Parents of boys who became incels

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do we think upwards of 25% of boys are labeled as ADHD in elementary school? They grow up in an environment built for girls for 7 hours a day and are medicated to stay quieter. Our society no longer understands or appreciates little boys and this is the natural outcome.

Well, no. It's the boys (and their parents, and society's expectations/ tolerance level) that have changed. Sitting quietly and respectfully for a full school day used to be the norm. There was an ironclad expectation from schools and parents alike that children, boys included, behave themselves in class. This was true from the earliest days of congregate education, up until, well, now. Even when I was a kid, when ADHD meds were rare but corporal punishment was a thing of the past, there was nothing like the chaos that reigns in today's classrooms at every level. So it's not even that we used to beat them into compliance (though of course we did-- it just wasn't the only factor.)

So boys are no longer expected to sit quietly and do their work. And yet they still expect to win at everything, when girls following the rules and doing the work are right there modeling the behavior that used to be expected of all students. The only explanation for this is that parents have abdicated their responsibility to raise respectful humans, and communicated to their boys the sense of entitlement-- the right to be wild, to play rough, to denigrate their teachers-- and the understanding that this will not affect their futures.

Want better men? Raise better boys. Shelve the excuses.

A bit off topic, but there is a case for having boys delay school and start K at six years old, as the difference in maturity is so stark by the time kids hit puberty. Girls are also hitting puberty younger, while boys are experiencing delayed puberty. Here's a gift article from the Atlantic from a few years ago that takes a deeper dive, some excerpts -

" The reason little boys wear almost all of the red shirts is not mysterious; the fact that boys mature later than girls is one known to every parent, and certainly to every teacher. According to a Rand survey, teachers are three times more likely to delay entry for their own sons than their own daughters. The maturity gap is now demonstrated conclusively by neuroscience: Brain development follows a different trajectory for boys than it does for girls. But this fact is entirely ignored in broader education policy, even as boys fall further behind girls in the classroom."

"On almost every measure of educational success from pre-K to postgrad, boys and young men now lag well behind their female classmates. The trend is so pronounced that it can result only from structural problems. Affluent parents and elite schools are tackling the issue by giving boys more time. But in fact it is boys from poorer backgrounds who struggle the most in the classroom, and these boys, who could benefit most from the gift of time, are the ones least likely to receive it. Public schools usually follow an industrial model, enrolling children automatically based on their birth date. Administrators in the public system rarely have the luxury of conversations with parents about school readiness."

"A proposal to give a boost to boys may sound odd to some, given the inequities that many girls and women still face. But I am betting on our ability to think two thoughts at once. There is much still to be done to promote female representation in politics and corporate leadership, for example. But as to education, boys and men are the ones who need the most help. And it’s not an issue only for them. When schools fail boys, those boys grow into men lacking the skills to flourish in the workplace, to be strong partners, or to be good providers for their children. Giving boys the gift of time will help create a better society not just for men, but for women and children too."



https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/boys-delayed-entry-school-start-redshirting/671238/?gift=-EjTk41hZpIFNabX4fgzmxyjRzNjqcEmPa0ELcoqqzU&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a problem that the entire discussion in this thread is premised on an assumption that boys are almost inherently at risk of going off the rails and becoming bad. That assumption, which unfortunately has becoming deeply rooted in culture and especially in schools due to liberal political preferences, is the key driver for the problem you are worried about. Right now, girls are boosted and treated like the future at every turn, even in implausible situations. Look at the Super Bowl ads for one example, where, among other things, there was an ad where a minority female implausibly bested the entire men's football team (who were portrayed as hateful ogres throughout). Until you all learn to respect and value boys, expect bad results. Toxic femininity is real and a problem.

Have you ever met a kid? Boys are (usually) confident to the point they need to learn humility, compassion and empathy. They need to be taught a lot emotional skills in order to not end up undateable in todays modern world where women will chose to stay single rather than marry them. That’s why we’re ending up with these incels.

Girls, on the other hand, (usually) develop the emotional skills early, independently and successfully. Where they need guidance is building skills like dealing with conflict and risk taking. Skills boys seems to develop more naturally.

That’s not toxic femininity. That’s basic child development.

I have boys, and their confidence that they outwardly project is just bravado. They are deeply insecure, as are their friends. I don’t think tearing down girls is the answer. But, I do see tons of initiatives at least at the elementary level to empower girls and none to empower boys. Even our school gym has a big sign saying “girls rule!” with pictures of professional female athletes. Which is awesome. But they have nothing for boys that is similar. They have a girls coding club and a girls on the run club. Boys aren’t allowed to join either club unless they identify as nonbinary. Even my son’s Boy Scout troop has girls in it. I may get flamed but boys need spaces where they’re safe to be boys, with only other boys, and feel empowered and have strong same gender role models. Just like girls do. As it is right now it seems like girls are allowed into any space that was previously just for boys, but boys are not allowed into any of the spaces just for girls. Until we start celebrating boys for who they are and what amazing things boys can do, they’ll continue to flounder without a strong sense of identity, and that’s where the Joe Rogan types snatch them up and give them an identity- a terrible one. We need to catch them earlier and give them a better one, but as a society, the general message is “boys are bad”.

Huh? Are you delusional?
The school gym doesn’t have a poster of male athletes, because that’s literally the standard. ANY major professional sport is ruled by men, that banner is trying to encourage girls to stick with sports, as they more often drop out vs boys.
Why can’t boys start their own club? Girls were excluded (and still are) from many male spaces, so they started their own clubs where they are allowed and allowed to be themselves.

Like, it’s f***ing crazy to me that people don’t see the history behind these decisions, and now decry that their boys are being discriminated against because girls have a girls coding club. No. That’s not how it works. And you are part of the problem if you’re raising your 4 boys to feel undervalued compared to girls and aren’t celebrating them on your own.

Historically you are absolutely right. As an adult, I think it’s amazing to have these things for girls. I’m telling you that 8, 9, 10 year old boys do not have the same history that you and I do where girls couldn’t do that stuff and now they can and we love it. All they see, from when they are babies, is outward celebration of girls as a cohort, and not of boys. Yes, male athletes and male politicians are the “standard” and you’re obviously correct on your point but that’s the problem- they’re for everyone. It’s not “let’s watch boys basketball and celebrate boys and talk about how little boys can grow up to do this”, it’s just “basketball” and “kids”. Boys are not explicitly singled out the way girls are. And kids don’t get nuance, they just grow up with the message of “boys and men are just the standard that we rally against, and girls are special”. You may not like it, but failing to recognize this is why these boys are turning to MRA groups and trying to ruin the world.

So your issue is that women also watch the NBA? Your issue is that women and girls have too many “male” hobbies that are taking space away from boys?

Women’s bball has only just recently taken off to be more mainstream, mainly because of Caitlyn Clark. But otherwise, you turn on the tv, you ONLY see men. Most people would be hard pressed to name a top female athlete, aside from maybe 2-3. Ask them to name a male? You’ll get hundreds.

You’re rallying against the pendulum swing towards girls, but it’s really not even close to “even” yet. You’re rallying against boys and men being the majority of everything. They don’t want to share.

I’m trying really hard to explain to you what’s going on with little boys but you really and truly don’t want to hear it. All I know is, if boys are continually treated as lesser than girls AT YOUNG AGES and not given boys-only groups AT YOUNG AGES they will grow into teen boys who crave male role models and male spaces and the ONLY ONES AVAILABLE that “celebrate” boys and men are Tate and other losers.

You don’t even see what you’re doing. You’re saying for example that adding books by queer , black/brown, female, etc authors to classrooms doesn’t take away any books from cisgender white male authors. You’re right! We agree! All those books should be there! (Don’t listen to the loser arguing otherwise.) But what did we do when we added girls clubs and girls groups? We SUBTRACTED boys groups. Boy Scouts is just an easy example because it’s “Girl Scouts” (no boys allowed” and “scouts of America” now (both genders). Little league is the same way- both genders, but then softball is JUST girls. You see what I’m getting at? We didn’t add girls stuff and leave the boys stuff there. We added girls stuff and took away boys stuff. That’s the problem and the young boys are turning to the only boys groups out there, which are MRA groups!! Let’s add some GOOD boy only groups back into the mix, please!

