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Notes -
Life offers a Better "Minimum Deal" to Women than to Men - Change my Mind?
Men are vastly more likely to be victims of the worst kind of violent crime: murder. In the US, 82% of total homicide victims are male, 18% are female. Women probably endure more sexual violence, but men definitely endure more violence overall given the 4:1 murder ratio.
Men do the overwhelming majority of the nasty, dangerous work, such as roofing in the summer, oil rig operation, management of sewers, garbage collection, etc.
Men are much more likely to be homeless (70%:30%) or imprisoned (93%:7%). I think this speaks to the greater competitiveness of the male world: If a man fails in life, he's judged a complete fuckup, and ends up a homeless low-status loser. If a woman fails, she can almost always just get married.
Men are much more likely to kill themselves (4:1). Although women attempt suicide more than men, men use dramatically more lethal means (hanging, gunshots, jumping). Because I'm not so sexist as to claim that women are too stupid to know how to actually succeed in killing themselves, I conclude that the difference in suicide methods reflects a difference in willingness to die. (And in any case, even when controlling for method, men manage to kill themselves more effectively than women.)
Men spend much more time on the job than women (41weekly hrs:36.3hrs/week). (This remains true well after the children leave the nest. And no, I'm not persuaded that childcare is harder than conventional employment.)
The law heavily favors women in child custody and child support disputes, and the institution of alimony transfers far more male wealth to women than female wealth to men.
Men are much more likely to die in combat; in fact, during serious military conflicts, they face military slavery (“the draft”). (In Iraq, women were 2.9% of all American combat deaths, men the other 97.1%; in WWII, of the 292,000 members of the US military who were killed by enemy fire, only sixteen were female. Women made up only 0.1 percent of the military's 405,000 war-related deaths.)
Our culture automatically cares more about female suffering and wellbeing than male suffering: "The ship is sinking! Save the women and children first!" Male job candidates are significantly more penalized for crying than women; subjects express that it appears that a woman in distress is taken more seriously than a man in distress.
The dating market is more competitive for men than for women; women are far more selective than men about sex partners. Imagine an attractive person of the opposite sex walking up to you on a college campus and saying, “Hi, I’ve been noticing you around town lately, and I fnd you very attractive. Would you have sex with me?” How would you respond? If you are like 100 percent of the women in one study, you would give an emphatic no. You might be ofended, insulted, or just plain puzzled by the request. But if you are like the men in that study, the odds are good that you would say yes— as did 75 percent of those men (Clarke & Hatfeld, 1989). As a man, you would most likely be flattered by the request.
Women are more likely to be superficially treated as mere "sex objects" by men. That said, men are more likely to be superficially treated as mere "success objects" by women.
Women now comprise nearly 60 percent of enrollment in universities and colleges and men just over 40 percent.
The "minimum deal" of life for men is worse than for women. The "minimum deal" for women seems to be "get married." The minimum deal for men seems to be: become homeless and kill yourself, if you aren't murdered first. Yes, men make more money and enjoy greater prestige because men are overrepresented at both the top and the bottom levels of society. But the degree to which being at the bottom of society hurts you is greater than the degree to which being at the top helps you. That is, it's so much more bad to be at the bottom than it is good to be at the top. Just ask yourself: would you rather experience the greatest amount of pleasure possible for 20 seconds, followed by the greatest amount of suffering possible for 20 seconds? Our response tells us that there is not a 1:1 ratio of pleasure to suffering. How about 30 seconds of the greatest possible amount of pleasure for 20 seconds of the worst possible amount of pain? 40:20? 50:20? I think this is why men kill themselves more.
According to Christian legend, God told Adam and Eve before their ouster from the garden of eden: "man shall live by the sweat of his brow, and woman shall suffer the pain of childbirth." Modern technology has greatly minimized the pain of childbirth, but has it equally lightened the burden on men's shoulders?
I won't deny that men do much less childcare and housework than women, and non-custodial fathers provide little financial or parental support for their children. Also, men are the perpetrators, and women are the victims, of the vast majority of sexual violence. (Although I'm not sure what the stats at prisons do to this balance; apparently rape in male prisons is a huge epidemic and is vastly greater than rape in female prisons. Considering the ridiculously disproportionate number of men in prisons, it's possible that this balances out.)
Anticipated objection: "But men are often the primary perpetrators of the issues facing men." This is irrelevant to the post title, but in any case, I think this is like saying "it's not bad that humans are victims of murder because, after all, all of the perpetrators of murder are also humans." The identity group to which the perpetrators belong is irrelevant to whether an individual was treated unjustly if the perps and victims are different individuals. This simple-minded identity-politics is like saying "someone with red hair beat me up when I was 12. Therefore, it's okay for me to beat someone up today, so long as they also have red hair (regardless of whether they are the same person)."
For some reason copy/pasting my post over to this website deleted all of the hyperlinks. It would be a big time waster to fix that so I'm just going to suffer the blow to credibility that may or may not cause. (For what it's worth, a simple google search should give you all of the same ratios above.) I originally drafted this for CMV on reddit, but the mods took it down.
Over the years online I've encountered a few people who make this kind of argument and I have to say that it baffles me.
