Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The American Man: R.I.P.?

Hanna Rosin got a little carried away when she entitled her recent article: "The End of Men." Link here.

Rosin does make reference to other countries and cultures, but she is focusing primarily on the decline and fall of the American man.

If so, this development seems less a natural socio-economic progression and more the effect of decades of social engineering.

Of course, women the world over are gaining new freedoms and new opportunities. And yet, what seems to be uniquely American is that this is taking place at the expense of men.

Creating the conditions where women and girls will be able to compete fairly in the classroom and the marketplace is not the same as systematically demoralizing men and boys to the point where they will not be able to compete effectively.

Rosin's article is comprehensive. It is not just another exercise in feminist mythmaking. Still, it has its shortcomings.

For example, Rosin does not ask whether women are working more because they want to or because they have to.
If it is true that 65% of working mothers would prefer to stay at home with their children, this suggests that they are working by necessity more than by choice. Link here.

More dubious yet is Rosin's assertion that "modern, post-industrial society is simply better suited to women."

She explains that the decline in manufacturing and construction work has left large numbers of men with few viable career options. At the same time job growth in the nurturing and caring professions has been growing rapidly. Thus, the majority of those working today are women.

Strangely, Rosin does not mention that many of the best jobs in the future will be in science and technology, and that these jobs seem to be better suited to the male of the species. Men do consistently better than women on standardized math tests, like the SATs, and the best students in science are predominantly male. As recent articles have shown, all evidence suggests that this is more nature than nurture. See John Tierney's New York Times article, link here, and Mark Perry's column, link here.

If boys do less well in school than girls, and if they are seriously under-represented in higher education, then perhaps the reason lies in the way schools have undertaken to boost the self-esteem of girls at the expense of boys. This unfortunate tendency was provoked by Carol Gilligan's book In a Different Voice.

For a picture of how this plays itself in the schoolroom we turn to another article by Hanna Rosin. In this week's New York Magazine Rosin shows how one form of what I and Mark Perry would call social engineering works: "For at least a decade, a subtle shift has been happening in the educational system that seems to be working against boys, who tend to be later verbal bloomers. New initiatives have emphasized more literacy skills in preschool, long before boys are ready. And early standardized testing-- now the norm-- sets up boys to see themselves as academic failures." Link here.

If boys are being conditioned to see themselves as academic failures and if the curricula tend to overemphasize subjects at which they are less adept, it should not be surprising to see them underrepresented in colleges and universities. Not because of any natural progression but because policies have been established to diminish them.

As I said, Rosin is not just indulging another round of feminist mythmaking. She is well aware of the negative consequences of this "war against boys."

In here words: "But allowing generations of boys to grow up feeling rootless and obsolete is not a recipe for a peaceful future. Men have few natural support groups and little access to social welfare; the men's-rights groups that do exist in the U.S. are taking on an angry, anti-woman edge. Marriages fall apart or never happen at all, and children are raised with no fathers. Far from being celebrated, women's rising power is perceived as a threat."

Ask yourself this. Is this outbreak of anger toward women just a speed bump on the road to feminist utopia, or is it the natural consequence of poorly conceived social engineering? Is it payback for the educational system's systematic bias against boys?

Are we really surprised that young men who are brought up without fathers in the new feminist dystopia are drawn to gangs and crime. We have seen exactly the same thing happen in the American inner cities over the past few decades. Single-parent families, headed by women, do not produce a cohort of healthy young males. See Kay Hymowitz' article here.

Astonishingly, those who are directing this great American social experiment have acted as though they thought-- consciously or unconsciously-- that it would be a good idea to have all of America emulate the example of inner city life.

Today Maureen Dowd wrote an amazing column about the behavior of high school students at Landon School, one of the toniest prep schools in the Washington suburbs. Link here. Incoming male freshman set up a draft, roughly like the NFL draft, where they would each select girls from their class and divide them into teams. Then they compete by getting points for the number of sexual encounters they have with the girls.

Keep in mind that we are talking about 14 year olds!

Culturally, Landon is an elite educational institution. It prides itself on teaching civility and good character. And yet, these boys seem more inclined to take their cultural cues from hip-hop music and ghetto slang. As Dowd explains: "One team was called 'The Southside Slam Pigs' and one boy dubbed his team with crude street slang for drug-addicted prostitutes."

