Some of the aforementioned male friends have even been broken up with due to such an incident. It's of course nonsense because every human being regardless of gender should be able to express one's feelings and cry if needed, but perhaps not everyone sees it that way.

It is an interesting example of a revealed preference in the sociological space [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference

100%. Many data points in my own life and lifes of other people I know. What woman say they will do and what the actually do are two completely different things. They can very easily rationalize about anything with "feelings".

It's not exactly about crying per se, but psychological weakness. If you shed a tear on a funeral of your parent etc it's ok.

But the moment guy seems like a wimp, they loose all attractiveness. They will get to hear that things got boring, or relationship is not fulfilling enough or something else like that at the first convenient opportunity (a more promising candidate has shown up).

(Expose the generalizations. Am on my phone here with no proper keyboard.)

I don't see anything wrong with people feeling like any of those 2 from time to time. If it is continuous and long term, then it's a matter of concern.

These standards lend more and more credence to the thing that Chris Rock said, "Only women and children are loved unconditionally. Men need to provide something to be loved."

Of course, these standards are being enforced by men too, not just women. But it does not surprise me that so many men I know have checked out of one or more aspects of life.

I say this as someone who has gone through all of this, and a lot more. Instead of seeing these feelings as proof that the world is out to punish you, it‘s much more useful to see that pain as a signal. A signal that tells you that you‘re likely carrying some deep bullshit around from your past and early childhood. And that dating and relationships are here for you not as consumables to fill a need, or as a measure for your own self-worth, but as a challenge, a „task“ in your life that gives you the chance to grow beyond your childhood patterns, and to take an active role in redefining not only your relationships to „woman“, but to mankind as a whole.

If you‘re on HN, you‘re very likely an intelligent, resourceful, curious person. You have most likely solved problems in your life that have been much, much tougher. It would be a pity if you ran away from this one.

It just seems rare that women can maintain attraction after seeing a man be weak and vulnerable.

But what is also unreasonable is to expect that someone else out there („people“? „society“? „women“?) should be responsible for your growth. That might have been true in tribal societies („It takes a village to raise a child“). But live in an individualistic society. And just as people on the street won‘t go out of their way to help you learn, say, regular expressions, they won‘t do that to help you get laid, or find love, or make your marriage work.

With Regex, if you had books or articles that made it sound like an intractible problem, you‘d ditch those sources and find better ones. With women and relationships, though, guys just seem to happily accept the conclusion that things are rigged against them because they are men. Like some mirror-feminist ideology where it becomes a badge of honor to demonstrate that a man needs a woman as much „as a fish needs a bicycle“. What a silly game!

I once read about a psychologist who said that, in America, people mentally map the concept of „sex“ to the idea of „war“. „Battle of the sexes“ - that kind of thing. But one makes a mistake when one takes that map to be the territory. This „battle of the sexes“ thing is just one way of ascribing meaning to observations (and of filtering them). It‘s just a story. An ideology. You only have to play by its rules if you subscribe to it.

From an evolutionary lens they are presenting you with a sneaky test and when you cry you fail the test :)

“Women” aren’t some sort of psychosexual Kobayashi Maru where every choice is just a different wait to fail. They might surprise you if you’re willing to engage with them on the topic of how society is engineered to oppress those with feelings and compassion, like women, in places like the workplace, etc…

Women don’t belong to some secret organisation that go around testing men for their viable “genetic strength”.

Sounds like someone’s giving in to self pity.

They aren't obsolete. The mere notion of this is laughable to anyone spending a bit of time looking around.

What happened was the standards cranking up to 11 and either the rewards aren't visible, or they simply aren't there. In addition, there's far more entertainment available and children are no longer seen as an automatic achievement. Some might even say, having kids is actively discouraged in the upper circles.

>Feminist writer Susan Faludi has pointed out that many men are "clinging to a phantom status." She's right, of course.

Based on what? I don't necessarily see men clinging onto a "phantom status" as much as their (potential) lover, family, friends and business network not giving a hoot unless their status is deemed great. Men are still primarily judged on status, not the other way around.

>He is not the only one. A common thread running through many of the challenges facing men is the culture shock of women's economic independence.

The article really misses nuance on this whole "economic independence" thing. Yes, women got "more economically independent". No, they can't just start families on their own and get by. In many countries, they can't even get a decent home (dual income households say hello). Check the demands of typical college-educated women, and then compare with the available pool of men. Now compare to the current education system, the way society works and what is happening with starting wages. There simply aren't enough men for all those women, and it's evident most women aren't willing to drop their standards yet. Meanwhile, men aren't willing to "step up", as popular lingo would like to claim.

The author correctly identifies so many things, only to come to the most safe conclusion. The same conclusion which has yet to be proven correct.

To be pithy, we went from men having economic independence and women not to a situation where neither (save the highest earners) has economic independence. Couples are now interdependent and single people often need roommates. If you're economically independent, by definition you don't have to concern yourself with your partner's income.

If I didn't feel like I had to provide for a family, I'd get drunk at night and play video games all-day. Certainly better than working 60 hours a week.

Men tended to rate women in a normal distribution, but they also mostly messaged women in the uppermost range of attractiveness.

Women tended to rate men more harshly, rating most men below average attractiveness, but they also tended to message those "below average" men regardless of their assessment.

Most women don't use dating apps to find long term partners, at least among my peers and online circles. The common use case is casual hookups, which would certainly place a higher emphasis on physical attributes.

Conversely, I have met/seen many men looking for long term partners on those same sites, which should place a higher emphasis on compatibility.

Pretty sure that is a result of experience not just some miss placed belief

>Men on a dating site will message pretty much everyone

While true, the data was not just placed on messaging. Other data seems to back this result as well.

