THE NARCISSISM OF THE ANGRY YOUNG MEN
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
What to do about the deadly misfits among us? First, recognize the problem.
S ome years ago , I got a call from an analyst at the National Counterterrorism Center . After yet another gruesome mass shooting (this time, it was Dylann Roof’s attack on a Bible-study group at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, that killed nine and wounded one), I had written an article about the young men who perpetrate such crimes. I suggested that an overview of these killers showed them, in general, to be young losers who failed to mature, and whose lives revolved around various grievances, insecurities, and heroic fantasies. I called them “Lost Boys” as a nod to their arrested adolescence.
The NCTC called me because they had a working group on “countering violent extremism.” They had read my article and they, too, were interested in the problem of these otherwise-unremarkable boys and young men who, seemingly out of nowhere, lash out at society in various ways. We think you’re on to something, the analyst told me. He invited me to come down to Washington and discuss it with him and his colleagues.
The meeting was held in a classified environment so that the group’s members, representing multiple intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, could more easily share ideas and information. (I was a government employee at the time and held a clearance.) But we could have met in a busy restaurant for all it mattered—the commonalities among these young men, even across nations and cultures, are hardly a secret. They are man-boys who maintain a teenager’s sharp sense of self-absorbed grievance long after adolescence; they exhibit a combination of childish insecurity and lethally bold arrogance; they are sexually and socially insecure. Perhaps most dangerous, they go almost unnoticed until they explode. Some of them open fire on their schools or other institutions; others become Islamic radicals; yet others embrace right-wing-extremist conspiracies.
I emerged from the meeting with a lot of interesting puzzle pieces but no answers. Since then, there have been more such attacks, more bodies, more grief—but precious little progress on preventing such incidents. A few recent examples: In 2021 , a 15-year-old boy murdered four of his fellow students in his Michigan high school. In 2022 , an 18-year-old man carried out a massacre in a Texas school; another , the same age, committed a mass murder in a grocery store in upstate New York. A 21-year-old male attacked a Fourth of July parade in Illinois. A 22-year-old went on a rampage at an LBGTQ nightclub in Colorado.
These attacks are not merely “violence” in some general sense, nor are they similar to other gun crimes classified as “mass shootings” beyond the number of victims. Drug-war shoot-outs and gang vendettas are awful, but they are better-understood problems, in both their origins and possible remedies. The Lost Boys, however, are the perpetrators of out-of-the-blue massacres of innocents. Their actions are not driven by criminal gain, but instead are meant to shock us, to make us grieve, and finally, to force us to acknowledge the miserable existence of the young men behind the triggers.
After each Lost Boy killing, Americans are engulfed in grief and anger, but eventually, we are overtaken by a sense of helplessness. Sometimes, we respond by raging at one another; we fight about gun control or mental-health funding or the role of social media as we try to fix blame and reduce a seemingly inexplicable act to something discrete and solvable. But I wonder now, as I did back in 2015, if all of these debates are focusing on the wrong problems. Yes, the country is awash in guns; yes, depression seems to be on the rise in young people; yes, extremists are using social media to fuse together atomized losers into explosive compounds. But the raw material for all of the violence is mostly a stream of lost young men.
Why is this happening? What are we missing? Guns and anomie and extremism are only facets of the problem. The real malady afflicting these men, one about which I’ve written much in the intervening years since that original article, is the deluge of narcissism in the modern world, especially among failed-to-launch young men whose injured grandiosity leads them to blame others for their own shortcomings and insecurities—and to seek revenge.
T he lost boys are mostly young and male, largely middle- or working-class. Frustrated by their own social awkwardness, they are so often described as “loners” that the trope has been around from as early as the 1980s . But these young males, no matter how “quiet,” are filled with an astonishing level of enraged resentment and entitlement about their roles as men, and they seek rationalizations for inflicting violence on a society they think has both ignored and injured them. They become what the German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger called “radical losers,” unsuccessful men who feel that they have been denied their dominant role in society and who then channel their blunted male social impulses toward destruction.
And they are, above all, staggeringly narcissistic. Almost all of the recent mass killers, for example, thought they had a special mission in the world. We know this because they felt compelled to tell us so.
Indeed, to search for the killer’s manifesto is now part of the ritual of investigating a massacre, a tradition we might trace back to the Unabomber, the ur-Lost Boy Ted Kaczynski , whose terror campaign included a demand that the press publish his 35,000-word treatise. (And yet, when he left society at 29, he wrote in his journal : “My motive for doing what I am going to do is simply personal revenge. I do not expect to accomplish anything by it.”) There are many other examples: the Los Angeles mass killer Christopher Dorner left behind an 11,000-word screed in 2013; Brenton Tarrant , who killed 51 people at two New Zealand mosques in 2019, posted a 74-page rant to the internet. ( Patrick Crusius , who murdered 23 people in El Paso in 2019, claimed to be inspired by Tarrant but managed to upload only four pages to the infamous 8chan site.) At this point, so many such documents exist that there are scholarly research studies analyzing them.
Juliette Kayyem: A ‘lone-wolf’ shooter has an online pack
Many of the Lost Boys claim to represent various causes derived from a wide spectrum of sources—sexism, racism, religious bigotry, conspiracy kookery, and anti-government extremism among them. (Nor are all of these aimless young men killers: When I first examined this problem, I also identified a type of Lost Boy who convinces himself that he’s doing good, such as Bowe Bergdahl , who thought of himself as the fictional action hero Jason Bourne when he deserted his military unit in Afghanistan in 2009, and Edward Snowden, who is the embodiment of a particular kind of nonviolent but nonetheless highly destructive misfit .)
Narcissism is a common malady, but for the Lost Boys, it is the indispensable primer for a bomb whose core is an unstable mass of insecurities about masculine identity. This, of course, helps explain why such spectacular and ghastly acts are an almost entirely male phenomenon. Women, who are less prone to commit violence in general, are rarely the perpetrators of these kinds of senseless massacres. In general, they do not share the same juvenile fantasies of power and dominance that are common to adolescent boys. Nor do they tend to harbor the same resentments about sex and status that are common to all teenagers but that in the Lost Boys persist beyond adolescence and soon grow to volcanic levels.
For example, in 2014 Elliot Rodger became a kind of patron saint of “incels,” or involuntary celibates (men angry at women for not having sex with them), when he killed six people and plowed his car into several more in California before killing himself. Rodger explicitly said his attack was “retribution” against other men—and the women who sleep with them—for having sex while he remained a virgin. Four years later, a self-described incel who’d praised Rodger killed 10 people in Toronto .
Lives that seem to unwind over problems related to sex or sexual identity are a persistent theme. Micah Johnson, a Black military veteran, claimed that he was avenging the deaths of Black people at the hands of the police when he ambushed Dallas police officers in 2016, killing five and wounding nine others. Perhaps more pertinent, though, was that Johnson was a failure as a soldier and his life had gone into free fall after he was booted from the Army for stealing women’s underwear from a female comrade. That same year, Omar Mateen, who had expressed particular animus toward homosexuals, became a mass killer when he attacked a gay nightclub in Florida, as did the accused recent Colorado shooter Anderson Aldrich. Aldrich’s lawyers have said that the alleged killer is nonbinary, but some observers , including a former friend, suspect Aldrich is merely attempting to troll the LGBTQ community.
Another way these young men express their sexual insecurity is to seek heroic redemption by imagining themselves as the defenders of helpless women against sexual threats from other men. Roof, for his part, thought he was on a mission to stop Black men from raping white women , a common racist trope in America. One of the members of a group of young Muslim men in Canada who planned to storm the Parliament in Ottawa in 2006 reportedly had a similar motivation, believing that NATO soldiers were raping Afghan women.
This masculine insecurity is even more striking when we consider the number of such young men who chose what we might think of as “the military cure,” by joining the armed forces in an apparent attempt to forge a more manly identity. In a society where relatively few people serve in the military, the Lost Boys are heavily overrepresented among veterans or would-be soldiers. Timothy McVeigh, who went on to become the Oklahoma City bomber, left the Army after being rejected for Special Forces. Dorner was a naval reserve officer; Johnson and Bergdahl went to Afghanistan. (Before he enlisted, friends told The Washington Post , Bergdahl had “identified with Japanese samurai warriors and medieval knights.”) Devin Kelley, who opened fire on a Texas church , joined the Air Force. Snowden joined the Army and tried for a Green Beret, but washed out. The “American Taliban” traitor, John Walker Lindh , also went overseas—but for a different army.
Jihadists, especially those radicalized in the West, are also examples of this syndrome. They join organizations that promise to create a powerful male identity, and, in some cases, to reward them with women as sex slaves. For all their supposed distaste for Western immorality, many of the young males who gravitate toward jihadism are avid consumers of forbidden Western delights, such as music , alcohol, drugs , and pornography . (Even in middle age, Osama bin Laden had quite a porn collection .) For these men, terrorism may be, among other things, some sort of self-purification, a way to deny their illicit desires by destroying the places and people that supposedly coax them toward perdition. (In a striking parallel, the American Robert Aaron Long—who at 21 had already been treated for sex addiction—is accused of opening fire on a string of massage parlors around Atlanta, killing eight, in an attempt, as he told law enforcement officers later, to eliminate the source of his “temptation.”)
Fear of women and hatred of minorities, animosity toward authority, patterns of absent or dysfunctional fathers, histories of being bullied, romance with symbols of power, conflicts of identity and sexuality—we can catalog at length the similarities among these young misfits. They are, in the main, scared and narcissistic boys, and like many boys teetering on the cusp of manhood, they are tormented by paradoxes: insecure but drenched in self-regard, fearful yet brave, full of self-doubt yet fascinated by heroism. For most males, this is a transitory part of adolescence. For the Lost Boys, it is a permanent condition, a deadly combination of stubborn immaturity and towering narcissism.
K nowing about the common characteristics of these killers and terrorists does not shed much light on what to do to thwart them. Stricter gun laws, a good idea in general, will not stop the mass murderers already among us who live in a society saturated with easily obtained weapons. Law enforcement can infiltrate and destroy violent militias, terror cells, and other threats, but that will not prevent unstable young men from searching for causes to justify their massacres—if they even bother with such ideas.
Likewise, arguments about “ toxic masculinity ,” as tempting as they are in these cases, miss the mark. The problem of toxic masculinity is real, but the swaggering jerks and violent abusers who sometimes become a threat to their partners (and themselves) are distinct from the insecure man-boys who decide to prove their worth—or just to prove that they exist —by committing extraordinary acts of mass murder. And, in general, toxic men are easy to spot. The Lost Boys are, by their nature, usually invisible until they strike.
