A woman simply cannot be a role model in all of the same ways as a man, and vice-versa. This belief that men and women are the same and contribute in exactly the same ways is a big part of the problem that this article discusses.
It isn't, in fact it's great that we have different kinds of role models. The problem being discussed is that some people lack certain types of roles models (i.e. male ones)
I recommend the book 'Families and how to survive them' which covers human developmental psychology and has detailed sections on gendered role models. It may push a few woke buttons, but doesn't everything?
some Depth Psychology (Jungian) suggests that the primal biological child is female. Development of a male starts similarly to the female, but must take steps over the growth phases, to differentiate. Historically males are very, very useful for successful survival and reproduction, but times have changed for WEIRD and others.. Meanwhile, cultural ritual was replaced by commercial "neutral" offerings that lessen differences in tribal/cultural groups, and therefore also remove or smooth out important development goal posts for young men.
People are emotional creatures, not rational ones. Like it or not, there is an outsized influence on (especially) young people when they do or do not see people "like them" (gender, ethnicity, immigration status, nation of origin, etc.) in various roles. And this is also exaggerated by society. If a boy is in a community where it's "common knowledge" that men are stupid, deadbeat, bums, then no one will be surprised if he acts in a way that indicates he's heading in the same direction. No one will intervene on his behalf, and he will (statistically, not universally) act in a way that conforms to those expectations.
Some men are relatively emotionless, and there's nothing particularly bad about it, but it can be difficult to find healthy role models who are wired the same way.
Yep. In all the talk of racial or gender privilege, the most beneficial privilege a person can enjoy is the benefits of a loving, supportive, traditional two-parent household (there is insufficient data on non-traditional two-parent households).
You can see a direct correlation in outcomes when comparing children that emerged from two-parent households over those that emerge from single-parent households. But because that is an uncomfortable and pervasive problem to discuss, almost all social effort is focused on solving less tangible problems.
I don't have too much to add, but as one of three sons of a quasi-single-parent household (multiple father figures, all with significant problems) who is now grown up with many points of comparison, this is so clearly and immediately obvious to me. I also have two kids of my own whom I have been on the fringe with and while I'm happy that I'm the only (and stable) figure in their lives, I worry what impact my long-distance presence will have.
The fathers I did have ranged from absent, to addicts, to abusive. I realize nobody is perfect but there has never been a positive role model for me and this affected me terribly in my relationships for so long (I've been to jail for abuse). I'm only lucky in that I got out of that cycle at least somewhat, and I can probably only credit the massive improvement in my economic condition. My brothers have not been so lucky.
People don’t like to talk about it because in public discourse it often turns into disparaging single mothers.
My dad worked in public housing and I used to do tutoring as a kid in the summer. It was sad as I saw the 10 year olds who I really related to grow up in negative paths, mostly because nobody cared.
I tend to agree with that piece. But what made me ask for data in the first place was my perception of the opening of your post which I read as „living in a traditional two parent household is more beneficial than being a white male“ since you mentioned race and gender.
IMO this is a big factor but it really depends on the absolute value. Two low-income earners is not going to make a big difference, but two middle- or high-income workers is going to be a substantial improvement, although they still need to be 1) present and 2) dedicated.
I have small children I also make a pretty respectable Software Engineering salary, my kids have no real understanding of that. They just know Daddy works and has a job they don't really understand the finances, and seem just as content in the home we purchased recently as they did when we were living in an apartment, for them the realities of finances don't have major impact in their day to day lives.
In contrast my mother works in a Title 1 Elementary school[2], she spends much of her day dealing with children that are in chronically bad situations, it has been her observation that the biggest problem is that no one cares about the kids, not in a the parents hate them sense, but there is no one actively concerned with and thinking about and preparing for the child's future, there are all sorts of resources the school makes available to try and help these kids but it doesn't matter much because no one is invested.
When you have only one parent that one parent has is the sole person responsible for helping prepare that child, investing in that child, and guiding the child, and that kind of work is exhausting. It can be done my own mother is evidence of that, but when you have two parents now you don't have to be the point man on it all day every day you can share that burden with someone else, you have someone to help bear the burden when it is too much for you, and that shares the load.
That I think is an important part of what having a two parent household rather than a one parent household brings, even if finances aren't great it still means there is someone that can invest in the child.
But what doesn't get talked about with family (especially small kids) is that you're with them for 16 hours a day.
Emotions get messy. Someone is always upset about something. And the larger the family, the more probable that someone is upset at any given moment.
The nice thing about a two parent household is that (hopefully) one parent keeps a cool head while the other me be annoyed, etc.
It's so much of a help to have a partner that says "why don't you take five minutes" or "I think you were too hard on ..." And I can reciprocate the same support.
Seems like an easy thing to test, just adjust for income in single parents and compare outcomes. Easy enough that it's likely been done before and didn't materially change the outcomes of this kind of analysis
Or, more importantly, selection bias. When people form a family, they eventually start having some disagreements. Those who have the skill to resolve them, de-escalate situations and find compromises, stay together. The ones who don't have these skills get divorced.
There's little evidence for that kind of causality. Economic stability, on the other hand, i.e. the effects of neoliberalism over 40 years?
> "Economic transformation has been a big contributor. More than two-thirds of manufacturing workers are men; the sector has lost more than 5 million jobs since 2000. That’s a lot of unemployed men. Not just coincidentally, “deaths of despair” — those caused by suicide, overdose and alcoholism — have surged to unprecedented levels among middle-aged men over the past 20 years."
A society divided into wealthy elite homeowners living off investment cash flows, and poverty-striken underclass renters living off minimum wages, is not a very stable or healthy society.
What you're describing is fundamentally the disappearance of the middle class.
Historically, an economic middle class is a relatively recent phenomenon. For ages past and across cultures, there were "rich" and "poor" and relatively few in between.
What created the middle class in the US was a government system that restricted the power of the elites to abuse that power. As Thomas Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal". I.e. the rich, powerful, government, or otherwise privileged people ought not to have rights that the poor do not have.
I think the disappearance of the middle class today is largely due to favoritism and miscarriage of justice in government -- like failing to prosecute gross economic crimes adequately (embezzling, insider trading, monopolism, etc.). I don't think rich people are bad by definition, but I do think our government tends to show favoritism to them.
EDIT:
Lest I sound like I'm coming down on conservatives only, liberals in the US have also been hugely responsible for the disappearance of the middle class. The bipartisan post-WWII GI bill, signed by FDR, severely disadvantaged African-American veterans in how it was carried out - by disproportionately denying applications by African-American veterans for housing.
In the decades that followed, Democrat welfare programs provided significantly more total income to 2 divorced adults with kids than a family with 2 married, cohabiting parents -- thus encouraging men to move out so their family could have more welfare money, and (broadly speaking) causing an entire generation of children in poor (and especially African-American families) to grow up without a dad in the home. This lead to further poverty, crime, drug addiction, and ultimately devastation.
Clinton's "war on drugs" and his three-strikes rule only made the problem worse by merely prosecuting and imprisoning people in poverty instead of working to repair the root causes of their behavior. This resulted in many more fatherless families.
Upholding the rights of the poor is everyone's responsibility, especially those in government, regardless of their political affiliation.
> The aggregate of individual moral/ethical choices manifests as social phenomena.
That's not entirely false, but it's misleading. The personal choices follow relevant distributions, which are themselves not aggregates. Also, such choices are made in circumstances and under constraints that are not up to individual choice.
The cynical take is that after dry running it in, ahem, certain sub-groups of the population the powers that be liked the results so much they decided everyone should get it.
The often stereotyped fatherless poor black household is one of the net effects (accidental or intentional I will not speculate) of government policy over the past ~60yr.
No couples with a brain are marrying when doing so would render woman and child ineligible for state aid. The downside to this is that the man is free to leave and leave they do. That's the big one but many government policies have have had the net effect of decreasing stability in poor urban households (regardless of race, but we all know poor urban households do not represent a cross section of society).
I think the root cause is that society no longer needs "beta" males. Or rather, men in the middle of the distribution. This here is a symptom of that broad effect in society. Technical leverage, automation, premium on intelligence in the workplace, and technology more broadly are pushing out average men.
Hyper-concentration of wealth means no upward mobility so it's no surprise America is having this crisis. Turns out in capitalism if the goal is to hoard the most resources, once you're winning the game it's no longer profitable to educate the masses, better off to leave them poor and dying in wars that make even more money. Can you imagine a library or a modern public computer lab being built in cities? We make kids go into debt for food at school.
Possible unpopular opinion, but my wife and I want just one kid, and would greatly, greatly, prefer a daughter for reasons that include some mentioned in this article.
I feel a son would be so much harder to raise in today's world.
I think individual differences are far more important. I have a boy and a girl both, and my son is far, far easier to raise. I do not fear for his future, socially or economically. My daughter, on the other hand, keeps me awake at night worrying.
I have a son, and am moderately optimistic this has peaked already.
As the other commenter said, we see different families in very different mindsets.
I have been personally affected by sexism type B: was expected to work, to be a provider someday, to pay my own way to university, if you want a car you buy it, etc. etc. My sister had the second family car at disposal and the tuition was paid for. There was this undercurrent interpretation of feminism that "women will eventually suffer so they should be pampered when possible".
There were other factors at play: I have a tendency to self-indulgence, my sister does not, so it is prima facie difficult to separate what was proper, individualized upbringing and what was sexism. But sexism was a part; many male friends of the same generation have the same complaint and some could be better off today had they have more support at home.
Then there is this relative of mine, that simply threw his daughters out at 18, since they are supposed to get a wealthy boyfriend and marry rich, so they don't need any further support. BTW they are disowned, too.
This is sexism type A, and make it a big A.
Not necessary to say this strategy did not end well: both are stuck with less-than-optimal partners and careers. We are in 2022 and a nice, wealthy and rational guy won't commit to someone without a career and finances in order.
> We are in 2022 and a nice, wealthy and rational guy won't commit to someone without a career and finances in order.
This is more often false than true. I know many men who have or are marrying women who make 1/2 or less what they do. Nice, wealthy, and rational folks. They however need a woman. And there is a strong lack of women who are anywhere near where many men are in compensation and wealth.
I am example of that. I married someone who made nothing. I put her through a prestigious college in the most expensive location in the country and paid for it all. Etc.
Supply+demand. We got way more men than we do women in this world under age 35. As a guy - you have to settle.
Again - unpopular opinion - but I've noticed men tend think of a potential wife's wealth or earning potential much less than vice a versa.
Even when choosing a career, men seem to place a lot of importance on compensation, while women seem to place just as much, if not more, importance on other non-financial factors too.
I am also an example. I make much more than my wife, and it made zero impact on my decision to date and marry her.
In general I rarely see couples where the wife earns significantly more than the husband. Generally the husband makes more, they both make about even, or the wife might make slightly more.
> Again - unpopular opinion - but I've noticed men tend think of a potential wife's wealth or earning potential much less than vice a versa.
My personal experience and from what I've learned from other men: It's because most men know they won't receive a dime from their partner. It starts with how a man almost always pays for the dates or at best they split it. (Or they have a rule like - "whoever asks X out has to pay" which is of course always the man because almost no women ask any men out) Similarly - the wife is usually the SAHP not because the man doesn't ever want to do it (I know many men who'd love to be a SAHP!) but because financially it makes little to no sense. As a man - you could try to choose a woman who makes more but that's very hard. Most women don't want to be the bread winner - why do it when they've never been the one to do it anyway? There's a level of entitlement that comes with carrying children to term as well - there's an idea that they should get to spend time with their children at home for as long as they want before they have to go back to work. (A weird mentality of, "It's work that deserves to be compensated but I also really want to do this and would do it even if I wasn't compensated and definitely don't wanna go back to work!") When it makes more financial sense - I see the men be SAHP but I've only ever met one guy in that position. One! And it's because he's broke AF and his wife makes way more money. They are the one couple I know who go against the grain on these gender roles and they're both incredibly liberal leaning people.
When I think back on my own experience and that of the many men I've listened to... The gifts men received, the treats, the support, etc. it's always much less than what the men were putting out. Most men know they won't receive anything from a woman even if she has the ability to. There is a certain level of entitlement and certain patriarchal values that many women have not given up and refuse to give up for the foreseeable future. One is giving up the notion that the man provides the majority or all of the financial support. There's also a nature of feeling like a woman needs to be financially spoiled in order to feel "supported"/"loved". I don't know if this is due to consumerism but it feels closer to gender roles than that.
I don't think any of this stuff is ingrained. I think it's cultural. Again - why I said I don't see this changing for generations. If people are still so adamantly doing this now and it feels like many are even more ingrained now with it - there's no hope for the next 50 years. I think people will dig in more and more men will go without reproducing.
> In general I rarely see couples where the wife earns significantly more than the husband. Generally the husband makes more, they both make about even, or the wife might make slightly more.
It's hard to say if that's because the men chose that or if the woman chose that - but I know many women who outright declare they won't date anyone who makes less than they do and many are hesitant to date anyone who makes even the same. I know many of these women - almost all of them are my friends. Only people I know who date someone who makes less than them are men. (Gay or straight)
This is because we live in a time of transition. Humans always try get the best of two worlds, XX humans are no different. Men need to learn to speak up.
As I said in the other comment, I am moderately optimistic because some indicators are already moving e.g. you mentioned that more men will go childless. This is already happening.
I don’t think the childless men is a good thing though. The fact there are more childless men than women by a huge margin doesn’t signal to me that men are withholding - it looks like women are withholding.
As it stands, most women have far greater leverage in romantic relationships than most men. They can easily walk out the door and find a partner the next day. Most men spend much longer looking for someone.
But would you sleep better at night if you had a daughter, than if you had a son, because of that?
To my son, I teach that there are no gender roles set in stone. If in doubt, stay single and childless; he has many, many decades to opt out if the Right One shows up.
> But would you sleep better at night if you had a daughter, than if you had a son, because of that?
Yes, I am hoping that I have daughters. I do not want a son. I experienced life as a man and have seen what the life of my partners is in comparison. If the girls come out even half as decent looking - they'll coast through life with little guidance needed from me.
I have friends with just daughters - and they all do not envy the parents with boys. They are all feeling blessed to have daughters. I think being a woman has its struggles but the plights are mostly for those in the poor class. If you're upper middle class or above as most people in tech within SV - you can mostly skate by many issues. The issues of a man do not go away regardless of your class - short of being hyper-wealthy.
> a son would be so much harder to raise in today's world
Maybe, but today's world is not the world your son would grow up in. We're at the end of the cycle from the G. Michael Hopf quote below. The beginning of the cycle is once again imminent, thankfully.
"Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times."
This unproven quote seems like a great justification for what they call “continuing the cycle of abuse”. Or what Calvin’s dad calls “building character”.
>>Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms. Roughly one-third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce.
I wonder how much of this is because more women are joining the workforce. If men are leaving the workforce by their own free will because their wife is working and they are staying home with the kids, both of these facts could be true, but seems like a win in both gender equality terms and allowing men to have the life they want. This seems better then having two working parents.
I don't really like how "out of the workforce" is coupled with unemployed. "out of the workforce" implies they don't have to and don't want to work, as opposed to unemployed
The effect of womens' labor participation should be easy to suss out. Look at professions where womens' share of employment is still very low in the US (building trades perhaps), and compare it with the rest of the economy.
Do many married men really want that kind of life though?
It's one thing to be single and roaming the world carefree.
But my observation has been that most men who are married, especially if with children, have some innate desire to provide for the family and not being able to do so (due to unemployment, underemployment, etc.) causes them stress even if the wife is earning more than enough.
Those that don't seem to be an outlier. Is it biological? Is it social pressure? I don't know.
Personally, I would love to quit working and take care of my family at home. I find much more joy in that than working a programming career. I think a lot of men have been conditioned to think we have to be the provider much like women have been conditioned to think they have to be a homemaker.
I'm in the same boat as you, but I think it's important to remember another factor besides conditioning. It's much easier to say "I would love to quit" when you have a job than it is to be happy not having a job when you aren't sure if you could actually get one to begin with.
Similarly, if you know you could take someone in a fight, and they challenge you in public...its easier in that case to "take the high road" and walk away than it would be if you knew you would lose the fight, or you weren't confident you would win. The people in the latter case are much more likely to feel shame and/or resentment towards the aggressor later on.
I think with "power" like that its easier to make the best choice in many cases. It's a shame too...I know a few people that are miserable because they don't have a "real job", even though they don't really need one financially. That lack of power keeps them from being happy and choosing the lifestyle that would obviously be best otherwise.
I don't really understand your comment, sorry! However, in my case, I think taking care of my family would be my "real job" since it actually takes a lot of effort! My wife does a lot around here, and I consider her work as integral to our family's well-being as my work; maybe even moreso.
Indeed; how is it fair that men are "forced" to work and provide income (with all the stress associated for that, especially for low-earners) and are "forced" to miss out on their kids? It seems to me that's just as much of an injustice as women being "forced" to stay at home. ("forced" in quotes as it's not strongly forced, but rather "forced" by expectations, prospects, etc.)
I've long considered traditional gender roles of man works and provides income and woman raises kids and cooks to be unfair to both genders and a general issue that affects everyone, and not really a "feminist" issue as such (or rather, not exclusively feminist).
In my country there's been a lot of discussion that a lot of women are working part-time rather than full-time, with many claiming this is horrible and evidence of discrimination. Maybe that plays a part, but it seems to me the real question is "why aren't more men working part-time?" rather than "why aren't more women working full-time?"
And more general: up to a few decades ago it was entirely normal for a single earner to support an entire family and still have money for a yearly holiday. Now that's much harder financially, if not outright impossible. Something really profound changed in our economy with seemingly few people noticing or commenting on it.
Men are socialized to work by the same society that women are socialized to stay home and make babies. Feminism's direct goals would be breaking that down so that men could stay home (unfortunately we cannot make babies) and women could work, or any other combination, without the traditional gender role boundaries. Feminism's goals are good for everyone.
There are examples of men who want women to be chained to the kitchen; we should consider the reasonable views though, and not throw the baby out with the bath water. Ignore the fringe elements, even though that’s the thing that the media and social algorithms push since they’re the most “engaging”. They are the small minority.
Your whole argument hinges on this word, you are not arguing in good faith, but rather, building a strawman. I'm not going to engage with this style. Thanks.
> I have no papers to show but I have been watching the debate from the sidelines:
You are arguing a strawman, for the simple reason that the results of this hypothetical would be the same: The average man or woman does not wish murder or slavery on another person. If you live in a social web where this is not the case, that sucks. It's time to get new friends.
No, in fact now you are strawmanning me, creating a dumb version of what I wrote and tearing it down.
My point is that among mainstream feminists it is more ok to write even gross hate speech against men (#killallmen) than it is to write even bad jokes about women (they should be chained to the kitchen) amongst not-feminists.
I'm not suggesting mainstream feminists conspire to actually kill all men.
That "reasonable subset" is to a first order approximation feminism.
All "isms" contain outliers, but it's a mistake to get too hung up them in almost all cases. One of the oldest tricks in the book for people trying to push back against idea is to identify these outliers and generate a narrative that this is what the idea is actually about - it's bad faith argument and shouldn't be engaged with.
It sure could be if you were trying to represent it as most/many men or whatever.
Which is I think what the sibling commentor was trying to say, no?
The bad faith argumentation doesn't come from the specifics of whatever group you are talking about, it comes from trying to represent a fringe view or characterization as definitive of the group, then attacking them all for it.
Take for example the current news about Canadian trucker convoy, there was some coverage of people in the convoy being pictured with swastika flags.
It's perfectly reasonable to say: "hey, what's up with the neonazi's ? Are you guys really ok with them being part of your protest?"
And it's perfectly reasonable to judge them on the response to that question. There are even nuanced answers that it's hard to judge.
However, it's a bad faith argument to jump from that to: "Canadian truckers are nazi's".
> Sibling comment to yours is writing about men who want women chained to the kitchen.
I said:
> There are examples of men who want women to be chained to the kitchen; we should consider the reasonable views though,
and
> Ignore the fringe elements
Emphasis added on the important parts. I was arguing there are always fringe elments, and to ignore those, not that the men who are shitheads are important to focus on. You're really twisting things around and I won't comment further on these bad-faith arguments, have a nice day.
Sure, I'm not "against" feminism in general or anything, although re-reading my previous comment I can see how it gave off that impression. I just think it's a very limited view on things, which translates into suboptimal solutions. I also think it can feed alienation among men at times, rather than involving them in the conversation.
From what I've read and people I've spoken to, quite a large number – though far from all – feminists seem to agree on that in broad lines, yet somehow the public discourse still remains fairly narrow IMHO. Personally, I blame the "MRA" people and their nonsense.
I'd like to see some stats that feminism has led to women marrying men who make less than them. From what I've seen, the expectation that a man should provide holds true even with egalitarian couples.
Women, regardless of their own earnings, do not want men that are unemployed, lowly employed, "in between jobs". You will be completely ignored. It's a crude reality, but a reality nevertheless. Men are selected by utility.
Read the article again. It seems there's whole armies of men with time on their hands. Unemployed, unable to get a partner. A great supply of male homemakers one would think.
But no. Nobody wants them. A male without utility is cast aside like trash.
Likewise, women do not really want the feminine or sensitive men that they claim to want. They may want it after first securing a man with good looks and good earnings, after which said man may at times express his emotions. But don't overdo it, obviously.
This feminist idea to destroy male gender roles directly contradicts what women actually do. For as long as feminists do not marry economically disadvantaged men and financially take care of them, none of this will change, and it's all just a bunch of hypocrisy.
This entire comment is steeped in a deeply bitter tone, which you would do well to disabuse yourself of (it is not endearing and frankly is a little worrying).
> women do not really want the feminine or sensitive men that they claim to want.
You are wrong. Yes, as a partner you're supposed to have drive and groom yourself properly - this is true for everyone. After those basic life requirements, what is important is that you are capable of having a mature relationship with someone else. Part of that is knowing that you should express yourself and how to do it in such a way that it isn't a fight every time.
It's not bitter, it's reality. Dodging inconvenient truths because they make people uncomfortable is exactly the issue I'm trying to describe. The massive divide between what people say they do and what they actually do.
But if you don't believe me, do go ahead and create a fake dating profile. One in which you show economic fragility (which is the point of the OP article) yet that you're very much in touch with your feelings.
Enjoy the crickets. Nobody wants you.
Hence my point: be attractive, economically successful and only then might you also express some feelings. The thing you're missing here is "economically successful". You describe it as a basic life requirement but I made my remark in context of the article, which describes millions of men for which this is out of reach, even if they try. So the "mature relationship" doesn't apply as they won't be in any due to their economic status.
And as this lack of economic success leads to a lack of romantic success, they sink into a depression, start drinking, and then kill themselves. None of which apparently is worrying, instead the worrying part is saying that women select for economic success, as this sounds shallow, bitter or even offensive.
It's not offensive, it makes total sense from both a biological and cultural perspective.
I didn't read it as bitter. I'm a happily married guy with kids, never struggled to date, has high income, etc. Even then, I agree with what he says. That's simply the way the world is. My wife comes from a non-Western culture and fully agrees with "A male without utility is cast aside like trash". The consequences of selecting the wrong husband are dire for a woman.
Thanks. If it has a bitter tone, it would come from my conviction that modern progressive politics are entirely backwards, and therefore regressive. How very typical is it that millions of men have nothing to live for, end up in the gutter, drink and die, and not one prominent feminist cares?
People have become experts in dodging and bending realities they dislike. When it rains outside they deny it, change the subject, or even redefine the meaning of the word rain.
But to me it still just rains. I'm a man and I know what is expected of me: utility. I have to deliver it and there's no safety net. Failing is not an option. It doesn't matter how I feel about it as it doesn't matter how I feel about the rain. Rain doesn't care, and the world doesn't care about men.
Until a few generations ago everyone worked from home. The kids were with whichever parent or often extended family.
You lived on your farm or in your village. Both parents did work on the farm as needed. Dad was never far from home and did take the older kids to the fields.
I figure this is the tough transition once the kids are older and try to get back into the career-mode after a long hiatus. I hope you are finding your footing.
I think this is unfortunately a common issue among those who leave the workforce to raise children; looking back, it certainly seems to match my mother's experience. I'm preparing to follow that path as well but hoping to keep up by doing small projects or piecework at home when I can.
I, for one, would like it, and I think I'd like it more than my wife. My personality is well suited to being a stay at home parent. I like chaos, and I like working with my hands. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of reduced-hour programming jobs, and our financial situation isn't such that one of us can be full-time stay-at-home.
Another thing is that it's awkard for breast-feeding women to be away from their babies for long times, and formula comes with its own set of problems.
> Another thing is that it's awkard for breast-feeding women to be away from their babies for long times, and formula comes with its own set of problems.
Regardless of gender, it seems rare that only one partner would be making more than enough to support the family. It's very difficult to make ends meet with a family on a single salary these days (without assistance; and what about saving for retirement? ).
A dual-income family isn’t necessarily evidence that you need two incomes to survive. Rather, it just means there’s a lot of things out there to buy, so it's worth paying for childcare to earn more money.
It’s also a sign that the gender income gap decreased, because it’s worth both people’s time to work. It’s not worth womens’ time to work either when the family is poor (because they can’t earn much and might as well do home/childcare labor) or rich (because the amount one partner can add with a job effectively doesn't matter).
This means the easiest way to get back to a one-income family is to lower womens’ wages again, so you probably shouldn’t wish for it.
"This means the easiest way to get back to a one-income family is to lower womens’ wages again, so you probably shouldn’t wish for it."
There's no connection to this and the rest of your post. It also assumes that families don't need two incomes to stay out of poverty or off of assistance.
The easiest ways according to your post is to make a family poor or rich.
> Most families need two incomes in my experience.
Probably depends on the neighborhood - there's claims in this thread that single motherhood is up, but those can't both be true. (I don't have any evidence to add here.)
> The easiest ways according to your post is to make a family poor or rich.
Yes, but making someone poor's a lot easier. Murphy's law, y'know.
They can. I think you're missing one of my key parts - without assistance. It's highly likely single mothers are getting child support. It's possible they are getting assistance too.
Just look at the stats on how much people have saved in emergency funds and for retirement. That should show you the dire need for two incomes.
Does doing the actual childcare not constitute providing for their family? I'd argue that if men see bringing in an income as providing and not other things (and I don't think that's universal at all) then that's entirely cultural.
"Providing for the family" traditionally refers to bringing in an income. Of course technically that's not the only thing, but for argument's sake.
I'm curious - are there any human cultures where the woman was the traditionally (as in, not a recent modern phenomenon) the breadwinner and the men stayed at home? I know there are cultures that were matriarchal in leadership, and that there are animal species (i.e. lions) where the female does the hunting. But were there any true "Amazon" cultures in the past?
Women needed to stay with the kids to breastfeed. Baby formula was only invented around 1865. Any traditional culture is going to need women to stay with the babies to keep them from starving.
However women would take babies with them while doing things like picking nuts and berries.
anecdotally I would love to spend all my time taking care of my kids, cooking, cleaning, etc… I find it much more enjoyable than working for someone else
> More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners.
and
> Research shows that one significant factor women look for in a partner is a steady job. As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Unsurprisingly, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from 1960 to 2010, the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just over 70 percent to roughly 45 percent.
Seem to imply that this isn't a case of men choosing to stay at home with the kids. I'm curious what the actual data is though.
As the father of 18 year old who is not going to college and instead working as a carpenter, I don't think lumping 18 year olds with 25+ year olds makes much sense. Perhaps I have an antiquated view of family, but I don't feel his "independence" has everything to do with where he lives. I'm more than happy to have him around the house if it allows him to save money and live a better life at, say, 21.
Sure, it can be a great arrangement. It will slow down his dating prospects though, who can host if a relationship gets serious is a common discussion in dating.
Dating for the 18-21 cohort, outside of the university setting, is already very challenging. Truth be told, some of the women my son has dated in this cohort also live at home.
Multigenerational households are the default in many countries/cultures with many young adults - even high earning ones like doctors, hedge funders, or FAANG SWEs -continuing to live with their parents until marriage. They manage to get in relationships and date just fine. The logistics can be different of course.
It absolutely makes sense. The idea that an 18 year old would start their own household is an artifact from a small period in our history when 18 year olds could easily get an unskilled job that would afford a decent modest lifestyle. But that only really started in the late 40's and was over by the 70's.
You know one thing I find interesting is you specifically call out "unskilled job", which I think has a point but the OP mentions specifically his son studying to be a carpenter that I would consider a "high skilled" job, even if it is blue collar, and then you suggest there was a small period of time when an 18 yo could provide for a family with unskilled labor.
I then realized that for much of history up until recently by the time a young man was 18 years old he was already a skilled craftsman at his craft to a large extant. The young man would've been training with his father at his craft from the time he was ten years old and so by the time he was 18 would be proficient in what he had to do.
I wonder then is part of the issue we face due to the fact that we spend so much time trying to instill a modern education into youth until they are adults that they have to spend an additional 4-8 years acquiring an actual skill in order to be able to provide value in the workforce?
I largely agree. My grandfather grew up on a farm, graduated 8th grade, then continued to work the farm while mining coal with the other men in his family. That wasn't uncommon in his time.
Yep. And we do it largely because we started from a schooling model built to shape factory workers, and then tried to develop it by aping what the upper classes did - regardless of whether their models could actually scale or were at all desirable in large numbers.
Sadly, doing so also stripped dignity from vocational / blue-collar work - even when it pays (very) well, kids are told that a life in the trades is for the uneducated, ignorant swines.
Ironically, part of this development is led by emancipation of the lower classes themselves: "I break my back every day but my son will study and be a doctor". A sentiment we all admire, but ends up reinforcing the idea that the father's blue-collar work is crap - and that's not how it should be, all workers should have equal dignity and value.
Modern factory work is going to need a lot of that "upper-level" knowledge too, due to technical change. Pure "blue-collar" work where one could neglect education altogether is either gone or fast disappearing.
That's going to be severely problematic for those in the bottom 15% of the intelligence distribution when there comes a point that there is nothing in society they could do that wouldn't be actively counter productive.
Modern society and its trajectory seems a fundamentally unsustainable enterprise.
> A sentiment we all admire, but ends up reinforcing the idea that the father's blue-collar work is crap - and that's not how it should be, all workers should have equal dignity and value.
Assuming that value equals price, the only way everyone would have an equal price is if supply and demand were exactly equal across all occupations over a long period of time.
That is not a realistic expectation. And the only way for people (by and large) to be incentivized to do the things where supply is not meeting demand is to have a higher price where supply of labor is more needed than elsewhere.
That's a big assumption. There are lots of careers with social and financial values that diverge, ignoring that would I think miss the point OP is trying to make.
My point is everyone can never have equal “value”. The blue collar father urging their kid to be a doctor is not doing it because he thinks he is inherently less “valuable” than a doctor. The father is urging their kid because the father has experience on the type of quality of life a blue collar father can provide versus a doctor father can provide, which is a function of the price that they can sell their labor at.
You are still being reductive in a way that I think misses the point grandparent was trying to make. It may be true that not everyone's career can have the same value, but it's hopeless to try and define that by paychecks alone - that's just not how society values things.
In other words your argument could works equally well for the father urging their kid to do something that on average won't pay better, but will bring them more respect and social standing.
I find that it is usually purchasing power which results in respect and social standing. What are examples of the opposite, that do not involve being related or networked to someone who does have purchasing power?
If most plumbers started earning top 10% wages in the US, they would have similar social standing to doctors. Even doctors have probably moved down in relative status, where the new ones are basically W2 employees with metrics for a big company.
The example could be replaced by a father encouraging their child to be a scientist rather than an accountant - likely a net financial loss.
Hell, put a noble prize winner (or Olympic gold medallist, or astronaut, or you pick) in a room with a guy who made 50mm on property development. No contest, but chances are the developer is at least 10x as wealthy.
There are examples all around you; might not be why you respect people, but its' what people actually do. Trying to reduce this all to wealth just doesn't stand up to even a little scrutiny, though it's equally clear that wealth does contribute.
I'm all for equal dignity and value, but I think you are misunderstanding the situation here.
The fact is that money buys better health and familial outcomes. The parents want that for their kids. Manual labor, regardless of how well it pays takes a toll on your body and generally pays less than a lot of the highly sought after knowledge worker jobs.
I really think the rising cost of living is whats driving these kinds of ideas. The parents want their kids to make more money so they can have a better life - a reality in america. Others see this and assume that the blue collar job is bad or something.
If we had an adequate healthcare system that didn't favor the super rich with good outcomes, I would agree. Until then, my kids are going to be encouraged to go into a career where they can make lots of money sitting in an air conditioned office.
I've worked the blue collar tough as fuck jobs, and now I work in an air conditioned office making 15x as much. Objectively, which one is the better job?
I agree, not how it should be, but you gotta get yours.
Also, if you've ever worked in the trades you would know that a large portion of them are ignorant and uneducated. That stereotype exists for a reason. Its just a fact, and they have a tougher time navigating life because of it. I've lived it.
> Also, if you've ever worked in the trades you would know that a large portion of them are ignorant and uneducated. That stereotype exists for a reason. Its just a fact, and they have a tougher time navigating life because of it. I've lived it.
I agree with you there, I think there is a tendency to romanticize the life of a blue collar worker, and thing of them as the noble simple idealized "proletariat", when as you point out the stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.
But I have to wonder is part of that because of the brain drain in the trades that resulted from everyone going to college and feeling they had to do white collar work. Before a smart, observant, hardworking young man could become an electrician and by virtue of being observant and quick witted could succeeded and excel and become an outstanding electrician that could bring about innovation and elevate his work team. Nowadays though the same hardworking intelligent young man is being told that the trades are for stupid people, and he is too smart for that and wouldn't it be much better to go get a college degree so he can get a "real job". Then twenty years and $50,000 of student debt later he finds himself as a project manager trapped in a standup meeting at 8:00 on a Wednesday morning, hating his life, drowning in unfulfilled despair and wondering what went wrong with his life.
I just think that part of the stereotypes about the trades has become a self fulfilling prophecy.
According to this source[1], the average student loan debt for a new 4-year graduate in 2020 is $28,400. Of course, this is highly variable depending on the student, but $150-200k is not typical for a 4-year degree.
There seems to be a bunch of variability here. In support of my original assertion of 150-200k, that site has multiple average debts for different fields in my stated range.
Actually, the article you linked confirms my original statement. Look at the "graduate loan debt" section.
From the article you linked:
Average student loan debt for a professional degree from a private, nonprofit institution $243,300
I have no idea how they got 28k when most every number I see on that page is much larger.
There is a huge, huge difference between the debt you take on in undergrad vs grad programs vs law school vs medical school, etc. You are looking at the numbers for the most expensive programs (that also result in some of the highest paying careers!) to make the case that people have high debt, but those are the minority. They also tend to be the most educated and have the highest future earnings potential. Most people do not advance past an undergraduate degree. The 28k number is far more relevant, and within the article you linked.
Your page says the same number as the parent for a bachelor degree: $28950.
All the other numbers you see that are higher are graduate degrees. Comparing a medical student debt (4+ years more of school beyond the 4 of undergrad, residency, perhaps a specialty on top) to only a 4 year degree is not representative of the vast majority of student debt.
I have hopes that the invisible hand will provide some corrective feedback. Because at the end of the day, someone has to do the electrical work and the construction work etc. If it can't be done without some amount of IQ the market will adjust for that.
This is already coming to pass in hot real-estate markets where it's almost impossible to get any sort of trade help. It feels like most of the skilled tradesmen (and women) have a plethora of job choices and they by far prefer to build new housing instead of dealing with nitpicky rich people for the same money.
I agree we are in an unstable situation and it will equal out over time. My main concern is the burden it places on us all in the meantime. Those most vulnerable are going to be hit the hardest.
> Manual labor, regardless of how well it pays takes a toll on your body and generally pays less than a lot of the highly sought after knowledge worker jobs
In many places a skilled plumber or electrician earns more than an office worker or even junior engineer. A skilled highway construction worker earns more than the country average. A crane operator makes more than the average software developer. There are many surprises when it comes to blue collar job payment.
I think you're comparing entry level tech jobs to mid to sr level blue collar jobs.
Take the electrician for example. Minimum 4 years of work as an apprentice, then you have to do a year of schooling, pay for it out of pocket, take a test and your making about as much as a entry level developer who only needed to spend 1 year studying in their free time, spent $400 on a laptop, got all their learning for free online, and isn't doing back breaking, more dangerous work. And from there the tech worker's salary is going to go to 150k+ in 3-5 years. You don't even need college to do that anymore.
Same thing with the crane operator. Starting salary for tech is more, requires less time to get started, and the tech worker's salary goes up quick after starting. You don't start out on the path to being a crane operator at 50k+ a year. You start helping doing rigging and spotting for $12 an hour.
I lived both sides of it, trust me. I see where your coming from, some blue collar jobs pay more than you'd think, but in reality there's just no comparison.
I absolutely understand your POV, I've worked crap jobs too (dropped out of uni), and I have kids who have to suffer through the classist UK education system. But my point is that this was not inevitable, it's the result of societal and individual choices made over the last 40 years.
> if you've ever worked in the trades you would know that a large portion of them are ignorant and uneducated
Yes, and that's why there used to be a view that adult education was to be promoted and encouraged.
My point is that at some point, we just stopped aspiring to a better tomorrow and accepted we're all doomed to live in hell. Which, inevitably, condemned us to a life of pain.
When I said unskilled, I meant to distinguish the OP's carpenter son from unskilled jobs. I don't think there has ever been a time before 1945 when the average man was a skilled laborer. A liner worker in a factory or farm-hand isn't skilled labor. For most of history, those people were exploited.
