There's a gender crisis in America, and it has nothing to do with whether somebody has difficulty deciding which one of the two dozen or so genders they are. The crisis, as Tucker Carlson observes in his recent book Ship of Fools, is that while we are implementing all manner of policies to help women, to secure for them better pay and more opportunities, something awful is happening to men, and relatively few people seem to be talking about it.
For example, relative to girls, boys are failing in high school. More girls than boys graduate, and more girls than boys attend and graduate from college.
Boys are overwhelmingly more likely to be discipline problems in school and to have been diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder (one in five boys, one in eleven girls).
Women outnumber men in grad school and earn more doctoral degrees. They are the majority of new enrollees in both law and medical school.
Between 1979 and 2010, young male high school graduates saw their hourly wages drop 20% while similarly situated women saw theirs rise. When men's wages drop they find it harder to get married and stay married. That's one reason why we find more stable, intact families in affluent neighborhoods than in lower socio-economic areas.
Far fewer men are getting married today than did just a few years ago and fewer stay married. About one in five children live only with their mothers, double the rate in 1970. Young adult males are more likely to live with a parent than with a spouse or partner. That's not the case for young adult women. Much more than women, men need work to bolster their mental health and give them an identity. When they don't work, Carlson says, they fall apart.
The average American man dies five years before the average American woman. One reason is addiction. Men are more than twice as likely as women to become alcoholics and twice as likely to die from a drug overdose. Statistics from New Hampshire showed that 73% of the OD deaths in that state are men.
Another reason is suicide. Suicide among young men rose 43% during the first fifteen years of the current century.
Moreover, over 90% of prison inmates are male.
Half of young men failed the army's entry-level physical fitness test during basic training. Fully 70% of American men are overweight or obese, as compared to 59% of American women.
One of the most bizarre and troubling developments has to do with maleness itself. While academics fret over what they call "toxic masculinity," masculinity, in biological terms, seems to be inexplicably diminishing.
Sperm counts are down almost 60% since the early 1970s, and no one knows why. Testosterone levels have dropped 1% a year every year since 1987. Lower testosterone is associated with depression, lethargy, weight gain, and decreased cognitive ability.
This is an unprecedented state of affairs, and not only does no one know why it's happening, there seems to be little inclination among our politicians or media to find out. Instead, our elites continue to be stuck in the 1970s, fixated on improving opportunities for women while ignoring the much more serious crisis afflicting men.
