Header image  
Culture, politics, science, philosophy  
 

 

Thinking matters
 

Culture, politics, science, philosophy.

General manifesto ***** Immigration manifesto
The deep Crisis of the West
Permalinks

 


First-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys

13.01.2019. For the first time ever, the American Psychological Association (APA) is releasing guidelines to help psychologists work with men and boys. At first blush, this may seem unnecessary. For decades, psychology focused on men (particularly white men), to the exclusion of all others. And men still dominate professionally and politically: As of 2018, 95.2 percent of chief operating officers at Fortune 500 companies were men. According to a 2017 analysis by Fortune, in 16 of the top companies, 80 percent of all high-ranking executives were male. Meanwhile, the 115th Congress, which began in 2017, was 81 percent male. But something is amiss for men as well. Men commit 90 percent of homicides in the United States and represent 77 percent of homicide victims. They're the demographic group most at risk of being victimized by violent crime. They are 3.5 times more likely than women to die by suicide, and their life expectancy is 4.9 years shorter than women's. Boys are far more likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder than girls, and they face harsher punishments in school—especially boys of color. APA's new Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Boys and Men strive to recognize and address these problems in boys and men while remaining sensitive to the field's androcentric past. Thirteen years in the making, they draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly. APA issues first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys.

Some reactions to the new APA Guidelines:

  • The American Psychological Association goes to war against boys and men. The American Psychological Association (APA) has, for the first time in its history, come out with Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men. One does not have to have read the entire 30,000 word document to appreciate its thrust: "traditional masculinity" is bad for society as well as to boys and men themselves. Stoicism, competitiveness and risk-taking, the qualities we consider desirable when they result in firefighting, search-and-rescue operations, self-sacrifice for women and children (see under Titanic) and combat in the defence of the nation, are, the APA believes, "psychologically harmful." By Barbara Kay, The Post Millenial.
  • The American Psychological Association just made it harder to maintain strong marriages. I'm finishing up a manuscript for a new book that helps women find Mr. Right and keep him by embracing sexual inequality, aka the innate differences between women and men. So-called gender equality presumes the sexes are interchangeable, and they are not. Masculinity and femininity represent the yin and yang of any romantic relationship and are crucial for lasting love. When they cease to exist, children suffer and families disintegrate. So you can imagine my shock and disdain for the American Psychological Association's new guidelines that claim traditional masculinity is "harmful." We've known about the war on men for years, but to have the the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the country formally reject the inherent nature of men is both profound and appalling. The APA guidelines understandably triggered a huge backlash. They emphasize such absurd ideas as "gender role strain," defined as "a psychological situation in which gender role demands have negative consequences on the individual or others," and "gender role conflict," defined as "problems resulting from adherence to rigid, sexist, or restrictive gender roles, learned during socialization, that result in personal restriction, devaluation, or violation of others or self." By Suzanne Venker, The Washington Examiner.
  • The unending war against masculinity and men. For the first time in its history, the American Psychological Association (APA) has issued guidelines for mental health professionals working with men and boys. That may not sound like a momentous event, but the APA is a powerful body in the US. It has 117,500 members, including the vast majority of practising psychologists, and an annual budget of $115 million. Its guidance documents carry the imprimatur of scientific authority and are hugely influential when it comes to policies and behaviour in public institutions. This edict will be referred to by university administrators when policing sexual interactions on campus, by the courts when deciding who to award custody to in divorce hearings and by HR departments when assessing complaints about male employees. It's not an exaggeration to say this new guidance will affect the lives of millions of men and boys for years to come. By Toby Young, The Spectator.
  • Farewell, Masculinity: We'll Miss You When You're Gone. This week, the American Psychological Association delivered some sad news for fans of "traditional masculinity." According to the organization's new "Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men," the "harmful" ideology of masculinity — marked by "stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression" together with "anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence" — has got to go. [...] Here is a sentence that actually exists on the APA's website, paired with a summary of the new guidelines: "Indeed, when researchers strip away stereotypes and expectation, there isn't much difference in the basic behaviors of men and women." There is no direct or encompassing citation for this impressively sweeping statement, probably because it is a) untrue, b) unscientific, and c) likely to make God laugh. How is it that we can live in a civilization so advanced that we can propel a rocket 33 million miles through the cold abyss of space to successfully land on a hostile and largely unexplored planet, but still manage to publish insouciant nonsense sentences like this? Never say life isn't mysterious, friends. It is mind-boggling. By Heather Wilhelm, National Review.
  • Grown Men Are the Solution, Not the Problem. With young men in crisis, the American Psychological Association wrongly declares war on 'traditional masculinity'. By David French, National Review.
  • The APA Can't Spin Its Way Out of Its Attack on 'Traditional Masculinity'. Our culture has grown more disdainful of common, inherent male characteristics. By David French, National Review.

