High-Priced Emancipation [Book Review: Why There Are No Good Men Left]

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Friday, January 3, 2002 | MEGHAN COX GURDON

[TroutStalker]

Anyone who has ever struggled to find a house to buy should intuitively understand the difficulties faced by the legions of accomplished, educated, 30ish women currently roaming society in search of a husband. They are the stuff of mass entertainment now, these handsome, quick-witted graduates of higher education. On TV, they're the saucy females of "Sex and the City" and "Will & Grace." They surface in fiction as lovelorn Bridget Jones and the hapless heroines of Pam Houston's best-selling short stories.

[BuddhaBoy]

If I had the choice today of being married or not, NOT, wins in a walk.

You said it all. I have nothing to add.

[BuddhaBoy]

Those gals 25-35 have got it made, it seems.

19-22 yr old women would beg to differ. 25 is the upper limit these days before a woman's options begin to diminish rapidly.

[Centurion2000]

bump

[RooRoobird14]

My mother (arg...) and my sister bought into the "you can have it all" FemiNazi B.S. that started in the 60's. Mom jettisoned my wonderful dad when I was 11 years old, telling him "I don't need you anymore!" when she earned her master's degree (which he paid for).

Sister married her college sweetheart (a decent fellow) and immediately put him LAST, because of course getting a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkley (gag) and "My Career!" came first. 25 years later, she's divorced and remarried to an unemployed BUM, and has had 2 out of her 4 children wind up in juvenile detention. Yeah, that "have it all" bullsh*t really paid off, didn't it?

I never bought into that FemiNazi tripe(don't exactly know why, either--LOL)-- I always thought getting married, supporting hubby's career, and having babies was a perfectly honorable way to live my life. (Of course, mom and sister were horrified by this......) 25 years later I have a wonderful hubby who shows me the utmost respect and (as my friends tell me) was a "great catch". (LOL)

I feel like I've done a good job as a mother because my 14 year old daughter wants to get married "when I grow up" and wants to stay home to raise her "four children". Put that together with daughter knowing the importance of dating/marrying another Catholic, I'm not worried she'll end up like the perpetually unhappy and single sluts on "Sex in the City."

Somehow I ended up "having it all" (nice family, professional career)--but I think I got there primarily because I put hubby, daughter and family life FIRST, not the other way around.

By the way, there are a lot of "good men" left. But the good men are NOT interested in "Sex in the City" style sluts, and don't like to be with ball-busting single women who lead promiscuous, unhappy lives.

[Poohbah]

Many of the spinsters-to-be go to the wrong places because they're accustomed to meeting the wrong type of guys. Hint: stay away from non-family oriented places and gatherings!

I met my wife at a church social.

I know many married couples who met at church young adult gatherings.

I discern a pattern here...

[Billthedrill]

Big topic. I might add a couple of points without writing a book about it - first, that dating venues have been the target of a systematic attack by politically-motivated feminist terrorism, and second, that there are several tendencies in men that work against late-life embarkation on a new personal relationship.

Point the first - campuses have become hotbeds of political correctness which feminist zealots have essentially bullied out of the relationship business - one extreme example is the insistence on a formal, signed contract prior to dating and a grotesque step-by-step permissions system that resembles nothing so much as the grade-school "first base, second base" continuum. Many feminists feel that this is a measure of protection against "date-rape" and other newly-minted social constructs; in fact, it militates against normal heterosexual dating practices and they know that full well. That is not a side benefit, it is the main agenda.

So where does the mating game move to? It wasn't always on campus, after all, it used to be centered around church and workplace. It is no accident that progressive social engineers have targeted these, for reasons in addition to the re-ordering of societal sexual roles, but the rules have definitely changed here as well. Bars? If we are truly down to finding life partners in establishments dedicated to evanescent pleasure-seeking, then we shouldn't be surprised if the relationships turn out to be evanescent as well. As my Dad once put it, the type of women you meet in a bar are the type of women who are in bars. Same goes for the men.

There is obviously a problem here.

Point the second - just about the time many women realize that being a man isn't all it's cracked up to be, the men of their generation have found that being in a relationship isn't all it's cracked up to be, either through the failure of relationships via divorce or through having refused to play the game so long that the game is simply no longer as compelling as it used to be. This does not augur well for a woman who may not be as physically attractive as she used to be.

The upshot here that feminists discover in their drive to attain the advantages of masculinity is that the traditionally masculine role of seeker after relationships is not always the advantage that it appears, and becomes less so as time goes on - for both sexes.

I would question the premise of the title - there are plenty of "good" men available; it's just that not all of the women bitching about it are "good" women.

[fuente]

Bookstores are another place to find interesting people. Just pay attention to what they are browsing!

[equus]

Wow, this thread is an interesting cultural window onto something. So many hostile comments about women.

Though it sounds like the writer of that book was on target.

