Maybe we ought to rethink that whole 19th amendment thing. Yeah, I just microagressed a whole bunch of people.

So I was just reading this article (yeah, The Daily Beast, I know) about college-educated women in Manhattan not being able to find dates. It's an interesting article in which the author fulfills all of the stereotype about leftist women, including the conceit that parts of the U.S. other than NYC and coastal California simply don't exist, and the expected bemoaning of the fact that the professional Manhattan men, who are now a distinct minority, can pick and choose who they date.

But the best one is when the author gets to explaining about how women vastly outnumber men in the sort of colleges whose degrees get you six-figure jobs in the trendiest parts of Manhattan. Did you know that this is totally a random demographical accident? It has no cause whatsoever, other than maybe men are getting stupider. Most importantly, the author takes great care to assure the gentle reader that this disparity has absolutely nothing to do with feminism. No sirree! No feminism to be seen here. No one here but us sweet innocent college girls who would never hurt a fly. The author does throw in at the end, "Maybe we should try to get more boys to go to college. But not at the expense of girls!" Heaven forbid!

Cousin Dave,

Here we go again!

http://www.today.com/news/princeton-moms-letter-telling-women-find-husband-campus-strikes-nerve-1C9179555

Or maybe it has to do with this?

From Pollitt's column in 2006:

"Believe it or not, there are still stereotypically male jobs that pay well and don't require college degrees--plumbing, cabinetry, electrical work, computer repair, refrigeration, trucking, mining, restaurant cuisine. My daughter had two male school friends, good students from academically oriented families, who chose cooking school over college. Moreover, as I'll discuss in my next column, sex discrimination in employment is alive and well: Maybe boys focus less on school because they think they'll come out ahead anyway. What solid, stable jobs with a future are there for women without at least some higher ed? Heather Boushey, an economist with the Center for Economic Policy and Research, noted that women students take out more loans than their male classmates, even though a BA does less to increase their income. The sacrifice would make sense, though, if the BA made the crucial difference between respectable security and a lifetime as a waitress or a file clerk."

Lenona, I can assure you that to the average Manhattan young single woman, people like plumbers and electricians are expected to be invisible. No such woman would ever lower herself to even speak to such a man any more than necessary, much less consider a romantic relationship with one. You are right that men are turning more to these sorts of jobs, but other than maybe mining, there's nothing that stops a woman from doing any of them. Nothing, that is, other than the feminist-inspired belief that because such work is typically male, it is unclean in a quasi-religious sense, and not fit for the devout. The existence of it is an unfortunate necessity, but not fit for discussion in polite company.

Cousin Dave, about the only mining women would do is with one of these. I suspect most women's reaction to that Youtube video would be "huh". Mine? that would be so coool! I want to give that a spin!

Otherwise, women don't marry/date down. It isn't an immutable law of nature, but it is awfully close.

I would suspect that most of the women graduates from elite universities would look down their long nose at me simply because I attended a *gasp* state school.

I'm pretty sure that the average Manhattan young single woman overvalues her own stock.

When there are thousands of other reasonably attractive, size-two, college-educated, career women running around in your area, you aren't that hot a commodity.

"Otherwise, women don't marry/date down. It isn't an immutable law of nature, but it is awfully close."

Yeah, that's the thing. It's evolutionary hard-wiring. A bunch of women aren't going to marry down for the same reason that a bunch of men aren't goint start marrying fat women. What I'm pointing out is that the college women, and their post-modern feminism, are refusing to recognize their own role in the sitaution. If they want more men of higher status, they are going to have to either remove some of the obstacles to men attending college, or do something about promoting the social status of tradesmen. But there is no way in hell American feminists will consider either of those courses. It's so much more rewarding to cast themselves as victims.

(As an aside, I will note that in Europe, engineers and scientists enjoy far higher social status than they do in America. So there's another potential group of eligible males being overlooked by the Manhattan women.)

You are right that men are turning more to these sorts of jobs, but other than maybe mining, there's nothing that stops a woman from doing any of them.

Posted by: Cousin Dave at September 9, 2015 10:11 AM

What makes you think that the awful things that have happened to women miners (as portrayed in the well-known 2005 movie "North Country") don't happen in plenty of other traditionally male-dominated jobs? Anthony Bourdain certainly didn't paint a pretty picture in "Kitchen Confidential." (It's not just blue-collar jobs either, from what little I've heard of law firms, for one.) I certainly wouldn't consider working in hostile environments like that.

Good job Lenona for trying to turn misandrist bigotry and blame it all on the men. Men are turning away from school because the schools are discriminatory. This has been documented for quite some time. They are turning away from colleges for the same reason. Except in fields where there is objective grading criteria men are not that welcome.

