Advice For Young Men

Hi, I want to write this post for young men, say guys teens to 25, regarding my personal views of how young men might deal with the challenges of living within a feminist authoritarian society (ie. all Western countries).

I think my starting point would be, YES realise the reality of a system that TENDS to binarily present women as having virtuous qualities and men as having vice-like qualities - that there is both public defamation of men and celebration of women, but also numerous actual laws and policies designed to promote women and constrain or retard men. Examples? Reserve jobs for women in male dominated industries (engineering), don't do it for men in female dominated industries (education, some higher education), let women use the Hague convention on child removal to recover their kids, but not men.

So once you have this starting point of awareness, my thoughts are a young man SHOULD NOT preoccupy on it and should get on and live his life. That means going on and doing all possible to advance his career (in the private sector a man may face less discrimination than in public service, in some academic environments in Australia a man would be a fool to pursue this career thread if he seeks to reach high office). It also means to lock in a reasonable woman as lifelong partner. Because of the imbalance of the genders' rights, responsibilities and powers the system appears to add lots of problems to the men in heterosexual relationships, but from what I have seen this is less of a problem for couples that met up at a young age. To put it bluntly, if you're 21-22, etc, lock in that 19 year old and build something she doesn't want to burn down no matter how much the feminists tell her to.

Also, I would suggest focusing on investing in relationships with family of origin (with the common sense caveat of not investing in abusive, non reciprocating people), particularly female family members. So that is sisters particularly, but further across, aunts, nieces, female cousins etc. The reason for this is women's access to their children is rarely compromised in relationship breakdown - so women relatives will generally be happier as they come out better off in relationship breakdown - and therefore, they generally will have more emotional reserves to help their own biological male relatives.

I would on balance advise against getting too involved in men's rights, or even lurking here on reddit on the men's rights sub too much - once you realise the state of affairs, there's no point wallowing in the injustice. Get on with life avoiding many of the pitfalls so many here have fallen into. Maybe when you're older, very established, or whatever, such a man will be really helpful for the men's rights movement. Maybe his wife, daughter, or other family member will be an even more valuable spokesperson. But the point is, keep it to yourself.

These are my thoughts only. The way I see it now, improving legal conditions or media portrayal of men is a totally unrealistic goal, and for me the goal is simply to help men internally realise what is going on. That, to me, is a valuable outcome and realistic goal.

Best of luck any young man reading this. If we could but put old heads on young shoulders...

[–]playingpoodles[S] 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago* (0 children) | Copy Link

[+]CarrotFlute -7 points-6 points-5 points 7 years ago (27 children) | Copy Link

Just so you know. The reason for which there are more engineering jobs for men is that there is a stigma around female engineers. The abnormally high amount of male engineers is not a reflection on differing passions within the genders, but rather a lack of an engineering culture for women. There have been steps to reverse that, and it is beginning to manifest itself in American schools. Dartmouth, for example, graduated more female engineers than male ones in the class of '18.

Also, the idea that we are living in a feminist authoritarian society is ludicrous. There are two reasons for which that reasoning is false. First, the countries with the highest percentage of women in national parliaments go as follows: Rwanda, Cuba, Bolivia, Mexico, Sweden, Grenada, Namibia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and South Africa. Those are all (with the exception of Sweden) developing countries.

And second, you imply that women's rights are at a point where they are overcoming men's rights. That could not be further from the truth. The gender inequality index's world average is an unsightly 0.44 - which is equivalent to a country like Jordan. That's kind of shitty.

P.S. I'm aware I will be downvoted mercilessly, but I figured we needed some facts.

