Why men are in trouble

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William Bennett has a thought-provoking commentary on the CNN website:

cnn.com/2011/10/04/opinion/bennett-men-in-trouble/index.html

What really struck me though was the response to the article. Over 5500 comments, and virtually all of them by young men complaining about how unfair the article was, how their problems are caused by women or their parents, how there is nothing wrong with an adult spending all his free time playing video games, etc. etc.

I could not find any comments that actually addressed Bennett’s points in a thoughtful way, or which would admit that maybe, they just might be called to behave differently. It was embarrassing.
 
Yes, I think this is a real problem, and it is very sad.

Overall, most people really have no idea what has caused it or how to do anything about it.

I think that often women are not bothering to marry because who wants to be mom to an adult? Better to be a single mom it seems rather than have to carry that dead-weight around.

On the other hand, some people get on the fundamentalist track and say the only thing to do is to restrict women to homemaking roles. Which is also not helpful.
 
I don’t think video games are the reason men are in trouble.

I spent a whole lot more hours playing video games from 18-22 than I did from 12-17, too. It’s called college. 😛 In high school, I left for school (which was a distance from my home) by 7am and sometimes didn’t get back until after 7pm after which I then had to do homework. In college, I only had class for a few hours a day within walking distance of my dorm room/video game haven and there were no daily homework assignments like in high school. So there were certainly more opportunities for me to play.

Do many men need to grow up? Certainly. I think both men and women have fallen on hard times in our confusing culture. But I think it would be overly-simplistic to reduce it all to being about video games. If anything, it’s a symptom, not a cause. And, sure, the article didn’t flat out say that video game playing was the sole cause of this situation. But the fact that it was the one behavior that was brought up several times with specificity is a pretty clear indication of what the author was trying to do rhetorically.

And of course you’re going to get a skewed sample of single video-game playing guys in the comments section. This is the internet. 😉

Some of the statistics seem potentially misleading to me.“Women’s earnings grew 44% in real dollars from 1970 to 2007, compared with 6% growth for men.” Hasn’t there also been a concerted effort in that time for “equal pay for equal work”? It seems to me it could be a matter of finally getting the pay scale balanced rather than shifting things disproportionately towards women.
 
Joe_5859 said:
I don’t think video games are the reason men are in trouble.

I spent a whole lot more hours playing video games from 18-22 than I did from 12-17, too. It’s called college. 😛 In high school, I left for school (which was a distance from my home) by 7am and sometimes didn’t get back until after 7pm after which I then had to do homework. In college, I only had class for a few hours a day within walking distance of my dorm room/video game haven and there were no daily homework assignments like in high school. So there were certainly more opportunities for me to play.

Do many men need to grow up? Certainly. I think both men and women have fallen on hard times in our confusing culture. But I think it would be overly-simplistic to reduce it all to being about video games. If anything, it’s a symptom, not a cause. And, sure, the article didn’t flat out say that video game playing was the sole cause of this situation. But the fact that it was the one behavior that was brought up several times with specificity is a pretty clear indication of what the author was trying to do rhetorically.

And of course you’re going to get a skewed sample of single video-game playing guys in the comments section. This is the internet. 😉

Some of the statistics seem potentially misleading to me.“Women’s earnings grew 44% in real dollars from 1970 to 2007, compared with 6% growth for men.” Hasn’t there also been a concerted effort in that time for “equal pay for equal work”? It seems to me it could be a matter of finally getting the pay scale balanced rather than shifting things disproportionately towards women.
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The main problem in American society is that many women are raised to be “princesses” and they are quite vocal about it. This, of course is promulgated by the mass media because it sells newspapers and air time. The result is a bunch of spoiled brats that won’t share and an inflated divorce rate, because any man who is truely a man will put up with their nonsense for only so long.
The fact is in America, that many women want to “wear the pants” after they are married and as soon as they get them on they become the most miserable people on earth.
A good example of this is how many married working women treat the wages they earn. They rightfully expect to share in their husbands wages, but they do not want to share their wages. “What you earn is ours, but what I earn is mine, mine, mine”!
For what it’s worth…I learned from bitter experience.
 
As a woman and a gamer, there’s so much BS in this article that I don’t know where to start. It just sounds like someone’s upset because “dem wimmins are out of the kitchen and getting good jobs”. My brother is in his late thirties, married, has a cat, a dog, a bunch of lizards, fish, and a pretty good job selling insurance. He also has an active nightlife, and guess what? He STILL finds time to play games!

Also, women play games too. I was at school full-time studying for a Master’s degree, and I still played games.

Frankly, this article is insulting to married, successful male and female gamers!
 
George_Stegmeir said:
The main problem in American society is that many women are raised to be “princesses” and they are quite vocal about it. This, of course is promulgated by the mass media because it sells newspapers and air time. The result is a bunch of spoiled brats that won’t share and an inflated divorce rate, because any man who is truely a man will put up with their nonsense for only so long.
The fact is in America, that many women want to “wear the pants” after they are married and as soon as they get them on they become the most miserable people on earth.
A good example of this is how many married working women treat the wages they earn. They rightfully expect to share in their husbands wages, but they do not want to share their wages. “What you earn is ours, but what I earn is mine, mine, mine”!
For what it’s worth…I learned from bitter experience.
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Thank you for the insulting broad-brush generalization. I guess when I get home from my 10-hour workday, I should spend the evening shopping for a tiara instead of washing dishes and feeding the livestock. I’ll tell my husband he has you to thank.
 