A man I know is attempting to add a new wife to his household every 5 years...

But it fell back into the familiar trope: if men aren't succeeding, it's entirely their fault. They don't have the motivation, etc. When people use this line of thinking for Black communities we rightfully call them racist, but how can you look at these numbers for men and boys, especially in the lower class and not see something structural?

The cynical side of me thinks it's because the people who could study it don't care. There's a notion that a group that has had power for centuries is now losing it, and so it's just providing balance. But making individuals of today worse off won't provide justice to those long passed.

I will give credit to this article for not making the case that we should do something because if we don't then it will harm women in finding mates, like you see in so many other similar articles. Men's well-being should be worthwhile on its own.

I think this is a leap, or maybe we have different ideas about motivation. Seems to me motivation and direction exist at the interface of an individual and their environment. Sometimes forming over the course of a lifetime, and sometimes changing with the wind, but always connected to the environment.

Most articles, like this one tend to lay the blame at the feet of boys and men in a way that would be obscene if it were applied to women or minorities. EG they are just lazier and unmotivated. This is a superficial answer that fails to get at the deeper question: why are they less motivated. Of course I don't have an answer for why, but I I think it is a very pressing question. It is tied to higher rates of depression, suicide, low productivity, and antisocial Behavior

• Lack of father figures affect's men's educational success more than women

• Feelings of helplessness due to impossibly high standards beyond just education

• Lack of males employed by the education system mean fewer role models

• Less attention given to them by adults as boys than as girls

• Easily satisfied by pornography

• Lack of success with women causes men to give up on dating and self-care

• Need for more physical activity during childhood and adolescence which school prohibits

• Lack of freedom in the education system puts off even intelligent boys

• Declining social spaces means that men and women participate in society less

I have no proof of any of these, just anecdata

Even if they were just lazy and unmotivated, if an entire demographic suddenly becomes lazy and unmotivated, that's a problem for society to solve and not some individual character flaw.

But surely, we can acknowledge that there are at least some intrinsic behavioral differences between men and women. For example men are intrinsically more violent than women. 90%+ of violent crime is committed by men. This holds true across every human society ever studied. Another example, it's probably also a human universal that men have a higher predisposition to substance abuse than women.

So the fact that men commit far more murders at women, we can probably lay the blame at the feet of men. It's not that society has let them down. It's that testosterone increases the propensity to violence. So, we can't categorically rule out that men are intrinsically less suited to productive participation in a post-industrial economy. (For example getting in bar fights and going to jail during prime earning years.)

Higher testosterone I would guess (this is not my area of expertise so I emphasize "guess" here) is probably also correlated with higher competitiveness, leadership, and work drive, all perfectly suited for a post-industrial economy. Men are significantly more likely to pursue entrepreneurship and be competitive within companies (in fact studies show that the wage gap is the result of women prioritizing temporal flexibility, ie. greater work/life balance).

If you're going to suggest that men aren't suited to productive participation, you need to consider more variables than simply violence rates, which in practice is only relevant to a tiny fraction of the population.

I think it is a valid question if men have gender specific challenges they face in modern society, economies, and cultures.

It is important to remember that the purpose of society is to serve men and women, not the other way around. If there is a problem, we should look at society with a critical lens to see if there are areas to reform to create a better fit.

Sure, men are probably always going to commit murder at a higher rate. That said, if men are depressed due to a lack of competitive and physical outlets, that is something worth consideration.

Often these problems are cause by systems we have set up rather than by innate character qualities.

And I don't see a lot of trans men throwing rage tantrums when they increase their T.

Maybe the correlation appears after sampling bias - If men are bigger on average, they might feel safer acting violent than a smaller person.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2019.104644

The alternative is to be a looser the rest of your life. You might never succeed in becoming wealthy or get the pretty girl or whatever but that’s not the point. The point is to do the best you can. It’s the struggle against the perceived odds that makes you respected. Not the end result.

Which is problematic because minorities are a subset of men. When you legitimize saying men are statistically for dangerous, that disproportionately ends up hurting black and brown men more as they are more likely to be assumed to be dangerous. It's implicit racist and it's crazy that it's acceptable in the mainstream just because no of wants to consider PoC

First off, something can be bad for simply hurting all men. You don't have to resort to a racial analysis.

Second, something can be statistically true in practice, but not intrinsically true. I don't think Arguments that say men are intrinsically lazy hold up under scrutiny anymore than claims that POC are intrinsically lazy.

Lastly, even if men are intrinsically more violent, which I think is plausible, that doesn't mean it's appropriate to blame men for their genetics. If it's a biological fact, I don't think it is something that can be weeded out of men. It is something that we simply need to understand and control. Maybe that means encouraging men to channel that energy into healthy and productive outlets.

At the end of the day, if journalists and policy makers are trying to say boys and men in America are falling behind because they are just naturally lazy and unmotivated, they are simply wrong. We can look across cultures and time and see that it is obviously not the case. There is something about our modern society and culture that is leading to these outcomes

But that's the thing-- I'm not "resorting" to that argument. I'm a PoC and I really think that really matters. But people handwave that away every time. Because it's not interesting to the majority of people, because the majority of people don't really care about these things.

It is not "problematic because minorities are a subset of men".

It already was problematic for hurting men. Your statement implies that it would not be a problem if it were just non POC being hurt.

To take a hyperbolic example, If someone shoots up a school, we don't say it is bad because there were children of color in it. It is bad whomever is hurt. It might also hurt POC, and it might especially hurt POC, but it was always bad.

> Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men: We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust.

