Ferdinand Bardamu has a post titled Ehe macht frei: why Laura Wood and other conservatives and traditionalists just don’t get it where he takes strong issue with conservatives shaming men into marriage:
What offends me most is that her contention that the commenter is “evil” for warning men against marriage due to the risks involved.
As a supporter of marriage I take great offense at this as well. I don’t agree with what appears to be the majority MRA view that all men should refuse to marry, but I resent the attempt to shame those men who choose not to. Given the likely results to innocent children, telling men they must marry despite radically changed laws, a complicit church, and a debased culture is what is evil. How many millions more kids are Laura and others willing to feed to the divorce wood chipper in order to keep up the facade of marriage and the church as a healthy moral institution in the west?
Simply put, we don’t live in a culture which can back up any assurances it gives to men who enter marriage in good faith. As I wrote in my previous post Old rules or new? there is no moral authority which is currently acting to ensure that women honor their side of the marriage contract. Therefore, there is no moral authority in a position to shame men for choosing not to marry. This fixation on the speck in the eye of unmarried men is wholly misplaced. They should be shaming the church for standing by for decades while the women (and men) in attendance divorced at the same rates as atheists.
Laura’s own Catholic church can’t be counted on to stand up for marriage, as Solomon II shares in Solomon II’s Confession. Solomon II’s eight year marriage was annulled by the Catholic church at the request of his wife’s powerful father following her miscarriage while Solomon was overseas on business:
When I landed back in the U.S., she was gone. Her parents had taken her back to Brazil to recover. I lost her father’s respect, which meant my marriage was over regardless of what she felt. “If a man can’t take care of his wife, then a father will take care of his daughter.” said the man who has a handwritten letter from Ronald Reagan saying “Thanks for letting me and Nancy spend the night” hanging on his parlor wall. He was a powerful man, so the papers were filed and a call was made to the Vatican faster than you can ever imagine. Just like that, I was single again in the eyes of God and the U.S. Government.
His isn’t the only story of a trigger happy Catholic church when it comes to annulments. What would you say Laura to those men who honored their vows and the church one day decided their marriage wasn’t really for life? Would you say man up and marry again in some grotesque game of Lucy and the football? Next time my church is bound to get it right. Or maybe double or nothing? What would you say to the other men you are trying to shame into marriage? Don’t worry it might not happen to you? Or When the mass is given in Latin all is well? Is there some trick to getting a real marriage out of the Catholic church? Perhaps couples need to check that the priest who marries them doesn’t have his fingers crossed during the ceremony?
Rex makes a similar point in his letter to Laura which started the discussion:
It would be different, perhaps, if we were living in a non-atomized culture, a culture characterized by strong communal ties, a much higher level of homogeneity, etc. But that isn’t our situation. We don’t live in a culture where responsibilities can be ‘imposed’ on persons outside of voluntary choice.
Laura dismisses his point in her response:
The sphere of “direct voluntary choice” is significant but quite small. When I drive into a city, I cannot choose to drive anywhere I wish, but conform to roads already laid out. I am naturally obligated. Driving on the sidewalk or into buildings would not be to my benefit anyway. Similarly, all people are constrained somewhat by what society teaches them is good, by the roads that are laid out for them.
Telling men not to marry isn’t like telling someone to drive on the sidewalk or into a building. It is like telling someone to avoid a certain road due to an abundance of potholes or warning them not to move into a high crime neighborhood. The city might suggest steering around the potholes and not going out out after dark, but it doesn’t have the right to tell others they have a duty to take risks they are legitimately not comfortable taking. If the city feels that more people should drive on a certain road or live in a specific neighborhood they should focus on making those options more desirable. Likewise, if we want to encourage more men to choose to marry we need to focus not on shaming them but in creating an equitable framework for marriage.
Furthermore, even if you believe that men have a general moral obligation to marry, you can’t suggest that men have an obligation to marry a woman who isn’t highly likely to keep her vows. In fact, because of the likely future impact on children, men have a moral obligation not to marry a woman unless he can determine that she is highly likely to keep her vows. I’ve never found an example of someone shaming men into marriage which didn’t omit this crucial point. Additionally, unless you have a foolproof method to guarantee a woman has this quality you have to leave this assessment up to the individual man.
Given the state of our culture including encouragement and incentives to women to divorce, there will be a large number of men who won’t be able to find a suitable wife. If anything, far too many men are marrying now.
I have another moral objection to telling men (or women) that they have an obligation to marry. Doing so weakens the moral grounds for insisting that they keep their solemn vows. A marriage entered into under coercion has a significantly weaker moral underpinning than one entered into freely. Coercing men or women into marriage weakens marriage.
No one should feel obligated to make a promise. But once a promise is freely made they should be expected to honor it. This is the exact opposite of the situation we have today; men are told they need to “man up” and marry, and women are told they don’t really need to honor their marriage commitment.
I encourage those men interested in marriage to marry, but only if they understand and accept the risks and can find a woman with the moral force to keep her side of the agreement.
Dalrock, nice weaving in of a link to HUS there! Good points, good post.
Beautifully put. An excellent post, Dalrock. I really can’t add anything to this comprehensive dressing down.
I’ll just say that I find Traditionalists like Laura almost as sickening & dangerous as their radical feminist counterparts. The Traditionalists offer no real solutions and are as willing as anyone to send their sons & grandchildren into the divorce/family court meat grinder. They’re too afraid to take on the real culprits and demand changes to custody laws and the removal of the financial incentives that drive divorce, and so focus a lot of the ire on the most popular target: men.
While I hate to drag my online dispute with Laura Wood onto your blog, she is highly interested in having white, middle class men marry (preferably middle class white women) and make babies.
That said, I agree with you that men are not obligated to marry. From a religious standpoint, I tend to agree with this guy:
http://faithandsociety.wordpress.com/2006/05/05/why-should-christian-men-marry-confronting-anti-male-bigotry-in-churches/
Until Christians take their marriage vows more seriously, the average man is taking a huge gamble marrying a modern woman. The “family” courts are no friend to men facing a frivolous divorce even as they overcompensate women being treated to spousal abandonment.
Life is a series of tradeoffs for all of us. Each man has to decide for himself what tradeoffs he’s willing to make. And having a family requires being willing to make huge sacrifices. Even in the church, once you account for issues of sin and righteousness, we have no business pressuring any man to do something that may be detrimental to him and any future children he might have.
“Is there some trick to getting a real marriage out of the Catholic church?”
Each congregation sets itself up as a mental health facility, doing whatever it takes legally to enact involuntary commitments. To enter into marriage with a man, the woman must give him power of attorney and voluntarily commit herself to the institution. Having done so, the feminized world at large will recognize that she is clearly mentally ill. There should be no objection to the voluntary commitment immediately becoming involuntary.
Then the congregation releases the inmate into the custody of her husband.
I should have put make babies in bold.
This is a very good post that captures the recent debate on many blogs. I agree completely.
Terry,
I was going to write something similar regarding you comment about trade-offs. As I was readings, I thought it is sort of like going to college, or buying a house. Two others things that are expected for a successful person, but not always a wise choice for that person. Everything is a cost/benefit analysis. One should not go to college for the sake of the educational institution, if that person does not feel it will excel them or that they would go broke doing so. Likewise for marriage; men should not marry for the sake of the institution, to “save society”, or because it is a manly duty. As sad as it is, we live in a society that has to be concerned with one’s own interest first. Self-preservation. Women are allowed to feel this way. Feminism has allowed women to forgo marriage in the interest of self-preservation, but when it comes to men they are not allowed such a choice. I know it sounds selfish, but we are in a selfish world. On a sinking ship, where it is every man for himself.
In retrospect, I feel like college is a scam. Had the other side of the story been told to me, I possibly would have made other decisions or at least I would have gone into it with a balanced opinion. I think the male blogs are doing a great thing, because men are finally getting to hear the other side of the story, so that they can make their own informed decision. Like Dalrock’s point about the potholes; if someone tells you they are there at least you can make an informed decision of whether or not to take that road.
BTW, I was a little shocked to read some comments on her blog that seemed to suggest only white people can be conservative/traditionalists and in addition that traditionalists are superior because they hold the moral highground. While I agree with LW 95% of the time, the arrogance lately (mainly from commenters) has been troubling.
Also though, I don’t feel women get the full story either about marriage—that being that it is HARD work and not some fairytale to be taken lightly. I wonder how many women would still marry if they had a realistic view of what it is all about. If women all of sudden stopped marrying, would they come under the same level of scrutiny, that they need to “lady-up” etc. OR would they continue to get a pass, because they are just being “true to themselves”.
“Feminism has allowed women to forgo marriage in the interest of self-preservation, but when it comes to men they are not allowed such a choice.”
That’s because feminism requires, to operate, the material, technological and security (read: winning wars) benefits that come from the efforts of the masculine collective. Only prosperity can make possible individual selfishness movements, and the movements always seek to destroy the people and institutions that made the prosperity possible. History repeats.
