You mentioned the fact that the young men affected didn't see the change over the last fifty years. I am old enough to have seen them and think it worth noting that one change has weakened them. I don't say this disparagingly.
When I was young, males learned how to live with hierarchy. Made the team, last chosen in pickup games, you flunked and did a year over in school. All taught that you earned your place thru effort and life isn't fair. You got stuck with genetics.
Now everyone is a winner. You get a trophy for showing up. You pass to the next grade in school even if you can't read or make change. You have a digital world and are not well equipped to deal with the real adult world where everyone doesn't get a trophy. You didn't experience that as a child like we did fifty years ago, or at least fewer do.
"Now everyone is a winner. You get a trophy for showing up"
God yes, this attitude has broken the minds of so many people. They feel so entitled to feel good about themselves simply for showing up.
I watch videos on social media of millennials crying into the camera because they didn't get their way in a work meeting or they didn't get called by the special pronouns they wanted and I wonder how a cohort of adults so totally lacking in resilience will function in the world.
All participation trophies did for Gen X was make us cynical, not entitled.
I wonder if part of the reason we catastrophize so much is that we (in the west) don't have many of the real worries our ancestors did. So our tolerance for pain and discomfort has shrunk. And catastrophizing gives our life meaning; we can cast ourselves as victims of whatever oppressive power suggested we smile, or complimented our hair, or didn't say "Merry Christmas." And then comes the fun part: outrage!
Boys like having a chance to win. "So your saying there's a chance" - Jim Carey, Dumb and Dumber
When everyone is a winner just or showing up, it really means that nobody can win and that bores many boys. They are constantly told to not seek winning. Girls are thrilled to fit in, but this is not the same motivator for many boys.
We taught everyone to value self- ESTEEM, when we should have taught them to value self-RESPECT. You know who has the highest self-esteem? Narcissists. So it's no surprise that we wind up elevating the most self-centered of them to power; after all, Donald loves himself SO much, surely we should too.
It is important to understand the implications of the fact that we are a sexually dimorphic species.
Women have never been as powerless as they are often portrayed. Women’s power has mostly been indirect because female aggression tends to be indirect. Many women refuse to admit it occurs at all, even to themselves.
The objectIves of female aggression are not always beneficial. Women are not angels, any more than men are. Lady Macbeth is fiction, but the character rings true. We know how male misbehavior looks. We have not agreed on a catalog of female misbehavior. Corporate conduct standards focus on male typical misconduct and ignore female typical misconduct, almost as if it doesn’t exist. There is, of course, misconduct perpetrated by both sexes. Embezzlement comes to mind.
We need to require positive-sum behavior from everyone. That’s another thing to catalog. What positive sum games are more typical of women than men? How can we reward women for playing them?
"Corporate conduct standards focus on male typical misconduct and ignore female typical misconduct, almost as if it doesn’t exist."
I might be suffering from the blindspot you're pointing to here, but what would be an example of female-typical misconduct? Or, more specifically, female-typical misconduct that isn't punished.
I guess the stereotypical example would be "mean-girls" type behaviour, and yeah, it's true that a woman's verbal misconduct would probably be punished less harshly than a man making a sexualised comment.
But is there a solution other than tightening up acceptable speech codes in exactly the way that some on the extreme Left have already been trying to do?
You are right. Human Resources is filled with man-hating feminists, that openly discriminate against men, and in favor of women. At Rose Medical Center in Denver in 2007, they hired Kristin Diane Parker as a surgical scrub tech, despite KNOWING that she had Hepatitis C.
Women choose their clothing and grooming primarily for their effects on other women. They signal affiliation and status, among other things. The effect on men can be distracting. Noticing is fraught. A civilized man can and will ignore it, but not without effort. It’s like playing music that your coworkers can hear. Few companies have dress codes these days.
This comment is radically under-appreciated by straight men IMHO. Much has been written on it since the 70’s and 80’s, dissecting the specifics.
Notes on clothes:
Somewhere in the late 70’s and early 80’s, it became acceptable for adult women to wear underwear as outerwear, as the expression goes, in professional situations, as well as wearing nothing under outerwear. Men, not so much.
Men cannot wear a racer-back tank top and shorts with a 3” inseam to the office. Men cannot wear sleeveless skintight jersey-knit tops to the office. Men cannot wear a large shirt and tights to an office. Men cannot wear a buttoned jacket and no shirt to an office. There is no context where a man could wear a sheer blouse over a tight muscle-contouring tank top and thigh-length shorts to an office. Even with a jacket. There is no context in fact where a man can expose hairy legs from ankle to calf, knee, thigh, or lower buttocks. A man might be able to wear short-sleeves or rolled up sleeves, if they were not too hairy. but sleeves above the elbow, sleeves mid-bicep, upper bicep or exposing hair on deltoids is unacceptable. Men with extremely hairy chests, hairy collars, hairy necks is unacceptable to expose. Men with beards are acceptable to other men now, longer beards less so, ZZ-top beards are not, no matter how well-groomed.
In effect, men must always be covered from the tip of their toe to their neck, from wrist to neck with some exception of forearm. Skintight sweaters are not possible. Leather shirts and pants are not possible.
