
The War Against Boys - vilda
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/05/the-war-against-boys/304659/?single_page=true
======
Overtonwindow
I think this is still relevant. Society places a lot of pressure on boys to
man up and win, and I think unfairly pushes males to hide their feelings.

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baus
I do think men (at least in my generation; I'm 42) are expected to bury their
emotions. Emotions are viewed as weakness. I think this is dangerous, and I've
witnessed men such as my dad suffer through their problems in silence. It
might be viewed as stoic, but I don't think it is healthy for the mind or a
way to find happiness.

~~~
Overtonwindow
I'm there with you at 35, sir. My father too suffered through his emotions
from his time in Vietnam, having to keep it all down. My girlfriend tells me
the one differing factor between me and all of the other men she's dated is
that I express my emotions, and I'm not afraid to talk about them. However
she's warned me not to let that show around her father because he will react
critically. It's healthy to open up and express emotions. It's a shame we're
just now, with this youngest generation, beginning to truly realize that.

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wolfhumble
(The Atlantic May 2000 Issue)

~~~
Freak_NL
Meta:

Perhaps a hint could be added on HN's submission page about adding the year of
publication in parentheses for older articles? That seems to be the custom.

~~~
denzil_correa
I think this should be made explicit for articles that are not recent.

~~~
georgeecollins
Agree - I read this and I thought, I have read this before.

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skj
I think it's telling that the article opens with girl empowerment as a segue
into boys being kept down.

This isn't zero sum, people.

~~~
exo762
It is not and it should not be. Splitting co-ed classes into single-sex
classes solves the issue. Same goes for teachers being mostly female - just
hire male teachers for boy classes.

EDIT: solves the issue of same model of class education being forced onto both
girls and boys.

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kstenerud
Where did you hear this from?

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xwkd
They may have been referring to something like this:

[http://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/ednext20064_68....](http://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/ednext20064_68.pdf)

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dhatch387
An interesting follow up, women continue to gain on men in college enrollment
rates as of 2014: [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/womens-
colle...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/womens-college-
enrollment-gains-leave-men-behind/)

~~~
wrsh07
What surprises me isn't that women improved, it's that black/white/asian men
barely did.

[but even still, some of those numbers were abysmal...]

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dhatch387
Why was this post flagged and deleted?

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brudgers
Perhaps because the community felt it did not produce an intellectually
interesting discussion and that the odds of it producing one were
significantly lower than the odds of it producing an unproductive one.

\+ As a news item: While the topic may be intellectually interesting, the
Hacker News community probably doesn't bring much specific informed expertise
to the topic and no person's experience is going to stand out as more relevant
to the point that anyone changes their opinions...Peter Norvig's opinion is no
more informed than Marrissa Meyer's.

\+ As a topic inspiring discussion: much of the discussion wound up being
meta-discussion about Hacker News, e.g. this thread. As this comment
demonstrates, that is a topic that leads to rather dull discussions.

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CapitalistCartr
May of 2000. Not that anything has changed in American classrooms since then.

~~~
chme
No, something has changed, there was this great campaign
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_are_stupid,_throw_rocks_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_are_stupid,_throw_rocks_at_them!_controversy))
in 2003.

Update: Oh, and because internet: /s

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wrsh07
This seems like an issue that is easily susceptible to Simpsons paradox.

What happens if you also split by race or socioeconomic class?

Also, I think part of the issue is that it's difficult to measure what makes a
successful high school (and there is no good proxy on a short feedback loop).
Is it college admissions? Minimizing suicides (that seems important...)? Etc

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rustynails
It is good to see a well researched article. However, the article gets
something fundamentally wrong that I strongly disagree with. The idea of
equality (of outcome) is a misnomer vs equal opportunity. 10 people don't win
a race at the same time. I deeply believe that boys develop language skills
slower than girls, and conversely, boys embrace science more readily than
girls, unless there is extreme interference (like today).

Where we get it wrong is our extreme prejudice based on gender and a belief in
equal outcomes. The last few years in Australia have been particularly brutal.
Our government heavily promoted a commercial with a 10 year old boy slamming a
door as domestic violence, followed by "that's a boy thing". This was a
calculated attack to demoralise half of Australia's population, with no intent
of stopping domestic violence. In fact, I challenge anyone to look at gender
generalisations in any media in Australia (Google male/female with year by
year timeframes as an example), or even listen to Australia's own minister for
Sex Discrimination who brazenly supports highly sexist statements in
interviews when she is on TV. She's a lawyer and lawyers consider their words
carefully - it speaks volumes of how bad we are that almost no one has
condemned any of this. The prejudice is unprecedented in at least 50 years.
Nothing comes close to being so aggressive as media and governments are today
with respect to sexism.

I promised I would build evidence about sexism and how we are far more sexist
than I've ever seen. So far, I've researched what I can of 1970 and part of
1971. I found one article calling for boys to deliver newspapers, that was all
I recall that was obviously sexist (from memory). I took many photos of
adverts, articles, especially education, sports, advertising and politics. I
will publish my findings, but as I expect to be attacked relentlessly and
viciously (aka Matt Taylor), I intend to be robust in my evidence and
(temporarily) remain anonymous in doing so. I've also been writing articles to
support photo evidence and to cite blatant lies in this decades long gender
war.

I am glad to see articles like this being discussed, however, as the sexism
has recently become far more aggressive and far more prevalent and directed at
younger children (code.org and Science Week in Australia as two examples), I
have little faith that most people are listening and/or care. When the topic
posted hits most mainstream papers, I know the gender war is stopped (at least
for a time).

If you are a decent human being, I emplore you to take a hard stance against
feminism or any gender based movement.

Thank you to the poster of this article and to the author.

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nv-vn
Shouldn't this have a (2000)?