To give a Catholic’s perspective on this:
The Catholic Church has always held that moral obligations are only obligations when the ability to carry them out is present. In other words, if by doing the technically moral thing a greater evil would result, the obligation ceases. A classic example: it is usually immoral to lie; but those Catholics who harbored Jews during the Third Reich were morally justified in lying to the Gestapo since telling the truth of their whereabouts would have resulted in murder.
The same is true of the contemporary American marriage scene. Men are under no obligation to fulfill the Sacrament of Matrimony since they would likely harm themselves, and their potential children, by doing so. I am Catholic, and I date foreign women; but that’s not an option that’s within every American male’s means. It is not immoral for American men not to marry since the means to create a wholesome marriage are simply not available to us.
On a lighter note, young teenage girls are fawning over this:
sterling example of masculinity.
Show them the video! Observe the results of their hamsters desperate attempt to process it. Report back!
http://www.funnypicturemarathon.com/pictureView.php?picId=6632
Eric: Seems a bit like the yogic moral system where non-violence takes precedence.
@ Laura Grace:
Like you, I agreed with Laura Wood about 90% of the time. It’s why I didn’t get offended when she went on a tear about her feelings about miscegenation. I know plenty of black people who think people should marry within their respective races. It’s not something that matters to me, but I didn’t think it was a big deal. Until she started her whole “white is right”,”black men are testosterone laden savages” that I began to get really annoyed with her.
Back on topic, her insistence that men should marry despite the pitfalls of modern marriage are closely related (I believe) to her views on race. I consider myself a Christian traditonalist with respect to marital roles and hierarchy, but I would never insist that any man put himself in a precarious position to preserve a way of life that is no more for most husbands.
It is not incumbent on Catholic men to marry. I speak as someone who has practised as a Catholic for 50 years. If things are as grossly unfair for husbands in America as people say, a man would be a fool to take on marriage unless he was VERY certain of his future wife’s character.
The Catholic Church has always understood that not everybody is called to the married life. It is a vocation for some people, but not others. The single life – whether religious or not – is a perfectly acceptable vocation. Arguably it is superior.
One possibility Catholic men may want to consider is getting married by the Church but not by the secular authorities. Traditional Catholic marriage – patriarchal, indissoluble, open to life – is not supported by the secular authorities. It is, rather, undermined at every turn, it would seem.
There is NO need to for a lavish church wedding. If I were a Catholic American man, I would consider finding a priest who would solemnise my marriage to my fiancee – theologically the couple marry each other anyway – without regard to the civil authorities. I would stay away from the civil authorities as much as possible. Don’t participate in a pagan system.
Conservative women and race-nationalists are just as bad as hard-core feminists.
The point is to control men: white women who have racially or culturally ethocentric opinions get upset when “their” men won’t play ball and get married to *them*.
I’ve seen no end of tirades from conservative women who feel like men have let them down. However, there’s never any examination of how antithetical to male interests getting married actually is in this environment. They acknowledge how bad it is, how much feminism has ruined it, in a conscious attempt to obliterate the notion of marriage, and yet they persist in making men take all the risk and assume the burden.
This is predictable, and comes from the same motivation that has women pushing their own agendas and overriding male agendas, and in this, they’re the same as radical feminists. ME ME ME ME ME.
It’s always, always about how other people let them down or how other people have a responsibility to them – and never, ever about how they let others down or what their responsibilities are.
Frankly, white American males, given his climate, should be free to marry or not, without any judgment, and to marry whomever they want – white or not – as non-American women almost invariably make better wives than American ones.
Conservative women sound exactly like bitter, single 35-year-old NYC feminists whining about the unwillingness of bankers to marry them when they want them to.
“Like you, I agreed with Laura Wood about 90% of the time. It’s why I didn’t get offended when she went on a tear about her feelings about miscegenation. I know plenty of black people who think people should marry within their respective races. It’s not something that matters to me, but I didn’t think it was a big deal. Until she started her whole “white is right”,”black men are testosterone laden savages” that I began to get really annoyed with her.”
I just want to make it clear that I do not support these views. I am adamantly and VEHEMENTLY opposed to these views on race. Of course,in America, she has the right to say it, just like some black people who say whites are mutant albinos or a genetic abnormality (instead of a natural adaptation to a climate where absorbing vitamin d from the sun is essential to survival).
Where possible or desirable,I support absolute equality between the races just like I support absolute equality between the sexes,i.e. no Affirmative Action for blacks, no Jim Crow stuff for whites,no alimony or child support for either sex. This angers people on both sides, but I feel it is necessary to prevent the “My group is more oppressed!” Victimhood Olympics that inevitably ensue when these matters are discussed.
@ Negral:
Yes, she has a right to say whatever she wants. And for the record, I abhor the perpetual victim status that has been demanded by, and conferred upon black Americans. Don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say here. I’m probably as conservative as it gets.
My anger at Mrs. Wood has to say about black men and blacks in general is fueled by two things: 1) Love and respect for my own husband, and 2) Her claims to be a Christian. Period.
The black community is largely a mess and mostof it is a mess of our own making. You’ll never get an argument from me on that score. Just wanted to make my position clear.
I’ve said once and again. Social conservative women are not our allies. They are even more dangerous than the feminist.
In fact, feminism and so-con pedestalizers are two branches of the same ideology: the female supremacism or, if you will, the pedestalization movement. This movement started with the troubadours, in XII century, when each poet considered himself a vassal of a lady and hence her inferior. This pedestalization spread for all the history of Western poetry, e.g. Dante in “The Divine Comedy” makes Beatrice a redemptor of the human race and puts her roughly at the same level as Christ. We can talk about Petrarca or “Le Roman de la Rose”. This pedestalization reached its apogee in Victorian times and extended until the 50s: the woman was “the angel of the house” and man was civilized by her love.
The aim of this ideology was to make men willing to economically support women. This is similar to Indian religion, which makes cows sacred in order to protect them from slaughter (which could produce the starvation of the family). Cows were specially vulnerable, because bulls were not killed since they were needed for agriculture. But, if cows were sacrified, there was no way to get future milk and more cows and bulls (through reproduction) so it was necessary to make cows sacred, in order to the long-term interests to prevail so people could have better chances of surviving.
The same way women were elevated to the status of angels and superior beings, because they were the more vulnerable (in a world without contraceptives and without medicines they had to be economically supported in order to make the survival of human communities possible). Women were brainwashed since childhood to be “good girls”, so they get closer to this ideal, although anyone that has had experience with women in their feral state knows how female nature is different from this ideal.
Then technology advanced and women stopped being so vulnerable (the death in labor was almost eliminated, women had access to easy jobs that did not demand physical endurance, contraceptives reduced the number of children and appliances and compulsory education reduced the need of housekeeping). When this happened, the old deal of full-time work for sex, reproduction and housekeeping became obsolete. Since sex, reproduction and housekeeping were not as hard as before, their value dropped and, hence, they could not demand being economically supported by a man only because of it. This is the real reason of the entrance of women into the workplace.
Faced with these new situations, there was a split in the pedestalization movement. Some women tried to cling to a past where her husband economically supported them: these were the so-cons. They shamed men to stick to their traditional role, even if women’s traditional role was not available anymore.
Some other women tried to make the transfer of wealth compulsory, even if men didn’t received anything in return. Unlike the so-cons, the transfer was not from husband to wife, but from all men to all women, through taxes. These were the feminist.
At the end of the day, as someone said, “women agree about the goal and they only differ about the means”. The goal is the transfer of wealth from men to women. But each group thinks that their strategy to reach that goal is the best.
“Faced with these new situations, there was a split in the pedestalization movement. Some women tried to cling to a past where her husband economically supported them: these were the so-cons. They shamed men to stick to their traditional role, even if women’s traditional role was not available anymore.”
I agree with your whole comment and this part specifically. I know there are several blogs that advocate that women should stay home even if there are no children, because after all there is a husband and house to tend to. I get that, BUT this is not 1800 where it took 3 days to do laundry with washboards! I find there is enough time to do the chores and still run an efficient house, especially more so when we lived in a tiny apartment (there is only so much square footage to clean). You should be there to take care of you husband, but on the other hand you are not his mother. There is a fine line. He does not need to be monitored 24/7 and left without supervision. Under the pretty and sweet notion of “taking care of one’s husband”, a woman can easily make it into a control/power trip by feeling she has to monitor his toys, hobbies, friends, and other disagreeable or manly habits.
It is very easy to get sucked into the trap that women can still maintain a traditional role, when like you said, a woman’s traditional role is not available anymore. Trying to be such in a modern world that is hostile and has wife replacements via washing machine etc., only sets one up for disappointment and frustration. As much as some of us may long for and crave that existence, it will never be that way again.
Terry,
I am glad we are on the same page with this as I was starting to wonder where I fit in in the traditional spectrum. While I most easily identify with traditional/conservative values, sometimes the shoe just does not fit if LW and the sort contend to be so. All I know for sure is that I am not PC and that I am a Christian.
