Men aren't worse off.

[Ethel mermania]

i can write my name in the snow. show me a woman who can do that.

Depends on the name and language.

Really? Show me.

[Lessnt]

Depends on the name and language.

Really? Show me.

try japanese women writing their name in snow.
I cannot source it.

[Bottle]

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/10/01/the-myth-of-male-decline/

Interesting discussion there. The article itself asserts that the idea that men are worse off now than they used to be is largely a myth. Any circumstances where they actually are worse off are explained solely by greater competition with women.

The comments section is even more interesting. There is a very heated discussion there about whether or not men are obsolete.

So what do you think? Are men really worse off compared to the 50's or is this a myth? On a related note, will improvements in reproductive technology make men obsolete, or is this a paranoid fantasy?

Interesting and strange stuff one can find on the internet.

Men and boys are, by almost every single objective measure, doing better now than they were 50 years ago. The problem (hah) is that women and girls have made even greater gains, and thus men and boys are not sufficiently far ahead to satisfy some folks. If you assume that men are "innately" better at math, then when girls and women catch up (and start to surpass) their male peers you are forced to conclude that SOMETHING HORRIBLE IS AMISS because the natural order of male supremacy is being disrupted. If you assume the default status for any male human is one in which he owns and rules over a woman and children, then you will be horrified and dismayed by a world in which women and children decline to be owned.

Remember that to some people, it's a zero sum game. Men can't win unless women lose. Best advice is to simply ignore them and continue making the world a better place for everyone in spite of their petulant, childish whining.

[Bottle]

Men are worse off.
In a multitude of ways.
We still have to sign up for drafts.
We have to share more.
We have more responsibility.
We carry more burdens.
While living in a world that is still far more likely to kill us.

i can write my name in the snow. show me a woman who can do that.

Hi.

I grew up in Minnesota. On a glass of Walleye Lager, I can write my first, middle, and two last names, with better penmanship than I can manage on paper.

[Ethel mermania]

i can write my name in the snow. show me a woman who can do that.

Hi.

I grew up in Minnesota. On a glass of Walleye Lager, I can write my first, middle, and two last names, with better penmanship than I can manage on paper.

I do not think we are talking about the same thing, but on the slim chance we are... marry me.

[Tahar Joblis]

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/10/01/the-myth-of-male-decline/

Interesting discussion there. The article itself asserts that the idea that men are worse off now than they used to be is largely a myth. Any circumstances where they actually are worse off are explained solely by greater competition with women.

The comments section is even more interesting. There is a very heated discussion there about whether or not men are obsolete.

So what do you think? Are men really worse off compared to the 50's or is this a myth? On a related note, will improvements in reproductive technology make men obsolete, or is this a paranoid fantasy?

Interesting and strange stuff one can find on the internet.

Men and boys are, by almost every single objective measure, doing better now than they were 50 years ago.

Unemployment rate?
Nope.
Incarceration rate?
Nope.
Being presumed innocent until proven guilty?
Nope.
How about how easy it is for a man to go find a teaching job?
Nope.
Taking pictures of your kids without people assuming you're a pedophile?
Nope.

The problem (hah) is that women and girls have made even greater gains, and thus men and boys are not sufficiently far ahead to satisfy some folks.

In an age where the educational requirements to get a job have inflated dramatically, making nominal gains in education on the population level isn't enough.

If you assume that men are "innately" better at math, then when girls and women catch up (and start to surpass) their male peers you are forced to conclude that SOMETHING HORRIBLE IS AMISS because the natural order of male supremacy is being disrupted.

If women are doing significantly better in the educational system in spite of similar overall levels of cognitive ability, then the educational system is being unfair to men.

If you assume the default status for any male human is one in which he owns and rules over a woman and children, then you will be horrified and dismayed by a world in which women and children decline to be owned.

And if you think that the default status for any male human is not being punished for things that aren't his fault, then you will be horrified and dismayed by the state of paternity law and the child support system in the United States; and by the fact that men serve substantially more severe prison sentences for the exact same crimes.

Remember that to some people, it's a zero sum game. Men can't win unless women lose. Best advice is to simply ignore them and continue making the world a better place for everyone in spite of their petulant, childish whining.

"Some people" being NOW, which at this point reflexively opposes any policy which they think would lead to some men winning custody fights they would currently lose?

[Forsher]

Men and boys are, by almost every single objective measure, doing better now than they were 50 years ago.

Unemployment rate?
Nope.
Incarceration rate?
Nope.
Being presumed innocent until proven guilty?
Nope.
How about how easy it is for a man to go find a teaching job?
Nope.
Taking pictures of your kids without people assuming you're a pedophile?
Nope.

