Snapshot of _Lost boys need help or they turn to extremes - William Hague_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lost-boys-need-help-or-they-turn-to-extremes-5xtl0z36v) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lost-boys-need-help-or-they-turn-to-extremes-5xtl0z36v)
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When will anyone address the lack of male teachers in schools? I work maintenance of public buildings including schools, and when you walk in they have a big board with photos and names of all the teachers that work there. Nearly every school I go to has either none or just one male teacher, with that teacher often being the head or a PE teacher.
I get the impression that men are put off the role because there's a culturally embedded suspicion that they're "a paedo" and their pupils can exploit that to bully them.
That, and the fact that it's become low-status, low paid work, and it's still culturally more acceptable* for women to take those roles.
\* I mean, clearly not actually a good thing, just still accepted.
There is definitely a misogynistic "this is a woman's job" angle, culturally, that ironically means there just aren't enough male teachers. Not to dismiss the "men are a danger" cultural belief at all. That's definitely another issue. It's just a weird balance thing too.. Because the younger the child, the more likely the teachers will be women. It makes it look like men don't want to teach unless the children are entering into the throes of puberty.
That's just terminally online Reddit bullshit rooted in misogyny (those little girls with all their fake rape accusations!!)
Men are put off teaching because it's one of the most stressful and worst paid professions. Its only real benefits is flexible working hours which suit primary caregivers, which is mostly women. It's not complicated. When you look at higher paid teaching roles, they're dominated by men.
Anyone who works in a school knows that there's no epidemic of false accusations.
>That's just terminally online Reddit bullshit rooted in misogyny (those little girls with all their fake rape accusations!!)
100ft tall strawman detected.
The funny thing about that is that it's essentially true, some M&Ms *might* be poisoned, as could any mass-produced food. There *is* some chance that you'll eat something that should've been or is currently subject to a hygiene/ingredient/foreign body recall. Yet people do, in fact, eat M&Ms.
Well, that's a very literal take, of course, but it's also true that people do take risks.
They might misjudge who they want to take those risks with, which risks they take, how and when they take them, but they do. For all the talk of "poisoned M&Ms", there sure do seem to be an awful lot of stories about women who have had dire relationships. How could those have possible happened - and continue to happen now - if women were truly that scared/paranoid or had a real sixth sense for men being wrong'uns?
It's very often used purely as a rhetorical device to dismiss the concerns of men they're not attracted to or don't agree with politically. As I'm sure you intended to parody here.
Just a theory, but I can't help wondering if the pay was better if it would be more aspirational for men. As it is now, it's practically 'vocational' pay (the idea being the satisfying work is reward in itself), which is generally correlated with traditional female roles...
I think it's much deeper rooted than that. Primary teaching is very much seen as a caring profession, in the same way as nursing (or indeed, caring), which our society views as womens' work. Men aren't really encouraged to be interesting in caring in the same way we didn't use to encourage women in STEM. We need to encourage men to be interested in caring, in the same way we have started to encourage women to get into STEM roles
The two go hand-in-hand. With pay for caring roles being what it is, anyone promoting a career in caring is likely to be encouraging people to act against their economic interests, which doesn't feel like a great thing to do.
I’m doubtful. It may get more men to apply for teaching roles but I think they’ll be out not too long after. Although pay is indeed an issue, starting salary is not. The biggest hurdle is cultural. You’ll instantly be an outsider, your life could be ruined by a false accusation, you are expected to be a teacher, childminder and parent all in one. Finally you’ll have little in the way of respect.
I remember, the only two male teachers at my primary school were without a shadow of a doubt the best teachers there also. I was lucky enough to have them in year 5/6 so academically it set us up nicely for secondary school at the time - to the point where I recall my parents actually being relieved we got them, rather than the other class. Often found the female teachers just relayed information in very convoluted and "soft" ways with no real discussion or critical questions humored; whereas the male teachers actually *taught*. The experience was definitely shared across both boys and girls too from discussions with them later in life at reunions and what not.
Wonder why young boys are suffering so much …
Still waiting for the day politicians care about boys failing in school. Girls have out-achieved boys for at least 30 years in the UK. Their numbers absolutely dwarf men at uni. Can’t see Labour or the Tories caring about this in the near future. But they’ll still get angry when these same boys/men flock towards whichever figure (Tate etc.) that says they’ll help them. This is genuinely not a hard problem to understand and fix, but it’s taboo to prioritise male education.
I think the big problem is there aren’t enough men in primary and secondary education. In my schooling I was lucky though to have several men who were very engaging and that definitely helped me out a lot. I also remember several older women teachers who seemed to be sure that all the boys were nothing but sneering punks who had no chance and that definitely didn’t help.
Having men who are publicly smart and in charge of the classroom is the best way to encourage boys.
Not just more male teachers - but more men in Ofsted, creating the National Education Curriculum and within the various governing boards. The rot starts at the top. Create gender equality from top to bottom and boys will catch up with the girls.
The most recent teach first tv ad campaign was featuring a male teacher, probably for this reason (although admittedly it looked like secondary rather than primary school)
I’m a man and teach at secondary school. The issue goes deeper than the teachers. The last 10 years has seen education revert away from coursework towards exams. The move to coursework was always given as a reason schools benefited girls more, but reversing that hasn’t changed things. It’s a cultural thing with how boys are seen, brought up, parented etc. of course schools play a part in that, but relying on schools to change all that in isolation isn’t going to happen. We are already parents, social workers, councillors and teachers to students.
You'd have to be mad to be a man and go anywhere near education. One pedo accusation and you'll be lynched, guilty or not. University's another matter, but secondary? It was vicious back in the 00s, I can only imagine how it can be now with the advent of social media.
Then again you'd also have to be mad to go into education at all these days. Why would someone that educated settle for so much stress and so little pay and 'customers' who actively hate you?
I'm not sure where these hellhole schools are but I'm quite confident I'm not hated by my classes and if I was it's of little consequence, they're children and immature. They're welcome to their opinion.
Also not sure where this idea that male teachers are constantly looking over their shoulders in case we're accused of being paedos comes from.
In my school there was one science teacher that the kids in my class decided was gay and therefore a pedo, so they hit him with accusation after accusation until he quit teaching altogether. He wasn't even gay! He just wore a purple velvet jacket!
There was a report shared on this subreddit recently (https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/news/girls-outperform-boys) which talked about this. Girls are now outperforming boys at *every* level of the education system.
Which is pretty worrying in itself, of course. But to me, the real issue was that the conclusion of the report's author was "we need to find out why this isn't reflected in STEM employment". Which came across to me as an incredibly crass "girls are doing better than boys in 9/10 areas; we need to find out what has gone wrong in the 10th area, so that we can make it a clean sweep".
The experts aren't even *interested* at looking at male underperformance. I'm not even sure if they notice it, to be honest.
I read the article and the comments on its crossposted subs; the comments seemed to all be either "it'll never get better" or "men need to try harder".
And really, the second type of comment is one reason why the first type exists.
Yeah, that's some misandrist bullshit isn't it?
Especially because we're supposed to be moving away from blaming victims, and acknowledging that some things are imposed by society.
Funny how that logic doesn't apply when it's male victims, isn't it?
My "favourite" piece of doublethink is that the female equality drives are always for STEM jobs, management jobs, HR director roles, and huge offence is taken if anyone dares to typecast nurse or teacher as "womens jobs".
At the same time it's just accepted that construction workers and bin collectors will be male, with no effort ever made to "attract women into the profession" when it's those classically male professions. The Birmingham Council equal pay lawsuit was even won in part because bin collector was decided to be a "mans job".
Had someone tell me the other day that the male suicide stat is wrong because actually more women attempt suicide they just tend to choose less lethal means and survive. I mean...jeez.
Not to mention white males, it's incredibly bad how positive racism and sexism has meant white boys are left behind in education by a significant margin.
Should be focusing on bringing all up to a high level instead of picking specific groups.
It's shame all these children being left behind and ultimately some will end up being more problematic later in life due to these poor decisions.
re: the positive discrimination point, that's because white boys (especially those of poorer backgrounds) are basically told to "eat shit" in this regard.
It's why you see someone like Andrew Tate is popular among teenage boys, being someone who doesn't shit on them like they're scum. It's a grift to be sure, but still, it's a sympton of the first point.
If a class of people believe the system is stacked against them, so they try harder, how is that reflected in the stats?
Are they measuring 'like for like' effort when making these comparisons?
I work in HE and a surprising number of universities in the UK and US have "silent" affirmative-action style policies for recruitment and are actively trying to get more applications from boys. It's not talked about because it's not good PR, but it's slowly happening.
> Which is pretty worrying in itself, of course. But to me, the real issue was that the conclusion of the report's author was "we need to find out why this isn't reflected in STEM employment".
I could go on about that topic at hand, but a lot of "women in STEM" reports don't even feel like they're written by women in STEM. They'd be more important to consult, particularly women formerly in STEM who left.
What's the point of women doing better academically when that doesn't lead to better paid or more fulfilling jobs?
https://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/blog/future-of-law/the-gender-pay-gap-in-the-legal-sector-where-do-we-go-from-here
I’ve touched on the gender pay gap in other comments. Women are more likely to work part-time, or stop working, once they have children. That impacts how much they earn over the course of their career.
Of course, the question is why? Why is it still less acceptable for men to take the career break, the part time role, be a stay at home parent?
Is it because there's still a stigma attached to men being the main caregiver? Is it because women are likely in lower paying employment before they have children?
I think men and women would both benefit from solving these issues.
A lot of it is just biology. A newborn baby needs their mother to live immediately and from there it just depends if the baby will take a bottle/formula milk in terms of who can actually be the care giver.
Plus people don't want to talk about the damage that child birth actually does to women, it wrecks them and they do need time to recover whilst being responsible for another human.
With this you get an intense bond formed between mother and child which isn't easy to put into words. Women don't want to leave their children and return to work. You'll end up getting called sexist but the paternal bond has nothing on the maternal one, they literally grew this child and leaving them is extremely hard
Couple this with women being the ones to receive statutory maternity pay and leave vs men I don't see this switching.
> Of course, the question is why? Why is it still less acceptable for men to take the career break, the part time role, be a stay at home parent? Is it because there's still a stigma attached to men being the main caregiver?
Because women have a statutory entitlement to 52 weeks maternity leave (2-4 weeks compulsory maternity leave, then the rest up to 26 weeks is ordinary maternity leave that guarantees you'll to return to the exact same job, and then additional maternity leave for another 26 weeks that guarantees you'll return to at least a similar job with no worse conditions).
Statutory Paternity Leave is 2 weeks. It is possible to have Shared Parental Leave - the mother "donates" some of her maternity leave to the father, but this is complicated and a lot of people aren't aware of it (plus it's an additional barrier - rather than an automatic entitlement, it's something that has to be "taken" from the mother).
Equalising maternity and paternity leave could help shift these default assumptions, but I don't think there's much political appetite to implement this when the government's continually freaking out about Britain's "productivity crisis".
> Is it because women are likely in lower paying employment before they have children?
The pay gap in full time employment is very low under the age of 40, and there was a stretch for a few years in the past decade where women in full time employment under the age of 40 have been outearning men in the same cohort. This holds true despite the tendency for traditionally female roles to be paid more poorly.
I *suspect* that 40+ women starting their careers 20+ years ago faced significantly more barriers than women do today and this hampered their career development, but the asymmetry in part time is inherently skewed due to these assumptions.
The answer to the question is pretty simple, because of children. When they’re born children physically NEED their mothers to be present. I don’t think there’s a stigma around men being the main caregiver but as I said before they’re much less likely to be due to the fact that after birth the mother physically needs to be present for the baby so of course the person in the couple that returns to work first is going to be the man.
The biggest problem, imo, is that before family life was quite sustainable on a “good” single income. That’s just not possible anymore.
It’s because women prefer to take a career break. The instincts grown during pregnancy make women very protective of their newborns. They develop a lot of anxiety when being separated. The truth is more women would rather work less and look after the children than have their husband do it. No amount of government legislation will change this. So, we need to accept this fuels the gender gap and stop assuming the gap exists due to evil intentions.
It certainly ties into it.
Compared to women, men are more pressured into being high income to attract a partner.
This leads men to place more importance on salary when choosing what field to go into.
So if that salary benefit is lowered, then that will not be as enticing to men that are salary driven.
Oh yeah, you’re completely right. The motive will always be ‘find where girls are failing and target this, so they then outperform boys’. Nobody cares that 90% of the boys are failing, bar the boys themselves. But you’ll see endless articles about the gender pay gap - which is mostly fuelled by women wanting to be stay at home mothers. These struggling boys are then expected to become breadwinners, despite being less qualified than their partners - who’d rather work less and spend more time with the children. It doesn’t take a genius to see this flawed efficiency contributes to our low birth rate and low productivity as a nation.
Just another piece in the jigsaw puzzle of why everyone is unhappy and everything is getting worse. Blank slate-ism and a dogged pursuit of 'equity' at the expense of happiness, progress, wealth creation, and basic competence.
> Blank slate-ism
It's not even consistent, because the same people will use the difference in trans and cis brains, ie the similarity to the gender that the person identifies with as a (valid) reason to justify transitioning.
> fuelled by women wanting to be stay at home mothers
That's going to be rather difficult if the men are so screwed by education and social support (or the lack thereof) that they're all skint, staring down a complete lack of future prospects, and mentally unwell.
Or not so much, I suppose, if the government picks up the slack. Because who needs families and social cohesion and both genders to be successful anyway, right?
...right?
The gender pay gap thing is infuriating. In my department at work there are two women who job share because they're both mothers who care for kids. They each do 2.5 days a week work, and their combined take-home pay is actually more than the FTEs on the team because they both get their full personal tax allowance.
This is then reported as women earning 50% what the men earn in the gender pay gap disclosures.
