Kim du Toit makes some good points about my previous post entitled, "Soft and Aimless or Strong and Calculating?":
I agree that men are opting out of the game but I think they are finding different ways then in the past to meet their goals. Men really are going their own way these days. I used to think that it was troubling that men were "opting out" of parts of society such as marriage, college etc. but I realized that my thoughts about them doing so were wrong. I thought that men would miss out by not having a family, or by not going to college but I found out through talking with men that they are just finding different ways to meet their goals on their terms and not society's.
For example, I recently talked with my accountant, a man who is getting an advanced degree online. He didn't want to go to a PC university and sit through a bunch of professors putting down his gender or having him do ridiculous amounts of tedious and inefficient paperwork that he found boring. Instead, he is taking classes that he enjoys on his schedule. The male nurse at my doctor's office is getting his degree online because he doesn't want to deal with the "crap" that a regular university expects students to listen to on an ongoing basis. He stated that he simply reads the material and takes the tests and doesn't have to deal with the PC milieu that would leave him annoyed and disgruntled. Both of these men have successful careers and while I don't know what they make, I bet it is plenty enough to pay for whatever lifestyle they want to enjoy.
It's no wonder universities are turning into pink collar ghettos. Men are finding other avenues that are fulfilling and fit in with their lifestyle. With the rise of technology and alternative ways to make a living and live one's lifestyle, I have no doubt that most men will find what works for them.
Myself, I think that men are neither aimless nor protecting themselves. I think they’ve just decided not to play the game.
In the meantime, they do stuff that’s pleasing to them—solitary or detached pursuits, from video games to hobbies like fishing or hunting—because those are not part of the game. So they go to work, put in the hours, and don’t care about their work, their careers or the job. They smile, go to endless meetings, work by “teaming” and in short, they do all the role-playing that they need to do in order to get by.
I agree that men are opting out of the game but I think they are finding different ways then in the past to meet their goals. Men really are going their own way these days. I used to think that it was troubling that men were "opting out" of parts of society such as marriage, college etc. but I realized that my thoughts about them doing so were wrong. I thought that men would miss out by not having a family, or by not going to college but I found out through talking with men that they are just finding different ways to meet their goals on their terms and not society's.
For example, I recently talked with my accountant, a man who is getting an advanced degree online. He didn't want to go to a PC university and sit through a bunch of professors putting down his gender or having him do ridiculous amounts of tedious and inefficient paperwork that he found boring. Instead, he is taking classes that he enjoys on his schedule. The male nurse at my doctor's office is getting his degree online because he doesn't want to deal with the "crap" that a regular university expects students to listen to on an ongoing basis. He stated that he simply reads the material and takes the tests and doesn't have to deal with the PC milieu that would leave him annoyed and disgruntled. Both of these men have successful careers and while I don't know what they make, I bet it is plenty enough to pay for whatever lifestyle they want to enjoy.
It's no wonder universities are turning into pink collar ghettos. Men are finding other avenues that are fulfilling and fit in with their lifestyle. With the rise of technology and alternative ways to make a living and live one's lifestyle, I have no doubt that most men will find what works for them.
posted by Helen at 12:38 PM
57 Comments:
Gee, and I thought I was antisocial. Who knew I was part of the avant garde?
Oddly enough, even those moronic males, after getting crapped on enough, will opt out. Who would have guessed?
Personally, I was at the 'opt out' point in the late '80s, when I figured the hassles weren't worth yhe effort. Then I met the woman who is now my wife.
She won't call herself a feminist, but she is, in the most real sense. She doesn't *need* me to be anything but what I am, and I'm the same with her.
We went through grad school together in the '90s, and it was bad then and worse now. universities are no place for a great many men.
I went to a small private college (<2,000 students) and found that true open-mindedness (not political correctness) was the order of the day.
Still got to enjoy all the fun college stuff like road trips and dorm rivalries.
