
The Man Trap - SirensOfTitan
https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-man-trap
======
dnautics
> Women who behave like their male colleagues may be disliked for being
> “pushy” or “bitchy”, but these penalties are offset by the fact that they
> are also likely to enjoy more power and greater financial rewards. When men
> adopt the jobs and behaviours associated with women, however, they typically
> experience a loss of status with fewer perks and more social sanctions,
> especially from other men.

I think older (straight) men do not care about loss of status or social
sanctions from other men. They care about loss of status from women.
Especially when in long term relationships, there's the fear of an incorrect
narrative where their partner often _says_ that adopting feminine roles is
appreciated, but subconsciously leads to less attraction. (with
acknowledgement that the reverse is sometimes true for women's perceptions in
the eyes of men)

[edit: it's actually in the article too ~3/4 of the way down, I should have
been more patient]

------
socrates1998
Yes, I agree. Men are often told they need to be everything:

Successful yet don't work too much. Help with the kids, yet don't be feminine.
Be strong, yet sensitive. Have hard employable skills, but also be an artist.
Don't play video games, but be fun to be around.

All of these are difficult to balance.

The scary part is the a majority of divorces are ended by women.

I don't know the answer, but as long as we acknowledge the fact that both
modern men and modern women have a long list of conflicting demands on them, I
think we can show everyone more compassion.

~~~
dionidium
_" Don't play video games, but be fun to be around."_

I was nodding along until I got to this one. What in the world do video games
have to do with being a fun person to be around?

~~~
greglindahl
I think the point here is about interacting with a computer vs interacting
with the people in the room.

~~~
dionidium
Yes, except _those two_ ideas are strikingly compatible :)

------
scarface74
Why the focus on married women earning less than single women instead of
focusing on household income?

Even if the single woman earns more than a married woman. For the most part, a
married couple should have more disposable income after living expenses than
her single counterpart. Married couples have a greater per capita net worth
than their single counterpart.

In our case, because of choices we made together, my wife earns a little over
10K less than she did when she was single 5 years ago, but because I could
depend on her to carry health insurance and she has more flexible schedule,
that helps our family, I was able to switch jobs aggressively and I earn
roughly $50,000 more than I did before we got married. We are both better off.

[https://www.forbes.com/2006/07/25/singles-marriage-money-
cx_...](https://www.forbes.com/2006/07/25/singles-marriage-money-
cx_tvr_06singles_0725costs.html)

[https://www.google.com/amp/www.today.com/amp/money/why-
marri...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.today.com/amp/money/why-married-
people-tend-be-wealthier-its-complicated-1C8364877)

 _Once they are married, the couples also are able to take advantage of
economies of scale – anything from buying just one dishwasher to relying on
one another’s health insurance. That allows them to build wealth more quickly
than their peers who are single, divorced or living together romantically._

 _For example, a married man may be able to work 12 hours a day to please his
bosses and get promoted, because he and his wife can divide household duties
so he can get ahead. That’s not as much of an option for a single parent._

~~~
watwut
I think that money are simple and crude measure of achievement and social
approval. E.g. If part of your motivation is competitiveness or passion for
your profession, she is losing after each child. My husbands higher salary
won't make up for my missed promotion or less interesting project, it won't
make me proud of my skills, basically.

The article however was about men primary. Which I found interesting, because
perspective of male who would prefer different tradeoff is rarely available.

~~~
scarface74
Isn't that a lifestyle choice that spouses make together - whether to have
kids, devote more time to each other, pursue their careers, etc.?

~~~
Mz
When you are married AND have kids, one thing that can happen is that the
parent who is most concerned about the welfare of the kids has no choice but
to simply buck up and do what is necessary for their sake. Quibbling with
another grown adult about "fairness" and "equality" can be a great way to see
the kids get shortchanged.

So, once there are children involved, it is not unusual for the wife to just
suck it up and do what the kids need at personal cost to her. It often makes
little sense to try to hold hubby's feet to the fire and insist on him doing
his fair share at home or whatever.

This is not man-bashing. I am a woman and former homemaker. I do a lot of
even-handed writing that tries to consider both sides of the picture. But this
is a reality in many marriages. I do not self-identify as a "feminist" in part
because, to me, "feminism" is about women wanting careers and to hell with any
other considerations. This ongoing argument about equality of the sexes seems
to mostly leave out the critical detail of the welfare of the children.

Unless and until we start talking about what works for the family as a whole,
including kids, and society as a whole, including families with legal minors,
this entire argument about men vs. women and so-called equality will continue
to be sick and twisted and will tend to continue to crap on any parent that
actually cares deeply about the welfare of their kids, regardless of gender.

~~~
lactau
>to me, "feminism" is about women wanting careers

Second-wave feminism lasted from 1960s to 1980s.

