Why boys should read girl books ("We are raising our boys to lack empathy")

DavidByron2 · 2016-05-05T16:18:12+00:00

I think men are more empathic that women. Privilege always means less empathy. Women simply decide to claim they have more empathy and compassion, rather as the rich say they are better than the poor.

The privileged don't have to understand the underprivileged. They can just ignore them until needed and then order the about. Our society defines empathy as empathising only with women, not men, and still I'd say even under that definition men do better.

Men are expected to magically figure out women's needs and moods. Women don't ever have to care to figure out what men want.

franklindeer · 2016-05-05T05:46:14+00:00

This has become the new way to disparage men while maintaining that you're concerned about their wellbeing, just suggest all of men's problems have nothing to do with the law, education or government policy and boil it down to something trivial like the books they read or that they're not held for that extra 3 seconds as an infant. It amazes me how feminist academics can prejudicially dismiss very big, obvious causes in favour of totally insignificant nonsense.

MRA-automatron-2kb · 2016-05-05T16:22:43+00:00

if you want boys to have more empathy, stop telling girls it's ok to hit boys.

scruffist · 2016-05-05T16:58:58+00:00

Part of the problem with education is they don't just want boys to read about girls — they want boys to read as girls. And as minorities. And as LGBTers.

They are making fiction reading lists that don't just have girl characters, they have girl narrator-protagonists, and not in a superficial way. The way many of the protagonists live in the story is stereotypically feminine. Their concerns are stereotypical and their actions.

This does nothing for a lot of boys. According to a friend who's dealing with this as a HS english teacher it's a huge part of the problem with boys getting behind in school. Boys are increasingly uninterested in "reading" because all they're shown as "reading" is this shit. You give them Hatchet, Heart of Darkness, On the Road, Hitchhikers Guide, etc. now suddenly they like "reading." But that's nearly impossible now in the average US HS because of the requirements handed down from on high.

It all goes back to this basic problem where they think no one can possibly understand their snowflake-ness unless they've lived it. So since they can't live it we'll force them to read it. It's fine to read a variety of things, but that's of course not what's happened. Girls would never be forced to read On the Road — it's women are disposable — or Hatchet — ew he buries his poop and has no one to talk to. So we just do away with the boy readings all together.

BookOfGQuan · 2016-05-05T20:54:04+00:00

No, we're raising our children to fail to empathise with outsider, lower status males.

It's almost hilarious how lacking in self-awareness these people are.

Mitschu · 2016-05-05T08:48:39+00:00

Why boys should read girl books ("We are raising our boys to lack empathy")

Oooh, should we start with "Boys are Stupid: Throw Rocks at Them?"

Or how about "Girls are from Saturn, Boys are from Jupiter?"

Ooh, or "Snips and Snails", the companion book to "Sugar and Spice?"

Maybe "A Girl's Guide to Guys: Meeting Them, Managing Them and All That Love Stuff", which promises to explain to girls whats going on in boys' "little brains?"

"Boys are Dogs", the book and later Disney movie about a girl discovering that you can train boys to do your bidding by using simple puppy rearing tricks?

I can keeeeeep going. There's practically zero written on the subject of empathizing with boys, compared to the dearth of "how to control / manage / put in their place / cut down boys" popular writings for young girls.

Are we raising our boys to lack empathy? Well, that depends on if they're emphatic learners - if so, then I'd say ironically yes, they're learning incredibly well from example, and encouraging them to read books marketed to girls would just hasten their empathy's demise.

Of course, if they're not, then we're utterly failing boys' emotional needs by making this all about boys not living up to girls' standards, re: "a boy steeped in contempt for the feminine [can't] grow up to respect women."

... because... uh, maybe boys don't have to flat out hate women, they just don't want to read "The Gutsy Girl" which starts from the premise that girls alone need to be taught that they can be just as good at stereotypically masculine things as boys are?

Why would a boy want to read it? I don't see blacks being required to read "Wigga: A White Guide to Being Just as Black if not Blacker than Black People Are" - and even if we accept the premise, why should we then expect blacks to read a book marketed to whites on how to be black?

Yet the alternative, pandering to girls about how anything a boy can do, they can do (better) not appealing to boys is "contempt of the feminine?" Boys already know anything boys can do, boys can do. The mission statement of the book doesn't apply to boys, by design, and then the author has the guff to complain that boys don't read it because they are excluding her.

Why aren't Jews reading my latest bestseller, "Kosher Living For Goyims"?! It must be because of their deepseated bigotry against non-Semites! Certainly not that they don't need outsiders to their standards and practices coming in to tell them not to eat pork, it's because they're being brought up to hate us.

This is before I even bother getting into her complaint about how girls have to read boy-books but boys don't have to read girl-books.

Books aren't marketed strictly at boys. Or rather, an incredibly tiny fraction are, and those that do are typically companions to books marketed strictly at girls.

"Boys books" aren't exclusive. "Dog Friday" doesn't start from a premise of "if you're afraid of dogs, and exclusively a white suburban boy, this book is for you!" Girls can relate to being afraid of dogs and learning to cope with that fear without the necessary prerequisite of having a penis.

Meanwhile, books marketed to girls are almost always marketed for girls only, either explicitly or (in the case of this gluttonous girl power book) implicitly.

Here's a tip for writing books that boys will read, feminists. Don't exclude them. That's it. That's fucking it.

That a solution so simple escapes their limited reasoning ability shows where the real empathy problem is.

lostapwbm · 2016-05-05T07:25:02+00:00

The writer whose presentation was not attended by boys is named Shannon Hale, and in her blog post about the incident she goes even further. She says that the agreement that boys shouldn’t read about girls, that in fact it’s shameful to be interested in what girls do and think about in books, is an agreement that “leads directly to <s>rape culture</s>mortal sin.”

Yep, still sounds stupid.

The movie asks, how can a boy steeped in contempt for the feminine grow up to respect women? Answer: he can’t and won’t.

Or, and this is just a wild shot in the dark, women could demonstrate something in themselves worth respecting, not just empty blustering about INDEPENDENCE and GRRL POWAH.

Just a thought.

She said that they will be “taught that girls are objects...

We're all objects in the strictest definition of the word, cupcake.

they are prizes that they can win,”

Yeah, because throwing trinkets at women and doing stupid shit to impress absolutely does not work. /s

...and that “boys go out and do things and girls sit back and wait to be rescued.”

Teach girls to 1) not need to be rescued and 2) if they do need rescue, to rescue themselves.

So this insistence by adults that boys want only boy things ultimately damages girls.

eyeroll

rottingchrist · 2016-05-05T10:08:37+00:00

Whatever, entitled twerp. Boys don't owe you an audience and are well within their rights to choose to not patronize your bullshit.

Title	Why boys should read girl books ("We are raising our boys to lack empathy")
Author	jackie55dz
Upvotes	10
Comments	20
Date	May 5, 2016 3:19 AM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/4hy6a7/why_boys_should_read_girl_books_we_are_raising/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/why-boys-should-read-girl-books-we-are-raising-our.950239 https://theredarchive.com/post/950239

Comments