Remember: some of the most important learning in college takes place outside the classroom, as we learn how to act and interact with people as responsible, independent adults.
I like the idea of lifelong learning, but there is significant value in the campus/dorm experience.
It's not just universities that are becoming pink-collar ghettoes.
Corporate America is already there.
"Everyone was kung-fu fighting!"
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/05/02/video-the-first-rule-of-fight-club-is-you-let-espn-film-fight-club-if-they-ask/
As a counter-point, I'm an unmarried male who's starting to have some success in the corporate world, and I find my interest in marrying a woman for life goes down as my income goes up. There's just much more downside.
Waiting for Cham to chime in with some snarky anti-male comment.
My husband stopped giving money to his alma mater when they banned tailgating parties at football games. He says as long as they continue to systematically take the fun out of going to college, they won't be getting any money from us.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Outside of a few narrow professions, college is a waste of time. I say drop high school graduation to after the tenth grade and then have kids go to trade schools. Universities would stop all the remedial this and that and general ed and just concentrate on extending practical learning from the trade schools.
Won't happen because higher education is now super big business sucking at the government teat.
Patrick --
Hardly. Just imbecile geeks with crap swinging at each other for fantasy machismo. Idiots.
Two thoughts:
Speaking as someone who was everybody's ALL American Straight A Everything through high school and college, I am here to tell you that academia is over rated. I know plumbers that make $400,000 a year and MBA accountants making $60,000. College is, for almost everyone, an utter waste of time and money.
As for dropping out, count me in. I have worked from home for the last three years at half my former salary and never been happier.
Finances may force me back to the rat race soon, but who can get excited about dragging your arse out of bed every morning at 7am to go make some other man rich?
Re: college -- it would be interesting for some economist-type to take a look at what's going in the skilled trades, those jobs where someone without a degree can still make good money: plumbers, electricians, hazardous and weird jobs profiled on all those shows nowadays on the Discovery Channel and the History Channel.
Such jobs are utterly dominated by men (I can't even guess a female equivalent). Chauvinist pig that I am, I have a working theory that men simply are more productive at sniffing out a path to making money, without feeling obligated to waste a ton of money and resources getting a pointless degree in something soft like marketing. (I'm talking to you, ladies).
Kim is right about businesses acting all feminized. One reason I'm sticking with my current underpaid job run by people out of the minds, is that its the most masculine, bullshit free engineering department I've worked in. We don't have birthday parties, employees of the month, team building exercises and all that crap.
The worse is that you are no longer allowed to even disagree in meetings at many, especially larger, companies, largely out of fear of hurting someone's feelings.
Many men have always looked at the society run by their elders, rejected it an headed out instead to make a life for themselves on the frontier. That's a normal part of American life and history.
The difference is that the frontier is more often today on the only relatively unfenced and unregulated territory we have - the internet.
Yep. I finished my degree online then got a divorce because I was tired of being shamed, manipulated, and used. (I should have done that the other way around since the higher wages resulted in higher alimony payments.) Much, much happier now.
And yet my son's high school is pushing college for all students. My son would wither in a pink-collar ghetto. Out of 400 graduating seniors, he was the only one who attended an apprenticeship job fair by all the local unions. He wants to go into undersea welding. Yes, I know it is dangerous, but that may be the appeal. There is plenty of time for him to attend college if and when he so desires. It took me longer to accept his decision than my husband, and that's another reason it is so important for boys to have men in their lives.
...it would be interesting for some economist-type to take a look at what's going in the skilled trades, those jobs where someone without a degree can still make good money: plumbers, electricians, hazardous and weird jobs...
My husband and I are both college-educated, but we are not so sure anymore about encouraging our son to go, at least for "career training." We are thinking we'd rather see him build a career in the trades. He can always take classes if there's something he wants to study.
