When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

[Munger]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

Did none of you see that I was posting a link? They are a bit hard to see (hint hint iTulip webmaster ...)

[blazespinnaker]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

[QUOTE=Master Shake;163326]By Tom Hoffman

I agree and disagree with his simplistic thesis. He has created a false dichotomy here. A behaviour typical of the masculine men he harkens back to.

Yes, men have been absolutely been feminized and in some aspects its a problem. I've noticed a drop in accountability and ability to fend for yourself that is very disagreeable to me .. a natural feminine quality which in some circumstances make sense (ie, while you're child bearing) but in others does not.

HOWEVER in other aspects, the feminization of man has been a a fantastic and critical thing to the survival of our species.

I'm sorry, but if machismo ruled the day we'd have nuked each other to death by now.

I think it can easily be argued that the women's movement is the only reason we made it out of alive from the 20th century.

Being a masculine warmonger does not play well with the soccer moms and thus we are more likely to consider diplomatic solutions to our problems.

I also think Rugged Individualism isn't all that we've made it out to be. It's been shown time and time again that when managed right, a group of people can always outwit any individual any time of the day.

Good masculine attitudes I'd like to see more is zero debt, working hard at being your best, saving up for a rainy day, and taking care of other people who can't take care of themselves. Those type of men are in far too short of supply, and really, always have been.

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are my idea of what a real man should be.

[llanlad2]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

Come on GRG, need i bring up queer eye for the straight guy ;) Or how about being metro-sexual, or a guy getting his chest waxed or his eye brows done or taking longer to get ready than most ladies.... I would consider it femenization.... Granted, some are hygiene and stuff, but seriously..... Perhaps the difference in age groups is why you're not seeing it as much as folks in my age group (mid to late 20's), but alot of the twenty somethings are extremely metro.... So much so its hard to believe....

All the above is a result of marketing and consumerism. A female cousin of mine told me 20 years ago that men would be buying beauty products and I laughed at her and told her men were different. She said that the female market was saturated so the cosmetic companies would now turn to the untapped 50% of the market. She was right.

The culture war begun in the sixties has, in large part, been won by the left. Nowhere is this clearer than in the feminization of men.

The thesis was academics, feminists, the left etc were to blame. That's rubbish. Metrosexuality is marketing concept dreamed up by companies seeking a new market. That's all.

[bpr]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

edit: What is with the lame smiley faces? Looks more like a smirk. At least you can see these.

I have had it with the feminization of smiley faces.

EasyCrying

[shiny!]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

John Gatto is awesome!

[ASH]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

Did none of you see that I was posting a link? They are a bit hard to see (hint hint iTulip webmaster ...)

I hadn't realized that until you mentioned it -- I think the lack of any text in the post that wasn't a link made it harder to recognize as such. Anyway, that's an interesting and appropriate article you linked. I've read about other studies in a similar vein -- a lot of data seems to support pretty unsentimental conclusions about how male and female reproductive strategies play out in different circumstances.

[llanlad2]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

Could be a feminist academic conspiracy, but thought it was relevant. From the London School of Economics.

The link between divorce and men who help around the house

Divorce rates are lower in families where husbands help more with housework, shopping and childcare, according to new research from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
A study of 3,500 British married couples after the birth of their first child found that the more husbands helped, the lower the incidence of divorce.
The research, Men's Unpaid Work and Divorce: Reassessing Specialisation and Trade, was carried out by Wendy Sigle-Rushton, one of several UK academics comprising the Gender Equality Network (GeNet), part of the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) Priority Network Programme. Findings are published in the latest edition of Feminist Economics.
It explodes the theory that marriages are most stable when men focus on paid work and women are responsible for housework, showing instead that fathers' contribution to housework and childcare stabilises marriage, regardless of mothers' employment status.
Economists have long argued that rising divorce rates, which began in the early 1960s, are linked with steady increases in the numbers of married women working, because marriages in which men take responsibility for paid work and women remain in the home make both spouses better off.
Dr Sigle-Rushton, senior lecturer in social policy at LSE and research associate at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion, said:
"Economists have spent a good deal of time examining and trying to explain the positive association between female employment and divorce. However, in doing so, they have paid very little attention to the behaviour of men. This research addresses that oversight and suggests that fathers' contribution to unpaid work at home stablises marriage regardless of mothers' employment status."
Dr Sigle-Rushton's research analysed data on married couples who had their first child in 1970, a time when most mothers of young children stayed at home. This data came from the British Cohort Study, a nationally representative study that followed the lives of 16,000 children born in one week in 1970.
Dr Sigle-Rushton focused on 3,500 couples who had stayed together for five years after the birth of their first child. Around 20 per cent divorced by the time the child was 16. The fathers' participation in housework, shopping and childcare is measured in the number of tasks the father was reported, by the mother, to have done in the previous week.
Just over half of fathers, in 1975, were reported to have helped with none or one task (51%), 24 per cent carried out two tasks, and about one-quarter carried out three or four, the highest contribution.Nearly a third of mothers were employed, only five per cent of whom were working full time.
It found that, relative to families in which women are homemakers and men do little housework and childcare, the risk of divorce is 97% per cent higher when the mother works outside the home and her husband makes a minimal contribution to housework and childcare. However, there is no increased risk of divorce when the mother works and her husband's contribution to housework and childcare is at the highest level. The lowest-risk combination is one in which the mother does not work and the father engages in the highest level of housework and childcare.
Dr Sigle-Rushton said:
"The results suggest that the risk of divorce among working mothers, while greater, is substantially reduced when fathers contribute more to housework and childcare.
"That men's failure to contribute to housework can increase the risk of divorce may seem surprising, given that all of the families in my sample had fairly young children over the time period they are followed and a divorce would have had substantial economic consequences and would not have relieved most mothers of housework and childcare responsibilities."
Putting the research into a modern-day context, she added:
"The structure of the labour market, rates of female labour-market participation, rates of divorce, and expectations about men's and women's gender roles have all changed considerably since 1975. But this study underscores the importance of taking into account relationships between's men's behaviour and marital stability. In economic and sociological research, there has been too great an emphasis on women's paid work and not enough attention given to the division of unpaid work."

