No sooner did I put down Hanna Rosin’s insulting piece in Slate about stay-at-home dads (read our response to her story here), than a friend of mine told me I’d better go get a copy of this morning’s Wall Street Journal—and I’d better sit down before reading it. I was also advised to keep firearms, blunt objects, and breakables out of arm’s length as I dug in.
The cover story “Where Have the Good Men Gone?” is adapted from the forthcoming book Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys. In it, author Kay S. Hymowitz laments the fact that men today refuse to grow up—and that’s making it difficult for women to find a decent mate.
“Women in their 20s are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace,” she writes. “In a number of cities, they are even outearning their brothers and boyfriends. Still, for these women, one key question won’t go away: Where have the good men gone? Their male peers often come across as aging frat boys, maladroit geeks, or grubby slackers.”
It’s a prisoner’s dilemma of sorts. What are we to do? According to Hymowitz and the WSJ, a key issue of gender in the 21st century is men’s loserdom—and the desperate situation in which they put single women.
Hymowitz seems to have thrown in the towel on guys altogether. Here, the piece ends with this uplifting bit of analysis:
“Relatively affluent, free of family responsibilities, and entertained by an array of media devoted to his every pleasure, the single young man can live in pig heaven—and often does. Women put up with him for a while, but then in fear and disgust either give up on any idea of a husband and kids or just go to a sperm bank and get the DNA without the troublesome man. But these rational choices on the part of women only serve to legitimize men’s attachment to the sand box. Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There’s nothing they have to do.
They might as well just have another beer.”
For the men who are part of the Good Men Project—guys fighting wars in foreign lands, working diligently to be good dads, recovering from economic hardship, striving to be loving spouses, searching their souls trying to figure out what it means to be a good man—the piece is one more example of mainstream media portraying us in an egregiously negative, quasi-sexist light.
Women are often described in the same universal, equally pernicious stereotypes. But combating the media’s outmoded, misogynistic logic doesn’t mean putting up with dreck like this. Why the free pass on a female writer’s conclusion that the opposite sex is a bunch of “aging frat boys, maladroit geeks, or grubby slackers” who “might as well just have another beer”?
None of this is to say that men can’t always be working harder to be better husbands, fathers, workers, and men. But women need to be there for us, just as we need to be there for them. So let’s work on this together—and leave out the stereotyping.
♦◊♦
See more:
About Tom Matlack
FROM CARLOS:
“Life is unfair, learn to cope”
In other words, “take it like a man?”
Carlos, that you take a clearly gender neutral statement and immediately asses it as an anti-male statement says more about you then me, or the statement itself. Let me be more clear. LIFE. IS. UNFAIR. and therefore the only thing one can do is: LEARN. TO. COPE. There is just no plainer way to put that.
Yes, how totally un-profound and unoriginal a suggestion.
If you want profound please look up the teachings of Buddha. Unoriginal perhaps, but fitting.
For all your claims of sympathy I don’t see you calling any of the radical feminists posting her to task. Perhaps you should question your own biases and assumptions.
First of all I don’t ‘sympathize’ or claim to sympathize with anyone. I assess a situation and call a spade a spade. Very different. I don’t need to pity anyone to recognize an injustice.
Second of all, I answer the comments that speak to me. I’m not interested in any radical point of view. let the ‘radicals’ brawl with the ‘misogynist’, it’s just not my thing.
I’ll worry about my biases and assumptions and you worry about yours. Fair enough?
Yes you’re right of course. Life is unfair, “learn to cope” is a totally gender neutral statement since men are no more oppressed than women in our society and both groups are equally well supported by our tax dollars. It’s not as though affirmative action, the legal system, liberalized gender roles, health care spending, media portrayals, selective service, tax-sponsored support services or anything else favor one sex over the other. Phaw.. LIfe’s unfair. You’re absolutely right and I don’t think you are making a gross over-generalization that happens to gloss over the problems of one sex by pretending they are both equally disadvantaged in our post-modern society.
A gender neutral statement is exactly that. Attempting to attach one gender’s issues or the other to it doesn’t change that. Nice try though.
Men are oppressed differently. Trying to make a case for ‘more oppressed’ or ‘less oppressed’ is as ridiculous as trying to measure suffering.
Affirmative action helps many men, just not white men usually, is that your real complaint? The legal system historically favored men until the last few decades – where were the male complaints then? Interesting huh? Not that this makes it right but it’s a point, and in order to make the legal system more fair it would do more good to speak to your representatives than rail against 52% of the population.
Health care research and spending overwhelmingly favors men. If you’re going to spout information at the very least make it accurate. From the http://www.fda.gov:
“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in 1977, barred women of childbearing age from clinical trials. Hence, for nearly a decade and a half, most medical research studies, including breast cancer trials, were done almost entirely on men.”
So your ridiculousness has been proven numerous times now. Maybe you should find a hobby.