Performative mass killings and large-scale terrorism are mostly post-1970s phenomena, and we can likely trace at least some of the Lost Boy problem to the rapid emergence in the past 40 years or so of a hypersexualized and yet lonelier, more atomized society. Likewise, the social institutions that once shaped and restrained the worst impulses of young men—religion, the military, schools, and even marriage itself—have gone through drastic and irrevocable changes in the same period.
Michael Carpenter: Russia is co-opting angry young men
We can lament some of those changes—I certainly do, particularly the collapse of a kind of mature sense of stoicism and self-control among men. But we cannot reverse them, not least because that would, in effect, require turning back time and unraveling years of social progress. The advances of women’s rights are especially terrifying to a certain cohort of the Lost Boys, but such progress was necessary and irrevocable, and society cannot be held hostage to the insecurities of a small group of males in arrested adolescence, no matter how dangerous they may be.
Western societies have now produced multiple generations of these young men, so we cannot hope to solve the problem by just waiting out the generational demography. (There are exceptions in the form of “lost old men,” but the two recent cases of older mass shooters in California—as well as the 64-year-old Las Vegas killer in 2017—are extremely rare outliers .) Perhaps more alarming, at least some of these young males seem to be aging into dangerous, frustrated middle-aged men, the gun-toting cosplayers who now have the time and money to pursue their angry fantasies. (Think of this as the Lost Boys becoming Proud Boys .)
What we can do, however, is start talking more about the specific problem of dangerous male immaturity without falling into endless loops about gun control, public health, or “toxic masculinity.” We can, in schools and colleges, pay closer attention to the boys and young men who seem to be sliding toward darkness, perhaps with more attempts to pull them toward a community or into mentorship with older men. At the least, we should be able to find a way to engage in gentle interventions early rather than face more drastic consequences later. As Enzensberger presciently warned nearly two decades ago: “It is difficult to talk about the loser, and it is stupid not to.”
The immensity of the challenge, as I learned at that meeting in Washington years ago, is overwhelming. But we can start by redefining the basic problem and recognizing Lost Boys as a distinct phenomenon. We are not likely to stop the next mass attacker, school shooter, or terrorist, whether tomorrow or next year. If we recognize, however, that our current arguments are dead ends, we can start anew, and become more creative about finding solutions before we produce yet another generation of silent time bombs.
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Any inane comments about Tom NIchols being a RINO slave to the Left will be excised ... or as Elizabeth I put it, "there will be an offing of heads!
Ouch! An offing of heads. Man, that can hurt. Do you know how difficult and painful that is? It takes days, sometimes weeks to sew your head back on, and, if one is hysterical, it is not uncommon for the less than-skilled to sew it on backward.
I know from personal experience.
hat same year, Omar Mateen, who had expressed particular animus toward homosexuals, became a mass killer when he attacked a gay nightclu
Mateen had no idea he was attacking a gay club. But narrative always wins.
no way for you to address the premise of the article i guess
Of course he did.
Nope.. The narrative always get ahead of the actual facts. The media runs wild with the rumors that fit their bias. Then the truth comes out in the Courtroom and doesn't nearly the exposure. Then you believe things that aren't true.
That's from your link.
Yes, did you not understand the context? It was listing the unsupported RUMOURS that the media and politicians ran with.
Read what I highlighted again.
"No evidence" means no evidence.
In the days following the attack, numerous people stated that they had recognized Mateen from various gay dating Web sites and apps, but the FBI was not able to substantiate those claims through forensic examination of his phone, his computer, or online account records.
for some reason
Disney World was his target.
I guess all the witnesses that saw him various times at that club could have mistakenly identified him.
(CNN) -- The Pulse nightclub may not have been Omar Mateen's first choice as a place to carry out a mass shooting, but other sites he drove to the same night -- including Disney properties -- appear to have had tighter security.
According to court documents filed in US District Court on Monday, the 29-year-old security guard may have been considering other targets, and the final selection of the Pulse appears to have been made based on the lack of security -- not because it was a gay club.
These revelations and others in the defense motion outline for the first time some of the government's evidence surrounding the shooting, which it plans to use in the trial of Mateen's widow, Noor Salman.
Here's a description of Mateen's actions the night of the attack, culminating in his death:
Scouting other sites?
About 10 p.m. on June 11, 2016, Mateen went to Disney Springs, just outside Orlando. The shopping and dining complex would likely have been busy on that warm Saturday evening, with families and groups of friends walking around or waiting in line to get into some of the more popular spots.
Security camera video and police records show the outdoor venue was well secured, with several uniformed police officers walking around, the court documents said.
About two hours later, according to cell tower data investigators used to determine Mateen's path that night, he drove near Walt Disney World's Epcot. It's another popular tourist attraction for families, and was probably busy on the balmy weekend night.
Then, at 12:22 a.m. on June 12, Mateen searched Google for "downtown Orlando nightclubs." A club called EVE Orlando and the Pulse nightclub showed in the results, and he got directions from Google Maps to EVE, which bills itself as a high-end nightclub and upscale lounge. EVE features DJs and live music, and is located in a busy downtown area, close to several other clubs and restaurants.
Mateen got near EVE about 12:55 a.m. The defense says it will present evidence that EVE has substantial security at its entrance and that people are searched before they can enter.
At that time, he did another Google search for clubs in downtown Orlando. This time Mateen got directions to Pulse and arrived there between 1:12 and 1:16 a.m. He drove around the area for a while, and around 1:33 a.m. he did the same Google search and got directions again to EVE Orlando. He started to head in that direction at 1:34 a.m. but then turned around one minute later and went back to Pulse.
That club is in a less dense area of the city. Aside from a few fast-food places and a car window-tinting shop, that block of Orange Avenue is a bit more sparse.
Then his aim really sucked.
Sure. People never lie to the media. It's much more likely the FBI and DOJ engaged in a massive conspiracy to suppress evidence in order to lie about a terrorist's motive.
If you read that NBC story and think he targeted Pulse because it was a gay club, there's really nothing I can say. To you, the initial rumors have become like the gospel to a devout evangelist, the discussion has left the realm where it can discussed on rational terms.
To you, the initial rumors have become like the gospel to a devout evangelist
this reminds me of the low functioning mental patients who bleat, “Hands up don’t shoot” what complete bullshit that was.
No, unfortunately he hit people that he was aiming at.
Evidence is only important to some if it supports their preferred narrative and their mind isn't open to alternatives.
Yah, that's ^^^ not a conspiracy theory, not at all, lol.
So his target wasn't Disney World like you said ?
It was until about two hours before the shooting, but it isn't what I said, but rather the evidence presented at his wife's trial.
How did this obvious sarcasm escape you? And what is funny about mass murder?
I don't think Sean was being sarcastic.
My "lol" was in reference to Sean's conspiracy theory. Nothing else.
I think we've beaten this thread to a pulp.
Have a great night
You are arguing with people who bought and sold Paul Pelosi/David Depape bullshit.
Yup, there's no arguing with a closed mind (to the truth).
All those witnesses did not mistakenly identify him, you know that Pat.
Gay Club, Straight Club, or Twisted Sisters Club, no one has a RIGHT to attack or purchase LETHAL WEAPONS to take their built-up HATE on other people.
Of course, if the USA had sensible Gun Laws like Japan and Britain there would be less opportunity for a pissed-off, angry, nutcase to blast strangers with an AR-15, or other lethal weapon designed for WAR purposes.
Under the Second Amendment, there is NO Constitutional Right to purchase as many LETHAL weapons as one wants.
The Second Amendment is a 27-word sentence, subtitled, "The Right to Bear Arms". It reads:
"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a FREE STATE, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The phrase "A Well-regulated Militia" is not a bunch of ignorant-ass Hillbillies in pickup trucks loaded with an arsenal of military-style weapons drag-racing on the streets of a run-down, former Confederate town."
It means under the supervision of the State. For example, that would be the F*&king National Guard in our time.
It is not wholesale permission for crazies with burrs up their tulkus to buy as many G-D guns as they want, for them to intimidate those who do not possess weapons, and slaughter innocent people they hate.
STUPID PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO PURCHASE LETHAL WEAPONS or be let out of the house.
(In my humble by the year's opinion.)
Argue your case to SCOTUS.
I think that a common profile includes childhood trauma like home violence, parental suicide, sexual assault, extreme bullying, etc. Social dysfunction starts creating more hopelessness, isolation, depression rejection from peers.
They want to commit suicide but also blame others for their situation. Classmates, some religious group, woman, different race, workmates, are to blame. There is also a need for fame and recognition.
Sounds about like the incels.
maga martyrs...
Ah, the M&Ms...
people having kids they can't or will not properly raise their kids are a big part of the problem
The NP disorders are often caused by a primary care taker who did not love or nurture the young child. It's really heartbreaking, they are sad, lonely people starved for attention and the narcissism is simply a social mask to hide how they really feel about themselves.
These boys grow into men and are what most of us identify as the abusers in society. I hate to break the news to the forum but politics has little to do with it as does religion. It has more to do with a child feeling unloved, overwhelmed with shame and a care taker that was disconnected and unempathetic to the needs of the child.
They are treatable but like all personality disorders its a difficult road.
I have read the opposite.
What research has shown successful treatment of narcissistic personality disorder? Who has published this research?
What I have read is that narcissists do not seek treatment because they do not feel they have a problem, and no one will ever convince them otherwise.
I rebelled against my far right wing republican parents and became a hippie.
Sometimes the parents are wrong and the kids are right.
Dad was a racist and I have had many friends of 'color'.
One of the great loves of my life was a Jewish princess. Dad hated it.
Thankfully, I am a much better person than my racist father was.
People forget that hardcore institutional systemic racism including mandated segregation and legal discrimination were just the way things were for many Americans prior to 1964. Non-whites were not even allowed in the restaurants, stores, banks, hospitals or schools in the "White Part Of" my little town. The rest of town, on the other side of the tracks, was called, um, I better not say. It started with an N, had a hard R and ended in "Town". Lots of people knew it was wrong, but, "You cannot do business in this town is you do not play by their rules". Their rules sucked ass...
Yet, some somehow remember those days fondly and openly desire a return to that!
My tiny town of 700 didn't even have tracks to be on the other side of.
Learned about systemic racism with mother's milk.
Took many years to shake it off.
Never even saw a black person in person until I was a teen.
The epitome of leading a sheltered childhood.
By the time I was five or six I was asking adults a lot of painful questions nobody wanted to answer. My aunt told me that her restaurant was segregated because white people were so sensitive to the body odors of any non-whites and the garlic or spicy smells of immigrant that they would become sick and lose their appetites smelling them. That because of this mixing of races in restaurants was impossible. Only white persons were allowed to enter the front entrance and dine in the main dining room. All others had to enter the service entrance in the alley and dine in "The Colored Room". Which was, BTW, my favorite hangout. There was a jukebox and a piano that usually had a pretty good player at it. There were jazz performances back there on weekends after closing time...
