for doing well on the test.

That we wouldn't actually do that speaks spades about our priorities.

And usually those that take the classes would have done fine anyway since they are engaged in parenting. I am critical of a governmental breeding licence, even if it is just for additional monetary support. Difficult to quantify anything that reflects successful parenting and the bureaucracy would probably be counter productive. Stressed parents are often bad parents, you don't want to make it worse with audits.

Also, as someone not from the US who heard unsubstantiated rumors about parents getting in trouble with law enforcement for leaving their kids alone for 5 minutes, I doubt this could in any way be sensibly handled. Similar problem exist in other countries too of course.

Best make room in school for some basic education, as there isn't any in most countries.

They shouldn't need means, it should be free and at convenient times.

It could be that parenting isn’t as much of a factor as growing up poor.

Oh, parenting is absolutely a factor and this can be observed in underdeveloped or developing countries.

Kids in families with good parenting, a focus on education, etc are the ones that make it out.

It seems that poverty is much more of a factor than good parenting.

In rich countries, most of the kids "make it out", not just the ones with good parenting.

Poverty is certainly a factor but its another factor. There are kids who have the basics covered and then some but don't get the emotional support they need and that impacts them over their adult life.

every factor we mitigate helps

People aren't having enough children. Every extra hurdle is going to reduce the number of people who end up parents.

> Potentially break the cycles of bad parenting

You can't break cycles of bad parenting, because they are 2nd order effects of cycles of trauma. And cycles of trauma have been a fundamental part of human civilization since we've existed. We absolutely should teach compassion, good parenting 101s and basic logistical upskilling as a part of high school for both men and women.

But, expecting humans as a whole to suddenly start acting with decency is not going to happen.

> People aren't having enough children. Every extra hurdle is going to reduce the number of people who end up parents.

There's 8 billion of us.

Reducing the number of (unfit, unwilling, unplanned) parents is a net positive.

Birth rates are plummeting everywhere.

I'm with you. We can have fewer people on earth. But, that means 2-ish generations will have to do 2x-the-work per capita while receiving 0.5x the care when they retire. Our social welfare and economic systems are not built to deal with decreasing populations, let alone halving of population every 2 generations.

I am approaching 30. I very much feel like the generation that is going to pay for a comfortable retirement for boomers, never be able to afford real estate, pay huge amounts to raise kids and get nothing in return. Because, by the time I retire, the work-force will have halved. If even fewer people have kids, society will find itself staring at collapse.

The definition of 'good parenting' has changed rapidly over the last few decades and it is going to keep changing. As of now, it seems like an impossible bar to reach. It's better to expect just 'slightly less worse' from each generation, and let the momentum carry it forward.

Look at it from the bright side: you are likely born towards a local maximum in terms of human development. Too late not to notice the decline, but early enough that you aren't likely to suffer too much from it for the best part of your life.

Current forecasts put generalized famines, all around the globe, at somewhere between +2.5ºC and +3.0ºC of global warming. We are on track to cross +2.0ºC around 2050, at best 2055 [1]. So really, it's just around the corner.

At current trend, it's not lack of birth, but lack of food that is going to drive population decline...

[1] https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/world-lik...

Not to whom you're replying, but as a parent this concerns me for their futures.

It mightn't be my problem, but fuck I'm a bad person if I just drop it on the floor for my kids to pick up - or slip over and die on.

That doesn't seem to be humanity's prevailing trait though...

The earth is getting greener. There are a ton of untapped opportunities in farming but it's mostly unprofitable and mismanaged. People don't care and will blame the government for rising food prices.

> Current forecasts put generalized famines, all around the globe

I am not aware of any such forecasts and call BS on that. If we are having a famine, it's because of a war or a conflict that disrupted our supply lines. Climate change effects are really minor (beyond having a bit of a hotter summer).

> Climate change effects are really minor (beyond having a bit of a hotter summer).

That's patently false. It goes way beyond hotter summers. We're already observing today the increased frequency of extreme weather events (droughs, floodings, hurricanes). Even not taking into account the other changes, just the extreme weather events will massively impact the US.

While I agree that the US will not suffer a famine (though a massive movement of farming activities), there will be global famine events that the richer countries will compensate by buying up all the market and letting poorer countries to suffer.

Interesting that we may get to be test subjects for:

What will be prioritised when there aren't enough workers for all the current positions? - necessities for everyone - luxuries for those who can afford exorbitant prices

It can be both, to some extent, but with any luxuries will come a sacrifice of necessities, and a sacrifice of necessities will increase the prices. The best of people will tend towards being paid more, which shallows the pool of talent for necessities, which reduces quality at the same time as increasing price.

> What will be prioritized when there aren't enough workers for all the current positions?

I'll give you the politically incorrect answer.

Until recently, a large population of old people oppressing a slighter smaller population of young people (by majoritarian voting patterns) meant violence.

Humans have eliminated the 3 main uncertainties that ensured some level of demand-supply elasticity : unprotected sex, starvation and violence.

So now, instead of society promptly reacting to a disgruntled workforce, we instead get slow but perpetual decline because the workforce cannot retaliate in any real manner. They can't vote out old people. They can't enforce violence. In any other world, bored-young-people would be having tons of unprotected sex and brute force replacing the old population. But, contraception allows people to engage in their most primal instinct (sex) without the resulting rise in work force.

Now, I am a 100% not suggesting that we need a return to older times. But, we need an awareness that the removal of these avenues means that history might not repeat itself and nature might not heal on its own.... because we have conquered nature.

If there are fewer people, won't there be less competition for housing and thus affordability would improve somewhat? If you need to spend less on a mortgage or rent, you may not need to work as much, or a single income couple might be viable once more, etc. (Or perhaps this just means cheaper property can continue to accumulate in the hands of wealthier people.)

No. Japan is a good example of that. It'll just centralize the area more, draining the periphery and raising the prices in the center.

> Our social welfare and economic systems are not built to deal with decreasing populations, let alone halving of population every 2 generations.

They better make it work then

Most work is unnecessary, bureaucratic and consumerist bs. Still many people are unemployed. Automation is held back by unions who fight for their right to do even the crappiest work, like mining. Inhabitable land is overcrowded. Less people is definitely net positive. Surely the economy might take a hit, cause it requires steady growth, but while that is bullshit in its own, we can still have growing economy with declining workforce, everyone would have to get very wealthy then.

> Birth rates are plummeting everywhere.

Birth rates are plummeting in many first-world countries but it's skyrocketing in most places.

Nope. Sky rocketing would mean that the numbers were low previously and are increasing now. Birth rates are still high in a small number of countries but even there they're lower than they were in the 60s.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Total_Fe...

If no one will have kids these 8 billion will go to zero in about 100 years.

That assumes there are no fit and willing parents.

Yes, sure. My point is that absolute numbers don't matter and the population can plummet faster than people usually imagine.

You know it won't happen.

> People aren't having enough children.

By what metric? Economics?

Economics, ironically, is the reason I don't have more kids. My family is doing, what I would consider, "quite well", but we'd still be pretty fucked with one more mouth to feed, the need for a larger car and possibly larger house.

I truly don't know how people that aren't that far below us on the resources / income scale have any hope of comfortable retirement prior to actual death.

By failing to maintain the population. The richer people get, the fewer children they have. This is the same in countries all over the world. Your intuition is wrong on this one.

And why should we maintain the population ? Have we reached the perfect amount of people on earth ?

We could be a lot less humans on earth, it would be amazing for the environment, and I think we'd be as happy.

The only downside I see is economic (in the sense that everything is built with the expectation of growth). But it is to me an economic problem, and not a reproduction problem.

> > And why should we maintain the population ? Have we reached the perfect amount of people on earth ?

Because when people are happy they fuck on impetuous and fucking on impetuous generates children (modulo vasectomy and morning after pill)

It’s not about the outcome , it’s about the happiness on the way there, whatever outcome it might be.

Also when people are happy they wind up perishing by fucking around in the real world due to excessive confidence doing dangerous activities such as drinking and driving, jetski accidents, drug overdoses etc

You have to substitute these people somehow and not only that, Nature installed a mechanism inside their brain so that the more they engage in dangerous activities the more they tend to have unprotected sex.

So to summarize we want to have a world above replacement rate because having a world above replacement rate is correlated with having a good time, wheras realities such as Japan represent a dystopian world where everybody live to 100 but they are miserable throughout their lives

> I truly don't know how people that aren't that far below us on the resources / income scale have any hope of comfortable retirement prior to actual death.

"Comfortable retirement" is a luxury of the recent past. It wasn't a concept for most of human history and will stop being one for most people fairly soon.

If anything, for most of human history, having someone to take care of you when you're old has been a primary incentive to have kids.

A formalized retirement age is a recent invention but human biology alone has always required people to transition through various stages in life. I think the idea of retirement = doing nothing is quite new when applied to broad sections of society. But going back millennia, older people would transition from often hard physical/dangerous occupations to tasks focused more on maintaining social networks, helping to raise kids, supervising, etc.

I think that societies should return to supporting this approach to life (but through valuing an individual's contribution, not sanctions). Growing older will always come with changes in one's abilities (not always to the worse) and personal priorities. This should be embraced and encouraged basically up to the point of death. I.e. my village has an organization called "Rentnerbande" (="gang of pensioners") where older guys help local schools, kindergartens and people with beautification and handicraft stuff for free.

Retirement isn't supposed to be about "doing nothing". It's about not having to work a job to be able to afford the lifestyle you have, as you reach elderly life. There are huge swaths of retirees who still "do things", and some of those things even bring money in! But the difference is, if one was able to prepare for their retirement, that money isn't needed to put food on the table and keep the lights on.

I know and agree, but in modern western societies there is no real expectation of or preparation for doing anything in retirement, least of all something that benefits society at large. Yes, some people transition and find fulfillment in something there do after retirement, but some also are scared and frustrated because they have tied their identity to their job. In my view, it should be the norm (which comes with corresponding support and encouragement) that people comprehend the last couple of decades of their life as simply an opportunity to follow their passions and support others follow theirs with less economic pressures.

It's interesting that when people talk about having another child there is almost always the implicit assumption of maintaining at least the same lifestyle.

I was quite amused that in your comment you explicitly talk about expanding your lifestyle to have another child: "the need for a larger car and possibly larger house".

Poor people have more children than well off people until you hit top >1% incomes. Economics is not the thing stopping people from having kids, reduction in lifestyle is.

> Economics is not the thing stopping people from having kids, reduction in lifestyle is.

Technically you're somewhat correct, because it sucks to have kids when you know they'll be raised by an economically poorer you.

And as most of the people don't see themselves as economically stable given the socio-economic conditions that have been in place for the last 15-20 years, that means that many people give up having kids because of said economic reasons (so, you're also incorrect, because economics is indeed stopping people from having kids), saying something like this: "I'm already only scrapping by as it is, bringing a kid into the equation will only make things worse for me and my spouse and definitely for the kid".

Not saying that everyone thinks and acts like this, because otherwise no-one would have had children by now, but it's a strong part of the population I would say.

>And as most of the people don't see themselves as economically stable given the socio-economic conditions that have been in place for the last 15-20 years

But as the OP says, this is almost backwards. The poorest in America are continuing to have children; their lifestyle isn't encumbered by a family.

Meanwhile, it's the young professionals, who sometimes have a skewed view of what it means to be "poor", who aren't starting families because they don't want to give up aspects of their lifestyle. Again, not a judgment, just observing.

This is a cultural thing. My wife and I ended up with a child at a fairly advanced age. We moved to a rural area about 5 or 6 years ago. Now that our child is of the age to play sports and other activities, we are socializing with other parents. They are sometimes half our age, married with families in their early 20s. These people are what would generally be considered "lower-middle class". And yet most of them have everything they need. There's no expectation that you're going to be a globe-trotting nomad, or live in a 5000 sqft house here. Raising a family is a priority.

> who sometimes have a skewed view of what it means to be "poor

I don't think is a skewed view when you don't own a house/apartment, and many of the young professionals from around the world, not only from America, are now exactly in that position.

Honestly glad that it worked out for you moving to the rural area, where I suppose housing is way cheaper, but that option is not on the cards for a lot of younger people out there.

>The poorest in America are continuing to have children; their lifestyle isn't encumbered by a family.

And those kids most often have all sorts of problems when they grow up. Sure, my poor as fuck mom could raise us, and technically keep some food in our mouths, but the stress of doing so while having an anxiety disorder that the back asswards rural community we lived in didn't even know existed until 2010 basically broke her. Thankfully we were predisposed to intelligence by genetics, and a strong family value of education, so the kids all "made it", by varying degrees.

Each and every one of us is in therapy, and on multiple medications. How much does that cost society over a lifetime? How much would it have cost society to just give my mom a little help to raise us instead? Helping poor families not drive themselves crazy struggling to do the basic things of being alive has a huge potential upside, and it's abhorrent that we don't do it because some people think they don't DESERVE help.

The problem with "only scraping by" is that a lot of people have very high baselines for "scraping by".

"I'm barely scraping by", says the person with an above average income, living in an expensive city, frequently going out, going on multiple vacations per year, buying luxury items, etc.

People who are actually scraping by do not talk about needing to buy a bigger house if they have more kids, because they literally cannot afford that.

https://twitter.com/kitten_beloved/status/166761594887723417...

>My family is doing, what I would consider, "quite well", but we'd still be pretty fucked with one more mouth to feed, the need for a larger car and possibly larger house.

What do you consider "quite well"? Does your car have a backseat? Does your home have more than one bedroom? If so, you don't need larger of either.

Yes, there are some sacrifices to having a family. Nothing in life is free. The problem is that it sounds like you don't want to your lifestyle hindered by a child. That's fine, but saying you "can't" is untrue. People much poorer than you are doing it all around the world.

> The problem is that it sounds like you don't want to your lifestyle hindered by a child

But that's not really a problem. The world has plenty of children. If you visit the border of Mexico you can probably snag a handful. Given their state of poverty they won't even mind.

So to the original question. What does it mean for a birthrate to be "too low". Too low for what? Sustaining some level of GDP output? Propping up Wal-marts bottom line with fresh souls to work the checkout counter?

> People aren't having enough children

People, who have enough resources (financial, educational) don't have much children. I don't think that this will affect this group.

People, who have no access to education or anticonception, have disproportionally more children. Many of them are unwanted. Some are irreversibly damage due to abusive susbtance intake.

> People aren't having enough children

If anything it's the opposite.

> You can't break cycles of bad parenting

Because you said so?

It's exactly what my father did. He took parenting classes at the library, because he wanted to learn more and didn't think that just because he considered himself successful in business and life, he would necessarily understand pedagogy. To that, I am eternally grateful to him.

It's very hard for people to swallow their pride and admit humility, to say "I don't know" and listen to the experts. I have an immense amount of respect for anybody who does, and it is an example I try to live by (though not always successfully).

Also you were a bit lucky. Over the years there has been an insane amount of bad advise from "health specialists".

I was born in a time when kids were supposed to sleep with their backs up and mothers were supposed to wash their nipples using antibacterial before breastfeeding...!

Sometime before that there was a time (at least around here) were kids were supposed to eat sour cream porridge from early life.

Of course kids died left and right, but the logic was, if so many died following the best practices, how many wouldn't have died if babies were left drinking only milk! (Retold as best I can describe it from what an older person in the family told me.)

All this is before we start talking about parenting fads like "no rules parenting" (not sure about the exact English term) which must have caused untold harm.

So creds to your dad for finding the correct advice and sticking with it.

I'm not at all disagreeing with you, but your examples also demonstrate that a lot of parental advice rely and reflect the era's zeitgeist.

How do we make sure that what you call 'correct advice' is not again a reflection of today's zeitgeist and 50 years from now will make fun of these suggestions in a similar way as of applying antibacterial before breastfeeding?

We don't, and that's why we should encourage parents to diversify their approach as opposed to doing the same set of things mandated from the above.

We're currently undergoing a mass experiment in what happens to children if they are denied sun exposure. I guess we'll discover the outcomes in a few years.

Nordic countries are regularly denied sun.

That's simply untrue: https://www.ndsc.ncep.noaa.gov/uvspect_web/Polar/

Moreover, people of Nordic ancestry tend to have paler skin, which is arguably an adaptation to the low levels of UV.

I've read somewhere that just buying a parenting book, even without reading it, can make some people better parents or have a positive influence. Simply thinking about how to be a better parent and showing an interest in improving can lead to self-reflection and conscious consideration of parenting approaches.

While reading the book (attending the course) would likely provide more benefits, just the intention to be a better parent and the willingness to reflect on one's parenting practices may still be valuable step leading to an improvement in parenting abilities.

That's interesting.

A little nitpick : you seem to imply that buying a book is having an influence on parenting skills. I'd argue that's its correlated but does not have a direct influence.

As you said, if you're buying a book it means you're ready for self-reflection, which is what has an impact on parenting.

I'm fairly sure they are referring to a Freakonomics episode (or book). The researchers found "successful" parents, then found various statistics around them.

One of the conclusions was that they "type" of people that would go out of their way to buy a parenting book were already the type of people to do the "right thing" when parenting and the book itself offered no additional support.

I've been around the block a decent number of times, having had a kid way too early at the age of 19. Now I'm 42 and watching friends raise kids, along with many others throughout the years - my kid is 22 now.

The sole thing that is universal is simply giving a shit and putting effort in. If you legitimately care about your kids and live a life to ensure they get the best reasonable outcome you can achieve for them, things are likely to turn out fine.

This goes across countries, continents, cultures, socioeconomics, you name it.

Anything else after that is basically focusing on micros vs. macros. It's amazing how rare this train in parenting actually is.

After that it's largely on society in most places. The suburbanized atomic family expected to handle everything on their own are extreme headwinds for the average parents to push against for example. Only once you get beyond this would I feel "parenting education" would be worthwhile of any serious society effort.

I really wish schools taught humility.

As a new parents we got tons of books as gifts on pregnancy and baby's first year or two. But then it ended. I continue to buy books on parenting, child psychology, etc. But sadly it seems once baby turns toddler, most parents are done with learning.

One of the most common toxic phrase I keep hearing from these parents is I was raised this way, look I turned out to be fine. Of course, later in the same conversations they will admit they are not fine.

Maybe it is us geeks who love to learn and feel proud to deep dive into whatever we get into.

Ok but if hubris is profitable, why couldn't or wouldn't a private school teach it?

There's alot of people pissing on public schools, whether to sabotage the general public or have special non-standard curriculum only available in private schools, I have no idea.

There is a lot of pissing on public schools because the public has lost sight of why they exist.

There is a lot of religious-y "If you don't go to school you will spend an entirety in hell, er, flipping burgers" or "Those who graduate will make more money – please don't notice that incomes are stagnant and that those with struggles in life that will make them economically unproductive fail/drop out because of the same struggles" nonsense floating out there, but not a lot of concrete details on what value is actually delivered. Other governmental departments put a lot of effort into communicating their value proposition, but schools seem rest on faith.

Which may have been fine a century or two ago when people still remembered why the schools were created, but people now forget. As such, they seek out things they think the schools should do to justify an existence.

Well schools can teach whatever, but if your parent raises you to think education is bullshit liberal brainwashing, you aren't exactly going to listen to it.

For example, plenty of schools teach media literacy, and yet the kids who desperately need it don't pay attention because they are not motivated to learn, nobody encourages them to learn, they and the people around them do not value education on it's own merits, and sure enough ten years later they are posting that Obama is a lizard person.

We have a giant amount of, essentially, knowledge skepticism. These people are convinced that studying something robustly for four years is valueless, and meaningless. Some of them are so "skeptical" they want to homeschool their kids expressly to just teach them the bible and nothing more.

>to say "I don't know" and listen to the experts

Seeing this repeated in this thread. Who are these "experts"? What makes them "experts"? Is there some kind of track record I can look at?

In my case experts are people who raised well adjusted children and are still happily married! It can even be your own parents as much as people (very prideful) don’t want to admit that.

My parents read child psychology and based on that changed their mind on whether spankings were something good for your kids.

They updated their views based on expert peer-reviewed evidence instead of relying on their own armchair theories. I laud them for that. I used to be pro-spanking since I turned out OK and was stunned to later learn my parents regretted it all after what they subsequently learnt. They earnestly wish they had learnt sooner it wasn't necessary.

Yes! The old refrain, "they don't come with a manual!" is such a load of ignorant self-serving garbage. There are plenty of resources to learn from. Ideally, not mommy-bloggers who misrepresent parenting techniques.

At the other end, modern parents have so many restrictions and expectations put on them.

A simple question for you, what exact measurable and quantifiable differences would you expect to see in, for instance, the children of psychologists of the sort this article appeals to, and those of e.g. Joe [demographically equivalent] Normal's children? And this naturally somewhat leads into, and what factors, as a society, should we prioritize?

To me it seems quite trivial to create unfalsifiable arguments, for near anything, using extremely nebulous terms like "reducing public health risks." It's not like anybody's ever going to say, "No way man - I really think we should work to increase public health risks!" But what separates science from pseudoscience is falsifiability. So it's only once you break things down into actual, specific, and measurable goals that the conversation can even begin.

---

As but one example, the most fundamental component for a society to perpetuate itself is fertility. And so, in my mind, a child's upbringing should absolutely be focused on ensuring this person will be able to both raise and support their own healthy family in the future. Yet of course even this simple goal is going to prove controversial because there's some conflict between it and certain cultural norms. And you'd need to reconcile this in some way that people, independent of worldview, can be generally happy with. I'm not sure this is possible.

> measurable and quantifiable differences would you expect to see.

Amount of psycological trauma and repression, neuroticism, insecurity. Suicides.

All easilly measurable.

define trauma. sometimes kids need to learn hard lessons. where is that line?

define repression? given that this is HN I'd imagine the definition will be different than from someone who was from, say, Malaysia or Saudi.

what does neuroticism mean? at some level we can agree what "crazy is" but where do you draw the line? ditto for insecurity.

most of this is NOT easily measurable, outside of suicides, which are discrete events. definition of things like sexual assault, child abuse, or repression vary by state, and even more so by country.

> definition of things like sexual assault, child abuse, or repression vary by state

Definition of homicide also varies by state, so what? Homicide is not real?

So basically you do not believe we can objectively measure psychological issues, so any parenting, no matter how bad, even outright abusive parenting, can't produce psychological issues.

Why do we have parents at all then, let's have all kids cared for by a commercial company, will be more efficient, right?

> For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity.

> 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.

In my country, we had a housekeeping class in school, that taught everything from basic cooking skills, to safety with electrical appliances. There was also a woodworking class, where you were taught how to use various tools correctly and safely. Later, in university, there were courses that concerned things like paying taxes in more detail, employment law and how small businesses work etc.

I think that parenting classes sound like a good idea. It can also help people figure out when they're absolutely not ready for something or are not comfortable with it - like happened to me and getting a driver's license.

You don’t learn how to parent, you learn how to live, in a wholehearted way, and you model that for your children.

Good parenting is foremost about growing up before your kids do.

Wholeheartedly agree, the thought that we can school our way out this seems overly simplistic. And I'd go as far as to say the schooling philosophy is part of this pathology.

Society decided to dump most doctrinal support but unfortunately this has left a significant portion of the masses with little direction. But also many have little inclination or time to work it out for themselves. And even if you did start to read Jung, Nietzsche, Hegel, Hiedeger or whichever philosopher you chose there's a myriad of directions one could take it and it's a heady mix. I've started to read these philosophers but I bring it a traditional Creator grounding and it's still pretty wild.

Ultimately I don't think we have a clue what we're doing and we are prone to getting very scared and taking it out on those around us or in our care.

This is terrible "magic thinking" advice.

Kids are VERY counterintuitive (mine at least). Our kid has had behavioral problems at school and at home. And it's extremely difficult to understand the root of the issues (it turns out that the pandemic, moving houses, starting school and having a baby brother all at once can be a bit much for a 3 year old).

Literally EVERYONE who is not a professional told us to smack our kid into submission. But by reading stuff and talking to professionals, you learn that some kids do have weird ways of expressing their emotions, and that acknowledging that and supporting them works. You have to completely turn the way you speak to them around. It's really hard to do cause nobody wants to confort a kid who's annoying, but it works.

None of the stuff I do with my kids would have been possible had I not learnt it as an adult. Stop the magic thinking. Read about children, they're weird and wonderfully different.

> smack our kid into submission

What does this mean? I never talk child care in any significant way on the net, so I feel there are way to many ways too misinterpret this. Even the nice interpretation of this would border on illegal here.

(FWIW I think I agree with you on all accounts and I have had it easy)

Beatings. I'm in my 30s and I was beat as a kid. You'd be surprised how legal and still often recommended it is, especially with neurodivergent young boys.

One of the founders of the DevOps movement once gave a talk on Dallas where he described striking a young boy who had hit his daughter because he thought especially young white boys need to learn consequences.

Especially in neurodivergent young boys, for sure. Speaking from experience.

Getting hit as a kid didn't teach me anything positive.

If hitting kids did anything positive, we'd be living in the worst not the best time to be alive.

What?

I am in France, where hitting kids has become illegal only in 2019. There is a practice we call fessee which consists of slapping the butt of your kid, which sort of hurts but fades quickly. It’s been around forever here and when I was a kid in the 80s was the ultimate threat (our fathers got the “martinet” which is small whip).

Anyways, although illegal, hurting your kid is a very common practice around here.

On that subject: humiliation in school by teachers has been prohibited since 1953, and is still common here too. In the first school my kid went to, there was a board on the wall in the hallway where they would write the name of bad boys to public-shame them.

In the US it's called spanking, and would be carried out manually, via a belt (using the buckle if you're a true sociopath), a "switch" - a small, whiplike sapling or tree branch, or a paddle which looks like a small cricket bat.

When I was in primary school in the 90's, it was technically still allowed by the state, and was threated by teachers, but I don't believe it was ever actually done, and I believe is illegal now.

That said, this entire thread is a shitshow and further convinces me that no one has any idea what they're doing or probably even any coherent idea of why they're raising children in the first place or what they want for those children, and reinforces my decision to opt-out of the whole idea.

Also, car battery jumper cables are a timeless favorite for this purpose.

> When I was in primary school in the 90's, it was technically still allowed by the state, and was threated by teachers, but I don't believe it was ever actually done, and I believe is illegal now.

In the US? Of course not. Still allowed and in fact being done: https://theconversation.com/video-shows-students-still-get-p...

So you are opting out because you perceive others as doing something wrong. Ok.

Having a child necessitates raising the child. Rather simple.

>> smack our kid into submission > What does this mean?

It only has one possible meaning: beat your child until they comply. A large percentage of parents have no other response. If they don't use physical violence they may use verbal or psychological violence instead.

People have a biological urge to reproduce which they're happy to indulge but are often unprepared for the challenges of raising children. Exasperation and exhaustion make shouting at or striking your child an attractive strategy. Note that this is different to (effective) discipline in that these responses are often arbitrary and unpredictable, leading to anxious and depressed children.

> often unprepared for the challenges of raising children

I don't think there's any way to really understand what raising a child entails until you've done it.

I don't think this was intended as "physically hitting". The intent was "ignore what the kid is requesting, and communicate to them 'no you don't want that, it is wrong to want that'". One way to do that would of course be to "hit", but the idea is about insisting that 'your view is right', and ignoring/not acknowledging the need the child is trying to communicate. My point being, this can do almost as much damage, even if you are not 'hitting'. Source: Am parent, was child.

It is hard living some problem, and then experiencing that the people who are in charge of taking care of you, consistently communicate "No, there is just something wrong with you, you don't want that/that isn't really a problem".

> I don't think this was intended as "physically hitting".

I am very sure it was. In many parts of the world (including the USA) that is still completely accepted and normal.

FYI “smack” is British English for American English “spank” and they are just about synonymous, modulo cultural differences on what kind of smacking/spanking is acceptable.

> Literally EVERYONE who is not a professional told us to smack our kid

Respectfully, if that's true I urge you to find a new social circle.

They may be referring to close family members. These are the people mostly likely to offer unsolicited parenting advice in my experience.

That and (though I’m not speaking on behalf of OP) social media destinations like Facebook, where most of us are likely to have had “friends” we haven’t seen since high school and will never see again in person.

The people in my family who smacked their kids aren’t professionals. Plenty of professionals hit their kids though.

Right? Kids are different, but honestly not that different from adults. Just more impressionable, because they are learning the world. And of course less knowledgeable and developed by definition. But they work a lot of the same ways.

Would you make it practice to hit adults??? No? Why are you teaching kids that this is what happens?

It makes no sense.

Of course it makes sense. Pain is the universal teacher. It's why every organism that can move under its own power experiences pain. We are extremely good at learning pain avoidance. We even used to hit adults (and far worse) to get them to behave. So yes, of course it makes sense. Whether it results in positive outcomes is the only legitimate question.

For many of these people, yes. They would absolutely make it practice to hit adults.

My parents were married in 1966 ages 22 and 23, two children the next two years, a house three years after married. Dad was a high school dropout although his Dad my grandfather had a painting business. But my grandfather died aged 52 just as my Dad was beginning his life with Mom. So yes he did some growing up fast I really forget how hard it must have been for him and Mom with all that happening all at the same time.

My grandfather was married to my grandmother and had nine kids and then even a few grandchildren all before the age of 52 when he died.

So here I am now no children, not married, I'm past at the age my grandfather died. Staggering to my mind how mature the previous generation was or had to be.

> Staggering to my mind how mature the previous generation was or had to be.

Or how immature they really were?

I can't downvote this enough. Sure, it's true that experience is the best way to learn but that method leads to alot of dead ends that society then has to deal with. Saying that parents can self-learn and self-evolve totally distracts the reader away from the original comment which is about the critical need for society to better support parents structurally. Most of us don't live in multi-generational communes where this stuff might happen without a structured approach ... and for all those new parents who do not, the need is great.

> You don’t learn how to parent

Actually I do.

This is exhibit A, not only have they learnt nothing, but will reject every opportunity to learn. Exactly like my Father.

I have a daughter growing up, and every time there is a decision to make, I check what people like this would do, and do the opposite. Or at least make sure to avoid that.

This is such bullshit.

My mother tried to be a good mom but never addressed her mental health issues, leading to four kids having pretty severe problems twenty, thirty years later.

She took decades from us, though she "tried to live" but didn't want to learn anything she didn't already know.

This is the mistake that most parents make. They assume that what worked for them will work for their children.

>> Good parenting is foremost about growing up before your kids do

This unfortunately is not a given and that's the crux of the discussion.

If every parent were able to achieve complete knowledge and wisdom about all things parenting before they had kids we wouldn't be talking of any of this.

This is a great idea.

One of the things that Finance people do is force employees to have short computer-based trainings every year. They seem stupid and bother everyone, but I think they are fairly effective (and they've been going on for years, so they must have proven some level of effectiveness).

Health insurance providers could be forced to have parents do a yearly 1-hour training on how to handle kids to enable benefits.

You're not going to solve the biggest problems, just like SEC trainings don't prevent money laundering, but whateveer moves the needle a little bit may be worth doing...

> and they've been going on for years, so they must have proven some level of effectiveness

They are effective

In reducing the liability of the company that is forcing it's employees to take the course. As for actual behavioral change, that is often not the case.

Schools may present the set of validated (consensus among pertinent professionals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_who_work_with_... ) explanations/guidelines to each adequate target (from children to young adults).

There’s a saying: “it takes a village to raise a child.”

Historically, the role of the “parentin school” you’re proposing has been played by the family, most importantly grandparents. As we move away as a society from relying on family structures, we need to recognise their utility and find equivalents.

We moved away successfully from family structures in many areas of society: succession of rulers, for example. So this doesn’t need to be a bad thing. But I think the role that grandparents played should be studied carefully when proposing certain types of schooling for parents.

Not necessarily family structures but tribes. Could be a small group of families helping each other. Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the values imparted on the youth come from a position of trust (from the youth) and not a forced daytime prison run by folks whose dreams died when they found out how much they owe for their PhD without deferment.

Seriously though, those tribes or large familial structures that keep the youth accountable because their authority is established and trusted is what all children need. Sometimes that trust comes from teachers but rarely.

> find equivalents

There is no equivalent. Full stop.

Maybe you could re-create an extended family w/ friendship and local community - "the village" so to speak - but let's say I have my severe doubts about finding enough like-minded people in at least the US to accomplish it. Very few with options have the commitment.

The government and institutions seriously cannot even hope to replace a tiny fraction of this support structure though. People actually have to care about each other on a individual human level. It turns into checkboxing CYA otherwise - having seen a bit of this implementation in social work.

This is an underrated comment. American lifestyle forces people to make tough choices about their extended, sometimes even closest family. The % of the population who earn enough to support one or more dependents comfortably, be it a child or a parent, is probably in single digits. The result is the mental health epidemic.

Or we could recognize their utility and not move away from them… wouldn’t this make more sense?

> However with parenting we have nothing and the result it seems is we pay with a ton more resources downstream in the way of therapy, detention centers, jails etc.

I think it’s a situation where we can’t stop people from having babies so we don’t even attempt to limit.

There have been attempts to prevent births in “undesirable” populations that people thought weren’t capable of properly raising kids. [0]

But unless we’re going to have a super controlled society with forced birth control and abortion, there’s not a qualification to give birth. And developing nations have really low birth rates so anything to further lower birth rates has some negative societal and economic impact.

That being said, there are many free programs available to parents but they have to reach out to find them. I live in a pretty backwards, relatively speaking, state and there were numerous state, county, charity, and religious programs to help with parenting coaching before and after birth.

It does seem like a good idea to add coaching into the maternal health programs to give more education and support to expecting and new parents.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/43208...

> developing nations have really low birth rates

Did you mean to write developed, perhaps? I'm under the impression - and a quick google confirms - that the more economically developed a country is, the lower its birth rate tends to be.

(I'm sure I'm oversimplifying. I've not studied in this area, which is why I'm replying)

Thanks. You are right. I meant developed[0]. I like to think I typed “developing” and didn’t check my autocomplete.

There does seem to be a function of the more money and education for women, the lower the birth rate. Some countries are increasing immigration to compensate.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

I think a society would have better outcomes by teaching young people the consequences to their lives of having children, such as time and financial costs. In one of the classes in my high school, students had to carry around a sack of flour for a week without damaging it.

A reward/benefit system is possibly better. We can examine how teaching consequences concerning the law, isn’t working sufficiently if we look at the US prison system population and the US prisoners reoffending rate. I think something like offering a tax deductible for completing a parenting program that’s specifically designed for outlining psychology negatives of not being there for the child is obvious. The money for financing the said program should be taken by a tax of adults with kids that haven’t completed the said program. I wouldn’t apply and cutoff age as well because everyone that has kids regardless of how long ago would still benefit society by completing such a program.

Only problem with tax deductible is that it doesn't benefit lower income families as much.

I think a better reward would be the ability for someone having gone through the parenting program to have the ability to tell child protective services, or law enforcement, to fuck off straight to their face without any negative consequences.

>How about some minimal coaching so that all parents are aware of the state of the art in child psychology

What is "state of the art" in psychology? A bunch of irreproducible papers?

Yes exactly that. Appeal to authority.

Many people have such broken relationships with their parents that they refuse to believe their parents can offer them good advice.

Before they take a parenting class, they might be better served taking a counseling class to repair their relationship with their own parents.

My city (Munich, Germany) automatically sends "parent letters" to every child registered here (they are addressed "To the parents of <child's name and address>), which contain advice on dealing with common problems and questions as well as providing information about support services, sorted by age.

So for example, the one for 3,5 years has sections on how to deal with food pickiness, or with excessive preference for one parent.

> 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 themselves, so a parenting course won't fix that.

2. You're basically turning what is normally considered an innate human right into a privilege for which you need to earn a license. This invites all kinds of abuse (only the right kinds of people get this license!).

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.

It's a perfectly coherent question! I'd kindly ask that you try to comply with Hacker News's guidelines about engaging in kind dialogue, and specifically the line "please don't post shallow dismissals".

Here's what I consider to be a simpler question to answer: do you think people have the right to give birth to a child whose existence would be only horrible, endless suffering before eventually succumbing to death?

This isn't just a hypothetical: people tend to agree that a parents who are at high chance of birthing a child with a terrible genetic disease probably shouldn't take that risk (or, at least, should protect against it with some preimplantation genetic testing).

But everyone suffers at least a little bit at some point in their life. If you don't think people have a right to birth children whose lives would be pure suffering, but you do think people have a right to birth children who would suffer at least a little bit in their lives, then how do you justify one but not the other? Is there some threshold amount of misery which you think is okay to inflict on someone without their consent?

There may be some other moral framework or argument which articulately justifies this, and I'm genuinely curious to see if someone has come up with an interesting answer to the question.

Pretty much.

Unless you've worked out how to obtain consent from someone that doesn't exist either we create kids without their consent or society ends.

Inability to obtain consent does not imply consent.

Do you consider the continuation of our society to be more important than respecting consent?

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

Is this satire?

It's a legitimate question! Many people wish they had never been born. What right do you have to force such a person into existence without their consent?

In the absence of someone's ability to give consent - ie. Informed consent in medical terms- the responsibility is assumed by the parents or guardian.

Since an infant or fetus is unable to provide consent, why would you think a parent is incapable of doing so?

This is a baffling line of thought to me.

2 is tricky because we live in a society where the group is responsible for an individuals bad parenting decisions.

Our options are to keep creating support programs to cover for bad parenting (not nearly as effective as good parents) or to stop “bad” parents from having kids (not super moral).

>we know some behaviours which are typically harmful (molestation, violence), but everyone already knows that

Horse crap, a huge amount of parents genuinely believe violence is a necessity for child rearing (including frequent repetitions of "spare the rod, spoil the child") to the point that they've even pushed to bring it back into public schools!

Even the very basics are not accepted as fact by many.

> Horse crap, a huge amount of parents genuinely believe violence is a necessity for child rearing (including frequent repetitions of "spare the rod, spoil the child") to the point that they've even pushed to bring it back into public schools!

The effects of corporal punishment are small compared to the effects of molestation and physical abuse. If corporal punishment were our only "issue", we'd be much better off. I wouldn't even classify this under "the very basics".

What are you saying here?

Corporal punishment is physical and psychological abuse. It is in the title: punishment is a judgement and corporal is the violence.

There is no such thing as corporal punishment that is also not an abuse. Maybe there is a scale of it but it is abuse.

> It is in the title: punishment is a judgement and corporal is the violence

Are you suggesting that judging your child's actions as wrong is psychological abuse?

> There is no such thing as corporal punishment that is also not an abuse.

That's incorrect, and the legal precedent has been clear on the legality of spanking and the distinction from abuse:

https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/can/defining/disc-abuse/

> Are you suggesting that judging your child's actions as wrong is psychological abuse?

Nobody said that. We are saying that corporal punishment is physical abuse.

> the legal precedent has been clear on the legality of spanking and the distinction from abuse

An action does not need to be illegal in all areas (or illegal at all) to be a form of abuse. Corporal punishment causes negative emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes in children regardless of whether it is used in an area where it is legal or illegal. It is physical abuse and a poor method of parenting that is detrimental to the children's long-term welfare.

> Lifetime spanking/slapping was independently associated with increased odds of mental health disorders, physical health conditions, and defiant behaviors in adolescence after adjusting for childhood adversities and child maltreatment (unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios ranging from 1.29 to 2.19).

> These findings suggest that lifetime spanking/slapping is uniquely associated with harmful mental, physical, and behavioral outcomes in adolescence, and efforts should focus on its prevention.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07067437211000...

I notice you consistently take data that says that lifetime physical discipline can be detrimental to welfare, and then claim that all physical discipline, no matter how infrequent, is physical abuse that is detrimental to welfare. One does not follow the other.

The data shows that the use of physical discipline is independently associated with negative emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes. If there are any studies of the same quality that show otherwise, go ahead and post them. Otherwise, your argument is just like saying that infrequent lead exposure may be beneficial because studies only focus on the negative effects of lifetime lead exposure.

> Otherwise, your argument is just like saying that infrequent lead exposure may be beneficial because studies only focus on the negative effects of lifetime lead exposure.

No, it's saying that infrequent lead exposure is not as harmful as most think, and certainly not as harmful as other environmental pollutants that are more pervasive.

Corporal punishment is much more pervasive than molestation and rape, which is why it is being highlighted as a major problem. Lead exposure is actually more harmful than most people think, just like corporal punishment.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/30/one-in-t...

> Are you suggesting that judging your child's actions as wrong is psychological abuse?

How is that judgement communicated? Without that information the question is incomplete.

> The effects of corporal punishment are small compared to the effects of molestation and physical abuse.

That even worse abuses such as molestation, rape, and murder exist is not a justification for corporal punishment (physical discipline), which has been shown to cause negative emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes in children. Corporal punishment is a form of physical abuse, considering these negative outcomes.

> The Resolution on Physical Discipline of Children By Parents, adopted by APA’s Council of Representatives in February, relies on strong and sophisticated longitudinal research that finds physical discipline does not improve behavior and can lead to emotional, behavioral and academic problems over time, even after race, gender and family socioeconomic status have been statistically controlled.

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/physical-discipline

> That even worse abuses such as molestation, rape, and murder exist is not a justification for corporal punishment (physical discipline)

Fortunately, that's not the argument I made.

I guess this is simply straight-up unenforceable. Making babies is the one thing almost anyone over 12 is capable of doing, with no effort. A key tenet of public policy is that it must be achievable, else forget about it.

What to do about multiple parenting styles that are at odds with one another (sometimes even in the same household)? How about the baggage that parents are carrying that influence how they’re gonna parent, many of those suitcases inherited from their parents? That’s one thing for sure, but some parents aren’t even parenting for various reasons, not enough time, lack of responsibility or not being around for various reasons. If we could tackle all that we’d basically get a much better society but it’s a nearly impossible problem to solve in a practical way…

It is funny that you mention driving as an example. Driving and cars are not designed for pregnant woman. As a typical man with passion for cars and driving, this never occurred to me until my wife got pregnant.

<< For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity.

The issue is that in US driving license is trivial to get and it shows on the roads ( queue explanations that it is just the function of car being a necessity -- true, but irrelevant too the point ). Even if instituted, I don't think people would accept that kind of infringement though I admit this is probably one place, where we should be able to self-regulate ( we clearly can't though and some systems are built for ever increasing population, which is a separate force that would prevent that kind of change ).

In short, I agree. I don't think we are doing it well now.

Lobotomy was once state of the art and the last one done in the US was 1967. Experts and gatekeepers who think they know better are not helpful here.

Something I don’t think many people know about is that marriages licenses, (yes you need a license to gain some tax benefits) often have an incentive to do pre-marital counseling. Tennessee, for instance, at least halves the price of the marriage license if you got any premarital counseling. Which they very broadly define, so you could get it from just about anyone a reasonable person could call trained in counseling.

Something along those lines, such as cheaper hospital stays or government covering part of childcare or some incentive like that could support what you are thinking. Not required, but a financial incentive. This is especially useful because it targets lower income families, hopefully reducing the correlation from parental income and career/health/etc outcomes.

PS: Smart of you to wear your nomex, this thread is a conflagration.

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 other, but try to sed s/women/men/ and you're a toxic macho.

I think the outcome is unsurprising.

Just to be clear, a lot of the initiatives for promoting women's success are good and necessary. But to me the emphasis should have been on promoting equality, not bashing men for the benefit of women.

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 unique to men, but it’s ok to point out “mansplaining” but not non-men explaining stuff. “Manspreading” is used quite a bit, but there’s a reason why men sit with their legs open so there’s a polite about of space that’s ok for comfort. Etc etc.

I hope this is overcompensating for a long time of jerks being jerks but I fear that the bullying resulting from “strength = power” and jocks has now changed to “money = power” and people other than jocks have power.

I go to an esports bar quite a bit and an esports team was there. And they were totally bullying people and it was weird because it was multiple genders and races being total jerks to people. But the bully’s were strong, tall, handsome jocks. They were esports-types. So the jerk dynamic was still there.

I don’t think it’s progress if we end up with the same number of “toxic” jerks.

> 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.

The high school jocks in the showers is a generational thing as well as a regional thing. It may not match your experience, but it is/was real.

Your belief that everybody felt like the shy sensitive kid is wildly out of touch.

When remembering my past I also try to remember that there were times that I was the villain of somebody else story. One of the reasons why there are always 'jerks' and 'bullies' is because most jerks and bullies don't view themselves as such.

I went to a school with 1000 men. There were hundreds who identified with the towel ass slappers. And I have friends who still do.

In my high school the jocks got the girl. Movies are fantasy and there was no sensitive kid who got the prom queen. At least for the limited experience I had.

I dont have data to support this, but I can't help but feel that increasingly America has a habit of "pendulum" swinging around societal issues. That is, we severely overcorrect (often time a little too late) that also has the nasty effect of leading to unintended casualties.

On equality, I find it highly disturbing the current policies have amounted to a zero sum game.

This is probably just a human nature thing more than America

> We inherited a world where for many generations, men were hostile to women. It was unfair and needed rectifying.

> hyper focus on promoting outcomes for girls while doing nothing of the sort for boys.

I feel this bit of your context inspires some really useful analysis.

My perspective is that we have finished the easy part, having made progress on the most obvious harms. The work that remains is dealing with more deeply embedded issues - and that they are far more subtle and complex. We can see evidence of those issues manifested, when and where there is hostility toward women and for our systems that effectively safeguard them from historical risks.

And as ever, the group with the best insight to puzzle out how to proceed is the group that suffered. I believe this is true, even if they're still working it out (because it is immensely complicated). They will work it out, if we give them enough room and trust to do so.

As far there is an imbalance in fulfilling the needs of children, the most worthwhile solutions should be ones that are loving, inclusive and sow a unanimity that uplifts everyone toward their individual potentials. If girls are in a better place, then bringing boys into into that place seems like what we should try next.

> men were hostile to women

Were they really though? I mean, yes there always were and always will be some abusive men, but men _as a group_ have been more associated with protecting and caring for women than being hostile to them. Until very recently in human history, women actually couldn't physically survive without men - it's only been in the past few generations that the nature of work has changed to where women could actually perform it.

> I mean, yes there always were and always will be some abusive men, but men _as a group_ have been more associated with protecting and caring for women than being hostile to them.

As much a slaveowner has been "protecting and caring" for his slaves.

You could easily equate that statement to a “mother protecting and caring for her children”

It’s pretty trite and meaningless to boil every dependent relationship into one of slavery.

In the past, most women had to pick between marriage with an established man so she can have many kids starting young, versus working for herself and having no or few kids.

It’s no surprise many women chose marriage.

Comparing it to children is not better. If anything, it's worse.

Women are not children. They don't want to be protected, especially when they've chosen not to be. Women don't want to lose agency in the name of being cared for. Children don't have that option, because they're not adults.

Adult women want to be treated as adults, and very much resent the implication that they need protection. Especially when that comes with losing control over their own bodies.

As an adult you should understand the financial realities of a stay at home parent.

If the breadwinner (man or woman) needs to make enough to support the kids and family. If they don't, the marriage and kids suffer.

The stay at home parent (man or woman) also has duties to the kids and family and home. Otherwise the kids suffer. If either party wants to divorce for any reason, the kids suffer. That's the reality of parenthood.

Protection is antiquated but it's foolhardy to think a healthy man would suppress his instinct to protect his pregnant wife. You're right though women don't need protecting all the time.

>Protection is antiquated but it's foolhardy to think a healthy man would suppress his instinct to protect his pregnant wife

Plenty of men beat their wives, up to and including miscarriage or death. Seriously you have an absurd notion of the realities of being a woman before like the 60s. Human men, especially when angry, are irrational beings, as all humans are, and are perfectly capable of harming those they "love".

You weren't alive then, I don't think you know either.

Painting all men as abusers is dishonest.

And yet, I don't see many women turning down decades- or life-long spousal support when they walk away from a marriage (no-fault divorce remember) that they're no longer happy with. As a population, statistically, they certainly do want to be provided for at someone else's expense.

I spotted the American!

Seriously though, it does absolutely no good to anyone if you make such a snide remark. Even if you'd be right, what's to be done next from that statement?

I'm Polish.

Sure, I also made a snide remark that didn't contribute anything to the discussion.

I meant though that your concepts seem anchored in the US public debate.

In recent memory, 40% of cops ADMITTED to physical violence towards their wives.

But sure, tell me that men forever were actually so nice and good to everyone and slapping your wife or threatening her harm for basic things wasn't normal, or that women had the freedom to do what they wanted like every innocent human deserves, or that there weren't explicit societal pressures to be subservient to men, not by choice.

>Until very recently in human history, women actually couldn't physically survive without men - it's only been in the past few generations that the nature of work has changed to where women could actually perform it.

