This sort of runs into the situation Machiavelli described. The more oppressive you are, the higher the possibility of rebellion in the streets, which would then require more oppression, inevitably resulting in an endless spiral from which one of two results will occur. The Prince kills off everybody, or everybody kills off the Prince.

Government functions better when it tries to get people to do things when they have a reason, usually positive, to do such things. For example, if couples paid less taxes than individually, then such things might balance out the risks of divorce and what not. It would also provide an incentive for taking care of their children financially, since they could divorce and have less money or they could remain together, albeit estranged, and be able to pool their economic resources for the children.

In any situation, the government has to deal with individual problems, and we all know how effective that is.

“I returned home from a 3-day visit with my best friend from college, and for every room except my study, it was like moving into a new apartment. Not a single fork, plate, roll of toilet paper, curtain, drape, salt shaker, napkin, bar of soap, nothing. She even hired an electrician out of the Yellow Pages to take down some ceiling light fixtures she liked. (Our regular electrician refused. I think he had visions of me skinning him alive.) When I’d tell people what had happened to me, their eyes would get big and they’d invariably tell me of two or three other friends they knew whose wives had done exactly the same thing.”

Trey

The ideal 19th century practices you mention here - sex in marriage for the man, security for the woman - remains the hope for many men today, although the feminist revolution and gains in women’s economic progress have cut that prospect down to size.

I was raised, however, by parents who both worked, and they shared household responsibilities with a fair amount of equity. The main thing was that my Dad did most of the cooking (yummy stuff, too!), and he taught me and my sisters the value of pulling our weight around the house.

So, when I married, I had no expectations for a patriarchical relationship. I should note, though, that my parents did divorce, as did my wife’s, so when we got engaged we talked about how important for us staying together would be.

We also have two boys, and I’m traditional in thinking that marriage is about procreation, and I think that kids are best raised in a nuclear family - with one father and one mother - and that the family forms the core unit of society. Education and economic attainment for the kids develops from the deep, conservative social institution of the family unit, an organization that is the basis for American individualism and the culture of self-sufficiency.

So, I can see how men today are scared to enter into an arrangement where a woman can just book it, take the kids and the sue to high heaven, taking the guy to the cleaners. But love should determine how one decides, at least if one is committed to the hard work of making a marriage last.

I don’t always love being tied down, but the alternative - social drift and anomie - is much worse, and unthinkable as I get older.

Stimulating stuff, in any case.

Marriage used to be difficult to leave for many reasons, which you outline, that have lost much of their force today. Still, people don’t marry for those reasons, either men or women. It is mutual attraction and the hope of psychological, emotional, and spiritual fulfillment. Always has been, always will be. Calling it “love” works too, provided the proper definition for love.

Just as changing technology has forced us to moderate our sleep habits with something other than the rising and setting sun, we must now moderate our relationship desires with more maturity than the neighbors’ opprobrium. For many, sadly, that doesn’t happen, and the legal system will never provide any satisfaction, as you note.

Still, I am optimistic that society will eventually pull into its collective wisdom the knowledge that lifelong relationships have extended “down” periods that can be survived, and that a deep commitment to surviving them produces far greater benefits in the end. It’s just going to take a while.

Perhaps simply discussing the topic of marriage only isn’t sufficient to explain the widespread sense of disenfranchisement among men. Yes, there is a legal dimension to this issue, but I think it is only part of a larger issue beyond marriage. You can call it the cliched “battled of the sexes” if you wish.

Any objective view of the current social landscape would show that it is heavily weighted in favor of women over men. Casual castration and belittlement of men is ubiquitous, from TV shows, to movies, to commercials, etc. One might object and say that women are being belittled just as much as men on tv and movies, but I claim that within the context of the show, this is just not so.

I unfortunately watch quite a good amount of television. In many instances where these castrating incidence occur, there is a complete role reversal. The man would be the shy, insecure party and the woman would be the strident, domineering party.

It is almost as though many women have taken into themselves the worst caricature of men and portray that crass behavior has strength and powerful when it is really just being crass and ill mannered.

With respect to the inequities of marriage and divorce, I’ll refer to an analogy given by G.K. Chesterton. In one of his essays, he said that modern philosophies are liken to a child reasoning that the wind blows simply because of the wavering movements of the trees above him. The leaves rattle, thus wind blows.

