Fascinating essay. I'd just like to chip in this particular stress factor on boys (one amongst many of course):
"The focus in recent years on calling out sexual harassment (although broadly a positive thing) can....create a new kind of unfairness. Now, a perfectly decent young man hungry for romance can find himself in Catch 22: he knows from ancient folklore that faint heart never won fair lady but he also knows that - in lore of feminist-chic – one definition of sexual harassment is merely being hit on by someone other than the one that you had secretly been wanting it to be." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
Indeed - MeToo has been in many ways, an abject failure. And one of those many reasons is because it is simply too risky for most guys to be bothered with going through the Kabuki dance of dating and mating. Too much to lose and too little to gain. In the Black community this has been going on for years prior to the rise of the internet and social media - now to the point that when the various "social mixers" and the like occur, one can count the number of Black men who even bother to show up. And for good reason: Because, in a world where women have the right and ability to choose who they really want, they simply do not want most men. Dating apps confirm this truth, as well as, dare I say it, the wisdom of the (Black) Manosphere - we call it "The 80/20 Rule". One can legitimately argue that MeToo, for all its flaws, has done a good thing in shining a light on very powerful and influential men going too far with the lovely ladies; I and my compatriots would just as convincingly argue, that the cure seems to be just as injurious - if not more so - than the disease it sought to treat...
MeToo isn't the reason males are failures. Males been failing a long time, and they have nobody to blame but themselves. Stop acting like Harvey Weinstein is the reason black males can't get a date on Tinder.
Go worry about males are doing in Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Egypt, and Sudan. Is MeToo at fault there too? Idiots.
On MeToo: we all agree that what Harvey Weinstein did was wrong - in fact it was rape, and he deservedly went to jail for it. I'm pleased that justice was done.
But a lot of the discourse in the aftermath centred on much less clear-cut cases. Cases where, for example, a woman had begrudgingly consented to sex, regretted doing so afterwards, and claimed she had been a victim of sexual harassment. Having bad sex makes a woman feel used and unclean, but a crime it is not.
To be honest, I think the culprit here is sex-positive feminism, which contends that all consensual sex is good, and that women should always be "up for it". Neither of these things are true, but together it leads to a generation of women enduring sex they do not enjoy.
Therefore I recommend a correction. Not to a sex-negative vision so much as one I'm calling "love-positive". Before consenting to sex, a woman should ask herself whether she loves him; and if she doesn't she should feel empowered to say "no".
This would clarify things for the vast majority of men. Harvey Weinstein would still be a grotesque abuser but most of us are not Harvey Weinstein; we understand that "no" means "no".
And yes, this would lead to a world whereore men get rejected. Being rejected hurts; but it's a worthwhile trade-off for not having to tread on eggshells, not wondering whether even consensual sex will be treated like assault, and the certainty that "yes" means "yes" rather than "not really but I don't want to be rude". Obviously the bigger beneficiaries would be women no longer enduring loveless and soulless sex where only he has an orgasm. But men would benefit too.
Incentives matter. One motivation underlies everything men do. If you convince us that our efforts are futile we will stop.
Men climb power poles in the rain because it’s heroic. All the dirty, dangerous jobs are. That’s why men do them. Heroes get laid.
Thousands of years ago civilization tied marriage to work. That’s why men obsess about work. We break that link at our peril. That link is the difference between civilization and barbarism.
Men in technical fields obsess over them. Many have side projects when not at work. Their female colleagues, with notable exceptions, do not. The women prate about “work-life balance”. Gullible young men listen to them, and fall behind.
The feminists said decades ago that a modern society cannot afford to waste the talents of half the population. It’s quite true. That stick points both ways. We need to motivate our young men. We can’t do that if half the population refuses to help.
Bitch, please. Bringing in all these other countries like the strawmen they are have absolutely nothing to do with the point. I don't give a toss how YOU FEEL about the matter, the facts speak for themselves - ain't nobody got time for stuck up broads like YOU, who think you['re doing a brother a favor by simply breathing in their direction. No wonder so many guys are saying eff it and sticking with Playstation and PornHub. If the alternative is having to deal with the likes of you, #MeToo has done us all a favor. You silly broad, you.
I respectfully disagree with the implication (intended or not) that feminism/MeToo/the voices of women have created a net loss for society in general or men in particular. The things women have asked for are small, basic, and fair. Human interaction is hard. Communication is hard. Things are nuanced and grey and difficult for everyone regardless of sex. The change, as I perceive it, is that previously men were not expected by society to appreciate this nuance when it came to communicating with women, particularly when wanting some sort of intimate connection. They were told (and this is a simplification) that what they do or say in pursuit of what they want is ok because they are a man and she is a woman. The change is that they now need to consider the nuance, the grey: that the individual woman may not like that approach, or them, or be interested in that moment with what they have to say. That women (as a whole) do not want to have to deal with romantic advances in the workplace, by colleagues or bosses, where they are then set up to be the "bad guys" if they reject the advance. That is some of the nuance. There is also of course the obvious (not nuanced) that women don't want to be raped, coerced, degraded and insulted.
Recognising these things will bring a net benefit to everyone.
"The things women have asked for are small, basic, and fair. Human interaction is hard. Communication is hard."
What was asked was to excise human sexuality, and make sexual approaches and relations a clinical bureucratic procedure, with as little humanity as possible - only one with arbitrary Kafkaesque rules. Case in point:
"That women (as a whole) do not want to have to deal with romantic advances in the workplace, by colleagues or bosses"
Except when they do. Or in the millions of relationships and marriages that started in the workplace.
The excision of humanity and sexuality in this case, is the robotic idea that there's an off switch to sexuality in the workplace. Especially since work is the place where people have most of their daily social interactions, and spend 40 or even up to 60 hours within the week in.
Flirting can either be an aggresive approach or assault (both of which can very much happen in the workplace, and should be stomped), or it can be regular flirting or even just a slightly sensual comment (like "you look pretty").
One is bad/criminal. The other is normal humanity, and part of how the human race has avoided going extinct thougout history.
Adding more "nuance" to these two cases, makes this nuanced judgment an arbitrary weapon to yield against coworkers one doesn't like, while the "chad" or the one appreciated as a potential love interest can get away with it.
> Recognising these things will bring a net benefit to everyone.
Well, the way it's been working out is less sex than ever (according to polls with 18-30year olds), more disconnect and more loneliness than ever (according to studies), and more mental illness than ever - also accoding to studies and statistics. So maybe it's not exactly the best approach...
So, are you trying to say that MeToo and feminism are the cause of young people having less sex and everyone being more lonely and mentally ill?
Maybe it's actually tied more to technology, as the article proposes. Multiplayer role playing video games may be fun for boys, but they aren't generally going to get laid by playing them. People might feel like they're interacting with people on social media and enjoy it, but the quality of the interaction is different and does not seem to alleviate or prevent loneliness in the same way. Many people want to work from home more because it's convenient and they may save money on child care and so on, but it's much more isolating. None of that has anything to do with MeToo or feminism.
"So, are you trying to say that MeToo and feminism are the cause of young people having less sex and everyone being more lonely and mentally ill?"
I'm rather saying that modern culture (including modern prejudices and preoccupations) is not the sole reason, but a compounding factor.
Which goes beyond feminism and MeToo and their uses as substitutes for an identity and as weapons to further distance people as opposed as means of emancipation and justice (which they should have been about).
Alienating technology is also part of it. But people were drawn to technology and used it as a substitute for interaction because they were already primed to. The alienation process was gradual, and includes things like the AIDS scare that hurt intimacy, the preoccupation with the self and self-promotion, the replacement of the counter culture with sell-out culture, and the domination of neoliberalism, all of which predated the smartphone, social media, and even the web.
MeToo and feminism and other such things (like incels, "alpha male" culture, obsession with gender, and so on) are just convenient and fitting tools for this progression to alienation, isolation, and peak neoliberalism at worst, and cheap substitutes for real connection and real social life at best. Just like we're all happy on Instagram at the time of peak depression rates, and we're all preoccupied with sex and gender at the lowest rates of young people actually having sex (both according to statistics). Overcompensation.
The problem, as I see it, is that #MeToo was populated by the unfortunately too-common sort of 'feminist'; the kind who sees women and themselves as eternally victimized, eternally vulnerable, eternally at the mercy of the savage, rampaging male. What started out as a great conversation about male harassment and behaviour and learning how to, gentlemen, 'read the room' quickly turned into feminists venting on every possible thing men have ever done that annoyed them, amplified by anyone else on Twitter who agreed with them. What it was was a giant snapshot of millions of women's personal experiences, none of them representative of the whole. I find younger feminists quite weak-willed, actually; they're the ones steeped in critical gender studies crapola (and I consider *all* critical theory to be largely crapola) which taught them that patriarchy and misogyny is everywhere, it's baked into the system, no matter how much we fight it we can't overcome it. Sound familiar? It's Critical Race Theory with 'women' for blacks and 'patriarchy' for white supremacy and 'misogyny' for racism.
This sort of perma-victim feminism has done as much to suck the life out of romance and sexuality as social media, Instagram Face, porn, video games, or AI.
The problem isn't MeToo per say but out of control, ridiculously privileged, entitled, narcissistic, middle- and upper-class feminism (not always white either) in which females are helpless little girls and men are always in power.
As long as they believe it, it will be so. At least in their worlds.
Hardly. I merely accuse the movement of going off the rails and into extremism. Victimhood mentality serves predators and patriarchy, and weakens women. I'd *love* for them to stand up more to *real* patriarchy! They can start by acknowledging the horrific rapes perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. After all, #BelieveWomen, right...?
"Recognising these things will bring a net benefit to everyone."
MOA: How so, exactly? And particularly with respect to men overall? You simply laid out the numerous ways in which women don't want to be bothered, but you don't lay out how that's a "benefit to everyone", certainly not to men. Sounds to me that the ONLY people to "benefit" from this are women, and even that's a stretch, because there ARE women who actually would like to find someone to take them out. And for most of modern American history, that happened on the job.
