I interviewed a Georgetown expert about the rise in women getting college degrees, outpacing young men, and he had an interesting point: For women to earn the same as men, they NEED a college degree. Basically, white men without a college degree can find jobs in construction or the trades (both of which are predominantly STILL male) and earn a middle-class salary.
Women without a college degree earn bupkis — they work in retail, restaurants, etc. He said for women to just get to the same earnings level as a man without a college degree, they need a college degree. In his view, this is what is fueling the majority enrollment of women in college today — that they understand, without a college degree, they are looking at a lifetime of low wages. Not so for men. Depressing.
This thesis extends to include Black, Hispanic, and Asian workers - and also helps explain why those graduates have significantly more debt than their white classmates. (And why for-profit colleges target students of color - they know the sell is more effective)
There is something about this conversation that is tickling the back of my brain with regard to nurses and healthcare. I am a nurse and a professor and there is an absolute reckoning going on in healthcare right now that I think is closely related to how little credit we give to care workers for the amount of planing that goes into all aspects of care, and how gendered it can be. Related, the non college careers mentioned here are largely gendered masculine while, as someone mentioned below, the non college careers that are gendered feminine are largely care and service oriented, compensated much more poorly, and less likely to be unionized. Lots of care labor was left out of labor laws entirely in the early 20th century. Lots of travel nurses I know of have left staff positions not only for the money (I mean the money is important obvs) but also because they were exhausted by being the defacto planners and care coordinators for the entire hospital system. Why not travel, get paid 2-4x as much, and not have to be a part of endless meetings about how you can be responsible for improving care while we give you fewer and fewer resources? We welcome men in nursing and their numbers have improved but they tend to advance into leadership and admin extremely quickly. Sorry this is not a well formed thesis. There is something here but I gotta let it marinate a bit.
Yes. “Glass escalator” has been found to advance cismen in traditionally ciswomen’s occupations (e.g., nursing, K-8 teaching, public librarianship). So these men get moved up and out of entry-level and tracked into management even when they don’t want to move up!
this is so true and i've seen it in action. upward mobility is expected of them, and thus they expect it of themselves. it's almost like the work itself is not enough (the care, the teaching) and in order to legitimize their presence in these care or service professions, there needs to be an element of administration or power. the same is not true for women, it seems, who are thought to be "fulfilled" by the work itself. i acknowledge that i am really generalizing here on gender lines.
They actually touch on the lack of men in care professions and early elementary education in the Ezra Klein interview, and make the case for the importance of having men in these professions both to encourage other men to join them, and to give young boys models that say "you can teach pre-K" or "you can be a nurse!" And there are valuable arguments made there, but neither of the men in the interview have the insider view you do on the automatic privilege assigned to those who do enter the field. That's what seems to be missing from the interview as a whole.
My house rep is a huge promotor of tech schools and basically thinks too many people are going to college. With so many career areas that tech schools focus on are historically and currently male-dominated, and I can absolutely see why young women would choose a four year college.
I always wonder about these proponents: What is your kid doing? Are you encouraging your kid to go into a trade, or are they headed to 4 years of undergrad and then law school? Cause if it's the latter, I can't hear what you're saying over what you're doing. My kids deserve the same opportunities as your kids.
This particular rep doesn't have kids, but he has a law degree so there's that.
Also what doesn't come up in conversation about the promotion of tech schools and their associated careers is that some of the jobs can really take a toll on your physical body in a way desk work likely never will.
I agree about the physical toll that some jobs take, but I think that’s something you can take stock of and make an informed decision about, you know? There are trade offs. Desk work is also not great for your health, and having no work life balance is terrible for your mental health. Some people like working with their bodies more. The bigger problem to me is if those same legislators who push the concept of trade school over college *also* support defunding healthcare, pensions and other social safety nets that make the physical trade offs that come with those types of jobs conscionable.
I think we all feel that way, but at the end of the day not everyone can be lawyers. I would LOVE for my kids to do trade school if it interested them AND if they were able to make a living wage, have controlled hours and work/life balance and supportive health and retirement benefits. Wouldn’t that life be preferable to an 80 hour knowledge work week with no balance and suffocating student debt? I think the trade school idea is great as long as the work it leads to is Union protected.
Oh absolutely. But I’m in a “right to work” state, and it seems to me like the promotion of trades is, for many, a way to get out of creating equitable opportunities for historically under-resourced communities. If we want trades to lead to middle class lives, we’ve got to put in place the workplace protections that make that possible- and no one is trying to do that (at least where I live).
I have also thought this for a long time. I told my kids (and anyone else who would listen) to get the schooling they NEED for the job they WANT.
I think people autopilot into graduate school when there are certificates, certifications, and job experience that could get them where they're going just as well.
People autopilot into college because they don't know what else to do, and our high schools (at least in everything other than the lowest economic neighborhoods) are all geared towards 4 year colleges. It used to be that you went to college because you wanted to be X, and X required a degree. Now a lot of kids are undecided until junior year or later. College is becoming part of this extended adolescence, and we see it in the sales pitch for the "college experience".
I got an undergraduate degree because it was expected and encouraged by all the adults around me. They encouraged it because more and more companies were requiring a degree - any degree, any subject - to even be considered for an entry-level position. When I graduated and went looking for that first "real" job, I was glad I'd taken their advice.
While I consider it to have been a valuable experience, the subjects I studied have no relationship at all to the work that I do. But the reality is that my current economic stability is a direct result of getting that degree so that I could get that first job which led to better jobs.
I'm not sure what the solution to this mess is, but companies requiring degrees for jobs that don't really need them are definitely part of the problem.
Absolutely. I'm old enough that I have seen companies cycle through several rounds of "You need a degree" and "You just need to prove that you can do the job".
Right now I can't tell if companies are crazy, stupid, or both. I saw an opening that required a degree, 7+ years of experience, and it was an internship. I was gobsmacked. And they aren't the only ones...
I am seeing people at my company at least get jobs that absolutely would have required a 4 year college degree 10 years ago. And a former company I've kept tabs on is no longer asking for a 4 year degree for some positions.
Looking back, I know that I was so gung-ho about going away to school because my helicopter parents had kept me from growing independence in high school. I was worried that if I continued to live at home that I would never be able to grow up.
For me, the "college experience" was less about being able to party and more about being able to make basic life choices on my own and to get away from anxious parents.
I think that's true for a lot of kids, I know it was a big thing for me. But when I went to school (back in the dark ages), The big selling point of college was that the degree gave you better pay and more opportunity. It was a good investment. By the time my kids went to college (elder millennials), The big selling point was the 4-year college experience. There was no more talk about college being a good investment, I think because they know that in a lot of cases it isn't anymore.
Oh yeah, the degree giving you better pay and more opportunity was still very much the big reason to go to college in 2005. My older brother, who is pretty introverted, didn't care about the 4 year college experience and commuted to a university close to home. I'm more extroverted and wanted the freedom to do things like go to Waffle House with my friends at 1 am without my parents freaking out. The college experience was a huge bonus selling point for me.
The gender stereotype threat research is also important to look at when understanding why women work harder to reach positions some men have handed to them. However, this research mostly explains why girls score higher in reading & writing, whereas boys score higher in math. There's also been research on how boys would receive teacher feedback that promoted a growth mindset, whereas girls received feedback that blamed their attributes. This seems contradictory to why women are now doing better at school, but in fact, it shows why women had to cultivate their own ambition, whereas men started to feel that success was their birthright.
All that being said, we need to understand that the research in this article is WEIRD (Weird, educated, industrialized, and democratic). In fact, it mostly just pertains to people from the USA. If you read about the atrocious slavery Ukrainians went through, Euromaidan in 2013, or turn on the news right now, are you really going to say those white men are more privileged than all the American women who got to "study abroad for at least a semester if not the full year?"
Either way, it shouldn't be a competition about who is more marginalized or less privileged. I'm not claiming to have the answers, but it seems the hegemonic classes use labels to divide and conquer. Whether it be wealthy racists hoping to marginalize and discriminate to uphold their power or the university elite hoping oppressors will check their privilege.
I don't know about the USA, but in Canada, those who study trades have a much higher chance of finding work than those who study arts at University (that also might explain why less boys go to university) –– I was one of the boys who studied arts at University. Why? My privilege allowed me to study something I was passionate about and travel abroad. And for the past ten years, I've been working random day jobs to make ends meet while putting 40+ hours a week into my writing career without an income to show for it. Does that mean I'm "unambitious?" I don't know. But apparently, it means I "work hard at sucking" because I haven't risen.
When I read quotes like "Men don't need ambition. They have the privilege. They rise unless they work hard at sucking" I feel the divisiveness and hatred in America. I'm a third-culture kid who doesn't belong to one country, so maybe I have no right to talk about American culture, but I've always considered myself a feminist, and quotes like these make me feel like I'm nothing, a failure. Do I deserve to feel that way as a white man? Will that empower women? I don't know.
I think there’s also a component of how things like ADHD and ADD are diagnosed differently depending on the person’s sex - highly organized and overachieving girls are seen as being good students, not as people overcorrecting for struggles just to meet expectations. I also suspect that’s a component of the late 30s-40s burnout women are experiencing. We’ve been overcompensating for so long just to maintain expectations instead of getting the help we need.
Yes! This! I was highly ambitious when I was younger, and highly organized. Nobody EVER suggested neurodivergence, ever saw me as anything but bright and driven. I didn't realize it at the time, but it involved huge amounts of compensating for ADHD that didn't get diagnosed until I well into adulthood. As I got older, and my life got increasingly complicated and stressful, managing full-time work and children, covering for it got harder and harder, and I got more and more exhausted. With the diagnosis, I realize that it's not actually my fault that I've had to work so hard to stay afloat for so long, but now I need to figure out what to do with that information and how to proceed.
The irony (maybe? or just... soul-crushingness?) of how effing hard it is to get diagnosed with a thing that will tell you that there's a reason that getting a diagnosis is so hard... well, whatever it is, I'm stuck in it. I want a blanket diagnosis or a streamlined process for girls who were designated as "gifted" in the mid-90s. Like, we will just assume that you have a thing and you can go directly to a psychologist for your rapid diagnosis.
Yes! Thank you for this! girls who were “gifted” in the mid-90s lol. I was one of these girls and being labeled “gifted” was horrible. Suddenly there was a standard everyone expected me to live up to but I was a mess just like everyone else. Then when I didn’t “succeed” at something I felt stupid and like a failure. Finally in college I opted out, at least publicly. I was invited to join the honors program after my freshman year and even though it would have meant a free trip to Vietnam, a country I desperately wanted to visit and still do, the application went into the trash and I took up binge drinking instead. I was already exhausted and couldn’t bring myself to try for one more fucking day. Fast forward to 20 years later and I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 40. All of a sudden everything made sense but I’m still reckoning with the grief of knowing that I did not have to struggle for decades. My high school biology teacher told me that I was “incapable of thinking logically”. And I went to a private all girls school where girls were supposed to be empowered lol 👎🏻). Even now there are dirty dishes piled up in my sink for so many valid stress-related reasons and all I can think is “why can’t you just get your shit together and do the dishes then work for 12 hours a day in a low-paying, high-stress job where women bear the brunt of the workload and also the responsibility when something goes wrong because it’s our job to QC the men’s work too because they won’t do it, without complaining??”
YES. Have seen two psychologists who immediately brushed away the possibility of ADD because I had done well in school. Even when I explained to them that I had done so by white knuckling my way through all-nighters to write the papers whose deadlines I forgot because if it's not basically tattooed on my body and written on 700 post-its strategically placed around my home, I will always forget the deadline.
I was being a flip - the question was, why can't we just get a quick diagnosis. With telemedicine, you usually can. But it helped me get where I need to be for right now. I'd argue tiktok isn't either but it helps a lot of people get to their next step as well. Many paths, many situations.
I hear this idea from a lot of people with ADHD-- the relief of "it's not my fault I had to work so hard."
As someone with executive function issues not caused by ADHD, I can understand why that would be a relief, but I wish we could move away from the idea that "fault" is a factor or that the level of achievement needed to maintain an adult life is working for anyone.
Yes I hear you. Zooming one level out is sometimes what we all need to do to reframe all of these ideas about ambition and achievement and whose fault is it anyways
THIS! I was always ambitious and overachieving until my late 30s, at which point I just got exhausted. This is also when I got diagnosed with ADHD, and realized that I'd spent so much energy and effort overcompensating for my lack of executive functioning and I was tired of the rat race. I have a great career, and I still have ambition, but struggle with both feeling like I'm someone who squandered my potential, and with the desire to still achieve, just in a less frantic way. Like, I want to maybe be General Counsel one day, but... how? I literally have no idea how to do it and what particular overcompensation I need to be channeling in order to get there.
Mar 29, 2023·edited Mar 29, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
Thank you so much for this. Ive been listening to Reeves with a healthy dose of skepticism. I also want to add that girls are raised to be more conscientious and to have a desire to be "good", and are thus more likely to listen to the teacher and go the extra mile at work. "Boys will be boys" mentality cuts boys a lot of slack. Reeves doesn't talk about how children are parented, which is obviously a huge factor. A glaring omission.
Yes, wasn't there that study of kids' chores that found boys do much fewer and are much more likely to be paid for them? Dishwashing free, lawn mowing paid, for example, and guess who gets which tasks.
Yes! I would love to see a study of family expectations for kids of different genders. Expectations around washing, dressing, doing homework, cleaning up after yourself - these high or low expectations shape kids deeply and early.
I’m a feminist masculinity researcher-great idea for a study! Would be curious also to ask parents/caregivers what they PERCEIVE vs what actually happens (ie if we did observations over time). I can imagine a lot of feminist-minded folx, with all good intentions unknowingly reinforcing inequities. (Sidenote: also my joke/great idea to hire/ train “work-people” (plumbers, folx fixing your drywall, contractors, etc) in observational methods. Folx are real as hell around the person redoing their guest bedroom (they often are true flies on walls) in ways they’d never be with an “official researcher.” Circling back, this book was written a few yrs ago re: roots of gender pay gap in early life: “The Cost of Being a Girl”, Yasemin Besen-Cassino.
Oh my gosh this is like the DREAM reply! Exciting stuff. I also love the idea of training & hiring laborers to do observational studies, some of the keenest observers I know work in the trades!
Mar 29, 2023·edited Mar 29, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
My younger brother will turn 30 this year. He took what I refer to as "the scenic route" to his bachelor's degree. He dropped out of a prestigious graduate program last year and moved home for the fourth time (I think? I've lost count). He recently got a service industry job and is now working full-time for the first time in his life. Without a trace of irony, he told me he can save a lot because his expenses are so low.
This all feels very related to an article I read (title based on a tweet): ARE YOU OKAY OR ARE YOU AN ELDEST DAUGHTER? I'm a classic Type A, people pleaser, control freak, teacher's pet, enneagram 1, whatever you want to call it. I started working at 15 and have been unemployed for a grand total of 3 months since. I've been supporting myself since I was 22. I guess I didn't know there was another option.
I really resonate with this comment and with the article that you linked. I took the so-called more ambitious path in comparison to my siblings, mostly because I had to. As the oldest daughter, it was my job to be responsible and successful and so on.
Here’s my personal perspective that might explain some part of this trend, because that’s all I know: My white boomer dad was rewarded heavily for his ambitions, so he became more ambitious. My three brothers, however, were raised for a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Trained for jobs that no longer provide financial stability. I was the only girl in my family and the only one that went to college. I think overall, things were easier for me because I was less boxed-in by gender than they were. So it was easier for me to adapt to the changing world in the 90s when we all became adults. What’s more, during childhood I learned skills that helped me adapt too. I learned language for feelings. I was taught it was okay to ask for help. That failure was okay.
