"Boys are more than twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder... are five times as likely to spend time in juvenile detention; and are less likely to finish high school.... Men now make up only 40.5 percent of college students.... Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms. Roughly one-third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners.... 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.... Here’s the simple truth I’ve heard from many men: We need to be needed. We imagine ourselves as builders, soldiers, workers, brothers — part of something bigger than ourselves. We deal with idleness terribly. 'A man … with no means of filling up time,” George Orwell wrote, is “as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain.'"
Andrew Yang takes up the cause of men in "The data are clear: The boys are not all right" (WaPo).
Let me single out the line "Strong, healthy, fulfilled men are more likely to treat women well." I've made approximately that argument myself on occasion... and gotten into some of the worst arguments of my life. I'll check the comments now because I'm sure the most liked comment will be something that shows why this seemingly moderate position can enrage those focused on women. Yes, here, from one "Jane Guy":
Guess what? If men started doing their share of housework, child care, and the emotional labor of a family (which every study shows they do not), they would feel needed. They ARE needed, in fact, just not in the way you say they want to be. Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" and start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life."
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122 comments:
If men started doing "their share of housework, child care, and emotional labor" then women would leave them and the papers would be full of stories about how men are intruding on "women's spaces" and destroying something uniquely feminine.
"start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life"
. . . as defined by women. Supporting Yang's (and Althouse's) point.
Besides feminist sexism, let's add racism: how many young black men are needed? feel needed?
Strong, healthy, fulfilled men are more likely to treat women well
You have to give women a reason to care.
But without men, you'd be living in dirt huts, as Paglia famously said in Sexual Personae. Women can't hack it on their own because they have only feelings interests, not systems interests.
I agree with Ann Althouse.
Do we still drug boys in grade school to make grade school better for girls? Yes?
That’s probably why this result…
"Guess what? If men started doing their share of housework, child care, and the emotional labor of a family (which every study shows they do not)..."
You know why, Jane? Because when they do, they're criticized for "doing it wrong." Translated into English, that means "doing it the way the woman wants it done". And the woman doesn't want to have to tell the man what that is, he's expected to just know.
"Why bother doing it if I'm just going to get bitched at anyway?" said most every guy at some time in his life.
Feminism, in addition to starting the transgender fad, has destroyed itself. It was begun by lesbians and ended with transgenders.
I'll check the comments now because I'm sure the most liked comment will be something that shows why this seemingly moderate position can enrage those focused on women. Yes, here, from one "Jane Guy":
$100 says "Jane Guy" isn't married and will be one of the first people who will tell you that there are no good men left in New York City.
Seems like Jane Guy is saying, it's important for women to have the kind of life they want, but not for men.
Academia, Hollywood, and this Lowest Common Denominator culture we have allowed to take root are getting exactly what they’ve strived for.
Unexpectedly.
Strong, healthy, fulfilled men are more likely to treat women well
Yes, it's not important to have men feel strong and fulfilled for their own sake, there has to be something in it for women. I remember having a discussion with my wife about things that she can do to make me feel better as a man, as well as things that I can do to make her feel better as a woman. I made the point that if you know for a fact it's going to make the person you love feel better, why wouldn't you do it?
It seems that many of the arguments made about how I'm not going to do this for my man stem from pleasing people who don't care about you. Rather than focusing on your life partner and acting in ways that will make him happy, you're acting in ways that will make people that you've never met, never know, and don't care about happy. It's insanity.
Better work up a plan for Honor Killings. They're just around the corner I'll bet. How about those New Yorkers, pushing all those Jewish and Korean women around, under trains and such. On their way to choir practice I'll bet!
Didn't Daniel Patrick Moynihan predict this? Dustbin.
If men started doing their share of housework, child care, and the emotional labor of a family (which every study shows they do not), they would feel needed
Well,
you know as well as *i* do; that if you'd just Make Him a Sandwich, he'd be willing to do all that
The feminist cant is “what is good for women is good for men.” So by the contrapositive, what is bad for men is bad for women. Women will be socially distraught because they can’t find a university status mate. I can’t say much more because I don’t know any guys who live with their parents and don’t work. I wonder about the 60/40 stat. I would suspect that the number on men stayed the same but the number of women greatly increased. But the article talks about the problems of all these spooky guys so I don’t know. I do think that snotty responses like the one from Ms. Gay will make things worse.
I wish I could believe that our society doesn't need warriors, builders, etc; that it can do just fine with big burly smiling dishwashers who take the second shift on childcare, and who make a killer casserole.
But I don't believe it. There are tasks for which women are not suited; not by biology, not by temperament, not by culture (even after a major infusion of Womynz Cheerleading). Sorry. At the nitty-gritty level, you are gonna want --no, NEED-- some XY chromosomes.
Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" and start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life."
Notice Jan Guy's logic: just use culture to make things the way I would like them to be. Voila! Then everything is perfect.
What I take from this is that it is a demonstrated fact that boys and girls react differently to the culture they find themselves in, which is why boys/men are failing.
Yet the notion is that if boys/men would just start "doing "their share of housework, child care, and emotional labor"" then everything would be all right.
The latter notion seems to suggest that all that is needed is an attitude adjustment, and men and boys would stop failing if they were just more like girls/women.
To hell with that!
In response to Jane Guy, We need more women doing sanitation and waste management.
"Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" and start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life."
"Our culture" being her and her cats.
"If men started doing their share of housework, child care, and the emotional labor of a family"
housework, child care, emotional labor look very different for a strong, healthy, fulfilled man than it does for a strong, healthy, fulfilled woman.