Whatever happened to the notion that we should strive for excellence? Apparently the cultural revolutionaries among us have morphed it into a striving for deviance, a veritable race to the bottom.

[A warm welcome to those of you who got here via Instapundit or Dr. Helen. I want to thank Prof. Glenn Reynolds and Dr. Helen Smith for linking this post.]

40 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good post.

Anonymous said...

Aw, Maureen, I'm sorry you aren't a "top draft pick" anymore; if you ever were....

The yearning in that opinion piece is palpable and pitiful. Maureen, I'd trow ya a poke if it made you happier and made the morning paper readable.

Society (whatever that is) cannot supress or snuff out the Male Drive. That Drive can only be channeled into more constructive areas.

The feminists, and feminized men, can gloat that this Great Recession has disarmed and penalized males in their trades and drives, but they still expect the toilet to flush, the car to run, the roof to hold and their implacable enemies not to enslave them.

Yeah, men, real men, are on the outs, but who's going to stop that oil leak and install the solar panels?

--Gray

TAS said...

"And yet, these boys seem more inclined to take their cultural cues from hip-hop music and ghetto slang."

This isn't surprising. For decades liberals, the media, and teachers have been telling white kids that they lack a culture and how wonderful every nonwhite culture is. The media especially glorifies degenerate ghetto black culture, so it should be no surprise that even boys at a prep school are trying to act like thugs.

Chuck Pelto said...

TO: All
RE: Heh

The time is coming when the real men will stand forth. Why? Because it's either that or die.

Why is that? Because that time will be rather 'messy'.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The feminist movement died one millisecond after the first impact. -- Lucifer's Hammer, by Niven & Pournelle]

Anonymous said...

Anytime I read a column such as Ms Dowd's or any one of a million 'where have all the good men gone?' type articles, the question which comes to my mind is this:

Why don't men in a matriarchal, polyamorous society behave as if they're living in a patriarchal, monogamous society?

--alexamenos

L said...

>>And yet, what seems to be uniquely American is that this is taking place at the expense of men.<<

Here's what I wonder: did the previous few centuries of Western Enlightenment come at the expense of women? I know the feminists think so, but really?

I come from pioneer stock. It was unthinkably hard for both men and women just to subsist, and they needed each other. Men could have done it without women, but needed us to build a future. We still need each other. I don't believe American achievement is truly a zero-sum game, in which team penis has to lose for team vagina to win. Or vice-versa, however satisfying an outcome that might seem to some.

And I am 100% certain that American manhood is more resilient than y'all think. Hannah Rosin has probably never been to Texas.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a lot of hue and cry from people who don't get out of their Brooklyn zip code.

There are loads of real mean that people like the author and his/her ilk choose to look down upon as they fly over them jetting between the coasts.

The men who still think volunteering to serve their country is an honorable thing to do.

Robert Arvanitis said...

Not an issue.

The moment the lights go out, or the internet is cracked, or enemies are at the gate, the American man will show himself.

Always has been, always will be thus.

Anonymous said...

Robert A: Yes, that's what they're all counting on.

Eric said...

The moment the lights go out, or the internet is cracked, or enemies are at the gate, the American man will show himself.

Always has been, always will be thus.


I wonder about that. A man with no family and little status doesn't have a lot invested in society. He's going to be tempted to shrug and say "I'll just sit this one out."

Anonymous said...

Feminists were so busy tearing down the edifice of traditional manhood, that they forgot to build something to take its place. There's real men still out there, but we aren't taking orders from the Maureen Dowd types of the world...

To all feminists: you broke it, you own it!

Anonymous said...

Facts of life:

Political movements, like union movements continue to expand until they meet resistance. The women's movement, which has mutated into what could realistically be called the women' union, has yet to be stopped because men simply won't stand up and say "No!"

I believe this is in large part due to the massive expansion of single parenting. Women get the male child 90 percent of the time, so a majority of men are now programmed to accept female authority from an early age.

In any case, men are getting the **** kicked out of them right now and I have yet to see more than a few men actually get off their butts and say something about it.

tyree said...

Heck, American Manhood is triving even in California, but the liberal elite pretends they don't exist, and denigrates them when they meet.

