A big part is diminishing religiosity. There is little point in getting married if you aren’t religious. Thanks to progress made by LGBT couples, most of the legal benefits of marriage are shared by domestic partnerships. Traditionalists on the left and the right make a big deal of this, but it is of negligible factual importance.
I don't think most people who get married do it for religious reasons or even to start a family in the US anymore. People do it since they see it a formal a commitment and want to announce their love in public.
That only covers one angle, if people do it for religious reasons, not if they don’t do it because of religion. I’m not getting married, and the religious connotations of even a secular wedding is a significant chunk of why.
There’s also a million legal reasons to get married… If there weren’t, same sex marriage would probably have never made it to the Supreme Court. Everything from insurance coverage, employment benefits, credit rating, child custody, transfer of property following death, medical decisions, and a bunch of other very secular, very important benefits are conferred via legal marriage.
Is there any way to adapt this better for polyamorous people? I have poly friends that got around it by choosing a primary partner and marrying them, but that seems like a bad solution in the long term.
I don't think that is going to be happening for a long time. It took decades for gays and lesbians. The marrying of a primary partner is the best solution so far.
That might not be entirely the case here. If you are far enough up the looks-ladder to be considered "good looking", that puts you in a much higher starting position relative to everyone else, especially other men. Because according to women, most men are ugly (or at least "less attractive than average"). I'd assume that if you're that conventionally attractive, you're going to get better treatment from other men too, even straight ones.
"Good looking" men are just very rare, it seems. It makes sense to me they'd get a bigger boost in socioeconomic rating from that alone. Less to share the spoils with, as it were.
I don’t think that attract men are rarer, societally it just seems like we’re being judged on different scales. Something I’ve noticed, although only anecdotally:
If you get a group of people attracted to women to describe what an attractive woman is, you’ll get a fairly similar answer.
This makes it easier to know where you stand, and also easier to become “more attractive” easier, because there is a fairly consistant goal to be achieved.
If you ask a group of people attracted to men to describe what an attractive man is, you’ll generally get a few different archetypes.
A guy with a beard will get an instant 0 from some people, but it’s a positive for others.
A guy with abs will get an instant 0 from some people, but it’s a positive for others.
A guy with little/no hair will get an instant 0 from some people, but it’s a positive for others.
Note: This is from last year. The numbers are much higher now. Ukraine puts the number of dead Russian soldiers at 376,030. The US says it’s 315,000 personnel.
Either way, if those numbers are anywhere close to the trugh, then Russia has already lost ~50% of the personnel that the entire Soviet Union lost in its 9 year-long invasion of Afghanistan. And the fallout of the war in Afghanistan contributed a lot to the fall of the Soviet Union.
I ddg russian population 2023 and got this from world-o-meter: “9th Russia 144,444,359(estimated population) -0.19%(change) -268,955(net)”
Until they have to mobilize the more dense populated area, it’s just a number game for them I guess.
Oh, and compare to Ukraine, it’s pretty dark.
“41th Ukraine 36,744,634 -7.45 % -2,957,105” in the later column, Migrant listed as 1,784,718 assuming fled the war. so should be part of that -2.9m decline number. I don’t know what happened to the other 1.2m.
Female friends often tell me that their male partners just aren’t as good at this work as they are––that they do it partly because it would cause more stress to hand over the tasks.
At work, I'm training a new coworker. He's been assigned to create some diagrams that we need for compliance reporting. He hasn't made them the same way I would have. I've been tempted to produce my own diagrams the way I would want them, but I have steeled myself against that impulse. His diagrams are acceptable to the higher-ups and they're not wrong in any respect, they're just not how I would have made them. I need to learn to be OK with that.
That’s a serious life skill. Avoiding micromanaging gives you more time, makes the other person feel more empowered, and avoids conflict in your relationship. Props!
Would many straight men even read this fabled column? Again, I asked some friends. “I probably wouldn’t be interested in reading a column by some dude cos I’d just think, well, that’s him I guess. I can’t imagine finding it useful or applying it to me in any way.”
I think this is it for me. Women vary, and what works for some dude’s woman probably won’t work for mine.
I think that is true for most advice columns. I think it would need to a hook (bi, kinky, poly etc.) of some kind as well. It is interesting that it doesn't exist
I think the snag is that “talk to your partner” is a boring, factual, real-world response to most questions – which is very, very good advice… that nobody wants to hear.
That is true. You could spruce it up about specifics about how to talk about it but you are right. Most relationship problems are boring and that is the boring answer. You need some advice about the interesting parts of sex and relationships where there are a focus on the sex especially non PIV sex.
Meh. Both people not understanding what they want or how to solve a problem is entirely possible, but the solution to that is to try a few different things and talk some more. Maybe that could be the hook… Talking to couples instead of just one person. Anyway. As much as I’d love for someone to pay me to talk about sex all day, it’s not happening.