[–]SamHanes10 3 points4 points5 points 7 years ago* (3 children) | Copy Link

The way the GII is designed, it will almost always find inequality. For example, it includes maternal mortality rate (MMR) and an adolescent birth rate (ABR, or adolescent fertility rate AFR) but no corresponding health component for men. By definition, male health is set to 1 (the maximum). Any country in which the MMR is above 10, or the AFR is above 0.1, will be considered inequal, even if everything else is equal. See here:

Consider a hypothetical country with PRf = PRm, SEf = SEm, LFPRf = LFPRm and with the lowest MMR and AFR observed in the sample of countries for which data is available (MMR = 10, AFR = 3.8). In that case, that hypothetical country would have a GII value well above 0 (GII approximately 0.15). )

The related UN GDI is similar flawed in that it defines a five-year difference in life expectancy between males and females as 'equal'. That is, countries in which females do not live more than 5 years more than males are considered inequal.

[–]CarrotFlute -2 points-1 points0 points 7 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]SamHanes10 6 points7 points8 points 7 years ago* (1 child) | Copy Link

You are wrong, please read the technical notes about these indices. The GII is "ranges from 0, where women and men fare equally, to 1, where one gender fares as poorly as possible in all measured dimensions." (see page 7). That is, anything above 0 is considered an "inequal" country. As I pointed out, in any country in which the MMR is above 10 and the AFR is below 0.1 will be have an GII of above 0 (possibly substantial so), and thus considered unequal, even if the other components of the index and the same. In order words, it will almost always by definition show that "women and men do not fare equally well".

You're also wrong about the GDI. As per page 6 of the above document, the GDI includes male and female health indices. These are calculated as:

Dimension index = (actual value – minimum value) / (maximum value – minimum value)

For the health indices, the "Life expectancy at birth (years)" is used. The minimum and maximum for females are 22.5 and 87.5 years. For males, these are 17.5 and 82.5 years (see table on page 6). Note the five year difference. If both males and females had a life expectancy of 80 years, these are the values of the health indices:

Female health index = (80-22.5)/(87.5-22.5) = 0.88

Male health index = (80-17.5)/(82.5-17.5) = 0.96

That is, the health of males and females of this country would be considered inequal. For the female health index to equal the male health index of 0.96, the female life expectancy would have to be 85 years. In other words, countries that make an effort to improve male health may be penalised in the GDI, even if males still live on average shorter lives than females. I think most people would find this to be a ludicrous definition of gender 'equality'.

I suggest you actual read up about how the indices were calculated, and understand what they measure, before using them as gospel to prove that women are universally disadvantaged compared to men. You obviously have no idea what these indices are actually measuring. Even when told about their flaws, you didn't bother to go look them up.

[–]CarrotFlute -1 points0 points1 point 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Lmfao if you can get me some proof that GII is by definition unequal by all means go ahead. If the MMA is abnormally high, it should be considered in the calculation of GII because it is emblematic of poor reproductive health.

Now as for your second point. Why didn't you bother to quote the whole page? The age is not biased lol. It is tinkered to take into account biological advantage that women have to live longer.

The indicators are transformed into indices on a scale of 0 to 1 using the same goalposts that are used for the HDI, except life expectancy at birth, which is adjusted for the average five-year biological advantage that women have over men

Either way, you're not a scientist so don't go try to attack a universally adopted system that was created by more IQ than you could ever dream of. I get you're mad at me, but I did do my research.

[–]Maito_Guy 2 points3 points4 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]problem_redditor 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago* (10 children) | Copy Link

Here's more facts for you.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0205349

Most studies measuring gender inequality do not take into account the disadvantages that men face, or if they do take them into account they do not weight them heavily at all.

Apart from political agendas, research on gender inequality has also almost exclusively focused on issues highlighted in the women's rights movement. Issues disadvantaging more men than women have been understudied (for a review, see [3]) and are not heavily weighted (if at all) in widely used measures of gender inequality, such as the highly cited Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI)[4]. Further, the GGGI truncates all values such that no country can, by definition, be more favorable for women than for men (for details see below). As a result, existing measures do not fully capture patterns of wellbeing and disadvantage at a national level. This is an important oversight, as there are issues that disproportionately affect boys and men. Among the many examples are harsher punishments for the same crimes [5] and an overrepresentation (93% worldwide) in the prison population [6]; compulsory military service (in living history or currently [3]); the large majority of homeless people without shelter are men [7]; higher levels of drug and alcohol abuse [8]; higher suicide rates [9]; more occupational deaths [10]; underperformance in schools [2]; and, men are more often victims of physical assault in general (see [3], p.30-33) and within schools, thus limiting educational opportunities [11]. Men are also overrepresented in occupations that are risky (e.g., exposure to toxins [12]) and physically taxing, such as front-line military duty, firefighting, mining, construction, or sewage cleaning.