My aunt apologized on her death bed for telling me that. She said she didn't believe it but that was a plausible excuse she had heard before. It had bothered her for fifty years and was something I had never forgotten either. Most adults would just shrug and say, "That's just the way things are", when I would ask how come blacks had to have a white man cash their checks or how come Mexican immigrant farm worker's children had to attend a makeshift school in a farm shed. "Why are you always asking me how come?"
Did they ever tell you that is the way Democrats wanted it in OK?
Most of those old Jim Crow racist Democrats have died off by now, so, no, people aren't pining away for the Democratic Party glory days!
There's at least one still around..
Probably so, but some of their offspring are with us....some of them right here on NT.
I'm not sure I agree here. I think toxic masculinity explains or can explain a lot of these acts. I think it just has different manifestations - lone wolf killers, incels banding together to gripe about women who won't have sex with them and cheer those who act violently about it, men who abuse their wives and children.
Toxic masculinity causes some men to feel entitled - to sex, to jobs, to respect. It also causes some men to feel like they're displaying weakness when they ask for help with mental health, or when they're the victims of abuse, or when they display empathy for others.
And toxic men (and women) can be very difficult to spot. Manipulative people know how to be charming when it suits them. They know how to gain trust and exploit it. The toxicity isn't always out there for the world to see. It's often only shown to their victims, whom they have often gaslit and isolated so they're unlikely to be able to challenge the toxicity.
I have to disagree, to a point. I don't agree completely with the quote you included in your post, it has a grain of truth, but ends up in the wrong place, in my opinion.
My understanding of what people consider toxic masculinity revolves around the man's image of his role in a relationship. If my understanding is correct, and at the risk of oversimplifying, the relationship is toxic because the man's primary concern in the relationship is his self-image rather than the actual relationship. The toxic male sees his partner's role as confirming the image he has of himself. If she fails to confirm that image, she pays for it.
Concerning the lone wolf killers, as you call them, I think the motive is different. In the case of the toxic male, they operate within their perceived set of societal rules or standards of what they think is a male. In the case of the lone wolf mass killers, they become disassociated with all societal rules. Relationally, the relevant factor is that they can't relate, either on an individual level or societal. In most of the mass shootings I've read about, masculinity doesn't appear to be a factor. That is, in most cases, it simply seems to be an attack against society or a portion of it.
Whether or not I agree or disagree with this depends on what you mean, specifically. Toxic men or women is such a subjective term that it's really not possible to address. This is because there's no actual standards for anything anymore. Everything is so subjective that it ultimately becomes meaningless to even discuss unless a basis from which to begin is first constructed.
I do agree that toxic people can be difficult to spot, but I think that has as much to do with those who should be doing the spotting as the ones being toxic. I can't count the number of articles I've read lately that tell you how to spot a toxic partner or how to spot a partner who's gaslighting you or some other method of one's partner taking advantage of you or if they're cheating on you or whatever. But there's almost none that talk about one's responsibility TO their partner. It seems to be that if THEY aren't giving you what you want or treating you the way you want, that's all that matters and you should move on. So, the point I'm trying to get to is, how many relationships are considered toxic simply because one partner isn't doing their part? Is it really toxic if the man says she's not giving him what he needs from her if she isn't giving it and vice versa?
First, we're talking about toxic masculinity, not masculinity in general.
And also:
That is the number one tell. If you meet someone who thinks they should be running shit, but is 6 months into the industry, giant fuck no. The narcissism in some people these days, me included, in incredible.
Consider myself to be a good person (mostly).
Have known women who are much better folk than me.
most of my favorite bosses or peers when I was working were women...
My favorite boss of all time was a woman.
She wanted to give me her job when she retired.
I turned it down because I didn't like her male boss.
I retired with her instead.
We had one hell of a retirement party.
just you and her?
yeah, I wouldn't tell me either...
I'm not sure about RINO or whatever other nonsense, but this author obviously hasn't spent any time with boys or young men. His judgementalism in the face of his ignorance just marks him as an asshole. Maybe if he spent some time coaching a basketball or football team he might develop a clue.
Nobody responds well to a no-win situation.
When we send young men into a competitive environment without any sort of idea about how to generate any success whatsoever, it goes badly. Yes, they blame other people. And they are correct in doing so.
If the people who raised you had 18 years to prepare you to take an exam that would determine the path of the rest of your life, but failed to tell you it was coming and refused to equip you for it in any way, shape, or form ......you'd be pretty pissed. You would blame them, and you would not be wrong.
Then, when the people who give the exam utterly and knowingly misrepresent the criteria for passing, you would become angrier. You would blame them also, and again... you would not be wrong. You then see these same people refer to your competitors as "toxic"....while simultaneously rewarding them for the very behaviors they condemn. It's enough to make people very angry.
Au contraire, Nichols has spent many years teaching and has received a number of awards .
What necessary skills, specifically, do you think we're not giving young men?
Perhaps we or the young men in question are making the mistake of inventing competition where there doesn't need to be any. Many situations are better addressed by cooperation rather than competition.
That's probably too long a list for this forum.
But for this discussion, we can narrow it down to the skills young men need to attract young women.
That's such a fantastic example of the mindset that undermines these boys I can't tell if you're being ironic or serious.
it results from an ideological concept of reality rather than a factual one. It reveals a complete lack of understanding of human nature and, instead, a groundless fantasy. In other words, she's being serious.
I'm honestly not sure what those skills would be, other than perhaps grooming and dressing well. Conversational skills, maybe. Women will usually be attracted to a decent-looking man who pays a bit of attention to his appearance and who has a pleasant personality.
I really can't imagine why you'd say this. There are times for competition, and times for cooperation. That seems like a very reasonable position to me. Sports or looking for a job - competitive. Running a household, raising kids, getting the actual job you have done with a team at work, bettering one's community - cooperative. I really can't see how that's undermining young men at all. Can you be more specific?
Ah, there's the ad hom.
Since that isn't a quote from me, why do you address this to me as if it were? Not that I disagree with it, but wouldn't it make more sense to address something I said rather than what someone else said?
Sorry, the wrong quote was on my clipboard. Here's where you engaged in ad hom, although I really shouldn't have to explain to you when you're being insulting, since insulting was evidently your intention.
I don't know what Jack will respond with but I know what I would. For males, competition is the basis of life. We are born to fight, battle and compete. It is our nature. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about the most toxic masculine man ever or the most subservient, milk toast man. Everything a man does is in order to fight for some goal.
And almost all of that competition, all that effort, is for the purpose of being accepted by a female in some way. To be validated by a female.
Of course, it's more complicated than that. There's tons of factors that play into this. But if reduced to its most elementary level, that's what it's about. Everything else, like the cooperation you mention, proceeds from that.
Insult was not my intention. Of course, you're going to believe what you will. I said what I did because I believe it is true, not because I had insulting you as a goal. If insulting people was my goal, I'd follow tessylo around constantly. Instead, I almost never reply to her. Shouldn't that tell you something?
Drakk, in what world do you think "she lives in a fantasy world and doesn't know anything about human nature" isn't an insult? Not buying the bullshit.
Excuses.
Men can cooperate. We see this in team sports, group projects, community development, military service, etc.
The idea that men can't behave in any manner other than competitive is the very foundation of toxic masculinity, and sells men short. It implies that they can't be rational about when a competitive mindset is necessary, and when it's not.
The people you are arguing with here are self professed Christians. I went to catholic school for 12 years (which means 12 years of religion classes) and I dont recall anything in any of those lessons about Jesus being competitive. But then again maybe he wasnt really a man.
When someone is competitive all the time they cant relax. , thus all the tension, aggression and violence.
Because it was literal, not figurative. I don't think you understand the reality of what we are speaking of. Further, it wasn't said to get under your skin. That you find it an insult is unfortunate but, likely, inevitable, I suppose, given what I think your view of reality is.
Drakk, the defense that "it wasn't an insult because it's true" doesn't fly, and is also based on your very biased interpretations. Also, insulting me, trying unsuccessfully to gaslight me about insulting me, and doubling down on insulting me are extremely un-Christlike actions.
In this context, however, it has been an excellent illustration of toxic masculinity. So thanks for that contribution to the discussion.
Probably Jesus most well known teaching.
Dont see anything in there that relates to hyper competitiveness.
I guess, maybe, some men don't have the self control of a leg humping dog. I would bet, though, humanity has progressed out of the stone age as far as we have in spite of toxic competitiveness, not because of it.
Of course we can. Look at the members of special forces teams, pretty much the apex Alpha male predators of the human species. Basically, violence in a bottle, yet it isn't chaotic. Isn't random or purposeless. Hell, most of the time it isn't even expressed as violence. it is restrained for the purpose of what you should consider cooperation. These are highly skilled and very dangerous, competitive men who always have a completive mindset but understand not that it isn't always necessary but, rather, how to channel it.
At the risk of being "insulting" again, you don't know the nature of men. Do you know why movies like Die Hard or John Wick are so popular, both among men and women? How many movies do you know of that sing the praises of actuaries or make women weak in the knees at the thought of such? Women are turned on by absolute bad asses.
Males being aggressive or competitive is not toxic. It is the method in which they express such that can be toxic. The happiest woman is one that knows she's married to an absolute monster that channels their monstrosity for the good herself and her children first, and the good of her society. A man who is capable of extreme violence but has rock solid principles she can depend on. In other words, a monster that channels their monstrosity for cooperation.
Contrast that with the same sorts of monsters that don't subject themselves to the same sort of principles. Wife beaters, drug lords and related criminals. It isn't that males are competitive that makes them toxic. It's what they do with it that does.
Sometimes. Obviously, there are narcissistic men whose only concern is their image of themselves. But make no mistake, even a man who's representing a humanitarian non-profit addressing some board of a company is doing the same thing as a SEAL team does, only on a different level. While the SEAL team member trains in the art of physical violence, the charity worker trains in the art of convincing others to contribute. Both are a competition.
The sheer stupidity of this statement is astounding! Do you not have access to news? If you do, what makes you think humans have progressed even the slightest bit over those of recorded history? Every single evil that beset them then besets us now. So what the hell are you talking about? If that is unclear to you, humans today are exactly the same as humans of the past.
Of course you don't. It completely escapes you that even though Jesus said these things, he willingly died for them. Do you not get that? He stood against the accepted ''wisdom" of his day and died for it. How much more competitive can you get?
"Mansplaining'.
A header under which anything a male says can be dismissed. Brilliant.
