Gentlemen: This guy thinks you’re a loser
If you have female friends (or are the proud owner of your very own ladybits) you might have seen this article from CNN contributor and former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett popping up on your Facebook and Twitter feeds in the past week. It examines statistics which show that young women today are increasingly more well-educated, ambitious, and successful than their male counterparts. The big culprits, in Mr. Bennett’s opinion, are decaying social and moral values… and… waiiiiit for it… video games (oh snap! bet you didn’t expect THAT!).
Like the virtual Conservative father you never wanted, this man disapproves of your life choices.
What are you waiting for? Off you go. And be sure to read some of the ignorant comments below the article, if you want to be offended regardless of gender. I’ll be here with my thoughts when you get back.
…Are you back? Good!
Okay, so as a well-educated, ambitious woman, I couldn’t help but be a little gleeful over the yay-for-women! side of this opinion piece. And as a 20-something single female, I do have to agree that mature single males in their twenties and thirties are hard to come by. Most of the mature men I know locked down their wives a long time ago and are already 1 or 2 or 3 kids deep. And really, I only consider them mature because they have mortgages and are incredibly boring.
They may also be serial killers.
I should have no complaints after reading this article, since I am not the gender being scolded. But something about it really bothered me. That same old prejudice against the entertainment industry rears its ugly head again. Among other broad generalizations, this comment:
“Video games, television and music offer dubious lessons to boys who have been abandoned by their fathers.”
Nice save, just picking on the fatherless kids. However, I’m pretty sure there are plenty of boys that are fatherless (for any reason, be it abandonment or tragedy) who don’t grow up thinking of Duke Nukem as a good father figure.
In 8 years he'll be in jail, but today, he's just a young fatherless douchebag.
Of course, if you “don’t believe the numbers”, you can just listen to the complaints of whatever “young women” the author knows. Sorry, but I’m pretty sure cavewomen complained about a lack of good men too. So did Mr. Bennett’s wife, until she gave up and settled for him.
Also, no one who actually plays video games would hold a controller like this.
It’s an old, old, gripe, but I am sick and tired of video games and mass media being blamed for all of the world’s problems. Hell, Steven Spielberg plays video games and no one has ever called him unproductive. Why not point a finger at Facebook and Twitter and the internet in general? Today’s youth (myself included) waste more time watching videos of adorable Asian babies being squirted in the face with water than playing video games. I’m not even going to touch the argument that marriage and religion is what you gents need to shape up.
I watched it three times in the course of writing this article.
Well, boys, that’s enough from me. What do you think?
