What if

So, John at Hunter-Gatherer posted a link to an article claiming that the economy discriminates against men, which in turn reminded me of some things.

First off, I think the whole "men's rights" thing is a response to society giving men a particularly shitty identity. All the good parts of being male are not valued anymore, or not even considered worthwhile. A blog about cars actually touched on this rather well, which I also found via Hunter-Gatherer sharing it:

"Of course, “man’s work” isn’t what it used to be. Forget the “war on women” you’re hearing about right now, although it may well exist. There’s been a “war on men” for the last fifty years, and it’s been more successful than any of the Middle Eastern adventurism which has burned up the lives of American men like so much unwanted firewood at the end of winter. A war against the ideas of manhood, fatherhood, responsibility, dependability. The traditional American man — think Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird — has been parodied, denigrated, humiliated, ironized, writen out of existence. It’s no longer pleasant or even feasible to emulate our grandfathers and their unashamedly masculine lives.
Instead, we choose one of two paths. We become “modern men”, sensitive to womyn’s needs, ashamed of our basic desires, never sure whether to hold a door or let it slam shut. Most college-educated men take this path, particularly if they want to succeed in life. The men for whom success isn’t even an option — the rural, the uneducated, the discarded — well, they choose a distended hyper-masculinity. They can’t take care of their children, but they can bench-press a small car. They can’t hold a job, but they can kick your ass under MMA rules. They’ll never ascend above the service class, but if you are walking down a narrow hallway towards them you will guaranteedly have to bump shoulders with them. It is the appearance of masculinity serving in the stead of its actuality, an unemployed gym rat living with his parents and riding a Hayabusa covered with tribal graphics to the 7-Eleven on Saturday nights. "


I find this sentiment becoming more common, first I encountered it at T-Nation, but now I'm seeing it more. Men are getting pissed because it's not valued to be a man anymore. In a way it's not good to be a man, since men discriminate against women, and stuff like that. In general, it's just not a satisfying identity to have, much like the generic identity of being "white" in the US.

Jumping topics a little, women and men think differently. I remember reading an account of a Dutch transgendered man, who was a women, describing how his thought process changed as he took hormone therapy, and how he perceived the world differently. Anyway, women and men think different, so why wouldn't it make sense that they have different skills and capabilities? I think some of this gender equality discussion starts making an idealization of what humans really are, although this could just be me assuming they are using biological definitions wrongly, when in fact, they've redefined them for their own scholarly purpose. But, my main question is, what if men and women are different? What if there should be gender inequality?


I work in the science industry, and I wonder what would happen if there were to be only women groups, and only men groups. This would produce a change if men and women have different ways of working together and leading. The way gender equality discussions are going now, no one would ever probably consider condoning formation of single-gender groups, but I think it would be something interesting to consider.

Problems with Identity

I've had ideas for this post for a long time, always floating in my thoughts. Usually being brought up by a certain article I read somewhere. What going to try to address is identity, or cultural identity. I could probably write a book on what identity is, but it's probably already been done, and lengthy definitions tend to aggravate me.

People are having trouble identifying themselves currently. Media is defining people, instead of people defining themselves. People are being defined in terms of other groups, Black vs. White, Man vs. Women, Gay vs. Straight.

If people just defined themselves as who they are, and didn't rely on other groups for identification, there would be a stronger sense of identity among people.

What I'm trying to get at, albeit roughly, is that it seems that everyone is defining their identity in terms of others. There's "Black" Americans defining part of who they are with the racism they experience from "White" Americans. Women defining themselves by the lack of masculine characteristics, and men the other way around.

I guess if people just started not caring as much about how other people define themselves and fit their definition to them, and take a break on political correctness, we'd have more meaningful groups, or at least those that do not feel threatened by the existence of others. In regards to political correctness, I mean that people should still take care not to offend people, but I'm still going to define myself as a man as being strong of constitution and will, and not care that others define themselves differently. This starts getting into the territory of "What is a Man?" on a societal scale, instead of just being a personal definition.

That was a rough snapshot.

And one reason why I like T-Nation, it's a good platform to reach men, and "Your crumbling Y Chromosome" was conveying the ideals of a strong man, something that tends to be avoided, or just not done.