In this week’s news-and-snark piece, Bill Maher offers a piece that may be controversial, for it’s about how men need to be “men” again. He avers that the loss of masculinity in males is one reason why women are disappointed in men, and why people are having less sex. The data are eye-opening; for example, 44% of Gen Z men say they’ve had no relationship experience at all during their teen years. That means up to age 20! And you might be interested in the new genre of literature he describes: “romantasy”, in which women get involved with animals or half-animals like centaurs.
His solution? Men should “man up”. His example: Taylor Swift being engaged to football star Travis Kelce (“old-school wood”) after writing songs about all the lame men she was once involved with. (He describes songs by other women.) Is he right? I have no idea.
The guests are Jonathan Haidt (not shown), Stephanie Ruhle and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster (Retired).
Didn’t Germaine Greer tell educated women to marry truck drivers?
That was the advice to lots of PhD students aiming for academic careers. Instead we tended to marry each other, with hilarious (meaning disastrous) consequences. [Sorry not directly related to the masculinity crisis.]
According to the data it seems kids today are virginal, scared of the opposite sex and don’t do the usual things we did for entertainment (smoke, drink, drugs, knocking each other up, etc.).
In fact the most “degenerate” generation has been…. Gen X! (sorry boomers!)
🙂
D.A., 55
NYC
When there was no internet, one was channeled by necessity into talking with members of the opposite sex face to face. In fact that was the only practical way to meet and engage with anyone. Today, with the internet, it’s quite possible to let fear of rejection lead people to conduct their lives entirely online. The most pathetic can even “identify” as an avatar instead of a person. I don’t know how bad the problem really is, but some may never be able to have normal social lives.
The impression I get is that this is a consequence of the following combination:
1) Western society still largely following the idiotic norm of men being expected to “make the first move” in most aspects of a relationship.
2) Massive social condemnation of a lot of behaviour that “making the first move” entails – everything from creepy to condescending to chauvinistic.
Once, any of these gets relaxed – preferably 1) – normalcy should resume.
The males pursue and the females pick and choose. Blame the evolution of the sex binary. If all the males check out then there will be nothing for the females to choose from. Maybe we are on that trajectory, but only to a degree – some males will still rise to the challenge no matter what.
I’ve read that one real roadblock to romance is the lack of casual friend groups who “hang out” with each other. No pressure, just proximity and frequency and an opportunity for acquaintances to gradually become friends — and possibly more. Online groups or dating apps just don’t offer the same benefits.