Be VERY careful what you wish for, fellas!

In recent years, advances in neuroscience (of which we are still just barely scratching the surface) have led to an increasingly popular tendency to view teenagers and young adults (i.e. anyone under age 25) as having "underdeveloped brains" that somehow justify having their civil rights revoked or curtailed.  Of course, as we have noted before, that same neuroscience has shown that the human brain continues developing well into the 30s and even 40s (and possibly even beyond that), and that the development that occurs between 18-25 (and even a bit earlier) is basically on the same spectrum as the development that occurs after 25.  And that inconvenient fact is clearly ignored by The Powers That Be, for obvious reasons.  But for argument's sake, let's pretend for a moment that no significant brain development occurs after age 25 or so, shall we?

In case you haven't realized yet, this entire argument that young people under 25 should have less rights than people over 25 is really just a warmed-over version of a centuries-old and widely discredited ideology known as "biological determinism".  Similar arguments have been made in the past for black people, women, various immigrant groups, Jews, and other oppressed non-dominant groups in society.  Based on real or imaginary differences between groups, the dominant groups of the time would use such differences to justify their privilege over and oppression of the non-dominant groups. And essentially every single one of these arguments have been roundly debunked, and are really only taken seriously anymore by a few dodgy ideologues on the fringes (*cough* Charles Murray *cough*) and their brainwashed followers (*cough* Faux Noise *cough*).  That's not to say that the demographic groups in question are no longer oppressed or discriminated against (spoiler alert: they are), but today people are far less likely to openly claim "scientific" justifications for such discrimination/oppression than in the past.  Except when it comes to young people, for whom such junk science has apparently become de rigeur as of late. And the dominant group in this case, adults over 25, are certainly all-too-smug about it.  Nevermind that it too has actually been debunked by people like sociologist Mike Males among others. 

It should be obvious now that ageism/adultism is simply one more crucial component of the pyramid scheme known as the kyriarchy, which needs to end yesterday.  But what if there really was a demographic group that actually did show differences, in both physiology and behavior, that could (using the same dubious arguments) be used to justify that group's rights being curtailed?  Well, that group does exist, fellas, and I'm talking about you and me.  In other words, I'm talking about MEN in general, regardless of age.  Based on what we know from Ashley Montagu's 1953 bombshell of a book, The Natural Superiority of Women (last edition published in 1998) as well as its (sort-of) sequel Women After All by Melvin Konner, there are indeed enough brain differences to imply that, on average, males are basically the inferior gender.  Not only do our brains mature at a slower rate than for females, but we ultimately never really catch up completely.  In fact, the gender gap seems to actually widen with age.

Of course, it doesn't matter if we fellas think with our adenoids.  What really matters is how we ACT.  But here too, the evidence is rather abysmal:

• Contrary to stereotypes, we apparently really suck at driving, or at least we are more likely to take stupid risks behind the wheel.  And auto crash and fatality statistics bear this out rather well--and not just for young people, either. 
• Despite having a somewhat higher tolerance to alcohol than women on average (even after controlling for body weight), men are more likely to abuse alcohol and get into trouble with it.  Men are four times more likely than women to become alcoholics and four times more likely to drive drunk. 
• Violent crime of all kinds is overwhelmingly committed by men, especially violence against women. 
• But most crime is male-on-male, making us both dangerous AND endangered at the same time.
• At least 99% of all school-shooters and other mass-shooters have had one thing in common, aside from guns of course.  Care to guess what that is?
• Practically every war ever fought in history was started and waged by men.
• For the past 7000 years or so, most positions of power were overwhelmingly held by men.  And what happened?  We paved paradise and put up a parking lot, we created a desert and called it "peace".  We have devoured and suffocated our own empire, and we will all pay a heavy price for it soon enough.

And these differences between men and women greatly dwarf the differences between young people and older adults, at least when other variables such as socioeconomic status are accounted for.  That's the pink elephant in the room that the (mostly male) purveyors of the new anti-youth biological determinism don't want to talk about.  Why?  Because men are a privileged and dominant group in our society.  That's why.  DUH!

