It seems that many men are only comfortable competing with other men. They can’t handle competing with women. When women start outshining them in a field of endeavor, the society devalues that field. There’s something inherently wrong with the entire hierarchical system.
I don’t think being outshone by women is the issue, males have more variability in intelligence than women at both the low end and the high end. So some women may outshine some men. The masculinity argument is that men don’t think certain careers or college are seen as valid choices for men by their peers and by wider society. And Women are a part of that society, one of my college housemates had been a male nurse, was constantly teased about it by some women friends. He’s now a surgeon and is no longer teased 🤷♂️
It was women doing the teasing! You can say that many women internalize and embrace patriarchy and traditional gender roles (which is true), but you can't let women off the hook here.
This set of comments here is why patriarchy won't die. Your job is yourself and other men. The rest of us are working on everyone, including women. When you distract with "wOmEN DO iT tOo" and "wOmEN aRe ThE rEaL PrObLem" you're basically just doing exactly underlying thing mentioned in the article. Avoiding your own responsibility by focusing on how women are the problem.
Stop deflecting to other people what you should do yourself. Crying about "women also impose patriarchal positions" will not solve it, but do you know what does? Pointing out to other men when you see it happening.
Calling out women and vilifying women for stuff that men ALSO do in higher numbers, is easy. Using a scapegoat and cleaning your hands off of doing any of the actual work to deconstruct it is very easy.
How about _you_ do your f-ing part? Once you manage to convince women to not be more attracted to masculine men, then I'd be on board. Screeching at men while never blaming women is easy. Changing what seems to be innate biological preferences is hard if not impossible.
BTW, it turns out that the more gender equal a society is, the _more_ women prefer performative masculinity, so you have your work cut out for you.
This is an everyone problem. Not calling women out in that situation would have allowed other men to say "it's not patriarchy because women are doing it, so there's no need to change anything" we all need to call it out whenever we see it. It doesn't change unless we work together. Now you do the work and stop wasting effort by calling people out
The teasing was all about being a man in what was seen as a female profession. Nursing never flipped male to female, it was always a female dominated profession and culture. When I met him at college he was pursuing a degree in management, and a few years after that he went to med school. He was looking for status, for something that would get him respect. It’s all about perception.
This is what we mean when we say that patriarchy damages men as well as women. Your friend was teased for being in a female dominated profession because “female” is considered lesser and the women who piled on were demonstrating their internalized misogyny as well as their rigid expectations of what masculinity means. The whole hierarchical system is toxic.
I don’t think it’s that complicated, Elizabeth. Men have a sense of self respect that is as much biology as sociology. Women, likewise. We don’t need a patriarchy to explain any of this behaviour. A lot of it is human nature, and human interaction, and that’s enough to explain much of what we see. Small pieces, loosely joined.
We don’t need a patriarchy, John, but we have one. It’s why female dominated spaces are considered unattractive to men and why men, like your friend, who choose to work in those spaces are mocked. This isn’t biology, it’s societal conditioning.
This is probably true, but it's framed maximally unsympathetically.
Think about it. Directly competing with women is typically lose-lose for men. If he wins, he's a bully or a beneficiary of male privilege. If he wins, haha he got beat by a girl.
It's the toxic worldview between their ears that puts them in a lose-lose. Don't act like the person pointing it out is somehow responsible for that framing. Feminists didn't do that to them, patriarchy did... 🙄
Charlotte, your hostility is unwarranted and bizarre. I’m saying that all people are hurt but systems of oppression and dominance. We need to do better by all human beings. What’s your problem with that? I don’t sneer at men who are struggling with the system that has damaged them. When I say that many men have a problem competing with women - that’s demonstrably true. They’ve been conditioned to feel that way. It’s bad for them and for women. Your rage is misdirected.
I majored in theater in the early 70's. We did not discover anything about ourselves. The Humanities have not been stripped from public education. Please talk to some people who have different opinions.
Please speak for yourself. YOU didn’t discover anything about yourself. That doesn’t mean “we” as in everyone else. I was a theater arts major in the 70s too. I discovered a lot about myself. So did most of the theater studentsI know.
What I discovered about myself was wrong. It took a decade to unlearn. What they discovered about themselves was often wrong as well. Not always. A few did well and are not brittle now. Yet the ones who went on to make their livings in theater are now the least open to being challenged on any subject - even theater!
That isso exactly what happened to Sports. Their egos couldn't handle competing (and losing) to women, so they created female leagues and now those same leagues are being used to shame women of colour, trans women, and women in general!!!!! Just ego and their egoistic goals.
Female sports teams and leagues were created because females cannot compete in most sports. If teams and leagues were not created for them, they would have no place to compete at all. You could make a better argument that it is female egos that cannot stand losing to men all the time. Years ago I coached boys, girls, and mixed sports. That's in addition to reading the actual research on biological differences that are not due to socialization.
Dude, reading a little on why women were banned to begin with from football(soccer) and other sports would have given you the same conclusion as Sophia. Female leagues, WHEN women were unbanned from sports, were created to not hurt the male ego when they were outperformed.
Men were not outperformed. They thought women should not do unfeminine things like that at all. A big deal was made out of the occasional girl who could beat all the boys in tennis or skiing, and that did bother boys. But that was very much at the fringe. Where in the world do you get ideas like this? even now, the very best women who have trained for sports all their lives, like the US national women’s soccer team, cannot defeat a team of 15 year-old boys. They get clobbered.
It bothered MEN, not boys. And it was enough to banish women because women's football (ENGLAND not US) was selling tickets and having an audience similar/bigger than the mens. It didn't have anything to do with "pack of femininity", that was just an excuse, it was their tiny men Ego's that got hurt 😭
I don’t know about ticket sales in England, I admit. I would be surprised if any women’s team was outdrawing Arsenal, but sure, maybe. But that’s changing the subject.
Watch how fast endurance sports build gender segregated leagues after women started eviscerating men in endurance-based sports like long-distance rowing, running, and swimming.
Most sports favor male bodies, sure. Those sports are short, quick bursts of energy. There are biological bases to gender segregated sports, but most of the time under any rigorous scientific inspection those bases fall apart. In the military, for example, there are plenty of weak, feeble, small little men who get crushed by women in their same field.
The truth is that women and men are more similar biologically as groups to one another, but when you start separating by certain physical abilities under very specific conditions (which men created) of course men will outperform in those scenarios where the rules are made to favor men. If women had built sports empires, wrote the rules, and spent 200 years building infrastructure specifically around men in sports and specifically around keeping women out of sports, you would have had an argument. Unfortunately, the patriarchy makes it difficult to compare.
Itll be interesting to see how Kant performs in the wnba. He doesn't seem to be afraid of competing with women, being completely outnumbered. Excuse me, she. Trans women are women
I was a great athlete in my youth. It paid for my college education. I was in the newspaper sports section often. I had major talent. And yet when I played pick up ball with the neighborhood boys, many of whom played no organized sports, and I could hit the ball harder and father than any of them, some became so frustrated and embarrassed they actually QUIT. They were boys, I was a girl, they should excel at boy things, that was the belief, and nothing would change their minds, not even reality - they just quit reality. It was an interesting lesson to learn.
It was a very incomplete lesson to learn. That an exceptional female athlete can anecdotally compete with unexceptional male athletes does not tell us very much about the overall situation. It doesn’t even fully tell us about your particular situation. You have an interpretation of why they quit. They might have a different interpretation. They might have found you unlikable for some other reason.
I have five sons who played sports. Only two of them are any good. I have seen them play mixed games at school picnics, and town leagues and I have seldom seen any females that were at the level of age, mate boys, even more seldom after age 12. But I have seen a few: State Champion volleyball players who went on to play college. Women’s D2 basketball players who could compete reasonably well against high school boys.
I have never seen the situation that you describe, of boys quitting because girls were beating them. Never.
People who are prideful and very ego driven are very quick to notice and accuse the other prideful and ego driven people in a situation. It’s a little spiritual lesson than I picked up from CS Lewis, and recognized immediately and myself 50 years ago and have worked against in myself since then .
There is a lot of talk here about Mail ego. I have not seen even a passing mention of female egos. And yet I worked two female dominated fields, nursing and social work and can tell you a fair bit about female egos, especially from the women complaining about male egos .
This echo chamber might at least give some consideration to the idea
Well one of them said “how can you hit it so far? I can’t hit it half that far!!!” then he threw his glove down on the field and left.