Now, thanks to MeToo, that has pretty much gone away - and honestly, can you say that women overall, are better for it? Really?
I patiently await your actual response to my question as per above. Thanks!
As the mother of 3 adult sons (also single), I can say with confidence that feminism/Me Too/the voices of women HAVE created a net loss for society in general or men in particular. Young American men are much better off looking for a wife in Eastern Europe.
Hello, Kat. Nice to met you. Your concern is very valid. I am sure domestic violence is a problem in that part of the world and it is being addressed by various organizations and protection services.
Being born and raised in the USSR - and post Soviet Russia I haven’t experienced any male violence and I do not know of anyone in my circle, who did. I see the same in the ex-USSR immigrant circle in the US, where I lived for over 20 years.
It must be largerly because I belong to a strata of well educated and well
to do people.
The point of my comment is that this strata, - at least in Russia - is huge. It is enormous. And it provides and it will continue to provide well balanced females to decent Western males, who seek femininity and traditional family values in women.
Will it also create some unfortunate marriages with abuse and domestic violence ? I am sure it will. For such is life, however sad and unfair this sounds.
Yet, there is a lot of women in Eastern Europe who have a special brand of personal power that allows them to build strong and loving relationship with males without the help of MeToo. Why is that is a topic for a different comment.
You were born in a failed society run by failed males, and then you immigrated to a better one, where women have better lives because we have more options and don't have to tolerate male stupidity and violence.
Yet your comment insinuates that men in the US should comb through desperate women from shitty societies filled with and run by those same males that you fled.
Then say that. Say that women in shitty societies run by worthless men are desperate and want a free ride to the US, where they then then file for a green card and a divorce the first chance they get.
"Special brand of personal power without MeToo" Sure, genius. You type that on a laptop in a safe US city, where feminists fought to make wife-beating a crime.
All of you are idiotic phonies. Keep telling yourself lies while women are dying and being raped in the Ukraine, you coward. Like I believe a single word.
You pickmes, especially lying hypocritical immigrants in the US, are pathetic. Good luck in life. You have a chance now that you don't have to cater to a husband who beats you. Idiot.
I don't have cats. What is it with you morons and cats? What if I did? Women would rather clean up cat crap than marry your sons. How does that make you feel? Keep dreaming that your sons have to prey on poor, impoverished women from failed societies because they don't have a chance with anyone who's a native English speaker with a job.
Now go check and see if your sons have paid their monthly subscription to Andrew Tate, you sad idiot. With imbeciles like you raising sons, no wonder the world is like this.
Not really what it really does is incentivize oily and sociopathic communications strategies. And this in a society where sociopaths are already overly rewarded in the corporate and political realm. We need to get back to the plain spoken speech of our forefathers, and not add yet another layer of insincere bullshit under the guise of "sensitivity."
This is a generalization & from a male perspective. However, I believe one of the issues today is narcissism. Young women are told they should never have to experience discomfort. If they do, the default is victimhood. They know they have the power to hurt or destroy a man's career. However, men are still expected to take the initiative and make the first move. To take a chance on being rejected or being fired.
It's during the time of young adulthood that women & men learn where their boundaries are. How to navigate social interactions with the opposite sex. This can only happen by experiencing real life situations. It's called the 'school of hard knocks'. The most important lesson they can learn is how to treat people with respect & compassion. To treat someone as they would like to be treated.
All too true - and the opposite sex appreciates the attention as well, it's only the few that can ruin it for everyone else. Why being around like-minded peers with many other friends around can help buffer any kind of perceived threat, vs a public setting where you're really not sure what the others' intentions are. But hey - nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
This is not a data-driven claim, and it may have little to do with social media, but I wonder if relentlessly negative messaging about men (and patriarchy) might play a role. For instance, my two girls, ages 11 and 7, have been steeped in many well-intentioned narratives about female empowerment that often cast men in the villain's role. Take the Rebel Girls series, for instance. I worry about what that messaging might do to my 4-year-old son. Will he grow up thinking of himself as a problem? Will he take the slogan "The Future Is Female" to heart?
John Gottman claims, in his bestselling book "The 7 Principles that Make Marriage Work" that a healthy relationship often shows 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative one. That formula is not gender-specific: both men and women seem to need a disproportionate amount of affirmation to be capable of absorbing negativity or criticism. If the same principle holds in social relationships or in the social construction of gender identity, boys may well be getting dozens of negative messages about their gender identity for every positive one. That's likely hard to measure.
I don't think boys are going to feel hopeful about their future until they can feel good about being boys. I'm not saying they need a "Rebel Boys" series, but they need much more than stories about themselves as predators, oppressors, and lackluster earners.
I really appreciate this perspective, but I would just add one little wrinkle: women who grew up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s were overwhelmed by negative portrayals of themselves: men were real people doing real things, women were prizes at best, vixens at worst, and usually just distracting eye-candy, altho occasionally they were harpies or shrews. It was a Man's World. And yet somehow women who grew up in these decades still managed to not kill themselves at alarming rates and to create inspiring counter-programming for their daughters. Maybe men should be doing more to mentor men into the world? Maybe we don't need to tamp down on feminism so much as give boys opportunities to be masculine in healthy real-world ways? I'm a very feminist woman in a relationship with a very masculine man, but I will concede his masculinity is not "typical" -- it's mature and measured in a way that I can imagine some assholes calling "feminine" because that's how they apply the terms. So maybe redefining masculinity in the popular imagination is a big part of this too.
I couldn't disagree more - as a Black American man, there have been much clamoring for "mentoring" of boys that I see not as solving the problem, but aiding and abetting it. Why should I be the surrogate dad to a boy who's mother couldn't be bothered to choose Black men like me in the first place? They certainly seem to know who the Black men with "good dad" traits are, AFTER THE FACT, but that doesn't seem to matter much when selecting the "sexy" brothers with whom to make those boys, it seems. What's in it for Black men like me to give a damn about it? What does it say about a "communitah" that doesn't give a damn about Black men like me until there's some mess to be cleaned up?
I grew up being told that men-only organizations were outlawed, yet as soon as I reached young adulthood, I found myself being professionally shut out by *informal* male-only social gatherings. Some women I knew DID go to the strip clubs with the boys, but they didn’t gain professionally from it like the boys did. They got a rep as “a cool chick, not uptight,” but they didn’t get the opportunities and references and the high-stakes introductions. Around the same era I was invited to some women-only functions, and they were well-meaning but nonetheless gatherings of people none of whom had access to levers or routes of power. Legal prohibition is one thing, actual fact another. Is it better, for men, to have staid, legal “gentleman’s clubs” where dudes in suits and ties make deals, or strip clubs (often colloquially referred to as “gentleman’s clubs”) where the displacement of women is effected by social mores rather than laws? I honestly don’t know -- either way I’m shut out, but perhaps the legal arrangement is better for the mental health of the men. And the women? I really don't know.
I have to add one last thought: when I was a kid and I was told that these clubs for men-only had been legally challenged and ruled illegal, I assumed that meant they had to admit women. No, my mom told me, they all just closed down. Closed down rather than admit women. My dad told me a similar story about his experiences with desegregation in the 1960s: he lived in a city with a municipal whites-only golf course and a whites-only swimming pool. This was successfully legally challenged, but the golf course and swimming pool was not for a single day open to non-whites, instead they closed the pool and sold the golf course to a private group, who made membership prohibitively expensive for everyone but a small minority of white families in town. Total dick move. And I think the two narratives are comparable.
And that's the way it should be, and I say that as a proud Black American man. Either we have the right to freedom of association or we don't. Private clubs, organizations and even businesses, have the right to associate with whom they will - and if there are people who don't like it, they are more than welcome to start up THEIR own privately held, owned and operated, club, organization or business. If there are ladies like you who want to be powerful, start up your own networking clubs, organizations and businesses, and there you go. Bumble did very well doing this, the OG CEO just recently stepped down and handed off to ANOTHER female CEO - and I have absolutely no problem with that in the least. That's the way things should be done - not forcing people to associate with others they either have little in common with or don't even like...
Good observations. But there is also truth to the claim that there was an attack on male groups. They seem to have been vindictive rather than to attempt to cure anything.
I think of the Boy Scouts, who were initially sued for not allowing gay counselors. Common sense would seem to rule against male gay counselors. The gay counselors won, they were brought into the organization, and then the sex crimes proliferated. And then the Boy Scouts were sued for the sex crimes.
Then the Boy Scouts admitted girls, even though there has always been a Girl Scouts. You can rationalize just about anything. But what has been done to the Boy Scouts is, to my mind, unforgivable. No problem; the perpetrators are flying high, and are not seeking forgiveness.
Male only organizations aren't illegal. Fraternities are still only male, Sons of Confederate Veterans, not to mention all top professional sports. Male only organizations like the Navy SEALs are still literally funded by the US government.
I don't see any women suing making men uncomfortable by trying to join fraternities like that troon at the University of Wyoming, or ruining women's sports like William "Lia" Thomas. No one is afraid of "trans"men rampaging in the NFL.
Would all of you stop it with the testerical behavior? You idiots literally run on lies and porn-fried delusion. Stop it.
“If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.” Abraham Lincoln
I think that to allow mediocre male athletes to compete in women’s sports is a travesty. One might as well enter a harbor seal to swim against men.
During the Olympics in Rio, one idiot commentator predicted that women would be beating men. That sounded wrong to me. I looked it up. The male records in Katie Ledecky’s events are around 50 seconds faster. That’s an eternity at the Olympic level. High school boys regularly beat Ms. Ledecky’s times. She is magnificent; a marvelous athlete. She is not a man. Her achievements do not depend on beating men.
That said, women do regularly invade men’s spaces. When the lines to the women’s bathroom get too long, women often use the men’s. Most of us are fine with it. I do reserve the right to be amused.
Women have demanded that physical standards for occupations like firefighters be lowered so as not to exclude them. That may be a mistake.
