“Men say they have no choice. If they want a life, they have to ask women out on dates; they have to initiate conversations at bars and parties, they have to take the lead on sex. Women can take a Chinese menu approach to gender roles.”
Kay Hymowitz
Since my recent post criticizing Kay Hymowitz‘ Where Have the Good Men Gone? she has had more to say on the subject. Mostly, she’s overwhelmed by the anger that men feel at her judgmental and unfair assessment of their motives, choices and actions. She should have expected it, as she has encountered it before when speaking in a similar vein.
In any case, she clearly felt the need to respond to the outcry. Yesterday The Daily Beast published a new piece by Ms. Hymowitz – Why Are Men So Angry? After sharing some examples of irate comments from readers, she actually puts her finger on something very interesting:
I’ve stumbled onto a powerful underground current of male bitterness that has nothing to do with outsourcing, the Mancession, or any of the other issues we usually associate with contemporary male discontent. No, this is bitterness from guys who find the young women they might have hoped to hang out with entitled, dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling—and did I mention gold-digging?
As far as I know, she is the first person in the mainstream media to even examine the behavior of women as having a causal effect on men’s choices. She might as well be describing Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha, a foursome often praised for their independent, modern sensibilities.
In attempting to understand men, she adds some new explanations to her previous focus on male immaturity. Backlash against feminism, people acting out on the Internet, and misogyny are part of it too, in her view. There is some truth to this, but she misses the interrelatedness of the causes of male dissatisfaction. Feminism flipped gender roles, and there is considerable confusion on the part of both sexes as they navigate a sexual marketplace that now seems upside down. Hymowitz addresses the question of how today’s women want both contemporary equality and old-fashioned chivalry:
Women may want equality at the conference table and treadmill. But when it comes to sex and dating, they aren’t so sure. The might hook up as freely as a Duke athlete. Or, they might want men to play Greatest Generation gentleman. Yes, they want men to pay for dinner, call for dates…and open doors for them. A lot of men wonder: “WTF??!” Why should they do the asking? Why should they pay for dinner? After all, they are equals and in any case, the woman a guy is asking out probably has more cash in her pocket than he does; recent female graduates are making more than males in most large cities.
Perhaps most significantly, she goes on to identify – for the first time in the mainstream media, perhaps, the concept around which the sexual marketplace revolves: female hypergamy.
Far worse in the bait and switch category is women’s stated preference for nice guys and actual attraction to bad boys…enough of them are partial to the Charlie Sheens of this world that one popular dating guru, David DeAngleo, lists “Being Too Much of a Nice Guy” as No. 1 in his “Ten Most Dangerous Mistakes Men Make With Women.”
Frankly, I have no idea what Kay Hymowitz’ motives are. Perhaps she’s opening her mind to new ways of understanding. Perhaps she’s just trying to sell books. Whatever her reasons, she is the unlikely ambassador of this very real truth.
Of course, the feminist gestapo couldn’t let her get away with such a thing. Amanda Marcotte, the dragon of Pandagon, filed a retort yesterday at Slate’s XX, Why Are Men Angry? They’re Not. Marcotte resents the portrayal of women as “marriage obsessives” and denies that men are “universally angry with women.”
Her evidence for this? The rantings of men on internet boards that are dedicated to misogyny. That’s like reading a white supremacist website and concluding that all white people worship Hitler.
Having once again proved that her favorite man is made of straw, Marcotte continues:
Honestly, I don’t particularly understand why it is that women reading this are supposed to be so upset that a handful of men who hate women so much don’t want to date you. Men who are upfront about their hate save you the effort of worrying what they think of you.
Predictably, Marcotte chooses not to acknowledge the very real losses that young men have experienced in education and the workplace. She’s happy to write off a whole generation of dissatisfied men because she has no use for men anyway.
Women who like men, need men and want men in their lives should make every effort to understand that if men are unhappy, women must become unhappy. A society that marginalizes its men cannot function.
Here’s Amanda, still not getting it:
(Hat tip: Stuart Schneiderman. Don’t miss his own excellent post on the topic here.)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADylz6XoeWg&feature=related
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Wonderful post Susan!
Really even if some of this women are lesbian they don’t have fathers, brothers,uncles, male friends… they care about on some level? Is like they live on Venus or something. Half of the population becoming angry is a HUGE problem, not something to yell “good riddance”
I expect the misandrists to go down fighting. Most of them will continue rationalizing their hate long after the majority of women move on.
However, regular girls are starting to take notice. Once they try to look at things from a man’s perspective, it’s not hard to see what it is about modern girls that turn men off, and what girls need to do to appeal to men again.
For all the damage that’s been done, I don’t think it will be that hard to get gender dynamics back to normal. It takes constant BS to keep things the way they are now. Let nature takes it course, and girls will once again discover that men like to do nice things, for nice girls. Men will again discover that women actually like them to be strong. Gloria Steinem wept.
She might as well be describing Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha, a foursome often praised for their independent, modern sensibilities.
It’s an instant turn off when a girl mentions she likes the show.
Amusingly, OffTheCuff managed to make it onto the live chat they did after the original article (though unfortunately the format didn’t really allow for any discussion of substance):
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/02/23/live-chat-where-have-the-good-men-gone/
Wow! It looks like our own Off the Cuff may have been the one that inspired KH to take the hypergamy issue seriously. Well done OTC!
There really are men, good men at that, who have opted out of the dating market. My husband was one of those men, and when I met him he said he was resigned to be single for the rest of his life. He had never lived with a woman and hadn’t had a LTR in years. He has said that he can’t stand or be with bitchy women, and that most women are bitchy, so he couldn’t really be in a relationship.
@Hope.
Heh I was my husband last chance, he was already preparing for monkitude and only the fact that he had a strong drive to be a father convinced him to sign for the website we meet. I would say that I was also preparing myself for spinsterhood for a while before deciding to outsource.
@Hope.
My husband has bought a house and run into sexism in his desire to adopt a child when he met me. He honestly thought he’d be single his whole life because he had been ignored in the SMP for so long.
I took one look at a man who was his neighborhood’s big brother, who was willing to drive a long distance to dig my car out of snow, owned a house and had a good job and fell in love.
I don’t t think I was preparing myself for spinsterhood at the point- I had finally grasped that I had value after staying way too long in a relationship to an omega man and deserved a man who valued me for who I was. I didn’t think alphas would value me. Betas did. I won the dating game.
Oh Auntie Sue. You gets all the internetz today.
They’re noticing (maybe) that the men they want are leaving the building. The holdovers are the unattractive ones. That being said, once these women turn 28, almost any guy will do.
Big deal.
Nothings gonna change. TV (the oracle of women) will see to that.
I like that all of these discussions are getting out in the open. The attention is good-hopefully something positive comes out of it. Some of the comments have led me to believe that feminism in general may not be the root cause of our issues.
While I was reading the comments on Hymowitz’s articles, I noticed more mention of foreign women than I’d expected. I know I’ve beaten this foreign-girl drum here more than enough on this site, but I think I have a useful point so just roll with me here.
Here’s an example of a comment I saw:
Let’s leave the guy’s point(and whether or not we agree) aside for a second. Notice the nations the guy mentions-a usual suspect(Indonesia) known as an expat destination and definitely a developing country with fewer empowered women but…France? Quebec(Canada)?
The trend I’m seeing, which this and several other comments of the same intent have made clear to me is that feminism may not be the main issue irking men in the US. Sure, they tend to mention feminism in general when citing their concerns, but then a whole bunch of guys get on a soap box about foreign women and mention countries like Japan, Korea, Sweden, Norway, France, Canada, etc, as destinations where men can do better relationship wise.
I’ve heard all of those nations touted consistently, and yet ALL of them are, by and large, westernized, liberal and feminist. Japan and Korea have some of the most educated and career focused women on Earth thanks to their rigorous education systems(and they have the painfully low birth rates to show for it). Same with Singapore, another often noted destination. Sweden and Norway are among the most egalitarian societies on the planet-Scandinavia is practically a feminist utopia as far as the legal system and the cultural mores go. Canada is…well, Canada. Feminism is a force in all of these countries and, in some, you can reasonably claim it is a bigger force than it is here.
And yet we have American men who still want to go to these places after having visited and experienced a clear difference in the way they are treated. It’d be one thing if they were only mentioning developing nations where women simply didn’t have the same opportunities, but they’re talking about nations where women are arguably more empowered and independent than they are here.
The comment I quoted hints at this, but I posit that feminism in general is not the issue. Rather, I think there are specific American cultural trends(I suppose they may influence a particular americanized brand of feminism, I dunno) that are creating concerns amongst men.
The problems men are having with women may be more of a symptom indicating larger socio-cultural issues as opposed to being the primary result of feminism writ large.
Clearly, in other contexts, men can live with feminism, even in its most extreme forms(Scandinavia). But here we’ve got all of these crazy side effects(as Hymowitz has noted).
So what’s so different about Americans that they end up arguing and complaining so much about it relative to everyone else?
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well, not necessarily a sexual turn off but it raises a mighty high red flag otherwise. Great wife-material first-date weeder-outer question…hint: its not about the prolific shoe obsession
My take on all this is that there are some men who are bitter but there there tends to be an underlying reason.
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Most guys I know socially are cool and together and far from bitter. They would go to to lengths to avoid outwardly bitter guys and would notmwish to be associated with them.
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However in some jobs I have been exposed to, I have seen guys who are enraged with life and or women and they have serious issues involving criminality and mental health problems.
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I have observed some guys a few years back who were bitter because they couldn’t get laid and there were good reasons why women were sidestepping these guys. Its wasnt the silly roissy dynamic it was simply guys with bad breath or terrible dress sense or aggressive dating tactics who would put a women off and then wail that girls were too fickle.
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Of course I dispute the 80/20 thing. I think it’s more like 30/70 the other way but that’s based on observations that are decades old or might just be plain wrong- I accept that.
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I think women that are super militant feminists may get avoided but most modern women just don’t have too much of a problem and nor do their female counterparts as far as I can tell. My younger co workers who i have spoken to have no idea about any ‘problem’ and they agreed with my 30/70 estimate. Maybe it’s just the ones I spoke to…..
Well, thankee, I had no idea they posted the transcript. Kudos to Badger for the heads-up about the live chat.
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Honestly, the chat exactly what I expected – unenlightening, as all the answers felt like the prefabricated answers of a politician. Looks like I tried to fit too much into one question (hypergamy, responsibility of consequences, prioritization of character vs. tingle, where the good guys DO go) since that was my only shot.
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I found it telling (and rather predictable) that she didn’t answer the question part of the question – what responsibility do women have for their own choices? That says to me the answer is “None, you silly man!”
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Still, if it made her consider the issue even a bit, I’m thrilled. Perhaps in due time people like her will the discover “other half” of the Manosphere like HUS (yes, you count, it seems) and MMSL, which espouse the same underlying red-pill principles as Roissy et al, without the harshness that’s so easily rebuffed on emotional grounds as bitterness or misogyny.
>She’s happy to write off a whole generation of dissatisfied men because she has no use for men anyway.
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This is a wildly irresponsible misrepresentation of Marcotte’s post. Her point was Roissy and his ilk do not speak for all men. And she’s clearly right about that.
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I think Roissy gets a lot of things right, but he certainly doesn’t speak for me. And when I read the Hymowitz’s quotes from the responses to her previous piece, my reaction was, “geez, these guys sound like losers, I hope I never catch myself saying anything like that.” I think I’m pretty typical in this regard – I rarely hear anything remotely like that stuff from my guy friends.
Repping the feminist movement, even if I don’t have time to write a coherent argument right now.
—-
I bet Kay will read this post.
@Susan
“She’s happy to write off a whole generation of dissatisfied men because she has no use for men anyway.”
If feminists like Marcotte, me and the one from Feministing (who also failed to see a trend of no-good child-men), then it may be because our social milieus don’t have a man shortage or a commitment shortage.
