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More Monogamy Musings

Posted by Playful Walrus on Tuesday, December 08, 2009 5:16:49 PM
The Los Angeles Times ran a blowback piece by Sharon M. Scott, responding to David P. Barash's take on monogamy. My analysis is over at The Opine Editorials.
But I agree that children are better off being raised by a mother and father who are monogamous with each other. (By the way - if they aren't haven't sex with each other, that's not monogamy.) Monogamy reduces the possibilities of conflicts of interests between the parents and between parent and child, keeps loyalties and resources within the family, avoids paternity fraud and "illegitimate" half-siblings causing situational instability, and avoids STIs. It promotes bonding between the parents and keeps the parents focused on each other and in-tune with each other.
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Revisiting the Alleged Child-Man

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.
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More Responsibilities of Men

Posted by Playful Walrus on Friday, May 16, 2008 11:36:30 AM
In response to this column by John Hawkins, here is my response...
 
I mostly agree, but I have hard time with this "men should always pay for dates" thing.  This carries over a tradition that had a reason behind it - back when this became tradition, women usually didn't earn income outside of the home.  They lived in their father or brother's or uncle's house until they married, maybe helping out with the family business but certainly expected to help with the clearning, cooking, and raising of children (perhaps their own younger siblings).

Women now make up the majority on the college campus.  They have equal access to the workplace.  They can earn income, head households, own property, buy and sell, save, invest, and insure (and file for divorce, and more often do!).  They can live a very full life without a man.  Indeed, what have we heard?  Women want to be independent and don't need men.  They want to be respected as equals.

Well how can you be equal if you don't pay your share for the date?  Why should my son spend money entertaining and feeding a woman that, chances are, he will not marry?  He should be saving that money for his future.  When my father takes me out to lunch, he always insists on paying.  We do not have an equality between us, and I admit and accept that.

I have heard that a man pays for a date because he is paying for a woman's time.  Excuse me?  Why is her time more valuable than his?  If a man is paying for a woman's time, it should mean that she is his doctor, lawyer, accountant, counselor (or some other "employee").

Another thing a real man should know how to do is distinguish betweem marriage-and-family minded women and other kinds of women, like ones who will gladly let him pay for dinner and a play, then will leave him at her door, wait until he is gone, and then call over a bad boy for a booty call.

Men should not be fools - paying the way for women who will only marry him if she is done fornicating with a host of "jerks" and is bored of sex, looking for someone to marry as a means to pay off her debts and perhaps as a sperm donor.

 
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Toxic Bachelors: Mostly a Result of Toxic Women

Posted by Playful Walrus on Thursday, March 29, 2007 12:41:06 PM
I recently came across the term "toxic bachelor."

Women, instead of complaining about toxic bachelors, how about taking these steps to attack the culture that promotes “toxic” behavior in bachelors?

Save sex for marriage.  Yes, some men will marry you even if you give them easy sex with little or no commitment involved.  Other men, though, the ones you call toxic, realizing they can keep getting easy sex either from you or other women, will not bother with the obligations and expectations that come with marriage.  Apply this to all men, not just men you intend to marry - otherwise the message to the “good” men is that they have to wait for what other men got “rewarded” with more quickly, and on top of that, they get someone who has been around the block.  Most of the “toxic bachelors” are toxic because they see women reward jerks with easy sex and few demands.  You may also want to…

Encourage other women to also save sex for marriage.

Don’t Conceive and Birth Children Out of Wedlock.  See above.  As good as they may be with children, most men would rather not to commit to a woman if it means having to take on the responsibility of some other man’s child, and quite likely continuing to be on the hook for that child even if you leave him.  Also, discourage your friends from conceiving children out of wedlock in an attempt to "trap" a man.

Conversely, Make Love to Your Husband.  No normal, healthy man wants to marry a woman who will then reveal that she is tired of sex, or that she no longer has the time or energy for it, or doesn’t feel like it, or is unenthusiastic about it and acts like she is doing him a favor.  If you feel this way, you shouldn’t be getting married.

Related to the above, Keep Yourself in Shape and Feminine.  Appearance matters to just about any sighted man.  Immediately butching up, getting frumpy, and gaining weight after you get married tells a man that you don’t respect him and don’t care about his feelings or his needs.  Growing older is not a choice, but letting yourself go is.  Bachelors notice this kind of thing and it encourages some of them be “toxic.”  Don't bother to say "it is what is inside that counts."  If that was true, you'd be fine with the man quitting his good-paying job right after to married him so he could spend more time on his hobbies.  This is important to men.

Encourage a Prenup.  You buy insurance for all kinds of things you hope never happen.  Why should you let some judge who doesn’t know you apply one-size-fits-all laws to your situation should the marriage end?  Most of the time, this leaves men on the short end of the stick, and thus hesitant to marry.  A prenup can protect both of you and reassures him that you don’t see him as your free meal ticket.  You already have a prenup (the laws) – you might as well have one with which you both had some direct input.

Stay Out of Debt.  Aside from buying a home or a car that isn’t beyond your means, you should eliminate debts and stay out of debt.  Men don’t want to marry a woman who has been living high on the hog and then have to be the one who ends up paying for all of the fun she had before she met him.  Don’t bother to defend yourself by saying “hey, it’s only money” unless you would marry a man who made less money than you.

Accept Traditional Roles.  Why should a man marry a woman who will not be home when he gets there, will not raise his children, will not make sure the home is in order, and will not make sure he has a hot meal waiting for him when he comes home?  If you must pursue a career that takes you away from taking care of your husband and kids, at least agree to have him become the caretaker.

Don’t Be Toxic - Accept a Man As-Is, or Move On.  Toxic women pressure a man into commitment and then nag him about his flaws, which she knew about from the start.  Toxic women are attracted to a man because of his job (or at least his earning ability/potential) and then want him to spend less time and energy on work.  Toxic women try to separate a man from his friends and family.  Toxic women are insecure and jealous.  Toxic women disrespect men and destroy intimacy by sharing what should be between the two of them with her friends and family.  Toxic women think they can change men.  Toxic women encourage men to be toxic bachelors.

So, is all of this too much to abide by?  Still going to sleep around, buy things you can’t afford, and have kids out of wedlock?  Still going to disrespect men?  Still going to give ultimatums?  Still going to encourage your girlfriends to divorce their husbands and take him for everything they can?  Then stop complaining about toxic bachelors.  Most of them are just responding to the way things are, because women are the ones who truly set the culture of relationships.  There would be a lot fewer toxic bachelors if there was no reward in being one.

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