The gender pay gap is normalised to take that into account, so it would be report correctly as equal pay for your department.
Bit unfair to say that as they have fewer hours their tax rate is lower, as you would get the same if you reduced your hours.
Not sure why more women don't. It's an easy ride all the way up for most of them unless you cause trouble.
We've had a number of female apprentices come through in recent years. Every single one was offered a long term position. Around 60% of the males were not, even if most of them generally were better than their female counterparts.
Not to mention once they're in the company, they have a rocket strapped to them and they're sent to the moon figuratively into lofty management positions they're wholly unsuited for. But it makes the ESG score look good so who cares, right?
So the question I have. Is it boys are all of a sudden less intelligent, or are girls being given an easy time in education and being favourably taught and marked up in exams? In my experience of training some of these apprentices, I'm going with the latter.
ETA: This isn't to say we don't have some fantastic female colleagues. We most certainly do. But the standards have been changed (rather than lowered), which means women tend to be able to make easier and more sustained career progression.
Thank you for this response - it’s really insightful.
I want to add, the main problem I saw targeted on International Women’s Day was the ‘Gender Pay Gap’. This, of course, is not women getting paid less for the same job but getting paid less than their male counterparts over the course of their career. I empathise with this if you’re a single woman who wants an equally sized pension. However, these single women barely have a gender pay gap. The gap is fuelled by women working part-time, or stopping working at all, once they have children. Lots of wives would prefer to spend more time at home with their new babies, compared to slaving away in an office. Can’t blame them for that. What can be blamed is women saying the gender pay gap is not fuelled by women’s choices. Yes you will have a smaller pension if you work less. But that’s YOUR CHOICE. No man is forcing that on you. Men would gladly work less if given the chance, but given the nature of families in the U.K. - it is more socially acceptable for the woman to stop working to look after the children.
A lot of it comes down to not enough resources for families resulting in one partner (most likely the woman) taking a few years off. Affecting her career and pension when they go back to work they are also more likely to have to do school runs, sick days and pick ups. Resulting in them not being able to work full time if their job doesn’t allow flexibility.
There is a social stigma on the roles of women and men in relationships with kids and it bleeds into the work place.
Men aren’t supported enough with parental leave and often may be judged for taking a more active role (E.g sick days, school pick up)
And women are expected to do this but punished for not balancing it all.
That's why at least in many cases, they've created a new metric at least at my employer based upon equal pay for the same job role.
They actually found that women were often paid a little more than their male counterparts, and were more likely to receive a bonus payment each year.
They haven't suggested this will be addressed as of yet at least.
Well maybe one day. But something tells me a disparity in favour of women, won't be as urgently looked at.
I firmly believe it's because lower paying jobs on tools etc tend to be male dominanted. Whereas a lot of the office based roles, which routinely pay more have a higher percentage of females.
I expect a lot of it comes from these facts:
>75.7% of teachers were women, and there were more female than male teachers in every ethnic group
>...
>In 2021, there were around 20,800 headteachers, and over two-thirds (14,026) were women
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/workforce-and-business/workforce-diversity/school-teacher-workforce/latest/
Our education system is overwhelmingly dominated by women in both leadership and teaching roles, so it'll invariably have a pro-girl bias. Though it's difficult to know if that's because we've set up the education system specifically in a way that girls do better (I remember the old cliché when I was at school was that girls did better at coursework and boys did better at exams; and at the time, everything was moving towards coursework), or if it's just that female teachers can relate to their female pupils more, and encourage them more.
Combine that with the sort of schemes you mention where girls are given additional opportunities, and is it any wonder that they do so much better than boys?
Did you see the report (and I'll try to find it) lamenting that only ~66% of headteachers were women, compared to the ~84% of teachers that are women and that more needs to be done to bring the number of female head teachers up?
The idea that either of those numbers was worrying wasnt ever mentioned.
So which party's actually deserving of the male vote?
Because I don't see either of the two actually-capable-of-winning-an-election parties giving any kind of a damn.
Even the Lib Dems, at a glance, don't seem to have a policy on this. Although it appears they [had done](https://www.libdemnewswire.com/files/2016/04/Liberal-Democrats-2010-mini-manifesto-policies-for-men.pdf) at one point. Albeit 14 years ago.
I remember that our regular primary school teacher had a term off due to stress, and the replacement was the only time we had a male teacher.
He was sort of universally beloved, by the boys in particular, I think because of a very practical workshoppy approach - music on, circling the room doling out light-hearted banter. The outlook for the afternoon is learning about maths by building aqueducts and then outside on the field pretending to be Aztecs and Spaniards in history.
It's a massive gender-generalisation, but I do think what would classically be called boisterousness tends to be discouraged in classrooms and yet many boys respond so well to being 'let loose' a bit, within obvious limits.
> are girls being given an easy time in education and being favourably taught and marked up in exams? In my experience of training some of these apprentices, I'm going with the latter.
[That's not surprising, when there are vastly more female teachers than male ones, and women have a much greater ingroup bias.](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2004-19340-007?doi=1)
> So the question I have. Is it boys are all of a sudden less intelligent, or are girls being given an easy time in education and being favourably taught and marked up in exams? In my experience of training some of these apprentices, I'm going with the latter.
Given that the level of attainment at school leaving age the year before O-Levels got switched out for GCSEs was a more or less dead equal line between boys and girls, and then when GCSEs came in girls jumped significantly ahead of boys, I'm going to suggest that you're right.
I think it's neither. It's that boys are the targets of intensive marketing from a young age that has them obsess over video games, sports, etc., while girls escape this marketing and are instead more likely to spend time reading, socialising, etc. (both genders are the targets of toys advertising). The pendulum swings when girls get older and are suddenly crushed by social media and all the awful things teenage girls are pushed into caring about, but they're (comparatively) spared as children at least. Boys for the last 20 years, but especially the last ten, are losing their formative years to incredibly sophisticated and ever-present marketing that hijacks their brains and stunts growth. Then they're set loose into schools. Wahoo.
Video games (and traditional games), sports, TV, and such existed in the early to mid 80s too.
For what you're saying to be true, the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986 must've single-handedly destroyed boys' ability to do anything except stare at a screen. Never mind the Atari VCS, the ZX Spectrum, the BBC Micro, and the dozens of other computers and gaming systems popular before that happened.
Or sports, you think boys didn't collect football cards/stickers in the early 80s? You think they didn't support their favourite teams, have posters of their favourite players on their walls?
What about girls? Girls have been known to be obsessive about pop groups since at least as far back as the 50s and 60s. They're commonly associated with following fashion trends and wanting to explore/wear makeup. They gossip and chatter. They're just as much into boys as boys are into girls, as teenagers, because they're all coming of age, all flooded with hormones, and all wanting to "grow up".
So, sorry, no, that answer doesn't make any sense.
It's not a matter of whether these things existed. It's about the weight and sophistication of marketing materials, as well as the intensity of marketing campaigns, which are now data-driven on every level. Back in the 80s, adverts were on TV, in magazines, and on billboards. Video game studios were small, had limited marketing budgets, and produced products still considered "nerdy" and socially embarrassing. Games systems and games were also prohibitively expensive (N64 carts were £50 each back in 1999, which according to the bank of England is £91.17 today).
Today, the video game industry makes more than the film and music industries combined. Marketing budgets are massive. Children are increasingly online from the moment they're physically capable, with many parents still too ignorant or technically illiterate to properly control or limit their access. Advertising companies have never enjoyed such unfettered access to impressionable children than they have in the last decade. And, as video games are still marketed primarily towards boys (though this is changing, especially with mobile games), it's boys who bear the brunt.
Sports are much less of an issue, but of course the 24/7 access children now have to sports media is still something that disproportionately impacts boys rather than girls.
[https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/studies/online-gaming-statistics/](https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/studies/online-gaming-statistics/) \- 73% of boys between 3 and 15 in the UK use a games console to play online games (2023). The rate is (a still surprisingly high) 44% for girls of the same age.
A better example than sports is likely porn, which we know male children consume at high rates in our internet age. Essentially anything that fucks with reward pathways, spikes dopamine, and results in ADHD-esque symptoms.
Re. teenagers, I stated in my initial post that both boys and girls get hit hard. But I don't think that the problems we're seeing with boys today have to do with their teenage years - they have to do with what happens during their formative childhood years, which ultimately determine the kinds of teenagers they grow into.
In short, it's naive to think that the entertainment and video games industries, as well as the forms of omnipresent and data-driven marketing, that we have today are at all comparable to their 1980s counterparts. Kids, and especially young boys, growing up today are blasted 24/7 from the screens that play a larger and larger role in raising them.
So you think, to be clear, the thing I highlighted ([graph](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/hEcw6KxOIA5L2idBNFb0AideBK1oyJu5KzPWkKKFLI5YmQQ5aSIwGjIDlvGnFl-8dUQKzIpozQk28Br6gDfFQq4X6dpCBB2RTjmlBmwcnBzAhVGpC0iuMGo_6TK4CVu-4oAfZjWdnYr-JkrmrgLgoe3X)), which happened quite specifically in 1986, with immediate clear effect as compared to the previous several decades of equal educational outcomes, happened because boys collectively discovered video games, that year, completely out of nowhere, and suddenly dropped off the face of the planet as far as school goes?
Even though the line still goes *up* for boys?
You think that the chart above shows that there was no upper-hand given to girls, who also went up but did so in significantly greater numbers, and that it's somehow entirely the boys' fault, with no external influence or gendered bias in the education system whatsoever?
How about instead of telling me what I think, you actually pay attention when I explain what I think.
Of course I'm not blaming boys. You cannot blame children for being the targets and victims of gigantic international businesses who see them as the route to greater revenue. But that doesn't change the fact that they \*are\* the targets of these companies and that, as a result of this, their behaviour (and, subsequently, their psychology) changes.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that this is the \*only\* cause of the failure of boys. I'm suggesting it's a factor, particularly today (your graph only goes up to 2006). On the other hand, I have no idea what you're suggesting - that under Maggie Thatcher, schools in 1986 collectively decided to start favouring girls and punishing boys in a nationwide conspiracy that has somehow been kept under wraps by generations of teachers for 40 years?
I've worked as a teacher. I can assure you we didn't get any memos to secretly mark down boys' work and mark up girls'. Your conclusion is simply another conspiracy theory. If there was even an inkling of truth to it, don't you think the Daily Mail and the Sun would have shouted about it from the rooftops?
The chart is interesting, though. I found its source and quote:
"The overall change dating from the late 80s (as shown in Figure 3-7), could be attributable to the introduction of GCSEs, replacing O-Levels in 1988. The National Curriculum was also introduced at this time, giving less scope for specialisation in particular subjects (Machin & McNally 20059). **GCSEs, unlike O-Levels, are criterion-based assessments, rather than measured in relation to peer performance, ending the rationing of the top grades.** Additionally, many more pupils were entered for GCSE than had been the case for O-Levels (which were taken mainly by children attending grammar and independent schools) though this does not explain the rising standards following the introduction of GCSEs. However, **the following analyses show that the gender pattern for 5+ A\*-C masks the fact that girls have done better than boys in several subjects (e.g. English, English Literature, French, History, Religious Studies) prior to the 1980s**, and in other subjects, the gender gap is not as large as the post-1980 5+ A\*-C data indicate."
I suspect the first bolded section explains the discrepency: boys had artificially inflated grades previously due to O-levels being awarded according to the performance of your peers, so if you have 50 poor-performing students, the students who perform the least badly (but still badly) will get an A. That's not the case with GCSEs, so poor students are recognised as poor no matter who they share a class with.
So I guess boys are just dumb? So glad we came to this conclusion!
> On the other hand, I have no idea what you're suggesting - that under Maggie Thatcher, schools in 1986 collectively decided to start favouring girls and punishing boys in a nationwide conspiracy that has somehow been kept under wraps by generations of teachers for 40 years?
Either intentionally or accidentally but then did nothing to correct the obviously skewed outcomes for the next 35+ years, yes.
> I've worked as a teacher. I can assure you we didn't get any memos to secretly mark down boys' work and mark up girls
Teachers do this subconsciously. Doesn't require a memo.
> Not to mention once they're in the company, they have a rocket strapped to them and they're sent to the moon figuratively into lofty management positions they're wholly unsuited for. But it makes the ESG score look good so who cares, right?
I'm sceptical this is actually happening as much as people think. Apart from my general gripe about British businesses not being particularly good at hiring and training managers, there seems to be increased scrutiny on managers who are from underrepresented groups. Accusations of "diversity hire" or worse, sleeping their way up, get thrown at them, as opposed to just accepting they weren't a good pick if they underperform.
Scepticism is healthy. I'm only speaking from experience so it's very much an anecdotal point, which I should have made clearer. So I apologise if I misled anyone.
The term failing upwards is commonly used in engineering at least. The further you are away from the end product, the more you get paid but the less damage you can do generally.
>The term failing upwards is commonly used in engineering at least. The further you are away from the end product, the more you get paid but the less damage you can do generally.
as somebody who moved from the factory floor to office scum. i can confirm
I remember having a debate/argument on this sub with a female teacher. She basically said it's boys' fault for not being good enough, and why should she put extra effort into bringing them up.
These are the people teaching these kids. How can we ever expect to improve them, when teachers (majority female) are treating them like this. I don't even know what to say.
The internet: anyone you don't like a bit "cut them off they're TOXIC!"
But this goes back to an issue that younger generations seem to have with 'if something isn't perfect it's rubbish'. I assume this is a byproduct of 'infinite' choice.
Yes, I get it there are some people who genuinely are toxic, however there are also some people who are just going through a bit of a bad time and need support.
It's because young women are still being taught the lie that men have it better in every way, so it's not surprising that women push back against the priorities of men.
