Mommy, Why Would You Write a Book with Such a Mean Title?
That’s what Hanna Rosin’s young son, Jacob, asks her everyday about her recent book The End of Men: And the Rise of Women.
I am reading Rosin’s book for additional research for my forthcoming book on why men are going on strike in marriage, fatherhood and in the culture. One reason I suggest in my book for men’s negative attitudes towards marriage, women and the society is the denigrating and damaging way that boys and young men are treated in our culture and a book with a title like this sure doesn’t help. To her credit, Rosin at least offers up a lame explanation to Jacob that “I want to convince people that some men out there need our help, since it’s not so easy for them to ask for it.” “He doesn’t quite believe me yet, but maybe one day he will.” Yet as I read the pages of her book, I am not sure what type of help she thinks men need and as Christina Hoff Summers said to me about men’s centers that try to convince men to be more like woman: “I don’t think that’s the kind of help men want.”
Rosin points out the ways in which girls are seen as better than boys. Rosin describes a shift in the US whereby parents, both men and women, prefer a girl when asked. It took two hypothetical daughters for people to say they would prefer the third child to be a boy. Rosin goes on to say:
Women are not just catching up anymore; they are becoming the standard by which success is measured. “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” is a phrase that resonates with many parents of school-age sons and daughters, even if they don’t always say it out loud. As parents imagine the pride of watching a child grow and develop and succeed as an adult, it is more often a girl than a boy that they see in their mind’s eye.
Did Rosin ever stop to think that with men are just responding to the culture around them. “The End of Men,” “boys are stupid, throw rocks at them,” Girl Power, and parents who want them to be girls–these are damaging messages to send to our young men. Boys and men keep many of their thoughts and feelings to themselves but don’t think that they won’t hear and respond to what is happening around them. Books declaring “the end of men” are contributing to the problem, not trying to find a solution to the reasons that boys and men are not faring as well in our society.
The cultural wussification of the American male is just one more step in descent into national destruction.
By God’s design, men and women have different skills and characteristics that complement each other. By minimizing the contributions of either gender to society, we destroy the ability for that society to succeed.
The decline of the American/Western male is no less damaging for the progression/survival of our society than is the suppression of women in islamic and other misogynist societies contributing to the lack of progression in those societies.
Publishers published this book to make a profit so it’s aimed at some demographic they think exists. Take a second and list what you think are the world views of that demographic; I did and it scared the pants off me.
Societal suicide…
I wonder (not very hard) what that imbecile means by “the end of men.” No more men at all? Hmm, talk about a low birth rate! A country full of women? They couldn’t even take Mexico in a war.
In my opinion, all this stuff & nonsense about men is political, and probably based on the fact that women are a majority. This horrible sexism (that’s what it is, isn’t it?) is one reason I moved out of the USA.
One male gone!
You’re very close. What’s going on here is an offshoot of the radical feminist movement. Those women hated men for whatever reason and they used the power of the press and media corrupt other women into hating men, too. Those they couldn’t hate they worked on again through media (just look at how men are portrayed in sit coms, etc.) to make them hold men in contempt as idiots, fools and incompetents. That is the aim behind the “Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them” meme sold to little girls.
It seems to be catching on. Studies of narcissism, particularly of teens and college ages, show that it is more common than ever and most highly so amongst girls. This should be no surprise when girls are taught in school and by media that they are all superstars and superior, lot of arrogance and bitchiness results. So then these girls go out and the only males who will have anything to do with them are narcissistic sociopaths who treat them terribly and decide the feminists were right that all men are creeps. But of course they never look in the mirror.
But it is troublesome that they are trying to make girls out of boys. In school, that is mostly because most teachers are women and they won’t make allowances for the fact that boys and girls are different. Instead of letting boys move around or get regular exercise, they just get them medicated into zombies on dangerous drugs instead.
