If young men want ‘traditional’ gender roles, we need to know why - Kathleen Stock

I mean, yes, that's kind of the idea, but it's ignoring a few elements - creating a stable family structure for children is a major part of this, and arguably from an evolutionary POV that's more important than how well it works for women or men.

I also would point out that just as a proportion of men are less than average, so are a proportion of women. The latter are more likely to procreate regardless, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are great prospects for mates themselves. The sense that women are all great and some have to settle for shitty men is a little misleading.

I'm not sure the view that feminism can be harmful is necessarily 'a backward step in attitudes to gender equality'. It might be but some of what is passed off as feminism nowadays is just an excuse to moan about men for some. Most people don't like ranty blue haired nutters tbh which is defo some of the 'feminists' young men will encounter at college/uni. 🤣

You see them banging on and on about how shit men are but then when challenged they suddenly go all "wut, you don't believe in equality/women's rights/etc?".

I live in the USA but my son has been well raised to know you never make a cup of tea for yourself without asking if anyone else wants one. The day he starting bringing me cups of tea made all those late night feeds worth it.

I think I'd roll my eyes a little at the kettle bit tbh. I don't think I've ever met a single bloke that can't manage to make a cuppa at home. I'm sure it'd be less well received if we had a woman trying to change a tyre and breaking a nail or something. 🤣

Don't despair. I don't trust these simplistic surveys. This thread shows the multiple interpretations on what feminism actually is.

https://theconversation.com/gen-z-boys-attitudes-to-feminism-are-more-nuanced-than-negative-222532#:~:text=Young%20men%20are%20more%20likely,done%20more%20harm%20than%20good.
Who’s a feminist?In our recent experience of working in schools delivering and evaluating an educational session designed to address harmful sexual behaviour in schools, we asked the young people how many would identify themselves as a feminist. In response, there were often just two or three hands raised, often accompanied by an odd snide comment from one of the boys.Both boys and girls seem disinclined to endorse feminism, with this perhaps counter-intuitive tendency among young women having been seen for some time.But when we probe a little deeper and ask if they believe in equality between genders or what they understand by feminism, a different picture emerges.The young people we work with often have a firm understanding of the inequality that exists between men and women. They typically endorse the idea that people should not be restricted or disadvantaged by their gender, but that possible disadvantage as a result of gender is nuanced and flows in both directions: both boys and girls are affected by gender stereotypes and pressures.The girls in the room are quick to point out the double standards which, they feel, means they are judged more harshly and experience more social shaming connected to their bodies and sexual behaviour than boys. They talk about the effect of gender inequality on their ability to make free choices and to feel safe in their day-to-day lives. Unwanted attention, sexual harassment and feeling unsafe are still a rite of passage for teenage girls.The boys, meanwhile, with the demands of masculinity thrust upon them, rarely consider themselves powerful or privileged. They are often insecure in their bodies, embarrassed and out of their depth – especially in their intimate and sexual relationships where they are expected to take control.We have found that young people have a straightforward desire for authentic and healthy relationships be that with their same- or opposite-sex peers. They find it difficult to translate these aspirations into reality, however, as they navigate existing social and cultural expectations and pressures surrounding gender and relationships.Boys and young men, in particular, are pulled between ideas of traditional masculinity and demands to be emotionally self-aware and sensitive

You are now putting words into my mouth and making out that I am some sort of right wing fascist. I really take acceptation to your India comment.

I did not answer your points because they were not worthy of answering due to the fact you flew off the handle in some sort of social justice rant that I didn’t think was warranted or fair.

fwiw I totally agree with much of what you say. I do think as previously stated that I think capitalism is prone to exploitation and there is sexism infiltrating way too many of the infinite hierarchies that make up our world. But I do not think that it defines what capitalism sets out to achieve, rather it is comes as a result of corruption.

i do think that the way you see the world as being simply a ‘power and oppression’ fight between two groups, in this case men and women, conspiratorial. In any other case believing that there are unseen powers coming together and working against you in every faculty of your life to disempower you suggests to me that you have a victim mentality.

just out of interest, what does ‘success’ look like to you if you think that capitalism in every single way has been a failure? What is the alternative that you seem to know about that has been overlooked by just about everyone who has ever lived? Or do the powers that be actually know how to unlock a fair, harmonious and plentiful society but just choose to keep it under wraps because they are too busy finding new ways of oppressing women and anyone who isn’t a heterosexual white guy?

your version of feminism seems very reliant on obtaining men’s approval. I would like to live in a world where I do not need their permission to get on in life and teach my potential. I’d like to do it independently of them. So long as there are safeguarding measures and laws in place that serve to ensure my physical well-being, i will be fine thank you without the blessing of men. I don’t need them to approve of me or like me. The trouble is safeguarding and anti corruption is not taken seriously enough nor is it enforced and we therefore have our institutions full up of misogynists and psychopaths.