This is a self serving and tone deaf comment. Let's stop redefining men and masculinity - there is nothing wrong with either. And yes we do need to tamp down feminism till it's good and buried, imo.
People in any organization advance through some combination of competence and networking. Organizations where the latter consistently overrides the former will be less competitive. If your organization doesn’t reward you properly for your performance, you should find one which does, and do your best to help them succeed. If enough people do this, our overall competence will increase, making everyone better off.
Great point Joshua - This also puts a disproportionate amount of pressure on women - as they're expected to perform like the same superwomen / perfect housewives of the 1950s, while giving men an easy pass to just go along with the narrative, and not take a stand for any principles of their own.
I hear your point -- I don't think that's a necessary conclusion at all. I'll try to avoid painting with a broad brush, but some issues that are framed as systemic (and then generalized without nuance) are in fact solvable by better communication between individuals. There's no need for men to simply get an easy pass. Neither is there a need to minimize gains for fear of minimizing the historic problem. I think Gottman's principle is absolutely right, and we ignore it at our peril. If there is a problem such as domestic labor inequality, and both parties commit to a good faith effort to tackle it, sustaining that effort is going to require recognition of progress in addition to corrective input.
As a college professor I witnessed the same principle in my students. They needed to feel that there was evidence of progress -- that they were doing well in some areas -- to be receptive to critical input about areas for improvement. A lot of men came in thinking they had no business trying to compete with their female peers academically, that girls were just smarter and better at school. It was a newer version of the "why be serious" problem that Adrienne Rich tackled in her classic address to female students, "Claiming an Education." Coddling male students accomplished nothing, but many of them did need repeated encouragement to aim higher than average and think about themselves as serious intellectuals. I think we all get defensive if we feel that we're repeatedly cast in a negative light. My job as a teacher was to offer a balance of believing and doubting. I believe that balance can work as a broader social strategy, but I do recognize that I'm making that argument in a largely hypothetical sense.
Does your son already watch Andrew Tate videos? Millions already have and think he's a great male role model because men think abusing women is funny. How do you feel about him growing up and turning into a rapist, pimp, and human trafficker like him?
I am struck by the fact that the first comments on this excellent article highlight the possible negative effect of the culture IRL which has been portraying boys and men as “predators” or worse. I know that if I were a teen boy right now (I have 2) I would be scared to death of doing the wrong thing in my interactions with girls and being forever branded a “creep” or worse.
Finally. Someone is giving voice to the concerns many of us parents (moms mostly, because many man-boys are addicted to video games) instinctively had for years. The online world is squeezing the humanity out of young men and boys.
Absolutely Kim. Jonathan is an inspiration to me as well. We should also note that the more pressing factor, aside from social media, is the EMF radiation that magnetizes our cortex (made of iron) to those devices: https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/how-do-children-become-addicted-to
Are there specific suggestions/actions I can take to minimize exposure for myself and kids? We’re swimming in this toxic stew and I’d love to get out of it - or at least be in it less.
Something my family does to minimize exposure is to shut off the WiFi at night. My mom can’t even sleep with it on at this point, so we have it set on an automatic timer. Cell phones should be on airplane mode for sleeping and ideally at least a few feet away from your bed. Getting an EMF blocking case such as SafeSleeve for your phone is a must, especially if you’re carrying it around in your pocket all day. And don’t sit with your laptop directly on your lap— get an EMF blocking pad, or put it on a desk. Minimize usage of Bluetooth devices; so many things are Bluetooth these days that work just as well with a wire, and a wire doesn’t hurt you! There are probably many other things you can do, but I think these are a good place to start.
There are so many things that can be done, but one is to track how much screen time you and your children spend each day. Seeing the progress of lowering screen time daily/ weekly can be motivating, and can be made into a game.
At the very least you can shut off the WiFi at night, and I also like to shut off the power to the bedroom as EMFs magnetize onto live wires:
They're doing it to themselves. Males need to take responsibility for their stupid behavior and stop trying blame FeMinISm for their failures. Nobody is forcing them to watch internet pornography and play video games all day. It's their own fault.
When you tell one sex they are empowered and tell the other sex they are toxic it's hard to expect anything other than poor results. Men and boys have been bashed for decades. They have been blamed for all of women's ills. Boys are told they need to be more like girls. I am a therapist and have seen this up close for decades. It's hard to imagine anyone not seeing this and acknowledging this as an important source of the troubles boys face in our culture.
Our lawns are all dying, and we are vigorously and articulately bemoaning the color of the grass, without addressing the drought causing the problem. We have fallen before the altar of verifiable data while ignoring the unmeasurable but paramount effects of what all boys, and girls, need most. We all need to feel loved. The Beatles knew that—All We Need Is Love—but the word love has become diluted to the point that we talk about loving chocolate and each other in the same sentence. We all need love that is unconditional, the kind we don’t have to earn, the kind with no taint of disappointment or irritation—utterly unknown to most of us. All of thse truly terrible problems with our children are united by one thread—us, the parents, and our inability to give this unconditional love to our kids. We didn’t get it ourselves. Remember, this is love without disappointment or anger.
Let’s keep this simple: children without unconditional love are unavoidably in pain, and then we see their depression and suicides. We see them seeking solace in devices, isolation, addictions, and more. Will we finally address the root cause of the problems that Jon Haidt and others brilliantly describe? The practical solutions are already thoroughly described in the free websites RealLoveParents.com and RealLove.com.
Agreed Greg - all we need is love and presence, yet so many of us want to "figure out" what is "wrong" with children, and blame society, when all the power is in our hands to hold that space for them. Thank you for sharing these links!
Thank you for your continued work in drawing attention for boys (and girls) to connect to the real world and avoid the virtual vortext. I recently listened to your podcast on the Trinity Forum Conversation with Andy Crouch, and have delved into your efforts at social media reform as well as the Let Grow project. All of these are crucial and hopeful steps in rehabilitating youth who have grown up as "ferals of the digital age". My husband and I have just released a post on "Sowing Anachronism" that encourages individuals to start from a bottom-up direction by unsettling the assumptions about omnipresent technology use. See https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/sowing-anachronism-how-to-be-weird?utm_source=activity_item.
Thanks again and I look forward to reading your new release!
Boys have been falling behind girls in school and employment for many years now, trapped in a world that pathologizes everything they want to do. Of course this is widely ignored, because the societal imperative is to push women forward, with no thought whatsoever for the effects this has on boys.
I wrote about precisely the subject of boys abandoning the desert of the real for Pixel Valhalla here:
If it wasn't for the digital opium of porn and video games, the social order we're trapped in - with too many young men consigned to a hopeless, sexless existence as despised incels, and too many young women becoming depressed, neurotic, barren cat ladies - would be far more unstable than it is. The ugly possibility is that the electronic narcotics are being encouraged as a deliberate strategy to keep disenfranchised young men from forming into gangs and changing things.
Yeah maybe if male work really hard, they'll finally be a male president of the USA one day! Who knows what they can accomplish!
Males need to take responsibility for their own failures. These men are sexless because they're unattractive and using "cat lady" as an epithet against women shows exactly why males like you are rejected.
Get back to your anime porn. Nothing you say has value.
The self-centred callousness of this comment is why an entire generation of men are growing up to hold everything you stand for in contempt.
We've run the experiments. We know what men, and women, can accomplish. A society run by men produces high civilization. A gynarchy produces social dysfunction and mass immiseration, for women as well as men.
Yeah, my comments on the internet is why males fail in school and become porn addicts by age 11. Really.
Lol, really? What experiments? A society run by men? Like what? Afghanistan? Yemen? Iran? ISIS? Where are people flocking to? Those failures, or places like Finland and Iceland? This is measured every year by the World Economic Forum. Societies where males are allowed to behave like the trash they are (Islamic ones are the worst) are failures and millions literally leave to invade and beg in countries with better sex equality (and now are getting deported because nobody wants those men there). How's the Ukraine and Russia doing with all the rational males running things over there at this time of year?
You know nothing. I don't care that you can't get laid. You're proof of why universities have affirmative action for males.
Get a job and get off the internet. You were meant for manual labor. Stop talking of things that you're nowhere near intelligent enough to understand. The world owes you nothing, women owe you nothing, and you are the reason you can't get a date.
The levels of delusion you're operating under are really off the charts. Affirmative action for males? Lol. Lmao, even.
It's also deeply funny that it just keeps coming back to sex for you. There's a stereotype that women process everything through access to their vaginas, which you seem intent on validating.
Enjoy your hateful, narcissistic little bubble while it lasts.
Sigh. Males literally benefit from affirmative action at university. Please just stop.
This coming from a male, the vast majority of Tinder and OnlyFans consumers, both billion dollar companies (among other similar ones). I say this because I know the statistics. Males are driven by their irrational perversions, from "trans" to Pornhub. Males literally go on shooting sprees because they can't get laid. And you think I'm the one who processes it this way? I live in reality and check statistics, that's what I do. Males project.
Btw, stop with the video games. You have no grasp of reality, and I can tell.
Just stop making a fool of yourself.
Btw, great job addressing the countries I pointed out that were run by men and therefore total failures, and where people flock to for a better life (it's not Yemen). I'm sure you're booking a flight to Afghanistan as we speak, where you can starve to death with all of the rational males doing the protecting and providing.
I don't even play video games you tiresome and bigoted radfem.
'Gender balanced admissions', in any program that is remotely rigorous, amount to affirmative action for women. But nice try.
By the way how did the American gynarchy fare against the Afghan patriarchy?
In any case, this is pointless. You lack the neural architecture to process anything beyond your narrow personal self-interest, while your vicious hatred of the other sex comes through loud and clear in everything you say.
Well put, especially on the "gangs changing things" aspect. Instead, the tech and gang of social media is changing boys' "things" and brains as the cortex is made mostly of iron, which magnetizes onto the phone:
Yes. And those cities are all run by progressives, while the underclass males joining gangs are from single-mother homes thanks to the sexual revolution and social welfare schemes.