I appreciate your comment but I was there and my interpretation can be trusted completely. It is *your* interpretation that is incomplete because I do not have the time nor inclination to provide all the details that would fill in the situation for you ....it was just a moment in time for me, among many many others in which I was challenged for being a girl. I played college softball and the baseball coach got sick of his own players making comments about my ass and forced them all to take an at bat against me in the batting cage....he already knew what they did not, I struck all of them out, because they were all so comfortable underestimating me and my 75 mpt fastball, which hits different coming at your from 45 feet. Then he presented me with a baseball signed by the whole team, there were only three penises drawn on it, plus one butt.
btw I actually dated the boy who threw the glove down, so yeah, not about being unlikable, but thank you for that.
In logic and debate that is formally known as an anecdote. The plural of anecdote is not #DATA. I am confident that it happened somewhere in the world, and more than once! I am sure you are not the only woman to have seen such a thing. But you very obviously made it a general observation, and it looks like you can’t sustain that.
Yeah I'm aware of what data are, I'm a statistician by training. I don't know what you are talking about, my not 'sustaining' your observation - you said my lesson was incomplete, that I may have been unlikable, and that not enough was known about the overall situation that I was a part of and you were not. I politely explained that there are much more data, but I'm not inclined to share because frankly who cares, it's way in the past. The lesson I learned held and served me well throughout my softball career, whether or not you believe the lesson was valuable or not.
The unlikable part really hit you hard, even though I only raised it as a possibility. Your original comment was that men do this generally. I think men do this occasionally. I don’t think you can sustain the argument that men do this consistently; first, Because it doesn’t happen that often, second because men do not act that way all that often.
I long ago accepted that I am not an exceptional athlete and it is no part of my self definition. You, on the other hand seemed to have your ego pretty well wrapped up in this. Maybe a lot of men are worse than you in this way and it is a more general characteristic of men. But it looks like you haven’t got any grounds on which to accuse others here. I only speak from what you have shown me in this conversation.
If you resent my making it this personal, I will remind you that you were the first one to make this personal.
Sounds very familiar. Again, this what I mean when I say that our system of indoctrination about masculinity and femininity harms everyone. These boys were taught to feel shame in the face of an outstanding female athlete and you were being given the message that you shouldn’t be better than boys at something you excelled at. This damages everyone.
Why do men want to compete in the first place? Men compete to see who is the best, and women wait at the finish line to … marry … the winner. Competing against women does nothing for a men.
I’m talking about human societies. Chimps make war on each other. Does that make it fine for us to do it? Chimps sexually brutalize females. Does that make it fine for us to do it? Praying mantis females eat the male after mating. Does that make it fine if we did that? I don’t think that hierarchical systems that grant one group of people power over another group of people because of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, nationality or any other reason is morally or ethically right. Clearly, many, many people don’t agree with my view, but so what?
We are talking specifically about gender hierarchies here. Once you start inspecting gender in the animal kingdom versus humanity, MANY of humanity's socially constructed ideas of reality start to fall apart.
That isnt the case at all. If it were, there wouldnt be two men declaring eligibility for the wnba. What they're afraid of is the HR-ification of society, seen as largely a female phenomenon, that makes every small transgression a crime against humanity, something to be cancelled over. They fear that a drunken hookup (where they're both drunk and consenting) will result in their arrest. Make certain spaces inhospitable for men and surprise, they'll opt out
Interesting that "inhospitable" places for women prior to women being given human rights, was just literally existence. And yet women still opted into existence most of the time. Men can "opt out" of society, sure. But they won't do so without a whole lot of whining and bitching about how unfair it is to them lmfao
Opting out of going to college isn't opting out of society.
Also, if women not having human rights up until recently is your argument, an argument I wouldnt dispute, wouldn't it follow that they really don't have the option to opt out (with the extreme exception of suicide)?
Do you think the men of today should be content to slowly lose the things in life that give them meaning? Should they just shut up and take it on the chin? If so, for how long? And how is that good for women?
Why do they even use money as an argument? Girls and women have to pay the exact same tuition 🫠🫠
I also think it comes down to how girls and boys are raised. Women who go to college WANT more in life, and they know they have to study and work hard if they want to have a career. They grow up with "You have to work to succeed". That's what they are taught since they were little. Boys, however, they listen "You will be great, you can do whatever you want". "Work" is never the message. It's a given that they will accomplish stuff. Even if they do believe in meritocracy, it's not as ingrained in their upbringing.
Another thing is that women know they have to be EXCELLENT to get anywhere, because any mediocre man can take their spot. Men don't even bother being good, nevermind excellent.
> Why do they even use money as an argument? Girls and women have to pay the exact same tuition 🫠🫠
It's not really my hill to die on, but I'll give you a simple reason. Men are judged for their financial security, whereas women are not. I mean, any man ought to look at a pile of debt from a potential girlfriend/wife as a red flag, but the nuance is that the man has to be planning for the future when he's 20, whereas the woman can just arrive at whatever age she's married with an expectation that her contribution to the household income is optional. The woman's income serves the purpose of maintaining her independence from the man moreso than being an economic engine for the family.
There's also the contribution that parents make to their children's education. When I was growing up, it seemed that girls got more care from the parents than the boys. Boys were expected to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (pay your own way to college, start out with the jalopy clunker car), whereas girls were given special treatment (college paid for, allowance given, and new Volkswagen Jetta as a high school graduation present). I'm aware that this kind of thing is highly variable. It's just a pattern that I noticed.
Blame patriarchy. I do. I supported myself and raised 3 kids with no child support or family support. I had men actually tell me they couldn’t date a woman who makes more than they do. Okay, that eliminates about 80% of men. I never had the energy to prop up male egos for the sake of the patriarchy. You guys have got to get yourself off of that hamster wheel. If a woman demands you support her find another woman or stay single.
> I had men actually tell me they couldn’t date a woman who makes more than they do.
Well, marriages are much less stable when that happens, so maybe they're looking ahead. I don't know, I can't read their minds. I'm just saying that there's a difference between being insecure and knowing how people will judge you differently if something happens.
> If a woman demands you support her find another woman or stay single.
Deny our foundational gender role because "oppression" is something that women do, not men.
Myths are more important than “made up thing.” They are central to social structures and undermining them causes issues. Yes, our myths should be continually re-examined; no, we should not dispose of them unless we have something to replace them.
'I supported myself and raised 3 kids with no child support or family support'
That's a very misleading statement.
For starters we have to imagine a life where you transition not pregnant - pregnant - child born - not pregnant - pregnant - child born - not pregnant - pregnant - child born
With no support apart from a sperm donor providing sperm.
For another we have to remember that you had government assistance at all times.
It was not 'supported myself....' it was instead. I was supported by society that everyone regardless of gender paid into.
There is a difference between those two statements, a vast difference. That the mythology of 'supported myself.....' has persisted as a primary personal identifier indicates how removed from society this has become.
I personally know real women - two individuals - who raised children and were the principal earners of their family units without male (or female) partners, and without gov’t support. Their support was in the form of community, where friends came together to provide childcare, home maintenance, social/familial constructs for each other. It wasn’t communal, just friends helping friends. But it was tribal in its own way. Both women were forced by either abandonment or abuse of their spouses to do it solo. Fortunately they had both the education and marketable skills to make it work. I realize these examples are the exception rather than the standard, but they worked well for all. Kids grew up solid and well-loved. My point, it *is* a non-traditional social construct that can be used successfully.
Maybe read your comment and then mine. Then compare and contrast, and you'll see where you're ignoring what was said and instead just inserting a templates reply on the difficulties of single motherhood.
It's not what I was referring to.
Why is it important to you to respond via a rote reply?
" but the nuance is that the man has to be planning for the future when he's 20, whereas the woman can just arrive at whatever age she's married with an expectation that her contribution to the household income is optional. The woman's income serves the purpose of maintaining her independence from the man moreso than being an economic engine for the family."
I'm sorry, lol whut? This is the 21st century, not 1950. Many women know that the strength of their family is on their back; they have to prep for their financial stability as much as men.
This comment should be pinned. We were just told that men and women felt money concerns the exact same way and that’s that. Very shallow conclusion from that study.
"Men dont bother being good, let alone excellent" - feminists love to lie about men (my sincete belief, not insult) , so I will ask this question - why do men and women have separate tournaments etc in chess, if men really are so anti excellence. Why are majority of nobel prize winners male? Ik you will cry discrimination. When women perform worse that's always your excuse but not when men perform worse? Somehow nobel prize committee has more anti female bigotry than every college in the existence lol. There are some obvious problems with this article too, but will cover it some other day, think noah smith had also done a partial debunking, back in the day
100%. My wife and I were both profs for 30 years. It’s definitely misogyny but in a very sad way. Many boys really hate feeling awkward and out of place among girls and women. They hate being wrong or bad at anything around women. They do not have the social and communication skills and resilience for a classroom with a lot of girls in it. They’re not open to new or challenging things around girls. I say this because we both loved the “feminization” of the classroom. And we both noticed what kind of boys thrived in it. The ones who had strong social and communication skills and who liked and were interested in women’s perspectives. But the closed off boys are only ok being wrong or taking chances or learning really new things among mostly other boys. And now a whole political movement gives them a language to justify their rage at ever being uncomfortable and to take pride in ignorance as a kind of grim visceral natural wisdom. They spout social Darwinism while knowing nothing about biology.
