Intelligence Squared sponsored a debate at the Skirball Center in New York City recently entitled “Men Are Finished.” The debate was one in a series of debates on different social issues sponsored by the organization. Our very own Scott Luxor attended and put together this video.
The summary of the debate, posted on their website, says:
In a modern, post-industrial economy that seems better suited to women than men, many are wondering if men have been permanently left behind. Education and employment statistics point to a clear and growing dominance in women’s status at home and in the workplace. Are men primed for a comeback or have the old rules changed for good?
The debaters arguing against the future of male dominance were Hanna Rosin, author of the “XX Factor” blog and Dan Abrams of ABC News, author of the book Man Down.
The debaters in defense of men included Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys and David Zinczenko, Editor of Men’s Health magazine.
The lively debate provoked some passionate reactions from the audience.
Although there was not a definitive conclusion to the debate, the “anti-men” position was much better argued. In a flash poll about the statement “Men Are Finished,” taken before the debate, 20% were in favor of the statement. After the debate, however, 66% were in favor of it.
You know how we feel, so let us know what you thought of the comments from the panelists and from Slate editor David Plotz.
And be sure to check out our response to the “End of Men”:
About the Editors
I think Men are Finished, but only in regards to what they are fighting and who they are fighting for.
What should be a discussion of the NEW spiritual and emotional direction of Modern Men has degenerated to a Femisist Grandstanding and I told u So’s
What bothers me about the framing of this debate is that for all the talk of egalitarianism, there would be feminist like Hanna Rosin who would push to fear monger and exploited Every paranoid delusion of the most misogynistic of Men’s rights activist.
Men are Disposable (check)
Men are Obsolete (check)
Men are Corrupt (check)
Men are stupid (check)
Sensationalism has it’s place but not in an academic setting. Another book seller hell bent on profiting from the notion of angry Man hating lesbian feminist supemist trope.
Every man knows arguing with women, is not a progressive approach.
I’d like to just ignore the trash talk, “men are finished”. It is meant to inflame, not help resolve real issues. But, there is an opportunity here. The people making this argument are declaring and proving with statistics that the “patriarchy” is not some uber-successful conspiracy in which all men lord over all women. This opens the door to a more nuanced and true understanding of gender equity in North America today.
I believe that gender equity is an important and admirable goal. And the impacts of inequality exist. I’ve recognized this for decades now and have worked in my own small ways to rectify the situation. However, I try to make sure that my understanding of the issue is fact based and that I understand who really is suffering from the inequality (often its both). Unfortunately, in the public discourse, facts are too often taken out of context or just plain wrong.
I’ll use education to illustrate my point. There have been a spate of articles recently in major media outlets about how women are left behind in some particular field — computer science is the most recent one. This is true. There are 25,000 less female 4-year graduates annually than men in computer science (all data I’m using is from 2008 as published by the National Science Foundation). Then the articles jump to a conclusion that women are not being properly encouraged in the sciences. For example, Anna Holmes argues in her 9/22/2011 Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/technically-science-will-be-less-lonely-for-women-when-girls-are-spurred-early/2011/09/21/gIQARGztoK_story.html) that women are disproportionately succumbing to some “beauty versus brains saga” when it comes to science education. Not true, women graduate with bachelor degrees in science and engineering in the same numbers as men (50.3% female to be precise). This has been true for quite some time now. Computer science is an anomaly. As are the biological sciences (my field) and psychology where tens of thousands more women than men receive degrees. Holmes cherry picked her facts to reach a demonstrably erroneous conclusion. The true issue is that we simply need more of our girls and boys to enter the sciences and engineering, not just one gender.
A local university held a medical field career day this year just for girls arguing that girls needed special encouragement to enter the field. This despite the fact that this same medical university already has a significant majority of women in the student body. It’s like facts have no meaning when it comes to gender in education.
When I taught at a 2-year college I took a course on diversity for my credentials. It was mostly good, but I was astonished to find that my college which was 60% female had affirmative action plans in place for women. This involved targeted recruiting of women and special support services to encourage women to be successful. Curious as to why men, who were only 40% of the student body, did not receive these services, I found the policy to be exceedingly clear. Men are not a protected class. Women are. It was written in our college policy manual (this was 5 years ago). In this case the explicit goal of this public institution was not gender equity, but female hegemony.
Yes its true, half a century ago male college graduates exceeded female graduates. We resolved to change that and we did. A generation ago women and men graduated at equal rates and the concern shifted to the continuing disparity in science and engineering degrees. Now women account for 57% of all bachelor degrees and, as mentioned, 50% of degrees in science and engineering and some still cry foul that women are under-represented in this field or that. There is almost no analysis nor calls for action about the 233,000 less men graduating with bachelor degrees than women.
Are men finished? (O.K. I can’t ignore the question.) Of course not. But now that people are beginning to recognize that men are not the uniformly privileged class many argued they were, I would call on all people who like me believe in gender equity to focus our energies using real facts and rational analysis to see the issue for what it is today, not what it was 50 years ago. For instance, in education we need to change our teaching methodologies to bring boys up to the standards now set by girls. This may mean hiring tens of thousands of additional male primary school teachers to serve as role models, changing pedagogies to appeal more to boys, recruiting men into higher education fields where they are under-represented, creating gendered professional groups such as “Men in Primary Education” to help them succeed, provide special scholarships targeted at males, etc. In other words, we need to provide the very type of support services for men that helped us succeed so wildly to educate women.
How many women engineers (electrical, mechanical, or otherwise) are there? How many female physics majors are there? And I think the computer science statistics just go without saying. Biology, on the other hand, at least from what I’ve seen has a ton of women, I’ll admit.
I doubt that Anna Holmes (or especially Hanna Rosin) or most people are willing to admit this, but the reason why there aren’t many women computer scientists, is because, although many of them are good students, the majority of women can’t or don’t want to code. These are only my first hand observations at the university where I attended. (and worked for, as a teaching and lab assistant, tutor and grader). I can only assume that other types of engineering, (eg. the type based on physics and chemistry) and hard science such as physics have similar reasons.
I’m not saying that there aren’t women like that out there, (I know quite a few due to hanging out almost exclusively with those types of people) but they are very, very rare, and are a much lower percentage of the female population, relative to the male population. Furthermore, the only reason why you see most women in these fields at all is because most companies and universities aggressively push them to pursue said fields, regardless of merit.
For every Marie Curie, you have well, thousands of able male scientists, and I don’t see this changing.
Men are not superior, but proportionally more men have aptitudes suited towards these fields. Hanna Rosin is at odds with science, and if her cherry-picked numbers are even true, they are an anomaly.
That all depends on what we do as men. We need to organize ourselves and stop acting like we are too cool to react. Over and over again I see men taking a high level intellectually approach to this topic. We need to get angry in order to act. There is a war out there by large groups of women against men and we just stand around pretending it’s not happening. We need a mens lobby that is just as petty and self-promoting as womens. Maybe biologically we are not designed to fit against women but that can AND MUST change. That doesn’t mean we have to hate women, it means that we have to work together, support each other, support the women who support us and destroy the women who fight against us.
It’s time to stop intellectualizing, it’s time to get mad. If we don’t stand up for ourselves we are finished. Hopefully I’m talking to the right audience, those who have the energy to fight.