The Manhood Trap

[Toni]

Seems pretty ironic to me. On the one hand, men are more predatory (probably even moreso when drunk) but drunk women have agency to stop being raped.

Nonsense.
We all have the ability to choose against getting drunk. Including women.
Tom

Getting drunk is not the same thing as giving consent.

Getting drunk is not the same thing as giving consent to be robbed, beaten, or raped.

Being drunk is being drunk. It’s not wise but it’s also not always intentional.

You can commit a crime if you are drunk. You still are responsible for your crime.

You are more likely to be a crime victim if you are drunk. You are not responsible for the crime even if you were drunk.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Toxic masculinity ends up being a cover, not always but often enough to not be surprising, for latent homosexuality and gender issues.

That I definitely agree with.

The issue for many of these people is that they believe something about themselves is the problem, and that's not a problem that can be solved by hating yourself more, and they are taught to fear the actual solution: to actually explore all of themselves and be open to having been wrong about what it means to be a "man".

But they tend to get meaningless answers.

The made up solution to the made up problem is "blame everyone else", for the incels.

If men want to solve their problems, maybe they could start by asking "what even is a 'man' and why do I even care?!?"

There have always been those who can't find someone. More so now because choosing to remain single is more of an option than it used to be. The problem is radicalizers are exploiting this to stir up trouble.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Those last two sentences contradict each other. I think that they are both true but therein lies the problem.
Young men want to solve their problems —but wanting someone else to provide the solutions is lazy and childish—and ultimately unproductive.

I do not think it is contradictory. Not all problems are solvable by the person. And when the person sees that the society is marginalizing them, pretending that their problems do not matter, that leads to alienation.

Disagree on the marginalizing. It's trivializing problems. It's not "you don't matter", but "your problem is small, just apply yourself".

Take college. Most college students these days are women. And yet, women are still given preferential treatment because they are not majority in every major.

But this is not an example of it.

Then you have this idea that it is better to expel 100 innocent college men than to allow one sexual assaulter to remain on campus.

Nor is this. It's an example of being extremely unfair, but it's not marginalizing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why do I keep hearing that young men feel "left behind" when in reality, it's just the opportunity gap was finally closing (WAS). Why do men feel like they've been 'left behind'?

Because some of them are. This isn't about opportunity gap or the like. I'm thinking back to PE class in grade school--so many competitive things with increasing thresholds that ended up the people at the bottom of the pack might be doing something for 30 seconds out of a class period, of course they fall further behind. The same thing happens in the social realm, the ones that don't do as well are totally left behind. Some can recover, many can't.

And you're pretty much doing what Derec was pointing out. In this case, tossing the issue aside because you blame it on the opportunity gap closing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So goes the story, anyway. From my vantage point as a professor, I don't see any evidence that male college students themselves are plagued by such feelings, it's their parents who are really doing the freaking out, and the media amplifying it. Not to say that today's young men aren't dealing with a lot of real and serious problems, but I don't think "there are too many girls at college" would be first on the list for most.

It's not a problem with too many women. It's a problem with losing out to those who scored lower.

It's like back in high school there was this big book of scholarships. But the pattern quickly became obvious. You had to either have the right employer, the right ancestry, or be not white, or be not male.

 

[laughing dog]

No, he means that women who get drunk are responsible for whatever sex happens because if she didn’t want it, she should not have been drinking.

Sometimes, misrepresentation and strawman arguments reach the level of flat out lie. I said no such thing.
Tom

I cannot handle the irony.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Boys nowadays grow up with countless examples of male behaviour. They aren't just learning from the men in their local community, they're learning from social media, TV, and films, plus all the advertising that's mixed in with the actual content. It's a lot to take in, and a lot of it is over the top. As someone I knew put it, "boys don't know how to act anymore." He lamented the fact that the masculine ideals of his childhood were no longer being celebrated in popular culture, and that there was no longer a clear model to follow.