There was a 20-year period in my life when I maintained a competitive bodybuilding sized body, and I have always had a beard since I was 19. Wearing a polo shirt with 21” biceps was extraordinarily distracting to those around me. Wearing a form-fitting button-down shirt where my pectorals visibly bounce, every flex, was distracting. I had men and women in meetings wanting to touch my trapezius, my biceps, my deltoids, to the amazement of business colleagues. My wardrobe became either black sweaters or baggy shirts and trousers, and jackets.
—-
Being gay, I’m immune to female skin exposure distraction, for the most part, but it is amusing to watch straight men get flustered. It would have been an amusing exercise to come to a large meeting sometime, in a spaghetti-strap tank top and jacket, and matching expensive shorts, with my shaved head and blond beard, all 250lbs of me, and take the jacket off, my blond body hair a light carpet over chest, shoulders, back, arms, every muscle flexing and dancing under my skin and do an hour long presentation of a complex financial/technical matter: just to see the reaction. An exaggeration, perhaps, but that’s what the double-standard is.
—-
Women don’t dress for men, they dress for other reasons, a complex set of signals of dominance and submission, youth vs experience, and consciousness of sexual desirability to women only, which men don’t read unless interested in fashion.
—-
Men dress to indicate they are not a threat; they aren’t a 250lb muscular male, they don’t have secondary sex characteristics fully developed and arrayed to intimidate, they dress to seem unselfconscious, and to suppress any intimation of physical challenge. Men dress to seem like they would never ever attack, or even could do so, or ever be attacked. The modern western shirt and trousers and jacket is an evolution of the articulated medieval suit of armor.
—-
The one thing women do consistently is expose their neck, their throat to the collar bone, as far as they can around it to shoulders and back, as far down as possible to the pectorals. The apotheosis is the strapless gown, but that’s completely unacceptable for the office.
The one thing men cannot do is expose their neck to the collar bone, the back of their neck, along their shoulders, below the collar bone to the pectoral muscles.
In sociobiology, exposing the neck and belly maximally in animal groups is an appeasement gesture to group leadership. It exists in multiple classes of mammals, from Lions / cats, to Wolves / dogs, Primates / humans, even Dolphins, Meerkats, Rats, Otters and Giraffes.
When you’re aware of it, it simplifies a lot of discussion about office dress.
I have had to sit through many sexual harassment indoctrination, er, I mean "training" sessions. I always bring up that women wearing revealing clothing is sexual harassment of men. That pisses off the "trainers" every time.
"I always bring up that women wearing revealing clothing is sexual harassment of men."
I'm absolutely dying to hear your reasoning here. And how do we define what revealing clothing is? If a woman has big breasts, say, and can't really hide that fact no matter what she wears, what should she do?
The sexual harassment “trainers” weren’t interested in my definition of revealing clothing, as they never asked me for it. What I see is relevant is that they were pissed off that a man had the gumption to question the feminist narrative that only men are evil.
I don't think it's about your gumption, I think it's that defining women's clothing choices as "harassment" makes no sense.
Obviously some clothing is inappropriate for the workplace. But that's quite different to saying that a woman wearing whatever she wants is "evil." And as both you and Bob are demonstrating, defining what is "too revealing" is difficult and can easily slip into "hijab" territory.
I'm obviously not suggesting that men are all evil or that women never are. But unless you actually have a definition of revealing clothing, and it's one that most women would be happy to conform to, you're kind of stuck, no?
I think it may be more that they resent male interference with female intrasexual status games. Women can be deadly serious about those games. Never mind how disruptive they can be in the workplace.
Certain cues provoke an involuntary reaction. Civilized men can and will control themselves, but it’s distracting. It’s much easier to ignore a full figure with a high neckline than power cleavage on a trimmer figure.
Women shouldn’t inflict these cues on coworkers. Save it for face-to-face negotiation with an adversary, where your coworkers will be out of the line of fire.
"Women shouldn’t inflict these cues on coworkers."
Ah, okay, so you're thinking a dress code of some sort for women that prevents them from "distracting" the men? Maybe something in black? That covers them from the neck down?
Although, better cover the face too as some women's beauty is distracting. The hair too, of course.
I mean, I'm being ever so slightly flippant, but come on, you can't be serious here can you?
LOL now say this again but with 'male parts', not breasts. Pretend it is normal for male adults to wear tight, stretchy pants and underwear that puts 'male parts' to levitate straight forward from the body with no sag. LOL. Big breasts do not naturally project straight out, levitating in thin air. They sag with gravity. Any clothing choice that removes the artificial shelf and contrast of the transition from stomach to the breasts would make even big breasted women look more barrel shaped (just like a man). I appreciate the female physique and the breast shelf, so I am not advocating this. It is, however, easy but unflattering to do.
Have you seen the 1994 movie "Disclosure", starring Michael Douglas? I can't remember the female star. Bottom line is she accused Douglas' charcter of sexual harassment, when SHE was the one that sexually harassed HIM.
I am fairly certain that a LOT of methods have already been attempted. To my knowledge NONE of them have ever succeeded.
IF they HAD then wouldn't the WORLD be materially DIFFERENT than what it is now?
