For a fun exercise, try replacing "men" with "black people" and "women" with "white people" throughout this article, and speculate on whether The Atlantic would have published it.
"What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to white people?"
"White people live longer than black people. They do better in this economy. More of ’em graduate from college. They go into space and do everything black people do, and sometimes they do it a whole lot better. I mean, hell, get out of the way—these white people are going to leave us black people in the dust."
"Researchers have suggested any number of solutions. A movement is growing for more all-black schools and classes, and for respecting the individual learning styles of black people. Some people think that black people should be able to walk around in class, or take more time on tests, or have tests and books that cater to their interests."
try replacing "men" with "black people" and "women" with "white people"
Well, try replacing "women" with "black people" and "men" with "white people" and they would most certainly publish it. In fact, any time the slightest improvement in the fortune of any allegedly-mistreated group occurs (women, blacks, whatever) it is trumpeted and paraded endlessly.
Anyway, the article didn't point out two salient facts:
1. Women still lag in almost everything that matters (engineering, entrepreneurship, science, math) and
2. Parents prefer girls over boys for the same reason they used to do the opposite: Because that is the gender more likely to take care of them in their old age. No one wants girls because of "empowerment" or whatever PC bullshit journalists happen to be obsessed with.
"Their [research] also suggests that the disadvantages that poverty imposes on children aren’t primarily about material goods. True, every poor child would benefit from having more books in his home and more nutritious food to eat (and money certainly makes it easier to carry out a program of concerted cultivation). But the real advantages that middle-class children gain come from more elusive processes: the language that their parents use, the attitudes toward life that they convey. However you measure child-rearing, middle class parents tend to do it differently than poor parents — and the path they follow in turn tends to give their children an array of advantages. [...] Can the culture of child-rearing be changed in poor neighborhoods, and if so, is that a project that government or community organizations have the ability, or the right, to take on?"
(If you read the whole article, they are using poor to mean low-income minority, i.e. black.)
That exercise may be fun, but aren't gender differences in cognition pretty well established? OK, maybe the experiences of Erik Von Markovik (et. al.) are not exactly rigorous, but then there's Helen Fischer:
What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women?
What if modern, postindustrial society is simply hostile to males in return for all the past hostility to females?
edit: apparently axle replied while I had my lament on the state of scholarships. Summarized: out of literally thousands available after pre-filtered (however poorly), I had to toss out all but a dozen or two because I'm white and male.
The problem is really that you likely have not been anything else apart from a male WASP. See, there is no institution working against you. These things you are complaining about not getting are not the main product, they are shortcuts. A scholarship is not the normal way of studying, it's a shortcut way, for people who have something working against them.
A woman (and a black guy) have institutions against them. They go somewhere, and they are instantly assumed to be less competent. That's why these things are given to them - to help out the weak, not to push YOU down. Those things are legs-up to equalise the playing field - you, as a WASP already are at the starting line, asking to get those things is to get another 10 yards.
And no, it's not a socio-economic program. If you took a white bum and a black bum, and you cleaned them up and dressed them nice and sent them to interview, the white will likely get more jobs than the black guy. There is an inherent issue that non-WASPs have to deal with.
A poor black kid from a farm and a poor white kid from a farm don't have the same chances of succeeding in life. The white kid is neutral (everything is always open to him), but the black kid has things working against him right from the start.
It's going to be difficult for you to understand because you have never BEEN a woman in a managerial position. You have never BEEN a black guy applying for jobs.
Let's do this test: Imagine I say you'll get ALL the perks that black people get from the government, do you think you will have a better life being black?
This article is okay, somewhat sexist. I'm surprised it passed the first round of editorial review. Imagine the uproar if a man published an article flirting with "the end of women" in a major publication. This is a feminist claptrap with a lot of anger behind it, and intended to push buttons. It amounts to "girls are better than boys HAHA!"
I'm quite sure men will do just fine over the coming decades, thank you kindly, Ms. Hanna Rosin, and sorry to disappoint. :)
In the meantime I'll make a note not to do any more reading over at the Atlantic. Sad for me; they were once a great rag.
