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The War On Men

CecilW

CecilW

Member
Real Person
Male
The War On Men

Author: Suzanne Venkner (presumably NOT a Testosterone Poisoned Male Chauvinist Pig Patriarchal MAN! :lol: )
Source: Opinion Piece on Fox News, 11/24/2012 (Dunno how long these stay up, so I decided to preserve the text by posting it here as a quote.)

The battle of the sexes is alive and well. According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.

Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don’t.

The so-called dearth of good men (read: marriageable men) has been a hot subject in the media as of late. Much of the coverage has been in response to the fact that for the first time in history, women have become the majority of the U.S. workforce. They’re also getting most of the college degrees. The problem? This new phenomenon has changed the dance between men and women.

As the author of three books on the American family and its intersection with pop culture, I’ve spent thirteen years examining social agendas as they pertain to sex, parenting, and gender roles. During this time, I’ve spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women. And in doing so, I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who’ve told me, in no uncertain terms, that they’re never getting married. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.

Women aren’t women anymore.

To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way men and women interact. Men haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but women have changed dramatically.

In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.

Now the men have nowhere to go.

It is precisely this dynamic – women good/men bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Yet somehow, men are still to blame when love goes awry. Heck, men have been to blame since feminists first took to the streets in the 1970s.

But what if the dearth of good men, and ongoing battle of the sexes, is – hold on to your seats – women’s fault?

You’ll never hear that in the media. All the articles and books (and television programs, for that matter) put women front and center, while men and children sit in the back seat. But after decades of browbeating the American male, men are tired. Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault.

Contrary to what feminists like Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men, say, the so-called rise of women has not threatened men. It has pissed them off. It has also undermined their ability to become self-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family. Men want to love women, not compete with them. They want to provide for and protect their families – it’s in their DNA. But modern women won’t let them.

It’s all so unfortunate – for women, not men. Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever.

It’s the women who lose. Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex, by dismissing male nature they’re forever seeking a balanced life. The fact is, women need men’s linear career goals – they need men to pick up the slack at the office – in order to live the balanced life they seek.

So if men today are slackers, and if they’re retreating from marriage en masse, women should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they’ve played to bring about this transformation.

Fortunately, there is good news: women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.

If they do, marriageable men will come out of the woodwork.
Click to expand...
 
As usual these opinion pieces tend to enjoy blaming the blame game, whether it is on one side or the other. Point is, socially things have changed and that genie will not be put back into the bottle, people will need to re-learn how to work together to make successful relationships. Saying women need to surrender to their true natures is just pointless and betrays a reactionary attitude that is just not helpful, instead it just allows men to feel justified in their decisions and women to feel more conflicted.

And just a small point of fact here from an unmarried woman, despite living and working for years independently, more than once I have been looked down upon by men because I do not have a glittering career or own my own house with all appropriate status symbols. The idea that out there is a wealth of single men looking for women who they can take care of is such a terrible falsehood to perpetuate. There are many men who would not even 'look' at a woman who is not earning as much as they are.

At the end of the day there is no Universal Law, there is no point in a blame game, it is men, it is women,. it is feminism blah blah blah ad nauseum. Blaming people doesn't do anything but pit one side against the other. When will people learn?

B
 
Still, Bels ... ya gotta admit it was an interesting piece; made doubly so by its author being a woman family researcher/writer.

Also, I would suggest that, economics aside, she hit upon a key point when she said that men want to take care of women, not compete with them. That would seem to have more to do with attitude than Balance sheets, though there are undoubtedly any number of blokes about who can't tell the difference.
 
to me the question is:
is there such a thing as a "true nature"?

people on opposite sides of that divide will never see the same reality.
 
steve said:
to me the question is:
is there such a thing as a "true nature"? .
Click to expand...

Ah, well that is a very good question. Let me tell you about a very good friend of mine, I will call her Susie, she is pretty traditional, hasn't worked full time outside of the home since her first child was born, she married a second husband who had a good job and his own home, after she moved in she helped with sorting out his finances, fixed up his home and they had a baby together. She is the most busy, organised, domestic goddess type I know. She supported him through his work and boosted his confidence. She is very traditional and has never wanted to be anything other than a wife and mother.

However, her husband I will call him Peter, has had other ideas, not long after he was married she realised he was needy and passive, he has wanted her to be the public face of the family, to tell him what to do, when to do it. Basically, as soon as he had a wife, he just felt he could relax from having to make any decisions or be in charge of anything.
No matter how often she tried to get him to take charge or make a decision, he never would, it was left all to her or otherwise, it just would not get done.

