In reply to ralleah :
Consider them checked.
I would be interested to know who in here hates or is prejudice toward women because I'm not seeing it.
In reply to ralleah :
Consider them checked.
I would be interested to know who in here hates or is prejudice toward women because I'm not seeing it.
Toyman! said:In reply to Duke :
Young? Not hardly.
OK, then, "Grasshopper".
In reply to Duke :
LOLs
ddavidv said:Toyman! said:I don't voice my problems, I solve them. She voices hers but doesn't necessarily want them solved as much as she just wants me to listen.
Everyone re-read and memorize this. It will make your life better if you are in a relationship.
Do you want me to bitch with you, offer suggestions, or just listen?
Best question you can ever ask, changes the discussion.
NSFW for a couple curse words and a very brief nip slip that I'm surprised YouTube hasn't deleted.
Steve_Jones said:ddavidv said:Toyman! said:I don't voice my problems, I solve them. She voices hers but doesn't necessarily want them solved as much as she just wants me to listen.
Everyone re-read and memorize this. It will make your life better if you are in a relationship.
Do you want me to bitch with you, offer suggestions, or just listen?
Best question you can ever ask, changes the discussion.
Quoted for truth. Knowing enough to ask that question when I was younger would have saved me and the women I was talking to so much grief.
Changing subjects and getting dark for a second. Earlier in the thread it was mentioned that men commit suicide much more than women. That's not entirely accurate. They SUCCEED much more often but IIRC men and women attempt at roughly the same rate. Men chose methods like guns or hanging whereas women tend to choose things like pills or wrist cutting.
In reply to thatsnowinnebago :
We are just better at it.
Talking about men's issues, I'm strongly opposed to the widespread practice of child circumcision.
Content warning: I will be talking frankly (but dryly) about genitals and sex.
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Although there are times where it may be medically beneficial, the widespread practice is really done out of tradition and because it is viewed here as "normal".
Removing the foreskin of the penis is directly equivalent of cutting the clitoral hood off of a girl. In the west, we widely - and rightly - view female circumcision practices like this as female genital mutilation. Because they are.
Performing these same procedures on infant boys in the west is no less a form of sexual abuse.
I've heard people justify the practice on the grounds of it being more "sanitary". Yes, the head of the penis and under the foreskin needs to be cleaned. It should be anyway even if a man is circumcised. Just like women need to wash around their labia.
Many men say how it isn't really a problem. They were circumcised and suffered no ill effects. You don't actually know you haven't. You have no frame of reference for what it would be like if you still had that extra buffer skin with all those nerve endings. Even if you did not suffer ill effects, you certainly didn't benefit anything from the procedure.
Many men *do* suffer negative effects from circumcision. Even if they are a small minority, it is a definite population that is harmed for all the rest of men out there to have "not been hurt".
I am one of those men who has suffered from being circumcised. That lack of extra skin has caused me many problems throughout my life.
::Content Warning:: I will be talking frankly about my penis and experiences
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Going through puberty, not having a foreskin meant I did not have extra skin to grow into. As I grew to adult size, when I would get erections in puberty there was not enough skin to take up the slack. The skin would tear around the crown of my penis where the shaft met the head. It felt like a paper cut on the most sensitive skin on my body. This was a regular occurrence for years.
There is a fairly significant band of scar tissue there. That is certainly less sensitive skin than what should be there.
As an adult it continues to provide minor sexual dysfunction. Especially strong erections can be uncomfortable. It is very difficult for another person to stroke my penis in a way that is really comfortable for me. There just isn't enough extra skin to provide enough give. It is far too easy to instead be tugging in a way that places pressure like trying to pull the head of my penis down onto the shaft and/or straining where that band of scar tissue is.
In conclusion: there are real men's issues that we still have to address in western society that too-often get ignored because they are normalized.
Before y'all think Beer Baron is being gross on purpose...this is an actual thing.
DAMHIK
But this is a problem rooted in religious practice and is probably another topic...one that likely won't go well, from past experience with this group.
In reply to Beer Baron :
In reply to Beer Baron :
I learned something from your post. Being a dad, there's very little that grosses me out anymore, and having a son, this was something we had to make a decision on and while I did not have all of the facts that you presented here at that time, I am always learning about things. I remember in high school a friend of mine asked me if I was C'd, and I recall at the time I told him that I did not know. As weird as that sounds, it was never something that occurred to me to ask, and it wasn't like I'd been exposed to a lot of other male parts to compare mine to. I also remember my friend's response, which was to take his shirt and pull it up over his head and say "this is uncirmcumsized", then pull the shirt back down and say "this is circumsized".