I am not disparaging your thesis...you MAY be onto something...but possibly too late for it to alter mankind's trajectory.
ALREADY A VAST numbrr kf Men of my acquaintance have akready 'thrown in the TOWEL'; they have absented themsekves - all they ARE - from real, material interaction with 'Modern Feminity' inasmuc as - truthfully - doing otherwise IS principally equivalent ti slashing ones veins open and then jumping into a tank full of hungry Pirhana.
Great article illuminating a most important point. If the incidence of depression and suicide we see among men were happening to women there would be a four alarm crisis. It is not acceptable for any society to fail to listen to a sector on the grounds that your grandfather had it great. Men today have had no share in the benefits of the past,nor have they committed the crimes that occurred then.
Men are still more likely than women to be victims of violence, but I've never seen anyone address that. Anything that might deny women their moral status as victims is ignored or shouted down.
I agree completely, Steve. I wish we could acknowledge the problems young men are facing, and not have to make it exclusively "men of color," assuming falsely that "obviously, white young men are completely fine." I see a parallel in the way white feminists have been demonized as upper class white oppressors, and that all the legitimate feminsts are women of color.
"I see a parallel in the way white feminists have been demonized as upper class white oppressors, and that all the legitimate feminsts are women of color"
Yeah, the problem, as is often the case, is that there are grains of truth mixed in with the craziness. All the way back to Sojourner Truth asking "ain't I a woman?" there has been a degree to which feminism ignored, or at least missed, the issues of women who weren't white.
But then, as almost always happens, this gets boiled down to "white feminists bad, black feminists righteous."
It's so frustrating to see, on issue after issue, people failing to see others as anything but their groups.
I hear that your key point is 'every body'. We are so busy herding people into categories - and people love sweeping generalisations to make their point and claim their territory. Now we are stuck in this situation where you can only speak for certain bodies that have been mapped as marginalised. But very time we exclude some body we create more margins, more 'differance'. Can we humans move away from abstracts to create a deeply embodied world where any push for equality begins with the acceptance all bodies have material value? Otherwise the pendulum keeps swinging wildly!
If there was a woman in the election in the mold of Margaret Thatcher, regardless of skin color, she would have my vote. It’s not about skin color or sex, it’s about character, what you stand for and why, and all the while being able to communicate.
Hillary has been quoted as saying "the future is female". Sounds like a Nazi saying "the future is Aryan". Would you really want her in the Oval Office? Oh - and she said that women are the primary victims of war. Imagine that.
Any woman who is able to reach the level of power Hillary had will be demonized so badly that she probably won't win. Of course, had she won, misogyny would have skyrocketed and affected all women. Women would have been punished en masse for her win. It would still have been worth it, though.
Do you realize that only men have to register for the military draft? That only women have reproductive rights? That there is far more funding for breast cancer than prostate cancer? Do you think Hillary would have changed any of that?
Men also control the House, the Senate, the Presidency, The Supreme Court, the Armed Forces, and always have. They decide who goes to war. They didn't even let women join the Armed forces if they wanted to until recently. If you get to decide everything and keep women from participating, then it makes sense that you are the ones who register for the draft. When women get the Presidency, the majority of Congress, the majority of officers including five star generals;, the majority of SCOTUS, the majority of CEOs of the Fortune 500 including all the war profiteers, then the common woman can register for the draft.
Reproductive rights can never be fully equal because the woman is the one stuck carrying the baby for nine months and giving birth. Yes, men should be allowed to opt out of fatherhood. I agree with that. But they shouldn't be allowed for force a woman to carry a baby she doesn't want to. Once they get artificial wombs women can transfer their embryo to the rent-a-womb and the man can take over if he wants. But that hasn't happened yet.
Yes I think prostate cancer should get more funding. Guess who needs to get off their butts and organize that and fundraise for it like women did? Men.
No, I don't think HIllary would have changed much of that, though I don't think any of that is really the President's job. I think she would have done fine as President. I don't think Trump is going to get more funding for prostate cancer or instate the draft for women.
I think you are right, because it will have been the first time for a female. I am always interested in how differently people act to first exposure to anything versus being able to "act like you have been there before". The first one pays the price and makes it normal for those who follow.
Women via ‘Feminism’ have WEAPONIZED themselves against White Male-kind.
Period.
There WILL be consequences to that decision.
When your Country NEEDS White Males - who FAR and Away - are this country’s STAUNCHEST supporters, are CALLED to Duty, they will ask only ‘Why?”. YOU akready picked and CHOSE your ‘Champions’…good luck with THAT…
WHEN a White Male is walking out to his car and sees a ‘Man’ of COLOR beating the SHIT out of some WHITE WOMAN, he’ll likely think ‘Hmmm, NOT my problem.’ and WALK ON…
WHEN your MAJOR APPLIANCE needs repair, the WHITE MALE repairman will be in his basement wanking off since you endeavored to minimize him - US - to the point of absurdity…
WHEN your local Electrical Generation Facility FAILS, all the WHITE MALES who COULD ‘FIX IT"‘ will be wanking off in thier basements to PRON since THAT is the SOLE AVENUE available to them to obtain RELIEF from our GOD DAMN BIOLOGY, so you’ll just have to endure living with no EKECTRICITY for an indefinite period….