Whenever I see anyone who might seem “unambitious,” I always wonder what mental health challenge is causing it — because I’ve found that's usually the case. And I think about this a lot because my oldest brother died last fall at 52. Natural causes, including despair. He’d never hurt anyone. Never thought he was better than anyone. But he felt lost and lonely. And there are so many people like that.
Mar 29, 2023·edited Mar 29, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
"My three brothers, however, were raised for a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Trained for jobs that no longer provide financial stability."
This is a very big topic of focus in Reeves's book (which, full disclosure, I found eye-opening and enlightening, speaking as an elder millennial dad of 4-year-old and 1-year old boys). His main thesis, IMHO, is that the world—especially the labor market—has changed so drastically in the past few decades that a huge cohort of men and boys have been left bewildered and adrift. He fully acknowledges the advantages that many have by default (as articulated in this piece). But be that as it may, there is a major problem brewing (as also articulated in this piece: historically low academic and professional achievement, deaths of despair, social alienation, antisocial behavior, etc.)—one that's not going to go away or end well if left unaddressed.
Yes I should've been more clear in the piece that there's a whole lot more to both the episode and to Reeves' overall argument — and that I, too, am convinced by! I think the tough part — and Garrett Buck's comment in this thread tries to get at this — is that you can have compassion for people who're suffering under the system while also demanding accountability, and that second part is what's often left out of these conversations.
I agree we need to demand more accountability and we always need more compassion for people suffering. But while we bring more accountability, I feel like it’s important to avoid the blame culture that dominated life in the past. I think with any discussion about people, it’s good to remember the vast differences in individual circumstances. Life is unfair in structural ways. But life itself can be so unfair. Personally, I feel like I need to bear more accountability than someone like my brother who had literally nothing. I do agree with you — balancing compassion with accountability is the “tough part.”
This feels like such a classic case of patriarchy hurts everybody - including men. I recently read a piece about AndrEWWW T@t* in NYMag and why he appeals to so many boys today. And I honestly walked away even more convinced that a lot of the solution is to socialize boys to be caregivers. I think we really are observing that men don't have the tools to succeed & the solution is to emphasize caregiving, organization, consequences, and empathy. We can't treat it with himpathy, and say "poor boys have it so hard now..." But we also can't dismiss their floundering, either.
I looked up the person you referenced in the NYMag article — beyond-words sickening is all I can say. Even on a more subtle level, I agree the culture shouldn't dismiss males who are floundering and be like: Oh well, boys will be boys, it's not their fault. I'm so not on board with that.
I probably shouldn't have even shared my thoughts here because this topic feels very personal to me after losing my brother. But I did, because I know there are a lot of people, including men, really struggling now, but feeling alone and like it's their fault. My brother was floundering for many reasons, including being sexually abused as a child and having dyslexia. No one could look at him and know that. Everyone has something going on that you can't see. So it's always better to not assume things. That was really my only point.
And I totally agree that we need to change how boys are socialized. I'm a parent to three of them, ages 7-17, and I'm doing my best to raise them to be caring, sensitive, and mindful of the consequences of their behaviors and actions.
At risk of sounding like a broken record, Reeves talks a lot about this too in Of Boys and Men. One of his chapter titles is "Men Can HEAL" (a reference to so-called Health, Education, Administration, and Literacy jobs). That's another one of his prescriptions: creating the conditions for many more men to be elementary school and early education teachers, health care workers (not just doctors), psychologists, occupational therapists, etc. Looks like he excerpted that chapter, or parts of it, on his Substack: https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/men-can-heal.
I haven’t read Reeves’ book, but I’ve heard him interviewed on a number of outlets. There were a lot of men displaced from high paying “blue-collar” jobs in the 90s. But bigger than the income loss, people who worked with their hands started being looked down upon, as if they weren't as “smart.” This shaped a generation, and maybe even the next. But who really knows about the future. AI might replace more knowledge worker jobs (like mine as a pharmacist) than jobs in the trades so we might see a rebalancing of income — and respect.
Declining physical and mental health is a really big concern. Loneliness is a huge contributing factor that's not easy to fix. And we’re seeing declining generational health too. It might be worse for men because they’re less likely to go to the doctor. I think people then get stuck feeling badly about themselves. Taking less care of their health. And then isolating from other people. It’s a vicious cycle that can affect any one of us. But if you were socialized as a male, you might have fewer skills that would help break the cycle.
I’m a mom of 3 boys (ages 7-17). Hopefully, we can help prevent that from happening to their generation by teaching them that it’s okay to show vulnerability and ask for help.
I really appreciate your comment about gender boxing people in. I see a lot of men in my life who are restricted by masculine gender roles even while they might also benefit from them. I think being gay has allowed me to sidestep some of those norms/restrictions, but I see it around me a lot—men eating alone in their cars in parking lots.
Regarding attitudes towards labour work: I read Eyal Press's Dirty Work last year (or the year before) and found it to be a really remarkable read. He interviewed people who worked in jobs that society tends to ignore in order to look at the toll it takes on them. One of the jobs he looks at are the people who work on "kill floors" in slaughterhouses. Press notes that traditionally these jobs were held by white, rural Americans. Over time, though, they came to be more commonly occupied by undocumented immigrants, because companies didn't have to pay them a minimum or living (not saying those are the same) wage. This, in turn, drove down wages for those kinds of jobs and reduced the bargaining power of labour unions. At one point, Press interviewed a white, American woman who still worked at the plant and said that her job was now seen as "immigrant work" and was no longer a job many of her friends or neighbours wanted or would take. Reading your words reminded me of Press's book—about the role of corporate power in all this and about how attitudes of contempt or disrespect might develop and spread. Feeling useless or purposeless is one of the worst feelings in the world, I think.
I agree—it will be interesting to see what happens as A.I improves and threatens different streams of work.
And I appreciate your comment Zachary! I’m so glad you've been able to simply be yourself without worry or pressure.
You’re right to bring up the labor changes. Eyal Press’s book sounds like something to check out. Jobs that require manual labor have always been hard. And risky too — lots of chemical exposures and stress on the body. So it’s really hard doing that work with an older body. When jobs were unionized, it was easier to keep a job through middle-age and then retire relatively young (like 60) with a pension, including health benefits. If you were an older worker then, you might do less of the heavy lifting so you could stay on the job until you retired. Now, if you can’t keep up, you get let go and have nothing to fall back on.
Retraining sounds good but it’s not always easy or accessible. My brother struggled with dyslexia so any classes that involved reading were a challenge.
I completely agree re labour work. My partner is a massage therapist and we often talk about what it would be like if people who worked in labour-intensive jobs had better access to body work and the kind of physical care that allows people to try and maintain their bodies. I read somewhere that the current fight over retirement age in France has started some conversations around different retirement ages for different work (labour workers retiring at a younger age). And you're totally right: retraining is great but we definitely romanticize it. We also, I think, ignore the message that a society sends when it tells a generation of workers that they are no longer needed. I remember listening to a(nother) Ezra Klein episode with Saul Griffiths about climate change. At one point Griffiths says that part of the path toward de-carbonization is to basically thank everyone who has worked in oil and gas for their work, tell them how important they have been to the world we've built, and then invite them to help on the next leg of the journey. It was so counter to what I hear a lot: demonizing the people who work in oil and gas. But what he said seemed to make sense to me, and it made me wonder about how often we miss the opportunity to respectfully end one era and then invite everyone into a new one.
Thanks for the endorsement Adam, I’ll probably pick this up. I’d love to hear, if you don’t mind sharing, what you’re doing to better equip your boys for their future?
Ooof! Still trying to figure that out ;). I want to say I'm trying to set an example as a dad, man, and person, but that's a pretty lazy answer. They're obviously very young now, but I'm trying to impart an emphasis on finding meaning and value through friendship, family, integrity, and service to others, not exclusively, or even predominately, in work (which is obviously complicated given that I really love my job and derive a lot of satisfaction from it). I also like Reeves's idea of holding up fatherhood as a new, more defined, and positive identity. This isn't in a reactionary way at all. He's saying, I think, taking pride in the role of being a father—not a "breadwinner," but engaged parent—could help fill the void of meaning that dislocation has wrought. Whatever way the world turns, and even in the face of challenging circumstances, this is a stable, productive identity that can be cultivated and meaning made from.
A recent piece in the Times, "Fathers Gained Family Time in the Pandemic. Many Don’t Want to Give It Back" hints at this shift in identify. At the beginning of the pandemic, lots of dads were forced to spend more time with their kids . . . and a lot of them, even those who left work grudgingly, found the experience invaluable, so much that they've decided being able to spend more time with their kids is worth making professional sacrifices for: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/upshot/fathers-pandemic-remote-work.html.
Of course, this is something that mothers have been doing forever! So I completely get the automatic instinct to eye-roll. But if we can get past that, I don't think it's a bad thing for society if many fathers are re-imagining their roles as someone who's involved with their kids and, by extension, takes a larger part in running their household.
Mar 29, 2023·edited Mar 29, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
This is me. I know this is the wrong message to take away, but reading this whole conversation makes me feel like the world would be better without me in it. (Yes I’m depressed, diagnosed, and in treatment, but it’s not working)
David, I am so sorry that you took that message away from the piece — truly, I don't want any person to not be here, I want the systems to change so there's less suffering and domination and pain (and that includes yours, absolutely). I'm grateful you're here in the comments, I'm grateful you're here in the world, and I hope you can hear what I and others are saying here: you matter.
Please don't take that message away. Two things can be true at once: the world was/is set up for certain people to thrive in. But everyone, no matter their circumstances, has innate value and is entitled to respect. The world is definitely better with you in it.
David this breaks my heart, but you’re brave just getting it out of you and sharing it. I’m sending you a virtual hug and want you to know that things can get better. It's really good that you’re trying to get help. But be persistent; if something’s not helping, let them know so they adjust your treatment. I'd take a break from social media if it’s making you feel like crap. And everyone should know that help is available at 988lifeline.org. We all need help sometimes. I like to say: needing help is normal.
My brother told me he felt like he didn’t matter. “Who really cares about an unmarried, middle-aged, fat white guy with no money and no kids?” On the one hand, I told him how much he mattered to the people who love him. But at the same time, I totally understood what he meant, because it’s true that we don’t value everyone the same in our culture. I think it's worse when we pretend we do. And I think if you’re a guy, it’s often harder to form close connections. People might think you’re threatening or creepy just by interacting the same way I would when I meet people. So I’ve been trying to find people who might feel like that, and start a conversation with them. We’re all just people, and no one deserves to feel excluded. I feel like the younger generation understands this better than the older ones.
As a woman, I find the tone of this entire article revulsive and embarrassing. I am sorry you read it and hope you don't take the nonsense to heart (Btw, I didn't study abroad during college - I couldn't afford it)
Points in this article did ring true for me, but I too didn’t really love how much emphasis was put on traveling abroad in college as a woman... I now am transgender, but I could barely afford to go to college in general, let alone do anything extra other than work. Just too expensive.
Your brother sounds so much like my late uncle. He was of the boomer generation, and never really fit in anywhere like he was 'supposed' to. He died almost 30 years ago, at age 40 of, as you say, natural causes, including despair. It's been so long, and in so many ways as these conversations become more common, it's like his death is more present than ever. My condolences on the loss of your brother, I hope you're able to find some comfort and peace in the coming seasons.
Thank you Elisa for your kind words. I’m sorry about your uncle. There are so many bad things that happen in the world that can't be prevented. People being treated badly just because of who they are is the saddest.
I am so sorry for your loss. I relate to your story, though it was my male cousins, not my brother. I wanted to get at this with a comment I made elsewhere in the thread, but you made the point so much more clearly and eloquently. Thank you for sharing.
I also think some of this is men have never been expected to be of service to others in the way women have. The PeaceCorps and other high intensity volunteering type efforts focus so highly on the moral imperative to serve others, especially if you have privilege, but that seems to fall flat when it comes to the most privileged group of white men.
And I wonder if part of the study abroad issue is that study abroad is generally considered a "safe" way to travel, and so women (or women's parents) are only comfortable with their daughter traveling in a larger structured group, whereas men can more easily take off and travel at will and people will not bat an eye.
I totally agree re: service (see also why non-profits are dominated by women) but I do think ideas around women traveling have changed - also I travelled alone while studying abroad constantly!
I feel like travelling *while* studying abroad is very different from just ‘going travelling’ though? At least in parents’ minds? Like how, if I’m staying with my parents, and I’m not back when I’ve said I’ll be, they will worry, but when I’m living my own life, they have no idea what time I should be getting home or if I’ve stayed out all night.
This is so relatable. I studied abroad and did two different summer programs that had a 2-week gap in between. I wanted to stay in Europe and travel around, and my mom made me fly back to the US because she was too worried about me being "alone" for any period of time that wasn't university-sponsored
This! Plus, studying abroad has a layer of administration involved with the university, so if something bad were to happen, then the university would be in contact with the parents.
I agree about the safety aspect of studying abroad! It also got me thinking about the relatively constrained nature of study abroad vs. solo traveling on its own, and how that might make it more appealing to women and their parents. Like, study abroad programs have a defined end date, some are fairly structured by directors or host schools, and for many students it is a “one and done” kind of experience for cost or school reasons. Then students come back to school and work commitments and family responsibilities, and I think women are socialized to feel a need to care about that stuff more than men, as other folks have been discussing here.
I’m thinking that interacts with the gender issue because of some really broad generalizations I can make about what college-educated women tend to do after college here, so with that caveat: a lot of women in my area get married and maybe even buy a house with their partner right out of college, and it’s still very common for women to have kids in their twenties, so within 3-5 years of graduation. I’m wondering if some of that inclination toward studying abroad during college is about having a chance to travel before it gets in the way of women’s expected obligations as wives, mothers, and household managers, not to mention people with careers or professional ambitions. I think it’s also more expected here for men to have the kinds of jobs that require a lot of traveling than it is for women, so another angle on which study abroad might feel like a unique chance for women to travel. Men might not feel that pressure because the option to travel is more available to them after college as well.
Yes! This mentality also matches my experience with my white male friend group, which I talk about in my main comment. When my close friend (who never studied abroad) had a six week gap in job projects, he saw it as a unique opportunity but not necessarily a once-in-a-lifetime one, if that makes sense, and he chose to solo travel domestically for two trips (each 2-2.5 weeks long). Whereas for me, I saw my study abroad trips as once-in-a-lifetime chances to travel internationally, and if I had a six week work gap and the finances to do it, I would choose one large international trip to visit friends abroad. I think it's worth noting that I work for a local government, so maybe I get a chance annually to travel across my small state, but that's it.
I know not all women feel this way, but I also don't want to travel to new locations without my family. It's not a safety thing - I want to share those experiences with my husband and daughter (my two favorite people in the world). My male friends cannot relate to this at all, and see family vacations as more of a compromise situation. Even my husband would admit to this if pushed hard enough - he wants to do what he wants on his own agenda without others getting in the way. Whereas for me, sure, maybe I'd get to go to more museums without my kid, but I'd rather spend that time with her than inanimate objects.
Oh I'm sure that studying abroad being the safe option for women has a lot to do with it! I know that I would have been too afraid to travel alone - and my parents would have freaked out, anyway, if I had tried in my late teens early twenties.
Interestingly, I did two study abroads - a J-term and summer-term, and the almost universal attitude among the men was much more about going to drink and party. The only men in the 2 groups who didn't go out partying every night were neurodivergent, whereas there was a larger percentage of all minds of women who stayed in most nights.
Ooh I like your last point. My younger brother spent a few months volunteering in South America when he was 18 and there is no way I would have been able to do that (based on my parents’ attitudes to me doing other things at that age!)