GCSE Latin was mixed: boys school, girls school, mixed school all together. I was at the girls’ school. The teacher had decided years ago that he disliked the boys from the boys’ school. One of them once got 95% on a mock exam and was rightly proud. The teacher said something along the lines of “don’t get too excited, look at what [my name] got”. It felt good at the time, but looking back, his only “crime” was being proud of a very good mark. Being humiliated in front of the class wasn’t right, and I suspect it happened because he was a boy from the boys’ school.
The boys’ school was notoriously rough and violent, certainly compared to my school. What of that was that the boys - brothers of the girls at the girls’ school - were all rough, violent little scrotes? And what of it might have been the expectations placed on them to act or not act a certain way?
Yeah keep austerity for 15 years, strip councils of 60% of real-time budget, the NHS of the same. Insist on care in the community, while creating a mass cost of living crisis then say boys need support!
Yes youth need a place to go that is safe and enables transition, but like everything else it needs to be funded. Yet this government seems more intent on giving their cronies cushy contracts than actually enabling society cohesion.
This indeed. My local council around the 2010s employed a few vans with workers in who rounded up lads near playing fields and simply played a bit of footy with them. Eventually these kids were doing that on their own when the vans weren’t there. Simple idea. If you had your eyes open you could see the small but important starting point in the development of _social_ behaviour. The more the merrier effect of games meant that younger ones were drawn into this.
Obviously this had gone completely extinct by 2013. Six months later and the older kids move on and the younger ones are sat around. An easy win just wasted.
That could be a bit of a laugh actually. Little adventure trips, like the Scooby Doo gang or the Famous Five, having to go around town solving "mysteries". Like an easter egg hunt, but more complex/grown up. Throw in an ARG as well to update it for modern interests. Add a pinch of Ingress/Pokémon Go for geographical location-finding.
Comes back to the problem of somebody having to fund it/run it, but that could be quite an involving team-building social exercise and it could get kids moving about.
>Yes youth need a place to go that is safe and enables transition, but like everything else it needs to be funded. Yet this government seems more intent on giving their cronies cushy contracts than actually enabling society cohesion.
Damn right. People talk about how the rising costs in pubs & closure of libraries means that adults lack "third places", i.e. places to go where you're not necessarily spending money (or at least, not a lot).
Kids have it even worse, and that's entirely austerity.
The irony is they're all lost boys - sent away to public school, deprived of the love a family, thrust into a Lord of the Flies but Wearing Ties school environment where you obey the older boys and terrorise the younger ones.
Maybe we wouldn't be in such dire straits if they weren't.
Lawks, Hague almost seems sane compared to the rest of them. Major was a grammar school boy as well. They come off as well meaning liberals who threw their lot in with the Tory Boys because it was the only prospect of them gaining power.
>Yeah keep austerity for 15 years, strip councils of 60% of real-time budget
Real-terms core spending power is 18% below 2010 levels. The figures thrown around about a cut to (not by) 60% of 2010 levels ignores all of the "give with one hand and take with another" accountancy changes that have happened, such as Business Rates Retention Scheme that moved a large chunk of council funding out of the core funding streams and instead allowed councils to just keep part of those local taxes. And of course headline funding figures don't take account of the rapid rise in both demand and cost of meeting demand for the big three statutory services; adult social care, children's services, and housing.
I say this because your overall point is entirely correct, but you undermine it by using a nonsense figure with no foundation in reality.
The issue with your figures is that it masks the cut to councils in the more deprived area as consequently they have lower business rates to be retained.
TBF I didn't know the exact figure so I was using a rhetorical device of exaggeration for effect.
Also no one probably knows the real status, because of the puposefullycomplicated mechanisms finance use. For example when inflation goes up the pound is stretched in spending across the board, but it is implied that it is only in one area...fuel goes up, but that means delivery's go up and waste disposal, so running costs for businesses and councils go up at the front end and the back. So inflation of 10% say on the pound is greater than 10% real terms.
Exactly… perhaps if they have something of a future to aim for then they might not slip through the cracks. Doesn’t even have to be spoon fed to them exactly, there just needs to be the opportunities available for them to be able to access. Sure, even then some will go down the wrong path but at least they’ve had an option at that point.
You are again ignoring the specificly male side of things here. Why aren't women proportionally affected then by these cuts if they are the sole reason?
> strip councils of 60% of real-time budget, the NHS of the same
I assume you mean *real terms* budget.
Just for your information, the NHS budget in real terms has gone *up by over 30%* since 2010.
Not down 60%.
Because it’s the biggest departmental expenditure, it’s the main reason (along with pensions and care) that spending on almost everything else has been throttled so much.
Do try to keep in touch with reality.
Charts at the link below:
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/nhs-budget-nutshell
I understand your objection, but when people write something that’s so demonstrably false - not even a matter of opinion - it’s hard to treat it with much respect.
If I proclaimed on here that NHS waiting lists were magically down 60% thanks to wonderful management under the current government - in the complete absence of any realistic evidence - do you think it would be judged so leniently? With downvotes for those (rightfully) correcting me and white knights policing tone?
Unlikely, despite it being a roughly equivalent claim in terms of realism and subject matter. It would be an interesting experiment to run; perhaps I am mistaken on that score but I doubt it.
Whether it’s helpful or not depends I suppose on whether you place more value on truth or on feelings.
"Just for your information", the Social Care budget was done away with and not only was it absorbed into the 'Health and Social Care' budget, but the NHS is left overwhelmed not being able to release many patients who don't need to be in hospital but can't be released because of the lack of social care.
What is undeniable is that there are over 25% less beds in the NHS and the whole service has been purposefully managed to decline.
On top of that you are quoting the Kings Fund think tank, which is closely aligned to the Government and merely parrots and publishes this Governments so called facts and statistics, as in the link you've provided.
Do try to keep in touch with reality.
I'm not disagreeing with your points but the Kings Fund categorically are not a gov mouthpiece. We've worked with them before and they produce some great analysis/work that's entirely Independant and heavily critical of the gov - especially around how raiding of capital budgets and diverting to opex is the cause for collapsing Hospital Buildings and years of Gov funding neglect + unpredictability
Also everything in the link is NHSE + DHSC corroborated published data - why are you conspiratorial about it? What stats specifically from that link are incorrect?
>the Kings Fund categorically are not a gov mouthpiece.
And yet the entire article on NHS spend, including the link provided, is merely presenting this Governments facts and statistics as though they are undeniable.
You're accusing me of being "conspiratorial" for questioning this Government on their 'facts' about the NHS. I won't be taking Government briefing papers from this bunch of charlatans at face value, thanks very much.
So what numbers specifically from the DHSC data set are you denying then? Because that's the source.
You might want to let the OBR, Moody's and the Markets know the Treasury are lying about government expenditure in official accounts and published budgets, oh and the NHS too - you'd think an opposition party or any litany of political opponents would have picked up on it too (or by people like, me a Labour member)
Headbanger rhetoric needs to be called out at source jfc
I went to school from 1968 and left in 82, nursery to secondary and from memory the majority of my secondary school teachers were male. We had female sports teachers, arts and crafts and culinary. History and French were female but all the other subjects were taught by men. I’ve just looked at the teachers in my son’s school and it’s 80% female. I visit all the local schools and it’s the same there. I have no data to explain this, others have spoken about teaching being primarily a female role these days and I’d be interested in any research that’s actually been done into this.
There should be more male teachers in schools to give young boys decent role models, yes I know that might not be true for all male teachers, but it might begin to address what Tory boy is talking about
The problem I would suggest is partly how society portrays men as bad whilst accepting equally bad behaviour from woman as acceptable.
I'm a male primary school teacher. The amount of misandry in the field is awful. If I said some of the things that women do, I would be hauled over the coals.
I have a friend who's a femcel.
She frequently says things like "all men are trash"/"I hate all men"/"misandry is justified".
I'm always awkwardly just trying to ignore her when she says these things because I'm just laughing inside knowing that she'd flip a new one if I said "all women are trash" or something like that.
Funny how \~ \~ Politicians always blame everybody else for their own failings.
Perhaps, if the politicians had not failed so many people these people would not be looking for alternatives.
Will having female-only candidate lists for MP spots fix this? What about electing a woman to the Lords despite her losing the election by a large margin against a man?
What about reducing prison sentences for women? Special homeless shelters for women?
Paying for foreign women to live here free as refugees while their men are conscripted? Maybe conscripting our own men?
More women in STEM? More women in high paying positons?
More health programs for women so they can outlive men even more? Better pensions for women?
Less pay for binmen?
More demonizing of men? Teaching them about toxic masculinity?
More openly sexist women in DEI initiatives?
All viable solutions!
TLDR: Just face it folks, society does not care about men. We are currently in the process of raising a generation of young men who won't care about society either. We are in the FA stage of the FAFO process. Hopefully It will not be my problem when we reach the inevitable conclusion...
This is something that has been known for thousands of years and somehow in the furore of male privilege and other such nonsense we as a society seemed to collectively memory hole it and make all sorts of vile accusations against anyone that suggested that maybe young men deserve help too
The idea that is problem is caused by some kind of woke boogie man and not the rampant dismantlement of public services by the conservatives is almost laughable.
That's definitely true.
With many of the culture war issues it just seems to me like political strategists are getting poor and middle class people to fight among themselves, while the real cause of the issues are going on elsewhere.
Having said that, I do think feminism has been a very powerful and positive force for women and society, and that was largely fought using culture war tactics. There are definite issues for boys and men that could use stronger (and more) voices advocating to solve them.
That's all this is. We've gone past uplifting girls, which was needed and is good, and have now reached the part where we're pushing boys down.
Everyone should be given the chance to succeed, and everyone's best interests should be thought about, not just those historically disadvantaged groups.
¿Porque no los dos?
If young men already see the bleak future before them *and* that women are being praised and promoted and provided resources whilst (especially white straight) men are being depicted as the devil incarnate (the source of all - and especially anti-women - violence, assault, privilege, etc), what do you think's going to happen? It's going to compound the issue, for them in particular.
White boys are one of the absolute worst performing demographics in the school system. What do we do? We say they're just shit by their very nature, immature, restless, disruptive, and thick, should be held back a couple of years, they're not "ready" for it. We shrug our shoulders and say "oh well, men have had their time anyway, as long as they don't get in the way and upset the girls, we'll manage".
What do we do when *girls* are struggling? We change the system, we throw as many opportunities and campaigns at them as we can, we scream from the rooftops that "something must be done". We completely ignore the worst affected because women and girls are more fashionable to support, seen as more deserving/helpless, and not recipients of some millennia-old man's club privilege.
What do we teach boys, as far as relationships and sex? Consent, respect, harm-reduction, that any unwanted expression of their sexuality is verboten (even though they're the ones who are going to have to initiate/escalate in order to *get* a relationship). When they're lonely, it's their fault.
What do we teach girls? That men will take any opportunity to deprive you of every ounce of respect and dignity and that they should be avoided unless you're absolutely sure, that anything that goes wrong is *his* fault and not *yours*, and more colloquially that men will abuse you and dump you and leave you with children to struggle with. When women are lonely, it's *men's* fault.
What about when there's considerable harm playing out? Who experiences the most unnatural death? Men. Who commits the most suicide? Men. Who most often dies as a result of performing a job in a dangerous profession? Men. Yet most often if you hear anything spoken about these things it'll be about the minority percentage of *women* suffering them. Journalists being killed? Well, 20% of them are women, something must be done! Suicide? 25% of them are women, something must be done!
Boys and men aren't fucking *stupid*. They don't need it said directly to their face that nobody cares or, worse, that they're actively being discriminated against, because it's obvious enough *without* that.
So, yeah, gee, I wonder, what could possibly cause boys and men to get the impression that nobody listens to them, that nobody's there to help and support them, that they have no purpose, that they're being neglected and punished for things they didn't do?
Boys recognise that they are now discriminated against in education and many workplaces.
They get constant lectures in school about how terrible men are and how they're responsible for the bad treatment of women.
There is a certain section of society that treats them like utter shit and then wonders why they hate their politics
But no, it's only down to the other side hey
>The idea that is problem is caused by some kind of woke boogie man and not the rampant dismantlement of public services
Well this flies in the face of the entire argument of systemic discrimination.
We know that boys underperformed relative to girls at all levels of education.
Why would the dismantlement of public services affect boys over girls?
> The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.
African proverb, though i'm told it was the premise for a marvel movie so is now quite well known.
We tell 12 year old boys that they are all rapists-in-waiting, that they are to blame for the behaviour of 27 year old creepy sexual harrassers because they don't call out their friends behaviour, while bombarding them with constant propaganda that girls are amazing and blameless for anything and can do anything they want. We then offer girls every possible leg-up when getting into academia and the workplace while telling boys that they need to "check their privelege" and "shut up and listen".
We then turn around and wonder why said 12 year old boys feel alienated and turn to people like Tate.
> but because the system that tells boys how to be masculine is fundamentally broken
What system? Which politically acceptable figures are outlining a positive form of masculinity?
Not at all. I disagree.
The fundamental social contract until recently was that even if you were a "loser", there was respect in every profession. You didn't make it in the business world and because a shoemaker, a butcher, or a factory worker? That's still alright, you're a contributing member of society. You WILL be able to provide for your families.
You are absolutely spot on how it has twisted and manifested itself I think, but I believe that it used to work - but the degradation of the social contract due to a general collapse in collective personal morality has absolutely highlighted the worst parts of human nature and made it virtuous as it fills the vacuum. This is why even though objectively someone like Andrew Tate, who's selling but a shade of traditional masculinity and objectively a bad person, has so many emulators: because we've collectively said it doesn't matter how terrible a person you are, you're still "an cool guy" if you're rich.
Traditional masculinity worked in the context it was in, and could've adapted to the post-empowerment reality if carefully tailored. Instead, we decided to throw it out wholesale, and the vacuum was filled by horrors beyond our wanting.
Without even stepping outside my organization I can tell you that the graduate programme here requires no worse than a 40/60 gender balance either way at every stage, despite the fact that our applicants are probably > 90% male (statistical programming). Of course it being 60/40 *either way* makes it "fair".
