Posted on 07/11/2025 4:38:34 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
And how to bring them back.
In a recent New York Times article titled, “Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back,” Rachel Drucker laments what she calls “a collective shift” in men, a “slow vanishing of presence.” So many single men, she writes, aren’t “sitting across from someone on a Saturday night, trying to connect.” Instead, they “have retreated from intimacy, hiding behind firewalls, filters and curated personas, dabbling and scrolling.” She adds, “We miss you.”
Ms. Drucker – a single, 54-year-old Chicagoan – hints that pornography is at least partly to blame for this state of affairs. She mentions that she herself spent years working in that field as the custodian of records for Playboy and its affiliated hardcore properties. She worked closely with marketing teams to understand “what cues tempt the average 18-to-36-year-old cis heterosexual man. What drew him in. What kept him coming back.” She learned that it wasn’t intimacy or mutuality, but “access to simulation.”
Now many men, she believes, have “quietly withdrawn from intimacy and vulnerability” into “indifference.” The sexes have moved, she observes, into an era when traditional courting has devolved into “directionless orbiting,” “men circling intimacy but never entering it… ‘seeing where it goes’ without ever going anywhere.” She even mourns the “unscripted contact” of one-night stands.
She concludes by pleading men, “You can still come back. We’re still here, those of us who are willing to cocreate something true… And we haven’t stopped hoping.”
The male retreat from the courting dance of days past is a tragedy, but so is Ms. Drucker’s obliviousness to the reasons for it. Yes, pornography is a huge factor; the ubiquitous availability of the most explicit imagery imaginable (and even unimaginable) to anyone with an internet connection is a terrible scourge in our society – and not...
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
What about when a man reaches fourty [sic] and realizes that he has “hit the wall”?
Whataboutism (similar in some respects to the "Tu Quoque Fallacy") - one of the favored rhetorical counter-attacks employed by the Soviets.
BTW: I mention that only as a point of historical interest - not in an attempt to smear you through association (see your clumsy use of the Ad hominem below).
Elderly men are NOT attractive, despite some male FReepers claims. Men have a “sell by date”.
"Straw Man Fallacy"! You are exaggerating their claims in an attempt to discredit their argument. No one here even hinted at men in their 80s and 90s still being able to dazzle "babes" or dominate the dance floor!
But the fact remains that the high-SMV phase and fertility window of women is far shorter in duration than the corresponding phase and window of men.
Sorry, but your quote about “keys” is disturbing because I have heard Muslim men utter that sexist quote. Do you want to sound like a Muslim male??
Nice "Reductio ad Hitlerum" fallacy, there, Crimson! "Hitler drank tea - you drink tea. Ergo: You must be as bad as Hitler."
QUESTION: Is the "sexist" quote a valid or credible observation, or not?
I’m fifty-four and people tell me I look much younger.
Well, bless their heart! They sound like very kind and tactful people!
Anyway, I’m fine with being single.
"Single" isn't necessarily the same as "celibate" - so: Whatever flies your kite!
I have a disabled elderly mother whom I care for and that takes up much of my time.
In days long past, it used to be de rigueur for the "weak" son or the "unmarriageable" daughter to stay behind / remain on the family farm and care for the infirm parents. The rest of the children would thus be free to venture forth into society at large and make their mark upon the world. They could people the planet with a new generation, safeguard civilization, secure in the knowledge that their elderly parents were still being taken care of.
I'm glad to see that this practice hasn't entirely died out.
Look, you're probably a nice person, and I didn't mean to "trigger" you. When I was your age (54), I was still dropping my youngest off at kindergarten - where the other parents (most in their 20s) would often mistakenly assume that I was a grandparent (it was a kindergarten exclusively for the children of the students attending the nearby university, like my much younger wife). So I'm familiar with the phenomenon of "perceptual bias." I'm sure that you likewise find it wearisome, having to constantly correct strangers who mistakenly assume - on the basis of your unusual marital status - that you are a "bull-dyke," or "involuntarily single," or a "recluse." Stereotypes are hard to stamp out.
Regards,
🚨🧬👀
Worth noting that she'll be able to actually release only about 150 - 200 of those ova before menopause sets in. And towards the end, the majority of those released ova will be of very low quality / viability.
The motility and overall quality of spermatozoa also decreases with the man's age - but of the approx. 200 million sperm released in a typical ejaculation, the defective ones will lag far behind, and so are effectively excluded or "filtered out" from "the race." They are thus irrelevant to the discussion. So only the highest-quality sperm have a chance of reaching the ovum. This constitutes an intense quality filter, so - generally speaking - healthy offspring are still assured.