I am surprised you saw the article as angry. I've read it as being very sympathetic towards boys and men. I thought it factually presented the decline of male participation in college and at work as well as in family life and sounded an alarm at what's happening. All the anecdotes were along the lines of, what do we do to involve men more?
How is that an alternative theory? It reads to me as the same statement, except with an implicit value judgment (men deserve/should-be-entitled-to something better suited to them) layered over top of it.
Alternative theory: "modern, postindustrial society" means dysfunctional economy.
> Men dominate just two of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most over the next decade: janitor and computer engineer. Women have everything else--nursing, home health assistance, child care, food preparation.
We're living in a country where almost all the projected growth professions produce no capital or exports.
This is really all about a shitty job market, heavy on consumption and health care, not some boys vs girls thread.
Women currently make up the majority of workers and college graduates because of corruption. Colleges decide admission and grant scholarships based on grades from high school that are 75%+ non math/science * and 90%+ taught by women, who like women more. They then graduate and go into jobs, like teachers or bureaucrats, where being a pedantic, to-the-letter PITA is good for your career.
*Of the 25% that is "science", the bulk of it isn't really, it's just memorizing definitions. I remember in my 9th grade physics class we had to memorize that the definition of a "virtual image" was an image that appeared behind a mirror. They never went into any detail about the physics of lenses, they just found a science term and made everybody memorize it.
Who gives a crap? Even if there are measurable statistical differences in competence at various activities between the sexes (which is far from proven), the average variation between two individuals is far, far more than the average variation between the sexes at large.
In other words, treat people like the individuals and stop ANY form of discrimination based on irrelevant categories, sex-based or otherwise.
Also, the article makes much of the fact that women are getting more education. But this is probably because it is both harder and less necessary for them to jump into the workforce straight out of high school, not because they're any better or more prone to academia. I have no hard data to back this up, but I strongly suspect that your average woman in her 20s is FAR more likely to be at least partially dependent on a husband or parents than a man of the same age.
> the average variation between two individuals is far, far more than the average variation between the sexes at large
You might want to stop and think about how the world would have to look for the above statement not to be true. I don't think it's as strong as you think it is.
> I have no hard data to back this up, but I strongly suspect that your average woman in her 20s is FAR more likely to be at least partially dependent on a husband or parents than a man of the same age.
Careful with your selection bias, though.
My experience mirrors yours (all my male friends are completely independent, many female friends are dependent on boyfriend or parents), but almost all my male peers are software developers, engineers, some PhDs, etc. My female peers, on the other hand, are from a more diverse pool of people.
I would agree if 'male' and 'female' were arbitrary labels. But they're not. Gender is far less arbitrary than, say, race. It is reasonable to suppose that even a small shift in power between the sexes might affect how they interact, and by extension, society (and not necessarily for the worse, of course). In other HN articles it has been claimed that big changes happen when the sex ratio is put out of balance by even small amounts.
> In other words, treat people like the individuals and stop ANY form of discrimination based on irrelevant categories, sex-based or otherwise.
This is beside the point. As a demographic, men are becoming less privileged without there being overt discrimination against them. This is newsworthy.
> Even if there are measurable statistical differences in competence at various activities between the sexes (which is far from proven), the average variation between two individuals is far, far more than the average variation between the sexes at large.
This is has no bearing on the issue. Yes, two individuals are probably measurably more different than the average woman vs the average man, but the qualities of the individual tend to balance out to a middle point in the larger picture. While variation is high, there is a single locus.
With gender, the average woman compared to the average men may be less different than any two random individuals, but there are nonetheless two loci for gender.
> But this is probably because it is both harder and less necessary for them to jump into the workforce straight out of high school, not because they're any better or more prone to academia. I have no hard data to back this up, but I strongly suspect that your average woman in her 20s is FAR more likely to be at least partially dependent on a husband or parents than a man of the same age.
And maybe Unicorns are making all the girls smarter, and flying spaghetti monsters are distracting all the men from studying and doing homework. I have no hard data to back that up. I'm just saying.
