You can either watch the video or read the the transcript below [YOUTUBE]rlvMAS_20K4[/YOUTUBE] http://owningyourshit.blogspot.com/2012/03/transcript-of-men-not-marrying-how-deep.html Okay, so an online friend of mine was spitting mad after reading this recent effort on the part of I can only assume to be a traditionalist woman, in trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with men these days. As so many traditionalists and feminists before her, she missed the mark by a freaking mile, even though she did dance dangerously close (within 100 miles or so) of a few of the core issues that currently discourage men from being good little married drones like they're supposed to be, dammit. Despite being critical of feminist attitudes that she rightly sees as anti-male, the article was absurdly gynocentric. It was very much about what women want, and there was a lot of expectation that men *should* do what women want when they want it--that is, get married and have babies on HER schedule as decided by her. One has to wonder if she even bothered to ask any actual unmarried males WHY they are refusing or not bothering to "man up" before writing her article. But as I said, it did at least poke at the surface of the festering boil that is the systemic nature of "the problem", even if it didn't give it the lancing it truly deserved. Her conclusion was "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? And why get a good job when women are so independent they can just give the milk away for nothing?" Both are backhanded criticisms of women's behavior (yay, for someone brave enough to blame women for their own troubles), but they fall far short of any sort of true examination of the issues. So I'm going to give it the old college try, and give a bit of an overview of what I believe has become a multifaceted problem. A recent examination from Heartiste said a very great deal, and with some serious literary flair (pearls of wisdom from that pit of social nihilism that is the pick-up artist community). I'm just going to quote some of the relevant bits and leave a link to the article below: If you want to know why men are running away from marriage, children and beta provisioning, one major reason is that the women available to these working class men are flat out disgusting. Take a look for yourself. What man of normal mental health and active libido wants to romantically woo and date, let alone marry, a beastly, waddling tatted mountain of pustulence with the issue of three other men barking and nipping at her cankles? And let’s not forget that economically empowered and government-assisted women, slaves to their hypergamous impulse for higher status mates than themselves, can’t help but winnow the pool of men deemed acceptable marriage material. When women say “there are no good men left”, what the astute observer hears is “there are no good men left thanks to a combination of my increased expectations and decreased attractiveness.” He goes on to say: to the factory-farmed ivory tower sociologists studying marriage trends and turning out paper after paper of half-assed hogwash: there’s a whole other world out there. It’s the world of men, and in that world, men’s desires matter. You should think about incorporating that ugly reality into your theories. Hey, Heartiste--why don't you tell us how you really feel. As blistering as that little snippet was, it raises some very important points, I think the most important of which is that MEN'S DESIRES MATTER. When men cannot find women THEY desire who are willing to partner with them, why would they partner? And I think it's important to note that the reality of divorce and family law in our culture plays a HUGE part in men's growing contempt for marriage as an institution. It's not that men are commitment-phobes. It's that women seem increasingly commitment-incompatible. The word "commitment" has in fact, in female parlance, come to mean, "up until the moment I'm no longer 100% satisfied with the person I married". And that attitude is only going to lead to more and more divorces as more and more successful women effectively set their sights higher than they reasonably should while their youth and attractiveness wanes, leading to a growing number of them feeling like they settled even if they didn't--even if they scored someone 2 points above them on the overall attractiveness scale. And oddly enough, no one, least of all women, seem to really give a shit what MEN desire in a partner. Why can't men just be happy with what's available? Well, let's look at what's available to the *average* man in his 30s: a 35 year old woman who hollers yes over the jangling of her biological clock while unable to keep the grimace from her face because he's a bigger loser than the 5 guys she dumped in her 20s and now she has to settle, a divorcee who's already financially annihilated and emotionally crippled at least one man, and a single mother who's collecting reams of child support from one poor schmuck while her other baby daddy manages to duck his obligations because he's a drug dealer and his income's off the books. And yes, I'm exaggerating, but you see my point. And no, not all women are like that. But frankly, the consensus among today's women seems to be that this state of affairs is the new normal, and even responsible women will often frame such destructive choices on the part of other women as somehow valid and defensible. The sentiment in the mainstream is that men should just man up and go along with Pairing Up 2.0: Who Cares What Men Want?, that essentially, a given woman's behavior and life choices should have no effect on whether she is able to attract a good, reliable man...this does not speak well of the principles of even those women who are more well-situated. In fact, I think it's safe to say that the fewer female voices of reason there are out there the more men are likely to wash their hands of the entire idea of