“Oh, he’s kind of cute.” My friend at Yale, swiping through Tinder, leaned over and showed me his profile.
“Wait, no.” She moved her finger leftward.
“Why not? He seems alright,” I reply.
He goes to a local, less highly-regarded university, she explained. In other words, not Yale.
Swipe Right for a Master’s Degree
The dating market for women is getting tougher. In part, this is because fewer men are attending universities. Why would male enrollment in higher education matter for women? Because women, on average, prefer educated men. One source of evidence comes from women’s personal responses to dating profiles posted by men. Researchers analyzed 120 personal dating ads posted by men on the West Coast and in the Midwest. They found that two of the strongest variables that predicted how many responses a man received from women were years of education and income. Similar results have been found in Poland. Researchers analyzed how many women responded to dating ads posted by 551 men. They found that men with higher levels of education and higher income received more responses. A more recent study in Australia of more than 40,000 online daters found that women were more likely to initiate contact with a man if he had more education than themselves.
Still, young people today are more likely to use Tinder or other dating apps than Internet dating websites. Are things different on the apps? A study led by economics researcher Brecht Neyt of Ghent University found that, on Tinder, women were 91 percent more likely to “like” a man with a master’s degree compared with a bachelor’s degree. The researchers used the same male profiles, the only difference was level of education. They also tested how men would react to women with different levels of education, finding that men were only eight percent more likely to “like” a woman with a master’s degree compared with a bachelor’s degree. Both men and women preferred more-educated partners, but women had a much stronger preference.
In other words, all other things equal, a man with a master’s degree is about twice as likely to get a match than a man with a bachelor’s degree. Perhaps something to keep in mind, if you are interested in obtaining a graduate degree and are active on Tinder.
Some women do marry men with less education, though. These women tend to marry men who earn more than them. A study by Yue Qian, a sociologist at the University of British Columbia, found that women who had more education than their spouses were 93 percent more likely to be married to men with higher incomes than themselves. In other words, if you are a less-educated man, it is helpful to earn more than your educated male peers if you want to marry an educated woman. Better-educated women have a stronger preference for partners who earn more, especially if their partners are less educated than themselves.
This finding fits the overall pattern revealing that women who are more educated and professionally successful have an even stronger preference for successful male partners, relative to less successful women. The evolutionary psychologist David Buss, discussing his research on how professionally successful women select partners, found that “Successful women turned out to place an even greater value than less professionally successful women on mates who have professional degrees, high social status, and greater intelligence and who are tall, independent, and self-confident.” The more professionally successful a woman is, the stronger her preference for successful men.
Getting Ratioed
Sex ratios matter for dating strategies for both men and women. Even seemingly small differences in sex ratios can be misleading. For example, in The Evolution of Desire, David Buss discusses the student body of the University of Texas at Austin where he teaches. In 2016, the student body consisted of 46 percent men and 54 percent women. That doesn’t seem like a big difference, but it is. It translates to 17 percent more women than men on campus. The UT Austin campus has about 52,000 students in total. This means that if every student pairs up with someone of the opposite sex, about 4,000 women will be without a partner.
More to the point, the age range for the Tinder study cited above was 23 to 27. This is the age range in which women are far more educated than men, and where more women tend to be looking for male partners. In his book Date-onomics, Jon Birger revealed that according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there are 5.5 million college-educated women between the ages of 22 and 29, versus only 4.1 million college-educated men in the same age bracket. In other words, the dating pool for college graduates has 33 percent more women than men—or four women for every three men. Broken down by degree type across all ages in the U.S., for every 100 men with bachelor’s degrees, there are 130 women. For those with master’s degrees, for every 100 men there are 134 women. The situation for educated women seeking educated male partners isn’t looking so good. Furthermore, more men identify as exclusively homosexual relative to women. Which suggests the dating pool for heterosexual women may be even smaller than the above numbers suggest.
But how do such imbalances manifest themselves with regard to mating strategies? When there is a surplus of men, men are more likely to adapt to women’s preferences. When there is a larger male-to-female ratio, men are more likely to compete with each other to be what women want. And, on average, women tend to prefer longer-term relationships. In general, women report a greater desire for emotional investment than men. This is true across cultures. In fact, the sex disparity in this preference for emotional investment is greater in more egalitarian cultures. In other words, the difference in the desire for love and emotional investment between men and women is larger in societies that more strongly underscore egalitarianism and sociopolitical equality. In contrast, men, on average, are more likely to prefer more casual sexual relationships. Indeed, the sex difference in the male preference for casual sex and sexual variety is greater in more gender-egalitarian societies. For example, research led by the psychologist David Schmitt found that the sex difference for enjoyment of casual sex in Denmark, Norway, and Finland is higher than in less gender-egalitarian cultures such as Ethiopia, Colombia, and Swaziland.