Craftsman usually had a decent living because it took training and there was generally demand. But if you train twice as many electricians, its not like there will be twice as many electrician jobs created. So learning a craft or trade is a great personal strategy, but it not a solution we can universally apply.
I do think we force way too many people into college-track for little benefit and quite a bit of harm.
> But if you train twice as many electricians, its not like there will be twice as many electrician jobs created. So learning a craft or trade is a great personal strategy, but it not a solution we can universally apply.
I don't know that I agree with that, right now at least on the data I have available and the anecdata I have observed there is a serious shortage of skilled blue color work, plumber, carpenter, electrician, etc. so there is definitely a shift that would be beneficial for society at large and individuals.
But let's explore this idea a little bit more, right now we are used to the idea that there are X jobs for Y persons, especially in white color work. This seems to derive largely from the fact that white color work is focused not on production of goods and services but in the production of information (and to some extant bullsh*). For example there are only so many marketing jobs out there because there are only so much marketing a company needs done. Sure adding your first 3 marketers may increase your revenue by 50% but adding your 300th marketer probably isn't going to increase your income at all, in fact it's likely it might actually be a negative investment. The problem is the marketer doesn't actually add a resources to the world, they aren't producing marketing widgets, they merely identify and optimize existing distribution channels, and help others become aware of your company, and there is only so much you can do in that area, there is only so much inefficiency that can be optimized away.
Contrast this instead with a plumber. You hire your first plumber he can do say 5 jobs a day, if you hire 3 more plumbers you can do 20 jobs a day now. Well let's suppose later on you hire another plumber he still adds the value to do 5 more jobs a day. Now you may say that there are only so many plumbing jobs out there, only so many people have their 3 year old push a bouncy ball down the toilet, but the plumber is also working on new housing and new business, the plumber isn't just optimizing the existing pie they are causing the overall size of the pie itself to increase. Now there does of course exist some sort of maximum to this, but after reading World War Z that explores this concept in quite a bit of depth (and has no similarity to the movie at all) I've realized that if society did collapse I as a software engineer have absolutely no real or applicable skills, whereas an electrician or a carpenter, they will be able to keep on doing their job as they were now, because they are creating actual wealth, not just optimizing existing wealth generation activities.
My point being a society with an overabundance of electricians, carpenters and plumbers is probably better off than a society with an overabundance of project managers, paralegals, and risk analysts.
Some form of Green New Deal would create tons of jobs like that -- people to upgrade furnaces, install heat exchangers, upgrade windows and insulation, and manufacture all of the above. Republicans used to be all about creating jobs like this... I'm not holding my breath, but if a post-trump era is less toxic and the parties can sit down together, it could do marvels for our economy.
> The idea that an 18 year old would start their own household is an artifact from a small period in our history when 18 year olds could easily get an unskilled job that would afford a decent modest lifestyle.
I think this is the root of a lot of people's frustrations around housing, and adulthood. For most our history it was expected that you would have multiple generations sharing a household. The idea that you move out of your family's house the second you turn 18 or finish college is a relatively new idea. As parent commenter points out, this was really only the norm for two generations, suggesting that that, and not our current situation, is the historical outlier.
Living with your family for a while allows you to save money and help your parents out after they spent the better part of two decades raising you.
I'm wildly uncomfortable with normalising the idea (that is far too normal already) that you owe your parents a thing for raising you.
We have a lot of choices in this life, but whether I get brought into it isn't one.
I have no expectations of what my son will or will not help me with in the future and will try as hard as possible to set him up well - because he didn't have a choice in his circumstance, I and solely I did.
I’m doing the same for our family, but it would seem kind of weird (and, frankly, disappointing) if after doing that, that if my wife and/or fell on hard times that the kids wouldn’t pitch in to help in return.
> I'm wildly uncomfortable with normalising the idea (that is far too normal already) that you owe your parents a thing for raising you.
Wow. This is wild to me. My grandfather was an orphan, most likely because his parents weren't married(if he were alive today, he'd be well over 100).
I am absolutely grateful that my parents have done their best to raise me to be the intelligent, caring person I am, and to take care not to perpetuate the misdeeds of their parents(which, being Boomers, were numerous). As both someone who suffers from depression and identifies as a materialist, it is probably the single thing I am most grateful for, and certainly the most profound intangible in my life. The feeling that I owe them is honestly one of the fundamental things that keeps me going.
If your parents are decent to you and showed care with how you were raised I absolutely think that you owe them. Having a functional, caring family is one of the greatest privileges one can have in life. You know who I don't owe anything too? The people who put my grandfather up for adoption.
An 18 year old can easily get a "unskilled" job what will give you a modest lifestyle. There are ~20 cities in America where this isn't possible but just about everywhere else it's completely possible. There is a shortage of tradesman across the country. Are you capable of doing relatively simple math, showing up on time, and working hard? There's a decent job for you in a midwestern city where you can buy a house for $120,000.
Further, I think it is largely undesirable for people in their late teens or early 20s to be living with romantic partners. Breakups are way more complicated when you also lose your housing.
People don't get good at stuff unless they practice
At some point you need to just do these adult things in order to get good. Delaying doesn't change that much. Better to get the practice over with as soon as possible.
Travelling with a partner is a better bet. Involves a lot of the testing scenarios that living with someone brings: decisions, shared finances, putting in effort, cleanliness in shared space (roadtrip car, motel rooms) etc. But worst case you've wasted a week and a smaller amount of money.
The statistic uses "now" which implies a change over time, so they have been grouped together for while and it may be difficult to separate this group from past studies.
This does bring up an important concept of "emerging adulthood" [0]. Where in modern day societies there seem to be a time period where young adults do what you are describing. There seem to be some of this coupled with some young men not being able to find purpose in life as evidence by the increase in suicide and drug use in the that group.
This is spot on. Multigenerational housing used to be the norm, not a symbol of failure.
Why we all think it's a great idea to leave our families at 18 and pay high rents so that we can live with strangers we found on the internet is beyond me.
There are good reasons in response to: "Why we all think it's a great idea to leave our families at 18 and pay high rents so that we can live with strangers we found on the internet is beyond me," though personally I also don't believe that multigenerational housing is a symbol of failure, and often lets a person save a lot of money.
It's more difficult to maintain a romantic relationship when living with family (especially if both partners live with family), and it can also delay life skills (e.g. learning how to cook at home, clean, and generally learn to live more independently; though it's possible to deliberately learn this while living with family, it becomes a necessity to learn after moving out).
There are definitely some benefits to living on one's own for a while, but I do not think we should continue to view as the only viable option, or even the default for that matter.
Being pressured to move out of your parents' home ASAP is largely an American phenomenon I think. Maybe parts of Europe as well?
In many parts of the world, the point where you are expected to (and socially pressured to) move out of your parents home is marriage. Of course there are exceptions, like moving to a faraway city for a job, etc.
Whereas I see many American youths bleeding away their income on rent and expenses while living 10 minutes away from their parents' home.
The thing is, the people that do the systems planning of our economy and social structure have an incentive for every man to move into a productive lifestyle the minute he turns 18. But there's a misalignment of incentives; what appears productive for society is not productive for the young men in question.
So of course, in print, there's a crisis of young men staying at home with their parents til they're 30. But for young men, there's a crisis of incentive. Why on earth would a young man want to go give half his waking life to barely pay his own rent, then run on the treadmill that is modern online dating for, at best, meaningless hedonistic interactions with maybe, maybe not, women he's attracted to?
What it comes down to is that men have no incentive to do anything other than low effort, intangible self service, because the other alternative is just a more expensive version of the exact same thing.
I have a family to support. If I realized just how bad the corporate world was, I would have stayed single, bought some land, and quit my job once I had enough money saved for a safety net so I could do a low effort job.
Much of our life’s joy comes from what amounts to “meaningless hedonistic interactions”. It’s not that surprising that after having a taste of that in college or early adulthood that people sign up for that trade. I did, and I’d do it again.
I've had my share of them too. They're great. It's not going to motivate me to try to one day afford a 4 bedroom house though, if that's all the future has in store for me. You're not getting career men with those prospects.
Oh come on. I'm not talking about the Illuminati here, I'm talking about the heads, advisers and important employees of executive departments like HUD, the Treasury, the FED, things like that. If you'd done a little thinking before responding maybe you'd have considered that. Unless you think our society is just entirely unmanaged?
You could perhaps have stated it as politicians and bureaucrats instead of "people", which would have made it more obvious to the reader you meant the government at large.
Aspects of it, absolutely. It's not even a secret, I'm not talking about some secret conspiracy. Social structures are largely a game of incentives, and the government agencies have a pretty powerful toolkit as far as incentives go.
Here's an example, it is openly stated that the government maintains an inflation rate to discourage saving and encourage spending to stimulate the economy. This is a deliberate attempt to influence the culture of the US, and it works. We have a consumer culture where everyone buys services and cheap stuff and nobody saves money, the stated goal of these fiscal policies.
Your claim was that there are people 'manipulating our social structure' and instead of backing up a bold claim you backed off and just made the claim that people don't save enough money. If you don't want people to push back on what you say, don't say hyperbolic nonsense. This is a common pattern people fall into.
They don't say what they mean, they say come bizarre abstract exaggeration to get a reply or reaction, then completely back off from what they originally said, then get mad that they are asked to explain their original claim.
I never said "manipulating" although without the negative connotation of the word it's semantics. And I haven't backed off a single thing.
I didn't claim people don't save enough money. I claimed that it is fiscal policy of our government and has been for decades to stimulate the economy by discouraging saving and encouraging spending via debasement of currency. Discouraging saving and encouraging spending is manipulation of social structure. I fail to see where your disagreement lies in that statement. You did not address my example at all, you just dismissed it entirely. I restated it here to give you an opportunity to correct that if you want.
I can give you more examples of government managing social structure if you like. In some instances the social and cultural impacts are secondary effects, often unintended consequences, but in many cases they're deliberate and openly stated, such as the example I've already given.
What exactly do you think government means when they call themselves "government"? What does it mean to govern a society, population, land mass or nation?
Alright, I can't tell if you're being difficult on purpose or by accident, so I'm going to explain my example very simply, "draw it with crayons" so to speak.
Monetary inflation is planned. there are men, in the US that would be the board of the FED, that try to decide what the inflation rate will be using interest rates to borrow from them. They target certain rates because they want certain social and economic consequences of the conditions they impose.
This is one example. Draw me a picture of how that's not systems planning our social structure.
Now, to answer your question, yes, there are people that do treat our society like a system and do systems planning to attempt to create desired social, cultural and economic outcomes. These people collectively form what is known as government. This is not a matter of contention, it is not a controversial statement, this is literally their stated goal, their mission for existing and what we pay them to do.
Now let me ask you a question: what exactly do you think a government does?
It seems like you are just making a gigantic reach by saying 'money affects everything' so by some sort of hop scotch free association, inflation (the thing you actually seem to care about) affects 'social structure' (the nonsense you are bringing into the discussion because you don't feel listened to)
Inflation was an example, and "the nonsense I'm bringing into the discussion because I don't feel listened to" is the statement I made in the first comment that you replied to that started this thread.
Anyway, unless you're going to reply to a statement I made, answer a question I asked or actually state your disagreement with anything I've said there's not a discussion here to be had.
the statement I made in the first comment that you replied to that started this thread.
I know, but it turns out you are really just upset about inflation. You haven't connected that in any real way to claims of "system planning our social structure".
I'd really like to see that broken down year by year. 18 is rather young to be living with a partner, and not at all out of the norm to be living with parents (many 18 year olds are still attending high school, others are in junior college, others are working and possibly saving up to move out).
More of all 18-34 year olds are staying with their parents, not just men[0], so this may be a problem of unavailable housing or some other non-gender specific problem.
> the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just over 70 percent to roughly 45 percent.
seems to be the answer is right here - college. Historically the basic level of necessary education has been increasing. 4 year grammar school couple centuries ago to the K-12 30 years ago, and today it is "K-16", i.e. K-12 plus college. Not having college today is more and more like not having GRE several decades ago.
If most women are optimising unemployed men out of dating / marriage then men being unemployed has far more significant consequences for men than women. Women are all about equality for access to employment but then complain that there aren't enough suitable men with jobs. The more a woman earns the smaller her dating pool becomes. Perhaps she could be more flexible in partner selection? There are outliers but the data suggests women are very traditional in very particular ways. Whereas the situation for men has been to marry down. But no such expectation for women. Its an interesting little bit of hypocracy.
There's a heap of complexity around this. Society needs to shift and work this out. Its only been around a century. The answers are not so simple.
> The more a woman earns the smaller her dating pool becomes. Perhaps she could be more flexible in partner selection?
This will take more than a generation to solve. Culturally this is not acceptable for women. Women are looked down upon for dating men who make less than them.
For the next 20-30 years, women will continue to shame themselves and others for dating men of “lower” or even equal value.
> Perhaps she could be more flexible in partner selection?
My experience suggests that people are rarely more flexible than they need to be to meet their goals. And: why should they be?
This results in some amount of assortive mating (of the social, rather than genetic, variety), but I don’t see a likely path out of this. It’s the human version of “birds of a feather”.
>I wonder how much of this is because more women are joining the workforce. If men are leaving the workforce by their own free will because their wife is working and they are staying home with the kids, both of these facts could be true
Not what's happening. For one, marriages are decreasing too and marriage age increases.
Legal marriage is decreasing. You can draw on more benefits as single from the System. Legal marriage also leads to pathological complications in terms of seperation in some states.
A substantial population of men are also deeply concerned that a legal marriage will end in a costly, lopsided, and devastating divorce. It is no secret that women have the advantage in such proceedings.
For the breadwinner the outcome isn't very gendered, except for the conditions of custody of any children.
And although not very gendered, it is a shitty contract where the worst clauses have extremely high rates of occurring. Even when isolating to later aged upper middle class economic equals, a 10% rate of triggering the worst clauses in a financial contract is extremely bad.
You simply can't decouple the financial aspects of a financial contract just because how someone might have been conditioned to romanticize an overarching concept.
> For the breadwinner the outcome isn't very gendered
This is a distinction without a difference. Even today, with women's educational attainment and workforce compensation skyrocketing, they still strongly marry "up". In the aggregate, this leaves the situation arguably even worse than before:
1. More men are pushed out of the marriage market.
2. Men who are in the marriage market still face financial devastation when the wife decides it's time to "find herself" in a no-fault divorce state (e.g. nearly all of them).
And the power dynamic this creates puts men in a state of walking on eggshells to unrealistic expectations from a partner who can take them to the cleaners for any reason, which is highly destructive to relationships, and a massive reason why so many are opting out of relationships and spend their life online
> Even today, with women's educational attainment and workforce compensation skyrocketing, they still strongly marry "up".
Yes, while the delta between spousal earnings is much smaller which also leads to a third observation:
3. Economic equals that are stable are marrying each other for the first time/generation, which increases inequality for the people (mostly for the other remaining women) that have nobody to marry up to.
The women aren't interested in being in an unstable situation and are also not interested in taking care of a man, both genders in this binary situation are opting to avoid marriage (or merely consider it unattainable) if there is no stability. And of course there is my observation that it's also a bad contract.
In civilised jurisdictions these rules apply to unmarried couples too. The amount of economic violence, historically, perpetrated by men over women has been huge.
> In civilised jurisdictions these rules apply to unmarried couples too. The amount of economic violence, historically, perpetrated by men over women has been huge.
I’m guessing we are talking about two different things.
I will also add that, in my circle, women are getting screwed as much by this as men, so “the worm has turned” might better be “be careful what you wish for”.
I largely have no issues with approximately equal division of assets acquired during a marriage.
The two main issues I have are:
1. Determining what counts as an asset.
2. The method of contesting anything in a contested divorce.
For 1, appreciation of any asset counts as an asset that should be divided.
If you came into a marriage with $1 million in ETFs and a $1.5m house free and clear, and those go up to $1.7m etfs and $2.5m house, spouse gets half of $1.7m asset appreciation for…. I struggle to answer this question in a way that us not “being lucky”.
Note that they do not owe half of losses if assets lose value.
Meanwhile, somehow inheritance is treated as largely untouchable money. How does that make sense?
For 2, if a divorce is not amicable, sometimes the party that feels scorned takes a scorched earth approach and basically is willing to give a ton of money to lawyers (“spouse doesn’t get it!”) while also freezing assets.
I’ve seen some very asset rich people be cash poor because their former spouse just wouldn’t let them sell anything, even when they split the proceeds. This was just nothing other than malice. Sure, you can go to court to force them to let you sell for cash, but this is just another example of a pathological aspect of our current system.
This aspect can also create complications in things like limited partnerships and other businesses in which it can be really hard to assign values to the asset and even harder divide the value of the asset without simultaneously destroying that value.
Pre-nups can help, but they largely make the outcome slightly more certain while still leaving much to be contested via litigation if the party that feels scorned chooses to do so.
I know a lot of these rules are in place because of the historical economic shenanigans that men have subjected women to, but that doesn’t mean that the system is reasonable, fair, or not pathological for certain (perhaps many or even most) cases.
>Meanwhile, somehow inheritance is treated as largely untouchable money. How does that make sense?
That depends on how one's finances are set up beforehand. There are quite a few financial instruments that are almost always untouchable. One such instrument is the irrevocable trust. In short, an irrevocable trust isn't owned by the trustee/divorcée. As a result, anything awarded from it is not subject to property division.
What do you mean by "civilized jurisdictions"? I don't know any place that explicitly adjudicates the separation of unmarried couples as though it was legally equivalent to a formal divorce. You'll have to be more specific.
Unmarried couples may fall into one of two types: common-law marriages and meretricious relationships. In the US, the former is approved by a vanishingly small number of states. The latter has no legal rights to property division or palimony without an explicit cohabitation contract. Even then, many states don't recognize palimony at all.
> I definitely think (particularly young) people should be better educated about what a marriage contract is and isn't before they get into it.
I agree, but I think the HN crowd might grossly underestimate how difficult it is for lay people to get accurate, actionable advice that is also fully understood.
The default takeaway for a not small number of people is “don’t get married if you are successful and like financial security”.
> “don’t get married if you are successful and like financial security”.
But that's terrible advice really, and doesn't follow reality. So I think there is something more going on.
I don't think simple, actionable advice is that hard really, but there is a lot of political and ideological noise around the subject that confuses people.
It certainly does follow reality. You just haven't talked to the large number of financially ruined men that the family courts system has let be abused by vindictive women.
It's common. The root problem is presuppositions in the marriage contract are wrong.
The reality is most relationships don't last forever for lots of reasons and most reasons being benign.
But the penalties in the marriage contract are based on the fallacy that relationships should last forever and if they don't it's the provider's penalty and the provider's life energy should be consumed forever to pay for it.
Obviously there's some reasons it was setup that way such as providing for kids, but it's out of balanced and been abused for so long it's now a stereotype.
This is a major cause for lack of relationship formation! Because a failed relationship can demolish your future many hardworking smart men have moved the goalposts so high that we can see statistically they are less likely to have children.
Those who didn't work hard and have nothing to lose are not being punished they are instead given welfare.
Won't someone think of the children and fix this stupid law driven power imbalance that's driving us toward the future warned in the idiocracy movies.
Correction: Don't get married at all, regardless of economic status. If you are rich, you can lose almost everything you've worked for. If you're poor you have a good chance of ending in a de facto debtors' prison.
"The middle class still gets its preferred policies enacted 26 percent of the time even when the rich are opposed."
Gee, thanks!
Most of this "debunking" rests on the idea that the tiny minority of rich people should have about the same amount of power as the rest of us, so it isn't so terrible that they actually have a fair amount more. That just doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, the fact that a few people have a few quibbles with a few minor details doesn't amount to "that study is false".
The important point is that what most often happens is the middle class and rich agree on policies. So "rich person gets policy" is true, but it's not the reason the policy happened.
It is surprising that the middle class and rich agree so often. But as I'm sure you know, most Americans don't think of politics in economic class warfare terms, so maybe that's why.
I think it's because middle class likes to compare themselves to the people at the top rather than the people at the bottom, even though they are closer to the latter.
So you have someone who makes 50k a year who has 10k of investments, and they would rather compare themselves to the CEO making millions, rather than someone lower in the org chart who makes 30k a year.
They have investments, so they'll approve of tax cuts on dividends, even though the people who profit from these tax cuts are the people who have 100 million invested, not the middle class who might just get a few hundreds in dividends from their investments a year.
So even though they are completely dependent on their salary and the whims of their employer, they like to think of themselves as independent upper middle class people and vote accordingly.
It's amazing how people will tell themselves stories and vote for policies that are bad for themselves just so they can feel superior to someone else.
It's possible they totally disagree with your worldview that the primary way to view the world is by comparing how you're doing with others.
Quite a lot of people vote for the system they think will bring the best outcomes for all. Some people think it's by levelling outcomes; others by increasing opportunity.
Assuming the increasing opportunity people are doing it to feel superior is likely false, and also likely just a way to feel superior to them.
> Assuming the increasing opportunity people are doing it to feel superior is likely false, and also likely just a way to feel superior to them.
You are right about that, maybe it's not about feeling superior, I don't know the real motivation. My argument would probably be stronger without this remark.
But I don't know if the differentiation between "outcomes" and "opportunities" really makes a difference. People still vote for "opportunities" that are only meaningful for people richer than themselves.
For example, you could say that lowering taxes on dividends is providing an "opportunity", but it's only an opportunity for those who already have more money than they need, and it rewards people proportionally with how much money they already have.
With many opportunities the outcomes are rather predictable, so I'm not sure what the difference is between focussing on "opportunity" vs. "outcomes".
> lowering taxes on dividends is providing an "opportunity", but it's only an opportunity for those who already have more money than they need
I don't think this is that simple. Only considering billionaires, when most businesses fail in 3 years and owners can often get paid very little for a long time, is far, far too reductive in my opinion.
The important point is that what most often happens is the middle class and rich agree on policies.... It is surprising...
This was described by Herman and Chomsky as "manufactured consent". No rational consideration of middle class priorities would wage half a dozen ruinous wars in faraway unimportant places in two decades, but for a time many in the middle class were patriotic for such atrocious policy. That time has passed, yet the wars continue, which is what we're actually talking about: the result of disagreement. That middle class preferences are honored when they agree with the preferences of wealth is a triviality. That they are not honored when in disagreement, is the topic under discussion.
That's really the elephant in the living room. Perhaps as a society we are poorer because we set fire to trillions in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan.
For the HN crowd here's a metric: the average seed round is like $2M these days, so Iraq at roughly $3 trillion would be enough to fund 1.5 million startup companies.
The problem isn’t the debt. The problem is the waste. All the personnel and capital used on those wars was personnel and capital not being invested productively. It was wealth pulled out of the economy and burned, which makes us all poorer.
Money is just accounting. The real economy is physical.
Women at 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles saw real wage increases from 1979-2019; men saw a decrease at 10th and 50th.
(I'm morally opposed to the top 90th percentile's growth at the expense of the bottom. I'm not morally opposed to gender pay equality, which I _think_ is zero sum and results in lower wages for men as it improves.)
Is there an argument that women in the workforce suck money out of the economy? I thought the argument was that their participation in the workplace increases the supply of labor, thus reducing the value of any individual's labor.
How "out of the workforce" is defined might be a missing part of the big picture. (The term itself is pretty nebulous!)
"Staying home with the kids" might also include learning some skills, or trying to start a business, or self-employment. The radar will likely miss this. In the US, singles who earn under $12,500 don't need to file a federal tax return.
(Note that the radar will always remember that 'missing time' ... which you may need to account for later! And that info is widely available.)
The demographic data, which you can pretty easily look up, is pretty clear on that. Women started joining the workforce dramatically in the '70s. What happened in the '90s was the death of manufacturing.
One thing to remember when looking at manufacturing capacity in the United States is that it's somewhat skewed. For instance, when a CPU doubled its speed, the US government decided that we had doubled our manufacturing capacity. I don't know what other interesting if you points have skewed the data.
Are there a lot of stay at home dads? I personally don't know any. I don't believe that's a large societal trend. I agree it would be a good thing if it were that way, but I don't see any indication to think that
> I wonder how much of this is because more women are joining the workforce. If men are leaving the workforce by their own free will because their wife is working and they are staying home with the kids, both of these facts could be true, but seems like a win in both gender equality terms and allowing men to have the life they want. This seems better then having two working parents.
You sound like you didn't look at or have any sense of the statistics around two- vs one-income, single-family households before you posted this comment.
Wild to me that data showing men are facing objective decline is called a win, just because the gender gap is smaller (or speeding in the opposite direction as before, with regards to college entrance rates) due to the situation being worse for men.
Society really loves to kick them while they’re down these days.
The picture is nowhere near this neat and tidy. Plenty of men can't get jobs. They want jobs but can't get them. Life circumstances are far more complex. Its not always solved by learning to code either. Not everyone can do that. Offshoring jobs was not good for societal structures at all. It was all about short term profit.
Less men in employment is not a good thing. It isn’t some kind of passing the torch to women happy event. Its just mass unemployment of a significant number of people in their prime earning age. Its societal failure.
And probably people in an age bracket prone to acting out aggressively or against some perceived opponent.
I look at the variety of protests (of all sorts) and wonder how many people are there for a cause and how many want something to be part of, and a bit of motivation and thrill.
People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an illiterate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work even more than he needs money. An educated man can put up with enforced idleness, which is one of the worst evils of poverty. But a man like Paddy, with no means of filling up time, is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain. That is why it is such nonsense to pretend that those who have 'come down in the world' are to be pitied above all others.
The man who really merits pity is the man who has been down from the start,
and faces poverty with a blank, resourceless mind
From Down and Out in Paris and London.
(Someone should have known better than to try to link to Google Books from a mass media piece.)
"No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order."
Here in Europe, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, a large amount of men were fired from their construction job.
I'm talking about incredibly tough and hardened men. The type doing this job for decades, getting up at 5AM each day, working in the bitter cold, never calling in sick, breaking their body and taking pride in it.
Just like that, society suddenly declared these men to be zeroes. They have to call to this unemployment agency, where they're treated as if beginners, and with distrust, as if they're leeches. They have to go to the red tap, none of which they understand.
Reportedly, many of these men broke down and cried on the phone. They probably hadn't cried in decades.
It just shows how absolutely devastating it is when such a man loses purpose. It breaks them. They take pride in their strength, their sacrifice to provide. They cannot be idle nor can they be in a dependent position. It's not them.
Purely anecdotal, but it was uncool, dorky, nerdy, etc. where I grew up for boys to be interested in math or even English, but “more manly stuff” like working with your hands was highly encouraged. It seems that kind of culture will result in men being less likely to end up in higher paying careers.l than girls who are being encouraged to pursue STEM.
You do realize that a career in the skilled trades can lead to very good pay, right? Yes, the work can be hard, and the hours sometimes long, but there are very clear paths to working independently, or for small shops/contractors that provide a nice degree of independence and good pay.
I think high school kids in the U.S. should be exposed to STEM, the humanities, and the trades. We have pushed college/academic achievement long enough, and I suspect that some of the data we are seeing represents a backlash against it, particularly when you consider the cost of university and the job prospects for new graduates.
> You do realize that a career in the skilled trades can lead to very good pay, right?
Only if you can start your independent business, which few can do pretty much by definition. That's still a recipe for bimodal outcomes. And the U.S. has pushed "college achievement" on paper, but their K-12 education still sucks. There's no way that this isn't a drag on college outcomes.
I knew people who started oilfield welding businesses at the age of 18 right out of high school, bought houses and started families. Yeah that is a boom-and-bust business but then again so is machine learning.
This isn't necessarily true. I know a wide range of folks that work in union trade positions, and they make very good money. Now, sometimes, those jobs can be unpleasant for awhile (building is behind schedule, etc, etc), but they also last a finite amount of time.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the trades are a gravy train for everyone, but the idea that you will barely make ends meet is also not the case.
I would say of the significant number of tradesmen I've met that owned their own business, practically all worked for someone else. Thats how you acquire the skills to start your own business. I paid two guys to spackle and paint a bathroom, install a vanity and new fixtures. They were the "no experience, but lets start a business" guys you don't want to meet. 2/3 way thru, I stopped them, paid them, gave them one piece of advice - "get a mentor to work FOR". I finished the job myself.
In my area nearly every high school including the one I attended offered great programs that for many lead to careers in the trades.
I know several people who were in one of the trades programs who decided it wasn’t for them and seemed to wander aimlessly just like many of my friends who went to university.
Maybe the issue isn’t opportunity for training or trades vs university?
On a side note a skilled trade career can pay very well, but is it reasonable to expect everyone will be a union-member or own a business? Union support seems to be declining in the US and owning and running is business is not for most people.
I used to teach calculus in university and I would always find a way to tell my classes how much a plumber makes just to show up at your house and their hourly rate. Almost without exception they were amazed that they would make less as an engineer unless they got lucky and were hired by a top end firm. Definitely the local shipyard which hired most of our graduates couldn't compete with that rate.
> If I setup a boys club for computers at school or hosted a men’s IT society at work, that wouldn’t end well.
Maybe not, but nearly every <Subject> Users Group I've attended may as well have been a men's IT society for all the women I've seen attend, despite specific outreach efforts to get them there.
While I share your first hand observations here, I'll note that (from my limited perspective) there was nothing obviously catering to non-females or any particular gender in these groups. Many of the groups I've attended also had 'professional standards'.
So what is the discrepancy? What has changed and what is being done differently between the groups where 'boys' can optionally attend and ones that 'girls' appear to self select against attendance? We should reach for a world that doesn't require discrimination.
1. Women aren't going to want to join a group where they're the minority
2. Given a brand new group with 0 members yet, it's still likely that women will avoid it, because of their past experiences with 1. putting them off joining groups in general
3. Women are less common than men in general in CS. Any group that accepts the average person will statistically end up with more men than women.
The groups that "advertise" to women avoid these problems, which is why they tend to work.
I agree that we shouldn't need specialized groups, but I haven't seen any other solution, at least in the immediate term. Likely society will improve simply due to the passing of time, and in 50 years from now and it won't be a problem anymore.
Probably. But why should small boys be punished and denied opportunities because of that?
Also, this has been even broader:
Around here, until recently girls got extra points even on studies were they were massively over-represented (in addition to being generally over-represented in higher education.)
Just recently boys started to get extra points when applying for Engineering degrees in Chemistry or in Nursing.)
I don't know where "around here" is or even what "girls got extra points even on studies where they were massively over-represented" means. Are you talking about grades? "points" towards college admissions?
At least in the US, most schools practice either explicitly or implicitly (through adjusted admissions criteria) affirmative action towards women for STEM subjects. That's the case even for subjects like Biology where the gender ratio is already balanced or tipped towards women.
One obvious example of this is the fact that CMU admits 50% women into its CS program, even though their applicant pool and similar caliber schools have around a 20-30% ratio. So if you believe that women and men in the applicant pool are equally qualified, women have a 2x higher chance of getting in. That's just basic statistics.
> One obvious example of this is the fact that CMU admits 50% women into its CS program, even though their applicant pool and similar caliber schools have around a 20-30% ratio. So if you believe that women and men in the applicant pool are equally qualified, women have a 2x higher chance of getting in. That's just basic statistics.
This is a reasonable initial assumption (candidates are equally qualified), and so there is evidence that something is happening (by examining the initial figures). But it may or may not be a bias in favor of women (that is, in this case, something like giving "points" to female applicants either explicitly or implicitly). You'd have to examine the actual applicant pool to determine what was happening other than being able to conclude that something is happening. It is also plausible that the female candidates are, as a group, more qualified than their male counterparts.
It would be plausible, but if you examine the historical enrollment numbers it's clear that CMU expanded their CS program around the exact time that their female representation went to 50%. In essence they created more spots reserved for women, but still admitted the same number of men each year.
You'd also have to ignore that similar caliber schools have the same 20-30% ratio so CMU would have to be doing something special that MIT, Stanford et. al aren't in its applicant recruiting/marketing - that's a tough one to believe.
women have been marginalized for most of modern history, so it's not like it's a false assumption... I guess maybe you could make an argument for over-correction? but a lot of women would disagree.
>If I setup a boys club for computers at school or hosted a men’s IT society at work, that wouldn’t end well.
That's because most computer clubs and IT societies are already primarily men. It's kind of the default, which is why women-only groups are seen as transformative.
If you want to look at it in a different way, you probably wouldn't have a problem setting up a group that teaches miners IT
I believe it's reactionary attitudes like these (why can't we have a special club?) that make tech so hostile to women in the first place. If they feel better in a space that specifically caters to women, and if by them feeling better, they actually learn the skills, why should they not have those spaces?
Not to be flippant, but have you seen somebody try this and fail or be stopped? What would be the purpose of the group? Why would it need to cater to men?
These aren't rhetorical questions. I'm genuinely asking.
>If they feel better in a space that specifically caters to women, and if by them feeling better, they actually learn the skills
This can't apply to men? I believe there were such clubs and they were considered sexist in the past. I don't see why it's so strange an idea that men might like a club where they can be catered to and taught in a way that works for them.
> Not to be flippant, but have you seen somebody try this and fail or be stopped? What would be the purpose of the group?
I've not tried that exact thing but I have tried twice carefully to bring attention to mens day at work.
I stopped doing it and I probably won't do it again; it's just a simple way to get some mockery thrown at oneself even at the generally very civil place where I work.
Making a support club for men probably has the same problem as trying to start a UFO or vaccines scepticism book club - since it is taboo you will have a hard time attracting sane members.
(throwaway for obvious reasons of the culture war. /sigh)
One example might be the Isbister v. Boys' Club of Santa Cruz case, in which the Supreme Court of California ruled that, according to civil rights laws, no space could be legally barred to women. (imagine that same justification banning women-only spaces; it simply wouldn't happen, because of course it wouldn't).
Or, more famously, Earl Silverman's attempt to open a shelter for male domestic abuse survivors in Canada, for which he was ridiculed and ostracised and eventually, when the government refused to fund such a thing (male domestic abuse victims? Perish the thought!) had to shut it down, ending his own life in despair. Erin Pizzey, who founded the first women's shelters in the UK, faced similar harassment (including bomb threats serious enough that the police decided that they needed to intercept all of her mail to check it for explosives) when she began discussing the same thing, and was eventually driven out of her home country.
In fact, the dearth of male-focused help in general, even in situations where men are the overwhelming majority of the at-risk population. See, for example, homeless shelters in the UK. Ironically, some women in need of assistance escaping their abusers sometimes get turned away from these places because they come with male children.
Generally speaking, most "assistance" actually primarily aimed at men treats them like shit. See, for example, the Duluth model, the most common batterer intervention program in use in the United States. It explicitly pre-concludes that any domestic dispute is caused by men trying to dominate women. Ellen Pence, its creator, has even gone on record stating, "By determining that the need or desire for power was the motivating force behind battering, we created a conceptual framework that, in fact, did not fit the lived experience of many of the men and women we were working with. [...] Speaking for myself, I found that many of the men I interviewed did not seem to articulate a desire for power over their partner. Although I relentlessly took every opportunity to point out to men in the groups that they were so motivated and merely in denial, the fact that few men ever articulated such a desire went unnoticed by me and many of my coworkers. Eventually, we realized that we were finding what we had already predetermined to find." (emphasis added) This has not lessened its popularity as an intervention mechanism for domestic disputes.
I mention this not as an example of a male-only space being destroyed, but as an example of why they may be needed. Many men, emotional illiteracy aside, do in fact realize when the chips are stacked against them. They do not learn to socialize with other men in school, nor in the manner that men have historically been socialized. They are allowed in the public forum, but most attempts to share their perspective, at least in the more woke circles, are met with hostility - after all, they are the historical beneficiaries of the social order, and therefore they cannot also be allowed to be even perceived as victims, especially when being a victim confers social status. No matter that "privilege" is not uniformly distributed.
Philosophically speaking, men ought to have a male-only space if only for the benefit of being able to calibrate themselves against other men, rather than having to constantly downplay their own difficulties and miseries by the standards of women; a man ought to be able to feel bad about losing his job without having to also remind everyone that he still has it better than a woman who would be jobless and also facing sexism. He ought to be able to exult in a promotion or other achievement without "checking his privilege" and feeling guilty about how his success closes the doors for others who have not had the opportunities he has.
If men should be more emotionally intelligent, they need a safe space where they can express their emotions. It has become abundan...
In areas where men are the minority, there are spaces that cater to men.
For example, we have parent-child meetups here. Since it is almost exclusively mothers who show up (despite being open to all parents), they at some point introduced an extra meetup for fathers. This gives men an opportunity to take part in something with their kid where they aren't the only man in the room.
X-only spaces make sense when X is marginalized or a minority. If you start a kindergarten teacher group for men, noone is going to complain.
The "Girls Who Code" program was created because of the discrimination and bias women face in the tech industry (not to mention other workplaces and areas of life). Also, the existence of woman managers doesn't suddenly mean that sexism doesn't exist in the industry. I'd imagine that many woman managers have faced a lot of prejudice throughout their careers. And there's probably a large amount of women who want to get into technology, but are intimidated by the space and fear potential sexism.
Also, the reason that running a "boys club for computers" or a "men's IT society" wouldn't end well is because men already make up a large portion of the tech space and, like I said, there's a lot of gender bias in the tech world. This comment comes off as you using anecdotal evidence to disprove the marginalization women face.
I don't know if a men's teaching club would be accepted, but I can tell you I've been told by a female school teacher looking for work that it's much easier to get hired as a male because high school administrators are desperate for more male role models to help struggling male students given the lack of male staff in high schools.