@Plzdontaskmyname isn't it the case that even recently, men had to have something to offer in order to be with a woman. In this country, they'd usually used to have to have a job, date and make a nice impression then ask permission from the girls father.
It seems now that even the most laziest and undesirable man can trap a woman.
Btw im not saying the first scenario is ideal. I like that women are now independent and able to make a choice but they often don't make good choices! What's happened there?

My TikTok algorithm took me to feminism tiktok a while ago.

Young women seem very clear on what they want - men to take equal share of shitty household jobs, equal share of the mental load, to take equal care of children so it’s not all down to their mother. There seem to be more women demanding better behaviour from potential partners, and will happily be single rather than dating a man who won’t step up.

Many men responding to these take real umbrage at them - we have to make the money (no you don’t, women can also work), we have to do the heavy lifting and the nasty jobs (women stepped into these roles very well during WW2!). There are reams of excuses why these men cannot and will not step up (obligatory NAMALT), and their actions once children are on the scene show how little they are committed to being equal partners and parents (based on families I know).

There’s then that thing where the young women saying “men! Do better!” also say “porn? Oh men have needs”, accept harmful sex practices as normal, which, whilst that seems great for men, as increasing deviant porn is becoming more and more acceptable, is actually also teaching them that women are expendable, women are there for their entertainment.

It must be confusing for growing boys (and continue the conditioning for girls) who see every day that women are the ones who teach them (I believe around 75% of teachers are women, happy to be corrected), who clean up after them, who feed them, who make sure their clothes are clean, then at some point they watch porn and see women in this whole other role, but still meeting men’s “needs” and “looking after them”, and rape is basically decriminalised, which sends even more confusing messages to boys and men.

Women are ready and willing to be equal earners, to take the bins out, to do the diy, to be equal partners, but too many men are resisting this and still want the status quo that allows them their freedoms, their choice to opt out of “women’s work”. Too many men are showing very clearly that they want women to be equal but still take on the wife and mother work.

I don’t know what the answer is but I think it involves better male role models on tv and films, more decent men teaching, porn being much more difficult to access.

If that theory is true, then it will only be solved by a few generations of strict female mate choice. If men who can't find any women who want to reproduce their genes are simply issued a woman anyway against her wishes, that society will continue to have men who can't find any women that want to reproduce with them, forever, and will have to keep forcing women to have sex with those undesirable men, forever.

Historical social studies have shown that monogamous societies are the most stable and most productive.
Younger societies are more violent, which isn't so surprising as you have comparatively more young men. It's another reason to explain the harshness or earlier societies.

What is missing from this discussion is a reality check on what humans are.

Pretty much all anthropologists and biologists conclude that at least 50 percent of men would be rejected by women who don't see them as good partners and wouldn't have sex with them, in history and in traditional societies.

That's not a good situation because it will cause war among the men as they compete for women.

We all have far more female ancestors than male because so many men didn't reproduce. Men will go to war for other thigs too of course.

So what I'm saying is that the traditional set up is great for men, and marriage is encouraged to tame men into being less violent, and trap women into domisticity so they are too busy to have other men while making life more cushy for the husband.

Jordon Peterson talks about this and said he concludes that he doesn't see a better way for society to be run than the traditional family because if women rejected the massive amounts of undesirable men, the rejected would cause terrible trouble. It's better if that substandard man has a woman. But what about the woman?

Aggression and violence are natural drives, much more pronounced in males. Amazing we don't properly acknowledge this.

There’s quite a bit of academic research to support your view; exams have always benefitted children who are perceived as lower achieving, but could show their abilities through (relatively) objective measurement. In the nineteenth century the performance of girls in the College of Preceptors exams played an important role in shaping perceptions of female academic ability. The same was true of Britons from ethnic minorities in the twentieth century.

I suspect that relative performance between the sexes in exams now probably has no relation to “sudden death” performance, more to other factors.

Not sure I'm totally sold on this coursework suiting girls/sudden death exams suiting boys more....I am elderly and took my 11+ in the 1950s. Girls were, even then, excelling boys in the exam to the point where they required a higher mark to be accepted into grammar school so that the boy/girl ratio in those schools remained roughly 50/50 as oppposed to 60/40 ish. A quick google will confirm the accuracy of what I am saying.

*So again whether men / boys understand expectations as something they are entitled to but women / girls learn early that you have to work (including housework) to earn things.

A bit like the often referred to reason why having introduced course work to be taken into account for exam results, it was taken out because too many young women were getting top marks, an young men were no longer the high achievers. ie women learn early that you cant just wing it at the last moment, but have to plan, put things in place, because if you dont no one else (except maybe your mum) is going to do it.*

The counterpoint is that no-one could ever get a good mark in a traditional exam (O-levels, pre-reform A-levels) without a relatively deep-seated subject understanding, which would require study and work. So “winging it” just doesn’t cut it as a performance explanation, and framing it in these terms shows some significant biases.

