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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If I decided to start a boys’ exercise and “empowerment” club at my child’s school that specifically excluded girls, heads would roll. And before you say boys don’t need empowerment and emotional support, check the latest high school dropout rates, college attendance rates, suicide rates, and think again. [/quote]

All of society already implicitly empowers boys.  They already see other boys and men in leadership positions at every level in every industry and around the world.  We make such glacial progress against sexism in this society because people like you argue about the wrong things.

Start your boys club and empower them to be respectful members of society who see girls as true equals and I'm all for it.  [/quote]

The empowerment argument is just not true at the elementary school level. later, maybe, but only for a subsection of boys/men. If you actually do want to fight sexism I suggest you accept this very well documented fact and think it over.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/upshot/boys-falling-behind-data.html[/quote]

You cannot debate that in the current world, men occupy far more positions of power and leadership across the country and the globe.  Prove me wrong.  You cannot.  Kids are influenced by simply seeing who is in charge around them and in that way, our society does empower boys more than girls.  Do you think both boys and girls don't notice, even subconsciously, that we have only had male presidents?

The click bait article you have linked; Did you actually read it?  Did you put any thought into the basis of her assertions?

"Many young men say they feel unmoored and undervalued,".  Did they ask how many young women feel unmoored and undervalued?  She doesn't say.  Without statistics for both, you don't really know if there is a specifically male crisis or just a general problem for young people today.  The link she provides is a piece trying to explain why young men were attracted to Trump and feeding this whole "men are being attacked narrative" that the author also wrote.

She also says "School has changed in ways that favor girls, and work has changed in ways that favor women."  She provides no link to substantiate how school has changed to favor girls.  Second, she says work has changed to "favor women".  The link here is to an article about the loss of manufacturing jobs and rise of service professions.  The title of the article is, "Why Men Don’t Want the Jobs Done Mostly by Women," another article that *she* wrote.  I think the title tells you the real problem here. We all know we have lost manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and moved into more of a service economy.  So shouldn't men adjust and stop spurning service jobs as "women's work" and take some of these jobs?  What is the real problem here?  Are men too superior to do service jobs?  That sure sound like an example of the dreaded "toxic masculinity" we aren't allowed to bring up.  Here is a problem where men's definitions of masculinity and their disdain for "woman's work" is holding THEMSELVES back.  Women aren't hurting them here; they are hurting themselves with old-fashioned "toxic" masculinity.

As for your elementary school argument, a lot of what she refers to in the article is speculation.  The first line of her paragraph on education is "School has become more academic earlier, perhaps making it harder for boys, who generally mature later than girls, researchers say."  Operative word there?  Perhaps.

Then she talks about boys scoring lower in reading on standardized tests that girls, which is true.  But that has been true for a long time and has nothing to do with any recent efforts to empower girls outside the classroom. If you dig further into research, boys catch up by adulthood.  And since this is a long-standing problem, it doesn't appear that it was holding men back from being very successful as adults.  Meanwhile, she makes no mention of how boys often score HIGHER than girls in math.  That is completely ignored, because it doesn't suit her narrative.

In many ways examining things like school performance in terms of boys versus girls is a dichotomy that is likely too simplistic.  Do you really think all boys are the same in how they learn?  All girls? Socioeconomic level is most likely an even more critical factor. Nevertheless, if it is the case that the current classroom is failing SOME boys, they we should look at ways to change the way things are done in the classroom.  But you can't tell me it isn't also failing SOME girls. Improvements should be with an eye to making it better for all students.  And I hate to say it, but good luck with that as we currently exist under an administration hell-bent on destroying the education system in this country.

I could dissect this thing further, but suffice it to say, that in most cases the things she brings up about boys/men are also happening to girls/women, but maybe the percentage of women is a few percentage points lower.  Sound more like societal problems than specifically boy problems.

Start your boys club and empower them to be respectful members of society who see girls as true equals and I'm all for it.  Teach them that service jobs are not "women's work".  They'll be better off for it.[/quote]

I agree that that men in my generation had an unfair advantage when it came to school, sports and success in their career. And boys in elementary school need to own up to this and take accountability. [/quote]

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