Men have work around the house, do take care of children's physical and emotional needs, and do emotional labor. But none of these are defined in typical maternal ways. Good dads and husbands have immense impact in emotionally healthy kids and spouses, but rarely by using emotions oriented language. They don't talk as much about feelings, but do provide significant socio-emotional roles, which is why daughters and sons with involved dads turn out much more emotionally stable. Child-care can involve a lot of things, from just being around to playing sports to being a courage and risk inducing counter to the maternal typical safety monitor.
If we define those roles just in maternal ways, we don't have the emotionally balanced results that comes from having both dad and mom playing their own parts.
Be present in a way that is strong, healthy, fulfilled and there will be work around the house getting done, care for children happening, and healthy emotional intelligence being developed.
The trouble is that so many males in our society don't have healthy, fulfilled guys around them in hardly any direction.
The solution isn't to complain and whine, it's to man up and be this kind of guy in one's own family and context.
Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" and start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life
I believe this is called womansplaining.
I don't have emotions for the purposes of engaging in labor, so I couldn't do it. If that happened I'd visit a shrink and if someone told me about their laborious emotions I would probably advise them to do the same.
High school students aren't really expected to share in the emotional labor of parenting and housework Jane. Your confusion about your grownup friends' complaints in life colors how you see everything else. You are evil thereby. Those 10 year-old boys are getting destroyed in schools that are designed by women, for girls, and have been since Tom Sawyer's day. Read the local paper to see that even in middle school, 2/3 of the honor roll is female, and 3/4 of high honors. If this were reversed, there would be lawsuits galore. Read up on Big Five Personality or HEXACO traits and consider what is rewarded in schools. Or raise some sons. (I had five, all bright, decent, polite boys who saw the honors go to girls - and a particular sort of girl at that - year after year.)
Emotional labor indeed. One more resentful female who is pissed because the real world doesn't play by the rules that made her an all-star in 7th grade. Though even the business world, especially in large institutions, is playing by 3rd-grade rules now. I get that they feel the rug has been pulled. I saw it clearly myself in college in the early 70's with the outrage that the "clearly more qualified females" were somehow not getting ahead. Huh. Wonder why. Like those William and Mary girls were being asked to be Stepford Wives, sure. (I was very unpopular the night the sorority came back from that movie.) And it is worse every year. Walk a mile in their shoes, sister. You won't like it. Just because the highest levels in many fields are populated by sexists you prevent you from being Queen of the May doesn't mean that the society as a whole isn't deeply favoring you.
Asking men to do the "emotional labor" is like asking women to do the fighting. The fighting is only necessary because of other men, and the emotional labor is only necessary because other women make it necessary. Really each sex should stick to its own field.
"Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" and start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life."
So who is going to be the "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers?" Women? Good fucking luck.
Interesting that men being successful means "treating women well". This sounds a lot like, "Men being marginalized and left out of modern society, women and minorities hardest hit."
I've never seen a woman do roofing. Not even a woman identifying as a man.
Do these women have brothers, fathers or sons? The male hatred is rather odd. But i guess if you're a lesbian, it all makes sense.
It is the “feminization of America.” Be less like a boy and more like a girl or else you will be viewed as aggressive and dangerous.
There’s nothing wrong with a man cooking and helping out with the kids and household chores. But, we must remember that men and women ARE different. Even if some people think that there is really no difference and we can transition from one gender to the other at will. For me, I like a guy who is masculine and who makes me feel protected, and safe, and most importantly makes me feel like a woman who enjoys being with a man. No overly sensitive feminist man for me.
I am so glad that I do not have a son in today’s world. Modern day society wants boys and girls to behave like there is no difference between them. This is unnatural. I am so glad that I don’t have a boy growing up today. It’s brutal out there.
The sentiment in the comment reminds me of men who complain their wife is staying at home to raise children instead of having a job and making money. It's the same thing.
What both spouses think matters, but what chores actually need to be done, and what can be done by other people, are legitimate questions. My experience is that people (not just women) get mad because their spouse doesn't spend enough time doing valuable work, as defined by the other person. This can degenerate into being angry that the spouse has leisure time at all.
I had an argument with my spouse about free time. I work 6 nights a week for about 55 hours. I asked if I needed to work every day before it was OK to spend an hour to myself not doing anything productive. I was mad, it wasn't a nice thing to say, but I was really frustrated that I spent all my time at work, asleep, or doing chores. I do dishes and driving the kids home from school and cleaning bathrooms.
We renegotiated chores after that. My chores didn't go to her but to other members of the household.
When you polled on laziness- I had so much to say, but couldn’t express it. How being a Mom and homemaker is difficult, especially if one doesn’t always feel well, and the amount of emotion it takes to do these things is so tiring(for me). Yet, my husband works very hard, long hours- physically. I do, too- but half as many, maybe.
How could he possibly do anything in the house or w/the kids? He’s wired so differently. If things are to jive smoothly- comments like the one you quoted? Harsh the jive.
The big problem is that women want to be married to other women. There's been a push to feminize men for the last fifty years. The bit about boys being diagnosed with ADHD? They're just behaving like normal boys, but the administrators and teachers want them to behave more like girls so they dope them up.
How about things women can do to try and fix things? How about you stop dumping your husbands at the drop of a hat because "you feel unfulfilled"?
By the way, if such a thing as "toxic femininity" exists, certainly Kamala and Hillary are the best example of it?
Guess what? If men started doing their share of housework, child care, and the emotional labor of a family (which every study shows they do not), they would feel needed. They ARE needed, in fact, just not in the way you say they want to be. Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" and start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life."
This is the familiar sound of a feminist who believes the problem with men is that they aren't women. This situationally alternates with how men and women are interchangeable.