And we see this on campuses with more male students relative to female students. Jon Birger, in Date-onomics, describes the dating scene on campuses with imbalanced sex ratios. On colleges with more men than women, such as Caltech, steady relationships are more widespread. Students go on dates, and men demonstrate commitment in partnerships. Men are more willing to do what women want in order to be with them. On the other hand, when there is a surplus of women relative to men, women are more likely to adapt to men’s preferences. They compete with one another to be what men want. And this is what we see on campuses with more female students relative to male students. On colleges with more women than men, such as Sarah Lawrence, casual sex is more widespread. Hookup culture is more prevalent, and men are less interested in entering committed relationships. Women are more willing to do what men want in order to be with them.
Birger describes an interview with a female student at Sarah Lawrence:
Most straight men at Sarah Lawrence had no interest in a committed relationship. “Why would they?” she said. “It’s like they have their own free harem. One of my friends was dumped by a guy after they’d been hooking up for less than a week. When he broke up with her, the guy actually used the word ‘market’—like the ‘market’ for him was just too good.”
If you have ever been around young men at elite colleges, many of them do speak in this way, especially if there are less-prestigious colleges nearby. This is because male students at top colleges can attract women at their own college, as well as other local campuses. On the other hand, women at top colleges are often only interested in dating men at their own college. For these women, the dating pool is less promising compared to their male counterparts.
Interestingly, women at colleges where women are more numerous trust men less. In a study on campus sex ratios and sexual behavior, researchers analyzed data from 1,000 undergraduate women from different U.S. colleges. Women’s responses varied based on sex ratios on campus. For example, women at colleges with more women were more likely to agree that “men don’t want a committed relationship” and that they “don’t expect much” from the men with whom they go out. They also found that women on campuses with a higher female-to-male ratio were much less likely to report that they had never had sex.
The researchers report that, “women who attend college on campuses where they are more numerous tend to view men as less interested in commitment and less trustworthy. They are less likely to expect much from men, find it more difficult to locate the right kind of men, and are more likely to report that their relationships don’t work out and that a woman can’t have a boyfriend if she won’t have sex.” In other words, when men are in an environment where there are more women, they appear to put in less effort, and have less interest in relationships.
In contrast, in environments where men are more numerous, relationships are more likely to proliferate. The Harvard psychologist Marcia Guttentag and her colleague Paul Secord examined census numbers, data on sex ratios, and historical texts dating back to ancient Greece and medieval Europe. She found that in societies where men were more numerous relative to women, the culture was more likely to stress courtship and romance. Men had to compete for wives and were thus more willing to make commitments to women. While women in such societies were more likely to be cast in stereotypical gender roles, they also, Guttentag reports, exercised greater control in their choice of romantic partner. She found that the opposite was the case in societies with more women than men. She writes, “The outstanding characteristic of times when women were in oversupply would be that men would not remain committed to the same woman throughout her childbearing years.” Intriguingly, Guttentag posits that feminist movements are energized when there is a dearth of men in the local environment:
With a surplus of women, sexual freedoms are more advantageous to men than to women. Decreased willingness to commit oneself to an exclusive relationship with one woman is consistent with that fact… It follows further that the persistence of such circumstances would leave many women hurt and angry. Other women, not themselves without a man, would nevertheless often be aware of the unfortunate experiences of their women friends in relations with men. These circumstances should impel women to seek more power, and incidentally, turn them towards meeting their own needs. Most forms of feminism are directed to just such ends.
In short, environments with more women give rise to conditions that propel women to reduce their social, economic and political dependence on men. In part because men are less interested in commitment when they are outnumbered by women and therefore have more options.
