I’ll never get over how, in an era when women’s rights and status are being attacked and eroded in law and culture alike, we were incessantly told that it was boys and men whose suffering we needed to attend to.
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If you cant seriously contend with the fact that some very weird and bad shit is going on with young guys right now, then you are probably missing a big part of the story
@moiradonegan.bsky.social I don't think it's a zero sum game; society could address both the issues women and girls face as well as issues that men and boys face
You can never convince anyone with a working brain that a system built by men that only ever caters to men suddenly makes men "fall behind". What actually happens is that women consistently outperform men because they have to to be on a somewhat(!) even playing field. Misogyny still fucks them over.
Now that men need to compete they fall short and smart employers know that. So the earning and job market gap between genders closes more and more and you seriously wanna convince people this is bad with your himpathy??? Men don't deserve more than women for virtue of being male.
i mean the education system was definitely EXTREMELY female coded (and still is to a lesser extent) in the past (as in teaching is still primarily considered a "woman's job" especially in K-12 education)
once girls started going to school at similar rates of boys (and post title IX) they do better
You mean the education system girls and women are still excluded from worldwide? The same education system that was deemed necessary by men to get higher paying jobs? The education system that didn't fundamentally change except for teachers not being allowed to abuse children anymore?
In the not so long ago history it was a male dominated field, even for small children. Men were teachers who tought primarily boys skills they deemed important. Until men decided working with children is a woman's job and should therefore not be paid much.
And not just that we need to attend to their suffering… that their suffering was BECAUSE of us, because we are succeeding in school and work. From the article:
Eh, there is an age gradient here. Men don't get the status that comes with their sex until after school; girls very much get preferential treatment and do better through school.
A whole lot of HS boys are told they are privileged, yet it is completely at odds with their lived experience.
Is this was true girls would be one year ahead of boys in school but they keep girls learning at the pace of boys. Girls have always been taught to appear more agreeable and make themselves smaller in every way not to hurt boys feelings.
this is true imo
the men are struggling way harder in comparison to women during their early lives
but the response is always "men are too lazy" and not the reasons WHY they act this way
harder than girls? you're basing this on what, movies? girls are sexually harassed in schools, told to cover up bc they distract the boys, teased for their appearance if they grow breasts early or mocked if they're not conventionally hot, sexualised and hurled misogynistic slurs at
i never said they had it harder than girls
but they FEEL like their worse off regardless
never heard of a girl mocked for growing breasts early??
also unattractive dudes get shit too
Girls get preferential treatment in school? When is this? When they're told to cover up their shoulders because they're a distraction to boys? When they're told that the boy who sexually assaulted them can't be expelled because we must think of his future?
I once explained my mornings to a male coworker @ a corp job. Wash & tame my hair, put on concealer to mask valid exhaustion, dress stylishly but hide my curves so I’m taken seriously, etc. It starts in school & it never stops. I once shrunk a sweater w/out realizing. Never wore it again.
There's about a 40 year lag between education and power.
The performance gap is specific to school grades. Performance is fairly equal on the SAT, if not slightly in boys' favor. But in top GPAs (+honor roll, magnet classes, etc) it's 2:1 girls to boys nowadays.
That doesn't mean they're getting preferential treatment. Girls and women have to work harder and accomplish more to get the career opportunities and pay that men get. So we work harder. Boys and men are not being denied opportunities. In fact, they get college admission preference.
Boys get college admission preference nowadays so that colleges aren't extremely gender lopsided, like 2:1+ girls to boys, because girls do so much better than boys on average in HS in the US.
so girls are clearly and unfairly at a disadvantage despite doing better and yet you're here claiming they get oreferential treatment? do you hear yourself?
I've already addressed this in the thread and am still waiting for evidence of preferential treatment (as opposed to higher performance)
It kind of sounds like you believe that boys are inherently smarter. Therefore, higher performance by girls must be due to rigging.
Put it this way. Would you trade your bodily autonomy and a portion of your wages for a somewhat better GPA on your high school and college transcripts?