Men are broadly more interested in things and abstractions, women more in people and feelings. Occupationally it's the main reason why, without quotas, men will continue to dominate things like hard STEM and women more socially intense professional fields like nursing.
The funny thing about this piece's theme about men and boys failing is that in the U.S. at least, they've lagged in many social indicators for years, and academically for decades, and it still hasn't made a dent in feminist wailing about oppressed women under the patriarchy.
By the way, how about we start with defining what "woman" means?
I'm so old that every time I do the dishes the running water makes me piss.
The latter notion seems to suggest that all that is needed is an attitude adjustment, and men and boys would stop failing if they were just more like girls/women.
That's the exact message and attempt.
If men started doing their share of housework, child care, and the emotional labor of a family (which every study shows they do not)
Wherein Jane reveals that everything she knows of men -- or thinks she knows -- she (?) got from some study, from some academic, from some women's studies class, and she (?) knows absolutely nothing from real life lived experience.
The same place where normally sensible women come up with all sorts of crazy sh*t ideas.
I note that practically EVERYONE here has utterly ignored the point about the utter emasculation and infantilization of men in today's (younger) culture.
More and better focused vocational ed, shop classes, etc would go a long way and not require an expensive new government program. I'm shocked when I see a young man that has no ability to use simple tools, change a tire, fix a leaking faucet, jump a battery, etc. As a 72 year old woman it makes me sad and embarrassed for them when I have to show them how. Safetyism has probably contributed to that.
From the article comment: "...from one "Jane Guy"[no relation to me!]:
Guess what? If men started doing their share* of housework, child care, and the emotional labor of a family (which every study shows they do not), they would feel needed."
*fair share = most, if not all.
I think women should do 50% of the regular labor - do 50% of the heavy lifting, repair 50% of the broken plumbing, carry 50% of the heavy sacks to the garden, shovel 50% of the snow, build 50% of the DIY home projects. They should contribute 50% of the family cash and alimony should be abolished.
Maybe it's cuz all the elementary school teachers are female????
Asking for a friend.
That fucking cunt has no clue. The ADHD diagnosis increase is because of the reduced playground time. Boys need to be doers fighters builders teammates, etc. It's like boys are being deprived of oxygen. When my grandsons get in trouble at school it's usually for beating up bullies and theives. The new system protects and encourages bullying and punishes the good kids who push back.
Wasn't Yang's schtick UBI?
I learned a hell of a lot about macho in the Boy Scouts. It was all the neighborhood Dads that were WW2 veterans, but social justice has watered that down.
By the way..........did they break this down by race???
No??? I'm not surprised.
Emotional labor is sitting with other women, and bitching!!
"Guess what? If men started doing their share of housework, child care, and the emotional labor of a family (which every study shows they do not), they would feel needed."
****************************
I call BULLSHIT on "every study". On EVERY STUDY.
These "studies" invariably define housework as the things women do, and wish the men *would* do.
But show me the women who fix everything that's broken, carry out the trash, manage the finances ("ick! MATH!!!"), mow the goddamn lawn and rake the leaves, go up ladders to clean the gutters, and all the other things most wymyn DON'T do. Show me the women who negotiate with contractors, deal with mechanics and electricians and plumbers. I'm sure they are out there, just not among bitchy urban types.
I recall reading one woman who "studied" the "housework" issue say she didn't consider that stuff "housework" because (she claimed) "men **like** doing those things. S N O R T
In my house I have done EVERTHING that needs doing, short of giving birth and nursing the babies. I change diapers, I took the kids to the pediatrician, shlepped them to school.
I sew buttons, iron clothes, use the vacuum, and do "spring cleaning". I buy the groceries, I'm a better (and more frequent) cook, and on and on it goes.
I'm retired now, but I did all those things when I was working as well. I don't feel "put upon" by doing these things, because I come from a military family where there was no such thing as "women's work". Plus, my wife does her part as well.
(It may have been different when we were first married, until I explained to her that we BOTH had to serve as maids and janitors.)
Maybe among effete New Yorkers it's different, but among us Ordinary Folk, the rule is: "You do what you gotta do."
As for "emotional labor" and raising the kids, it's ironic that some wymyn bitch about dads not stepping up, when they are only too happy to abort w/o notifying the father, or by choice raise kids themselves as "single moms."
So, to use a 60's expression, don't lay that trip on us.
Me Tar Gal. You Jane Guy.
As an afterthought: What about the work men do OUTSIDE the home?
Show me ONE physically dangerous job that women do in the industrialized world that women do in anywhere near the same proportions as men.
(and just listen to them bleat, mewl, pule and whine when the idea of including women in the military draft comes up.)
The descriptions of men's lives in this post and these comments don't reflect my own experiences as a married man or the experiences of married men that I know. They're different from "I Love Lucy", but no more accurate.
Christina Hoff Sommers was writing about this over 20 years ago. Glad Andrew Yang made it to the party.
Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" and start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life."
Productive members of society? Where would we women be without men doing all the productive work they already do. Granted some women are truck drivers, welders, oilfield workers, etc., but basically the hard productive work is done by the stronger sex, which is male, biological males.
I cringe every time I watch one of those house hunter shows where the woman and sometimes the man says "happy wife, happy life." Well, I'm standing up for men, I think that is a very selfish attitude.
Agree with Ann.
What exactly does emotional labor mean?
My husband helps out with childcare and housework. Actually, he criticize about my messiness and not folding clothes right. I would like if he was more handy around the house and with cars (thats a tremendous benefit, too, when men are). I can't complain though since he doesn't complain I don't cook and clean more. I know only one stay-at-home Dad, but the Dads I know are still very involved. Coaching their kids' sports teams and other activities more associated with Dads than Moms are also very important.