This is just wrong. The vast majority of women are as physically capable as the vast majority of men. There are only differences in the extremes

Let's stop with this nonsense. Women are not inherently better people than men in any general way. That is some serious propaganda going on there. If for some reason they don't abuse others physically then they do it emotionally. However, it turns out they actually do it physically.

Taken from someone else:

"Men are the biggest abusers."

No. In fact, women initiate domestic violence more than men.[1]

    “Analyzing data gathered from 11,370 respondents, researchers found that “half of [violent relationships] were reciprocally violent. In non-reciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more that 70% of the cases.” Out of all the respondents, a quarter of the women admitted to perpetrating the domestic violence and, when the violence was reciprocal, women were often the ones to have been the first to strike.

    Reciprocal violence was more dangerous for the victim, both men and women, than was nonreciprocal violence. In fact, men in relationships with reciprocal violence were reportedly injured more often (25.2%) than were women in relationships with nonreciprocal violence (20.0%); this is important as violence perpetrated by women is often seen as not serious.[2]

"Oh, but reciprocal violence is because women are only defending themselves against men!"

    Reciprocal partner violence does not appear to be only comprised of self-defensive acts of violence. Several studies have found that [in cases of reciprocal violence] men and women initiate violence against an intimate partner at approximately the same rate.

"That can't be right. Everyone knows women are less violent than men."

    Women are at least as likely as men to kill their children—more so if one counts killings of newborns—and account for more than half of child maltreatment perpetrators.[3][4]

"What about the fact that it is well known that most violent crimes are committed by men?"[5]

    But, whatever explains the higher levels of male violence—biology, culture or both—the indisputable fact is that it’s directed primarily at other males: in 2010, men were the victims in almost four out of five homicides [6] and almost two-thirds of robberies and non-domestic aggravated assaults [7]. Family and intimate relationships—the one area feminists often identify as a key battleground in the war on women—are also an area in which women are most likely to be violent [8], and not just in response to male aggression but toward children, elders, female relatives or partners, and non-violent men, according to a study published in the Journal of Family Violence.

How will your typical new age western feminist react to this?

    For the most part, feminists’ reactions to reports of female violence toward men have ranged from dismissal to outright hostility. Straus [9] chronicles a troubling history of attempts to suppress research on the subject, including intimidation of heretical scholars of both sexes and tendentious interpretation of the data to portray women’s violence as defensive. In the early 1990s, when laws mandating arrest in domestic violence resulted in a spike of dual arrests and arrests of women, battered women’s advocates complained that the laws were “backfiring on victims,” claiming that women were being punished for lashing back at their abusers.

Some excerpts taken from: The Surprising Truth About Women and Violence [10]

Feel free to copy paste it whenever someone like the above poster posit that men are the biggest abusers.

[1] https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2005...

[2] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...

[3] http://www.jaapl.org/content/35/1/74.full.pdf

[4] http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files /cb/cm2012.pdf#page=76

[5] http://users.soc.umn.edu/%7Euggen/Lauritsen_CRIM_09.pdf

[6] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c...

[7] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv10.pdf

[8] http://www.researchgate.net/publication/226871004_The_two_fa...

[9] https://web.archive.org/web/20140708085504/https://www.socio...

[10] https://time.com/2921491/hope-solo-women-violence/

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 constitutional protections for abortion something that imo is critical for women’s ability to exist as equal citizens. I don’t think we’ve pendulum swung somehow past equality. Obviously something has gone wrong for men in the US. Stats around education, depression, and suicide make that hard to dispute, but it remained the fact that a boy born today can expect to have more power than his sister.

I do think this can be true while there can also be elements of society that push the other way. Culture is made up of many micro cultures and the kid born in SF will have a different experience than the one born in Mississippi, but we do have bigger issues than people on the internet making fun of mansplaining or something. It’s just too easy to have one’s perception of reality distorted by your perception.

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.

I don’t agree. “Sensitive men” are acutely aware of the behavior of “toxic masculinity men”. It’s not a behavior that exclusively affects women. It affects everyone. I can’t say I’ve ever felt threatened by this concept as a guy.

Semantics get messy and people can use terms however they want but the basic to me feels obvious and just. It is no surprise that such men don’t have their emotional needs met. But there are layers upon layers of issues that create this circumstance.

> I don’t agree. “Sensitive men” are acutely aware of the behavior of “toxic masculinity men”. It’s not a behavior that exclusively affects women. It affects everyone.

I agree with this, and I'm not sure on which point you disagree.

My point was that the broader cultural anti-male rhetoric that arose as an (understandable) response to toxic masculinity tends to have the least impact on the worst perpetrators, and the most negative impact on those who are not the problem to begin with.

And to your point, there are many layers involved here, and reducing this to just a spectrum of masculinity is not sufficient on its own. We need broader thinking.

The combination of the depictions of nerds vs jocks in 80s and 90s media plus this huge overcorrection on toxic masculinity really fucked with me hard. I thought that nerd and jock was a hard line, that I had to actively avoid anything sports related to not be one of the stupid jocks who were all woman objectifiers. I was also convinced that women wanted nothing to do with sex, hated getting hit on, and would consider any physical contact without explicit verbal approval to be assault.

Now I know that's all a load of crap. Nerds can and should play sports for the health and social benefits, women absolutely have sexual desires, and all physical interactions with someone are contextual. It just would have been great to have had that realization way sooner than my late 20s!

There must be a middle-ground somewhere that discourages being disgusting to women while also not making men feel like they are inherently disgusting. Something that lets a wide spectrum of both masculinity and femininity be considered valid and acceptable.

The ideas you’re proposing are the mainstream norms. I’m inclined to think the internet has played a large part in it. The social dialogue is simply much better. Earlier movies were overly simplistic and dumb.

I think Slasher films are the poster child of this. They began as this thing for the geekier men, with their idolization of the pure final girl in the 80s and 90s. But they all kind of portrayed this same dumb world view as lampooned in Cabin in the Woods. It mostly ended with Scream, which featured characters openly reflecting on the nature of such films and how they translated to pop culture and a final girl that fucked, despite still being kind and pure and unpunished. But it still kept this cultural narrative of the dorky guy protagonist.

The newer scream (number 6, which is unironically fantastic imo; best since the og) features a jock named chad who is not an obtuse asshole, horny girls that are not defined by being horny, and weird people with weird passions that are shown as sociable and well liked. This is good.

But this highlights the larger point. Being a jock was not the problem, it was being an asshole. It’s good that we recognize that jocks are not necessarily assholes. But assholes still thrive and environments where physical strength assertions to social power are probably the worst of them.

at the end of the day there is going to be a social hierarchy. If this shifts to favor intellect, academic achievement, and social skills; how do you support the dumber bigger kids who will geeked compelled to physically assert themselves into positions of social power? Very difficult. And it’s not like there aren’t a plethora of dumber, weaker kids who lack that option and also need support.

“Who will weep for the bully” is not easy to answer because being an asshole is often a survival strategy…

I don’t agree that it affects the worst perps less though. I think society has progressed enormously. I think strong men have significantly much less power than they did before, both with respect to how women are treated and with respect to how men interact with other men. There is work to be done, and it is hardly universal, but it is much better.

For example, you can’t just… grab and hump subordinate women in the workplace as a joke anymore in most areas. This is a kind of thing that is now so outrageous you will see people young people doubting that it was ever a normative thing.

Or cliche locker room bullies. You’ve got someone in this comment thread denying that this was real because it’s so far from their experience.

A large part of this is probably because being a strong white dude is not a good indicator of social power anymore because the economy is much harder. But narratives help.

I agree that society has progressed enormously, and that there was a time where harsher attitudes about this were appropriate given the prevalence of these behaviors.

It may be that during some time periods, the impact was not disproportionate. My point was that in the current social climate, it seems equally appropriate to reexamine this rhetoric, and direct focus to bad behavior.

To your point, there are things you could never get away with today, and that is excellent. But it is that very progress that makes it questionable to perpetuate the same attitudes towards a younger generation, who will not have the contextual understanding to know why it was necessary, or how it relates to them and appropriate behavior relative to the current norm.

Perhaps. My gut says no, today’s youths should be more than capable of correctly identifying what is and what is not genuinely harmful behaviors. I don’t think toxic masculinity narratives are particularly prevalent or over saturated.

Perhaps with the exception of California, not that I have any personal experience there.

I agree with much of this especially the lack of zero sum games, but a problem is this conversation takes oxogen away from bigger issues. We’re literally commenting on an article talking about how we still treat boys and men like they don’t or shouldn’t have emotions and thus don’t need emotional support and all the top comments are about how attacking toxic masculinity has gone too far?

Like the problem here is seeing some sort of bio-essentialism or just a form of masculinity that is unhelpful, and unhealthy in very much the kinda way that some feminist thinkers believed for a long time. Yes, I very much don’t like rad fems for a lot of reasons, but for every one of them hurting society there are 10 women and men afraid society is going soft. Do you know what the most popular source of news in this country is? Have you seen polling.

> a problem is this conversation takes oxogen away from bigger issues

Is it? This doesn't seem like an obvious conclusion to me, and isn't this just another way to frame "zero sum" thinking? i.e. there's only so much oxygen, and it's better used over there on that other issue instead of here on this issue, with the implication being that using oxygen here detracts from other things over there.

Another way to frame this is that those other issues aren't seeing the desired progress for the same reasons these negative outcomes are starting to emerge: current strategy/tactics are not working effectively, and/or we aren't looking at a big enough picture. If this is true, conversations like this are necessary to address both, and to course correct as needed. A conversation about one should happen in the context of the bigger picture, and becomes a conversation about the other, raising awareness and moving the dialogue forward across both fronts.

I should be clear that I'm not taking a hard stance about this, but challenging the idea that we should steer clear of certain lines of discussion. I don't think we make progress until we expand our thinking to include an honest evaluation of actions taken and their effects (desired or otherwise), and narrowing the field of "acceptable" exploration seems like it can only be counterproductive.

> Do you know what the most popular source of news in this country is? Have you seen polling.

Not recently. What do you feel that these pieces of information indicate?

Millions of young men are knee deep in the "incel" and "manosphere" community. This community is transparently hateful towards women, views them as objects who have no free will and follow very simple rules, and they only exist so you can sleep with them and then they parasite off you forever.

Where is this supposed man hating community?

All those issues has equality issues that impacts both genders, and solutions that would benefit both men and women generally ignored. Roe vs Wade could be changed into a human rights discussion where every person has a right to demand consent to parenthood before being forced into it. The asymmetry of child birth has up to today dictated different amount of rights for men and women, both before and after birth. Unifying those into a single right, a human right, would bring those issues closer to each other and change how policy is created around them.

Women still get payed significantly less than men, and men work significantly more hours than women and at more dangerous jobs. Those two inequalities also hang together with inequalities related to non-paid work like parenting, and also that men are twice as likely to not have children than women (sometimes refereed to as reproductive inequality). Solving those require a lot of different initiatives that all work in unity to reduce inequality for both men and women.

Women are also at much higher risks of sexual assault, and men are at very higher risk of assault. Reducing sexual assault and assault involves solutions that are fairly similar, ie higher cohesion in society, more trust, and stronger social connections, social networks and social support among the population. Inequality in social economic status is also a strong indicator of high amount of sexual assaults and assault.

Could it be that equality is not the just nor fair answer?

A big silence in terms of women’s equality is found in the most drastic case in fields like the military, where even though women have been allowed and encouraged via advertisement, is still overwhelmingly male worldwide. It’s obvious that women’s bodies are not the same as men’s bodies in general… so why would we aim for full equality (aka identicalness) given these basic facts that men are not like women?

Also see pay and work: the more time a woman spends at her job is less time with her kids, which directly impacts society in many unfortunate ways, especially since men are still often the breadwinners, and even sociobiologically, the role of motherhood cannot equal fatherhood. So is work pay more about capitalism & lowering wages or more about a nebulous sense of empowerment?

In terms of assault and harassment: there is also the general culture on both genders of situations that encourage this. For example, things like clubbing, heavy drinking, proximity with strangers, hookup culture, a culture focused on individualism and bringing attention to oneself in terms of clothing, behavior, etc… all of these are factors.

Perhaps to obtain the outcomes people wish to see, “equality” is not the answer.

> 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 to be "manly" and "strong", to bottle up any problems and never show weakness. That's toxic masculinity. Toxic to ourselves.

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).

I don't think there's One True Definition of "toxic masculinity", and of course different people sometimes use it in different ways. However, I do think that defensiveness is the wrong response to the linked article, which clearly explains how men's own attitudes toward masculinity are harming young boys by ignoring their emotional needs.

It's not about "bashing" men, it's about helping boys, who are in obvious need of help. I'm not seeing the level of self-reflection that the article ought to stimulate. "Criticism", for lack of a better term (maybe critical reflection?), is necessary for progress. If any criticism is interpreted as "bashing" and a defensive refusal to self-correct, then no improvement or progress will ever be possible.

The comment about “bashing men” (not by me) was obviously not referring to the article, but to society at large.

How is it obvious that the OP's top-level comment on the article thread was not referring to the article? Why even bring it up in the context of the article?

I’d rather not have a debate between two people here, speculating on what a third person might have meant, when that third person is right here and you can comment to them directly. To me it was obvious that rich_sasha supported the article and wanted to comment on the larger issue in society. If you disagree then take it up with rich_sasha.

Um, this is kind of a bizarre response, because I did reply to rich_sasha's top-level comment, and then you replied to my reply to rich_sasha.

Anyway, it's not clear to me that rich_sasha supported the article.

Hello :)

It's not clear to me if I do, actually. The backdrop to all this is drastically dropping outcomes for men, including mental health. TFA, in broadest strokes possible, implies that a lack of emotional empathy for boys is to blame.

Who am I to argue with psychologists? But as a parent and, well, man, I think the anguish is coming precisely from the effort to reinvent masculinity, banish the "bad" bits like competitiveness or assertiveness. Wherever I look, and I'm happy with my life, I see celebrations of women, complaints that there aren't enough women in key positions and so on - many of these valid! But I'm a white guy from someplace random, no one cares - and worse, a key pillar of my happiness and sense of worth, qualities such as bravery, cool-headedness, reliability, are discounted and mocked.

Now, if the white guy from someplace random is Warren Buffet, well, he'll be fine. But if it's an unemployed blue collar worker, no surprise he is in poor mental health. It's like getting a dog that likes to bark and run around, and sticking him in a small back yard, then wondering if he needs therapy.

I'll note that these dropping outcomes for men are a relatively new thing. Historically this was somewhat inflated by the suppression of outcomes for women, but IIUC this is not the whole story. So the past "toxic" upbringing of boys didn't, seemingly, cause that. Maybe it caused other issues, but not this.

I read an article by a leading feminist, whose name sadly escapes me. She wrote, candidly and seemingly without seeing the irony, how feminism managed to suppress the bad bits of masculinity and patriarchy - which she thought was good - but still needs to invent a new role for men in the society, and that's the next challenge for feminism.

This article smells to me a bit like that. Yes, boys need emotional support, but it has to be boys-specific. They need space to grow up as boys, with boyish attributes. To learn what character traits and decisions lead to good and bad outcomes. They need schools that cater to their needs, not in some condescending manner, but as a matter of equality. Hugs and kisses and listening - that too. But I don't see that denied to boys these days. But oh boy, so to speak, are they denied their masculinity!

...so do I agree with it? Not sure. But clearly it made me write a lot!

> Hello :)

> It's not clear to me if I do, actually.

Thanks for your measured response!

> qualities such as bravery, cool-headedness, reliability, are discounted and mocked

They're mocked? I guess I don't see that.

> But if it's an unemployed blue collar worker, no surprise he is in poor mental health.

Of course. But isn't that an economic problem?

> So the past "toxic" upbringing of boys didn't, seemingly, cause that. Maybe it caused other issues, but not this.

Right. IMO the two issues are largely tangential. I understand that a lot of men are disgruntled, but feminism seems to me like just a scapegoat. The economy has increasingly become globalized yet centralized, benefiting a small percentage of people while leaving a lot of others behind.

> Yes, boys need emotional support, but it has to be boys-specific

Sure. The article is clear that boys need emotional support specifically from their dads, who are effectively role models.

>to bottle up any problems and never show weakness. That's toxic masculinity. Toxic to ourselves.

Women have a strong expectation for men to be this way too. Ask a room full of men their experience with being totally emotionally candid with their SO and you'll hear the same "she left me" refrain ad-nauseam. Go look up the reddit threads when this topic comes up, the comment volume is insane. Many guys reading this have their own story too, I know I do.

But I don't even blame women either. They are just acting by natural instinct. And so are men. I think it's a fools errand to try and uproot instinct.

> Women have a strong expectation for men to be this way too.

Agreed. Although I would say that mothers tend to be more emotionally available than fathers to their sons. The problem is that "momma's boy" is considered an insult.

(Incidentally, there's been some discussion in the comments to this article about divorce and child custody, i.e., which parent should get custody. But nobody seems to be discussing which parent the child would prefer to live with.)

Regarding women's attitudes toward men's emotional needs, there's likely a crucial distinction between "son" and "sexual partner", where neediness is much more acceptable in the former.

> I think it's a fools errand to try and uproot instinct.

Disagreed. What separates humans from the rest of the animals are civilization, rationality, science. We should aspire to more, not less.

> We inherited a world where for many generations, men were hostile to women. It was unfair and needed rectifying.

Perhaps in an American/European centric view of the world. I would heavily challenge/reject that assumption across the globe.

Universally? No one can say that, but at large, men have been hostile to women in most cultures including most of the modern non-western societies: China, India, Korea, Japan, Middle East, South & Central America, Russia, etc.

There are exceptions, but to pretend that they are relevant to current public health crisis is a red herring at best.

As a Middle Easterner, we reject that notion.

How is middle-eastern not hostile to women? Can you share this perspective? AFAIK women don't even have the right to show their skin in most of middle-east.

We don't see showing skin as a right, and that applies to both men or women, with respective differences of course. We're a conservative traditional society. We're well aware that our values don't align with the liberal and secular views, and we reject the labels they use on us. Reducing a complex topic to just showing skin or a few points that are always repeated blindly up by the adversary is overly simplistic, and frankly, naive. The picture they try to paint is that our countries are somehow completely oppressing women, making their lives miserable and unhappy, and that they are treated as cattle or something. All that is absolute nonsense.

Showing skin is just an example to illustrate how ridiculous the situation is. The burden is on you to show that your society is just. I think that Islam have the concept of “putting things in the right place” (iirc its adl).

Anyway my point is that I am open to the argument that man and woman have different “place” and thus have different rights. Perhaps this is just and result in more prosperous society? But I think the onus in on you to prove this claim.

Instead, you just lie by asking someone that can’t reveal their opinion what their opinion is. Technically, the punishment for apostasy (and thus a single prayer) is death, well its kinda hard to be honest in this situation isn’t it? Women can’t divorce their husband easily. Homosexuality is forbidden. You have to slaughter an animal with cruelty by slitting their throat. There are better more painless ways to do it but no, you can’t do that because reasons. Modern slaughterhouses aren’t necessarily better but to claim that we can’t make any more progress because the religion mandates that a certain blood vessels need to be cut is ridiculous. So many ridiculous things that you can’t let go of and can’t make progress in because a certain someone in the middle ages said so. They didn’t consider how fasting would work in the north pole did they?

I don’t have to respect your religion and i am free to ridicule the ridiculous. Religious people are in the same category as flat earthers and nut jobs as far as i am concerned.

The burden isn't on us, you're the one making the weird and incorrect claims about our society.

It has also been shown that in secular liberal societies that instituted and implemented egalitarian policies, both genders separated instead of converged, so there you go.

And I didn't lie, not sure what prompted that accusation. I'm not going to explain all the faults, fallacies, and false claims in your post on this site (all of which are trivial to address), it's not the avenue for it. Your last paragraph comes off as very defensive as well. If you're interested, feel free to reach out to me in my email, it's in my profile.

>But increasingly, we fixed it by normalizing hostility to men

What evidence do you have of this? All my friends who want healthy views of women consider me a valid human being, deserving of respect and care, even though I have a penis. Sure, lots of young men are glomming onto this absurd train of hatred, that women or "femoids" actually naturally enjoy rape and other horseshit, but they are being told this stuff by adult men, who clearly and overtly do not consider women to be equals, or deserving of anything but nonconsensual sex.

How the hell do you blame the toxic masculinity problem, caused by assholes like Jordan Peterson, Andrew tate, Nick Fuentes, "Fresh and fit podcast" etc, on women asking to be treated like people. It is not women driving the hatred against women, it is morally bankrupt individuals quite literally profiting off boys who were never told that they shouldn't be trying to pressure their girlfriend into sex, or kids who have no idea how to treat women being told "here's a simple mental model" that surely explains all their problems, they just have to be fit enough or attractive enough and then they will get the sex they "deserve".

Meanwhile, all these "Manosphere" influencers seem to be really against anyone being gay, or anyone being trans, and also for some reason are great friends with actual neo-nazis, and I don't remember those people being very pro-women's rights.

What's interesting is that I recently watched The Red Pill Documentary. I recall when it was released that the director, Cassie Jaye a self professed feminist was pilloried absolutely everywhere for giving a voice to Mens Rights Activists. The actual documentary is quite milquetoast.

What it is, is her engaging with the ideas around how in some ways men are disadvantaged in modern society. It's fascinating to me that the fundamental issue in the red pill is, whenever someone tries to point out where society is failing boys and men no-one listens and they get shouted down.

As pointed out by Corrine Barraclough, of the Australian tabloid newspaper The Daily Telegraph, who said in her review of the film that "the message of The Red Pill is compassion" and the film made her "wonder why feminists tried so hard to silence this crucial conversation."

That was not my experience. The message was bitterness, and there is a reason their lot is poorly perceived.

Try /r/menslib for a healthier discussion that isn’t centred around blaming women for everything.

They mean the message of the movie not the community.

Correct. I am not and have not been involved with any of those communities. I saw the documentary was free on YouTube and was interested in watching it because I recalled the controversy over it.

I will queue it up and see for myself

> that isn’t centred around blaming women for everything.

Without clicking the link, I just know it's gonna be the patriarchy/masculinity, right?

Kind of? It’s a bit of everything, because the place fosters civil discussion. It’s a pleasamt place to talk it out, which is the whole point.

If it fosters civil discussion because everything is discussed through the same lens that you agree with, which is the exact same view point as 4000 other feminist subreddits, then I'm not sure how it would add anything.

> I just know it's gonna be the patriarchy/masculinity, right?

I don't think a single person blames masculinity for mens problems. Did you by any chance hear the word toxic masculinity and assume all masuclinity was under attack because that is not the same?

Also, ngl your comment reads like "ohh why am I bleeding, without checking with a doctor I am gonna guess the answer is the knife lodged in my back, right?" Like the sarcastic tone is there but the answer is still right. Post-sarcasm is a 10 year old concept but damn your comment is almost museum worthy.

Name a positive masculine trait, something which men tend to have and women tend not to (should go without saying - it's not a "masculine" trait otherwise).

I look forward to your rendition of 4'33".

> Name a positive masculine trait, something which men tend to have and women tend not to

This question is wrong. I mean, in the sense that a valid english sentence does not mean a valid question. See for example "which colour is the number 4" or "how many notes does the capital of france have". They are syntactically valid questions but have no real meaning.

There are no masculine traits that men have and women dont, that is not what masculinity even means. What traits, behaviours and modes of expression are related to masculinity (in western culture) are things such as leadership, honor, aggresion, competitiveness. There is a long history as to why this is the case, some cultural, some historical some arguable biological essentialist. But just because testosterone makes you more aggresive, and more competitive does not mean women are not, or can not be, competitive or ambitious.

In the same veing that feminine traits like emotional regulation, teammwork, compassion etc are not something men do not have. It is not like men only do individual sports and women only do team sports.

in other words, pitting them as exclussionary is framing the entire conversation wrong, and therefore even haviing this as an assumption "should go without saying - it's not a "masculine" trait otherwise" makes the entire question wrong.

From false you can prove anything, is an old adage in formal logic F -> any(P) . but you cannot, and should not form a basis of "masculine traits are those not expressed by women", but "masculine traits are the cultural aspects related to masculinity in a specific culture". Now you can define masculinity and time period and culture and get an answer. But the definition of "not expressed by women" is just wrong from the offset.

You've attempted to subtly rephrase the question - I said "tend" for a reason, thus I will sadly have to discard the rest of your post. In fact, it puzzles me why you bothered writing a wall of text here, surely you didn't believe this wouldn't be seen through instantly?

> You've attempted to subtly rephrase the question

I didn't. I just pointed out that definying masculinity as exclusionary from women is wrong by definition. Pointed out a number of traits that are currently considered masculine in modern western society and also pointed out how despite their definition we see tons of overlap on those formal categories.

The part I objected too was defining masculinty as "should go without saying - it's not a "masculine" trait otherwise".

To give a very obvious example. Blue is masculine and pink is feminine, this is inarguable however less than 100 years ago the opposite was true. It does goes with saying that masucline is not something men show and women tend not to. Because masculinity is not defined on biological essentialism, it is largely cultural.

By starting with a false assumption "It cannot be masculine if men do not showcase this trait more than women" you can come to wrong conclusions, because from false you can prove anything.

You did, you even replied for a moment removing the "tend" with an imaginary quote:

> You said tend sure, but still defined masculine as "something women do not have". See the lack of Tend there.

Tend was always there in my comment - twice.

But even excepting that, there are still flaws in your argument.

Firstly, my question was not related to biological essentialism. You can define "masculine" and "feminine" in a cultural context and still run into the same problem - which masculine traits, in the current cultural environment, are positive?

Secondly, we can trivially see from your examples that toxic and positive are flip-sides of the same thing. Traits you might define as positive, e.g. competitiveness and leadership require a degree of stoicism which would, in modern feminist terms, also be "toxic". Leaders of businesses can't be too concerned with putting their competitors out of a job, you can't lead an army (never mind fight in one) as a quivering wreck.

> But even excepting that

Let's call it a misunderstanding, and I apologise, I thought the part within parentheses was a bait and switch and I shouldn't have expected bad faith.

> you can define "masculine" and "feminine" in a cultural context and still run into the same problem - which masculine traits, in the current cultural environment, are positive?

That was already in my original comment, but traits like leadership, honor, strength, bravery, competence, intelligence, humour are all in some form or another in western culture male coded. Those are all insanely positive, and a real treat to not have to constantly be asserted.

> we can trivially see from your examples that toxic and positive are flip-sides of the same thing. Traits you might define as positive, e.g. competitiveness and leadership require a degree of stoicism which would, in modern feminist terms, also be "toxic".

So this is an important point. Yes, almost any trait CAN be positive or negative. Being competitive and wanting to win is good, training hard, pointing our flaws and working on them is good. Shouting at your coworkers, punching them and treating them like dogshit isn't, regardless if Michael Jordan thinks it is what made the chicago bulls win or not.

Also no modern feminist believes stoicism is inherently toxic. Stoicism is in many ways the basis of CBT which is considered by most modern psychologists as a cool tool to work on stuff and many modern feminists constantly talk about CBT. Youtube stoicism where a bald dude tells you to treat women and business as a goal, shut your feelings out and be an unfeeling terminator that only thinks of hustling and business is toxic, but calling that stoicism might make you rich because you can have infinite energy by using Marcus Aurelius spinning in his grave as a source of energy.

> Leaders of businesses can't be too concerned with putting their competitors out of a job

This is entirely based on the wrong assumption that the economy is a winner takes all market. Which it isn't. Yes you cannot think of your competition if you want to be an oil baron. But most software companies open source work, which benefits their competitiors because there are added benefits to strong ecosystems, healthy competition and interoperability of systems. See NATO having interoperable munition despite every country working in secret in the design of their own planes, tanks etc. If america (leaders in business in this example) sought to conquer the market, yes they would, but we would all have worse optics as France is a world leader.

> But just because testosterone makes you more aggresive, and more competitive does not mean women are not, or can not be, competitive or ambitious.

People always jump to biology when there isn't much to support a cultural observation. Often than not conclusions based on hormones tend to be false.

Testosterone makes people aggresive as estrogen make people hysterical. The trouble with this model is that when tested (within levels that occur in nature), Testosterone does not make people aggressive nor does estrogen make people hysterical. Hormones are about sexual reproduction and neither aggression or hysteria provide benefits in that domain.

What Testosterone (using more modern research) does (among other things) is to increase behavior towards maintaining social status based on whatever social behavior has in the individual person culture been imprinted. To use other words, Testosterone trigger learned behaviors in specific circumstances in order to maximize chances of sexual reproduction in specific cultural environments.

Estrogen too is significant more complex and research on this subject is even more spotty. There are multiple forms of Estrogen, and the effect is generally about its proportional relation to other hormones.

The conversation is very technical and I just wanted to point towards a "simple" example that most people can relate to.

Yes the behavioural effect of hormones goes beyond simple "aggresion up" nonsense, however it is reported that feelings of loneliness, aggresion and hornyness are reported in many transmen when starting the test treatments. Between this observation and the memories of male puberty many cis men have I think using aggresion as a proxy to describe some of perhaps bio causes of our societal understanding of masculinity is not a terrible example.

I used pink/blue as an example of non bio masculine and feminine traits that point towards the core issue of masculinity being entirely a social construct and the bio argument being almost irrelevant when discussing the whole thing. I just thought it was a simple example, but I do concede that hormone effects on the body are multiple, complicated and in many ways misunderstood so perhaps it was not a great choice.

> There are no masculine traits that men have and women dont

This is not true. There are obvious traits as humans aren’t unique in biology. It’s not to say that these things are unique to women or men, but that they are more common.

Male swans are larger than female swans. This doesn’t mean that all male swans are larger than all female swans. But it’s a masculine trait.

There are obvious traits that are masculine and feminine and some are positive or negative. And some were more positive or negative historically and in the future.

This doesn’t mean that one sex is superior to another in general.

All humans have equal rights to dignity even though different sexes and genders have specific advantages and disadvantages.

But just showing the height differences of men and women is pretty clear. That was more useful 800 years ago when people wore armor and fought wars and less useful in the future when people work in space.

> Male swans are larger than female swans. This doesn’t mean that all male swans are larger than all female swans. But it’s a masculine trait.

So it depends on definition here right. The trait "taller" is masculine with respect to female swans. But Height, is not something that women do not have.

Dutch people are taller than the rest of the planet, that does not make Dutch women more masculine than American men. hence my point that something that is masculine cannot be defined as something women do not have.

> But Height, is not something that women do not have.

Height is not masculine. Higher height than women is masculine. The average man is taller than the average woman.

The average Dutch man is taller than the average Dutch woman.

Traits doesn’t mean only one sex has it. It just means a difference.

Both men and women have testosterone and estrogen. But the levels are the traits difference between them.

I’m not sure what you’re arguing as the request was to name something that men are better at than women, some characteristic. You should be able to do that as it’s simple.

It doesn’t seem that you’re arguing that there’s no difference. Just some weird semantic debate with yourself about what “trait” means.

> The average man is taller than the average woman.

Yes, but that was kinda my point. "Taller" is a comparative trait not an intrinsic one. If you are the last person on earth, things like your height, your test level, how you keep your beard etc remain. But you are not taller than anyone.

> Traits doesn’t mean only one sex has it

That is how the dude above me defined it, hence my complaint, thanks for agreeing with me here.

> But the levels are the traits difference between them.

Yes, but also those traits individually are not enough. Similar to Species in an animal group, what we look for are clusters. Clusters of traits that are masculine/feminine etc makes us read a human as feminine or masculine.

> It doesn’t seem that you’re arguing that there’s no difference.

My argument is that masculine and feminine are mostly made up social constructs that we mold based on many times silly stuff. Like people in croatia used to ride a horse with a necktie to not get swea on their shirts, and the king of france liked it so much he copied it but made it expensive with silk, then rich twats in france followed and 400 years later all men in banking wear ties, as peak masculine work uniform. There is nothing "masculine" about a french king copying a necktie and yet culturally it is enshrined.

So I was arguing that the position that masculine is something women tend not to do/or have is wrong. That is not how masculine or feminine things start, they start at random many times and culturally stick.

The following seem positive to me, and more commonly possessed by men:

Strength, self-confidence, wealth, position of responsibility.

> I look forward to your rendition of 4'33".

Holy shit you absolutely NAILED their response.

Loudest rendition of 4'33 ever

It's a honeypot. It prioritizes feminism / viewing issues under the lens of feminism, over solving the issues boys/men have. In bad cases, the advice given is downright self-destructive, as the political/social climate is not there for individual men to act the way that sub would recommend.

So yes, you're correct.

Yup! https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/wiki/meta/profeminist

> We use many of the tools created by feminism to discuss and address men's issues.

They hit every feminist buzzword in existence here, including patriarchy: https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/wiki/glossary

This place appears about as toxic for men as any place I could ever imagine. I feel sorry for anyone tricked into joining that community.

Sorry, any mention of "biological essentialism" is explicitly banned there. Unfortunately, a lot of biology is indeed objective essentialist. It's a terrible subreddit made for people who think that the solution to every problem that men face is to simply go read "Come as You Are" or some other shit from Bell Hooks.

So biology says tomato is a fruit. In the kitchen we consider it a vegetable.

Could the same be true for the whole gender discussion? That biology gets side-stepped in the name of common sense (that does not answer questions regarding toilets, sports competitions and mis-pronouning; but it would give us some space without totally invalidating biology)

But the whole tension is over sports:

Do we base sports on the biological reality of sex or mute our awareness of that objective fact[1] to preference “identity” — even if the outcome is females[2] no longer having a space to compete?

[1] - Humans like other apes (and mammals) are sexually dimorphic.

[2] - Female is the scientific term referring to the sex.

I think in sports we should "call a tomato a fruit" where at work/school/sociallife we should call a tomato a vegetable is the tomato wishes to be called a vegetable. :)

It does not make sense in sports. Otherwise the women's leagues would become trans-leagues.

> But the whole tension is over sports:

which is stupid, because at least with professional sports it deals with 0,001% of population. And in some rando backyard leagues no one cares. Really bad hill to die on.

The issue is that if you get rid of the male/female bracket - you’re going to never see women win almost any sports at all. As soon as men go through puberty - most women are at a significant biological disadvantage. Turns out, some women like sports and like to compete. They don’t want to compete against men because it’s very lopsided and unfair due to biology.

I don't suggest that. I suggest denying trans women opportunity to (professionally) compete. I believe this is inherently discriminatory, but better than all other alternatives.

I also believe this is 99% smaller problem than anyone talking about it believes.

They can still compete with the other men. The only difference is that they won't get the affirmation they crave from competing against actual female women. But that's their own personal problem to deal with in their own minds.

Warning, if you are a man with low self-esteem do not visit that sub.

If you need an example:

"I'm nearing 30. I've internalized the "leave women alone at all times" and "men are trash" rhetoric so hard that I almost consider myself a burden to them simply by existing. I've gone out of my way to minimize interactions with women because I've catastrophized that my mere presence is bothersome."

https://old.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/13ov3wh/spare_a_ki...

I've heard conspiracy that 3rd wave feminism is just a tool for filtering out weak men like this guy.

It wasn't that many years ago people did word bubble (frequencies) of reddit subreddits, and both Feminist and Mens Rights Activists subs was very similar. The most common word in the Feminist one was "Men", and the most common word for Mens Rights Activists was Women". The second most common word was also symmetric, Women in the first and Men in the other.

It is not symmetric to assume that all female equality issues and all male equality issues must be the fault of men. People are human. Faults in human society is from humans, and humans are 50% women and 50% men.

/r/menslib is a honey pot by radical feminist super mods who delete absolutely everything that is even remotely not "xyz, but women still have it worse". It's probably one of the most censored subreddits, which is quite an achievement. Instead, take a look at /r/leftwingmaleadvocates for some actual discussion.

The director did a good Tedx talk[0] if anyone would like a tl;dr.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WMuzhQXJoY

Just FYI, TEDx is no guarantee at all about the credentials or worthiness of a talk:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)#TEDx

> TEDx are independent events similar to TED in presentation. They can be organized by anyone who obtains a free license from TED, and agrees to follow certain principles. TEDx events are required to be non-profit, but organizers may use an admission fee or commercial sponsorship to cover costs.

Generally speaking, fame is no guarantee for credentials neither.

There's a way to judge the merit of someone's words, it's called listening.

TED proper is just rich people playing gentlemen science again. There's been a lot of pseudoscience and self help gurus in those talks.

> Just FYI, TEDx is no guarantee at all about the credentials or worthiness of a talk

This is true, but that's true of all talks (and credentials). It's also no guarantee that I said it was a good talk. But here we are.

I don't know if this was considered in the film (I haven't seen it), but the difference between how men's and women's issues are treated is quite obvious to me. It's due to an imbalance in the care matrix.

If we think broadly about who cares about whom, it goes like this:

* Men care about women because they want to mate with them,

* Women care about women because it's in their own best interest to look after each other (men only care about them for selfish reasons),

* Men don't care about men because it's not in their own best interest to do so, in fact it's advantageous to defeat other men,

* Women don't care about men because it's not in their own best interest to do so.

Essentially, women support each other, men compete with each other.

Yep.

Gender differences in automatic in-group bias: why do women like women more than men like men?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15491274/

A better title for that would have been ... why do women like more women than men like more men?

In every species female is the selector, that's how natural selection works.

Generally in a group of healthy young population with 50% sex ratio, about half of the men are selected, and they help eachother.

But in the online dating / birth control age this ratio has gone more extreme, and there's no real ,,parenting advice'' or emotional need support that can help, just accepting the new normal for everyone, and competing harder.

>In every species female is the selector, that's how natural selection works.

Maybe that is true if you are only talking about mammals. But it is certainly not true in general.

Here is an example directly from Wikipedia:

"In the size dimorphic wolf spider Tigrosa helluo, food-limited females cannibalize more frequently. Therefore, there is a high risk of low fitness for males due to pre-copulatory cannibalism, which led to male selection of larger females for two reasons: higher fecundity and lower rates of cannibalism."[0]

This means that in this species of spider is the male who applies the selective pressure.

You can look into sexual monomorphism/dimorphism to find more examples.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism

It appears you and me came to the same conclusion.

The only solution I see to this problem is bringing down the value of reproduction through technology. Think artificial wombs.

That should hopefully lessen the social pressure of men to compete.

It's not artificial wombs. But you can have children through surrogacy.

https://www.thefp.com/p/motherloading-inside-the-surrogacy

It is somewhat similar but it doesn't have big enough of an impact in this regard. Still too expensive/illegal.

Men don't really compete due to a conscious desire to reproduce, though. It simply pleases men to have more power and more access to more women. The only reason is because they are descended from men who had power and access to women.

This seems to be a common misunderstanding of how natural selection works. Giraffes don't select other giraffes consciously because of their ability to reach higher leaves. They select them unconsciously simply because they are attracted to giraffes with longer necks. And they are attracted to giraffes with longer necks because they are descended from giraffes who were attracted to giraffes with longer necks and those giraffes were able to reach higher leaves and could slightly out-compete the other giraffes.

There is an amazing movie about this, an italian horro comedy, recommended watch in many ways.

I feel the same about "The Red Pill" movie and couldn't see how the criticism aligned with the reality. What I do see often is that entrenched actors and groups will attack, with specially reserved ardor, any artist or production taking a position of understanding and shared interest between groups or actors that are meant to be at odds.

With this movie, the critics could have said the filmmaker, Alex Lee Moyer, avoided the most misogynistic fringe that could be associated with the Men's Rights movement and been correct but that would undermine the safe thing to say, that the _entire_ Men's Rights movement is fringe and misogynistic.

I'm not especially interested in Men's Rights but I thought the movie was a refreshing surprise, commend the risk taken by the creator, and hope people continue to take risks when the evidence leads them into the unexpected.

PS: The film maker went on to make "TFW No GF" which followed and explored lonely, young men. Searching "Alex Lee Moyer", the second result is a Rolling Stone article on this movie with the headline, "‘TFW No GF’ Is a Deeply Uncomfortable Portrayal of Incel Culture". Here are just a couple quotes that show how much bull this director has had thrown her way for her troubles:

> This non-judgmental approach has made many viewers deeply uncomfortable, with writer Eric Langberg tweeting that the film is “one of the most irresponsible docs I’ve ever seen,” leading to a barrage of abuse from incels on Twitter.

> But even if you believe that objectivity is the best approach to capturing a subculture marked by misogyny, violence, and racism, it’s hard to accept the argument that the film’s relationship with its subjects is wholly objective in the first place.

Clearly, how dare she go and explore this sub-culture by meeting and filming some of its members, willing or not, without reminding the audience that these are bad people that say bad things on the internet and laugh at bad jokes.

Don't think Alex Lee Moyer had a thing to do with the Red Pill.

> couldn't see how the criticism aligned with the reality.

I think it’s the same phenomenon of people skipping the article and going straight to the comments where they make statements based on the headline and their own existing contexts.

By the time they learn the content, if they ever do, they dig in and try to defend their positions.

I think this is caused by the incentive is for karma/whuffie/whatever rather than actual knowledge and benefit to fellow man. So macro is that the first to comment gets the most points. And everything else is downstream results.

So people assume the doc is about bad people doing bad things and talk like that. It doesn’t help that it also falls into the complex zone of “Hitler loved dogs” where people who truly are jerks also are into redpill stuff, but likely a very small percent of the total number. So it’s easy to make reductive comments of “this jerk is into redpill let’s talk about him and get more clicks and ignore the thousands of men blowing their brains out [0]”

[0] about 80% of US suicides in the 2021 were men, https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/suicide-rate-by-ge... The rate different isn’t as stark globally but still much higher for men than women, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide

Frankly, I'm beginning to succumb to the belief that even knowing the truth, or attempting to find it, is a lose-lose activity. First, I have to dig for it and evaluate the probabilities, credentials, incentives, and context until I'm confident. Second, I have to obscure my informed opinion.

While they're ignored up to the point they do blow their brains out, they're then a welcome addition to the number of gun deaths, which is often used interchangeably when referring to statistics describing gun violence.

Correction, thanks to dri_ft:

The film maker responsible for The Red Pill is Cassie Jaye.

Alex Lee Moyer was behind TFW No GF.

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 & counting the male attendees, I can’t say for sure that all were fathers but it roughly balanced the # of kids.

Did you communicate to the organizer about this?

In modern society we're normally conditioned to avoid confrontation, but it's the best way to initiate a proactive solution.

The problem with confrontation is people tend to start acting as if they’re playing a role that they don’t know how to leave. As though they’ve seen in movies and places where two sides get ramped up, confront one another, but there’s usually not an equally powerful resolution to model. It’s just: get angry and be blatant/audacious. Notably in movies violent resolutions are much more common as the ultimate resolution, too, and that doesn’t leave much as a compromise or alternative-so just stay pissed/audacious/etc.

I don’t know if I have a suggestion to OP. One option would be to offer to contribute to buying the flowers next time. That’s a soft way to engage and remind there’s others in the audience not being celebrated. Personally, I’d probably be put off by the whole thing and just let them have their moments. Or bring dark chocolate. Chocolate because theobromine acts a little like a happy “everything’s good” buzz for people and men might tend towards dark chocolate over milk. But bring some milk chocolate too-shows you’re being inclusive.

Nothing to be done at this point: the event is over and my child is done with that school.

My daughter's teacher this year just straight blanks me at the parent consultations. Like, it's uncomfortable. Speaking to some other fathers it's not just me. But I am still undecided over whether it's worth complaining as her holding her hands up and saying mea culpa seems somewhat unlikely and I feel I would quickly become the bad guy.

> My daughter's teacher [...] it's not just me

Maybe it was just her though. I'd talk to the school director over this.

You're not wrong but at the same time she otherwise seems to do a good job with my daughter which I'm keen not to in any way get in the way of by making this about me.

It's not about you, though; it's about all of the fathers that will follow you. Does your partner see this dynamic as well? Will she support you by redirecting conversations to force your inclusion? That's where I would start, if you don't want to throw her under the bus with her admin.

Your point is correct of course and I have considered that. Where my partner stands is complicated because I share parents evenings with my ex, whose support I can not rely on to put it mildly.

She is teaching your daughter that treating you (or other men) this way is acceptable. I think it's worth the intervention for that reason.

OTOH I was the only male in my daughter's classes whatsapp group for parents. Most fathers seemed to be glad the mother was handling that shit.

And I doubt I was the only divorced father with shared custody.

What is a parents' WhatsApp group for?

From things like "my son left his math book in school, can someone send a picture of page 23 so we can prepare for the test" to "my daughter didn't write down the homework assignments; can someone send them" to organizing the class outing, discussing general issues with teachers or the schools organization.

Doesn't this just delay learning about responsibility and consequences until later, when the consequences might actually be real? Parents getting this involved in the children's learning seems really, really weird to me.

We are talking primary school, when kids don't have their own phone/computer and it is unrelated to taking responsibility and consequences. If my daughter ask me to relay a question/message because she didn't wrote well / forgot a detail, she is actually taking responsibility for it.

This is the content I've seen so far, limited to primary school children.

I'm German so my view may not be the prevailing one in the US, but I see my role as including making sure that the kids get a proper education. This includes making sure they are doing their homework and are revising for tests.

The consequence of forgetting (or "forgetting" ;) ) to write down their homework assignments or their books is not a work-free afternoon, an inconsequential negative remark by their teacher or a slightly worse test score (I'd argue that at primary school age consequences have to follow directly; a delayed test score does not register).

The first time it happened, they got a friendly expansion of the expectations. The second time an expression of disappointment. There hasn't been a third time.

Also I was glad they could ask for anything they missed when my girls were still learning the language and were spending most of their class time trying to grasp what they were told in class.

There are loads of reasons its useful for parents to communicate which have no bearing whatsoever on the long term psychological health of the child. I feel you might be reading a little too much into the implications of having that channel that simply aren't founded.

Like: My son loses his sun hat. I could make a point about personal responsibility and let him get sunburnt for a few weeks until he saves up his non-existent pocket money to pay for a replacement, or I could just ask if anyone has it and find out that Joe accidentally took it home and that Joe's mum is going to leave it on the fence post at drop-off.

Why is this weird? I can make sure my child faces consequences for this myself. If I don’t get the learning material on time, the consequence is that my child doesn’t learn what they need to, has a slightly harder time keeping up in the next day’s lesson. I don’t want my child’s punishment to be “insert obstacles to learning”.

Also that might not even be an very unpleasant experience for them. In my kid’s school the teacher has plenty of other things to deal with so their practice is generally to have kids do the missed work quickly in the classroom and move on. I’m not sure my child is going to learn much about responsibility that way.

Instead, I take the time to make sure my child is able to get their work done on time. But that costs me time. This is where the consequences and learning responsibility comes in. Because I value my time, and the ways I make my children compensate me for my time when they have been irresponsible is much more memorable what they’d experience being unprepared in school.

Well it is useful at primary school when kids don't have phones. If they miss one day of school or didn't record correctly an information from the teacher parents can ask others about homework tasks, missed lessons, etc.

Also the parents delegate can relay useful info from the teacher's as the only one who has direct immediate (without taking an appointment) through that channel. State is maintaining an app/website where teachers can send messages to parents but while some do it correctly, other teachers ignore it completely.

It is also interesting when some parents find out they have an issue with a specific teacher. Like this year one of my daughter had one lazy one and parents expressed their concerns to the delegate and debated on a common message to send to school.

To help Meta collect more information on everybody and their children.

I wish people were using xmpp, tox, briar or jami but that is the way it is. Network effect.

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.

Value is in the eye of the beholder.

Granted, I absolutely hear what you are saying. Not to search very far, I have cousins, who managed to get bamboozled their father was an absent father, because he was a trucker and clearly did not love them enough ( apart from ,naturally, securing their future several times over, but as kids they could not understand it -- and their mother certainly was keen to capitalize on it ).

> New research shows that when fathers are present and emotionally invested in children’s lives, they are more likely to develop a stronger sense of self-worth and excel in everything from school to relationships.

Regardless of the debate on how tough (or not) love should be, the absent fathers issue seems like something concrete and impactful that we should be trying to address.

How do you even address something like that? Even if you paid each father $10k to stick around to age 18, that doesn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t become domestic abusers, suicide victims, or would even be good role models. It’s possible that father presence for kids is only so valuable because the only fathers that stick around are the ones that care.

A good start is to not beg the question.

Are you doing something other than assuming that 'caring' is the primary factor?

> only so valuable because the only fathers that stick around are the ones that care.

Last time I looked at data about this, it appeared that even a poor father who was present was better than no having a father in the home. If I remember right it was measuring the likeliness of a teenager to end up in prison. If there was a segment of fathers that were worse than not having a father, I don't think it shows up in any study I've seen.

