“The gender-neutral society is really a kind of experiment,” says Mansfield, himself adopting the prissy liberal usage of mutable “gender” rather than immutable “sex.” “It’s something that hasn’t been done before in human history.”108 If the aim is to create an androgynous people, then so far women are proving better at being men than men are at being women.
For the first time in American history, there are more women than men in the workplace, and they dominate the professions.109 The 2008 downturn accelerated the trend: the recession was for the most part a he-cession. There are more women than men at college: for 2009 graduates, the college enrollment rate was 73.8 percent for girls, 66 percent for boys.110 Almost 60 percent of Bachelor’s Degrees go to women.111 Speaking of bachelors, in 1980 the number of men who reached the age of forty without marrying were 6 percent of the population.112 A quarter-century later, they were 16.5 percent. How many by 2030? Currently some 55 percent of men aged 18 to 24 live with their parents.113 Even before the recession, more than half of all American college seniors moved back to the family home after graduation.114 Thirteen percent of American males (“men” doesn’t seem quite the word) aged 25 to 34 live with their parents.115
From time to time, many ambitious regimes find themselves minded, as Bertolt Brecht advised, to elect a new people. The immigration policies of most western nations seem intended to accomplish that goal. But you can also change the existing people, in elemental ways and over a surprisingly short space of time. Give me a boy till seven, said the Jesuits, and I will show you the man. Give me a boy till seventh grade, say today’s educators, and we can eliminate the man problem entirely.
Men are no longer hunter-gatherers, and have now ceased to be bread-winners. It isn’t such a bad deal. Though discriminated against in matters such as child support, the average male—if he retains enough of the wily survival instinct from the caveman days—can still have a pretty good time.
Most of these new-type gals still like a good old-fashioned shagging every now and again, and there’s no obligation to marry them anymore, or even pretend you’re dating seriously. You certainly don’t have to meet their parents, and, if the stork decides to spring a little unwanted surprise on you, there’s always your friendly local abortionist. After all, being “pro-choice” is a good way to show these babes what a sensitive new man you are.
So, even if constrained in all other rowdy boyish inclinations more or less since nursery school, guys are still free to abandon women in greater numbers than ever before. In 1970, 69 percent of 25-year-old white men were married. By 2000, it was 33 percent.116 The remainder don’t have wives, kids, homes—in the sense of mow-the-lawn wash-the-car paint-the-spare-bedroom homes. So what do they do? Well, they drink, they listen to music, they hook up, they lead teenage lives on an adult salary.
Males 18 to 34 years old play more video games than kids: according to a 2006 Nielsen survey, 48.2 percent of men in that demographic amused themselves in that way for an average of two hours and forty-three minutes every day—that’s thirteen minutes longer than the 12- to-17-year-olds.117
When these games were first produced, parents used to fret that they were taking boys away from baseball and tree-climbing and healthy outdoor activities. Now they’re taking men away from… what? their midlife crisis?
“For whatever reason,” concluded Kay Hymowitz in