But—and this is the worst part—I could say all this stuff to their faces and most of them they didn’t hate me for it. I reached a few. Because I’m a man with an authoritative presence. My wife had to tread much more carefully.
I saw this when I was a lecturer (in English lit.) in the UK, too. Often there would only be one or two male students in a seminar group. The ones who respected women as people and could communicate clearly and openly thrived. The ones who couldn’t, didn’t in my groups or with their male lecturers on other modules.
During my PhD, in California in the early noughties, I was teaching introduction to literature and composition (a gen. ed. class), so classrooms were usually 60/40 female/male. It was less noticeable then. I don’t know if that’s because the gender balance was closer to equal or if something else has shifted in the meantime.
Yeah, definitely. When I broke up amicably with my college boyfriend, he DROPPED OUT OF SCHOOL entirely. It’s an isolated incident, but demonstrates that men don’t have the resilience to navigate awkward dynamics in a female-dominated environment. They just expect things to go their way all the time
The corollary to this excellent article is the drop in wages that happens in a profession when the percentage of female workers increases. Would love to see stats on that.
Before I was born, my Aunt Ruth became the first female bank teller in Minneapolis. By the time my mother told me that story in the 1960s, male bank tellers were almost nonexistent and it was considered a low-status position comparable to office workers -- a formerly all-male profession itself. Thanks for this deep dive.
You see this in real time with a lot of administrative and office jobs right now. There’s many criticisms to be had of these types of jobs and their effect on society (I.e. admin bloat in school districts and hospital systems), but there definitely is a gendered aspect to people lashing out against these problems
“Look at these WOMEN in these BULLSHIT email jobs! They’re taking from the hardworking MEN doing the real work!!!”
Thanks for a disturbing researched view into this major change. It has been going on much more obviously in the past decade. Patriarchy and traditional views on what a man should be like are the root of poor decisions, mistreatment, prejudice, and ignorance in many cultures.
I wish I had a bullhorn I could use to proclaim this: "But men are not structurally or legally prohibited from attending college as women were decades ago. Men are choosing not to go to college."
>Patriarchy and traditional views on what a man should be like are the root of poor decisions, mistreatment, prejudice, and ignorance in many cultures.
All of which are reinforced by female sexual selection.
Actually, they largely serve to completely override female sexual selection. Patriarchy is often a tool for either writing women's desires out of the equation entirely, or warping them to fit the form given.
"Conservatism," especially MAGA, relies on Fundamentalism, which rejects science (e.g., evolution) and which, unlike traditional Christianity, is very oriented towards riches and capital.
At Capitalism's greedy extreme, the terrible 1911 Shirtwaist Factory Fire killed 146 young women, because the greedy owner had feared losing pennies if a young woman answered nature's call to go pee, so he locked them in the factory, without accounting for fire. When the tragedy occurred, the owner was not nearby to let out the victims to safety. The resulting criminal trial resulted in an acquittal for manslaughter after a mere two hour deliberation. The civil litigation resulted in the owner paying out a paltry $75.00 per victim. Even by 1911 standards, at the worth of the dollar in those days, $75.00 was paltry in a human death situation.
In that year, the woman could not yet vote.
In that year, in case of divorce, the husband was usually awarded the kids.
Wind the film a century ahead, and you have the U.S. Supreme Court ending the right to choice in women.
These John Roberts Court Members were groomed by Mitch McConnell Republicans to undo the Voting Rights Act and rights of women.
Meanwhile, there is not a head of industry that doesn't want factory or coal-mine safety regulations loosened if not cut.
Which . . . brings us back to 1911.
But people are bored with history books.
Professor Heather Cox Richardson recounts the story several times:
What does this have to do with women's human dignity, her rights to industrial safety, healthcare and the like?
Well, one of the persons emotionally moved in 1911 by this horrific tragedy of epic proportions was . . .
Frances Perkins.
On March 25, 1911, Frances Perkins was on Washington Square in New York City when the fire engines wailed the sirens to respond to the factory fire just a few blocks away.
Ms. Perkins had already been involved in the labor movement to try to obtain fairness to labor.
The rest is history.
Ms. Perkins became active with Tammany Hall to obtain support for public labor safety measures.
More importantly, Frances Perkins served the whole of the first three terms -- 1933-1945 -- of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as . . . Secretary of Labor.
Where she actively sought to protect labor.
Since women worked under oppressive, even dangerous conditions, Frances Perkins' measures certainly protected all of labor, but were especially necessary in the case of women.
Professor Heather Cox Richardson recounts the story with great compassion in my three cites.
Oppression is from greedy Capitalism driven by wealth-driven Fundamentalism, designed to shift earnings from labor to capital.
Which directly affects women -- and men and children -- in a broad swath of sectors.
So, I think your comment is very on point and insightful.
My lengthy commentary results simply from this: I love history, and try to live its lessons in Love of Neighbor and the cause of labor, liberty, due process of law, and labor.
Men have no idea that it was a WOMAN who fought for ALL workers to have a safe working environment. Honestly, what HAVEN'T women done to make the world a better place for everyone?!?!?
In a den of wolves, a mother or grandmother wolf is one of the most invaluable members of the pack.
It doen't lower my ego to acknowledge all that is excellent about women. I loved my Mom, and my dear wife, two daughters, and adored granddaughter.
I cannot imagine otherwise, and I cannot even UNDERSTAND how we are in a world of angry men.
That leads to Nazism.
I can -- and have!! -- recounted "Freundinnen" (Girlfriends) by Johanna Moosdorf, who suffered immensely -- and heroically -- under the Third Reich, and in "Freundinnen" (yes, girlfriend--lovers) attributed the Third Reich to epidemic and toxic Male-Supremacy in the most perverse manifestation.
Despite the premise, the novel is beautiful. (No English translation. But I have recounted the novel many times in my comments to Substack postings.)
Celeste Davis: When, 1970-1973, attended the Law School of the University of Arizona (JD '73), Women made up already one-third of the class.
The whole 28,000 students at the UofA was happily well populated by women.
I took flight all right!
Away from my loving, but cloying Mom and Dad and eagerly into higher academia well populated by women.
Besides my strong natural attractions, what I loved in women surrounding me was their maturity way above my level. Even 18-year-old women were more mature than I, already a law student.
The women were always highly professional, well-prepared, fully informed, and logical in their academic presentations, and possessing social skills I could barely hope to achieve.
On July 4, 1971 I went on my last family trip with Mom, Dad, sister and brother.
Seven days later, a very bright young woman, socially mature, a UofA grad, quite pretty, and the fresh innocence of girlish humor, and I have been smitten with her for 55 years, married to her the last 53 years, my Nancy, whose innocence and brightness and her glow that radiates beauty have won my heart each minute of these 55 years.
We laugh and cry together, with two wondrous daughters and seven grandchildren, among them a granddaughter who captivates our hearts.
An academic setting friendly to women allowed me to develop friendships with professional women whose academic achievements I admired, along with their maturity in steadfast dedication to their studies and professions.
In my undergraduate studies, 1966-1970, and my law studies 1970-1973, I was happily surrounded by bright, talented, socially mature, dedicated academic women, and I considered that a bit of heaven, quite frankly.
I was socially shy, including around women I admired.
In fact, I love my academic life surrounded by intelligent, professional women so inspiring, that I have continued by academic pursuits my whole life in classical literature and philosophy, classical music, the arts, and Continental Philosophy.
And Nancy and I share a wondrous life together.
And Nancy has a full social life with her woman friends.
So I took flight.
Flight from a loving family that became cloying to the 22-year-old into academia with rich contributions of numerous gifted, intellectual women.
I pity the young man who would fear such a life of intellect and sheer joy.
Using Celeste as an example, consider that perhaps boys today need to spend more time in the company of other men. Goose. Gander. Maybe we need to move back in the direction of more education options in gendered settings, separate (sometimes) the girls from the boys. It has often been noted that girls perform better in all girl settings. Has anyone ever studied the same situation for boys?
Reading . . . : The setting you describe was traditionally common in: (1) Preparatory schools (Philips Exeter Academy); (2) Military preparation (Virginia Military Academy); (3) Naval and military academies; (4) Catholic schools separate for girls and boys; (5) Traditionally in IVY League Schools (Radcliffe versus Harvard); (6) Some State Schools (Mississippi School for Women).