 

 


Free speech scandal gets even worse

13.01.2019. It has been revealed that Lindsay Shepherd, the former graduate student at the centre of the Wilfrid Laurier University free speech scandal, is now being sued by the very same professors who fabricated false claims of transphobia against her and subjected her to an extra-legal interrogation. According to a tweet by Shepherd, Nathan Rambukkana and Herbert Pimlott are suing her as part of a third-party claim in response to Dr. Jordan Peterson's lawsuit against Laurier University and individuals involved. Back in 2017, Shepherd was a teaching assistant working under Professor Rambukkana when she showed a widely disseminated television clip from The Agenda with Steve Paikin that featured Peterson discussing the contentious issues of gendered pronouns and compelled speech. Rambukkana, Pimlott, and Adria Joel, a gender activist and university bureaucrat, then concocted a plan to interrogate Shepherd and find a way to punish her for the high crime of discussing "problematic" ideas in a university classroom. Professors who falsely accused and harassed Lindsay Shepherd are now suing her.

See also:

 


Home

Permalinks to older articles

 


 

Search HonestThinking

 


Norsk stoff - Norwegian material

Norske og skandinaviske lesere vil kunne finne stoff på norsk her.

 


 

HonestThinking is dedicated and committed to the art of thinking honestly. Yet honest thinking is not the same as true thinking, for it is possible to think honestly, but be mistaken. For the same reason, honest thinking is not identical with objective thinking either. Honest thinking is striving to get things right. This involves being truthful about whatever one publishes, but just as importantly, it involves an uncompromising dedication never to suppress relevant data, even when data collides with dearly held prejudices. Such an approach may sometimes cause hurtful revisions in one’s belief system. That’s what HonestThinking is all about! Read the entire manifesto.



Provoked or enthusiastic?

Please send e-mail to postmaster at honestThinking.org (replacing ' at ' with '@') if you would like to tip us about a web resource that we should link to, or if you wish to submit an article for publication here. Quality contributions are welcome from anyone.

 



 

The current European immigration and integration policy is profoundly disrespectful of both Muslims and Islam, because it is built on the tacit assumption that the Muslims will become like us. One claims to have respect for Islam and for Muslims, but one also expects Muslims to give up their orthodox faith when they come here. At the same time one is assuming that Islam will be reformed and modernized as soon as the Muslims become integrated and understand and appreciate how superior our Western culture is compared to their own. This is cultural shauvinism and arrogance indeed! The unspoken premise for this scenario is that Western socities are superior to Islam. Read more.

 


 

 

Human rights and democracy are under pressure. One threat comes from the Western world, in the form of lack of or dishonest thinking. There exists a peculiar Western "tolerance" which is so "tolerant" that it even tolerates totalitarian or anti-democratic ideologies. A tacit assumption underlying such an attitude is that all cultures, world views, and religions are really equally good. As a consequence of this assumption one is cut off from the possibility of critically examining the above mentioned ideologies. Read more.