When they're expected to pitch in with the housework but their brothers aren't? When they get accused of being not a real girl if they're too good at sports? When they can't get an abortion after being abused by their stepdad because it's illegal in their state?
the mystification of men when it comes to women outperforming them is equal parts hilarious and enraging to me. they just can't get past their foundational belief that men are naturally superior to women. if you believe that, of course you'd find no explanation to this unnatural phenomenon
HS boys are generally much less mature than girls the same age so they have more trouble with focus and completing work. Girls are more articulate as well so boys feel like they’re are always losing arguments BUT most teachers still prioritize boys when calling on students. They also perceive…
They also perceive that girls talk “too much” when studies show boys talk more than girls. Teachers see high-achieving girls as “try hards” where the poor boys are “just doing their best.” I agree boys need different scaffolding in academics but the idea that they are NOT privileged is false.
"Privilege"- the way you're using is, has a different definition than the sociological definition, which is what feminists and anti-bigotry activists use. You are deliberately conflating these two definitions so as to make up a reason to be angry
No. It really isn’t. I hated being stuck with the dipshit who wouldn’t shut up and didn’t do any work, and I made damn sure they didn’t get any credit for my work, either.
Not a teenager’s job to teach other teenagers, ffs.
That same situation, having to work with lazy dipshits on projects will be encountered again and again. (The smarter you are the more often it occurs). It will reoccur in college and professional life.
It's a valuable life skill to have that your not quite as smart classmates didn't get.
It’s about being purposefully set with the boys who are loud and make it difficult for you to work and who sometimes sexually harass you so not it’s not going to always be the same for dudes thanks
Thanks for telling me I wasn't held back by refusal to give me work at my academic level because it was more important that I learn how to manage someone else.
This is an absolutely pathetic attempt at rationalizing the constant parentification and exploitation of girls that happens solely to reduce the workload of an actual adult being paid to do an actual job.
If anything, capitalism is simply finally leaving them behind at rates similar to how it's always treated minorities. They're finally learning how much it sucks. But instead of sucking it up, as others have always been told to do, they're throwing a historic tantrum. Bc white privilege.
Adding race and class as a factor, like, we all know what boys they are actually talking about and it's not the ones getting criminalized before they even get evaluated for a learning disability.
"It's not just feelings: data shows women getting increasingly better at the arbitrary set of hoops we make them jump through in order to participate in society as equals, and now we're running out of excuses"
I mean, we do need to attend to it, it's just that no one seems to want to actually do it. They just want to attack women and girls and assume that that will somehow solve the problem.
And meanwhile every woman you know has either been sexually harassed or assaulted at least once at some point in her life. Every woman is afraid to walk alone at night. Every woman checks the backseat of her car before getting in. But those poor men!
If we ever get out of this, the fact that men and boys were cast by the media as victims in a time when women’s advances and rights were being deliberately erased will strike some historians as one of the more perverse little hypocrisies of our era.
Also as the drawing indicates, it's white boys and young men who are the tragic victims, at a time when Black (male and female) participation in this country's history and culture is being erased.
How are men and boys falling behind, you might ask? Well, boys disrupt their classrooms (no mention of how their misbehavior impacts girls’ education) and men now only have an 11% higher workforce participation rate than women do (it used to be more like 40% higher).
"When you're accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression". Except they're jumping the gun before we even reach anything resembling equality.
I think we need to look at this as an advertising/messaging war. Alt-right tells young men “it’s not your fault, you should be angry at women/immigrants/… and vote for us”.
I think one of the better counters to this argument is “help us fight corporations for a better country for all of us”.
And finally, if you convince someone that they were misled, they could end up being your strongest supporter.
(When I was 8 or 9 I used to read the NRA magazines the local barber left in the waiting area, and thought they made a lot of sense. When I got older, I hated the NRA for that.)
More teenagers report that girls "seem like leaders" than report that boys do. Do not, under any circumstances, look up the actual distribution of leadership positions among men and women in politics, civil society, or the workforce. 🙃
(They have to measure vibes to make it seem like boys and men are being left behind by girls and women because all actual indicators of status, wealth, or wellbeing indicate the reverse.)
Boys and men have always been centered in Western culture throughout history. Girls and women are taught to decenter themselves while to center men always in their lives. It's only been in the 20th century, the last half of that century, when that centering has been challenged.
Thinking how whenever there was a purported crisis of Single Lonely Women all the media was trying to tell women how to solve the problem i.e. catch a man.