As for mining jobs. Gee, you put a bunch of people in the middle of nowhere working a dirty and dangerous job, why is it shocking you don't get the highest quality of people? I don't recommend women as field hands in the oil industry. There are no toilets. You live in a tent. There are no police either. Most work is done in nations where rape is effectively legal. Except for the top five drilling companies the men aren't that great either. Most of them take various illegal drugs. Typically in the meth or cocaine families. Comparing that with being a plumber or carpenter in a large city is just stupid.

Also, do you think men in women dominated fields have it any easier? Try being an electronics assembler in a city where that is dominated by women. You better love soldering cause many of your coworkers will do everything they can to get rid of you.

Point, missed: I mentioned mining because of the sheer amoutn of strenuous physical labor involved. (Although mining is becoming as automated as everything else these days... no reason why women can't do the job if their main responsibility is to sit in a cab and pull levers.) But to wrap up what Ben said, if women are such shrinking violets that they can't stand up for themselves to face the kind of crap that men face from a very young age, then they just won't be employable at all, will they?

Lenona, honestly, the #1 mistake you make is to assume that nothing experienced by anyone outside of your own identity group is a valid experience. Until you're ready to open your mind to that, nobody is going to take your complaints serioiusly. Because to claim that your own experiences, or the experiences of people in your own tribe, have moral authority over everyone else, is a claim of privilege. And you know it.

Lenona, honestly, the #1 mistake you make is to assume that nothing experienced by anyone outside of your own identity group is a valid experience.
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Explain, please.

In the meantime, I've noticed that YOU often tend to say that "sexist obstacles don't really exist for women, so they should stop complaining that they do exist." Talk about absolutism.

Not to mention that while Bourdain certainly made it clear that one's coworkers in restaurants can make things pretty rough for you as a newcomer - a type of hazing, I suppose - he ALSO strongly implied that it's somewhat Off Limits to use bigoted slurs (or vicious printed material) against any coworker who's a member of a minority group - and that taboo is not about assuming that any man in a minority group is a shrinking violet who needs coddling, so why should there be a difference when it comes to women?

Men are turning away from school because the schools are discriminatory. This has been documented for quite some time.
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It's also been documented for decades that college is way overpriced; even many women are now reconsidering going. How do you know that saving money isn't the biggest factor when it comes to young men's decisions?

"How do you know that saving money isn't the biggest factor when it comes to young men's decisions?"

Because you don't have to pay for k-12.

Meaning?

You don't have to pay for K-12. Saving money is not a factor.

It is no secret that K-12 public schools in the US are biased against boys. This has been documented numerous times. The biggest reason men don't apply for and get into colleges in the same proportions as women, they don't have the grades for it.

Or maybe modern teachers and parents alike are too cowardly when it comes to boys who refuse to do what they've ALWAYS had to do in schools - sit down and pay attention. That is, they'd rather drug them than deal with it any other way - and teachers, understandably, are afraid of parents going into denial and hitting back when the teachers accuse their sons of disrupting classes, so they simply refuse to give them the high grades they aren't earning. Some would say this is the result of attachment parenting, in which parents revolve around their kids and start to think the kids can do no wrong, regardless of what other adults are observing again and again.

However, I'm not opposed to single-sex schools - if it can possibly be arranged so that it doesn't turn into "separate and unequal" for either sex.

Deny reality all you like Lenona. Teaching is not a new activity and humanity hasn't changed much in over a thousand years. The evidence is quite clear on current US K-12 public education. But no one can make you see the truth if you don't want to.

I see you don't want to deal with the problem of parents who spoil their kids rotten - hardly a minor problem. Check out a certain TIME issue from 2005 -

http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20050221,00.html

"What Teachers Hate About Parents"

Pretty eye-opening. As many conservatives are happy to point out, 60 years ago or so, parents were more likely to listen to the teacher's side of a case rather than their kid's side. Now, it's the other way around.

And, from the same column I mentioned:

http://www.thenation.com/article/girls-against-boys/

"...The conservative spin on the education gender gap is that feminism has ruined school for boys. 'Why would any self-respecting boy want to attend one of America’s increasingly feminized universities?' asks George Gilder in National Review. 'Most of these institutions have flounced through the last forty years fashioning a fluffy pink playpen of feminist studies and agitprop "herstory," taught amid a green goo of eco-motherism and anti-industrial phobia.' Sounds like fun, but it doesn’t sound much like West Texas A&M, Baylor, Loyola or the University of Alabama, where female students outnumber males in about the same proportion as they do at trendy Berkeley and Brown. Even Hillsdale College, the conservative academic mecca that became famous for rejecting federal funds rather than comply with government regulations against sex discrimination, has a student body that is 51 percent female. Other pundits–Michael Gurian, Kate O’Beirne, Christina Hoff Sommers–blame the culture of elementary school and high school: too many female teachers, too much sitting quietly, not enough sports and a feminist-friendly curriculum that forces boys to read–oh no!–books by women. Worse–books ABOUT women.

