Explaining what’s wrong with articles by Kay “guys should man up” Hymowitz is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel entirely full of salted herring. Nevertheless, I am in a ranty mood, so.
Hymowitz’s first article, from the Wall Street Journal, is all about this brand-new “preadulthood” thing, which is where instead of getting married and popping out babies, twentysomethings are getting drunk and/or watching Star Wars and/or being unemployed.
I’m currently one of those “preadults”; most of my friends are “preadults” too– geeks, bronies, starving artists and writers, comic book readers, Star Wars fans, regular users of a wide variety of interesting psychedelics, gamers, the unemployed and underemployed. And this whole idea of “large numbers of single young men and women living independently, while also having enough disposable income to avoid ever messing up their kitchens”… fuck, Hymowitz, have you heard of the recession? Have you heard of the massive amounts of college students graduating into one of the worst job markets in recent history?
Man. I am so pleased to discover that I was just hallucinating all the people who had to move back in with their parents, and the people who are on food stamps, and the people hoarding their college cafeteria money because once it runs out they don’t eat, because the entire world looks like the two hundred people Kay Hymowitz knows in New York.
After all, my friends eat in restaurants all the time! When I’ve craving Chinese and pay for their meal in exchange for company! When you can get a burrito for five dollars with free chips and if you’re clever get two-and-a-half meals out of it! When they get free dinner as one of the perks of waiting tables! I mean, there’s that one guy whose roommate is an underemployed professional chef, he eats restaurant-quality food almost every day!
This is not even getting into the problems with writing a sociological argument about The Nature Of Men In America and fingering one of the major causes as “college degrees take a lot of time.” Do poor people not exist in Hymowitz-land?
This is not even getting into the scientific fact that Hymowitz hates happiness. First, she talks about how “[preadults] are looking not just for jobs but for “careers,” work in which they can exercise their talents and express their deepest passions.” As it happens, job satisfaction is well-correlated with overall happiness. Second, she is pissed as fuck that people are waiting to get married, even though higher age at first marriage is correlated with lower risk of divorce. Finally, here is a short list of things that Hymowitz guys should not do:
- Watch Star Wars.
- Given her rationale for why guys shouldn’t watch Star Wars, consume any media with an intended demographic of children (e.g. Pixar, My Little Pony, Harry Potter).
- Play video games.
- Be in a rock band.
- Go to Vegas.
- Be a maladriot geek.
- Smoke pot.
- Watch Comedy Central, the Cartoon Network, or Spike.
- Watch movies starring Steve Carell, Luke and Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Will Farrell, or Seth Rogen.
- Watch movies featuring car crashes, fart jokes, breast or crotch shots, beer pong competitions, or fratboy pranks.
Like I said. I think she hates joy.
The way I see it, there are exactly two rules you need to follow in your life:
1) Don’t hurt people.
2)Try to live a life as happy, fulfilled, meaningful, and fun as you can without violating #1.
If you’re following those two rules, and you get a life in which you work shitty stress-free slacker job to pay the bills while smoking pot, playing video games, being in a rock band, and watching Comedy Central, Star Wars, and car-crash movies, awesome! Get down with your bad self.
I mean, if you’re living off a parent or romantic partner who is decidedly Not Okay with the “slacker job, pot, Star Wars” plan and wants you to contribute to the family budget already, you should probably work on the whole not living off them anymore thing. (Although the shitty economy and high unemployment rate can make that impossible for a lot of people, and that is pretty much not your fault.) But other than that, dudes? Your worth as a person is NOT based on how well you fulfill the Success Myth or hegemonic masculinity. You do NOT have to spend your life slaving away to enrich the corporate overlords. Being happy is enough.
Hell, if you think about it, being a dude who’s proudly and happily ignoring the Success Myth is fucking up the gender binary as much as being a chick who’s proudly and happily ignoring the Beauty Myth. Slacker masculists are exactly like hairy-legged feminists!
I think Hymowitz’s idiocy can be summed up in one quote: “[preadult men] live in rooms decorated with “Star Wars” posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys.” One of these things is nooooot like the others, one of these things just dooooooesn’t belong.
Star Wars and beer do not hurt people, hence they do not violate Rule #1, hence they are viable life choices. Being a misogynistic fuckhead does hurt people, hence it does violate Rule #1, hence it is NOT a viable life choice. These are the problems you get into when you put “being a dickhead” and “liking Star Wars” in the same category of “not being a Real Man.”
This gets brought to a head in more recent Kay Hymowitz article, which features The (He)artist(e) formerly known as Roissy, because I died and went to Ranter Heaven. Kay Hymowitz wishes to inform you that men are bitter! No, they are not bitter over being unemployed and unemployable, having their job prospects fucked in the ass by Wall Street, the cancellation of Firefly, or anything else sensible. No, they are bitter because women are bitches.
Why are women bitches, you ask? Well, because women are different! Some women want to be asked out, and some women want to do the asking out! Some women want men to be chivalrous, and some women want to be treated as equals! Worse, some women may want different things at different times! They may want casual sex sometimes and relationships other times! They may want to split the dinner fifty-fifty and a ton of roses on Valentine’s Day! Anarchy! Madness! Riots in the streets!
Hymowitz is the only person who can write a set of sentences like “Men say they have no choice. If they want a life, they have to ask women out on dates; they have to initiate conversations at bars and parties, they have to take the lead on sex. Women can take a Chinese menu approach to gender roles” and come to the conclusion that what we need to do is stuff women back in the gender-box too. Everyone is miserable! Equality!
Here’s the deal, people. If you are confused what your girlfriend wants, ask her. If she lies or plays games, inform her that you are not a mind-reader and that if she wants things she has to fucking communicate. If she regularly refuses to communicate like a grown-ass adult, dump the motherfucker already. If she has told you, don’t read Fox News telling you about the “five feminist demands she wants you to ignore” and fucking ignore her. That’s shitty.
