Philip Zimbardo: The demise of guys? (TED TALK)

From:

www.ted.com...

My paraphrased summary bits & factoids . . .

--Girls now outperform boys in education at every level from kindergarten to grad school.

--boys--fear of intimacy--no clue how to handle/dialogue with female partners who give off "ambiguous contradictory phosphorescent signals."

--boys--fear of intimacy--can't handle, don't have skills for face to face dialogue with women.

caused in large part by

--the net, porn, & video games

--excessive net use.

--for every 400 regular movies made in Hollywood--10,000 porn movies

--results in a craving for CONSTANT AROUSAL. Drug addicition--want MORE drugs. This arousal addiction, guys want DIFFERENT

--average guy 15 porn videos/week

--virtually an incapacity to make love slowly any more

--30% of guys flunk or drop out of school.

--socially awkward

--more comfortable being with guys from kindergarten to work life.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

I've been a fan of Phil's for decades--probably 4 decades now.

I think he's absolutely right in this talk. I hope folks will listen to it.

One of the things I worked hard at--was getting my guy students comfortable to actively dialogue with the rest of the class. Guys are not used to communicating vulnerably about their feelings and a lot of other communication aspects needed and desired by women.

They left my class much better on such scores.

Guys are typically quite anxious to fearful about communicating with women about women's emotions.

Guys understand things they can hammer, saw, measure, etc.

They don't understand women's emotions and feel out ranked, out-classed, out maneuvered in the emotional arena. They certainly feel at a loss trying to communicate SUCCESSFULLY with women about women's emotions &/or their own emotions.

They can be trained but it takes a very patient sensitive and empathetic woman who greatly respects her man to train him well and successfully in how to communicate vulnerably and overcomingly about tender, important emotional content routinely.

Men CAN learn to paraphrase back to a woman what he thinks he heard her say.

With lots of help, most men can learn to paraphrase back to a woman what she said in his own words AND what he thinks she might be feeling about what she's talking about.

Most men have no clue how helpful doing so is to a woman in dialogue with her. They CAN be taught that--patiently.

Enough for the OP . . . I hope lots of men and women watch the talk. It's only 6 minutes and a powerful, rapid 6 minutes it is.

I hope men and women engage in the issues on this thread. It CAN result in better relationships and more fulfilling lives to sort through these issues and arrive at better mutual understanding.

Cheers.

Let the games begin.

Other than daily sexual arousal, I have no need for women. I hate gossip and drama, and I certainly can't stand listening to mindless babble just so a woman can hear herself talk.

Women spend money irrationally and force men to buy things they normally wouldn't buy. Women constantly change their minds about important financial decisions.

Really, all a woman has to offer me is a sexual experience, and even then I want them to leave when we're done. I prefer to be by myself and to make decisions for myself.

Originally posted by DaTroof
Other than daily sexual arousal, I have no need for women. I hate gossip and drama, and I certainly can't stand listening to mindless babble just so a woman can hear herself talk.

Women spend money irrationally and force men to buy things they normally wouldn't buy. Women constantly change their minds about important financial decisions.

Really, all a woman has to offer me is a sexual experience, and even then I want them to leave when we're done. I prefer to be by myself and to make decisions for myself.

True, I find emotional black mail and sexual blackmail happerning to my friends all the time cos of thier girlfriends, girls can be bitches and manipulative and I think its more of a problem now than ever. Especially with all this "Boxed up vanity comercialisation" in TV/Magazine adverts which is then sold to our kids to make them vain and bitchy.

Another thing tha anoys me with women is when they start date some guy who treats her like crap and from now on in her life 'Men are dogs' and all they want is sex when the real issue is the men she choosing and keeps choosing, yet she is happy to say that 'All men are the same'

kinda makes me feel down about women.

Probaly why i have never had a GF.

There's no reason to be bitter, women aren't evil creatures, they are just more easily lead by their emotions than men are. The problem with modern men is society conditions us to be emotional cripples, hence why most guys can't really relate to girls. Of course, there is the whole not needing to go out anymore thing as well; basically, social media provides us with "social interaction," thus fulfilling our need to socialize and removing desires to go out and actually interact with people. Lack of interaction creates lack of social calibration which leads to social awkwardness.