Another thing: It seems there are some women out there who try to get us to listen to and follow them, rather than our own husband. I would not want a woman reading my blog and think that I am an authority on these matters or to listen to me rather than her own husband if I say something contradictory. Like you said, love and respect for your husband fuels your anger…I feel likewise. When whacks are taken against men in general or men who supposedly aren’t godly enough, I do take it personally. I think it is arrogant to presume that a man isn’t godly just because he isn’t doing A, B, and C, in a culture that won’t let him or give him the tools to do A, B, and C.
A feminist writer actually wrote a piece that was approaching some kind of insights in this matter, where she described her vacation at the family’s summer house with no mod cons, leading to a traditional division of labour, coming to the conclusion that without access to black market handymen from poorer countries and electric appliances equality has no chance.
Much of the “liberation” of women was made possible by the inventiveness of men. Specifically the electrical grid, and small electric motors. The other day I was looking through “Joy of Cooking” (1970’s edition) at a dessert. It is one of those things that involves beating egg whites to a certain consistency. One can either beat by hand with a whisk for about 30 minutes (which implies one woman and a daughter or two, or 3 to 4 kitchen helpers) or one can get out the electric mixer for maybe 3 minutes.
So there you go. Small electric motor, plugged into the wall, or several teenaged girls who will do exactly what they are told, for as long as they are told to do it.
Athol over at married man sex life makes the point that basic housekeeping doesn’t take all day, every day. His opinion is that any young, married woman should work for money outside the home, because the alternative tends to lead to hours spent on Facebook. Facebook is now a major factor in divorce cases, whether it’s a stupid man putting up images of his affair, or a woman with too much time on her hands re-discovering some guy from high school.
I’m inclined towards finding some way to match up the good young men with the still good young women, before it is too late for either or both of them. But no man or woman should feel obligated to play “Russian Roulette” with marriage.
“I’m inclined towards finding some way to match up the good young men with the still good young women, before it is too late for either or both of them.”
Sounds like what Susan Walsh advocates, getting the “greater beta” men together with the “non-attention-seeking relationship-friendly” women (my terms not hers) before they both get bitterly destroyed by the dopamine thrill-fueled hookup culture.
This requires one of two things, preferably both:
-Beta guys get taught from a young age how to cultivate and express a healthy masculinity (possibly with some game lessons)
-Young women learn to grow up fast, skip the whole “I looooove bad boys” phase of life, and exhibit some real social independence from the groupthink sisterhood of insecurity. (As I have noted several times, no matter their background or education, most urban young women I’ve met on both coasts are heartbreakingly insecure and lacking in social confidence that isn’t reinforced by a posse.)
The former point requires the dismantlement of a social and school system that has been built to girls’ benefit at the expense of boys’. The latter may require some good old-fashioned shaming and playing on fears of spinsterhood to get women thinking (and reacting) realistically about the sexual marketplace. It’s not enough to “want a relationship;” you have to get your mind ready to actually have one and not just have a boy-bitch accessory you can show off to the girls. As Joe Paterno says in paraphrase, “everyone wants to win. The will to prepare to win is what makes winners.”
It sounds weird to say that women need to back off on all of the socially-enforced goodies they’ve been given the past forty years or there won’t be enough quality men for them to be happy (haaaaapy) with. Imagine how that realization must make a feminist’s head explode!
Forgot to mention that whenever I hear a woman describe herself as an “anti-feminist” I almost invariably find a female supremacist with a pedestal addiction.
A woman I was friends with and dated briefly called herself anti-feminist. Should have been a red flag; what she really meant was that she wanted the benefits of the old system as she moved through the new society. She broke off our friendship when I called her out on some bad behavior, saying I was supposed to “support” her in a time of need (as if that gave her the right to be a jerk). Came crawling back to me after she started to detach from the guy she dated instead of me, then started crushing on me because I compensated for the flaws of her ex. Dropped me like a bad habit when a better offer came around and somehow expected me to be proud of her for it.
Badger Nation: It seems inevitable, but it might take a long time with a lot of casualties on the way. Early adopters will be the winners.
Lavassa, do you mind posting the link for the story you mention? It sounds like an interesting read.
“Badger Nation: It seems inevitable, but it might take a long time with a lot of casualties on the way. Early adopters will be the winners.”
This is why I am pumping Game for LTR to all the guys I talk about relationships with. Plenty of beta men who are seeking monogamy and LTRs can make huge strides in their social lives with classic game teaching, without getting into the triple-digit counts some of the PUAs seek.
Oak: It is written in Swedish. You can google translate, but I am afraid it is so collaquially written that it will just be gibberish.
http://www.expressen.se/kronikorer/sommarkronikorer/1.1628313/jenny-ostergren-jamstalldheten-star-sig-inte-ett-dyft-utan-elektricitet-och-kopta-tjanster
Badger Nation: I am not a fiend och LTR game. A LTR should be a space where you can relax and be yourself to be of any value (naturally within the limits of time, money and reciprocity) and culture/society should make that happen.
In the age of No-Fault Divorce and Marriage 2.0, I have come to the conclusion that the onus is on women, not men, to prove their worthiness to marriage. They made their bed and have to lie in it. What sane individual would enter marriage under its present structure and not at the same time require his SO to renounce demonstrably the ills of this?
Firstly, sorry for only presenting a Catholic perspective above. I did this because, firstly, I am a Catholic and, secondly, so I believe is The Thinking Housewife, whose comments started a lot of this recent discussion. She would know – or she should – that there is no religious requirement to marry, for Catholics at least.
Secondly, I think women generally should work, at least part-time. My wife has mostly worked part-time (it gives her balance and something to do, and keeps the woman’s mind occupied, as well as being good insurance against loss of the husband’s income). Girls should be told that – statistically – it is most likely they will work part-time for a while. Not constantly full time and not constantly SAHM. That is what they should prepare for. The only exceptions would be cases in which the girl is so clever and has so much to offer professionally that she chooses to pursue a career to the virtual exclusion of the normal path of marriage and some children. Some such women have always existed.
I have known some cases in which the wife becomes the primary breadwinner, and the husband minds the house and children, but these tend to be due to loss of the husband’s job or his advancing age. I doubt that such situations will become the norm, and I suspect that they are not stable.
Most of the women I know in this middle class town in Australia work part-time when they have children.
As for reversion to traditional roles, I have also seen this as conditions get even temporarily harder.
On LTR Game, I have found this to be of immense help in my marriage in recent times. It really does work. You don’t have to be what Americans call a “jerk” about it; but you do have to be aware of the effect your behaviour as a man is having on your wife’s perceptions of you as a woman. You can dial it up or down as appropriate. It is rather sad that women respond best to a rather firmer and cooler treatment than I would actually like to use, but I suspect this is because women “evolved” when times were harsher and still respond viscerally to this kind of treatment.
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She would know – or she should – that there is no religious requirement to marry, for Catholics at least.
While it is true, you’d be surprised at how a religious older woman my mom knows seems to have this understanding that I should either get married or enter the religious life with a vocation. The entire concept of being single and not engaged in the church directly seems foreign to her. Mind you, I suspect that for many people, there were very few examples of somebody engaging in that lifestyle, especially her since she grew up in the rural countryside in Haiti. Otherwise, the few people who opted for that lifestyle were written off as weird or mentally ill, and the women were labeled as “spinsters”.
Girls should be told that – statistically – it is most likely they will work part-time for a while. Not constantly full time and not constantly SAHM.
Admittedly, that’s rather liberal given your traditional background, but I think for some families, it’s not going to be enough to maintain a middle class lifestyle, and unless you’re dealing with low end service sector positions, most (American) employers want dedicated full-time workers. Even traditional female fields like nursing, social work, and teaching can’t work with part-time employees.
Mind you, a number of my female friends have hinted at such a lifestyle being ideal, while my male friends want their future wives to work full-time to lessen the burden on them.
As for reversion to traditional roles, I have also seen this as conditions get even temporarily harder.
Which admittedly makes no sense to me given that it’s a burden upon the male that has to take care of the female. The modern lifestyle allows women to go out and earn their own income and stop being a financial burden on males.
It is rather sad that women respond best to a rather firmer and cooler treatment than I would actually like to use
The trick is to stop indulging in them and for all males to refrain engaging with women sexually until they evolve and become human. In other words, a sexual male strike until our demands are met.
DA, I get a happier wife and I am happier when I use “game”, consciously or unconsciously.
I have noticed on field trips, as a student biologist, that the girls seemed to get more girly and the boys more dominant. That kind of thing.
My wife has mostly worked part-time, and I full-time. We have managed financially here in Australia. We don’t live “high on the hog”, but we do OK. When she was SAHM, it got hard a few times.
It is important for Catholics not to buy into soem of the sterner Protestant ideas about the role of the housewife. I don’t mean that to cause offence, just that there is no single way of a woman living her life that is optimal. I do think there is a reasonable presumption that a Catholic wife should be firstly wife and mother, and that has been our model, but I don’t see any absolute prohibition on a woman doing paid work as well.