As a result almost every female applicant remotely appropriate gets to the final round of interviews while we're chucking extremely well qualified male candidates CVs in the bin for the most benign reasons because we have to cull 30% of them before even a phone interview. This is considered "fair".
Once into the organization, there are fast-track leadership programs open only to women, to promote "fairness".
Put yourself in the shoes of a male grad, who got a great degree from a great university, finally getting a grad program placement after 25 rejections, to then start and find that the female grads not only have considerably worse academics than he does but flew through the first process they applied for no bother and are immediately placed on a management fast track program he's not eligible for. I wouldn't blame them for being extremely disillusioned by this.
It was exactly the same for my last organisation, they had a competitive management track that opened each year and several years ago they announced that it was changing how they picked people and that it now had to be 50/50 men and women (and they lowered the standards to do so).
I saw multiple lazy and incompetent women being promoted over and above their infinitely more talented male peers purely because the company was being pressured to hit their diversity targets, it didn't matter that it was a 90% male workforce, half of the limited management track positions were reserved for women.
Women were effectively handed a management fast-track position on a silver platter by virtue of being women in a male dominated field, regardless of how useless they were at their jobs, and it absolutely killed the morale of the more qualified men that had been angling for the management track for years and resulted in the company just haemorrhaging their best senior talent who saw no other avenue for progression.
It's absolutely infuriating now seeing these same women on LinkedIn in their cushy management roles reposting endless nonsense about how women have it so bad and how more needs to be done to support women when you know full well that the only reason that they are in the position that they are in is *because* they are women.
Nobody sensible disputes that women absolutely faced and in some cases do still face discrimination in the workplace, and needed help to achieve equality with men. Implied in that is that eventually, one day, that will be achieved, and unless you believe we should just continue these programs forever no matter what we need to have a grown up conversation about exactly when that will happen or indeed if it has happened and how we should move forward in the workplace henceforth.
Anyone saying "equality will never be achieved" is just saying "our diversity measures don't work" with different words.
>Can you give examples/evidence of policies, large organisations, etc. which give specific preference to women over men all else being equal when it comes to getting into university or attaining employment? Because it would be illegal so we should probably report it.
Are you kidding me lol?
Just look at any university society board. There are a ton of "Women in XYZ prestigious industry" clubs aimed at helping women specifically. There are programmes which are pipelines to grad schemes and jobs exclusively for women. There are women exclusive mentoring networks and networking opportunities that men have no option to partake in.
If you're touched academia in the last 5-10 years, it should be self-evident that this has been the case for some time.
Yes here is the take that actually matters. Conservatives have had control of education and it's policies for a decade and a half near enough, they just never care unless they can turn it into a complaint against their enemies.. Despite it being something they're responsible for at the time.
Boys are failing education are ever increasing rates, university degrees are becoming more skewed towards women, men are the majority of the suicides, drug addicted, alcoholics, gaming addicted, homelessness, work places deaths, homicides, more likely to get cancer and die from it.
Men may occupy the higher rungs of society, but they also occupy the lower rungs aswel. There are reasons for all of this, and some of the reasons are mens own fault, but they definitely need help in alot of areas that are ignored currently.
*Male Role Models. They lack them at home and at school. Schools are 75% female taught. If these boys don’t have a male role model they look up to and respect, they will turn to men like Tate who offer to help them.
> *Male Role Models
Which the dad should primarily be. Fatherlessness is a disaster for children. A male teacher can help but they can never fully replace a good dad.
I had a father. He was shit at it. Actively harmful the vast majority of the time and *very* rarely supportive, understanding, or appreciative. Rarely in a job the entire time I've known him (and I'm fast approaching 40), never really taught me anything of practical value, avoidant of any topics regarding relationships, and absolutely useless emotionally. Also incredibly judgemental, argumentative, self-obsessed, and frequently violent.
As much as I agree that fatherhood *should* be where it starts, you can't even begin to rely on that as a guaranteed basis for a boy's upbringing.
(In service of equal opportunity intergenerational trauma, my mother wasn't any better.)
Thanks. He's no longer an issue. The damage is done, but I'm my own man now.
But the point I was making was that I'm far from the only one who had a father like that, so I don't think you can take it for granted. Even those not as actively harmful but still useless aren't any real help for those boys trying to find direction and purpose and the right way to do things.
I don't want to sound like I'm suggesting that fathers are unimportant or should be considered harmful by default, despite my own experiences, just that I think it would be a mistake to think along the lines of "he has a present father, he'll be alright", because that's not a given, far from it. I'm sure many fathers *are* good, responsible, present, understanding, helpful, and so on, and that's great. But, if we're talking about what boys need, I think we have to be aware that a father, good or bad, may not be enough. Especially if that father has to hold back the tide of cultural messaging in the process.
We have way more present fathers than previous generations, yet this trend of extremism in the young is growing. So something makes me thing the issue isn't necessarily about how present the dad is.
I agree it can be a solution to the problem, but there are more immediate issues that likely need to be resolved.
>We have way more present fathers than previous generations
Do we?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/281640/single-parent-families-uk/
> this trend of extremism in the young is growing
is it? Do you have a source?
That first chart is raw numbers, not per capita. In 1996, we had 58.2 million, and in 67.33 million (taken from the google front page). That percentage increase (16%) brings the 1996 value up to 2,828 thousand families, so it's basically unchanged.
So we can call that a wash. [We instead then look at a study looking at exactly this issue](https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol40/30/40-30.pdf). We can see that I'm, basically wrong, but not horribly so. It's pretty much stagnated in recent years, but my biases show in that paternal engagement has increased among "higher" occupational classes but decreased among "lower" classes.
We had a chunky increase during covid, that I believe has stuck around, but that's not recent enough to have any impact on our current children.
**That being said**, there are other similar articles claiming [that boys today are much more likely to be closer to their dad](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/like-father-like-son-boys-today-are-twice-as-likely-to-be-close-to-their-dads-as-in-times-past-9970349.html)
> These research findings confirm what psychologists and therapists are seeing in their clinics, namely the nature of fatherhood, boyhood and the relationships between fathers and their sons are more involved, more communicative and more attentive than ever.
So I believe I have conflated the improvement in the type of relationships we have with our fathers, with the percentage of actually active fathers (the latter of which hasn't changed much)
> is it? Do you have a source?
I mean, that's why we have articles like this one referring to growing evidence of young men feeling disenfranchised. I also don't have a study on this, but I have seen [many articles](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/03/revealed-uk-children-ensnared-far-right-ecosystem-online) referring to this issue more recently. And it's a fairly new trend.
You're missing the point. If we valued fathers and actively sought to instil a sense of responsibility in young men (which is precisely Jordan Peterson's method of appeal) then boys would be better off. It would also help if we brought back a taboo for casual sex as it leads to kids born into single parent families. Fathers are constantly portrayed as lazy and deadbeats in tv, film, comedy and general conversation. Dads are the butt of every joke and not esteemed so it's not surprising young men don't value fatherhood.
In times gone by, they used to say politicians were out of touch. Now, they just claim that the public has failed to adapt to the glorious vision of the politicians.
Everyone of these article is hopeless because none of them get to the heart of the issue. Which is the swipe left culture an increasing minority of men face when they try to date.
They are told they should be happy being house husbands, taking low paid low status work like care work and yet when it comes to dating they face a completely different reality. The pressure is the other way, to be taller, stronger, more successful and richer.
We have gone from a society in which a below average guy had a decent expectation of getting married and having a family. Even if he had a working class job.
To one in which such men are frankly obsolete and have little hope of that happening.
Alas as well meaning as William Hague is, he doesn't have a solution to that problem.
Prevention is the best cure. We should be pouring money into early years education, social services, poverty prevention, community programmes and mental health services so no one becomes a lost boy in the first place.
>we need “a positive vision of masculinity that is compatible with gender equality”
ok but then
>thinkers on the political left, in an age of “woke” ideas, too easily ignore the fact that there are biological differences between men and women, and label masculinity as toxic.
I'm not sure why this concept is so hard to grasp. If you accept that you can have "a positive vision of masculinity that is compatible with gender equality", then you should also be able to accept that you can have a vision of masculinity that *isn't* compatible with gender equality, a vision of masculinity that is damaging to men and to society general ie a *toxic* masculinity. Would not a a vision of masculinity where the "Use of steroids and similar drugs to enhance body shape is thought to have risen ten-fold in the past decade" be toxic? Or a view of masculinity that causes men to commit suicide at three times the rate of women? Or the view "“Real men are right-wing, real men have ideals, real men are patriots. Then you’ll get a girlfriend.” Or Tate’s views on what it means to be a man. Aren't those reasonably described as toxic?
Now, he might be a genuine idiot although I suspect he isn't, so is he just playing the same tired culture war games of pretending that the term "toxic masculinity" is an attack on men rather than a description of a cultural problem, that sometimes people have conceptions of gender roles that are harmful.
It may well be that this popular (and seemingly deliberately encouraged) confusion does mean that "toxic masculinity" is a *useful* term for broader public discourse. But as he readily admits by implication everywhere else, *it is a real problem.* And you don't effectively deal with problems by pretending there isn't one, or that admiting there is a problem is the actual problem. I mean, that kind of thinking is a bit *toxic,* isn't it?
> Now, he might be a genuine idiot although I suspect he isn't, so is he just playing the same tired culture war games of pretending that the term "toxic masculinity" is an attack on men rather than a description of a cultural problem, that sometimes people have conceptions of gender roles that are harmful.
20-30 years ago we were having this conversation about women and girls contracting eating disorders because the cultural messaging around them associated femininity with being the same shape as a pencil. We all agreed that this was bad, that we shouldn't be associating femininity with having no curves, no substance, that it's not normal to aspire to show off your ribcage.
We also agree, presently, that if a disadvantaged/minority group does not appreciate the language other people use to describe it, that language should cease being used because it's offensive and oppressive. Doing otherwise, against their wishes, even accidentally, is "microaggressions" at best, hostile bigotry, or even an expression of violence against them.
So how is it that now, if men say "hey, please stop associating everything bad in the world with words that relate to manhood and masculinity" (such as "toxic masculinity", "misogyny", "*internalised* misogyny", "male privilege", "patriarchy", and so on), the supposedly progressive camps just yell those words harder and tell us we just don't understand it/ourselves/our place in the world, and can't comprehend that young men are going to be affected by this constant association with negativity?
The demographic is young boys, not academics. Pretend you are a vulnerable preteen who knows nothing about anything. Google "toxic masculinity." What you will find is a content mill of thousands of articles from click bait culture warriors torturously labeling almost any male pattern behavior as "toxic" and playing it for engagement. It does not matter what the academic definition of the term is, because that is not how struggling 12 year old boys are interfacing with it, nor do they even have the cognitive ability at that age to properly abstract it.
20 years ago we had the collective ability to recognize that perhaps saturating the cultural space with twig thin women was indeed having some material impact on the mental and physical health of young girls.
Absolutely. But for the benefit of those who say "well, get offline then", it doesn't just stop at those zeitgeist-abusing content farms, it's in the public consciousness too. Media, education, charities, law enforcement, government. Little hints and references to it everywhere.
So, yes, you might not get the raw raging feminism of TikTok and Tumblr if you "go offline", but young men can put two and two together and see that the stuff they see and hear in real life is just a badly repainted copy of the same sentiments, presented as something more mild and benign. They still know how people feel about boys and men. That it's not expressed as directly in terms of outright hostility offline is neither here nor there, it's still present and still detectable.
The two support each other. The online people can refer to government stats, campaigns, and so on (and scare people into voting for parties who'll Do Something About It), and the offline people lend credence to the validity of the righteous online crowd. Because they're both singing from the same hymn book. The only difference is that the online are singing it in the style of a death metal band and the offline people are singing it in the style of Miley Cyrus or Beyonce. Still the same songs though, just varying degrees of aggression.
I wish Tory ideologues like Hague had seen this coming and cautioned their party about it a decade ago. Now I'm not sure there's anyone left that'll listen to them.
Snapshot of _Lost boys need help or they turn to extremes - William Hague_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lost-boys-need-help-or-they-turn-to-extremes-5xtl0z36v) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lost-boys-need-help-or-they-turn-to-extremes-5xtl0z36v) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
When will anyone address the lack of male teachers in schools? I work maintenance of public buildings including schools, and when you walk in they have a big board with photos and names of all the teachers that work there. Nearly every school I go to has either none or just one male teacher, with that teacher often being the head or a PE teacher.
I get the impression that men are put off the role because there's a culturally embedded suspicion that they're "a paedo" and their pupils can exploit that to bully them. That, and the fact that it's become low-status, low paid work, and it's still culturally more acceptable* for women to take those roles. \* I mean, clearly not actually a good thing, just still accepted.
There is definitely a misogynistic "this is a woman's job" angle, culturally, that ironically means there just aren't enough male teachers. Not to dismiss the "men are a danger" cultural belief at all. That's definitely another issue. It's just a weird balance thing too.. Because the younger the child, the more likely the teachers will be women. It makes it look like men don't want to teach unless the children are entering into the throes of puberty.
Weird, because in the 70’s and 80s there were plenty of male teachers.
Mhmm, and there were more women in computer science too. It's a more modern change in it. It's fine and a man's job up until the moment it's not.
That's just terminally online Reddit bullshit rooted in misogyny (those little girls with all their fake rape accusations!!) Men are put off teaching because it's one of the most stressful and worst paid professions. Its only real benefits is flexible working hours which suit primary caregivers, which is mostly women. It's not complicated. When you look at higher paid teaching roles, they're dominated by men. Anyone who works in a school knows that there's no epidemic of false accusations.
It’s not, my girlfriend holds this opinion. Does not trust male teachers.
