The ‘Masculinity Crisis’ Is Real.

My claim is merely that men are not emotional retards, evolutionarily incapable of communicating their feelings to others.

If that's your only claim then we agree totally. You have been pushing back at more than that though, and quite often at claims that I'm explicitly not making.

I also don't know why this was first posted on FWR. I think in advocacy or in what one cares about it's totally fine and good to be partial.

In scrutinising claims about what is true though, it's a bad idea to hold claims that produce 'unfavourable' results to a higher standard to others. It also can end up with unintended consequences as I've noted above.

What I'm saying @GeneralPeter is that there are two ways of looking at this.
One is to assume an inate difference in the aptitudes and interests of the two sexes based in our biology, and that this results in roles being female or male coded. And that inequality arises from the wrongful devaluation of female coded activities. And that the answer is to elevate female coded roles and interests to the status of male coded ones.
The other is to assume that the ability of a person to perform a particular role is based on their individual ability and their access to opportunities, not their sex. So rather than try to artificially elevate female coded roles so women are more valued in them, we ensure women are given equal access to the male coded ones, and vice versa.
The problem with the first approach is its never going to stick. Because the roles that make the biggest profit and difference in the outside world are inevitably going to carry higher status, influence and power than those that operate in the domestic sphere.
The path to equality does not lie in being praised for facilitating men to run the world. And I don't believe that women's biology predisposes us to do this.

If we were to wake up in the supposed utopia that postmodernists stupidly think they’re bringing into existence, a world without money, without material need, where every person is given what they need to thrive, what would men be expected to do in order to thrive?

If women are carers and men are providers, and the state assumes the role of universal provider, then what meaningful role remains for men at all?

Although this pie-in-the-sky utopia will never come to pass, men would be wise to start thinking about what the could do to thrive in a changing world. The state might not become a universal provider, but AI and other advances might rob men of their role as providers by making worker surplus to requirement.

Women will be able to adapt, because they've shown themselves capable of doing so. Will men be able to adapt because considering they haven't coped very well with women 'taking their jobs', how they are they going to react to an autobot 'taking their jobs'.

It's not for women to solve men's problems but when men take their problems out on women, it's in women's best interest to help men adapt, which women have being trying to do doing for decades, and men have being resisting for decades.

My claim is merely that men are not emotional retards, evolutionarily incapable of communicating their feelings to others.

I'm not saying that they're as predisposed to it as women might be, and I'm not saying that nature (for eg. testosterone) doesn't have an effect. I'm simply saying that they can do it if they want to.

The very fact that they open up and share with women (as mentioned in the article) means that they are capable! They just refuse to do so with other men.

So, no, I'm not making any extreme claims.

Yes, in this kind of discussion, I am rigorous in the pursuit of women's best interests, to ensure that women are not unfairly maligned in studies that are all too often sexist and flawed.
Men are not my concern, so no, I'm not going to be caping for them.

I think the fact the same patterns recur across countries and contexts suggests to me that they are at least in part innate, and thus difficult to change durably.

In what way? As other posters have pointed out, men will freely show their emotions in other cultures, Middle Eastern or Mediterranean cultures being the first that come to mind. Why is it so impossible, if western men are lonely and wanting to reach out, for them to emulate other cultures and do so?
I wouldn't argue with the claim that men are generally less disposed towards emotional expressiveness than women on a daily level, but they should absolutely be capable of connecting emotionally when the moment arises.

Can one create a society where women know far more about servos and howitzers and men know more about taffita and doulas?

Personally I think one should know all four of those words, at least to use in context. They're not particularly esoteric.

And no, I don't care if men as a demographic are 'social-verbal', but apparently they do. And my opinion is that, if that is the case, they should do something about it. It's not the concern of women, and so really doesn't belong on the FWRs section of Mumsnet. As someone said, why not post this article to Dadsnet?