“But it is troublesome that they are trying to make girls out of boys. In school, that is mostly because most teachers are women and they won’t make allowances for the fact that boys and girls are different. Instead of letting boys move around or get regular exercise, they just get them medicated into zombies on dangerous drugs instead.”
Man-o-man, you hit the nail on the head there. I coached baseball for ten years, and NEVER ONCE had a team without some poor boy on Ritalin or some other ADD concoction.
Our neighbor had her son on Ritalin from age 7, on the advice of some sorry biddy school marm. When he was a young teenager, he started using “non-prescription” drugs, cause, you know, drugs make you “better”. Just before they moved away, he pulled a loaded shotgun on another neighbor. The mom confessed that Ritalin was “the biggest mistake of her life”. So it goes. Can’t take THAT ONE back.
But it isn’t that most teachers are women; most were women when I was growing-up in the Mezozoic Era, but THEY knew about the wonders and pitfalls of testosterone (ref: the “long tail”, hit-or-miss characteristic of the hormone, e.g. most geniuses AND most criminals are MALE). They knew to encourage the shy ones and put a bridle on the wild ones, but that in any case you couldn’t “fix” what came through the door.
Today’s women (well, and men too) have lost any sense of the “organic” (e.g. how things really ARE in nature, or economics for that matter). They never met a problem that didn’t require Urgent Action. But it’s OK, because a “scientific” approach is a hallmark of the Progressive/Liberal movement, regardless of the quality of the “science”. See: Warming, Global.
In Texas, we’d say that these folks are “stuck on stupid”, but that misstates the problem. Stupid isn’t uniformly malevolent. They’re actually all stuck on Third-Rate Intelligence; exactly smart enough to INSURE bad outcomes.
The issue with this is that so many men now are such concern trolls (wanting to appear properly ‘progressive’) that they’ll willingly participate in their own march to irrelevance.
They buy the “Even if somehow you ever get raped, you can’t get pregnant from it, so you will always be the oppressors!” card when it’s played, and then play it THEMSELVES against other men if it should ever be pointed out that women tend to get favored treatment in the court (whether child & family, or criminal justice) systems.
They respond with “You just REFUSE to let women have their day and their issues, thinking you’re oh so important that you have to override it with YOUR male privilege!”
“Male Feminists” don’t seem to understand that their enabling of Misandry in order to “level the playing field” is actually a worse misogyny of their OWN action.
In their constant need to concern-troll, it shows that they themselves do not think of women as being anywhere close to equal footing, and therefore THEY must step in to ‘elevate’ or otherwise White Knight for them; advocating for institutionalized “positive discrimination”. If they truly believed in women as being ‘equal’, they’d understand that said women don’t need them to step in and fight their battles for them.
All it is, is another form of male Self-Loathing.
This is an important and necessary work – a classic seminal work of feminism.
I can’t wait for the sequel which Ms Rosin’s will undoubtedly write to help fund her Club Med golden years:
‘Why Our Son’s Hate Us for our Emotional Abuse’
That kid is probably going to end up being a great author, like Ernest Hemmingway.
I’m assuming you’re familiar with the abuse Hemingway’s mother heaped upon both Ernest and his father? That she made a gift of her husband’s suicide pistol to her son, Ernest? That Hemingway referred to his mother throughout the rest of his life as “that bitch?”
No sweat, Bill. F. Scott Fitzgerald mis-spelled Papa’s name in exactly the same way. Hence, the importance to both writers of Maxwell Perkins. But that’s another story.
‘Why Our Son’s Hate Us for our Emotional Abuse’
I’d be willing to read THAT one, just to see she got her just deserts.
I can’t wait. More Valerie Jarrets, Hillary Clintons, Elizabeth Warrens, Nancy Pelosis, Janet Napolitanos, Kathleen Sebeliuses, Claire McCaskills. Things are so much more honest, open, loving and humane when women get power, aren’t they?