Susie tried every tactic she could think of to get him to 'Man up' as she called it, she felt like he was acting just like another child in the house, if she express an opinion, he would just agree with her to please her rather than expressing his own opinion and giving her a contrary view or even any intellectual stimulation. He used to drink and be verbally abusive, once I was in the home when he did that, humiliating her. She tried to get him some help but he did not want to pursue it, then she contracted an STI (not a really serious one thankfully but bad enough) he refused to get tested but it could only have been from him, as I said before, she is traditional. Eventually she lost sexual interest in him and eventually emotional investment in the relationship.

I suppose from a conservative point of view people will probably condemn her for leaving a such a relationship but I don't have to tell you that she is not a religious person although the last thing she ever wanted was to have another failed marriage, she worked incredibly hard to make that marriage work, much harder than I would have probably done in her shoes, she stuck with it because she felt it was the right thing to do to keep her family together.

So, what is Peter's true nature? Maybe he is a rotten egg and their case is extreme, but I can tell you that I know SO many women (and we women talk) that are in situations where they are with men who act like children and they are the ones who have to control the relationships not because they want to, but because things would not get done otherwise, I have been in two such relationships myself, it did not last because I am attracted to men who have some control and are strong minded, these were grown men who were so meek it almost made me want to give up on the idea of ever having a fulfilling relationship.

I cannot stand these people standing from on up high, judging modern women as if the problems between male and female interpersonal relationships are all the fault of women's liberation. If my girl Susie, who doesn't want anything more than taking care of her husband and family, wanting marriage, not sleeping around, not a party girl, just wanting a healthy good marriage and family life can find herself with a man who wants a mother more than a wife than what chance does anyone have? At the end of the day there is a problem but that Op-Ed in the OP is far too simplistic to be given any credence AFAIAC.

Bels
 
Bels, thankyou for that story. There are certainly a lot of loser men out there who are not willing to stand up and take the lead in a family, and that really is the problem when people complain about the lack of good men. There have been a lot of causes of this, however feminism (NOT females, the philosophy of feminism, which is held by people of both genders!) is one of the contributing factors.

Back in the past, a man was taught from a young age that one day he would have his own wife, she would be his responsibility, he would be the head of the home, and needed to get a good career so he could support her and their children. This was expected, so men prepared for it.

Now that is not PC. Now he is taught that both he and his wife will probably have careers, marriage is a partnership / friendship, and they'll make it work in a democratic fashion. With this philosophy a man need not prepare to be a strong leader of a home, but rather can just do what he likes with his life, and hope he finds a woman who'd like to team up with him along the way. He can expect her to contribute leadership to the home (as it's not PC for him to presume he will be the leader). The result is a wishy-washy emasculated man like "Peter", expecting his wife to do everything.

Feminism has also affected women, they are more likely to aspire to have careers, and good on them, I've got no problem with that IF that is truly what they want with their lives. Many of them are also happy in a "partnership"-style marriage where they have leadership responsibilities. But there are many, many women (like "Suzie") who just want to raise a family in a traditional male-led home. They want a strong man. And these men are hard to find any more.

As most men are not taught to lead, most either choose not to lead or they decide to lead anyway and become abusive because they do not know how to lead lovingly. Either extreme is poor husband material.

When I think about it, feminism may have changed men more than it has changed women...
 
It is hard for us to judge when most of us are too young to remember what it was like before.

My mom went to an exclusive private school for girls, yet my Grandfather in the early 1960's was reluctant to pay for the one year of college it took for my Mom to get a career (and her sister to become a teacher) because he felt it was a waste of money when they were going to get married anyway.

My Dad was not a bad person - but he was a "Peter". His father died when he was 3 and he simply did not know how to lead a family effectively. When my parents finally divorced, my grandfather was the first to say how glad he was that he had paid for my Mom to go to college for that year.

My Uncle came from a very impressive family and he could not live up to that legacy. He was an abusive drunk who pursued every deviant side of society you can imagine. My Aunt was a stay at home Mom who was terrorized by him. When she finally left, my grandfather was again very glad that my Aunt had her teaching degree to fall back on.

Did their ability to provide destroy their marriages? Undermine their marriages? I don't believe so. What it did was give them an opportunity to escape unhappy and unfruitful situations that had been denied to women before them.

Does a women’s ability to provide automatically cause a man to fail in his leadership role? Not if he is secure in himself and his role as head of the house. I suppose the argument could be made that if my Mom did not have an escape route she MAY have turned things around with my Dad, but I believe the respect was already gone and it would have been very difficult for them to fix that.