The thing about “overeducated” liberals and/or feminists that a lot of conservatives don’t fully understand is that most of us, lead fairly conventional, dare I say conservative, personal lives. Men and women are expected to pair off monogamously, and they mostly do.
That doesn’t mean that there are no problems in the US as a whole (marriage does seem to be nosediving at lower socioeconomic levels), but it explains why manosphere rants fail to instill the fear of spinsterhood in most of us. As far as I can tell, men haven’t left *our* building.
Also, I don’t know what you mean by “no use for men”. Amanda is straight and I believe she has a boyfriend of several years who she lives with.
Oops if they are getting it the next generation will not: We got a younger version of Sex and The City on the works on HBO. http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/01/hbo_orders_lena_dunham_pilot_t.html
God help us all
Jess: ” there were good reasons why women were sidestepping these guys. Its wasnt the silly roissy dynamic it was simply guys with bad breath or terrible dress sense”
Hmm. So, you think that “terrible dress sense” counts as a “good reason for sidestepping a guy.” Do you grasp how shallow that is? To each their own, but I think that any woman who operates this way should (1) be honest about her shallowness (most men are) and just openly admit that grooming is more important to her than character; (2) _never_ complain when she herself is passed over for a hotter chick in skimpier clothing; and (3) never, _ever_ complain that “there are no good men left,” since — I’ll let you in on a secret here — men who don’t pay attention to shallow things are more likely to be decent and honest in the long run, while more likely to be passed over for just that reason.
You girls are all heart, Jess. Really, all heart.
Athlone:
I partly agree with you, but I mostly disagree.
Let me state where I agree with you first.
I think most of the other nations that have a highly feminist inspired judicial machinery still have less overt misandry than exists in the US. And that is what it really is all about. Women are not competing in the same way, and those societies tend to be slightly less toxic in terms of female and male relations and in what they consider a “male loser” to be.
Where you are being a wishful thinker is when you fail to notice how low the native born populations of these countries birthrates tend to be (indicating issues of some sort), how many of these countries have a strong marital institution, and -most importantly- just how misandrist and in some cases openly discriminatory many of the laws of those countries tend to be. That the women of those countries may seem more pleasant as individuals due to better socialization doesn’t mean the women involved don’t fully support feminism and many of those laws.
[Hang on this is heading someplace in the end!]
So in another world, far far away, Suze Rotolo died recently @67 in NYC. She was Bob Dylan’s first muse when he came to the Village in NYC in the 1960′s, during the great folk music ‘revival/scare’. She was a 17 years old when she first met ‘Bobby’, 20 in 1961 in Greenwich Village. They lived together mostly on & off for the next 4 years in NYC.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/suze-rotolo-muse-and-girlfriend-to-bob-dylan-dies-at-67/?partner=rss&emc=rss
Dylan recalls that moment:
“Right from the start I couldn’t take my eyes off her,” Mr. Dylan wrote in his memoir, “Chronicles: Volume 1,” published in 2004. “She was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. She was fair skinned and golden haired, full-blood Italian. The air was suddenly filled with banana leaves. We started talking and my head started to spin. Cupid’s arrow had whistled past my ears before, but this time it hit me in the heart and the weight of it dragged me overboard.”
Other than being young lovers in a different age, what’s remarkable here is the perfect ordinariness of the situation. They shared this tempestuous 4 year relationship, with Dylan writing about, to or for her often. She was his true ‘muse’ at the time. And yet, she was just a young gal in the city, trying to make her way in the art world. And despite the glowing descriptions of her, she seemed pretty average looking overall, but also having some real depth of character and learning at a young age. But overall? Looking at the pictures of them both together [below] you saw how much she admired Dylan at the time, and how much she enjoyed being with him. It showed. It showed on her face, and she could not & did not hide that sense of ‘innocent’ or senseless simple loving joy at just being with him. [It actually sold Albums too!]
That’s what’s the missing element here is in all too many ‘modern relationships’: they’re not only often devoid of that kind of simple, heedless joy, but even the possibility of that kind of joy.
Pics of her here:
http://www.google.com/images?q=suze+rotolo+photos&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&sa=X&ei=1KNtTeqpBI2TtwfazoXWBQ&ved=0CCkQsAQ&biw=1439&bih=587
Men like women who like men & like being with men. Not as ‘eternal’ adversaries or ‘comic foils’, rhetorical punching bags or ‘useful’ literary, ‘pathetic’ examples of what not to do or become. They just want someone to come home to who likes being with them, and who will or can express some simple joy in that basic fact of human contact and togetherness. And sadly? That’s getting harder & harder to find today. Suze had it as a natural gift. Cheers, ‘VJ’
[Geez, Yes, that was the 'usual' VJ who posted the above. Sorry for the extra 'd' that snuck in there from the next line. Sorry for any confusion] Cheers, ‘VJ’
@Clarence:
Well, as far as birthrates go, I’ll agree that low birth rates in those countries are indicative of a large and serious problem, but what issue is that specifically? The lack of fertility surely isn’t coming from some a dearth of healthy relationships between the genders, so what’s going on?
Some of these nations aren’t losing the fertility battle to the US(at least, not by much). Sweden and Norway are at 1.9 and 2 respectively (compared to the American fertility rate of 2.1-stats from the World Bank).
The main issue is what causes the difference in toxicity in gender relations here and there. Would you posit that fertility rates have a lot to do with it?
From what I can see, low fertility doesn’t seem to preclude good gender relations. The US, with the highest fertility rate in the developed world, might also have the most toxic male-female relations. But why?
I also agree that many of the laws in some of these countries (especially Sweden) are openly misandrist, sometimes shockingly so.
Then again, you and I both agree that in spite of the presence of these laws, the systems in some of these countries seem somewhat less misandrist overall than what we in the US are used to(hence less toxic male-female relations). Again, this in spite of the harsh feminist-promoted misandrist laws we sometimes see there.
The key is how and why is that? Sure, the women there support feminism and its laws. Somehow, though, they are able to maintain less toxic relations with men than we see in the USA. How is it that they manage to put feminism to the forefront and stay more positive than Americans can?
I just think that there may be a more complex answer behind American problems. Feminism seems like just one piece of the puzzle here. It is a big piece, but it clearly isn’t the only one. If we can figure out what is making US gender relations so much more adversarial than we see in so many other developed nations, maybe we can get a little closer to the solution.
@Hepsas
First, my statement that Marcotte has no use for men is based on her body of work, not just this particular essay. She is generally very hostile and derisive in her attitude towards men.
Second, she failed to address the only real issue – men are lagging in college enrollment, GPA, jobs after graduation, and pay compared with their female peers. This issue is the subject of Hymowitz’ book, and all of her recent essays. Instead of giving that any consideration whatsoever, Marcotte employs her usual snark in saying that all the men who feel that way are misogynists anyway. In this one essay, she invokes Hitler, Sodini, and Darren Mack. She describes men who object to Hymowitz’ portrayal of them as immature men who mail-order brides and waste their money on PUA scams.
True, not all men are languishing in pre-adulthood. But when the college ratio is 60/40, we’ve got a serious problem, Houston. Yet Marcotte writes as if we’re talking about a miniscule number of men with borderline personality disorder (at best).
That’s what’s the missing element here is in all too many ‘modern relationships’: they’re not only often devoid of that kind of simple, heedless joy, but even the possibility of that kind of joy.
“I think the word used on ancient times (the 50′s) was magic”
@GudEnuf
I count on you as our resident male feminist. I look forward to your thoughts.
Re Kay, that would be kinda fun. I give credit where it’s due, and I do believe she has shed light on a very important subject. Finally.
I thoroughly enjoyed my interactions with Amanda Marcotte here last summer. Even though she said that I am just envious and worried that my man will have sex with sluts like her.
Do you realize how elitist this is?
Furthermore, one has only to look at the ranks of prominent feminists to see that they marry and reproduce at a low rate compared with other white women of similar education. Indeed, the ranks of sex-positive feminists are largely filled with women who aren’t quite sure why they’re still alone, but enjoy a robust sex life with a variety of partners as they explore their sexuality and discover their outer sexual boundaries. (Jessica Valenti and Rebecca Traister are two exceptions.) If Marcotte is monogamous and committed, it’s not something she freely admits. Last summer on this site she boisterously identified herself as a slut.
I think it’s great that you found your life partner. But if you are at all tuned in to the zeitgeist, surely you must see that your local bookstore is making space for the rash of spinster lit books. And do you believe that hookup culture in college is a myth? Do you fail to see that there is indeed a commitment shortage? Perhaps not for you, but for many women aged 18-30? I find it difficult to believe you are ignorant of this – which leads me to believe you are being disingenuous at best, obtuse at worst.
“Even though she said that I am just envious and worried”
It’s something I’ve definitely noticed about these feminist bloggers and the commenters who sympathize with them: they’re very quick to change the subject from debating facts about the world, to ridiculing the supposed motivations of people who disagree with them. Men and women are both entitled to receive this treatment, as you’ve seen first-hand. Really, this habit doesn’t raise my opinion of women’s ability to reason, sorry to say.
If we can figure out what is making US gender relations so much more adversarial than we see in so many other developed nations, maybe we can get a little closer to the solution.
US interpersonal relations are adversarial in general, more so than many other places. There are gender tensions, interracial tensions, ethnic tensions, religious tensions, class tensions, regional tensions, and political tensions. There are even tensions between subcultures (nerds vs. jocks, sports team rivalries, and so on).
These “us vs. them” mentalities tear at the basic social fabric. Even members of a family can be at each other’s throats. The country I grew up in, most people had a national sense of identity that everyone who was living in the country was your neighbor. There are national sports teams, and they only play against other countries. Most people look similar and have similar beliefs. There just aren’t that many social tensions.
In many ways the US is at war with itself, and that shows up in interpersonal interactions. Diversity does foster a great deal of creativity and innovation, and America leads in those areas. But as far as social cohesion is concerned, America is simply comprised of too many different groups to be truly harmonious.
No offense, VJ, but I think this argument is the male version of a girl’s “I like nice boys but go for bad boys IRL”. Every single girl I know just wants to be with a man she loves. How and with whom she falls in love with is up to the girl (to some extent–we can’t all help who we fall in love with), but at every girl’s heart is the simple desire for companionship. We all want the simple joy of being together.
Girls today are seeking answers for why they aren’t in relationships. I have offered exclusivity to every guy I’ve dated and fallen for, and I have been rebuffed every time. I’m not offering him a relationship because I want a foil or punching bag. I’m not offering a relationship because I want his money and his BABIEZ. I’m offering him a relationship because wow, I really, REALLY like him and I just want to be with him.
It is just as depressing for good girls to see these young men chase after sluts, or refuse us relationships after being traumatized by a psychobitch, knowing full well that we could offer so, so much in terms of companionship, and beyond.
These girls are not getting harder to find. They are hiding in plain view. I enjoy being with men. I enjoy and crave the intimate ‘togetherness’ when I am with someone I have feelings for. I consider myself to be exactly the kind of girl you have described and, as flattering as it is, I refuse to believe that I am a rare, special snowflake in this SMP. Girls like me are everywhere, they are reading this blog, they are sitting next to you at your favorite coffee shop, they are NOT missing out on you and they are NOT messing around.
@Stephenie
Lena Dunham has gotten great reviews for her film Tiny Furniture. Her whole family is incredibly high achieving. Sounds like they’ve hired a PR firm and had great success. I hope they’re wrong about the resemblance to SATC, though.
@Esau
Jess does not represent all “girls.” I’m not saying that all of us are good-hearted, but many women are, hypergamy notwithstanding.
Argh. Meant to say, “they are NOT missing you”, as in “they are not overlooking you”.
It’s been a long night.
E:You girls are all heart, Jess.
S:Jess does not represent all “girls.”
That was intended specifically to the “sidestepping” women that Jess knows and refers to, presumably including herself; not meant generally. Sorry if that wasn’t perfectly clear.
