Helen Smith: on men saying “no thanks” to marriage
I confess I haven’t yet read Helen Smith’s book Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters, but it sounds fascinating. I’m quite familiar with Helen Smith’s work in general and her blog, which has long been on my blogroll.
Here’s an interview with Dr. Smith about the book.
the marriage strike hits home a few days after they announce the oppressors are dying out even faster than they thought… good going grrrls..
only women think 60/40 is 50/50!!!!!!!!!
[bet the ladies deny it and a lot of guys get it!!!]
i am undecided on her as she came after i was a big part of the mens movement (just before i came here!)
its like watching young people go crazy for V, but only because they have not seen, the scarlet pimpernel, the phantom of the opera, robin hood, and about a dozen others that made the “mash up”.
in their ignorance it was fresh and exciting
they took away my schooling for the women in the 80s
they took away my sons now…
neither of us are going to do what we would like
my son will probably not have kids
my wife and i cant
they have locked me way for my autism
yet use my skills… without paying
but i am a evil oppressor, so i sat at a semen stained desk in a closet at 80 degrees, had a stroke, and now no reward till i die. cant go to court, i deserve that.
heck.. i hoped way back that neo might help
desperate to be able to earn more, connect with what i can do, be compensated for it, and have a child with my wife who is indonesian and deserved not to be punished because she fell in love with me.
but no..
i am waiting to die…
from this perspective, ovens seem almost humane
I love my wife dearly…
i did not marry her because i was looking
i married her because i fell in love with her from a distance, she did too, we were introduced, and thats that
but compared to my western relationships…
the women, once they liberated themselves, exterminated their future, and enslaved their children, and destroyed the wealth of knowledge handed down from the past to the future!!!!!
and they thought us guys were oppressing them cause we wanted sex!!! no. we didn’t want to be exterminated and we wanted our children free…
with the help of Russia, the women sided with Americas opposition, and did what?
Stand up and take a bow ladies
you self determined your way to the dinosaurs!!!
and you smashed you smashed your ability to go back and fix it before its too late… hey Cortez?
i have a big mouth now, because they can only kill me once…
and i am dead already…
[no, not suicidal, i NEVER EVER do that… i want to live and be alive and do things and so on… but sitting in a room day after day, that hurts you, and you cant change it without more hurt and damage… well, your dead already, and just waiting for the coffin to shrink]
When it comes to the emasculation of the American male, the part that I find most fascinating is women’s resultant unhappiness when they do get men to capitulate.
Many if not most modern American (and I suspect most Western) women are profoundly unhappy (though most suppress it) with exquisitely sensitive, metrosexual eunuchs. A woman in charge of her man will not be happy with her man.
Perhaps that explains the popularity of romance novels? The men are commonly depicted with a strongly masculine appearance. Masculinity is not hesitant, deferring or uncertain, it does not ‘walk on eggshells’ for fear of offending a woman’s sensibilities.
So many women are, apparently so insecure that the only way they can feel equal is if they are in a position of dominance, which of course makes a partnership of equals, impossible.
Geoffrey Britain:
Sexual attraction stubbornly resists the PC rules.
I personally don’t “get” modern marriage. My paternal grandparents were married more than 60 years and my maternal grandparents were married 76. My parents, aunts and uncles all set good examples of what it is to be married.
But a lot of my peers have been married and divorced before we even had our 10th class reunion. One of my good friends tried to fight her divorce – try that in a “no-fault” culture – despite her husband having secret accounts and a mistress, because she knew it would hurt their children. He laughed at her; now he has a weird proud-but-distant relationship with them. I think the problem was that his parents were divorced when he was young, and he was re-creating the relationship between his father and his stepmother. He even met his second wife NEE mistress at work, the same as his father did.
I find that a lot of young people don’t know what marriage is supposed to be. When I was dating, men thought they should be able to “kick the tires” after three weeks. (I used to laugh and say they wanted to put 100K miles on me, then return me to the dealership after I lost the new car smell!) A couple wanted us to move in together, which I thought was the dumbest thing I ever heard. I’d only known one co-habiting couple that had successfully gotten (and stayed) married.
As for my take on “feminism” – I blame the Pill mentality. That is, we as a society look at a woman and say, “Oh, her reproductive system works – let’s break it” and “Oh, she stays at home while the husband works outside of it – there’s no value in that at all.” But that’s not just women saying that.
Neo: “Sexual attraction stubbornly resists the PC rules.”
That sentence captures the issue.
Rules-abiding men who are the element of civilization abide by the rules. So, when PC is the rule – unspoken and spoken (normative) rule, policy rule, even legal rule – rules-abiding men will abide by PC.