As a non-American, I always find it fascinating when the topic of travelling abroad and safety comes up.. Hands down I feel the most unsafe, nervous and on guard when travelling in the US. That is true if I am alone or with my family or friends.
I’m glad to be reminded that this community of commenters is not US-only or even North-American-only (though your comment doesn’t mean you’re not Canadian :)). There are conclusions we can come to, inferences we can draw—but then we should remember to ask ourselves all the questions about our demographics and how they influence our thoughts. That said, it *feels* surprising that you said this and yet it’s not at *all* surprising you feel unsafe in the US. I can come up with so many reasons/possibilities just thinking for half a minute. And I think it’s true that a lot of these (some of these are statistics; others are cultural) really don’t exist in many other countries (and not just central and western Europe, definitely). I wish I had been engaging with this thread at the time it occurred and seen this. I would like to hear more about this (were you comfortable to share).
The end of this essay reminds me of the Toni Morrison quote that goes, “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.” I think this also applies to sexism, ableism, etc.
Just think about how much time and energy women, particularly BIPOC women, would get back if we did not have to spend our entire lives doing the mental labor of ambition and society’s infrastructure.
YES! To this Toni Morrison quote. And this isn’t a bug of these oppressive systems. The exhaustion, second-guessing, and divisions (eg infighting for scraps amongst folx marginalized by these very systems) is a vital feature! If we can’t rest, organize, strategize, and effectively care for one another, how will we revolutionize?!!! One of the oldest tricks in the patriarchal book! (Relatedly, while we are talking gender/ways these systems use our time, I bet you can guess what THE BEST WAY to keep women/femme folx/folx with uterus’ from building solidarity and toppling power! Yep-forced birth! Myriad research suggests that this is the most effective way to keep women and children in poverty and also biggest predictors of those same people experiencing violence). Never under estimate the perniciousness and ubiquity of settler colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy.
I was abut 10 years out of college when I said to someone how it felt like I was watching men and women have totally different career outcomes. Regardless of their degree, regardless of their initial career moves, it was like good jobs were just...waiting for them. Whenever they were ready.
I worked five years at a company where I watched my male peers rack up promotions in a way I saw exactly one woman at the company do. I've seen similar things at other companies where men get farther, faster even if it's not as explicit as that first place. And I don't think it's because men want it more. Because I wanted more, and it took years to get there.
What’s even worse about this (basic observable fact) is that in many executive circles “career velocity” is seen as a marker of potential fit for executive roles. My head exploded when I first heard that, and there was zero willingness of the person who stated this to accept that for women, that might be an unfair metric.
It also doesn't take into account how easy it is to slur a woman and derail her career trajectory completely. I don't think I have ever had a job where I wasn't accused of sleeping with someone for a promotion, or someone wasn't bragging about how they'd f***ed me. None of it was true. But it guaranteed that I wasn't going to get promoted.
That or, the middle aged version, which is some perceived lack of “presence” or “fit” or (my favorite!) “too hands on” which basically boils down to not being a dude and doing work because it needs to be done. (I work in tech so maybe it’s better elsewhere?)
I work in tech too (in case my name didn't make that obvious) and I finally made it to an executive role at my last company (growth stage startup) after 15 years across multiple GTM functions in progressively senior roles. I thought, I finally fucking made it. And there were a few other women on the executive team as well, so I wasn't even alone! Yet every single woman executive was more experienced (in most cases significantly so) than every male executive. And guess who was pushed aside, who was told that their perspective wasn't the right one, who was left out of the actual decision making? We were. We were told the sky was red when we could see with our eyes the sky was blue. We would back each other up, we would bring data and feedback and all manner of things to "prove" we were correct when all one of these tech bro fuck bois had to do was state an uninformed opinion and that's what the CEO decided was the right one. We did all the things we're told we're supposed to do, and we were still at the kids' table. And, as time would tell, we were almost always right in the end. But those things were just memory-holed and these dudes just kept. failing. up. Even by their own metrics, they were failing but would keep getting promotions, keep getting budget. The amount of gaslighting I experienced was unreal. I was less confident after this role than I was before I took it even though I managed a huge team and achieved excellent results. I knew sexism still existed in the workplace and definitely experienced it throughout my career. But I did not expect this shit to get worse as I acquired more seniority and power in an organization. And now I'm one of those women (I'm 40) who is taking a career break because the thought of being in a situation like that again fills me with dread 🙃
I am so so sorry you had this experience. The gaslighting!! For more mind-exploding validation, some research suggests that women in positions of greater power experience more sexual harassment. It’s possibly explained by “gender role threat” a theory that suggests that folx are punished for not adhering to specific gender roles (“you’re not acting like a woman when you sign off on my paychecks and have actual power over me.”) It’s…ya. Devastating.
I’m just circling back and seeing this now, and I am so sorry. And also: not at all surprised. I’m so tired by all the bullshit. How stupid and wasteful it is, and how hypocritical when that experience is paired with the “you’d be more successful if you were more optimistic” and “we value building a positive and inclusive work environment for everyone!!!” And yet I am reluctant to bail on an industry that has made my family more financially secure, and that needs voices saying these things if it is ever going to change. Grrrrrr!
“we value building a positive and inclusive work environment for everyone.” Yes, this phrase has gotten very hard to hear without feeling myself grimace.
Sending you hearts because, while not someone who’s been at an exec level (yet? Doubt it), I know “the thought of being in that situation again [in the workplace] fills me with dread.”
I hear this. I know so many women (myself included) who took admin assistant jobs after finishing their bachelors degrees. While male college graduates somehow got entry level professional jobs. I didn’t get my first professional job until after I finished my masters degree!
Thanks for sharing. It's infuriating how wide spread this is. I can't imagine what my finances not to mention my life would look like if I'd not spent 10+ years at what were basically admin roles.
This is me right here! I even finished my master's and struggled to find anything. Saw male college friends just continue to land "good" jobs that allowed them upward trajectory.
Almost 8 years out of college and I started in marketing admin, did that for a long time. I switched careers to a production role in the arts because it was killing me, though, and am making less now (and have more work to do!) than when I was in admin. Crazy
Mar 29, 2023·edited Mar 29, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
The study abroad thing was amusing to me because I (an ambitious female identified person) didn't study abroad...because I served in the leadership of my class in my junior year of college. But that "if you want to have X you have to start Y SO MUCH EARLIER THAN YOU THINK" is also trickling down into some of the ways that elder millennials parent and it does a number on you.
Sports is one thing (see kids on my kid's soccer team--8/9 year old boys--doing specialized training in the off season at the behest of their parents because if they DON'T they might not get into the good club team and so on and so on...) but it also shows up in places like math curricula. Turns out that if you want to take AP Calculus in high school, which is a) HIGHLY correlated with success in STEM majors, particularly with traditionally marginalized groups and b) close to a prerequisite for admission to many schools, you pretty much have to take algebra in 8th grade, which means you (often) need to be hitting certain benchmarks in math in 6th-7th grade, which means you need really strong arithmetic skills in 3rd-5th grade. It's not unreasonable to think that a decent amount of one's capacity/opportunity to pursue a complicated technical field is laid out as early as the age of 10.
So it's a system that rewards that kind of forward thinking--there are places/programs that can help kids catch up or get ahead, but it's not necessarily talked about, especially if you're in a place where there aren't sufficient academic counseling resources at a school. My thoughts on this aren't super-duper fully formed yet but it definitely fits into the puzzle of "must be organized and competent at all times not just for me but for those around me" along with opportunity hoarding, systems of access, hidden curriculum...
Kids self-perception of themselves as “good” or “bad” at math starts even earlier, by 1st or 2nd grade (I’ve heard earlier, but that’s the most robust research I’ve seen), and so much of it is how math is taught and what kinds of skills are rewarded. Our district relies heavily on online learning programs, which reward speed. So kids who are fast at computation are taught to see themselves as good at math. Kids who aren’t fast, and who might be great at math but want to understand concepts more deeply and need the time to do so are taught that they’re not “math people.”
So if you want to be in algebra in 8th grade, you’re also helped or hindered by the ways math is taught. Only, kids don’t know that and it’s hard as heck to help them understand they can be good at math even if the online program keeps telling them they’re not.
Yes, and on the math stuff and white guys doing poorly now…I’m a gender researcher and just finished Reeves book. I was floored that he didn’t present any of the research around doing well in school and caring about it as feminized traits! This ties to study abroad convo too-basically it’s not cool amongst adolescent boys to “be smart,” and DEF not cool to care about it! Or really anything else-enthusiasm around anything other than sports/gaming and in some groups things like ROTC is seen as antithetical to traditional masculinity. Study abroad signals that you care about something-DUMB! It also requires more emotional openness and social risk-taking which biys/men have less capacity for (via socialization). Masculinity is rigid, narrow, and is always having to be won-it’s precarious. Both study abroad and “good at school” relate also to the possibility that you’ll fail and caring about something openly and failing is a) humiliating and b) boys/men have not been socialized to be equipped to sit with nor share difficult emotions. So they “play it safe” as to avoid failing at things bc they’ll feel bad and “be on their own” emotionally. It’s sad and honestly vital to hold the multiple truths of our experiences at the same time-we are all suffering under the crushing weight of hegemonic masculine norms and we will be better off when white dudes aren’t so f’d up! Said another way, I study masculinity and it’s shit health outcomes bc my people, my best people (women, femme folx, queer and trans and gender-diverse folx) are suffering often at the hands, directly or indirectly, of white dudes in power who’ve been divorced from their own humanity via patriarchy’s beloved binaries. And if I want their lives/my life to be better, I need white dudes to be healthier.
Yep. Again, math in early grades. If ever there was a subject with many depths, many levels, much woe… Being “good at math” early on (assuming one has the resources/school) seems to be a strong indicator of success. And yet, I don’t know that public schools as a whole are doing better with it. Though of course considering how much most public schools are up against, is that a surprise. No. I know I certainly wish things with math and my schools had been even a little different because I agree that this “math people” thing gets set in and seems nearly impossible to get away from.
There are so many factors that make it difficult for schools to introduce and nurture math ability in the ways that I think many of us would like. And of course there are adults’ own early math experiences, which often keep them (teachers, parents, volunteers) from being willing to try more creative approaches. You’re right, it feels impossible to get away from. I’ve had so many adults literally flinch when I ask them about volunteering with the math games program I help run. And it’s only for 3rd grade! The most complicated thing we do is probably calculate are and barely work with the idea of fractions. But the fear remains, and it pains me to see it.
you're doing good work and trying to help change some outcomes and change the "old ways" of doing things. Definitely sounds kind of very(?) agonizing but so worth doing. I appreciate you. And I would be among those flinching adults, btw! I found math hard in first and second grade, let alone in third! (I *still* remember those sheets we were given with the perforated paper coins to push out so that we could use them in our math time and how while I was pushing them out and enjoying that part I knew that dark forces were coming. How did I internalize that dread already, I wonder... perhaps the teacher had said things by way of introduction that I did not understand? And, sure enough, when it was time to take those paper coins out and work with them? My stomach started to hurt. Ai yi yi yii.)
OMG I had a literal visceral response reading that. I’d totally forgotten about those paper coins! I hated them so much. (I was born in 1976, very much a rural 1980s education.)
ha ha wow, you're the first person i have met who recognized those coins! :) I was born in 1972 ( it was really very late 1971 but lately i've started thinking it makes more sense to just say 72), so clearly they were in use for a decent amount of time.
I think about this ALL THE TIME. My mom unabashedly advocated for my placement in gifted classes, then honors, then AP. Hell, she even made a change to my schedule right before freshman year of undergrad. She knew how to navigate all those systems and felt comfortable doing so, and now I have that same knowledge. But many of my students' parents don't know and so can't be as effective at advocating for their kids. It's so frustrating for the myth of meritocracy to be perpetuated and held up when you can see all of the invisible systems that create the outcomes. It's not merit.
The Linda Flanagan interview w/AHP and book were REALLY useful and clarifying around this. We've opted not to put my kid into club soccer, and we're currently OK with his current team setup because after every practice/game, all the kids want to do is stay on the field and play more soccer, and that's what I'm looking for. (It contrasts a LOT with what I've seen from other teams/towns) https://annehelen.substack.com/p/are-kids-sports-reformable
I also didn’t study abroad in undergrad *because* I was so career focused. I was an accounting major and a) accounting majors weren’t encouraged to study abroad because it would throw off the course schedule, and b) we were encouraged to do internships! So instead, I spent a spring semester doing an internship in public accounting during busy season where I was paid handsomely and got a job offer for after graduation. This was very typical in my Big 10 business school, which, suffice to say, was chock full of white dudes! Maybe one reason more women study abroad is because the more traditional paths to employment after college are clogged with white men and so women have to find different ways to get noticed by employers. Study abroad could be one way, or, it could be a means to a third way: grad school. So many men I went to college with didn’t need to go to grad school, because they were walking out of undergrad with a $60k per year job offer in their pockets (in the early aughts!).
I still regret that I didn't do study abroad. But I was working as an RA my junior and senior years so I had RESPONSIBILITIES and also I needed to make sure I didn't graduate with a ton of debt! And of course that was part of my plan from the minute I got into college... not just thinking about work after graduation, thinking about work during my enrollment!
oof hidden curriculum. i was “tested” into a “Gifted” class at 3rd grade, and by 4th grade i was watching how kids in that set believed themselves more capable and were therefore more confident, and thus more capable, or at least that’s what i saw happening through my 4th grade eyes. i think the other kids knew, somehow, that we were not different in skills but different in the messages and expectations we received. that was unfair, and kids can smell that from miles away.
of course i didn’t put that into words until recently. and i see my kid experiencing something similar, mostly because the teacher deals with behavioral and other barriers to learning that don’t delay him, and he gets different materials, and is starting to say he’s “smarter” than the other kids. blurg.
ooh your last couple of lines there about systems of access and hidden curriculum really struck me because it doesn't end. I think about how not just job opportunities, but the inside-baseball kind of mentoring and knowledge that middle aged men tend to share with younger men but not with women. I don't even think it's malicious (mostly), but it's striking to me just how much women are at a disadvantage in the workplace because we are told it's a meritocracy--like school with relatively objective measures of success--when it is definitely not!
I think of golf when I think of 'inside baseball' mentoring. My college sophomore son mentioned he might want to try learning golf over the summer because it might be a good skill to have. I'm not sure if that is Old School and no longer as relevant (taking clients out golfing, corp retreats, etc) but it is definitely a stereotypical example.
Although this idea of (white) men mentoring and sharing some sort of inside knowledge with younger men is sort of fascinating within the context of: white men aren’t particularly (or at all) ambitious or even very successful. What are they sharing, I wonder.
A the mom of a recent high school grad (male) who took AP Calc because his college major required Calc (business) and he hoped to get a high enough score on the test to avoid it (nope), he did not take Algebra in 8th grade, it was a class you had to be selected for. He did take Accelerated Math throughout high school, and 'double up', taking two math classes one year, to leave room in his schedule for AP Calc, which was a three semester class Senior year.
I agree that you need to be forward thinking, which also requires parental knowledge, and luckily we found out early that one college flat out said "you need advanced math and Stats doesn't count, neither does whatever your school calls 'College Math'". So we discussed that with his advisor (yes, I met with his high school advisor once a year to confirm his major classes only) because we were unfamiliar with the 'doubling up' process.
There’s much that’s interesting in your comment but I’m stuck on: Calculus is required for a business degree? Wow. I mean, that just doesn’t make sense to me at all, practically speaking. And yet it totally lines up with success in math / being a “math person” predicting future success.
When you say that even by third to fifth grade your math/arithmetic skills need to be pretty high, that hits home in a gut-punch sort of way. And it also makes sense. I have certainly heard people who work in education or education-adjacent fields talk about, in terms of finding kids who are underserved by their school(s) and helping them do well and get the resources they need, finding them as early as possible is key.
