Of course, all this batting-around of statistics assumes that going to college is the only valid measure of intelligence or drive, but there are others—like enlisting in the military (roughly 85 percent male) or going straight to work after secondary school. Many young men, of all races, follow these paths because they choose to. Sometimes, though, they don’t have much of an option: they come from low-income families in which going to college isn’t feasible.
Last time I checked, “serving your country” and “trying to work” are honorable goals. Many years ago (I’m over 50), I went to high school in an agricultural town in western Kansas, home to any number of smart, capable guys whose preference was to skip college and either farm, work with their hands in some manufacturing or skilled-labor job, or launch businesses in non-glam vocations like earthmoving and construction.
One of the tragedies of the era we’re in is that so many work-with-your-hands jobs have gone overseas or have been made obsolete by robotics, leaving lots of men without access to the kinds of employment their fathers and grandfathers took for granted. In “The End of Men,” Rosin is not unsympathetic to the plight of men who possess skills that aren’t much in demand anymore, but she’s more clinical about it than I would have expected. At one point, she sits down with a group of unemployed men in Kansas City, who are there to get counseling and compare miseries. Rosin is too smart and humane not to be touched by a scene like this, but she argues that such men have essentially placed the wrong bet by not getting the kinds of training needed in the modern workplace. “The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength,” she writes. “The attributes that are most valuable today—social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus—are, at a minimum, not predominantly male.”
♦◊♦
Well, maybe. But I’d hate to see a future in which the value of practical labor continues to erode, supplanted by jobs that place a premium on sitting still. Meanwhile, those of us in the so-called “knowledge economy,” male or female, shouldn’t be too smug, since computers are coming after us as well. Digital technology has completely disrupted the only trade I know (journalism), and the job-erasing power of software is looming in fields like law and medical administration.
As for Hymowitz’s claim that “most” men in their 20s have elected to become slackers, where’s the evidence? She treats it as a given that stampedes of “aging frat boys, maladroit geeks, [and] grubby slackers” are at large, but her supporting examples come from Madison Avenue and Hollywood rather than real life. She makes far too much out of the popularity of Adam Sandler movies (“one of the inventors and the yogic master of the new genre of male arrested development”), Maxim magazine, and Knocked Up, “the child-man national anthem.”
This tendency toward argument-by-Apatow appears to be irresistible, however. Rosin writes about “often-unemployed, romantically challenged loser[s]” who “can show up as a perpetual adolescent (in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up or The 40-Year-Old Virgin) … or a happy couch potato (in a Bud Light commercial).” Writing about Knocked Up in The New York Times, Sharon Waxman opines that “reactions to Apatow’s work suggest something close to catharsis in the depiction of hapless losers as heroes … Perhaps [now] there is something in the culture, a generational cue that may come from the rise of women’s economic and sexual independence or from the arrival of a recognizable geeky archetype, that makes this paradigm comforting for audiences.”
Yeah, or perhaps those characters show up because exaggerated male foibles are funny, a fact that creative artists have recognized for a while now. See: Jeff Spicoli, Ricky Ricardo, Falstaff, and the comedy team of Encolpius & Giton from The Satyricon.
♦◊♦
I realize it’s not journalistically easy to find groups of guys—or individual specimens—who are worthless and lazy and who want to discuss it with a somber female journalist. But it should be kind of easy, since they’re supposedly everywhere, choking society’s arteries with their comic-book collections, Entourage DVDs, and Sin City posters.
And yet you rarely hear from them, only about them. Hymowitz relies on secondhand sightings throughout her book, and neatly excises huge numbers of males who don’t fit the profile, including “[p]oor and working-class twentysomethings … Their trajectory during the years before adulthood is its own more troubling story, one that will have to be a subject for a different book.” The closest Rosin comes is to speak with three identity-shielded sorority sisters at the University of Missouri at Kansas City—“Victoria, Michelle, and Erin”—who complain about their lazy boyfriends. “Victoria is a biology major and wants to be a surgeon,” Rosin writes. “… She doesn’t want kids for a while, because she knows she’ll ‘be at the hospital, like, 100 hours a week,’ and when she does have kids, well, she’ll ‘be the hotshot surgeon, and he’—a nameless he—‘will be at home playing with the kiddies.’”
Hymowitz is far more harsh, which I think may be a function of book-marketing pressures. If you’re going in, go loud, so her book’s cover features a photo of a toddler in a man’s shirt and tie, looking like he’s about to tinkle on his dress shoes. Ridiculously, her Faith Popcorn–meets–SCUM Manifesto style leads her to the conclusion that women won’t require men much longer—for any reason.
