Britain’s lost boys Sonia Sodha

Chairs, yes, good points. Perhaps part of helping men out would be improving what's on offer for women and girls.

Make brownies and guides better. Provide good tool libraries and lessons and workshop space for women.

Is it all really a question of resources? All of which used to be unquestioningly there for the use of men, now opened up to women?

Maybe it is as simple as rights really are pie, and the emancipation of women has meant fewer resources for men, or that men have to work for things they used to expect as an entitlement.

Probably a mix.

This is the thing - people need to understand what they're asking for.

When I was a child, lone women got 'looks' (best case. Chucked out not uncommon) if they ventured in the pub (I'm not that old - late 40s - but I've been given a half pint when I asked for a pint when younger)

Women were only allowed in the cricket pavilion in the village to set up and serve tea. Women were only allowed into the working men's club by invitation, weren't allowed in the snooker hall. I can't remember what else but lots of places excluded women.

This wouldn't be a problem if there were equivalent facilities for women, but of course there weren't (and where would they go - the pavilion/cricket green for the men already took up the middle of the village, along with the pub) - women, having been excluded from owning property/having well paying jobs for so long, and having the responsibility for the home and family didn't have the resources to buy these kinds of properties now, and weren't allowed to in the past when these men's facilities were set up. That's why so many were forced to open to women - because it was blatantly unfair.

If men wanted to meet up alone, they could start clubs in each others houses, or in private rooms in pubs, just like women have. I have limited sympathy for men being so convinced that they earned and deserved these things but women didn't, that they haven't moved with the times and come up with new ways to hang out together.

Hmm @Wildflowers, I agreed w most of your post, but surely you don't want a return to these norms around pubs?

True about English- but surely boys & girls should read books w both male & gemale mcs? After all English is meant to be stuff you can easily relate to but also stuff to build empathy, esp w those who are different- including half the human race!

Jordan Peterson ofc says a lot of decent stuff. The issue is when he's saying that patriarchy (as in men mostly being in power) is bc women aren't competent enough. Or promoting David Deida, whose whole shtick is that women are blobs of feeling while men are the intellectual ones, who shouldn't take what women say too seriously.

People should read Louise Perry's take on him in the Critic. She is fair & sympathetic, pointing out that his main issue is that he is quite agreeable & sensitive (ironically more feminine!) so loves praise & won't reign in his more unreconstructed followers

https://x.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1715074395415425099

https://asylury.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/we-need-to-talk-about-david-deida/

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/april-2020/the-feminist-case-for-jordan-peterson/

Sort of. There were fewer spots for girls, so girls needed higher marks to get one of those places.

yeah - in pubs women were allowed in the saloon/lounge, but not at the bar (and definitely not unaccompanied!). Probably wouldn't be served pints, might be expected to leave after a certain time.

Can you believe in Ireland this was the case in some places up to 2002 (and past that, given that actual implementation requires a woman to do it, not just the law to be there)

Isn’t divorce and single parenthood a factor- the main resident parent is nearly always the mother.

Back in the 50s didn’t they fiddle the eleven plus exam results so that more boys got into Grammar Schools.

Agreed. Sometimes there were legit8mate issues- eg. Guides less independent than Scouts but that could have been fixed inside. & stuff like the Garrick Club was bad bc it was a prime source of networking. But ordinary men's clubs etc should be fine. We're there ever single sex pubs tho? 😂

Was the education system less feminine- targeted back in the 50s? As in, surely there were strict rules against horseplay & disobedience in lessons then? And you had to pay attention? Surely now there's more understanding of different ways of learning, not less?

To you... to those of us 'in the community' (I can't believe those words came out of my mouth) it's totally fine..

Now yes, there are those of us who are indeed basement dwellers. But as I said, in real life, at my game (and while I was at Uni) 6 of the 8 are happily coupled up (many with kids), one is long-term single, and one divorced - we're normal people.

The gaming club at Uni was massive and I, as a lone 18 year old girl was able to walk in and find a game to play. I was less intimidated walking in there than I was into my similarly male dominated physics lectures.

What I'm saying is, that in geek circles, there's no stigma, there's just enthusiasm. Aside from religious parents, I've never seen stigma from parents (well, maybe Warhammer, those little metal shavings are a bugger for getting everywhere) - plenty of parents drop their kids off to games workshop on a Saturday morning.

The most there is, is a lack of knowledge (which you are also displaying here, thinking these are online things)

It was a question of funding for ours. Dependent on being 'open to all'. Fine, but it destroyed the whole point of the shed, which was to help older men.

The local men's shed now admits and is largely consisting of women. So the one place that a lot of lonely older men used to have to go and have awkward, blokeish conversation about engine parts is now just another mixed sex club, like all the other local clubs.

To be fair, our local men's shed is men only still, but, the reason another one went mixed up the road is because they liked the women coming in and bringing food and cleaning it for them.