In reply to ddavidv :
I don't know if it so much religious in the US as much as simply habitual. It was done to me and with no ill effects. It is definitely more of a US custom than the rest of the world. My understanding is the practice has been slowly decreasing in the US for various reasons.
In reply to Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) :
"Over the last few decades not only has the law started to correct the imbalance, but society has (started) to accept them accept them as equals. This means that a young woman who a few decades ago was essentially forced to become a housewife and baby making machine, can now instead choose to become an independent person on their own terms. This also means that there are now more young men who are not finding mates/brides/partners, and many don’t like it. Let’s not blame women for no longer being ‘forced’ into unhealthy relationships.
One thing is for sure, despite the set backs women are certainly poised to take on great leadership roles in the future. The ratio of men/women getting a degree has gone from 57/43 in 1970 to 40/60 today, and for people of African decent it’s up to 30/70. Women still face massive discrimination in hiring, promotion, and especially wage equity, but over the coming decades as more of them are entering professional and leadership positions, and by extension politics, the world will continue to evolve for the better."
I'm going to try to be careful here, so please don't take my response as mean-spirited or attacking. However, I have a number of issues with the above statements, which I hope will come across as polite disagreement and not "mysogeny":
1) While I agree that it is a net benefit to society to not have people "forced" into suboptimal relationships, this isn't entirely a benefit to women. I believe it is Germany, and possibly Japan, that has a large contingency of unmarried adult men. As another poster pointed out, if the choice is made willingly in this regard, the results can be the man devoting his time to something productive and helpful to himself and the community. However, in my dealings with married and unmarried men in the workplace, I notice a distinct difference in the interactions. Unmarried men, in my experience, are, in general, less willing to compromise, more demanding, and less empathetic. Again, this is a generalization. Perhaps there are benefits to marriage that can extend into the workplace. I wonder if the same could apply to women. The takeaway here is that since the workplace is diverse, having a home life that involves interacting with different sexes could provide a benefit. If that makes sense.
2) Again looking at societies like Germany and Japan, the decline in marriage has also led to a decline in population, an aging of the population, and stagnant economic growth. I do worry about the ability of the Earth to sustain infinite population growth, so perhaps this is a good thing? In any case, its something we're going to have to address and possibly re-align our way of thinking, in economic terms, from a (possibly Ponzi-esque) growth schema to a society more at equilibrium.
3) Is it a change to the better if we went from 60/40 men/women in college to 40/60 men/women? Why was it "bad" to have men be the vast majority in college but "good" for women to be the vast majority? Unlike other groups of people, who have varying levels of diversity in our country, men and women are essentially equal in numbers. And even there, those numbers don't tell the whole story. Men and women tend to take up different majors in college- women are still (I believe) way underrepresented in STEM, for example. There's been a big push for women to go to college, but I get the impression that there was less of a push to take a hard look at what they're going to college for. Just looking at hard numbers, a degree in anthropology is worth less, in terms of future earnings potential, than a degree in engineering, for example. So this may be why men's college rates are dropping- they were the first big push to go into college, and many discovered that the college degree itself wasn't everything it was sold to be. Now the focus has shifted to women. If the trend follows, women's enrollment number may eventually drop as well. Time will tell.
This is not to say that women are generally taking up worthless majors. At a number of companies I have worked at, the majority of the people in the finance/ accounting departments have been women. Women are also over-represented in manufacturing (that doesn't require a college degree) in areas like electrical work and other crafts that take a high level of precision and attention to detail, and are not physically demanding. Again, these are observations, and generalizations. There are, of course, female firefighters, welders, machinists, and engineers...but as a percentage, not a lot of them.
The take-away here that I am trying to get to is this: we should be less focused on equality of outcome than equality of opportunity. And I think the perception out there, that we "still have a long way to go in terms of women's equality", is based on looking at the unequal outcomes that exist. But these outcomes may not be caused by prejudice, malice, mysogeny, or anything so evil. It could be that they exist because there are differences in how we are wired, plumbed, and built biologically. It goes back to the nature vs. nurture discussion.
4) One other topic, and I realize I'm rambling a bit here, so I'll try to keep in brief. The shift in the college enrollment makeup may be having knock-on effects to the dating world. People often meet their mates in college, so a lower % of men in college means fewer dating prospects. Also, there has been historically, I feel, a perception that while a college educated man could marry a non-college educated women, the reverse would not be true. I am not saying this is right, or acceptable; I am saying this is culturally true. Is that changing? Sure, it probably is, but the change isn't immediate, and it's probably causing some consternation in the dating world- college educated women, and non-college educated men who can't find mates.
Steve_Jones said:In reply to Beer Baron :
berkeley you.
Seriously. berkeley you.
