You raise some excellent points here, however I’m not entirely swayed.
Your point about raising men with a good social culture is a good one, however it has its roots in the fallacy which really lies at the heart of the matter - that only men need fixing.
As a man, I’ve sat through a work conversation where a group of women (including my direct senior) have openly denigrated men in humour (I found it edgily funny). If it had been the other way around, the men involved would be talking to HR the next day, no laughs involved. The standards to which both parties are held need to be the same, though what those standards are is anybody’s guess.
Equality, equity, justice: that lovely ladder graphic. If you give students extra resources, their outcomes are better. “Women in stem”, “women’s networking day”, all aimed in one place at one group. In our drive to redress imbalance against women, we have created one against men. It isn’t the fact that young men feel isolated and need socialising that’s stopping them, it’s the fact that the deck is rigged against them and we celebrate that rigging.
What you see with the “manosphere” (never heard it called that before, I like the name), is the froth and bubbles. The boys who are angry, but who can’t do anything about it, are the ones who tumble in there and become monsters instead.
The solution isn’t simple, and while socialisation will help a little, there needs to be fundamental changes to the social world before we can move forward. If your argument were to be, say, socialising both men and women to be kinder to one another, I’d be with you.
You raise some excellent points here, however I’m not entirely swayed.
Your point about raising men with a good social culture is a good one, however it has its roots in the fallacy which really lies at the heart of the matter - that only men need fixing.
As a man, I’ve sat through a work conversation where a group of women (including my direct senior) have openly denigrated men in humour (I found it edgily funny). If it had been the other way around, the men involved would be talking to HR the next day, no laughs involved. The standards to which both parties are held need to be the same, though what those standards are is anybody’s guess.
Equality, equity, justice: that lovely ladder graphic. If you give students extra resources, their outcomes are better. “Women in stem”, “women’s networking day”, all aimed in one place at one group. In our drive to redress imbalance against women, we have created one against men. It isn’t the fact that young men feel isolated and need socialising that’s stopping them, it’s the fact that the deck is rigged against them and we celebrate that rigging.
What you see with the “manosphere” (never heard it called that before, I like the name), is the froth and bubbles. The boys who are angry, but who can’t do anything about it, are the ones who tumble in there and become monsters instead.
The solution isn’t simple, and while socialisation will help a little, there needs to be fundamental changes to the social world before we can move forward. If your argument were to be, say, socialising both men and women to be kinder to one another, I’d be with you.