In contrast, APA is a professional organization of health care providers, writing guidelines for practicing therapists who deal with vulnerable men who come to them for help. The standards are quite different.
The content is quite different also.
Here is a list of things APA considers “harmful”, under the umbrella term of “traditional masculinity”:
Saying that the lists of items below are the most likely problem you are going to see in the subgroup of men who end up looking for therapy is not the same as saying that these traits are always harmful.
Similarly, citing a prominent figure that did well for himself while showing high doses of these traits is not good evidence that these traits will favour an average person.
The argument that these traits can either be vices or virtues is technically correct I guess, but what seem to happening is that men that are, let’s say, “traditionally educated” are often pressured into adopting these traits and keeping them on full time.
So these traits seem to be something society is consistently teaching wrong to a very large number of men, and they also seem to be a pattern on a wrong way to educate men into masculinity, which studies show to be tied to all kind of problems, especially because a large number of men are taught or pick up a dysfunctional way to express masculinity or trait.
So the goal, especially from those who document themselves on the studies about masculinity, is not to attack masculinity, just to teach people the broad points that a) It’s okay not to be masculine, if you don’t want to, and b) you can be masculine or male and still show traits that are usually classified by certain models of masculinity like feminine or weak, such as cooperation, kindness, etc… and c) you can be successful and do well for society using “feminine” traits and strategies too, and that this holds true even in environments that are usually seen as relying on “masculine” traits.
There certainly isn’t a war on competence in general. If you go check what the suggestions to face the problems “competitiveness” in the workplace creates, you’d usually find stuff that aim to reduce strategies that try to game the scoring system of competence assessment, like trying to talk over your competitor or to socially diminish him/her, or you’d find stuff that tries to help people notice that certain traits that have been socialised into women on average more than into men, like looking for compromises or avoiding conflicts, and to look for ways to even the field about them. I’ve never heard at all the suggestion that, in a workplace or in research or whatever, you should consider competence less, save when people opposed to these kind of attempts misreport their contents.
Similarly, there are some groups that are, I guess, just pissed off at men and try to attack masculinity in general, but these groups are a small minority, and likely don’t control APA. But, they are the groups someone attacking the above attempts at changing masculinity would quote the most, and try lump everyone in the same category.
Jordan Peterson, from the talks I heard him give, is absolutely guilty of this and does not seems to argue in these subjects with good faith.
Instead of dealing with hard questions, it’s easier to reuse the tricks that worked in the past like saying that any majority-male hierarchy is nefarious and privileged. The APA was quick to point out that 95% of Fortune 500 CEOs are men. So are 80% of Google engineers and 80% of top-grossing actors. Also 99% of HVAC mechanics, but only 2% of dental hygienists. Are those examples of privilege or of competence?
The answers to all of the above are “almost certainly both, it’s complicated”. But this answer doesn’t help you climb the hierarchy of progressive politics. To maintain that those are all examples of pure male privilege, one has to completely deny the role of competence. As people on the left compete to demonstrate their commitment to dismantling privilege, the entire concept of competence gets wholly ignored and the pursuit of it is seen as pathological. I think that this impulse is at the root of the “war on competence”.
People can’t just start to look exclusively for competence and ignore prejudice. The argument made is that women are not evaluated on competence fairly, because, unless a women is clearly superior to a man, she’ll often get evaluated as less competent.
Unless you haven a clear biological discriminant that says that males would dominate a field even if women are given equal chances to compete (like in, say, powerlifting), then any majority-male hierarchy is privileged because there is no fair reason for having a higher percentage of males higher in the hierarchy than the base rate of males in the field (which is a topic that’s has separated stuff into it).
Even if we assume that this discrimination is partly competence based: let’s say, entirely as an example, than the 70% of most competent individuals between google engineers are males, and that only 60% of google engineers are males, which would be the strongest possible case I can think for a genuine difference in competence getting existing alongside pure bias. Unless you have large evidence that men are just better engineers than women for biological reasons, then the difference in competence still has to be determined by some kind of privilege that is having men receive more formation and/or chances for improving their competence than women. As a possible example of it, I remember hearing that in STEM sciences a common thing that has been noticed is that males are a lot more likely to have been habituated to thinker with computers and programs and experiment when young, and that there is also evidence that men are socialised to react to their failures in “traditionally male fields” differently than women, who are more likely to receive a negative feedback in their competence for failing. So you have a real disparity in competence, which is being caused by privilege and unfair reasons.
That might be what you were referring to with “it’s complicated”, I don’t know.
But the point is that, if you still want to value competence over fairness, which for jobs that have large consequences, you still need to dismantle that privilege as aggressively as you can, because you are currently missing a lot of competence that could be developed in women and that would have more competent individuals.
Now, to be fair, I usually am pretty selective in the medias I consume, so I’m unlikely to stick around a media that consistently gets stuff I agree with wrong.
But still, I think there is a consistent attempt from a number of people in the conservative and reactionary crowd to frame the war on toxic masculinity as a war on masculinity/competence, and that this attempt has a lot more influence on communication than the subgroups of people on the “other side” who genuinely wants to attack masculinity or get these things wrong, and so that the post is kinda attacking an issue that’s not as relevant as much as it would seem. That is, referring to the issue of “war on competence”. Our society is not good at effectively teaching competence and how to improve, so attempts to overcome that are pretty relevant.
I do agree that “hierarchy climbing traits” can guide someone to improve, and do think sport can be a good way to learn the “climbing hierarchy traits” in a positive way, but I fear it depends heavily by who you are and where you are.