This is obviously absurd. In like manner, to point to the legal system as the culprit for the abysmal state of affairs between men and women would be equivalent to G.K. Chesteron’s analogy. It confuses the result with the cause.

It is clear to me that divorces and the hysteric clashes between the sexes is the result of a moral landslide within us as a people. No amount of legislation can cure this no matter how you cut the cards. Legislating morality, to make morality carry the weight of law is just a stop-gap measure, and I believe it would be one that would have catastrophic results.

In my opinion, the only remedy is to make sure your personal actions in any relationship is clean, and I would also add that one would have to humble oneself before God and man. Apart from this, I don’t really see a solution. Things would going along its majestic course to its inexorable conclusion.

I’ve begun to wonder if that isn’t as glib as it sounds.

As a man “in the market” for a wife, I realize I am up against it. Though I would be hard pressed to ask for or initiate a divorce, I realize the choice can and probably would be made without my consent and that choice would be made regardless of my guilt or innocence pertaining to the marital relationship’s perceived nature. Beyond, I realize that I would lose my children, possibly completely, and very possibly simply through innuendo, barring any proof or truth. I realize I would probably, if she wanted it, lose my home, but certainly large chunks of any collected wealth and future gains, both in direct payment(s) and losses due to lawyer costs, moving, and all else. And yet I am “in the market”. As someone said, it is not about economics, purely. Nor do I believe it is purely sex, children, or a family center, or any one thing, but about the nature of men, women, and life, as I believe they were designed to function. Yet, I cannot help but believe that the government and women share a larger chunk of the responsibility for the dissolution of the family. Perhaps thoughtless from both parties, perhaps with intention from a government which wishes fewer children (think: a US version of China’s one child policy).

I am not sure, in the larger picture, if there is hope for this precious, and finally, necessary, social tool (marriage). I do know that without it, societies fall, then are conquered, then adopt the conquerer’s (often draconian) family values, family values that have allowed it’s culture to thrive and ultimately win over other cultures. Whether by real war or by influence and conversion, that is what this nation faces without a major see change in how it governs marriage. To see the results of status quo, US, look to Western Europe. It is America in 10 to 15 years. If you wish to see status quo in 15 to 25 years, look to Russia. We have little enough time, they have very little to no time. They are on the brink, we are chasing them, and it is over a cliff.

Still, how can I really worry. Perhaps, as all things have their time, our time is over. Intertwined in this, for me, however, is the feeling of a loss for something I will probably never find in my life, a stable family, a civil nation, and hope in this world.

One wants to take a bath after reading this stuff.

It would be the usual turkey shoot to deal with feminist agitprop– its so sad our society is in creasingly controlled by the attitudes and bigotry of women like this one. And its so cleverly camoflaouged..

One need only consult the universal knowledge of women in our culture–
the female DA prosecuting female heroine Clara Harris for murdering her husband.
She said that the murder was indefensible ( shockling and dismaying women across the nation), because , paraphrasing -

” She could have done like every other woman does — take his kids , his house , his car and make him wish he was dead.”

This self- appointed “expert” argues there is no basis for this universal awarenes shared by both men and women.

No rational person can dispute the system is systematically biased against men— and no one seriously does… The ” Women uber alles” crowd merely argues that it is justified. Thats the debate.

” He that disturbeth his own home — will inherit the wind”

Plus, marriage even then was expensive and most people could not afford it, half a crown was a LOT of money, about $1,100 in today’s money! Furthermore, the gender system most used was the “wife” system which is completely different from the gender system used in the American Colonies (wife literally means “the one who buys and sells” and her being gone to market at least once a week was a major factor in most families).

Using your idea of narcissism is also faulty. What the men are mostly complaining about is loss of legal-right to stop a woman who is behaving badly. Thus, we are talking about a major justice issue and not at all a personal-reward issue.

Furthermore, without an allowance for men who have been treated EXTREMELY badly to talk about the extremity of their bad treatment we are creating a pool of rage which will cause our children & grand-children immense harm.

