Marriage has plenty of upsides for women. If it didnt they wouldnt be getting married or desiring to get married.
It has none today for men. None.
Women marry up in multiple ways. They want a taller guy, they want a better looking guy than they are, and they want a guy who makes more than them.
It lifts their finances because it almost always raises their standard of living. This is true because alimony is so one sided to always go to women, the etremely rare cases of men getting alimony from a woman has women using a new term to describe this, manimony. Remember the “family court” takes into account the standard of living the woman has gotten accustomed to from getting married. Why anyne should expect any gurantee to that standard of living once they file for divorce is insane, they do not even have that guarantee remaining married (for richer or for poorer)...
No upside for guys. Financial rape in divorce. Women filing for divorce over 80% of the time, no need to have any fault reasons, vague terms like irreconciliable differences, so it can be on a whim or for the flimsiest weak reasosn just to get half the guys cash and prizes, and use kids for another round of alimony.
Your cautionary points are generally valid, but in the real world there are many exceptions.
Any young man thinking about marriage would do well to consider all the points you raise, and would want to mitigate any potential downsides.
There are many ways to do this—my own preference would be “marrying up” but there are other tools in the toolkit.