partnering. But I honestly think it goes deeper than even the baggage the average unattached woman now carries, or the danger of ending up an emotionally and financially devastated statistic with "generous" every-other-weekend access to one's children that is keeping men from "manning up". I've been thinking of the White Feather Girls. For those who don't know, it was a group of young women in the UK during WWI who bestowed a white feather of cowardice on any man they saw in civilian clothes, to shame them into enlisting. And when I consider how vulnerable so many men were to those kinds of shaming tactics, vulnerable enough to enlist in a war that killed 10 million to preserve their manhood in the eyes of women they'd never met, I simply can't believe that it's only the risks of marriage, as onerous as they are, that have rendered men impervious to the kinds of shaming tactics employed by traditionalists and feminists who seem increasingly desperate to strong-arm men into their old roles. I think at the very core of it, it's about a positive male identity. Male identity almost always revolves around doing, rather than being. Most of that doing has always revolved around being of use in a uniquely male context. Most of men's usefulness through history has derived from learning "male" skills and performing them well, embodying a male role in the service of women or society. In the more turbulent past, those roles needed to perform a valuable service to women or the community that women could not--or should not be expected to--perform for themselves. This is the most common path to a positive male identity BECAUSE MEN LACK A MECHANISM FOR AUTOMATIC OWN-GROUP PREFERENCE. Simply put, they do not relate to other men automatically, just because they're men. Women have this bias, which provides them a natural ability to form cooperatives, relate to other women, and seek consensus though their strong mechanism for own-group preference based on gender alone. Given their gender roles through most of human history, this mechanism makes sense. Their individual value as, to put it bluntly, breeders, meant that in a survivalist environment, you didn't throw a woman on the trash pile without a pressing reason. Adjustments were made when possible to keep as many women as you could within the sisterhood. This is where you find a ton of attention in female spaces given to things like "tone" and "being nice" and "getting along" even when there are disagreements. It's all about comfort level and feelings of acceptance. Men, however, lack the hardwiring to form a preference for maleness based merely on maleness. And that only makes sense when you think about men's roles for the last couple million years or so--roles that involved things like beating the guys down the valley to a pulp when they threatened his women and children, and competing against other males within his community for a shot at the mating game. Given those roles, automatically siding with one's own gender over the other is...well, it just doesn't work. And it's not that men cannot manifest a form of own-group preference, it's just that when own-group preference manifests in males, it can't be based on maleness alone. There must be a common purpose, a common set of ideals, a common duty or cause, a common doing or a common position in the status hierarchy.
Men can indeed identify with each other and be team players among other men--you see it in churches, military units, fraternities, sports teams and even sports fans, political parties, movements, project teams. While they will often form hierarchies within those contexts, those realms can be sources of a sense of loyalty and brotherhood among men. The myth among feminists that men will insult each other for displaying feminine traits because they see women as inferior is just that--a myth. Men do this because women have a trump card that bestows intrinsic value on them--their uteruses--and they retain that value even when they gender-bend a little. A woman who acts like a woman is not seen as inferior. A man who acts like a woman has always been seen not as a woman, but as a "woman without a womb". He has no female value, and he has no male value. Therefore, he has NO value at all. And unlike women, men who were not "useful" did--and still do--get thrown on the trash heap of society. In the currency of reproduction, an ovum goes for a thousand bucks, a uterus is worth a cool mill, and an ejaculation about 10 cents. To be acceptable mating material, and worth keeping around, a man had to do more than generate sperm. And when the only thing keeping you from becoming completely disposable as an individual lies in differentiating yourself from the feminine, well, guys gonna enforce that shit. This is why men have always tended to define themselves by their roles. Father, husband, working man, soldier, career man, family man, middle class man, politician, activist, etc...in other words, roles to exist in which allow them to relate to other men who also occupy those roles, and to derive a positive and meaningful identity from performing their masculinity through those roles. And I think this may be why suicide rates for men skyrocket after divorce--you have not just taken away his kids, his wife, his assets and a chunk of his income. You've effectively stripped him of a huge part of the male identity he's built around himself. So I'm thinking that for most men, forming a positive male identity in relation to other males requires a couple of things--a male role that is differentiated from the female one (or at the very least, a male-oriented environment) and, well, positivity. Men used to be able to derive a positive male identity from marriage. That is, through the respected and uniquely male role of husband and father. When that identity is increasingly characterized by society as superfluous, obsolete, or in the words of Harriet Harman, unnecessary to social cohesion, it is no longer