I loved this and think it absolutely describes a ton of the trends in how, as White cis men, our walk in the world is cocooned by so many intersecting cocoons of “not having to notice/having the world work out to our advantage without ambition.” I also love the way you wrestled with the “should we have compassion for the White men dilemma?” One offering I might make (that I love getting to see the benefit of in my work both with White people on race and cis men on gender) is that compassion vs. accountability isn’t a binary. Like you, I don’t think we (here I’m referring to my fellow White cis men) deserve a lot of surface level compassion for the fact that now only 99% of systems are rigged in our advantage rather than 100% and so the evidence of the moments we suck are more obvious now. I do think, though, that for those of us trying to work with/transform communities who share privileged identities with us (so White people with White people, White cis men with other White cis men, etc.), that there is power in sitting together in the bigger/deeper issue— that our particular identity is an identity of domination, that has and will cause harm, and that separates us from humanity. And there is immense grief in there (also joy, in the form of the joy of getting to try to be more connected and less harm-causing, but definitely grief). And I do think that grief is “family work” (meaning it’s the work of cis White men to get into with each other, not one more form of emotional midwifery we outsource to women and non-binary folks in our lives) but doing that work is such an important part of the equation in how we all move forward. And it’s so much better than the alternative of just dozing through your privileged/resentful walk through the world, as it turns out. I wrote about it this week, but it’s been cool (as my White son is getting older) to realize what a joy (and responsibility of course, but joy) for the two of us to figure out a different, more aware way of being White and male together than the one I learned.
This won't add much to the conversation, but WOW all I have to do is put my resume next to my husband's to see this play out in real life. I had four jobs in college, was a three sport athlete, majored in chemical engineering and chemistry, got a masters. He was in a fraternity, majored in computer science, and doesn't have an advanced degree. We work at the same company (I'm a technical account manager and people manager, he's a developer), and he still makes more than me.
I'm in slightly the opposite position, I out earn my husband by a fair bit and am more senior in my company. He's supportive but also wonders out loud sometimes "why can't I have that" and this conversation has prompted me to reply next time "I've been hustling for this since I was, I dunno, 13." My life has been organized around ambition (color coded files for all of the colleges I was considering starting sophomore year of HS) in a way his just wasn't (he applied to two because his parents made him...)
I see this in my grad school classmates. Granted, we are all high acheivers, but the white guys have advanced a lot faster and further than anyone else.
It took me so long to realize that the white cis male grad students in my program weren't actually smarter than me. It's just that they came in feeling entitled to their success, and, therefore, felt comfortable saying whatever they felt like saying. Success was a forgone conclusion for them.
As the parent of two kind-of grown kids-a 21yo female and a 19yo male, conversations like these always make me think about how differently I treated them without even realizing it, as a person who really should have known better.
Omg me too! Mine are 19 and 16 and neither is terribly ambitious (as I am not either) but I definitely worry more about my daugther's lack of ambition than my son's!
I am a high school English teacher at an International School, and I just have to say that whether the systemic issues are the root cause described here are true: "Only recently — as their power has (very gradually) eroded, and they’ve come to face more legitimate consequences for sucking — has this lack of white male ambition been presented as a problem." 1) This isn't just a white boy problem. I teach mostly Asian boys who are feeling the same sort of decline 2) I do think it is profoundly sad to relegate these kids (little boys if you have been teaching as long as I have) to the dustheap of structural problems that were not their making 3) The climate against actively teaching skills like organization, planning, etc. that Peterson points out helps women succeed because it is now classified under SEL (a new touchpoint in rightist complaints) is another barrier.
I am, myself, an American, person of color born without a lot of means (but a loving family), and I used to pride myself on my own relative success. But, I just feel bad about how many boys are just legitimately unhappy. I'm not saying they should all be automatically risen to CEO, but there is something really wrong in their ability to feel joy. I'm only 39, but I, somehow, have been able to find an amazing partner, started a family, found a modicum of success in a meaningful endeavor even if it doesn't pay a lot. I feel needed and appreciated in ways that they cannot even foresee being possible. I spend too much time talking to boys about how their worries about their calves don't matter (in the big realms of things but also to girls because let's be real). I have spoken to a number about why Andrew Tate's ideas will literally work against you as a Korean/ Filipino/ Japanese/ many other including westerners, etc. I find that we're too easy to judge these kids as they work through their culturally appropriated misogyny. I was homophobic and misogynistic coming out of high school. I am embarrassed by what I thought and believed, but I worked my way out. I was coached by other sensitive men and given things to read and consider, things that were longer than a 3 minute Tiktok. They are judged by their mistakes and dig deeper because there is an easy outlet to assuage that shame, and then they feel alienated for not having the right idea right off the bat. I don't know what the answer is other than compassion and empathy. The boys are not alright. I swear. It's not just about newly sucking. I think they know they suck. I think they think they suck and cannot stop sucking. There's no path that is given for how not to suck.
This rings very true! I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was 33 because my fear of being seen as lazy/incompetent and therefore “bad at being a girl” led me to some damaging (but effective) coping strategies. I was already fat, which meant I wasn’t going to be given the benefit of the doubt if I fucked up in other ways. The only way to be seen as a real person - a real girl, specifically - was to be the best performer, the most organized and together and ambitious student and employee. And it worked! But I’m now unraveling all of these horrible beliefs and trying to figure out a different way to live. Like maybe those coping strategies that allowed me to mask for 30 years can help me build a more sustainable life, a kinder and safer community? I’d like to think I can use the tools that were originally developed out of fear to lead me towards something better.
Me too, Lauren! Thanks for writing this on our behalf, Grace 😆 More seriously, it means a lot to read something that I can relate to so strongly. I have felt like an alien for so much of my life, but more and more I realize there are others from my planet out there.
Can I ask you how you began your journey to get an ADHD diagnosis as an adult? I'm curious about getting formally diagnosed, but I don't know where to start or if it will even be worth it (or if I have anything at all!). Dyslexia and ADD run in my family, and I have some tell tale symptoms, but function ok. Part of me feels like if I could get through high school without it, why get diagnosed now? But I'm sure that thinking is totally wrong. Has the diagnosis helped you as an adult?
It has helped tremendously! I’d really recommend it, if you can and want to! It helped me to separate my struggles from my sense of self-worth, and to look for ways to help myself OR give myself a break, instead of getting angry and frustrated and pushing myself even harder. Knowing that it wasn’t my fault made me realize that actually, there’s nothing wrong with giving myself lots of accommodations - things like hooks instead of closets (where everything is out of sight and therefore doesn’t exist anymore), asking to keep my phone on me at work so I can constantly be setting alarms so I don’t lose track of time, scheduling an actual meeting time in my calendar with a trusted friend to go through mail because otherwise it won’t happen. I need those accommodations, they make life easier and better, so why not just ask for them/put them in place? Plus, availing myself of the wealth of knowledge and solutions that other ADHD people have come up with has been so helpful.
Also, for me, medication was a game changer. It took a couple tries, but finding one that worked for me made my life so much easier. It also helped me forgive myself, and realize that life felt harder for me because it WAS harder for me, and that’s not my fault. However, I just got new insurance and they won’t pay for my medication so I’m back to gritting my teeth 🙃
I figured it out through social media, honestly. My response to every ADHD meme was just “no, that’s not ADHD, everyone does that/feels like that/thinks like that.” So I went looking for a psychiatrist who did ADHD screenings and went in saying “I think I have this.” It was tough because he definitely was like mmmm you sound like you’re functioning very well, not sure about this. I had a list of specific things that made me think I had it, and I kept reiterating that while I was “successful” in school and work, it was incredibly hard and took up all my energy and focus with nothing left for my actual life. Even then, it took months before he would agree to let me try medication, and that only happened because I mentioned offhand that my sister had been on Adderall since her teens and had extremely classic ADHD symptoms. All of a sudden he believed me and gave me a prescription. So, you know, not sure if that’s actually helpful.
Anyway, even if you don’t decide to pursue a formal diagnosis, please know that you can absolutely use all the resources and strategies the ADHD community has developed! You can treat yourself like a person who had it and deserves help and support and patience, even if it’s just from yourself for now.
A friend gave me "Delivered from Distraction" to read for my son, and my response was "Damn, it's me." I'm GenX, ADHD was a joke if anything. I stigmatized it - it wasn't for A-student high achievers like me, it was for the screw-ups. Wrong. Entrepreneurs are 8-10x more likely to be ADHD, for example.
I got diagnosed via a telemedicine site just to "see." The process was far less intensive but convenient. In-person was $1500+ with a 6-month wait list. This was immediate and cost $200. The goal was to sell drugs. So while I'm slightly skeptical of the methods, I don't doubt the result.
I don't medicate, but echoing others: the gift is self-forgiveness. What a relief to stop verbally abusing myself about my "bad habits" and "laziness" etc. I understand it's my brain. I see the pattern and anticipate the potholes but it's WIP.
Considering how many people seem to be wired like this, I don't even identify with "neurodivergent." I don't buy into a norm or standard, that's very 20th century America IMO. I believe diversity was planned into the system. You know, for back when we relied on each other and worked as a collective, not as hypercompetitive individuals. Natural systems require biodiversity and we are one type. Some make spreadsheets, some make deals, some make ideas, some make lunch. We all need each other.
I'm not the above poster, but I literally just had my ADHD assessment last week at the age of 39 and am waiting on the results. At my last visit with my GP, I asked if I could get a referral for ADHD screening. She said, "Yes, absolutely," and gave me a list of three local agencies that theoretically accept my insurance. (I say "theoretically" because I didn't actually perform the due diligence of calling my insurer to inquire about the medical codes, take down names, etc---it all felt like too much effort, and I had the funds in my HSA to cover the full price of testing.) I requested an appointment through the agency's website, filled out bunches of forms, and got an appointment for a few months later. In terms of what I hope to get out of it, I have two aims: 1) As another poster said above, it's a self-knowledge thing---the idea that it's "not my fault" for being disorganized, messy, and sometimes unmotivated is appealing, especially at this stage of my life. 2) Resources, support, and above all, community.
I'm not the above poster, but a few years ago I worked up my courage to ask my primary care physician for a referral to get tested for ADHD. She asked me a few questions and said she thought it sounded like I was. (Note: I have been her patient for 10 years and she may also have ADHD) She offered me the option to try a low dose of meds to see if it helped.
I hear you on "if I got through high school, why bother?" But seeing you write that out I think, is there any other area of life where I'd let that kind of logic fly? Thank you.
I’m Gen X. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my thirties and was prescribed meds… but there was no discussion of strategies for success, resources, etc. Thinking about it and even saying it, that sounds so odd. But so it was. It was not until my pandemic travails, during which I turned 50, that I realized, “Good lord. Why have I not ever thought about this before?” So in some ways it feels like I was only diagnosed recently. Or that I fully understood such a diagnosis recently.
Shiiiit. I'm reading this right now instead of writing one of the million overdue papers I have to submit TODAY in order to graduate with my MA, which has been so very long in coming and is constantly back-burnered because of sick kids, family emergencies, family vacations, and so on and son and so on. I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety until I started grad school in my 40s and I'm dying to see the conversation about how being disorganized and 'low achieving' messes with our sense of femininity and ambition. I have so many thoughts, but I have to see if I can get my kids to go be in a different room because they're on spring break and I am not, and my breadwinner husband worked the night shift.
Mar 29, 2023·edited Mar 29, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
Re: femininity and organization: yes yes yes. Some of us COULDNT overcompensate by being hyper organized when we were younger, and it’s deeply affected my sense of my own femininity (imagine being the only one at a new moms meeting who forgot supplies and didn’t pick out a cute outfit for their newborn). For me, this also extends to upkeep and appearance. I struggle in these areas and it’s affected me professionally in a way it probably wouldn’t if I was a white man. I unconsciously looked for jobs where being “put together” wasn’t as big of a deal, which are limited, and I’m one of few people in my friend group who didn’t go to grad school.
This hits EXTRA for those of us who grew up poor, or come from working class families of color. The new mom group thing...phew. A whole other enormous conversation to be had there.
While my feelings about never becoming a mom are many and multi-faceted, this about fitting in or not with other moms is definitely among those feelings. I feel pretty sure I would have struggled with “mom identity” in a group of peers because I surely would not have been organized and really proactive.
To be clear, I am ambitious, but that ambition looks very different than the markers discussed here. It looks like job hopping to different industries for better pay, lateral moves within the same company, getting employers to pay for certificates, etc. For others, it’s stuff also outside of those traditional “ambitious” markers too like starting a podcast, running a booth at a craft fair, or whatever. Those take a ton of work.
I often say that we should get some kind of, like, college credit or something for managing to keep body and soul together. Yes, all the kids getting to where they need to be, etc. But also, like you say, these other markers of ambition. I've never once considered myself ambitious, because of the traditional markers you name. But your list of other things resonates massively with me. Fundraising for health care worker meals during the early stages of covid, community gardening, organizing people in all kinds of ways around things that they didn't realize they had in common, Tons of stuff. Thank you so much for simply pointing this out. I never would've seen it myself.
Your comment and Anne Helen’s statement about how different groups NEED to be more ambitious to try to match white men (at least, until the plans get derailed), and it’s making me think about what we label “ambition,” Does it just have to do with white male markers of professional success, which aren’t open to many of us who can’t overcompensate, or burn out? Effort? Something else? Does that energy get redirected into something not labeled ambition, just because they aren’t likely to result in education or monetary success? How do we label community essential work like yours, or the stay at home mom who’s the kickass PTA president? Anyway. This comment isn’t about why white men aren’t ambitious anymore but is making me think.
Hey, for what it’s worth, I totally see “job hopping to different industries for better pay, lateral moves within the same company, getting employers to pay for certificates, etc.” as ambitious. Ambitious and seriously hustling. Hard for me to understand how anyone wouldn’t, but I like to think I at least try to never underestimate the shallowness of corporate America, which is quite white and quite cis-het and quite non-neurodivergent and quite male.
Yes, really feel you on being a disorganized and “low achieving” woman. I put low achieving in quotes because you did, and I do recognize that it’s a loaded term, but … not sure that I do *not* feel like I have achieved little. In fact, I do feel that I have achieved little.
That last paragraph? I think about it all the time, and then I try to shelve it because it’s so damn depressing.
“If the goal is simply matching the success of white men without re-imagining the world that privileged it in the first place, the whole enterprise is a dead end.” This applies to so many things, doesn’t it? If a few less white men are winning in a system built on manufactured scarcity to benefit only a very few--who don’t need an elevator to the 25th floor because where they live is only reached by private helicopter--that still leaves that system intact, still only really benefitting a very few.
I interviewed a Georgetown expert about the rise in women getting college degrees, outpacing young men, and he had an interesting point: For women to earn the same as men, they NEED a college degree. Basically, white men without a college degree can find jobs in construction or the trades (both of which are predominantly STILL male) and earn a middle-class salary.
Women without a college degree earn bupkis — they work in retail, restaurants, etc. He said for women to just get to the same earnings level as a man without a college degree, they need a college degree. In his view, this is what is fueling the majority enrollment of women in college today — that they understand, without a college degree, they are looking at a lifetime of low wages. Not so for men. Depressing.
