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How can men turn things around?

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Oct 4, 2011.

  1. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    I know that it is frequently written about, but the permanent state of adolescence that much of the male gender seems to be stuck in these days should be a concern to us all, men and women both:

    http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/04/opinion/bennett-men-in-trouble/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

    A sentence that just makes me shake my head:

    Today, 18-to- 34-year-old men spend more time playing video games a day than 12-to- 17-year-old boys.

    I'd be interested to hear from both men and women here on the topic. The writer notes, anecdotally, that young women find it disheartening when they look around at what's available.

    I guess the questions are: What's wrong with men? What are you doing to fix it?

    Personally, I try to set a good example for my own son and nephews and teach them, both by example and explicitly, how to be a grown man.
     
  2. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    There are plenty of woo girls out there who don't have much going on, either.
     
  3. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    If they enjoy video games, why the hell not?
     
  4. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    How can you be a man and not 40 years old?
     
  5. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Bill Bennett's right. Those young men shouldn't be playing video games, they should be losing all their money in casinos and getting horsewhipped by dominatrixes.

    Also: 18-to-34 vs. 12-to-17 as the age groups for the playing of video games? I'd imagine 18-to-24 -- a.k.a. college, with great amounts of time and no parents telling you to turn that shit off -- accounts for the great bulk of that.
     
  6. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Bennett's just pissed off that you can't gamble away millions of dollars on video games.

    Truth be told, there's nothing wrong with men. Bennett uses a number of false equivalancies.

    More women are graduating from college than 40 years ago. Maybe it's because more women are getting into college because they broke away from the "stay at home and bake cookies" mode.

    More men are unemployed. Yeah, and the "global economy" had nothing to do with it. It's because the men are immoral.

    Out-of wedlock births. Yes, it's a problem when it comes to poverty. But remember, it takes two to tango.

    Women whining about "Where are the good men?" They've been whining about that for 3,000 years. What else is new?

    Oh, and back to the video games, he doesn't even cite a source for his statement. A conservative making up facts? Say it ain't so.
     
  7. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Also accounts for a great bulk of the college dropout rate, I imagine.

    His personal foibles aside, the numbers Bennett presents are pretty staggering. And I've seen them reported elsewhere.

    P.S. I get that his conservative agenda leaves his numbers open to scrutiny. Certainly the church and religion numbers felt shoved in there to me, like nobody was going to notice. Felt like the kid in "American Graffitti" buying beef jerky, a bottle Coke, a candy bar, some chips, a newspaper, and, oh, this six-pack of beer.
     
  8. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Staggering? The numbers he cherrypicked represent a number of broad cultural forces over decades that have nothing to do with his "get off my lawn, men these day" rant.
     
  9. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    My first college class the professor told us only one in 10 of us would graduate. That was in 1988.
     
  10. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    For whatever it's worth, I'm pretty sure The New Yorker wrote the same piece a few years ago.

    I think he touched a nerve with a lot of you with the video game line. :)
     
  11. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    I don't play video games. You want to talk about an expensive fucking hobby? But I hate how video games are castigated.

    I spend many hours a day playing and studying chess. Is that okay? A little more intellectual, but also nerdy.

    What if it was painting? What if it was music? What if it was consuming sports journalism?

    There are "good" hobbies and "bad" hobbies, and it's lame.
     
  12. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    It's a hodgepodge of disconnected numbers that purport to prove a point but don't really prove anything.

    Cases in point:

    --"Women's earnings grew 44% in real dollars from 1970 to 2007, compared with 6% growth for men."

    --"Men still maintain a majority of the highest paid and most powerful occupations, but women are catching them and will soon be passing them if this trend continues."

    I would think the growth of women in the workforce, and not Those Lazy Men, would be the main component of women's incomes growing. The whole theme is akin to saying women will eventually be running marathons faster than men because their times have been decreasing at a greater rate for the past 20 years.

    There may be a point about what is happening to men -- I would say it's happening to 20-somethings of both genders as their parents shield them from what should be a time of independence -- but Bill Bennett certainly didn't make that point very well.
     
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