Still, much of this is assuming that men in educated dating pools prefer educated women. And for long-term relationships, they do. Compared with women, though, men tend to be more open to pairing up with less educated partners. And less educated women tend to be open to dating men more educated than themselves. What this means, then, is that educated women are not only competing against other educated women for educated male partners, but also against less educated women. To use Guttentag’s phrasing, the dating environment for educated men has an oversupply of women, and they are acting in line with Guttentag’s original findings. As Birger puts it in Date-onomics, describing why educated men are often reluctant to settle down, “Why make a lifetime commitment to one woman when you can keep her as an option while continuing to survey the market—a market that, for college-educated men, has an ever-increasing number of options?” This point has also been stressed by David Buss. In an essay titled The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women, Buss observes that it is no coincidence that the rise of hookup culture on college campuses has developed alongside the growing proportion of female students. Even Tinder, he suggests, is a part of the same phenomenon. Fewer men means more hookups.
Why Don’t You Get a Job?
Other factors don’t bode well for long-term relationships. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly 80 percent of never-married women, compared with less than half of never-married men, report that having a partner with a steady job is “very important” to them. Employed men are more attractive to women. And given that successful women tend to value success in prospective partners even more than less successful women, it stands to reason that employed women place an even greater value on employment when selecting a partner. However, Pew has also found that among never-married adults, for every 100 women, there are only 84 employed men. If all employed men were suddenly taken, every sixth woman would be partner-less.
Why does any of this matter? Maybe relationships aren’t that important, and people derive happiness from other things, like career success. But consider recent research led by Nathan Kettlewell at the Economics Discipline Group at the University of Technology Sydney. Kettlewell and his colleagues found that when it comes to cognitive and emotional well-being, job-related events such as getting a promotion or being fired doesn’t actually have much impact beyond about three months. What does impact well-being? Negative factors on well-being were the death of a partner or child, separation or divorce, and major financial loss (e.g., bankruptcy). Positive factors were getting married, having children, and a major financial gain (e.g., inheritance or lottery winnings). Considering that few of us are going to inherit money from a rich uncle or win the Powerball, establishing a relationship with people we love is key to our sense of well-being.
Why are men falling behind when it comes to education? Several suggestions have been offered. One might be video games. In a paper titled “Cutting class to play video games,” the economist Michael Ward looked at a dataset of more than 6,000 high school and college students. He found that when video game sales increase, students spend less time attending class and doing homework and more time playing games. Furthermore, this “crowding out” effect was stronger for males and lower income students. He also found that the average amount of time spent playing video games was three times larger for males compared to females.
The economist Erik Hurst has suggested that leisure time has become so valuable to men that they are less willing to exchange that time for other pursuits. In an interview, Hurst has said, “In our culture, where we are constantly connected to technology, activities like playing Xbox, browsing social media, and Snapchatting with friends raise the attractiveness of leisure time. And so it goes that if leisure time is more enjoyable, and as prices for these technologies continue to drop, people may be less willing to work at any given wage.” This may be why fewer young men, relative to women, are employed or attending university.
Furthermore, Hurst and his colleagues found that from 2000 to 2015, labor hours fell by 12 percent for those aged 21–30. What has filled this free time for men? The researchers found that young men increased the number of hours dedicated to leisure by about the same number of labor hours they lost. And what kind of leisure? An article in The Economist reports, “For each hour less the group spent in work, time spent at leisure activities rose about an hour, and 75% of the increased leisure time was accounted for by gaming.” Video games might be more appealing than other ventures, and many young men have decided to dedicate more of their time to gaming and less to education or work. Interestingly, these young men do not report being unhappy. Hurst goes on to say, “These individuals are living with parents or relatives, and happiness surveys actually indicate that they are quite content compared to their peers.” However, the men surveyed are quite young. It is possible and perhaps likely that as these men reach middle-age, their feelings will change.
For now, many young men understand that women want educated and successful partners. Why not work harder to adapt to this preference? In their book, The Demise of Guys, psychologists Philip Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan suggest that the answer is twofold: fake war and fake sex. They argue that many young men have a natural desire for conflict, struggle, and accomplishment. Video games satiate this desire. They are designed to induce a sense of gradual achievement in the face of obstacles adapted to be just above the player’s ability. Alongside this, young men also have a natural desire to seek sexual partnerships. Digital porn satiates this desire. Porn provides a virtual experience of sexual fulfillment with multiple different partners. Many young men may have simply decided to derive a sense of accomplishment from gaming, and a sense of sexual satisfaction from porn.