I’ll defend the Church here, although I have my own complaints. I’ll also try to address this in longer form at my blog, which is only mostly dead at the moment.
I think the Catholic Church, for all her faults, is one of the few institutions that takes marriage seriously. It has a serious and well-thought out sacramental theology where marriage is one of the seven sacraments. Even though that theology is not lived out and not administered truly perfectly in every instant, marriage is important.
There is a serious problem in the Church in America with annulments. An annulment is not a “Catholic divorce” but the result of a Church tribunal that, juridically speaking, the marriage never existed in the first place usually because of a lack of capacity or intent in one of the parties.
Dalrock, sounds like your buddy got a bum deal. I don’t deny the injustice of his situation. I don’t know enough to do so either way.
But as some above have alluded to, marriage as a sacrament is not “administered” or “delivered” or “provided” by the Church to the lucky couple, the Church only witnesses the sacrament. The husband and wife share the grace of the sacrament of marriage with each other. That’s why it’s sometimes referred to as the primordial sacrament. From the perspective of the Catholic Church, marriages are valid whether the Church “marries” a couple or not.
I’ll try to get a post together on this. My blogging dropped off because I was slammed with work.
Badger Nation Says:
Sounds like what Susan Walsh advocates, getting the “greater beta” men together with the “non-attention-seeking relationship-friendly” women (my terms not hers) before they both get bitterly destroyed by the dopamine thrill-fueled hookup culture.
This requires one of two things, preferably both:
-Beta guys get taught from a young age how to cultivate and express a healthy masculinity (possibly with some game lessons)
-Young women learn to grow up fast, skip the whole “I looooove bad boys” phase of life, and exhibit some real social independence from the groupthink sisterhood of insecurity. (As I have noted several times, no matter their background or education, most urban young women I’ve met on both coasts are heartbreakingly insecure and lacking in social confidence that isn’t reinforced by a posse.)
I agree with the first point, and it is likely to be difficult because of all the anti-man nonsense that is flooding the culture. The second point is not quite correct. What I think is needed is to provide a different “posse” for young women. It seems to me that women are much more attuned to the opinions of others, so rather than fight their nature it is essential to provide a better set of opinions. In the college world, sororities used to do this. Now, I have no idea what they do besides provide bodies for selected frat parties. So likely this would have to be done under the umbrella of religious organizations.
The former point requires the dismantlement of a social and school system that has been built to girls’ benefit at the expense of boys’. The latter may require some good old-fashioned shaming and playing on fears of spinsterhood to get women thinking (and reacting) realistically about the sexual marketplace. It’s not enough to “want a relationship;” you have to get your mind ready to actually have one and not just have a boy-bitch accessory you can show off to the girls. As Joe Paterno says in paraphrase, “everyone wants to win. The will to prepare to win is what makes winners.”
Lacking the ability to turn the school system around on a dime, I think that we’ll have to try to save the college men and men in their 20’s first. As to the women, it looks like the boomer feminists are in the process of providing an abundance of bad examples, such as that British feminist cat-lady discussed on this site not long ago. Explaining to young women that they won’t turn into lonely cat-ladies over night, but they can certainly get a head start that way by going for a ride on the infamous “carousel” might be a useful place to start.
It sounds weird to say that women need to back off on all of the socially-enforced goodies they’ve been given the past forty years or there won’t be enough quality men for them to be happy (haaaaapy) with. Imagine how that realization must make a feminist’s head explode!
Do not underestimate the power of a fully operational rationalization hamster…
Unless it is absolutely impossible – the man and woman are stuck on a desert island, for example – the normal requirement for a Catholic marriage is the blessing of the Church. The ideal is a nuptial mass, which is what my wife and I had.
I am not an expert but I suspect a marriage deliberately contracted without a church service would be “valid” but “illicit”. It is highly desirable to have witnesses and so on.
The point is that if a man (or woman) is interested in a marriage as a Catholic outside the civil power, he should seek advice from a sympathetic and wise priest, if he can find such a rare jewel.
Worth thinking about:
”In fact, feminism and so-con pedestalizers are two branches of the same ideology: the female supremacism or, if you will, the pedestalization movement.”
“Pedestalization Movement”?
I think it capture the essence of what happening quite nicely. I’m going to have to adopt your terminology.
And, thanks for giving the historical perspective.
Nothingbutthetruth – “At the end of the day, as someone said, “women agree about the goal and they only differ about the means”.
As a matter of proper attribution, I believe that this first came form the blogger known as Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology in a comment he made on Welmer‘s old blog (back before he started The Spearhead.
Likewise, unless you indicate that you picked ip up from someone else, I’ll be giving you attribution for the “Pedestalization Movement” term.
Dalrock and Co,
You left an interesting comment on Haley’s Halo a while back that addresses this very point (just saw it today going over some old crosslinked HH threads). Haley said “But because women are uniquely programmed to follow strong men, it behooves good men to take the lead and guide women into making good choices they might not have made on their own.”
I’m guessing the key obligatory word “behooves” inspired your response:
Even Roissy and company don’t claim to be able to talk a woman down from an entitlement complex. They know how to break through it or use it to their advantage, but not how to make her see the light.
Perhaps more importantly, why should a man learn game to try to reform such an awful person? Once he learns game, he should go find a nice non delusional one instead. Let the omegas chase after the ones with entitlement complexes. They need love too.
http://haleyshalo.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/you-get-what-you-pay-for/#comment-592
Augustine:
That’s a distinction without a difference in the case that dalrock told us about. The fact is, the man had a wife who he really was married to, but because of the Church’s doing, he lost her involuntarily, despite not having violated his marriage vows. The Church can rationalize their breakup of a legitimate marriage by claiming that they were only “witnessing” the supposed “fact” that there had never actually been a marriage in the first place (just as they had “witnessed” the formation of that retroactively never-existing marriage in the first place), but it just ain’t true. They were observably a driving force here.
@Badger Nation
I’m guessing the key obligatory word “behooves” inspired your response:
Good call. I wasn’t thinking of that exchange specifically when I wrote this but I have thought about it on other occasions and I think you are right about the relationship. I think a good portion of what I have been writing about is how men need to stop pretending that old rules and obligations are in place. I don’t recall which post but several months ago a commenter mentioned that he only felt responsible for the security of those women in his life who had some level of obligation to listen to him. If you think about it that limits your role of protector immensely but it also makes sense. There are too many variants of “lets you and him fight” in addition to “strong independent women” who will make all sorts of feminist inspired bad choices about their safety.
In an age where everything has been made muddy, assuming the old rules apply by default is insane. Yet this is what so many would ask men to do and perhaps more importantly what many of us would do instinctively.
Edit: I found the comment. It was by tspoon.
Robert, David Tickets is a feminist and white knight who runs interference for feminists by blaming the damage feminists cause on satanists and pedophiles that don’t exist.
Once again, excellent post, and thanks for the link. I’m not going to throw my hat in the ring on this one because my opinion matters not. I’ve been taking my time off from blogging to… well… blog. I’m storing up articles for the new year, and this is definitely a major topic.
I have two very close friends who got engaged in the past month. I’ve had private conversations with both of them and asked them what led them to make their decisions. Long story short, both of them admitted they felt like they “kind of had to” based on pressure from their girlfriend, the girlfriends family, and their own family.
Both men are in their mid 20’s and are clearly not ready for marriage. One of their fiancée’s tried to kiss me last time I saw her, and the other is hung up on some guy she works with.
This cycle has to stop.
Dalrock, this is a feature—not a bug. You have very astutely noted here that our society has liberated women from their traditional responsibilities, while keeping men largely shackled to theirs so as to prevent women from having to bear the costs of societal misandry. It is in the best interests of men to see this asymmetrical regime ended, and since our means of doing that through legislation, culture and custom are rather limited, this really only leaves the personal abdication of chivalry—in any form. In that context, I would consider the decline of the protector role to be desirable.
Of course it doesn’t end there. I think what will eventually happen—if enough men abandon chivalry—is that you will see a push to legislate chivalry, perhaps through increased proliferation & enforcement of so-called “duty to rescue” statutes and other legislation seeking to compel chivalry from men. These will be hard to enforce in a free society…which is part of the reason why, ultimately, the United States will not remain a free society. But now I’m getting off topic.
@ TFH
I appreciate the kind words. I’ve thought about blogging…but I have some reservations:
1) My job is incredibly demanding.
2) I’m not sure that I have anything terribly original to offer. There are a lot of good writers/bloggers/thinkers in the Manosphere who are doing good work and I am in (broad) agreement with them. I’m not really sure what I could add.
That said, I’ve been pondering contributing to The Spearhead recently. When I first become aware of men’s rights and issues it was mostly in the context of the divorce/family court racket and other anti-male legislation. But my real passion on these matters really centers around the war on young men and boys. If I do anything, it will most likely speak to that.
