"The Decline of Men"

I was reading some articles on Guy Garcia who is the author of the book, "The Decline of Men: How the American Male Is Tuning Out, Giving Up and Flipping Off His Future." I found it interesting in that with this whole shebang thrown out by IR bloggers and the so-called 'black female empowerment' movement regarding the "damaged black male", we have an author who analyzes such damage, yet does so from the standpoint of ALL males. What you hear from the author sounds quite similar to the various descriptions of black men tossed around by these particular ladies. Here are some excerpts from an interview with the author:

"We do know that men are losing traction in high schools. The same is true in colleges, where 59% of all students are female. Harvard professors tell me male students have lost their drive and ambition, women tell me they can't find a guy who's not a dummy, slacker, cheater or loser. Men of every stripe and part of the country are telling me they feel confused, besieged and worried that they have lost their place in society, that they have lost their bearings as men. They sense the male gender is adrift and increasingly dismissed, denigrated and demonized -- by the media, by women, even by other men. And that's just the tip of the iceberg."

And...

"Let's start with the says-it-all title of Maureen Dowd's post-feminist creed, "Are Men Necessary?" The answer, of course, is yes, we are. The reason is that in this great unraveling of gender roles and male identity, one of the casualties has been the nuclear family. Last year, for the first time ever, single people outnumbered married people. More than ever boys are growing up in single-parent homes without fathers who can guide them into adulthood. And we've known for a long time that boys who grow up without strong male role models are more likely to drop out of school, make less money, be more likely to use drugs or get in trouble with the law and, ultimately, end up divorced themselves. It's a downward spiral."

And more...

"It goes way beyond that. The industries projected to grow in the next few decades are mostly in the service sector, where communication, collaboration and multitasking rule. At the same time many of the industries that favor the physical and mental attributes of males are shrinking or disappearing. Women in their 20s in the 10 largest U.S. cities already out-earn men of the same age. The trend is pretty clear."

And finally...

"Your examples are all symptoms of male decline. Men have been conditioned to be selfish, greedy and aggressive. Infidelity and perfidy are manifestations of insecurity. Society has taught men that it is manly to be competitive, to make as much money as possible, to win at any cost. I would add the war in Iraq and the implosion of Wall Street to the list of troubles that have been brought about by the old-fashioned, swaggering macho approach to politics, economics and life in general. Yet in spite of this -- or partly as a result of it -- other guys have simply given up. They sense that they've lost the high ground (and the future) to women, and they aren't even trying anymore. They've opted out to become jackasses, stoners and slackers. Responsibility is shirked, and adolescence is extended indefinitely."

If we listen to the various IR bloggers and black female empowerment demagogues, one would believe that only such descriptions apply to black men. Of course, they will argue that this trend is at a greater level among black men, but in such a case, should they not argue that the "unraveling of gender roles" that is pushed by the modern woman is at a greater level among black women? Is this push toward dominance the very thing that so many black women call "strenth" and wouldn't their fantasized mass migration away from the black community (black men) and toward white men result in hurrying the process of white men giving up at the level that black men have? How will it affect masses of white men when they are cursed out for expressing an honest view on race to their black wives? We know that black America is always the canary in the mine and as Pat Moynihan showed, black America is often a glimpse of white America's future.

Amanda Platell states it quite well here:

"But perhaps what we should be asking is: who turned men into sissies?

The answer to that is we women. Women wilfully feminised men to make them less masculine, less challenging to our ambitions, less competition for us. We emasculated them.

As a result, we've destroyed the core of their being, their masculinity. We've led them astray and away from the very qualities we intrinsically find most attractive in a man.

We told them we loved their feminine side, then came to despise it. We convinced them we wanted to be equal breadwinners, then began to resent it.

We loved the idea of earning more than our men, more than any man, yet lost respect for them when it was us bringing home the bacon.

But men have been culpable in all this, too. Sure, we gave them a social duffing up, but they gave in to it. The feminisation process sneakily appealed to their intrinsic vanity, and sharing the career workload played to many men's innate laziness.

I disagree with Garcia when he says 'men aren't giving up - they're being run over because they're lazy and can't multi-task'. There is nothing more energised, more vital than a man who is loved and respected for being a successful man, a provider and a father.

But partly because of the way women have systematically traduced men and their manliness, partly because of the way we as a society have feted and institutionalised single motherhood, from the council estate to the boardroom, we haven't left much for men to do or be that is unique to them.

Even the education system is now skewed against them. Garcia is correct when he says that girls are outperforming boys at school, but it's not because they are brighter or more adept at surviving in a post-modern world, but because of the liberal engineering of state education that has made it more sympathetic to girls' learning skills and less so to those of boys.

And with the huge increase in university-educated girls, there is a social timebomb ticking.

In America, over the past 25 years the number of female undergraduates has grown more than twice as fast as their male counterparts.

According to Garcia, by 2006 women outnumbered men on American college campuses by more than two million.

Again, if the tables were turned and women were wildly outnumbered today in universities and if men were overtaking their achievements, there would be an outcry.

The feminists view the current state of play in the war of the sexes as a great victory - they feel it proves they were right and that women were smarter than men all along.

But it's like two armies locked in battle, one armed with bayonets, the other with Kalashnikovs. It's not been a fair fight.

One survey Garcia cites shows that, on average, females between the ages of 21 and 30 earned 117 per cent of males' wages in the same group.

And while women's wages have soared, wages for men have declined.

'Men are not just getting poorer, they're also getting dumber,' he says. And he's right. Beneath the lip gloss of metrosexual modern male, men are in trouble.

Men of all ages are becoming increasingly 'angry, suspicious, reactionary and isolated' because women have treated the men's natural roles without respect.

Who wouldn't become reactionary when all that you knew had been demeaned, taken from you or chipped away?

Who wouldn't feel isolated when society had institutionalised fatherlessness, thus eradicating the most vital and enhancing role any man can play in his life?

Garcia goes so far as to argue that the roles have flipped so much from the way they were, say, 50 years ago - and that men have become so emasculated and feminised - that 'men are the new women'.

If that's true, and sadly it is for some men, then women have a lot to answer for. And perhaps the greatest irony is that it's us who are the losers in the end.

You show me a woman who isn't attracted by strength, success, masculinity and I'll show you a lesbian.

Garcia argues that it is 'an undeniable reality that women are poised to become the dominant gender in America, and in many ways already are'.

With men already in decline, it's only going to get worse. Deep in a recession with so many jobs at risk, a man's native, competitive provider survival spirit has never been more necessary to millions of families' survival, and yet never have these qualities been so systematically diminished.

So when we most need men to be men, we've created a disproportionate number of men who are more pussycats than lions. Perhaps the real Decline Of Men has only just begun.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, they'll throw off their Prada, ditch the pedicures, stop crying and get in touch with their masculine side again. We can only hope."

Well Amanda. Take the negative influences on men you state above, multiply by three or four at the least, and you have the plight of black men in this post feminism world.