I've noticed so many young men, born in 90s and younger struggling. My generation (80s babies) seem better. It could just be the people I know, but I suspect a significant change around that time.
My cousin's son was having so many problems in public school, but is now thriving a at all-boys private school. As such, I was sad to hear about Boy Scouts opening to girls. Of course, I want various opportunities open to girls and women, but I do think there is value to single-sex schools and activities. Co-ed is great and we have and should have a lot of it, but I get annoyed at this societal demand that everything be open to girls, too.
@Althouse, thanks for reminding me about all the times female teachers in elementary and high school tried to sabotage my sons’ education. Math teacher tossing my younger son’s homework in he trash, then claiming he didn’t turn it in, for instance. One incident out of many. Women need to be barred from teaching K-12 until they pull their heads out of their asses. Which will be never.
"Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" and start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life."
***************
No more "calling things by their right names".
Just refer to everything in terms of woolly abstractions.
No more: "I am an electrician.'
Instead: "I am a productive member of society."
How...female.
Thisis an interesting article about relations between the genders. It's a bit long, but worth the read. I found it thought provoking.
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/womens-tears-win-in-the-marketplace
Equal in rights and complementary in Nature/nature. Reconcile.
Guess what? If men started doing their share of housework, child care, and the emotional labor of a family (which every study shows they do not), they would feel needed.
God-damned women (with the exception of my wife) think the damned lawn mows itself, think a snow-covered driveway shovels itself, and that gutters are self-cleaning.
Blogger Michael K said...
Feminism, in addition to starting the transgender fad, has destroyed itself. It was begun by lesbians and ended with transgenders.
Probably the most trenchant point I've seen made in weeks... .
Blogger Michael K said...
Feminism, in addition to starting the transgender fad, has destroyed itself. It was begun by lesbians and ended with transgenders.
Probably the most trenchant point I've seen made all week.
[sorry if this is double posted. My first attempt failed. Michael K used to always complain about blogger eating his posts, so I suppose it is fitting...]
More and better focused vocational ed, shop classes, etc would go a long way and not require an expensive new government program. I'm shocked when I see a young man that has no ability to use simple tools, change a tire, fix a leaking faucet, jump a battery, etc. As a 72 year old woman it makes me sad and embarrassed for them when I have to show them how. Safetyism has probably contributed to that.
It is more than that, it is the feminization of public spaces. The high school I work at used to have an ROTC program. Long gone. We had metal shop and wood shop. Scrapped. We had a masonry class. No more. Four years ago we had two full time auto shop teachers, teaching 12 full classes of auto shop, both gone. The only Vo Tech we have left is nursing (They've tried to kill that several times) and airplane mechanic! They bought flight simulators and everything! The class is half full.
Every senior has to fill out a FAFSA. They make kids who don't want to go to college, apply. At graduation, if the kid isn't going to a four year college or the military, they pick one of the local community colleges and say they're going there to get the counselors off their backs.
Lots of people with a variety of good points, but none of them point to the whole. If you're a low-T basketcase with a college degree, the system is great for you. The problem is that for many American men:
- their jobs have been sent overseas
- elite culture is implacably hostile to them in favor of other races
- marriage and family arrangements are preposterously unbalanced in a way they weren't even 60 years ago
- and most importantly, they can expect no favors from the government to help them. Quite the contrary.
You'd think "smart" women would realize how untenable this all is, but the trucker strike in Ottawa might give them some clue about what a national worker's strike for men will look like.
I should add, Andrew Yang and feminist culture more generally have no idea what men need, much less what they want, and the vast majority would reject the "offer" here out of hand. Men aren't going to be improved by trying to be inferior women.
Try true "equity" in employment. I'll give a single metric:
- Deaths in the workplace.
Maybe not all jobs are equal.
Same at home.
I made the mistake of reading through the comments at WaPo. If you were considering it, don’t. I’d say 70% misandry, 20% misogyny, 10% random blather. 100% of comments failing to discuss that statistically speaking boys are falling behind, it is a societal outcome, and nobody wins from this.
'Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" and start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life."'
Don't forget pickle jar openers...very important.
There is a misconception that runs through the comments that feminists are lesbians who hate men. Here's a news flash: lesbians don't hate men, they mostly don't care about men at all or are pals with men and just not interested romantically. The women I've known who talk about men and hate men are women who deal with men sexually and domestically and have unsatisfying and abusive relationships. Maybe they are to blame for that, who knows? OK? I think that accusing feminists of being lesbians is a throwback to when gays and lesbians were ostracized, and the threat of being called a lesbian was a nasty way to keep women under control.
When the vast majority of women who wanted families were homemakers and didn't work outside the home there was a division of labor and responsibilities that were rather absolute. That's changed because the economic realities have changed. Two incomes are necessary. Expecting the woman to do all the "womens' chores and child care" in addition to her working fulltime outside the home and bringing in money clearly doesn't work. Men have to adapt or they are likely to have conflicts. Yes there are demanding physical jobs which are mostly if not exclusively done by big strong men but mostly we've moved to a service economy* where most of the jobs can be done equally well by men or women.