A word about Texas. When my son-in-law was relocating his family to that great state he wound up in a shouting match in a parking lot with another newly transplanted Texan. Within seconds a white haired cowboy with a silver buckle on his belt stepped between the two angry men and said in his slow, southern drawl, "Gentlemen, there will be no fightin' on the Lords Day". And got both of them to cool off, shake hands and go there separate ways.
Yeah, American Manhood is doing just fine in some places, it just doesn't get record deals and accolades from the left wing.

Hucbald said...

This really is a phenomenon associated primarily with the coastal elites. In the heartland, men are doing just fine, thank you very much. The fact that wrongly-so-called feminists refuse to accept is that men, at the highest levels of achievement, stand alone: There are no female equivalents of Newton, Michelangelo, Bach, Eienstein, and Beethoven (I could go on for days) not because men have repressed women, but because the highest functioning men are simply intellectually superior to women (Men also have deeper feelings than women, it's just that women's feelings are closer to the surface). No amount of leftist social engineering will ever change any of this.

Anonymous said...

The last 30 years of my career as an engineer saw only preferred treatment of women over men. Experience and skill did not matter. The primary quality for promotion, contracts, and quality jobs was sex. If you were female, please move to the front of the line. If you are male, don't bother to apply. My most lasting memory is when all the men in my agency were told in a meeting that the next promotion would go to a female. When one of my peers stated that this was not right, he was told that, "If you want to work at the ----- , this is the way it is." No one challenged her further. With continued preferred treatment for females at Universities, why should we expect other results. Quite frankly, if I were a young man with secular beliefs, I would not go to school, and live off of the women. Sex without responsibility is great.

Anonymous said...

Read 'The Misandry Bubble' - it is the most comprehensive article on the subject of misandry in America.

Note how Rosin still trots out the tired old lie about women being underpaid relative to men (when in reality, women are paid more than men relative to output produced).

Anonymous said...

Feminists demanded that boys be transformed into men who cry at sunsets, talk about their feelings 24/7 without ever mentioning sports... and then wonder why their men aren't sticking by them through thick and thin, and ready to leap to their defense with Neanderthal intensity. Where have all the real men gone, goes the plaintive cry...

You can't demand that your beef change into arugula and bean sprouts, and then wonder why the resulting hamburger is so... unsatisfying.

Chuck Pelto said...

TO: Eric
RE: Have You....

I wonder about that. A man with no family and little status doesn't have a lot invested in society. He's going to be tempted to shrug and say "I'll just sit this one out." -- Eric

....ever read Lucifer's Hammer?

There's not much chance of 'sitting it out'.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Once the shooting starts, you're either a combatant or you're a pop-up target.]

Chuck Pelto said...

TO: Anonymous
RE: Them Changes

You can't demand that your beef change into arugula and bean sprouts, and then wonder why the resulting hamburger is so... unsatisfying. -- Anonymous

I like the way C.S. Lewis put it....

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. -- C. S. Lewis

Obviously....this problem has been going on for quite some time. And I have to wonder if it does go back to Old Testament times as well, what with the women that the Israelites married leading them astray.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The more things change, the more they remain the same.]

An Unmarried Man said...

I'm increasingly convinced the traditional concept and practice of male/female marriage has been the primary culprit for the sorry state of modern man.

Within the confines of marriage and by virtue of its design, woman exerts undue influence. The phenomena you are all speaking of did not happen in a day or a week or a decade or even a century. This underlying kind of social change takes many century's worth of each generation pitching in its own small defect in the natural order. Exponentially growing we find that thousands of years later, society as a whole now mirrors the microscopic paradigm of the traditional marriage.

Chuck Pelto said...

TO: An Unmarried Man
RE: You....

I'm increasingly convinced the traditional concept and practice of male/female marriage has been the primary culprit for the sorry state of modern man. -- An Unmarried Man

...are OH SO WRONG about that.

The REAL problem is that nobody is following the 'traditional concept and practice'. Or rather damned few are. [Note: I happen to be one blessed with a woman who DOES practice it. Actually, we practice it together.]

Now, I have to ask the question....

Do you REALLY understand the 'traditional concept and practice' of marriage?

I suspect you're 'ignorant' of the 'traditional concept and practice'. Or, if you are not 'ignorant', you're looking at a different 'reference'.