I've experienced this firsthand, and I think most men have, with their girlfriend or wife (or even mother or sister). Your value as a male romantic partner relies on you being that "rock," and anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet. Women, even Margaret Atwood-quoting feminists like my ex, are repulsed by male vulnerability.

That may sound like a strange statement, but our programming is strong and no matter how much we debate it in the society it doesn't change. We are what we are. We may be able to evolve, but you can't snap your fingers and have that happen in a century. Arguably, I don't see us evolving past it either, as our programming likely gives us some advantage in reproduction.

In terms of "helping men" I used to work with troubled youth (13-17yrs); young men need role models and a place in society. They'll ask for help and the role models can help them. They do much better in apprenticeship type roles. I don't really think it can be force, but a bit of encouragement and guidance goes a LONG way.

Today our society coddles everyone, young men need responsibility, guidance and hard work. Everyone has the desire to be respected, show them how to fit into society and be respected and they'll follow your lead. Many of the issues we face in society today is we don't have high expectations coupled with mentorship. Sports do this to a degree, but it needs to be through all walks of life.

The main issue IMO is that we have removed male and female only spaces and are attempting to homogenize. We also coddle children and young adults to the point they are offended when someone uses their wrong pronoun. It's good to have roles in society it helps optimize and provides guidance to those who need it. It's also good to have a thick skin, so you can roll with the punches and still succeed. Men and women alike are attracted to the traditional roles of the opposite gender because it helps both partner. There's a good reason for that, historically and today. That's not to say other configurations aren't possible, but biologically, societally and economically the traditional roles make sense to most people internally.

"the problem"...

You don't get to choose what other people call you. Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a common phrase school children say. I've been called a plethora of names, that doesn't define me, why let others define you (so to speak)?

This is exactly the coddling I was discussing.

The purpose of pronouns are to help others understand who you're talking about. It's not to validate the individual being discussed. Confident people don't need validation.

That does not make it true. It is also not great to put the onus on the victim of bullying.

As someone who was bullied quite severely, I always preferred a fist fight over words. Still do; feels more honest, less manipulative getting-in-your-head but more visceral and present. To each their own perhaps, underlining the fact that words can and perhaps should hurt as much as sticks and stones; if you think words mean something, well, then they mean something.

Confidence only gets you so far, there are no simple solutions. Any study on bullying will elucidate that fact.

What? That’s literally the definition of a legal name change, which happens all the time. If someone continued to, intentionally, refer to my wife’s maiden name after she went through the nightmare process of changing it, you can bet she’d be offended, and rightfully so. Being offended by behaviour being done specifically to offend isn’t being coddled or a sign of weakness, and it’s frankly kind of weird that you think it is.

Sure, she can’t technically “choose” if someone continues to be a jerk and call her by the wrong name, but the social convention of respecting given names has existed forever, and extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me.

You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you? (I’m assuming you’re male, I find it hard to believe a woman would have written this) I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve met plenty of men who like to think they’re that confident, but yet to meet a man who actually is.

No, that is choosing what the GOVERNMENT calls you, largely for the purpose of ensuring they can extract a large portion of the labor for redistribution.

There is nothing requiring me or any other person from using your legal name, and in fact in some situations today using a persons legal name would be met with outrage and offense (i.e dead naming)

>If someone continued to, intentionally, .... you can bet she’d be offended

Seems like an odd thing to be offended over, maybe annoyed, or even feel disrespected. Offended nah... My first name has a commonly used short name that I dislike, people use it for me all the time but I am not offended by it it is just annoying

>extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me.

One big difference in language is pronouns are not directed at the target of their use, where names are.

Normal use of pronouns is used when describing a person to a 3rd party. "Go find Jim, he has your report"

He/She etc are outward expressions of secondary sex characteristic to aid people in their observation of the world. to use a another example

"Go find Sam, she has your report", I would go looking for a human with outwardly female characteristic. where as "Go find Sam, he has your report" I would look for a human with male characteristic. "Go find Sam, they has your report" is not only grammatically incorrect, it gives no indication on the type of human I should be looking for so I would just go down the hallway yelling Sam at everyone

>You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you?

I have a problem if people refer to me as Sir but it has nothing to do with the gender. /s

>but yet to meet a man who actually is.

Nice to meet you. Call me Ma'am, I dont care. Call me asshole I dont care, call me anything you want except late for dinner

I don't believe you. What if I called you Pedo?

That would be accusing me of crime, and accusing me of victimization of others. These are actions that one would have to take.

That is a far different statement than simply calling someone the wrong name, pronoun, etc.

One could be arrested, jailed, fired, etc for being a "pedo", Referring to a "they" as "she" or "he" would not result in that person being arrested, jailed or fired. if anything today the person using the incorrect pronoun would have higher legal jeopardy than the person being "mis-gendered"

Calling someone Ma'am if they wanted Sir or vice versa is not going to result in the person the incorrect salutation was directed at being fired or jailed

Your "gotcha" is both insane and idiotic, raising to the level is disbelief anyone would even make that as a analog comparison

My wife didn’t take my last name, 2 of her aunts keep intentionally sending cards and such, addressed only to her, with my last name. It’s been 13 years.

You don't have to have a particular stance on trans issues to have the common decency to use the correct pronoun. Mind you, I'm talking about reasonable things here: I am not necessarily sympathetic to wholly invented pronouns (because that doesn't come very naturally), although I think "they" is fine, and of course, it would be ridiculous if (hypothetically) a person switched pronouns every day, but in the cases I have experienced, someone communicates that they now identify as the other gender, and that's fine. Usually it's also accompanied by enough outwards changes that it's also not too hard to do; I've met trans men that I didn't know were not biological men at first.