*“In 1956, for the first time in American history, white-collar workers in technical, managerial, and clerical positions outnumbered blue-collar workers. Industrial America was giving way to a new society, where, for the first time in history, most of us worked with information rather than producing goods.2 The share of the service jobs grew steadily to 76 percent by the mid-1990s, and as indicated in Exhibit 1-3, it had reached 84 percent by 2010. In other words, anyone who is planning to enter the workforce today has about an 84 percent chance that [she’ll] be working in a service organization. Exhibit 1-4 illustrates the dramatic increase in service jobs since 1970." https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2095734&seqNum=3
Nature typically corrects this imbalance by having another culture's men invade, slaughter the effeminate men, and enslave the women and children who remain. Haven't we seen a whole lot of fighting-age single men streaming over a certain undefended border recently?
The gender identity confusion should be the clue that something is massively wrong with how kids are being raised, and I suspect women - both mothers and teachers - are encouraging it because they want an identity checkbox kid to virtue signal about rather than a "normal" kid.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8AA1lR3CC4s
Jordan Peterson and Warren Farrell on the Boy Crisis.
Anything else I could say wouldn’t be adequate, but this Dr Farrell is a compassionate, researched advocate via word and text.
Why would anyone argue against: "Strong, healthy, fulfilled men are more likely to treat women well."?
Of course, how many of us are all of those things at all times?
B/c yesterday, my comments were all confused on the wrong posts.
My Mom always tells me my husband should have married a hired man b/c that’s what he really wants from me. And if I could do everything on the farm myself(which I purposely don’t do) why would I even need a man ;0)
How sad.
Of the great apes, only female humans are sexually receptive through their entire cycle. This is a fundamental truth, they don't go any deeper, and it's for a reason, to keep the man around for protection and to provide food. Of course, since this seems to have been a successful strategy, it also selected for certain types of men, men who would stick around for a steady access to sex. This combination got us from scavenging lion kills by using stones to break up large bones to get at the marrow, to our current situation of dominating nearly the entire world.
Of the great apes, only male humans lack a penis bone, and therefore need to feel some kind of emotion, or at least hormonal response, independent of the response to estrus, which other species us to arouse the male, in order to impregnate a woman and pass along his genes. In fact female humans are not only sexually receptive throughout their cycle, but hide their fertility so effectively that even they don't know for sure when they are fertile, although studies on infidelity suggest that they do, at least subconsciously.
These two realities in combination are possibly unique in the animal kingdom, and define the human species. Any system of gender relations needs to take them into account or it is doomed to crash on the rocks of population collapse. Nothing like population collapse is happening now though, right?
What exactly does emotional labor mean?
"Emotional labor" is to actual labor what "emotional intelligence" is to actual intelligence; it's a device that women invented in order to make their feelings "real", and thus equivalent to actually being smart and doing work.
"Here’s the simple truth I’ve heard from many men: We need to be needed."
many men said that? bullshit.
Expecting the woman to do all the "womens' chores and child care" in addition to her working fulltime outside the home and bringing in money clearly doesn't work. Men have to adapt or they are likely to have conflicts.
This has been said numerous times in this thread and is a strawman argument. Who, besides women even use the phrase "women's work" these days? None of the men I know. Same with rising to do child care, cooking, cleaning, etc... I think the conceit here is that men do nothing at home to help in any way I just don't see as being close to a legitimate generalization these days (if it ever really was).
So the applicable phrase in my mind here is: asserted without evidence.
"Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" and start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life."
Then what is femininity? And do these words have any residual meaning?
housework, child care, and the emotional labor
Every man's dream, LOL.
Daniel, if that sentiment is for my comment, I say:
No- it’s good- kinda tongue and cheek/kinda true.
You’d have to know my Mother. She married a handsome rogue a bit below her class. I don’t think she knew it at the time. She could have had such a different life as she was an RN and had trained in RI and CT; but, ended up (not wanting to truly be) a farmer’s wife. In the NEK.
I, OTOH, love my job(s). I’m the best damned hired man my husband has ever had, too.
Regardless, they were an excellent team. She managed the finances- they always talked about things and made decisions together. As we do on our farm. So many couples I know have separate money. We never have. I wonder about the separation of income, payments, possessions- not much seems “theirs”/“ours”. That seems like it could be divisive and a bone of contention.
In the end, it’s no fun being taken for granted- for either partner.
Water the flowers.
They bloom when you do.
Curious George: I've done roofing, third story gutter work on a scaffold, and so on. Pretty much every manual labor job. But I couldn't carry a bundle of shingles up a ladder. Not now, and not when I was 20. Sex differences are very obvious on a worksite, but I've always pulled my weight. I just like building things.
My husband is not good at any of this, but he mows our very large acreage, just as Gavin McInnis says men should do.
My husband is a strong, reliable, emotionally accessible, and masculine man.
I cook and clean. I'm far more emotional and quotidian than he is, and he is far more rational and abstract than I am. I have no neuroses about our gender differences. In fact, they make us intellectually complementary.
I guess we're just lucky, among the lucky few who escaped Free To Be You And Me relatively unscarred. Because that stuff was certainly shoved down our throats when we were children.
"A maaaaaiid, a man needs a maid
I was thinking that I'd get a maid,
Find a place nearby for her to stay,
Just someone to keep my house clean,
Fix my meals, and go away.
A maaaiiiiid, a man needs a maid...."
----Neil Young
(Why hasn't this guy been cancelled?)
Do what we want when we want it and you will feel needed? I'm not sure life works like that. Couples can figure out what works for them, rather than comply with some edict, but how does that address the problems of boys and young, unmarried men?
My mother did (all) the housework and it did not make her feel needed or fulfilled. It's strange that feminism, which began by expressing the longing of women for a life outside the home, might now expect men to find meaning in just being someone else's helpmate. Or maybe not so strange--entrenched ideologies have blind spotslike that.
Divorces/breakups
Systemic discrimination against men getting custody of children
Single female head of household explosion
No male role models of young males.