Now that male loneliness is the hot topic though the emphasis is once again...on women. To solve the problem
2. For thousands of years the default assumption was that *women* were the ones desperate to get a guy. Men on the other hand preferred to be Swinging Singles.
But changes in women's economic/social circumstances suddenly removed a lot of that former impetus.
I'm willing to accept that the results are statistically significant (since I'm not a statistician) but "39 percent of men and 36 percent of women don’t have a partner" is a very small difference??? Which doesn't feel like a crisis situation (and seems to ride on an assumption of heterosexuality)
Well, men "deserve" partners (who will cook/clean/provide sex on demand), and women should be happy with any male that will have them, so the fact that they don't have a partner means they are unacceptably picky. /s
And there is this here, this takeaway Graf (which slides past income inequality bc bo-ring women gripes) and lands on notion that the reason for all this woe… is the headfuck that the work world is too feminized. Love to be the villain in this fantasy
And it always comes back to “but boys are just developmentally different, so they really need male role models in elementary school/lower behavioral standards/fewer tests/etc/etc/etc.” Somehow education is now stacked for girls—who’ve only been ALLOWED to go to most colleges for 50 years!!!! 🤯
Boys children disrupt classrooms when their needs are not being met. Yes, it’s important to ensure that the disruptive behavior of bored/restless/unhappy kids doesn’t impact other students but schools should be welcoming happy places for all kids.
what sucks is that boys are disruptive and get sent outside to run it off on the playground, while the girls who have been socialized to suck it up are struggling just as much but are getting none of the attention.
My experience when my son was in elementary is that kids got “punished” by having recess time taken away. Yes, struggling girls need attention but it doesn’t have to be a zero sum game.
it doesn't have to be zero sum. the point of the post really is, why are we saying boys have a big problem that we as a whole society needs to address, when it's boys, girls, and especially nonbinary kids who need support? The problems "boys" have seem to be problems everyone else is dealing with.
Or, the girls are assigned to "fix" the bad behavior of boys, by sitting next to them, helping them in the classroom, etc. Yet, if a boy treats them badly (physically or emotionally), the girl is told that she should ignore it (and continue to make herself a target), because "boys will be boys".
That labour participation graph got to me the most. You'd figure the real story there would be why American women's labour participation rates have plateaued since around 2000, but the article doesn't so much as mention that development.
1/3 of American pregnancies are dangerous now. 1/3 of our girls and women are second class citizens, some who die needlessly, some who have fewer rights over their future and family planning than their rapists.
As a nation, we have abandoned these girls and women. They are forgotten casualties.
Everybody who wasn’t a cis white guy was told they had to level up to have a better life and opportunities, so we did - while they f’ed around. Now they’re behind in some aspects and that’s all on us? They should take their own damn advice.
Isn’t that always the case right before men try rob women of their basic rights? After WWII, they called women who wished to stay employed, “Job Hoarders.”
In Canada currently there has been a gruelling 7 day cross examination of a rape victim alleged by 5 hockey players that has blamed her every step of the way and has been covered live, reinforcing every rape culture stereotype in the book.
100%. The fact that a certain percentage of men feel they don’t have to grow up and be responsible, empathetic and outward-looking, is a failure of a culture that tells them that it’s ok to be that way. It isn’t ok to be that way because it’s selfish. Go out into the world and you’ll soon figure out
That you aren’t owed attention and your story only has value if it contains the narrative of others. Men have everything they could ask for and more. White men, even more. If you feel hard done by, there’s a reason and it’s definitely not because of some underlying prejudice agains your ‘type’.
It means they are afforded more opportunity, more forgiveness, better wages, better jobs, the benefit of the doubt, less prejudice against them… as a section of society, white men, are the pinnacle of opportunity, even with measures that try to combat that standing like DEI initiatives.
that may be true in general, but most young men aren't getting those opportunities when they start adulthood
not everyone can go to an ivy and get a fat paying finance job
Women are the only group in the history of the US to have their human rights rolled back 50 years. Women & girls in some red states are subjected to forced pregnancy & forced childbirth. That means we don’t legally own our own bodies. The state owns us & makes our decisions. And men have it bad? 🤣
And it’s wild how SO much of this piece contradicts its premise. Passage after passage adds up to : “yeah boys are still way ahead in every area that counts but I don’t know, things feel icky.”