OH..and THAT is owning to our FUNDAMENTAL inclination to not ALL become RAPIST…
I’m SURE that the progression here need not be further expostulated…surely.
Fuck OFF and DIE…we don’t ACTUALLY need you anymore…we ‘found’ a substitute. It’s not a GREAT one but we no longer have to put up with your whining, bitching, moaning, DEMANDING asses anymore…and we DON’T have to ‘SHARE’ our incomes with you EITHER.
I have recieved three employment settlements for sex discrimination against men. The feminists in human resources never even tried to hide the discrimination.
The argument being made is not - per se - racists, though it touches thereon once or twice...
In truth, it is more a SCATHING DAMNATION OF insane (non compos mentat) WHITE WOMEN...who have - in the last few decades - went SO FAR 'Off the Reservation' as to now exist on ANOTHER FUCKING PLANET.
Also, it serves to express just how FUCKING FED UP we - males in general - ARE with 'female ABSURDITY'.
NO OFFENSE was in particular was - actually - intended, the SCREED was intended predominantly as a 'Gedanken' meaning 'Thought Experiment' from German, to illustrate the points laid out...
I think there's another issue of perspective. Women tend to cluster at the center: of education, income, IQ, etc. Men are clustered more towards the top and the bottom. So you have a population of women looking up at the few men at the top keeping them down, blaming men categorically...while all the men at the bottom are also getting screwed.
Feminism started out as rich women with the luxury of protesting who wanted the power and prestige their brothers and husbands had. Any benefits of feminism to poor women have trickled down.
"Men aren’t being kept out of C suite" There must be at least 1,000 times more men driving trucks than in the C-suite. But male truck drivers are invisible to the likes of Kathy.
"Data show that around 7% of American voters would never vote for an African American president, no matter how qualified. We all know how that worked out. For women, it's around 8%. For gay men, if memory serves, it's around 21%."
The interesting thing is that I would be there is a significant % that would not vote for a "white man". But no one even thinks to ask that.
Yes a person with white skin color that presents as a man has the most privilege in the country. But that does not mean that men with white skin color are in the position to leverage that privilege.
Its not about men having a problem. It's about the obsession with racial identity. The only study on DEI (interestly enough not from Kendi, what did he do with that $50M) states that DEI training is making racial tensions worse, not better.
Emphasizing race is divisive. Emphasizing sexuality is divisive. The vocal trans community did no favors to trans people by claiming a trans woman is a woman.
I really appreciated her questions, because they allowed you to elaborate more on your points. Well done.
I challenge her assumption that men aren't taught to work hard. Others sometimes say things like "white men are raised to believe the world is theirs" but that is the opposite of the experience of me or any other white male friends I grew up with.
I was born in the late 60's; I can't imagine what it could feel like to grow up now, in an era when the word "masculinity" never appears without the "toxic" prefix, and how much a failure I might feel like if everyone is saying I should inherit the world but I'm in a low-paying job, just scraping by.
And about my low-paying job: there are 12 of us on my team and only one is a woman. I know for a fact that my boss doesn't make hiring decisions based on sex, it's simply that 90% of the applicants are men. And I'm a contractor for a huge tech company where more than half of the actual employees are women. It would be insane to insist on staffing my team 50/50 men and women.
Maybe we should stop terrorizing teens and youth with porno. Who’s keeping men in the basement? The people gleefully pushing porno normalization on the simple men of the world. The regular, simple, just human guy doesn’t stand a chance. It’s your son’s dignity on the line you dingbats.
The main point wasnt raised. Feminization of the education. Education is controlled by women. That where all starts. They have even destroyed thinksnlike the boys scouts.
Wanna a co share structure of power? Really? Reinste sex segregated education.
Another excellent post Steve.
You mentioned the fact that the young men affected didn't see the change over the last fifty years. I am old enough to have seen them and think it worth noting that one change has weakened them. I don't say this disparagingly.
When I was young, males learned how to live with hierarchy. Made the team, last chosen in pickup games, you flunked and did a year over in school. All taught that you earned your place thru effort and life isn't fair. You got stuck with genetics.
Now everyone is a winner. You get a trophy for showing up. You pass to the next grade in school even if you can't read or make change. You have a digital world and are not well equipped to deal with the real adult world where everyone doesn't get a trophy. You didn't experience that as a child like we did fifty years ago, or at least fewer do.
"Now everyone is a winner. You get a trophy for showing up"
God yes, this attitude has broken the minds of so many people. They feel so entitled to feel good about themselves simply for showing up.
I watch videos on social media of millennials crying into the camera because they didn't get their way in a work meeting or they didn't get called by the special pronouns they wanted and I wonder how a cohort of adults so totally lacking in resilience will function in the world.
All participation trophies did for Gen X was make us cynical, not entitled.
I wonder if part of the reason we catastrophize so much is that we (in the west) don't have many of the real worries our ancestors did. So our tolerance for pain and discomfort has shrunk. And catastrophizing gives our life meaning; we can cast ourselves as victims of whatever oppressive power suggested we smile, or complimented our hair, or didn't say "Merry Christmas." And then comes the fun part: outrage!