Don't use ridiculous made up words so you can feel better about the fact that you're unf*ckable.
New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine are run by progressives, there's no crime there, after the sexual revolution.
You said males may form gangs--I pointed out they already have, and commit crime because males commit violent crime. Now you're backtracking after you got called out on your illogical claims.
Be quiet and stop making a fool of yourself. Males don't do a great job when they're placed in power and crying about how the feminisms took your rights away won't get you laid, which is what you're actually crying about.
The human body contains a few grams of iron in total. The concentration of iron in the brain is up to a few hundred micrograms per gram of tissue. This measurement excludes the contribution of the tinfoil hat you appear to be wearing.
One thing I didn't see mentioned and hope Jon will address (I'm sure he will) is the practice of boys watching other boys play video games. This is intensely passive behavior and only parents of boys (or teachers of boys, like me I guess) know how insanely common this behavior is. It's inherently passive which is its own issue. On top of this, I had many many students tell me over the years about how watching others play video games on YouTube introduced a great many aggressive, unsustainable behaviors to their little brothers' lives. My students were always overwhelmingly far more worried about "the next generation" than themselves. For the record, the vast majority of my male students sat on their phones all day every day in every class that took place in my former school.
I see comments from parents of teenage boys here and I do my best to feel your pain. I have two young daughters and am preparing for those fights. As I see it, the only way to help ALL kids - boys and girls, with all their different issues - would be to truly ban smartphones from classrooms and hallways.
It's hardly advice to the parent struggling in the moment with the 15 year old video game addict. But that's also how deep we may be. We need to think about how to save the next wave of kids. My advice I guess is to advocate for the removal of phones from schools in order to help all kids...and your kid is one of those kids.
"The War Against Boys" was written almost a quarter century ago. Many young men have withdrawn from the real world because the real world tells males they are literally toxic. They have grown up exposed to nearly all media ignoring or vilifying their gender, while glorifying and amplifying anything non-traditionally masculine.
Fathers and men need to have backbone, otherwise both females and males will be unhappy with no clear boundaries. We don't have to like boundaries, but we can respect them.
I am noticing the escalation of propaganda infused in everything surrounding my daughter and starting to realise just how much propaganda/nudging I was exposed to. Not healthy for anyone. I wish it would stop, it is everywhere now.
I find it interesting but also a bit puzzling how closely your essay mirrors the concerns of feminism but does not mention it explicitly? I am puzzled as it seems like a deliberate exclusion of something that would be otherwise a very obvious inclusion. Feminism talks endlessly about women being socialised to be better at emotional labour and "people" (in reference to your article's delineation between average interests between men (things) and women (people)). Feminism addresses this issue directly talking about how current gender roles and expectations mean that men not being permitted/expected/taught/modelled how to have meaningful and effective relationships and navigate difficult emotional landscapes as there is still that perception that a "strong" or "real" man does not cry or express vulnerability or emotions (anger excepted of course - that emotion is the predominant emotion men are expected and allowed to experience), and that they are expected to dominate and control their surrounds - would that not also be an obvious push factor (one amongst others) towards the virtual world? The toxic tenants of the patriarchy are not preparing boys and men to live in a world that supports human rights for all (women included) and is pushing boys to a virtual world where they can live out what society is telling them should be their birthright: complete freedom from consequence, total control, sexual domination and choice, a lack of intellectual challenge or rigour, action over thought, etc.
The picture in your article shows a boy sitting in a grey classroom looking at a colourful magic world - the virtual world. And I take the point that you are making and completely agree.
But I add that that world also has some absolutely horrible and terrifying attributes and making reality more appealing to boys and men can't be confused with reintroducing the hideousness of a pre-1970s patriarchy, where women (and children I add) were chattels and purportedly "male" characteristics of aggression, domination and unrestrained sexual appetite were actively encouraged and promoted.
It will be a corrective relief when we can have an conversation about "toxic femininity". Do women more readily sacrifice freedom for safety? Are womens' prefered form of aggression character assassination and what effect does this have in an economy that is now dominated by service industries? If for upper body strength 99% of women fall below the average male and we are expected to equalize the proportions of women in all careers, what does this mean for high risk professions like fire fighting, police, military, and heavy industry? Will this mean women will make up a higher proportion of management because of their limitations? What does that do to all involved when those that can't tell those that can when, where, and how to do the job? Even if the job discrepancies are small, they could still be significant. If I don't have a womb, how expendable am I?
“…many have been lured into an ever more appealing virtual world in which desires for adventure and for sex can be satisfied…”
Self-efficacy is another thing that can (superficially) feel satisfied by virtual reality, leaving boys less inclined to pursue goals and accomplishment in the real world.
I'm sure someone somewhere has observed to you that "correlation is not causation" but one thing I do know, if there is a correlation, there is usually something that ties it together. Have you been able to sort out what that something is that is causing these mental ills? Rising ice cream sales in the summer do not cause rising heart attack rates, though they correlate nicely. The connection is thought to be rising temperatures. What is the rising temperature for this correlation? I'm guessing brain chemistry is affected in some way. At least toward becoming addicted to social media. But, what is missing in terms of emotional care that maybe used to be available and now isn't? Or maybe that we did not need before that we need to be deliberate about today?
I think of your point of boys withdrawing from the world. Isolation. Do we have any data on that? And any thoughts on a corrective? I know one answer is "take the phones away, and/or limit their use". But, is that the answer? Or something else relationally in the family and social dynamic in the real world?
Good points Mark. What's missing in my opinion re: emotional care is presence, and hands-on parenting, connection to nature and keeping children in a creative state, vs giving them ipads at age 6, which puts their brains into a high-beta brainwave state, and out of creative theta.
Blue light is one of the main culprits in my opinion, the heroin that the child takes after being ignored by family to join the "gang" of social media and sexy tech.
Blue light switches prohormones and growth hormone to cortisol, and spikes dopamine, which eventually makes children addicted to stress:
Addicted to stress... how wretched. Do you know if using the blue light filter that is available on some phones and computers (and TVs I think) actually is effective?
Sounds like maybe kids need to play outside.
Short story, when I was a kid, my dad got tired of us all sitting and watching TV so he "broke" the TV. He pulled a tube out of the back, and poof, we went outside to play. Late at night I would imagine I could hear the TV...
Thank you for your questions Mark. Sorry for the jargon - a prohormone makes other hormones. In the case of blue light, pregnenolone is that prohormone, which gets switched to cortisol, instead of making DHEA, growth hormone, etc.
Unfortunately, the blue light filter can be ineffective, as many of these phones still create was is called flicker:
From the website of iris, a screen filter I use for my monitor:
OK, that flicker thing I did not know about. I knew our brain did not perceive it, but I wonder if it is slow, or just ignores things that aren't an immediate threat, kind of like we ignore the 60 cycle hum in our house. But, the eyes respond... leading to eye fatigue and general tiredness, I would guess, and making it less likely you will go outside and do anything. Vicious circle.
I am about to finish "Rise of Endymion" by Dan Simmons. A four book series sometimes called the Hyperion Cantos. Fascinating science fiction. I tend to have more than one book going at a time. I'm a wanna be philosopher and am currently reading the first book in a 4 book collection titled "Socrates Children". The first volume is the ancient philosophers. Then the not so ancient, etc.
Been reading science fiction since my dad took the tube out of the TV. Heinlein, Sturgeon, Clarke, Simak, Dickson (The Childe Cycle is pretty awesome), Card's "Ender" series, Asimov, Bradbury, (Dandelion Wine!) Also, Donaldson, the Thomas Covenant series and also the Gap cycle...
Fascinating essay. I'd just like to chip in this particular stress factor on boys (one amongst many of course):
"The focus in recent years on calling out sexual harassment (although broadly a positive thing) can....create a new kind of unfairness. Now, a perfectly decent young man hungry for romance can find himself in Catch 22: he knows from ancient folklore that faint heart never won fair lady but he also knows that - in lore of feminist-chic – one definition of sexual harassment is merely being hit on by someone other than the one that you had secretly been wanting it to be." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
Indeed - MeToo has been in many ways, an abject failure. And one of those many reasons is because it is simply too risky for most guys to be bothered with going through the Kabuki dance of dating and mating. Too much to lose and too little to gain. In the Black community this has been going on for years prior to the rise of the internet and social media - now to the point that when the various "social mixers" and the like occur, one can count the number of Black men who even bother to show up. And for good reason: Because, in a world where women have the right and ability to choose who they really want, they simply do not want most men. Dating apps confirm this truth, as well as, dare I say it, the wisdom of the (Black) Manosphere - we call it "The 80/20 Rule". One can legitimately argue that MeToo, for all its flaws, has done a good thing in shining a light on very powerful and influential men going too far with the lovely ladies; I and my compatriots would just as convincingly argue, that the cure seems to be just as injurious - if not more so - than the disease it sought to treat...
MeToo isn't the reason males are failures. Males been failing a long time, and they have nobody to blame but themselves. Stop acting like Harvey Weinstein is the reason black males can't get a date on Tinder.
Go worry about males are doing in Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Egypt, and Sudan. Is MeToo at fault there too? Idiots.
On MeToo: we all agree that what Harvey Weinstein did was wrong - in fact it was rape, and he deservedly went to jail for it. I'm pleased that justice was done.
But a lot of the discourse in the aftermath centred on much less clear-cut cases. Cases where, for example, a woman had begrudgingly consented to sex, regretted doing so afterwards, and claimed she had been a victim of sexual harassment. Having bad sex makes a woman feel used and unclean, but a crime it is not.
To be honest, I think the culprit here is sex-positive feminism, which contends that all consensual sex is good, and that women should always be "up for it". Neither of these things are true, but together it leads to a generation of women enduring sex they do not enjoy.
Therefore I recommend a correction. Not to a sex-negative vision so much as one I'm calling "love-positive". Before consenting to sex, a woman should ask herself whether she loves him; and if she doesn't she should feel empowered to say "no".