It would be disingenuous to pretend that the interests, attributes and behaviours associated with being male are not afforded higher status than those associated with being female.
The issue isn't one of moral worth, as arguably stereotypical female traits are more 'moral', involving nurturing, care for others over vain glory.
Its about value. Stereotypical male interests and abilities are the big picture stuff that makes the money, wields s the power, builds things we need to progress. Stereotypically female interests are the small picture, the domestics, the fluff.
There is no hope at all that society is genuinely going to give equal weight to these things. For one thing is perfectly obvious that being able to design a bridge is more challenging and skilled than baking a cake.
Claiming our compliance with sex based stereotypes is biological simply affirms the idea women are less capable of the things we all know are more highly valued and therefore the second rate, support humans by nature. Pretending to equally value the things women are steered towards is just gaslighting aimed at keeping us doing the small stuff that facilitates men doing the big stuff.

@OtterlyAstounding
I think my second post, which crossed, addresses quite a few of the issues in your one.

Prove your claim. Given that men interact far more emotionally in other cultures, and throughout history: prove that they are biologically evolved to be less capable of communicating their emotions.

You prove yours!

I've offered lots of nuance to what I'm claiming and what I'm not. I'm making a claim that differences are partly nurture and partly nature.

You seem to be making the claim that they are entirely nurture and that any contrary view is absurd.

Yours seems like a more extreme claim. I'm here for discussion. If what you demand from a thread is proof, then you go first.

Catullus! When speaking about a platonic male friend, no less!

"Veranius, preferred by me to three hundred thousand
Out of all the number of my friends,
have you then come to your own hearth
and your affectionate brothers and aged mother?
You have indeed. O joyful news to me!
I shall look upon you safe returned, and hear you
telling of the county, the history, the various tribes of the Iberians,
as is your way, and drawing your neck nearer to me
I shall kiss your beloved face and eyes.
O, of all men blest than other,
who is more glad, more blest than I?"

If men find articulating their emotions so hard, why are so many poets male?

Explain. Give references, including but not limited to Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Wordsworth, Shelley, Yeats, Elliot, Kinsella and Heaney.

I agree we should be wary. But this does feel like an isolated, or at least ideologically patterned, demand for rigour.

We must definitely question whether these measures are good ones, what the reasons could be, etc. But I suspect the impetus for demanding such strong scrutiny of this particular claim is that it's one of the topics where men tend to out-score women. That certainly felt like the implication of "not on FWR!".

Women often outscore men on medical knowledge and other valuable things in similar surveys. But I don't think I'd have been pulled up, had that been the example I'd chosen.

what does any of that have to do with your claim that men are somehow inherently less capable of showing and communicating their emotions?

It's two slightly different claims on the same thread.

The link is that there exist sex-patterned differences in interests and capabilities.

Depending on what you mean by "inherently", I think the fact the same patterns recur across countries and contexts suggests to me that they are at least in part innate, and thus difficult to change durably.

You are of course free to take any view you like on nature vs nurture. To me, I think that almost all facts about human behaviour in society are going to be some mix of both nature and nurture. The 0% and the 100% views both seem extreme and implausible to me.

Can one create a society where women know far more about servos and howitzers and men know more about taffita and doulas? Yes. Are you pushing against very significant headwinds if you want to keep it up at scale for long, or across many cultures? Also yes, I think. What if you want to make men as social-verbal, good at articulating and emphathising as women? In my view, same pattern.

@GeneralPeter
"My claim is that a wholesale, durable, significant shift in the entire population is very hard, and furthermore that this is at least partly because such differences are in part evolved"

Prove your claim. Given that men interact far more emotionally in other cultures, and throughout history: prove that they are biologically evolved to be less capable of communicating their emotions.

And in addition to that, this conversation was started on the basis of this statement from you:

"It often seems to jump from that to “well, men just shouldn’t be. They do it to themselves”. This feels like the argument that if women want to stop losing to males at Parkrun they should just run faster. After all, they have limbs just as men do, and could just move them faster. Correct, but not a very useful analysis."

We've established that it's actually nothing like men being biologically faster than women. But the first sentence, that 'men just shouldn't be. They do it to themselves' - well, this is true, actually. They shouldn't be, if they're just going to complain about it. And who else is doing it to them? No one. They are doing it to themselves. So they need to learn to stop doing it. No one said it would be easy, but there it is.

"I also don't think this means that either men or women's distributions are inherently "better" than others, at least when we are talking about topic interests."

Great, neither do I, when they're accurate, and not based on sexist scientific methods, or used to try to enforce behaviours.

