Comment by ryuhhnn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryuhhnn | Hacker News Reader

Every time the author mentions a problem that young men face, he explains it away by saying that it stems from a society that's built against serving the needs of men, even though the outcomes affect women all the same. He mentions the college debt crisis and it's affects on men merely one breath after explaining that women outnumber men in higher education. The housing affordability crisis is also not exclusive to men. Workforce participation of men can also be explained by relaxed gender roles and more women entering the workforce while their male counterparts take on domestic work. Pretty much the only thing he rightfully identifies as a uniquely male issue is suicide. Nobody is averse to identifying the issues that men face, but be correct in what you're identifying as a uniquely male issue. This author has been making the rounds in popular culture lately and I can't help but feel like it's because he's offering an oversimplified solution to a problem that runs much deeper than how we treat men and young boys. Society consistently asks women and non-White people to take ownership of their own problems, why can't we ask the same of men?

Not only are more women in college, but average starting salary out of college is $12k more for men than women: https://www.naceweb.org/job-market/compensation/nace-researc...

Women also on average go into slightly more debt: https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-gender

Yeah, says it right there: women choose lower paying professions. That’s literally all it is.

The pay gap mostly has to do with what careers women choose. Most men and women earn the same given the same credentials, years of experience, and job.

> women choose lower paying professions

Do they actively choose lower paying professions or do they unwillingly end up in those professions? It seems to be you're making a logical leap without citation.

Why would a gender choose en masse to earn less money?

Because it's entirely plausible for one to enjoy different things on average?

For that to be plausible it would mean the vast majority of women choose their profession based on enjoyment with no consideration of earning potential. Which doesn’t feel all that plausible. At the very least you’d expect a study on it, any data at all.

Arguing with someone like this is just pointless. You'd argue over whether the sky is blue. You're in denial about basic tangible realities.

Damn, first time I'm hearing that women can't choose their majors in college but for some reason men can!

What kind of learned helplessness wokeist bullshit is this?

It's no wonder this country has gone to the capitalists. Idiotic arguments like this are at the forefront of every left movement. "Women can't do anything! They can't choose their own careers!" Left leaning people just like to shoot themselves in the foot and say, "I blame the right!" You could, you know, maybe fight for something and actually choose a direction in life rather than being a victim of everything.

Where's the old left that would actually fight and kill for their rights? This country fucking sucks.

What a ridiculous response.

My objection is to explaining away observed data with unsupported assertion.

There is a pay gap = fact

The pay gap is largely attributable to women working in fields that pay less = fact

Women work in these fields because they choose to = unsupported assertion

Dress it up in some internal dialogue you have with yourself about “left” “right” and “woke” if you wish but it doesn’t speak to my point at all. You’re just settling on an answer that feels right to you and shutting down any further thought. “Everybody knows it’s true” is pure laziness.

> Women work in these fields because they choose to = unsupported assertion

The assertion is supported by the fact that in most modern countries, women are free to choose what school they’ll go to.

And you’re saying that is the only factor that would determine what job someone does?

That is not the only plausible way for that outcome to happen. It could be that both, men and women, are biased toward professions they enjoy, and, due to our economic system, the activities that men tend to prefer end up paying more. It wouldn't even need to be a "vast majority". It could be a small bias over the entire population, or a large bias over a smaller subset of the population.

At the very least, why isn't every student in the same major? Why isn't everyone working toward the highest paying field at any given time?

> It could be that both, men and women, are biased toward professions they enjoy

I would also be interested in data on this. I simply can not buy into it being biologically based. Approved social-cultural identity is the likely culprit.

An example I keep thinking about when this topic comes up, is how computer science and programming was considered "women's/secretarial" work in the early days. It's one of the few STEM areas where looking at it's history, no one is having to dig though obscure archives to find women who were buried or left off co-discover/creator list just to prove they did that work back in the day. This is in part to that profession's invisible "identity badge" being beneath a man to wear (still many males enjoyed it then and got into it, but I doubt his buddies looked at him the way they would today). Women were secretaries; computers and programming was secretarial work. Main stream (US) society looked to this as the way god made men and women at that time; these days they are working with an updated list of approved men-this, women-that and still attributing biology for things far outside the actual body.

Once home computers started marketing the machines to males a rapid shift happened, and now it's male dominated -- and paid at higher rates than when it was "secretary" work and for the "human computers" -- women who did the calculations of computers manually; see early NASA. Yet, today, its looked at as male bio-backed bias thing? It simply doesn't make sense to me to chalk it up to a biological sex difference in determining one's profession.

