Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, November 25, 2008 2:27:53 PM
This introduction slightly tongue-in-cheek. But only slightly.
As families gather for the Thanksgiving holiday and meal, there will be men - there as the son, the grandson, the brother, the uncle, the cousin, the nephew, or whatever - who will be asked one or more of the following questions:
"When are you going to get married?" This is usually asked of a guy who has a steady girlfriend, whether or not she is there. It is especially painful when the steady girlfriend is present, and often that is the intention.
"When are you going to settle down and get married?" This is a variation of the first question, usually asked of men who do not have a steady girlfriend or at least do not have her there. It falsely implies that a man can't be settled down without marriage.
"When are you going to have children?" This is usually asked of married couples.
"Why can’t you find a nice girl and get married?"
"If I give you this girl's number, will you ask her out?" There are many variations on this. Sometimes, the girl in question is actually present and can hear the question. It may be as open-ended as "Brittany, I like your sweater. Isn't that a nice sweater, Joe?"
What’s more, these questions are often asked in front of - or even by - others at the table who are unhappily married, going through a divorce, or divorced (remarried or not) and still showing the wounds. Or are dealing with children who have brought shame and dishonor to the family while costing untold sums of money. In some cases, the questioner is enjoying a long and happy marriage, but because the questioner married in the early sixties or before and soon raised kids, he or she has no idea what the culture really is like these days in regards to these things.
The men who are subjected to these questions may be dreading them intensely knowing they are coming ahead of time, or they may not have anticipated the questions and just find them a minor annoyance. Some of the former will be nursing wounds from previous relationships.
And how should these men respond? It wouldn’t exactly be polite to say, "Gee, I just haven’t found the right woman to get arrested for after a domestic dispute, like Greg here was after Jane started throwing things at him. Oh, and I'm so eager to hand over my house and have to pay half of my future earnings to an ice block of a woman who badmouths me to anyone who will listen, like Susie here does of her ex whenever she opens her mouth. And I really don't want to have kids I'll pay for but never get to see, like John over here."
Now, we conservatives tend to idealize and promote marriage, but we are not immune to martial problems, as evidenced even in some of our icons who have been divorced, sometimes two or three times.
The culture has changed. Many men see that parenting is more difficult in a culture where media is everywhere and so many people work to subvert or interfere in parental authority. Many men see that when it comes to dealing with women socially, the jerks are rewarded and there are fewer rewards and more risks and pitfalls for loyal, moral men of integrity. So much of the culture does not lend itself to lasting marriages.
With that in mind, I want to take a look at the latest from Kay S. Hymowitz, a contributing editor of City Journal and the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. (PLEASE NOTE: There is crude and explicit language at that link as she quotes others.) She wrote this in response to the fallout she encountered from an earlier piece about "child men", which I analyzed here.
She doesn’t get too far into her piece before she goes astray. But she does get a lot right in the rest of the piece.
Their argument, in effect, was that the SYM is putting off traditional markers of adulthood - one wife, two kids, three bathrooms - not because he’s immature but because he’s angry.
I disagree that a wife, kids, and a house are traditional markers of adulthood for men. Everyone knows some (straight) man in the family or neighborhood who has never been a husband of father who is nonetheless a responsible adult. Are we to believe priests in the Roman Catholic Church are immature or otherwise not behaving like adults? Traditional markers of adulthood may include (for men, barring a disability severe enough to prevent these things) financial and emotional self-sufficiency. These are men who pay their bills and choose and make their own friends or buddies, apart from their family of origin. They have a good handle on their lives.
In fact, a wife, kids, and a house may all be signs that a man was immature, not mature. It doesn't take maturity to get married. It doesn’t take maturity to knock a girl up. It doesn’t take maturity to "buy" a home one can't afford – which is what so many people did in recent years with perilous results. It is immature to marry strictly to avoid being alone. It is immature to marry the wrong woman because of desperation or a lack of clarity or because she nagged you into it. It is immature to conceive children when unprepared to deal with them.
Are some men angry? Absolutely. Many of them have been denied fathers, in part or in whole because of the poor choices of their mother. We are mocked as a gender in the media to an extent long since stopped when it comes to women. Our media, educational system, workplaces, courtrooms, and churches are largely geared towards female sensitivities and tendencies while suppressing or disparaging male tendencies.
Some are angry because they like their lives and are living responsibility, yet are being told they aren't mature men unless they marry, have kids, and buy a house.
Some aren't angry at all, other than angry at a mischaracterization of them.
He's angry because he thinks that young women are dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling, and gold-digging.
Many are. Not all. And they are rewarded. And still - some men aren't angry at this. They take advantage of it.
He's angry because he thinks that the culture disses all things male.
Largely, it does.
He’s angry because he thinks that marriage these days is a raw deal for men.
State-licensed marriage, in a lot of places, guarantees only two things: 1) The spouse who earns more (usually the man, as most women refuse to marry a man who earns less than they do, or to be the breadwinner once married) will pay the other spouse money in the event of a divorce, sometimes for life. 2) Any children born to the wife will be assumed to be the husband's, especially for the sake of child support, even if she was having an affair. Marriage does not guarantee fidelity or upholding any of the vows made at the wedding. Husbands are still expected to be the breadwinners, but it is "sexist" to expect wives to do most of the interior housework or be available for lovemaking. Given the social climate, how is that not a raw deal for men?