I think articles like this do tend to push us to examine our own anecdotal experience and project it to the general population. Or maybe that’s just me. :o

Sadly, I know plenty of women who wasted much time with deadbeat guys who sponged off of them expecting them to work for a living and cook and clean so that they could spend all their time on the internet or playing video games (or drinking or doing drugs). I also know of a few examples where those roles are reversed. Or where the man or women are sponging off a parent. Thankfully, I know many people to whom this description does not at all apply.

But in the end, that’s just my experience. I have conducted no studies nor do I have any statistics.
 
Joe_5859 said:
I think articles like this do tend to push us to examine our own anecdotal experience and project it to the general population. Or maybe that’s just me. :o

Sadly, I know plenty of women who wasted much time with deadbeat guys who sponged off of them expecting them to work for a living and cook and clean so that they could spend all their time on the internet or playing video games (or drinking or doing drugs). I also know of a few examples where those roles are reversed. Or where the man or women are sponging off a parent. Thankfully, I know many people to whom this description does not at all apply.

But in the end, that’s just my experience. I have conducted no studies nor do I have any statistics.
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I’ve read LOTS of thoughtful replies to this mans article…just not in the comments section. People are responding in blogs of their own where they have more room to express their ideas.
I think it’s (almost) complete hogwash.
 
TonyT said:
William Bennett has a thought-provoking commentary on the CNN website:

cnn.com/2011/10/04/opinion/bennett-men-in-trouble/index.html

What really struck me though was the response to the article. Over 5500 comments, and virtually all of them by young men complaining about how unfair the article was, how their problems are caused by women or their parents, how there is nothing wrong with an adult spending all his free time playing video games, etc. etc.

I could not find any comments that actually addressed Bennett’s points in a thoughtful way, or which would admit that maybe, they just might be called to behave differently. It was embarrassing.
Click to expand...
I’ve read LOTS of thoughtful replies to this mans article…just not in the comments section. People are responding in blogs of their own where they have more room to express their ideas.
I think it’s (almost) complete hogwash.
 
Garyjohn2 said:
I’ve read LOTS of thoughtful replies to this mans article…just not in the comments section. People are responding in blogs of their own where they have more room to express their ideas.
I think it’s (almost) complete hogwash.
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Are there ever any thoughtful replies in the comments section of any article? 😛
 
TonyT said:
William Bennett has a thought-provoking commentary on the CNN website:

cnn.com/2011/10/04/opinion/bennett-men-in-trouble/index.html

What really struck me though was the response to the article. Over 5500 comments, and virtually all of them by young men complaining about how unfair the article was, how their problems are caused by women or their parents, how there is nothing wrong with an adult spending all his free time playing video games, etc. etc.

I could not find any comments that actually addressed Bennett’s points in a thoughtful way, or which would admit that maybe, they just might be called to behave differently. It was embarrassing.
Click to expand...
Lets see if I understand, a computer article which bad mouthed men on computers during the day was replied to by men on computers during the day, and they did not like being bad mouthed? Did I understand the issue?

FYI - if you work all day and the IRS takes 50% of your earning and a judge gives the other 50% to your exwife because she appearrantly married you for money would you be better off to work more or just play video games?
 
I’m off and on with games. I’ll be really into one for a while and spend quite a bit of time on it and then I go through a phase where I wont play for a month or so.

I’ve never gotten the whole Warcraft, folks that seem to loose contact with the outsede world.

And having a kid cuts gaming WAY back as kids hate being ignored!!
 
George_Stegmeir said:
The main problem in American society is that many women are raised to be “princesses” and they are quite vocal about it. This, of course is promulgated by the mass media because it sells newspapers and air time. The result is a bunch of spoiled brats that won’t share and an inflated divorce rate, because any man who is truely a man will put up with their nonsense for only so long.
The fact is in America, that many women want to “wear the pants” after they are married and as soon as they get them on they become the most miserable people on earth.
A good example of this is how many married working women treat the wages they earn. They rightfully expect to share in their husbands wages, but they do not want to share their wages. “What you earn is ours, but what I earn is mine, mine, mine”!
For what it’s worth…I learned from bitter experience.
Click to expand...
Wow, so your bitter experience translates into “many women”. Amazing, must be the new Math!
 
This article isn’t particularly original - a lot of it I think he pinched from a book that was written about two years ago, IIRC. Looking at that makes it a bit more clear why it mentions video games at all. The author of that book had noted a weird tendency among the teens he was coming in contact with. The girls were engaged in school, had career plans, played sports, we involved in community activities. But the boys - often the brothers of the same girls - very often seemed to have dropped out of things. Not engaged at school, in sports, or the community, no plans, or living at home unemployed or working a dead end job, often playing a lot of video games. Not all the boys of course, but compared to the girls enough to take note.

So he was curious and decided to look into it to see if this was just coincidence, or appearance, or what. What he found was that statistically, the boys were not “succeeding” in the same way the girls were; they were coasting along in many cases, spending most of their time in what might be called “play” activities. He also found that this seemed to cross most class and social lines and be all over the US.

Anyway, most of the book is about why he thinks this change has happened, but the basic observation is the same idea as what is in this article but much more fleshed out.
 
I agree men are in trouble, and it is because they have such a hard time defining themselves. So much of the culture defines them – for them – like beer commercials. Yeah, you’ve got to drink beer – our beer – to be a man, and grab for all the gusto that you can. You only go around once.

Well, yes, you do only go around once, and it won’t mean very much if your personal values are centered around your high score on a Baloney wee game.

I know such a guy, who is over 35 and hasn’t had a full time job in his life. His wife is the breadwinner, but OH, he has the ideas of grandeur of what he wants to do. And, with his just-above-minimum-wage cashier job? Oh, he likes “cars” – although he really can’t afford one.

He is a product of public school education, and by the way, his dad was a high school teacher, no less.

His wife told me that he won’t get involved in anything, if it involves a book.
 
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