The judge has disregarded multiple threatening phone tapes, police, neighbors and daycare witnesses, order of protection given by another court (after an extensive hearing). The ex was fired from his job (he’s incapable to keep a job for more that 6 months in a row) and filed a case to make her pay HIM alimony (after the divorce) - and if not for my realative’s expensive lawyer, the judge would have awarded him the money! Child support doesn’t come regularly - the courts do nothing about it. She had lost her job of 4 years and tried to get work anywhere (it’s hard to find it in Michigan now) - the judge ruled she can not leave the state without her ex’s permission, even if it means she’ll be left destitute. Recently the ex tried to run her and kid over in his jeep in a public park - there were witnesses, complete strangers, who came over to my relative and offered to go to court with her. He doesn’t care: he knows by experience the judge will be on his side no matter the evidence.

I can’t decide if the wave of male hatred towards their ex-wives, expressed here and in the other thread, has any factual reasons in reality; it must be, at least in some cases - I see so many men saying the same thing - but the pettiness, the sense of their entitlement to the joint property (I don’t know how much the wives earned, probably less than the husbands - but isn’t their taking care of the home worth something?) , the rage of having lost control of the lives of their kids and wives is palpable.
I, too, feel - after reading - it’s better not to be married. The pain is not worth it.

But some people can’t acknowledge there’s another side, because their own stories (and the stories of the friends they talk to) seem to bolster their own one-sided view. For example, men tend to talk to men and share their war stories, and women tend to talk to women. Therefore it can seem as if all the inequity is on one side. It most assuredly is not.

And the narcissism I speak of is not only the tendency to see the whole world as reflective of one’s own experience, or the experience of one’s cronies. It is also reflected in the ideas one brings to marriage.

For example, it would be a really good thing if both parties came into marriage thinking compromise was a necessary and intergral part of the pact. It would also be great if both sides understood that once children are born they are an obligation, both financial and otherwise, until they reach maurity. This means that, if the arrangement within the marriage is that the wife is the primary caretaker and the husband the primary breadwinner, if a divorce occurs this will probably continue to be the situation—the wife may indeed have more to do with the children, and the husband will probably pay some portion of his income in child support. It’s part of the bargain one makes when one marries and has children, and decides to raise them in a certain way.

Reading the level of vitriol in the comments at Dr. Helen’s article, the writers seem to be indicating that their anger is merely a result of what happened to them in their divorces, that they were models of lovingkindness within their marriages, and that they were shafted by rotten women. No doubt that’s true in some cases. But somehow I find it a bit difficult to believe that it’s quite as prevalent as asserted, just as I find it difficult to believe that, even if this were true, they could not have seen the characters of the women they married at the outset.

I am with those who maintain that if one chooses carefully at the outset in marriage, not only is it more likely that the marriage will last, but it is also more likely that, should a divorce occur, both parties will behave decently and fairly to each other. Notice, however, that I say “more likely.” Nothing is certain, and it is indeed possible to act well and yet be treated very unfairly in a divorce. This is true for both men and women.

‘Cause, if anyone said that this was it… they lied.

(Places on the internet where men gather to rage about women being totally nonexistent. I mean, they’re like Sasquatch or something!)

You bring up a good point:

I see so many men saying the same thing - but the pettiness, the sense of their entitlement to the joint property (I don’t know how much the wives earned, probably less than the husbands - but isn’t their taking care of the home worth something?) , the rage of having lost control of the lives of their kids and wives is palpable.

I have noticed something in the work world. When you speak to a married man with whom I work about his home he calls it “my house”, when you speak to a married woman with whom I work she will call her home “our house” or “the house”. I have never seen a man refer to the family’s home as “our house”. Perhaps the anger and vitrol expressed has more to do with perception of mine and ours.

That sound like the relationship between man and mistress, not man and wife. To quote the French Revolutionary Genaral Louis-Lazare Hoche: “you may take a whore as a mistress, but not as a wife.”

If that were the point, no man would have cared if his wife slept around, before or after marriage.

I am inclined to argue that marriage provided knowledge of paternity, which largely depended on denying other men sexual access.

Incidentally, if you are analysing marriage in the past as providing benefits to the marrying parties, why do you think that the people involved were more narcissistic than people today?

All you can really say is that they had more motive in the past to get married and stay that way.

(And I do not think that the stereotype that women benefit more from marriage is all that new.)

I would offer this modification of your comment:

Marriage is a great institution if you like being institutionalized.

I have another solution. I am an expert on angles because I married an angle. Our marriage is founded on three essential human relationship elements — namely Mind, Body and Spirit. I will leave it to you to decide how to define those elements. Caroline and I have. We never retire for the night mad and therefore have negated the requirements for lawyers, prenuptials or therapists.