The fact is they DO suffer more in school. Girls and women are simply more equipped to study IMO and from what I’ve seen as a teacher. Women are more mature sooner. But then MEN get all that male privilege that means they get the advances and protections!
Girls are *forced* to mature faster. We're held accountable for boys' and men's actions before we even hit puberty and more likely to be tasked with caregiving and housework
Also that women and girls are the ones who need to do the tending while backing off their own ambitions. Otherwise they'll all become school shooters bc really, what other option do they have if women they hate refuse to have sex with them?
it's kind of similar to the way so many of the lynchings of the Jim Crow era were pegged to an (often made-up) greater victim... something in a human minds needs a greater imaginary victim before assaulting the real victim.
Wait but not actually help boys either, that would be leftism. Nooo we should only ever use them as a whataboutism to justify oppressing women because that's the enlightened centrist way!
Well, yeah.
They finally had to do it themselves, and do it well, and compete against people who could.
Even in an age where ChatGPT can do your term papers, most just decided that was too hard.
While your experience may be that you are being ‘incessantly told’, within patriarchy the problems of men which expose them as frail humans are actively suppressed. Men internalize this and fail to seek help because the weakness itself is unmanly. Everyone deserves empathy.
only sort of related, but my mom said yesterday that “oh girls’ brains do develop faster than boys” and I said “do they, or do we just expect more from them while letting boys slide”
I’m sure lots goes into boys being “behind” but this double-standard coddling is for sure a central cause
I’m not a neurologist and so I’m fully willing to admit I might be wrong, but I think the overwhelming evidence that girls are also expected to be more mature, and also do more family work compared to boys also a factor rather than a division determined by chromosomal sex
Not the gymnasts, dancers, very active & athletic females. Is it eating disorders or changing now that males are more sedentary than in old days? Females who are sexualized and/or sexually abused chronically as toddler/young children mature younger.
most gymnasts are really short (it gives you an advantage for doing flips and shit) most of team usa is under 5'
idk about athletes
i dont think eating disorders have a significant effect with this phenomenon
gonna need sources on the last point, that seems like a stretch
My superpower as a dvlp psych obsessed teen babysitter was to guess within a few days an infants (1 wk-18 mo) due date age. (Kids born early were at their due date age not birth age). But any sex, if +active=speech lagged. If +verbal=motor lagged. If +thoughtful=first word was a full sentence.
I know brain development starts in utero w/maternal nutrition and chronic stress cortisol levels. Child predisposed to prepare for high stress environment & to get stress related endocrine diseases like type2 diabetes in their lifetime.
patriarchy hasn’t disappeared men dominate many fields including politics and are actively trying to strip women of their rights, men are still ahead, and it says a lot about the mediocrity, failures, and entitlement of the “behind” boys and men that this is treated like a super serious problem
like I’m sure there are boys being failed by society, but the things failing them are systemic, like poorly funded education, they aren’t being failed because they are boys and get more Grace than girls in the same situation and it’s insane to frame it as a some type of sexism against males
She did eventually agree that socialization might actually be a better explanation & that even if girls do “mature faster” that’s not a strict biological law
she’s actually kind of a feminist, but this maturity difference gets repeated so much I think she just internalized it as true
I don’t know the definition of exactly how “female brains grow faster”, but that statistic is also used r/t females w/trauma & stress who dvlp younger. The predisposition starts maternal stress = all sexes in utero. Affects frontal lobes (less dvlp LT) & reproductive dvlp is younger
It'd be one thing if it was actual concern for providing positive role models and addressing the effects of toxic masculinity or the constant grind of capitalism, but it's never actually that, it's always just a way to shout down non-cishet white men from talking, or repeat fascist talking points
When they worry about kids in the juvenile detention system or men trapped in the criminal justice system or men being poisoned at their jobs because OSHA is not there and corporations can do whatever they want—THEN I will believe they care about ‘men.’
"Cool, so are we going to address the toxicity of the traditional model of masculinity or some of the societal factors that have disconnected them from meaningful work?"
