EQUALITY MYTH

Today in Things we Love: “The PROSTITUTE who saved Puerto Rico!” (Or, in Which We Learn That Men’s Magazines Used to Really Love Exclamation Points.)

Check the amazing gallery of vintage men’s magazines on Buzzfeed today. Among the ridiculous headlines:

• United Nations Report: Free Love is Killing Prostitution!
• One of Every Two Wives has Extra-Marital Sex! Does Yours? Seven Ways to Find Out For Sure….
• “I Got All the Women I wanted for $50 a Month!”
• The PROSTITUTE Who Saved Puerto Rico!

 And among the not so ridiculous:

• Should we legalize marijuana?
• What’s Wrong with American Men?

But our personal favorite is Sir! (which is actually kind of a rad name for a magazine), cause they ran the following three cover lines on one single issue:

• Your Sweetheart and Abortion
• Why Call Girls are That Way
• Are You Taking a Chance with VD?

VD! Heh.

Howard Kurtz on Why Time is the Last Man Standing. (And Yeah, He Really Means ‘Man’)

With “the roof having fallen in” on Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, as Howard Kurtz puts it in today’s Washington Post, it’s Rick Stengel’s Time Magazine that’s become, as Stengel puts it, the newsweekly “category of one.”

So how does Time manage to stay profitable while the rest of us drown? Various ways. But one of them has to do with talent—male talent!

While he had to trim the roughly 200-person staff by a quarter over four years, relying more on freelancers, he has assembled a team of high-profile writers. These include a spate of journalists from The Post, including Michael Grunwald, David Von Drehle and Pulitzer Prize winner Barton Gellman. Stengel also brought in Mark Halperin from ABC, Michael Crowley from the New Republic and, most recently, Fareed Zakaria from Newsweek.

Time has lost a few big-name contributors as well, including Michael Kinsley, Andrew Sullivan and Bill Kristol. And Stengel, a speechwriter for Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign, has no prominent conservative to balance liberal columnist Joe Klein.

Maybe we’re a wee-bit sensitive here, but, um, we get it, OK? Great—really great!—men have kept Time going. But what about Nancy Gibbs, who wrote the—as Kurtz describes it—“fascinating look back at the cultural impact of ‘The Pill’”? Or Aryn Baker, the controversial author of the magazine’s recent Afghanistan cover, who Stengel once called “dazzling”? Honestly, the same men making the same decisions and writing about the same men making those same decisions just gets old. Which brings us to this question: could more women have saved Newsweek? More on that to come.

-jessica

The State of the American Man in 2010. And Why Cosmopolitan Isn’t Doing Anybody Any Favors.

So askmen.com just released the results of its annual “Great Male” survey, and damn if their results aren’t fascinating.The best bits:

• When asked what defines a “real man” in 2010, a full fifty percent said “being a great father and husband who takes care of his family.”
• Similarly, the ultimate male status symbol? Having a family, which ranked higher than a high-profile career, a beautiful wife, a sports car, or a nice house.
• And ninety-four percent said that they either are in a relationship with a woman who makes more than them or that being in one wouldn’t bother them.

Given the “mancession,” what’s going on with boys in school, and the gains that women have made in the last couple of decades, we’re going through a critical moment of re-evaluation when it comes to men and women and the roles that we play. And these responses feel eerily like the responses that women might have given fifty years ago, no? Are men the new women? Is this shift going to end with a full role-reversal? Maybe.

But not so fast. Cosmopolitan magazine did a corresponding survey this year, and damn if it isn’t the stupidest thing we’ve ever seen. The Great Female Survey doesn’t ask nearly the same number of questions, and sticks to stale stereotypes and gag-worthy ideas about what’s important to women today. “Money Matters” is limited to a single question about who should pay for a date. Vomit.

The few interesting findings are relegated to a random miscellaneous other insights category. They are:

• 46% of women say that a beautiful house is the ultimate status symbol. A successful husband or boyfriend came in second place, with 29%.

• 44% of women define a “real woman” as someone who can “do it all.” Being a good mother and wife who takes care of her family came in second, with 33%.

Cosmo, this is interesting. How many women wish they had a C-cup, not so much. Ugh. If a site as vapid as askmen.com can make one of the leading magazines for women look dumb, we’ll hold off on declaring victory just yet. Where, oh where is the modern-day Sassy? We miss you! We need you!!!

-jesse

Holy Crap! Can We all Move to Sweden? Gender Equality, Baby Daddies, and Swedish Paternity Leave

In Sweden, writes the New York Times, men have it all. Which, well, simultaneously means that women have it all. It’s like the land of perfect gender-equality, where 85 percent fathers take parental leave, the ponytailed finance minister calls himself a feminist, ads for cleaning products rarely feature women as homemakers, and preschools vet books for gender stereotypes in animal characters.

Swedish mothers still take more time off with children — almost four times as much … But laws reserving at least two months of the generously paid, 13-month parental leave exclusively for fathers — a quota that could well double after the September election — have set off profound social change.

Birgitta Ohlsson, European affairs minister, put it this way: “Machos with dinosaur values don’t make the top-10 lists of attractive men in women’s magazines anymore.”

