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Comment by anonfordays | Hacker News Reader

There's a 500 pound gorilla in the room:

Young men have collectively checked out of a society that has nothing but contempt for them. When the supermajority in academia have nothing good to say about you, opine about how "toxic" your existence is, and openly deride your struggles... who would want to spend four years and tens of thousands of dollars to be "lectured" by those people?

When men are suffering from record levels of depression, dying from suicide and drug overdoses at rates never seen, still being openly discriminated against and laughed at, supporting the system that not only allows, but encourages that behavior is ridiculous.

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Oh please, let's lose the persecution complex. If there is any discrimination against men happening in academia it's in the clown show departments that no one cares about anyway.

As for "struggles", study history. The minor struggles that modern men in developed countries deal with are nothing compared to what our ancestors faced. I was never drafted and sent to assault the beach at Normandy.

I mean, the Chronicle of Higher Education put out an explainer a year or two titled "The Male Enrollment Crisis." Not "Is there a male enrollment crisis?" because this is a fact that is not in dispute. Males are walking away from college in droves, they are 40% of new enrollments and dropping.

https://connect.chronicle.com/rs/931-EKA-218/images/MaleEnro...

In case your main way of assessing information is its tribal affiliation (it shouldn't be for gods sake): this publication was written by a woman, it devotes substantial time to black male enrollment where the problem is extra bad, and the CHE leans center-left according to Media Bias/Fact Check.

But hey if you weren't at Normandy you don't have problems right? Good lord, what a non sequitur

There is an enrollment crisis. It is not because colleges are denying entry by men. It is because men are not even attempting to go to college. Men don’t seem to be able to deal with a society in which they are not coddled as much as in they were in the past.

Ironically, your posts are a perfect example of the utter derision some (most of society) give when discussing problems men are facing. This is one reason men are suffering from so many problems women aren't such as way higher rates of depression, suicide, and drug overdose.

There is a crisis with men. But it stems, I believe, from not being as coddled as they once were in terms of privilege. An equal playing field is not something men seem to be able to deal with. A solution will not be obtained by misidentifying the causes. What women and minorities have dealt with for centuries in America is far greater than the perceived slights white men deal with today. It is pathetic that they seem unable to deal with an equalization of the playing field.

It is beyond me how you can write these words and not recognize that they are bigoted.

You keep saying, over and over again, that as a broad generalization you simply believe white men are inferior to everyone else. That in itself is a racist and sexist statement - you're asserting that all people of a particular race and gender are inferior, because of their race and gender.

It doesn't matter if you believe this is the case because of some historical occurrence, it's still discriminatory and just as offensive as stereotyping and discriminating against anybody else would be.

It's not good to assume anyone is inferior and in your words "pathetic" because of their race and gender. I can't believe we still have to tell people this in 2024.

> Oh please, let's lose the persecution complex.

Commenter: Men are suffering and no one cares.

Response: No they aren't and quit your whining.

This is a great example of 'reaction proves the point'.

>Oh please, let's lose the persecution complex.

It's not a complex when it's actually occurring. This is like like Russia telling the world it's not invading Ukraine, it's denazifying it: "Oh please Ukraine, let's lose the persecution complex."

>If there is any discrimination against men happening in academia it's in the clown show departments that no one cares about anyway.

This is when you're unintentionally correct. The problem being critical departments are clown shows, including ones like admissions.

>As for "struggles", study history.

It's clear you haven't.

>The minor struggles that modern men in developed countries deal with are nothing compared to what our ancestors faced.

"The minor struggles that modern women in developed countries deal with are nothing compared to what our ancestors faced."

>I was never drafted and sent to assault the beach at Normandy

This has to be satire. The largest European land war since WWII is currently raging, with drafts currently occurring.

When I was in graduate school in the late 90s I took a flight home for the summer break. I was reading a math research paper during the flight. An elderly lady that sat next to me and asked if was reading a mathematics paper. I said yes. She said that she wanted to study math in college but in those days she wasn’t allowed to. She ended up in accounting. She was still upset over that injustice.

That men can’t handle the present circumstance is pathetic. That white men in particular have a hard time dealing with a more level playing field is pathetic. Stop playing the victim. Stop being a snowflake. Stop being pathetic.

This comment is absolutely dripping with bigotry and absolutely not reflective of the attitude that exists in the higher education industry itself, where many people are highly concerned that male enrollment has plummeted. If you want to be a bigot, be it somewhere else please.

The vast majority of Americans want _everyone_ to be represented in higher education, we don't need to split people up by identity and then tell them to take turns.

> That white men in particular have a hard time dealing with a more level playing field is pathetic.

All men want is a level playing field. Colleges have been discriminating against white and Asian men for decades. SCOTUS finally slapped them down, and colleges immediately started scheming to find ways to be covertly racist through proxies for race. Many colleges stopped using SAT scores, making admissions more subjective, and easier to influence with racial bias. Workplaces are doing the same thing, with DEI hiring goals that in effect mean "no white or Asian men".