A lot of the time that is the response after someone says that they did try to talk to their partner too. It is both true and a non-helpful answer in a lot of cases because the problems to discuss are caused by underlying communication problems.
Lessons from 15 years as a stay-at-home father By Shannon Carpenter Illustration of a man holding hands with two kids to >quizzical looks from others Illustration by Pat Thomas for The Atlantic November 24, 2023
When I first became a stay-at-home dad, 15 years ago, people didn’t know how to categorize me: I was called a babysitter, “that guy at story time,” and even a woman a couple of times by shirttail relatives and friends. Their words were patronizing and unnecessarily feminizing, but they didn’t diminish my love of being a father. Over time, I raised three kids while my wife advanced in the advertising world. She negotiated contracts; I negotiated naptime. She worked hard to bring in new clients; I worked hard to raise our children. The division of labor has benefited our individual strengths: We both agree that I’m more patient while she is more business-savvy.
Yet, after all this time, many people still can’t compute that I’m my kids’ primary caregiver. Several years ago, as I was fetching my youngest child from preschool, a kid asked the teacher why my son was always picked up by his father; the teacher explained that I was a “daddy-mommy.” As I wrote this article, I learned that I’d missed the sign-up for the same child’s parent-teacher conference because I never got the email. My wife did, even though she barely interacts with the school.
I wish I could be surprised that this kind of confusion hasn’t gone away. I live just outside Kansas City, Missouri, in a rather progressive part of the Midwest where people tend to accept those who buck traditionally gendered roles. In 2021, the proportion of American fathers who were stay-at-home parents was 7 percent, up from 5 percent in 2020; dads account for 18 percent of all stay-at-home parents. Still, I’ve come to believe that a gradual increase in the number of stay-at-home dads alone won’t alter people’s perceptions. Two problems also need solving: policies that discourage men from being involved parents, and a cultural misunderstanding about men doing care work.
Let’s start with paternity leave. Denmark offers a year of paid leave that is split between a child’s parents. Swedish parents get 480 days of paid leave between them. These systems come with their own complications. But the American counterpart is paltry: The Family and Medical Leave Act provides only 12 weeks of unpaid time off, for mothers or fathers—and applies only to certain employees at certain companies. When new mothers aren’t even guaranteed paid time off from work after birth, it’s hard to imagine fathers taking time too—in some cases, they might need to provide the family’s only income while a mother recuperates and cares for a newborn. The result is that fathers, from the very start of a child’s life, tend to be seen as the secondary parent. This too often sends the message to new dads—and to other men—that child-rearing is not the father’s main job.
For a rich country like the U.S., these parental-leave policies are a travesty. However, paid time off at a child’s birth is the bare minimum required for fathers to be active in their kids’ lives. We also need to address society’s perception of what kind of labor can lead to a fulfilling life for men.
A vehicle for this could be some of the many caregiving fields that have a labor shortage. Richard Reeves, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the author of Of Boys and Men, and the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, has advocated for a “massive national effort to get men to move into jobs in the growing fields of health, education, administration, and literacy.” He argues that having more men in occupations like therapy, nursing, and teaching would not just fill jobs but provide a broader social good, by modeling that men can be caregivers. Reeves points out that federal funding has increased the number of women in STEM professions by providing grants, scholarships, and direct aid to women. The same funding could be provided to place men in fields such as nursing and teaching. The number of male nurses has increased by 59 percent over the past decade. But currently, only 12 percent of nurses are men, and 11 percent of elementary-school teachers are men.
To Reeves, there are real benefits to men when they are cared for or taught by other men. They may be more receptive to a male therapist, and thus more likely to get help, for instance. But doing care work rewards the giver, not just the receiver. Studies show that people who actively choose to provide care may experience a decrease in stress and a greater sense of social connectedness. Dads experience caregiving benefits in specific ways: One study found that when a group of fathers cradled their premature newborns against their bare chests for the first time, they experienced a decrease in both blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol. In general, when men become fathers, their testosterone tends to decrease, a change that increases empathy while lessening aggression, writes Linda Nielsen, the author of Myths and Lies About Dads: How They Hurt Us All and a professor of adolescent and educational psychology at Wake Forest University. In short, it can be both psychologically and physiologically healthy for men to care for others.
My hope is that policy and societal changes will benefit all fathers in the long run, no matter the particular caregiving structure in their family. But for stay-at-home dads who might feel marooned or misunderstood in their experience now, the best recommendation I can offer is joining a dads’ group. These are locally organized small associations of fathers—and not just at-home ones—who might meet regularly for playdates with kids or hangouts without them. The groups are an ideal way for men to bond over their parenting experiences and mentor one another: My group and I discuss everything from automobile engines to potty training. I have been a member for my entire time as a father; the community has both cared for me and taught me how to care for others. When I was in the hospital with my wife for the birth of my youngest son, one of the fathers in my group took care of my older kids, while other dads brought food over for the next month. Just recently, we discussed strategies for teaching my 16-year-old son to drive, ahead of his upcoming test.