There are certain truisms based on biology. Men look for a woman who is fertile--thus probably your 25-35. After 35 we know women's fertility starts to decline a bit.

Women look for a man who can provide security--thus is successful and has money. Otherwise her offspring may be at risk.

So--men look for pretty young women and women look for powerful rich men. The age of the man doesn't matter as much as his ability to provide security; the more security, the less he has to have of other "good" qualities.

The changes in society have caused a lot of disruption and things haven't settled into a "better" pattern. Women are expected to work in two career marriages, so....if they don't build a career in their 20's and early 30's-----then what? It's a more demanding world financially these days. On the other hand, women's relative freedom, financial security and mobility, are threatening to men. Now they often compete for the same jobs. As a result men are feeling more hostile and insecure. On the other hand, as that writer points out, the women are more interesting and more of them are available. How many men have I met who think it's fine to go dutch on the first date, or soon after. I don't know a woman, no matter how successful, who likes that.

Did you guys watch The Bachelor? I found the psychology of that interesting. He did choose the one who, relatively speaking, was independent, intelligent, and had her own career. She wasn't a rocket scientist by any means, but he preferred her to the blond bimbo who was just finishing college.

Just some thots.

[BuddhaBoy]

Your post is right on the money.

However, most women (and men) don’t realize that successful marriages are usually those where the couple grows and achieves together, rather than before marriage. Once a man or woman has achieved a certain level in life, marriage is no longer looked upon from the perspective of what can be gained from it, but of what can be lost from it.

That is where I am, and many other men. We are no longer willing to make the compromises and sacrifices necessary for a successful marriage, and are left with those same "Sex in the City" types to choose from, of which we say "No thanks", and are called women-haters for our trouble.

Women need to understand and accept that if they don't get us when we are young, odds are, you won't get us at all, because after a lifetime of building a career and lifestyle, you are not going to find too many of us willing to take the risk of losing it all over a woman, when there are so many available for temporary amusement.

[RobRoy]

>>What Ms. Whitehead calls the "signature union" of this system is cohabitation. Here, as in so many apparently gender-neutral arrangements, one party (in this case, the woman) is at a severe, almost punitive, disadvantage.<<

What the author fails to acknowledge is that the same punitive disadvantage is enjoyed by the male in the system of MARRIAGE as it currently exists in our culture. As a YOUNG MAN (under 40), only a fool would marry in our current legal/cultural environment. And it crosses all religious lines.

[RobRoy]

You are precicely correct, re: post 18.

[Psycho_Bunny]

On TV, they're the saucy females of "Sex and the City" and "Will & Grace."

Snotty, big-mouthed, self-important, slutty, bitches....THAT'S why they're still single.  My upstairs neighbor is one of these.

[BuddhaBoy]

Fantastic post, dude.

[BenLurkin]

>A good pattern too.
> I note where the author continues her analogy between houses and husbands and says: "Houses with "potential" mean years of wearisome renovation."
>My only reaction is that I'm very glad the current Mrs. BenLurkin was willing to spend years in her wearisome renovation project on myself.

[RooRoobird14]

I hear you, Buddahboy, and I understand.

There are some good women left, also. But the good women (like the good men) also happen to be the "boring" types who don't hang out in bars, go to church regularly , and probably don't look like centerfolds. I hope the "good men" left will eventually find some of these good women. The future of our country depends on this(not joking, either).

[Dead Dog]

Their abundance is a boon to men in search of delicious company

Uh, yah, riiiiight. Sometimes independence is just a facade for undependable.

[cgbg]

find interesting people

I think you have the key to the castle here.

To meet the kind of person you want you should be actively doing what you want to be doing with people you want to be doing it with. Then invariably some of the people you meet will be of the opposite sex, and then the rest is up to you!

The other little secret: when you are doing what you love to do you are smiling and a joy to be around. Then others will be attracted to you. In the end a positive attitude will take you further than any physical attribute.

(I am one of those guys fortunate enough to get comments like: "How did _you_ ever get _her_? :-) )

[RobRoy]

>>Sometimes independence is just a facade for undependable.<<

Sometimes...

[RooRoobird14]

Snotty, big-mouthed, self-important, slutty, bitches....THAT'S why they're still single. My upstairs neighbor is one of these.

Hubby is a sales manager at IBM and has to work with a number of females who fit the above description perfectly. These women are quite "accomplished" (make good money) by the FemiNazi standard of success--and nearly every single one of them is in a perpetual state of defensive, paranoid, PMS. They're also either divorced single moms or single mothers of b*st*rd children---and are mad at the world (and men in particular) because they're "stuck" raising their kids alone.

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

Exactly!

If those hags represent women, then it isn't a lack of good men, it's that women have turned into beasts!

Personally, I've bought over seventy houses but am still with the same woman after 25 years.

All that counts in a house is location. You can change everything else with a little effort. When it comes to women, choose wisely.