Susan Walsh did a post the other week titled Your Chances of Divorce May Be Much Lower Than You Think. In it she shared some stats on divorce rates from the 2010 State of Our Unions report by The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Overall I think Susan is doing a service by sharing more information on the question of divorce, but I also think that this is a complex question and it would be easy for her readers to walk away with a misunderstanding of the true nature of the risk of divorce. For example, Susan writes (emphasis mine):
So far, Millennials voice more favorable attitudes about marriage, despite a constant drumbeat of gloomy news about marriage from the media. The common myth that the overall national divorce rate is 50% is just one example. (It’s 40%, and has been declining steadily since 1980. That’s bad enough – why exaggerate?) Additionally, the politically correct bias so prevalent in the media renders much of the coverage deceptive at best.
Susan doesn’t cite her source in busting this “myth”, but this question is something which is anything but settled. The very report she cites later in the post puts it this way on P 72:
Overall, the chances remain very high—between 40 and 50 percent—that a first marriage started in recent years will end in either divorce or separation before one partner dies.
On page 73 (the same page Susan pulled her other stats from) they go even farther:
By now almost everyone has heard that the national divorce rate is nearly 50 percent of all marriages. This is true for the married population as a whole.
The initial quoted range of between forty and fifty percent lifetime divorce rates roughly fits what the NY Times reported in an article on divorce rates in April of 2005 (H/T Half Sigma). One of the researchers they interviewed stated that the fifty percent estimate was “very sensible”:
Dr. Larry Bumpass, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Demography and Ecology, has long held that divorce rates will eventually reach or exceed 50 percent. In an interview, he said that it was “probably right” that the official divorce statistics might fall below 50 percent, but that the rate would still be close.
“About half is still a very sensible statement,” he said.
However, Susan’s larger point (and Half Sigma’s as well) is that divorce rates vary widely by demographics. The very high overall divorce rates can be misleading because of this. This is a valid point, although even here the good news is bitter sweet.
First the good news:
College educated women have historically exhibited a far lower divorce rate than the population at large. The following data is from Figure 1 on page 19 of the State of Our Unions report:
In the NY Times article they estimate that roughly 60% of all marriages which end in divorce do so within the first ten years of marriage. Assuming this is correct, this would give us a rough lifetime divorce risk estimate for college educated women of under 20% (11% / .6 = 18.3%). Compared with the consensus average of 40-50% average lifetime divorce risk, this is truly impressive.
The Marriage Project authors attribute this much lower divorce rate among college educated women to what they call the “success sequence”:
…highly educated Americans (and their children) adhere devoutly to a “success sequence” norm that puts education, work, marriage, and childbearing in sequence, one after another, in ways that maximize their odds of making good on the American Dream and obtaining a successful family life.
This overlooks the strong relationship between the age of the wife and the rate of divorce. College educated women tend to marry later, and this reduces the incentive they perceive to divorce in the form of remarriage prospects. This also overlooks the impact of IQ. Sorting by education is very close to sorting by IQ, yet the terms “IQ” and “intelligence” aren’t used anywhere in the report. This is especially problematic because they (and Susan) also report lowered divorce risks for a number of other characteristics, many of which tend to be strongly correlated with IQ, such as income, out of wedlock births, and coming from an in tact family. Someone who didn’t understand the nature of the data might not notice that if you add up all of the reductions in risk the report lists in the table on page 72 (and Susan lists in her post) the total risk reduction would be 131%, which would mean a negative risk of divorce. The authors of the report make this worse by following the table with the statement:
So if you are a reasonably well-educated person with a good income, your parents stayed together, you are religious at all, and you marry after age 25 without having a baby first, your chances of divorce are very low indeed.
Very low indeed? Why not simply report what the actual reduction in risk would be?
IQ has been found to have strong and at times contradictory impacts on divorce rates, which in itself should cause at least some pause. In The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray shared their results from analyzing a longitudinal sample of Americans. They found that higher parental Socio Economic Status (SES) tended to increase 5 year divorce rates, while higher IQs tended to lower 5 year divorce rates. Given the strong correlation between parental SES and the IQ of the child this shows two conflicting forces at work in Americas Upper Middle Class. They also looked at the question of education and divorce rates (emphasis mine):
It is clear to all researchers who examine the data that higher education is associated with lower levels of divorce. This was certainly true of the NLSY, where the college sample (persons with a bachelor’s degree, no more and no less) had a divorce rate in the first five years of marriage that was less than half that of the high school sample: 7 percent compared to 19 percent. But this raw outcome is deceptive. Holding some critical other things equal–IQ, socioeconomic status, age, and date of marriage–the divorce rate for the high school graduates in the first five years of marriage was lower than for college graduates.
They also found that IQ played a huge role in divorce rates within the college educated group. Those who were college educated with an IQ of 100 had a 5 year divorce rate of 28%. Those who were college educated with an IQ of 130 had a five year divorce risk of only 9%.
As you can see, the authors of The Bell Curve found that IQ swamped education as a predictor of divorce rates. Yet IQ is an academically taboo topic and therefore is seldom mentioned. This is something to keep in mind whenever looking at risk factors for divorce which might be correlated to IQ.
As I mentioned above the impact of IQ on divorce risks can be contradictory. Researcher J Dronkers investigated the impact of IQ on divorce in his paper Is there a relation between divorce risk and intelligence? Evidence from the Netherlands He found that when divorce was first introduced in the Netherlands (and was therefore “novel”), higher IQ was associated with higher rates of divorce. However, once divorce became common the opposite effect was observed. Since Herrnstein and Murray were looking at the impact of IQ on divorce in the US after divorce had already become common, their results fit with what was observed in the Netherlands.
Now the bad news:
What Susan doesn’t mention when referencing the Marriage Project report is the full title of the report. When she refers to the report as “The State of Our Unions, 2010:” what she leaves off after the colon is the rest of the title: When Marriage Disappears. The same chart which shows that ten year divorce rates are down to 11% for college educated women also shows that for women with a high school diploma ten year divorce rates have remained essentially steady at 37%. If we apply the 60% estimate here, this would mean that roughly 62% of these marriages would ultimately end in divorce. The same basic rates apply for high school dropouts as well. This means that marriage is a foolish proposition for men considering marriage with 70% of American women. Try to push more diners into the restaurant if you wish, but it will only make the problem worse.
Marriage in the US has become something only the elite can afford to dabble in, a fact which is masked by the overall declining divorce rate:
The sad fact behind the decline (and levelling off) of divorce rates in recent years is that it is driven not by overall reductions in divorce risk, but by those who who present the greatest risk of divorce not marrying as often in the first place. The decline in the rate of marriage has masked the larger problem with marriage itself.
Additionally, just because men are avoiding marrying the women with the highest divorce risk it doesn’t mean these women aren’t having children. The trend of the past thirty years has been a normalization of the idea of out of wedlock births for women without a college degree:
So far this remains uncommon amongst college educated women. However, given how quickly high school educated women accepted out of wedlock childbirth this might change in the future. This risk is exacerbated by men like Glenn Stanton lionizing unwed mothers.
The impact of hookup culture on future divorce rates:
One thing the most recent data doesn’t tell us is what impact if any the widespread acceptance of hookup culture will have on divorce rates moving forward. Just because marrying a college educated woman in the late 90s turned out to be a relatively safe bet, it doesn’t mean marrying one today will have the same low risk. Back in the late 90s the hookup culture was still in the early stages. Since then we have seen the growth of hookup culture and a mass of women postponing marriage until the very last minute. All of this adds up to an explosion of former carousel riders suddenly looking to marry. Based on what The Social Pathologist has shared here, here, and here, we know that the more sexual partners a woman has the less satisfied she is in marriage and the higher risk she presents for divorce. On the flip side, we know that older wives are less likely to divorce. This leaves us with a best case scenario of unhappy marriages with low rates of divorce, and a worst case scenario of unhappy marriages with high rates of divorce.
Conclusion:
Based on the most recent available data, the risk associated with marrying a college educated woman may be much lower than the overall risk of divorce. However, if she has participated in the hookup culture or sees serial monogamy as relationships with training wheels, your risk of divorce may well be much higher after all.
Either way, the logical result of legal incentives to women to divorce, the intentional destabilization of marriages and Christians turning their backs on biblical marriage is coming to pass. If this doesn’t turn around, we may one day tell our grandchildren (if we know who they are) that we witnessed the death of marriage as an institution.
I wouldn’t dare entertain a routine surgical operation with a mortality rate of 10%… let alone 40-60%! Divorce will have to reach single digit percentiles before i would ever entertain that option again.
Wow. Great post.
Yes, a very excellent post! Thanks!
Most of the people I know in my community are college educated and married or divorced. Same with my parent’s social group. There is a major difference in how I view the marriages in each group.
In my parent’s social circles, I cannot envision any discussion between the men that complains about their marriages. Same with the women. They may joke a bit but it is always good natured. That doesn’t mean they are always happy but they are certainly committed. These are people who started families in the 1960’s.
In most all the social circles I run in the college educated women bitch and moan to each other all the time. The men do too but much less so. These are college graduates from 1985 to 1992 or so. You certainly have more divorce but the main difference I see is the willingness of the women to trash the men and to do it publicly and frequently. In the instances where there was a divorce the cheating was by the wife. My point is that I don’t see the marriages in my social circles as being that great. Some clearly are, but many just seem to limp along.
So your comments about what today’s generation of college graduates might experience are spot on. There was no hook up culture at college in my peer group. There was certainly sex and yes, some one night stands, but nothing like the apparent free for all that exists today. Couple that with the explosion of social media that today’s college kids have used most of their lives, Ashley Madison and more and you have a perfect storm brewing. Sure, these college educated folks might stay married, but I cannot help but wonder if they will be happy. Or if they just limp along while the participants randomly cheat on the side.
BTW, your data on unwed college educated mothers is roughly five years old. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to which way that percentage has moved in the last five years? Or where it will be in five more years as more of these college educated women wake up at 35 with either no marriage prospects or no interest in marriage, but a burning desire to be a mother?
Once again, Dalrock, you have secured your place as the Man Who Knows in the Manosphere. Brilliant post.
Oh great, so according to Slut Walsh, all one needs to do to have a successful marriage, is to marry an over 30 year old, college educated, burn out of a slut, who had years of hook-ups, LTRs and ONSs. Wow, quite amazing there Susan, I think I’ll pass though, thank you very much.
The silver lining in Susan’s mind is that college educated women get to marry college educated men and cheat on the side, whilst the men can’t divorce because it’s too expensive and the women can’t divorce because she really has no other options to upgrade to, by virtue of her late age.
What happens to the other 90 % of the population who are not college educated? Oh right, they don’t matter… that “apex fallacy” thing again.
Susan is selling garbage to the women on her site. And they lap it up by reason of their pathetic chances of marriage due to their ability, in their late teens and twenties, to delay it till the last moment.
Susan Walsh, a modern day Snake Oil Saleswoman!
In most all the social circles I run in the college educated women bitch and moan to each other all the time. The men do too but much less so. These are college graduates from 1985 to 1992 or so. You certainly have more divorce but the main difference I see is the willingness of the women to trash the men and to do it publicly and frequently. In the instances where there was a divorce the cheating was by the wife. My point is that I don’t see the marriages in my social circles as being that great. Some clearly are, but many just seem to limp along.
Yes, exactly. This is precisely my own age demographic as well, and I see the same thing. There is some divorce, but not as much as in other SES groups, but the marriages aren’t really “great” marriages. There is cheating going on on the side by him, her, or both, or longing to be cheating on the part of either or both. There is disparagement left and right, separate beds going on, separate vacations going on, and so on.
There is less divorce, though. Based on my observations of this group, from the perspective of being one of the relative few who did actually divorce, I think there are several reasons for this. One is that divorce for this group is very expensive. It’s the difference between 75k and 125 k for the less well off, and the difference between 1.5m and 1.m for the lower end of the rather more well off, as compared with the 200k vs 600k that characterizes this “well off upper middle but not really seven figures upper class” that makes it more expensive for this group to divorce in terms of lifestyle hit. Many of these couples married very assortatively based on career success and actual and potential earnings of each spouse, and this tends to mean divorce presents a fairly uncomfortable lifestyle squeeze for both — much less comfortable than the couple where the guy earns 1.5m and gets cut down to 900k after a divorce. A second reason is related — many of these couples got married, and chose partners specifically with the idea of — raising kids well. They are educated, they know the statistics about what divorce does to kids, they really want to avoid this as it was a main goal they had in marrying when and whom they did to begin with — so they will tend to grit their teeth and find ways to cope with a less than stellar marriage, rather than divorcing as people would in other SES groups. A third reason is that in this particular SES slice, it is a growing stigma to actually be divorced. It is no stigma to live in an unhappy marriage — in fact, as you point out, this is expected –> everyone bitches about their marriages in this demographic. But relatively few divorce, and so the relative rarity of divorce tends to create a healthy stigma about it that also serves to tamp down on divorces in this group to a level lower than the actual degrees of marital happiness would indicate.
I don’t know what to expect about the younger, “rising” UMC SES, really. I think it’s quite possible that their marriages will be less stable because they are less willing to grit their teeth and power through a lackluster marriage using coping mechanisms and perhaps an affair or two on the side, but it remains to be seen. Certainly their pre-marital behaviors have been more free-wheeling than they were in our generation, but it remains to be seen how this will parley into their married lives.
SW’s emphasis that educated people divorce less is just another form of “stop being so scared and man up!” Young women really need to understand where this anxiety is coming from, and mitigate it directly (i.e. showing the guys why they are worth the risk) instead of immediately attacking the men (To Susan’s credit, she’s mentioned this on a couple of occasions…not as much as her “damn those evil cads deceiving my girls, why can’t they all be nice beta guys” shtick.)
Because when your first response is to tell someone “your fears are overblown,” what you’re doing is communicating “I’m not listening to your concerns, I don’t think your concerns are valid, whatever I want is more important that your risk analysis.” Which is no way to get men on board the marriage train.
Please tell me these educated women have something better in the tank than to play it off as “fear of commitment.”
Add to the equation men who reach their late 30’s and early 40’s who chances of ever marrying decreasing substantially. The incentive to marry (and even going through the hassle of dating) is simply not there. Especially with the used and broken down women that are around.
The huge drop in divorce rate for those with a college degree is sort of puzzling to me since many colleges have been, for quite some time, more about indoctrinating people in liberal/feminist groupthink than they have been about actual education.
“Based on the most recent available data, the risk associated with marrying a college educated woman may be much lower than the overall risk of divorce. However, if she has participated in the hookup culture or sees serial monogamy as relationships with training wheels, your risk of divorce may well be much higher after all.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57457647/college-president-prostitution-site-ruled-legal/
Wonder where the prostitutes come from? Face it, many women in college are beyond being marriage material. They may not be on websites selling themselves, but they aren’t exactly prudes either.
I agree chaz and am trying to research and explain that for my own satisfaction. It does not fit my anecdotal experience at all, I’m that age group of early 80’s college grads and its rampant among my peers who almost all have number 2 marriages. I think its just less marriages in general, or less remarrying after the first divorce….not sure though. I mean it seems like a simple assumption at first blush that the uneducated folk, the peeps I grew up with who work blue collar and are basically salt of the earth are the ones divorcing but I just do not see it, it looms the opposite to me.
I cannot argue the stats, so I need to explain them for myself
I was at a graduation party yesterday, it was very hot outside, so I retreated to the air-conditioned house, found a nice quiet corner and opened a beer to stay cool. At one point my space was invaded by a gaggle of bitter, angry, frumpy 40-something mothers who carried on a 30 minute bitch session about men. After about 10 minutes I was ready to suffer the heat, but then one of these loud-mouth porkers included me in the discussion. I gave my pat response to chronic complainers, ” if my life sucked as much as yours I’d kill myself”
Jokes aside, none of these hags were happy with the men in their lives.
So, I asked the obvious, what attracted you to this guy in the first place?
When confronted with a moment of introspection the women left in a huff…thank God!
I agree with the thread that most marriages are just plodding along….BUT…in life, don’t we just find a comfort zone and plod along?…and is this a bad thing?
Are we enemies of the “good enough” in our search for the “perfect”?
Who said a marriage is to be perfect?, as if “perfect” could be defined anyway?
I think of all the marriages I know of and EVERY single one is a series of compromises.
My parents have been together for 56 years…pops is an ogre if meals are not on a strict schedule, mum hates to cook. Pops loves dogs, but mum has a no pet rule…hates animals around the house. Yet for 1/2 a century they have sucked it up and made a life together.
@chaz345
I think the best answer is IQ. They can keep their impulses in check to accomplish their long term plan. Brendan nailed it with this:
When divorce was novel, high IQ people divorced more often than the rest of the population. Once it was common and the impact on children was observed, this correlation flipped.
Your last graph on unwed child birth is where it is at now. Children are meal tickets now and status symbols. And as if on q the less educated have chose motherhood as a career path. This data you put up Dalrock matches what I felt was going on and why I use the mantra of “involuntary CHILDless spinsterhood” With women marry the government for the povider protecter and men for the tingle to be later bored the child is the hostage that allows the delusion of goodness and victimhood. This delusion is the justification of the laws of misandry. The converstion ends with a male pill. Then it is MGTOW and PUA players and beta men insulated from the effects of their own betaness.
I am all for gay adoption and won’t do anything to stop gay marriage with the aim at making it easier for a man to be a father without the burden of a legal exempt from responsibility women under western law. (single fathers are a cheaper way for the state to breed replacements BTW, men generally don’t get a damn thing) The maddening thing about this whole thing is just holding women to the exact same law as men would end all of this nearly over night.
I guess that the logical next questions relate to hook up culture.
How many partners do college carousellor female riders rack up?
How many women are in the hook up scene? (probably the limiting factor for the scene)
Can we split the divorce stats for college grads into ‘hook-up’ vs ‘others’ (for want of an unloaded term)
I have seen numbers at HUS that were surprisingly low, so low that I don’t understand why anybody would claim that there is a hook up culture. 3-4 guys over 4-5 years isn’t what I’d call hooking up, I’m not saying it’s great for future marriage / divorce rates, but neither is it Sodom & Gomorrah.
So have we got any sources of stats regarding partner counts in/out of college?
I agree with the thread that most marriages are just plodding along….BUT…in life, don’t we just find a comfort zone and plod along?…and is this a bad thing?
It’s not always, no. I don’t like the bullshitting that goes on about how happy these people are, but they are sucking it up and sticking together, and that does count for something, and is generally better for the kids as well.
@Brendan
This touches on an issue which we have disagreed on before (the results of sucking it up regarding happiness), but interestingly the Marriage Project report presents data that college educated women report being “very happy” in their marriages 69% of the time (a rate which didn’t change between the 1970s and 2000s). Check out the second chart in the report.
One thing I wonder about is if your observations aren’t confined to a fairly limited subset of college educated women. I’m thinking from what you are saying that they are. With this in mind, the overall data could be correct and not refute your observations.
That could be, although I tend to think that the people I have anecdotally observed as being in relatively lackluster marriages and generally less than happy would nevertheless survey as being “very happy” indeed. It’s one thing for women to bitch to each other about how their husbands suck (and for men to do the same to a lesser degree about their marriages) or even to have an occasional affair. When survey time comes, it’s like the office cocktail party or Facebook: everyone is as happy as a clam, full of smiles, couldn’t be better, and so on. So, yes, both are likely “true” in a sense.
college educated women report being “very happy” in their marriages 69% of the time (a rate which didn’t change between the 1970s and 2000s).
I have to wonder though, since marriage is very much a status symbol and a large part of the herd says that you should be happy in your marriage (unless, of course, you are with a group of women. Then you are supposed to deride your husband) how accurate these numbers are? Self reporting women will often report what they should be feeling, not how they actually are.
Also, I do not mean to imply that they are deliberately deceiving, either. While they are answering the questions on the report they very likely will rationalize how happy they are so that they can feel comfortable putting down that answer.
Perhaps this is just a matter of cost-benefit analysis. Those women with higher i.q.s are actually able to set aside the hamster for a while, at least for the good of their children. Women with lower i.q.s never make the necessary analysis to benefit their children. A lot of it may be impulse control as well: Women with college degrees may well be more self-disciplined than those without. As a final thought, women with college degrees may earn as much as or more than their husbands in today’s economy, which eliminates much of the economic allure previously associated with divorce. A woman who already has a career of her own and makes more than her husband will usually be able to do a cost benefit analysis and realize divorce will be a financial hardship on her and a hindrance to her career (there goes half the help taking care of the kids).
It’s really all about the methodology used.
If one just takes the number of marriages in a given year then divides by the number of divorces in the same year. Then one can break the numbers down more by age, education, and etc. However, all that does is give one an idea of what are the odds that in any given year one will be divorced. It doesn’t really tell a person what are the chances that their marriage will go the distance. Although it does seem to support the idea of hypergamy in that the younger a couple is the greater the odds that one will be served divorce papers while in that young and fertile stage of life.
A more accurate way would be to take a sample size of the population and track if those individuals who married in a given year are still married to each other 5, 10, 15, or 20 years down the road. I don’t think this method is used very often as one has to wait 5, 10, or 15 years and still be able to track those individuals down.
Personally, I think a good rule of thumb is to look at your friends, family, or church and count the number of people married and never divorced compared to divorced and/or remarried. However, a good chunk of the never divorced will most likely be the young newlyweds and the elderly who married back when the idea of divorce still carried some social stigma so after discounting them one would get a pretty good rough idea of what the odds are that one would be able to have a marriage that lasts until death do you part.
If your friends and family are anything like mine it’s not a pretty picture.
@Brendan
I was thinking more in terms of the fact that the UMC that you are talking about are a small percentage of those who graduate from college. It took me a while in a previous discussion to realize we were thinking about different groups. Your definition of UMC is very much the top performers. This group could easily be different than the other 90% of college graduates.
As for the survey, if they knew what they were doing they should have accounted for this. Give people several options which are generally positive, and the difference between “happy” and “very happy” has important meaning. Psychologically they want to report that they are happy. Giving the less enthusiastic option allows for this. I’m not an expert in this area, but the paper in this article seems to confirm that women are pretty honest about their marital happiness (since their sexual satisfaction is so strongly correlated with their overall marital satisfaction).
Of course the divorce rates are dropping …
It’s because more people are either living together, doing booty calls or ONS, or staying single, or not getting married.
The fun fact is, 100% of divorces happen between married people…
I was thinking more in terms of the fact that the UMC that you are talking about are a small percentage of those who graduate from college. It took me a while in a previous discussion to realize we were thinking about different groups. Your definition of UMC is very much the top performers. This group could easily be different than the other 90% of college graduates.
It could be that, too, although I don’t know why these people would be less happy than average, really.
@P Ray
Yes and no. The chart I included is divorces per 1,000 married women. This is better than the often quoted number of divorces per adult women. So at first glance fewer marriages shouldn’t be a factor. However, the groups with the highest divorce rates are where we see the biggest declines in marriage, so the makeup of the married group is changing. Also, if all marriages stopped today we would expect to see the divorces per married women figure keep declining simply because the existing marriages would be to older and older women, who divorce at far lower numbers.
I have a hunch that the higher divorce rate in younger marriages is more applicable when both partners are young. A pair at age 18 has a much tougher road in regards to the wife’s hypergamy than an 18 year old woman marrying a 28 year old man. A large portion of her hypergamous nature might be controlled by the fact that the guy has probably got a career, car, and his own place. Again just a hunch but it seems reasonable. Anyone got any info on this?
Note: Getting a girl ten years his junior would indicate greater beta/lesser alpha, at least. Another possible factor in marital stability.
Excellent article thanks. So it seems high IQ is the way to go although ( a frustratingly small pool to chose from though if you add other criteria to the selection) I don’t draw too many conclusions from the 10 year stats or the 60% of divorces happening within 10 years of marriage – as mentioned the total marriages pool and total divorces are two different counts from different times – knock out all the over 60s and I’m sure the results would be quite different.
As mentioned above, look at your friends/family/colleagues and so many (degree educated) friends of mine (mostly married to graduate partners) are getting/have got divorced – personally, I’d only marry if it was financially beneficial – i.e the girl was a higher earning/asset richer partner. Very rarely I’ve found, do women put their own money, where there mouth is….
I like the HUS reference to UK civil partnerships stats where Lesbian couples split up with the same frequency as UK married couples whereas gay Civil partnerships seem significantly more resilient.
I wonder if the rate of divorce has stayed low in the college educated because the make up of the ever larger numbers of people who never married as described in your recent post, “Never Marrieds Piling Up”.
It seems a lot of the discussion on why these never married types are piling up is related to how many women are told to establish a career and then get married around 30. I just assumed this message is targeted more towards college educated ladies, not High School graduates or H.S. drop outs.
If this is the case, the data in your post would indicate that more college educated women are never getting married. If so, what is the make up these college educated ladies?
How many who have no interest in marriage feel any societal pressure to marry like they would have in the past?
How many have gone the carousel route and present as so broken that nobody bites? Or who have grown to like it so much they don’t want to marry?
How many have decided to have a kid out of wedlock and now can’t find anyone who wants to marry them? Your data in this post shows this group growing from 2% to 6%.
How many have such high expectations that no man passes the test?
My point is that each and every one of these “types” of ladies would be prone to divorce. If these women never marry you are taking some of the high risk segments out of the population of college educated women who marry. I think we can agree that the mix of attitudes and beliefs of college educated women in the married and unmarried grouping are not exactly the same.
So you can say that the divorce rate in college educated women still remains low. But I have to wonder if it is just being masked by the changing percentages of married versus never married and their associated overall beliefs.
Dalrock, thank you for reminding me why I *don’t* read HUS (groan).
(Though, in my opinion, you have always been quite gracious to Ms. Walsh).
Some of your readers may be interested in some background on the National Marriage Project. They say they’re “a nonpartisan, nonsectarian, and interdisciplinary initiative located at the University of Virginia. The Project’s mission is to provide research and analysis on the health of marriage in America, to analyze the social and cultural forces shaping contemporary marriage, and to identify strategies to increase marital quality and stability.”
NMP tends towards the conservative, and are often somewhat of an echo chamber, as their various contributors and quoters (Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, David Popenoe, Elizabeth Marquardt, Diane Sollee, Kay Hymowitz, et al, appear at each other’s conferences and websites, or within Heritage Foundation related-activities. I think they *mean* well, but may as well be discussing unicorns, compared to the SMP/MMP realities of hypergamy.
The IQ/impulse control thing makes some sense in terms of the lower divorce rate in college graduates. I do have a comment on the higher divorce rate in younger marriages though. Since there is a definitely correlation between number of sexual partners and divorce rate, shouldn’t it make sense that marrying earlier, having had fewer sexual partners, would result in a lower divorce rate? I very strongly suspect that the higher divorce rate in people who get married very young is due in large part to the number of them who get married because they got pregnant. If that were corrected for, I’d bet a bunch that the divorce rate of those married very young would be far less that the overall number.
At the risk of being flayed, I could use some clarification on the following:
1) Why is it that risk of divorce is dependent on the woman? Last I checked, marriage requires two people, with two sets of baggage/experiences/education/what-have-you.
2) Couldn’t the marriage rates be going down because there are women who are also choosing not to marry? Especially “high-risk” men?
3) In vitro aside, since when is child-bearing out of wedlock solely the fault/responsibility of the woman? Because she wasn’t on the pill, didn’t make the father wear a condom, or chose not to find a day-after pill or have an abortion?
4) And on that note, I bring up the age-old question of why is it that men who “hook up” are studs and women who do are sluts? If there weren’t women to hook up with, where would that leave the men? And, if men are so put off with women who hook up, why do they continue hooking up with women, themselves? If they are so concerned with the chastity of women, wouldn’t they be more concerned with protecting said it instead of defiling it for their own pleasures? At least, I know that’s the stance the guys I’ve dated who actually value chastity take.
5) Could it be that divorce rates of college educated women remain low because those who are disciplined, driven, and passionate enough about education and career to focus on them may have also been as disciplined, driven, and passionate, or more, in regards to relationships, namely dating, marriage, and divorce?
Dal, you made me more aware of something I’ve always suspected, and that’s the inverse relation of people getting married to the people who are and how this affects the overall ‘stats’ such as they are. If less people are getting married, what does this tell us about the index of ‘consumer confidence’ people have in the institution of marriage as a whole?
If you’ve got 300 million people in the U.S. and only 50 million are predisposed to even consider marriage, does it really matter if 40 or 50% of that 50 million divorce?
The marriage and divorce industry (and their subsidiaries) can’t really afford the PR of truths like that. Blurring statistics and using ambiguous metrics with the buy-line “It’s really not that bad” is still the best advertisement the industry can muster.
From The Peacekeepers:
https://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/the-peacekeepers/
These posts are why I don’t start a blog. Why bother?
Oh, you wrote a rant, Cane? That’s cute. Did you see Dalrock’s in-depth analysis of statistical trends in marriage and divorce?
Hell, I haven’t even read The Bell Curve.
We have a Hamster.
Given that college educated women tend to small families, its not a good situation either way if you’d like children.
Marry a women who wants kids and risk the marriage meat grinder or marry an educated women and maybe she’ll manage one in her 30’s.
Bah,
Whether or not Walsh’s analysis is flawed (I think it probably is) It’s not only fear of divorce preventing men from getting married. It’s that marriage is really unappealing. Not just the state of being married, but also the options men have to choose from.