This thesis extends to include Black, Hispanic, and Asian workers - and also helps explain why those graduates have significantly more debt than their white classmates. (And why for-profit colleges target students of color - they know the sell is more effective)
There is something about this conversation that is tickling the back of my brain with regard to nurses and healthcare. I am a nurse and a professor and there is an absolute reckoning going on in healthcare right now that I think is closely related to how little credit we give to care workers for the amount of planing that goes into all aspects of care, and how gendered it can be. Related, the non college careers mentioned here are largely gendered masculine while, as someone mentioned below, the non college careers that are gendered feminine are largely care and service oriented, compensated much more poorly, and less likely to be unionized. Lots of care labor was left out of labor laws entirely in the early 20th century. Lots of travel nurses I know of have left staff positions not only for the money (I mean the money is important obvs) but also because they were exhausted by being the defacto planners and care coordinators for the entire hospital system. Why not travel, get paid 2-4x as much, and not have to be a part of endless meetings about how you can be responsible for improving care while we give you fewer and fewer resources? We welcome men in nursing and their numbers have improved but they tend to advance into leadership and admin extremely quickly. Sorry this is not a well formed thesis. There is something here but I gotta let it marinate a bit.
Yes. “Glass escalator” has been found to advance cismen in traditionally ciswomen’s occupations (e.g., nursing, K-8 teaching, public librarianship). So these men get moved up and out of entry-level and tracked into management even when they don’t want to move up!
this is so true and i've seen it in action. upward mobility is expected of them, and thus they expect it of themselves. it's almost like the work itself is not enough (the care, the teaching) and in order to legitimize their presence in these care or service professions, there needs to be an element of administration or power. the same is not true for women, it seems, who are thought to be "fulfilled" by the work itself. i acknowledge that i am really generalizing here on gender lines.
They actually touch on the lack of men in care professions and early elementary education in the Ezra Klein interview, and make the case for the importance of having men in these professions both to encourage other men to join them, and to give young boys models that say "you can teach pre-K" or "you can be a nurse!" And there are valuable arguments made there, but neither of the men in the interview have the insider view you do on the automatic privilege assigned to those who do enter the field. That's what seems to be missing from the interview as a whole.
My house rep is a huge promotor of tech schools and basically thinks too many people are going to college. With so many career areas that tech schools focus on are historically and currently male-dominated, and I can absolutely see why young women would choose a four year college.
I always wonder about these proponents: What is your kid doing? Are you encouraging your kid to go into a trade, or are they headed to 4 years of undergrad and then law school? Cause if it's the latter, I can't hear what you're saying over what you're doing. My kids deserve the same opportunities as your kids.
This particular rep doesn't have kids, but he has a law degree so there's that.
Also what doesn't come up in conversation about the promotion of tech schools and their associated careers is that some of the jobs can really take a toll on your physical body in a way desk work likely never will.
I agree about the physical toll that some jobs take, but I think that’s something you can take stock of and make an informed decision about, you know? There are trade offs. Desk work is also not great for your health, and having no work life balance is terrible for your mental health. Some people like working with their bodies more. The bigger problem to me is if those same legislators who push the concept of trade school over college *also* support defunding healthcare, pensions and other social safety nets that make the physical trade offs that come with those types of jobs conscionable.
I think we all feel that way, but at the end of the day not everyone can be lawyers. I would LOVE for my kids to do trade school if it interested them AND if they were able to make a living wage, have controlled hours and work/life balance and supportive health and retirement benefits. Wouldn’t that life be preferable to an 80 hour knowledge work week with no balance and suffocating student debt? I think the trade school idea is great as long as the work it leads to is Union protected.
Oh absolutely. But I’m in a “right to work” state, and it seems to me like the promotion of trades is, for many, a way to get out of creating equitable opportunities for historically under-resourced communities. If we want trades to lead to middle class lives, we’ve got to put in place the workplace protections that make that possible- and no one is trying to do that (at least where I live).
Yes exactly! Thanks for making my point more explicit!
I have also thought this for a long time. I told my kids (and anyone else who would listen) to get the schooling they NEED for the job they WANT.
I think people autopilot into graduate school when there are certificates, certifications, and job experience that could get them where they're going just as well.
People autopilot into college because they don't know what else to do, and our high schools (at least in everything other than the lowest economic neighborhoods) are all geared towards 4 year colleges. It used to be that you went to college because you wanted to be X, and X required a degree. Now a lot of kids are undecided until junior year or later. College is becoming part of this extended adolescence, and we see it in the sales pitch for the "college experience".
I got an undergraduate degree because it was expected and encouraged by all the adults around me. They encouraged it because more and more companies were requiring a degree - any degree, any subject - to even be considered for an entry-level position. When I graduated and went looking for that first "real" job, I was glad I'd taken their advice.
While I consider it to have been a valuable experience, the subjects I studied have no relationship at all to the work that I do. But the reality is that my current economic stability is a direct result of getting that degree so that I could get that first job which led to better jobs.
I'm not sure what the solution to this mess is, but companies requiring degrees for jobs that don't really need them are definitely part of the problem.
Absolutely. I'm old enough that I have seen companies cycle through several rounds of "You need a degree" and "You just need to prove that you can do the job".
Right now I can't tell if companies are crazy, stupid, or both. I saw an opening that required a degree, 7+ years of experience, and it was an internship. I was gobsmacked. And they aren't the only ones...
I am seeing people at my company at least get jobs that absolutely would have required a 4 year college degree 10 years ago. And a former company I've kept tabs on is no longer asking for a 4 year degree for some positions.
Looking back, I know that I was so gung-ho about going away to school because my helicopter parents had kept me from growing independence in high school. I was worried that if I continued to live at home that I would never be able to grow up.
For me, the "college experience" was less about being able to party and more about being able to make basic life choices on my own and to get away from anxious parents.
I think that's true for a lot of kids, I know it was a big thing for me. But when I went to school (back in the dark ages), The big selling point of college was that the degree gave you better pay and more opportunity. It was a good investment. By the time my kids went to college (elder millennials), The big selling point was the 4-year college experience. There was no more talk about college being a good investment, I think because they know that in a lot of cases it isn't anymore.
Oh yeah, the degree giving you better pay and more opportunity was still very much the big reason to go to college in 2005. My older brother, who is pretty introverted, didn't care about the 4 year college experience and commuted to a university close to home. I'm more extroverted and wanted the freedom to do things like go to Waffle House with my friends at 1 am without my parents freaking out. The college experience was a huge bonus selling point for me.
The gender stereotype threat research is also important to look at when understanding why women work harder to reach positions some men have handed to them. However, this research mostly explains why girls score higher in reading & writing, whereas boys score higher in math. There's also been research on how boys would receive teacher feedback that promoted a growth mindset, whereas girls received feedback that blamed their attributes. This seems contradictory to why women are now doing better at school, but in fact, it shows why women had to cultivate their own ambition, whereas men started to feel that success was their birthright.
All that being said, we need to understand that the research in this article is WEIRD (Weird, educated, industrialized, and democratic). In fact, it mostly just pertains to people from the USA. If you read about the atrocious slavery Ukrainians went through, Euromaidan in 2013, or turn on the news right now, are you really going to say those white men are more privileged than all the American women who got to "study abroad for at least a semester if not the full year?"
Either way, it shouldn't be a competition about who is more marginalized or less privileged. I'm not claiming to have the answers, but it seems the hegemonic classes use labels to divide and conquer. Whether it be wealthy racists hoping to marginalize and discriminate to uphold their power or the university elite hoping oppressors will check their privilege.
I don't know about the USA, but in Canada, those who study trades have a much higher chance of finding work than those who study arts at University (that also might explain why less boys go to university) –– I was one of the boys who studied arts at University. Why? My privilege allowed me to study something I was passionate about and travel abroad. And for the past ten years, I've been working random day jobs to make ends meet while putting 40+ hours a week into my writing career without an income to show for it. Does that mean I'm "unambitious?" I don't know. But apparently, it means I "work hard at sucking" because I haven't risen.
When I read quotes like "Men don't need ambition. They have the privilege. They rise unless they work hard at sucking" I feel the divisiveness and hatred in America. I'm a third-culture kid who doesn't belong to one country, so maybe I have no right to talk about American culture, but I've always considered myself a feminist, and quotes like these make me feel like I'm nothing, a failure. Do I deserve to feel that way as a white man? Will that empower women? I don't know.
https://bornwithoutborders.substack.com/about
I think there’s also a component of how things like ADHD and ADD are diagnosed differently depending on the person’s sex - highly organized and overachieving girls are seen as being good students, not as people overcorrecting for struggles just to meet expectations. I also suspect that’s a component of the late 30s-40s burnout women are experiencing. We’ve been overcompensating for so long just to maintain expectations instead of getting the help we need.
Yes! This! I was highly ambitious when I was younger, and highly organized. Nobody EVER suggested neurodivergence, ever saw me as anything but bright and driven. I didn't realize it at the time, but it involved huge amounts of compensating for ADHD that didn't get diagnosed until I well into adulthood. As I got older, and my life got increasingly complicated and stressful, managing full-time work and children, covering for it got harder and harder, and I got more and more exhausted. With the diagnosis, I realize that it's not actually my fault that I've had to work so hard to stay afloat for so long, but now I need to figure out what to do with that information and how to proceed.
The irony (maybe? or just... soul-crushingness?) of how effing hard it is to get diagnosed with a thing that will tell you that there's a reason that getting a diagnosis is so hard... well, whatever it is, I'm stuck in it. I want a blanket diagnosis or a streamlined process for girls who were designated as "gifted" in the mid-90s. Like, we will just assume that you have a thing and you can go directly to a psychologist for your rapid diagnosis.
> girls who were designated as "gifted" in the mid-90s
Oh my god, I have never felt so seen, HAHAHAHA
It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me
me but in the 70's and 80's
Yup, just tag me next time. It me.
Yes! Thank you for this! girls who were “gifted” in the mid-90s lol. I was one of these girls and being labeled “gifted” was horrible. Suddenly there was a standard everyone expected me to live up to but I was a mess just like everyone else. Then when I didn’t “succeed” at something I felt stupid and like a failure. Finally in college I opted out, at least publicly. I was invited to join the honors program after my freshman year and even though it would have meant a free trip to Vietnam, a country I desperately wanted to visit and still do, the application went into the trash and I took up binge drinking instead. I was already exhausted and couldn’t bring myself to try for one more fucking day. Fast forward to 20 years later and I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 40. All of a sudden everything made sense but I’m still reckoning with the grief of knowing that I did not have to struggle for decades. My high school biology teacher told me that I was “incapable of thinking logically”. And I went to a private all girls school where girls were supposed to be empowered lol 👎🏻). Even now there are dirty dishes piled up in my sink for so many valid stress-related reasons and all I can think is “why can’t you just get your shit together and do the dishes then work for 12 hours a day in a low-paying, high-stress job where women bear the brunt of the workload and also the responsibility when something goes wrong because it’s our job to QC the men’s work too because they won’t do it, without complaining??”
YES. Have seen two psychologists who immediately brushed away the possibility of ADD because I had done well in school. Even when I explained to them that I had done so by white knuckling my way through all-nighters to write the papers whose deadlines I forgot because if it's not basically tattooed on my body and written on 700 post-its strategically placed around my home, I will always forget the deadline.
It exists and it's called telemedicine, for better or worse.
If you have issues with executive function, telemedicine is not a solution.
I was being a flip - the question was, why can't we just get a quick diagnosis. With telemedicine, you usually can. But it helped me get where I need to be for right now. I'd argue tiktok isn't either but it helps a lot of people get to their next step as well. Many paths, many situations.
I hear this idea from a lot of people with ADHD-- the relief of "it's not my fault I had to work so hard."
As someone with executive function issues not caused by ADHD, I can understand why that would be a relief, but I wish we could move away from the idea that "fault" is a factor or that the level of achievement needed to maintain an adult life is working for anyone.
Yes I hear you. Zooming one level out is sometimes what we all need to do to reframe all of these ideas about ambition and achievement and whose fault is it anyways
Yes.
Nodding vigorously.
THIS! I was always ambitious and overachieving until my late 30s, at which point I just got exhausted. This is also when I got diagnosed with ADHD, and realized that I'd spent so much energy and effort overcompensating for my lack of executive functioning and I was tired of the rat race. I have a great career, and I still have ambition, but struggle with both feeling like I'm someone who squandered my potential, and with the desire to still achieve, just in a less frantic way. Like, I want to maybe be General Counsel one day, but... how? I literally have no idea how to do it and what particular overcompensation I need to be channeling in order to get there.
It's such a brutal double-bind. Show you can overcompensate and other will think you're fine, but don't and you flounder and are blamed.
Thank you so much for this. Ive been listening to Reeves with a healthy dose of skepticism. I also want to add that girls are raised to be more conscientious and to have a desire to be "good", and are thus more likely to listen to the teacher and go the extra mile at work. "Boys will be boys" mentality cuts boys a lot of slack. Reeves doesn't talk about how children are parented, which is obviously a huge factor. A glaring omission.
Yes, wasn't there that study of kids' chores that found boys do much fewer and are much more likely to be paid for them? Dishwashing free, lawn mowing paid, for example, and guess who gets which tasks.
Yes! I would love to see a study of family expectations for kids of different genders. Expectations around washing, dressing, doing homework, cleaning up after yourself - these high or low expectations shape kids deeply and early.
I’m a feminist masculinity researcher-great idea for a study! Would be curious also to ask parents/caregivers what they PERCEIVE vs what actually happens (ie if we did observations over time). I can imagine a lot of feminist-minded folx, with all good intentions unknowingly reinforcing inequities. (Sidenote: also my joke/great idea to hire/ train “work-people” (plumbers, folx fixing your drywall, contractors, etc) in observational methods. Folx are real as hell around the person redoing their guest bedroom (they often are true flies on walls) in ways they’d never be with an “official researcher.” Circling back, this book was written a few yrs ago re: roots of gender pay gap in early life: “The Cost of Being a Girl”, Yasemin Besen-Cassino.
Oh my gosh this is like the DREAM reply! Exciting stuff. I also love the idea of training & hiring laborers to do observational studies, some of the keenest observers I know work in the trades!
or if working with the more rich, au pairs, personal assistants and nannies. They truly see it all.
My younger brother will turn 30 this year. He took what I refer to as "the scenic route" to his bachelor's degree. He dropped out of a prestigious graduate program last year and moved home for the fourth time (I think? I've lost count). He recently got a service industry job and is now working full-time for the first time in his life. Without a trace of irony, he told me he can save a lot because his expenses are so low.
This all feels very related to an article I read (title based on a tweet): ARE YOU OKAY OR ARE YOU AN ELDEST DAUGHTER? I'm a classic Type A, people pleaser, control freak, teacher's pet, enneagram 1, whatever you want to call it. I started working at 15 and have been unemployed for a grand total of 3 months since. I've been supporting myself since I was 22. I guess I didn't know there was another option.
https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/eldest-daughter-syndrome-oldest-sibling-family-responsibilities
I really resonate with this comment and with the article that you linked. I took the so-called more ambitious path in comparison to my siblings, mostly because I had to. As the oldest daughter, it was my job to be responsible and successful and so on.
It is only very recently that I’ve realized that there can be another option!!! What a succinct and smart way to put it. Thank you!
Here’s my personal perspective that might explain some part of this trend, because that’s all I know: My white boomer dad was rewarded heavily for his ambitions, so he became more ambitious. My three brothers, however, were raised for a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Trained for jobs that no longer provide financial stability. I was the only girl in my family and the only one that went to college. I think overall, things were easier for me because I was less boxed-in by gender than they were. So it was easier for me to adapt to the changing world in the 90s when we all became adults. What’s more, during childhood I learned skills that helped me adapt too. I learned language for feelings. I was taught it was okay to ask for help. That failure was okay.
Whenever I see anyone who might seem “unambitious,” I always wonder what mental health challenge is causing it — because I’ve found that's usually the case. And I think about this a lot because my oldest brother died last fall at 52. Natural causes, including despair. He’d never hurt anyone. Never thought he was better than anyone. But he felt lost and lonely. And there are so many people like that.