Boys like having a chance to win. "So your saying there's a chance" - Jim Carey, Dumb and Dumber
When everyone is a winner just or showing up, it really means that nobody can win and that bores many boys. They are constantly told to not seek winning. Girls are thrilled to fit in, but this is not the same motivator for many boys.
I don't think I tied my comment in to yours very well, so I hope the connection of trying to win and earning respect is possible to imagine.
We taught everyone to value self- ESTEEM, when we should have taught them to value self-RESPECT. You know who has the highest self-esteem? Narcissists. So it's no surprise that we wind up elevating the most self-centered of them to power; after all, Donald loves himself SO much, surely we should too.
It is important to understand the implications of the fact that we are a sexually dimorphic species.
Women have never been as powerless as they are often portrayed. Women’s power has mostly been indirect because female aggression tends to be indirect. Many women refuse to admit it occurs at all, even to themselves.
The objectIves of female aggression are not always beneficial. Women are not angels, any more than men are. Lady Macbeth is fiction, but the character rings true. We know how male misbehavior looks. We have not agreed on a catalog of female misbehavior. Corporate conduct standards focus on male typical misconduct and ignore female typical misconduct, almost as if it doesn’t exist. There is, of course, misconduct perpetrated by both sexes. Embezzlement comes to mind.
We need to require positive-sum behavior from everyone. That’s another thing to catalog. What positive sum games are more typical of women than men? How can we reward women for playing them?
"Corporate conduct standards focus on male typical misconduct and ignore female typical misconduct, almost as if it doesn’t exist."
I might be suffering from the blindspot you're pointing to here, but what would be an example of female-typical misconduct? Or, more specifically, female-typical misconduct that isn't punished.
I guess the stereotypical example would be "mean-girls" type behaviour, and yeah, it's true that a woman's verbal misconduct would probably be punished less harshly than a man making a sexualised comment.
But is there a solution other than tightening up acceptable speech codes in exactly the way that some on the extreme Left have already been trying to do?
Women tend to organize on criteria other than competence.
Agreed. The feminists that fill human resources departments are a good example of that
You are right. Human Resources is filled with man-hating feminists, that openly discriminate against men, and in favor of women. At Rose Medical Center in Denver in 2007, they hired Kristin Diane Parker as a surgical scrub tech, despite KNOWING that she had Hepatitis C.
Women choose their clothing and grooming primarily for their effects on other women. They signal affiliation and status, among other things. The effect on men can be distracting. Noticing is fraught. A civilized man can and will ignore it, but not without effort. It’s like playing music that your coworkers can hear. Few companies have dress codes these days.
This comment is radically under-appreciated by straight men IMHO. Much has been written on it since the 70’s and 80’s, dissecting the specifics.
Notes on clothes:
Somewhere in the late 70’s and early 80’s, it became acceptable for adult women to wear underwear as outerwear, as the expression goes, in professional situations, as well as wearing nothing under outerwear. Men, not so much.
Men cannot wear a racer-back tank top and shorts with a 3” inseam to the office. Men cannot wear sleeveless skintight jersey-knit tops to the office. Men cannot wear a large shirt and tights to an office. Men cannot wear a buttoned jacket and no shirt to an office. There is no context where a man could wear a sheer blouse over a tight muscle-contouring tank top and thigh-length shorts to an office. Even with a jacket. There is no context in fact where a man can expose hairy legs from ankle to calf, knee, thigh, or lower buttocks. A man might be able to wear short-sleeves or rolled up sleeves, if they were not too hairy. but sleeves above the elbow, sleeves mid-bicep, upper bicep or exposing hair on deltoids is unacceptable. Men with extremely hairy chests, hairy collars, hairy necks is unacceptable to expose. Men with beards are acceptable to other men now, longer beards less so, ZZ-top beards are not, no matter how well-groomed.
In effect, men must always be covered from the tip of their toe to their neck, from wrist to neck with some exception of forearm. Skintight sweaters are not possible. Leather shirts and pants are not possible.
There was a 20-year period in my life when I maintained a competitive bodybuilding sized body, and I have always had a beard since I was 19. Wearing a polo shirt with 21” biceps was extraordinarily distracting to those around me. Wearing a form-fitting button-down shirt where my pectorals visibly bounce, every flex, was distracting. I had men and women in meetings wanting to touch my trapezius, my biceps, my deltoids, to the amazement of business colleagues. My wardrobe became either black sweaters or baggy shirts and trousers, and jackets.
—-
Being gay, I’m immune to female skin exposure distraction, for the most part, but it is amusing to watch straight men get flustered. It would have been an amusing exercise to come to a large meeting sometime, in a spaghetti-strap tank top and jacket, and matching expensive shorts, with my shaved head and blond beard, all 250lbs of me, and take the jacket off, my blond body hair a light carpet over chest, shoulders, back, arms, every muscle flexing and dancing under my skin and do an hour long presentation of a complex financial/technical matter: just to see the reaction. An exaggeration, perhaps, but that’s what the double-standard is.