I can think of a lot of other things I’d rather do with my life than court single mothers, sluts looking to cash their casino chips in, women carrying around piles of baggage from a past marriage or LTR, or women so unpleasant nobody wanted them even when they were young. Especially considering each one will assume she is settling for me.
And even if you pull something decent out of that turd pile, you have to live with the very real threat of divorce.
Melissa@Ink In Pink
1) Why is it that risk of divorce is dependent on the woman? Last I checked, marriage requires two people, with two sets of baggage/experiences/education/what-have-you.
Marriage requires two people. Divorce, unlike any other form of contract abrogation, can be performed by one of those two people. So far as I can tell, 60% of divorces are filed by women.
No clue how many divorces filed by men are a result of women cheating, but it is nonzero. So the total percent of divorces filed by women or caused by women’s behavior is obviously greater than 60%.
That’s why.
“Back in the late 90s the hookup culture was still in the early stages. Since then we have seen the growth of hookup culture ”
Maybe. I went to college in the late 80s. There was a pretty established hookup culture among some of my high-school friends who ended up going to community colleges, low-prestige 4-year colleges or not finishing at 4-year colleges. At my college, there wasn’t a huge hookup culture, but having a number of boyfriends – one at a time – was pretty common.
One can hypothesize that having many one-night-stands is more corrosive to future relationships than having 5 boyfriends for about a year each, but is there any actual data?
Melissa @ Ink in Pink says:
June 25, 2012 at 1:58 pm
“4) And on that note, I bring up the age-old question of why is it that men who “hook up” are studs and women who do are sluts? If there weren’t women to hook up with, where would that leave the men? And, if men are so put off with women who hook up, why do they continue hooking up with women, themselves? If they are so concerned with the chastity of women, wouldn’t they be more concerned with protecting said it instead of defiling it for their own pleasures? At least, I know that’s the stance the guys I’ve dated who actually value chastity take.”
This is very worn turf, but for you gals, here goes AGAIN…cads love sluts because they are easy, low investment lays. Men looking for marriage partners don’t like sluts because they are a high risk and damaged goods. SO, you gals have a choice, be chaste and market yourself to marriage minded men OR be a punch board and notch your lipstick case. There is a class of man for you regardless of YOUR choice!
Great post, Dalrock. Doing God’s work.
If I may just point out one thing-
“Dr. Larry Bumpass ”
Hilarious
The Pink Hamster’s questions appear to me to be rhetorical.
Anonymous Reader
“So the total percent of divorces filed by women or caused by women’s behavior is obviously greater than 60%.”
What about divorces filed due to the man’s behavior? Infidelity? Abuse? Is the woman accountable for those, too, because she filed, and the man held to no accountability or responsibility for his actions? Have we gotten so far down the rabbit hole that we are to so vehemently abhor women for the acts for which they are responsible as well as the actions of others? Where is the logic, the ownership, in that? Blaming others is not the answer and neither is blaming ourselves. Big or small, we all play a part. Give credit where credit is due.
@ Melissa,
1) Why is it that risk of divorce is dependent on the woman? Last I checked, marriage requires two people, with two sets of baggage/experiences/education/what-have-you.
Anonymous Reader addressed this question perfectly.
2) Couldn’t the marriage rates be going down because there are women who are also choosing not to marry? Especially “high-risk” men?
I agree. I believe many woman ARE choosing not to marry. The reason, however, is that women’s standards at this point are so out of touch with reality men, on the whole, couldn’t possibly meet them. How often do you hear women telling one another to be more reasonable/sensible/realistic/pragmatic? YMMV, but I’ve never heard it. Also, ever since advertisers figured out women do roughly 80% of consumer purchasing, women have been flattered to no end and promised the moon – all to get them to buy products X, Y & Z. The trouble that has arisen from this fact is that women (generally speaking) believe everything can/will be theirs – every fantasy, dream & aspiration (just hand over your credit card/PIN #/sign on the dotted line, etc). “Buy our cosmetics and you’ll be so beautiful you won’t need to worry about your weight”, “See our divorce attorneys so that you can get rid of the deadbeat and find a much better man right around the corner.”, etc. The sad fact is none of these carnival barkers care a whit about you – they just want your cash and they’ll say anything to get it. And, in case you haven’t noticed “high risk men” aren’t AVOIDED by women – they’re HUNTED by them. 10 minutes observation of the world around you will be more than enough of a demonstration.
3) In vitro aside, since when is child-bearing out of wedlock solely the fault/responsibility of the woman? Because she wasn’t on the pill, didn’t make the father wear a condom, or chose not to find a day-after pill or have an abortion?
It’s been her responsibility from the beginning and women have wanted to keep it to themselves throughout history. How many forms of birth control are available for women? And for men? Exactly. Women realize just how powerful having control of the reproductive process is and are loath to surrender it. So much so, in fact, that Judaism was declared to be passed (for lack of a better word) to children via the mother (rather than the father) to regain reproductive control post-rape of their women by other cultures warring with them.
4) And on that note, I bring up the age-old question of why is it that men who “hook up” are studs and women who do are sluts? If there weren’t women to hook up with, where would that leave the men? And, if men are so put off with women who hook up, why do they continue hooking up with women, themselves? If they are so concerned with the chastity of women, wouldn’t they be more concerned with protecting said it instead of defiling it for their own pleasures? At least, I know that’s the stance the guys I’ve dated who actually value chastity take.
From the (now defunct) website ‘In Mala Fide’:
“The sexual double standard arises from the reality that getting sex is easy for women but hard for men. The reason studs are respected and sluts are derided is because being a stud requires skill, talent, and practice, while being a slut merely requires a pulse and a lack of impulse control. The unsung flip side of the double standard, however, is that female virgins are cherished whereas male virgins are ridiculed. A man who can’t get laid signals to the world that he is a loser, while a woman who resists spreading her legs for every scumbag who winks at her shows herself to be a sober, selective person. Because a female’s primary goal is getting the highest-quality man available to commit to her, women who cannot or will not stay in a relationship are poor sources of information on men. The male virgin and the female slut are mirror images of each other in terms of attractiveness to and knowledge of the opposite sex.”
5) Could it be that divorce rates of college educated women remain low because those who are disciplined, driven, and passionate enough about education and career to focus on them may have also been as disciplined, driven, and passionate, or more, in regards to relationships, namely dating, marriage, and divorce?
It seems you want to place more blame for divorce on men yet credit savvy, bad-marriage avoidance to women.
Therefore, I’m not sure I understand the question.
MIP wrote, “4) And on that note, I bring up the age-old question of why is it that men who “hook up” are studs and women who do are sluts?”
Hello Melissa,
The thing is, sometimes the way things are is not how we might wish they would be. So it is with the cad/slut conundrum. We can squintch our eyes shut tight and say, “Double standards are bad” fifty times, and when we open our eyes, that double standard will still be there. It has ALWAYS been there and it will always be there. We can pretend like it doesn’t exist because we think it’s unfair, but yet it WILL STILL BE THERE! It is never going away, ever, no matter how many women’s studies courses men are forced to take before they graduate; they don’t want to marry sluts. Since the double standard is never going to go away, I say to the rest of womankind: let’s be smart, self-aware little hamsters, shall we?
Missy, I understand all of this is novel to you, but do you really think this is a trail unblazed by the manosphere?
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/is-frivolous-divorce-overstated-in-the-manosphere/
Been there, done that,..
@sunshinemary,
I told a woman with whom I’ve been involved for a while:
I’m not asking you to change; I’m asking you to simply be honest about who you are – to BOTH of us..
So, thanks for this:
“let’s be smart, self-aware little hamsters, shall we?”
A key that opens many locks is a Master Key.
A lock which opens for many keys is just a shitty lock.
Did somebody want to talk about Double Standards?
https://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/double-standards/
A key that opens many locks is a Master Key.
A lock which opens for many keys is just a shitty lock.
That. Is. Awesome.
Susan’s post is misleading as is this one.
How many of those “college educated” “upper middle class” “above average” women married lower class men? Men who never graduated college?
None? Is that correct?
The deliberate lie here ignores that you could throw “college educated women” statistics in the toilet, as you should, and replace them with the REAL statistics:
College educated, upper middle class, men with good jobs tend to be divorced at a lower rate than “lesser” men.
Well, whoppie do and water is wet. These men are also the least negatively effected(though I doubt they really have much sex, just like everyone else in the dry, desolate wasteland of modern American combat dating). So they also have the least reason to marry in the first place.
The low divorce rate is because the woman correctly predicts her chance of finding a replacement as “low” no matter how many times she watches “Eat, Pray, Love”. The only exception to this is the Very Rich, who don’t even need a man’s income.
Ace of Spades
Thank you. I appreciate your feedback. It was helpful and constructive. For clarity, I’m just saying relationships require two parties. Takes both to enter in to a relationship, two responsible for it, two to make it work, and both capable of deciding to avoid it altogether.
Rollo
Thank you. I will definitely look that up. But, please, don’t call me Missy.
Et al
It appears in trying to suggest both parties take responsibility, I have come off looking like a feminist, what is your term, hamster? A fluffy, nocturnal, near-sighted rodent without a tail or purpose beyond gnawing and breeding. Cute. Witty. Really. Not derisive at all. And here I thought the About Me section encouraged comments both in agreement and disagreement to the status quo. My comments were not intended to incite argument or suggest one side or the other is better…but rather that they both appear off-base and could both benefit from taking responsibility for themselves and giving some grace to the others.
Rollo,
I am going to write that one down and give it to my kids when they are old enough.
Anonymous Reader
“So the total percent of divorces filed by women or caused by women’s behavior is obviously greater than 60%.”
What about divorces filed due to the man’s behavior? Infidelity? Abuse?
Got any numbers?
Is the woman accountable for those, too, because she filed, and the man held to no accountability or responsibility for his actions?
Of course not. Men are accountable for their own actions, and for the actions of their soon-to-be-ex-wives, as well. We see this every day. And that 40% bastardy rate, it’s all men’s fault, too. Everything is the fault of men. Nothing is the fault of women.
Thanks for sharing.
@Melissa;
3) In vitro aside, since when is child-bearing out of wedlock solely the fault/responsibility of the woman?
Does the phrase “her body, her choice” ring any bells? If the woman has unilateral decision making power in terms of whether or not to abort an unwanted pregnancy, then the responsibility for the result is also unilaterally hers.
Looking a littler earlier in the process, since women are the gatekeepers of sex, and have the power to cry rape even after a consentual encounter, again, the bulk of he responsibility is hers.
In principle I agree that it takes two to make a relationship work. The problem is, because of a variety of legal and societal norms, virtually all of the power in any relationship, married or not, is with the woman.
What this seems to show is that higher IQ types are less likely to divorce while it still might impact the kids, but then one has to ask if there is a concomitant higher rate of divorce in that same group after the kids leave the nest.
Anon
Really? And *I’m* the near-sighted fuzz-ball here? Seriously? Perhaps you missed the part where I said everyone plays a part and is responsible for their part. And the part about how blaming others isn’t helping anyone? Meaning that it doesn’t help for men to blame women and it certainly doesn’t help for women to blame men. That’s the problem with taking sides when there aren’t supposed to be sides anymore…remember? Two become one? No more sides. No more you. No more me. Just us. And “us” only works when working together.
@Melissa/Ink in Pink,
You’re welcome.
– A♠
Dear Melissa,
“Hamster” does not mean what you think it does in this context… And in this context, “hamster” can and does refer to men as well as women (esp. the White Knights).
The problem with divorce, as discussed here and other places, is that marriage in the Western world today is essentially a contract which binds only the higher-earning partner (usually the man) and imposes no penalty on parties who choose to unilaterally violate the contract or end it all together (no fault divorce). Your references to men causing divorce are a bit off… In the early 1960s women could still file for divorce if their husbands committed adultery or beat them. Yet in that time period the national divorce rate was approximately 10%. Today we have “no fault” divorce and a divorce rate of approximately 50%, approximately 67% of which are filed by women. Thus the rate of divorces initiated by women under “no fault” rules is 350% of the rate for all divorces filed by either spouse under the “fault” (adultery, abuse or abandonment) rules. I hope this helps to clarify the matter somewhat.
Crank, it may be too early to tell, given the cohorts in question. Part of the problem studying this issue is the sheer longevity issue. Looking at 40 year old women to see if they have ever married or not is looking backwards 10, 20 years, and driving a car by looking in the rear view mirror kinda sorta works only in a straight line. Given the changes in the US legal structure in the last 26 years, it is extremely difficult to imagine the trends reversing any time soon. And the hookup culture is definitely a factor. Click on those Social Pathologist links above that Dalrock provided; for every stallion on the carousel a woman rides, the probability of divorce only later on only increases. The increase starts at “more than zero” and goes upwards from there. Do not put any stock in self-reported partner counts from women, those numbers are always going to be lied-down by some factor.
The larger issue is getting clearer: marriage is tending towards becoming a kind of boutique item, something that only a religious minority and the upper levels of IQ will be willing to participate in.
This connects back to Dalrock’s last line.
Anon
Really? And *I’m* the near-sighted fuzz-ball here? Seriously? Perhaps you missed the part where I said everyone plays a part and is responsible for their part.
I read it. Why should i believe it?
@Crank
This seems to be conventional wisdom, but I’ve never seen data to corroborate it. What data I have goes against it. I think the other factor is that for women the actual advantages of divorce are highly oversold, and higher IQ women are more likely to spot the lie. As unfair as the system is the bulk of the perceived increase in standard of living comes from the divorcee not having a grown up forcing them to plan for the future. This is why we have the onslaught of hand wringing articles about how no one told divorcees not to spend the equity of their house and to be sure to save for retirement. The other side of this is the opportunity to remarry is also greatly oversold. This gets worse the older they get, but it probably isn’t that great for most women to begin with. They married the best man they could attract when they were younger and hotter. Why again should they expect to do better now that they are older and have more baggage? Isolated cases, sure. Statistically likely, no way. Certainly by the time she is ready to pull off a case of classic divorce theft this gets really difficult. Divorce theft almost always requires kids to really pull off. On top of that, would be divorce thieves start off in the hole now by waiting so long to marry.
What this seems to show is that higher IQ types are less likely to divorce while it still might impact the kids, but then one has to ask if there is a concomitant higher rate of divorce in that same group after the kids leave the nest.
That is an interesting question, but I think we’re still a way off from even being able to measure that trend, because the “educated people divorce less” data generally applies to Gen X and below, and almost none of these are empty nesters yet.
Someone mentioned hamsters. I’ve created a category for reference: https://dalrock.wordpress.com/category/rationalization-hamster/
The last two on the list (written first) are still my favourites.
@Melissa
google “rationalisation hamster’ – you’re not a hamster, you have a hamster and it has a disturbing amount to do in guiding your thoughts (that’s the theory, not that you’re going to like it).
I’d also suggest that “these are not the answers that you are looking for”, try jezabel and the like, you’ll be much happier with the answers there; Man BAD, woman Goooood.
Tell you what, Melissa. If you will actually go and read all the articles on this site having to do with marriage, and divorce, especially divorce-with-cash-and-prizes, if you will do this before further postings maybe a discussion can be had.
As it is, you’re basically asking a number of people to re-write hundreds, if not thousands, of words that we have already written over the last few years. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m not your personal typing slave, and frankly do not have the time right now to go over these issues yet again. Plus you strike me as being quite disingenuous in your approach, with that wide eyed, “Gosh, what are y’all so worked up about? Us girls wouldn’t hurt a fly!” approach. It looks to me like you are trolling for flames. I’ve already pointed out that women file the majority of divorces, others have demonstrated that divorce for reasons of adultery or physical harm are quite rare (leaving aside the all too common fraudulent claims made by women in the course of divorce) and so I will pick one other: your question as to why babies are the responsibility of women.
That’s easy. Every married woman in the US has a Constitutional right to an abortion, over any objections her husband might have, with or without his knowledge, and under the Violence Against Women Act, she has the right to make him pay for it. This isn’t my opinion. This is the US Supreme Court decision in Roe and Casey if I remember correctly. If you cannot understand how vastly unbalancing this is to your “equal partnership”, to your “two become one”, then you need to think a whole lot more on just that one topic.
There are men who have found out about their wife’s abortion when they looked at the credit card bills. Do you think this would increase trust in the woman in question, or decrease it?
@chaz345 says:[June 25, 2012 at 4:12 pm]
+1
Excellent response.
Okrahead
Thank you. That is precisely the kind of response I was seeking.
While I understand that a woman filing for ‘no fault’ could be doing so because of her own misconduct, not her husbands, I would like to point out that isn’t *always* the case. ‘No fault’ can also apply to amicable, mutually decided partings, where one party still must file, either husband or wife–so at least some of the men and women stats for ‘no fault’ filing could be the result of amicable, mutual decisions, right?
I really didn’t mean to be some sort of troll or hamster or whatever. I am honestly just trying to understand where all this hatred is coming from–on both sides–especially within the church where we are called to love and respect ALL people because we are ALL made in the image of God and, therefore, possess inherent dignity as His image-bearers. I admit to expressing frustration, on occasion, with relationships, but I do not now feel, nor have I ever felt, the kind of malice and bitterness I’ve seen some men and women exhibiting toward the opposite sex these days. It seems great frustration and division threatens our family and that breaks my heart.
Melissa @ Ink in Pink – ”…and it certainly doesn’t help for women to blame men.”
It may not have occurred to you, but the Manosphere has grown as response to the bulk of the rest of society which has for a very long time reflexively blamed men for virtually every problem that arises. In the eye’s of society at-large, men have long been viewed as the “culprits” in divorces (regardless of who was actually more at fault). Men have also been viewed as the gender solely responsible for the negative outcomes of the sexual revolution. Men have come to be viewed as essentially bad, while women have come to enjoy being viewed as essentially good. And, this comes from both the left/socialist-leaning feminist camps as well as the right/conservative-leaning (pseudo-)Christian camp – not to mention most of the “undecided” in the middle as well.
In society, it is the gynocentric view which is taken (by default) by most people.
The Manosphere/Men’s Right’s/Men’s issues blogs are basically an attempt to bring some balance to many societal issues and the discussions thereof. It ascribes to an androcentric view, and argues that the androcentric is every bit as important to society and societal functioning as is the over-emphasized gynocentric view.
You can go to many news sources, on-line magazines and both left-feminist and right-conservative and Christian blogs and read all about the faults and failures of men. The Manosphere is the brave new road on which we dare to ask the (seemingly taboo) questions, “What about the women?”
And, from our perspective, women do, in fact, bear a great deal of culpability in many major societal issues. Of course, our openly discussing that angle makes many of you rather uncomfortable.
Still, I’ll bet you never called out anyone on any other forums for male-bashing. Even if you aren’t actively anti-male, you still likely follow along with the majority of society in assuming that it’s quite okay to bash men, because men just deserve to be derided.
As an example of your buying into the “conventional wisdom that men are the problem, ans that women suffer (as victims) due to the bad behaviors of men, I’d note that you’ve brought up the standard whine about this supposed double standard “sluts vs. studs”.
It something that the Manosphere has hashed over time and time again; and, what it seems that you fail to understand is that women are also primarily to blame for that. Men (collectively) rightly assess promiscuous women as poor relationship/marital material, while women tend to over-value promiscuous men, and FAIL to make a differential judgment between what makes for a desirable sex partner and what makes for a desirable marital partner. If women could simply control their hind-brains and learn to judge promiscuous men in the same way men (rightly) judge promiscuous women, then there wouldn’t be this supposed double standard.
“I am honestly just trying to understand where all this hatred is coming from”
Thought you weren’t trolling?
Pro tip: Next time you come into a place seeking “understanding”, throwing accusations of hatred is not where you want to start
@ Melissa,
Where did anyone say that anything was *always* the case?
Of course some no fault divorces filed by women are done so either as the result of an amicable mutual decision or because of misconduct by the man. But it’s been looked at, by studying the actual court transcripts, not just looking at the reason on the initial filing and infidelity/abuse by the man is a factor in only a tiny minority of no fault divorces filed by women.
Yes there are jerks and idiots of both genders, but in terms of where the anger of men is coming from, if you stop and look at what’s actually being said here, it’s largely directed at the currently large imbalance of power in the system that heavily favors women. And the anger/vitriol from women is driven largely by the delusion that men who are looking to address this imbalance are actually seeking to put women back into slavery or subjugation to men that to a large degree never really existed to the degree they want to say it did, in the first place.
Anon
Sorry, posted that last before I saw your latest response. I will gladly go read the rest of the site. Didn’t mean to ask people to recreate the wheel. I understand completely. And, maybe I am a bit “wide-eyed,” but disingenuous, I am not. In fact, the only reason why I came here today is to try to understand the guy side better in order to better love and serve my sisters AND brothers in Christ. Maybe having a woman relate some of these frustrations back to other women will have a more positive and lasting affect on their actions than the scathing rebuke of frustrated men. Or, maybe it won’t, but at any rate, I’d like to know how to love y’all better, personally. But, that’s just me.
So, again, sorry for stepping in to the arena without the back story. Will go check out the archives now. Thank you.
I think that now would be as good a time as any to discuss the following: namely Marriage in the District of Krummhorn, Germany in the early Nineteenth Century – and it was Dalrock’s above remark concerning lack of options of divorcing women that put me in mind of this:
I am by the way entirely indebted to Professor Dunbar (of Dunbar Number fame) for this. He in turn learned of the same from Sociologists who have been studying certain parish registers of marriage:
Krummhorn was an agricultural district and researchers found that well-to-do Krummhorn males tended to marry women slightly younger than the average age at which women married. What was happening was this: Women were holding out for the local landowner’s son – their Mr D’Arcy – but many were inevitably unlucky for the local D’Arcy wants the prettiest woman (and prettier women tend to be younger). It was (from an evolutionary and doubtless unconscious point of view) a risky strategy for the women, because it meant if they did not attract Mr D’Arcy they – the plainer women – had to settle for the local curate; but by that time the likelihood of their being able to produce a large number of children who would reach adulthood was diminished. Sometimes older unmarried women became pregnant and would then quickly marry some very much younger man, a man with little by way of prospects, but at least they had the Status of being married and some limited resources.
We live in a very different world, but I think it is easy to see that the same concerns (whatever women may try to persude themselves of) continue to play out, with rich guys going for younger prettier women, the rest settling for what they can (and always pining for that Alpha who got away), and some at an older age becoming pregnant by some young itinerant male keen to acquire that green card.
Of course, those Krummhorn ladies did not have Divorce to improve on their first decision.
Melissa,
The “hatred” you see is not necessarily what it first appears to be; for many (myself included) it’s hating the sin while still trying (very difficult here at times) to love the sinner.
“Amicable” divorces? I am over 40, have been married well over a decade, and have many friends/family members/fellow congregants who have been through divorce….. and I have yet to have seen the mythical “amicable” divorce. I believe that saying “amicable divorce” is somewhat akin to “happy cancer”.
The effects of divorce on children are especially pernicious (I would suggest perusing The Marriage Problem by James Q. Wilson and Coming Apart by Charles Murray for more in depth information about this). There is a genuine concern in the MRA about divorce for many reasons, but among the top are:
1) Fathers being evicted from their children’s lives,
2) The devastating effects on children who grow up without their fathers
3) The resultant “marriage strike” in our culture in which more and more young people decline to marry altogether because of the wreckage they have seen in their parents’ lives as a result of divorce.
I hate, abhor, detest, despise, etc. so on and so forth all three of these things (and several others) about divorce.
Cordially,
Okrahead
Hatred? This is just dating, modern style. Hypergamy, careerism, be the best you can be, and so forth.
All supposedly leading to marriage 2.0, where the husband leads, the wife submits, and christians rarely divorce.
Oh, sorry, back to reality, where women initiate most divorces, cite frivolous reasons, become heroic single moms, get the lions share of assets and ongoing alimony, plus church sponsored support groups, because obviously, the man failed to lead well enough, and no harsh words thank you very much.
Melissa, i suggest you read before posting. Most of these issues are well covered.
Otherwise, you will not last 72 hours before getting offended and leaving in a huff.
There is much to learn, and your questions so far suggest you prefer generalising and stereotypes to any real insights.
I am honestly just trying to understand where all this hatred is coming from
So any criticism of bad behavior on the part of women is “hate”, is that what you mean?
@ Melissa,
Thanks you for your very gracious response to what was in some cases,a less than welcoming entry to the site. Please realize that much of the reaction you received was because of some buttons that you probably very unintentionally pushed. Much of what you said sounded identical to those who come here with their minds made up that we’re a bunch of woman hating pigs and who are out to prove a point about how wrong or how evil we all are.
There are definitely some negative attitudes around here, but of you really do look a little deeper with an eye toward truly understanding, you’ll see that they come from a place that has nothing to do with in inherently dislike of women or an inherent attitude of hate of anything.
AR,
I wish I could insert *tone* into this comment, but as I can’t I am saying this nicely. Not snottily. Give Melissa a chance. She is speaking woman speak and you are speaking man speak and you two are not connecting. Does she mean hate like you think she does? No, she doesn’t. But she feels hate right now and she feels it directed at her because she is new here and not used to all of this. Is it really directed at her? No. (Melissa, I advise you to look up solipsism. It is strong in women, for the mere fact that it just . . . is).
Melissa, none of this is directed at you. We don’t know you. What we do know is lots of womem who have come before you here (manosphere here. Not Dalrock’s necessarily. I haven’t been here long enough to see it for myself) who come in for the sole purpose of derision and denigration. They don’t come to learn. However, you should know that your comments sound an awful lot like you are coming here to do that. Now, they are different in tone enough that I believe you are here for the reasons you say you are. Knowing this, you must not get mad or indignant with the people here. Rather, get mad at those women who came before with the purpose of hate on their minds. Also, read your comments before you post them and be careful of your tone. You will find that if you ask questions without implied judgement, but for the sole purpose of learning, people will happily answer or point you in the right direction for further research.
A key that opens many locks is a Master Key.
A lock which opens for many keys is just a shitty lock.
Rollo, you beat me to it. 🙂
Dalrock,
Might there be value in an faq page, with short and succinct paragraph-length descriptions of common terms and phrases.
Visitors could be encouraged to read the faq before posting.
Melissa has lived all her life with kid gloves. Tell her straight and to the point AR if she decides to play dumb so be it.
@ Melissa
“In fact, the only reason why I came here today is to try to understand the guy side better in order to better love and serve my sisters AND brothers in Christ. Maybe having a woman relate some of these frustrations back to other women will have a more positive and lasting affect on their actions than the scathing rebuke of frustrated men.”
I am a woman who has been a wife in the Christian church for more than two decades and I can tell you that the sisters you want to take some of this information back to do not want to hear it. And the brothers won’t be able to hear it with their heads tucked in the sand as far as they are. The leaders we went to for counseling put all blame for marriage problems on my husband’s shoulders while some of the ladies showed me how easily I can manipulate my husband to behave and get things done.
I can also tell you that since I have tried talking to women I knew from our churches about being a biblical wife and having respect for my husband I have been met with anger and disapproval.
You are right, “we are called to love and respect ALL people because we are ALL made in the image of God,” and it would interesting to know how you fare when you go back to the women you love and serve; you may find that love part going out the window rather quickly. Just speaking from experience.
Divorce rates are down because less people are getting married to begin with.
It is fully impractical, except for the matter of health insurance.
Chaz345 and Stingray
Thank you. I admit I did get defensive. Most of my experiences with divorce and relationship are more varied than the ones painted here. Yes, I know people who have divorced because of the man’s infidelity. Yes, I know people who have divorced because of the woman’s infidelity. And, yes, I know people who have gone through amicable divorces. So I tried to provide a wider scope based on what I have experienced. Just because you haven’t had the experience, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
Hatred? Yes, I feel that. The derision, the sarcasm, the generalized and stereotypical accusations of being generalizing and stereotypical when my intent was to learn.
And, please, feel free to tell me “straight and to the point.” Me and my kid gloves are “man enough” to handle it.
Just because you haven’t had the experience, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
It is very important that you remember this, because the experiences of the men who frequent manosphere blogs (like here) do not mimic your experience much at all. They mimic what Dalrock has posted above. Your few friends is greatly diminished by the great number of men around these parts who have been on the receiving end of “Eat, Pray, Love” divorce.
Besides, as I can tell from my site stats, more than a couple of you have gone to my site from here. If I were just here to troll or cause trouble, do you honestly think I would be stupid enough to use my real name and site? Maybe other people are that stupid. Hell, maybe you think I’m stupid for doing it any way, but for me, that’s my marker, my voucher. That’s my word that I’m for real.
I just wanted to comment this:
This comment symbolizes everything that is wrong with Christian women.
I really just can’t believe that this attitude is the dominant one in CHRISTIANITY of all place.
I just makes me legitmately sad and I had to vent.
http://haleyshalo.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/new-boundless-blogger-to-men-yep-still-your-fault/#comment-8344
KaehuJune 25, 2012 at 12:12 pm#
I don’t know Haley, but my general opinion is that finding a Christian of the opposite sex who is spouse material and available these days is like finding hen’s teeth.
Melissa,
From “The Marriage Problem” by James Q. Wilson:
“young people in father-absent families were twice as likely to incarcerated as those in two-parent families” (p 8)
“the homicide rate for children living in stepfamilies is SEVENTY (emphasis mine) higher than it is for those living with both biological parents” (p3)
“preschool children living with a stepfather were forty times more likely than those living with their biological parents to become the victims of child abuse and seventy to one-hundred times more likely to be murdered by the stepparent.” (p. 169)
“Amicable divorces”, if they involve children, are the equivalent to allowing a five year old to play with a loaded firearm in the middle of a busy intersection while smoking a cigarette. Any other activity that adults engage in that puts their children at this much risk is (rightly) criminalized as negligence or worse. This is why so many men are enraged…. they have been kicked out of their children’s lives, while the state (and their former spouse) allows these same children to be subjected to conditions of danger that would have been unacceptable in a 1930s Kentucky coal mine.