It's easier to get hired as a male teacher because university and teaching school grads demographically skew female. There is less supply of male teachers ultimately which causes the high demand for male teachers is what I've heard.
Men's teacher support groups exist. Men's nursing support groups exist. Men's breast cancer support groups exist. Men's support groups in general exist. If you find a place in society where men are underrepresented, there is probably a support group for men in that space.
The problems women face in male-dominated fields are well documented. Blog posts and articles describing the discrimination are occasionally posted on HN, and if you're a frequent reader you must have seen them.
There are obvious issues like sexual harassment. Almost every woman I know has been a victim of it at some point, but I don't know any man who has been sexually harassed at the workplace. For this reason men typically think that sexual harassment at the workplace is not a big issue.
But there's also more subtle things, that are hard to measure since companies aren't open about them, like women being made lower offers for the same job with the same qualifications, or women being less likely to be promoted, or women straight up being refused the job because "they might leave the job soon to have children".
Getting evidence for these things is hard, because companies rarely give a reason why they are hiring or promoting someone, and even if they give a reason it's very rarely something that can be objectively measured.
Special "Help $Gender enter $Field_Where_Gender_Is_Rare" stuff makes sense, if (for whatever reason) it seems that having some fields highly gender-skewed is undesirable. And whatever the PC / ideological reaction, programs aimed the other way sound like a waste of resources.
Or maybe there are a bunch of "convince women that nursing is a career for them, too", "day care workers shouldn't all be men", "ladies can become receptionists", etc. programs that I'm not aware of.
Maybe, just maybe, the point of those events for women has something to do with the fact that everything else in the tech world is a de-facto boys' club.
My current team at work: 6 men.
Previous team at a different company: 27 men, 3 women.
The team before that: 5 men.
The team before that: 10 men, 2 women.
I guess we can debate "marginalized", but women are unquestionably a minority in tech.
No, the teams weren't trying to exclude women. Not at all. They were representative of the company and the entire industry. There are very few women in tech.
So then the question is why are very few women in tech? If you really dive into this, it's a chicken-and-egg problem: The fact that so few women are in tech makes the whole scene into sort of a frat house, which is often not a welcoming or kind environment to women, so women avoid it. A feedback loop. And one way you can try to combat that is by encouraging entry into the field. Et voilà: "Girls who code".
> I have had several jobs in tech. None of those work environments resembled a frat house. Maybe a few startups resemble a frat house, but is it really indicative of the industry as a whole?
Are the jobs you've worked at indicative of the industry as a whole?
I just realized that so many people always repeat that there aren’t many women in “tech.” But it’s really more like not many women in programming. In my experience, the majority of PMs, designer/artists, and tech writers, and about half of QA, have been women. Therefore only the programming team felt like a boys club, never the larger org or the company. The only place this wasn’t true was one tiny startup I worked at long ago.
Girls and women are marginalised in the area of technology. This site in particular has hosted terabytes of discussion of this problem. If you look back at some of the stories about conferences and why codes of conduct have been set up, you will see at least part of the publicly visible part of this.
This is why it’s perfectly socially acceptable to set up a specific group to give women and girls a chance to learn skills in an environment where they feel safe from sneering, lewd comments, and other such behaviour which is not conducive to learning, or simply having a good time.
The article under discussion here is important, because boys and men face a great many difficulties in life, but the Venn diagram of difficulties faced by men and women has problems unique to each and problems shared by both.
Complaining about people getting help in areas where they face a disproportionate struggle just seems unkind.
I believe what's rubbing many the wrong way is the obvious bias towards 'girls'. The name of the programs, the focus of resources based on being VAR rather than a need someone could be (E.G. how I similarly take mild offense at programs that happen to target 'RACE' rather than 'the POOR' (anyone impoverished, even if that happens to strongly correlate to various races in sadly common cases due to past discrimination)).
So, hypothetically, what do you and others believe needs to change? How would a 'girls can code/tech/etc' look if it couldn't //market// towards girls or any other focus of discrimination? Other than perhaps types of being in the 'have nots' category which any body-type could qualify for?
Women marginalized in technology was mostly bullshit abuse of statistics. It is just being assumed that fewer women has to be the result of discrimination. It is not.
> This is why it’s perfectly socially acceptable to set up a specific group to give women and girls a chance to learn skills in an environment where they feel safe from sneering, lewd comments, and other such behaviour which is not conducive to learning, or simply having a good time.
No. You just make it clear this is an environment where such behaviors are not tolerated.
Also, it's not true that women and girls are incapable of sneering and lewd comments.
You come across very much as the kind of person who believes boys are inherently deficient and deserve to fail, based on your assumptions about how boys will behave, and that they are incapable of behaving differently.
What does discussion on HN have to do with programs in schools? Really-- the tech industry may have issues but they are separate from how we raise and educate children, and the messaging we send those kids
I think the culture that allows for the sexist torment that you see in conferences, in games, etc is disgusting and cannot be tolerated.
That’s a leadership and culture failure. When a female employee or student is marginalized or harassed, that’s an issue that needs to be dealt with unequivocally and swiftly.
In the school scenario I’m familiar with, my son is in 5th grade. There isn’t a gamergate environment there. We should be exposing kids to technology and coding, period. School clubs should be building that culture where the idea of bullying girls is both unacceptable and repugnant.
> Complaining about people getting help in areas where they face a disproportionate struggle just seems unkind.
Women don't face a disproportionate struggle in tech. They are given more opportunities in tech than men are. There are uncountable scholarships, fellowships, hiring initiatives, mentoring initiatives, and all kinds of programs for women in tech - while there are none for men. There are many positions that are explicitly advertised as for women or for underrepresented minorities only. Companies and universities give preference to hiring and admitting women, even overtly. And finally, multiple studies showed that women are given preference in hiring for STEM positions.
The first step to help men is for us to admit that men are discriminated against, and it is very counterproductive when people pretend that is not the case.
My CS lectures barely have any women. 1/10 students in a class of 200-300 are women. In more difficult/less mainstream classes (operating systems, networking, sometimes PL theory), it's 1/20. The game development club I'm in has 2 woman in it (including me) out of the ~20 people that regularly show up. This is in 2019-2022.
My school also hosts a hackathon for women and underrepresented gender minorities every year (organized by a student org that rents out a building from the school for it). The hackathon is also open to high school students. Many people I've talked to there talk about how they only went into CS because someone they knew invited them to the hackathon, or have made friends and feel less alone in CS because of it.
There's a real need for these groups. Whether men needs their own groups is a separate discussion that I have no real stance on.
> There's a real need for these groups. Whether men needs their own groups is a separate discussion that I have no real stance on.
That doesn't imply there is a need for women-only groups. There can be a CS group for all genders and we just teach girls to stop being sexist and be part of that group (if they want to).
This isn't "girls being sexist." Like other folks have explained[0][1][2][3][4], women often feel uncomfortable in spaces where they're the minority and might even have negative experiences in situations like that. And thus, they are put off by joining those groups in general. Groups that encourage women to join help women feel less intimidated by the idea of joining those groups.
Men's comparative advantage, throughout human history, has always been their physical strength. It was the one thing a man could count on to provide value to society. That is no longer the case in our modern economy. You need intelligence, emotional intellect, and analytical skills. All of which men and women are on an equal footing at. So when you remove the ability to generate a viable income through physical labor, it's pretty obvious why a good portion of men are now left without anything useful to contribute.
I agreed with this until the last sentence. If men and women are on an equal footing, why are a good portion of men left without anything useful to contribute? I suppose this could hinge on the definition of "good portion." I personally don't think that a "good portion" of prime working age men or women are left without anything economically useful to contribute. American unemployment is currently low, hiring is up, wages are rising, and the coming AI revolution where robots do every job now appears more distant to me than it did 10 years ago.
>If men and women are on an equal footing, why are a good portion of men left without anything useful to contribute?
Point being that not everyone can be a doctor or a lawyer or a physicist. There will always be a good portion of the population that really has nothing to contribute economically but their labor. For women, these labor positions are the ones that have survived our transition to a mostly service based economy; healthcare, childcare, cleaning, food service, etc. For men, they mostly have not. The days of a man being able to use his comparative advantage of physical strength to earn above the median wage are long gone.
High physical strength is useful for several modern jobs we’re desperately in need of - in particular nurses and home health aides. There’s still construction too, once we defeat the NIMBYs.
Most of this “running out of work” thought is just excuses for the US’s bad economic management in the 90s-2000s; as the GP said, now we’re at 4% unemployment and anyone with skills will be able to find a way to use them. Anything can be a skill if it's unique enough - if AI took all the jobs, "being human" would be a skill. That's comparative advantage.
This is a spitball take, but I'm trying it out because I'm more interested in learning how it plays out than actually making a point.
Socialization is moving at a slower pace than the shift in economics. The trade deficit starting in the 1970s has overwhelmingly affected goods [1], resulting in the exporting of goods production overseas and leaving the US with a service-based economy[2]. The US at the time had a greater proportion of gender-dependent occupations[3]. The export of goods-producing jobs tended to disproportionately affect men as a result of this gender-occupation dissymmetry[4].
At the same time, people have been socialized with system of gender values. In the past these gender values were congruent with both gendered occupations[5] and gendered occupational values[5]. However, as the proportional of service occupations grew, a portion of men found themselves socialized with values[4] incongruent with the values associated with occupations now available to them. The lag between value socialization and economic realities represent a point of friction and frustration that is expressed as a feeling of being undervalued economically[7].
7. Gould, R. 1974. Measuring masculinity by the size of a paycheck. In: J. Pleck & J. Sawyer (Eds.) Men and masculinity (pp. 96 – 100). Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
There's a lot of speculation but it's not proven. One of the big challenges when comparing these kind of claims is that the brain is plastic so it requires extra work to figure out what percentage of the identified difference is explained by differences in what activities people engage in. Since most big studies show more variation within a group than between groups, there's good reason to question whether this is measuring anything other than social effects.
The other challenge is figuring out what activities actually have a low-level differences translate into significant advantages. There are very few job where a single low-level difference is both significant and the only path to success — in most fields, there isn't a single model of top performer.
First time I heard of rotators and wordcels, but yeah, when I was in high school we were actually given tests to see how much of a rotator or wordcel we really were -- the idea being to make career suggestions based on the results. I did fairly well on the rotator tests, which involved things like telling which way a particular gear or pulley in a given mechanism will turn. I struggled with the wordcel tests, which involved picking out a sequence of letters.
Do you know who ran the board on the wordcel tests? Like, all of the girls.
Just another anecdata point, so don't take it seriously.
- Re-discovered that hard and soft sciences (or, gasp, the liberal arts) attract different people
- Declared their preferences (and themselves) superior
- Invented a disparaging name for the inferior class
I feel like I've seen this movie before. It does not end well.
If by “the Internet intelligentsia” you mean one guy last month, sure. Not his fault a few VCs are promoting it.
His actual point is more like “ML developers are making a lot of money but don’t talk about themselves in the media; journalists don’t earn as much and you have to hear them complain about it all the time”.
It's a nonsensical idea that serves a narrative, so it's promoted by ignoramuses. Check.
Take this "actual point" to its logical ... well, I was going to say "conclusion", but it occurs to me that there's no point here at all. The unemployed are not happy? The ultra-wealthy know better than to incite class wars? No idea.
But anyone who coins the term "wordcel" to label a group they are not a part of, certainly seems to have ill intent.
Well, it is a joke. There's a genre of Twitter jokes based on "men are better at spatial visualization" studies where they imagine men entertaining themselves by rotating objects in their heads as a hobby.
I think the joke inventor made up a philosophy behind it to stop the VC guys from turning it into a culture war thing. He also put crypto guys under "wordcels" not "shape rotators" because they like writing whitepapers.
I see why you would conclude that "it's pretty obvious why a good portion of men are now left without anything useful to contribute." It sure looks that way based on the sheer volume of male resentment online. Try commenting on any forum with a female persona and you will be ready to call for mass internment of trolls.
But, the thing is, men are on not just equal footing, but a very advantageous footing especially where men dominate investment decisions. There is no excuse for men not to step up to the challenge of being equals when others carry a heavy disadvantage, still.
I think your analyisis is missing something more fundamental - men's fundamental biological advantage is higher risk-tolerance, physical strength was associated with surviving physical risk to a degree that it justified the higher calorie expanditure powerful muscles require. Even with a lot of mechanisation of heavy lifting, men would still be more willing to do anything dangerous because a kin group can afford to lose a few men. It seems less that modern society has a reduced need for physical strength than that it has a reduced need for individuals to take on personal risk - and in fact, the way that risk is largely spread out through society in the form of the social safety net, one might say it has not just a reduced need but a reduced tolerance for risky behaviour. Tough times for men indeed. The instinct to take risks for admiration from our social sphere runs very deep, and there are only so many intellectual or financial risks worth taking.
Nobody has ever wanted to overload a cargo ship until it sinks but it seems like in the past ~10-15yr the idea of worthwhile risks even existing have become demonized except in the most abstract settings (math, finance, etc).
In 1980 the guy that fixed a radio antenna in a blizzard because "what good is fall protection if I don't use it" got told he did a good job. Today he would be chewed out for taking unnecessary risks.
Even in finance, risk has become so socialised (thinking in particular of the wall street bailouts) that it's hard for an individual to take on a larger share of the risk for a larger reward even when he honestly wants to do so.
> it's pretty obvious why a good portion of men are now left without anything useful to contribute.
Well that went downhill quickly.
You start out with men and women on equal footing. Then the next sentence men no longer have anything useful to contribute.
Shouldn't the obvious conclusion be that men and women have equally as much to contribute? And therefor you would expect an equal number of men and women succeeding academically?
>Shouldn't the obvious conclusion be that men and women have equally as much to contribute?
Not really, because what men traditionally had to contribute was their physical strength to perform labor. Having that as a requirement for many lucrative positions like manufacturing and resource extraction is what allowed men to out earn women with their labor in the past. Women never filled those jobs with physical requirements en masse, and so they now already occupy a far greater portion of the other parts of the workforce that men must now compete for.
> As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline.
Conversely: as young men's potential future employability rises, their romantic prospects also decline. That is - the men who'll grow up to be stable and reliable have lonely teenage years.
I'm one of these men and I hope this actually works out in the end. I sense that men also have a biological clock but we can reassure ourselves that we can keep putting off settling down because of the biological reality of male reproduction. If I just get a little more successful, then I will be more attractive in courtship. But the thing is, you lose track of time really quickly. And, it is quite the bootstrapping problem to catch up on romantic social skills that you didn't cultivate earlier in life. Being awkward around women in High School is a given, but as a thirty-something it can be profoundly uncomfortable and off-putting.
>" Don't go the "creepy incel who hates all women and Chads" route"
Absolutely. I am on the autism spectrum so part of the difficulty I have can be attributed to that. However I accept that my social shortcomings are my own responsibility. I think a big part of the problem is finding new friends now that I am in my 30's and life is very stagnant.
Anecdotal, but I had this problem for many years, I stuck to my existing (small) social circle which included no single women, and that social circle got increasingly small over the years as people moved away, settled down, etc. I moved somewhere where I didn't know anyone at all, and after a few months of just spending every waking moment alone, I just started going to the same place where people are and doing the same thing every day.
I think all it takes is going somewhere where people are and being friendly, somewhere that doesn't include existing friends and acquaintances, just sticking with it and not really caring who thinks what about you. Anywhere but a bar would be my criteria, and ideally not a commercial establishment. For me it was the local swimming pool in my community.
I found myself in a similar boat until I started doing something that had a high community dependency that is also less extremely gendered. So, for example, biking and hiking are not gendered activities and a variety of humans do them. Foodie things, business things, specific crafts will also do this. Consistently appearing in them helps a lot. This is dependent on how “evident” your autism is though. There is a good amount of therapy that can be done to mitigate some of it, but there are also groups (fandoms for example) that are both less obviously gendered and also more open to awkwardness (like writing fantasy novels). Once you’re in an activity for the fun of the activity, friendships and the like also tend to form organically, like sewing seeds in a field and then allowing rain to trigger sprouting.
The problem is people, including women, get to pick their friends. If you're branded as awkward or ugly all women will avoid you leading to a self-perpetuating cycle.
Since women can pick their friends and generally pick gregarious, outgoing, and socially competent men for their friend groups, they ignore and do not understand the type of man who is labelled an incel.
No, these are false premises. All of my female partners have had the feedback from someone that "you're just like a guy". The so called "girl next door" wearing sweats, and rocking a bad-hair-day ponytail because she's late for her lab may be way hotter when she dresses up than the median film actress. She may be an awesome friend. She may be a frickin' monster in bed, without giving off any porn-star vibes.
Incels are fundamentally working off a broken model of women, attraction, dating, and sex.
EDUT> Not getting "Stacy" is making them crazy, but they don't realize that they don't want Stacy. Stacy's frumpy-seeming neighbour will rock their world.
> Incels are fundamentally working off a broken model of women, attraction, dating, and sex.
That broken model is unfortunately widespread in both genders. Some "girls next door" can basically feel like failures in the dating/relationships sphere, which ends up making them even less appealing to others. It's worth trying to fix this of course, but it's not always easy.
The former part is the cause of the latter. The guys I've known like this were trying to treat it like a game and/or had unrealistic expectations, and that ended about as well as it always does. Once they started being genuine and realistic, things changed dramatically.
You have no idea. I am sure there are some men who change for the better, but there's plenty of men who try being genuine and realistic and get no positive response.
Well, I certainly don’t know your friends but I can say that in my experience the guys who _said_ that tended to have, shall we say, gaps in their self-assessment or were unable to accept that there was nothing you could do to make one specific person feel differently.
Good luck to you. I'm in the same boat and it's comforting to not be alone. I've sacrificed a social and romantic life to get to this point (20 year old, fairly well paid DevOps guy). There are days that I immensely regret leaving school at 16 and terminating my youth early but financially speaking it was the best decision ever. I just push onwards, hope for life to become fun, and hope that I won't become a cautionary tale.
Please please please try to find good outgoing non-techy roommates that you can tolerate while you are at this age. Even better if they are good with girls. Do not live alone just because you can afford to do so. Try to spend as little as possible of your salary and regardless of the market buy a house/apartment as soon as you can. Live in the smallest room.
There are plenty of excellent places in the world where you can have a reasonable quality of life for about $10k/year, your goal is to have that covered from your real estate income. Go do that as soon as you can, travel slow. Overnight trains, house/pet sitting, couch surfing, 'etc are all good things to try.
Try to find a remote job and never touch your salary income again, keep investing it. Do not mention your net worth to anyone.
You will find in a few years that "DevOps" is a very finite skillset so there is no real need to push so hard as you'll know most of what you need to know in about 3 more years if you do not already.
No reason not to have a social and romantic life and great weekends. I'm quite confident your employer and less talented peers are exploiting your age and willingness to put in long hours.
Don't be available after hours and avoid being on call as much as possible.
You only get your 20s once. Make memories.
Money is important but you need less than you think and is never a worthy goal in and of itself. You can convince yourself of this by reading up on behavioral economics. Optimize for quality of life. Have a FU-money number, reach it, and bail.
Appreciate the advice. It is a bit harder than it sounds though. Building a friend circle from scratch is harder than any technical challenge I've faced before. I overcame my social anxiousness for the most part but that doesn't mean I can cold approach people and build a conversation up to a friendship.
Anyway, HN is hardly the place for this kind of topic but thanks again. I'm giving it my best but it's not a piece of cake.
HN is certainly the place for this kind of topic, it is one of the most important topics discussed here. I've been on this site for over a decade and was exactly in your shoes when I found it.
Tech crap comes and goes and is repetitive. You'll sponge it all up sooner or later anyway.
It is absolutely not a piece of cake, I know buddy. It requires a massive investment on your part and I am flailing around to really drive home the fact that it is worth literally ALL THE EFFORT YOU CAN MUSTER. Guaranteed.
I sincerely hope you succeed in making the very necessary changes you know deep down you have to make. Best of luck!
If there's any solace for you, there are plenty of similarly brilliant kids as you that did stay in school to try to get that 'college' experience, and still are unsatisfied with themselves and feel out of place. Think about if you were in that normal streamlined path in college, would your personality and innate nature really do a 180? Highly doubt it, even though most people think they can exercise a locus of control and that external circumstances can change their deep inner character. There's a reason why you gravitated towards leaving school and being a young genius and working early. You live a unique (and impressive) life. Try to live your life out like a movie and don't look back at the what ifs. You're 20 too, haha. You're a baby. Your future is fucking unscripted. Don't worry about any of that shit. Your life is just starting.
Surely one's romantic prospects should not be set in the teenage years. Or even be affected all that much by contingent employment status, when future potential might be far more relevant.
As another reply touches on, there's a developmental process to romance. A guy in his thirties dating for the first time will have a seriously hard time because of his inexperience. I'm not saying that it's impossible at that point but missing the boat in your teenage years can stunt this development. I think Jordan Peterson has described this in one of his lectures (it's an interesting idea regardless of what you think of his character).
a guy in his thirties dating for the first time will have troubles IF he didn't have good friendly social interactions BEFORE that with both women and men.
Interesting. I'm just one person, but: I've enjoyed stable employment as a programmer since I was 23, and my teenage years and early 20s were easily my most socially (and romantically) active, and I rarely felt lonely then. I've felt most lonely in my late 20s and early 30s.
I sometimes wonder if my career destroyed my ability to make and keep friends.
Social groups just dry up when you get to your late 20's as people are marrying off, having kids, and only maintaining the utmost of friendships. I know it's brutal but it's a time thing... significant others and families take lots of time if you're doing it right so socializing time becomes of higher value/expense.
It was way easier to meet people when I was younger - not just romantic partners. Social groups were much more cohesive and much less based around couple activity. People were just down for whatever and would jump at something just for the experience. I had tons of friends I could just call/SMS like "hey I'm bored let's go find a show" whereas I would feel inappropriate doing this as an adult.
I think late 20s is when most people lose touch w/ remnants of their college social circle if they're not naturally outgoing. Usually everyone has moved away or married off at this point. It's fairly normal.
Is this actually true? This feels a bit like a post-facto generalization from specific situations. "I was a nerd and didn't go on dates. Being a nerd got me into software and now I make a lot of money. Therefore people who are on the path to high earning are not getting dates."
My experience has been that a lot of the stereotypical jocks ended up in finance and are doing quite well and that software is no longer dominated by social loners.
Maybe true but there's a lot of survivorship bias in the population. Software shops are often hurting for clear communicators. Winsome folks tend to get bumped into leadership roles even if they start out slinging curly braces and semicolons.
Even if this were true (jocks go into management and management is useless), it would be the opposite of what the parent was saying about the people on the path to high pay rarely having romantic relationships since management tends to pay well.
I don’t know where you went to school. I guess I know a “jock” type who was running a meth lab, I guess that is a kind of management, at least until he went to prison.
The meme is not about income or physical fitness, it's about psychological aggressiveness. Highly un-aggressive men are considered emotionally unattractive and don't get dates because, for one thing, they're afraid to ask, but they're nice and dependable and will take care of you forever. Highly aggressive men come across as dynamic and interesting, and turn out to have five mistresses in three states and a warrant out for their arrest in two of them.
As a guy, you can handily subvert this dynamic by learning to act assertive in a way that implicitly appeals to others' sensation seeking, without being so aggressive that you end up being off-putting to others or even scaring them away.
Poe's law, sorry. (Although some truth snuck in with the parenthetical about not asking.) The arrest warrants were supposed to give away the joke...
If you're wondering why people see it that way, just imagine a world where a large number of people had undiagnosed social anxiety, and another large group of people had undiagnosed sociopathy, and they both got pushed out of normal society into the same place. Then the ones with social anxiety look at the ones with sociopathy and associate their slightly greater success with short-term relationships with the condition they do have, rather than the one they don't.
A lot of stable and reliable men have really good teenage years.
There is definitely an arc-type of socially awkward boys who grow up to be engineers, accountants, etc. But within that group, romantic prospects are positively correlated with employment prospects. An awkward guy w/ a job is better than an awkward guy w/o one.
> men who'll grow up to be stable and reliable have lonely teenage years.
You are describing nerds having high paying tech jobs, right?
I find that little bit short sighted, there are huge number(probably the majority) of people with balanced lifestyles who are employed in stable jobs, just not really in a trendy high paying or high status sectors.
There are also a sizeable number of people who don't posses the nerdy characteristics at all and still are good in academics and business. Colleges are actually full of that kind of people, they all end up in good jobs.
Hey, sports teach valuable life skills -- life skills the socially awkward often miss out on. Things like grit, teamwork, and not being a sore loser, as well as the importance of keeping your body in shape. In fact we are having a crisis of not enough boys doing sports, and as a consequence elite military units can't find enough recruits who meet the baseline physical fitness standards.
A reasonably intelligent person with an athletic background probably did well socially in HS, and will probably do well in the working world.
> That is - the men who'll grow up to be stable and reliable have lonely teenage years.
Wouldn't that be nice? That sort of karma is not really guaranteed to exist. Chances are the ostracized lonely introvert will be worse off due to poor networking and if he finds any success at all it will be despite many disadvantages. Meanwhile, asshole bullies could very well go on to become their bosses because sociopathy is often found in powerful people.
great book on this topic is friedan's feminine mystique (1963). She wrote about the spiritual crisis affecting a generation of young women who were more likely to be 'homemakers' than their mothers. worth reading at least the intro IMO for anyone who feels dissatisfied with their work / life / contribution
not sure how yang made this his topic. my sense of his random walk is 'had a job at yahoo' -> future of work -> UBI -> numbers guy -> times square -> ?
really miss the andrew yang policy bot on twitter though
> great book on this topic is friedan's feminine mystique (1963)
Another is “The Will To Love: Men, Masculinity, and Change” by bell hooks (2004)
There aren’t a lot of authors that I feel get it right about issues relating to men and masculinity. Bell hooks is one of the few.
> not sure how yang made this his topic. my sense of his random walk is 'had a job at yahoo' -> future of work -> UBI -> numbers guy -> times square -> ?
I live in NYC and spend a lot of time online, so we got kinda saturated with Yang during the last year because he was in the mayoral race. As far as I can tell, he’s a passionate self-promoter, and engages on a shallow level with tons of different topics as some kind of cynical way to promote his brand. If he were at least more skilled at it I would respect him more, but he’s made so many obvious PR blunders and it’s obvious he doesn’t listen to advisors. He pokes around at sensitive topics like race and sexism, but as far as I can tell it’s so he can stay in the news, because he rarely has anything interesting to say on those subjects.
It seems like a random walk because he’s doing whatever will get him in the news online.
I also live in NYC, and completely disagree with this take on Yang. I can't think of anyone who gets hated more unfairly than him. He provides actual substantive policy suggestions with evidence to support his claims. He doesn't resort to dirty muck-raking the same way that the other mayoral candidates and the NY Times did. In fact, NY Times and the NY Daily News spent so much time focusing on bashing Yang that it's literally the reason why Eric Adams of all people ended up being our mayor.
I read the policies on Yang's website during the NYC race and dug into them.
> He provides actual substantive policy suggestions with evidence to support his claims.
This is untrue. The policy suggestions are all poorly researched and reminded me of the kind of ideas you'd see on a comedy show like Silicon Valley... you know, TV depictions of tech bros coming up with "solutions" for problems that they don't understand.
I'm not saying that they were all laughable, but it was very hit or miss. Yang had some good ideas mixed in with bad ideas, and I think a combination of inexperience, lack of deeper research, and a refusal to listen to experts is what caused all the problems in his policies.
> In fact, NY Times and the NY Daily News spent so much time focusing on bashing Yang that it's literally the reason why Eric Adams of all people ended up being our mayor.
Yang ran a incompetent campaign. He relied far too heavily on internet presence--Twitter, Reddit, etc. I don't know why he thought that was enough. Say what you will about Eric Adams--Adams wasn't in my top 5, and so I didn't vote for him--but Eric Adams knew how to work with the press and he spent far more time hitting the streets during the election than Yang did. Adams was far more in touch with the people in NYC who vote, far more knowledgeable about how the press works, and had experience with NYC politics.
You can complain about "hit pieces", but Yang was out of touch with most voters in NYC, made a series of obvious PR blunders, showed no competence at working with the press, and had nearly zero experience working with NYC politics... Yang didn't even vote in local elections.
> The policy suggestions are all poorly researched and reminded me of the kind of ideas you'd see on a comedy show like Silicon Valley... you know, TV depictions of tech bros coming up with "solutions" for problems that they don't understand.
Spare me the uneducated "tech bro" commentary that I've heard throughout. It's unoriginal. I'm eager to hear your ranked choices and what policies made so much more sense to you though than Yang's and what Yang's good ideas were.
Yang made PR plunders sure, but it was completely disproportionate. It's odd to me that you can be so complimentary towards Eric Adams though, Brooklyn borough president, a position that's notorious for doing literally nothing. Voting in local elections is important, but I consider living in NYC rather than Fort Lee, NJ to be mayor to be even more important. NYC newspapers certainly didn't care though.
Here's the best example of the muck-raking that I can think of, which I've been thinking about since Michelle Go's murder. Yang talked about the mentally ill, homeless population, the need for enforcement of Kendra's law, psych beds, and the concern of ordinary New Yorkers. The media and voters ran with the soundbites to mean that Yang hates homeless people. Kendra's Law would have saved Michelle Go's life by the way.
> Spare me the uneducated "tech bro" commentary that I've heard throughout. It's unoriginal.
Comedy writers make original takes, I’m just some rando on the internet sharing my opinion. Likely it’s gonna be an opinion you heard before.
> I'm eager to hear your ranked choices and what policies made so much more sense to you though than Yang's and what Yang's good ideas were.
Why?
Are you looking for five (5) opportunities to roast different politicians running in the Democratic primary that I think were better qualified for the mayoral position than Yang? No thanks, I don’t see the point. Pick anyone that ran. Chances are, I preferred that person over Yang.
You’re also casting the discussion strictly in terms of policies. Policies are only one of the reasons that I would choose one candidate over another—I disliked Yang for lots of other reasons besides policy.
> Yang made PR plunders sure, but it was completely disproportionate.
It wasn’t just “PR blunders”, he made mistake after mistake, and those mistakes betrayed unfamiliarity with basic stuff that a good NYC mayor should know. He proposed making domestic violence shelters (that already exist), he proposed having the MTA take control of various bridges and tunnels (which are already under its control), he made comments about the conflict in Israel and Palestine (with predictable results). And then when he (predictably) got some bad press, he whined about it like a schoolkid being bullied at recess.
It would be one thing if he actually were a little kid getting picked on by bullies. But he’s an adult, this is politics, and the reason he got picked on so much by the press is because he was a constant source of entertainment—either when he made a basic mistake, or when he whined about how he was being treated by the press. That kind of behavior gets clicks and eyeballs online.
> It's odd to me that you can be so complimentary towards Eric Adams though…
Maybe I was relying too much on subtext. “Say what you will about X” one of the most uncomplimentary ways you can introduce a subject into a discussion. Even though grammatically, it’s a request for you to talk about Eric Adams, it’s not actually a request for you to talk about Eric Adams.
I don’t know if the above explanation is appropriate or welcome to you, but I have started explaining subtext in direct terms, for various reasons.
> Yang talked about the mentally ill, homeless population, the need for enforcement of Kendra's law, psych beds, and the concern of ordinary New Yorkers.
Yeah, among other things, he proposed homeless shelters dedicated to domestic violence victims, which already exist. He talked about a ton of things, but talk isn’t enough. He showed that he lacked basic knowledge about the policies he proposed.
Perhaps you mean The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love?
Also, it is bizarre to characterize Yang's mayoral campaign as listening too little to advisors. He seemed a completely different person than in the presidential campaign, and it was mostly because of all the expensive new consultants.
I know in some areas like declining college enrollment men are definitely disproportionately effected, but can you be so sure for other areas that the article cites as evidence?
like more men being raised by single mothers, or declining wages - I imagine phenomena like this would be effecting both genders roughly equally? I do not know - but without knowing for sure, I am more skeptical of the article's premise
Andrew Yang makes some good points in this piece, particularly about positive masculinity and role models. Whether fair or not, the perception that the left is hostile to men has driven recruitment for the far right, and that merits some reflection.
But he's also really facile about underlying economic causes. It's easy to blame problems on "our culture has been broken by the wokes!", but many of the problems of young men are not unique to them. Fewer women are entering college, also. Women are dropping out of the workforce, also. More young women are living with their parents, also. Is that because they lacked strong masculine role models?
Or is it because the rising costs of college, housing, healthcare, and living have made the traditional path much less attainable? Absent fathers didn't do that. These are the same patterns you see in any country with a shrinking economy; it's just a shock to Americans who feel they were promised better.
(In summary: Maybe Andrew Yang should spend more time talking to Bernie Sanders)
I didn't really get the sense that he was placing all the blame on "the wokes" as you put it though that is most certainly a factor in my opinion. The data he points out is relative to the state of things for women in most cases and shows that men are falling behind in dramatic ways. I don't think he is necessarily trying to say its the only issue of the day.
As with any challenged population, blaming the victim is unfair in the majority of cases, is unproductive in finding solutions, and it creates division where it is unwarranted. But the phrase "positive masculinity" is fraught.
Ease in befriending and reaching real camaraderie with women does not depend on masculinity at all. It depends on seeing others as equals. I sure don't think about masculinity and whether I'm doing it right. What would that do?
I doubt the kind of masculinity advice Jordan Peterson is slinging helps any of the men who listen to him. Instead, they find comfort and self-justification in that advice. It isn't changing their outcomes. It isn't the on-ramp to good relationships. It is the on ramp to the "intellectual dark web" and that will keep your dick dry more reliably than anything.
> Ease in befriending and reaching real camaraderie with women does not depend on masculinity at all. It depends on seeing others as equals.
¿Por qué no los dos? A positive worldview and mindset makes it even easier to see others as equal. The negative 'woke' mindset is hardly conducive to true equality.
> ... Jordan Peterson ...
Jordan Peterson has never thought very well of seeking "comfort and justification". He's the "clean your room and get your ducks lined up instead of blaming the world for your failure" guy. I'm not sure you're familiar with his thought.
I don't understand how the phrase "positive masculinity" is fraught, males tend to seek out male role models which is only natural and these role models should be positive influences, further males should not feel that all male traits are "toxic". I don't know that the article called out Jordan Peterson and if that is your only example of "positive masculinity" than we are probably talking past each other.
I've coached high school sports teams, both boys and girls, for the last two decades. I've seen some of these trends unfold over the years with my student athletes. My observation is girls are just more motivated than boys, even for something fun like sports practices and workouts, girls in general will show up more consistently than boys. The teachers I've spoken to at the school where I coach have confirmed the same thing with school work. What I've seen is the boys that are successful at school or sports have at least one parent pushing them at home, and from my experience it's often the mother. I'm not trying to downplay the role of positive male role models and their impact, but what it seems like many boys are missing these days is motivation and drive, and that can come from anywhere. I don't know what it is but it just seems like girls are much better at thinking about the future and putting in the work to get where they want to be, boys often need the guidance of an adult to steer them that way, and fewer of them are getting it now.
High school is a pretty special timeframe where girls on average have more conscientious, adult-like mindsets that their equally-aged male peers. That's a recipe for educational success too. But it doesn't last - males do catch up eventually and might even do better.
This is speculation on my part, but I've felt that it's because women know they may want a child in their lifetime and due to their biological clock it gives them a window to plan back from.
They know they should do it between certain ages which means they need a career which means they need an education e.t.c.
There's nothing equivalent for men, no event they can see coming within a decade or two that helps anchor them in their lives.
I think it's probably some of both. Boys are definitely more distracted with stuff like video games than girls, but then again many girls are absolutely obsessed with social media (TikTok/Snapchat etc) and still manage to succeed in school and sports. I do also think it has to do with the age of maturation, girls just mature earlier than boys.
I'm not disagreeing with your point, but I don't think this entire trend can be blamed on a lack of fathers. I'm fortunate now that I coach at a school in a pretty affluent community, the vast majority of the kids I coach have married parents with active fathers in the house. I still see many of these young men fairly checked out by high school. I think in many of these cases boys are over protected these days, they grow up without the freedom to explore and test themselves and their parents create an environment where it's OK not to try or put forth an honest effort or finish your commitments etc.
Years ago I coached at an inner city school, lots of single moms, I've seen the results first hand. I'd like to think for many of those kids I was a positive male role model, maybe one of the only ones in their life. Unfortunately I don't live in that area anymore.
I have two elementary-aged children, a boy and a girl. They fit the pattern you describe to a T, and I think most teachers' experience would agree.
So anecdotally, the theory that (in general) boys need more nudging than girls from someone in their life in order to be successful rings true. But what would account for a modern change? Are there fewer people pushing, now? Are boys more resistant to it now, or maybe more distracted? Are expectations of boys different now than they were in the past?
Although your reply is buried beneath a lot other comments, I do think you are right on this! People that prefer book learning and listening (passively) to a teacher have an advantage with the current teaching methodologies than people that prefer hands-on learning..
> Are boys more resistant to it now, or maybe more distracted?
Or perhaps parents are more distracted. Much has been made of how our digital age has made us, as individuals, more distracted and less connected to individuals in our life. For a parent, it doesn't seem unlikely that that would translate to being less invested in their child, or at least not as proactive in this kind of nudging.
Schools are structured to benefit girls, and the deck is absolutely stacked against boys. The vast majority of teachers are female, and they mark boys worse for equivalent work. [1] Boys generally require more physical activity than girls, yet the majority of school is "sit down and stare at this whiteboard".
Of course they're less motivated, it's quite literally a rigged game.