—-
Women don’t dress for men, they dress for other reasons, a complex set of signals of dominance and submission, youth vs experience, and consciousness of sexual desirability to women only, which men don’t read unless interested in fashion.
—-
Men dress to indicate they are not a threat; they aren’t a 250lb muscular male, they don’t have secondary sex characteristics fully developed and arrayed to intimidate, they dress to seem unselfconscious, and to suppress any intimation of physical challenge. Men dress to seem like they would never ever attack, or even could do so, or ever be attacked. The modern western shirt and trousers and jacket is an evolution of the articulated medieval suit of armor.
—-
The one thing women do consistently is expose their neck, their throat to the collar bone, as far as they can around it to shoulders and back, as far down as possible to the pectorals. The apotheosis is the strapless gown, but that’s completely unacceptable for the office.
The one thing men cannot do is expose their neck to the collar bone, the back of their neck, along their shoulders, below the collar bone to the pectoral muscles.
In sociobiology, exposing the neck and belly maximally in animal groups is an appeasement gesture to group leadership. It exists in multiple classes of mammals, from Lions / cats, to Wolves / dogs, Primates / humans, even Dolphins, Meerkats, Rats, Otters and Giraffes.
When you’re aware of it, it simplifies a lot of discussion about office dress.
I have had to sit through many sexual harassment indoctrination, er, I mean "training" sessions. I always bring up that women wearing revealing clothing is sexual harassment of men. That pisses off the "trainers" every time.
"I always bring up that women wearing revealing clothing is sexual harassment of men."
I'm absolutely dying to hear your reasoning here. And how do we define what revealing clothing is? If a woman has big breasts, say, and can't really hide that fact no matter what she wears, what should she do?
The sexual harassment “trainers” weren’t interested in my definition of revealing clothing, as they never asked me for it. What I see is relevant is that they were pissed off that a man had the gumption to question the feminist narrative that only men are evil.
I don't think it's about your gumption, I think it's that defining women's clothing choices as "harassment" makes no sense.
Obviously some clothing is inappropriate for the workplace. But that's quite different to saying that a woman wearing whatever she wants is "evil." And as both you and Bob are demonstrating, defining what is "too revealing" is difficult and can easily slip into "hijab" territory.
I'm obviously not suggesting that men are all evil or that women never are. But unless you actually have a definition of revealing clothing, and it's one that most women would be happy to conform to, you're kind of stuck, no?
I think it may be more that they resent male interference with female intrasexual status games. Women can be deadly serious about those games. Never mind how disruptive they can be in the workplace.
Certain cues provoke an involuntary reaction. Civilized men can and will control themselves, but it’s distracting. It’s much easier to ignore a full figure with a high neckline than power cleavage on a trimmer figure.
Women shouldn’t inflict these cues on coworkers. Save it for face-to-face negotiation with an adversary, where your coworkers will be out of the line of fire.
"Women shouldn’t inflict these cues on coworkers."
Ah, okay, so you're thinking a dress code of some sort for women that prevents them from "distracting" the men? Maybe something in black? That covers them from the neck down?
Although, better cover the face too as some women's beauty is distracting. The hair too, of course.
I mean, I'm being ever so slightly flippant, but come on, you can't be serious here can you?
Power cleavage comes to mind.
LOL now say this again but with 'male parts', not breasts. Pretend it is normal for male adults to wear tight, stretchy pants and underwear that puts 'male parts' to levitate straight forward from the body with no sag. LOL. Big breasts do not naturally project straight out, levitating in thin air. They sag with gravity. Any clothing choice that removes the artificial shelf and contrast of the transition from stomach to the breasts would make even big breasted women look more barrel shaped (just like a man). I appreciate the female physique and the breast shelf, so I am not advocating this. It is, however, easy but unflattering to do.
Silhouettes are easier to ignore than cleavage.
We need to identify feminine positive-sum games. We need to reward competent women.
Have you seen the 1994 movie "Disclosure", starring Michael Douglas? I can't remember the female star. Bottom line is she accused Douglas' charcter of sexual harassment, when SHE was the one that sexually harassed HIM.
The problem is not the clothes as such. It’s the interactions around it.
THAT is the 'Question of the AGES' methinks.
I am fairly certain that a LOT of methods have already been attempted. To my knowledge NONE of them have ever succeeded.
IF they HAD then wouldn't the WORLD be materially DIFFERENT than what it is now?
I am not disparaging your thesis...you MAY be onto something...but possibly too late for it to alter mankind's trajectory.
ALREADY A VAST numbrr kf Men of my acquaintance have akready 'thrown in the TOWEL'; they have absented themsekves - all they ARE - from real, material interaction with 'Modern Feminity' inasmuc as - truthfully - doing otherwise IS principally equivalent ti slashing ones veins open and then jumping into a tank full of hungry Pirhana.
Just a thought...
JOG!
Great article illuminating a most important point. If the incidence of depression and suicide we see among men were happening to women there would be a four alarm crisis. It is not acceptable for any society to fail to listen to a sector on the grounds that your grandfather had it great. Men today have had no share in the benefits of the past,nor have they committed the crimes that occurred then.
Men are still more likely than women to be victims of violence, but I've never seen anyone address that. Anything that might deny women their moral status as victims is ignored or shouted down.