@VJ
The photo of her and Dylan on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is a powerful symbol of my own childhood. That album was played constantly in our house – my father in particular adored Dylan. I’ve always loved that photo, and the kind of easy intimacy it portrayed.
I fear that NY as a place where a young, idealistic artist could go and live and work no longer exists. Or at least it’s far less hospitable. Aspiring teenage girls used to pack a suitcase, hop on a Greyhound bus, and go live at the Barbizon Hotel for women. Quite a few famous actresses and artists got their start that way. e.g. Lauren Bacall.
Human contact and togetherness – perhaps that also is too pricey today.
Understandable, but for what it’s worth, the men who are feminists use all the same tactics. It’s a definite snarkiness, evident at Jezebel, Feministing, Feministe, Pandagon, etc. It’s an avoidance tactic – the last refuge of frauds, really.
@Hope
I was actually discussing this with my inlaws and my husband on Christmas (yeah I know we are a bunch of bores) how it amazes me Otherness of their culture when pretty much everyone here descend of immigrants but leave them a couple of years living here and they start to hate the ones that come, you see the tensions between the races, when the Irish came, the jews… is like everyone blame the new kids for everything (when in my country our natives practically sold the country to the Spaniards and we had kept our foreigners are cool policy, not to good results always), and even old immigrants start to socialize by doing the same. This model can be seen on everything from religion, to race, to subcultures really is like everyone is at war.
I will also said the culture of the Bully is very strange to me for understand why is tolerated. Did you had bullies back at home?
@Susan
“Do you realize how elitist this is?”
That’s why I acknowledged, in the same comment, that our not seeing it doesn’t mean there’s no problem elsewhere. I was trying to explain the disconnect in perception. As for the spinster “zeitgeist” you describe I see it in media but not so much in real live people. Friends, former classmates, coworkers. Yes, I realize this is a class issue. I’m not advocating it, I’m being descriptive and trying to explain how Marcotte and others don’t see what you and Hymowitz see. I believe you yourself have noted numerous times that the women who “don’t know” why they’re alone have passed up commitment-desiring “decent” men more than once. So the issue doesn’t seem to be commitment shortage for them.
As for hookup culture, almost everyone I know, men and women, hot or dorky, hooked up at least a few times in college. It doesn’t appear to lead to spinsterhood. YMMV.
Athlone:
Actually, I think the birthrates issue says more about the state of sexual relations in a society than you think it does. Mind you, I’m not talking about 4 kids or (like in the past and in many poor countries with limited lifespans and no contraception) or 6 or more children. I’m talking “replacement” level here, which I believe is approximately 2.0 children per married couple. The only other factor I can think of that explains the birth- dearth so well in a society is the overall economy as regards the expense of family formation.
Anyway, I think the vast majority of the US population actually has a birthrate below those of many European countries. I’ll explain.
The calculations of the census department to get population figures include the children of illegal aliens, and last I saw (around 2007 or 2008) that was still the fastest growing segment of the US population. It’s been said in many places that the only reason the US population is above replacement is because of the fertility of illegal immigrant women. Remove them from the picture, and remove the Mormons and and the one or two other large protestant sects that are busy reproducing at larger than average rate, and you will still be left with 90 plus percent of the population, black, white, and hispanic. I wonder what an adjusted birthrate for the 90 percent plus of the legally born, non fundamentalist part of the US population would be? I bet its rather far below replacement, actually.
As a feminist let me add that women who want equality AND ‘chivalry’ really piss me off. I do not like a man to open a door for me, unless of course he happened to go first. And I just hate when a man gets that panicked look when I happened to go first and held the door. Just go through the friggin’ door.
I don’t think men have left the building. I think that it has gotten harder in some circles to find men who are not boy-men and women who are not girl-women. I know mostly happily married couples, with several kids. The only divorce amongst friends was because one went off to become a fundie.
I see the problem as both sexes being completely coddled and it being expressed differently due to gender biased parenting.
@SayWhaat
Don’t get discouraged. This might sound lame, but you’re better off with a direct “no” on exclusivity from those guys than a “yes” to exclusivity that would waste months or years of your life before trainwrecking. As a general rule (yes yes, exceptions exist), I believe that a guy who doesn’t have at least *some* “oneitis” for you early on isn’t going to be the right one for the long haul (same goes vice versa) anyway. You sound like you’re outgoing enough that you won’t miss the right guy if he comes along.
Hope:
I think you are even righter than you know.
The US has long had three strands of thought that, when overdone, could potentially fray at the very fabric of the society.
One is excessive competitiveness. This is in part based on our (mostly a good thing) capitalist economic system, but people in the USA tend to look at even youth sports and the game of love as having necessary winners and losers. Like a game isn’t worth playing unless someone has to lose.
The second is the “protestant work ethic”, so to speak. Nothing wrong with this in moderation: it helped build the US into a worldwide power after all. But this is why our society could never handle the very idea of a ‘siesta’, and why our societal memes regarding time off of work are so screwed up.
The third, and last, is the strain of American sexual puritanism. People are still very judgmental about how other people love and conduct their sex lives and that goes for most sex-pos feminists as much as with the most hide-bound sexual traditionalists. I think this explains in part why many men and women seem to actively hate or disdain all members of the opposite sex: Feminism got the idea of guilt and taint from our puritan heritage and has been busily applying it to all men.
The second strand is
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How about this? Count up the times you’ve been rebuffed by such guys. Now, count up the times you’ve explicitly rejected you’ve guys who have asked you out, or tried to make conversation with you. (In reality, you’d have to multiply that second number by about 5 to account for the implicit rejections you gave by strenuously avoid eye-contact, or flat-out escaped the scene, or guys just never even noticed in the first place.)
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I don’t expect those numbers to be equal, but you have to realize, you are rejectING far more than you are rejectED and to put yourself in the rejected role is fatuous.
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I believe that girls who are good-hearted like you say you are, are quickly snapped up by guys at or slightly above your own level… so long as you want them.
It is just as depressing for good girls to see these young men chase after sluts
Again, those are the high-status guys. Round and round we go.
On why American feminism is so abrasive:
“US interpersonal relations are adversarial in general, more so than many other places.”
Hope is right, but white-collar American feminism doubles this up and lives by one tenet: don’t take any shit from a man.
It’s not about equality, or equal opportunity, or competing fairly. It’s about the longtime-oppression meme and sticking it to men whenever they can. That explains equality-when-we-want-it and chivalry-when-we-want-it.
Frisky writer Jessica Wakeman, who has re-discovered chivalry and male provision as she has realized she’ll be unplushed and poor for life as a journalist, wrote a column where she described a waiter or a date (I can’t recall which one) pulling out her chair for her at a restaurant. Instead of sitting in the seat she made a big point of walking around to the other side of the table and pulling out her own seat to show she wouldn’t be put in anybody’s social debt. (The guy didn’t walk away from the date at that exact moment which is what he should have done.)
That’s not feminism, that’s just being difficult for its own sake. And these drills repeat themselves every day. If a woman doesn’t take an opportunity to push herself ahead at a man’s expense she’s letting down the feminist sisterhood.
AAMOF grerp wrote on this: http://grerp.blogspot.com/2010/10/piece-of-advice-74-do-not-confused.html
I don’t envy SayWhaat’s position but I do empathize. As I’ve said before she is in the same position I and many betas were in in college – lots to offer but just not getting it right in the scene. It’s a little of us, a bit of who we’re pursuing and a LOT of poor fortune.
@Clarence, ah yes, also fierce individualism.
I disagree that traditional attitudes toward sex makes gender relations difficult. In Asia there is still a strong tradition valuing sexual morality, and people are very judgmental about others’ love lives. A year or two ago there was a big deal made about a young couple making out in an elevator — that would never be news here unless it was some celebrity gossip.
But it is like the grown-ups telling you to each your vegetables. I absorbed that lesson well and am reaping the benefits. Those kids who rebelled (like the feminists rebelling against sexual morality) might have fun in the short term. In the long run, they are likely to have issues. There are perfectly healthy people who have eaten nothing but junk food all their lives. But that’s not something you can count on for most people.
@Stephenie, bullying was very rare and was stomped out by adults as soon as any signs of it showed. Those who would be likely bullied in America, or the “geeks” and “nerds,” are the highest academically achieving kids, and they were the most admired and the ones that all the girls wanted.
@ OTC:
Ugh, again?
Zero. That’s right, I said zero. I have not once turned down a guy who has asked me out on a date, nor have I ever ignored any man who has tried to make polite conversation with me.
The only times I have turned down a guy is after the first or second date, after I have already given him a chance. Turning someone down after one or two dates is not expressing preference for an alpha cock carousel, it is simply an issue of compatibility.
You know what? If I want an ambitious, intelligent man who possesses good character, and if that man is what you consider to be high-status, then so be it.
@ Hope and Clarence:
I think you guys pretty much cover it. Puritanism, from what I can see, seems to be at the root of a lot of interesting quirks(both positive and negative) within American culture. I think it explains a lot of the animosity we see.
Not sure how we can go about correcting that, as it would involve altering the root of what has made America what it is. Then again, you never know I guess.
@Clarence:
Interesting. I just took the figure for the whole population.
The white, non-hispanic population in the US is supposedly at about 1.8-definitely below replacement but high for a population in a developed nation. Mormons are at roughly 2% of the US population, maybe add 1% for other smaller hardcore fundamentalist groups throughout the nation. I’m not sure how to apply the math here to get an exact figure but I’d assume their influence at such a small percentage couldn’t be exceedingly high.
If I just had to throw a figure out there excluding these groups…1.7 or so, 1.6 at the lowest. That’s just BS guesswork though on my part.
@Jess
Placing such high emphasis on a man’s dress styles (a superficiality) is about as fair as a man placing such high emphasis on tits and ass (a superficiality).
As for Marcotte’s attitude, the Wikipedia entry for her highlighted an unflattering aspect of her character – namely taking a highly insulting attitude toward a certain religion…which ABC’s Terry Moran wrote on his blog “”her comments about other people’s faiths could well be construed as hate speech.”[3].
(I’m NOT starting a religion debate here — I only brought this up because personal beliefs about religion are hot potatoes that anyone with an IQ of a carrot should know to tread lightly and respect around – particularly wordsmiths as high up the food chain as Marcotte. This suggests that she’s either really lacking in social skills or simply doesn’t give a damn about respecting people whose views are different from hers.)
@ AnonymousF:
Yeah. I think the biggest thing that sucks for me right now is that I fell for a guy who had (has?) feelings for me, but was so scarred from being in a relationship with a huge bitch that he just cannot fathom the idea of being in another one, even years later.
As bad as many women have it in the SMP they don’t have it as bad as a low status man. I think of all the appalling treatment I’ve received from women, even or maybe even especially undesirable ones. Expressing interest in a woman seems license for many to dump on somebody. The old forms of courtship, where less-than-perfect people met other less-than-perfect people for actual relationships, seems to be pretty much dead.
@ Omega Man:
I’m sorry to hear that was how you were treated. It makes me sad to know that women behave that way–even if you’re not interested, at least be polite!
SayWhaat. You must either be the only woman in history to never turn down a man, or, you simply are so unaware of men who do like you that you are unconsciously rejecting them with a “business friendly” demeanor. There are too many millions of men who find young women attractive for you to have zero true rejections. I just don’t believe it, any more than I’d believe a guy who has never been turned down.
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I also note you carefully said “dated and fallen for” which implies you have… well, rejected the guys that you didn’t fall for.
Here, Here to VJ’s above post.
To Mr. Mcginnis
The problem with America, is the lack of any cultural fabric. Culture informs the way we make value judgments, tastes. It allows for reference. This is the source of both America’s ability to invent itself so easily and destroy itself, a double edged sword. The ugliness of feminism has spilled-over into other foreign nations. The difference is that these foreign nations have a strong cultural narrative for men and women to full back onto, if a young girl is confused she has folk stories and other such traditions to inform her. It means that on a superficial level feminism very much exists there but at the ground level sexual relations still go on as they always have. America’s lack of a consistent cultural identity and narrative, like a vacuum, allowed feminism to flourish. An interesting observation is how puritanical American feminism is, it must continually push itself into every human sphere much like a religion. I notice also that it is sold as a ready made identity for young girls, this is both evil and so sad.
