Apparently the world is too 'female'.....

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DH was voicing his view last night that 'masculinity' is being wiped out and that men can no longer do the things that make them men any more because they are frowned upon and that in a few years there will be a need for a 'masculinist' movement because the world is becoming so 'female'. He inferred that these manly things include shagging and fighting without consequence.

I was trying to make the point that in a world where equality is still a million miles away this kind of whingeing is pathetic and that men were only able to do these things in the past (largely) at the expense of women. I actually had to leave the room in the end because of a strong desire to lamp him.

I think his attitude sucks and his view of the world completely deranged. These views don't really seem to be in sync with the intelligent, thoughtful man I thought I had married. AIBU, is this just a typical male view? If I'm not, how can I put him right back in his box?!

If you are interested in the women and schooling adiscussion, dale Spender has some very interesting research here and here I once heard her speak and she was very funny and perceptive in how we treat girls and boys differently within the classroom. She did some research about how much attention is given to boys and girls by teachers and found that, even in teachers who hold avowedly feminist views, boys routinely get more attention class than girls. She then demonstrated the effect of this by stating at the beginning of the lecture that she would give men proportionally the same amount of time during questions at the end that girls get in class and vice versa. It was funny to watch the men at the end, even though they had been warned, get more and more frustrated that they weren't being listened to or that they had to wait for the women to be answered first. They were just so used to having their voices heard firstthat the experience of being made to wait in the same way girls are routinely expected to be passive and quiet, confused and frightened them.

That is true slug, boys do receive more attention, they demand more attention, they also often receive twice as much negative commenting on thier beahviour as girls do.

They will often 'demand'to be heard as they will be motivated by thier own to desire to speak, whereas the girls are more motivated to adhere to rules and please adults and so will sit queietly, wait, put hand up etc as asked, but get overlooked for more egocentric boys.

Girls can get overlooked which affects their perception of their level of importence, boys can be perceived negtively and their self image as 'bad' is reinforced by teachers.

the classroom is a very complex environment with different issues for different genders, both equally as valid, and both we need to be equally mindful of and willing to address.

I don't see why it has to be an either or, debate.

This thread started with a the 'world is too female' debate, and yes I can agree with the OP's husbad that men/boys have some particular issues in society today, that I think the dismissive anti male attitude expressed on here by some has highlighted, but of course that does not negate the huge ongoing issues for women regarding education, pay, childcare etc. The difficultes for both gendres are different but intertwined usually, as the complexties of geneder in education demonstrate.

"Firstly boys generally (and all this is generalisatiobs with excpetions but a large amount of evidence to support from truth) mature cognitively later than girls and so are not ready for formal education which they are pushed into too early, wheras many girls are more ready."

I agree with this. But the school system has always been the way it is, if more liberal now. To say it is feminised is to say it has always been feminised. There was no "Exploratory play and learning" in the early education systerm, only later ones. Learning by rote, particualy in grammer, maths and writing was the staple of the system when it was predominently boys in it. This is not the case. It just happened to be the case that when girls were allowed an equal education they very quickly excelled in that environment, which had the appearance of boys doing less well. In fact, boys have always faired the same. Girls doing better creates an illusioin of them doing worse. This is not so.

"95% are primary teachers (or so) are female, with thier own language based perference style and little understanding in how boys learn and why they are underacheieving." What is a langaguage based preference style? Are you saying that its bacause primary school teachers are women that they don't understand or that promary school teachers receive no training. If it is becasue they are women, does that mean that mothers have the same shortcomings?

The fact is you see more women in promary schools because they are both drawn to nurture young adults (as they are as mothers more than fathers, whic are drawn to provide for them - on average) and are also better at it. In primary shcools about half of the learning is exploratory and play style - just the kind that favors boys.

