You so far have been disagreeing with all of it. — javra

Thanks for clarification. If I can ask for a bit more, how do you think I have been disagreeing with it? While I know what you've written, I don't know how you've read what I've written.

Okay. Can you please recap your position for me, what you believe we're disagreeing about, so that I can better engage with you?

So I've gots not damn interest in reading ti. — javra

That's a shame. It's a good paper. Gets used in a masculinity studies course in my city's uni.

It roughly makes the case that considering masculinity as a collection of traits is a bad idea and plays into the essentializing of masculinity, ultimately stymieing its evaluation and improvement. It instead should be considered as a set of socially mediated behaviours that people come to identify with.

I think this is roughly what we're arguing about. I see you as talking about masculine archetypes, as corpuscles of traits, and I think you see me as apologising for the worst excesses of masculinity using a veneer of erudition. I'm largely criticising the lens you view this through, rather than any of the moral judgements you're saying.

And this in no way answers the question in regard to toxic masculinity. — javra

Yes, I think you're asking the wrong question. I've explained my reasons for this.

Who the fuddle is doing this? — javra

I suggest you read the linked paper.

Here presuming you won't claim these to be feminine traits, are these behaviors toxic or not? — javra

Obviously murder and rape are evil.

You're own view of toxic masculinity being a stereotype is therefore idiosyncratic, as evidenced by the open source article on the subject. — javra

Yes, idiosyncratic. Though rooted in the masculinity studies literature. Connell doesn't use the term "toxic masculinity", to my recollection. She uses "hegemonic masculinity", which has a particular structural role in the reproduction of patriarchy. Toxic masculinity as a concept instead plays a moral role in the judgement of men and society, it's "everything bad" in the "traditionally masculine", which is already a clusterfuck - a nebulous evaluation of some aspects of a nebulous norm.

In terms of popular discourse, toxic masculinity is used to condemn individuals rather than even the corpuscle of traits it's supposed to be, it isn't used in anything like Connell's structural sense referenced in the Wiki article you linked. When was the last time you saw people talking about toxic masculinity as anything but an individual moral failing?

Moreover, the use of toxic masculinity to characterise a character archetype - a corpuscle of male traits - is quite strongly criticised in eg Boise (2019)'s "Editorial: is masculinity toxic?". It provides a sociological criticism of this individualising and essentializing trend in conceiving masculinity, which might be old hat to you and might not be. I don't think the article goes far enough in the direction of structure - it doesn't talk about how masculinities become embodied or masculine subjectivities are created -, but it's definitely better than the morally repugnant everyman "toxic masculinity" conjures up with shite methodology.

Toxic masculinity, interpreted in the sense of an essential collective archetype, is exactly the kind of mythopoetic move that feminism which deals with masculinity tends to reject. Though obviously not all feminists reject every essentialism.

In contrast to non-liberal-left versions of mysticism? — javra

Yes. People with right leaning sympathies tend to prefer Jung, conspiracies and the occult. People with left leaning sympathies use words like toxic masculinity, capitalism, patriarchy, privilege as if they're magic explanatory words. People often don't specify concrete mechanisms. The difference, as I see it, is that you tend to be able to specify concrete mechanisms for some of these terms and not others. You can't specify mechanisms for Jung, conspiracies or the occult, you tend to be able to gesture in that general direction for the left buzzwords. But not always, people are lazy. And toxic masculinity is particularly lazy!

To me it’s somewhat in keeping with the “virtues of cruelty” theme I’ve been recently told about in another thread - at least, in so far as there being nothing toxic about activities such as rape and murder, masculine though they might be. — javra

From my perspective, being irritated with toxic masculinity as a social construct is quite a lot different from endorsing the things it castigates. I dislike toxic masculinity as an explanatory concept because it's individual and psychological - about what a particular person values -, but it tends to be used from a place of the collective and social - about how values are created and expectations formed.

If you say someone acts in accordance with toxic masculinity, it's about as good as saying that someone falling asleep is acting in accordance with drowsiness. At least without specifying the hows and whys that drowsiness derived from.

