Summary: The war on boys is another front in the Left’s program to mold a new America. Feminists are winning, a victory with uncountable casualties and unimaginable consequences.
The stories about the rise of women over men – like those below – show how America has abandoned the ideals of the civil rights movement which accomplished such great things during in the 20th century. We are on a path to a strange future, with incalculable consequences. It is an experiment, with us as the lab rats.
Apply the gender bias test to these articles: reverse “men” and “women”. Instead of these fun articles there would be outraged declarations of a national crisis. Also note journalists’ casual “making stuff up” explanations. If women were affected, the cause would be oppression by men. With calls for immediate and drastic action.
The articles do not mention the massive drugging of boys (I felt sad every day at summer camp when watching boys line up to have their vitality chemically taken from them). They do not mention the restructuring of school to make it unfriendly. They do not mention the suspected and even worse aspects of the war on boys.
Here is more evidence showing that feminists are winning.
“The new minority on campus? Men“
By Jon Marcus at The Hechinger Report.
“Where men once went to college in – proportions far higher than women — 58% to 42% as recently as the 1970s the ratio has now almost exactly reversed. This fall, women will comprise more than 56% of students on campuses nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Some 2.2 million fewer men than women will be enrolled in college this year. And the trend shows no sign of abating. By 2026, the department estimates, 57% of college students will be women. …”
“U.S. Women Are Outpacing Men in Higher Education“
By Alexandre Tanzi in Bloomberg.
- “As of 2017, women between ages 18 and 24 earned more than two-thirds of all master’s degrees, meaning there were 167 women with master’s degrees for every 100 men.
- Among professional degrees, women in the same age cohort obtained three-quarters of professional degrees and 80 percent of doctoral degrees.
- Women between ages 25 and 34 held the majority of doctoral degrees.”
“For Women’s History Month,
a look at gender gains & gaps in the US“
BY Abigail Geiger and Kim Parker at Pew Research.
“Among adults ages 25 to 64, women are now more likely than men to have a four-year college degree. In 2017, 38% of these women and 33% of men had a bachelor’s degree.
“Women are also outpacing men in postgraduate education. In 2017, 14% of women ages 25 to 64 had an advanced degree, compared with 12% of men. In 1992, a higher share of men (9%) than women (6%) in this age group had an advanced degree.”
No nation has thrown away its men as America is doing. Like so many things these days, our rulers are doing so without our consent – guided only by their ideology. I doubt this will end well for us.
We’ve know about this problem for a long time, and ignored it
There have been many articles about this during the past decade. But the chemical crippling of boys continues.
The United Nations warning about growing and excessive use of Ritalin, 28 February 1996. Now flash forward 18 years…
“The Drugging of the American Boy“
By Ryan D’Agostino in Esquire, 27 March 2014.
“By the time they reach high school, nearly 20% of all American boys will be diagnosed with ADHD. Millions of those boys will be prescribed a powerful stimulant to “normalize” them. A great many of those boys will suffer serious side effects from those drugs. The shocking truth is that many of those diagnoses are wrong, and that most of those boys are being drugged for no good reason – simply for being boys. It’s time we recognize this as a crisis.”
But, of course, we don’t recognize this as a crisis. It’s not even considered unusual. We note the increasingly obvious effects of the war on boys, and shrug.
Preparing for the new world
“We live in a time when women are outperforming men in many areas of professional and personal competency. And men have two choices: to find female strength captivatingly attractive, or to be insecure and intimidated. Real men love strong women, because God’s glory is beautiful, and “woman is the glory of man” (1 Corinthians 11:7).
“Jesus, give men the grace to see the beauty of glorious female strength. Give women the resilience to remain strong long enough for the right men to find them beautiful for the right reasons. And help men and women to fall in love with proven, genuine faith, which is “more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire” (1 Peter 1:7). …often, godly femininity requires being strong, even intimidating.”
— “Real Men Love Strong Women” by Paul Maxwell at Desiring God. Maxwell is a Ph.D. student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and a philosophy professor at Moody Bible Institute. Hat tip for this to Dalrock.