I hear you, and it's a valid point. Somewhat cherrypicked, but valid.

I think the problem I'm having is that when boys-only spaces exist, they get the best of everything. Just like with male-protagonist literature that is supposed to appeal to boys and girls alike, people of all sexes line up to support boys. They get the best field to practice on, the nicer uniforms, the bigger travel budget, and the most affirmation. The places where this has shifted are very small. Yes, there's Girls on the Run. What's the average budget of a GotR club? And is there a single school anywhere in America that has a GotR club but doesn't have a boys track team? How many people turn out to support the girls' teams, in any sport? My daughter plays tennis. She joked the other day that she doesn't know how the boys focus with all that cheering-- her team's matches are much quieter.
And then there's capital-F Football. Where entire towns support the boys, girls cheer for them, the band plays for them. No girls allowed (with the aforementioned vanishingly rare exceptions-- it's always national news when a HS girl gets to join the football team.)

And I think it comes down to parenting. Are parents of boys really so helpless that they can't explain why it is in fact "fair" (something that young kids care about a lot) and the reasons why?

I think if football is the only boys only space left for little boys, that explains a lot about how they’re turning out.

I see your points too- they’re all correct, they’re just harder for little kids to understand. I do explain to my boys why there is a girls run club but not a boys one (yes, their school alongwith many other elementary schools in our county have a girls run club but not a boys one). But what they hear, is “sports clubs used to be just for boys and that wasn’t fair, so now we have clubs for girls.” And they say- but that’s not fair either! Now it’s just for girls!

Obviously our conversations are more nuanced than that about stuff like this but I can’t expect them to understand adult level logic with gender roles , they’re kids. All they know is the teachers prefer the girls, the boys need to learn to quieter, the boys can’t play rough with the girls (or even with each other- they need to pick calmer recess games), the one after school club that focuses on being active / sporty is just for girls , and they just need to deal with it and it’s the parents job to try to even this all out for them.

“It’s on the parents” yeah no duh. You know it’s not true that teachers prefer girls, why would you let them continue to believe that? Again, it is you as the parent setting your kids up for failure.

Ok, try that argument again but with little girls in the 1950s. Same wording. Go!

They did! Why do think ANY girls succeeded in the ‘50s? By chance? No, because some girls had amazing parents who helped and encouraged and pushed.

Don’t blame your lazy parenting on other girls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do we think upwards of 25% of boys are labeled as ADHD in elementary school? They grow up in an environment built for girls for 7 hours a day and are medicated to stay quieter. Our society no longer understands or appreciates little boys and this is the natural outcome.

Well, no. It's the boys (and their parents, and society's expectations/ tolerance level) that have changed. Sitting quietly and respectfully for a full school day used to be the norm. There was an ironclad expectation from schools and parents alike that children, boys included, behave themselves in class. This was true from the earliest days of congregate education, up until, well, now. Even when I was a kid, when ADHD meds were rare but corporal punishment was a thing of the past, there was nothing like the chaos that reigns in today's classrooms at every level. So it's not even that we used to beat them into compliance (though of course we did-- it just wasn't the only factor.)

So boys are no longer expected to sit quietly and do their work. And yet they still expect to win at everything, when girls following the rules and doing the work are right there modeling the behavior that used to be expected of all students. The only explanation for this is that parents have abdicated their responsibility to raise respectful humans, and communicated to their boys the sense of entitlement-- the right to be wild, to play rough, to denigrate their teachers-- and the understanding that this will not affect their futures.

Want better men? Raise better boys. Shelve the excuses.

You can say this until you’re blue in the face but until there is a shift in how society views and treats little boys (re read your own post for example), boys will continue to gravitate towards “cool men who get me!” like the idiot MRA guys.

The discussion is about how to prevent boys from becoming incels, right? So you've shot down better parenting/ more engagement, and you've shot down higher expectations. Unless you have a society-changeinator device, I guess all that's left is giving up. Tried nothing and you're all out of ideas.

Apparently the only way to prevent incels is to kick girls and women out of everything and put via white men back on top. Anything else is too much work

[Anonymous]

How many of you know any incels in person? I have teen boys so I know a lot of boys. I don’t think I know any incels and I don’t know any people who know incels.

I suppose I know a number of single adult men but they’re generally nice guys. Federal employees, for example, who never met the right person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a problem that the entire discussion in this thread is premised on an assumption that boys are almost inherently at risk of going off the rails and becoming bad. That assumption, which unfortunately has becoming deeply rooted in culture and especially in schools due to liberal political preferences, is the key driver for the problem you are worried about. Right now, girls are boosted and treated like the future at every turn, even in implausible situations. Look at the Super Bowl ads for one example, where, among other things, there was an ad where a minority female implausibly bested the entire men's football team (who were portrayed as hateful ogres throughout). Until you all learn to respect and value boys, expect bad results. Toxic femininity is real and a problem.

Have you ever met a kid? Boys are (usually) confident to the point they need to learn humility, compassion and empathy. They need to be taught a lot emotional skills in order to not end up undateable in todays modern world where women will chose to stay single rather than marry them. That’s why we’re ending up with these incels.

Girls, on the other hand, (usually) develop the emotional skills early, independently and successfully. Where they need guidance is building skills like dealing with conflict and risk taking. Skills boys seems to develop more naturally.

That’s not toxic femininity. That’s basic child development.

I have boys, and their confidence that they outwardly project is just bravado. They are deeply insecure, as are their friends. I don’t think tearing down girls is the answer. But, I do see tons of initiatives at least at the elementary level to empower girls and none to empower boys. Even our school gym has a big sign saying “girls rule!” with pictures of professional female athletes. Which is awesome. But they have nothing for boys that is similar. They have a girls coding club and a girls on the run club. Boys aren’t allowed to join either club unless they identify as nonbinary. Even my son’s Boy Scout troop has girls in it. I may get flamed but boys need spaces where they’re safe to be boys, with only other boys, and feel empowered and have strong same gender role models. Just like girls do. As it is right now it seems like girls are allowed into any space that was previously just for boys, but boys are not allowed into any of the spaces just for girls. Until we start celebrating boys for who they are and what amazing things boys can do, they’ll continue to flounder without a strong sense of identity, and that’s where the Joe Rogan types snatch them up and give them an identity- a terrible one. We need to catch them earlier and give them a better one, but as a society, the general message is “boys are bad”.

Huh? Are you delusional?
The school gym doesn’t have a poster of male athletes, because that’s literally the standard. ANY major professional sport is ruled by men, that banner is trying to encourage girls to stick with sports, as they more often drop out vs boys.
Why can’t boys start their own club? Girls were excluded (and still are) from many male spaces, so they started their own clubs where they are allowed and allowed to be themselves.

Like, it’s f***ing crazy to me that people don’t see the history behind these decisions, and now decry that their boys are being discriminated against because girls have a girls coding club. No. That’s not how it works. And you are part of the problem if you’re raising your 4 boys to feel undervalued compared to girls and aren’t celebrating them on your own.

Historically you are absolutely right. As an adult, I think it’s amazing to have these things for girls. I’m telling you that 8, 9, 10 year old boys do not have the same history that you and I do where girls couldn’t do that stuff and now they can and we love it. All they see, from when they are babies, is outward celebration of girls as a cohort, and not of boys. Yes, male athletes and male politicians are the “standard” and you’re obviously correct on your point but that’s the problem- they’re for everyone. It’s not “let’s watch boys basketball and celebrate boys and talk about how little boys can grow up to do this”, it’s just “basketball” and “kids”. Boys are not explicitly singled out the way girls are. And kids don’t get nuance, they just grow up with the message of “boys and men are just the standard that we rally against, and girls are special”. You may not like it, but failing to recognize this is why these boys are turning to MRA groups and trying to ruin the world.

So your issue is that women also watch the NBA? Your issue is that women and girls have too many “male” hobbies that are taking space away from boys?

Women’s bball has only just recently taken off to be more mainstream, mainly because of Caitlyn Clark. But otherwise, you turn on the tv, you ONLY see men. Most people would be hard pressed to name a top female athlete, aside from maybe 2-3. Ask them to name a male? You’ll get hundreds.

