The Male Inequality Problem

Great Debates
701

And even more having successful careers and friends. But men wanting families more, with the less educated struggling to make either career or family happen.

Some Pew polling data:

While 57% of young men say they want children one day, a smaller share of young women (45%) say the same.

Women place a little more importance on job or career enjoyment than men do (74% vs. 69%). At the same time, men place somewhat more importance on marriage and having children. Some 28% of men, compared with 18% of women, say being married is extremely or very important for a fulfilling life. Similarly, 29% of men versus 22% of women say the same about having children.

College education the best correlate to being partnered.

Marriage rates also vary by education. Among people ages 25 and older, those with a bachelor’s degree or higher (66%) are more likely than those with some college experience (56%) or with a high school diploma or less education (54%) to be married. These differences were less pronounced in 1995, when 70% of college graduates were married, compared with 66% of those with some college and 62% of those with a high school education or less. This education gap is evident among black and white adults, while educational differences in marriage rates are smaller among Hispanic and Asian adults.

The share of adults in cohabiting relationships has risen across all educational levels. Among those ages 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or more, this increase in cohabitation offset the decline in marriage, and as a result the share of college graduates who are either married or living with a partner is unchanged since 1995. Among those with less education, however, the increase in cohabitation only partially counteracts the decline in marriage. Consequently, adults without a bachelor’s degree are somewhat less likely to be either married or living with a partner today than in 1995.

702

We can debate whether that narrative is accurate or if it’s just another example of a thing people on the internet people want to create a narrative about.

I did not take away from the article that the problems the author was describing was limited to men without college educations.

A lazy analysis of a film the director specific set out to make as statement about gender dynamics..

LOL. Google “looksmaxxing”. Apparently THAT’S a thing now.

Or look at the sort of men who follow Andrew Tate or the pick up artist movement or any sort of red pill manosphere stuff.

Clearly there is some segment that doesn’t seem interested in long-term partnerships (at least not in any sort of healthy way). All these weird subcultures seem to share themes where men need to focus on narcissistic, materialistic, superficial pursuits in order to obtain any “value” in society. I’s would be curious to see what a demographic cross section of these people actually looks like.

703

I wouldn’t be surprised.

My friends and I used to joke about using a pickup line “I don’t have a lot of money and may not be much to look at, but right now I’m the only man here talking to you.” Meaning at some point people end up doing that mental calculus that results in them getting together with someone who is pretty decent, but doesn’t have to be absurdly perfect.

Well, unfortunately the endless options made available by the internet means everyone gets to compare themselves to everyone else, all the time.

Personally I think that’s an issue that goes beyond dating or man problems to include careers, general happiness, and how people make decisions about everything.

704

Correct. They were instead making up a generalization to “men” as a group. Because of course

There are in fact multiple segments. Most of them don’t make for as very clickable a narrative though, like

or a few others do. Reality is less … interesting: there is a crisis for men and women both who are not college educated. More for women of the group really, because a successful career also counts and there still are trades that offer that, primarily for men. Women though are increasingly opting for higher education, while the numbers for men have somewhat dropped off. And that leaves more men behind than women, and creates a romantic assortment mismatch.

Relatively few men actually even are sympathetic to the perspectives of “the manosphere” let alone participate in it. Disapproval far outpaces approval even among young men, and that group is the least poor he gets.

Men are still primarily learning what it means “to be a man” from mom and dad, a pretty traditional method. And mostly it means being there for family.

These are the documented facts, citations already provided.

I don’t pretend to have answers to education conundrum. Are boys not being educated well enough? Is the educational system biased to women? Is higher education actually worth the investment going forward? Dunno.

705

Sorry for the double post but to the above: especially now. All the bits about the problems for men today actually reflecting the higher education divide? May be yesterday’s news.

Against the backdrop of rapid AI adoption across the U.S. workforce, the steepest pessimism is concentrated among highly educated young Americans not yet working full-time, the group most actively trying to enter the labor market.