The wussyfying of males.
The notion that 2 incomes are now required is just that. A notion.
Reminds me of when the kids were just starting school. We made a decision that the misses would stay home. Since I moved to new opportunities we had no family to help with child care. All would have to be hired, so in effective the household took a pay cut.
But the point about two incomes. The misses was getting her hair cut at a local one chair shop. The woman just mentioned off handed she wished they were rich like us, so she could be a full time mom.
The had two snowmobiles, and the weeks long vacations up north to use them. Two motorcycles and the vacations to use them. Cabin 2 hours away at the lake, for weekends Trip to Disney every other year
We had none of that. In fact the Touring bike we did have, we sold when the youngest was one, because it was evident that the time to enjoy it was very limited, so assets not really an asset anymore
We make choices. Our choice was to focus on rearing kids.
“More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners.”
What percentage of those men living with their parents are also living with their romantic partners? That’s an option a lot of young people take these days, bringing their girlfriend or boyfriend home to live with mom and dad.
FIFY Jane Guy:
-"Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as it has been understood for thousands of years and start defining it as being whatever makes me happy.
-Jane Guy
Guess what? If men started doing their share of housework, child care, and the emotional labor of a family (which every study shows they do not), they would feel needed. They ARE needed, in fact, just not in the way you say they want to be. Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity" as being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" and start defining it as being "productive members of society and equal participants in family life."
In other words, men need to become women. Feminism sees men as defective women. Reality is that God made both man and woman. Each has natural strengths to be celebrated and natural weaknesses from which to be uplifted. The rest is toxic ideological bull$hit.
Just scanning through the first half of the comments, I'm surprised--though I shouldn't be, given the retrograde mentality of a preponderance of the regular commenters here--at the general resentment of women and resistance to the idea that men should share in the domestic responsibilities of raising families. There are a lot of cookoo ideas expressed above, which, again, is typical of many daily regulars here.
I. One of the best inventions, established early in the evolution process, is specialization. If somebody demanded in a company that lawyers do their 'fair share' of sales, HR their 'fair share' of programming and system administration, etc, etc, would be laughed out of the room. Yet in relationships, it is treated seriously, even if it is obviously grossly inefficient.
II. Almost all cultures held celebrations of a boy turning into a man, and passing his guardianship from mother to father. In Slavish cultures it happened at age of 7y. Celebration included symbolic shortening of hair. Nowadays, given the compulsory public school system, boys remain under custody of women way longer than that, forced to do things which really don't make much sense for them. This is how we get feminized boys. Then, they date and get a spouse complaining about 'fair share' of chores. Game over.
III. A good rule in life is not taking advice from somebody who doesn't like one's job and/or constantly complains about stuff. Like, e.g. 'fair share' of chores, being a stay-at-home/no career mum, etc.
“Women are Sabines” ~ Michael Walsh (the author).
I'm having the wonderful opportunity to help raise my grandson after raising 3 daughters. It's the same but different too. I'm trying to raise him to be a strong and loving man. I tell him it's his responsibility to be kind to women and take care of them. We go backpacking and build computers and skateboard. Also to do his best at everything, including making his bed in the morning. I've also told him that real men never have children and desert them like his biological father has. That's there's nothing better in life than raising your children. And taking care of your wife.
Being a man is just different than being a woman. We compliment each other.
'Our culture needs to stop defining "masculinity"...' Don't be anti-science. Masculinity is not what you define it, it is what it is.
This is perfectly standard well-accepted social science.
She’s right. Maintaining a household requires a roughly equivalent division of labor, and if children are in the mix both parents have to be affectionate, firm mentors for them, which is the opportunity of a lifetime to make the world a better place, one caring, kind, productive human being at a time. And if I’ve done nothing else in my life, I’ve partnered with my wife to raise a daughter who is that kind of person.
If the results are the only thing that matter, as the leftists proclaim, then it is time for affirmative action for males of all races, and for systemic discrimination against women to become the governments' policy. Time for the Handmaid's Tale to become reality as the pendulum swings?
"I'll check the comments now because I'm sure the most liked comment will be something that shows why this seemingly moderate position can enrage those focused on women."
"those focused on women": In an article on how men are in serious trouble, here are all these people enraged, not about how terrible it is what's happened to men, but about their personal political whatever. That pretty much disqualifies them from being decent human beings.
>>Men now make up only 40.5 percent of college students...
Some might argue that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Feminist movement is almost complete. First women said being a woman sucks we need to be like men. Then they didn't like that so now they are saying men need to be more like women. Next thing you know, they will go into the animal world and start trying to change their gender roles.
>>"Strong, healthy, fulfilled men are more likely to treat women well."
Addendum: I don't agree. Men are more likely to treat women well when they've been taught to treat women well by other men.
Boys and men thrive at being useful, but our schooling system is organized to prevent them being objectively useful in the wider world until they are quite old. First the schools occupy them with busy work even into the night. And the schools no longer teach how to use tools, make something that works, fix something that is broken.
For a brief period after the late 19th century Mind and Hand movement, there was change in education in the US, but by the mid-1970s, the abstract once again won out. College for all and, don't touch those dirty tools. It is amazing how little has changed in US education over the last 150 years. We did get the overhead projector, that was the big advancement.
=======
"The use of tools quickens the intellect. The boy who begins to construct or form a machine, a tool, or anything, is compelled to think definitely, to deliberate, reason and conclude. As he advances he is brought into contact with powerful natural forces. If he would control those forces he must master their laws ; he must hence investigate the phenomena of matter, and thence he will be led to a study of the phenomena of mind. Thus the training of the hand reacts upon the mind, inciting it to excursions into the realm of science in search of hidden laws and principles, to be utilized through the arts, in useful and beautiful things.
