I have lived in a country where communication between adults and minors is not frowned upon in the slightest and so I have been a male mentor for a bunch of girls in an orphanage for many years.
(Once I perish, no one is going to remember any of my business projects, clean codebases and unit test coverage. But that little hobby of mine - oh, these deliverables are gonna last).
Anyways. Happy to be a mentor to teenagers but it seems to me that in the US that's impossible on multiple levels.
I used to work for a short time as an IT teacher. The kids there were wonderful, even the troublemakers weren't that bad. What struck me is that clearly for some of the boys I seemed to be the only male figure they could related to in their lives: direct, available, happy to just be there and listen, sharing a common passion. They would come to me very often to talk about anything, not just computers. The younger ones also tried to hug me, which of course I had to stop, which is a pity as I believe these kids should be hugged as much as they need, obviously not necessarily by me.
Relationship with fathers are not easy even at the best of times, there are a bunch of factors that complicate things. Somewhat ironically, having a relationship with a stranger can be much easier and liberating. It's a bit like talking about your problems with a barman.
I have much easier relationship with other son's peers than him. And I love him to no end and we do lots of hugs and are generally close.
But your own kids have seemingly this special superpower to get you pissed off to extreme levels (both for men and women) that no other situation in adult life can ever come close to. We as adults learnt the easy or hard way some form of basic empathy required when communicating with others, while kids lack it. Like doing 20x the same thing that pisses you off while ignoring your kind calm words - where else do you experience it, in your face, with big grin on top of that?
I've see it many times - people who are otherwise calm and relaxed get turned to 11 in seconds by their offsprings doing something stupid, arrogant or dangerous. Bonus points if its any form of unprovoked aggression towards other kids, especially younger/weaker.
It does feel a bit cruel that we were told to be vulnerable and open, and then when men said we’re lonely got accused of asking other people to fix our problems and that we just needed to deal with it.
Also I don’t think I’d risk being e.g. a teacher - the girls in my high school would casually joke about accusing their teachers of being creeps if they failed a test, etc.
I think one problem we have (always had, but worse now that there are so many more opinions to be exposed to) is that we expect "society's" opinions to be consistent, despite being made up of millions of different people.
Of course there are going to be people telling others to be vulnerable and open, and of course there are also going to be people telling others not to complain because that's dumping their problems on other people.
> we were told to be vulnerable and open, and then when men said we’re lonely got accused of asking other people to fix our problems
The discrimination pendulum swinged the other way. And as with a lot of discrimination, the criticism is in reality aimed at what you are, not what you do. So you will never get it right in the eyes of those critics. On the other hand the roles of men in society are changing and it's not at all clear "to what". "Be a man but don't really be one, it's complicated".
Well we have data showing that people have fewer close friends, men in particular, than in decades past. This used to be what the loneliness epidemic referred to, but somehow it got turned in to being about dating.
I mean, I’m lonely and I’m married. Middle age is a tough time for friendships.
Too many lonely men seem to think that women can and should fix all their problems. That if only they had a relationship all their shit would be over.
While the first step should be to join a hobby club or do some volunteer work or find a sport to do (and definitely not the gym or running or any other solo sport). Just find something where you regularly interact with people, and especially the same people over a longer period of time.
One of the saddest things I heard was a young kid say he's never heard the word masculinity unless it was paired with the word toxic before it. With that kind of attitude is this any wonder?
It is difficult to get society to accept that maybe it's time to balance the constant public and media validation of women with some public and media validation of men.
Disney has seen a bunch of Marvel flops since they switched the focus to Marvel properties that target women (they've since publicly indicated a course correction on this).
Take a bunch of IP that primarily males are interested in (super-heros), water it down so that it's less male focused, and then find that neither males nor females are interested.
One of my most crank opinions is that superhero stuff is (a) for kids, (b) inherently a bit fascist even if you make it textually anti-fascist, and (c) ultimately like popcorn, something that should be only a small part of a more varied diet.
Now, that's not a terribly strong opinion, and I know it'll make a lot of people mad, but I have personally got fed up with the oversupply of superhero stuff and believe that there should be more movies that mixed-gender adult audiences would like. Maybe find a way of doing an action-romcom that men will like. Characters that have human level ability and must find human level solutions. Probably the problem is that audience has now fragmented, moving the genders further apart.
