It's an interesting read - a lot of her experiences she's discussing boil down to feeling she was ignored or her voice minimized because of her perceived gender identity and assumptions about how she was raised and what she would feel.
I liked her discussion and thought her perspective on purposely not transitioning was an interesting view. This was a really good analogy and drove home the point for me:
Imagine, dear reader, a cis-woman evenly saying:
“I wish I looked like that but I don’t and can’t. It sucks and it makes me feel really awful if I brood on it. That’s why I focus on my writing—I’d rather make things. Investing in and building things that aren’t my body helps me cope with the body issues I’ve been saddled with against my will.”
She doesn’t sound like she needs advice on how makeup will actually fix her core problem, does she? She seems like she’s doing alright. I’m her and I’m trans. That’s all.
Some big quotes that hit home through this post were
Do I need to be inspected and dissected by the people who laughed at me in order to receive my credential?
“I play along,” one of them told me, “because in the queer community the only people who defend cisboys are cisboys. I don’t want to give up finally being read as a girl.”
Oof.
I don't know if it's just the sections of the internet I frequent these days, but this intense, misandrist views don't seem to be as common as they once were, and not as accepted.
I was born into that shitty town, maleness, in the remains of outdated ideals and misplaced machismo and repression and there are some good people stuck living there. They are not in charge. They did not build it. And I don’t feel okay just moving out and saying “fuck y’all — bootstrap your way out or die out, I was never one of you.” I want to make it a better, healthier place—not spend all my time talking about how shitty it is and how anyone who would choose to live there deserves it.
I especially liked that they raised point like the fact that despite the fact that men earn more on average and make up more of the top CEO/Board Members spots, that those things don’t help the bottom segment of boys who are left behind in school and left unsupported.
Their program to try and pull those teens back into post secondary is helpful and I’d be excited to see their long term impacts
It’s interesting. I took a read and generally didn’t dislike the article, but it read to me like its intended for women, by women. They touch briefly on topics I would definitely have preferred them to go into more depth on.
Nearly three decades ago, the sociologist William Julius Wilson cited male joblessness as the reason behind the decline in marriage in some predominantly Black communities, and the pool of available men has shrunk since the late 1970s and 1980s because of Black men’s disproportionately high rates of incarceration and mortality. More recently, economists have documented falling marriage rates in pockets of the U.S. where men have lost manufacturing jobs, notably in sectors facing competition from cheap Chinese imports. Unlike the egg freezers, women in these communities typically do not defer childbearing until their late 30s, but instead have children at earlier ages and raise them on their own.
This section in particular is interesting. Anecdotally, I wouldn’t be surprised if jobless men in places without any hope of improvement of their situation sunk into being terrible partners. Given the pressure for men to be primary income providers, especially the forces at work in blue-collar environments and the stronger gender norms enforced there, handling a loss of your future and not seeing a chance to improve things isn’t likely to make you someone who wants to look into the future and plan for a family.
Beyond that, the article gives very few in depth answers, and just skims over things, like what classifies men as ‘eligible’? Income seems to be related, given the wording they use, but is that just any income, or are these women unable to find men who are interested in being high income/sole breadwinner type earners? My frustration with the article’s lack of solid information is summed up in the paragraph below;
Or is it that finding love and connection has always been hard, and is even harder today for straight women because something is amiss with a not-insignificant share of American men? Between the quantitative gap in college attendance and the qualitative gap in dating experiences between men and women lies dicey causal terrain. Mapping that terrain with any degree of precision may be beyond Inhorn’s (or anyone’s) capacity.
I think the unsaid part is just time spent together- when you’re a kid it’s easy to have dozens of hours a week to hang out and bond. As you age, there’s other time commitments - kids, spouse, family, maintaining a house, etc. In order to have that emotional investment you need to get past the awkward first stages of friendship.
I think a lot of people lose/drop their hobbies, or the things that let them bond and meet other people. It’s hard to say “I dropped football and now I lost 50% of male conversation” without more info. If all your friends are only bonding over football, yeah. So find other things to do! There’s a million of them, and people are always passionate about their own interests. Find people with similar interests.
The author also mentions “it feels like they’re always just someone’s partner” and that’s very telling. Are the only men you’re engaging with those who are partners of your own spouse? Well no shit you’re not feeling like you have friends. I like my wife’s friends partners, but they’re firmly in the acquaintance category.
I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out. ( medium.com )
How gender disparities are affecting men ( www.cbsnews.com )
Why Are Women Freezing Their Eggs? Look to the Men. - "A new book explores the 'mating gap' and why women are struggling to find a male co-parent." ( www.theatlantic.com )
Paywall removed
Why men lose all their friends in midlife ( www.telegraph.co.uk )