Gilder's Wealth and Poverty book cites a lot of studies and examples showing how society has changed in ways making it harder for dads to stick around with everything from how drug policies are enforced to the way that welfare resources are allocated.

> Last time I looked at data about this, it appeared that even a poor father who was present was better than no having a father in the home. If I remember right it was measuring the likeliness of a teenager to end up in prison. If there was a segment of fathers that were worse than not having a father, I don't think it shows up in any study I've seen.

I think their point is that those bad fathers don't show up, because they don't care about their children.

> It’s possible that father presence for kids is only so valuable because the only fathers that stick around are the ones that care.

Even if this would be the case, we should allow those fathers to spend more time with their kids. For example, it is very difficult for a man to find a part-time job. Most companies take "I also want to spend some time with my kids" as "I don't really care about the work I do". You can care about the work without wanting to devote your entire life to it.

4 day work week, should be more common for this case here. If it were offered, I would take it, even if just for a few years while the kids are little.

You're looking myopically at the issue; absent fathers is less likely to be a choice, but an economic consequences of income inequality, along with the other economies that arise because of this.

You're looking at the drug war, high school graduation rates, ability to find a job, attached to teenage pregnancy, lack of commute options, and below living wage - likely connected to public health issues including water treatment, sewage, inneficient or unsafe homes (hook worms, sceptic, HVAC)

So instead of a 1 time $10k (which is delusional) think marijuana being legal, healthcare and childcare being affordable, public transport - or at least not a food desert in a walkable community, and $15+/hr 30+ hour weeks at a single employer.

It used to be done by promoting marriage and stigmatizing divorce. Now, that has obvious costs for the parents in many cases and certainly isn't always the right approach because of problems like domestic abuse.

But the good of the children is part of why past societies have incentivized keeping parents together to care for their children and maybe we've gone a bit too far in the other direction, away from a happier medium.

> It used to be done by promoting marriage and stigmatizing divorce.

Stigmatizing divorce does absolutely nothing to make fathers emotionally invested in their kids. If anything, it can make them resentful of their kids.

The article was about how boys need emotional support from their father. A father who is present and married but still demands that his son "man up" and bottle up every problem is of no help.

It's really hard to be emotionally invested when you're totally absent from most of their lives, though. It doesn't work the other way, i.e. it won't fix a bad father, but there are plenty of guys who could do better by literally just showing up.

> It's really hard to be emotionally invested when you're totally absent from most of their lives, though.

Why would you be totally absent from most of their lives?

Divorce frequently leads to being absent at least half of the time, possibly more.

Yes, but that still leaves the other half. And the phone is always there, not to mention mode modern communication technology.

A parent doesn't need to be around all the time. In fact, they shouldn't be around all the time, otherwise they're "helicoptering".

There are plenty of men who have no gross moral fault, who are still excluded from their kids' lives by a wife who divorces him and gets custody. Stigmatizing divorce would help that. In divorces that occur in the US, close to 80% of the time it's by women; close to 90% when the woman is college-educated. The vast majority of divorces are not predicated on a gross moral fault by the man, but on unhappiness by the woman, growing apart, found a new guy, whatever. The woman in those cases is thus putting her own happiness above the wellbeing of her kids. So a stigmatization of divorce by society could work very well. It worked very well historically. Women are not more important than children. In fact, half of children are girls who also need fathers. And a woman-centric view of defining morality is just another demonstration of the problem of society's current disregard for men, boys, and the male experience.

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? Shouldn't we promote a less Hollywood-like picture of long lasting relationships? I have the feeling that we are trained too much to think that our "romance" and sex life should last forever. When - in reality - a good relationship transforms to something that is more similar to a good companionship (yes - you should like each other a lot, sure... but be less seeking for the thrill you might have had in the first year). Kids need stability - not parents living in their own unrealistic world.

I've never understood why there is a dichotomy presented in relationships like that - sure, 10 years into your marriage you might not be going at it like rabbits as you were in the first year, but there isn't any reason why parents can't provide stable environments for children _and_ have strong romantic relationships still. It takes very little to carve off some time for one another, and that continued investment in bonding with another in and of itself long term provides the stability children need.

> It takes very little to carve off some time for one another, and that continued investment in bonding with another in and of itself long term provides the stability children need.

Why is romanticism the only way to "invest in bonding"?

There seems to be a large subset (maybe very large?) of the population where the only way to bond on some level is sex.

I guess you don't have kids yet, emphasis on plural. They chip away bit by bit everything that makes a relationship a good one, sand in the fine gears that made people fall for each other in the first place. By far the biggest stressor in marriages (unless somebody else is actually raising your kids, be it grandparents or nannies).

Sure, you can, and should, keep working on repairs and rebuilding, but that's additional work on top of all additional work on top of actual work of living in modern society. Not everybody, always, has energy for that, and you need 2 for that or it just doesn't work. Hence the difference of what looks nice on paper and how things should be, and how they actually are.

> 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 or this will do damage to those kids.

Imagine going to work and telling a coworker that your marriage is a disaster, but that you and your wife are considering staying together for the sake of your kids. What would your coworkers say? Do any of us know anyone that we believe might tell us "hey, that's a good idea, and I hope it works out that way for you"?

It shows us where our priorities as a society and culture lie.

Even if someone could intellectually admit that this assertion of mine was correct, it has inconvenient implications. The larger culture war around us relies on the idea that children simply aren't important to a marriage.

Why would the end of a marriage end the father's emotional investment in and emotional availability to his sons?

It's not entirely his decision as to whether that investment or availability is called upon, there is the ex-wife's decisions, and others (e.g. court) that have bearing.

My parents' divorce was one of the best things to happen in my childhood.

Please expound.

Instead of having parents who regarded each other with something between disdain and seething resentment depending on the day of the week, they were much happier apart and I was able to build better relationships with each.

I also discovered that without my mom screaming at him several times a day, my dad was a much better person, and without my dad having the option of being a lazy sack of shit (to this day he has never changed a diaper), he decided to start actually trying at being a dad. I only wish they had divorced sooner.

Divorce is wonderful. I've known a lot of people who probably shouldn't have gotten married but not one single time have I known people who gotten divorced and though "gee they really should've stayed together".

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.

I think as a culture we need to normalise respect for both men and woman. Currently, in society violence against men is acceptable. You see it through articles like this[1] or in tv shows where it's acceptable for a woman to slap a man. Men in ads and tv shows are shown as helpless and clueless without their wives/girlfriends.

In modern media, woman are nearly always portrayed positively. Woman are always the 'girlboss', who need to show they are equal or superior to men. Practically, every male space has been feminised.

Current culture doesn't really respect Men.

[1] http://jezebel.com/294383/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-...

> Practically, every male space has been feminised.

Can you give some examples? I'm really struggling to understand this point.

It can be healthy for a family not to be together. Fetishizing stability and the nuclear family over happiness of the people in that family isn't necessarily a good solution to anything much.

Sure, a good relationship might not resemble the hollywood ideal very much, but "duty to the family" leads to misery for a lot of people, and kids don't grow up happy and well adjusted when mom and dad are very unhappy with their lives and each other.

As someone who grew up on shitty side of that research, I make it a point in my life to be the exact opposite for my son.

My father attempted to be the opposite of my grandfather and yet still remained very similar to him. Thankfully still an improvement over my grandfather. Not implying this is you too. Just thought the observation was interesting.

But, he tried. He made a conscience decision. That part matters most -- his intent. He did it for love.

Can you share a little more (anecdote) about what this means to you? <<As someone who grew up on shitty side of that research>>

Was your dad mostly absent, over-working, or what? Or emotionally invisible?

My mom and bio dad were divorced when I was 11 months old, and I had basically zero contact with him until age 15 or 16. My mom re-married an alcoholic racist fuck who was on my very short list of people that I genuinely wished he were dead (he is now, so he's no longer on the list). He wasn't physically abusive, but he was certainly hella verbally abusive.

In the nearly 40 years since re-establishing contact with my bio dad, he hasn't exactly proven himself as a role model. He falls into the "woe is me" category of low income people. He always finds excuses.

Brutal. Thank you to share your personal experience. It is hard to see now, but other young men will be reading this post in the future, and it will help. No one controls if you draw a sh-tty ticket in the lottery of life and have a bad family.

Real Question: If your step-father was an "alcoholic racist fuck", why did your mum marry him and stay with him? Please, please, don't read this as an attack on your mum! People enter and stay in relationships for a long list of reasons.

I was so lucky to have great parents, but my dad was mostly commuting during 8-18. I know he cared about me deeply, but his job and commute made it very difficult to spend a lot of time with me.

> absent fathers issue seems like something concrete and impactful

There is a general corruption of the concept of masculinity in American culture. It’s similar to what’s happened to the symbol of the American flag, but more insidious.

When I say masculinity, or masculine values, what do you think of? When you think of someone who values their masculinity, who do you perceive? Now do the same for femininity. Which model is healthier?

Men and women have, on average, physiological differences. These differences are pronounced in puberty. That’s when these frameworks matter the most; they thus must be embedded in childhood. There is no right answer, I think, but there are right questions that boys dealing with a burst of testosterone should ask themselves. That we’ve ignored or even repressed that seems to link both failures in boy and fatherhood.

It also seems to naturally extend to trans and non-binary kids, another situation we are culturally bankrupt in addressing. Boys understanding and speaking to their feminine sides is, ironically, a classically masculine strength in the way women understanding and acting on their masculine sides is, traditionally, a classical sign of motherhood and through that feminine strength. (The linking of feminine strength and motherhood is obviously dated, though as someone who lives in bear and moose country I can see why it was originally embraced.)

Can you think of anything feminine that takes more strength than motherhood?

> Can you think of anything feminine that takes more strength than motherhood?

Sure. Enduring this kind of misogynistic classification of their womanhood when they don't have a child (regardless of the cause). The idea that someone isn't "feminine" or "strong" if they haven't pushed a child through their vagina† is complete and utter horseshit.

† Take note sometime of how much crap women who get c-sections will get from society.

What crap will they get from “society”? Who's “society” exactly? Because I never heard anything bad about C-section vs. natural, so I'm really curious.

I don't understand the link with the flag. Can you explain?

Many (mostly to the left of center) increasingly associate it with far-right nationalist groups, Trump supporters, or any group considered undesirable. As a result, the flag is gaining an undeserved negative connotation in the same way that masculinity has.

To be fair, many right of center groups presume liberals can’t be patriots and that any display of the American flag is a tacit endorsement of far right ideals (which is of course nonsense).

That the US flag is routinely desecrated by reactionary conservatives up to and including police departments in the form of thin blue line, punisher flags, Molon labe lapels etc to explicitly advertise anti-American ideals seems at least as likely to be the cause of growing anti-flag feelings as any liberal agenda.

When I think of masculinity, I see positive and negative aspects of it. I also see that tribes tend to zero in on only the positive or negative. I see the same thing happening with femininity. For whatever reason, the people who zero in on the positivity of one tend to zero in on the negativity of the other, at least on social media. I'm not sure why this is.

Tribalism. Black and white. Lack of nuance.

Masculinity can be wholesome or toxic.

Femininity can be wholesome or toxic.

Which one is discussed more, by a literal order of magnitude? [1]

[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Toxic%20ma...

I think part of the issue is that through our success we erased a lot of the need for the most fundamental male roles.

When it came to handling the things that go bump in the night, a social species with thumbs, a bit of fire and a few sharpened sticks went a hell of a long way.

And after bumping back for long enough, we were the only monsters left standing.

I think that one of the problems with toxic feminity is that it's a quieter and less explosive form of destructive behaviour - but it's very much a real thing.

As a weird little note regarding society's tolerance of the hatred of men, "misandristic" isn't even worth inclusion in the spell checker's dictionary.

We haven't removed the need. You take away a majority of men from the workforce, society would collapse overnight. Same can't be said for women, even if it would be disastrous both short and long term.

What happened was the government has successfully co-opted the social contract between men and women so women now can reap most of its benefits while men carry most of the risks. That doesn't make things all hunky-dory for women, but it certainly doesn't do men a whole lot of good when some of their biggest assets in a relationship are stripped away and redistributed, without accommodating that in some form.

Meanwhile, society has done very little to put men in a positive light or encourage women to accept the 'new man'. If anything, it has done the opposite: women seem to respect men less than before, and men are expected to be more competitive than ever before, even on aspects which are practically immutable. Now society is slowly showing signs of how dysfunctional things become when men aren't incentivized to be men, while women aren't taught to respect the 'new man'. The men quit trying, the boys get stressed out, and the women run around asking the government to fix it somehow. Virtually no one is happy, and Socrates is rolling in his grave.

> We haven't removed the need.

Not what I said; men are still needed - but it's been a damned long time since we spent our nights waiting around the fire in case of tiger.

> we spent our nights waiting around the fire in case of tiger

I think it's the opposite. During the prehistoric times most food was actually gathered by women IIRC, and both sexes could use fire to scare away predators, so men were relevant for breeding nearly exclusively.

Today we have far more risky activities where men dominate, such as high-rise towers construction, firefighting, law enforcement, security, sailing etc etc.

You think that we took equal roles in dealing with threats!?

The simple truth is that men handled the vast majority of situations where combat was required - we're bigger, stronger, faster, more aggressive.

Our aim is better, and (best of all) if half of us die it doesn't severely impact intergenerational population levels.

Women may have gone gathering, but men went hunting.

Fire fighting is some scary shit - but our ancestors took on short faced bears with sticks.

> The simple truth is that men handled the vast majority of situations where combat was required

I think you greatly overestimate how much combat people faced during prehistoric times. Population was distributed sparsely, most food was gathered, not hunted, and was abundant, and you don't fight predators to scare them off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_warfare#Paleolithi...

And I think that you're severely underestimating the impact of infrequent existential threats, and how that interplays with slight improvements to fitness compounded over hundreds of thousands of years.

In fact, I'm damned near certain of it.

The most existential threat in pre-industrial times was a bad harvest. It meant starvation. That men used their de-facto monopoly on violence to start dominating their communities is a different story.

So agriculture? 10,000 years ago.

~Modern humans have been around 30 times longer than that.

It boils down to the same thing. Demand for things men are primarily doing / willing to do / capable of doing hasn't significantly decreased. It has merely been commercialized and subsidized in a way that it isn't at all obvious the need for men is still very much there. Hence, the lack of a need for men, whatever form you imply, is not the cause.

I'm not fighting tigers but the women around me sure are happy when I can carry something alone they struggle to do with three of them. There's a significant difference between a direct display and a bunch of commercialized abstractions. All those abstractions make people forget the value others have. We just so happened to push a lot of those abstractions onto men and the value they tend to bring as men.

It is almost as if general kindness, helping someone carry something for example, is well received. Who'd have thought...

It was really interesting to see Season 2 of the Island (men vs women).

The most interesting part was not how much women failed to survive, and how successful men were (which makes sense, as men are designed for survival), but the feeling of how much easier in that world is to show the need for masculanity (which is mostly not needed anymore).

>>> which makes sense, as men are designed for survival

Evolution doesn't only "design" a single sex for survival. (With the possible, arguable exception of some insect species.)

No, but it designed men with very few compromises (as far as auto-adversarial hill-climbing algorithms go).

Women are structured as a compromise between their own needs and the needs of their children.

Women live longer than men on average so this line of thinking that men are optimized for survival, as opposed to women, is pretty darn silly. (Neither is more or less optimized.)

Expected lifespan and the ability to survive dangerous situations are two very different things.

If you think for an instant that men and women aren't optimised for very different scenarios, then think harder.

Seriously, you can tell just by looking at us.

Or do you think that child bearing hips and big vulnerable mammaries are useful things to have in situations that call for physical action (other than birthing and feeding infants)?

Among gorillas and baboons, species in which males fight for reproductive opportunities feature males twice as big as females, while among pair- bonded gibbons that fight much less, males are just 10 percent bigger than females.

As I understand it men have greater strength because they are optimized to fight other men for reproductive opportunity. This doesn't increase their opportunities for survival since fighting other men can get you killed. It increases their opportunities to reproduce.

Our advantages in a hostile environmental come from building tools not physical strength. If physical strength was important a male human would not be 5 times weaker than a gorilla.

So no, I would not say men are "designed" to survive on an island better than women, or whatever. They are designed to fight other men in a zero sum game.

You seem hell bent on asserting some false equivalency between the physical prowess of men and women. What possible reason you'd have for making such patently ridiculous claims is truly beyond me.

> So no, I would not say men are "designed" to survive on an island better than women, or whatever. They are designed to fight other men in a zero sum game.

False dichotomy. Also, what fraction of explorers do you think were men? Pretty much fucking all of them.

We don't get pregnant, so having children is not a physical inconvenience and (as I mentioned elsewhere) half of us can die without impacting the next generation's population.

If you think that men and women had the same evolutionary imperative to develop the skills required for navigating strange environments then you're not adequately considering the innumerable trade-offs involved.

Do explorers survive better than people who migrate to new locations with their families, or something?

> Do explorers survive better than people who migrate to new locations with their families, or something?

No, they die far more often. Because they enter unknown risky situations.

Humans explore in search of new lands and resources, and in search of safe paths.

When they take the more vulnerable members of the tribe, they generally have a better idea of where they're going, what the path is, and what risks are involved.

If a path is too dangerous then they don't tend to take pregnant women and small children.

So because it is primarily adult or adolescent males that go on the more risky adventures, they're the ones that have the costly adaptations required to maximise the likelihood of survival.

Now show me the records from 300,000 years ago that you based your above post on.

> Our advantages in a hostile environmental come from building tools not physical strength. If physical strength was important a male human would not be 5 times weaker than a gorilla.

Have you ever made a tool with your hands? Physical strength--especially grip strength--not just dexterity, is required for tool making. There are no vices or pliers in the Wild.

Men have a huge advantage in grip strength, and hence tool making. This study[1] suggests that elite female athletes in athletic disciplines that require grip strength only rank in the 25th percentile of grip strength when compared to men as a population.

oops. Forgot the link and too late to edit!

[1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17186303/

Really makes you wonder how the Pintupi Nine survived one of the world's harshest environment's with no adult males.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30500591

I suspect any of the western desert women would merrily laugh and wiggle their little finger were they to hear you speak.

Thanks for finding an _exception_.

If you look at the series, they took 14 random people for each group and gave them 2 days of survival training and basic helper tools.

Just looking at how the men killed the crocodile in a team work with their bare hands first time in their life without any help from experts looked awesome.

This entire argument is a bit silly, but FWIW, four of the nine were teenage males.

> When I say masculinity, or masculine values, what do you think of? When you think of someone who values their masculinity, who do you perceive? Now do the same for femininity. Which model is healthier?

I don't think of anything aside from obvious physiological differences

> but there are right questions that boys dealing with a burst of testosterone should ask themselves

I mean, everyone's different, different personalities, different trials and tribulations of life. I have no idea how you can generalize across all teenage boys without making a bunch of stuff up

I really struggle to understand this question. Between masculinity and femininity is there one that is supposed to be obviously healthier?

If we go by what the marketing is pushing it's a toxic tarpit on both sides (see The Rules vs The Game).

> the absent fathers issue seems like something concrete and impactful that we should be trying to address.

Interestingly, only a few years ago, Bill Cosby himself made an impassioned plea to address these issues. He saw it a lot.

Cosby's criminal conviction(s)[1] undermined much of what he championed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cosby_sexual_assault_case...

I don't see it that way. You've fallen for a tu quoque fallacy. To say that Cosby was hypocritical doesn't seem to devalue the merits of his message: that men need to step up, that fathers need to stop being absent, take some responsibility for the dignity of women and children.

If anything, it makes it even more poignant. Haven't you ever seen a man in prison, pleading with his son not to turn out like him? Does the father's murder conviction undermine his admonition against violence?

Haven't you ever seen a man in prison, pleading with his son not to turn out like him? Does the father's murder conviction undermine his admonition against violence?

Did bill cosby ever take responsibility for being one of the most prolific serial rapists in history?

I don't see it that way either, but many other people find it very difficult to separate the message from the messenger, just as you've done from my (brief) comment.

>>Haven't you ever seen a man in prison, pleading with his son not to turn out like him? Does the father's murder conviction undermine his admonition against violence?

Except, as others would argue, a more similar analogy would be a man in prison continually protesting his innocence. In that situation, I'm not sure that the man would be telling his son to do anything differently without an admission of guilt, except perhaps to be very cautious in their dealings with women. The point remains that the drama and conviction(s) surrounding Bill Cosby's numerous sexual assaults caused him to be an ineffective messenger even if the underlying message remains sound.

> You've fallen for a tu quoque fallacy.

You literally cited his personal experience in your original comment, and thought it relevant enough to take up one of the two sentences in it, so I don't see a problem with the response.

The man is a self confessed serial rapist. Maybe look to almost anyone else's opinion on the importance of father figures.

True, even slyzz ball can be have good argument.

However, the problem about Cosby, and the general "men need to step up" crowd is that frame the issue of absent father as a moral and character issues. Never going deeper to understand if there were external constraints pushing those men out.

We shouldn't completly alleviate those absent father from any responsibilities for their choice, but we should also look at the cause and condition making those choices so prevalent.

> We shouldn't completly alleviate those absent father from any responsibilities for their choice, but we should also look at the cause and condition making those choices so prevalent.

I'm much more involved in my children's day-to-day lives than my father was in mine.

But I'm a software engineer who has worked from home full-time for the last 7+ years. Yes I lock my office door for several hours a day, but I'll pop out every now and again and say hello, it is easy for me to do school drop-offs/pick-ups sometimes, or take them to appointments. My commute is zero, so as soon as I'm done for the day, I'm there for them.

My father spent most of his career as a manager/executive in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. You can't manage a manufacturing line without physically being there to respond when things go wrong. Before that, he also worked as a manager of analytical chemistry laboratories, and you can't really do that remotely either. Even when he got senior enough that he didn't physically have to be there all the time, he told me that if all the people under him had to be there physically, from a workplace politics viewpoint, he had too as well. At one manufacturing plant he was managing a few years ago, the IT staff were demanding to work from home, but he was pushing back against their demand, because he was worried about how it would look to the manufacturing staff for whom that couldn't be an option.

I think the "absentee father" issue would be easy to address: have the courts stop favoring mothers as custodial parents in divorces.

Of the divorced couples I know with children, the mothers were awarded custody in every single case, often over the strenuous objections of the fathers and other family members like grandparents (and in one case, even in the face of documented abuse by the mother).

I feel like studies on the effect of children who grow up with a missing parent need to somehow control for couples who split because of mental health issues. Otherwise, it's studying not the effect of the absent parent, but the effect of the behaviors of the parent who was granted custody, and some of those behaviors may strongly correlate with not being able to maintain a marriage or other partnership.

Too late to edit my comment, but I want to clarify the first sentence of the above: I'm not arguing the courts should automatically favor fathers, either. I meant to say blindly assuming one gender is more suited to raising children than the other is a bad policy, and it should be reformed. (And I do believe some family court jurisdictions have gotten better about this than when I had friends going through it 10-20 years ago.)

In the US it depends heavily on the state, but as I understand it, the stats on the mothers getting custody are misleading. Overwhelmingly, the fathers are giving up custody and not fighting for it. When they do, it is roughly equal, though some studies suggest bias one way or the other.

I’m not finding great primary sources, but here’s some articles on it https://legaljobs.io/blog/child-custody-statistics/ https://www.liveabout.com/child-custody-there-is-no-gender-b...

So was parent commenter's experience just that non-representative or is something screwy going on with how the data gets recorded?

Unless GP is a marriage counselor or family-court judge, I am wondering how many anecdotal child custody cases they would have witnessed.

I think it's probably just very, very unlikely that any individual person individually knows a representative sample of divorced couples, and within what sample there is the original commenter noted that the father contesting custody was a subset.

I think people also maybe aren't primed to think of this in terms of "What percentage of people who contest custody receive custody, by gender?" They're just thinking to themselves "Of the couples I know who are divorced, in what percentage does the woman have custody?", and that is going to be very large because a very small percentage of men contest custody. Anecdotally, almost every divorced couple I know has had child custody with the woman (I am in Australia, for the record). The much smaller subset of "divorced couples where I know the father contested custody" are two father's with custody and one mother. Obviously, those are also the only divorced couples I know where the man has custody - no court is going to give custody for a child to someone who doesn't want it, ideally. I also know a lesbian couple who've gone through a custody dispute but I don't believe that really has any impact here.

From what I’ve read so far, there’s a lot of variation between states. The law used to explicitly prefer the mother, and that may still be the case in some states. Beyond that, n=2 isn’t a great sample, but there’s definitely going to be bias when it’s a friend sharing only their side of the story. Like how anytime someone you know gets into a car accident, it was definitely the other guy’s fault.

> Overwhelmingly, the fathers are giving up custody and not fighting for it.

Couldn't that be confirmation bias - if you don't think you are going to win, and it will cost lots of money - why fight?

Which is why when fathers fight for custody they may win more - because they have a stronger case.

> Couldn't that be confirmation bias - if you don't think you are going to win, and it will cost lots of money - why fight?

Confirmation bias is defined as "the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories."

What you're describing is not confirmation bias, because there is no "new evidence" which one could interpret as confirmation of their existing beliefs or theories. If the father doesn't even try to obtain custody then they haven't discovered anything new that would reinforce their existing beliefs.

It's not confirmation bias for the men, it's more for the researchers: Selecting data on who contests custody as a proxy for who wants custody. If there is a gender bias in the courts, that might not be accurate.

Without evidence, I'll suggest that this is an oversimplification. In a model where boys require masculine modeling from older, adult figures, "absent fathers" are most an issue when a boy's regularly-accessible social unit has been whittled down to the nuclear family. That seems to be a crisis in-and-of-itself. When I look at socially-successful men, they often have had multiple older men in their lives to model themselves after - usually grandparents, uncles, teachers, etc., on top of their father (or in lieu of). This is two-fold redundant, in creating fallbacks for both a central father figure and in skills or traits which that figure may lack.

I think this is important because the "absent father" is often used as an excuse, when it rather represents the last breached line in a long list of failures of society, which have ripped boys from the men who would look after them.

(I admit that there's likely some who won't like hearing this, as it cuts against the grievances of those who find pride in specific fatherhood ("I will raise MY child.") and see society's manner, or the dissolving of the nuclear family into a larger community unit, as working against that.)

It isn’t either/or. It’s cumulative.

Joseph Campbell emphasized the idea of the “second father.” A mentor who takes a young man further than his father can.

A father has to love you, but the second fathers love has to be earned. Think NCOs in the military, coaches, sensais in martial arts.

We aren’t just missing fathers, we’re missing second fathers.

Not many people would describe a gunny sergeant, or football coach, or the guy who runs the local Karate America as a second father.

If you include foremen, clergy, and union bosses as second fathers, a man living in 1960 could expect to spend his entire life under the tutelage of second fathers.

Traditionally masculine institutions like the military, workplace, and churches have renounced their “second family” status, and tried desperately to feminize to appeal to women.

What sorts of institutions offer “second fathers” to young men now? Predatory ones, like far-right groups. And some sports.

Edit: there are plenty of institutions that market themselves as second families - tech companies for example. But they tend to eschew masculine gender roles.

> What sorts of institutions offer “second fathers” to young men now?

Must it be institutionalized? Can't this be encouraged without some one-sized-fits-all framework? I learned from a lot of guys in church related groups, yet with so much garbage messaging it made me hate myself. Also encountered some very good guys in school, forums, and LAN gaming, and without the religious strings attached.

Institutions are “stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior.”

Institutions encourage “second fatherhood” as a means of passing in the patterns of behavior.

That behavior might be killing opposing militaries, educating future generations, or religious worship.

So I think there’s a strong obvious link between institutions and second fathers.

I wholly agree with "second fathers."

I am Gen X, and I think one of the social institutions which has quietly vanished before I could quite get to it was the old Roman concept of "patronage." Without understanding I was doing it until embarrassingly late, I spent a lot of time looking for those second fathers, the mentors, the patrons. What broke it for me was someone who was clearly suited for the role, and had benefited from it himself, but was simply too self-involved to pay it forward, as it were. I realized that the Boomers as a trend just weren't thinking patronage or even the idea of planting trees they wouldn't see grown.

So, no mentors for me. Nor am I, sadly, in the position to be much of one myself. I can at last see myself doing it and cut that off at the pass.

If the "wrong" groups have something to offer in the way of second fathers, maybe their values aren't as bad as expected. Nobody wants to even consider that. If only The Bad Guys are making sense about some issues, what else might they be correct on?

> If the "wrong" groups have something to offer in the way of second fathers, maybe their values aren't as bad as expected. Nobody wants to even consider that. If only The Bad Guys are making sense about some issues, what else might they be correct on?

Some of those “wrong groups” are just flat out scammers and charlatans though - see those “alpha male” influencers hawking their courses or whatever. They are taking advantage of a need in others to enrich themselves without really giving a damn about their charges.

Two examples immediately spring to mind, Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson.

I’m sure both have had some moderately useful things to say at some stage of their life for some folks, but a quick look at their Twitter profile tells you everything you really need to know now.

To be fair, several years ago Jordan Peterson seemed quite genuine and earnest about wanting to do good in the world...and then his Benzos coma happened, and he was out cold for several months in Russia or something bizarre, an it's very, very obvious that he has never recovered from that.

Like, we're talking some amount of genuine brain damage damage which he's just stuck with now.

Twitter was also just not a good place for him at all. Some people just get sucked into that sort of stuff, even though it's terrible for their public image, and even though there is so much more they could be doing. Anyone remember how people made fun of eg. Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson for being obnoxiously atheistic on Twitter? Yeah, it's a bit like that.

I think social media influencers should be excluded from the “second father” category.

This is an in person relationship.

Sadly a lot of folks form parasocial relationships with influencers.

I would point out that most of your examples are only allowed to hold significant sway over a boy after they've become a young man, in the teen years and further. I'm also speaking to young childhood through the early teen years, when children are mostly going to be limited to their home and neighborhood. There are cultures where they'll regularly come into contact with "second fathers", who will have discipline privileges over/responsibility for them, over the course of their daily activities. This is not the case in America; the norm is the buck stopping with one's resident parents, and others have little authority or responsibility. So I understand if it's hard to conceptualize; we simply don't have much lived experience with it.

You're thinking institutions, when I mean uncles and grandparents who live down the street, or even with the family; trusted neighbors (perhaps distant relatives); teachers who can afford to live in the same neighborhood; local workers and entrepreneurs who are included in neighborhood life; and so on.

There is no such thing as an extended family unless there are strong nuclear families to begin with. this concept is lost on so many people... But it's simply easier to raise your kids with their grandparents aunts and uncles if grandma and grandpa had a good relationship and aren't divorce to begin with.

Divorce is ultimately at the root of so many social ills but it's verboten to even mention

> but it's verboten to even mention

You just did.

I find it curious, though, that a number of commenters seem to focus almost entirely on the "present" aspect and not on the crucial emotional investment aspect discussed in the article: "when fathers are present and emotionally invested in children’s lives", the title of which says "what boys really need is emotional support from their dads".

Presence alone is not necessarily helpful, and indeed can be harmful, as demonstrated by countless abusive parents. On the other hand, an emotionally invested parent can make a positive impact regardless of whether they're married.

>>but it's verboten to even mention

>You just did.

And now his comment is grey.

> And now his comment is grey.

It's not, as far as I see now.

Anyway, downvoting on HN is not the same thing as "verboten". Downvoting is a feature of HN that is supposed to put higher quality comments higher up and lower quality comments lower down. (I'm not saying it works, but that's the theory.)

I'm not sure it's quite that simple, as some marriages are toxic to children. But the general dissolution of the nuclear family is not a positive trend, and will have grave consequences for future generations.

> I'm not sure it's quite that simple, as some marriages are toxic to children.

Some marriages are, certainly, but all divorces are.

> Divorce is ultimately at the root of so many social ills but it's verboten to even mention

Divorce is frequently mentioned but as usual life is a compromise.

I was reading recently about suicide and depression numbers for women, especially, going down significantly when divorce became socially acceptable.

> There is no such thing as an extended family unless there are strong nuclear families to begin with.

I disagree on that point. It takes a village to raise a child, and a large enough extended family has space for all sorts. Not everyone is called to the married life: I agree that divorce is a problem, but divorce rates would go down quite a bit if those for whom marriage is not compatible with their personality didn't get married in the first place, and there was a space for them to thrive within the family/community.

Again, I grew up in an extended family, being taken care of by grandparents, aunts etc. Singleness is not the problem. Single people are not opposed to a nuclear family. Divorce is. Divorce with children takes a family and breaks it apart. To compare divorce to singleness is disingenuous.

> but divorce rates would go down quite a bit if those for whom marriage is not compatible with their personality didn't get married in the first place, and there was a space for them to thrive within the family/community.

Being single is as socially acceptable as ever (in fact, it is slowly but surely becoming the default) and I see no sign of things improving.

A big part of this in the US is our continued evolution in suburbs: In practice, in person contact with others is a lot more work than historically. This makes children have very little contact with adults other than teachers and their own parents. Even contact in businesses is depersonalized, given this world of chains, large stores and many employees with changing shifts, leading to minimal recurring contact, and interactions that very rarely get personal.

More communal countries, both in Europe in Asia, still have some personal contact: From a pharmacist to an ice cream man, a town or a neighborhood can have community, and with that community come the children seeing those workers as people, and having a relationship with them. When most business is done on foot, people see each other down the street, or in the park, and there's a chance of community. With suburbia an cars, all social contact takes effort: Community get expensive, and few pay the price.

When suburbs were first built they were much more social. You had churches, Kiwanis clubs, veterans clubs, unions, bowling leagues, etc.

But those third place institutions have been gradually replaced by the internet.

Bowling Alone said declining civic ties started in the 1960s. Critics said even earlier.

This reads like a lot of broscience to be fair

> are most an issue when a boy's regularly-accessible social unit has been whittled down to the nuclear family. That seems to be a crisis in-and-of-itself.

Quite the contrary, it seems that those who would modify and engineer culture have been pushing on everyone the idea that men are fungible. That step-daddy, or mommy's new boyfriend, or all the men in the hippy commune are adequate substitutes... and it seems like that's just never the case (at least not often enough to count on).

It may just be down to math. All those other men who might substitute just have their own lives. Your grandpa likely has other children and other grandchildren. Their focus is diluted. Uncles might be trying to raise their own families. Step-dad just thinks your inconvenient and a competitor for the attention and resources of his own children, either from a previous marriage or after he knocks up mommy.

And if that's not bad enough, think about the circumstances we tend to see in these situations. Mommy (and it's usually her, isn't it?) just doesn't get along with the rest of her extended family. Not only is she demanding extra attention for her own offspring, she's showing them all how bad she is at judging character, at planning her life, etc. It's a high risk investment in a person who doesn't look like a good investment at all, for someone they already have negative feelings for.

Teachers, mentors and friends are of course very important, but I would believe this not to be the case.

There is no society or commune to take care of the immediate needs. There can be large families that offer a very good and secure support network and there are families that form clans. In that it seems to be a very neutral influence.

> I admit that there's likely some who won't like hearing this

You have to advertise this larger community unit a bit because I don't really see it aside from the latter example. The time of the utopia commune parenting with the weird third party uncle was never very popular and most importantly, not very successful.

Father that take pride in parenting will get much better results and to say that is egotism seems like a very sad and reduced perspective.

> Father that take pride in parenting will get much better results

You need both. Fathers that take pride in parenting their own kids, and the random neighbor kids, and their sister's kids, and their friend's kids when they happen to be around. And other parents that support said fathering.

A totally disinterested father cannot be replaced by a broad functional community. A functional community cannot be replaced by a highly invested father. They simply fulfil similar but differing needs.

You could say the village is made up of fathers (and mothers, etc.) who take pride in parenting.

I don't expect something like that to form anywhere aside from very remote villages where people tend to stay for most of their lives. In a modern city interactions are probably too fleeting, people change location too often. Strong relationships need time to form.

So people leave and only the closest family members and friends remain in contact. Even with Facebook. I believe this is a main driver for why you generally don't see large families in the western sphere anymore.

Or are people who are not genetically inclined towards executing monogamy also not genetically inclined towards other “organization and self control” rooted behaviors?

> Regardless of the debate on how tough (or not) love should be, the absent fathers issue seems like something concrete and impactful that we should be trying to address.

Where would we even start? The only circumstances where we could hope to do anything at all are those where it's either not a problem, or is still only a minor one... if daddy's doing 20 for murder or dealing at the kilo level, are we supposed to let him out so he can sing lullabies?

There exists an entire class of problems that people only seem to comprehend the causes of once those same problems have escalated far beyond the capacity for comprehension to allow us to fix them. Perhaps the universe hates us. Or maybe we just deserve it.

A simple answer (the one other developed countries tend towards) would be to emphasize / invest more in rehabilitation than in retribution/deterrence in the criminal justice system.

Another set of approaches would be to fund pro-natal/pro-family initiatives such as child income tax credits, to make it easier for fathers to participate in family life; at the margin economic instability drives families apart among other things. (More paternity leave (and better maternity leave while we’re at it) would help a lot here too).

I think you can look to other countries for examples here, Scandinavian countries for example have much better pro-family programs we could copy if we were really serious about this.

It is strange that you immediately went the criminal route. I was thinking more about fathers who work too much, which is most in my world. They spend far less time with their children than their wives, maybe 5x to 10x. My father had a grueling commute as a child that was 90 minutes each way. What a waste. I hardly saw him during the week, then he was exhausted on the weekends. I cringe every time I hear senior (_ALWAYS_ male) executives say: "I do it all for my kids." Yeah right; work less and spend more time with your kids -- that is what they really want, not another fancy ski trip.

9-5 five days a week is itself too much if the goal is quality time with children

Society itself doesn’t prioritize upbringings of children

The start of this was the industrial revolution. Instead of the family and the home being the main workplace and source of income (farming, family trade, etc.) men went off to work, women went off to work, children went off to work. The family was atomized. Basically, corporations are the downfall of civilization.

Today, most people work long hours away from their family (both men and women) not to buy another ski trip but just to keep a roof over their heads and feed their kids. How can all of us find our way back to family business?

Though the statistics speak loudly enough, my anecdotal experience with a bit whose father abandoned him has been harrowing. It’s deeply disturbing to him. Even having a father figure step in to take care of him doesn’t fill that void or resolve much distress. It seems it will be a lifelong issue to some degree.

I didn’t quite believe it at first. Over time it has become abundantly clear. Boys without dads, not even someone to step in to support them, are often swimming upstream at best.

I agree, as a kid I just didn't think about that, but as an adult I see the epidemy all around me. Women without functional father figure have same deep scars that they struggle with for rest of their lives, and so do men. They just manifest very differently since each have their own needs from this father figure that were not met.

And its not just physically absent fathers, those working long hours constantly (under false premise of 'providing for my family'), or for some other messed up reasons are simply not there often enough, physically or emotionally, often cause all this.

Its a vicious circle too, people take this baggage with them into their own relationships which suffer then, and cycle repeats. Lack of trust, running away from solvable issues, sleeping around etc, I've seen it all and some more. Some of my relationships failed exactly due to women on the other side not being able to deal with exactly this baggage, to the point I gave up on trying to fix other people's lives, because you basically can't anyway.

It's become clear to me in my mid 30s that I was very emotionally neglected as a child. I had literally no idea because I had nothing to compare it to, and the behavior of my parents feels relatively normal for when I was growing up.

It's my belief that this neglect has had a big role in the insecurity, lack of vulnerability, lack of self-esteem, and lack of honesty throughout my entire life. I don't blame my parents and I own my mistakes. But it's freaking wild to me that it's only now in my 30s that I'm going through emotional development that I can look back on and see people I knew in high school who had already done this sort of growth. After having read Running on Empty I started asking people about the dynamics with their parents growing up, and it really solidified how uncaring my childhood was in many ways.

My childhood conditioning was also something which recently unraveled for me.

The first time I had a heart-to-heart with my father, the center of my chest felt viscerally tender.

Mother stole a car and sold it to pay for a cocaine addiction. Father was such a workaholic that he simply marked her behaviors as "strange"... like her taking phone calls into a closet.

After the divorce my father had custody and remarried to continue his absence. (Normally left before I awoke, and I went to bed before he returned. He was even normally late for family dinners on holidays. When he was home, he was sleeping or watching TV)

Sometimes stepmother would return from work and vomit anger onto me and my stepsister. (Only about 2 years ago I realized it was Verbal Abuse)

Re-encoding memories was crucial for my awareness, and mental-emotional progress.

It's challenging at first, but after processing a few traumas, now when a deeper layer surfaces, I know I can immediately bring it to a therapeutic resolution.

"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

I have a similar experience. I went to some counselling in my early 40s and we talked a lot about my childhood and family dynamics. It was one of the best things I've ever done in terms of my capacity for happiness (and the happiness of those around me).

I have near 0 emotional intelligence because of that. Only small part I have it is due to my wife efforts on teaching me how to feel about others and my own feelings.

I’m 45 and only realized this a few years ago and I think about when my dad was 45 and it’s obvious he had no clue. He was all work, work, work, don’t complain, no crying, no weakness. I know he tried his best but man what a screw up…I’m thankful for my wife and friends who put up with my complete and total lack of maturity for so long. Like wow, what a heavy lift I threw at them and still do because I’m still not caught up and not sure I ever will be?

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 masculinity, or the other extreme 2. has an overly masculine culture and harmfully stifles femininity, 3. celebrates both feminine and masculine qualities in a mostly healthy way, and is the most "balanced" of the places I have lived. The one problem I would say that is way too common here in Eastern Europe is absent/cheating dads, but that is balanced by a strong and independent feminine (not feminist!) expression.

For me it was a real awakening and a welcome cure to live in a place where men are men and women are women.

Interesting. I thought for 1 there was actually both : half men are effeminate and the other half basically ultra-masculine gym bros ^^. Eastern Europe looks interesting tho

> basically ultra-masculine gym bros

I don't think that's ultra masculine. At least people around me like that are self obsessed, appearance obsessed but ultimately fragile men. I also know because I was probably almost the same. I had a beard and looked like a lumberjack. Was I a real man? Not really.

I'm not saying I now know what a man should be, but it definitely isn't an ultra masculine gym bro. It is someone who can create a stable, responsible, potentially loving environment for a family, someone who can endure a lot of strain and responsibility while still holding it together. It also helps if you have a goal in life other than "look good naked".

Well you can be masculine in some ways and not other, it's the whole thing of "alpha person" vs "alpha behavior". Going to the gym makes you strong and fit but yeah if you have 0 personality or are a coward you will have longer term problems

> someone who can create a stable, responsible, potentially loving environment for a family, someone who can endure a lot of strain and responsibility while still holding it together

How is this different from a woman's role?

Your question floored me for a few hours, it’s a good one, but I think I’ve worked it out.

This goal applies to both men and women, but a man needs to do this in terms of protecting his family from the outside, and create the conditions that this can happen within any harsh world, whereas it’s the woman’s job to actually do it inside the bubble that the man created.

Obviously these are broad strokes and there are overlaps. But to me a man and a woman are both nothing really without a family, ultimately that’s what all this is about, it’s just how do you create that family and maintain it that’s different slightly.

I think society would be better off if all people were raised to focus on creating stable, responsible families and being resilient to adversity, regardless of gender. Roles within the relationship should be negotiated based on individual strengths.

I say that as a woman without children in a very equal marriage, working in software, who worries regularly about the impact of having children. I dread being expected to take on a less "worldly" and more "homemaker" role.

Curious as to if you can give insight why? I think many mothers would say their role as a mother is the most important and valuable to them. Usually men are more ambitious in their work, and women who become ambitious in work and career risk missing the biological clock to have children.

I would hope that fathers would also say that being a father is their most important role!

I have been a software engineer for a decade. I derive a good deal of personal satisfaction from my work, and from being able to provide financially for my family. There are some things that only my body might be capable of, compared to my husband's, but otherwise I would hope that we are able to equitably divide responsibilities and impart the varying positive aspects of our worldviews and personalities onto our children.

Bio clock is a mild concern, but people can struggle with infertility at any age. I would not want to tie my entire personality up with motherhood/homemaking and then find out that it wasn't in the cards.

As a father of two, don’t overthink it, just do it. You won’t regret it

Masculinity is summed up in the motives behind why we do things: are you running from something or are you building towards something?

You can build an impressive body because you're running from the thoughts and feelings you get when you're at home alone without the endorphins in your blood. Or you can have a vision and build towards that actively.

You'll always have both to some degree in everything but the core point here is what percentage are spending in which pole?

I am polish, but was raised in germany. I can confirm the observation about eastern europe, at least regarding poland. Man are man, and Woman are Woman. In general, (non-trans, non-homo and somewhat binary people) seem to have a healthier relationship with their core-gender identity. People in western societies certainly should take an example when it comes to modern gender roles. I would not glorify the situation there, though.

Of course, this already implies problems with people with non-traditional orientations and identities. But I wouldn't regard those as the main problems. They even seem somewhat easy to overcome when compared to the usual sexism in Poland.

I find sexism in Poland to be a very different thing than sexism in Germany for example. With regards to both genders. It is more reciprocal, with more obvious sexism against man than in germany. It would be a too big subject, to even outline it here.

I find this weird. My interpretation of Poland and of a decent amount of folks who came from Eastern Europe is that both sexes actually exhibit more faux-stoic and vaguely masculine behaviors than other western countries. There is an idea that many people in Eastern Europe are stoic but then the rampant alcoholism and other such behaviors would make it clear that they’re not actually stoic… whatever they’re dealing with actually is troubling them (which it wouldn’t to this degree with a stoic).

Poland has plenty of issues… and wiping the whole lgbt-free zone thing under the rug seems quite negligent.

Can't judge a culture by its emigrants, especially when you don't speak their native language. The cold/stoic stereotype is especially false.

I say this as someone who spent a month visiting Poland and seeing many native people of the area…

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 face your own existence in war to clear the mind of certain topics.

I’m guessing though there’s some event UA has or hasn’t experienced that helps explain the difference-possibly many. US contends with a lot of guilt around the past as something like societal psychological trauma. Guilt and sexual repression are bigger in the US than elsewhere.

Edit-note, the metoo movement had a strong legal component replete with legal, criminal consequences. That would tend to compound the effects, yes?

> *Are people as glued to social media in EE as they are in the US?

Millenials and Gen-Z? Absolutely.

>Have they had a #metoo movement?

Not really, other problems abound.

>How about religious zealots?

In Poland thanks to them abortion was recently banned. Other countries don't really pay attention to them.

Would you care to elaborate on Observation 1 ("has an overly effeminate culture and harmfully stifles masculinity")?

Also, re: "men are men and women are women" -- how are LGBT rights doing in Ukraine outside of Kyiv these days?

This sounds like they're not really taking into account boys needs, with the idea that we shouldn't be "gendered" when relating to them.

This made me think of Andrew Tate, who is a douchebag, but has a huge following with young men, apparently because he has found a way to appeal to them emotionally. Anyone who is looking at how to push boys in the right direction should look at what appeals to them and meet them where they are, not try to push some idea of emotional help that will only preach to the choir, which is what I see society doing. I definitely agree this role is best filled by fathers.

AFAICT there is nothing good in Tate's message, except perhaps that one doesn't have to be ashamed of strength.

Yet Tate seems to promote strength, power, and confidence as silver bullets for all ones problems -- mixed with a lot of get-rich-quick BS that boils down to "pay me to teach you to selling teaching to others". And this from a guy who got rich pressuring women into camming and taking a huge cut.

Boys and men need nuanced male role models (even modestly flawed), not one dimensional grifters.

> Boys and men need nuanced male role models (even modestly flawed), not one dimensional grifters

All individual people are nuanced and flawed people when you interact with them one on one (even Tate I imagine).

What's toxic is social media and it's ability to portray a life that doesn't exist.

Tate fills a gigantic void that exists because rational people in that space are haunted and shouted down

> This sounds like they're not really taking into account boys needs, with the idea that we shouldn't be "gendered" when relating to them.

I'm not really sure how you got that from the article, practically the entire piece is citations of how boys are different from girls, just not in the way that we think they are culturally.

Tate has a following because anybody more mild or less delusional will just get shouted down by vocal radicals who have no concept of why lost men gravitate toward people like Tate in the first place. Anybody that exists in the space he does will be called an incel-adjacent far-right radical regardless of how reasonable what they're saying is, and the only winning move there is to just say that detractors are agents of the NWO that want to destroy them for telling the truth.

If the terminally online people that lose sleep over Tate could stop equating somebody disagreeing with them with that person being a piece of irredeemable human dogshit, he would be a nobody.

