Britain’s lost boys Sonia Sodha

[WarriorN]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/09/jobless-isolated-fed-misogynistic-porn-where-is-the-love-for-britains-lost-boys?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

I do agree but feel it's men who need to step up here

Boys either want to be women or are turning to Tate et al neither of which is ultimately good for women and girls. Victoria Smith has been saying similar recently.

If you're not into sport there's so few decent role models or movements for boys. From experience they go off track at a very young age too.

Have to say I can't relate to your post at all.

What do you think you and your girl group have that the boys want so badly?

We're 19, 20, 21. What do you think we have?
And, yes, we as young women obviously think similarly about them, but not to the extent of ditching our "galmates".
And I'm sure there lies the difference. We NEED other girls/women to help us cope with boys/men. They don't need friends to cope with us. We're not a threat!

I thought that the evidence in education is that girls do better in single sex environments but boys benefit and do better from mixed sex environments. I can see where NPET is coming from

I get it - but honestly, it's just not been my experience at all - I've played in pubs (admittedly, a naice pub, not the one known for fights), a church hall, castles (that was LARP), obviously university as well as people's houses. My ex never played any of this stuff, but he's wandered around with the kids into board game shops and been invited to whatever they have that's child appropriate. Now he was a bit judgemental about the dressing up for LARP, but didn't care about the tabletop, and would have quite enjoyed Warhammer if you didn't have to paint the figures first (after all, kids have been playing with toy soldiers forever - it's just a riff on Risk if you think about it).

When I told my friends and colleagues that I was off for a weekend long game with my uni buddies they were all either amused (that a grown adult still did this) or interested - not one had any issue with it.

I've seen posts on the local facebook group asking for club ideas for more geeky children (where I live now most people are more involved with local sport clubs) - no Games Workshop here, but things like lego are suggested

I guess that's what makes life interesting and makes this all the more complicated - not only is everyone different, but the society around everyone is different.

Sorry, I just find your posts perplexing........

So, you now seem to be suggesting that the only reason they want to be with you and your friends is because they fancy you and want sex? Before, you made it sound as if they couldn't cope or function socially or form friendships without being a part of the girl gang; and that they would ditch their male friends as soon as they were given entry?

The biggest problem facing boys is the amount of gaming they're allowed.
There's a denial about how serious this problem is with lots of people claiming that's how boys socialise these days, leave them to it. We really shouldn't be leaving them to it.
Get them off their consoles and phones and they may start to go out and socialise, do some sports or even read a book.
Get them to do chores from a young age and they'll grow up to be more competent, more confident and develop a more willing and able attitude.

This is true, and there are probably several factors.

One is that in early reading education, the trajectory for boys vs girls is a little later for boys. So they suffer the consequences of the push to have kids reading earlier - they can't keep up because they aren't developmentally ready and that just snowballs for some. More realization that reading readiness varies a lot in those early years would help a lot of kids, but especially boys.

Because the education system wants them reading early, they start to rely more on strategies that work for kids who aren't developmentally ready, like guessing based on cues like pictures. That can hide the fact that some kids aren't really reading up until about age 10, when they are expected to read for content. The, they can't keep up.

I also think it's notable that the computer and online stuff boys seem drawn to are largely images, like video games, whereas girls are more drawn to social media type things which include text. In my experience a lot of the girls aren't reading l either outside of school, but they are typically reading a little more than many boys.

Iam not sure about this. I don't think young men and boys have had much of a message that they are supposed to be higher in the hierarchy somehow.

My son has said things to me a few times that tell me the message he's received from pop culture is that boys aren't very smart and girls should be in charge.

Yeah.

I used to tutor struggling readers. Comics were such a frustration to me.

They are fine for fun but they are not language rich. There just aren't enough words for a student to really get practice reading, which is what they need. and the vocabulary is usually fairly low level.

Kids that mainly read that kind of thing just don't improve.

Plus, a lot of these "incels" game heavily. I don't think that they understand that women are turned off like a stopcock by a man who wastes excessive time on any hobby, and especially a hobby like gaming where there's little or no possible application of the hobby-specific skills to real life.