>That's just terminally online Reddit bullshit rooted in misogyny (those little girls with all their fake rape accusations!!) 100ft tall strawman detected.
> (those little girls with all their fake rape accusations!!) Go ahead, eat some M&Ms; only a few are poisoned, after all.
That's the logical justification for any kind of bigotry, whether it's towards, men, ethnic minorities, immigrants.
The funny thing about that is that it's essentially true, some M&Ms *might* be poisoned, as could any mass-produced food. There *is* some chance that you'll eat something that should've been or is currently subject to a hygiene/ingredient/foreign body recall. Yet people do, in fact, eat M&Ms. Well, that's a very literal take, of course, but it's also true that people do take risks. They might misjudge who they want to take those risks with, which risks they take, how and when they take them, but they do. For all the talk of "poisoned M&Ms", there sure do seem to be an awful lot of stories about women who have had dire relationships. How could those have possible happened - and continue to happen now - if women were truly that scared/paranoid or had a real sixth sense for men being wrong'uns? It's very often used purely as a rhetorical device to dismiss the concerns of men they're not attracted to or don't agree with politically. As I'm sure you intended to parody here.
Just a theory, but I can't help wondering if the pay was better if it would be more aspirational for men. As it is now, it's practically 'vocational' pay (the idea being the satisfying work is reward in itself), which is generally correlated with traditional female roles...
I think it's much deeper rooted than that. Primary teaching is very much seen as a caring profession, in the same way as nursing (or indeed, caring), which our society views as womens' work. Men aren't really encouraged to be interesting in caring in the same way we didn't use to encourage women in STEM. We need to encourage men to be interested in caring, in the same way we have started to encourage women to get into STEM roles
The two go hand-in-hand. With pay for caring roles being what it is, anyone promoting a career in caring is likely to be encouraging people to act against their economic interests, which doesn't feel like a great thing to do.
I’m doubtful. It may get more men to apply for teaching roles but I think they’ll be out not too long after. Although pay is indeed an issue, starting salary is not. The biggest hurdle is cultural. You’ll instantly be an outsider, your life could be ruined by a false accusation, you are expected to be a teacher, childminder and parent all in one. Finally you’ll have little in the way of respect.
I remember, the only two male teachers at my primary school were without a shadow of a doubt the best teachers there also. I was lucky enough to have them in year 5/6 so academically it set us up nicely for secondary school at the time - to the point where I recall my parents actually being relieved we got them, rather than the other class. Often found the female teachers just relayed information in very convoluted and "soft" ways with no real discussion or critical questions humored; whereas the male teachers actually *taught*. The experience was definitely shared across both boys and girls too from discussions with them later in life at reunions and what not.
Wonder why young boys are suffering so much … Still waiting for the day politicians care about boys failing in school. Girls have out-achieved boys for at least 30 years in the UK. Their numbers absolutely dwarf men at uni. Can’t see Labour or the Tories caring about this in the near future. But they’ll still get angry when these same boys/men flock towards whichever figure (Tate etc.) that says they’ll help them. This is genuinely not a hard problem to understand and fix, but it’s taboo to prioritise male education.
I think the big problem is there aren’t enough men in primary and secondary education. In my schooling I was lucky though to have several men who were very engaging and that definitely helped me out a lot. I also remember several older women teachers who seemed to be sure that all the boys were nothing but sneering punks who had no chance and that definitely didn’t help. Having men who are publicly smart and in charge of the classroom is the best way to encourage boys.
Not just more male teachers - but more men in Ofsted, creating the National Education Curriculum and within the various governing boards. The rot starts at the top. Create gender equality from top to bottom and boys will catch up with the girls.
I wonder when we'll see a public drive to recruit men into these roles, like we have for women into STEM?
You'll be waiting a long time I'm afraid.
I'd probably see the 57th Porcine Squadron lining up for take-off on Runway 29L first....
The most recent teach first tv ad campaign was featuring a male teacher, probably for this reason (although admittedly it looked like secondary rather than primary school)
I’m a man and teach at secondary school. The issue goes deeper than the teachers. The last 10 years has seen education revert away from coursework towards exams. The move to coursework was always given as a reason schools benefited girls more, but reversing that hasn’t changed things. It’s a cultural thing with how boys are seen, brought up, parented etc. of course schools play a part in that, but relying on schools to change all that in isolation isn’t going to happen. We are already parents, social workers, councillors and teachers to students.
You'd have to be mad to be a man and go anywhere near education. One pedo accusation and you'll be lynched, guilty or not. University's another matter, but secondary? It was vicious back in the 00s, I can only imagine how it can be now with the advent of social media. Then again you'd also have to be mad to go into education at all these days. Why would someone that educated settle for so much stress and so little pay and 'customers' who actively hate you?
I'm not sure where these hellhole schools are but I'm quite confident I'm not hated by my classes and if I was it's of little consequence, they're children and immature. They're welcome to their opinion. Also not sure where this idea that male teachers are constantly looking over their shoulders in case we're accused of being paedos comes from.
In my school there was one science teacher that the kids in my class decided was gay and therefore a pedo, so they hit him with accusation after accusation until he quit teaching altogether. He wasn't even gay! He just wore a purple velvet jacket!
If that’s all he wore frankly I’m not surprised.
There was a report shared on this subreddit recently (https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/news/girls-outperform-boys) which talked about this. Girls are now outperforming boys at *every* level of the education system. Which is pretty worrying in itself, of course. But to me, the real issue was that the conclusion of the report's author was "we need to find out why this isn't reflected in STEM employment". Which came across to me as an incredibly crass "girls are doing better than boys in 9/10 areas; we need to find out what has gone wrong in the 10th area, so that we can make it a clean sweep". The experts aren't even *interested* at looking at male underperformance. I'm not even sure if they notice it, to be honest.
I read the article and the comments on its crossposted subs; the comments seemed to all be either "it'll never get better" or "men need to try harder". And really, the second type of comment is one reason why the first type exists.
Yeah, that's some misandrist bullshit isn't it? Especially because we're supposed to be moving away from blaming victims, and acknowledging that some things are imposed by society. Funny how that logic doesn't apply when it's male victims, isn't it?
My "favourite" piece of doublethink is that the female equality drives are always for STEM jobs, management jobs, HR director roles, and huge offence is taken if anyone dares to typecast nurse or teacher as "womens jobs". At the same time it's just accepted that construction workers and bin collectors will be male, with no effort ever made to "attract women into the profession" when it's those classically male professions. The Birmingham Council equal pay lawsuit was even won in part because bin collector was decided to be a "mans job".
Let’s not even begin to talk about what % of homeless people and suicides are men …
Had someone tell me the other day that the male suicide stat is wrong because actually more women attempt suicide they just tend to choose less lethal means and survive. I mean...jeez.
Not to mention white males, it's incredibly bad how positive racism and sexism has meant white boys are left behind in education by a significant margin. Should be focusing on bringing all up to a high level instead of picking specific groups. It's shame all these children being left behind and ultimately some will end up being more problematic later in life due to these poor decisions.
re: the positive discrimination point, that's because white boys (especially those of poorer backgrounds) are basically told to "eat shit" in this regard. It's why you see someone like Andrew Tate is popular among teenage boys, being someone who doesn't shit on them like they're scum. It's a grift to be sure, but still, it's a sympton of the first point.
If a class of people believe the system is stacked against them, so they try harder, how is that reflected in the stats? Are they measuring 'like for like' effort when making these comparisons?
I work in HE and a surprising number of universities in the UK and US have "silent" affirmative-action style policies for recruitment and are actively trying to get more applications from boys. It's not talked about because it's not good PR, but it's slowly happening.
Good to hear, but a shame it needs to be seen as taboo still.
> Which is pretty worrying in itself, of course. But to me, the real issue was that the conclusion of the report's author was "we need to find out why this isn't reflected in STEM employment". I could go on about that topic at hand, but a lot of "women in STEM" reports don't even feel like they're written by women in STEM. They'd be more important to consult, particularly women formerly in STEM who left.
I think it’s more important to see why we have less men becoming Doctors, Teachers, Lawyers etc. That’s the majority that’s struggling here.
All these jobs have become less attractive in terms of hours, pay and conditions.
But that’s not why more women qualify than men.
What's the point of women doing better academically when that doesn't lead to better paid or more fulfilling jobs? https://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/blog/future-of-law/the-gender-pay-gap-in-the-legal-sector-where-do-we-go-from-here
I’ve touched on the gender pay gap in other comments. Women are more likely to work part-time, or stop working, once they have children. That impacts how much they earn over the course of their career.
Of course, the question is why? Why is it still less acceptable for men to take the career break, the part time role, be a stay at home parent? Is it because there's still a stigma attached to men being the main caregiver? Is it because women are likely in lower paying employment before they have children? I think men and women would both benefit from solving these issues.
A lot of it is just biology. A newborn baby needs their mother to live immediately and from there it just depends if the baby will take a bottle/formula milk in terms of who can actually be the care giver. Plus people don't want to talk about the damage that child birth actually does to women, it wrecks them and they do need time to recover whilst being responsible for another human. With this you get an intense bond formed between mother and child which isn't easy to put into words. Women don't want to leave their children and return to work. You'll end up getting called sexist but the paternal bond has nothing on the maternal one, they literally grew this child and leaving them is extremely hard Couple this with women being the ones to receive statutory maternity pay and leave vs men I don't see this switching.
> Of course, the question is why? Why is it still less acceptable for men to take the career break, the part time role, be a stay at home parent? Is it because there's still a stigma attached to men being the main caregiver? Because women have a statutory entitlement to 52 weeks maternity leave (2-4 weeks compulsory maternity leave, then the rest up to 26 weeks is ordinary maternity leave that guarantees you'll to return to the exact same job, and then additional maternity leave for another 26 weeks that guarantees you'll return to at least a similar job with no worse conditions). Statutory Paternity Leave is 2 weeks. It is possible to have Shared Parental Leave - the mother "donates" some of her maternity leave to the father, but this is complicated and a lot of people aren't aware of it (plus it's an additional barrier - rather than an automatic entitlement, it's something that has to be "taken" from the mother). Equalising maternity and paternity leave could help shift these default assumptions, but I don't think there's much political appetite to implement this when the government's continually freaking out about Britain's "productivity crisis". > Is it because women are likely in lower paying employment before they have children? The pay gap in full time employment is very low under the age of 40, and there was a stretch for a few years in the past decade where women in full time employment under the age of 40 have been outearning men in the same cohort. This holds true despite the tendency for traditionally female roles to be paid more poorly. I *suspect* that 40+ women starting their careers 20+ years ago faced significantly more barriers than women do today and this hampered their career development, but the asymmetry in part time is inherently skewed due to these assumptions.
The answer to the question is pretty simple, because of children. When they’re born children physically NEED their mothers to be present. I don’t think there’s a stigma around men being the main caregiver but as I said before they’re much less likely to be due to the fact that after birth the mother physically needs to be present for the baby so of course the person in the couple that returns to work first is going to be the man. The biggest problem, imo, is that before family life was quite sustainable on a “good” single income. That’s just not possible anymore.
It’s because women prefer to take a career break. The instincts grown during pregnancy make women very protective of their newborns. They develop a lot of anxiety when being separated. The truth is more women would rather work less and look after the children than have their husband do it. No amount of government legislation will change this. So, we need to accept this fuels the gender gap and stop assuming the gap exists due to evil intentions.
It certainly ties into it. Compared to women, men are more pressured into being high income to attract a partner. This leads men to place more importance on salary when choosing what field to go into. So if that salary benefit is lowered, then that will not be as enticing to men that are salary driven.
Oh yeah, you’re completely right. The motive will always be ‘find where girls are failing and target this, so they then outperform boys’. Nobody cares that 90% of the boys are failing, bar the boys themselves. But you’ll see endless articles about the gender pay gap - which is mostly fuelled by women wanting to be stay at home mothers. These struggling boys are then expected to become breadwinners, despite being less qualified than their partners - who’d rather work less and spend more time with the children. It doesn’t take a genius to see this flawed efficiency contributes to our low birth rate and low productivity as a nation.
Just another piece in the jigsaw puzzle of why everyone is unhappy and everything is getting worse. Blank slate-ism and a dogged pursuit of 'equity' at the expense of happiness, progress, wealth creation, and basic competence.
> Blank slate-ism It's not even consistent, because the same people will use the difference in trans and cis brains, ie the similarity to the gender that the person identifies with as a (valid) reason to justify transitioning.
> fuelled by women wanting to be stay at home mothers That's going to be rather difficult if the men are so screwed by education and social support (or the lack thereof) that they're all skint, staring down a complete lack of future prospects, and mentally unwell. Or not so much, I suppose, if the government picks up the slack. Because who needs families and social cohesion and both genders to be successful anyway, right? ...right?
The gender pay gap thing is infuriating. In my department at work there are two women who job share because they're both mothers who care for kids. They each do 2.5 days a week work, and their combined take-home pay is actually more than the FTEs on the team because they both get their full personal tax allowance. This is then reported as women earning 50% what the men earn in the gender pay gap disclosures.
The gender pay gap is normalised to take that into account, so it would be report correctly as equal pay for your department. Bit unfair to say that as they have fewer hours their tax rate is lower, as you would get the same if you reduced your hours.
Not sure why more women don't. It's an easy ride all the way up for most of them unless you cause trouble. We've had a number of female apprentices come through in recent years. Every single one was offered a long term position. Around 60% of the males were not, even if most of them generally were better than their female counterparts. Not to mention once they're in the company, they have a rocket strapped to them and they're sent to the moon figuratively into lofty management positions they're wholly unsuited for. But it makes the ESG score look good so who cares, right? So the question I have. Is it boys are all of a sudden less intelligent, or are girls being given an easy time in education and being favourably taught and marked up in exams? In my experience of training some of these apprentices, I'm going with the latter. ETA: This isn't to say we don't have some fantastic female colleagues. We most certainly do. But the standards have been changed (rather than lowered), which means women tend to be able to make easier and more sustained career progression.
