The War Against Boys

That sounds like what half the people in my art class did anyway...

and if a person hates both men and women equally, are they still a misogynist?

hating everyone = misanthropy

no, seriously, this is a complex topic. and i dont think it can be all laid at the feet of 'women in power' etc .
it IS a concern, and i am aware of much research on this 'rising rate of male youth suicide.
sorry, but im too fucking tired to comment on it.

Rising suicide rates = worrying thing. Blaming 'gender wars' for it = dud.

I'm not defending racism. I just think that one of the most unpopular things you can be, at least if you're living in a balanced environment that has a pretty diverse variety of people living in it, is a white, straight, male. If you happen to be of the Christian faith, then that puts you into an even more unpopular category. Historically speaking, the Christian/Catholic/Protestant WSM has been the source of many, MANY social problems, but why keep blaming him for something his parents or grandparents did? This just seeks to promote the differences between us all, and keep everyone feeling seperated and alone. What the fuck has to happen before we can reach a state of equilabrium, and then truly live as equals?

I'm not defending racism. I just think that one of the most unpopular things you can be, at least if you're living in a balanced environment that has a pretty diverse variety of people living in it, is a white, straight, male....

This should be a clear signal that I shouldn't throw my line towards the bait.. but oh hell...

What the fuck has to happen before we can reach a state of equilabrium, and then truly live as equals?

Reinvent DNA. Living things on Earth find ways to discriminate themselves against others. This will never change.

Of course, you can still have loads of behavioral problems and still become president of the US.

"Drugs are bad, m'kay? Even when they're good for ya, they're bad, m'kay?"

"Wait, ignore that, we want to prescribe some really horrible drugs to your child because he doesn't sit still enough for our tastes and he's not learning the lessons the way we mandate that they be taught, so bring the little tyke around, cuz we need to dope him up so he'll conform to the way we do things."

I don't know why men are doing worse, personally. Probably just because the course of history has brought us to a point where we no longer have a clear-cut sense of purpose or identity.

Underground boxing clubs, anyone?

one word too many there...

And I think a lot of people have some sense of it, but maybe men have less of a sense than women! Most of my female friends can tell me what they want out of life. Most of my male friends can't even tell me what they want for dinner. Maybe the ladies are lying and they don't know, but hey I'm just reporting what I see here...

I agree with you there, but until we find a way to be able to properly mindread and be 100% telepathic and empathic, we will never truly understood where another comes from, and hence we will always have different ideas of what actions will benefit a) me, and/or b) society. If you were to make every person on this planet white and asexual, we would still have the same level of discrimination problems, but using different discrimination criteria...

"Wait, ignore that, we want to prescribe some really horrible drugs to your child because he doesn't sit still enough for our tastes and he's not learning the lessons the way we mandate that they be taught, so bring the little tyke around, cuz we need to dope him up so he'll conform to the way we do things."

On the other hand, if Wellbutrin had been around in the Eighties, I'd have had a doctorate and/or be the head of a well-known computer company by now.

That was a lot of big words that I'm not sure I put together right. I haven't had lunch today.

I'll agree with TMTCD that none of the young guys I talk to know what they want out of life. When conversation turns to the future and what we want to be doing when we're thirty things get pretty bleak and depressing. There's just nothing to look forward to besides money, which is fucking SAD.

I'm a food zealot, esp when it comes to kids. This is why I'm not a parent.

Studies have shown that in ANY culture, darker-skinned individuals are generally discriminated against more than light-skinned ones.

What do young women have to look forward to that young men don't have? Am I missing something here?

This has to be nearly the funniest thing I've read all day.

I sure as hell don't know. But isn't the question about male school problems and suicide rates?

Of course this may just be nature's design. We are more fragile, biologically, than women are, and perhaps a subpar response to society's normative system is just part of it. Maybe dudes just kill themselves because of a lemming-like system to maintain a favorable male-female ratio. We haven't had a real war in a while, so maybe we just have too many white boys, and maybe the regular response is to start fucking up.

Of course I'm not saying boys consciously think through this when going about their self-destructive activities, but it could very well be part of a larger scheme, a self-correcting mechanism that functions in the form of individual apathy and depression.

When I said "I'm not defending racism. I just think that one of the most unpopular things you can be..."

Sterling Clover said
"This has to be nearly the funniest thing I've read all day."