Thank you, but the grandfathers didn't have it so great, either. They were sacrificial lambs in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
I agree completely, Steve. I wish we could acknowledge the problems young men are facing, and not have to make it exclusively "men of color," assuming falsely that "obviously, white young men are completely fine." I see a parallel in the way white feminists have been demonized as upper class white oppressors, and that all the legitimate feminsts are women of color.
"I see a parallel in the way white feminists have been demonized as upper class white oppressors, and that all the legitimate feminsts are women of color"
Yeah, the problem, as is often the case, is that there are grains of truth mixed in with the craziness. All the way back to Sojourner Truth asking "ain't I a woman?" there has been a degree to which feminism ignored, or at least missed, the issues of women who weren't white.
But then, as almost always happens, this gets boiled down to "white feminists bad, black feminists righteous."
It's so frustrating to see, on issue after issue, people failing to see others as anything but their groups.
x10 likes, if that were possible.
You are so patient! I couldn't have done it. Thank you.
I hear that your key point is 'every body'. We are so busy herding people into categories - and people love sweeping generalisations to make their point and claim their territory. Now we are stuck in this situation where you can only speak for certain bodies that have been mapped as marginalised. But very time we exclude some body we create more margins, more 'differance'. Can we humans move away from abstracts to create a deeply embodied world where any push for equality begins with the acceptance all bodies have material value? Otherwise the pendulum keeps swinging wildly!
If there was a woman in the election in the mold of Margaret Thatcher, regardless of skin color, she would have my vote. It’s not about skin color or sex, it’s about character, what you stand for and why, and all the while being able to communicate.
Hillary won the popular vote FFS. if she hadn’t run a flawed campaign in a couple swing states, she’d have been president.
Hillary has been quoted as saying "the future is female". Sounds like a Nazi saying "the future is Aryan". Would you really want her in the Oval Office? Oh - and she said that women are the primary victims of war. Imagine that.
Yes I wanted her in the oval office.
Would you also have voted for Hitler? Femi-nazi, Nazi, same thing, different target.
Most likely very true, no disagreement. Some day soon it will happen.
Any woman who is able to reach the level of power Hillary had will be demonized so badly that she probably won't win. Of course, had she won, misogyny would have skyrocketed and affected all women. Women would have been punished en masse for her win. It would still have been worth it, though.
Do you realize that only men have to register for the military draft? That only women have reproductive rights? That there is far more funding for breast cancer than prostate cancer? Do you think Hillary would have changed any of that?
Men also control the House, the Senate, the Presidency, The Supreme Court, the Armed Forces, and always have. They decide who goes to war. They didn't even let women join the Armed forces if they wanted to until recently. If you get to decide everything and keep women from participating, then it makes sense that you are the ones who register for the draft. When women get the Presidency, the majority of Congress, the majority of officers including five star generals;, the majority of SCOTUS, the majority of CEOs of the Fortune 500 including all the war profiteers, then the common woman can register for the draft.
Reproductive rights can never be fully equal because the woman is the one stuck carrying the baby for nine months and giving birth. Yes, men should be allowed to opt out of fatherhood. I agree with that. But they shouldn't be allowed for force a woman to carry a baby she doesn't want to. Once they get artificial wombs women can transfer their embryo to the rent-a-womb and the man can take over if he wants. But that hasn't happened yet.
Yes I think prostate cancer should get more funding. Guess who needs to get off their butts and organize that and fundraise for it like women did? Men.
No, I don't think HIllary would have changed much of that, though I don't think any of that is really the President's job. I think she would have done fine as President. I don't think Trump is going to get more funding for prostate cancer or instate the draft for women.
I think you are right, because it will have been the first time for a female. I am always interested in how differently people act to first exposure to anything versus being able to "act like you have been there before". The first one pays the price and makes it normal for those who follow.
Serious discussion point. Will she be of Asian descent or Hispanic?
Fucking pathetic ‘Kathy’ that is…
Women via ‘Feminism’ have WEAPONIZED themselves against White Male-kind.
Period.
There WILL be consequences to that decision.
When your Country NEEDS White Males - who FAR and Away - are this country’s STAUNCHEST supporters, are CALLED to Duty, they will ask only ‘Why?”. YOU akready picked and CHOSE your ‘Champions’…good luck with THAT…
WHEN a White Male is walking out to his car and sees a ‘Man’ of COLOR beating the SHIT out of some WHITE WOMAN, he’ll likely think ‘Hmmm, NOT my problem.’ and WALK ON…
WHEN your MAJOR APPLIANCE needs repair, the WHITE MALE repairman will be in his basement wanking off since you endeavored to minimize him - US - to the point of absurdity…
WHEN your local Electrical Generation Facility FAILS, all the WHITE MALES who COULD ‘FIX IT"‘ will be wanking off in thier basements to PRON since THAT is the SOLE AVENUE available to them to obtain RELIEF from our GOD DAMN BIOLOGY, so you’ll just have to endure living with no EKECTRICITY for an indefinite period….
OH..and THAT is owning to our FUNDAMENTAL inclination to not ALL become RAPIST…
I’m SURE that the progression here need not be further expostulated…surely.