In case my name didn’t give it away. I’m not white. Nice try though.
Blacks have complained for decades about how facially neutral policies, such as the war on drugs, are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased. Just because something is gender neutral on the surface doesn’t necessarily make it so sweety.
You should really stop reading so much Women’s Studies ideological nonsense.
Health care spending vastly over-emphasizes females who already live longer.
You could say making men the guinea pigs for medicine discriminated against women. You could also say that not letting women die in war discriminated against them too (and in fact i’m sure you would.)
Maybe you should try to get some real data that didn’t come from a feminist echo chamber?
Just saying something is biased doesn’t make it so.
The ‘war on drugs’ is a farce in so many ways it’s hardly worth discussing but you brought it up so we’ll give it a go. The facts are that drug dealers, drug lords, etc. are overwhelmingly male. That law enforcement profiles minorities for arrest has nothing to do with gender issues.
This is like saying it’s unfair that most serial killers are male. It’s just a fact.
Please try citing facts. Health Care ‘spending’ is what individuals spend on health care personally, and yeah, women spend more on health care services, of course women have babies and men do not so that’s many thousands of dollars right there. Also, women tend to live longer and spend more in the geriatric years.
Health care research, as I’ve already proven, is overwhelmingly done on men. If you want to call it using men as ‘guinea pigs’ just to prove your blind bitterness towards women runs so deep you can take any example of benefit to men and twist it into an attack on women just accept that you’ve shown your hand. Tipped it mightily some would say.
‘Not letting women die in war’ is a big theme in these comments. Of course no one bothers to point out that the elite men that made the rules also forbid women to go to war in the first place. Or, that until the U.S. had an established military women actually did go to war and fought right alongside men. Or that during the Civil war hundreds of women went so far as to costume themselves as men just to fight alongside men. Or that women served as nurses and war correspondents right on the front lines during every war, and that many were held as prisoners of war during WWI, WWII, the Korean war, and Vietnam. Or that women have been fighting in the U.S. for the right to go to combat for decades. Or the fact that the ruling men have used the term ‘protection’ to prevent allowing women to do most things throughout history much to the detriment of women. Nice try though.
I would suggest you not only get informed but that you seek help. Anger and bitterness are a self inflicted poison.
@ The Moderator
Are you also going to censor all of the hateful comments and personal attacks made by the womynz?
Or are you just White Knighting to protect the womynz feelings?
I already know the answer.
Site just refreshed and ate my comment. smh.
Paraphrase:
She’s obviously wrong… doesn’t deserve our energy or time. The only men hurt by this article are the ones she’s talking about. Me, I’m too busy being the opposite of the guy she loathes to care. What’s important is that my daughter won’t grow up having this worldview because she’ll have seen a father live, love and sacrifice for his own wife and family in the manner in which the author’s apparent hurts and relationship failures preclude her from seeing.
‘Dog can’t hunt’ is an expression that in no way alleges “mental health problems, misogyny, bitterness, living in moms basement, abuser, small penis ”
But your response plainly shows your hate and bitterness which of course is quite often the basis for a lack of rational.. Please seek help.
Men built this society. In fact, they have built, currently build and will continue to build most everything in our world. Who are the engineers for the most part? The scientists? The laborers? The garbage collectors?
I have no idea where would we would be without their contributions.
I suspect we’d still be in caves – nicely decorated ones, but caves nonetheless.
I do NOT hate women. I think we can be wonderful. I know there are many wonderful, generous, beautiful and loving women out there. I just don’t see much of it online anymore. I see hateful whiners who are, in reality, very lonely and unloved. Sh!t, I wonder why?
When I was 16 in 1972, I was told I could not go into broadcasting because I was female. I fought that and rightly so. (I never did make it in broadcasting but it was a due to an unexpected pregnancy for which I took full responsibility Best, ladies, to learn to say no if you don’t really want to do it. You guys as well. But I digress.) Fighting for one’s rights is a fair and just thing to do.
How feminism turned into this – this horrible anti-male movement, I have no idea. All *I* wanted was to be permitted a chance to work in a field for which I was very well suited. I just wanted fairness and opportunity and yes, my rights.
How did this happen – where women have ALL THE RIGHTS and NO RESPONSIBILITIES?? This is a travesty and terribly unfair to the very men who helped US get OUR rights. Whom do you think voted in favor of WOMEN voting? Men.
Yes, some men are slackers but let’s take a look at the girls. There are FAR too many women who are self-entitled b!tches who think men should worship them simply because they are female. And I have to say it – MANY are obese and do not take pride in their looks. Call me a catty bitch but this is what I see. And then they wonder why American men don’t want their fat, whiney, self-entitled bitch asses? Please.