I think you missed it. Let me put it a little more bluntly: I do not defend the idea that one race is superior to another. I do think that social attitudes have brought us to a point where the white, straight, male has achieved the status of the human race's scapegoat because of the many past atrocities commited against the human race by White, straight, males. As a result, when you get a mixed crowd of people there is now a new form of discrimnation against the appearance of a person based on what that person looks like. In other words, some white kid who has no racist inclinations but is being looked down on by other cultures because of the oppressor that they represent in other people's minds.

Do you really believe that?

Dan, have you ever seen or felt this in real life? Cuz I sure they hell haven't.

"Do you really believe that?"

Not every kid is like that, but yes, I've met people who look back at their culture and are ashamed they are white. Maybe I hang out with some odd people, but when they look back at slavery, the American Indian, and the spread of disease from Europe to other countries, they are definitely not proud. What is promoted in today's culture to say otherwise to people who think like this?

Millar, I'm sorry if I moved off the point. You're right, this is more about gender than anything else, but I felt race was an interesting thing to consider. I should have realized the floodgate that would open with that one.

Gimme a fucking break.

I don't associate w/my white 'ancestors' any more than I associate w/those of other races that have come before me. I wasn't a part of what they did and don't feel guilty or responsible for what they did. Likewise, I don't take pride in any positive achievements made by Caucasians. Evil deeds have been performed by every social group that ever existed. I don't think any progress will be made in race relations until we judge people on who they are, not on the actions performed by their ancestors--or living members of their race for that matter. Shocking theory, huh?

I don't pretend to know the mind set of ever person. I'm listing posibilities here... what does everyone else think?

Where can I find this "Catholic nepotism"? If you could tell me, that would be wonderful. I feel like I need a break from working my arse off for a change. If this is anything like the relationship Texas A&M alumni have, it will alleviate my worries about the future. Hmmm. How would it work? Maybe, instead of knocking rings together, we'd knock together confirmation certificates?

*looks around*

It doesn't do any disservice to the problems faced by women, blacks, whomever to discuss the particular problems facing young men in America in this day and age.

More later maybe.

Perhaps oppression isn't the right word because hey I guess that belongs to other groups already eh? Better just not even entertain the possiblity then!

Can't people say "I'm a white male, do I feel oppressed" and honestly answer the question instead of folding instantly. Is the fact so few people here are even willing to discuss this the minute the word "oppression" is mentioned a sign of some kind of oppression?

What I'm asking is; is it a form of oppression that males can't even ask this question without being ridiculed? Is this the deeper reality here which we are all aware of, that males are not allowed to show weakness in society? Well?

It is nonsense to talk in terms of oppression when you are discussing the least oppressed and most privileged group on the entire fucking planet

See I disagree with this. I don't think it's far from denying young males have problems, I think language like "most privileged group on the entire fucking planet" does lead to a certain denial.It's almost parental.

This doesn't have to be a relative discussion.

Also yes everyone has problems, but our problems are not everyone elses. That is to say it's worth discussing what the specific problems people within the "male" group have to face.

Surely there are some disadvantages to being a white male? Is it not even possible to accept this and discuss them?

Does this whole thing go as far as expectation. That white males are the spoiled child of society, "we gave you all this and this is what you end up doing", a different kind of pressure to achieve, and as I said pressure to not show weakness etc?

I think this is what I was getting at earlier aswell. There must be some disadvantages to being a male, the same as there are with anything.

Can a male really come on this thread and start discussing what the problems with being a male specifically are? Are people even ready for that? Do we know the language to discuss that? I don't think so. I don't think people want to hear it.

cultural nationalism was a tremendously seductive rhetorical weapon in the 60s and 70s, wielded with brilliant effectiveness by israel in particular, by black panthers and radical islam and variegated and multifold others in their seemingly successful wake => but at TERRIBLE, fundamentally reactionary cultural cost... the "black nation" won almost nothing in america by the strategy except resentment, often against things won by other better means; feminist and gay politics are fighting like crazy to extricate themselves from the contradictions they got tracked into; and israel itself, far from making a success of it, is now trapped in an endless racist whirlwind it can never admit to exacerbating and thus can't find a way of shutting down

bnw OTM. and as Ronan noticed, what scares me is that talking about this fact in relation to white males is so taboo. do people really think that by suggesting that there is baggage that comes with being a white male, they are a) giving legit ammunition to racists; or b) somehow threatening the progress that has been made in the recognition of oppression and hatred of minority groups?

