To think some men fear expectations of them won't lower in line with their prospects

[japanned]

I agree with hopefully most people that greater equality of opportunity, in the job market and elsewhere, is a good thing. In the past, many if not most jobs were open to men only. Even men in relatively ordinary jobs still had greater financial power and prospects than women, who mostly had none of either.

With the changes that have happened, the reality is that an average or below average man putting in an average amount of effort will probably achieve less in relative terms compared to women (or minorities, if he is in the straight white category too).

When men had all or almost all the opportunities and being straight and white were requirements for many jobs, well in a way it stood to reason that their and others expectations of them were to achieve a certain level. What I have seen I think in some modern men, is a kind of bad reaction motivated not so much by pure inner prejudice as a feeling that people look at them and think- you're straight, white, male, you have all this privilege, what's wrong with you that you can't afford a proper house, let alone to support a wife and children on one salary? I am not saying that people necessarily do have this expectation, but is it possible that it'd be beneficial to communicate more clearly that expectations will have to change in a reality which is very very different from that of the past.

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Could you expand your thinking a bit? I can kind of see what you are getting at, but might have read it wrong.

Is not this type of message the one that has lead to the increase of the Andrew Tate admirers etc.

Bit bleak to kind of say that straight/white/male = the future is not for you.

I just don't recognise this as a thing tbh. Where have you seen these 'bad reactions'? Also I don't quite get who you think should be communicating this concept more clearly? Individual women in relationships with low-earning men? Surely most women in those relationships will have jobs themselves and not just expect to give up work and be supported by their husband?

I get what you mean.

We had a young man in a "job training" position at a former place of work. He had been unemployed for a year so the job centre made him do a full time job with us while only getting his benefits for it and not a normal salary. He was very bitter about it. He had an economic education and there was and is a shortage with those kinds of educations. It was in Denmark and it turned out that he thought that because he was a white, Danish, blond male ( so no risk of maternity leave) the companies would headhunt him. He hadn't even applied for one job a month. So how would the companies even know that he existed?

When the job centre placed him with us and put some pressure on him he started applying for a couple of jobs a month and then became almost hysterical because he still couldn't get a real job. I informed him that when I was unemployed I applied for ten jobs a week and he was like " yeah but you are a woman with dark hair". He did end up with a job after approx six months at my place of work. It was in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland where it take years to fill academic positions. I suggested it. He didn't have a girlfriend, his roommate wanted him to move out and he never saw his family anyway so he might as well move away for a job.

He did expect different rules for him in general. He showed up for work with a headache once (I suspect it was actually a hangover) and clearly expected our manager to tell him to go home and get better. That didn't happen so he aggressively asked me what he was supposed to do. I said he should do what the rest of us did: take a headache tablet and get on with it. "But he didn't have any tablets! Why would I even expect him to have any? How? Why?". Normally I would have offered him one of my pills but he annoyed me so I told him to cross the street and get some at the supermarket.

I kind of get what you are saying.

I think so little has been asked for so long...
The ask/bar is now a lot higher and the rewards are lower...

Its a bit like "should I work for minimum wage or just claim benefits... its 25 hours pw and I'll be £26.80 better off per week."

The class element of privilege is often down played, which can cause resentment.

Yes I think in the same way that there are still underlying social expectations that women be beautiful nurturing home-makers, there is an expectation that men be successful breadwinners.

Women are now excelling in the previously ‘male’ domains of work, which I suppose is naturally displacing some men.

The difficulty is that childcare and home-making isn’t as prized and encouraged in men as having a career is for women. Men aren’t flocking to become home-makers and their self-esteem isn’t being bolstered by raising the children well, whereas women are having great success in the workplace. ‘Home making’ work sadly just isn’t valued highly enough by society. ( I think probably due to capitalism, but that’s another thread…)

So we have a situation where women are doing well in the work arena as well as carrying most of the load at home (and frequently burning out), while men find success at work is not as easily achieved as they had believed it would be (and housework just doesn’t do it for them) so they get all angry and disillusioned.

As a lifelong progressive I can’t quite believe I’m saying this, but we need to be championing home-making and childrearing more! The key being that we need to be championing it for MEN as well as women.

I think I get what you are trying to say.

Yes, the reality is that not all hard-working men can support a family anymore. They need a partner who is willing to muck in beside them to work hard and together the two of them may just manage to keep a small family afloat. It’s a sad reality in today’s economy.

the problem is that too many men have an attitude that because they are having to work harder for less, they don’t have to share but still want the family. We see so many men expecting women to both have the children and earn to support them without recognizing that he still has a significant economic role to play.

women need to set high standards and expect partners who are willing to work hard and work as a team. They don’t have to be high earners. Not everyone will be a high earner. Plenty of the most valuable professions in our society come with awful pay. What matters is a man’s values.

I think most of this is on social media, where influencers drone on about men needing to be tall, rich and handsome before a woman will even glance at him. Likewise, women are basically made to feel that if they don't look like supermodels, life isn't worth living.