Risk? Your posts ooze with it. Furthermore you insult yourself if you think we buy your kitchen table pop phycology babble.
You do not speak for all men, no matter how long your post is.
That would be a brilliant argument had he actually claimed he did!
LOL. You now sound like you are rationalizing your own position.
Says the one that never even has an argument...
Some people cant be expected to work too hard.
I don't know what cave system you live in, but let us all know so we can avoid it. I like indoor plumbing, access to advanced medicine and wifi.
As science continues to uncover, humans have always had an unlimited potential for compassion, learning and socializing. We are finding art far further than we previously knew where human gathered to trade and pass along knowledge of farming and astronomy. It's where we developed language, art and religion and mathematics. Sure we also have an almost unlimited potential for violence, but violence by it's very nature is anti-social.
Doesn't your religion command you to cast aside any baser impulses to love and accept your fellow man? hmmmm... I'm sure there's a truth there beyond the scope of this article thread.
Just pointing out how you are inventing things and then trying to argue them as if someone other than you had actually made the statement.
I see it pretty often here, it is easy to identify as a dodge or deflection.
You pointed out nothing other than my opinion.
So deal with it then, instead of asking questions or making statements that assign words to others.
If he felt my opinion was wrong he could say so.
You on the other hand STILL have not offered anything.
I offered up the same as you, an opinion!
Predictable. You think that because tech has advanced that humans have?
Um, apparently, you don't seem to understand that everything you've said here simply defends what I said. We are the same today as we ever were.
Sorry, but you wouldn't understand any answer I gave to this. Especially since you aren't actually asking a question but, rather, a statement posed as a question that I am not adhering to your idea of what you think my religion is.
Texan is absolutely correct. You may have as well said something equally inane as "not all men are as tall (or short) as you." You take Texan to task for offering nothing when you've offered nothing yourself. Good job.
Okay. Let's assume, John, that you've caught me in a teachable moment. Tell me the difference between rationalizing and explaining what's behind what I think. If that's unclear to you, what differentiates what anyone says from rationalization as opposed to what isn't rationalization in your book?
You, being consistently proven wrong every time is becoming predictable, yes.
All tech advances have been the success of advanced socialization, teams of people talking, working, testing, educating. I guess it's possible one guy, on his own might have build a rocket, landed on the moon and came back. It didn't happen for the flat earther Mike Hughs, he died when he crashed... NOPE I'm gonna say not probable. ALL communities and societies do better and accomplish more when we set ego aside and work together.
I understand, what you miss is that -
doesn't mean what you think it means.
I wouldn't believe any of your bullshit, we've already established this much.
I assure you that I have not "insulted' myself for such reasons. I have not the slightest illusion that you guys will wake the hell up and face reality.
That seems to be a rather common practice here, usually by people who don't believe in God.
Apparently, that portion of the conversation isn't showing up on my screen.
So, sticking with the "tech proves humans are different than they were" meme? Great! Then you should be able to explain how crimes from six thousand years ago no longer exist today because humans have evolved beyond such things. I fully admit I'm ignorant as to what these things could be but, hey, this is your chance to educate me. Go for it.
The rest of your post is meaningless.
Yeah, that's not insulting at all.
Yet you dismiss everyone with your insults and your arrogance and pompousness.
So many words to say so little.
I reject your conclusion that Jesus dying for mankind was competitive. Calling it "competitive" is your rationalization.
When will you wake the hell up and face reality?
You just said that you were ignorant, I heartily agree. First thing you said that's true or makes sense.
Guess what, I will be more direct. You do not speak for me as a man.
And exactly what reality is that?
Um, okay?
Again, okay? What would you call challenging the norms of society to the point of death? What would you call standing your ground in spite of the knowledge that doing so would kill you?
Guess what? Since you seem to think it necessary for me to state, I never said anything remotely like "Ender thinks (whatever). Texan already made this clear, yet you ignored it. I suppose you'll ignore my direct response as well.
Already stated. Restating it isn't going to accomplish anything.
People have no problem citing Jesus with words He never said.
Of course, people do the same with everyone... but when they misquote John Doe, they're not taking the name of the Lord in vain.
I know that you believe that Jesus is God incarnate. Who does God compete with?
Sorry. I'm not stupid enough to not recognize what you're trying to do here. Get back to me when you have a serious question.
Generally a true statement IMO. But clearly a drive that is tempered by nuance (situations, body chemistry, experiences, genetics, ...).
You are arguing with Sandy as if her notion of cooperation by males is incompatible with natural male competitiveness. What she wrote is perfectly sensible (and I find it quite correct):
I see later in this thread you come back and effectively agree that men are quite capable of cooperating under the right conditions. A fine example would be a platoon on a mission. Sports like football demonstrate that teams which dial up competitiveness AND cooperation tend to win.
To wit: males are indeed inherently competitive (my opinion). But we (mostly) are able to moderate/manage our natural tendencies in order to achieve higher goals. And it thus makes sense that society provide circumstances where both competitive and cooperative skills are learned.
Your comment came off (as I read it) to imply that Sandy (as a woman) cannot be correct about even observable properties of males because she is not male.
So, basically, you agree with me, but are still arguing. That seems to me to represent a need to compete when competition isn't necessary.
So, from speaking for all men, you now move on to speaking for all women. And not doing so very well, either. Your view of women's views is extremely simplistic. Some women are turned on by "badasses". Speaking for myself, I have never seen Die Hard or any of the John Wick films, and am perfectly not seeing them.
But if we're going to use actors and movies as examples, let's take a look at Mel Gibson. Surely, we can all agree that he was quite the sex symbol back in the 80s and 90s, yes? Had women swooning?
Well, fast forward a few decades, and I was shopping in a nearby college town. A few students from the local university were in the bathroom at the same time as me, and were discussing having watched the Mel Gibson version of Hamlet for class that day. One said "Did you know he used to be a sex symbol? He's so crazy, I can't imagine women finding him attractive." Mel Gibson's badass days weren't exactly ancient history by this time, but he had outed himself as an anti-Semitic mean drunk.
So, yeah, it takes more than being a badass to be attractive to women. Most women, anyway.
Straw man. I never said it was. Being aggressive or competitive when such traits are not useful and are possibly harmful is toxic.
The happiest woman in the world told you this herself? Or is this entirely you presenting speculation as fact?
Competing with whom, Drakk?
More condescension, which is insulting and not very Christlike.
Agreed.
But then he goes on to tell me (a woman) what makes me go weak in the knees, and what would make me happiest.
... and aligns with those that want to tell you what you should do with your own body.
Yup. While ignoring that his God commanded the abortion of fetuses conceived by adultery - the test of bitter water.
But that was ok. That was about a man not wanting his walking incubator to have offspring that weren't his.
An old friend of mine's wife couldn't stand the big buff steroid looking guys. Said they looked gross.
Yeah. There's muscular, and then there's muscle-bound. Like Dwayne Johnson - not a look I care for.
My current crush is Tom Ellis in the TV series Lucifer. Oh. Em. Gee. Handsome as, well, the devil. Funny as hell. Really good actor. British accent. Excellent dresser (or at least excellent stylists on the show). Great chemistry with the female lead. Good singer and pianist (not sure if that's really the actor playing and singing, TBH). Fit, toned, but not beefed up. Has the occasional action scene, and handles himself well in a fight (or the character does, at least), but I couldn't care less about those. I want to watch him flirting, because he raises flirting to an art form.
One of my employees has discovered the same show, and we compare notes. We are in agreement that he is damn near irresistible.
Possibly. Hard to tell from such limited context so far. My argument is that men being capable of violence is not toxic. Men absolutely should be capable of extreme violence and should always be prepared to express it when necessary. Admittedly, I am filtering what you say through what is currently being pushed concerning what men should be, which I view as coming mostly from feminism.
Why do you do this? In pretending I am stupid do you think it allows you to be? I don't have a shred of doubt that you know I am speaking in terms of generalities. So, why do you think presenting yourself as a specific example, rather than the obviously true generality makes your argument valid?
(sigh) I'm not going to bother with this.
Already answered.
Pretty close. Although I'm not sure it's limited to males. It's probably more visible with males.
Not really. It's basic biology. Living organisms are driven to reproduce. For males, that generally requires out-competing the other males in whatever form of trial the female chooses. Lions fight it out with teeth and claws. Birds of Paradise dance. Giraffes hit each other with their necks. Bulls lock horns. Human men use money, prestige, and wit. Cooperation among men occurs when it helps them be more competitive.
If you enter this competition of adult life without even the most basic clue that it is, in fact, a competition, you have no chance. If you don't know how to make and manage money, you have no chance. If other men have no respect for you, you have no chance. If you actually believe what women say about what they want in a mate, you have no chance.
When you put people into positions where they cannot possibly win or thrive, normal patterns of behavior soon cease to apply. Normal moral values are soon abandoned. They can comply with the wishes of the social system and be miserable alone or they can burn the thing down and make everybody else miserable, too.
What evidence can you give to support this statement? More specifically, support your statement in light of Christ's statement that people would ever be hearing but not understanding.
Agreed, but what I meant was that such is complicated by sapience. That is, what you say is a perfect example of animals but isn't as simple with humans.
Just about every comment you make supports it
And then there are some males that can slip in and mate while the so called alphas are distracted playing with each other...
Which, generally speaking, is where mass shooters come from.
Nobody said it was. Violence is sometimes necessary.
More ad hom.
You really should avoid doing that. I know women who enjoy Die Hard, but I literally don't know any woman who sees Bruce Willis as a sex symbol because of that movie. Some really liked him in Moonlighting, but that was more about him being funny and his chemistry with Cybill Shepherd. "Badass" didn't really mean that much to them.
Yeah, you really probably should let it go there, after deciding that YOU know best what makes women happiest.
Saying everything is a competition is simply not true.
Men have worked together to hunt not just for themselves but for whole villages.
We are not cave men that can just grab a woman and walk off. Claim whatever they want.
No. Just sidestepped.
You can start with the Beatitudes. "Blessed be the peacemakers", for example. Insulting isn't peacemaking, and condescension is insulting. Like your statement about hearing but not understanding is insulting.
Be a peacemaker, Drakk. Try, if you can manage it, to have a conversation without resorting to personal insults. That's what you did here in your very first comment on this thread. Then you lied about it, then you doubled down on it. That's not peacemaking. It's belligerent, childish, and dishonest.
That's a start, certainly. But women are more attracted to wealth, confidence, height, and muscles. Mostly wealth.
Because in 30 years of coaching I've literally seen it thousands of times.
More often than not, men cooperate so they can compete better. Whether we're playing team sports as kids or teaming up to form businesses as adults, we cooperate with some people to out-compete others.