If you don’t want to date women and would prefer to spend all your time with, to quote someone quoted in the article, “PlayStation 3s, 24-hours-a-day sports channels, and free Internet porn,” don’t date women! Tell anyone who gives you shit about it to mind their own fucking business. As long as you are not a sexist asshat and otherwise do not violate Rule #1, it is perfectly all right to decide you don’t want to date people. If nothing else, it really pisses Hymowitz off, which is pretty much the noblest cause around.
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2020
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No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz? 
Hey, I am an ol’ Boomer lady–and I completely agree with you. I totally abhore people wanting everyone to pop out everyday from the cookiecutter mold they have constructed. Judging by appearances is just SSOOOO wrong! This Hymowitz is just way off her rocker and very deprived, if you ask me.
Kay Hymowitz Logic:
– Men aren’t being Real Men like all women everywhere want, need and require them to be! Horrible!!!
– Oh wait, women are giving up monolithic societal ideas about the kind of life and relationships with men they are “supposed” to want, and beginning to assert their individual desires?
– Women aren’t being Real Women like all men everywhere want, need and require them to be! Horrible!!!
I can only imagine that step 4 is condemning men for beginning to pick and choose among women as individuals? Anyway, her point seems to be that rejection of rigid gender roles leads to rejection of rigid gender roles. I sure do love me some panicky, judgmental tautologies.
I loved this post! I like your ability to confront the argument without bashing the other sex, i.e. women. Good job 🙂
I think large groups of people living together is good. I am hoping the recession makes us all question the “single person in an apt” thing… that is a huge waste of resources. Sharing washing machines and toasters and cable TV and stuff is GOOD.
And yeah, the whole college degree thing, augghhh, drives me berserk… some folks really do just want to work on cars or fly planes for a living. (In Michael Moore’s “Capitalism, a love story” –they mentioned the low salaries of pilots, and one reason they get by with this: because pilots really do LOVE THE FLYING and the airlines depend on that love to get them at cheap salaries!) I think Kay expects her car or plane to run smoothly, but doesn’t seem to find the people worthwhile who perform these tasks for her… they/we are not included in her analysis. (And those are “careers” too, for those who enjoy cars and planes).
And as for your list… WOW. There goes my husband! Am I supposed to get a divorce now, or what?
And what do I do with this whole season of ARCHER that he is making me watch?
And NO Adam Sandler. I have to draw the line SOMEwhere!
Ohhh never mind, ARCHER is FX, its not Comedy Central. (But yes, I also have many seasons of FUTURAMA under my belt)
He watches them over and over and now he works various lines into conversations: http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/archer/
Hmm… I honestly didn’t see that solution coming! It’s got some kind of fridge brilliance to it.
brb oppressing sum womenz
@f.
Nicely put.
Watch movies starring Steve Carell, Luke and Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Will Farrell, or Seth Rogen.
Well, she would have a point there. Nobody should do that.
(I kid, I kid. I mean yes, that style of comedy kind of makes me want to barf, but I don’t actually insist that everyone else feel the same way. As long as you don’t make me watch it with you, we’re good.)
Anyway. I wonder if she actually believes all that stuff, or if she’s just shit-stirring for attention/money? Because if the latter – well played, Kay Hymowitz. Well played.
…probably not though, unfortunately. And even if she was, the comments alone contain more than enough fail to leave a permanent forehead-shaped dent in my desk. Sigh.
@Daisy
“I think large groups of people living together is good. I am hoping the recession makes us all question the “single person in an apt” thing… that is a huge waste of resources. Sharing washing machines and toasters and cable TV and stuff is GOOD.”
Shit, daisy – we might even have to start learning to get along with our relatives! What would we have to whine about then? TV comedy will never be the same. Thank God.
“And yeah, the whole college degree thing, augghhh, drives me berserk… some folks really do just want to work on cars or fly planes for a living.”
And so many college degrees don’t even equip them for that!
“Do poor people not exist in Hymowitz-land?”
You do know where she lives, don’t you? You do know that one of the perks of living in aplace like that is all kinds of barriers between those places and poor people, don’t you?
I’m fortunate enough to work a job that, while not the most fulfilling thing on the planet, allows me the mental space to pursue other interests. The same is true for my wife.
I’m exhausted by the sentiment, often repeated, that ‘those young kids today don’t [insert random non-super superlative] .’ Please. Yes, the college and career gig has worked out SO WELL for everyone. We really love all this debt and resentment.
Your readers have already highlighted the bestest, rantiest stuff, so I don’t have much to add. I’m content to leave Kay to her well appointed, turtleneck-heavy cocktail parties while nerds debate minutia. See that? I can pointlessly stereotype, too.
I have to admit that I found Kay Hymowitz’s earlier article to be comforting. Not because of the sexist notions, but because I am squarely in her deplored “pre-adult phase” and at the time when I first read her article I felt all alone. When Hymowitz started her sexist arguments with the statement “lots of young men are doing [‘un-adult behaviors’]” and then proceeded with a negative tone it was able to reach me that I wasn’t alone. Further, by mirroring my own negativity it helped me realize how stupid I was for thinking like that.
Then finally the last useful thing I was able to get is if I take her arguments as a sort of base set of notions about how “men” “should act” it helps me spot assorted biases in others’ arguments and ideas. So yeah, in the end Hymowitz s sexist and classist at least, but not impossible to learn from.
Good God. I’m pushing 40 and with the exception of the rock band and Vegas thing, I still do everything on that list all the while being married, working full time, and having a kid. I just realized I have the perfect life. well except for all the misandry.
Yeah, Kay…it REALLY sucks that some of us don’t want to join the Embittered Adults club even though we’re chronologically adults…because your version of “adult” sounds like not a lot of fun…complain about taxes, the kids these days, bitch about your spouse, whine that other people are having more fun than you when they should settle down, saddle themselves with unpleasant burdens, and forget about those childhood joys. My partner and I are 30-something professionals with five degrees between us (that we or our jobs paid for) and we may grow older but we’re not growing up any time soon. No, we’re not in our dream jobs, but we’re mostly content with our work and enjoying spending our disposable incomes on ourselves…toys, vacations, books, video games, electronics, hobbies, tickets to sporting and cultural events, etc. There’s a calendar on the fridge to keep track of our respective and joint activities…squash, acro, curling, dance, French lessons…we spent our own time doing these things ourselves instead of taxiing kids to them, it’s awesome! Not interested in marriage, family, mortgages, lives of quiet desperation, consumerist pursuit of more salary and more spending…just making the most out of this time and sharing the fun times. He doesn’t want a wife and kids to support, I don’t want a husband to nag, we’re perfectly content to be partners-in-crime, adventure pals, teammates, and bed buddies 🙂
Ugh.
