Sexism and Men's Issues

i feel that this aimlessness is not really an american-exclusive thing.

i went through much the same, i've gone through 4 different majors counting the one i'm at right now. hopefully this one sticks.

it's just part of being young and the process of self-discovery.

i have some more things i would like to share considering your brother and i seem to have similar issues but that might have to wait a bit.

edited 1st Oct '15 11:42:06 AM by wehrmacht

If only we could do that here But the thing is he is passionate about things, but he doesn't believe he can do well enough to get into university.

Same here in Russia.

But in America I heard there's a thing called "gap year". Not going anywhere for a year, trying to figure out what you want, and then doing something. Maybe that could help?

Definitely not U.S only.

Some of us do that. Sometimes we just hop in a car and go drive for a while, touring the country while we figure out what we want to do. This is somewhat dangerous, however, because once we hit the open freedom of not being beholden to an educational schedule, a lot of us become reluctant to ever go back to one. A gap year becomes a gap life.

But many of us also just go straight into college after high school and spend a couple years figuring out our lives from there. I've heard it's nicer than high school because in college, everyone fits in. No matter who you are or what you do, there is a social group for you. You don't have to interact with anyone you don't want to and there's tons of people who are passionate about the same things you are.

Katie Tiedrich of Awkward Zombie had this to say on the matter.

But I'm only recounting what I've heard second-hand, because I jumped straight into the workforce and never looked back. >.> I'm living a gap life.

edited 1st Oct '15 11:46:16 AM by TobiasDrake

We have a gap year here as well. Thing is, I think uni would do him a heck of a lot of good with doing things like learning to be independent, learning to be happy with yourself as a person, etc.

I would like a lot of things for my sister and my brother, but they have the right to choose their own happiness. Again, it would be very helpful if you could delineate specific behaviors that were very troublesome or worrisome enough to warrant a clinical psychologist stopping by and saying "Swiggity swooty im commin-a for dat intervention"

Have you considered the possibility that at least part of this concern might stem from a well-intended concern that tries to impose your definitions of "What people SHOULD be doing at this age..."? Well intentioned or not, it is still trying to box in your brother.

Nah I'm not trying to say that he should do anything, I think it'd be nice if he did go to university but I know he can make his own decisions on that front. I'm not trying to box him in, I just know that he is unhappy right now and I would like him to feel better about himself.

Everyone's personal experiences are different. Uni was horrible for me. I did not feel better about myself there in the slightest.

Uni has been great for me only because of all the wonderful people I met and not exactly because I am deeply interested in pursuing the fields I've been studying, but for what I am aiming right now I do need to have a degree in technology at least.

I could have switched majors or dropped college but that would be a huge And Then What? for me along the prospect of risking only having access to shitty jobs because unless a family member puts you in charge of something important, good fucking luck getting a decent paying job in Brazil without one, even then it is going to take some years for the economy to recover so even with one things will still suck.

One thing I am sure off, giving up of joining the Navy through the military school and avoiding being conscripted were the best things I did.

Still while hard to relate to a Men's Issues thread, you can still encourage him to take activities and be a part of groups even ifthey are not necesarily university oriented ones.

Take a new language. Have a part time job. Take extra classes in something not necesarily university. Work out.

Many of those things can involve socializing and one of the ways you can help him is by offering to do it with him, or sitting down and talking to him, try to see what he likes and find out what hobbies he might enjoy, then find places he could do those hobbies in nearby and point it to them.

Obligatory: we're not doctors and we can't diagnose your brother over the internet. If you think he has a serious problem, like clinical depression, then get him to see a professional.

" I jumped straight into the workforce and never looked back. >.> I'm living a gap life."

You didnt choice Gap life, gap life choice you, Gap4life

....sorry, I just have to said it

I see university as a "you get what you put into it" type of deal.

It can help to meet a bunch of new people, discover things about yourself, learn about adult life and responsibility, etc but nothing is really stopping you from just doing your classes, getting good grades (or not) and just spending the rest of your time at home or at your dorm engaging in solitary activities, which while fine to a degree does not tend to help people with self-image/socialization issues get much better, though obviously experiences might vary. you kind of have to go and "grab the bull by the horns" so to speak, experiences don't just magically come to you most of the time.

i spent most of university doing just that for my first two majors, though part of that was because i wasn't in them for very long. during the third one i met more people and had more experiences by virtue of me being there longer, met a few neat people, but also a LOT of really toxic ones that I shouldn't have gotten myself involved with.

(relating back to the thread topic) you kinda have to exercise some caution with that, a social environment like that does unfortunately tend to foster negative male group behaviors which are best avoided.

edited 1st Oct '15 2:09:26 PM by wehrmacht

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1832-5-ugly-bloody-realities-getting-vasectomy.html

Don't get fooled, getting a scalpel and needles near your private jewels is as unpleasant as it sounds and can go so wrong.

Well, shit biscuits.

It's bad enough that I'd have to go to Belarus to get this done, if it can go this horribly wrong, is it even worth it?

Sigh. What do I do now?

Just about any surgical procedure *can* go horrifically wrong. It's just a matter of weighing up those risks against what the gains are.

All education tends to be a "you get out of it what you put into it" thing.

Different strategies work for different people. One of the attendant problems with going to college right out of high school is burnout. You get to the end of your 4 (or so) years of higher ed and just don't feel like climbing any more. School is most of what you've done your whole life. Still, that's not the case for everybody. It is a serious blessing, and advantage, to know early on what you want to do, and to be able to direct your energies. Again, though, one should be mindful of the buddhist notion that it's not wise to direct ALL your energies in one direction; it makes disappointment that much more brutal.

Sorry...rambled a bit there...

What I don't get is that so few men complain about there being no middle ground between condoms and vasectomy. I'd be thrilled if there was a spear counterpart to the pill (reliable, reversible and non-obvious), but that seems to be a rare feeling.

I think such a thing was mentioned a few pages ago, but it's still in development.

that seems like such an obvious idea that i'm wondering if there were just a lot of technogical hurdles to overcome to make it possible until just now.

I'm not talking about technological hurdles, but cultural ones (which need to be overcome before technological ones).

Lots of obvious things are ignored for cultural reasons rather then technological ones.

I don't know, the biology of male fertility and female fertility is wildly different. It wouldn't actually surprise me to learn that it's a lot easier, medically speaking, to prevent women from getting pregnant than it is to prevent men from impregnating women in terms of a safe, easily-reversible pill with no side effects.

Whether this is medically true is something that only actual gynecologists and andrologists know, but as far as I know, fertility test for men is easier since that only sperm is needed, thus the male pill should function by simply making it nonviable for pregnancy.

By the way, it is said that the lack of male pill is due to economic reasons on the grounds that if the male pill becomes very popular, birthrates will decline a lot and the consumer pool would shrink. No profit-oriented business would like this to happen.