Now, I am married. Happily so. But I knew full well I was gambling. I believe I improved my odds of being happily married and remaining married by the preparations I took, including being very choosy about who I married. I do not believe my wife is ordinary. I wouldn't have married the typical woman of today, and I don’t advise that other men do so. I advise they marry an extraordinary woman, or remain unmarried.
You can find the same themes posted throughout websites like AmericanWomenSuck, NoMarriage, MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), and Eternal Bachelor ("Give modern women the husband they deserve. None").
Yes, there is a modern men's movement going on. It is by no means monolithic. Some of it is motivated primarily by hedonism, some of it is motivated by Biblical principles or other traditions. All are a response to feminism gone wild. You can hear it on the radio with personalities as diverse as Tom Leykis, an atheistic hedonist who revels in the "liberation" of women to fornicate while avoiding committing to them or spending money on them, and Dr. Laura, married mother of a young man who promotes traditional values and exposes and fights back against the biases imposed against boys and men, encouraging wives to (gasp!) care about the needs of their husbands. See my link in the right column to Glenn Sacks.
SYMs of the postfeminist era are moving around in a Babel of miscues, cross-purposes, and half-conscious, contradictory female expectations that are alternately proudly egalitarian and coyly traditional.
Translation: A lot of women are sleeping around (because they are "equal" to men), but they still expect men to pay for everything (because that is tradition).
Never before have men wooed women who are, at least theoretically, their equals—socially, professionally, and sexually.
But often there isn’t equality. As I said, women still choose men who earn more than they do. Women will tell a court they weren't competent when they signed a pre-nuptial agreement, despite being an adult with her own lawyer when she did so. Also, women get pregnant and men don't. Women can, and do, lie about paternity. Men can't do that. Women live longer than men.
The woman may be hoping for a hookup, but she may also be looking for a husband, a co-parent, a sperm donor, a relationship, a threesome, or a temporary place to live. She may want one thing in November and another by Christmas.
Which is why some men are taking steps to make sure that they get what they want, whether or not the woman gets what she wants. If a man just wants casual fornication, there are ways to get that without a lot of time, money, or effort, and without allowing anything more to develop. If a man is looking for a good wife and someone to be the mother of his ten children, there are fewer women out there who have the right character, because society doesn't teach them to have that character.
In her interviews with 100 unmarried, college-educated young men and women, Jillian Straus, author of Unhooked Generation, discovered that a lot of women had "personal scripts" - explicit ideas about how a guy should act, such as walking his date home or helping her on with her coat.
What’s worse, if he doesn’t follow the script, she will try to make him follow the script, instead of moving on to the next guy. Or, a woman might pretend he's following the script, even to the point of marrying him before she gets disillusioned. Some women care more about their wedding than the marriage that follows. Hey, if it doesn’t work out, she gets some lovely parting gifts.
Not only have they become understandably wary of till-death-do-us-part promises; they frequently suspect that women are highway robbers out to relieve men of their earnings, children, and deepest affections.
All too many women are willing to show this to be true. Not only are they more likely to get alimony, but they are much more likely to file for divorce. Those two facts are probably not mere coincidence.
As the disenchanted SYM sees it, then, resistance to settling down is a rational response to a dating environment designed and ruled by women with only their own interests in mind.
Bingo. But again, "settling down" isn’t the right phrase.
At the same time, evolutionary theory gives the former wuss permission to pursue massive amounts of sex with an endless assortment of women.
Many women reinforce this by rewarding bad boys with no-strings-attached fornication.
Forty years after they threw off the feminine mystique, women continue to prefer bigger, stronger, richer men, at least as husbands. They almost always marry men who are taller than they are, men who are several years older than they are (though the age difference has declined in recent decades), and men who earn more than they do (though that number, too, has declined a bit). Most of the women interviewed by Jillian Straus say that they’re looking for a man who can be the primary breadwinner.
By the time these women are looking to get married, they are in their thirties, and guess what? There's another generation of eighteen to twenty-five-year-old women willing to fornicate with the guys in their thirties and forties, whether or not those women are hoping it turns into more. And if she does hope it turns into more and starts to make that clear, the male can simply move on to the other willing sex partners.
She points out that all of the Pick Up Artist stuff aside, most men will get married and have kids.
And if the past is any guide, most of them, even the most masterly PUAs, will eventually find themselves coaching Little League on weekends.
For some of those guys, it is after they tire of getting their fill of fornication. Others end up that way because they got lazy or careless and lost sight of what they wanted. If you thought those guys were bitter SYMs, how much worse is the bitterness when they wake up one day with a lot obligations and little time or money for what they want, and realize they are living a life they didn't really want? Most of them will change their mind if their wife is a rare gem, and end up enjoying being husbands and fathers. But if his wife has turned into - or revealed herself to be - a frigid, berating nag who is unconcerned with his needs, that's a prescription for affairs, divorce, or worse.
However, it's also a good guess that a significant minority of SYMs are the sort you wouldn’t wish on your friends and relatives.
Right. Which is why we should let them be and not try to browbeat them or trap them into marriage.
The fact is, women have the power in relationships. Some willingly choose to yield or at least share that power in a beautiful and reassuring way. Others cling to it, wielding it with stinging fierceness and seemingly arbitrary demands which can't all be met. The latter are best dealt with by not getting into relationships with them. Unfortunately, the latter often don't reveal themselves as such until it is too late for the man to avoid serious consequences.
If women start using their power again to entice men to become married fathers with abundant integrity, then you'll see fewer marriage strikers, cads or not. However, there will always be some men who are better off not getting married.
I was alerted to this article by the Biblical Manhood blog, who found it via the Elusive Wapiti.