Kay Hymowitz just needs to go away. I’m 27 and unemployed. Well, technically I have a job, but it’s as a day laborer and I’m lucky if I can get even a half-dozen hours a week. Why? Because I float the majority of the hours I get to my friend/roommate because he has a wife and two little girls, and we’re all living off their foodstamps.
And now the one thing I did have going for me, my car, is dead in my driveway because some asshole felt the need to siphon the $40 worth of gas and oil in it, and did so by probably cutting my lines so that when I replaced that gas and oil, it leaked out over the course of a few miles and then the engine seized up on me.
So, frankly, Hymowitz can go take a leap. Unless she wants to float me the god-only-knows-how-many hundreds of dollars it’s going to take me to fix my car, I’m not particularly interested in hearing how she thinks I’m a failure, I get enough of that from myself, thank you very much.
/end rant
@Paul, it seems like you can’t be a man under 40 and not feel singled out and crapped on after reading one of Hymowitz’s articles. She attacks guys who make 6 figures but live by themselves and aren’t married, too. It used to be that they just attacked single men who lived with their parents… now they attack the ones with the room mates… the ones with the great job… even the ones who have a little bit of personal space (“man cave”) that they call their own.
Watch Stranger than Fiction or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mindand say that again. I dare you.
I mostly agree with the thrust of your comments.
Mostly.
If someone (and that’s certainly not the case for most unemployed or underemployed people, obviously) decided to spend their life with “PlayStation 3s, 24-hours-a-day sports channels, and free Internet porn,” I’d think that this is a waste of abilities. If they were a friend or relative of mine, I would try to get them out of their funk; and if they were, say, an hypothetical minor offspring of mine, I would _force_ them to do so.
Human beings are creatures of terrifying potential; it’s up to them to decide how to better use it, but I do believe that it is a *duty* for them to use it in some way.
@Pietro, that’s a good point and it does bother me when some of these people attach themselves to a culture which celebrates these behaviors as superior to that of anyone else. However, I think there is a middle ground to be found. The observant behavior of men who turn themselves into disposable wage slaves isn’t exactly enviable, either. So there’s no reason to attack someone just because they have different aspirations from you. I think you’re also missing the other big element in this: Hymowitz does this to all men who don’t serve her needs. She refers to highly paid, hard working, educated men who live with male room mates as “pre-adults” as well. For example, I’m friends with a young doctor who not only finished his residency, he also spent a year in Africa volunteering for Doctors Without Borders. But he lives with his male room mates and isn’t getting married yet, in fact he’s hesitant about the idea because he wants to travel the world. According to Hymowitz, though, guys like him are immature pre-adults who should stop looking like they’re having so much fun and become “responsible,” probably by coming over to Hymowitz’s residence and kissing her feet.
College prevented me from becoming a self actualized adult. I bought into this notion that if I went to a good school, I’d get a good job, and be a happy adult. What a load of horseshit. YMMV.
@dungone, yeah, it’s like she thinks that men and women are violating some kind of social contract with one another when we don’t take the plunge into traditional couplehood and marriage ASAP. It’s silly and brings out my judgy side as I can’t help wondering WHY this Hymowitz person thinks society should be remade to fit her narrow idea of what she thinks people should be doing with their lives. I do think that Pietro has a point – but you’re right, many people from all walks of life are leading lives of quiet desperation in one way or another. In general, I say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMimqfJVedE
@debaser71, when I was in college I was appalled by students and professors who twisted the liberal arts philosophy which promotes becoming a well-rounded individual into something where every major was equal. I’m sorry but spending $80,000 at an Ivy League school to become a kindergarten teacher is a bad move. When I was in high school, I picked my major partly by looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics job growth and unemployment stats for the fields that I was interested in. Throughout my college career, my academic advisor and I would sit down to pick out classes for the next semester and always weigh them based on which class might be something that employers are looking for on an entry level resume. I always had this impression that a lot of other students walk into the career counselor’s office in the middle of their senior year and ask, “So, I’m majoring in X… what kind of job do you think I could look for?” A lot of other students just write off the problem altogether, saying things like, “Well, I guess I’ll just go to grad school…” It’s like really.. so that’s why you were an English major? Please take your post modernist deconstructionism and shove it, k? 🙂
On the other hand, I have more college debt than I can sneeze at. I hate it. There’s some asshole student loan operator in Texas who I want to strangle every time I write a check on my 7% interest Stafford loans that he is taking no risk on but still charging me out the ass for. I can just imagine him sitting by the pool sipping on his piña colada thinking that the world is his Oyster… Ugh. And I know a lot of hard working students who graduated around the dot com bubble and couldn’t find work for 2-3 years and now others who graduated around the housing bubble and can’t find work, either. But I don’t think that’s a good argument against getting a good education, though. When it comes to people with good educations, there’s actually a big shortage of them. Good schools, in my opinion, are also very few and far between.
Dungone: I’m sorry but spending $80,000 at an Ivy League school to become a kindergarten teacher is a bad move.
Aside–
True, but I think what they are expecting is to make lots at a PRIVATE kindergarten in Manhattan for rich kids, like where Paul Simon sent his kids. Its like Bob Jones Univ students all expect to work in Baptist churches.
There is a local rich school in this area, that openly brags about which schools they get their teachers from, even for the elementary grades. (Like, how much education do you need to sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider”?)
Its the class thing of being able to say they hire kindergarten teachers from Princeton..