Yeah “society” had millennia of that. It’s quite telling that perhaps less than a decade of taking women seriously led to a a vitriol filled backlash full of Tates, Trumps and the manosphere.
It’s also quite telling that your main complaint is Disney superhero movies. It’s difficult to think of something more juvenile and unimportant.
> It’s quite telling that perhaps less than a decade of taking women seriously led to a a vitriol filled backlash full of Tates, Trumps and the manosphere.
1. It's been about 30 years since the "strong independent women" meme first started in popular media.
2. Where is the vitriol and backlash in my post to which you are referring to?
Your response looks like a canned one that can be inserted into any discussion about males.
> It's been about 30 years since the "strong independent women" meme first started in popular media.
Much longer than that. While there was significant pre-war feminism, it really took off in the 1960s. Perhaps what people mean is a sort of post-"Bechdel test" world, where people will be sharply criticized if they make a piece of media that only has (properly characterized) male characters.
I see it as a co-existence problem. Trying to insist on male-only spaces or male-only values isn't going to fly any more. A lot of traditional masculinity is framed around being "not a woman", an inherently denigratory concept. It needs a programme that is (a) positive and (b) a concept of personhood and value that's not tied to gender.
> It is difficult to get society to accept that maybe it's time to balance the constant public and media validation of women with some public and media validation of men.
But its up to men to do the work. Women needed decades and decades to figure out what it meant to be a women and how to get what they wanted. They took the time and effort to organise, resulting in suffragettes and women's clubs and feminism and all that. Men could so far skip this all and just coast by on being the default. And now we're stuck with the situation that there are barely any male role models (except incredibly vile and toxic ones like Tate and Peterson), and trying to figure out what it means to be a man in a world that is rapidly changing, where men no longer can just be the breadwinner.
Not only that, but women are also demanding more from men (more emotional maturity, more support with chores and child raising, having a fully developed personality). And too many men seem either incapable or unwilling to change, preferring to lash out against 'woke' and voting for extreme rightwing politics that aims to put women back in the kitchen.
What work would this be? Any organisation to the benefit of males would instantly be shutdown.
What do you have in mind that won't get backlash? I mean, after all, even just a quantitative study has elicited, in this thread, much anti-male sentiment in the form of strawmen.
So I am curious how you see male-advocacy groups proceeding in a manner that has no or limited backlash.
My friend’s son was four and had to have it explicitly explained to him that men can be scientists, too! Based on all the books he’d been read and other media, he assumed only women were scientists.
So we can all be schooled in the important manly things such as the '6 Card Games Every Many Should Know' or 'The Dale Carnegie That Will Instantly Improve Your Relationships'?
No, so we can all be schooled in "Why Every Man Should Be Strong"[0], "How to Set a Table"[1], "9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches"[2] or "Win the War on Debt: 80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money"[3]. You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves. That's not a "good" manly behavior.
> You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves
Those examples you posted that actually are good would also seem to me to be universally important for everyone across all genders. '80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money' seems useful for everyone, and while I doubt a lot of people are going to need '9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches' immediately, what makes that specifically 'manly' and not good for anyone either going seriously outdoors or prepping.
Yes, I picked those examples deliberately, but I don't see why any of the qualitatively good ones are 'manly'.
> Those examples you posted that actually are good would also seem to me to be universally important for everyone across all genders. '80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money' seems useful for everyone, and while I doubt a lot of people are going to need '9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches' immediately, what makes that specifically 'manly' and not good for anyone either going seriously outdoors or prepping.
For the same reason "Be strong and independent" is a message targeted only at women, even though it can easily double as a universal message.
I think there might be some of that happening on YouTube, James from Speeed[0] (who used to be in Donut Media before) has been mixing the usual car-related content with wholesome masculinity stuff, and I feel that should be the future of making masculinity be seen less as "being tough" to being a resilient, dependable, empathetic person.
I don't think his channel is the only one, it's the only one I'm exposed to so kinda tells me there should be quite a bit more of those around, hopefully that way of masculinity gets traction instead of Andrew Tate-esque buffoons.
Whole bunch of factors involved in this which HN is ill-equipped to deal with. But I think paranoia about "grooming" should probably be counted as a factor as well. A lot of people are going to be suspicious about an adult man who wants to hang out with children. So everything gets tangled up and shut down in the name of safeguarding.
