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Thread: The Boy Crisis

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    Default The Boy Crisis

    Ethernautrix posted:

    Quote Originally Posted by ethernautrix
    Also, I suspect... it isn't just the guns. Do we have rites of passage, anymore? Would having that help? Are we failing our boys by not giving them guidance and activities to work out their frustrations and learn self-control and such?
    ... which I think is important. HERE's an interesting conversation posted yesterday, with Dr. Warren Farrell, author of The Boy Crisis. Kind of long at 2 hours or so, but a small investment for those who are serious about understanding this issue. I listened to it while racing around my 3 acre lawnmower racetrack today.

    A lot of points regarding many aspects ranging from "toxic masculinity" and the impact of that phrase's popularity on young men, the value of the father role and increasing fatherless households, etc...

    I'll post more of those later, after those who might be interested have a chance to watch or listen and share their thoughts. One thing that came to mind was the "right of passage" concept and how it ties into the YouTube video.

    The "right of passage" isn't about the event itself. It's about a positive male environment guiding boys along the route through adolescence to manhood - the last part of ethernautrix's point.

    If you look at the timeline, you'll notice there are tagged sections by subtopic if there's something particular that does or doesn't grab your interest. Might make it easier than watching the whole thing.

    Last edited by dneal; June 14th, 2022 at 03:30 PM.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Senior Member Chip's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    Umm, could it be rite of passage? She got it right.

    Jordan Peterson seldom gets anything right. He is to psychology what Mehmet Oz is to medicine: a master of the media grift.

    Thin-skinned Jordan Peterson is wrong about everything but right about Twitter

    Arwa Mahdawi

    Tue 17 May 2022 12.58 EDT



    Jordan Peterson is an academic, an internet personality, and a big fan of beef. A man of many accomplishments, he’s most famous for writing a bestselling book called 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos while simultaneously living what can only be described as an incredibly chaotic life.

    The latest Peterson drama comes to us via Twitter, which the academic has just dramatically announced he will be “departing” forever. Don’t worry, he’s not going to go quietly into that tweetless night; Peterson has promised us all a long article explaining his problems with the platform soon. For now, however, he wants us all to know that Twitter is a hellhole which makes your life infinitely worse.

    “The endless flood of vicious insult [sic] is really not something that can be experienced anywhere else,” Peterson tweeted on Monday, “If I have something to say I’ll write an article or make a video. If the issue is not important enough to justify that then perhaps it would be best to just let it go.”

    He adds, “I like to follow the people I know but I think the incentive structure of the platform makes it intrinsically and dangerously insane.”

    I may not agree with Peterson on much but he’s spot on there. And I, for one, am really glad that the man once described in the New York Times as “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world”, has finally discovered what everyone else has been banging on about for years. Women and marginalized people, in particular, have been sounding the alarm about how Twitter, along with other social media platforms, ignores violence and abuse on the platform. They have been sounding the alarm about the intrinsically dangerous incentive structures of social media platforms, which prioritize engagement above everything else. But, you know, nothing in life is really important until a rich white guy starts paying attention.


    https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ts-illustrated

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    Senior Member dneal's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    "Right" was intentional, just for you.

    Is there some reason you still can't address a topic? This isn't about Peterson. If you can't debate ideas, debate personalities, and all that...
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    I brought up a different Dr. Farrell interview a few weeks ago and was shot down too.

    Boy crisis indeed which is feed/propagated by the ever so celebrated toxic feminism and gender dysphoria.

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    I think the Book Maher video you (dneal) posted suggests a major influence to mostly male society. Also, a large part of the music industry seems to glamorize gangsta lives. Boys seek out idols to help define their morals and goals. Entertainment these days does little towards that.

    Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™
    M: I came here for a good argument.
    A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
    M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
    A: It can be.
    M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
    A: No it isn't.
    M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
    A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
    M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
    A: Yes it is!
    M: No it isn't!

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    Real men (first and foremost their fathers) are the gatekeepers to boy’s rite of passage. If they don’t have these then they get sucked up into all the lies of the world.

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    He's actually got an interesting bio. A 1970's "second wave feminist" and "the only man ever elected three times to the Board of the National Organization for Women in NYC" kind of immunizes him from the "MISOGYNY" screed we hear from the woke propaganda like Chip's article; even though his follow-on (NYT Bestselling) books are identical to the kind of thing Peterson's known for. "Myth of Male Power", for example.

    It looks like he's done the homework on a few themes I've casually investigated. Once I finish Douglas Murray's latest, I think Dr. Farrell has two books I'll read next.

    The linkage I'd like to see (and maybe he's done it already) is along the lines of the absence of the father figure in the black community and the gun violence the the media likes to ignore. The discussion above makes slight mention of gangs acting as an unhealthy surrogate for what fathers normally provide young men (strict boundaries, discipline, encouragement of individual empowerment, etc...).

    —edit—

    As to the last paragraph, Thomas Sowell’s work also ties in.
    Last edited by dneal; June 14th, 2022 at 08:31 PM.
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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    Quote Originally Posted by Lloyd View Post
    I think the Book Maher video you (dneal) posted suggests a major influence to mostly male society. Also, a large part of the music industry seems to glamorize gangsta lives. Boys seek out idols to help define their morals and goals. Entertainment these days does little towards that.

    Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™
    That's a thought I was waiting to bring up too. In the context of the discussion (they don't really address it), it seems the to me violent games and movies don't cause the behavior - which is probably why studies can't establish the correlation - but they contribute to it when a young male is in a vulnerable set of circumstances described in the discussion.

    Admittedly it's a long video, but I thought it was fascinating and informative.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    My wife and I are parents of a 26 year old, and often discuss various aspects of his generation. Sharing this with her, I discovered an article on his site he published on USA Today. A decent summary of the basis of the discussion in the video.

    LINK

    BOY CRISIS’ THREATENS AMERICA’S FUTURE WITH ECONOMIC, HEALTH AND SUICIDE RISKS

    Warren Farrell, Opinion contributor Published 5:00 a.m. ET April 7, 2019 | Updated 5:46 p.m. ET April 9, 2019

    I have discovered that there is, in fact, a boy crisis, that it is a global crisis, and that it is particularly egregious in the U.S.

    In an astonishing disclosure about the two greatest dangers to the future of America’s economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell revealed on CBS’ “60 Minutes” last month the peril posed by “young males”: young males not looking for work; being addicted to drugs (think opioid crisis); and being unprepared for the transition to technology.

    Powell posits that this economic problem is also a national security problem. He implies that we ignore this crisis at our own peril. Yet his warning is ignored.

    In my half-century of research on boys and men, I have discovered that there is, in fact, a boy crisis, that it is a global crisis, and that it is particularly egregious in America. The crisis is more than economic. It is multifaceted, with each facet magnifying the others.

    It is a crisis of education. Worldwide, 60% of the students who achieve less than the baseline level of proficiency in any of the three core subjects of the Program for the International Assessment are boys (1). Even boys’ IQs are dropping (2).

    It is a crisis of mental health. Boys’ suicide rate (3) goes from only slightly more than girls before age 15 to three times that of girls’ between 15 and 19, to 4 1/2 times that of girls between 20 and 24. Mass shooters (4), prisoners (5) and Islamic State terrorism recruits (6) are at least 90% male.

    It is a crisis of physical health. American men’s life expectancy has decreased two-tenths of a year even as American women’s has remained the same (7). Boys and men are dying earlier in 14 out of 15 of the leading causes of death (8).

    It is a crisis of shame — of boys feeling that their masculinity is toxic; that the future is female; that dads are but bumbling fools or deadbeats.

    It is a crisis of economic health. The economy is making a transition from muscle to mental — or from muscle to microchip, as with the 1.7 million truck drivers (9) predicted to be largely replaced by self- driving trucks. With the United States neglecting vocational education, those with no high school degree have nearly three times the unemployment rate of those with a college degree.

    BOYS ARE FALLING BEHIND WITHOUT DADS

    Boys are falling behind (10) girls in the 63 largest developed nations. As developed nations developed solutions to surviving, they allowed more permission for divorce and for children to be raised with minimal or no father involvement. A great solution — less fear of starvation — created a new problem: dad-deprivation.

    I discovered that the boy crisis resides where dads do not reside. For example, The American Psychological Association (11) found that father absence predicts the profile of both the bully and the bullied’s poor social skills, and the bully’s poor grades and self-esteem. According to a study in the Journal of Marriage and Family, every 1% increase in fatherlessness in a neighborhood predicts a 3% increase (12) in adolescent violence.

    It starts early. Before six months of age, the less interaction a boy has with his dad, the lower his mental competence (13).

    And dad-deprivation is a significant predictor of the increasing rate of male suicide (14), drug overdose, obesity (14) and withdrawal into video game addiction (15). It even predicts by age 9 a shorter life expectancy as determined by shorter telomeres (16), protective end caps of chromosomes. Aggregately, this leads to my predicting that the biggest gap between boys who are successful and unsuccessful in the future will be the gap between those who are dad-enriched versus dad-deprived.

    As Powell points out, America exacerbates this problem by falling behind every developed nation in preparing our sons for the changes in technology. In contrast, Japan has extensive vocational education programs, with 99.6% of their graduates receiving jobs (17) after graduation. A boy who is not academically inclined may be bored by physics and chemistry until he learns that to be a highly paid welder, he needs them. Then he sees purpose, and his motivation changes.

    THE SOLUTION IS INVOLVED FATHERS

    There is a straightforward solution to dad-deprivation. It is dad-involvement. Conservatives have long supported dad-involvement; and both feminists Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem have said that mothers would not be equal at work until dads were equal in the home.

    Plus, it addresses numerous problems: First, dad-deprived girls experience most of the problems faced by boys, albeit less intensely. Second, an involved dad predicts a son much more likely to be employed, so aspiring moms don’t have to search for a dad in unemployment lines. Third, with fewer boys defining their purpose as future warriors by being disposable in war, and fewer defining masculinity as being a sole breadwinner, millions of young men are experiencing a “purpose void.” Inspiring young men to become “Father Warriors” can fill that purpose void. But this also involves inspiring women to value father warriors.