@Dungone: I am not defending Hymowitz’s position, the depth of insight of these article is something that I do not believe I could quantify without making recourse to nonstandard analysis and infinitesimals 🙂
And I also agree that the myth of success, and more in general the excessive focus on money making as a sign of achievement, is highly damaging for society as a whole: I shudder at the thought of how many bright people are now slaving away at well-paying, but ultimately pointless jobs. That can also be a waste of talent, I think.
I admit, when it comes to job satisfaction I am ludicrously privileged: roughly speaking, I knew what I wanted to do (to work in academia in something science-related) since I was a little kid, my folks were easily middle-class enough to give me a comfortable home environment and all the study material I could possibly need, and being European I did not even pay all that much in college fees (actually, I kinda came out ahead after getting a scholarship).
I do not have any right to look down on people whose careers are, at the moment, not satisfactory, and I know it. When I say that just lazying around for a whole lifetime is a waste of potential talent, I am not saying that people who do that are bad or unworthy: how could I even know if that is the case? What I am saying is just that, well, that it’s a waste.
But in any case, it’s not really necessary that self-actualization coincides with job activity. I have nothing whatsoever against the stereotypical starving artist who does something whatsoever to pay the bills while perfecting her/his talents, or the activist who focuses on his/her “mission” rather than on her/his job, or the parent who focuses on the education and well-being of his/her children, or so on. These are perfectly worthy life choices, I think, and so are many, many others.
Doing nothing but laze around, however, is a whole different issue. As I said, I am not criticizing the people themselves – I have no idea about their life histories, their motivations and so on – but I _am_ certainly saying that the situation they are in is less than optimal.
@Daisy, I think that most kindergarten teachers are unqualified to be around 5 year olds and are actually making them dumber. “Itsy Bitsy Spider” is part of the problem. That said, it shouldn’t require an Ivy League education to do a better job. From the standpoint of common sense, it just shouldn’t be allowed. The main problem with these schools is they let in more students than will ever be able to get the kind of job that makes their education worthwhile. Also, people who base their academic careers around the idea that they’re going to teach Paul Simon’s kids are about as smart as high school dropouts who think they’re going to become CEOs of heating and air conditioning repair empires. It just doesn’t “happen.”
It’s nothing unusual to see another New York columnist writing about her self-constructed world and finding us “preadults” wanting. Classist, misandrist, and incredibly naive, she’s just another spark in the fire of anti-male bashing. That she actually interviewed Roissy to gain some kind of insight into most men is quite telling.
It tells me that she really is just that foolish =/
Dungone, ohhh I know, and its true even for the Bob Jones kids. In a healthy economy, some of these pipe dreams could happen in SOME form, like the Princeton teacher could at least get a basic prep school gig or something like that. Nowadays? They are lucky to get ANY job at all.
The Bob Jones kids are likewise figuring out that any decent singer who can read music can be a “music minister” and you don’t need 4 years of bad Bible scholarship to pound the piano in a Baptist church. You know? The lack of accreditation may bring the school down, since in a bad economy it is all about the $.
Sorry for derail, but I am unemployed and studying WHO ELSE is currently unemployed and how they are marketing various things to us… example: these yahoo “colleges” advertising at bargain-basement prices during the soaps, promising you can get a job? Need to be taken out and horsewhipped, hard. All about exploitation, not education.
I know three people taken in by them so far–avoid, avoid.
@Pietro, I don’t think there is such a thing as a well-paying, but ultimately pointless job.
This wasn’t my intention from the start, but I prefer to be a waste doing ‘nothing’ productive (not working at all) than slaving away at minimum wage. And I’m sort of anti-capitalist in a sort of In Time way. I’d be the kind to rob Time Banks and give it to the poor, communist-style, because the rich having it all is so horribly horrible to my worldview.
@dungone, I think that the majority of the stereotypical high-paying jobs are fairly pointless. They may make sense as a means to an end – you make money, and then you use that money for something worthy – but if the greatest thing you did with your life was figuring out clever ways for a corporation to pay less taxes then you are not much better off than the “Playstation and porn” people…
The situation is the US for jobs and the economy is definitely grim. There aren’t too many openings for people fresh out of university because there are tons of experienced workers willing to take those entry-level jobs…and it’s not going to improve for quite a while, I’m afraid. Maybe a new New Deal is needed, some sort of public works/employment program to both shore up infrastructure and keep people working while the recession/depression grinds on…I’d much rather see spending on that then defence and bailouts.
My partner and I have been fortunate…our areas of study and credentials make us highly portable so we were able to find really good jobs outside of the US. I’ve paid off my student loans and he’s almost done with his, but both of us came from working class backgrounds so we are grateful both for the opportunities we’ve had and also proud of ourselves for taking advantage of those opportunities and working hard to gain education, training, and credentials. I’ve seen people who had it better than me and those who had it much harder than me, so I try to help the latter and not be envious of the former. I don’t think it’s fair for people like Hymowitz to make broad statements about “kids these days” as if everyone comes from the same upper middle class white background.
@Pietro, I think you’re wrong when you say “majority.” Very few high paying jobs are stereotypical. At least the way you worded it is sort of a truism. And besides, one of the reasons those people get paid so much is because most other people don’t recognize the value of what those people do. There’s a reason why they’re called stereotypes.
My general sense of what is really going on is that most people don’t understand leadership and think that a monkey could do those jobs. It was just as true when I was in the military and lower ranking soldiers thought that everyone higher ranking than them was inept – any private could do a sergeant’s job, after all – except where do you think the sergeants come from? I also see the same thing with engineers who think that their managers, who are former engineers, are also inept. And the people who work on the assembly lines building stuff definitely think that all the engineers are inept. And the construction crews who build houses think that the architects are inept. And some of the unemployed artists who live in Brooklyn and listen to Arcade Fire and live off of trust funds think that everyone who holds down a full time job is inept. You may also be really pleased to know that just about everyone in America think that all academics are inept, especially the ones who graduate college and can’t find a job that’s worth a damn. Everything is pointless according to somebody else. I don’t think it makes sense to talk about any job as pointless. It’s a sign of narrow mindedness.
@Dungone: I think that we are misunderstanding each other. I never said that the majority of high paying jobs are pointless: I said that there exist high-paying jobs which are pointless, and that people who subscribe to the myth of success sometimes risk getting drawn into them, and that this is a pity.