Men only complained about women in working men's clubs (cricket clubs, rugby clubs etc) when they suggested that perhaps they could be full members, and not just invited to come along and bring food occasionally.

Yes, younger men are different. Many older men are very isolated, because over the course of a lifetime they often seem to lose friendships in a way that women don't.

Part of this in fact may well be that men get used to women doing the socialising and emotional load for them. Women tend to take care of the social side of things, and men can get left behind, eventually.

Women are generally adept at forming and maintaining networks of family and friends.

Men's sheds were a great way to help men form connections and friendship groups in a way that suited them.

On various threads on MN where RPG players have been brought up as a better source of male partner, it has been shot down as those that play are seen as basement dwellers, socially award and still live with mum and dad.

I think RPGers have been confused with obsessive video gamers. RPGs require you to leave the house and meet with your fellow players.

Boys and men need to feel they can offer something positive as male people

Learning to drive a vacuum cleaner would be something positive they can offer as male people. But that's "women's work".

One of the reasons why I didn't learn to cook until I was in my late twenties is internalised misogyny: cooking is "women's work" and I don't do "women's work" because I'm "not like the other girls", in fact I'm not really a woman but a man trapped in a woman's body (see also: gender dysphoria).

If "that's women's work" deters a woman from learning tasks that an ex-bf (who is a fabulous cook) rightly dubbed "not women's work, survival work", then it's going to deter men from learning it too.

They like the idea of survival skills, of engaging with the wild, camping, making fires, stalking, acts of physical strength ( lifting, pulling, hauling, building).

So do girls! A huge driver of my internalised misogyny is how everything targeted at girls is pretty, pink, and pathetic. All the cool stuff is labelled as being for boys.

You'd prefer us to go back to the old, pre-safeguarding days? I knew boys whose parents wouldn't let them join Scouts because of the reputation the leadership had for fiddling the kids.

A lot of men don't come close to your ideal dad standard. That's why there's so many single mums...

I think socialisation alters the expression of anger in women (crying where men would shout) and at the same time testosterone is a potent hormone that exacerbates anger.

When I was on Danazol, I punched a hole in a door. I don't come close to behaving like that when I'm not on it.

No. It was in those "good old days" that women's refuges were first founded, so the need for said refuges was present back then.

Scouts was pressured into opening up to girls because Guides sucks by comparison.

To give a side-by-side comparison of the Scouts and Guides on camp at opposite ends of the same field in the mid-90s:

• The Scouts cooked in cookout shelters, per patrol, learning to cook on a fire pit and cooking daily. The Guides used a sort of camp range that was raised off the ground and one patrol each day on a rota cooked for the whole troop, so not cooking daily.
• The Scouts were supervised but not assisted by leaders. The Guides, the leader did most of the cooking and the "cooking" patrol were mostly washing pots and feeding the fire. And with a whole patrol tasked to that, we got in each other's way.
• The Scouts had to plan their evening meals and bring their own evening meal food. (Breakfast and lunch was supplied but they had to prep it.) The Guides had meals planned by the leaders and the food was included in the price of camp.
• The Scouts were responsible for fetching their own water each day, per patrol. The Guides had one patrol per day, on a rota, fetching water.
• The same but for emptying the latrines.
• The same, but for fetching firewood.
• The Scouts went rock climbing. The Guides went swimming.
• The Scouts built bivouacs in the woods and "slept out" one night. The Guides didn't. I was so jealous of the Scouts being allowed to build shelters.

My point is that Guides was really "hand-holdy" and not very exciting compared to Scouts and I can completely understand why girls would want the more independence-building and intense Scout experience. If Guides had offered a more Scouty experience, perhaps Scouts would still be single-sex?

They're "a bit rubbish at socialising" you say. Well that's where we come in and I've never been turned away by any man at any gathering.
But OK I'm 20 and so not familiar with elderly men (or women) getting together. I'm just talking about my age and I KNOW that I and my 'galmates' want (or need) privacy or time together. Boys don't want or need. Given the chance they'd much prefer for me & my mates to be involved with them every step of the way. Which actually is good. It means they're not planning or doing (or talking about) anything sexist which ignores us.

That sounds similar to my experience. In the 2010s at primary school it wasn't totally like that but only because teachers made sure we had some space. But I always remember on Fridays when the teachers more or less disappeared for a meeting the boys would take the opportunity to play football over the whole of the playground.
And at older school it was sometimes worse because the boys would make sexist comments, which didn't always have the desired affect on either side.
I can actually remember one lunchtime several of us marching into the boys locker rooms to make a point and the boys for the FIRST time realising that we weren't doormats just accepting their behaviour.

The local men's shed now admits and is largely consisting of women. So the one place that a lot of lonely older men used to have to go and have awkward, blokeish conversation about engine parts is now just another mixed sex club, like all the other local clubs.

😤