As we’ve seen in this thread, there are as many plausible explanations and answers as there are people with an opinion. Here’s mine:
I agree that we are way beyond “Nickel and Dimed”, as Barbara Ehrenreich put it. Between that, a shrinking social safety net and sky high rent and mortgage prices I think there are many people feeling downright desperate.
Desperation is not good. It makes people reckless and apt to seek guidance and inspiration in the wrong places. Some are likely to follow disreputable manipulators who promise to solve all their problems and help them achieve status and admiration. Seen through that lens, it’s not hard for me to see why Trump is president and pea-brained dimwits like… well, any of those mentioned earlier (Tate, et al) have lots of people interested in their moronic opinions.
Specifically on male inequality, such as it may be…
I’m reminded of an incident from 6th grade. One day we all came back to class after lunch to find the teachers gravely concerned about one of the popular kids. It seemed he was no longer popular. I wasn’t privy to the details, but apparently the other popular kids had gotten together and decided this boy was no longer in the club. He was ostracized from the other popular kids and left to be a normal kid.
It seemed the entire faculty was shaken by this and there was an urgent class meeting about it, with the former popular kid sent on an errand to the office. They all wanted to know what had happened and how the rest of us were going to treat this kid.
I remember being nonplussed about it. So this formerly privileged kid was now just another kid without privilege? Why should I care? I didn’t intend to treat him cruelly, but neither was I inclined to console him. More importantly, why did the teachers care so much? It’s not like he had actually been bullied - he’d just been ejected from the popular kids’ clique.
This was my first realization about privileged people being treated differently than everyone else. When privilege or power was lost, it was a big deal. Never mind almost everyone else - the normal kids - were unchanged and nobody was worried about them. I mostly think the same when I hear about so-called male inequality.
Again, college educated individuals are doing superior to those without college education, be they women or men. Yes college education increasingly skews female.
But “vastly” overstates. The middle class, where most of those with college degrees are, isn’t sitting so pretty either, economically. They aren’t killing themselves as often (although rates there have gone up too) but they are stressed also. Most of wealth and income and power increase has gone to the very top.
Incomes in the middle class (by our definition, the middle 60% of households) have lagged since 1979, growing just half as fast as those in the bottom 20% and the top 81-99%, once taxes and transfers (including health care) are taken into account.
Add in the fact that the college educated are usually often servicing huge education debt out of that income as well. Even some highly educated folk are seeing real income decreasing over time. Doctors for example: “down 3.1% relative to 2017, after adjusting for inflation” - again before accounting for debt service.
Which is an (emotional) argument in favor of men becoming bigots; why not lash out at everyone else if no one will feel sympathy for them? If they are going to be treated as unpeople either way, what’s the incentive to be good people?
It’s not the morally correct choice, but it’s a psychologically predicable response.
This has probably already been said in the thread but the issues are made worse by the fact that any problem (especially among groups seen as bad, oppressive, privileged, etc.) is seen as a personal moral failing rather than the product of worsening societal trends and attitudes. Men suffer the most from it for a variety of reasons but women suffer from loneliness and related issues too. The just world fallacy and the childish “It’s your fault because you’re a bad person and the world doesn’t owe you a basically good life” response are only making matters worse. It’s all so tiresome.
So some of this is another form of the divide and conquer technique. Don’t get mad at the economic structure that’s screwing people of all genders, don’t get mad at any individuals building that structure and writing laws to benefit the handful at the top, just get the men angry at the women.
What a giant load of horse shit. Toxic masculinity is itself the belief that sharing emotions, caring, and nurturing makes you a female. It is also the belief that being female is a bad thing to be avoided.
I can’t express my emotions because I’m a man. I can’t care for others because I’m a man. I can’t nurture others because I’m a man.
That whole paragraph is TOXIC MASCULINITY in blinking neon lights. Then he wonders why boys don’t understand how to not be toxic.
It’s OK to embrace your female side, just the same way girls would be well served to embrace positive masculine traits.
Yup. Previously linked Pew link though shows it is not working:
Despite seeing more progress for women than for men in the past two decades, most Americans (81%) don’t think the gains women have made in society have come at the expense of men
Nope. It is not my “female side”. I am a man. I do it. It is therefore masculine. Sure what I do as a man is different than what my WW2 era dad did as a man. But cooking, making the kids their lunches, being more emotive is manly because I do it. I’d just say being a mensch is manly. Tautology.