For more information
There is a host of research on this problem, although we don’t care. Such as “Boys Lag Behind: How Teachers’ Gender Biases Affect Student Achievement” by Camille Terrier (MIT Dept of Economics), November 2016. I love the last line: that it helps girls go into science justifies the damage to boys!
“I use a combination of blind and non-blind test scores to show that middle school teachers favor girls when they grade. This favoritism, estimated in the form of individual teacher effects, has long-term consequences: as measured by their national evaluations three years later, male students make less progress than their female counterparts. Gender-biased grading accounts for 21% of boys falling behind girls in math during middle school. On the other hand, girls who benefit from gender bias in math are more likely to select a science track in high school. “
Ideas! For shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about society and gender issues, about feminism, about education, and especially these …
- Women dominating the ranks of college graduates – What’s the effect on America?
- A better answer to “why women outperform men in college?”
- Women on Top, chapter 10: the growing gender gap in education.
Two of the best books about this self-inflicted crisis.
The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men
The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It
Wouldn’t argue, which is unusual for me…
Recently read this article https://theconversation.com/childrens-books-are-adding-to-sciences-gender-problem-98522#comment_1702529 criticising (yet again) the use of gender role stereotype in children’s books and the effect it was having on career choices of women, particularly in STEM subjects. The call from the article was for teachers to be *vigilant*.
What they didn’t point out was that in the UK the overwhelming majority of junior school teachers are female, and in senior school a clear majority: 26% of teachers in England are men – accounting for 38% of secondary and 15% of primary school teachers.
That, when it comes to university education: 2016 UCAS statistics showed women outnumber men in 112 of 180 degree subjects and females from poorer backgrounds are **50%** more likely to go to university than their male counterparts
Or, finally, that the majority of English family doctors are female, the majority of those currently training are female, and the ratio of male to female is still declining.
What baffles me is that all of these boys and men have mothers who presumably want them to succeed in life. Mothers who want well educated partners for their daughters. Where’s the maternal outrage? It can’t come from me or men in general, because I’m pale male and stale, and that’d just be the ‘dying embers’ of the patriarchy.
Can’t they see what’s ahead of them?
Subsidiary.
In any sane world there would be a host of people being very vocal on the gender ratios of teachers in schools and the astonishingly poor performance of boys from underprivileged backgrounds compared to girls.
Is it just me? Do discussions of the growing disparity between boys and girls academic performance take different paths? With girls, discussion of poor performance usually centres around what can be done with their *environment* to improve their performance. With boys, it’s what’s wrong with boys and how can we fix them.
Are female teachers more inclined to see boys as a *problem*, because they don’t understand them? Are female doctors more likely to prescribe a chemical cosh because they don’t understand? Are female single parents more likely to accept all of this because they don’t understand?
You can tell, this is a particularly raw nerve…
Steve,
Lots of good points there.
“What baffles me is that all of these boys and men have mothers who presumably want them to succeed in life.”
Apparently not. Most parents are either participants or bystanders in the War on Boys. Two examples…
Millions of parents drug their boys to make them more docile, and easier to manage. Only a fraction of those have serious behavior problems warranting that. Which is why parents in other nations don’t drug their boys in such numbers. They use classes and sports as day care centers, regimenting their boys as close as possible to every-waking-hour.
As for regard of daughters vs. sons — For 15 years I was an adult leader of Boy Scouts. During those years many dads told me about their children. Never did I hear a dad speak more highly of his children than when saying his daughter was a “tomboy” (or something similar, such as doing activities usually associated with boys).
“Is it just me? Do discussions of the growing disparity between boys and girls academic performance take different paths? With girls, discussion of poor performance usually centres around what can be done with their *environment* to improve their performance. With boys, it’s what’s wrong with boys and how can we fix them.”
This is one of the most disconcerting yet common themes in female psychology. Women by and large seek to selectively embrace and disavow responsibility whenever it is inconvenient for their solipsistic self-image. Wrongdoings and embarrassments are blamed on external factors, mollified by decreased culpability (mental issues are all the rage today), or spun to be metaphorical/symbolic indictments of worse forces. The reverse is cited for any triumph. All of this seemingly inane mental gymnastics is meant to avoid social ostracization, normally reified as collective shaming or diminished status/ejection into the out-group. Notably women will employ this criterion on other women contingent on perception and favorable outcome; today’s pity party might turn into tomorrow’s castigation regardless of the truth.
