Oct 22, 2022·edited Oct 22, 2022Liked by Richard V Reeves
As a Biological Psychologist, lifelong teacher, and former stay-at-home dad that raised two boys, I agree with this. And, quite frankly, one of the worst influences on their lives was the teachers that they had in grade school (for all the reasons noted in this essay, and more). I think that virtually everything that's going on in education is not only anti-boy but anti-child and, to a great extent, anti-rationality....
Despite all the disadvantages and drawbacks of displaying manly virtues in today’s society, men need to be manly and women need to recognize those virtues.
I’ve noticed that women who say that all men are trash tend to have remarkably poor taste in men.
100% yes: “ Given the rate boys are diagnosed with various behavioral disorders, it’s fair to wonder if it’s the educational institutions, rather than the boys, that are not functioning properly.”
For a bit more credibility it would have been better if a woman had written this, a topic that is long overdue for serious attention. We fail at everyone’s peril when we neglect our male citizens, to demonize their behaviors at every age - from boys being “on the spectrum” at an early age, to toxicity to patriarchy, to blaming every ill suffered by women on “white men”. Women are now less able to find suitable life partners equally or better educated than themselves, not a problem decades ago. Men, on the other hand, are walking away from these newly empowered gender warriors, uninterested in competing with them in a game not of their own choosing, or fending off the barrage of gender-based insults hurled their way from every direction - by society as well as individuals. The battle is won for women. Now we need to win the war so that society and all of its members benefit from all this progress.
And the one thing that everyone avoids is that this entire sick charade could be ended in a hot second if men were really the beasts that the extreme feminists portray them to be. Because biology is immutable and men are simply stronger and bigger. Indeed, one need look no further than the Islamic societies that enforce a rigid male dominance. But men in Western societies did not want to see their wives oppressed and their daughters denied opportunities. And, yet, predictably, as is the case with most things that "progressives" touch, sanity has been turned on its head and men have been demonized and marginalized. The facts don't lie and those laid out by Mr. Reeves are but the tip of the iceberg. The radicalization of marginalized men is only just getting started. What do you think will happen when they see boys being turned into girls, boys anesthesized with drugs to make them more malleable, masculinity demonized, and young men denied work opportunities? And all the while, lonely women decry the absence of real men and revile the soy boys who prostrate themselves on the altar of the cult of feminism.
Mother of three boys, now grown. The public school system was awful for all three of them. The underlying messaging was terrible. In 8th grade, one of my sons was told at the awards ceremony, "You were the best math student, but we gave the outstanding math student award to (a girl), because she was nicer to the other students in class. " I wish I was kidding. In college, all the women in STEM and special interest groups create a Venn diagram where there are no spaces prioritized for men, other than fraternities. The feminists are trying to dismantle those too. Our saving grace was a Jesuit all-boys school, which provided a safe and nurturing learning and social environment. My boys are faring way better than their friends who attended public school. It is time to overhaul our educational system and our thinking about boys.
The author makes an important point. We cannot stop considering the needs of 50 per cent of the population without realizing unintended consequences.
I was at a meeting one evening this week when a volunteer, a brown man, explained to the group that men, and white men in particular, take up too much space in the world. He claimed if you encountered a white man in the grocery store, he would not yield to provide social distance. It was a grossly unjust generalization. Because of the current Zeitgeist and the nature of the organization I work for, the other four participants in the meeting -- two white women and two white men -- listened to this tirade without comment. But we spoke about the comments amongst ourselves after the fact. We have created a culture where it is acceptable to express to sexist, racist commentary as long as it is directed to white men. It is wrong.
Not to be *that* person but the Bible has quite a bit to say on the topic of men, how they should behave and how men and women should act towards each other. I just can’t help but think so many of today’s issues all trace their roots back to the rise of secularism. 🤷🏻♀️
There is the problem: men ( or women for that matter) need to be seen as something more than a "cultural side effect". It's a very good essay and I totally agree with it, but it seems that we are not only disrupting 12,000 years of cultural heritage, but hundreds of thousands years of evolution as well. Note to young leftists, you cannot wish things like biological imperatives or previous events away. Just saying.
Well one great point made is the elimination of education for skilled trades. With manufacturing moved overseas and schools wanting to eliminate auto and wood / metal shops and replace with gender studies, it stands to reason that the goal is gender neutral. Look at the leaders of women groups, do they look like they care about boys or men? Hell they have to sneak up on a water fountain.
Long said our priorities are all wrong. The US has a serious shortage of skilled workers. I know people with companies that can not find people willing to work and learn. They can make six figures a year but the work is sometimes long and odd hours. We sold a couple of generations the you must have a degree bullshit and eliminated manufacturing.