"Pfft, no, we're gonna blame women and minorities, drop a bunch of anti-Semitic dogwhistles, and then say the answer is fascism."
Yeah this bullshit falls apart as soon as you ask, “Falling behind whom?” Like women are supposedly surging ahead? That’s why they run the world now I guess
They're falling behind because turns out on average they're stupider than women and gay men which is why they hate them although they like lesbians but only blonde ones and only with huge breasts and only when they rub them together and the minute they stop they go back to hating them.
Miseducated.. misled.. willfully ignorant of anything outside their chosen fandoms, sure.
Still, take away their screens and influencers and leave them on a tropical island for a month and we may be surprised at how intelligent they can get when the chips are down.
I was just on reddit and seeing true crime posts and read about the St. Kizito Massacre and, I'm sorry world, but I just have a really hard time feeling bad for boys and men.
I read this article & the entire thing managed to miss the "cause" of males "falling behind" - because for at least a brief window, they weren't given the advantage of excessively privileged treatment & hand holding & now most are refusing to put any effort into something they feel entitled to.
But men and boys are taught to bury their feelings, so OF COURSE they have to respond by oppressing, exploiting, pushing down, assaulting, and denying rights and freedom to women. They don’t have a choice those poor souls
I don’t give a toss what men are taught. None of that should equal problems for women. It’s time for men to face their issues on their own w/o having to shit on women in the process. If they need to lean, they can ask, but we shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of their problems around anymore.
Men's feelings are not everyone's problem. Men are solely responsible for their feelings, and the actions they choose to do. They're not a natural disaster, the ones who do "crack down" do so consciously and on purpose and to their own shame.
I really don't know what your point is in this thread. If men want sympathy, they need to not make their feelings everyone's problem. It's not inevitable, it's individuals making choices. "Men are sad uwu we must as a society cure their sadness so they don't kill everyone" is unsympathetic.
They aren’t falling behind. Women are clearly better. They are simply losing to their accomplished female peers. Plus, mommy’s boys. Just like their loser orange hero.
Because in a patriarchal society, they are the only ones who matter.
And it says so much about how that society views women that instead of providing meaningful aid to struggling males, it chooses to drag women backwards. Just appalling behavior all the way around.
It’s constant! And so annoying. I was berated about this by a very emotion guy the other night at a dinner. The whole time I was thinking, who does this dude remind me of? Then it hit me. Brett Kavanaugh vibes.
US women couldn't get a credit card, a mortgage, or a car loan in their own name - without a male co-signer - until 1974. Business loans not until 1988.
We lost *generations* of women to their legal inability to control their own body or their own money & nobody cared.
People act like this was ancient history. I was in grade school in 74. I remember a great teacher telling us to go home and ask our parent if our mothers names were on any financial documents. The results stunned us. She was the best teacher I ever encountered.
As with the concept of consent, there are too many people who choose to misunderstand the difference between having something done to you and doing something to yourself.
Every day it pushes me a little bit closer to full on Joker status, istg.
Weird, that cohort we were actively sabotaging actually does really well when we stop actively sabotaging just a tiny bit! But, you know, that’s not faaaair, how are the boys and men supposed to feel innately superior now?!
Isn’t this just natural selection? The “simps” are being selected for and the male of the species that cannot adapt and become emotionally intelligent will fail to procreate.
Also, teen boys see these types of criticisms and understand that collective efforts to address their mental health are mocked and derided which....doesn't help anyone.
no, they're not mocked and derided. they're taken super seriously, as evidenced by the article quoted above. they're prioritised. even this thread isn't mocking them, it's meaningful and nuanced criticism
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Their collective freak out about lonely boys, trans kids, and (white) birth rates that nobody else is concerned about.
once girls started going to school at similar rates of boys (and post title IX) they do better
Pay attention to them or they will abuse again!!1!
A whole lot of HS boys are told they are privileged, yet it is completely at odds with their lived experience.
the men are struggling way harder in comparison to women during their early lives
but the response is always "men are too lazy" and not the reasons WHY they act this way
but they FEEL like their worse off regardless
never heard of a girl mocked for growing breasts early??
also unattractive dudes get shit too
"the men are struggling way harder in comparison to women during their early lives"
"Never heard of it so it must not happen."
title IX was so successful it flipped the gender divide the other way
The performance gap is specific to school grades. Performance is fairly equal on the SAT, if not slightly in boys' favor. But in top GPAs (+honor roll, magnet classes, etc) it's 2:1 girls to boys nowadays.