Basically, if you want a better sex life, start going out and having fun and meeting people. Naturally, you'll meet someone you click with and you may even hook up with that person. To an extent, everyone is afraid of his or her own success; we can attribute this mental homeostasis. As long as we're getting by and our basic needs are being met (food, shelter, sex, which can be substituted for porn and masturbation, etc), our minds see no need to change our behaviors. We don't want to remove ourselves from our comfort zones because it's NOT COMFORTABLE. Well, the thing is, if you're not in the game, you're not going to win, and you're not going to lose. Repeat the same actions, expect the same results.

reply to post by BO XIAN


Men and women relate completely differently with each other, depending on age, so that is a factor sorely missing from this...

For example, what women think they want in the teens and 20's, is COMPLETELY different than what they eventually realize they want in their 30's and 40's.

Likewise, in the teens and 20's, guys just want to get laid, but not just that, but they want to score only with the hottest gal they can find (much like the gals in the same age category).

For those guys that DO mature early and know how to communicate and listen to women, they are actually at a social DISADVANTAGE during the teens and 20's, as they will be the proverbial "Nice Guy" and "Friend Zone" type. Once in their 30's and up, these guys will be ideal partners....providing the teens and 20's rejection didn't completely destroy them, and they're not living in Mom and Dad's basement, collecting comics, while endlessly playing MMORPGs online 24/7.....

As for more pornos than movies, well, pornos are WAY cheaper, quicker, and easier to produce than a hollywood film, so OF COURSE there will be more, movie for movie. Who really pays for porn anyway? There's so much you can get for free. For me to pay for it, it has to have some other value than just porn (like the parodies, which are actually pretty well made, and have comedic value also).

It does point to a bigger problem though...the fact that today's youth has more of a VIRTUAL existence than an in person one. It seems they haven't learned the value of direct person to person communication in the world of texts, emails, and tweets.

I recently saw how different this is firsthand. My wife and I inherited a ranch, and are moving out to the country. It's amazing how different it is, how people are friendlier, how people pull together, and just their overall approach to one another, vs. the city. I'm really glad we're making the move, and I've already seen the difference. (I'm even using maam and sir way more than usual, hehe...)

Originally posted by DaTroof
Other than daily sexual arousal, I have no need for women. I hate gossip and drama, and I certainly can't stand listening to mindless babble just so a woman can hear herself talk.

Some are certainly talkative--many, actually. LOL.

I learned long ago . . . most women think out loud. It seems that their mouth has to be moving for their brain to work very well. LOL. Actually, they do seem to sort out their thoughts out loud. Though I'm not sure how they do that when so often two women are both talking to each other at the same time! LOL.

And, many seem given to dramatizing virtually everything to an extreme.

I wonder if women with a more serious amount of ATTACHMENT DISORDER do that more than others. An interesting question I've never seen any research on.

Women spend money irrationally and force men to buy things they normally wouldn't buy. Women constantly change their minds about important financial decisions.

Plenty true for a great many women. Though I've met some men like that.

Really, all a woman has to offer me is a sexual experience, and even then I want them to leave when we're done. I prefer to be by myself and to make decisions for myself.

Sounds like a fairly . . . meager social existence. However, given some women, alone would be far better.

What's the Bible verse . . . something about living in a house with a contentious woman is like a continual urinal dripping.

reply to post by definity

True, I find emotional black mail and sexual blackmail happerning to my friends all the time cos of thier girlfriends, girls can be bitches and manipulative and I think its more of a problem now than ever. Especially with all this "Boxed up vanity comercialisation" in TV/Magazine adverts which is then sold to our kids to make them vain and bitchy.

Tooooo true, toooooo often with tooooo many.

Those women have serious degrees of ATTACHMENT DISORDER. I consider it epidemic in our culture and around the world.

On top of that is all the brainwashing propagandizing of the media, ads, movies, etc.

Another thing tha anoys me with women is when they start date some guy who treats her like crap and from now on in her life 'Men are dogs' and all they want is sex when the real issue is the men she choosing and keeps choosing, yet she is happy to say that 'All men are the same'

Most of those women have serious degrees of ATTACHMENT DISORDER

AND

It shows up also because they have typically had horrible to abusive fathers. So, they have tons of unfinished father business never resolved. Soooo unconsciously , they keep returning to a similar messed up man to . . . more or less unconsciously, try and work through their unfinished father business. However, without some skilled help, they are not likely to make much progress. They break up and go out and find almost an identical jerk for the next one.

kinda makes me feel down about women.

