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The Demise Of Guys? (TED Talk)

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Enco

Member
I haven't given much thought of how I want to raise my son into a man. My dad is coming over to the house today and my wife always stresses because she feels he is critical of how we keep our house and yard. I freely admit he's judgmental, but try to tell her not to sweat it because his opinion doesn't matter.

Still every time he visits she wants the house clean so I help out on my days off while I watch my son. This week I vacuumed the 1st floor of our house, mopped the kitchen, cleaned up all the surfaces, and clean the microwave. As a treat, because the less stressed she is the better my life is, I also cooked her dinner on the final day. Her comment when she got home was to say I was so domestic.

She's always been one to think that house hold cleaning was women's work. I've developed the school of thought that as long as I do it right and not half assed, then it's as manly as anything else I could be doing. To me, manliness is tied to having pride in the work I do.

I've fixed leaky toilets in my home, replaced fence posts in my back yard, and mowed the law. I've also done the laundry, the dishes, and the household shopping. I take care of my son for most of the week. I'm the only dad at my son's weekly play group. The rest are their with their mothers or grandmothers. Never once have I felt that this reflects poorly on me as a man.

Being a 'man', or being a 'woman', is defined in the pride you take in your actions and that will never go away.
I agree.

I'm not one for the stupid "gender is wrong! We shouldn't be labelled!" argument but people who look down on men for cleaning up a house are pretty pathetic.

I do think men are being pussified though. You need a male figure in your life growing up. There's no doubting that people bought up by a single mother aren't as capable in some respects as those who have both parents.
 

leadbelly

Banned
the front line should be 50% men, 50% women, with equal representation among all races, ethnicities, and religions. It should be like wal-mart advertisement diversity of front lines.

lol

A politically correct front line. This is how everything should be decided from now on.

Nah, I am actually being serious though. I remember years ago in the UK there was a debate over this. War is fucking shitty. If women want to fight on the front line then put them on the front line.

The problem is, to get into the marines you have to be one very fit and strong person. It is incredibly tough and I don't think there are many women (in fact I think the figures were along the lines of none) that can complete the training. If there are women out there that can then put them in with the men. They should also have a separate female marines where the training is easier. They fight on their own in a separate female unit.
 
lol

A politically correct front line. This is how everything should be decided from now on.

Nah, I am actually being serious though. I remember years ago in the UK there was a debate over this. War is fucking shitty. If women want to fight on the front line then put them on the front line.

The problem was, to get into the marines you have to be one very fit and strong person It is incredibly tough and I don't think there are many women (in fact I think the figures were along the lines of none) that can complete the training. If there are women out there that can then put them in with the men. They should also have a separate female marines where the training is easier. They fight on their own.

An interesting factoid for you, only two women have passed the (Royal Marine) Commando Course, and I don't think any have passed P-Company (Parachute Regiment). Although they would not be allowed to join the Royal Marines (except for the band) or the Paras if they did pass. Attached Airborne/Commando units should be open to women, though.
 

leadbelly

Banned
An interesting factoid for you, only two women have passed the (Royal Marine) Commando Course, and I don't think any have passed P-Company (Parachute Regiment). Although they would not be allowed to join the Royal Marines (except for the band) or the Paras if they did pass.

They're still banned from fighting on the front line though right?

Edit: I didn't read the whole post correctly. You stated that,
 

RawPower

Banned
Kids aren't dumb they internalize these messages. They see the girls doing as they please, being told they can grow up to be anything. What are little boys told? Don't fucking cry, don't be weak. People still expect them to be emotionless little automatons, little Don Drapers and act surprised when they don't measure up, when the homosexual ones commit suicide, when they're confused and can't talk about it because SUCK IT UP SON, TOUGH IT OUT. I never really realized till recently how much "masculine" gender policing goes on even today even among friends. These arbitrary definitions that don't mean shit when women are allowed to exude the very same characteristics and more and yet boys are still confined to some stupid box. Instead of talking about these issues the thread turned into what? Men forcing arbitrary notions of manhood down each others throats yet again. The cycle continues.

You are pretty much my favorite poster here now. Posts like this are why.
 
They're still banned from fighting on the front line though right?

Edit: I didn't read the whole post correctly. You stated that,

Yeah, by attached units I meant Artillery, Engineers, Logistics etc.

Which is somewhat misleading, as women can (and have) come under fire in these "non-front line" roles in Afghanistan.
 
You are pretty much my favorite poster here now. Posts like this are why.




i don't get why people make posts like this instead of iterating on that poster's ideas. If I were devolution, I'd be annoyed by idol worship, rather than people discussing what I was talking about. I mean, unless she was really trying to create a stop-gap that was meant to be the end-all/be-all of the thread.
 
That quote is painful---good lord.

If you actually feel a need to base what should be your own personally and logically derived thought about being a man, on what some other guy said ages ago, who was starkly an asshole at that and largely parroting stereotypes devoid of substance well from before said guy was even alive---you're missing the boat in a big way.

Subservience never ends well----it is contrary to hard fought human dignity and robs the future of untold bounty that is hampered by trying to have folks shackled.
 