Note, I am not saying that these jobs are *easy*: they definitely require commitment, drive and talent. However, if they do not contribute directly or indirectly to make the world a more interesting place then yes, I’d say that they are pointless.
This does not imply a disapproval of the people who do them, again. I’m just saying that, well, that it’s a pity. That’s all.
@Pietro, perhaps our disagreement lies in just how relevant those jobs actually are in making the world a better place and whether or not that is a reasonable way to judge jobs. Clearly, there are some types of work that make the world a worst place. But it’s not limited to a couple bean counters at the top of the pay scale. Landscapers who illegally dump the pesticide-laden grass they mowed into a sensitive wildlife area, academics who push forth harmful theories such as sex-negative feminism, doctors who don’t really care about the well-being of their patients, they’re all harmful. But I’m not willing to be the one who looks at the bean counters who work for a positive, well-intentioned company and say that they’re pointless. If you’re thinking of tax loopholes that diverts money that could otherwise go towards infrastructure and social safety nets, I think you have to look at the nature of the beast. Even the most well-meaning business has to be efficient to compete against its rivals. The solution isn’t to disparage the people who do their part to help the business survive, it is to look at the civic system that forces people to devote a part of their lives chasing after the lowest common denominator. Take the tax loopholes away. That is everybody’s responsibility and perhaps academics should be the ones who are leading the way in figuring out how we’re actually going to do it.
@Dungone: Agreed. My only point in mentioning high-paying, pointless jobs was in order to point out yet another way in which the Myth of Success can cause damage, that’s all. Yeah, there are many other jobs which have perhaps worse effects, but my point was not to “disparage people” (as I think I emphasized, I do not want to imply *anything* about the people who do them) or to make some sort of sharp classification of jobs in “good ones” and “bad ones”.
Really, all I wanted to say is that “success”, as Hymowitz seems to define it, is not only not necessary, but not really something worthy to be sought after for itself either.
As for academics leading the way… well, I hope that we can help in some small way, perhaps. But organizational talent is not something that we are hugely gifted with, for the most part 🙂
Sorry but /rantmode on.
I had to learn that life’s not fair, that I am not special, no one gives a shit about me, and the world owes me exactly nothing. I was indoctrinated into the idea, “get into a good college and everything will simply fall into place!” My ass. It took me a long time to unlearn this. I feel like I was fucking scammed. Granted I had the “luxury” of being able to work three bullshit jobs (at once) after college. Today it’s hard to even land one bullshit job…never mind an “entry level position”.
Anyway IMO many young people are finally realizing this. You’ve been sold horseshit. Very very expensive horseshit. It’s a slap to the face, but it should also be a kick in the ass. I don’t know what to do if I were 20 something and straight out of college now or what I would have done if even the bullshit jobs were not available. (and by bullshit job I mean being a part time stock boy at Radio Shack). I probably would have moved back home with my grandmother and be scorned by people like Kay H.
“[preadult men] live in rooms decorated with “Star Wars” posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys.”
This is either too general or way too specific – as in she dated one guy like this.
@Debaser:
“I had to learn that life’s not fair, that I am not special, no one gives a shit about me, and the world owes me exactly nothing. I was indoctrinated into the idea, “get into a good college and everything will simply fall into place!” My ass. It took me a long time to unlearn this. I feel like I was fucking scammed. Granted I had the “luxury” of being able to work three bullshit jobs (at once) after college. Today it’s hard to even land one bullshit job…never mind an “entry level position”.
Anyway IMO many young people are finally realizing this. You’ve been sold horseshit. Very very expensive horseshit. It’s a slap to the face, but it should also be a kick in the ass. I don’t know what to do if I were 20 something and straight out of college now or what I would have done if even the bullshit jobs were not available. (and by bullshit job I mean being a part time stock boy at Radio Shack). I probably would have moved back home with my grandmother and be scorned by people like Kay H.”
It doesn’t sound like you thought you were special or that the world owed you anything. You were presented with a condition, (get a degree and you’ll get a good job). You fulfilled that condition, and expected the payout. You didn’t expect it to be handed to you, you did what you were told was necessary to earn it. I’m tired of people claiming that young people today “Have a sense of entitlement”. Usually its older people, who, years ago, worked for a few years and started talking about how they “deserved a raise”.
I think young people have been sold horseshit, sure, but we also can’t hold it against the people who sold it to us. A generation ago, having a degree meant you had a job, because few people had degrees. Enter the Stafford loan, and now EVERYBODY goes to college. Meaning a degree is bullshit. I can’t remember the name of the paradox for the idea that if one person does something, its an advantage, but if everyone does it, its not an advantage for anyone.
I’m 27, I live with my mother. So does my brother, 29, and my sister, 30. I mostly just ignore the people who say I’m not “independent” because I don’t have a private residence – I handle all my own affairs, I’m debt free, I help out, both financially and with work on/around the house (which further saves my mother money). I also, frankly, don’t make a lot of money right now (work part time, massage part time, and go to a community college). I’m sure I could go out and find a full time job, as well as something on the weekends, if I really wanted to – and then I could get my own place! And work 70 hours a week, and never be there! Or relax, spend time with people I care about, or have much to spend because it will all go to rent. I have a few friends who got a place together – near as I can tell, the main difference between their lives and mine is they party more. They pay an extra 600 dollars a month to be able to drink and smoke weed more often. And, somehow, they’re seen as more mature.
@Suturexself, I think you’re both right. The fact is, universities are part of a complex system of industry and labor and in a lot of ways they take part in the redistribution of resources. What you’re doing when you pay tuition is a) pay for free corporate R&D that benefits the 1%, b) provide risk-free profits to the banking industry, and c) provide a risk free* source of skilled labor.
*It’s risk free in the sense that corporations can seize upon an economic opportunity and expect that trained workers will just be there, as if by magic. And if they don’t see an economic opportunity and the workers are not needed, then the workers are SOL.