Seriously though, if you don't have at least some kind of evidence to back up what you're saying, you're better off just not saying it.
All the more reason for men to work as hard as they can to introduce more women to the field of engineering. What could possibly be more engineer than replacing yourself?
Well, the modern society is less like the savanna, which was the environment that shaped men throughout the evolutionary history of our species, and more like the cave, which was the environment that shaped women. Less physical confrontation, more squabbling. Less concrete, immediate dangers, more abstract worries. Less ass-kicking, more cooperation.
Heck, even spatial abilities are so last-century, now that everyone has a GPS.
So then you get things like men's constantly decreasing fertility, for decades now. Decreasing testosterone levels, again trending downwards for many years now.
I'm not saying this is either good or bad, I'm just saying this is an environment which creates different evolutionary pressures, and our species is responding to it.
I'm not sure I can imagine the destination, though.
Half a century--two human generations--is not nearly enough time for evolutionary pressures to have the sort of effect you are talking about. Least of all in a society of abundance in which the majority of members reproduce.
Instead, I'd suggest you look at the various changing environmental factors for an explanation of these phenomena: BPA in plastics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A), the growing use of soy in human diets (with its attendant phyto-estrogens), and the growing quantities of synthetic human estrogen in the environment (already known to have effects on fish, see for instance http://www.seattlepi.com/local/124939_estrogen04.html).
Well, for the academic insuccess of men I have an easy explanation: nurture.
Look at any movie, telefilm, sit-com ecc where the main character is a youg boy.
He's always a good-looking,athletic, funny,street-smart guy. And at school sucks.
The smart guys are always nerds, losers.
The girls are always pretty, shy, serious and very good at school.
I think that for a school boy there is a lot of social pressure to be good in sports, get many girls and be the leader of your class.
They can't afford to lose time studying.
For the "good" girls there is social pressure to be more serious and academically good.
I actually spent a bit yesterday writing a short response piece to this. Here's an excerpt:
"The problem with "The End of Men" is that it isn't an isolated problem, putting males today and males tomorrow out of jobs. Instead, it's part of a larger pattern. That pattern is the replacement of human labor with automation."
It's also excellent. I regret that our privilege necessarily implies disadvantage for everyone else, but we have it far easier than most. It seems that no amount of anti-discriminatory measures can erase this admittedly positive prejudice.
Making cents on a dollar, whether from non-whiteness or non-maleness, is hardly an inferiority complex. But hey - don't just take my word for it, see for yourself. Go to a McDonalds and request an item from their 99c menu. When they ring it up, say you only have 3 quarters. When they stare at you, tell them they just need to get over it... and please, don't forget to let us know how it worked out.
On the bright side, I don't think many people reading Hacker News fall in to the category of brutish, construction worker-type. :)
I did work construction when I was younger, and I must say, I enjoyed it immensely. I always love to help out someone build a shed or throw up some drywall.
It's just plain fun to build things with your hands, even if you're mainly doing the work with your finger-tips these days.
Not to say that physical work is always great, in fact many times it isn't, but i find the devaluation of it a little troubling, I did physical work on and off several years, there is immense value and satisfaction in building and creating with your hands.
It will be very interesting to see if the arc of human development begins with primitive matriarchal societies and ends with hi-tech matriarchal societies.
It will also be interesting to see if history bears out the current theories that men skew to the extremes. In 20 years women may make up the majority of the white-collar workforce, but will they also dominate at the executive level?
What makes you think that human development started with primitive matriarchal societies? There are anthropological studies of thousands of stone age tribes, very few are matriarchal.
Wikipedia goes even further than my hedged and uninformed "very few" statement and says:
There are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal,[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] although there are a number of attested matrilinear, matrilocal and avunculocal societies, especially among indigenous peoples of Asia and Africa,[9] such as those of the Basques, Minangkabau, Mosuo, Berbers or Tuareg. Strongly matrilocal societies sometimes are referred to as matrifocal, and there is some debate concerning the terminological delineation between matrifocality and matriarchy.
which is no doubt enough to keep anyone occupied for hours, but anyway, I see no evidence that early societies were matriarchal.