Was the alternative better, where a woman was stuck in a bad situation? Like I said – it is hard for us to judge. It is especially unfair for women living in a good marriage to judge what other women should or should not do.
 
wow, this is an exciting post. you took the words right out of so many men's mouth's, including my husband. my husband just had a convo with me about how he feels women have changed to an unfemine way. We see it on tv, and in christian modern homes. When are we women gonna take a stand to feminity. And embrace our natural makeup as a women. i love when my husband explains, and re informs me of femine women, their character and how they carry theirselves. i think many women can say, that men and women have been competing since the beginning to be more dominant, powerful, just like men. Since Eve in the garden, being decieved by Satan for knowledge. He definately would love to take women away from men who lead and also from God's devine order. Men being rulers of the house and so on. We are just missing out if we dont come back to who God really made us women to be like. Femine, lovely, not arrogant, nor disrespectful. I still got work to do, and ask God to finish the work. May women stand up to purity, and God's natural way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
FollowingHim said:
Now that is not PC. Now he is taught that both he and his wife will probably have careers, marriage is a partnership / friendship, and they'll make it work in a democratic fashion. With this philosophy a man need not prepare to be a strong leader of a home, but rather can just do what he likes with his life, and hope he finds a woman who'd like to team up with him along the way. He can expect her to contribute leadership to the home (as it's not PC for him to presume he will be the leader). The result is a wishy-washy emasculated man like "Peter", expecting his wife to do everything.


When I think about it, feminism may have changed men more than it has changed women...
Click to expand...

I don't think feminism has changed men, I think it is the lack of an adequate male movement to respond to feminism has created the Peter's of the world. Peter's parents are still together and from what I can gather (having only met them a few times) they have a very good symbiotic relationship. Peter was not taught how to be a husband to a traditional wife, but neither was he taught to be an equal partner to career minded modern woman. In fact, he was taught nothing, because in our society we are not taught how to have functional relationships, we are not taught how to communicate, how to express our needs or how to work together. We are not taught this by parents or teachers or anywhere, all that you see are people blindly trying to work things out as they go along. This is not the fault of feminism, this is the fault of society as a whole.

B
 
eternitee said:
It is hard for us to judge when most of us are too young to remember what it was like before.

.
Click to expand...

Very good post Eternitee and great point, I think it is very easy to romanticise the past and believe in some Golden Age when men were masculine men and women were pretty feminine women and all was well in the world...except it was never really like that was it? What we see from the street is not always what happened behind closed doors.
I often think there is a real lack of critical thinking on the matter of history with people projecting a level of gender bliss that is not really backed up by historical evidence. Just yesterday I was reading an account of a Canadian woman who lost her job after the war ended (because returning men needed jobs) and how desperately unhappy she was about it. Those 30 something housewives with the apron and smiles could often be very unhappy women who felt a deep dissatisfaction with the roles that society assigned to them, they looked back at a time when they were working and independent as their own Golden Age (I not only read a lot of social history but I have worked with elderly people and interviewed them also).
I often find it both sad and also a bit amusing that 60 years later people can idealise their lives, totally divorced from the reality of these people's lives. The 2nd wave of feminists were raised by these women who so many people think of as stereotypical feminine traditional housewives, girls were brought up by women who felt trapped and resolved to be liberated so they would not be forced into a pre-defined role by society but can actually make their own choices.
Like any movement there are some people who are extreme and there are some who pass it by entirely but at the end of the day it is about not feeling stuck in horrible situations like Eternitee illustrated so well.

Not everything is black and white.
 
CecilW said:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/1993812123001/inside-look-at-the-war-on-men/?playlist_id=903226511001

Fox News Video followup on the original article
Click to expand...

Thank you Cecil, very interesting, two things come to mind when watching it though, the first one of course was that the stats are pretty bogus, there is really very little evidence that the reduction in the rate of marriage is to do with male reluctance, many people, for various reasons do not get married but still live together and raise children. Also, it definitely does not at ALL correspond to the demographics that seem to have more male reluctance amongst women of a class who do not have competitive jobs or could be considered career minded women. This is at odds with the theory put forth by the author, could this indicate a certain amount of class bias?
Secondly, I feel the author did a wee bit of backtracking in her interview, she claimed it was creative editing for the purposes of catting attention (which is most certainly did) but I do feel if you make the claim, one should back it up when challenged about it.

I really had no problems with anything she said in the interview, call me sexist if you like but I still see the romanticism of 'women and children first', I don't want to have to dispose of the dead mouse or check to see if there is a burgler in the house, sadly, i live alone so those jobs falls to me and I would have to do them (here's hoping I don't find a dead mouse because it would totally gross me out) but do I want to? Certainly not, I am very happy to not be in the Protector role and what get's my goat with some of the assumptions made about modern women is that we are all rushing to do that, sure I may be a little less traditional than Susie but I still want a man who will step up and protect his family, not one who will hide behind my apron strings (yes I DO have an apron :P ).