You’re rallying against the pendulum swing towards girls, but it’s really not even close to “even” yet. You’re rallying against boys and men being the majority of everything. They don’t want to share.

I’m trying really hard to explain to you what’s going on with little boys but you really and truly don’t want to hear it. All I know is, if boys are continually treated as lesser than girls AT YOUNG AGES and not given boys-only groups AT YOUNG AGES they will grow into teen boys who crave male role models and male spaces and the ONLY ONES AVAILABLE that “celebrate” boys and men are Tate and other losers.

You don’t even see what you’re doing. You’re saying for example that adding books by queer , black/brown, female, etc authors to classrooms doesn’t take away any books from cisgender white male authors. You’re right! We agree! All those books should be there! (Don’t listen to the loser arguing otherwise.) But what did we do when we added girls clubs and girls groups? We SUBTRACTED boys groups. Boy Scouts is just an easy example because it’s “Girl Scouts” (no boys allowed” and “scouts of America” now (both genders). Little league is the same way- both genders, but then softball is JUST girls. You see what I’m getting at? We didn’t add girls stuff and leave the boys stuff there. We added girls stuff and took away boys stuff. That’s the problem and the young boys are turning to the only boys groups out there, which are MRA groups!! Let’s add some GOOD boy only groups back into the mix, please!

I hear you, and it's a valid point. Somewhat cherrypicked, but valid.

I think the problem I'm having is that when boys-only spaces exist, they get the best of everything. Just like with male-protagonist literature that is supposed to appeal to boys and girls alike, people of all sexes line up to support boys. They get the best field to practice on, the nicer uniforms, the bigger travel budget, and the most affirmation. The places where this has shifted are very small. Yes, there's Girls on the Run. What's the average budget of a GotR club? And is there a single school anywhere in America that has a GotR club but doesn't have a boys track team? How many people turn out to support the girls' teams, in any sport? My daughter plays tennis. She joked the other day that she doesn't know how the boys focus with all that cheering-- her team's matches are much quieter.
And then there's capital-F Football. Where entire towns support the boys, girls cheer for them, the band plays for them. No girls allowed (with the aforementioned vanishingly rare exceptions-- it's always national news when a HS girl gets to join the football team.)

And I think it comes down to parenting. Are parents of boys really so helpless that they can't explain why it is in fact "fair" (something that young kids care about a lot) and the reasons why?

I think if football is the only boys only space left for little boys, that explains a lot about how they’re turning out.

I see your points too- they’re all correct, they’re just harder for little kids to understand. I do explain to my boys why there is a girls run club but not a boys one (yes, their school alongwith many other elementary schools in our county have a girls run club but not a boys one). But what they hear, is “sports clubs used to be just for boys and that wasn’t fair, so now we have clubs for girls.” And they say- but that’s not fair either! Now it’s just for girls!

Obviously our conversations are more nuanced than that about stuff like this but I can’t expect them to understand adult level logic with gender roles , they’re kids. All they know is the teachers prefer the girls, the boys need to learn to quieter, the boys can’t play rough with the girls (or even with each other- they need to pick calmer recess games), the one after school club that focuses on being active / sporty is just for girls , and they just need to deal with it and it’s the parents job to try to even this all out for them.

“It’s on the parents” yeah no duh. You know it’s not true that teachers prefer girls, why would you let them continue to believe that? Again, it is you as the parent setting your kids up for failure.

Ok, try that argument again but with little girls in the 1950s. Same wording. Go!

They did! Why do think ANY girls succeeded in the ‘50s? By chance? No, because some girls had amazing parents who helped and encouraged and pushed.

Don’t blame your lazy parenting on other girls.

Look, no one is doing that. I am a girl. I have a girl. Girls are awesome! So are boys. Society , right now, thinks young boys are actually pretty crappy, especially within elementary school environments. I am doing my best as a mom to lift them up and help them be confident in their boyhood, the same way I do for my daughter. For my daughter, in the realm of preschool and elementary school at least, society helps me out a lot. For my sons, not so much. That’s all I’m saying. Just like how when you add literature by Maya Angelou to the high school curriculum, you aren’t taking anything away from Shakespeare. You’re just adding Angelou. By adding back boy- positive environments into childhood, and appreciating boys and their inherent differences to girls in childhood, we aren’t taking anything away from our daughters!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do we think upwards of 25% of boys are labeled as ADHD in elementary school? They grow up in an environment built for girls for 7 hours a day and are medicated to stay quieter. Our society no longer understands or appreciates little boys and this is the natural outcome.

Well, no. It's the boys (and their parents, and society's expectations/ tolerance level) that have changed. Sitting quietly and respectfully for a full school day used to be the norm. There was an ironclad expectation from schools and parents alike that children, boys included, behave themselves in class. This was true from the earliest days of congregate education, up until, well, now. Even when I was a kid, when ADHD meds were rare but corporal punishment was a thing of the past, there was nothing like the chaos that reigns in today's classrooms at every level. So it's not even that we used to beat them into compliance (though of course we did-- it just wasn't the only factor.)

So boys are no longer expected to sit quietly and do their work. And yet they still expect to win at everything, when girls following the rules and doing the work are right there modeling the behavior that used to be expected of all students. The only explanation for this is that parents have abdicated their responsibility to raise respectful humans, and communicated to their boys the sense of entitlement-- the right to be wild, to play rough, to denigrate their teachers-- and the understanding that this will not affect their futures.

Want better men? Raise better boys. Shelve the excuses.

You can say this until you’re blue in the face but until there is a shift in how society views and treats little boys (re read your own post for example), boys will continue to gravitate towards “cool men who get me!” like the idiot MRA guys.

The discussion is about how to prevent boys from becoming incels, right? So you've shot down better parenting/ more engagement, and you've shot down higher expectations. Unless you have a society-changeinator device, I guess all that's left is giving up. Tried nothing and you're all out of ideas.

Apparently the only way to prevent incels is to kick girls and women out of everything and put via white men back on top. Anything else is too much work

You are being willfully obtuse. I am not trying to kick girls out of anything. What a ridiculous notion. I’d just like to ADD BACK ON things for just boys.

You really do sound like the people who screech that we are erasing male authors from libraries by adding in books by women. No one is taking away books by men. Right?? We can agree on that. No one on this thread is trying to take away girls on the run. That’s absurd. I’d just like my boys, who literally crave more physical activity in their school days, to also be allowed to participate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a problem that the entire discussion in this thread is premised on an assumption that boys are almost inherently at risk of going off the rails and becoming bad. That assumption, which unfortunately has becoming deeply rooted in culture and especially in schools due to liberal political preferences, is the key driver for the problem you are worried about. Right now, girls are boosted and treated like the future at every turn, even in implausible situations. Look at the Super Bowl ads for one example, where, among other things, there was an ad where a minority female implausibly bested the entire men's football team (who were portrayed as hateful ogres throughout). Until you all learn to respect and value boys, expect bad results. Toxic femininity is real and a problem.

Have you ever met a kid? Boys are (usually) confident to the point they need to learn humility, compassion and empathy. They need to be taught a lot emotional skills in order to not end up undateable in todays modern world where women will chose to stay single rather than marry them. That’s why we’re ending up with these incels.

Girls, on the other hand, (usually) develop the emotional skills early, independently and successfully. Where they need guidance is building skills like dealing with conflict and risk taking. Skills boys seems to develop more naturally.

That’s not toxic femininity. That’s basic child development.

I have boys, and their confidence that they outwardly project is just bravado. They are deeply insecure, as are their friends. I don’t think tearing down girls is the answer. But, I do see tons of initiatives at least at the elementary level to empower girls and none to empower boys. Even our school gym has a big sign saying “girls rule!” with pictures of professional female athletes. Which is awesome. But they have nothing for boys that is similar. They have a girls coding club and a girls on the run club. Boys aren’t allowed to join either club unless they identify as nonbinary. Even my son’s Boy Scout troop has girls in it. I may get flamed but boys need spaces where they’re safe to be boys, with only other boys, and feel empowered and have strong same gender role models. Just like girls do. As it is right now it seems like girls are allowed into any space that was previously just for boys, but boys are not allowed into any of the spaces just for girls. Until we start celebrating boys for who they are and what amazing things boys can do, they’ll continue to flounder without a strong sense of identity, and that’s where the Joe Rogan types snatch them up and give them an identity- a terrible one. We need to catch them earlier and give them a better one, but as a society, the general message is “boys are bad”.

