Posted on 09/24/2017 3:31:11 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Spend a little time with single women in their early to mid-30s, and you'll be grateful you're not one of them. The relationship scene is even more dismal today than when I was their age. All the women want serious relationships that lead to marriage, but many of the men they meet do not. All too often a woman moves in with some guy, hoping they're on the road to somewhere. Two years later, he tells her he's not ready for marriage and kids just yet. Splat.
But wait. Hasn't online dating made the mating market easier? Yes – for men. If you really want to hear a woman rant, just utter the word Tinder.
Single women are more equal and empowered than ever before. They have unparalleled sexual, reproductive and economic autonomy. In many ways, they're doing much better than the men. (Just look at the lopsided university graduation rates, which are now around 60-40). And yet, large numbers of young women admit their private lives are a sad mess.
If you're a gender studies major, stop reading here. You're going to hate what I've got to say next. I don't like it much myself.
In a nutshell, over the past few decades, the traditional relationship exchange has broken down. It used to be that men and women each had something the other really needed. Men needed access to sex. Women needed access to resources. Men couldn't get steady access to sex unless they had resources to offer, so they worked hard for them. The partnership between men and women was a grand bargain that (usually) left both sides better off.
For men, sex was traditionally expensive. The price tag was a long-term commitment to provide for a woman (and children). But today, sex is cheap. And that changes everything.
This is the premise of a bracing new book, Cheap Sex, by American sociologist Mark Regnerus. Sex got cheap because of three technological developments: the advent of the Pill, which divorced fertility from sex; the onset of mass-produced, high-quality pornography; and the arrival of online dating sites, which make it easy for men to find willing sex partners.
Sexual liberation is a fabulous thing – in some ways. But it can also turn men into louts, because women don't expect much in return for access. Today, most men can have all the sex they want for very little cost – no fancy dinner required. The irony, as Mr. Regnerus writes, is that today's mating market is probably more dominated by men's interests than ever before.
When women complain that marriageable men (sober, steady good providers) are harder to find than ever, they may well be right. The marriage rate is falling steadily, especially among the lower middle class, while long-term stable marriage is increasingly a privilege reserved for the better off.
A lot of women seem to have their act together these days. But a lot of men don't. "I think the greatest, most astonishing fact that I am aware of in social science right now is that women have been able to hear the labour market screaming out 'You need more education'… and men have not," MIT economics professor Michael Greenstone says in Cheap Sex.
What might explain this puzzling fact? Men don't have to prove themselves as providers any more. They can get all the sex they want anyway – including online porn on demand that can make the real thing feel mildly disappointing. (Ask younger women about men and porn. You'll get an earful.)
Like it or not, women have always been the gatekeepers for sex – not because they don't like sex, too, but because (no matter what you learned in gender studies) men's sex drive is innately higher. This means it's up to us to make the rules. "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" my father used to say. It drove me crazy when he said that. Now, it's dawned on me that he was right.
Since the women's cartel collapsed, women's bargaining power has seriously eroded. That's why so many single women hate Tinder, which has further commodified sex for the benefit of men. Women are just another consumer good in the shop window.
It may take a village to raise a child. But it takes a village to raise a husband, too. And modern society has largely abdicated from the job. "Good husband material doesn't occur naturally, but is instead the product (in part) of socialization, development, and social control," Mr. Regnerus writes. "[I]n the domain of sex and relationships men will act as nobly as women collectively demand."
Time to get our act together, ladies. If we don't, they won't either.
You're describing today's young women.
+1
The good men gravitate to the good women - I gravitated way above my goodness grade and don't feel a bit guilty....;-)
Because wedding cake kills a womans sex drive... old joke ;)
Why are good men so hard to find?
Men are all born equal. It takes time to make a good man and the prototype was lost decades ago.
LOL...too funny!
That’s my point.
Men should not be forced into behaving morally.
Blaming it on the women is blame-shifting and throwing the responsibility of men’s immoral behavior back onto women.