If you want a stereotype to serve as an explanation, it's fine. That can even be rhetorically useful. But it's not a good lens to study anything by.

This is very mature guys and demonstrates what a bunch of losers you are. — Agree-to-Disagree

Is this your job?

Good.

Still, I myself find that this interpretation of masculinity and femininity – itself exceedingly nebulous – denies physiological masculinity being biologically intrinsic to men and physiological femininity being biologically intrinsic to women. Which is exceedingly odd to me, and I’m guessing to many another as well. — javra

I don't think that one needs deny that. Sex isn't something you can just define away.

If you're looking at it from this constructivist lens, you're going to pay attention to which properties get glued together to form part of a concept of gender and which don't. Some of the ones which go into identifying sex go into the gender concept, but they don't need to. Some identifications are largely done from style, and some done more robustly.

For example, having a Y chromosome gets put into the "man" category, but so does having a dick, having a beard, and having steak as your favourite food.

Though this doesn't see an of these properties as "intrinsic", in the sense of being a necessary part of the concept, it sees them as being ever-present at a given time and place. Some of those "given time and place" are expected to be very broad and held for strong reasons, like the identification of what counts as masculine with having a body with a Y chromosome, even though Big Madge can be viewed as masculine.

In strictly simplistic terms, the understanding of masculinity I generally uphold will account of toxic masculinity as - here very abstractly expressed - "willfully forced penetration (physical and/or psychological) upon other without the other's consent". As two extreme examples of this: rape and murder (which sane people all know to be wrong). So too with subjugation and, in more extreme forms, slavery (abstractly, in which those subjugated are at minimum psychologically penetrated by the subjugator against their wishes such that the subjugated are forced to assume inferior roles and standing relative to the subjugator(s).) — javra

I don't like toxic masculinity as a concept at all personally. I wish we cold stop speaking about it. From what I gather it's a hodgepodge. You have intuitions about violence and intrusion and subjugation in it. But those are also proxied with emblems, like being assertive in a conversation, speaking loudly, bragging. Also inside of it is prestige seeking and adherence to hierarchy. There's a lot of sense in viewing these things as a big corpuscle. But the act of identifying some other action as arising from toxic masculinity is not terribly explanatory. For me it's a liberal left version of mysticism.

And did you catch that series, "Adolescence"? — Jeremy Murray

I did. Enjoyed it. There was never a satisfying answer to "why" the murder was done though. I'm quite glad of the latter, it would've been very easy to blame social media outright and it didn't.

Do you, as a guy, feel any differently from your colleagues on any of these subjects? — Jeremy Murray

I've never spoken about it. The only adjacent thing I've heard is surprise that a bloke wants to work with kids. It was also relatively good surprise, as they were cognisant of the impact having few male authority figures/role models has on the kids.

I imagine it might be actually harder for boys your student's age to express emotions? — Jeremy Murray

Maybe. I've very little experience with high school students to draw on.

Even the 'emotion language' topic is 'feminized' or 'gendered' female, even though that's not a thing this subject addresses - we are only concerned with gendered 'male' behaviour, since 'maleness' is the problem, per the consensus. The entire project seems to be making the boys more like girls. — Jeremy Murray

This is something I've noticed too. Just with adults though. Probably also with kids. Though I see the emotion language stuff specifically as "making the boys more like girls" in a slightly incidental fashion. An analogy, if it turned out a dress was body armour, people would be wearing dresses to protect themselves, even though boys would have to wear something feminine to do so. It's taking something that was more associated with feminine social styles and trying to open it up to boys as well.

Not to mention the whole 'Bad Therapy' argument, Abigail Shrier's book, condemning the therapy culture that permeates our children's lives and which may be actually causing the spikes in youth mental health. — Jeremy Murray

I agree that pathologizing every aspect of experience is bad. I doubt it's a cause for the spikes in young people's poorer mental health outcomes in recent years. That pattern seems connected to broader issues with living standards to me.

