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

[IwantToRetire]

Gen Z women and men are growing further apart in their political outlook and aspirations. It is vital the root causes are understood so we can all find common ground

Afew months ago, alongside other proud parents, I sat watching my teenager’s GCSE drama class showcase: a dozen short plays, devised and performed with gusto by small groups of pupils. In terms of theme, there was a definite attraction to the darker side of life; indeed, in nearly every play there was a hair-raising death. Another repetitive strand — at least, in pieces written partly or wholly by the girls — was the shoddiness of men’s behaviour.

One character struggled to find the kettle after his wife had died, having never used it before; another was violent to his family; and what viewer could forget the fiendish theatre manager, forcing dancers to take stimulants so that they could work longer hours? Worst of all, though, was the policeman who was also a serial killer, dramatically strangling his detective wife on stage after she discovered he was the culprit. There were also quite a few impassioned speeches about the prevalence of patriarchy and misogyny in society.

At the final curtain, I looked around at the mild-mannered, supportive fathers in the audience, many of whom had cut work short to be there. What could these men have done to their children, I wondered. Or, more seriously: was it possible to give young women today some awareness of male violence without causing them to write all men off?

Full article at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/if-young-men-want-a-return-to-traditional-gender-roles-we-need-to-know-why-g3pnmfj56

I disagree with nearly everything she said, but agree this is something that more people need to be talking about.

Or I suspect, as it has always been, women will have to adjust their lives to accommodate intransigent men and boys.

Can be read at https://archive.ph/gGXMV

The archive link won't load for me?

Not sure why - try copying it and paste into browser bar.

Or copy the full Times link, go to https://archive.ph and paste the Times link into the box. (which is worth remembering for any article to see if it has been archived, or if it will archive for you.)

Tbh they sound great in terms of their imagination and reflecting the darker side of being female. Not being able to find the kettle after your wife dies is beautifully poignant.

I did A level drama in the 90s and my character was relentlessly cheery and annoying but was about to be raped as the "it's obvious what happened next" ending of our examination board assessed group piece. We were trapped in a bunker after a nuclear holocaust.

Tbh they sound great in terms of their imagination and reflecting the darker side of being female.

But if you read the full article, as I understand it, KS is saying both girls and boys are just repeating the cliches they hear.

And it just keeps going round in circles.

There's a slight whiff of poor boys, everyone is so negative about them, is it any wonder they act up and behave badly.

There are a lot of factors here and I do t think this is simple. Society has changed a lot in structure in the last few decades. The changes started before that but the push for equality, while not complete, has come further than ever before of late.

Women work, can be executives, can be tradespeople, can own property, can drive, can live independently, and can even have children without a partner if they desire. We no longer actually need men to be able to function in the world.

for certain people this is seen as an assault on them. They don’t see it as a call to do better and be better, but a call to take us down.

So you end up with men wanting to be women, men wanting to go backwards as a defence mechanism, and men wanting to harm us to scare us into line.

Look at Andrew Tate and all the beardy men with mics on TikTok and Insta telling the young guys “what women , (reader, we want none of it).

They Are getting this messaging from all over, so even if their dad’s and male role models are decent guys, supportive of the women in their life, of which there are very many,they can still see this stuff online.

It’s like a cornered animal lashing out. Except they aren’t cornered really, it’s just a large number of men either don’t want, or aren’t ready, to change and say that what a woman does doesn’t matter or have any impact on them.

All leads me to say, that I think there needs to be a concerted effort to engage and educate young men.

I did think it was an interesting line “girls’ political opinions are seen as important and worth listening to - boys are seen as sulky, silly and backwards” (or something - paraphrasing).
Liberal left not listening to the opinions of the deplorables again. They really really need to start as the tactic “just another bigoted woman” is not working at all, in any sphere.
It’s just as important to bring boys with us. They need to see a role for themselves. They need to feel powerful and able to accomplish anything, just as girls are hopefully being encouraged to do.

I think you pretty much summed it up. Many boys no longer see a role for themselves. That is difficult to reconcile.

I do agree there's a bizarre disconnect, that's got worse over the last few decades.

But do young men want ''traditional'' roles? ie, no sex before marriage? to be sole breadwinners? To be, on the surface of it, protective, respectful, chivalrous as would be expected behaviour from a traditional man (whether it was felt internally or not).