There was an opportunity to study the effects of gender separation.
Whether any study surveyed the situation, I do not know.
I recently attended an open house at my local community college. Enrollment is 69 percent female. Yet they have courses in robotics, HVAC, law enforcement and medicine that you would think would entice men. And while I agree men flee, I think they're also lazy. And more susceptible to peer pressure. They have a buddy or uncle telling them not to bother. They don't need a degree. They can start their own pressure washing/car detailing/construction business where they “can be their own boss” and of course that sounds better than 4 years of college.
I teach at a community college, and the graduation rates are heavily skewed towards female students. The enrollment rates may look like they are about equal, but the success (passing) rates and persistence rates (staying enrolled) look very different!
Patriarchal power structure has always considered men more ‘intelligent’ than women. Women are supposed to be homemakers, not equals in intelligence. How many mediocre men in the past have stolen the work of brilliant women and claimed it their own? Tons….
Not everyone is equal in intellect. When men dominated higher education it was ‘okay’ to not be the smartest man in a room of men. Now men are openly competing against women, and finding out some of those women are much smarter than they are. Their egos can’t take it so they come up with excuses.
This is the same group of mainly white men who can’t handle minorities being smarter than them.
The white, patriarchal power structure has been in place for centuries. Even in today’s society young boys and men are being taught they should automatically be at the top.
Mind reading. This has nothing to do with why men disengage from female spaces.
This comment sections multiple projections of the inner thoughts of men by women is a prime example of one reason men may not want to be around a /groups/ of women.
Read this and the comments from other male students:
You should tell us directly how you feel. Confrontation is important and the internet is the place for it. I read some of your article. Social exclusion seems to be the main gripe. Certainly that can be a problem and as a neurodivergent woman I can relate. I am taking note of this idea as being how some men feel is the primary problem.
I believe these disconnects - whether in a psych trainee program or a comment section - could be resolved by a genuine hashing out. In real life that's tricky but here on Substack, the ground is fertile to understanding.
My experience and the experience of many women, though, has been that ego actually is a major factor in whether or not you'll engage with us in a respectful manner, be able to emotionally regulate yourself after an unfavorable interaction with or around us, and whether you'll seek dominance (or leave) to resolve any dysregulation. It's not projection or mind reading.
Right because men never project each other's inner thoughts. "You did X? You must be gay!" "You don't do Y — you're a wimp!" or dismissing men who take women's side as "white knighting."
Those are direct statements that are easily responded to or ignored. They don't really upset men all that much. It's standard male break-of-rapport. They have almost no effect on how men behave; and frankly, it's very rare. The person doing it makes themselves look crass and wounded.
Yes, but there's something more corrosive about how women engage in this. Male malignant narcissists typically bully in a way that is easily visible. You can expel the people engaging in it. The female narcissists engage in covert operations.
Get religion out of government and education. Monotheism requires a heirarchy. Christianity, especially American, eliminates the feminine Jesus in favor of Old Testament Yahweh, who is all man.
When Christianity moves into law making, it imposes that male hierarchy as the norm; redemption through rejecting the feminine World, much like monks and hermits and some religions. The harder the life, the happier god is. Puritans and Calvinism.
The problem here is that women are no longer dependent on men. And denying boys access to feminine civilizing shoves them back into the truncated world of manliness
Male fear of female at bottom of all social ills. We bleed. We birth. We milky boobs. We teary. We messy. Many bodily fluids. Males wary, scared. Must control humans with many fluids because only one fluid “counts” and it’s male.
Such a national emergency over men being “left behind” when a decent number of them saw women carrying textbooks and fled the building voluntarily.
Apparently masculinity can build empires, cross oceans and walk on the moon, but put six women in a ten seat classroom and suddenly it needs an emergency exit.
Boys are trained to believe they will be kicked out of the club if they are too often seen in friendly association with women and girls. The worst slur is to suggest that a young man "is" a woman. This toxic behavior is as old as dirt but that doesn't mean we can't work to improve. Diverse, thoughtful exposure to co-ed learning opportunities can help unless the parents react as though their child is getting short-changed. Among peers, boys can be brutal in their enforcement of the code of male superiority they've learned from adults. Breaking this cycle is a tall order but worth the effort. Thank you for publishing this essay.
I was one of those who was bullied by the football team members, beat up by them, called gay and faggot boy. There was a group, though, who was even more brutal with this, though not physically. The cheerleaders were horrid. Yes, the girls gleefully joined the football players in taunting and social rejection, throwing accusations of sissy, faggot etc. So 1. it's not just believing you will kicked out of the club, you will be kicked out of the club. 2. The girls do it too, and do it worse (better?).
Girls like that learn how to and clearly do play the game and see their place in it. Mean girls, stepford wives types - proximity to hierarchy and power through looks and performed femininity. Betty Draper types, then tragically left for a younger model as their value inherently diminishes over time. I'm sorry for your bullying, those kinds are mean to anyone that doesn't allow them to social climb.
Teen boys in WWI Britain were afraid of being perceived as cowards for not having enlisted yet, and surely some of the condemnation came from other men.
But the truly terrifying figures were the White Feather Girls.
I love that line, "weed whacking the behaviors." Also, that male authority saying that schools require "obedience," which is a girl thing, and then goes off into a long quote about how men won't do obedience has never been in the military, shouted at by a drill sergeant, or been on a sports team being shouted at by a coach. Do these men ever just listen to themselves?
This is a real problem. It bodes ill for the success of long-term relationships, because the women will put up with ignorant chest-thumping for only so long. Listening to some dude bellow on and on about stuff he hasn't the education to really analyze and understand flat-out kills respect. Why? It's not just the ignorance. That's bad enough. No, it's the inability to sit quietly, listen, think, and respond intelligently. To participate in give and take. To perceive another's perspective. The lack of those qualities is deadly for marriage. And, this becomes a death spiral within the family, because the modeled behavior for the sons of these men is just so awful.
I would be really curious to learn if this pattern of male participation in higher education is widespread across the world, or purely a feature of US culture. If it's just us, we are in far bigger trouble as a society than we thought -- and that was bad enough.
It seems that many men are only comfortable competing with other men. They can’t handle competing with women. When women start outshining them in a field of endeavor, the society devalues that field. There’s something inherently wrong with the entire hierarchical system.
Exactly what I was going to say!
I don’t think being outshone by women is the issue, males have more variability in intelligence than women at both the low end and the high end. So some women may outshine some men. The masculinity argument is that men don’t think certain careers or college are seen as valid choices for men by their peers and by wider society. And Women are a part of that society, one of my college housemates had been a male nurse, was constantly teased about it by some women friends. He’s now a surgeon and is no longer teased 🤷♂️
That teasing is the way patriarchy harms men. We need to stop tolerating it
Exactly, we need other men to call it out when they see other men do it. They'll not listen yo women obviously, it's beneath them.
It was women doing the teasing! You can say that many women internalize and embrace patriarchy and traditional gender roles (which is true), but you can't let women off the hook here.
Women do most of the enforcement of patriarchy
This set of comments here is why patriarchy won't die. Your job is yourself and other men. The rest of us are working on everyone, including women. When you distract with "wOmEN DO iT tOo" and "wOmEN aRe ThE rEaL PrObLem" you're basically just doing exactly underlying thing mentioned in the article. Avoiding your own responsibility by focusing on how women are the problem.
Do 👏🏻 your 👏🏻 f-ink 👏🏻 part 👏🏻
Stop deflecting to other people what you should do yourself. Crying about "women also impose patriarchal positions" will not solve it, but do you know what does? Pointing out to other men when you see it happening.
Calling out women and vilifying women for stuff that men ALSO do in higher numbers, is easy. Using a scapegoat and cleaning your hands off of doing any of the actual work to deconstruct it is very easy.
How about _you_ do your f-ing part? Once you manage to convince women to not be more attracted to masculine men, then I'd be on board. Screeching at men while never blaming women is easy. Changing what seems to be innate biological preferences is hard if not impossible.
BTW, it turns out that the more gender equal a society is, the _more_ women prefer performative masculinity, so you have your work cut out for you.
I'm doing it. You see it.
This is an everyone problem. Not calling women out in that situation would have allowed other men to say "it's not patriarchy because women are doing it, so there's no need to change anything" we all need to call it out whenever we see it. It doesn't change unless we work together. Now you do the work and stop wasting effort by calling people out
This is, sadly, the case
Interesting… have you ever wondered WHY he was teased in the first place…?
The teasing was all about being a man in what was seen as a female profession. Nursing never flipped male to female, it was always a female dominated profession and culture. When I met him at college he was pursuing a degree in management, and a few years after that he went to med school. He was looking for status, for something that would get him respect. It’s all about perception.