I think you're oversimplifying what is a massive systemic issue into two points that, while true, might not contribute as large of an impact as you're assuming.
Also, just in defence of female teachers, I don't think it matters so much that they're women, but that they understand that boys will be boys. Anti-male teachers were, at least in the experience of myself and a friend who went to a different school (we discussed this once), definitely present but firmly in the minority.
Has this ever not been the case? I remember that girls were way more mature than boys in HS quite well, it was common knowledge and nobody questioned it. They just don't mature as fast.
> But he's also really facile about underlying economic causes. It's easy to blame problems on "our culture has been broken by the wokes!", but many of the problems of young men are not unique to them. Fewer women are entering college, also. Women are dropping out of the workforce, also. More young women are living with their parents, also. Is that because they lacked strong masculine role models?
You're not wrong, but at the risk of drawing an unhelpful analogy, I'll point out that the "all lives matter" response to "black lives matter" missed the point in the same way. Of course the prospects of everyone is important, but describing how young men have distinct and perhaps underappreciated experiences should be a viable conversation that doesn't get bogged down before it really gets going.
I disagree, and here's why: Andrew Yang is ignoring the elephant in the room. It's not just that the concerns I brought up are another factor, it's that they are by far the dominant factor in why young men are dropping out and discontent. At least in my opinion.
To use another analogy: it's like going to the ER for a sucking chest wound and being told you should reduce your cholesterol. They're not wrong, but this is probably not the most pressing concern.
Yes, exactly. This is a recurring problem with Yang... he talks about a lot of subjects, but it's clear that he's barely scratching the surface of the problems he's talking about. My impression is that his way of engaging with a topic evolved on mainstream Twitter, and he's applying those same Twitter-oriented techniques in other avenues.
He ran on these core issues that the economy is failing the people (read: "A War on Normal People", it's just packed with data about what you're thinking about). This article focuses on one angle, but not doesn't encompass the entire view (which he already spent years campaigning on)
I believe he addresses the root causes more than Bernie. Free college + federal jobs, or rather should we live in a society in where corporations are so productive that people shouldn't just follow a college track + work themselves to death to stay afloat
The politics side of this scares me too. And I don't really have an answer.
Ideas for how we can push for more equality, inclusivity, opportunity, without causing this far-right reaction?
Maybe it's unavoidable since we're often talking about structural change to benefit one group, and the other side feel (wrongly) that for others to have more they have to have less. All lives matter is an example.
The same thing is happening with trans and queer rights (which also tags along with gender roles like this article talks about).
A scary % of people feel under attack or at least a group of politicians is generating/amplifying this for their gain.
I'm about to be a bit facetious but scarily not really, a lot of people truly think that a mob of commies is trying to recruit their kids to be gay/trans and that 'men/boys' (part of the issue here is their understanding of gender) will invade their bathrooms and take over their sports.
This backlash is actually producing legislation to further political agendas and harm kids.
This weeks "Don't say gay" bill in Florida is shocking to me.
Would ban LGBTQ topics in schools. And likely force counselors to out kids to their parents, lest they be sued - the TX trick that is going to be abused on all social issues from now on.
It's like one step forward culturally, two steps back legally.
I wonder if social media technology is as much at fault as the neoliberal program of exporting well-paid manufacturing jobs overseas and replacing them with low-paid service jobs (with the difference going into the pockets of the shareholders) is.
If children are being raised on TikTok, okay, the average video length on TikTok is a couple minutes. Advertisements are now 5-15 seconds. This is not conducive to 'long attention span'. Now, imagine popping these kids into a classroom and expecting them to pay close attention for, say, 15 minutes, without any breaks. What to do... diagnose them with ADHD and dose them with amphetamines, what else? Of course this is the same issue for girls and boys but is generally going to create more of a dumbed-down population. Kids are probably better off playing video games instead, those require more attention. Even better, encourage them to read actual books.
I wonder if the WaPo would be interested in publishing any critiques of social media effects on children, given their ties to Big Tech... Let's see... "New report: Most teens say social media makes them feel better, not worse, about themselves (2018)"
Corporate media claims... remember this one? "NAFTA and China WTO will raise the standard of living for all Americans!"
> I wonder if the WaPo would be interested in publishing any critiques of social media effects on children, given their ties to Big Tech... Let's see... "New report: Most teens say social media makes them feel better, not worse, about themselves (2018)"
Oh come on. You're either being misleading, or have been mislead. What you wrote doesn't make any sense:
1. Why would the existence of an example of one type of article show the absence of a different type? It's not like the Washington Post cannot report on multiple sides of an issue.
2. A single article from five years ago? How is that supposed to support such a sweeping statement?
> Corporate media claims... remember this one? "NAFTA and China WTO will raise the standard of living for all Americans!"
As far as I can tell, you just made that up. Literally no Google hits: https://www.google.com/search?q="NAFTA+and+China+WTO+will+ra... (at the time of this writing, it looks like your comment hasn't been indexed yet). So, no, no one "remembers" that one.
And even if if the WaPo did publish an article claiming exactly that (most likely some kind of advocacy on the op-ed page), what's the big deal? Do you think they should censor articles like that? Perhaps by using their precognitive abilities to know who the future will prove wrong?
It's kind of ironic that many people's who criticize the media for being some kind of propaganda rag issue critiques that implicitly advocate for it to be a propaganda rag.
> As far as I can tell, you just made that up. Literally no Google hits
NAFTA was passed in the very early days of the internet. Here's a great quote about it from former presidential candidate Ross Perot via wikipedia:
"We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, ... have no health care—that's the most expensive single element in making a car—have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south. ... when [Mexico's] jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals."
Perot was from Texas, and mocked by corporate media as a clueless hillbilly for suggesting that NAFTA would be a bad deal for Americans. It was one of the few issues Noam Chomsky and Rush Limbaugh and all the major unions agreed on. Trump, whether sincere or not, uses it as one of his main talking points because it is absolutely true. Selling out our capacity to manufacture our own goods has been a terrible choice for Americans. We can't make the things our civilization needs to function. We have hollowed out entire metro areas and replaced steady paychecks and fairly cohesive social units with "gig" work and broken families.
That's a long way of saying their memory is accurate, but I think it's a critical moment to understand in modern US history. NAFTA was a big fucking deal, and the owners of corporate media spared no one to make sure it would get passed. They understood the power it would give them in terms of wealth accumulation and bargaining power to beat down unions and wages. Everyone thought Clinton wouldn't capitulate since it was unpopular with Democrats, but Clinton was attracted to and further corrupted by Wall St power and depended on them for guidance.
For a lot of Americans, NAFTA was the beginning of the end of their community. They are still pissed off about it, and that's the reason the criticism of the Clintons can turn vile in certain circles. It's not entirely unearned. I don't like the Clintons, though I voted for her as the lesser of two evils in 2016.
>>> Corporate media claims... remember this one? "NAFTA and China WTO will raise the standard of living for all Americans!"
>> As far as I can tell, you just made that up. Literally no Google hits
> NAFTA was passed in the very early days of the internet. Here's a great quote about it from former presidential candidate Ross Perot via wikipedia:
I'm well aware. What I meant was the headline he "quoted" was almost certainly made up (I mean "NAFTA and China WTO"? There was a bit of a time gap between those things). Obviously there were advocates who made grand predictions in favor of free trade in general, and advocates who said that was all BS (and for the record the latter have been proven to be far more correct). The issue I have is with the sloppy thinking and sloppy argumentation in the GGP.
A lot of people seem to lazily think of the media as a unitary agent, and think that agent's intentions are revieled in some random cherrypicked op-eds they read sometime that pissed them off. That's almost as big of a pet peeve of mine as libertarianism.
That's not to say it can't be taken by a zeitgeist or its participants don't show bias, but it's kind of an important thing that ought to be thought about more carefully and less conspiratorially.
> Selling out our capacity to manufacture our own goods has been a terrible choice for Americans. We can't make the things our civilization needs to function. We have hollowed out entire metro areas and replaced steady paychecks and fairly cohesive social units with "gig" work and broken families.
I've heard the causation goes the other way for ADHD.
TV and TikTok don't cause ADHD. They're products that arise to exploit people's attention, and they work excellently on people with poor executive function. TV doesn't cause ADHD, ADHD causes TV.
You can probably train attention span, and there are ways to cope with ADHD (I cope pretty well, and I have only mild symptoms), but it's measurable and it's genetic.
I guess you and I would agree on the conclusion - Treat social media like any other addictive drug: Regulate it, don't let kids get hooked on it, maybe even discourage adults from abusing it.
I think a lot of it comes down to, video and human faces exploit something deep in your brain. Maybe Hacker News just feels high-brow to me because there aren't image macros and constant ":O" clickbait thumbnails like some other sites.
I don't know, the vast majority of teens are users of TikTok, and attention spans are undoubtedly decreasing across the board. Everyone. Yet I don't think the majority of the population had ADHD previously. If the incidence of ADHD was really like the 4-8% in the medical literature, then we would see 4-8% of teens hooked to TikTok, but no, it's a majority (>50%) of teens that are hooked to Tiktok/youtube/instagram.
I could see it go either way, but I think it's important to distinguish that apps/platforms that exploit short attention spans don't exclusively have effect on people with ADHD (nor do all ADHD-diagnosed people neccesarily use TikTok). There's a number of reasons why people might want to seek out short-form content; they're on the go, they can't focus at the precise moment they want to peruse social media, or they want to blow by a huge amount of diverse content in a short amount of time.
That being said, I despise TikTok personally and would even go as far as to say that these short-form content platforms are reinforcing lower attention spans, but does it cause ADHD? I think that's a stretch. What's more likely is that it turns susceptible individuals into "whales" who sink time into it like nobody else. Not just ADHD folks, but those who are lonely or lack socialization too.
My observation is that we are going to have a radical rebalancing of who reproduces and who doesn’t.
Lot of men and women who are generally not too motivated to seek out a companion, lose weight, put in the work to make it happen just…won’t pass on genetics.
Children are a lot of work and energy.
I’m highly introverted and high earning. My wife was the aggressor in my case. She pretty much made it all happen.
I think the ball is firmly in the woman’s court now. Women have most of the advantages (education, societal promotion, fit in better with our institutions) yet i see so many women who are generally apathetic about getting into a relationship at all.
There is also a massive obesity problem. If people have trouble getting attracted to each other versus the alternatives, makes it really challenging to find the motivation.
I wonder what all these effects will have over the next 200 years? If you play out the changing “relationship market conditions,” it seems like men and women with different personalities and dispositions towards seeking out relationships in order to reproduce will have a significant effect on the species.
Will people who were genetically predisposed towards being thin, hard working, open minded to approaching members of opposite sex and forming deep attachments resulting in children become more frequent?
On a genetic and evolutionary perspective I’m super interested - we know that IQ has been rising, but what else will change?
In some societies such as Korea I am told, women are sometimes or more frequently the aggressor. I wonder if this becomes more common.
The very rich by ability and the very poor by inability to attain family planning, and everyone else in TX.
I maybe in a skewed population (FAANG) but women are much more aggressive here in urban areas. While I was walking downtown, a woman pulled her Mercedes over in traffic and shouted an offer at me. I thought she was hilarious and bold but not attractive enough.
In the past, this was sometimes a thing too: in 1943, my grandmother (15) decided to have my grandfather (21 - war vet at 17 by lying). Their 70-year marriage was technically illegal too.
i mean, there are a certain subset of intelligent, highly competitive women who move to urban areas and are also kinda ugly, so they know they have to be aggressive to have a shot since most men judge women heavily based on appearance. I have been approached and asked for dates by two women in my life, both were intelligent but both were not very attractive.
> Got anything a little more widespread/recent to back up that claim?
The Norwegian study cited to "Dutton E, van der Linden D, Lynn R (2016) The negative Flynn effect: A systematic literature review. Intelligence 59:163–169". Here's the HN thread on that paper specifically: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13723859 (Haven't read it myself; was just curious.)
I don't know. It seems like the middle to upper class is having fewer kids, while the lower middle class and poor are having more kids. This could be a bunch of different factors like most needing dual income to do well but not having time with the kids, assistance programs increasing and targeting kids, etc. The ability of people to connect via dating services is high, including the people you categorized as not passing on genetics to be able to meet others in the same category.
> while the lower middle class and poor are having more kids
Most statistics show indeed lower middle class and poor are having more kids than higher income families, but in time the number is decreasing for them too
> Lot of men and women who are generally not too motivated to seek out a companion, lose weight, put in the work to make it happen
I don't think you need these things to find a partner and have children.
Just go to a maternity ward. It sounds like you think everyone there is highly motivated, physically fit, and dedicated to working on relationships. They aren't. They're just normal people with a range of human flaws and a regular cross-section of society. Fat, thin, lazy, hard-working, professional, unemployed, etc.
IDK starting the baby making process isn't terribly difficult once one has a partner. It's the carrying to term and everything after that is a lot of time, money, and energy.
Some folks will struggle more with the partnering aspect than others. Or mustering the will and resources to begin parenting.
Spend some time reading about infertility at the start of the baby making process and I think you’ll find that it can terribly difficult. Especially as you progress into your mid/late 30s (women). And it is that starting process that can also cost lots of money, time, and energy.
As two-kid dad, I definitely agree that the time, energy, and cost of delivering and raising kids is HUGE. It's not something that you should undervalue at all.
But I think we have this unfortunate habit of severely underweighting the start process and things that aren't obvious.
You probably experience lots of stress over the span of raising a kid (or more). Other people see that in the classic screaming-kid seemingly-helpless-parent visual. You may also experience that same stress, perhaps cumulatively more, just from the start because it's (1) VERY stressful when it doesn't work, and (2) a situation that can drag on for what feels like forever.
So, everyone commiserates over work it is to raise a kid but few people talk openly or at all about how hard it is to start the process of having a kid.
That's why I mentioned boarding schools, you don't have to live there to send your kids to it and also it might be good for them, nurture independence and a lot of experience with a foreign culture while also giving you flexibility and easing the burden of child raising.
I used to think that. I genuinely did. I thought that the bar was all the way up in space and that it’s impossible to reach it. I was pretty lonely.
Of course, I used to also think that my value was in my net worth and you could have seen all the way from space the “I’m an asshole and I don’t know why nobody will date me” vibes radiating off of me.
Then I grew up, I chilled out, and I put conscious effort into things other than my career and being Good At Tech Stuff. Stuff like listening, and exercising my capacity for empathy, and trying to be pleasant to be around. You can project being likeable or interesting for a bit, but I found that it’s easier to be likeable and interesting instead. And suddenly I stopped finding it so difficult at all to find matches and find dates.
I met my previous SO of three years on OKCupid and my current SO on Tinder, and it wasn’t until we’d been dating for quite a while that what I did for a living, all that Is This Man A Provider nonsense, even came up.
The difficulty is between the ears of one party in this selection process. It’s a mix of getting over oneself and understanding that it’s all a numbers game besides, but one of those things doesn’t work without the other.
Odd thing to but-for him about. About one in five American mothers have children from more than one father, and that includes Very Upstanding(tm) folks who divorce and remarry and not the women falling for those absolute chads of your projection.
A bit of a sidetrack, but that seems like a pretty high number to me. At least in my part of the world, the numbers are at least an order of magnitude lower.
It’s actually not that bad if you get out from behind the keyboard and practice. But it’s work and it could take a few years off practice 2-3 times a week.
This is the line peddled by MRAs and similar dirtbags, yes, when they need you to be righteously angry about your situation. And yet, somehow one can muddle along and do alright for oneself--and I am not ugly but I'm not particularly attractive.
As 'rdtwo notes, though, it does take practice and commitment and it does take time.
Continuing to believe that may be what's holding you back. There are less- and un-attractive females that are looking for a partner as well. The "bar being too high" works in both directions.
Also, in regards to longer-term relationships, if this is true:
> You have to be attractive for girls to swipe right on you and start a conversation in the first place.
Then they're probably not the right ones to be starting a conversation with.
I have zero experience with online dating, but I've watched a friend give it a crack after divorce. A brutal appraisal would be: struggling freelancer, doesn't own a house, overweight, mental health issues, greybeard. On the other hand: smart, good sense of humour, etc. Yet he's had a solid number of dates and he puts it down mostly to not putting a picture of him catching a fish in his profile, and holding a decent conversation.
To be fair, this is the 40+ age range. It's possible that 18-25 year olds of both genders haven't yet honed in on what makes for a good partner.
It's exactly like marketing, but the product is you: understand the customer you want, understand the market dynamics, understand the product. Carefully position the product to ensure you are reaching the right customers, and be willing to iterate. I literally A/B tested profile descriptions and pics yo improve my response rates on apps.
And now i have a wonderful SO and don't have to deal with those awful apps for the time being.
> The selection process is on Tinder, not the maternity ward, and the bar is brutally high there for men.
I’ve been seeing this exact trope repeated more and more on HN lately: Some vague assertion that Tinder is the only place for matchmaking and that only a tiny number of men are getting all of the matches.
It’s an objectively ridiculous claim for anyone who has experience in the real world where, yes, even “normal” men can find partners. It doesn’t even stand up to the most basic tests of logic.
Are only attractive people getting married and having kids? Of course not.
So what is actually going on here? Is this some talking point being repeated on some corner of the internet that resonates with a subset of people who view the world through their cell phones instead of getting out and interacting with real other people? It’s an objectively absurd assertion, yet it gets repeated with great confidence in a lot of online discussions.
Genuinely asking, roughly how old are you? I'm in my early-mid twenties and of the ~100 people I keep in touch with my age range from high school, there has been one child born (by accident if the rumors are true) and zero marriages. Of the dozen or so people I keep in regular contact with I've gathered that this is not for lack of trying, either. Obviously there is bias here as this is all anecdotal, but I'm very curious as to how unique this situation is.
That was the same for me in my mid-20s. By my mid 30s, vast majority are married with children. People are waiting a little longer than the last generation, but it's still happening as normal.
Mid-20s is nothing, especially if your peer group is college educated. My wife and I married at 25 a bit over 20 years ago. Even at that time, we were the first of our friends group to marry. We had our first child right about the time I turned 30. We were only the 2nd of our peer group to have a child. Today, all of our friends from back then are married (a few divorced) with kids.
The trend has been only towards waiting longer in the 20+ years since we were ahead of the curve.
If you're from an affluent background - being married in your 20s is weird. If you're single in your 30s - you should be worried but it's too late. By then - most of your friends will likely marry.
I'm close to your age than some of the other commenters, but I also find that marriage/child statistic unsurprising, not least given the events of the last two years, and the assumption of a vaguely affluent, coastal peer group.
It actually matches the real data and studies which have been done on the topic. When men ranked photos of women on a scale of 1-10, the majority of woman were ranked in the 5 category which would indicate the average person is seen as average. While when woman ranked photos of men, the majority of men were ranked bellow 5. The data that has come out of online dating is pretty damning and says a lot more than some anecdotes about some normal men finding partners.
I wish I remembered the exact study from a few years ago because there are more details which were even more depressing but I'm less certain on.
The idea that only the most attractive people are entering relationships with each other while everyone else, regardless of gender, is staying single is ridiculous.
Did you date during Covid? I did. Every possible avenue to meet partners was closed except...apps. i am extremely active and extroverted, but yoga classes went online, the gym shut down, the bars closed, concerts were cancelled. Dance studios shut their doors. How exactly were your expecting dating to work for the last few years?
I would not underestimate how much the process of dating and meeting romantic partners has shifted because of that, even as we re-open. the stigma is mostly gone and there is little reason not to at least be present there.
> It’s an objectively ridiculous claim for anyone who has experience in the real world where, yes, even “normal” men can find partners. It doesn’t even stand up to the most basic tests of logic.
> Are only attractive people getting married and having kids? Of course not.
Have you considered that men are just having less partners than women? Many more men go childless (25%) than women (14%). As far as we can tell - men are having less sex overall. It's obvious that the majority of men eventually get a partner and settle down with someone but that's generally less than the number of partners a woman has before she settles down.
I find it weird that you didn't think about that. Men and women generally have very different journeys to their destination. One is usually more consistent in sexual experience whereas the other is wildly varying. The amount of men who have 50+ sexual partners completely dominates the amount of women who do. This doesn't mean that men are having more sex than women though. This means that a few men are having more sex than most women.
This is what feeds into the whole online discussion. It's obvious to anyone who has done online dating or talked to the women. They'll be like, "Oh yeah, I matched with that guy too." It's clear that many women are sleeping with the same select group of men. I don't know how this is a surprise to anyone...
Tinder isn't for relationships, it's a disgusting people market for hook ups. Every profile is basically an ad for a person.
Online dating is toxic, most people I know that used it years ago are still there safe for few unicorns. How could it possibly be? Weren't they lookimg for someone?
Maybe because it distorts relationships and people as commodities thus making meaningful relationships harder to initiate, maintain and commit.
Most serious relationships and marriages that I known of (including mine) that started within the last 7 years or so originate in online dating. I'm in my 40s. You might want to be a little less sure of your opinions.
Damn near every profile I see says "not here for hookups, no FWB/casual" and people are almost so allergic to any form of flirtatiousness you practically need to keep it "business casual" or you get silence/unmatched. If you're over your mid 20's, you're not using it for hookups, at least in my (US) city.
I think the obesity problem is linked to the fact that many people have to work 60 hours a week to survive and don't have the time/energy to get in shape.
Capitalism has taken a large swath of people out of the dating game just due to working to survive.
People work 10% fewer hours now than in the 1960s, but the obesity rate has gone up from 13% in that time period to 36%. The obesity crisis is IMO more related to what we eat, and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.
This may be true, but people are probably commuting for vastly more time per day to their suburban wasteland house that can only be driven to, than fewer minutes worked would compensate for, and the money doesn't go as far—possibly because they felt spending $60k on a dumb car, and 9 hours a week in it, was more sensible than spending 2 hours a week in a physical hobby.
Total hours worked by people who are being paid. If you’re working on a farm but you’re a farmer’s wife you’re not being paid. Female liberation resulted in a very large increase in the labor force, a much less drastic rise in hours worked than in paid labor hours.
Being overweight is overwhelmingly related to eating habits. As the sage advice goes: “you can’t outrun a bad diet”
You may have an argument with the absolute bullshit that people eat in our consumerist society but the fact of the matter is, if your calorie needs are 2000/day and you eat 14000 calories per week of grains, pulses, veg, fruit, meat, etc in the ‘right’ amounts, you’ll stay trim if you’re trim, you’ll stay fat if you’re fat, and any changes need you to adjust the calorie balance accordingly through eating more, eating less or exercising more.
Obesity is largely linked to economic incentives and urban design. The USA for example is dead set on building car dependent cities, which has an knock on effect on both the amount of free time available to leisure and the activity.
In some countries people are slimmer without making a real effort cause there's a higher percentage of people walking to work, and there's less time spent in traffic so that can be redirected to leisure and exercise.
Ehhhh... I don't know that capitalism can be blamed for personal irresponsibility. I'd say it's more of a motivation / knowledge thing. You don't have to live in the gym to get in shape. I spend about 4.5 hours per week total. Even when I've been in the very rare 70-80 hour/week death march, I could take an hour out of my day to go to the gym and lift.
Similarly, dieting is not an activity, more so the absence of one (shoving food in your mouth). When I'm cutting weight, I have more time because I'm not cooking eating food all the damn time. Eat a carrot rather than a Pizza to lose weight is not super rare knowledge. It IS uncomfortable, though.
Okay. And now add any of the following, or a combination, to that situation:
* Ill partner or family members to take care of
* Child(ren)
* Studying
* Long travel times
* Irregular working times
* Poor upbringing food wise
* Stress
* Sleep deprivation
* etc
Is it still so easy then? That pizza tastes good and is real comforting.
The obesity problem is overwhelmingly because of the amount of sugar/HFCS pumped into our foods. We are working less today than 50 years ago, yet those times no one was morbidly obese. Obesity is caused by food, not by the amount you exercise or move.
step 0: if you’re single and think you NEED to work 60 hrs/wk to survive, quit BS’ing yourself. get a roommate and split the rent.
step 1: gather some savings and take an honest (3mo+) break from work.
step 2: take note of which of your habits actually change when freed from the work-imposed time restrictions.
my personal experience: good habits don’t just spontaneously occur out of the vacuum. and social connections don’t just come knocking on your door. you have to decide these things are important to you, motivate yourself, and build your life in support of them.
to the extent that we don’t teach non-job skills in school, that’s a societal failure. if by “capitalism” you’re referring to how much we shape schooling to focus on making you a productive worker, then sure. but this is as much a failure of our democratic systems (which govern schools) and our social norms around child raising (wherein it’s acceptable to believe that govt schooling is the only learning/wisdom a child needs to be given).
“capitalism” is a boogeyman and — without admitting anything of its merits/faults — using it in such a way only serves to keep yourself from understanding the problems you face more concretely.
Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years. Socialism has failed every time it has been tried. (Also stop describing everything you don’t like as “Capitalism”, it is intellectually lazy, instead describe what aspect of Capitalism caused the thing you don’t like directly and provably and with a clear alternative that wouldn’t have had worse downsides)
Good critiques of Capitalism are important to help it continue to evolve, compete, and win in a competitive marketplace of ideas.
I have increasingly noticed this general trend (here, on Reddit, and elsewhere) to just blame a myriad of societal ills on “Capitalism”. Sometimes it’s related to economics or whatever, but more often it’s really a non-sequitur. Some of the problems blamed on Capitalism, it’s not at all clear how communism or socialism or any other system would result in a different outcome. It’s become a thought-ending cliche.
Agree, just tribal signaling, “thing I thoughtlessly think is bad is bad”
I feel the same about every bad weather event being “caused” by climate change in the media. The models predictions are so vague people could blame anything on climate change. Not saying climate change isn’t happening, it is, but blaming everything on it is intellectually dishonest, costs legitimacy, and can lead to poor policy.
> Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years.
That's not wrong, but it came at the cost of massively depleting the oil reserves and polluting the ecosystems.
The same Would have happened with communism or any other economic system, unless we were kept at a pre-industrial level of tech. Collectivist systems don't particularly take better care of their environment.
But to get obese..you actually need to eatmany more calories than you need for a lot of time. If obese people cannot stop eating unhealthy food the problem is mental.
>I wonder what all these effects will have over the next 200 years?
Well with a birth rate below replacement level there will be less and less people with each generation if the birth rate stays at that level, so in 200 years there's virtually no one left or something like that.
A note on fitness. Any pressure I've had to lose weight or whatnot has come from me. All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on. That said, they have commented favourably on other physical features, and I'm not particularly overweight.
I say all this just to try and fight the idea that crops up that if you're male and don't fit some jacked or "Chad" ideal that there's no one out there for you (who you'd have an awesome time with). When I look at the incel subculture, it's doubly sad because these boys are being fed a model of how attraction, sex, and dating works that is just flat out wrong. It's like a self-harm club based on false premises.
As a 5'3 guy in pretty good shape with a nice apartment, six-figure job, and socially savvy, I agree. Almost all women taller than I am love coming to my parties and genuinely like me. But they are usually unable to see me as a romantic partner because of height. Forget dating apps or bars.
"Any pressure I've had to lose weight or whatnot has come from me. All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on."
Same.
I work out as a hobby and for psychological hygeine, i.e. to keep myself disciplined and just feel better.
Oddly when I started dating my current girlfriend she thought my lack of a 'dad-bod' might be too much of a red flag.
Doesn't seem to be the case almost 5 months later.
> All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on. That said, they have commented favourably on other physical features, and I'm not particularly overweight.
What women say and which partners they choose in reality are 2 different things. You should always keep that in mind when discussing these issues.
This isn't meant as a critique of women, rather than of people in general. Stated and actual preferences are not the same (it seems obvious once you give it some thought, yet still has to be repeated, since some people just don't get it).
Forget the incel subculture, media - traditional, social, or otherwise has been feeding us that for decades as well. If you're not thin and "beautiful", your romantic prospects are zero so why even try. Admittedly, it's also partially one's own fault for buying into it, but being fed a continual stream of the best looking people from a young age seriously alters one's perspective.
I spent my entire teenage and young adult years thinking that no one could possibly be attracted to me because I was overweight. Yet, I never could seem to pull myself out of the habits that got me there in the first place and I just kept getting larger - from somewhat overweight in high school to morbidly obese by the end of college. No one has ever randomly talked to me in a bar or out in public. The only time I ever experienced that was when I was abroad. I've not made a single non-work friend since college. I don't know where to go to "meet people my own age", etc. Here I am about to turn 29 and my social life is talking over the internet with the people in knew in college and I just feel ... lost. I have a high paying tech job, but that's about the only thing I feel is going well in my life. I recognize that never having to actually worry about money is most people's dream, but I envy those with diverse social lives.
Figured I'd start with actually getting my weight under control. 3 months ago I started religiously tracking calories and I've done a reasonable job of keeping my eating within my goals. Managed to lose 30 pounds so far. Would love to be half way to my target by my 30th birthday. Maybe try a dating app and make sure I'm honest about my looks. I'd love to be able to ride roller coasters again.
Just from a fellow friend trying to lose wait that is awesome how much you have managed to lose and I think that is great. Congratulations on that, keep up the good work. You've inspired me!
Just wanted to say good for you and keep it up re: 30 pounds lost!
What's your exercise regimen? I know there's lot of stuff out there that tells you what to do. Not all of it easy to understand or even effective. Happy to keep replying here to give you some thoughts.
Exercise regimen isn't much at the moment. I'm still 400 lbs, and my doctor said I needed to be careful what I try to do right now because I could easily hurt myself. So for now I've been trying to stick to a 3 mile walk every day, which takes about an hour. Work still being remote has been helpful in that regard. It took a bit to find shoes that didn't cause my shins to hurt when walking every day.
Why would you start dating in an environment where you are most disadvantaged? In person dating plays to your strength as opposed to online where you are fighting your weakness
Please don't take anything I wrote as an attempt to dissuade you from what sounds like a good idea. As others have pointed out, perhaps a lot depends on just how "overweight" one is. Also, do it for yourself -- the rest is incidental.
I'm 6'3"; was 190 lbs at age 19 (university); was 210 pounds at age 21 (could afford to eat out for lunch); was 245 lb at age 40 (depressed + about to be divorced); now back to 220-230 lb at age 46. Would like to be consistently 210-215 ish.
Have dated a number of 30 to 45 yo women who explicitly like a "Dad bod".
EDIT> I have never picked anyone up off the street, at a bar, club, whatever. I pass for sociable, but am actually a big introvert. Like, it bothers me when other people are in my home, with a very few exceptions. But I'm told I have "dork game". So my experience is biased -- only seriously dated in my 40's
Met my true love on Tinder, and she's more of an introvert than I am, yet fun and relaxing / no-maintenance / no-drama to be around.
To be fair though, you're in the top 5% of a massively important trait which women select for with greater precedence than any other physical attribute. 'Dad bod' almost always implies someone of above average height. Women tend to imagine more of a Norm McDonald than a Jason Alexander when they think of 'dad bod'.
If you look at male-oriented fitness subcultures, they’re almost never motivated by sexual attractiveness. The idea of “lifting for women” is typically a taboo that will get you ridiculed in most communities. The ideals of these communities typically revolve around some model of self-improvement, and if the participants are pursuing any type of social status, it’s typically in the form of praise from other men.
100%. I am an avid lifter (not competitive) and love the camaraderie that inevitably pops up at the gym, and elsewhere. I like those comments from the trainer! I like exchanging videos with friends and praising and giving feedback. Now friends with a neighbor of mine almost entirely because I told him that his Crossfit-like home gym looked awesome the second time we met.
> All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on.
Contrary to popular belief by men, women are very visual. They say things to each other like 'How do I get the guys I am attracted to to notice me?' The problem we have is that when guys ask why we reject them we can't give any sort of honest answer because the men will start to debate our answers. Combine that with the fact that they are stronger and can physically assault us and many men don't get this important signal and are left with the impression that how they look doesn't matter to women.
Some men do eventually realize that their looks do matter when it plays out in the office.
If you want to look at it from an evolutionary perspective who should I choose for a mate: Someone I can see is strong, fit and in shape or someone who isn't? The lack of muscle definition hints of possible low T in the same way that overweight women hint that they are possibly already pregnant to men. Is that skin issue genetic or from lack of care? Who could better help and protect me and my offspring?
Sidenote: The fact that men don't take care of their skin is such a weird societal issue. Taking care of your skin at the basic level is an aesthetic choice like taking care of your teeth is. It shouldn't be gendered. Everyone should take care of their skin and wear sunscreen, it is your largest organ.
A man that is not overweight, has some muscle definition, showers and wears clothes that actually fit his body is instantly more attractive than the countless men that don't.
To add one final little bit to your original statement:
> All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight
We never want you to say that you care about our weight. We want you to care for who we are, not for what we looked like when you met us at 19. One day we will be 60. We also will not tell you what you have to do with your body. We have had a lifetime of men telling us what we should do with ours and know how negative that is. You can weight what you want and if you are our special someone we will not care, but we will be more attracted to you when you are not obese.
This is such a weird take. You really don't need to be all that special or beautiful to find a partner, I've always been a stocky guy all my life and I never had a real issue finding sexual partners and now I'm happily married with kids.
Get yourself a personality, don't be weird, dress decently and talk to people. That's really all you need, no matter what you look like there's someone out there that's into it.
At the height of a loneliness epidemic, it's hard to get a personality and talk to people.
Don't get me wrong, your conclusion is spot on. Getting there is the hard part.
Another factor is we live in a period in time where we have so much choice on how to spend our time, products that are personalized to each of our own tastes, that creates sparsity of shared experiences.
No longer is there a movie like Star Wars, that you could throw a stick and find someone who shares that experience. Now unless you're suckling from the teat of mainstream media, you need to go out of your way to find someone who shares your taste in film, music, art, games and ideas.
I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been an experiment adding a social component to Netflix.
> you need to go out of your way to find someone who shares your taste in film, music, art, games and ideas.
You may as well just be with yourself at that point. Someone else bringing new experiences that you don't share, to learn and involve yourself in going forward, is where interest is found.
This really is it - all you have to do is consistently be around the opposite sex while being generally likeable and care about your appearance. Eventually SOMEONE is going to find you attractive.
> I think the ball is firmly in the woman’s court now. Women have most of the advantages (education, societal promotion, fit in better with our institutions)
I don't think we at all can define what individuals should do based on their gender; that is sort of the point. They can be who and what they want to be.
Maybe by some theory women have most of the advantages, but the outcomes clearly indicate otherwise. Look at the successful and elite in almost any field.
You can look at the elite in society and see an over-representation of men, but it's important to also look at the most downtrodden and worse off in society. The homeless; people who are the victims of violent crime; people who die in wars; people who die working shitty jobs; people who are so hopeless that they commit suicide. Perhaps even looking at things like lifespan.
Men's results are bimodal: if women are forced to break through a glass ceiling to reach the elite, men are similarly forced to walk on a glass floor that might collapse at any moment. And when it does, they're fucked.
Are men’s results bimodal or just much higher standard deviation? I feel like there are way, way too many men living a “normal, unremarkably good nor bad” life to sustain a bimodal conclusion.
Yes? At least as far as all the individual points about men dying earlier in general, having higher suicide rates, greater risk of homelessness, worse educational outcomes, etc.
I suppose the point of contention people would make is that men deserve it/have it coming so it's not worth discussing or treating as a political topic.
> the individual points about men dying earlier in general, having higher suicide rates, greater risk of homelessness, worse educational outcomes, etc.
We certainly can find some ways in which the male population is worse off - though that doesn't establish any correlation or causation, inevitably in some ways it's true. But we need to look at the overall picture.
> I suppose the point of contention people would make is that men deserve it/have it coming so it's not worth discussing or treating as a political topic.
That's a pretty incredible strawman. Can you find one person saying that?
I can list lots of ways that men are worse off, and I have done exactly that. You don't even acknowledge them besides writing them off as perhaps minor inconveniences, and ask us to look at the "overall picture" instead without even bothering to try to paint that big picture. Why is the fact that men face significant discrimination in education not part of the big picture?
> Can you find one person saying that?
Let's be explicit about this, since you seem intent on evading the discussion: why shouldn't we treat male-particular suffering, discrimination, and death as important topics for society to address? What possible explanation is there for you to write those issues off as not part of the big picture except for thinking that men deserve it?
People have been finding partners and having children ... for the entire history of homo sapiens, and our homo ancestors, and their ancestors back to the dawn of sexual reproduction. In fact, there is probably nothing we are better evolved to do than find a partner, make babies, and raise them.
You are generalizing your stable situation and values far too much.
The population stats are something like 60% of men will be fathers but 90-95% of women will be mothers. Most women who can reproduce will but a huge percent of men who can will not.
40% of births are outside of marriage in the US.
I would think the only real generalization that can be made is that an introverted guy with money is more likely to get married.
I would bet money on that stat that women being the aggressor in Korea is simply not true in a statistical sense.
Not sure what stats you're looking at. In the US it's about 80% of women [1] and 60% of men [2]. More interesting to me is the overall downward trend in fertility rates.
You guys are mixing up numbers. 80% of women have a child at some point in their lives, and 60% of men age 15+ currently are fathers. A lot of those 40% who are currently not fathers yet will become fathers at some point in their lives.
> My observation is that we are going to have a radical rebalancing of who reproduces and who doesn’t.
I think the idea that everyone has the option to settle down and have kids is a relatively recent phenomenon. It used to be that most men never had kids. Nowadays most men do have kids. That said - 25%+ of men will never have children. Kinda wild when you think about that. 1/4 of all men will never have children. Whether this is a choice or not isn't clear (I'm going to go with - not a choice overwhelmingly). The interesting part though is that the number is less than 15% for women. That means that there are ~70% more men than women who will never have children. These stats are usually taken for men who are age 45+ - where the gender balance is more equal.
