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On Masculinity and the War on Poverty

Melanie Sturm | @ThinkAgainUSA Read Comments - 22
Publish Date: 
Wed, 01/15/2014

 

As a binge-TV watcher, I’ve relished devouring serial dramas in advertising-free gulps. But “Breaking Bad” -- the story about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher turned clandestine meth-cooking badass – didn’t appeal.


Then Anthony Hopkins declared it an “epic work” with “the best actors I’ve ever seen.”

 

Midway through Season 2,  I understand why Walter White is heroic. As men increasingly check out of work, marriage, and fatherhood, it’s hard not to root for a man fiercely determined to secure his family’s future before dying – despite his morally abhorrent methods.  

 

That there are dramatically fewer men willing and able to safeguard family prosperity is perhaps America’s greatest – and unrecognized -- problem.

 

Consider Sunday’s “Shattering the Glass Ceiling” discussion on ABC’s “This Week.” Lamenting unrealized opportunities and unsolved problems when “women aren’t fully utilized,” businesswoman Carly Fiorina and co-panelists were oblivious that two times more men than women aged 25-34 languish in their parents’ basement far below the glass ceiling, according to US Census data, and that women now outperform men in nearly every measure of social, academic and vocational well-being.

 

Rather than apply Band-Aids to the cancer of male-underachievement -- like unemployment insurance extensions and minimum wage hikes -- political elites must Think Again. 

 

Focus on the real gender gap: millions of males, especially less-educated, are “unhitched from the engine of growth,” according to a recent Brookings Institution report.  Women gained all 74,000 jobs added to payrolls last month, and among the world’s seven biggest economies, America is now last in the share of “prime age” males working – just behind Italy. Why isn’t widespread male worklessness a priority for policymakers, given the massive economic, fiscal and social costs?

 

Fifty years after President Johnson declared the War on Poverty “to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities,” we’ve spent an inflation-adjusted $20.7 trillion on 80-plus welfare programs -- $916 billion, or $9,000 per beneficiary, in 2012.

 

Yet 2013 ended with rates of government dependency and chronic joblessness near 50-year highs. Meanwhile, though inflation-adjusted GDP-per-capita has more than doubled since 1969, men’s average annual earnings dropped 28 percent, according to Brookings.

 

Since 1960, the percentage of married Americans plunged from 72 percent to 51 percent, while the rate of unwed motherhood skyrocketed from 4 percent to 41 percent, causing 24 million boys to be raised in fatherless homes – ominous trends considering children of single mothers experience less economic mobility.

 

As the New York Times explained, the ensuing vicious cycle means less successful men “are less attractive as partners, so some women are choosing to raise children by themselves, in turn often producing sons who are less successful and attractive as partners.”

 

Two recent books, both “cries-de-coeur” in support of men, chronicle the male achievement gap and propose remedies – “The War Against Boys,” by American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, and “Men on Strike,” by psychologist Helen Smith.

 

Citing myriad studies, Sommers details how educational reforms and ideologies that deny gender differences have created hostile environments for rough-and-tumble boys, causing a serious academic achievement gap.

 

Out: structured, competitive, teacher-directed classrooms that best support boys’ learning; and outlets for natural rambunctiousness, including conflict-oriented play like cops and robbers. Last year, 7-year-old Coloradan Alex Smith was suspended for throwing an imaginary grenade at “bad guys.”


In: behavior-modifying drugs designed to make boys attentive and controlled.  

 

Distressingly, boy-enthralling, job-directed schools -- like Aviation High School in the Bronx, which specializes in teaching and graduating at-risk kids -- are under assault because females are under-represented. Sommers laments that “male-specific interventions” -- including masculine readings, single-sex learning opportunities, and teachers trained in boy-friendly pedagogy – “invites passionate and organized opposition” from feminist groups.