This is what we mean when we say that patriarchy damages men as well as women. Your friend was teased for being in a female dominated profession because “female” is considered lesser and the women who piled on were demonstrating their internalized misogyny as well as their rigid expectations of what masculinity means. The whole hierarchical system is toxic.
I don’t think it’s that complicated, Elizabeth. Men have a sense of self respect that is as much biology as sociology. Women, likewise. We don’t need a patriarchy to explain any of this behaviour. A lot of it is human nature, and human interaction, and that’s enough to explain much of what we see. Small pieces, loosely joined.
We don’t need a patriarchy, John, but we have one. It’s why female dominated spaces are considered unattractive to men and why men, like your friend, who choose to work in those spaces are mocked. This isn’t biology, it’s societal conditioning.
What is biological? Being teased by both men and women for being a man in a "feminine" profession?
This is probably true, but it's framed maximally unsympathetically.
Think about it. Directly competing with women is typically lose-lose for men. If he wins, he's a bully or a beneficiary of male privilege. If he wins, haha he got beat by a girl.
That's what the article says. Men need to be coddled.
We allowed Christofascists to strip Liberal Arts and Humanities from public education.
Men have been shuttled away from them as a means of domesticating them.
They aren't taught the 'feminine' parts of civilization. The self-discovery found in theatre and literature.
They are consigned to the gym, and a warped version of masculinity that favors submissive and hegemonic world view.
A world out of balance either way sucks.☯️🖖
Put someone in a lose-lose position, then denigrate them as "needing to be coddled" when they withdraw from that position.
Wow.
It's the toxic worldview between their ears that puts them in a lose-lose. Don't act like the person pointing it out is somehow responsible for that framing. Feminists didn't do that to them, patriarchy did... 🙄
"Patriarchy hurts men too!"
And when it does, you'll sneer at the men for being hurt.
Charlotte, your hostility is unwarranted and bizarre. I’m saying that all people are hurt but systems of oppression and dominance. We need to do better by all human beings. What’s your problem with that? I don’t sneer at men who are struggling with the system that has damaged them. When I say that many men have a problem competing with women - that’s demonstrably true. They’ve been conditioned to feel that way. It’s bad for them and for women. Your rage is misdirected.
I majored in theater in the early 70's. We did not discover anything about ourselves. The Humanities have not been stripped from public education. Please talk to some people who have different opinions.
Please speak for yourself. YOU didn’t discover anything about yourself. That doesn’t mean “we” as in everyone else. I was a theater arts major in the 70s too. I discovered a lot about myself. So did most of the theater studentsI know.
What I discovered about myself was wrong. It took a decade to unlearn. What they discovered about themselves was often wrong as well. Not always. A few did well and are not brittle now. Yet the ones who went on to make their livings in theater are now the least open to being challenged on any subject - even theater!
Sorry to hear that. My experience has been the opposite of yours.
Thats a bold statement.
False AF, thanks for your discrimination
That isso exactly what happened to Sports. Their egos couldn't handle competing (and losing) to women, so they created female leagues and now those same leagues are being used to shame women of colour, trans women, and women in general!!!!! Just ego and their egoistic goals.
Female sports teams and leagues were created because females cannot compete in most sports. If teams and leagues were not created for them, they would have no place to compete at all. You could make a better argument that it is female egos that cannot stand losing to men all the time. Years ago I coached boys, girls, and mixed sports. That's in addition to reading the actual research on biological differences that are not due to socialization.
Dude, reading a little on why women were banned to begin with from football(soccer) and other sports would have given you the same conclusion as Sophia. Female leagues, WHEN women were unbanned from sports, were created to not hurt the male ego when they were outperformed.
Information, labraries and Google is still free 😎
The US women's Olympic team lost to a team of 15 year old boys
Men were not outperformed. They thought women should not do unfeminine things like that at all. A big deal was made out of the occasional girl who could beat all the boys in tennis or skiing, and that did bother boys. But that was very much at the fringe. Where in the world do you get ideas like this? even now, the very best women who have trained for sports all their lives, like the US national women’s soccer team, cannot defeat a team of 15 year-old boys. They get clobbered.
It bothered MEN, not boys. And it was enough to banish women because women's football (ENGLAND not US) was selling tickets and having an audience similar/bigger than the mens. It didn't have anything to do with "pack of femininity", that was just an excuse, it was their tiny men Ego's that got hurt 😭
I don’t know about ticket sales in England, I admit. I would be surprised if any women’s team was outdrawing Arsenal, but sure, maybe. But that’s changing the subject.
Motte-and-bailey argument.
What do you mean banish?
In which sports did men find they couldn't compete (and win) against women?
Watch how fast endurance sports build gender segregated leagues after women started eviscerating men in endurance-based sports like long-distance rowing, running, and swimming.
Most sports favor male bodies, sure. Those sports are short, quick bursts of energy. There are biological bases to gender segregated sports, but most of the time under any rigorous scientific inspection those bases fall apart. In the military, for example, there are plenty of weak, feeble, small little men who get crushed by women in their same field.
The truth is that women and men are more similar biologically as groups to one another, but when you start separating by certain physical abilities under very specific conditions (which men created) of course men will outperform in those scenarios where the rules are made to favor men. If women had built sports empires, wrote the rules, and spent 200 years building infrastructure specifically around men in sports and specifically around keeping women out of sports, you would have had an argument. Unfortunately, the patriarchy makes it difficult to compare.
The world's fastest woman in the 100 meter dash (Florence Griffith Joyner at 10.49 seconds) is slower than the top ten high school boys (all under 10.01, see https://trackandfieldnews.com/tfn-lists/high-school-all-time-top-10s-boys/)
Military study after miliary study shows that women are weaker than men and sustain more injuries than men.
Women's national soccer teams regularly play boys high school teams as practice for their championship games, and the women lose. They get trounced.
No one in their right mind would place a woman in NFL gear on a professional football team because she might be killed at the line of scrimmage.
Itll be interesting to see how Kant performs in the wnba. He doesn't seem to be afraid of competing with women, being completely outnumbered. Excuse me, she. Trans women are women
I was a great athlete in my youth. It paid for my college education. I was in the newspaper sports section often. I had major talent. And yet when I played pick up ball with the neighborhood boys, many of whom played no organized sports, and I could hit the ball harder and father than any of them, some became so frustrated and embarrassed they actually QUIT. They were boys, I was a girl, they should excel at boy things, that was the belief, and nothing would change their minds, not even reality - they just quit reality. It was an interesting lesson to learn.
It was a very incomplete lesson to learn. That an exceptional female athlete can anecdotally compete with unexceptional male athletes does not tell us very much about the overall situation. It doesn’t even fully tell us about your particular situation. You have an interpretation of why they quit. They might have a different interpretation. They might have found you unlikable for some other reason.
I have five sons who played sports. Only two of them are any good. I have seen them play mixed games at school picnics, and town leagues and I have seldom seen any females that were at the level of age, mate boys, even more seldom after age 12. But I have seen a few: State Champion volleyball players who went on to play college. Women’s D2 basketball players who could compete reasonably well against high school boys.
I have never seen the situation that you describe, of boys quitting because girls were beating them. Never.
People who are prideful and very ego driven are very quick to notice and accuse the other prideful and ego driven people in a situation. It’s a little spiritual lesson than I picked up from CS Lewis, and recognized immediately and myself 50 years ago and have worked against in myself since then .
There is a lot of talk here about Mail ego. I have not seen even a passing mention of female egos. And yet I worked two female dominated fields, nursing and social work and can tell you a fair bit about female egos, especially from the women complaining about male egos .
This echo chamber might at least give some consideration to the idea
Well one of them said “how can you hit it so far? I can’t hit it half that far!!!” then he threw his glove down on the field and left.
I appreciate your comment but I was there and my interpretation can be trusted completely. It is *your* interpretation that is incomplete because I do not have the time nor inclination to provide all the details that would fill in the situation for you ....it was just a moment in time for me, among many many others in which I was challenged for being a girl. I played college softball and the baseball coach got sick of his own players making comments about my ass and forced them all to take an at bat against me in the batting cage....he already knew what they did not, I struck all of them out, because they were all so comfortable underestimating me and my 75 mpt fastball, which hits different coming at your from 45 feet. Then he presented me with a baseball signed by the whole team, there were only three penises drawn on it, plus one butt.
btw I actually dated the boy who threw the glove down, so yeah, not about being unlikable, but thank you for that.
In logic and debate that is formally known as an anecdote. The plural of anecdote is not #DATA. I am confident that it happened somewhere in the world, and more than once! I am sure you are not the only woman to have seen such a thing. But you very obviously made it a general observation, and it looks like you can’t sustain that.