Shit sells products. Straight men are a vulnerable audience to sell to. They want sex as much or more than most women and yet they have the least access to it of all people. Sell an image - get them invested in it and sell products that aim to get them somewhere. Yet - it ultimately does nothing.
I think Japan is a pretty decent model of where most of the US is going. Anime weebs and what not with waifu pillows will become much more normalized and other various forms of NEETs. But with more violence, unfortunately. I think shootings, suicides, and “accidental” deaths are going to stay the course or get worse. We’ll find ways to skew the statistics to cover this up so that we never have to address it (cause that’s require a different way of thinking about capitalism) but I don’t think this problem is going away for a few generations.
We've already seen a few outbreaks the last six or seven years:
* The Santa Barbara shooter angry at women
* The El Paso, TX and Miami, OH shooters angry about the end of white genetic pool dominance or something
* The guy who tried to go on a shooting spree in Harlem and got caught after killing an elderly Black man as practice because "Black men are taking all the White women"
Unfortunately, there are many many more examples of real world violence. If you peer into the abyss that is the online world - it seems like there are an endless amount of shooters waiting to happen in the US. It's no surprise that it happens so often. A lot of men in pain who want everyone else to experience the pain they've been feeling before they themselves commit suicide. With access to guns - it makes it so easy to do.
The biggest surprise for most women out here might be this tidbit: most men are incels until they're not. It's that some men never get out of that horrible rut and a small amount of those are the ones you see end up doing the shootings. The rest suffer silently or just kill themselves.
It's sad. Most of my female friends are completely unaware. All of my male friends are painfully aware because almost every man who ever went through that phase to any significant degree will do almost everything but forget it. Someday we'll get to the point where we acknowledge this but part of me thinks we don't ever want to. If we did - then we'd have to really change things and no one likes to change shit.
Eh, saying "they're mentally ill" (since obviously these aren't hoaxes) merely obfuscates the sociological etiology of 'mental illness', see Thomas Szasz. Brains are responding to environments largely and for the most part, brains themselves being non-uniform, unless you can demonstrate extreme pathological divergence in the individual case.
> Will people who were genetically predisposed towards being thin, hard working, open minded to approaching members of opposite sex and forming deep attachments resulting in children become more frequent?
These are not the people right now having more children - it's those who (often at least partly for reasons of disadvantage) have relatively less impulse control and are poorer at long term thinking/planning.
And/or those who are part of a culture that encourages fertility and discourages contraception.
I don't see how current trends point to this changing in the direction you mention. Being young has more to do with thinness than genetics, and most babies are born outside of marriage.
200 years(maybe even 30-40 years) from now the process of creating babies will probably not be the biological one that it is now. Artificial wombs and genetically selected babies would probably be the norm. You select the traits of the baby you want, share your dna, fill some forms and boom your baby is ready to be installed and delivered in 9 months.
> There is also a massive obesity problem. If people have trouble getting attracted to each other versus the alternatives, makes it really challenging to find the motivation.
Nobody wants to talk about this "elephant in the room" but I agree with you. Even obese people don't find other obese people attractive. Young people are dating (and having less sex) today because the majority of them are obese or overweight.
Birth control has created favor for less masculine men.
When women are ovulating, they are statistically more likely to select men with higher testosterone levels and of course the physical qualities that go along with that (bigger/more muscular, stronger jawline, more aggressive, etc...).
When women are horny, they are statistically more likely to select men based on appearance.
"When horny, men are statistically more likely to select women with big tits" is banal and adds nothing to the conversation. I don't understand why these references to ovulation get a pass.
>> Ovulation generally corresponds to periods of increased randiness in women.
Which doesn't mean women only fuck when they're ovulating.
>> can't resist
I'm not sure how you've implied that from what I've said. You sound awfully defensive and angry. I haven't stated any opinions here, in case you didn't notice.
I think the trend is in the opposite direction - the more we advance as a society, the less evolutionary filtering is applied to the population. That means genetic regression over time.
Probably unpopular opinion: men having it tough is actually a good thing for men, if you make the most of it. Yes, in modern times as a man, you pretty much don't have any programs specifically designed to benefit you. And yes, men get shat on by pretty much every corner of society. But it's still possible to succeed in these conditions, and some people most definitely do. And those who were able to find their way and make it in a very unfriendly system tend to be extremely competent, not just intellectually but socially and emotionally as well. It's that old saying - "hard times make strong men," yada yada. Having just gone through the whole school process, I am very confident in my ability to solve a problem / achieve a goal on my own, and I don't need some special program or exception to the rules in order to succeed.
> I am very confident in my ability to solve a problem / achieve a goal on my own, and I don't need some special program or exception to the rules in order to succeed.
Picture a distribution, like a bell curve or something.
The programs are meant for the side of that distribution that need it. You can talk about how the other side of the distribution doesn't need the help, but don't lose sight of the fact that many do.
Just as long as you know you have succeeded in spite of it all and do not buy into the "almost failed despite being wildly privileged" idea that gets pushed.
(To be clear: I am wildly privileged to live in a Western country now instead of living almost anywhere else at any other time. I'm also generally happy to be a strong and healthy male. My thoughts are best best explained by the fact that 1. all else being equal I'd prefer to recruit a woman rather than a man to the company I work for because that gives me more "social credit" at work 2. Boys systematically do better on anonymous tests, at least in the western world.)
However, the number of years people complain about societal decay is irrelevant to the question about whether it's happening or not.
The Roman Empire was "going to hell in a handbasket" for centuries prior to 410, according to the social critics of the time. It doesn't make them wrong.
Applying one's personal normalcy bias on timescales of a single lifetime to societal evolution that happens on the scales of tens of generations is rather short-sighted.
I'm a white straight male, grew up middle class near Seattle. I'm now in my mid-30s and have 3 kids. Semi-recently I had an (maybe my first?) experience where I wasn't the favored party in a situation. My kids have made focus more difficult, and I work in an industry (tech consulting) where focus is a big deal, and the idea that I'm not the perfect person for the job was a foreign feeling. I no longer felt "I was made for this" or "I'm perfect for this".
While I hate that things are getting worse for anyone (and want to fix it!), these findings are good reminders for me that almost everyone else has dealt with similar circumstances much more often than I have. Often the cause is out of their control and that they are just trying to make the best of it, with varying results. It gives me good perspective and reminds me that peoples choices / actions include inputs that I'm not exposed to.
That all being said I hope we can find a way to make these situations less common for everyone. I'd settle for quick fixes (adjust taxes, better welfare, etc.), but I'm excited for the societal changes that I hope are the eventual long-term fix.
> Semi-recently I had an (maybe my first?) experience where I wasn't the favored party in a situation
You're mid-30s and you might have just experienced your first thing like that? Man or woman, that's hard to believe. And more importantly, I'm not sure your experience can be generalized to all men.
As someone who has experienced situations like that frequently, and knows other men who have, it's a bit frustrating to see the implication that we all feel like "we're perfect for this" or "we're made for this" all the time.
The degree is irrelevant. I don't doubt that men have privilege — but the "but women have it worse!" comment often shows up on articles like these, and since it's just whataboutism, it feels like it's suggesting that we shouldn't care about these issues.
Shouldn't we care about how society is treating people, no matter who they are, instead of getting into a pissing contest about who society is _really_ screwing over the most?
Not to mention, frankly, it's ridiculous to imply that a 35-year old male software engineer's experience is at all representative of that of the average male (who is far, far worse off).
> Shouldn't we care about how society is treating people, no matter who they are, instead of getting into a pissing contest about who society is _really_ screwing over the most?
This is a great point that often gets overlooked in discussions around gender, race, sexuality, class, or any other issue surrounding equality. I think people often hone in on the latter and it becomes counter-productive to fixing these issues. Thanks for bringing it up.
You're jumping to a bit of a conclusion here. Most people seem to be reading this comment as re recognition that this particular guy is privileged compared to most people, not a blanket argument that women have it worse. Consider why you reacted so defensively to such an anodyne self-reflection.
He absolutely is, "but women have it worse", is not implied anywhere in the comment at the start of this thread. It's a claim GP invented. See how a fairly similar argument can be raised respectfully and without defensiveness in the sibling thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30278864.
Respectfully, this is kind of a privileged take, both economic and intellectual. For the majority of men who aren’t going to college, they’ve spent a lot longer than a couple of years feeling like they’re not “the favored party” in a situation.
I'm older than you, living in a third world country. I've been reflecting on this since I discovered my privileges like you did. I feel like the poor state of my society comes from the fact that a large part of the population is constantly trying to survive. That state of survivorship is what makes a person make poor choices, harm other people and lose respect for themselves. Which makes those persons untrustworthy and explains the low level of trust in my society.
I went to a local college few days back and I noticed that there were more girls than boys. I think part of the reason is due to high college debt many young men are choosing to take jobs and skipping college all together. This will translate to less men in the knowledge based/corporate jobs.
There have been more women than men in college in the US since the 80s. It varies from college to college and from subject to subject (e.g. STEM is much more male, MIT more male, humanities-focused colleges more female).
Teachers also give boys lower grades and girls higher grades when their gender is evident; anonymous grading greatly reduces the gender gap in primary and secondary school.
Black teachers and male teachers are rated lower during teacher observations than white teachers and female teachers, despite comparable or better outcomes for their students in test scores and student attendance.
Interestingly, the bias against male teachers is around twice the bias against Black teachers.
>Only recently have we stripped away a lot of the sexism however, providing a successful transition to higher education.
Is it really so difficult to consider that career preferences are gendered? That millions of years of sexually dimorphic specialization could lead to statistically significant differences in interests, abilities, and desired life outcomes?
The recent popularity of blaming any disparity on {$x}ism really bothers me. Culture and genes influence outcomes at least as much as any external force in the modern world. That goes for gendered differences too.
>girls are more likely to do their damn homework
Also ironic that the people who are so eager to fight against sexism/racism have no qualms about generalizing their scapegoats. But it sort if proves my point: you are willing to acknowledge that males may have intrinsic negative traits which could cause them to underperform, but of course acknowledging the obvious implication that such groups may have innate advantages is forbidden; maybe because doing so would undermine the very underpinnings of the modern progressive push for equality of outcome.
Metrics targeting equal representation among all industries/disciplines are fundamentally flawed. There's no reason to expect such parity if people are truly free to choose their own paths, nordic countries are an example, where gender disparity persists despite an egalitarian culture.
For one thing, I wasn't really addressing career preferences.
Matriculating to higher education isn't really preferring one career over another, other than white collar blue collar. But with absolute surety women are going to college.
I feel like you've got multiple different hypotheses in your comment, so I'll address the big one at the start.
> Is it really so difficult to consider that career preferences are gendered? That millions of years of sexually dimorphic specialization could lead to statistically significant differences in interests, abilities, and desired life outcomes?
Consider that 60% of college students are female now, and 0% were a hundred years ago.
I strongly feel like there's very little innate attraction to "traditional" gender roles amongst women.
If you look at the trajectory of change, it's very clear that every single decade, the change in women's choices marches in a particular direction. Decade on decade, the numbers all point one way.
Which makes me think that women themselves feel traditional gender roles are very unattractive. If there was some sort statistically significant difference, clearly it's not changing the direction of the trend, much if at all.
And change is basically percolating its way through society, slowly but surely.
------------------------------------------------
Given the above:
If women's preferences were genetically or otherwise innately determined, why have they gone for such an enormous, dramatic change in their lifestyles and social situation in the last 50 years? Because women have chosen that for themselves.
My deeply held assumption, is that all our "assumptions" about "what women want" are just that, assumptions.
If you think from a perspective of geological time, the 50 years since the 1960s are nothing. That's 1 generation or less. And yet the lot of women in society has changed dramatically, and they seem to be happy about it.
Given how much change we've had, I think it's fair to say that the attitudes of 100 years ago were not genetically or innately constructed.
I assume pretty much everything in society is just a giant social construct.
Very, very little sexual dimorphism between girls and boys is down to nature.
Another way to look at it is that educational systems are setup to favour girls over boys.
Typically when we see outcome differences between two groups in a system, most people will blame the system... unless they think it's good/natural for one group to do worse than the other.
Two very common views people will adopt to demonstrate the above:
The gender pay gap: clearly there is no legitimate or natural way that men would make more money than women in a fair system, so the system must be biased against women.
The gender academic success gap: boys don't pay attention or do their work so it's only natural for girls to do better.
It's clear that for both of these thoughts to exist in someone's head, they must think there's a superior gender.
STEM is (barely) more female than male [0]. It only seems disproportionately male if you take the idea that 60%+ of people in a major should be female as a given, or if you pick very particular subfields in STEM and take them to represent all of STEM.
Oh yeah, it really depends on what you count. I was thinking of the fields I was closest to -- CS, physics, math -- but e.g. biology leans female and has a lot of students.
The high paying vocational jobs also tend to be more geared towards males. Eg. plumbing, electrician, etc. So I wonder if college is the best measure here. I think most people just go to college as a means of making money, they aren't actually in it for the love of knowledge.
In what way? I've worked with some people with some fairly, ehm, extreme takes on things, and had a fair share of disagreements, sometimes with some words that were harsher than I thought were professional, but I've never been subjected to or observed anything I'd call close to "bullying".
White, straight, male, 37 with two kids. One who is severely disabled and under the age of 5. In the past couple of years, its become clear to me that I will probably become a caretaker to my daughter at some point in my life. The prospects of keeping a full time job, in my field are quickly changing - I am no longer desired. Doing this in a financial services setting is especially stark because there's no empathy. Its been really rough the past couple of years. I am trying to find my peace with the idea that I've done a good job, I did everything I was supposed to do, but there were forces outside my control that will dictate the future. My wife just made partner at her firm, and I was told by a c level executive, of color, that I'm "no longer part of where the firm culture is headed". I see this issue every day, it gets harder as we get older. As we head towards 2024, that sentiment on the other side of the fence gains momentum from this type of isolation, regardless of race. It will be interesting to see how many men vote in 2024 vs. previous elections.
White, straight male in my 40s who worked hard to build a decent career. The feeling that this culture hates me based on each of those categories, completely without knowing me, is hard to ignore much longer without a response.
The feeling comes from being on the losing side of every action the government and popular culture takes. Being told that you can’t even be involved in a conversation about that fact.
White, straight male (too far) into in my 40s, but in France: for now I don't witness that. There is overall concern for women and minorities, but no hate towards my "category".
Reading what happens elsewhere, I'm happy to live in a more cohesive society.
Go look at Google's Mother's Day doodles. Go look at Google's Father's Day doodles (if you can find them, suspiciously absent for a while).
"Men are trash." "Men are awful." Then look up on Wikipedia the "Women are wonderful" effect. And of course the ever-popular "dick is abundant and low-value."
You get suggestions like white people should be vaccinated last. And so on and so on. It just never stops.
Because around the times of Occupy Wall Street the Left has been hijacked and redirected from addressing economic issues relevant to the majority (property ownership/retirement perspectives, cost of raising children, medical/education costs) to manufacturing intangible problems and directing the society's passion to solving them. So the fact that <1% of the population feels bad when called with wrong pronouns gets massive attention, and the fact that >50% of the population has massive debts and lives paycheck-to-paycheck is considered unworthy of discussion.
The crisis, if there is one, is that society has less use for males who have IQs between 90-105 or so, who cannot cut it in STEM, and who are finding it hard to cope with increasingly competitive economic conditions and higher overall costs like rent, and is why many men are delaying family formation or moving back with parents (but also due to careerism for women). Men are just dropping out rather than doing low-paid work and having to deal with political correctness at the office and other inconveniences.
This kind of withdrawal seems to be happening in many cultures. In Japan it's called hikikomori. I forget what it's called in Italy, but I know I've read about it. Here it's the same, except ours tend to be more violent.
I don’t know enough about Japan to say anything on this matter but at least in Italy, unlike America, it’s fairly common for adults to live with their parents until married, without social stigma (well, if they have a job).
> having to deal with political correctness at the office and other inconveniences.
I think there is room for another look at this (without condoning it):
men have careerism out of necessity for stability - or at least conveying stability - and made environments that were comfortable for them to make it tolerable
women have careerism out of choice for stability and are finding pursuing this choice out of pride enters them into an environment that was never really about professionalism
so the two audiences are exploiting themselves in office and corporate environments for different reasons or pressures
I'm all for making environments comfortable for a greater population to be productive and sustain their lifestyle, I think acknowledging why an environment is uncomfortable for new entrants can help that
I'm 33, Ive got a fairly high IQ, make $340k in a STEM field and enough to retire tomorrow, I'm not unattractive, and put a huge amount of effort over many years into online dating. I've pretty much given up on dating. I have a total inability to find anyone I'm interested in that is interested in me.
When I was younger and I wanted to go to bars and get drunk and be an idiot I had plenty of attractive sexual partners.
So I don't buy this at all. The guys I know who have an easy time dating are 1 or 2 points more attractive, make minimum wage as yoga teachers or selling crystals or dumb stuff like that, and tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear about their quantum vibrations matching and other new age nonsense.
So I can say this narrative empirically doesn't feel true for me.
If you're so smart to observe what the problem your facing is, and have the money to retire tomorrow and be a yoga teacher and find a partner, go do it?
> tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear
If you are looking for a reason for your travails, here it is. If you started out with this level of contempt, it’s no wonder you’ve been unsuccessful. If you became embittered due to your challenges, then I’m sorry. That is a hard path. But if you want it to change, I think you have some work to do. And I wish you luck with it.
The typical women are wonderful counterargument. Dime a dozen in threads like these.
I suggest you take your own advice and work on your issues that make you respond in a knee-jerk manner, blaming them like that, instead of assuming that OP may be correct in their assessment about the dating scene.
The core conceit of their post is that women want to hear stupid things, and won't partner with them because they will not say them. This is essentially a misogynistic point of view and there is nothing wrong with pointing that out. Refocusing the argument on some peripheral part of what was said is not useful, because it doesn't address the core issue.
Do bars really work? I keep seeing this advice, but I never see it happening when I'm in bars. People usually show up and leave as a group, especially now with social distancing measures.
Depends on the bar. Certainly when I was young there where certain bars that where known as places you go to be social and meet girls and certain bars that where known as places where you sat and drank with your mates and got left alone. By selecting which bar you went to you could greatly influence how your evening went.
Please don't put yoga and crystals into the same category. While what most people in the west are doing has little to do with the actual thing it's still probably the most important discovery made by humanity.
>huge amount of effort over many years into online dating
My god I hope you aren't talking about tinder are you? You are totally clueless about women and dating if that is what you are talking about.
Go out to bars, talk to people, do activities and meet lots of people. stop doing 'online' dating (of any kind)
Seriously, myself and everyone I know found that upon reaching 33 the interest from women in their 20s sky rockets. You are definitely doing something wrong, not society.
39% in 2017. I'd be very curious to know the numbers over the past two years as in 2017 bars/restaurants were at 27%, school/college at 9%, and work at 11%.
And note that this says "online dating" not specifically tinder. Statistics show that 80% of women sleep with 20% of men on Tinder. Tinder is a place women go when they are interested in having sex with men based on nothing other than their looks. That is fine, if you are in the top 20%, if you aren't, it is a real fools errand.
> Seriously, myself and everyone I know found that upon reaching 33 the interest from women in their 20s sky rockets. You are definitely doing something wrong, not society.
Huge YMMV. A lot of us are physically similar to what we were in our 20s but I definitely peaked when I was around 25. It’s been a steady downhill trend since then and the interest from women has gone completely downhill. Mind you - I’m not exactly surrounded by many women I’m interested in but at least in the past I might’ve had someone I wasn’t into express some mild interest in me.
In my 30s though? Nope. Definitely not. Haven’t even lost hair or gained a bunch of fat. Yet - from the results one would think I have.
So, I’d say… grain of salt as far as your experience and your friends goes. I know many men who have basically given up in their 30s because they feel completely undesired and have managed to keep up their physicality.
It seems to be a generational thing. Women over 40 are so much easier to date than early thirties and under. I'm 38 and it seems my generation or the ones younger just do it differently. I don't get it. I can't get them to go out in public sooner than 2 months of chatting, but late 30s and early 40s it's usually a few texts and we meet up. It seems the younger generation is more comfortable being virtual. And keeping it that way. Or something. I can't quite put my finger on it but I've stopped even trying to date people in their 30s. 40s+ seems to still live in the physical world.
The younger women aren't actually interested in you. They're just using you as entertainment and keeping you around as a backup option. It's a common online dating strategy for people who are in high demand.
No surprise that women in their 40's are more responsive. There are less men alive at their age and less men interested in dating their peer age. Many men in their 40s want to date someone in their 30s. Men in their 50s want a 40s, etc. It's uncommon for men to want to date someone in the same age bracket as they get older.
I'm not sure if it's the cities I've been living in but bars seem to have relatively few women in them. Going to a bar in search of a partner almost seems not so different than swiping on Tinder.
Literally everyone I know who is around my age (~34), if I ask them how they met their partner, the will say they met their partner online, myself included.
"go out to bars" is advise that's about 20 years out of date, mate. However, being successful at online dating is non-intuitive and takes skill.
Of course, if you're in your mid 30's and you want to bang college chicks half your age with daddy issues, maybe "going to bars" is the way to go...
I would tell you to take that with a pinch of salt.
I've met people online and dated them. I've also met girls in other ways and dated them, now marrying one. Once or twice, well, we didn't quite want to tell other people how we met. So we didn't. We just said we met online. It's the perfect blow-off justification when you don't want to get into a perhaps complicated and messy story.
People meet in all sorts of ways. I used online dating for years but it was never the most successful strategy. What did work - meeting girls at events, in bars, ideally at events in bars, one or two less conventional ways, and never giving up.
People in their 30s should be avoiding college bars if they're actually looking to meet people and have some kind of connection.
It's pretty easy to strike up conversations with people at bars and events. I know people who met their long term partners on overseas tours, at work and at music festivals. Not everyone uses dating apps, not every person at a bar is ancient or has daddy issues.
Is it instead that some of these folks who have an "easy" time actually don't care that much about the process? Not ignorance, but not spending much time over-analyzing everything. Instead, they're out and they're drawing people to them because they're not thinking about having a good time, but just doing it?
It really is that simple in some ways. Focus on enjoying yourself throughout your day to day and especially in social situations and perhaps someone will find their way to you instead.
PS: those crystal sellers don't sound to me (generalizing) like good long-term matches for most people. So, stop comparing yourself to them.
> anyone I'm interested in that is interested in me.
Perhaps this is your problem? I've seen this with folks at work. They're middle aged, successful, extremely bright and they want to find a mate. The problems as I see it:
1. They insist on living in "Man Jose" aka SiValley. There is a serious lack of demographic diversity here.
2. They want to find a bright, attractive woman with an amazing career, 10/10 body who is wowed by their lack of life balance, an obsession with career and status, and lack of fun/joy in their lives.
If these guys would live practically anywhere but the valley and accept that, even though they make a lot of money and are great at their tech jobs, they are just average in terms of what a woman looks for in a mate, well, they might get somewhere.
Lonely nerds: you've got to accept that in all likelihood your mate will disappoint you in some way and vice-versa. Don't just marry the first girl you find, but consider lowering your standards to match with reality.
> I had plenty of attractive sexual partners.
This sentence is a serious red flag. If you think your ability to bang hot women who hang out in bars bears any relation to your fitness as a mate then you need to check your beliefs about what women want in a relationship. I'd like to hope this is just an insensitive way of you telling us that you're not a hideous monster and hopefully that's all it is. If not, I don't know, maybe stop trying to date, take a break from the tech world, and just work on your social skills for a while.
> tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear
Jesus... so many red flags. Really man, you have a condescending attitude towards women and you wonder why you can't find a mate?
You want a 1% female? I mean you sound like you are only 1% on income alone so that’s probably not enough. You probably have also gotten quite difficult at your age. At some point people get old and really set in their ways and are hard to merge into a marriage unit
As a mid-20s male I can completely relate. Have spent way too much time trying to optimize the amount of matches I can get on these apps.
You might feel like your achievements and positive qualities are not being valued by women and you've worked so hard to improve yourself for nothing. Trust me, this is not true. There are other factors at play that make online dating unreasonably unfair for you.
1. If you are in the Bay Area, you are at a distinct disadvantage. The male-female-ratio, homogeneity of interests and credentials make stand out far less than you would in the general population. It is also natural for women to form negative stereotypes about men in tech if they've been on bad dates. There's no way to tell that you won't be the same from your profile. I've experienced this first-hand where every woman I managed to go on a date with responded positively and complained to me that the guys they meet are immature, entitled or lack social skills.
2. If you are not white and live in the USA, your odds are slimmer even among your racial group. There are studies to confirm this and you can compare yourself to your peers.
3. Physical attributes like height, fitness and facial attractiveness matter but to a way lesser extent than people think. I've been skinny as a rail and ripped with a substantial amount of muscle and the number of matches were still about the same and women I met in person didn't seem to care either way though I would rate myself as considerably closer to the generally accepted male standards of attractiveness when jacked.
4. By far the quickest hack to get more matches on dating apps is to improve your pictures. Bite the bullet and do it, the bar is pitifully low.
5. No matter how many matches you get, the vast majority of them will act the same way. They'll not respond, stand you up and ghost. Most people are incapable of dealing with the pressures of interacting with other and will choose to do what's easiest for them instead of what's right. However, the more matches you get, the less you'll care about this.
6. Your point about appealing to the lowest common denominator sounds attractive when you feel like you have no prospects but you'll realize it is a sheer waste of time once you learn to value yourself appropriately and stop degrading yourself because of the feedback you're getting from the apps. This is difficult to do unless you really deeply understand the dynamics of these apps so the typical suggestion is to get off them and just date in person.
7. You were pretty much sold a lie growing up that everyone is entitled to love and the average guy will have an easy time finding a partner. When you understand the evolutionary pressures placed on women to select the best partner and today's world where women feel like there are many more high value men due to social media, it is easy to understand why they find it repulsive to settle for someone who's average. Most women grow out of this kind of thinking and seek real connection at some point though.
TLDR; You're probably undervaluing yourself but its not really your fault. Move out of the Bay Area. Get better pictures for your dating apps. Don't expect to have an easy time dating if there is nothing extraordinarily exceptional about you.
> If you are in the Bay Area, you are at a distinct disadvantage. The male-female-ratio
This is just true in the entire USA under age 35. If you're a man - you have a distinct disadvantage. More men (107:100) are born than women. This evens out around age 40 because men killed themselves at a much higher rate than women have. (Think about that - women kill themselves too but 7% of men have to off themselves to just even it out if all the women lived)
Practically speaking, you're going feel the gender ratio of your geographical region/metropolitan area. Sure, men will be at a ratio disadvantage more often than not in the US, but there are definitely zones where the ratio is inverted. I spent half my 20s in NYC and half in SF and the wow was the difference glaring.
In NY I could easily get matches/dates... in SF it was much more difficult. And when I did get dates in SF, 2nd dates were much less likely, I got ghosted more often, etc. In terms of the silly reductive attractiveness scale, I went from feeling like an 7 or 8 to a 3 or 4.
I’m just letting you know that even in NYC the ratios are still not in mens favor. 18-35, there are still more men in NYC than women. You’ve been sold a lie for a long time - lol.
Every source I can find in a cursory search only shows the overall ratio, not age group segmented - whats your source?
And regardless, even if it was somewhere between slightly favorable and slightly unfavorable in NYC, it is strongly unfavorable in SF, which accords with my subjective experience dating in the two places.
First Google search result. Census data contains all the info you desire. It’s not highly publicized because no one likes to admit that men might be struggling with something - lol. It doesn’t sell well in the media.
I will agree that the gender ratio of SF and SV are wildly worse for men than NYC. Just saying that it isn’t some holy grail that people like to sell it as. Men outnumber women in this world from birth. It’s only because men kill themselves that we have less men than women by age ~40.
The obvious problem is: what are you "interested in" when it comes to women?
The way you are killing it in your career, I suspect that your female companionship objectives are a tad bit too demanding. At the least, you should try to find a women you can trust and enjoy in small moments of life. Start there.
If you have 340k and have put huge efforts into online dating and failed, it would be trivial economically for you to hire a professional photographer to get you a better dating profile (most people have shit photos, and you likely do too), it would be trivial to book some sessions with a dating coach (mainstream, not red pill style / PUA stuff) to give you feedback on your profile or real world interactions. You could also afford a personal stylist to do a wardrobe revamp.
Put those monetary resources your brain has afforded you to work.
If you were able to get laid at bars in the past, you are good looking enough. Your profile is just likely bad / has poor photos. And I know that sucks but its the real world.
Automation will essentially keep the top percentiles of intelligence employed while everyone else suffers immensely. 80% of the country is going to be fucked in the coming decades while we automate everything. It's why UBI is so crucial in the future.
I believe "who cannot cut it in STEM" is a very dangerous thing to say. How many theoretical physicists or golang developer positions are available? By definition only a minority of men can hold them. And the government is importing foreigners to compete for the same positions too. But a society is much larger than that. And if you don't support those alleged "90-105"s from your society pretty soon you'll be a minority in your own country. Which incidentally is going to happen to Americans in my lifetime.
When was the last time your heard politicians talking about it? Ross Perot and DJT?
Your reminder that having disenfranchised young men with nothing to lose in your society is like keeping kindling next to a munitions factory and has never ended well.
It’s kind of like a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs but for a society. If your higher needs are only being met at the expense of your lower needs it’s all going to come crashing down.
The lower needs in this case are channeling the energies of those that can commit the most violent atrocities away from committing violent atrocities and into something constructive like jobs and families.
I like Yang, he's certainly intelligent and his reality/algorithm is certainly separate from mine, yet parallel. So I find what he talks about is very interesting. The first part of the article clearly lays out the reality that men/boys are under attack.
One of the key roles that the political left-wing should represent is fixing disenfranchisement. Unfortunately for about the last few decades, that not only is untrue, the opposite is what is happening. It has been the left-wing who has been disenfranchising boys and men.
>Yes, men have long had societal advantages over women and in some ways continue to be treated favorably. But male achievement — alongside that of women — is a condition for a healthy society.
Here it is coming from Yang. The right-wing are obviously where traditional gender roles are still represented. The equality or rather attack on traditional roles started many decades prior but for example it's the left-wing who has attacked the boy scouts.
It's the same reason that homelessness is in vast majority men, but the vast majority of homeless shelters are women's only.
>Our media, institutions and public leadership have failed to address this crisis, framing boys and men as the problem themselves rather than as people requiring help.
This is intentionally being done by those groups. Hard to address the crisis that they themselves are intentionally creating.
>Resources that keep families together when they want to stay together, such as marriage counseling, should be subsidized by the government — a much more cost-efficient approach than dealing with the downstream effects.
What's more important. This isn't zero-sum, women benefit from men being strong.
>On a cultural level, we must stop defining masculinity as necessarily toxic and start promoting positive masculinity. Strong, healthy, fulfilled men are more likely to treat women well.
This was intentionally done and in fact, it's trending in a worse direction. This is about to get worse before it gets better.
>The above is, of course, a prodigious undertaking. But I see the need around me all the time.
Toxic masculinity isnt a thing on the right-wing. When the left-wing says 'toxic masculinity' the right-wing rolls its eyes. He sees this around him all the time because of where he stands politically. If you're interested in some right-wing positions on this subject.
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[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 378 ms ] threadI agree that a woman can't be a role model in the same ways as a man, but I believe this is not necessarily a bad thing.
source: student of Depth Psychology
You can see a direct correlation in outcomes when comparing children that emerged from two-parent households over those that emerge from single-parent households. But because that is an uncomfortable and pervasive problem to discuss, almost all social effort is focused on solving less tangible problems.
The fathers I did have ranged from absent, to addicts, to abusive. I realize nobody is perfect but there has never been a positive role model for me and this affected me terribly in my relationships for so long (I've been to jail for abuse). I'm only lucky in that I got out of that cycle at least somewhat, and I can probably only credit the massive improvement in my economic condition. My brothers have not been so lucky.
My dad worked in public housing and I used to do tutoring as a kid in the summer. It was sad as I saw the 10 year olds who I really related to grow up in negative paths, mostly because nobody cared.
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-47057787.amp
In contrast my mother works in a Title 1 Elementary school[2], she spends much of her day dealing with children that are in chronically bad situations, it has been her observation that the biggest problem is that no one cares about the kids, not in a the parents hate them sense, but there is no one actively concerned with and thinking about and preparing for the child's future, there are all sorts of resources the school makes available to try and help these kids but it doesn't matter much because no one is invested.
When you have only one parent that one parent has is the sole person responsible for helping prepare that child, investing in that child, and guiding the child, and that kind of work is exhausting. It can be done my own mother is evidence of that, but when you have two parents now you don't have to be the point man on it all day every day you can share that burden with someone else, you have someone to help bear the burden when it is too much for you, and that shares the load.
That I think is an important part of what having a two parent household rather than a one parent household brings, even if finances aren't great it still means there is someone that can invest in the child.
But what doesn't get talked about with family (especially small kids) is that you're with them for 16 hours a day.
Emotions get messy. Someone is always upset about something. And the larger the family, the more probable that someone is upset at any given moment.
The nice thing about a two parent household is that (hopefully) one parent keeps a cool head while the other me be annoyed, etc.
It's so much of a help to have a partner that says "why don't you take five minutes" or "I think you were too hard on ..." And I can reciprocate the same support.
I don't know how single parents do it.
This was an op-ed by a politician, not any kind of analysis.
> "Economic transformation has been a big contributor. More than two-thirds of manufacturing workers are men; the sector has lost more than 5 million jobs since 2000. That’s a lot of unemployed men. Not just coincidentally, “deaths of despair” — those caused by suicide, overdose and alcoholism — have surged to unprecedented levels among middle-aged men over the past 20 years."
A society divided into wealthy elite homeowners living off investment cash flows, and poverty-striken underclass renters living off minimum wages, is not a very stable or healthy society.
Historically, an economic middle class is a relatively recent phenomenon. For ages past and across cultures, there were "rich" and "poor" and relatively few in between.
What created the middle class in the US was a government system that restricted the power of the elites to abuse that power. As Thomas Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal". I.e. the rich, powerful, government, or otherwise privileged people ought not to have rights that the poor do not have.
I think the disappearance of the middle class today is largely due to favoritism and miscarriage of justice in government -- like failing to prosecute gross economic crimes adequately (embezzling, insider trading, monopolism, etc.). I don't think rich people are bad by definition, but I do think our government tends to show favoritism to them.
EDIT:
Lest I sound like I'm coming down on conservatives only, liberals in the US have also been hugely responsible for the disappearance of the middle class. The bipartisan post-WWII GI bill, signed by FDR, severely disadvantaged African-American veterans in how it was carried out - by disproportionately denying applications by African-American veterans for housing.
In the decades that followed, Democrat welfare programs provided significantly more total income to 2 divorced adults with kids than a family with 2 married, cohabiting parents -- thus encouraging men to move out so their family could have more welfare money, and (broadly speaking) causing an entire generation of children in poor (and especially African-American families) to grow up without a dad in the home. This lead to further poverty, crime, drug addiction, and ultimately devastation.
Clinton's "war on drugs" and his three-strikes rule only made the problem worse by merely prosecuting and imprisoning people in poverty instead of working to repair the root causes of their behavior. This resulted in many more fatherless families.
Upholding the rights of the poor is everyone's responsibility, especially those in government, regardless of their political affiliation.
The aggregate of individual moral/ethical choices manifests as social phenomena.
That's not entirely false, but it's misleading. The personal choices follow relevant distributions, which are themselves not aggregates. Also, such choices are made in circumstances and under constraints that are not up to individual choice.
No couples with a brain are marrying when doing so would render woman and child ineligible for state aid. The downside to this is that the man is free to leave and leave they do. That's the big one but many government policies have have had the net effect of decreasing stability in poor urban households (regardless of race, but we all know poor urban households do not represent a cross section of society).
I feel a son would be so much harder to raise in today's world.
As the other commenter said, we see different families in very different mindsets.
I have been personally affected by sexism type B: was expected to work, to be a provider someday, to pay my own way to university, if you want a car you buy it, etc. etc. My sister had the second family car at disposal and the tuition was paid for. There was this undercurrent interpretation of feminism that "women will eventually suffer so they should be pampered when possible".
There were other factors at play: I have a tendency to self-indulgence, my sister does not, so it is prima facie difficult to separate what was proper, individualized upbringing and what was sexism. But sexism was a part; many male friends of the same generation have the same complaint and some could be better off today had they have more support at home.
Then there is this relative of mine, that simply threw his daughters out at 18, since they are supposed to get a wealthy boyfriend and marry rich, so they don't need any further support. BTW they are disowned, too.
This is sexism type A, and make it a big A.
Not necessary to say this strategy did not end well: both are stuck with less-than-optimal partners and careers. We are in 2022 and a nice, wealthy and rational guy won't commit to someone without a career and finances in order.
This is more often false than true. I know many men who have or are marrying women who make 1/2 or less what they do. Nice, wealthy, and rational folks. They however need a woman. And there is a strong lack of women who are anywhere near where many men are in compensation and wealth.
I am example of that. I married someone who made nothing. I put her through a prestigious college in the most expensive location in the country and paid for it all. Etc.
Supply+demand. We got way more men than we do women in this world under age 35. As a guy - you have to settle.
Even when choosing a career, men seem to place a lot of importance on compensation, while women seem to place just as much, if not more, importance on other non-financial factors too.
I am also an example. I make much more than my wife, and it made zero impact on my decision to date and marry her.