I get that, but... do you not feel that the whole world constantly celebrates men and their achievements? Don't boys see empowerment and role models every time they turn on the TV/ pass a billboard/ watch the news? The Williams and the Rapinoes and the Collins are exceptions. We only know them because they're so exceptional. The world is awash with men being celebrated, such that when a woman finally reaches the top, she's an abberation to be pointed out.

To a 7yo? No I don't think it feels like the whole world "constantly celebrates men." You are thinking of history, statistics, CEOs etc - that's not really what younger kids are necessarily awash in, unless they are spending a lot of time watching TV or devices.

NP

But why do you think JK Rowling made her main character a boy? Because then the books would appeal to both boys and girls. If the main character was a girl the story could be exactly the same but only girls would read it.

Boys get plenty of passive reinforcement that they are the default sex.

Related to your book comment - there has been a large “outcry” recently from men that there are too many books from/about women. They actively refuse to read books with women as the main character. Girls and women grow up reading books with male protagonists basically from birth, but you want a boy to read something about a girl? Outrage!
I hadn’t even thought of this until your comment, thank you for adding it.

I believe the prevailing trend in schools is to largely disallow or discourage books authored by cisgender white males.

Is it to remove books by cis white men? Or to add more books by others? Are they removing Shel Silverstein and Maurice Sendak and Mo Willems?

I think it’s an extension of the educational effort to center other voices, and to create space or highlight authors of color, womyn authors, and LGTBQIA+ literary works.

Right. But is that exclusionary to white cis men? Or simply a balancing of the voices available? It feels like men are mad at no longer being the default voice in every space, or at the potential for having to compete on a bigger field. And there's this refusal to recognize that not being given automatic preference is not the same as being excluded.

I read a fair amount of science fiction, historically utterly dominated by men, and when women authors started getting the big awards, some men lost. their. minds. It was no longer a boys-only space. They had to compete with some amazing authors who might never have entered the space 50 years ago, or gotten an agent/ publisher if they had tried. "Because no one will buy sci fi by women. Sorry, it's just the market." And men just couldn't handle the increased competition. They wanted to keep the "no girls allowed" sign on the clubhouse door.

Your theories sound good and appear reasonable. But that’s not the reality of what’s happening in the example of the schoolbook-list , linked above.

The school did not simply “balance” reading by adding a few BIPOC/womyn/LGTBQIA+ authored or themes.

No. They virtually excluded all cisgender white male themes and most authors. It took quite some digging to locate the list discussed in the dcum link, but this appears to be the list on page 3; see for yourself:

https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Cooper-English-7-AAP-2023.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a problem that the entire discussion in this thread is premised on an assumption that boys are almost inherently at risk of going off the rails and becoming bad. That assumption, which unfortunately has becoming deeply rooted in culture and especially in schools due to liberal political preferences, is the key driver for the problem you are worried about. Right now, girls are boosted and treated like the future at every turn, even in implausible situations. Look at the Super Bowl ads for one example, where, among other things, there was an ad where a minority female implausibly bested the entire men's football team (who were portrayed as hateful ogres throughout). Until you all learn to respect and value boys, expect bad results. Toxic femininity is real and a problem.

Have you ever met a kid? Boys are (usually) confident to the point they need to learn humility, compassion and empathy. They need to be taught a lot emotional skills in order to not end up undateable in todays modern world where women will chose to stay single rather than marry them. That’s why we’re ending up with these incels.

Girls, on the other hand, (usually) develop the emotional skills early, independently and successfully. Where they need guidance is building skills like dealing with conflict and risk taking. Skills boys seems to develop more naturally.

That’s not toxic femininity. That’s basic child development.

I have boys, and their confidence that they outwardly project is just bravado. They are deeply insecure, as are their friends. I don’t think tearing down girls is the answer. But, I do see tons of initiatives at least at the elementary level to empower girls and none to empower boys. Even our school gym has a big sign saying “girls rule!” with pictures of professional female athletes. Which is awesome. But they have nothing for boys that is similar. They have a girls coding club and a girls on the run club. Boys aren’t allowed to join either club unless they identify as nonbinary. Even my son’s Boy Scout troop has girls in it. I may get flamed but boys need spaces where they’re safe to be boys, with only other boys, and feel empowered and have strong same gender role models. Just like girls do. As it is right now it seems like girls are allowed into any space that was previously just for boys, but boys are not allowed into any of the spaces just for girls. Until we start celebrating boys for who they are and what amazing things boys can do, they’ll continue to flounder without a strong sense of identity, and that’s where the Joe Rogan types snatch them up and give them an identity- a terrible one. We need to catch them earlier and give them a better one, but as a society, the general message is “boys are bad”.

I get that, but... do you not feel that the whole world constantly celebrates men and their achievements? Don't boys see empowerment and role models every time they turn on the TV/ pass a billboard/ watch the news? The Williams and the Rapinoes and the Collins are exceptions. We only know them because they're so exceptional. The world is awash with men being celebrated, such that when a woman finally reaches the top, she's an abberation to be pointed out.

To a 7yo? No I don't think it feels like the whole world "constantly celebrates men." You are thinking of history, statistics, CEOs etc - that's not really what younger kids are necessarily awash in, unless they are spending a lot of time watching TV or devices.

NP

But why do you think JK Rowling made her main character a boy? Because then the books would appeal to both boys and girls. If the main character was a girl the story could be exactly the same but only girls would read it.

Boys get plenty of passive reinforcement that they are the default sex.

Related to your book comment - there has been a large “outcry” recently from men that there are too many books from/about women. They actively refuse to read books with women as the main character. Girls and women grow up reading books with male protagonists basically from birth, but you want a boy to read something about a girl? Outrage!
I hadn’t even thought of this until your comment, thank you for adding it.

I believe the prevailing trend in schools is to largely disallow or discourage books authored by cisgender white males.

Is it to remove books by cis white men? Or to add more books by others? Are they removing Shel Silverstein and Maurice Sendak and Mo Willems?

I think it’s an extension of the educational effort to center other voices, and to create space or highlight authors of color, womyn authors, and LGTBQIA+ literary works.

Right. But is that exclusionary to white cis men? Or simply a balancing of the voices available? It feels like men are mad at no longer being the default voice in every space, or at the potential for having to compete on a bigger field. And there's this refusal to recognize that not being given automatic preference is not the same as being excluded.

I read a fair amount of science fiction, historically utterly dominated by men, and when women authors started getting the big awards, some men lost. their. minds. It was no longer a boys-only space. They had to compete with some amazing authors who might never have entered the space 50 years ago, or gotten an agent/ publisher if they had tried. "Because no one will buy sci fi by women. Sorry, it's just the market." And men just couldn't handle the increased competition. They wanted to keep the "no girls allowed" sign on the clubhouse door.

Your theories sound good and appear reasonable. But that’s not the reality of what’s happening in the example of the schoolbook-list , linked above.

The school did not simply “balance” reading by adding a few BIPOC/womyn/LGTBQIA+ authored or themes.

No. They virtually excluded all cisgender white male themes and most authors. It took quite some digging to locate the list discussed in the dcum link, but this appears to be the list on page 3; see for yourself:

https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Cooper-English-7-AAP-2023.pdf

A lot of the books on that list appear to be authored by men, including white men. Moreover, that's not a list of the books the class is reading together, it's a list of books from which the kids can choose. I'm baffled as to what you think that list proves. Roughly half of those books appear to be by men. Of those, many are white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do we think upwards of 25% of boys are labeled as ADHD in elementary school? They grow up in an environment built for girls for 7 hours a day and are medicated to stay quieter. Our society no longer understands or appreciates little boys and this is the natural outcome.

Well, no. It's the boys (and their parents, and society's expectations/ tolerance level) that have changed. Sitting quietly and respectfully for a full school day used to be the norm. There was an ironclad expectation from schools and parents alike that children, boys included, behave themselves in class. This was true from the earliest days of congregate education, up until, well, now. Even when I was a kid, when ADHD meds were rare but corporal punishment was a thing of the past, there was nothing like the chaos that reigns in today's classrooms at every level. So it's not even that we used to beat them into compliance (though of course we did-- it just wasn't the only factor.)