Men dominate just two of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most over the next decade: janitor and computer engineer. Women have everything else: nursing, home health assistance, child care, food preparation.
The entire premise of this article is pretty weak, which isn't surprising for The Atlantic. While more women may be employed than men, the jobs they have are associated more with support than with production. As long as our economy doesn't become based on social work and child care, men don't have too much to worry about.
In fact, it seems to hide the real problem of getting more women involved in math and science. Technical skills will be even more important 20 years from now, and women are sorely underrepresented in those fields. I think the society that has the most women involved in tech will be big winner in the long term.
I can't help but think that the trends in this article are only medium-term cultural changes that'll be countered by demography in a century. Fertility rates for highly-educated women in first-world countries have fallen to too low a level for this to be a permanent societal change.
The article touches on relationship desire among professional women a bit.
I know a few recent nursing school graduates, they tell me the running joke in the medical profession is that all the successful women are merely hunting for a successful mate(with a doctor being the brass ring).
Career as means to long term relationship might seem misogynistic, but there's also the common male stereotype of men chasing money primarily to attract women.
I'm not presenting real evidence here, maybe a survey of professional women and their relationship goals would be enlightening.
[+] [-] hugh3|16 years ago|reply
"What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to white people?"
"White people live longer than black people. They do better in this economy. More of ’em graduate from college. They go into space and do everything black people do, and sometimes they do it a whole lot better. I mean, hell, get out of the way—these white people are going to leave us black people in the dust."
"Researchers have suggested any number of solutions. A movement is growing for more all-black schools and classes, and for respecting the individual learning styles of black people. Some people think that black people should be able to walk around in class, or take more time on tests, or have tests and books that cater to their interests."
[+] [-] mynameishere|16 years ago|reply
Well, try replacing "women" with "black people" and "men" with "white people" and they would most certainly publish it. In fact, any time the slightest improvement in the fortune of any allegedly-mistreated group occurs (women, blacks, whatever) it is trumpeted and paraded endlessly.
Anyway, the article didn't point out two salient facts:
1. Women still lag in almost everything that matters (engineering, entrepreneurship, science, math) and
2. Parents prefer girls over boys for the same reason they used to do the opposite: Because that is the gender more likely to take care of them in their old age. No one wants girls because of "empowerment" or whatever PC bullshit journalists happen to be obsessed with.
[+] [-] Alex3917|16 years ago|reply
"Their [research] also suggests that the disadvantages that poverty imposes on children aren’t primarily about material goods. True, every poor child would benefit from having more books in his home and more nutritious food to eat (and money certainly makes it easier to carry out a program of concerted cultivation). But the real advantages that middle-class children gain come from more elusive processes: the language that their parents use, the attitudes toward life that they convey. However you measure child-rearing, middle class parents tend to do it differently than poor parents — and the path they follow in turn tends to give their children an array of advantages. [...] Can the culture of child-rearing be changed in poor neighborhoods, and if so, is that a project that government or community organizations have the ability, or the right, to take on?"
(If you read the whole article, they are using poor to mean low-income minority, i.e. black.)
[+] [-] pohl|16 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ewvCNguug
[+] [-] willchang|16 years ago|reply
Perhaps I miss your point. Do you mind making it explicitly?
[+] [-] sgman|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Groxx|16 years ago|reply
What if modern, postindustrial society is simply hostile to males in return for all the past hostility to females?
edit: apparently axle replied while I had my lament on the state of scholarships. Summarized: out of literally thousands available after pre-filtered (however poorly), I had to toss out all but a dozen or two because I'm white and male.
[+] [-] axle|16 years ago|reply
A woman (and a black guy) have institutions against them. They go somewhere, and they are instantly assumed to be less competent. That's why these things are given to them - to help out the weak, not to push YOU down. Those things are legs-up to equalise the playing field - you, as a WASP already are at the starting line, asking to get those things is to get another 10 yards.
