from Hacker News

The War Against Boys

by vilda on 8/1/16, 10:30 AM with 28 comments

• by Overtonwindow on 8/1/16, 11:59 AM

  I think this is still relevant. Society places a lot of pressure on boys to man up and win, and I think unfairly pushes males to hide their feelings.

• by wolfhumble on 8/1/16, 10:46 AM

  (The Atlantic May 2000 Issue)

• by skj on 8/1/16, 12:27 PM

  I think it's telling that the article opens with girl empowerment as a segue into boys being kept down.

  This isn't zero sum, people.

• by dhatch387 on 8/1/16, 1:05 PM

  An interesting follow up, women continue to gain on men in college enrollment rates as of 2014: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/womens-colle...

• by dhatch387 on 8/1/16, 1:04 PM

  Why was this post flagged and deleted?

• by CapitalistCartr on 8/1/16, 10:56 AM

  May of 2000. Not that anything has changed in American classrooms since then.

• by wrsh07 on 8/1/16, 1:03 PM

  This seems like an issue that is easily susceptible to Simpsons paradox.

  What happens if you also split by race or socioeconomic class?

  Also, I think part of the issue is that it's difficult to measure what makes a successful high school (and there is no good proxy on a short feedback loop). Is it college admissions? Minimizing suicides (that seems important...)? Etc

• by rustynails on 8/1/16, 1:04 PM

  It is good to see a well researched article. However, the article gets something fundamentally wrong that I strongly disagree with. The idea of equality (of outcome) is a misnomer vs equal opportunity. 10 people don't win a race at the same time. I deeply believe that boys develop language skills slower than girls, and conversely, boys embrace science more readily than girls, unless there is extreme interference (like today).

  Where we get it wrong is our extreme prejudice based on gender and a belief in equal outcomes. The last few years in Australia have been particularly brutal. Our government heavily promoted a commercial with a 10 year old boy slamming a door as domestic violence, followed by "that's a boy thing". This was a calculated attack to demoralise half of Australia's population, with no intent of stopping domestic violence. In fact, I challenge anyone to look at gender generalisations in any media in Australia (Google male/female with year by year timeframes as an example), or even listen to Australia's own minister for Sex Discrimination who brazenly supports highly sexist statements in interviews when she is on TV. She's a lawyer and lawyers consider their words carefully - it speaks volumes of how bad we are that almost no one has condemned any of this. The prejudice is unprecedented in at least 50 years. Nothing comes close to being so aggressive as media and governments are today with respect to sexism.

  I promised I would build evidence about sexism and how we are far more sexist than I've ever seen. So far, I've researched what I can of 1970 and part of 1971. I found one article calling for boys to deliver newspapers, that was all I recall that was obviously sexist (from memory). I took many photos of adverts, articles, especially education, sports, advertising and politics. I will publish my findings, but as I expect to be attacked relentlessly and viciously (aka Matt Taylor), I intend to be robust in my evidence and (temporarily) remain anonymous in doing so. I've also been writing articles to support photo evidence and to cite blatant lies in this decades long gender war.

  I am glad to see articles like this being discussed, however, as the sexism has recently become far more aggressive and far more prevalent and directed at younger children (code.org and Science Week in Australia as two examples), I have little faith that most people are listening and/or care. When the topic posted hits most mainstream papers, I know the gender war is stopped (at least for a time).

  If you are a decent human being, I emplore you to take a hard stance against feminism or any gender based movement.

  Thank you to the poster of this article and to the author.

• by nv-vn on 8/1/16, 12:55 PM

  Shouldn't this have a (2000)?