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.

Jordan Peterson's focus on trans people/fat women instead of men's issues is hella distracting though

It is, but part of being a man (and more importantly, a good person) is understanding that there's a limit to how much you should be looking up to somebody. At some point, the sense of right and wrong you have developed in your life needs to override the mental influence somebody has over you, at which point you can appreciate and continue doing the good that they do without perpetuating the bad. Somebody who has developed as a man probably first experiences this with their parents (or parent figures), and continues experiencing it multiple times throughout their life. There's no reason somebody can't do it first with Peterson. It's a valuable lesson.

Peterson is a perfect example of how being reasonable doesn't work. His ideology/commentary had nowhere near the delusion and woe-is-me gnashing of teeth that Tate's grift revolves around, it is nowhere near as destructive to its target audience and society, and it caught the dude so much shit that he basically self-destructed. There was a $35 million film made where the villain was based on him, with the director having this to say:

"We based that character on this insane man, Jordan Peterson, who is this pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community. You know the incels? They’re basically disenfranchised, mostly white men, who believe they are entitled to sex from women. And they believe that society has now robbed them—that the idea of feminism is working against nature, and that we must be put back into the correct place. Yeah, they’re actually succeeding in many different ways. But this guy Jordan Peterson is someone that legitimizes certain aspects of their movement because he’s a former professor, he’s an author, he wears a suit, so they feel like this is a real philosophy that should be taken seriously."

If you're integrated into the modern US corporate society and media landscape, and think that some portion of Peterson's outlook is potentially helpful, keep that shit to yourself. That you will even humor his ideas is grounds for people with brain worms to attack your moral character. If it starts to make noise, your employer may not want to deal with it. Your friends and family may not want to deal with it. Mum's the word; you are only going to hurt yourself.

I would say that one of the few people in this specific media market that stands any chance of telling people that are looking to Tate and Peterson for advice something that may actually help them is Sam Hyde. Outside of his inflammatory comedy, his commentary on how to deal with being lost is hard to hear for somebody that's there, but ultimately as close as some talking head on the internet will ever get to helping somebody like that. He has pretty much completely checked out of "normal" society, so lost people looking integrate with "normal" society aren't going to find him. They'll find Tate instead, who has a relatively easy "answer" and is trying as hard as he can to change the world to fit it. Reasonable people commentating on this are doomed to fail in the current environment.

Couldn't agree more, and I've spent a lot of time looking at this particular strain of culture from both sides and talking to high up figures inside of it. I'm surprised by the commentary here in other threads, and it does make me imagine how much time people have spent investigating this world versus strongly articulating "is-ought" fallacies.

Haven't kept up with Sam Hyde after MDE got the axe. I saw a youtube vid where he answers a stream question about sleeping around. How does he communicate to his following nowadays?

> 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.

I have 0 idea what this is trying to say.

Is his academic past bad because it is highfaluting? Or is the outcome justify the means and helping people is ok even if you also cause a lot of problems along the way?

Also, giving advice through books is indirectly helping them, he is not making your bed, he is telling you to do it. Directly is going the way of literally to just mean emphasis

In retrospect I probably shouldn't have made such a claim, since I really don't know much about Jordan Peterson and his views.

Most of what I've seen is him motivating and trying to help young/lost men, which seems like an admirable cause.

There's a segment who function with the idea that the emotional needs of boys, teen guys, and men can go unmet and that they will just somehow crumble and be okay with it. This is not true. People with unmet needs will seek to meet those needs; if something healthy is not provided, it ought to be no surprise when unhealthy means are found as a substitute.

Instead, boys are discriminated against academically, emotionally, in terms of support and scholarships and these people who are in charge of starvation are shocked, shocked! when a guy like that appears to meet their needs.

If someone asked me an obscure sin, something that went unrecognized but was none the less heinous, I would say that attempting to inculcate the innocent with self-loathing, to saddle them with Original Sin, and to more or less attempt to have that hatred internalized, that would be a mortal sin, if for no other reason than there's simply a finite capacity you can find in humanity for that self-abnegation and past that point, one or more will snap, will turn on you, and it will always be in a way you most dread. Most dread because these ground-down types will have an endless flood of hearing the particulars of what another would like that they can simply do the opposite.

>If someone asked me an obscure sin, something that went unrecognized but was none the less heinous, I would say that attempting to inculcate the innocent with self-loathing, to saddle them with Original Sin, and to more or less attempt to have that hatred internalized, that would be a mortal sin, if for no other reason than there's simply a finite capacity you can find in humanity for that self-abnegation and past that point, one or more will snap, will turn on you, and it will always be in a way you most dread.

As someone raised in a hardline Calvinist worldview I couldn't agree with this more, claiming someone is fundamentally disgusting and contaminated on a basic level simply for existing can do awful things to them whether the beliefs stick or not.

On my reading, the article is explicitly taking into account boys' specific needs. It cites research showing that infant boys are more sensitive. need greater emotional scaffolding, and are more vulnerable to the effects of bullying.

Perhaps you're referring to the line

> Fathers and mothers use far more emotionally rich language with toddler-aged daughters than sons, for instance. Fathers are also more likely to sing to and soothe their toddler daughters at night when they cry.

I interpret this as a call to resist specific gendered parenting behaviours that propagate harmful norms. Not that gender should be excluded from consideration.

If you look past the surface and pomp, a lot of Tate’s takes have a degree of sensibility in the absurd culture we exist in. For example, his take on how hookup culture is damaging & the motivations of men & women differ was very insightful. He noted, men feel honor in their wives being chaste, and women feel happy in being protected & provided for by men, but culture distorts these underlying biological realities. Many of his ideas are presented in an inflammatory manner but dig deeper and more insight wells.

I think this nails the heart of the problem. We've empowered women and assumed men would be able to continue an as we always have. The issue is that the world has changed but none of the education has. No one is sitting down young boys and teaching them to be better. I only developed emotionally because my parents were smart and got me therapy. When we focus on teaching girls since we've been neglecting them that we've failed to extend that to boys.

Just as society has historically dissuaded women from pursuing stem it has historically dissuaded men from growing emotionally. We've started to tackle that first element but I truly believe that the second one is the next breakthrough. As it is, men like Andrew Tate are trying to fill that void. I think this is because we as a society have failed to lift up boys and give them healthy role models

I'm mid 30s now and my childhood is full of instances of me being treated with contempt for being a boy by my teachers and female peers. Like, outright mocking in ways by teachers that in retrospect I would consider nearly traumatic and abusive.

Maybe public, unashamed contempt is more recent?

Indeed. It isn't a new thing.

I worked in a place a long while ago, being the only male in that department.

Everyone was nice and we did our jobs.

Over time I discovered 'rumors' about me from people outside the department. I'll call these people, the observers. They had no interactions with our team, aside from seeing who worked in our office as they walked past.

It was quite concerning that people would assume the situation meant anything but myself working with a team of peers.

Can you give some examples?

I didn’t experience this in my childhood in the 80s (I’m 47) in Los Angeles.

The only shocking moment I had was taking a Women Studies course in my sophomore year of college… as I felt my childhood lacked this tension, it would be helpful to uncover blind spots. In particular I remember we had a 2 day discussion on the harmful impact of the Cosby Show on society (both race and gender relations) and the other male member of the course piped in with what I felt was a well reasoned comment. He was eviscerated in such a manner that it was apparent our presence was not welcome. I kept my mouth shut the rest of the course. It was certainly educational.

>the harmful impact of the Cosby Show

Could you expand on this?

The basic thrust of the argument is that it was so successful because it made white America feel validated about low-key racism...as long as there's a certain level of success portrayed, as long as they act white, as long as the women are light skinned and pretty, etc. There is arguably some merit there. The tie-in to 3rd wave feminism as the conversation progressed went off course and is hazy.

I live in a small EU country, and at our largest universitey, there are ~50 more women enrolled than men (60-40 ratio). Does it bother anyone? Of course not... they are more worried why in a few colleges (engineering mostly) ther are still more men than women and try to encourage more women to go there.

Education (and a lot of other parts of society) has(ve) left men behind, and it starts in the childhood and never stops.

50%

just saw the error now

I spent a summer teaching at a high school with separate gender classrooms. One thing that stuck out was that the women were motivated from hearing them out and how they felt first and men were motivated by giving them a challenge.

To some extent, society is becoming more effeminate. This is a good thing in giving more opportunity for women, but there seems to be less space for men to grow or learn to be men. The main options seem to be Boy Scouts, martial arts classes, military, frats, father/older friends etc. or your out of luck and looking up to online grifters.

Unfortunately Boy Scouts was commandeered by women and now allow girls to participate. So it's no longer a place for boys to be boys.

While I agree with your take about society, I disagree that boys have less space to be boys. Boys will be boys, no matter what the world does. There will never be a shortage of boys who want to throw rocks and jump in mud until their feet get stuck.

> Boys will be boys, no matter what the world does.

This seems wildly overstated and naive.

Things are rapidly changing.

Forget the world, a mother alone has a massive influence on whether a child will engage in the behaviour you are describing.

Yes, some children will shine through all odds stacked against them, but to put all your chips into nature over nurture isnt even close to reasonable.

> to put all your chips into nature over nurture isnt even close to reasonable

It sounds like you're saying that "what we are" is less instrumental than "what we are told to be". We can agree to disagree.

> Boys will be boys, no matter what the world does.

You are saying this based based off of.. what exactly?

I disagree with this entirely. The world has a huge effect on what boys do. In a social media world driven by likes, clicks and endless consumption, you have to be very careful about what is said or done as it is easy for something to be take out of context, and magnified for the whole world to see.

> You are saying this based based off of.. what exactly?

Based on the fact that boys are indeed boys, and hence, they will be boys.

> Boys will be boys, no matter what the world does.

I dunno man. In school it seems that gossiping is more or less accepted where roughhousing is clearly banned. That sure seems to me like the world is trying to repress at least part of "boys will be boys".

>In school it seems that gossiping is more or less accepted where roughhousing is clearly banned.

In its majestic equality, the law prohibits boy and girl alike from engaging in socialization activities overwhelmingly favored by boys.

Well... the school prohibits it. The law actually allows for two combatants to engage in mutually agreed combat as long as they don't kill each other. That's completely legal.

I feel like sticking roughousing under "combat" is part of the problem

Maybe I'm an outlier, but I don't think so... during my teenage years my friends and I were pretty much constantly engaged in friendly combat. I'm talking weak body shots, Charlie horses, red bellies, that kind of thing. All in good fun, but we were absolutely engaged in combat.

One of my fondest memories from my teenage years is visiting my older friends John and Kenny (who were only my friends because they used to babysit me), and Kenny put me into an iron cross and called everyone in to laugh at me and give me a red belly. Honestly, it was a bonding experience.

Can you imagine another man that gets that kinda of abuse as a boy and doesn't look back on it as a fond memory?

I mean I considered it a privilege, so yeah I can, haha. I would probably do it again.

You know how they say it's the journey that matters, not the destination? It's kind of the same when you're struggling to escape from an iron cross. It doesn't matter that your stomach is being mercilessly slapped and everyone is laughing. That's just the destination. What matters is the bonding experience that was shared as I futilely struggled against Kenny's much larger body.

That's the whole point, boys (especially but not exclusively) need to test risk/reward, physical limitations, and social power dynamics when the stakes are still small. Otherwise men will learn these lessons much more painfully and potentially permanently on a dimly lit street at 3 AM, for example.

"Protecting" boys from their conflict resolution while allowing girl's preferred conflict resolution will only stunt their relative development.

If we look around though, boys are still throwing rocks just as they always have. We haven't slowed down. I posit that society's attempt to stifle our roughhousing will play out similarly to the preacher's daughter. Due to the preacher's overbearing influence she embodies everything that he doesn't want her to be.

This is so far off the mark I don't even know where to begin...

Boys that "act like boys", (throwing rocks, etc) are given Adderall. Parents that refuse end up talking to child services.

What does it mean to learn to be men?

Resilience, courage, strength

Dirty, loud, narcissistic, violent, etc...?

It means learning what is expected of a man in society.

Society isn't becoming more effeminate.

Society is losing some of the toxic masculinity because women are achieving leadership positions and have legal remedies available to them when men behave inappropriately. Parents are attempting to intervene appropriately.

Besides, the default state of raising a boy in the United States is to abuse the child.

Feelings? Not valid. Keep them to yourself. (This is how I ended up with depression at age 8 when my folks used me as a pawn in their religious dispute while my sisters sat there, oblivious)

Pain? Not real. And even if it is, don't show weakness. (This is how I ended up with a burst appendix during a wilderness hike in the Boy Scouts)

Your role? Provider. If you aren't providing, why are you even breathing? (This is the cause of a lot of breakups)

Everyone knows that these are more or less true. It's something that should resonate with people regardless of their political affiliation. And every bit of it is emotional abuse. None of it is about "being a man or learning to be a man." There's nothing more dehumanizing for a child than to be told that their thoughts and feelings don't matter and that their reason for living is to work until they can't anymore.

i totally agree with this, and if you haven't read "For Your Own Good" and "The Drama of the Gifted Child" by Alice Miller you would likely enjoy them.

The HN commentary on this article is strange. The title is "The ‘manning up of boys begins in the cradle.’ But what boys really need is emotional support from their dads" (why is the HN submission title different from the article title, by the way?). Yet so many commenters here are arguing about men's rights and discrimination against men instead. The article isn't about how fathers are somehow prevented from being emotionally available to their sons; rather, it's about how fathers choose to be emotionally unavailable to their sons in the misguided notion that boys need to be trained from childhood to be "manly" and "strong". A telling quote: "Fathers are also more likely to sing to and soothe their toddler daughters at night when they cry."

>The article isn't about how fathers are somehow prevented from being emotionally available to their sons; rather, it's about how fathers choose to be emotionally unavailable to their sons in the misguided notion that boys need to be trained from childhood to be "manly" and "strong".

People here are explaining why fathers are being emotionally unavailable to their sons.

It's not a mistake, and it's not neglect. The fathers aren't idiots or abusers.

It's to train the son to be able to function in a world that doesn't care and will never care about his feelings, his pain, his safety, or his life. A world where all acceptance and love is conditional on being useful to someone else.

The fathers understand that showing weakness or needing emotional help as a male simply makes people distrust, reject, abuse, and abandon you. We've all had this experience over and over. They care about their sons, so they try to teach them the easy way, before the world teachers them the hard way.

It's "the talk" for boys.

> It's not a mistake

I disagree.

> The fathers aren't idiots or abusers.

Well, a lot of fathers (and mothers, and non-parents) are idiots or abusers. There are no qualifications for the job other than having functional sexual organs.

> It's to train the son to be able to function in a world that doesn't care and will never care about his feelings, his pain, his safety, or his life. A world where all acceptance and love is conditional on being useful to someone else.

The question is, to what extent are we just "preparing" boys for that world, and to what extent are we creating and perpetuating that world by brainwashing boys into this mentality?

> The fathers understand that showing weakness or needing emotional help as a male simply makes people distrust, reject, abuse, and abandon you. We've all had this experience over and over.

Speak for yourself, not for me.

> They care about their sons, so they try to teach them the easy way

It's not the easy way, though. Boys do have emotional needs, and neglecting those needs takes a hard, enduring toll on them. It's like throwing the kid into the deep end of the pool and forcing them to sink or swim.

> It's "the talk" for boys.

Except there's very little talking. Talking about it would be emotional availability.

Again, "Fathers are also more likely to sing to and soothe their toddler daughters at night when they cry." That's not "the talk". You don't sit down and have a hard talk about the future with a toddler, who hasn't even learned how to speak yet.

Sadly, it's not something that can be taught just by talking, because must be taught at a very young age. Boys need to learn to be strong as young schoolchildren, in order to not suffer the consequences of being weak. Social interaction patterns start early and persist. Fathers know this, so they must start early, so the son is prepared for the cruelty of the schoolyard.

You're right about the lack of talking. It's not literally talking, it's conditioning/training. I was using the expression "the talk" to link it to something else you might understand.

> Fathers are also more likely to sing to and soothe their toddler daughters at night when they cry.

100 years ago father’s wouldn’t even talk to their kids. I don’t think dads even went into the delivery room

Dad’s didn’t get time off from work to be with their wives when the baby was born or get bonding time

Things are definitely getting better on this front

I was recently wondering about who was typically in the delivery room 50+ years ago. So when I saw my elderly grandmother last week, I asked her whether my grandfather was there when my father was born in the late 50s.

She was a little offended by the question (itself interesting), but said it was just her and the medical staff. No other support people. She thought my grandfather was at the hospital, but wasn’t sure.

In the times when I was born, the father waited in the waiting room.

À la Mad Men.

Heck, I had similar expectations a few years ago and then I was set straight about modern reality :-))

The concept of the delivery room is a historical aberration. For most of history women would give birth at home accompanied by female friends and family.

And for most of history, maternal mortality was double of what it is today

Can you expand on that?

That is mostly due to the development of germ theory, and before that was developed, hospitals had worse outcomes than midwives, who due to 'tradition' would do things like sanitize their hands before touching the laboring mother.

Having more than 99% probability of surviving is also a historical aberration.

offended in what sense?

In the TV Show "I Love Lucy", there's an episode called "Lucy Goes to the Hospital" which aired January 19, 1953. It depicts the father-to-be waiting in the hospital waiting room while Lucy gives birth to their son. The waiting room permits smoking and Lucy's husband smokes a cigarette nervously while waiting.

What utter rubbish... Where did you read this? Or get this impression?

My grandfather was the epitome of "manliness". Blue collar worker. Hunter. Army service. My mother and her sisters have vivid memories of him singing to them.

Something is honestly sick with so many families in this country. Men have been caring for their children for millennia. It's what separates humans from the lesser beasts.

We made a caricature of men and we've grown to believe it.

If this matters, its effect in society is going depend on the number of fathers who behave like this. If that number were much smaller 100 years ago then it is now, etc.

Based on my own familial experience (hard to get many others), my grandfather was not an aberration. Actually, if we look at cultural products of various times (songs, poems, etc), it seems quite clear that it was expected that a good father would be playful and intimate with his children.

Thats a very, post-industrial revolution view of history.

By comparison in my wife's "backwards" country, the female relatives of the woman in labor are traditionally not allowed to attend labor. Sure, the men weren't allowed to see the baby for forty days, but thats to protect the newborn from dirty ruffians who'd spent all day wrestling hogs and ploughing fields. All the men of this society - regressively conservative to a tee - Ive met are far more involved with kids than your average modern day phone addicted westerner.

Nor are fathers, generally, cold and uncaring for their children in classical literature outside very militaristic societies. Curiously enough, you mention "100 years ago". Those fathers were literally shell shocked.

> many young men don’t seek emotional support when they need it because they fear being perceived as weak and ineffective.

I would be curious to see a study on what happens to those men who do seek it. As in every last case I anecdotally am aware of, that perception quickly became reality and those men regretted it.

Are you saying that (in your experience) young men who seek emotional support become weak and ineffective? Or am I misunderstanding what you've written?

> perceived as

> that perception quickly became reality

I am saying that young men who are seek emotional support then get treated as and viewed as weak and ineffective by those they have sought support from or those around them who know they have sought support, with all the repercussions of that.

The men are the same, whether they seek emotional support or not. However, seeking emotional support gets them treated very differently verses not seeking it and it is rarely in a compassionate way.

A lot of "problem solving" involving kids means "making the problem go away from the adult's life". E.g. a situation I see played out is kids being told to respond to bullying by acting like they don't care (good advice as far as it goes). If the bullying continues, we hear it isn't a problem because the kids says he doesn't care - which is what we told him to say, true or not. In any case, the problem is solved from the adult's POV - the bullying complaint has disappeared, ticket is moved to resolved. The bullied child now faces his problem alone. Receiving this kind of "support" discourages reaching out for help.

(I'm not saying this is specific to boys, don't read too much into pronouns.)

Right, I think the article would completely agree that society as it is right now is not a broadly accepting place for males to be open about their emotional needs. Which is why the call to action isn't for males to be emotionally open in general, but for fathers to try to have more positive and supportive interactions with their sons about emotional needs.

And why the article's guide point is 'Encourage them to share their struggles — with you, of course, but also with other trusted adults, a therapist or even friends.', not 'Encourage them to share their struggles with all their acquaintances'.

Eh, I’m gonna bite the bullet and give a quick answer, based on what’s I’ve seen growing up:

Basically you get answers like:

“Man up”

“Grow a pair”

“Boys don’t cry”

“Life is harsh, get used to it”

Last but not the least: “psychologists are for weak people with mental problems, not for you”.

Two more observations again based on my life experience:

1. Weakness is generally accepted in girls/women, largely acknowledged and supported. Can’t say the same for boys/men.

2. Often times I’ve been said the above phrases either by girls/women of my same age or by people like teachers/educators.

Basically you end up appearing weak, sometimes get mocked, and in general you’re better off shutting up and keeping stuff inside. Over the years I’ve developed quite a cynicism, that I acknowledge and that (sadly?) works fairly well.

I have endless examples of being mocked by my teachers growing up. Including some of your above quotes.

I teach my son not cry. I teach him how to conduct violence. I teach him to treat people kindly, never equally.

We don't cry because we manage our emotions. We know words cannot physically harm us. If it's truth, acknowledge it. If it's a lie, it can be ignored and the liar pitied.

Teaching violence because it teaches respect, physical limits, and healthy lifestyle. We know how to be gentle because we are strong. We will kill bad guys. We will be good guys. Violence can lead to death. We love life and will protect it.

A child capable of this kind of violence needs to have their emotions in check. He gets hurt? Ask for a hug. Ask for advice how to win.

People aren't equal. We don't pretend. We don't go 100% against smaller or less trained. We don't expect everyone to behave as we do. We don't all value the same things. We can still be friends. We can ignore inequity. Sometimes we have more or can do more than others. We do not boast. Sometimes we have less. We do not whine or envy.

He is a man when he no longer has to obey me when he tells me he can be responsible for himself. Until then I get to discipline him and limit his freedom. We explore freedom along with the responsibility.

Life is harsh and wonderful.

> We don't cry because we manage our emotions. We know words cannot physically harm us.

Words can absolutely physically harm you. Have you ever felt your heart beating fast when someone says something that upsets you? At some point that might become a heart attack.

Brene Brown studied it. It does not turn out well for men:

> I was not prepared to hear over and over from men how the women — the mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives — in their lives are constantly criticizing them for not being open and vulnerable and intimate, all the while they are standing in front of that cramped wizard closet where their men are huddled inside, adjusting the curtain and making sure no one sees in and no one gets out. There was a moment when I was driving home from an interview with a small group of men and thought, Holy shit. I am the patriarchy. Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men: We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust.

I posted this on HN before, and out of the woodworks came all the anecdotes of bad reactions to male vulnerability. I strongly advise other men to not discuss their feelings in depth with any woman they have romantic interest in, and possibly women in general since I've seen mothers similarly affected.

This is from her book Daring Greatly by the way, in case anyone else was curious.

i'd suggest the total opposite: do talk about your feelings, and if she can't handle it then she isn't the right partner for you.

You've just whittled down your already small dating pool to something even smaller, or you've alienated your girlfriend (or wife) of 3 years. Was it worth it?

If anything I feel like becoming more emotionally mature opened up my dating pool, and made me a better partner. Ultimately you are better off being with someone who you can talk about your emotions with.

I've been in relationships where I couldn't talk about my problems, and being unable to talk about them didn't make those problems disappear.

Yes, very much worth it. As someone who divorced after two decades, living your life behind a mask isn’t worth it for any romantic relationship. Which will lack true intimacy, since you will not be known for who you are. You will never feel chosen just for being you, because she won’t know who that is.

I get open and vulnerable and emotional with my partner, and I have since the beginning. Hasn’t hurt things yet. Maybe that’s still coming, but again, I’d rather be single.

Is this even a question? 1000%

Emotional vulnerability and openness is predicated on trust. If you can't trust your partner to be there when you express yourself, then you have a serious problem. Trust is the cornerstone of any relationship.

Great as a concept - terrible when it comes to the crushing reality that is the dating market as it is.

Average looking men are already dealing with an incredibly challenging dating market. Now you add on that they have higher expectations for their partners behavior - you're going to be completely alone for the rest of your life.

I hate to say it but the reality is - you're better off trying to mold/brainwash/train your partner to become more accepting of men's feelings than looking for some unicorn that already accepts them.

are you sure it's a unicorn? i didn't get that impression. i can't remember having a girlfriend that wasn't open to my feelings. of course everyone's sample size is very small, and being your average introvert meant that there weren't so many opportunities to meet someone, and there also may be the idea that women who are not open to a mans feelings would not even be interested in someone like me in the first place. that is to say, a woman who cares about a mans feeling is looking at other qualities, that potentially raise the chances for an average looking man.

so maybe there was some self selection going on rather than intent from my side. but that also counters the idea that it's a unicorn. but there is also a cultural dimension, as i was traveling the world, most people i met did not come from western countries. so maybe they are a unicorn in the western cultures.

Potential partners are one thing. Replacing mothers, sisters, and female family members tends to be more difficult to manage.

yes of course. when it comes to unaccepting family members, the only thing you can do is to stop trying to share your feelings with them

I agree with much of this, but not the takeaway. After my divorce, I decided that I’d rather be single than have to spend any more timing hiding myself. So I’m pretty open and vulnerable with women. If they can’t handle it, I’m not gonna spend my life hiding real shit, that’s insane. And the woman I’ve been seeing for almost two years doesn’t seem phased by it, so they’re out there.

Yes, I had previously mentioned the idea that, if you want a woman to break up with you, you be vulnerable in front of her over something small but reasonable. A moment of weakness.

The disdain and even revulsion makes them think it was their idea. Revulsion is the correct term for it; now trending is women endlessly discussing what gives them "the ick" when it comes to a prospective mate. A tear at anything other than your mother's funeral? You'll get dumped soon.

It's like a dreadful little magic spell and one of the components you use up at each casting is your faith in what society at large tells you.

Yeah, this resonates. The times I have been vulnerable in relationships has always been met with, exactly as you say, recoil and disgust. It's a really shitty feeling to feel clingy and unworthy... in other words, when you actually need someone by your side.

As men, when we need people the most, that is when they are nowhere to be found. A stark contrast with women, who naturally seem to support each other in such times, and aren't hung up on the social stigma that encumber men.

As a teenager in the early 2000s, the times I reached out for help while being suicidally depressed and alone and very distraight, I was met with extreme discomfort from adults, or treated as a wet dog that just managed to run inside and get water everywhere.

There's a reason that men succeed at suicide a lot more frequently than women. Help is often not an option.

In his excellent review [1] of Nostalgia Critic's idiotic, embarrassing and awful review of The Wall, Dan Olson points out that much of the part of the film that Doug makes fun of is specifically the main character being told to hide/suppress emotion and struggling with that and failing.

In other words, the "satire"'s primary take is basically that men showing feelings is being strictly something to be mocked.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rokAtlFGa7Y

I highly recommend I Don’t Want To Talk About It by Terry Real or The Will To Change by bell hooks (which extensively cites the former) on this topic. We don’t talk enough about the harm patriarchy inflicts on boys and men through emotional neglect and detachment.

Can you write a paragraph on what patriarchy is and what the harm it inflicts on boys is? Preferably without referring to emotional neglect or detachment but explaining the underlying mechanism itself?

Ideologies are not something you are, people are not patriarchy-ists. Ideologies are something you do, which means people act in a patriarchal way, likely based on ideological reasons, often without ever consciously thinking about the underlying ideology. To better understand patriarchy, what are some examples of people "doing" patriarchy?

How do I test if something is patriarchy?

> Ideologies are something you do, which means people act in a patriarchal way, likely based on ideological reasons, often without ever consciously thinking about the underlying ideology.

I think the emotional neglect and detachment you mention (and are mentioned in the comments of this post) are a symptom of the underlying ideology of patriarchy. We don’t always recognize the hidden biases we hold men to, leaving them in a place where the feel trapped and untrue. It’s much in the same way women might have been denied their athletic ambitions because of a destiny prescribed to them. [1] Be it a cruel friend or a selfish lover, I think a lot of men in our lives have a piece of their individuality and humanity supplanted by an ideal that only works in theory.

I can’t claim knowledge of a perfect patriarchy test. That said, since making the distinction between a “good man” and a good person who happens to be a man, I see a lot of my friends feel pressure to be something they’re not. And the thing they truly are often isn’t a bad thing in the first place.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/why-womens-ski-jumping-was-b...

Sometimes Birkenstock Andrew Tate isn't the answer either.

We don't need a critical theory of boyhood, we just need to stop institutionally empowering people who hate their dads. I know many good men, and the defining characteristic of every single one of them is that regardless of who their father was, they accept him, and by extension they accept themselves. If you are still mad at him or have contempt for him, I recommend considering how it's manifesting in your beliefs about the world before even thinking about problematizing boyhood.

Obviously I'm quite suspicious of adults talking about how to raise boys, but only because the only problem they should be trying to solve at all is how to be a worthy example, and anything else is a substitute for that essential element. But the "concern" about boys is just another form aggression against them, imo.

Provocative notion, but I agree. n = 1 : no father, but had some stabilizing male influences in my formative years.

People without good enough “father figures” turn out emotionally volatile. I see it in myself, and I see it in others. Sometimes, emotions should be observed and not yielded to. “Toxic masculinity” is just taking this to the extreme of disregarding all emotions. “Toxic femininity” is just yielding to all of one’s emotions. It mirrors the narcissist:BPD relationships (absent, cold, and self-absorbed man; next to the hysterical, ever-present, and needy woman).

A healthy person has cultivated both aspects of themselves in moderation (learning to listen to and identify one’s emotions, and having the good judgement to know when they should and shouldn’t be allowed to continue) — this is usually best done by emulating others with this healthy outlook, most commonly with a healthy mother and father (but with the dissolution of gender norms, gender doesn’t matter on the surface, so long as the people involved have nurtured both parts well).

The best way to raise boys is in a village with all sorts of people to learn from. The worst way is to neglect them and let them figure out life for themselves.

"Toxic mascilinity" is a canard, and unless that father figure was an actual man respected by other men, they were probably just in search of a hit of narcissistic supply (or worse) from a child in need. Some agony aunt of whatever sex that's always around when the chips are down because it makes them feel needed is a just another predator.

The best way to raise boys is to become a good man.

Err… what? So people with abusive or absent dads should just forgive and love them?

That's not at all what GP said. They said "accept". For example, that could mean accepting that your father was a piece of shit and sloughing him off, out of your life. At some point, one has to stop letting the damages of the past continue to damage ones self.

They said "accept".

They said "accept him", as a direct object.

Not "accept the fact that he had negative qualities", which is something entirely different.

I would agree with you. The most important person I hurt when holding a grudge is myself. Much better to do my best to forgive, maybe forget, and move on with my life (with or without that person).

Love them, no. Make their peace with what happened, accept that they can't change it, and move on, yes.

This is a lot easier said than done. I say this from first hand experience. I've been screwed a few times so far and generally managed to make my piece with most of those experiences except the abuse and apathy from my parents

Right. Just as some people who were abused by their parents will never be 100% physically well as adults, some will never be 100% mentally well. (And of course in neither case is that something they should be blamed for).

Forgiveness is all about detachment. Forgiveness is not only good for the forgiven, it is good for you, too. If you let hate fester in you, it will incline you toward wrath. Hate the sin and not the sinner. Love and pray for your enemy.

Now, that doesn't mean you should just act as if nothing happened. Actions have consequences, and those consequences should be determined by the gravity of the actions.

"Abuse" is a vague term and often people mean very different things by it. Some people call their father throwing a fit of anger or cussing their kids out about something every now and then "abuse". And then other people use the same term to refer to really diabolical stuff, like child-buggering. With the less serious and more understandable stuff, you should also take into consideration what your father was going through at the time, and how that might have influenced his actions and his judgment. When I got older and began to understand what my father has had to deal with (including me lol), it really made me not care at all about some of the rough-ups we had. So I mean whether or not you should want to patch up the relationship with your father should really be determined by the character of the abuse, the extent of it, the circumstances, et cetera. This should also determine what exactly "patching up" that relationship means - like what kinds of boundaries you set, and so on.

Dad murdered mom when I was 15, so I have some experience here. I haven't seen him since I testified against him.

But... I don't let that define my life. I miss mom, and I always will, but I made peace with it and have moved on. You can't just spend your life sobbing into a pillow or grinding my teeth in rage, at some point you have to go back to just living again.

Forgiveness is often more about the forgiver than the forgiven.

> I know many good men, and the defining characteristic of every single one of them is

That would stand if you considered every guy talking shit about their father as "bad" men, regardless of how they behave otherwise.

I agree having a settle relationship with one's father is better, but people with legitimate grief against their father and having objective disgust about what they did as human beings shouldn't be a disqualifying situation.

I'm also a bit perplexed by the opposition between hating someone and accepting them. You can acknowledge what someone did for you, see where they come from and accept they are who they are, while hating their guts.

Hate implies resistance, while acceptance has no resistance. It's this resistance that manifests itself in how they treat men in general.

Someone who hates how their father behaved and treated them, and put their soul into being better as a human being would still fit that "resistance" theme. That resistance could totally manifest in them not engaging in aggressive or corrosive behavior toward other men, if that's part of what they hated in their father.

Only problem is - objectively some dads are just no damn good.

Are their children supposed to "accept" him regardless, and feel bad about themselves if they can't?

As someone who fully supports ejecting toxic relatives - including fathers and mothers - from their adult lives, no, they should not feel bad if they can't or won't accept their parents' toxicity.

Keeping toxic people in your life, regardless of their gender, is not something that somehow makes you a better or stronger person. And most psychologists with licenses agree.

Often we hold on too long because we cannot accept that there will never be a "normal", healthy future for the relationship. Letting go, and cutting them off can be an expression of acceptance.

And it's important to accept those things we cannot change, lest they torment us.

Their children feel bad about themselves because they can't accept who their fathers were. In these offspring, that hate is always there somewhere and comes out in other ways, directed at other things, often outgroups. An antidote is Blaise Pascal's observation that, "To understand is to forgive," which has a lot of depth to it.

The animus in the culture right now is divided between those who have some acceptance of their fathers, and those who don't. It's not just a right/left thing either, as that animus decides whether someone chooses to be an unworthy person who blames, betrays, and justifies their own cruelty to others because of what they imagine they suffered themselves - or not. Understand who he was and consider that a lot of the anger at "The World," was really just pent up anger at him. Personally, I think a key role of a father is to moderate the urges for cruelty, vanity, conceit, self pity, and other vices that mothers often overlook and forgive, and mainly by example.

Their children feel bad about themselves because they can't accept who their fathers were.

I get the moral point you're trying to make. But otherwise this statement simply is not factually tenable.

Granted, some children who don't "accept who their fathers were" fall into the borderline spectrum that you're referring to. Or are needlessly resentful of their parents due to simple human failings, such as a single lapse of judgement at some key moment. Of course.

But a very significant portion have perfectly valid reasons for "not accepting who their fathers were". And it would be psychologically unhealthy for them to try to force themselves to do so.

Any more than any other victim of violent (or comparable) crime needs to "accept their attacker for who they were". Or force themselves to "understand" their attacker's motives. Let alone forgive them for anything.

Maybe the people who had dads worth hating don't turn out well, and those with dads worth accepting have good outcomes -- exactly part of what the linked article suggests!

I'm late to the party on this, but the first thing that comes to mind with your comment is a comedian by the name of Taylor Tomlinson. She used to be a great balance of young, self-deprecating humor while mixing a healthy amount of family drama in. Her recent tour, however, was just depressing. Constant beratement of her dad in joke after joke. Much of the audience laughs because they feel the same.

I won't pretend to know her family struggles, but the public lynching of present fathers is becoming a strong dark theme.

My dad did the following when I was growing up:

At 5yo, he threatened to take me to the sheriff's and adopt me out because I was "horrible".

Was told constantly to "man up", and ignore any sort of emotions I was having.

He also beat me. Naturally, that was perfectly acceptable in the 80's, even in public. Instead, it was called "spanking".

He would buy toys, then take them away to take a hammer to them, or otherwise destroy them in front of me.

Told me that I'd never amount to anything and that I should just join the military cause thats where stupid people go.

Anything bad that happened to me was always my fault. Didn't matter what it was. My fault.

It also didn't work out that my mother was/is an enabler and a narcissist (and, well, abused by him too).

I don't care what people call this. Patriarchy, etc. Those're just labels. But did they hurt me until I figured out how to undo the damage of childhood? Damn straight they did. And I wont perpetuate these abuses on any other.

And I've met people like you, motohagiography , that defend these sorts of abuses as the general mantra "man up". I find defending obvious assaults and child abuses to be disgusting.

And, well, burying my dad did finally put a nail in that coffin, so to speak.

Can somebody define what "emotional support" even is? I have no clue what they are talking about.

From reading the article I would say men might need mentors who give them good advice and wisdom. That is what I felt I needed at times, anyway.

Emotion support is showing loving, care and/or empathy.

Mentorship and emotional support can have significant overlap.

Is that how it was defined in the article?

No you should buy the book

I don't what they mean by "emotional support", but to me it boils down to asking "how are you doing?", but meaning it.

FTA: “The manning-up of boys begins in the cradle,” says Tronick. Fathers and mothers use far more emotionally rich language with toddler-aged daughters than sons, for instance. Fathers are also more likely to sing to and soothe their toddler daughters at night when they cry.

And "Praise them when they ask for help. Encourage them to share their struggles — with you, of course, but also with other trusted adults, a therapist or even friends."

And the article is full of links like this: https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/involved-fathers-play-an-i...

which suggests:

- Positive engagement: Involved fathers directly interact with their children in positive ways, including caregiving such as changing diapers and shared activities that involve play.

- Accessibility: Involved fathers are available to their children even when not directly interacting, such as cooking while the child plays nearby.

- Responsibility: Involved fathers take ultimate responsibility for their child’s welfare and care, including participating in decision-making regarding child-rearing and ensuring that children’s needs are met.

The opposite of emotional support is if you're crying, people around you say "don't be a baby."

Actual emotional support can take a lot of different forms. I'd say that it includes someone recognising the emotions you're having, not judging them, not stopping you from expressing them, and talking about the emotions afterwards if you're up for it.

The really hard thing is finding the right balance. “Don’t be a baby” isn’t good, but over-compensating too far in the other direction doesn’t do a kid any favors either. There are times when being a good dad can mean (kindly) pushing kids out of their comfort zones or tempering excessive self-pity.

I’m currently trying to teach my 4 year old daughter to swim, so this is very front-of-mind for me. If it was up to her, she would just splash around in the shallowest part by the steps without trying anything she’s afraid of, and she would never learn to swim. It takes gentle but insistent pushing from me to keep making progress. It’s a fine line—when I do it well, she tries new things and has a great time too. If I overdo it, she shuts down and won’t try anything else.

The emotions that make her hesitant are totally valid and natural, and I try to empathize with her and talk about them, but I also can’t overly indulge those feelings, because she needs to learn to push past them in order to gain an essential life skill. It’s tough.

I agree 100% with this, but I think this balancing act doesn't have to be gendered as the common view of crying is.

Absolutely. It's just the easiest example.

It's hard!

There's not much space between emotional support and indulgence. Parents' anxieties fill that space tho :)

> If it was up to her, she would just splash around in the shallowest part by the steps without trying anything she’s afraid of, and she would never learn to swim.

It is a very fine line but this part is probably not true. She's 4 years old and doesn't need to learn to swim, unless you really want an Olympic swimmer.

If she keeps going swimming in the shallow end, do you know what will happen? She will get bored and want different things (including deeper water).

I see this kind of thing frequently, kids work at a slower rhythm than parents and parents are still human and have limited time and patience.

I’m curious whether you’ve seen kids learn to swim with that approach? There are definitely some kids that take to the water easily and push forward on their own, but I wouldn’t say it’s the norm. More often it seems like fear of going underwater especially needs a period of steady, concentrated effort to get past.

Maybe it was the phrasing from the comment I was replying to, but yes, I understand the fear. I'd just leave them alone, more or less, for a long time.

If they see their parents swimming, the desire to try will come at some point. That's when the help should kick in, in my opinion.

FWIW i learned swimming with that approach. It took longer than focused/professional lessons but I can swim fine.

More than that, you can do both.

Take toddlers and small kids swimming and let them do things at their own pace and then have them take professional lessons when they're old enough to really understand the benefits of swimming and why overcoming the fear of drowning is a valuable asset.

Seems like preventing drowning is a key reason to start early. That is why I started early for both of my kids. Too many stories about kids wandering into pools and dying to not take it seriously.

Yep, that's a big part of it for us. We go to the beach often all through the year and usually spend a couple weeks every summer at a lake, so we are around water quite a bit.

Apart from safety, I just know she'll enjoy water so much more in general after getting over the hump. I could be wrong, but my gut feeling is that the fear of going under is only going to get more ingrained if we wait, so it's better to do it now.

I actually wish we had been more consistent with taking her in the water from the time she was a baby. That seems to be the easiest path. Babies aren't aware enough to be afraid (it seems to kick in during early toddler-hood), so if you get them used to going under as a baby, then keep doing it regularly enough, you can avoid that fear ever developing in the first place.

I'll never forget the night that I was crying for some reason or another, and my Dad came in and said I was nothing like himself or my big brother, and was more akin to my depressed alcoholic mother (obviously he didn't say this, but he said I was more like my mum and that's how I perceive her to a point).

Unfortunately I was raised by two people so opposite on the emotional scale that I still have no idea how to regulate my emotions so I just don't show any.

The thing that helped me was accepting that we live in a damaged world. It's okay to be damaged yourself.

To expect otherwise is to expect a fish not to be wet.

Take care.

I don't get this thread

The article is saying that I, as a man, need to jump through a bunch of hoops to become "emotionally mature"?

The comments in this thread are saying that I, as a man, am being persecuted?

Okay. Cool. Too many stereotypes for me personally. Can't say I've gained anything from sifting through all the political signaling and angry baggage

This is a huge problem, and I lack the faith that it will ever get fixed. People have talked about it for years, and the amount of investment and research is nonexistent compared to the talk about it.

I have met many people in my life that virtue signaled using this issue. I opened to them assuming it was safe. They used any vulnerable moment to amplify my pain for their own enjoyment.

It sounds insane, but this is a fundamental(could be instinctual) aspect of human societies. Look at prisons. Look at war. Look at how online spaces react to men vs women.

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.

Totally. When my kid was young and I was out with him the other parents (invariably women) treated me as an oddity and assumed I would be incompetent. Yet, many don't like the fact they're saddled with the majority of childrearing.

Dating is much the same: the majority of the hetero/bi female dating pool selects in favour of features that are often red flags for toxic masculinity. This gets better as one gets older, mercifully, but gender is a verb as well as a noun, and men and women alike aggressively gender one another and unwittingly punish people who deviate from the rules.

Still, at least we're talking about it. Previous generations succumbed badly to gender essentialism - "men are from Mars" and that stuff - and as ever, left a mess for the next generations.

>> 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. ... > toxic masculinity

Maybe we could make progress by tabooing words that frame being male as a bad thing?

I found the post you replied to very incongruous, because as I read it started with the idea that men are casually discriminated against (responding to the "men suck" thing) and then skewed into something that may be an issue but is completely in a different spirit (men defying stereotypes by being primary child carers) and then committed exactly the same offence the original post was pointing out with "toxic masculinity". It's almost like a weird simultaneous attempt to find victimhood while still toeing the "men bad" line.

Toxic masculinity means something very specific, i.e. surpressing emotions other then anger and rage.

I don't think it's fair to equate that to "men bad".

That makes some sense.

Then again, how would a similar "Toxic Blackness" concept fly?

> how would a similar "Toxic Blackness" concept fly

Negative elements of traditional black American culture seem well discussed by the community itself, perhaps to a fault.

The post said "female dating pool selects in favour of features that are often red flags for toxic masculinity". I took that to be a pretty expansive definition, typical "men that women like over me are toxic" vibe, at least that's how it comes out.

No you are projecting your own worldview over the substance of that comment.

Toxic masculinity is absolutely a thing, think things like refusing to admit you're wrong, being overly aggressive and escalating situations, being overly boastful, being reluctant to show emotions other than anger. A lot of people are just triggered by the term for whatever reason. You could just as easily replace "toxic masculinity" with the word "machismo" if it makes you feel less threatened

"Machismo" is still a gendered term though.

Why not just describe it as "being an asshole", or "stubbornness", or "aggressiveness", or "being disagreeable", "being antisocial", etc?

Well, it's a masculine failure mode of essentially being overly prideful/insecure of maintaining one's sense of masculinity. You don't see a lot of women trying to defend their masculine sense of pride by picking fights

> You don't see a lot of women trying to defend their masculine sense of pride by picking fights

Why limit this only to "masculine" pride? You absolutely see women picking fights to defend their pride.

We just call that behavior "being a Karen" (or "catfights"). Which, being fair, both come with their own misogynistic problems.

Because people tie these behaviors to their identity as a sense of their masculinity. It isn’t calling masculinity toxic. Identifying these behaviors as inherently masculine is what is toxic.

So why wouldn't it be better to attack people's bad behavior than their identity?

Because they’ve made their identity the bad behavior. You can’t change behavior when someone has adopted it as their identity. Any criticism is perceived as a personal attack. Thus, the only approach is to point out that being an asshole as your identity is toxic and to be avoided.

Everything you just said is only reinforcing my belief that it's best to separate the behavior from the identity at all times, but especially when criticizing it, so that we don't spread the bad idea of linking bad behavior and identity in the first place.

That's just a return to the status-quo, which led to where we are. Giving advice of "don't be an asshole" didn't work because people made it their identity. Switching the advice to "don't make being an asshole part of your identity" is at least an attempt to change tack and address the weakness of only targeting behavior.

I can respect teaching people not to make it their identity, but the term "toxic masculinity" does nothing to teach people, it just bundles the toxicity to their identity.

You just described a bunch of traits of a narcissist and assigned them to masculinity. But I’m reality plenty of women display the same traits.

> refusing to admit you’re wrong > escalating situations > being overly boastful

The reason why people, mostly men, don’t like that term is because it gets thrown around for pretty much anything at this point to mostly put men down. Spreading your legs and holding the door open for someone is considered toxic masculinity.

> A lot of people are just triggered by the term for whatever reason.

trigger warnings for whatever reason

it's a blanket statement, it gets thrown around way too often without apparent reason, that's why

Toxic femininity might not be as visible, but in many ways it's more harmful for society because it hinders collaboration on every level

> Toxic masculinity is absolutely a thing, think things like refusing to admit you're wrong, being overly aggressive and escalating situations, being overly boastful, being reluctant to show emotions other than anger.

In general, women do all of this all of the time except the last. So you see the problem.

The term "toxic masculinity" doesn't imply that masculinity is inherently toxic any more than the term "burnt toast" implies that toast is inherently burnt. Toxic masculinity refers specifically to expressing and enforcing masculinity in a way that's harmful (to men as well as women).

Teaching boys to epxress masculinity through strength, assertiveness, self-reliance, etc. is totally healthy in moderation. Teaching boys to be violent or domineering isn't, nor is teaching them that showing emotion or asking for help is weakness.

Attaching a word for maleness and badness is harmful in and of itself, though. And its not even a good term, because the name is constructed to make it look like being male is what's bad. It's far from the only term like this, see, e.g. manspreading, mainsplaining, etc. which are pointlessly gendered.

This type of recent linguistic addition really sticks out when people are working so hard to make language humane and inclusive elsewhere, while simultaneously going in the exact opposite direction with male-related neologisms.

And the last part of your own post illustrates that bad traits like being violent or domineering can be called out without having to pointlessly gender the terms.

> because the name is constructed to make it look like being male is what's bad

I'm open to this argument because it's clear that many people take it this way, but how else would you state it? Everywhere else in English, an adjective limits the scope of the noun it's attached to. "Toxic chemicals" doesn't imply that chemicals are inherently toxic, "red car" doesn't imply that cars are inherently red. "Toxic" is probably needlessly sensational though, I'll grant that.

> bad traits like being violent or domineering can be called out without having to pointlessly gender the terms.

I agree with this. To clarify I think part of the frustration/misunderstanding with the term comes from it being applied at the wrong level. It's a descriptor of a social/cultural phenomenon, not a trait of an individual. If a man is being violent, it may or may not have anything to do with toxic masculinity, and invoking toxic masculinity to describe his actions would be inappropriate and needlessly gendered.

It really only makes sense to start talking about toxic masculinity when asking higher level sociological questions like, for example, why men are so over-represented in violent crime stats. It's a term to use when exploring causes, not effects, if that makes any sense.