“[T]he single young man can live in pig heaven—and often does,” she writes. “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.”
To the contrary, we do need them. And right now they could use something from us in return: a freakin’ break.
—Photo Brad Gillette/Flickr
Sources…
[…]here are some links to sites that we link to because we think they are worth visiting[…]…
I have a job, my own house (paid off), car (wholly owned) and all the necessary amenities of life. I consciously choose entertainment that is inexpensive and repeatable to save money and computer games are one such entertainment that falls into the category. I also have a DVD collection and an array of books – again repeatable entertainment. I’m not going to “man up” and become someone else’s walking ATM because some feminist says I should. I am a man irrespective of anyone’s opinion to the contrary.
Um, hi. Man-loving feminist here. Please don’t make sweeping generalizations about ALL feminists based on the actions of a few– especially a few from a few decades ago. Early feminism had many shortcomings. In addition to demonizing masculinity, it also left women who were comfortable being feminine (such as myself) and enjoyed having sex with men (such as myself) out in the cold– not to mention perpetuating middle-class WASP values, neglect of trans women, etc. Newer feminism focuses on inclusion and gender equality as opposed to the superiority of any one gender expression. Gendered behavior is nothing more than a… Read more »
This is a really good discussion to broach–how the media makes men look like uncomplicated jerks morons generally incapable of taking responsibility for themselves or anything else. Did I get that right? However, I think Heard might be wrongly conflating a lot of arguments on the opposing side to make his point. I think he doesn’t know that the LoserGuy and Bully Guy are the same guy, The Loser Guy just has a huge dose of passive-aggression, at least, he’d have to be in the implied context of heterosexual relationships, or else there wouldn’t be a relationship. But perhaps many… Read more »
forgot to mention the huge mistake of equating adulthood with family-starting. that’s a nice dash of singlism in the Salon article.
Any definition of adulthood, male or female, that is based on dichotomy is ultimately suspect.
How the feminist media portrays men:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plkeKMTDM9g
” the depiction of hapless losers as heroes …” Clearly, this author (Rosin) did not read many folk or fairy tales when young. These ancient stories are FULL of hapless losers who just happened to have a block of cheese or crust of bread in their pocket that magically opened up the world of magic when handed to a beggar.
Nowadays it’s low-end comic movies instead of folk tale, but it’s the very same story.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I cringed when I saw the title “Man Down” and read its subtitle. I work really hard to achieve equality in my life, my mind, my relationships, and to teach the same to my daughter. These “better than” attitudes just make me have to swim harder against the stream.
Hi there I’m an Australian male who is 21 years old. I have a large collection of comic books, many of them passed down from my father, and a few even from his father. I play video games, yes, I own quite a few. Have I gone to Collage? No. Am I looking for options for my schooling? Yes. Hymowitz’s claims that we are a race of “child-men.” I put it too her, I have been in a steady relationship with my high-school sweetheart since I was fifteen, I have never claimed unemployment and have never attempted to join the… Read more »
The media brainwashes people pretty successfully. Women are being portrayed as strong, resilient and intelligent and all of a sudden they start performing much better in school and they start rising in the employment field and making more money. When they were portrayed as weak, submissive and not as competent as men, they didn’t perform that well in the real world either. Successful brainwashing is behind it all.
As a woman, I agree. I go to a male-dominated college in VT and have only male friends here, most of whom are game programming, design and animation majors. If anything, modern men have begun to adapt “childish” past-times like video games into incredibly marketable skills. Besides, I’m one of those ambitious female students these women love to laud and I watch Disney princess movies in my free time and play video games. Hobbies are no indication of laziness, though I’d be interested in seeing the effect of MMO gaming on community building as opposed to, say, bowling leagues, but… Read more »
For you and AntZ, this gem from Seinfeld:
Jerry (to George): “You know, you really need some help. And a regular psychiatrist couldn’t help you. You need to like, go to Vienna or something. Get involved at the university level, like where Freud studied. Not the once-a-week for eighty bucks, no. You need a team. A team of psychiatrists working around the clock. Thinking about you. Having conferences. Observing you, the way they did with the Elephant Man. That’s the kind of help you need, because that’s the only way you’re going to get better.”
I don’t want to get better from my “disease” of masculinity, or from its symptoms: compassion, generosity, respect, honour, honesty, integrity …
As to feminists and their “healthy” religion, I can live without that kind of health: hate, jealousy, egotism, greed, self indulgence, mercilessness, cruelty …
Whoa false dichotomy…
“I like to see if being from a single parent home increases the likelihood that a boy will be drugged.”