So....

...what is it?

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Who can find a virtuous woman? Her worth is greater than rubies. -- Proverbs]

An Unmarried Man said...

Chuck, intrinsic to the nature of Man is the inability to perform and uphold the strict duties of the archetypal Christian marriage or whatever the hell people call it.

Over the span of a few thousand years this innate failing has manifested itself in gender roles which have socially and culturally been gutted. Our biology tells us the truth but we listen to our unreliable minds. Of course no one is following the traditional concept of marriage...or rather, more are not than are. Social evolution has bred that ability right out of the human animal.

Industrialization and scientific progress have allowed our minds to race ahead of our physical bodies.

And we are left with this mess where men have become buffoons and clowns and women the same but with all the dutiful pretensions of masculine power to disguise their true flippant natures.

Captain Napalm said...

Having read a fair bit of Roman history, I think that it is the urbanization of a society that produces effeminate men. In Epictetus, there are references to young men who wear a lot of jewelry and perfume. City and suburban living are confining, obey-the-rules environments.

Another point which is of importance is that boys, by and large, don't want to do what girls do.

Anonymous said...

Making an impromptu speech back in the early 70's, I predicted a day when might makes right would again, one day, dominate.
I still see it coming.

Micha Elyi said...

Note: I happen to be one blessed with a woman who DOES practice (the 'traditional concept and practice' of marriage.-Chuck Pelto

When you rag on your fellows not similarly blessed, Chuckles, you're showing that you take your blessings for granted.

Also, if you are still using the phrase "no-fault divorce" then you don't understand traditional marriage. It's really unilateral divorce.

Finally, if women were equal to men in the number of divorces they initiate (usually done for flighty reasons such as "I've fallen out of love," or "I need to find myself"), the U.S. divorce rate would fall by 80%.

Chuck Pelto said...

TO: Micha Elyi
RE: Heh

When you rag on your fellows not similarly blessed, Chuckles, you're showing that you take your blessings for granted. -- Micha Elyi

You just pulled that out of your fourth-point-of-contact.

I thank God Almighty every day for my blessings. Especially HER! After all, she IS the Proverbial 'virtuous woman'. And after so many other disasters, I'm eternally grateful.

By the way, she continually reminds me of the female lead in Life Force.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
P.S. Eat your heart out, buckie.....

Chuck Pelto said...

P.P.S. If you want to 'understand' traditional concept and practice of marriage, I can recommend a 'Good Book'.....

You can start with Proverbs 31.. Start around verse 10.

Chuck Pelto said...

TO: An Unmarried Man
RE: Heh

Chuck, intrinsic to the nature of Man is the inability to perform and uphold the strict duties of the archetypal Christian marriage or whatever the hell people call it. -- An Unmarried Man

You're only reinforcing my understanding of your lack of understanding.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out....]

Anonymous said...

There's more to it than what Rosin writes. Men's traditional roles were to protect the females, the young and the old from the men in the next village. That and feeding everybody - farming and hunting - activities where men had a huge physical advantage. We're replacing soldiers with drones and other robots. We're replacing physical labor with machines. Now that women have begun to pick girls over boys, women will need men less and less to protect them against other men. The decline of the 2-parent family, not to mention sperm donation, is already eliminating lots of males from the gene pool. There's no limit to that trend. The bottom line is that women don't need men like they used to.

It's not only women who are abandoning tradition. Now that men are increasingly out of the role model business, they have the opportunity to devote themselves to beer and video games. What's college for, again? It used to convey status, which in turn gave men access to the best mates.The traditional family gave men a reason to grow up and take on responsibility. So much for that, although there are still 10s of millions of American men who do. Women don't have that option, unless they abandon motherhood entirely (which is also more and more common...)

While it's still true that the most capable/smartest men are generally more so than the smartest women, that only matters if those men and their society are set up to value those abilities. We no longer need the best to survive or to escape the chains of misery. It's a different world...

blahga the hutt said...

Chuck,

Sorry, but as I've said before (on another site), I still prefer the rubies/jewels. You can always trade them in for something worthwhile.

On a general note,

I still see way too much whining on these posts regarding this subject. Guys, just don't marry, period. In fact, don't get into a relationship at all. No muss, no fuss. The fact is that women aren't going to change (as nice as it would be), so you might as well cast them aside and move on with your lives.

blahga the hutt said...

