Young adults will be young adults

As a modern male, let me reiterate that we’re living in some crazy times. I mean beyond the gloom and doom of Facebook culture, climate change, and wars abroad, we’re in the midst of a cultural shift of inclusiveness unlike any in the modern age—namely the emergence of women. These days, it’s women’s turn to shine. Finally. After centuries of fighting for equal rights, or hell, even the ability to be considered a person, women are outperforming men in the classroom and in many cases, the office. I, for one, welcome our new overlords—not because all women deserve it, but because as a rational society, it’s pretty damn stupid to waste 50% of your talent and intelligence pool because of castration anxiety. Basically, I don’t give a shit if you have a penis, a vagina, or both, as long as you can do the job and not be an asshole about it.

That being said, I can’t help but be offended when females rehash the fallacious stereotype that men are the immature sex. Hymnowitz, whose article garnered a spot on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, anguishes over “Single Young Males’ (SYM)” modified adolescence and the problems it creates for the growing number of empowered females in society.

In the 1960s, as a male in my mid-20s, I would have been screwing on caps at the local toothpaste factory, making love to my high school sweetheart, and living with my parents so I could save up enough to feed my kids. Forty years later, the modern me is wasting away in a hellish apartment with some dudes and dumping money into Xbox, iTunes, and sex--or the pursuit of it anyway. My droogs and I, when we’re not at our 9-2-5, are wrecking young females’ lives and hearts with our hard-to-get routine and our general preference for shooting the shit instead of changing diapers. We choose to “hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3 and, in many cases, underachieving.” In contrast, our female counterparts are “hyper-achieving in both school and an increasingly female-friendly workplace, while packing leisure hours with shopping, traveling and dining with friends.”

Excuse me? Why do shopping, traveling, and gossip hour fall into “leisure” while their equivalents of drinking and video games equate to underachievement? And if I’m not mistaken, we’re not hooking up with other guys (well, 90% of us aren’t anyway), so aren’t females also hanging out in these dens of iniquity? Or sorry, does the fact that they’re in a pair of fuck-me boots they bought three hours earlier and have a pair of Chinatown bus ticket stubs to NYC in a Coach bag mean that they’re still achieving the American dream? Men may be turning to Tucker Max and Maxim for advice, but women are doing the same; their sources have names like Carrie Bradshaw and Cosmopolitan.

Which brings me to my “beef” with Hymowitz: this is a generation clash, not a gender difference. She notes that 33% of 25 year old males are married these days, compared to 69% in 1970. Funny, but she forgot to mention that 40% of women in their 20s are unmarried, too. And trust me, the woman who grabbed my ass in the bar last night wasn’t looking for me to show the ring and pop the question. I’m not trying to absolve the mire of men; God knows we are a filthy creation. Instead, I believe that this pre-adult stage is a shared experience between both sexes.

Nevertheless, I don’t see our generation’s lack of popping out babies and buying up houses for families as a problem. We’re in the unique situation where we may be the first generation in America that does not earn more per capita than their parents. We’re competing with the explosion of American education, the emergence of women in the workforce and an educated foreign workforce. Furthermore, our generation has been taught by our society and public education system to “Be Something” rather than another cog in the machine (kids want to be doctors, lawyers, and astronauts—not office managers and electricians). Is it any wonder we’re not satisfied with our .ppt-creating, coffee-making, copier-troubleshooting work day?

Above all, family is an improper (and antiquated) metric for responsibility and adulthood when the individual is existentially searching for a way to contribute to society as a whole. With our bustling economy and entertainment-filled lives, who doesn’t want to be the next Bill Gates or Matt Damon? Our dreams are not our fathers’. And they are especially not our mothers’.

Is our generation somehow less responsible because we’re more interested in investing in stocks and high-interest bank accounts than locking ourselves into mortgages? Are we less capable of making decisions because we derive entertainment from parodies and immaturity rather than contrived “wholesome” TV? Is society going to collapse because 20 year olds are getting action on the side rather than making babies in an overpopulated world? I say no. Then again, maybe I just share the Burgessian vision that in the not-so-distant future, we’ll tire of our ultraviolence and yearn for unruly 20 year-olds of our own. Our generation is no more threatening to the American way of life than the immigrants of the 1920s, and the teenagers of the 1960s.

In the meantime, if you’re 20 and looking to get married, I have a few suggestions:
a) Stop trying to find your future spouse at a club (unless it’s a country club)
b) Don’t sleep with her/him on the first date
c) Move to Idaho