The continuous change toward the way girls learn has had the consequence of the widening grade gap.
It kind of sounds like you believe that boys are inherently smarter. Therefore, higher performance by girls must be due to rigging.
Education isn't just about the facts you're learning.
Not a teenager’s job to teach other teenagers, ffs.
It's a valuable life skill to have that your not quite as smart classmates didn't get.
It’s about being purposefully set with the boys who are loud and make it difficult for you to work and who sometimes sexually harass you so not it’s not going to always be the same for dudes thanks
As a kid.
Jfc men are so fucking exhausting.
*yes, I am being snarky. And now I need to step aside. I just threw up a little.
I think one of the better counters to this argument is “help us fight corporations for a better country for all of us”.
The folks doing this are evil. A lot of the targets probably weren't, but are being convinced to believe and support evil.
(When I was 8 or 9 I used to read the NRA magazines the local barber left in the waiting area, and thought they made a lot of sense. When I got older, I hated the NRA for that.)
Now that male loneliness is the hot topic though the emphasis is once again...on women. To solve the problem
But changes in women's economic/social circumstances suddenly removed a lot of that former impetus.
Boyschildren disrupt classrooms when their needs are not being met. Yes, it’s important to ensure that the disruptive behavior of bored/restless/unhappy kids doesn’t impact other students but schools should be welcoming happy places for all kids.As a nation, we have abandoned these girls and women. They are forgotten casualties.
“Guys - he is accused of rape. Can we focus here!?!?!?”
It’s maddening and gross.
And they elected a *convicted rapist* as president.
Like…
/sigh.
That tells you everything.
what does that mean
not everyone can go to an ivy and get a fat paying finance job
So many men at the time were sputtering “But, but are they qualified?!”
Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris were also victims of this misogyny
NOOOOO
Girls, stop studying or your nail salon could get shot up
They finally had to do it themselves, and do it well, and compete against people who could.
Even in an age where ChatGPT can do your term papers, most just decided that was too hard.
I’m sure lots goes into boys being “behind” but this double-standard coddling is for sure a central cause
countless studies have proven this
https://medium.com/the-noösphere/do-girls-really-mature-faster-than-boys-or-do-we-just-force-them-to-68e31307abf3
idk about athletes
i dont think eating disorders have a significant effect with this phenomenon
gonna need sources on the last point, that seems like a stretch
She did eventually agree that socialization might actually be a better explanation & that even if girls do “mature faster” that’s not a strict biological law
she’s actually kind of a feminist, but this maturity difference gets repeated so much I think she just internalized it as true
"Pfft, no, we're gonna blame women and minorities, drop a bunch of anti-Semitic dogwhistles, and then say the answer is fascism."
Miseducated.. misled.. willfully ignorant of anything outside their chosen fandoms, sure.
Still, take away their screens and influencers and leave them on a tropical island for a month and we may be surprised at how intelligent they can get when the chips are down.
but they will make it so
And it says so much about how that society views women that instead of providing meaningful aid to struggling males, it chooses to drag women backwards. Just appalling behavior all the way around.
a) girls and women are under siege
b) boys are adrift and suffering, too
The witless hatred aimed at you online doesn’t disprove b). It’s a mechanism for deforming boys also
My prescription for the welfare of boys isn’t forcing more compliance from girls
Yet somehow it’s women’s fault
Men and boys are being told that they had a birthright to rule over women.
They didn't have to earn it.
It was theirs by virtue of a Y-chromosome.
Of course, that was bullshit... but it made some of them mad and they became determined to FORCE their rule onto women.
We lost *generations* of women to their legal inability to control their own body or their own money & nobody cared.
https://www.washingtoninformer.com/black-women-jobs-loss-april/
Weird, that cohort we were actively sabotaging actually does really well when we stop actively sabotaging just a tiny bit! But, you know, that’s not faaaair, how are the boys and men supposed to feel innately superior now?!
But sadly too many still think with the wrong head…..
There, I fixed it for you.