Here are some interesting links, the man has a mind like a diamond anvil, of course he is deliberately iconoclastic and inflammatory:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HG04Aa02.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/EL16Aa01.html
Feminists have no armies.
A large pool of unemployed,disenfranchised, angry young men is an army. Just look at the middle east and every other revolution.
Marcotte is frankly suicidal
I’m sick of hearing “nice guys” whine and rant about how life is unfair to them. Our resident “nice guy” Athlone McGinnis has admitted to wanting to collect “notches” before snagging a “nice girl” for the long haul. And outlined his plan to do just that. How “nice” is that?!
Take that ugliness, times it by a thousand and put it on amphetimenes and testosterone shots, and there you have the “mens rights movement”.
I’m glad I’ll be dead with a few decades…
@Hope.
The same in my country if a kid bullied they called their parents and told them to find a way to control their kid or he/she will be expelled with a black mark on their record so other schools would be wary of taking them. THAT usually fixed it them right away and you could ask anyone if they will go to HS again and I will say 98% of them would love to. I was totally surprised by the fact that in here people hated HS and most of them wouldn’t go back again most of them had a bully story to share. I agree about the values of different cultures there was of course the prettiest girl on the class and the handsomest guy, but usually you could gain status by developing other skill, being smart, nice, a leader on a class so there were few if none lonely kid no to mention we were socialized to try and make the class come together so even the most antisocial kid will have at least a couple of friends to interact and talk during their class and who invented the dances on HS? We had our parties but everyone participated had fun and both males and females were socialized to dance with everyone because rejecting people is RUDE, specially on public. There was no such a thing as someone that was better than the other, making this huge event were high rank kids get even more attention and the low classes one gets reminded how unpopular they are…Again.Terrible idea altogether competition, competition, competition from the cradle to the grave, specially on a society with little or non-existant emotional support and with kids that are starting to get out there. No wonder everyone acts like everything is a fight, it is a fight an ugly one at that.
“Yeah. I think the biggest thing that sucks for me right now is that I fell for a guy who had (has?) feelings for me, but was so scarred from being in a relationship with a huge bitch that he just cannot fathom the idea of being in another one, even years later.”
Please take this in the best way – it’s probably not you or him; she must have been one hell of a bitch. I believe most normal young guys would not turn down a relationship opportunity with a woman we liked because of earlier dating scars unless it was really bad. She really must have been real bad to turn him off to LTRs for years.
OTC,
I’m willing to give SayWhaat the benefit of the doubt – everything she’s told us, and she’s been quite open, suggests she’s dating in good faith. That it’s not working out doesn’t have to mean she’s giving dagger-eyes to 80% of the guys.
@VJ:
If a talented musician talked about me like that, and wrote about, to or for me often, I’d “express joy” at being around him also.
Actually, I think the birthrates issue says more about the state of sexual relations in a society than you think it does. Mind you, I’m not talking about 4 kids or (like in the past and in many poor countries with limited lifespans and no contraception) or 6 or more children. I’m talking “replacement” level here, which I believe is approximately 2.0 children per married couple. The only other factor I can think of that explains the birth- dearth so well in a society is the overall economy as regards the expense of family formation.
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Probably more economics then sexual relations.
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In the last 100+ years we’ve transitioned from an agrarian, agricultural society where most people had limited education to a hyper-specialized society where advanced education is a necessity to a earning a good living.
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In agricultural society, kids were workers for the family. There was no college to put them through. Net-net, they were probably an economic positive in that their work output exceeded the expenses of raising them. So you saw 5, 8, 10 kids.
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In today’s society, kids are expensive, especially for middle to upper middle class and beyond. There is dance class, and piano lessons, and football camp, and then 4 years of private college. So you get your 2.1 kids or below.
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Like the SMP, or really anything for that matter, incentives matter. There really is no incentive to have kids beyond the fact that I suspect for 99%+ of women there is some instinctual drive for motherhood, and I think probably 70-80% of guys want to pass on their genes for ego reasons (part of me will “live forever”).
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But from a strictly economic view, kids are definitely massively negative present value. Additionally, in our socialized society, “government” will take care of you instead of your kids. Social Security payments are not tied in any way to the number of productive workers you produced for society to pay those benefits.
@Stephenie, most of my elementary school years were spent in a foreign country, but my middle school and high school years were spent in the US. You are right that it is an experience that I would not want to repeat. My husband and I both went to private high schools, and even though bullying was more subdued, it was still clear to both of us that we were the “low status” people. In my case I just didn’t even bother socializing and settled on being an outcast. He on the other hand tried to fit in which gave him more trouble. But the upshot is he has many more colorful stories from high school than I do.
A comment at http://www.feministe.us urges early baby-making:
I have to laugh at this post and the comments. The only reason not to wait is that it’s hard as hell to raise young children in your 40s if you’re not as wealthy as Hollywood starlets who all have nannies.
I’m 51 – I have an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old and I’m done in. I”m exhausted beyond description. I love my kids more than my life, but the middle-aged body wasn’t meant to do what I’m doing. I saw the worn-out moms at my Catholic school and for some reason never saw myself in that picture, but here I am.
I was the first wave of feminism when we would no longer be slaves to our “biology” – we’d all have scintillating careers and leave the babies to the “breeders.” Callous, hideous attitude now that I look back. Cause no career comes close to having a family for satisfaction.
Beyond that, I came out of college in a rotten economy but I had never seen the prosperity that your generation and it’s really set back maturity for sure – you don’t know it when you’re in the middle of it.
So go have the babies now and save your back. Mattie
@Hope
Life is so strange sometimes.
@SayWhaat
“I’m not offering him a relationship because I want a foil or punching bag. I’m not offering a relationship because I want his money and his BABIEZ. I’m offering him a relationship because wow, I really, REALLY like him and I just want to be with him.”
Yeah, but you have the option whenever you want to take his money (and his BABIEZ) away from him with the power of the legal system behind you. Who can say you wouldn’t do that down the road?
Every divorced guy has heard the same “promise” in the early days of his marriage, let me tell you. It’s worth absolutely nothing.
You want a man to commit? Wait until our legal system, especially the civil code concerning family issues, stops treating women as a highly privileged legal class.
Until then, there are plenty of examples all around us men here in the US of how women’s “promises” usually mean nothing at all after 8 years of marriage, especially with the prospect of possible lifetime alimony and many years of tax-free child support dangled in front of you.
More men should hang out with their friends and avoid the legal and financial gulag of marriage.
More men should say “no” to the slavery that long-term relationships inflict on so many.
To the men in Kay Hymowitz’ article, I say, “Keep doing what you’re doing!”
These men can stay at home, mind the kids, and divorce their working wives to inflict the peonage of divorce on their ex-wives, the same peonage that has been inflicted on countless men in the past up ’til today. Beautiful!
The oppressive prison of old-school marriage is no longer.
Work harder, women! Go to war, work in the mines, work on weekends and evenings, stay up late! Work, work, work to support me and your family.
If you do not make me happy, I will take away your kids, your money and your future. Better not make me mad!
Welcome to the feminist utopia!
Now that the subject is back to “winners and losers”, the competitive nature of American culture, etc., this is my cue to repost this link
What Darwin Didn’t Mean: How Social Darwinism Fails Us
It’s long, but worth it.
Ahh, Amanda Marcotte, what a piece of work. I’ve been reading Pandagon for a while, and boy, she’s one of the least empathic people I’ve seen blog. How about her defensiveness about one of her book covers (ah, overblown, it must be and not racially insensitive)? Or her many threads with snark toward women who valued motherhood or wanted relationships? How about the disdain of all those “Nice Guys” (TM)? In a strange way, she mirrors the lack of empathy and lack of ability to walk in someone else’s shoes that she so heartily condemns in her nemesis of the Religious Right…
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So it’s not surprising for her ignore the “mens” in her latest screed. Her modus operandi generally seems to be that she doesn’t see any such issues in her circle, so it can’t be true, or it’s just misogyny. Must be mens who should check their privilege. It was quite amusing seeing her cast Susan as a some insecure woman worried about keeping her husband from the “bad women out there”.
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One of the things to note in the MGTOW approach that she so heartily disdains, is that for a large contingent, it’s not about angry men, or divorced men, or men who are bitter (though those will figure in the more vocal segments). It’s a lot of just plain ignored men, disdained men, under the radar men. There are some men who are dropping out because there’s nothing actively making it worth their while not to do so. How prevalent is this? I don’t know, but anecdotally, it seems it’s more than just one’s crazy unmarried uncle…
XNYer: “How about the disdain of all those “Nice Guys” (TM)?”
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I don’t consider guys who are pissed off that they are not able to notch up the numbers that the alpha guys are to be “nice guys” just because they are shy/geeky/nerdy and not “getting any” from women. A genuine “nice guy” would not be envious of players and he would not want to notch up numbers. He would be relationship-minded. We have our own “nice guy brigade” right here on HUS and they are all passive-aggressive haters and number notch wannabe’s.
Boycott the Nice Guy TM and big-up the REAL nice guy – if he even exists.
And they can keep wondering “WTF??!”
We women know that these are markers of provider status. In a country that does not provide paid maternity leave at all, what to speak of a prolonged period of time so that you can recover from PPD, breastfeed your infant around the clock and take the time needed to bond with him/her – then YES – women still require “providers” at least during that time and longer if they lose their job because of pregnancy, maternity, PPD, breastfeeding, mother-child-bonding, etc.
I believe its Sweden or Finland that provide a 3 years paid leave for the mother and 1 year paid leave for the father. Oh those evil Socialist/Feminazi regimes!
So, unless these same men who are wondering “WTF??!” are on board with extended paid maternity leave for women – the potential future mothers of their children – then they better just stfu wrt complaints about working, paying for stuff and possibly supporting their wives.
RE: “an entire generation of dissatisfied men” —- Susan, are you serious? You really believe this generation of men – the whole lot of ‘em – are dissatisfied?
I know a few dissatisfied guys, however its not because they can’t get laid or the girl next door is bedding down with the bad guy. Its because they don’t fit in with America’s mass consumerist materialistic society – AND THEY DON’T WANT TO.
And guess what? They don’t have to.
Let them live as happy bohemian couch surfers. What’s wrong with that?
ExNewYorker:
You forgot she threw the Duke 3 under the bus early on, continued to insult them by calling them racist sexual predators after they were declared innocent by the Attorney General, and never apologized, though she did try to erase her posted thoughts about their exoneration. Thank God for screenshots and The Way Back Machine.
She’ll throw people under the bus for ideology. That’s really all you need to know about her.
And now I’ve done two posts about the same person on this blog. That’s never happened before, and I’m going to try to keep the Evil Ones name (only slight snark) from passing my lips again.
@Mike C.
Your post about children being expensive reminded me of Jonathan Swift’s “A modest Proposal.” I just had to share the laugh.
Mention was made that some men had gone so far as to consider (or implement) adopting just to fill their need to be a father… Now that is a scary idea. Suddenly that bluegrass song that personified an old man’s relationship with his dog is a lot less ridiculous. Will the new cliche for Betas be collecting dogs? Has the crazy-cat-lady finally found competition?
SayWhaat, OTC….Whatever the case may be with SayWhaat, it is probably true tht the average woman rejects 5-10 times as much as she is rejected….BUT there is a huge difference between being “rejected” by someone you’re just met and isn’t interested in conversation or more, and being rejected by someone who you’ve spent time with and who has give you reason to believe they’re very interested in you.
Kind of like the difference between not getting a response from a potential employer when sending a resume, on the one hand, and getting fired after your first 2 weeks on the job, on the other.