'While it's still true that the most capable/smartest men are generally more so than the smartest women, that only matters if those men and their society are set up to value those abilities. We no longer need the best to survive or to escape the chains of misery. It's a different world...'

Well, that's assuming the Western world operates in a vacuum, which it doesn't. You're also ignoring demographics completely. If you don't believe me, check the demographic stats in Europe vs. Muslims. You honestly think that won't have any impact whatsoever?

History has shown time and again that a culture that becomes matriarchal will fall to a patriarchal culture. And you can have all the robots in the world for defense (or more accurately high technology) but still lack the will to use them.

Chuck Pelto said...

TO: Blahga the hutt
RE: Yeah....

....we've discussed this before. And, as I think I stated THERE....

Thanks for playing.

Too bad my kids won't have any of YOUR kids to play with.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[If your parents didn't have any children that lived, chances are you won't either.]

blahga the hutt said...

Chuck,

Given the way things are going right now (as in, down the toilet), I'm not too concerned. I don't think I would even consider trying to raise a kid in this cesspool environment. Your kids will probably be too busy fending off the Muslim hordes to have much playtime.

I simply judge the odds, don't like what I see, and fold (or for another analogy, circle the wagons). Like I've said a million times; we chose this type of society. This is what we wanted. Well, we got it and now all of a sudden we don't like it. Well, if more than a few people developed long-term thinking skills instead of running to the freudian id, we wouldn't be where we are today.

Chuck Pelto said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chuck Pelto said...

TO: blahga the hutt
RE: As If....

....I REALLY cared about your getting out of the gene-pool.

It's not MY problem. Rather, I look upon it as evolution in action.

RE: Back On Topic

Yeah, things are going into the sewer. But, as has been stated time and again in this thread, many of US are quite capable of dealing with the 'mess' whenever **it finally hits the fan.

The point being that the meterosexuals and the women who prefer them are going to be among the first to suffer the most. Meanwhile the survival-types will make due and THEIR children will inherit the Earth.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The gene pool could use a little 'chlorine'.]

B. Durbin said...

"the highest functioning men are simply intellectually superior to women (Men also have deeper feelings than women, it's just that women's feelings are closer to the surface)."

Wow. While I might grant you the basic bell curves for men are flatter than those of women (more men at the extremes of intelligence), that statement reeks of triumphalistic one-upmanship. "Men have deeper feelings than women" is not a falsifiable proposition-- you can't prove or disprove it one way or another. It's the sort of thing you say after catching a promo for "Real Housewives of Orange County." (shudder.)

Again, relations between the sexes should not be a zero-sum game. I cringe when I see such language because I have read much literature of the type that wonders if women have souls. There's a difference between saying that women are not oppressed now and saying that they're never oppressed (see any land with "honor killings.")

My husband is a real man. He does the things he is good at doing, works hard for our family, and is a good father and husband. And he does not feel the need to attack my intelligence or emotions (nor will I attack his.)

Rant over. Sheesh.

Words Twice said...

We're replacing soldiers with drones and other robots.

Not for the foreseeable future. UAVs and bomb robots are not soldiers, nor are they replacements for soldiers.

And, as blahga the hutt mentioned, all the high tech wonder weapons in the world are for naught if you lack a proper combat mindset.

Now that women have begun to pick girls over boys, women will need men less and less to protect them against other men.

Delusional. Who will be guarding your porous borders?

You might want to familiarize yourself with the concept of "de-policing". I suspect we will see more and more of it in the future.

Chuck Pelto said...

TO: Words Twice, et al.
RE: As Fehrenbach Put It....

Americans in 1950 rediscovered something that since Hiroshima they had forgotten: you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud.

The object of warfare is to dominate the earth, with its peoples, for causes just or unjust. It is not to destroy the land and people, unless you have gone wholly mad.
-- T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Incoming artillery has right-of-way.]

namae nanka said...

"I have read much literature of the type that wonders if women have souls."

That's really going too far, it ought to have stopped at 'self'.

Christina Aguilera perfume said...

The point being that the meterosexuals and the women who prefer them are going to be among the first to suffer the most. Meanwhile the survival-types will make due and THEIR children will inherit the Earth.