Men are assumed, by both women and men who buy into women’s sensibilities, as accountable for all emotional expressions and actions (unless male feebleness and ambivalence can be opportunistically appropriated as one more side effect of the nefarious patriarchy). Those who violate social convention are shown little mercy and given even less space for forgiveness.
“Or, finally, that the majority of English family doctors are female, the majority of those currently training are female, and the ratio of male to female is still declining.”
A triumph for feminists and a plague on taxpayers’ wallets. Enjoy watching your hard-earned money flushed down the toilet once 50%+ of the work force reverts to part-time schedules. This has written about extensively as a silent catastrophe that will envelop Britain in the next decade, never-mind the U.S.
@Larry Kummer
Its bizarre madness that “Father’s” want to emasculate their sons and masculinize their daughters.
That men must be weak and women strong. And that women must be men and men must be women.
info,
Sad but true. Our entertainment media show this in action. TV shows love gender “bending.”
That was the master plot arc of the hit TV show “Castle”, as he became the girl (easily frightened, needing protection, emotionally volatile) to Beckett (the dominant man in the relationship). As a realistic touch, she often mocked him for being like a girl.
That is the master plot arc of the Kensi-Deeks romance in NCIS LA. She becomes more the dominant “man”, he becomes the weak emotional girl.
Hit TV shows, both of them. I’ll bet that people who watch more TV than I could give more examples.
It seems also evident when you look at a recent action film “Mad Max”
At least at the graduate level the ratios are worse. I would argue that if you removed all the foreign grad students, or at least the ones that return home the percent of women in would be much higher.
Sven,
Wow. I hadn’t thought of that. Esp at elite institutions, that might significantly change the gender numbers.
To loosely quote Lind’s Victoria, “The Feminists who would not reject their leaders along with their leaders were sold to the Muslims as slaves.
Join the CMC (Christian Marine Corps)!
Longtrail,
How fun to dream of one’s foes destroyed in unlikely scenarios. It’s what peasants do, along with the poorly organized doomed peasants’ protests.
In those totals, what is the proportion of useless degrees, in which women are over-represented (in the humanities and social sciences, as is often said), in overall domains where the career afterwards (or more likely the series of jobs) won’t allow for the loans to be repaid? I’ve read recently that in the US, two thirds of the student debt is owed by women (therefore a higher proportion than that of women with a university degree), which in turn tends to fuel the demand from certain parts of the left to make university free and/or cancel said debts (at whose expense?). It seems to me that such matters should also be taken into consideration, because, the actual content of many degrees being set aside for a moment (everything that ends in “studies” for example: not worth the time or money), it tends to result in large numbers of people, mainly women, who like to say they are “highly educated” and have all the demands and attitudes of “top level citizens or earners”, but none of the qualifications to stand on their own two feet in general, or at least at the level they ought to (cf indebtedness).
It seems like universities with a defective business model (overpriced, with large numbers of useless degrees and graduates, taking in big numbers of future indentured servants to fuel the beast) are producing an inordinate amount of semi-educated people, or useless highly educated people, that will form a permanent class of malcontent activists with no marketable skills, made to be structurally unhappy.
On the purely gender side of things, I wonder how things end up with that taken into account, especially in a context of important under-employment for many specialties and people. I’ve read quite often that a significant chunk of the boys that left college or chose not to go did so to avoid the heavy burden of debt (such a choice not always being judicious, as some of them choose to go to a paying job that will not get them very far passed a certain amount of time), while many girls didn’t seem to take that factor as seriously (borrowing 30-50 000 dollars or more for an English lit or art degree seems beyond comprehension).
So I’m not necessarily shocked by the overall disproportion and would personally focus more on the type of degree and domains concerned to make a judgement, and on the relative prospects linked to them as well. That would, in my opinion, balance many things, with -and that may be the quesion- a probably important and increasing proportion of people with a degree or some college education, that won’t be able to do much with it and won’t constitute a worthwhile “mating pool” for the present and the future. And that in a time when social alienation and solitude are, more than ever in History, a major feature of modern life (that makes people angry, and does not serve a country well).