Soccer in Italy is… pretty much the opposite of what you describe, in my experience. The incentives to just rack a win are huge compared to other sports here, so you see all kind of foul plays and anti-sportiveness and stuff. Acrimony between teams is also pretty high, so people are quick to pounce on enemy cheating and to justify or forget their own team cheating.
You can, of course, still find beautiful examples of sportsmanship and players that are renowned for their correctness.
I suspect that sportsmanship and the types of positive competition you describe are more common when the monetary stakes are lower. Unfair competition won’t be penalised by fans if the rise of it is very slow, and when every team shows it the sport can still be hugely popular while penalising “fair” teams.
Saying that the lists of items below are the most likely problem you are going to see in the subgroup of men who end up looking for therapy is not the same as saying that these traits are always harmful.
Similarly, citing a prominent figure that did well for himself while showing high doses of these traits is not good evidence that these traits will favour an average person.
The argument that these traits can either be vices or virtues is technically correct I guess, but what seem to happening is that men that are, let’s say, “traditionally educated” are often pressured into adopting these traits and keeping them on full time.
So these traits seem to be something society is consistently teaching wrong to a very large number of men, and they also seem to be a pattern on a wrong way to educate men into masculinity, which studies show to be tied to all kind of problems, especially because a large number of men are taught or pick up a dysfunctional way to express masculinity or trait.
So the goal, especially from those who document themselves on the studies about masculinity, is not to attack masculinity, just to teach people the broad points that a) It’s okay not to be masculine, if you don’t want to, and b) you can be masculine or male and still show traits that are usually classified by certain models of masculinity like feminine or weak, such as cooperation, kindness, etc… and c) you can be successful and do well for society using “feminine” traits and strategies too, and that this holds true even in environments that are usually seen as relying on “masculine” traits.
There certainly isn’t a war on competence in general. If you go check what the suggestions to face the problems “competitiveness” in the workplace creates, you’d usually find stuff that aim to reduce strategies that try to game the scoring system of competence assessment, like trying to talk over your competitor or to socially diminish him/her, or you’d find stuff that tries to help people notice that certain traits that have been socialised into women on average more than into men, like looking for compromises or avoiding conflicts, and to look for ways to even the field about them. I’ve never heard at all the suggestion that, in a workplace or in research or whatever, you should consider competence less, save when people opposed to these kind of attempts misreport their contents.
Similarly, there are some groups that are, I guess, just pissed off at men and try to attack masculinity in general, but these groups are a small minority, and likely don’t control APA. But, they are the groups someone attacking the above attempts at changing masculinity would quote the most, and try lump everyone in the same category.
Jordan Peterson, from the talks I heard him give, is absolutely guilty of this and does not seems to argue in these subjects with good faith.
People can’t just start to look exclusively for competence and ignore prejudice. The argument made is that women are not evaluated on competence fairly, because, unless a women is clearly superior to a man, she’ll often get evaluated as less competent.
Unless you haven a clear biological discriminant that says that males would dominate a field even if women are given equal chances to compete (like in, say, powerlifting), then any majority-male hierarchy is privileged because there is no fair reason for having a higher percentage of males higher in the hierarchy than the base rate of males in the field (which is a topic that’s has separated stuff into it).
Even if we assume that this discrimination is partly competence based: let’s say, entirely as an example, than the 70% of most competent individuals between google engineers are males, and that only 60% of google engineers are males, which would be the strongest possible case I can think for a genuine difference in competence getting existing alongside pure bias. Unless you have large evidence that men are just better engineers than women for biological reasons, then the difference in competence still has to be determined by some kind of privilege that is having men receive more formation and/or chances for improving their competence than women. As a possible example of it, I remember hearing that in STEM sciences a common thing that has been noticed is that males are a lot more likely to have been habituated to thinker with computers and programs and experiment when young, and that there is also evidence that men are socialised to react to their failures in “traditionally male fields” differently than women, who are more likely to receive a negative feedback in their competence for failing. So you have a real disparity in competence, which is being caused by privilege and unfair reasons.
That might be what you were referring to with “it’s complicated”, I don’t know.
But the point is that, if you still want to value competence over fairness, which for jobs that have large consequences, you still need to dismantle that privilege as aggressively as you can, because you are currently missing a lot of competence that could be developed in women and that would have more competent individuals.
Now, to be fair, I usually am pretty selective in the medias I consume, so I’m unlikely to stick around a media that consistently gets stuff I agree with wrong.
But still, I think there is a consistent attempt from a number of people in the conservative and reactionary crowd to frame the war on toxic masculinity as a war on masculinity/competence, and that this attempt has a lot more influence on communication than the subgroups of people on the “other side” who genuinely wants to attack masculinity or get these things wrong, and so that the post is kinda attacking an issue that’s not as relevant as much as it would seem. That is, referring to the issue of “war on competence”. Our society is not good at effectively teaching competence and how to improve, so attempts to overcome that are pretty relevant.
I do agree that “hierarchy climbing traits” can guide someone to improve, and do think sport can be a good way to learn the “climbing hierarchy traits” in a positive way, but I fear it depends heavily by who you are and where you are.
Soccer in Italy is… pretty much the opposite of what you describe, in my experience. The incentives to just rack a win are huge compared to other sports here, so you see all kind of foul plays and anti-sportiveness and stuff. Acrimony between teams is also pretty high, so people are quick to pounce on enemy cheating and to justify or forget their own team cheating.
You can, of course, still find beautiful examples of sportsmanship and players that are renowned for their correctness.
I suspect that sportsmanship and the types of positive competition you describe are more common when the monetary stakes are lower. Unfair competition won’t be penalised by fans if the rise of it is very slow, and when every team shows it the sport can still be hugely popular while penalising “fair” teams.