"Add to this an number of them may have the awful views of little boys and demonise them and their behaviour which is then self fulfilling and you have lots of sad, 'naughty' disaffeted underacheiving boys.
I have met and worked with many teachers with an anti boy bais and a prefernce for the good easy girls. Boys are often demonised as OM has so nicely demonstrated"

I would like to see the evidence for this anti-boy bias, and if you can say that it is applied across the board. Becasue the study's I have seen do not back this up. Boys are, on average, more apt to lose concentration and act up in structured classes while girls do, on average, just accept the structure and play by the rules. Buyt like Isaid earlier, this is not a pro-female bias, this is just the way it is. And, many boys reverse this trend when reaching maturity - failing boys become excelling adults while excelling female students fall out of the system and go into their favoured (less well paid) areas.

It is far too complicated to simpl;y be a 'feminisation of the system' argument.

You could say,Slug, that boys learn from an early age how to work the system. If they act up they get immediate attention from their teacher and they transfer the same technique onto their boss.

Whilst the women are quietly working away (as trained to from an early age) the men are monoplizing their boss. They are top of the list for promotions etc.

I don't think society is too female, I think it is creeping towards equality.

MT 'It is far too complicated to simpl;y be a 'feminisation of the system' argument.'

I agree with this, feminiastion of the school system is one aspect of one problem for some boys. there are many other factors, and other issues for girls.

As usual trying to establish a single cause for any behaviour/issue is never going to be productive.

I agree with much else of what you say but would add:

'In primary shcools about half of the learning is exploratory and play style' this is just not the case at all!! The foundation stage is moving back towards this (hurrah for little boys and girls) but after this literacy and numeracy hours have made primary schools much less play based, exploratory learning topic based than previously.

Also 'Boys are, on average, more apt to lose concentration and act up in structured classes' well yes, they cannot concentrate for as long on structure adult goal set activities. Another example of education system not accepting male learning. So do it differnt and they beahve better.

Schemes set up for boys to have more frequent physical actibity breaks, and shorter tasks times expectation, and greater opportuniy for problem solving spatial activities has demonstrated better behaved and acheieving boys.

It's not enough to just say 'boys/girls are like this, we need to consider are we doing something that makes them like that and if we did it different would it improve outcomes for them.

Again, I'm intersted in geneder issues for boys and girls and accpet there are isues for both. But there seem to be some who refuse to accept difficultes for boys/men and just put thier issues down to 'that being how they are' if that's not an anti male bias i don't know what is, and there is plenty of evidence for it just on this thread.

Why when dicussing boys issues do people need to say but girls have this 'xyz'issue. Yes, I accept all those, but it's not a competition and girls/women having issues does not mean that boys/men don't. It should not be one or the other.

Why all the 'but girls, but girls' posts when you tyr to discuss boys issues?? Suely they are both equally as vlaid?

Sorry I know I am verging on incoherent. in a rush!

I agree TheCrackFox. I spent years teaching a predomimantly male subject and it was always a shock to cover a class where girls predominated. Suddenly I would be confronted by a group that didn't demand to have their every action approved and applauded. It was quite restful and lots of work got done in the lessons. Granted, most of the students I taught came from a very traditional culture and had a great deal of difficulty coming to terms with being taught a technical subject by a woman.

Musing on that one further, I completed a MSc a few years ago, again in a fairly technical, male dominated area. At graduation I recieved the academic prize. The shock on my fellow classmates face was amusing to behold. Why they were so surprised is a mystery to me. They knew I always got the top marks, they knew I had a better grasp of the subject than them because every single one of them had, at some point, come to me for help. Yet they resented the public acknowledgement of that fact and came out with lots of justifications for why it had happened (positive discrimination, you were only doing your degree part time etc). I doubt they would have been so resentful if it had been in a slightly more 'feminine' area.

The thing is, as soon as women start to move into a professional area, the prestiege of that job drops. It happened to teaching, it happened to banking, it happened to clerical work. I think some men resent the 'feminisation' of society because it forces them to compete with half of the population they did not have to compete with previously. You can't dismiss women as pretty and fluffy and inconsequential when those women are working in your area and are patently better at your job than you are.

