The War on Men and Boys: your evidence is requested

Yeah my advisor says the same thing to me.

 

Taking arguendo that the table is set, as women have the spending power, they can make their own fashion choices. Men did not make Twiggy popular. And there is no table set that explains her popularity other than WOMEN liked that look. Not men. We more tend to want someone like Raquel Welch.
As women now have control of some 60% of US wealth obtained in no small part through transfers of wealth from men who earned it to women that did not, they have to hold themselves accountable for their purchasing choices. That will drive the market.

 

Yeah I don’t even want to know how you justify economic dependency on men as a form of power.

 

Money is power. It gets people to do things. So if government orders men to give money to women in order to help socially disenfranchise themselves, women don't have to acknowledge dependency. They can simply live off of men and call that independence. Then they can hold things like the Canadian Munk debates in which they found, be it resolved, men are obsolete. While living off of them.

 

Remember my criticisms earlier that you’re talking about gender but not talking about it through a gendered lens, meaning you’re going to miss important nuance?

 

I've never ben called toxic because I'm a male. Ever. Not in college, and not in a liberal town. Not even online. To be honest, I doubt if all but a tiny few have been called toxic because they are male.

 

If that were actually happening, that would be terrible. Unless the kid actually is toxic, and even then, there are better ways of handling it.

 

I do and what came to my mind was a critique of religion and its most scholarly advocates. To be a true religious scholar you must study a butt ton of writings. As you study the writings, you may find that they are nonsense but now you are super invested. You may even be on your way to making a living handing this knowledge down. No way are you going denounce this thing you have devoted so much of your life to.
And now you have this thing telling women that men, through the millennia, set the fashion table in a way that harms and oppresses women and that there is literature to support the view.
I'm writing, with women having control of some 60% of US wealth, they have to be accountable for their own purchasing choices, regardless of anything that happened in the past.

Agreed. And if we are to try, first we have to be vocal about it even being a problem. Someone wrote when some 20% of boys are diagnosed as hyper active: when you get to 20% of a population being a thing, that thing is not an abnormality. Acknowledge the problem and then move for solutions, such as longer recess periods during which the kids can burn off some of that energy.

 

How many of these that get broadcast on the public networks should I post for you?

And while you might be on a trip down the nile.... the rest of us are paying attention to what is being propagated, and by whom..

 

Lol, did you actually watch the video? Because it doesn't say anything remotely close to what you claimed.

If by "paying attention" you mean "not paying attention at all and instead making **** up"

 

Didn't it? In every one of the scenarios, the creation of toxicity is being demonstrated. I get you probably don't like having to face it, but this is, exactly what the narrative is. Men, toxic. products of the culture that make them evil, that make them prey on drunk girls at parties, pic fights on the playground, yada yada. You don't seem to be able to see it for yourself. Enjoy that trip on the nile...

 

The best line... "I'm a women's studies major"...



What kills me is the tens of thousands of dollars that are being wasted on these folks who can repeat the propaganda, but can't think their way out of a plastic bag...

 

Yes. It is. So you made it that far.

You might want to watch it again for the actual message. There are toxic ways to raise boys and healthy ways, so lets promote healthy ways. How could you possibly disagree with that message? I get that this probably gets in the way of your victim narrative, but that's what the video actually says.

And, yes, that does in fact happen. That doesn't make them "toxic for being male." It means they were raised on a toxic version of masculinity.

I won't apologize for functional literacy.

The video says a lot of men are raised in a toxic way. This is objectively true. It does not say "men are toxic." It says there's a better way to raise boys than the examples shown in the video. This is also true. Do you seriously disagree? You really think that all of the examples in the video are the right way to raise boys? I doubt it. But addressing that fact would mean actually paying attention to what the video said instead of having a victim narrative pity party, and we can't have that.

 

Conservatives 10 years ago: "Maybe we should raise our boys to be gentlemen. There are a lot of bad influences out there."
People today: "Maybe we should raise our boys to be gentlemen. There are a lot of bad influences out there."
Conservatives today: "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU WOULD CALL ALL MEN TRASH LIKE THAT!!!!"