Cordially,
Okrahead
Okrahead
I agree. In fact, the “amicable divorces” (and that is just for a lack of a better term…any love lost comes with some sort of detriment) I know of occurred in families without children. You are absolutely correct that protecting the welfare of children is incredibly important. Also, it is a breath of fresh air to hear there are “so many men” who are so passionate about being in their children’s lives. I have been fortunate to know such passionate men but, and this is just my personal experience, I am sad to say that they have appeared more like diamonds in the rough than grains of sand on the shore. Thank you for the reminder that they’re out there. And, yes, I agree that women who give their children over to abuse are just as culpable, if not more, than the abusers, themselves.
Melissa,
Concerning fathers, you wrote, “I am sad to say that they have appeared more like diamonds in the rough than grains of sand on the shore.” Might I suggest you consider associating with a different group of men? I am a father, as are most of my male friends and relatives of appropriate age. I have personally seen these men make sacrifices you would not believe on behalf of their children. I saw the same in my own father as a child. I did look at your website, and I know your background is quite different from my own, but I find it amazing that we have seen such two different groups of men in the same country. And, just as an aside, I would not suggest using that line to often when commenting on a site where men are seeking help to keep from being evicted from their children’s lives. Just a thought.
Another note on “amicable divorces”. You said you just don’t have a better term. Perhaps you mean divorces with a lack of the overt conflict often seen. Apparently many people in our society consider this a mark of sophistication or civilization. If such is the case I must strongly disagree.
My wife and I took an oath to God (not just an oath before God, as often stated, but an oath TO God) and formed a family. Even before our first child was born the two of us were a family bound by love, but also by a sacred oath. Divorce is the murder of a family, even if there are only two people involved, and the abandonment of a sacred oath to God. I must confess that if anyone were to attempt the destruction of my family my response would be something rather near the polar opposite of “amicable.” False sophistication in such a matter is a mark of moral cowardice, and if the Revelation of St. John tells us anything, it’s that cowards are the first ones cast into Hell.
Cordially,
Okrahead
Men love their children, Melissa.
Amicable Divorce also means that the man is doing what his soon to be ex wife expects him to do. The minute he doesn’t it’s amazing how the amicable part goes out the window.
I would also add that many men put on a game face while getting divorced just because they don’t want the kids to suffer more than they already will. So they smile and mouth all sorts of nonsense when inside they are seething. Knowing that when the ink is dry on the divorce they will see the kids half the time (or less) when before they were around all the time. The private conversations with the soon to be ex wife are brutal, but everyone just sees the smiles in public and assumes everyone is “amicable”.
The divorce rate is kinda a red herring. It’s the devastation to a man’s life caused by divorce that is the issue. I don’t want to play Russian roulette with 3 (50%), 2 (33%) or 1 (17%) bullets. Telling me that there’s only one bullet, nothing to worry about, is not very reassuring.
Stingray and Okrahead – I think you’re both doing a fine job of firmly but kindly explaining the issues without injecting emotionalism.
A small bone of contention, just a minor point…since we are talking about divorce and many of us are arguing from a Christian perspective, I just want to reiterate that “abuse” is not grounds for a Biblical divorce. We don’t need to delve too deeply into that right now while we have company on the thread (Melissa), but I just keep seeing abuse mentioned as if it were an allowable reason for divorce…
Melissa, don’t get too worked up about feeling jumped on (no one really jumped on you all that bad, anyway). Personally I don’t invest any more ego in my online identity than would fit on the head of a pin. I advise you to do the same, as this aids one in staying rational and unemotional during conflict.
Dear Sunshine Mary (and I really love that picture!),
I concur with your statement about abuse not being a Biblical ground for divorce, (Matt. 19). Please forgive me if I was obtuse. Perhaps it would be better to state that I was talking simply as an observation of the secular law on divorce, and the effect its change has had on divorce rates. The fact that the law of man allows us to perform an act does not, of course, mean that we can still commit that act if it violates the Law of Christ.
Cordially,
Okrahead
Okrahead
When Melissa comments you can see the “team woman” equality qualifiers she has in her comments. As you picked up on, she acknowledged that men actually care about their kids. I like the “so many men” in quotes. Its like a little kid saying I promise with her fingers crossed. (team woman first baby) If she is sincere and stays a regular on the blog she will naturally start to give that stuff up. Will be interesting to watch.
Okrahead
Knowing and associating are two different things. Of the men I know, the gems are the ones with whom I am privileged to associate. The others are less men I know and more men that I know of, since they are the ones who have up and left their children behind of their own volition, not the mother’s.
David Collard
Parents are supposed to love their children, but there are some (men AND women) who would do better to show that love, or even just show up, at all. Clearly, those people are not represented here, but they do exist.
Interested
Men can be brutal, as well, and women can put on a brave face, too. Road goes both ways.
greyghost
The quotes were in reference to the fact that I was *gasp* actually quoting Okrahead. If you think I’m waving some sort of “team women” flag, then I am led to believe you must be at the head of the “team men” battering ram. How about at least trying take a closer look, drop all this team men/women battle of the sexes bullshit, and consider joining “team humanity.”
I wasn’t posting to you Melissa relax and enjoy Dalrocks crew. There is no battle of the sexes. Dalrock doesn’t require men to keep their mouth shut and walk on eggshells in the presence of females here.
@ Melissa
There is no Team Man. There is Team Her Man or Team Woman – pick one, because you can’t be on both. Hint: pretending Team Woman doesn’t exist doesn’t make it cease to exist.
If there were really a Team Man, feminism would have been strangled at birth.
“If there were really a Team Man, feminism would have been strangled at birth.”
+1
Melissa wrote:
And one acting unilaterally to make it all blow up, and then blaming the man for his own issues and hers as well. Most of us are saying that life really doesn’t work this way.
It helps when determining responsibility for failures. The main problem when it comes to relationships and marriage is that women are being held blameless for their actions and have been for a very long time. Then to add insul to injury, men are being held responsible for the actions of the women. Remember your speech about saying it takes two responsible for it and to make it work? The model that people are operating in now says that the man is wholly responsible for the relationship AND making it work. No fantasy lands here. This is how the legal environment holds marriage as well.
Not hatred. Natural reactions to what people do to one another. Natural reactions to injustice. If you are even remotely alive, you should feel angry when an injustice is done. I even haven’t been married, and I’m angry just reading some of the horrific things feminism and the legal system as it stands have wrought on men as it pertains to divorce. There is no such thing as an “amicable divorce”. And I’m angry that I’ll never get the chance to know what my forefathers knew in the past because marriage has been changed so radically from the way God designed it. (If you aren’t trying to troll, you’re doing a pretty bad job of it. You would do well to listen much more than you speak if you are seeking “understanding”, especially if you see pointing out the faults of women as “hatred”.)
LovableChimp:
Unfortunately, Churchianity is much worse than the world in this regard. They are just like the secular women, but have the backing of the church spoiling them further with the heretical daughter of the King nonsense. It’s no wonder that I’ve read many cases of Christian men going outside the church for their wives. The ones in the world are far less spoiled on average, plus the environment is much better for being able to find a good wife outside of Churchianity. And that’s saying something.
Oh, you mean like female babies in overpopulated countries? Now there’s an argument for the sanctity of life. We should make a bumper sticker.
Melissa,
In point of fact, speaking of men who love their children, you said, “I am sad to say that they have appeared more like diamonds in the rough than grains of sand on the shore.”
Please bear with me as I point out that what you have here is both a mixed metaphor and a non-sequitur. Perhaps you can copyright this as the mixed non-sequitur. “Diamonds in the rough” is not a reference to scarcity, although in context this appears to be your meaning. “Diamonds in the rough,” as a reference to men, are those who have the potential for goodness but still need more development. I would submit to you that men who love their children are not as much a scarcity as your comment tends to indicate, and those who do love their children are not still “in the rough.” There is a common view in society that men are not loving unless they express love in the same manner as women. I would suggest (and please feel free to correct me if necessary) that the very different ways in which men and women express their love is not only desirable, it is God’s plan.
Cordially,
Okrahead
What’s Team Her Man?…
@Emma
You could click on the link that CL posted and then you would read my post where I first wrote about Team Her Man.
Thanks, 7man.
Team Woman and Team Her Man explained:
http://curmudgeonloner.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/team-woman/
Okrahead
Being that we were discussing divorce, my statement was in line with that discussion, not a generalization of men as a whole. Who I am talking about are the absentee fathers. Men who have no problem spreading their seed but curse and forsake any plant that might spring up from it.
Seriously, this community isn’t about fostering understanding, it’s about lambasting for the Good Old Boys Club. Women have all the power. Right. That must be it. I have all the power. My favorite activity is reclining in my chaise lounge, scissors in one hand, your genitals in the other. In fact, I’m doing it right now. That’s why I’m here. Not to understand. Not to offer perspective. But to remind you who is in control. (just for clarity, that was sarcasm)
You know, griping so much about close-minded, power-hungry bitches really just makes the gripers sound a whole lot like close-minded, power-hungry bitches. If you want to be understood and respected, try being understanding and respectful–although, that hasn’t seemed to work for me today, so maybe that’s just a female thing, something that was hidden in the part of Adam’s side God removed to create Eve–you know, when He created her, in His image, similar and equal to, but also different than and complementary to Adam.
You want to talk about being enraged by the horrors and injustices of the world? OK. Let’s talk slavery. Let’s talk modern-day slavery: sex trafficking–men, women, CHILDREN. Speaking of children, let’s talk absentee parents. Let’s talk child soldiers. Let’s talk rape, murder, suicide. Let’s talk about the general degradation of humanity. Men, women, children…all of HUMANITY. This he said/she said, he did/she did schism–this blame game is the antithesis of the Gospel message. This is NOT Jesus’ message. This is NOT God’s way. None of it. If I don’t come back, it’s not because I can’t handle perspective and truth, it’s because this doesn’t seem to be a place that honors or cultivates perspective and truth. God calls us to be iron sharpening iron, challenging each other, not red-hot pokers and goads searing into and maiming each other. This is all enlightening in a very, very saddening way.
“And this is my prayer [for us all]: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ–to the glory and praise of God.” ~ Philippians 1:9-11 [addition, mine]
Melissa, here is some scripture for you to ponder, from the Douay-Rheims translation:
“The man … is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man.”
1 Corinthians 11:7
One of you guys pissed Melissa off. My favorite part of her display of displeasure with you guys here was that the messed up part of Eve was the part God took from Adam. That was team woman on biblical scale. Infact if it wasn’t for you assholes here f’ing up Dalrocks blog with your snotty comments to the new chick there wouldn’t be so much injustice in the world. Like gas costing more than 3 dollars a gallon.
@Anonymous Reader:
Funny facts about Roe vs. Wade, Norma McCorvey falsely claimed she was raped to gain more traction for her abortion plea.
She later gave birth to her child, then put her up for adoption … and is now fighting to overturn that right to abort.
@Melissa:
You remind me of that saying in the very first Survivor season:
“If you want to be seen, stand up. If you want to be heard, speak up. If you want to be appreciated, shut up”.
I can see at least 2 problems with the “shut up and be appreciated” angle (which to my mind is what you are telling men to do): you are enabling the bad behaviour to continue by not taking a stand against it, and indirectly telling other people it is the correct state of events by not taking a stand against it.
@greyghost
It was impressive how quickly she gave up trying to make a rational case and just spouted off a bunch of one liners she learned in college. Right now she is fuming thinking “Don’t they know that when I rattle off clichés they have to apologize for their male privilege? What’s up with these men? Why don’t they know the rules?”
Did someone just sit up in bed, rotate her head 360 degrees and start spitting pea soup all around the room?
It would be really nice to have a woman come onto a site like this and say something like: “I am here to learn. I understand that women are supposed to support and help men in life. How can I help?”
[and then I woke up]
I think the only thing worse than the feminist trolls I’ve encountered in places like this is the preachers who lift themselves up in their minds to the point of thinking their words are as if they’re coming from Jesus Himself. Can’t even dare ask them a question without them flipping out, much more challenge them. Looking at their blogs, they either don’t allow comments at all or moderate the ones that disagree with them out of existence. This post in response to an Albert Mohler rant railing against the Internet illustrates it almost perfectly. It’s almost a “here’s what he thinks of you for being online”. Probably hates the fact that he can’t control the dialogue in places like this and others. Just like Melissa.
Whenever there is a new blog post in the manosphere that almost instantly has 100+ comments, it’s almost always because some obtuse feminist troll like Melissa has shown up.
I fail to see much of significance in the fact of a younger group of people only having divorced at 80% of the rate, as compared to an older group of people, who have been alive longer, and therefore had longer to achieve that 50% rate. It’s as if to say that having taken this snapshot in time, no further couples will divorce from this younger group. To say it lacked a certain amount of intellectual rigour would be quite charitable.
Hi all, been a long-time reader over here at Dalrock, which is by far my favourite site on the Internet. I always enjoy reading the comments pages and particularly when visitors share anecdotal experiences from their own lives.
In the case of marriage, I would like to give my perspective on my generation as a 27-year-old man, in the UMC, highly-educated crowd. Firstly, there have been very few marriages to date, and the only marriages that seem to be materialising are those where the couple have been together for a long time (5+ years) and where the boyfriend devirginised the girlfriend.
My biggest gripe with the modern dating scene, and to which Dalrock has written extensively (I am thinking of ‘Promiscuity is good so long as it is done on the woman’s term’) is that serial monogamy has become the new chastity in our day and age, especially among secular ‘good girls.’ This is a real shame, because, though one can rightfully debate the ‘sluttiness’ nature of serial monogamists vs sluts, ultimately, serial monogamists to me are equally unmarriageable as sluts.
In every sense of the word, I would be described as a high-status man or ‘alpha male’ (tall, good-looking, athletic, exercise regularly, highly educated from world-class universities, money and power from family’s profession and lineage etc.)., yet I still see myself as a loser in the modern dating place. Where in the past I would have gotten a young, virgin girl who would be at the same SMV as me, today I am faced, at best, with the prospect of a high-SMV girl who has been engaging in serial monogamy with multiple men for several years. The ‘good girls’ nowadays are girls with a history of at least 2-3 boyfriends in sexual LTR, which basically means she has been having regular sex with multiple men for most of her youth.
The girls I grew up with and that I see around me appear (again I am not too intimate with them so i am only guessing) to have slowed down their serial monogamy tendencies, and some women, in an effort to entice me, take a few months or a year off sex and serial monogamy, and genuinely think that they have become lucrative marital prospects. The female hamster is so damn self-destructive and annoying…
I really cannot for the life of me see how people will get married from my generation. as previously mentioned on this site, girls engage in serial monogamy because they are genuinely afraid of true commitment while they’re young (late youth, early 20s). In true herd mentality, the prettiest girl will encourage the rest of her girl friends to become sexually active via serial monogamy so they are not viewed as ‘sluts’, yet now in our late 20s, very few of these girls have come out of this path in a genuine relationship that is moving towards marriage, which is skewing the dating market so much in favour of men.
Another thing to note, is that I come from a Mediterranean country with a strong tradition of tight family bonds and Christianity, yet growing up, I was the SOLE person with any sort of religious education or teaching in the Bible from home, which I am sure is in stark contrast to so many of my peers’ parents who grew up in a different time period.
My reaction has been a mixture of MGTOW, ONS and Peter Pan syndrome. The few times I engage in sex regularly with a girl, it rarely lasts more than a month or two, as I get fed up of their promiscuity and entitlement attitudes (they really have no clue that their chances of getting married are small, and their chances of getting married to an equivalent high-status male like me are nil).
I remember graduating high school at 18 thinking how all the girls I grew up with were essentially unmarriageable, but surely as I traveled around the world and met more people, my perspective will change. Rather, what I have observed is the predictably homogenous effect that sexual freedom has brought to all Western countries (I only travel around Western countries for the most part, UNFORTUNATELY).
To top it all off, my parents who are both worldly and well traveled, have underestimated how widespread the sexual revolution has become, and think I’m exaggerating when I say there are no cute virgin girls left (‘good girls’ as they would say).
I am sorry that this may be off-topic to this specific post, but I thought I would share my personal experiences with everyone, and state how much I enjoy being part of this online community that brings me solace and comfort, at a time where I feel tremendous isolation and alienation from the general culture around me.
greenlander: Yeah. If comments go high quickly it’s most often because of feminist trolling or some personal grievancies between commentators. Race baiting also will make figures sky rocket.
I guess Melissa just got her first taste of the manosphere. As Bruce Willis said in Die Hard, “Welcome to the party, pal”.
Scary stuff when your toolkit of shaming, propoganda (lies) and manipulation (which is pretty much all you have, or have needed) gets laughed off the stage.
Best get used to it sweety, because I seriously believe that society is waking up. Comments in the main stream media are becoming far more critical of feminist bullshit. The latest attempt to use paedo scares in the UK got a very mediocre reaction, people see the bullshit nowadays. The glory days are gone
I see that the Hamster has entirely disrupted the thread, however, I am not dismayed, as I have more to say about Dunbar.
Firstly, from the Krummhorn example which I gave above I think he misses one important matter: That women greatly overestimate their desirability. Given the encouragement their sisters always give them, – for at the end of the day that is their best and frequently only calling-card, it is hardly surprising they should rate their desirability considerably higher than it actually is.Many women then confuse the ease with which they can sleep with a man with their desirability to the man as a marriage partner; but Men will always divide women into the easy and the marriageable. For a historical example one only has to remind oneself of the life of Count Leo Tolstoy.
Secondly,there is something else that Dunbar said which might be somewhat off-topic but as it is so important I trust I might set it out here. In the MRM there is a lot of talk of Alphas and Betas (and even the hapless Omegas) but much confusion as to the characteristics of the Alpha. Dunbar (who I imagine has never heard of the Man-o-sphere) explains women’s desires this way: Women want three mutually incompatible things such that their choice of man is ALWAYS a compromise. The things she wants are 1. Good looks and Muscles (Gina Tingle) 2. Wealth and Resources (Status) 3. Reliability. A few moments reflection will reveal that no man is going to be equally strong in all categories; but to take one example: If you are Wealthy, and Good looking there will be less cause for you to be monogamous. Try any other permutation to see this. The first two traits are Alpha, the latter obviously Beta.
Opus, I am glad you read Dunbar. I have one of his books, on primate sexual choices IIRC. And I looked up some of that Krummhorn literature. It is the kind of thing I find fascinating.
You are right that Dunbar has probably never heard of the Manosphere. But it is only a matter of time before younger social and behavioural scientists catch on. And as Just1x says, there is a marked change in online comments on MSM articles on gender issues. It is clear that the media gatekeepers are losing control of the debate.
Opus, I think there will always be a market for a quality woman, but she will have to bring looks, charm, chastity and feminine skills if she wants the exclusive attention of a quality man. Other women are destined to join alpha cad harems or marry depressing chumps.
Melissa encapsulates the tragedy of the modern Western woman. Head full of fashionable nonsense. Just pretty enough and smart enough and Christofeminist enough to imagine unlimited options, and by chasing a lukewarm career, screw up her chances of marriage and children. Society is cruel to women like her.
She is a case study in what not to do.
I assumed that she was some kind of teen-ingenue, but 33 not heard of hamsters, wide eyed that women trigger divorce for other than battery? FFS
It was impressive how quickly she gave up trying to make a rational case and just spouted off a bunch of one liners she learned in college. Right now she is fuming thinking “Don’t they know that when I rattle off clichés they have to apologize for their male privilege? What’s up with these men? Why don’t they know the rules?”
Well, it so predictable that it is boring. Woman comes here, she says he wants to understand the male perspective, she repeats the same slogans and clichés we have heard ten thousand times. She is astonished when she sees that men don’t agree with these clichés and have arguments against them. She thought that we were ignorant people who were about to be enlightened with the truth and we were going to accept her superior Opprah-esque wisdom. Unable to engage in a logical discussion, she drops some shaming language and leaves. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The bad thing is the time wasted with these girls and the decrease in the quality of the discussion. I think the best policy is to ignore such attention wh*** but every time a such girl appears, it monopolizes the discussion and the whole debate revolves around her.It tells volumes about the power of American women over American men that, even in a MRA forum, one girl is able to make tens of men dance to her tune..
@David Collard
Thanks
Re-thinking my second Dunbar point, the following struck me: Men need to have as much as they can of those three qualities; Looks, Status, and Reliability, but women (and this is where they go wrong) merely need looks and reliability (which begins as being – reasonably – chaste). The one thing they do not need and which has zero influence on a man is wealth, that is to say status – and every woman who knows the story of Cinderalla should instinctively realise this. The Prince was not enamoured of Cinderella because of her Masters degree or for that matter her (alleged) high partner count.
As part of the Apex fallacy, women often seem to think that because it is so easy for them to have sex with a stranger, that all men are equally having sex with women. After all a man without a woman is seen by women as a bit of a loser. That of course is not the case, and because a man with a track record does not become less desirable to a women, women often seem to think that their high partner count is of no concern to a man, but I am afraid it does, and men (like Tolstoy) see women in two very different categories. Tolstoy married at age 34 an eighteen year old who was of course a virgin: He wasn’t looking to shack up with some 33 year old ex-carousel-rider. There are those who will say that was a long time ago and things are different now, but it is not so long ago really – I have a letter addressed to me by his daughter Sasha.
You want to talk about being enraged by the horrors and injustices of the world? OK. Let’s talk slavery. Let’s talk modern-day slavery: sex trafficking–men, women, CHILDREN. Speaking of children, let’s talk absentee parents. Let’s talk child soldiers. Let’s talk rape, murder, suicide. Let’s talk about the general degradation of humanity. Men, women, children…all of HUMANITY. This he said/she said, he did/she did schism–this blame game is the antithesis of the Gospel message.
——————————————————————————–
Ok lets talk slavery etc. Why is it ignored by feminists? Why is it equated with -access restrictions to birth control-by American wild eyed feminists so they can EXPLOIT the imagery for their gain?
We are talking about absentee parents and the number one reason there are so many…..female filed frivolous divorce
We talk rape, we cover the other side, the false accusation side….its not trivial, and Id assume your posture would be the pedestrian one, how dare we even deign besmirch such a thing as rape victims by demanding false accusations be considered, and laws codified to punish the while logic dictates we ought to be able to talk about one side of an issue since the rest of the population cant wail enough about rape, women marching and controlling the narrative and white knight men laying in the mud puddles so the little snowflakes neednt soil their shoes.
This isnt he said she said….this IS what fairness and balanced approach looks like Melissa. You, like so sadly many, are so settled in to comfy chair of conventional wisdom that you see what we are saying as one sided. In reality we are the most balancing bunch that exists, our perspective has not been audible for decades.
I dont like to but I will play the age card in that you have never been shown anything different than the main narrative. It is a very uncomfortable thing, like molting I’d imagine, to start seeing that you are not the victim and we needn’t get on our hands and knees to afford you a stage on which to roar.
@sunshinemary
“I say to the rest of womankind: let’s be smart, self-aware little hamsters, shall we?”
Very nice,shows introspection,very rare in a female.
To the *other* women out there:
Please tell your nuclear fueled zombie hamsters to quit bring food to my hamster, he is becoming overweight rapidly.
Actually, I believe marriage is a sacred institution, one not to be entered into lightly. I believe that God has placed husbands as the head of the household, to lead the family as Christ leads the Church and that wives are to submit to their husbands out of respect and love. I don’t believe “the messed up part of Eve was taken from Adam.” I believe that God made man and all beings from the dust, and then made Eve differently, from part of Adam, because the two were meant to be part of each other–to love each other–to return to each other in order to become one flesh once more. After reading this board and others in the manosphere, I wholly believe that there exists a chasm of animosity between some members of both sexes. I do apologize, again, for coming here and seeming troll-like. I did get defensive. I actually don’t consider myself a feminist at all. Or really any kind of “ist.” Obviously, that’s not how I come off.
Honestly, I believe God made men to be men and women to be women. Different. Not better or worse than the other, just different. Complementary. I don’t think men should act like or bow down to women. I don’t want men to shut up. It is in communicating with each other, and in God communicating through us to each other, that we grow and become more like Him. I am so very sorry women make men feel that they are inferior. Men are not inferior to women. So, before I head offline for the day, let me say…I am sorry. I AM here to listen, to understand. What can I do to help?
I would say that men give about 30% of their points to the right looks (has to be his type), about 30% to freshness and personality (not a slut or a bitch), about 20% to wifely skills, and about 20% to appropriate education (neither too little nor too much).
Some men, like me, insisted on a virgin. Other men might be less fussy. But few men want to marry the town bike.
No woman has ever made me feel inferior, Melissa.
@the pink hamster
“ALL people because we are ALL made in the image of God and, therefore, possess inherent dignity as His image-bearers.”
The high priestesses has been using the argument that
certain Bible verses are written to ‘men’ so do not apply to women,specifically on submitting to the husband unconditionally.
Using this same illogic I could tell you that the Bible states that *man* was created in the image of God,not women,and hence you are not in the image of God.
You are welcome Madaam.(to the male point of view)
Go in peace sister,and hamster no more.
Actually, i learn from the visitors that drop in.
Apart from realising they are brainwashed, i get to practice the art of unpicking the many lies they believe, and can do my own work on dissaasembling them. Even without responding, as in many cases, it would be simply repeating what others have said, perhaps using different words.
As empath demonstrates, each and any statement made by the dropins can be pulled apart. Which doubtless fuels their frustration at not being kow towed to.
Yes, the threads can be distracted. But i still take away a positive from the experience.
@Pink hamster.
Regarding the question of Eve being made from Adam’s rib.
The word for rib in the Hebrew has origins and direct to relation to the English word curve.
Some high minded folks has put forth the proposition that this was an early attempt to express the DNA curve.
If you’re gonna read the Bible get a Strong’s concordance and look into these matters if there is a question.
Melissa,
As per the various ills of the world you listed above (sex slavery, et.. al.): They all result from two (2) things.
1) The breakdown of the family, and
2) The resultant breakdown of civil society
The greatest cause of the breakdown of the family in the United States, and Western civilization as a whole, is frivolous divorce. The greatest cause of anti-social behavior in adolescents and young adults is growing up in a fatherless home (see Charles Murray and James Q. Wilson, again, amongst others). The two main causes of children growing up in fatherless homes are:
1) The expulsion of fathers from their children’s lives in frivolous divorces,
2) The growing trend (over 50% of live births to women under 30) of women choosing to be single mothers.
If you want to address the horrors you spoke about in your earlier post then you must address the dissolution of the family. If you want to address the dissolution of the family you must shut down your emotional side (the hamster, and it’s not because you’re a woman) long enough to look at the problem with a gimlet eye. Yes, there are terrible things going on in the Sudan, Uganda, and Bangor, Maine. While I might fret about them, I can have little, if any, direct impact. There are also terrible things happening to families in my own community as a result of divorce and illegitimacy. I can actually do something other than fret about those things.
Cordially,
Okrahead
Gee, I read it all now…the thread I mean. Melissa, the whole team humanity theory and that word that women seem to just LOVE to use…well one of them…..BALANCE…..is an empty gesture. There are numbers that prove the state of the (marriage/divorce) union. PROVE, not anecdotes about your friends and sisters and such, but actual large population studies.
Here is a correlation I’d like to see studied….women who espouse the views you do are prone to either not being able to grasp verbiage that is suggestive of statistics nor statistics themselves, usually dismissing the former with some value judgement like “people don’t fit into boxes” (the ole women are unique snowflakes assertion) and the later with “statistics can be made to say whatever the author wants”. Well, generalizations are perfectly valid if based on simple percentages that have been counted. And some statistics gathering is manipulable, but when things are counted and categorized using rigid criteria, those are what they are.
I raise all that because there is a statistically verifiable crisis of female filed frivolous divorce, smack in the middle of the church. So ignoring it and suggesting more utopian and less threatening avenues of exploration is feminist folly to keep the heat down.
Fact is, the unilateral stuff you seem to decry has been the state of affairs for decades, its just been in the other direction, and evangelical feminists have done a great job of wrapping it in ribbons, AND rationale complete with a Personal Jesus (TM) to back their views. Id bet you attend a Personal Jesus (TM) church, why, because there are not really many if any other types of churches in this country.
The things you call hatred here are merely truths, and if you’d allow your scales to fall off you’d even figure out that these PRO FAMILY messges we espouse are the best things for women and for children.
I respect your returning to continue the conversation, Melissa, but don’t give yourself airs by condescending to men. I belong to the sex that gave the world Beethoven, Shakespeare and Einstein. Your sex wears string bikinis and gives blowjobs.
High misogynist priest freebird sez:
God made Eve in Adam’s image,not God’s!
Therefore woman is less than Adam,and made entirely for subservience and kitchen duty.
Love it when my hamster gets a hold of the the nuclear fuel!
It is sweet and tastes good but is bitter in the tummy.