Sexy selfies and dating pools
In short, there are far more educated women than educated men. Educated women, on average, prefer men who are educated as well. And among couples in which the woman has more education, they tend to prefer men who earn more than themselves. But the reality is that fewer young men are graduating from college compared to women, fewer men are employed, and fewer men are seeking employment. The dating pool is shrinking for women who are interested in successful, educated, men with good career prospects. In such an environment, hookup culture becomes more widespread, which women tend not to like as much as men. The romantic landscape is rosy for educated men, who are more open to dating both educated and less educated women. But for women, the situation doesn’t look as great. Research suggests in such an environment, sexual competition between women intensifies. In fact, a recent study found that the proliferation of “sexy selfies” may be due in part to economic inequality, as women compete to earn the attention of a shrinking pool of economically successful men.
The good news, though, is that couples in which both individuals are educated tend to be happier. Their divorce rates are lower and satisfaction with their marriages is higher. But as the incentives continue to shift, and imbalanced ratios continue to influence the dating pool for the educated, we may see fewer such couplings.
Rob Henderson is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge and a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. You can follow him @robkhenderson
Vincent Harinam is a law enforcement consultant, research associate at the Independence Institute, and PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. You can follow him @vincentharinam
Good article, thank you. It never occurred to me how hookup culture could be fueled by an overabundance of female students, but it makes a lot of sense. The female preference for educated men and the diminishing proportion of men in university adds up to bleak prospects for our birthrate.
How do we fix this? Do men need to make themselves more competitive for university admission or do more women need to look outside the university pool?
Although lowering standards is seldom the right answer, I’d have to say the latter is a better solution. We have too many university graduates as it is, saturating the market such that there are insufficient jobs that pay well enough to support a good standard of living and pay off tuition debt in a reasonable timeframe. We should be looking to reduce admittance to higher education institutions to numbers that match the market’s need.
On the other hand, plenty of great men’s careers require no formal education, mostly in the trades. Men with such careers start their earning years earlier and without debt, making them more financially secure in their 20s, the prime reproductive years, and many can be in the position to open their own businesses in their 30s or 40s if they wish. The male-dominated nature of these professions means they too need to look outside for a mate.
My husband was working as a pipefitter when I met him, while I was doing my MSc. I was too conservative for the university crowd so I wasn’t going to find a mate there, but I was practically a leftist compared to my husband. Meeting him and truly stepping outside the university bubble for the first time in my life was a transformative experience that showed me the value of old fashioned family-centric ethos. Now I have a loyal husband who’s incredibly attractive and who supports my higher education goals and my excessive living standards. Being a wife and mother is infinitely better than chasing down dates with the miniscule proportion of men who are both highly educated and good looking.
Men outside the bubble are better able and willing to give women what they actually want, something women should clue in to before they end up bitter and infertile.
Per the article, apparently boys need to spend less time playing video games.
I agree with this. As I’ve mentioned before, in 1966 Australia had 90,000 students with 12 million people; by 2015 it was 1.4 million students with 24 million people. In the late 1980s people could work as a bank teller without finishing high school, 10 years later they needed a commerce degree. I refuse to believe that in 10 years the job gained complexity needing 4 more years’ education, if it had the banking industry would have gone through convulsions through lack of qualified people. Likewise many other industries.
“the reality is that fewer young men are graduating from college compared to women, fewer men are employed, and fewer men are seeking employment.”
This does not bode well for the future, since these things all lead to higher incidences of mental health issues, drug abuse, and crime. And a growing healthcare and welfare bill.
But mainly what I got from the article was that I’m very glad to be happily married.
Apparently, there are a lot of highly intelligent, well-educated and successful women who were under the impression that the old saying “it’s lonely at the top” was never going to apply to them.
Some years ago, a friend of mine, a female professor at a local college was teaching a course in which all the students who signed up were women. No men.
It wasn’t set up to be all female, it just worked out that way by chance. On the first day of class, my friend invited them to each say a few words about themselves by way of introduction, and she then said she would like to ask them a few questions about their view of life outside of school.
Among her questions were these three:
How many of you would be willing to marry a man who is younger than you? Most of the women raised their hands.
How many of you would be willing to marry a man who makes less money than you and always will make less? Most of the women raised their hands.
How many of you would be willing to marry a man who is shorter than you? Not a single woman raised her hand.
(My professor friend was 6’ tall in her bare feet, and her husband was an inch or so taller. Her students didn’t know that.)
I’m sure it all means something.
Education and formal education are antonyms.