If you ask the question "what proportion of girls and young women have a male mentor", the problem becomes even more obvious.
Yeah, this is also a huge part of it. Society has made it incredibly dangerous for any man to be around children, because a single allegation is enough to destroy a life.
In fairness, a single act of abuse can wreck someone's mental health for their whole life as well. It's a difficult problem that requires lots of human effort.
I think there is a big problem around "man things" and "girl things" that has cost a lot to society, the women scientists who thought it wasn't for them, the men teachers and nurses who thought the same, and all the knowledge kept from people seen as being the wrong gender for it (cooking, cleaning, car repair ...) and i think the solution and a necessary step for the advancement of humanity is the recognition that the importance of sex is overinflated in society, and that a lot of things attributed to sex are actually social constructs, like gender.
In other words i think a post gender society would allow the distribution of occupations and knowledge to better match the populations skills and interest and children having access to better mentors.
You don't understand much if you think that to fight the lack of mentors for men, you have to put down women. It's completely orthogonal.
People in power want you to have this "I don't have what I want because this other minority takes it from me", but it's simply wrong, even though this argument seems to capture the mind of simple-minded people.
We don't have what we want because we're in a ruthless capitalist society, directed by stupidoes like Trump and Musk
> You don't understand much if you think that to fight the lack of mentors for men, you have to put down women. It's completely orthogonal.
Knee-jerk much? How on earth did you get "put down women" from what I wrote?
> People in power want you to have this "I don't have what I want because this other minority takes it from me", but it's simply wrong, even though this argument seems to capture the mind of simple-minded people.
Where did you read that in the tiny little snippet I wrote?
Let me be clear, so that there is no misunderstanding -
1. Men dominate the bottom of almost every ranking. This is just another ranking.
Maybe before we try to fix this specific ranking, we should be asking ourselves why men are at the bottom in every ranking.
> to fight the lack of mentors for men, you have to put down women
For sure you don't have to put women as a whole down. But society and media these days are generally dominated by the most toxic voices. Toxic feminism is a big issue, that's what we have to put down for this particular purpose.
> You don't understand much if you think that to fight the lack of mentors for men, you have to put down women
The reverse of this has been what's been dominating for a decade. Anything pro-men (or even just neutral) can be accused of being anti-woman, which creates a chilling effect as female-dominated HR departments can make life very difficult for men looking to provide for their families.
Discrimination along protected attributes such as gender would be highly illegal though, so no doubt you’d have tons of evidence to present beyond “gossipy HR ladies”.
I didn't mention gossip at all. Are you pretending to quote something I never said, to just perfectly illustrate the bad faith nonsense that is ever-injected into even simple conversations about this topic?
It might be worth Googling James Damore as an early example of this chilling effect.
What about their dad’s & uncle’s? Mum’s male friends? I don’t know, external (outside the family) isn’t the only source of “mentorship” and we should stop trying to pretend it is
all those fellowships and fanboy cultures and follower counts and network and everybody gets all they want to evolve and raise their children to be witty and snappy and vibe with that pan all the chill kids are playing in those pretty red forests nowadays and some researchers found a shortage of male mentors?
is this one of those "we want you" recruiting scarcity tactics?
People are going to misread the article and go off in their own direction but the problem is clearly capitalism. It's always been capitalism. Lower income boys have drastically less access to male mentors than higher income ones and the article even states this.
Low family income means less options. Most of your mentors at a young age are going to come from schooling, which still generally has a gender tilt towards women for multiple reasons. But lower income schools are going to be more resource starved with larger classes and less time for teachers to interact with students individually.
edit: fixed wording to better emphasize what I meant
Low income families skew nonconventional/single parent which fractures the extended family unit, less likely to have uncles etc around to step in as a mentor.
Smaller family sizes over the previous generation have also contributed to this.
I have 9 uncles in total (including all my aunts' partners). My kid has one.
Also, if you grow up in a household that rents (moves often or is surrounded by neighbours who move often), you are less likely to have long term reliable neighbours available to form adult-child relationships with.
Yes lower income boys are hit way harder, but it's not like the issue disappears at the higher end.
