Anonymous wrote:Female in my 20s here. I plan to have a child via donor at 40.

Greetings female. I also am a female human person.

Anonymous wrote:Teach your boys to interact with girls. Teach your boys to interact with one another in the real world and not only online. Far too many young men's only interaction with other people is through screens. Men aren't encouraged to have friends with other men. Men are socially isolated and incompetent.

I wouldn't focus so much on the online and screens issue. That stinks of "kids these days and their rock & roll music." But the rest is completely accurate - teach boys how to interact with one another and with girls, encourage them to have friends with other men and with women. Facilitate spaces where low key, non-anonymous interactions are common. (I think the main problem with the online/screen interaction has more to do with the anonymity and less to do with the medium itself.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like women have seen their roles in society shift and have risen to the occasion (with our increased educational and economic opportunities comes the expectation that we'll be equal financial partners in addition to birthing/raising kids). Why can't men rise to the occasion if they want a partner?

Men are traditionally willing to marry in any direction on the economic ladder. Women are traditionally willing to marry up or laterally. Take both of those into account and you have a mismatch that gets exacerbated when women start surpassing men in education

Men need to step up. It's a dog eat dog world. Women don't even require a man to be all that good looking.

If they can't find a partner through career, they should work out. Being hot will go a long way. Women are expected to stay in shape but a lot of guys just don't even try.

I blame Pon Farr 🖖

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like women have seen their roles in society shift and have risen to the occasion (with our increased educational and economic opportunities comes the expectation that we'll be equal financial partners in addition to birthing/raising kids). Why can't men rise to the occasion if they want a partner?

Men are traditionally willing to marry in any direction on the economic ladder. Women are traditionally willing to marry up or laterally. Take both of those into account and you have a mismatch that gets exacerbated when women start surpassing men in education

Men need to step up. It's a dog eat dog world. Women don't even require a man to be all that good looking.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can sneer at the quality of young men, and you can say it's their own damn fault for being unf**ckable losers that don't deserve love. You could even do those things with some justification.

But when they increasingly make the world a violent sh*tshow, none of us is going to be happy, and it's not going to make a huge difference who was right or wrong.

What is your solution?

I am not the poster to whom you are responding. Not sure what the solution is. Maybe a start would be more support for boys in the early years? Aside from sports, encourage activities that require more social interactions like drama, home economics, the arts. We encourage both boys to do all sorts of activities that would allow for more social interaction. The truth is that when they are in a non-athletic activity, they struggle so much more to be accepted into the group since most girls seem to want to partner with other girls in group activities.

Boys need good role models for them with more mentorship programs.

The bolded is actually not a bad idea. My son got social benefits from being in the school band that's hard for me to overstate. Lots of friends, both boys and girls. It's no accident that his long-term girlfriend is someone he met in the band.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not convinced that somehow schools, or social media or video games are the culprit. Or that men have become significantly less social, educated or "desirable" over time (probably the opposite). But in terms of the mating game, the acute economic pressure that was on women e.g. in 1950, to find a husband is probably close to gone today (and the social pressure has correspondingly abated as well). So if 30% of men are attractive mates, 40% average, and 30% subpar, and this has remained steady over time, there is really no reason women today would date the bottom 30% or even 50%, whereas 40-50 years ago they would have no other feasible option, and 20-30 years ago the social pressure would have still been fairly intense.

I'm not sure you could unwind this dynamic now or why we would even want to.

The shifting role of men means they need to become relevant, which they are, but they’ve seemed to have lost their way. Men need to see dating and marriage as a partnership and not the traditional way marriage has played out.

Right but then men, at least as a class, actually have to improve. If previously, all the bottom 30% had to offer was a paycheck or basic physical protection to get a mate, obviously that is not necessarily going to cut it anymore. So these guys have to become more pro-social, egalitarian, educated, whatever--which sure, would be great, but seems a bigger endeavor than just cutting video game time or changing some company's recruiting strategy.

All men have to be above average if they want a partner.

