Real Men Don't Write Blogs

It isn't that "they" are just lazy. Your kid might be lazy, but I wouldn't know. To argue that a whole demographic is on average lazy is nonsensical in the context of the rest of your argument. You are arguing that they lack the incentive (or are given a disincentive) to work hard given their other privileges. You move from an implication that boys are acting rationally to one that they have a character deficiency. You can't have it both ways.

This really is important. It doesn't do us any good to conflate individual vice with a social phenomenon. Conflating the two has caused all kinds of problems in stereotyping women.

What I am interested in are those things which might cause boys to not work hard in school. I don't believe that boys understand explicitly that they will be okay because they are males. What are the manifestations of that in our culture that broadcast that message?

So, ALL boys are lazy? Just because your son is (or so you think)? If that's not a sexist attitude, I don't know what is. I pity your son having such a sexist mother.

ah the old "women still earn less so lets forget boys and keep focusing on girls" that line never gets old from you feminists and as for the "wage gap" why dont you read this

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Repo...

if link doesnt come up google "consad gender wage gap"

now according to this consad report prepared for the DEPT OF LABOR girls dont get paid as much because they dont focus on thier career and work their a$$ off like men do, and that debunks the "glass ceiling" as well because if women were to put their careers first their is no reason why they couldnt succeed especially with all of the affirmitive action benefits they get:)

please complain about something else their is no reason why we should leave boys behind the fact that feminists seem to be the only group oppossing helping boys in school should tell any person with a brain what kind of people they are.

I see you subscribe to the Feminist as Victim philosophy and it may well be tragic you seem to care more that you don't have the ambition to achieve a higher status than your son's problems,. I think it is telling you would accuse boys, as a gender, of being lazy. Its not so and in some school areas these boys don't see much of a male teacher in their first 14 years of education.

We do have a boy crisis and there are lots of reasons. Your comments are one of them and single moms are another. In the USA sole physical custody is given to mom in 86% of cases, Canada 90% and the UK 93%.

Liberals and the left just don't get it.

"Really? I am female, got a degree and still make less than my current husband (he does not have a degree) and we work in similar fields. I am also bilingual and have more diverse work experience."

On average young women outearns the average young man today, considerably. That's the trend going forward. Your little anecdote means nothing in the wider scheme of things.

MLH: Guessing your kid is a boy, perhaps your man-hating succeeded in that you didn't allow him to become a man, and that is why he is so lazy.

“Really? I am female, got a degree and still make less than my current husband (he does not have a degree) and we work in similar fields. I am also bilingual and have more diverse work experience.”
Some very important factors here that you might want to consider:
How many hours a week does he put in at work compared to you/
How much higher did he negotiate salary wise compared to you?
Did he leave the workplace to bear and raise small children? Di d you do these things? Make no mistake, these are choices that women have that men do not have. The wage gap is simply a reflection of the fact that women still require that a man go off to work and provide for the household and most women would never even consider being the primary bread winner.

“My point is, there is a salary gap here in the U.S. and most other countries. There is still a glass ceiling.”

Glass ceiling? What about the glass basement? How many women do you see digging ditches on the side of the road, collecting trash, and doing extremely dangerous work like mining and electrical line work? 95% of all workplace deaths are male. Would you propose a lottery that randomly selects a female subject of sacrifice every time a man dies at work so we could kill her too?

“Most wealth is still controlled by men, not women.”

This is as patently absurd as it is false. 75% of all the worlds wealth is controlled by women-NOT MEN. Roughly 80% of all purchasing decisions are made by women-NOT MEN. Let me see if I can explain this to you; men go to work, work longer hours, take greater financial and PHYSICAL risks and then give their hard earned money to women who both save and spend it. Understand?

“Why do boys fail to do well in school? Because they can. Because they know that, at the end of the day, no matter how well women prepare themselves and how much they achieve, they (the men) still run the show.”

80% of homeless are men
80% of all suicides are men
Men die on average 7 years earlier than women
There are eight national level agencies for women’s health and none for men. Not two months ago Obama was making cuts in the budget and initially did not include regular annual increases in the budget for women’s health care. These state funded advocacy groups (and that is what they are) raised hell and they got what they wanted and more.
Just who runs the show here?

“By the way, I am a feminist and the mother of a boy.”

Poor kid!

“I see his lack of interest in school every day, and I don't see this as a "national tragedy" of sorts.”