I had a much longer comment typed up before but it vanished. So the Cliff’s notes version:
1) Wives without children should definitely be contributing income. I’ve never understood the rationale by some of the bloggers Laura Grace mentioned that teach women to stay at home when there are no children.
2) When there are children younger than school aged, my view changes considerable and I’m very hardline about it having worked ina daycar and read the studies about daycare and young children. Even the studies done by liberal progressives don’t paint a pretty picture.
3) If the kids are in school the better part of the day, a part time job isn;t a bad idea. I was on the verge of being hired myself until we found out were expecting the fourth of our five children.
4) This all underscores why a man should never marry a woman if he has the slightest doubt about her integrity and ability to be a wife. The stakes are too high.
Incidentally, of all our married friends, the two income familes are the only ones we know of where there are serious fights about money, and it’s mainly because most wives have “my money is my money but his money is our money” syndrome.
That said, the rules have changed considerably and men have a lot to be wary of. Since the issue of the church has been a big part of the thread, I’ll mention the elephant in the room: Sex, known as fornication outside of marriage by more devout types like myself. This is why many religious folk pressure men to marry. I view this as just another type of misandry as men are often portrayed as having no control over their sexuality.
It was one the reasons the post at Faith and Society (that I linked to in an earlier comment) resonated with me. The author called the church on its misandrist tendencies.
Look, either we go the traditional route and women are protected companions of men and have hard responsibilities, … hence things like alimony (because women don’t work),…
Or we go the feminist route, and we’re independent.
This half-way thing allows women to have their cake and eat it too – hence thinking “my money is my money and your money is our money”.
Being a traditional male in a society where women can opt out of their traditional responsibilities any time is insane. You’re stuck: But your woman isn’t.
Fuck that.
I say: Go the whole hog, feminist route. Oblige women to support themselves.Any woman who marries a man must, if the marriage dissolves, be expected to look after herself financially. Women can get jobs now and have careers: she gives it up at her own risk.
Why the hell are men expected to look after women and women aren’t expected to look after themselves? We have to hold doors open for them? Be chivalrous? Responsible?
Are we slaves, or what?
If we’re independent and women are tough and strong, then they should eat their damned medicine they want to much and be fucking INDEPENDENT.
Stop leeching off men like brazen parasites.
Or get back in the kitchen. If you want independence, then stop fucking expecting any man to treat you like a special flower.
No further words need be said about it. That’s it.
Well, Gorbacev, I’ve been “in the kitchen” for the better part 16 years, and happily so. I think marriage works better when played by the “old” rules. However economic realities being what they are, sometimes wives need to help bring home some bacon. Of course, from my antiquated religious standpoint, most of the confusin and anguish can be eliminated by “wives, submit yourself to your own husband.”
“I have two very close friends who got engaged in the past month. I’ve had private conversations with both of them and asked them what led them to make their decisions. Long story short, both of them admitted they felt like they “kind of had to” based on pressure from their girlfriend, the girlfriends family, and their own family.
Both men are in their mid 20′s and are clearly not ready for marriage. One of their fiancée’s tried to kiss me last time I saw her, and the other is hung up on some guy she works with.”
If I may ask, did you ask them what they expect to get out of this? Suggest they didn’t have to do it? Advise they stand up for themselves?
Or get back in the kitchen. If you want independence, then stop fucking expecting any man to treat you like a special flower.
Personally, I don’t think they should be able to go back to the kitchen. They are going to have to learn to be independent because quite frankly, I don’t see the need to support them anymore. Men have tasted freedom, and we’re not going back to slavery so you can stay at home.
What galls me is how women expect to get the benefits – all of them – of the old order, and yet not have to pay the price. They want automatic custody of children, the right to select the “father” of their children and get the support for them from another man, and yet they say they want equality. Maternity trumps paternity. Paternity relegated to history.
Fine.
Sexual freedom – sluts no longer exist. Fine.
The right to work. Fine.
The right to eliminate the glass ceiling (if there is one). Fine.
The right to equal consideration.
Fine.
However, then this should all be:
– Alimony. That’s sexism. Get a job, you lazy ass!
– Automatic custody? Then tie it to child support. Better yet, as fatherhood as been relegated to history, eliminate child support completely because being a father is a matter of convenience for the woman.
– Door-opening and bag-carrying. What, open your own door, you lazy ass!
– Paying for dates. Pay for yourself, you ultra-mega-lazy ass! You disgust me in your expectations and feeble-mindedness. What are you, some sort of princess? Get off it.
– Sex. Regrets after the fact? We need signed agreements notarized by lawyers before each and every sex act, because it’s too easy to put innocent men in jail. So much for being swept off your feet by a powerful man: you doomed that kind of sex forever. We educate all young men always to continually ask – and record – all assents. Must be maintained for 7 years after coitus, because you never know when the female will change her story and decide it was rape.
– Equal Pay: Then men, stop working so hard. Work the minimum you need to, and make sure you contribute as little to taxes as possible. The Replacement Husband can’t pay the bills if he runs out of money, too. See to it that the women pay most of the taxes, those that go out to the other women, anyway.
– Marriage: Fuck you, you self-annointed princesses. Marry yourselves. You clearly don’t need men – so you don’t need our money, our skills or our companionship. You definitely don’t need us as fathers, so, … bye.
– War. Drop out of the army. Clearly, men are violent dogs, killers. We should shut down the army. You give us nothing, and you want us to fight and kill and die for you? Forget it.
No more army. Oh! bad guys coming? You deal with it. I’m sure you’re independent and strong enough to do it. You’ve been telling us this for so long, and you’ve been insulting and putting us down for so long, calling us violent, murderous dogs — well, clearly, you don’t need our help.
Want to walk the Feminist Way? Then go all the way and stop fucking men over. You can’t beat a dog until it bleeds and not expect it to bite back or slink away.
Seriously, the contradictions and misanthropic garbage is just beyond belief.
I really think feminists should be given *EXACTLY* what they ask for- in every possible measure. Without restriction or hesitation.
We’ll see how much they like it in 15 years.
My bet: They’ll find another way to blame it all on men. Ultimately, we’ll be blamed for being pussies and letting them walk all over us. And it’ll be the women who blame us for that, too.
@Badger Nation
“If I may ask, did you ask them what they expect to get out of this? Suggest they didn’t have to do it? Advise they stand up for themselves?”
Of course that’s what I (very timidly and kindly) suggested. One said “What am I going to do, man? Not get married until I’m 30?” And the other said “They’re right. I guess I need to grow up. I guess its time.”
It’s a sickness.
“Of course that’s what I (very timidly and kindly) suggested. One said “What am I going to do, man? Not get married until I’m 30?” And the other said “They’re right. I guess I need to grow up. I guess its time.” It’s a sickness.”
Sad, I guess beta males have hamsters too.
I was hoping one of you guys had a way to get through to guys like that. I think the best hope is to reinforce their obligation to their future kids. These guys are rationalizing their bad decision based on a sort of self sacrifice. They want to believe, and they shield their irrationality by saying they are being noble if they get screwed over by the woman. So if you can take away the nobility rationalization it might help. But the reality is you can’t argue with someone who is dead set on rationalizing a bad choice they want to make (man or woman).
@ Dave Alex:
Men have tasted freedom, and we’re not going back to slavery so you can stay at home.
I must assume you meant “you” as a collective statement towards all women because as I have said before, I have been staying at home since you were still a child. Further, I came home at my husband’s insistence. Which brings me to the crux of my comment:
I think I am more of a men’s rights supporter than you are, LOL. I believe I have expressed this sentiment to you before, but it’s up to every man to decide for himself what tradeoffs he’s willing to make in his own life, but he should do so with eyes wide open. I don’t think menshould be pressured to marry or that they are morally obligated to do so. Period.
@ Gorbacev: Despite the fact that it appears you and I have divergent worldviews, I can’t say I disagree with your positions on the matters of equal pay, alimony, double standards, or any of ther est of it. For reasons I am not comfortable divulging online, I have real problems with the way child support is administered and I think men are being denied equal protection under the law in a host of areas.
I say what you say: true equality for men and women alike or a return to the days when men could reasonably expect a return on their investment of hard work and commitment to their families. The murky middle is riddled with landmines that largely take out the men and children while the women are protected. This is unjust.
That said, my position is that men should have the right to choose whatever it is that they want. A couple of years ago when I started blogging, I was a stickler about women being in the home because I saw so many Christian kids getting into all kinds of trouble and families being ripped apart because Christian wives, despite giving lip service to the idea of submission felt entitled to run the house no matter what the Bible had to say about it.
It wasn’t long before I realized that my opinions were in direct opposition to my stated theology: Wives, submit to your own husbands. In other words, if a man feels his wife need s to help contribute income, what I think means nothing. She is to submit to what her husband requires, not what mine believes. Further, her duty to submit is not contigent upon whether she brings in a paycheck or not.