So be careful what you wish for, fellas.  Check your privilege, and your karma as well.  Yeah, you may laugh and be smug about it now.  Snicker, snicker.  But if the futurists are correct, and I think that they most likely are, women will eventually reclaim their rightful place as the new leaders of the free world.  And when that does happen, they will remember exactly how they were treated, so it really behooves us fellas to clean up our act yesterday--both in how we treat women as well as how we treat the younger generations.  The choice is ours, so let's make the right one.

What do the "Hookup Culture" and "Binge Drinking" have in common?

Turns out, they both have an awful lot in common indeed:

• Both terms are rather nebulously-defined concepts that can mean anything you want it to mean
• Both are fueled by the lamestream media's sensationalism, creating a "deviancy amplification spiral"
• Both are fueled by "pluralistic ignorance", i.e. people falsely believing that everyone else is doing it more than they are and more than is actually the case
• Both are fueled by a kind of androcentrism that persists in spite of the patriarchy's overall decline (i.e. women are expected to behave more like men rather than vice-versa, and men write the rules)
• Both are fueled by a sort of "tyranny of the structurelessness" and the persistent belief that they are the "only game in town" on college campuses (spoiler alert: that is NOT actually true)
• Both are fueled by our schizophrenic culture's ambivalence about both sex and alcohol
• Both, statistically speaking, tend to go together (albeit not always, though)
• Both are used as virtual bogeymen of sorts to advance regressive and illiberal agendas, often in the guise of "protecting" young people and especially women
• Both are often falsely blamed on feminism, when the reality is that, among individual women, there seems to be a somewhat inverse correlation between feminist beliefs and those behaviors.
• The existence and prevalence of both are heavy on anecdotal evidence, and very light on actual data.
• And both defining behaviors are actually less common now than in the past, with Millennials being less likely to drink and tend to have fewer sex partners than their Baby Boomer parents.  Even Jean Twenge of all people concedes this.

But don't expect the lamestream media to tell you any of that, though.  Why let mere facts interfere with a good story that can boost their ratings?

Happy (Belated) Mother's Day!

First of all, I would like to wish a very happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there, especially those who support our movement to lower the drinking age.  And yes, there are plenty of them indeed.

Recently, I have been reflecting on the utter lack of diversity in our movement, most notably the fact that our movement is largely a sausage-fest for the most part.   And most of the women in our movement tend to be younger and tend to be non-mothers.  That is in no small part due to groups like MADD effectively monopolizing the issue and claiming to speak for all mothers, while those mothers who openly support lowering the drinking age are often viciously shamed for taking such a stance.  It is also the result of our movement unfortunately having a tendency to be at least somewhat androcentric, which then attracts more men than women, which makes it even more androcentric, and so on.  And that needs to change yesterday if we wish to make any sort of progress.  It was after all, women, and especially mothers, who were the main driving force for repealing Prohibition in 1933.  And the recent victories on cannabis legalization did not happen until more and more mothers were willing to stand up and be counted.  Witness, for example, the group known as "Moms for Marijuana".  Yes, you read that right--something that would have been unthinkable just ten years ago.  And our movement needs to do the same as well.

We at Twenty-One Debunked propose the creation of a mothers' group to act as a counterweight to MADD.   It could be called "Mothers for Responsibility", for example.  At the same time, us fellas in the movement need to remove all remaining traces of androcentrism in our movement and effectively make it  more gynocentric as well.  We need to take women's issues much more seriously.  With no apologies to MRAs, PUAs, MGTOWs, and other "manosphere" types who frankly need to be kicked off the island, so to speak.  Ditto for brocialists, manarchists, and (worst of all) macktivists--if you don't know what any of those are are, feel free to Google them.  And as readers may have noticed from our recent posts, Twenty-One Debunked (as well as the TSAP) is certainly evolving in the right direction as we speak.