So boys are no longer expected to sit quietly and do their work. And yet they still expect to win at everything, when girls following the rules and doing the work are right there modeling the behavior that used to be expected of all students. The only explanation for this is that parents have abdicated their responsibility to raise respectful humans, and communicated to their boys the sense of entitlement-- the right to be wild, to play rough, to denigrate their teachers-- and the understanding that this will not affect their futures.

Want better men? Raise better boys. Shelve the excuses.

You can say this until you’re blue in the face but until there is a shift in how society views and treats little boys (re read your own post for example), boys will continue to gravitate towards “cool men who get me!” like the idiot MRA guys.

The discussion is about how to prevent boys from becoming incels, right? So you've shot down better parenting/ more engagement, and you've shot down higher expectations. Unless you have a society-changeinator device, I guess all that's left is giving up. Tried nothing and you're all out of ideas.

Apparently the only way to prevent incels is to kick girls and women out of everything and put via white men back on top. Anything else is too much work

You are being willfully obtuse. I am not trying to kick girls out of anything. What a ridiculous notion. I’d just like to ADD BACK ON things for just boys.

You really do sound like the people who screech that we are erasing male authors from libraries by adding in books by women. No one is taking away books by men. Right?? We can agree on that. No one on this thread is trying to take away girls on the run. That’s absurd. I’d just like my boys, who literally crave more physical activity in their school days, to also be allowed to participate.

What things exactly do you want to "add back on" for just boys? Is is Scouting? Because girls didn't take that away from boys. What happened was that BSA lost a couple of significant court cases, and also lost the trust of many American families, due to abject negligence and lack due diligence for the boys in their care. To avoid ruin, they expanded to girls. If you want to complain about that decision, don't put it down to "girls get everything." Put it down to what happens when men don't protect boys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a problem that the entire discussion in this thread is premised on an assumption that boys are almost inherently at risk of going off the rails and becoming bad. That assumption, which unfortunately has becoming deeply rooted in culture and especially in schools due to liberal political preferences, is the key driver for the problem you are worried about. Right now, girls are boosted and treated like the future at every turn, even in implausible situations. Look at the Super Bowl ads for one example, where, among other things, there was an ad where a minority female implausibly bested the entire men's football team (who were portrayed as hateful ogres throughout). Until you all learn to respect and value boys, expect bad results. Toxic femininity is real and a problem.

Have you ever met a kid? Boys are (usually) confident to the point they need to learn humility, compassion and empathy. They need to be taught a lot emotional skills in order to not end up undateable in todays modern world where women will chose to stay single rather than marry them. That’s why we’re ending up with these incels.

Girls, on the other hand, (usually) develop the emotional skills early, independently and successfully. Where they need guidance is building skills like dealing with conflict and risk taking. Skills boys seems to develop more naturally.

That’s not toxic femininity. That’s basic child development.

I have boys, and their confidence that they outwardly project is just bravado. They are deeply insecure, as are their friends. I don’t think tearing down girls is the answer. But, I do see tons of initiatives at least at the elementary level to empower girls and none to empower boys. Even our school gym has a big sign saying “girls rule!” with pictures of professional female athletes. Which is awesome. But they have nothing for boys that is similar. They have a girls coding club and a girls on the run club. Boys aren’t allowed to join either club unless they identify as nonbinary. Even my son’s Boy Scout troop has girls in it. I may get flamed but boys need spaces where they’re safe to be boys, with only other boys, and feel empowered and have strong same gender role models. Just like girls do. As it is right now it seems like girls are allowed into any space that was previously just for boys, but boys are not allowed into any of the spaces just for girls. Until we start celebrating boys for who they are and what amazing things boys can do, they’ll continue to flounder without a strong sense of identity, and that’s where the Joe Rogan types snatch them up and give them an identity- a terrible one. We need to catch them earlier and give them a better one, but as a society, the general message is “boys are bad”.

I get that, but... do you not feel that the whole world constantly celebrates men and their achievements? Don't boys see empowerment and role models every time they turn on the TV/ pass a billboard/ watch the news? The Williams and the Rapinoes and the Collins are exceptions. We only know them because they're so exceptional. The world is awash with men being celebrated, such that when a woman finally reaches the top, she's an abberation to be pointed out.

To a 7yo? No I don't think it feels like the whole world "constantly celebrates men." You are thinking of history, statistics, CEOs etc - that's not really what younger kids are necessarily awash in, unless they are spending a lot of time watching TV or devices.

NP

But why do you think JK Rowling made her main character a boy? Because then the books would appeal to both boys and girls. If the main character was a girl the story could be exactly the same but only girls would read it.

Boys get plenty of passive reinforcement that they are the default sex.

Related to your book comment - there has been a large “outcry” recently from men that there are too many books from/about women. They actively refuse to read books with women as the main character. Girls and women grow up reading books with male protagonists basically from birth, but you want a boy to read something about a girl? Outrage!
I hadn’t even thought of this until your comment, thank you for adding it.

I believe the prevailing trend in schools is to largely disallow or discourage books authored by cisgender white males.

Is it to remove books by cis white men? Or to add more books by others? Are they removing Shel Silverstein and Maurice Sendak and Mo Willems?

I think it’s an extension of the educational effort to center other voices, and to create space or highlight authors of color, womyn authors, and LGTBQIA+ literary works.

Right. But is that exclusionary to white cis men? Or simply a balancing of the voices available? It feels like men are mad at no longer being the default voice in every space, or at the potential for having to compete on a bigger field. And there's this refusal to recognize that not being given automatic preference is not the same as being excluded.

I read a fair amount of science fiction, historically utterly dominated by men, and when women authors started getting the big awards, some men lost. their. minds. It was no longer a boys-only space. They had to compete with some amazing authors who might never have entered the space 50 years ago, or gotten an agent/ publisher if they had tried. "Because no one will buy sci fi by women. Sorry, it's just the market." And men just couldn't handle the increased competition. They wanted to keep the "no girls allowed" sign on the clubhouse door.

Your theories sound good and appear reasonable. But that’s not the reality of what’s happening in the example of the schoolbook-list , linked above.

The school did not simply “balance” reading by adding a few BIPOC/womyn/LGTBQIA+ authored or themes.

No. They virtually excluded all cisgender white male themes and most authors. It took quite some digging to locate the list discussed in the dcum link, but this appears to be the list on page 3; see for yourself:

https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Cooper-English-7-AAP-2023.pdf

Thanks, that's really useful.

It looks... balanced. Titles on all themes, authors of all identities. What's the problem again?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a problem that the entire discussion in this thread is premised on an assumption that boys are almost inherently at risk of going off the rails and becoming bad. That assumption, which unfortunately has becoming deeply rooted in culture and especially in schools due to liberal political preferences, is the key driver for the problem you are worried about. Right now, girls are boosted and treated like the future at every turn, even in implausible situations. Look at the Super Bowl ads for one example, where, among other things, there was an ad where a minority female implausibly bested the entire men's football team (who were portrayed as hateful ogres throughout). Until you all learn to respect and value boys, expect bad results. Toxic femininity is real and a problem.

Have you ever met a kid? Boys are (usually) confident to the point they need to learn humility, compassion and empathy. They need to be taught a lot emotional skills in order to not end up undateable in todays modern world where women will chose to stay single rather than marry them. That’s why we’re ending up with these incels.

Girls, on the other hand, (usually) develop the emotional skills early, independently and successfully. Where they need guidance is building skills like dealing with conflict and risk taking. Skills boys seems to develop more naturally.

That’s not toxic femininity. That’s basic child development.

I have boys, and their confidence that they outwardly project is just bravado. They are deeply insecure, as are their friends. I don’t think tearing down girls is the answer. But, I do see tons of initiatives at least at the elementary level to empower girls and none to empower boys. Even our school gym has a big sign saying “girls rule!” with pictures of professional female athletes. Which is awesome. But they have nothing for boys that is similar. They have a girls coding club and a girls on the run club. Boys aren’t allowed to join either club unless they identify as nonbinary. Even my son’s Boy Scout troop has girls in it. I may get flamed but boys need spaces where they’re safe to be boys, with only other boys, and feel empowered and have strong same gender role models. Just like girls do. As it is right now it seems like girls are allowed into any space that was previously just for boys, but boys are not allowed into any of the spaces just for girls. Until we start celebrating boys for who they are and what amazing things boys can do, they’ll continue to flounder without a strong sense of identity, and that’s where the Joe Rogan types snatch them up and give them an identity- a terrible one. We need to catch them earlier and give them a better one, but as a society, the general message is “boys are bad”.

