Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures: Men Are Calling Discrimination’s Bluff
By Laurie A. Couture
Young men are at a disadvantage in career recruitment, father’s rights, and relationships. Women earn 57% of bachelor’s degrees, 60.8% of master’s degrees, and 54% of doctorate degrees. Women also enjoy numerous women-focused business leadership, ownership, mentorship, grant, and recruitment opportunities funded by multi-million and billion-dollar corporations and donors. In the parenting and relationship sphere, around 80% of custodial parents are women. The number of single, lonely young men is increasing as young women are eschewing romantic relationships with males that they find educationally and economically inferior to them–and many are opting for an LGBTQ+ identity instead of being with young men sexually and romantically.
Frustrated men are, in small numbers, beginning to realize that they must stand up to the unceasing political efforts to push them to the sidelines of humanity. They are doing this using a “join ‘em” strategy and the “abandon ship” strategy.
For example, the years 2022 and 2023 saw a collapse of jobs in the tech industry as dozens of tech giants laid off over 160,000 employees. While the layoff data by sex is inconclusive due to lack of company reporting by sex (and a small study that used convenience sampling vs. random sampling), it appears that men made up the majority of those laid off. This seems consistent with The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, as men were listed as having slightly higher unemployment rates than women between September 2022 and September 2023. Given their unemployment situation, it would make sense that in late 2023, men flooded one of the largest tech job fairs in the world in hopes of meeting with job recruiters. However, the “Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing” conference was intended for women and non-binary people. Men listed themselves as “non-binary” (when they were not) in order to access the event, which legally cannot discriminate against men attending but clearly discourages men from accessing job recruiters at the event. There was no counterpart conference for men.
In matters of parenthood, men are also being driven to “join ‘em”. Rene Salinas Ramos of Ecuador has made a bold statement by legally changing his gender in hopes that it will help him gain custody of his two daughters, who he alleges are suffering abuse in their mother’s home. Although Rene is reportedly not transgendered, Rene now legally identifies as “a mother” in order to have a better legal opportunity for obtaining custody and protection of “her” children.
In an age of incessant male-shaming, plutonic “marriages”, straight women hooking up with women, and financially successful young women not wanting to “date down”, young men are “abandoning ship”. While some lonely, touch-starved young men are drowning themselves in video games and porn, a growing segment are now turning to AI “girlfriends” in order to receive a little empathy, caring, and emotional support—and perhaps some compliments, too.
Predictably, the media has criticized men’s self-advocacy (survival?) efforts, viewing the men as con artists and losers rather than people desperate to make a living, protect their children, or find some semblance that they are worthy of love. Feminist ideology has set a tone since the late ‘90s for boys and men to be shamed in our institutions and media, then society mocks and shames them some more for trying to find their way in a world that doesn’t want them to exist. Maybe these men who are calling discrimination’s bluff will spark true equality, empowerment, and mutual caring for all.
References
National Center for Education Statistics. (2021b, May). Table 318.30. Bachelor’s, master’s, and doctor’s degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by sex of student and field of study: 2018- 2019. Digest of Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_318.30.asp
Finbold: https://finbold.com/tech-layoffs-statistics-q1-2023/
Computerworld: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3685936/tech-layoffs-in-2023-a-timeline.html
Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-fair-men/
Axios: https://www.axios.com/2023/07/06/tech-layoffs-2023-female-workers
365 DataScience: https://365datascience.com/trending/who-was-affected-by-the-2022-2023-tech-layoffs/#3
Frishberg, H. (2019, September 6). Broken men are hurting American women’s marriage prospects. The New York Post. https://bit.ly/2lPK6wM
Ingraham, C. (2019, March 29). The share of Americans not having sex has reached a record high. The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3hJOSp1
Laughlin, S. (2016, March 11). Gen Z goes beyond gender binaries in new innovation group data. Wunderman Thompson. https://www.wundermanthompson.com/insight/gen-z-goes-beyond-genderbinaries-in-new-innovation-group-data
Lee, K. M. (2020, February 14). Settling Down: Romance in the Era of Gen Z. Yale News. https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2020/02/14/settling-down-romance-in-the-era-of-gen-z/