I was willing to give Hanna Rosin the benefit of the doubt regarding her intentions until I read her Slate column on the Colorado shooting – ugly stuff.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/07/23/aurora_dark_knight_shooting_the_men_protected_the_women.html
As the commenters there point out, she’s tendentiously exploited that tragedy to promote her thesis and is disingenuous in her account of the incident and the people involved.
Women will continue to rise as the Democratic party remains ascendant. It’s not so much that the GOP wages a war ON women but rather that the Democrats wage a war FOR women.
My observations is that the group most likely to “go Galt” are single males. Married men with children have responsibility that they generally take seriously and won’t take action that will make their families worse off. I think that the whole reduced willingness to marry phenomenon is just another aspect of going Galt.
Nonetheless, as long as males continue to go Galt, women will have no choice to rise and shoulder an ever increasing burden in society. Ms. Rosin should maybe be careful what she wishes for.
Our only priority should be to transfer the costs of the current order onto women and manginas.
That is all we have to do.
The reason the title is “mean” is that the author is selling an emotional lie. Men key to humanities success. It is men who have and continue to invent the technological marvels that create humanities wealth. It is men who create great wealth. It is women who consume it.
Yes women get better grades, but they do not create humanities wealth (excluding procreation where to date men are blamed). The vast majority of the worlds billionaires are men who created our technology. Women use them. Journalist and authors like our dear friend incorrectly measure success.
The simple truth is that men are superior to women. Women like this author know this and choose to lie about the simple truth.
“Yes women get better grades, but they do not create humanities wealth”
They get better grades studying what men have discovered or written.
The idea that there are all these great women authors and scientists just *waiting* to get burst forth from millenia of oppression is bullshit. Men dominate on the far ends of the bell curve, not women.
Am I the only person who has noticed that Islamic radicalism has all the ideological sidebars needed to function as a “masculinist” reaction to the triumph of the feminist movement? Islamic radicals seem to get a lot of respect in today’s media — for obvious reasons (Who wants to get blown up?). Hanna Rosin could end up in a Burka, facilitated by the political and religious choices of her sons and grandsons.
Hanna Rosin could use a burkha. Have you seen a photo of her?
Kay Hymowitz has excellent fact-based essays on this subject which you may find more useful to read.
The great themes of my 60 years have been
(1) Disintermediation (originally coined during the FIRST S&L crisis with the creation of Certificates of Deposit, but now applies to everything, thanks to Al Gore’s invention)
(2) Diseconomies of Scale (contrary to Soviet economic theory (sic), there IS such a thing as TOO BIG), and
(3) The Rise of the Bitch.
As a society, we adapted to the first two pretty well, but this Bitch thing is gonna sink us. Many date it to the Vietnam War, when men first took the easy road to sex by dumbing-down their X-Y chromosomes to get a little left-wing nookie. Remember that Barbarella poster? Sure you do. Admit it, you’d have tapped that even AFTER it turned into Hanoi Jane.
Now, a couple of generations later, we have badly-fathered left-wing Urban Bitches making-up shit about “useless, lazy” men, and a growing number of men refusing to either play along OR grow up (why should they?).
One funny thing, though; after the trees blew down during Hurricane Ike (65 mph wind at my house, 13 days w/o power)I NEVER saw a female of any stripe, gay or straight, running a chain saw or back-wiring a generator into their entrance panel, or siphoning gas out of their vehicle.
Huh. Wonder why.
Well said, a great comment.
I would append that to say ‘The State-Backed Rise of the Bitch’.
None of this would be possible without massive government resources propping up women. Sadly, this is the something the Republicans have been quick to do as well, as the possibility of worshipping a woman very quickly turns Republicans into leftists.
This is very interesting, but of course the main reason I came here was to see your photo, Helen. You might just be the number 1 hottest woman on the planet. Lucky Glenn Reynolds!