Sure. Just listen to the phrases you use. "Running a household". "Raising kids". At no point are women attracted to a man because he can fold a fitted sheet and buy the correct brand of tuna.
That is exactly the kind of rubbish mothers tell their sons. But that's not what attracted that woman to his father, and it's not going to help him. We undermine young men by telling them to do the things women like to say they value instead of the things they actually do. It's a lifetime sentence in the friendzone, if they're lucky enough to make it that far.
Sure. But look at your examples. We cooperate in team sports for the purpose of being competitive. The same is true of military service. War is the ultimate competition. We work with teams in a corporate setting to win more business.
It implies no such thing. Just because you don't happen to like the facts of life does not make them toxic.
I beg to differ.
Sandy has made that argument.
Are you missing the point entirely or just posting nonsense for it's own sake?
Given the current conditions for young men, it's frankly surprising we don't have more of them than we do.
You all are just exemplifying what this article is describing....
Mating is a competition in pretty much every life form. I'm not sure how that's in question.
Sorry but I never had to fight for a mate...
I'm sure you think so.
But you just said women found sheet folding sexy, so your credibility isn't at its highest right now.
If you think women don't like someone that can take care of their own shit, sorry but you would be wrong.
Besides, I don't assign jobs depending on sex.
I just never got that impression from my wife after all these decades of marriage. I think she likes that I take care of business in many dimensions but she never seems (to me) to get off on "channeled monster". And I am absolutely certain that my cooperation with our household (e.g. taking care of the myriad things that constantly seem to malfunction or get damaged) and helping her with her hobbies (e.g. making cookie cutters for her on my 3d printer) is very much appreciated (and I doubt this falls under the monster category).
Also I think women are generally competitive too but this manifests in a subtler manner. Maybe as a whole not as much as men, but still quite prominent.
So what is it that makes all women go weak in the knees and happy?
( Asking for a friend. )
My wife luvs the Rock.
No offence..(uh huh)...butt....
I almost think that just sounds like you all have gotten comfortable with each other. Not in a bad way, in more of a way of relying on each other, as a couple.
I could almost say that is most people.
Yeah, that's just not true. Women are generally attracted to men they know will make good partners. So, money? Yeah, sure. But also, can he cook? Calm a fussy baby? Be trusted to go to the grocery store without her literally talking him through every aisle and holding his hand via cell phone for every tomato he squeezes? Yes, that's all attractive, too.
And men also cooperate to achieve. Watch an Amish barn-raising. Nobody's winning any competition there, but there sure is a hell of a lot of cooperation going on.
Of course it does. Men who don't display toxic masculinity are able to allow their brains to direct their actions instead of their gonads.
Not true.
You think Sandy has argued that male cooperation is incompatible with male competitiveness?
That a male must suppress (use whichever verb you prefer) competitiveness to cooperate?
Seems to me she has argued that male competitiveness is not the only means by which males express ourselves. That society should encourage young men to pursue more than simply competing. For example, creative pursuits (building machines, homes, etc., art, writing, ... ) or constructive pursuits such as leadership, negotiation, developing strategies, solving problems, ...
A woman just told you the same thing. Surely, you don't think that you know what I like better than I do? That would be irrational.
Sure, but the qualities I mentioned were quite prominently there when we were dating. That is, she was very clear that I was not Andrew Dice Clay and that my priorities were raising a healthy family, being financially secure, and having the freedom to be creative.
Exactly. TBH, the "channeled monster" seems like a misplaced violent outburst waiting to happen. I can see constantly having to talk such a man down from the ledge. I suppose some people believe that kind of anger reflects a passion to defend one's wife/girlfriend and kids, which I suppose some would see as romantic. But for myself, I prefer a guy who's not always a dam on the verge of bursting.
See my comment re: Tom Ellis. I have a sample of two women who would be quite competitive for his attention, if we thought we had a chance in Hell.
I would say that some men are more driven by primal factors (e.g. the amygdala / hormones) vs the frontal lobe. (I think this is true for women too.)
( I was just kidding. )
I thought he looked better back in the 90s, when he wasn't quite so ginormous. I do think he's entertaining. I mean, he's never going to win an Oscar or anything, but I can laugh at his movies.
Yes, thank you. At no point did I say that men must be either purely cooperative or purely competitive. I've explicitly said there are appropriate situations for competitiveness. Some folks are choosing to read words I never wrote and attributing them to me.
I am very familiar with this dynamic in forums. Not only must one make a clear point and be careful with word choice, but one must continually correct "misinterpretations".
No offence..Really I don't mean any.
I sometimes forget that of all the posters here I am one of the youngest.
I sometimes think we just have a different mindset. There are no specific roles for any gender.
I took no offense, Ender.
Also, I was not speaking of specific gender roles.
I think that is the difference with the age difference. The only thing I would consider a gender specific role would be childbirth.
I don't see why other things would have to be defined. People and society changes away from what people like us have grown up in.
Women can hunt. Men can farm and forage. I just really don't see any roles that would have to be gender specific.
Ender, why are you talking about gender specific roles?
I was alluding to the way different generations view things.
Okay. Then how would you express to someone that their worldview is a fantasy in such a way that it could not be accused of being a personal insult? Then, after that, show how your own words can't be taken as personal insults.
Let's use an all-too-familiar example.
My perspective is that the Bible is not divine. Its errors and contradictions are what one would expect from a work produced over more than a thousand years by ancient men who were well-versed in traditions of their history and funded by rulers with an agenda. I see no good reason to hold the Bible as divine.
That is my view. I could have stated that your view of reality is a fantasy based on your belief in biblical divinity. My statement, however, simply noted my position and offered reasons why I hold it.
Yes, I know. But you're speaking of talking to me directly. You don't include things you say to other people. In both cases you do, in fact, say things that can easily be taken as personal insults. You, of course, will claim that they are not, which is the point behind what I've said. While I might be offended personally on some level, I dismiss it as irrelevant to the point being made, whether it's valid or not.
Either way, no matter what manner in which you speak, I understand the nature of this place. I understand that this place isn't a support group. It is about expressing one's thoughts and opinions. Well, ideally, anyway. Because of that, I don't take what you or anyone else says personally, even when they are intended to be personal. In other words, I participate in this place because I'm interested in the point, not to validate myself. That is, this isn't about me. If people can't understand that about this place they probably shouldn't be here.
I pretty much watch any movie he appears in, even if the movie is voted the worst ever made. I can't say for sure why but I think it is because in both movies and real life, he pretty much exemplifies what most men wants to be.
Think again.
Here we are at the beginning of this...
I see. So your argument is that men don't want to be seen as strong, self assured individuals able to handle themselves in any situation while simultaneously be appealing to women? Can't wait for that argument.
Oh, are you feeling persecuted because I called you out for insulting me?
That's a shame. But it's a "you" problem. Try not tripling down on the insults.
After taking a look at the Beatitudes, you can meander on over to "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Not everybody sees him that way, Drakk. I see him as a somewhat endearingly goofy gym rat on steroids.
Professional Wrestler come Action Star...
Exactly. I like men with a bit of emotional and intellectual depth. Now, maybe The Rock has that, but one wouldn't know it from his acting.
A caricature of comic book masculinity...
At least he pulls it off with a wink/smile.
Apparently, you didn't read my response to TiG. Whether or not you insult me is irrelevant to me. Whether or not I'm being persecuted is irrelevant to me. What you think of me is irrelevant to me. If it pleases you to believe otherwise, go for it, but I find it boring. I'm not here to promote me. I'm here to talk about my views and the views of others. If you find those views offensive that's unfortunate, but not a reason for me not to express my views. As such, I'm done with explaining this to you.
Gosh! Really??
Well then. That must be how everyone sees him. Except that it doesn't explain why he's so popular. I mean, it certainly couldn't be that he's handsome and extremely masculine, yet portrayed as non-toxic and is naturally charming in most of his roles. Nope. The somewhat endearingly goofy gym rat explains it better. Good argument.
Your behavior here belies your words and your professed beliefs.
The types of roles he takes are pretty much ideal for an endearingly goofy gym rat and for his level of acting ability. So, those types of films are popular. Big deal. That doesn't make him the epitome of what every, or even most, men want to be, nor of what every, or even most, women want in a man. Most know the type of workouts, meals, and drugs required to maintain his physique are not conducive to a pleasant life, and possibly not even a healthy one.
Regarding him being attractive because he's not a toxic person - well, that's a pretty low bar.
You know, it strikes me that this entire conversation illustrates the problem young men may be having in finding young women to date. You have an actual woman telling you what she likes and dislikes, and your response is basically "Nuh uh. The box office is the best judge of what women like." You seem to think that you can speak for women, but an actual woman can't. Your attitude here has been "When I want your opinion about what women like in men, I'll give it to you."
Maybe the skill young men should be taught is listening, and not assuming that they're authorities on the thoughts and emotions of others.
Translation: Your belief as to what my beliefs are belies what you think my beliefs are.
If you want to have a meaningful conversation about this, provide reasoning behind your opinion. Otherwise, you are simply lowing like a cow or quacking like a duck.
I've given you quotes from the scriptures you claim to follow, Drakk, as has John. If you can't understand how your insulting behavior is inconsistent with those instructions, that's on you.
You must ascribe to the "veneer theory" in that all people don't run amok only because of the threat of punishment? Or that people are naturally bad. I do not. I never claimed crimes don't exists (they are called crimes for a reason). I claim these things are socially destructive and over the course of human history have become less acceptable and happen less frequently. ALL scientific and statistical data supports that.
Good, bad or indifferent actions and attitudes are taught. Raise a child in household to hate and they will. Raise a child in a household to think women are property and he will do that. Raise a child in a household to love and respect herself and she will.
Socially we have been conditioned to accept the strong silent type, the antihero and the cop that shoots a bad guy on TV every week is a hero. At one time the pinnacle (the apex) of society was a thin pasty inbred that wore a wig and face powder. What we know is that sometimes that rich, handsome college quarterback turns out to be a serial date raper. The idea of owning and breeding other human people was once a capital industry and looked up to by the community. Today the idea is abhorrent. We no longer pit humans and tigers in death duels either. We, as a society are beginning to recognize that the talented, handsome, college quarterback can no longer be shielded from abhorrent antisocial behavior.
The issue in the article at it's bedrock is that we are now working at this crossroads where many cling to "traditional" gender rolls and what phycologists are pointing out where these attitudes can and have been destructive. Competition can be good, but using that as an excuse for toxic behavior is worse and won't be tolerated.
Absolutely. That's what viewers want to see, right? Endearingly goofy gym rats.
Yep. The viewing public has made it clear that what it wants is endearingly goofy gym rats.