> 72 percent of boys from households earning $100,000 or more reported having a male mentor for schoolwork.
> A similar trend appeared regarding relationship advice. Only 45 percent of boys in the lowest income group had a male mentor for relationships. This compares to 67 percent of boys in the highest income group.
Even 30% of rich kids don't have access to a proper male role model, those are terrible numbers!
$100,000 isn't even 'rich' nowdays, that's below middle class especially if we're talking about an actual family unit. I can guarantee that if this research further stratified things into $100-200k, and $200k+ you would see the results continue to improve as people cross the threshold into middle class.
This survey can be seen as comparing people in poverty level income vs everyone else.
A lot of the lower income kids are from single parent homes (which is why they can't cross the $100.000 threshold), those will obviously have less access to a male role model.
If you correct for that the numbers would likely get closer, not further apart.
Yes, sorry, I meant single parent. I don't mean to fight against the idea that income is correlated to the problem, just that "lack of male role models" cannot be reduced to income inequality.
I believe poverty is the natural state of man and I wonder how non-capitalism (= socialism?) makes people rich?
What I think you mean is that equal access to education is a promise of the state that is too often broken.
But then we're talking about incompetence or corruption at the state level, paid for and sustained with your taxes, and you have those problems in socialism, too.
Tbh I do not know but I'm sick and tired of seeing these threads devolve in the most cringe way possible. Tech already has a bad reputation in this respect and HN really isn't helping. And reading some of the comments in this thread that assessment was spot on.
I have lived in a country where communication between adults and minors is not frowned upon in the slightest and so I have been a male mentor for a bunch of girls in an orphanage for many years.
(Once I perish, no one is going to remember any of my business projects, clean codebases and unit test coverage. But that little hobby of mine - oh, these deliverables are gonna last).
Anyways. Happy to be a mentor to teenagers but it seems to me that in the US that's impossible on multiple levels.
I used to work for a short time as an IT teacher. The kids there were wonderful, even the troublemakers weren't that bad. What struck me is that clearly for some of the boys I seemed to be the only male figure they could related to in their lives: direct, available, happy to just be there and listen, sharing a common passion. They would come to me very often to talk about anything, not just computers. The younger ones also tried to hug me, which of course I had to stop, which is a pity as I believe these kids should be hugged as much as they need, obviously not necessarily by me.
"which of course I had to stop".
I want to go back to a world where I can be affectionate toward children without an implication of something more sinister.
Relationship with fathers are not easy even at the best of times, there are a bunch of factors that complicate things. Somewhat ironically, having a relationship with a stranger can be much easier and liberating. It's a bit like talking about your problems with a barman.
I have much easier relationship with other son's peers than him. And I love him to no end and we do lots of hugs and are generally close.
But your own kids have seemingly this special superpower to get you pissed off to extreme levels (both for men and women) that no other situation in adult life can ever come close to. We as adults learnt the easy or hard way some form of basic empathy required when communicating with others, while kids lack it. Like doing 20x the same thing that pisses you off while ignoring your kind calm words - where else do you experience it, in your face, with big grin on top of that?
I've see it many times - people who are otherwise calm and relaxed get turned to 11 in seconds by their offsprings doing something stupid, arrogant or dangerous. Bonus points if its any form of unprovoked aggression towards other kids, especially younger/weaker.
It does feel a bit cruel that we were told to be vulnerable and open, and then when men said we’re lonely got accused of asking other people to fix our problems and that we just needed to deal with it.
Also I don’t think I’d risk being e.g. a teacher - the girls in my high school would casually joke about accusing their teachers of being creeps if they failed a test, etc.
I think one problem we have (always had, but worse now that there are so many more opinions to be exposed to) is that we expect "society's" opinions to be consistent, despite being made up of millions of different people.
Of course there are going to be people telling others to be vulnerable and open, and of course there are also going to be people telling others not to complain because that's dumping their problems on other people.
Also, by "society" often people mean "twitter", which is hardly an organic cross section of public opinion.
> we were told to be vulnerable and open, and then when men said we’re lonely got accused of asking other people to fix our problems
The discrimination pendulum swinged the other way. And as with a lot of discrimination, the criticism is in reality aimed at what you are, not what you do. So you will never get it right in the eyes of those critics. On the other hand the roles of men in society are changing and it's not at all clear "to what". "Be a man but don't really be one, it's complicated".