I agree with you in specific parts:

It becomes threatening when this is seen as an indicator that a predisposition to a certain interest is based in biology;

Disagree. Why would something being based (to some degree, whether small or large) in biology make it more morally worthy? If we recognise that male chimpanzees commit 90%+ of 'murders' and that this is similar to human males, does that make murder more worthy? I say no.

that the interests favoured by higher numbers of men are more intellectually challenging and worthy than those favoured by women, and therefore greater interest in these areas equates to higher intelligence.

Totally agree on this bit.

These differences between the sexes studies are useful only in what they tell us about the different socialisation and access to opportunities of the sexes.

The 'only' bit seems like a dogma claim. Why couldn't there be other drivers at play other than socialisation and access to opportunities? Northern European countries typically seen as having the greatest gender equality tend to see more 'stereotypical' division of men and women's occupations. It could just be that given more choice, men and women on average choose different things, and also that that is totally fine and not politically threatening.

What's not fine (we agree) is when that is taken as a measure of what is a 'worthy' occupation, or where it entrenches other types of problem. But, in those cases, fix the other problems, there is no need to make a big claim about the sources of the difference being entirely socially-constructed.

that men are somehow incapable of learning to communicate their feelings and be emotionally expressive with each other.

This really isn't my claim. My claim (which I thought I'd been quite specific about in my early posts) was that men can do this, just as the middle-set maths class can study more at weekends, learn from stronger mathematicians, and also (to step out of the metaphor) that there are large overlaps in trait distribution such that many men will be very good at this stuff from the outset and many women very bad at it.

My claim is that a wholesale, durable, significant shift in the entire population is very hard, and furthermore that this is at least partly because such differences are in part evolved. I also don't think this means that either men or women's distributions are inherently "better" than others, at least when we are talking about topic interests. But by the same token, that they shouldn't be thought of as politically threatening either.

In fact, I think that treating differences in trait and interest distributions as taboo has in many cases been unhelpful to the cause of sex-based and women's rights. In two main ways: i) some idiots then believe, or claim to believe, that this applies to physical differences also (I suspect not that many actually believe it), and ii) huge numbers of bystanders and commentators, who also don't believe it, do feel that it's somehow taboo to recognise, and they set policy accordingly.

Like... a huge reason not to let men into women's changing rooms is the violence threat. But dignity and privacy matter too. And the test for "is this reasonable" is not "would a typical man mind if a woman did it to him", it's "would a typical woman mind it". If you delegitimise seeing the difference between these two questions, then at best-case you get a sort of averaged-out view being applied, and at worst you just get the man's view being applied as the standard.

Its not threatening to acknowledge there are patterns in behaviour in the interests of the two sexes.
It becomes threatening when this is seen as an indicator that a predisposition to a certain interest is based in biology; that the interests favoured by higher numbers of men are more intellectually challenging and worthy than those favoured by women, and therefore greater interest in these areas equates to higher intelligence. When aquiring information in an area is confused with intelligence and potential, and when not conforming to the patterns is seen as undesirable in an individual and discouraged.
These differences between the sexes studies are useful only in what they tell us about the different socialisation and access to opportunities of the sexes.

If the data one is studying is flawed to begin with - such as survey questions being framed around issues that men are more likely to find relevant than women, which has been noted as an issue - I find myself wary of the results.

It did also state itself, "Second, the analyses reveal large differences in gender gap size within individual countries over time. Such fluctuations cast doubt on the validity of the standard instruments measuring factual political knowledge."

But we circle back to: what does any of that have to do with your claim that men are somehow inherently less capable of showing and communicating their emotions?

Very true! And historically in the west, men seemed able to be very effusive too. Which is why I'm even more confused by the insistence by modern western society, as well as by GeneralPeter on this thread, that men are somehow incapable of learning to communicate their feelings and be emotionally expressive with each other.

(I'm also confused by what examples of men and women having potentially divergent knowledge distributions, has to do with men's capability to learn to communicate their feelings.)

The reason I haven't been posting studies is that posting individual studies are never really conclusive (it's really not a matter of picking one study and saying "it explains it! You are wrong"). I wanted to look into how much effect removal of Don't Knows has on the effect.

The best meta-analysis I could find is this one which covers 106 surveys from 47 countries, and looks at the effect of 'don't know' and other methodological choices, and many other factors. It's on 'political knowledge' which is not precisely the same as 'current affairs', but is the topic your claim is about.