I support marriage because I believe strong families are the backbone of civilized society. I come from a community where the fruits of anything less are painfully evident for all to see. That said, my primary concern is how women who call themselves Christians balance their roles as co-breadwinners with the Biblical command to love, respect, and submit to their husbands. As far as the rest is concerned, I think it could be quickly resloved if the courts would simply grant men the equal protection under the law that they are entitled to.
Maybe y’all should file a collective lawsuit or something?
An oblique approach should be quite effective….. or in the case of the girl who wants to sleep with you, just take a hit for the team and f* the slut silly. But if that is to direct for you, then the “standard” attack is fairly simple. First, take the most recent guy you and he know, whose life has been destroyed by divorce, and talk to the guy so you have all the details. He’ll be relatively eager to talk to someone who doesn’t scream at him to shut up and take it like a man. That will be your good deed for the day. Then have a nice talk about “poor Bob” and “What is he going to do?” to the young’n. Go on, in detail, about what happened to Bob. Brevity isn’t the soul of wit in this case, the soul of wit is a massive barrage of horror. Now, never say that “his pumpkin” will do the same. But DO mention how perfect a wife, how good, how just such a darling woman Bob’s wife was. Ham it up. She was WONDERFUL before the divorce. Sure, this isn’t true, but neither is pumpkin a “good girl” either.
Make his future suffering real.
You bypass an immediate shut-down that way.
By the way, the seduce the slut and f* her is an old standby for protecting bros. Been around for a while. To bad he’ll probably hate you after that.
On the other hand, male hamsters lack the Estrogen to defend themselves against firepower of that magnitude. You will probably permanently injure his poor male rationalization hamster.
“These guys are rationalizing their bad decision based on a sort of self sacrifice. They want to believe, and they shield their irrationality by saying they are being noble if they get screwed over by the woman.”
As a Catholic, I see a lot of this motivated by some kind of mis-application of the Catholic philosophy of “virtue in suffering.” It actually fits perfectly with beta delusion, thinking that they are “better” people for taking pain instead of being leaders in their lives and working for their own self-interest. I would not be surprised if that attitude motivated a lot of people who softball their divorce case while their spouse moves heaven and earth to take everything from them – they don’t want to “feel bad” for being a “heavy” even though they are up against a devil.
You know Badger Nation, “virtue in suffering” is a Protestant philosophy as well. However, we have been taught that suffering for the cause of the gospel is virtuous. Suffering when it causes us to give up our selfish self-centered ways is virtuous. But the Scriptures expressly say:
Blessed are you when men persecute you for righteousness sake
And again:
For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.
For a man to marry a woman he doesn’t love and isn’t sure he can trust hardly qualifies as suffering for a good or righteous cause. Further, the damage his actions and hers are sure to inflict on future young and innocent children can hardly be justified using “virtue in suffering” ideology.
If a man has doubts, he should surely take a step back. Preferably before the cash being doled out for the nuptials begins to creep into the $100,000 range.
Further, I came home at my husband’s insistence.
From one perspective, I can understand why he did that, but from another perspective, I think he created his own prison by doing so, and if society reinforces this arrangement, it merely leads to men being directly responsible for women again. Ultimately, I think in my drunker moments, if men could merely hold out against women, they’d finally break, and we’d finally achieve a glorious utopia where women are responsible and useful self-sufficient creatures that will finally be great sex partners and long-term relationship prospects.
I don’t think menshould be pressured to marry or that they are morally obligated to do so.
Which is a rather sensible position to take, but the problem is that the supply of women leads to some men choosing to opt-out. While some may argue that returning to previous norms may rectify this, I don’t see how that would improve the lives of men given that sex and housework really isn’t equal to what men give up in a marriage. As I said, I’m probably chasing some bizzare utopian concept of where men and women give up nothing to get married while deriving only positive benefits from that arrangement.
I support marriage because I believe strong families are the backbone of civilized society.
What’s the success rate for a marriage of two low IQ black people where the male is perpetually unemployed…
@P.T. Barnum
Brevity isn’t the soul of wit in this case, the soul of wit is a massive barrage of horror. Now, never say that “his pumpkin” will do the same. But DO mention how perfect a wife, how good, how just such a darling woman Bob’s wife was. Ham it up. She was WONDERFUL before the divorce. Sure, this isn’t true, but neither is pumpkin a “good girl” either.
I disagree. I think this plays right into the guy’s rationalization hamster. Out comes the white knight shield to protect his betrothed’s honor. Also out comes the “you just don’t want me to be happy” rationalization. You just fed steroids to his hamster.
A better strategy would be to sit him down and make sure he takes marriage seriously. Challenge his honor. Would he divorce without cause? Would he judge other men who did? What are valid reasons? Get him worked up passionately defending his own honor and commitment to marriage. Explain that you are challenging him because his future children deserve two parents who are fully committed to their marriage. Once he passes all of your tests, then turn it to his future wife. If you think he can be trusted to take it seriously, have him ask her the same questions (write them down for him). If not, ask him if you can ask her yourself. Explain that if you know both really take marriage seriously they will have your blessing.
It still isn’t foolproof. The hamster usually does what it wants. But I think that angle is far more likely to be successful.
@ Dave Alex:
What’s the success rate for a marriage of two low IQ black people where the male is perpetually unemployed…
Probably about the same as the success rate for two low IQ white people where the male is perpetually unemployed.
Seriously, DA, is that all you got? Let’s set aside for the moment the tired meme about blacks having low IQ (mine is between 120 and 130. not a genius, but far from stupid). The issue here is marriage and the truth of the matter is that black marriage success rates were much better before black women, subsidized by the federal government, ran black men out the homes because sisters were gonna do it for themselves. We can all see how successful that’s been. Did all of our collective Iq’s suddenly plummet over th last 50 years?
Success in life is much more readily determined by integrity and work ethic than a function of IQ. The fact that our short-sighted, shallow, lazy culutre has deemed blue collar work as “less than” doesn’t mean that people who do blue collar work must of necessity have lower IQ’s than the rest of the general population. Anecdote:
I have a 15-year-old nephew in high school. He doesn’t like school and struggles to keep decent grades. He is being raised in a two-parent, devoutly religious, close-knit family. His mom and dad are very devotedto one another. He knows college isn’t for him, but he has inherited his father’s strong work ethic and is already taking steps to own his own commercial lawn business when he finishes high school. Every weekend, he takes his lawnmower, hits the pavement in his subdivision, and makes a over a $100 one day of the weekend. He has a reputation for doing good work.
What are his chances being a successful husband and father? I’d say pretty good so long as he marries the right woman. No matter what the HBD crowd serves up, even if it’s true, nature trumps nurture every time.
Now if you want to have a substantive conversation about the subject at hand, then let’s.
My last comment has a major typo. That should read, “nurture trumps nature.” I should add that I am not saying the folks who insist that Black people are the dumbest of all God’s children are correct. I’m just saying that even if they were, there are other factors that are much better indicators of success in life.
Obsidian uses a phrase that I really like. He calls educated fools “clever sillies.” The people who are ruining this country, the feminists who are waging a war against men that will cost them as much as anyone when the dust settles? I bet you they all have high IQ’s. And their marriage success rates are nothing to be proud of.
Actually Terry, we can take DA’s absurd question a step forward:
We know that Black marital rates in the 20th century were fairly high up until about the early 1970s, where it began to drop off to where we are today, about 40% or so. If indeed Black Men overall have lower IQs in relation to everyone else and that includes Black Women, how then are we to account for the previous fact of such relatively high and stable marital rates in Black America? Perhaps DA can explain this.
O.
as for DA’s other comments in this thread, they are completely irrelevant to him; by his own admission, not only is he not presently married, but he doesnt intend to be in the near future, perhaps never. To that extent then, the matter he’s so thoroughly intent on addressed has effectively been solved. He doesn’t have to worry himself about supporting anyone other than himself, full stop. The only remaining question is whether he is willing and able to withstand the occasional criticism for his lifestyle decisions by his social circle, ie, family, friends, etc. If he thinks they should stop doing this he is even more deluded than I had originally thought. So long as we have the right to criticize others we will do so, and there is precious little DA can or will do about it.
O.
@terry@breathinggrace,
I see your point.
I agree with you: Super smart doesn’t mean successful in life.
And if you’re religious, I can see the issue being how to proceed. Your solution is good.
And I think you’re right. We should create a “union”.
Hah.
Seriously, DA, is that all you got?
Yeah, it is. 🙂
The problem is that for some low IQ men, there isn’t much work that’s available to them that pays well, so their value as marriageable partners is low.
Let’s set aside for the moment the tired meme about blacks having low IQ
One must remember that HBD is using averages. So yes, there are highly intelligent black men and women out there, but the average IQ of African Americans is at 85 which is lower than white and Asian average IQ.
The issue here is marriage and the truth of the matter is that black marriage success rates were much better before black women, subsidized by the federal government, ran black men out the homes because sisters were gonna do it for themselves.
The problem is that, these women would have ended up on some type of support regime due to the fact their husbands and sons would no longer have much in the way of employment opportunities. The factories that would employ these men would disappear, but there isn’t a next phase for these men to go to because some of them lack the intellectual capability for higher skilled (and higher paying) work.