It's like the difference in terminology between an ER nurse and an epidemiologist. The nurse might just say "flu", because at the level they operate that's the issue at hand. For them to speculate about the origins of the specific strain would be inappropriate. For the epidemiologist, however, these questions are exactly the point, because understanding the details of how an outbreak spreads can help us be more prepared in the future.

> I'm open to this argument because it's clear that many people take it this way, but how else would you state it?

I'd frame them in a way that centers on behavior ("domineering", "violent") without gendering them. I think this makes the actual things that are toxic clearer and that lumping them into "masculinity" makes them less clear.

> "Toxic chemicals" doesn't imply that chemicals are inherently toxic

Yet you've probably seen at least a few people who take this as a reason to worry about "chemicals" in general, despite that covering literally everything. Things like this just make me think that if we want to avoid harmful associations, we have to simply not pair up the words at all. If someone is being violent, we can complain about that without bringing their identity into the frame.

> why men are so over-represented in violent crime stats

But the term is bad because it does nothing whatsoever to illuminate which things might actually cause that and there are probably many causes it lumps under a single umbrella wrongly.

I've seen stats that indicate one of the bigger causes is untreated psychosis, which has nothing in particular to do with being male, or any other identity that's over-represented in arrest data for that matter.

And to me that just reinforces the idea that the identity shouldn't be used at all when framing the problem. I'm aware of the correlations, but we have to find actual causes and, e.g. get people mental healthcare to fix the behaviors creating toxicity, rather than accepting a framing that centers on someone's very identity as if that's the thing that's problematic.

And I can say "causes" because causal modeling is a thing now. I've been reading the Book of Why lately and it's interesting how much things have advanced even in just the last couple of decades or so.

> I'm open to this argument because it's clear that many people take it this way, but how else would you state it? Everywhere else in English, an adjective limits the scope of the noun it's attached to. "Toxic chemicals" doesn't imply that chemicals are inherently toxic, "red car" doesn't imply that cars are inherently red. "Toxic" is probably needlessly sensational though, I'll grant that.

I have an idea. Maybe it has nothing to do with the syntax of the term in the abstract and all to do with what a large number of people using it actually mean. If the term had no history of abuse, this wouldn't be a problem, exactly as you say. What we see in the actual world though is what people really mean by the term. The people using it are misandrists (evidenced by things like the other terms mentioned in the GP) and so the term has come to be a sort of slur; they just hate men and genuinely believe that masculinity is toxic tout court and they have a very hard time hiding it despite simultaneously spouting off otherwise reasonable theories. In other words, they don't mean what they claim to mean by it and people can detect this, so the term has become tarnished.

There does not exist a single pejorative or derogatory term which inherently was negative and disrespectful to a demographic. It is always the case that a word get used in a way that turns the word into a pejorative or derogatory term.

toxic masculinity as a descriptor is equally useful when asking higher level sociological questions as female hysteria was in the past when asking higher level sociological questions. Why are women so over-emotional in certain situations. Why were they over-represented in mental institutions. It's was a term they used to exploring causes of those things, and as a by product it was used to justify their conclusions.

It was originally a terminology used by doctors and health experts. It was later used by people and politicians. It was then abandoned by doctors and health experts, and then much later abandoned by people and politicians. It existed for hundreds of years and then abandoned. Neither change how inappropriate and needlessly gendered it was, nor the harm it did.

And yet when people talk about negative ways to express and enforce feminitity, they never seem to use the phrase "toxic femininity".

Frankly there's ubiquitous motte and bailey on this topic. People will claim the term just means "harmful stereotypes that make men feel they need to be macho", but then use the term in an entirely different way to shame any masculine behavior, no matter how harmless. The correct term for that definition would be "internalized misandry". People claim they're being trying to help men while taking brazen delight in bashing them with this "compassionate" term. If men are the victim, why are they being blamed again?

If I started going on about "toxic femininity" (e.g. gossiping and character assassinating rather than confronting people directly, or favoring groupthink over independent thought), then I'd rightly be called a misogynist for clearly trying to blame women for these negative human behaviors. Femininity is seen as a protected and positive trait, while masculinity is so shunned that even saying we shouldn't bash it is seen as suspicious

> majority of the hetero/bi female dating pool selects in favour of features that are often red flags for toxic masculinity

This is so insane. Anyone who's been enough a player of the dating game and treed to optimise your strategy known you will end up becoming or (in my case) pretending to be "toxic masculinity" because it work so much more on girls.

Gee, it's almost as if women were biologically programmed to like powerful men and "toxic masculinity" was just an invention to denigrate men for being men.

Thing is, men are men—can’t help it, really—regardless of what behaviors they display. Being toxic isn’t “being men” because plenty of men aren’t toxic.

I won’t dismiss the part about evolutionary pressure favouring those hypermasculine traits, but toxic masculinity is more about critiquing aspects of masculinity that are improper or inappropriate in a societal setting.

I saw a meme that summed it up nicely:

“You’re not a gladiator or a spartan warrior who needs war, you’re a middle manager who needs therapy”

> you’re a middle manager who needs therapy

Let me expand on that: “you’re a middle manager who needs therapy” – because we’ve built a society where you can’t fulfill your innate desires.

I for one am tired of the therapy meme. If everyone needs therapy, it’s society that’s wrong.

You can’t just take a monkey out of the savannah, put it in a cubicle, then say “you need therapy” when it misbehaves.

PS: I’m not saying therapy doesn’t work, just that it feels like we’re using it as a bandaid on a deeper issue. Like, hey, maybe people should lead fulfilling lives instead of using therapy to fit themselves into the box society drew for them.

>I for one am tired of the therapy meme

Not like I’ll ever access it (too masc, heh) but I definitely see therapy as a much more positive way to address your emotions than self destructive or violent behaviour.

Sports and stuff helps too, maybe martial arts are the masculine equivalent to talk therapy.

I for one am tired of the therapy meme. If everyone needs therapy, it’s society that’s wrong.

I don't think that the majority of people need therapy. But I've also never met a manager who acted like they were a Spartan going to war. This may well be one of those social bubble sorting issues, where something that is common in one person's experience is very rare in another person's experience.

It’s not that middle managers act like warriors.

It’s that there are a small amount of men in the modern world who need a warrior ethos and the ‘tempering fires of warfare’ and other such cringe imagery employed by those pushing hypermasculine ideology.

The majority of men don’t need to be ‘redeemed through violence’ and, like the proverbial middle manager, probably just need someone to tell them they aren’t alone and things will be OK in due course, or whatever a therapist does.

> The majority of men don’t need to be ‘redeemed through violence

And yet the manufactured adversity industry is booming. Look at all the marathons and triathlons and iron mans and spartan races and ninja warriors and all the other nonsense we’ve invented just to scratch this itch for men and women alike.

Humans _need_ something to fight against. If there’s nothing, they’ll make something up.

Assuming that humans actually need something to fight against. Then it's a good thing that we're making up reasons to do so. It's better than terrorizing innocent people halfway across the globe or even those that are closest to us. If these hyper aggressive people are given a relatively safe outlet to express their emotions then the world is better for it.

I'm curious why you think it's nonsense though. Those activities can be fun, safe and encourage discipline.

Most of the people I know who have done those races are essentially competing against themselves- they want to say they were able to do it.

I haven't met anyone who was actually competitive about it in terms of wanting to be the fastest or whatever. I suspect it is a minority of the group, who in turn are also a minority of society.

If we are making generalizations about what humans need, I wouldn't consider "fighting against something". Perhaps "being right on the internet" would fit more people.

> It’s that there are a small amount of men in the modern world who need a warrior ethos and the ‘tempering fires of warfare’ and other such cringe imagery employed by those pushing hypermasculine ideology.

No one is pushing that, other than those that push that as a strawman.

> The majority of men don’t need to be ‘redeemed through violence’

You are so far off the mark that you're crossing over into speculative fiction at this point.

Ever heard of testosterone? Do you know what the effects are?

Okay, sure, it doesn't result in a bloodlust, but it is largely responsible for active aggression. As a society we channel this aggression into sports where it can be safely bled with limited violence.

> I for one am tired of the therapy meme. If everyone needs therapy, it’s society that’s wrong.

What's wrong with therapy? You go to the doctor from time to time to take care of your physical health, why shouldn't you go to a therapist from time to time to take care of your mental health?

> What's wrong with therapy?

Nothing is wrong with therapy. I’m just saying that if your entire diet consists of ice cream and you’re feeling poorly, maybe try eating some veggies. You don’t need a doctor for that.

When the damage is already done, you need both. You need to address the social problems that cause mental health problems, which, by the way, is not easy, and you need therapy for those who already have mental health problems.

Agree.

I think the crucial difference to me is whether people say “You need therapy [to change your life]” (good imo) or “You need therapy [to fit into your life]” (bad imo). And it feels like too many people mean the latter.

> You go to the doctor from time to time to take care of your physical health, why shouldn't you go to a therapist from time to time to take care of your mental health?

I don't know about the US, but here in Australia, GPs are supposed to take care of both your physical health and your mental health.

Feel the need to see a psychologist? You go see your GP, and they create a GP mental health care plan, which entitles you to a certain number of government-subsidised psychologist sessions per a year. At a certain point through those sessions, you need to go back to the GP to get the plan reviewed. The psychologist sends your GP status reports on your progress.

Feel the need to see a psychiatrist? You need to go to your GP and get a psychiatry referral, before a psychiatrist will see you. You have to go back to the GP once every 12 months to get the referral renewed. The psychiatrist sends regular reports back to the GP on your progress.

GPs also commonly prescribe antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, antipsychotics, etc. Individuals with more serious mental health needs are referred to psychiatry/psychology (sometimes paediatrics for children/adolescents), also those who need prescriptions GPs can't legally write (mostly psycho-stimulants for ADHD).

All this talk of "you need therapy" is very American. One thing the Australian government is concerned about, is people with only mild (or even non-existent) mental health issues consuming mental health resources, causing strain on the availability of those resources for those with more severe mental health issues who really need them, and adding to the burden on the taxpayer – especially when those who seek out professional mental health services for minor issues skew middle-to-upper class, while many lower class people with serious mental health issues aren't getting enough support.

Spoken like someone who lives in a country with a pragmatic healthcare system!

I jest, but I think you are right on the money that this talk of "you need therapy" is very American. The deep irony of someone telling someone else "you need therapy" is that it is spoken with the implication that it should be considered a punishment for a moral failing, rather than resource to live a one's existing life but better. It all feels very Puritan.

Ideally yes. But in my very limited exposure to a therapist, it seems like therapy is far slower and open ended than going to a physician. A physician would not say “I can’t give you an immediate diagnosis, You will have to visit this clinic regularly for an indefinite period to understand what your problem is”. Doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that I’m going to get anything out of it

> You go to the doctor from time to time to take care of your physical health, why shouldn't you go to a therapist from time to time to take care of your mental health?

You don't "go to the doctor from time to time", unless you're in some dysfunctional medical system where doctors can make more money by doing unnecessary work. You go to the doctor when you have a problem. You don't see a doctor regularly unless you've got something wrong with you (including old age, but old age life is not exactly healthy - it just beats the alternative), and if a lot of people in a certain environment are going to the doctor regularly then there's something wrong with that environment.

> You don't "go to the doctor from time to time", unless you're in some dysfunctional medical system where doctors can make more money by doing unnecessary work.

On the contrary, you should go for regular checkups. Even late-stage capitalist health insurance covers these, because it help detect some problems early, before they become a bigger problem. Generally, this is once a year or so.

> On the contrary, you should go for regular checkups. Even late-stage capitalist health insurance covers these, because it help detect some problems early, before they become a bigger problem. Generally, this is once a year or so.

Nah. They're popular in America because of the corrupt healthcare-industrial complex, there's no health benefit on average.

(OTOH, if and when you notice something unusual, go to the doctor post-haste, don't wait around hoping it'll clear up or put off mentioning it until your scheduled annual medical).

> What's wrong with therapy? You go to the doctor from time to time to take care of your physical health, why shouldn't you go to a therapist from time to time to take care of your mental health?

There's a big difference, though.

Doctors, by and large, diagnose using a body of knowledge acquired from scientific fact backed by intensive peer-reviewed and reproducible studies. They prescribe using a similarly evidence-based foundation of facts.

Therapists (psychologists, not psychiatrists) have no such foundations in science. Much of what they "know" is from non-reproducible studies.

If you need mental health maintenance, there's literally no evidence that going to an actual therapist is any more or less helpful than meditating, religious involvement, sports clubs, homeopathic remedies, diet modification, acupuncture, etc.

I'm not arguing that taking care of one's mental health isn't a good thing, I'm arguing that there's no evidence that therapy with a psychologist is better than the placebo.

>>> What's wrong with therapy? You go to the doctor from time to time to take care of your physical health, why shouldn't you go to a therapist from time to time to take care of your mental health?

You presumably think there's a) an objective thing called "mental health" that can b) be effectively treated by talking to someone called a "therapist". But if either a or b is not correct, then there may be something wrong with going to therapy.

> If everyone needs therapy, it’s society that’s wrong.

This. Pioneering psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, father of character analysis made a similar claim. He was pilloried for suggesting that we should focus on prevention of mental illness over treatment. To do this he said that we should radically reorient our societies so that they meet people's organismic needs. He died in US prison.

The psych establishment now is a tool to rehabilitate workers who have become unproductive, not a way to help humans fulfill their potential. Therapy has been helpful to me, but woefully inadequate. That is by design. It's not about my needs, it's about my employer's needs.

He died in US prison because he was committing large scale fraud, specifically by claiming to be selling a miracle cure for cancer that didn't actually work.

For those curious, the miracle cure was sitting inside a special magic box he claimed would do something with your "orgone energy", which was like that orgasm/organism joke but posited as a real thing his device could help you with.

Reich had been persecuted on two continents long before he went crazy and raved about cloudbusting and orgone. The early psychoanalytic period was a wacky time by modern psychological standards, and his pseudoscience about "bions" didn't help. But what really did him in was his transgression of practitioner neutrality, his advocacy of free sexual expression, his touch-based therapies, and his insistence that a psychiatrist's job is to help reform society to better meet the psycho and the somatic needs of the masses. Only then could we prevent "neurosis" rather than just treat it. Even today the idea of reforming society to prevent mental illness is hugely controversial.

They burned his books, including "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" and his seminal "Character Analysis" in what has been called one of the worst instances of book burning in US history at the time. Looks like the burning times are back, eh?

He was jailed for refusing not to proselytize the Orgone box, but that was really a pretext. Orgone boxes aren't in any way dangerous. He was jailed because his theories and practice were a threat to the status quo.

Selling something to cure cancer that does not cure cancer is fraud and it's normal to go to jail for it - two years is not that long of a sentence for it, either. I would need to see a lot more evidence that his sentence for fraud was a pretext for political imprisonment to believe that.

To be perfectly clear, I'm familiar with multiple political prisoners in the USA and am well aware that the US does imprison people for political reasons. I'm just not convinced that this guy is one of them.

Your point about fake cures is well taken. But I hope you can see there was more involved. Imagine touching clients, working on their sexual expression, and pushing radical, explicitly anti-fascist social change in the USA during the height of "Leave it to Beaver", Behaviorism, and the Red Scare. The knives were out for him with or without the box. He came to the US to escape persecution but it followed him all the way from Europe and led to his untimely death and the utter destruction of his liberatory vision for psychiatry. The ground was scorched and we are still bereft of a comparable vision.

The therapy meme is just another result of monetizing every thing about our lives. There’s a whole industry that benefits from us thinking everyone needs therapy.

Sometime I wish we had a real, secular, replacement for the church that existed off of donations (with basically everyone donating for cultural reasons) and took care of education, medicine, community building and psychiatric support. One that wasn’t the government, obviously, since that has the monopoly on violence as well.

There's always room for society to be improved, but I'll take a society where everyone needs therapy over one where most people die of disease, hunger or violence long before reaching old age.

If these aspects are inappropriate, why does society continue to reinforce them? If these are just individual acts of toxicity, it would be wrong to call it toxic masculinity.

Evolutionary pressure.

Society is one abstraction, reproduction is another, and they don’t always mesh nicely.

Maybe the perfect society for reproduction is one of polyamorous warlord harems or something (this is a hypothetical)

Men optimizing for that status quo would be absolutely lethal in our peaceful monogamous society.

That used to be the case, but it's not anymore because our society abstraction is powerful enough to stop it

> If these aspects are inappropriate, why does society continue to reinforce them?

On the male side, prisoners' dilemma. On the female side, tragedy of the commons.

There is a lot of pressure to conform within one's peer group from a very young age. It is possible that "nurture" pushes men and women down these destructive paths rather than nature.

That's pretty rich considering wars are still happening very often. Maybe we should generate a society where a person who has the personality suited for war can live as well as a person who has the personality suited for peace. For one thing is certain, war will come.

I’m imaging actual gladiators and spartan warriors going into therapy because they want to be middle managers.

Well, gladiators for sure would want to. Cushy admin job that doesn't kill you? Sure!

Middle managers are some of the nastiest petty tyrants you'll ever meet, and dearly require proper melee combat to teach them that other people are, in fact, human enough to oppose them.

Does therapy help? I see this throwaway line of "needing help" or "getting therapy" quite often, but I'm dubious about whether it does anything. Get help is often suggested in response to depression, but the actual treatment by psychiatrists is to basically pick an antidepressant with the help of a game of darts and hope for the best. Repeat until you've tried various options for a few years.

Is therapy any more effective than that? Or do they just repeat you into submission until you sing the right tune even if you don't believe in it?

Therapy hasn't helped me "break down any walls", but I have found it useful at times sharing my troubles with someone because it makes me feel less alone in it all.

I did therapy for 3 years, 1 year as a teen and 2 years in my early 20s. I had (diagnosed) depression for a decade+ for context.

I'll say it: it was completely useless, a total waste of time. I wouldn't consider speaking to a therapist about anything ever again.

There are a lot of useless therapies. I've been through several garden variety therapists and the cost was simply not worth it. Part of the problem with therapy is you know nothing about your new therapist, and more often than not the therapist has no idea what you're going through. So you lack the connection. The therapist/client relationship is very narrow and neutered and its easy to waste a lot of time.

However -- I did have some breakthroughs with a life coach I found watching youtube vids. It was really helpful for me to go into a therapeutic relationship when I already know I can connect with the coach on a personal level.

For me it was completely useless. I have tried to find evidence that it helps and have never been able to find any.

A lot of "middle managers who need therapy" turned real fast into the modern version of "spartan warriors" in Ukraine.

Putting it that way implies that women deserve it when the men they're attracted to treat them like shit.

Maybe because you spend too much time with girls who are "players" on the dating "game".

insert meme about selection bias here

There's a whole world out there of fairly normal people who don't play those games. They are not in nightclubs. Try to live an actual life.

Where are these normal people you speak of ? University and highschool dating pools are heavily gendered, as women themselves will profess to dating toxic dudes through college. Once at work, dating apps and bars become the only accepted dating avenues, both of which are heavily gendered. There are other soft-dating venues like Co-Ed sports and workplaces, but non-traditionally attractive people often do not have the "charisma" to read "signs". So they run the risk of being considered creeps.

I will be the first to say #notAllWomen, but every number is heavily skewed in a direction that promotes toxic masculinity.

This doesn't line up with my understanding of human nature. I never really got into pickup culture and have ended up incredibly lucky, so don't read any bitterness in this comment. The pickup game didn't come from nowhere. It culturally evolved because these techniques are extremely effective hacks on the human brain. There are elements of it that you can ethically utilize, but if you go all in on it, you are manipulating people to your own ends. This isn't a game some people play and some don't.

Mm it's not even pick-up really. Pickup is about a bunch of catchy and cheesy lines and hacks as you say and it's not what I was referring to.

I was mostly referring to the general idea tat woman are attracted to dominant, physically strong, confident men (that's for the 'good' traits') but also downright confrontational, insulting, mean and even humiliating with other people.

Since in my opinion women want to avoid being with what they perceive is a "weak" man, they will give a pass to all the bad traits because they see it as 'being a strong dominant man', and if you are nice or just not mean, they will be scared you are being weak

There's another pickup culture that you seem to not have heard about that centers around what you're talking about. Things like nagging.

If anyone reads this and decides to learn about it, go ahead. I'm never going to tell someone else not to educate themselves. But don't treat it as an instruction book, and don't treat anyone like shit.

And davidguetta, if you can figure out how to express the good traits but not the bad ones, you'll find a girl that is not only attracted to you but may actually grow to love you. And what's more, you'll learn to love and respect her and yourself.

What women are looking for is someone confident in their ability to defend themselves and others. You don't need to be toxic to show that.

Nagging is absolutely part of what I was describing, but it's more general. You can also just treat other men in the room as shit and telling to the girl these men are a bunch of pussies and she will love it. Part of it because it's kinda true in some ways... You have to be suble about it tho.

> And davidguetta, if you can figure out how to express the good traits but not the bad ones, you'll find a girl that is not only attracted to you but may actually grow to love you. And what's more, you'll learn to love and respect her and yourself.

Yeah.... well first if you read my message I never said I even WANTED to express bad traits or did it that much beside trying to pick up in bars, nor think it's good. It just works better in the flirting phase, whatever you or I think about.

BTW there's a class of girl where it works particularly well and it's the cliché of the "low self esteem girl"(LSE). It's the kind of girl who thinks / knows she's crazy / stupid and have issues so you can't really NOT be an ass to her because if you treat her as your equal she's going to despise you. ("I suck but he likes me so he must suck too"). I'd recommend running away from these kinda of girls but if you want sex there are a bunch of hot ones among them.

Also I think you should know love and attraction are a lot closer one from the other from what you seem to think...

But once again I'm not particularly interested in having to do that as a man. I'm in a relationship and I explicitly explained to my gf that she should be ambitious, have some fight in her and not take shit from other people or me. I also vaguely explained whole concept of LSE so that she doesn't become one. I have 0 interest in being in a relationship where I can see my gf as someone I respect / vaguely admire. I mean there are women astronauts ffs

> Also I think you should know love and attraction are a lot closer one from the other from what you seem to think...

Or there may be a lot more to it than you think. Attraction will certainly fade.

Anyway, I didn't mean to jump to conclusions about you, but I'm sure you know there are plenty of guys that look for fulfillment through sex, don't care who they hurt doing it, and it's not a great path.

> there are plenty of guys that look for fulfillment through sex, don't care who they hurt doing it, and it's not a great path.

It's not that bad if you are young. To me the good path is you should fuck at least 20 girls to know what you like / how girls work before settling (and girls should do the same). Then after 40+ girls you get tired of it if you are not a retard. The fact that most young people almost don't fuck at all is a bigger problem than the one who fuck too much ^^ (consensually of course)

American women.

You live in a toxic culture, why wouldn't women be also toxic?

These techniques are extremely effective hacks on the American brain.

Experience tells me it's not true.

In general girls who don't go to nightclub are still going to respond to basically the same 'stimuli' / behavior than club girls. It's just in general they are less conscious of it and don't understand it, and sometime blame themseleves (when they are not just at the edge of depression) for despising their "nice" boyfriend and getting horny for the "toxic" guy.

Not really. I've found the opposite: last time I was single I spent a year dating professors, PhD students, professionals of various kinds, scientists etc. It was off the back of a profile that was specifically designed to highlight my mind and interests. I got very few hits from Instagram obsessives and had a truly wild time.

>>When my kid was young and I was out with him the other parents (invariably women) treated me as an oddity and assumed I would be incompetent.

That didn't happen to me but I live in a large city where I've come across (many) other dads who seemed to have more flexible schedules as evidenced by said dads showing up for pickup/dropoff and playdates. I'm not sure if there is/was a greater acceptance for fathers taking care of young children more visibly in metropolitan areas.

You wrote:

>> Previous generations succumbed badly to gender essentialism... and as ever, left a mess for the next generations.

Perhaps previous generations--thousands of them? millions?--realized there's more to gender than blank-slate social constructionism. And the mess is self-created by a younger generation wanting to rebel for want of anything else to rebel against?

See how easy it is to apply ageism in the other direction? /s

Yeah exactly. I let this kind of thing slide because obviously the problems facing minorities/women as groups are far worse than the problems facing men as a group, but just shifting the conversation from "I think group A of people is the problem" to "I think group B of people is the problem" is creating downstream problems. And there are very real issues facing men - suicide rates are dramatic enough to indicate that. I think the goal should be reduce social/economic/criminal expectations based on what group(s) a particular individual is lumped in, because we are all simultaneously part of, victims of, and perpetrators of a system that damages people, though obviously some groups are hurt way more than others.

Public opinion oversimplifies things to good vs bad and works like a pendulum, and I just hope it doesn't swing too much in the opposite direction. If people saying "men suck" is a temporary by-product of addressing systemic gender inequality then that's a price I'm willing to pay. I've benefited plenty from the power of average white male mediocrity.

There's a 5:1 male:female suicide rate in my home country. This has been going on for decades. "Temporarily" saying "men suck" doesn't help.

I really hate to be put in the position of looking like I'm minimizing this, because I made the same point in my post that suicide rates are an obvious indicator that there is something wrong here. But just want to point out that this is not a new thing, and I don't think it was caused by people saying "men suck". https://www.statista.com/statistics/187478/death-rate-from-s...

But I'm with you in the frustration that this isn't talked about.

To add: a 3-5x ratio of male to female suicides exists in almost every other country too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

No, I don't think you've minimized the issue at all. In fact, you've highlighted the fact that men have always struggled with mental health, and if anything we need more support, not people telling us that we should die.

What makes you say the problems facing people other than man are far worse? I'm genuinely curious, because often conversation around these topics will go along the lines of "well, women have to worry about getting beaten up" (or (sexually) assaulted, etc), but men have problems too!

The above attitude I feel like minimises men's problems - the implicit assumption is that everyone else has it worse, whether that attitude was intended or not.

I've done literally no research into the problems these groups face comparatively, but I find it interesting that above case is usually assumed.

I don't wanna get into a whole thing, but if you stop to think for maybe 10 seconds, you'd realize that the problems women face (physically, socially, economically ,etc) are incomparably worse than what men face.

- How about the fact that in some countries women can't even show their hair, have the right to drive or vote?

- How about the fact that women are several times more likely to be sexually assaulted?

- How about the fact that women have to worry about potential unwanted pregnancy?

- How about the fact that abortion laws are being repealed across the United States?

- How about the glass ceiling and the fact that women are paid less for the same jobs across many industries?

That's not to say that men don't have their own challenges as well, but it's borderline delusional if you think that men and women face the same level of challenges.

> are incomparably worse than what men face.

Hummm well i guess i am taking the bait.

> How about the fact that in some countries women can't even show their hair, have the right to drive or vote?

I don't want to diminish the experience of people in other countries. But comparing acros so many different variable muddy the water. If you gonna bring up women in muslim/arab countries (many of which support the hijab btw), then i will raise you the men currently dying in ukraine and what ever war you want to talk about.

Let's focus on the average experience in the US... where we have both enough information and cultural understanding to make good commentary.

> - How about the fact that women are several times more likely to be sexually assaulted?

Something, something prison... And what about the other kind of assaults... like say murder ?

> How about the fact that women have to worry about potential unwanted pregnancy?

Touche on this one. Also i would say that women have more control on when/if they want to be parent as opposed to men. And the 18 year child support can be brutal. (Did you know that child support can't be discharged in bankruptcy court ?)

> How about the fact that abortion laws are being repealed across the United States?

Agree that a travesty.

> How about the glass ceiling and the fact that women are paid less for the same jobs across many industries?

Yeah this one is a rabit hole. But comparing modern data, and normalizing this is much less pronouced. How about the missing men in univestity etc... etc...

> That's not to say that men don't have their own challenges as well, but it's borderline delusional if you think that men and women face the same level of challenges.

This must be an american thing, the weird need to diminish or reduce the experience of a certain group. Life sucks, and sucks for a lot of people accros so many different variable.

I understand the concept that some issue might be more pressing , but to call someone delusional simply for asking the question is not helful at all...

Its a tit for tat and it probably averages out. Everyone has it shitty:

- How about the fact that men commit suicide at greater rates than women

- How about the fact that men are 10 times more likely to be killed on the job

- How about the fact that men are several times more likely to be physically assaulted

- How about the fact that men are more likely to die of covid

- How about the fact that 3 in 4 homeless people are men

We could go on and on like this in an all day pity party if you want?

> I don't wanna get into a whole thing

Proceeds to get into the whole thing.

Also that most problems women face are also part of related issues for men: the construction of femininity in opposition to masculinity has been the basis of an enormous amount of bullying and emotional trauma for men who are perceived to not adequately meet whatever arbitrary standard of "manliness" is allowed.

This should be familiar to most male members of this forum: being the computer nerd was weak, not playing the man's sports was "girly", not meeting body image standards is contrasted to being too feminine.

Men who are raped aren't taken seriously at all because of these problems. But that's never getting fixed so long as your only answer (and it's rife in this thread) is to construct these issues in opposition to femininity.

Instead everyone can remember one person saying "men suck" in some context, and on that basis they're clamoring to tear down decades of progress on equality. Which isn't going to help any man.

I was wrong to use the word "obviously", and would change it to "in my opinion" if I could still edit that post. And definitely did not intend to minimize mens problems - I'm a man myself and have first hand experience. I've had this conversation with a friend who is a outspoken feminist who I felt erased the problems men faced.

I don't have time to show my thoughts with any objective metrics, so I'm just going to lay out how I see things, so this will be touchy-feely. This is merely my opinion and I have no problem with people disagreeing.

I think the biggest impact is in how people can function in modern society - pay gap, positions of power, tokenization - a good book is "Invisible Man" by Ralph Waldo Ellison which is about more than being black in America but about being an individual that everyone wants to put in a box or a particular group - he's invisible because people don't see the individual. It's universal, and everyone feels that to some degree, but the degree I feel it as a white male is much smaller. Basically your ability to project your will on the world is easy mode for white male (btw - me).

Anecdote alert: For example I was literally just talking to an old friend who I've worked with in the past who is a great architect but kept getting the in-the-middle-of-nowhere projects at a very well known and old NYC firm, so she started her own architecture business and is doing quite well.

But not that it makes things easy for men! Because there is also expectation to be a provider, suck up your emotions and be tough. These things, which some point to as "the problem" are harming men as well and should be addressed. And this is where it gets very messy - some of the things that are "evidence" that men are privileged are also things that harm men in non-obvious ways. And as for the "easy to project your will", there is also an expectation that you have to and you're a failure if you don't. Why can't someone live a simple life without feeling like a failure?

Ultimately I think the ideal goal should be to not push gender based expectations - both for male and female.

Thanks for the reply, I get where you're coming from. I think I mostly just wanted to bring up the implicit assumptions that are made about the problems a certain group can have.

I suppose a lot of these issues come down to these subtler problems - Men have fewer problems in some senses (physical capability, professional respect, etc) but more in others (generally emotional and relationships), wheas for women it's often the reverse. These sorts of implicit assumptions that exist on a cultural level can be difficult for people of the opposite gender to see or understand.

> I don't have time to show my thoughts with any objective metrics,

Here's the thing though, there are objective metrics. On almost all of them, women have it better as a group than men.

Victims of violence? Overwhelmingly male. Suicides? The same. Deaths and injuries at work. The bar charts for all of those look pretty much the same.

Other objective metrics reveal females to have the upper hand: education (better for females, worse for males), health (better for females, worse for males), family court (better for females, worse for males), employment (better for females than for males), homelessness (better for females than for males).

So your assertion that there exists objective metrics but that it would take too long to present is, I feel, maybe correct, but there's so few of those metrics and they need to be applied to narrowly, they may as well not exist.

I've come around to replace 'insert group name' with the word Jews and see how it sounds.

I call this the "Muslim test": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045005

I use "Muslim", mostly because there's been a lot of negativity and discrimination surrounding Muslims in my own country, but obviously whatever works for you.

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 men. You couldn't even do that show today.

> Seinfeld is one of the few sitcoms where a female character is as flawed as the men. You couldn't even do that show today.

So you observed a whole bunch of modern shows and judged that none met the same standard... Which one of them did you watch that was closest?

> Seinfeld is one of the few sitcoms where a female character is as flawed as the men. You couldn't even do that show today.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Succession? Yellow Jackets? The Righteous Gemstones? Beef? White Lotus? House of The Dragon?

You could argue about percentages but it is in fact extremely easy to do a show with flawed female characters today.

Interesting, maybe: Are any of those women not white? Aside from Beef, which I'm not sure counts as much since the actor was also the writer and the show doesn't have any main characters that aren't asian.

What does race of women have to do with the emotional needs of men?

Insecure? Atlanta?

As a man I've never understood this complaint. Sure, it's a sitcom cliche to always have the bumbling dad and the competent mom who is usually also wildly out of his league, but the reasons why that's the more common case don't strike me as something to get upset about (it is boring writing, but that's a different problem). Humor at the expense of traditionally more powerful groups works better because it can be seen as both a way of balancing the scales a bit and it doesn't come with the uncomfortable connection to examples of people taking the underlying ideas way more seriously. Comedy about my gender is funnier because nobody actually thinks my gender is a weakness.

To that point, culture is absolutely full of baseless attacks on women too, often in a far more damaging context. Lots of people still feel way too comfortable suggesting women are biologically unsuited for high status jobs and really only valuable for making babies. And the vitriol directed at women in the abortion debate, and the actual reduction in rights that rhetoric has led to, sort of puts dumb male sitcom characters in perspective.

> but the reasons why that's the more common case don't strike me as something to get upset about

I would venture to guess that's because you are not in the socio-economical bracket where this is not just something you see on TV but become how people actually treat you.

In my arm-chair and widely unqualified perspective, the life experience of men is very very bi-modal. A select few with whatever the characteristic du-jour are can have such a different experience that it become harder to related to the less fortunate.

> Humor at the expense of traditionally more powerful groups works

About the same remark, traditionally, the most the people with the most power were/are men, doesn't follow that most men have power or that even that the average men have more power than the average women. The distribution of power/social status is usually very skewed for men.

> because it can be seen as both a way of balancing the scales a bit

Two wrong doesn't make a right , and the sin of the father do not belong to the sons. The problem with balancing things like this is that you are punishing people who weren't not involved in a situation...

> it doesn't come with the uncomfortable connection to examples of people taking the underlying ideas way more seriously.

And racist joke were also justified before because they were just joke that nobody take seriously.

> Comedy about my gender is funnier because nobody actually thinks my gender is a weakness.

You would be surprised... Sure not weakness... But things like emotional maturity and basic organization skills that's a different story.

> To that point, culture is absolutely full of baseless attacks on women too, often in a far more damaging context. Lots of people still feel way too comfortable suggesting women are biologically unsuited for high status jobs and really only valuable for making babies. And the vitriol directed at women in the abortion debate, and the actual reduction in rights that rhetoric has led to, sort of puts dumb male sitcom characters in perspective.

This also a big problem every time men/boys problem are brought to the for front. It seems to always been turned into "but what about women... etc..."

I can only speak for myself, as fairly liberal man. We all understand (even if we don't always relate to them) the tribulation that women face. Those things should definitively be addressed and fought for. But we don't need to solve ALL the women problems before we give some attentions to men issues. And certainly shouldn't use that as excuse to continue detrimental societal stereotypes.

Stereotyping an entire gender as dumb, un effective buffoon is wrong and as you mentioned yourself not very funny. Let's just stop it and move on... there is no need for mental gymnastic to find bizare excuses.

The issue is that, at least for me, growing up the only exposure you had to the concept of "normal" on TV was sitcoms. They lived in a block of shows that got shown either before or after The Simpsons (which was obviously meant to be not real, except for literally everything they said about the American healthcare system) and thus even though you knew there was meant to be funny things happening, it was never clear what the subversion of - not to teenagers trying to figure out their identity.

We had a stunning lack of shows which tried to depict well adjusted male characters: i.e. people who could have emotions, who could have flaws and were allowed to work to correct them, but who could also be sources of wisdom or correct. Instead we had "sitcoms" and "drama".

And in Australia at least, our "drama" is...pretty god damn messed up - but at least that was obviously something you didn't want to watch.

It's why show's like Bluey have exploded the way they have: it fills that need for a middle ground of something in media to say "this is what you can be" in a way which isn't playing to stereotypes.

Though I suppose all of that could be summarized as: the death of boomer humor about hating your wife is long-overdue.

Negative stereotypes about men are not okay. Please stop making excuses for negative stereotypes about men.

Yes, men are more privileged than women in many ways. But men are also disadvantaged in many ways -- many individual men are actual quite vulnerable! -- and negative stereotypes about men cause real harm. Yes, society is sometimes quite shitty to women; but that doesn't somehow make it okay to be shitty to men.

Feminism at its best treats both women and men with respect and dignity. Feminism at its worst uses "gender equality" to justify hurting men. Right now you're doing the latter. Please stop.

Because we did Seinfeld. It's done. You can still watch it. It's really popular amongst Millenials and Gen Z. People say "you couldn't do that show today" and I wonder what show they think isn't being done? Because It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia is right there - it's definitely not Seinfeld, because that would be redundant, but it's been happily leaning into similar ideas (while going a different direction).

Seinfeld was pretty good, eh?

> Misandry is normalized in society.

Is it?

I don't regularly (if ever) encounter "baseless attacks on men"... excepting situations where "reversing the roles" would result in the perpetrator still being a man and the victim still being a man.

> there'd be pitchforks for treating women as anything other than paragons of virtue.

Wait, are you doing a sarcasm?

Who wields the pitchforks? It's the husbands, right? Those who were wronged when their wives' virtue was called into question?

You just have to look at some of the prominent Karens who are now getting their behavior recorded to see how many have internalized this concept. Both SoHo and Central Park Karen's were quick to don the caul of victimhood to shine a negative light on males and seek special treatment when they were in fact the victimizers.

They were both quick to try to "don the caul of victimhood," but were they actually successful at all? Certainly in my "leftist" circles no one took their side.

Only because they were captured on video. This isn't a new phenomenon. Just like bad cops now being caught doing what they've always been doing. Remember. Believe Them. They'd never lie /s.

You must know my friends and acquaintances very well if you can predict their behavior in a hypothetical situation; even I wouldn't venture to do that!

You're confusing racist attacks with imagined "misandry". Note that the term 'karen' usually refers to a racist white woman, as it does in these cases.

In fact, the sensational coverage of these very incidents you cited demonstrates the misogynistic standards of the society and media cycle. The reason you've heard so much about these "prominent karens"[0] perpetrating racist attacks is because they are women. Women being violent is seen as a scandal and ridiculed by society/media. The fact that it's not an everyday occurrence is (counter-intuitively) why it seems so common. Men are responsible for a much greater share of all violence. It is clearly the violence perpetrated by men, not women, that is normalised.

[0] and that there can be "prominent karens" in the first place

It's not that men are portrayed as fools and women are not. It's more likely that women in the shows you are describing are there as fillers and not as characters of their own right -flawed or not-.

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.

Herman was even described as having "the mind of a child" in one of the episodes. The plots often revolved about some childish scheme that Lily tried to put a stop to.

MwC was definitely the oafish husband, again with the childish schemes, much like Ralph in the Honeymooners. It's just a raunchy version of the Honeymooners.

ILL is a rare exception - a reverse Honeymooners.

P.S. I still enjoy watching these shows. Especially the Munsters. Herman always makes me laugh.

To elaborate a little, I watched season 1 of married with children a while ago and it struck me as a more modern I love Lucy. I can't speak to later seasons.

The Munsters... well, I think I've seen a few episodes. I don't recall the wife (Lily) doing much in the episodes I watched, to be honest. I did see the recent Munsters movie, and Herman is both the cause and solution to their problems, Lily doesn't really do much from what I recall, if she has a comedic premise it's the ridiculousness of her falling for Herman.

The Munster movies are unwatchable. They should never have been made. The TV series, though, is nigh perfect. Some nice touches are the mirrors that shatter whenever Herman looks in them, and the trombone accents are inspired.

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."

Last year there was some graffiti near my house:

"Trans rights are human rights!"

Okay, fair enough. Then a few metres later, in the same colour and obviously by the same person:

"Kill all men!"

People will say "yes, but it doesn't mean literally kill all men", and of course it doesn't. But it's not exactly positive, is it?

Some people do mean it though

edit: radicalism is a real thing

I suppose, but those are staggeringly rare and can essentially just be ignored.

> People will say "yes, but it doesn't mean literally kill all men", and of course it doesn't.

As an honest question: why “of course it doesn’t”?

Because both sexes are required for the species to survive. Killing all men would mean the end of all women too.

> Killing all men would mean the end of all women too.

There is some percentage of “feminists” who don’t love women but simply hate men.

There is some percentage of $x who hate $y for almost any value and combination of $x ad $y. It's not meaningful or constructive to look at the extreme nutjob examples when examining a movement in its entirety.

I completely disagree. As you know, the extreme nut job examples are always the loudest people in the group. It is not meaningless to account for them.

I agree many have an apparent outsized influence, but with some exceptions in most cases I think this is only optics, and they don't really represent all that many people.

"280 character soundbite" social media isn't helping either here, nor is "zomg person X said something ridiculous"-type "journalism".

Well, someone did seriously suggest getting rid of 90% of men, and invented a fairly popular slogan in the process. "The future -- if there is one -- is female" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Miller_Gearhart

Yeah I'm very left wing and in trans circles and that combination of rhetoric never made sense to me. It's giving in to the same harmful gender essentialism that generates transphobia (especially TERFs, who are basically entirely motivated by second wave radical feminism's silly misandry) so it's just kind of self contradictory, not to mention being unhelpful. Plus it's just... stupid? Like, sure, patriarchy, but one of the crucial parts of third wave feminism was seeing how patriarchy doesn't benefit all men at all, it only benefits a few, and even the mechanisms of their privilege can also harm men a lot. And saying stuff like that really does psychologically harm men even if they still have privilege (especially since they may not actually be in a good life position despite that). It's actually become a point of discussion in online trans spaces bc trans men have begun pointing out how harmful this rhetoric is — being made to feel evil and like "gender traitors" and stuff for being men, or, if they're excludeded from "KAM," being made to feel like men-lite. There's no winning with it.

It was written on a wall, doesn’t that mean it is literal?

I really wanna ask whoever wrote that if trans men are included

Speaking of which, I felt [1] was a rather interesting article on that. Multiple people are interviewed and their experiences differ, but stuff like this really stands out, and especially that last paragraph is pretty relevant here:

Prior to my transition, I was an outspoken radical feminist. I spoke up often, loudly and with confidence. I was encouraged to speak up. I was given awards for my efforts, literally — it was like, “Oh, yeah, speak up, speak out.” When I speak up now, I am often given the direct or indirect message that I am “mansplaining,” “taking up too much space” or “asserting my white male heterosexual privilege.” Never mind that I am a first-generation Mexican American, a transsexual man, and married to the same woman I was with prior to my transition.

I find the assertion that I am now unable to speak out on issues I find important offensive and I refuse to allow anyone to silence me. My ability to empathize has grown exponentially, because I now factor men into my thinking and feeling about situations. Prior to my transition, I rarely considered how men experienced life or what they thought, wanted or liked about their lives. I have learned so much about the lives of men through my friendships with men

What continues to strike me is the significant reduction in friendliness and kindness now extended to me in public spaces. It now feels as though I am on my own: No one, outside of family and close friends, is paying any attention to my well-being.

I can recall a moment where this difference hit home. A couple of years into my medical gender transition, I was traveling on a public bus early one weekend morning. There were six people on the bus, including me. One was a woman. She was talking on a mobile phone very loudly and remarked that “men are such a–holes.” I immediately looked up at her and then around at the other men. Not one had lifted his head to look at the woman or anyone else. The woman saw me look at her and then commented to the person she was speaking with about “some a–hole on the bus right now looking at me.” I was stunned, because I recall being in similar situations, but in the reverse, many times: A man would say or do something deemed obnoxious or offensive, and I would find solidarity with the women around me as we made eye contact, rolled our eyes and maybe even commented out loud on the situation. I’m not sure I understand why the men did not respond, but it made a lasting impression on me.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/07/20/feat...

>I’m not sure I understand why the men did not respond, but it made a lasting impression on me.

Because male intra-gender solidarity is viewed as the first step to neo-Nazism, so we grin and bear it in mixed company.

To be fair, it often is, but we don't have to let it be.

This isn't even new, what is surprising is how society refuses to listen to Men. In 2006 Norah Vincent a woman, pretended to be a man for 12 months and wrote a book about her experience called Self Made Man, see some interviews about the book[1][2]

The mental strain of maintaining a false identity during the making of Self-Made Man ultimately caused a depressive breakdown, leading Vincent to admit herself to a locked psychiatric facility

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-uv8gT9Kxw

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWkgCEPFmXo

Wonder how much of this is built in.

Robert Sapolsky studies baboons, and I heard him describe this same behavior.

Males would were in constant competition, and if one tripped up in any way, the others jumped him.

Females would protect each other, form a group to help each other. If one tripped up, the others would come to their aid.

all trans people must have been included, because they were either born as male biologically or became men and self-identify as such

The dogma among certain groups of feminists is that trans men are "really" confused lesbians, and that those feminists are entitled to their bodies because they "should" be in lesbian relationships as opposed to transitioning.

Claiming those feminists aren't feminists does nothing to stop them from calling themselves feminists.

Yes, the phenomena you're describing is very real, but I guarantee you that that type of person would never graffiti "Trans rights are human rights".

If the story is accurate as conveyed and the separate graffiti instances really were written by the same person (not a given, a lot of stories like this aren't true on the internet, although I think this one probably is), I have a decent idea of the sort of person that would write it - I have known a couple that could have written this while they were teenagers. Someone from the postmodern left or intersectional queer theory milieux, certainly young, not a cisgender man, who is frustrated with the ability of powerful men to continuously escape accountability for the violence they enact against women and queer people. They view "kill all men" as a non-literal rallying cry to demonstrate their seriousness and willingness to fight against the injustices they recognise in the world (and are/were likely subject to in their own lives). I am extremely certain they have never killed a man, and just as certain that if given the choice they would not actually kill all men (or any appreciable quantity thereof). They would probably kill a lot of rapists, if given omniscience and omnipotence. I'm giving all of this characterisation because I think it's very unlikely that most people on HN would have met or known well the sort of people that say these sort of things genuinely, and because most of what I see here on these topics is either genuine confusion or literally misguided anger that doesn't understand the people they are angry at.

For context, I agree with "Trans rights are human rights" as a slogan and disagree with "Kill all men" as a slogan.

> I'm giving all of this characterisation because I think it's very unlikely that most people on HN would have met or known well the sort of people that say these sort of things genuinely, and because most of what I see here on these topics is either genuine confusion or literally misguided anger that doesn't understand the people they are angry at.

Granted. However, even though we can never fully understand another person, we can still demand that nobody in the room calls for the elimination of another group of people, even as a "joke" or "expression of anger" or similar. That's basic defense of human rights, the acknowledgement that nobody deserves to be targeted for things they can't control. Because jokes are used by extremists to gauge the tone of the rest of the group, and, if the group is conducive, they magically aren't jokes anymore.

> For context, I agree with "Trans rights are human rights" as a slogan and disagree with "Kill all men" as a slogan.

Yes, I fully agree with this.

>Granted. However, even though we can never fully understand another person, we can still demand that nobody in the room calls for the elimination of another group of people, even as a "joke" or "expression of anger" or similar.

To clarify, I was explaining what the type of person who would write that believes and why they would write it, because that question was asked in the thread. I don't agree with the slogan, I am just able to explain the thought processes and background of those who do.

>Because jokes are used by extremists to gauge the tone of the rest of the group, and, if the group is conducive, they magically aren't jokes anymore.

I'm familiar with the concept you're discussing but I don't think it applies here. For one, it's not a joke - it's insincere, but not humorous. For another, I have known neo-Nazis (I have worked in deradicalisation, specifically exit programs for young men in neo-Nazi groups) who would do the whole "day of the rope" thing and claim they were joking but were actually chomping at the bit to enact it, and I would consider myself well-equipped to judge whether these "kill all men" people were "secretly serious" like those neo-Nazis are. Genuinely, they really weren't.

Or, to put it another way, out of the people I knew who would be willing to say or agree with the slogan "kill all men", if they were in a social situation where they had the opportunity to contribute to the slaughter of a group of men in a socially supported way, they would not contribute and would almost certainly actively resist if they weren't having some sort of nervous breakdown at being in such an unusual situation. The same is not true for neo-Nazis or theocratic Islamists or some other groups that I have interacted with who are calling for the death of people with contingent insincerity - outside of a few of the younger members of those groups, given a social situation which allowed them to act out said social murder they would do it, and they all know it, as does anyone who interacts with them for any length of time. That's why I don't think the analogy is valuable, because in a practical sense these people aren't actually engaging in domestic terrorism and don't have any power to enforce their beliefs even if they were sincere, and also because I am familiar with the dynamics of the phrase and the sort of people that say it and they would not actually support mass murder even in an imaginary social context which was specifically supportive of that.

