Far from being overrun with gaggles of enlightened men in clothes covered with baby sick and badges saying “World’s greatest dad”, the father quota is, in my own limited experience, disappointing.
In 1963, The Feminine Mystique, a seminal book by Betty Friedan, helped launch the second wave of feminism by positing that American women faced “a problem that has no name”: they had essentially become typecast as uber-feminine mothers, home-makers, cake bakers and sexual slaves to their husbands.
The question is this: 50 years later, are men facing their own “problem with no name”, a “masculine mystique” which imposes rigid cultural notions of what it is to be male – superior, dominant, hierarchical, sexually assertive to the point of abuse – even though society is screaming out for manhood to be something very different?
Writers, actors and performers, including Robert Webb, Alan Hollinghurst and Simon Amstell, will explore the relentless levels of expectation heaped on men and assess whether this is responsible for statistics that suggest it is truly dismal these days to have a Y chromosome.
Then there are our role models: misogynist presidents, groping politicians, narcissistic sports stars, self-satisfied billionaires, airbrushed actors, heroic superheroes, alpha men, all of them.
Thus far “masculinism” has manifested itself principally in niche areas such as custody law or male victims of violence, or simply as strident misogynist voices pushing back at feminism.
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I live in a red state, it is common to call any collective action communism. It’s common historically for the right to call collective action or ownership communism.
Corporate socialism? Honestly never heard that. Market Socialism is the form of socialism that seeks to have publicly-traded companies abolished and replaced by co-ops. Mixed with state owned companies in the case of natural monopolies and basic services (transport, electricity, education, health, etc).
Market Socialism is very much aligned with OG Marxism, so I see how red-scared people may call it communism.
There is a book "From Mondragon to America" which goes into excruciating detail about how it all works. It's not just a few factories there are credit unions, food coops and more all doing business together.
if it can happen in the South, it can happen in your workplace too! you should start a union--and if you need help to that end, reach out to the AFL-CIO or, if you would prefer a more radical alternative, EWOC
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Workers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama are set to vote on whether to join the UAW in mid-May.
Shawn Fain, the UAW president, is also targeting Tesla, whose boss, Elon Musk, has vigorously fought unionization efforts.
The UAW had been expected to win its latest vote given the firm support of workers beforehand, a quick turnaround from filing for the election to holding it, and a changing culture and landscape that has seen the US labor movement and the surge in the UAW’s popularity after its successful strike against the US’s domestic automakers last year.
“The UAW is sending a strong signal that big change may be coming to places where most thought the labor movement was dead and buried,” said professor Sharon Block, executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School.
The UAW’s organizing campaign throughout the transplant companies in the south is a bet that workers can’t be bought off so cheaply.
A spokesperson for Volkswagen said in an email ahead of the vote: “We respect our workers’ right to a democratic process and to determine who should represent their interests.
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Still, it was sweaty backbreaking work as they carefully positioned, watered and staked a 10ft tall Blue palo verde and Chilean mesquite in opposite corners of resident Ana Cordoba’s dusty unshaded backyard.
Over the course of three days in early April, arborists planted 40 or so desert adapted trees in Grant Park, as part of the city’s equity-driven heat mitigation plan to create a shadier, more livable environment amid rising temperatures and hundreds of heat-related deaths.
“This is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods – and one of the most neglected,” said Silverio Ontiveros, a retired police chief turned community organizer who drummed up interest for the tree planting by knocking on doors and putting flyers through every neighbor’s letterbox.
Grant Park is a majority Latino community in south Phoenix situated next to a sprawling electrical substation – a hot and dusty neighborhood with 200 or so homes, but no stores and plenty of empty lots and boarded-up houses.
Trees have multiple benefits in urban areas which include cleaner air, improved physical and mental health, water conservation, increasing wildlife habitat, CO2 storage and sequestration and lower temperatures through shade.
The slow progress in improving tree coverage has frustrated many Phoenix residents, and in May, the heat team will present a new master shade plan to the city council, setting out more nuanced data-driven goals for homes, sidewalks and parks to replace the 25% citywide one.
Yeah, tbh I’d see if you can get a different union to represent you, but it doesn’t look like there’s one union specifically for grad students. (I’m assuming you’re in the US, if UAW was an option)
I graduated. I tried bringing this up, but no one seems to care that they shaft us. The university puts out a ton of propaganda about how people will be punished for strike activities, and it scares the international students into being scabs because they're scared they'll lose their visas.
Yeah, that’s a shitty situation all around. Just from what you’ve said, I blame the UAW about as much as the international students- it’d be great if the solidarity was there, but it’s natural that their priorities are elsewhere. The school is the real problem, but I definitely get how it’s hard to think so fondly of UAW after that experience.
In Star Trek, Irish reunification and the Bell Riots both occurred in 2024. I used to think that was was a coincidence, but c'mon: you can't have a guy with almost the same name as the Irish nationalist political party who's also an American labor leader without him being the thing that connects the two events somehow!
Anyway, dude's gonna have a busy rest of the year. I wish him luck!
Another factor is the increasing focus on work from home, and remote learning.
The less "forced" in-person interaction you have with a wide range of people, the less practice you get in developing the social skills that would be useful in navigating relationships later in life.
Definitely didn't realize this was such an old article. Side note, it's probably also worthwhile to discuss how things have changed in the past decade.
There was a kid staying with a relative (I think) in a building across from me and I joked that I’d start blasting hardcore porn on my projector with my blinds up to teach him about the birds and the bees.
History would disagree. We're still living in a society shaped by Quaker beliefs about sex, children, and the human body in general.
It's telling that the article didn't interview anyone with expertise on the history of sex or people who study sex professionally (as academic scientists and researchers). Porn is definitely more easily viewed than ever before and that may be shaping kids views of sexuality but how is that shaping adult's views of sexuality? Why are kids special?
I'll tell you why kids are special: It's because it has become acceptable to assume that kids being exposed to sex of any kind is somehow "bad". Nowhere in the article do they talk about why it is that kids aren't learning about healthy sexual relationships: Because we hide that from them.
No one wants to talk to their kids about sex but if there's one thing you should tell kids (not just your own!) about porn it's this: It's fake
It's the classic puritanical/quaker view of sexuality. Kids should be shielded and protected from any mention of sex and sexuality. Then when they turn 18 or get into their first sexual situations a switch is flipped and they're chastised for not "knowing better".
“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn.
Children aren't quite as good as the unborn, but they're close. Advocating for children still lets you feel good about yourself without having to actually associate with children. They're a group it's pretty much OK to be paternalistic toward. If they do resent your condescension, you can easily write it off because they're just children.
I answer every question my son has honestly and in plain, easily understood language. He's in middle school. Boy are his friends being fed some bullshit from their parents and unfettered access to the Internet. Smile and nod, kiddo, then come ask me. If I don't know, we'll look it up together, but I will not keep him in the dark. The dangerous thing about sex is ignorance of it. And yeah, porn ain't real.
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