Success in life is much more readily determined by integrity and work ethic than a function of IQ.
The problem is that there’s only so much that “brute force” can handle. Yes, you can work hard and save your money, but your income and wealth levels are still dictated by one’s IQ. Can somebody with an IQ of 85 really become middle class without any type of government support? If one isn’t able to even perform the basic mathematical work to become an electrician or plumber, leaving only low-paying work at a big box store, then how can one become successful?
but he has inherited his father’s strong work ethic and is already taking steps to own his own commercial lawn business when he finishes high school.
I understand that he doesn’t do well in school, but one is left wondering even with a strong work ethic, will he be able to run a sucessful business in the future.
What are his chances being a successful husband and father? I’d say pretty good so long as he marries the right woman.
If he can maintain employment with a good salary, I would agree with you except that he may have to exclude some women who demand college degrees from their husbands. If he is unable to do so, then he’s functionally useless as a husband. Even in a world without welfare, a husband with poor employment options is burden upon a working woman.
Sheesh, DA, going back and forth with you is pointless and I have stuff to do. Christmas lights to go see and all that. One more point before I sign off for the holidays:
If one isn’t able to even perform the basic mathematical work to become an electrician or plumber.
Doing basic mathematics doesn’t require the intellect of a rocket scientist and you know it. You’re grasping at straws. I know too many black men (and white ones for that matter) who are suppoorting their families quite well doing blue collar work. You have a narrative in your head you’re determined not to let go of because it supports what you wnat to believe. You’ve already stated repeatedly that you want no part of anything that doesn’t come easy and as such you have effectively decided not to be happy.
It is an inconvenient fact of human nature that the best things in life are not free (even though money can’t buy them) and the things we appreciate the most are the things we work the hardest to obtain or maintain. God just made us that way.
I wish you a Merry Christmas- if that’s even possible.
Obsidian:
I don’t believe that the out-of-wedlock birth rates are as high among African- American women as the media presents them. They invariably report the birth rates according to the ethnicity of the father. A huge percentage of those African-American children born out of wedlock or aborted are to white females with African-American fathers. IOW, it’s the Anglo-American women who are the real sluts here, as usual.
Gorbachev:
Let’s go one step further: now that the Anglobitches chose the men with whom they wish to have relationships: what do they choose? Thugs, lowlifes, criminals, scum and losers generally. So let’s go all the way on this one, too— let the cretins, morons and bums they choose as partners be their ‘white knights’. Let those creeps be their fathers, husbands, and sources of support. Let them rely on those kinds of men to uphold their priviledges and defend them.
Already Anglo women are clamoring about the supposed ‘man shortages’ and ‘no decent men’. Well, they didn’t want us, and now we’re gone. Let’s see how they like it when the screws are tightened even more; as more and more Anglo men are discovering that there are better choices elsewhere.
Eric,
With all due respect I have to disagree. All stats and measures done in this regard agree, that OOW births among Blacks is indeed considerably higher than for other groups of people.
As for your thoughts about “Anglo”, by which I take it to mean White, I think they are just a bit extreme. There are plenty of White Women in this country who aren’t taking up with cretins and thugs and so forth. I am not saying that there aren’t legitimate problems to be confronted here, just making the case for scaling back and toning down the hyperbole and wildeyed rhetoric that the Manosphere is increasingly becoming known for. We have to be mindful of this if our goal is to be taken more seriously in the wider debate of the issues of the day. I’m just sayin.
O.
The Catholic Church, from top to bottom, is in the active business of encouraging adultery and the undermining of marriage.
This is plain reality. The Pope knows and supports this in the distinctly cowardly manner of saying things in support of marriage while allowing his bishops and priests to work to support those who walk out on their marriages.
Benedict would resign if he was a man/priest of quality character.
He plays, purposefully, both sides of this issue.
“The Catholic Church, from top to bottom, is in the active business of encouraging adultery and the undermining of marriage.”
Could you elaborate on this a bit?
I suspect what Karl means is that the Catholic Church has become slack on the matter of annulments. Specifically the Catholic Church in America. There is a suspicion that annulments, which should by definition be rare, are being used as “Catholic divorce”. From what I have heard and read, this is more of a problem in America than elsewhere. The presumption should always be that the marriage is valid, but some American clerical authorities are reportedly using weak arguments to annul marriages, which may be “liberating” for the partner who wants out, but not for the spouse left behind.
Whenever you hear the Pope speak of marriage his “position” reflects a classical Catholic orthodoxy, this was
the same for JPIi. But all the while they observed their Papal Court overturning cases appealed to Rome from the U.S., as I did and won after a twelve year battle.
What you do not hear of, not “officially” is the “selling” of divorce as a gateway to nullity. Then, if nullity is refused, the, almost always irreversible(not when understood, taught and actually practiced) destruction of a valid sacrament results, often, in adultery by one or both of the spouse, with the Church accepting the “new couples” with open arms and thus, willingly, formally, cooperating in open adultery, which the Church helps to “cover up”, to “avoid?” scandal.
The real damage, however, is done when children, who see all the goings on, loose their faith. To top that, when one spouse is abandoned, wrongfully, but the Church is involved with encouraging and supporting the adulterous, malicious abandoner(for the good of the children born to the adulterers) and the innocent spouse must pay the adulterous, Church/State supported abandoner/adulterer
to brainwash the innocent children of the valid marriage, through childsupport and alimony
….the injustice simply becomes too much to describe.
What Catholics Do Not Accept or Understand, is that the clergy, with bishops and Vatican knowledge, are supportive, directly, of the ongoing crimes involved and openly ignore pleas for help!
Chew on that reality and understand that, since over pne million annulments have been granted in the US, even 5% wrongly granted is 50,000 destroyed, valid marriages.
I bet the number is significantly higher but cannot be accurately discerned. Then, understand, help to heal these marriages, is mostly non existant, by choice of the Catholic Hierarchy.
It is criminal, what the CatholicChurch and its clergy are doing and their is absolutely no accountability. None.
I know this. I am living it. This is not a theory. This is life experience.
Karl, that sounds terrible. My wife wrote a piece for the local Catholic paper, here in Australia. She must have written something a bit positive about annulments, because it attracted a sharp response from someone who pointed out that annulments may be good for one spouse but very bad for the other. It is a classic case of liberals wanting to make life easier for some people, and not be “harsh”, but just creating a new class of the abused and disaffected.
I didn’t criticise my wife, but I felt bad for her and rather regretted not intervening earlier. I have toughened in my attitudes over the years, and I would probably try at least to forbid her writing something so silly again. She sometimes listens to me on such matters.
There was an interesting article in, IIRC, an American traditionalist Catholic magazine about the Mrs Sheila Rauch Kennedy case. Married to one of the famous Kennedys, she found herself facing the annulment of her marriage. You have probably heard of the story. I think she recently won some justice. The article claimed that some Church bureaucrats were using ridiculous excuses to try to annul marriage, things like the husband not sharing equally in “chores” was one that stuck in my mind. As some bureaucrats allegedly boasted, they could find an excuse to annul 95% of Catholic marriages using such flexible “criteria”.
Sheila Kennedy joked that her husband would have trouble finding the washing machine, but she did not think that grounds for an annulment!
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/06/21/vatican_reverses_kennedy_ruling/
The assumption should ALWAYS be that the marriage is valid.
That said, I have known of a couple of cases where marriages have been annulled, probably correctly, and the aggrieved spouse has gone on to contract an apparently happy and successful Catholic marriage. Some marriages will be invalid, for some reason, and annulments are appropriate in such cases, but they should be rare.
In my understanding, numberwise, this scandal far exceeds that of the child abuse, but gets virtually no Catholic or secular press, to expose it and to encourage the Church to address its complicity.
People like their dalliances and find the destruction of divorce, although it is real child abuse on a far larger scale, preferable to the child abuse of clergy. It is a joke.
Rome mostly ignores our pleas, with full knowledge of the consequences. It can do much, much more.
It is a authentic full blown scandal, which goes all the way to the Pope. His court overturns nullities, he has an in to act, if only he cared. He does not, in this man’s opinion and THAT I cannot comprehend, from otherwise seeing his behavior. I am astounded by his reserve in this nightmare, for thousands and thousands of us and our whole families!
I read Sheila Kennedy’s book, years ago.
Do not be too hard on your wife. Yours is to see that you live, first, what you would hope she followed you, in doing. Remember the two ends of marriage. They do not
” go away”.
My experience is that, in America, the ubiquity/insidiousness of the “divorce mentality” IS NOT educated out of out clergy. It remains, amidst sometimes faithful orthodoxy, which makes strange bedfellows sometimes when this issue is discussed.
I am almost always harshly criticized. But that is what I must face, as did Jesus. I know, I speak from experience. It is a significant shame that Cardinal Pell does not spend some time in the ‘states’ to listen, not to his fellow clerics, but to those of us who have lived through these “annulment mills” and the pastoral cesspool that American Catholicism employes. He has clout.
how then are we to account for the previous fact of such relatively high and stable marital rates in Black America?