Drugged, or diagnosed with a mental illness or condition? And if you mean the latter, do you mean a behavioral one (like Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Intermittant Rage Disorder) or a more organic one like Bi-Polar Disorder or Schizophrenia?
If you mean the former, just drugged like they used to, then that would be interesting. it would indicate that certain behaviors are linked with fatherlessness and/or a set of conditions that are perhaps brought about by or linked to fatherlessness.
I hazard a guess that it is indeed so, if only because there’s no father around to object to the drugging, and the female being brainwashed by feminist propaganda that boys are less won’t have much objection to it – especially if it means (and perhaps used as reasons) that she has less of a handfull to deal with him.
I watched you guys get blown out of the water at Pharyngula. It was most entertaining, and I recommend the comments sections on any of several feminist related posts over there for anyone irritated with these guys. You’ll see some familiar names and some cogent arguments that of course none of the MRA guys could deal with.
Haven’t you fellows noticed yet that hardly anyone can be bothered to respond to you? You’re all just repeating each other’s non-points in an echo chamber, trying to show off and be provocative. Get a room already.
Actually, Jen, REFUSING to respond to points raised by people who are classified as “MRAs” (and it should be damned obvious that I am not one, by now) and instead gratuitously insulting them, cursing them and finally banning them at the slightest wiff of any sort of response in kind is hardly “blowing people out of the water”. It’s simple intellectual bullying: the tyranny of a loud-mouthed, self-proclaimed majority against anyone who doesn’t toe their particular ideological line. Not one single reasonable response was given to me re: anything I ever said at Pharyngula re: gender relations. Instead, I got… Read more »
I have to agree. Jen, on most feminist blogs I’ve seen, going against the established consensus of the place will only net you a barrage of abuse and insults, after which, if you continue to defend yourself, you are blocked or banned. That’s not ‘being blown out of the water’, that’s being bullied into silence. This is why I like comment sections like this one, where a debate can actually take place and the bullies can’t hide behind their high-fiving clique and admin panel. This is also why you will rarely see one of those ‘feminists’ arguing outside the safety… Read more »
Wheeeew! I’m glad this article came along. I was beginning to be afraid that the natural order of men as dominant and women as doormats had gone. It’s good to know the pendulum is swinging back to the good ole days of June Cleaver! I should have know though; you can’t keep us guys down.
““Victoria is a biology major and wants to be a surgeon,” Rosin writes. “… She doesn’t want kids for a while, because she knows she’ll ‘be at the hospital, like, 100 hours a week,’ and when she does have kids, well, she’ll ‘be the hotshot surgeon, and he’—a nameless he—‘will be at home playing with the kiddies.’”
Good lord, would you trust a surgeon that talks like this?
People have since there have been surgeons. Just those surgeons are men. Go figure.
I wouldn’t trust a male surgeon who talked like a mallrat ignoramus either.
Were you also totally convinced that Swift loved eating Irish babies too?
No, he thinks Andrea Dworkin does, even though she’s been dead for six years.
“… sexual penetration may by its very nature doom women to inferiority and submission, and may be immune to reform.”
— Andrea Dworkin
Sounds like pretty main-stream feminist hate to me. No wonder Catullus worships her.
None of the vanished victims of past extermination campaigns imagined their fates either.
Just because we are still in phase 3-4, does not mean that phase 5-6 is not coming. Men must be ready to fight for the survival of our boys. The hearts of the enemy have no mercy, and they are determined to carry out their plan. If we do not stop them, our children will answer to numbers instead of names, and the numbers will be branded on their flesh.
More tolerant and loving, so put the others in camps? Nice blind irony there.
Ample booze and pot, AND World of Warcraft marathons? Can I, like, get some pizza with that too, dude? ‘Cuz otherwise, it’s like totally not doable. Seriously though, excellent article, Alex! It also showcases why an intersectional and kyriarchical analysis helps us perceive reality better than patriarchical theory or its MRA knock-offs. If all we do is look at one factor – penis or no penis? – gee, things look pretty grim indeed for men. When we factor in race and realize the fact that, for at least 25% of America’s population (blacks and hispanics), women are perceived as being… Read more »
Speaking of class, it helps to know Kay Hymowitz is a fellow at the quasi-libertarian Manhattan Institute.