In general I rarely see couples where the wife earns significantly more than the husband. Generally the husband makes more, they both make about even, or the wife might make slightly more.
My personal experience and from what I've learned from other men: It's because most men know they won't receive a dime from their partner. It starts with how a man almost always pays for the dates or at best they split it. (Or they have a rule like - "whoever asks X out has to pay" which is of course always the man because almost no women ask any men out) Similarly - the wife is usually the SAHP not because the man doesn't ever want to do it (I know many men who'd love to be a SAHP!) but because financially it makes little to no sense. As a man - you could try to choose a woman who makes more but that's very hard. Most women don't want to be the bread winner - why do it when they've never been the one to do it anyway? There's a level of entitlement that comes with carrying children to term as well - there's an idea that they should get to spend time with their children at home for as long as they want before they have to go back to work. (A weird mentality of, "It's work that deserves to be compensated but I also really want to do this and would do it even if I wasn't compensated and definitely don't wanna go back to work!") When it makes more financial sense - I see the men be SAHP but I've only ever met one guy in that position. One! And it's because he's broke AF and his wife makes way more money. They are the one couple I know who go against the grain on these gender roles and they're both incredibly liberal leaning people.
When I think back on my own experience and that of the many men I've listened to... The gifts men received, the treats, the support, etc. it's always much less than what the men were putting out. Most men know they won't receive anything from a woman even if she has the ability to. There is a certain level of entitlement and certain patriarchal values that many women have not given up and refuse to give up for the foreseeable future. One is giving up the notion that the man provides the majority or all of the financial support. There's also a nature of feeling like a woman needs to be financially spoiled in order to feel "supported"/"loved". I don't know if this is due to consumerism but it feels closer to gender roles than that.
I don't think any of this stuff is ingrained. I think it's cultural. Again - why I said I don't see this changing for generations. If people are still so adamantly doing this now and it feels like many are even more ingrained now with it - there's no hope for the next 50 years. I think people will dig in more and more men will go without reproducing.
> In general I rarely see couples where the wife earns significantly more than the husband. Generally the husband makes more, they both make about even, or the wife might make slightly more.
It's hard to say if that's because the men chose that or if the woman chose that - but I know many women who outright declare they won't date anyone who makes less than they do and many are hesitant to date anyone who makes even the same. I know many of these women - almost all of them are my friends. Only people I know who date someone who makes less than them are men. (Gay or straight)
As I said in the other comment, I am moderately optimistic because some indicators are already moving e.g. you mentioned that more men will go childless. This is already happening.
As it stands, most women have far greater leverage in romantic relationships than most men. They can easily walk out the door and find a partner the next day. Most men spend much longer looking for someone.
To my son, I teach that there are no gender roles set in stone. If in doubt, stay single and childless; he has many, many decades to opt out if the Right One shows up.
Yes, I am hoping that I have daughters. I do not want a son. I experienced life as a man and have seen what the life of my partners is in comparison. If the girls come out even half as decent looking - they'll coast through life with little guidance needed from me.
I have friends with just daughters - and they all do not envy the parents with boys. They are all feeling blessed to have daughters. I think being a woman has its struggles but the plights are mostly for those in the poor class. If you're upper middle class or above as most people in tech within SV - you can mostly skate by many issues. The issues of a man do not go away regardless of your class - short of being hyper-wealthy.
I don't think this is true. I think population evens out at about age 18 then it's more women until death.
It's age 40 where it evens out. Mainly due to suicide. (A lot of "accidental" deaths and occupational deaths are low-key suicidal behavior)
"number of men vs women by age usa"
Maybe, but today's world is not the world your son would grow up in. We're at the end of the cycle from the G. Michael Hopf quote below. The beginning of the cycle is once again imminent, thankfully.
"Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times."
I wonder how much of this is because more women are joining the workforce. If men are leaving the workforce by their own free will because their wife is working and they are staying home with the kids, both of these facts could be true, but seems like a win in both gender equality terms and allowing men to have the life they want. This seems better then having two working parents.
I don't really like how "out of the workforce" is coupled with unemployed. "out of the workforce" implies they don't have to and don't want to work, as opposed to unemployed
It's one thing to be single and roaming the world carefree.
But my observation has been that most men who are married, especially if with children, have some innate desire to provide for the family and not being able to do so (due to unemployment, underemployment, etc.) causes them stress even if the wife is earning more than enough.
Those that don't seem to be an outlier. Is it biological? Is it social pressure? I don't know.
Similarly, if you know you could take someone in a fight, and they challenge you in public...its easier in that case to "take the high road" and walk away than it would be if you knew you would lose the fight, or you weren't confident you would win. The people in the latter case are much more likely to feel shame and/or resentment towards the aggressor later on.
I think with "power" like that its easier to make the best choice in many cases. It's a shame too...I know a few people that are miserable because they don't have a "real job", even though they don't really need one financially. That lack of power keeps them from being happy and choosing the lifestyle that would obviously be best otherwise.
I've long considered traditional gender roles of man works and provides income and woman raises kids and cooks to be unfair to both genders and a general issue that affects everyone, and not really a "feminist" issue as such (or rather, not exclusively feminist).
In my country there's been a lot of discussion that a lot of women are working part-time rather than full-time, with many claiming this is horrible and evidence of discrimination. Maybe that plays a part, but it seems to me the real question is "why aren't more men working part-time?" rather than "why aren't more women working full-time?"
And more general: up to a few decades ago it was entirely normal for a single earner to support an entire family and still have money for a yearly holiday. Now that's much harder financially, if not outright impossible. Something really profound changed in our economy with seemingly few people noticing or commenting on it.
Feminism also contains the culture that wants six year old boys to be held back, feel shame and suffer for the sins of their fathers.
Feminism also contains the idea that being a man is some kind of disease, something to be ashamed of.
If you ask a representative sample of men most will disagree strongly and loudly.
If however you ask feminists to distance themselves from the extremists you'll probably find a completely different answer.
I have no papers to show but I have been watching the debate from the sidelines:
Even something as simple as getting feminists to condemn "kill all men" is hard.
Your whole argument hinges on this word, you are not arguing in good faith, but rather, building a strawman. I'm not going to engage with this style. Thanks.
> I have no papers to show but I have been watching the debate from the sidelines:
First strawman is not the word here anyway. That would mean I misrepresent others to make it easier to knock down their arguments.
That said, I'm not a native speaker and it probably affects the quality of my arguments.
I'll try to rephrase it as a thought experiment:
If one ask
- a random sampling of men to distance themselves from a tweet that says women should be chained to the kitchen
- and a random sample of women to distance themselves from a #killallmen tweet
how do one think the results would be?
> I'm not going to engage with this style. Thanks.
Your choice, for the benefit of everyone else I answered.
But I think it is unfair to say I argue in bad faith.
My point is that among mainstream feminists it is more ok to write even gross hate speech against men (#killallmen) than it is to write even bad jokes about women (they should be chained to the kitchen) amongst not-feminists.
I'm not suggesting mainstream feminists conspire to actually kill all men.
All "isms" contain outliers, but it's a mistake to get too hung up them in almost all cases. One of the oldest tricks in the book for people trying to push back against idea is to identify these outliers and generate a narrative that this is what the idea is actually about - it's bad faith argument and shouldn't be engaged with.
Is that too a bad faith argument?
Which is I think what the sibling commentor was trying to say, no?
The bad faith argumentation doesn't come from the specifics of whatever group you are talking about, it comes from trying to represent a fringe view or characterization as definitive of the group, then attacking them all for it.
Take for example the current news about Canadian trucker convoy, there was some coverage of people in the convoy being pictured with swastika flags.
It's perfectly reasonable to say: "hey, what's up with the neonazi's ? Are you guys really ok with them being part of your protest?"
And it's perfectly reasonable to judge them on the response to that question. There are even nuanced answers that it's hard to judge.
However, it's a bad faith argument to jump from that to: "Canadian truckers are nazi's".
I said:
> There are examples of men who want women to be chained to the kitchen; we should consider the reasonable views though,
and
> Ignore the fringe elements
Emphasis added on the important parts. I was arguing there are always fringe elments, and to ignore those, not that the men who are shitheads are important to focus on. You're really twisting things around and I won't comment further on these bad-faith arguments, have a nice day.
From what I've read and people I've spoken to, quite a large number – though far from all – feminists seem to agree on that in broad lines, yet somehow the public discourse still remains fairly narrow IMHO. Personally, I blame the "MRA" people and their nonsense.
Please kindly let me know where such sort of feminism is happening - I would like to move there.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism
Feminism is the belief that women are deserving of equal consideration in all things.
Women, regardless of their own earnings, do not want men that are unemployed, lowly employed, "in between jobs". You will be completely ignored. It's a crude reality, but a reality nevertheless. Men are selected by utility.
Read the article again. It seems there's whole armies of men with time on their hands. Unemployed, unable to get a partner. A great supply of male homemakers one would think.
But no. Nobody wants them. A male without utility is cast aside like trash.
Likewise, women do not really want the feminine or sensitive men that they claim to want. They may want it after first securing a man with good looks and good earnings, after which said man may at times express his emotions. But don't overdo it, obviously.
This feminist idea to destroy male gender roles directly contradicts what women actually do. For as long as feminists do not marry economically disadvantaged men and financially take care of them, none of this will change, and it's all just a bunch of hypocrisy.
> women do not really want the feminine or sensitive men that they claim to want.
You are wrong. Yes, as a partner you're supposed to have drive and groom yourself properly - this is true for everyone. After those basic life requirements, what is important is that you are capable of having a mature relationship with someone else. Part of that is knowing that you should express yourself and how to do it in such a way that it isn't a fight every time.
But if you don't believe me, do go ahead and create a fake dating profile. One in which you show economic fragility (which is the point of the OP article) yet that you're very much in touch with your feelings.
Enjoy the crickets. Nobody wants you.
Hence my point: be attractive, economically successful and only then might you also express some feelings. The thing you're missing here is "economically successful". You describe it as a basic life requirement but I made my remark in context of the article, which describes millions of men for which this is out of reach, even if they try. So the "mature relationship" doesn't apply as they won't be in any due to their economic status.
And as this lack of economic success leads to a lack of romantic success, they sink into a depression, start drinking, and then kill themselves. None of which apparently is worrying, instead the worrying part is saying that women select for economic success, as this sounds shallow, bitter or even offensive.
It's not offensive, it makes total sense from both a biological and cultural perspective.
People have become experts in dodging and bending realities they dislike. When it rains outside they deny it, change the subject, or even redefine the meaning of the word rain.
But to me it still just rains. I'm a man and I know what is expected of me: utility. I have to deliver it and there's no safety net. Failing is not an option. It doesn't matter how I feel about it as it doesn't matter how I feel about the rain. Rain doesn't care, and the world doesn't care about men.
You lived on your farm or in your village. Both parents did work on the farm as needed. Dad was never far from home and did take the older kids to the fields.
Until my children grew up and I rejoined the workforce. That has been a struggle.
Another thing is that it's awkard for breast-feeding women to be away from their babies for long times, and formula comes with its own set of problems.
True. But it is a short period.
Or adjust your lifestyle to not need to earn so much.
If you really want to stay home, there's probably a way to make it work.
It’s also a sign that the gender income gap decreased, because it’s worth both people’s time to work. It’s not worth womens’ time to work either when the family is poor (because they can’t earn much and might as well do home/childcare labor) or rich (because the amount one partner can add with a job effectively doesn't matter).
This means the easiest way to get back to a one-income family is to lower womens’ wages again, so you probably shouldn’t wish for it.
"This means the easiest way to get back to a one-income family is to lower womens’ wages again, so you probably shouldn’t wish for it."
There's no connection to this and the rest of your post. It also assumes that families don't need two incomes to stay out of poverty or off of assistance.
The easiest ways according to your post is to make a family poor or rich.
Probably depends on the neighborhood - there's claims in this thread that single motherhood is up, but those can't both be true. (I don't have any evidence to add here.)
> The easiest ways according to your post is to make a family poor or rich.
Yes, but making someone poor's a lot easier. Murphy's law, y'know.
They can. I think you're missing one of my key parts - without assistance. It's highly likely single mothers are getting child support. It's possible they are getting assistance too.
Just look at the stats on how much people have saved in emergency funds and for retirement. That should show you the dire need for two incomes.
I'm curious - are there any human cultures where the woman was the traditionally (as in, not a recent modern phenomenon) the breadwinner and the men stayed at home? I know there are cultures that were matriarchal in leadership, and that there are animal species (i.e. lions) where the female does the hunting. But were there any true "Amazon" cultures in the past?
However women would take babies with them while doing things like picking nuts and berries.
and
> Research shows that one significant factor women look for in a partner is a steady job. As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Unsurprisingly, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from 1960 to 2010, the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just over 70 percent to roughly 45 percent.
Seem to imply that this isn't a case of men choosing to stay at home with the kids. I'm curious what the actual data is though.
It's not like everyone lives on a farm anymore. You probably can't just build a starter house on the other side of her dad's back 40 acres.
I then realized that for much of history up until recently by the time a young man was 18 years old he was already a skilled craftsman at his craft to a large extant. The young man would've been training with his father at his craft from the time he was ten years old and so by the time he was 18 would be proficient in what he had to do.
I wonder then is part of the issue we face due to the fact that we spend so much time trying to instill a modern education into youth until they are adults that they have to spend an additional 4-8 years acquiring an actual skill in order to be able to provide value in the workforce?
Sadly, doing so also stripped dignity from vocational / blue-collar work - even when it pays (very) well, kids are told that a life in the trades is for the uneducated, ignorant swines.
Ironically, part of this development is led by emancipation of the lower classes themselves: "I break my back every day but my son will study and be a doctor". A sentiment we all admire, but ends up reinforcing the idea that the father's blue-collar work is crap - and that's not how it should be, all workers should have equal dignity and value.
Modern society and its trajectory seems a fundamentally unsustainable enterprise.
Assuming that value equals price, the only way everyone would have an equal price is if supply and demand were exactly equal across all occupations over a long period of time.
That is not a realistic expectation. And the only way for people (by and large) to be incentivized to do the things where supply is not meeting demand is to have a higher price where supply of labor is more needed than elsewhere.
That's a big assumption. There are lots of careers with social and financial values that diverge, ignoring that would I think miss the point OP is trying to make.
In other words your argument could works equally well for the father urging their kid to do something that on average won't pay better, but will bring them more respect and social standing.
If most plumbers started earning top 10% wages in the US, they would have similar social standing to doctors. Even doctors have probably moved down in relative status, where the new ones are basically W2 employees with metrics for a big company.
Hell, put a noble prize winner (or Olympic gold medallist, or astronaut, or you pick) in a room with a guy who made 50mm on property development. No contest, but chances are the developer is at least 10x as wealthy.
There are examples all around you; might not be why you respect people, but its' what people actually do. Trying to reduce this all to wealth just doesn't stand up to even a little scrutiny, though it's equally clear that wealth does contribute.
The fact is that money buys better health and familial outcomes. The parents want that for their kids. Manual labor, regardless of how well it pays takes a toll on your body and generally pays less than a lot of the highly sought after knowledge worker jobs.
I really think the rising cost of living is whats driving these kinds of ideas. The parents want their kids to make more money so they can have a better life - a reality in america. Others see this and assume that the blue collar job is bad or something.
If we had an adequate healthcare system that didn't favor the super rich with good outcomes, I would agree. Until then, my kids are going to be encouraged to go into a career where they can make lots of money sitting in an air conditioned office.
I've worked the blue collar tough as fuck jobs, and now I work in an air conditioned office making 15x as much. Objectively, which one is the better job?
I agree, not how it should be, but you gotta get yours.
Also, if you've ever worked in the trades you would know that a large portion of them are ignorant and uneducated. That stereotype exists for a reason. Its just a fact, and they have a tougher time navigating life because of it. I've lived it.
I agree with you there, I think there is a tendency to romanticize the life of a blue collar worker, and thing of them as the noble simple idealized "proletariat", when as you point out the stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.
But I have to wonder is part of that because of the brain drain in the trades that resulted from everyone going to college and feeling they had to do white collar work. Before a smart, observant, hardworking young man could become an electrician and by virtue of being observant and quick witted could succeeded and excel and become an outstanding electrician that could bring about innovation and elevate his work team. Nowadays though the same hardworking intelligent young man is being told that the trades are for stupid people, and he is too smart for that and wouldn't it be much better to go get a college degree so he can get a "real job". Then twenty years and $50,000 of student debt later he finds himself as a project manager trapped in a standup meeting at 8:00 on a Wednesday morning, hating his life, drowning in unfulfilled despair and wondering what went wrong with his life.
I just think that part of the stereotypes about the trades has become a self fulfilling prophecy.
Two things I would comment on are:
1) the amount of debt, try 150-200k
2) in this example, how can you know that he wouldn't hate his life if he chose the trades?
[1]: https://www.credible.com/blog/statistics/average-student-loa...
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/stude...
There seems to be a bunch of variability here. In support of my original assertion of 150-200k, that site has multiple average debts for different fields in my stated range.
Actually, the article you linked confirms my original statement. Look at the "graduate loan debt" section.
From the article you linked: Average student loan debt for a professional degree from a private, nonprofit institution $243,300
I have no idea how they got 28k when most every number I see on that page is much larger.
All the other numbers you see that are higher are graduate degrees. Comparing a medical student debt (4+ years more of school beyond the 4 of undergrad, residency, perhaps a specialty on top) to only a 4 year degree is not representative of the vast majority of student debt.
This is already coming to pass in hot real-estate markets where it's almost impossible to get any sort of trade help. It feels like most of the skilled tradesmen (and women) have a plethora of job choices and they by far prefer to build new housing instead of dealing with nitpicky rich people for the same money.
It's just like most programmers preferring to work on greenfield projects rather than maintenance.
Not everyone can work an information sector job.
In many places a skilled plumber or electrician earns more than an office worker or even junior engineer. A skilled highway construction worker earns more than the country average. A crane operator makes more than the average software developer. There are many surprises when it comes to blue collar job payment.
Take the electrician for example. Minimum 4 years of work as an apprentice, then you have to do a year of schooling, pay for it out of pocket, take a test and your making about as much as a entry level developer who only needed to spend 1 year studying in their free time, spent $400 on a laptop, got all their learning for free online, and isn't doing back breaking, more dangerous work. And from there the tech worker's salary is going to go to 150k+ in 3-5 years. You don't even need college to do that anymore.
Same thing with the crane operator. Starting salary for tech is more, requires less time to get started, and the tech worker's salary goes up quick after starting. You don't start out on the path to being a crane operator at 50k+ a year. You start helping doing rigging and spotting for $12 an hour.
I lived both sides of it, trust me. I see where your coming from, some blue collar jobs pay more than you'd think, but in reality there's just no comparison.
> if you've ever worked in the trades you would know that a large portion of them are ignorant and uneducated
Yes, and that's why there used to be a view that adult education was to be promoted and encouraged.
My point is that at some point, we just stopped aspiring to a better tomorrow and accepted we're all doomed to live in hell. Which, inevitably, condemned us to a life of pain.
Craftsman usually had a decent living because it took training and there was generally demand. But if you train twice as many electricians, its not like there will be twice as many electrician jobs created. So learning a craft or trade is a great personal strategy, but it not a solution we can universally apply.
I do think we force way too many people into college-track for little benefit and quite a bit of harm.
I don't know that I agree with that, right now at least on the data I have available and the anecdata I have observed there is a serious shortage of skilled blue color work, plumber, carpenter, electrician, etc. so there is definitely a shift that would be beneficial for society at large and individuals.
But let's explore this idea a little bit more, right now we are used to the idea that there are X jobs for Y persons, especially in white color work. This seems to derive largely from the fact that white color work is focused not on production of goods and services but in the production of information (and to some extant bullsh*). For example there are only so many marketing jobs out there because there are only so much marketing a company needs done. Sure adding your first 3 marketers may increase your revenue by 50% but adding your 300th marketer probably isn't going to increase your income at all, in fact it's likely it might actually be a negative investment. The problem is the marketer doesn't actually add a resources to the world, they aren't producing marketing widgets, they merely identify and optimize existing distribution channels, and help others become aware of your company, and there is only so much you can do in that area, there is only so much inefficiency that can be optimized away.
Contrast this instead with a plumber. You hire your first plumber he can do say 5 jobs a day, if you hire 3 more plumbers you can do 20 jobs a day now. Well let's suppose later on you hire another plumber he still adds the value to do 5 more jobs a day. Now you may say that there are only so many plumbing jobs out there, only so many people have their 3 year old push a bouncy ball down the toilet, but the plumber is also working on new housing and new business, the plumber isn't just optimizing the existing pie they are causing the overall size of the pie itself to increase. Now there does of course exist some sort of maximum to this, but after reading World War Z that explores this concept in quite a bit of depth (and has no similarity to the movie at all) I've realized that if society did collapse I as a software engineer have absolutely no real or applicable skills, whereas an electrician or a carpenter, they will be able to keep on doing their job as they were now, because they are creating actual wealth, not just optimizing existing wealth generation activities.
My point being a society with an overabundance of electricians, carpenters and plumbers is probably better off than a society with an overabundance of project managers, paralegals, and risk analysts.
I think this is the root of a lot of people's frustrations around housing, and adulthood. For most our history it was expected that you would have multiple generations sharing a household. The idea that you move out of your family's house the second you turn 18 or finish college is a relatively new idea. As parent commenter points out, this was really only the norm for two generations, suggesting that that, and not our current situation, is the historical outlier.
Living with your family for a while allows you to save money and help your parents out after they spent the better part of two decades raising you.
We have a lot of choices in this life, but whether I get brought into it isn't one.
I have no expectations of what my son will or will not help me with in the future and will try as hard as possible to set him up well - because he didn't have a choice in his circumstance, I and solely I did.
Wow. This is wild to me. My grandfather was an orphan, most likely because his parents weren't married(if he were alive today, he'd be well over 100).
I am absolutely grateful that my parents have done their best to raise me to be the intelligent, caring person I am, and to take care not to perpetuate the misdeeds of their parents(which, being Boomers, were numerous). As both someone who suffers from depression and identifies as a materialist, it is probably the single thing I am most grateful for, and certainly the most profound intangible in my life. The feeling that I owe them is honestly one of the fundamental things that keeps me going.
If your parents are decent to you and showed care with how you were raised I absolutely think that you owe them. Having a functional, caring family is one of the greatest privileges one can have in life. You know who I don't owe anything too? The people who put my grandfather up for adoption.
At some point you need to just do these adult things in order to get good. Delaying doesn't change that much. Better to get the practice over with as soon as possible.
What is the average number of romantic partners that a person lives with in their life? It probably isn't that high.
This does bring up an important concept of "emerging adulthood" [0]. Where in modern day societies there seem to be a time period where young adults do what you are describing. There seem to be some of this coupled with some young men not being able to find purpose in life as evidence by the increase in suicide and drug use in the that group.
[0]https://www.unh.edu/pacs/emerging-adulthood
Why we all think it's a great idea to leave our families at 18 and pay high rents so that we can live with strangers we found on the internet is beyond me.
It's more difficult to maintain a romantic relationship when living with family (especially if both partners live with family), and it can also delay life skills (e.g. learning how to cook at home, clean, and generally learn to live more independently; though it's possible to deliberately learn this while living with family, it becomes a necessity to learn after moving out).
In many parts of the world, the point where you are expected to (and socially pressured to) move out of your parents home is marriage. Of course there are exceptions, like moving to a faraway city for a job, etc.
Whereas I see many American youths bleeding away their income on rent and expenses while living 10 minutes away from their parents' home.
So of course, in print, there's a crisis of young men staying at home with their parents til they're 30. But for young men, there's a crisis of incentive. Why on earth would a young man want to go give half his waking life to barely pay his own rent, then run on the treadmill that is modern online dating for, at best, meaningless hedonistic interactions with maybe, maybe not, women he's attracted to?
What it comes down to is that men have no incentive to do anything other than low effort, intangible self service, because the other alternative is just a more expensive version of the exact same thing.
Who are these people and are they in the room with us now?
Here's an example, it is openly stated that the government maintains an inflation rate to discourage saving and encourage spending to stimulate the economy. This is a deliberate attempt to influence the culture of the US, and it works. We have a consumer culture where everyone buys services and cheap stuff and nobody saves money, the stated goal of these fiscal policies.
They don't say what they mean, they say come bizarre abstract exaggeration to get a reply or reaction, then completely back off from what they originally said, then get mad that they are asked to explain their original claim.
I didn't claim people don't save enough money. I claimed that it is fiscal policy of our government and has been for decades to stimulate the economy by discouraging saving and encouraging spending via debasement of currency. Discouraging saving and encouraging spending is manipulation of social structure. I fail to see where your disagreement lies in that statement. You did not address my example at all, you just dismissed it entirely. I restated it here to give you an opportunity to correct that if you want.
I can give you more examples of government managing social structure if you like. In some instances the social and cultural impacts are secondary effects, often unintended consequences, but in many cases they're deliberate and openly stated, such as the example I've already given.
What exactly do you think government means when they call themselves "government"? What does it mean to govern a society, population, land mass or nation?
Here you are just talking about inflation and implying that that is the same thing as "systems planning of our social structure".
Monetary inflation is planned. there are men, in the US that would be the board of the FED, that try to decide what the inflation rate will be using interest rates to borrow from them. They target certain rates because they want certain social and economic consequences of the conditions they impose.
This is one example. Draw me a picture of how that's not systems planning our social structure.
Now, to answer your question, yes, there are people that do treat our society like a system and do systems planning to attempt to create desired social, cultural and economic outcomes. These people collectively form what is known as government. This is not a matter of contention, it is not a controversial statement, this is literally their stated goal, their mission for existing and what we pay them to do.
Now let me ask you a question: what exactly do you think a government does?
Anyway, unless you're going to reply to a statement I made, answer a question I asked or actually state your disagreement with anything I've said there's not a discussion here to be had.
I know, but it turns out you are really just upset about inflation. You haven't connected that in any real way to claims of "system planning our social structure".
[0]https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/censu...
seems to be the answer is right here - college. Historically the basic level of necessary education has been increasing. 4 year grammar school couple centuries ago to the K-12 30 years ago, and today it is "K-16", i.e. K-12 plus college. Not having college today is more and more like not having GRE several decades ago.
There's a heap of complexity around this. Society needs to shift and work this out. Its only been around a century. The answers are not so simple.
This will take more than a generation to solve. Culturally this is not acceptable for women. Women are looked down upon for dating men who make less than them.
For the next 20-30 years, women will continue to shame themselves and others for dating men of “lower” or even equal value.
My experience suggests that people are rarely more flexible than they need to be to meet their goals. And: why should they be?
This results in some amount of assortive mating (of the social, rather than genetic, variety), but I don’t see a likely path out of this. It’s the human version of “birds of a feather”.
Not what's happening. For one, marriages are decreasing too and marriage age increases.
And although not very gendered, it is a shitty contract where the worst clauses have extremely high rates of occurring. Even when isolating to later aged upper middle class economic equals, a 10% rate of triggering the worst clauses in a financial contract is extremely bad.
You simply can't decouple the financial aspects of a financial contract just because how someone might have been conditioned to romanticize an overarching concept.
This is a distinction without a difference. Even today, with women's educational attainment and workforce compensation skyrocketing, they still strongly marry "up". In the aggregate, this leaves the situation arguably even worse than before:
1. More men are pushed out of the marriage market.
2. Men who are in the marriage market still face financial devastation when the wife decides it's time to "find herself" in a no-fault divorce state (e.g. nearly all of them).
Yes, while the delta between spousal earnings is much smaller which also leads to a third observation:
3. Economic equals that are stable are marrying each other for the first time/generation, which increases inequality for the people (mostly for the other remaining women) that have nobody to marry up to.
The women aren't interested in being in an unstable situation and are also not interested in taking care of a man, both genders in this binary situation are opting to avoid marriage (or merely consider it unattainable) if there is no stability. And of course there is my observation that it's also a bad contract.
This cannot be overstated.
True even with a prenup.
The worm has turned
I’m guessing we are talking about two different things.
I will also add that, in my circle, women are getting screwed as much by this as men, so “the worm has turned” might better be “be careful what you wish for”.
I largely have no issues with approximately equal division of assets acquired during a marriage.
The two main issues I have are:
1. Determining what counts as an asset.
2. The method of contesting anything in a contested divorce.
For 1, appreciation of any asset counts as an asset that should be divided.
If you came into a marriage with $1 million in ETFs and a $1.5m house free and clear, and those go up to $1.7m etfs and $2.5m house, spouse gets half of $1.7m asset appreciation for…. I struggle to answer this question in a way that us not “being lucky”.
Note that they do not owe half of losses if assets lose value.
Meanwhile, somehow inheritance is treated as largely untouchable money. How does that make sense?
For 2, if a divorce is not amicable, sometimes the party that feels scorned takes a scorched earth approach and basically is willing to give a ton of money to lawyers (“spouse doesn’t get it!”) while also freezing assets.
I’ve seen some very asset rich people be cash poor because their former spouse just wouldn’t let them sell anything, even when they split the proceeds. This was just nothing other than malice. Sure, you can go to court to force them to let you sell for cash, but this is just another example of a pathological aspect of our current system.
This aspect can also create complications in things like limited partnerships and other businesses in which it can be really hard to assign values to the asset and even harder divide the value of the asset without simultaneously destroying that value.
Pre-nups can help, but they largely make the outcome slightly more certain while still leaving much to be contested via litigation if the party that feels scorned chooses to do so.
I know a lot of these rules are in place because of the historical economic shenanigans that men have subjected women to, but that doesn’t mean that the system is reasonable, fair, or not pathological for certain (perhaps many or even most) cases.
That depends on how one's finances are set up beforehand. There are quite a few financial instruments that are almost always untouchable. One such instrument is the irrevocable trust. In short, an irrevocable trust isn't owned by the trustee/divorcée. As a result, anything awarded from it is not subject to property division.
Unmarried couples may fall into one of two types: common-law marriages and meretricious relationships. In the US, the former is approved by a vanishingly small number of states. The latter has no legal rights to property division or palimony without an explicit cohabitation contract. Even then, many states don't recognize palimony at all.
Sure it can. It's not complicated (pathologically or otherwise), it's just not what some people want.
I definitely think (particularly young) people should be better educated about what a marriage contract is and isn't before they get into it.
I agree, but I think the HN crowd might grossly underestimate how difficult it is for lay people to get accurate, actionable advice that is also fully understood.
The default takeaway for a not small number of people is “don’t get married if you are successful and like financial security”.
But that's terrible advice really, and doesn't follow reality. So I think there is something more going on.
I don't think simple, actionable advice is that hard really, but there is a lot of political and ideological noise around the subject that confuses people.
It's common. The root problem is presuppositions in the marriage contract are wrong.
The reality is most relationships don't last forever for lots of reasons and most reasons being benign.
But the penalties in the marriage contract are based on the fallacy that relationships should last forever and if they don't it's the provider's penalty and the provider's life energy should be consumed forever to pay for it.
Obviously there's some reasons it was setup that way such as providing for kids, but it's out of balanced and been abused for so long it's now a stereotype.
This is a major cause for lack of relationship formation! Because a failed relationship can demolish your future many hardworking smart men have moved the goalposts so high that we can see statistically they are less likely to have children.
Those who didn't work hard and have nothing to lose are not being punished they are instead given welfare.
Won't someone think of the children and fix this stupid law driven power imbalance that's driving us toward the future warned in the idiocracy movies.
I'm not sure I blame them. If I had no prospects of a wife or kids, I'd quit my job and argue with people on the internet in my dad's basement too.
20 trillion in debt for illegal and stupid wars probably didn't help either, though it does tie in once again with the 1% class.
What does that mean?
It's not men vs women, but workers vs owners.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...
"The middle class still gets its preferred policies enacted 26 percent of the time even when the rich are opposed."
Gee, thanks!
Most of this "debunking" rests on the idea that the tiny minority of rich people should have about the same amount of power as the rest of us, so it isn't so terrible that they actually have a fair amount more. That just doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, the fact that a few people have a few quibbles with a few minor details doesn't amount to "that study is false".
It is surprising that the middle class and rich agree so often. But as I'm sure you know, most Americans don't think of politics in economic class warfare terms, so maybe that's why.
So you have someone who makes 50k a year who has 10k of investments, and they would rather compare themselves to the CEO making millions, rather than someone lower in the org chart who makes 30k a year.
They have investments, so they'll approve of tax cuts on dividends, even though the people who profit from these tax cuts are the people who have 100 million invested, not the middle class who might just get a few hundreds in dividends from their investments a year.
So even though they are completely dependent on their salary and the whims of their employer, they like to think of themselves as independent upper middle class people and vote accordingly.
It's amazing how people will tell themselves stories and vote for policies that are bad for themselves just so they can feel superior to someone else.
Quite a lot of people vote for the system they think will bring the best outcomes for all. Some people think it's by levelling outcomes; others by increasing opportunity.
Assuming the increasing opportunity people are doing it to feel superior is likely false, and also likely just a way to feel superior to them.
You are right about that, maybe it's not about feeling superior, I don't know the real motivation. My argument would probably be stronger without this remark.
But I don't know if the differentiation between "outcomes" and "opportunities" really makes a difference. People still vote for "opportunities" that are only meaningful for people richer than themselves.
For example, you could say that lowering taxes on dividends is providing an "opportunity", but it's only an opportunity for those who already have more money than they need, and it rewards people proportionally with how much money they already have.
With many opportunities the outcomes are rather predictable, so I'm not sure what the difference is between focussing on "opportunity" vs. "outcomes".
I don't think this is that simple. Only considering billionaires, when most businesses fail in 3 years and owners can often get paid very little for a long time, is far, far too reductive in my opinion.
This was described by Herman and Chomsky as "manufactured consent". No rational consideration of middle class priorities would wage half a dozen ruinous wars in faraway unimportant places in two decades, but for a time many in the middle class were patriotic for such atrocious policy. That time has passed, yet the wars continue, which is what we're actually talking about: the result of disagreement. That middle class preferences are honored when they agree with the preferences of wealth is a triviality. That they are not honored when in disagreement, is the topic under discussion.
That's really the elephant in the living room. Perhaps as a society we are poorer because we set fire to trillions in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan.
For the HN crowd here's a metric: the average seed round is like $2M these days, so Iraq at roughly $3 trillion would be enough to fund 1.5 million startup companies.
Money is just accounting. The real economy is physical.
Women at 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles saw real wage increases from 1979-2019; men saw a decrease at 10th and 50th.
(I'm morally opposed to the top 90th percentile's growth at the expense of the bottom. I'm not morally opposed to gender pay equality, which I _think_ is zero sum and results in lower wages for men as it improves.)
"Staying home with the kids" might also include learning some skills, or trying to start a business, or self-employment. The radar will likely miss this. In the US, singles who earn under $12,500 don't need to file a federal tax return.
(Note that the radar will always remember that 'missing time' ... which you may need to account for later! And that info is widely available.)
One thing to remember when looking at manufacturing capacity in the United States is that it's somewhat skewed. For instance, when a CPU doubled its speed, the US government decided that we had doubled our manufacturing capacity. I don't know what other interesting if you points have skewed the data.
You sound like you didn't look at or have any sense of the statistics around two- vs one-income, single-family households before you posted this comment.
Society really loves to kick them while they’re down these days.
Less men in employment is not a good thing. It isn’t some kind of passing the torch to women happy event. Its just mass unemployment of a significant number of people in their prime earning age. Its societal failure.
I look at the variety of protests (of all sorts) and wonder how many people are there for a cause and how many want something to be part of, and a bit of motivation and thrill.
https://archive.is/47R8y
People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an illiterate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work even more than he needs money. An educated man can put up with enforced idleness, which is one of the worst evils of poverty. But a man like Paddy, with no means of filling up time, is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain. That is why it is such nonsense to pretend that those who have 'come down in the world' are to be pitied above all others. The man who really merits pity is the man who has been down from the start, and faces poverty with a blank, resourceless mind
From Down and Out in Paris and London.
(Someone should have known better than to try to link to Google Books from a mass media piece.)
-FDR
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300002
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300001
Screens have fixed this problem since Orwell wrote that in 1933.
Here in Europe, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, a large amount of men were fired from their construction job.
I'm talking about incredibly tough and hardened men. The type doing this job for decades, getting up at 5AM each day, working in the bitter cold, never calling in sick, breaking their body and taking pride in it.
Just like that, society suddenly declared these men to be zeroes. They have to call to this unemployment agency, where they're treated as if beginners, and with distrust, as if they're leeches. They have to go to the red tap, none of which they understand.
Reportedly, many of these men broke down and cried on the phone. They probably hadn't cried in decades.
It just shows how absolutely devastating it is when such a man loses purpose. It breaks them. They take pride in their strength, their sacrifice to provide. They cannot be idle nor can they be in a dependent position. It's not them.
I think high school kids in the U.S. should be exposed to STEM, the humanities, and the trades. We have pushed college/academic achievement long enough, and I suspect that some of the data we are seeing represents a backlash against it, particularly when you consider the cost of university and the job prospects for new graduates.
Only if you can start your independent business, which few can do pretty much by definition. That's still a recipe for bimodal outcomes. And the U.S. has pushed "college achievement" on paper, but their K-12 education still sucks. There's no way that this isn't a drag on college outcomes.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the trades are a gravy train for everyone, but the idea that you will barely make ends meet is also not the case.
But union jobs are at an all time low.
In my area nearly every high school including the one I attended offered great programs that for many lead to careers in the trades.
I know several people who were in one of the trades programs who decided it wasn’t for them and seemed to wander aimlessly just like many of my friends who went to university.