Their conclusion is that removing 'Don't Know' reduces, but does not eliminate the sex difference found in political knowledge, which is found across almost all countries surveyed and across a wide range of different methodologies.

ttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4968032/

"First, the results reveal that significant gender gaps in political knowledge exist in almost all countries under scrutiny irrespective of how scores are allocated to answers (positive, expressive, accurate). However, the gap is largest if DK answers are considered as incorrect answers."

I don't think either of us needs to apologise to the other. I learned from the study you referenced, and you learned from the one (or the 106, if you like) that I referenced.

I'm not at all afraid of the claim that men are more likely to be confidently wrong. Those pesky trait distributional differences again!

Perhaps men are extremely opposed to opening up emotionally and being vulnerable to other men, because they perceive other men as a threat, and wish to maintain a show of strength around them.

That might only relate to the men in the west because from footage I've seen of other culture's around the world, a lot of other men have no problem getting overly emotional.

Men and women are equal, but equality doesn't mean they're the same. That's the big mistake the 'feminists' in the 90's made, a women doesn't have to have sex like a man, or watch porn like a man, or swear like a man to be a mans equal, we're equal because we're walking, taking, free thinking apes just like men are. It's the same mistake men have been making, they keep say 'well you wanted equality' as if it's some sort of gotcha.

The fact that more men recognised words that are typically related to male interests and women recognised words that are typically related to women's interest should not be a surprise or a big deal.

I notice a thing recently, but has probably be around for a while, equality seems to be replaced by parity, which if the meaning of the word is what I think it is, (and hasn't been just changed arbitrarily) seems like a better word than equality.

A random thought occurred to me:

Allowing for cultural differences, broad generalisation, and the fact that this is a freshly formed musing...

Perhaps men are extremely opposed to opening up emotionally and being vulnerable to other men, because they perceive other men as a threat, and wish to maintain a show of strength around them.

They are less opposed to opening up to women, because they perceive themselves as being stronger than women, both physically and socially, which means women are not a threat to them.

Women are probably less opposed to opening up emotionally, partially because we exist in a state of awareness of our own constant vulnerability, in a way that men do not. We are more accustomed to being vulnerable, and strong in spite of it, while men fear it far more.

It makes me think of Ursula K Le Guin's quote from Tehanu, about shame:
"She thought about how it was to have been a woman in the prime of life, with children and a man, and then to lose all that, becoming old and a widow, powerless. But even so she did not feel she understood his shame, his agony of humiliation. Perhaps only a man could feel so. A woman got used to shame."

True. So it could be that there is a social expectation that men know about military/technical words and women know about textiles/medical words, and that men and women know these stereotypes, so they respond on the ones that they think they "should" know according to those stereotypes.

But that explanation still relies on: i) men and women knowing at least that a word is military/technical versus textiles/medical, on ii) them perceiving some stigma to answering correctly to the 'wrong' ones, and iii) them knowing that some words are more heavily stigmatised than others.

It just feels like quite a bit of a stretch, when there is an explanation that accords better with daily observation. At a military gear shop, mostly men, at a fabric shop, mostly women. Neither is right or wrong. Different interest distributions show up in different behaviours and in different word knowledges. I don't see what is particularly threatening about that hypothesis. Neither is inferior.

Exactly.

I mean, all that could be proving is that men are more likely to pretend to know 'manly' and 'scientific' sounding words, and to pretend not to know 'girly' and 'sissy' words. I mean, who knows? (ETA: I see now that's basically just me repeating what you're saying, but it's late here, haha).

It's so vague that it says very little of use, frankly.

Try reading the materials linked about the issue of 'gender gaps' within political knowledge, so that you understand the issue, and why men aren't more knowledgeable about the important political issues. Maybe even read my comment on it, which explains it in summary.

Then feel free to come back and apologise for being so confidently wrong (don't worry, it's apparently a male trait ).

It's a list of words that men and women are more likely to say they know. It's a subtle difference, but it allows for some people to not want to admit they know what a word means, or to pretend that they know exactly what a word means when they think they should.

The fact that they didn't have to define the words, or at least use them in the appropriate context, makes the entire study useless, imo.

I could say I know any words at all, if I'm not asked to prove it!