And no, it's not a socio-economic program. If you took a white bum and a black bum, and you cleaned them up and dressed them nice and sent them to interview, the white will likely get more jobs than the black guy. There is an inherent issue that non-WASPs have to deal with.
A poor black kid from a farm and a poor white kid from a farm don't have the same chances of succeeding in life. The white kid is neutral (everything is always open to him), but the black kid has things working against him right from the start.
It's going to be difficult for you to understand because you have never BEEN a woman in a managerial position. You have never BEEN a black guy applying for jobs.
Let's do this test: Imagine I say you'll get ALL the perks that black people get from the government, do you think you will have a better life being black?
[+] [-] codingthewheel|16 years ago|reply
I'm quite sure men will do just fine over the coming decades, thank you kindly, Ms. Hanna Rosin, and sorry to disappoint. :)
In the meantime I'll make a note not to do any more reading over at the Atlantic. Sad for me; they were once a great rag.
(edited for tone)
[+] [-] rada|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ovi256|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amock|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acangiano|16 years ago|reply
Alternative theory: Society is failing our boys.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfranke|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubashov|16 years ago|reply
> Men dominate just two of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most over the next decade: janitor and computer engineer. Women have everything else--nursing, home health assistance, child care, food preparation.
We're living in a country where almost all the projected growth professions produce no capital or exports.
This is really all about a shitty job market, heavy on consumption and health care, not some boys vs girls thread.
[+] [-] foco24|16 years ago|reply
*Of the 25% that is "science", the bulk of it isn't really, it's just memorizing definitions. I remember in my 9th grade physics class we had to memorize that the definition of a "virtual image" was an image that appeared behind a mirror. They never went into any detail about the physics of lenses, they just found a science term and made everybody memorize it.
[+] [-] lukev|16 years ago|reply
In other words, treat people like the individuals and stop ANY form of discrimination based on irrelevant categories, sex-based or otherwise.
Also, the article makes much of the fact that women are getting more education. But this is probably because it is both harder and less necessary for them to jump into the workforce straight out of high school, not because they're any better or more prone to academia. I have no hard data to back this up, but I strongly suspect that your average woman in her 20s is FAR more likely to be at least partially dependent on a husband or parents than a man of the same age.
[+] [-] Eliezer|16 years ago|reply
You might want to stop and think about how the world would have to look for the above statement not to be true. I don't think it's as strong as you think it is.
[+] [-] acid_bath|16 years ago|reply
Careful with your selection bias, though.
My experience mirrors yours (all my male friends are completely independent, many female friends are dependent on boyfriend or parents), but almost all my male peers are software developers, engineers, some PhDs, etc. My female peers, on the other hand, are from a more diverse pool of people.
[+] [-] willchang|16 years ago|reply
I would agree if 'male' and 'female' were arbitrary labels. But they're not. Gender is far less arbitrary than, say, race. It is reasonable to suppose that even a small shift in power between the sexes might affect how they interact, and by extension, society (and not necessarily for the worse, of course). In other HN articles it has been claimed that big changes happen when the sex ratio is put out of balance by even small amounts.
> In other words, treat people like the individuals and stop ANY form of discrimination based on irrelevant categories, sex-based or otherwise.
This is beside the point. As a demographic, men are becoming less privileged without there being overt discrimination against them. This is newsworthy.
[+] [-] Qz|16 years ago|reply
This is has no bearing on the issue. Yes, two individuals are probably measurably more different than the average woman vs the average man, but the qualities of the individual tend to balance out to a middle point in the larger picture. While variation is high, there is a single locus.
With gender, the average woman compared to the average men may be less different than any two random individuals, but there are nonetheless two loci for gender.
> But this is probably because it is both harder and less necessary for them to jump into the workforce straight out of high school, not because they're any better or more prone to academia. I have no hard data to back this up, but I strongly suspect that your average woman in her 20s is FAR more likely to be at least partially dependent on a husband or parents than a man of the same age.
And maybe Unicorns are making all the girls smarter, and flying spaghetti monsters are distracting all the men from studying and doing homework. I have no hard data to back that up. I'm just saying.