Men also don’t have to pressure women into having sex either but they do pretty much universally. And I understand why but that still doesn’t change the fact that more likely it’s the man who initiates it.
It applies to both. I’m not denying that.
I’m objecting to men blaming women for the condition men are in today. Men are supposed to be the leaders and set the example. What we are seeing today is what happens when men abdicate that role.
It seems as a rule most young people today are shallow as a puddle. Gone is common courtesy, chivalry, altruism, and other positive character qualities. It’s no wonder relationships don’t work anymore when everyone is out for number one.
It takes two to tango. Women should bring back the face-slap and spiked-heel stomp when men make unwanted multiple physical advances.
Women should not be forced into behaving morally, but by our choices, we can all force each other into behaving morally.
Men can also CHOOSE to NOT make those kinds of advances.
Then women would not be forced into a position of keeping them in line.
Again, the responsibility is being laid at the women’s feet.
God expects moral character out of both men and women.
Men were never exempt from moral failure. God administered the SAME punishment to both for it. HE doesn’t make distinctions or make excuses about boys will be boys, and men’s sex drive is stronger.... wink, wink.....
How can men expect to be taken seriously about their role of protector when they are the first to prey on vulnerable women?
True.
If the impulse to behave morally does not come from within, it must come from without to have a moral society.
“Men are supposed to be the leaders and set the example.”
Thirty years of feminization and being raised by man hating women has turned most men into pansies. Schools didn’t help. Women got what they(well the vocal ones) wanted and now it sucks for them. Actually I am sad for society but these whiny women should ask their mothers what they did to “men” and why.
Yes, it will be a cold winter for many because from the article and from many comments on this thread, I surmise most don’t even understand what the true purpose of marriage is: two people committing to remain together through the ups and downs of life - companionship so that one doesn’t have to navigate this crazy world alone. Sex is a bonus.
There will be a lot of lonely individuals going into the later years of life consumed with bitterness only because they failed to see the deeper matter.
Stupid generalization. I was 37, my husband 38, when we married, I hadn't slept with "30-50 guys"; didn't sleep with my husband until our wedding night (we had what you might call a moral code); and we are bonded like duct tape and gorilla glue. We're in love. Even 29 years later.
The part about fertility decline is more or less correct. We conceived about 6 weeks after we got married, which was a super OMG blessing, but that was followed up with a couple of early miscarriages and then nothing. It was difficult to even adopt a brother for our only-begotten Ben at that age, but we did. Again by Divine Providence, I am convinced.
So we've been lucky, or favored if you see it that way; but many find both fertility and adoption to be major challenges in their late 30's and beyond. OTOH, my mother conceived me when she was 42. Thank you Mother, thank you Father.
>I think some of them do reform, after a time, perhaps becoming “born-again virgins” seeking quality men, but I don’t have the patience to weed them out from all other ones.
Born again virgins is a ridiculous idea. The ability to bond is reduced with each new partner. People throughout the ages have known this which is why female virginity is so highly prized and why sluts are shunned.
“The only way to win (or not lose) a fixed game...is not to play.”
...or to play by a DIFFERENT set of rules. I wanted kids, but with the deck stacked against me as it is with American women, I played by a different set of rules.
Unlike many people I know, I wasn’t about to be defeated by our ‘system’.
But women didn't have to fall for it: except they tend to be herd creatures.
>>>Two years? Ladies, Ladies, Ladies. If ya’ll aren’t exclusive within 6 months (after a credit and background check and referrals from trusted people and a parent check on both sides) and aren’t planning a wedding around 9months for a marriage within 15 months, then pick up your purse and walk out the door and don’t look back, because it’s not going to get any better. If he’s serious, he’s coming after you to get you back with a wedding, and if he doesn’t, well, that’s your answer right there.
Life’s too short. And you’re too valuable.
<<<
That’s real solid advice for the minority of young women who are not sluts, not crazy, not a rabid feminist and otherwise normal.
I’m just disagreeing with your last part that “you’re too valuable.” Most women, not that valuable imo. Not valuable enough to marry.
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