"My three brothers, however, were raised for a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Trained for jobs that no longer provide financial stability."
This is a very big topic of focus in Reeves's book (which, full disclosure, I found eye-opening and enlightening, speaking as an elder millennial dad of 4-year-old and 1-year old boys). His main thesis, IMHO, is that the world—especially the labor market—has changed so drastically in the past few decades that a huge cohort of men and boys have been left bewildered and adrift. He fully acknowledges the advantages that many have by default (as articulated in this piece). But be that as it may, there is a major problem brewing (as also articulated in this piece: historically low academic and professional achievement, deaths of despair, social alienation, antisocial behavior, etc.)—one that's not going to go away or end well if left unaddressed.
Yes I should've been more clear in the piece that there's a whole lot more to both the episode and to Reeves' overall argument — and that I, too, am convinced by! I think the tough part — and Garrett Buck's comment in this thread tries to get at this — is that you can have compassion for people who're suffering under the system while also demanding accountability, and that second part is what's often left out of these conversations.
I agree we need to demand more accountability and we always need more compassion for people suffering. But while we bring more accountability, I feel like it’s important to avoid the blame culture that dominated life in the past. I think with any discussion about people, it’s good to remember the vast differences in individual circumstances. Life is unfair in structural ways. But life itself can be so unfair. Personally, I feel like I need to bear more accountability than someone like my brother who had literally nothing. I do agree with you — balancing compassion with accountability is the “tough part.”
This feels like such a classic case of patriarchy hurts everybody - including men. I recently read a piece about AndrEWWW T@t* in NYMag and why he appeals to so many boys today. And I honestly walked away even more convinced that a lot of the solution is to socialize boys to be caregivers. I think we really are observing that men don't have the tools to succeed & the solution is to emphasize caregiving, organization, consequences, and empathy. We can't treat it with himpathy, and say "poor boys have it so hard now..." But we also can't dismiss their floundering, either.
I looked up the person you referenced in the NYMag article — beyond-words sickening is all I can say. Even on a more subtle level, I agree the culture shouldn't dismiss males who are floundering and be like: Oh well, boys will be boys, it's not their fault. I'm so not on board with that.
I probably shouldn't have even shared my thoughts here because this topic feels very personal to me after losing my brother. But I did, because I know there are a lot of people, including men, really struggling now, but feeling alone and like it's their fault. My brother was floundering for many reasons, including being sexually abused as a child and having dyslexia. No one could look at him and know that. Everyone has something going on that you can't see. So it's always better to not assume things. That was really my only point.
And I totally agree that we need to change how boys are socialized. I'm a parent to three of them, ages 7-17, and I'm doing my best to raise them to be caring, sensitive, and mindful of the consequences of their behaviors and actions.
At risk of sounding like a broken record, Reeves talks a lot about this too in Of Boys and Men. One of his chapter titles is "Men Can HEAL" (a reference to so-called Health, Education, Administration, and Literacy jobs). That's another one of his prescriptions: creating the conditions for many more men to be elementary school and early education teachers, health care workers (not just doctors), psychologists, occupational therapists, etc. Looks like he excerpted that chapter, or parts of it, on his Substack: https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/men-can-heal.
I haven’t read Reeves’ book, but I’ve heard him interviewed on a number of outlets. There were a lot of men displaced from high paying “blue-collar” jobs in the 90s. But bigger than the income loss, people who worked with their hands started being looked down upon, as if they weren't as “smart.” This shaped a generation, and maybe even the next. But who really knows about the future. AI might replace more knowledge worker jobs (like mine as a pharmacist) than jobs in the trades so we might see a rebalancing of income — and respect.
Declining physical and mental health is a really big concern. Loneliness is a huge contributing factor that's not easy to fix. And we’re seeing declining generational health too. It might be worse for men because they’re less likely to go to the doctor. I think people then get stuck feeling badly about themselves. Taking less care of their health. And then isolating from other people. It’s a vicious cycle that can affect any one of us. But if you were socialized as a male, you might have fewer skills that would help break the cycle.
I’m a mom of 3 boys (ages 7-17). Hopefully, we can help prevent that from happening to their generation by teaching them that it’s okay to show vulnerability and ask for help.
I really appreciate your comment about gender boxing people in. I see a lot of men in my life who are restricted by masculine gender roles even while they might also benefit from them. I think being gay has allowed me to sidestep some of those norms/restrictions, but I see it around me a lot—men eating alone in their cars in parking lots.
Regarding attitudes towards labour work: I read Eyal Press's Dirty Work last year (or the year before) and found it to be a really remarkable read. He interviewed people who worked in jobs that society tends to ignore in order to look at the toll it takes on them. One of the jobs he looks at are the people who work on "kill floors" in slaughterhouses. Press notes that traditionally these jobs were held by white, rural Americans. Over time, though, they came to be more commonly occupied by undocumented immigrants, because companies didn't have to pay them a minimum or living (not saying those are the same) wage. This, in turn, drove down wages for those kinds of jobs and reduced the bargaining power of labour unions. At one point, Press interviewed a white, American woman who still worked at the plant and said that her job was now seen as "immigrant work" and was no longer a job many of her friends or neighbours wanted or would take. Reading your words reminded me of Press's book—about the role of corporate power in all this and about how attitudes of contempt or disrespect might develop and spread. Feeling useless or purposeless is one of the worst feelings in the world, I think.
I agree—it will be interesting to see what happens as A.I improves and threatens different streams of work.
And I appreciate your comment Zachary! I’m so glad you've been able to simply be yourself without worry or pressure.
You’re right to bring up the labor changes. Eyal Press’s book sounds like something to check out. Jobs that require manual labor have always been hard. And risky too — lots of chemical exposures and stress on the body. So it’s really hard doing that work with an older body. When jobs were unionized, it was easier to keep a job through middle-age and then retire relatively young (like 60) with a pension, including health benefits. If you were an older worker then, you might do less of the heavy lifting so you could stay on the job until you retired. Now, if you can’t keep up, you get let go and have nothing to fall back on.
Retraining sounds good but it’s not always easy or accessible. My brother struggled with dyslexia so any classes that involved reading were a challenge.
I completely agree re labour work. My partner is a massage therapist and we often talk about what it would be like if people who worked in labour-intensive jobs had better access to body work and the kind of physical care that allows people to try and maintain their bodies. I read somewhere that the current fight over retirement age in France has started some conversations around different retirement ages for different work (labour workers retiring at a younger age). And you're totally right: retraining is great but we definitely romanticize it. We also, I think, ignore the message that a society sends when it tells a generation of workers that they are no longer needed. I remember listening to a(nother) Ezra Klein episode with Saul Griffiths about climate change. At one point Griffiths says that part of the path toward de-carbonization is to basically thank everyone who has worked in oil and gas for their work, tell them how important they have been to the world we've built, and then invite them to help on the next leg of the journey. It was so counter to what I hear a lot: demonizing the people who work in oil and gas. But what he said seemed to make sense to me, and it made me wonder about how often we miss the opportunity to respectfully end one era and then invite everyone into a new one.
Lovely to chat with you.
I'm so sorry about the loss of your brother.
Thank you. BTW — I love your writing voice. It sounds insightful and not too similar to something I've read before. Best to you :)
Thanks for the endorsement Adam, I’ll probably pick this up. I’d love to hear, if you don’t mind sharing, what you’re doing to better equip your boys for their future?
Ooof! Still trying to figure that out ;). I want to say I'm trying to set an example as a dad, man, and person, but that's a pretty lazy answer. They're obviously very young now, but I'm trying to impart an emphasis on finding meaning and value through friendship, family, integrity, and service to others, not exclusively, or even predominately, in work (which is obviously complicated given that I really love my job and derive a lot of satisfaction from it). I also like Reeves's idea of holding up fatherhood as a new, more defined, and positive identity. This isn't in a reactionary way at all. He's saying, I think, taking pride in the role of being a father—not a "breadwinner," but engaged parent—could help fill the void of meaning that dislocation has wrought. Whatever way the world turns, and even in the face of challenging circumstances, this is a stable, productive identity that can be cultivated and meaning made from.
A recent piece in the Times, "Fathers Gained Family Time in the Pandemic. Many Don’t Want to Give It Back" hints at this shift in identify. At the beginning of the pandemic, lots of dads were forced to spend more time with their kids . . . and a lot of them, even those who left work grudgingly, found the experience invaluable, so much that they've decided being able to spend more time with their kids is worth making professional sacrifices for: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/upshot/fathers-pandemic-remote-work.html.
Of course, this is something that mothers have been doing forever! So I completely get the automatic instinct to eye-roll. But if we can get past that, I don't think it's a bad thing for society if many fathers are re-imagining their roles as someone who's involved with their kids and, by extension, takes a larger part in running their household.
This is me. I know this is the wrong message to take away, but reading this whole conversation makes me feel like the world would be better without me in it. (Yes I’m depressed, diagnosed, and in treatment, but it’s not working)
David, I am so sorry that you took that message away from the piece — truly, I don't want any person to not be here, I want the systems to change so there's less suffering and domination and pain (and that includes yours, absolutely). I'm grateful you're here in the comments, I'm grateful you're here in the world, and I hope you can hear what I and others are saying here: you matter.
Please don't take that message away. Two things can be true at once: the world was/is set up for certain people to thrive in. But everyone, no matter their circumstances, has innate value and is entitled to respect. The world is definitely better with you in it.
David this breaks my heart, but you’re brave just getting it out of you and sharing it. I’m sending you a virtual hug and want you to know that things can get better. It's really good that you’re trying to get help. But be persistent; if something’s not helping, let them know so they adjust your treatment. I'd take a break from social media if it’s making you feel like crap. And everyone should know that help is available at 988lifeline.org. We all need help sometimes. I like to say: needing help is normal.
My brother told me he felt like he didn’t matter. “Who really cares about an unmarried, middle-aged, fat white guy with no money and no kids?” On the one hand, I told him how much he mattered to the people who love him. But at the same time, I totally understood what he meant, because it’s true that we don’t value everyone the same in our culture. I think it's worse when we pretend we do. And I think if you’re a guy, it’s often harder to form close connections. People might think you’re threatening or creepy just by interacting the same way I would when I meet people. So I’ve been trying to find people who might feel like that, and start a conversation with them. We’re all just people, and no one deserves to feel excluded. I feel like the younger generation understands this better than the older ones.
I'm rooting for you too David!!
As a woman, I find the tone of this entire article revulsive and embarrassing. I am sorry you read it and hope you don't take the nonsense to heart (Btw, I didn't study abroad during college - I couldn't afford it)
Points in this article did ring true for me, but I too didn’t really love how much emphasis was put on traveling abroad in college as a woman... I now am transgender, but I could barely afford to go to college in general, let alone do anything extra other than work. Just too expensive.
It’s not true. I don’t even know you and I’m rooting for you. I hope you feel better one day soon and that you don’t give up.
Your brother sounds so much like my late uncle. He was of the boomer generation, and never really fit in anywhere like he was 'supposed' to. He died almost 30 years ago, at age 40 of, as you say, natural causes, including despair. It's been so long, and in so many ways as these conversations become more common, it's like his death is more present than ever. My condolences on the loss of your brother, I hope you're able to find some comfort and peace in the coming seasons.
Thank you Elisa for your kind words. I’m sorry about your uncle. There are so many bad things that happen in the world that can't be prevented. People being treated badly just because of who they are is the saddest.
I am so sorry for your loss. I relate to your story, though it was my male cousins, not my brother. I wanted to get at this with a comment I made elsewhere in the thread, but you made the point so much more clearly and eloquently. Thank you for sharing.
I also think some of this is men have never been expected to be of service to others in the way women have. The PeaceCorps and other high intensity volunteering type efforts focus so highly on the moral imperative to serve others, especially if you have privilege, but that seems to fall flat when it comes to the most privileged group of white men.
And I wonder if part of the study abroad issue is that study abroad is generally considered a "safe" way to travel, and so women (or women's parents) are only comfortable with their daughter traveling in a larger structured group, whereas men can more easily take off and travel at will and people will not bat an eye.
I totally agree re: service (see also why non-profits are dominated by women) but I do think ideas around women traveling have changed - also I travelled alone while studying abroad constantly!
I feel like travelling *while* studying abroad is very different from just ‘going travelling’ though? At least in parents’ minds? Like how, if I’m staying with my parents, and I’m not back when I’ve said I’ll be, they will worry, but when I’m living my own life, they have no idea what time I should be getting home or if I’ve stayed out all night.
This is so relatable. I studied abroad and did two different summer programs that had a 2-week gap in between. I wanted to stay in Europe and travel around, and my mom made me fly back to the US because she was too worried about me being "alone" for any period of time that wasn't university-sponsored
This! Plus, studying abroad has a layer of administration involved with the university, so if something bad were to happen, then the university would be in contact with the parents.
I agree about the safety aspect of studying abroad! It also got me thinking about the relatively constrained nature of study abroad vs. solo traveling on its own, and how that might make it more appealing to women and their parents. Like, study abroad programs have a defined end date, some are fairly structured by directors or host schools, and for many students it is a “one and done” kind of experience for cost or school reasons. Then students come back to school and work commitments and family responsibilities, and I think women are socialized to feel a need to care about that stuff more than men, as other folks have been discussing here.
I’m thinking that interacts with the gender issue because of some really broad generalizations I can make about what college-educated women tend to do after college here, so with that caveat: a lot of women in my area get married and maybe even buy a house with their partner right out of college, and it’s still very common for women to have kids in their twenties, so within 3-5 years of graduation. I’m wondering if some of that inclination toward studying abroad during college is about having a chance to travel before it gets in the way of women’s expected obligations as wives, mothers, and household managers, not to mention people with careers or professional ambitions. I think it’s also more expected here for men to have the kinds of jobs that require a lot of traveling than it is for women, so another angle on which study abroad might feel like a unique chance for women to travel. Men might not feel that pressure because the option to travel is more available to them after college as well.
Yes! This mentality also matches my experience with my white male friend group, which I talk about in my main comment. When my close friend (who never studied abroad) had a six week gap in job projects, he saw it as a unique opportunity but not necessarily a once-in-a-lifetime one, if that makes sense, and he chose to solo travel domestically for two trips (each 2-2.5 weeks long). Whereas for me, I saw my study abroad trips as once-in-a-lifetime chances to travel internationally, and if I had a six week work gap and the finances to do it, I would choose one large international trip to visit friends abroad. I think it's worth noting that I work for a local government, so maybe I get a chance annually to travel across my small state, but that's it.
I know not all women feel this way, but I also don't want to travel to new locations without my family. It's not a safety thing - I want to share those experiences with my husband and daughter (my two favorite people in the world). My male friends cannot relate to this at all, and see family vacations as more of a compromise situation. Even my husband would admit to this if pushed hard enough - he wants to do what he wants on his own agenda without others getting in the way. Whereas for me, sure, maybe I'd get to go to more museums without my kid, but I'd rather spend that time with her than inanimate objects.
Oh I'm sure that studying abroad being the safe option for women has a lot to do with it! I know that I would have been too afraid to travel alone - and my parents would have freaked out, anyway, if I had tried in my late teens early twenties.
Interestingly, I did two study abroads - a J-term and summer-term, and the almost universal attitude among the men was much more about going to drink and party. The only men in the 2 groups who didn't go out partying every night were neurodivergent, whereas there was a larger percentage of all minds of women who stayed in most nights.
Ooh I like your last point. My younger brother spent a few months volunteering in South America when he was 18 and there is no way I would have been able to do that (based on my parents’ attitudes to me doing other things at that age!)