I'm a man and I can honestly say I've never for a moment felt envious of women and I really don't understand the people who say that if they could choose, they would choose to be born as a woman. The only thing you've really listed that bothers me is child support and custody, I've got no kids myself but I feel for the good fathers who get a raw deal from the courts.
I'll take being homeless thanks, I'd much rather be bum-fighting a junkie than live my life as any woman. I've been in plenty of fights, brawls and various other flavours of fracas over the course of my life and I've enjoyed them all thus far, I don't know what the hell your average woman does to pass the time nowadays (eat hot chip and lie?) but I have to imagine it would be deathly boring by comparison.
This is an interesting question: you wouldn't change your mind if she was beautiful, wealthy, physically fit, socially gifted. You'd rather be you...but homeless, and likely with mental health or substance abuse or perhaps legal issues keeping you homeless.
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I'm considering your case with mild curiosity (not disapproval per se, just a very foreign worldview).
I haven't thrown a punch in anger in like 15 years, and the closest within recent memory is when a junkie fuckup was screwing an ex of mine, and I hit the gym and forced myself to lift while imagining beating the shit out of him. Even then, it was more kayfabe than something I'd do unprovoked.
Of course, India has less physical violence than the US does. Bar fights are absolutely not a common thing.
I've also never had people try and pick a fight with me, and they'd be stupid to, because I'm like +3 SD taller than the average Indian male.
Now, if you're unable to fight back, then you're not a pacifist, you're just harmless. I'm categorically not, I was mildly tempted to volunteer in Ukraine when I saw the atrocities happening there, and I have no qualms about stabbing a fool if the need arises.
Thankfully, I can point to absolutely no scenario in my life where that would have been a remotely good decision.
Citation needed.
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I would say you're on the far right tail of "down to fight hobos," even among young men. Regularly fighting in uncontrolled environments sounds like a bad time to me, especially when it comes to hobos—I'd rather fight pro-MMA fighters. Fights can be fun until one day they're not. On a side note, there used to be a video series called "Bumfights," of which I'm sure there are clips floating around on the interwebs.
You're thinking of this from a male-brained perspective. Many women spend tons of time on things like make-up, fashion, shopping, and taking selfies—interests/activities that most men would find "deathly boring." Yet women enjoy such things. If you were instead born a girl, or a switch flipped to turn you overnight into a woman (with the attendant neurological and hormonal changes), female-you might suddenly find eating hot chip and lying to be intensely interesting activities, alongside twerking, being bisexual, and charging your phone. Female-you might suddenly have a higher tolerance for boredom in general.
I think a lot more men would like those activities if it weren’t for social stigma. Fashion for men was historically huge in the West and is very prevalent in some countries still, make-up is getting more and more popular for men in Korea, and lots of men are addicted to shopping, just for “male-coded” things like video games or gear for their hobbies. And I know a lot of masculine gym bros who suddenly got obsessed with taking selfies the moment their physique became visible.
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I mean, it's not like I have much choice on the matter and believe me I am aware that women find the things I like to be boring. I'm not going to be so cruel as to try and force some poor woman to sit through Das Boot.
I see your point, but at the same time that's such a radical and fundamental change that I don't think I'd consider this hypothetical person to be me anymore. Who I am can't be disentangled from growing up as a boy and living as a man.
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Ok...
So many you just don't respect women?
I've worked security in a few bars and spent my younger years doing MMA; I've heard similar lines from a lot of 'tough guys' who've never thrown a punch in their lives.
How many times have you broken your nose/ribs/knuckles? How many times have you been stabbed? How much time and money have you spent in court fighting off charges and law suits? You enjoyed them all?
I wouldn't put it like that. I just really enjoy being male, all of my interests are deep inside "man" territory and as such there's really nothing on the feminine side of the spectrum that makes me go "oh yeah, I'd want that for myself".
I'm pretty lucky thus far and haven't been stabbed, although I have had to pick some decent sized shards of broken bottle out after one nasty incident, I was lucky to not need stitches. No breaks either, although I've dislocated my right shoulder twice and my nose tends to dramatically explode into a fountain of blood whenever someone so much as taps it. Closest I've been to lawsuits/charges over fighting was when I broke another kids leg when I was in my late teens.
I swear some former doorman always pops up to say this whenever the topic of fighting comes up online, as if you need credentials to make poor life choices. I get into fights because I get angry and make bad decisions in the heat of the moment, I enjoy them because the adrenaline and catharsis of releasing a lot of anger into my surroundings drowns out the pain and fear I would normally feel for doing something so reckless. It's not smart, but it feels amazing.
Ok
I would put it like that.
Ok
This is what people say, who've never been in an actual fight. This is something a 14 year old would say.
This is why people who've done things like security or did some fighting pop and say something. It's obvious your experience comes from video games.
Maybe. But there are a few no bullshit soldiers that enjoyed fighting in literal wars. There's not many, but they're out there. Also this guy could be extremely attached to being a man and his male sex/gender: he'd rather be a hobo fighting homeless junkies (and potentially being killed/maimed/thrown in jail from same) than be a beautiful, wealthy, socially graceful, healthy woman.
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I admit, I would've never expected someone like this to be so self-aware about it. Thanks for expanding my perspective.
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