One of the general drivers over the introduction of coursework was that it had a role as a participation award, designed to reward children who were compliant and agreeable, to compensate for lack of ability, to allow anyone taking part to get some kind of grade (versus, for instance, an O level). Is this a good idea? That’s a complex question, but it’s important not to treat educational theory and practice as a neutral phenomenon.

👏

@BritishBeatleMania

I agree with this. But also, as I have said below, I actually think that some of the expectations women have been sold have been a bit unrealistic, hence the backlash.

@Dargawn 😁

@IwantToRetire

And also "made men the problem they now are"? Women have had years of oppression, but this is extremely unhelpful rhetoric, frankly. Yes, men as a class are the violent ones and there are many negatives to living in a world build by men for men.

BUT, we should also admit that some of the structures of society originally aimed to protect women (from men and, more negatively and unforgivably, from perceived female limitations). Many women did and do want to be able to stay at home to raise children - part of the gender pay gap is accounted for by the fact that many women do WANT this. True choice would be to allow them to do it or to drop back and to come back to a career without too great a penalty rather than only offering them "working just like a man" as the only option. And to celebrate men doing it too.

I do feel that some of the talk of absolute equality has done a disservice to both sexes. It has perpetuated a bit of a myth that women can have it all - as Laura Trott said very recently, you definitely can have a career and a family, but you have to be comfortable with the level of sacrifice in both spheres (time with kids vs time working - it does not make you a bad mum for wanting to work full time - different women will weight and balance the need to be with their kids differently and that is ok, but of course working full time will likely mean less time with your kids!). This has lead, of late, to a really negative discussion around motherhood led by those who really truly believed it - look at motherland, hilarious, yes, but also, frankly fucking off-putting. And on here, being a SAHM is often derided even apart from the (very reasonable) discussion of the question of women potentially being economically exposed, with comments about SAHMs being uninteresting drudges, basically. Speaking as a magic circle corporate lawyer, I wish I had listened less to the career stuff and had my kids in my late twenties rather than early thirties - would have been the death knell to my career, but what a blessed relief to be part of a unit that isn't just about you all the fucking time and to make the most of the energy I had at that point in my life - I'm not supposed to say this, though, as it is bad feminism :)

Women are of course totally capable of being equal to their male counterparts, but this doesn't mean that they are necessarily absolutely the same or should be. Maybe, creating a world in which we have to pretend that we are (because saying that they are not has generally been used to suppress women) is hindering progress, in terms of celebrating some more "female" characteristics (eg discussing the positives of risk aversion to boards, to conflict resolution processes etc) and in creating space to celebrate and understand difference, and to discuss maleness in a more nuanced way than simply "patriarchy - bad". I know that my husband operates under different domestic and social expectations than I do, which can be irritating, but I also know that if one of had to die he would sacrifice himself for me and our kids without a second thought.

Male-dominated society is not just about violence keeping women down, it is also about the reality of living in a pre-contraception world in which, frankly, women's biology kept them very busy and often shortened their healthy lives. Women in the west don't live in that world any more - that should be of benefit to women and men. Why does it have to come at men's expense? Why can't we discuss this more positively?

@IwantToRetire is literally going to be having a meltdown after that @Queenmaker.

Reading this thread I get the impression that a number of women think men should be remodeled and remade into a version that women think they want. What about what men want? As the two sexes, it's always going to be a dance between us of compromise as noone is perfect and what women and men want can be quite different. Also, a huge reason for the disruption of sex roles in society is not just down to the rise of Feminism, but fundamental changes in the economy. While jobs that many working men did (and most women didn't want to do) such as mining, heavy manufacturing and ship building have steeply declined, white collar, educational and medical jobs have all increased in a service economy, which tend to more attractive to women at a time that women have been entering the workforce and gaining higher education.

However, what women find sexually attractive in men hasn't massively changed, they still want physically fit, independent, ambitious, kind and generous men who can provide. Women don't generally find men who are very similar to themselves as sexually attractive. It's those women and men that reproduce that will form the future society and it's now those who are most liberal that are the least likely to have kids. I think the patterns of human behavior that produce the most kids will continue, whatever the philosophy and theories we hold. I still see religious and more traditional family structures around me as being the most stable with larger numbers of kids. If we can't find a way to remake the family in a way that appeals to men and women, then people will stick with what has worked (with all it's imperfections). Obviously if very egalitarian couples only have 1 kid (or none) while a religious couple has 3 or 4, the future is much more likely to be socially conservative.

you have certainly read a lot into my post which I don’t think was particularly controversial or extreme.

it’s a bit sad if you throw around Tate and MRA accusations just because someone looks at the world differently to you.

quite immature actually