im a male who is unimployed and lives with my parents but not by choice. I am more then willing to work my ass off to move out on my own and marry my girlfriend but I can’t find even a minimum wage job I have aplied to over 100 places sense december and no bites. I don’t have a criminal record im healthy in good shape and consider myself a friendly outgoing person. so yeah im the stereotypical “20something couch potato” as far as I know im doing evrything im supposed to but I still haven’t found employment what… Read more »
I have had problems getting jobs where I live, and it has everything to do with the fact that where I live there are more Mexican immigrants than there are other people. When I applied for a job at Wal-Mart, I had more qualifications than my fiance, but yet he got chosen over me instead. When I asked my mom, she told me it was probably Wal-Mart’s minority “goal”, and he got chosen over me simply because he is hispanic. I, a female, did not get the job because I am white and not a minority. So don’t think it’s… Read more »
It’s less sexism than it is ageism: I think you’ll find those eighteen year olds are far cheaper to hire, if American wage structures are anything like they are here in Australia.
“… Education has been feminised, so boys lean at a early age that school is for girls….” Correct. Boys cannot write about things that interest them. Boys cannot talk or play in ways that interest them. And boys who resist the feminist indoctrination are subdued using forced chemical dependency. The long arm of feminist violence against boys strikes most viciously in our schools. The feminists want all men reduced to the role of beast of burden in service to their female owners. The best place to begin the indoctrination of boys is Elementary School. This is why Elementary Schools are… Read more »
It’s has been shown in many studies that boys differ greatly from girls in their learning styles, energy levels, and abilities, and even this can vary person to person. I would not stoop so low as to say that, “elementary schools are 90% staffed by females for breaking the spirits of boys and Ritalin addiction is their strongest weapon.”, however. There are many wonderful female teachers as there are male teachers. And not every woman who believes in equality is a Feminazi! As for Ritalin – it is simply a by-product of big Pharma and Psychiatric industries bent on profits… Read more »
“… but my guess is that teaching is less like a daycare and more a higher learning experience …” No. Men were chased out of K-12 by the presumption of male guilt. The feminist strategy was to pump as much hot air as they could into their make believe “depraved predator” male construct, so that no man would feel welcome in nurturing/supporting roles. Every man knows the feeling of being watched with suspicion when he is around children. Every man knows the experience of standing at a bathroom doorway, forcing his children to take care of their own needs years… Read more »
If boys can’t spell a word as rudimentary as ‘learn’ and worse yet, repeat the error in a quote without correction—well, you have to wonder if education will do them any good. But of course they can. Just as they can appreciate “Anne of Green Gables” as well as “The Odyssey.” The boys at my daughter’s charter school do. And yes, the parents of unruly kids are expected to do what it takes to calm their kids down. Don’t you just love it? A school where the kids keep their asses in their seats until they have leave to do… Read more »
“… your head implodes on a daily basis after certain relieving functions are undergone.” The highest priority for the MRM is to re-direct feminist hate away from children, and towards ourselves. Feminist boy-haters such as yourself gravitate alarmingly towards K-12 classrooms. I guess the temptation to stifle the voices of tomorrow’s men while they are still young and vulnerable is too tempting to pass up. “If that adds up to Ritalin, well, c’est la vie.” I wonder if you have any ability to understand just how filled with hate your words are. You force 6-8 year old boys to take… Read more »
Good God, now you’re irrational as well as tiresome and paranoid. It’s frightening to think you’re not only a scientist, but are involved in the creation of pharmaceutical products. You should prove I ‘force 6-8 year boys to take mind altering drugs to suit [my] ideological religion.” Failing that, you should retract this ridiculous statement and apologize. Like a man, which by the way is my own gender. I know you won’t; it’s the penchant of complete losers to dig themselves deeper into the hole. What’s another foot, after all. But you should prove or retract. Then you should heed… Read more »
Great piece Alex. I particularly appreciate your pulling apart the college myth. Men going to war seems like a legit reason for lower college rates, whether you like the wars or not. And then you give us this, “Hispanic men had the lowest B.A.-attainment level of any group—just 10 percent—and there were nearly twice as many African-American women in college as men.” The only conclusion I can draw from that data is that in fact we don’t have a gender issue in America we still have a race issue. Something much harder to talk about but essential if we are… Read more »
“Hispanic men had the lowest B.A.-attainment level of any group—just 10 percent—and there were nearly twice as many African-American women in college as men.” Three days ago I was hosting eight “women in science” undergraduates. One was ill and did not show. Of the remaining 7, five were pre-med, one was computer science, and only one actually wanted to be a scientist. On March 26, I host another 8, and it will likely be the same thing. I believe if you pump too much money into a program, it becomes ineffective. In essence, you get “female tourists in science” who… Read more »
I read it. She wrote it about 12-14 years too soon. The evidence of physiological and psychological damage caused by forced chemical dependence of boys is just becoming apparent now. It is a big part of what brought me into the MRM (I am a scientist working with pharmaceutical drug design). The 50% increase in the rate of stroke for boys in the 15-28 year range, compared to 17% increase for girls in the same age range, is terrifying. Combined with new studies showing that Ritalin and related drugs are cocaine/methamphetamine analogues, it is possible, perhaps likely, that the Ritalin… Read more »
RE the medication…
It’s a little known fact, even among those of us in the social service/education industry, but up until 1996 (in the U.S.), a school district could deny a child access to education unless they were medicated.