Of course. People didn't go to see him in his wrestling career because he was manly, but because they saw in him the spirt of Laurel and Hardy. This continues with his acting career.
A good point, and one I admittedly missed. Most people rate movies on exactly such criteria. Thanks for pointing it out.
Um, as much as I am struggling to agree with everything you say, this one is a doozy. Practically anything a man does other than being dead is described as toxic.
Okay. At this point I'm laying aside the sarcasm that should be obvious to anyone with a working brain to the comments you've made in this post so far.
Which would be relevant if what I've been saying was about you, specifically. Do you think they were? Do you think I've been saying these things because of what I believe your point of view is?
Not the way I would put it. The box office responds to what women like because it produces the most profit. Do you think because you're a woman means that every woman sees Duane Johnson the same way you do?
Then you misunderstand my argument. I am not arguing against what you personally think. I am speaking of general trends.
Which can be said of any opinion or view that doesn't align with yours from a male. Not saying anything much here.
Um, yeah.
If I shake a road killed cat in your face and then claim your lack of understanding of why I did so is on you, how valid an argument would that be?
If the meaning of that escapes you, let me dumb it down for you. You say you've given me quotes from scriptures I claim not to follow. Do you not understand that doing so is useless unless we both agree on what that particular scripture means? All you end up doing is trying to make an argument based on what you think, not on what is empirically true.
So, if you really want to have this conversation, begin with what you think those verse mean rather than assume your interpretation is the same as mine. Otherwise, this simply becomes a Laurel and Hardy skit about who's on first base.
Splitting hairs. You asked:
I offered an example of how to do this.
Aside from the fact that your reference is incorrect (in that it references something Sandy said, not me) stating that I am splitting hairs doesn't make it a fact. It's simply a device for not dealing with what I said.
Putting that aside, you did not provide such an example.
How does one define 'empirically true' regarding exegesis of the Bible? If persons A and B have different interpretations of a passage, who determines which (if any) interpretation is 'empirically true'? I am not talking about ridiculous extremes, but rather something very specific such as:
This is a rhetorical question to make a point. Clearly two persons A and B can have opposing interpretations where one claims that this is God moderating the practice of slavery while not approving of the reality that human beings are being held as property; while the other interprets this as more evidence that 'God' (aka the authors of the Bible) condones the practice of owning human beings as property (even allows beating said property ... as long as it does not die in result within a couple of days).
Point: knowing what is empirically true per the Bible is largely unachievable because everyone has the right to interpret it as they see fit and there is no active authority to determine which interpretation is correct.
Petty; a typo; I typed 10 instead of 110. Reference = Drakk @7.2.110
You asked a question.
I offered an example of how to do this:
Trying really hard to think of a way to respond in a way you can't take personally, but it's probably a pointless effort. So...
I can only assume that you are completely unaware of what NT is. Assuming that is true, let me explain it to you. NT exists for the expression of a person's point of view concerning a given subject. Those points of view are subject to what they believe to be true. In other words, it is based on their biases. Whether you believe it or not, this applies to you as well. Therefore, that what I said "doesn't fly" is simply your opinion and those who hold the biases you do. It isn't fact.
(extreme eye roll) You continue to think this is about you. Boring. I am, however, interested in your claim that my actions are "un-Christlike". Please provide an argument for your claim.
Except that you do exactly what you claim not to do. Take something to ridiculous extremes. More, you prove my point. There's no point in biblical references unless there is agreement in what it means.
More deflection.
I was not arguing against that point, Drakk. And you know it. You asked this question:
You keep pretending that I did not answer your question by providing an example. ⇡
Except that you have done that very thing, both to me and to others in conversations I was not involved in. Every single time you erroneously state that we believe without evidence, regardless of how much we provide evidence of the contrary, you are being offensive. Dismissive. I ignore it because I assume that you are not intentionally doing so but, rather, simply expressing your opinion. It isn't your behavior I focus on but, rather, your point.
Sandy, apparently, cannot do so. For her, everything is personal. Not my problem, nor am I going to stop saying what I think is true because of it.
You again deflect.
You asked this question:
You keep pretending that I did not answer your question by providing an example. ⇡
It isn't pretense. You didn't answer my question because you provided an example supporting my argument rather than yours. As useless as it is likely to be, allow me to explain. Your supposed example is, in your mind, inoffensive. You believe it to be so because of your perceived motives for saying what you say. This is no different than what I've said to Sandy or anyone else.
If what I've said is unclear to you, then let me put it more plainly. The reason you think your example isn't offensive is because you don't think it is offensive.
Isn't it hilarious how some men choose to speak for all women?
So you have a crush on The Rock?
LOL
Just amazing watching you deny the blatantly obvious.
Anyone can deem anything to be offensive; you are just evading the point.
You continue to ignore the difference between claiming someone is kidding themselves vs. expressing one's position and making no mention of those who would believe otherwise.
In super simple terms:
Offensive: You are living in a fantasy world (regarding belief 'B')
Not-offensive (not intended to be): I do not believe 'B' is true for these reasons.
Yes, indeed Sandy he does.
Typical.
TiG never insults, that would be you drakk with every single post.
Amazing how you can state what the point is and then immediately dismiss it
Yeah, again, that's not insulting at all.
You sound just like the toxic males you support.
In a sense, yes. Most men would love to be what he portrays on screen and off. Strong, confident, charming and the rest. Do you find this surprising?
You make no goddamned sense.
Yet you continue to
It's amazing how YOU work so hard to miss the entire point.
No, you're wrong, just like every post you've made here.
Thanks for admitting you love the rock and wish you were him.
You dismiss everyone else with your insults and arrogance and pompousness.
You've made it personal against Sandy with every post with your insults and arrogance and pompousness and you continue to double and triple down on it.
What you think is true . . .
I beg to differ, you are quite pretentious.
If you take what I say as insults, arrogance and pompousness, that's on you and anyone else who feels the same. I extend the same to everyone else here. I might be offended by what someone says but I don't allow it to influence my argument. How I feel is irrelevant. The point being discussed is what is relevant.
If you want an example of what an insult, arrogance and pompousness would look like from me, consider the fact that I seldom ever reply to anything you say. This is because I believe doing so amounts to trying to have a meaningful conversation with my dog. Not sure if saying this fits the "arrogance and pompousness" aspect of your post but, whatever.
And thanks for demonstrating why responding to your posts is a waste of electrons.
As I noted, you are taking the position that anything can be offensive thus there is no way to ever say or write anything to ensure another will not take offense. Of course, but that is just taking things to a ridiculous extreme to deflect from the point.
Putting aside the notion that someone can be offended by anything, my point is that it is quite possible to state one's position without being offensive to an individual.
Person 'A' holds a belief. Person 'B' does not hold that belief.
Person 'B' can ridicule 'A' personally by describing 'A' as living in a fantasy world. That is a directly personal comment.
Person 'B' could, alternatively, simply explain why they do not hold the belief. That is an analytical opinion that does not deal with 'A' in any manner.
Sure, 'A' could be offended no matter what 'B' writes but that misses the point that leaving 'A' out of the commentary focuses the critique onto the belief and not on 'A'.
Directly now. You said that Sandy was living in a fantasy world. That is a directly personal comment. Alternatively, you could have simply criticized her belief in a logical, factual manner and left her (personally) out of it.
Oh no Avatar was popular.
That means men want to be tall skinny blue people and that is what women want men to be....
You competed for one, whether you knew you were doing it or not.
Of course. I never suggested otherwise. That doesn't mean they choose a man simply because he's good at housework. They generally have much higher standards.
Really? Putting 50lb boxes back up in the attic after Christmas is an equal opportunity mission? Riiiiight.
Riiiiight. They don't like "bad boys" or anything.
Look, I realize they like to talk a good game about "good partners", but their actions tell a very different story.
To older women, maybe. Not to young ones.
“That doesn't mean they choose a man simply because he's good at housework. They generally have much higher standards.”
Perhaps those standards include being willing to even help with the housework. Do tell what ‘higher standards’ you ascribe.
Right. You have yet to provide anything that says the same thing but isn't offensive (in your opinion). Why is that?
For the record, we're not talking about any woman old enough to think of Bruce Willis in terms of a sex symbol. The article is about "angry young men". And telling them that women their age are generally attracted to a man because he can "run a household" is complete nonsense and does them a disservice.
You are unable to read the words I provided in my initial response where I made critical comments about a belief but did not get personal??
Why do you play these pointless games?
“…is complete nonsense and does them a disservice.”
What is complete nonsense is an aged male individual speaking for an entire younger female generation.
Dude... Seriously. Quote function. Highlight the lines you want to quote and click the quote marks up next to your avatar.
To answer your "standards" question, they generally want men to be tall, rich (or with good prospects of becoming so), good-looking, intelligent, funny and reasonably muscular.
I'm pretty sure there isn't a "good at housework" option on dating apps...because young women don't care about it at all.
Were you unable to read the response that said just because you didn't find them offensive or personal doesn't mean they weren't?
Why do you play these pointless games?
Now you resort to Pee Wee Herman tactics?
Even so, I addressed that directly @7.2.157:
Wow what a hateful arrogant pompous and ignorant thing you just said, you managed to top yourself and wow no that's not insulting at all.
What a small c faux christian you are,
Thanking for proving that beyond a doubt
Such a hateful arrogant toxic male you've also proven yourself to be beyond a doubt.
Such arrogance and hate like your fellow faux small c christians and such toxic masculinity,
Your thumbs up are the same as you, toxic.
You're conflating box office popularity with desirableness as a sexual or marital partner.
Tom Cruise is still reasonably popular at the box office. But after the couch jumping, the verbal attacks on Brooke Shields, and watching Katie Holmes basically pull off a defection-type escape from the marriage, most women would not be interested in dating him.
Women actually do know the difference between a guy who can sell movie tickets and a guy they'd want to date or marry.
Maybe you should ask some of them for some tips.
Drakk, you're the one asking me to clarify to you how your behavior has been not very Christ-like. You're the one who apparently needs your own damn religion dumbed down for you.
No, you're not. I've provided examples from your own scriptures. You have been either unwilling or unable to understand them.
Some do. Some don't.
With age comes wisdom. Usually.
You should aim this at Drakk. I didn't bring up Bruce Willis.
And young women do actually think a guy who isn't helpless around the house is sexy. Or at least I did when I was young, as did my female friends.
I'll load the dishwasher, but when the vacuuming starts I'm out the door with the dog and cat...
He's provided so many examples of his "un-Christlike" behavior.
Unreal how self-unaware some are.
Observing their behavior is not "speaking for them".
Does that include enough wisdom to recognize that the behaviors of young women differ greatly from the behaviors of older women?
Sure. As long as he has 6 other, far more important things going for him.
