Sexism and Men's Issues

I think it's more down to how education got handled. As it turns out, 'traditional' "shut-up, sit down and do your work" styles actually suit female learning techniques better than boys' (for whatever reasons, girls acclimatise to them easier than boys do). Earlier, this wasn't apparent, because... well, girls didn't actually have much chance of showing they could do that. So, no matter the teaching style, the boys just had to get on with it (however much it actually wasn't fitted to them).

All increasing the intake of students has done is show how limiting such styles of educating can be, rather than how good or bad the students are.

I actually find that ironic: in a world dominated by male upper-echelon supervision and student intake, teaching actually used female biased techniques... and didn't know it, whilst excluding the very students who could handle them. For centuries. In short, it's only now that we're starting to realise just how short-changed all those generations of poor boys were.

edited 12th Jun '12 10:34:23 AM by Euodiachloris

This ain't about how women have it better,there is no denial that are serious injustices against them,but more people actually take it seriously and do something about it.

If it's blatantly discrimination,they call it so and do something about it. Now if it discriminates against men and you try to call it as is

You can get the following responses:

A) What kind planet are you on? (@ any person that says that,Earth,how about you?)

B) Be a man and deal with it (technically this is dealing with it,besides I thought men were supposed to act,oh right only when it suits women best)

C) Women have it worse,always sos top this BS about how they have it better (No,only some of the time is it worse,sometimes it is better)

Ya' gotta read Warren Farrell's The Myth Of Male Power to really understand.

Misandry is just as common as misogyny,we're just trained to tolerate it more and see it as humor so unless it's very unmistakably sexist,no one gives a s^!t. But almost anything can pass as misogyny with certain ears.

edited 12th Jun '12 10:19:05 AM by terlwyth

This is a form of "women have it better." Please knock it off. I started this thread to talk about causes and solutions for various injustices faced by men—in other words, to take them seriously and propose what might be done about them. Just moaning about them is counterproductive.

edited 12th Jun '12 10:35:51 AM by Karalora

I agree. No matter how you you say "I'm not moaning about this..." and then go on to moan about it, it darned well doesn't disguise it.

edited 12th Jun '12 10:35:59 AM by Euodiachloris

So what do you propose,mens issues not being taken seriously,or considered non-existent are injustices

The title already inherently suggests that yeah sometimes women have it better,there is no avoiding that. But it's not the focus,the focus is still very much on well mens issues.

I'm not moaning at all,I've brought plenty of issues to discuss about to the table and some of the problems,it should be taken seriously that well,...such ideas are usually considered out there,and we should start focusing on changing that.

edited 12th Jun '12 10:59:35 AM by terlwyth

This is an interesting take on the matter (and much better than the one I see sometimes that blames the preponderance of female teachers in primary grades, as if that were a new phenomenon). I doubt whether there is such a thing as inherent "male learning styles" and "female learning styles," but I can certainly agree that cultural ideals which praise boys for being restless and noisy outside the classroom will make it hard for them to adjust to being focused and quiet inside.

I also think that the academic success of girls indirectly hampers boys, because it gets filtered through the "femmephobia" that is instilled in boys from a very young age—i.e., if girls do well in school, then doing well in school is "girly" and no self-respecting boy should be caught dead doing it. There's also the related jock/nerd False Dichotomy.

There very well could be different learning styles, since as an overall generalization men and women also have different approaches to every day tasks, I.E. men being methodical, women being good at multi-tasking.

I think a lot of it gets characterized by the teacher too though, depending on the age. I don't feel like I learned anything from my geriatric older woman teachers who were serious all the time and taught straight from the book. I had a lot of great younger female teachers who were awesome, and I guess one older woman to defy the standard I'd had(she was a crazy chainsmoking libertarian poli-sci teacher, but she was awesome)

I think the one thing all my favorite teachers had in common wasn't so much their sex, but that they all had a sense of humor. I think because of attitudes inherent in society, women in positions of authority or power might stray away from trying to be funny or really engage in their students by sort of going down to their level, because they think that it undermines the authority.

