Where Have the Men Gone?

Not an anti-Feminism screed, but a well-balanced article. I think it adds to the debate, and show why the Green Party needs to abandon Feminism as one of the Ten Key Values, or better, abandon the Ten Key Values altogether, in favor of the Six Principles:

The trend of females overtaking males in college was initially measured in 1978. Yet despite the well-documented disappearance of ever more young men from college campuses, we have yet to fully react to what has become a significant crisis. Largely, that is because of cultural perceptions about males and their societal role. Many times a week, a reporter or other media person will ask me: "Why should we care so much about boys when men still run everything?"

It's a fair and logical question, but what it really reflects is that our culture is still caught up in old industrial images. We still see thousands of men who succeed quite well in the professional world and in industry -- men who get elected president, who own software companies, who make six figures selling cars. We see the Bill Gateses and John Robertses and George Bushes -- and so we're not as concerned as we ought to be about the millions of young men who are floundering or lost.

But they're there: The young men who are working in the lowest-level (and most dangerous) jobs instead of going to college. Who are sitting in prison instead of going to college. Who are staying out of the long-term marriage pool because they have little to offer to young women. Who are remaining adolescents, wasting years of their lives playing video games for hours a day, until they're in their thirties, by which time the world has passed many of them by.

I think this article goes a long way towards making the argument one of right versus wrong - it is not right to let a certain percentage of boys grow up to fail in life until such time as women control at least 50% of everything. These little boys aren't evil - they deserve the same chance that every little girl deserves - nothing more, nothing less.