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The idea that this situation does not matter in the relationship between men and women is simply a superficial understanding of this relationship.

I did not mean to suggest that widespread promiscuity has no effect, only that it is not the driving force in any observed "marriage strike" by men.

One theory we have seen expressed here is that the only reason men ever got married was for sex, and that where sex is freely available, they will have no reason to marry and will not do so.

According to this hypothesis, the "marriage strike" is no strike at all, but simply men being their usual deplorable sex-driven selves, taking advantage of freely available sex to shirk their responsibilities... which now include marching into a financial slaughterhouse operated by the state of behalf of its female citizens.

If men turn out to be intelligent enough to see the slaughterhouse coming, and refuse to march in, then the solution is to compel them to do so, which will be easy to do since they are simple creatures totally driven by their sex organs.

Before going on, stop and think about what is going on in the heads of the people advancing this idea. Men are just these stupid sex-driven animals that marry to get sex, won't marry if they don't need it to get sex, and can be compelled to march into a slaughterhouse that they know is there by depriving them of sex. This is their view of you. Why would any sane man marry a woman whose view of men is this corrupted by her own sense of herself as the only human in the deal, the only one who matters, and who views sex as a bludgeon with which to herd men around like goats?

It is a measure of how successful feminist activists have been in getting our culture to view men as sub-human animals that people will post this stuff in public with no shame. They honestly do not see anything wrong with talking quite openly about herding men around like goats, compelling them into a financial slaughterhouse that drives many of them to suicide, and labeling as "whiners" and "woman haters" those who call them on it.

Whatever effect widespread promiscuity may have on the fundamental relationship between the sexes, the feminist poison that has seeped into our culture is worse. Huge numbers of people have bought into this feminist notion that men are just these things to be managed by the state on behalf of women, the way the state manages the national forests. They aren't human, they don't matter, we can take their children away from them, we can take their financial lives away from them, we can imprison them at whim, and none of that matters. Men should just accept that because, well, they just should, and if they don't it's because they're Peter Pans and whiners and they must not be getting laid.

I have heard about as much of that as I want to hear. I don't know about you, but I'll worry about promiscuity's effect on the culture when we've dealt with the feminist bigotry that now frames so much of what we hear in these discussions.

As an aside, you state that "instead of making men adher to a standard, women have simply become just as promiscuous as the men." Women are not the moral cops. Women have never been the moral cops. That idea is an artifact of the Sugar And Spice hypothesis, and has no reality. Women are no more or less moral than men. They are human beings just like us. You are not a sub-human animal, and they are not pristine vessels of virtue. The moral cop in almost every human society is and has been what the feminists call "patriarchal religion." It is men who set these standards, and it is men who have enforced them on each other.

There is a telling subplot in Pride and Prejudice concerning a young couple who violate society's rules; instead of going through the elaborate courtship rituals that the society imposes, these two go off and have a little fun. She winds up pregnant. It falls to a male relative in this culture to hunt this guy down and make him "do the right thing." The only force holding this man to a higher standard is his fellow men. It has always been thus.

The idea of sex as a commodity it not new and feminists certainly did not invent it. Your so-called "religious patriarchy" (I wouldn't label it that) and many of the rules of society for eons have set those traditions, rules and regulations.

Sex rules have been unfair from the get go. We see that even today in many "traditional" cultures which stone women and barely sanction men for the exact same offense, sex outside of marriage. We see that in prostitution laws which for eons prosecuted the prostitute but not the client (this has only recently been remedied in small areas of some countries).

So, moral/sexual laws and assumptions have always commodified sex and been uneveny applied. They still are, such as with the writer of the article just ASSUMING that women who are living with men want to be married, instead of assuming that both parties are adults and capable of running their own lives.

Instead, it has to be presented as women are getting pay back for "giving away the milk for free" ... in effect a moral proscription or sanction against women in the form of a marriage strike. Did it ever occur to them that adult women are capable of making their own decisions? That women may not WANT to get married themselves? No, it always has to be presented in terms of retribution against women. These are lame moral parables intended to shame women and sanction their autonomy, especially sexually, while not dishing out retritubion for men who "give away the milk for free". This theme is as old as the earth itself.

I agree that the idea that every man is lead around by his penis is disgusting and insulting to men. But the concept of every woman as a prostitute who must "sell" sex to for marriage is equally insulting and degrading to women.

Both women and men want sex and have always had sex, even illiciti sex at great personal risk. The idea that the sex drive is exhalted in men and deplorable in women should be put to rest. God gave men and women a sex drive for a reason, and that reason is not commodify sex or incite retribution and insults on women for their God-given sexual nature or incite insults on men for theirs.

Women came out on the winning end of the judicial stick regarding divorce long before the current nonsense. Women got the kids and property, and the ex-hubby got alimony and child support. I can't really say that the situation has gotten worse even with the feminist influence.

Women have always held the upper hand when it came to morality. It has been up to them to tell the man no and make it stick if she wanted a permanent relationship. Man have always wanted it and so have women, but the difference now is that no one is saying no, and the sex act has become a mere biological function without the bonding between a man and woman that it once had.

Marriage involves love, trust, respect, and a desire to see life through together. There once was a time when men and women had that. They no longer do. And, the loss of these things do not stem from divorce laws. The way that men and women treat each other now stems from something much deeper, and it involves loss of things once held dear.