Ok, I’ve got that out of my system. Bottom line for your boys is this, and I can say it because it has worked very well for me. I taught my boys to work hard and study hard. Good grades are very important, way more important than the extra-curricular activities like football, basketball and such. I did urge them to play sports and get plenty of exercise, and they were good athletes who excelled at tennis, golf and swimming. My oldest son has degrees in mechanical engineering and nuclear technology. My youngest son has a degree in petroleum engineering. Both are very successful, if I may brag on them for a moment.
But they worked hard in college, didn’t join fraternities, didn’t drink or party, kept their noses clean, and now have great careers. The problem with most boys are their parents, who want them to be cool, great athletes, or popular. I didn’t worry about those things, but taught them to work hard. My oldest son graduated #2 in a class of 400, and has done much better than the top graduate, who was female. My youngest son graduated in the top 10% of his class, and no one in his class is any more successful than he is. Boys can easily compete with girls, but most of the time society gets in the way. It is up to us parents to make sure our boys perform at the level of their capabilities. The end of men? Not at all, my oldest son has a young son right now who just turned one. He acts like a chip off the old block.
Ah, but your sons are engineers. Not politically correct. And, of course, the Ultimate Threat to the feminists – not one of whom could survive freshman year of a good engineering school.
of course the main reason I came here was to see your photo, Helen. You might just be the number 1 hottest woman on the planet
Heh! Every time I read one of her posts, I can’t help but notice that she’s quite lovely.
The end of liberal manhood perhaps. Rosin is just another articulate fool. They are a dime a dozen.
Interesting game. The only way to win is not to play….
(smiles deviously)
Seriously – I once dated a woman who would talk for hours on end about how there were no matriarchal societies in world history. I invariably would reply: “Given the human taste for experiment, the arrangement almost certainly has been tried at some point. So, why do you think there aren’t any such societies in the historical record?”
I never got an answer.
If you get rid of the sheep-dogs, the wolfs get a fee lunch. Hope they enjoy the coming dark age.
Patriarchy is inevitable.
http://www.goldberg-patriarchy.com/index.html
Or, you get something along the lines of Kingston, Jamaica where a woman doesn’t dare be caught out after dark.
I feel sorry for Jacob Rosin, having a mother who doesn’t want him as himself, and in 30 years I suppose I should feel sorry for Hanna Rosin not having a real relationship with her son and not understanding why…. except I won’t feel sorry for her at all, she’ll have brought it on herself, but I’ll still feel for Jacob, tho.
Western Civilization is enjoying a mild summer in a tidal pool. The freedom that modern feminists are currently reveling in is a house of cards. As long as we are a society of clerical workers in air-conditioned offices, things will be fine, but everything changes. Enjoy it while you can, ladies. When the music stops, don’t expect the modern castrated man to give you his chair like an old school “gentleman” would, he’ll just give you the finger like a true equal.
I don’t think the Islamists give a wooden nickel about this topic. They will just ban the book and kill the author. And there won’t be females on their side of the process – well, there will be – they’ll be at home, wearing garbage bags and living in fear.
Your move, ladies. You might want to keep a few real men around for protection – just bring money, since you have no affection for them.
Qu’elle emasculating b**ch, didn’t they used to say?
Urging my son to go west, from Massachusetts, to a red state for college. Be nice for him to perhaps be exposed to young ladies who were not nurtured on the casual anti-man, feminist mother’s milk that poisons the youth – both make and female in this part of the Northeast – as he does want to marry and build a family someday. (About which, pray for him please)
He was horrified when I suggested that he add the term “sweetie” or “honey” when answering rude feminists. In his HS he said that the gals would report him and that would be considered bullying! Ha, what is wrong with women, geez? Some if them want to be seen as just as tough as guys, but do not hurt their delicate feelings.
“I don’t think that’s the kind of help men want.”
More critically, that’s not the help they need.
My wife and I have 4 sons and are expecting another child. We learned 2 weeks ago that we are having a 5th son, which thrills us. Our friends, who know us well, are excited for us of course.
Yet when we tell our neighbors, co-workers, etc., they try to *comfort* us!
