Comment by parennoob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by parennoob | Hacker News Reader

I think this article puts the euphemism 'social perfectionism' on the subtle, and in some cases blatant anti-male stance that pervades US and UK society today.

Sports teams fall over themselves to wear pink for Mother's Day, hardly anyone celebrates Father's Day. [1] Time Magazine publishes an article on how "Men are Obsolete". [2] Politicians routinely trumpet the 77% pay gap despite it being "more complicated than that" at best, and false at worst. [3] Fathers are routinely mocked and disparaged in TV commercials, and shown as the bumbling idiot. [4] A Columbia student has gained national acclaim after doing a "art performance" accusing a fellow student of rape [5] while he (despite having been cleared by the University) is still a pariah. [6] Meanwhile, a female teacher in California who had sex with her 14-year old male student gets only two years in prison (note that the article doesn't ever say "rape", even though it is statutory rape).[7]

Given these, is it any surprise that the average man who is mocked by society thinks of committing suicide after his wife commits infidelity multiple times, and then gets the house through no-fault divorce laws? This has nothing to do with so-called perfectionism.

To be fair, the article covers this in one succinct sentence in the middle, which is, "In the UK and other Western societies, it sometimes feels as if we collectively decided, at some point around the mid-1980s, that men are awful." -- which I think is a far more accurate statement.

[1] http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/granderson-met-ya...

[2] http://time.com/179/men-are-obsolete/

[3] http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/gende...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGCTFjFiNu4

[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/29...

[6] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/03/columbia-st...

[7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/07/amy-beck-gets-2-yea...

Please don't take threads like this further off-topic with prefabricated lists of links and talking points. This is not conversation.

This entire thread is a train wreck, but this comment is one of the places the tracks were blown up.

Sorry, I will keep this in mind in the future.

I thought references to what I was saying would be helpful, to prove that I wasn't talking out my bottom. Hence, I was trying to give references from major newspapers and other media resources that backed up things that I knew from memory. A lot of other assertions in this thread (or indeed in a lot of HN threads) don't do this, so I assumed it was a positive.

> prefabricated lists of links and talking points

As I said in another comment, a lot of things can't be verified over the Internet, but I will tell you that my list wasn't prefabricated. I wrote that paragraph (or a rough skeleton of it) from the various anti-male things I had seen in the media (not very difficult, IMO); and then took the time to search for the exact details, and added in the references.

I do agree that it is a hodgepodge of various things, which significantly detracts from its quality. I'll try to narrow down my comments in the future as well.

Fascinating. What constitutes a thread being labelled as a "train wreck"?

Yeah, I'm not really seeing the whole social perfectionism thing either. An ex-coworker killed himself in a similar situation.

Men aren't killing themselves because nobody celebrates fathers day. And they're not killing themselves because sitcom dads are morons. They're killing themselves because they feel they have failed the people around them, and can't live with the shame. This pressure to succeed was not invented by feminists, and has existed for many years. Both women and men unconsciously perpetuate a toxic idea of masculinity which keeps men from seeking help,

This masculinity is the cause of your other problems too:

Nobody celebrates father's day because according to society's version of masculinity, men aren't allowed to be sentimental. Getting cards and flowers isn't exactly a manly thing.

Male victims of statutory rape are rarely considered to be victims, because according to our twisted view of masculinity, males are always supposed to want sex. Everytime a female teacher is caught having sex with an underage male student, someone jokes that the young student "scored a hot babe" or something to that effect.

Men on TV are bumbling idiots because men are the primary audience for these shows. The protagonists are always average, unremakable men so that the average man can identify with them. The women characters are always sharp witted and shrewd because they are the antagonists.

And for every bumbling idiot dad on a television, there are 10 other shows with a lead male character and an attractive, but not-all-that-helpful supporting female. And don't even get me started about shows like "Say Yes to the Dress" and "Bridezillas" :-p It goes both ways.

It's ridiculous to talk about how bad the situation is for men on TV, when a lot of movies don't even pass the bechdel test which has the following criterias: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.

http://bechdeltest.com/

For what it's worth, the mid-eighties was peak (male) crime in the US. Remember Bernard Goetz?

Terrible cases for sure but none makes being a man any harder than being a woman. Life can be equally shit. I just think women vent things off better than men do.

huh? I hardly feel threatened by basically everything you just listed there. Do you?

I get the feeling if you asked most women: "Do you think men are awful?" The answer would be "Yes but we love them anyway."

and, to be on a less cutsey point.

There was a time in my life where I was seriously depressed, and it was not because I thought society treated men poorly on average. It was because I thought I would have no place in society.

So at the very least for this poster, my experience directly contradicts you. Hardly scientific, but I trust my own eyes.

> I hardly feel threatened by basically everything you just listed there. Do you?

Seeing a bias and pointing it out does not equal "being threatened". Would you speak this way to a woman who was pointing out, say, anti-female bias in hackathon results?

> I get the feeling if you asked most women: "Do you think men are awful?" The answer would be "Yes but we love them anyway."

The fact that you accept the "yes" at the beginning of that answer reflexively illustrates my point precisely. Remember that the adjective I used to describe majority of the bias I referred to was subtle, not blatant.

> There was a time in my life where I was seriously depressed, and it was not because I thought society treated men poorly on average. It was because I thought I would have no place in society. So at the very least for this poster, my experience directly contradicts you.

I think you are misconstruing my post as a reflection of my life situation. Nothing is really verifiable over the Internet, but I can assure you that it is not.

huh? No. I was talking about my life only. I'm sure you're wonderful.

To be clear, I don't actually believe that the thought "Society treats men so poorly, and I'm a man" is a thought that is pushing you towards depression, or anyone to depression. I don't believe would depress anyone. I do believe it outrages you. I would agree, some of those things seem pretty outrageous!

I'd have a hard time believing you were actually depressed if you were to assert that the reason you were depressed is because you didn't like the way society treated men. I would not believe that at all. It would deeply contradict my experience with depression.

> It would deeply contradict my experience with depression.

And I think that that is where the problem is. You are assuming that your personal, anecdotal experience with depression is representative of all cases of depression for everybody.

It's not.

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