Well we have data showing that people have fewer close friends, men in particular, than in decades past. This used to be what the loneliness epidemic referred to, but somehow it got turned in to being about dating.
I mean, I’m lonely and I’m married. Middle age is a tough time for friendships.
Too many lonely men seem to think that women can and should fix all their problems. That if only they had a relationship all their shit would be over.
While the first step should be to join a hobby club or do some volunteer work or find a sport to do (and definitely not the gym or running or any other solo sport). Just find something where you regularly interact with people, and especially the same people over a longer period of time.
I was talking about friendships, not dating.
One of the saddest things I heard was a young kid say he's never heard the word masculinity unless it was paired with the word toxic before it. With that kind of attitude is this any wonder?
It is difficult to get society to accept that maybe it's time to balance the constant public and media validation of women with some public and media validation of men.
Disney has seen a bunch of Marvel flops since they switched the focus to Marvel properties that target women (they've since publicly indicated a course correction on this).
Take a bunch of IP that primarily males are interested in (super-heros), water it down so that it's less male focused, and then find that neither males nor females are interested.
> Marvel
One of my most crank opinions is that superhero stuff is (a) for kids, (b) inherently a bit fascist even if you make it textually anti-fascist, and (c) ultimately like popcorn, something that should be only a small part of a more varied diet.
Now, that's not a terribly strong opinion, and I know it'll make a lot of people mad, but I have personally got fed up with the oversupply of superhero stuff and believe that there should be more movies that mixed-gender adult audiences would like. Maybe find a way of doing an action-romcom that men will like. Characters that have human level ability and must find human level solutions. Probably the problem is that audience has now fragmented, moving the genders further apart.
Yeah “society” had millennia of that. It’s quite telling that perhaps less than a decade of taking women seriously led to a a vitriol filled backlash full of Tates, Trumps and the manosphere.
It’s also quite telling that your main complaint is Disney superhero movies. It’s difficult to think of something more juvenile and unimportant.
> It’s quite telling that perhaps less than a decade of taking women seriously led to a a vitriol filled backlash full of Tates, Trumps and the manosphere.
1. It's been about 30 years since the "strong independent women" meme first started in popular media.
2. Where is the vitriol and backlash in my post to which you are referring to?
Your response looks like a canned one that can be inserted into any discussion about males.
> It's been about 30 years since the "strong independent women" meme first started in popular media.
Much longer than that. While there was significant pre-war feminism, it really took off in the 1960s. Perhaps what people mean is a sort of post-"Bechdel test" world, where people will be sharply criticized if they make a piece of media that only has (properly characterized) male characters.
I see it as a co-existence problem. Trying to insist on male-only spaces or male-only values isn't going to fly any more. A lot of traditional masculinity is framed around being "not a woman", an inherently denigratory concept. It needs a programme that is (a) positive and (b) a concept of personhood and value that's not tied to gender.
> It is difficult to get society to accept that maybe it's time to balance the constant public and media validation of women with some public and media validation of men.
But its up to men to do the work. Women needed decades and decades to figure out what it meant to be a women and how to get what they wanted. They took the time and effort to organise, resulting in suffragettes and women's clubs and feminism and all that. Men could so far skip this all and just coast by on being the default. And now we're stuck with the situation that there are barely any male role models (except incredibly vile and toxic ones like Tate and Peterson), and trying to figure out what it means to be a man in a world that is rapidly changing, where men no longer can just be the breadwinner.
Not only that, but women are also demanding more from men (more emotional maturity, more support with chores and child raising, having a fully developed personality). And too many men seem either incapable or unwilling to change, preferring to lash out against 'woke' and voting for extreme rightwing politics that aims to put women back in the kitchen.
> But its up to men to do the work.
What work would this be? Any organisation to the benefit of males would instantly be shutdown.
What do you have in mind that won't get backlash? I mean, after all, even just a quantitative study has elicited, in this thread, much anti-male sentiment in the form of strawmen.
So I am curious how you see male-advocacy groups proceeding in a manner that has no or limited backlash.
My friend’s son was four and had to have it explicitly explained to him that men can be scientists, too! Based on all the books he’d been read and other media, he assumed only women were scientists.