@AnonF
There’s a lot going on in this comment. First, there is a class issue in the broad sense – socioeconomic status. However, I would argue that the issue is real and problematic at Harvard, Duke, Stanford, etc. I meant elitist in a different way – in the sense that you have what you want in life and hang out with similar people, but you don’t acknowledge the very real dilemma that women like SayWhaat are in. Commitment in college is hard to come by, for a variety of reasons. Physical intimacy generally precedes emotional intimacy. This is not the script for a few unlucky souls. This is the dominant cultural model.
Marcotte is anxious to achieve sexual equality for women, and believes that men are guilty of perpetuating an unfair double standard. The problem with this view, as I have written many times is that:
1. Unleashing female sexuality has exploded promiscuity and led to many women turning themselves into sexual objects.
2. It is not possible to re-educate men about sex. Biology trumps politics.
On the point about women passing up decent men, you are correct. That’s another frequent theme in my writing. It is the result of female hypergamy. Marcotte does not accept this, or the notion that decent men are losing out. She writes off the men who are losing out as misogynists or weirdos.
Feminism sidelined the decent men. That may have been an unintended consequence, but it’s one that needs to be addressed. Your comments do not address the very real demographic data that clearly demonstrate young men as a whole are not thriving. You got yours, which is great, and I’m all about individual strategic action, but gaining a clear understanding of the environment will be essential for some. The trends of later marriage and fewer marriages mean that many women will not get theirs.
@Mac
Welcome, thanks for leaving a comment.
Yes, this mirrors my own experience. However, things are very different for my daughter, who is in college. Eventually, those kids will marry, but it will be later than is perhaps desirable, biologically speaking. Many women and men currently in college have not been in a relationship and may not do so for several more years. And of course, the 60F/40M ratio in American colleges means that we’ll have a very real shortage of marriageable men, assuming that women prefer to marry someone with the same level of education.
I agree that both sexes have been coddled by my generation of parents, and I’m surely guilty of it myself. But I’m curious to know what you mean by gender biased parenting, and how that plays a role.
@Hope
This is fascinating. What constitutes social dominance is culturally determined, then. And it must be determined by parents – they define early in a child’s life what success is, whether it’s being the star on your Little League team, or in your science class.
@filrabat
Yes, she has been accused of hate speech against Catholics. That scandal led her to resign as John Edwards campaign blogger after just a couple of months. Marcotte also published a book that used a cartoonish illustration of a gorilla carrying a scantily clad woman. She was accused of racism, and the publisher had to recall all the copies and reissue it. Finally, to this day she maintains the guilt of the Duke lacrosse players. She is really a terrible person.
P.S. Sorry, I see that others have already covered much of this ground. Still, I’ll leave it up b/c I can’t stand her, haha.
“Feminism sidelined the decent men.”
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Sexually speaking, yes. But, per the feminist click, that does not give those men the right to opt out of subsidizing the cost of paid maternity leave, state funding to abort alpha-male-inseminated pregnancies, onerous social programs or any other decent-men-tax-funded women-dependent program du jour.
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“A genuine “nice guy” would not be envious of players and he would not want to notch up numbers. He would be relationship-minded.”
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There are many “nice guys” with those highly sought after characteristics out there. Another character trait those men have is self respect. Therefore, a small subset of women are denied the privilege of being rescued by such relationship-minded men. Even a staunch feminist has enough sense to know that a self respecting nice guy will not sully himself.
Great post, Susan! The original article prompted a lot of discussion amongst me and my friends, but I hadn’t heard about this follow up article. I think she is dead on about woman today wanting both equality but then old fashioned chivalry when dating. I actually had a full on argument with my ex about this. He claimed that he thought that since I was so independent I wouldn’t want him to do such old fashioned things like paying and setting up real dates. I think the truth is that becasue we are so independent and strong in the work place and in social settings, that we look for a time (dating) where we can take a little break from all that and let someone else lead the way for once. At least that is the case for me! Great post. Very interesting…
@Badger
Jessica Wakeman has undergone a radical change. Now she’s all about not being cut out for casual sex, while admitting that for years she thought she was and acted accordingly. With the Editor Amelia’s similar sexual makeover, I’m wondering if The Frisky is going to be less sex-positive overall. I hope so.
“…men are guilty of perpetuating an unfair double standard.”
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Meaning that some women can and do spend years of perfectly “fair” screwing around [couched as "exploring" and "boundary defining"] but if one man [read: the one she wants to marry] rejects a woman for having done so he is perpetuating an unfair double standard. He is also perpetuating such a standard if he proactively seeks a foreign wife. If all this is true, then men should be proud of perpetuating an “unfair” double standard.
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Here is an article:
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Feminism of the Future Relies on Men
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/world/europe/23iht-letter.html?_r=1
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good luck
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“The only thing that can level the playing field at work is a level playing field at home. And that requires a major shift in public policy and corporate culture.”
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Yep, pass laws that force men to be “fair”.
@Susan
“I meant elitist in a different way – in the sense that you have what you want in life and hang out with similar people, but you don’t acknowledge the very real dilemma that women like SayWhaat are in.”
I believe SayWhaat is still in college. When I was in college I had a boyfriend for a while, but also had over 2 years without a boyfriend during which I met some good guys and some not so good. I’ve experienced having feelings for someone (a good guy by the way, just not into me) who doesn’t return them equally. Most of my friends’ college experiences were similar: one or two “official” relationships and 1-3 years of awkward singlehood with both dates and hookups (which I consider to include stuff as mild as making out). I also know people who married their college boy/girlfriends, so that happens too.
It never occured to me to blame a wholesale “lack of good men” or “commitment shortage” when a guy wasn’t into me, because I knew I’d turned down some good men for lack of attraction or lack of long term compatibility. As I said a while back, I acknowledge things may have changed a lot in the past 5-6 years. And some schools may have worse cultures than others.
It’s not that “I have mine” because I’m so awesome and SayWhaat isn’t. Rather, I am 6-8 years older. I’d be happy to bet money that by the time SayWhaat is my age, she has hers too. Even now, it appears quite a few guys are willing to invest the effort to take her out on real dates even though she’s not sleeping with them. Presumably they’re at least entertaining the idea of making her their girlfriend because otherwise I don’t see the point. It’s not like they’re inviting her over at 2am to hook up for 2 months before rejecting commitment. The fact that she hasn’t found the right mutual “click” yet isn’t that alarming.
Hymowitz’s data is evidence of later marriage, but not evidence of less overall lifetime marriage. She conveniently only cites stats about 25 year olds and 25-29 year olds. As far as I know, lifetime marriage rates for college-educated women aren’t dropping significantly. Later marriage can be a problem fertility-wise, but I’m not sure later marriage is a result of men’s caddishness rather than both men’s and women’s education and career ambitions, and the increasing trend of men and women to relocate in pursuing these.
The lack of men in college isn’t problematic if men are earning, as machinists, plumbers, soldiers, startup dropouts. A friend of a friend earns a respectable middle-class income playing poker online. Women, in my experience, are much less likely to take riskier paths to making a living. They prefer to go the well-behaved, establishment-approved way which is college followed by grad school. Men still largely outearn women, except for a handful of cities where women slightly outearn men. That latter is the only data that I truly find problematic (and even then, only if the trend continues and the gap widens), and I haven’t yet seen a convincing data-based connection between that and changing sexual mores, though I’m open to such an argument.
By the way, I do have single friends, including good men actively seeking committed relationships with marriage potential. I try to help them in any way I can, including with introductions, wing-ing and so on. I hope you realize that I don’t have a negative view of men. That’s why I *don’t* agree that most of them are immature Apatow-ish slackers or commitmentphobes.
Susan..”What constitutes social dominance is culturally determined, then. And it must be determined by parents”
Often equally if not more determined by peer group, as in “Johnny is a good boy but I just don’t know, he’s been running with a bad crowd lately”
AnonymousF…”Women, in my experience, are much less likely to take riskier paths to making a living. They prefer to go the well-behaved, establishment-approved way which is college followed by grad school”
A fundamental principle of finance is that when an investment with high returns is discovered by many people, the rates of return on that investment fall. Mike Mandel (back when he was chief economist at BizWeek) observed that this principle should also apply to college degrees, and that it was abnormal for the rates of return to stay so high for so long. There is lots of evidence that this is now changing, and indeed there are many stories of people who’ve spent years & years in college/grad school, accumulated huge debts, and are now finding their job prospects pretty dismal.
You can’t drive very successfully by looking in the rear-view mirror, yet this is what many people attempt to do in their careers as well as in investing. The “safe” course is often in reality the dangerous one.
Plain Jane-
You’re just outed yourself as a silly socialist-utopia advocate.
Who do you think pays for all that leave? “Other People”.
That’s the defect in people like you – you have no empathy for anyone except the people that you wish to be the recipients of such government-mandated “Benefits”.
Here’s an efffing GREAT IDEA. You want three years off after having a kid? Save up the money ahead of time through work and sacrifice, rather than excising from the labor of other people. Or marry a guy with a good job. The US has it RIGHT on this issue.
But the shoe and purse budget would never allow for that kind of savings, would it? Hair, makeup, nails, oh my.
The fact that you are an economic illiterate and cannot understand why such policies will destroy an economy is sadly, probably not rectifiable at this point.
Your thinking is textbook proof of the absoluteness of American Womens’ entitlement mentality.
@david f
Agreed. Frankly, if I had my way with college attendance there’d be far fewer men *and* women attending 4 year schools, and fewer employers requiring 4 year degrees for basic entry level jobs. And we’d have more demanding vocational 2yr programs that would actually be respected by employers. But I don’t want to threadjack
rick:
While I disagree with you on a fundamental point – that is, I think reproduction has to be one of the central concerns of any nation or culture and I think its good if a state encourages it- I will agree with you that PJ does have her head up her butt in a way. She wants all this, but she forgets about no fault divorce, easy restraining orders, and all sorts of other things that make it easy to break up one’s family. I have sympathy for women and men who want to create stable family units and I wouldn’t mind helping them to do so. But replacing daddy with the state and not even requiring responsibility is the worst of both worlds.
Blog after blog. Website after website. Article after article. Post after post. Comment after comment…………….. American men say they DON’T WANT TO GET MARRIED AND PAY FOR THE WIFE AND KIDS.
That’s my whole point.
“reproduction has to be one of the central concerns of any nation or culture and I think its good if a state encourages it”
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The state represents the people and therefore has to be sensible and fair. The state should only encourage and in some way financially support women under the age of 28 to reproduce. That will begin the process of correcting the imbalanced SMP, is biologically appropriate and benefits the majority of the male voting bloc.
Hymowitz original positions was: modern men suck.
Her addendum is: modern women suck too.
She’s wrong on both counts. Let’s not forget that we are talking about life-style choices and aspirations here. No-one is being coerced.
Marriage is on the way out. So is the superior socio-economic position of the typical western man. That’s my take on it. The only question now is how we respond to that as individuals.
Its interesting that Hymowitz mentions Chivalry. The traditions of Chivalry involved high status men deferring to much lower status women. So it was a powerful act.
If a man who fills the shelves at Walmart defers to a woman who works in an office cubicle it doesn’t really have the same impact.
This is my point.
Men are complaining about women being “gold diggers” or only wanting dudes that have more money than they do. There’s some very good reasons for that.
PREGNANCY. BREASTFEEDING. MOTHERHOOD.
Women must be supported during those stages. Stay at home moms and their kids need money too. They need to feel financially stable and secure.
There is absolutely no getting around this.
Regarding taxes being spent on a “socialist utopia” – the US has been spending trillions on exactly that – utopian wars meant to bring about utopian societies in other countries as well as a utopian global regime with the US at the helm.
I’d much rather my taxes go toward building that dream IN MY country, rather than my country trying to take over OTHER lands and build it THERE.
(and did you know our taxes go to NASCAR as well? yes, NASCAR of all f*cking useless things! look it up)
There’s no getting around it – we will always have to pay taxes.
