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Disentangling Men’s Problems from Women’s Advancement
It’s time we did for everyone’s sake.
One of the sadly consistent peculiarities of social movements is that extremists eventually seize the agenda. I always thought Gresham’s law (the bad drives out the good) referred only to economic and monetary matters. It appears to hold in the market for ideas as well. As the culture wars divide society ever further apart, civil society appears to have lost the ability to engage in civilized discourse.
We’ve gone from a sentiment of “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it” to “we need to seize the reins of democracy by any means to get the other side to bend to our will.”
One of the most pernicious areas this extremist phenomenon plays out is in the so-called battle of the sexes. Some of the more extreme proponents of masculinity would have us believe that women’s entry into the labour market has somehow come at the expense of men. Further, this is being blamed for the generational loss of economic status of men.
Even as I write this, I see how such a dynamic can distract us from what the powerful are imposing on the population at large. The sheer volume of lies we must sift through in society’s onslaught of disinformation can blind us from seeing what is right in front of us.