As for raw numbers, I don't know anything recently, and its definitely still more 'male' behaviour, but it feels like the girls are closing the gap. — Jeremy Murray

Interesting! I'm just going from vibes as well. I didn't see or hear of any violent "play" - you know 'play' that's basically intentionally hurting someone physically for the sole reason of hurting them - from the girls in the school I worked in recently, but I'm sure it happened.

Thank you for your thoughts.

First, I note that no such “non-mystical” answer to the question has been provided by anyone who looks down upon them “mystical” answers - one that thereby addresses what the heck female masculinity is supposed to mean. — javra

Absolutely. I don't want to provide an answer to what constitutes masculinity or femininity, on an essential level. Because I think that entire approach is misguided. I think archetypes are even worse, since they behave simultaneously like stereotypes and essences.

For a rough and ready definition of an essential property, I'd consider X as essential to Y if whenever Y exists in a world it has properties Y in that world. There are problems, but it will tell you that water is H20, boils at 100 celcius and so on. I don't think there are essential properties to gender.

Consider "is a man", imagine writing a list of things that a man must have. A penis? Can lose it in war. Confidence? Can have it undermined. So on. Whatever attribute that goes in the list must be predicated of a man, and then you can prescribe an event which removes that attribute. So they must not be personal attributes, as there are men without them.

Masculinity is what is emblematic of what is essential to manhood. If there are men without every property which is emblematic of manhood, then none of the properties which are emblematic of manhood must be essential. Which means they're contingent in some regard. Contingent commonalities.

There's then the question of where the commonalities come from. @unenlightened provided a scheme for this. A person learns that X counts as masculine through instruction and is compelled to identify with X. X was quite arbitrary. This says little more than the commonalities come from prior commonalities through some system of social propagation. I think that's almost all you can say sensibly about the content of gender. Contingent properties. Stereotypes. Expectations.

You can talk about cases, histories of stereotypes and social roles, perceptions but when you're talking about gender you're fundamentally about social stuff, politics, history. That is, norms.

There's a relevant question about the kind of socially constructed property that gender is, and you definitely hit on it below.

I’ll venture that no “non-mystical” answer is then possible to provide for why women such as Margret Thatcher, RBG, and AOL might be deemed to exhibit masculine traits, including those of assertiveness and leadership. They, after all, are not of the male sex, so, again, why the attribute of “masculine traits”? — javra

No I think there's a quite transparent answer as for why someone like Big Madge could be considered as having masculine traits. And you said it yourself. She counted as a decisive, rational, analytical and erudite leader - she worked as an excellent disciplinarian for her party, and she had vision. All of those are masculine properties, and they don't need to be held by someone who counts as a man. A good example there is woman bodybuilders, too - they exemplify strength, muscularity and so on. There isn't much to this besides "people have said so, look".

The type of predicate that "is masculine" is is more like a cluster of family resemblance. A vague hodgepodge of stuff that gets agglomerated together through the identification @unenlightened talked about. It resembles a giant, vaguely understood extension. Stuff like {muscles, wealth, power, violence, assertion, confidence,...} is masculine. Some of it is very hard to remove, perhaps even close to ever present - like beards and dicks - , even if it's not strictly speaking necessary.

Call it mystical or not, this interpretation can then make ample sense of female masculinity: a pussy-endowed women that is assertive (thereby radiating her being, this being yang) and takes leadership (thereby informing others of what to do, which is a type of information penetration, being again yang). — javra

Yes. Someone who counts as a woman can do things which count as masculine. It doesn't serve as much of an explanation to me? All it seems is that we've got different, but pretty similar, giant blobs that go into the "is masculine" or "is feminine" construct. Maybe some people think odd numbers are feminine, maybe some people think mountains are masculine, maybe the sky is like a dick or a pussy and the rain is androgyne?

It's all still yeeting nebulous lists of crap into a bucket man. Then putting your hands into the bucket for an explanation, getting your hands covered in crap, then wondering why the crap in your hands is grounded in the bucket. And it's not crap, it's essence.

