What to do about "failing men?"

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Why not just let the women take over all the workload and men stay home and raise the children and tend to home and family matters? woman gets what she wants of equal opportunity and you don't have to worry about the failed men.

But the men wouldn't be 'unemployed' any more - they'd be cared for at home by their wives/sisters/mothers/daughters. They could have happy and fulfilling lives as fathers and homemakers.

How we frame a problem is part of the problem. Here's a possible solution:

Anyone who opines on the moral goodness of work (especially 'hard' work), anyone who calls themselves a 'hard worker' and does so with pride and superiority - male or female, they do all the work (or as much of the work as they can). Everyone else chips in as they see fit, likely combining their work with their interests, but otherwise has time to concentrate on their preferred non-work activities.

Everyone's a winner.

Why is "Massively reduce the military" not an option? We already piss away half our tax dollers every year on it. I don't see how increasing it could possibly foster economic growth unless plans for WW3 were in the works.

If you want my honest opinion on "affirmative action", I think it's actually an extremely discriminatory concept in and of itself. Why? Simply because it gives certain groups of people an advantage over others. If the playing field really is to be evened-out, people need to be hired based on their skills and qualifications, NOT because they are male, female, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, gay, straight, transgender, or whatever.

As I understand, affirmative action says that, where candidates present as equally suited to a job, you choose the one (if there is one) from a particular, underrepresented minority. It draws on the notion that certain groups are already given an advantage over others, due to various prejudices.

Economies and institutions operate within a society, and will reflect and then reproduce certain prejudices and power bases within that society.

careful, you're getting dangerously close to mentioning privilege, and some people (according to my personal observations, mostly affluent white males) have serious difficulty understanding that concept, however valid it may be to the discussion. (i might say they don't understand because they don't want to understand, but i don't like to think that poorly of people when i can avoid it, so i choose instead to believe they don't understand the concept because their life experience has created a sort of "blind spot" for privilege.)

I've only come across the term in the last year and a half, and have yet to feel confident enough to use it, though I've long talked about what it represents. It just seems obvious.

I think part of the problem is the word itself. It's an apt word, but all the same, there's likely a clear idea amongst people of what they mean when they talk about 'privilege', and it ain't them. I think a lot of people hear it, and think, "but I'm not obscenely wealthy and didn't go to snooty schools!". Which is usually true.

And I think a certain level of success (as defined socio-economically) brings with it an idea that 'I did that!'. That anything like luck, let alone privilege, never once played a part. That it already is a 'level playing field'.

i'm certainly not obscenely wealthy and i went to public school (which is not the same thing as it is over there, to us "public" means your parents don't have to pay anything for you to go there)--but i still understand that i enjoy a certain amount of privilege being a white woman as compared to women of colour (ie. i don't experience racially-based harassment or mistreatment--say from the police--on a regular basis as many people who aren't white do, which makes my life less stressful in that particular sense than it would be if i weren't white).

the word is new and has become sort of a "buzzword", but the concept itself certainly isn't new. i think what you say is true, and that it comes down to a certain amount of ego--it feels good to think you accomplished something through hard work, and to have to acknowledge that the same amount of hard work from someone else in your place might not result in the same accomplishment because the game is fixed to provide an advantage to certain people diminishes the amount of pride you can feel in that accomplishment.

Haha .. this privilege concept again.... it does seem aimed at denigrating the success of people .. hey, you were only successful because of X, not because you really earned it
It seems like something a Marxist philosopher would make up to explain why some people are more successful than others.

Why, according to Pew research, are Asian Americans the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the U.S? Marxist response: Must be "Asian privilege"! The "game" must be fixed for these people , apparently. But how ?

I don't think there's anything particularly Marxist about it. It's pretty easy to understand: I take my life as it has been. Everything else being equal, would it have been easier or harder if I were a woman? I'd say harder. Gay? Harder. A person of colour? Harder. Blind? Harder. And so on.

Pretty easy, eh? That's privilege in a nutshell. Societies are set up a certain way. They tend to want to reproduce themselves - a certain kind of person finds it easier to get along than another.

People are succesful - in the capitalist, socio-economic sense - for all sorts of reasons. Why do you think? Is it succesful to be born to wealthy parents? That's still a major way people get to be rich. Not just inherited money, but access to a world many could never get. That kind of being the whole point - the exclusivity, the 'people like us'.

There are people who work very, very, very hard, and have pretty much f.a. to show for it at the end. There are people who didn't work all that hard, but lucked out and got rich.

I don't know US society/culture anything like well enough to remark on the success or otherwise of Asian-Americans.

I think most people are able to grasp the idea. I do understand a reluctance or difficulty to, because (in the UK at least), that clear, upper-class idea of privilege is quite strong still. But if you (the general 'you', not you specifically!) can be honest with yourself, and consider 'would life be easier or harder if x', it's a great way of making certain matters suddenly obvious.

And I feel lucky to live in a country that still has a sense of a class system - where, despite many politicians' attempts (it's just the politics of envy, quick! blame the immigrants!), people are still able to grasp how these things affect their lives.

I suppose people like to consider themselves in charge. That they did what they did, with no help from good fortune. It wouldn't do to think that others might also have, but for bad fortune. Tangentially, I do find the use of 'driven' as a (sometimes self-) compliment odd, given how passive it is. Cars are driven. So are cattle.

I don't know how you make your conclusions of what is easier/harder.

According to your above logic, the hypothetical question of "would it be easier for me in America as a white person (the majority), or an Asian person", then "white people" should be the answer. However, as a I cited before, and provide a link here, the correct answer per likeliness to have higher income, and higher education is "Asian".
( http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/asianamericans-graphics/ )

This would seem to contradict your logic ? Your logic appears to assume that being in the majority makes life "easier" for one.

The point I'm trying to make is that people should be hired based on their ability to reliably perform a task, NOT because just happen they fall into one or more minority groups. If you have a group of people with similar qualifications who all fall into different minority groups, then you should test them to see who performs the best overall, and hire them, no matter how "normal" they are compared to the other people in the group.

You're confusing 'easier' for 'be an economic success'. Economic success is part of it, but very far from all of it.

I'm white. There's a whole load of crap I don't ever have to deal with because of that. If all else in my early life circumstances had been the same, but I'd been a person of colour, my life would have been harder. Would still be harder. It doesn't mean I couldn't have become an economic success, but it does mean I'd be far more likely to be stopped by the police if I was then driving a fancy car.

Or if I were gay. The world and time I grew up in was not fond of gay people. It has thankfully improved in the UK. But still, it's a whole lot easier to be straight.

If I couldn't walk, and used a wheelchair. The practicalities, in terms of wheelchair access, and the general social attitude would have made my life a whole lot harder.

It's a simple series of thought experiments that, for me, points to the necessity of deeper consideration of social and cultural attitudes and assumptions, and how they can be reproduced through institutions. I think the person who is a deliberate bigot is rare. Much of this is unthinking assumptions. We see the world as we are, which is often mixed in with how the world sees us.

(bolding mine)

They are.

I'd be surprised if there was anyone who suggested otherwise, unless they were 1) a figure conjured up in certain political imaginations or 2) taking the piss.