“Oh, you poor thing!”
and
“You must be so disappointed!”
are so common as to be banal. My favorites, though, were the female neighbor who *burst into tears* saying,
“Oh, [Aquinas Mom] I feel SO SORRY for you!”
and a (female) co-worker of mine who said,
“Such a terrible blow to you both, I’m sure. Is it too late to ‘do something’ about it and try again for a girl?”
Such unconscious (or not) loathing for boys!
The most notable exception is the lady who owns a nearby restaurant we go to 1-2 times a month. She was so happy! Her rst response was,
“Oh, God must love you special!”
Of course, she’s a Chinese immigrant….
I think ‘do something’ should count as fighting words, and it be legal for you or your wife to beat said coworker into a puddled mass of vomit on the floor. Ideally you do it, and then your wife claims responsibility and says ‘it was hormones that made me do it’.
I don’t know about legal, but as long as I’m on the jury it will be “justified”.
Do people actually *say* that? Holy crap!
The notion that America is more civilized than countries that practice sex-selective abortion, has just proven invalid.
It has happened to my wife since I posted this this morning.
Why would any woman go on to publish under that title once her son had made such a cogent criticism? Oh, yeah, he’s just a male, so his views mean nothing. Love ya, Mom.
I do think there’s some validity in this: the predominance of female cultural values has made “caring and empathy” in politics MORE important than nuts-and-bolts problem solving, clear experience, and demonstrated record of achievement.
If it looks good, and makes you feel good about yourself, that’s good. If it’s demonstrated to work, able to fix or turn around problems, but doesn’t give you those warm fuzzies, that’s bad.
And no matter how bad the crisis, “does he care about my problems” has become more compelling than “is he competent to handle the job.”
Did you ever stop to think that this book wasn’t written for men in the first place? Very few men will ever read it (unless prodded to do so by their significant other). And yes, men are reacting to the twisting of our society by feminists. That’s why fewer and fewer marriages are occuring. It’s a life sentence…especially if there are children involved. In America, at least for the past 30-40 years, women not only get the house, but the kids and usually a hefty child support as well as alimony check every month. What man in his right mind will ever submit to that?
Thee is also the Kim DuToit essay written 2003 that is still floating around the Internet decrying all this:
http://www.nbssportfishing.com/vBforum/f24/pussification-western-male-9528/
Hanna Rosin is a monster.
When her son was about 4 years old, Hanna Rosin forced him to say on videotape that ‘Women are better than men’, and then play the tape for rooms full of excited feminists.
I was born in 1983 and I have vivid memories of realizing (in one of the earliest math classes I can remember) that if I had my hand up and a girl had her hand up, I was never called on.
Reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with a group of women. We were at a convention reception and talking about our families. They all had daughters. When it got me me, I said, ” well, my son is 16 years old, holds a Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do, is an Eagle Scout, is an NRA qualified marksman with both rifle and shotgun, and is as good with knife and tomahawk as he is with a bow. The looks on their faces were of horror. One said she could not believe my son had been taught such things and been part of a homophobic organization.
I told them to look at it this way: suppose one of their daughters was trapped on a suddenly closed road in terrible weather. Judging by their reactions, she’d be unprepared. If my son was on that same road, she would walk out alive and safe because he is trained and would put her welfare ahead of his own. Then they would get down on their knees and thank god for such a man. None of them said a word. I was not surprised.
Related to all this, note the many movies and tv shows in which females kick the crap out of men in fights. At the same time, in the military, we see the physical requirements for soldiers in terms of strength and endurance being lowered, because women haven’t a prayer of meeting them.
In my arrogant opinion, none of this is an accident. Others have mentioned the pass Islamic societies get for their abuse of women. We are being consciously set up for conquest by foreigners, and the people behind it are doing it not because they care about women, but because they hate Western civilization.
Yeah, Rosin and those like her will end in burkahs, if they get their way. But their male rulers will be anti-American, at that’s all they really care about.
Rosin is Jewish. She will not end up in a burqa, but a box.