Probaly why i have never had a GF.

Wellllllllllllllllllll you may well have a significant degree of ATTACHMENT DISORDER as well. Most men nowadays do, imho. And that alone doesn't leave us with much resilience with which to bounce back and enter the fray looking for a decent gal yet again.

Originally posted by DestroyDestroyDestroy
There's no reason to be bitter, women aren't evil creatures, they are just more easily lead by their emotions than men are.

PLENTY TRUE.

The problem with modern men is society conditions us to be emotional cripples, hence why most guys can't really relate to girls.

Lots of truth to that, for sure.

Of course, there is the whole not needing to go out anymore thing as well; basically, social media provides us with "social interaction," thus fulfilling our need to socialize and removing desires to go out and actually interact with people. Lack of interaction creates lack of social calibration which leads to social awkwardness.

I think that so many men suffering from significant levels of ATTACHMENT DISORDER even adds to that problem. They are low in self esteem; self-confidence; assertiveness; emotional communication skills; empathy skills etc. "Social calibration" is also lacking from a paucity of experience as you noted.

Basically, if you want a better sex life, start going out and having fun and meeting people. Naturally, you'll meet someone you click with and you may even hook up with that person. To an extent, everyone is afraid of his or her own success; we can attribute this mental homeostasis. As long as we're getting by and our basic needs are being met (food, shelter, sex, which can be substituted for porn and masturbation, etc), our minds see no need to change our behaviors. We don't want to remove ourselves from our comfort zones because it's NOT COMFORTABLE. Well, the thing is, if you're not in the game, you're not going to win, and you're not going to lose. Repeat the same actions, expect the same results.

Well put.

Thx for your comments.

Originally posted by Gazrok
reply to post by BO XIAN

 

Men and women relate completely differently with each other, depending on age, so that is a factor sorely missing from this...

For example, what women think they want in the teens and 20's, is COMPLETELY different than what they eventually realize they want in their 30's and 40's.

Likewise, in the teens and 20's, guys just want to get laid, but not just that, but they want to score only with the hottest gal they can find (much like the gals in the same age category).

I think you have some useful insights there.

And with COMMITMENT trashed in the media so constantly by the globalists' attacks on marriage and the family . . . it just makes things worse and worse.

For those guys that DO mature early and know how to communicate and listen to women, they are actually at a social DISADVANTAGE during the teens and 20's, as they will be the proverbial "Nice Guy" and "Friend Zone" type. Once in their 30's and up, these guys will be ideal partners....providing the teens and 20's rejection didn't completely destroy them, and they're not living in Mom and Dad's basement, collecting comics, while endlessly playing MMORPGs online 24/7.....

INDEED.

As for more pornos than movies, well, pornos are WAY cheaper, quicker, and easier to produce than a hollywood film, so OF COURSE there will be more, movie for movie. Who really pays for porn anyway? There's so much you can get for free. For me to pay for it, it has to have some other value than just porn (like the parodies, which are actually pretty well made, and have comedic value also).

Porn is a huge problem.

Men who watch porn a lot lose the capacity to make fitting love to a woman. Often, they can't even get it up sufficiently to get the job done. If they can mange things that far, they are toooo slam, bam, thank-you mamm to make it a meaningful experience for the woman.

Also, there's beginning to be some evidence that porn does ugly things to the brain at a structural level.

It does point to a bigger problem though...the fact that today's youth has more of a VIRTUAL existence than an in person one. It seems they haven't learned the value of direct person to person communication in the world of texts, emails, and tweets.

ABSOLUTELY INDEED.

I recently saw how different this is firsthand. My wife and I inherited a ranch, and are moving out to the country. It's amazing how different it is, how people are friendlier, how people pull together, and just their overall approach to one another, vs. the city. I'm really glad we're making the move, and I've already seen the difference. (I'm even using maam and sir way more than usual, hehe...)

What region? I hope in the West somewhere.