When I was attending a small liberal arts college just outside New York City, the first semester of my sophomore year featured a lengthy sit-in where very privileged students agitated for expanded facilities and the like for students of colour, failing to take in that the college was so small, there was no set-aside 'me' space for any so-called minority interest. The point missed, obviously, was that we were there to learn how to share everything with everyone regardless of race, beliefs, or - this is crucial - class background. We already had numerous opportunities to do so and the point-scoring reached an all-time low when my white prof, who taught a course about South Africa, was victimised by students who thought the course should be taught instead by a black woman, never mind that this was the prof's life's work. That's more important. But some of these same sit-in folks bussed down to a giant pro-choice march in DC, abandoning the march when they decided they didn't see enough working women of colour representing there. D'oh! If you're working class, you're probably working, right? I know I was, I'd have loved to go on the march instead.

American society doesn't acknowledge class as a factor very often: remember, only the really rich white folks own everything. The rest of us are paying bills to them. There is a big difference between a white male with two professional parents and another with, say, a single working mum. People *may*, as has happened with me, assume you are a product of the former rather than of the latter, with not-so-hilarious results (this is in no way meant to be dismissive of others' more profound experience of being discriminated against for fixed reasons. Arbitrary judgement hurts everyone). The only fair way to determine the outcome of tricky access issues like college education is to offer affirmative action to students based on income, to compensate for years of the talented but cash-poor being denied access to an education so bloaters like GWB could have a place at Daddy's college.

On the other hand if you don't go to college and join the right frat you're X-fucked like the rest of humanity. Issues abound, 'white trash' and etc. etc. even if you get an education and find a good job you ultimately end up with 1. a house maybe 2. a car 3. duhhh. Too many single dudes up in this bitch. At least I don't live in China, I guess.

Let's address those. It's going to take an awful lot of persuasive argument to convince me that 'oppression of white boys' is any use at all as a line of investigation here. Men have always had more heart attacks than women. Is the explanation (and I think this is a very good parallel) 'men are oppressed and disadvantaged' or perhaps 'men have higher pressure to succeed and worse social penalties for failure'? And the second cann't be reduced to the first without throwing away the whole point of language.

I think that this is a more useful vein to explore here. Is academic success both more necessary for white boys, and less cool among their peer group? There may be something in this. Are there more pressures on white boys towards all sorts of things irrelevant to or even antipathetic to academic success? Again, I think there's some potential in this line. Can we try to think in these kinds of terms rather than this hopeless and misguided cul de sac this thread has charged down?

Also thanks to that one pic Fritz posted, whenever I read dave q I see John Taylor fm Duran D. with a rifle running up on the beach in the sand with the girl and the martini. Except dave is pissed off because of the girl and the martini and he's all I'M FIGHTIN' A WAR HERE DAMMIT and I don't know what happens next.

This thread is the number one example of why discrimination will never go away

That's a pretty big statement to make without any explanation.

Now, this is all well and good but you come to the issue of culture. There are definitely differences between black and white culture, but they are becoming less and less pronounced. Rapidly culture is becoming much more uniform, both within social strata and between social strata. Now an interesting point was made up thread about white kids wanting to be black. I'm not sure its a case of white kids wanting to be black. It can be said though that the most predominant urban working class culture in america at least is one that is of black origin. White working class kids identify with this culture, but lack the single most obvious identifier with that culture, a black skin.

So anyway, to bring this all together. You don't have oppressed white kids killing themselves, you have oppressed poor kids killing themselves and they might happen to be white. The white male oligarchy is as alien to them as it is to a black kids.

This thread is basically telling me that most posters here have middle-class aspirations or are actually sited within that class. But many think that damn near all the people who've got what they want, or more toys, took some massively unfair shortcut to get it. Yet most people we know personally who have done well have a skill or have put in the hours. Nobody minds when nepotism gets you a job as a plumber (and as any Brit will tell you it's a nicer little earner than a job on the Guardian). Everyone has skills and everyone has special needs. Sorry, but the time you spend whining about what the other guy's got is time wasted, because 'the other guy' would be working while you whine. THAT is what the people who run tings fully expect you to do: fight with each other over shiny shiny prole toys while they determine all future outcomes. As usual, it's a divide-and-rule thing. If you want to keep people from noticing you, get them to start fighting with each other. Flawless.

Human beings appear to be hard-wired to disdain large swathes of people.