Bottom line is, just by the fact of going to college, you are contributing to the economy and working your ass off and the only sure thing is that you will get shafted with heavy long-term debt.
The thing I find so amusing about this Kay Hymowitz person (we don’t have her here but I’ve gathered that she’s a horrible person) is that the people she’s describing…I don’t think they exist. Like, I know a bunch of people who have their bedrooms decorated with Star Wars posters and who play video games and stuff like that. But they don’t know how to TALK to women let alone treat them like disposable toys (and these guys are collectors, you don’t *dispose* of toys!!! You don’t even take them out of the packaging!).
Howard in Big Bang Theory maybe? If he had more than extremely marginal success with dating.
Yeah but that’s a fictional character that doesn’t actually exist? I mean insofar as most erroneous and misinformed stereotypes on that show don’t exist. But what do I know? As a 25 year old guy with a housemate, a band, X-men tattoos, a big screen tv and a sizable comic book collection, I’m clearly not fitting in to Hymowitz’s definition of an adult despite being in a successful and happy relationship for 5 years and being employed as a social worker.
Awesome! I hope when my husband and I are 40, we’ll still have refused to succumb to adulthood. Staying up late and sleeping until 2 pm on weekends, not having kids to drag our lifestyle down or loose sleep over, no mortgage to anchor us to a city or a job we hate, and the flexibility to do what we want, when we want it.
I enjoy it when my peers call me selfish because I REFUSE to accept the hallowed “milestones” of adulthood. Dig a little deeper, and they’re carping about how horrible “kids’ stuff” is – clubs, movies, music, TV shows, whatever. And dig a little deeper, and behind that carping is the resentment that they prioritized that Societally Accepted Badge of Adulthood ™ over their true wants and desires, because someone told them it was The Right Thing to Do. And that’s really why they hate people like us.
Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that overpaid corporate media shills like Hymowitz are also irate partially because they have no idea what it’s like to be a young adult these days, and are insulated from real life from their media castles. The generation after ours – Echo Boomers, Millennials, whatever we call ’em now – went to college in an era when education costs are at an all-time high and grants and scholarships are at an all-time low. Then, they entered a workforce oversaturated with bachelor’s degree holders, with 8 applicants for every job, and a general attitude among management and HR that entry level now means “2-4 years of experience.” Shit.
I didn’t even do an internship and got a job in my field within a year. My younger brother did 3 and couldn’t find work, so now he’s passing time in grad school, which he’ll finish this spring. And my cousin went to law school because everyone in the family believes law is one of the few “real careers,” and graduated into a job market with too many lawyers and not enough law firms hiring.
@ HumanBeing: You are, for today, my favorite person in the world. Kudos.
HumanBeing,
I’d bet that you will eventually reach a point in your life where staying up all night will lose its appeal, regardless of your family situation, financial situation, etc. Ageing is an adventure that the young can’t imagine.
I keep getting the feeling she is miserable at her wasted life, and now she wants everyone else to be as miserable as she is.
dungone writes:
Huh. I thought men kissing women’s feet was a male fantasy. I imagine if a man kissed Kay Hymowitz’s feet, she’d say, “What are you, my child? You’re not acting like a real man, you creepy weirdo!”
Wait, she interviewed Roissy? She’d say, “You’re acting like a herb!”
HumanBeing,
I’d bet that you will eventually reach a point in your life where staying up all night will lose its appeal, regardless of your family situation, financial situation, etc. Ageing is an adventure that the young can’t imagine.
Ah, but my sleep cycle is perpetually stuck on the second or third shift. It’s actually gotten worse the older I’ve gotten, and even my ADD meds make little difference. On weekends, I like nothing better than staying up until 6 am and sleeping in until 2 pm. I thought this was really strange, but I did some research, and it actually has a name: Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder. I hate the 9-5 grind. It’s like living with perpetual jet lag.
You know, I tend to think of “geek” as a synonym for “hacker” or “engineer” long before I think of “obsesses over obscure pop culture”. That being said, I think your point stands here. The silliness about video games and Star Wars really doesn’t make you less of a productive member of society. To be honest, it’s a bit of a red haring. This is one of the reasons that, while I agree with much of Kay Hymowitz is saying, I’m a bit bothered by how she’s saying it in this article. Let’s face it, some of these ‘maladroit geeks’ are busy building everything from the Linux kernel to next generation of manned spacecraft. Some are even happily married. If that’s not advancing civilization, I don’t know what is.
Newt Gingrage expressed the idea a bit better. He described Adolescence as a failed cultural model. Ultimately this boils down to two things: 1) Our young adults can and should be able to accomplish more of what they want, sooner in their lives. 2) We should not delay becoming productive members of society any longer than necessary.
Additionally, the bits about ‘manning up’ that Hymowitz mention bring up are still relevant, although I she she is missing the forest for the trees. The question I think she is trying to get at is ‘why have we defined masculinity as this.’ After all, the very gender enforcement you folks seem to oppose is a part of the frat-boy culture that Hymowitz is decrying.
For one, that number doesn’t quite mean what you think it means, Ozy. Yes the youngest men (younger than around 20 or so) have a higher divorce rate. However, this doesn’t mean that men who marry at 24 are significantly more likely to divorce than those who wait until they are 44 to marry.
Beyond that, when I make the exact same argument about pre-marital sex it’s labeled ‘slut shaming’. I really don’t see the difference between your condemnation of folks who want to get married young, and people who condemn what they see as unwise sexual behavior. Except, the latter have never made any statements to the effect of “we accept everyone”.
Do I see a hint of Objectivism here?
Where do I start? I suppose I would start by saying that happiness isn’t necessarily a function of how you are feeling right now. There are lots of things that are difficult and unpleasant but necessary for true fulfillment. My undergraduate career would have been a lot happier with fewer all-night code-a-thons. But, this is still a worthwhile investment. When I graduate in a couple of months, I will have no debt and no worries about finding a job. With an luck, I’ll be able steer my career into something that allows me to create something worthwhile. A little bit of drudgery can buy an awful lot.