Melissa,
I am no longer convinced you are here just to learn, but since you insist that you are, may I make a suggestion? Stop commenting. Completely. For at least a few days. Start reading. Read here and then visit some of the sites on the side bar. Don’t comment there either. You may not consider yourself a feminist. A lot of us women didn’t either. That does not mean that we didn’t whole heartedly swallow a good deal of what they were selling without even realizing it. You clearly did. Guess what? So did I. But you are never going to learn until you forget for a while what you think you know and start to truly listen to what is being said in these sites.
Furthermore, these bloggers are NOT talking about you, Melissa. They are talking about women. Yes, you are a woman and a great deal of it will apply to you. That does not mean you should take it personally. Separate yourself for a bit and allow your self to absorb what is being said. If you take everything you read as a personal attack, you will learn nothing.
Watching that hamster run, and explode was an education for me. I always wondered what would happen if you put a hamster in the microwave (manosphere). It was the metal wheel that caused the spark that ignited the numerous droppings.
Melissa, I am glad you are here. I do not think you are a troll and I hope you will keep reading even if you don’t comment. But now I have to make an observation that you might not find pleasurable.
Melissa wrote, “God calls us to be iron sharpening iron, challenging each other, not red-hot pokers and goads searing into and maiming each other. ”
Did you suppose that iron sharpening iron was a gentle tickle? Matthew 7:5 says: You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. The pain of removing the log from one’s eye is directly proportional to the size of the log.
On April 27, Melissa wrote on her blog “:God is so beautifully deliberate. When He said, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him,” He did not say “mate” or “wife,” He said “helper suitable.”In the original Hebrew, the phrase translated as “a helper suitable for him” could more acceptably be translated as “a power equal to him.” Not mate. Not significant other. Not servant. Not subordinate. “A power equal to him.”God didn’t make Eve so that Adam would not be single; He made Eve so that Adam would not be alone, so that he would have community.”
On June 26 on Dalrock’s blog, Melissa wrote, “I actually don’t consider myself a feminist at all.” …and…”Honestly, I believe God made men to be men and women to be women. Different. Not better or worse than the other, just different. Complementary.”
Melissa, the log in your eye is very large. This may hurt a little.
Opus
As part of the Apex fallacy, women often seem to think that because it is so easy for them to have sex with a stranger, that all men are equally having sex with women. After all a man without a woman is seen by women as a bit of a loser.
If he is “seen” at all. More likely, a man who has no social proofing (“has woman”) is not visible, or barely visible, to most women – a grey shadow on their awareness at best. Lower than a loser, such men are simply invisible to women.
Game enables a grey, invisible to barely visible man to suddenly pop himself into view. To women it likely appears to be a magic trick; one minute he’s not there, then he suddenly appears out of nowhere. But what really happens is, some combination of behavior/appearance on the part of the man triggers a response in her hindbrain, and she “sees” him.
I expect many younger men have had the experience of being invisible to women, and then being seen with a “date” (social proofing), whereupon suddenly women who had ignored him start paying attention to him. As a young man, when this happened to me more than once, I put it down to a fickle, lazy, untrustworthy nature in the individual women in question. But that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, as some of the women who did this were actually fairly good people. The proof of the pudding comes later in life, when a man who has secured a woman finds that she’s treating him as somewhat “invisible”, in an LTR / marriage. Betaization, lowering his attractiveness to her, resulting in recatagorization by her hindbrain. The solution is to Game up a bit, in order to pop back “into view”. It helps if she is willing to work on her own attitude, of course.
So I agree with Opus on the Apex fallacy, I just believe that women stand on a glass floor in the social realm as well as the business world. They can’t “see” men beneath their attractiveness triggers, and so don’t really know much about those men’s existence.
“The man … is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man.”
You’re much kinder and gentler David.
Meanwhile the nuclear fuel the pink one brought me has gone into critical mass and has caused my hamster interpret the above scripture as :
The glory of God is man, means that man has an eternal soul.
The glory of man has always been his sons, so women do not have eternal souls,but leave a genetic legacy through sons that do have souls.
Gotta love that.
That hamster fuel IS addictive and the withdrawl is a bitch.
Regarding “iron sharpening iron”, as someone who has put an edge onto axes, knives, machetes, wood chisels, etc. a time or two with a stone, file, or grinding wheel I can say that the process is tedious. The stone/file/wheel is used to wear away, polish away, or even grind away, imperfections in the blade. The cutting edge is eventually smooth and sharp, but in the process of sharpening there will be a certain amount of friction, and heat generated. A careless sharpener can spend even more time shaping, then re-shaping, the edge in question. The process works best when one pays careful attention to what the tools and the steel are “saying”.
“On April 27, Melissa wrote on her blog “:God is so beautifully deliberate. When He said, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him,” He did not say “mate” or “wife,” He said “helper suitable.”In the original Hebrew, the phrase translated as “a helper suitable for him” could more acceptably be translated as “a power equal to him.” Not mate. Not significant other. Not servant. Not subordinate. “A power equal to him.”God didn’t make Eve so that Adam would not be single; He made Eve so that Adam would not be alone, so that he would have community.”
OMG did she write that?
Critical mass…not shutting down…scram,scram the core!
Lord stay my hand from writing the next misinterpretation.
No, Freebird, women have souls. But, yes, it is arguable that only man is made directly in God’s image and for His glory. Woman is made for the glory of man. As for helper, it means just that. A helper. Women who struggle with that are suffering from Pride.
Core breeched, full nuclear explosion!
The refined silver, a metaphor for scooping the dross off the silver refining process again and again REALLY refers to “The Patriarchy” having to assert their boundless authority over women time and time again
until they are mindless automatons barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen!
Copters are coming with fire control measures,let’s all hope they succeed!
Melissa, the Matrix has you.
Think about that for a moment. Why do you think you’re coming off that way? Maybe because you’ve been acculturated for a lifetime in a christian social doctrine that’s been so steeped in feminism for the past 60 years that it’s evolved into your personal belief?
Why does all this well-reasoned, critical thought about gender inconsistencies sound like hatred to you? Because it aligns with terminologies you’ve been socialized to associate are counter to your interests?
If you put the question, “are you a feminist?” to most evangelical women you’d get exactly the response I quoted by you. If you asked a random 100 women from any evangelical franchise religion if they’d describe themselves as “feminists” you’d get a resounding chorus of “no” to “hell no!”
Feminism, as a label, has the stink of a liberalism that they’ve been taught to construe as appalling and against their ‘moral code’. The term, in this expression, is equatable with pro-abortion, anti-christian, loose, loose morals, etc. etc. However, ask any of them whether they believe in an “equal work for equal pay” ethic, or whether they ought to be discounted from making political decisions (voting or running for office) by virtue of them being women and you’ll see how non-feminist they really are. Tell them traditional mores forbid them from ministry, give them guidelines for modesty, ridicule effeminate church-men, and you’ll see how ingrained feminist thought really is.
Women, particularly religious women, will embrace traditional morality insofar as it benefits their female primacy. I hate to shatter the illusion that makes guys think traditional, religious women are immune to the influence of feminism – they’re not. If anything they more actively exploit the aspects of feminism that serve them while deftly avoiding the label of “feminist” by virtue of their religion.
For a very well written series on fem-centric christianity you should really read Dalrock’s Reframing Christian Marriage 1-5
https:.htm/dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/reframing-christian-marriage
Read this and then comment here.
Rollo is correct, across the board. It is exactly that she suffers the illusion of conventional wisdom being GOOD. Lots of folks over history have suffered that illusion. He also points out something I get exercised about a lot, that is that the traditional Christian woman in America easily dismiss feminism for precisely the reasons he stated. Evangelicalism is the PERFECT cover for feminism, it is better referred as evangelical feminism or pure gynocentrism, which is actually aptly descriptive. The female is at the center and things revolve around her. There are ways that scripture is changed to help that fit
Admonitions to women are made null, or made conditional (if he goes first)
Admonitions to men are amplified, expanded in definition (lust in the heart equals physical adultery equals pure grounds for divorce…….neglect equals emotional abuse, abuse equals abandonment equals grounds for divorce, in fact anything unpleasant to a woman in marriage is deemed abuse which is deemed abandonment which is grounds for divorce making a situation where there are literally NO groundless divorces, nearly ever, filed by women)
Things are run through a bizarre form of interpretation where using concordances and lexicons feminists take a word and assign some perspective to it, mine scripture for other uses of that word or even a similar word, find scenarios that can be used to confuse the meaning of the word even though the scenario is utterly irrelevant, then bring that whole complex mess back to the original and say ‘so it flows that whats being said is XYZ’…..most women dont actively do this, they just read it once and it seems all scholarly and stuff, AND its indeed useful to establish her primacy, so they adopt it.
Melissa, in the church men are admonished, women are encouraged. Full stop. Divorce is hunky dory no matter the reason, and only men are derided for it, knee jerk question ‘what did HE do?’
As to that last point, someone I think sunshine said STOP reading comments as if they are about you. Melissa this is going to be the hardest thing you need to do, I’ve been watching this for years, and there is a form of narcissism that women CAN get past, but it makes you read youself into all statements, test the statement against your anecdotal world (which is tiny) and blow back how its not correct because YOU, or YOUR FRIENDS/SISTERS didnt do that, etc. Usually the fact is they did do that but the things I mentioned above about scripture twisting have been employed to make it look different.
Finally, do not make the mistake of seeing angry bitter men writing. That’s cheap and lazy, but oh so common. I didnt see that you had done so, but please dont. Many/most of us are married, I am 22 years married….its just that we got our scales pulled off in a different way than being ruined by a frivolous divorce.
If he is “seen” at all. More likely, a man who has no social proofing (“has woman”) is not visible, or barely visible, to most women – a grey shadow on their awareness at best. Lower than a loser, such men are simply invisible to women.
Game enables a grey, invisible to barely visible man to suddenly pop himself into view. To women it likely appears to be a magic trick; one minute he’s not there, then he suddenly appears out of nowhere. But what really happens is, some combination of behavior/appearance on the part of the man triggers a response in her hindbrain, and she “sees” him.
This is how I now understand it as well.
One way of thinking about it is, as a man, when we walk into a room of people, in a typical situation most of the women will be attractive visually to some degree — let’s say about 60-80% depending on the setting, age, sub-demographic and so on. That doesn’t mean each of these women is *equally* attractive — no, they are not. They are on a scale of attraction, but the “floor” beneath which a woman is “off the radar screen” for attraction is fairly low — men are somewhat attracted to quite a number of women, and the percentage who are invisible is small (but still there — some women are in the 20-40% who in most settings are going to be sexually invisible, and in most cases it is appearance related).
The way I now understand how this works for a woman is that a woman walking into the same room sees most men as grey or washed out, and only a few as standing out in vibrant color or sharp relief, in terms of pure initial attraction. These men stand out for any number of reasons depending on the setting, but it is typically a combination of social status and/or power, outright charm, and physical appearance. Game is one way of trying to address this so that a guy is one of the few who stands out in a group like that in attractional terms. But the point is this: most guys are grey, washed out and invisible in terms of *attraction*. That does not mean women do not think they exist, but they exist in a kind of neutered, neutral way — not as men, in an attraction sense. They are sexually invisible. This is the same as it is for the 20-40% of women who are in this bucket, but the key difference is that the percentage of men who are in this category for any given woman is very high compared to the percentage of women who are in this category for any given man — it’s around 80% of men, in any setting, who are in the invisible category in terms of this pure initial attraction — most guys are just invisible in terms of attraction to most women.
People — often women — will sometimes confuse this by saying “see, men are hypergamous, too, they’re all attracted to the tens!!!”. But that isn’t hypergamy. For men, this is about ranking women who are already in the “attractive” bucket as compared to the “unattractive” bucket — it’s a hierarchy among women who are attractive to some degree, and that degree will of course vary. Hypergamy isn’t about ranking among attractive men, it’s about having a very small list of men who are attractive, period, with everyone else not making the cut. In other words, hypergamy is about having a high “floor” for attraction at all, which by its nature excludes most men — it isn’t a ranking, but a very stiff filter mechanism that excludes most.
Melissa, as one who doesn’t want to see you as a troll, I would suggest taking everything Rollo and empathologicalism said above to heart, then go through everything Dalrock has written. Then read Rollo’s site – The Rational Male. As a Christian, I will tell you that Dalrock’s Reframing Christian Marriage posts are hard to read, but I think they are absolutely necessary. Heresy must be confronted.
If you are truly here to learn (and I want to take this at face value) then you have many resources available to you. Don’t become discouraged. I think a woman unplugging would be a wonder to behold!
What’s the betting that Melissa has ever gone to a feminist site and complained about “the hate” there?
@Empath
You missed her opening comment on Re-framing Christian Marriage Part 3 then. Her response was predictably to… re-frame biblical marriage back to her feminist view. As far as hamster gymnastics goes, I give it a 7. Passable skill and execution, but lacking in originality.
freebird says:
June 26, 2012 at 8:01 am
You don’t get to be single at her age not believing and writing syuff like that. If that was her profile that greenlander put up I’d say that was the biggest waste of an attractive young woman I’ve seen in a while. That attitude keeps her from gina tingling for a good man. Those guys where all around her and that apex falicy thing was like blinders. Male friends and colleages at ythis age are going to start getting married to 22 to 26 year old women and having kids and homes with families. She gets to go on face book and see women she saw as lesser than her posting pictures of their babies on facebook. Female coworkers all fat and shit in bathing suits they shouldn’t be wearing in swimming pools teaching their 2 year old son how to dog paddle with smiles ear to ear and she is writing articles of the empowerment of being a professional single woman at 38. Think of the joy of hearing her husband cussing at her 17 year old son for wrecking the car racing one of his buddies because she is just happy he is alive after seeing the car. Don’t laugh this is the drama god knows women need and he’ll give it to you as you need it. years later that same kid shows up before thanks giving with his wife and and your grandaughter who proceeds to terrorize the cat and exchange licks on the mouth with the weenie dog. This doesn’t happen by accident you have to work at it and god will fill your heart so that no matter how bad the work felt at the time when you look back you will feel this calming peace. It all comes from making something bigger than yourself.
@ greenlander
Melissa obviously has a lot to learn and plenty of unplugging to do—but using her LinkedIn profile to publicly out her was stupid and unnecessary.
Shame on you.
“Well, it so predictable that it is boring. Woman comes here, she says he wants to understand the male perspective, she repeats the same slogans and clichés we have heard ten thousand times. She is astonished when she sees that men don’t agree with these clichés and have arguments against them”
I’m finding, not just in the Manosphere but in the general public, men are subtly changing their response to such “arguments.” They’re no longer qualifying as much and rebutting the feminist arguments – now they’re (we’re) responding with contempt and dismissal. And nothing drives the agitators nuts more than being ignored.
@Dalrock…so yea, I read it now thanks, and as others have done I want to comment on this
————————————————————
Speaking of Genesis, “helpmeet” and “helper suitable” are actually sub-par terms. A more literal translation of the Hebrew there is “a power equal to.” Scholars also believe the equality of man and woman is also demonstrated by the fact that God took a part of man’s side to make woman–not a portion from his upper quarters or lower, so that there would be no inherent superiority or inferiority. The power structure, then, wasn’t laid out until after the fall when God said to the woman, “because you have done this…your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.”
—————————————————————-
The response as a whole was a little different than I expected, it did a better job of wrapping itself in disguise than most…not nearly enough to cloak it, but not too bad. As to the above, this is what I referred to in my posts above about the manner of exegesis so common among evangelical feminists. I suspect she read that somewhere else, heck let me send her to http://www.hupotasso.wordpress.com “A Wife’s Submission” , where she can read some of the very best bad exegesis if she wants, then she can come back and I can point her to its undoing and unraveling. It makes zero sense in or out of context, to suggest to a man hey, its not good you be alone, here is a power equal to you….have a good life. Lest she get confused, I am not at this juncture hung up on the power and equality aspect validity, just the nonsensical aspect of it being stated as such.
The desire for the husband is the manifestation of the fall, its an unhealthy thing that is manifest in the very exegesis she subscribes to. The facts are not complicated, and that offers a simple extra Biblical proof to these claims. How can evangelicals men and women, claim all doe eyes how God’s word is so accessible to all, overcome the atheist questions about ‘what about the bush man who never hears of God’…etc etc….then suggest the utter absurd complexity one must subscribe to to render these gynocentric doctrines. Its one (complicated beyond measure) or the other (simple and accessible)….not both.
The allusion to imagery about the place on the body is nothing more than a sermon trick, which once I’ve listened to so many sermons these start to get tedious to me.
I will allow for something, that is that its terribly hard to shuck the comfy chair of conventional wisdom. Having one’s world rocked creates nausea and headaches, double vision, and erratic behavior if one allows it to penetrate the veil of these canned responses. Even after opening the mind, and stepping willingly in here, a woman steeped in these things will find other subjects we talk about that send her grappling back for a hand hold in the old ideas. Its painful and takes time, but when one finally gets through it they wills see what God intends actually works, and nobody gets hurt.
Dragnet I agree, I dont like that either that he pasted her profile here. Its serves no purpose and makes us look bad
Stingray:
“I am no longer convinced you are here just to learn, but since you insist that you are, may I make a suggestion? Stop commenting. Completely. For at least a few days. Start reading. Read here and then visit some of the sites on the side bar. Don’t comment there either. You may not consider yourself a feminist. A lot of us women didn’t either. That does not mean that we didn’t whole heartedly swallow a good deal of what they were selling without even realizing it. You clearly did. Guess what? So did I. But you are never going to learn until you forget for a while what you think you know and start to truly listen to what is being said in these sites.
Furthermore, these bloggers are NOT talking about you, Melissa. They are talking about women. Yes, you are a woman and a great deal of it will apply to you. That does not mean you should take it personally. Separate yourself for a bit and allow your self to absorb what is being said. If you take everything you read as a personal attack, you will learn nothing.”
Melissa, copy/paste Stingray’s comment and save it in a word document. Like many of the women here, I never considered myself “Team Woman,” but I was Team Woman by default. I knew there was something wrong with it, but being a woman, IT WAS ALL I KNEW. I also always considered myself a balanced moderate, but since society has gone so far to the left, I come across as a raving right-winger. My liberal (and compassionate, loving) friends think I’m absolutely CRAZY simply because I think men and women should have the very same legal rights – no special rights based on sex. What you see here is not misogyny or wacky conspiracy theories, it is simple truth. Everything you have ever been taught, in school AND in church, has been based on a handful of lies.
Now that you have discovered reality, you have three choices: ignore it, fight it, or learn it. If you want to learn it, put on your big girl panties; your previously sheltered sensibilities WILL get bruised. That’s how the real world works.
Her profile is rather flattering towards her so the damage is not as bad as could be. But the principle of doing something like that is bad in that we are here to talk about ideas that the individual post up. To me that makes a much better environment because as Empath has stated she is exposing the essence of who she is here. I would hate to see the lady leave and for others to not to participate.
@Badger
There is something truly comical to the incredulous way they typically approach these situations. Often times it seems as if they imagine themselves in the role of the scientific expert in an old movie.
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She obviously wasn’t making any effort to conceal her identity. There’s a dozen pages that tie her blog directly to her name. If one chooses to make themselves a public figure on the internet, they’re fair game. It’s hardly comparable to the way Lady Raine outed Roissy.
Yawn, I’m immune to shaming. You’ll have to go back ten years and time and go shame the beta version of greenlander. I write and play by my own rules now.
Another +1 for Rollo, he is spot on. My other thoughts in response to Melissa’s claims of feminism are here.
Spoken Like a true hard core CAD. As said in one of my favorite movies,” If I had a division of such men our truobles here would be over.”
I like the response greenlander
Dalrock, I made an initial post about 7 hours ago but it has not appeared. Do I need to register for my posts to appear?
[D: I released it from moderation this morning. It is just further upthread.]
I don’t see the problem with greenlander posting the linkedIn profile. If it’s linked on her blog and she’s put her name out there, she’s made the choice to be public and there is no ‘outing’ taking place here at all.
Many thanks to those who disagree with my profile being posted. I appreciate your support. However, I also support the observations made by greenlander and CL. I am making no effort to hide myself in this. While I could have done without the debasing editorial that accompanied the profile, I have no problem with y’all having it. If I was trying to hide, I could have easily made up a moniker.
As for the rest, I plan on taking advantage of the sage advice given here and reading more throughout the manosphere, objectively–not taking things personally, before further commenting.
‘Til then,
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
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@Melissa
You are certainly welcome to continue reading as well as commenting. However, after reading a bit of your blog I suspect it will be very foreign to you. This (the larger “manosphere”) is a very logical place. Emotions absolutely exist but facts trump feelings here. We are like the people you are frustrated with in your recent post [redacted]
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Melissa (and anyone interested),
I expanded on my earlier comment. Feel free to read it here.
Dalrock, I don’t know the ins and outs of blogging etiquette yet and if it is inappropriate to post comments like this, please let me know and delete this.
[D: Not a problem at all. Feel free to do so, especially when it is related to the topic.]
I think it’s really difficult for plugged-in women to come to an objective understanding of the critical thinking the manosphere has invested itself in for so long. Its analyses, its theory, its discourse is confusing for uninitiated women because they expect to encounter a “get back in the kitchen, make me a sammich” retort from men – to which they have the clichéd, prepackaged responses and accusations of “misogyny”.
The Women’s Studies of both the academic and pop-culture variety teaches women to anticipate this, so it’s not surprising that it’s an easier task to pass off cogent arguments as misogyny and lob standard feminine boilerplate than it is to really pause and absorb the ideas of the manosphere.
@CL, what is the benefit of posting the profile? I dont have an issue as in outing per se, I have an issue with what it APPEARS to be meant to convey here, whether real or imagined, and its frankly a weak tactic employed by feminists usually. At the maximum very best it is utterly irrelevant, it goes down from there, but again, it LOOKS nefarious, and under the circumstances its a bad idea. If we think we are playing cyber battleship here, cool, if however some of us think we collectively have some sort of beneficial message, posting the profile and the implication of same (whether she minds or not) is childish and a bit meany weenie seeming, and discourages others, men and women, red and blue pill folks, from sharing.
Melissa,
Charity begins at home. For all your talk on slavery in other lands, you are neglecting the plank in our collective eyes: the breakdown of the family right here in our own communities and what that portends for our future. Have a dispassionate look at the facts around that and then you might begin to understand where we are coming from. I know it’s difficult for you as a woman, but try really hard not to let your emotions get in the way of understanding the realities that men deal with. Dalrock has done excellent work in this regard, not only with the marriage and divorce rate discussions, but also about the manner in which “Christian” churches have reframed marriage.
It is my opinion shared by many other men (and a few women) that depriving children of their full-time fathers is child abuse. As a society, we bend over backward with VAWA, with false rape accusations, with no-fault divorce and so on, many of which are supported by “Christian” churches, yet too many women are incapable of counting the cost to their children of not having a father in their home.
I think it’s really difficult for plugged-in women to come to an objective understanding of the critical thinking the manosphere has invested itself in for so long.
Well, it is difficult to get a woman to understand something, when her privileges depends upon his not understanding it
Posting Melissa’s profile was akin to an ad hominem attack. It was not necessary to the conversation, nor did it prove anything. If she is a troll it gave her ammunition, if she is not a troll it was needlessly insulting.
@CL, what is the benefit of posting the profile?
I don’t necessarily see that it was beneficial either, just that it wasn’t anything that anyone couldn’t have found if they’d had the inclination to do so. No different really than, say, posting Sheila Gregoire’s bio to provide context about where she’s coming from. In Melissa’s case, she fits the standard profile of the over-30, never married, childless Churchian that Dalrock has written about before. That’s not to say she can’t learn – time will tell on that count, or not – but that it explains her apparently unconscious feminism.
That said, I wouldn’t have posted it myself, but people can make up their own minds about what one commenter posts without it necessarily reflecting on everyone, including any blog owner who allows a variety of people to comment. Of course, if the whole thing had degenerated into bashing Melissa based on her personal attributes, that would be a different story, but as that didn’t happen, I’d say that speaks well for the general civility of the commenters here.
@ Melissa Ink Pink:
If you’re still reading, let me offer this. You view male-female relationships much the same way that most Christian women do — through an egalitarian, feminist-lite lens. This contemporary Christian woman worldview holds that:
1. men and women are exactly equal in every way.
2. marriage is desirable but not necessary.
3. traditional gender roles such as husband/father as breadwinner, wife/mother as stay at home mother and primary childcare-giver, are outdated and antiquated
4. women can and should move into dominant roles in business, work, marriage and ministry
5. Christian life must be approached with an eye toward equality, fairness, and social justice, rather than acceptance and observance of biblically sanctioned roles of the husband, wife, children, and ministry
6. the single mother is a heroine who is to be exalted and vaunted as worthy of sympathy and support, even held up as a role model
7. the contemporary single Christian woman is a plucky, spunky, spirited soul who is just doing her best to make her way in a hostile world. She is entitled to have it all — a fulfilling career, a hot, sexy alpha husband with dishpan hands, candlelit dinners and foot massages every night followed by moonlit strolls on the beach, 2.4 beautiful children, and a McMansion in the suburbs
8. the single man is shirking his responsibilities to his society by remaining unmarried. There is obviously something VERY wrong with a single Christian man. It is his duty to man up, get educated, get a job, stop playing videogames, and marry any woman who will deign to have him. He is entitled to nothing. He should feel fortunate that ANY woman would marry him.
I have now read Sister Melissa’s comments and I am very disappointed.
The head essay from Dalrock is very carefully thought out and difficult of resolution. So much so, that as anyone can easily check I had not commented (before notifying of the arrival of the Pink One) and found the subject very difficult to come to any conclusion about one way or the other, much as I would have wished to. That remains the position. As a result of the intervention – an intervention that seems to me, at any rate, to be full of NAWALT and varying veiled attacks on men covered over by an appeal to God – the thread, and without at any time any apology from her for the same has been entirely derailed.
Melissa’s protestations, not withstanding, I do not give her the benefit of the doubt as to her intentions being otherwise.
Deti, mock me, deride me, call me names, but please, do not be so obtuse to tell me what I believe. In fact, if you are so determined to pick me apart based on my beliefs, let me tell them to you based on your presumption of my beliefs and then you can feel free to have a go. But don’t deride me based on what you assume to know about me. That’s just as bad as what y’all are saying women do to you.
1. Wrong. I believe men are men and women are women. I believe we are both made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), and that we were made differently. Then again, I also believe that God tends to the making of each person so than no person is exactly the same as any other.
2. Marriage is not necessary if that is not God’s best for you. You want to talk divorce rates? Maybe there would be fewer divorces and fewer gender issues in general if people were less concerned about the business of how to get married and more concerned with God’s business. Would I like to be married? Yes, but only if it’s where God wants me. I am happy being single because God has me single–not me, not man–God.
3. Although I’m sure you won’t like all I have to say in this post (especially about men getting lazy…but note that it was a man who gave me that line, not a woman), I fully disagree with the notion of throwing out traditional gender roles and, instead, encourage them [link redacted]
4. Define dominant roles, please. Can a woman be a CEO? Yes. Can she be an ordained pastor? No. Can she serve her ministry in great capacities? Yes. Should women be the head of the house? No. Have some women stepped in as head of the house? Yes. Have some taken that lead of their own volition? Yes. Have all of them taken that lead of their own volition? No. Do all women want that lead? No.
5. Life should be approached with grace and mercy, especially Christian life, just like God showed us, His people. No one here is to judge (Romans 12), for we have not been lifted up to that position. But we are to offer words of consternation and rebuke as per Biblical guidance (2Tim).
6. I’ll address this when you are a single parent–left to raise your child(ren) alone by the one person who promised to love and uphold your family .
7 & 8. Singles, heck, people in general, male and female, would do better to heed Solomon’s advice in Ecclesiastes and enjoy each day as a gift from God, giving back to Him, no matter what their marital status. God does not make mistakes. He has us where He wants us in order to bring glory to His name. The chase for singleness, marriage, or divorce for the sake of happiness? That’s a chasing after the wind. Joy is found in God alone, for He is the creator, initiator, and giver of joy.
And…go. But, please, if you’re going to criticize, at least do me the favor of explaining to me logically and rationally how and why you think I’m wrong. Biblical backing would be nice. Also, feel free to send links instead of recreating the wheel. I love looking things up.
Then again, I also believe that God tends to the making of each person so than no person is exactly the same as any other.
———————————————————————————
Melissa, please explain what made you feel that you needed to say this. Whether you realize it or not its a huge red flag for circling back around later so you can say “not all women” NAWALT, and can question the efficacy of generalizations. See, its perfectly true and sufficient to say that men and women are different. There is no need to make this further statement….is there? Have you EVER seen it asserted that any two people are identical? Ever? But feminism makes this unique as snowflakes thing a mantra, ironically while suggesting men and women ARE the same.
OK so men and women are not the same. Good. Is that not enough?
Again, what is the motive for your seeming disclaimer?
6. Please address it when the heroic single mom jettisoned her husband because he neglected her and she was unhaaaapy, THEN she is held up as hero for being the single mom, because that is the narrative that statistically defines the issue. Common sense tells us to prioritize, stats help do that, the stats show that the vast majority of divorces are filed by women and lack Biblical grouds, IOE they arent haaaapy….so, these are the single mothers in question, these are the issues in question, and these are the problems creating social pathologies
RIght, so many red flags. There’s NAWALT (1), There’s Boyfriend Jesus (2). There’s default single motherhood is the fault of the deserting man (6). There’s wheedling nonanswers for (4)
I’d say it’s safe to say that as of right now, she’s at complete odds with the manosphere, even if she doesn’t see herself as such. This is exhibit A of culturally entrenched feminism.