The area which worries me more, actually, is school: what happens before college, especially now in small children’s education, is alarming to no end. I’ve read quite a bit about it, and, that is where the catastrophe is happening (in addition to the general problems of inadequate standards and performance), especially for boys. Just as an example, I was struck by a number I heard (I think it was said by Christina Hoff Sommers): in California, there were (it was a few years ago) more than 400 organizations, initiatives or groups dedicated to supporting girls education, very active in politics and on the ground, with vast resources and many people dedicated to such actions, as well as a boatload of policies, regulations…. That resulted from their actions. On the boy side? Zero organisation, initiative or group, zero additional budget with private or public money), zero people dedicated to the topic. But of course, “boys are privileged”.
Tan,
“In those totals, what is the proportion of useless degrees, in which women are over-represented (in the humanities and social sciences, as is often said)”
The relevant point is that women are increasing on their way to dominate the numbers in every field. Sorting out which you consider “useless” is fun but irrelevant (probably many you consider “useless” have large effects on our culture). It’s something to do while we lose.
If a higher ratio of females graduating with a degree that doesn’t help them get a good job (or even think better) and/or saddles them with massive student debt is a win in the gender wars, it’s a striking example of a Pyrrhic victory. One that comes with monthly student loan payments, a shrunken pool of males they consider relationship-worthy, lower fertility rates, more feminism, more leftism. Shit, female happiness has gone down in the polls since the 1970s.
So, what is your metric for success in that scenario, to have a higher of men at college (so that women don’t “dominate the numbers”)? Even when it seems like a worse and worse deal every year?
Thoughts appreciated.
Dark,
That’s a different subject. This post is about the fact that women are increasingly dominating in all kinds of degrees. That will give them a massive advantage in the future jobs market.
Odd that so many refuse to see this inevitable result. I’m impressed with people’s attempts to not see this, however.
Some food for thought?
and
Dark,
I admire your optimism. But those are much less than dots. Taleb cites no supporting evidence (as usual; he tends to speak ex cathedra — as if he was the Pope of the World).
Lehmann is not “in charge of the world.” She’s not even doing anything. It’s just one person’s opinion.
A good friend of mine, married, with 6 year old twins, one girl and one boy, recently shared this with me. His son had been fidgety in class and had some minor trouble with the classwork. So the school recommended to drug his son for ADHD (I don’t recall the details and whether there was a formal diagnosis) . His wife was almost immediately on board with drugging the son. My friend steadfastly refused to drug his son. But I wonder, what if they were divorced? If the wife had custody? As a single mother? That boy could very well be drugged right now.
My guess is that a feminized school system (70%+ female teachers) and a mother who doesn’t understand a boy’s energy as a father would, conspire to drug the boy.
And I would be right. Look at this article. Nearly TWENTY PERCENT of boys will be diagnosed with ADHD. If that isn’t a function of a feminized school system and a lack of an active father’s presence, I don’t know what is.
“The Druging of the American Boy” by Ryan D’Agostino in Esquire, 27 March 2014.
“By the time they reach high school, nearly 20 percent of all American boys will be diagnosed with ADHD. Millions of those boys will be prescribed a powerful stimulant to “normalize” them. A great many of those boys will suffer serious side effects from those drugs. The shocking truth is that many of those diagnoses are wrong, and that most of those boys are being drugged for no good reason—simply for being boys. It’s time we recognize this as a crisis.”
Miguel,
Thank you for sharing that story, and for the link to the Esquire article — showing that this problem has long been known, but ignored.
I added a full cite to your comment, and added it to this post.
Modern school, even with all the problems in its contents and programs, seems to have two major problems, as far as boys are concerned, from what I’ve heard:
– a heavy bias against boys that leads to them being down graded (I’m not sure of the word in English). This as been consistently seen in western countries over the last 20-30 years: for the same work, boys receive lesser grades, and the trend is automatically corrected (to a rough equivalence between boys and girls grades) when papers are anonymous (multiple tests have been made)
– a problem with managing and judging behavior: this is where the “feminized” education really comes into play.Boys behavior is seen as structurally problematic, because the standard has been calibrated on girls over the last 20-30 years, so much so that boys are now considered defective girls (a formula heard in multiple languages), and are treated accordingly. The changes in education, from the earliest age, do not suit the way boys are, behave, grow up and learn, to an alarmingly and increasingly dangerous extent. Punishment, drugging, berating…. The ways of “treating” it are numerous. And all wrong because the basic premises are wrong (and possibly ideologically motivated). But an example of what it can lead to: if a boy and a girl are equally problematic and their case must be discussed to see if they ought to pass a class, it comes down to behavior. Girls being “nicer” on average (also another word for “docile”, “compliant”, “obedient”), they get a pass, boys being more rambunctious (or “agitated”, “full of energy”, “annoying”, “motivated”), they are sacked.