 

As young men disengage from school, alarming numbers are opting-out of post-secondary education, considered by Sommers the “passport to the American Dream.” Women disproportionately possess these passports, having earned post-secondary degrees in the following percentages: associate’s (62), bachelor’s (58), master’s (60), doctorates (52).

 

Expanding on Sommers’ argument, Smith taps into her counseling experience to explain that by opting-out of family life, risk-averse men are responding rationally to social institutions that offer fewer rewards and more costs.

 

The pendulum has swung too far, Smith argues, when male victims of statutory rape and paternity fraud are made liable for child support, or when collegiate men are assumed sexual predators before proven innocent (see the Duke Lacrosse case).

 

America’s young men aren’t “Breaking Bad” drug dealers, but they are suffering bad breaks in a society rife with misguided policies. The answer is not to “raise boys like we raise girls,” as Gloria Steinhem suggested, but to recognize that while the sexes are equal, they’re naturally different – and that’s beautiful.

 

Every human being arrives on earth with unique gifts, and our short life’s mission is to realize them. Shouldn’t society’s goal be to enable this process?

 

Think Again – isn’t closing the gender gap the true definition of feminism?

 

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Who hasn’t witnessed the

Who hasn’t witnessed the destruction wrought upon society through modern feminism? Today (and for the past several decades), through marriage, your worst nightmares can be realized.

Feminist will claim that women have it far better now, all thanks to feminism. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are more women living in poverty now than ever before. Billions are spent through welfare to support single mothers who use the state as their provider and protector. Feminism is a hate movement against men.

A lot more effort needs to be put towards warning people of the life-destroying dangers of marriage. Our societal values no longer support this institution. How many additional millions of lives must be destroyed before we admit that marriage, to a large extent, causes more damage to peoples lives than any other societal ill? Feminism is at the heart of this destruction. Feminism is not about equality. It’s about control, power and superiority. Modern feminism is outright fascism.

Marriage and family cannot coexist with modern feminism. Under modern feminism, it is men that are the biggest losers in marriage. Modern feminism makes marriage obsolete. Every single statistic that measures the health of a society has declined significantly with the rise of feminism.

http://gynocentrism.com I

http://gynocentrism.com

I learned a lot about the history of feminism from the above site. There’s a plethora on this site regarding the history of gynocentrism (it goes way, way back). The hypocrisy of feminism, both then and now, is infuriating and has had a horrific impact on society.

The truth is, feminism has done exactly the opposite of what it intended. It has enslaved women to corporate America, forced them to leave their children in the hands of strangers and has rejected men in favor of the state as provider and protector. Children from single parent and divorced households make up the vast majority of the incarcerated, addicted and homeless.

What amazes me is that women thought they could eschew their traditional roles and that men would simultaneously choose to maintain theirs. It’s the old “have your cake and eat it, too” mentality. Only when men started to reject their traditional roles have women started to complain, “What’s wrong with men?” You can’t have it both ways. You can’t reject your traditional roles, label all men as oppressors, molesters and rapists and then expect men to be excited about familial or intimate relationships with women.

In line with the above, as women gain more “independence”, female perpetrated abuse, child molestation, murder and all sorts of female perpetrated crimes have skyrocketed. Female addiction and depression have followed the same trajectory. So very telling, is this not?

Tis national suicide. One need only look to Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, large parts of Europe and South Korea to see how this will end. America’s indigenous will be largely replaced by foreign cultures with stronger opinions of men and family values. Maybe that’s a good thing

Ladies – this is your problem to fix. Men are waking up and realizing that intimate relationships with women have a high probability of destroying their lives. Without any incentives, men will continue to drop out in droves. For responsible, hard working men, marriage and family have become the most likely place to have their lives and futures obliterated. This is the sad reality of modern life in most anti-male, overly feminized cultures.

Feminism jumped the shark long ago. As it exists now, feminism is an anti-male hate movement.

"Why isn’t widespread male

"Why isn’t widespread male workless-ness a priority for policymakers..."

Because middle class white women are getting jobs, therefore no problem.