Sites like artofmanliness.com seem to be more and more needed in today's world.
So we can all be schooled in the important manly things such as the '6 Card Games Every Many Should Know' or 'The Dale Carnegie That Will Instantly Improve Your Relationships'?
No, so we can all be schooled in "Why Every Man Should Be Strong"[0], "How to Set a Table"[1], "9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches"[2] or "Win the War on Debt: 80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money"[3]. You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves. That's not a "good" manly behavior.
[0] https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/fitness/why-ev...
[1] https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/etiquette/how-to-se...
[2] https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/outdoor-survival/9-way...
[3] https://www.artofmanliness.com/career-wealth/wealth/money-sa...
> You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves
Those examples you posted that actually are good would also seem to me to be universally important for everyone across all genders. '80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money' seems useful for everyone, and while I doubt a lot of people are going to need '9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches' immediately, what makes that specifically 'manly' and not good for anyone either going seriously outdoors or prepping.
Yes, I picked those examples deliberately, but I don't see why any of the qualitatively good ones are 'manly'.
> Those examples you posted that actually are good would also seem to me to be universally important for everyone across all genders. '80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money' seems useful for everyone, and while I doubt a lot of people are going to need '9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches' immediately, what makes that specifically 'manly' and not good for anyone either going seriously outdoors or prepping.
For the same reason "Be strong and independent" is a message targeted only at women, even though it can easily double as a universal message.
I think there might be some of that happening on YouTube, James from Speeed[0] (who used to be in Donut Media before) has been mixing the usual car-related content with wholesome masculinity stuff, and I feel that should be the future of making masculinity be seen less as "being tough" to being a resilient, dependable, empathetic person.
I don't think his channel is the only one, it's the only one I'm exposed to so kinda tells me there should be quite a bit more of those around, hopefully that way of masculinity gets traction instead of Andrew Tate-esque buffoons.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/@SpeeedCo
Whole bunch of factors involved in this which HN is ill-equipped to deal with. But I think paranoia about "grooming" should probably be counted as a factor as well. A lot of people are going to be suspicious about an adult man who wants to hang out with children. So everything gets tangled up and shut down in the name of safeguarding.
If you ask the question "what proportion of girls and young women have a male mentor", the problem becomes even more obvious.
Yeah, this is also a huge part of it. Society has made it incredibly dangerous for any man to be around children, because a single allegation is enough to destroy a life.
In fairness, a single act of abuse can wreck someone's mental health for their whole life as well. It's a difficult problem that requires lots of human effort.
I think there is a big problem around "man things" and "girl things" that has cost a lot to society, the women scientists who thought it wasn't for them, the men teachers and nurses who thought the same, and all the knowledge kept from people seen as being the wrong gender for it (cooking, cleaning, car repair ...) and i think the solution and a necessary step for the advancement of humanity is the recognition that the importance of sex is overinflated in society, and that a lot of things attributed to sex are actually social constructs, like gender.
In other words i think a post gender society would allow the distribution of occupations and knowledge to better match the populations skills and interest and children having access to better mentors.
A lot of people on bluesky have very good "wow, everything is gender now" observations about just how stupid US politics has become.
This will not change anytime soon; the "women are wonderful" talk is as relevant as it has ever been.
Regardless of the criteria you choose to establish a ranking, males dominate the bottom of that ranking.
You don't understand much if you think that to fight the lack of mentors for men, you have to put down women. It's completely orthogonal.
People in power want you to have this "I don't have what I want because this other minority takes it from me", but it's simply wrong, even though this argument seems to capture the mind of simple-minded people.
We don't have what we want because we're in a ruthless capitalist society, directed by stupidoes like Trump and Musk
> You don't understand much if you think that to fight the lack of mentors for men, you have to put down women. It's completely orthogonal.
Knee-jerk much? How on earth did you get "put down women" from what I wrote?
> People in power want you to have this "I don't have what I want because this other minority takes it from me", but it's simply wrong, even though this argument seems to capture the mind of simple-minded people.
Where did you read that in the tiny little snippet I wrote?
Let me be clear, so that there is no misunderstanding -
1. Men dominate the bottom of almost every ranking. This is just another ranking.
Maybe before we try to fix this specific ranking, we should be asking ourselves why men are at the bottom in every ranking.