If the rules allow masculinity, then rules-abiding men will be masculine by nature. But today’s omnipresence of feminist PC rules – in the school, workplace, politics, pop culture, the law – means rules-abiding boys and men are internalizing the subjugation of their natural masculinity in order to abide by the rules.
Yet as you point out, sexual attraction is not PC. Thus, the exceptional rules-breakers become the winners as the PC rules-abiders are handicapped in the sexual marketplace.
Meanwhile, rules-abiding men are in a quandary that literally can mean life or death for their genetic heritage when to be an actualized sexual man is to break the rules. Many rules-abiding men, frustrated by a social compact that hurts them yet still abiding by its PC rules, will eventually select out of the sexual marketplace altogether.
When the rules-breakers are the winners and the rules-abiders are the losers, civilization has a problem.
When the LEft is done, men and women will behave exactly as proscribed in the Holy Utopian writ, ruled over by intellectual priests and those born to rule.
All these other things…, they are merely road blocks along the way to full control of human behavior.
The Left has spent vast time and money researching ways to control people and populations. Much of their success can be seen in politics right now. But that’s only the surface of their true power.
Today’s newest catwalk star:
http://www.france24.com/en/20130621-androgynous-swiss-model-new-catwalk-star
Sexual attraction stubbornly resists PC rules? The fact that these ugly women are catwalk stars tells you who is driving this dynamic.
Modern feminists: hothouse flowers demonstrating strength and independence by destroying the greenhouse they live in.
I’m sorry, but Steve’s link gave my computer all sorts of grief. Better use care and make sure your computer security is dialed up to 11 before clicking on it.
Ah, when manly men weren’t afraid to be men … and women were OK with liking them for that. This is why I love writing historical fiction about the 19th century. It was OK for a woman to fall for a stoic and manly guy, and appreciate him for that – while strong women were OK with doing what they felt meet, right and proper in that context. Marriage was a partnership in the great enterprise of life; the guy went out in front, and his wife guarded his back. Or sometimes vice versa. It depended on the marriage, really – and the individuals. Sigh. I like that – I wish we could have that understanding back again.
Here is the missing element regarding sex and love both Leftists and non-Leftists alike do not get, or do not admit to.
A man does not have sex with a woman because he loves her, ever. He has sex because his brain tells him a particular woman is sexually acceptable to her.
The sexual attraction by the man sometimes facilitates an emotional/psychological connection with the woman, a connection driven by the sex.
A woman’s sexual appeal opens his eyes to her other appealing attributes.
Those attributes, plus a man’s understanding of what is expected of him at the moment, compel him to accept a long term relationship.
There is a fork in the road (under ideal circumstances) when the man realizes that the appeal his mate has for him as a person, is contradicted by his profound desire for a new sexual partner. Men always want a new sexual partner, period.
Love is the man’s understanding that his desire for a new sexual partner requires the sublimation of that desire in favor of the woman’s desirable human attributes.
The perceived equation of sex and love and the actual separation of sex and love is one of those disappointing facts of life making life a burden on all of us.
Why buy a cow when you can get the milk for free?
“Modern feminists: hothouse flowers demonstrating strength and independence by destroying the greenhouse they live in.”
That is completely brilliant.
}}} the part that I find most fascinating is women’s resultant unhappiness when they do get men to capitulate.
No sht. It’s why women constantly pick “the wrong” guys — they want to do this:
The Cardigans
But when a male turns out to not be an alpha, they’re disappointed. The were looking for Prince Charming, who, despite the story, is supposed to be an AM.
This, btw, is one of the two key problems with American women — the Prince Charming Complex, along with the notion that their farts smell like roses.
IGotBupkis:
Generalize much?
You know something? I know an awful lot of women—some of my best friends are women :-)—and I know very few who meet that description you gave. Funny thing, that.
I’m not saying, of course, that there aren’t plenty of women who do meet that description. No doubt there are, but I don’t think they are in the majority. Perhaps they are in the majority of Hollywood celebrities, actresses, models, political activists, whoever it is we tend to see on TV, feminist writers, or even young pretty ones that a lot of men chase after because because they’re young pretty ones. But outside of those groups I don’t see a lot of what you describe, either among the older and middle-aged women I know or the young women who are my nieces or the friends of my son. And a lot of the women I know (older AND younger) seem to be happily married—to men.
Well I think in the future more and more women will explore lesbianism and marry one another. I think in the not too distant future women will have sex with men enough to get pregnant then dump him and bond in a lesbian relationship.
I think it is more of a desire by women to be dominate in the household, rooted in a long human history where the household usually consisted of women and children while the men were away hunting or raiding.