In real life I know lots of couples where the woman earns more, or the man isn't over 6ft, and both are average looking.

Social media has the loudest voices, but definitely not the most representative. There are plenty of normal, contented people who are getting through life without agonising over sexism and racism, or the expectations placed on white men.

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Lazy argument OP.

Really lazy.

Come back with something you didn't get out of a "woman's magazine" circa 1993.

This!

I agree that discrimination against other demographics has resulted in a disproportionate number of white men in senior roles. I agree that many of these men are mediocre, and that more competent people will have lost out to them. To believe anything else requires a belief that white men are the most intelligent and highly skilled members of our society, and I don't believe this. I don't agree that white men fear they will be seen as failures if they don't succeed despite their privilege, for the simple reason vanishingly few recognise and admit to having privilege. The successful believe their achievements are due to their exceptionalism. The unsuccessful tend to blame their failure on external factors - including equality of opportunity as it happens, which they equate to favouring other groups over them.

Yeah I think you could be an utterly average bloke and still have a reasonable life. The increased competition means that they actually have to compete for stuff that they would have otherwise got purely because they ticked a few boxes. This is probably true across all income brackets. I also think cost of housing etc has changed this for a lot of people, most need a dual income household and some men are struggling to catch up with the idea that if you are both working you also both have to pitch in at home and with the kids as well. But I don’t think a lot of men are very good at recognising how utterly average they actually are.

That quote that says something like “when you have lost a privilege equality feels like oppression” is bang on (I probably got that slightly wrong).

Those who were in the position of privilege scream ‘unfair’ the loudest when the rules change and their privileged is diminished. They think it’s discrimination when it is nothing more than a balancing out.

OK. Is it possible there is a timely between social & financial change & expectations (both yours of yourself and others of you, or of your perception of others expectations of you.) For example it was possible in the mid to late 90s for a single graduate on an ordinary graduate income in their 20s to buy a small flat in outer London. I know of people only a few years younger than that cohort who would have seen older siblings doing so and therefore had that expectation of themselves. In only a few years, house price inflation rendered it impossible. But I certainly know of people who felt surprised, aggrieved and disrespected because they could not do what they expected based on what had been normal up to then, including when they were at university forming their expectations of life.

I know that were I 25 now I would not expect any romantic partner to be able to outlearn me, support me, or pay for housing on their own. I would think most people who are in that age group now would also think like this. But I have encountered attitudes normally from straight white men, which suggest they think that this is expected of them. They see what they perceive as an impossible expectation placed on them (even when it isn't there, because it might have been in the past or media or whatever has made them internalise it). And they become resentful. The fault is largely with them, but what will it take for them to realise that nobody can reasonably expect this of them?

Re: the position of the still favoured but no longer unchallenged straight white male. I agree with the quote about loss of privilege feeling like oppression. It would have been far better had everyone been equal since the start of time, but they weren't. So, while there is an upward journey in terms of equality for women and for minorities, there is also naturally a downward journey for the SWM. Perhaps there is a fear, when you are on the downward escalator, that the end of the downward journey will not be equality but subservience, or perhaps they feel no end at all to the journey. For the record I think Andrew Tate is one of the most damaging and despicable figures of our time, and I have never read Women's Own magazine.

I think some men have an inferiority complex if that’s what you mean?

I’ve seen it with men I’ve managed, they just do not respond to female authority because of a lack of respect, and because it should be them - even when it clearly shouldn’t.

I’m all for an open job market based on merit and not sex, or any other characteristic. If those men who were threatened did better, they’d be in better positions.

I don’t know if I’m misunderstanding - does your last part suggest that women (for example) advancing in opportunities pushes men down?

Men can still have those opportunities, if they earn them, like everyone else. That’s not oppression. I haven’t taken a man’s job, it’s my job that I earned 😂

"I don’t know if I’m misunderstanding - does your last part suggest that women (for example) advancing in opportunities pushes men down?
Men can still have those opportunities, if they earn them, like everyone else. That’s not oppression. I haven’t taken a man’s job, it’s my job that I earned 😂"

No I don't believe women advancing in opportunities pushes men down, nor that there won't be opportunities for them. But for the kind of mediocre men (which by definition is quite a lot) that were advantaged by the relative suppression of opportunities for women, if they are already at the ceiling of their ability (in other words if they are making reasonable efforts, but their ability prevents them from landing the best opportunities) they will not enjoy the unearned privilege they may have done in earlier generations.

There is a degree to which female, gay or minority advancement is (rightly) celebrated as empowerment. I am not aware of any celebratory aspect to the other necessary part of the equality matrix, the de-privileging of SWMs.

I see your point, but I don’t see it as taking their privilege - it’s not theirs.

In the same way I don’t believe that advancing ethnic minority rights takes anything from me, because I’m white. I don’t lose anything just because someone else has gained it - it’s not pie etc.

you are generalising about inner prejudice and privilege and being quite racist and sexist to say that all white men have been handed the world on a platter. .