> I would consider myself well-equipped to judge whether these "kill all men" people were "secretly serious" like those neo-Nazis are. Genuinely, they really weren't.

I know you have said you don't agree with it, so please don't take the following as me accusing you of excusing the slogan or agreeing with it, I'm trying to further conversation and am interested in your thoughts and really don't want to come off as accusatory.

Even if it is 100% definitely, totally, absolutely, meant as a joke should we be making allowances for that? Lately we have culturally been moving away from jokes that are about genders/races/identities being considered acceptable... or at least we have been for all identities other than "white" and "men", such as in this case where this whole group of people will listen to someone saying "kill all men" and just understand it is a joke and let it go by.

I actually do understand why someone who feels frustrated by certain things might make a joke like that, and I have nuance enough to understand that context and audience matters, and that often things said in jest are a way to emotionally deal with something without any desire to cause any sort of hurt (emotionally or physically) to the people being joked about.

For me at least though that sort of joke is frustrating and hurtful when I have had to listen to years to (an often overlapping set of) people talking about how men have a responsibility to speak up when their male friends make those sorts of jokes and tell them to stop. "Silence is Violence" and all that sort of thing.

I guess what I'm getting at is you may say that people upset about people saying it don't understand the people saying it, but I do. I do hang around these sorts of people, some of my good friends belong to the local socialist party and their social circles include these sorts of people. And it still does upset me, not so much because of what they are saying - although it isn't a great thing to say - it's the hypocrisy of it that upsets me. I have legitimately heard the exact same person have a little rant about how misogynistic the phrase "bi--- be crazy" and also make jokes about how "the straights aren't ok", etc.

I think people in general, and myself especially, would be a lot more receptive to "oh it's just a joke" if those people hadn't spent a bunch of time policing what was said as part of comedy shows and stuff because as of right now it feels like a lot of people have decided that certain groups I am in are the only acceptable targets for this sort of thing, which is just... incredibly frustrating.

>I know you have said you don't agree with it, so please don't take the following as me accusing you of excusing the slogan or agreeing with it, I'm trying to further conversation and am interested in your thoughts and really don't want to come off as accusatory.

No problems, thank you for clarifying.

>Even if it is 100% definitely, totally, absolutely, meant as a joke should we be making allowances for that?

It is not a joke, I think you may have missed me saying that earlier. It is insincere, but not a joke. I think maybe you're conceiving of every statement that someone doesn't literally mean as being only okay if it's a joke (assuming it's a harmful thing to say in the first place, like "kill all men"). Have you ever talked with a co-worker and said (or heard them say) something like "I wish I could punt my boss into the sun"? It's not a joke, the person expressing it really does hate their boss and it's not intended to get a laugh, but it is insincere. By "insincere", I mean that the person does not have any intent to follow through with the literal specific thing they actually said. People just don't always talk literally, without there being a requirement that it's for humourous purposes. People can say these things as jokes and expect a laugh, but that isn't most of the use. It is definitely not the use when it's being graffitied onto a wall.

>such as in this case where this whole group of people will listen to someone saying "kill all men" and just understand it is a joke and let it go by.

I don't think that's true unless you're in a very strong filter bubble. In population-representative company "kill all men" will always get pushback, it's never going to be just accepted. I mean, just think about it being said in a group that's half men, it would be incredibly uncommon and would definitely receive pushback if someone did say it. It's not like society has agreed that "kill all men" is a cool thing to say, that just hasn't happened. It's also worth noting that "kill all men" is way, way, way less common than either "kill your local rapist" or "all men are bad" or "men suck", all much less controversial and much more common. "Kill all men" is a super fringe thing. My professional experience is in Australia and maybe it's different where you are, I can't comment on that. But I am familiar with the phrase and know where it comes from, and that it's not some common thing that goes unremarked in company.

>For me at least though that sort of joke is frustrating and hurtful when I have had to listen to years to (an often overlapping set of) people talking about how men have a responsibility to speak up when their male friends make those sorts of jokes and tell them to stop. "Silence is Violence" and all that sort of thing.

Yeah I'm very familiar with those campaigns, and I understand the facial similarity you're drawing. Those campaigns exist because domestic violence against women exists with a social and cultural support structure that normalises that violence, and the theory behind the campaigns is that intercepting the support structure earlier might stop some amount of domestic violence against women before it ever happens, by stopping its justification in culture.

It's not the same thing as the "kill all men" example because while some women definitely have killed some men, broadly speaking almost no men are being killed by women, and the number isn't spiking or any other observation that should make us concerned that that may change.

The reason those domestic violence campaigns got approved isn't because governments decided that the hurt feelings of women were worth spending a lot of money to prevent - it wasn't about the jokes and frankly at the time basically no government would have cared about that. They got approved because firstly, domestic violence by men against women is very common and most people want it to stop, and because it has a significant cost to the government in terms of healthcare, funerals, legal processing, various support services that need funding for the victims, children need to go into the foster system, etc. And secondly, there were credible theories that predicted the levels of violence should decrease if men are joking about violence against women less.

>I do hang around these sorts of people, some of my good friends belong to the local socialist party and their social circles include these sorts of people.

If they are socialists and you want them to stop saying things like "kill all men", I think your best bet is going to be an argument along the lines of "Communism is about the interests of the broad masses, and half of the masses are men - it doesn't help the revolutionary cause to alienate oppressed men who can and should be on our side. No program to end chauvinism against women can succeed without broad support from all proletarians, including men. Trying to fix chauvinism against women doesn't separate the class, but the slogan 'kill all men' does." If they respond with "it's just a joke bro don't be so emotional" or some variant, note that communists have an obligation to be truthful, and that includes being precise in your language when there's a misunderstanding. I have used those arguments successfully to convince people of this and similar issues. If you've made that point in a reasonable way without being overly aggressive or dismissive towards the oppression of women (for example by not indicating that you understand that women are oppressed more deeply and in different specific ways than men) and they still aren't interested in stopping it long term., you should probably find other friends if it (understandably) really bothers you, or ignore it and move on if that isn't worth it to you. Even if the conversation doesn't end with "Wow I didn't think about it like that, you're very right" (almost no disagreements end like that after one conversation), if you stick with it there is a good chance that they do at least change their behaviour and maybe come around to understanding why it's not a good idea. I would strongly advise you to avoid any and all variants of "This is hypocritical", because they're not going to be persuasive as arguments. Hypocrisy is treating the same fundamental situation differently based on factors that are superficial, and it's very easy to note that violence against women by men and violence against men by women are not the same fundamental situation, so hypocrisy doesn't apply.

This message was too long, so I'll reply to this with the second half.

> Those campaigns exist because domestic violence against women exists with a social and cultural support structure that normalises that violence, and the theory behind the campaigns is that intercepting the support structure earlier might stop some amount of domestic violence against women before it ever happens, by stopping its justification in culture.

Yes I'm aware of the motivation, I am skeptical of the efficacy personally and I say that as someone who grew up a victim of domestic violence. In Australia in particular we also invest no resources in domestic violence against men, which has women perpetrators more than most people expect, but also doesn't help victims of DV who are in MLM relationships.

> It's not the same thing as the "kill all men" example because while some women definitely have killed some men, broadly speaking almost no men are being killed by women, and the number isn't spiking or any other observation that should make us concerned that that may change.

Look, "bit-- be crazy" is definitely not a call to violence. It's a form of commiseration and some venting. This is actually the hypocrisy - the assumption that everything said is coded hatred when said by or about certain people but not others. I'm not and never have claimed that the people saying "kill all men" meant it literally.

>Yes I'm aware of the motivation, I am skeptical of the efficacy personally and I say that as someone who grew up a victim of domestic violence. In Australia in particular we also invest no resources in domestic violence against men, which has women perpetrators more than most people expect, but also doesn't help victims of DV who are in MLM relationships.

I'm really sorry to hear you're a victim of domestic violence, and I appreciate you sharing that, I know that is an extremely difficult thing to do. It's actually not just Australia (I am also in Australia), in basically every country on Earth there is an absurdly small amount of resources dedicated to helping male victims of domestic violence, including both male victims of domestic violence by women and by men, when compared to the prevalence of that violence. Domestic violence against men, depending on the specific statistics used, is around half to a third as common as domestic violence against women - meanwhile, resources for male victims of domestic violence are more like 1/20th or less of the resources spent addressing domestic violence in general (which also need to be increased for women, as they're currently inadequate). It's a very important issue that does not receive enough attention, and unfortunately gets marred by associated with men who never mention it or care about the issue unless it's deployed in an argument to detract from the concerns of women. For what it's worth, I am a woman and care deeply about the issue, and have personally advocated to get DV support resources opened up to men as well, as well as including men on some of the poster campaigns we've done around domestic violence. It's an issue I find deeply frustrating to deal with because I generally encounter apathy from people in power.

I'm not sure how I feel about the efficacy of the specific campaigns around reducing "jokes". I certainly often feel like rates of domestic violence have not decreased, but there's obviously been a decrease in the "jokes" which is a self-evident good. I believe there is some research on this, but I'm not sure if there have been follow-up or efficacy studies since the campaigns. I'd be interested to know those results.

>Look, "bit-- be crazy" is definitely not a call to violence. It's a form of commiseration and some venting.

That's not true, it is misogyny. It's a reframing of a very old and violent trope that women are basically mentally unsound and don't need to be listened to. This attitude is the reason why many women suffered and suffer abuse in psychiatric care facilities, why fake medical conditions like hysteria were invented to pathologise normal reactions to oppressive conditions (and class as mental illnesses many physical illnesses which men refused to recognise). It is used that way today - "b*tches be crazy" as a saying means "Don't worry man, women are just like that [crazy]. Don't let it bother you." That is misogynistic.

>This is actually the hypocrisy - the assumption that everything said is coded hatred when said by or about certain people but not others. I'm not and never have claimed that the people saying "kill all men" meant it literally.

Someone who says "kill all men" definitely hates men. I've never claimed otherwise, and neither would the person saying "kill all men". There's no hypocrisy there - the issue people have with men saying misogynistic things isn't just that they hate women, many women hate men right back and are very capable of articulating what that means. The issue is that men have oppressed women and still do, and the misogynistic ideas they use to convey their positive feelings about that are important and valuable for the purpose of organising and normalising that oppression. Ideas are an important part of any group who believes anything, and men who believe in the inferiority of women and have harmed us throughout history and today use ideas to organise and support that activity.

(2nd half)

>make jokes about how "the straights aren't ok", etc.

I think you may be misunderstanding what that means, although in this case you have correctly identified that this is a joke. It doesn't mean "not okay" as in they're not acceptable or they're bad, it means they're "not okay" in the same way you might say to someone "The situation in Russia is not okay" or "Thank you for your concern, I'm not okay at the moment". It's an expression that someone needs to check in on them, not that they're bad. You'll find it said when straight people are doing something really weird for frivolous reasons related to their sexuality, like starting wildfires using a gender reveal party. It's sort of like concern trolling (not really, but explaining actual jokes is not my strong suit), in that it's a ~false expression of concern. If it bothers you a lot, I'd advise you to laugh at it and do some thorough research to learn what sort of weird things queer people are doing (as in actually doing, not the fake nonsense propaganda like grooming children or whatever - go to queer sources and find what they're complaining about queer people doing). I guess something like "At least straight people aren't declaring a national crisis over the top shortage when they could go outside and find one by literally just talking" or "I think the degree of drama involved in your average lesbian break-up definitely means they need a check-in". Just make sure you're always approaching the topic with the understanding that the people you're talking to and joking about are currently having their children taken away from them in America or being beaten up by fascists around the world or being mass murdered in Chechnya etc for being queer, and for that reason it would once again be a very bad idea to use the hypocrisy argument, because it's very easy for them to dismiss it (and you) by pointing out that these situations are not actually the same and therefore there's no obligation to talk about or treat them the same way.

>if those people hadn't spent a bunch of time policing what was said as part of comedy shows and stuff because as of right now it feels like a lot of people have decided that certain groups I am in are the only acceptable targets for this sort of thing, which is just... incredibly frustrating.

Just because of statistics, I know there's at least one group of acceptable targets for comedy that you're not in, which is the capitalist class. You can make jokes about Beyonce running sweatshops or Barack Obama drone striking weddings and the people you're talking about aren't going to have an issue with it unless they're the sort of identity opportunists/morefemalecampguards people I don't have any time for (and I don't think anyone should have any time for).

More generally, good comedy is about punching up. It might make you laugh (I don't know you) to hear that really funny one about how feeding disabled homeless women into a wood chipper is cool, but most sane people are going to view it as mean-spirited. It's a lord having a big old laugh about how the peasants look like scarecrows during the famine - true, and very funny for the court, but unlikely to get a laugh from the peasants for really obvious reasons. You still have things in common with the people making jokes that punch up though, and there are people above both of you that you can both joke about. If it's too personally distressing to deal with jokes about you being white or straight or a man or cisgender or abled, you almost always have the option not to listen to them. Even if you're a diehard comedy fan, the vast majority of standup comics are not making jokes about how "straight cisgender white abled men suck amiright?" Guarantee it.

> It's an expression that someone needs to check in on them, not that they're bad

Trust me, in context it was an implication they are bad. I understand that it isn't always used that way, but in this case it definitely was an implication they are bad.

> it means they're "not okay" in the same way you might say to someone "The situation in Russia is not okay" or "Thank you for your concern, I'm not okay at the moment". It's an expression that someone needs to check in on them

I understand it is often used this way, but trust me in the group of people I know in real life it isn't always. Plus frankly even that usage could be seen as kind of patronizing, though again I want to stress that I am not personally offended by the joke itself

> If it's too personally distressing to deal with jokes about you being white or straight or a man or cisgender or abled, you almost always have the option not to listen to them. Even if you're a diehard comedy fan, the vast majority of standup comics are not making jokes about how "straight cisgender white abled men suck amiright?" Guarantee it.

I feel like you've really missed my point. I don't mind the jokes, they are (mostly) not a reflection of any genuine ill will, many of them are funny to me, etc. What is frustrating is how quickly people will assume ill will when jokes are made about certain groups of people and not others. The jokes themselves are fine.

>Trust me, in context it was an implication they are bad. I understand that it isn't always used that way, but in this case it definitely was an implication they are bad.

As you noted, we're both in Australia, so there's no language or cultural differences here, so I know you're incorrect. The "not okay" in that phrase is the version of "not okay" in "I just got admitted to the psych ward, I'm not okay", it is not the version of "not okay" in "Terrorism is not okay". They are two different meanings, only one of them is the correct one for that saying.

>I understand it is often used this way, but trust me in the group of people I know in real life it isn't always. Plus frankly even that usage could be seen as kind of patronizing, though again I want to stress that I am not personally offended by the joke itself

It is insulting, patronising is exactly the right word. It's intended meaning is something like "There's something so wrong in straight culture, they need an intervention, look at this example" - it's faux concern. I wasn't explaining why it wasn't insulting, I was explaining why the meaning you were ascribing to it wasn't grammatically correct.

>I feel like you've really missed my point. I don't mind the jokes, they are (mostly) not a reflection of any genuine ill will, many of them are funny to me, etc. What is frustrating is how quickly people will assume ill will when jokes are made about certain groups of people and not others. The jokes themselves are fine.

Okay, so if I'm understanding you correctly the jokes don't cause any harm to you, but similar jokes do cause harm to marginalised people. Your contention is because the grammatical format of the joke is the same and you're not offended by it when you're the object of it, marginalised people should not be offended when they are the object of it. I don't agree with that contention, it's a false equivalency (grammatical equality does not equal semantic equality), but I think I would just like to understand how you're thinking of it. You remember the lord joking about how the peasants look like scarecrows during the famine, and how that is an objectively true observation that the lord and the court find funny but the peasants don't find funny? Do you understand why even though it's true and clearly funny to the lord and his coterie, the peasants wouldn't find it funny? If the peasants joked about the lord looking like a tomato, would you consider that to be hypocritical?

> As you noted, we're both in Australia, so there's no language or cultural differences here, so I know you're incorrect. The "not okay" in that phrase is the version of "not okay" in "I just got admitted to the psych ward, I'm not okay", it is not the version of "not okay" in "Terrorism is not okay". They are two different meanings, only one of them is the correct one for that saying.

So two things. One "not okay" as in psych ward can still imply negative things, but secondly I am aware of the useage of it as a saying, I am referring to jokes people have made using the saying in such a way as to imply the other meaning of not OK, which in part are funny precisely because of the typical saying. I am getting very frustrated you refuse to believe that anyone may play on the standard meaning and that I must be mistaken.

> Your contention is because the grammatical format of the joke is the same and you're not offended by it when you're the object of it, marginalised people should not be offended when they are the object of it.

No that isn't my contention. My contention is that offense doesn't equate to harm. I find some of the jokes I am talking about offensive, but I also am capable of understanding the context in which many of them are said and that the people saying them aren't actually terrible prejudiced people. Some of them absolutely are, I've met some people who are definitely actively prejudiced but they are a minority.

> You remember the lord joking about how the peasants look like scarecrows during the famine, and how that is an objectively true observation that the lord and the court find funny but the peasants don't find funny? Do you understand why even though it's true and clearly funny to the lord and his coterie, the peasants wouldn't find it funny? If the peasants joked about the lord looking like a tomato, would you consider that to be hypocritical?

I feel like this is a false equivalency. The lord and his court are why the peasants look like scarecrows in the first place, because they will have taxed them and taken a large part of their crops and left them with little to eat. This is laughing at the misfortune of people while being the cause of the misfortune.

I also think there is a big difference between making a joke about the suffering that people actively are going through than there is about say, making a joke that references the stereotype that lesbian couples move in together quickly.

Just to be clear, "kill all men" literally means "kill all men", whatever the mindset of the man broadcasting it.

That person has very strong emotions about gender.

:%s/men/jews/g

Doesn’t seem ok now does it? Because no matter what it’s not ok to call for the death of any group. JFC why is this is hard?

Have you ever tried this approach in the real world? In my experience it just makes things worse.

The distinction is that Jews can and indeed repeatedly have been rounded up and slaughtered. Not something that will ever happen to 'men' as a whole class (who would do it? Women?)

What a brain dead reply.

So violence is fine because it's not as bad as some other horrific events in the past? The barometer shouldn't be the frequency of violence reaching a certain threshold. It's should be zero for everyone.

You should genuinely be embarrassed at this remarkably stupid and pathetic distinction.

The point is that the threat cannot be real (to the class as a whole). Indeed, it is hard to consider it real to an individual, unless you think there are gangs of women going around beating up men just for being men.

Surely you can see the distinction between a real and possible threat, that might genuinely put fear into the object class, and words that can never be actioned? "Kill all men" might as well say "beware of the vicious rabbit"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depp_v._Heard

> The juror stated that he found that Depp and Heard "were both abusive to each other" but that Heard's team failed to prove that Depp's abuse was physical.

Not sure how any of that substantiates whatever point it is you are trying to make. Unless making allegations of violence is now considered violence itself?

Ummm what? This is maybe the dumbest thing I've ever read.

    The Massacre of the Bani Qurayza (627 AD): According to Islamic sources, during the siege of Medina in the aftermath of the Battle of the Trench, the Jewish tribe of Bani Qurayza was accused of conspiring with the attacking Meccans against the Muslim community. After the Meccans retreated, Prophet Muhammad's followers turned against the Bani Qurayza. The men were executed en masse, while the women and children were enslaved.

    The Sack of Isfahan (1387): Timur, the Turko-Mongol conqueror, laid siege to the city of Isfahan, which was then part of the Jalayirid Sultanate. When the city finally fell, Timur reportedly ordered that every soldier in his army should return with at least two severed human heads. The total number of people killed is estimated to have been about 200,000. Women and children were often spared to be taken as slaves.

    The Massacre of Nanking (1937): Also known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, this atrocity was committed during the Sino-Japanese War when the Imperial Japanese Army captured the city of Nanking. Over a period of six weeks, mass killings, rapes, and looting were perpetrated against the city's residents. While not every man was killed, the death toll was incredibly high, with estimates ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Many women were raped, and some were killed or taken away.

    Srebrenica Massacre (1995): This was the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II, perpetrated during the Bosnian War. Over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were systematically executed by units of the Bosnian Serb Army. Women, children, and some elderly men were forcibly transferred and deported, making it an example of ethnic cleansing.

    The Assyrian Empire: The Assyrians, who built a powerful empire in ancient Mesopotamia, were notorious for their brutal military tactics. Their treatment of conquered peoples often included mass killings, forced deportations, and enslavement. However, it's important to note that not every city they conquered was subjected to this treatment; it was often employed as a form of psychological warfare, to intimidate other cities into surrendering without a fight.

    The Mongol Empire: While not exactly "ancient" by some definitions, the Mongols under Genghis Khan and his successors in the 13th and 14th centuries were known for their ruthless conquests. Cities that resisted Mongol rule could expect no mercy; the men would often be killed and the women taken as slaves or wives. This strategy was also a form of psychological warfare, encouraging other cities to surrender without a fight to avoid a similar fate.

    The Roman Empire: The Romans are known for their tactic of "decimation", which involved killing one in every ten men in a unit as punishment for serious infractions, like desertion or cowardice. But when it came to conquered peoples, the Romans were sometimes ruthlessly thorough. For example, after the Third Punic War, the Romans reportedly killed or enslaved the entire population of Carthage.

Right, but not men as a whole class simply for being men. They were killed for being men from the opposing side (perhaps killing women and children was considered too barbaric, or women were considered useful for some reason). With the exception of your last example, where decimation was used as punishment for serious infractions, again not simply for being men.

I trust you can appreciate the distinction, if you think this through a little.

But should it be assumed that you can appreciate that distinction? What it is to be a man is /rooted/ in being killed for being men from the opposing side for millions of years. There is no biological purpose for low status man, which is in stark contrast to women of all status.

"...men and boys were systematically executed..." huh?

They were conscripted for being men, and then sent into battle to die, or be decimated, or what have you.

> They were killed for being men from the opposing side (perhaps killing women and children was considered too barbaric, or women were considered useful for some reason).

Or because they were men and thus seen as being future potential combatants where women and children were not. Men were seen as potentially future detriments and thus were killed.

The distinction is thin to the point of being indistinguishable.

Under that logic, eugenics isn't genocide either. The intent isn't to eliminate a specific group, it's to get rid of some trait they attribute to that group.

I'm not aware of any instances where Jewish people were rounded up purely for being Jewish. There was always some misguided and wrong justification, like a belief that the plague was caused by Jewish people poisoning wells, or that their numbers were enough to threaten the Christian institutions, or that they sabotaged the war effort. In other words, they were perceived as "the opposing side" in one misguided way or another.

I can't recall any sort of -cide where the cause is purely because of membership in some group. In purely practical terms, it's too expensive and too large an undertaking to randomly decide to do. There's always some kind of twisted logic underneath it.

> I'm not aware of any instances where Jewish people were rounded up purely for being Jewish. There was always some misguided and wrong justification, like a belief that the plague was caused by Jewish people poisoning wells

At that point though, those Jewish people were in fact persecuted and murdered purely because of their ethnicity. It matters not that the persecution was justified with stories of poisoned wells. What matters is that those stories pertained directly to a specific ethnical group, and that group was subsequently hunted.

Sure, and I'd agree with that. My point is that under GP's argument of "it wasn't because they were men, it's because they were from the other side" the same thing applies to other instances of persecution.

Flimsy excuses either matter or they don't, and the application is universal.

Longtime lurker here. I am taken aback by the suggestion that Jews have never been rounded up purely for being Jewish. I find this notion historically unfounded and antisemitic.

Your comment broadly argues that killing of one group by another is never done with purity of intention. I submit almost nothing people do is for its own sake, but rather woven within individual and collective stories. To think otherwise is to deny the role narrative plays in human consciousness.

A cursory glance through a list like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom shows numerous examples of massacres of Jews (and others, but mostly Jews). The attackers always claim justifications--again, no group attacks any other group without somehow justifying it to itself, either initially or post-hoc.

1. What about the many massacres of the Jews for rejecting Christianity? Surely those are examples of being rounded up for the sake of being Jewish, since the Jewish religion is incompatible with, for example, the concept of the divinity of Jesus. A key point here is that Judaism is a tribal and not universal religion. Thus, it is hard to divorce attacks on the Jewish religion from attacks on the Jewish people.

2. What about the massacres justified by absurd pretenses, such as (As you mentioned) poisoning wells, corrupting the host (Communion), or the blood libel (That Jews kill Christian children and use their blood to bake Matzo). These justifications, which do not hold up to scrutiny, only work for a population that wants to believe them in the first place. The sheer number of nonsensical justifications points to the underlying fact--there is no justification at all.

3. Need I mention the Holocaust, in which the stated aim of the Nazis was to eliminate the Jewish race? Even those with Jewish ancestry but with no religious practices (and who were not considered Jews by themselves or other Jews) were nonetheless sent to the death camps.

By the way, I have focused on historical violence from the Christian world, but this is not to the exclusion of violence from the Islamic world, of which there has been much as well.

In sum, if there was ever an example of a group persecuted for purely "being themselves", it is the Jews.

I appear to have struck a nerve, and I apologize for the offense. My intent wasn't to imply or argue that Jewish people have never been persecuted. I would agree that Jewish people have certainly been persecuted for their faith.

My point was primarily that in a world view where flimsy excuses like the side of a combatant makes something not a gendered massacre, those same flimsy excuses would also apply to other instances of mass killings. I'm essentially arguing that if a mass killing predominantly or solely impacts a certain group of people, then it counts as a targeted killing of that group. The justification is largely irrelevant.

Given the 2 responses, I apparently did a poor job of conveying that and should have been more clear.

Thank you for clarifying. I'm interested in your argument, but confess I don't understand it.

Killing an enemy combatant in war is justified--after all, he or she is coming to kill you. That isn't a flimsy excuse at all. And the fact that men were conscripted into armies as opposed to women is no accident. It is attributable to human sexual dimorphism. But when many men die during war, that doesn't seem to me to be a targeted killing of men, since wouldn't women be killed as well if they were soldiers? And I don't quite get the analogy to mass killings, which seem to me to have an entirely different moral valence altogether.

Apologies for the delay, life has been busy the past couple of days.

> Killing an enemy combatant in war is justified--after all, he or she is coming to kill you. That isn't a flimsy excuse at all.

Certainly, but I don't think those actions are the troubling part. The troubling parts come before and after. The decision to only conscript men (that part'll be below), and the decisions to conduct massacres after combat had ceased. It wasn't uncommon to massacre the male civilian population once a city had been seized or an army subdued. The strongest counter argument there to me is that women weren't killed, but rape may have been prevalent. I don't know what the occurrence would have been in those situations, and I don't want to hazard an uneducated guess.

> And the fact that men were conscripted into armies as opposed to women is no accident. It is attributable to human sexual dimorphism.

To some degree. The minimum age for Roman conscription was 16, and I think that gap is a lot closer when you're comparing fully grown women against boys. In other words, if conscription was gated by some kind of "minimum strength requirement" where the lower bound was set by 16 year old boys, I think the sexual dimorphism claim loses some weight.

Even then, some of these events happened after the invention of the firearm where raw strength became almost entirely removed from the "who wins a fight" question.

> But when many men die during war, that doesn't seem to me to be a targeted killing of men, since wouldn't women be killed as well if they were soldiers?

Sure, but they weren't. To turn it around a little bit, would it not seem problematic to forcibly place solely a particular group of people into an incredibly dangerous job? If only Native Americans were eligible for conscription, I don't think "but other races would be killed too, they just aren't soldiers" would be an acceptable excuse.

> And I don't quite get the analogy to mass killings, which seem to me to have an entirely different moral valence altogether.

The likeness, to me, is that they have the same end result, but with different mechanisms. A mass killing is hunting down people with the intent to kill them. Conscription is hunting down people with the intent of repeatedly exposing them to events with a high probability of killing them.

I do think the moral valences are divergent. Genocides seem to be an act of outright hate to me, where conscription largely strikes me as the result of indifference. They both end with a lot of deaths of a somewhat homogenous group of people, though.

If only the men are killed because women are considered useful, is that really so different from men being killed simply for being men?

As for the whole whether "Kill all <historically persecuted/minority group>" should be considered equivalent to "Kill all men", I suppose one way to justify treating them differently is the likelihood of anyone actually taking such a suggestion seriously. We know there's been at least one massive-scale attempt to kill (virtually) all Jews, and we know there are still people around today who admire the ideology behind that and could potentially develop the capability to carry out such an attempt - I don't think, despite the list of examples just given, you could seriously suggest there's a group of people with sufficient admiration of an ideology that says "all men should die" and a capability to attempt carrying it out.

Androcide is a common historical tactic in war, most recently exemplified in the Anfal Genocide.

Right, but they were not slaughtered because they were men, they were slaughtered because they were men from the opposing side.

Yes, they were the wrong kind of men. Just as the Jews were the wrong kind of Germans.

Plenty (in fact the majority) of Jews murdered in the Holocaust were not German.

They were murdered because they were Jews. In your examples the men were murdered for being on the opposing side, and so a possible threat (unlike the women and children).

But what about the Jews that were German?

This comment presumes a modern understanding of citizenship. Jews living in Germany were seen as Jews, not Germans (just as Jews in Russia were not seen as Russians). This humorous quote by Einstein is based on this notion: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/93643-if-my-theory-of-relat...

> implying that the 1940's weren't modern times or that the concept of citizenship has radically changed since then.

nope

I admit I used the word "citizenship" in an inaccurate manner. Please allow me to clarify and correct myself.

In terms of technical, legal citizenship, that (presumably) became available to Jews in Germany upon their emancipation in 1871. This opportunity was revoked a mere 64 years later in 1935 with the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws. Citizenship in this sense is a modern invention.

What I meant above was citizenship in the sense of belonging to a particular group. A person could be a German in a legal or social sense, and I meant it in a social sense. The Jews were never seen as being "authentically" German. They were seen as a foreign people living on German land. This certainly contributed to the ease at which their legal status was stripped.

Thus, not a single Jew who was a German (in either sense) was murdered in the Holocaust, since that is an empty category.

By the way, this attitude wasn't particular to Germany, but all over Europe, from Russia to France.

Well you see, war rape is actually not a women's rights issue. After all, women aren't raped because they're women, they're raped because they're women from the opposing side. It's completely different!

(Before anyone takes it seriously: this is a parody of how stupid the parent sounds.)

What exactly does it mean then? No matter how charitable I view "Kill all men!", I fail to find an interpretation that doesn't mean "Kill all men!".

Your problem here is that if you look black, many racists and bigots won't say what they actually think to your face. (Or they justify it as 'oh, he's one of the good ones')

They are often more than happy to confide in what they think of ------------ when they feel they are in a safe space. A friend of mine, who is half-black, but passes as a white guy gets way more of that than he should in North Carolina [1].

[1] It really helps that he's working in a profession that is majority-team-red. Some people really can't help but run their mouth when they think they are preaching to the choir.

I’ve heard people of any sex say that phrase plenty of times but that’s hardly the quintessential case of male “oppression”, if you can call it that. The scenario described in the article makes more sense, is more common, and has more serious consequences—-ignoring the feeling of boys precisely because they are culturally being forced into a certain toxic mode of masculinity—-and even then, I don’t see why you need to pitch this problem against women as if it’s supposed to be a battle for which gender has experienced oppression worse and historically so. The way that Americans have begun to frame their discussions around gender politics has honestly just gotten derailed and even more stupid since around 2016 or so.

And we have this:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/17/row-after-...

> A row has broken out at York University after plans to mark International Men’s Day on Thursday were cancelled following an outcry from staff and students.

There is a big rift in feminism which feminists seem loath to acknowledge, preferring instead to claim that it isn't real, it's made up by anti-feminists, and it isn't important even if you can point to actual evidence. Well, it's real, it's important, and despite the posturing, we aren't all ignoring it.

https://time.com/3432838/emma-watson-feminism-men-women/

> Just in the past few days, many feminist commentators have taken great umbrage at suggestions that soccer star Hope Solo, currently facing charges for assaulting her sister and teenage nephew, deserves similar censure to football player Ray Rice, who was caught on video striking his fiancée. Their argument boils down to the assertion that violence by men toward their female partners should be singled out because it’s a bigger problem than female violence toward family members. Meanwhile, in Watson’s native England, activists from women’s organizations recently blamed the shortage of services for abused women on efforts to accommodate abused men (despite the fact that, as Guardian columnist and blogger Ally Fogg demonstrated, even the lowest estimates of the prevalence of domestic violence against men suggest that male victims are far less likely than women to get help).

A whole topic thread that seems to be navel gazing on various angles on culture war bollocks without actually talking about the parenting implications.

I’ve got a 7 month old boy, I’ve done everything I can to read up about how to be a good parent - obviously time and attention is not infinite, I’ve definitely missed stuff. The best I’ve seen is the stuff around Emotion Coaching. Give kids (note, non gendered) a safe, loving environment and act as teachers/guides to learning to be comfortable with their emotional selves and hopefully they’ll sort the rest out from the solid foundations you’ve given them to allow them to be in the world.

So much hair pulling pro anti feminism, Andrew Tate whatever itt and so little talk about the actual act of parenting.

Yes, neglect destroyed my health and social life too, and the men I meet in the places I meet them are very often from the same kind of background.

Our childhood needs were not met, hence we lacked the common lovedness that draws social groups together. In later life we find it difficult to form good relationships and find it difficult to function as part of a team.

I believe that neglect is the single most important cause of health issues. Neglect is however almost impossible to diagnose, because it is a lack, and not a thing in itself.

They also need rough play. Last night, I was playing with my nephew, and I was just picking him up and tossing him on the couch. Then, I was choking him out, and he was just laughing and laughing.

I think about what men need most, and I'm pretty sure it is brotherhood. People that you can go, hang out with, and not hold back with. I've thought about getting into men's health because I see the future in my nephew. I don't want him demoralized by the world... I want him to become strong, manifest virtue, and build a better world.

Maybe something lost in translation here, but I don't think anyone needs to be choked out lol

My nephew did. It was light choking until he tapped out.

You'd be surprised how easy it is to cause serious harm to the throat. Be careful!

Parents should not have to earn money at all. They should all stay at home and take care of their children. At (pre-)school there should be no more than ten students in a class, taught by the best teachers earning the best salaries, 50/50 male/female across all subjects.

What I want to say is: for me, this is mostly an economic debate, and boys vs. girls always seems like a red herring to me.

And pigs should be able to fly to the moon. Parents are already extremely subsidized by the rest of society. _Someone_ has to do actual work and make money.

I do not disagree. Let me rephrase: I think it is much more important to discuss how much we want to spend to raise our children or how and how much we need to work, than discussing boys vs. girls.

Of course singing more to your children is probably a good idea in general, and being sensitive on how you might (without a good reason) treat them harshly or differently, is also a good idea. But for that you need energy, and that energy will then be missing somewhere else, assuming things in general are efficient. And if they are not efficient, we should discuss why they are not.

not going to read it. i know how it always ends up:

"men suffering...women most affected"

The effects onto men are more internal. Whereas effects onto women are normally more external.

For example, a man could allow himself to be triggered into rage. And afterwards there will be no visible signs it happened within him.

But his wife could've been around him, and now she has purple bruises.

External signs are more easily measurable, and therefore reported more, therefore readers assume the most affected.

If the man had internal bio-signals measured, such as HRV, blood pressure, etc, you'd see the effects even BEFORE that of a beaten wife. (Of course there are also long-term health issues for being a slave to rage/anger/frustration)

In the western world 75% of all suicides are men and over 90% of all homeless people are men.

Exactly. All that (internal) emotion gets pent-up and he doesn't know how to release it, so he takes one final act.

My only credibility to make a reliable book recommendation on this topic:

1. Have experienced some of what's discussed

2. Has historically read quite a lot

The following book, and others by the author, have proven to be the most efficient filter for 'compressing' sometimes challenging life experience into something manageable:

'The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting Forgiveness Out of Blame', by Pete Walker.

https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Fully-Feeling-Harvesting-Forgiven...

His CPTSD book was very enlightening to my childhood.

There is a vast overrepresentation of women in education

Most don't know just how bad it is:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/young-men-...

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/10/08/the-male-...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-university-fall-higher-...

Women are now more dominant in universities today than men were in the 1950-70s

There's an article I can't find that specifically documents how douchy fratboys are having the time of their life due to the surplus of women and dearth of men in college now.

True, though I think the parent was discussing the dearth of male teachers, not students. E.g. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/02/the-ex...

Bell Hooks "The Will To Change" is as astounding body of work for folks who are interested in this further.

Boys not only need emotional support, they need a strong role model, a leader, that provides guidance.

My wife works in mental health field and, as she put it just yesterday, she had no idea none of it is rare. The stories she observes daily are truly sad it it clearly starting to take a toll on her to the point where is talking about changing her job. It is a hard subject, because you immediately wonder how you would deal with it.

I have no real answer, but coming from old country in Europe, I do think that culture in US holds a lot of the blame.

The world crushed my spirit, and erased the remnants with SSRIs.

I'm frequently told that I have no right to treat my own depression with mushrooms, with my depression and its consequences held as proof that I don't know what I'm talking about and should have no decision making autonomy.

The long term destruction of self that resulted from only three months of that is difficult to comprehend if you haven't been there.

> I'm frequently told that I have no right to treat my own depression with mushrooms

What a bizarre thing for them to say. In my experience, psilocybin mushrooms are absolutely amazing for mental health. I think that everyone should take mushrooms at least once a year to clear out the cobwebs.

They saved my life, I'm still depressed, but I don't want to die (still don't care too much if I do, but little steps).

There's not a single conversation that I've had where my subjective experience has been relevant to the other person's opinion or position, both with family members and medical professionals.

Casually discounting my internal understanding and experience in conversations pertaining to the internal emotional state of my mind. It's fucking infuriating.

One of the weirdest parts has been the way that mental health practitioners react whenever I bring up mushrooms. They don't say anything - just look at me and wait for the topic to change.

This has happened several times, and with several different people.

The most ridiculous example was a woman who dismissed my need for mushrooms and then chastised me for refusing to slip back into SSRI induced asexuality.

Wouldn't it be better?

Well it wasn't for the first twenty years, so I'm gonna run with no.

I hear you. SSRI side effects are frustrating. Don't let anyone give you flack for medicating with mushrooms. Don't even bother explaining it to them if they don't just get it.

I've long since stopped giving a shit about other people's opinions, in that and many other regards.

But depending on illegal seasonal mushrooms is far from ideal (even if a single dose is three to four months worth of treatment).

Hopefully they'll be legal soon all around. As it stands, it really is a hassle in most states. I live in Texas and I'm way overdue at this point.

If I were American, there wouldn't be a barbeque in Texas that could stop me from moving to Colorado.

The abundance of very attractive people in Texas might give you second thoughts about that. If you're a single guy, going from Texas to Colorado would be like going from heaven to Earth.

The place seems a little too god fearing and gerrymandered for my tastes.

(cringe) Yeah... it's gotten out of hand.

Very questionable advice, but I would support it wholeheartedly anyway.

This article breaks my heart. As a (now) adult man who received very little “emotional scaffolding” from my parents - I can’t understand how anyone can think that all children don’t have to learn about how to manage (not just ignore) their feelings.

It is hard to take a step back and empathize with your children when just getting through the day seems like a victory. I needed counseling to understand these things and that is a problem because not everyone has access to that.

I don’t know how we fix something that most people don’t acknowledge is a problem. How many of us acknowledge the trauma our parents endured and what that did to us? Hopefully articles like this help get schools, groups, etc to shift this trend in a better direction.

It's not just a health crisis it's also a insurgency recruitment pool.

Anyway history has a way to do away with dysfunctional cultures.

No, it doesn't.

History, just like nature, is almost completely random and "unfair".

Nature is absolutely not "almost completely random", it follows the path of least resistance in any and all things.

Thus making it "Fair" if we had all the variables

In an obtuse sense nature isn't random, since it follows natural laws.

Small consolation for the dinosaurs when the asteroid hit...

I believe this is one of the reasons for the rise of people like Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Lex Fridman, et al. They act as strong male role models for the myriad of young men who don't have one. They are intelligent, wildly successful, and usually due some sort of martial arts or workout. Men (not just young ones) see this and want to be like them, so they latch on to their messages. This is nothing new, the mafia did the same thing, and the military does this to young men every day.

But while I don't necessarily agree with the messages of all the above, I do think they have done one thing that seemingly everyone else has ignored. They understand that men have feelings, need a purpose, and need to feel useful, and they provide outlets for those feelings in a way society at large is not. The political culture in the United States has become so split that we can't even talk about these issues without someone being labelled an incel, or part of the patriarchy. It's a shame because it's causing a lot of men to feel disenfranchised, which causes them to seek validation from sources that are willing to provide it, which don't always have their best interests in mind.

Andrew Tate is intelligent ?

Intelligent enough to create a grift selling subscriptions to the "Real World" featuring rehashed low-quality dropshipping/crypto/copywriting content, sure. That's not even how he made his money but teaching how to launder money through casinos and adult webcam businesses probably wouldn't work out legally. I have younger friends who are into him so had to do research to see if they weren't getting fleeced.

I wouldn't put him in the same category as the other three men mentioned who deliver value for free.

This article is ridiculous and emasculating from the first paragraph.

Old ways of educating boys existed for so long because they worked.

If boys are extra sad nowadays, it is because of articles exactly like this one.

The author's view is of obviously troubled boys (obvious enough to people around the boys to direct them to therapy). Non-troubled boys may have very different viewpoints.

I really hope more of this specific discussion is had here. It's the type of conversation we should be having instead of what's being shouted around in social media.

This topic has me oddly emotional, not in an angry way. A bit sad, but also, happy-sad that perhaps these things can maybe be discussed in a sane way and we can just help people that need help.

Although I don't agree with everyone here, I see a lot more nuance and reasoning behind a lot of the discussion here. It overrides the overall MSM/social-media picture that says there is only one right answer and all who question it are evil.

Look at the way that people attack Jordan Peterson.

Jordan comes out and says, basically: hey men maybe yoj aren’t actually the worst thing in the world, eh? Maybe you have some things to contribute to society.

And look at how he is attacked for that. Think of all the people who are warming up to type out how wrong I am and post some out of context clips of him saying something provocative.

Here’s a guy who started seriously improving the lives of millions of men and look what was done to him for it.

He is "attacked" because he started attacking communities that weren’t buying his views that men are oppressed. He started attacking feminists, then women in general, then anyone who doesn’t share his angry views, calling them "woke".

His tone has become more and more aggressive, now he’s just a shadow of himself, drowning in hatred and paranoia. That’s sad because 10 years ago he sounded like a reasonable guy with sane advices. He was saying stuff like "the battle between his and evil starts in oneself. We all are capable of the worst and we must fight it inside ourselves." Now he just considers he’s 100% good, right on everything, he’s oppressed and his "attackers" are evil. What a letdown.

My impression is, men are stuck in a world where they are told not to be men.

Toxic masculinity is perhaps a thing, but boys are told endlessly how they shouldn't behave and how their nature is flawed. Girls on the other hand, all is well.

> Girls on the other hand, all is well.

This is also far from the case.

>> Girls on the other hand, all is well.

> This is also far from the case.

Yes, all is not well with girls, but I don't think they have to deal with an analog of the condemnation of "toxic masculinity" and messages that "their nature is flawed." I believe their problems are frequently blamed on external actors (e.g. beauty magazines, social media, etc).

Depending on the place and time, girls have to deal with being called too fat, too thin, not caring enough about their appearance, caring too much about their appearance, being too prude, being too slutty, and many other things. There is definitely a facet of "your nature is flawed" in a lot of them.

You might be right that the question of who exactly is sending and spreading these messages has many answers and external (f)actors definitely come into it. But that too could be said about the claims of toxic masculinity.

That's true actually. I put the "toxic masculinity" bit in a different pigeonhole to the whole "what women should be like". I can see an analogy.

One difference is that, I get the impression it's actually women doing a lot of not most of the "too fat/too skinny" bit. Sure, boys/men can be horrible to girls/women but tend not to get hung up on details. The details of "too slutty" etc seems to come from women, peer female friends, women's magazines etc.

In that respect I guess it's different, because it's a narrower critique. And it's, hmm, self-inflicted for lack of better word. Whereas with boys, it seems to come from women all around, and woke men too. Girls won't be told by their teachers (you'd hope!) that they are too fat or too skinny, but it's open season to tell boys they have a flawed nature they will have to spend the rest of their lives fixing.

I think it depends on your culture, but generally women's appearances matter way more than men's appearances and are considered a personal responsibility thing. Simply becoming older and being visibly older is considered a failure of a woman to "age gracefully" or whatever it is that means.

But also, I think most of the HN crowd are men, and I don't think we're broadly the populace to discuss with any serious authority whether or not women are raised to blame themselves in some way lol.

No, women are subject to ridiculous double standards from everything from body shame (too skinny too fat too ugly too pretty too grown too immature) to their clothing, manner of speech, grooming, and on and on.

"Toxic masculinity" is a problem because of cultural standards where it is seen as manly to harm others. I know lots of very manly men, who are secure in their manhood where that isn't the least bit toxic. I don't think that, for example, cat-calling is manly. But I would describe it as toxic.

I think you're gravely misunderstanding the concept of toxic masculinity. It's good that we condemn it, because it directly hurts boys. Toxic masculinity isn't a description of masculinity itself, it's about parts of the social image of masculinity that are toxic. Stuff like "boys shouldn't cry" or "boys should suck up their problems and not talk about them". You don't improve boys' emotional needs by resuming this kind of messaging.

Masculinity itself is a wonderful thing and necessary for men to (at least partially) embrace - but not the parts that stunt their development and keep them alone! Instead it should be aspects like reliability, trustworthiness, empathy, confidence, emotional strength - what comes to mind when you think about what makes a good man.

That may be so, but it is totally not the popular image of "toxic masculinity". That would be more like, boys are aggressive, horrible to women, insensitive and their one mission in life is to not act in accordance with their flawed nature.

Wait, I'm not sure what you're exactly trying to say. The things you've listed:

> boys are aggressive, horrible to women, insensitive

are parts of toxic masculinity, i.e. they are toxic and they are part of the social image of masculinity. Why is it wrong to say that they are toxic, and that boys shouldn't ascribe to those "goals"? The best thing we can do is tell them "society negatively associates these negative traits with masculinity, but you don't have to be like that to be a man".

> I think you're gravely misunderstanding the concept of toxic masculinity. It's good that we condemn it, because it directly hurts boys. Toxic masculinity isn't a description of masculinity itself, it's about parts of the social image of masculinity that are toxic.

Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure you're accurately describing a particular meaning of that term in some jargon, but that jargon doesn't control the meaning of the term.

There are certainly people who view masculinity itself as toxic, and I wouldn't be surprised if "toxic masculinity" has been borrowed to describe that view. It's a pretty straightforward application.

> Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure you're accurately describing a particular meaning of that term in some jargon, but that jargon doesn't control the meaning of the term.

Okay, but how else are we supposed to talk? If we can't agree on common definitions we can stop right here and now, because any further discourse will just end up in misunderstandings. Toxic masculinity has a simple and obvious meaning. The only reason to misunderstand this is to clutch your pearls and not have to deal with the reality that maybe some of your learned behavior is actually negative.

> There are certainly people who view masculinity itself as toxic, and I wouldn't be surprised if "toxic masculinity" has been borrowed to describe that view. It's a pretty straightforward application.

Maybe, but are we then going to also use every other word based on misusage by few people? Or is it just "toxic masculinity" that we have to use wrongly?

> Okay, but how else are we supposed to talk? If we can't agree on common definitions we can stop right here and now, because any further discourse will just end up in misunderstandings.

The same way people have talked for millennia? Talk, pay attention to what other people are saying, and be on the lookout (and open to) new ways words and terms are being used.

> Maybe, but are we then going to also use every other word based on misusage by few people? Or is it just "toxic masculinity" that we have to use wrongly?

Your mistake is to label usages different than your favored one as "misusages." It's not a "misusage" if someone is successfully communicating their meaning to others (but maybe not to you). If you're having trouble communicating because you're getting hung up because you cling to some "official" definition and reject all others, the problem is on your end.

Once some other usage of a term is established or likely, it's a fool's errand to try to lecture it into non-existence.