Huh? Are you delusional?
The school gym doesn’t have a poster of male athletes, because that’s literally the standard. ANY major professional sport is ruled by men, that banner is trying to encourage girls to stick with sports, as they more often drop out vs boys.
Why can’t boys start their own club? Girls were excluded (and still are) from many male spaces, so they started their own clubs where they are allowed and allowed to be themselves.

Like, it’s f***ing crazy to me that people don’t see the history behind these decisions, and now decry that their boys are being discriminated against because girls have a girls coding club. No. That’s not how it works. And you are part of the problem if you’re raising your 4 boys to feel undervalued compared to girls and aren’t celebrating them on your own.

Historically you are absolutely right. As an adult, I think it’s amazing to have these things for girls. I’m telling you that 8, 9, 10 year old boys do not have the same history that you and I do where girls couldn’t do that stuff and now they can and we love it. All they see, from when they are babies, is outward celebration of girls as a cohort, and not of boys. Yes, male athletes and male politicians are the “standard” and you’re obviously correct on your point but that’s the problem- they’re for everyone. It’s not “let’s watch boys basketball and celebrate boys and talk about how little boys can grow up to do this”, it’s just “basketball” and “kids”. Boys are not explicitly singled out the way girls are. And kids don’t get nuance, they just grow up with the message of “boys and men are just the standard that we rally against, and girls are special”. You may not like it, but failing to recognize this is why these boys are turning to MRA groups and trying to ruin the world.

So your issue is that women also watch the NBA? Your issue is that women and girls have too many “male” hobbies that are taking space away from boys?

Women’s bball has only just recently taken off to be more mainstream, mainly because of Caitlyn Clark. But otherwise, you turn on the tv, you ONLY see men. Most people would be hard pressed to name a top female athlete, aside from maybe 2-3. Ask them to name a male? You’ll get hundreds.

You’re rallying against the pendulum swing towards girls, but it’s really not even close to “even” yet. You’re rallying against boys and men being the majority of everything. They don’t want to share.

I’m trying really hard to explain to you what’s going on with little boys but you really and truly don’t want to hear it. All I know is, if boys are continually treated as lesser than girls AT YOUNG AGES and not given boys-only groups AT YOUNG AGES they will grow into teen boys who crave male role models and male spaces and the ONLY ONES AVAILABLE that “celebrate” boys and men are Tate and other losers.

You don’t even see what you’re doing. You’re saying for example that adding books by queer , black/brown, female, etc authors to classrooms doesn’t take away any books from cisgender white male authors. You’re right! We agree! All those books should be there! (Don’t listen to the loser arguing otherwise.) But what did we do when we added girls clubs and girls groups? We SUBTRACTED boys groups. Boy Scouts is just an easy example because it’s “Girl Scouts” (no boys allowed” and “scouts of America” now (both genders). Little league is the same way- both genders, but then softball is JUST girls. You see what I’m getting at? We didn’t add girls stuff and leave the boys stuff there. We added girls stuff and took away boys stuff. That’s the problem and the young boys are turning to the only boys groups out there, which are MRA groups!! Let’s add some GOOD boy only groups back into the mix, please!

I hear you, and it's a valid point. Somewhat cherrypicked, but valid.

I think the problem I'm having is that when boys-only spaces exist, they get the best of everything. Just like with male-protagonist literature that is supposed to appeal to boys and girls alike, people of all sexes line up to support boys. They get the best field to practice on, the nicer uniforms, the bigger travel budget, and the most affirmation. The places where this has shifted are very small. Yes, there's Girls on the Run. What's the average budget of a GotR club? And is there a single school anywhere in America that has a GotR club but doesn't have a boys track team? How many people turn out to support the girls' teams, in any sport? My daughter plays tennis. She joked the other day that she doesn't know how the boys focus with all that cheering-- her team's matches are much quieter.
And then there's capital-F Football. Where entire towns support the boys, girls cheer for them, the band plays for them. No girls allowed (with the aforementioned vanishingly rare exceptions-- it's always national news when a HS girl gets to join the football team.)

And I think it comes down to parenting. Are parents of boys really so helpless that they can't explain why it is in fact "fair" (something that young kids care about a lot) and the reasons why?

I think if football is the only boys only space left for little boys, that explains a lot about how they’re turning out.

I see your points too- they’re all correct, they’re just harder for little kids to understand. I do explain to my boys why there is a girls run club but not a boys one (yes, their school alongwith many other elementary schools in our county have a girls run club but not a boys one). But what they hear, is “sports clubs used to be just for boys and that wasn’t fair, so now we have clubs for girls.” And they say- but that’s not fair either! Now it’s just for girls!

Obviously our conversations are more nuanced than that about stuff like this but I can’t expect them to understand adult level logic with gender roles , they’re kids. All they know is the teachers prefer the girls, the boys need to learn to quieter, the boys can’t play rough with the girls (or even with each other- they need to pick calmer recess games), the one after school club that focuses on being active / sporty is just for girls , and they just need to deal with it and it’s the parents job to try to even this all out for them.

“It’s on the parents” yeah no duh. You know it’s not true that teachers prefer girls, why would you let them continue to believe that? Again, it is you as the parent setting your kids up for failure.

Ok, try that argument again but with little girls in the 1950s. Same wording. Go!

They did! Why do think ANY girls succeeded in the ‘50s? By chance? No, because some girls had amazing parents who helped and encouraged and pushed.

Don’t blame your lazy parenting on other girls.

Look, no one is doing that. I am a girl. I have a girl. Girls are awesome! So are boys. Society , right now, thinks young boys are actually pretty crappy, especially within elementary school environments. I am doing my best as a mom to lift them up and help them be confident in their boyhood, the same way I do for my daughter. For my daughter, in the realm of preschool and elementary school at least, society helps me out a lot. For my sons, not so much. That’s all I’m saying. Just like how when you add literature by Maya Angelou to the high school curriculum, you aren’t taking anything away from Shakespeare. You’re just adding Angelou. By adding back boy- positive environments into childhood, and appreciating boys and their inherent differences to girls in childhood, we aren’t taking anything away from our daughters!

No, no one thinks this. You’re victimizing your own children for no reason, and you’ll be the reason if they end up as incels. Stop perpetuating these incorrect notions and maybe you’ll have better luck. I’m glad you don’t want your kids to end up like this, but blaming girls in scouts and calling your poor babies victims in elementary school is not it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do we think upwards of 25% of boys are labeled as ADHD in elementary school? They grow up in an environment built for girls for 7 hours a day and are medicated to stay quieter. Our society no longer understands or appreciates little boys and this is the natural outcome.

Well, no. It's the boys (and their parents, and society's expectations/ tolerance level) that have changed. Sitting quietly and respectfully for a full school day used to be the norm. There was an ironclad expectation from schools and parents alike that children, boys included, behave themselves in class. This was true from the earliest days of congregate education, up until, well, now. Even when I was a kid, when ADHD meds were rare but corporal punishment was a thing of the past, there was nothing like the chaos that reigns in today's classrooms at every level. So it's not even that we used to beat them into compliance (though of course we did-- it just wasn't the only factor.)

So boys are no longer expected to sit quietly and do their work. And yet they still expect to win at everything, when girls following the rules and doing the work are right there modeling the behavior that used to be expected of all students. The only explanation for this is that parents have abdicated their responsibility to raise respectful humans, and communicated to their boys the sense of entitlement-- the right to be wild, to play rough, to denigrate their teachers-- and the understanding that this will not affect their futures.

Want better men? Raise better boys. Shelve the excuses.

You can say this until you’re blue in the face but until there is a shift in how society views and treats little boys (re read your own post for example), boys will continue to gravitate towards “cool men who get me!” like the idiot MRA guys.