Have you considered that your experience as a boomer is not representative of conditions for millennials and zoomers today?

All men want is a level playing field, a few steps higher than the level playing field women play on. (Which they had up until not very long ago, and still have to a large extent).

Viewing things through a "battle of the genders" lens like that is toxic. The men getting screwed over today are completely different individuals than the men who benefited from unfair policies or norms in previous generations. You aren't getting revenge by retaliating against young men, just hurting innocent bystanders.

I’m not a boomer. Born in the 70s. I’m a white a male who teaches in higher education. White men have a more or less equal opportunity in terms of going to college. Until recently college admissions were on the decline and most colleges were way less choosy than in the past. Men are not oppressed. They just aren’t coddled as much as in the past. Men don’t seem to be able to deal with living in a society in which they aren’t privileged. It’s pathetic.

Ah, right. An early Gen Xer, my mistake. Still, you were part of a generation that actually benefited from sexist norms and policies. Have you considered resigning your position to make room for a more deserving diverse candidate? After all, it's quite possible that you only obtained your position because a woman was unfairly passed over.

Sarcasm aside, your performative self-flagellation gives me second-hand embarrassment. The DEI activists at your college will never like you, no matter how much you bash young white men.

I also can't speak for DEI everywhere, but at our school, the focus of DEI is entirely on hiring the most qualified person for the job.

That's fantastic and how it should be everywhere. But that's not what DEI is or how it works. I wish that it did, but its not.

I don’t like the liberal do gooders in academia. The ones who think they are doing something meaningfully good by putting land acknowledgement statements in their syllabus are equally pathetic.

Usually there are a few equally qualified applicants for a given position. The goal is to not carry on the tradition of excluding those on the outside because they don’t “fit” with the current in group.

I'm a Gen-Xer. I teach at a university. My classes are almost entirely white males.

But I do admit my anecdotal experience might not be representative.

Hey. Man here. I grew up with 4 sisters. They're remarkable, smart, capable, and accomplished. I was sold a line that I thoroughly believed well into my 20s that because women can do everything a man can do plus childbirth that my existence was both unnecessary and unwanted. Girls around me in high school wore shirts saying things like "Menstruation. Menopause. All our problems start with men." I'm not in their heads. I can't divine their intent. But it hurt.

I love my sisters. I want to live in a world where they're able to live joyful and fulfilled lives, where their contributions are taken just as seriously as any other competent contribution. I would fight and die for that. I also think that, after decades of trying to figure out what my value is as a non female, I've determined that I'm also human and that I also have a right to life and the chance for fulfillment and having my contributions taken on their own merits, just like my sisters.

I think we've inherited a system that's run with a multigenerational finger on the scale and rather than remove the finger from the scale we've added more fingers to the scale. Standard distributions are everywhere. There will always be others who are underserved or over served. I can't account for all men, but the messaging that I internalized as a child was directed to all men, and whether it not it was intended for harm it left me feeling pretty disenfranchised. Again, I didn't speak for all men, but if there's a possibility that we've disenfranchised half of the species that seems like a problem worth addressing.

And for thousands of years the problems women faced have been caused primarily by men. Now there is “liberation” in some western countries and men have a problem. They think, incorrectly, that they are oppressed or otherwise being discriminated against. It is laughable that this view exists. It’s like whites in the South decrying blacks no longer being slaves and thinking as a result of the new reality that they are now oppressed.

My dude, take a breath. Two wrongs don't make a right. Let's grow together, not at the expense of each other. Find someone and ask for a hug. Your hurt is showing.

There is no expense of each other. Men are not oppressed. They are not discriminated against in any meaningful way. The crisis they are going through is self inflicted. It is annoying to hear the false cries of victim hood. Boo hoo for you that you heard some women say they don’t need men.

I hope you find love.

Indeed. And I hope you can cope with the knowledge that some women don't need men.

Zing!

>When I was in graduate school in the late 90s I took a flight home for the summer break. I was reading a math research paper during the flight. An elderly lady that sat next to me and asked if was reading a mathematics paper. I said yes. She said that she wanted to study math in college but in those days she wasn’t allowed to. She ended up in accounting. She was still upset over that injustice.

"When I was in graduate school in the late 90s I took a flight home for the summer break. I was reading a math research paper during the flight. An elderly man that sat next to me and asked if was reading a mathematics paper. I said yes. He said that he wanted to study math in college but in those days he wasn’t allowed to, he got drafted and sent across the world to watch his brothers in arms die. He ended up in roofing. He was still upset over that injustice."

>That men can’t handle the present circumstance is pathetic.

That women can't handle the present circumstance is pathetic.

>That white men in particular have a hard time dealing with a more level playing field is pathetic.

That White women in particular have a hard time dealing with being the most privileged human beings to ever exist is pathetic.

>Stop playing the victim. Stop being a snowflake. Stop being pathetic.

Men aren't playing victim, they're wising up to their circumstances. They're anti-snowflakes, they know society views them as expendable and fungible. They're done being viewed as "pathetic" when they're dying by the tens of thousands in the largest European land war since WWII.

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