Another thing to be mindful of is clinging too tightly to an "official" definition (especially a narrow technical one) can be an attempt at gaslighting: some discourse makes an observation and describes it with a particular term, but a competing discourse quibbles with the term as a way of denying the observation.

> The same way people have talked for millennia? Talk, pay attention to what other people are saying, and be on the lookout (and open to) new ways words and terms are being used.

Can you demonstrate that people use toxic masculinity to mean "all masculinity is toxic"?

> Your mistake is to label usages different than your favored one as "misusages." It's not a "misusage" if someone is successfully communicating their meaning to others (but maybe not to you). If you're having trouble communicating because you're getting hung up because you cling to some "official" definition and reject all others, the problem is on your end.

I am having trouble because I'm using a word in the intended way and under the commonly understood definition (as seen in dictionaries etc.), and people are wilfully misunderstanding the word. I don't have trouble communicating, they choose to have trouble understanding. I don't think that anyone really uses "toxic masculinity" in the way you describe some people use it.

If you want to reduce the pressure on boys to do X, then calling X an "(adjective) masculinity" is exactly the wrong way to go.

Things that are bad, just call them collectively "toxic behavior", without reminding the boys that this is the stuff that they are not supposed - but also kinda supposed - to do. You may also include some toxic behaviors stereotypically attributed to women, to make it obvious that we are criticizing bad behavior in general, not just a specific sex.

No. "poisonous tree" does not mean all trees are poisonous. "toxic relationship" does not mean that all relationships are toxic. This is basic grammar.

This misunderstanding comes up because it is not basic grammar. It's ambiguous grammar. In English, [adjective] + [noun] can be used both to specify a subset of [noun]s that are [adjective], but also it can be used to state that [noun] is categorically [adjective]. Both usages are common. If I say "don't eat poisonous plants", it's understood that I'm referring to the subset of plants that are poisonous. But for example, if I say "thank you for the delicious food", it's understood that I am both thanking you and also saying that (all of) the food is delicious. It would be very unusual to interpret the sentence as me thanking you for only a subset of the food that was delicious.

A sentence like "beware of toxic masculinity" can easily be understood in two ways; first, to beware of the subset of masculinity that is toxic, and second, to beware of masculinity because it is toxic. Even if the former meaning is intended, the latter will be an easy mixup, even for native English speakers.

> But for example, if I say "thank you for the delicious food", it's understood that I am both thanking you and also saying that (all of) the food is delicious

The subset is the food you just received. It would be very weird to give thanks to a single person for all food everywhere and label it all delicious.

That specifying is not done by the adjective "delicious". If "delicious" is to be interpreted as narrowing, it would be something like "thank you for the delicious carrots; no-thanks for the yucky peas".

Other examples:

"The scariest thing about a rattlesnake is its deadly venom". (This sentence is not intended to contrast a rattlesnake's other, non-deadly venom, but rather emphasizes that its venom is categorically deadly).

"Our mortal bodies may die, but our immortal souls will live on". (Implies that all bodies are mortal, and all souls immortal; not specifying the subset of bodies that happen to be mortal).

"I'll place my trust in solid steel over empty words". (Implies that the speaker believes words are always empty, and only actions matter).

"Consider the humble pencil". (Implies that a pencil is humble by its nature, not a specific pencil that is humbler than others).

There's no clear rule, but generally, if the adjective describes a property of the noun that is already understood to be intrinsic to that noun, then it is more likely to be interpreted as emphasis rather than as a modifier. (Deadly venom, delicious food, solid steel, immortal soul). "Toxic masculinity" is in a sort of Schrodinger-state, where it can kind of go either way depending on contextual clues, basically, the reader's perception of the speaker's beliefs about masculinity itself. And once you've chosen a reading, even subconsciously, that will reinforce your preconception of what the speaker meant by their grammar. Like the blue-yellow dress illusion, people will read it one way or the other and not understand why others disagree.

So if I say something like "the problem with fraternities is that they are awash in toxic masculinity", and you happen to be from a fraternity that seems to you like a healthily masculine environment and have never seen a toxic one, then you might interpret my criticism of fraternities as coming from a viewpoint that masculinity itself is somehow intrinsically toxic, and interpret my sentence accordingly.

We've changed technical terminology before for similar reasons (eg. global warming -> climate change); it's probably worth finding a different term for this one.

There's very little solid steel in your text.

Grammar discussion requires words. Not a surprise.

Toxic masculinity is clearly defined in dictionaries. Use google if you don't believe me.

"ideas about the way that men should behave that are seen as harmful, for example the idea that men should not cry or admit weakness"

"Social distancing" was a well-defined technical term that every epidemiologist understood. When the pandemic hit and the term went mainstream, epidemiologists quickly learned that lay people were misunderstanding, no matter how many times they explained it.

So the preferred term among epidemiologists is now "physical distancing".

Sometimes when people just keep getting the wrong idea, regardless of the dictionary definition, it's worth changing terminology.

Do you have a suggestion for a better term instead of "toxic masculinity"? I haven't found any replacement that describes the same thing while not falling under the same problem.

I'd suggest replacing "toxic" with a more clinical term to make it obvious that it's technical jargon with a specific meaning, rather than something that sounds like a hashtag trending on social media. For example, "adverse masculinity". That phrase seems better in every way.

But that just replaces one word with another while keeping the same issues. Do you really think the average man is going to hear "adverse masculinity" and not react the same way they do for "toxic masculinity"? Because if they believe toxic masculinity means all masculinity is toxic, I don't see how they'd think different about all masculinity being adverse.

I do think so. As I said, "adverse" being a clinical term suggests the reader should look for a technical definition if they doesn't know it already (unlike "toxic", which one tends to mainly find spammed across twitter in less-technical contexts). Furthermore the word "adverse" carries a strong connotation of an implied contrast against a benign alternative. It's simply too sterile to be interpreted as emphasis.

I don't share your optimism. English isn't my native tongue, yet I have a clear colloquial understanding of adverse. I don't see a reason why the average person would have a kneejerk reaction towards toxic and wouldn't towards adverse.

> Furthermore the word "adverse" carries a strong connotation of an implied contrast against a benign alternative.

Given the sentiment shared by some commenters here I think it's pretty clear they'd take this as a direct attack on masculinity by people who want to promote femininity.

You might be right. I still think adverse is an improvement over toxic but yes, it would be better to find an alternative to "masculinity". Which is pretty ambiguous itself; whether a behaviour is deemed masculine or feminine leans heavily on central vs noncentral examples of men or women, despite the fact that just about any such behaviour (toxic or not) can be expressed in both men and women, just like how both men and women can become bodybuilders or ballet dancers. So the terminology itself paradoxically leans on stereotypes of which toxic behaviours are associated with masculinity, even while encouraging men to move away from those behaviours and stop perceiving them as an essential part of being a man.

Maybe it would be better to call specific behaviours "toxic stoicism", "toxic domineering", "toxic aggression", or things like that.

> Maybe it would be better to call specific behaviours "toxic stoicism", "toxic domineering", "toxic aggression", or things like that.

That might have a better reception, but unfortunately it changes the messaging.

> So the terminology itself paradoxically leans on stereotypes of which toxic behaviours are associated with masculinity, even while encouraging men to move away from those behaviours and stop perceiving them as an essential part of being a man.

It's not paradoxical, because the term is specifically talking about the negative associations with the stereotypes for masculinity. That's why it's so important to keep the messaging. Masculinity as such isn't a biological reality (in so far that "masculine traits" differ between cultures/historical periods and aren't necessarily present), it's a social construct. "Toxic masculinity" refers to the toxic parts of this construct in regards to the culture in which it is used. If the stereotype changes, the meaning of toxic masculinity changes.

"Toxic behavior" isn't a good term because it doesn't mean the same thing as "toxic masculinity". It's like calling poisonous cat food just "poisonous food" - technically you're using a correct superset, but practically you're referring to something different because you're dropping specificity.

Do you have any alternative to "toxic behavior" that doesn't have this problem? If you do I'll gladly switch my choice of terms.

If you want a term to be used the right way, it helps to pick a term that won’t be immediately confused to mean something else.

If the point were to communicate nuanced meaningful, they'd have chosen a different term once it became obvious people found it confusing.

Do you have any examples?

I honestly don't think the term matters. Many people don't want to think about parts of their own behavior potentially being bad, especially when they've been socially taught that those parts should be good. No matter what term I use, somebody will find a way to misinterpret it, because it's much easier than actually thinking about the topic itself.

Do we know that these aspects of masculinity actually hurt men, or are we trying to put a woman-shaped hat on men? Who's to say that men are incapable of dealing with their emotions through sombre silence? Stoicism has to confer some fitness advantage, either evolutionary or socially, otherwise it wouldn't be such a large part of masculinity.

> Who's to say that men are incapable of dealing with their emotions through sombre silence?

The argument generally being made isn't that teaching boys stoicism is wrong. The argument is that it's wrong to teach boys that somber silence is the only acceptable way of dealing with their problems, and that anything else is a sign of weakness (for which they'll face social consequences).

I'd also separately argue that the way we go about teaching this has a tendency to lead to a behavior that more closely resembles avoidance than stoicism.

It appears that studies show stoicism as negatively affecting mental health:

> Ancient philosophy proposed a wide range of possible approaches to life which may enhance well-being. Stoic philosophy has influenced various therapeutic traditions. Individuals today may adopt an approach to life representing a naive Stoic Ideology, which nevertheless reflects a misinterpretation of stoic philosophy. How do these interpretations affect well-being and meaning in life? We examine the differential effects of Stoic Ideology on eudaimonic versus hedonic well-being across three cultural contexts. In this pre-registered study, across samples in New Zealand (N = 636), Norway (N = 290), and the US (N = 381) we found that a) Stoic Ideology can be measured across all three contexts and b) Converging evidence that Stoic Ideology was negatively related to both hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being. Focusing on specific relationships, we found especially pronounced effects for Taciturnity (the desire to not express emotions) and Serenity (the desire to feel less emotions). Despite being a misinterpretation of stoic philosophy, these findings highlight the important role of individuals’ orientations to emotional processing for well-being.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-022-00563-w

> Stoicism has to confer some fitness advantage, either evolutionary or socially, otherwise it wouldn't be such a large part of masculinity.

I'm sorry, but it doesn't have to confer some fitness advantage. Stoicism isn't a generic part of masculinity, it's only part of it in specific cultures. It's entirely possible people made a mistake and socially pressured each other for no good reason.

You can just look up the definition instead, and how it's been distorted by some:

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

With shrinking recess time and PE disappearing from some schools, boys with normal needs for physical activities are increasingly labelled as "sick" and medicalized for completely normal behavior by the taxpayer funded school system. Energy has to go somewhere so it ends up manifesting itself in behaviors that are deemed "disruptive" (really, not sitting still and being unable to concentrate on tasks). That's the beginning of the slippery slope toward "toxic" masculinity traits (such as healthy competition).

Maybe it's something that female administrators and teachers fail to understand. Or rather, willfully ignore trying to push a certain (extremely liberal) agenda on captive boys.

It would also explain the current epidemic of ADHD and especially ADHD medication prescribed to young boys.

Baden-Powell famously said "A boy is not a sitting-down animal." One might dislike a lot of other things about the man, but he got this one right.

I am not a behavioral psychologist, but both the above posters' comments seem more appropriate as a general critique of America's factory schooling model than how it treats young males specifically.

I have a niece and nephew who are being home-schooled (both testing in the top 10% of their respective peer before and after moving to home schooling). While their home schooling encompasses quite a bit more, they cover the traditional material for their age (everything covered by standardized testing), including drills, practice worksheets, and other typical "homework" in about 10% of the time they were previously spending in school.

While there are obviously other aspects to school, including social interaction (which their parents are making certain they do get), watching the whole process as an extended family member has really driven home how much of current American schooling is just kid-warehousing.

The factory schooling is not an exclusively American thing. But I agree that sitting the whole day is not necessary to getting education. You can also discuss things while walking outside, or allow kids to walk from desk to desk and observe what their classmates are doing.

Perhaps 90% of my acting out in childhood was people trying to stop me doing 'sitting down' activities. All generalisations hurt someone.

People seem to disregard that a disproportionally large part of autism spectrum is also made up by boys.

Nothing would make me more miserable than shoving PE up my throat on account that I got to 'need' it. It was the worst part of my school and uni days, which in turn was the worst part of my life, period.

The assumption that boys are all extroverted, physically active and agressive is a big part of the problem.

You're going to get people here saying "no, it's the same rate for girls, they just mask better"

Well, that ability to mask is exactly what increases their likelihood to be spared from the worst of the pain of being ASD (the negative treatment from others due to inability to mask).

Autism really does hit men harder

I think it actually is far deeper than that. I believe our entire school system is setup to offer success to women, and failure to boys.

Take as one point the fact that boys brains develop slower and later into life than women. Should then boys be competing against women of the same age given what we know?

Take as another point the decline in physical activity in schools and the reduction is recess time. Does this negatively impact boys more than girls? I think so, but it hurts then both to be sure.

> Should then boys be competing against women of the same age given what we know?

In a perfect world, education would not be a competition at all. Everyone would proceed at their own pace, differently in different subjects.

And maybe at the end, where would still be a certification of people who mastered something versus people who didn't. But we would not freak out so much about whether someone understood something e.g. at the age of 12, instead of 13 or 14. The important thing should be that at some age they did.

That world is simply impossible. Humans can not help comparing themselves to their.

> I believe our entire school system is setup to offer success to women, and failure to boys.

And that's why most entrepreneurs/successful people are men. System was rough to them since the start, putting them down during every occasion and most boys have learnt how to stand up back on their feet again since early age. The system offered them failure and gave them resiliency.

Girls were carried around and when real life come around and they fall down, they now have no idea how to get back up.

I can’t tell if this is a troll or serious.

Unfortunately, I think they and the people agreeing with him are actually being serious. I wonder if this is something they picked up through their lived experience or if they're just stuck in some sort of bubble.

>"our entire school system is setup to offer success to women, and failure to boys." And these comments just strike me as strange especially in STEM. It's only recently that girls are being pushed towards this path, after decades of being actively pushed out and consistently told they are worse than their male peers.

If women underperform on something, society has spent and currently does spend a lot of effort trying to fix that. The goal is to make sure that women don't underperform on anything. If we phrase it differently, the issue becomes clear: The goal is to make sure that women perform better or equal in every aspect. Those attempts have been quite successful and here we are.

Now people are slowly waking up to the consequences, and it's clear that the trend is ever so slowly turning around.

I'll conclude by giving two examples to illustrate my point if you think I'm exaggerating. Both are from about 10 years ago. I honestly don't think it would happen the same today anymore. The first was that there was one (like a single) school where boys were somehow outperforming girls. They said in the press that it was weird because everyone knows it's usually the other way around and that it would be investigated what was wrong. The second was that there was a college entrance test (similar to sat) where men outperfomed women, and one of the criteria they had when redesigning it was closing that gap.

So for that second example, what questions were being asked, that men could consistently outperform women on? And doesn't removing those questions even the playing field?

For example, men watch a lot more sports than women (I don't know if this is true but for the sake of conversation let's just assume it to be the case). If that exam had questions that had a sports 'setting' then those who are most familiar with the sport would have an edge over those who don't. This isn't limited to just gender either. People from different cultures would also struggle if the 'common sense' in the question isn't something that they are familiar with.

I'd like to see which questions were removed and hear their justifications for it. This sounds like something that happened but the details got distorted into a simple take to push some form of agenda. "test makers are dumbing down questions so that women look better."

Do you happen to have historicals of the test you were looking at? The SAT results look pretty even from 2017-2022 https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_226.10.a...

ACT point difference is even closer (~1 point difference each year) their site sucks but that data is from 1995-2010 https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_155.asp

These are the two most popular college entrance exams and have longevity on their side.

I won't even begin to tackle the first point since there is just way too much that is unknown or anecdotal. I honestly do think you're either exaggerating and/or misinformed but if you can provide some sort of evidence to prove your point then I'm all ears. And I'm not saying this to discount your lived experience. You may truly have felt that the school system or various teachers really did want you to fail. If that's the case then you were done a disservice but the aggregate data just doesn't agree with you.

>The goal is to make sure that women don't underperform on anything. I'm really trying to be charitable on your intent but comments like these really make it difficult. If you look at the past couple of centuries, women have been treated as second class citizens. Their only duties relegated to being wives, mothers and homemakers. Not allowed to pursue intellectual pursuits despite being more than capable of doing so. The entire system was biased against them from the very beginning. Even when the laws gave them power to go after these new opportunities, culture continued to hold them back. The goal is and always has been to level the playing field, to reverse centuries of blatant sexism but if that sounds like 'setting up boys to fail'. Then I really don't know what to tell you.

I'm not saying the intentions were necessarily bad, just outlining how past perspectives and actions lead to the outcomes we are now observing.

The intentions weren't bad and the 'outcomes we are now observing' aren't bad either. Those changes were a net positive on society. There is still more work that needs to be done so that both boys AND girls have the same opportunities in school and have the freedom to pursue it without judgement. If some boys/men feel that a level playing field is setting them up to fail then I have zero sympathy, society doesn't need more second class citizens.

And the notion that boys are being set up to fail, especially by the school system is just ridiculous. In this day and age, students can post their questions and answers online. Any bias in grading can be quickly found out and if the issue is as broad and systemic as you are claiming then this will be incredibly trivial to prove. There would be millions of students complaining.

> how their nature is flawed. Girls on the other hand, all is well

I really doubt this describes the experience of 90% of people on this planet.

> Girls on the other hand, all is well.

Girls, on the other hand, get told their body is flawed. Gotta constantly be on a diet, and spend like an hour a day on beauty stuff.

We are all victims of society.

Do you think millions of gym rats are thinking something different? I think it's weird that you present this as feminine problem when it's men who on average participate in more sports.

Surprised to see this downvoted. Both men and women are told that their bodies are wrong. Maybe using different words, but still.

That said, gym and sports (typically recommended to men) seem healthier to me than starving (typically recommended to women).

Orthorexia can actually be pretty damn harmful as well.

Ummm... If you think men are turning to gym and sports to get some of the male bodies being portrayed in media, then I have news for you.

A large portion of young men are turning to steroids and fake hormones in addition to insane diets to achieve those bodies. Look at pictures of strong men or body builders from the early 20th century. The look nothing like the six packed gym bro we're all supposed to look like.

Heck, just look at Hugh Jackman in the first X Men movie vs more recent X Men/Wolverine movies.

Honestly, yes. I exercise to have fun, be healthy, and maybe look a bit better. But I know for sure I can succeed in business, in programming, in academia, in comedy, even in pornography with only a few minutes of grooming every day.

Oh I know there are some men who struggle with body image issues. And the tiny proportion of men working as hollywood actors probably care about their looks a great deal. But do you shave your legs or wear make-up? Read beauty magazines? Me neither.

We men have a wealth of role models showing we can succeed regardless of appearance. Nobody gives a shit about Elon Musk's BMI, or how Richard Stallman dresses, or whether Donald Trump has a six pack.

> even in pornography with only a few minutes of grooming every day.

You’re either incredibly blessed or incredibly underestimating the barriers to entry to be successful as a male porn star.

Also Elon Musk and Donald Trump both have a shit ton of memes straight up body shaming both of them. Trump had literal fucking statues made with the sole purpose of showing him as fat and small dicked. People still often post the shirtless picture of Elon or the one of his hairline before the plugs to try to shame and discredit him. It’s absolutely wild and false to say no one gives a shit about it. His fans might not, but his fans don’t even care that he did a bunch of crypto scam shit, so that doesn’t really mean much.

He’s successful despite the body shaming, but women like Lizzo are wildly successful despite the body shaming they receive too.

Literally every men post trying to get help on the internet is met with "hit the gym, eat better" no matter whatever the person does. The default assumption _is_ that there's something wrong with man bodies.

Uh, boys get told that too.

Most of that is told to them by other women.

Fat boys get made fun of and are ostracized. Like, a lot.

Isn’t the paragon of masculinity in American culture all about “improvise, adapt, overcome”? The idea that men have a fixed nature and can’t thrive outside a particular environment is… not very masculine.

Something I think people miss sometimes is that there’s a big market for messages loudly affirming girls’ identities and choices because things are not, in fact, going that well.

Good point, we (men) might be oblivious to the fact that pressure has ramped up for women too, they now need to be a woman AND a man to get prestige.

It's been an ongoing adventure with my partner, she works very hard for a good salary while I'm the successless indie game dev. We talk a lot about it and our feelings about it, and I realize how privileged/lucky I am to have found her and that she accepts me.

She's crazy enough to agree with me on the fact that I might get exponentially more useful in case of a war/disaster, and that I'd make a perfect dad when we get to it :p

Wait a second, this is flagged and dead? Wow. But then again, some people are selected against which gives some solace to my heart.

Yep. This is how you end up with young boys/men admiring the likes of Andrew Tate.

In the nineties I joined a men's group retreat where we circled up and listened to each other's struggles, gave lots of support, and lots of hugs. Then we did some consciousness raising around circumcision and it's barbarity. We took our cue from the Feminist movement. They were getting their shit together and so could we. Gary Snyder read his gorgeous nature poetry, Peter Berg sold us on a green cities concept that would make our urban areas more livable.

Later, the monstrosity called the "manosphere" completely gutted our movement and turned it into a grievance fest against feminism. They stole our issues but instead of working on them, they weaponized them against feminists, especially against us feminist men. Domestic violence by and against men, paternal rights, genital mutilation, psych support, male fragility and toxic aspects of traditional masculinity, etc. But then they never did anything about any of these problems but bitch and bash feminists with them. As if it's womens' job to clean up our mess.

Step one to improving the situation for men is to destroy the right-wing MRM. "Let men be men again!" is the cry of the regressive who sees the problems and plugs his hears screaming "Naaaaaah!" No progress is possible from that position. If you bother to look, the MRM does absolutely nothing to confront the problems men face in this world. Why? They don't want to. They do not care about men's problems, they only care about protecting men's ability to rape, dominate, and abuse.

Take a look at this thread. For so many commenters their problem is with acknowledging the problems. Pointing out the toxic aspects of traditional masculinity is seen as an attack rather than an attempt at resolving the issues. How the hell are things supposed to improve if we can't acknowledge problems or ally with the movement [feminism] that did the first work to outline such problems? Feminists have been pointing out toxicity of the "man up" attitude for decades. So have queers. Feminists and queer men are natural allies in this struggle to improve men's lives. But we've let proto-fascists hijack the conversation.

My greatest fear is that reactionary men join across class and race lines to form a united front for fascism. That's certainly the goal of the MRM. We must stop them. Let's go back to a Men's movement that forms alliances, rather than buries heads in the sand.

If we did that, we could have men's domestic violence shelters, an ACLU for paternal rights, education policy makers that tackle bullying and lack of emotional support for men, and so much more. But we don't because too many are lured in by propagandists who would gladly destroy democracy to protect the status quo.

Before this comment gets downvoted to hell by the shitshow that invariably characterizes HN discussion of men's issues, just to say I appreciate the historical context here in particular, and the confirmation that just because the fascist right owns the topic today doesn't mean it was ever thus - or that it needs to stay that way.

Thank you. The history of the feminist men's movement was the first target of the MRM. They are very good propagandists. Even the name Men's Rights Movement sets up the opposition with feminism perfectly. But let's never forget that we were and can be allies.

> But let's never forget that we were and can be allies.

Can you share some examples? Honest question, I've never seen this happen in modern day America (it's usually just one side taking and taking instead of give and take).

Based on what you wrote the men's circles you talk about were probably influenced by Sterling Institute, Mankind Project, and the mythopoetic men's movement. I've attended related events in the distant past but I was much too young to "get it" (and honestly still don't get some of it coming from an immigrant family viewpoint).

Men's rights have been denigrated to the point my younger male (Western) friends are Andrew Tate fans because there isn't anything else left.

Yes, this was the mythopoetic men's movement.

> Men's rights have been denigrated to the point my younger male (Western) friends are Andrew Tate fans because there isn't anything else left.

OMG, yes. The MRM has successfully redefined the men's movement to be regressive not productive. Any discussion of men's issues has to refer back to this body of worthless propaganda. But you know, we don't actually have to take the bait. Just as that scientist doesn't actually have to debate vaccines with jackass Joe Rogan. If he wants to learn something he can read a book like a normal person.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but here's a few points off the top of my head.

* Intersectional feminism is a powerful frame. When we look at the places where sexism and classism intersect, for example, then we can begin to explain the fact that the vast majority of homeless people are men. We can see ways that careerist academic feminism fails those who don't have such constraints. And we can see how popular working class feminist movements can benefit from the research that more privileged feminists have had the freedom to do.

* Men who are open to feminist critiques don't often do the research. We don't read feminist authors. We don't know the history of the struggle, nor of men's role in feminism. Second-wave feminism started with consciousness raising groups. Maybe we men could do some self-educating and soul searching.

* First world feminists need to accept leadership from feminists in poorer countries. There is so much right going on with feminism in places like Mexico. These men and women are confronting millennia of machismo. How do they do it? We should know.

* Men need our own organizations. Who are the groups working on paternal rights? I don't know. Are there any? Can we start one? If the MRM is about whining about feminism. A real men's movement could be about actual organizing. We used to hand out anti-circumcision flyers at 24th and mission. We got some weird looks, but even the MRM has carried on the work we started in their ineffective pissy way.

* Feminist men need a popular social media presence. We have ceeded the space to reprobates and literal criminals. Rather than engaging in tit-for-tat with MRM people, we should address regular, reasonable men who might be open to us if we made a reasonable effort. We need to accept that we have dropped the ball and that that the growth of the MRM is significantly our fault. We were too quiet.

* That said, what I don't think we need are sites like "We Hunted the Mammoth" which are about ridiculing the MRM. This is an example of stooping to their level. When we engage with the MRM, we neglect our organizing. They know this, which is why they constantly bait us into making it all about them. Similarly democrats fail by harping on all the stupid things republicans do. We should be focused on our own failures and solutions. Let the idiots argue amongst themselves.

* Feminist men need to be able to critique other feminists. The movement gets plenty wrong. We need to feel free to call that out even when doing so invites blowback from other sectors of the movement. In the past, feminist men were too afraid to confront bullshit in the movement. We deferred too much to women. That needs to stop.

When MRM people bring up straw men like "Why are there no domestic violence shelters for men? See? Feminists hate men." Feminists often respond, "Feel free to get to work cleaning up your own mess." So let's do that. Let's get to work. We're way behind, but there's no time like the present.

> Intersectional feminism is a powerful frame. When we look at the places where sexism and classism intersect, for example, then we can begin to explain the fact that the vast majority of homeless people are men.

Maybe I don't have the background needed, but I don't follow. How does intersectional feminism explain that the vast majority of homeless people are men?

Out of my ass opinion is 'the patriarchy' views low status men as completely disposable.

Also in any unfair exploitive system you'll see victimized groups attack other victimized groups instead of going after the system and those that directly benefit from it.

That doesn't explain anything. The same should be true about women, in fact more so. What we see here though is it would seem women are privileged in that domain.

Under traditional patriarchal gender roles, men are seen as self-sufficient, and women as dependent. When men fail to be self-sufficient, they do not tend given the same level of support as women who are expected to need help. Add class relationships into this mess and low-class men are left to rot on the street. Our oligarchs see all poor people as disposable tools. So it's the intersection of gender and class that results in more homeless men. This is an example of a negative result for men under patriarchy.

Keep in mind, that women at the same level of risk may not be on the street, but that doesn't mean they are safe. Women at risk are often preyed on by exploitative men and take refuge from the street in unsafe housing where survival sex and abuse is common. That may be a step up, but perhaps not by a lot.

Intersectionality is also informative when understanding the reaction many poor men have to the line that "men have privilege over women". Poor men don't feel privileged, even if they do enjoy higher privilege than women in the same economic class. But compare Joe Schmoe to Sheryl Sandburg, and it's the CEO lady who has the relative privilege, even if she's much lower status than the Zuckerbergs of the world.

Intersectionality is also the basis for critiques of "White feminism" where relatively privileged women dominate the discussion for women as a whole.

I've read with an open mind through all your line of replies. In the end though it summed up to making it about women and feminism. You forgot this entire thing was supposed to be about men.

Right wing MRM a la Andrew Tate is for sure a scam and toxic extreme. But you can easily find such examples in feminist circles as well. Exaggerating in one direction does not justify exaggerating in the other.

You've derailed the conversation about boys and men needs and made it about women, feminism, intersectionality, etc. That is the reason I am down-voting all you replies.

I don't understand how you can read this:

> When men fail to be self-sufficient, they do not tend given the same level of support as women who are expected to need help. Add class relationships into this mess and low-class men are left to rot on the street. Our oligarchs see all poor people as disposable tools. So it's the intersection of gender and class that results in more homeless men. This is an example of a negative result for men under patriarchy.

and interpret it to be "about women and feminism".

You've cherry-picked one thing out of many replies. I do not want to see feminism, intersectionality, patriarchy, class, women, etc in a discussion about boys' emotional needs. Take your philosophy and politics in topics about these issues, there's plenty of them.

Intersectionism, patriarchy and class absolutely have a part to play in boys' emotional needs. I believe trabant00 explained this pretty well. It reads a little like you've seen some words that you instinctively disapprove of and dismissed the whole argument as a result. That attitude is troubling, as it disregards various social pressures on boys.

It disregards the fact that, as long as most men and women remain heterosexual, there's no divorcing social pressures on one from social pressures on the other, because these will at some point become indistinguishable from the same thing.

Feminism has trod this ground before, with political lesbianism and lesbian separatism. The results of these experiments are not such as to suggest they are worth repeating, which hasn't stopped that from happening in the form of last decade's unsurprisingly abortive "MGTOW" movement.

I'm really struggling to parse your first sentence as it's too convoluted. Are you predicting that men and women will have the same social pressures in future? How does this challenge the idea that feminism may overlap with men's issues today?

Perhaps it would help if I gave a tangible example of how e.g. the patriarchy links to male emotional troubles. Patriarchal norms include the stereotype of the male as a strong, unemotional provider type. As a consequence, parents discourage boys from showing emotion. Thus, boys do not learn to accept, validate and maturely process their emotions.

I'm agreeing with the claim that there can be no serious distinction drawn such that the concerns addressed by feminism are disjoint from those which should be addressed by a masculist movement constituted on grounds of actually addressing men's problems rather than nucleating around a festering contempt for women, and supporting that claim on the grounds that so long as most men and most women remain heterosexual their concerns are necessarily and intimately intermingled - what affects men affects women and vice versa, by virtue of women and men spending their lives together. The implicit conclusion is that it is therefore absurd to imagine that a men's movement which constitutes itself in opposition to feminism can ever be capable of materially improving the condition of men overall.

Thanks. That was still pretty convoluted but I think I'm with you. I agree on a conceptual level but only partly agree on a practical level.

On a conceptual level, the fundamental problem is harmful gender norms. Both movements must challenge that.

On a practical level, the way these norms manifest is very different. Women face more sexual and domestic violence and expectations around care-giving. Men face more emotional suppression and expectations around career.

There are some policies which I believe would dramatically benefit both genders. Equalising maternity and paternity leave, for example. It's absolutely bonkers that men may only be able to take a week or two, given that they might want to spend more time bonding with and caring for their newborn, and their partner might have had a C-section and be house-bound for weeks to come.

There are other policies which target one gender more than another, but I believe are still needed. Women-ony refugees, or workshops for building boys' emotional intelligence, for example. I think I would have benefited as a teenager from messaging that it's ok to accept and explore my emotions. I didn't really get that from home.

Yes of course, my attitude is "problematic", says your intersectional feminist neo marxist ideas. Because I can't have a conversation about men without all that shit popping up.

The patriarchy is successfully being attacked from all directions. Intersectionality is stronger than ever. Class is as fluid as it's ever been in the history of man kind. How do you explain that men issues are getting worse and worse in these conditions? It looks like feminism is not helping the gender it is not about. But that can't be, right? Feminism is for everybody, hence the gender neutral name and constant praise and support for men. Ooooh, that's it, I got it now. I'm the problem. Silly me.

And if all of the above is too wordy for you: get off my gender problems lawn with that toxic shit. Go eat it on a feminist topic and call it strawberry vanilla tasting for all I care. Just don't get too close to me cause your mouth stinks.

I appreciate you feel strongly about this but there's no need to resort to insults. I've never suggested that you're the problem, just that I'm troubled by the offhanded way you dismissed a whole avenue of exploration.

One thing I will say is that whilst some social attitudes are improving, society hasn't come very far in fundamentally challenging the norms and prejudices it hoists on men and women. In England and Wales, 1 in 4 women have been raped or sexually assaulted. Literally a quarter. I know that as men we our own unique set of issues, such as high rates of suicide and substance abuse. But I look at that statistic and am concerned at what it says about the safety of women in society.

> am concerned at what it says about the safety of women in society

HN, being text only, makes it difficult for some people to understand the topic. It's men. The bigger, uglier sex, with a penis and two testicles between their legs. Try to imagine the picture.

Sure, but an assumption in your argument was that feminism is winning on all fronts. Was just remarking that it's not made all that much progress.

See, if I dismiss a post because it's off-topic then it's "troubling". If I address it head on you start with "arguments" and bring the discussion to women. The point here is not to argue, it's clear that the topic is men's problems. There is no room here for women and feminism. And if you wonder why some men to go to MRM it's because of people like you. They can't have a discussion in peace without feminism intruding, so fuck feminism and everybody who pushes it everywhere. It's not exactly rocket science.

After multiple interactions I personally think the extremes deserve each other. Bash your heads in, cancel each other, get each other fired, kill, maim, the worse the better. After the massacre is over the rest of us can finally have dialogue in peace.

Again, please avoid insulting and wishing violence on others. It certainly doesn't help you look like the less extreme, if anything it's what risks derailing the debate.

How I would describe what's happened here:

* corinroyal explains how some concepts which overlap with feminism has helped him understand men's issues

* You dismiss his comments because of the mere mention of feminism

* I point out that this is unfair and argue the case for the overlap being worth considering.

* You repeatedly dismiss any mention of feminism and make various unfounded claims as well as aggressive and violent comments towards me.

With all due respect and love, I think you'd find it helpful to think about why any mention of feminism is threatening to you. I'm not interested in pursuing this if you make any further aggressive remarks.

Feminism is the movement that seeks to free both men and women from traditional gender relations. Feminism isn't the term for the women's side of a war between the sexes. It's an intellectual framework that offers tools and analysis to understand and dismantle the patriarchal system that harms us all.

If you read my post from that perspective, you'll see I'm very much talking about men. Perhaps this is easier for me as a gay man to understand since the harms of patriarchy are VERY clear to me.

I have a different perspective on this:

I'm a man who's currently deeply lonely, depressed, and struggling with poor self-esteem. I hear feminists talking about "toxic masculinity". But none of what they say feels applicable to me. I've never been violent; I'm currently trying therapy for the third time; and I can't remember even a single time when someone told me to "man up". So, while I'm sure toxic masculinity is a real problem for some men, I don't feel like it's the issue that's hurting me personally.

The issues that do feel like they're hurting me personally are things like:

* Negative stereotypes of men as incompetent, boorish, etc.

* The widespread attitude that "men suck"

* The stereotypes of socially awkward men (like me) as gross/creepy/neckbeards/etc.

* Difficulty navigating expectations around how dating and relationships are supposed to work, especially as a socially awkward man

The feminist movement does a great job of addressing the issue of toxic masculinity. But when it comes to the issues I listed above, many feminists don't take them seriously, and some feminists are actually making them worse:

* A feminist in this thread making excuses for the "incompetent, boorish dad" stereotype in media: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36473710

* A feminist in this thread making excuses for saying "men suck": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36474484

* That time when a socially awkward man talked about his feelings (https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2091#comment-326664) and a feminist said some extremely toxic things in response (https://web.archive.org/web/20150113081455/http://www.rawsto...) (Yes, that controversy was eight years ago, but it's really stuck with me)

Now, I'm definitely not trying to say that "feminism is terrible" or anything like that. Feminists are fighting the good fight on many gender-equality issues. Feminism arguably deserves credit for why I never had to struggle with toxic masculinity, and I'm grateful for that. But at the same time, there are unfortunately some really shitty people in the feminist movement, and they're are causing real harm to people like me. And my experience has been that the feminist movement defends and enables those people, rather than letting them be held accountable.

So my reaction to the article is: I know toxic masculinity is a real problem, and I'm glad feminists are fighting against that problem. But the problems that are hurting me personally are different from toxic masculinity, and unfortunately some feminists are actually exacerbating my problems. So, when I hear feminists blaming most/all of mens' problems on toxic masculinity, that actually feels to me like it's derailing the conversation from the issues that are most important to me.

I hope my perspective helps you see another side of the issue.

I appreciate your thoughtful and heartfelt reply. I can relate so much to what you're saying. I too am depressed, deeply lonely, and struggling with poor self-esteem. I've dealt with chronic illness, PTSD from watching a few people die badly and one living death [worse], poverty, and frequent homelessness.

On "Men suck!"

I can understand how hurtful could be, but it never personally bothered me. Oppressed people let off steam in all sorts of ways and some of those ways are unfair. But compare "Men suck" to "Billionaires suck", "Cops suck", "White people suck" etc. Do all of those bother you equally? The fact is that waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many men do suck in so many ways while being perfectly lovely in so many other ways. Rapey, dominating, violent, criminal, oligarchic, etc. People who have been harmed by such men have an absolute right to vent. I've got friends who regularly bitch about White people in front of me. It does not bother me. White people do suck in so many ways. And even though I don't have an "All Lives Matter" sticker on my truck, I know that even I exhibit some racist thinking and behavior my self and that I benefit from a racist system.

My only recommendation is to seek understand the hurt behind the speaker's statements. Empathy with their suffering may help explain why they are acting out.

On Popular Feminism

I would never suggest that popular feminism isn't feminism. We are what we do. And yet, not all who identify as feminists are particularly good at it. WitchesvsPatriarchy, for example, strikes me as a rather immature expression for young women who are just beginning to work out their relationship to the world. This is valuable for them and us. People need a playpen where they can develop. Just as we expect college students to express the dumbest, most strident, and self-defeating version of whatever political philosophy they have adopted, we must recognize that newbies are stupid in every discipline.

There are, of course, terrible people who are feminists. There are those who simply use feminism as a cudgel to gain status.

And there is a Imperial shit ton of anti-feminists who parody feminist positions in memes. I am ogen accused of supporting a "feminism" which I do not recognize.

One of the rules for good debate is to argue against the best possible version of your opponent's argument. This is hard to do in the context of a well that has been poisoned by those who spew falsehood so hard and fast that it's difficult to sort the true from the false. And yet, there are plenty of coherent and internally-consistent feminisms to be found for those who can put the effort in to find them. I wish we were doing a better job to make things easier for those trying to make sense of things.

On Negative Stereotypes

The stereotypes are too often true. I have never raped or abducted a child, but when a parent gets nervous around me for being too close to a child, I just have to swallow my indignation and realize that the actions of others have ruined things for me.

The men loudest about "Not all men!" are those who never made an effort to understand the critiques in the first place.

And yet, these stereotypes are hurtful. Especially to men already struggling. The only advice I have is to do your part to build a world where these stereotypes have no basis in reality. In the mean time, thicken your skin. If you're not the creepy type, then realize that such unfair statements do not apply to you.

On Navigating Relationships

I'm gay and can't imagine how hard this must be. Straight people have such overwhelming and conflicting social expectations laid on them, that I don't know how they even function. We queers are used to making things up as we go along. There's a freedom to being a hated outsider.

So I guess my advice would be to make things up as you go along. Ignore all the advice you've ever heard about what women want. And listen to the specific individual that you are interested in. The are few interpersonal problems that can't be resolved by prompt, honest, and empathetic communication, and there are few problems between people that can't be made MUCH worse by the lack thereof. Listen. Express. Compromise. Repeat.

As a Christian, my faith tells me that we are each divine beings made in God's image. This informs how I treat my partner. Even when they are acting badly I try to remember that they have infinite Godlike potential within them and that my love for them can help them reconnect with their deeper nature. Indeed this is the point of a relationship. In bell hook's book "All About Love" (highly recommended} she suggest that romantic love is not about the pleasure of fucking or feelings of infatuation, but about a desire to see your partner realize their highest potential. When you start from that perspective, the specifics of the relationship become much easier to work out. The problem is when we see our partner as a fuck toy built for our pleasure and service. That is not a loving frame for a relationship, and only exploitation is possible from that position.

Under patriarchy, women are seen as servants who clean, nurture, and cook for men. This attitude is the root of so much suffering for both genders. I knew a guy who never learned to cook, ate ramen and canned spaghetti daily, and was way too desperate and lame to find a woman to serve him. Patriarchal expectation left him unable to even care for himself. His only solution was to try to trick some poor soul into being his servant.

Men and Feminism

Feminism started with women and has been primarily focused on their needs and the harms to them under sexism. It took quite a while for people to realize that men also suffer from the system. But women who have been harmed are focused on their own resolution and are under no obligation to develop feminisms focused on men's needs. That's our job and we simply have not done enough of the work to present a comprehensive, well documented, easy-to-understand feminism that addresses men's needs.

So if you feel like feminism isn't focused on you, you are absolutely correct. In an emergency, you put on your own mask first, even before your own child. The version of feminism we need isn't written yet. That's why it is important for men to introspect deeply over these issues, to take up the tools and clues previous feminists have left us, and to build what we need.

Think of the project of creating a men-focused feminism in terms of programming. You've found a project on Github that looks close to what you needed, but whole chunks are missing for your use case. No logging, no authentication, no input sanitization, random open ports everywhere. These you will have to write yourself. But that is still much easier than starting from scratch.

I hope this unpolished rant addresses the issues at least some of the issues you raised.

> The fact is that waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many men do suck... Rapey, dominating, violent, criminal, oligarchic, etc. People who have been harmed by such men have an absolute right to vent.

It's true that some men are rapey, dominating, etc. Those men have deeply hurt many people. This is a real problem. The victims of those men have a right to vent about those things, and society needs to listen and hold the those bad men accountable.

But the vast majority of men are decent people who aren't rapey, dominating, violent, criminal, or oligarchic. (Many men aren't even particularly sexist! Every man internalizes some amount of sexism, but that's true of every woman too.) So the victims of bad men don't have a right to make generalizations like "men suck". In fact, that's misandrist hate speech.

Analogy: Many socially awkward nerds have been deeply hurt in their lives. They have a right to vent about the pain they've experienced, and society should listen, and should hold accountable the people who are hurting them. But that doesn't give the victims a right to become hateful incels who make generalizations like "women suck".

The key is to distinguish the good men from the bad men: treat the good men with respect and decency, while holding the bad men accountable.

And society does hold many of the bad men accountable. Every single day, society sends men to prison for rape, violence, and crime. And men regularly get censured or fired for sexism. It's true that society doesn't always hold bad men accountable, and this is a real problem; but society really does hold many of the bad men accountable.

> One of the rules for good debate is to argue against the best possible version of your opponent's argument. ... And yet, there are plenty of coherent and internally-consistent feminisms

I agree there are many good feminists out there, and I support them. But there are also many bad feminists out there, and they've hurt me deeply.

By analogy to above: Some feminists are misandrists. Those misandrists have deeply hurt many men (including me). Men like me have a right to vent about those misandrists, and society needs to listen and hold the misandrists accountable. At the same time, I know that most feminists are decent people, which is why I'm careful not to make generalizations like "feminists suck".

The key is to distinguish the good feminists from the bad feminists: support the good feminists, while holding the bad feminists accountable.

Unfortunately, what I've seen is that most feminists make excuses for the bad feminists, rather than holding them accountable. For example, you just now made excuses for the feminists who say "men suck"! Throughout your post, you put the onus on me to tolerate being hurt, instead of putting the onus on the bad feminists to stop hurting me! And this is a pattern throughout the feminist movement: Most feminists, even otherwise-good feminists, are unwilling to acknowledge that the bad feminists are causing real harm, and that men have a right to be upset that the bad feminists are hurting them.

> So if you feel like feminism isn't focused on you, you are absolutely correct.

It's fine that feminism isn't focused on me. The problem is that bad feminists are actively hurting people like me; and the broader feminist movement is enabling that behavior.

Did you read the link I posted above? https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2091#comment-326664 Scott Aaronson wrote a very thoughtful and introspective post about the issues facing socially awkward men, while also being careful to respect women. His post resonated with me deeply; he put into words many of the things I had been struggling with. This is exactly the kind of thing we need more men to do. And yet, he received some extremely toxic responses from feminists -- e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20150113081455/http://www.rawsto.... And in the end, the harassment was too much, so he stopped talking publicly about these issues, and nothing got better for me or other socially awkward men.

This kind of misandry needs to stop happening. I know most feminists aren't personally saying horrible misandrist things. I'm not saying "feminism sucks". Yet, the misandry needs to stop. Do you agree the misandry needs to stop? Will you stop making excuses for misandry?

(P.S. I know you touched on a lot of other issues, but this post was getting pretty long, so I wanted to focus on the core issue and leave the other issues for some other time.)

Thanks for the great links. I've just read Aaronson's piece, Penny's response, and Marcotte's diatribe.

I do not see the misandry you suggest is here. Penny's response is remarkably compassionate to Aaronson. ["Hi there, shy, nerdy boys. Your suffering was and is real."] Marcotte's, while brutal and snarky, makes some insightful points. It is not misandry to be unkindly criticized for your ideas, even when you're being honest and confessional about a traumatic time in your life.

Like Aaronson and Penny, I was also a nerd who took refuge in nerdy pursuits as a way to deal with social and sexual awkwardness. I too grew up terrified that someone might find out I might be attracted to them. But this wasn't because I was afraid to be called a "creep" but because I was afraid they might become physically violent. This isn't an idle fear, since I've been gay bashed a few times, once that required hospitalization, each time contributed to my crippling PTSD.

Laurie Penny suffered nerd sexual anxiety like me and Aaronson did. But her fear was being called "crazy" and "slut". She says, "we were terrified, just like you, and ashamed, just like you, and waiting for someone to take pity on our lonely abject pubescence, hungry to be touched. But you did not see us there."

On top of nerd sexual anxiety, Penny had to deal with misogyny, while I had to deal with murderous homophobia. And yet Aaronson claims, without a hint of irony, "But I suspect the thought that being a nerdy [straight] male might not make me “privileged”—that it might even have put me into one of society’s least privileged classes..." LOL, Wut!? Hello Scott, we're right here. He doesn't see that we're dealing with the same shit PLUS an Imperial Fuckload that is SO extra. But unlike Aaronson, I do not blame my problems on feminism. I'm as shocked as Marcotte that this dude literally thinks he's at the bottom of society's totem pole because he has to figure out how to talk to women in a time of changing social mores.

Aaronson states that his nerdy anxiety was so severe that, "My recurring fantasy, through this period, was to have been born a woman, or a gay man, or best of all, completely asexual..." This statement is mindblowing in it's failure of solidarity and imagination. He so fervently craves the empathy he denies to people like me and Penny. He acts like it's only straight male nerds who have ever feared rejection. WTHF!? It must have been nice ONLY to have feared being rejected or being called a creep and not say, rape, gay bashing, or racially-motivated violence. Aaronson suffered a common experience of fear of rejection, and since the objects of his affection were women, he twisted his anxiety into an indictment of feminism as a way to protect his privileged-as-fuck male ego. This would never have occurred to me to do, since the targets of my affection were men. I never had any problem figuring out what feminists meant by consent. It was the same as my own. I never had any trouble figuring out that Dworkin was a dismissable reactionary. I get the feeling that Aaronson read feminist writers with the intent of cherry picking whatever confirmed his fears.

It's hard to imagine anyone labeling Penny's piece as misandrist, so I assume you're referring to Marcotte. But while uncompromising and uncharitable, her critique of Aaronson's letter matches my own. She writes:

"There are many women out there who are also crippled by social anxieties who would prefer to hide in their hobbies and interests. The difference is a) they can’t blame the entire opposite sex instead of themselves for their mental health issues and b) when they actually try to turn those interests and hobbies into professions, they are told by various social forces, both explicitly and implicitly, that their femaleness means they will always be second-rate at best. Being able to hide in mathematics is, in fact, a privilege, because it is one that has long been and continues in many ways, denied to women."

Aaronson loudly decries the notion that he has male privilege, but both he and I were able to take refuge in our nerdiness, while women nerds are constantly getting tossed out of the tree fort. This notion that only dumb alpha males are sexist and that enlightened nerds are somehow sexism-free is absurd. It's like the straight geeks don't even realize we gay geeks have been in the same rooms. We see you. Yes, you're very often being creepy and sexist. Do you see us? We have had to negotiate the same fraught terrain as you have. We managed to do so without resort to blaming feminism for our suffering. Maybe learn from us?