I’m middle aged. I’ve lived 55 years now. Fighting for the right to be a broadcaster was one thing. Attempting to turn men into second class citizens is quite another. I’m ashamed of what is being done to our men. It’s no wonder many want nothing to do with us and, quite frankly, I can’t believe they are still marrying us.
Again, I’m not women-bashing. But I just wanted to point out that it’s getting harmful, all this male bashing. We cannot live without them, ladies, and they deserve the same rights for which many of you so loudly clamor.
I feel the same way as you in a lot of ways, but I think there’s a flaw in the argument here. Yes, men have done much of the physical building of society and much of social building as well. Leaving aside the fact that women have contributed a lot, too, there is a fault in that logic. Even if one could prove that everything society is made by men, there is still the possibility that maybe if it were all made by women it would be even better. (I’m not saying that it would be, but that is just as valid a conclusion.)
Your message also runs the risk of implying that everything bad in society is from men. If men are the ones who did everything, then women won’t get any credit for anything bad or good.
Besides, male-bashing makes me laugh. I think male-bashing is cute and sexy.
Dana is a such a sweetie. I hope she’s st ill single. I am going to set her up with my ex. He deserves a sweetie like Dana. ……ROFLMFAO.
Awww shucks. Aren’t you sweet? And SO clearly serious about this and in no way being a jerk. Yeah.
Anyway, I’m married to a Marine. He thinks I’m pretty fabulous and that’s all I need to know.
Why should I be a “good man” (as defined by this article) when there is a distinct lack of “good women”? But of course, you’ll never see that article, will you?
Amen.
AMEN AMEN AMEN!
Awareness, among us all, is always a good thing.
I fail to see how that isn’t a description of what you are doing.
If the article author would be so kind as to provide a list of pre-approved jobs, hobbies, and beverages for men, it would be most appreciated. I could really use a Do List and a Don’t List so I can more easily transform my life to meet her exacting standards. Such a simple prescribed list would we perfectly consistent with the _Cosmo_ level of analysis expressed in the article. I see I have been trying to develop my own sense of the appropriate life to live, but in doing so I have failed to conform to what an entire gender has wanted from me. Please help me by informing me about what I’m doing wrong and educating me about how I’m disappointing the women who want to change me.
Thanks to this article, I can see that when my wife says she loves me the way that I am, she is really lying. Maybe I can show her this article and confront her with how she really feels, or show her how she is supposed to feel as a modern woman. My wife may just be settling for less than what she deserves. Thank goodness for her there are consciousness-raising articles out there from bastions of gender equality like the Wall Street Journal.
Me again.
On second thought, I can see maybe I’m being disrespectful and unrealistic. Of course it’s impossible to fit all the prerequisites onto two short lists, and these judgments need to happen on a case-by-case basis anyway. Forget the lists.
Instead, I’ll make a different request: could I get the address of the Central Committee in charge of these matters? I would like to send in my personal information, fill out the requisite forms, and get a ruling about my “goodness” level. (I assume there is a quantitative rating of some kind?) I hope the Committee could also recommend areas in which I could improve, so I can purify myself of false gender consciousness.
The Wall Street Journal is the least of the offenders. They did publish the Hymowitz article, and received about 1500 readers comments, mostly negative, that were readily available on their site.
The worst offenders are in the mainstream media, publications like the NY Times, the Washington Post and most of the liberal cable news and academia. I have a form letter I send to the Times and the Post every fathers day exhorting the feminists dominant at those publications to let the men off of their hands and knees one day per year and allow them to say a good word about fathers. Never happens.
Just about all the mainstream media articles on parenting, family, men, boys, fatherhood, sex, women and girls are written by women, and feminist women at that. That feminists aren’t qualified to speak for or about men and boys is like water off a ducks butt for the media and academia. There is little new information in any of the treatments I’ve read. One can’t solve a problem until it is identified and discussed, so for now we just have the official politically correct party line discussions and the official politically incorrect responses with no real interchange going on.
In 2011, young men have insanely higher expectations of women than they did in the sixties and nowhere near the obligations. Strange how the young men aren’t complaining as loudly about all of this no-strings attached sex, women’s sexual expression as performance art, insane demands on women’s appearance and the ability to get this all done while playing Halo and eating T-Bell. Progress isn’t pretty.
If feminism were truly about equality, the gender education gap would be on their agenda. But, since it’s boys and men who are being discriminated against and suffering, they don’t care. In fact, they are privately celebrating as if they won the world series.
“Growing up” or “Manning up” is just the latest attempt to shame men into behaving the way some women want. I think it has the most effect upon boys and young men as the “reward” for being good is the possibility of sex. What truly Good Men can do is counter this BS with assertive reinforcement of what good men are to those who are vulnerable to this form of harassment.
Women don’t define whether I’m a good man; I measure myself against other men I deem to be good men.
“Women don’t define whether I’m a good man; I measure myself against other men I deem to be good men.”
Well said.