The thing I noticed though was that a lot of the studious girls would get frustrated with some of the teachers who joked around a lot because they were all in "I WANT TO LEARN!" mode, where as they usually got good grades in the classes with boring teachers. Or at least I think they did, I slept through all those classes so I'm not sure.

edited 12th Jun '12 11:14:53 AM by Barkey

An interesting talk by Sir Ken Robinson pointed out that the current system of education was designed principally to produce skilled workers for the Industrial Revolution. Just an interesting little side note.

Anyway; the current system/style/whatever of education benefiting females slightly makes a lot of sense to me. From the moment we started to have to sit down and be quiet as school children, the little boys would be daring each other to get out of their seats, always just wandering. Little girls did too, but not as often. Boys tend to go for the more physical things, the games, the running, the stand-up roles. Of course, there are exceptions (I used to tell people off for talking during Storytime. At age five), but it has a very important side-effect: boys tend to be less likely to be violent if they're constantly required to follow physically unstimulating pursuits, mainly because they aren't as physical in their day-to-day lives. I may be wrong there, but I do find the kids, boys and girls, who sit down and do the work quietly get into about ten percent of the energetic, fidgeting ones. This is important. Suppressing aggression in boys early can help to stop a decline into crime, hence why father figures are key in many ways. Seeing a big guy holding his strength back? That's precedent. That tells you 'Well, being big and strong ain't everything'.

My little bias from fourteen years in British Education. Take what thou wilt.

edited 12th Jun '12 11:50:53 AM by Minister

I am rather suspicious of the idea that the disparity between males and females when it comes to learning comes down to a difference in "learning styles". It might be; but I think it more likely that this is yet another case in which individual variance between humans drowns out whatever difference there is between the genders.

I would rather look at social pressure and lowered expectations — some of the same reasons why different ethnic groups tend to fare better or worse in school, on average.

The Industrial Revolution problem affects both sexes so probably is off-topic, although I completely agree our education system is incorrectly designed.

I've personally figured that the superior female academic results were due to their increased socialisation toward the sciences (but ironically not math). We've banned them for so long from physical jobs, they only got to walk into a coal mine in the last 30 years, let alone work in one. I think if we properly promote females in physical labour jobs and similarly promote males to enter university, then we equal out the workforce. However, there's a few issues here:

• Women, especially in the United States, enter the work force at a lower rate than men, we should try to even out the number of work hours done by both
• Canada has equal parental leave for both parents up to 6 months paid by the government, one of the few countries in the world. The United States is the ONLY western country and one of about... a dozen countries in the entire world that doesn't offer ANY parental leave.

Those two are known to be huge factors in affect employability of individuals with respect to also having families. Giving only parental leave to a mother, for example, means you're specifically damaging the careers of women should a family choose to have children, and then you assign in the wage gap to "oh well women are just choosing to work less". They aren't choosing. They're forced to do so. And additionally, if a father wanted to take care of their child (having been in Canada, I've seen the father take parental leave actually roughly 50% of the time because the government made it available to them, so even well to do fathers with good careers will take the leave but I rather Stat Can give out a stat on that figure), they now have the opportunity to do so with less damage to their career.

edited 12th Jun '12 12:02:38 PM by breadloaf

Not sure on the accuracy of it, but the textbook in the Sex & Gender class I took last semester claims that boys are encouraged to learn from their mistakes in school while girls are taught to accept them.

I have a couple, but they aren't the most severe:

1. In society, Men are usually pressured to ask the girl out, pay for dinner, etc.

2. Men are usually expected to be stronger, both physically and emotionally (e.g. Men Don't Cry) than women, and are ridiculed if are not.

Tell me if you disagree.

edited 13th Jun '12 12:16:17 PM by every108minutes

At least over here, "paying for dinner" is not really expected. Offering to do so is polite; but the woman generally refuses and offers to split the bill (which should be accepted — insisting to pay the whole bill would be rather offensive, actually, as it suggests that the woman cannot take care of herself).

edited 13th Jun '12 12:30:28 PM by Carciofus

I really hate the "always pay for dinner" thing. It supplements the really overall thought that men aren't worthy of a woman's time if they don't have money or can't spend it on you, hand-in-hand with "a man is only attractive if they're successful." People pass it off as, "if a man can't buy you dinner now, then he's obviously a failure," but that's just as sexist, implying that woman shouldn't work.