Change the way individual cases (as the one above) are judged, and change the way grades are granted, and 90% (if not all of it) of the achievement gap is solved. It is not by chance that the achievement level of boys has fallen over the last two or three decades: the gap between genders is not in itself the problem. The real problem is that most of it is due to the boys declining, and in the vast list of potential factors at play, none other than the education system itself really pops up (because other factors haven’t really changed so as to impact the genders differently).
Tancrede,
Thanks for the reminder about the grading bias. I was going to mention it, and forgot. I’ve added a mention (citing one of many studies) in the For More Info section.
The female GP that put my cousin on ritalin had no problem doing so because her 3 sons were on ritalin.
Sven,
OMG! It’s not just that modern women raise cats instead of children, they raise their children like cats (domesticated pets). At least she didn’t neuter them to make them more docile.
Most parents are either participants or bystanders in the War on Boys.
Yup. Most American parents see their children as annoying distractions at best, or pests to be rid of at worst (“I gave birth to the damned thing! Isn’t that enough? You expect me to RAISE it for 18 years too??!?!”). Boys, in particular, with their restless energy and propensity to question everything around them, are intolerable to those adults who benefit from the status quo, especially those seeking to avoid as much responsibility as possible and whose hedonistic mindset and lifestyles have no room for children in need of nurturing. Most parents don’t learn until it’s too late that their choice is to either nurture their sons to manhood or suffer at the hands of the monsters that they create otherwise.
OMG! It’s not just that modern women raise cats instead of children, they raise their children like cats (domesticated pets). At least she didn’t neuter them to make them more docile.
That will be the next salvo in the WoB. Mark my words.
feeriker,
“Most American parents”
I don’t know about “most.” The parents I worked with for 15 years in Boy Scouts devoted vast amounts of time and energy to help their kids — and those of other families — become strong and good men.
Ditto the families I worked with during the two decades we home schooled our children (in the various support organizations).
Ditto, I’ve heard, about the families that support the various sports organizations, 4H, Girl Scouts, etc.
But these are mostly middle class families. During my years on Wall Street, I met many parents for whom the kids were a to-do on their perfect life agenda — to be raised by nannies and private schools and outside classes, while they were engaged in work, elite charities, and elite entertainment. As for our lower classes, many parents are working full bore just to survive — and many just don’t care.
It’s a mess. We need lavishly funded social science surveys to even understand what is happening, let alone figure out how to fix it.
“We need lavishly funded social science surveys to even understand what is happening, let alone figure out how to fix it.”
Considering who is likely to do the surveying, in the current state of social sciences, I doubt anything really useful would come out of it: the confirmation bias and the problematic peer review process in this area of research may be too far gone. That may be the first obstacle: changing the sensor array and the processing software of western societies on that topic. Just to have a chance at identifying the problem and maybe clearing the way for actual solutions.
Tancrede,
“I doubt anything really useful would come out of it:”
I’ve read quite a bit of the survey work on the current state of the gender wars. Most looks accurate. The analysis is, of course, totally obedient to the PC Narrative. Useless.
But the data is essential. Otherwise we’re just guessing.
Larry, do multiple people post under the Larry Kummer, Editor tag? feeriker quoted your 7:03 am comment, then at 4:39 pm you contradicted it and it seemed you weren’t even aware he was quoting you.
Dark,
Only one of me. He wasn’t quoting me.
Me: “Most parents are either participants or bystanders in the War on Boys.”
FreeRiker: Most American parents see their children as annoying distractions at best”
Gotcha, I thought you were quoting the italics.