"The error in prevailing methods of education consists in striving to reach the concrete by way of the abstract, whereas we should pursue a diametrically opposite course."
—The Co-education of Mind and Hand, Charles H. Ham, 1890
Blogger Rosalyn C. said...
There is a misconception that runs through the comments that feminists are lesbians who hate men.
Somebody got her knickers in a twist. I said the movement was BEGUN by lesbians and it was. Women joined for various reasons but it has always contained a significant anti-male component. Now, the transgender thing is destroying it. Look at women's sports, which destroyed men's minor sports a generation ago with Title IX. Now it is being destroyed by the bastard child of feminism. These people like that U Penn swimmer are laughing at the feminists.
More than 90% of the people killed by cops are male.
Systemic sexism?
“Men have work around the house, do take care of children's physical and emotional needs, and do emotional labor. But none of these are defined in typical maternal ways. Good dads and husbands have immense impact in emotionally healthy kids and spouses, but rarely by using emotions oriented language. They don't talk as much about feelings, but do provide significant socio-emotional roles, which is why daughters and sons with involved dads turn out much more emotionally stable. Child-care can involve a lot of things, from just being around to playing sports to being a courage and risk inducing counter to the maternal typical safety monitor.”
The reality is that females do better raising younger kids, and males do better raising older ones, esp teenagers. Our court system, thanks to feminists, strongly tends to give custody to women in divorces, regardless of the age of the kids, and even when that does matter, kids grow up, and while the female might have been the naturally better parent, when the couple got divorced, she isn’t later, but still has custody.
Why is that? For boys, the answer is fairly obvious. We know exactly what happens when men aren’t raising their sons - we just have to look at our inner city Black communities. Many of the males are never domesticated. Women mostly can’t do it (though the women I have been married to may be exceptions). To be crude, a lot of boys need their butts kicked as they enter their teenage years, and really most of the way through. Guys much more easily detach, and do what is necessary for raising boys. This isn’t to love them unconditionally, spoiling them rotten. It is to set standards, define repercussions, and enforce them. That is what most boys need to be fully socialized and domesticated. They need to find their place in male, and not female, society. My partner, widowed young, with young kids, tells of how hard it was to do this with her young son. She had to be the father, putting him up against the wall, on occasion, telling him that this behavior had to stop now, or else, and then enforcing it. He had the natural charm of his father, and she would, of course, melt. She had to ignore that. Most women can’t. Actually, most women don’t even understand that they have to. She remarried, when he was maybe 5, and he turned out great. His step father did what he had to, without ever beating their two boys. For example, once as late preteens, he took one son in each hand and tossed them onto their beds. Lesson learned.
Girls need some of it, but mothers seem to have an easier time being tough with their daughters. One thing that fathers can, and should, do is to give their daughters the unconditional love of a good man. The result there is that they don’t look to males of their generation for that love, until they are ready to go off on their own, because getting what they think of as love from horny teenaged boys very, if not most often, involves sex. And young sex, very often leads to pregnancy, which tends to stunt their emotional and intellectual development to the age of their first pregnancy.
This is why matriarchy doesn’t really work - because it devalues the role of fathers in raising their kids. Or doesn’t work, unless male relatives are allowed to step in and assume the male parent role. That same emotionality that this author holds out as being so important, opens these women to being easily manipulated by their children (many of whom become very good at it).
How is being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" inconsistent with being "productive members of society?" And if you look at marriage as a partnership, with each partner doing different things to advance the mutual interests of the partners, which includes financial interests, then now is being "builders, workers, soldiers, brothers" inconsistent with "being equal participants in family life." Equality in a partnership does not mean a 50/50 split of all things that are necessary to make the partnership work.
Let me add that the liberal trend towards criminal Justice reform is wrong headed because it is based on the assumption that society is too tough on unfathered boys. But without fathers to set the limits on the behavior of boys, the only viable alternative is for the state to do it. That means that the consequences to actions that fathers should place on teenaged boys, are instead placed on them, a couple years later, as prison. Eliminate that, and what you get are violent juvenile packs, terrorizing the community. Yes, in many cases, that means the gangs running rampant through many of our inner cities, but now emboldened because the legal consequences of not conforming to societal expectations for behavior have been effectively removed.
Here’s my theory, which I’m sure will cause my Woman Card to be revoked, but whatever.
But back when almost all women stayed home, the women tended to the house and all its chores while the men worked. This is not news.
But then when women joined the workforce full-time, they thought it unfair to have a full-time job AND be sole person in charge of household chores. Sure. That’s fair. No argument from me.
Except that now the men are now expected to increase their workload too - they have to work full time and do half of all chores (as does the woman, but she chose to increase her workload). When women joined the workforce, each spouse’s workload increased - but for women it was a voluntary increase, and for men, it wasn’t.
I’m a SAHM. I do most of cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. But I have a Saint of a husband who helps out when he can. He knows being a SAHM is more than a full time job, and he doesn’t mind taking a few things off my plate. However, if I were to get a full time job, I would expect him to do half the household chores because now we both are in and out of the house equally. But me choosing to work would also increase HIS workload significantly, whether he likes it or not. So yeah, I can see why men are less likely to buy into that arrangement.
Wow I didn't know the answer to men's hard and real problems of jobs, education, drug use, delinquency, etc was simply to help us with our feefees. Nothing solves unemployment like a lecture on the importance of masculinity.
Josh Hawley and Andrew Yang for Therapists in Chief, 2024!