Yeah I'm aware of what data are, I'm a statistician by training. I don't know what you are talking about, my not 'sustaining' your observation - you said my lesson was incomplete, that I may have been unlikable, and that not enough was known about the overall situation that I was a part of and you were not. I politely explained that there are much more data, but I'm not inclined to share because frankly who cares, it's way in the past. The lesson I learned held and served me well throughout my softball career, whether or not you believe the lesson was valuable or not.
The unlikable part really hit you hard, even though I only raised it as a possibility. Your original comment was that men do this generally. I think men do this occasionally. I don’t think you can sustain the argument that men do this consistently; first, Because it doesn’t happen that often, second because men do not act that way all that often.
I long ago accepted that I am not an exceptional athlete and it is no part of my self definition. You, on the other hand seemed to have your ego pretty well wrapped up in this. Maybe a lot of men are worse than you in this way and it is a more general characteristic of men. But it looks like you haven’t got any grounds on which to accuse others here. I only speak from what you have shown me in this conversation.
If you resent my making it this personal, I will remind you that you were the first one to make this personal.
Sounds very familiar. Again, this what I mean when I say that our system of indoctrination about masculinity and femininity harms everyone. These boys were taught to feel shame in the face of an outstanding female athlete and you were being given the message that you shouldn’t be better than boys at something you excelled at. This damages everyone.
Why do men want to compete in the first place? Men compete to see who is the best, and women wait at the finish line to … marry … the winner. Competing against women does nothing for a men.
Exactly what I stated above. Men and women are not supposed to be competing against each other. They are supposed to complement each other.
Hierarchies are present in animals, are they socially conditioned misogynists too?
I’m talking about human societies. Chimps make war on each other. Does that make it fine for us to do it? Chimps sexually brutalize females. Does that make it fine for us to do it? Praying mantis females eat the male after mating. Does that make it fine if we did that? I don’t think that hierarchical systems that grant one group of people power over another group of people because of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, nationality or any other reason is morally or ethically right. Clearly, many, many people don’t agree with my view, but so what?
We are talking specifically about gender hierarchies here. Once you start inspecting gender in the animal kingdom versus humanity, MANY of humanity's socially constructed ideas of reality start to fall apart.
"It seems that many men are only comfortable competing with other men. They can’t handle competing with women."
Well, mostly, yes. Because it wouldn't be fair. What "field of endeavor" where women "outshine" men are you thinking of?
But here’s the evolutionary thing. Men and women aren’t supposed to compete with each other. They were created to COMPLEMENT each other.
That isnt the case at all. If it were, there wouldnt be two men declaring eligibility for the wnba. What they're afraid of is the HR-ification of society, seen as largely a female phenomenon, that makes every small transgression a crime against humanity, something to be cancelled over. They fear that a drunken hookup (where they're both drunk and consenting) will result in their arrest. Make certain spaces inhospitable for men and surprise, they'll opt out
Interesting that "inhospitable" places for women prior to women being given human rights, was just literally existence. And yet women still opted into existence most of the time. Men can "opt out" of society, sure. But they won't do so without a whole lot of whining and bitching about how unfair it is to them lmfao
Opting out of going to college isn't opting out of society.
Also, if women not having human rights up until recently is your argument, an argument I wouldnt dispute, wouldn't it follow that they really don't have the option to opt out (with the extreme exception of suicide)?
Do you think the men of today should be content to slowly lose the things in life that give them meaning? Should they just shut up and take it on the chin? If so, for how long? And how is that good for women?
Men don't like competing against other men!
Why do they even use money as an argument? Girls and women have to pay the exact same tuition 🫠🫠
I also think it comes down to how girls and boys are raised. Women who go to college WANT more in life, and they know they have to study and work hard if they want to have a career. They grow up with "You have to work to succeed". That's what they are taught since they were little. Boys, however, they listen "You will be great, you can do whatever you want". "Work" is never the message. It's a given that they will accomplish stuff. Even if they do believe in meritocracy, it's not as ingrained in their upbringing.
Another thing is that women know they have to be EXCELLENT to get anywhere, because any mediocre man can take their spot. Men don't even bother being good, nevermind excellent.
> Why do they even use money as an argument? Girls and women have to pay the exact same tuition 🫠🫠
It's not really my hill to die on, but I'll give you a simple reason. Men are judged for their financial security, whereas women are not. I mean, any man ought to look at a pile of debt from a potential girlfriend/wife as a red flag, but the nuance is that the man has to be planning for the future when he's 20, whereas the woman can just arrive at whatever age she's married with an expectation that her contribution to the household income is optional. The woman's income serves the purpose of maintaining her independence from the man moreso than being an economic engine for the family.
There's also the contribution that parents make to their children's education. When I was growing up, it seemed that girls got more care from the parents than the boys. Boys were expected to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (pay your own way to college, start out with the jalopy clunker car), whereas girls were given special treatment (college paid for, allowance given, and new Volkswagen Jetta as a high school graduation present). I'm aware that this kind of thing is highly variable. It's just a pattern that I noticed.
Blame patriarchy. I do. I supported myself and raised 3 kids with no child support or family support. I had men actually tell me they couldn’t date a woman who makes more than they do. Okay, that eliminates about 80% of men. I never had the energy to prop up male egos for the sake of the patriarchy. You guys have got to get yourself off of that hamster wheel. If a woman demands you support her find another woman or stay single.
> I had men actually tell me they couldn’t date a woman who makes more than they do.
Well, marriages are much less stable when that happens, so maybe they're looking ahead. I don't know, I can't read their minds. I'm just saying that there's a difference between being insecure and knowing how people will judge you differently if something happens.
> If a woman demands you support her find another woman or stay single.
Deny our foundational gender role because "oppression" is something that women do, not men.
>Well, marriages are much less stable when that happens,
Well, why is that? You're SOOOOOOOOO close.
Psst: it's the SAME answer: patriarchy. Patriarchy has convinced men that they're emasculated in some way if she makes more than he does. It's stupid.
Foundational gender *myth
...fixed that for ya! 👍
Myths are more important than “made up thing.” They are central to social structures and undermining them causes issues. Yes, our myths should be continually re-examined; no, we should not dispose of them unless we have something to replace them.
I don't know what's more braindead: environmentalism gradually transitioning to anti-humanism or skepticism transitioning to anti-traditionalism.
Myth/belief/moral/custom/practice. It doesn't matter what you call it.
Myths are false. That's what matters in this case.
You can be a man who doesn't make most of the money in the house.
You can do anything you want to do. People don't have to accept you for it. Your "wife" doesn't have to stay with you.
So?
The right reaction to people harming themselves and others with lies is to call out the lies and change culture
'I supported myself and raised 3 kids with no child support or family support'
That's a very misleading statement.
For starters we have to imagine a life where you transition not pregnant - pregnant - child born - not pregnant - pregnant - child born - not pregnant - pregnant - child born
With no support apart from a sperm donor providing sperm.
For another we have to remember that you had government assistance at all times.
It was not 'supported myself....' it was instead. I was supported by society that everyone regardless of gender paid into.
There is a difference between those two statements, a vast difference. That the mythology of 'supported myself.....' has persisted as a primary personal identifier indicates how removed from society this has become.
I personally know real women - two individuals - who raised children and were the principal earners of their family units without male (or female) partners, and without gov’t support. Their support was in the form of community, where friends came together to provide childcare, home maintenance, social/familial constructs for each other. It wasn’t communal, just friends helping friends. But it was tribal in its own way. Both women were forced by either abandonment or abuse of their spouses to do it solo. Fortunately they had both the education and marketable skills to make it work. I realize these examples are the exception rather than the standard, but they worked well for all. Kids grew up solid and well-loved. My point, it *is* a non-traditional social construct that can be used successfully.
Maybe read your comment and then mine. Then compare and contrast, and you'll see where you're ignoring what was said and instead just inserting a templates reply on the difficulties of single motherhood.
It's not what I was referring to.
Why is it important to you to respond via a rote reply?
" but the nuance is that the man has to be planning for the future when he's 20, whereas the woman can just arrive at whatever age she's married with an expectation that her contribution to the household income is optional. The woman's income serves the purpose of maintaining her independence from the man moreso than being an economic engine for the family."
I'm sorry, lol whut? This is the 21st century, not 1950. Many women know that the strength of their family is on their back; they have to prep for their financial stability as much as men.
I think the problem is the place where you live, because that’s not a pattern in Portugal, for example. At least around me.
Why don't the women around you look for better?
What? We don't need to. What I said is that parents don't treat their kids diferently just because one is a man and another is a woman.
This comment should be pinned. We were just told that men and women felt money concerns the exact same way and that’s that. Very shallow conclusion from that study.