One of nicest and apparently happy-in-his-work men I've ever met was the guy who pumped out our septic tank. When we needed a new one he recommended a contractor; 3 years later when he came back to do his thing, he was genuinely thrilled to see the good work the contractor had done, and he said so. Most people would say "ewww" to such a job. But that's a job people need done, and it's probably not one that gives a guy a heart attack at 40.
there's also no affirmative action BS with an online degree.
of course the mainstream universities could open up online degrees and end affirmative action as an issue immediately, but that might entail more work.
Pink Ghettos! How appropriate. I am doing my doctorate online as my consulting gigs don't permit me the time out for on campus hiatus.
But the economics are the key feature facing brick and mortar education. Any university that is strictly B&M just won't last. The economies of scale will favor a university that can virtually triple enrollment vs those that will not. The other advantage is the Sheepskin looks no different hanging on the wall whether garnered virtual or physical.
King Crimson - "In the Court of the Crimson King". The album came out in 1970 or 1969. I believe.
"21st Century Schizoid Man".
The games have begun.
I want to know the ratio of men to women at the trade schools or vocational colleges like ITT Tech. I suspect men tend to go there because its shorter and there's no PC crap. My brother went to community college (before they became high school part 2). He took a bunch of computer classes and got a good job in an IT dept. He never got his degree but he takes endless computer classes and gets certificates in special areas that his job requires. Why go to some 8 am poetry class when you want to work with computers? Your stories about the online courses fits in with my theory. Most colleges have turned into a 4 year Oprah episode with some drunken debauchery thrown in. It annoyed the heck out of me and so I know the guys were going nuts. I became disenchanted with formal education when I took 4 years of Spanish and couldn't understand anything when I went to Mexico. My new philosophy is buy a good book and go out and DO whatever you're intested in. Unless you're going for one of the hard sciences, I'd pass on the expense of college. If guys want to meet college girls, go to college bars. Save a ton of money and no endless whining.
I worked in large, small, and medium-sized law firms from January 1963-December 2003. In one 18 year span, I co-founded and co-built a firm from 2-50 lawyers eventually with offices in Atlanta, DC, San Diego and Dallas.
As I got older and more experienced, I had to devote a larger and larger proportion of my time to management headaches and the "changing workplace" rather than practicing law.
Since Jan 2004 I have been practicing with a former partner in a virtual law firm, and have never been more professionally fulfilled. And there is no overhead to speak of since it is, like many "pajama" firms, essentially run out of our homes using the web and email to the max. No staff, no PC office procedures, and plenty of work with clients I really enjoy working with.
What's not to like?
The point of all that was that the foibles of the "pink ghetto" are not confined to academia, and plenty of us men are quite content to drop out and quit playing without adverse consequences, econonmic, professional or emotional.
Lucky for engineering students the only BS classes i have to take is philosophy, art history(actually like it, lots of buildings :) ) & english lit! Almost every class is full of men, ocasionally there is a girl.
go engineering!
Evil Rob's path to success lay through college only because of the people he met there. (And that only in a tangential manner.) One of them recommended him for a job working in the warehouse of a tech store. Doesn't sound like much, but he enjoyed it since it kept his body busy and his mind free.
We-elll, a couple of years later, that experience got him a job working for one of those new Apple retail stores, which at the time had thousands of applicants for each position. There was literally nobody with the necessary experience applying until he showed up. One thing led to another, and hard work paid off— he's now working for the retail distribution group in the corporate arm of the company. This division is all of about thirty people, and it was smaller when he joined. He's going to have a major project (internal; you'll never see it) come out this month.
His history degree, english minor, has nothing to do with his success. I think he mostly enjoyed it, though.
I remember hearing something and I'm not sure if it was in the local newspaper or on this blog. Basically, there are a lot of high paying trade jobs that aren't being filled. Either men don't know about them or they aren't interested.
It is happening everywhere. Corporate managerial and executive jobs are now held by people who should be administrative assistants. It is just fine for most corporations: creativity and initiative are troublesome qualities and administrative assistants do a great jobs of suppressing such displays of testosterone.