The formal education system, besides promoting Leftism, is highly feminized. It treats all students like girls and puts boys on ritalin to try to get them to comply. The results are a reduction in the number of good men, the inflation of the female ego, and a credentialism that leads women to incorrectly imagine themselves superior to men who thrive outside their system.
As women are hypergamous, this is a dating disaster waiting to happen.
Men are checking out of this system as it plainly does not serve them. Some achieve outside the system, but others, particularly those indoctrinated by the system and their single moms, find no avenue for satisfying their male need for measurable achievement other than video games, whose addictive nature is their clearly defined measures of progress.
I read an article a few years back in which economically successful Chinese women complained that there were “no good men”. The signature quote was that in China, “The A men marry B women, the B men marry C women, and all that’s left is the C men and A women”.
Think about that for a second. This was China - a country that’s spend decades creating a massive gender imbalance with the One Child policy. How on earth can their women complain about bad odds? Likely these self-described “A women” are not as special as they think they are. At the same time, given the rampant egoism of recent history, who can blame men for marrying down and scoring themselves wives who are actually grateful for them?
And the end of the day, this is all just more evidence that feminism is awful. If the male/female ratio at a university was 51/49, they’d scream “patriarchal oppression!”, but give them the majority, and suddenly they’re unhappy about their dating lives.
Shooting the messenger, claiming a monopoly on good intentions… any other textbook left-wing tactics you want to pile on there?
What I said was true, and if you don’t like it, too bad for you.
There were many interesting points raised here - I particularly thought it was interesting about the hookup culture stemming from a surplus of women - but I was rather bemused to read this entire article without encountering “all the single mothers” who parent these men and women.
Video games are a trendy and, to my mind, easy and shallow way of scorning young men. It seems to have become received wisdom, with logic something like this: “More young men are single, driftless, angry, and underemployed/undereducated. More young men also play video games. Therefore, video games are obviously the cause of their being single, driftless, angry, and underemployed/undereducated.”
Talk about a logical fallacy. Perhaps they play video games because that gives their lives meaning; that is, their lives are rudderless and instead of joining a gang or drinking themselves to death, they join a community of video game playing. Quelle horreur.
I don’t play video games, but my sons do. Many are hugely inventive, imaginative, skill-intensive, particularly the RPG but also highly skilled games like the Mario games. Just because a lot of young men play video games does not mean that playing video games causes their other issues. If a lot of men read and didn’t go out, would we be having a discussion attacking books? If a lot of women spent excessive time drinking wine and gossiping with their female friends, would we say they’re wasting their time too?
I’ll tell you what else is associated with driftless young men: single mothers and absent fathers.
How this entire article talked about this issue without mentioning single motherhood is beyond me. There are a million studies that show the high risk of single mothers and absent fathers on kids–why would the risks stop once they turn 18 and become adults? (I"m a single mother by the way; I don’t hold animus to single mothers. At the same time, I’m not going to pretend my kids had the same experience as kids whose fathers also played an active role in their lives.)
The other interesting thing the article didn’t do was question the habits of women and men–women wanting men of higher status essentially (money, height/strength, power), and men wanting women who compliment their physical/emotional desires and needs. That is, women are on average far more hierarchical than men when it comes to choosing their mates. It’'s fascinating how we can have parallel discussions on the intrinsic biological differences between men and women to the point that it’s unquestioned - the author never says, “Hey here’s a solution: why don’t women try marrying a decent lower-class bloke for once?” - at the very same time it’s verboten to say men and women are different. Talk about cognitive dissonance!
I agree with @jdfree49 and @Dcl that video games are a weak explanation. It seems tautological that as work time decreases, leisure time increases. Videogames just happen to be the popular leisure activity for men, being both engaging and inexpensive.
Sure there are men who have a toxic dependence on them, but it’s not like in the absence of videogames they would be going to university and being top-tier husband material. The men at the bottom of the pile were always going to be there, and if they are underemployed and totally unmarriageable I would blame the lack of jobs available for the uneducated before blaming videogames.
I recall seeing some of this years ago, but blaming men- women were being “forced” into hookup culture.
I have always been a subscriber to the school of thought that women actually control all sexual and social interactions and norms. The Tinder results are proof- women are making hookups available for reasons of mate competition, men aren’t forcing them into it. The male response is a response, not a power play- feminism is wrong.
So, retroactively apply to social more and older feminist arguments: Did men force women into the home? Did men hold women back? Or did the gestalt choice of most women create that prudish society, with its emphasis on men becoming as optimally masculine as they could achieve?