"Men dont bother being good, let alone excellent" - feminists love to lie about men (my sincete belief, not insult) , so I will ask this question - why do men and women have separate tournaments etc in chess, if men really are so anti excellence. Why are majority of nobel prize winners male? Ik you will cry discrimination. When women perform worse that's always your excuse but not when men perform worse? Somehow nobel prize committee has more anti female bigotry than every college in the existence lol. There are some obvious problems with this article too, but will cover it some other day, think noah smith had also done a partial debunking, back in the day
my man, go read a history book. the answers to all of those questions is there
That’s not what this guy heard growing up. I was told you gotta work and study . However regarding mediocre men advancing, yep.
100%. My wife and I were both profs for 30 years. It’s definitely misogyny but in a very sad way. Many boys really hate feeling awkward and out of place among girls and women. They hate being wrong or bad at anything around women. They do not have the social and communication skills and resilience for a classroom with a lot of girls in it. They’re not open to new or challenging things around girls. I say this because we both loved the “feminization” of the classroom. And we both noticed what kind of boys thrived in it. The ones who had strong social and communication skills and who liked and were interested in women’s perspectives. But the closed off boys are only ok being wrong or taking chances or learning really new things among mostly other boys. And now a whole political movement gives them a language to justify their rage at ever being uncomfortable and to take pride in ignorance as a kind of grim visceral natural wisdom. They spout social Darwinism while knowing nothing about biology.
But—and this is the worst part—I could say all this stuff to their faces and most of them they didn’t hate me for it. I reached a few. Because I’m a man with an authoritative presence. My wife had to tread much more carefully.
I saw this when I was a lecturer (in English lit.) in the UK, too. Often there would only be one or two male students in a seminar group. The ones who respected women as people and could communicate clearly and openly thrived. The ones who couldn’t, didn’t in my groups or with their male lecturers on other modules.
During my PhD, in California in the early noughties, I was teaching introduction to literature and composition (a gen. ed. class), so classrooms were usually 60/40 female/male. It was less noticeable then. I don’t know if that’s because the gender balance was closer to equal or if something else has shifted in the meantime.
Yeah, definitely. When I broke up amicably with my college boyfriend, he DROPPED OUT OF SCHOOL entirely. It’s an isolated incident, but demonstrates that men don’t have the resilience to navigate awkward dynamics in a female-dominated environment. They just expect things to go their way all the time
You have been profs for 30years.
You have seen this decline.
What have you done to reverse it?
If you haven't done anything why not?
If you have done something why do you think it failed?
The corollary to this excellent article is the drop in wages that happens in a profession when the percentage of female workers increases. Would love to see stats on that.
Before I was born, my Aunt Ruth became the first female bank teller in Minneapolis. By the time my mother told me that story in the 1960s, male bank tellers were almost nonexistent and it was considered a low-status position comparable to office workers -- a formerly all-male profession itself. Thanks for this deep dive.
And I bet wages for tellers dropped when the percentage of women tellers rose.
Wages don't have to drop. It's enough if they fail to rise. That way, the devaluing is slow enough to be largely invisible.
Eh, fail to rise nominally, fall in real dollars, same diff.
yep.
You see this in real time with a lot of administrative and office jobs right now. There’s many criticisms to be had of these types of jobs and their effect on society (I.e. admin bloat in school districts and hospital systems), but there definitely is a gendered aspect to people lashing out against these problems
“Look at these WOMEN in these BULLSHIT email jobs! They’re taking from the hardworking MEN doing the real work!!!”
Thanks for a disturbing researched view into this major change. It has been going on much more obviously in the past decade. Patriarchy and traditional views on what a man should be like are the root of poor decisions, mistreatment, prejudice, and ignorance in many cultures.
I wish I had a bullhorn I could use to proclaim this: "But men are not structurally or legally prohibited from attending college as women were decades ago. Men are choosing not to go to college."
A sad, Amen.
When was the last time you went to college as a man? What was your lived experience, can you please share it?
You may want to think about that a bit more.
1000%
>Patriarchy and traditional views on what a man should be like are the root of poor decisions, mistreatment, prejudice, and ignorance in many cultures.
All of which are reinforced by female sexual selection.
Actually, they largely serve to completely override female sexual selection. Patriarchy is often a tool for either writing women's desires out of the equation entirely, or warping them to fit the form given.
All and never are absolutes, dangerous and/or incorrect in opinions.
I didn't say all in an absolute sense. I didn't say all women or all men. I said all of those qualities.
This is the foundation of a very long discussion, a college course, or a book. ;-)
Now I understand why conservative politics is working so hard to control women.
Elle M. YES.
"Conservatism," especially MAGA, relies on Fundamentalism, which rejects science (e.g., evolution) and which, unlike traditional Christianity, is very oriented towards riches and capital.
At Capitalism's greedy extreme, the terrible 1911 Shirtwaist Factory Fire killed 146 young women, because the greedy owner had feared losing pennies if a young woman answered nature's call to go pee, so he locked them in the factory, without accounting for fire. When the tragedy occurred, the owner was not nearby to let out the victims to safety. The resulting criminal trial resulted in an acquittal for manslaughter after a mere two hour deliberation. The civil litigation resulted in the owner paying out a paltry $75.00 per victim. Even by 1911 standards, at the worth of the dollar in those days, $75.00 was paltry in a human death situation.
In that year, the woman could not yet vote.
In that year, in case of divorce, the husband was usually awarded the kids.
Wind the film a century ahead, and you have the U.S. Supreme Court ending the right to choice in women.
These John Roberts Court Members were groomed by Mitch McConnell Republicans to undo the Voting Rights Act and rights of women.
Meanwhile, there is not a head of industry that doesn't want factory or coal-mine safety regulations loosened if not cut.
Which . . . brings us back to 1911.
But people are bored with history books.
Professor Heather Cox Richardson recounts the story several times:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-5-2021
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-25-2025
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-14-2026
What does this have to do with women's human dignity, her rights to industrial safety, healthcare and the like?
Well, one of the persons emotionally moved in 1911 by this horrific tragedy of epic proportions was . . .
Frances Perkins.
On March 25, 1911, Frances Perkins was on Washington Square in New York City when the fire engines wailed the sirens to respond to the factory fire just a few blocks away.
Ms. Perkins had already been involved in the labor movement to try to obtain fairness to labor.
The rest is history.
Ms. Perkins became active with Tammany Hall to obtain support for public labor safety measures.
More importantly, Frances Perkins served the whole of the first three terms -- 1933-1945 -- of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as . . . Secretary of Labor.
Where she actively sought to protect labor.
Since women worked under oppressive, even dangerous conditions, Frances Perkins' measures certainly protected all of labor, but were especially necessary in the case of women.
Professor Heather Cox Richardson recounts the story with great compassion in my three cites.
Oppression is from greedy Capitalism driven by wealth-driven Fundamentalism, designed to shift earnings from labor to capital.
Which directly affects women -- and men and children -- in a broad swath of sectors.
So, I think your comment is very on point and insightful.
My lengthy commentary results simply from this: I love history, and try to live its lessons in Love of Neighbor and the cause of labor, liberty, due process of law, and labor.
Men have no idea that it was a WOMAN who fought for ALL workers to have a safe working environment. Honestly, what HAVEN'T women done to make the world a better place for everyone?!?!?
Signme Uplease: Exactly.
We used to worship the Goddess.
In a den of wolves, a mother or grandmother wolf is one of the most invaluable members of the pack.
It doen't lower my ego to acknowledge all that is excellent about women. I loved my Mom, and my dear wife, two daughters, and adored granddaughter.
I cannot imagine otherwise, and I cannot even UNDERSTAND how we are in a world of angry men.
That leads to Nazism.
I can -- and have!! -- recounted "Freundinnen" (Girlfriends) by Johanna Moosdorf, who suffered immensely -- and heroically -- under the Third Reich, and in "Freundinnen" (yes, girlfriend--lovers) attributed the Third Reich to epidemic and toxic Male-Supremacy in the most perverse manifestation.
Despite the premise, the novel is beautiful. (No English translation. But I have recounted the novel many times in my comments to Substack postings.)
That novel I have read again and again.
Johanna Moosdorf was a wondrous person!
Celeste Davis: When, 1970-1973, attended the Law School of the University of Arizona (JD '73), Women made up already one-third of the class.
The whole 28,000 students at the UofA was happily well populated by women.
I took flight all right!
Away from my loving, but cloying Mom and Dad and eagerly into higher academia well populated by women.
Besides my strong natural attractions, what I loved in women surrounding me was their maturity way above my level. Even 18-year-old women were more mature than I, already a law student.
The women were always highly professional, well-prepared, fully informed, and logical in their academic presentations, and possessing social skills I could barely hope to achieve.
