Not at all, but you’re taking loosely connected threads, in my opinion, and weaving them into a blanket that covers more than it should. Young men and young women are struggling through a gender role transition that started in the 60’s. That’s real. Our schools are in crisis to some extent also, with confusion over their educational vs social responsibility (focus on food and community safety needs or focus solely on curriculum?) and the question of medicating boys so they’ll act like girls. That’s real. Changes in the job market are real. Social media is real and even more importantly for young men, video games are real.
So yes, there are challenges for men going into the dating market, but there are also challenges for women, and those are real, too. How would you like to be staring down the barrel of a 50% divorce rate and making decisions about staying home with children, for example? The simplicity of yesteryear, which you seem to long for a return of, was not simple for everyone.
I don’t see the advantages for women over men having shifted in the way you’re describing. Yesterday at work I saw three women between ages 20-23 and one 16-year-old male. My first appointment today is with a 21-year-old. I’m telling you that the girls are not laughing at boys because upward mobility is just that easy for them. I can’t discern that anything has changed since I was 20 except that gaming ruins the lives of males, who can’t pull themselves away from it, and social media torments girls, who now get to see all of the things people are saying about them behind their backs.
My goal was to offer that you (“you” being the general “all men”) can follow the cynical path and get rich to get laid by gold diggers, or you can work on yourself and find someone nice and treat them with respect and have a happy life hopefully.
I am ultimately dismissive of people who keep denying the possibility that their victimhood is the problem. It’s foolish and wearying. I can’t distinguish between the men who cry “but society!” when talking about women and the idiots who believe that all successful weight lifters and bodybuilders are on steroids, and the reason they can’t make progress is that they don’t have this special advantage. But you COULD, you know, actually devote time and effort to it and see what happens. You and I both work with people dealing with severe lifestyle-related health issues. We could talk about the deck being stacked against them, because it is, but the biggest hurdle they face is the mindset that it’s no use to try to change. I worked as a weight loss counselor before I went back to school, and a thing I said over and over again was that “you can do what you want to do, of course, but if what you want to do is lose weight, what you need to do is follow the program.” Sometimes it really IS that simple, despite there being challenges.
I don’t think I actually give @greenboy advice, and haven’t for some time. I don’t think he’s a nice person and have no investment in his happiness (nor investment in his continued unhappiness). I disagree with him, so I outline my case against his thinking.
I’m really speaking to the guys potentially reading who may be influenced by his thinking.
There are a number of places with similar mobility, but not, I think, most places. Certainly not Latin America. That’s not to say it’s not possible to succeed, but it’s more difficult. Shit, it’s not that easy here for kids born into poverty!
Pros and cons, I guess. I’m pretty pretty adaptable. It takes a lot for me to start crying that the sky is falling. We’re not approaching that for me. We’re also not approaching a matriarchal structure in the US.