We have the worst of all worlds now, men have been 'freed' by anything goes norms to behave as badly as they want and their needs are still met, through porn, prostitutes, and mostly, sadly, through women who don't know them and are full of optimism.

My own son is awful and obviously if I were stupid enough to start a thread about him, I'd be blamed. But I never modelled anything except respect, communication, warmth, support, understanding et cetera. His anger when I tried to limit his gaming shocked me. His entitlement to intimidate me and make demands in the home where I pay for everything shocks me. He has witnessed a single mother work hard as an employee, provide, support and parent. His absolute contempt for me shocks me and I don't know where it comes from. Inside him? from the internet? It's all so weird. I wonder what he'd be like if he'd been raised in the 80s before the internet. (he doesn't live with me anymore).

Ooh… coming back later!

When I taught adults, I met a number of young men who were about to become fathers. For the most part, they were eager to be involved and keen to be supportive and to be a good husband/partner and dad. But they felt marginalised and lonely, caught up in a process they didn’t properly understand, emotionally disconnected and often ignored - they felt - by the mother-to-be and by her female family members, whose expectation was that they would always be there to do or buy things when required, but otherwise left them on the sidelines. They felt there were great expectations of them, but no guidance as to how to properly fulfil those expectations. I felt sorry for them.

But Tate isn't right wing in any meaningful sense. The reason he is "coded" right is because he is mostly popular with young men. Its a circular logic. Young men= "alt right." X is popular with young men therefore X is right wing. Xs popularity with young men demonstrate further that men are moving to the right.
Women =lefties losing it. Women like Stanley cups/hair dye or dislike sexual harassment. therefore cups/coloured hair/being anti sexual harrassment is left wing. I know loads of right leaning types that are not ok with perves. Or sex trafficking.

Its self fulfilling and self perpetuating.

I disagree that women's politics is seen as good, men's as bad. It depends on whether the source /media is left/right wing . Stock is still fairly left though so it makes sense that's what she is most exposed to/who she is addressing in her piece.

That's an interesting point actually.

The next step is to ask whose responsibility is it to provide the guidance, to model the behaviours, to be the support and share learning?

Other men, older men or does the work automatically default to women? Why are fathers, brothers, uncles , makefriends and cousins not stepping up in the wat female friends and family seem to for the mum?

I do think we do have a problem with the messages we send to boys.

My kids (both sexes) seem to have had the message, especially in primary school, that boys are naughty and rowdy, but girls are good (or maybe that’s girls should be good?). Neither should be generalised by sex.

High school brought many opportunities for (specifically) girls to get involved with STEM stuff, but no similar opportunities to encourage boys to broaden to arts and languages.

In the workplace I (rightly) see attempts to increase women’s representation in some areas, but no similar drive to increase the number of men in more traditionally female roles such as nursing. Also, it is important to remember, even in areas dominated by men, that that privilege has not been felt by the young men just starting out, and we need to offer balanced opportunities to everyone. Saying everyone in department X is male, so all graduate entries need to be female is just as sexist as allowing them all to be male , and we should be able to do better

I've only read the first few paras but what jumped out at me was the teachers (many likely to be young women) may have been doing "misogyny workshops."

Whilst I agree there's so much to do around tackling misogyny I really do think it needs to be more subtly addressed within education and given opportunity for the type of balance that celebrates how men can be. Looking at behaviour, taking responsibility for actions, tackling sexism.

Some detrans men have described not wanting to be a man thanks to awareness of how awful they can be in the world.

I think the kettle story line is lovely though.

A gay friend started following some exercise pages on facebook and found he was then being algorithmed with faintly misogynistic content. Why does that go hand in hand fgs? That's the impact of Tate et al.

I really like the work that Men at Work are doing. menatworkcic.org/

Will Hitchens on Instagram tackles this narrative from young men saying that basically all they have to bring to a relationship is money and if women are earning their own money, they have nothing else to bring.

Instead of developing themselves into the type of man that would attract independent confident women, they’re on podcasts and shows saying to avoid independent women and look for women who are basically naive.

Its horrific.

https://www.instagram.com/willhitchins?igsh=MXV1YWR0eXJ0czQ0YQ==

It's so sad. There's so much more young men can do within a parenting relationship.

I feel that breastfeeding isn't supported enough from the father's pov. I see them wanting to actually feed the baby so encouraging mum to express or mix feed. Rather than doing the other supportive stuff.