The smart and capable men are all independent consultants. They are taking in pay what they would never get in promotions or responsibility.
Way to go, Earth Girl! I hope when my son is an adult I am as supportive of his decisions as you seem to be with your son.
As a college grad woman married to a self-taught man, I have to agree with many of the posters here. College is great for some, not for others and becoming continually more hostile to traditional masculinity. My husband attended one semester of college and dropped out because he realized it wouldn't make him any money in the long run and he was wasting his time. He is incredibly bright and successful as a business owner and I have never doubted his ability to take care of his family no matter what happens because he is resourceful! (Something they don't teach in college anymore.)
Unfortunately, the death of vocational programs in high school has affected many young men interested in vital occupations. As a former public school educator, I cannot fathom why we are pushing college for all when it is obviously contrary to the wishes of so many bright and capable young people! What a waste of talent!
I've taken lots (i.e., at least 5) classes in physics, math, computer science, electronics technology, economics, psychology and anthropology. I've also taken at least 30 classes at both a 15,000 student community college and a 4000 student state liberal arts college. The differences in all these combinations are enormous.
First, the 2Y school had MUCH less PC BS than the 4Y school. Part of it may be that the 4Y school had a rather large Women's Studies department.
The math, physics and technology classes were dominated by men, pretty rigorous and almost entirely politics free.
The economics department were pretty liberal, but there was enough rigor in what they did that they couldn't go too far. Also there are a fair number of blogs written by economists, we were required to read lots of them and some of them are pretty conservative. For every Paul Krugman, there is a Gary Becker, a Greg Mankiw and a Thomas Sowell. Perhaps most importantly, profound cynicism is one of core beliefs of economics.
The psychology and anthropology departments had multiple personality disorder, I don't know how else to describe it. The physical anthropologist and primatologist were very rigorous and balanced (The primatologist was just as cynical as the economists. She was also the person who introduced me, and the rest of the class, to evolutionary psychology.) The cultural and social anthropologists constantly confused teaching with political advocacy and they were none to subtle about it either. It didn't help that two of the most outspoken of them were also women studies professors.
In psychology, as far as I can tell, the big schism is between the researchers and the therapists. And the department chair, a therapist with definite feminazi tendencies and my adolescent psychology professor, was best friends with the department's most prolific researcher, a happily married mother of two and my research methods professor. Go figure
Dr. Helen, like many of your posts, I find myself agreeing in principle but not in practice. I'm 32, male, live in a pinko town (Boston), so in some ways right in the crosshairs.
Not having spent decades in the corporate world, I asked my father, and he said large companies were retarded 30 years ago, though they were certainly more tolerant of three-martini lunches and shagging your secretary. So I will write that down as a loss for all, since that was presumably a good way for a nice lower-middle class girl to climb the social ladder.
When I hang out at the bar with the guys, no one complains about this stuff more than in passing. No one is checking out because of it. The finance American Psycho wannabes still do coke and curse and talk about the size of their @#$!s louder than they should.
As for marriage, the vast majority of my friends were married between 25-35. A few potholes, but no one had kids too fast, so the divorces were pretty clean as they go. The women were educated and employed and didn't clean the men out. Mind you, my parents split up after 30 years, so I'm not naive about how it can go. It was a bit War of the Roses for a while when I was in my early teens.
Of course this is all anecdotal but since all the comments ever seem to do is say that you're not going nearly far enough, I thought you ought to hear a dissenting view.
Studied programming in '72. Been an analyst most of the time since. Have pulled 5-6 figures later half of that time and been very happy. Yes, there is stress, but it's the kind I enjoy and working on Tandem machinery is a joy unto itself.
I finished my degree in biology because I wanted to. Never used college for anything else and actually didn't learn anything more than I knew, just got paper. Waste of money, really.