Maybe the issue isn’t opportunity for training or trades vs university?
On a side note a skilled trade career can pay very well, but is it reasonable to expect everyone will be a union-member or own a business? Union support seems to be declining in the US and owning and running is business is not for most people.
My son’s school has a “Girls Can Code” program. All collateral features women and girls. (Boys are welcome though)
I worked at a place where a C-level executive hosted company endorsed dinners at her home for female managers to mentor them for executive roles.
If I setup a boys club for computers at school or hosted a men’s IT society at work, that wouldn’t end well.
Maybe not, but nearly every <Subject> Users Group I've attended may as well have been a men's IT society for all the women I've seen attend, despite specific outreach efforts to get them there.
So what is the discrepancy? What has changed and what is being done differently between the groups where 'boys' can optionally attend and ones that 'girls' appear to self select against attendance? We should reach for a world that doesn't require discrimination.
2. Given a brand new group with 0 members yet, it's still likely that women will avoid it, because of their past experiences with 1. putting them off joining groups in general
3. Women are less common than men in general in CS. Any group that accepts the average person will statistically end up with more men than women.
The groups that "advertise" to women avoid these problems, which is why they tend to work.
I agree that we shouldn't need specialized groups, but I haven't seen any other solution, at least in the immediate term. Likely society will improve simply due to the passing of time, and in 50 years from now and it won't be a problem anymore.
Also, this has been even broader:
Around here, until recently girls got extra points even on studies were they were massively over-represented (in addition to being generally over-represented in higher education.)
Just recently boys started to get extra points when applying for Engineering degrees in Chemistry or in Nursing.)
I'm not a native English speaker and while I get my points across I struggle with the school system. Sorry for that.
Point is, around here when you apply for higher education you get a standardized score based on:
- how good your grades were.
- being over a certain age
- having extra maths/physics/chemistry classes
- being a girl (at least in STEM)
- etc
Recently, but only recently they have finally started to add extra points for boys applying for BSc nurse studies.
One obvious example of this is the fact that CMU admits 50% women into its CS program, even though their applicant pool and similar caliber schools have around a 20-30% ratio. So if you believe that women and men in the applicant pool are equally qualified, women have a 2x higher chance of getting in. That's just basic statistics.
This is a reasonable initial assumption (candidates are equally qualified), and so there is evidence that something is happening (by examining the initial figures). But it may or may not be a bias in favor of women (that is, in this case, something like giving "points" to female applicants either explicitly or implicitly). You'd have to examine the actual applicant pool to determine what was happening other than being able to conclude that something is happening. It is also plausible that the female candidates are, as a group, more qualified than their male counterparts.
You'd also have to ignore that similar caliber schools have the same 20-30% ratio so CMU would have to be doing something special that MIT, Stanford et. al aren't in its applicant recruiting/marketing - that's a tough one to believe.
EDIT: my bad, think I got you confused with a different comment.
>If I setup a boys club for computers at school or hosted a men’s IT society at work, that wouldn’t end well.
That's because most computer clubs and IT societies are already primarily men. It's kind of the default, which is why women-only groups are seen as transformative.
If you want to look at it in a different way, you probably wouldn't have a problem setting up a group that teaches miners IT
These are not mutually exclusive things!
These aren't rhetorical questions. I'm genuinely asking.
This can't apply to men? I believe there were such clubs and they were considered sexist in the past. I don't see why it's so strange an idea that men might like a club where they can be catered to and taught in a way that works for them.
I've not tried that exact thing but I have tried twice carefully to bring attention to mens day at work.
I stopped doing it and I probably won't do it again; it's just a simple way to get some mockery thrown at oneself even at the generally very civil place where I work.
One example might be the Isbister v. Boys' Club of Santa Cruz case, in which the Supreme Court of California ruled that, according to civil rights laws, no space could be legally barred to women. (imagine that same justification banning women-only spaces; it simply wouldn't happen, because of course it wouldn't).
Or, more famously, Earl Silverman's attempt to open a shelter for male domestic abuse survivors in Canada, for which he was ridiculed and ostracised and eventually, when the government refused to fund such a thing (male domestic abuse victims? Perish the thought!) had to shut it down, ending his own life in despair. Erin Pizzey, who founded the first women's shelters in the UK, faced similar harassment (including bomb threats serious enough that the police decided that they needed to intercept all of her mail to check it for explosives) when she began discussing the same thing, and was eventually driven out of her home country.
In fact, the dearth of male-focused help in general, even in situations where men are the overwhelming majority of the at-risk population. See, for example, homeless shelters in the UK. Ironically, some women in need of assistance escaping their abusers sometimes get turned away from these places because they come with male children.
Generally speaking, most "assistance" actually primarily aimed at men treats them like shit. See, for example, the Duluth model, the most common batterer intervention program in use in the United States. It explicitly pre-concludes that any domestic dispute is caused by men trying to dominate women. Ellen Pence, its creator, has even gone on record stating, "By determining that the need or desire for power was the motivating force behind battering, we created a conceptual framework that, in fact, did not fit the lived experience of many of the men and women we were working with. [...] Speaking for myself, I found that many of the men I interviewed did not seem to articulate a desire for power over their partner. Although I relentlessly took every opportunity to point out to men in the groups that they were so motivated and merely in denial, the fact that few men ever articulated such a desire went unnoticed by me and many of my coworkers. Eventually, we realized that we were finding what we had already predetermined to find." (emphasis added) This has not lessened its popularity as an intervention mechanism for domestic disputes.
I mention this not as an example of a male-only space being destroyed, but as an example of why they may be needed. Many men, emotional illiteracy aside, do in fact realize when the chips are stacked against them. They do not learn to socialize with other men in school, nor in the manner that men have historically been socialized. They are allowed in the public forum, but most attempts to share their perspective, at least in the more woke circles, are met with hostility - after all, they are the historical beneficiaries of the social order, and therefore they cannot also be allowed to be even perceived as victims, especially when being a victim confers social status. No matter that "privilege" is not uniformly distributed.
Philosophically speaking, men ought to have a male-only space if only for the benefit of being able to calibrate themselves against other men, rather than having to constantly downplay their own difficulties and miseries by the standards of women; a man ought to be able to feel bad about losing his job without having to also remind everyone that he still has it better than a woman who would be jobless and also facing sexism. He ought to be able to exult in a promotion or other achievement without "checking his privilege" and feeling guilty about how his success closes the doors for others who have not had the opportunities he has.
If men should be more emotionally intelligent, they need a safe space where they can express their emotions. It has become abundan...
For example, we have parent-child meetups here. Since it is almost exclusively mothers who show up (despite being open to all parents), they at some point introduced an extra meetup for fathers. This gives men an opportunity to take part in something with their kid where they aren't the only man in the room.
X-only spaces make sense when X is marginalized or a minority. If you start a kindergarten teacher group for men, noone is going to complain.
Also, the reason that running a "boys club for computers" or a "men's IT society" wouldn't end well is because men already make up a large portion of the tech space and, like I said, there's a lot of gender bias in the tech world. This comment comes off as you using anecdotal evidence to disprove the marginalization women face.
Are they paid less for the same work? Denied promotions? Are men being favored for hiring over equally qualified women?
There are obvious issues like sexual harassment. Almost every woman I know has been a victim of it at some point, but I don't know any man who has been sexually harassed at the workplace. For this reason men typically think that sexual harassment at the workplace is not a big issue.
But there's also more subtle things, that are hard to measure since companies aren't open about them, like women being made lower offers for the same job with the same qualifications, or women being less likely to be promoted, or women straight up being refused the job because "they might leave the job soon to have children".
Getting evidence for these things is hard, because companies rarely give a reason why they are hiring or promoting someone, and even if they give a reason it's very rarely something that can be objectively measured.
Or maybe there are a bunch of "convince women that nursing is a career for them, too", "day care workers shouldn't all be men", "ladies can become receptionists", etc. programs that I'm not aware of.
Why? Why not just let people decide for themselves what kind of jobs to pursue?
Maybe, just maybe, the point of those events for women has something to do with the fact that everything else in the tech world is a de-facto boys' club.
My current team at work: 6 men. Previous team at a different company: 27 men, 3 women. The team before that: 5 men. The team before that: 10 men, 2 women.
I guess we can debate "marginalized", but women are unquestionably a minority in tech.
(I am also a man, fwiw)
Right now, tech companies are desperate to hire anyone qualified. Are you saying they are deliberately excluding women from consideration?
From what I've seen, all the tech employers are desperate to hire and promote women, and there are just very few women interested.
So then the question is why are very few women in tech? If you really dive into this, it's a chicken-and-egg problem: The fact that so few women are in tech makes the whole scene into sort of a frat house, which is often not a welcoming or kind environment to women, so women avoid it. A feedback loop. And one way you can try to combat that is by encouraging entry into the field. Et voilà: "Girls who code".
I have had several jobs in tech. None of those work environments resembled a frat house.
Maybe a few startups resemble a frat house, but is it really indicative of the industry as a whole?
Are the jobs you've worked at indicative of the industry as a whole?
This is why it’s perfectly socially acceptable to set up a specific group to give women and girls a chance to learn skills in an environment where they feel safe from sneering, lewd comments, and other such behaviour which is not conducive to learning, or simply having a good time.
The article under discussion here is important, because boys and men face a great many difficulties in life, but the Venn diagram of difficulties faced by men and women has problems unique to each and problems shared by both.
Complaining about people getting help in areas where they face a disproportionate struggle just seems unkind.
So, hypothetically, what do you and others believe needs to change? How would a 'girls can code/tech/etc' look if it couldn't //market// towards girls or any other focus of discrimination? Other than perhaps types of being in the 'have nots' category which any body-type could qualify for?
No. You just make it clear this is an environment where such behaviors are not tolerated.
Also, it's not true that women and girls are incapable of sneering and lewd comments.
You come across very much as the kind of person who believes boys are inherently deficient and deserve to fail, based on your assumptions about how boys will behave, and that they are incapable of behaving differently.
That’s a leadership and culture failure. When a female employee or student is marginalized or harassed, that’s an issue that needs to be dealt with unequivocally and swiftly.
In the school scenario I’m familiar with, my son is in 5th grade. There isn’t a gamergate environment there. We should be exposing kids to technology and coding, period. School clubs should be building that culture where the idea of bullying girls is both unacceptable and repugnant.
Women don't face a disproportionate struggle in tech. They are given more opportunities in tech than men are. There are uncountable scholarships, fellowships, hiring initiatives, mentoring initiatives, and all kinds of programs for women in tech - while there are none for men. There are many positions that are explicitly advertised as for women or for underrepresented minorities only. Companies and universities give preference to hiring and admitting women, even overtly. And finally, multiple studies showed that women are given preference in hiring for STEM positions.
The first step to help men is for us to admit that men are discriminated against, and it is very counterproductive when people pretend that is not the case.
My school also hosts a hackathon for women and underrepresented gender minorities every year (organized by a student org that rents out a building from the school for it). The hackathon is also open to high school students. Many people I've talked to there talk about how they only went into CS because someone they knew invited them to the hackathon, or have made friends and feel less alone in CS because of it.
There's a real need for these groups. Whether men needs their own groups is a separate discussion that I have no real stance on.
That doesn't imply there is a need for women-only groups. There can be a CS group for all genders and we just teach girls to stop being sexist and be part of that group (if they want to).
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30277540 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30278113 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30276633 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30299883 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30276633
Point being that not everyone can be a doctor or a lawyer or a physicist. There will always be a good portion of the population that really has nothing to contribute economically but their labor. For women, these labor positions are the ones that have survived our transition to a mostly service based economy; healthcare, childcare, cleaning, food service, etc. For men, they mostly have not. The days of a man being able to use his comparative advantage of physical strength to earn above the median wage are long gone.
Most of this “running out of work” thought is just excuses for the US’s bad economic management in the 90s-2000s; as the GP said, now we’re at 4% unemployment and anyone with skills will be able to find a way to use them. Anything can be a skill if it's unique enough - if AI took all the jobs, "being human" would be a skill. That's comparative advantage.
Socialization is moving at a slower pace than the shift in economics. The trade deficit starting in the 1970s has overwhelmingly affected goods [1], resulting in the exporting of goods production overseas and leaving the US with a service-based economy[2]. The US at the time had a greater proportion of gender-dependent occupations[3]. The export of goods-producing jobs tended to disproportionately affect men as a result of this gender-occupation dissymmetry[4].
At the same time, people have been socialized with system of gender values. In the past these gender values were congruent with both gendered occupations[5] and gendered occupational values[5]. However, as the proportional of service occupations grew, a portion of men found themselves socialized with values[4] incongruent with the values associated with occupations now available to them. The lag between value socialization and economic realities represent a point of friction and frustration that is expressed as a feeling of being undervalued economically[7].
1. https://www.stlouisfed.org/-/media/project/frbstl/stlouisfed...
2. https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/services-investment/services
3. https://flowingdata.com/2017/09/11/most-female-and-male-occu...
4. https://statusofwomendata.org/gender-differences-in-sectors-...
5. ANN C. MCGINLEY Masculinities at Work (2004)
6. https://www.annelitwin.com/masculine-and-feminine-workplace-... (this isn't the best source, but it is hard to find an example of how gender values connect to goods-service work and how that has changed over time)
7. Gould, R. 1974. Measuring masculinity by the size of a paycheck. In: J. Pleck & J. Sawyer (Eds.) Men and masculinity (pp. 96 – 100). Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
The other challenge is figuring out what activities actually have a low-level differences translate into significant advantages. There are very few job where a single low-level difference is both significant and the only path to success — in most fields, there isn't a single model of top performer.
Do you know who ran the board on the wordcel tests? Like, all of the girls.
Just another anecdata point, so don't take it seriously.
So the Internet intelligentsia have:
I feel like I've seen this movie before. It does not end well.His actual point is more like “ML developers are making a lot of money but don’t talk about themselves in the media; journalists don’t earn as much and you have to hear them complain about it all the time”.
Take this "actual point" to its logical ... well, I was going to say "conclusion", but it occurs to me that there's no point here at all. The unemployed are not happy? The ultra-wealthy know better than to incite class wars? No idea.
But anyone who coins the term "wordcel" to label a group they are not a part of, certainly seems to have ill intent.
I think the joke inventor made up a philosophy behind it to stop the VC guys from turning it into a culture war thing. He also put crypto guys under "wordcels" not "shape rotators" because they like writing whitepapers.
https://roonscape.substack.com/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words
But, the thing is, men are on not just equal footing, but a very advantageous footing especially where men dominate investment decisions. There is no excuse for men not to step up to the challenge of being equals when others carry a heavy disadvantage, still.
In 1980 the guy that fixed a radio antenna in a blizzard because "what good is fall protection if I don't use it" got told he did a good job. Today he would be chewed out for taking unnecessary risks.
"You need intelligence, emotional intellect, and analytical skills. All of which men and women are on an equal footing at."
Well that went downhill quickly.
You start out with men and women on equal footing. Then the next sentence men no longer have anything useful to contribute.
Shouldn't the obvious conclusion be that men and women have equally as much to contribute? And therefor you would expect an equal number of men and women succeeding academically?
Not really, because what men traditionally had to contribute was their physical strength to perform labor. Having that as a requirement for many lucrative positions like manufacturing and resource extraction is what allowed men to out earn women with their labor in the past. Women never filled those jobs with physical requirements en masse, and so they now already occupy a far greater portion of the other parts of the workforce that men must now compete for.
Conversely: as young men's potential future employability rises, their romantic prospects also decline. That is - the men who'll grow up to be stable and reliable have lonely teenage years.
Males should be fixing that by making some female friends. Don't go the "creepy incel who hates all women and Chads" route.
Absolutely. I am on the autism spectrum so part of the difficulty I have can be attributed to that. However I accept that my social shortcomings are my own responsibility. I think a big part of the problem is finding new friends now that I am in my 30's and life is very stagnant.
I think all it takes is going somewhere where people are and being friendly, somewhere that doesn't include existing friends and acquaintances, just sticking with it and not really caring who thinks what about you. Anywhere but a bar would be my criteria, and ideally not a commercial establishment. For me it was the local swimming pool in my community.
Since women can pick their friends and generally pick gregarious, outgoing, and socially competent men for their friend groups, they ignore and do not understand the type of man who is labelled an incel.
Incels are fundamentally working off a broken model of women, attraction, dating, and sex.
EDUT> Not getting "Stacy" is making them crazy, but they don't realize that they don't want Stacy. Stacy's frumpy-seeming neighbour will rock their world.
That broken model is unfortunately widespread in both genders. Some "girls next door" can basically feel like failures in the dating/relationships sphere, which ends up making them even less appealing to others. It's worth trying to fix this of course, but it's not always easy.
There are plenty of excellent places in the world where you can have a reasonable quality of life for about $10k/year, your goal is to have that covered from your real estate income. Go do that as soon as you can, travel slow. Overnight trains, house/pet sitting, couch surfing, 'etc are all good things to try.
Try to find a remote job and never touch your salary income again, keep investing it. Do not mention your net worth to anyone.
You will find in a few years that "DevOps" is a very finite skillset so there is no real need to push so hard as you'll know most of what you need to know in about 3 more years if you do not already.
No reason not to have a social and romantic life and great weekends. I'm quite confident your employer and less talented peers are exploiting your age and willingness to put in long hours.
Don't be available after hours and avoid being on call as much as possible.
You only get your 20s once. Make memories.
Money is important but you need less than you think and is never a worthy goal in and of itself. You can convince yourself of this by reading up on behavioral economics. Optimize for quality of life. Have a FU-money number, reach it, and bail.
Anyway, HN is hardly the place for this kind of topic but thanks again. I'm giving it my best but it's not a piece of cake.
HN is certainly the place for this kind of topic, it is one of the most important topics discussed here. I've been on this site for over a decade and was exactly in your shoes when I found it.
Tech crap comes and goes and is repetitive. You'll sponge it all up sooner or later anyway.
It is absolutely not a piece of cake, I know buddy. It requires a massive investment on your part and I am flailing around to really drive home the fact that it is worth literally ALL THE EFFORT YOU CAN MUSTER. Guaranteed.
I sincerely hope you succeed in making the very necessary changes you know deep down you have to make. Best of luck!
I sometimes wonder if my career destroyed my ability to make and keep friends.
Social groups just dry up when you get to your late 20's as people are marrying off, having kids, and only maintaining the utmost of friendships. I know it's brutal but it's a time thing... significant others and families take lots of time if you're doing it right so socializing time becomes of higher value/expense.
It was way easier to meet people when I was younger - not just romantic partners. Social groups were much more cohesive and much less based around couple activity. People were just down for whatever and would jump at something just for the experience. I had tons of friends I could just call/SMS like "hey I'm bored let's go find a show" whereas I would feel inappropriate doing this as an adult.
You spend thousands of hours at your job. It is inevitable that it will change your personality.
Choose wisely.
My experience has been that a lot of the stereotypical jocks ended up in finance and are doing quite well and that software is no longer dominated by social loners.
36% higher lifetime income for joining a college fraternity.
The numbers don't lie.
I don't think any of this is true.
If you're wondering why people see it that way, just imagine a world where a large number of people had undiagnosed social anxiety, and another large group of people had undiagnosed sociopathy, and they both got pushed out of normal society into the same place. Then the ones with social anxiety look at the ones with sociopathy and associate their slightly greater success with short-term relationships with the condition they do have, rather than the one they don't.
I think you're probably right with your second paragraph.
There is definitely an arc-type of socially awkward boys who grow up to be engineers, accountants, etc. But within that group, romantic prospects are positively correlated with employment prospects. An awkward guy w/ a job is better than an awkward guy w/o one.
You are describing nerds having high paying tech jobs, right?
I find that little bit short sighted, there are huge number(probably the majority) of people with balanced lifestyles who are employed in stable jobs, just not really in a trendy high paying or high status sectors.
There are also a sizeable number of people who don't posses the nerdy characteristics at all and still are good in academics and business. Colleges are actually full of that kind of people, they all end up in good jobs.
A reasonably intelligent person with an athletic background probably did well socially in HS, and will probably do well in the working world.
Wouldn't that be nice? That sort of karma is not really guaranteed to exist. Chances are the ostracized lonely introvert will be worse off due to poor networking and if he finds any success at all it will be despite many disadvantages. Meanwhile, asshole bullies could very well go on to become their bosses because sociopathy is often found in powerful people.
not sure how yang made this his topic. my sense of his random walk is 'had a job at yahoo' -> future of work -> UBI -> numbers guy -> times square -> ?
really miss the andrew yang policy bot on twitter though
Another is “The Will To Love: Men, Masculinity, and Change” by bell hooks (2004)
There aren’t a lot of authors that I feel get it right about issues relating to men and masculinity. Bell hooks is one of the few.
> not sure how yang made this his topic. my sense of his random walk is 'had a job at yahoo' -> future of work -> UBI -> numbers guy -> times square -> ?
I live in NYC and spend a lot of time online, so we got kinda saturated with Yang during the last year because he was in the mayoral race. As far as I can tell, he’s a passionate self-promoter, and engages on a shallow level with tons of different topics as some kind of cynical way to promote his brand. If he were at least more skilled at it I would respect him more, but he’s made so many obvious PR blunders and it’s obvious he doesn’t listen to advisors. He pokes around at sensitive topics like race and sexism, but as far as I can tell it’s so he can stay in the news, because he rarely has anything interesting to say on those subjects.
It seems like a random walk because he’s doing whatever will get him in the news online.
> He provides actual substantive policy suggestions with evidence to support his claims.
This is untrue. The policy suggestions are all poorly researched and reminded me of the kind of ideas you'd see on a comedy show like Silicon Valley... you know, TV depictions of tech bros coming up with "solutions" for problems that they don't understand.
I'm not saying that they were all laughable, but it was very hit or miss. Yang had some good ideas mixed in with bad ideas, and I think a combination of inexperience, lack of deeper research, and a refusal to listen to experts is what caused all the problems in his policies.
> In fact, NY Times and the NY Daily News spent so much time focusing on bashing Yang that it's literally the reason why Eric Adams of all people ended up being our mayor.
Yang ran a incompetent campaign. He relied far too heavily on internet presence--Twitter, Reddit, etc. I don't know why he thought that was enough. Say what you will about Eric Adams--Adams wasn't in my top 5, and so I didn't vote for him--but Eric Adams knew how to work with the press and he spent far more time hitting the streets during the election than Yang did. Adams was far more in touch with the people in NYC who vote, far more knowledgeable about how the press works, and had experience with NYC politics.
You can complain about "hit pieces", but Yang was out of touch with most voters in NYC, made a series of obvious PR blunders, showed no competence at working with the press, and had nearly zero experience working with NYC politics... Yang didn't even vote in local elections.
Spare me the uneducated "tech bro" commentary that I've heard throughout. It's unoriginal. I'm eager to hear your ranked choices and what policies made so much more sense to you though than Yang's and what Yang's good ideas were.
Yang made PR plunders sure, but it was completely disproportionate. It's odd to me that you can be so complimentary towards Eric Adams though, Brooklyn borough president, a position that's notorious for doing literally nothing. Voting in local elections is important, but I consider living in NYC rather than Fort Lee, NJ to be mayor to be even more important. NYC newspapers certainly didn't care though.
Here's the best example of the muck-raking that I can think of, which I've been thinking about since Michelle Go's murder. Yang talked about the mentally ill, homeless population, the need for enforcement of Kendra's law, psych beds, and the concern of ordinary New Yorkers. The media and voters ran with the soundbites to mean that Yang hates homeless people. Kendra's Law would have saved Michelle Go's life by the way.
Comedy writers make original takes, I’m just some rando on the internet sharing my opinion. Likely it’s gonna be an opinion you heard before.
> I'm eager to hear your ranked choices and what policies made so much more sense to you though than Yang's and what Yang's good ideas were.
Why?
Are you looking for five (5) opportunities to roast different politicians running in the Democratic primary that I think were better qualified for the mayoral position than Yang? No thanks, I don’t see the point. Pick anyone that ran. Chances are, I preferred that person over Yang.
You’re also casting the discussion strictly in terms of policies. Policies are only one of the reasons that I would choose one candidate over another—I disliked Yang for lots of other reasons besides policy.
> Yang made PR plunders sure, but it was completely disproportionate.
It wasn’t just “PR blunders”, he made mistake after mistake, and those mistakes betrayed unfamiliarity with basic stuff that a good NYC mayor should know. He proposed making domestic violence shelters (that already exist), he proposed having the MTA take control of various bridges and tunnels (which are already under its control), he made comments about the conflict in Israel and Palestine (with predictable results). And then when he (predictably) got some bad press, he whined about it like a schoolkid being bullied at recess.
It would be one thing if he actually were a little kid getting picked on by bullies. But he’s an adult, this is politics, and the reason he got picked on so much by the press is because he was a constant source of entertainment—either when he made a basic mistake, or when he whined about how he was being treated by the press. That kind of behavior gets clicks and eyeballs online.
> It's odd to me that you can be so complimentary towards Eric Adams though…
Maybe I was relying too much on subtext. “Say what you will about X” one of the most uncomplimentary ways you can introduce a subject into a discussion. Even though grammatically, it’s a request for you to talk about Eric Adams, it’s not actually a request for you to talk about Eric Adams.
I don’t know if the above explanation is appropriate or welcome to you, but I have started explaining subtext in direct terms, for various reasons.
> Yang talked about the mentally ill, homeless population, the need for enforcement of Kendra's law, psych beds, and the concern of ordinary New Yorkers.
Yeah, among other things, he proposed homeless shelters dedicated to domestic violence victims, which already exist. He talked about a ton of things, but talk isn’t enough. He showed that he lacked basic knowledge about the policies he proposed.
Also, it is bizarre to characterize Yang's mayoral campaign as listening too little to advisors. He seemed a completely different person than in the presidential campaign, and it was mostly because of all the expensive new consultants.
yang had a test prep company that got bought by kaplan, apparently, per wikipedia
like more men being raised by single mothers, or declining wages - I imagine phenomena like this would be effecting both genders roughly equally? I do not know - but without knowing for sure, I am more skeptical of the article's premise
But he's also really facile about underlying economic causes. It's easy to blame problems on "our culture has been broken by the wokes!", but many of the problems of young men are not unique to them. Fewer women are entering college, also. Women are dropping out of the workforce, also. More young women are living with their parents, also. Is that because they lacked strong masculine role models?
Or is it because the rising costs of college, housing, healthcare, and living have made the traditional path much less attainable? Absent fathers didn't do that. These are the same patterns you see in any country with a shrinking economy; it's just a shock to Americans who feel they were promised better.
(In summary: Maybe Andrew Yang should spend more time talking to Bernie Sanders)
Ease in befriending and reaching real camaraderie with women does not depend on masculinity at all. It depends on seeing others as equals. I sure don't think about masculinity and whether I'm doing it right. What would that do?
I doubt the kind of masculinity advice Jordan Peterson is slinging helps any of the men who listen to him. Instead, they find comfort and self-justification in that advice. It isn't changing their outcomes. It isn't the on-ramp to good relationships. It is the on ramp to the "intellectual dark web" and that will keep your dick dry more reliably than anything.
¿Por qué no los dos? A positive worldview and mindset makes it even easier to see others as equal. The negative 'woke' mindset is hardly conducive to true equality.
> ... Jordan Peterson ...
Jordan Peterson has never thought very well of seeking "comfort and justification". He's the "clean your room and get your ducks lined up instead of blaming the world for your failure" guy. I'm not sure you're familiar with his thought.
The only times I recommend someone read/hear Jordan Peterson is when they radically misrepresent him.
Peterson's whole schtick is challenging young men to take responsibility for their own outcomes.
They know they should do it between certain ages which means they need a career which means they need an education e.t.c.
There's nothing equivalent for men, no event they can see coming within a decade or two that helps anchor them in their lives.
Do you see that as innate or as a symptom of society's biases?
No, that is exactly what you are doing.
All the available evidence shows boys, especially, do less well across the board when raised without a father in the home.
Years ago I coached at an inner city school, lots of single moms, I've seen the results first hand. I'd like to think for many of those kids I was a positive male role model, maybe one of the only ones in their life. Unfortunately I don't live in that area anymore.
So anecdotally, the theory that (in general) boys need more nudging than girls from someone in their life in order to be successful rings true. But what would account for a modern change? Are there fewer people pushing, now? Are boys more resistant to it now, or maybe more distracted? Are expectations of boys different now than they were in the past?
Or perhaps parents are more distracted. Much has been made of how our digital age has made us, as individuals, more distracted and less connected to individuals in our life. For a parent, it doesn't seem unlikely that that would translate to being less invested in their child, or at least not as proactive in this kind of nudging.
Of course they're less motivated, it's quite literally a rigged game.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672
Also, just in defence of female teachers, I don't think it matters so much that they're women, but that they understand that boys will be boys. Anti-male teachers were, at least in the experience of myself and a friend who went to a different school (we discussed this once), definitely present but firmly in the minority.
You're not wrong, but at the risk of drawing an unhelpful analogy, I'll point out that the "all lives matter" response to "black lives matter" missed the point in the same way. Of course the prospects of everyone is important, but describing how young men have distinct and perhaps underappreciated experiences should be a viable conversation that doesn't get bogged down before it really gets going.
To use another analogy: it's like going to the ER for a sucking chest wound and being told you should reduce your cholesterol. They're not wrong, but this is probably not the most pressing concern.
I believe he addresses the root causes more than Bernie. Free college + federal jobs, or rather should we live in a society in where corporations are so productive that people shouldn't just follow a college track + work themselves to death to stay afloat
Ideas for how we can push for more equality, inclusivity, opportunity, without causing this far-right reaction?
Maybe it's unavoidable since we're often talking about structural change to benefit one group, and the other side feel (wrongly) that for others to have more they have to have less. All lives matter is an example.
The same thing is happening with trans and queer rights (which also tags along with gender roles like this article talks about).
A scary % of people feel under attack or at least a group of politicians is generating/amplifying this for their gain.
I'm about to be a bit facetious but scarily not really, a lot of people truly think that a mob of commies is trying to recruit their kids to be gay/trans and that 'men/boys' (part of the issue here is their understanding of gender) will invade their bathrooms and take over their sports.
This backlash is actually producing legislation to further political agendas and harm kids.
This weeks "Don't say gay" bill in Florida is shocking to me.
Would ban LGBTQ topics in schools. And likely force counselors to out kids to their parents, lest they be sued - the TX trick that is going to be abused on all social issues from now on.
It's like one step forward culturally, two steps back legally.
If children are being raised on TikTok, okay, the average video length on TikTok is a couple minutes. Advertisements are now 5-15 seconds. This is not conducive to 'long attention span'. Now, imagine popping these kids into a classroom and expecting them to pay close attention for, say, 15 minutes, without any breaks. What to do... diagnose them with ADHD and dose them with amphetamines, what else? Of course this is the same issue for girls and boys but is generally going to create more of a dumbed-down population. Kids are probably better off playing video games instead, those require more attention. Even better, encourage them to read actual books.
I wonder if the WaPo would be interested in publishing any critiques of social media effects on children, given their ties to Big Tech... Let's see... "New report: Most teens say social media makes them feel better, not worse, about themselves (2018)"
Corporate media claims... remember this one? "NAFTA and China WTO will raise the standard of living for all Americans!"
Oh come on. You're either being misleading, or have been mislead. What you wrote doesn't make any sense:
1. Why would the existence of an example of one type of article show the absence of a different type? It's not like the Washington Post cannot report on multiple sides of an issue.
2. A single article from five years ago? How is that supposed to support such a sweeping statement?
3. It's not hard, at all, to find examples of the WaPo "publishing any critiques of social media effects on children": "Instagram is even worse than we thought for kids. What do we do about it? (2021)" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/09/17/instagra...), probably all the articles in this search https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awashingtonpost.com+%2..., etc.
> Corporate media claims... remember this one? "NAFTA and China WTO will raise the standard of living for all Americans!"
As far as I can tell, you just made that up. Literally no Google hits: https://www.google.com/search?q="NAFTA+and+China+WTO+will+ra... (at the time of this writing, it looks like your comment hasn't been indexed yet). So, no, no one "remembers" that one.
And even if if the WaPo did publish an article claiming exactly that (most likely some kind of advocacy on the op-ed page), what's the big deal? Do you think they should censor articles like that? Perhaps by using their precognitive abilities to know who the future will prove wrong?
It's kind of ironic that many people's who criticize the media for being some kind of propaganda rag issue critiques that implicitly advocate for it to be a propaganda rag.
NAFTA was passed in the very early days of the internet. Here's a great quote about it from former presidential candidate Ross Perot via wikipedia:
"We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, ... have no health care—that's the most expensive single element in making a car—have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south. ... when [Mexico's] jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals."
Perot was from Texas, and mocked by corporate media as a clueless hillbilly for suggesting that NAFTA would be a bad deal for Americans. It was one of the few issues Noam Chomsky and Rush Limbaugh and all the major unions agreed on. Trump, whether sincere or not, uses it as one of his main talking points because it is absolutely true. Selling out our capacity to manufacture our own goods has been a terrible choice for Americans. We can't make the things our civilization needs to function. We have hollowed out entire metro areas and replaced steady paychecks and fairly cohesive social units with "gig" work and broken families.
That's a long way of saying their memory is accurate, but I think it's a critical moment to understand in modern US history. NAFTA was a big fucking deal, and the owners of corporate media spared no one to make sure it would get passed. They understood the power it would give them in terms of wealth accumulation and bargaining power to beat down unions and wages. Everyone thought Clinton wouldn't capitulate since it was unpopular with Democrats, but Clinton was attracted to and further corrupted by Wall St power and depended on them for guidance.
For a lot of Americans, NAFTA was the beginning of the end of their community. They are still pissed off about it, and that's the reason the criticism of the Clintons can turn vile in certain circles. It's not entirely unearned. I don't like the Clintons, though I voted for her as the lesser of two evils in 2016.
>> As far as I can tell, you just made that up. Literally no Google hits
> NAFTA was passed in the very early days of the internet. Here's a great quote about it from former presidential candidate Ross Perot via wikipedia:
I'm well aware. What I meant was the headline he "quoted" was almost certainly made up (I mean "NAFTA and China WTO"? There was a bit of a time gap between those things). Obviously there were advocates who made grand predictions in favor of free trade in general, and advocates who said that was all BS (and for the record the latter have been proven to be far more correct). The issue I have is with the sloppy thinking and sloppy argumentation in the GGP.
A lot of people seem to lazily think of the media as a unitary agent, and think that agent's intentions are revieled in some random cherrypicked op-eds they read sometime that pissed them off. That's almost as big of a pet peeve of mine as libertarianism.
That's not to say it can't be taken by a zeitgeist or its participants don't show bias, but it's kind of an important thing that ought to be thought about more carefully and less conspiratorially.
> Selling out our capacity to manufacture our own goods has been a terrible choice for Americans. We can't make the things our civilization needs to function. We have hollowed out entire metro areas and replaced steady paychecks and fairly cohesive social units with "gig" work and broken families.
No disagreement there.
TV and TikTok don't cause ADHD. They're products that arise to exploit people's attention, and they work excellently on people with poor executive function. TV doesn't cause ADHD, ADHD causes TV.
You can probably train attention span, and there are ways to cope with ADHD (I cope pretty well, and I have only mild symptoms), but it's measurable and it's genetic.
I guess you and I would agree on the conclusion - Treat social media like any other addictive drug: Regulate it, don't let kids get hooked on it, maybe even discourage adults from abusing it.
I think a lot of it comes down to, video and human faces exploit something deep in your brain. Maybe Hacker News just feels high-brow to me because there aren't image macros and constant ":O" clickbait thumbnails like some other sites.
That being said, I despise TikTok personally and would even go as far as to say that these short-form content platforms are reinforcing lower attention spans, but does it cause ADHD? I think that's a stretch. What's more likely is that it turns susceptible individuals into "whales" who sink time into it like nobody else. Not just ADHD folks, but those who are lonely or lack socialization too.
Lot of men and women who are generally not too motivated to seek out a companion, lose weight, put in the work to make it happen just…won’t pass on genetics.
Children are a lot of work and energy.
I’m highly introverted and high earning. My wife was the aggressor in my case. She pretty much made it all happen.
I think the ball is firmly in the woman’s court now. Women have most of the advantages (education, societal promotion, fit in better with our institutions) yet i see so many women who are generally apathetic about getting into a relationship at all.
There is also a massive obesity problem. If people have trouble getting attracted to each other versus the alternatives, makes it really challenging to find the motivation.
I wonder what all these effects will have over the next 200 years? If you play out the changing “relationship market conditions,” it seems like men and women with different personalities and dispositions towards seeking out relationships in order to reproduce will have a significant effect on the species.
Will people who were genetically predisposed towards being thin, hard working, open minded to approaching members of opposite sex and forming deep attachments resulting in children become more frequent?
On a genetic and evolutionary perspective I’m super interested - we know that IQ has been rising, but what else will change?
In some societies such as Korea I am told, women are sometimes or more frequently the aggressor. I wonder if this becomes more common.
I maybe in a skewed population (FAANG) but women are much more aggressive here in urban areas. While I was walking downtown, a woman pulled her Mercedes over in traffic and shouted an offer at me. I thought she was hilarious and bold but not attractive enough.
In the past, this was sometimes a thing too: in 1943, my grandmother (15) decided to have my grandfather (21 - war vet at 17 by lying). Their 70-year marriage was technically illegal too.
Here's what Our World in Data says: https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence
The Norwegian study cited to "Dutton E, van der Linden D, Lynn R (2016) The negative Flynn effect: A systematic literature review. Intelligence 59:163–169". Here's the HN thread on that paper specifically: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13723859 (Haven't read it myself; was just curious.)