@ Melissa
Your last comment is so full of red flags it’s hard to know where to start – all you did was confirm deti’s list.
I fully disagree with the notion of throwing out traditional gender roles and, instead, encourage them [link redacted]
So it’s all because “men got lazy” and refuse to “step up”. If you think that’s true, you should stick around the manosphere and find out why it is that men are becoming increasingly less interested in marrying, then you’ll find out where the real fault lies (far beyond your superficial observations).
In the meantime, you ought to stop talking for a while. Just listen; don’t react; let it sink in. And if you haven’t already, check out Stingray’s post she linked above in the comments.
Melissa:
First of all, I didn’t tell you what you believed. I simply gleaned it from your writings here and on the Reframing Christian Marriage thread you posted on. I also framed the statements as general propositions rather than as statements of your personal beliefs.
But your defensiveness and anger leads me to conclude I’m pretty close to the mark. In my experience, the angrier and more defensive a woman gets when responding to a point, the closer the point is to the truth.
Keep reading here. I suggest you read the Reframing Christian Marriage series. I also suggest you read the following for just how corrupt the North American Church is on male and female roles, marriage, and single motherhood:
dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/stantons-heroes/
dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/women-are-innately-good/
Melissa:
And: The list I gave above is the loud-and-clear message that the North American Church is sending men.
Woman good, man bad.
Woman dominate, man submit.
Woman entitled to everything, man entitled to nothing.
Woman should get everything she wants; man should feel fortunate she lets him have anything at all.
Woman is always right. Man is always wrong.
I even heard it in my own church this past weekend. I’ll disguise it a little. The pastor preached that men are more “dense” than women. Men have to have everything spelled out for them and that’s why the Bible is so “explicit”. There are more women in church because it’s easier for women to submit to and follow Christ.
And this is a place I love (or at least did love). I almost got up and walked out.
Dalrock was right all along. If it all goes to hell, my church won’t have my back:
dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/warn-men-beware-christian-marriage-doublespeak-and-hair-trigger-for-wife-initiated-divorce/
I hadn’t read her link. Oy. Its shaming 101.
This idea about women wanting to be wanted and pursued….lets look.
There are pathways to sin that men and women have, and they are generally different for the genders. Sex usually gets men, and this desire to be wanted and pursued is one that gets women (along with my personal favorite, a craving to experience empathy). The woman entering marriage and then unable to grasp that the feelings of being wanted and pursued are actually impossible to stay as they are in the beginning, is setting herself up to be a filer of divorce for neglect. Why? because she doesn’t feel wanted and pursued.
What made her feel those? It was that period where every revelation about each other was new discovery. That IS cool, I agree. But it is also nearly (not completely) finite. It does asymptotically approach “done”. All these relationship books and such that suggest otherwise are marriage killers, which is why its so goofy to claim women are the relational gender because they buy those things….heck they buy them and suddenly discover all those problems in the own marriages.
Men haven’t gotten lazy, they have gotten smart. Setting aside morality, men can get sex if they have half a game, they needn’t even feign commitment. Men see risk in marriage, and they see the folly of the endless urge to feel wanted and pursued, the maintenance costs are higher than the product itself.
The guy who said :men got lazy”…..Place the word SIR before that white knights name.
That last reply to Deti says leave that one out in the darkness. She still thinks she’s got it going on. So I say use that as a training aid for a woman that really gives a damn. Not all women deserve a marriage and family. I will give her this she didn’t sacrifice a father and child for her beliefs and attitude.
RE: Role Call.
– RooshV
Hmm… according to her LinkedIn profile we run in the same professional circles. Can’t say I’ve met her personally though.
This one was pretty brilliant too,..
http://www.rooshv.com/im-ready-to-man-up
I’m not sure continuing the pile on Miss Pink is terribly productive, however, I’d like to point something out.
NOBODY LIKES BEING REJECTED.
So this little exert from role-call:
Is a stinking pile of BS. Oh yes, men LOVE the Nuclear Rejection. They LOVE it. They can’t get enough of it. And if you deploy HR and get him fired, why then, all his dreams have come true! Even if Pink controls her desire to be beyond crazy upon being asked out by an Unworthy(tm), she will still feel free to reject with no compassion or thought and/or string along with no intent of anything happening EVER,
Maybe men aren’t Combat Dating because Combat Dating isn’t fun for them.
Re: #6 On Deti’s list and Melissa’s response (single mothers). Upwards of 50% of all children born in the United States today to women under 30 are born to single, unwed mothers. This is obviously a decision made by the young women in question. As I am unwaveringly pro-life, might I suggest that the young women in question 1) not get pregnant to begin with (I sincerely doubt that this level of illegitimacy is the result of a massive rape epidemic) or 2) if pregnant, put the child up for adoption in a two-parent, Christian home (there are no shortage of those available who are ready, willing and able to give the child a loving home).
The next point, which I have belabored (apparently to no avail) in previous posts was to demonstrate that there has been an explosion in our national divorce rate, that this explosion in the divorce rate has NOTHING to do with men committing adultery or abuse, that the overwhelming majority of these divorces are initiated by women, and that the result of these divorces are children in fatherless homes, a condition enforced by the armed representatives of the state.
In summation, from a statistician’s point of view the overwhelming number of unwed, single mothers in this country, and in its churches, are that way simply because they CHOOSE to be in that condition. Many, if not most, churches in this country, to their shame, aid and abet this problem. As I stated earlier, this is a virulent form of child abuse. It puts children in immediate physical danger, it causes permanent psychological home, and it erodes the spiritual life of the children abused in this manner.
With malice towards none,
Okrahead
Bingo, Comment_Whatever. Rejection sucks. That’s why men develop buffers to protect against it and the ‘nuclear buffer’, if you will, is withdrawing from the dating game. Some men fill the void with porn and video games, some learn game and get tail without commitment. Women reward these behaviors. You want guys to man up and stop Call of Duty while wanking to Naughty Teacher, make dating a pleasurable experience for him. Sure this will cut out many of your hypergamous options, but would you rather settle down when you are 24 or be forced to settle when you’re 34? Or not get married at all. If you want a guy who will commit to you, reward those who commit rather than those who give you a case of the tingles. Sure this will cut down on your hypergamous options…
If you are already over 30, used up, or otherwise undesirable, warn your younger sisters. Use some of that awesome feminine shaming skill and bring down divorcees and single moms. Make these unattractive prospects. Start showing the next crop of potential carousel-riders your example of what not to do. Who knows, perhaps once you start repenting for the carousel, and saving the next generation, some guy your age and equal to you in SMV may take note and get back into the dating game.
Given that 90% of divorces are initiated by women (even those initiated by men are usually at the behest of women) and given a worst case scenario of a 50% total divorce rate then women only have a divorce risk of 5%. Not only that but the party with the 5% risk also suffers less materially from the consequences of a divorce. So men have an 1100% greater risk than women with significantly worse material outcomes for a divorce.
So the party with a 1 in 20 risk (with lower risk consequences) is telling the party with a 1 in 2 risk that things aren’t so bad, no wonder women think marriage isn’t such a risky proposition.
Off Topic But Interesting:
Me oh my, do read this bizarre comment on the The Thinking Housewife:
http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2012/06/artificial-wombs-sexbots-and-the-mens-rights-movement/#more-40358
I generally like Mrs. Wood’s blog very much; this post is a bit of anomaly. I did my best to defend the Christian MRM, but I was rushed and didn’t do it justice. Forgive me if I didn’t get it quite right, everyone.
@ Dalrock, Empathologicalism, CL/7Man, Bskillet81, and Will S. –
In my comment, I mentioned your blogs as examples of Christian MRM blogs. That characterization of your blogs was just my own thought and may not be how you perceive your blog, so if you would prefer, I can email Mrs. Wood and ask her to edit my comment to remove your blog name. Just let me know.
– Sunshine Mary
The Thinking Housewife is not too bad. I think it was one of her clueless male commentator who said that about false rape allegations, but I stand to be corrected. She is kind of a sidekick to View from the Right’s Lawrence Auster, and shares some of his racial awareness. I give TTH points for being a Catholic, and I have posted some comments there, but she tends to edit comments.
The best woman blogger, now that Alte’s blog has degraded and disappeared, is probably Full of Grace, Seasoned with Salt, by Laura Grace Robbins. She has the best attitude to men, and is the most respectful of men’s concerns.
Sunshine Mary, the best anti-feminist blogs will come from women, I believe. Your comments here are most welcome, but you should have your own blog. As far as I can recall, you don’t.
That post is filled with over-generalizations and silly notions on men’s rights activists. Though I wouldn’t expect a 17 year old girl to understand the mental perspective of men, and neither the MRM. I’ve been reading MRM sites for close to two years, and never read a single text on artificial wombs, and the future of pregnancy (who cares?).
But anyway, there’s nothing wrong with thinking about the possibility of certain technologies. I can see women protesting since it also means artificial wombs could also help men as well: if he wants to have a son but don’t want to marry a woman, this technology will solve his problem. In a sense, she has a point that it could effect family structures for worse, and I think the family structure is very necessary and integrable for society. However, the situation right now isn’t any better both from a social perspective and a micro-sociological perspective.
Also I think we can infer that if so many men would prefer synthetic genitalia, and emotions, then there’s a massive problem with the state of women.
@TFH
I have been reading Mrs. Wood’s blog for about a year. I have not seen any post by her condoning false rape allegations. If you have a link to a post in which she does so, I would be obliged if you would post it. I respectfully disagree with you that Mrs. Wood is misandric, but if you post a link in which she voices support for false rape accusations, then I will have to agree with you.
This overlooks the strong relationship between the age of the wife and the rate of divorce.
As well as overlooking reward-delay behavior. That is, the college educated are more likely to delay reward in order to work hard to reap a greater reward. That’s a valuable skill in marriage. That we are funneling such women into college may not be optimal but does help identify the population. This also helps explain the HS education analysis discussed later.
Marriage in the US has become something only the elite can afford to dabble in, a fact which is masked by the overall declining divorce rate (data from Fig 5 on P 69):
I think that implies causation that isn’t present. It can be reversed to, “marriage is something that the successful prioritize”. I believe that understanding is the correct one. The elite preach promiscuity but personally recognize it as destructive behavior. The non-elite can’t puzzle out the difference between the message and reality.
One of the other things the report comments on (and I haven’t had time to read it all and probably won’t for quite a bit) is that TFR is way down and may be an indicator of overall marriage decline. Marriage being the place for proper and ordered sexual relations and children being the outcome of those relations. If you aren’t seeking children why seek the orderly development of the same?
I’ll try to comment more as time allows.
^ Sacrifice being the sole provider in a marriage and you just might finish your life paying for all her decisions
Such a deal! I thought they were strong and independent? So there should be no problems contributing to the family finances too, right? Last I checked – children grew up, and there are more part-time jobs for women than men.
@ Dalrock – allow me to make a correction in the reporting and the WEAK premise of the the divorce numbers on page 71-74.
They omitted current data and presented a biased comparison.
The 1980 data was compared against 2001 census data published in 2005 (http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p70-97.pdf).
Quite a bit has changed from in 11 years in divorce rate (using 11 year old data is ridiculous).
Comparing 2001 data to current data of 2009, 2010, or 2011 would yield a much different outcome.
Adding insult to injury to further skew the statistics on page 69 and make up their statistics and graph (Note the REMOVAL OF California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, and Minnesota) and make up their own graph from mixed sources !!
A
Calculations for this table are by the National Marriage Project for the United States, less California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, and Minnesota. source: U. S. Cen su s Bureau : Statistical Abstract of the United States for 2001 (Table 117).
source: U. S. Cen su s Bu re au : Statistical Abstract of the United States for
2001 (Table 117). Available online from http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/
st at ab.ht m l; Current Population Survey for 2000 (Table 3). Available online
from http://www.census.gov/cps/; American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates for
2008. Available online from http://www.census.gov/acs/www/. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths:
Provisional Data” for 2000 (in National Vital Statistics Report 49), for 2007
(in NVS Report 56) (Table 2), for 2008 (in NVS Report 57) (Table 2), and for
2009 (in NVS Report 58) (Table 2). Available online from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/
products/nvsr.htm. Relevant data summarized online at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/
nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm
“Cause and effect analysis that would be obvious to a man (or even a boy age 14) just does not compute for the female mind.” – TFH
Neither do they understand incentives. The marriage related ones have been talked about here a lot. I’m helping some friends with event promotion (social ones, with a dating undertone) and I’ve given up explaining to them why few desirable men show up. They just don’t understand that such men need good incentives to go spend money and time there and not merely because there are women at said events.
The rich and poor will still marry. The former can afford lawyers and prenups, whilst the latter have nothing to lose.
It is the shrinking middle that will withdraw from statist supported marriage 2.0. If much of the middle class actuallyrvive the greater depression, the men will buy sex bots because they wilmay still better than the alternative.
Speaking of which…
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/sexbot-armies-gather-on-the-horizon/
an observer
The rich and poor will still marry. The former can afford lawyers and prenups, whilst the latter have nothing to lose.
I don’t agree with half of this. The growing numbers of never-married women having children suggests to me that the poor won’t marry; there is a common notion of “children now, marriage later on when we get our act together”, and it is not confined to the black community, either. It’s not even confined to the US. Stan Kurtz studied marriage patterns in Nordic countries a few years ago, and found that the older pattern of marry, then have children had given way to a pattern of cohabit, then have a child, then marry. But that pattern has broken down since the late 1990’s, giving way to “cohabit, have a child, have a second child and maybe marry”. Perhaps Lavazza can shed some light on this.
The disincentives to marriage are clear, in the industrialized, feminist nations. The poor in many cases have decided that they “can’t afford” to marry, not now, not right way, but maybe someday. The fact that 40% of births are to women who aren’t married tells me “someday” doesn’t come very quickly.
I also disagree that the prenups of the rich offer much protection in the current legal environment.
They may offer some protection in some states, but anti-family court judges are pretty free to set aside portions that they don’t care for.
And poor men do have something to lose – their freedom to stay out of prison. The 1986 Bradley amendment, as modified in the late 1990’s, means that there are men who have been arrested and sent to prison for debts as small as $2,000, if those debts are for child support. The chid support debts continue to add up while a man is in prison, in a lot of cases, meaning he’s behind as soon as he gets out. The punitive “deadbeat dad” laws take away certifications and licenses, including driver’s licenses. Hard to keep steady work when you can’t legally drive a car. Can’t hunt for food legally, either, hunting licenses require a Social Security Number just to catch “deadbeat dads”.
Has anyone ever made a list of all the punitive laws that make marriage and the danger of divorce so risky for men in the US? Viewed simply in terms of rewards / subsidies and punishments /; taxes,it is obvious that this society wants more unmarried babymommas, and far fewer married families.That’s what we are getting.
Too bad so many “smart” women are so blinkered, they can’t look outside of their UMC / UC niches & see the wider world around them.
Whew!
That was a close call,the nuclear hamster fuel almost caused a chain reaction in the atmosphere.
Luckily the fires were contained and no civilians where injured.
My hamster now has a healthy respect for the nuclear fuel,and will only handle it inside a containment facility.
All joking aside,it’s clear the pink one is not here to learn,rather to keep asserting “The Narrative” as the reassertion of genuine Christianity is the greatest threat to the feminist supremacist agenda.
Deti has done a fine job of rebuttal,no need to engage such toxins on my part.
God Bless the women out there who can use logic instead of emotion.
Really,it is disingenuous to yelp “you’re insulting me”
every time someone engages you with logic.
Fweeelings are not the arbiter of reality,logic is.
Case closed.
To the original topic,it is more like yelping through a megaphone in the graveyard rather than whistling.
These things tend to disturb the entire neighborhood.
Ok just a tiny rebuttal as the fallout has not be fully cleaned up.
A *person* who blames God for her failures and praises herself for her victories is engaging in heresy and should not be posting on a Christian site.
Ok, will try and rephrase.
The rich will still marry, and may sell the right to the divorce sideshow to help cover the cost. Womens magazines will gush over each new development and chronicle the steady flow of new girlfriends the former husband manages to snare, in order to support the obviously wronged woman in her quest for a ‘fair’ outcome.
The ignorant will still marry becuase they know no better.
And there will be more poor people as a result of deteriorating economic conditions, and foolish decisions to marry that lead to a later divorce.
And all the heroic single moms lived unhappily ever after, with their numerous crows feet, multiplying chins and inflated entitlement attitude.
And all the single men that successfully used game lived happy, fulfilling lives, ever after, with no nagging, alimony, or children.
The end. Of western civilisation.
BTW, it may have been a bit of a sin to toss those misinterpretations out there,but it was pretty clear I was being sarcastic.Did it fall under returning evil for evil?
I dunno,will to ask my personal Jesus about that.
As for not turning the other cheek,does not apply as I’m not in her house.
But I do sense in my spirit that my actions increased the anger quotient among the Brethren,so I must attempt to apologize and make amends.
@greyghost:
The quote you attributed to me way up in the thread,I did not write it.Must have been above or below the post.
You are forgiven in advance,it’s a common mistake and I’ve made it a few times myself.
@greyghost
As a matter of fact I mixed you up with someone else
on another forum just a few days ago and took your quote of out context and attributed it to someone else.
I was hoping you did not notice.
Apologies.
Mistakes happen with quick reading.
Ar,
You may have a point about lower socioeconomic behaviour. I was actually thinking of working class people, not the welfare class. I could have made that a lot clearer. I gather the former seek marriage as a status thing whilst the latter don’t care? And cannot afford a big party anyhow.
Anyway, the point i was leading to was that a middle class marriage strike could have profound effects on family formation and number of live births. We already see that with birth rates below replacement levels in many western countries, and high unskilled immigration to make up the difference. Bringing the delights of cultural diversity. Great. But getting away from topic.
The us already has travel restrictions on students with outstanding student loan payments. Extending that to men in arrears on support payments is the next logical step. Making the whole empire a debtors prison.
n my comment, I mentioned your blogs as examples of Christian MRM blogs.
———————————————————————————————————–
No issue from me, thanks for mentioning it
@Michael Singer
I don’t think this is an attempt to cherry pick the data. California stopped reporting on divorce some time back, and I’m guessing it is an availability issue for the rest of the states. From my own calculations this removal does seem to reduce the measured divorce rate per 1,000 women. I noted this on the final note on this page. By my calculation using a different data set the overall rate per 1,000 women in 2009 was 19, but they calculate it as 16.4. Until just recently I didn’t have another source to cross check those calculations against but yesterday I ran across one. My age category calculations match the cross check, which gives me more confidence in my overall value of 19. I haven’t checked but it would be telling if the removal of California and the other states occurred after the 2000 data. This would suggest it has remained flat since then.
Also note that the chart showing divorce rates by education is based on a different methodology.
sunshinemary – ”I have been reading Mrs. Wood’s blog for about a year. I have not seen any post by her condoning false rape allegations.”
Maybe not so much Woods’ herself, but certainly her mangina surrogate Jesse Powell, who once stated that he believed that it was good that some innocent men do get unjustly convicted based on false rape allegations, making some nonsensical argument that throwing non-rapists in prison will protect women from rape. I’ll try to find the exact link
Woods does let his anti-male pro-false rape stuff stand unchallenged. And, she once stated that older women (statutorily) raping under-aged boys should not be a crime – but considered merely seduction (I can probably find that one too).
You can read some of Powell’s anti-male bilge on the same thread that you commented on (http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2012/06/artificial-wombs-sexbots-and-the-mens-rights-movement/).
I’d comment there myself, but Woods banned me some time back – not for anything I posted on her blog, but because I supposedly failed to defend her in a discussion thread on The Spearhead, although before banning me, she always edited/deleted my comments directed at Powell, the sissy who hides behind Woods apron strings, and dares not leave her protection to debate on other forums, the coward (sorry for my bitter little rant there).
That post by “Izzy” reads like a false flag post to me. My guess is that it’s a front for a trad who wanted a stalking horse to whip MRAs, yet again, by throwing traditionalist men some tasty red meat. It’s pretty much impossible for anyone who has a broad reading of the MRA internet to think that the focus of the discussions here is on sex bots and preventing the birth of female babies. It was a ruse, I think.
———-
More broadly, the problem with TTH, as is the case generally with social conservatives and traditionalists, is that they make the perfect the enemy of the good. In other words, they are against making improvements for men under the current model because this is, itself, a concession to the legitimacy of the current model, and therefore is considered harmful — that is, even though women have all of these various legal rights and powers over men under the current system, trying to equalize this to some degree as a matter of “men’s rights” is wrongheaded because it is still based on a “flawed worldview based on rights and not inborn responsibilities”. So, you’re left with (a) the existing body of rules with overwhelmingly favors women under the rubric of feminism, (b) a rejection of support of any equalization of these rules under the rubric of men’s rights and (c) advising men to man up, suck it up, behave chivalrously and so on in spite of the imbalance of rules in favor of women because this is “the right thing to do”.
It’s pretty much totally useless for men, full stop.
But it’s worse than that. Idiots like the infamous “Jesse” or the even worse “Thordaddy”/”Josh” openly advocate men lining up for the meat grinder and behaving chivalrously as a matter of personal duty. Regardless of the context. This isn’t just stupid, it’s hateful — hateful towards men in the extreme. Assholes like those guys are the real enemies, not people like TTH herself, because it’s assholes like that who are the real face of misandry currently — men who hate men, men who prefer the interests of women and are more than happy to throw man after man after man under the bus of feminism and famliy law so that their own ideologically purist fantasia can be vindicated in the confines of their paltry, narrow minds. This is the face of the enemy, well and truly — the vicious, vile, hateful enemy of men.
TFH – ”Ferdinand Bardamu had a couple of detailed takedowns of Laura TTH. Sadly, Ferdinand’s archives are gone.
Laura TTH pretty much has the same view of men’s role in marriage vs. women’s, as Sheila Gregoire and other Christian women..”
Indeed. Even in her rebukes against women (such as her take on women’s infidelity), her ultimate bottom line always ends up being that women will end up lowering themselves to the status that men are supposed to occupy (working outside the home to support themselves and their children) if they destroy their families through their misbehaviors.
@Michael Singer
I’m swamped right now, but it isn’t entirely clear to me what data they are using for the table on page 73. The reduction based on education fits with the data in the chart I shared in this post (Figure 1 on page 19). This makes me think maybe it was the same source. I’m not impressed with the table anyway for the reason I mentioned in the OP. It is misleading because it gives the impression that the reductions are additive.
@sunshinemary
As promised, Jesse Powell on false rape:
“…punishing men who rape necessarily entails punishing men who have not raped but are believed to have raped. That is simply the price that must be paid for the social good of protecting women from rape to the best extent that we as men are capable of.”
It’s at the bottom.
As side note, in re-reading the comments, it is quite startling the change that Alte has undergone (She’s Vannessa BTW, as Wood’s would take our actual names from our submitted emails – I’m Stephen)
You can see even more of what she used to be like in this discussion thread: http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2010/07/idiocy-and-hatred-in-the-mens-rights-movement/
You get even more example of Jesse Powell as well.
@Dalrock. One can come up with a “study to prove anything”. Whether it is credible or not is a different story. Studies that are well designed and credible are published in reputable journals of a that field ( ie NEJM etc…)
On page 73 they are using US census data from 2001 published in 2005.
Hence the “control” group in the comparison was very old 2001 data that was intentionally selected. To present 2001 data vs 1980 data as current divorce trends is “cherry picking data”. Chances are there is much more current US census data available at the time the University of Virginia started the project.
On page 69 – 5 states were intentionally left out and merged data to then combine their own unpublished meta analysis ( this is too funny !!)
In summary, the University of Virginia produced a study to prove exactly what they wanted rather than reporting the findings.
@Michael Singer
I’m not looking to defend them. If they are presenting inaccurate data we need to shine a light on it. As an aside previously I’ve been accused of conspiring with the US Census against the marriage project when I pointed out the confusion around their marriages per 1,000 unmarried women stats (as far as I know their stats are accurate, but the measure is being misunderstood by others reading their reports). However I’m not clear on what they did wrong here aside from present easy to misunderstand data without clear (in my reading) explanation of the source.
Looking at the table on P 73 again, I am guessing they pulled the data from: Matthew D. Bramlett and William D. Mosher, National Center for Health Statistics, “Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the United States,” Vital and Health Statistics 23 (22) (2002).
Is this incorrect?
An observer, Anon Reader:
I’m not convinced of a full scale marriage strike because what the data seems to show is men and women marrying later. It also seems to show the percentage of never marrieds creeping upward (correct me if I’m wrong, Dalrock).
All that needs to happen in my view is a shift of about 5 to 10 points of men simply refusing to marry. It’s not a “strike”, but it’s a small boycott. That will make a big difference. Women are starting to get the message that more and more men are not marrying. They’re starting to ask why. Unforutnately, many women are not understanding the answers that men are giving them. SW’s post which doesn’t tell the whole story is, I think, a symptom of that.
an observer, unfortunately I find your more recent assessment to be more accurate. No-fault divorce, which is really “men’s fault” divorce, is the gift that keeps on giving. So long as women have the illusion that they can extract resources from a man, or many men (aka “government”) while not having to actually put up with a living, breathing, flawed human being in their life, the short and intermediate term incentive to divorce will outweigh the long term bad news. People with longer time horizons, who tend to be from the middle to upper middle class, or move into that class, will live as slwerner has described.
The point that I try to make clear over and over in various places is this: industrial civilization needs a certain percentage of ordinary, functional people to exist. The bad effects on girls and especially on boys that result from growing up without a father are extensively documented, and in the large view divorce &/or single motherhood tends to produce people who are dysfunctional. I know there are exceptions, frankly they prove my point. The exceptions to this look a whole lot like children of stable, 2-parent families. So Stanton’s Heroes, if they try really hard and never mess up, can produce a young woman or young man who looks more or less like an average, normal person of 30-odd years ago.
The divorce industry is one of the many jackhammers destroying the foundation of this civilization.
@slwerner
Thank you for posting the link. I have read the entire thread. I disagree with how you have interpreted that comment. I do not think he was supporting false rape allegations; he was arguing against jury nullification (the a priori judgement of “not guilty” in any and all rape trials regardless of the evidence as a means of protesting false rape allegation). His point is no different than saying that there are people in prison who have been unjustly accused of murder; we cannot argue for nullifying juries because of this and thus have NO murder convictions. That would be insanity. The sad truth is that there will always be some small percentage of people who are falsely convicted of crimes they did not commit. We should work to right these wrongs, but jury nullification is not the way to do that.
Rather than identifying Mrs. Wood as the enemy in the false rape debate, how about a more worthy opponent? The other day on another blog I mentioned this quote from Mark Driscoll:
“The definition of rape is: Any type of sexual behavior or contact where consent is not freely given or obtained and is accomplished through force, intimidation, violence, coercion, manipulation, threat…deception, or abuse of authority…And it manifests itself in three ways: The ‘acts’ can be physical, verbal, or psychological. In the age of bullying and the Internet, in the age of certain inappropriate speech and conduct, it just, it can be physical contact that connotes sexual assault, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. It also can be verbal and/or psychological.”
Source: http://marshill.com/media/real-marriage/disgrace-and-grace#transcript
Apparently there’s rape-rape, false rape, and another category altogether…psychological rape.
I remain at a loss to know whether men are refraining from marrying and indeed if they are, why? I see single women but then my experience may not be atypical. What is clear, however, is that there can be no marriage if a man fails to ask – at least I have yet to hear that equality has reached the stage where the offer of marriage can come from either party. A woman can of course one way or another attempt to coerce the man into asking. The man can ask and the woman can reject the offer, but then she would need a better offer and the unlikelihood (50/50?) of that together with the efluxion of time makes marriage ever less probable.
If the age of marriage is happening later, it seems most unlikely that there will be time for all those who previously would have married to get round to doing so. You sell more Ipads overall if they are queueing outside the Apple store at midnight, on the day of release, than if people first wander in at any time during some later day.
As marriage is the basic economic unit, I will be surprised if society can function as it has outside of a marriage based society – but doubtless the Feminists will explain otherwise.
@Deti,
I can’t prove men aren’t on a marriage strike, but I can’t prove they are either. My interpretation of the data I’ve seen is as you describe it. I’m assuming that men aren’t passing over young hot women and instead marrying older less hot ones. I’m assuming the trends in later marriage for women is being driven by women doing as they say they want to do, which is to delay marriage. I think we do see some shying away by men from marriage on the margins though. Black women (statistically) pose a much higher divorce risk than white women do, for example, and their rates of marriage are much lower than white rates. The same could be said for men being less willing to marry divorced women. Logically this makes sense, and in fact I’m surprised we haven’t seen a more solid move in this direction to date.
With this said, I could see a scenario where men never go on strike or “small boycott” but the overall “marriage market” shifts dramatically. I’ve described this in recent posts. If this happens, it seems likely that we could see large numbers of men choosing to stay in LTRs instead of marrying since they 1) couldn’t marry when young and interested and are now used to the idea of not marrying, 2) The women available are too old to have children with, and 3) They sense that the SMV power is in their favor. In this scenario, ageing carouselers could find themselves not just duking it out for marriage, but for even an LTR. An intentional strike or boycott due to awareness of the unfair laws/courts would of course add fuel to this fire.
@ Sunshinemary,
In looking at the comments about false rape allegations, there seems to be a bit of a sentiment that as long as there is no false conviction, there is really no problem. Nothing could be further from the truth as the mere existance of the allegation is enough to significantly negatively impact the falsely accused man’s life forever.