"since all the comments ever seem to do is say that you're not going nearly far enough"
Could you clarify that?
"Any university that is strictly B&M just won't last. The economies of scale will favor a university that can virtually triple enrollment vs those that will not."
Yes, but... Colleges aren't just in the admission business. Just as importantly, they're in the rejection business. The more people a college can afford to reject, the more valuable their sheepskin is.
This is true, anyway, for the top couple hundred schools. Below that, I tend to agree that they're all just issuing a fairly generic credential.
The real issue here, I think, is that undergraduate admissions offices do what private employers cannot do, and filter people based on cognitive intelligence. Ceteris paribus, I'd hire someone who dropped out of Yale after one year for a good reason than one who graduated from Northeastern (no offense, Huskies).
The top schools fight over the chunk of kids 1.5 or more standard deviations above median, with the fighting getting more extreme as you go. Once you get below +1SD of the mean, then it really doesn't mean as much, except a willingness to color inside the lines.
I work in a scientific field, so college was pretty much essential for me. Over the past few years I've been teaching biology to home school students, and my classes have grown larger every year. I've been able to use my practical knowledge to my advantage.
I'll be approaching retirement age in about 10 years, and I'm seriously contemplating developing the home school biology program into a full-time job once I retire...maybe even teach chemistry as well. I've tossed around the idea of teaching in a public or private high school, but that would mean having to get some sort of education degree or certificate, and I am NOT interested in having to slog my way through all those stupid classes on educational theory. From what I understand, when it comes to the PC multi-culti dumbing-down of the modern university, education departments are at the forefront.
I'm glad somebody said something about this. I'm tired of high school kids that are unsuited temperamentally for "higher education" being told that they won't amount to anything unless they go to a 4-year college when an apprenticeship or 2-year technical program would be far more appropriate.
There was a career fair recently held at a local high school for the kids at risk of dropping out. While there were some professions such as lawyer that required an advanced degree, there were others such as the owner of an auto repair shop, a beauty salon, an electrician, and other trades that merely required an apprenticeship and specialized education (without the BS) and their income was equivalent to or greater than those that spent a lot of years in school and were in debt up to their eyeballs for student loans.
Sloan, it isn't necessary to have an education degree to teach in all states.
I am having my bathroom renovated. It is creeping along: at this point, I await the drywaller, who has a reputation of being an ace drywaller, but of course, I must await humbly until he can make it to my little job, because he is REALLY BUSY making tons of money at larger jobs.
Truly. To get a good tradesman, we will be patient, pay out large sums of money, and be nice, really nice, when he finally turns up.
Now. What "profession" commands this respect?
Also, as to University, I am very happy to have taken History to the BA level. It hasn't made me any money, but it has provided me with a lot of personal enjoyment. The totally nice thing is, so much of what used to be in large university libraries can now be found on the 'web. This is really what will kill the university: their ownership of a library has been key to their power to make scholars come to THEM.
I think there are a lot of jobs around that involve independence, responsibility, and initiative...but many people miss out on them because of prejudice and risk aversion.
Consider business-to-business sales. There are a lot of people, male and female, selling high-ticket products like locomotives and major software systems, and often making $100-200K while doing it. Many of these jobs involve considerable autonomy. But there are a lot of college graduates who do not even consider such jobs, because they once saw "Death of a Salesman," and/or consider the front lines of commerce to be socially beneath them.
Also...for those looking for serious responsibility and real-time decision-making, the FAA is now on a major effort to hire air traffic controllers.
I have a several degrees ending in a Ph.D. in history, I chuched all the PC BS and I now work as a cabinetmaker....at the end of the day I can point to something concrete and say "I MADE that!" The job satisfaction is so far beyond what I had teaching....and listening to adult-age "children" whine about "you ruined my life you GAVE me a B and now I won't get into law school...don't you know who my father/mother is?..."
you get the picture. I make less than half what I did...but to be able at the end of the day, to have real satisfaction that I am contibuting something to society is worth the loss of money.