This study is one that attempted to properly measure gender inequality between the genders (taking men's disadvantages into account as well as women's), and this is what it found.

Using the calculations described above, we created BIGI scores for 134 nations (representing 6.8 billion people in the studied period). As noted, BIGI scores below 0 mean that men are more disadvantaged than women, and scores greater than 0 mean that women are more disadvantaged than men (S1 Table).

In 91 (68%) of the 131 countries, men were on average more disadvantaged than women, and in the other 43 (32%) countries, women were more disadvantaged than men. The international median of the BIGI is -0.017 (SD = 0.062), that is, nearly a two percent deviation from parity, favoring women.

Hmmm. This study runs contrary to everything you've been saying.

[–]CarrotFlute 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (9 children) | Copy Link

[–]CarrotFlute 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

Here a few more facts from our reputable source (the U.N.):

While the world has achieved progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment under the Millennium Development Goals (including equal access to primary education between girls and boys), women and girls continue to suffer discrimination and violence in every part of the world.

Here is the proof:

Globally, 750 million women and girls were married before the age of 18 and at least 200 million women and girls in 30 countries have undergone FGM.

The rates of girls between 15-19 who are subjected to FGM (female genital mutilation) in the 30 countries where the practice is concentrated have dropped from 1 in 2 girls in 2000 to 1 in 3 girls by 2017.

In 18 countries, husbands can legally prevent their wives from working; in 39 countries, daughters and sons do not have equal inheritance rights; and 49 countries lack laws protecting women from domestic violence.

One in five women and girls, including 19 per cent of women and girls aged 15 to 49, have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner with the last 12 months. Yet, 49 countries have no laws that specifically protect women from such violence.

While women have made important inroads into political office across the world, their representation in national parliaments at 23.7 per cent is still far from parity.

In 46 countries, women now hold more than 30 per cent of seats in national parliament in at least one chamber.

Only 52 per cent of women married or in a union freely make their own decisions about sexual relations, contraceptive use and health care.

Globally, women are just 13 per cent of agricultural land holders.

Women in Northern Africa hold less than one in five paid jobs in the non-agricultural sector. The proportion of women in paid employment outside the agriculture sector has increased from 35 per cent in 1990 to 41 per cent in 2015.

More than 100 countries have taken action to track budget allocations for gender equality.

In Southern Asia, a girl’s risk of marrying in childhood has dropped by over 40% since 2000.

[–]problem_redditor 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Again, this is regarding the issues only women face. Just because women have these issues does not mean men do not have others of their own. How do you measure relative deprivation in men and women, compare them side by side and factually say one has it worse than the other?

In reality, whether an entire group overall has it "better" or "worse" can be measured in many different ways which will give you vastly different results. People constantly quote the lack of women in higher positions and average higher pay for men to attempt to prove that men are the privileged ones, but it is not the only way of looking at it, or measuring gender inequalities. If one were to use combat fatalities, workplace deaths or conviction rates, one would see that men would be a lot worse off in that regard. It is very difficult to reliably or with any accuracy determine which gender is overall better or worse off because in doing so one is essentially comparing apples to oranges and has to apply a lot of subjectivity in coming to a conclusion.