“@deti,
They’re starting to ask why. Unforutnately, many women are not understanding the answers that men are giving them. SW’s post which doesn’t tell the whole story is, I think, a symptom of that.”
To be honest, I think that on some level they really do understand, but their absolute and total inability to accept that “their side” has any culpability at all in the current state of things causes them to respond in all manner of irrational ways, most often simply firing off accusations intended to put men on the defensive.
@Opus
Agreed. What I think happened is (large numbers of) women put out a sign saying they were going to hold off on selling their ipad for many years, come back after it isn’t the latest and greatest. This marketing strategy worked for small but growing numbers of retailers in the past, but it strikes me as very unlikely that it will work en masse. As I wrote in a previous post, I think the very thing which makes them so comfortable delaying marriage is what poses their greatest risk. Too many of their peers are making the same bet. Markets shift from greed to fear over exactly this sort of miscalculation.
“I could see a scenario where men never go on strike or “small boycott” but the overall “marriage market” shifts dramatically. I’ve described this in recent posts. If this happens, it seems likely that we could see large numbers of men choosing to stay in LTRs instead of marrying ***”
What would be interesting to see compiled is data on men whose first and only marriages ended in divorce in a short time (under 5 years, say) and who never remarry. From looking around at my own life and the men I know, most of them still remarry but a slowly growing number of them seem to remain single or have sworn off marriage.
(As an aside, from what I see, it’s the older divorced men who leave marriages after 15 or more years who are swearing off marriage. Almost all these men are from “I’m not haaaappy” marriages, their divorces are against their will, they’re being screwed over royally, and they swear never to marry again.)
Dalrock:
“An intentional strike or boycott due to awareness of the unfair laws/courts would of course add fuel to this fire (of men declining marriage; aging carouselers fighting just for LTRs.”
Yes, but only if men start figuring out what a divorce could do to them. I wonder seriously if most married men even understand just how rigged against them the system is. Before I stumbled into the manosphere door through the Roissy rabbit hole about 18 months ago, here’s what I knew (or thought I knew) about divorce:
1. about half of all first marriages in the US fail at some point;
2. moms get the kids and the house; and the man pays child support.
3. alimony is a thing of the past; women don’t receive it anymore, and alimony is the exception; not the rule.
4. divorce will happen to someone else; but not to me, because I’m a NiceGuy (TM). As long as I’m nice to her, I give her what she wants and I am bringin’ home the bacon, my wife will never get unhaaaaappy and we will live in matrimonial bliss all our days. My wife is a fully rational creature and always acts upon facts and reason, not upon emotion, whims or feelings.
Deti, yup. Many things in the natural world are affected at the margins first – replanting a lawn is one example, keeping a meadow cleared is another. So as you say, it only takes a small percentage of women finding out that they can’t obtain a hubby on demand to bring about a lot of noisy worry. I think we’ve all pretty much agreed that the ongoing “man UP and marry these sluts!” barrage from the various social and/or traditional conservatives is a result of this. It only takes a relative handful of screeching, unhaaapy women to get the likes of Bill Bennett worked up. Can’t wait to see what we get as the numbers get worse.
And it should be no surprise that most women in the affected age group (30-somethings) are not hearing what men are saying. They very likely can’t even process the words, because what is being said to them is totally opposite of their own unconscious premises, starting with “men and women are exactlyl the same, except women are awesomely awesome and men aren’t – plus women can have babies”. A woman of 32 was born in 1980, spent part of her childhood during the “self esteem” movement’s early phases, was in her early teens when Monica was first a public figure and spent her early adult years in a couple of economic bubbles (dotcom and housing). Easy money, always another job coupled with the natural attractievness of that age. Now the economy has gone sour & men don’t chase her anymore. Stamp foot! Shoo the losers away, Where Are All The Good Men? I Want One RIght Now! This mix of entitlement, coupled with fond memories of the good times, is not a recipe that is likely to result in any kind of introspection.
Introspection, some kind of self-assessment, is what is required for a 30-something woman who spent her 20’s Hooking Up Smartly / riding the carousel-lite, to snag a man. It is something that nothing in her life has prepared her to do. Actually paying attention to what men are saying, and processing it as a message to be received, is also something that she’s never had to do before.
One thing I’m heartened by is the shift in comments on mainstream media publications. The comments on the WSJ site responding to Kay Hymowitz were often short, to the point, and right out of androsphere thinking. Journalists tend to be arrogant, pompous groupthinkers, but perhaps if they get the same message pounded into comment thread after comment thread, after 5 years or so they might begin to pay some attention. Maybe.
sunshinemary – “I disagree with how you have interpreted that comment. I do not think he was supporting false rape allegations”
The discussion thread started with his refutation of Elam’s call for jury nullifications; but, his statement that I quoted is not directly in reference to his argument about jury nullification so much as it is his very purposeful statement that he does not have any issue with innocent men going to prison for rapes that they were falsely accused (you’re right, he not against false rape allegations per se, but he is all for innocent men who happen to be falsely accused being unjustly punished).
I didn’t agree with Elam’s radical notion, but I feel Powell’s is even worse. He actually believes that it is a good thing (“simply the price that must be paid “), because he believes it to be a vital part of what he considers to be the more important and over-riding purpose of protecting (all) woman at any cost to (all) men.
But, his reasoning is terribly flawed. As it is now, most men who are being falsely accused and subsequently falsely imprisoned are not actual rapists, nor are they simple victims of misidentifications (as was once the case – demonstrated by the Innocence Project) – they are men being specifically targeted by women (Brian Banks, William McCaffery – check out http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/ & http://www.cotwa.info/ for many, many more examples). Their unjust imprisonment did absolutely nothing to protect any women anywhere from any threat to her from a real rapist.
As a bit of additional background on Powell, as Brendan has alluded to, he simply hates other men. He had previously whined about how he (a seminary student at the time, as I recall) saw all the young (Christian) women who he believed to be HIS pool of potential wives being seduced and sexed-up by other men. I have no way to prove it, but I do feel that his open support of innocent men being punished via false rape allegations is little more than his contempt for other men who DO get sex from women, only to have those women regret it and claim it to have been rape. He’s happy to see his “rivals” (in his mind only – it’s not as if he would have a chance with those women even if every alpha around was thrown into prison) eliminated.
@Anon Reader
Yes. I think the other thing they realize, if only instinctively, is that there are two very dangerous structural forces which threaten the status quoe, and they both are due to Trad Con neglect of traditional marriage. The first is the men who didn’t get the signal, and therefore didn’t feel the need to create the surplus wealth men with families (or who are preparing to have one) create. Why knock themselves out? You can’t shame these men back on target for the most part, even if they cared. The die is for many of them cast, and this seems likely to only grow. The other is the normalcy of adults not being married. With the carouselers putting off marriage and divorces ending them, each year a smaller and smaller percentage of americans currently are married. At some point being unmarried stops being so unusual, and this could happen socially in the form of a tipping point.
TFH – ”As I wrote in The Misandry Bubble, all we need is for 20% of men to decide not to marry for *all* single women to be in big trouble.”
It might be already at that point, but the effects may take some time before they are fully recognized.
One thing that may be “masking” it is that few of those ~20% of men who intend to never marry do not make that clear, leading many of the woman who will ultimately be left-out believing that those men will someday (soon) “grow up” and be ready. This would tend to obscure the reality of the 5:4 women to men ratio for them.
Then, there is the reality of the purposeful obliviousness of many young women. As they continue to delay marriage, young women remain blissfully ignorant of the increasing anti-marriage sentiment amongst their male peers. They don’t notice that there is insufficient supply to meet demand until they hit their 30’s. Some who’ve reached that point are starting to notice, but they still seem to be clinging to the idea that those men will still “grow up” – they just need to be shamed into it.
It may be 7 or 8 more years before everyone fully catches on…say, around 2020, as somebody suggests. It may be 5:2 (or less) by then anyway.
Dalrock
The other is the normalcy of adults not being married. With the carouselers putting off marriage and divorces ending them, each year a smaller and smaller percentage of americans currently are married. At some point being unmarried stops being so unusual, and this could happen socially in the form of a tipping point.
This is a subtle and significant point. In many churches, it is the norm to have some number of divorcees attending, along with a few single mothers. I honestly can’t see a pastor taking any kind of public stand against divorce in that situation. But what message is being sent to young men and women growing up in that church? That marriage is a good thing, but not essential in any way – people can live together and have children without marriage, and it is normal.
This goes double for those churches with women preachers, and squared/cubed for churches with divorced women preaching or in other leadership positions. Personnel is policy – there is no way a church with divorced women in charge of sunday school, “praise team”, potlucks, etc. is going to be able to say one word against frivolous divorce. That implies a future in which some churches will mainly consist of old people, single mothers with their children, and divorcees. Any 12 year old boy in a church like that will be counting the days until he can run away from it.
@TFH, slwerner
20% or even double number of men refusing to marry will have absolutely no effect. This presumes two things.
A) 1:1 ratio of men vs. women being in relationships. Simply said, monogamy is assumed. But this is absolutely not the case for humans.
B) Willingess of women to marry and stay with her man. Women prefer other solutions when given a chance.
Maybe you remember 1:2 ratio of men:women who ever reproduced. In can be seen these days in single mothers by choice. Some men have children with multiple women, many men have no children at all.
The original assuption will work only when most of those men are alphas.
This blog (and others) have rightly had a fair amount to say about the average number of sexual partners that a woman might have pre-marriage, and has generally determined that the higher the count the lower the marriage worthiness of the woman. (Who ever would have guessed 😉 ).
I am curious about something else, however, which might not be entirely unconnected: How many (serious) proposals of marriage might a woman expect to receive say by the age of 38? Would it be 1 or would it be 2? Perhaps, receiving that first proposal you think you can do better than number 1, or maybe you are finding yourself or pursuing your career or maybe all your friends are still single, so you reject guy Number 1. Maybe Guy number 2 is a worse bet than guy number 1, (and I think that there must be a 50/50 likelihood of that); but you will be that bit older, and thus (post 24 when you are at your Miss Universe hottest) that little bit less desirable. You turned down Guy number 1 so you surely won’t accept guy number 2 if he is that bit less desirable then Guy Number 1. No, you need someone better, but will there be a third proposal and will it be better than Guy number 1 and Guy number 2? and with guys becoming marriage-averse perhaps proposal number 3 will never arrive.
Ultimately the number of men that you could reasonably marry at any time is bound to be low, (say 1 if any) – once you have ruled out the losers , the married men, the beyond-the pale, the wrong religion etc. You will of course still receive male attention, but that is by reason of your SMV rather than your MMV. It is perhaps easy for a woman to confuse the two, and your MMV is based on the market for brides whereas your SMV merely on the market for casual sex – and men always like that especially as the cost is negligable.
Krakonos – ”20% or even double number of men refusing to marry will have absolutely no effect. This presumes two things.”
I’m not understanding your arguments. Perhaps you could explain them more?
For the first, I’m not following why a 1:1 men-to-women in relationships would have any connection to the chances of a given women who (at the age of 30+ finally) wishes to many a man?
At the respective ages of 20 for women and 22 for men (two year age difference in married couples being somewhat typical), it seems that a significant portion of the men are interested in marriage (perhaps 90%), while an increasingly small number of the women are (perhaps 30%, if that).
By the time they hit 30 and 32 respectively, many of the 70% (or whatever) of women who weren’t interested in marriage before will have (rather suddenly at that point) become so; but, as the years pass, the men will have become less and less interested in marrying (for numerous reasons that have been discussed at length many times before).
Of those who did not find a women to marry already, many, in not most, will have already given up on the idea of ever marrying. LTR’s not withstanding, those women who DO truly wish to get married after 30 [and, don’t forget that young women are being encouraged to wait] are going to find the pool of men (in their logical age-range match) to be much smaller than the number of them who will be “competing”.
And, as to your second point, I’m not sure what a 30 year-old woman’s (suddenly increased) marriage commitment level has to do with her ability to find a man still willing to marry her?
And, I’m not sure how procreation success even factors in at all? We already have nearly 40% of all births occurring without marriage anyway. A given woman who has a child before getting married, who hits 30, is going to be amongst the least competitive for a husband – but she will have successfully bred, and passed on her genes.
@slwerner
First of all, you suppose that number of women who want to marry is (after 30) greater than number of men. I have not never seen any such statistics but my observations are different. What changes with age is rather woman’s expectations (steadily rises with age – usually up to 50).
Many women live in temporary relationships while being single mothers. Add factical polygyny (although illegal) and the result is more men willing to marry then women. Women have traded tradiotional marriage for other forms of relations, men not yet.
The situation might change with increasing numbers of fatherless kids reaching adulthood (lacking model of marriage) but by that time marriage will be marginal institution anyway.
I am commenting on situation in Eastern Europe. In the USA situation might have progressed a little further, but I do not suppose it among whites.
To be honest, just a one (or more) generation ago situation supported you assumption. The pattern was clearly monogamous. But things have changed rapidly and this is not the case now.
Krakonos, where are you from? I think I asked you before on the “ova” name thing didnt I?
Krakonos – “I have not never seen any such statistics but my observations are different.”
I take it that you’ve somehow managed to miss those numerous articles with “why don’t men grow up and marry” themes?
They are merely a sign that some are beginning to see the tip of the iceburg – women wanting men to marry them, but not finding any men who are both worthy and willing. And, they are not fully comprehending the reason for nor the magnitude of the problem they see on the horizon.
No solid statistic yet, just those increasingly visible signs. Get back with me on that in a few years.
Not to throw too big a wrench into your engine here gentlemen, but your deliberations may also need to account for the biological difficulties women experience in even conceiving, much less delivering healthy children in their post-Wall years.
https://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/the-myth-of-the-biological-clock/
It’s much easier to unravel the “marriage strike” in terms of how women’s conditions contribute to a cycle that disfavors marriage.
“it seems likely that we could see large numbers of men choosing to stay in LTRs instead of marrying”
Unfortunately this gets the men absolutely nothing since all the woman has to do to have the same leverage that a marriage certificate would give her is “accidentially” get pregnant.
Jessica Bennett in the NY Times has an article about “one that got away”. It is an interesting article, as she’s one of the writers who wrote or co-wrote an article on how no woman needs marriage ages ago (in 2010) for Daily Beast and I think also Newsweek. There are links to both at The Spearhead, however the NYT article is behind a paywall so I can’t do a copy/paste of the link. Therefore I shall point to Welmer’s well written article on Bennett’s regrets.
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2012/06/26/regret/
Bennett’s just looking to cash in on some of Kate Bolick’s ‘poor me’ money.
Rollo, that may well be true – Bennett seems like a fabulist to me, with all her experiences – and that market won’t saturate any time soon. However, taken at face value, her story is entirely predictable to men of the androsphere, and totally baffling to everyone else.
The value of any hypothesis lies in its accuracy in making predictions…
I wonder how I can get me some of that ‘poor me’ money. I think after I’ve read through a few more ‘how women think’ articles I should be able to write some good chick lit and make a few bucks.
“They were the best of times and they were the worst of times. The best times were back when I was a young lady, easily an HB11 and all the guys loved me. But I had no time for them. I had a career in Human Resources to pursue and a second M.A. in Polynesian Studies and I could never give up my girls nights out! But there were always hunky guys fawning over me. Some of them I used as emotional tampons, but some of them just gave me that special feeling.
But those days are gone. None of the guys I could have easily had just four years ago pay me no attention. One guy, I think his name was Rooshey, or something like that, invited me out to the bar but I had a report due on Women’s Role in Mauri Society so I had to bail. I texted him a dozen times and got no response. I saw him the other night with a younger girl, a cheap slut, flirting at the bar. What could he possibly see in her! She has none of my accomplishments!
What has changed in these few short years! Men just need to man up and stop playing with girls emotions! All I have left these days it seems are my cat Mr. Flufflerock and Reinhardt the Hamster.”
@Opus
I’ve never tried it but I suspect this is one of those questions which if you asked your standard HUSie the answer would be something like:
In their mind proposals abound. Why just the other day that man on the train was flirting with her, not to mention all of those men at the club. Surely all of them were dying to marry her. But asking her this question brings out the painful truth, that 99% of the interest she receives has nothing to do with marriage. I think for most women (to date) this has all turned out fine however, with a somehow acceptable proposal coming from the (for now) last leg of her serial monogamist journey. I think the exact scientific expression is something like:
What would be terrifying is if somehow that last miracle they are banking on didn’t occur, and boyfriend number 5 (or 50) decides instead that he is happy to keep playing the game women insisted on for a decade or two. So now you understand why it is so crucial that you man up and marry those sluts.
My hat’s off to you, koevoet.
Yes, certainly don’t use ‘Crowbar’ as your nom de guerre though…
In terms of a “marriage strike” by men doing no good, I disagree. There’s already a huge hue and cry from women, especially unmarried Christian ones, about how hard it is to find a guy. As more and more men wake up to the fact that marriage a)has no real advantage to them if they are willing to engage in sex without being married and b) holds many disadvantages if it blows up, that shortage of marriable men will eventually reach a point where they will have no choice but to listen to what we’re saying. I’d say that were pretty much already at the point that with very few exceptions, the only thing that marriage has to offer men is some level(usually a very insufficient one) of socially/morally acceptable sex. If he’s of the mindset that there’s nothing wrong with unmarried sex, then marriage litterally has nothing to offer him.
@TFH
Courtney, Vivian, Beverly, Evelyn, Leslie and Aubrey are all male names (if you’re a “proper” English speaker and not a Yankee. :p
Back on topic: the marriage strike, while disorganised and (literally) slapdash in its application, is real. At least, it’s real in major cities (using an estimate of >100,000-250,000 people in a specific area as a demarcation between “small town” and “major city”.) As someone who has travelled through many of America’s largest city, I can say that the average American male *in those specific environs* sees marriage as something between a burden and an unnecessary distraction (*at best*.) Between the neverending heights of female solipism, the gradual increase in their own SMV and the consistent refrains about the negative effects of a woman scorned/scornful (every business in a major city has at least 1 bitter ex-husband), most urban men will only marry if the woman is damn near perfect.
As far as post-20’s fecundity is concerned, I had a patient who said it best-“The uterus is a muscle. If you want it to work long-term, you have to give it regular amounts of exercise. You can’t spend a decade working out one half of your parts as much as possible, then expect the other half to kick into gear just because ‘you’re ready now’. ” In that situation, it was a 41-year old woman on Children No. 8-9 (conceived during her husband’s R&R, no help required), talking to a 28-year old woman who had used $1000 in fertility drugs to conceive Child No. 1.
Many women live in temporary relationships while being single mothers. Add factical polygyny (although illegal) and the result is more men willing to marry then women. Women have traded traditional marriage for other forms of relations, men not yet.
You are talking about active cock carouseler with the added baby momma sub title. Young women are the target marriage group and your way of seeing it is the way they see it too. These young women think the cock carousel will always let them ride and the hypergamy will be satisfied wth the next good dick in the ass. They will get kicked off the carousel and the marriage proposels stop and the men that will shack up with her are not the men of hypergamy entitlement. What the dumb baby momma fails to realise is this guy is settling for what he thinks he can get.
@ Rollo
I don’t think so—Bill Bennett and the rest of the tradcons were doing their man-up schtick long before Bolick came on the scene.
Nah, these guys are true believers.
Perhaps the young ladies hear stories about how hard it is to get men to marry, but they were all raised with lots of self esteem, and are special. Since they are special, it will never happen to them, just those other “not as special” ladies. This is one factor in the overall problem, I do think. Chalk up another disaster related to the self esteem movement.
David,
Thanks for the kinds words. It really is too bad about Alte. The latest drama really confirmed my suspicions.
Everyone,
Re Laura TTH does anyone notice that when someone writes in such as 17 y/o Izzy the writing style sounds like Laura? I can’t fathom any 17 y/o writing like that, which of course makes me wonder who is really behind a lot of the commenters there.
She also says she doesn’t support the MRM because it views life as a power struggle between men and women. Well, like it or not, that is what modern life has become. The power struggle was started by uppity women and men had to defend themselves. It is not some sort of “view” or approach to life, it is the hardcore reality. That is why I am everyday more and more weary of “traditionalists”, because they refuse to deal with reality.
As an academic, I am very impressed how the manosphere has totally developed an new discipline. In fact, all of the very logical thinkers here comparing notes, developing models, and then determining if the models agree with real data is very impressive. This red pill model was done fast and very well; and without the BS of academia. If only academia looked at what is real, rather than what they want to see…
From the larger sense, the issues with Feminism are the same as those with Marxism; the problem being that they both go against inborn human nature. Lots of “smart” people pretend that this is not true. So, who are you going to believe, a smart man with a model that does not work, or a dumb man with one that does?
@Dalrock – what they presented on page 73 may be correct (if they included all 50 states). But using a SINGLE 2001 data is impertinent and renders the findings impotent in 2012.
Then to further create a axiom of “Your Chances of Divorce May Be Much Lower Than You Think” using 2001 data vs 1980 in 2012 is a incredulous.
As a example – They have used 2009 in other places.
Given it is bloated size, old impertinent date, and obviously deducted findings. It is nothing more than a poorly done report. No reputable social science journal /magazine would publish it. If those two errors are that obvious then there are far far more…
Another analogy would be make a bloated report (no pun intended) showing obesity in America is lower than you think and using 1980 data vs 2001 data in 2012.
Totally random question from a lurker, but dragnet, I’ve been reading your posts on various blogs for a while and almost invariably find them well-considered and thought-provoking, even when I disagree with them. Do you have a blog of your own, perchance?
Btw, I took a look back at their sources and divorce data is available up to 2009 – interesting enough the data from 5 states are NOT included.
To make a axiom and a graph from 3 different data sources is a joke.
One has to use the same exact method/source. To not do so – show that It is intensely flawed.
The only method would be to look at the same data source from 1980 vs 2009 using the same exact controls (and using all 50 states)
My guess it is someone showing hoping to get seed money for further “projects”.
Dragnet, not Bill Bennett, but Jessica Bennett. She has an article in the NYT about how she coulda got married, but he gotta way. Rollo’s thinking she wants to write yet another “poor me” book. He’s probably right. But if you read even the excerpt at Spearhead from the NYT article, it’s obvious why her 7-year-long LTR folded up and moved away….if you understand men.
Good point, Terse Man. Academics could have made all these discoveries about the nature of women, but it had to be left to crowd sourcing by interested amateurs. There will be a new Ice Age before academic textbooks tell the truth about what really attracts women. It is really fascinating stuff, but they would rather be boring and trite.
@slwerner
I do not see any such problems in my country. There is no “no good men left” meme (there is only a meme “I will rather stay in a harem than with some beta”). Women have it much easier when looking for men (to marry) after 30 then they had in past due to effects I mentioned.
The only signs on this topic are that women strongly prefer cohabitation or single motherhood (over 50% of first born children are born out of wedlock, 15% have no father in birth certificate). Men are more traditional in this regard (80% of young men want children but only 50% of women).
For some reason men value (traditional) family more but women have accepted western indoctrination.
There’s already a huge hue and cry from women, especially unmarried Christian ones, about how hard it is to find a guy
And yet the Christian women exhibit the most extreme hypergamy of all — rendering them unmarriagiable despite, in most cases, being surrounded by good Christan men whom they endlessly, baselessly reject. Back in my single days, a lot of Christian women I knew, were asked out regularly, yet turned down all candidates as unworthy… and they were wrong about that. These same women would then turn right around and complain that there were “no men”!!!!!
Van r,
I expressed much the same sentiment on the women after 55 thread.
Some of those women i knew from back then have found that the wait for the perfect man lasts up to menopause and beyond.
Had their chances. . .
“Unfortunately this gets the men absolutely nothing since all the woman has to do to have the same leverage that a marriage certificate would give her is “accidentially” get pregnant.”
There’s still a massive difference between your liabilities for a child out of wedlock and your liabilities if your Wife decides to divorce you and take the kids (at least in the UK). Work out your partners cycle and err on the side of caution (wear condom when necessary)……
Jon,
The UK Law Society’ recommendations were for the woman to be entitled to half the mans assets if they have a child and have been cohabiting for three months or two years without children. Of course this has not been implemented, but thats not to say it won’t be at some point in the future. Children may end up being even more of a cash cow for unmarried women then they are at the moment.
Will,
Ooooh that’s draconian and surely immoral; just incentives Women to leach off men! Still hopefully that’s some way off, at least until Labour get into power again…..!
So I guess it’s back to sleeping over (at hers!) a couple of nights a week only…..
If you keep a rotating harem of three girls sleeping with each two nights a week, you’d still have a night to go out with your guy friends and drink beer.
Jon,
As you say hopefully its some way off, if ever, so perhaps not something to be too concerned about at the moment.
However if it does get implemented then I would watch for the definition of cohabitation to be broadened over time to include part time cohabitation.
I recall reading a case about a canadian man who maintained his own seperate residence to avoid their cohabitation laws but stayed over at his girlfriends house four nights a week. When the relationship ended she took him to court and the judge ruled that they were cohabiting and his ex girlfriend got half his assets. Granted he admitted staying over, four nights a week, but what if you are staying over, two nights a week but your ex accuses you of staying over, four nights a week. The judge might believe her over you.
Cohabitation laws could become a bonanza for gold diggers and very opportunistic for false accusers.
@ Anonymous Reader
Ah, gotcha! Didn’t know which “Bennett” he was referring to–thanks for clearing it up.
@ Hurp
No, I don’t have a blog of my own. I’d given some thought to starting one but there’s no way I could do a creditable job as my job is very demanding.
I appreciate the kind words—thanks.
There’s never going to be a full on marriage strike for a couple of reasons:
1.) Not everyone is vile abuser of the Marriage system. See Dalrock, myself, and others. There are plenty here that have never been “bitten” and enjoy our current state immensely.
2.) Marriage is economically and socially stabilizing. It has survived for all of recorded human history for a reason. It will survive for the foreseeable future.
3.) People like it. Overall it makes men especially happy (and would make women just as happy if we could clip their way overinflated and modern expectations) according to every piece of statistical information we have across religions and cultures.
4.) Women reform for either biological or moral reasons as they age (ie The Wall) and are more likely to accept a stable marriage
It is rational for men to be far more “choosy” and I think they are starting to do that. To expect a complete opt out is I think a pure fantasy driven mostly by beta’s that have been beaten up by the current system and have not yet recovered.
That doesn’t mean that a large choosy mass of men can’t create a significant ripple in the overall political scene. Because marriage is desired by all players a serious conversion of men into careful purchasers can result in a sea change in marriage attitudes.
“(and would make women just as happy if we could clip their way overinflated and modern expectations)”
This is a huge point. It’s usually objected to by saying that men, usually because of viewing porn, have unreasonable expectations too. That may be somewhat true, but by and large it is my opinion that it’s women’s expectations and them not being met that’s a much bugger driver. That is born out by the disparity in who files too.
There’s never going to be a full on marriage strike
There will be an increasing number of people who never marries. But I guess that most people will just cohabit the way they do in Europe.
Being from an European country, I can attest that, in the generation before mine, the marriage-cohabitation rate was above 90%. In my generation (I’m 42), this rate is below 70%. This is a lot of women being single. This has made women more easy to deal with: they know that they cannot be demanding and bitchy and, in spite of that, to land a guy.
@G.K.Chesterton
That is very interesting and it is true that marriage has always been the basic economic institution and surely must remain so. Equally, in their hearts, marriage is a condition that most men aspire to – men actually like to care for and protect, not that you would ever guess that if one reads and takes seriously the too frequent anti-male slurs women seem to bandy about where such an aspiration is regarded as tantamount to a desire to imprison and abuse. When I was younger I was very careless about exactly who I pursued, and wasted far too much emotional energy (the financial cost was immaterial) on unsuitable women and usually paid dearly for it. I was certainly never advised to be very careful as to whom I became involved with, either by my parents, teachers, or indeed peers. Neither was I advised – for example – how to deal with a woman who goes passive aggressive, or blows hot one minute and cold the next (as my Mother was not like that I had never seen it); to give promiscuous women and those with little impulse control a wide-berth or to avoid divorcees (especially those with children) and serial monogomists (they didn’t really exist – for if she’s done it once she will do it again). Now I am much more wary (though I fear my taste has not improved).
It’s really quite something to behold. From a historical standpoint, feminism’s advances in culture, education, business, industry and politics have been extraordinarily rapid. In just about 100 years we went from women not even having voting rights to women (and the feminine imperative) now dominating just about every aspect of our daily lives. Of course women are not “in charge of everything”. But the feminine dominates everything: entertainment, work, culture. You can’t work anywhere wihtout being subject to sex harassment laws. We all know about its effects on sex, dating, marriage, divorce and parenthood. You can’t go anywhere without seeing the femcentric in advertising, news, sports, business and entertainment.
Yet the male response has been, up to only a few years ago, surprisingly patient and deferential.
“More protection against rape and sex harassment? Seems reasonable. OK.”
“Need divorce from an abusive husband? Reasonable. OK.”
“Family leave? OK.”
“Now you want divorce because you’re unhaaaaappy? Well we want you to be haaaappy. Haaaappiness is good.”
But now people are asking hard questions.
“Who is the father?” “Have you been faithful?”
“How many sex partners have you had? Be honest.”
“Is your career more important than me?”
And we’re taking hard stances.
“You cheat, we’re done. Period. Full stop.”