Congrats. Sounds wonderful and none too soon. I hope you get the 6+ months of food and water socked in ASAP.

Yes, rural areas are better in a list of ways.

However, the globalist Federal seductions and perversions of the education system reach down even to rural areas.

Hopefully, there are good Sherrifs who will tell the feds where to stick their noses.

Thanks for your meaty contribution to the thread.

Like many college students at a time, I read some of Mr. Zimbardo's work.
I dunno, I had my doubts sometimes, and these projects came across as very guided.

Somehow, eventually the arguments ended with Zimbardo's ethnicity and race (Latino, Jewish and black), since he claimed that blacks and Hispanics were twice as heroic as whites:

In the study, both blacks and Hispanics were twice as likely as whites to have performed heroic deeds. Zimbardo says they want to do follow-up research on the reasons for the racial/ethnic differences, which he speculates could be attributed to "greater opportunities to respond" or "being discriminated against makes them have more compassion to others in need."

ozziesaffa.blogspot.com...

What?
Interesting how such studies always show the complete opposite of what we see.
Yeah, and then I thought he's just playing to an audience that's post-liberalization.
We'll see what race helps which in the next natural disaster.
Oh, but the poor can't help, because they applauded leaders like poor Gaddafi, Amin, Mugabe, Castro and a range of communist terrorists and juntas.
Such fans of human and gay rights (not).
Such humanitarianism ... those racist black dictators and their supporters obviously don't need whites.
The dictators will give their golden toilets to help their "fellow poor" of course.

Anyway, back to the topic of gender specifically.

Warren Farrel (author of The Myth of Male Power) has done outstanding work on masculinity studies, and how especially heterosexual working class men are exploited by the gender set-up, virtually from birth.
It seems that the female pretense of weakness is the strength of women, and the male pretense of strength is the weakness of men.
And so men were exploited and then blamed for it, as women benefited economically in a system of mutual exploitation.
Men fought wars that benefited both ruling class men and women (kings and queens), and then they were blamed for the horrors they endured.
In an era of active discrimination against my race and gender, where the daily racist slaughter of white farmers is hidden by the press, and men are portrayed as cold-hearted, HIV-bearing brutes, it is high time we questioned people like Zimbardo on gender propaganda, and heard people like Mr. Farrel.

reply to post by halfoldman



Did you watch the video?

How on earth do you consider Dr Phil Zimbardo

to be black?

reply to post by BO XIAN

Yes I did watch the video, and nowhere did I or anybody say he was black, but the article quotes him as being oppressed because he was black, Jewish, Italian and Puerto Rican, which became relevant when he conveniently found two of those backgrounds as more heroic than whites.
These are some of the right-wing responses to liberal academia, which sees it as biased against whites (and often as pro-Palestinian) and traditional gender roles.

Of course it is difficult to vouch for anything on the Internet, and I'm not sure how he identifies from his mixed background, and Wikipedia merely says he comes from Sicilian immigrant stock: en.wikipedia.org...

In the liberal knowledge industries gender and race are considered constructions, although in academia it can be more fashionable to highlight the minority aspects of one's ancestry instead of whiteness, which not only shows that visible race is only skin-deep, but also gives one clout as one of the "historically oppressed".

Of course Prof Zimbardo has every right to claim his ancestries, but it will cause resistance if it's framed in such a way that whites are made to feel as morally inferior, and uniquely responsible for historical exploitation and chauvinism.

reply to post by halfoldman



Interesting to a point.

I don't know what he was trying to articulate about ancestry.

He can be given to say things in thought-provoking ways for effect. Though I doubt he'd say something that he knew was untrue.

I think his points about men being . . . diminished as men . . . in his TED TALK are quite valid points as his statiscs make abundantly clear.

Beyond that, I may still not be following your points or line of reasoning remotely well.

reply to post by BO XIAN

Well, with the statistics he charges through in the clip he notes what Farrel and others have long noted about male conditioning and the notion of a "crisis in masculinity".

Homosocial work and relaxation environments for men are nothing new, and historically such socializing for men was deemed functional, and some cultures still consider gender segregation as traditionally desirable. So why is this suddenly problematic for males? Are the women integrating more, and who are the men they socializing with, if the men are so busy socializing at the local pub?
What culture is he talking about? In Muslim, Hindu and many African cultures mixing with unrelated women is frowned upon and considered a recipe for trouble.