The discussion is about how to prevent boys from becoming incels, right? So you've shot down better parenting/ more engagement, and you've shot down higher expectations. Unless you have a society-changeinator device, I guess all that's left is giving up. Tried nothing and you're all out of ideas.

Apparently the only way to prevent incels is to kick girls and women out of everything and put via white men back on top. Anything else is too much work

You are being willfully obtuse. I am not trying to kick girls out of anything. What a ridiculous notion. I’d just like to ADD BACK ON things for just boys.

You really do sound like the people who screech that we are erasing male authors from libraries by adding in books by women. No one is taking away books by men. Right?? We can agree on that. No one on this thread is trying to take away girls on the run. That’s absurd. I’d just like my boys, who literally crave more physical activity in their school days, to also be allowed to participate.

Wasn’t your entire first post about how girls in scouts are ruining your kids life?

No one is stopping your boys from physical activity. And again, blaming girls for starting their own running club is NOT preventing your kids from running, or starting their own running club if they want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a problem that the entire discussion in this thread is premised on an assumption that boys are almost inherently at risk of going off the rails and becoming bad. That assumption, which unfortunately has becoming deeply rooted in culture and especially in schools due to liberal political preferences, is the key driver for the problem you are worried about. Right now, girls are boosted and treated like the future at every turn, even in implausible situations. Look at the Super Bowl ads for one example, where, among other things, there was an ad where a minority female implausibly bested the entire men's football team (who were portrayed as hateful ogres throughout). Until you all learn to respect and value boys, expect bad results. Toxic femininity is real and a problem.

Have you ever met a kid? Boys are (usually) confident to the point they need to learn humility, compassion and empathy. They need to be taught a lot emotional skills in order to not end up undateable in todays modern world where women will chose to stay single rather than marry them. That’s why we’re ending up with these incels.

Girls, on the other hand, (usually) develop the emotional skills early, independently and successfully. Where they need guidance is building skills like dealing with conflict and risk taking. Skills boys seems to develop more naturally.

That’s not toxic femininity. That’s basic child development.

I have boys, and their confidence that they outwardly project is just bravado. They are deeply insecure, as are their friends. I don’t think tearing down girls is the answer. But, I do see tons of initiatives at least at the elementary level to empower girls and none to empower boys. Even our school gym has a big sign saying “girls rule!” with pictures of professional female athletes. Which is awesome. But they have nothing for boys that is similar. They have a girls coding club and a girls on the run club. Boys aren’t allowed to join either club unless they identify as nonbinary. Even my son’s Boy Scout troop has girls in it. I may get flamed but boys need spaces where they’re safe to be boys, with only other boys, and feel empowered and have strong same gender role models. Just like girls do. As it is right now it seems like girls are allowed into any space that was previously just for boys, but boys are not allowed into any of the spaces just for girls. Until we start celebrating boys for who they are and what amazing things boys can do, they’ll continue to flounder without a strong sense of identity, and that’s where the Joe Rogan types snatch them up and give them an identity- a terrible one. We need to catch them earlier and give them a better one, but as a society, the general message is “boys are bad”.

I get that, but... do you not feel that the whole world constantly celebrates men and their achievements? Don't boys see empowerment and role models every time they turn on the TV/ pass a billboard/ watch the news? The Williams and the Rapinoes and the Collins are exceptions. We only know them because they're so exceptional. The world is awash with men being celebrated, such that when a woman finally reaches the top, she's an abberation to be pointed out.

To a 7yo? No I don't think it feels like the whole world "constantly celebrates men." You are thinking of history, statistics, CEOs etc - that's not really what younger kids are necessarily awash in, unless they are spending a lot of time watching TV or devices.

NP

But why do you think JK Rowling made her main character a boy? Because then the books would appeal to both boys and girls. If the main character was a girl the story could be exactly the same but only girls would read it.

Boys get plenty of passive reinforcement that they are the default sex.

Related to your book comment - there has been a large “outcry” recently from men that there are too many books from/about women. They actively refuse to read books with women as the main character. Girls and women grow up reading books with male protagonists basically from birth, but you want a boy to read something about a girl? Outrage!
I hadn’t even thought of this until your comment, thank you for adding it.

I believe the prevailing trend in schools is to largely disallow or discourage books authored by cisgender white males.

Is it to remove books by cis white men? Or to add more books by others? Are they removing Shel Silverstein and Maurice Sendak and Mo Willems?

I think it’s an extension of the educational effort to center other voices, and to create space or highlight authors of color, womyn authors, and LGTBQIA+ literary works.

Right. But is that exclusionary to white cis men? Or simply a balancing of the voices available? It feels like men are mad at no longer being the default voice in every space, or at the potential for having to compete on a bigger field. And there's this refusal to recognize that not being given automatic preference is not the same as being excluded.

I read a fair amount of science fiction, historically utterly dominated by men, and when women authors started getting the big awards, some men lost. their. minds. It was no longer a boys-only space. They had to compete with some amazing authors who might never have entered the space 50 years ago, or gotten an agent/ publisher if they had tried. "Because no one will buy sci fi by women. Sorry, it's just the market." And men just couldn't handle the increased competition. They wanted to keep the "no girls allowed" sign on the clubhouse door.

Your theories sound good and appear reasonable. But that’s not the reality of what’s happening in the example of the schoolbook-list , linked above.

The school did not simply “balance” reading by adding a few BIPOC/womyn/LGTBQIA+ authored or themes.

No. They virtually excluded all cisgender white male themes and most authors. It took quite some digging to locate the list discussed in the dcum link, but this appears to be the list on page 3; see for yourself:

https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Cooper-English-7-AAP-2023.pdf

Uh is this satire? Like half of these are from white men. Did you even look at the list?

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Anonymous wrote:Why do we think upwards of 25% of boys are labeled as ADHD in elementary school? They grow up in an environment built for girls for 7 hours a day and are medicated to stay quieter. Our society no longer understands or appreciates little boys and this is the natural outcome.

This is such a BS argument. Schools are not and never were built for girls. Schools are even LESS demanding than they were 100+ years ago when most girls were excluded past a certain age.

You are arguing that the observation that girls do better on the whole than boys means clearly the school environment is biased toward girls. This is both incredibly wrong and blatantly sexist.

I’m talking about the early grades. Which in fact now are much more sit down , learn, less play, less singing, less recess time than they were 50 years ago. Or even 30. And girls as a whole do fine , but boys as a whole do not.

This is not true. You are just making things up because it feels right to you.

I actually have some interesting links about if if you’re interested
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/why-school-isnt-working-for-many-boys-and-what-could-help/2025/01

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2025/04/14/falling-behind-boys-malfunctioning-girls-education

https://ifstudies.org/blog/whats-wrong-with-boys-at-school

I scanned all three links and none seem to support the claim that schools are built for girls. All three seem to focus on the fact that girls tend to do better than boys in school settings, therefore something is obviously wrong with the schools (because boys *should* be better or at least not worse than girls at everything, right?)

But it doesn’t address the fact that children, including and in the past overwhelmingly boys, have ALWAYS been expected to sit still, to focus, to read, to respect their teachers while in school. Standards for behavior today are on the floor and parents are making every excuse under the sun for why boys suddenly find themselves unable to meet those standards.

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Anonymous wrote:It's a problem that the entire discussion in this thread is premised on an assumption that boys are almost inherently at risk of going off the rails and becoming bad. That assumption, which unfortunately has becoming deeply rooted in culture and especially in schools due to liberal political preferences, is the key driver for the problem you are worried about. Right now, girls are boosted and treated like the future at every turn, even in implausible situations. Look at the Super Bowl ads for one example, where, among other things, there was an ad where a minority female implausibly bested the entire men's football team (who were portrayed as hateful ogres throughout). Until you all learn to respect and value boys, expect bad results. Toxic femininity is real and a problem.

Have you ever met a kid? Boys are (usually) confident to the point they need to learn humility, compassion and empathy. They need to be taught a lot emotional skills in order to not end up undateable in todays modern world where women will chose to stay single rather than marry them. That’s why we’re ending up with these incels.

Girls, on the other hand, (usually) develop the emotional skills early, independently and successfully. Where they need guidance is building skills like dealing with conflict and risk taking. Skills boys seems to develop more naturally.