Fuck OFF and DIE…we don’t ACTUALLY need you anymore…we ‘found’ a substitute. It’s not a GREAT one but we no longer have to put up with your whining, bitching, moaning, DEMANDING asses anymore…and we DON’T have to ‘SHARE’ our incomes with you EITHER.
Have a great DAY Y’ALL
JOG!
You...uh, you sound a little more angry than you need to be my friend.
Perhaps a Lifetime of 'watching' does that to one...
My Dad told me once about the 'Ultimate Weapon'...one that cannot be defended against,
" The most TERRIBLE Weapon is TRUTH...pure, PERFECT Truth. Against THAT there is NO defense. Period.
That is something that must be used with the GREATEST of care inasmuch as it tends to BREAK people - and relationships - forever."
I have seldom employed that...but occaisionally, it IS needful to do so...
JOG!
I have recieved three employment settlements for sex discrimination against men. The feminists in human resources never even tried to hide the discrimination.
I think you'll find that fixing electricity is not the sole province of white men
White men account for 75% of suicides. Did you know that? Yet, there is only an Office of Women's Health.
I agree that there should be an Office of Women's Health. What does that have to do with electricity, though?
Not entirely Clarence...I concur.
The argument being made is not - per se - racists, though it touches thereon once or twice...
In truth, it is more a SCATHING DAMNATION OF insane (non compos mentat) WHITE WOMEN...who have - in the last few decades - went SO FAR 'Off the Reservation' as to now exist on ANOTHER FUCKING PLANET.
Also, it serves to express just how FUCKING FED UP we - males in general - ARE with 'female ABSURDITY'.
NO OFFENSE was in particular was - actually - intended, the SCREED was intended predominantly as a 'Gedanken' meaning 'Thought Experiment' from German, to illustrate the points laid out...
JOG...
SOME white women have gone off the reservation. I for one have not. I am not woke or progressive. Also, I know - I speak German.
I think there's another issue of perspective. Women tend to cluster at the center: of education, income, IQ, etc. Men are clustered more towards the top and the bottom. So you have a population of women looking up at the few men at the top keeping them down, blaming men categorically...while all the men at the bottom are also getting screwed.
Can confirm, the data to support this data distribution has been well known for decades. I wish I could remember the primary source.
Me too. There were multiple categories, but I forget them all.
Feminism started out as rich women with the luxury of protesting who wanted the power and prestige their brothers and husbands had. Any benefits of feminism to poor women have trickled down.
"Men aren’t being kept out of C suite" There must be at least 1,000 times more men driving trucks than in the C-suite. But male truck drivers are invisible to the likes of Kathy.
You think it’s just a fact that someone (you coyly don’t say who) is revenge killing tens of thousands of Palestinian kids.
You are an idiot and a pig. And blocked.
"Data show that around 7% of American voters would never vote for an African American president, no matter how qualified. We all know how that worked out. For women, it's around 8%. For gay men, if memory serves, it's around 21%."
The interesting thing is that I would be there is a significant % that would not vote for a "white man". But no one even thinks to ask that.
Yes a person with white skin color that presents as a man has the most privilege in the country. But that does not mean that men with white skin color are in the position to leverage that privilege.
Its not about men having a problem. It's about the obsession with racial identity. The only study on DEI (interestly enough not from Kendi, what did he do with that $50M) states that DEI training is making racial tensions worse, not better.
https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/Instructing-Animosity_11.13.24.pdf
Emphasizing race is divisive. Emphasizing sexuality is divisive. The vocal trans community did no favors to trans people by claiming a trans woman is a woman.
"The interesting thing is that I would be there is a significant % that would not vote for a "white man". But no one even thinks to ask that."
How do you know this? Is there data to support this?
I really appreciated her questions, because they allowed you to elaborate more on your points. Well done.
I challenge her assumption that men aren't taught to work hard. Others sometimes say things like "white men are raised to believe the world is theirs" but that is the opposite of the experience of me or any other white male friends I grew up with.
I was born in the late 60's; I can't imagine what it could feel like to grow up now, in an era when the word "masculinity" never appears without the "toxic" prefix, and how much a failure I might feel like if everyone is saying I should inherit the world but I'm in a low-paying job, just scraping by.
And about my low-paying job: there are 12 of us on my team and only one is a woman. I know for a fact that my boss doesn't make hiring decisions based on sex, it's simply that 90% of the applicants are men. And I'm a contractor for a huge tech company where more than half of the actual employees are women. It would be insane to insist on staffing my team 50/50 men and women.
Maybe we should stop terrorizing teens and youth with porno. Who’s keeping men in the basement? The people gleefully pushing porno normalization on the simple men of the world. The regular, simple, just human guy doesn’t stand a chance. It’s your son’s dignity on the line you dingbats.
The main point wasnt raised. Feminization of the education. Education is controlled by women. That where all starts. They have even destroyed thinksnlike the boys scouts.
Wanna a co share structure of power? Really? Reinste sex segregated education.
I commend you for sticking up for men.
I have identified 14 ways in which men are given the short end of the stick in contemporary America:
https://davidgottfried.substack.com/p/liberals-ignore-14-ways-in-which