We shouldn't want that old-fashioned model to return as-is, because it has some unnecessary baggage like chauvinism, homophobia, and alcoholism. But I think he was onto something: if we want our boys to live fulfilling lives and be good to people, then we would do everyone a favour by giving them very clear messages about how they ought to act. We, as parents and mentors, are up against a tidal wave of bullshit. On social media, where every women telling men what she wants in a boyfriend is met by ten red-pillers telling her she's wrong; against TV and films which tell boys they have to get jacked and solve their problems with their fists; against advertising which is in the business of inventing bullshit problems for bullshit solutions.

And note that social media amplifies extreme positions. There are all too many influencer "examples" (they're illusions, not reality) that compete for attention.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I do not believe that it is useful to talk about what someone shouldn't be doing, unless one has an alternative suggestion. As far as I know, the radical morons running the Democratic Party are not in fact opposed to heterosexuality in any way, so what is it you want them to do exactly?

The always believe the woman mantra. Especially how universities were expected to handle rape allegations on campus. That made casual heterosexual sex dangerous.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My husband recently retired and it is true that over the several decades of his career his department went from being all male to having half the department being female. There are now actually women in the physics department and chemistry dept. which is a big change, and a recent one.

Is that the problem? Or is it that now it’s talked about that one should not attempt to have sex with someone who has over imbibed, deliberately or not?

The problem is the path to get there. All too often it amounted to males need not apply until the quota is met.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don’t personally think it is infantilizing women to say that sex with someone who is altered by either drugs or alcohol is unable to give consent. Being told they ‘wanted it’ is definitely infantilizing them and it also infantilizes men to believe that they are not responsible for their own actions with regards to sex and aggression. (See above for comparison of two drunk party goers). I believe that men and boys can be raped and can be raped by girls and women and that all rape is reprehensible, repugnant, illegal, and

The problem is where do you draw the line on "altered"? Society clearly does not demand total sobriety for deciding on sex. Yet at the same time we say that you can't consent when altered by drugs or alcohol--can't have it both ways. And there have been plenty of cases where people think they were drugged when it was nothing but the alcohol they knowingly consumed.

 

[Politesse]

I do not believe that it is useful to talk about what someone shouldn't be doing, unless one has an alternative suggestion. As far as I know, the radical morons running the Democratic Party are not in fact opposed to heterosexuality in any way, so what is it you want them to do exactly?

The always believe the woman mantra. Especially how universities were expected to handle rape allegations on campus. That made casual heterosexual sex dangerous.

So you believe the Democrats need to run on a platform of destroying Title IX?

 

[ZiprHead]

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that getting a good paying job is nearly impossible today without further education. Unskilled manufacturing jobs paid well in the past and still do. They were easy to get in my father's day. But they are getting fewer and further between due to automation and offshoring. I believe that's what most people refer to when they say they have been left behind.

Free to the student community or junior college and free skills training (HVAC, plumbing, electrician, etc.) could go a long way to relieving the "left behind" problem.

But sitting in your mom's basement playing video games and bitching on social media is far from the solution.

 

[Jarhyn]

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that getting a good paying job is nearly impossible today without further education. Unskilled manufacturing jobs paid well in the past and still do. They were easy to get in my father's day. But they are getting fewer and further between due to automation and offshoring. I believe that's what most people refer to when they say they have been left behind.

Free to the student community or junior college and free skills training (HVAC, plumbing, electrician, etc.) could go a long way to relieving the "left behind" problem.

But sitting in your mom's basement playing video games and bitching on social media is far from the solution.

What about sitting in a highrise apartment and bitching on social media?

So, as a 40+yo with a college degree and a still fairly sharp mind, I can recognize that few of my skills will really have value in the coming years, despite having built skills in literally every skill I could target.

I have skills in everything from machinistry to agriculture, software engineering, soldering, woodworking, welding, illustration, marketing, product design, 3d modeling, some HVAC stuff, and so on... I even targeted really weird and abstract skills, like forming a theory of ethics/morality and free will.

None of it is going to have much value soon.

I'm hoping that's an alright thing, but like... I really hope people figure out some way to deal with everything becoming easy. Most of us are on borrowed time, it feels like. And I recognize it as my most recent hat is "storefront owner of a store for consumer goods". My question ends up being "how much longer will my customers have jobs?"