Thank you for this response - it’s really insightful. I want to add, the main problem I saw targeted on International Women’s Day was the ‘Gender Pay Gap’. This, of course, is not women getting paid less for the same job but getting paid less than their male counterparts over the course of their career. I empathise with this if you’re a single woman who wants an equally sized pension. However, these single women barely have a gender pay gap. The gap is fuelled by women working part-time, or stopping working at all, once they have children. Lots of wives would prefer to spend more time at home with their new babies, compared to slaving away in an office. Can’t blame them for that. What can be blamed is women saying the gender pay gap is not fuelled by women’s choices. Yes you will have a smaller pension if you work less. But that’s YOUR CHOICE. No man is forcing that on you. Men would gladly work less if given the chance, but given the nature of families in the U.K. - it is more socially acceptable for the woman to stop working to look after the children.
A lot of it comes down to not enough resources for families resulting in one partner (most likely the woman) taking a few years off. Affecting her career and pension when they go back to work they are also more likely to have to do school runs, sick days and pick ups. Resulting in them not being able to work full time if their job doesn’t allow flexibility. There is a social stigma on the roles of women and men in relationships with kids and it bleeds into the work place. Men aren’t supported enough with parental leave and often may be judged for taking a more active role (E.g sick days, school pick up) And women are expected to do this but punished for not balancing it all.
Yes but if you don't address the gender pay gap, then you disincentivise women from having children which is not good for society in the long term.
That's why at least in many cases, they've created a new metric at least at my employer based upon equal pay for the same job role. They actually found that women were often paid a little more than their male counterparts, and were more likely to receive a bonus payment each year. They haven't suggested this will be addressed as of yet at least.
>as of yet
Well maybe one day. But something tells me a disparity in favour of women, won't be as urgently looked at. I firmly believe it's because lower paying jobs on tools etc tend to be male dominanted. Whereas a lot of the office based roles, which routinely pay more have a higher percentage of females.
I expect a lot of it comes from these facts: >75.7% of teachers were women, and there were more female than male teachers in every ethnic group >... >In 2021, there were around 20,800 headteachers, and over two-thirds (14,026) were women https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/workforce-and-business/workforce-diversity/school-teacher-workforce/latest/ Our education system is overwhelmingly dominated by women in both leadership and teaching roles, so it'll invariably have a pro-girl bias. Though it's difficult to know if that's because we've set up the education system specifically in a way that girls do better (I remember the old cliché when I was at school was that girls did better at coursework and boys did better at exams; and at the time, everything was moving towards coursework), or if it's just that female teachers can relate to their female pupils more, and encourage them more. Combine that with the sort of schemes you mention where girls are given additional opportunities, and is it any wonder that they do so much better than boys?
Did you see the report (and I'll try to find it) lamenting that only ~66% of headteachers were women, compared to the ~84% of teachers that are women and that more needs to be done to bring the number of female head teachers up? The idea that either of those numbers was worrying wasnt ever mentioned.
Politicians won’t care until voting men show that this is a vote defining issue.
So which party's actually deserving of the male vote? Because I don't see either of the two actually-capable-of-winning-an-election parties giving any kind of a damn. Even the Lib Dems, at a glance, don't seem to have a policy on this. Although it appears they [had done](https://www.libdemnewswire.com/files/2016/04/Liberal-Democrats-2010-mini-manifesto-policies-for-men.pdf) at one point. Albeit 14 years ago.
I remember that our regular primary school teacher had a term off due to stress, and the replacement was the only time we had a male teacher. He was sort of universally beloved, by the boys in particular, I think because of a very practical workshoppy approach - music on, circling the room doling out light-hearted banter. The outlook for the afternoon is learning about maths by building aqueducts and then outside on the field pretending to be Aztecs and Spaniards in history. It's a massive gender-generalisation, but I do think what would classically be called boisterousness tends to be discouraged in classrooms and yet many boys respond so well to being 'let loose' a bit, within obvious limits.
Female teachers grade girls higher for the same quality of work.
Any source for this?
https://theweek.com/news/world-news/958209/teachers-give-higher-grades-to-girls There is a growing body of evidence for this
> are girls being given an easy time in education and being favourably taught and marked up in exams? In my experience of training some of these apprentices, I'm going with the latter. [That's not surprising, when there are vastly more female teachers than male ones, and women have a much greater ingroup bias.](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2004-19340-007?doi=1)
> So the question I have. Is it boys are all of a sudden less intelligent, or are girls being given an easy time in education and being favourably taught and marked up in exams? In my experience of training some of these apprentices, I'm going with the latter. Given that the level of attainment at school leaving age the year before O-Levels got switched out for GCSEs was a more or less dead equal line between boys and girls, and then when GCSEs came in girls jumped significantly ahead of boys, I'm going to suggest that you're right.
I think it's neither. It's that boys are the targets of intensive marketing from a young age that has them obsess over video games, sports, etc., while girls escape this marketing and are instead more likely to spend time reading, socialising, etc. (both genders are the targets of toys advertising). The pendulum swings when girls get older and are suddenly crushed by social media and all the awful things teenage girls are pushed into caring about, but they're (comparatively) spared as children at least. Boys for the last 20 years, but especially the last ten, are losing their formative years to incredibly sophisticated and ever-present marketing that hijacks their brains and stunts growth. Then they're set loose into schools. Wahoo.
Video games (and traditional games), sports, TV, and such existed in the early to mid 80s too. For what you're saying to be true, the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986 must've single-handedly destroyed boys' ability to do anything except stare at a screen. Never mind the Atari VCS, the ZX Spectrum, the BBC Micro, and the dozens of other computers and gaming systems popular before that happened. Or sports, you think boys didn't collect football cards/stickers in the early 80s? You think they didn't support their favourite teams, have posters of their favourite players on their walls? What about girls? Girls have been known to be obsessive about pop groups since at least as far back as the 50s and 60s. They're commonly associated with following fashion trends and wanting to explore/wear makeup. They gossip and chatter. They're just as much into boys as boys are into girls, as teenagers, because they're all coming of age, all flooded with hormones, and all wanting to "grow up". So, sorry, no, that answer doesn't make any sense.
It's not a matter of whether these things existed. It's about the weight and sophistication of marketing materials, as well as the intensity of marketing campaigns, which are now data-driven on every level. Back in the 80s, adverts were on TV, in magazines, and on billboards. Video game studios were small, had limited marketing budgets, and produced products still considered "nerdy" and socially embarrassing. Games systems and games were also prohibitively expensive (N64 carts were £50 each back in 1999, which according to the bank of England is £91.17 today). Today, the video game industry makes more than the film and music industries combined. Marketing budgets are massive. Children are increasingly online from the moment they're physically capable, with many parents still too ignorant or technically illiterate to properly control or limit their access. Advertising companies have never enjoyed such unfettered access to impressionable children than they have in the last decade. And, as video games are still marketed primarily towards boys (though this is changing, especially with mobile games), it's boys who bear the brunt. Sports are much less of an issue, but of course the 24/7 access children now have to sports media is still something that disproportionately impacts boys rather than girls. [https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/studies/online-gaming-statistics/](https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/studies/online-gaming-statistics/) \- 73% of boys between 3 and 15 in the UK use a games console to play online games (2023). The rate is (a still surprisingly high) 44% for girls of the same age. A better example than sports is likely porn, which we know male children consume at high rates in our internet age. Essentially anything that fucks with reward pathways, spikes dopamine, and results in ADHD-esque symptoms. Re. teenagers, I stated in my initial post that both boys and girls get hit hard. But I don't think that the problems we're seeing with boys today have to do with their teenage years - they have to do with what happens during their formative childhood years, which ultimately determine the kinds of teenagers they grow into. In short, it's naive to think that the entertainment and video games industries, as well as the forms of omnipresent and data-driven marketing, that we have today are at all comparable to their 1980s counterparts. Kids, and especially young boys, growing up today are blasted 24/7 from the screens that play a larger and larger role in raising them.
So you think, to be clear, the thing I highlighted ([graph](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/hEcw6KxOIA5L2idBNFb0AideBK1oyJu5KzPWkKKFLI5YmQQ5aSIwGjIDlvGnFl-8dUQKzIpozQk28Br6gDfFQq4X6dpCBB2RTjmlBmwcnBzAhVGpC0iuMGo_6TK4CVu-4oAfZjWdnYr-JkrmrgLgoe3X)), which happened quite specifically in 1986, with immediate clear effect as compared to the previous several decades of equal educational outcomes, happened because boys collectively discovered video games, that year, completely out of nowhere, and suddenly dropped off the face of the planet as far as school goes? Even though the line still goes *up* for boys? You think that the chart above shows that there was no upper-hand given to girls, who also went up but did so in significantly greater numbers, and that it's somehow entirely the boys' fault, with no external influence or gendered bias in the education system whatsoever?
How about instead of telling me what I think, you actually pay attention when I explain what I think. Of course I'm not blaming boys. You cannot blame children for being the targets and victims of gigantic international businesses who see them as the route to greater revenue. But that doesn't change the fact that they \*are\* the targets of these companies and that, as a result of this, their behaviour (and, subsequently, their psychology) changes. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that this is the \*only\* cause of the failure of boys. I'm suggesting it's a factor, particularly today (your graph only goes up to 2006). On the other hand, I have no idea what you're suggesting - that under Maggie Thatcher, schools in 1986 collectively decided to start favouring girls and punishing boys in a nationwide conspiracy that has somehow been kept under wraps by generations of teachers for 40 years? I've worked as a teacher. I can assure you we didn't get any memos to secretly mark down boys' work and mark up girls'. Your conclusion is simply another conspiracy theory. If there was even an inkling of truth to it, don't you think the Daily Mail and the Sun would have shouted about it from the rooftops? The chart is interesting, though. I found its source and quote: "The overall change dating from the late 80s (as shown in Figure 3-7), could be attributable to the introduction of GCSEs, replacing O-Levels in 1988. The National Curriculum was also introduced at this time, giving less scope for specialisation in particular subjects (Machin & McNally 20059). **GCSEs, unlike O-Levels, are criterion-based assessments, rather than measured in relation to peer performance, ending the rationing of the top grades.** Additionally, many more pupils were entered for GCSE than had been the case for O-Levels (which were taken mainly by children attending grammar and independent schools) though this does not explain the rising standards following the introduction of GCSEs. However, **the following analyses show that the gender pattern for 5+ A\*-C masks the fact that girls have done better than boys in several subjects (e.g. English, English Literature, French, History, Religious Studies) prior to the 1980s**, and in other subjects, the gender gap is not as large as the post-1980 5+ A\*-C data indicate." I suspect the first bolded section explains the discrepency: boys had artificially inflated grades previously due to O-levels being awarded according to the performance of your peers, so if you have 50 poor-performing students, the students who perform the least badly (but still badly) will get an A. That's not the case with GCSEs, so poor students are recognised as poor no matter who they share a class with. So I guess boys are just dumb? So glad we came to this conclusion!
> On the other hand, I have no idea what you're suggesting - that under Maggie Thatcher, schools in 1986 collectively decided to start favouring girls and punishing boys in a nationwide conspiracy that has somehow been kept under wraps by generations of teachers for 40 years? Either intentionally or accidentally but then did nothing to correct the obviously skewed outcomes for the next 35+ years, yes.
> I've worked as a teacher. I can assure you we didn't get any memos to secretly mark down boys' work and mark up girls Teachers do this subconsciously. Doesn't require a memo.
> Not to mention once they're in the company, they have a rocket strapped to them and they're sent to the moon figuratively into lofty management positions they're wholly unsuited for. But it makes the ESG score look good so who cares, right? I'm sceptical this is actually happening as much as people think. Apart from my general gripe about British businesses not being particularly good at hiring and training managers, there seems to be increased scrutiny on managers who are from underrepresented groups. Accusations of "diversity hire" or worse, sleeping their way up, get thrown at them, as opposed to just accepting they weren't a good pick if they underperform.
Scepticism is healthy. I'm only speaking from experience so it's very much an anecdotal point, which I should have made clearer. So I apologise if I misled anyone. The term failing upwards is commonly used in engineering at least. The further you are away from the end product, the more you get paid but the less damage you can do generally.
>The term failing upwards is commonly used in engineering at least. The further you are away from the end product, the more you get paid but the less damage you can do generally. as somebody who moved from the factory floor to office scum. i can confirm
Careful you don't spill your drink on the way back from the coffee machine.
don't worry i have a pre-written list of excuses ready to go. remember the 3 Bs baffle, bollocks and bullshit.
I remember having a debate/argument on this sub with a female teacher. She basically said it's boys' fault for not being good enough, and why should she put extra effort into bringing them up. These are the people teaching these kids. How can we ever expect to improve them, when teachers (majority female) are treating them like this. I don't even know what to say.
The internet: anyone you don't like a bit "cut them off they're TOXIC!" But this goes back to an issue that younger generations seem to have with 'if something isn't perfect it's rubbish'. I assume this is a byproduct of 'infinite' choice. Yes, I get it there are some people who genuinely are toxic, however there are also some people who are just going through a bit of a bad time and need support.
It's because young women are still being taught the lie that men have it better in every way, so it's not surprising that women push back against the priorities of men.
GCSE Latin was mixed: boys school, girls school, mixed school all together. I was at the girls’ school. The teacher had decided years ago that he disliked the boys from the boys’ school. One of them once got 95% on a mock exam and was rightly proud. The teacher said something along the lines of “don’t get too excited, look at what [my name] got”. It felt good at the time, but looking back, his only “crime” was being proud of a very good mark. Being humiliated in front of the class wasn’t right, and I suspect it happened because he was a boy from the boys’ school. The boys’ school was notoriously rough and violent, certainly compared to my school. What of that was that the boys - brothers of the girls at the girls’ school - were all rough, violent little scrotes? And what of it might have been the expectations placed on them to act or not act a certain way?