~~~
Mz
I don't know what relevance that has to anything I said. Aside from the cherry
picking aspect of how you (mis)quoted me, I was a homemaker for a lot of
years. I am 51 years old. I deal routinely with women who look down upon me
because they chose to put their careers first. In some cases, they chose to
not have children at all. In their eyes, I absolutely am not their equal and
unequivocally not deserving of any real respect.

Dealing with such women is usually a worse experience for me than dealing with
most men. Such women are typically pretty toxic.

~~~
watwut
Because these choices are very personal and people are very insecure about
them. Does you staying home and being alright with it really means she is bad
egoistic mother? Does some women liking staying home signify that world is
moving back to homemaker side? Does me staying at home (and having to fight
changes situation push on you) really means I am naturally lazy or less
capable as conservatives like to suggest?

In a sense, no one talks about these considerations openly, ever. So it comes
out indirectly through attitudes.

Everyone is supposed to be motivated only by positive things, you are supposed
to stay because you are caring and loving not because you are sucking it up.
That idea insults people. You are supposed to work because you love career,
not because you don't want to be the lazy nagging stereotype - which you are
pretty sure you would turn into if forced to stay at home.

~~~
Mz
I have plenty of hypotheses of my own as to why other women do this sort of
crap to me. In the end, I don't think it matters. If you want to talk about
making the world a better place and "equality for all," then shitting all over
me because I made different lifestyle choices from you and this hits some
nerve of yours -- well, get therapy and quit making it my problem that you
aren't actually happy with the lifestyle choices you made.

If you want to call yourself a feminist and talk about getting equal rights
_for women_ , then I don't want to hear your crap about how your ideals only
actually apply to _women like you_ but still exclude large groups of women.

I think these are just bitter people who felt "It's a man's world and the
least worst option for a woman is to not have children."

That's not an idealistic solution. That is not about making the world a better
place. That is not about expecting more of the world. That is basically saying
"No point in fighting evil. You can't win."

Turning around and shitting on me because you gave up years ago makes you part
of the problem, not part of the solution.

------
Pxtl
I'm always iffy about articles like this because so much of the ground has
been utterly salted by online "men's rights" activists that are more motivated
by misogyny and antifeminism than actually righting wrongs.

It seems like a good read, but I would loved more data to crunch. The numerics
of working long hours was a great example of how the mathematics of the
situation make this stuff happen.

Anyhow, my wife and I actually do the fully-equal thing - she makes a bit more
than me (teaching in Ontario is paid well and I'm not working in one of the
Big Tech Market cities) so we have get to split things 50/50.

This actually presented a great opportunity: She wanted to go back to work
early from her parental leave after the birth of our 3rd kid. So I did
something new: I took the other half of the leave. 7 months off with my kids.

If you have the opportunity, do this. It actually made _more_ money for us, in
terms of strict income. Both of our employers provided a several weeks of top-
up parental leave in which the government unemployment-insurance benefit is
supplemented up to your full weekly paycheck. So by both of us taking time
off, we got to double-dip on this.

And the experience with the kids was fantastic. I got to play boardgames with
my son and teach him to ride his bike, and took my two daughters jogging in a
double-stroller every other day. I practically _lived_ in a ring-sling, even
getting the stink-eye from greasy guys on a family trip to Manhattan. I got to
properly get to know the parents of all my son's best friends and we're all
still close. I was in the best shape of my life and had a great time, and my
wife likes her job so she was happy to be at work.

I'd considered doing it on our 2nd kid, but friends and family had talked me
out of it because of worries about my career. I don't even _work_ in the same
place I did when my 2nd was born. I quit that job later on anyways, so I
missed out on that time for nothing.

To me, the biggest tragedy is the every-upwards climb of working hours for the
household. There was a time when a family would live on a single 40 hour
workweek. And what have we gained? I mean, for people who work retail, does
the fact that they work on Sundays and every night to 10PM mean they actually
sell more goods? Or does it just mean that retailers need to pay staff less
per-hour because they're selling for more hours?

~~~
emsy
>"men's rights" activists that are more motivated by misogyny and antifeminism
than actually righting wrongs.

What you think or told they are motivated by and their actual motivations are
different things.

~~~
vacri
If MRAs were primarily motivated by actual concern for men's lot in life,
they'd do more proactive work. Instead they are mostly reactive, coming out of
the woodwork when something is mentioned about women. They bitch about how bad
men have it in order to deflate the issue de jour, then are not to be seen
until the next time someone talks about women.