“Emotional Labor” is what women give in trade for men with surplus money. This whole kerfuffle is about the rate of exchange.
I was in a large meeting with 20 and 30 something men at work, about 15 guys. Out of curiosity, I asked for a show of hands:
How many of you change your own oil in your car?
Zero.
How many of you know how to change the oil in your car?
Two hands went up, one being a "maybe".
As others have pointed out, 50/50 on labor never seems to mean that the Misses is mowing the yard or fixing the roof half the time.
I suspect Ms. Guy's issue is that the men she is around are no more capable of doing "men's work" than she is, so in that sense her point is valid.
I can't imagine Mrs. DtM coming out to me in the shop and saying "Dan, when you are finished replacing the leaking valve cover gaskets on my car, you need to change the baby."
If you're a girly-man who doesn't own power tools and can't install cabinets, or patch drywall, you damn well better be doing half the dishes.
A few commenters mentioned bringing back shop classes to high schools. There's one big problem with this: There aren't any teachers! Most teachers are women and they don't tend to specialize in vo-tech skills.
Men have a different definition of their "share of the housework". If women want the inside of the house cleaner, then they should take on that extra work. In addition, when women start more of the snow shoveling, yard work) that includes fixing and repair things including mowers), and vehicle repair and maintenance, I'll start to take the commenter's complaint seriously.
A good argument to stay out of.
I've been married for more than 55 years--and in my house I'm still not "qualified" to run the dishwasher or washing machine.
OTOH one of the things that a husband and father brings to a marriage--and which is vitally important for the children, is simply "being there". Kids need two parents--and Pete Buttigieg and his husband to the contrary, it usually works better when the two parents are a man and a woman.
@Tim
I don’t think that is quite accurate in terms of Great Apes in terms of sexual receptivity. Bonabos are famously promiscuous, apparently using sex to bond much more than humans do, and their close relatives, common chimps apparently do it some. Thus, the evolutionary line appears to be before we split from those two species maybe 7.5 million years ago. Another species that appears to do it are the dolphins. Interestingly, the females in all four (including humans) of these species have functioning clitorises.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that human females, with their hidden estrus, are much better at determining their fertility than males are, if they really want to. It’s evolutionary purpose is to hide it from males, in order to keep them around, even when they (the females) are not in estrus. It can be beneficial for females to know this, even if they can hide it from males. For example, they can have sex at that time, or desist from it, depending on their personal situation. And, yes, I know women who did hide their status from a guy, in order to get pregnant with his kid (and get him to pay her child support).
Boys and men across all regions and ethnic groups have been failing, both absolutely and relatively, for years.
Is the premise here true? I don't think it holds for Asians. Just taking one factor (educational attainment), the census has a reasonably detailed breakdown here. Overall, educational attainment is roughly comparable for males and females, with males being a little more likely to get further education past a BA. Even for recent cohorts, when I look at the total percentage with a BA or more, I see 71.51% for men in the 30-34 age group, and 71.46% for women, unless my math is wrong. So not really much of a gender gap. I think it's true for the other racial/ethnic groups though.
Do we still drug boys in grade school to make grade school better for girls? Yes?
First grade teacher wanted to do this with my grandson. He would do things like come out of the bathroom and swing on a coat hanger. Second grade he was in a Lutheran grade school. The teacher in the LS shook her head "no" emphatically to attempts to drug him in first grade. If he started getting restless, she would tell him to take a few laps around the gym. She always kept a bag full of "useless" books and whenever he needed it, she'd send him on an "errand" to the office with the books. (With a note explaining to the office people what she was doing.) When he came back he was fine. Now there was a teacher. (Since retired, sadly.)
He's in the Army Reserves now.
@Rosalyn C:Two incomes are necessary.
Two incomes are NOT necessary. After child care, commuting, taxes, and the cost of domestic labor not done or outsourced, there's not much of a second income left.
If you have a lot of debt to service then you may be stuck with two incomes, because banks don't except domestic chores in lieu of currency. But in terms of having only 24 hours in a day to provide all that family needs, two adults only have 24 hours each and converting more of those hours into money does not create more time. It can only change how that time is spent.
"More than 90% of the people killed by cops are male.
"Systemic sexism?"
Yes, the police aren't just racists, they're also misandrists!
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a lesbian? No.
Betty Friedan was a lesbian? No.
They were major early leaders in the feminist movement.
I could go on and list many others, but suffice it to say, the feminist movement was not started by lesbians.
What an absurd claim.
JK Brown quote from Charles Ham re learning from manipulating physical objects.
I agree completely.
I am 48 years old and I still enjoy the 29+ years of schadenfreude of withholding myself from women that would like to be with me.
After being abused in various ways by various girls, The Incident put a capstone on it and completely shut down my socio-sexual development at the age of 19.
And sure, you can argue that none of the ones that I'm punishing with my absence were complicit in abusing me. But none of them ever objected to it either, and Silence Is Violence.
There is a misconception that runs through the comments that feminists are lesbians who hate men. Here's a news flash: lesbians don't hate men, they mostly don't care about men at all or are pals with men and just not interested romantically.
That is generally true so far as I've seen. From what I've heard, things were quite different earlier. The cliches of the man-hating lesbian and the woman-hating gay man weren't so far off the mark in some earlier eras. Was it just that the stereotypes were so powerful then that people believed them in the face of evidence to the contrary? I don't know. My impression is that attitudes have changed over time.
Michael K said...
"Feminism, in addition to starting the transgender fad, has destroyed itself. It was begun by lesbians and ended with transgenders."
The object of which was to feminize men and destroy the family unit.
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