Saving Our Young Men
This year, almost twice as many women as men will earn bachelor’s degrees. For the same work, women typically earn at least as much as men. Yet society continues to do more for girls and women, usually at men’s expense.
By Marty Nemko
Twenty years ago, when I began career counseling, my male and female clients were equally upbeat about their future. Today, for the most part, the girls and women are confident, feeling the world is their oyster, while the boys and men more often are despondent, scared, or angry. The phrase that best defines my male clients is “beaten down."
What happened? Most of the guys can’t put their finger on the cause, but having had 2,800 clients over 20 years, I believe I’ve pieced it together.
Starting in elementary school, boys are made to feel inferior. Take Your Daughter to Work Day implied to boys that they count less. Endless lessons highlighting the contributions of women (from Pocahontas to Rosa Parks to Hillary Clinton) and the evils of men (from Hannibal to Hitler to McCarthy) make boys feel inferior. That inferiority is reinforced when they come home from school and see TV shows and movies with Doofus Dads or Scuzzball Sams being put in their place by Wise Women. In the effort to boost girls’ self-esteem, boys’ are destroyed.
When boys start to look into college, the very first thing they see are the colleges’ brochures and websites, with far more pictures of women and minorities; the subliminal message, we don’t care about white males. Application essays often ask students to describe a hardship they overcame. “Hardship"is often code for “overcoming the disadvantage of being a woman or a minority."Many white males, if only unconsciously, feel this is just one more thing discouraging them from applying.
If and when they arrive at college, young men find the anti-white-male juggernaut continues, from the very first day. At orientation, they hear of endless clubs, mentoring programs, and other opportunities for women and minorities, almost none for men, let alone for white men. In the classroom, the denigration of white men accelerates. Lysistrata often replaces Lear, The Doll House displaces Homer, with the writings of dead white European males disproportionately used as whipping boys, deconstructed in anti-male ways. More broadly, the “white male hegemony"is presented as society’s worst cancer, one which must be extirpated at all cost, with constant vigilance required to stamp out any area in which men are ‘overrepresented."Yet, it’s ignored or even extolled when women are overrepresented. For example, women dominate the highly influential book publishing world, putting out an endless stream of pro-woman/anti-male bestsellers such as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s Are Men Necessary? and Dee Dee Myers’ just-published, Why Women Should Rule the World.
So, far fewer men are going to college, and those that do, drop out at much higher rates. In the 2007 college graduation class, 58% were women, 42% men, a dramatic reversal from just two decades ago. Today, with a bachelor’s degree being the minimum requirement for most decent jobs, this is a disaster for men. And a disaster for half of our population is a disaster for us all.
When young men apply for jobs, they immediately see the anti-white-male bias continue: the want ads so frequently feature an EEOC statement encouraging women and minorities (but never white males) to apply. They see the photos on employers’ websites disproportionately highlighting women and minorities.
If a white male gets hired, he’ll likely quickly learn that women’s approaches to work– collaborative, team-oriented, exploratory of feelings–is viewed as superior to men’s competitive goal-orientedness. If a man dare says, “Enough of this processing of feelings, let’s just get on with it,"he’ll usually be viewed as Neanderthal if not fired for “not fitting in"or for not being “a team player."White men learn of mentorship programs created for women and minorities, but not for them. And they’ll soon find out about reverse discrimination promotions that occur because of the organization’s diversity committee pressures, because the employer fears a Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton running to the media claiming the organization is racist, or because the only group not an EEOC-protected class is young white men.
And dare a white man object, even if he doesn’t get censured or fired, he will likely receive either or both of two invalidating refutations:
– Women earn 79 cents on the dollar. This statistic is terribly misleading. According to the definitive book, Why Men Earn More, based on a decade of research using government statistics, for the same work, women earn at least as much as men do.
– Fewer women than men are in top positions. That implies that the reason is sexism, a glass ceiling. The far more frequent reason is that many more women than men care more about work/life balance and/or want to be more involved with their children. (Ironically, we genuflect to women’s rights to work less so they can raise children at the same time as we worry about global warming–and environmentalists agree that the greatest threat to the environment is overpopulation.) Promotion disproportionately requires willingness to work evenings or weekends, to spend discretionary time doing professional activities, and to move their family across the country for promotions, Women may wisely not want to do all that, but cannot legitimately claim they’re not being promoted because they have two x chromosomes.
A final assault on men’s self-efficacy is that that they’re made to feel like the disposable sex. They see an endless array of pink ribbons to fight breast cancer. But where are the ribbons for prostate cancer or for early heart attack, which kills, early, many more men? Men die 5 1/2 years younger than women and live their last decade in worse health, yet only pink ribbons proliferate. And the heart disease ads I’ve seen are all about women and heart disease.
So millions of young men who have heard these facts or experienced them first-hand are overwhelmed, depressed, insecure, and scared. They’re rarely angry–they’ve been told so long that they’re inferior, they just blame themselves. So, they return to live on their parents’ sofas, sleeping late, playing video games during the day and getting drunk or stoned at night.