As far as I know, biological differences don't flip in a single human generation. But social-culturally, absolutely -- when the right incentives are there. In-power groups (e.g., current churches and religion with male deities vs ancient matriarchal religion/societies with female deities) will be able to change the owner of an "identity" type to whatever they want, including gendered Identity badges (example: boys prefer to be programmers and scientist, girls prefer to be care-takers and english majors/writers yet so many of the classic books I read in school were written by male authors) and then sell people on it being a biological sex difference. This includes making it difficult for males who want to be care-takers and nurses, they are harassed for choosing a profession not in their current gendered-approved work Identity lane. It's lose-lose all around, but not always equally.

Anecdatally I know a HS graduate woman that recently left a trade profession due to harassment from men - just said never again

On paper it’s going to look that they “chose” the hospitality industry or real estate - wonder how many are out there like that

Even if that's true, it doesn't really matter. The fact is that regardless of why it happens, women come out of college with more debt and less ability to repay it than men do. If you're writing out woes specifically of men relative to women, then college debt shouldn't be one of those issues.

>Pretty much the only thing he rightfully identifies as a uniquely male issue is suicide.

Haha you must be a woman. Men are more severely punished in court for the same crimes, disproportionately lose assets and custody in divorce, get discriminated against at work on DEI terms, go to college less than ever (maybe a good idea, but opposite stats would trigger outrage), and yes they even get less sex on average. They are constantly told that women don't need or want them, they have a ton of privilege (even as they struggle). If you stand up for yourself as a man, people call you a lot of nasty names like "incel" or "Nazi".

>This author has been making the rounds in popular culture lately and I can't help but feel like it's because he's offering an oversimplified solution to a problem that runs much deeper than how we treat men and young boys.

Honestly I could not get through this article. This guy is being promoted by somebody. There are far better voices for men out there who don't mince words when describing the problems men face.

>Society consistently asks women and non-White people to take ownership of their own problems, why can't we ask the same of men?

Overwhelmingly women and minorities have been promoted literally at the expense of men. Companies give bonuses for checking off boxes, and skirt the law to put white men down. Society is not one monolithic voice. While some people have told everyone to take responsibility for themselves, the dominant political regime for perhaps the past 30-50 years (and by far much worse in the past 15 or so) has been favoring women over men on average. You can't talk about men's issues without first apologizing to women who have never seen anything but positive favoritism from the system, yet think they are oppressed. The same statement applies to the everyone vs. white men dynamic.

At some point, being mean to specific groups such as white men, or men in general, is going to backfire. But I expect the system to try to preempt that and force the issue, to further vilify the actual victims here.

> Men are more severely punished in court for the same crimes

Not the Op, but this is simply wrong for domestic killings

The majority of women who kill their partner do so in self-defense after having endured abuse from that partner. After the system fails them and the abuse finally breaks them the courts hand down ~15 year sentences[*]. When the guy's abuse end's up killing a female partner/family member, he gets around 2-6 years, because the female made him super mad and he lost control.

Agreed on the custody and asset cases needing an overhaul years ago.

But saying men have it unfair because females are defaulted to in (civil, not criminal) custody cases screwing over the guys that actually want to show up, and ignoring how women are screwed in criminal self-defense domestic killings compared to mens rage/hate/power-trip domestic killings -- is really stretching that unfair tag

[*] Don't have time to find a stat link, but its widely known and published in news articles on the topic, studies etc that come up in a basic search

The trouble with the abuse thing is that anyone can claim it. Women are the only ones for whom such an excuse can generally persuade a jury. False allegations of abuse abound. It is nearly impossible for a man to prove that he did not abuse a woman at some point, and women use this to their advantage.

While I admit that there are some men who abuse women and get attacked for it, plenty of other crimes and plenty of situations exist where being a man is a distinct legal disadvantage. Lots of places have a policy that forces police to assume that the man in the relationship is the offender/instigator in any domestic violence dispute. If you hit a woman in self-defense and don't have reliable witnesses or video evidence to back you up, you're probably going to have a hard time. There is a very clear pattern in most of society: if a woman does something to a man, they ask "what did he do to deserve it?" There are no shelters for men to leave abusive relationships, and feminists have literally campaigned to keep it that way.

I don't have a ton of links to establish my point here but this one seems to have relevant citations. https://www.mcgrathtraining.com/post/offenders-and-sentencin...

Frankly I would be shocked if you could find a single crime for which women would get a more harsh sentence than men on average.

>Don't have time to find a stat link, but its widely known and published in news articles on the topic, studies etc that come up in a basic search

Basic search is not very helpful lol. You need to look past the headlines to find this kind of stuff. Women have excellent PR and everyone tries to pander to them. Government, academia, marketing, religion, Hollywood, etc. are all on women's side for the most part and cling to half-truths that paint women in the best light (while smearing men).

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