"For the record, in middle school my daughter was assigned exactly one book by a woman: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. In high school she read three, Mrs. Dalloway, Beloved and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, while required reading included male authors from Shakespeare and Fitzgerald and Sophocles to (I kid you not) James Michener and Richard Adams, author of Watership Down. Four books in seven years: Is that what we’re arguing about here? Furthermore, I don’t know where those pundits went to school, but education has always involved a lot of sitting, a lot of organizing, a lot of deadlines and a lot of work you didn’t necessarily feel like doing. It’s always been heavily verbal–in fact, today’s textbooks are unbelievably dumbed down and visually hyped compared with fifty years ago. Conservatives talk as if boys should be taught in some kind of cross between boot camp and Treasure Island–but what kind of preparation for modern life would that be? As for the decline of gym and teams and band–activities that keep academically struggling kids, especially boys, coming to school–whose idea was it to cut those 'frills' in the first place if not conservatives?..."

Cute Lenona. As I said, you don't have to face the truth if you don't want to.

How about providing a few studies that aren't from Fox News or the like? I notice you didn't tackle any of the points Pollitt made - maybe you can't?

I'm just tired of your innuendo presented as fact. Your what ifs and maybe thats presented as if random fears in your mind have any significance. You are so desperate to push your ideology absent any evidence supporting it. Did I present anything from Fox? No, but you can't stand that fact either.

So, since you asked for it.
"whose idea was it to cut those 'frills' in the first place if not conservatives?"

I didn't know that our public schools were run by conservatives. They must be very confused conservatives since the vast majority of them vote democrat.

"For the record, in middle school my daughter was assigned exactly one book by a woman"

So effing what. How many Scottish writers were assigned? How many Russians? How many Chinese? How many Thais? You can only learn from people who look like you? Are you Arabic? If not I guess you can't use algebra any more. No more addition or subtraction for you cultural imperials.

"60 years ago or so, parents were more likely to listen to the teacher's side of a case rather than their kid's side. Now, it's the other way around."

Once again, so effing what? You are claiming there is a gender imbalance caused by this? Parents protect and support boys more than girls? Absent that none of this supports your point.

So, how about some reality. Who required Title IX to do away with due process? I don't care what publication you go to reality is still the same. The order came from the department of education of the Obama administration. Not exactly a conservative flag bearer. Will you accept Christina Hoff Sommers as a valid source? Her 'The War Against Boys' lays thing out quite clearly with all the statistical evidence. Boy on average do worse in every class in public schools. Math, English, even gym, boy do worse than girls. Even when boys score higher on standardized tests in a subject than girls they still have worse grades. Read her book if you want the truth. The evidence for institutionalized sexism is there.

Sorry Lenona. Your poor little female self wasn't discriminated against. The big bad conservatives didn't hold you back.

Also, "...The conservative spin on the education gender gap is ..." If you are going to present a conservative position, quoting from a far left source doesn't give you any credence. Watching you fight with your own straw men is not that entertaining.

"For the record, in middle school my daughter was assigned exactly one book by a woman"

So effing what. How many Scottish writers were assigned? How many Russians? How many Chinese? How many Thais? You can only learn from people who look like you?
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You're dodging her point, which was clearly that there's a good chance that boys aren't really being forced to read as many books in school by or about women as conservatives like to claim. So why the fuss? "Four books in seven years: Is that what we’re arguing about here?"
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"60 years ago or so, parents were more likely to listen to the teacher's side of a case rather than their kid's side. Now, it's the other way around."

Once again, so effing what? You are claiming there is a gender imbalance caused by this? Parents protect and support boys more than girls? Absent that none of this supports your point.
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No, what I was claiming (OK, so I could have spelled it out better) is that when parents spoil their kids by never taking the teachers' side over the kids' side, they're enabling boys who refuse to sit still, and teachers will sooner or later lash out at boys who disrupt classes, whether by giving low grades or something else. Spoiled girls might (or might not) become increasingly lazy or whiny, but they're less likely to be truly disruptive. So there's a good chance that parents are as much to blame as anyone else, if not more so, when it comes to boys not doing as well in school as girls.

If you are out there Crid I apologize. I now understand that every person has their limit. You have just been on this blog longer than I have.

As for your 'points' Lenona. How about presenting an actual conservative point instead of making one up. Whining about the gender of the author is a liberal preoccupation, as your own link points out. And countering official government policy as is well documented by that government with a 'there's a good chance' fantasy of yours isn't persuasive.