U Not Gonna Like This

I have decided to repost comments from one of the regular visitors to MarkyMark's blog (link) a visitor by the name of Ruddyturnstone. He is commenting about a repost of Mirror of the Soul's (link) "The Men Have Left The Buliding" (link):

ruddyturnstone said...

Yep. Men have left the building. More and more of them are figuring out, at a younger and younger age, that, without a wife or cohabiting GF and/or kids to support, they can live happy, healthy productive lives. And can do it without killing themselves at a job they don't like.

Under the old regime, marriage was still probably a better deal for women than it was for men. But it did offer men some benefits, enough to make the cost/benefit case for it at least pluasible. Men got regular access to sex, and, at the beginning, at least, sex with an attractive, young, virginal (or nearly so) woman. Men got hot, home cooked meals.

Clothes washed. House cleaned. Emotional support. Status as head of the household. Children to bond with securely. And so on. Sure, men had to give up their sexual freedom. They had to be the breadwinners.

They had to do all of the "outside" work (cutting the grass, maintaining the car, etc.). They had to be "the strong one." But there was some notion of balance.

Now?

In marriage, men still have to, in 9 times out of 10, be the real breadwinners. But because the wife has some bullshit "job" that pays less than half of what he makes and probably costs more (in clothes, shoes, transportation, etc) than it is worth, he is now expected to do "his half" of the cooking, cleaning, clotheswashing, etc. And still do all of the "outside" work too. He is no longer the head of the household (but he still has to be "the strong one" emotionally).

No, now they are "equal partners," which, in practice, means he does what she says or she cuts off the sex. Married women used to have to have a reason for not having sex with their husband. That's what all those old jokes about wives' "headaches" were about. Now, wives feel they have every right to refuse their husband sex, with no reason at all necessary.

And women have no problem refusing their husbaned emotional support, although they demand even more of if from them than ever. Men do have stronger relationships with their children now. And that's a good thing. But, that relationship depends entirely on the woman not divorcing him.

And that takes us to the divorce issue. Back in the day, divorce was akin to social death. Now, it is no big deal. Women divorce their husbands for any old reason or none at all. But still get the house and car that his wages bought, plus a "settlement," alimony, attorney's fees, and so on. And she gets the kids too.

If he's lucky, he'll get to keep some fragment of his relationship with them. And, of course, the honor of paying Child Support until they graduate from college, if not even longer.

The only upside for men in all of this is that marriage is no longer required of them. Time was, a single man was considered to be kind of a joke. Even now, the feminists (for all of their fake claims about women not needing men) try to belittle single men ("Peter Pan," "mama's boy," "can't get (or can't handle) a liberated modern woman," etc.).

But companies and other employers no longer care if a man is single, married or divorced. Or has kids or not. And that opens the door to let men out of the building. Men don't need to work themselves to death to support a family.

A single man can live incredibly cheaply, if he so desires. For all the talk about women being more "spiritual" and men needing their "toys," the truth is that many single guys are happy living in a one room apartment, or with their parents, or out of a van or RV.

Single guys have no problem living in a closet sized bedroom with 2 or 3 other guys, splitting fixed costs and thereby driving them way down. It's women who "need" to live in stand alone house. It's women who "need" new furniture all the time.

Who "heed" to have a perfectly fine kitchen or bathroom remodeled. Not men.

And, without so many material needs, a man is free to work as much or as little (almost) as he likes. A single man can tell a boss to go eff (screw) himself. He can take the summer off and go surfing. Or work for a couple of years, save up some dough and then follow his dream to go to Alaska or Asia or make a movie or work on an invention or whatever. He doesn't need to go college or grad school to get the credentials needed to get the steady job that pays the big bucks necessary to support a women and children.

All along, the system had been set up to cater to women. It is mostly women who have the stronger desire to reproduce. Men have only the stronger desire to have sex. Society's interests are more or less the same as women's. For a society to flourish, men have to do the work to support women and children. That gets the work done, and it ensures the perpetuation of the society.

But women wrecked this system in the name of their own, "spurious" freedom. Sure, womena are now "free" to be sexually promiscuous and to live by themselves and to have careers. But, in reality, this is not what most women want, not in the long run anyway. They WANT to be wives and SAHMS. But now they can't, because the deal has been made too one sided. A married woman now has it made. She has all the upsides that her mother or grandmother had, and none of the downsides.

Only problem is, a married man now has a totally shit deal: all of the downsides his father or grandfather had, and none of the upsides. So, men are eshewing marriage. And when the law equates co habitation with marriage, men eschew that too.

Thus, if one only looks around, one sees ever more desperate attempts on the part of women to get married. Books, magazines, TV shows, movies, aimed at women, are all about how to "hook" a man. Or are BS meant to reassure them that there are plenty of men "out there" who want to marry them. Anything produced by women and aimed at men is nothing but propaganda telling them that they "should" marry. They won't be happy unless they do.

They won't "really" be a man (although, as liberated persons, it is somehow perfectly OK for a woman to "choose" to be single) unless they marry. If they don't marry, they are immature, or weak, or cowardly, or selfish, or chauvanists, or it must be because they "can't" get a woman, or are gay, and so on.

But men are no longer listening. They have left the building and are going their own way. If women, and the society they now run, want them back, they are going to have change their behavior and the legal and societal norms they have promulgated.

If not, the whole thing might just go down the chute, and they will be the ones to blame. As for dalrock and whoever else doubts it, all of the statistics show that a greater percentage of adult women are now "unmarried," (single, divorce, widowed) than ever before. Or at least since reliable statistics have been kept.

This is true in the US and the UK, and I suspect, throughout the Western world. Historically, it was a bit of an anomaly that such a large percentage of men and women were married as were in the halcyon days of British, American, and Western societies generally. When those societies were at their strongest and most successful, marriage was the norm for men and women of all social classes except the very poorest.

And for all races even in heterogeneous societies like the US (including African Americans).

Marriage, with SAHMs, was the ideal. The US and the UK boasted that even blue collar, lower middle class families consisted of wage earning men, children, and women who stayed at home and watched them and kept house.

This was the high water mark of modern, Western society.


Not some ahistorical, timeless norm that will automatically replicate itself indefinitely if the behavioral, social and legal infrastructure to support it is withdrawn. As it has been withdrawn now.....

08 November, 2010 08:39

also in the comments section:

ronaldglassford said...

Great posts all. Ruddyturnstone, your assessments are really on the money.

Excellent summary of the reasons why marriage has lost its luster for contemporary men. At least the "old regime" flawed as it was, provided some stability and security for men...now, it seems to offer nothing of value at all.

As a friend of mind, describing another institution, stated, "They're offering a product that nobody wants"...not men, anyway.

I saw the tendency in our family when I was very young. Once the men married, you did not see them for 30 years. They were soon ground down into earning machines, supposedly "excited" by trips to the mall and the installation of new countertops. No wonder they fled to fantasy magazines, sports and drinking as the only escape from their mental incarceration.

The stifling of the creative spirit in men through the marital system is obvious to anyone who looks with an objective eye. Of course, we have been conditioned to think otherwise.

Esther Vilar outlined the whole problem in the 70s...men want to belong to something greater than themselves...the old system provided this. Now, you will be deserted and given the bill anyway.

This is such a massive disconnect that it has to lead to a major shift. As your post shows, it is already in evidence, yet our media and popular culture refuses to admit to it.

PS: Ruddy's post was broken into 4 parts since blogger no longer allows for long comments. I combined them all into this one post.