 

Yeah so if you think that, maybe adopt a different lens when talking about gender.

 

The ad has some good food for thought but fails to acknowledge the world boys grow up in and how much of their makeup is based upon what they need to survive. It comes across as actually just advocating for men to be weak.

And even with some good food for thought, I'm sure we've all heard of the Gillette ad kurfuffel. Could you imagine a ladies razor ad saying, "Women: stop sleeping around. Out of wedlock birth is a social disaster." Even if true, heads would roll.

In order to accomplish what?

 

I'm glad you can acknowledge that it has some good food for thought, but that "need to survive" and fear of being seen as "weak" is exactly the sort of damaging conception of masculinity that the video is meant to address.

This whole idea that it isn't "manly" to ask for help when you need it, or give some time for vulnerability, or find healthy outlets for your stress, or practice basic empathy IS the "toxic" version of masculinity that they are talking about. And this idea of what it means to be "manly" IS part of why men lead shorter, less healthy lives than women typically do.

 

I can post a video of women telling us that male abandonment is male toxicity too. They also spent a great deal of time on how they felt underwhelmed by the fact that they (women) didn't "feel" "protected" but in the same breath lambasted men for their toxic behavior. It's laughable, really. The idea that men must "protect" women, but can't be masculine about it, and then also having women disparage men that aren't masculine, because that isn't what they really wanted... Yes, utterly laughable.

 

. . . and it is. The problem is that you can't seem to understand that this isn't the same thing as saying "Men are bad for being males."

Assuming you are presenting the video correctly, sure, there sounds like there could be a contradiction there.

 

And, IF, that were the conversation, I doubt anyone would be in disagreement. But, that isn't what is being said here. What is being said is,

Then: Raise boys to be gentlemen.
Now, Being a gentleman is by definition, toxic.

Again, that nile trip you're on seems all encompassing for you. The difference is that what is being criticized by conservatives isn't that boys can be raised to be gentlemen. It's that liberals are destroying the outcome. Because men are now toxic.

 

What’s amazing to me are these “men” who are losing their minds over online videos. Why do you care about the opinions of online videos? Hell, the only reason I know any of these videos exists is because of these “men” posting them in threads like this. The “men” upset over these videos reminds me of the term used by these same “men” when trying to insult whiny liberals. Grow a pair and live your life the way you want and ignore the opinions of these online videos. You’re welcome.

 

That's exactly what the "toxic masculinity" thing is about.

No one is saying that.

Again, practice some functional literacy. Learn how adjectives and nouns work. No no is saying that "men are now toxic."

"Cold pie" =/= all pies are cold
"Cheeseburger" =/= all burgers have cheese on them
"Chinese food" =/= all food is Chinese
"Tall Swede" =/= all Swedes are tall
"Good film" =/= all films are good
"Toxic masculinity" =/= all masculinity is toxic

 

Still waiting

 

Because there are contradictions. Think about it this way. The thought that men can be condemned universally, as suggested in the first video I posted, without any concrete understanding, itself is corrosive. It insinuates that there is a problem, but no one has a definition of that problem, but it is a problem because it is universally acknowledged. The contraction here is that asked questions like should men intervene on behalf of women, the majority of women would say yes. Given the flip of that, when asked should a woman intervene on behalf of a man, their responses are almost universally no. So men, must 'protect" women, but women feel no correlative obligation to help out. It's classic only more me but not for thee...

The question folks could ask here is: why is there so much obvious dichotomy here? We have folks actively demanding behavioral modifications, and yet they themselves couldn't be bothered... all that prerogative and such...

 

The reality, though, is different. Somewhere around 95% of custody cases are worked out without the court, and a majority of those wind up with shared custody of some kind. I know many such cases, including my husband and his kids with his ex. I know three women paying child support, because they make more than their ex.