Yeah keep austerity for 15 years, strip councils of 60% of real-time budget, the NHS of the same. Insist on care in the community, while creating a mass cost of living crisis then say boys need support! Yes youth need a place to go that is safe and enables transition, but like everything else it needs to be funded. Yet this government seems more intent on giving their cronies cushy contracts than actually enabling society cohesion.
This indeed. My local council around the 2010s employed a few vans with workers in who rounded up lads near playing fields and simply played a bit of footy with them. Eventually these kids were doing that on their own when the vans weren’t there. Simple idea. If you had your eyes open you could see the small but important starting point in the development of _social_ behaviour. The more the merrier effect of games meant that younger ones were drawn into this. Obviously this had gone completely extinct by 2013. Six months later and the older kids move on and the younger ones are sat around. An easy win just wasted.
Instructions unclear. Got some teenagers and their dog in the back of my van. They've painted it with flowers and are on about solving mysteries.
Honestly thought that comment was going somewhere else.
That could be a bit of a laugh actually. Little adventure trips, like the Scooby Doo gang or the Famous Five, having to go around town solving "mysteries". Like an easter egg hunt, but more complex/grown up. Throw in an ARG as well to update it for modern interests. Add a pinch of Ingress/Pokémon Go for geographical location-finding. Comes back to the problem of somebody having to fund it/run it, but that could be quite an involving team-building social exercise and it could get kids moving about.
Guarantee they'd solve more cases than the police currently do Doesn't seem like such a bad idea now you mention it
>Yes youth need a place to go that is safe and enables transition, but like everything else it needs to be funded. Yet this government seems more intent on giving their cronies cushy contracts than actually enabling society cohesion. Damn right. People talk about how the rising costs in pubs & closure of libraries means that adults lack "third places", i.e. places to go where you're not necessarily spending money (or at least, not a lot). Kids have it even worse, and that's entirely austerity.
The irony is they're all lost boys - sent away to public school, deprived of the love a family, thrust into a Lord of the Flies but Wearing Ties school environment where you obey the older boys and terrorise the younger ones. Maybe we wouldn't be in such dire straits if they weren't.
Not Hague, he went to a grammar school
Lawks, Hague almost seems sane compared to the rest of them. Major was a grammar school boy as well. They come off as well meaning liberals who threw their lot in with the Tory Boys because it was the only prospect of them gaining power.
The true magic of the current Tories is to make the old Tories look almost normal.
>Yeah keep austerity for 15 years, strip councils of 60% of real-time budget Real-terms core spending power is 18% below 2010 levels. The figures thrown around about a cut to (not by) 60% of 2010 levels ignores all of the "give with one hand and take with another" accountancy changes that have happened, such as Business Rates Retention Scheme that moved a large chunk of council funding out of the core funding streams and instead allowed councils to just keep part of those local taxes. And of course headline funding figures don't take account of the rapid rise in both demand and cost of meeting demand for the big three statutory services; adult social care, children's services, and housing. I say this because your overall point is entirely correct, but you undermine it by using a nonsense figure with no foundation in reality.
The issue with your figures is that it masks the cut to councils in the more deprived area as consequently they have lower business rates to be retained.
TBF I didn't know the exact figure so I was using a rhetorical device of exaggeration for effect. Also no one probably knows the real status, because of the puposefullycomplicated mechanisms finance use. For example when inflation goes up the pound is stretched in spending across the board, but it is implied that it is only in one area...fuel goes up, but that means delivery's go up and waste disposal, so running costs for businesses and councils go up at the front end and the back. So inflation of 10% say on the pound is greater than 10% real terms.
Exactly… perhaps if they have something of a future to aim for then they might not slip through the cracks. Doesn’t even have to be spoon fed to them exactly, there just needs to be the opportunities available for them to be able to access. Sure, even then some will go down the wrong path but at least they’ve had an option at that point.
>strip councils of 60% of real-time budget, the NHS of the same The NHS has been stripped of 60% of its budget? Source?
You are again ignoring the specificly male side of things here. Why aren't women proportionally affected then by these cuts if they are the sole reason?
> strip councils of 60% of real-time budget, the NHS of the same I assume you mean *real terms* budget. Just for your information, the NHS budget in real terms has gone *up by over 30%* since 2010. Not down 60%. Because it’s the biggest departmental expenditure, it’s the main reason (along with pensions and care) that spending on almost everything else has been throttled so much. Do try to keep in touch with reality. Charts at the link below: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/nhs-budget-nutshell
> Do try to keep in touch with reality. I don't disagree with your point necessarily but this is a really unhelpful style of communicating
I understand your objection, but when people write something that’s so demonstrably false - not even a matter of opinion - it’s hard to treat it with much respect. If I proclaimed on here that NHS waiting lists were magically down 60% thanks to wonderful management under the current government - in the complete absence of any realistic evidence - do you think it would be judged so leniently? With downvotes for those (rightfully) correcting me and white knights policing tone? Unlikely, despite it being a roughly equivalent claim in terms of realism and subject matter. It would be an interesting experiment to run; perhaps I am mistaken on that score but I doubt it. Whether it’s helpful or not depends I suppose on whether you place more value on truth or on feelings.
you sound like the biggest nerd
Ha, ok if you say so. No comment to offer on the actual substance if an important topic, or just indulging in personal attack?
"Just for your information", the Social Care budget was done away with and not only was it absorbed into the 'Health and Social Care' budget, but the NHS is left overwhelmed not being able to release many patients who don't need to be in hospital but can't be released because of the lack of social care. What is undeniable is that there are over 25% less beds in the NHS and the whole service has been purposefully managed to decline. On top of that you are quoting the Kings Fund think tank, which is closely aligned to the Government and merely parrots and publishes this Governments so called facts and statistics, as in the link you've provided. Do try to keep in touch with reality.
I'm not disagreeing with your points but the Kings Fund categorically are not a gov mouthpiece. We've worked with them before and they produce some great analysis/work that's entirely Independant and heavily critical of the gov - especially around how raiding of capital budgets and diverting to opex is the cause for collapsing Hospital Buildings and years of Gov funding neglect + unpredictability Also everything in the link is NHSE + DHSC corroborated published data - why are you conspiratorial about it? What stats specifically from that link are incorrect?
>the Kings Fund categorically are not a gov mouthpiece. And yet the entire article on NHS spend, including the link provided, is merely presenting this Governments facts and statistics as though they are undeniable. You're accusing me of being "conspiratorial" for questioning this Government on their 'facts' about the NHS. I won't be taking Government briefing papers from this bunch of charlatans at face value, thanks very much.
So what numbers specifically from the DHSC data set are you denying then? Because that's the source. You might want to let the OBR, Moody's and the Markets know the Treasury are lying about government expenditure in official accounts and published budgets, oh and the NHS too - you'd think an opposition party or any litany of political opponents would have picked up on it too (or by people like, me a Labour member) Headbanger rhetoric needs to be called out at source jfc
I went to school from 1968 and left in 82, nursery to secondary and from memory the majority of my secondary school teachers were male. We had female sports teachers, arts and crafts and culinary. History and French were female but all the other subjects were taught by men. I’ve just looked at the teachers in my son’s school and it’s 80% female. I visit all the local schools and it’s the same there. I have no data to explain this, others have spoken about teaching being primarily a female role these days and I’d be interested in any research that’s actually been done into this. There should be more male teachers in schools to give young boys decent role models, yes I know that might not be true for all male teachers, but it might begin to address what Tory boy is talking about
The problem I would suggest is partly how society portrays men as bad whilst accepting equally bad behaviour from woman as acceptable. I'm a male primary school teacher. The amount of misandry in the field is awful. If I said some of the things that women do, I would be hauled over the coals.
I have a friend who's a femcel. She frequently says things like "all men are trash"/"I hate all men"/"misandry is justified". I'm always awkwardly just trying to ignore her when she says these things because I'm just laughing inside knowing that she'd flip a new one if I said "all women are trash" or something like that.
Funny how \~ \~ Politicians always blame everybody else for their own failings. Perhaps, if the politicians had not failed so many people these people would not be looking for alternatives.
That's true. But it's also good I think that this message is part of any discourse on young men and radicalisation.
Will having female-only candidate lists for MP spots fix this? What about electing a woman to the Lords despite her losing the election by a large margin against a man? What about reducing prison sentences for women? Special homeless shelters for women? Paying for foreign women to live here free as refugees while their men are conscripted? Maybe conscripting our own men? More women in STEM? More women in high paying positons? More health programs for women so they can outlive men even more? Better pensions for women? Less pay for binmen? More demonizing of men? Teaching them about toxic masculinity? More openly sexist women in DEI initiatives? All viable solutions! TLDR: Just face it folks, society does not care about men. We are currently in the process of raising a generation of young men who won't care about society either. We are in the FA stage of the FAFO process. Hopefully It will not be my problem when we reach the inevitable conclusion...
This is something that has been known for thousands of years and somehow in the furore of male privilege and other such nonsense we as a society seemed to collectively memory hole it and make all sorts of vile accusations against anyone that suggested that maybe young men deserve help too
The idea that is problem is caused by some kind of woke boogie man and not the rampant dismantlement of public services by the conservatives is almost laughable.
That's definitely true. With many of the culture war issues it just seems to me like political strategists are getting poor and middle class people to fight among themselves, while the real cause of the issues are going on elsewhere. Having said that, I do think feminism has been a very powerful and positive force for women and society, and that was largely fought using culture war tactics. There are definite issues for boys and men that could use stronger (and more) voices advocating to solve them.
That's all this is. We've gone past uplifting girls, which was needed and is good, and have now reached the part where we're pushing boys down. Everyone should be given the chance to succeed, and everyone's best interests should be thought about, not just those historically disadvantaged groups.
What do you mean telling boys "sit down shut up and work for the system which keeps on kicking you down" doesn't work?
¿Porque no los dos? If young men already see the bleak future before them *and* that women are being praised and promoted and provided resources whilst (especially white straight) men are being depicted as the devil incarnate (the source of all - and especially anti-women - violence, assault, privilege, etc), what do you think's going to happen? It's going to compound the issue, for them in particular. White boys are one of the absolute worst performing demographics in the school system. What do we do? We say they're just shit by their very nature, immature, restless, disruptive, and thick, should be held back a couple of years, they're not "ready" for it. We shrug our shoulders and say "oh well, men have had their time anyway, as long as they don't get in the way and upset the girls, we'll manage". What do we do when *girls* are struggling? We change the system, we throw as many opportunities and campaigns at them as we can, we scream from the rooftops that "something must be done". We completely ignore the worst affected because women and girls are more fashionable to support, seen as more deserving/helpless, and not recipients of some millennia-old man's club privilege. What do we teach boys, as far as relationships and sex? Consent, respect, harm-reduction, that any unwanted expression of their sexuality is verboten (even though they're the ones who are going to have to initiate/escalate in order to *get* a relationship). When they're lonely, it's their fault. What do we teach girls? That men will take any opportunity to deprive you of every ounce of respect and dignity and that they should be avoided unless you're absolutely sure, that anything that goes wrong is *his* fault and not *yours*, and more colloquially that men will abuse you and dump you and leave you with children to struggle with. When women are lonely, it's *men's* fault. What about when there's considerable harm playing out? Who experiences the most unnatural death? Men. Who commits the most suicide? Men. Who most often dies as a result of performing a job in a dangerous profession? Men. Yet most often if you hear anything spoken about these things it'll be about the minority percentage of *women* suffering them. Journalists being killed? Well, 20% of them are women, something must be done! Suicide? 25% of them are women, something must be done! Boys and men aren't fucking *stupid*. They don't need it said directly to their face that nobody cares or, worse, that they're actively being discriminated against, because it's obvious enough *without* that. So, yeah, gee, I wonder, what could possibly cause boys and men to get the impression that nobody listens to them, that nobody's there to help and support them, that they have no purpose, that they're being neglected and punished for things they didn't do?
Boys recognise that they are now discriminated against in education and many workplaces. They get constant lectures in school about how terrible men are and how they're responsible for the bad treatment of women. There is a certain section of society that treats them like utter shit and then wonders why they hate their politics But no, it's only down to the other side hey
Isn't the point that its a disparity between girls and boys not a general trend? How is your argument then valid in your mind?
>The idea that is problem is caused by some kind of woke boogie man and not the rampant dismantlement of public services Well this flies in the face of the entire argument of systemic discrimination. We know that boys underperformed relative to girls at all levels of education. Why would the dismantlement of public services affect boys over girls?
*Californian vampires have entered the chat*
> The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. African proverb, though i'm told it was the premise for a marvel movie so is now quite well known.
We tell 12 year old boys that they are all rapists-in-waiting, that they are to blame for the behaviour of 27 year old creepy sexual harrassers because they don't call out their friends behaviour, while bombarding them with constant propaganda that girls are amazing and blameless for anything and can do anything they want. We then offer girls every possible leg-up when getting into academia and the workplace while telling boys that they need to "check their privelege" and "shut up and listen". We then turn around and wonder why said 12 year old boys feel alienated and turn to people like Tate.
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> but because the system that tells boys how to be masculine is fundamentally broken What system? Which politically acceptable figures are outlining a positive form of masculinity?
Not at all. I disagree. The fundamental social contract until recently was that even if you were a "loser", there was respect in every profession. You didn't make it in the business world and because a shoemaker, a butcher, or a factory worker? That's still alright, you're a contributing member of society. You WILL be able to provide for your families. You are absolutely spot on how it has twisted and manifested itself I think, but I believe that it used to work - but the degradation of the social contract due to a general collapse in collective personal morality has absolutely highlighted the worst parts of human nature and made it virtuous as it fills the vacuum. This is why even though objectively someone like Andrew Tate, who's selling but a shade of traditional masculinity and objectively a bad person, has so many emulators: because we've collectively said it doesn't matter how terrible a person you are, you're still "an cool guy" if you're rich. Traditional masculinity worked in the context it was in, and could've adapted to the post-empowerment reality if carefully tailored. Instead, we decided to throw it out wholesale, and the vacuum was filled by horrors beyond our wanting.