Dark,
That was my fault for not giving the full quote.
Evidence that RItalin damages the developing brain.
Boys with ADHD have parents who don’t know how to discpline or aren’t putting them to bed early enough.
Schools also favor the girls and time for recess has been cut in half.
These coddled girls may become women one day, and seek a mate. Their prospective partner’s will need to come from the damaged ranks of boys. That’s not going to work out well.
Who among you doesn’t have a father and mother. The trend continues back into history. Many women and many men became you. It works both ways. This concept of a war on women is a perverted political power war. Nobody has an interest in biasing the scales due to one’s genitals. That assumption is racism. Human level racism. Sick. Nihilism is burning bright.
“Invocation of One in Despair” Karl Marx
Powderburns,
That’s a great comment, hitting all the bases (even poetry).
“That assumption is racism. Human level racism.”
I think you mean “sexism.” But it is the same principle, pointing to one of the major political changes of the past few years: racism and sexism have become acceptable to the Left. They find them useful, and are normalizing them. Undoing the work of generations, for political gain.
“Sick. Nihilism is burning bright.”
Burning a generation of boys in pursuit of their ideological goals — it’s nothing new for the Left. They have shown a willingness to destroy big-time to build their “ideal” worlds. “Collateral casualties.”
I’d read Farrell’s book. There was much in it. But I’d like to share the best. The best was the section on rough-and-tumble play.
If your kids are young enough, you must try it. My two 11, 13 became instantly hooked, and beg for play fighting every night. The molly-coddlers who ban bull-rush, ban wrestling, ban dangerous play are doing unimaginable harm. Learning to play fight, is like learning to dance. It is really fundamental social interaction, that people crave.
We started jiu jitsu on the back of this experience.
Get the book, but if not, try fighting with your kids. Mum is wired not to like it, but kids love it.
The belief boys should be strong allows aggressive treatment by parents teachers peers others from infancy so they will be tough. There is much less mental/emotional/verbal interaction/support for fear of coddling. This creates high maintained layers of average stress for boys (new thought will send to all). These layers remain in the mind taking away real mental energy leaving much less mental energy for academics so they will have to work harder to receive the same mental reward. This treatment creates more social/emotional distance from others/adults. The total treatment creates higher average stress hurting learning/motivation more activity (not genetic) higher muscle tension hurting handwriting/motivation much lower social vocabulary/communication skills from both much less communication and social/emotional distance from fear. It creates lags in communication girls are given daily. The high stress creates activity for stress relief not genetics. This creates higher muscle tension which hurts handwriting motivation. The total treatment hurts reading/motivation which requires both a high social vocabulary/knowledge of syntax and low average stress something boys through harsh less support are increasingly weak in. This treatment creates more social/emotional from others/adults. It creates lags in communication girls are given daily. The high stress creates activity for stress relief not genetics. This creates higher muscle tension which hurts handwriting motivation. The effect with false genetic models creates more failure and hopelessness. To make it tougher boys are given love honor feelings of self-worth only on condition of achievement. This was designed to keep Male esteem low and be willing to give their lives in war for love honor from society. Males not achieving are given ridicule and discipline to make them try harder. Support is not given for fear of coddling and false belief in genetics. Many boys falling behind turn their attention to sports and video games for small measures of love honor not received in school. The belief boys should be strong and false belief in genetics create denial of the harsh treatment which is creating the low academics low esteem and other problems for boys. This is not about more openness from boys it is about society allowing aggressive treatment from infancy so boys feel much wariness toward parents teachers who freely use aggressive treatment for any sign of weakness. This is condoned by society. This problem is affecting all male children but the lower the socioeconomic bracket and time in lower areas the much more amplified the treatment given male children by parents/teachers.
There is a wrinkle to this. There are a “very few boys” given more stable correct support from some families which will enable those boys to succeed in school. This enables those boys to do well -and receive love and honor from others which they must continually do to continue to earn that love and honor. This then becomes a drug for those boys which drives them to continually achieve in different ways in school.
Who needs Russia and China as enemies when the West are already so busy destroying themselves in culture wars from within?
Anonymouse,
When did American not have “culture wars”? Clashing ideas is the way a free people decides how to move forward. It is not a pretty process, but it works.