Life in the pre-dating app world was different.
“Observing their behavior is not "speaking for them". “
Fair enough.
But unless a sociologist and not just a voyeur, I’ll stick with the wise words of the women whom have offered their take on the subject.
The professional sociology on this has become widely prevalent over the last few years, especially with people like Jordan Peterson selling so many books. Sadly, the science has been politicized to the point where half the population refutes the obvious simply because their tribe has aligned against the messenger.
TBH.. I suspect neither of us are likely to be classified as "young men", so it hardly matters what we accept or don't.
But the building of this societal shitshow with our young men and boys has been well-documented for decades. They've been studying this stuff and writing about it since the 1970s.
That's rich.
It is when doing so in opposition to what they're telling you, themselves.
It does.
And one of the things I no longer do is to allow men whom I have never met to speak about my experiences as if they know them better than I do, myself, which is what you do when you make generalizations about women.
They're not. You are.
We're talking about young women. By your own admission, you have friends who thought Bruce Willis was sexy in Moonlighting. Which means you are at least as ancient as I am and probably more.
You are still trying to defend the traditional old woman behavior of telling young men and boys what young women OUGHT to want in a man as though it is what they actually DO want in a man.
But unless he's looking for dates in the Over 60's Bridge Club, it's complete nonsense.
We're talking about young people. Those high school girls who have crushes on "cute boys" do not give a tinker's damn about their ability to "run a household". College girls are not sleeping with frat boys thinking "I bet he'll be able to grow a great patch of Kentucky fescue in our backyard". The 25-year-old at a nightclub is not scouting around for the man she thinks is best able to fold fitted sheets and recognize tuna brands, despite your earlier ridiculous suggestions.
Even the most casual observers can easily recognize that young women gravitate toward tall, muscular, handsome, successful, confident men who know how to talk to women.
But let's just go ahead and pretend it's about the tuna.
FFS.
“FFS.”
Indeed, Jack…pick anything else in which to joust…you’ve got nothing here.
I'm actually probably one of the youngest people here. Not ancient. Moonlighting aired when I was in middle/high school, and established Bruce Willis as a sex symbol, but not especially among my friends, nor did I say so. I was telling Drakk that Willis' history as a sex symbol was based not entirely on the Die Hard movies, nor on being a badass. It went back further, and was based more on his chemistry with Cybill Shepherd than on his perceived physical prowess.
I have actually been a 20-some-year-old woman at a night club, Jack (not 25. I married young). You haven't. But I've also been a 20-some-year-old woman who found that the best way to meet guys worth knowing wasn't necessarily a night club, but in class, in campus clubs, playing sports, hanging out with friends. Guys from night clubs might have been ok for one-night stands, but most women I knew even in college weren't into that. They were looking more for long-term relationships, so, yeah, a guy who could cook and didn't call a girl asking her how to do laundry was appreciated.
I taught my ex how to cook, do laundry, and drive. I guess my priorities were a bit confused.
My hubby does his laundry every weekend. He knows I hate doing laundry & putting it away - so he does his own and the towels. Could be one of the reasons we have been married almost 4 decades and together nearly half a century is that we know the likes & dislikes & work with it. I pack our lunches every morning as I let him sleep in later. He drives me to work and picks me up so I don't have to ride the shuttle (shuttle makes me feel like a sardine), I usually cook because he doesn't like to. Funny how that stuff works...
One of my dental school friends was dating a guy, and it was pretty serious, but then they started having problems. For some reason, he asked his mom to help them talk things through (mama's boy - huge red flag right there). Anyway, one of his complaints was that my friend didn't fold his laundry the way he liked it to be folded. His mom apparently laid into him right there. "Wait a minute. You two aren't married, and aren't even living together, and you expect her to do your laundry? Do you do her laundry?" Of course he didn't. His mom told him that he was the problem, which was hilarious. Even more hilarious was that he'd told my friend that was what to expect from an Italian guy - more traditional gender roles, her doing his laundry while he played softball. His Italian mama set his ass straight.
Which means you're in your 50's, so we can agree that we're both talking about "young women" in the third person.
Yeah. In 1992. And even back then, tall, good-looking, rich and muscular beat "good with laundry" every time.
This is just getting hilarious.
No dear, I've never been a woman in a nightclub, bar, college campus, spring break trip to Ft. Lauderdale, co-ed soccer league, or anywhere else, for that matter.
So what could I possibly know about picking up women in those places?
I'll let you think about that one. Go ahead. Take your time.
And they naturally gravitated toward short, fat, broke, awkward guys who could spot a good can of tuna.....
Oh..... wait....
No. They didn't.
What makes you so sure?
My husband while good looking, intelligent, and funny is not tall nor muscular. But he can fold laundry like nobody's business. Knows how to cook and bake, and keeps things tidy. But he's also my jar opener because I have arthritis. And he looks sexy as hell on the lawn mower.
So, Jack....why don't you ask a real woman what they want. And BTW, I knew this about my spouse 34 years ago when we got married
Forty-eight.
Good grief. This whole thing started because Drakk thinks that Bruce Willis and the Rock are the epitome of what women want, because they sell movie tickets, and because he has a man crush on them. You really can't fathom that women might want more than a box-office success? That male admiration for a man might not translate into female admiration for the same man?
You can say it's getting hilarious, but I've given specific examples to rebut Drakk's points. Bruce Willis was a sex symbol before he went up against Allan Rickman (who, by the way, is also a sex symbol, but has generally not been considered badass, just because he's such a nice guy, skilled actor, and has a voice like silk) in Nakatomi Plaza. His sex symbol status had already been established.
Mel Gibson lost his sex symbol status by being an asshole.
I'm providing specific examples, and you basically have "no, no, I know better."
Because like some men, he believes that all women rate the men they want in their lives (not in a movie or on TV) like many men rate women they want in their lives (subservient beauties with no vocal cords).
So.... three out of five.
And if you're honest you'll admit that had zero to do with you agreeing to a first date.
Because they're not honest about it. They're like Baptists at a convention, who condemn all the whisky drinking and then pretend they don't understand how the liquor stores are all sold out.
Women who have been married for decades tell you the things that are important to them now, ignoring or even ridiculously denying the fact that those things were not even in the back of their minds when they were 18. Young women will tell you the things they think will create the image of them they would like you to have. But actions speak louder than words.
How many times in your life have you asked a young woman on a date?
Please. Tell us about how you've been successful at it.
You would be right. I just thought myself lucky that this handsome man wanted to go out with me. Later as we were dating, I became aware of his folding skills. He had been married before and was living on his own so he had to take care of himself. He was self sufficient and not looking for someone to take care of him. That attracted me more to him. I didn't need anyone to take care of me, either, and he found that attractive. So four months later we got married
Jack, you're telling us your experiences as a man. We, who were once young women, are telling you what young women want.
You're talking about young men getting sex, and now you're talking about them getting first dates. First dates don't always yield sex. And your scenarios seem to be limited to young men asking out young women whom they don't know in settings like night clubs. You seem to discount that some young men ask out women they already know and have known for a while - young women who actually have an idea whether those young men are able to fix an edible dinner, who can tell from seeing them daily whether they're doing laundry, who maybe have been to their apartments or dorm rooms and know whether they vacuum or wash dishes.
In college, I dated men I already knew from class, or from shared activities. I knew way more about them than just their looks.
First, let me say it sounds like you guys are great together, and congratulations on 34 years.
Second, thanks for being honest.
I don't understand why it's so difficult for some people to admit that the things we find important in our 50s are different than the things we valued in our 30s, which were altogether different than what attracted us to people at 19.
Telling a 20 year old boy that women want a man who can help run a household is like telling a 20 year old girl that men are looking for a woman who can decorate a guest bedroom.
When we're talking to and about young people, we need to be talking in terms of things that are relevant to them, not us.
Yes, we do.
Men.... by which you mean the people who actually have to live with the consequences of acting on or ignoring this advice, and therefore know whether or not it's worth anything.
The comedy of the phrase "what women want" aside, how many times have you asked a woman on a date and how many of those times were you successful?
You're basically trying to make an argument similar to "we make the footballs, so we know more about how to throw them than the quarterbacks who actually do it".
I never talked about sex.
How many of those guys you actually agreed to date were ugly, timid, broke, poorly dressed and awkward?
Eh, when I was a teenager my girlfriend hung out at my house so yes, she saw how I lived and conducted myself.
How do you reason that?
Seems to me that women would be better authorities on what women want and men would be better authorities on what men want. A woman need not be practiced in asking women for a date to know what women want in a man. I think being a woman / man is far more important than being experienced in dating women / men.
What works for a man to get a date with a woman is not necessarily the same as what women want.
Yup. A woman accepting a date hopes a man will have traits that she wants. She doesn't know, but she's willing to give him a chance.
There is a well worn trope within psychological studies that during their lives women tend to be primarily attracted to three different kinds of men. 1. Firstly, in their youth, a studly manly type whether an athlete or a tough guy, but of the physical type that will produce "breed" strong attractive offspring. 2. The good provider. A stable man who will care for them and their offspring until they are independent. 3. The good companion who will endulge them with a good life. This is often a younger man who helps them spend their first husband's life savings. Yes, this is simplistic, but there is lots of generalized truth within it...
Competition is what all animals engage in from the moment of birth.
Make no mistake. Humans are animals just like all other beasts.
Some more so than others and should probably be avoided if a person treasures their own mental and physical health.
Yep, some animals are nicer than others.
One dog loves you, another dog... not so much.
It's all about personalities.
Wow, way to bail the pussies out lol.
We ARE ALL thrown into the meatgrinder that is life. 99% of us come out fine.
Well.... 1 in 7 American adults has to be medicated for depression, so I'm not sure your numbers work out at all.
So all those statistics on everything from domestic violence to wealth inequality are just made up? How does that work, exactly?
That doesn't mention the plummeting stats on sex in America.
So it might just be possible that all the shit that applied to you and me way back in the 1900s isn't actually the same now.
Interesting paragraph from your link, Jack.
Young men may not be getting laid because they're not even trying to. Their eyes are glued to a screen.
That's absolutely part of it. Although there is a downward spiral there in the idea that video games give them a place to hide from having to talk to women, so they never learn to talk to women, which makes them want to avoid having to talk to women, so they play more games, etc, etc, etc.
We haven't even discussed the horrific impacts of social media. The studies on that are alarming.
See, now there's the respectful discussion I tried to have from the beginning.
We can agree here. They aren't learning to interact face-to-face.
Exactly. Yes ma'am.
We don't talk to them about how to do that, and if they're brave enough to take a chance and it doesn't go 100% perfectly they get crucified. We call them anything from "toxic" to "creepy" or worse.