> to fight the lack of mentors for men, you have to put down women
For sure you don't have to put women as a whole down. But society and media these days are generally dominated by the most toxic voices. Toxic feminism is a big issue, that's what we have to put down for this particular purpose.
> You don't understand much if you think that to fight the lack of mentors for men, you have to put down women
The reverse of this has been what's been dominating for a decade. Anything pro-men (or even just neutral) can be accused of being anti-woman, which creates a chilling effect as female-dominated HR departments can make life very difficult for men looking to provide for their families.
Discrimination along protected attributes such as gender would be highly illegal though, so no doubt you’d have tons of evidence to present beyond “gossipy HR ladies”.
I didn't mention gossip at all. Are you pretending to quote something I never said, to just perfectly illustrate the bad faith nonsense that is ever-injected into even simple conversations about this topic?
It might be worth Googling James Damore as an early example of this chilling effect.
What about their dad’s & uncle’s? Mum’s male friends? I don’t know, external (outside the family) isn’t the only source of “mentorship” and we should stop trying to pretend it is
Often missing as well. Lot of isolated single mothers out there.
does shortage refer to actual size?
all those fellowships and fanboy cultures and follower counts and network and everybody gets all they want to evolve and raise their children to be witty and snappy and vibe with that pan all the chill kids are playing in those pretty red forests nowadays and some researchers found a shortage of male mentors?
is this one of those "we want you" recruiting scarcity tactics?
People are going to misread the article and go off in their own direction but the problem is clearly capitalism. It's always been capitalism. Lower income boys have drastically less access to male mentors than higher income ones and the article even states this.
Low family income means less options. Most of your mentors at a young age are going to come from schooling, which still generally has a gender tilt towards women for multiple reasons. But lower income schools are going to be more resource starved with larger classes and less time for teachers to interact with students individually.
edit: fixed wording to better emphasize what I meant
Low income families skew nonconventional/single parent which fractures the extended family unit, less likely to have uncles etc around to step in as a mentor.
Smaller family sizes over the previous generation have also contributed to this.
I have 9 uncles in total (including all my aunts' partners). My kid has one.
Also, if you grow up in a household that rents (moves often or is surrounded by neighbours who move often), you are less likely to have long term reliable neighbours available to form adult-child relationships with.
Yes lower income boys are hit way harder, but it's not like the issue disappears at the higher end.
> 72 percent of boys from households earning $100,000 or more reported having a male mentor for schoolwork.
> A similar trend appeared regarding relationship advice. Only 45 percent of boys in the lowest income group had a male mentor for relationships. This compares to 67 percent of boys in the highest income group.
Even 30% of rich kids don't have access to a proper male role model, those are terrible numbers!
$100,000 isn't even 'rich' nowdays, that's below middle class especially if we're talking about an actual family unit. I can guarantee that if this research further stratified things into $100-200k, and $200k+ you would see the results continue to improve as people cross the threshold into middle class.
This survey can be seen as comparing people in poverty level income vs everyone else.
A lot of the lower income kids are from single parent homes (which is why they can't cross the $100.000 threshold), those will obviously have less access to a male role model.
If you correct for that the numbers would likely get closer, not further apart.
I assume you mean single parent but housing scarcity does indeed relate to precarity.
Yes, sorry, I meant single parent. I don't mean to fight against the idea that income is correlated to the problem, just that "lack of male role models" cannot be reduced to income inequality.
When you say "capitalism" you mean poverty?
I believe poverty is the natural state of man and I wonder how non-capitalism (= socialism?) makes people rich?
What I think you mean is that equal access to education is a promise of the state that is too often broken. But then we're talking about incompetence or corruption at the state level, paid for and sustained with your taxes, and you have those problems in socialism, too.
Ah yes, the answer to the problem of inequal income distribution is of course capitalism.
> People are going to misread the article and go off in their own direction but the problem is clearly capitalism. It's always been capitalism.
Of course it is, because as we all know capitalism only affects males /s
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I'm flagging this based on previous experience with similar threads.
Where do you think this should be discussed if not here?
Tbh I do not know but I'm sick and tired of seeing these threads devolve in the most cringe way possible. Tech already has a bad reputation in this respect and HN really isn't helping. And reading some of the comments in this thread that assessment was spot on.