I believe the argument goes that the rise of leftism is what is causing the alienation. I agree wholeheartedly that men are not choosing between a productive life and video games. The video games are just the best option available to these men. So why is a productive life not readily available (at least in young men’s perception)? An education system that teaches young men that they are defective girls and any assertion of masculine energy or competitiveness is an act of violence worthy of reeducation. A cultural moment that teaches young men that they are violent rapists who must be preemptively trained not to victimize lest their instincts bring out the inevitable monster. A historical view that proves every male accomplishment a problematic denial of female agency. Recall that facts are less important here than the impression that young men get/absorb by 18. I may not have a sophisticated enough understanding of the isms, but most cultural phenomenon that denigrate and diminish masculinity seem to be traceable back to leftism. Young men are simply responding to their environment the same way women respond to gender ratios by changing their dating strategies. Men know in their DNA what this article quantifies. Unless they can provide something that will satisfy the hierarchy tracking subroutine, the juice will not be worth the squeeze.
Don’t use the word ‘‘mysogyny’’. It’s very rarely appropriate in real life as there are so few men who hate women. If you must bend the knee to leftist twaddle, at least use ‘‘sexist’’ as it was invented to cover the sort of thing of which you complain.
If you’re not careful, you’ll be using ‘‘decimated’’ to mean ‘‘erradicated’’ and then where will we be?
Yes, men outside the bubble are better able to give women what they need. Men growing up in the progressive bubble are turning to video games so they can experience and develop their masculinity. One of the reasons men are underrepresented on college campuses is because they are being driven away by ridiculous attacks on their white maleness every time they try to contribute in class. I know several men who have left for that reason.
Agreed, his posts frequently are both more interesting and better sourced than the original article. Although there are quite a few other commentators that is true of as well. Quillette has great essays, but really shines for the quality of the comment section.
It actually poses an interesting paradox. Most website commenting forums are such cesspools that interaction just gets mud on you. So what is the point in posting? Then I find Quillette and have the opposite problem. Anything I want to say is often already being said far more eloquently by someone else, so what is the point in posting?
At least I get to push the “like” button pretty often.
The usual feminist diversion- attack the messenger rather than the message.
You may not like the argument, but can you deny that it’s true? If the ratio of men to women at universities were reversed, feminists would cry sexism. But when the ratio favours women, suddenly everyone, including the media, go quiet.
Apparently double standards aren’t a problem when they favour females. To dismiss this as “misogyny” gets it laughably backwards.
Most of these articles today are typically written from the perspective of women complaining about loneliness in the modern world. It would appear that it’s actually “men need a woman like a fish needs a bicycle”. In other words, more men appear to be content without female companionship than the other way around; despite all the snarky activist sayings to the contrary.
It’s therefore unlikely that men will arbitrarily alter their behavior because of some vague complaints by women in online articles. Many women tend to have a very socially constructed view of society, premised on the idea that it can be successfully micromanaged from up high whereas men tend to be more responsive and accepting of their environments, whatever they may be.
The latter approach is the better solution to your problem. If you accept reality for what it is, then women in their 20’s should be actively family planning. As it happens, far too many modern women blow away their 20’s and then in their mid 30’s “insist” on having a family. It doesn’t work like that. You have to strike while the iron is hot. This is obviously true, if we stop pretending that men and women live identical lives. If you do that, you realize that a young, reasonably attractive woman is incredibly powerful in the dating market. She pulls all the strings and therefore, if she simply tries, has an excellent chance of partnering up.
Also, you wax poetic about males in competitive spaces while also suggesting mothers encourage this in their sons, however, it is not typically men who are creating cultures which stifle male spaces. Schools are heavily dominated by women and it is schools where competition and rough and tumble play have been all but banned. In the US, kids, typically boys, are arrested for fantasy gun play. In the UK, they’ve even developed categories of “lad culture”, and institutionally pathologized it. A male sports team recently got punished when it was revealed that texts were exchanged back and forth assessing how hot women were. None of this is male driven. It is female driven and, as always, it appears you would blame men regardless. That it’s the fault of men for not standing up to crazy women.
Men tend think more like entrepreneurs. When we see a problem with a structure, we go somewhere else and create a new one. It’s probably why men create most sh*t. Men aren’t going to fix schools dominated by women. They’ll just go underground and let the crazy women sink that ship.