CNN piece asks: Are women leaving men behind?

Submitted by anthony on Tue, 2011-01-11 19:43

Opinion special here. Excerpt:

'Why is this? As one fertility expert surmised in my Atlantic story: These mothers "look at their lives and think their daughters will have a bright future their mother and grandmother didn't have, brighter than their sons even, so why wouldn't you choose a girl?"

In certain segments of society, men are struggling to stay relevant in this rapidly changing economy, as manufacturing jobs disappear. Women, meanwhile, are making many more of the decisions: how to raise the children, manage the money, even whether to get married at all.

Let me say this again: This is not feminist gloating. It's not any kind of value judgment. It just is. Women are in so many ways filling the roles that men traditionally filled.

Many of the changes happening are obviously beneficial to women: They have more economic freedom and power than ever. But many of the changes are not all that positive for women.

With more freedom and power comes the burden of managing, heading households alone, being ever more perfect. And the stresses show up in reports of increased rates of unhappiness, alcoholism and even violence among women. Plus, the prospect of women rising is quite threatening to men in many places, so the transition can look ugly.'

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Aparently this article has a goal: To make women feel good.

But it is very sad that it comes to lie and put down men in order to make women feel good.

To this day no woman has invented or discovered the cure of any decease.

Their "achievements" are actually the achievements of men, we gave the jobs through affirmative action; it is our achievement.

I wonder how many people are so blind and dumb to actually believe the crap of such articles.

The world is getting dumber.

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Submitted by Hulkmania on Wed, 2011-01-12 03:21

The whole piece reminds me of "A Class Divided" which was a social experiment in a classroom in the late 1960s in which the blue eyed children were told they were better than the brown eyed ones, and consequently the blue eyed children did better in class than the brown eyed ones and also bullied them. This was meant to represent racial attitudes between blacks and whites. Reading this woman's remarks about women doing better than men (and seeing her daughter's superior attitude in a video) makes me think that this phenomena is being applied betweem males and females in contemporary Western society.

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Submitted by mens_issues on Wed, 2011-01-12 03:57

Quote from the article:

"When you open your eyes to the evidence, you can see that so many of our assumptions about the natural order between men and women are no longer relevant."

I disagree. I assume by "natural order" she means biological tendencies. In my opinion, respecting the biological differences between men and women is absolutely crucial in maintaining families and societies. Only a feminist would think nature is irrelevant.

Funny how she makes that statement about natural order being irrelevant and then goes on to mention how all the new female "power" is causing stress which has resulted in higher levels of unhappiness and alcoholism among women. She even brings up fertility clinics (almost as if that is the normal way children are conceived).

Uh, maybe it is all that disregarding of biology and being pushed into jobs that you wouldn't naturally select that is causing the stress. If anyone needs to open their eyes it is her.

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Submitted by Kris on Wed, 2011-01-12 07:43

Perhaps I am nit-picking and being overly suspicious of her choice of words, but here is a few "red-flags" I found:

She refers to "managing a household" as a "burden", and uses the phrase "more perfect" when speaking of households headed by women.

She mentions that men should feel "relief" that they are not expected to fill the masculine role since gender roles are now "so fluid". So one might conclude that she is open to the idea of men taking on traditional female roles such as work-at-home type jobs or being stay at home dads, however she makes it clear that women still have control of the household and children. Men are "irrelevant". Apparently this gender role shift she is so excited about is just for women.

Anyone else feel the gender bias in her story about her mother seeing boys in the neighborhood "up to no good" and "getting them to do the right thing"?.

I also remember in her first video she used all kinds of esteem-boosting adjectives to describe her daughter. Well, in this article she mentions that her sons are "darling".

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Submitted by Kris on Wed, 2011-01-12 07:52