That’s not toxic femininity. That’s basic child development.

I have boys, and their confidence that they outwardly project is just bravado. They are deeply insecure, as are their friends. I don’t think tearing down girls is the answer. But, I do see tons of initiatives at least at the elementary level to empower girls and none to empower boys. Even our school gym has a big sign saying “girls rule!” with pictures of professional female athletes. Which is awesome. But they have nothing for boys that is similar. They have a girls coding club and a girls on the run club. Boys aren’t allowed to join either club unless they identify as nonbinary. Even my son’s Boy Scout troop has girls in it. I may get flamed but boys need spaces where they’re safe to be boys, with only other boys, and feel empowered and have strong same gender role models. Just like girls do. As it is right now it seems like girls are allowed into any space that was previously just for boys, but boys are not allowed into any of the spaces just for girls. Until we start celebrating boys for who they are and what amazing things boys can do, they’ll continue to flounder without a strong sense of identity, and that’s where the Joe Rogan types snatch them up and give them an identity- a terrible one. We need to catch them earlier and give them a better one, but as a society, the general message is “boys are bad”.

Huh? Are you delusional?
The school gym doesn’t have a poster of male athletes, because that’s literally the standard. ANY major professional sport is ruled by men, that banner is trying to encourage girls to stick with sports, as they more often drop out vs boys.
Why can’t boys start their own club? Girls were excluded (and still are) from many male spaces, so they started their own clubs where they are allowed and allowed to be themselves.

Like, it’s f***ing crazy to me that people don’t see the history behind these decisions, and now decry that their boys are being discriminated against because girls have a girls coding club. No. That’s not how it works. And you are part of the problem if you’re raising your 4 boys to feel undervalued compared to girls and aren’t celebrating them on your own.

Historically you are absolutely right. As an adult, I think it’s amazing to have these things for girls. I’m telling you that 8, 9, 10 year old boys do not have the same history that you and I do where girls couldn’t do that stuff and now they can and we love it. All they see, from when they are babies, is outward celebration of girls as a cohort, and not of boys. Yes, male athletes and male politicians are the “standard” and you’re obviously correct on your point but that’s the problem- they’re for everyone. It’s not “let’s watch boys basketball and celebrate boys and talk about how little boys can grow up to do this”, it’s just “basketball” and “kids”. Boys are not explicitly singled out the way girls are. And kids don’t get nuance, they just grow up with the message of “boys and men are just the standard that we rally against, and girls are special”. You may not like it, but failing to recognize this is why these boys are turning to MRA groups and trying to ruin the world.

So your issue is that women also watch the NBA? Your issue is that women and girls have too many “male” hobbies that are taking space away from boys?

Women’s bball has only just recently taken off to be more mainstream, mainly because of Caitlyn Clark. But otherwise, you turn on the tv, you ONLY see men. Most people would be hard pressed to name a top female athlete, aside from maybe 2-3. Ask them to name a male? You’ll get hundreds.

You’re rallying against the pendulum swing towards girls, but it’s really not even close to “even” yet. You’re rallying against boys and men being the majority of everything. They don’t want to share.

I’m trying really hard to explain to you what’s going on with little boys but you really and truly don’t want to hear it. All I know is, if boys are continually treated as lesser than girls AT YOUNG AGES and not given boys-only groups AT YOUNG AGES they will grow into teen boys who crave male role models and male spaces and the ONLY ONES AVAILABLE that “celebrate” boys and men are Tate and other losers.

You don’t even see what you’re doing. You’re saying for example that adding books by queer , black/brown, female, etc authors to classrooms doesn’t take away any books from cisgender white male authors. You’re right! We agree! All those books should be there! (Don’t listen to the loser arguing otherwise.) But what did we do when we added girls clubs and girls groups? We SUBTRACTED boys groups. Boy Scouts is just an easy example because it’s “Girl Scouts” (no boys allowed” and “scouts of America” now (both genders). Little league is the same way- both genders, but then softball is JUST girls. You see what I’m getting at? We didn’t add girls stuff and leave the boys stuff there. We added girls stuff and took away boys stuff. That’s the problem and the young boys are turning to the only boys groups out there, which are MRA groups!! Let’s add some GOOD boy only groups back into the mix, please!

I hear you, and it's a valid point. Somewhat cherrypicked, but valid.

I think the problem I'm having is that when boys-only spaces exist, they get the best of everything. Just like with male-protagonist literature that is supposed to appeal to boys and girls alike, people of all sexes line up to support boys. They get the best field to practice on, the nicer uniforms, the bigger travel budget, and the most affirmation. The places where this has shifted are very small. Yes, there's Girls on the Run. What's the average budget of a GotR club? And is there a single school anywhere in America that has a GotR club but doesn't have a boys track team? How many people turn out to support the girls' teams, in any sport? My daughter plays tennis. She joked the other day that she doesn't know how the boys focus with all that cheering-- her team's matches are much quieter.
And then there's capital-F Football. Where entire towns support the boys, girls cheer for them, the band plays for them. No girls allowed (with the aforementioned vanishingly rare exceptions-- it's always national news when a HS girl gets to join the football team.)

And I think it comes down to parenting. Are parents of boys really so helpless that they can't explain why it is in fact "fair" (something that young kids care about a lot) and the reasons why?

I think if football is the only boys only space left for little boys, that explains a lot about how they’re turning out.

I see your points too- they’re all correct, they’re just harder for little kids to understand. I do explain to my boys why there is a girls run club but not a boys one (yes, their school alongwith many other elementary schools in our county have a girls run club but not a boys one). But what they hear, is “sports clubs used to be just for boys and that wasn’t fair, so now we have clubs for girls.” And they say- but that’s not fair either! Now it’s just for girls!

Obviously our conversations are more nuanced than that about stuff like this but I can’t expect them to understand adult level logic with gender roles , they’re kids. All they know is the teachers prefer the girls, the boys need to learn to quieter, the boys can’t play rough with the girls (or even with each other- they need to pick calmer recess games), the one after school club that focuses on being active / sporty is just for girls , and they just need to deal with it and it’s the parents job to try to even this all out for them.

“It’s on the parents” yeah no duh. You know it’s not true that teachers prefer girls, why would you let them continue to believe that? Again, it is you as the parent setting your kids up for failure.

Ok, try that argument again but with little girls in the 1950s. Same wording. Go!

They did! Why do think ANY girls succeeded in the ‘50s? By chance? No, because some girls had amazing parents who helped and encouraged and pushed.

Don’t blame your lazy parenting on other girls.

Look, no one is doing that. I am a girl. I have a girl. Girls are awesome! So are boys. Society , right now, thinks young boys are actually pretty crappy, especially within elementary school environments. I am doing my best as a mom to lift them up and help them be confident in their boyhood, the same way I do for my daughter. For my daughter, in the realm of preschool and elementary school at least, society helps me out a lot. For my sons, not so much. That’s all I’m saying. Just like how when you add literature by Maya Angelou to the high school curriculum, you aren’t taking anything away from Shakespeare. You’re just adding Angelou. By adding back boy- positive environments into childhood, and appreciating boys and their inherent differences to girls in childhood, we aren’t taking anything away from our daughters!

No, no one thinks this. You’re victimizing your own children for no reason, and you’ll be the reason if they end up as incels. Stop perpetuating these incorrect notions and maybe you’ll have better luck. I’m glad you don’t want your kids to end up like this, but blaming girls in scouts and calling your poor babies victims in elementary school is not it.

I'm the PP who's been encouraging parents of boys to step TF up where they see something lacking, and I don't think the person you're responding to ("Society, right now, thinks young boys are actually pretty crappy, especially within elementary school environments") is wrong. I think there's something to it. We, as a society, as super quick to pathologize normal behaviors. But because we have this new medical language, we are much less likely to parent kids through it. Why have a fight when you can make him pop a pill? Why insist on good manners when "stimming" is acceptable everywhere for everyone? Why not define a kid's constant internet consumption as "self care"?
But I DON'T think that the solution is to regress, to encourage everyone to withdraw to their own clubhouse, and to "let boys be boys." We tried that for a few millennia and it sucked for everyone except a few of the boys.
Gotta raise better boys. No return to the past.