He makes essentialist and deterministic comments on men's brains, when most feminists would regard such statements about women's brains as unacceptable.

Arguably "porn" for women is widely available, but because of its emotional content it is rarely recognized as "porn". So the Twilight series features gratuitous topless hunks for teenage girls, but vice-verse it would be labelled "porn". One sexy Hollywood "romance" for women can make billions, but that's OK.
So we don't see anything really being challenged about essentialist and deterministic theorizing on men.
Men are compared to women, rather than to previous generations of men, which creates the illusion of "a crisis" without taking into account the unique problems thrust on the current generation of men, including reverse discrimination.

At least in SA race and gender intersect, as women of all races are candidates for affirmative action and greater resources at universities, while white males face increasing exclusion.
Men are not a homogenous racial or class group, and even religious affiliation divides men in their responses to feminism, between the adaptable "new man", and gender segregated ministries that prompt men to assume older forms of gender power.
The crisis seems more on how men and their problems have been marginalized in liberal and conservative discourses.
Men are more likely to face violence from other men (despite the focus on male violence on women) so it is not surprising many withdraw socially.

Thus we get the notion that men are withdrawing because they cannot adapt to "equality" without looking at the reasons.
It's probably fair to say that previously men were privileged over women (mediated by class and race), and while the playing fields are made equal for women in Western society, men are expected to adapt to the role of the "new man", and to bear the old responsibilities without complaint.

The clip only gives us a snippet of the debate, so maybe some of these questions were raised elsewhere, but the feeling is that males are inherently deficient, and that's unfair.

The context is very unclear. Is Zimbardo blaming the male brain inherently for the problems experienced by men, or are men seen as the victims of exploitative capitalism?
If the latter is the case, then why not mention that men still overwhelmingly perform the most dangerous jobs, with great risks to their lives and health?
He could have made some really helpful statements on the problems and experiences of men.
In SA there's been a feminist discourse around prostitutes and their HIV risk around the mines, but there's little focus on the short life expectancy and bleak outlook of the men who work there (even without HIV, their jobs cause lung diseases and fatal accidents).
So Zimbardo mixes up men as a classless group when it suits him (he mentions gangs and fraternities in one breath of homosocial behavior), but his focus on Internet porn and college drop-outs does have a race and class implication, so it appears that he is once again implying his own prejudices. However, I may read this differently from SA than somebody from the US or Canada.

His books and lectures are more complicated, but I'd like to see his statistics and their methodologies.Do men just drop out to watch porn and join gangs? Why link such statistics? Maybe some must support a woman and kids, which is the still the social norm?
The communication problems of "young men" in regard to women's sexuality was already discussed by Farrel before the mass computer age, so that's not new.

As for male drop-outs for BA degrees - that's true by my experience, and it can become a very hostile environment for heterosexual men, particularly in some fields where radical feminism and queer studies proliferate. That statistic may not work for all degrees however. Anything to do with previous power, be it whites or males, can now be denigrated. If minority groups or women have lower statistics in educational success it is considered a tragedy to be remedied. If it's any other group it's their own laziness and lack of social skills, so they should shut their gobs and stop complaining. That's the notion I get, even if it may not be intended.

reply to post by halfoldman


It seems to me you missed Dr Zimbardo's points . . . mostly.

Perhaps you could review the paraphrased bits of transcription in the OP.

Let me take a bit of a different tack to summarize overmuch how I received what he was saying.

1. Gross amounts of very serious ATTACHMENT DISORDER have left particularly men very incapacitated when it comes to:

A) emotional intimacy--period--with women and men . . . one could say even with themselves.

B) communication skills necessary for an emotionally bonded relationship and for a meaningful mutually satisfying relationship with women--even with one woman.

C) a serious problem of isolation, loneliness, fostering pseudo relationships in pubs and gangs and getting a kind of brief dopamine fix substituting for emotional connectedness via porn.

2. Men have become kind of used, abused, barely tolerated worker drones at best. And dropout alcoholics etc. non-working drones at worst. There is little approved, applauded successful men except in sports and maybe the military or race cars and rodeos. Not exactly a mass market appeal except somewhat in sports. Yet a very small minority can make it there in the limited slots.

