One possible explanation for this phenomenon (and by no means the only factor) lies in gender expectations. Men (and boys) are conditioned to believe that women only exist as functions of their lives. When that functionality is denied, they react by demanding it more vocally. - ThreadSky

giuliab.bsky.social • 55 days ago

One possible explanation for this phenomenon (and by no means the only factor) lies in gender expectations. Men (and boys) are conditioned to believe that women only exist as functions of their lives. When that functionality is denied, they react by demanding it more vocally.

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fabiomvsousa.com•55 days ago

Indeed, studies suggest marital tensions often rise when the woman earns more than her spouse - he feels devalued. Some men may also feel left behind in current discourse, with society neglecting issues like mental health, financial security, and others.

giuliab.bsky.social•55 days ago

Men have been reluctant to take matters into their own hands, though. Because caring for one's mental health requires a degree of vulnerability, and is tied to the deconstruction of male identity. Women started deconstructing femininity at least 50 years ago.

fabiomvsousa.com•55 days ago

The mental health problem has many complexities (e.g. see below). So, the solution is not 100% dependent on men. In addition, mental health is only one example of a problem. As I pointed above, there are several and some men - including youths - feel that they are being left behind by society.

kateallday.bsky.social•55 days ago

Is "society" neglecting mental health? Because for the first time I'm hearing casual coffee shop conversations about healing from codependence, what narcissism is, etc.

It really seems like you're describing men being angry that they have to take responsibility for their own mental health.

fabiomvsousa.com•55 days ago

I’m not describing anything. I only listed possible problems that I often heard are associated with this growing movement of anti-equality. Although, as I have said, in another post the mental health is not only dependent on men.

nolan144.bsky.social•55 days ago

Who is conditioning them? When I was growing up, it was obvious, but social conditioning has changed. If this concerns only young people, I'm curious as to how they're being re-conditioned to see women merely as functionaries. Is it the ubiquitous porn?

giuliab.bsky.social•55 days ago

The whole of society is structured around women's unpaid or underpaid labour, and most of the caregivers are women. Porn has little to do with it.

nolan144.bsky.social•55 days ago

This piece makes a different case, which I think is compelling. Men don't value any system where women predominate or have power. It all boils down to how deep-seated misogyny is, how much men hate & fear anything feminine in themselves.
https://celestemdavis.substack.com/p/why-boys-dont-go-to-college?triedRedirect=true

giuliab.bsky.social•55 days ago

I don't see how the two theories are in conflict, to be honest. If anything, this reinforces my views: men (speaking broadly) do not want to share space with women unless they dominate that space, and women exist as functions of that dominance.

nolan144.bsky.social•55 days ago

Yes, not in conflict. That's a good diagnosis. Interesting how we never hear that theory in the endless discussions this topic provokes. It almost seems that misogyny is innate within men, as a function of their fear of femininization. Even independent of conditioning, they must not be like women!

giuliab.bsky.social•55 days ago

Not innate at all! Misogyny is instilled in all of us, but women can rely on decades (if not centuries) of feminism to spot it and work to remove it from their thought processes, or at least learn to defend themselves against it. Men as a whole haven't put in the work, although some are starting to.

grahortarg.bsky.social•55 days ago

Porn was always accessible and ubiquitous. I fail to see how it could influence anything.

nolan144.bsky.social•55 days ago

Not like it is now, when every kid carries a nonstop porn machine in their pocket. It used to require ingenuity & embarrassment to acquire it. Now it's pumped directly into the brains of kids as young as 10.

grahortarg.bsky.social•55 days ago

I was a teenager in 1980-ies. Since that time, there was no moment porn wasn't freely available, in the different mediums, to any kid or teenager. Yes, you may had 5-10 porn movies in easy access and not 500, but you don't consume more than 1 or 2 at a time, as teenager, anyway. No need.

nolan144.bsky.social•55 days ago

My younger son discovered it on our desktop family computer in the early 2000s, when he was 10. I'm sure an unsupervised kid today could discover it even earlier today. I had to have the discussion with him at that age about how it dehumanized women. Would fathers normally approach it that way?

thene.bsky.social•55 days ago

I used to think porn could be an issue, but it's been studied relentlessly for the last 20 years and there has been absolutely no evidence of ill effects at a population scale. It turns out porn is just media, like watching sports or TV shows. that surprised me, but we've proven this out by now.

giuliab.bsky.social•55 days ago

If consumed by adults, porn is just like any other product of creativity. The problems arise when porn becomes a substitute for sex education, and we know it is widely accessible by teenagers. This of course is connected with what we said, but it isn't the primary factor.

nolan144.bsky.social•55 days ago

But kids have far more sex education than earlier generations had. It's mostly taught as a subset of biology, when the true issues are emotional. I think it's more a substitute for lived experience, for the process of sexual discovery among human beings, prior to being conditioned to it by porn.

thene.bsky.social•55 days ago

I have yet to see any proof that porn has an effect here either (lack of sex ed/abstinence-focused sex ed IS proven to cause harm but i know of no evidence that porn access increases that harm. this was studied to death in the early-00s when some areas had broadband and some didn't!)

thene.bsky.social•55 days ago

like intuitively what you day makes total sense, but...at some point we have to accept that there is simply no evidence that it's true, and then we can move on and look at other factors that drive this.

nolan144.bsky.social•55 days ago

Simply no evidence? I disagree. I find that adults who enjoy porn are adamant in their opposition to any possible judgment that their habit is harmful in any way. Porn is quite often blatantly misogynist, especially re: rape depictions. How could that NOT harm a child's development, male or female?

eastgermanboom.nafofellas.com•55 days ago

My impression (!) was that gender expectations as teached from nursery up are far more „equal“ in Norway, also discouraging competition & encouraging solidarity. It’s frowned upon to be exceptional.
„You are good enough (as you are)“
See

https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Stina-Talling/BlimE-Mer-Enn-God-Nok/translation/english

https://youtu.be/U3wwj85NqL8?feature=shared

eastgermanboom.nafofellas.com•55 days ago

Don’t really know how far this goes, but discouraging „boyish“ traits might cause them to look for examples outside Norge eg. US where hard men with muscles & sometimes brains work & protect females. Plus an influx of immigrants from other cultures, although they superficially seem well integrated.

giuliab.bsky.social•55 days ago

You seem to assume that being a "boy" is some monolitic whole that is unchanging from individual to individual and has nothing to do with education, values, relationships and character. Also, "boyish traits = dominance" is exactly our problem. Because once you take that away, there's nothing left.

eastgermanboom.nafofellas.com•55 days ago

That's a bit undercomplex 😉
My assumption is that there *are* traits which are gender-associated & their expression changes in indiv. by education, social environ etc. AFAI follow still huge disagreement over this & I'm not entitled to definitive truth. But you can't discuss away bodily differences.

eastgermanboom.nafofellas.com•55 days ago

The extremists make "male = female", the other take the magnifying glass to differences - truth probably the middle. But this is another discussion.

giuliab.bsky.social•55 days ago

There is literally nothing in our biology that fully justifies male dominance, and the degree to which men and boys rely on this dominance to define themselves. Nothing at all.

eastgermanboom.nafofellas.com•55 days ago

I don't talk male dominance, this whole concept is ... yuck.
I talk about acknowledging differences where they are and adapting education accordingly. Even we do we will fail some, but we may get better results than with an "all equal" approach.

jamesanders0n.bsky.social•55 days ago

Curious on how this would explain why this is only being seen in younger Gen Z men, and not millennials? If this is societal expectations and 'nurture', surely we would expect Gen Z's parents to be more right wing, which is not what these stats show at all.

nolan144.bsky.social•55 days ago

I saw school performance declining among boys when my millennial kids were growing up. I noticed a kind of indulgence creeping in - that boys were just too naturally wild to sit still & learn - and my sons were among the few males in the top 10% of their classes. This thinking has only gotten worse.

giuliab.bsky.social•55 days ago

It is also present in Millennials, but bear in mind that adolescence and youth are a time of extremes. Gen Z males (men and boys) are also more vulnerable to bad faith influencers such as Andrew Tate. Gen Z, besides, are the children of Gen X men, who lived through 3rd-wave feminism.

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