An adorable baby-daddy gallery, and the rest of the fascinating article, are well worth checking out.

Bad Time to Be a Dude: Dissecting Male Studies, College Admissions, and Being a Man in America in 2010

Ever since we went to Staten Island for the male studies symposium last month, we’ve been wondering about something. It seems that a growing number of men have signed onto the idea that because women earn more bachelor’s degrees than men today (and are close to surpassing men in the earning of advanced degrees), it’s proof, suddenly, that it’s men who are being discriminated against. Meanwhile, a number of college admissions deans recently admitted they hold women to higher standards, prompting a full-scale civil rights probe into whether female college applicants are facing formal discrimination.

Which brings us to this: When is imbalance actually discrimination? It’s fascinating that the same situation can be read by one group as discriminatory toward men and another as discriminatory toward women.

We were reminded of this when we came across an editorial in this week’s Washington Times, which reads, in part:

For decades, women’s studies programs have thrived based on a host of purported “victimization” and gender gap claims. Both government data and sound social science research now have exposed many of these claims as myths. Today it is clear that “gender gaps” predominantly favor females and disfavor males. Specific examples would include strikingly higher rates of male unemployment, strikingly lower rates of male educational attainment, blatant gender bias in family and divorce law and, even when women and men initiate domestic violence at equal rates, the government’s providing of services to women but not to men (as seen in the Violence Against Women Act).

Now this is the Washington Times, but it’s worth asking: What is actually happening here? Are male unemployment figures higher because our society now favors women? Have the tables really turned so radically? Of course, you all know where we stand, but we also understand, on some level, why others would look at this collection of data and think it’s profoundly unfair, and, in short, a really bad time to be a dude.

We turn to you, dear readers. Would you want to be a man in America in 2010?  Do you think colleges should favor men in order to achieve gender balance on campus?

Turns Out, Men Get Ahead Cause They’re Just Plain Smarter, Says Creepy UK Prof

In a newspaper article last month, Susan Greenfield, one of Britain’s best-known female scientists, bemoaned the lack of female science professors in the UK. Which prompted Richard Lynn, a retired psychology professor and possessor of crazy-ass thoughts, to ask, in last week’s Daily Mail, Is there really a glass ceiling? To which he quickly answered his own question: No (or is it yes?), because—wait for it—men are just, well, smarter. He writes:

Not only is the average man more intelligent than the average woman, but a clear and startling imbalance emerges between the sexes at the high levels of intelligence that the most demanding jobs require. For instance, at the near-genius level (an IQ of 145), brilliant men outnumber brilliant women by 8 to one. That’s statistics, not sexism.

All of that brilliance, Lynn continues, goes a long way toward explaining why, in almost 110 years of Nobel Prize history, only two women have ever won the Prize for physics, only four have won the Prize for chemistry and why no women have ever won the Fields Medal for mathematics “in eight decades of trying.”

He goes on to explain what he “means” by intelligence, why men have emerged as “the more intelligent sex,” why we can’t exactly explain this, and, oh—why, when it comes to verbal intelligence, women are actually smarter than men! (Because of our nonstop gabbing, of course.)

In our hunter-gatherer past, women needed verbal abilities to negotiate their relationships with both men and women and to teach and socialise their children.

Now, before we throw up all over ourselves (and we’re only halfway through the column), we should note that this is this Richard Lynn, eugenicist, and that the Daily Mail is, well, the British equivalent of the New York Post. Still, as the ladies over at Femonomics put it:

The fact that Richard Lynn can still call himself a scientist, and his theories and the evidence he provides to back them up can be thought of as scientific, is an embarrassment to every real scientist out there, and to those of us working our tails off to put the letters P, H, and D after our names.

We don’t have P, H, or Ds after our names, but we’ll leave you with this choice quote, care of Feministing, from the lovely Richard Lynn:

“What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the population of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of the ‘phasing out’ of such peoples…. Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality.”

Return of the (Ok, Not at All Daily) Dose of Douchebaggery!

Aaaaand we’re back with a bang! In the form of an awesomely grandiloquent letter from Darryl Edwards to the Columbia Daily Tribune. We have no clue what he’s writing in about, but the title alone (Nanny state feeds on teat of women’s lib) is so great that it doesn’t even matter. It’s long, but it’s worth it. Herewith, our new favorite sad guy, and our interpretation of his flowing prose:

Why is our country swamped under the drowning flow of red ink as marked by our bulging national debt, our palladium of civic manners debauched by bullying indecency, our disposable income dwarfed by higher tax rates, frozen wages and the ballooning cost of living, and our society steeped in a stupor of despair to remedy these problems?

(Ed: why does everything suck so much right now?)

Solutions to national interest require virtuous, intrepid men to trailblaze a pathway to recovery from the shambles of mismanagement. The industrious and valorous men of our founding generation are churning in their graves at the lurid sight of simpering male misfits.

(Ed: because men are not MEN!)