Seriously though, if you don't have at least some kind of evidence to back up what you're saying, you're better off just not saying it.
(p.s. the data says you're wrong.)
[+] [-] doron|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sliverstorm|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sutro|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] francoisdevlin|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FlorinAndrei|16 years ago|reply
Heck, even spatial abilities are so last-century, now that everyone has a GPS.
So then you get things like men's constantly decreasing fertility, for decades now. Decreasing testosterone levels, again trending downwards for many years now.
I'm not saying this is either good or bad, I'm just saying this is an environment which creates different evolutionary pressures, and our species is responding to it.
I'm not sure I can imagine the destination, though.
[+] [-] gambling8nt|16 years ago|reply
Instead, I'd suggest you look at the various changing environmental factors for an explanation of these phenomena: BPA in plastics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A), the growing use of soy in human diets (with its attendant phyto-estrogens), and the growing quantities of synthetic human estrogen in the environment (already known to have effects on fish, see for instance http://www.seattlepi.com/local/124939_estrogen04.html).
[+] [-] thinkdifferent|16 years ago|reply
Look at any movie, telefilm, sit-com ecc where the main character is a youg boy. He's always a good-looking,athletic, funny,street-smart guy. And at school sucks.
The smart guys are always nerds, losers.
The girls are always pretty, shy, serious and very good at school.
I think that for a school boy there is a lot of social pressure to be good in sports, get many girls and be the leader of your class. They can't afford to lose time studying.
For the "good" girls there is social pressure to be more serious and academically good.
[+] [-] carpdiem|16 years ago|reply
"The problem with "The End of Men" is that it isn't an isolated problem, putting males today and males tomorrow out of jobs. Instead, it's part of a larger pattern. That pattern is the replacement of human labor with automation."
Check out the whole thing here: http://www.intellectualpornography.com/2010/06/one-oclock-da...
[+] [-] sbt|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erlanger|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ontheroad|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rada|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerme|16 years ago|reply
I did work construction when I was younger, and I must say, I enjoyed it immensely. I always love to help out someone build a shed or throw up some drywall.
It's just plain fun to build things with your hands, even if you're mainly doing the work with your finger-tips these days.
[+] [-] doron|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cageface|16 years ago|reply
It will also be interesting to see if history bears out the current theories that men skew to the extremes. In 20 years women may make up the majority of the white-collar workforce, but will they also dominate at the executive level?
[+] [-] hugh3|16 years ago|reply
Wikipedia goes even further than my hedged and uninformed "very few" statement and says:
There are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal,[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] although there are a number of attested matrilinear, matrilocal and avunculocal societies, especially among indigenous peoples of Asia and Africa,[9] such as those of the Basques, Minangkabau, Mosuo, Berbers or Tuareg. Strongly matrilocal societies sometimes are referred to as matrifocal, and there is some debate concerning the terminological delineation between matrifocality and matriarchy.
which is no doubt enough to keep anyone occupied for hours, but anyway, I see no evidence that early societies were matriarchal.
[+] [-] hooande|16 years ago|reply
The entire premise of this article is pretty weak, which isn't surprising for The Atlantic. While more women may be employed than men, the jobs they have are associated more with support than with production. As long as our economy doesn't become based on social work and child care, men don't have too much to worry about.
In fact, it seems to hide the real problem of getting more women involved in math and science. Technical skills will be even more important 20 years from now, and women are sorely underrepresented in those fields. I think the society that has the most women involved in tech will be big winner in the long term.
[+] [-] gyardley|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r0s|16 years ago|reply
I know a few recent nursing school graduates, they tell me the running joke in the medical profession is that all the successful women are merely hunting for a successful mate(with a doctor being the brass ring).
Career as means to long term relationship might seem misogynistic, but there's also the common male stereotype of men chasing money primarily to attract women.
I'm not presenting real evidence here, maybe a survey of professional women and their relationship goals would be enlightening.
[+] [-] raintrees|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tjmaxal|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] numeromancer|16 years ago|reply
GTG girls, Big Sis is on the screen, and it's time for the two-minute bitch.