Contributor Post Created with Sketch. The War on Men

Rob Long
By Rob Long
Rob Long Founder
Rob Long, Hollywood writer and producer, started his career as a screenwriter for the TV show "Cheers." You can find his musings on National Review, Newsweek International, and the Los Angeles Times. Rob's weekly commentary "Martini Shot" is broadcast on L.A.'s KCRW and can be found on iTunes. Rob is a co-founder of Ricochet.
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65 COMMENTS
 

shutterstock_162854771You don’t have to be a “revolutionary” presidential candidate to know that there’s something seriously wrong about the way boys are growing into men in this country.

Most of the media is obsessed with fraternities, creepy boys with “affluenza,” and lax bros. Most of that reporting follows a familiar template: bad (white) boys and their victims. It’s a reliably monotonous litany because that frees them from the responsibility of looking at what happens to (mostly non-white) boys who grow up in poor neighborhoods. Short answer: nothing much good. From Citylab:

How adults in the U.S. fare economically depends, to a large extent, on the quality of the neighborhoods they grew up in. But boys and girls who live right down the street from each other don’t always end up, economically speaking, in the same place. And that’s most likely because their childhood environments affect them differently, a new working paper by economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues finds, with boys having an especially tough time.

None of this is surprising. But still:

Differences between men’s and women’s employment rate, income level, and college enrollment at age 30 all varied based on the income and marital status of their parents, but the gender gap in employment varied most starkly. Among those whose parents were in the bottom fifth of income distribution when they were young, the 30-year-old men were less likely to have a job than the women. This was especially true if these boys were raised by a single parent.

The paper — and the post it’s based on — go on to make a lot of lefty-sounding points. The research, however, is pretty clear, though we all might draw different conclusions from it. Yes, the incarceration rates are higher in those neighborhoods. Yes, those neighborhoods are more likely to be, essentially, segregated. But it still gets back to this sentence:

This was especially true if these boys were raised by a single parent.

And what do we see in the culture, in the community, in the halls of left-wing city governments and left-wing federal offices? An obsession with everything but the root problem: families have been torn up by federal and state programs that encourage broken, scattered, fatherless families.

The question is, are those boys in trouble because their fathers are absent or in jail? Or are those men in jail because their fathers were absent?

Either way, one thing we should all agree on: whatever we’re currently doing in under-privileged neighborhoods we should stop doing. Whatever we’re currently focusing our time and energy and resources to we should stop doing.

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  1. katievs Member
    katievsJoined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member

    Henry Castaigne:So once a female iwatch can send a signal to a fertility regulating machine in her body to not conceive, do you think we’ll have this thing figured out? The Pill sometimes doesn’t work and condoms break but humans always make technology better.

    Women don’t need to be manipulated; they need to be respected.

    Men too.

    • #61
    • February 10, 2016, at 7:14 AM PST
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  2. Ansonia Member
    AnsoniaJoined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member

    Henry Castaigne:What exactly happened in the sixties that made men and women have children out of wedlock?

    My theory: Birth control. In the sixties, women thought they wanted to have sex without becoming pregnant. They denied, or failed to recognize, their own intense, unconscious, desire for a child. This was easy to do because they lived in a society that told them they had no such unconscious drive or desire influencing their actions.

    So, instead of decreasing out-of-wedlock pregnancy, birth control brought about a change in the norms of sexual behavior that increased the number of out-of -wedlock pregnancies. The original norms were better suited to the real nature of female sexual desire.

    • #62
    • February 10, 2016, at 9:11 AM PST
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  3. James Gawron Thatcher
    James GawronJoined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member

    Sowell for President:Martel – You’re certainly right about many of the unthinking followers of feminist opinion leaders. This is the sort of confusion we might expect to apppear in the wake of a multi-generation movement that aims to upend manhood, womanhood, nature, history, religion, etc. As we have seen already, however, here and elsewhere, instinct alone (e.g., a preference for physically or economically stronger men over weaker ones) is too flimsy to protect against the onslaught.

    S,

    I think you are hitting right on it. To go against instinct is insanity and we have hit pure insanity in this society. What is needed is what we all used to take for granted. A society that re-enforces our instincts toward making the best choices. Without such a social order I think we are in moral free-fall.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #63
    • February 10, 2016, at 9:15 AM PST
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  4. GrannyDude Member
    GrannyDude

    Martel:

    Judithann Campbell:Martel: I think you are wrong about feminists, and I don’t believe that drafting women will bring anyone back down to earth, especially when “conservative” fathers are now telling their daughters to sign up for the draft: the vast, vast majority of those girls will do whatever their fathers tell them to do, and they won’t complain about it. If you are thinking that drafting women will cause younger women to see the light, I think you are wrong, because for them, seeing the light will entail facing many painful realities that they either can’t or won’t be able to face.

    It is very easy for me to speak out on this, because my father was and is a good man, and I know that he agrees with me and supports me. I fully expect the daughters of men who want their daughters drafted to go crazy in one way or another, but I don’t expect them to see the light. The light will be way too painful for them.

    Tell the average college-aged she’s heading off the Hoogivesastan whether she likes it or not because “equality,” and she’ll disabuse herself of the notion mighty quick.

    I see feminists twist and run away from their own ideology continually the moment “equality” poses an actual threat to their coddled existences. Their support for Clinton despite Lewinsky is nothing compared to what they do when it actually personally affects them.

    Who are the feminists y’all are citing? I’m not being snarky—I’m just bewildered. I’m not seeing any names: do you have particular people in mind? Are we still with the Gloria Steinem/Robin Morgan crowd, or are there newbies calling for women in combat?

    • #64
    • February 10, 2016, at 11:01 AM PST
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  5. Ansonia Member
    AnsoniaJoined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member

    Re comment # 64

    There are women calling for women to have to sign up for selective service. I saw something written by one in The Federalist. The writer is a soldier.

    • #65
    • February 10, 2016, at 11:30 AM PST
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