I am talking about serious personal trauma. Imagine asking a woman to show pictures of a scarred labia.
Go berkeley yourself.
In reply to Beer Baron :
As someone who was circumcised and has apparently had no ill effects, I agree that medically unnecessary circumcisions should be phased out mainly because it's an added risk with no benefit. If the only argument for continuing it is "it didn't harm me so it's fine," that would just be survivorship bias.
ddavidv said:Before y'all think Beer Baron is being gross on purpose...this is an actual thing.
I hope people are shocked, disgusted, and offended by what I shared.
Not because there is anything wrong about me sharing my experience*, but because the practice I am describing is despicable.
*This is not an easy thing for me to talk about. I am not entirely comfortable sharing my experience. It is very personal. It is traumatic. I honestly feel kind of embarrassed sharing and complaining about details that are effectively "hand jobs don't feel good". I feel very vulnerable talking frankly about my experiences.
I feel embarassed and a bit whiny. Lots of people have worse experiences. Me sharing can't undo what has happened to me. It's not something that I fear someone might do to me in the future.
I share because I hope that by doing so, I can raise awareness to save future people from having to go through what I did.
I am sincerely hurt insulted that people here would treat what I have shared as a joke.
GameboyRMH said:In reply to Beer Baron :
As someone who was circumcised and has apparently had no ill effects, I agree that medically unnecessary circumcisions should be phased out mainly because it's an added risk with no benefit. If the only argument for continuing it is "it didn't harm me so it's fine," that would just be survivorship bias.
Exactly. All the arguments in favor of elective* infant** circumcision are fallacious (no pun intended). Survivorship bias. Appeal to tradition. Bandwagoning. Etc.
*Sometimes there are reasons why circumcision is medically beneficial to prevent or minimize future health or sexual issues. This is a minority of circumcisions.
**I am fine with adult circumcision. You have the ability to make informed decisions about your body. It is even possible for minors to make informed decisions about bodily procedures with responsible adult guidance.
Steve_Jones said:In reply to Beer Baron :
Wait... Never mind. I'm GLAD you posted this. It is an excellent demonstration of why people are Men's Rights Activists and the problems our society faces looking frankly at men's issues and discussing them openly and honestly.
I shared an experience of sexual abuse, trauma, and ongoing issues. I put myself and my experiences out there very vulnerably.
You responded with a completely inappropriate joke. Multiple people supported your joke.
This illustrates the real challenges and push back men face in our society when they attempt to raise and discuss serious personal issues. In a space as welcoming, supportive, understanding, and safe as this forum, sexual trauma was still treated as a joke.
There are immature young men who complain about "why don't girls like me?!?" There are also unambiguously serious issues that need genuine discussion.
We can do better.
In reply to Beer Baron :
I actually think the reason there isn't a lot more support for phasing it out, and perhaps even why it hasn't been phased out already, is that the most visible people who argue against it are the nutballs protesting in pants with bloodied crotches, whose main argument is that it's inherently a severely functionally damaging genital mutilation. This seems utterly ridiculous to any man who had no ill effects from the procedure, and then people get caught up in arguing over that (bandwagoning becomes a major factor here) rather than looking at it from the medical perspective of doing essentially pointless body mods with medical risks to babies.
Noddaz said:There is stuff besides car, gun and slot car videos on You-Tube (The *New* Boob Tube)?
Who would have thought.
If you haven't seen the beauty of 3DBotmaker (Don't the the name fool you, they cover cars and racing), you're missing out.
volvoclearinghouse said:1) Unmarried men, in my experience, are, in general, less willing to compromise, more demanding, and less empathetic.
2) Again looking at societies like Germany and Japan, the decline in marriage has also led to a decline in population, an aging of the population, and stagnant economic growth.
I think you need to be careful with correlation and causation here.
1) It's possible (I would argue more likely) that rather than marriage teaching people to be empathetic, it's just that once you decrease societal pressure to marry the people who are less empathetic are the ones who are less likely to do so and thus become overrepresented. You shift from a society where these unempathetic people are in unhappy marriages to one where they are more likely to be single.
2) There is a well-documented trend that as a society industrializes the birth rate of the population drops. In an agrarian society, having many children is a net benefit to the parents because they (the ones who survive infant mortality, at least) are free labor on the farm and can support the parents as they get older and less able to work. By contrast, in a more industrialized and advanced society children switch from generating wealth (those pesky child labor laws!) to costing parents more (college education!). Also, the higher income of the parents means that they are more able to save for retirement themselves rather than needing adult children to provide for them.