All women are not above average. Why do men need to be?

Because women want a man who is better educated and earns more than they do while also doing 50% of everything else.

If you actually read the article, it stated that women want men who are emotionally available and empathetic. They are tired of carrying the entire responsibility for the emotional burden of the relationship/family. And they want men who are AS educated and successful as they are, or at least not a loser.

I have two nephews who are 38 and 40 and I can't believe what losers they are. They both have remote tech jobs; one lives with his parents and the other lives with a houseful of roommates. Only one has ever had a girlfriend. One just learned to drive in his mid-thirties. I don't know where they went off the rails, but their parents are middle-class, college-educated and happily married in a traditional marriage and have resigned themselves to never having grandchildren.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can sneer at the quality of young men, and you can say it's their own damn fault for being unf**ckable losers that don't deserve love. You could even do those things with some justification.

But when they increasingly make the world a violent sh*tshow, none of us is going to be happy, and it's not going to make a huge difference who was right or wrong.

I think you sum it up. By every metric girls and young women are surpassing men. They are better students starting in elementary school and they carry that advantage through college graduation. If you accept that women traditionally seek men who are either at or above their level, that means fewer men to go around. You can say great for women, but large groups of despondent men who feel society has failed them tends to be a very dangerous thing for society.

So what are we supposed to do? Discourage women from being successful? Force women to f***/date/marry men they’re not attracted to?

A good first step is not to trivialize what young men are going through. Maybe there aren't good solutions, but ridiculing them is going to make the situation worse.

Anonymous wrote:I feel like women have seen their roles in society shift and have risen to the occasion (with our increased educational and economic opportunities comes the expectation that we'll be equal financial partners in addition to birthing/raising kids). Why can't men rise to the occasion if they want a partner?

Men are traditionally willing to marry in any direction on the economic ladder. Women are traditionally willing to marry up or laterally. Take both of those into account and you have a mismatch that gets exacerbated when women start surpassing men in education

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS university is 56% female, 44% male. According to DS, there’s an anonymous, school specific social platform where girls complain that the guys on campus don’t approach. He admits they don’t because they feel like creepers, an overused term used on social media. He connected a girl [friend] with his roommate, and they are now in a relationship. DS college sophomore (19) is in a very new situationship with a high school senior (18). They met in a traditional setting over the summer. She visited him on campus. We haven’t met her, but he told me yesterday that she suggested they take DH and me to dinner over winter break. I like her already. He also called his cousin who is getting married this spring to add her as his plus one 🙃. She’s been accepted to a few colleges (for civil engineering) in same city as DS. I sound like a creeper, but I’m not. He told me!

The bolded is an increasingly loud chorus. But what they really mean is that guys they find attractive don't approach them and the rest are creepers. And that men are supposed to just know ex-ante which category they fall into and/or assume the risk of a Title IX complaint if they take the initiative but make one wrong move.

Women don't want to have to do anything that falls mildly outside of their comfort zones, but still want to reap all of the rewards.

Young men have been neutered in so many ways. A true cluster.

I think this approach/creeper dynamic is one of those things with some truth but which is overstated. Guys don't want to be regarded as creeps, but even if that wasn't the case, they still wouldn't want to approach. Because it's nerve-wracking! The truth is that getting a sexual harassment complaint because you asked a girl out on a date is the stuff of online mythology. It's not happening. But she might say "no." She probably won't laugh at you, but she might. And there's a pretty good chance she'll giggle with her friends at your expense if you weren't up to her standards. Initiating these things sucks. And that's why women mostly don't want to do it either. Because of long years of cultural tradition, women can avoid having to do it just based on inertia. They are understandably more interested in changing those aspects of culture where men get something that women would like to have. They're not going to jump to take on those tasks men do that women don't want to do.