Interesting note, I have never had a relationship with a man brought up by a single parent, in fact the two most wimpy, passive men I have come across have parents who are pretty traditional (wrt gender roles) and still together.

B
:D
 
I would rather call this the War on God. When Satan and sin are trying to systematically destroy the very nature of the first relationship God established here and the only one meant to last until death (while here on earth) Satan is trying to destroy the foundation of God's design and desires for us.
 
:roll:
Isabella said:
As usual these opinion pieces tend to enjoy blaming the blame game, whether it is on one side or the other. Point is, socially things have changed and that genie will not be put back into the bottle, people will need to re-learn how to work together to make successful relationships. Saying women need to surrender to their true natures is just pointless and betrays a reactionary attitude that is just not helpful, instead it just allows men to feel justified in their decisions and women to feel more conflicted.

And just a small point of fact here from an unmarried woman, despite living and working for years independently, more than once I have been looked down upon by men because I do not have a glittering career or own my own house with all appropriate status symbols. The idea that out there is a wealth of single men looking for women who they can take care of is such a terrible falsehood to perpetuate. There are many men who would not even 'look' at a woman who is not earning as much as they are.

At the end of the day there is no Universal Law, there is no point in a blame game, it is men, it is women,. it is feminism blah blah blah ad nauseum. Blaming people doesn't do anything but pit one side against the other. When will people learn?

B
Click to expand...
I agree with you 100%.....there is no blame on women or men.....the point is both men & women have problems in relationships & there is no one gender that is to blame.As far as men coming out of the woodwork to get married if women would just "be women like the way God created them to be".....that is a big fat joke! The fact is both men & women are fallen creatures & to say one gender is responsible for ruining the others choices of wanting to get married is just not the true....think about it
 
So if there are not enough good men, that could be solved by each man having more women :lol:

(and yet that is not really a solution because how will it help the leftover men (no I do not mean help them marry, I mean help them improve))

(Also in reality a man marrying a woman does not practically mean less women are available for marriage for the other men, because marriage increases the number of women over 18 years old in the long-run by increasing the birth rate since as the birth rate increases the number of women over 18 years old increases in the long run)
 
DiscussingTheTopic said:
(Also in reality a man marrying a woman does not practically mean less women are available for marriage for the other men, because marriage increases the number of women over 18 years old in the long-run by increasing the birth rate since as the birth rate increases the number of women over 18 years old increases in the long run)
Click to expand...

By that logic, more men are born also :P
 
Just thought I'd comment here.
Hubby and I have both observed over many years, the lack of manly men, especially, but not exclusively, in the LDS church. Hubby is of the decided opinion that churches rather then teaching men to be men, encourage them to defer to other men, and let someone else take responsibility for their lives and families.
In our (perhaps not so) humble opinion, there is a huge difference between letting a man in a leadership position do his job, and supporting him in it, and letting that same man run your household.
The way we see it, people in leadership positions are to be servants, NOT authorities. The men are supposed to rule their own households, but the pastor is NOT supposed to rule the men in the congregation. He should however be available to help them and counsel them, if or when it is needed.
The problem with society in general, is that manly men are not appreciated, at least by those in supposed positions of authority. Men are expected to allow their persons, wives, cars and homes to be searched by any officer of "the law" without protest. So our men have been taught and trained to be little more then neutered men.
So welcome to the new age of the neutered male. I feel sorry for any woman looking for a real man, who will stand up and defend what is right, regardless of the cost.
 
Isabella said:
DiscussingTheTopic said:
(Also in reality a man marrying a woman does not practically mean less women are available for marriage for the other men, because marriage increases the number of women over 18 years old in the long-run by increasing the birth rate since as the birth rate increases the number of women over 18 years old increases in the long run)
Click to expand...

By that logic, more men are born also :P
Click to expand...

Yes but
[P*e^(KT-KA)]/[P*e^(KT)]=e^-KA
[P*e^(KT-18K-KA)]/[P*e^(KT-18K)]=e^-KA

[P*e^(KT-18K)]/(KT-18K-KA)=e^KA

P and K are proportionality constants
Population of men at time t years = Population of women at time t years = P*e^KT
Where t = 0 is 0 years after the number of men in the world is P humans

Population of women 18 years and older is P*e^(KT-18K)
Population of men 18 years +A years and older is (KT-18K-KA)

The number of men [18+A] years old and older is smaller than the number of women 18 years old and older for A greater than zero
The number of women 18 years old and older is approximately e^KA times the number of men [18+A] years old and older which is greater than one when A and K are greater than zero

This assumes that the birth rate per person (over 19 years old) per year remains constant which it might with monogamy but it might increase with polygyny making the gap even bigger further preventing marriageable people shortages.
 
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