What world are you all living in? I just took a new job in a small company that is paying me over $100K and it is a job that I was not eligible for without my Ph.D. and extensive language skills (learned while in undergrad). My well-educated husband is in Iraq being shot at (how's that for manly and NOT opting out). Pink ghetto? More like lazy American ghetto full of people who expect everything handed to them on a platter, not grateful that others are in Iraq/Afghanistan for them, unaware they could be starving/dying in Darfur, suffering heat stroke crossing the desert from Mexico to the US ......
Dr. Helen,
What are the chances of a class action law suit ending the uni practice of "women's studies" altogether in one fell swoop?
After all they are discriminatory.
Brown vs Board of Ed was supposed to end that "separate but equal" dealie.
There's probably some obvious loophole, that my uneducated mind missed, which makes this impossible.
What are the chances of a class action law suit ending the uni practice of "women's studies" altogether in one fell swoop?
What about Title IX? Shouldn't there be an equal number of men's studies programs? And if the men don't show up...
papertiger,
It seems to me there might be a case, although a better lawsuit might be for men in education, think how few boys have male role models who are teachers. After all, male teachers have hit a 40 year low:
http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2008/02/percentage-of-male-teachers-hits-40.html
I am a college professor (economics) who is about to leave academia for good. I agree wholeheartedly with Helen and with most of the commenters.
For most people, college is largely a waste of time. This is doubly true for degrees in business. I have taught at three different universities and I would guess that at least half of the students should not be there. Some type of vocational training would be better.
And it is ridiculous how men get treated in universities. White men in particular are demonized.
Ah yes, those stupid women. Now they've even gone and ruined higher education for the men. Can't women remember their place??? That's what most of you commenting on this post sound like. Poor you. Boo hoo.
I have to agree with Elizabeth. Rumors of the "real" man's demise have been greatly exaggerated. So a corporation is a ghetto now because there's too many women? This is just absurd. I work in the business world, and I think that all of the good doctors here are making a feminist Godzilla out of a mole (or a shrew, for that matter).
This is what I wrote on Kim Du Toit's blog:
Kim: You see, as women have become more influential in the business world, that business world has changed to become more, well, womanly. “Conflict resolution” has replaced “decision-making”—where it’s more important for people to get along and not get their feelings hurt, than by hard decisions made which create winners and losers.
Me: I work in the corporate world, and I think you’re giving the “good old days” too much credit. William H Whyte was complaining about consensus management back in the early 1950’s in his book The Organization Man, and that was long before women participated in corporate governance beyond the typing pool. Men have been perfectly capable at waging zero accountability bureacracy without having to learn it from women.
In our effort to de-wussify men, lets not go to the opposite extreme of looking at them through some vaseline lens of false memory. Being a decisive leader is not the same as being a rude jerk. I’ve worked with and for male and female bosses, and you can’t make generalizations about either sex. Good leadership is a personal trait, not a gender stereotype. Women can be as driven, rude and nasty as men. Whether the workers are women or men, respect is always a prerequisite for effective leadership.
Kim: All good points. But as I pointed out, “consensus management” has now become the sine qua non of corporate operation, rather than just one option among many.
Me: Sorry, but that still doesn’t jive with what I see in the workplace. And if it is, how is it hurting business? Is there really a problem that is affecting the bottom line of business?
In the companies I work for (I’m a business analyst consultant) managers and executives still make decisions, often without consulting subordinates and just as often with mixed results. On the last two projects I’ve worked on progress has been impeded by department heads not wanting to give up control or work with other departments. Consensus building would improve the results. And I don’t see any appreciable difference between the sexes here. On my current project we had to retrace the entire requirements process because the project “owner”, a woman director, made all the decisions by herself and didn’t involve the departments whom she should have been representing.