There are plenty of disadvantages that men face that a lot of people ignore:

Men throughout history have been, and in some places still are, subjected to social and legal pressure to fight in war. When it comes to conflict fatalities, men are in fact far more vulnerable to victimization than women, with a 1.3 to 10 times higher likelihood of death. Yet this fact of male victimhood has garnered little attention to date.
Prevailing gender stereotypes also have deadly consequences for men, be it through forced recruitment and death as a soldier or through ‘pre-emptive’ executions of non-combatants of ‘battle age’ — as happened in Srebrenica. Non-combatant males are denied civilian status (and hence protection), as is happening at the Syrian-Jordanian border where the government of Jordan has refused entry to single male refugees.
Men get a longer sentence for the same crime. A study by Sonja Starr, an assistant law professor at the University of Michigan, found that men are given much higher sentences than women convicted of the same crimes in federal court. The study found that men receive sentences that are 63 percent higher, on average, than their female counterparts. Females arrested for a crime are also significantly more likely to avoid charges and convictions entirely, and twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted.
Males are circumcised upon birth. The practice of male circumcision in African countries is downright deadly. A recent report by South Africa’s Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities calculated that in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo provinces alone at least 419 boys have died since 2008, and more than 456,000 initiates have been hospitalised with complications. Urologists describe seeing patients whose penises have become so infected and gangrenous they literally drop off.
Certain countries such as Afghanistan practice bacha bazi, which translate as 'boy play'. It is on the surface a harmless form of entertainment - young boys dancing for the entertainment of their elders. The boys are trained as dancers, made to perform to groups of men dressed as girls, bells on their flowing skirts and make up on the faces. Then the boys are passed between the men, taken to hotel rooms where they can be sexually abused.
Men have comparatively few resources when it comes to domestic violence, despite some studies showing that over 40% of domestic violence victims are men. The Duluth Model of domestic violence assumes that men are aggressors and women are victims. A lot of domestic violence law is based around the Duluth Model, and the Duluth model has been used to train police and other officers of the court to automatically identify the man as the abuser.

This list is not exhaustive.

[–]problem_redditor 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (5 children) | Copy Link

Except that you've completely disregarded the part where the study surveys a huge sample size of countries and in the vast majority of these countries, men are disadvantaged compared to women.

Also, keep in mind what the GII uses to measure gender inequality. What the GII uses is the maternal mortality ratio, adolescent birth rate (births per 1000 by women), the female and male population with at least secondary education, female and male shares of parliamentary seats, and the female and male labour force participation rates.

These are mostly issues facing women globally, so it's no surprise that women come off as being worse off in the GII. The GII does not, however take into account the ways in which men are primarily disadvantaged.

Among the many examples are harsher punishments for the same crimes [5] and an overrepresentation (93% worldwide) in the prison population [6]; compulsory military service (in living history or currently [3]); the large majority of homeless people without shelter are men [7]; higher levels of drug and alcohol abuse [8]; higher suicide rates [9]; more occupational deaths [10]; underperformance in schools [2]; and, men are more often victims of physical assault in general (see [3], p.30-33) and within schools, thus limiting educational opportunities [11]. Men are also overrepresented in occupations that are risky (e.g., exposure to toxins [12]) and physically taxing, such as front-line military duty, firefighting, mining, construction, or sewage cleaning.

The GII takes near to none of this into account, and I would argue that makes it a very questionable measure of gender inequality when trying to measure "which gender has it worse".

[–]CarrotFlute 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

[–]problem_redditor 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

The problem with the GDI is that it takes the gender earnings gap into account. While financial resources are related to wellbeing, individual earnings of men and women are not necessarily a good indicator of financial resources, given that most adults live in households where income is shared. In fact, in many contexts the division of labor and income in families can provide advantages to women, giving them an opportunity to benefit from the family income to cover costs associated with raising children (if they wish to do so), as can be found in nations with high levels of human development.

EDIT: And as someone else in this thread said, "the related UN GDI is similar flawed in that it defines a five-year difference in life expectancy between males and females as 'equal'. That is, countries in which females do not live more than 5 years more than males are considered inequal."