What’s the answer? It reduces to one word: fairness. In our attempt to lift girls and women up we have destroyed boys and men. Just as we are assiduous to avoid unfair treatment of women and minorities, we must do the same for boys and men: in school curriculum, television and movie programming, college admissions and programming, hiring, promotion, and workplace culture, and health research funding and outreach.
Until then, guys, the advice is the same as so many Black parents have given their kids: “No use complaining. You simply gotta be twice as good to get half as far. Eventually, the pendulum may swing back into balance."Maybe.
Dr. Nemko is co-president of the National Organization for Men, which educates the media to bring about fair treatment of males and females in schools, colleges, the media, employment, family law, and health care. www.orgformen.org . Emal: mnemko@comcast.net .
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Stumble It!
March 14th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I few years ago I spent three or four stints of 3 days to 2 weeks in the hospital in the course of a year. The doctors who I saw there were overwhelmingly middle aged white men. I thought, “Damn, where are all those hot young black, white, and hispanic chick MD’s like on the doctor shows on TV…You know, the ones who are banging all the young male stud MD’s in those broom closets between performing heart transplants?” The reality isn’t so sexy, I guess.
White men getting shut out of the economy, or retreating from it, doen’t bode well for our ability to continue to compete with the emerging economies of the far East, China and India in particular. These cultures are highly patriarchal, and their economies are results-driven and competitive. It was white men who created Western Civilization, and women and minorities don’t have a prayer of maintaining it for more than 2 generations on their own.
March 14th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
The question is how to make the pendulum start swinging back? The biggest hit against men is that we still have male gender roles. Who keeps the economy moving? Men. Who is supposed to keep kids in line? Men. Who provides for the family? MEN! So when we have gotten everything stripped from us and things start to fall apart, they turn around and blame us.
We get kicked out of the house and threatened with lawsuits, but its men who are supposedly retreating from family. When the economy falls it because men are slacking off. When a shooter goes on a rampage and no one stops him, it because a man was too much of coward to throw his life away.
We can point to the injustices done to us and reasons why we are now UNABLE to do what we traditionally have done. However, we are then called whiners, slackers, deadbeats, and losers. Society has programmed both genders that men’s complaints don’t matter. No matter what the circumstances a complaint from a man for himself is of no consequence. If a woman complains she should be listened to.
So I come back to my original question. How do you get the pendulum to start swinging back when no one listens at all. A man may snap and shoot a judge or two and they are dismissed as radicals, crazies, or criminals. The media refuses to give airtime to Male protesters if it is a men’s issue. Do we have to do a massive march or have people light themselves on fire to get actual un-dismissive attention? Its either that or allow things to go so bad that society is forced to rely on us again on our terms. So we forcibly take back our power because everyone else is so scared.
I wish us all the best of luck, because things still have a long way they can slide.
March 14th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
True mirwalk. That is a great post.
I agree that things have a ways to slide before some people ask questions.
Keep in mind that the marriage strike is in play. Women have never had it so difficult to find their sucker. The longer this slides for the women the better.
Keep in mind also that corporations have no loyalty to men or women. They’d just as soon get slavery back in America. But the second best choice is to increase the labor supply by bringing in women and importing lower paid workers to push down incomes. Corporations have been the biggest advocates of affirmative action for women and promoting women’s issues to recruit women NOT because they are feminist corporations but because they can get workers at less cost.
It used to take one male income to provide for an entire family. Now it takes both husband and wife. And now these two workers are under economic pressure to make ends meet. Women had it MUCH better in the past! LOL!!! Someday even the stupid American woman may see the light.
Women’s liberation was not much liberation for MOST American women.
An American man who is single has many more good choices than an American woman over the long term.
Just don’t ever marry an American woman.
Time is worse for women than men.
YES! Let things get worse so society is forced to rely on us on our own terms.
There are a great many depressed American women. And there is nothing like personal pain to make one try to focus and sharpen the mind. Maybe even American women will get a clue.
American women are disliked the world over.
American men are highly respected by women in many other cultures.
Men are mobile. They can survive most any circumstance.
For women everything is fine until the oil needs changing.
Things are imploding for women everywhere. Their lives will continue to worsen.
They have all the power of the government behind them for privileges and advantages but the government still can’t force you to love them, provide for them, protect them, or give a damn about them. Men have to want to do these things. And women for a VERY LONG TIME have given men
reasons to NOT want to do these things.
Tonight Marc Rudov was on Bill O’reilly and he was described as a MENS RIGHTS ADVOCATE. He will be on The O’reilly Factor every Friday. Men’s rights HAS broken through the media wall against men.
Feminism is under assault and it is gonna be fun watching the attacks.