“I will live with you, I’ll have sex with you. But no marriage. End of discussion.”
“I don’t need marriage or even a relationship to get sex. If the women can do it, so can I.”
“Women might be the sex gatekeepers. But I, and only I, decide how much investment and commitment will be given, and when, and to whom.”
“No rings for sluts.”
It’s only recently, in the last few years, that pushback has started. This is only the beginning. There won’t be a full scale marriage strike, but the numbers of men refusing marriage altogether is growing, I think. I don’t think most men will ever learn much game. I don’t think most men will ever put it into practice. There will never be a “men’s rights movement”. But all that’s necessary is for a few percentage points of men to move it ever more toward critical mass.
We’re getting ever closer to that mass. You can tell because the squeaky wheels of women with their cries of “Where are all the good men?” and their tradcon minions with their bleats of “Man up and quit playing those video games!” and their Churchian sycophants screaming “What the hell is the matter with you!?!?” and “Line up to marry the sluts!” continue to grow.
It’s funny how judges like treating Canadian women as if they are all just very expensive prostitutes. I guess that’s why they’ve made prostitution legal here.
Want regular sex with her? Well it’ll cost you half of everything you own, minimum.
@deti
They are PISSED about it too.
Whenever you come across a batch of them that have not seen MRM MRA type things, they go flipping apoplectic. I had never done it (mainly as I dont get so many comments), but had to shut comments on the latest post because a den of vipers got kicked. The husbands were downright mad that the poor dears were being held to account. Imagine how much more so for those women who are trying to find men and men are rejecting them so they dont have to listen to what I was just reading for the last hour….goodness. ,
@ Deti,
“There won’t be a full scale marriage strike, but the numbers of men refusing marriage altogether is growing, I think. I don’t think most men will ever learn much game. I don’t think most men will ever put it into practice. There will never be a “men’s rights movement”. But all that’s necessary is for a few percentage points of men to move it ever more toward critical mass.”
Agreed and may I say that a minor percentage of men is all that is necessary.
It merely has to be the RIGHT percentage.
As we know, the vast majority of men are simply invisible – nigh on literally – to the vast majority of women.
Therefore, greater numbers are both irrelevant and entirely unneeded.
On a long enough timeline, things might manifest thusly:
A percentage of men will learn Game.
That percentage of men will be the preponderance of those men most desired by women (of course celebrities/the very wealthy will still garner their share).
With having Game will come a reticence or trepidation to marry.
And, being perceived by women as the only choice, women may begin to change their tune.
I reiterate, however, “on a long enough timeline”.
Given that it only took a hundred years to tilt one way so hard I think you’d be shocked how fast it will tilt back.
@GKChesterton,
Good point.
And from your lips to God’s ears.
@Empath
Since you blocked comments on that thread, I’ll just mention here that I went through it, and what a bunch of nonsense did they spew. Stuck on stupid, is I believe the appropriate descriptor.
TFH, I think this is an important point. The only things that women can uniquely do are bear children and be feminine. They are mostly not capable of building civilisation because they lack the innovative tendency. They make reasonably good administrators and so on, but so do plenty of men. They might be better than men in some areas, perhaps in publishing, but even there the differences are not great. Basically women can best contribute uniquely as wives and mothers. This includes passing on the culture, especially the verbal culture, something women are also very good at it in many cases.
The problem is that huge numbers of women are just meandering about doing jobs that men can do at least as well, and clogging up the workforce. I exclude the occasional woman who is really good at being something useful, like a doctor.
But, not to pick too much on Melissa, look at her CV. Or what I can remember of it, since I gather it has been taken down for privacy reasons here. But she was doing some blogging and newsletter journalism. It reminded me of that Economist joke advertisement:
Seriously, it is not a lot to show for giving up the chance of marriage and a family. Feminism has meant that this pretty, intelligent girl is spending her life writing newsletters that nobody will read, instead of being a wife and mother and building a happy home. It is insanity.
“Given that it only took a hundred years to tilt one way so hard I think you’d be shocked how fast it will tilt back.”
The problem is that it is much easier to create a Hobbesian chaos than it is to change this chaos to cosmos, because when trust is destroyed it is destroyed.
Seen from my point of view there is no doubt that women will be the losers in this hobbesian chaos and that it will be very costly for them to create order. But I think that some sort of awareness that valuable traditions have been destroyed are beginning to grow among women:
http://www.salon.com/2012/06/24/our_new_era_of_hearbreak/singleton/
While this feminist article contains a lot of BS I think that the following observation is accurate:
“If before men and women were pressed early on to have children and to have a family, you now create a situation in which the family is superfluous for masculinity”
Seriously, it is not a lot to show for giving up the chance of marriage and a family. Feminism has meant that this pretty, intelligent girl is spending her life writing newsletters that nobody will read, instead of being a wife and mother and building a happy home. It is insanity.
I know at least 5 of over 35 women not married and childfree and I can only point out to one that is actually successful in a way that you can see “well she is living the dream, I can see how her life is glamorous” one of them spent every single day mentioning how much she hates her job and how much she fantasizes about drinking or eating instead of whatever she is doing (and she was unemployed for two years before this job) and the other one is buried on student debt and barely can afford anything. I’m a bit more forgiving of the Bolicks of the world because I can see they thinking they have “THE JOB” but this ones are really examples of the bag of goods they were sold and how little they are cashing in.
“If before men and women were pressed early on to have children and to have a family, you now create a situation in which the family is superfluous for masculinity”
The funny part is that every time feminist were accused of mysandry they always said that “traditional gender roles” were oppressive for men too and that they wanted them to have more choices on life….guess what they are finally embracing this…happy now?
The funny part is that every time feminist were accused of mysandry they always said that “traditional gender roles” were oppressive for men too and that they wanted them to have more choices on life….guess what they are finally embracing this…happy now?
Well, the issue is what they thought that would look like. They seem to have thought that men would simply and happily glide into the roles that women were abandoning, because men were interested in these roles, and would want to embrace them as a way to escape their own “traditional gender role” — i.e., men would become domestic Mr. Moms for women who were breadwinning ballbusting careerists, and be happy about this due to the “gender role freedom” ot offered men.
I’ve always found it puzzling why they could have possibly thought that men would find embracing the very things these ambitious women found constraining to be instead liberating for men. That makes no sense, other than as a fairly typical projection. In any case, it generally misunderstands what “liberation from traditional gender roles” looks like for men. It does NOT look like Mr. Mom for most men — becoming the domestic oriented partner that women were fleeing from being. What it looks like for most men is what women are moaning about today — men doing what they want, when they want, and not really caring about any particular “responsibilities” to women or children. That is liberating for *men*, because the essence of the traditional gender role for men was taking on this responsibility — so leaving it off is what liberation for men looks like: SportsCenter, video games, motorbikes, trips to Vegas with the boys, beer, day trading — you name it, and it usually doesn’t involve women from the perspective of responsibility — it typically involves women from the perspective of pleasure (which is the same way men are viewed by many women today — as instrumentalities of physical or emotional pleasure). And women seem to hate it as much as many men hated what liberation for women looked like.
Traditionalists hate this trend for this reason. But it is a trend that must continue in order for things to improve at some point in the future. Men and women are going to need to become more alienated, not less, from each other as sexes in order for each, and especially for the programmed masses of women and WKs, to realize what has been lost, and to recognize what needs to be done to replace what has been lost. Simply holding men to “traditional gender roles” in a world which does no such thing for women, will not work, and will not do. Things need to get quite a bit worse than they are now before they have a hope in getting much better overall.
Yes, and I strongly suspect that a lot of even the relatively rare cases of SAHDs are really just pursuing creative options at home. A lot of housewives used to amuse themselves with various creative outlets. Men are quite happy to do the same, given the chance.
The only way most men were kept in line, marching off to their dreary jobs, was with a Noble Lie, that it would make them honoured as heads of houses. You can make a man literally die for honour; but he won’t work himself to death for an ungrateful woman who regards him simply as somewhere between a joke and an oppressor.
I sometimes wonder whether Feminism is the Peacock’s Tail of Western Civilisation; where we effectively humiliate the rest of the world by saying ‘Look, we even make half our Military, female, and we can still beat you – easily’.
There is a price to be paid however, for this abuse of the natural order, and we have actually seen this before – frequently, in fact, though only in small measure: the Female CEO or cubicle Corporate-Worker is merely the latest incarnation of that old class, The Courtesan, of which there came to be two types; the Lard-Arses (who did a lot of mundane work), and the Cute Ones who were effectively very Up-Market Prostitutes. If a woman is not a wife and a mother, then short of Celibacy/Lesbianism what is she going to be but the play-thing of a small handful of men – unless she drifts into Low Market Prostitution when she is the temporary play-thing of a larger number of less-desirable men. Should any of you actually meet a Pastor advising his single-male flock to man-up you may remind him of that most famous of fictional Courtesans Violetta Valery (from La Traviata) – who ultimately did not marry Up, or if you are more religiously inclined Mary Magdeleine (whom Jesus did not encourage one of the Disciples to marry – at least not in my King James) or even more up-to-date, the unfortunate Monica Lewinsky.
The Party Girl, however, always enjoys herself, so long as she can keep her looks and avoid Alcoholism and the nastier and more ineradicable STDs – I almost wish I had been born Female, save that it is not in my Nature.
DC:
“The only way most men were kept in line, marching off to their dreary jobs, was with a Noble Lie, that it would make them honoured as heads of houses. You can make a man literally die for honour; but he won’t work himself to death for an ungrateful woman who regards him simply as somewhere between a joke and an oppressor.”
I agree with honor being a key component to male motivation. It is interesting to think about how women have used shaming men in the past. Women used to be able to shame men into doing many things, dangling the carrot of honor while hitting with the shame stick. Now, positive male identity (honor) has been replaced with rudeness (family guy, homer simpson, bumbling idiot, etc…) in the MSM. Men do not have honorable standards to aspire toward. And, low and behold, shaming isn’t as effective. Women have lost their power to shame men because when there is no carrot, the mule resents the whip.
Yes, Opus, only a nation powerful enough to build a score of aircraft carriers can afford the luxury of manning them with women. As you say, too, it is what animal behaviourists call Costly Signalling. Although I actually disagree with your peacock tail example, and have written a brief article on the point under my real name.
As for the ubiquitous presence of women, I am reminded of what an otherwise PC young man said was to be the function of a woman we both knew who was going off to work at an army base. To be the “camp fuck”.
I have never wished to have been born female. It seems to involve a lot of unavoidable humiliation.
I almost date the beginning of the end to when Woody Allen managed to make male cowardice funny. I don’t mean to blame him personally, but I remember thinking that it was a significant development. Good Grief, when the Iranians, I think, captured some British Marines, they included a young mother and a nebbish chap the Iranians christened Mr Bean. They all behaved poorly, but none of them was punished.
Discipline in the British Army used to be harsh. I was told of man given life imprisonment because he only fired two warning shots instead of the requisite three before shooting an escaping German in WWII. And corporal discipline in the Royal Navy was only abandoned, IIRC, in the 1950s. And now look at them.
@Brendan
Well, this is nothing but speculation on my part, but I think they were convinced they can just browbeat men into submission. This wasn’t entirely groundless, though, as Anglo-Saxon men are generally known to be docile, hardworking, compliant and wussy (towards their women), as opposed to Latin American, Mediterranean or Russian men, for example. The mistake Western feminists apparently made was thinking that their men will remain such useful idiots until the end of time. They forgot that such male attitude is the result of decades, even centuries of heavy cultural indoctrination. It isn’t something that just comes naturally for men.
Western men generally made the same mistake, as it should be pointed out, though. It usually goes unmentioned that the institutions of Western civilization – the churches, the schools etc. – had to expend enormous resources just to train young women to show the kind of reasonable behavior that encourages men to invest in them. Being slender, non-bitchy, chaste, loyal, good-natured, well-behaved and generall just a pleasant human being all around. This was completely forgotten by the ’60s, so the men went along with feminism because they thought their women are like that by nature, so they believed it’s not a risk to empower them legally and economically. This was a colossal blunder, of course, one that had a very heavy price.
@dorsey47
Women used to be able to dangle the carrot effectively because they knew how to demonstrate mating value. They largely have no idea how to do that today.
There is this common fantasy among women that if all of them just shut their legs and demanded commitment in exchange for sex – which is a completely unrealistic idea, by the way -, men would “shape up”. No, they wouldn’t. It’s not enough for a woman to keep her legs shut. She has to bring more than that to the table. She has to offer chastity, commitment, a pleasant nature, agreeable behavior. THEN men will be willing to shape up and commit to them.
It’s not enough for a woman to keep her legs shut.
—————————————————-
Hence the paranoid references to the testostosphere being fascinated with sex bots and the like
DC:
“She has to offer chastity, commitment, a pleasant nature, agreeable behavior.”
Correct me if I am wrong, as I am a young man. Before the revolution, were there not schools that taught women to be pleasant and agreeable? My meaning is: pleasant and agreeable is not the natural state of woman. If we had schools to refine women to be attractive, it is a learned state. Could the sexual paradigm shift have to do with the switch in the sex that is being trained into an unnatural role? Boys are taught to be pleasant and agreeable, now.
If I may…
Here in the U.S. there was both school ,Home Economics, Etiquette like Emily Post, etc. , even when I was in university as I was a busboy at a sorority (yes….that was an awesome job with benefits back then, except seeing the gals at breakfast did change things, lets say) and the House Mother taught manditory classes in manners and entertaining, table setting, food presentation, greeting guests, etc etc. Thie was in the early 80’s.
Funny the sorority gals because reputed as the wildest of the wild.
empath,
Were there noticeable differences in the women who had been schooled? Is this the mythical girl game?
Look, women are still relatively sane here in Australia. They are not especially elegant, but they aren’t the worst women in the Western world either. I don’t find them to be ballbusters as a rule. There are some nasty feminists in this country, but I have mostly not had to meet them.
I think my wife got some Home Economics, but she was at a Catholic school in the 1970s. I expect they were trained to be ladylike, to some degree. My wife actually went to a sort of deportment school shortly after we met, to round off some of her corners. But she mostly learned to be a wife from watching her mother.
What nobody predicted was the depravity women would eventually show. The hypergamy was under control. Sluttiness was not celebrated. Women seem to have gone from Calpurnia to Messalina in a few decades. Extraordinary. The ancient moralists attributed great moral weakness to women, but nobody took that seriously in, say, 1960.
Dorsey
No difference, the training was a painful joke to them
But I think that some sort of awareness that valuable traditions have been destroyed are beginning to grow among women:
http://www.salon.com/2012/06/24/our_new_era_of_hearbreak/singleton/
Holy crap!!! The hamster runs wild in this article. All the usual fallacies are there: Apex fallacy, victimhood complex, dismissal of biological hard facts which are presented as cultural problems (and hence able to be solved with a change in the culture), women using relationships as a self-esteem tool, etc. They couldn’t see the truth if it hit them upside the head.
A bleak look into the dark female psyche.
Western men generally made the same mistake, as it should be pointed out, though. It usually goes unmentioned that the institutions of Western civilization – the churches, the schools etc. – had to expend enormous resources just to train young women to show the kind of reasonable behavior that encourages men to invest in them. Being slender, non-bitchy, chaste, loyal, good-natured, well-behaved and generall just a pleasant human being all around. This was completely forgotten by the ’60s, so the men went along with feminism because they thought their women are like that by nature, so they believed it’s not a risk to empower them legally and economically. This was a colossal blunder, of course, one that had a very heavy price.
I think for the guys it was a combination of (1) thinking this was “fair” for their mothers/sisters/daughters (especially for the older WKs who pushed through feminism) and (2) the promise of easy sex for men. Reason (1) probably didn’t think that the entire relationship between the sexes was going to be fundamentally reset for the reason you state, I think. Reason (2) did think it was a reset, but was easily misled, because after a relatively brief period in the late 60s and early 70s, when it really *was* easier for the average guy to get laid, women wised up and reinstituted the standards we still see today: alphas for sex, betas for later. So the promise of (2) proved shortived. When I was growing up in the 1980s, the AIDS scare put a further damper on the casual sex culture of the 1970s, and when we emerged from that in the later 80s and early 90s, the “new rules” (the essence of which still apply today) were more firmly entrenched, and hooking up between alphas and the top half of women became the norm.
To be fair, quite a few of the hardcore 2nd wave feminists were horrified by this, because they saw what it really was: lots of women pandering to the sexual needs of the top men (the men whom such women always envied anyway, due to the apex fixation which is fundamentally rooted in hypergamy), which led increasingly to a kind of sexual arms race among women, with increasing raunch and sexual license all around. The “sex positive” feminists were fine with this, and celebrated it, but many of the hardcore radfems of the 60s and 70s did not like it at all, and quite a few wrote quite voluminously about this — this led to the famous sex-pos vs non-sex-pos split in second wave feminism, which weakened the movement.
Basically it was a split between the women who were really ideologically feminist from the perspective of seeking female power per se, and the pragmatist feminists who wanted to indulge their hypergamy as a means of expressing power and achieving satisfaction (i.e., enjoying the freedom to ride the carousel openly for the first time in history). Many, but not all, of the former were lesbian, so even though the ideological feminists were running the show in the movement in the 60s and 70s, the sex-pos feminists won out, in the end, in terms of the lasting impact of feminism, much to the chagrin of the man-hating hardcore radfems, because it vindicated the heterosexual impulses of most women. This is why the hookup culture prevails, why the raunch culture prevails and so on — once female hypergamy was well and truly unleashed, the imperative of satiating that drive became compelling for most women — much moreso than some kind of ideological drive for power and equality as ends in themselves. This is why, despite the rhetoric of empowerment and equality, what we actually observe in women is that the broader underlying hypergamous motivation tends to color most of what you see happening for *most* women (there are certainly women who do not fit that mold, and who are truly independent and ambitious for its own sake, of course) in most contexts. It explains why so many remain single for so long much more than “I was focusing on my career” does –> she had boyfriends all along, after all, but hypergamy discourages picking one before the appointed time has come (and that appointed time is indeed very vague … 28? 35? 40?) due to the opportunity cost that is implied. And this also explains the constancy of support for political feminism by single young women: they understand that, even though they don’t identify with the man-hating lesbians in the women’s studies department, political feminism nevertheless ensures that the tools which enable their hypergamous quest (free access to abortion and reliable contraception and economic independence — i.e., sexual and economic autonomy) will remain available to them for as long as they wish to use them, and this is *viscerally* important in a way it is not to women who are older and married (and who therefore support political feminism much less strongly, at least in the United States).
Good comment by Brendan, in the States we can distill it down to a current example:
Sandra Fluke (bleah).
LGR wrote:
“She also says she doesn’t support the MRM because it views life as a power struggle between men and women…That is why I am everyday more and more weary of “traditionalists”, because they refuse to deal with reality.”
On the one hand, I fully agree with you. When limiting myself to reading on Christian-friendly MRM sites (I think of them as the Patriarchs) or the PUA sites (I think of them as the Merry Pranksters), I can easily contemplate jumping off the traditionalist platform. However, over the past several days, after reading L-TTH’s post, I decided to dig a little deeper and expand my MRM reading list. It ain’t all sweetness and light, that’s for sure. It’s more like an HR Giger painting come to life. I want to participate in reality, but I’m not willing to help build a reality that looks like that.
Hollenhund wrote:
“as opposed to Latin American, Mediterranean or Russian men, for example.”
HH, did you live in Russia? I’m curious because I’ve seen you mention it a few times now. I lived in Russia in the late 1990s. At that time, the women all worked full time and managed the household as well. Women showed extreme gratitude if they had a man in their lives, I noticed (at that time, the life expectancy for Russian males was the lowest in all of Europe, so there was a gender imbalance). The interactions between men and women were highly scripted and traditional. It was disorienting to me, and I was forever getting raised eyebrows because I would, for example, seat myself at table without waiting for a man to pull out my chair, and stuff like that. However, I also noticed what I think you are referring to – the men were NOT compliant at all. In fact, they seemed to have no problem publicly correcting a woman even if they didn’t know her. I was walking with a Russian acquaintance when he confronted two women for speaking too loudly in public. I was also on the receiving end of a lot of correction, being foreign. It was extremely different than here in the US. At the time, back in my feminist days, I despised it.
@Brendan re: Your comment at 5:41 a.m.
Brilliant. That clarified for me some of the problems with traditionalism. Basically every comment after Brendan’s was incredibly well-written and informative, too. Whatever criticisms can be lobbed against the MRM, poor writing and poor reasoning are NOT among those criticisms.
Nobody predicted a moral monster like Sandra Fluke.
Not to nitpick, but these men – most of them alphas, I guess – probably thought they’ll be getting easy sex on their on terms. What they actually got instead was easy sex completely on women’s terms, due to rape shield laws, sexual harassment laws, redefining rape etc.
I’ve never lived in Russia, but I know some people who have, also others who spent longer periods there, plus some Russian women as well. I’ve read some material about male-female relations there. It’s obvious that traditional gender norms have broken down a lot earlier in Russia than in Western nations, largely due to Bolshevik legal reforms and social engineering between 1918 and 1934, including the legalization of abortion, no-fault divorce, the normalization of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births etc.
According to some MRAs, Gorbachev discussed these issues in his book ‘Glasnost’ and explained how the breakdown of the traditional Russian family eventually contributed to the fall of the USSR, but I haven’t read it yet.
When I talked to Russian women, their opinions on their men largely fell in two categories:
1. Many Russian men are deadbeats and sleazebags, pumping and dumping women, not caring about their offspring, getting drunk etc.
2. Russian men, on the other hand, are badasses who’ll rip your face off if you disrespect them etc.
It’s a textbook case of a stagnant, violent, backward matriarchy where chivalry is dead, men generally have no sense of responsibility towards women and engage in deadly power struggles on all levels of society to assume the status of the local alpha king, because that’s the only was to get social status and thus women. Without its enormous reserves of crude oil, natural gas and other treasures, Russia would quickly degenerate to the level of some Sub-Saharan hellhole.
Not to nitpick, but these men – most of them alphas, I guess – probably thought they’ll be getting easy sex on their on terms. What they actually got instead was easy sex completely on women’s terms, due to rape shield laws, sexual harassment laws, redefining rape etc.
True, but for a brief period, hard as it is to imagine for us today, it wasn’t just the alphas who were getting laid. There was a brief window in the late 60s and early 70s where sex was flowing like water, and most average guys were getting laid. That window closed fairly quickly, in the space of less than a generation, but it did exist for long enough to get a lot of men of that generation to support the sexual revolution. It’s very hard to imagine today, because the rules today are so different, really.
They seem to have thought that men would simply and happily glide into the roles that women were abandoning, because men were interested in these roles, and would want to embrace them as a way to escape their own “traditional gender role” — i.e., men would become domestic Mr. Moms for women who were breadwinning ballbusting careerists, and be happy about this due to the “gender role freedom” ot offered men.
It made no sense but even if some men were coerced into taking more traditional roles they are punished with lack of sex, cheating and frivolous divorce. One has to wonder what in the world was the real goal of feminism since they reached the equality of opportunity long time ago and still messed everything else and continue asking for more…baffling to say the least.
I sometimes wonder whether Feminism is the Peacock’s Tail of Western Civilisation; where we effectively humiliate the rest of the world by saying ‘Look, we even make half our Military, female, and we can still beat you – easily’.
Hubby told me the story of a plane that no pilot wanted to try (not sure if it was on WW1 or WW2) because it looked very unsafe and they had one of the female pilots flying it for the first time. The guys all started to fly it out of pride according to the story. So I do think there is some level of that, a bit like Spartan women, but then Spartan women seem to be raised to honor their culture not to trash it and try and destroy it, YMMV.
But she mostly learned to be a wife from watching her mother.
THIS. I don’t think there was a lot of schools more like seeing the mother doing her duty and th way society started to see this as “meaningless and superfluous” because it wasn’t actively generation money, that became the ultimate proof of value and status. Also let’s not forget how many mothers instilled in their daughters that if only they would have had careers they would had been Nobel prize winners and wealthy CEO’s there is a lot of regret on traditional choices expressed by the former generations thus that fueled the need to reject them, except that now they have it a lot worst.
Of course it is. Just watch how women treat men with power over them.
Men and women are going to need to become more alienated, not less, from each other as sexes in order for each, and especially for the programmed masses of women and WKs, to realize what has been lost, and to recognize what needs to be done to replace what has been lost. Simply holding men to “traditional gender roles” in a world which does no such thing for women, will not work, and will not do. Things need to get quite a bit worse than they are now before they have a hope in getting much better overall.
I appreciate this line of reasoning, and I agree. We’ll have to suffer through many more years, perhaps decades, of silly evening programming like ‘Ally MacBeal’ and sexy hospital shows with hypergamous nurses screwing George Clooney lookalikes in the janitorial storage room to fully appreciate how bastardized our culture has become. I already have most of my friends view women as nothing more than holes to dump sperm into when they are not riding their motorbikes. And of course, women see men as nothing more than accessories to be shown off to their status-whoring girlfriends. As a culture we need to choke on this realization. We will need to see artificial wombs be put on the market in addition to sexbots. Yes, I know this has been bandied about recently on the interwebs, but it has to come to this. We need to acknowledge as a culture, that women prefer their vibrators, manicures and pedicures to being a traditional wife. And men will indeed take a sexbot that shuts up and doesn’t talk constantly and has no need to cuddle.
Brendan wrote:
Yeah this is funny as all get-out, typically because of how it blew up in the feminists faces. They thought it would look like something different than what they got. Of course, you get garbage like this too, which is trying to pull men into the “Kitchen Bitch” role by saying they’ll be happier and so on. Basically like the “you’ll be happier married” garbage that comes out, too.
sunshinemary wrote:
When one approaches the MRM, they have to realize that there’s different degrees, based on acceptance of the truth, awareness of the figures of feminism and their pronouncements, differing realizations of what needs to be done to affect change, and yes degree of anger to the injustices that go on. Dalrock and most of that area is more towards the liberal side, while others are more towards the conservative side. it would take a lot of text to explain the differences. As a man, when you realize that there are feminists that really wish your demise and will do everything in their power to make it happen, your tone changes considerably, as well as your proposed solutions for change.
Or another example that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Look up “Catherine Kieu” as it relates to an old-hen party show called “The View” (there’s articles, but there’s ample Youtube videos of this part of the show, too). They had a little collective laugh over the castration of the husband of this woman I named, with very little consequence as a result. Flip the script (men joking about a woman being maimed), and you’d have everyone wanting the lives of the men involved as well as the heads of the network execs that put it on the air, and would likely have a mob burning down the set.
Just saying, the MRM is like it is largely as a reaction to what the feminists are doing, and that it would be wise to read and look at them in that light.
“The View” – I mistyped there…”The Talk” is the correct show. Both of them are the same so it’s kinda easy to confuse them. Sorry.
Sunshinemary, I’m going to open up a box you may not want to see in, for a moment. My purpose is merely to explain why some men are the way they are, with regard to anger about feminism.
There is an addendum to ballista74’s link to the Agent Orange files: the women who participate in radical feminist sites such as radfemhub are not neglected SAHM’s, some appear to be college students. They are often employed in academic jobs, some apparently are instructors or professors, others work for Non Governmental Organizations (NGO’s). They are not powerless. Some of them are decision makers in some way or other. I wonder, sometimes, if perhaps the mid level bureaucrats who decided a couple of years ago in Haiti to distribute emergency food aid only to women were among the radfem/Orange group. No way to know, for sure, but the decision “you eat, he does not” was glossed over in the popular press on some flimsy pretexts of “safety”. If the reverse had happened, if food had been given only to men, there would have been a firestorm in the press. Maybe a blunder by a well-intentioned, but foolish, decisionmaker. Or maybe a trial run of something longer term, I can’t really tell.
Suppose that some group of men, professors, post-docs, men who decide on grant proposals at the Ford or Rockefeller foundations, mid level bureaucrats, etc. – suppose this group of men had sites where they calmly discussed using sex-selective infantcide to achieve a “better world”, by testing girl babies for certain genes, and painlessly euthanizing those that carried the “wrong” genes. If you happened to run across such a site, and realized that some of the men there were in positions of authority over research grants, etc. what would your reaction be?Would you want to sit down with a cup of tea, and have a nice chat? Or would you react somewhat differently?
There are men who are extremely angry out there. This site, Dalrock’s, tends to self select for more thought than anger, more light than heat. The farther one goes into the androsphere, the more ugly things that can be seen in some ways. But these men are not angry in isolation, there generally is a cause. I’ll point out just one.
Imagine that your mother divorced your father when you were 7 years old, and she was pregnant; thanks to a sonogram, the family knew she was carrying your baby sister. You’d even thought of a name for her. Imagine that as part of that divorce, she got an abortion. Would you be angry? Would that color your relationship with her? Do you think that would affect the way you view women? I know of, only indirectly, a man who grew up with a “mother” like that. From his perspective, the world has always looked like something out of a Giger horror – he grew up in one. In varying ways he knew that his mother killed his younger sibling – in part, to spite his father. What would you tell him that would change his perspective? NAWALT? Think that would work?
Now I’ll close the lid on that particular box. My only point: there are things out there you don’t know about, and there are men who have seen things they do not wish to talk about directly, but it does color their view of the world.
AR: “I’m going to open up a box you may not want to see in,”
You keep doing that. I’m starting to cringe a little before I read your comments.
“My only point: there are things out there you don’t know about, and there are men who have seen things they do not wish to talk about directly, but it does color their view of the world.”