If the extent of the misandry you've suffered is hearing that "men suck" from people who are unreasonable or deeply wounded or both, then that sounds remarkably tame to me. Perhaps my experience isn't typical, but problems for me are things like homelessness, poverty, trauma, queer bashing, and incipient fascism. I'm a man too. Hearing "men suck" doesn't even move the needle.

I was ready to accept that you've suffered misandry, but I'm absolutely not seeing it from what you've posted. What was your reaction to Penny's writing? Were you not impressed with her empathy and nerd solidarity?

The way that you were treated -- the gay-bashing, homelessness, poverty, trauma, etc -- was absolutely awful. Nobody should ever be treated like that. I agree you've been hurt much worse than either me or Aaronson.

You're right that when people say "men suck", that's not as bad as homelessness, poverty, trauma, gay-bashing, etc. But, compare: when people say "women suck" or "gay people suck", that's not as bad as homelessness, poverty, trauma, gay-bashing, etc. either! That doesn't make it OK to say "women suck" or "gay people suck". Hateful words like "men suck" and "women suck" and "gay people suck" are still bad even though they're not as bad as the problems you experienced.

Also, I don't think your experience is typical for someone in my generation (born in the 90s). Women and gay man in my generation certainly faces disadvantages, but nowhere near what you did on average.

And social awkwardness is a real disadvantage too. Historically, nerds were even the target of physical violence. You were unfortunate enough to be both gay and socially awkward, which must have been doubly difficult. But straight socially awkward people are still disadvantaged even though they're straight; just like gay people with normal social skills are still disadvantaged even though they have normal social skills.

The net effect is that even though I'm a straight man, I've still been significantly hurt, to the point of developing depression. I certainly haven't been hurt as badly as you were, but my pain is still real. (Imagine a gay man who never experiences gay-bashing, homelessness, or poverty. But suppose they're regularly exposed to homophobia, causing them to develop depression. They haven't been hurt as badly as you were, but their pain is still real!)

Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity: man, woman, straight, gay, nerdy or not. Your pain is worse than mine or Aaronson's, but that doesn't invalidate our pain, nor does it excuse the people who are causing our pain. It's not OK to use the existence of misogyny or homophobia as an excuse for misandry or nerdphobia.

You sent me all these great texts and then ignore them when they don't show what you said they would. Being a straight nerd does not in fact put Aaronson in one of the least privileged classes in society. It's not actually misandry for men to be criticized for common bad behaviors justified by an ancient system. I'm sorry that it's hard on men to internalize the lessons of the anti-racism, anti-sexism, and queer liberation movements. Imagine being a rich person hearing "billionaires suck" while you're writing a check to charity on your private jet. That must feel like a slap in the face.

When you say it hurts to hear "men suck" my flippant response is "Have you tried not sucking?" If you have and were successful, then feel free to ignore any men-sucks coming your way. That's what I do. I don't know what else you're asking then that men's behavior just not be critiqued, or only ever be critiqued in a completely dispassionate way that ignores the dynamics of women's suffering and recovery. Do you get upset when an abused dog acts skittish or barks around you? Do you think the dog is being anti-human for not immediately realizing you're one of the good ones? How is trust regained once broken?

Why are we comparing being socially awkward to being gay or a woman? Because we're each lower-status in society? Because nerds defy certain social expectations for manliness like gay men do? Ok. But one can get over being social awkward, one can gain confidence, and put work into building skills for reciprocal relationships; but you can't get over being a woman or a fag. Refactoring unworkable notions of manliness sounds like it would be of benefit to nerds, women, and queers.

If you're suggesting we need a movement to help men figure out their way in a changing society, then I'm all for it. I was member of one myself back in the nineties. There are many ways men suffer under patriarchy and much work that has already been outlined. Paternity rights, anti-circumcision, domestic violence and sexual assault resources for men... If you were to start a men's organization, what would it look like and what would you work on?

Same happened to "incels". Support forum overtaken by toxic desperate people, then grifters. And, to be honest, similar is happening to conservatism. I personally don't care much for traditional values and such, but I see the point of at least arguing for them. But now, you can't really do that, as populist politicians effectively highjacked it.

According to this article[1] from mother jones Warren Farrell is considered to be the founder back in the 80s:

"Farrell is widely considered to be the father of the men’s rights movement. In a series of books published since the 1980s, he has made the case that the primary victims of gender-based discrimination are men—casualties of a society that relies on their sacrifices while ignoring their suffering. He blames this phenomenon for a litany of woes, from the plight of blue-collar workers to the state of veterans’ health care and rising suicide rates among young men. Many of today’s men’s rights activists view Farrell’s 1993 book, The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex, as their touchstone, and the online forums where they congregate are steeped in Farrell’s ideas"

[1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/warren-farrell-...

I never heard of him at the time. I only know him in his aggrieved jilted lover incarnation and didn't care for it.

> In the nineties I joined a men's group retreat where we circled up and listened to each other's struggles, gave lots of support, and lots of hugs. Then we did some consciousness raising around circumcision and it's barbarity. We took our cue from the Feminist movement. They were getting their shit together and so could we. Gary Snyder read his gorgeous nature poetry, Peter Berg sold us on a green cities concept that would make our urban areas more livable.

I remember this. I wasn't old enough to join up, but I'd not have.

It was widely ridiculed at the time, and most folks didn't really respect it.

It wasn't the MRM that killed your movement; it just never took off, and was never really positively received by wider society.

This is true enough. We didn't get very far before the backlash set in. We were seen by some as feminized men who were traitors to our gender, which I take as a great honor. There were so many obstacles to overcome:

* Straight and gay men talking about emotions and hugging * Men confronting unearned privileges * Men confronting their own unjustified anger and aggression * Men trying to gain emotional intelligence to understand and control their moods and triggers * Men grappling with women invading traditionally men-only spaces

So it was absolutely a hard sell. But so is every other anti-oppression movement. No one expected to eliminate a millennia-old system overnight. The thing is, when you're right, you're right. Regressives can't keep a good idea down forever. The progress I've seen in my short lifetime confirms this.

Even if anti-feminists succeed in their efforts to overthrowing democracy and bringing about a patriarchal authoritarian state the gain will be temporary and we will return in force. After denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, comes acceptance.

> Step one to improving the situation for men is to destroy the right-wing MRM.

Step one is building the future you want to see. Step one isn't waging a cultural battle.

A well articulated alternative might even sap the wind from it's sails. But if you want to wage war without anything else to offer them... you'll just be entrenching the status quo.

Connecting to men might require discussing sore cultural subjects with a bit of impropriety. The problem for you, is that all the people willing to say "fuck good taste" aren't following it up with the message you want.

Point taken. It is much better to build up than to tear down.

Its interesting how in Ukraine and Russia and countries which really need soldiers and heavy security how males are treated. It seems in Western comfortable countries there isn't any advantage in being male, women can do everything just fine. Until someone invades, then everyone wants the thugs to come out and do their thing.

What, exactly, are you trying to say.

Have you been to Ukraine?

How are men treated there? I'm not sure what your point is. Most of us haven't lived in Ukraine or Russia.

Men have a place. They’re necessary for the continuing existence of Ukrainian society, and the nation itself. Women know what a good man is, and search it out — and so if you are a good man, you will be fine on that front. You can be terribly un-ideal by modern sensibilities, but if you are a reliable man that can provide for his woman, and the family — you have done your job.

The corollary is that if you do not fit into the men “mold,” you will not prosper. Most men in the Western countries would not have a place in Ukraine or any slavic country (except as an ATM) — because the values needed to be internalized are at odds with more polite societies.

This is true in much of Russia outside Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc. (the more metropolitan and “Western decadent” parts of Russia).

It is absolutely true that boys have been neglected. But the contempt of men is a recent phenomenon. Feminism has a great deal to do with it, demonizing masculinity by construing all men as brutes and promoting the false doctrine that men are unnecessary, that women are self-sufficient, that the patriarchy is some kind of evil oppressive thing. All of that is false. Men and women are complementary, which is to say they differ in ways that complete the other in some way. They need each other to help realize and become who they are. This doesn't necessarily mean every man and woman will marry or can marry or must marry, only that in the great social scheme of things, men and women have their unique genius to offer and range of roles to play in service of the other and the common good, even if it is remote.

Boys have different needs than girls. Treating boys like girls will not do them any good. All children need fathers, but boys are perhaps especially sensitive in this regard as men help model for boys what masculinity means. We see how the absence of a father translates into higher rates of various pathologies and delinquency in single mother households. Father also have an authority no mother can have, an authority that helps boys, and children in general, achieve the kind of moral formation need for adulthood.

There's a reason virtually every culture is patriarchal. Patriarchy exists in service of the common good, beginning with the family unit. It provides the structure and order that enables everyone to flourish. Can things go wrong? Sure. But that's true of every social order or arrangement. You don't abolish something because it can go wrong or goes wrong sometimes. This is like solving poverty by exterminating the poor, or cutting everyone's hands off to "solve" theft. A healthy masculinity, the via media between effeminacy and brutishness, is sacrificial and it is good not only for men, but all of society, including women. The common good depends on it.

> There's a reason virtually every culture is patriarchal.

It's because men are physically stronger than women. That's it. That's all it is.

I don't think it's that simple. The fact that women give birth, have periods, and have a hormonal cycle that has wide ranging impact upon their psyche and decision making processes also has probably had a major impact on most cultures trending patriarchal.

What do you mean by 'impact on their psyche and decision making processes'? They are less mentally capable in some sense? I'd like you to spell it out.

It’s no mystery that during certain parts of a woman’s menstrual cycle they become prone to being more emotional.

This comment doesn't make the point that you think. Yes, people in physical pain tend to be more emotional than they otherwise would, but there is no comparison across sexes that is relevant here. It is possible that women are generally more aware of their emotional state and remain better able to deal with it than men, even with hormonal fluctuation. Men also experience emotional cycles powered by hormones.

A woman’s mental state is altered by their hormonal fluctuations during their menstrual cycle. This is documented scientific fact. Sorry that it’s not politically correct or convenient to the current narratives. There are biological differences between men and women associated with their ability to give birth to children.

Men also experience hormones that affect their mental state, including periodicity. Men’s primary hormone is also associated with aggressiveness and risk taking. Given that, I would say (as a man) men are at least as emotionally affected by their hormones as women are! We just don’t have an obvious and painful reminder the same way women do.

Maybe in a society where leadership is based on challenges of physical strength (i.e. 1v1 combat for the right to rule). But that hasn’t been true of most cultures for millennia. It goes deeper than that.

You are saying that women are inherently 'less wise' or 'mentally weak' or some such? What are you saying?

Well, read the room. It is obvious what the tone of this discussion is - and it's pretty gross!

Against my better judgment, I'll comment in this thread.

I think the mistake in the post above is saying that physical strength has not been an issue for a millennia.

The strong have been using the threat of physical violence to take power right up to and including today. In the home, at work, and in society at large.

That’s not what’s being said here at all. As has been said in multiple comments pregnancy and everything associated with it physically and biologically is the most likely factor. It’s not bigoted to point out that women are biologically different in ways that make them unlikely to be rulers.

To put it bluntly, men are dumber. They're wired for task-to-task thinking, and their purposes are heavily motivated by challenges.

Women, by contrast, are wired for safety, which is a far more holistic approach to purpose because they consider connections men wouldn't even _consider_.

The downside of being smarter, though, is more unease about things you see that may present as a risk. It keeps females away from the bottom of the performance bell curve (men rank lowest in most metrics), but also from the top (men rank highest as well).

All of it is reprogrammable by operant conditioning (a large part of it often happening within marriage), but those are the biological primitives.

I’m on board with tailoring upbringing to the kid’s gender and being conscious of how society sometimes treats young men in a negative way.

But I second that is a weird take or point to throw in.

This is not true. The reason men tend to rule things is because men tend to lift each other up in life to a higher degree than women do.

We need to lay to rest the idea that patriarchal societies arise just because men are physically stronger. There are known quite a number of matriarchal tribal societies where inter-tribal warfare was a significant focus of their society, so physical violence was strongly tied to social status. I"m thinking of pre-contact North America in particular.

And more willing to use violence.

But the physically strongest man is rarely the leader of a culture.

It’s probably less the strength and more the fact that before contraception women would be pregnant a substantial amount of the time. Hard to be engaged in the world when you’re having to do a bunch of pre-scientific rituals to try and ensure a safe and healthy birth a lot of the time.

But that doesn’t really mean they weren’t involved in decision making, it just means they aren’t involved in the sorts of places where people will write any of it down for posterity.

I’d put higher aggression (and capability to act on such) into the mix as well.

From a long time ago, we were the aggressive hunters, warmongers, protectors of everything that “belonged” to us, including women and children.

To this day, we’ll often be the protectors (and usually aggressors) in a violent situation, for the reasons above.

> All children need fathers

Every study I've seen on the subject has said that children of same sex parents, including having two mothers, do as well or better than their peers across any metric of wellbeing or success.

Is the implication instead that children should have two parents? Ie. Sharing the burden, more perspective and the like cause the benefits?

If so, given that most children are born of conventional couples, it makes sense to say they should have their father in their life.

The 1st comment said boys need fathers to model masculinity. And there is no advantage to say children need a father and mother if the truth is children need 2 parents. 2 parents covers more cases in fewer words.

I've seen multiple women wearing shirts in San Francisco that said something about 'mediocre white men'. I was kind of blown away as I have always been pretty hard left, but it was shocking how blatant racism/sexism if it's targeted at one particular group is almost fashionable.

Yeah, I'm going call bullshit on this. Almost every society is historically patriarchal because for thousands of years, human attributes tied to testosterone (strength, endurance, athleticism, aggression) were extremely valuable. The world is changing, and we need to change with it by developing a new, healthy society, not retreating into traditional structures and patterns that no longer serve us as a species.

I disagree. Things are the same today as they were thousand of years ago, and they'll be the same for the next thousands of years. Believing this period of unusual prosperity and extended peace in human history will last for long is delusional. The only thing that matters is that we're still biologically the same.

What a depressing worldview. I sincerely hope people like you fail to drag us back to our base instincts with your cynicism.

It's embarrassing for Hacker News that this is the top-rated comment.

> All children need fathers

> Father[s] have an authority no mother can have

> There's a reason virtually every culture is patriarchal. Patriarchy exists in service of the common good

Really?? Where's the research that supports any of this? If you're going to make charged statements like this, you better at least bring some research to the table.

Let's all take a good long hard look at ourselves. Just because we might feel frustrated, or displaced, or ignored, doesn't mean that we (and I'm talking to the men on this site who upvoted this comment) need to abandon the truth-seeking parts of us that desire the gold standard of logical, evidence-supported arguments. If you blindly support any statement in favor of "your side" just because it feels good to you emotionally, regardless of how speculative or questionable the reasoning is, then you have little right to criticize the "other side" for doing the same.

> There's a reason virtually every culture is patriarchal

The Americas has strong, persistent matriarchies. And even Sparta had a politically-active group of heiresses who rivalled the Kings for power.

With respect, there are some errors in your thesis. Specifically, you're attacking some strawmen.

Here's the steelmanned version of the ideas you're saying are causing issues:

- Instead of defining men / women, think of each human as a person. There are no strong men, sensitive boys, intelligent women, vulnerable girls - there are only strong people, weak people, hard people, soft people. Our job as society is to compassionately accept people as they are and encourage them to be their best authentic selves, instead of arguing there is some role they must force themselves to fulfill because they were born with a set of genitalia, because this promotes individual happiness and is the kind thing to do.

- People's virtues are learned, not innate. Independent people can learn to accept help. People who are unsure of themselves can gain confidence. People are allowed to be vulnerable, but also to have the space to find roots, solidarity, strength and growth. Roles that traditionally would have gone to someone with a penis - head of household, soldier, provider - are achievable and manageable by anyone, because the virtues needed to hold those positions are learnable and not rooted in biology. The same holds in reverse - roles that would traditionally have been held by women are open to everyone.

- People should be given freedom to flourish as they best see fit. They have rights to their bodily autonomy, securing their financial futures, achieving scholastic pursuits, respect and equality for their contributions, and more. Historically, this has not been the case, and this does not just apply to women's rights here - it applies to anyone who has had these opportunities denied.

- Some human but deleterious attributes we should all grow beyond. Brutishness is an excellent example - as is shallowness, closed-mindedness, entitlement, ignorance, greed, dishonesty, and more. Some attributes are contextually awful - being stoic, for example, is a boon when you need to handle stressful situations, but it can also manifest as a lack of empathy for other's emotional lives.

Note that none of these are attacking masculinity - if anything, point two contradicts exactly that, literally anyone can learn the virtues associated with masculinity and is why trans men are supported even conceptually. Rather, point four holds - there are a subset of awful virtues that are unacceptable or contextually awful from anyone that have been attached to being a man, such as entitlement to sex, resorting to anger in lieu of healthy expressiveness, and assuming they must shoulder all burdens instead of being allowed to seek help. In other words, mainstream movements are attempting to abolish toxic masculinity, not masculinity itself.

You discuss the emotional needs of boys and girls as being different (which may or may not be valid, depending on the best available evidence), but then you argue that treating boys like girls is not the right thing to do, which is not what anyone is proposing at all. Again, the idea is that people are people, not their bodies. Girls and boys are people, capable of feeling, wanting and expressing the full range of emotions. People want to treat children in ways that allow them to be emotionally expressive and mature adults.

Further, when you talk about the patriarchy, you are again not taking point one and two into account. Nobody wants authority, strength, boldness, vitality, etc. to go away - these are all great virtues. Rather, they want the idea that these qualities are somehow gendered to go away. If you want strong leaders, find them in both genders. Additionally, historically, the patriarchy you are discussing has tended to enshrine point four virtues rather than eliminated it - it's the same system that inflicted foot binding tortures, made Indian women throw themselves into funeral pyres when their husband passed, allowed female infanticide to flourish, and so on. These are all terrible things and bundled into a parcel of ideas about what men "should" be: not just protectors, but architects of their offspring / wives / sister's fates. We have managed to overcome many of these core underpinning beliefs, but there still remain a lot that should not go unchallenged.

So, respectfully, I would ask you to at least attack the right thing. It is possible your value systems are opposed to all the points above, and that's fine. But if a value system has to reach towards attacking strawmen of other viewpoints, then it is not a good sign that that value system has been arrived at fairly.

But these qualities are gendered. Women are in general not wanting to be leaders in the same fields as men, and these fields are generally in prominent prestige (think roles like banking, lawyers, leadership, etc). In fields like medicine where there is more gender balance and even more women at the lower roles (like Nurses), we see these fields have more qualities of care imbued as well as the leadership that a physician need demonstrate. But even it was controversial for women to be doctors in the times that physicians had a lot more authority... now when the field has curtailed physician autonomy and become more about shared decision making, it is interesting to see that more women are entering the doctor role.

Still when it comes to leadership, it suits a man by his qualities to be a leader, while a woman is suited for other roles. You can just see this by the role mothers play in their families versus fathers. If you have an imbalance or the women starts taking control or leadership in the family when the men are still present, then you get a lot of wonky results.

There are some errors in your reasoning, though.

Here's one. When people collect datapoints and observe a difference in one case not present in the other, they sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that their dataset is exhaustive - that it captures all the variables that matter.

In other words, it's easy to start with the observation "women tend to be more represented in fields that exhibit qualities of care and less represented in leadership roles" and conclude that the absence of the variable "has leadership" makes up the core difference.

But this is a conceit that you, the observer, made. Your choice of variables to look at influenced your observations of what is different and therefore important.

Here's a counterpoint that contradicts your observed conclusion. Female heads of state and politicians have been increasing in number throughout the last century, and have done remarkably well in those roles. Has the nature and autonomy of executive power changed like medicine (according to you) has? It has not. It is a sign that you have not taken all variables into account.

Here's another error in your reasoning. Why those variables specifically? How do you know those are the variables your subjects are thinking about? When women sign up to be doctors and nurses and not CEOs, are they expressly telling you the shared decision making are the important variables? Or is it because you inferred that those variables are important because you can measure them?

In the interest of correct methodology, here are some other variables that people have suggested to explain the same data: women are conditioned or socialized into early expectations of caregiving roles; women are rewarded for pursuing caregiving roles in a way men aren't; there are more barriers for women than for men, and so on.

Now are these variables the correct answer? We don't know. It is a complex topic, because humans are complex. It is possible biology and perceptions of role play a part, as does socialization and others.

But what we can do is go a little meta and ask the likelihood that a biological variable is a good explanation in the first place. Consider what a good explanation has to do: it has to provide a causal mechanism, and be able to explain how the cause led to the effect you see. The trouble with every single biological explanation that's been proposed in this area is that they don't provide this causal mechanism. What exactly is it that makes women gravitate towards submissive roles? Is it estrogen levels? Hormones? Menstrual cycles? But then people on hormone therapy, people born with extra chromosomes, people with hermaphroditic parts, and so on should all display manifestly different behaviour and choices, which they don't. To explain these differences, you need to invoke more and more factors, until you end up with epicycles all over again.

More generally, the history of biological explanations simply don't fare all that well in comparison to sociological explanations. A reasonable prior is to assume that it may play a small part, but that larger effects are driven by how society treats and works with people.

Thanks for your reply. I would like to see social factors put to a similar rigor of analysis then, since it seems to me that you are proposing socialization is (1) a major factor and (2) that the socialization of women towards non-leadership roles is incorrect from a normative standpoint.

My counterpoint is that motherhood, pregnancy, chastity, fertility, these are tied up in the biologic of a woman, and these fulfill important roles that can’t be explained by social factors. We are not at the stage where we can replace women with mass artificial wombs and then no child has a “mother” they know and grow with. Rather we know from studies that a nurturing mother is incredibly important for a child at the epigenetic level all the way to the social level.

So much of a social role is devised around motherhood and so much of male mating and paternity is focused on not wanting the woman to have children who are not his.

This is why it is said polygamy is a natural choice for people, women are more likely to accept and be ok with having one husband even if he has multiple wives, compared to the inverse. From a biological paternity standpoint, this makes a lot of sense.

I also challenge your notion that scientific studies conducted in a research study fashion are the preferred criterion for evidence. A study without context and understanding is dangerous. And there are many truths we know without putting them to the now industrialized scientific process of producing studies —- many of which suffer political and ideological pressures in terms of what they can study when it comes to the relationship between human behavior and controversial social issues.

So when you say women are pushed into caregiver roles… this is obvious if you understand the concept of motherhood. As for a rise in women leaders of countries, I will say overwhelmingly the political and business class is male, and generally women are not suited for leadership of a country. We saw a rising “feminization” of society in terms of corporate interactions and corporate decorum now being a default in many respects for how society operates; there are also ideological reasons to elevate “women leaders”; all of these are reasons I suggest you see a rise in women leaders of countries. If you look at societies where ostensible crude military control and authority are important to display, or even in war situations, we see that men are by far the ones involved in combat.

A big question to ask, why so few women in the military roles then, if they have been open to women now? If you look at women’s physical performance it becomes obvious. We aren’t at the stage of all robot armies yet; and the militaries of today are still by far men.

> I would like to see social factors put to a similar rigor of analysis then, since it seems to me that you are proposing socialization is (1) a major factor and (2) that the socialization of women towards non-leadership roles is incorrect from a normative standpoint.

This is accurate, though, to be clear re: (1), I am saying that socialization of both men and women plays a role in these disparate distributions. Men are also socialized, to a great extent.

> My counterpoint is that motherhood, pregnancy, chastity, fertility, these are tied up in the biologic of a woman, and these fulfill important roles that can’t be explained by social factors. We are not at the stage where we can replace women with mass artificial wombs and then no child has a “mother” they know and grow with. Rather we know from studies that a nurturing mother is incredibly important for a child at the epigenetic level all the way to the social level.

I think you are blurring an important distinction here: motherhood during pregnancy and parenthood of a child. Yes, you clearly need women for the first, but that doesn't have anything to do with the latter - a nurturing parental figure is needed, but not necessarily women. Surrogate children, for example, thrive despite their biological mothers being absent in their developmental lives, as do adoptive children from early ages.

If you think about it, children have a variety of developmental needs, but none that are conditioned on requiring their parents to be of a specific gender. Children raised by successful gay male couples are simply not developmentally harmed in any way by any study, metric or measure, though neither parental figure is a woman.

The narrative that you need a nurturing, attentive and competent parental figure is certainly valid - but the idea that only a woman can fulfill that role isn't, because there's practical and ample evidence otherwise.

> So much of a social role is devised around motherhood and so much of male mating and paternity is focused on not wanting the woman to have children who are not his

But what about this is biological, exactly?

The trouble with the biological explanation is it doesn't explain exceptions very well. There are women who don't want children, men who don't want children, asexual people who don't care about sex but love the idea of raising a family, hikikomori who don't want any social contact, and more. That these people exist, are rational thoughtful individuals with full lives, and don't conform with the expectations biology supposedly places on them suggests biology can't be that strong a force in the first place. (You could claim these people are defective, of course, but that's circular and motivated reasoning - if biology is infallible except when it isn't, then we should just accept it's fallible instead of demonizing the exceptions).

The other trouble is that the biological explanation is very selective. As a species, we do a great deal of unnatural things. We eat cooked food, we wear clothes, we have manners, we employ language, use toilets, and more. Yet, somehow, when it comes to the topic of finding a mate, we somehow argue that our instincts, rather than our society, has shaped us into who we are, despite having shaped almost everything else.

Take one example where socialization has overridden this supposed base instinct: beauty standards. Small feet are not correlated with reproductive success, yet at some point in history foot binding was introduced. There are tribes that engage in neck elongation and other forks of bodily mutation that people learn to find attractive. Yet it would be foolish to argue that this is somehow a biological imperative - after all, we no longer include small feet as an index of beauty. Why does sexual reproduction get the special treatment?

To bring this idea back to the original talking point, the idea that motherhood is something you need to aspire to can't be something innate because there are many women who do not want (or even like!) children at all. Promiscuity and parenting preferences aren't "male" phenomena or "female" phenomena - these are people phenomena, and the currents of what we encourage, enshrine, highlight, reference, and consider weird shape how people internalize what parts of themselves are okay and aren't okay.

> I also challenge your notion that scientific studies conducted in a research study fashion are the preferred criterion for evidence. A study without context and understanding is dangerous.

Of course. But bad methodology at arriving at said context and understanding is much more dangerous, and significantly more common than bad analytical science. One rule that is usually overlooked, for example, is that explaining the outliers is much more important than explaining the average of the distribution.

> So when you say women are pushed into caregiver roles… this is obvious if you understand the concept of motherhood.

It's not just that women are pushed into caregiver roles - it's also that men are pushed away from these roles. It's an invisible pipeline that begins with how we think about feelings and how to process them. In general, men don't receive the emotional guidance women do. We're encouraged to think about sex as a prize, status as a measure of self-worth, anger as a primary means of self-expression. Close male friendships are rare in comparison to close female relationships. Suicide is much more prevalent, as is violence. The joy of emotional labour and pure authenticity is never presented to us until we experience and mine it for ourselves - or rather we are told it is only possible to have that when we are in relationships with submissive women, home with children who are supposed to love us for all our faults we never work on, at which point we explode because we cannot handle the idea that mature adult love is so much more than about just blind devotion. All these things shape our perspective on what's right for us.

So, no, I would say it is not obvious. I would say it glosses over the lived experiences of many men and many women to arrive at that specific conclusion.

> As for a rise in women leaders of countries, I will say overwhelmingly the political and business class is male,

But that doesn't mean anything? Of course they are overwhelmingly male - you've accepted that doors were formally barred to women for a long time, and there are invisible doors that continue to operate even now.

> We saw a rising “feminization” of society in terms of corporate interactions and corporate decorum now being a default in many respects for how society operates; there are also ideological reasons to elevate “women leaders”; all of these are reasons I suggest you see a rise in women leaders of countries

I don't understand what you mean by "corporate decorum/interactions". It sounds like you are arguing that it's only out of politeness that women are now allowed to be leaders. I assure you, when Boudica led a revolt against the Romans, savaging city after city, it was not because the men she led were being polite.

Take a first principles approach. It's possible to articulate what qualities or skills are required for competence in leadership: competence, assertiveness, popularity, diplomacy, and decision-making skills. No item on this list disqualifies women or even disadvantages them. There is no shortage of tough women out there.

> If you look at societies where ostensible crude military control and authority are important to display, or even in war situations, we see that men are by far the ones involved in combat. ... A big question to ask, why so few women in the military roles then, if they have been open to women now? If you look at women’s physical performance it becomes obvious. We aren’t at the stage of all robot armies yet; and the militaries of today are still by far men.

I've written a lot of thoughts above, but I'll reiterate once more because I'm tired and can't do full rebuttals: biological explanations are weak explanations, because they don't explain the outliers. The fact there are military women in the first place is the interesting finding, not their rarity.

Kids in general are neglected because having a stay at home parent has become a financial luxury. Kids used to grow up with a parent present, now they grow up watching TikTok until their parents come home. This is a real problem that no one wants to talk about it.

Lots of people talk about this. They’ve been talking about it for decades. Three or four decades ago, when I was a kid, we even had a name for it: latchkey kid.

How far back is "used to" because both of my fathers parents worked, and he was born in 1955 lol

The reality of the world dictates that men require a smidgen of "toxic masculinity" to power through. Try telling a sewer cleaner to feel more, or share his feelings. He instead should embolden himself and power through it.

Even if the material world didn't require this, it's required by a substantial portion of women, romantically speaking. Many women express their concern that "he never shares his emotions", but when he finally does express his emotions and what truly bothers him she finds herself unusually dry and loses respect for him. Some men never have to learn this the hard way, and they're fortunate. It's common enough that it's not hard to find such stories online.

Absolutely! As if women and men are biologically wired a certain way.

The funny thing is many women seem to prefer exactly the kind of men everyone is complaining about, and not because they really like them either. Nice guys are always treated like trash.

I can count the number of healthy relationships I've seen in this life on one hand.

I don't know exactly how we ended up here; but unless things get better fast, over population will be the least of our troubles.

I think part of the issue is the misunderstanding men have in terms of what a "nice guy" actually is.

If a man is told by a heterosexual woman he's not in a relationship with that he's a nice guy, he should take that to mean she's not attracted to him. But this is confusing because the majority of men's advice about women comes from women, and the messaging they've received is that they should be a "nice guy." And being nice at a surface level is antithetical to things like assertion, which is a quality many women look for in men. Until the advent of YouTube, my impression and experience is that elder men have failed to teach men anything useful about how to interact with women, including what it means to be nice. I know of no men my age in real life that received any wisdom from their fathers besides "wear a condom."

So called "nice guys" are treated like trash, not because they're nice, but often the opposite. If a man is a pushover, lacks confidence, doesn't seem like he knows what he wants out of life, and is willingly subordinate to women, but he is superficially very nice, that signals that his behavior comes from immaturity or to get laid. Women do actually like guys who are nice, but a scant number of them are into men who lack a spine or need women in order to feel complete. A man can be nice but also be assertive, confident, and not be needy.

And sure, plenty of women are into bad boys, but that's their prerogative, and a man may not want to be with those women anyway.

Plenty of assumptions there, and a somewhat defensive tone, might want to look into that.

I'm telling you, something's off; most women don't even want what they're looking for when they get it.

It's quite possibly a similar story for men, but I don't have the experience to judge.

My experience is that they do not mean it. What they want is for the man to make her feel loved. What they do not want is for the man to express his deepest insecurities and make her feel insecure by proxy because she depends on him.

Style of communication matters. There are different modes of interaction and being a caregiver/care-receiver is one of them that doesn't mix well with being desired sexually. You can, however, switch between modes. This is in fact the basis behind the therapeutic approach of Transactional Analysis:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis

Personally I've encountered the thing you've described, and think where it went wrong was falling into a persistent parent/child dynamic instead of returning to an adult/adult one. I'm a bit wiser now and can confirm that once you recognise the modes you're falling into, you can shed the (toxic) ideas like "nice guys finish last" and start having deeper relationships.

I mean turning dependency into codependency isn’t exactly a step in the right direction is it

Not even joking: isn't that was a romantic relationship is? What is this fear of becoming dependent on your partner? If I didn't need a partner then I would remain single. Isn't love a form of dependency?

I think this very modern fear of being dependent on your partner emerged of late because of the way sexual liberalism eroded the security of romantic relationships. Nothing means anything anymore and your partner can leave you at any moment, therefore you have to somehow remain completely independent while leading a relationship.

But at the same time, to truly open yourself and love someone you have to become somewhat dependent on them.

I remember an anecdote by a guy that shared to his family how he was feeling depressed and exhausted, mostly work-related.

It was a "deer in the headlights" experience. His family indifferent if not annoyed by his revelations. He had nervously prepared for the moment but the message was plain and clear: you can't fail.

I think it serves as an example of how cold and loveless men perceive this world to be. You need to deliver without fail for life. Fail and nobody cares or you're cast aside as trash.

So if the messaging is that nobody loves you for you and you're judged by utility only, we shouldn't be surprised by men's growing issues.

Is the ability to embolden one's self and power through stuff now considered "toxic" -- or intrinsically masculine?

If so, then we're in trouble.

I’ve been knee deep in everything people flush down a toilet and more fixing a broke sewage lift station. I deal with human bodily fluids in my work all the time, as do many women in the same field (medical) Shit and piss and puke and pus.

That doesn’t mean I’m a robot without feeling. Doing your job isn’t “toxically masculine”.

Growing up I was raised in all the bullshit about not crying or never appearing “weak”. It turns out bottling all your emotions isn’t a super healthy thing. Even worse when you don’t gain the meaningful perspective of understanding the implications of them because you’re conditioned to pretend to ignore them.

Men are emotional creatures whether some of them want to admit it or not because they’re human.

Cleaning human shit for a living or part of your living doesn’t change that no matter who you are.

tbh its not just ignoring their emotional needs, painting this as an emotional needs problems just characterizes them as women and basically claims that men need to be treated like women, which is not true. its ignoring their developmental needs

you need some kind of expertise to feel like you can make even the most basic of professions out of

you need responsibility

you need role models that you can choose and can talk with, and practice having complex and sophisticated conversations with

you need a meritocratic environment

you need physical development, and to embed the need for building physical and mental habits that guide you through your life in a sane and stable way

you need an environment that encourages kindness, hard work, and neither babies nor feminizes you. you need to, specifically, avoid idiotic environments that promote violence as part of the social hierarchy of peers.

Were you expecting this 1000 word piece to address all social, emotional, mental, and physical needs of a child? I don't see anything in the piece that contradicts the developmental needs you list, except of course treating the need for emotional support as inherently a feminine trait, which is very well addressed by the piece.

Men have a need to feel like men, which means different from women. As emotional support is considered a feminine thing it might be better to use a different framing without necessarily changing much of the substance.

Painting what as an emotional needs problem -- the issue of boys not being raised with sufficient regard to their emotional needs?

How are they (the boys?) being characterised as women?

Who is claiming that men need to be treated like women?

Why are you so concerned by femininity?

It is not a father's job to be the person a child goes to for emotional support. A father is indeed supposed to pass down masculinity and how to manage it and how to become a socially functional and acceptable man.

Mothers on the other hand are supposed to be the primary person that provides emotional support and care. But, the immediate community is supposed to provide that support as well.

This is how human society has functioned through history. This is how we naturally function.

Fathers being emotional support, mothers being distant and the community being a cold and harsh distant group of people does not work.

Teachers and social workers are not "the community". Children don't need psychoanalysis and being taught to think of themsleves as victims if their parents are too busy to attend their school presentations and sports activities and all that, because you have the community right there embracing you and supporting you.

"It takes a village to raise a child" not paid employees of schools and governments and psychoanalysts helping politicians draft policies.

The entire context of how this question is even being asked is wrong imo.

"A child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth"

Asking masculine fathers to be emotional or telling children the entire burden of their successful upbringing is on the shoulders of their parents is not only incorrect, it reminds me of the proverb "don't grade a fish on its ability to climb a tree". If it is unnatural for a father to support a child a certain way and it is natural for a mother, what is wrong with that?

Be careful not to confuse nature with nurture. Naturally humans have a high degree of variation. The traditionalist system you refer to is a construction, if a long-standing one. We can critique the success of this system like any other human construct.

To argue that stoic fathers tend to produce better sons requires evidence. We might ask, "Better for what?" Better to be a disposable cog in a rich man's machine, perhaps? There's quite a bit of evidence that stoic fathers produce sons with emotional problems. There is quite a bit of evidence that expecting fathers not to express intimacy with their sons is destructive for both. There's quite a bit of evidence that men who don't understand their emotions and have not been supported in expressing them safely tend to act out in dangerous ways.

Yours is a recipe for an exploitative, dangerous world. Intersectional feminism offers a path toward a safe, loving, and moral world.

That's not what I am saying. I am saying someone has to play the role of a father. As a boy, someone needs to teach that boy how to become a strong man but also a man who lives correctly and fulfills his duties. If it was me, I would teach my son to be honest, honorable, to defend the weak and to understand different types of strengths (including intellectual), to treat his romantaic partner right and to learn how to make male friends and make others be comfortable around him and most importantly to understand his place in society and how to succeed as a man. Only a father can do that because a father understands what it is like to be a man and only a father understands the hardships a male child will encounter specifically because he is male. The same applies to mothers and daughters.

Being stoic is not what I mentioned but being strong and masculine, except in certain modern western societies is not optional. To put it differently, I wouldn't want my child to be violent in any way but I would also want him to be strong enough so that he wouldn't become prey to bullies and anyone trying to take advantage of him. But also to be strong enough to defend the weak and if the time comes, to serve in the military to defend his homeland and people.

Think of it as a job opening. Someone has to be masculine and someone has to be feminine . If your argument is that a boy should not have to be masculine, although horomones and generics disagree, I say that's a different topic because my argument is that both masculinity and femininity are required and for parents who wish to raise a masculine child, unless the mother is masculine and knows what growing up as a boy and becoming a man is like, the father is the only person that can do that.

> There's quite a bit of evidence that men who don't understand their emotions and have not been supported in expressing them safely

I did not suggest that. What I said was that it is not a father's job or rather, if a mother is available then she is best suited for that job. Boys want their mothers to comfort and emotionally support them and their fathers to teach them how to be a man and to be proud of their progress. I did not support toxic masculinity, just masculinity.

> We might ask, "Better for what?" Better to be a disposable cog in a rich man's machine, perhaps

Better equiped to succeed in life and be able to care for themselves and others. To live a long and likely happy life and find their place in society.

America's prisons are filled with men who never had a father model. Mothers, hard as they may try, at some point their inability to understand what their boys are going through makes it impossible for the child to trust them with emotional support.

A well rounded upbringing with all emotional, social and psychilogical needs met is all I advocated.

> A well rounded upbringing with all emotional, social and psychilogical needs met is all I advocated.

Fair enough, but then:

> What I said was that it is not a father's job or rather, if a mother is available then she is best suited for that job.

Who says that she is? Plenty of women suck at nurturing. Plenty of men are good at it. Why not have both parents capable of providing emotional support and guidance? What about single dads? Why assume that dad is better than mom at training a kid for fitness and to stand up for themselves. There are a lot of women jocks and soldiers. Have you ever seen the arms on a bread baker? She could punch you through a wall and go back to kneading without missing a beat. Why assume that girls don't need to throw a punch? They deal with both bullies and rapists. You are falling into the trap of gender essentialism. There are sex differences, but they are not the straightjacket traditionalists say they are. Did you think Neanderthal women laid around on fainting couches waiting for some dude to hand them a hankie?

If you want to know what men and women can actually do, don't look at traditionalists, look for us iconoclasts. The fags, the dykes, women athletes, men that stay at home with the kids. We are living examples that essentialism is dangerous bullshit. If you want to see true bravery watch a drag queen walk down a city street past all the people who want to kill her. Balls of fucking steel. Talk to the girl coder in a room full of coder bros trying to either fuck her or drive her off. Imagine being Madeline Albright in a situation room full of generals. That's bravery.

My grandmother was a pioneer in computing and women's liberation. When her husband was off in the merchant marines under the constant threat of U boats, she wanted to do something for the war effort. She saw a sign for engineering classes. When she went to sign up the man told her, "Sorry honey, engineering is for men." The instructor happened to overhear and replied, "Let her take it Harry. Then she'll learn her place." Of course, my grandmother took the class, did better than all the other guys, and went on to a long career designing nuclear torpedo circuitry and keeping the mainframe running, while raising four kids alone, and dealing with a constant stream of sexist men. Pure bravery. On the flip side, she couldn't cook to save her own life, thought Sanka in tepid tap water was coffee, and was hopeless at nurturing her kids, who have the emotional scars to prove it.

My father is an example of a boy who was never taught emotional intelligence. He simply doesn't understand his emotions or why they change. If I say, "Dad, it seems like driving is making you anxious. Do you want to switch?" He doesn't recognize the category of "anxious". All he knows is that something is wrong, it could not be him, so it must be mom's fault. On the flip side, dad is one of the best people in the country at programming cultural events for college campuses and single-handedly transformed student life for generations of students and is one of the funniest guys you'll ever meet.

Humans have evolved to be flexible and resilient. A big brain frees us from the monorail of instinct. Men and women can be whatever we need to be. This period of reaction to progress will pass like so many others have. You can't stop a good idea forever. And we who know freedom will NEVER go back.

> Who says that she is? Plenty of women suck at nurturing. Plenty of men are good at it. Why not have both parents capable of providing emotional support and guidance?

You talked about a lot of things but I don't think this forum is best to discuss most of it, but let me reply to that statement.

I did not imply that all women are excellent nurturers or all men are great at being masculine. But whether you believe it is nature or society, parenting is many jobs packed into one. One person has to teach a child how to be masculine or feminine or if you are one of those people inventing thingd the whatever non-masculine/non-feminist thing I guess? But a father teaches his son how to be man, now you take that and make it about some ideologicial/political culture war and that isn't right. What's wrong with a mother providing emotional support? If a father is providing that then is that father also teaching the boy how to be a man? What is the woman doing then? Someone needs to do both jobs. If the mother can do the father's job then so be it. I don't get this obsession with reducing everything into politics or whataboutism. As a child I needed both types of support, to be understood as a male and thaught how to handle myself as well as to be taught how to be kind, caring and intouch with my emotions, to avoid burying them. Women don't have testestrome and society has it such that if you are feminine, you spend most of your life being emotional and being in touch with your feelings, so you're an expert at that.

You talk about what can be and hypotheticals. Ok, if you work hard enough, maybe a woman can teach a boy how to be man and a man can learn how to provide what a mother provides? But why are you talking about that? Why are you insisting that men who only know how to be men and have no interest in becoming women pretend to be something they are not? And if a woman is not great at providing motherly love and support, I say she should talk about it with her spouse and let them figure out the best way to meet the needs of their children. I hope we can at least agree that whatever socio-political winds may prevail, the needs of children should not be neglected.

> I hope we can at least agree that whatever socio-political winds may prevail, the needs of children should not be neglected.

Absolutely. Have a great night.

> The traditionalist system you refer to is a construction, if a long-standing one.

All social systems are constructions, and yes you are correct, we can observe and critique them. The sky is also blue. I like oranges. Snails are slow.

> To argue that stoic fathers tend to produce better sons requires evidence.

Likewise, to argue the opposite also requires more evidence than saying that "there is quite a bit of evidence" for your point. Saying that there is evidence is not evidence.

This take is crazy. I hope you don't have, nor will have kids.

Fathers should absolutely be there for emotional support, especially for small kids.

Also, distant mothers are not a modern creation, there have always been distant mothers.

> Fathers should absolutely be there for emotional support, especially for small kids.

A CEO should know about corporate finance but that doesn't mean he should also be the CFO. Both roles are important enough to have separate execs. Parenting is similar. I did not advocate for an emotionally shutoff and cold father, but rather the responsible person and the person the child runs to for emotional support is the feminine parent which is the mother (usually at least). Similarly, boys need to be taught how to be men. Women have their own unique perspective and as such, mothers should take part in this but ultimately, the parent who should be responsible for masculinity education is the masculine parent, who knows how to handle a testestrome filled body and the specific society's expectation of men and how to address or confront that, and the father (usually) is the right person for this due to biology.

You and others are saying both parents can do this. I am saying, the parent with the most experience and qualifications should be the responsible parent without excluding the other parent entirely. You can blame the CEO for being ignorant about the company's financial state but you can't hold him/her responsible for mismanging finances without making sure the CFO did his/her job right.

> Also, distant mothers are not a modern creation, there have always been distant mothers.

100% agree with this. But so are fathers that teach boys weakness, cruelty and cowardice or who themselves don't know how to be a man (like abuse their wives). Parents who suck at their roles exist and that sort of is my point. If a mother is cold and distant then should the father take on the role of an emotional support primary parent as well as masculinity training? What is the mother doing? Neglecting the child? Is that really ok for the father to be expected do both things or maybe should the mother teach the boy to shave and to fight off bullies and succeed in the sport of the boy's choice? No problem with that so long as you are not saying one parent is responsible for everything. That's the root cause, you and others are caught up in politics and appearances and avoid holding both parents responsible. Neither fatherhood nor motherhood is a shared duty, parenthood is. These terms are not some patriarchal social construct that you must rebel against. They simply mean children have specific needs that need to be met and parents need to choose which role to take on and be an expert in that role who will meet that need. If a father doesn't know how to take on the role of emotional support for the child because the mother is distant and cold, then why are you blaming the father for not being two parents when you should be asking what could be done to help both parents figure out a way to share parenthood and decide who will take on what role?

If the mother isn't doing her job, yes, that sucks.

And yes, I'd expect the father to do both things if that happens, for the sake of the child. The inverse is also true.

I don't think you can force a distant mother (or father) to be more involved but knock yourself out if you think otherwise.

> I don't think you can force a distant mother (or father) to be more involved but knock yourself out if you think otherwise

Force? No. Help/educate? Maybe.

> It is not a father's job to be the person a child goes to for emotional support. A father is indeed supposed to pass down masculinity and how to manage it and how to become a socially functional and acceptable man. Mothers on the other hand are supposed to be the primary person that provides emotional support and care.

This reads like satire. "ChatGPT, please write a paragraph that embodies the concept of toxic masculinity."

I'm becoming a father in a few months, so I've spent this entire year reflecting on the fathers I know - strengths, weaknesses, things to emulate and things to avoid. Every one of the "good fathers" in that reflection is someone whose child would go to him for emotional support.

It's astounding to me that anyone could believe it's possible to be truly masculine while neutering one's experience of human emotion. Being too afraid of emotion to ever express it, and making your child suffer for your fear, is cowardice, not masculinity.

> It's astounding to me that anyone could believe it's possible to be truly masculine while neutering one's experience of human emotion. Being too afraid of emotion to ever express it, and making your child suffer for your fear, is cowardice, not masculinity.

I did not claim that fathers should be devoid of emotion or neuter their emotion. You added that strawman on your own. This is the 3rd or 4th comment in this thread where someone made a similar claim.

Clearly even in your quote I said "the person a child goes to" as in the person responsible for that. Just because your child does not come to you first for emotional support, does that mean you have to be cold and unapproachable to your child? When did I claim that or why would you assume one extreme or the other?

Why do you people insist that parents should not have specific responsibilities based on their abilities. If you honestly believe you can support your child better than their mother emotionally then take on that role. No problem there. So long as the mother is able to exchange masculine responsibilities with you.

Why do you insist that fathers should be responsible for everything and mothers should do whatever they feel like doing? It sounds to me like 80% of parenting is done by the father according to you.

A son needs someone to teach them how to be strong and manly as well as gentle and kind and intouch with their emotions. Why so you insist thr father should do all these things? Why do you resist havig to share the responsibility with the mother?

This is basic human organizational structure. You can't have the CEO and CFO have the same exact job. You can't have two commanding officers responsible for the same subordinates in the military. Lookup "tyranny of the structureless".

In your attempt to do everything on your own, you rob your child the opportunity to get close to both parents bot worse than that, you rob them of structure and clarity which are essential to healthy development.

> This is the 3rd or 4th comment in this thread where someone made a similar claim.

If you believe that 4 different readers are "misunderstanding" you, perhaps the failure to communicate exists on the writer's side.

> This is basic human organizational structure. You can't have the CEO and CFO have the same exact job. You can't have two commanding officers responsible for the same subordinates in the military. Lookup "tyranny of the structureless".

Based on the frequency with which you compare parenting to hierarchical corporate or military structures, I sincerely hope you aren't a parent. It's intensely creepy and I would never want you around my kid.

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