“This is one of the reasons that, while I agree with much of Kay Hymowitz is saying, I’m a bit bothered by how she’s saying it in this article. Let’s face it, some of these ‘maladroit geeks’ are busy building everything from the Linux kernel to next generation of manned spacecraft. Some are even happily married. If that’s not advancing civilization, I don’t know what is. ”
My geekery doesn’t involve hacking or doing engineering. It involves passing time and amassing encyclopedic amounts of information about virtual worlds basically no one in real life cares about.
And this should be fine too. It doesn’t need to be productive to be good.
Life is not about “happiness” and “fun”. Life is about fulfillment and flourishing.
Debaser: Well, yes, but I do think the happiness and fun is part of it! For the majority of people, I think a happy life involves working on things that they’re passionate about and fulfill them sometimes AND eating fajitas and then playing Magic until dawn sometimes. S’why I put down “fulfilled, meaningful, and fun.”
D3: I do not entirely see what the idea “regulation and a strong social safety net lead to better outcomes than the converse” has to do with “your life duties are ‘don’t hurt people and try to be happy.'”
I am also not entirely sure where I argued against drudgery. If working your ass off in college will, to the best of your knowledge, give you a life more happy, fulfilled, meaningful, and fun in the future, then you should do that.
Well, yes, but Hymowitz was literally asking a return to fifties-style early-twenties marriages, which would lead to a serious increase in divorce and, more importantly, unhappy marriages. And I’m not arguing against it because I think that divorce is bad; lots of people get divorces and end up happy afterward. I don’t even think early-twenties marriages are bad– they’re statistically unwise, but I do statistically unwise things all the time. I’m arguing against her argument because Hymowitz claims to value marriage, but has recommendations that go directly against her goal, which implies that she doesn’t actually value marriage but has some other value. (I vote “hates happiness.”) Alsoalso, as I seem to recall, most of the studies that establish the “sleeping around = higher risk of divorce” thing are extremely flawed.
“The way I see it, there are exactly two rules you need to follow in your life:
1) Don’t hurt people.
2)Try to live a life as happy, fulfilled, meaningful, and fun as you can without violating #1.”
There’s a name for that: http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Principle_of_non-aggression
1. As was mentioned earlier, Kay Hymowitz is an Upper East (or maybe West) Side-dwelling Manhattanite. I live in NYC and I can tell you that the people who live between 60th and 90th streets in the city are among the worst people on the planet (in terms of self-absorption and ego.)
2. Whenever you read a news article about male underachievement (written by or from a white person in a white country), go ahead and add the words “Or ‘non-white’ people will take over”, to the end of their screed. Are there *benefits* to the standard monogamous lifestyle? Most definitely yes (from a financial and social standpoint.) Does this do anything to mitigate the racist undertone? Not in the least. Bottom line: “Man up! Get married” is almost always one step away from “If you don’t make more kids, Mexicans/Muslims/Asians are going to take over the country and a ringing stole my babyarblegargplespolytdmzkzax!” It’s the kinder and gentler anima to the abrasive and non-PC “White Power”/nativist animus (I added nativist because I know plenty of people who live in Japan. Japanese men are receiving the same messages.)
3.
The thing is that people can use the strong social safety net to hurt other people. If you go off and smoke pot every day, get lung cancer and require government subsidized treatment, then you are hurting everyone who pays into the system. You can say the same thing for all sorts of irresponsible behaviour. It becomes nearly impossible to do anything without hurting someone else.
We can argue about the latter point, and I’m sure it would be very interesting. For now, I’m just going to say that some experts in the area agree with me and that’s the best I can do for now. (*adds “learn R” and “analyse the CDC data on this topic to his vast to-do list”*)
I can see the difference between saying a choice is, in your view, unwise and saying it is ethically wrong. The thing is, most of the time you folks consider the act of labelling promiscuous behaviour as unwise to be ethically wrong. So, if I apply your standards to your own viewpoint, this is still condemning people who decide to get married younger than you would like. And you certainly aren’t defending people who make that sort decision. So, you can see my suspicion when you claim that “we defend all sexual desires that do not directly hurt someone else”.
It’s also worth pointing out that most people who get divorced are not happier as a result. Divorce nearly always lowers everyone’s standards of living, and that’s even before we consider children.
Isn’t it interesting that when someone who appears to be of European descent describes defending their cultural heritage, it’s racist. But, if someone of any other background does it, it isn’t. Isn’t that attitude, in and of itself, racist?
Beyond that, I really think that when anyone is using the phrase “racist undertone”, it’s a strawman, or worse a Kafkatrap. It would be extremely convent for your argument if your opponents were simply ignorant racists for even mentioning the idea of demographic winter. But, I really don’t think that’s the driving force here and you don’t have any evidence to the contrary.
I hate to say it, but “amassing encyclopedic amounts of information about virtual worlds basically no one in real life cares about” sounds an awfully lot like “learning to program”. Sure, your boss and end users will care that the product works at the end of the day, but only you and your fellow software geeks care about how it was made and the virtual world of libraries, frameworks, operating systems, and APIs that we have created and navigate every day.
My point isn’t “silly hobbies are bad”… Goodness, I would be the world’s largest hypocrite if I said that (doubly so, since I’m posting this from a Global Game Jam). In fact, my point is exactly the opposite. A lot of very intelligent and productive people have what we might call silly hobbies. For example, Eirc Raymond (and his wife) play board games, and Antonin Dvorak was a railfan. Thus, “you play video games, therefore you are immature” is pretty darn silly if you ask me.
D3: Yes, and people can use not having a strong social safety net to hurt people. Like, the whole “people starving to death” thing. I am pretty sure that people are hurt by that. I am personally of the opinion that I am hurt less by paying for food stamps and welfare (even for people who are “not deserving,” whatever that means) than other people are by starving.
Talking about whether divorce makes people unhappy is difficult, because if you think about it it’s wrong to compare divorces to marriages, because the set of marriages includes a lot of happy marriages, and the set of people who have been divorced is pretty much just unhappy marriages. Unfortunately, I don’t know any studies that compare divorced couples to unhappily married couples, but I doubt the divorced people would come off particularly badly.