Ends

[Master Shake]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

Then you haven't been paying attention.

[ASH]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

I remembered seeing this article, in one form or another, some time ago:

Fertile women chose the masculine version of each image 15 percent more often, on average, than women who were not fertile, said lead researcher Anthony Little, a psychologist at the University of Stirling in Scotland. The effect was strongest if they were looking for a short-term partner rather than a long-term one, and if they considered themselves attractive.

...

Men with hard bodies and sculpted jaws may therefore have better genes for producing better babies, so it would make sense for fertile women to be attracted to them.

But masculinity isn't always the bee's knees. As this study illustrates, women tend to prefer more feminine body types when they are less fertile, probably because high levels of testosterone makes men less likely to stay around.

Research suggests that men who are less masculine tend to invest more in relationships, making them more appealing to women who are at the least fertile points in their menstrual cycle--a hormonal profile that mimics that of pregnancy, when mate investment in the relationship is crucial.

I seem to recall reading somewhere else that an evolutionarily 'optimal' female strategy is to marry the less masculine male who will stick around and help raise children, but to conceive those children in a fling with a more masculine male who might have better genes. ("Better" from the standpoint of conditions prevailing at the point in human development when these instincts evolved.)

A somewhat more socially acceptible option would be to mary a masculine male who has some mastery over his lizard brain.

One important clarification we should make in this thread is that what a biologist means by "masculine" are physical and behavioral characteristics of male biology -- not anyone's philosophical "masculine ideal". So, for a post like Munger's or mine, citing the work of biologists, it should be understood that "more masculine" men are those with more testosterone in their bodies and so forth. This isn't a claim about how "men should be", or what defines "a real man" -- the biologists are talking about how organisms with male characteristics and blood chemistry behave.

(Anyone have the "what defines a man" speech from The Big Lebowski? I couldn't find it with a few minutes of searching online.)

[flintlock]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

[karim0028]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

Then you haven't been paying attention.

I think you are right..... I think i misunderstood the conversation. My bad.

[sunskyfan]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

The other, potentially, correlating factor with respect to the last 40 years is the advent of the female birth control pill. A couple of studies have drawn correlations to women on the pill favoring a less masculine man.



http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...t-womens-taste

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1218808/Contraceptive-pill-women-attracted-masculine-men--interested-boyish-looks.html

[Rajiv]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

I have had it with the feminization of smiley faces.

EasyCrying

That is just a depiction of masculine virtue as Ella says well

[dropthatcash]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

The more than faint misogynist undertone doesn't help the author with his case. Maybe instead of blaming feminist professors and the school system, he should ask himself why there are so many single parent households with kids being raised without a male role model. Seems a lot of men have decided to dispense with the responsibility of raising the children they helped create. But then being responsible for the consequences of your own actions doesn't fit that "rugged individualism" thing, does it...

How can a man be responsible for a child he never had a say-so in? The men are looking for sex, it's the woman that decides to want\have the baby and should be held responsible in entirety. An exception to that rule would be a case where a man clearly announces he is also looking for children. Funny how abortion is a womans choice but birth is a mans obligation.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

The guy who wrote this article needs lessons on understanding cause and effect. Is he really saying that Gibbon stated the Roman Empire collapsed because misguided liberalism led to the feminisation and collapse of what was actually a military state?

This is sort of what Gibbson in fact said. His thesis was that Rome collapsed due to moral decay.

This is the only set of books from the 1700s that is still widely read and many people respect this point of view.

-G