So, idk, to me "please refer to me as man/woman in the future" sounds like a simple, easily satisfied request and getting worked up over it to me signals that one prefers emphasising their political opinion over just being decent and accomodating.

What on Earth? Yes you do. Do you not tell people what your name is? When someone asks you for your name, what do you say? I don't understand how you have human conversations with other people and make this claim.

Just naive. Like saying the bible or the koran is "just words" rather than the foundation of societies and the cause of wars.

It _is_ just a collection of words though, it's people that take it very seriously and get offended that start the wars. Had they learned this credo when they were young, they might not have escalated it to war. Anyone can just shout words out, you going to get offended at everyone ?

People will play on social cues to gain benefit, it doesn't matter which social cue.

The idea that every person with non-standard pronouns is a good person is misguided, even if it was an overwhelming majority.

The capacity for self-centeredness and/or bullying behaviour exists in all demographics.

All people have morals; the ones to be fearful of are the ones that allow their morality to bend depending on the recipient.

I think the self interest heuristic is generally overused.

The way I see it we are fundamentally the same species which committed all of the atrocities of the 20th century, 19th century, heck all of the extremely violent and callous behavior in recorded history. To believe that human nature has changed much from that in only the span of a few decades is foolhardy.

If you assume most people are out for themselves, the rational solution is usually to violently suppress or exterminate your opposition whenever possible. Kill them before they have a chance to kill you.

so i need to assume that most people are not just out for themselves and engage others hoping that they are not, but maybe just be cautious until i know them better.

Another time, she told me that the only value I bring to her life is 'to provide for our kid until they turn adult'.

I don't think we will be together much longer lol.

I don't know the best way to proceed, since you no doubt have entanglements such as your children to consider, but I wish you all the best in finding your way out of that relationship. You deserve better than someone who would treat you that way.

Appreciate that she has made this commitment. Confirm it to her and tell her you are on board, and you will make life as easy as possible for the both of you until then. See if she is willing to make the same commitment out loud.

I have a suspicion, perhaps too romantic, that once you and her are broken from the bonds of obligation, you will discover yourselves again and will voluntarily decide to stay together.

But then again, some people just shouldn't be married.

So where I live, the standard for alimony is 1 year for every 3 that you are married. On top of that, if you're married 20+ years they think you should pay for life. There is no law that states this and couples are free to decide whatever they can agree to, but once layers are involved you're at a more significant financial risk the longer you stay married.

In short, if you honestly believe it will not work you should get out sooner rather than later. It will be better for both of you. Not sure about the kids though, but living under a broken relationship isn't good for them either.

But after that second quote about value, that is a big, fluttering red flag signal for you to leave. That is no longer a functioning relationship.

A guy I knew once told his girlfriend “just be a mom!” when she was tired and their son was crying. Rather than be a dad, he demanded that she resume a role and shamed her for wanting a break.

And yet I’ve experienced the same as a man. The sort of “just be a man” mentality and rhetoric you can encounter is widespread and ranges through all depths of relationships. Ever been unemployed as a man? People can be absurdly insensitive and unkind about it. It really makes people uneasy sometimes… Like there must be something wrong with you. Never mind why you’re unemployed; there could be any number of valid reasons, but people seem to assume that’s not the case.

The point is that this isn’t a gendered problem. I suppose it’s a people being selfish problem first, coupled with many possible issues leading to the selfishness and the gendered presumptions we make about our partners. We do the same thing with genderless accusations though. We just want certain behaviours from our partners and use all kinds of means to justify it, gendered or not.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/fertility_rate/fer...

E.g. the pay gap. The pay gap opens up only after marriage and especially children; in the majority of major metropolitan areas today, young single women actually earn more than men.

Heterosexual women's mate choice is what drives this: they have a strong preference for a male who makes more over one who earns less. Everyone wants to earn more money, but men have the additional incentive of needing to earn more to attract a mate. Given this incentive structure, it's inevitable that men as a group will outearn women.

Most individual women have an easy way to contribute to the pay gap statistic: either by not pairing at all, or by pairing with a man who wants to play a supportive role at home instead of being the "breadwinner." The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.

Men, of course, also use their agency to create this world with restrictive gender roles. But everyone recognizes this; point out that women also bear responsibility for their use of agency to create it and you get, at best, called nasty names.

Your thoughts and ideas are reasonable enough but you should have a little more intellectual humility when presenting them.

My only counter to what you've said is that I think while you acknowledge the inertia of the status quo makes on current gender dynamics, you are not appreciating how making even the slightest decision against the prevailing culture is incredibly difficult.

For example, I have a male, married friend who had a child and they used the mother's last name. This seemingly minor, insignificant little protest has already caused him like 10 problems because nobody can imagine a child not having their father's last name. Going against the status quo is not easy!

So like, OP predicted your argument and tried their best to explain that's not what they meant, and you ran with that interpretation anyway. Unless there's some edit shenanigans going on that I don't see, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out a polite way to say this, but like from where I'm sitting you don't look like you're responding to OP, you look like you're responding to a straw-man that OP went out of their way to explain was not what they were actually saying.

> The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.

As I said, the OP has reasonable points but to skate over these two obviously connected points while pointing out a "critical flaw" in feminist theory is very incomplete.

It it also a disingenuous argumentative technique to say that his points are so dangerous that to bring them up would get somebody called names. Most if not all academics would be happy to argue any of these points without name calling.

And also it is ridiculous to say that "contemporary, modern feminism" is a well defined term that means the same thing to everybody. What's modern conservatism mean? Modern liberalism?

You might benefit from a read through of these articles: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-th...