As a non-American, I always find it fascinating when the topic of travelling abroad and safety comes up.. Hands down I feel the most unsafe, nervous and on guard when travelling in the US. That is true if I am alone or with my family or friends.
I’m glad to be reminded that this community of commenters is not US-only or even North-American-only (though your comment doesn’t mean you’re not Canadian :)). There are conclusions we can come to, inferences we can draw—but then we should remember to ask ourselves all the questions about our demographics and how they influence our thoughts. That said, it *feels* surprising that you said this and yet it’s not at *all* surprising you feel unsafe in the US. I can come up with so many reasons/possibilities just thinking for half a minute. And I think it’s true that a lot of these (some of these are statistics; others are cultural) really don’t exist in many other countries (and not just central and western Europe, definitely). I wish I had been engaging with this thread at the time it occurred and seen this. I would like to hear more about this (were you comfortable to share).
The end of this essay reminds me of the Toni Morrison quote that goes, “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.” I think this also applies to sexism, ableism, etc.
Just think about how much time and energy women, particularly BIPOC women, would get back if we did not have to spend our entire lives doing the mental labor of ambition and society’s infrastructure.
YES! To this Toni Morrison quote. And this isn’t a bug of these oppressive systems. The exhaustion, second-guessing, and divisions (eg infighting for scraps amongst folx marginalized by these very systems) is a vital feature! If we can’t rest, organize, strategize, and effectively care for one another, how will we revolutionize?!!! One of the oldest tricks in the patriarchal book! (Relatedly, while we are talking gender/ways these systems use our time, I bet you can guess what THE BEST WAY to keep women/femme folx/folx with uterus’ from building solidarity and toppling power! Yep-forced birth! Myriad research suggests that this is the most effective way to keep women and children in poverty and also biggest predictors of those same people experiencing violence). Never under estimate the perniciousness and ubiquity of settler colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy.
I was abut 10 years out of college when I said to someone how it felt like I was watching men and women have totally different career outcomes. Regardless of their degree, regardless of their initial career moves, it was like good jobs were just...waiting for them. Whenever they were ready.
I worked five years at a company where I watched my male peers rack up promotions in a way I saw exactly one woman at the company do. I've seen similar things at other companies where men get farther, faster even if it's not as explicit as that first place. And I don't think it's because men want it more. Because I wanted more, and it took years to get there.
What’s even worse about this (basic observable fact) is that in many executive circles “career velocity” is seen as a marker of potential fit for executive roles. My head exploded when I first heard that, and there was zero willingness of the person who stated this to accept that for women, that might be an unfair metric.
THIS RIGHT HERE
It also doesn't take into account how easy it is to slur a woman and derail her career trajectory completely. I don't think I have ever had a job where I wasn't accused of sleeping with someone for a promotion, or someone wasn't bragging about how they'd f***ed me. None of it was true. But it guaranteed that I wasn't going to get promoted.
That or, the middle aged version, which is some perceived lack of “presence” or “fit” or (my favorite!) “too hands on” which basically boils down to not being a dude and doing work because it needs to be done. (I work in tech so maybe it’s better elsewhere?)
I work in tech too (in case my name didn't make that obvious) and I finally made it to an executive role at my last company (growth stage startup) after 15 years across multiple GTM functions in progressively senior roles. I thought, I finally fucking made it. And there were a few other women on the executive team as well, so I wasn't even alone! Yet every single woman executive was more experienced (in most cases significantly so) than every male executive. And guess who was pushed aside, who was told that their perspective wasn't the right one, who was left out of the actual decision making? We were. We were told the sky was red when we could see with our eyes the sky was blue. We would back each other up, we would bring data and feedback and all manner of things to "prove" we were correct when all one of these tech bro fuck bois had to do was state an uninformed opinion and that's what the CEO decided was the right one. We did all the things we're told we're supposed to do, and we were still at the kids' table. And, as time would tell, we were almost always right in the end. But those things were just memory-holed and these dudes just kept. failing. up. Even by their own metrics, they were failing but would keep getting promotions, keep getting budget. The amount of gaslighting I experienced was unreal. I was less confident after this role than I was before I took it even though I managed a huge team and achieved excellent results. I knew sexism still existed in the workplace and definitely experienced it throughout my career. But I did not expect this shit to get worse as I acquired more seniority and power in an organization. And now I'm one of those women (I'm 40) who is taking a career break because the thought of being in a situation like that again fills me with dread 🙃
I am so so sorry you had this experience. The gaslighting!! For more mind-exploding validation, some research suggests that women in positions of greater power experience more sexual harassment. It’s possibly explained by “gender role threat” a theory that suggests that folx are punished for not adhering to specific gender roles (“you’re not acting like a woman when you sign off on my paychecks and have actual power over me.”) It’s…ya. Devastating.
I’m just circling back and seeing this now, and I am so sorry. And also: not at all surprised. I’m so tired by all the bullshit. How stupid and wasteful it is, and how hypocritical when that experience is paired with the “you’d be more successful if you were more optimistic” and “we value building a positive and inclusive work environment for everyone!!!” And yet I am reluctant to bail on an industry that has made my family more financially secure, and that needs voices saying these things if it is ever going to change. Grrrrrr!
“we value building a positive and inclusive work environment for everyone.” Yes, this phrase has gotten very hard to hear without feeling myself grimace.
Sending you hearts because, while not someone who’s been at an exec level (yet? Doubt it), I know “the thought of being in that situation again [in the workplace] fills me with dread.”
I hear this. I know so many women (myself included) who took admin assistant jobs after finishing their bachelors degrees. While male college graduates somehow got entry level professional jobs. I didn’t get my first professional job until after I finished my masters degree!
Thanks for sharing. It's infuriating how wide spread this is. I can't imagine what my finances not to mention my life would look like if I'd not spent 10+ years at what were basically admin roles.
This is me right here! I even finished my master's and struggled to find anything. Saw male college friends just continue to land "good" jobs that allowed them upward trajectory.
Almost 8 years out of college and I started in marketing admin, did that for a long time. I switched careers to a production role in the arts because it was killing me, though, and am making less now (and have more work to do!) than when I was in admin. Crazy
The study abroad thing was amusing to me because I (an ambitious female identified person) didn't study abroad...because I served in the leadership of my class in my junior year of college. But that "if you want to have X you have to start Y SO MUCH EARLIER THAN YOU THINK" is also trickling down into some of the ways that elder millennials parent and it does a number on you.
Sports is one thing (see kids on my kid's soccer team--8/9 year old boys--doing specialized training in the off season at the behest of their parents because if they DON'T they might not get into the good club team and so on and so on...) but it also shows up in places like math curricula. Turns out that if you want to take AP Calculus in high school, which is a) HIGHLY correlated with success in STEM majors, particularly with traditionally marginalized groups and b) close to a prerequisite for admission to many schools, you pretty much have to take algebra in 8th grade, which means you (often) need to be hitting certain benchmarks in math in 6th-7th grade, which means you need really strong arithmetic skills in 3rd-5th grade. It's not unreasonable to think that a decent amount of one's capacity/opportunity to pursue a complicated technical field is laid out as early as the age of 10.
So it's a system that rewards that kind of forward thinking--there are places/programs that can help kids catch up or get ahead, but it's not necessarily talked about, especially if you're in a place where there aren't sufficient academic counseling resources at a school. My thoughts on this aren't super-duper fully formed yet but it definitely fits into the puzzle of "must be organized and competent at all times not just for me but for those around me" along with opportunity hoarding, systems of access, hidden curriculum...
Kids self-perception of themselves as “good” or “bad” at math starts even earlier, by 1st or 2nd grade (I’ve heard earlier, but that’s the most robust research I’ve seen), and so much of it is how math is taught and what kinds of skills are rewarded. Our district relies heavily on online learning programs, which reward speed. So kids who are fast at computation are taught to see themselves as good at math. Kids who aren’t fast, and who might be great at math but want to understand concepts more deeply and need the time to do so are taught that they’re not “math people.”
So if you want to be in algebra in 8th grade, you’re also helped or hindered by the ways math is taught. Only, kids don’t know that and it’s hard as heck to help them understand they can be good at math even if the online program keeps telling them they’re not.
(It all makes me really angry!)
Yes, and on the math stuff and white guys doing poorly now…I’m a gender researcher and just finished Reeves book. I was floored that he didn’t present any of the research around doing well in school and caring about it as feminized traits! This ties to study abroad convo too-basically it’s not cool amongst adolescent boys to “be smart,” and DEF not cool to care about it! Or really anything else-enthusiasm around anything other than sports/gaming and in some groups things like ROTC is seen as antithetical to traditional masculinity. Study abroad signals that you care about something-DUMB! It also requires more emotional openness and social risk-taking which biys/men have less capacity for (via socialization). Masculinity is rigid, narrow, and is always having to be won-it’s precarious. Both study abroad and “good at school” relate also to the possibility that you’ll fail and caring about something openly and failing is a) humiliating and b) boys/men have not been socialized to be equipped to sit with nor share difficult emotions. So they “play it safe” as to avoid failing at things bc they’ll feel bad and “be on their own” emotionally. It’s sad and honestly vital to hold the multiple truths of our experiences at the same time-we are all suffering under the crushing weight of hegemonic masculine norms and we will be better off when white dudes aren’t so f’d up! Said another way, I study masculinity and it’s shit health outcomes bc my people, my best people (women, femme folx, queer and trans and gender-diverse folx) are suffering often at the hands, directly or indirectly, of white dudes in power who’ve been divorced from their own humanity via patriarchy’s beloved binaries. And if I want their lives/my life to be better, I need white dudes to be healthier.
Right. Agreed.
*convo not Congo
Yep. Again, math in early grades. If ever there was a subject with many depths, many levels, much woe… Being “good at math” early on (assuming one has the resources/school) seems to be a strong indicator of success. And yet, I don’t know that public schools as a whole are doing better with it. Though of course considering how much most public schools are up against, is that a surprise. No. I know I certainly wish things with math and my schools had been even a little different because I agree that this “math people” thing gets set in and seems nearly impossible to get away from.
There are so many factors that make it difficult for schools to introduce and nurture math ability in the ways that I think many of us would like. And of course there are adults’ own early math experiences, which often keep them (teachers, parents, volunteers) from being willing to try more creative approaches. You’re right, it feels impossible to get away from. I’ve had so many adults literally flinch when I ask them about volunteering with the math games program I help run. And it’s only for 3rd grade! The most complicated thing we do is probably calculate are and barely work with the idea of fractions. But the fear remains, and it pains me to see it.
you're doing good work and trying to help change some outcomes and change the "old ways" of doing things. Definitely sounds kind of very(?) agonizing but so worth doing. I appreciate you. And I would be among those flinching adults, btw! I found math hard in first and second grade, let alone in third! (I *still* remember those sheets we were given with the perforated paper coins to push out so that we could use them in our math time and how while I was pushing them out and enjoying that part I knew that dark forces were coming. How did I internalize that dread already, I wonder... perhaps the teacher had said things by way of introduction that I did not understand? And, sure enough, when it was time to take those paper coins out and work with them? My stomach started to hurt. Ai yi yi yii.)
OMG I had a literal visceral response reading that. I’d totally forgotten about those paper coins! I hated them so much. (I was born in 1976, very much a rural 1980s education.)
I appreciate you, too, that is so kind!
ha ha wow, you're the first person i have met who recognized those coins! :) I was born in 1972 ( it was really very late 1971 but lately i've started thinking it makes more sense to just say 72), so clearly they were in use for a decent amount of time.
I think about this ALL THE TIME. My mom unabashedly advocated for my placement in gifted classes, then honors, then AP. Hell, she even made a change to my schedule right before freshman year of undergrad. She knew how to navigate all those systems and felt comfortable doing so, and now I have that same knowledge. But many of my students' parents don't know and so can't be as effective at advocating for their kids. It's so frustrating for the myth of meritocracy to be perpetuated and held up when you can see all of the invisible systems that create the outcomes. It's not merit.
Yes. Yes. This is connecting things for me as a Gen X mom about the rise of club sports.
The Linda Flanagan interview w/AHP and book were REALLY useful and clarifying around this. We've opted not to put my kid into club soccer, and we're currently OK with his current team setup because after every practice/game, all the kids want to do is stay on the field and play more soccer, and that's what I'm looking for. (It contrasts a LOT with what I've seen from other teams/towns) https://annehelen.substack.com/p/are-kids-sports-reformable
I also didn’t study abroad in undergrad *because* I was so career focused. I was an accounting major and a) accounting majors weren’t encouraged to study abroad because it would throw off the course schedule, and b) we were encouraged to do internships! So instead, I spent a spring semester doing an internship in public accounting during busy season where I was paid handsomely and got a job offer for after graduation. This was very typical in my Big 10 business school, which, suffice to say, was chock full of white dudes! Maybe one reason more women study abroad is because the more traditional paths to employment after college are clogged with white men and so women have to find different ways to get noticed by employers. Study abroad could be one way, or, it could be a means to a third way: grad school. So many men I went to college with didn’t need to go to grad school, because they were walking out of undergrad with a $60k per year job offer in their pockets (in the early aughts!).
I still regret that I didn't do study abroad. But I was working as an RA my junior and senior years so I had RESPONSIBILITIES and also I needed to make sure I didn't graduate with a ton of debt! And of course that was part of my plan from the minute I got into college... not just thinking about work after graduation, thinking about work during my enrollment!
oof hidden curriculum. i was “tested” into a “Gifted” class at 3rd grade, and by 4th grade i was watching how kids in that set believed themselves more capable and were therefore more confident, and thus more capable, or at least that’s what i saw happening through my 4th grade eyes. i think the other kids knew, somehow, that we were not different in skills but different in the messages and expectations we received. that was unfair, and kids can smell that from miles away.
of course i didn’t put that into words until recently. and i see my kid experiencing something similar, mostly because the teacher deals with behavioral and other barriers to learning that don’t delay him, and he gets different materials, and is starting to say he’s “smarter” than the other kids. blurg.
ooh your last couple of lines there about systems of access and hidden curriculum really struck me because it doesn't end. I think about how not just job opportunities, but the inside-baseball kind of mentoring and knowledge that middle aged men tend to share with younger men but not with women. I don't even think it's malicious (mostly), but it's striking to me just how much women are at a disadvantage in the workplace because we are told it's a meritocracy--like school with relatively objective measures of success--when it is definitely not!
I think of golf when I think of 'inside baseball' mentoring. My college sophomore son mentioned he might want to try learning golf over the summer because it might be a good skill to have. I'm not sure if that is Old School and no longer as relevant (taking clients out golfing, corp retreats, etc) but it is definitely a stereotypical example.
I agree that golf / business has long been a thing and I also think it still goes on.
Although this idea of (white) men mentoring and sharing some sort of inside knowledge with younger men is sort of fascinating within the context of: white men aren’t particularly (or at all) ambitious or even very successful. What are they sharing, I wonder.
A the mom of a recent high school grad (male) who took AP Calc because his college major required Calc (business) and he hoped to get a high enough score on the test to avoid it (nope), he did not take Algebra in 8th grade, it was a class you had to be selected for. He did take Accelerated Math throughout high school, and 'double up', taking two math classes one year, to leave room in his schedule for AP Calc, which was a three semester class Senior year.
I agree that you need to be forward thinking, which also requires parental knowledge, and luckily we found out early that one college flat out said "you need advanced math and Stats doesn't count, neither does whatever your school calls 'College Math'". So we discussed that with his advisor (yes, I met with his high school advisor once a year to confirm his major classes only) because we were unfamiliar with the 'doubling up' process.
There’s much that’s interesting in your comment but I’m stuck on: Calculus is required for a business degree? Wow. I mean, that just doesn’t make sense to me at all, practically speaking. And yet it totally lines up with success in math / being a “math person” predicting future success.