RawPower

Banned
i don't get why people make posts like this instead of iterating on that poster's ideas. If I were devolution, I'd be annoyed by idol worship, rather than people discussing what I was talking about. I mean, unless she was really trying to create a stop-gap that was meant to be the end-all/be-all of the thread.

There isn't much else to say.
 
There isn't much else to say.



actually, she started to say something interesting about how male roles are reinforced, then expressed shock and awe that male behaviors in real life actually reflected those ideas and then she used that to belittle the people posting in the thread, as per usual. The stats/concepts actually do mean something and aren't just abstract concepts that are easy as fuck to argue against in theory-- that people actually exhibit these things in real life and it's difficult as hell to cut through. Much easier to throw people under the bus then jump into ground zero--every day situations/conversations.

Thus, we get crap like "the cycle continues" and remarks about how there is no discussion, which helps nobody and only serves to tick people off.
And also perpetuates the "no discussion" part that one is complaining about.

Which is a huge problem too, when it comes to picking apart the male psyche--finger pointing and blame laying.

but yeah, there's nothing else to say, am i right?
 

dinazimmerman

Incurious Bastard
Some interesting quotes from the economics literature on this topic.

One source of the persistent female advantage in K-12 school performance and the new female lead in college attainment is the higher incidence of behavioral problems (or lower level of non-cognitive skills) among boys. Jacob (2002) finds, using the NELS, a much higher incidence of school disciplinary and behavior problems for boys than girls and a far lower number of hours spent doing homework for boys than girls. Controlling for these non-cognitive behavioral factors can explain virtually the entire female advantage in college attendance for the high school graduating class of 1992, after adjusting for family background, test scores, and high school achievement. Similarly, we find that teenage boys, both in the early 1980s and late 1990s, had a higher (self-reported) incidence of arrests and school suspension than teenage girls, and that measures of behavioral problems significantly attenuate the female college advantage. Reinforcing these findings is evidence that boys have two to three times the rate of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) than girls and much higher rates of criminal activity (Cuffe, Moore, and McKeown 2003; Federal Bureau of Investigation 2004). Boys are also much more likely than girls to end up in special education programs. The source of boys’ higher incidence of behavioral problems is an area of active research and could be due to their later maturation as well as their higher rates of impatience (Silverman 2003). Because gender differences in development and behavior are not unique to any particular country, they can explain why the reversal of the gender gap in college has occurred throughout much of the developed world once female access to college and to labor market opportunities were improved.
http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.20.4.133

The slowdown in the rate of growth of college attendance that has been noted by many scholars is not primarily due to a slowdown in the rate of growth of college attendance among high school graduates... This pattern is mainly due to males. A gap has emerged in the education of men and women. This is another source of the growth of inequality in America. Black female college enrollment is converging to that of white male enrollment. Across all ethnic groups, women are doing better than men. For recent birth cohorts, the gap in college attendance between males and females is roughly ten percent. However, the gap in college attendance given high school graduation is only five percent. Half of the growing gender gap in college attendance documented by Goldin, Katz, and Kuziemko (2006) can be explained by the declining rate of male high school graduation (Heckman and LaFontaine, 2008a).

...

It is plausible that the change in patterns of sectoral output away from manufacturing has harmed males more than females. Females appear to be better endowed with noncognitive skills — especially self-control, motivation, agreeableness and the like. The assembly line is a powerful monitoring device that polices expression of unproductive traits such as aggression and noncooperation. As employment on the assembly line declines and employment in the service sector rises, there is less restraint on the unfavorable traits of males and a growth in demand for the favorable traits of females.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2812935/
 

RawPower

Banned
actually, she started to say something interesting about how male roles are reinforced, then expressed shock and awe that male behaviors in real life actually reflected those ideas and then she used that to belittle the people posting in the thread, as per usual. The stats/concepts actually do mean something and aren't just abstract concepts that are easy as fuck to argue against in theory-- that people actually exhibit these things in real life and it's difficult as hell to cut through. Much easier to throw people under the bus then jump into ground zero--every day situations/conversations.

Thus, we get crap like "the cycle continues" and remarks about how there is no discussion, which helps nobody and only serves to tick people off.
And also perpetuates the "no discussion" part that one is complaining about.

Which is a huge problem too, when it comes to picking apart the male psyche--finger pointing and blame laying.

but yeah, there's nothing else to say, am i right?

There isn't much else I had to say.

Better?
 
That was a good talk. Can't lie - felt like he was describing me at times. I've always felt behind the curve somewhat when it comes to sexual maturation and relationships and I definitely feel like I fit into aspects of the demographic he was talking about.
 

jj350

Banned
Women feel a need to have things like feminism and a women's day because they are the weaker sex and that is all there is to it.
 
Women feel a need to have things like feminism and a women's day because they are the weaker sex and that is all there is to it.

willywonka_genewilder.jpg
 

Kinitari

Black Canada Mafia
Women feel a need to have things like feminism and a women's day because they are the weaker sex and that is all there is to it.

I know you're banned now, but it had to have been intentional bro. What sort of reaction were you expecting?

Forget about your perceived deficiencies of women, maybe you should work on your foresight.
 

RawPower

Banned
Personally, I loved how he ended every post with "that's all there is to it". That's pretty much THE red flag for trolling.
 
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