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.
Yep cheap and easy isn’t a big selling point.
I hear Melania Trump is over thirty. You just may be insane.
Article is tone deaf.
Dating in my early 30s as Amman is among the most traumatic things I’ve experienced. Women my age are poisonous, and all the good ones are being monopolized by all the wealthy or otherwise above average men (80/20 rule. 80% of the good women are competing for 20% of the top men).
For more average joes like me that left the poisonous and toxic for us to pick from. It also leaves most women single and childless by their mid 30s but by then, the remaining pool of men has either decided on their mates or said “to hell with it” and thus those ladies are left in the cold.
This is the sort of process that goes on in primitive tribal societies. It shouldn’t happen in a civilized society where marriage is a stable institution.
IE, marriage is dead in the West. The form of it continues but in truth it’s done and over with.
That is why I, who served in ministry in two denominations, am now alone and churchless.
I could write a book.
Maybe I will.
You sound like an awesome guy. Can’t imagine why chicks weren’t into you. /s
I can cook cereal and hot dogs. Is that good?
I hope so, for your sake.
I dunno. Kraft mac 'n cheese is pretty tasty. Oh, were you talking about women? Never mind then.
After you've lived with several and nothing ever worked out, your judgement and emotional stability come into question. And the jerks continue being attracted to you.
The reality is that young women are choosing to be promiscuous throughout their twenties and then they think they can just order a perfect husband when they are thirty. The online dating world involves a large number of women having casual sex with a small number of men, not at all like what this women suggests, that all men are being satiated by easy sex with a few bad girls who put out for any guy. More like the opposite.
Women in this age group today are incredibly immature and degenerate. Most are overweight, unfeminine and try to compete with men. These are the people who watch the Kardashians. A huge proportion come with some combination of the following baggage: Bastard kids, drug and alcohol problems, STD’s, massive debts, extreme feminism.
And it turns women into sluts.
Same statement.
Thanks for your kind words.
Even though my faith is even stronger and has helped me persevere thru life’s many challenges, there are daze when it’s really tough to continue...but I’m still here.
It keeps me prosperous and on the straight and narrow. Like that other guy, I'm awesome. But in my case, chicks dig me. I recommend the diet.
Are you telling me my live in sammich-maker is messin' around on me with THE JERKS?????
Where's my shotgun?!?
Join a church. Stick around at least 5 years. That is where the good women are. And folk who can tell you their history.
I think there is more to this than meets the eye. When women became more empowered, they started looking for their ideal man. That turned into, 6 figure income, great looks, tight body, good pedigree, graduated from a top college and available. What they soon found out was, Richard Gere from Pretty Woman is not as common as women thought. I addition, women started to turn “bi” and spend more time with their girlfriends than us guys. Also, the guys they were all looking for turned out to be gay. They dressed sharp, worked out, were well coiffed, but when the night ended it was Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve.
In the mid 80’s, I hung out in the bars in NYC, went to the clubs where people liked to be seen and had a group of friends that all earned well. Women would look at us and stick their noses in the air. Apparently our clothing wasn’t high end enough for style points and as I was told one rainy evening by some hottie from the upper east side, “I wasn’t refined, as my hair cut made me look like I came from the beach and not Wall Street.” It never occurred to her that I did in fact live one block from the beach in LBI NJ, made a good living on Wall Street and was staying at the apartment a friend and I shared in the city.
Needless to say, in the late 80’s I met a nice Jewish girl at a dance club in Jersey. I was dressed in jeans and a button down, nothing fancy. I bought a rose from some lady selling roses at the club, sent this lovely raven haired beauty a rose and told her I was a rabbi who wanted to bless her. She laughed, called me an a$$hole, but gave me her number anyway. The first time she saw my car she just about left me. I had a 1969 Chevy Nova which wasn’t built for looks, but for the street. On the first visit to her house, her dad asked me what my potential was. Her mother told me I wasn’t good enough for their baby, despite being Jewish also.
The girl I met that night at the dance club and I have been married for 28 years, have two kids out of college and love each other more each day. To those women who went looking for something that didn’t exist, I offer these words of wisdom. Open the package and see what’s inside before deciding if you want to keep the gift. And for those who still think it’s the wrapping paper that makes the gift, go feed your cat, put on your eating clothes and wallow in your own stupidity.
You sound like a good man. I pray that you will find a worthy woman soon.
You're right about the (institutionalized) church's failure to correct its members. "Live a chaste life" isn't the sort of thing that tickles people's ears or fills pews. Many churches would rather ignore sexual sin and not encourage couples towards Christian marriage. It's a shame.
It’s epidemic among young men. Porn addiction is off the charts.
Women spend their time agonizing over “Why won’t he propose?” After all, they’ve been living together for six years, have a house and two kids.
Tinder is meant to be more of a hook up site, less a dating/relationship site. Though people have formed relationships there.
Watching old movies gives you a glimpse of how it was before women got so angry.
I would *never* be willing to give up my professional ambitions for a man. So, I married a man who would support and encourage.
Of course, in the old days, men had too *much* power. They could get a recalcitrant wife locked up in a snake pit on their word alone.
Male-female relationships are not in a good place right now. And that is part of a grand design.
Is that wrong? Should I not have done that?
Time to get our act together, ladies. If we don't, they won't either.
Which is a real indictment of men.
It should not be women's responsibility to keep men in line or force them to act responsibly.
In a nutshell, men need to grow up and act like the adults they are supposed to be instead of looking for a free ride, housekeeping, food provided, and *privileges*.
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