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Without even stepping outside my organization I can tell you that the graduate programme here requires no worse than a 40/60 gender balance either way at every stage, despite the fact that our applicants are probably > 90% male (statistical programming). Of course it being 60/40 *either way* makes it "fair". As a result almost every female applicant remotely appropriate gets to the final round of interviews while we're chucking extremely well qualified male candidates CVs in the bin for the most benign reasons because we have to cull 30% of them before even a phone interview. This is considered "fair". Once into the organization, there are fast-track leadership programs open only to women, to promote "fairness". Put yourself in the shoes of a male grad, who got a great degree from a great university, finally getting a grad program placement after 25 rejections, to then start and find that the female grads not only have considerably worse academics than he does but flew through the first process they applied for no bother and are immediately placed on a management fast track program he's not eligible for. I wouldn't blame them for being extremely disillusioned by this.
It was exactly the same for my last organisation, they had a competitive management track that opened each year and several years ago they announced that it was changing how they picked people and that it now had to be 50/50 men and women (and they lowered the standards to do so). I saw multiple lazy and incompetent women being promoted over and above their infinitely more talented male peers purely because the company was being pressured to hit their diversity targets, it didn't matter that it was a 90% male workforce, half of the limited management track positions were reserved for women. Women were effectively handed a management fast-track position on a silver platter by virtue of being women in a male dominated field, regardless of how useless they were at their jobs, and it absolutely killed the morale of the more qualified men that had been angling for the management track for years and resulted in the company just haemorrhaging their best senior talent who saw no other avenue for progression. It's absolutely infuriating now seeing these same women on LinkedIn in their cushy management roles reposting endless nonsense about how women have it so bad and how more needs to be done to support women when you know full well that the only reason that they are in the position that they are in is *because* they are women.
Nobody sensible disputes that women absolutely faced and in some cases do still face discrimination in the workplace, and needed help to achieve equality with men. Implied in that is that eventually, one day, that will be achieved, and unless you believe we should just continue these programs forever no matter what we need to have a grown up conversation about exactly when that will happen or indeed if it has happened and how we should move forward in the workplace henceforth. Anyone saying "equality will never be achieved" is just saying "our diversity measures don't work" with different words.
Completely agree, happens lots in finance/banking/consulting as well now.
Its not young boys responsibility to discipline their peers and its disgusting that you would expect them to as an adult woman
>Can you give examples/evidence of policies, large organisations, etc. which give specific preference to women over men all else being equal when it comes to getting into university or attaining employment? Because it would be illegal so we should probably report it. Are you kidding me lol? Just look at any university society board. There are a ton of "Women in XYZ prestigious industry" clubs aimed at helping women specifically. There are programmes which are pipelines to grad schemes and jobs exclusively for women. There are women exclusive mentoring networks and networking opportunities that men have no option to partake in. If you're touched academia in the last 5-10 years, it should be self-evident that this has been the case for some time.
We known this for generations yet the conservatives removed that helps and now with defeat they claim to care
Yes here is the take that actually matters. Conservatives have had control of education and it's policies for a decade and a half near enough, they just never care unless they can turn it into a complaint against their enemies.. Despite it being something they're responsible for at the time.
Boys are failing education are ever increasing rates, university degrees are becoming more skewed towards women, men are the majority of the suicides, drug addicted, alcoholics, gaming addicted, homelessness, work places deaths, homicides, more likely to get cancer and die from it. Men may occupy the higher rungs of society, but they also occupy the lower rungs aswel. There are reasons for all of this, and some of the reasons are mens own fault, but they definitely need help in alot of areas that are ignored currently.
If only the his party the Tories hadn’t [cut funding for youth clubs by 60%](https://www.ymca.org.uk/outofservice).
It's in reference to a disparity between girls and boys not a general trend.
They need dads. Most issues with young boys turning extreme are prevented by present fathers.
They need good dads, some of the worst cases I know teachers have seen in boys, it's their father who's a terrible influence.
*Male Role Models. They lack them at home and at school. Schools are 75% female taught. If these boys don’t have a male role model they look up to and respect, they will turn to men like Tate who offer to help them.
> *Male Role Models Which the dad should primarily be. Fatherlessness is a disaster for children. A male teacher can help but they can never fully replace a good dad.
I had a father. He was shit at it. Actively harmful the vast majority of the time and *very* rarely supportive, understanding, or appreciative. Rarely in a job the entire time I've known him (and I'm fast approaching 40), never really taught me anything of practical value, avoidant of any topics regarding relationships, and absolutely useless emotionally. Also incredibly judgemental, argumentative, self-obsessed, and frequently violent. As much as I agree that fatherhood *should* be where it starts, you can't even begin to rely on that as a guaranteed basis for a boy's upbringing. (In service of equal opportunity intergenerational trauma, my mother wasn't any better.)
Sorry you had a terrible dad. Some dads are bad, that's not in dispute. I think that most dads are better than no dad for young boys.
Thanks. He's no longer an issue. The damage is done, but I'm my own man now. But the point I was making was that I'm far from the only one who had a father like that, so I don't think you can take it for granted. Even those not as actively harmful but still useless aren't any real help for those boys trying to find direction and purpose and the right way to do things. I don't want to sound like I'm suggesting that fathers are unimportant or should be considered harmful by default, despite my own experiences, just that I think it would be a mistake to think along the lines of "he has a present father, he'll be alright", because that's not a given, far from it. I'm sure many fathers *are* good, responsible, present, understanding, helpful, and so on, and that's great. But, if we're talking about what boys need, I think we have to be aware that a father, good or bad, may not be enough. Especially if that father has to hold back the tide of cultural messaging in the process.
That's quite a sweeping generalisation.
This is a politics discussion, we talk in general terms. Social issues aren't discussed on an individual basis.
We have way more present fathers than previous generations, yet this trend of extremism in the young is growing. So something makes me thing the issue isn't necessarily about how present the dad is. I agree it can be a solution to the problem, but there are more immediate issues that likely need to be resolved.
>We have way more present fathers than previous generations Do we? https://www.statista.com/statistics/281640/single-parent-families-uk/ > this trend of extremism in the young is growing is it? Do you have a source?
That first chart is raw numbers, not per capita. In 1996, we had 58.2 million, and in 67.33 million (taken from the google front page). That percentage increase (16%) brings the 1996 value up to 2,828 thousand families, so it's basically unchanged. So we can call that a wash. [We instead then look at a study looking at exactly this issue](https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol40/30/40-30.pdf). We can see that I'm, basically wrong, but not horribly so. It's pretty much stagnated in recent years, but my biases show in that paternal engagement has increased among "higher" occupational classes but decreased among "lower" classes. We had a chunky increase during covid, that I believe has stuck around, but that's not recent enough to have any impact on our current children. **That being said**, there are other similar articles claiming [that boys today are much more likely to be closer to their dad](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/like-father-like-son-boys-today-are-twice-as-likely-to-be-close-to-their-dads-as-in-times-past-9970349.html) > These research findings confirm what psychologists and therapists are seeing in their clinics, namely the nature of fatherhood, boyhood and the relationships between fathers and their sons are more involved, more communicative and more attentive than ever. So I believe I have conflated the improvement in the type of relationships we have with our fathers, with the percentage of actually active fathers (the latter of which hasn't changed much) > is it? Do you have a source? I mean, that's why we have articles like this one referring to growing evidence of young men feeling disenfranchised. I also don't have a study on this, but I have seen [many articles](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/03/revealed-uk-children-ensnared-far-right-ecosystem-online) referring to this issue more recently. And it's a fairly new trend.
Thanks. I'll just go out and find myself a dad
You're missing the point. If we valued fathers and actively sought to instil a sense of responsibility in young men (which is precisely Jordan Peterson's method of appeal) then boys would be better off. It would also help if we brought back a taboo for casual sex as it leads to kids born into single parent families. Fathers are constantly portrayed as lazy and deadbeats in tv, film, comedy and general conversation. Dads are the butt of every joke and not esteemed so it's not surprising young men don't value fatherhood.
In times gone by, they used to say politicians were out of touch. Now, they just claim that the public has failed to adapt to the glorious vision of the politicians.
Everyone of these article is hopeless because none of them get to the heart of the issue. Which is the swipe left culture an increasing minority of men face when they try to date. They are told they should be happy being house husbands, taking low paid low status work like care work and yet when it comes to dating they face a completely different reality. The pressure is the other way, to be taller, stronger, more successful and richer. We have gone from a society in which a below average guy had a decent expectation of getting married and having a family. Even if he had a working class job. To one in which such men are frankly obsolete and have little hope of that happening. Alas as well meaning as William Hague is, he doesn't have a solution to that problem.
Prevention is the best cure. We should be pouring money into early years education, social services, poverty prevention, community programmes and mental health services so no one becomes a lost boy in the first place.
Magic money tree etc
Investment is a good use of magic money trees, brother
Said William as he opened the Young Conservative Conference?
When I read that my first thought was he was talking about back bench Tory MPs.
They may join the Tory party and become leader.
I was going to say that in the worst case scenario they can grow mullets and turn into vampires - but I guess that's the *second* worst case scenario.
[удалено]
>we need “a positive vision of masculinity that is compatible with gender equality” ok but then >thinkers on the political left, in an age of “woke” ideas, too easily ignore the fact that there are biological differences between men and women, and label masculinity as toxic. I'm not sure why this concept is so hard to grasp. If you accept that you can have "a positive vision of masculinity that is compatible with gender equality", then you should also be able to accept that you can have a vision of masculinity that *isn't* compatible with gender equality, a vision of masculinity that is damaging to men and to society general ie a *toxic* masculinity. Would not a a vision of masculinity where the "Use of steroids and similar drugs to enhance body shape is thought to have risen ten-fold in the past decade" be toxic? Or a view of masculinity that causes men to commit suicide at three times the rate of women? Or the view "“Real men are right-wing, real men have ideals, real men are patriots. Then you’ll get a girlfriend.” Or Tate’s views on what it means to be a man. Aren't those reasonably described as toxic? Now, he might be a genuine idiot although I suspect he isn't, so is he just playing the same tired culture war games of pretending that the term "toxic masculinity" is an attack on men rather than a description of a cultural problem, that sometimes people have conceptions of gender roles that are harmful. It may well be that this popular (and seemingly deliberately encouraged) confusion does mean that "toxic masculinity" is a *useful* term for broader public discourse. But as he readily admits by implication everywhere else, *it is a real problem.* And you don't effectively deal with problems by pretending there isn't one, or that admiting there is a problem is the actual problem. I mean, that kind of thinking is a bit *toxic,* isn't it?
> Now, he might be a genuine idiot although I suspect he isn't, so is he just playing the same tired culture war games of pretending that the term "toxic masculinity" is an attack on men rather than a description of a cultural problem, that sometimes people have conceptions of gender roles that are harmful. 20-30 years ago we were having this conversation about women and girls contracting eating disorders because the cultural messaging around them associated femininity with being the same shape as a pencil. We all agreed that this was bad, that we shouldn't be associating femininity with having no curves, no substance, that it's not normal to aspire to show off your ribcage. We also agree, presently, that if a disadvantaged/minority group does not appreciate the language other people use to describe it, that language should cease being used because it's offensive and oppressive. Doing otherwise, against their wishes, even accidentally, is "microaggressions" at best, hostile bigotry, or even an expression of violence against them. So how is it that now, if men say "hey, please stop associating everything bad in the world with words that relate to manhood and masculinity" (such as "toxic masculinity", "misogyny", "*internalised* misogyny", "male privilege", "patriarchy", and so on), the supposedly progressive camps just yell those words harder and tell us we just don't understand it/ourselves/our place in the world, and can't comprehend that young men are going to be affected by this constant association with negativity?
The demographic is young boys, not academics. Pretend you are a vulnerable preteen who knows nothing about anything. Google "toxic masculinity." What you will find is a content mill of thousands of articles from click bait culture warriors torturously labeling almost any male pattern behavior as "toxic" and playing it for engagement. It does not matter what the academic definition of the term is, because that is not how struggling 12 year old boys are interfacing with it, nor do they even have the cognitive ability at that age to properly abstract it. 20 years ago we had the collective ability to recognize that perhaps saturating the cultural space with twig thin women was indeed having some material impact on the mental and physical health of young girls.
Absolutely. But for the benefit of those who say "well, get offline then", it doesn't just stop at those zeitgeist-abusing content farms, it's in the public consciousness too. Media, education, charities, law enforcement, government. Little hints and references to it everywhere. So, yes, you might not get the raw raging feminism of TikTok and Tumblr if you "go offline", but young men can put two and two together and see that the stuff they see and hear in real life is just a badly repainted copy of the same sentiments, presented as something more mild and benign. They still know how people feel about boys and men. That it's not expressed as directly in terms of outright hostility offline is neither here nor there, it's still present and still detectable. The two support each other. The online people can refer to government stats, campaigns, and so on (and scare people into voting for parties who'll Do Something About It), and the offline people lend credence to the validity of the righteous online crowd. Because they're both singing from the same hymn book. The only difference is that the online are singing it in the style of a death metal band and the offline people are singing it in the style of Miley Cyrus or Beyonce. Still the same songs though, just varying degrees of aggression.
It can be men of all ages. I have a mate aged 43 who has fallen into the manosphere hole. Joe Rogan seemed to be the gateway in this case.
[16 year old William Hague] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL_p9qjfu5U)
I wish Tory ideologues like Hague had seen this coming and cautioned their party about it a decade ago. Now I'm not sure there's anyone left that'll listen to them.