That’s specifically employment optimism but career prospects are a large part of the education impact on partnering and happiness. The not college educated are more job optimistic than the new college grads; not a usual dynamic. In a potentially rapidly changing time a prescription to get more men through college may just end up saddling them with debt, not a job good enough to service it, and still not in position to partner up and start a family.

706

For years there’s been a counterswell of commentary that folks of either gender, even smart ones, ought to concentrate not on brain work that can be outsourced to e.g. India, but rather what seem like the humbler skills of trades and services that physically cannot be offshored.

In direct contradiction to the steady drumbeat of college=success, college=success, college=success that was beaten into those of us of a certain age. And thereby into a lot of our older offspring.

Sounds like AI is finally making those thoughts of good jobs being the non-outsourceable non-brainwork ones credible after maybe 20 years of some pundits crying into the wilderness with little reaction from the public.

Preparing young adults for an uncertain future: education
707

Yes. Because of one of my hobbies, i have a lot of friends who are young (college age to 40s) and highly educated.

They don’t have any special problems finding partners. I’ve been invited to a lot of wedding celebrations, and celebrations of less standard forms of domestic commitment. (A friend just posted a photo of three hands, each wearing a ring. It’s three guys forming a domestic partnership, who want their friends to think of them as husbands. They are about 30. They have a lot of political anxiety, but they seem very happy domestically.)

But a lot of them are worried about employment in this AI age. One friend, 34, who seems very professionally successful to me as a software developer, confided that he’s wondering if he could succeed as a cabinet maker. Because he thinks his whole field is in trouble. He was also asking me about the job prospects of actuaries.

708

I’ll start by saying that I haven’t been out in the dating world since the mid nineties, and that I have personality traits that fall outside the norm. I don’t know that my level of education helped me in finding a partner. I barely dated in college, dated not at all in grad school, and still had trouble finding interested women early in my career. It took moving to a big city and being in a predominantly female profession to start dating much. Still, I’m socially awkward and undoubtably scared some women off because they weren’t sure what to make of me. I can’t blame them, and pretty much realized women were justified in being leery of me. I’ll say here that my lack of social skills mostly came to the forefront when I was interested in possibly asking someone out; I was without fail a deer caught in the headlights. It got worse rather than better as I went through my twenties. I’d given up when I was approached by my future wife. Things were further complicated because people not infrequently assumed I was gay. That, at least at the time, was a common assumption made about male librarians. Who’s fault was it that I barely dated during my twenties even though I was decent looking, in good physical shape, and gainfully employed? The short answer is probably “no one’s”. At the time I blamed myself, and people who didn’t know me well tended to assume I wasn’t trying hard enough. Looking back, I’m fairly certain that growing up in an isolated area and not having the opportunities for interaction with kids my age outside of school contributed. In my career, though, I’ve benefitted from being male. In public libraries I was promoted quickly (until I decided I didn’t want to supervise anyone) and was generally perceived to be more competent that I actually was (not that I was incompetent; I was adequate). Did my lack of social skills have more of an effect on me than it would have a woman? I don’t know. When I was younger I assumed that it wouldn’t affect an otherwise attractive woman, but I don’t think that was an accurate assumption. Yes, an attractive woman would be more likely to be approached by an interested party, but is that a good thing? I’d think not. The one time a (much older) gay man tried to pursue me it wasn’t pleasant even though he didn’t present a physical threat to me. In the end, I don’t think any of the challenges I’ve faced in my life were due to my gender.

709

Of course, this volatility in career and culture contexts is just as much an issue for women as for men (except in the much smaller subcultures, much smaller at least in developed wealthy nations, where women are expected not to have careers at all).

But the influence of toxic-masculinity societal expectations means that men are more likely to perceive this uncertainty not just as a threat to their happiness and stability as human beings, but as an attack on their manhood and their personal worth as men.