This would clarify things for the vast majority of men. Harvey Weinstein would still be a grotesque abuser but most of us are not Harvey Weinstein; we understand that "no" means "no".
And yes, this would lead to a world whereore men get rejected. Being rejected hurts; but it's a worthwhile trade-off for not having to tread on eggshells, not wondering whether even consensual sex will be treated like assault, and the certainty that "yes" means "yes" rather than "not really but I don't want to be rude". Obviously the bigger beneficiaries would be women no longer enduring loveless and soulless sex where only he has an orgasm. But men would benefit too.
Incentives matter. One motivation underlies everything men do. If you convince us that our efforts are futile we will stop.
Men climb power poles in the rain because it’s heroic. All the dirty, dangerous jobs are. That’s why men do them. Heroes get laid.
Thousands of years ago civilization tied marriage to work. That’s why men obsess about work. We break that link at our peril. That link is the difference between civilization and barbarism.
Men in technical fields obsess over them. Many have side projects when not at work. Their female colleagues, with notable exceptions, do not. The women prate about “work-life balance”. Gullible young men listen to them, and fall behind.
The feminists said decades ago that a modern society cannot afford to waste the talents of half the population. It’s quite true. That stick points both ways. We need to motivate our young men. We can’t do that if half the population refuses to help.
Get a job
Sure, it’s a start.
Bitch, please. Bringing in all these other countries like the strawmen they are have absolutely nothing to do with the point. I don't give a toss how YOU FEEL about the matter, the facts speak for themselves - ain't nobody got time for stuck up broads like YOU, who think you['re doing a brother a favor by simply breathing in their direction. No wonder so many guys are saying eff it and sticking with Playstation and PornHub. If the alternative is having to deal with the likes of you, #MeToo has done us all a favor. You silly broad, you.
LOL MUMIA OBSIDIAN ALI
Bitch, where do you live?
Phillly bitch - ask about me
I respectfully disagree with the implication (intended or not) that feminism/MeToo/the voices of women have created a net loss for society in general or men in particular. The things women have asked for are small, basic, and fair. Human interaction is hard. Communication is hard. Things are nuanced and grey and difficult for everyone regardless of sex. The change, as I perceive it, is that previously men were not expected by society to appreciate this nuance when it came to communicating with women, particularly when wanting some sort of intimate connection. They were told (and this is a simplification) that what they do or say in pursuit of what they want is ok because they are a man and she is a woman. The change is that they now need to consider the nuance, the grey: that the individual woman may not like that approach, or them, or be interested in that moment with what they have to say. That women (as a whole) do not want to have to deal with romantic advances in the workplace, by colleagues or bosses, where they are then set up to be the "bad guys" if they reject the advance. That is some of the nuance. There is also of course the obvious (not nuanced) that women don't want to be raped, coerced, degraded and insulted.
Recognising these things will bring a net benefit to everyone.
"The things women have asked for are small, basic, and fair. Human interaction is hard. Communication is hard."
What was asked was to excise human sexuality, and make sexual approaches and relations a clinical bureucratic procedure, with as little humanity as possible - only one with arbitrary Kafkaesque rules. Case in point:
"That women (as a whole) do not want to have to deal with romantic advances in the workplace, by colleagues or bosses"
Except when they do. Or in the millions of relationships and marriages that started in the workplace.
The excision of humanity and sexuality in this case, is the robotic idea that there's an off switch to sexuality in the workplace. Especially since work is the place where people have most of their daily social interactions, and spend 40 or even up to 60 hours within the week in.
Flirting can either be an aggresive approach or assault (both of which can very much happen in the workplace, and should be stomped), or it can be regular flirting or even just a slightly sensual comment (like "you look pretty").
One is bad/criminal. The other is normal humanity, and part of how the human race has avoided going extinct thougout history.
Adding more "nuance" to these two cases, makes this nuanced judgment an arbitrary weapon to yield against coworkers one doesn't like, while the "chad" or the one appreciated as a potential love interest can get away with it.
> Recognising these things will bring a net benefit to everyone.
Well, the way it's been working out is less sex than ever (according to polls with 18-30year olds), more disconnect and more loneliness than ever (according to studies), and more mental illness than ever - also accoding to studies and statistics. So maybe it's not exactly the best approach...
BOOM!
So, are you trying to say that MeToo and feminism are the cause of young people having less sex and everyone being more lonely and mentally ill?
Maybe it's actually tied more to technology, as the article proposes. Multiplayer role playing video games may be fun for boys, but they aren't generally going to get laid by playing them. People might feel like they're interacting with people on social media and enjoy it, but the quality of the interaction is different and does not seem to alleviate or prevent loneliness in the same way. Many people want to work from home more because it's convenient and they may save money on child care and so on, but it's much more isolating. None of that has anything to do with MeToo or feminism.
"So, are you trying to say that MeToo and feminism are the cause of young people having less sex and everyone being more lonely and mentally ill?"
I'm rather saying that modern culture (including modern prejudices and preoccupations) is not the sole reason, but a compounding factor.
Which goes beyond feminism and MeToo and their uses as substitutes for an identity and as weapons to further distance people as opposed as means of emancipation and justice (which they should have been about).
Alienating technology is also part of it. But people were drawn to technology and used it as a substitute for interaction because they were already primed to. The alienation process was gradual, and includes things like the AIDS scare that hurt intimacy, the preoccupation with the self and self-promotion, the replacement of the counter culture with sell-out culture, and the domination of neoliberalism, all of which predated the smartphone, social media, and even the web.
MeToo and feminism and other such things (like incels, "alpha male" culture, obsession with gender, and so on) are just convenient and fitting tools for this progression to alienation, isolation, and peak neoliberalism at worst, and cheap substitutes for real connection and real social life at best. Just like we're all happy on Instagram at the time of peak depression rates, and we're all preoccupied with sex and gender at the lowest rates of young people actually having sex (both according to statistics). Overcompensation.
Englighten us
The problem, as I see it, is that #MeToo was populated by the unfortunately too-common sort of 'feminist'; the kind who sees women and themselves as eternally victimized, eternally vulnerable, eternally at the mercy of the savage, rampaging male. What started out as a great conversation about male harassment and behaviour and learning how to, gentlemen, 'read the room' quickly turned into feminists venting on every possible thing men have ever done that annoyed them, amplified by anyone else on Twitter who agreed with them. What it was was a giant snapshot of millions of women's personal experiences, none of them representative of the whole. I find younger feminists quite weak-willed, actually; they're the ones steeped in critical gender studies crapola (and I consider *all* critical theory to be largely crapola) which taught them that patriarchy and misogyny is everywhere, it's baked into the system, no matter how much we fight it we can't overcome it. Sound familiar? It's Critical Race Theory with 'women' for blacks and 'patriarchy' for white supremacy and 'misogyny' for racism.
This sort of perma-victim feminism has done as much to suck the life out of romance and sexuality as social media, Instagram Face, porn, video games, or AI.
The problem isn't MeToo per say but out of control, ridiculously privileged, entitled, narcissistic, middle- and upper-class feminism (not always white either) in which females are helpless little girls and men are always in power.
As long as they believe it, it will be so. At least in their worlds.
Hardly. I merely accuse the movement of going off the rails and into extremism. Victimhood mentality serves predators and patriarchy, and weakens women. I'd *love* for them to stand up more to *real* patriarchy! They can start by acknowledging the horrific rapes perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. After all, #BelieveWomen, right...?
How far back do you want me to go? I mean, this shit has been going on for thousands of years.
"Recognising these things will bring a net benefit to everyone."
MOA: How so, exactly? And particularly with respect to men overall? You simply laid out the numerous ways in which women don't want to be bothered, but you don't lay out how that's a "benefit to everyone", certainly not to men. Sounds to me that the ONLY people to "benefit" from this are women, and even that's a stretch, because there ARE women who actually would like to find someone to take them out. And for most of modern American history, that happened on the job.
Now, thanks to MeToo, that has pretty much gone away - and honestly, can you say that women overall, are better for it? Really?
I patiently await your actual response to my question as per above. Thanks!
MOA
As the mother of 3 adult sons (also single), I can say with confidence that feminism/Me Too/the voices of women HAVE created a net loss for society in general or men in particular. Young American men are much better off looking for a wife in Eastern Europe.
Eastern European here. Confirming.
Really?
What are the wife beating stats over there? How are things going over in Ukraine and Russia? Is MeToo causing all the problems or no?
Hello, Kat. Nice to met you. Your concern is very valid. I am sure domestic violence is a problem in that part of the world and it is being addressed by various organizations and protection services.
Being born and raised in the USSR - and post Soviet Russia I haven’t experienced any male violence and I do not know of anyone in my circle, who did. I see the same in the ex-USSR immigrant circle in the US, where I lived for over 20 years.
It must be largerly because I belong to a strata of well educated and well
to do people.
The point of my comment is that this strata, - at least in Russia - is huge. It is enormous. And it provides and it will continue to provide well balanced females to decent Western males, who seek femininity and traditional family values in women.
Will it also create some unfortunate marriages with abuse and domestic violence ? I am sure it will. For such is life, however sad and unfair this sounds.
Yet, there is a lot of women in Eastern Europe who have a special brand of personal power that allows them to build strong and loving relationship with males without the help of MeToo. Why is that is a topic for a different comment.
I'm half Russian and half Yugoslavian and Eastern European women are the best. This Cat person seems very angry, right?
Yeah, like I thought.
You were born in a failed society run by failed males, and then you immigrated to a better one, where women have better lives because we have more options and don't have to tolerate male stupidity and violence.
Yet your comment insinuates that men in the US should comb through desperate women from shitty societies filled with and run by those same males that you fled.
Then say that. Say that women in shitty societies run by worthless men are desperate and want a free ride to the US, where they then then file for a green card and a divorce the first chance they get.
"Special brand of personal power without MeToo" Sure, genius. You type that on a laptop in a safe US city, where feminists fought to make wife-beating a crime.
All of you are idiotic phonies. Keep telling yourself lies while women are dying and being raped in the Ukraine, you coward. Like I believe a single word.