Particularly the bit on "The Cluster Structure of Thingspace"

>>A verbal definition works well enough in practice to point out the intended cluster of similar things, but you nitpick exceptions. Not every human has ten fingers, or wears clothes, or uses language; but if you look for an empirical cluster of things which share these characteristics, you'll get enough information that the occasional nine-fingered human won't fool you.

Also I'm not from the US so this really isn't my fight at all, I'm not arguing with you about this I'm just trying to point out where you're making a mistake that is going to make it difficult to communicate.

Here's an example, instead of saying "you can't point at contemporary modern feminism because language is hard and ideas are fuzzy" you can say "I don't think that the vice you're accusing these people of really comes up that often". Instead of trying to debate whether true feminists are whatever OP accused them of, you can just say that you don't think whatever OP accused them of is really a big deal that affects very many real people. Skip the definitional debate (you know what group they're trying to point at) and get right to the meat of the argument, whether that issues actually shows up in real life.

Another point is overall physique. Almost no woman admits it, but ask good looking gym builders who don't overdo it, how easy is for them to get a date. I don't mean from all women, but finding some decent looking one, often smart is simply much easier. Or even better - ask a smart well earning guy who was weak and pale who went through proper gym/sport transformation (while remaining smart well earning) - the change of interest from women is ridiculous. I can attest to that, I've changed few personal opinions after putting in enough time with free weights. Its not so much about muscle mass per se, but overall posture, confidence, happiness and projection of strength.

Women, much more than men, like to feel they are above primitive emotions and impulses. Well sometimes only till they aren't.

Women have been ostracized, sometimes killed, for not appearing virtuous for thousands of years. Women strongly retain a defense mechanism of virtue signaling in sexual relations. It's overwhelming and suppresses true sexual preferences among women of all types (education, income level, age, cultural background and so on). Always keep this in mind when reading what heterosexual women say they want in a potential partner.

My point is that I feel like it's not necessary to hold these groups to the standard of being logically consistent and rational all the time. The movements are still in their infancy. They will make mistakes. It's all experimental right now. We will figure it out, but it may take generations so the best thing to do is just relax and be supportive.

The society I can think of that has made the most progress is Israel, as it is modern but also has a TFR of 3 and generally is an outlier on plots of TFR and GDP per capita

This sounds weird to me, like "support damaging behavior because that's how people find themselves". Because, after all, damaging behavior is what this thread is about. Sure, maybe someone will grow out of being an ass, but maybe they won't. If you support them "no matter what" instead of calling them out, you're prolonging that behavior.

Not that we can't forgive and make mistakes, but aiming for other than "being logically consistent and rational" is likely a road to Hell, or rudderless at best.

But this is not an inconsistency in feminism, this is a discrepancy between feminism and what many women actually want.

I wonder how many analogues to that beyond feminism I can come up to that in a minute?

If you see people as at least partially rational actors, "Have enough income on your own that you're not trapped in a situation with anyone," and, "Have a partner that is successful," aren't two opposed concepts.

It's not a logical inconsistency, it's actually rational. I think you may be falsely equating "consistency" and "fairness," or "equability," but they're distinct concepts: A person can want to be successful and still find a successful partner more attractive. This isn't inconsistent.

And here is why there is not a single feminism. I made two categories, but there is more, it is just easier for my brain. You have the "liberal" feminism, targeting equality, and the "traditional" feminism (inherited from Emma Goldman and other marxist and Marxist-adgascent like Beauvoir, so maybe calling it traditional is wrong. Postmodern Feminism?) targeting emancipation. Emancipation is not equality, it is just asking to have the possibility to do what you are able to do (aka firewoman, general, or pornstar).

Short story about emancipation and empowerment:

At first, i thought it was the same. That the French "émanciper" was translated as "empowered", and did not go further. Then like 8 years ago (i was still a lib at the time), i've heard at the radio "We don't have an equivalent in French, this is the idea of empowerment". So i looked into the difference between emancipation and empowerment. Empowerment is practices to reach freedom for the self within the institutional structures, and emancipation, is a process of freedom for the self and others in society through challenging and changing the existing structures of power. Giorgia Meloni and Simone Veil.

Women's preferences don't define feminism. I think the Feminism is not a good word to describe feminism because it creates associations like these.

But there are no shelters for men in most provinces, and many shelters that accept children will reject male children over a certain age. Moreover, based on court-enforced outcomes, men who leave an abusive home face a serious risk of significantly diminished custody and access in the future[1].

The fact is, a lot of Canadian men are living in abusive homes with nowhere to turn and the knowledge that if they leave their children will be left to face their abuser alone.

0: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article...

1: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/jf-pf/2017/nov02.html

People have tried, the last person I am aware of that tried to get a mens shelter off the ground was harassed to the point of suicide, and faced extreme resistance and protesting in attempting to fund it. There is lots of government funds for womens shelters, and zero government funds for mens shelters

From Wikipedia’s bios on two of the people responsible for the spread of the practice, Lewis Sayre and John Harvey Kellogg:

> In 1870, Sayre began using circumcision as a purported cure for several cases of young boys diagnosed with paralysis or significant motor problems. He thought the procedure ameliorated such problems based on a "reflex neurosis" theory of disease, which held that excessive stimulation of the genitals (i.e., masturbation) was a disturbance to the equilibrium of the nervous system and a cause of systemic problems.

>Kellogg did promote extensive measures to prevent masturbation addiction. He circumcised himself at age 37. His methods for the "rehabilitation" of masturbation addicts included measures up to the point of cutting off part of the genitals, without anesthetic, on both sexes; he wrote men who did should be circumcised and women that did should have carbolic acid applied to their clitoral glans.