710

Two comments:

First, not so convinced that the social media bombardment impacts men and women to different degrees. Everyone is at risk of comparing themselves to others’ curated lives on display, and the unrealistic bodies and lifestyles.

Second is a return to discussion of the phrase “toxic masculinity” … what assholes who are men do is IMHO not masculinity in too high of a dose. It’s being a controlling asshole and women sometimes can be and are assholes in the same way. I fear the phrase poisons the well for discussions of what being a man means. Is it being the same things in a healthier dose? (The dose makes the poison.) Or is masculinity just always toxic with some doses worse than others? Or … does masculinity actually have nothing to do with the behaviors or attitudes that are labeled as “toxic masculinity?”

I’d love to see the behaviors called out without explicitly saying that those abusive behaviors and attitudes are what is associated with our archetype of masculinity.

Returning to the fears of women of the unknown man in a secluded area - to me the masculine thing is to be considerate of those fears.

711

Huh. I have not seen the concept of “toxic masculinity” interpreted in this way previously (though I’m not saying you’re wrong to do so): i.e., as an excessive dose of masculinity per se.

My take on it has always been that “toxic masculinity” is to masculinity basically as deadly nightshade is to blueberries: i.e., a superficially similar but poisonous entity that is much more harmful to those who consume it because they mistake it for the other thing.

“Toxic masculinity”, IMO, is essentially the emotional blackmail that patriarchal society imposes on men under the threat of denying or derogating their manhood. "If you don’t [always refrain from crying]/[pay the check on dates]/[impose your will on other people by physical or social dominance]/[avoid actions or activities or traits that are considered ‘feminine’]/[etc. etc. etc.], then you will be scorned and belittled for not being sufficiently manly."

So, IMO, toxic masculinity isn’t really about any particular behaviors that some individual man might personally want or not want to engage in. It’s about the pressure to conform to rigid expectations that some particular behaviors have to be engaged in, and others have to be avoided, to qualify as a man.

(And if it’s any clarification, I think that the societal phenomenon of “toxic femininity” to enforce rigid norms of womanliness works the same way, and is just as unhealthy.)

Hmmm. While I’d agree that being considerate towards somebody who might be mistakenly afraid of you as a random stranger is compassionate, kind, magnanimous, ethical, admirable, etc., it doesn’t strike me as a marker specifically of either masculinity or femininity.

If two otherwise identical men are walking down a street behind some woman and both notice some indications that she might be nervous about their presence, and one of the men considerately crosses the street to relieve her fears by avoiding her while the other indignantly pursues his way because how dare she assume that I’m some kind of criminal, I’m certainly going to consider that the former man is behaving like a better person than the latter one. But I don’t know that I perceive either of them as being more “male” or “masculine” because of it.

712

If I was a blueberry farmer and the most frequent context of “blueberry” in the media was “poisonous blueberries” … not “sweet” “tart” “crisp” or “healthy” … “poisonous” … I’d be upset that my variety was getting a marketing black eye. Gonna be harder to get the message out how wonderful most blueberries are.

“Toxic masculinity” to me is like that. Many, even most, varieties of being a man are healthy, but the association the product has is its toxic variety. And while I see the application you describe, I see it more not as an imposed identity on men, but as a way to describe behaviors when some men behave in ways that most do not endorse as a good model of “being a man.”

Early in the thread I had argued, and I still do, that manliness is simply being a good person, a person of ethics and a moral code, while being male.

Of course how a being good people plays out is filtered through our genders and our place in the society we inhabit. A man is more likely to be in the circumstance of being aware he might be perceived of as a threat and being considerate by helping avoid that imposed discomfort. A woman may be placed in other circumstances in which having empathy matters more often. Both parents value protecting their families, but in different ways as filtered through societal norms. So on.

Do you commonly hear the phrase “toxic femininity”? I don’t. And I don’t think it would be useful to call women who desire what they consider “traditional” stereotypical roles as being that.

713

Funny how “female chauvinist pig” never caught on…

714

Agree w @DSeid. And then some. “Toxic masculinity” is profoundly misandrous hate speech. Remove that term from your vocabulary if you want to reach the vast majority of men who are good men.

