The manosphere to man, is as feminism to women

[Breadandsticks]

And isn’t that scary! I believe that some of the people (I sadly know females that also carry some of these beliefs) that are deep rooted in the manosphere believe that the beliefs are equivalent to what the feminist movement is for women.

The difference is, feminism is rooted in a genuine need for change for equality for women and girls and includes law changes, system changes, increased support to achieve a level of equity.

Whilst the manosphere is actually about stroking men’s egos. It’s more about the women you date and the cars you buy over actual help and useful life advice.

It doesn’t seem to be about systemic changes for a fairer “male experience” such as encouraging mental health support (which is happening but not as a plea from the movement), or supporting dads to be equal in childcare. Or even helping boys do better at school (on the back of the stat that girls tend to be higher achievers younger).

This might be simplistic (and over said) but it’s scary that such a movement is brainwashing boys and men.

Reading for pleasure is reading outside of the school curriculum.

But the school English curriculum is generally heavily skewed towards boys. Male protagonists, male authors, male struggles.

No idea if they would get even worse results if it wasn't.

I think girls are open to reading about male heroes as long as they can emotionally engage with the character, whereas boys definitely prefer to have a male lead. Also the kind of discourse that takes place around a novel is important. Too much focus on feelings, rathar than on themes and plot structure can be detrimental.

My husband is quite unusual for a man in that he can read a very wide range of novel and will as happily read a novel by a woman as a man, whereas my oldest son, who also likes to read novels, tends to prefer historical action, adventure or military types of story - which tend always to be written by men.

My younger son is like me. He prefers non fiction. Reading doesn't always have to be about novels. Travel writing, literary and other types of biography are also more than worthwhile. Women make fantastic historical and literary biographical writers.

My daughter likes historical fiction too ( like oldest son) but her novels of choice are always more involved with the relationships between characters ( in the context of the Tudors). These books tend always to be written by women. Phillipa Gregory, Hillary Mantel etc

The point there is that the English books have been selected with engaging boys in mind and yet people still blame a feminised curriculum for their lack of success.

"Girls will engage with a male lead where boys definitely prefer a male one" - well, girls have had to, haven't they? Diana Wynne Jones wrote about her struggle to be allowed to write a children's book with a female protagonist decades ago and we've barely moved on from that.

Look at the Marvel films - how many were made with male leads before a female character got her own film, and then the manosphere cried that women were 'taking' superhero films from them.

But thats because women choose to be teachers and choose to be teaching assistants at much higher rates. Partly that's down to pay/status. It might also be that less men are willing to really deal with the day to day grind of helping students. Especially "difficult" students (who are statistically more likely to be struggling boys). So, is the real problem that the people helping boys are female and they aren't as good because they are female? Or is it that the people helping struggling boys are female and therefore the natural people to blame for the fact they are struggling. You can't blame men for boys struggling in schools if the men aren't there.

Because women are much much more likely to be teaching assistants there is a really hostile attitude to them from some parts of the men's advocacy camp. Paying teachers more, recruiting teachers, recruiting more TAs etc is seen as a "female centric" policy. And the lower teaching pay gets, the less likely men are to want to do it so the more "feminised" it gets so the more resentful men get. Etc etc etc

But by and large boys are far more likely to receive a one to one teaching assistant than girls. That money being spent on support teachers/extra teachers/specialist schools is being spent disproportionately on boys. But because it's paid mostly to women it's seen as a benefit to women. No one notices all the efforts that are being put into helping boys when it's women doing it.

If we really wanted to "level the playing field" we could pass a law saying that schools can't spend more on supporting boys overal than they do girls. But that would be disastrous for boys. So we choose equity not equality.

On single sex teaching... On academic results alone girls tend to do better on single sex environments than girls in mixed environments
Especially in maths and science. Boys tend to do worse in single sex environments than boys do in mixed sex environments. Make of that what you will. It certainly suggests "feminised environments" aren't the main culprits.

It's not about 'blaming' anyone, as such...

Regarding special needs provison and the sort of one to one attention that most struggling pupils require, I have often sensed that for some of these pupils they have missed out on some of the earlier stages of development. There seems to be a window and a time frame for developmental milestones, and if you don't get what is required when it is most needed, it can be difficult to catch up.

I've worked with struggling boys on a one to one basis, and my sense is that the the sort of nurturing and confidence building that is usually required in order to help a pupil overcome some of their difficulties can be well matched by a more 'feminine' sensibility. That's not to say that men can't be good teaching assistants. They obviously can. Some boys do seem to thrive with male teachers and assistants, maybe because they have previously lacked consistent, positive masculine role models?

It would be interesting to see the stats for boys attainment in mixed over single sex environments?

I've just come across this which suggests that boys do better at KS4 in single sex schools...obviously just one source, but nonetheless.....

Attainment at KS4 by subject
We’ll start with a look at the size of the attainment gap between pupils in single sex schools and their peers. This is fairly large, especially for boys.

Again, boys in single sex schools have higher average grades across all of the subjects shown. The difference in average English and maths grade is slightly higher than for girls, at just under 1.3 grades.

If it were the case that boys in boys’ schools do particularly well in subjects that tend to be more popular with female students, we’d expect to see large gaps in subjects like English, art, religious studies and modern foreign languages. And we do see this to some extent, but we also see large differences in some subjects that don’t tend to have gender gaps in progression, like geography and history, as well as in computer science and maths, both of which tend to be relatively popular with male students at A-Level and beyond.

https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2023/10/how-does-performance-in-single-sex-and-mixed-schools-compare-subject-by-subject/

https://www.nfer.ac.uk/media/4u0mdny4/the_impact_of_school_size_and_single_sex_education_on_performance.pdf

This study suggests that boys in single sex grammar schools do better than boys in mixed sex grammar schools.