Now we have micro aggression and are you a boy or girl and you are now six and should know. My hope is parents getting re-engaged with schools will help. Yet, until our incompetent government pulls it's head out of their ass, and helps get manufacturing and trade schools stood up, not much will change. They piss money away on gender studies but can't subsidize any manufacturing near a city for jobs in the hope of providing opportunities to lower income folks.
Keep telling young men to stop being mean and you will get the Biden administration. Men need to be women or just not have a pair. Plus, being honest, not sure that's what women want in their man. Think they would prefer a guy who believes in protecting his family and working hard to support. It doesn't have to be what you do for a living but more that you act like a man and not a gender afraid person.But have women been sold the you don't need a man story for so long?
"But like all revolutions, it has generated real challenges, too. You don’t upend a 12,000-year-old social order without experiencing cultural side effects."
Social engineering continues to evade the engineers; we don't really understand ourselves or the roots of the human condition very well and yet changes are made, and experiments conducted without any forethought about the outcomes. Dr. Jordan Peterson is quoted as saying something to the effect of "Oh you don't like the institution of marriage? Before you throw it out, rethink what you are replacing it with". It is clear to many that the alternatives, regardless of the purported advantages to monogamy, are yet to be vetted by history or outcomes as successful.
I wonder if it just where we are at in this particular cycle, like in a historical context. I think there can and is going to be a movement that gives men more economic power in society. I say this from a practical standpoint.
I am a single-mother with an advanced degree and make a decent living. I thank the opportunities given to me from the women who fought hard before me. And yet, when my plumbing went out and I had water flooding my house, the fact is I paid way more to the man who came to fix it in a half hour than I make in two days!
I pointed this out to both my kids-a son and a daughter. We will see if they take notice.
This article makes many good and valid points, right up until the disparaging remarks of the “populist right”. I voted for Donald Trump twice. I voted for him the first time b/c I was voting against Hillary Clinton. I voted for him the second time b/c his policies, both foreign and domestic, were rooted in reality as opposed to ideology. Democratic ideas might sound good to some, but the policies accomplish NOTHING. The disaster of the Joe Biden administration has these failing democratic policies on full display.
Glad Mr. Reeves is taking on this subject, but a couple of points I disagree on:
One, we should be very skeptical of the idea that feminism, or any ideology or social movement, has any significant causative effects on social changes. There are plenty of material explanations for these changes rooted in the technological developments of the Industrial Age and subsequent Information Age. Pre-Industrial gender roles were not arbitrary, and they did not disappear because someone discovered they were "sexist" and complained about it. The gendered division of labor simply became obsolete. I think you could argue for some causative effects of feminism downstream of the big picture changes, most of them negative, but let's give credit where it's due. Mass transit, the assembly line, the pill, etc. etc. are way more important than anyone carrying a snarky sign through the streets.
The idea of women being less dependent on men than in prior ages is not correct. Women are more dependent on men than they were in the Stone Age, just not on specific, identifiable men that they know. Technology has made many forms of male labor obsolete, but it has done the same for traditional female forms of labor. Women in the colonial U.S. spend a lot of time cooking, sewing, cleaning, and doing physical labor that produced useful results. Women of the modern laptop class, or more generally as part of the service economy, generally do not do essential work (particularly given the failed state of teaching and the social sciences). A single woman in 2020's America lives in a house built by men, drives a car built by men on roads built by men, uses devices designed by men built with rare minerals mined by men powered by coal and gas mined by men, and is protected by a mostly male police force and military. So does a single man, incidentally. Many of these men will be nonwhite, non-American, of low SES, living in remote areas, not part of this woman's social world. The fact that this woman likely never meets most of these men might lead her to be less aware of her dependence, and she might not have the same gratitude towards them that she would if she lived on an 1800's homestead with one man. But women need to hear the words of our former president: "You didn't build that".
I'm also not as bullish on "HEAL" professions. While I agree that more male teachers and psychologists would be a good thing, I don't want to valorize those professions, and many of them may eventually become as obsolete as the old blue-collar jobs. What is education as a profession when all the information in the world is available on a phone and the teaching professions are dominated by insane ideologues and corrupt unions? I would rather see more women in mining, coding, and garbage removal than see more men working in nursing homes, fine arts, and house cleaning, though all of these are in the direction of gender parity.
Otherwise, agree with some of the big points on the labor force and education, and agree that there just isn't a clear set of social norms and rules around masculinity and a lot of bad and confusing messaging that seems to make it tough for us.
As a Biological Psychologist, lifelong teacher, and former stay-at-home dad that raised two boys, I agree with this. And, quite frankly, one of the worst influences on their lives was the teachers that they had in grade school (for all the reasons noted in this essay, and more). I think that virtually everything that's going on in education is not only anti-boy but anti-child and, to a great extent, anti-rationality....