[–]Maito_Guy 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]shit-zen-giggles 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]headingtoshore 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (6 children) | Copy Link

[–]CarrotFlute -1 points0 points1 point 7 years ago (5 children) | Copy Link

[–]headingtoshore 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

so, out of intrest i am comparing rankings on your cited page to the 5 nations mentioned at https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/slideshows/top-5-countries-for-women-in-science?onepage

from usatoday as being the 5 'best' countries for women in science, mainly that is, countries that have the highest percentage of all stem field workers as female.

1 Trinidad and Tobago A share of 54.6 percent of people working in research in this Caribbean country are women. (gender inequality rank 73, value .324)
2 Azerbaijan it can boast that 54.3 percent of its researchers is comprised of women (gender inequality rank 71, value .318)
3 Tunisia a share of 53.9 percent of the total workforce in research in the North African country were women. (gender inequality rank 63, value .298)
4 Armenia 53.7 percent of those working in research are women (gender inequality rank 55, value .262)
5 Thailand 53.3 percent of people in research in the country are women. (gender inequality rank 93, value .393)

Why do you suppose it seems that the more equal nations lag behind the less equal ones, in terms of female participation in stem?

[–]CarrotFlute -1 points0 points1 point 7 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]headingtoshore 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]shit-zen-giggles 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]GreyTortoise 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

I threw you an upvote but I can't say you're fully correct. I mostly did it because you're a little more on the level than OP. The abysmal state of compassion for men is spot-on, but otherwise it's kind of a run-on.

In the US, women are quickly outclassing men socially and legally. Women have literally speaking more rights than men.

Reproductive rights are recognized as being nonexistent for men by even the World Health Organization, abortion is a protected service funded and kept politically secure by various organizations. Circumcision of infant boys is legal and even protected in some countries while female genital alteration of any severity is outlawed as barbaric in most of the westernized world. You can charge a man more for car insurance because, statistically speaking, he is more expensive to insure, and no one will think otherwise...whereas a woman who is statistically more likely to become pregnant in her lifetime cannot be charged more for health insurance. Beyond that we have new developments like female-only scholarships, female-only parking, female-only college spaces and organizations. Courtrooms and legal systems are hers for the taking with divorces more than half the time initiated by a wife and 93% of alimony being paid out to ex-wives. Let's not even start on child custody, which feminist organizations constantly knock down equal parenting laws to help women hold supremacy on single-custody and child support payments. And of course also "guilty until innocent", aka, "he-said-she-said" kangaroo courts where a woman can destroy a man's life with an accusation of a boob grab that never happened.

And then everybody looks at us like we have no idea what's going on and we must just hate women or something. "Shut up, incel virgin dickbag lolol."

I can keep going but you get the point. Read the news. I get it's not nice for women either but at least the whole world is tripping over itself trying to help them deal with fake wage gaps and such.

[–]CarrotFlute 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago* (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]GreyTortoise 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Abortion is a woman's right, I'd like to think. Something is growing inside her body, and if we revoke agency over someone's own body in any instance I think we're doing something wrong in principle. Just like with circumcision and overall alteration of infants' bodies. But I digress.

The issue of feminist organizations attacking equal parenting laws is documented, I'm sure you can summon the data up on Google. The National Organization for Women has shut down at least one rally by a fathers' rights group. Also forgot to mention how feminist organizations demand federal funding for women's domestic violence shelters and using various initiatives meant to curtail violence specifically against women, because men don't matter, have managed to reduce the number of men's domestic violence shelters in the US to just a single one as a side effect of being so ignorant of the other half of the population. And that one shelter for men is funded entirely by the volunteers working there.

There's a lot of cognitive dissonance and general lack of compassion for men, but it's good to see someone coming through here with some understanding. We don't even expect anyone to ever care or there to ever be any big initiatives or anything, we just don't want to sit around and let it all happen. Circumcision, though, I think we might manage to outlaw. A huge victory, if silent.

Title	Advice For Young Men
Author	playingpoodles
Upvotes	8
Comments	29
Date	April 10, 2019 11:47 PM UTC (7 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/bbt7jy/advice_for_young_men/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/advice-for-young-men.879933 https://theredarchive.com/post/879933

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