And don’t confuse “sensitivity training” with giving up on decisive leadership or accountability. To the extent that bosses (mostly male) in the past have gotten away with abusive behavior (like throwing telephones at employees or demeaning them publicly), this is a good development. There is no reputable theory of leadership that counts abuse as a positive behavior in a leader. I’ve been in the military, and counter to popular belief it doesn’t count as a positive behavior there either.
elisabeth, you are a typical feminist. You expect men to go out and fight for you, while you stay home in comfort and work for 100k, where the only real danger is a papercut.
Phd, (piled higher and deeper), A lot of degrees are useless, fluff courses, in the UK i have seen degrees that HAVE no relationship to the real world, But these degree students are hired because they have a degree, not because they can do the work. A Phd is a sign that a company is a go ahead.
So elisabeth, why do you think men arent going to university? its been shown in study after study, report after report than men are not going to university. whats changed in the last 30 years, 20 years, 10 years. 5 years.
But a PHD means NOTHING,
Men are not going to university, FACT.
More Women are, FACT.
WHY? Why the change? Why are men leaving universities in droves, untrained? is it that the courses are no longer suitable for men?
If women wanted to be treated equally to men, they should be out fighting, (and before you moan about how i am being mean to the fighting man, i am not i am being mean to women who expect men to do everything).
Duck , what do you call a real man?
a man that makes furniture, goes out and hunts, or a stay at home dad, Whats your terms for what is a real man?
Enlighten me please you too elisabeth. Give me the critieria of what is a real man.
Real man: a human with XY chromosomes and a penis.
Real woman: a human with XX chromosomes and a vagina.
Those are the only definitions for which the word real applies. Everything else is psychology, subjective opinion and aesthetic preference.
I really don't care to characterize men or women as real or not real. I care about morals and character, and those considerations apply to both sexes.
If you want to consider what a man is in his primal state of nature, then he's a violent, philandering brute. Maybe that's what today's liberated woman wants, because it makes her all woozy and tingly in her g-spot, but I really couldn't care what such a woman wants. She deserves what she gets.
It's taken centuries of civilizing pressures to instill men with higher goals and principles than just responding to his appetites, but I'm afraid that we're on the verge of reversing all that for the benefits of "spontaneity" or some ill-advised quest for a "real, authentic" manhood. You can find that "manhood" in gangsta culture. I'll have no part of it.
Wow mercurior. Oh I'm crushed - a "typical feminist" said as an insult, quite original of you. Well if thinking people who whine about how the world is against them, doesn't accept them, causes them to "leave" a job or institution are lazy sods, then sign me up for feminism. My husband has a degree too for the same reasons I do, we enjoy learning. I worked hard for mine and have a GREAT job because of it, a job I wouldn't have if I didn't have the degree (because I wouldn't have the necessary skill set). A job that is part of the homeland security effort in the US - so much for worthless paper cuts. That's right, piled high and deep with how to do analysis, speak several languages, all just utterly worthless. Except of course it isn't. It's quite valuable. As a way to make a living, and as a way to challenge me intellectually, which I enjoy.
I think universities offer great education. I think learning a trade is great too if that's what meets your desire/needs. But I also think it's so much whining to think that men aren't welcome at universities or that higher education is worthless.
This comment has been removed by the author.
My husband has a degree too for the same reasons I do, we enjoy learning.
And that is the crux of what we're getting at here Elizabeth. You DON'T need to go to college to get a good education. I LOVE to learn. I'm in constant learning mode. I've taught myself economics because it interests me, I was self taught in the computer field and currently I'm teaching myself Spanish among other things. I don't need a university that hands me what amounts to be a very expensive piece of paper. I don't need to sit in a class room on someone else's schedule. I can learn what I want, ignore what I don't want and shape my education according to my needs, schedule and learning style.
Degree = Learning is a myth. There are a lot of ignorant 'educated' people out there. And there are a lot of knowledgeable and skilled people who haven't stepped foot in a college. It's fair to say a lot of people manage to be well educated despite the fact they went to college.