a way for a man to defer his disposability, is it? Moreover, when that identity can be unilaterally stripped from him on the whim of the increasingly fickle and hard to please female even when he does everything right, marriage ceases to be a positive way for men to define themselves as men. It becomes a way for men to define themselves as chumps and idiots, and who wants to define themselves that way? Moreover, from sitcoms to romcoms to TV commercials, to billboard ads, the role of husband/father is increasingly one of playing the incompetent buffoon to sassy, smart, together wife or even child. In the mass media there is nothing noble or respectable about husbandhood or fatherhood anymore. Further, when the roles within marriage become virtually indistinguishable and interchangeable, a man's role becomes less and less...well, uniquely male. It's just a role. It can be a path to meaning and fulfilment (if he's lucky), and it may be something he desires to do and become, but it's not necessarily a path to defining himself AS A MAN. So we can scratch that one off the list--even for men who've been living under a rock when it comes to divorce law. Marriage and children no longer offer a reliable path to a positive male identity. It is no longer positive, nor is it significantly differentiated from the feminine. The workplace is yet another milieu that has largely lost its maleness. And that's not to say that women ruined everything. It is not so much the presence of women but rather the alterations in environment and interaction many women demand when they want to engage the world through the paid workforce. A male space that leads to a positive male identity need not be free of women, but it still needs to be male--men need an environment that suits their psychology, not one in which they must be metaphorically castrated in order to steer clear of trouble with HR. And I'm not even talking about vulgarity or expressions of sexuality, but aggression, ambition, ribbing, competition, passion, authority, and plain speech--all of these are often discouraged when women are present, in order to spare feelings and prevent discomfort. Outspokenness is replaced with drawing room rules of discourse and ingenuity with protocol, all of which render a feminized workplace, though tolerable to men, no longer a path to a positive MALE identity. Because it is no longer a male space, and no longer appeals to the psychology of men, the workplace has become a ladder fewer men feel driven to climb in order to construct their identities. Combine this with the fact that we handicap men through quotas and affirmative action for women, well... a large number of men are not only becoming disenchanted with the expectation to perform in an environment that does not feed their natures and has set them up to fail--in the absence of those uniquely male-centered psychological rewards and motivators, a growing number are finally opening their eyes and waking up to the negative aspects of wage-slavery. And that is a pill that, once taken, cannot be unswallowed. In every space males congregate where women have elbowed their way in and demanded changes, you seem to find large numbers of men giving ground and eventually losing their drive to perform there. And again, I don't think it's the presence of women that does this--it's the enforced necessity to change one's behavior in order to maintain a proper decorum around them, and the changes in how those places function that women often demand. It's the expectation that the environment and the men in it adjust to suit women's needs, rather than expecting women to adjust themselves to the environment. A few bastions of maleness remain, places where women are often welcome right up until they begin to demand the environment change to suit them, at which point the male protests begin. Hell, you can even see this tolerance on the part of men when women sneak into the men's room when the line-up is too long for the women's bathroom. It's all good unless she takes offence at men behaving the way men do in a restroom by farting and pissing in her presence. So where are men retreating to? The internet, and the few men's spaces that have not tailored their rules of conduct to suit women's easily offended natures and need for comfort. The MRM, where a common set of ideals and values bonds the community and allows them to define their maleness irrespective of society's or women's approval. A place where words and ideas are more important than the tone or the smiles that may or may not lie behind them. The hierarchy and uniquely male objectives of the pick-up artist community, where competition and scorekeeping are indeed still allowed, where there are men for others to admire or to mentor, and where they thumb their noses at what women say they want. Society wasn't working for them, so they invented their own society and they're running with by their own rules. Video games and related forums. Online venues where refusals to police speech are deemed misogyny and the men there don't give much of a fuck. Men going their own way, who've taken a stand based on a realistic assessment of what's in it for them, and maintain their self-respect not by complying with society's expectations but by disregarding them. Beer and buddies, hook-up culture, and part time jobs men tolerate but don't care about. Gynocentrism--the manginas and white knights who supplicate and pander to the feminine even when it's ugly or amoral, differentiating themselves from the feminine through their blind worship of it. And why? Because all of the "approved" paths to a positive male identity, the paths society both endorses and depends on, are gone. And even when men don't consciously realize this, they know it somewhere in the backs of their brains. Men have always worked and sacrificed and sweated and bled if they were rewarded with a means through which to see themselves as worthy of respect. But when every role society wants to cram you into is no longer a way to respect yourself, then it's time to throw those roles away. And one thing the apexuals at the top, like Bill Bennett and Obama, feminists like Kaye Hymowitz and Katie Roiphe, and traditionalists like Suzanne Venker, will never realize is that using shame to try to coerce men to do what is expected of them isn't going to work this time, because while it's possible to shame a man into giving his life for his country if there's a promise of respect in it, it's impossible to shame someone into working his ass off and risking his future just for the joy of looking in the mirror and seeing Homer Simpson or Ray Barone looking back at him. When the cost of society's approval is the self-respect you derive from a positive identity, it ceases to be worth it to a lot of men.