If given a choice of what to pay taxes for – most of us would not check off the NASCAR, war and unneccessary global military boxes.
All that bullsh*t, if cut by just a fraction, could go toward not just “maternity leave” but “parental leave”.
Sweden, for all the cries of “Fascist Feminazi Regime” from the bitter MRA-sphere, has parental leave.
See guys – Swedes want you to bond with your babies, too.
Single moms below a certain income in the US can get WIC, medicaid, foodstamps (its a card now), and Section 8 housing. So “the state” is already financially supporting women under the age of 28 to reproduce.
@Susan “What constitutes social dominance is culturally determined, then. And it must be determined by parents – they define early in a child’s life what success is, whether it’s being the star on your Little League team, or in your science class.”
This is the case across the entire culture, and parents are only a small component of it. The most intellectually and academically skilled kids as well as adults are revered throughout Asian societies. Teachers show them the best treatment. Adults of all stripes openly praise them (I remember visiting other girls’ homes, and their parents would go on and on about my good grades in front of their own kids). TV shows, books, popular culture, and all sorts of media venerate them. Japanese anime and manga, big throughout East Asia, feature male lead romantic that would have Americans scratching their heads — smart, studious, hard-working, and “beta.” So when Asian girls come to America, they still go for the nerds.
“traditions of Chivalry involved high status men deferring to much lower status women”…this may have been true in an idealized form of chivalry, but the same knight who behaved with exquisite courtesy to a lady of rank (still lower status than *him* based on gender, but very high status in comparison with other women) might well have raped and murdered a woman of “the common sort.”
Even much later, say the Victorian era, a chivalrous gentleman (in relationships with women of his own class) might well seduce, impregnate, and abandon a whole series of lower-class girls without feeling particularly guilty about it.
(My last post: thinking and memorizing, continued)
Thanks Badger. I think the important thing to recognize is that no one should be taking rejection too personally when dating. There are so many factors at work that can influence whether or not the girl/guy you’re trying to make a connection with will actually respond to you. The best way is to just assume that the other person likes you, and behave accordingly.
In light of what david foster said re the difference in rejection, I’m going to amend my answer and say that yes, I have rejected men. I don’t think there’s anything wrong in rejecting men that I don’t believe I’m compatible with, if the incompatibility is apparent after one or two dates. But I have never coldly ignored or punished a man for making an honest effort.
All the same, I can’t reject men if I have no idea that they are interested. Similarly, I can’t say that I’ve been rejected by men if they have no idea that I am interested. You can’t keep building a chip on your shoulder if the people you like have no idea that you like them.
@ AnonymousF:
Maybe, but most of my dating has been online. I’ve only recently been ableto go to (the nicer) bars and organically meet people I wouldn’t meet in my day-to-day life. Other than that, I’m too busy to meet new people unless they’re in class or through other friends, and it’s not like every one of those encounters results in a date.
I dunno…I dated a guy for a month and a half before he revealed that he really didn’t want a relationship, and this other guy I’m seeing/was seeing seems to be perfectly happy just casually meeting up, getting drinks, and making out. I think that there are guys who just like to casually date and don’t really see dating as a means to a goal (i.e. finding someone to love), which is annoying, because it is a huge waste of my time.
Perhaps, but the fact that I am 21 years old and have never been in a relationship bothers me.
“Marriage is on the way out. So is the superior socio-economic position of the typical western man. That’s my take on it. The only question now is how we respond to that as individuals.”
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If your goal is marriage combined with a superior position, then just immerse yourself in the endless sea of women who happily enable you to have both. One way to accommodate men is to legislate a marriage-age female-only immigration policy, screeching and howling from feminists notwithstanding. Short of that fun idea, just grab your passport.
Yup. Also explains why I have a weakness for guys with glasses. :p
@SayWhaat
I don’t mean to invalidate your feelings. I had periods of anxiety during college too, and so did everyone I know, including men. I’ve been on both ends of the commitment decline, and I know it feels crappy to get shot down. I don’t think you’re unreasonable or strange for being bothered. I just meant to say that I believe your odds of ultimately getting what you want are good.
I do find it odd that guys are dating you “casually” for more than a couple weeks without demanding any escalation past making out *and* knowing from the *very beginning* that they have no intention of a relationship no matter what happens. Not to be crass, but that would be considered a waste of time by all of my guy friends, both “player” types (who would aggressively push your boundaries) and boyfriend types (who would either want a relationship or not want one and then stop seeing you). I don’t have any experience with such a phenomenon, so maybe it is something new that’s sprung up.
Men: if you are marriage minded, only date women who are lower than you on the economic scale and assure her that you will provide for her in the event of maternity leave or choice to be a SAHM.
Never date women who are your financial equals or superiors.
They will not consider you for longterm.
Its not *fair*.
Life is not fair.
It just is what it is.
“I do find it odd that guys are dating you “casually” for more than a couple weeks without demanding any escalation past making out *and* knowing from the *very beginning* that they have no intention of a relationship no matter what happens. Not to be crass, but that would be considered a waste of time by all of my guy friends”
Yes, this is curious. Obviously, we’re not there, so it’s hard to say. But I think guys suddenly saying “I’m not interested in a relationship right now” is really them saying in a nice way “I’m not interested in a continuing relationship with you because you don’t seem sexually into me, or perhaps you’re just not very sexual at all.” Sexless relationships for guys are a huge depressing and frustrating drag, and there is no reason they should all want to sign up for one.
Now, I’m sure saywhaat would disagree and say that she’s ready to unleash a torrent of sexuality on these guys just as soon as she gets the commitment she wants, but it seldom works that way in reality. And how is investing two months in dating not some form of commitment? Like I said, I’m not there, so I can’t say for sure, but she is probably not giving any indication that she is really craving any sex from them – just that she wants companionship and likes the idea of having a boyfriend. Relationships that start without much passion tend to stay that way, and I think guys intuitively understand that more than they use to.
I love the Freewheeling cover.
Yeah, speaking for me only, but…
If she hasn’t “put out” by the end of two months, I’m outta there. It should be obvious that “playas” don’t hang around that long, and at the same time, why be in a sexless relationship? What does SaayWhat expect of us non-religious guys?
“Jessica Wakeman has undergone a radical change. Now she’s all about not being cut out for casual sex, while admitting that for years she thought she was and acted accordingly. With the Editor Amelia’s similar sexual makeover, I’m wondering if The Frisky is going to be less sex-positive overall. I hope so.”
Every Frisky post I read brought up the same mental imagery – naive, bubbly teenagers having a pillow fight and squealing “I HAD SEX!!!!!!!!!!”
They hitched themselves to false idols, showing more enthusiasm than judgment, and now they find they’ve been backing the wrong horse for years – not to mention they’ve put it all on the Internet for any guy they date to see!
““traditions of Chivalry involved high status men deferring to much lower status women”…this may have been true in an idealized form of chivalry, but the same knight who behaved with exquisite courtesy to a lady of rank”
This is something modern women really don’t get about chivalry – it was for gentlemen and ladies. Most women today are not ladies. The idea that a knight was incumbent to treat a pauperess with “chivalry” (forgetting their duties as security officers of the state) is madness. Yet women today think they deserve goodies because they have a vagina.
As I see it chivalry wasn’t really a gender-relations philosophy as much as a set of social markers for how noble people would act – a cultural shortcut to showing status and flipping the attraction switches. Every culture has had drills and customs that signal high social status.
” I think that there are guys who just like to casually date and don’t really see dating as a means to a goal (i.e. finding someone to love), which is annoying, because it is a huge waste of my time.”
I find this strange. Why would a guy date a woman for kicks? Sex or an LTR or both are the only reasons to date, anything else is just a waste of the man’s time too. I bet they are low-game guys who realize there’s not enough spark to get in your pants and so quietly back out of the arrangement without pushing too hard for it. Also guys without a lot of social life and so they use dating as a replacement for the hanging out, going out with friends etc that they lack.
Passer_By has a good point. Men really want a woman who is passionate and sexual, while still remaining loyal and relatively chaste. The so-called lady on the streets, freak in the sheets is the ideal girlfriend. It really is the most important component of a romantic relationship for men. It isn’t that men aren’t romantic… their version of romance just involves a lot more boners and a lot less flowers.
It’s actually easier to demonstrate your sexuality online because it’s completely safe, with no actual physical contact, and a girl can really get a guy hooked with fantasies. If you aren’t at least doing that two months into dating a guy, he’s likely to bail and look for something different. Unless you’re a Jessica Alba look-alike, even the good men aren’t going to wait around for you to get more sexual.
@David Foster: That’s true!
People always seem to be harking back to some bygone age where things weren’t screwed up. I’m not convinced that there was such an era.
@hope
“It isn’t that men aren’t romantic… their version of romance just involves a lot more boners and a lot less flowers.”
Best sentence ever on HUS.
Badger et al:
There was no “one” code of chivalry. There were -for the most part slight but still-differences between the implementation and the codes of various kingdoms and countries, and between knightly or courtly chivalry and Victorian era chivalry. Generally, the more believed the King or local ruler and the more “Christian” his realm, the more likely the Knights were to treat everyone with a bit of respect, even if , in the end, they owed more to people of higher rank. The Knights of Round Table legends are pretty instructive in this regard. Ideally, Knights were not to abuse their station or their power and even peasants had to be taken into account as subjects of the King and creatures of Christ. Of course in the real world it only worked this way sometimes, not often in times of war, famine, or bad rulers. It usually wasn’t as bad as everyone being chattel to the Knights and Nobles but it normally wasn’t as gallant as is often portrayed in film and romance either.
Now I’m no scholar on Victorian times even though they were much closer in time to our own. My familiarity with them comes from some scientific biographies, depictions in movies, and a few books of fiction, mostly written by male science fiction writers such as HG Welles. Still, if I remember what I have taken in from all that it would be that the Victorian era (at least in Britain, I know even less of how this played out in the US , ironically) still had concepts of what it meant to be a “lady” and females could lose their honor and thus some of their rights to pedestalization as the Goddesses of moral (including sexual) propriety. Far as I know, chivalry didn’t extend to men as the Geneva Convention wasn’t until the next century. Unlike in medieval times a Lady, while being owed all this deference did not have to show any in return. I think in some ways that is the same dynamic that exists through modern western style feminism where they get all these rights without any responsibilities.
I enjoy reading about middle-aged women who are “reformed” and no longer think hooking up is a good thing. That’s like Charlie Manson giving up space travel for lent.
JLW, you may think so, but how come there is no dearth of middle aged women who are “getting some” – whether than “some” is no strings attached sex, boyfriends and even husbands?
So many divorced, single moms remarry – often divorced single dads but sometimes single, child-free men as well.
If a woman is decent looking and has a half-way decent personality – she will not be at a loss for action of any sort – be it short term or long term.
The only problem for women is: DOES HE HAVE SUFFICIENT FUNDS?
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*breathe, Hepsas, breathe*
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Susan, a quick Google search brings up instances of Marcotte talking about her boyfriend on her blog. It’s possible they have an open relationship, bit isn’t it also possible that that in her comment she was, you know, joking? Making fun of the way you perceive her, rather than intended to announce that she was, at the time, sleeping around?
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What way? The “that” here is lacking a referrent. Personally, I’m with her on thinking the guys Hymowitz quotes are misogynistic losers. But if you’re suggesting that Marcotte is dismissing all 20-something slacker guys as misogynists, that’s again an absurd misrepresentation.
@JLW: Ha ha ha!
Yeah, I’ve decided to pass up a glittering career as a premier league soccer player for similar reasons.
I don’t think I could deal with the fame, the stalkers, the underwear-modelling contracts etc. I’ll leave that to the likes of David Beckham and Christiano Ronaldo.
I’ll let them have a go instead.
@Plain Jane: I certainly take your point about economic security for children.