In short, I think birth rate changes are simple economics rather than being directly caused by changes in marriage rates.
volvoclearinghouse said:1) While I agree that it is a net benefit to society to not have people "forced" into suboptimal relationships, this isn't entirely a benefit to women. I believe it is Germany, and possibly Japan, that has a large contingency of unmarried adult men. As another poster pointed out, if the choice is made willingly in this regard, the results can be the man devoting his time to something productive and helpful to himself and the community. However, in my dealings with married and unmarried men in the workplace, I notice a distinct difference in the interactions. Unmarried men, in my experience, are, in general, less willing to compromise, more demanding, and less empathetic. Again, this is a generalization. Perhaps there are benefits to marriage that can extend into the workplace. I wonder if the same could apply to women. The takeaway here is that since the workplace is diverse, having a home life that involves interacting with different sexes could provide a benefit. If that makes sense.
Fair point
2) Again looking at societies like Germany and Japan, the decline in marriage has also led to a decline in population, an aging of the population, and stagnant economic growth. I do worry about the ability of the Earth to sustain infinite population growth, so perhaps this is a good thing? In any case, its something we're going to have to address and possibly re-align our way of thinking, in economic terms, from a (possibly Ponzi-esque) growth schema to a society more at equilibrium.
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that less marriage = less children. I think that has at least as much if not more, to do with the availability of contraception. The average birth per mother has dropped from over 6 to just under 2 in Brazil over the last 50 years since the pill became available, I'm not seeing marriage rates, but I guarantee they haven't fallen by 2/3's
3) Is it a change to the better if we went from 60/40 men/women in college to 40/60 men/women? Why was it "bad" to have men be the vast majority in college but "good" for women to be the vast majority? Unlike other groups of people, who have varying levels of diversity in our country, men and women are essentially equal in numbers. And even there, those numbers don't tell the whole story. Men and women tend to take up different majors in college- women are still (I believe) way underrepresented in STEM, for example. There's been a big push for women to go to college, but I get the impression that there was less of a push to take a hard look at what they're going to college for. Just looking at hard numbers, a degree in anthropology is worth less, in terms of future earnings potential, than a degree in engineering, for example. So this may be why men's college rates are dropping- they were the first big push to go into college, and many discovered that the college degree itself wasn't everything it was sold to be. Now the focus has shifted to women. If the trend follows, women's enrollment number may eventually drop as well. Time will tell.
I never meant to imply a change was for better or worse. It's just is what it is. What I meant was that the number of women in senior and leadership positions will inevitably increase in the future due to the dramatic shift in graduation rates.
This is not to say that women are generally taking up worthless majors. At a number of companies I have worked at, the majority of the people in the finance/ accounting departments have been women. Women are also over-represented in manufacturing (that doesn't require a college degree) in areas like electrical work and other crafts that take a high level of precision and attention to detail, and are not physically demanding. Again, these are observations, and generalizations. There are, of course, female firefighters, welders, machinists, and engineers...but as a percentage, not a lot of them.
The take-away here that I am trying to get to is this: we should be less focused on equality of outcome than equality of opportunity. And I think the perception out there, that we "still have a long way to go in terms of women's equality", is based on looking at the unequal outcomes that exist. But these outcomes may not be caused by prejudice, malice, mysogeny, or anything so evil. It could be that they exist because there are differences in how we are wired, plumbed, and built biologically. It goes back to the nature vs. nurture discussion.
Totally agree, equality for all is what we should be looking at
In reply to Beer Baron :
I read what you wrote very seriously, and I learned something. I know it had to be hard to share that, and I appreciate that.
Thank you.
GameboyRMH said:In reply to Beer Baron :
I actually think the reason there isn't a lot more support for phasing it out, and perhaps even why it hasn't been phased out already, is that the most visible people who argue against it are the nutballs protesting in pants with bloodied crotches, whose main argument is that it's inherently a severely functionally damaging genital mutilation.
I can attest to this. I have been told in no uncertain terms that I am A) sexually dysfunctional, and B) likely to be a child molester just because I am circumcised. Neither is true.
Circumcision is getting phased out. It is far less common than it used to be, and I don't have a problem with that. I'm one of those "I'm fine" stories, and I was spared having to decide about it because we only have daughters. As shared above (thank you for that), there are valid reasons not to do it. But screaming irrational insults at people is never a great strategy for convincing them.
I've known my buddy since I was 13. I'm 43 now. He has and still does suffer from UTIs. He is just as clean (if not more so) than I. He is the only guy I know who suffers from it. He is also the only guy I know who is uncircumcised. Maybe bad genetics, bad luck or something coincidental, I don't know.
I had my son circumcised. I remembered the agony of my buddy. I wasn't about to take that chance with the boy. If he should ever ask why, I will tell him the same as I have just said. I will not apologize for it.
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