The first study I had showed that when you compare like for like (class sizes etc) boys in single sex schools do slightly worse. But that was Dutch so it might be different in the Netherlands than here. I take that back.

However, other studies from here suggest that boys in single sex education and boys in mixed education do about equal once you control for other differences
https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2024/05/do-pupils-in-single-sex-schools-get-better-grades/

So it's not what I said initially, apologies. However, while boys going to single sex private school or single sex grammar school might do better than boys in mixed schools, if you control for other differences (selective, class sizes, resources grammar versus comp) the fact it's single sex makes no difference. Whereas there is a moderate difference for girls.

I keep mentioning class sizes because that's one thing that's been proven again and again to make a difference for boys. It makes sense - boys as we already agreed find the "sit down and listen to a teacher talk" usually more difficult than teachers. The larger the classes, and the less resources the more that model is relied on. Its why the boys that do worst are working class boys. Disproportionately much worse than working class girls. And cuts in educational funding disproportionately hit WC boys. And cuts in one to one teaching disproportionately hits WC boys. It's not "feminising" of the teaching curriculum that's the problem. It's austerity. But AI haven't heard any of the podcast bros advocating for increasing spending on education or even paying teachers more to attract more men. Actually the opposite.

I'm not saying you are blaming anyone.

But the "manosphere" space (too general assume I'm talking about the more toxic end) absolutely do blame women teachers or feminism in general for the fact boys are struggling more than girls. I do agree that the lack of male role models can be an issue for some boys. But again, there's a tendancy in some spaces to push the blame for that absence on women. There's also (at the more toxic end) to see men being encouraged to spend more time with kids/take on more female coded roles as more evidence of "feminising" men. It's a very confused space.

It was you who was using the word 'blame' a few times in your post, which is why I said I didn't think ' blame' had anything to do with it.

The. word 'blame' seems to have a very judgmental edge to it which can often feel overly personal. I'd rather use the term 'responsibility'...as it it is suggestive of personal agency with which we can monitor the impacts and effects of certain kinds of action or procedure.

We were talking initially about the manosphere versus feminism. So I was talking about the attitude of some of the podcasters/debate bros in that space. Rather than anyone in that space. And blaming women/feminisation/feminism absolutely is part of their thing

I'm sure they do......but such an injurious word which simply escalates hostility rather than investigate responsibility.

Its why the boys that do worst are working class boys. Disproportionately much worse than working class girls.

Ethnicity plays a part there too. Chinese boys do much better than white boys. Why are they more suited to a classroom environment?

My guess is differernt home environment, in that case. Stereotypical, but also accurately, two parents emphasising academic achievement and responsibility.

In some other cases I think the difference can be because there are programs targeted, for example, to black boys, that help some kids that otherwise would miss out. But there have been fewer of those available to kids that don't fall into some kind of identity grouping.

One of the things that has been overall a disadvantage to boys in particular is the pushing down of academics to younger groups. Boys tend to be a little later in terms of readiness to sit and listen at a desk, and also to read, compared to girls.

When you push reading and academics down to 4 and 5 year olds, it is really not good for those who aren't developmentally ready. They adopt poor strategies for reading that cause problems later, they struggle to cope with the sitting, many struggle with handwriting early on, and the whole package means a bad experience and a high chance of behaviour issues.

That follows those kids right through school and while it is kids of both sexes it's disproportionately boys.

The general lack of physical movement in the day has also impacted in similar ways. Not great for anyone but girls are more likely to compensate.

Do you think female teachers tend to deliver less of this?

I definitely don't think that. It does matter , a lot if boys are disadvantaged. Do you think school disadvantages boys more, and if so, why? I'm on the fence...

I have read scientific studies which argue that men have less in-group solidarity, on average, than women do. I need to verify this, though.

Sure start was one specific programme that wasn't specifically targeted towards boys, or a specific ethnicity but that did help even the playing field for disadvantaged boys.
I also think the loss of playing fields and of outside space negatively impacts boys. I agree with you, it disadvantages girls but they cope better. At least academically (there are other side effects eg health, confidence as well).

I do agree with you about academics. My son started school in the Netherlands and while there are aspects of that education system I think work less well, one thing that did work is they start school at four but the first year is a complete dos. They actually teach letters etc later but kids seem to catch up to UK students very quickly, (and without the negative associations that sitting with a parent desperately trying to make them sound out the word C-A-T because the school told them they must do it.)

Its different in the US where a lot of states went down a whole crazy teaching route that messed up a lot of children's reading ability completely. But that's a different discussion.

Yes, I mean in Shakespeare's day, and before, boys would be caned if they fidgeted or were disruptive. The difference was that boys less suited to that mode of learning would either not have been in school in the first place, or have been expelled probably...☹️

Which kinds of novels do you think are uninspiring? Do you think it's that the novels per se are boring or they're ones that girls are more likely to find more interesting? Or that girls are more likely to keep engaged even if a book is boring because they're more likely to enjoy English already?

Also interested in the 'feminine sensibility' female English teachers bring. I guess it can be hard to pinpoint in words the differences...

That's a good point.

Agree strongly re Chinese & black boys. Also good point about starting later with academics.

Or in apprenticeships. Although the misbehaving apprentice/young men causing chaos was a theme then as well.
It was the industrial revolution which I think regimented childhood a lot. Boys were either in classrooms being canned if they misbehaved, or in cotton mills etc where you could lose a limb if you got distracted. Of course, the amount of injuries or punishments that did happen suggests they nevertheless got distracted quite a lot.😕
https://spartacus-educational.com/IRpunishments.htm

And girls of course were also in factories etc. It was quite equal opportunities cruelty.