I also don't see your point in being pedantic. Both are procedures which do not benefit the majority and are an active effort to make most lives worse (be it unknowingly or knowingly). The only case for male circumcision, is the extreme minority of men who would suffer otherwise.

Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.

That would be news to hundreds of millions of men.

>Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.

I think any sane person would see removal of the clitoris to be quite different.

It's called pilpul and he obviously will.

The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet, that serves as a blank check for the partner to harm the relationship as a passive-aggressive feedback mechanism to discourage subsequent behavior like it, be that withdrawal, or avoidance, or picking fights over inconsequential things.

Thus, men should constantly be striving for more value (read: status), or risk losing leverage with those they love. In a sense, projected status anxiety ensures that it is impossible for men to fully escape the evaluative sphere.

Internalizing this will age your soul, and not in a good way.

> anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet, that serves as a blank check for the partner to harm the relationship as a passive-aggressive feedback mechanism to discourage subsequent behavior like it, be that withdrawal, or avoidance, or picking fights over inconsequential things

the devalue phase of an unhealthy narcissistic relationship is not representative of most healthy relationships. a healthy compassion based relationship would see a value plummet met with support.

I hate that I speak from experience on the matter.

Thank you.

A more disgusting thing to me is the idea that people see their partners (or believe their partners see them) as having “value” like they’re a breathing stock ticker symbol.

The harsh reality of life is that all relationships are necessarily about value transference. If we're not stronger together than we are apart, then what the hell are we doing together. If you're sucking more value out of me than you're giving back, then you're a parasite and I'd be better off without you.

If you're not doing the calculation of whether a relationship is and will continue to be mutually beneficial, you're almost certainly going to become a host for a parasite.

In general it's not intended to offer advice, but there are some moments that invite thought, for sure.

Something's profoundly wrong when people put so much importance on what is an externally mediated measure. I don't know what it points to other than a sort of spiritual void, but the status game is one you are statistically almost guaranteed to lose.

It is the thing I hate most about my 30s and 40s: the utter seriousness with which status is regarded.

There are some sad stories in these threads.

I just want to add that not all partners are like this.

But the ones we attract in certain parts of our lives are definitely prone to it! When our self-identity (or at least our time and energy) is wrapped up in material success, or job prestige or some other externality, we attract people who agree with us.

It's a delicate edge, because most of us want to build, accomplish, achieve something that makes us proud of our efforts, and we dump a lot of that into "work" in our most-eligible years.

So if we "succeed", or move toward success, we attract those that see us the same way we imagine that part of ourselves.

And then the rest of life starts happening. I want to live in a van and see the national parks! I want to take the modest exit and move to the Caribbean. I want to get a dog and stop running in place in BigCity. I've saved enough and don't want to deal with issue X. Etc.

This new status is not always met with the same enthusiasm as the climbing part of our journey. We created the fiction, so maybe it's not completely fair to be disappointed when our focus shifts and theirs does not.

(I don't mean to suggest that I know anything about your life, I'm just riffing on your last sentence.)

I can't recommend this enough!

You're allowed to cry when your mother dies or your dog dies. Anything else and you may as well be wearing a dress. The constant encouragement to be vulnerable and express feelings is merely a test to make sure you're still "masculine enough."

I've always found it strange how women wearing men clothes is normal and just a style choice, while men wearing women's clothes is perverse and emasculating. Even many of the pro equality people feel this way

A 200lb man, who has the physical ability kill someone with their bare hands crying over an emotional vulnerability is scary. The issue isn’t “men aren’t allowed to have feelings”, but men are expected to have self-control over how they express themselves.

Many - if not all - of the difficult modern sociological problems we face are rooted in the inability for people to accept that while our technological understanding is, frankly, unfathomable compared to 100,000 years ago, our biology, our neurobiology, etc., is all still running under the software that was developed hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Take our social norms around sleep, for instance. We call bad dreams “nightmares”, we set our business hours to 9-5, etc etc. All of this is social, but clearly there is a biological link because we’re not inherently nocturnal animals.

IIRC the invention of agriculture caused a huge shift in cultural dynamics as regards sex and gender world wide, favoring men. It is not unreasonable to think that an age that lasted 10kyrs might have some lingering affects on how we view the world.

But most other norms are more complicated. So the idea of the man as a physically strong provider - it’s not universal but it’s extremely common across the world.

Cultures and societies are subject to the same kind of natural selection as individuals and species. Cultures that are self sustaining, defensible, and expansionary are the ones that win out in the end.

It's the automation of force that will drive change to how we view maleness. The increasing reality is that strong, aggressive males aren't nearly as necessary in the battlefield for the defense of societies. A 100lb woman can pilot a drone and drop bombs just as well as a 300lb linebacker of a male. Humanoid robots are rapidly entering the scene and will start to replace human soldiers and police officers as the ground units of power projection. eSports will start to overshadow the NFL as we start socially valuing individual human strength less and less in favor of tactical and strategic ability to control robots.

Societies have always used young males as disposable members who are thrown into the most dangerous and lethal jobs for the simple biological reality that wombs are scarce and sperm is not. If all of the lethal work gets automated away (a fantastic thing!) then that will be one of the most drastic changes to human social order that has ever happened.

You are making the same mistake as the clowns that cry how you “can’t use your AR15 to stop the government”.

Ignoring the reality of asymmetrical warfare, and failure of the strongest military or universe has ever seen failing to secure a state of uneducated farmers and merchants for the last 20 years…

If your goal is to glass something - sure the 100lb recruits in the drone program are your go-to. We leveled two parts of Japan and it ended things, then the math changed with mutually assured destruction.

But that isn’t how you actually take something over.