Why are skirts considered feminine? Because they get heavily associated with that which women - who are physiologically feminine - wear (unless one starts talking about kilts, a different issue). — javra

Yes. That's the germinal form of the association @unenlightened referenced. Ultimately it's juxtaposition. Juxtaposition that people really care about.

Why is the sword masculine and the chalice feminine? The sword actively penetrates and the chalice passively accepts, accommodates, and sustains. — javra

Why's the chalice gotta be a pillow princess man god damn archetypes suck.

Okay!

Right - and as expected, you have to pretend discernment doesn't exist and retreat to relativity. — Tzeentch

Can you tell me more about that please? I don't understand what error I've made.

But you've got a list of earth, cold, mountains that you like. Where sushi belongs in the cosmic order is a perfectly cromulent question. I'd put it in with the feminine personally. Its dual would be burgers. Or pizza.

In relation to Chinese thought, this is rather like asking a computer scientist which things are 1 and which are 0. — unenlightened

I would've thought it was more like asking someone who treats the world as 1s and 0s why nothing is essentially 0 or 1.

And if they cannot tell you, it's a false distinction? — unenlightened

If you can't say how you can tell something is an essential property, you've not established it's an essential property. Absolutely nothing in our discussion so far has been about odd numbers or mountains. If I had a bridge from odd numbers to femininity, I would walk it.

Alright. Can you tell me some things that go into the archetypes?

Alright. How do you tell which properties go in the archetype and which don't? @unenlightened's stepped up.

Long and short hair are not part of the archetypes, but beards perhaps are. — unenlightened

Yeah. You kinda just have to eyeball it for almost everything. Though some things correlate so strongly with sex, and sex correlates so strongly with gender, that it's hard to say the connection is arbitrary. Like beards. Or boobs.

I have an account of such, in the process of identification. — unenlightened

Absolutely! I think the distinction between your, and probably my, position and @Tzeentch's is that these identifications principally create/generate gender rather than simply track it.

Thus 'pink' has become the colour of femininity and blue, by simple contrast, that of masculinity. Who even knew that one was expected to have a favourite colour, let alone that it was sexually determined? Personally I like my sausages brown and my cabbage green, but if you want to go for pink or blue ... — unenlightened

Yes. Thinking of how things become gendered as a socially mediated process of identification lets you explain why something as arbitrary as pink/blue becomes so strongly gendered. Musk vs floral scents too.

The challenge of accidental crap counting as masculine or feminine poses to thinking of what counts as masculine or feminine as manifestations of a Jung-flavour archetype is rather great. The archetype either needs to explain too much, or obviates itself of the need to explain some of its manifestations - ie its capacity to explain anything. Like what @Tzeentch just did, to my sights. You pick universality or exceptions, not both.

I don't know how to interpret what you're saying at all then. Archetypes are universal patterns that behave as the essence of what they're archetypes for - like masculinity and femininity. Some things will be part of the archetype and some won't. It's a universal pattern, it's there forever, you know how it works, but there's no way of telling why skirts are feminine in some places and times and not in others in accordance with the cosmic duality you're proposing?

Which properties go in the archetype, the essence, and which don't? And how can you tell?

A definitive answer set in stone is precisely what an essence, a cosmic archetype, is.

I think it's more a matter of which properties one thinks it's worthwhile to pay attention to, and which aren't. — Tzeentch

That's extremely vibes based for the distillation of cosmic archetypes.

Because I have a concept of masculinity and femininity, I now have to provide explanations for all of the silly things people believe or do? — Tzeentch

That is not quite what I meant. How do you tell which properties go into the essence of masculinity and femininity and which don't?

No. But I think it makes sense to be able to provide one, if you've got an account of masculinity or femininity. Like why do the gals go for sushi and the guys go for burgers bro. I find it difficult to believe the sheer degree of affectation that goes into gender derives from any cosmic principle.