I agree. However, I think that rather than assuming women are good and men are bad, I’ve generally felt that men are better than women – I’ve believed that men are more trustworthy, more honest, have more integrity, and are less prone to hysteria and emotionalism, and reading on blogs such as this one has generally confirmed that for me. However, what I read over the past few days on the non-Christian/non- PUA MRM sites was more like someone holding up feminism in a fun house mirror, reflecting a grotesque mirror-image of something I already loathed. I don’t know if I’m a traditionalist or an MRM or something else altogether. What I want is essentially a fully Patriarchal society, with men held in the highest honor and women occupying their proper place. This system is the best way for both women and for men to have their needs met and by far the best for children. I saw a lot on this and similar blogs that seemed oriented the same way, but now I’m wondering if I’ve misunderstood…
I guess I’m trying to suss if there really ARE different aspects to the MRM or if blogs like this one are akin to putting a nasty-tasting pill in strawberry jam (oh, and by the way, I read Dalrock’s blog for about three months with nary a mention of sexbots, and within 48 hours of my comment on the Thinking Housewife in which I defended the MRM by saying I never saw sexbot-related commentary here, there were no fewer than six comments with mention of sexbots in them, so thanks a hell of a lot for that, gentlemen).
@ AR- You struck a nerve.
“Would you be angry? Would that color your relationship with her? Do you think that would affect the way you view women?I know of, only indirectly, a man who grew up with a “mother” like that. From his perspective, the world has always looked like something out of a Giger horror – he grew up in one. In varying ways he knew that his mother killed his younger sibling – in part, to spite his father. What would you tell him that would change his perspective? NAWALT? Think that would work? ”
Suppose it was a woman who grew up knowing that her mother killed a younger sibling out of selfishness. How would it or should it change how she perceives her own gender? Would it be acceptable for her to hate those she shares biology with? Would it explain confusion? Could it explain the feeling of never fitting in anywhere?
May I take it a step further? Perhaps that woman knows beyond a shadow of doubt that if she had been conceived a few years later, when abortion became legal, that she never would have seen life. How does that woman reconcile her view? Maybe she has a healthy dose of what was needed to finally see that it was not just her mother, but women in general, and she understands the injustice toward men especially when she remembers vividly the anguish she saw in her step father as her mother lied to him telling him she miscarried. Or the hurt on her own dad’s face as her mother raked him for many years after their divorce. How does she reconcile? What can she do? Where does she begin?
Any suggestions from anyone would be appreciated.
There generally isn’t much talk of sexbots and artificial wombs in the manosphere, it’s just in the radical fringe. My point was that it would have to take something like sexbots being mass marketed to shock people into realizing what they have lost. The sons of women would have to be engaging in this kind of sex for women to finally look in the mirror and see the human trash they have become; that they no longer hold men to any standard of behavior. Birth rates would have to plummet so much so that the only ones reproducing are gangbangers, sorta like what we have now. Only it has to get much worse, yet.
Jacquie – “May I take it a step further? Perhaps that woman knows beyond a shadow of doubt that if she had been conceived a few years later, when abortion became legal, that she never would have seen life. How does that woman reconcile her view?”
Jacquie,
I sure hope I’m wrong, but I get rather disconcerting feeling that you are referring to yourself?
If so, I have to admire your transformation that much more.
Personally, I have some good friends (since childhood, our parents were good friends), two brothers, whose mother became accidentally pregnant with another child – their youngest sister. As a Christian woman, she carried her daughter to term, but their relationship never seemed “right”. The daughter was even referred by her mother by a nickname which clearly indicated that she was an “accident”.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise that this girl grew up to have many psychological/emotional issues. Her older brothers have both become quite successful in life (although both, though happily married, have always expressed that they have no intention of ever having children – Gee, I wonder why that could be?).
Their sister struggled in school, and eventually dropped out of high school when she became pregnant. After a short lived marriage, and two sons of her own, she has struggled to make a life for herself and her sons (her brothers do provide quite a bit of assistance to her, and are quite involved uncles to their nephews).
Just this past weekend, my wife and I had dinner with one of her brothers and his wife, and I learned some very encouraging news. her oldest son had done so well in high school that he had graduated a year early and is attending the Colorado School Of Mines (perhaps not well known as school, but fairly elite, requiring a high standard for acceptance). And her younger son seems to following along the same path. Their mother, despite her own troubled upbring and youth, has always deeply loved her own children, and although she has never had much (financially), she has made the sacrifices necessary to ensure that they would have a chance at success in life.
After reading what you posted (whether it is about you personally, or not) I was struck by how much I had appreciated hearing about by friends (like her brothers, she too is my friend, even though I haven’t seen her in 2+ years) success story of turning life’s lemons in to lemonade – even if only vicariously through her sons.
@ slwerner
I am very sad to say that yes I am referring to myself. It is why this issue is so personal to me, why I get emotional at times even when I try not to. On a personal level I know that what I do in my marriage will make the most difference, as well as talking to women one on one, but I feel that there is more I should be doing. The loss of my dad last month made it more personal.
Thank you for sharing the story of your friends. I do know what it is like to be reminded continually that you weren’t really wanted, that you were an accident. I’m glad that even with her struggles she raised sons who are men of high achievement.
I’ve just spent far too much time in airports. In that parallel reality, the one set of books I noted were in great display everywhere were the three Shades of Grey series. Leaving aside the issue of pornography… why is a trilogy where a woman submits to the desires of her lover and master flying off the shelves?
Why is it that the more rational and sensible advice on marriage is about channelling male aggression and female lust? (Not the other way round). The entire idea of marriage 1.0 was to limit female options (to stop hypergamy) and limit men competing around women and instead using their aggression to protect their wife, their children and their tribe — in both battle and the field. Besides, farm work was physically hard and dangerous enough.
The consequence of the current situation is that many if not most of the young men who have great prospects are not out there dating. They are playing video games, card games — even rediscovering dungeons and dragons. They are sublimating their instincts, and using their energy to score — grades and places in competative courses. (And, looking at my kids, the average young woman is ignoring these young men, instead chasing the sportsman who will be head injured from his contact sports by the time he is 25).
Sexbot talk is shock talk. Women need to literally lift their game to be attractive… to the people they want to be with now — who are the very young men they blew off during their teenage years.
PS. Jacgster, son of a nursing student who got pregnant unexpectantly and lost her place in a course for it. Pre free access abortion. No question that she would have been encouraged to termninate now.
Yes it is emotional, but emotion does not win arguments.
TFH -“Of course, you are the one who brought it up, so those comments are in response to you, and the subject your started. Yet you say that the men let you down.”
Oh, reaaaaaally? Well, since I am apparently the one who brought it up here and triggered these comments, I’m sure you won’t mind showing me where I did so.
“i) Women never take responsibility for the situations they create.
ii) Women don’t understand cause and effect very well (note how you don’t see that YOU are the one who triggered others to mention the word ‘sexbot’).”
I never even mentioned the word sexbot on this site ever once prior to five minutes ago. Do I get to make insulting comments to you now since you clearly “don’t understand cause and effect very well”? I can’t be responsible for the fall out of comments that I NEVER EVEN MADE.
“I can’t be responsible for the fall out of comments that I NEVER EVEN MADE.”
Hah! try that line out as a married man.
@Sunshine
sorry, it’s a shitty day. Munson (a character around the manosphere) died. I’m taking laughs where I can get them (even inapropriately, sorry)
Ctrl+F’ing for the word “sexbot,” the first mention of it in this thread was a post by you, Mary, where you linked to the Thinking Housewife’s post on them. No one would have brought it up if you hadn’t linked to that post, something you yourself admitted was “off-topic” at June 26, 2012 at 9:35 pm. I have nothing against you, but it seems like you don’t even read your own comments.
SunshineMary, you wrote above that you want men honoured and women in their place. Here is your chance to “walk the talk”, by offering a respectful apology to the men here, in particular TFH.
Well, like I said I don’t have anything against Mary, but she did seem pretty foolish in that comment. I’ve haven’t been around much lately, and she seems new, so I’ll refrain from saying anything else about her.
That said, in reference to sexbots, I’m not really very religious, and I assume you aren’t either (or at least not Christian), if I recall correctly. Men like us naturally wouldn’t have a problem with them (or VR sex), but depending on how one interprets some of the injunctions in the New Testament, from a Christian point of view the technology is unpalatable. I’m not anti-religious, so if that’s the view of Mary (or Dalrock’s, or any of the other Christians here) I won’t lecture to them. Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks and all that…though it won’t stop me from getting my own sexbot if one comes out, lol.
I like SunshineMary. I just want to see if she is serious about treating men with respect.
My biggest issue here is that those sexbot comments that people were making were not related to the link I had posted. They were random comments on other threads, not related to me, my comment, or L-TTH’s post. So how is it that I precipitated those comments? At L-TTH’s site, I wrote that I had not seen sexbots discussed here at all, and yes, I do think that IS a good thing, since we are concerned with more serious topics here. I’m not yet convinced I’ve said anything for which I need to apologize. You’ll note that I have apologized to people here before when upon reflection I decided that I was in the wrong.
As for sexbots being competition for women…I’m assuming if they ever do exist, they will be made in both genders, so that competition will presumably cut both ways.
I have been trying to decide if I would sleep with Rachel, the replicant from Bladerunner. I think not. Deckard did, and he knew she was not a real woman. But some interpretations are that he was a replicant himself.
Et tu,David Collard?
That is exactly my point: society will have to degenerate to the point that either sex prefers sex with sexbots and not real humans. At that point, just maybe people will realize how much they have lost.
Do what you think is best, SunshineMary.
OK, DC, I trust you. Tell me slowly what I am supposed to apologize for. Seriously, I don’t get it, but I trust your opinion, and if you point out to me where I’m wrong, it will carry some weight.
@Just1X
“sorry, it’s a shitty day. Munson (a character around the manosphere) died. I’m taking laughs where I can get them (even inapropriately, sorry)”
Hi, no need to apologize, I laughed when I read your comment. 🙂
I’m sorry to hear about Munson; I didn’t know of him, but I hope his family is ok.
SunshineMary, thank you for your trust. If you feel you have done nothing wrong, forget about it. Seriously.
Dalrock
Would you mind deleting every comment of mine from this entire thread? The entire conversation that has sprung up around it is so insufferably annoying, it’s like a dog that’s been hit by a car but isn’t quite dead. Please, put this conversation out of its misery, I’m begging you!
Wait, I’ve figured out what I can honestly apologize for. I am really and truly sorry that I EVER made the original off-topic comment, I’m sorry that I then referred to the off-topic comment, and I’m sorry that anyone reading this has lost precious moments of their life that they will never get back in reading my pointless, off-topic comment.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa….
I’m going back into lurker mode now. Thanks for the fun! 🙂
iii) Women don’t want their words and deeds scrutinized, much less recorded.
I saw this talk on moms and abortions and it made me remember this story. I wonder how mom explains this http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/archives/anarosa.htm
A woman is capable of real horrible evil with the bizzarre ability to just imediately forget about it.
sunshinemary, my point wasn’t clear.
1. There are men in various places who go on about sexbots and artificial wombs.
2. Many of them are likely adolescents (some overage), perhaps oversaturated in science fiction, expressing frustration in a silly way.
3. Some of them are men who, for personal reasons, have decided that US women can not be trusted, can not be relied upon, to carry a child safely to term. These men seriously talk about using surrogate mothers in India to bear children for them, even if it costs tens of thousands of dollars.
Some women get worked up about this topic for various emotional reasons. However, I don’t believe any women I’ve read ever carried the above chain to point #3: that there are men, who due to personal experience, can no longer trust any American woman to actually perform the biological function of childbirth. There are not many of them. But there are some, and some are quite vocal. A question that doesn’t get asked much on women’s blogs is how a man could get that way…
Jacquie, I sincerely apologize for touching that nerve. I would have approached the topic very differently had I known. I do not know if it is any comfort, but some of my friends in college were the youngest in their family, and “surprises” to boot – in at least two cases, they proved to be the most responsible of all the children, the rock that others needed (including parents in one case). Therefore, they were clearly needed in this world, and therefore a good “surprise”.
We read about the effects of abortion upon the women who have them, but rarely to never read about the effects upon husbands, and I frankly cannot recall every reading any study of any sort having to do with the effects upon other children. Perhaps no one wants to study it, because they are afraid of what they will find.
@Chris
And, looking at my kids, the average young woman is ignoring these young men, instead chasing the sportsman who will be head injured from his contact sports by the time he is 25
Try this on for size:
Former flatmate is a very young Ph.D candidate. You’ve probably read about him. Got involved with a “so-called” traditional woman who gave sex on demand to pilots for free trips (that is a tradition, right?). I told him he was making a huge mistake to build a life with her. “But the sex is so GOOD!” is the response I get.
Fast forward some months, he has a child by her, hates his life and her mood-swings.
And apparently, I’m the one who has “a problem with women”.
Some people are really intelligent … but NOT wise at all.
@ AR
Please don’t feel the need to apologize, in a forum such as this no one knows what another has gone through.
You actually bring up a very valid point, what are the effects on husbands and children of the choices made by the selfishness of women. I wasn’t the youngest in the family, I was the oldest born to a party girl who married my dad two weeks before my birth. They divorced in three years and I witnessed my mother ride the carousel from that point until she married my step father ten years later.
I seriously would like to learn what I can do for my part. I know I cannot do much, I am only one person, and a female at that, but I am willing. Working on my relationship with my husband is first and foremost, setting the example for others to see what proper behavior is, and that the benefits of preserving the marriage even during the worst of times far outweigh the horrors of divorce. I talk to any and every woman I can where I see that their actions or thinking is wrong. I read everything I can, books and internet to learn about the issues (there is a lot out there). And I blog.
In fact you bring up some things I can write about that I hadn’t thought of, the effects of abortion on children and husbands. I can only go by my own experience and will never forget how my step dad collapsed to his knees when my mother told him she ‘lost’ the baby. I didn’t know yet at the time what she actually did and didn’t find out for several years, but I know how I felt when I did and my heart went out to my step dad more so after that. He still doesn’t know to this day. Also the effects on children who are raised by vindictive mothers who selfishly use their children to spite dads is another subject no one studies. It would just reveal the evil actions of women too much.
I still feel there must be something more I should do. I really would like any suggestions. Maybe something I haven’t yet touched on or discovered that I could be involved in. I just found AVFM that I need to read more about that looks active. Am I missing something or someplace else?
Malcolm X is approaching a building with three of his associates when a young white woman momentarily blocks his path and asks what she, as a white person, can do to help his cause. Malcolm tersely answers with one word — “Nothing” — and passes her by.
Reflect on that.
@slwerner
If women could simply control their hind-brains and learn to judge promiscuous men in the same way men (rightly) judge promiscuous women, then there wouldn’t be this supposed double standard.
+1
Also, considering that the high stats for illegitimate children would correlate to low usage of birth control…including condoms, therefore increasing risk for and spread of STDs…the argument could be made that, even on a purely biological basis, promiscuity decreases the attractiveness of both shitty locks and master keys.
hahaha
For what it’s worth, after he converted to Islam Mr. X ended up regretting that statement:
http://www.kevincassell.com/PERSON/CONVERSA/malcolm.html
Hurp still following me around. One out of context quote does not make a regret. Its nice that white supremacists like to puke out that quote all the time. Since white=right no matter what.
I’d make a very strange white supremacist, considering the fact that I’m not white. And the quotes (plural) aren’t “out of context,” X explicitly said “I regret that I told her she could do ‘nothing.” If you want Jacquie to reflect on the quote, you might do well to reflect on how the man’s feelings towards it changed over time.
Jacquie, your avatar doesn’t link to your blog.
I think your heart is in the right place. My advice:
Don’t get bored or offended and give up.
Be respectful here, and listen even to the harsher voices.
Be useful. If you want to help, remember it is not about you.
Appeal to men and women. Be critical of all women who deserve it, including smug religious women. Be critical of manginas and white knights.
Continue to work on your own marriage. Your husband comes first.
I know that since Hurp is is a troll shim will do whatever mental gymnastics required to convince itself of its correctness. The only things that matters to Hurp is that men, much like black people in America make themselves “humble” before women/whites. Invoking a single quote about ‘regret’ that somehow disproves everything that was said in the past by a great thinker is just another way of exerting its own particular brand of paternalism (maternalism?) on those they seek to troll.
Since X seems to be beyond your though process beyond what can be googled here is another advocate saying essentially the same thing:
“…First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Take your hood off.
Jacquie, a post at your blog on the abortion story, your own experience, could generate a lot of interest from women especially.
In general, the more you can knock your fellow women off their pedestal, the better.
The only things that matters to Hurp is that men, much like black people in America make themselves “humble” before women/whites.
You really need to work on your mind-reading skills. Your attempts to cast aspersions on my gender are also amusing. I might actually be offended if I hadn’t seen so many other male commenters (including actual MRAs) accused of being women in disguise.
Invoking a single quote about ‘regret’ that somehow disproves everything that was said in the past by a great thinker is just another way of exerting its own particular brand of paternalism (maternalism?) on those they seek to troll.
You might want to lose the sanctimony and the persecution complex, too. “Everything that was said in the past?” You’re right that Mr. X was a great thinker, but I hardly believe a single “nothing” counts as the great body of his early work. Now, of course, you’re a smart guy, and what you really want Jacquie to reflect on is the general hostility towards white people Malcolm X expressed early in his life, which is assumedly an analogue for the general hostility and rejection men in general and MRAs in particular should feel towards women. This is, ironically enough, not really an issue for me–while I obviously not as vocal as you are about it, I find the MGTOW lifestyle most suitable for me, personally. I do, however, object to your thoughtless and facile deployment of Malcolm’s words. If Jacquie–or anyone else–is to reflect on anything, they would do well to take into account not only a great thinker’s worldview at a certain point in time but also how it changed over time. How that is “paternalistic,” much less “maternalistic,” escapes me.
Nice quote from “letter from a Birmingham Jail,” though. I’m being quite sincere when I say that–not many people have more than a surface familiarity with Dr. King’s writing, despite his fame. But, of course, after expressing disappointment with the white moderates, King also wrote:
“I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality.”
Me? I wouldn’t put much money on many women becoming MRAs in either quality or quantity–though for reasons you’re probably familiar with, I wouldn’t say that’s quite a bad thing (in another stroke of irony, despite how much you insist I’m trolling you, I share more than a few of your reservations about Game and white nationalism in the ‘manosphere’). But if we’re going to be quoting great leaders, let’s do them the respect of putting their words in context–both in the immediate sense and in how their views changed over time.
I suppose you’ll call me a troll–though if I really was trolling you, I’d just lay out a bunch of ad-hominem attacks right from the start instead of talking about a historical figure I rather like. However, if Jacquie or any other commenter wants something to reflect on, here’s hoping they find my comment (and Mr. Collard’s as well) illuminating.
What always gets me (on the subject of Abortion) is how women can have their putative child aborted – and then still seek sympathy as a victim – ‘a difficult choice’ – ‘they had no choice’ – ‘the man didn’t want to know’ – ‘the man felt it wasn’t his responsibility’ – yady yada yada; and then a few years later it happens again and then again and then again, even as they crash into the menopause – and then someone says seeing said woman with someone else’s small child – “oh she is so good with children; what a pity she never had one”. 😦
On a personal level I grew up believing (as a very small child) that I had been acquired from Dr Barnardo’s – the Orphanage – I had merely misunderstood what my father had been implying to my mother. Of course had I been born a few years later…
The cold way women use abortion was one of the things that made me lose confidence in the general goodness of women. In manosphere language, it was one of my personal Red Pill realisations. It is one reason I have contempt for feminists and ignore their feeble bleats on morality.
@David Collard
A day or so ago I was reading that 80% of fiction is read by women and the explanation for this was given as being a woman’s greater empathy. Whatever the reason for the greater popularity of Fiction amongst women it most certainly cannot be cauised by greater empathy.
I think women can be wonderful. But only if they obey sound moral teachings derived from men. Confucius, Mohammed, Christ, whoever. Women are good, when safely under masculine authority. What women lack is moral imagination. They will hug a dolphin but abort a child. It is all surface impressions when women moralise. It is never abstract, only personal.
So, women have empathy, but it needs guidance.
Oh, my favorite topic, women and empathy as dysfunction. The quest for that superficial empathy David mentions will guide a women from one thing to another leading to overt contradictions and strained moral equivalencies.
Just yesterday a woman posted something about how she had zero problem with forbidding children sitting next to men on airlines, the very next thread, different topic, same women was talking about the gender of bosses at work, she said “I make no negative assumptions about either gender”
She is perfectly fine with those two opinions, because each one garnered “I know how you feel” [empathy] vibes from the sisters around her at that moment.
Empathologicalism
As TFH would say “that’s why them bitches shouldn’t be allowed to vote”
The cold way women use abortion was one of the things that made me lose confidence in the general goodness of women. In manosphere language, it was one of my personal Red Pill realisations. It is one reason I have contempt for feminists and ignore their feeble bleats on morality.
I had been thinking a lot about this after an acquaintance of mine wrote and article about her own abortion painting herself as some sort of feminist hero on Facebook (barf!).
I don’t know if any of you have had experience with animals I remember a friend of mine with a female dog that had puppies she was really protective of them but around a week after they were born she just decided to eat them. My friend explained to me that sometimes if the mother feels that the puppies are too weak she rather reabsorb her biological investment for a stronger group in the future and start all over again.
I was thinking on all the women that I sadly I know or heard that had aborted and I can’t remember a single one that was not “Alpha” chaser and slutty on some way and then I know a few women that were raped (one of them by her own father) or/and had almost life killing pregnancies that actually couldn’t just abort their kids in spite that must society would consider this a reasonable reason to abort and were fiercely against abortion, this women were in general terms very selective of their sexual partners.
I think there might be biological instincts at work on SOME women that makes them seek the need to try and start up again if the pregnancy doesn’t suit their needs and if they think they have a better biological chance of a stronger offspring, that would explain why even the feminist most verse on all types of birth control still wants abortion on demand, they still want the chance to trade up if they meet a better prospect at any point of their relationship. That would imply the selective woman knows she won’t back down of her pregnancy so she needs to make sure she is investing the best possible way.
In a book written by a feminist I remember she mentioned the bitch that drowned her five children and how she did this after she was considering a new man on her life, I think the woman that drown her two kids on a car and then pretended they were abducted also had a new man on her life that she was planning on pairing up again and then we have Casey Anthony… I recently learned that the mythical Jane Roe is now a pro-life advocate, but she repented of her position after she hit menopause.
So again I do wonder if there is some sort of imperative at work?
Is mostly and hypothesis now I will need to find statistics of abortion per age group and see how this women play the mother role to see if they actually are as good mothers as feminist claim they are with children they actually want and how do they react to hardships like the fathers leaving or dying and losing jobs and other opportunities out of being with their kids. I would also thing that even if there is an impulse there is probably ways to curve it socially, after all Romans didn’t had abortion but exposed their unwanted kids to the elements in a regular basis so they didn’t developed a connection because in their society babies were not considered humans, and almost every society on the past practiced infanticide so there most be a cultural element curbing some of this instincts, YMMV.
Anacaona
What you described in great detail is what being feral is all about. Imagine a young man in church being shamed into manning up and marrying one of those women. Enough to make a man be an MRA.
There’s really a simple answer to avoiding the slut label–don’t be one. Chastity isn’t some archaic notion. God’s commands exist to glorify Him and to protect us from ourselves.
It is wholly contradictory for a woman to attempt to circumvent man’s role and then complain that he isn’t “man enough.” God made separate genders in order to fulfill different roles in each others’ lives. It is hardly surprising, then, that masculine suitors avoid women who have forcefully adopted masculine traits and abandoned feminine ones.
Women who complain that men aren’t acting like men would do better to use all that whining time for a more productive activity; namely, taking a long look in the mirror and evaluating whether or not they are acting like women.
@Dalrock -Please keep in mind – no fault divorce which started in California.
Since the introduction of no fault – divorce rates have increased dramatically.
California has the worst reputation for men getting screwed by the California Court system ( I can personally attest to that).
States that have court systems that historically favor women over men (ie California) – I would suspect the divorce rate is much higher as compared to other states.
To suggest or present data is manipulating the stats.
Here is a well written abstract from Stanford that sheds some insight into the history of no fault divorce.
https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/RP1828.pdf
I wonder how the stats would stack up in a side-by-side comparison of no-fault-only, no-fault-with-separation, and fault-or-no-fault-option states.
On the flipside, I would also be very interested in evaluating stats that compare divorce rates between marriages entered into in states that require a premarital waiting period and those that do not.
I dont know if that is available/possible. It is impossible to go back – the study would have to have been in place with those parameters set and the population defined. It sure would be interesting if someone is conducting one.
Interesting observations – unilateral divorce laws increases divorce rates and the method of collecting reliable data has declined.
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@Jacquie,
I knew a woman exactly like this, the result of two college kids and bad protection. She was very liberal on almost all issues, but DEAD SET against abortion. Had her parents been in the same situation some years later, she’d have been offed. When I think of reasons to oppose abortion, her face comes to my mind: my world would have been emptier without her in it.
@greyghost
Interesting I never connected the definition of feral women with how it relates to attitudes about pregnancy but it fits the picture so well. But then if a woman that supports abortion on demand even if she declares she wouldn’t do it herself, should be considered a red flag? Pondering about it….
I don’t think our host has discussed this article, has he? http://www.russellmoore.com/2011/12/05/women-stop-submitting-to-men/ Anyone with a blog want to write a response?
Nvm, I just did a search and see that Empathologicalism has written something. http://empathological.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/women-stop-submitting/
Interesting observations – unilateral divorce laws increases divorce rates and the method of collecting reliable data has declined.
—————————————————-
I think you meant to say that the collection of data has declined.
I wonder though if even that is true. There are so many facts recorded about people daily, and digital record parsing isn’t rocket science as they say, sadly on matters of divorce its become RACKET science
“unilateral divorce laws increases divorce rates and the method of collecting reliable data has declined”
The method for collecting reliable data has always existed. It’s just not done because those doing the “research” don’t want what’s obviously true to be true, and that’s the the current divorce laws that were put in place with the good intentions, have created far more damage and carnage than the problem they were trying to solve ever did.
The cold way women use abortion was one of the things that made me lose confidence in the general goodness of women
Yes, feminists and others make a big fuss about being pro-choice. They say they are not pro-abortion. But being pro-choice is really being pro-abortion at least some of the time. Who can not see the evil?
Furthermore, it is easy to see why anti-abortion types believe strongly in their principle. It is truly baffling to see the pro-choice type equally as fervent. It makes them look silly to say the least.
Here is a conservative take on the situation
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/07/01/liberals-need-to-stop-lying-about-divorce/
But are they lying?
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Dalrock,
Will you please take down my [redacted] posts (including this one and those on the marriage post), greenlander’s 6/26 5:58am post with my profile, and P Ray’s 6/27 1:10am post? Scrutinize my personal life if you will, but those reflect poorly on my professional life. And since, as has been pointed out here, that just might be all I have going for me from here on out, I would greatly appreciate it if you would be so kind as to remove them.
Apologies to all.
[D: This is a very unusual request, but I don’t have any desire to have our discussions impact your professional life. I’ll leave your comments but remove the reference to your blog and your linked in identity. So long as you don’t continue participating here this should then just go away over time.]
That was good of you old man.
It’s sufficient enough to help preserve her anonymity,which she should have done herself to begin with.
As for taking down all her posts,that’s a lot like the kid who takes the marbles and runs home in a huff.
It seems the having the “narrative” being challenged is too much for some.
Personally I enjoy it when folks challenge my viewpoints,as sometimes I can learn from that.
Ah well,that’s how good judgement is (supposed to be) formed,by making mistakes and then not repeating them.
Part of the reason I remain anonymous
is that I’ve never set myself up as an authoritah on any subject.
Makes it easier to be corrected,with that ego out of the way!
Opus says:
Krummhorn males tended to marry women slightly younger than the average age at which women married. What was happening was this: Women were holding out for the local landowner’s son – their Mr D’Arcy – but many were inevitably unlucky for the local D’Arcy wants the prettiest woman (and prettier women tend to be younger).
Even that does not with certainty follow from just that age fact. It could be that the Mr. D’Arcy types wait until they find a suitable woman to marry. It’s bound to be a young one, because the older ones were already considered and rejected. The women could know they were rejected, but there’s another Mr. D’Arcy coming out on the market, so there’s still hope (or it takes them some time to find a husband after they are rejected).
Höllenhund says:
Women used to be able to dangle the carrot effectively because they knew how to demonstrate mating value. They largely have no idea how to do that today.
Instead what we get is women saying that Thomas Jefferson was beastly, because he wanted his daughter to learn French, music, and drawing.
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sunshinemary says:
June 29, 2012 at 7:47 pm
“As for sexbots being competition for women…I’m assuming if they ever do exist, they will be made in both genders, so that competition will presumably cut both ways.”
Nah. The demand for sexbots from each gender will never be comparable.
Consider what each sex wants from a partner: men seek children and pleasant, low-BS sex of the type and frequency they need. Women? They tend to want children (commonly as a means to a financial end, impossible from a bot), status, money, and (ONLY in the case of alphas) hot submissive sex. Ever see the movie with Melanie Griffith about a bot, “Cherry2000”? Women would IMO find bots just expensive mannequins, suitable mainly for placing in the front passenger seat of their car, so they can get away with riding in the HOV lane.
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