"It's taken centuries of civilizing pressures to instill men with higher goals and principles than just responding to his appetites, but I'm afraid that we're on the verge of reversing all that for the benefits of 'spontaneity' or some ill-advised quest for a 'real, authentic' manhood. You can find that 'manhood' in gangsta culture."
No. The point of all this is that the pendulum of the "civilizing pressure", as you call it, has swung too far over, and men have been coerced into becomimg more womanly.
What we're seeing is a reaction against that extreme -- by men at first rebelling, and then, when beaten down by PC rules and regulations, simply withdrawing.
If I were a 19-year-old man today, there's no way I would consider attending college, with all its stifling speech- and behavior codes. And even if I did, the prospect of working in some PC-bound corporation would not be attractive, especially when the career I would be planning could, in the end, be outsourced to the Third World.
It looks like a lot of young men feel the same way.
elizabeth:
Take it from one who has to fly way too often. I wouldn't brag about working for the TSA if I were you. (here it comes)
What we're seeing is a reaction against that extreme -- by men at first rebelling, and then, when beaten down by PC rules and regulations, simply withdrawing.
Kim
I can't speak for the college experience, since I graduated in 1980 and haven't been back since. But as I wrote on your blog, I am not seeing the pink ghettoization of the workplace that everyone is talking about.
Some of the changes that women have effected in the workplace, such as sexual harassment policies, have been beneficial. Courtesy and respect are not things that go against the male grain, or should, for that matter. If anything, the workplace seems to be masculinizing women. It isn't unusual for women executives to be charged with sexual harassment themselves.
But maybe that is part of it. For men to feel masculine, women have to act feminine. In that sense there has been a "relative" demasculinization of women. But I won't sign on to the notion that true masculinity requires that men curse and pound their fists on tables and make bawdy comments in the workplace.
It's frustrating to debate this in generalities. Where are the studies, the data, that describes the demasculinization? What are the clinical symptoms, beyond a general sense of unease with the state of masculinity and some hysterical rants by bloggers?
"It isn't unusual for women executives to be charged with sexual harassment themselves."
---
I'm a bit skeptical of that claim.
Maybe there are differences between sectors in the work world, but I doubt it. In any case, I haven't seen that.
A片-無碼援交東京熱一本道aaa免費看影片免費視訊聊天室微風成人ut聊天室av1688影音視訊天堂85cc免費影城亞洲禁果影城微風成人av論壇sex520免費影片JP成人網免費成人視訊aaa影片下載城免費a片 ut交友成人視訊85cc成人影城免費Ａ片aa的滿18歲影片小魔女免費影片小魔女免費影城免費看 aa的滿18歲影片sex383線上娛樂場kk777視訊俱樂部aa的滿18歲影片85cc免費影片a片免費看A片-sex520視訊做愛聊天室plus論壇sex520免費影片avdvd-情色網qq美美色網ut13077視訊聊天85cc免費影片aaa片免費看短片aa影片下載城aaaaa片俱樂部影片aaaaa片俱樂部aa的滿18歲影片小魔女免費影片台灣論壇免費影片後宮0204movie免費影片免費卡通影片線上觀看線上免費a片觀看85cc免費影片免費Ａ片aa影片下載城ut聊天室辣妹視訊UT影音視訊聊天室 日本免費視訊aaaa 片俱樂部aaa片免費看短片aaaa片免費看影片aaa片免費看短片免費視訊78論壇情色偷拍免費Ａ片免費aaaaa片俱樂部影片av俱樂部aaaa彩虹頻道免費影片 杜蕾斯成人免費卡通影片線上觀看85cc免費影片線上觀賞免費線上歐美A片觀看免費a片卡通aaa的滿18歲卡通影片sex520免費影片免費 a 片
Post a Comment
<< Home