FWIW most Americans agree that men should be more caring not less. From that same Pew link roughly 60% feel men should be more open with their feelings, more caring, “even among Republicans – including among Republican men – more say these traits aren’t valued enough in men than say they are valued too much.” And in terms of the behaviors usually defined as “toxic masculinity”, some variation between groups but “majorities of men, women, Republicans and Democrats see these behaviors as unacceptable” …
My church does more gender-segregating/patriarchical things than I would like, but something that my ward/stake does really well, and that I think is just wonderful, is that the men in my ward give my kids (and I have both a boy and a girl) a lot of different ways to be a man and be successful as a man (and, often but not always, a husband and father). For many (most) of the families our age that we know, this includes cooking, helping around the house, taking care of kids, sometimes being the primary caregiver (not that common but it does happen). It was a man (on the high council, for those of you who know what that means) who gave a talk at church that changed my life in a small way, about how we should all strive to be more vulnerable with each other, to open up to each other. Not because it is a womanly or a manly thing to do, but because it’s a human thing: it helps us as humans relate to each other, no matter our gender.
And some of the women will turn it on all men; just like some men turn it on all women. And there’s a lovely negative feedback loop going; and the people caught in it, as well as a lot of people mostly trying to stop it, are distracted from who’s getting away with the loot. And the country.
Let’s double back to the claims of the article cited in the op, specifically:
It’s obviously true as we look around that many men and boys do feel somewhat lost. They don’t quite know their place in society. They don’t quite understand how they’re supposed to be. They very often know how they’re not supposed to be. So this sense of, “What’s my place in the world, why am I needed, what’s my role going to be going forward?” that’s a very real question that many men and boys are genuinely struggling with.
Is it? Really? “Many” is a fuzzy word but apparently not most, or close.
It seems that the boys are alright. Positive masculinity abounds. Top parts of what they think it means “to be a man” are taking care of family, honesty, confidence, and helping others.
They also quote another poll which finds (all men and then dads) that:
taking care of his kids (76% and 83%) make a man more masculine, even more than say the same of working a full-time job (71% and 76%), which many traditionally associate with masculinity.
I often read “obviously true” as meaning “there is no evidence that” and such seems to be true in this case!
I read it as basically correct, but the author didn’t say everything.
For many men and boys, toxic masculinity was the only brand of masculinity that there was when they were raised.
When they’re told it’s toxic and bad, and they’re not presented with an alternative masculinity that they understand, this leads to a lot of confusion.
To them this looks like they’re being expected to be feminine instead of some kind of adjusted version of masculine, and they understandably balk at that. Lots of men just dismiss the entire thing as a result. And many more misunderstand the whole thing and actively resist it.
And example might be the idea that “real men don’t eat quiche”. If someone comes in and says that’s toxic masculinity and chastises them for refusing to eat quiche, they’re not wrong, but they’re approaching the problem from the wrong perspective.
The right way might be to approach it from an educational perspective - quiche is just a savory pie, and what man wouldn’t love a pie made from eggs, bacon, cheese and onions? When it’s presented that way, the prohibition on quiche seems kind of idiotic. Maybe don’t even call it quiche?
Take a look at the comments there and tell me we’re doing all right. Considering the one woman who spoke up was called a “misandrist cunt" (and the guy wasn’t moderated) it’s obvious this is a poisoned well. Maybe the study is fine but I feel like I’m going to throw up.
I never take comments sections as having any value as representation of anything. You might as well say “read an incel forum and say we’re doing all right.” Of course there are individuals who feel strongly and are loud. Some disturbed and dysfunctional. No one doubts they exist in some number. My pushback is to the conclusion extrapolating from some number of forum posters and loud jerks in comments sections that there is a systemic problem with boys and men and their lack of any positive sense of what it means to be a man. That these few folk makes that conclusion an “obvious” truth. It. Does. Not. They are the few. The disturbed. The loud. Not reality.
Mostly men have strong ideas about what being a man means that are positive things. Of course many women could give the same things as what being a women means. Generally it is as phrased earlier in this thread being a decent person while being your gender. Helping others. Caring for your family. Having confidence. Living up to your obligations and responsibilities.
I continue to be dizzied by the assertion that behaviors that in my lifetime were described as inherently masculine which women might not able to live up to (self-control, focus, devotion to duty) are now being called feminine ideals that are unfair to expect men to live up to. It’s almost like the idea that particular virtues belong to one gender or the other is mistaken.
A bit more pushback against the narrative that there is a crisis for boys … it should be completely unsurprising that boys and young men in reality overwhelmingly have a strong sense of positive masculinity: more of them are experiencing models of it than they have in decades, the most impactful model of it, a father in their household involved in their lives, invested in them, showing them that love and dedication is what a man does -
the proportion of children growing up with a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home is now at the highest since 1989.
Damn pesky facts getting in the way of a good story …