Most statistics show indeed lower middle class and poor are having more kids than higher income families, but in time the number is decreasing for them too
I don't think you need these things to find a partner and have children.
Just go to a maternity ward. It sounds like you think everyone there is highly motivated, physically fit, and dedicated to working on relationships. They aren't. They're just normal people with a range of human flaws and a regular cross-section of society. Fat, thin, lazy, hard-working, professional, unemployed, etc.
Having kids isn't as hard as you make it sound!
Some folks will struggle more with the partnering aspect than others. Or mustering the will and resources to begin parenting.
But I think we have this unfortunate habit of severely underweighting the start process and things that aren't obvious.
You probably experience lots of stress over the span of raising a kid (or more). Other people see that in the classic screaming-kid seemingly-helpless-parent visual. You may also experience that same stress, perhaps cumulatively more, just from the start because it's (1) VERY stressful when it doesn't work, and (2) a situation that can drag on for what feels like forever.
So, everyone commiserates over work it is to raise a kid but few people talk openly or at all about how hard it is to start the process of having a kid.
Every single one of my friends or acquaintances who is obese has had trouble conceiving. Every. Single. One.
The men I've seen in maternity wards are just totally normal men.
Of course, I used to also think that my value was in my net worth and you could have seen all the way from space the “I’m an asshole and I don’t know why nobody will date me” vibes radiating off of me.
Then I grew up, I chilled out, and I put conscious effort into things other than my career and being Good At Tech Stuff. Stuff like listening, and exercising my capacity for empathy, and trying to be pleasant to be around. You can project being likeable or interesting for a bit, but I found that it’s easier to be likeable and interesting instead. And suddenly I stopped finding it so difficult at all to find matches and find dates.
I met my previous SO of three years on OKCupid and my current SO on Tinder, and it wasn’t until we’d been dating for quite a while that what I did for a living, all that Is This Man A Provider nonsense, even came up.
The difficulty is between the ears of one party in this selection process. It’s a mix of getting over oneself and understanding that it’s all a numbers game besides, but one of those things doesn’t work without the other.
None of that matters if you aren’t attractive. You have to be attractive for girls to swipe right on you and start a conversation in the first place.
Again, looking in any maternity ward at the fathers you'll see many conventionally unattractive men.
As 'rdtwo notes, though, it does take practice and commitment and it does take time.
Also, in regards to longer-term relationships, if this is true:
> You have to be attractive for girls to swipe right on you and start a conversation in the first place.
Then they're probably not the right ones to be starting a conversation with.
Why? Aren't women entitled to be attracted by phisique and by passing good genes?
To be fair, this is the 40+ age range. It's possible that 18-25 year olds of both genders haven't yet honed in on what makes for a good partner.
And now i have a wonderful SO and don't have to deal with those awful apps for the time being.
I’ve been seeing this exact trope repeated more and more on HN lately: Some vague assertion that Tinder is the only place for matchmaking and that only a tiny number of men are getting all of the matches.
It’s an objectively ridiculous claim for anyone who has experience in the real world where, yes, even “normal” men can find partners. It doesn’t even stand up to the most basic tests of logic.
Are only attractive people getting married and having kids? Of course not.
So what is actually going on here? Is this some talking point being repeated on some corner of the internet that resonates with a subset of people who view the world through their cell phones instead of getting out and interacting with real other people? It’s an objectively absurd assertion, yet it gets repeated with great confidence in a lot of online discussions.
The trend has been only towards waiting longer in the 20+ years since we were ahead of the curve.
It actually matches the real data and studies which have been done on the topic. When men ranked photos of women on a scale of 1-10, the majority of woman were ranked in the 5 category which would indicate the average person is seen as average. While when woman ranked photos of men, the majority of men were ranked bellow 5. The data that has come out of online dating is pretty damning and says a lot more than some anecdotes about some normal men finding partners.
I wish I remembered the exact study from a few years ago because there are more details which were even more depressing but I'm less certain on.
The original study was published on the OkCupid blog, but it was taken down after it caught on likely due to the obvious PR implications.
If you want a scientific explanation, look up "Assortative mating": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assortative_mating
The idea that only the most attractive people are entering relationships with each other while everyone else, regardless of gender, is staying single is ridiculous.
I would not underestimate how much the process of dating and meeting romantic partners has shifted because of that, even as we re-open. the stigma is mostly gone and there is little reason not to at least be present there.
> Are only attractive people getting married and having kids? Of course not.
Have you considered that men are just having less partners than women? Many more men go childless (25%) than women (14%). As far as we can tell - men are having less sex overall. It's obvious that the majority of men eventually get a partner and settle down with someone but that's generally less than the number of partners a woman has before she settles down.
Here's a fun source - and this is BEFORE COVID. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-ame... I cannot imagine how much more grim it is post-COVID.
I find it weird that you didn't think about that. Men and women generally have very different journeys to their destination. One is usually more consistent in sexual experience whereas the other is wildly varying. The amount of men who have 50+ sexual partners completely dominates the amount of women who do. This doesn't mean that men are having more sex than women though. This means that a few men are having more sex than most women.
This is what feeds into the whole online discussion. It's obvious to anyone who has done online dating or talked to the women. They'll be like, "Oh yeah, I matched with that guy too." It's clear that many women are sleeping with the same select group of men. I don't know how this is a surprise to anyone...
Online dating is toxic, most people I know that used it years ago are still there safe for few unicorns. How could it possibly be? Weren't they lookimg for someone?
Maybe because it distorts relationships and people as commodities thus making meaningful relationships harder to initiate, maintain and commit.
Most serious relationships and marriages that I known of (including mine) that started within the last 7 years or so originate in online dating. I'm in my 40s. You might want to be a little less sure of your opinions.
Capitalism has taken a large swath of people out of the dating game just due to working to survive.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRUG
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2019001/article...
Plz don’t trivialize it.
10% is what, ~30 minutes less?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B4701C0A222NBEA
And more work is done part-time(usually by those are unable to work full time jobs)
https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/series?seid=B4701C0A222NBEA&ut...
That chart is not adjusted for population.
Working population since 1977
We have have roughly 50% working age population(136mil vs 205mil)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B4701C0A222NBEA
Hours worked is 65% more since 1977(155 257)
Or, we're working 15% more per eligible person.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/july/nonfarm-payr....
That said, I doubt it's enough to offset the growth in population among workers.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S
I've been scratching my head since orange_joes post because it didn't make sense from what I've been seeing.
You may have an argument with the absolute bullshit that people eat in our consumerist society but the fact of the matter is, if your calorie needs are 2000/day and you eat 14000 calories per week of grains, pulses, veg, fruit, meat, etc in the ‘right’ amounts, you’ll stay trim if you’re trim, you’ll stay fat if you’re fat, and any changes need you to adjust the calorie balance accordingly through eating more, eating less or exercising more.
In some countries people are slimmer without making a real effort cause there's a higher percentage of people walking to work, and there's less time spent in traffic so that can be redirected to leisure and exercise.
Similarly, dieting is not an activity, more so the absence of one (shoving food in your mouth). When I'm cutting weight, I have more time because I'm not cooking eating food all the damn time. Eat a carrot rather than a Pizza to lose weight is not super rare knowledge. It IS uncomfortable, though.
* Ill partner or family members to take care of * Child(ren) * Studying * Long travel times * Irregular working times * Poor upbringing food wise * Stress * Sleep deprivation * etc
Is it still so easy then? That pizza tastes good and is real comforting.
That said, "I have sleep deprivation" is indeed a common reason for skipping leg day (along with the vernal equinox)[0].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS-oRydlnCE
step 1: gather some savings and take an honest (3mo+) break from work.
step 2: take note of which of your habits actually change when freed from the work-imposed time restrictions.
my personal experience: good habits don’t just spontaneously occur out of the vacuum. and social connections don’t just come knocking on your door. you have to decide these things are important to you, motivate yourself, and build your life in support of them.
to the extent that we don’t teach non-job skills in school, that’s a societal failure. if by “capitalism” you’re referring to how much we shape schooling to focus on making you a productive worker, then sure. but this is as much a failure of our democratic systems (which govern schools) and our social norms around child raising (wherein it’s acceptable to believe that govt schooling is the only learning/wisdom a child needs to be given).
“capitalism” is a boogeyman and — without admitting anything of its merits/faults — using it in such a way only serves to keep yourself from understanding the problems you face more concretely.
Good critiques of Capitalism are important to help it continue to evolve, compete, and win in a competitive marketplace of ideas.
I feel the same about every bad weather event being “caused” by climate change in the media. The models predictions are so vague people could blame anything on climate change. Not saying climate change isn’t happening, it is, but blaming everything on it is intellectually dishonest, costs legitimacy, and can lead to poor policy.
That's not wrong, but it came at the cost of massively depleting the oil reserves and polluting the ecosystems.
Well with a birth rate below replacement level there will be less and less people with each generation if the birth rate stays at that level, so in 200 years there's virtually no one left or something like that.
I say all this just to try and fight the idea that crops up that if you're male and don't fit some jacked or "Chad" ideal that there's no one out there for you (who you'd have an awesome time with). When I look at the incel subculture, it's doubly sad because these boys are being fed a model of how attraction, sex, and dating works that is just flat out wrong. It's like a self-harm club based on false premises.
My only sticking point with your comment is it's not like that, it is that.
Same.
I work out as a hobby and for psychological hygeine, i.e. to keep myself disciplined and just feel better.
Oddly when I started dating my current girlfriend she thought my lack of a 'dad-bod' might be too much of a red flag.
Doesn't seem to be the case almost 5 months later.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What women say and which partners they choose in reality are 2 different things. You should always keep that in mind when discussing these issues.
This isn't meant as a critique of women, rather than of people in general. Stated and actual preferences are not the same (it seems obvious once you give it some thought, yet still has to be repeated, since some people just don't get it).
I spent my entire teenage and young adult years thinking that no one could possibly be attracted to me because I was overweight. Yet, I never could seem to pull myself out of the habits that got me there in the first place and I just kept getting larger - from somewhat overweight in high school to morbidly obese by the end of college. No one has ever randomly talked to me in a bar or out in public. The only time I ever experienced that was when I was abroad. I've not made a single non-work friend since college. I don't know where to go to "meet people my own age", etc. Here I am about to turn 29 and my social life is talking over the internet with the people in knew in college and I just feel ... lost. I have a high paying tech job, but that's about the only thing I feel is going well in my life. I recognize that never having to actually worry about money is most people's dream, but I envy those with diverse social lives.
Figured I'd start with actually getting my weight under control. 3 months ago I started religiously tracking calories and I've done a reasonable job of keeping my eating within my goals. Managed to lose 30 pounds so far. Would love to be half way to my target by my 30th birthday. Maybe try a dating app and make sure I'm honest about my looks. I'd love to be able to ride roller coasters again.
What's your exercise regimen? I know there's lot of stuff out there that tells you what to do. Not all of it easy to understand or even effective. Happy to keep replying here to give you some thoughts.
I'm 6'3"; was 190 lbs at age 19 (university); was 210 pounds at age 21 (could afford to eat out for lunch); was 245 lb at age 40 (depressed + about to be divorced); now back to 220-230 lb at age 46. Would like to be consistently 210-215 ish.
Have dated a number of 30 to 45 yo women who explicitly like a "Dad bod".
EDIT> I have never picked anyone up off the street, at a bar, club, whatever. I pass for sociable, but am actually a big introvert. Like, it bothers me when other people are in my home, with a very few exceptions. But I'm told I have "dork game". So my experience is biased -- only seriously dated in my 40's
Met my true love on Tinder, and she's more of an introvert than I am, yet fun and relaxing / no-maintenance / no-drama to be around.
There's hope.
> There's hope.
You need to make more friends with people who are down bad.
Contrary to popular belief by men, women are very visual. They say things to each other like 'How do I get the guys I am attracted to to notice me?' The problem we have is that when guys ask why we reject them we can't give any sort of honest answer because the men will start to debate our answers. Combine that with the fact that they are stronger and can physically assault us and many men don't get this important signal and are left with the impression that how they look doesn't matter to women.
Some men do eventually realize that their looks do matter when it plays out in the office.
If you want to look at it from an evolutionary perspective who should I choose for a mate: Someone I can see is strong, fit and in shape or someone who isn't? The lack of muscle definition hints of possible low T in the same way that overweight women hint that they are possibly already pregnant to men. Is that skin issue genetic or from lack of care? Who could better help and protect me and my offspring?
Sidenote: The fact that men don't take care of their skin is such a weird societal issue. Taking care of your skin at the basic level is an aesthetic choice like taking care of your teeth is. It shouldn't be gendered. Everyone should take care of their skin and wear sunscreen, it is your largest organ.
A man that is not overweight, has some muscle definition, showers and wears clothes that actually fit his body is instantly more attractive than the countless men that don't.
To add one final little bit to your original statement:
> All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight
We never want you to say that you care about our weight. We want you to care for who we are, not for what we looked like when you met us at 19. One day we will be 60. We also will not tell you what you have to do with your body. We have had a lifetime of men telling us what we should do with ours and know how negative that is. You can weight what you want and if you are our special someone we will not care, but we will be more attracted to you when you are not obese.
Get yourself a personality, don't be weird, dress decently and talk to people. That's really all you need, no matter what you look like there's someone out there that's into it.
Don't overcomplicate simple things.
Don't get me wrong, your conclusion is spot on. Getting there is the hard part.
Another factor is we live in a period in time where we have so much choice on how to spend our time, products that are personalized to each of our own tastes, that creates sparsity of shared experiences.
No longer is there a movie like Star Wars, that you could throw a stick and find someone who shares that experience. Now unless you're suckling from the teat of mainstream media, you need to go out of your way to find someone who shares your taste in film, music, art, games and ideas.
I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been an experiment adding a social component to Netflix.
You may as well just be with yourself at that point. Someone else bringing new experiences that you don't share, to learn and involve yourself in going forward, is where interest is found.
So many men try all your advice and still struggle greatly.
I don't think we at all can define what individuals should do based on their gender; that is sort of the point. They can be who and what they want to be.
Maybe by some theory women have most of the advantages, but the outcomes clearly indicate otherwise. Look at the successful and elite in almost any field.
Men's results are bimodal: if women are forced to break through a glass ceiling to reach the elite, men are similarly forced to walk on a glass floor that might collapse at any moment. And when it does, they're fucked.
I suppose the point of contention people would make is that men deserve it/have it coming so it's not worth discussing or treating as a political topic.
We certainly can find some ways in which the male population is worse off - though that doesn't establish any correlation or causation, inevitably in some ways it's true. But we need to look at the overall picture.
> I suppose the point of contention people would make is that men deserve it/have it coming so it's not worth discussing or treating as a political topic.
That's a pretty incredible strawman. Can you find one person saying that?
> Can you find one person saying that?
Let's be explicit about this, since you seem intent on evading the discussion: why shouldn't we treat male-particular suffering, discrimination, and death as important topics for society to address? What possible explanation is there for you to write those issues off as not part of the big picture except for thinking that men deserve it?
The population stats are something like 60% of men will be fathers but 90-95% of women will be mothers. Most women who can reproduce will but a huge percent of men who can will not.
40% of births are outside of marriage in the US.
I would think the only real generalization that can be made is that an introverted guy with money is more likely to get married.
I would bet money on that stat that women being the aggressor in Korea is simply not true in a statistical sense.
[1] https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-rise-of-childless-america
[2] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2019/mens-fer...
One thing to keep in mind with those long term fertility rates is that child mortality rates going back that far is just shocking
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-al...
It is too harsh to even think about really.
It is hard also to understand the rise in fertility rates from the 80s to 2010s.
I think the idea that everyone has the option to settle down and have kids is a relatively recent phenomenon. It used to be that most men never had kids. Nowadays most men do have kids. That said - 25%+ of men will never have children. Kinda wild when you think about that. 1/4 of all men will never have children. Whether this is a choice or not isn't clear (I'm going to go with - not a choice overwhelmingly). The interesting part though is that the number is less than 15% for women. That means that there are ~70% more men than women who will never have children. These stats are usually taken for men who are age 45+ - where the gender balance is more equal.
I think it is that we have a bias when having this discussion that children are the product of this Hollywood love story lifelong marriage.
Google says 28 percent of all U.S. women with two or more children have children by more than one man. It is an incredible statistic.
I think Japan is a pretty decent model of where most of the US is going. Anime weebs and what not with waifu pillows will become much more normalized and other various forms of NEETs. But with more violence, unfortunately. I think shootings, suicides, and “accidental” deaths are going to stay the course or get worse. We’ll find ways to skew the statistics to cover this up so that we never have to address it (cause that’s require a different way of thinking about capitalism) but I don’t think this problem is going away for a few generations.
* The Santa Barbara shooter angry at women
* The El Paso, TX and Miami, OH shooters angry about the end of white genetic pool dominance or something
* The guy who tried to go on a shooting spree in Harlem and got caught after killing an elderly Black man as practice because "Black men are taking all the White women"
The biggest surprise for most women out here might be this tidbit: most men are incels until they're not. It's that some men never get out of that horrible rut and a small amount of those are the ones you see end up doing the shootings. The rest suffer silently or just kill themselves.
It's sad. Most of my female friends are completely unaware. All of my male friends are painfully aware because almost every man who ever went through that phase to any significant degree will do almost everything but forget it. Someday we'll get to the point where we acknowledge this but part of me thinks we don't ever want to. If we did - then we'd have to really change things and no one likes to change shit.
The second bullet point, a written manifesto was posted online. The third obviously admitted to his motivations.
These are not the people right now having more children - it's those who (often at least partly for reasons of disadvantage) have relatively less impulse control and are poorer at long term thinking/planning.
And/or those who are part of a culture that encourages fertility and discourages contraception.
I don't see how current trends point to this changing in the direction you mention. Being young has more to do with thinness than genetics, and most babies are born outside of marriage.
Edit: added qualifications and clarifications
Nobody wants to talk about this "elephant in the room" but I agree with you. Even obese people don't find other obese people attractive. Young people are dating (and having less sex) today because the majority of them are obese or overweight.
When women are ovulating, they are statistically more likely to select men with higher testosterone levels and of course the physical qualities that go along with that (bigger/more muscular, stronger jawline, more aggressive, etc...).
When women are horny, they are statistically more likely to select men based on appearance.
"When horny, men are statistically more likely to select women with big tits" is banal and adds nothing to the conversation. I don't understand why these references to ovulation get a pass.
Before birth control, women normally always had ovulation roughly every month.
After birth control, not as much.
I don't have any idea why you're talking about men.
What, you think women are automatons that can't resist an instinctive prime directive to have babies when they are fertile?
Which doesn't mean women only fuck when they're ovulating.
>> can't resist
I'm not sure how you've implied that from what I've said. You sound awfully defensive and angry. I haven't stated any opinions here, in case you didn't notice.
Picture a distribution, like a bell curve or something.
The programs are meant for the side of that distribution that need it. You can talk about how the other side of the distribution doesn't need the help, but don't lose sight of the fact that many do.
(To be clear: I am wildly privileged to live in a Western country now instead of living almost anywhere else at any other time. I'm also generally happy to be a strong and healthy male. My thoughts are best best explained by the fact that 1. all else being equal I'd prefer to recruit a woman rather than a man to the company I work for because that gives me more "social credit" at work 2. Boys systematically do better on anonymous tests, at least in the western world.)
However, the number of years people complain about societal decay is irrelevant to the question about whether it's happening or not.
The Roman Empire was "going to hell in a handbasket" for centuries prior to 410, according to the social critics of the time. It doesn't make them wrong.
Applying one's personal normalcy bias on timescales of a single lifetime to societal evolution that happens on the scales of tens of generations is rather short-sighted.
While I hate that things are getting worse for anyone (and want to fix it!), these findings are good reminders for me that almost everyone else has dealt with similar circumstances much more often than I have. Often the cause is out of their control and that they are just trying to make the best of it, with varying results. It gives me good perspective and reminds me that peoples choices / actions include inputs that I'm not exposed to.
That all being said I hope we can find a way to make these situations less common for everyone. I'd settle for quick fixes (adjust taxes, better welfare, etc.), but I'm excited for the societal changes that I hope are the eventual long-term fix.
You're mid-30s and you might have just experienced your first thing like that? Man or woman, that's hard to believe. And more importantly, I'm not sure your experience can be generalized to all men.
As someone who has experienced situations like that frequently, and knows other men who have, it's a bit frustrating to see the implication that we all feel like "we're perfect for this" or "we're made for this" all the time.
Shouldn't we care about how society is treating people, no matter who they are, instead of getting into a pissing contest about who society is _really_ screwing over the most?
Not to mention, frankly, it's ridiculous to imply that a 35-year old male software engineer's experience is at all representative of that of the average male (who is far, far worse off).
This is a great point that often gets overlooked in discussions around gender, race, sexuality, class, or any other issue surrounding equality. I think people often hone in on the latter and it becomes counter-productive to fixing these issues. Thanks for bringing it up.
You're jumping to a bit of a conclusion here. Most people seem to be reading this comment as re recognition that this particular guy is privileged compared to most people, not a blanket argument that women have it worse. Consider why you reacted so defensively to such an anodyne self-reflection.
* "Semi-recently I had an (maybe my first?) experience where I wasn't the favored party in a situation."
* "almost everyone else has dealt with similar circumstances much more often than I have."
A graph from a random internet search result: https://educationalpolicy.org/hello-world/
There's even data from the pre-1900s, especially in the primary school years.
Only recently have we stripped away a lot of the sexism however, providing a successful transition to higher education.
It all boils down to:
Girls are more likely to do their damn homework when the teacher tells them.
Therefore they out-perform in formal education.
https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents...
https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v48y2013i1p236-264.html
(Not the exact studies I remember seeing.)
It's a common finding and one of the rare effects in the social sciences that are very reproducible.
https://news.yahoo.com/study-teacher-observations-biased-aga...
(The actual study is available at https://my.vanderbilt.edu/brendanbartanen/files/2021/10/gris... )
Black teachers and male teachers are rated lower during teacher observations than white teachers and female teachers, despite comparable or better outcomes for their students in test scores and student attendance.
Interestingly, the bias against male teachers is around twice the bias against Black teachers.
Is it really so difficult to consider that career preferences are gendered? That millions of years of sexually dimorphic specialization could lead to statistically significant differences in interests, abilities, and desired life outcomes?
The recent popularity of blaming any disparity on {$x}ism really bothers me. Culture and genes influence outcomes at least as much as any external force in the modern world. That goes for gendered differences too.
>girls are more likely to do their damn homework
Also ironic that the people who are so eager to fight against sexism/racism have no qualms about generalizing their scapegoats. But it sort if proves my point: you are willing to acknowledge that males may have intrinsic negative traits which could cause them to underperform, but of course acknowledging the obvious implication that such groups may have innate advantages is forbidden; maybe because doing so would undermine the very underpinnings of the modern progressive push for equality of outcome.
Metrics targeting equal representation among all industries/disciplines are fundamentally flawed. There's no reason to expect such parity if people are truly free to choose their own paths, nordic countries are an example, where gender disparity persists despite an egalitarian culture.
Matriculating to higher education isn't really preferring one career over another, other than white collar blue collar. But with absolute surety women are going to college.
I feel like you've got multiple different hypotheses in your comment, so I'll address the big one at the start.
> Is it really so difficult to consider that career preferences are gendered? That millions of years of sexually dimorphic specialization could lead to statistically significant differences in interests, abilities, and desired life outcomes?
Consider that 60% of college students are female now, and 0% were a hundred years ago.
I strongly feel like there's very little innate attraction to "traditional" gender roles amongst women.
If you look at the trajectory of change, it's very clear that every single decade, the change in women's choices marches in a particular direction. Decade on decade, the numbers all point one way.
Which makes me think that women themselves feel traditional gender roles are very unattractive. If there was some sort statistically significant difference, clearly it's not changing the direction of the trend, much if at all.
And change is basically percolating its way through society, slowly but surely.
------------------------------------------------
Given the above:
If women's preferences were genetically or otherwise innately determined, why have they gone for such an enormous, dramatic change in their lifestyles and social situation in the last 50 years? Because women have chosen that for themselves.
My deeply held assumption, is that all our "assumptions" about "what women want" are just that, assumptions.
If you think from a perspective of geological time, the 50 years since the 1960s are nothing. That's 1 generation or less. And yet the lot of women in society has changed dramatically, and they seem to be happy about it.
Given how much change we've had, I think it's fair to say that the attitudes of 100 years ago were not genetically or innately constructed.
I assume pretty much everything in society is just a giant social construct.
Very, very little sexual dimorphism between girls and boys is down to nature.
It's 100% to nurture, not nature.
Typically when we see outcome differences between two groups in a system, most people will blame the system... unless they think it's good/natural for one group to do worse than the other.
The gender pay gap: clearly there is no legitimate or natural way that men would make more money than women in a fair system, so the system must be biased against women.
The gender academic success gap: boys don't pay attention or do their work so it's only natural for girls to do better.
It's clear that for both of these thoughts to exist in someone's head, they must think there's a superior gender.
[0] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/gender-gap-in-stem-women-are-...
All the best.
The feeling comes from being on the losing side of every action the government and popular culture takes. Being told that you can’t even be involved in a conversation about that fact.
Reading what happens elsewhere, I'm happy to live in a more cohesive society.
"Men are trash." "Men are awful." Then look up on Wikipedia the "Women are wonderful" effect. And of course the ever-popular "dick is abundant and low-value."
You get suggestions like white people should be vaccinated last. And so on and so on. It just never stops.
It's hard to be left when it feels they hate me.
Maybe stop relying on google front page doodles for your own sense of self-worth?
Is this really true? You are describing the quintessential basement-dweller, which is not exactly a rosy stereotype.
I think there is room for another look at this (without condoning it):
men have careerism out of necessity for stability - or at least conveying stability - and made environments that were comfortable for them to make it tolerable
women have careerism out of choice for stability and are finding pursuing this choice out of pride enters them into an environment that was never really about professionalism
so the two audiences are exploiting themselves in office and corporate environments for different reasons or pressures
I'm all for making environments comfortable for a greater population to be productive and sustain their lifestyle, I think acknowledging why an environment is uncomfortable for new entrants can help that
When I was younger and I wanted to go to bars and get drunk and be an idiot I had plenty of attractive sexual partners.
So I don't buy this at all. The guys I know who have an easy time dating are 1 or 2 points more attractive, make minimum wage as yoga teachers or selling crystals or dumb stuff like that, and tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear about their quantum vibrations matching and other new age nonsense.
So I can say this narrative empirically doesn't feel true for me.
If you are looking for a reason for your travails, here it is. If you started out with this level of contempt, it’s no wonder you’ve been unsuccessful. If you became embittered due to your challenges, then I’m sorry. That is a hard path. But if you want it to change, I think you have some work to do. And I wish you luck with it.
I suggest you take your own advice and work on your issues that make you respond in a knee-jerk manner, blaming them like that, instead of assuming that OP may be correct in their assessment about the dating scene.
> tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear about their quantum vibrations matching and other new age nonsense.
Do you think "quantum vibrations matching" and "other new age nonsense" are not painfully stupid? Or do you just want to attack the parent comment?
And no high-earning, rational male in a STEM career would ever want to be with a partner that values that sort of conversation.
I know it sounds a bit stupidly obvious, but do the stuff that works!
Depends on the bar. Certainly when I was young there where certain bars that where known as places you go to be social and meet girls and certain bars that where known as places where you sat and drank with your mates and got left alone. By selecting which bar you went to you could greatly influence how your evening went.
My god I hope you aren't talking about tinder are you? You are totally clueless about women and dating if that is what you are talking about.
Go out to bars, talk to people, do activities and meet lots of people. stop doing 'online' dating (of any kind)
Seriously, myself and everyone I know found that upon reaching 33 the interest from women in their 20s sky rockets. You are definitely doing something wrong, not society.
39% in 2017. I'd be very curious to know the numbers over the past two years as in 2017 bars/restaurants were at 27%, school/college at 9%, and work at 11%.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/02/06/the-virtues-...
of those with a partner, 21% said they met them online (gets lower with age too)
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/nearly-...
And note that this says "online dating" not specifically tinder. Statistics show that 80% of women sleep with 20% of men on Tinder. Tinder is a place women go when they are interested in having sex with men based on nothing other than their looks. That is fine, if you are in the top 20%, if you aren't, it is a real fools errand.
Huge YMMV. A lot of us are physically similar to what we were in our 20s but I definitely peaked when I was around 25. It’s been a steady downhill trend since then and the interest from women has gone completely downhill. Mind you - I’m not exactly surrounded by many women I’m interested in but at least in the past I might’ve had someone I wasn’t into express some mild interest in me.
In my 30s though? Nope. Definitely not. Haven’t even lost hair or gained a bunch of fat. Yet - from the results one would think I have.
So, I’d say… grain of salt as far as your experience and your friends goes. I know many men who have basically given up in their 30s because they feel completely undesired and have managed to keep up their physicality.
No surprise that women in their 40's are more responsive. There are less men alive at their age and less men interested in dating their peer age. Many men in their 40s want to date someone in their 30s. Men in their 50s want a 40s, etc. It's uncommon for men to want to date someone in the same age bracket as they get older.
"go out to bars" is advise that's about 20 years out of date, mate. However, being successful at online dating is non-intuitive and takes skill.
Of course, if you're in your mid 30's and you want to bang college chicks half your age with daddy issues, maybe "going to bars" is the way to go...
You missed the rest of the sentence.
I've met people online and dated them. I've also met girls in other ways and dated them, now marrying one. Once or twice, well, we didn't quite want to tell other people how we met. So we didn't. We just said we met online. It's the perfect blow-off justification when you don't want to get into a perhaps complicated and messy story.
People meet in all sorts of ways. I used online dating for years but it was never the most successful strategy. What did work - meeting girls at events, in bars, ideally at events in bars, one or two less conventional ways, and never giving up.
It's pretty easy to strike up conversations with people at bars and events. I know people who met their long term partners on overseas tours, at work and at music festivals. Not everyone uses dating apps, not every person at a bar is ancient or has daddy issues.
These sound like the kind of partners you're trying to avoid anyway. Although I may be projecting.
Also, are you wanting an easy time dating, or are you wanting a long-term relationship with kids on the horizon? They're two wildly different desires.
Is it instead that some of these folks who have an "easy" time actually don't care that much about the process? Not ignorance, but not spending much time over-analyzing everything. Instead, they're out and they're drawing people to them because they're not thinking about having a good time, but just doing it?
It really is that simple in some ways. Focus on enjoying yourself throughout your day to day and especially in social situations and perhaps someone will find their way to you instead.
PS: those crystal sellers don't sound to me (generalizing) like good long-term matches for most people. So, stop comparing yourself to them.
Perhaps this is your problem? I've seen this with folks at work. They're middle aged, successful, extremely bright and they want to find a mate. The problems as I see it:
1. They insist on living in "Man Jose" aka SiValley. There is a serious lack of demographic diversity here.
2. They want to find a bright, attractive woman with an amazing career, 10/10 body who is wowed by their lack of life balance, an obsession with career and status, and lack of fun/joy in their lives.
If these guys would live practically anywhere but the valley and accept that, even though they make a lot of money and are great at their tech jobs, they are just average in terms of what a woman looks for in a mate, well, they might get somewhere.
Lonely nerds: you've got to accept that in all likelihood your mate will disappoint you in some way and vice-versa. Don't just marry the first girl you find, but consider lowering your standards to match with reality.
> I had plenty of attractive sexual partners.
This sentence is a serious red flag. If you think your ability to bang hot women who hang out in bars bears any relation to your fitness as a mate then you need to check your beliefs about what women want in a relationship. I'd like to hope this is just an insensitive way of you telling us that you're not a hideous monster and hopefully that's all it is. If not, I don't know, maybe stop trying to date, take a break from the tech world, and just work on your social skills for a while.
> tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear
Jesus... so many red flags. Really man, you have a condescending attitude towards women and you wonder why you can't find a mate?
You might feel like your achievements and positive qualities are not being valued by women and you've worked so hard to improve yourself for nothing. Trust me, this is not true. There are other factors at play that make online dating unreasonably unfair for you.
1. If you are in the Bay Area, you are at a distinct disadvantage. The male-female-ratio, homogeneity of interests and credentials make stand out far less than you would in the general population. It is also natural for women to form negative stereotypes about men in tech if they've been on bad dates. There's no way to tell that you won't be the same from your profile. I've experienced this first-hand where every woman I managed to go on a date with responded positively and complained to me that the guys they meet are immature, entitled or lack social skills.
2. If you are not white and live in the USA, your odds are slimmer even among your racial group. There are studies to confirm this and you can compare yourself to your peers.
3. Physical attributes like height, fitness and facial attractiveness matter but to a way lesser extent than people think. I've been skinny as a rail and ripped with a substantial amount of muscle and the number of matches were still about the same and women I met in person didn't seem to care either way though I would rate myself as considerably closer to the generally accepted male standards of attractiveness when jacked.
4. By far the quickest hack to get more matches on dating apps is to improve your pictures. Bite the bullet and do it, the bar is pitifully low.
5. No matter how many matches you get, the vast majority of them will act the same way. They'll not respond, stand you up and ghost. Most people are incapable of dealing with the pressures of interacting with other and will choose to do what's easiest for them instead of what's right. However, the more matches you get, the less you'll care about this.
6. Your point about appealing to the lowest common denominator sounds attractive when you feel like you have no prospects but you'll realize it is a sheer waste of time once you learn to value yourself appropriately and stop degrading yourself because of the feedback you're getting from the apps. This is difficult to do unless you really deeply understand the dynamics of these apps so the typical suggestion is to get off them and just date in person.
7. You were pretty much sold a lie growing up that everyone is entitled to love and the average guy will have an easy time finding a partner. When you understand the evolutionary pressures placed on women to select the best partner and today's world where women feel like there are many more high value men due to social media, it is easy to understand why they find it repulsive to settle for someone who's average. Most women grow out of this kind of thinking and seek real connection at some point though.
TLDR; You're probably undervaluing yourself but its not really your fault. Move out of the Bay Area. Get better pictures for your dating apps. Don't expect to have an easy time dating if there is nothing extraordinarily exceptional about you.
> If you are in the Bay Area, you are at a distinct disadvantage. The male-female-ratio
This is just true in the entire USA under age 35. If you're a man - you have a distinct disadvantage. More men (107:100) are born than women. This evens out around age 40 because men killed themselves at a much higher rate than women have. (Think about that - women kill themselves too but 7% of men have to off themselves to just even it out if all the women lived)
And regardless, even if it was somewhere between slightly favorable and slightly unfavorable in NYC, it is strongly unfavorable in SF, which accords with my subjective experience dating in the two places.
First Google search result. Census data contains all the info you desire. It’s not highly publicized because no one likes to admit that men might be struggling with something - lol. It doesn’t sell well in the media.
I will agree that the gender ratio of SF and SV are wildly worse for men than NYC. Just saying that it isn’t some holy grail that people like to sell it as. Men outnumber women in this world from birth. It’s only because men kill themselves that we have less men than women by age ~40.
What changed for you?
The way you are killing it in your career, I suspect that your female companionship objectives are a tad bit too demanding. At the least, you should try to find a women you can trust and enjoy in small moments of life. Start there.
Put those monetary resources your brain has afforded you to work.
If you were able to get laid at bars in the past, you are good looking enough. Your profile is just likely bad / has poor photos. And I know that sucks but its the real world.
I mean it is a crisis (at least potentially), creating a large group of disenfranchised men is not going to lead anywhere good.
When was the last time your heard politicians talking about it? Ross Perot and DJT?
It’s kind of like a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs but for a society. If your higher needs are only being met at the expense of your lower needs it’s all going to come crashing down.
The lower needs in this case are channeling the energies of those that can commit the most violent atrocities away from committing violent atrocities and into something constructive like jobs and families.
One of the key roles that the political left-wing should represent is fixing disenfranchisement. Unfortunately for about the last few decades, that not only is untrue, the opposite is what is happening. It has been the left-wing who has been disenfranchising boys and men.
>Yes, men have long had societal advantages over women and in some ways continue to be treated favorably. But male achievement — alongside that of women — is a condition for a healthy society.
Here it is coming from Yang. The right-wing are obviously where traditional gender roles are still represented. The equality or rather attack on traditional roles started many decades prior but for example it's the left-wing who has attacked the boy scouts.
It's the same reason that homelessness is in vast majority men, but the vast majority of homeless shelters are women's only.
>Our media, institutions and public leadership have failed to address this crisis, framing boys and men as the problem themselves rather than as people requiring help.
This is intentionally being done by those groups. Hard to address the crisis that they themselves are intentionally creating.
>Resources that keep families together when they want to stay together, such as marriage counseling, should be subsidized by the government — a much more cost-efficient approach than dealing with the downstream effects.
What's more important. This isn't zero-sum, women benefit from men being strong.
>On a cultural level, we must stop defining masculinity as necessarily toxic and start promoting positive masculinity. Strong, healthy, fulfilled men are more likely to treat women well.
This was intentionally done and in fact, it's trending in a worse direction. This is about to get worse before it gets better.
>The above is, of course, a prodigious undertaking. But I see the need around me all the time.
Toxic masculinity isnt a thing on the right-wing. When the left-wing says 'toxic masculinity' the right-wing rolls its eyes. He sees this around him all the time because of where he stands politically. If you're interested in some right-wing positions on this subject.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/the_lefts_w...
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/01/why_leftist...
https://mises.org/library/marxism-and-manipulation-man
Oh and if Yang continues this push. We shall never hear from him again.