715

:confused: Well that just seems… weird. Maybe a big aspect of the male inequality problem, in fact, is that we don’t have a term that most men seem to find acceptable to describe the societally-imposed rigid sexist gender norms policing men’s behavior for “masculinity correctness”.

What term would you use for that specifically male-targeted constellation of behavioral gender norms that gets men viciously called out for “insufficient manliness” if they don’t comply with them? “Can’t cry”, “must dominate”, “no skirts”, “smarter than women”, “stronger than women”, “don’t sew”, “don’t be queer”, “no makeup”, “no weakness”, “nothing pink”, “be the one to pay for the date”, “be the one to carry the boxes and move the furniture”, “be the one who determines how the money gets spent”, “be taller than her”, etc. etc. etc., “OR ELSE YOU’RE NOT MANLY ENOUGH AND DESERVE TO BE MOCKED AND DESPISED.”

I sure don’t intend any misandric insult to anybody, much less “hate speech”, but I honestly can’t help feeling that those societal pressures to perform a very rigid and arbitrary stereotype of “masculinity” are indeed pretty damn toxic. So what should we call them?

I do use and sometimes see the phrase “toxic femininity” (although you’re right that it’s nowhere near as common as “toxic masculinity”), which I think is indeed very useful to describe the similarly punitive societal imposition of rigid norms of female behavior.

I think you’re going off-piste a bit in interpreting that as a term to be applied to individual women themselves merely for having personal preferences for traditionally “female-coded” activities. As I wrote in the post you replied to,

Same goes for toxic femininity. The toxicity is definitely not in the fact that some women simply happen to like pink, or like baking, or like being stay-at-home moms, or whatever. The toxicity is in societal patterns of expecting or requiring women as a group to conform to those preferences, or else they’re “being a woman wrong”.

716

I think more the opposite; I think the problem is that there’s an unwillingness to define or acknowledge any form of positive or even neutral masculinity. Even “nice guy” is used as an insult. It’s simply taken as a given that men are horrible.

While I acknowledge the existence of “toxic masculinity” and use the term myself, I often see it used as synonymous with being a man; men are all evil, and therefore all toxic.

Talking to a man about toxic masculinity is likely to be better received if the person doing so has some actual alternative they are willing to argue for, instead of using it as just one more form of demonization. Otherwise it’s just calling them walking poison.

717

ISTM that @DSeid’s framing of “being a good person while being male” sums that up very nicely.

Edit: I’d also hark back to my own post #200 in this thread:

718

@Kimstu. I have no beef w you; I’ve often posted my heartfelt agreement with your always insightful and fair-minded comments on any interpersonal topic.

And I’m not going to retract my comment but I will expand on it a bit. @Der_Trihs came pretty close with what he has said in the last couple of posts. But he also is talking about a much larger issue than I am. I’m talking about the word, not the larger ideas.

Alex Jones is a currently famous raging asshole and a miserable excuse for a human being. The world would have been better had he never existed. I have exactly nothing good to say about him until he’s dead. Then I’ll say “good!”

To me, a statement like “Alex Jones is an example of toxic masculinity” reads about like “[infamous violent black criminal] is a N*****.” Both statements amount to “this person is what they all are, once their mask slips. Every one of them harbors this inside, and just barely controlled.” It is profoundly Othering.

I get that it’s handy shorthand. I get that there’s a lot of dumb men being egged on to do dumb shit. And lots of them don’t really need much egging. Which is a damned shame.

But it’s a classic prejudicial move to label individual’s behavior as an inherent trait of a group they’re part of. And I for one am not pleased to be tarred with that brush, either implicitly or explicitly.

So I’ve decided for my part that that term is not in my vocabulary. The rest of the world will do as it will.

719

How about “toxic expectations”, and use it for both genders?

720

Toxic gender expectations. If we want to stick to gender.