I’m really glad this article exists, but i wish it went bit further. Nobody of any gender should be pressured to participate in a sexual and romantic and legal entanglement. Conditions for dating are awful and misogyny is way too prevalent, but there is simply no world in which it is normal or fine to say “people need to be married for their own good and the good of their children”. How extremely regressive and gross. Single people are not responsible for the failings of the society they live in. If single people truly do have worse outcomes, then the solution is to change systems of financial oppression and create better social safety nets and offer more services, not tell people that they have to get into long term romantic relationships and create little nuclear families for socioeconomic reasons. We have already seen the outcomes of forcing people to get married and have babies or else. It wasn’t good back then, and it’s not going to help now either.
That is a great point and I wish they went further on the better social safety nets. If you really want healthy children that should be the focus regardless of gender of the parent. I think its odd when people talk about how marriage is only for children or you need to be married to have children its gross and so old fashioined.
yeah like why can’t people just get married if they want to get married, or not get married if they don’t want to get married? has never made sense to me
There have been scientific studies to determine if humans are monogamous or not … it was inconclusive … we like to think that we can or should be paired together for life and live happily ever after but in reality, most of us are not.
The majority of my friends get together for a few years and then divorce, separate or live together in a personal hell because they feel they have to.
I have friends in Quebec in Montreal that have been together for 50 years now. They never had children worked as artists and writers their whole lives and pretty much had a free life between themselves. They made an agreement with each other when they started living together that every five years, they would sit down and discuss if they wanted to continue their relationship. They’ve been doing that ever since.
I do that in a way with my wife every few years … we also don’t have kids … we just sit down and talk about whether or not we want to continue. It’s not done during a crisis, a falling out or when we’re angry or out of sorts … we try to have it when we’re clearly thinking of things but it’s not easy … it’s not an easy topic to discuss … which is also why it’s important to have. After 28 years, we still choose to be together.
Yup, been with my partner for over a decade. Live together, not married, no kids. Originally there was some talk of marriage, but I’ve always said that there’s no reason to insert the state or the church into our relationship. There’s nothing stopping either of us from leaving the relationship if we’re not into it any more. It keeps us treating each other with respect, knowing that there’s no higher authority telling us we have to stay together until we spend thousands of dollars in paperwork and waiting periods.
The current assumptions and expectations that society has about monogamy and commitment are insane. The idea that one person should meet all of your social, relationship and sexual needs is insane. Especially for those people who consider being attracted / look at other people / looking at porn to someone else as cheating. Like you don't stop feeling physical attraction or even get crushes if you are committed. You just don't do anything that violate other peoples trust.
The queer communities take on monogamy and commitment that does have any assumptions is really the best method going forward. Not to mention the removal of gender expectations for house work etc. Its exactly like you described it. An on-going discussion about what your commitment means and what is and isn't allowed. It priories the relationship over everything else.
I think one of the biggest issues everyone glosses over is … we change during our lifetimes.
We are not the same person in our 20s, our 30s, our 40s for all kinds of reasons … our work, our situations, events in our lives, trauma, biological changes, genetics or just psychological changes. Some people stay the same sexually and stay the same throughout their lives, whether its being straight, bi, gay or anything else … I know some people who changed over time from being straight, to bi, to gay or to just asexual … in one way to another. I’m sure everyone know people like this. It’s human nature, most people are not born a simple being that stays the same forever, we evolve and change sometimes because we want to, we have to and other times against our will and biology.
So to have an ever changing pair of people living together … we should not expect them to stay the same forever and want to be together indefinitely.
But the inverse is also true too … maybe the two 20 year olds accept one another but change when they’re 30 … and now the 30 year olds now accept each other at this age … and on and on.
Exactly. People and relationships should change and mature. We should also look at different measures of success. A couple of was married for 15 years and then got a divorce but don't hate each other. That is a successful relationship but it didn't last an entire lifetime
I like the suggestion that we concern ourselvrs more with the quality of men’s internal lives, but I do worry we’re still objectifying men as ‘the problem’.
Navigating interpersonal relationships in a time of evolving gender norms and expectations “requires a level of emotional sensitivity that I think some men probably just lack, or they don’t have the experience,” he added.
I like the quote above about this topic but it does still seem like men are the problem. The problem is that we as a society haven't taught those skills and worse yet reinforce the opposite. We should be concerned with men's internal lives and mold them to fit into modern society
Seriously. We can’t just call men “the problem”. We have to address the problems men are having in their social lives and in dating. Men are not being given a fair shot to bring their best selves.
He had recently read about a high school creative writing assignment in which boys and girls were asked to imagine a day from the perspective of the opposite sex. While girls wrote detailed essays showing they had already spent significant time thinking about the subject, many boys simply refused to do the exercise or did so resentfully.
I mean, we're not just talking about the ability to communicate (which is important), but the basic ability to empathize. If men (in general) are unwilling to even consider the female point of view, is it any wonder why women have a difficult time dating? This isn't happening in a vacuum; there are real reasons why this is happening.
Think of the structural issues which have caused this to be the case. Blaming men for not achieving an externally defined target isn’t going to help anyone.
