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Article: "The Sorry Lives and Confusing Times of Today's Young Men"
Submitted by TCM on Mon, 2012-03-12 06:44
Article here. The subtitle: "They don't have jobs. They're dropping out of college. They play video games all day and watch porn all night. Even their sperm counts are low. Why won't guys grow up?"
Discriminating against men and boys in employment and education, and then blaming them for being unemployed and uneducated, is like breaking someone's legs and then blaming them because they can't walk. Such is, unfortunately, the kind of treatment we have become accustomed to for the past forty years. As we may observe in this article and broader society, men are unique in that society regards their vulnerabilities as opportunities not to come to their aid, but to mock them for their very condition of being vulnerable. Note, however, the defiant comments in the article. Note the unity of their message. Note their passion, their choice of rhetoric, the targets of their scrutiny! No longer content to be the beasts of burden for a society that denies their suffering and mocks their existence, Men are Going Their Own Way, at last. Excerpt:
'THE WOMEN ARE IRATE. The women are talking about men, young men, the men they’d like to date and marry, and are they ever pissed. Here’s what they’re saying:
“All they want is sex. They don’t care about relationships.”
“They’re so lazy.”
“All they do is play video games.”
“They aren’t men. They’re boys.”
The women are a little bewildered. They’re good girls. They followed the script: did well in high school, got into college, worked hard there, got out, got jobs, started looking around for someone special to share life with, and …
“I met a guy the other night. Good-looking, smart. Twenty-eight years old. He still lives at home. With his mom.” Young men are now nearly twice as likely as young women to live with their parents; 59 percent of guys ages 18 to 24 and 19 percent of 25-to-34-year-olds live at home. Based on those Census Bureau stats, 64,000 young Philly men have returned to or never left the nest—and they all have mothers, ex-girlfriends, grandmothers, dads and other friends and relations worrying about their plight.'
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Comments
Maybe they just don't want to be bothered...
... after seeing what the typical life blueprint for men is as laid out in front of them. They see trails of destroyed lives laid out before them: men who have become the victims of a legal system that doesn't recognize their paternity rights when as is so often the case, marriages end badly. If I were in my late teens/early 20s again, I would be a lot like these guys. I wouldn't play video games quite as much, I don't think, but I would have come to the same conclusions so many seem to have (or, at least, they are acting that way): that relationships just are not worth the trouble and risk, so why bother? As for trying to be on the fast track or A-type run in the business world, again, they see the battlefield littered with their dead fathers, uncles, cousins, etc.: men who lost jobs after years of dutiful sacrifice only to have few or no new prospects remotely commensurate with their former status at work or in society after a layoff. What good is striving for Alpha Malehood when it it so easily taken from you? Whether they have heard the term or not, what you're seeing here is a move toward Zeta Malehood in all its glory, all without a coordinated effort, all without anything like a statement being made or a sociopolitical agenda. For these guys, the political, and they don't even know it, has become personal, and they are the result.
So young women decry the state young men are in? And they want someone to blame? They can blame their mothers and grandmothers for it, and in many cases, their fathers and grandfathers too, many of whom have been just as active in creating the circumstances that give rise to Zeta Malehood as any of their female counterparts.
I say, we celebrate it: liberated men. They consider themselves unbeholden to a stereotyped outlook or plan for their lives and so they live life without allowing themselves to fall prey to the same traps their fathers fell into. Good for them! Up the Zeta Males!
Men's liberation
What's interesting is that "women's liberation" in effect liberated men. Women wanted the family to the themselves and the jobs to themselves. They wanted the right to be the real human beings, the ones that matter. Of course, they offered nothing to men in return.
Men thus have no reason to undertake the effort to educate themselves or to work 20 hours a day when the only reward is money. Better to work enough to survive and enjoy time in other ways. In effect, men are liberating themselves from all the hard work, responsibility, and legal obligations that came with the male role. Society no longer provides any reason for a man to do take on those responsibilities. Being a father and a husband has become too risky.
None of this is really good for men or for society; we will soon become one big ghetto. But it's a rational response to society's refusal to give men any motive to do otherwise.
Men's liberation
What's interesting is that "women's liberation" in effect liberated men. Women wanted the family to the themselves and the jobs to themselves. They wanted the right to be the real human beings, the ones that matter. Of course, they offered nothing to men in return.
Men thus have no reason to undertake the effort to educate themselves or to work 20 hours a day when the only reward is money. Better to work enough to survive and enjoy time in other ways. In effect, men are liberating themselves from all the hard work, responsibility, and legal obligations that came with the male role. Society no longer provides any reason for a man to do take on those responsibilities. Being a father and a husband has become too risky.
None of this is really good for men or for society; we will soon become one big ghetto. But it's a rational response to society's refusal to give men any motive to do otherwise.
Interesting, Matt
You were writing your response while I was writing mine. I find it interesting we both reach essentially the same conclusion: men are liberating themselves.
No more Patriarchy?
For decades now feminists have bemoaned men dominating the top jobs, getting good grades and generally earning more than women. "Patriarchy" they said "needs to be smashed". So here we are in 2012 and it seems feminism's aims have been met; men and boys are dropping out big time, and often as a direct result of the negative messages fed to them at home and at school. Yet women complain about men dropping out, even though they wanted us to fall behind? Unbelievable. Women wanted men to earn less, be more poorly educated and have worse prospects, they got what they wished for, and it's men's fault? But there is one crumb of comfort, and that's it is the women who are doing all the complaining; it seems the men of today have it easier than they used to, even ten or so years ago. With no expectations and responsibilities foisted on them young men are at last free to live relatively easy lives. It's nice to know that for my generation at least feminism has done more than anything to liberate men. Thanks sisters...
As the old saying goes ladies: be careful what you wish for...
you know the thing about odds?
what never ceases to amaze is how many guys really believe that crap about
"i didn't mean to get pregnant, it was an accident"!
yeah. right. let's examine the odds against that being true,
since many of my friends have been told this over the years. real close friends. lots.
b.c. is whaT, 99% effective for most women?
on top of that, she can only get prego for a couple days a month?
so that 1% of the time, or whatever it is, the one or maybe 2 special soldiers get by,
and that just happens to be one of the very few days every month the door is even open?
and who doesn't know guys who were asked to believe exactly that?
even guys who use protection themselves are expected to believe this crap.
when b.c. is used together, it puts the odds out into space somewhere.
these are lottery winner type odds. but it happens every day, all over the place.
but every guy could lose in this lottery.
in the olden days she could just point at the best provider and they were soon married.
most would get far better odds that he ain't the real daddy.
my comment
"Why is it, when men were doing better in school and career, it was levied on discrimination (and still is, for STEM fields, the only place women don't dominate), yet despite 40 years of tailoring the education system and workplace environment to suit women, without a second thought to men, the only excuse for men's failures is "they are inept children refusing to grow up". Ever consider, maybe, just maybe, tossing men to the side for 40 years, denigrating them constantly (as seen in the media with the idiotic, inept, manchild rolemodels seen in virtually every commercial or sitcom) might have had a negative effect on men? That maybe, just maybe, this is the inevitable outcome of striving for equality by looking solely at one gender? Isn't it a little sexist to lay the blame square on some male deficiency without even exploring the possibility of alternative causes (which are plentiful on the net. Google "globe and mail failing boys" and there is a 6 part story on the subject, and none of it lays the blame on masculinity like you do here.)"