But your reply does make me curious: What would a so-called “non-mystical” account of masculinity then be? — javra

I'd call the account non-mystical if it tried to come up with an answer to why the things which count as masculine or feminine count as such. eg, skirts, where in the cosmic principle of yin and yang do skirts live? Why do they become masculine, feminine or neither depending on the context?

I wasn't expecting something so unapologetically mystical, thanks.

And I have no qualms with saying that I believe people are simply often wrong. — Tzeentch

The way 'masculinity' is used here is not the way I would normally use it. My conception is closer to that of Yin and Yang, and I don't think they're social constructions. — Tzeentch

Interesting. I would like to hear what you think the correctness conditions for a trait being masculine or feminine are then? Like if I throw you the trait "likes sushi", can you put that through some algorithm to tell me whether it's masculine, feminine, both or neither?

And if you heavily squint your eyes I'm sure you can find a few masculine virtues here or there, but calling them role models is a stretch. — Tzeentch

For whom? Some people absolutely love Musk - see him as Tesla or Tony Stark. People love Trump - see him as a paladin. Some people even still love Tate - see him as a charismatic masculine guru.

I tried to point this out earlier in the thread, but that basically just put me outside the conversation while people continued saying highly disagreeable things that I felt needed a reply. — Tzeentch

You pointed it out in a different way. You were speaking with people who generally see gender through a social lens - like as a social construction or a performance. I used virtues in a moral sense, and expectations in that social sense. So it's likely that what you were pointing out is quite a lot different from what I was saying, just based on presuppositions. Like I got the impression that you see an essential equivalence between the masculinity of Beowulf and that of Henry Ford based on what they are {men}. But please correct me if I'm wrong, and that you do see gender as principally socially constructed.

We are (hopefully) in transition, and not all at the same speed, so all these hypocrisies and contradictions, social and psychological are to be expected. — unenlightened

Good good. They feel at a breaking point right now. But they have for a decade.

You'd get a healthier picture of masculinity by reading some of the classics. — Tzeentch

Nah. I've got a plenty healthy conception of masculinity. I know what it is, what's expected of a man, and when that's bullshit. I'm of the opinion that virtues aren't gendered, just expectations are. Some virtues are expected of men and some of women, but it's good for everyone to have every virtue.

Think for a moment, what public figure is going to teach you or me about masculinity? Trump? Biden? Musk? Bezos? Etc. etc. — Tzeentch

They do teach you about masculinity though. On a societal level. People do use them as role models, and what they make normal through how they act + their power is literally teaching people about masculinity. Not that everyone accepts it.

You can see a lot of masculine virtues in Trump, Musk, Bezos. I think Biden's reputation of floundering senility renders him impotent, few people have been as symbolically castrated as Biden in recent years.

I can certainly plead guilty there; I don't like writing, so I try to be brief, and make every word count. — unenlightened

It shows and they do. I've always gotten a lot from reading your posts. I think of you as much more of a gadfly than a systems builder.

Also on this topic my thinking is unconventional in some ways, and liable to rub everyone up the wrong way who wants me to be either on their side or on the 'other' side. — unenlightened

Good!

Thus I am against the patriarchy, and capitalist society in general, but I blame women equally if not more than men for it. Like 'what do you expect, girls, if that's what you go for?' — unenlightened

Yeah this stuff is relational and gender stuff tends to come in man:woman dyads, if there's a shitty man thing there's a corollary shitty woman thing. I really like Audre Lorde on this, her book "Sister Outsider", she describes having made the choice to raise her boy as a patriarch - showing little to no interest in his emotional development -, without realising it. It took her a lot of effort to make other choices and raise him non-standardly {this was 1970-1980s}. Bell Hooks writes similarly about her implicit demands for the flavour of maleness she's spent her career criticising from her partners, and wrestling with it.

It's very related to @Tobias OP's framing isn't it? We're in a position, I imagine throughout the political north, where the chat about gender is post-feminist - equality, interchangeability, no gendered essence associated with family roles - but the underlying norms, dare I say libidinal formations, are explosively contrary. Some examples.