To be fair, the unemployment rate has affected everyobdy.

I cannot speak for the incarceration rate... I do not know enough about it.

Innocent until proven guilty. Someone here on NSG made a point that that only applies to courts, to make an arrest one must assume guilt. (That was their argument.) That said, the media is far too quick to jump on things and that whole DSQ thing was laughable. But then, so is the Dotcom saga.

I have one male teacher this year. Two if you include the equivalent of home room such as with all the following numbers. Last year, it was the same scenario. The year before that I had three but there were more teachers/subjects altogether (so it was still a third) and the year before that was complicated but never more than three (or five if you include two student teachers who we had for a few weeks) and with one additional subject but it barely qualifies as such. Prior to then I had never had a male teacher excluding one that was temporarily in some student teacher like position.

On the other hand, of five principals the chief one and the three lesser ones are male. No, that's not true any more we have four now (three male) as we await our new female replacement for one who has gone to be chief principal at another school quite far away. That said, the deans are four male and two female. Teaching is a funny one. But, then, more adminstrative posts have historically lagged behind the bulk in terms of proportioning.

I swear that was in a film. It was probably a comedy, I don't see it being in an action film, and there are only so many more serious films in a year. On a related note, people here are concerned at the lack of male early childhood educators.

The problem (hah) is that women and girls have made even greater gains, and thus men and boys are not sufficiently far ahead to satisfy some folks.

In an age where the educational requirements to get a job have inflated dramatically, making nominal gains in education on the population level isn't enough.

Again, that really effects everyone. That said, a lot of the people seen in improving education things are yet to hit the workforce... then we'll see, I suppose.

If you assume that men are "innately" better at maths, then when girls and women catch up (and start to surpass) their male peers you are forced to conclude that SOMETHING HORRIBLE IS AMISS because the natural order of male supremacy is being disrupted.

If women are doing significantly better in the educational system in spite of similar overall levels of cognitive ability, then the educational system is being unfair to men.

What we are told is that women and men are pretty much equal in terms of intelligence. When we look at the likes of PISA we see that boys are better at maths in comparison but the gap is not nearly as large between the genders as in English (or equivalent) which favours females. When we look at the media we here a lot about girls and maths and not so much about boys and English. For that one must turn to media focussed on education or parenting. It has not become mainstream. This is concerning.

That gap has been attributed to a feminisation of education. That's got nothing to do with teachers and everything to do with what teachers are meant to be teaching. The argument goes that English is less about the nuts and bolts that boys were better at and more about the smooth paint that English is today where girls are doing much better. The lack of nuts and bolts is also criticised in the sense that everyone (hyperbole) complains about illiterate students. My teachers tell us that at teacher's college the best knowledge of English comes from those who do not speak it natively and learn more of the nuts and bolts.

And that's all I have to say abou that.

[Kalaspia-Shimarata]

i can write my name in the snow. show me a woman who can do that.

How am I advantaged by that. I'm a man who can't!

[Tahar Joblis]

I'm not against the notion of explicitly adding forced penetration to the definition of rape, so I don't think you and I will be able to stir up a very interesting debate in that regard.

The really odd thing is that I rarely, if ever, run into anyone who disagrees that all sex without consent should be classed as rape. Or that if a woman has vaginal sex with an unconsenting man, that it isn't rape.

And yet somehow, taking issue with the way the various official legal and statistical definitions of rape exclude this is an exotic position.

A deeper exploration of the meaning of "patriarchy" in a feminist context is available here: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/fr/jou ... 7921a.html

I asked you to produce evidence and that's just what you did. Thanks much. Furthermore, your hypothetical reasoning regarding child molestation seems solid enough.

I can't deny that the concept of patriarchy has been misused before.

That paper seems to be saying that "patriarchy" is used with a wide variety of definitions within the context of feminist writings, including some fairly vague definitions, but ranging down to usage that's much more anthropological, i.e., talking about the basic structure of the family unit.

If I ever become more deeply involved with a feminist organization I will certainly try to reverse that trend if I find it to be present.

Good luck with that.

To be fair to me, you didn't actually specify what sort of funding you were talking about. It was very easy to infer from what you'd written that you were talking about organizational funding, not federal funding.

Both have actually happened. Mostly, we're talking about organizations that get federal funding.

Presumably these were suits regarding VAWA and federal funding distribution? Is there a specific case of interest here?

This one.