I just subscribed to this woman's channel. It's great to see and hear a logical woman. Thanks for sharing.
Great article fam. I especially liked when she highlighted marriage for a lot of women is "up until I'm not 100% happy anymore". I've often said that today's generation is in it for better not for worst. I also enjoyed her point about the OkCupid survey of women saying 80% of the men being below average. I've been on that site and I can guarantee the women saying that are well below average themselves looks wise any way. I think the difference between men and women in that respect is 1. Women date, especially over 25, date with the purpose of finding a mate. So the person they choose to date has to be "The One" potential. They don't feel they have time to date for fun anymore where as men normally date based on more baser instincts. She's hot I want to put my dick in her I'll see where it goes afterwards. And when you date with those kind of expectations your desire to find someone who meets all your childhood requirements seems unnecessary. 2. Women also believe in the idea of perfection especially single women who have never been married or have kids after a certain point in their lives. There seems to be a bitterness that life didn't work out the way they dreamed and so now they have an attitude that the world owes them something. "I haven't met Prince Charming yet? I won't settle for less" It seems less about finding someone whose rhythm matches theirs' and more about finding someone who can tell them what they want out of life. There's an attitude of just wanting to lay back and letting their men take care of them with little respect of what kind of pressure you might pushing off on someone else for your own individual benefit. Before I met my girl one thing I many if not most women would tell me on dates is their ultimate goal is to stay home. Seriously how inconsiderate is that? Especially in a time where jobs are so unstable and in short supply. One would have to ask what kind of man would want that kind of pressure? I am completely financially responsible for not only my own well being but at minimum three other people. Is it really hard to see why so many men shy away from marriage? Great post North. I really like that chick I'm gonna subscribe to her. Very fair and balanced.
That shit was too long and I found myself skimming it. Was the transcript written by a woman?? I agree that many women have unrealistic expectations in their husband search, but this has been the case ever since women were allowed to have greater life expectations than being housewives and homemakers. Keeping women out of the workplace was the biggest con job going in Western society, because most women didn't know what they didn't know. Any guy who was gainfully employed who could keep a woman in the lifestyle she was accustomed to as a child was 'in'. From my experience not every nurse expects to marry a doctor. Women are flexible when it comes to the level of professional achievement their man has before marriage. For most women that I know, the 'test' for whether or not their man's pockets are straight is whether or not he can support the family if she has to stop working for a period a time, whether it be from child birth/rearing or illness. As a guy I can say with confidence that too many of us are straight up knuckedraggers out here, guys who aren't really suitable emotionally or wired mentally for marriage. As for women entering formerly male dominated spaces and forcing men to change their behavior, guys think about how we talk about women when they aren't around. Look at the Men's Room on WWBM, it's almost 100% pics. Men talk about women who are bitches and hate them for it, or we physically rank one woman's bodyparts against another, or we discuss their facial 'attractiveness'. Dave Chapelle was playing it for laughs, but I know most of us remember when he said there are only 4 things a woman has to do to make a man HAPPY; 1) suck his dick, 2) play with his balls, 3) fix him a sandwich, 4) don't talk so much. Funny, yes. Sad because so many guys actually feel this way; fuck me, feed my face and STFU. I won't write a dissertational response, but the reason woman are finding it harder to hook up with marriage compatible men isn't all the fault of women. There are still women out here who are intuitive enough to give a man the space he needs in a relationship so he can be the MAN in their marriage. If a guy is more emotionally and psychologically satisfied from playing video games, getting fat and spending his cash once a week to fuck escorts or hook up with bar flys, that's not someone who's the new role model for male aspirations. Both men and women are the problem and the solution when it comes to monogamous relationships. You can't put the whole burden exclusively on the backs of one gender. [YOUTUBE]5ZRflz-93JA[/YOUTUBE]
The truth is somewhere in-between methinks. The world has since changed. It may take more than a generation for an overwhelming majority of both sexes to adapt to this reality, the extent that would involve a redefinition of marriage.