I worked in Higher Education for years and I mean to tell you something- There is a war going on against boys in our education system from primary school to the doctorate level and I am not exaggerating when I say that. I have seen it with my own two eyes. The curriculum is designed SPECIFICALLY to make boys disengaged. Administratively and financially male students are not supported and are in fact discriminated against in an extremely cynical way. I could give you many examples of this but the best thing is to watch these two Youtube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRRRwhcqE1E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp-4-13M4cU&feature=related

As a matter of fact watch all of the manwomanmyth videos on there you might learn something.

“The real tragedy is that women still lose their jobs for getting pregnant.”

I have never heard of a women getting fired for being pregnant. As a matter of fact companies pay women to get pregnant. It’s called paid maternity leave and they are guaranteed by law to have their jobs when they get back.

“The real tragedy is that women still get charged more for health care.”

Women consume more health care.

Boys goofing off at school and not graduating? Not really, in my opinion. They (and I include my kid) are just lazy.

You are a reprehensible bigot and I feel sorry for your son. I think about kids like him when I think about the 80% male share of the suicides.

While you mention some issues that need to be addressed, like most people who are pro-female on any subject, you failed to make a useful contribution to this discussion.

I entitled the subject hopeful due to the fact that i am hopeful your son finds someone in life to guide and motivate him. I have both a son and daughter and can tell you one thing is true - boys need attention as well. Being ignored is is the greatest reason for the behavior of America's sons. They need to be pushed the same way girls are pushed. Maybe we should motivate our boys by saying "You need good grades and an education to prevent female dominance". I guarantee that will motivate them. You will say that is wrong but it is no more wrong than telling girls "Get an education so you don't need a man." Enough seeds of divisiveness have sewn by chauvinist and FEMINIST. Stop perpetuating it.

Instead of complaining, teach and motivate your son. This way, he can make wages and costs fair should he rise to a position of influence.

You must be a troll or incredibly ignorant.

Here's your new female health facts:
http://www.wlp.givingto.vt.edu/wealth/index.html

Most wealth is not controlled by men, but by women. Women make up 85% of the discretionary consumer spending in the economy.

The product makers know this, the advertisers know this, and the TV producers know this, which is why the mainstream networks from early AM through primetime put on shows aimed at women, advertising products women buy. There is no male version of The Today Show, or The View, or Regis, or Rachel Ray, or Oprah, or Entertainment Tonight, or Grey's Anatomy, or Desperate Housewives, or Dancing With the Stars, or even Suzie Orman (for the PBS crowd)... etc, etc, etc.

Remember, the power of money is in its spending, not in its earning. She who pays the piper controls the song.

Thus, women's spending totally dominates the shape our popular culture takes. When you go to any mall it's women shopping because there's little there men want to buy. One study found space in department stores devoted to women's products was seven times the space devoted to products for men, and the former is more prominently displayed near the entrance and on the main floor, like the cosmetics and jewelry counters. Yes, this is true even at WalMart, where these are right at the entrance, while the paint, tools, and motor oil are in the far back corner of the bus.

So far as accumulated wealth goes, it's well known that women outlive men. As a result there are a lot of wealthy widows out there. 90% of the women billionaires on the planet inherited their wealth from fathers, husbands, or family businesses. (Sorry, no readily available data on how many do it via divorce...) The same trend shows up at less lofty levels. One study in the UK by Datamonitor showed that wealthy Britons, categorized as having £200,000 or more in instantly accessible cash, stood at about 750,000; almost 393,000 were women, against only 355,000 men. I'm sure the trend is similar in the US. 80% of the homeless are men.

One could go on practically indefinitely in this vein. The data just don't support the contention that men have all the power and control everything.

Not that webpage, this one.

Glad you liked some of the points I've made.
You mention that your parents pushed you harder than they did your brother. I believe that part of the problem with young males today is that they are not especially pushed at home. I think that this may, in part, be a reaction -- from fathers at least -- to how hard they themselves were pushed growing up. I, and several other fathers I know, felt overly pressured by our dads to do well in school (at a cost to some of our other interests, perhaps). So we decided not to do the same with our sons (I know this was the case for me).
No clear answer here, since the kind of pressure dads of my father's generation put on their sons wasn't necessarily the absolutely best thing for us; but just saying to our sons -- even if not literally -- don't worry, just do what you want to do, may not be the best thing either.
Maybe we need something in between.

"But the bottom line is that we need an educational overhaul in this country soon if we're going to keep our children (of all genders) on par with our past educational expectations."

There's no such thing as "genders" - that is a made-up feminist word. The word you are looking for is "sexes".