When you are a man talking to women you don't know, even under the best of circumstances there is little room for error and generally a low probability of success anyway. So if trying and failing has such severe consequences, they stop trying.
I used to coach 7th grade football. In Texas at that age, this was 90% of the boys in that grade. We might have 120 boys in the 7th grade and 105 or so on the team. In my district, that was the first year of secondary school, so along about October they all experienced their first school dance.
We required every boy on the football team to attend the dance with a date that was not their sister/cousin/other cop-out person. I would chaperone the dance, and they were required to bring their date over to me and introduce her. I obviously knew most of these girls already, but we were teaching social skills.
The moms & dads thought it was great. The mommies (very different thing from moms) were horrified.
But we were intentionally creating a training ground for our guys. Everybody in school knew they all had to ask a girl to the dance. So they all had to overcome their fears together, in an environment where everybody expected them to be awkward anyway. What they didn't realize was that almost all of the girls wanted very much to be asked, so their success rate was always likely to be really high.
Now, obviously something like that isn't scalable. But we can start to change the way we think about how we view these boys.
I think that's a good idea.
When I was in undergrad, there was a dinner to which some students were invited that was meant to polish social skills - how to place your utensils to indicate that you were finished with your meal, how to place your napkin, which fork to use for each course, etc. I think that would be a good idea for most students, and useful not just in dating, but in business dinners, travel, and so forth. It's the sort of thing you'd hope most kids learn at home, but many don't. I believe it was likely taught in home ec, but those classes have mostly gone by the wayside, and not many boys took them, anyway.
A yearly dance or dinner (or both) with adult guidance in the social graces in every middle or high school seems like an achievable goal. No electronics allowed in sight. Model making introductions, making small talk, how to dress (especially tying a tie).
As far as guys being called "toxic" or "creepy", I have to disagree. I've only ever heard them called so if they can't take a polite "no" for an answer, or if they approach in a very inappropriate manner, such as with overtly sexual talk right off the bat. And some guys do that.
Something I've noticed from talking to my son is that kids (or at least the ones he knows) seem to now hate and do anything to avoid attention. When I was in school, we had a large choir and even larger band. My son's high school is a lot bigger than mine was, but the choir and band aren't half the size ours was. I asked him why more kids didn't participate in either. "Because who wants to get up there where people can see you? That's embarrassing." I only remember the soloists being nervous before a concert. We weren't nearly so scared of being seen as kids today seem to be.
Excellent point.
But we didn't run the risk of an embarrassing video going viral on Instagram.
There are interesting studies about large scale behavioral changes in young people that began to appear at the same time as the iPhone. I'm not sure that correlation necessarily represents causation on the matter, but that seems to be a prevailing theory.
huh?
what about opening a non-screw off beer bottle cap with a bic lighter or rolling a 1 paper joint?
Disposable lighters aren't environmentally responsible, 1 paper joints burn too fast and unevenly, better to know how to avoid being short papers.
Also useful, in a slightly less formal setting.
yeah right, you should probably stick to your field of expertise...
If the goal is having a meaningful conversation, how does talking to women differ from talking to men?
Most children are not segregated by sex in grade school. Why aren't boys already talking to girls from at least the age of 5 years old?
If the conversation is only happening because of sexual interest, then if the target isn't sexually attracted to the speaker, the conversation is usually ended ASAP because there is no enjoyment in the interaction. This applies to both males and females trying to start a conversation that can feel predatory to the person targeted.
Didn't see this post 7 months ago because I don't login often and don't follow up old threads. But this was an awesome convo between you and sandy and I think really got to the heart of the issue. Perhaps I was a bit... harsh.. in my initial response. Honestly sad that I didn't see it til 7 months later.
... on every online forum.
So the article is about those young men that go on killing sprees and what is causing this to occur and one explanation & it has become a discussion of how ALL women want ape men???
What is wrong with some of you people - defending this type of behavior as "boys will be boys - can't change that" bullshit.
What a sick country we have become.
“…as "boys will be boys…”
Cannot understate how ridiculous this statement. Do we raise and hold our boys to a different standard, excusing their behavior simply for their gender? Even if that behavior does harm in the subjugation of others in being ‘manly’? Bullying and abuse should never be tolerated, regardless of gender.
As a stay at home dad of two sons, I endured many a comment from family and others wondering about my circumstance and how it affected their definition of ‘manhood’…but it was our family goal to dispel the myth that only a real man is the sole provider, the arbiter of truth, the end all and be all.
Proud to say those two sons have grown to be great men. Men whom appreciate their partners for the wonderful women they are. Men who understand their role in the community. Men who can stand on their own without any preconceived notions of what it takes to be a man.
Thanks, Veronica.
There are many people on this country that do exactly that - and many of them are members here.
My husband and I have been together for over 44 years - married almost 38 years now. When I was a teenager I thought it was great when he "protected" me (being all manly), but we both grew up & discovered that as adults our relationship was better as a partnership not as a HE-MAN protect HIS WOMAN relationship. Funny how some have never grown up.
I think it is awesome you were home for your boys - you must have formed a wonderful bond with them that many men do not form with their children.
“…a wonderful bond with them…”
Lucky I am and thanks for the oh so kind words. As fate would have it, my youngest proposed just this morning in NYC to his longtime love. He will be a loving husband and she deserves no less. His mother would be so, so happy.
I disagree with the last word "become". These qualities and attitudes of boys will be boys has a long rich history of abuse and acceptance. I could write an entire book on the subject. Society is just now excepting the evidence of toxicity and how destructive it is.
Are we really going to quibble over words? The sentiment is there.
Quibble? No.
What's really cracking me up is the fact that the complaint above seems to boil down to "We don't teach young men how to attract sexual partners."
Women on the thread point out what they like and don't like in a man.
Men respond with, "Nah, you all don't know what you want. We know what you want, and also simultaneously are going to complain that young men can't get laid because they don't know what women want. Damn you women for not wanting what we tell you that you want!"
They really don't see the inconsistency in their position here. The lack of self-awareness ridiculous.
It is very evident in the replies I have read. I hate when some people tell me what I want and like. As if I don't know what I want and like....
Bullshit.
Men read that and respond "women have been saying one thing and doing another for centuries". You just don't like that being pointed out.
That comment is misogynistic, but in keeping with many of your comments so far in this discussion.
Describing obvious and well-established behavior that women don't want discussed is the new definition of misogyny.
Telling us that you know our thoughts better than we do is misogynistic, as is accusing women in general of dishonesty, which is what you did.
“…established behavior that women don't want discussed is the new definition of misogyny.”
No, Jack, it is the age old definition of self-serving ignorance.
…behavior women ‘don’t want discussed’? Every woman I’ve ever met would encourage that discussion and we would be much better served if we would just listen…even if just once.
Read the article and it is exactly right. These guys are a bunch complete faggots. Nothing to contribute, no useful skills, and have the idea that they are owed something.
So many incels…
seems as though there's a severe shortage of women willing to submit to fascist troglodytes...
I am married to a narcissistic, psychotic nut job. He was born in 1947. He was a first-born son and the first-born grandson. He was spoiled rotten by his family, but remembers every little slight where he was not the golden child. He was rejected by his peers, but I suspect that I am getting a very one-sided view knowing what I now know and what I have experienced living with him. There is absolutely nothing that this man would not do to anyone if he thought he could get by with it - nothing. He perceives everyone as his enemy.
I have spent over 3 years researching what is known about dark personality traits. There are no clear-cut answers to the role of nature vs. nurture. There is hope that brain scans might be beneficial in understanding the areas that control emotions to identify if there are connections missing or damaged. Researching brain damage and personality changes caused by aging might give some insight on optimal brain function and lead to medical treatment that is beneficial to the individual and society.
what a bunch of hatred, ignorance and lies
I'm going to post today's video from Sam Vaknin that might give anyone interested into the mindset of narcissists some insight into why our society must take the rise of NPD seriously. This is a mental illness that to date is untreatable with therapy or drugs. The people with NPD are extremely dangerous to the mental and physical health of anyone who has to live or work with them. They live in a world of their own making - reality has no place in their life.
Narcissists cannot, and never will be, someone that is safe to date or marry. Love cannot cure narcissism, but loving a narcissist is a one way trip to never-ending Hell on Earth.
Abuse can be harsh treatment, but it can equally be spoiling a child. However, many children have been abused by their parents and don't acquire NPD. It may have a genetic component that is activated by the primary caregiver. The primary caregiver is usually the mother, but it does not have to be. If the primary caregiver is a daycare worker, it can be that person who sets up NPD in the child.
I have an adult daughter with NPD. I was her primary caregiver. I have spent years trying to remember all of the ways I might have let her down in some way. One of my primary guesses is allowing her (at 3 yrs of age) to spend a week with my mother-in-law and my 16 year old brother-in-law molesting her. There was a drastic personality change after that, but of course there would be.
Sounds like a 'manifest of destiny' for 'american exceptionalism' ... /S
There are schools in the US that are requesting staff psychiatrists for grade school students. That may be the best way to engage younger children who are being the victim or perpetrator of bullying or other anti-social behaviors.
I believe that it would be best for professionals to determine if the child would be best served in supervised play groups, adult mentoring or one on one therapy. Keep in mind, that the children that are being forced to interact with the victim/perpetrator could be mentally/physically harmed by being forced to interact with someone they would choose to avoid. This is bypassing our instinct to avoid what our brain tells us is dangerous.
If the child is mentally ill, then the only recourse should be professional treatment. No child or adult should be forced to interact with anyone who is mentally ill. If a trained professional can't help the individual, there is no reason to expect anyone else to be able to. They are not only risking their lives, but they are also wasting them.
What could possibly be more common in the US than blaming women for men's problems?
Because of all of the hoopla about population decline in all industrialized nations (except the US which relies on an open border to increase population), I have researched why even married couples are opting to be childfree. It might surprise some people, but women opting out of marriage is nothing new, nor is being childfree. This has been going on for centuries. Being single meant the right to work and keep their own wages and to own their property among other things. Married women had few, or any rights, and were pretty much owned by their husband.
So what has caused the ever-rising rates of narcissism in males that make them believe that they are entitled to have anything and everything they want? Including a girl/woman to satisfy their sexual needs, be their mother and be their whipping boy? Social media? Hollywood movies that depict stalking or being the lovable nerd as ways to trap/entice a sexual conquest?
Healthy relationships, that last, are based on friendship, respect and commonalities. Unhealthy relationships, based on sexual attraction, usually end in very unhealthy ways.
In the case of having any kind of relationship with a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder - avoid it like your life depends on it because it does.
One example of what marriage meant to women in the good old days.
How many men think it should be the same in 2023?