I hope you actually get some pussy out of writing that post because a lot of what you said was total horseshit. You know what fam maybe its a regional thing since I don't live where you live but nurses DO expect to marry doctors or at least they would like to. There is no recognition of the fact that they can take care of themselves unless there's argument where money comes up and a man expresses that he carries the majority of the financial burden. This all comes from my personal interactions with people but I assume I am not alone since there are plenty of articles expressing the same concern. Are there immature men? Of course there are but it isn't prudent nor honest to take the light off the hand that women play in their own unhappiness. Their childish lazy expectations, of course not all, that create such unrealistic expectations. Why would you ever enter a relationship thinking about another person's finances as it relates to your health or job security. Men don't commonly think "well if I lose my job at least my girl has hers or if I get sick my girl can hold it down". Men commonly think they'll have to figure it out themselves. I get that its a team work effort but I think women would be better off in the long run concentrating on how best they can take care of themselves instead of unloading themselves on others which seems to be a growing meme amongst the up and coming generation. Just a shit ton of girls who go into teaching or social work hoping to find a man who will suppliment the life style they truly want to lead. Like I said before it could be a regional thing but I see it all the time. Why would any sane man want to sign up for that kind of indentured servitude?
Funny, because most nurses I know cant stand most docs and I used to work at hospitals for years. The vast majority never dated docs. ps - I cant stand that meme shit, dont get it.
I don't doubt it but like I said from what I've personally seen they complain like crazy about the doctors but let one of those board certified dudes make 200k a year show some interest and there's a totally different attitude. The nurses all of a sudden become very sympathetic to their asshole behavior lol. Its the same with teachers I've dated who hate everything financial, since Madoff and Occupy Wall St. that's the attitude around here, and when I told them I was interviewing for jobs that would start me at 80k and I would be making 150k inside of ten years they too became more understanding. I partly understand that things are unstable and it makes sense to team up with someone who is financially stable but unless you are dating way below your station looks wise, which most women in NY refuse to do, one has to wonder what do they think they're really bringing to the table?
Men have always been judged for their ability to provide for their mate. That's the way it's been, the way it's always going to be. Being willing to marry a doctor doesn't mean a nurse will only find doctors acceptable marriage material was the point; we're talking about women having unrealistic expectations for a husband. For most professional women the standard from my experience is meet me where I'm at, don't bring both of us down. It's not salary that makes some women's expectations unrealistic, it's all the other soap opera perfection many want in a relationship that dooms many of their love lives from the jump. I feel like too many men have forgotten how to BE men in a relationship, which has nothing at all with living up to some women's stratospheric expectations. If a man doesn't know how to give a woman a 'reality check' and accurately assess his own value, he's not really cut out for being married. Again, most of the women I know aren't bitches, they aren't dreamy high schoolers whose idyllic fantasies dominate their entire waking lives. Yes there are women who sabotage their own relationships with their attitudes and expectations, but I know sooooo many adult men who would rather play video games than fuck their woman at night.:smt009 People are becoming more self-centered on both sides, which is not the best disposition to have in a LTR for both men and women. If you're focus is 'ME' and not 'WE', guess what??? Eventually your marriage is going to turn into a steamy pile of doo doo that no one wants to own anymore.