The latter is hurting both boys and girls.
Spot on.
Despite all the disadvantages and drawbacks of displaying manly virtues in today’s society, men need to be manly and women need to recognize those virtues.
I’ve noticed that women who say that all men are trash tend to have remarkably poor taste in men.
100% yes: “ Given the rate boys are diagnosed with various behavioral disorders, it’s fair to wonder if it’s the educational institutions, rather than the boys, that are not functioning properly.”
For a bit more credibility it would have been better if a woman had written this, a topic that is long overdue for serious attention. We fail at everyone’s peril when we neglect our male citizens, to demonize their behaviors at every age - from boys being “on the spectrum” at an early age, to toxicity to patriarchy, to blaming every ill suffered by women on “white men”. Women are now less able to find suitable life partners equally or better educated than themselves, not a problem decades ago. Men, on the other hand, are walking away from these newly empowered gender warriors, uninterested in competing with them in a game not of their own choosing, or fending off the barrage of gender-based insults hurled their way from every direction - by society as well as individuals. The battle is won for women. Now we need to win the war so that society and all of its members benefit from all this progress.
And the one thing that everyone avoids is that this entire sick charade could be ended in a hot second if men were really the beasts that the extreme feminists portray them to be. Because biology is immutable and men are simply stronger and bigger. Indeed, one need look no further than the Islamic societies that enforce a rigid male dominance. But men in Western societies did not want to see their wives oppressed and their daughters denied opportunities. And, yet, predictably, as is the case with most things that "progressives" touch, sanity has been turned on its head and men have been demonized and marginalized. The facts don't lie and those laid out by Mr. Reeves are but the tip of the iceberg. The radicalization of marginalized men is only just getting started. What do you think will happen when they see boys being turned into girls, boys anesthesized with drugs to make them more malleable, masculinity demonized, and young men denied work opportunities? And all the while, lonely women decry the absence of real men and revile the soy boys who prostrate themselves on the altar of the cult of feminism.
Mother of three boys, now grown. The public school system was awful for all three of them. The underlying messaging was terrible. In 8th grade, one of my sons was told at the awards ceremony, "You were the best math student, but we gave the outstanding math student award to (a girl), because she was nicer to the other students in class. " I wish I was kidding. In college, all the women in STEM and special interest groups create a Venn diagram where there are no spaces prioritized for men, other than fraternities. The feminists are trying to dismantle those too. Our saving grace was a Jesuit all-boys school, which provided a safe and nurturing learning and social environment. My boys are faring way better than their friends who attended public school. It is time to overhaul our educational system and our thinking about boys.
The author makes an important point. We cannot stop considering the needs of 50 per cent of the population without realizing unintended consequences.
I was at a meeting one evening this week when a volunteer, a brown man, explained to the group that men, and white men in particular, take up too much space in the world. He claimed if you encountered a white man in the grocery store, he would not yield to provide social distance. It was a grossly unjust generalization. Because of the current Zeitgeist and the nature of the organization I work for, the other four participants in the meeting -- two white women and two white men -- listened to this tirade without comment. But we spoke about the comments amongst ourselves after the fact. We have created a culture where it is acceptable to express to sexist, racist commentary as long as it is directed to white men. It is wrong.
Not to be *that* person but the Bible has quite a bit to say on the topic of men, how they should behave and how men and women should act towards each other. I just can’t help but think so many of today’s issues all trace their roots back to the rise of secularism. 🤷🏻♀️
There is the problem: men ( or women for that matter) need to be seen as something more than a "cultural side effect". It's a very good essay and I totally agree with it, but it seems that we are not only disrupting 12,000 years of cultural heritage, but hundreds of thousands years of evolution as well. Note to young leftists, you cannot wish things like biological imperatives or previous events away. Just saying.
As the mother of 4 young men, I could not agree more with this piece.
Well one great point made is the elimination of education for skilled trades. With manufacturing moved overseas and schools wanting to eliminate auto and wood / metal shops and replace with gender studies, it stands to reason that the goal is gender neutral. Look at the leaders of women groups, do they look like they care about boys or men? Hell they have to sneak up on a water fountain.
Long said our priorities are all wrong. The US has a serious shortage of skilled workers. I know people with companies that can not find people willing to work and learn. They can make six figures a year but the work is sometimes long and odd hours. We sold a couple of generations the you must have a degree bullshit and eliminated manufacturing.
Now we have micro aggression and are you a boy or girl and you are now six and should know. My hope is parents getting re-engaged with schools will help. Yet, until our incompetent government pulls it's head out of their ass, and helps get manufacturing and trade schools stood up, not much will change. They piss money away on gender studies but can't subsidize any manufacturing near a city for jobs in the hope of providing opportunities to lower income folks.