 

[laughing dog]

I do not believe that it is useful to talk about what someone shouldn't be doing, unless one has an alternative suggestion. As far as I know, the radical morons running the Democratic Party are not in fact opposed to heterosexuality in any way, so what is it you want them to do exactly?

The always believe the woman mantra. Especially how universities were expected to handle rape allegations on campus. That made casual heterosexual sex dangerous.

Please elaborate on the meaning of “the woman mantra”,

 

[laughing dog]

I don’t personally think it is infantilizing women to say that sex with someone who is altered by either drugs or alcohol is unable to give consent. Being told they ‘wanted it’ is definitely infantilizing them and it also infantilizes men to believe that they are not responsible for their own actions with regards to sex and aggression. (See above for comparison of two drunk party goers). I believe that men and boys can be raped and can be raped by girls and women and that all rape is reprehensible, repugnant, illegal, and

The problem is where do you draw the line on "altered"? Society clearly does not demand total sobriety for deciding on sex. Yet at the same time we say that you can't consent when altered by drugs or alcohol--can't have it both ways. And there have been plenty of cases where people think they were drugged when it was nothing but the alcohol they knowingly consumed.

Knowingly getting drunk does not mean knowingly consenting to have sex. Mistakingly thinking one was drugged when one is purposely getting drunk does not mean one consented to have sex.

I agree that determining when someone is too altered to give consent can be difficult, especially if you don’t really know someone. But the remedy is more caution, not risk less abandon.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I do not believe that it is useful to talk about what someone shouldn't be doing, unless one has an alternative suggestion. As far as I know, the radical morons running the Democratic Party are not in fact opposed to heterosexuality in any way, so what is it you want them to do exactly?

The always believe the woman mantra. Especially how universities were expected to handle rape allegations on campus. That made casual heterosexual sex dangerous.

Please elaborate on the meaning of “the woman mantra”,

Are you capable of actually parsing English?

The proper grouping is "believe the woman".

 

[Toni]

My husband recently retired and it is true that over the several decades of his career his department went from being all male to having half the department being female. There are now actually women in the physics department and chemistry dept. which is a big change, and a recent one.

Is that the problem? Or is it that now it’s talked about that one should not attempt to have sex with someone who has over imbibed, deliberately or not?

The problem is the path to get there. All too often it amounted to males need not apply until the quota is met.

Bullshit.

 

[Toni]

I do not believe that it is useful to talk about what someone shouldn't be doing, unless one has an alternative suggestion. As far as I know, the radical morons running the Democratic Party are not in fact opposed to heterosexuality in any way, so what is it you want them to do exactly?

The always believe the woman mantra. Especially how universities were expected to handle rape allegations on campus. That made casual heterosexual sex dangerous.

Please elaborate on the meaning of “the woman mantra”,

Are you capable of actually parsing English?

The proper grouping is "believe the woman".

Are you capable of parsing English? Because that would explain your utter bullshit responses.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I do not believe that it is useful to talk about what someone shouldn't be doing, unless one has an alternative suggestion. As far as I know, the radical morons running the Democratic Party are not in fact opposed to heterosexuality in any way, so what is it you want them to do exactly?

The always believe the woman mantra. Especially how universities were expected to handle rape allegations on campus. That made casual heterosexual sex dangerous.

Dangerous? Wasn't aware expulsions were so common.

 

[Toni]

I do not believe that it is useful to talk about what someone shouldn't be doing, unless one has an alternative suggestion. As far as I know, the radical morons running the Democratic Party are not in fact opposed to heterosexuality in any way, so what is it you want them to do exactly?

The always believe the woman mantra. Especially how universities were expected to handle rape allegations on campus. That made casual heterosexual sex dangerous.

Dangerous? Wasn't aware expulsions were so common.

You don’t get it: Casual heterosexual sex having negative consequences for MEN is a problem. Casual heterosexual sex that carries a significant risk of unwanted pregnancy for women? Who cares?

And god forbid men be expected to ensure that their sex partners are fully consenting and capable of consent. I mean, don’t we all accept that men are just overgrown 2 year olds who are incapable of delaying gratification or considering another human beings feelings and needs?

It’s almost as though blue balls is a myth and not a serious health concern for men…