The germ that spawned this pusillanimous debility must be laid squarely in the lap of our female cohort. Through slow, stealthy degrees, they have beguiled the male population to offer them equal rights; in that wake appeared the problems we now experience. This sneaky, confederate rise to power has unequivocally dashed the dominion of male-dominated sovereignty and replaced this imperial rite with androgynous misrule of nanny-state defeatism.

(Ed: gender equality turned us all into a bunch of pussies!)

Their insidious agenda has brought on the social rot that now afflicts our civilization. This furtive conspiracy of misandry has produced a male brood of pandering, milquetoast hermaphrodites.

(Ed: literally!)

The roaring flare of lusty, rugged male individualism has dimmed to a flicker of callow, epicene pushovers. A notable psychiatrist has attributed this social dysfunction to insufficient breastfeeding.

(Ed: our mothers really f-ed us up.)

It’s past time for men to stand up and exert their sacerdotal privilege of domestic rule and begin the remodeling of our grand “city on a hill!”

(Ed: we had to look up “sacerdotal” and turns out it means priestly. um, ironic!)

Men: Obsessed with Penises, Unemotional, Cheaters (If you believe a new book)

We call bullshit on Louann Brizendine’s new book, The Male Brain. As we write in Newsweek:

With [her first book], The Female Brain, Brizendine was attacked for shoddy science—and her follow-up should receive no less criticism. The author makes vast claims about male biology without really delving into the science, which leaves you with a manual for excusing every crappy thing your man has ever done. Emotional distance? It’s called “problem solving.” Cheating? It’s his “testosterone levels.” Aggression is a natural instinct. Ignoring you is the male brain’s natural acoustic system “automatically shutting off.” Now does that make you more or less annoyed?

Brizendine’s science may be shaky, but what’s more interesting to us is how her claims—or claims about biology in general—relate to the modern workplace. As the longtime domain of men alone, workplaces have long been setup to reward typically male traits like aggression, boldness and willingness to take on risk, while women excel at subtler, less measurable things like loyalty, diligence and teamwork.

In reality, those assets are no less important—and in fact, the World Economic Forum has estimated that closing the employment gender gap could increase U.S. GDP by up to 9 percent. As UC Irvine business professor Judy Rosener told us, “Difference does not mean deficiency. Difference means added value.”

But the corporate culture simply hasn’t caught up. So the question, then, is this: How do we change the institutional culture? How do we shake things up enough that women can rise to the top, without having to act like boys? Thoughts? Rants? Advice for corporations?

Kristof: The Boys Have Fallen Behind. But What About the Girls?

In this week’s New York Times, columnist Nick Kristof reports on the latest trouble with young boys—who, according to the Center on Education Policy, have fallen behind girls in reading in every single state. “The most pressing issue related to gender gaps,” the report claims, “is the lagging performance of boys in reading.”

Before everyone starts freaking out about the boy crisis, a quick reality check:

Boys have been lagging behind girls in school for decades. As Peg Tyre wrote in her book, “The Trouble With Boys,” elementary-aged boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities; and the number of boys who said they didn’t like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001, according to a University of Michigan study. Nowhere is the shift more evident than on college campuses: thirty years ago, men represented 58 percent of the undergraduate student body, today, at 40 percent, they’re a minority. As Margaret Spellings, the former U.S. secretary of Education, told Newsweek in 2006, this widening achievement gap “has profound implications for the economy, society, families and democracy.”

But here’s the rub: no matter how poorly boys do in school, there is no evidence to show that that those lags impede their later success. And in fact, young men still outpace women in the workforce to an astonishing degree. U.S. Department of Education data shows that despite earning lower college GPAs, men still earn some 20 percent more than women in their first jobs out of college. The wage gap  widens as men accelerate into management positions more quickly—over a lifetime, male high school graduates will earn some $700,000 more than their wives or sisters; college graduates will earn $1.2 million more.

To be sure, academia is critical—but the workplace lasts the rest of your life. And while young women may thrive in a merit-based system, there is growing evidence to prove they don’t have the skills to excel in a professional setting. Young women are four times less likely to negotiate a first salary, and, according to a recent Girl Scouts study, afraid to take on leadership positions they fear will make them seem “bossy.” “The zeitgeist is that girls are excelling and boys are having trouble,” says Rachel Simmons, the author of The Curse of the Good Girl. But it all depends on what you’re measuring.” In other words, all those ribbons and medals don’t translate to the real world if women are too afraid to ask for what they deserve.

Kristof makes the point that this doesn’t need to be a zero-sum game: “We should be able to help struggling boys without imposing any cost on girls,” he writes. He’s right. But the reality remains: gender inequities still—as they have for centuries—damage many more women than men.

Should Universities Have Men’s Studies Programs?

This morning we discovered that in April, a college in Staten Island will be hosting a symposium on “Male Studies,” leading up to a larger conference next fall. The announcement includes this line:

“…the growing problem of misandry—the hatred of males, an unacknowledged but underlying socio-cultural, economic, political and legal phenomenon endangering the well-being of both genders.”

This was the first we’d heard of “misandry.” Are we alone? Do we think that there’s a growing hatred of males that’s endangering our well-being? We may be feminists, but we love men! Thoughts?