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'The war on men'
Submitted by Mastodon on Sat, 2012-11-24 21:53
Article here. Excerpt:
'Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don’t.
The so-called dearth of good men (read: marriageable men) has been a hot subject in the media as of late. Much of the coverage has been in response to the fact that for the first time in history, women have become the majority of the U.S. workforce. They’re also getting most of the college degrees. The problem? This new phenomenon has changed the dance between men and women.
As the author of three books on the American family and its intersection with pop culture, I’ve spent thirteen years examining social agendas as they pertain to sex, parenting, and gender roles. During this time, I’ve spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women. And in doing so, I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who’ve told me, in no uncertain terms, that they’re never getting married. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.
Women aren’t women anymore.
...
In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.
...
It is precisely this dynamic – women good/men bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Yet somehow, men are still to blame when love goes awry. Heck, men have been to blame since feminists first took to the streets in the 1970s.
But what if the dearth of good men, and ongoing battle of the sexes, is – hold on to your seats – women’s fault?'
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Comments
Delusional but willing to learn
I'll give this woman credit for being open to something else besides the standard tripe coming from feminists, such as men are the source of all women's problems. But this author is delusional in that she thinks that all is necessary is for women to be women, and then the men will want to marry them. Sorry sister, there is a lot more needed. For a start, we need to get all the anti-father and anti-husband laws changed.
Like so many other female writers about gender-relations, this one has a simple formula, and then it's off into the sunset we go, happily ever after. These women need to get out of their fantasy worlds, and need to be willing to deal with the messy and imperfect world in which we live.
That's what I was thinking, too
Men, esp. younger ones, are much less in denial abt. what's going on than older ones, or so it's been my experience. It's going to take a lot of change to occur politically, socially, and legally to get young men interested in marriage. Not only does it need to become safe for men to marry but there has to be a real but non-coercive set of incentives in place.
There's also this: younger men don't accept traditional gender roles as a default, for either sex. "Be 'the provider'? Um, why?" And for many, they might ask "How? Been in the job market lately? Besides, most women my age make more than me *and* have better prospects!" The author misses these critical details. Unless there are a lot of really good reasons to get married, for men, under typical circumstances, it doesn't make sense to do so. And, the young guys know it.
It's great that this is happening
Even if we have not yet been able to mobilize men in large numbers to become MRAs, it's great that men are increasingly unwilling to marry. If nothing else about the men's rights movement has gotten the attention of large numbers of women to date, perhaps this will. So I think that the "can't find a man to marry me" phenomenon is going to be good for MRAs.
Does it lead to more MRAs?
It certainly is good for the typical man to realize marriage is not a desirable thing for him to agree to, simply because if he avoids it, he avoids the single greatest opportunity for being in legal and financial jeopardy that he can likely ever to be in. Even if he starts a business he can reliably protect his personal assets so if the business fails and owes creditors, he is not without a home; but even the seemingly most solid pre-nups can be vacated by a judge without much redress and he can find himself with no place to live soon enough.
So does the increasing rise in the number of men unwilling to even consider marriage actually increase the MR cause's visibility? Does it help with the addressing of the many issues MRAs raise? I am not so sure. This unwillingness of men to marry is sociological in nature, a reaction to the changes in gender roles (or elimination thereof) as well as to the realization of the legal and financial jeopardy state men are put in by marriage. Is it a reaction against systemic injustice and anti-male bias in institutions and society? Not so sure about that. If men avoiding marriage translated into men becoming MRAs, that'd be great, but I am not convinced it does. It definitely shows that increasing numbers of young men are realizing what a bad deal marriage is for them (esp. if they will have kids) and making the entirely rational choice of avoiding it.
Women are angry?
I don't believe that. Feminists are bitter and angry but the vast majority of women aren't. I hate communal blame when its directed at men so I'll defend women when such generalized criticism is aimed at them.
Delusion is correct
Women are socialized to respond to any shortage of "marriageable" men by waffling between one of two things: to play a more "traditional" submissive woman, or to play harder to get.
This woman seems to believe that men aren't falling on their swords for damsels in distress anymore because women aren't damseling hard enough. Showing their fangs a little too much, scaring the males away, or whatever...
This woman is delusional because she literally says that men haven't changed at all, that they haven't had a sexual revolution and don't have the need for one. Her advice is like trying to put nicer cheeses on mousetraps in order to catch a mouse that surfed the internet and saw how the mousetraps work. No, the mouse is not, in fact, the same old mouse anymore. And women really need to come to grips with that.