The OP is utterly right in saying that the ground has been salted by these
man-children. Men do face problems, but MRAs do little work and mostly just
armchair whine. How many of them create working groups or petition politicians
or similar? Compare to feminism, where while it has a share of whiners, is
mostly pro-active; organising events, talking to stakeholders, starting
discussions instead of derailing them. You see it here on HN, where a topic is
about women, and the whiners come out to derail... yet these same MRAs don't
post their own articles about men.

~~~
Pxtl
I always like to point at Movember. A solid men's-issue foundation with no
whining, no association with mras, and it generates an pantsload of money for
a good men's-issue cause with relentless positivity.

MRAs complain while the real men concerned by men's issues are actually doing
something. Worried about the discrepancy between funding for breast cancer vs
prostate cancer? Well you can moan about the nasty feminists and how society
cares about women's suffering more than men's, or you can make a difference.

~~~
ar15saveslives
How to be "proactive" with widely accepted discriminatory practices and
affirmative action?

------
wcummings
>Chase, a father in his late 40s who is a partner at an international law firm
in Chicago. “When I see a woman who has children and I know she and her
husband are working like crazy, that concerns me for the sake of the kids,” he
says. “But when I see stay-at-home dads, I don’t think very highly of them.
Call it sexist, call it whatever you want, but I think it’s kind of wimpy to
do that. It’s checking out, not being in the game, not fighting for success.
Those are the traits I value.”

Wow, Chase sounds like a real turd, I feel bad for his kids.

------
phd514
>> Coltrane has found that after controlling for variables like age and
education, married American men earn significantly more than their unmarried
or divorced male peers, and their earnings go up with every child they have.
Marriage seems to make men more productive at work because it allows them to
outsource much of the housekeeping to their wives.<<

I don't see how that last sentence makes any sense. Since when does one's
earnings have anything to do with whether the housekeeping for one child or
three children is "outsourced" to wives? I think it's far more likely that
being a father to more children is correlated with being older and more
experienced and therefore more highly compensated.

~~~
icewater
"...after controlling for variables like age and education."

~~~
phd514
Hmm, fair point. It just doesn't make any sense then that more children
correlate to higher income because the housekeeping responsibilities fall to
the wife.

------
gozur88
>Coltrane has found that after controlling for variables like age and
education, married American men earn significantly more than their unmarried
or divorced male peers, and their earnings go up with every child they have.
Marriage seems to make men more productive at work because it allows them to
outsource much of the housekeeping to their wives.

That's an assumption. IMO it's more likely to be that men with families out-
earn their single and divorced counterparts because they're motivated to do
so.

Particularly as compared to divorced men. There's no point in killing yourself
at work if the ex is going to take half the money.

~~~
micahbright
Luckily, in Texas, child support is capped and alimony is politically
unpopular. So there is a motivation for divorced men to make more.

------
jondubois
I think that in a couple, there is always some form of resentment towards the
partner which does not work (is not pulling their weight) but I think that the
level of resentment is many times higher if the non-working partner happens to
be a man.

~~~
killjoywashere
When I was in med school, married with two kids, every member of my wife's
family told her to divorce me, not once, but on a regular basis. They all
think I'm great now and wonder why we don't visit them much.

------
samirillian
I think a big part of reckoning with these social pressures may be simply
expressing them out loud. It seems to be a truism of therapy that "you should
never be ashamed of your feelings," but the very real benefits that white men
continue to reap on one level tend to preclude an emotionally honest reckoning
on another level.

A lot of the negative effects documented in this essay seem to purely relate
to cognitive dissonance. For example, the essay said that men would be more
willing to accept certain "child-friendly policies" if they believe that it
would not decrease their socially-perceived masculinity.

I can only believe that it would also help men to openly express these fears,
to state out loud the dissonance in their self conception that (largely
positive) social change has wrought.

------
monksy
> misogyny and antifeminism

What's wrong with anti-feminism? Also, misogyny is one of those catch-alls
that's being abused to mean: "Does not complement women" as of late.

~~~
dang
Please don't post like this. The unsubstantive+ragey combo forms an inflection
point at which threads go from bad to much worse.

When a discussion turns into "yay label" vs. "boo label", there's no
information left in it, and flamewars are the only thing left to do.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337198)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
monksy
I disagree with your view of what I posted. (it was not done with a
unsubstantive+ragey stance) What I posted was a disagreement with the
exaggeration of the alternative point of view they had. (Any article that
doesn't agree with the popular ultra liberal women's positive view is "salted
by mens rights [insert derogative terms etc]")

Being anti-feminist is not a bad thing. It is a conversation that could be had
(is it good, is it bad, etc), the topic of the original poster leads to a
conversatoin about this.

My concern with Hacker News is that it claims to be technology focused, and
founder focus. However articles dealing with gender issues, like this, get
promoted and kept up.

I completely respect and understand your stance that those topics tend to go
badly.