Well, because promiscuity isn’t usually unwise. There are unwise ways to do it (for instance, without protection) and people for whom having promiscuous sex is unwise (for instance, people who tend to fall in love with people they have sex with), but promiscuous sex isn’t ipso facto unwise, the same way that marriage isn’t ipso facto unwise. Also because most slut-shamers don’t say “promiscuous sex is unwise in most circumstances, and here is my methodologically sound data backing it up,” they say “LOL DIRTY FILTHY SLUTS DISRESPECTING THEMSELVES PETRI DISH VAGINAS FUCKING THEM IS LIKE THROWING A HOT DOG DOWN A HALLWAY.”
Look, you know what, if I know a couple that’s 20 years old and wants to get married? I’m gonna say “good for you!” and ask about their wedding plans, because I am not a douchebag. I just think it’s idiotic in the extreme to be all “I am DEFENDING MARRIAGE by complaining about how people aren’t getting married at 20 anymore.”
@Ozy:
Love this post. Thanks. 🙂
Hymowitz’s article strikes me as the economic equivalent of slut-shaming. Excoriating young men for not having 1%er jobs or interests may be a propagandist means of instilling self-blame in the underemployed. Her disdain for the low-stress job and its workers is a subtle indication that the office bullies have lost valuable targets, but gained an apologist with a literary agent.
The thing that you can’t hurt someone through the lack of a safety net any more than you can hurt someone by refusing to give them some other piece of your property. The lack of a social safety net isn’t going shoot, stab, seize the belongings of, or imprison anyone. This doesn’t necessarily mean that having no social safety net is always good policy. That’s not my point. My point is that the strong social safety net can be abused, and that pointing out such abuse is perfectly valid. There’s nothing wrong with asking all members of civilization to carry their share of the load if they are able to do so.
Dalrock did a post about a couple such studies. (Please also note that this isn’t a general endorsement of Dalrock, or even some of the views he puts forth in that post. It just happens to contain a good collection of data.) I can see another workable way of making such a comparison: Follow a set of couples, and compare their happiness prior to and after any divorce.
I do have a couple objections here… But, I think we might be closer to agreeing on a key point than you might think. You seem to be backtracking from your initial stance that it would be unwise for a young couple to consider marriage. Your current stance that it is unwise for certain young couples to consider marriage, which is something I’m willing to agree with. It is also something that isn’t automatically opposed to sex positive feminist’s stated desire for the acceptance of all ethical sexual behavior, which is my primary objection.
In my admittedly biased experience, I’ve found that most sex positive feminists react similarly are not very accepting of the “no sex until marriage” folks. Although, when pushed, they are usually willing to give some begrudging acknowledgment of individual’s freedom of choice, they generally seem to think that anyone who hold such attitudes is either the victim or perpetrator of sexual repression. This is a very much a double standard.
@Developers^3
I’ve been reading critiques of Hymowitz’s “Man Up!”, posts for almost a full year. The amount of responders in those threads who openly castigate/worry about “demographic change” would astounded you. They have the same commentary for “the Muslim threat” in Europe (I’ve lived in Europe, its nowhere near as bad as they think) or the “herbivore” men in Japan (men who refuse to marry for fear of failure to meet their wife’s demands.) At its base, “Man Up” literature strikes me (personally speaking) as a call to make more of “our own”. I mean, I work in healthcare. I can’t count the amount of patients who I’ve treated who have complained about how “furners” are taking up good American doctor jobs while their “lazy” sons are sitting at home or in their own tiny little apartments playing “the Halo” and typing on their computers (with plenty of comments about how their sons might want to do something better with their lives if the sons had wives and kids to take care of…) I was in the military for a decade. When I can recall meeting people from states as disparate as Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey and Minnesota talking about how their sons need a woman to light a fire in their belly (while also complaining about how they have to travel for hours to see an “American” doctor because their local practice was taken over by a Hindu or a Korean first-generation immigrant), 1+1 eventually becomes 2 in my head. When I have multiple people in a week compliment me on my English, then mention that their kid(s) “were” pre-med (with a frown on their faces), cogs begin to turn in my head. I didn’t come to this conclusion because of “Blahhh, raycism!”, I came to this conclusion because I’ve actually counseled thousands of very dissimilar people who have said those comments to me. When you have Bismarck beet farmers, Tampa Bay mavens, retired Okies, double-pension collecting Philadelphians and others complaining about how their sons refuse to become “grown men”, it sticks in your head.
” (while also complaining about how they have to travel for hours to see an “American” doctor because their local practice was taken over by a Hindu or a Korean first-generation immigrant), ”
Those are self-selected, cream-of-the-crop types. Globalism makes that kind of competiton happen in societies that welcome it. This society in particular has been practicing that for centuries now – that’s why we had our industrialization on the backs of cheap imported European labor rather than expensive native-born Euro-and African American labor. Discarded populations are a signature feature of American history.
As for insisting on a doctor of one’s background, that just makes sense from the perspective of effiective communication, and I don’t mean language, which is why it’s stupid to insist on and “American” doctor. This is a big diverse country and you are quite likely to get one that is a different background. You end up talking right past each other. And you find some of the most unexpected people have similar backgrounds. My mother selected a doctor with a clearly Anglo surname – English in fact – who turned out to be black and culturally absolutely compatable around pain, disease and healthcare matters. Anglo is Anglo, I guess.
Daisy_Deadhead: “I think large groups of people living together is good. I am hoping the recession makes us all question the “single person in an apt” thing… that is a huge waste of resources. Sharing washing machines and toasters and cable TV and stuff is GOOD.”
Thankyouthankyouthankyou. I thought maybe I was the only one who noticed that living with parents and siblings (even while helping out) is a helluva lot more sustainable than everybody having his or her own house or apartment. If Mom, Dad, the son, and the daughter each want to eat dinner while watching the news and JEOPARDY!, which uses more energy: cooking dinner on one stove and one microwave oven, watching one television in one kitchen with the light and heat on, or multiplyng all that by four?
People used to live with their parents until they married, at which point they’d begin a new home together. Now each person sees having an apartment as the sole indicator of success.