Perhaps times are a changing.

graduate-jobs.com/news/10321/More_female_graduates_finding_jobs

But then again, perhaps not

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/aug/19/oxford-university-men-places-women

i might add that an active teachng environment IME is better for both girls and boys - they are kids, they have short attention spans, and associating physical movement with the learned subject makes it easier to remember and recall.

I don't demonise boys at all, most boys are lovely, its just a majority of the worst kids are boys. The naughtiest child in my class was a boy (in fact the naughtiest 3 children were....though that was Taiwan and feminism is very behind there)

In fact, a full feminist agenda would see this evening out in time - look at the effects in later life - women are (shock!) drinking more, taking drugs (horror!), driving ALMOST as badly as men (spill pint in suprise!)

I'd like to say outisde a 'social relativsm boys-just the same goodness but different' perspective that i have a real problem with anyone telling me that the gender that commits the vast majority of serious violent crime is as good as the gender that doesn't. That the boy who hits a classmate shouldn't be disciplined because he's 'just being male' He isn't - he's being a violent little prick.

the case i cited of the bloke who went to jail - well first he was a troubled boy who hit his brother, then he was expelled (twice), then he went to university (and jail!) - he has a thick scar on his wrist from a suicide attempt- (so he hits quite a lot of the categories you cite as disadvantages of masculinity).....I can't see him as a victim because throughout this time he was afforded every opportunity - free access to the bank of mum and dad. The only thing lacking was discipline of any kind (from either parent). You find more boys like this than girls. I don't pity them - i pity the smaller people they bully as they go through school, the teachers who had to try and educate him, the people who lived next door to his house in university (who finally reported him to the poice for brandishing a firearm in the street) - in what way is this person a victim of any kind?

Statistics heh?

Last year, the proportion of undergraduates at Oxford was 50.2% female and 49.8% male.

I do think it is sad that we cannot admit to some sucessesses. But there is always a negative spin. When women get a larger share its somehoe devalued - I know that used to be the case, but am not sure if that is the case any longer. And I for one will not be campaining to see 50% of women being 'bin men', down the sewers or working in slaughterhouses.

MT I think that I end up feeling defensive about women's achievements (ie. thinking "yes, but") because I can't help getting annoyed by the idea that feminism, or fighting for female equality is somehow completed. The idea that feminism won or that the world is now totally feminised.

Neither is true. In fact, at times (heavy stress here please not: not all the time) that such ideas are just another backlash against feminism. An attempt to convince that there isn't still a lot of work to do.

It's all very well using boy-friendly teaching methods, allowing for physical exploration, horseplay etc but how does this prepare them for an adult job?

Most men will have to sit quietly at a desk for long periods when they leave school, unless they want to take a physical job which will often be less well paid.

Can't boys let off steam etc on their own time, iywsim?

Cat, yes I very much agree. Its just that I also find myself grappling with the definition of what 'equality' is. Its a fact that men are not equal across the board, and some areas have a greater number of women whilst others do men.

The material equality thing is even more confusing. Absolutley, in blue collar jobs men and women should be paid the same. There is no backroom skullduggery about pay in blue collar work; you get what your given. I see the fact that women are still waiting for equal pay in this area as inequality. But while collar, middle class and high flights jobs, where no one will be earning the same, male or female - I just get the feeling this is a red herring - a Macguffin. This kind of equalty doesn't exist. We compete, male and female for these resorces and studies show women are happy to earn a good wage than are driven to earn more than their co-worker, which men are, which makes them constantly negotate for more. I stuggle to see this as inequality. After all, most of these men will also have families and the money will be going in to their homes and families - to women - by proxy. I know this will trigger many a stress response on this thread. I hope you can see what I'm getting at though.

The pay issue is very complex I think. Even with blue collar workers, since different sexes gravitate towards different jobs: so (to talk from personal experience) a hotel porter (male) will earn more than the chambermaid (female) and the waitress (female). A cleaner (female) will earn less than a caretaker (male) etc.