You take things by putting your people on street corners. Going door to door. Preventing undesirable assembly. Securing travel and trade.

Tanks and drones really suck at standing on the corner. The soldier isn’t as outdated as you suggest.

See also the responses of women learning their partner is bisexual or their dating racial preferences.

Their mating strategy optimizes for status and in the process creates and reinforces the very structures they claim to oppose. What they are really opposing is the negative effects these structures have on them.

They are not evil or man-hating, but all of us are ruled by instinct way more than we would like to admit. And the people self aware enough to recognize and avoid reacting to them, specially when they relate to something as important as romantic relationships, are not very common.

But of course cherrypicking just the convenient parts of feminism is common, and it's not always easy to tell early on what kind of person the other one is.

It is also possible that all the modern pressures and beliefs won't really override physical attraction. In general if someone is pretty to look at they have a lot of slack personality wise, whether they are a chest thumping mansplainer or an emotional crybaby.

Good for society: People should not be harassed or mugged when they walk at night. Good advice for an individual: Stay aware of your surroundings and make situational choices about your clothes and behavior.

Good for society: Men should also express their feelings, including their bad ones. Good for individuals: Know who is safe to express your feelings to, and who is not.

There was a big revelation that maybe we should try to improve society instead of all the victim blaming of the 70s-90s. I think it's great that we focus on perpetrators more than victims, but we forgot to tell individuals that they still live in a imperfect world, and that even though it's not their fault when they get targeted, they could still take action to protect themselves while waiting for society to improve.

This is an awesome way to put it and applies to so many more topics of public debate. Consider as a simple example:

Good for society: Close tax loopholes. Good for individuals: Exploit tax loopholes.

We should all be mindful that this distinction exists, and acknowledging it openly should be part of healthy debate culture.

I think this is wrong - like 180 degrees wrong. The mode of failure I see most often for men is low EQ - misreading the wants / needs of the woman and delivering the wrong things with no awareness of where they are going wrong.

The reason why women find confidence attractive is because low self esteem / insecurity is often the root cause of negative and harmful behaviors. See pride and envy occupying the lowest circles of hell.

Many guys totally misread this as women want assholes, rather than incessant approval seeking behavior indicates low self esteem / insecurity which has the potential to make her life hell. It’s not that you can’t be kind to women, you just need to be doing it for the right reasons - because you feel this is the right way to conduct yourself - and not because you are scared that you are unworthy of love or admiration.

Even the "quit dating assholes" stereotype is obvious, with women falling for the typical cocky jerk who goes against what society claims a man should be. Then it turns out, that guy ended up being problematic and scarred the girl for life.

Does that mean assertiveness has to be dark? No. But frankly, society is doing a lot to kill the "dark assertiveness" while not doing anything to insert "light assertiveness", if you're willing to view it that way. We're not exactly raising boys to be cowboys and gentlemen, we're raising them to be doormats and appeal to women in ways which clearly aren't dropping panties.

The seven virtues provides a useful framework to think about this. Prudence (emotional intelligence) gives rise to justice (knowing what is owed to whom), which gives rise to fortitude (assertiveness), which gives rise to moderation. Moderation without fortitude is cowardice. Fortitude without justice is tyranny. And justice without prudence is injustice. A little esoteric, but St Augustine knew a few things about life :)

It is very evident that [confident jerk] > [lacking confidence]. Kindness and compassion are not substitutes for confidence and assertiveness, as far as both anecdotes and token evidence goes.

As far as society goes, it is removing [confident jerk] in boys. It is not replacing it with [confidence]. It is also not teaching girls to actively value any of your other supposed virtues. Congratulations, most boys are now [lacking confidence], one of the few measuring standards.

Your "useful framework" does not align with the reality of the western world.

1. In my view “confident jerk” == lacking confidence. The confident jerks usually have the lowest self esteem. Their “confidence” tends to be a facade - a lie they tell themselves - which is why they seem to always have something to prove.

2. Assertiveness is not necessarily indicative of confidence. Again, it is clear that some of the most assertive wanna be dominant people are deeply insecure and simply acting out to assuage their internal feelings of low self esteem.

3. Compassion and kindness require true self confidence.

You can be assertive without being a jerk. Society and moral philosophy generally encourage this; and they discourage being a jerk. The difference is that constructive assertiveness is kind and compassionate and comes from a place of confidence. Destructive assertiveness comes from a place of low self esteem (pride/envy). Moral philosophers have written about this for over a thousand years so I don’t think that these values are especially modern.

The writing of St Augustine are a key part of the foundations of modern western (Judeo Christian) moral philosophy. This they offer many insights into moral reasoning in modern western society.

I find this to be a very convenient belief, in the same vein as "criminals are stupid" or "[not my political party] is stupid" or "good things happen to good people" or "bullies are insecure." I don't see any evidence or have any reason to believe that confident jerks are secretly harboring internal conflict, as satisfying as it may be to believe.

I mean the convergence of beliefs across a bunch of religions and moral philosophies is probably pretty good evidence. They were not exactly running randomized controlled trials; but they were smart people who thought a lot about this stuff. I’m not sure that the methods of modern behavioral science are so much more advanced :)

Otherwise this is just like one of those “obvious”, self evident things (i.e. obvious to some not to others). I do concede that there are a subset of jerks who have Dunning Kruger syndrome as well as a small number of true sociopaths out there.

Women don’t want assholes, they want security, and the traits I listed are all indications of security, whereas being emotionally sensitive is less so. Hell everyone wants security, it’s why confidence is so attractive.