When you say that even by third to fifth grade your math/arithmetic skills need to be pretty high, that hits home in a gut-punch sort of way. And it also makes sense. I have certainly heard people who work in education or education-adjacent fields talk about, in terms of finding kids who are underserved by their school(s) and helping them do well and get the resources they need, finding them as early as possible is key.
I loved this and think it absolutely describes a ton of the trends in how, as White cis men, our walk in the world is cocooned by so many intersecting cocoons of “not having to notice/having the world work out to our advantage without ambition.” I also love the way you wrestled with the “should we have compassion for the White men dilemma?” One offering I might make (that I love getting to see the benefit of in my work both with White people on race and cis men on gender) is that compassion vs. accountability isn’t a binary. Like you, I don’t think we (here I’m referring to my fellow White cis men) deserve a lot of surface level compassion for the fact that now only 99% of systems are rigged in our advantage rather than 100% and so the evidence of the moments we suck are more obvious now. I do think, though, that for those of us trying to work with/transform communities who share privileged identities with us (so White people with White people, White cis men with other White cis men, etc.), that there is power in sitting together in the bigger/deeper issue— that our particular identity is an identity of domination, that has and will cause harm, and that separates us from humanity. And there is immense grief in there (also joy, in the form of the joy of getting to try to be more connected and less harm-causing, but definitely grief). And I do think that grief is “family work” (meaning it’s the work of cis White men to get into with each other, not one more form of emotional midwifery we outsource to women and non-binary folks in our lives) but doing that work is such an important part of the equation in how we all move forward. And it’s so much better than the alternative of just dozing through your privileged/resentful walk through the world, as it turns out. I wrote about it this week, but it’s been cool (as my White son is getting older) to realize what a joy (and responsibility of course, but joy) for the two of us to figure out a different, more aware way of being White and male together than the one I learned.
I'm grateful you're here and parenting, Garrett. <3
This won't add much to the conversation, but WOW all I have to do is put my resume next to my husband's to see this play out in real life. I had four jobs in college, was a three sport athlete, majored in chemical engineering and chemistry, got a masters. He was in a fraternity, majored in computer science, and doesn't have an advanced degree. We work at the same company (I'm a technical account manager and people manager, he's a developer), and he still makes more than me.
I'm in slightly the opposite position, I out earn my husband by a fair bit and am more senior in my company. He's supportive but also wonders out loud sometimes "why can't I have that" and this conversation has prompted me to reply next time "I've been hustling for this since I was, I dunno, 13." My life has been organized around ambition (color coded files for all of the colleges I was considering starting sophomore year of HS) in a way his just wasn't (he applied to two because his parents made him...)
Ha, “why can’t I have that?” Wellllllll…. :) ;)
I see this in my grad school classmates. Granted, we are all high acheivers, but the white guys have advanced a lot faster and further than anyone else.
It took me so long to realize that the white cis male grad students in my program weren't actually smarter than me. It's just that they came in feeling entitled to their success, and, therefore, felt comfortable saying whatever they felt like saying. Success was a forgone conclusion for them.
As the parent of two kind-of grown kids-a 21yo female and a 19yo male, conversations like these always make me think about how differently I treated them without even realizing it, as a person who really should have known better.
Omg me too! Mine are 19 and 16 and neither is terribly ambitious (as I am not either) but I definitely worry more about my daugther's lack of ambition than my son's!
My son is 6 and my daughter is 1, and I want so desperately to make sure that I make the best choices for both of them. (As all parents do!)
I am a high school English teacher at an International School, and I just have to say that whether the systemic issues are the root cause described here are true: "Only recently — as their power has (very gradually) eroded, and they’ve come to face more legitimate consequences for sucking — has this lack of white male ambition been presented as a problem." 1) This isn't just a white boy problem. I teach mostly Asian boys who are feeling the same sort of decline 2) I do think it is profoundly sad to relegate these kids (little boys if you have been teaching as long as I have) to the dustheap of structural problems that were not their making 3) The climate against actively teaching skills like organization, planning, etc. that Peterson points out helps women succeed because it is now classified under SEL (a new touchpoint in rightist complaints) is another barrier.
I am, myself, an American, person of color born without a lot of means (but a loving family), and I used to pride myself on my own relative success. But, I just feel bad about how many boys are just legitimately unhappy. I'm not saying they should all be automatically risen to CEO, but there is something really wrong in their ability to feel joy. I'm only 39, but I, somehow, have been able to find an amazing partner, started a family, found a modicum of success in a meaningful endeavor even if it doesn't pay a lot. I feel needed and appreciated in ways that they cannot even foresee being possible. I spend too much time talking to boys about how their worries about their calves don't matter (in the big realms of things but also to girls because let's be real). I have spoken to a number about why Andrew Tate's ideas will literally work against you as a Korean/ Filipino/ Japanese/ many other including westerners, etc. I find that we're too easy to judge these kids as they work through their culturally appropriated misogyny. I was homophobic and misogynistic coming out of high school. I am embarrassed by what I thought and believed, but I worked my way out. I was coached by other sensitive men and given things to read and consider, things that were longer than a 3 minute Tiktok. They are judged by their mistakes and dig deeper because there is an easy outlet to assuage that shame, and then they feel alienated for not having the right idea right off the bat. I don't know what the answer is other than compassion and empathy. The boys are not alright. I swear. It's not just about newly sucking. I think they know they suck. I think they think they suck and cannot stop sucking. There's no path that is given for how not to suck.
Late question for you - has the "they know they suck" and inability to feel joy changed in the time you've been teaching?
This rings very true! I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was 33 because my fear of being seen as lazy/incompetent and therefore “bad at being a girl” led me to some damaging (but effective) coping strategies. I was already fat, which meant I wasn’t going to be given the benefit of the doubt if I fucked up in other ways. The only way to be seen as a real person - a real girl, specifically - was to be the best performer, the most organized and together and ambitious student and employee. And it worked! But I’m now unraveling all of these horrible beliefs and trying to figure out a different way to live. Like maybe those coping strategies that allowed me to mask for 30 years can help me build a more sustainable life, a kinder and safer community? I’d like to think I can use the tools that were originally developed out of fear to lead me towards something better.
Wow I thought I entered a fugue state and wrote this comment. This is my story, right down to the age of diagnosis!
Ughhh I’m sorry but also glad I’m not alone, I guess? Hooray for figuring shit out in our 30s!
Me too, Lauren! Thanks for writing this on our behalf, Grace 😆 More seriously, it means a lot to read something that I can relate to so strongly. I have felt like an alien for so much of my life, but more and more I realize there are others from my planet out there.
Can I ask you how you began your journey to get an ADHD diagnosis as an adult? I'm curious about getting formally diagnosed, but I don't know where to start or if it will even be worth it (or if I have anything at all!). Dyslexia and ADD run in my family, and I have some tell tale symptoms, but function ok. Part of me feels like if I could get through high school without it, why get diagnosed now? But I'm sure that thinking is totally wrong. Has the diagnosis helped you as an adult?
It has helped tremendously! I’d really recommend it, if you can and want to! It helped me to separate my struggles from my sense of self-worth, and to look for ways to help myself OR give myself a break, instead of getting angry and frustrated and pushing myself even harder. Knowing that it wasn’t my fault made me realize that actually, there’s nothing wrong with giving myself lots of accommodations - things like hooks instead of closets (where everything is out of sight and therefore doesn’t exist anymore), asking to keep my phone on me at work so I can constantly be setting alarms so I don’t lose track of time, scheduling an actual meeting time in my calendar with a trusted friend to go through mail because otherwise it won’t happen. I need those accommodations, they make life easier and better, so why not just ask for them/put them in place? Plus, availing myself of the wealth of knowledge and solutions that other ADHD people have come up with has been so helpful.
Also, for me, medication was a game changer. It took a couple tries, but finding one that worked for me made my life so much easier. It also helped me forgive myself, and realize that life felt harder for me because it WAS harder for me, and that’s not my fault. However, I just got new insurance and they won’t pay for my medication so I’m back to gritting my teeth 🙃
I figured it out through social media, honestly. My response to every ADHD meme was just “no, that’s not ADHD, everyone does that/feels like that/thinks like that.” So I went looking for a psychiatrist who did ADHD screenings and went in saying “I think I have this.” It was tough because he definitely was like mmmm you sound like you’re functioning very well, not sure about this. I had a list of specific things that made me think I had it, and I kept reiterating that while I was “successful” in school and work, it was incredibly hard and took up all my energy and focus with nothing left for my actual life. Even then, it took months before he would agree to let me try medication, and that only happened because I mentioned offhand that my sister had been on Adderall since her teens and had extremely classic ADHD symptoms. All of a sudden he believed me and gave me a prescription. So, you know, not sure if that’s actually helpful.
Anyway, even if you don’t decide to pursue a formal diagnosis, please know that you can absolutely use all the resources and strategies the ADHD community has developed! You can treat yourself like a person who had it and deserves help and support and patience, even if it’s just from yourself for now.
A friend gave me "Delivered from Distraction" to read for my son, and my response was "Damn, it's me." I'm GenX, ADHD was a joke if anything. I stigmatized it - it wasn't for A-student high achievers like me, it was for the screw-ups. Wrong. Entrepreneurs are 8-10x more likely to be ADHD, for example.
I got diagnosed via a telemedicine site just to "see." The process was far less intensive but convenient. In-person was $1500+ with a 6-month wait list. This was immediate and cost $200. The goal was to sell drugs. So while I'm slightly skeptical of the methods, I don't doubt the result.
I don't medicate, but echoing others: the gift is self-forgiveness. What a relief to stop verbally abusing myself about my "bad habits" and "laziness" etc. I understand it's my brain. I see the pattern and anticipate the potholes but it's WIP.
Considering how many people seem to be wired like this, I don't even identify with "neurodivergent." I don't buy into a norm or standard, that's very 20th century America IMO. I believe diversity was planned into the system. You know, for back when we relied on each other and worked as a collective, not as hypercompetitive individuals. Natural systems require biodiversity and we are one type. Some make spreadsheets, some make deals, some make ideas, some make lunch. We all need each other.
As for ADHD communities, please share everyone!
I'm not the above poster, but I literally just had my ADHD assessment last week at the age of 39 and am waiting on the results. At my last visit with my GP, I asked if I could get a referral for ADHD screening. She said, "Yes, absolutely," and gave me a list of three local agencies that theoretically accept my insurance. (I say "theoretically" because I didn't actually perform the due diligence of calling my insurer to inquire about the medical codes, take down names, etc---it all felt like too much effort, and I had the funds in my HSA to cover the full price of testing.) I requested an appointment through the agency's website, filled out bunches of forms, and got an appointment for a few months later. In terms of what I hope to get out of it, I have two aims: 1) As another poster said above, it's a self-knowledge thing---the idea that it's "not my fault" for being disorganized, messy, and sometimes unmotivated is appealing, especially at this stage of my life. 2) Resources, support, and above all, community.
I just wrote a novel of a response but you nailed it in 6 words: “resources, support, and above all, community.” Yes yes 100% yes
I'm not the above poster, but a few years ago I worked up my courage to ask my primary care physician for a referral to get tested for ADHD. She asked me a few questions and said she thought it sounded like I was. (Note: I have been her patient for 10 years and she may also have ADHD) She offered me the option to try a low dose of meds to see if it helped.
I hear you on "if I got through high school, why bother?" But seeing you write that out I think, is there any other area of life where I'd let that kind of logic fly? Thank you.
This was me, but I didn't figure it out until I was 50. I'm glad you got diagnosed sooner
I’m Gen X. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my thirties and was prescribed meds… but there was no discussion of strategies for success, resources, etc. Thinking about it and even saying it, that sounds so odd. But so it was. It was not until my pandemic travails, during which I turned 50, that I realized, “Good lord. Why have I not ever thought about this before?” So in some ways it feels like I was only diagnosed recently. Or that I fully understood such a diagnosis recently.
Shiiiit. I'm reading this right now instead of writing one of the million overdue papers I have to submit TODAY in order to graduate with my MA, which has been so very long in coming and is constantly back-burnered because of sick kids, family emergencies, family vacations, and so on and son and so on. I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety until I started grad school in my 40s and I'm dying to see the conversation about how being disorganized and 'low achieving' messes with our sense of femininity and ambition. I have so many thoughts, but I have to see if I can get my kids to go be in a different room because they're on spring break and I am not, and my breadwinner husband worked the night shift.
Re: femininity and organization: yes yes yes. Some of us COULDNT overcompensate by being hyper organized when we were younger, and it’s deeply affected my sense of my own femininity (imagine being the only one at a new moms meeting who forgot supplies and didn’t pick out a cute outfit for their newborn). For me, this also extends to upkeep and appearance. I struggle in these areas and it’s affected me professionally in a way it probably wouldn’t if I was a white man. I unconsciously looked for jobs where being “put together” wasn’t as big of a deal, which are limited, and I’m one of few people in my friend group who didn’t go to grad school.
This hits EXTRA for those of us who grew up poor, or come from working class families of color. The new mom group thing...phew. A whole other enormous conversation to be had there.
While my feelings about never becoming a mom are many and multi-faceted, this about fitting in or not with other moms is definitely among those feelings. I feel pretty sure I would have struggled with “mom identity” in a group of peers because I surely would not have been organized and really proactive.
To be clear, I am ambitious, but that ambition looks very different than the markers discussed here. It looks like job hopping to different industries for better pay, lateral moves within the same company, getting employers to pay for certificates, etc. For others, it’s stuff also outside of those traditional “ambitious” markers too like starting a podcast, running a booth at a craft fair, or whatever. Those take a ton of work.
I often say that we should get some kind of, like, college credit or something for managing to keep body and soul together. Yes, all the kids getting to where they need to be, etc. But also, like you say, these other markers of ambition. I've never once considered myself ambitious, because of the traditional markers you name. But your list of other things resonates massively with me. Fundraising for health care worker meals during the early stages of covid, community gardening, organizing people in all kinds of ways around things that they didn't realize they had in common, Tons of stuff. Thank you so much for simply pointing this out. I never would've seen it myself.
Your comment and Anne Helen’s statement about how different groups NEED to be more ambitious to try to match white men (at least, until the plans get derailed), and it’s making me think about what we label “ambition,” Does it just have to do with white male markers of professional success, which aren’t open to many of us who can’t overcompensate, or burn out? Effort? Something else? Does that energy get redirected into something not labeled ambition, just because they aren’t likely to result in education or monetary success? How do we label community essential work like yours, or the stay at home mom who’s the kickass PTA president? Anyway. This comment isn’t about why white men aren’t ambitious anymore but is making me think.
Hey, for what it’s worth, I totally see “job hopping to different industries for better pay, lateral moves within the same company, getting employers to pay for certificates, etc.” as ambitious. Ambitious and seriously hustling. Hard for me to understand how anyone wouldn’t, but I like to think I at least try to never underestimate the shallowness of corporate America, which is quite white and quite cis-het and quite non-neurodivergent and quite male.
Yes, really feel you on being a disorganized and “low achieving” woman. I put low achieving in quotes because you did, and I do recognize that it’s a loaded term, but … not sure that I do *not* feel like I have achieved little. In fact, I do feel that I have achieved little.
That last paragraph? I think about it all the time, and then I try to shelve it because it’s so damn depressing.
“If the goal is simply matching the success of white men without re-imagining the world that privileged it in the first place, the whole enterprise is a dead end.” This applies to so many things, doesn’t it? If a few less white men are winning in a system built on manufactured scarcity to benefit only a very few--who don’t need an elevator to the 25th floor because where they live is only reached by private helicopter--that still leaves that system intact, still only really benefitting a very few.