No group deserves more animosity than American Feminists and their enablers. Things are gonna slide for them. Wait and see.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
u.s women are easily the most privileged group of humans to ever exist on the face of the earth, as far as we can tell. i mean, we still haven’t found Atlantis, so maybe there is a chance those women were better off. doubt it.
and still all you can hear is how pitiful their lives are, how they don’t get enough of this or can’t get a leg up there. dozens of government programs designed to make sure they get more, more, MORE. their greed knows no bounds.
u.s. women know the rest of the world has no respect for them. that’s why they insist their minions in congress (lawyers) pass IMBRA type laws. got to keep the men servants they already have trapped here. and if they get behind in the CS/alimony payments (by design), take away the passports (unconstitutional). and VAWA, to finance their little war on American men.
every time some guy listens to his real friends and refuses to marry or backs out of marriage, that’s one more woman w/o a servant to pay her way, and change her oil. if young guys only realized that all these pregnant girlfriends are not an accident. birth control is almost 100% effective. get pregnant (blame him) and she has her servant, or welfare, free college, and the list goes on and on. and the black robes to see she gets all that her bond servant can provide.
i agree w/ the posters here. the downside is gonna be a bitch, literally.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Today’s paper, movie guide, shows a new film: “Girls Rock” a program to help girls with self-esteem issues. “Much has been written” the authour Mary Houlihan Chicago Sun Times wrote. “about the bewildering challenges facing girls struggling with their self-image” Carol Gilligan returns. The AAUW and NOW propaganda about girls struggling is alive in Hollywood.
Channeling the feminist liars of the 70’s – until today – the movie will spawn more programs for girls. Feminist today claim that it doesn’t matter if males don’t get the education because men earn more. Both the AAUW and NOW currenly claim for fund raising and membership that women only earn 77 cents on the dollar men make and both groups know they are lying. T
he know women are pulling ahead and they want to make sure the gap is greater. Do they really think it’s in the best interests of our daughters for our sons to fail, for the prisions to burst, for more and more men to kill themselves. Men have been trashed and not honored where anyone looking at the real lives of men, not feminist fabrications, would see that men are honorable and have sacrificed much. We worked the mines, fields, sea, dying to provide for our families and after we invent central heat, public transportation, washers and dryers, cars, lights, and organized police – when we all agree it’s safe for women to go out on their own – we are told we oppressed women and it’s their turn to rule. You go girl and let me know how it works out for your granddaughter.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Try to get the book “The Woman Racket” by Steve Moxon imprint-academica.com a book dedicated to Norman Kingsley Mailer “a fierce critic of ‘the woman racket’ Published in the UK Moxon nails these issues in ways too many Americans miss while they tread too softly to not offend the PC crew in charge, while treading softly and unable to make a dent in the gender war.
March 15th, 2008 at 8:13 am
From having been married to a western woman, and from having being involved with them my whole life, I’ve noticed the same thing over and over again. Women love to complain about equality, and once they get it, they shout their grrrlll power and independence to the hills. The minute they start earning their big paychecks, they never let you forget it. But time and again, when the bills come, these same women suddenly become mute and helpless. Whenever an unexpected big expense arises, it’s the man who picks up the slack. When money gets tight, it’s the man who’s expected to put in the extra hours. When it’s raining heavily, it’s the man who’s expected to park the car five blocks from the restaurant so that his woman can sit all safe and dry inside the restaurant sipping her cosmopolitan while schmucko walks in a downpour.
Where are the commercials where succesful women hand their husbands an expensive watch for Christmas? When’s the last time I heard a group of women at a diner talking about how hard it was to pay last month’s heating bill? When’s the last time an ‘independent, successful’ career women asked ME out on a date and paid for it?
Answer: It’s a racket. A big scam. It’s the ‘Have our cake and eat it too,’ game that men are getting sick of.
I’ve dated women who make more money than me when I’ve gone through hard times, and this is my experience. They ALL still expected me to pay my way. Not ONE of them ever dug into their pockets a little extra. But when the situation was reverses, you can be damn sure I was expected ti pay for everything.
This is b______t. And what’s even worse, more than half the men I know scoff at my arguments and say that I’m just angry at women. Sorry guys, you got it wrong. I’m angry at the nonsense. I’m angry that the majority of women out there, those creatures who I was raised to believe are more empathetic and in touch with their feelings than I am, are a bunch of con-artists. I’m disgusted by the fact that ’strong, independent’ women suddenly become ‘Traditional’ when it comes time to take care of business. I’m dismayed that I’m supposed to listen to the endless drivel of women’s ‘feelings’ with no judgement, but when I express MY ‘feelings’ about the unfairness of the situation, I’m answered with derision and shaming.
My answer is that I’ve walked away from it all. You can have your years of misery and lies. It’s just not worth it.
March 15th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Dr. Nemko for you’re reasoned and persistant efforts to press Academia, and the media on these very important concerns.
March 15th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Everybody-
Marc Rudov can use your vote in his latest debate against Feminist and Entitled Princess Lis Wiehl at Fox News. He’s up 51% to 49% but a much bigger margin is obviously better.
http://www.foxnews.com/yourworld/index.html