"The media are all wrong about men"

[lumberjack_jeff]

During a book tour last fall, I had a chance to share a few drinks with roughly a dozen law-school students—half male, half female—at a top university in Virginia. And though I hate to say it, here goes: the young men were smarter and more driven than the young women, who came off like sorority lightweights auditioning for Legally Blonde IV. The men wanted to talk about the law and history. The women wanted to slam tequila and talk about cities that offer “good hook-up potential” during summer internships.

Sadly, to hear professors tell it, law schools are stuffed with “quota babes” like these, who are admitted to adjust the enrollment imbalances that persist in male-dominated fields such as law, engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and computer science. A few years back, Lawrence H. Summers, then president of Harvard, drew fire for suggesting that women’s slow progress in these disciplines may have more to do with “issues of intrinsic aptitude” than the age-old barriers of sexism. The Virginia spectacle left me wondering if he was right, and whether, for their own good, we need to prevent unqualified women from suiting up for roles they can’t fulfill …
♦◊♦
Yeah, right. As I hope you’ve guessed, I’m only pretending to be a sexist idiot. I did meet some law students in Virginia last year, and they were all smart and impressive. But even if the women had been airheads, that wouldn’t be grounds for such sweeping generalizations by me. The enrollment statistics and the Summers quote are real, but everything else is a simulation.

Of? Of the attacks on young men that have become so popular in the media lately. These range in style from mainly-for-laughs (like Julie Klausner’s 2010 book, I Don’t Care About Your Band, a funny memoir ripping the various Star Wars geeks and self-obsessed indie rockers she’s dated), to cutely provocative (Dan Abrams’s new Man Down, which compiles research “proving” that “Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers and Just About Everything Else”), to very serious, like “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin’s much-discussed article in The Atlantic from last summer, which examined whether a fundamental shift is underway that will lead to men being one down in a women-dominated future. “What if the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men?” she chillingly asked.

http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/media-wrong-about-men/

[Warren DeMontague]

1. The media loves these made up stories that play on American insecurities.

Like the cavalcade of "you're doing it wrong" mommy books endlessly flogged by Time, etc. last year. Ooooh, "tiger moms are best!" "no, no, disaffected, smoking, cold and unfeeling French bebe moms do it better!"

And 3 months from now there will be another opportunity to pay $19.95 to learn why all your parental instincts are wrong, wrong, wrong, and the fact that manufacturing jobs have all gone to China has nothing to do with soulless outsourcers, dirt cheap labor costs and zero environmental oversight, but rather the fact that YOU DIDN'T MAKE YOUR KID STAND OUTSIDE BAREFOOT IN SUB ZERO TEMPERATURES BECAUSE SHE WOULDN'T PRACTICE THE PIANO FOR FOUR HOURS STRAIGHT!

This "end of men" nonsense is the same shit, although in my experience men are less likely to engage in anxiety and angst driven magazine and book purchases. Maybe that's a generalization, but its what i've seen.

[4th law of robotics]

2. "men are less likely to engage in anxiety and angst driven . . . "

Would explain why these articles and books and magazines are almost exclusively geared towards a female audience.

Men are being talked about, not spoken to.

Actually that would probably explain the horrible gender stereotypes against men in popular culture (dads being beyond useless, men in general being stupid kids, and so on): it appeals to female fantasies. Men's opinions aren't taken in to account because we don't matter as far as profits are concerned.

Where men do care (video games, certain movie genres, and so on) the slant is very different.

Oddly enough you'll get endless streams of op-eds lamenting the horribly sexist culture of video games but relatively few on the horribly sexist culture of daytime television.

Apparently men being the man target audience in porn, a few movies, and videogames is an outrage when all women have is most magazines, commercials, almost all cable television, and a good chunk of the movies as well.

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. The purpose of the TV is to sell soap.

You're exactly right about the stereotypes that need to be pandered to in order to facilitate that purpose.

[4th law of robotics]

4. It is unfortunate that denigrating men apparently appeals to so many women

at least judging by the number of ads geared towards women that have that as their focus.

When men are accused of objectifying women that at least leaves the woman being desirable in some fashion (albeit not the best manner).

When women do it to men it leaves the men as completely valueless. A nuisance at best, a menace at worse.

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. Warren Farrell coined the phrase "success object"

as the male corollary to "sex object".

[loli phabay]

6. thats quite an on target phrase

[loli phabay]

7. I also think guys have a different way of looking at other guys making an ass of themselves

we can look at the jackasses of the world and admire the downright stupidity of what they are attempting and kidding ourselves on that we too would do that given the chance. Lets be honestwhat guy dosent find stuff like farts, some one falling off their bike or some guy trying to be smooth screwing the pooch funny. We can laugh at the idiots and still relate to them and see ourselves in their epic failness.