Keep telling young men to stop being mean and you will get the Biden administration. Men need to be women or just not have a pair. Plus, being honest, not sure that's what women want in their man. Think they would prefer a guy who believes in protecting his family and working hard to support. It doesn't have to be what you do for a living but more that you act like a man and not a gender afraid person.But have women been sold the you don't need a man story for so long?
"But like all revolutions, it has generated real challenges, too. You don’t upend a 12,000-year-old social order without experiencing cultural side effects."
Social engineering continues to evade the engineers; we don't really understand ourselves or the roots of the human condition very well and yet changes are made, and experiments conducted without any forethought about the outcomes. Dr. Jordan Peterson is quoted as saying something to the effect of "Oh you don't like the institution of marriage? Before you throw it out, rethink what you are replacing it with". It is clear to many that the alternatives, regardless of the purported advantages to monogamy, are yet to be vetted by history or outcomes as successful.
"feminism has achieved a central goal of securing for women economic independence and power."
Which women? Do you know any women who aren't upper middle class professionals?
Your book is one of the most classist pieces of trash I've read.
Men of the professional class are doing fine; it's poor and working class men who are suffering, and women of that class are suffering, too.
Your answer to the problem?
Holding boys back from school for two years and hiring more male kindergarten teachers.
Asinine.
I wonder if it just where we are at in this particular cycle, like in a historical context. I think there can and is going to be a movement that gives men more economic power in society. I say this from a practical standpoint.
I am a single-mother with an advanced degree and make a decent living. I thank the opportunities given to me from the women who fought hard before me. And yet, when my plumbing went out and I had water flooding my house, the fact is I paid way more to the man who came to fix it in a half hour than I make in two days!
I pointed this out to both my kids-a son and a daughter. We will see if they take notice.
This article makes many good and valid points, right up until the disparaging remarks of the “populist right”. I voted for Donald Trump twice. I voted for him the first time b/c I was voting against Hillary Clinton. I voted for him the second time b/c his policies, both foreign and domestic, were rooted in reality as opposed to ideology. Democratic ideas might sound good to some, but the policies accomplish NOTHING. The disaster of the Joe Biden administration has these failing democratic policies on full display.
Glad Mr. Reeves is taking on this subject, but a couple of points I disagree on:
One, we should be very skeptical of the idea that feminism, or any ideology or social movement, has any significant causative effects on social changes. There are plenty of material explanations for these changes rooted in the technological developments of the Industrial Age and subsequent Information Age. Pre-Industrial gender roles were not arbitrary, and they did not disappear because someone discovered they were "sexist" and complained about it. The gendered division of labor simply became obsolete. I think you could argue for some causative effects of feminism downstream of the big picture changes, most of them negative, but let's give credit where it's due. Mass transit, the assembly line, the pill, etc. etc. are way more important than anyone carrying a snarky sign through the streets.
The idea of women being less dependent on men than in prior ages is not correct. Women are more dependent on men than they were in the Stone Age, just not on specific, identifiable men that they know. Technology has made many forms of male labor obsolete, but it has done the same for traditional female forms of labor. Women in the colonial U.S. spend a lot of time cooking, sewing, cleaning, and doing physical labor that produced useful results. Women of the modern laptop class, or more generally as part of the service economy, generally do not do essential work (particularly given the failed state of teaching and the social sciences). A single woman in 2020's America lives in a house built by men, drives a car built by men on roads built by men, uses devices designed by men built with rare minerals mined by men powered by coal and gas mined by men, and is protected by a mostly male police force and military. So does a single man, incidentally. Many of these men will be nonwhite, non-American, of low SES, living in remote areas, not part of this woman's social world. The fact that this woman likely never meets most of these men might lead her to be less aware of her dependence, and she might not have the same gratitude towards them that she would if she lived on an 1800's homestead with one man. But women need to hear the words of our former president: "You didn't build that".
I'm also not as bullish on "HEAL" professions. While I agree that more male teachers and psychologists would be a good thing, I don't want to valorize those professions, and many of them may eventually become as obsolete as the old blue-collar jobs. What is education as a profession when all the information in the world is available on a phone and the teaching professions are dominated by insane ideologues and corrupt unions? I would rather see more women in mining, coding, and garbage removal than see more men working in nursing homes, fine arts, and house cleaning, though all of these are in the direction of gender parity.
Otherwise, agree with some of the big points on the labor force and education, and agree that there just isn't a clear set of social norms and rules around masculinity and a lot of bad and confusing messaging that seems to make it tough for us.