In the economic/political absence of well-paid stable careers for the majority of men, no-one should be surprised that there is an acute shortage of Hymowitz’s “Good Men”. Men that are better-paid than their partners and willing to put their partners needs above their own.
Although I’m not a huge fan of government-run Ponzi Schemes like the welfare state, I take your point that there are worst things that governments can spend money on: foreign empires, banker bailouts, subsidies to third world dictators (aid), the “war on drugs”, the “war on terror”, crony-capitalist boondoggles, etc.
I’m probably crossing a line here, but what the hell. I’ve noticed a connection between the kind of feminism you’re describing and right wing fundamentalism. Republicans scream and moan about how the poor are lazy and uneducated, and that they need to get out there and get a job. But they completely ignore the cause/effect relationship between poverty and poor underfunded school systems that are still arguing over whether or not to teach a 2000 year old myth as science. They ignore the fact that the vast majority of bankruptcies in the U.S. are from medical bills, all the while screaming that people should be able to afford high risk health care on minimum wage.
The feminists are screaming about how men ought to be everything women want, and ignore the cause/effect relationship that they have created with the success of their initiatives. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. Birth control is awesome, and it’s great that women can get it by simply walking into a clinic. (Well… we’ll see about funding for Planned Parenthood… that might not be the case soon.) It’s great that women are expected to be an active participant in birth control. It’s great that women are nearly equal in the business world, and that they don’t need men. It’s great that they have the protection of law when they have children, and that men are forced to pay for their children’s care.
But all these things come at a price, and that price is the value of the vagina. It’s simple market economics, and ignoring that reality is naive at best.
You want a man to take all the initiative, pay for all the dinners, bring home the bacon, help with the kids, commit long term, and keep you in nice things? Ok… why don’t you stay at home and keep the house spotless, have dinner on the table every day, put out every time he asks, and sign a pre-nup?
Sound awful? Yes. It does sound awful. No reasonable man would ask that of a woman he loved. And no reasonable woman would ask a man to live up to pre-feminist standards of “manhood” in the face of the devaluation of the vagina which was an inevitable result of egalitarianism.
It’s very, very, very simple economics. If two things are equal in value, one seller doesn’t get to charge more and expect to pay less.
ExNewYorker, I remember Devlin making the hypothesis once that women aren’t naturally imbued with a sense of justice because it has little use in child-rearing (in my personal experience, this ties into the massively overrated female knack for empathy). Unless a man is directly threatening my livelihood, I tend to sympathize with him and want to help him out. But women couldn’t by and large care less.
To Plain Jane et al: women who take maternity leave with the expectation of not having their job replaced are an enormous stress on everyone else. This probably doesn’t exercise itself much in the urbane upper-class educrat circles that this blog attracts, but when real work has to be done the loss of a single coworker means everything gets shunted onto everyone else’s shoulders. My own parents have had to clean schools into the twilight hours because of women cleaners who never show up.
@Hope
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You’ve said a lot of insightful things in this thread Hope and I agree with you. My experience of having lived in Japan largely corroborates with your “smart, studious, hard-workings boys/men = attractive” in Asian countries.
Outside of populous and dense places like Tokyo, the ideal catch for a young women is the hard-working beta. In the rural area that I lived in, I never saw a single instance of any woman yearn for the irresponsible, likes to party, promiscuous, loudmouthed type of man. They all wanted the man who had a high-salaried job, worked hard and had social status (via his company, not his group of friends). In Japan, the young man who works his butt off studying and makes it into a prestigious university is the prize. Boys like Tucker Max don’t stand a chance in Asia (outside of the big cities).
@SayWhaat
It sounds as though you don’t get very physical with the guys you date. I think that’s smart.
The double standard does have practical roots. When you’re catching, you’re much more likely to get an STD from your partner. Your investment and risks in a pregnancy are much greater. All in all you have much more to lose in a sexual encounter than a man. It makes sense for women to be conservative about sex.
This is apart from any problems you may have in bonding with your partner that increase as your “experience” increases. I believe both sexes have this problem, though with a man it’s at least partly because once he learns the trick to scoring it’s difficult for him to give it up.
I graduated college 30 years ago. In my day women were still a large minority on campus. There were guys who never had trouble getting dates and sex, and there were the rest of us.
I suspect that the vast majority of guys on your campus aren’t getting any, either. They haven’t the looks, social skills, and whatever else that tickles girls fancy. They just don’t show up on the radar. They may not even show up on your radar.
Those guys who date you casually for a while and then stop? I suspect they were hoping to add you to their strings.
The most often quoted data on this is that 78% of male college students say they wish to marry eventually. Obviously, that’s the vast majority, but that percentage has been declining steadily, and this is the first year it went under 80%.
The rise in the average age at marriage is increasing for both women and men, largely due to longer periods of education, as well as focus on careers. As you say, geographic mobility also plays a role. I don’t believe that men who wish to delay or even avoid marriage are cads – I reserve that word for men who practice deceit to get sex with women.
The reason that a lack of college educated men is problematic is that women strongly prefer to marry someone of higher status than themselves – female hypergamy. In contemporary society, women are high achieving, and so will usually mate with someone of similar education and background. Men, on the other hand, have a strong preference to marry a woman with the same or less education than they have. All of this has been shown repeatedly in studies.
That’s not what I read. What I hear men saying is that they don’t want to put everything on the line in a marriage, get kicked to the curb, and pay unfair awards. All while they’re forced to move out, reduce their standard of living, and lose much of the time they spend with their own children.
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I’m not sure that this is true. I think the inclination towards family men is certainly stronger, but players can clean up just as well as anywhere else (one of my good friends was the biggest player I’d ever known until he moved back to Hong Kong). Asian girls just tend not to blab about it.
“That’s not what I read. What I hear men saying is that they don’t want to put everything on the line in a marriage, get kicked to the curb, and pay unfair awards. All while they’re forced to move out, reduce their standard of living, and lose much of the time they spend with their own children.”
Correct. While it’s working out so far for me (knock on wood), I’m not sure I would take the chance again given what I’ve seen men I know go through (to say nothing of stuff you read about).
Hello Ms. Walsh,
Well, as I had anticipated, Ms. Hymowitz’s handiwork has finally reached that sector of the Internet that I refer to as the Afrosphere; today’s topic over at Very Smart Brothas takes up her writings in the WSJ, and cites as backup for their post a member of the Sistarati named Sista Toldja, who gives her take on the whole ball of wax here:
http://thebeautifulstruggler.com/2011/02/wsj-discussesthe-extended-adolescence-of-some-american-men.html/comment-page-1#comment-18471
After leaving a shorter comment earlier today and reading Ms. Toldja’s response, I then left the following comment:
“Hello ST,
I think faulty assumptions abound, with all due respect, not just with your take on Ms. Hymowitz’s piece(s), but with said pieces themselves. This explains, for example (and which you did not include in your review), why at last count, Ms. Hymowitz got upwards of *1500* comments in response – one of the highest responsed-to pieces in WSJ history. And the bulk and mass of said responses came from Men, who felt that Ms. Hymowitz just didn’t get it.
While you were correct to note that Ms. Hymowitz failed to take into account racial and class differenes here, she is by no means any stranger to such things. I am very familiar with her work and so know very well that she sees what has been happening in Black America for decades, now beginning to take place among those I refer to as White Folks Who Matter – which is the topic of her articles and dare I say, book.
That said, the huge problems I am having with both you and her take on all of this, is in the very nature of you both deigning to question what makes a Man, a Man – I mean, can we honestly say that Ms. Hymowitz, or you, or anyone else, would even think of putting finger to keyboard, asking why so many Women are wasting their best and most fertile years chasing degrees and working as cogs in the corporate wheel, instead of “growing up” and having babies and getting married? To ask the question, is to answer it – and we all know it. Yet, folks like you and Ms. Hymowitz feel fit to determine, for Men, what it means to be a Man. I notice that only Women do this, by and large, and that, quite frankly, isn’t only hugely disrespectful, but its also old – since, again, if Black America is any indication, such a strategem simply doesn’t work.
Moreover, you left out a key consideration as to WHY so many Men are “going their own way”; in a followop piece for the Daily Beast, Ms. Hymowitz rightly observes:
“Far worse in the bait and switch category is women’s stated preference for nice guys and actual attraction to bad boys. Now, clearly this is not true for all women. Many, maybe even most, want a guy with the sweetness of a Jimmy Stewart and sensitivity of Ashley Wilkes. But enough of them are partial to the Charlie Sheens of this world that one popular dating guru, David DeAngleo, lists “Being Too Much of a Nice Guy” as No. 1 in his “Ten Most Dangerous Mistakes Men Make With Women.” At a website with the evocative name Relationshit.com, (“Brutally honest dating advice for the cynical, bitter, and jaded,” and sociological cousin of Dating-is-Hell.com) the most highly trafficked pages are those asking the question why women don’t like good guys.”
This, I submit ST, is what is lacking both in the broader conversation on this topic, to say nothing of you and Ms. Hymowitz’s original “takes” on the matter, and which, if we’re serious, must be addressed in brutally honest fashion. The simple truth of it is that there is a growing cohort of Men who, after surveying the dating and mating scene, rightly decide that they have better options elsewhere, and avail themselves of said options. The guys that you suggest are using women as “estrogen play things” are in fact a very small slice of Men overall; they usually are NOT those who you and Ms. Hymowitz gives the side eye to for choosing to play Atari or Call of Duty. Those are the winners of a vastly changed sexual marketplace; the rest are veritable losers in said SMP, and are then called upon when Women pass through their “Grrl Power” phase and are ready to settle down and have children and get married, well into their 30s and all that comes with it, and if these Men refuse then suddenly, they’re excoriated for being immature, they need to “Man Up” and so on and so forth.
Do you see what I’m saying here?
This is why I had such a difficult time getting my head around both you and Ms. Hymowitz’s articles, because at the very least, it seems both of you are so willfully blind to the facts on the ground that it strains credulity. Millions of White Folk Who Matter – to say nothing of the scores of Black Men over the decades – aren’t “going their own way” out of a vacuum, Sista. They are responding to legitimate concerns out there on the sexual market, and have said, “no thanks; I have other, if not better, things to do”. That you, or Ms. Hymowitz, may consider those things puerile or immature, is irrelvant – as irrelevant as any Man who sees a Woman exploring her options educationally and in the work-a-day world and putting off home and hearth as being self-centered. In the end, the feminists of yesterday intoned, what this is about is giving Women choice – as in, “my body, my choice” – which has become the sine qua non of our age. But such lofty intentions and aims seems to end at the skirt’s hem; when Men decide to determine for themselves what they will make of their lives, suddenly they are accosted by a virtual army of Schoolmarms wagging the finger of shame. The sheer hypocrisy of it all is enough to do the trick here, let alone all the other things I have noted, and more that I have not.
“Choice for me, but not for thee”, like a MoFo.
Hmm.
Holla back
O.”
Comment and reply, holla; also, feel free to register your thoughts over at Ms. Sista Toldja’s place.
The Obsidian
@Susan
Well apparently scienceblogs did a survey which showed there was a correlation between social autism and atheism. She’s just a victim of her genetics.
@Plain Jane
Very wise advice. I hope those women won’t be whining in a few years time that they can’t find a man.
@Passer By
I recall that Hamby said once that for women who want to wait for monogamy to have sex, they need to make it clear up front that they are hot for the guy. I think he suggested something like, “I don’t have sex with people I don’t know well and trust, but if we become exclusive I’m going to rock your world.” I liked that suggestion – a bit of sexual directness on the part of the woman might go a long way to convincing a guy it’s worth waiting for.
Gaaaaahhh. I need to make some clarifications!
First of all, re the guy I dated for 1.5 months. Things did escalate; in fact, it was when things started to get fairly intense physically (stopped short of third base) that I brought up exclusivity.