Boys refusing to do an exercise about imagining a day as the other gender represents a social problem, not a men problem. High school boys who refuse to imagine themselves as someone else were taught to be resistant to that idea, and not only by men but society as a whole.
Maybe we stop with top down one size fits all solutions to human interaction? The article is a good example of part of the problem, as it seems to exonerate one group while putting all the onus for change on the other. Mainly by it having essentially a single position from all them people that the author uses as sources and references and the narrow scope that they actually show.
You couldn’t be more in your own echo chamber. If other men are telling you woman also act the same way as some men and also have issues and you refuse to see another position or point of view you are the problem.
I would hesitate to draw conclusions from something like that. Both me and a lot of the other men I know just flat out skipped basically every assignment like that if it didn’t give enough points to be worth the effort, from middle school up through college.
Beyond that, it just seems like a shitty assignment as a whole. Because either a) it’s done under an assumption that their day as the opposite sex would be spontaneous, and thus would have very few relevant differences from their normal days (and we can easily guess those differences) or b) it’s done under an assumption of having always been the opposite sex, in which case it would just be an exercise in the butterfly effect, since huge amounts of things would be different, to the point that any generic hypothetical day would work.
All this is to say, it’s a prime assignment for skipping
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.
Gen-X men see eye-to-eye with male Gen-Zers. An identical 43 percent of men in that bracket call themselves feminists, compared to 49 percent of the generation’s women.
I feel like the authors think these 2 sentences are supporting the same argument, and I think they do not.
Asking someone if they “identify as a feminist” is vastly different than exploring their core values. “Feminism” is a badly exploited word that means many different things to many different people, even within a generational cohort.
It’s entirely possible that the sample of Gen-Xers that identify as feminist also carry more regressive beliefs than Gen-Zers that said they were not feminists.
The way this study was summarized in the article smells a lot like an older author (read: Gen-X or Boomer) trying to make sense of Gen-Z by plopping them into buckets created for the older generation.
I don’t know anything about anything, but this smelled less of science than an article reporting a study ought to.
I don’t know how much I trust AEI’s motivation, methods or conclusions. The same survey also shows gen z are much less likely to go to church, less likely to drink and smoke, less likely to have a girlfriend/boyfriend…and gen x and boomers are more likely to do all of that. Is it true? Probably. But when you are asking a 19 year old and a 59 year old the same question…how do you even calculate what the answer means?
Currently Gen Z included aa young as 11. Are they polling 13 year olds? Because I definitely give zero shits what 13 year old boys think.
Yes I’m joking because the very premise of comparing the age groups with specific questions is problematic. “Are you a feminist” doesn’t mean the same thing to someone born in 2002 as it does someone born in 1972.
If you ask me…a 40-something man, I say yes I’m a feminist because I want you to know I am an ally and support women. If you ask a 16 year old, I would doubt the word means much to them at all. But I bet they will be more supportive of women than our generation anyway.
Language changes with time, not with birth year. While someone born in 1972 certainly has much more life experience and context than someone born in 2002, the question today will mean approximately the same thing to both.
Not really, no. People aren’t working off some master database of language that pushes updates out universally. They’re working from their own understanding based on their own life experiences. Someone born in 1973 will have a very different socialization and bundle of personal experiences than someone born in 2002.
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”.
But do they identify as a non-labelled person that respects women and their choices? Or is this just about political labelling made for marketing and division?
Articles like this suck. They contribute absolutely nothing to discussion by just saying “well, other people also have problems too”, without even attempting to suggest any direction where a solution is.
They contribute context? And if you have women in your life it affects you as well somehow. Tbf there’s wasn’t really anything new in it for me personally, but mb it helps someone else to be more empathetic.
Ahh, yes. The only possible reason I could want to make progress is because it’s edgy. How about you go somewhere else if you’re only interested in dismissing everything out of hand
A solution which doesn’t care about context, empathy and emotions in regard to social problems is not worth much. Also you were the one dismissing anything I was contributing
It’s not just a gender thing, it’s also a family/culture thing. Like I just come from a family where people will talk over each other, but than I have some balkan friends who will talk over me like it’s nothing (no matter the gender). What I try to do is to adjust to the situation - if someone is quieter I will let them speak out, if someone is interrupting I will also join in in a more lively way. In a group setting if I see that someone is getting talked over - I will try to refer the conversation back to them.
When dealing with small groups, I ask participants for their perspective by name. The loudest doesn’t go first, and everyone gets equal-ish time. That doesn’t scale to a large forum though.
To me what stands out is not the fact that men speak up more than women do, but that women get ignored/dismissed when they do speak. I make an effort to:
Give them attention
Understand their point of view
Engage in their point of view
Not let others (men) interrupt and if they do, quickly get back to the core discussion until the speaker is satisfied/has said everything they wanted to say
Basically give your attention not to the loudest ones, but the ones that deserve it. Things like these make all people who usually don’t engage in discussions more likely to engage in the future.
I think you are absolutely right. In general I think that everyone should feel comfortable to speak when they want but in return should respect that other people get the right to have their voice heard too.
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