As I said, it seems reasonable on the face of it. If you follow around discussion of that case, we're talking about oh, these organizations can't afford to serve men, and if they tried to serve men, it would impact how well they could serve women, they are underfunded, etc etc, go make your own shelters.

You can also see the threat - saying that if these shelters serve men, they risk losing some measure of federal funding. Ultimately, the LA shelters won the lawsuit - it got dismissed for lack of standing.

Not just feminist.com; you can also see the sorts of things that I'm talking about in the CWLC's statements. It says men are rarely the real victims of domestic violence, this will reduce the amount of money available to women's shelters or jeopardize their funding from VAWA.

On review, you can actually find most of the arguments I listed in one or another' group's statement relating to that particular lawsuit; here you have statements along the lines of if the plaintiffs cared about it so much, hecan go raise funds for men's shelters privately or get some other federal program passed to help men. That brief talks a lot about how serving abused women helps children, but no acknowledgement at all that a male victim of DV might need shelter in order to have someone to take his children where they won't be abused; it makes the argument that women have a special need of shelters because of their children, leaving fathers invisible.

One individual, or even one organization, is unlikely to throw every single argument on my list out there at once, and I think the brief is unusual in that it contains a grab-bag of diverse arguments that don't necessarily originate with the same individual or group. However, you can see the presence of most of them, I think; I can go searching for more examples of those arguments being used, I know I've seen every single one of those made fairly often at some point.

Thus increasing the importance of crime statistics so that these groups' activities can be more accurately coordinated with societal trends. Got it.

The importance of accurate and meaningful statistics can't be understated, IMO. I see a lot of bad figures tossed around, and a lot of potentially meaningful figures seriously misinterpreted. For example, using arrest or conviction data to show that certain crimes are "male" crimes when gendered stereotyping is a major issue in the arrest ratios is problematic, as in the case of child molesters discussed earlier.

So you hear a lot of people using statistics to "show" that child molesters are overwhelmingly male, but to a large degree, the way those statistics are created means they reflect our social biases rather than test them. The use and abuse of bad or misleading figures is as much of a problem as the lack of good figures, in many cases.

I'll keep what you've said in mind and reevaluate. Thank you for your reply.

You're welcome.

[Ethel mermania]

i can write my name in the snow. show me a woman who can do that.

How am I advantaged by that. I'm a man who can't!

I would not admit to that in public.

[Quintium]

How am I advantaged by that. I'm a man who can't!

I would not admit to that in public.

Meh, why not? I can't write my name in snow either, because my handwriting is terrible. There were only two people at my high school who could read my handwriting on exams - someone who could read Arabic, and someone who spent most of his adult life so far reading medieval manuscripts. Then again, I don't think I wrote on my exams using what this is about.

[Kalaspia-Shimarata]

How am I advantaged by that. I'm a man who can't!

I would not admit to that in public.

I can't write my name in snow, due to the lack of snow...
...
...not for any other reasons, and certainly not for the reason you think...

I would not admit to that in public.

Meh, why not? I can't write my name in snow either, because my handwriting is terrible. There were only two people at my high school who could read my handwriting on exams - someone who could read Arabic, and someone who spent most of his adult life so far reading medieval manuscripts. Then again, I don't think I wrote on my exams using what this is about.

I can relate. For that reason, and that reason only, I can type my exams

[Ethel mermania]

I would not admit to that in public.

I can't write my name in snow, due to the lack of snow...
...
...not for any other reasons, and certainly not for the reason you think...

Meh, why not? I can't write my name in snow either, because my handwriting is terrible. There were only two people at my high school who could read my handwriting on exams - someone who could read Arabic, and someone who spent most of his adult life so far reading medieval manuscripts. Then again, I don't think I wrote on my exams using what this is about.

I can relate. For that reason, and that reason only, I can type my exams

So the truth of the matter is you do not know if you can write your name in the snow or not? Don't be so down on yourself, you don't know until you have tried.

The world being our bathroom, and drunken spelling in the snow are two of the great things about being a man.

[Kalaspia-Shimarata]

I can't write my name in snow, due to the lack of snow...
...
...not for any other reasons, and certainly not for the reason you think...


I can relate. For that reason, and that reason only, I can type my exams

So the truth of the matter is you do not know if you can write your name in the snow or not? Don't be so down on yourself, you don't know until you have tried.

The world being our bathroom, and drunken spelling in the snow are two of the great things about being a man.

Don't forget the lack of menstruation
I'm under-age and can't drink and there is no snow, so that gives me no benefits.
I went to Canberra in July. I live in southern hemisphere, so it was winter here. It got cold enough snow but this was no snow