This is a world where women may feel the need to forgo makeup at work to prove they're not just there because they're pretty but feel most comfortable being meticulously feminine looking regardless. And one where the feminine-construed virtues of community and collaboration are lauded for efficiency in the workplace, as exemplary leader-followers, but the self sacrifice embodying those virtues requires does not get anyone a leadership role. It gets you stepped on.

It's similarly a world which values men when they identify stoically with their functions - work, "providing a space" - , but requires men to be unstoic for their correct execution. It's a world where you are asked to be emotionally available and kind, but strike fear in strangers if you're seen being kind to them.

Norms regarding sex and attraction are particularly contrary. Here's an anecdote. I saw a bloke flirting with an impossibly drunk tourist girl outside a bar, he kept about 2m distance from her, she was quite uncomfortable and said "I don't want to continue talking with you". He laughed it off and continued talking, maintaining that distance. She got quite scared. So I went over to talk with both of them and deescalated the situation. She then touched me quite inappropriately. It was so bizarre, having "protected" her from a bloke that kept 2m distance, only to have her touch me in the way she was afraid of being touched.

I think a good deal of this comes down to norms regarding men didn't get updated by years of successful feminist consciousness raising, they were largely retained. Which isn't exactly "the feminists" fault, it's just the movement was never designed to reevaluate many social norms regarding men. Just ones that were seen to disempower women. I'm not saying it's a "power grab", I'm saying the revolution wasn't total and it needs to be for its own sake.

I suppose another aspect is that you can find relics of 1960s-1980s academic essentialisms in how people treat gender in liberal public discourse - women get defined through their subordinate role to men, to be a woman is to have patriarchal oppression experiences by men, and to be a man is to be a domineering oppressor. Hilariously the right uses the same essentialisms and either treats them as natural+benign or to be celebrated and escalated.

I'm not sure if my thoughts are too complex or merely incoherent. — unenlightened

I don't think they're incoherent, they're just unsystematic. I think you've put a lot of ideas into a very small space.

Must be them damn commies again, taking over the humanities. — unenlightened

I wish the humanities were full of commies.

Yeah I agree with @Jamal's comment. It's a long way from psychological angle you took though right? I'm mostly reacting to "Men are pitiful", it doesn't seem like the kind of idea you just stumble into as a bloke. Though I did read it as wordplay, as in "to be pitied" {sardonically} and "pathetic".

Did you always think like this?

AOC in a policy-making position comes to mind. — AmadeusD

I think she's fine.

He sees identitarianism as a tool, wielded by neoliberals, to divide people - poor and working-class blacks, whites, others - from the fight against class inequality, which of course would threaten the status and privilege of said neoliberals. (Not to suggest some sort of Machiavellian mastermind behind the curtain - Reed argues that much of this thinking is well-intentioned). — Jeremy Murray

I think this concept of 'reductionism' can be extended to consider a 'gender reductionism' trend, or really, a 'marginalized reductionism'. This might just be a fancy way of saying 'wokeness' but I think the flaws in wokeness are central to this discussion, and more predictive of a male rightward shift than misogyny. — Jeremy Murray

I broadly agree. I wouldn't want to call it "wokeness" in public, since that well's poisoned. I have no idea what else to call it though. I see it as a group of people who adopted left wing Twitter etiquette in real life.

My friends and I who have been part of these spaces think of it as Mark Fisher's vampire castle. Admittedly that article is 2013 and somewhat dated now, and I think somehow discourse these days is even worse than it was back then. I could go on but I'll leave it for now.

They encounter far fewer male role models - one of the only domains in which having someone who 'looks like me' teaching seems to make a difference. — Jeremy Murray

Yeah. I primarily work with 5-12 year olds in education. I'm the only bloke in my work cohort. You work with kids yourself right? Do you also think that the boys are picking up relatively traditional norms - in the playground - at the same time as being demanded to follow other ones -in the classroom-? I think it's a great thing that all the kids I'm aware of are getting eg courses on self expression and emotion language, but the boys still can't use it without stigma. There also still seems to be that element of casual violence among the working class boys, which is still socially rewarded.