I think I erred here. When I wrote this I was expressing frustration over this guy that I’ve sort of been seeing (the 29-year-old hipster musician from the bar). I can’t tell if he’s interested in me or not, so I kinda feel like I’m a makeout buddy of sorts. You would think that if a guy isn’t interested, he would stop responding to a girl’s texts, or at least tell her he’s not interested after three dates. I think realistically what’s going on is:
A) he’s really busy
B) he’s met other girls closer to his age who are easier to sleep with (not like he hasn’t tried to escalate with me; on our last date he was a little touchy-feely, as guys are wont to do, but it was only the second time we’ve ever made out so I wasn’t going to go there)
C) he’s lost interest in me (he’s 29 in NYC and I’m only 21, why wouldn’t he?), but he’s too polite to stop responding whenever I text
D) he found a radioactive monkey that is threatening to destroy the world unless he keeps it under control
E) all of the above
I’m going with E (haha!). I met him a while ago, I’m just frustrated that things weren’t moving faster. I think I’ve gone into this more than I needed to but basically I feel like I’ve reached out to him enough at this point where I’m just going to let him reach out to me if he wants. I’m not optimistic, but if he does I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
In the meantime I’m back to square 1, with zero love interests at the moment. Maybe I can fix that this weekend.
I remember seeing a tweet from Diana Vilbert, a writer who went to swingers clubs, got naked, and then wrote about it for The Frisky. She had a hot date planned with some guy, and he found her articles online, then reneged. She laughed it off saying something like “Oops! Just lost a date b/c I go to swingers clubs on assignment!” It’s one thing to be Lena Chen – who is going to have a career based on her slutty college experiences. But some freelance writer? Insanity.
@ SayWhaat
If you’re looking for a LTR make sure that the guy knows you want one. Though I don’t know if it’s the first thing to bring up in conversation. There should certainly be conversation though. Get him talking about something that interests him.
@Passer By
Haha, yes it’s good, but I’m still cracking up from your comment about the 5 yo who was determined not to marry without a job.
“The reason that a lack of college educated men is problematic is that women strongly prefer to marry someone of higher status than themselves – female hypergamy. In contemporary society, women are high achieving, and so will usually mate with someone of similar education and background. Men, on the other hand, have a strong preference to marry a woman with the same or less education than they have. All of this has been shown repeatedly in studies.”
I’ve seen data indicating that women outearning their husbands by a large factor is a risk factor in marriage, and a substantial turnoff in dating. People tend to associate income with education, and there’s some correlation, but there are a lot of highly educated low earning women (see david foster’s comment above).
I’m dubious that, on a large scale, women with PhD’s in Sociology earning $40K/year will refuse to date men with a bachelor’s in Engineering who earn $85K on account of a disparity in formal education, but it’s possible that I just haven’t seen the data. Women may express a preference to date men with more education, just as they express many other preferences. In practice, most will end up compromising on at least a few (as will most men in their spouse hunt).
The percentage of married women with less-educated husbands has increased since the 1970′s and the number with more-educated husbands has decreased, so clearly this preference is elastic, and I’d guess it is much more elastic than the preference for a higher-earning husband (which women are also increasingly compromising on).
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1466/economics-marriage-rise-of-wives
On marriage rates in general (unfortunately not equally encouraging for everyone):
“In 1950, less than three quarters of white college-educated women went on to marry by age 40 [compared with 90 percent of high-school graduates]. But today, 86 percent marry by age 40, compared with 88 percent of high-school grads.”
“Today, 70 percent of black college-educated women marry by age 40, compared with 53 percent of those who never finished high school.”
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/01/30/want-to-be-happily-married-go-to-college.html
@terre, Asian women are still women, and modernization/westernization has changed things significantly, and often not for the better. There are signs that the country I grew up in is now filled with extremely materialistic and status-oriented women who are no longer satisfied with a normal life, but want new cars, houses, the latest fashions and luxury goods.
These changes took place rapidly over the span of just under 20 years. I’m sure things are changing sexually as well, as western pop culture has become very popular there. I never saw a single American movie until I moved here (17 years ago), and I also never saw people kissing on TV or anywhere else for that matter. On the other hand, kissing is no big deal in children’s cartoons in America, not to mention more risque films like Sin City, and these same movies are all over the world now.
The culture definitely gets changed by popular media. Certain traditional roots might still remain, for instance academic excellence is still prized, but other elements (globalization of tv and movie industries) might have eroded the sexual traditionalism in most countries since the 1990s.
@SayWhaat, @Jason
I agree with Jason. Don’t bring it up on the first date, but after 2 weeks of dating you can go for it. No need to drag things on for over a month while anxiety festers, you get increasingly attached and you miss other opportunities in the meantime.
I agree with a lot of what AnonymousF is saying. I’m late 20′s female, and among my peers I don’t see discomfort with dating men who earn equal or slightly lower salaries, or who have lower formal education. I imagine a larger disparity would be awkward for everyone involved, though, and so if the college attendance gap were to continue increasing (along with diminishing opportunities for careers that don’t require college), then I would find that concerning. But I dunno, I just don’t really see that need to be with a guy who earns more among the women I know.
@ SayWhaat, with your 1.5 month dating guy, I think it’s a good idea to lay low for a while. If he’s interested, he’ll come around. Unfortunately I suspect you’re correct that he’s just been distracted by other women who may be more quick to sleep with him. And I have to say, 21/29 is a big age gap. In my experience, the 29 y/o guys who are interested in committed, long-term relationships are dating 24-30 y/o’s, not college students — if only because people in college are less settled & likely to still be living in the same city even 1 year from now.
“She had a hot date planned with some guy, and he found her articles online, then reneged.”
.
He reneged because, well, he could and he merely “left the building.” He has self respect and a woman hanging on his arm better have that too. But most of all, he knows that 99.99% of women in the world don’t even know what a swinger is. Lets keep it that way. We will keep it that way.
.
Wisdom from..Beyonce:
.
Nasty put some clothes on, I told ya
Don’t walk out your house without no clothes on, I told ya
Girl what ya thinkin’ bout lookin’ that to’ down, I told ya
These men don’t want no hot female that’s been around the block female, you nasty girl
.
These men have left the nasty girl building.
@SayWhaat
Good call. It’s one thing to initiate to get the ball rolling. It’s quite another when you have to continue initiating and he is in response mode. If you have to wonder if he likes you, he doesn’t like you enough. Not if you’ve made your interest clear. He does sound like a nice guy, but “hipster musician” has trouble written all over it, haha, and you know it!
ME:
-
SUSAN:
*
Fair enough. Women also have to think for their financial future and marrying a man who can support them and the kids through maternity leaves and possible choices for SAHM status.
That man who suggested quiting college to get married very young without having any degree or working skills is mad.
NO.
Women have to think of their financial status every step of the way.
Imagine quitting college, signing a pre-nup, getting married and then the dude dumps you with kid in tow!
Imagine graduating from college, working at a financially stable career for some years, then getting married to a man who does not earn much and then having a complicated pregnancy that forces you to stay home with no maternity leave, and your man can’t support that.
And dudes are complaining about paying for dates?!?!
At filrabat,
As it happens I’m not into dress sense as much as most women. I go for grunge and casual as a default and don’t follow fashion at all.
But its true to say that MOST women simply cannot FANCY a guy who dresses AWFUL. I mean real awful.
Condemn as shallow if you want but be careful not to chuck rocks around inside the glass house.
I daresay there are some deal breaking, female physical characterestics that character alone would not cure in your own mind. But you need not feel shame because thats also true of every living human on earth.
.
I don’t know if you directed your marcotte comment at me, if you did I should say I dont know much about her but I would say that I find religion distasteful and inhumane so I’m afraid I possibly wouldn’t side with you given your descriptions.
Vj,
I noted your take on sex and the city
I sometimes think I am the only girl in the uk who hates that show.
I think those 4 women are HORRIBLE people.
‘is my hair too shiney?’
.
I often like usa imports but that show sucked so bad.
And I am always disappointed when a friend or colleague says they liked it or even worse went to see the film.
@ Terre: “My own parents have had to clean schools into the twilight hours because of women cleaners who never show up.”
*
There’s a huge difference between “maternity leave” and just “never showing up”.
If you have a heart attack and have to be hospitalized shall we call it, “not showing up” for your job?
Regarding empathy and women: Father Theresa did not exist.
@Jess
I don’t know I watched the show sporadically mostly to know what the fuss was about. But my take was that Harry Potter had less fantasy on it. Samantha was the slut’s fantasy: sex with all types of guys on her own terms with no downhills, no need to settle or have kids ever, Carrie the working girl fantasy: always desirable with a lot of money and getting the attention of the richest man in the city no matter how screw things went. Charlotte and Miranda were a bit more realistic, The ones that want to get marry and have the white fence (although was she was so promiscuous tells me she missed a ton about how to go about it) and Miranda who I believe would be the confused modern woman, because she is not the most attractive, neither the most fashion orientated so she becomes a serial dater workaholic without realizing that family and a stable relationship is what would make her happy and satisfied.
Anyway I had to stop to watch the show after Aidan. The way Carrie treated him God! I have a list of fictional characters I wish a time machine can sent them to a nazi camp and she won a spot on it over Aidan. That ^%%#$%*((%#@, YMMV.
I realize you’re not necessarily advising that world-rocking should occur immediately on declaration of exclusivity, but just in case anyone is reading it that way…
My advice to a woman who considers sex to be a big deal and hasn’t had it before would be emphatically against promising a guy outright that she’ll have sex as soon as he says the magic exclusivity words. Aside from the obvious incentive for him to flat out lie, she’s probably not going to be magically ready overnight. Especially if the couple hasn’t already spent some time doing everything else and building up the comfort level to where both parties feel secure and unselfconscious. If a guy cares about you, he’ll take some time, even after exclusivity, to let you work up to sex in a natural progression kind of way. As always, YMMV.
P.S. A woman can easily demonstrate sexual interest, drive and intensity at the milder levels of hooking up (long before any pants are removed).
“That man who suggested quiting college to get married very young without having any degree or working skills is mad.”
.
You’re right. That is why the State should provide for very young women who want to marry and have children…up to the age of 25 only. And married only. After that, she is on her own. That’s social engineering we can all live with.
@ Hope (March 2, 2011 at 6:19 pm)
In that case, then, if you still have a great command of your native language, maybe you can spend time on your native land’s romance and love forums and warn them of the dangers of “The American Way”. I wouldn’t wish our way even upon our country’s worst enemies. Better yet, maybe you can translate the Hymowitz, et al. articles and post them
@abbott
“That’s social engineering we can all live with.”
speak for yourself.
@AnonymousF
I think you are right on the part of the woman showing that she is really into the guy without having sex with him. But subtlety is a lost art on this time and day. Maybe you could give her some pointers?
@Abbot
I would go at it on the opposite way, giving a lot more incentives to couples the longest they remain together. Of course this couples should be evaluated to make sure they are cheating the system, but if a couple is on their 15 anniversary and are raising three kids the state should be able to make things easier for them to remain together, like helping them with the mortgage of the house offering some help on the education of the kids and so on. Of course liberals hate the idea of placing a relationship as better than others alternatives, but given how attractive divorce has become for women, some incentive on the other direction might not be a bad idea, YMMV.
To sr
You think miranda was the least attractive? Was that the Ginger one?
I thought she was prettier than the skinny blonde one.
Gosh she had a frightening countenance! Used to make me wince.
@Stephenie
Haha – I would love to share if I knew SayWhaat in person. I’m not shy at all in talking about sex and its gory details. In fact I thought about writing something more detailed & sharing experiences. But I have a nagging fear of being outed, and if that were ever to happen, I would be embarassed to have shared those kinds of things in writing or to have them linked to my real name in Google :/
Incentives from the State can also encourage women to marry much younger in their prime years for birthing. That would also encourage men to marry earlier since women would demand commitment and men typically left out of the demented SMP would find mates. Is such a scenario unprecedented, historically speaking?
Plain Jane said: “Regarding empathy and women: Father Theresa did not exist”
But Father Maximilian Kolbe did.
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