For all the chaos it created, the pandemic gave many fathers more unexpected family time, even if they weren’t full-time caregivers like me. It opened many fathers’ eyes to a new approach to parenting. But too many people still see men caring for others—be they one’s own kids or a wider community—as an implausible vocation. I’d like friends, extended family, and our kids’ teachers to recognize how fulfilling being a stay-at-home dad can be. And I’d like fathers to see that caregiving can be a joy for them, too.
I especially liked that they raised point like the fact that despite the fact that men earn more on average and make up more of the top CEO/Board Members spots, that those things don’t help the bottom segment of boys who are left behind in school and left unsupported.
Their program to try and pull those teens back into post secondary is helpful and I’d be excited to see their long term impacts
I mean it makes sense. Feminism has become quite the loaded term as of recent, and young people are going to be a lot more distanced from the earlier wages of feminism.
That’s what I’d assume. My impression is that many Gen-Z might associate the term “Feminism” with J.K. Rowling and such, Trans-Exclusionary feminists as it were. If there were questions that could suss out concern about trans issues, or even LGBT+ issues in general, I suspect the differences between generation might match.
Not even getting into substantive issues, the people who loudly proclaim their feminism online are usually total fucking jackasses since honest people see little need to hide behind the concept of “feminism”, as if it’s a shield against criticism.
Overall, a more substantive survey would just be better. Or really anything beyond “self ID with a broad and contentious label”.
Oh man, I’m actually going through a whole mess of shit right now, but this was absolutely not a call for help. Was sick for months culminating in debilitating reactive arthritis and because of this missed out on some time with my grandmother during her last days. We were very close, I had lived with her for a while during my childhood. She just recently passed and it’s been tough, but I’m doing ok all things considered. Thanks for asking.
Glad to hear you’re pulling through! Condolences; that’s pretty rough. The arthritis getting in the way definitely wasn’t your fault. Hope you can look back on those good childhood memories with her :)
I’m sorry to hear you’re going through a hard time. just know your not alone. life is rough out there for a lot of us. recently I was falsely accused of rape by someone I was dating. top that off, my mom just got admitted to the hospital this morning for some serious medical stuff. I’ve only had one friend who I haven’t seen in years checkin to see if I was ok. it’s sad to see but makes be grateful. wish you the best man! we deserve better but we do the best we can. stay strong brother
Though others have pointed out alternative interpretations of the poll (such as merely disagreeing with the label, not the ideals, of feminism), I am going to voice the minority opinion here: the straightforward interpretation may be right. In fact, I unfortunately find it completely plausible. Millennials, after all, went through ten formative years of #MeToo and BLM, the biggest protests for equality in a century. The younger generation aren’t going through a cultural revolution anywhere near that scale. Things have quieted down, and sentiment may have regressed to the mean.
I also think people may be underestimating how powerful rightwing bro media has become, with radical figures becoming mainstream like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, etc. I don’t see many countervailing feminist voices with as much reach, especially those targeting impressionable boys. I’m not sure about any of this, and I know some may not like to hear the alarm, but I think we need to be realistic about the possibility.
There are also things like dating apps to consider. More and more adults are finding their relationships through dating apps, and women can be pretty disrespectful (obviously this doesn’t mean that men aren’t disrespectful as well).
“Must be 6’0”, have a steady job, must worship me, I hate men if you know what I mean" etc. See too much of that shit, go too long without any matches (alongside things like porn addiction giving you a skewed perspective on what sex/relationships are) and it’s hard not to take it personally.
This isn’t to say the young men are faultless, by any means. Just something that adds fuel to the fire.
I haven’t been in the dating world for quite a while but I assumed that type of profile was pretty rare and just commonly posted online to be ridiculed. Is that not the case?
While it’s probably rare to find a profile with everything I listed , many profiles have at least one of the things I mentioned. Most common one I’ve seen from the list is being unwilling to date men below 6 feet tall. Second most would have to be the “men r bad” or some variation of that.
I’m not comfortable blaming women for how horrible dating is, but I take your point that people can sometimes be pretty disrespectful.
But given that we’re making a comparative claim between generations, I wonder if this really explains the difference. Is disrespect on dating apps so much worse for gen Z men than Millennial men that it’s making men less feminist? I’m skeptical.
I would not blame women for how bad dating apps are either. But I think the average person would say something like “the women in my area suck” or “women just don’t like me” before they think the design of the app itself is part of the problem. Does that make them less feminist? Still probably not, but it could push them towards pickup artists type guys if they are really frustrated.
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