You pickmes, especially lying hypocritical immigrants in the US, are pathetic. Good luck in life. You have a chance now that you don't have to cater to a husband who beats you. Idiot.
I'm sorry, but you can't be serious. Or if you are, where have you been for the last 35 years?
Well, bless your little heart. Now go and feed some cats....
Wow, real original!
I don't have cats. What is it with you morons and cats? What if I did? Women would rather clean up cat crap than marry your sons. How does that make you feel? Keep dreaming that your sons have to prey on poor, impoverished women from failed societies because they don't have a chance with anyone who's a native English speaker with a job.
Now go check and see if your sons have paid their monthly subscription to Andrew Tate, you sad idiot. With imbeciles like you raising sons, no wonder the world is like this.
Come up with something new.
Have a Merry Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year.
It’s fine you are lesbian and hate men, but can’t you do it more quietly? Do you really need to let the whole world know what a hate monster you are?
Congratulations you are legit EVIL in your level of hatred, you make Andrea Dworkin look like mother Theresa. Proud of yourself?
Not really what it really does is incentivize oily and sociopathic communications strategies. And this in a society where sociopaths are already overly rewarded in the corporate and political realm. We need to get back to the plain spoken speech of our forefathers, and not add yet another layer of insincere bullshit under the guise of "sensitivity."
As with so many things in life, it is the right balance that is wanted....but so difficult to keep from lurching too far one way or the other.
This is a generalization & from a male perspective. However, I believe one of the issues today is narcissism. Young women are told they should never have to experience discomfort. If they do, the default is victimhood. They know they have the power to hurt or destroy a man's career. However, men are still expected to take the initiative and make the first move. To take a chance on being rejected or being fired.
It's during the time of young adulthood that women & men learn where their boundaries are. How to navigate social interactions with the opposite sex. This can only happen by experiencing real life situations. It's called the 'school of hard knocks'. The most important lesson they can learn is how to treat people with respect & compassion. To treat someone as they would like to be treated.
“Young women are told they should never have to experience discomfort. If they do, the default is victimhood.”
I’ll translate this from malespeak to English—”I hit on young girls on Tinder but none of them will fuck me. I’m the actual victim, not them.”
You’re welcome lol
All too true - and the opposite sex appreciates the attention as well, it's only the few that can ruin it for everyone else. Why being around like-minded peers with many other friends around can help buffer any kind of perceived threat, vs a public setting where you're really not sure what the others' intentions are. But hey - nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
This is not a data-driven claim, and it may have little to do with social media, but I wonder if relentlessly negative messaging about men (and patriarchy) might play a role. For instance, my two girls, ages 11 and 7, have been steeped in many well-intentioned narratives about female empowerment that often cast men in the villain's role. Take the Rebel Girls series, for instance. I worry about what that messaging might do to my 4-year-old son. Will he grow up thinking of himself as a problem? Will he take the slogan "The Future Is Female" to heart?
John Gottman claims, in his bestselling book "The 7 Principles that Make Marriage Work" that a healthy relationship often shows 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative one. That formula is not gender-specific: both men and women seem to need a disproportionate amount of affirmation to be capable of absorbing negativity or criticism. If the same principle holds in social relationships or in the social construction of gender identity, boys may well be getting dozens of negative messages about their gender identity for every positive one. That's likely hard to measure.
But when was the last time you read a column about domestic labor inequality by a male author in the NY Times? You read pieces like Lisa Taddeo's op-ed all the time: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/opinion/my-husband-and-i-dont-speak-the-same-love-language.html
I don't think boys are going to feel hopeful about their future until they can feel good about being boys. I'm not saying they need a "Rebel Boys" series, but they need much more than stories about themselves as predators, oppressors, and lackluster earners.
I really appreciate this perspective, but I would just add one little wrinkle: women who grew up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s were overwhelmed by negative portrayals of themselves: men were real people doing real things, women were prizes at best, vixens at worst, and usually just distracting eye-candy, altho occasionally they were harpies or shrews. It was a Man's World. And yet somehow women who grew up in these decades still managed to not kill themselves at alarming rates and to create inspiring counter-programming for their daughters. Maybe men should be doing more to mentor men into the world? Maybe we don't need to tamp down on feminism so much as give boys opportunities to be masculine in healthy real-world ways? I'm a very feminist woman in a relationship with a very masculine man, but I will concede his masculinity is not "typical" -- it's mature and measured in a way that I can imagine some assholes calling "feminine" because that's how they apply the terms. So maybe redefining masculinity in the popular imagination is a big part of this too.
I couldn't disagree more - as a Black American man, there have been much clamoring for "mentoring" of boys that I see not as solving the problem, but aiding and abetting it. Why should I be the surrogate dad to a boy who's mother couldn't be bothered to choose Black men like me in the first place? They certainly seem to know who the Black men with "good dad" traits are, AFTER THE FACT, but that doesn't seem to matter much when selecting the "sexy" brothers with whom to make those boys, it seems. What's in it for Black men like me to give a damn about it? What does it say about a "communitah" that doesn't give a damn about Black men like me until there's some mess to be cleaned up?
Male-only organizations became effectively illegal after various lawsuits alleged they were a bastion of the old-boy network.
I grew up being told that men-only organizations were outlawed, yet as soon as I reached young adulthood, I found myself being professionally shut out by *informal* male-only social gatherings. Some women I knew DID go to the strip clubs with the boys, but they didn’t gain professionally from it like the boys did. They got a rep as “a cool chick, not uptight,” but they didn’t get the opportunities and references and the high-stakes introductions. Around the same era I was invited to some women-only functions, and they were well-meaning but nonetheless gatherings of people none of whom had access to levers or routes of power. Legal prohibition is one thing, actual fact another. Is it better, for men, to have staid, legal “gentleman’s clubs” where dudes in suits and ties make deals, or strip clubs (often colloquially referred to as “gentleman’s clubs”) where the displacement of women is effected by social mores rather than laws? I honestly don’t know -- either way I’m shut out, but perhaps the legal arrangement is better for the mental health of the men. And the women? I really don't know.
I have to add one last thought: when I was a kid and I was told that these clubs for men-only had been legally challenged and ruled illegal, I assumed that meant they had to admit women. No, my mom told me, they all just closed down. Closed down rather than admit women. My dad told me a similar story about his experiences with desegregation in the 1960s: he lived in a city with a municipal whites-only golf course and a whites-only swimming pool. This was successfully legally challenged, but the golf course and swimming pool was not for a single day open to non-whites, instead they closed the pool and sold the golf course to a private group, who made membership prohibitively expensive for everyone but a small minority of white families in town. Total dick move. And I think the two narratives are comparable.
And that's the way it should be, and I say that as a proud Black American man. Either we have the right to freedom of association or we don't. Private clubs, organizations and even businesses, have the right to associate with whom they will - and if there are people who don't like it, they are more than welcome to start up THEIR own privately held, owned and operated, club, organization or business. If there are ladies like you who want to be powerful, start up your own networking clubs, organizations and businesses, and there you go. Bumble did very well doing this, the OG CEO just recently stepped down and handed off to ANOTHER female CEO - and I have absolutely no problem with that in the least. That's the way things should be done - not forcing people to associate with others they either have little in common with or don't even like...
MOA
Good observations. But there is also truth to the claim that there was an attack on male groups. They seem to have been vindictive rather than to attempt to cure anything.
I think of the Boy Scouts, who were initially sued for not allowing gay counselors. Common sense would seem to rule against male gay counselors. The gay counselors won, they were brought into the organization, and then the sex crimes proliferated. And then the Boy Scouts were sued for the sex crimes.
Then the Boy Scouts admitted girls, even though there has always been a Girl Scouts. You can rationalize just about anything. But what has been done to the Boy Scouts is, to my mind, unforgivable. No problem; the perpetrators are flying high, and are not seeking forgiveness.
Male only organizations aren't illegal. Fraternities are still only male, Sons of Confederate Veterans, not to mention all top professional sports. Male only organizations like the Navy SEALs are still literally funded by the US government.
I don't see any women suing making men uncomfortable by trying to join fraternities like that troon at the University of Wyoming, or ruining women's sports like William "Lia" Thomas. No one is afraid of "trans"men rampaging in the NFL.
Would all of you stop it with the testerical behavior? You idiots literally run on lies and porn-fried delusion. Stop it.
“If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.” Abraham Lincoln
I think that to allow mediocre male athletes to compete in women’s sports is a travesty. One might as well enter a harbor seal to swim against men.
During the Olympics in Rio, one idiot commentator predicted that women would be beating men. That sounded wrong to me. I looked it up. The male records in Katie Ledecky’s events are around 50 seconds faster. That’s an eternity at the Olympic level. High school boys regularly beat Ms. Ledecky’s times. She is magnificent; a marvelous athlete. She is not a man. Her achievements do not depend on beating men.
That said, women do regularly invade men’s spaces. When the lines to the women’s bathroom get too long, women often use the men’s. Most of us are fine with it. I do reserve the right to be amused.
Women have demanded that physical standards for occupations like firefighters be lowered so as not to exclude them. That may be a mistake.
You cannot seem to form or express a logical thought that actually contains a response to what I wrote.
Male only organization are not illegal. Stop saying lies and spewing nonsense so you can feel sorry for yourself.
This is a self serving and tone deaf comment. Let's stop redefining men and masculinity - there is nothing wrong with either. And yes we do need to tamp down feminism till it's good and buried, imo.
People in any organization advance through some combination of competence and networking. Organizations where the latter consistently overrides the former will be less competitive. If your organization doesn’t reward you properly for your performance, you should find one which does, and do your best to help them succeed. If enough people do this, our overall competence will increase, making everyone better off.
Yes!!
Yup -- a completely necessary part of the equation and something I'm committed to in fathering my son.
Great point Joshua - This also puts a disproportionate amount of pressure on women - as they're expected to perform like the same superwomen / perfect housewives of the 1950s, while giving men an easy pass to just go along with the narrative, and not take a stand for any principles of their own.