Perhaps more couples should have found their mates through Eharmony.com. Just think of the grief they could have avoided and how many lawyers they would have put out of business.

I think your point about choosing well is right on. The question is whether society today is helping young people define the criteria for choosing well. To the extent that we push things like having the latest technical fad, getting into the best school, breaking glass ceilings, we not only tell kids that these things will make them happy, we also tell those who can’t compete on these terms that they are loosers. We push political activity as a substitute for character, but aving whales is not a good basis for marriage.

Let’s look at choosing well as one for instance. If we teach boys how to choose well we are being sexist to girls and therefore breaking the social-law and possibly the Law itself. Canadian law, for sure, but it is not all that different in other places due to social pressure. However, if we teach girls how to choose well that is not being sexist to boys and is quite allowable. Now, what we’ve done is taught the bad girls how to choose the good boys without providing the boys with protection against the bad girls. We have a PROBLEM.

Or think of this: I am disabled and do the housework and such. If my wife were to divorce me she would face no obligation to support me. However, if the sexes were reversed then I would face a legal obligation to support her! Oh I know I know! The law allows a judge to award a man spousal support, it just doesn’t happen except for VERY minor amounts, without regard to need. And you are probably right in saying that EVENTUALLY that will change. The bigger trouble is that ‘eventually’ is an awful long way down the road of history.

Or related to the above: I get the CPP-D as well as my private pension. I get about $15 less per month than a woman with an identical history. There are myriad areas of gender-law like that wherein the male is the one being hurt and NO, ZERO, possibility of changing those areas of law. Women will not tolerate equality where the change needed is for male benefit.

Or look at it like this: Both sexes can be burned in a marriage. BUT! All of the government funded programs to fix that blame and shame MALES ONLY. So, picture yourself a man who cannot see your kids through no fault of your own. There’s the government putting ALL of the blame on you. How do you feel? On top of that there is the press and bloggers dumping ALL of the blame on you. How do you feel? Angry eh?

It doesn’t surprise me even a tiny bit that there are more and ever more angry men and there will be an increase in the rate of growth of angry men until we can get PEOPLE to see males as human beings with feelings and rights of our own!

Or so it seems to me.

There was, however this study, which indicates that depth of religiosity has the effect of reducing the divorce rate.

I agree with your comments on marriage. I have to believe that most of the people commenting on that blog were not prepared for marriage or relationships in general. One only has to look at how they post about themselves and their former significant others.

I’m am eternally grateful for my husband. We have a good marriage. It’s not always easy and it takes a lot of personal sacrifice and patience. But we are partners, that’s the key. We both work towards the goal of the relationship. It’s not a contest about who can get the best of who.

I do feel sympathy for some of those posters and hope they get some help for their issues.

You are, in a round about and thinly veiled way, blaming the men. Dress it up as you will, but that’s all you’re doing.

And, in a court of law, it IS about who can get the best of who. Divorce court and lawyers, MAKE it so.

I invite you to do what I have asked of others. For you, it is because you have obviously been blessed without ever having to be there…..

Take a week of vacation. Spend the entire week in the last row, against the wall, in your local divorce court. Take it all in. It is unbelievable.

I’m sure (as neo said) that divorce hurts people. I have friends (men and women) who have been hurt by divorce. But it is by no means a one way street and I would never claim that it is.

It seems that when people see comments by women or men, they want to immediately attribute some sort of bias towards it.

Such behavioral trends are magnified in Iraq, for example.

One thing led to another. We wanted a home, stability for she and me, both. I worked myself raw, and brought it all home. For us.

Later still, children.

It fell apart nearly a quarter century later. It was a tragedy. The system made it a travesty.

AW - the comments on Dr. Helen’s blog are mainly about what happens when the “system” gets involved,
how men get treated, and in their own words, from their own perception. I’ve never seen this type of outlet anywhere else.

If you have what you claim to have between your husband and yourself, please understand in this day and age, you are one of the few. Don’t let it slip away. It can, and out of the blue. Literally over night.

Maybe you, too, though, suffer from your third paragraph above.

If I still had what you claim to have, I would be speaking with, or doing something with my wife right now. What it meant to me, and how much I miss it all, is ineffable.

But never again.

Generally, men suffer most under the current divorce regime. This is provable.

What makes ME uncomfortable about is not that they’re angry and not that I think they’re misogynistic- which, for most of them, I don’t really- but that I think it’s not actually helping them, and may be hurting them in a way. The reason I’m interested in the subject to begin with is my own parents’ divorce; my father left my mother, and because my mother was and is a decent woman despite the flaws that led my father to leave- and he should have, now that I’m an adult I don’t think they ever could have been happy together any more- she didn’t screw him. She got a modest amount of alimony and child support, which as he continued in his wildly successful career became a financial drop in the bucket to him, and he never seemed to regard it as anything but his basic responsibility. (A traditional home-maker with few market skills, it remained vital to her.)

The thing was, he was pretty angry, bitter, and sad, because family was always a very central concept to him. He became convinced that women were just like “that”- not designed to treat him or any other man fairly or at all unselfishly- and because family was STILL important to him… he settled down with and had another child with the first woman that would have him. The problem there was that she was not only just as nuts as my mother, but vicious in the bargain. She treated me badly from the outset, and once she had had my brother and felt secure, began to treat him just as badly and probably worse when I wasn’t watching. He never left her partly because he knew she would screw him utterly as my mother had not and probably prevent him from seeing his son again- which is why I became interested in the issue, and why I still read Helen silently- but also because he truly believed all women were just like that, and there was nothing better out there for him. (This confused and hurt me, since the end implications of these speeches was that I would, by my female nature, inevitably treat the men I was with poorly and selfishly. It was the one black spot in our relationship.) He needed a family to feel whole. Eventually, he committed suicide. My brother was just 14 at the time.

Men have a right to their rage, and their pain, and Helen is right that they need to have it treated as valid reactions. But losing hope that there are good women as well as those that will hurt them, and constantly having that belief reinforced by those around them, isn’t much better for them than being constantly silenced.

I myself had a string of relationships with men who were emotionally unavailable (probably because my parents were not very demonstrative) and always blamed them. Then when I met my husband, I was confused because he was the opposite. I began to think there was something wrong with him!

I think one of the best books is ‘He’s just no that into you’. I wish I had that one way back when. What is needed is a male version of this book.

Talk about blaming the messenger. Much as I hate to say it too, what Commenter #1 said.

Folks, it’s that bad. If you haven’t the personal experience to understand how losing all your rights concerning your children, home, and financial property because society has parasites isn’t mindless rhetoric (it’s daily occurance, unless you’re into denying the reality hundreds of thousands have already lived) then I ask you to couch your opinions and your appearances-centrism as such.

What you think you think and what you like the look of is irrelevant. What’s actually going on (read the book, live the nightmare?) isn’t.

Primarily because it provides a feasible path towards the rhetorical straw man argument that is often tossed around the net, “How does Islam threaten to put American women into burkahs?” Given the fact that everybody seems to acknowledge that the current legal system treats men unfairly during a divorce. Without a doubt, men would get much better treatment under Sharia law. Certainly a Sharia court is unlikely to disregard a wife’s infidelity, no matter how good a mother she is and a Sharia court is unlikely to require a man to pay child support for a child conceived during that infidelity. The current system would seem to be creating a growing constituency for adopting Sharia law as it has been proposed in Canada — for those who are at least nominally Muslim.

Some people seem to have more of a need for religion in their life than others. For those who don’t care, there is absolutely no down side to declaring oneself Muslim in order to be covered by Sharia divorce laws. Others might be drawn to an attractive American born Muslim-Lite version of offering a similar kind of “God wants you to be happy” message combined with a lot of community activity and very little Hell and damnation or that creepy Arab stuff. It could get pretty popular pretty fast. Throw in an overseas matchmaking service and it might attract a lot of men who would like to marry and have children but who find the prospect of marrying a secular American woman too risky.

I should probably point out that as a practicing Catholic with two daughters I do not find such a future particularly appealing.

I meant to say an attractive Muslim-Lite version of Joel Osteen with a link to his mega church website.

Are American men so incapable of accepting women who aren’t subservient to them? Or are they simply choosing the wrong women (basing their choice on superficial qualities such as looks) and can’t deal with the consequences.

Women do have more choices today, and it seems that men haven’t done that well coping with it. And also some women. I know many independent working women who will not get married because they don’t want to get taken advantage of financially by some guy.

I suppose the modern reality is that people no longer need to be married (as neo pointed out). Maybe everyone shouldn’t get married.

But as always, it’s the children who will suffer.

You have offered us a false dilemma. Logic seems to be a weak point for you.

Perhaps the problem is with American women. I’ve lived in three countries outside the US: the UK, France, and Hong Kong. American women stand out as markedly inferior for marriage potential.

Most American women have lost all sense of decorum. They turn every conversation into a competition, to show men they are “equal.” Most European and Asian women possess an exquisite sense of decorum. Foreign women can often make a man’s say with a few well chosen words. American women are often too concerned with busting a man’s balls. yo many men, it appears that most American women don’t like men as a class.

Most American women are conflicted over their sexuality. They will dress provocatively, yet raise offense at the slightest notice of their bodies — in the name of “sexual objectification.” Foreign women are not conflicted. If the dress provocatively, they EXPECT attention. Again, American women often lack decorum.

Most American women have forgotten that men have social needs. Ask an American woman what men should do for women to be polite, romantic and desirable. you will get hours of advice. Then ask what women should do for men. you will get silence. Silence. And even indignant that a woman might have any social duties towards a man. Foreign women still possess grace and charm — they know what to do to make a man feel special. American women lack this ability utterly.

It’s true what you write, “women do have more choices today,” but you are very wring when you write, “it seems that men haven’t done that well coping with it.” Men are coping with it — by availing themselves of THEIR choices — specifically, the choice to choose foreign women.

Many men prefer foreign women, and for good reasons.

First, I’m opposed to Sharia unequivocally.

You use of this figure, the disloyal wife as a good mother, is rather striking. Why? Because a woman cannot be disloyal to her husband and simultaneously be a good mother.

A woman is a BAD mother, who puts an orgasm above her child’s continuity of parentage. (This is also true of men.)

This is obvious, so why does this cliche — the “good” mother screwing around on her child’s father — why does it endure?

Maybe because it benefits women? Just a thought.

If secular western society cannot survive this elementary exercise in the game called “Survival of the Fittest”, it deserves to perish. I hope to die before it collapses, but at this rate, I’m not optimistic.

True. But human nature can only be bent so far.

Perhaps, American men will avoid American women and secure marriages with non-Western females because they are better mates.

The non-Western family may breed faster, but we will take their women — consider the Roman raid on the Sabines — this is the age old response of men without prospect for a decent wife.

It’s speculation, wild speculation, but this mating strategy is an enduring historical pattern.

At least it is being discussed. Look at the hits here, and the hits PJ Media and Dr Helen are getting from it. Right, wrong - or worst - indifferent, there’s trouble in paradise.

AW, and children grow up to be adults. I have three beautiful kids. I want them to be happy. I don’t see how at this juncture in our country’s present social situation.

On the other hand, I have never know any woman with a divorce experience similar to
Tatyana’s “female family member”. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen.

Whether the women I know planned it or not, the net effect of their divorce was financial benefit. People, even women, behave in a statistically predictable manner. If you penalize an activity, you will get less of it; if you fund an activity, you will get more of it.

Child support and alimony fund divorce. Under the present system of Family Law, most women can be assured of a favorable outcome in a divorce. Any woman who gets a better offer can unilaterally dissolve a legal contract with no penalty. It is a foregone conclusion, that some of them will exercise that option.

No. Marriage *was* an arrangement by which two people agreed to a division of labor and responsibility in addressing the requirements of living on earth, for themselves and the progeny they both wished to have, hopefully in such a way that the sum was more efficient and successful than the individuals alone. Ideally, love was involved, if not at the beginning, then (in the case of arranged marriage) hopefully later, and subsequently had those intangible rewards mentioned in other comments (”psychological, emotional, and spiritual fulfillment.”) This did not have to change in contemporary marriage, but it has, largely through the politically-fabricated idea that the traditional division of labor was both a consequence of women’s subservience to men and a tool to enforce it, to be avoided at all costs, along with many other “evils of the patriarchy”.

Your entire paragraph on the increase in female-initiated divorce to reach two-thirds of all divorces is amusing in its entirety. “Explaining” this by suggesting that the reason is “because they can” due to their changed economic abilities is a convenient whitewash of one of men’s major poi