One thing most of us will tell you is that estrogen is a MUCH gentler ride than testosterone. After you’ve tried them both, there is no way you can completely fall for “social programming” rhetoric.

Beyond that, my personal experience is that men and women are both fenced in. For men, there’s a lot more area inside the fence – but the fence is electrified. Your mileage may vary.

Rose

In our welfare culture we have designed a system that excludes males. i.e. female heads of households can get welfare easily. Households with a male head have more difficulty. The results can be predicted by demographics almost exclusively.

Whether it’s a boyish boy or a tomboy-ish girl, physicaly active, intellectually aggressive behavior needs to be channeled, not crushed.

Having said that, I’m happy to see your mention of the Feminization of American Culture. Several international friends of mine are of the opinion that America is a matriarchy and think AMerican women are “masculine” acting yet possesed of many of the Paglia-described double-standards regarding gender roles.

These friends are both male and female, by the way,, and are all involved in the arts.

In our own family, I have a daughter, who is a senior in college, being courted by her professors for a Masters/PHD program in Economics. In at least two of her classes, she is the only girl among 20 to 30 men. She discovered this “talent” only in the last couple of years and said, cool. I’m really, really good at this. She’s decided she wants to become an economics professor.

I have a son who is a sophomore in college who wants to be a coach, but his other passion is Literature. He’s thinking liberal arts degree and he also wants to teach, not only young boys who need a strong role model on the field of sports, but also to pass on his passion for the written word.

Neither of them, however, were crammed in a gender box by attending public or private school. I think that is the key to their choices. They went with the things they enjoyed because they didn’t know girls don’t do well in math and boys don’t read books.

They both, however, had the same reaction upon attending college. We really, really need to be in the teaching profession. These poor kids, male and female, are not well served by the current environment.

Well, some of them like. Others wish that the rough-and-tumble recess players would drop off the face of the Earth and stop roughly tormenting them so they can read and study in peace.

While boys are generally different from girls, let’s not forget that they’re also noticeably different from each other. An institution that respects people as individuals, that maintains order and insists that the necessary work be done to specifications but otherwise leaves people free to pursue their own interests and activities would be a better fit for the motley collection of actual humans that it must deal with.

But, also, the more ambitious a school the less likely are freshmen to have a regular comp class and certainly they are likely to get a harried grad student who hasn’t taught before.

And I think David Foster’s point can’t be emphasized enough – though I don’t know tbe solution. For one thing, criticism in English is often impenetrable. If this is the model held up for the teachers, what do we expect them to teach?

I’m a big fan of Bush’s speechwriter, who seems to me to truly write in the context of our history – to feel it and understand it. But that’s Bush’s speech writer. I am, indeed, generally a fan of Bush. But in a country where the majority of younger people seem enthusiastic about privatized insurance (and they are the ones that will be affected), Bush’s lack of the rhetorical skills & p.r. power to get this through seems to me tragic. It is so clearly a step on the way to a stronger and broader middle class – and it appears to be stagnating in part because his communication skills weren’t up to pushing it. (I’ll grant that getting a good press is pretty much impossible, but what bigger and bullier pulpit is there than his?)

I agree rough and tumble play would probably cut down on classroom restlessness. And, Michael, it won’t surprise you that Sommers’ reviewed Rhoads quite favorably. Obviously, we can feed ourselves – now let’s get guys working on taking us to the moon, etc. etc.

USA TODAY article

If you check out that article it’ll explain that the males not in college aren’t going into the fields that you suggest and in the numbers I infer from your statement.

Also, sciences and Ph.D.’s I believe are at about 50/50 for males and females. Unfortunately I cannot recall if that was just at my university or a nationwide figure.

Thanks again to Glenn over at Instapundit.  There is a great and many layered article by Ginny at chicagoboyz.net on the current reality of sexism in America today, namely that of organized women in school against men and boys especially.  T…

The marginal cases need encouragement from society to become full men. Less encouragement, more aging boys.

I’ve seen various essays on ed-blogs lamenting the decline of grammar as a scholastic subject. I would have to agree that if people are not taught what the components of speech are, they will have trouble assembling them.

IIRC, in “Myths to Live By”, Joseph Campbell compared the mythologies of jungle tribes versus plains tribes. In highly productive ecosystems, a little slash and burn farming by the women was sufficient to support the tribe while the men, with little responsibility, tended toward secret societies and mythologies supporting ritual slaughter. In less productive ecosystems, the mythologies supported a more egalitarian appreciation of the contributions of all members of the society, including the vital role of hunters.

As described by Theodore Dalrymple in “Life at the Bottom”, the common elements of underclass culture in welfare societies around the world echo the traditional cultures of highly productive ecosystems where men have little responsibility.

I agree that “we’ve got the models” for explorers and homesteading, but I believe we also have inherent psychological models where peer status is achieved through gratuitous bravery via gang-style violence at best; grievance mongered violence at worst.

I fear intolerance for boisterous behavior in our classes repels too many males from exploring, shunning them aside before they can find their own frontiers.

So, why are so many college graduates so lousy at writing and speaking?

I recently read a joint press release issued by two well-known companies. The use of language was, to put it politely, suboptimal, and I think the writing seriously detracted from what could have been a fairly powerful marketing document. (And this wasn’t an exception–I’ve seen much, much worse)

I’m sure that just about everyone involved with this press release–the internal PR and MarCom people, the agencies, the line executives who reviewed an approved it–was a college grad, many probably from “elite” colleges and some with advanced degrees.

Is there something about the way in which verbal skills are now taught that tends to inhibit rather than enhance actual human communication?

The “female” persona wants to create a safe nurturing environment, based on group consensus and stability. This translates into teaching liberal arts and staffing social service agencies. Sometimes into being physicians and lawyers, but pediatricians rather than surgeons.

Some women have more “male” in their makeup and some men have more “female.” In each case a small percentage of the population, but in absolute numbers, many individuals whose stories aren’t told when sweeping generalizations or public policy are made about gender roles.

Whether there are more women than men in college isn’t that relevant. Math and science are still overwhelmingly male, CEOs are still overwhelmingly male, PhDs are still mostly male. Professions which command high salaries are still mostly male. The “pink-collar ghetto” still exists. Women in the US have only been equal before the law for about 30 years. The Biblical Exodus from Egypt teaches us that it takes at least a generation for emancipated groups to internalize their new status.

I agree that liberal arts isn’t a great environment for the male persona, but was it ever? The stereotypes of the man of action vs the long-haired sensitive poet have been around for awhile.

I often find myself in disagreement with her to one degree or another, but I admire her intellect. I loved listening to her talk. She has a brilliant and wide ranging mind.

Ginny backs into this answer at several points, but never quite seems to realize it. She mentions the winning of the West. She hits the answer full on right here:

Paglia didn’t write any of her books until the late 70s, and the “second wave” feminism didn’t gather steam until the early 70s, so if she was an “early 60s feminist” then she was an anomaly and is much older than I thought.

I say this as a woman who usually finds myself identifying more with the “male” personality gestalt than the “female” one. (Ex: I am good at reading maps, like to argue my point of view, am not very nurturing, etc.) I find myself cheering your critique of female-dominated liberal arts because that attitude alienates ME. But I am no less a female because I identify more with the boys on these things.

So I would hate to see a reaction to feminism lead to a renewed insistance on deterministic gender roles, or the equally pernicious idea that I am immature unless I give up my tomboyism and become a conventional feminine female.

I disagree with much of Jung, but his “anima” and “animus” concepts are useful in that they allow one to consider mental/emotional predispositions separately from biological gender.