Can anyone explain to me how the fear of (else the roundabout concern that) “women are taking over and are destroying the core of masculinity” is in fact not a communal projection of personally held aspirations by a certain male faction in society, one composed of individuals that themselves desire to be domineering over all others - women very much here included as those whom they deem themselves entitled to subjugate? Entitled by Nature, by God, it doesn't much here matter. — javra

In case this was sincere - no one would think “women are taking over and are destroying the core of masculinity” as anything but that projection-disavowal complex, unless they're in one of the maligned hateful demographics or sorely misinformed.

The thing which would make people react negatively to you phrasing it like that is no one would see themselves in those terms, and it parses as an accusation rather than an attempt at understanding. And it's a disrespectful thing to think of someone you don't know.

What makes the remark inflammatory isn't that those people don't exist, it's making the point as if they're commonplace. Rather than fringe members of hate groups.

Which is probably not your fault either. It's the shitty nature of the terrain.

How did we get on to this sidequest? — Banno

IMO noting persistent disparities in how genders are treated reveals what norms regarding them are. That's where I'm coming from anyway. The specific things I brought up were with regard to "masculinity as a problem" in the OP.

...and why more men are in gaol. — Banno

Yes, and why men face significantly harsher sentences for the same crime.

Start with two cohorts, one lower than the other, and then reduce that inequality, and it can be said that the other cohort is "falling behind". Especially when the two cohorts exhaust the population. — Banno

Well taken. For something like income I'd agree. That proceeded from inequality to {now} relative equality within the same role.

What I'm thinking of are school exclusions, finishing degrees, primary school performance and the like. The thing that makes women equal to men in expected performance in almost every competence is also what makes it suspect when men's performance is worse in something odd.

You could look at it from the perspective that "these boys are given every advantage and are still failing", but I don't believe that, because the outcomes show disadvantage in instances like the above.

It would be nice to understand and address how this works in a gendered fashion - like an explanation for why boys face longer exclusions in schools for equivalent transgressions - but it's probably a clusterfuck of mediation like you're saying.

Richard Reeves goes through this issue at length in his book. He argues that considerations of sex and gender do not need to be viewed as zero-sum, but due to political trends, conversations about the struggles of young men and boys are often framed as threatening to the progress of girls and women. — Jeremy Murray

That's very well put.

Remember, we are talking about boys and girls here. In our public schools, boys have been falling behind for decades, and yet people seem to be oblivious to this fact, or worse, seem to think it’s warranted retribution. Again, we are talking about children. — Jeremy Murray

Yes. I think at the higher studies level we're at the point where similar incentive structures that were made for women in STEM should be made for blokes in other fields, a similar drive and marketing campaign anyway. But I don't think this is zero sum - it would still be nice to see "women in construction" alongside the occasional "men in nursing" adverts I sometimes see!

I think the worst instance of the above I heard, again just this year, is in the context of body dysmorphia. Body dysmorphia among young boys is at parity with young girls these days. The response I heard was, paraphrase, "well men will just have to get used to doing what women have all this time".

There is a lot of needless combativeness.

Why would someone that studies philosophy go off into such an odd absolutist reading of femininity and masculinity? — Tobias

He is not the first erudite person I've seen start to go off that deep end. I do think it's related to your thread topic, subterranean norms and trying to find a partner these days. There are contexts that have relatively fixed gender scripts, and ye olde dating has that. I think I threw a reference at you about that before.

I also want to say that I believe it's everyone that ends up doing shitty identity category essentialism in this context, I've heard "men are trash", "men are apes", "men are assholes", "women are inherently more valuable than men", "men should worship women", "women should be in every position of power in society" - these are either paraphrases or direct quotes - as a result of mild romantic disappointment this year. I throw that in with every misogynist comment I've heard this year. And the incredibly unfortunate remarks you hear about Asian men and bi people in queer spaces, which I've not heard this year. Something about how that's configured is simultaneously dehumanising and essentialising.