On July 4, 1971 I went on my last family trip with Mom, Dad, sister and brother.
Seven days later, a very bright young woman, socially mature, a UofA grad, quite pretty, and the fresh innocence of girlish humor, and I have been smitten with her for 55 years, married to her the last 53 years, my Nancy, whose innocence and brightness and her glow that radiates beauty have won my heart each minute of these 55 years.
We laugh and cry together, with two wondrous daughters and seven grandchildren, among them a granddaughter who captivates our hearts.
An academic setting friendly to women allowed me to develop friendships with professional women whose academic achievements I admired, along with their maturity in steadfast dedication to their studies and professions.
In my undergraduate studies, 1966-1970, and my law studies 1970-1973, I was happily surrounded by bright, talented, socially mature, dedicated academic women, and I considered that a bit of heaven, quite frankly.
I was socially shy, including around women I admired.
In fact, I love my academic life surrounded by intelligent, professional women so inspiring, that I have continued by academic pursuits my whole life in classical literature and philosophy, classical music, the arts, and Continental Philosophy.
And Nancy and I share a wondrous life together.
And Nancy has a full social life with her woman friends.
So I took flight.
Flight from a loving family that became cloying to the 22-year-old into academia with rich contributions of numerous gifted, intellectual women.
I pity the young man who would fear such a life of intellect and sheer joy.
Pity, pity, pity.
They are missing out!
Using Celeste as an example, consider that perhaps boys today need to spend more time in the company of other men. Goose. Gander. Maybe we need to move back in the direction of more education options in gendered settings, separate (sometimes) the girls from the boys. It has often been noted that girls perform better in all girl settings. Has anyone ever studied the same situation for boys?
Reading . . . : The setting you describe was traditionally common in: (1) Preparatory schools (Philips Exeter Academy); (2) Military preparation (Virginia Military Academy); (3) Naval and military academies; (4) Catholic schools separate for girls and boys; (5) Traditionally in IVY League Schools (Radcliffe versus Harvard); (6) Some State Schools (Mississippi School for Women).
There was an opportunity to study the effects of gender separation.
Whether any study surveyed the situation, I do not know.
I ALWAYS wanted settings with both sexes.
Maybe boys need that. Maybe girls do too.
I recently attended an open house at my local community college. Enrollment is 69 percent female. Yet they have courses in robotics, HVAC, law enforcement and medicine that you would think would entice men. And while I agree men flee, I think they're also lazy. And more susceptible to peer pressure. They have a buddy or uncle telling them not to bother. They don't need a degree. They can start their own pressure washing/car detailing/construction business where they “can be their own boss” and of course that sounds better than 4 years of college.
I teach at a community college, and the graduation rates are heavily skewed towards female students. The enrollment rates may look like they are about equal, but the success (passing) rates and persistence rates (staying enrolled) look very different!
Patriarchal power structure has always considered men more ‘intelligent’ than women. Women are supposed to be homemakers, not equals in intelligence. How many mediocre men in the past have stolen the work of brilliant women and claimed it their own? Tons….
Not everyone is equal in intellect. When men dominated higher education it was ‘okay’ to not be the smartest man in a room of men. Now men are openly competing against women, and finding out some of those women are much smarter than they are. Their egos can’t take it so they come up with excuses.
This is the same group of mainly white men who can’t handle minorities being smarter than them.
The white, patriarchal power structure has been in place for centuries. Even in today’s society young boys and men are being taught they should automatically be at the top.
Mind reading. This has nothing to do with why men disengage from female spaces.
This comment sections multiple projections of the inner thoughts of men by women is a prime example of one reason men may not want to be around a /groups/ of women.
Read this and the comments from other male students:
https://www.centreformalepsychology.com/male-psychology-magazine-listings/invisible-man-my-experience-as-a-male-trainee-clinical-psychologist-in-a-female-dominated-system
You should tell us directly how you feel. Confrontation is important and the internet is the place for it. I read some of your article. Social exclusion seems to be the main gripe. Certainly that can be a problem and as a neurodivergent woman I can relate. I am taking note of this idea as being how some men feel is the primary problem.
I believe these disconnects - whether in a psych trainee program or a comment section - could be resolved by a genuine hashing out. In real life that's tricky but here on Substack, the ground is fertile to understanding.
My experience and the experience of many women, though, has been that ego actually is a major factor in whether or not you'll engage with us in a respectful manner, be able to emotionally regulate yourself after an unfavorable interaction with or around us, and whether you'll seek dominance (or leave) to resolve any dysregulation. It's not projection or mind reading.
Right because men never project each other's inner thoughts. "You did X? You must be gay!" "You don't do Y — you're a wimp!" or dismissing men who take women's side as "white knighting."
Those are direct statements that are easily responded to or ignored. They don't really upset men all that much. It's standard male break-of-rapport. They have almost no effect on how men behave; and frankly, it's very rare. The person doing it makes themselves look crass and wounded.
It isn’t a female vs male problem it is people problem. The dominant group becomes the oppressor. I have no idea how we change this.
Yes, but there's something more corrosive about how women engage in this. Male malignant narcissists typically bully in a way that is easily visible. You can expel the people engaging in it. The female narcissists engage in covert operations.
Get religion out of government and education. Monotheism requires a heirarchy. Christianity, especially American, eliminates the feminine Jesus in favor of Old Testament Yahweh, who is all man.
When Christianity moves into law making, it imposes that male hierarchy as the norm; redemption through rejecting the feminine World, much like monks and hermits and some religions. The harder the life, the happier god is. Puritans and Calvinism.
The problem here is that women are no longer dependent on men. And denying boys access to feminine civilizing shoves them back into the truncated world of manliness
Male fear of female at bottom of all social ills. We bleed. We birth. We milky boobs. We teary. We messy. Many bodily fluids. Males wary, scared. Must control humans with many fluids because only one fluid “counts” and it’s male.
No, we just find baby talk annoying.
Hmm…. Hit a nerve…. Hahahaha haha
I didn't mean to hit a nerve. My apologies.
Such a national emergency over men being “left behind” when a decent number of them saw women carrying textbooks and fled the building voluntarily.
Apparently masculinity can build empires, cross oceans and walk on the moon, but put six women in a ten seat classroom and suddenly it needs an emergency exit.
Boys are trained to believe they will be kicked out of the club if they are too often seen in friendly association with women and girls. The worst slur is to suggest that a young man "is" a woman. This toxic behavior is as old as dirt but that doesn't mean we can't work to improve. Diverse, thoughtful exposure to co-ed learning opportunities can help unless the parents react as though their child is getting short-changed. Among peers, boys can be brutal in their enforcement of the code of male superiority they've learned from adults. Breaking this cycle is a tall order but worth the effort. Thank you for publishing this essay.
I was one of those who was bullied by the football team members, beat up by them, called gay and faggot boy. There was a group, though, who was even more brutal with this, though not physically. The cheerleaders were horrid. Yes, the girls gleefully joined the football players in taunting and social rejection, throwing accusations of sissy, faggot etc. So 1. it's not just believing you will kicked out of the club, you will be kicked out of the club. 2. The girls do it too, and do it worse (better?).
Girls like that learn how to and clearly do play the game and see their place in it. Mean girls, stepford wives types - proximity to hierarchy and power through looks and performed femininity. Betty Draper types, then tragically left for a younger model as their value inherently diminishes over time. I'm sorry for your bullying, those kinds are mean to anyone that doesn't allow them to social climb.
Teen boys in WWI Britain were afraid of being perceived as cowards for not having enlisted yet, and surely some of the condemnation came from other men.
But the truly terrifying figures were the White Feather Girls.
Exactly
In my life, it's been women that most often engaged in toxic, emasculating, abuse towards me.
That is not the case for everyone, however.
How so, Shammah?
I love that line, "weed whacking the behaviors." Also, that male authority saying that schools require "obedience," which is a girl thing, and then goes off into a long quote about how men won't do obedience has never been in the military, shouted at by a drill sergeant, or been on a sports team being shouted at by a coach. Do these men ever just listen to themselves?
This is a real problem. It bodes ill for the success of long-term relationships, because the women will put up with ignorant chest-thumping for only so long. Listening to some dude bellow on and on about stuff he hasn't the education to really analyze and understand flat-out kills respect. Why? It's not just the ignorance. That's bad enough. No, it's the inability to sit quietly, listen, think, and respond intelligently. To participate in give and take. To perceive another's perspective. The lack of those qualities is deadly for marriage. And, this becomes a death spiral within the family, because the modeled behavior for the sons of these men is just so awful.
I would be really curious to learn if this pattern of male participation in higher education is widespread across the world, or purely a feature of US culture. If it's just us, we are in far bigger trouble as a society than we thought -- and that was bad enough.
worldwide