I hear your point -- I don't think that's a necessary conclusion at all. I'll try to avoid painting with a broad brush, but some issues that are framed as systemic (and then generalized without nuance) are in fact solvable by better communication between individuals. There's no need for men to simply get an easy pass. Neither is there a need to minimize gains for fear of minimizing the historic problem. I think Gottman's principle is absolutely right, and we ignore it at our peril. If there is a problem such as domestic labor inequality, and both parties commit to a good faith effort to tackle it, sustaining that effort is going to require recognition of progress in addition to corrective input.
As a college professor I witnessed the same principle in my students. They needed to feel that there was evidence of progress -- that they were doing well in some areas -- to be receptive to critical input about areas for improvement. A lot of men came in thinking they had no business trying to compete with their female peers academically, that girls were just smarter and better at school. It was a newer version of the "why be serious" problem that Adrienne Rich tackled in her classic address to female students, "Claiming an Education." Coddling male students accomplished nothing, but many of them did need repeated encouragement to aim higher than average and think about themselves as serious intellectuals. I think we all get defensive if we feel that we're repeatedly cast in a negative light. My job as a teacher was to offer a balance of believing and doubting. I believe that balance can work as a broader social strategy, but I do recognize that I'm making that argument in a largely hypothetical sense.
Does your son already watch Andrew Tate videos? Millions already have and think he's a great male role model because men think abusing women is funny. How do you feel about him growing up and turning into a rapist, pimp, and human trafficker like him?
I am struck by the fact that the first comments on this excellent article highlight the possible negative effect of the culture IRL which has been portraying boys and men as “predators” or worse. I know that if I were a teen boy right now (I have 2) I would be scared to death of doing the wrong thing in my interactions with girls and being forever branded a “creep” or worse.
Finally. Someone is giving voice to the concerns many of us parents (moms mostly, because many man-boys are addicted to video games) instinctively had for years. The online world is squeezing the humanity out of young men and boys.
Absolutely Kim. Jonathan is an inspiration to me as well. We should also note that the more pressing factor, aside from social media, is the EMF radiation that magnetizes our cortex (made of iron) to those devices: https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/how-do-children-become-addicted-to
Are there specific suggestions/actions I can take to minimize exposure for myself and kids? We’re swimming in this toxic stew and I’d love to get out of it - or at least be in it less.
Something my family does to minimize exposure is to shut off the WiFi at night. My mom can’t even sleep with it on at this point, so we have it set on an automatic timer. Cell phones should be on airplane mode for sleeping and ideally at least a few feet away from your bed. Getting an EMF blocking case such as SafeSleeve for your phone is a must, especially if you’re carrying it around in your pocket all day. And don’t sit with your laptop directly on your lap— get an EMF blocking pad, or put it on a desk. Minimize usage of Bluetooth devices; so many things are Bluetooth these days that work just as well with a wire, and a wire doesn’t hurt you! There are probably many other things you can do, but I think these are a good place to start.
Thank you for your question JMF.
There are so many things that can be done, but one is to track how much screen time you and your children spend each day. Seeing the progress of lowering screen time daily/ weekly can be motivating, and can be made into a game.
At the very least you can shut off the WiFi at night, and I also like to shut off the power to the bedroom as EMFs magnetize onto live wires:
https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/acelectricfields
What do you think is your/ your children's biggest hurdle in minimizing exposure?
1- scrolling is being used as a distraction
2- other friends / peers / partners expect you to have the phone "just in case"/ safety
3- have them all the time in school/ environment needs better boundaries and adjustment
4- other
Ideally there are no phones, but baby steps, baby steps...
Here's another idea:
https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/how-to-hardwire-your-phone
They're doing it to themselves. Males need to take responsibility for their stupid behavior and stop trying blame FeMinISm for their failures. Nobody is forcing them to watch internet pornography and play video games all day. It's their own fault.
What?
When you tell one sex they are empowered and tell the other sex they are toxic it's hard to expect anything other than poor results. Men and boys have been bashed for decades. They have been blamed for all of women's ills. Boys are told they need to be more like girls. I am a therapist and have seen this up close for decades. It's hard to imagine anyone not seeing this and acknowledging this as an important source of the troubles boys face in our culture.
Our lawns are all dying, and we are vigorously and articulately bemoaning the color of the grass, without addressing the drought causing the problem. We have fallen before the altar of verifiable data while ignoring the unmeasurable but paramount effects of what all boys, and girls, need most. We all need to feel loved. The Beatles knew that—All We Need Is Love—but the word love has become diluted to the point that we talk about loving chocolate and each other in the same sentence. We all need love that is unconditional, the kind we don’t have to earn, the kind with no taint of disappointment or irritation—utterly unknown to most of us. All of thse truly terrible problems with our children are united by one thread—us, the parents, and our inability to give this unconditional love to our kids. We didn’t get it ourselves. Remember, this is love without disappointment or anger.
Let’s keep this simple: children without unconditional love are unavoidably in pain, and then we see their depression and suicides. We see them seeking solace in devices, isolation, addictions, and more. Will we finally address the root cause of the problems that Jon Haidt and others brilliantly describe? The practical solutions are already thoroughly described in the free websites RealLoveParents.com and RealLove.com.
Agreed Greg - all we need is love and presence, yet so many of us want to "figure out" what is "wrong" with children, and blame society, when all the power is in our hands to hold that space for them. Thank you for sharing these links!
Spot on Greg! I'm a therapist and if I could just get parents to realize this point. Going to check out the sites you shared. Thank you.
Thank you for your continued work in drawing attention for boys (and girls) to connect to the real world and avoid the virtual vortext. I recently listened to your podcast on the Trinity Forum Conversation with Andy Crouch, and have delved into your efforts at social media reform as well as the Let Grow project. All of these are crucial and hopeful steps in rehabilitating youth who have grown up as "ferals of the digital age". My husband and I have just released a post on "Sowing Anachronism" that encourages individuals to start from a bottom-up direction by unsettling the assumptions about omnipresent technology use. See https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/sowing-anachronism-how-to-be-weird?utm_source=activity_item.
Thanks again and I look forward to reading your new release!
Boys have been falling behind girls in school and employment for many years now, trapped in a world that pathologizes everything they want to do. Of course this is widely ignored, because the societal imperative is to push women forward, with no thought whatsoever for the effects this has on boys.
I wrote about precisely the subject of boys abandoning the desert of the real for Pixel Valhalla here:
https://barsoom.substack.com/p/pixel-valhalla
If it wasn't for the digital opium of porn and video games, the social order we're trapped in - with too many young men consigned to a hopeless, sexless existence as despised incels, and too many young women becoming depressed, neurotic, barren cat ladies - would be far more unstable than it is. The ugly possibility is that the electronic narcotics are being encouraged as a deliberate strategy to keep disenfranchised young men from forming into gangs and changing things.
Came here to leave a link to Pixel Valhalla, nice to see you beat me to the punch 💪🏼
Damn, should have waited. Link-shilling is much more effective when others do it!
And thank you!
Yeah maybe if male work really hard, they'll finally be a male president of the USA one day! Who knows what they can accomplish!
Males need to take responsibility for their own failures. These men are sexless because they're unattractive and using "cat lady" as an epithet against women shows exactly why males like you are rejected.
Get back to your anime porn. Nothing you say has value.
The self-centred callousness of this comment is why an entire generation of men are growing up to hold everything you stand for in contempt.
We've run the experiments. We know what men, and women, can accomplish. A society run by men produces high civilization. A gynarchy produces social dysfunction and mass immiseration, for women as well as men.
Yeah, my comments on the internet is why males fail in school and become porn addicts by age 11. Really.
Lol, really? What experiments? A society run by men? Like what? Afghanistan? Yemen? Iran? ISIS? Where are people flocking to? Those failures, or places like Finland and Iceland? This is measured every year by the World Economic Forum. Societies where males are allowed to behave like the trash they are (Islamic ones are the worst) are failures and millions literally leave to invade and beg in countries with better sex equality (and now are getting deported because nobody wants those men there). How's the Ukraine and Russia doing with all the rational males running things over there at this time of year?
You know nothing. I don't care that you can't get laid. You're proof of why universities have affirmative action for males.
Get a job and get off the internet. You were meant for manual labor. Stop talking of things that you're nowhere near intelligent enough to understand. The world owes you nothing, women owe you nothing, and you are the reason you can't get a date.
The levels of delusion you're operating under are really off the charts. Affirmative action for males? Lol. Lmao, even.
It's also deeply funny that it just keeps coming back to sex for you. There's a stereotype that women process everything through access to their vaginas, which you seem intent on validating.
Enjoy your hateful, narcissistic little bubble while it lasts.
Sigh. Males literally benefit from affirmative action at university. Please just stop.
This coming from a male, the vast majority of Tinder and OnlyFans consumers, both billion dollar companies (among other similar ones). I say this because I know the statistics. Males are driven by their irrational perversions, from "trans" to Pornhub. Males literally go on shooting sprees because they can't get laid. And you think I'm the one who processes it this way? I live in reality and check statistics, that's what I do. Males project.
Btw, stop with the video games. You have no grasp of reality, and I can tell.
Just stop making a fool of yourself.
Btw, great job addressing the countries I pointed out that were run by men and therefore total failures, and where people flock to for a better life (it's not Yemen). I'm sure you're booking a flight to Afghanistan as we speak, where you can starve to death with all of the rational males doing the protecting and providing.
https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2023/07/princeton-affirmative-action-gender-balanced-admissions-brown-vassar-brandeis
https://www.firstpost.com/world/afghanistan-famine-millions-of-afghans-may-starve-to-death-warns-un-12118602.html
I don't even play video games you tiresome and bigoted radfem.
'Gender balanced admissions', in any program that is remotely rigorous, amount to affirmative action for women. But nice try.
By the way how did the American gynarchy fare against the Afghan patriarchy?
