There are all these electronic billboards in Kent and adverts on the side of Metro buses with messages telling people that it is "OK" to “ask for help.” I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that the targeted demographic are women and girls; you never see any of these public displays asking men and boys if they need help, only to lay guilt trips on them. Now, there are resources that people can go to if they have a problem that is beyond their control. Back in the day when they still had those thick phonebooks, the government and public assistance section had endless pages of assistance programs; the problem was that they were all for women, with or without children.
There was nothing specifically for men or boys—not even the YMCA, long past the time when it was, as the song goes, a place where you can go when you are short on your dough, and no one else cared if you were alive. There are no phonebooks these days, but that doesn’t mean the programs for women are gone. This is a listing on the Seattle.gov website which has a plethora of programs to help women (with or without children) stay off the streets and get a “leg-up” on the competition for work and business:
http://www.seattle.gov/womenscommission/what-we-do/resources
Observe also that there are 20 separate programs relating to “domestic violence” and “violence against women,” which only shows how much a political issue it is, with all these groups battling each other for public and private funding and the attentions of women who are victims—or those who are easily persuaded that they are; note in my “entertainment” post on May 18, the commentator in the linked video about yet another “Karen” observed that white women like her seem to think that society gives them “immunity” from consequences when they are verbally and physically abusive (see Amber Heard) toward others, and then pretend to be the “victims” when the real victims of their abuse “unexpectedly” turn it around on them.
You won’t find anything specifically targeted to men. You hear a lot of talk about homeless women, but don’t see many if any on the street because they have greater access to clean, “safe” temporary facilities (like the YWCA). Filthy homeless shelters with people who may or may not have violent tendencies, “medication” issues or people you wouldn’t trust taking your shoes off at night to be around is about as much “help” a single man in need can expect. Of course there is the state government sponsored “worksource” facilities where they send you out to be “checked out” by an employer, and who don’t have to take you. Forget it if you don’t have a mailing address or phone number, which is one reason why a lot of homeless men just can’t get out of the hole.
Problems start early for males in this new era of gender “wokeness.” Boys tend to be slower to learn reading and vocabulary skills than girls, yet schools today start teaching reading in Kindergarten instead of the first grade, giving girls a “head start” right out of the gate. Boys are usually forced to read material that doesn’t interest them, thus slowing down the process; what this means is that the failure to help boys who need to catch up on their reading and language skills—and remember, people who speak “well” are stereotyped as being “smarter”—creates disincentives to keep trying and taking school seriously. Unlike girls, boys have a harder time sitting still, which of course brands them from the outset of being “problem” students. Politicized female teachers bring their own prejudices and stereotypes with them to class, which is particularly important since they dominate the most vulnerable time of a boy’s educational existence, in the early grades.
The Financial Times wondered if gender gaps in schools are a zero-sum game, “in which education systems, schools and families have to choose whether to create an environment that promotes either boys’ performance or girls’ performance.” One female educator asked if there was a way to make classrooms more “boy-friendly” without “disadvantaging” girls, she said “It’s a tough question,..Some of education requires the self-regulation and discipline we value in girls.” An exercise in “good” and “bad” stereotyping, but also indicative of the lack of “comfort” that some teachers (especially female) have in dealing with boys. There was even one comment I came across that suggested that co-ed schools today are so geared toward the "needs" of girls that they are now essentially girls schools that boys are allowed in. Thus it isn’t surprising that some boys “fail” in school—and in life.
I’ve had some tough times too, despite the fact I have a college degree—which doesn’t mean a thing when the sight of you only raises the red flags of “concern” in others. But only once have I actually gone down to a local DSHS facility and asked if there was any “help” they could give me. The only thing was one of those EBT food assistance cards. I was informed by the agent that “We just don’t have anything that able-bodied single males are eligible for.” That is pretty much the story for “able-bodied single males,” who society assumes has an “advantage” on everyone else when it comes to jobs, but which isn’t true. Many employers prefer women and Asians for jobs that require “nimble” fingers; jobs that require manual, physical labor, or other “shit” jobs nobody wants to do, is left for many “able-bodied single males,” and those are not any easier to find than any other job. Myself, I’ve never been out of work for more than a few weeks; as a last resort, I’d just sign up with a temp agency, and I’d typically be put to work the next day somewhere, until I found another full-time “adventure.” I have no shame; I’ll do anything for an honest buck.
The Brookings Institute released a study some time ago that noted that the 1996 welfare reform law was geared to favor women and children and ignore impoverished men. It somewhat sarcastically observed that “the major favor the welfare law did for fathers was to pursue them ever more relentlessly for child-support payments. In fact, the law may have intensified the already substantial problems faced by poor fathers”—having to support two households on poverty wages.
The study noted that “Many of the nation’s most serious social problems are caused by poor young males…the strands in this complex web of causality can be thought of in two categories: the ones which young men have control and the ones over which they don’t. If young men could be helped to overcome their inherent disadvantages, and follow simple rules of behavior”—that is “Graduate from high school, don’t commit a crime, get a job and work hard, get married, and have children”—then there might be some hope for them.
However, many young males, especially black males, “are violating each of these injunctions in great numbers and, as a group, appear to be moving in the wrong direction on most of them.” They are not helped by the 1996 welfare law, that offered young mothers both sticks and carrots to “encourage” them to make the right choices. On the other hand, “The public agenda for men includes sticks and, well, sticks. Men do not qualify for case welfare, child care or Medicaid (or at least not before the ACA), and they qualify for an Earned Income Tax Credit that is worth only a tenth as much as the mothers EITC. The only major benefit for which they qualify for is food stamps—to go along with continual pressure from child support and, for many, incarceration. Thus, the carrots are missing.” The tremendous pressure on low-income men “has the effect of creating a huge work disincentive for these struggling young men.”
And many wind up on the street, where there are also those who don’t have “domestic” issues. According to a report by the High Clinicians Network, most homeless are single men, and they are more likely to experience homelessness in relation to homeless families for longer periods, and more often. Relative to the availability of public assistance and health programs to them, single men are at “increased risk for chronic homelessness.” While poverty has a great deal to do with homelessness, “some impoverished people are held more responsible for their plight than others. Discrimination between the ‘deserving and undeserving poor’ in American social policy reflects this discrepancy. For example, poor but able-bodied single adults are expected to rehabilitate themselves without public assistance. Among homeless people, most of these individuals are men, and they, of course, are expected to get by without anyone’s help.
There is also the “common assumption that many homeless men ‘choose’ homelessness as a lifestyle preference." Homeless men are “criminalized” for “loitering, sleeping, urinating or drinking in public places—activities that are permissible in the privacy of a home. This results in giving people a criminal record for noncriminal behavior, which prevents them from getting jobs, housing and needed services.
In an article in Psychology Today, single people without children—again, usually male—are typically “left in the cold and the dark” when it comes to “qualifying” for public assistance. “People with children often get different opportunities for respite compared to singles purely because of the number of people requiring shelter.” Who wants to bother with a single male who is solely to “blame” for being where he is at? Thus another example of the tyranny of gender politics in this country.
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