This means that if the guidance counselor at your child’s school recommended ritalin or some other drug, the school could LEGALLY prevent your child from attending until you could PROVE s/he was medicated ‘properly’.
“… school could LEGALLY prevent your child from attending until you could PROVE s/he was medicated …” This is still the case today. The bill called “the child medication safety act of 2005” was passed in 2005, not 1996. Here is the text — note that section (b) makes the entire bill meaningless because it allows schools to mandate the need for medical testing, which in practice means parents have to go to court to fight the school: (a) In General- As a condition of receiving funds under any program or activity administered by the Secretary of Education, not later… Read more »
By the way, the feminist anti-boy hate movement was very actively fighting against this bill. Senator Ted Kennedy, chosen by the NOW as the Senate’s most vocal advocate of women’s rights, single handedly prevented passage of the bill. This is what the monster said: “Kennedy’s office said that it is important to separate the roles of schools and doctors but that any legislation limiting schools’ ability to push for treatment of children with mental-health issues should wait until further study of the benefits and detriments of psychiatric drugs.” After consulting with his feminist pay masters, Kennedy successfully destroyed the bill’s… Read more »
There was something in 2005 about not allowing children who were refusing their meds…that they were already on. In 1996 there was, as I described, a bill passed regarding barring children from school unless they BEGAN medication. The difference is slight, but it was part of a professional training I attended that year.
At any rate, the point is that schools were using denial of education as a tool to manipulate families into medicating their children so they didn’t have to address the behaviors.
Is it the fact the kids are being medicated that you object to, Natasha? That’s a worthy objection on its face. But I don’t blame schools for not wanting problem kids around. Schools aren’t and ought not be places to remedy unruly behavior from the ground up. When that behavior goes from unruly to brutish, Mr. Weatherbee is remiss when he fails to tell people, “Do something about your kid or he or she can’t come back.”
I see I missed a crucial point…the children that the 1996 (and perhaps subsequent) bill refers to were children who did not already have a mental health (i.e. ‘behavioral’) diagnosis. These were usually children who displayed typically disruptive behavior(s) such as inattention, fidgetting, getting up and down from their seats, talking too much, distracting other students, ‘playing’ at their desks etc….and while these are all stereotypical behaviors for ADHD, they are also stereotypical behaviors for boys. Especially for boys who are bored out of their skulls and/or need to be learning physically rather than passively. Especially elementay school age boys… Read more »
Good points and reasonably stated at that. Anyone should raise eyebrows over 2 million prescriptions for Ritalin handed out in a K-12 population of 53 million. I’d arch my eyebrows higher myself—if it weren’t for gratuitous bombast about how good-old-American pathologizing is really a pogrom from the women’s studies set against boys.
FYI: Ritalin is _not_ a depressant. It is speed or an “upper”. The reason it was/is given to ADHD is that the brain chemistry of an ADHD brain uses speed differently than a normal mind. Somehow, it calms the ADHD mind (as does caffeine.) Give Ritalin to a normal child and they will become hyperactive.
“… Is it the fact the kids are being medicated that you object to, Natasha …”
I object to Schools treating masculinity itself as a disease that requires psychological or pharmaceutical treatment. I think Natasha thinks the same way.
If we treat femininity as the norm, and criminalize masculine behavior such that 50% of the population can only function when doped on Ritalin, then we have failed our boys.
^ “I think Natasha thinks the same way.”
Yes, Natasha does.
Good point about treating femininity as the norm. If that is the yardstick, then of course boys are going to ‘measure up’ differently…..they’re BOYS.
well said Danny
Men just need exposure to the truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plkeKMTDM9g
The feminist media mocks, ridicules, denigrates and emasculates males in our society. Proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plkeKMTDM9g