Which also leads into another grievance of mine: the fact that men are expected to work and women are not. It really makes it hard to say "there's a pay gap between men and women" and call that sexist against women, when really, what's happening is that there are jobs that no one will hire women for; menial tasks like janitorial service, construction work, or in my case, pushing shopping carts at retail services. (I've worked for Walmart and Target for a combination of nearly three whole years, I've seen all sorts of employees come and go, and not a one in cart pushing was ever female.)

Not to mention, because of society's stance on "women shouldn't work," women end up not finding jobs, giving males more "dominance" over careers, as well as the thought that when a woman marries or when financially possible, she's allowed to quit working and focus on "the family," where a man that quits a job for the same reasons is called a bum or a failure.

It's just that... people seem to forget that if sexism is involved, in almost all the cases, it hurts both genders, and forms problems for everyone.

Usually, the whole "ridiculed if they're not" is done by other men, rather than the women. Women are not adverse to Manly Tears as a whole. The odd Alpha Bitch wannabe notwithstanding (and, those girls usually have issues...).

Blaming women for attitudes that men purpotrait amongst and against each other is a bit... much, don't you think? Guys, you can change the script you tell yourselves.

Also, around where I live, the one who earns most pays: regardless of gender. <shrugs> It's the practical approach.

edited 13th Jun '12 12:38:24 PM by Euodiachloris

It's both men and women that allow this to happen, and since the other gender keeps refusing to budge or change, neither one does. It's a vicious circle of inactivity.

I would not make it that bleak. If you ignore the "rules", eventually people figure out that they don't apply to you.

On the topic of paying for dinner, the funny thing is that when I go out with male friends for beers or whatever, generally only one pays — the others will pay next times. It's simpler.

edited 13th Jun '12 12:45:52 PM by Carciofus

@Euodia: There might also be cultural differences at play too. In the community I grew up in, women were the ones that primarily ridiculed Manly Tears, whereas a guy could go out for a few drinks with his close buddies and let it out with impunity. Pretty much the only time a guy was "allowed" to cry in public was at funerals and stuff.

edited 13th Jun '12 12:52:15 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

This also requires that the change shows tangible gain, though. People aren't just going to go against their preconceived notions just because someone else does. Telling guys to stop spending money on women or for women to stop judging guys by their wallets won't work so long as money is associated with power and power remains sexy.

edited 13th Jun '12 1:07:06 PM by KingZeal

Probably: Brits do do things a bit differently. Going Dutch on dates is not that weird for a lot of us. And, guys are allowed to cry, would you believe? Stiff upper-lip works for all when you're on the job/ in a sticky situation to get you through it with the minimum of fuss. When you're off the clock or away from the danger? Go nuts: this goes for both. But, guys have a harder time of letting themselves do this.

A woman who cries at the wrong time? Is looked down upon as much as a guy who does. Trying for the Wounded Gazelle Gambit, in most people's books. About as impressive as Drogba's diving.

Cultural residue.

edited 13th Jun '12 1:12:36 PM by Euodiachloris

Well sexism and how it plays out is extremely regional. More liberal areas find it offensive for a guy to pay for everything on a date (but they haven't really tackled how men mush approach the women), or that a woman is a worthless bum for not going out to get a career (and similarly it is ridiculous for a woman to give up a career to raise children and just do family stuff) and so on.

Other areas men must pay for everything, act tough, do the "manly" stuff.

As I've lived and been in the more liberal areas, I'm fairly confident that the sexist attitudes we talk about can and will be overcome so long as everyone actively strives, on an individual level, to be less sexist.

I'm confident that progress will be made.

But, I'm cautious of the possibility of new stereotypes coming to replace the old. Humans are notorious for that sort of thing.

Relevant to the topic.

That's encouraging. I wonder how many single fathers are involved in that situation.

That stereotype particularly annoys me because my own dad did most of the housework in our house.