    Solutions to the boy crisis must be addressed simultaneously in the family, in schools and by policymakers. To name a few: Parents need communication training to prevent the divorces that breed the boy crisis. Schools need male teachers, vocational education and recess. Presidential candidates need to identify the boy crisis as a signature issue. And President Trump, with an executive order, can create a White House Council on Boys and Men to make the boy crisis a national priority, so millions of parents and sons do not feel isolated and ashamed — but supported to address a solution toward stronger families, more boy-friendly schools, and a more economically and psychologically secure America.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    This topic is also near to my heart having 4 boys at home

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    I don't support the MALE FATHER theory. I think a supportive, enjoyable fit the child to be around, and "moral" (not violent, not abusive, not greedy, not lazy, etc.) structure that shows appreciation (and possibly guidance) of any "acceptable" passion of the child without forcing any other unnecessary behaviors goes a long way. Not every child idolized the same attributes. Their dad may be someone YOU view as the ultimate role model, but perhaps not to the child. My childhood heros were fairly atypical (Groucho, Einstein, Jim Thorpe, Springsteen) - nothing like the passions of my parents nor their parents.

    Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™
    M: I came here for a good argument.
    A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
    M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
    A: It can be.
    M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
    A: No it isn't.
    M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
    A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
    M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
    A: Yes it is!
    M: No it isn't!

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    Lloyd what do you think of feminism?

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    Thanks for posting.

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    You could point out examples of poor fathers who are present in the home but do more harm than good. Dr. Farrell references some families where the mother tends to exhibit the "fatherly" traits and the father exhibits the "motherly" traits. Still, he isn't pulling this out of thin air and advocating some unexamined hypothesis. The link to the article I referenced above has hyperlinks to his references. He cited 17 18* for just a short USA Today op-ed.

    Here's a short video with John Anderson where he describes one example of the important role fathers play, how it differs from mothers, and why it's important.



    Young men seem to search for adult male figures who exhibit the traits Dr. Farrell describes. Maybe that's a friend's father, an uncle, a teacher, etc... unfortunately it's also gang environments and other negative influencers. What's worst, it seems, is when there's no "father" figure present. Dr. Farrell has done the homework on that too - and the Uvalde shooter fits the criteria.

    The entire John Anderson interview is Here

    *actually 18, including the truncated numbering error with number 14
    Last edited by dneal; June 15th, 2022 at 06:51 AM.
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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    I’ve consider getting involved. I’d like to address “toxic masculinity” and “Toxic Feminism”. Neither originated out of thin air. Actions, institutions, prejudices, and beliefs are behind both.

    I see the benefit of girls and boys playing sports together at least before puberty.

    There would be a positive in boys learning to be a caregiver like taking care of babies and toddlers. It produces an others orientation.

    That a father is in the home is no guarantee. A benevolent/nurturing male as a coach or mentor goes a long way.

    What the OP is about primarily is a look back into what causes young males to become a mass killer. This is different from a forward thinking consideration into how to parent. A book that helped me was How to Really Love Your Child by Ross Campbell. He sets forward three things, active listening, eye contact, and unconditional love.

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    Chuck, you should at least watch the shorter 10 minute video of Dr. Farrell. You'll see he is focused on parenting as well. His work isn't centered on mass shooters. He just notes it as one more consequence.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    I did watch several minutes. I’m just offering what came to mind.

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    "Right" was intentional, just for you.

    Is there some reason you still can't address a topic? This isn't about Peterson. If you can't debate ideas, debate personalities, and all that...
    So you do stupid stuff just so I'll notice you? Golly!

    Meanwhile, did you fail to note that the video link you posted features Jordan Peterson?

    Wonder if JP and the other bloke have well-thumbed copies of Iron John by Robert Bly?

    With so many fools proclaiming their manhood as a virtue, rather than a simple fact, and so much emphasis on macho military BS (e.g. Top Gun) it's no wonder boys are confused. Their fantasies are quite distant from the lives they're called upon to live.

    Not many job openings for cowboys.

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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    This is a shout out to @dneal, is it your purpose to post something for which you hold as true,‘then troll the rest of us to agree? The honest feedback or pushback is something you should consider.

  26. #20
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    Default Re: The Boy Crisis

    Quote Originally Posted by Chip View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by dneal View Post
    "Right" was intentional, just for you.

    Is there some reason you still can't address a topic? This isn't about Peterson. If you can't debate ideas, debate personalities, and all that...
    So you do stupid stuff just so I'll notice you? Golly!

    Meanwhile, did you fail to note that the video link you posted features Jordan Peterson?

    Wonder if JP and the other bloke have well-thumbed copies of Iron John by Robert Bly?

    With so many fools proclaiming their manhood as a virtue, rather than a simple fact, and so much emphasis on macho military BS (e.g. Top Gun) it's no wonder boys are confused. Their fantasies are quite distant from the lives they're called upon to live.

    Not many job openings for cowboys.
    Still debating personalities... Do you have anything constructive to add? I can find Twitter-level banality in all sorts of places.
    "A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."

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