3. Men don't know how to talk, share meaningfully verbally with women.

4. Men don't know how to share their bodies meaningfully carefully, tenderly, slowly with women. Slam-bam-thank-you-mamm vending machine sexuality is not relationship but merely fancy masturbation--aloneness at the core, yet again--in what was supposed to be maximum intimacy.

5. Men are hurting, hurting alone; bewildered, helpless and often feeling hopeless and can't even successfully scream fruitfully.

Maybe that helps articulate it a bit better.

At least through my understanding and interpretations of what Dr Z was saying.

reply to post by BO XIAN

It's been a while since commenting on this thread, so I won't resume the arguments that concerned me at that point.

Viewing the clip again makes me think Zimbardo may be quite correct.
However, I cannot help but wonder to what golden age of masculinity Zimbardo is comparing all this?

The documentary Tough Guise for example shows that masculinity has long been presented as ruggedly independent and solitary, probably epitomized by John Wayne's characters and the Marlboro man.
Men's socialization into an inability to communicate and "cowboys don't cry" attitudes were masked with getting plastered for a very long time, and alcohol abuse is now seemingly more challenged than ever.
Are homosocial spaces like fraternities, sports or the military a recent development?
Heck, I recall the days when women weren't even allowed entry to many bars.

Men have always masturbated and had some kind of material for solitary eroticism, just it was once considered too shameful to mention (even the Victorians had porn).
Perhaps digital porn allows for a greater variety of images, but I doubt it has rewired the male brain.
Rather, it is an industry tailored to appeal to the male brain.
Prostitution, concubines and mistresses always existed (even in the Bible) since men sought out variety.
Perhaps one could also say that films with constant male topless characters like Twilight are nothing but eroticism for young women, although this is largely applauded or ignored.
What kind of stoic characters and unrealistic physiques do these films construct for males?

As for males dropping out of BA courses: in SA I wouldn't be surprised because it is said quite openly that males, but especially white males, have a very low chance of being employed as academics under affirmative action.
Why study something when you suddenly realize that it leads to zero prospects (unless the BA degree is just the required basis for another degree)?

The popular masculinity associated with sport has traditionally been designed to get men out of the bedroom, as Roger Horrocks writes in Male Myth and Icons: Masculinity in Popular Culture:

Athleticism was also seen as a sublimation of sexuality that kept white Englishmen 'pure' and away from women. Thus, part of Victorian middle-class masculinity is a fierce sexual repression, a constriction that drives him out to the public world, away from the pleasures of the bedroom.

(Horrocks 1995, p.150)

The arts were considered effeminate in popular Victorian masculinity.

This also led to a pervasive philistinism which still haunts English masculinity today: how much more manly it is to take part in the rigors of the muddy sports field than read poetry or philosophy.

(Horrocks 1995, p. 151.)

My concern is simply that a generation of young men are problematized and almost pathologized.
So I'm not sure when there was a comparative time when men spent hours romanticizing women in the bedroom, or all men could chatter with the opposite sex (and it remains questionable whether all women would validate such behavior).
Male spaces were once considered the moral and correct place to be to prevent pre-marital sex or adultery.
Even religion has massive men-only crusades (the mighty Men conferences in SA) which allow a similar reprieve to the pressures of heterosexuality as sport.
It's therefore a very mixed message that men should have rather spent more time learning how to communicate with women in general.

The tough guise of masculinity has been pushed for generations.
Perhaps wiling away the solitary hours with digital pursuits is a more recent development, but the social unease hidden behind a mask of independence is nothing new.
It is far more concerning when that mask turns to reactionary violence or chauvinism to hide its own vulnerability.

Anyway, the clip is very short, and I'm sure Zimbardo could contextualize more about what he means.
There has been a long-standing crisis in masculinity pushed by all kinds of political and commercial interests, and of course it should be discussed in the context and symptoms of every generation.
However, I just don't find anything mentioned by Zimbardo particularly unique to this generation of "guys", and one should also address the causes and not just the symptoms.

Here is the documentary mentioned above, which traces the construction of US masculinity from the 1950s: