The Angry Czeck

Men are getting stupider.

Willingly and unwillingly. By design and by happenstance. Male IQ’s are dropping as sales for cargo shorts and video games increase. We’re dumb and we’re proud. We bear the “Y” chromosome, yet we have no answers. Meanwhile more than half of today’s graduating college students are women.

“This isn’t recent,” said Andrea Cyterski-Acosta of admissions at University of Incarnate Word. “This trend has been like this for over a decade. I think that there’s been more focus on women in math and science dominated professions. There’s been more of awareness over the last several years and more opportunities for women. You can’t just say the women are just interested in nursing and teaching because that’s not true anymore.” ¹

While education is valued among women, retaining a deep measure of adolescence is prized by men. Of course, there is nothing new to the age-old tradition of “sowing your oats.” Young men are expected to bounce around Europe, record a number of sexual conquests, and riot after a hockey game. Part of growing up.

The problem is, we’re resisting the growing-up part.

When a professional football player texts dic-pics to hotties, it’s amusing and a little trite. But when congressmen do it, you begin to wonder who else is doing this. And why?

As a society, we’re slowly marginalizing men, and we’re gladly accepting it. Watch any network situation comedy. Dads are no longer a good example from which people can count on for wisdom. Instead, Dads are dimwitted buffoons with odd hobbies and neurotic habits played for laughs. Meanwhile, mothers and wives are the “voices of reason” who are always more clever than their male counterpart.

If you’re a parent, you might have noted a philosophical trend that has bubbled to the mainstream for a couple decades: Girl Power. We decided that women lacked the emotional tools and confidence to seize what belonged to them. As a result, we’ve made a great effort to inflate girls’ self-esteem by focusing on their skill-sets and strengths.

For example, classrooms have become cauldrons of bland community achievement. Everyone is a winner. There are no losers. Boys are motivated by competition. When someone else is winning, boys pick-up the pace. A boy who fails to win once is generally motivated to improve at the next chance. When everyone earns an “A” or an achievement medal (even when some participants are clearly better than others) boys lack the motivation to try. Why make an effort if no champ is crowned?

Of course, girls respond well to competition, too. (In fact, they respond so well, I wonder why we’ve stripped competition out of the classroom.) But girls seem more interested in seeing their friends excel than boys. Moreover, girls don’t need competition for motivation. Her job well-done is its own reward. A girl approaches a spelling test wanting to perform well. A boy, more likely, wonders what’s in it for him. This system of Unearned Universal Achievement hurts both boys and girls, but boys especially.  

In the last thirty years, men have watched their role in society diminish. Yes, technically, it’s still a man’s world. Of the Fortune 500 companies (2010), only 12 women are CEOs. (Of the Top 1000, the number is only 22.) That’s alarming and unfair, yes, but it may only be the symptom of a lingering, antiquated “boy’s club” mentality. Of management posts, 50.6% are held by women.² It’s only a matter of time before women begin seeing more top-floor offices.

This is no reason to begrudge women. Not at all. Women have earned her places on the battle fronts, the police stations and the boardrooms. We men have unfairly monopolized these positions for centuries. Man has for too long leveraged his superior upper-body strength to his unfair advantage. But as technology advances and attitudes evolve, our biceps and pectorals are becoming as useful as a dinosaur’s teeth in an Ice Age. Perhaps today’s sitcoms are more accurate than I think.

But I am alarmed for my sons.   

I worry that while teachers are trumpeting Girl Power, the importance of math and science will not be stressed to my two boys (where it is assumed that they’d rather play video games or wrestle). I worry that my sons’ will lose interest in academics when they find no reward in excelling in them. I worry that my sons will accept their gender’s growing role as clowns and manual laborers.

If I want this trend reversed, I should start with myself. When my sons want to wear pajamas to a restaurant, I tell them that their outward appearance represents us as a family. We wear shoes when we go outside. Pants, too. And yet, I wait a week between shaves. My shirt is currently untucked from my jeans. How am I representing my family? How am I representing men?

We chose to live like boys, because quite frankly responsibility can be a real buzz kill. But as a result, our place as men is fading. Women don’t see a cool guy wearing a t-shirt and drinking a Red Bull. They see a void behind a desk, and quite frankly, she’s better qualified to fill it. We can surrender that position, or we can give the girls a run for they’re money.

I’ll race you for it.

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