Most of them likely did not

Most of them likely did not vote. At all. The problem is that women vote and vote for security over freedom.

Once enough "irrelevant" men decide that things will change, they'll do it with violence.

The problem isn't R's and D's, left and right - the problem is modern hubris denying what made civilization in the first place: Men are the masters of homes, and without family there is nothing.

There is a reason no great society ever existed when women were in charge. Because they would always fail. As we see happening right before our eyes.

The idiotic boy-men sitting

The idiotic boy-men sitting in mama's basement whining about how unfair it is voted twice for the Obamanation. Who cares what they think now. They made themselves irrelevant.

Modern feminism has been a

Modern feminism has been a victory for men. Before feminism a man was the sole source of income for the family. He worked to provide the roof over their heads, food, clothing, education, enough for the wife so she never had to work a day of her life and an estate after he was gone. Now, working mothers have lifted some or all of that burden off the shoulders of men and have enthusiastically grabbed the roles of child-raiser and financial provider. I stress, enthusiastically. Men have been given the opportunity to relax and watch this societal change from the sidelines. Given the level of propaganda under which this trick has been buried, it will be some time before the women victims of this plot realize how badly duped they have been.

I agree with the comment

I agree with the comment about women being women's (and everyone's) worst enemies in the workplace.

My last job was at a large engineering company. The department where I worked - and contributed - was run entirely by poorly trained, backstabbing women who abused the staff, both men and women. It was insufferable. (The browbeaten eunuchs in the department who toed "the party line" were left alone, of course.) The flagrant deceit, brazen theft of credit for other people´s ideas, endless nit-picking, and downright meanness shocked everyone.

I decided to retire and move to Ecuador. Life is just too short. The result? One less well-trained, productive, tax-paying male in the California workplace, and one less participant in the US labor force. (Like so many men who "opt out," I was in my prime working years.) What´s left? One blissfully liberated man. And three mendacious, overpaid, pettifogging, incompetent jobsworths who abuse everyone around them. I pity those who are left behind, I really do. At least I was able to escape.

Does anyone really believe that today´s Kabuki theater of feminized corporate hyper-sensitivity training, and brazen disregard of the demands of engineering and other "hard" sciences, and equal-opportunity managerial mediocrity, and ginned-up attacks on competent, plain-spoken, self-assured men by shrill harpies can continue indefinitely without drastic consequences for this nation and its economy?

Women need men to hold them in check and - likewise - men need women to hold them in check; otherwise, everything gets out of whack. Everything is out of whack.

America is in serious trouble, and militant, ruthlessly enforced, politically correct gender "equality" is making everything worse. Too many women have lost respect for what men bring to the table, and too many men have simply been browbeaten into submission. Atlas is shrugging. Everyone loses.

I am a woman who worked in an

I am a woman who worked in an office run by women. They were downright mean, nasty, petty backstabbers. They destroyed an office that was respected statewide as on of the best because of their ineptness.

My office was a microcosm of what is happening in this country today. Any business that functions well does so with a balance of male and female personalities that offset each other´s strengths and weaknesses.

There is much truth in this

There is much truth in this article.

The mention of behavior-modifying drugs strikes a chord. I was picking up one of my children from the school nurse´s office years ago, and there was a line of little boys (this was middle school, grades 5-8) was standing in front of the nurse´s desk. She handed each one his pill and a cup of water, they downed them, and left. I couldn´t imagine what was going on, until I heard one of the little boys say "I´m here for my Ritalin."

My blood runs cold at this memory. There must have been 20 little boys.

The other side of the problem

The other side of the problem is that what passes for a masculine role model, like Walter White, is often a gang banger or a steroid swollen warrior that commits wholesale mayhem in a video game. The Duke said “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do”, and manhood should embrace other manly behavior like grinding away in a tedious job or descending miles down into a coal mine for a 14 hour workday 6 times a week. And enduring and persevering without whining or self-pity. That’s what a man’s gotta do.

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