Living as I do in my ivory tower academic world, I have no idea how pay is negotiated in other sectors. The only thing I would note is that, our pay scale is nominally equal for men and women : but, (talking again from personal experience) it is interesting how men with the same or even fewer qualifications share my payscale, and who, on gaining more (ie finishing their PhD) are promoted up it while doing the same job, while I, fail to go any higher (since I alread entered with my PhD and postdoc; and so, there are really there are no more qualifications for me to obtain).

I don't know any of the research on this topic, but would be very interested in general terms to know if my experiences are generalised or just unique to me.

Catitainahatita - I used to be an acadmic and you will find that nominal equal payscale is also quite flexibly interpreted the higher up the scale you go with all sorts of little under the table deals loaded with extra perks being offered to entice the top male professors. Also it happens in awarding of research funding. Seen it first hand.

It is odious how absolutely rampant the unequal treatment of women is in academic life. Far worse than business and that is bad enough.

Yes there is a gender disparaty even within blue collar jobs - as I mentioned before, I am yet so see a woman aspire to be a 'binman' and feel it was some kind of achievement.

But also, I live in the northeast, am from a working (maybe even under) class background. I know that women in blue collar jobs who have been proven to be underpaid in the same job than a man are promised to get that back, though with the recession it is slow to coming - this is discrimination.

But on a bigger scale it is worth looking at the evolution of such discrimiantion - from that you can see it is not malign, but is still negligent.

In this I mean, in the days when women were only 'allowed' to work before they were married - or when they were 'matrons' - the man was still the 'breadwinner' (apoligies for the numerous inverted commas - there may be more to come however) and as such it was an organic process that made paying men a 'living wage' more of a priority than women, as they literally were, shoehorned into the nurtuting role, which as we all know, was literally priceless, in both sense of the word.

As things have developed, things have began to change - the equal pay act was a huge step in challenging this (benign/malign) prejudice (if you see what I mean by that).

There can never be 'equal pay for all' in areas that are internally competative, it all depends on the will and competativness of the ^individual - and on average, men want to get one over, over their collegues than women do, who I said before, are happy enough to earn a good living wage.

There are plenty of things to challenge and examine in the texts I will recommend now, but also a lot that is very informative about the unique situaltion we find ourselves in today in the West. I find that many of my traditiona femninist collegues reject reading these texts on point of principle. What I believe however is that it is essential that the many great minds within feminism read them for themselves, for it is only by knowing the argument that you can challenge it, if that is needed. Relying on old and hackneyed critiques is not enough.

So here they are: You can buy all these very cheaply on amazon but you can read bits in these links. I studied (and critiqued) Divided Labours) them at the LSE under Helena Cronin 2 years ago. The 'ev psych' paradgim is not a one way street.

books.google.co.uk/books?id=51nw-OSu4lIC&dq=Kingsley+Browne&source=an&hl=en&ei=6RSPSrC7Es-gjAed6vXaD Q&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7

books.google.co.uk/books?id=vq_0BUkcZ5MC&dq=Kingsley+Browne&printsec=frontcover&source=an&hl=en&ei=6 RSPSrC7Es-gjAed6vXaDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#v=onepage&q=&f=false

And latterly the new book by Susan Pinker www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search/ref=pd_lpo_ix_dp_am_us_uk_en_susan.020pinker.020the.020sexual.020paradox_ gl_book?keywords=susan%20pinker%20the%20sexual%20paradox&tag=lpo%5Fixdpamusukensusan.020pinker.020th e.020sexual.020paradoxgl%5Fbook-21&index=blended

Here is a review of Susan Pinkers (she is sister of Steven Pinker) book by Rosie Boycott. I think this was extraordinaryily brave of her and wonder if she has been shunned within the feminist hinterland becasue of it. But as Imelda Whelehan says, one of feminisms strenghs is that it is interdisciplinary. It will be stronger still if it adds this dialogue to its bow - IMHO.

www.susanpinker.com/docs/daily_mail_april22.pdf