Yeah, wait until he gets older and starts seeing women gyrating against men in music videos and men running most of the world's countries on the news. And starts playing games like GTA where you can score points by running prostituted women over with your car.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate hobbies are for down time. Time for relaxing and enjoying an activity around all your work and chores. They shouldn't be the main focus in your life, they should complement your life.
How many boys prioritise gaming over everything else? There's no time to do anything else.
It starts very young when so many young primary school kids get hooked on Roblox then Fortnite. Some kids, mainly boys, are spending several hours a day after school gaming and then pretty much all weekend.
Then at secondary school, it's the gaming and the phone.
They can't fit in anything else and everything else has lost its appeal by this stage.
Something is very wrong.

Exactly. The problem is when the woman ends up doing all the housework whilst the man games. The risk of that puts me off dating a gamer, even though I occasionally game myself.

Generalising, but I can think of the type of "boys" that would want to hang around with you and your "galmates".
And the reasons don't put you or the "boys" in a good light.

I don't know where I "made it sound" like they wanted to be part of a girl gang.
Certainly didn't mean to suggest that. Yes they want/wanted us for sex but probably for more.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Males used to have this automatic higher status. Most visible high status people are still male. (Politicians, sports people, business leaders).

So men still have the vestige of that expectation that they are higher status than women.

But girls outperform boys at school, and increasingly in many workplaces. Boys and men see lots of work towards equity for women and perceive it as anti male discrimination.

I don't want to derail but I just wanted to post a bit from Peterson's interview w Cathy Newman. He says he supports women who want to climb to the top of a profession & gives assertiveness training to help them increase their salaries. Some may disagree w other stuff he says in the interview & w the causes for unequal pay- tho I think some studies do support the assertiveness theory- but those seem positive in that he diesn't want women to be confined to domesticity if they want a career.

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180123010516/www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/putting-monsterpaint-onjordan-peterson/550859" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20180123010516/www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/putting-monsterpaint-onjordan-peterson/550859/

Ironically I actually find his wife Tammy much more sexist. Both were v ill a few years back, I can see how this might well focus someone on family, community & religion, ofc those are good things! But she is v dogmatic that women who want to work are betraying their femininity. Otoh she's a massage therapist, writer, speaker & podcaster...

Like a lot of Phyllis Schlafly types,...they criticise working women harshly but seem fine w conservative women working as long as their job promotes conservative values.

Isn't part of the issue with boys from working class backgrounds is a lack of opportunity? A lack of free and discounted council facilities such as youth centres, libraries, organised sporting clubs/events means that teens don't have anywhere to socialise and participate with others?

Anecdotally, I have a autistic, gaming teen boy at home, but he also participates in martial arts and a theatre group, goes out with his autistic friends occasionally and I encourage him to socialise and get involved (doesn't always work, of course). However, we are middle class with the means to give him that opportunity. It is a pretty similar pattern within his autistic friendship group.

I knew someone who is sad about the disappearance of snooker clubs.

I think there's a major problem with a lack of books that boys enjoy. Once they've done Harry Potter, there just isn't much being published that might appeal to them.

There are some male-coded genres - stuff like military sci-fi or high fantasy - that still sell, but a boy who isn't into that really has nowhere to go. What's promoted as YA fiction is just too female.

There's a big underserved market for the kind of adventure stories that boys used to read. There are tons of old books that could be republished, or if they're too old-fashioned or they've become politically tricky, there are writers who can do new books in the same style.

Women run the publishing industry, by and large. I think there's a genuine blind spot there. And an opportunity for anyone who wants to take it.

If boys aren't reading, the way to deal with that is to give them something they enjoy reading. Boys who don't have bookworm dads are unlikely to discover that.

I agree that there is little reading material aimed at boys, but even military, sci fi and high fantasy is mainly female protagonists.

Eh? What about Percy Jackson or Alex Rider or Artemis Fowl?

I was soaking up Stephen King when I was a teenager as were most of my friends. Why wouldn't those books work for boys?

Girls have been subjected to Holes, Of Mice and Men and war poetry in English since forever in efforts to try to engage boys with male protagonists.