It Must Be Because Boys are Lazy

Or some other rationale that dismisses the fact school curriculum has been hijacked by feminists idealogues who fantasize of a female-dominated universe. Of course, the boys are screwed out of gaining entry to college, but who cares, anyway.

http://www.adventistreview.org/article.php?id=3273

The Adventist Review occasionally prints responsible opinions on a wide variety of topics. The following is one opinion. -- Editors

A visit to your local college or university campus is likely to reveal that a revolution has taken place. On many campuses, young women now outnumber young men, and a gender gap of momentous importance is staring us in the face.

This gender gap has been growing for some time now, as successive generations of young women have entered the world of higher education. Yet, no one seemed to see a gap of this magnitude coming — until it had already happened.

The disparity of enrollment by gender varies by institution, but it is now estimated that almost 60 percent of all undergraduate students enrolled in American colleges and universities are women. This represents something altogether new in human experience since the rise of the university model as the dominant learning environment for young adults. For the first time, a generation of young women will be markedly more educated than their male generational cohort.

Is this a bad thing . . . a negative development? Yes — and profoundly so. The problem is not the larger enrollment of young women in colleges and universities. The problem is the phenomenon of missing young men, whose absence spells big trouble for the future.

The numbers point to the problem, but do not explain it. Explanations for the phenomenon of missing young men point to the fact that girls outperform boys at every level in grades K-12, and are thus more ready for the college experience than the boys. Other factors include economic and cultural patterns. Among some ethnic groups, the disparity between men and women entering college is far greater than 60 percent to 40 percent. Many young men consider the educational environment to be frustrating, constricting, and overly feminized. Others have lost confidence that an undergraduate education will lead to a job with adequate income and stability. Whatever the reason, their absence makes a big difference on the college campus today — and will make an even bigger difference in the larger society in years ahead.

The New York Times offered an unusually candid portrait of this gender disparity in “The New Math on Campus,” published in its February 5, 2010 edition. Reporter Alex Williams described a radically transformed social scene on some of today’s largest and most historic state universities.

The University of North Carolina, for example:
North Carolina, with a student body that is nearly 60 percent female, is just one of many large universities that at times feel eerily like women’s colleges. Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education. Researchers there cite several reasons: women tend to have higher grades; men tend to drop out in disproportionate numbers; and female enrollment skews higher among older students, low-income students, and black and Hispanic students.

Williams described a campus filled with young women who socialize with each other out of necessity — there are just not enough young men on campus. As Williams notes, this makes some college campuses resemble retirement communities, where women also generally outnumber men.

On the secular university campus, the gender imbalance has forced adjustments in the “hooking up” culture of sexual negotiation. As Williams reports:

“If a guy is not getting what he wants, he can quickly and abruptly go to the next one, because there are so many of us,” said Katie Deray, a senior at the University of Georgia, who said that it is common to see six provocatively clad women hovering around one or two guys at a party or a bar.

This is a portrait of demographic disaster, and the imbalance is not limited to secular campuses or students. Even as women now outnumber men in baccalaureate programs, they also indicate a desire to marry a man with equal or greater educational attainments. As the numbers now make clear, many of these young women will be disappointed.

Christian parents and all concerned with the coming generation should look closely at this phenomenon and ask the hard question — why is it that so many young men are falling behind in educational attainment? What are we doing that allows or encourages boys to exit formal education at their earliest opportunity? Why do we accept at face value the fact that boys fall behind girls of the same age in maturity and educational level? Why is college now an aspiration for far more young women than young men?

These are hard questions, but the answers will be even harder. We have allowed the development of an elongated boyhood and delayed adulthood. We frustrate them in school and then wonder why they bolt at the first exit from the classroom. We allow boys and young men to forfeit their futures.

All this might be different if the missing young men on our college and university campuses were missing for some good reason — such as military service or similar deployment. But, even as young men are more likely to join the military, the numbers do not explain the differential on campus.

Biblical manhood requires that young men grow up, assume adult responsibilities, and prepare for leadership and service in the home, in the church, and in the larger society.

This much is clear — if this trend is not reversed, the college campus will not be the only place these young men are found missing.

To Sum Up

http://hesaidshewhined.blogspot.com/2010/04/to-sum-up.html

Yet Again

An example of one group of men (and a few women), trying to take advantage of another group of men (pension funds, endowments, private investors, etc.).

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/%22rotten-to-the-core%22:-bill-black-and-barry-ritholtz-react-to-goldman-fraud-charges-469554.html?tickers=GS,JPM,C,XLF,BAC,^DJI,FAZ

Oh Wait....

You mean women don't get to make money that isn't counted when its divorce time? You mean men's money is always at stake to be taken, nearly in its entirety regardless of his actions or the duration of the marriage!?!?!?! An outrage! Its like saying women aren't privileged member of society when it comes to divorce. SICKENING!

Amanda Platell: 'Britain's Divorce Laws Need to be Changed to Stop Ladies Leeching Off of Men'
April 7th, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

Philippa Vaughan, 66, has no children, lives in a four-bedroom £1million house in fashionable Hammersmith, West London, and inherited £770,000 from her parents.

Not only that, she's

a working woman (with a job as an expert in Islamic and Indian art).

In short, she's in no way hurting financially, but the British divorce laws and the judges who interpret them, believe she is. That's why, after 25 years of separation from her ex, a judge just ordered him to pay her an additional £215,000 out of his estate. And, as this article points out, it's not as if Vaughan contributed anything to her ex-hubby's estate (Daily Mail, 4/3/10). He saved almost all of it after they split up. So what's the rationale for the payout ordered by the court? It's hard to see.

And writer Amanda Platell isn't happy about it, not a bit. She rightly points out that continuing to treat women as if they were children, incapable of caring for themselves and requiring ongoing infusions of male-earned money is an insult to the concept of women's equality.

It's particularly so in Vaughan's case. She supports herself and contributed essentially nothing to her ex's estate. Of course it's satisfying for her to "get one over her ex," but the larger picture is one of female privilege at the expense of males. When feminists complain that there aren't equal numbers of male and female elected officials, maybe they should look at the other side of the coin, the one on which they demand privileged status for women in many walks of life. I don't think you can have both. In the last analysis, I don't think a society that looks at women as uniquely needy, uniquely frail, uniquely weak, uniquely in need of protection, will simultaneously see them as equal. I don't think it works that way.

As if to underscore the point, the judge in Vaughan's case

said it was 'plainly wrong' to think she could adjust to life after her ex-husband's maintenance payments were cancelled last year.

Really? I wonder if he would say the same if the sexes were reversed. After all, this woman is well-educated and holds a good job, lives in a posh house and has about $1 million in the bank. Somehow, she required his "maintenance" and now without it, she can't "adjust to life." Who knew life could be so hard?

More important than the shakiness of the judge's reasoning though, are his assumptions. How pathetic a figure must he perceive Vaughan to be! Somehow, given all that she has, according to his logic, she just can't make it on her own. There are billions of people in this world who'd love to give it a try. It's that mindset that holds women to be overmatched by any and all circumstances that will consign them to secondary status as surely as any law ever could.

And it's that mindset that's got Amanda Platell spitting mad, and rightly so. Changing Britain's divorce laws isn't the whole answer of course, but it would be a start. Ex-spouses should only get part of the marital estate to which they contributed, and that includes non-monetary contributions. They should only get "maintenance" in cases of actual need, and when the need runs out, so should the maintenance.

It's past time to start treating divorcing couples like adults, whether they act that way or not.