Getting sexism and ideas of equality balanced for children as they grow up is very difficult and nuanced.

I don't blame young (and older) men at being annoyed at the lack of reasonably well paid, secure jobs - I would also not blame young women for this. It's interesting to think about the lack of collective role models for men for fatherhood. I'd like to think there are plenty about but they don't gather round as collectively or tribally. Do we need dads-not-in-sheds?

Who is this "we"? Surely this is men's job, to find a version of masculinity that works for them, for their families, and for society? A version that isn't toxic to themselves and to women? Women have spent the last 50-odd years figuring out our roles, figuring out what is toxic to women about traditional femininity and what the alternatives are, and what the downsides of those alternatives are too.

There seems to be a trend to misinterpret descriptions of commonplace toxic masculine behaviour as saying "men must be just naturally toxic" or "men don't want to be men nowadays because everyone just says they are toxic". Way to blame feminism, guys. And some male detransitioners have described huge amounts of actual "toxic masculinity" - absence, sexual aggression, bullying, authoritarianism, homophobia - they experienced from their own fathers and brothers and schoolmates.

So it's nice to hear about "Men at Work". I guess that as a lesbian mother Kathleen Stock has her own point of view on parenting. but mostly sorting masculinity out is not our job. Women / feminists can't be expected to fix it for men as well. Men need to sort themselves out.

From what I have gathered reading men’s forums, many feel like a man is supposed to be the provider and protector and genuinely has nothing else to offer. They don’t feel that women want ‘nice’ guys and they have seen women go for the arseholes, so they are at a loss as to what women want. They don’t think that men are particularly attractive or physically desirable because women aren’t chasing them down, so they focus on bringing home the bacon.

Except now they can’t because women are also earning so they feel that there is no clear role left for them. There used to be pride in blue collar jobs like the shipyards or the mines, but now that has ended and no one seems to care. We have a bunch of confused, demoralised men trying to work out why murderers in prison get female fan mail but they can’t get a date. It seems there is nowhere left for them to be accepted and appreciated as just straight white men. Society has made it difficult to be a normal bloke and it’s sad.

DH managed the supporting breastfeeding extremely well. His philosophy was that since I was doing the very important work of keeping our newborn baby alive plus recovering from giving birth, it was his job to look after everything else as much as he was able.

So he cooked, cleaned, changed nappies while I recovered and thoroughly established breastfeeding. I think that's the sort of masculinity that should be encouraged.

@HappyEDT that is so sad about your son

I wonder, and I may be wrong, if it is to do with how the generation above them treat women? How men often simply leave their wife/GF and kids? This often causes anger and feelings of massive rejection in young men.

they key to happier young men is for them to have fathers, father figures and male role models . But so many men are now shit partners and shit dads. The bar is so low for dads.

boys wanting traditional women probably goes quite deep psychologically and is built on a (subconscious?) wish they had an involved dad in their own lives (traditional nuclear family)

Archive links never load for me.
Fortunately we've got a Times subscription so here's a sharetoken link that should work for everyone.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6b5a20e6-1417-481a-8154-6bb648bf0dd0?shareToken=b2f6a365c344910dff11280c31c01cef

Yes exactly this @ISaySteadyOn

I saw my bil being a bit too keen to be the one feeding and I feel he dissuaded his second partner from persevering with their first child because he wanted to also be 'in control' of the feeding/ baby etc.

Was very pleased that his now wife had insisted she bf with their second child and firmly directed him to what he could do (mainly deal with their very 'spirited' first born and his older son.)

Luckily their spirited first child together disproved his idea from his very calm/ passive/ always sleeping formula fed first born, that formula fed babies sleep better

Breastfeeding is something that isn't discussed in pshe or RSE. There's a missed opportunity there to talk about different parental roles.

Can I just add something sort of related. My DS did drama GCSE. When they are asked to create plays in groups they are given sources to come up with ideas. These could include a photo, a piece of writing, a poem an image etc put forward by the examining body. They choose. The one my son’s group chose was a photo of people kneeling in front of police (dressed in riot gear) on horseback (a US photo related to the BLM riots). The resulting play was all about conflict and anger. I can’t remember much about the others but to me, many seemed to concentrate on what could be seen as the darker side of life - it felt quite depressing.