Regards,
What a sexist statement! I am shocked - shocked, I tell you!
Seriously: Why do you suppose that is? Does it perhaps in some way reflect the reality of sexual dynamics, mating strategies, and natural selection? I mean: There isn't a single counter-example in the entire recorded history of civilization - not a single culture anyone can point to where female promiscuity was praised.
How to explain that?
Regards,
The problem with this objection is that women are now proudly calling themselves that, talking about how they need to have a “hoe phase.”
Yuk! I never heard that before.
I have subscribed to feminist magazines and read them for decades, you should see what they write for themselves before the media softens it for the general public.
I have cured some feminists and I didn’t do it by giving them books ABOUT and critical of feminism, instead I would hand them a feminist book and ask them to read the actual thoughts and intent of leading feminist authors, to see what feminism is in its raw form.
You didn’t trigger me:)
Every now and then, I enjoy a good debate.
FRegards.
For a dominant left-brain persona that is quite enlightening! Much more to chew on than the old left-brain adage that “a man should marry a woman whose age is ten years more than half his own”.
Smart to let them figure out out for themselves!
But I am sorry you spend money on those subscriptions. Do you have to take a shower after reading them?
It’s been a thing for much of the past decade. You have but to search for it.
And much as with other things, “If you’re non-ironically calling yourselves that...”
I don’t do the deep dive into the opposition that I used to, I will still read a lot of their stuff online if I think that I will learn something that helps me understand them or reveal flaws in my thinking, but useful liberal writing is rare now days.
There was a time that I regularly read In-These-Times, Ms, Cosmopolitan, Utne Reader, The Nation, The Forward, The Progressive, Teen Vogue, Mother Jones, Harper’s would often have a single thought provoking article per issue several times a year, and for a few years New Republic was actually a good liberal magazine to read under Andrew Sullivan.
Examples/cases in pount:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUhcMJqPEGA
https://guardian.ng/life/the-unspoken-stuff-about-the-hoe-phase/
https://www.34st.com/article/2023/01/sex-hoe-phase-relationship-reclamation-romance-college
This one was written back in 2017 - note that it assumes that the target audience of women already basically know what this is, that it’s commonplace and that it is something commonly accepted among them - which implies that this has already been around for quite a long time before the writing of the article: https://grownmag.com/sex-relationships/navigating-your-hoe-phase/
So, yeah, this is a thing, it has been a thing for quite a while - at least a decade, by some reckoning more than two. Millions of American women willingly, unironically call themselves whores and behave accordingly now. These days men are only using the terms that women use to label themselves.
“Someone smarter than I wrote once that no one has adequately studied and reported upon the psychological and emotional harm done to men whose children were taken from them in divorce.”
You opened up a can of worms right there.
It is horrible, my oldest daughter passed in October of 2023 unexpectedly, at 43. My youngest daughter was visiting my house. I got the call around 3am. We talked a bit, I took her to Walmart when they opened at 6 so I could walk and talk. We went back to my house, and she packed up and left to go be with her Mom.
Are you OK Dad? Mom’s really gonna be hit hard! ba bye.
Two years ago on my Birthday, I had the oldest granddaughter, same Mom, over for the week. Picked her up on Friday, her Mothers second husbands sisters brother committed suicide. She talked the gdaughter into taking her home...”Mom insists by noon if possible” so she would have time to dress. Gggrrrrrrowl.... eF’n bizatch.
I like her, my ex that is, to a point....BUTT she has stolen so much from me.
It is 95 miles one way BTW.
Sorry for spilling the bile... Be well Mr Ballenger.
Sorry for your misfortunes in the war between the sexes.
Part of why I am extremely low self confidence and low feelings of self worth is my father was forced and pushed into a divorce when I was in the 3rd grade and she intimidated him to stay totally away all the years after that. Back then around 5% of children lived in a household with a divorce. Really low.
She was an alcoholic, narcissistic, mentally ill, man hating hag. Two more husbands suffered after my father. However, I came to the realization that my father shouldn’t have conceded so much. He should have fought hard to see me instead of leaving me “father absent.”
“You’re just like your father” was disdainfully said to me a lot but I heard at work, the self-centered shallow women of today still say that to their sons after their divorces.
Exactly.
All of the institutions taken over were allowed to be taken over. All of the cultural change was allowed. And here we are.
I was practical and got a degree where I could support myself and family if needed. But I chose a husband who was also a hard worker and able to support a family so I could be a SAHM (for 14 yrs at least). My 4 daughters have done the same.
It’s hard but worth it.
It’s also really understandable how white males in high school see nothing for them since they’re so discriminated against in schools and jobs. I think they’re waking up to who and what is to blame for that.
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