I feel like women have seen their roles in society shift and have risen to the occasion (with our increased educational and economic opportunities comes the expectation that we'll be equal financial partners in addition to birthing/raising kids). Why can't men rise to the occasion if they want a partner?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not convinced that somehow schools, or social media or video games are the culprit. Or that men have become significantly less social, educated or "desirable" over time (probably the opposite). But in terms of the mating game, the acute economic pressure that was on women e.g. in 1950, to find a husband is probably close to gone today (and the social pressure has correspondingly abated as well). So if 30% of men are attractive mates, 40% average, and 30% subpar, and this has remained steady over time, there is really no reason women today would date the bottom 30% or even 50%, whereas 40-50 years ago they would have no other feasible option, and 20-30 years ago the social pressure would have still been fairly intense.

I'm not sure you could unwind this dynamic now or why we would even want to.

The shifting role of men means they need to become relevant, which they are, but they’ve seemed to have lost their way. Men need to see dating and marriage as a partnership and not the traditional way marriage has played out.

Right but then men, at least as a class, actually have to improve. If previously, all the bottom 30% had to offer was a paycheck or basic physical protection to get a mate, obviously that is not necessarily going to cut it anymore. So these guys have to become more pro-social, egalitarian, educated, whatever--which sure, would be great, but seems a bigger endeavor than just cutting video game time or changing some company's recruiting strategy.

All men have to be above average if they want a partner.

All women are not above average. Why do men need to be?

Because women want a man who is better educated and earns more than they do while also doing 50% of everything else.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teach your boys to interact with girls. Teach your boys to interact with one another in the real world and not only online. Far too many young men's only interaction with other people is through screens. Men aren't encouraged to have friends with other men. Men are socially isolated and incompetent.

Because they've been completely neutered by calling every single thing they do "toxic" or "creepy".

But yes, instead of calming down on that hysteria a bit, let's situate the locus of all blame on them.

Maybe don’t push back when women say XYZ behavior makes them uncomfortable. Maybe don’t laugh it off when Tiger Woods hands his buddy a tampon to tell him how inferior he is. Honestly, why would we insist on promoting behavior that women find repellent and then complain that the women won’t date them? You can rant about how society is changing for the worse but you can’t try to relegate women back to second class status and have them embrace it.

+1
You know how men can find a woman? Don't be a massive jerk. Don't be a misogynist. Don't act like women owe them anything. Be receptive to her feelings and needs without always bulldozing over them. Flirt a little. Stop being to shy to interact at all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teach your boys to interact with girls. Teach your boys to interact with one another in the real world and not only online. Far too many young men's only interaction with other people is through screens. Men aren't encouraged to have friends with other men. Men are socially isolated and incompetent.

Because they've been completely neutered by calling every single thing they do "toxic" or "creepy".

But yes, instead of calming down on that hysteria a bit, let's situate the locus of all blame on them.

Maybe don’t push back when women say XYZ behavior makes them uncomfortable. Maybe don’t laugh it off when Tiger Woods hands his buddy a tampon to tell him how inferior he is. Honestly, why would we insist on promoting behavior that women find repellent and then complain that the women won’t date them? You can rant about how society is changing for the worse but you can’t try to relegate women back to second class status and have them embrace it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teach your boys to interact with girls. Teach your boys to interact with one another in the real world and not only online. Far too many young men's only interaction with other people is through screens. Men aren't encouraged to have friends with other men. Men are socially isolated and incompetent.

Because they've been completely neutered by calling every single thing they do "toxic" or "creepy".

But yes, instead of calming down on that hysteria a bit, let's situate the locus of all blame on them.

Right, blame it on being called toxic or creepy and not on their crappy male socialization. It's really not that hard for men to find a girlfriend or a job if they have some self esteem and motivation.

You're wrong. That's the point of the whole article.

Tell your son to go ask some women out. He'll find a date if he asks a few. If he doesn't have the confidence to do that then that's a problem with the way you raised him. If he's destroyed the first time he gets rejected then that's a self-esteem problem. Is asking women out easy? No. Is it easy being rejected? No. Does that mean you should never do it? That seems to be what's happening. Just live on your computer and video games and stop interacting with humans anywhere outside of a drive thru window.