If your time in the gym was a path to being more comfortable with who you are then it wasn’t a waste of time. Maybe you were good enough all along and just didn’t realize / believe it

there are a lot more factors that help with being confident with yourself.

i am none of these things: wealthy, handsome, social, and fit yet i am quite confident with myself. i'd say that with all the mistakes my parents may have made, this is one of the positive things i got out of my childhood. it probably also helped that i grew up in an environment where these things didn't matter. there was noone wealthy in my school, noone telling me that i had to be handsome, or that not being social or not being fit were bad.

[citation needed] (no snark intended)

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2021/march/...

> We are interested in the nature of narcissism. Narcissism is a personality disorder that is conceptualized as excessive self-love and manifests as a grandiose sense of self-importance, entitlement, and superiority (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Auerbach, 1993; Freud, 1914).

> More recently, two subtypes of narcissism have been distinguished. “Vulnerable narcissism” characterized by low self-esteem, anxiety about attachments and extreme sensitivity to criticism and “grandiose narcissism”, which manifests as high self-esteem, self-aggrandizement and self-importance (Dickinson & Pincus, 2003; Rohmann, Neumann, Herner, & Bierhoff, 2012; Wink, 1991). This distinction has shown itself to be fruitful - vulnerable narcissism is associated with low self-esteem, life-satisfaction, and interdependent self-construct. Conversely, grandiose narcissism is associated with high self-esteem and life-satisfaction and an independent self-construction (Rohmann, Hanke, & Bierhoff, 2019; Rose, 2002). These differential attitudes also present behaviorally. Both grandiose and vulnerable narcissists have a tendency to deliberately induce jealousy in their romantic partners, but for different reasons - a vulnerable narcissist is motivated by insecurities and seeks reassurance to compensate for low self-esteem whereas a grandiose narcissist induces jealousy primarily to gain power and control in the relationship (Tortoriello, Hart, Richardson, & Tullett, 2017).

> . . .

> Grandiose narcissism seems to resemble psychopathy in many respects, which raises the possibility that the tessellation of these conditions could be improved. It appears to be the case that grandiose narcissism might be better understood as a manifestation of psychopathy. This notion is supported by the finding that individuals who strongly exhibit psychopathic traits also tend to have a grandiose sense of self-worth (Gustafson & Ritzer, 1995; Miller, Sleep, Crowe, & Lynam, 2020). Conversely, vulnerable narcissism might be better conceived of as “narcissism proper” or “primary narcissism”.

Looks like they are pretty much trying to rebrand grandiose narcissism to psychopathy as you might suggest. Not really sure I see any value in changing the widely understood definition. I also didn't see any numbers about which type was actually more prevalent, however. Again, I was only able to do a cursory review. At this point, I think it's fair to conclude that there's more than one type of narcissism and that one of them probably has nothing to do with low self esteem, while the other probably does.

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188692...!

Low self esteem and insecurity aren't the problem. Lots of people suffer from it through little fault of their own and, frankly, people who think they're always right and never question themselves can be just as toxic.

The problem is people repressing their insecurities, acting out and making other people responsible for their pain, instead of facing their insecurities head on e.g. through therapy.

I have a lot of female friends. They will rip their boyfriends apart for vulnerable moments or emotional needs or economic inadequacies. One complained about him having to visit his dying aunt and leaving her alone for a weekend. Another called her boyfriend a loser for not making enough money for them to live in Vancouver proper (an expensive place). Heck, my mother has called my father as loser for "only" making about 250K a year (my parents live in a 1 million person LCOL city).

You go through this as a man and it reinforces your suppression of feelings and desires to never open up to anyone because of the humiliation.

No wonder men kill themselves 4x as often as women.

the question then would be, how does gender equality look like that doesn't rely on these narratives?

if on the other hand we assume that these ideals are good, then the problem is not that the narratives are false, but that we haven't yet actually achieved equality.

Second, you can have “moral equality” without assuming “fungibility.” My cousin just got married. The wife is brilliant—she’s civil engineer. The aunties are all impressed. But if they have a baby and her priorities shift and she decides she wants to stay home (which happens to many women!) those same aunties will 100% expect my cousin to take up the slack and support the family, because he’s the man. Morally equal, but not fungible.

traditionally picking up the slack would mean for the man to go earn more money. but women want to keep working. and, this is part of the issue, in middle to lower income families they have to. we have created a situation where a single income is no longer enough to support a family. the economic change is not financial freedom for women as much as a financial dependency on both parents working.

and the narrative we are creating and that we seem to want is that men help in the household and with childcare. and that too is happening but only just enough so that everyone supporting that narrative can point to an example, but not as much as everyone thinks. even in households where both parents are working, most of the housework is still done by women.

This hurts women in two ways. First it makes them more likely to select shiftless men who will run out in their families to pursue their dreams of being YouTube stars. Second, by setting cultural expectations and incentives, it increases the supply of such men.

When the narrative of "the one" breaks down, marriages dissolve. Children get custodial_parents -= 1.

Some times, one way is objectively better than another way. And yes it may be ego-bruising for those doing things the "less good" way, but we don't need to throat-clear so obnoxiously whenever these things are discussed.

I do think you should also take an honest approach to the valuable points Rayiner has made, here and elsewhere. Not everything is correct, but recently it seems like you're just jeering and nervously trying to change the subject when actual discussion of the issue would be uncomfortable for certain current orthodoxy.

In this case, American women (and men!) have been told, through the media, their peers, and reinforced through modern corporate culture, that behaving, acting, and expecting things in a certain way will make them happier. But that's not bearing out in reality. So are they being setting up for ego death, when reality doesn't match expectations, if the expectations are wholly unrealistic and perhaps even wrong?

I don't want to generalize, but that's a common narrative also. I have no direct experience.