In any case, this is pointless. You lack the neural architecture to process anything beyond your narrow personal self-interest, while your vicious hatred of the other sex comes through loud and clear in everything you say.
Well put, especially on the "gangs changing things" aspect. Instead, the tech and gang of social media is changing boys' "things" and brains as the cortex is made mostly of iron, which magnetizes onto the phone:
https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/how-does-emf-affect-children
Males literally form gangs and cause the worst crime in several major cities.
Do men literally live in delusion 24/7? Do any of you have any connection to reality?
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicagos-top-cop-breaks-down-number-of-gangs-in-city-how-theyre-structured/2309434/
Yes. And those cities are all run by progressives, while the underclass males joining gangs are from single-mother homes thanks to the sexual revolution and social welfare schemes.
Another triumph for the gynarchy.
Don't use ridiculous made up words so you can feel better about the fact that you're unf*ckable.
New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine are run by progressives, there's no crime there, after the sexual revolution.
You said males may form gangs--I pointed out they already have, and commit crime because males commit violent crime. Now you're backtracking after you got called out on your illogical claims.
Be quiet and stop making a fool of yourself. Males don't do a great job when they're placed in power and crying about how the feminisms took your rights away won't get you laid, which is what you're actually crying about.
Get a job. Women owe you nothing.
Once again, you process everything through access to your vagina, which is what you appear to use in place of a brain.
Sigh.
Male reading comprehension FTW.
You literally understanding nothing I wrote because you're doing exactly what you're projecting.
Just stop it. Go play video games. Nobody is interested in your porn-damaged irrational thoughts.
The human body contains a few grams of iron in total. The concentration of iron in the brain is up to a few hundred micrograms per gram of tissue. This measurement excludes the contribution of the tinfoil hat you appear to be wearing.
Why are you concerned about boys and their mental health? Why do you follow Haidt?
Thank you so much Poorch for your kind and insightful comment.
Do you know where the origin of "tinfoil hat" comes from?
https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/what-does-radiation-sound-like
It's nice of you to display your vicious misandry so openly.
There's no such thing as misandry.
One thing I didn't see mentioned and hope Jon will address (I'm sure he will) is the practice of boys watching other boys play video games. This is intensely passive behavior and only parents of boys (or teachers of boys, like me I guess) know how insanely common this behavior is. It's inherently passive which is its own issue. On top of this, I had many many students tell me over the years about how watching others play video games on YouTube introduced a great many aggressive, unsustainable behaviors to their little brothers' lives. My students were always overwhelmingly far more worried about "the next generation" than themselves. For the record, the vast majority of my male students sat on their phones all day every day in every class that took place in my former school.
I see comments from parents of teenage boys here and I do my best to feel your pain. I have two young daughters and am preparing for those fights. As I see it, the only way to help ALL kids - boys and girls, with all their different issues - would be to truly ban smartphones from classrooms and hallways.
It's hardly advice to the parent struggling in the moment with the 15 year old video game addict. But that's also how deep we may be. We need to think about how to save the next wave of kids. My advice I guess is to advocate for the removal of phones from schools in order to help all kids...and your kid is one of those kids.
Two things can be true at the same time. Girls are in trouble. Boys are in trouble.
"The War Against Boys" was written almost a quarter century ago. Many young men have withdrawn from the real world because the real world tells males they are literally toxic. They have grown up exposed to nearly all media ignoring or vilifying their gender, while glorifying and amplifying anything non-traditionally masculine.
Fathers and men need to have backbone, otherwise both females and males will be unhappy with no clear boundaries. We don't have to like boundaries, but we can respect them.
Amen.
I am noticing the escalation of propaganda infused in everything surrounding my daughter and starting to realise just how much propaganda/nudging I was exposed to. Not healthy for anyone. I wish it would stop, it is everywhere now.
I find it interesting but also a bit puzzling how closely your essay mirrors the concerns of feminism but does not mention it explicitly? I am puzzled as it seems like a deliberate exclusion of something that would be otherwise a very obvious inclusion. Feminism talks endlessly about women being socialised to be better at emotional labour and "people" (in reference to your article's delineation between average interests between men (things) and women (people)). Feminism addresses this issue directly talking about how current gender roles and expectations mean that men not being permitted/expected/taught/modelled how to have meaningful and effective relationships and navigate difficult emotional landscapes as there is still that perception that a "strong" or "real" man does not cry or express vulnerability or emotions (anger excepted of course - that emotion is the predominant emotion men are expected and allowed to experience), and that they are expected to dominate and control their surrounds - would that not also be an obvious push factor (one amongst others) towards the virtual world? The toxic tenants of the patriarchy are not preparing boys and men to live in a world that supports human rights for all (women included) and is pushing boys to a virtual world where they can live out what society is telling them should be their birthright: complete freedom from consequence, total control, sexual domination and choice, a lack of intellectual challenge or rigour, action over thought, etc.
The picture in your article shows a boy sitting in a grey classroom looking at a colourful magic world - the virtual world. And I take the point that you are making and completely agree.
But I add that that world also has some absolutely horrible and terrifying attributes and making reality more appealing to boys and men can't be confused with reintroducing the hideousness of a pre-1970s patriarchy, where women (and children I add) were chattels and purportedly "male" characteristics of aggression, domination and unrestrained sexual appetite were actively encouraged and promoted.
It will be a corrective relief when we can have an conversation about "toxic femininity". Do women more readily sacrifice freedom for safety? Are womens' prefered form of aggression character assassination and what effect does this have in an economy that is now dominated by service industries? If for upper body strength 99% of women fall below the average male and we are expected to equalize the proportions of women in all careers, what does this mean for high risk professions like fire fighting, police, military, and heavy industry? Will this mean women will make up a higher proportion of management because of their limitations? What does that do to all involved when those that can't tell those that can when, where, and how to do the job? Even if the job discrepancies are small, they could still be significant. If I don't have a womb, how expendable am I?
“…many have been lured into an ever more appealing virtual world in which desires for adventure and for sex can be satisfied…”
Self-efficacy is another thing that can (superficially) feel satisfied by virtual reality, leaving boys less inclined to pursue goals and accomplishment in the real world.
That's the subtle difference between being used by the tech, or using the tech.
It used to be a woman's job to civilize and socialize men. Now it's nobody's job.
I'm sure someone somewhere has observed to you that "correlation is not causation" but one thing I do know, if there is a correlation, there is usually something that ties it together. Have you been able to sort out what that something is that is causing these mental ills? Rising ice cream sales in the summer do not cause rising heart attack rates, though they correlate nicely. The connection is thought to be rising temperatures. What is the rising temperature for this correlation? I'm guessing brain chemistry is affected in some way. At least toward becoming addicted to social media. But, what is missing in terms of emotional care that maybe used to be available and now isn't? Or maybe that we did not need before that we need to be deliberate about today?
I think of your point of boys withdrawing from the world. Isolation. Do we have any data on that? And any thoughts on a corrective? I know one answer is "take the phones away, and/or limit their use". But, is that the answer? Or something else relationally in the family and social dynamic in the real world?
Good points Mark. What's missing in my opinion re: emotional care is presence, and hands-on parenting, connection to nature and keeping children in a creative state, vs giving them ipads at age 6, which puts their brains into a high-beta brainwave state, and out of creative theta.
Blue light is one of the main culprits in my opinion, the heroin that the child takes after being ignored by family to join the "gang" of social media and sexy tech.
Blue light switches prohormones and growth hormone to cortisol, and spikes dopamine, which eventually makes children addicted to stress:
https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/the-1-emf-youve-forgotten-about
Oh wow. What is a prohormone?
Addicted to stress... how wretched. Do you know if using the blue light filter that is available on some phones and computers (and TVs I think) actually is effective?
Sounds like maybe kids need to play outside.
Short story, when I was a kid, my dad got tired of us all sitting and watching TV so he "broke" the TV. He pulled a tube out of the back, and poof, we went outside to play. Late at night I would imagine I could hear the TV...
Thank you for your questions Mark. Sorry for the jargon - a prohormone makes other hormones. In the case of blue light, pregnenolone is that prohormone, which gets switched to cortisol, instead of making DHEA, growth hormone, etc.
Unfortunately, the blue light filter can be ineffective, as many of these phones still create was is called flicker:
From the website of iris, a screen filter I use for my monitor:
https://iristech.co/pwm-flicker/
"Monitors are like a light bulb. But instead of one light bulb, we have millions of them in the size of several inches.
In order to reduce their energy use and brightness, you need to turn them ON and OFF hundred of times per second.
And this thing, this ON and OFF thing is called flicker.
Our brain is slow and we do not perceive this, but our eyes are fast and our iris starts to open and close like this."
Amazing story about your dad - he was quite passionate about play-time, eh? Hope you don't want to watch TV more now as a result? (:
OK, that flicker thing I did not know about. I knew our brain did not perceive it, but I wonder if it is slow, or just ignores things that aren't an immediate threat, kind of like we ignore the 60 cycle hum in our house. But, the eyes respond... leading to eye fatigue and general tiredness, I would guess, and making it less likely you will go outside and do anything. Vicious circle.
Great point Mark on the 60hz hum - this electrical field resonates with our brains, as they also can pulse close to 60hz (cycles per second)
What it did was turn me into a reader. So, as far as I'm concerned, it worked out!
Good stuff! What's a good book you've read recently, just curious? Any sci-fi you like?
I am about to finish "Rise of Endymion" by Dan Simmons. A four book series sometimes called the Hyperion Cantos. Fascinating science fiction. I tend to have more than one book going at a time. I'm a wanna be philosopher and am currently reading the first book in a 4 book collection titled "Socrates Children". The first volume is the ancient philosophers. Then the not so ancient, etc.
Been reading science fiction since my dad took the tube out of the TV. Heinlein, Sturgeon, Clarke, Simak, Dickson (The Childe Cycle is pretty awesome), Card's "Ender" series, Asimov, Bradbury, (Dandelion Wine!) Also, Donaldson, the Thomas Covenant series and also the Gap cycle...