One could argue that a lack of welfare programmes created a disincentive to be single, I would note that the big difference is that the social structure simply reinforced marriage. In theory, the same social shaming networks which create a somewhat conservative structure in the black community today in regards to something like homosexuality collapsed under the practical notion of what welfare was offering, especially during the 1970s when deindustrialization took place and began the economic disenfranchisement of adult lower class black males in Northern industrial cities.
Doing basic mathematics doesn’t require the intellect of a rocket scientist and you know it.
It’s true that it doesn’t, but there is a certain intellectual level that is required to take basic mathematical concepts and use them on a daily basis. The question is if the average intellect of those in the lower class permits them to able to understand such concepts and use them effectively. In short, can we train these young men to become productive skilled workers in a modern economy and earn the middle class blue collar wages that can support a family? One could argue that I’m taking an ultra-pessimistic viewpoint, but I don’t see anything that points in the other direction.
The only remaining question is whether he is willing and able to withstand the occasional criticism for his lifestyle decisions by his social circle, ie, family, friends, etc.
I’m already facing criticism from my niece and nephew, Athena, my mother, several co-workers, and other friends and family members. I tend to down play my internet theories with a mix of deprecation (I’m not attractive) and fact skewing (girls only want alphas, not men like me, or “I don’t make enough money or have a good enough job”) to parry their criticisms. I’ve only revealed my full thought processes to one (alpha) male, and he’s repulsed by conceptual model of female behaviour. So for all intents and purposes, I’ll keep feeding the same sanitized answers as long as they keep asking me lest I seek to upset my friends and family.
Regardless, I think I’ll always have this jaded viewpoint that takes women in an abstract sense and views them as leeches on males that take away male resources and freedoms to sustain their lifestyles while the men get nothing of value in return. In contrast, on personal level, I find it hard to view my female friends in that sense, and even if their behaviour reeks of standard female behaviour, I somehow can’t label them as whores or parasites, nor am I running off to tell their boyfriends, fiances, and husbands to leave them.
It is an inconvenient fact of human nature that the best things in life are not free (even though money can’t buy them)
For me, I tend to look at money as a means to buy freedom. For those who are born into immense wealth, they can effectively buy their way into whatever they want and use their finances to sway the emotions of others around them. Maybe it’s because I look at things from a far more materialistic level, but to a certain extent, they have a certain level of real freedom that people like you and me don’t have because of their high income.
I wish you a Merry Christmas- if that’s even possible.
Merry Christmas Terry. 🙂
@Karl
Chew on that reality and understand that, since over pne million annulments have been granted in the US, even 5% wrongly granted is 50,000 destroyed, valid marriages.
I bet the number is significantly higher but cannot be accurately discerned. Then, understand, help to heal these marriages, is mostly non existant, by choice of the Catholic Hierarchy.
It is criminal, what the CatholicChurch and its clergy are doing and their is absolutely no accountability. None.
I know this. I am living it. This is not a theory. This is life experience.
Thanks for sharing your personal (and painful) perspective. I’m not aware of the stats you reference, but your point would seem very hard to argue against. Another way to consider it is that Catholics divorce at very close to the population at large (28% vs 33%). I think it is a very conservative estimate looking at the AARP stats that at least 50% of the divorces they examined were frivolous. So it isn’t as if there isn’t much room for improvement. Clearly Catholics don’t see divorcing frivolously as risky socially or an annulment as that difficult to attain. On the flip side, what little pressure the Catholic church applies does seem to be moving the needle a bit. If the church chose to take a hard line on this they could make a huge difference.
“If the Church chose to take a hard line on this, they could make a huge difference.”
Amen.
Justice and accountability, as well as charity are needed; not the false, heretical, charity that has largely masqueraded as “mercy” in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.
It’s a true scandal in the US Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church in the US has 6% of the global population of Catholics, but accounts for ~78% of the global number of annulments! See: http://www.catholicinsight.com/online/church/divorce/c_annul.shtml
Everyone in the Church knows that something is going very wrong with the way tribunals are handling annulment cases in the US, because in the US it’s becoming akin to Catholic divorce, which was never the intent of the annulment process, and isn’t the way it is normally used outside the US.
Why is this tolerated by the Vatican? My guess is that the US Bishops are telling the Vatican that unless they acquiesce in the American culture of easy/peasy divorce and remarriage (because annulment is really about remarriage in the Church more than anything else), they will lose even more Catholics from the paying pews. So along it goes, with annulments becoming rather easy to obtain (a garden variety accusation of emotional abuse will get you one, and every single divorce in America involves emotional abuse, doesn’t it?) and the whole system becoming a joke, really.
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A lot of you guys semed to be under the impression that the reproduction of the human species has no cost or sacrifices on the part of females. marriage is not that attractive to women because it is work plain and simple. in japan, women are not marrying. throughout europe the population is declining. these are serious economic issues which will have long term repercussions. churches want men to marry to preserve our way of life. mens power is dependent on their culture being strong. women bring and rear the next generation. women also contribute into the paid market. men have been asked to support women to ensure all of our survival. what you contribute in taxes does not begin to cover thetrue cost of the reproduction of our species. when you have children and see first had the demands your tune willing change. then watch your parents get sick and observe the amount of work is needed and you will embarrassed about your whining.
Renee, please note that this is to educate, and is not a personal attack. There appear to be some basic disconnects between viewpoints.
“A lot of you guys semed to be under the impression that the reproduction of the human species has no cost or sacrifices on the part of females.” Not at all. That’s not what this conversation is about, though. Let’s not derail things at the start, please.
“marriage is not that attractive to women because it is work plain and simple.” Very true. A good marriage requires constant work, from both sides. That’s why it is an oath taken before God, for rich or for poor, in sickness or in health, so long as we both shall live. You are saying that modern women are weak?
“in japan, women are not marrying. throughout europe the population is declining. these are serious economic issues which will have long term repercussions.” Correct. Now think about why this is. What changed? One must realize where and how things went wrong in order to avoid those mistakes in the future.
“churches want men to marry to preserve our way of life.” Yes. That does not mean that men should do so, since the problem of divorce isn’t being touched.
“mens power is dependent on their culture being strong. women bring and rear the next generation.” Here is a basic misconception. We men are more interested in individual achievement, we prefer to succeed or fail on our own. Also, women aren’t able to rear the next generation on their own, at least not well.
“women also contribute into the paid market.” Yes, as long as it isn’t hard, requires little creativity, isn’t dangerous and doesn’t require long hours. Men get hurt and die over ten times more on the job, work longer hours, do the great majority of the math, science, engineering and inventing. Can you come up with ten significant inventions thought up by women?
“men have been asked to support women to ensure all of our survival. what you contribute in taxes does not begin to cover thetrue cost of the reproduction of our species.” However, as individuals, we are not concerned with the reproduction of the human species. We are concerned with the passing on of our own genes. The historical average (recently confirmed with genetic studies) is that women pass on their genes 80% of the time, while men do so just 40% of the time. I’m against paying anything for Loose Lucy and her brood, my effort and resources are for my family, period.
“when you have children and see first had the demands your tune willing change. then watch your parents get sick and observe the amount of work is needed and you will embarrassed about your whining.” If I understand your words correctly, you claim that our tune will change when we experience dealing with children and sick parents. I have five children, now grown. I have had to harden my heart and turn away from a daughter that was a drug addict and prostitute, then later help her get her feet back under her when she hit bottom and changed her ways. My wife and another daughter had cancer at the same time, five years ago (daughter survived, wife…). I nursed my father through his final illness just months ago, while taking care of his younger brother (who now is permanently in my home) and do what I can for my mother, who is failing rapidly both physically and mentally. My sister (3 divorces) was living with our parents and was supposed to take care of them, all she did was trash the place and take their money. Been there, done that, have many t-shirts. I do my part, and expect other folks to do theirs, just as my wife did.
renee curran says:
November 2, 2012 at 6:59 pm
men have been asked to support women to ensure all of our survival.
And this is one aspect of the patriarchy I agree with the feminists that it should be destroyed. Men have no right to their children under the current cultural and legislative dynamic, therefore they should not, under any circumstances, listen to demands for their support.
Men don’t owe western civilization, white women, or their ancestors anything. It is a man’s right to reject that call, and if you actually looked into what a man faces in the court and in public opinion, you’d be a lot more embarrassed than anyone you would try to shame.
On top of which, it’s laughable that women would fight tooth and nail for the right to kill their own offspring, and then expect men to feel morally obligated to support them on the basis of their reproductive value to society.
Women have just ceded that particular high ground, they’ve cratered it.
Shamefest!
A man has the Right to Never Marry, Period!!
Why is forum shopping never discussed? There are plenty of countries with laws much more suitable to men. This doesn’t even need to be an argument. Save time and money, marry in a country (legal forum) of your choosing.