Today, on the first day of the new decade of '201x' years, I am going to tell you why that is. I am hereby triggering the national dialog on what the foremost challenge for the United States will be in this decade, which is the ultimate root cause of most of the other problems we appear to be struggling with. What you are about to read is the equivalent of someone in 1997 describing the expected forces governing the War on Terror from 2001-2009 in profound detail.
This is a very long article, the longest ever written on The Futurist. As it is a guide to the next decade of social, political, and sexual strife, it is not meant to be read in one shot but rather digested slowly over an extended period, with all supporting links read as well (if those links are still active after years pass). As the months and years of this decade progress, this article will seem all the more prophetic.
Executive Summary : The Western World has quietly become a civilization that has tainted the interaction between men and women, where the state forcibly transfers resources from men to women creating various perverse incentives for otherwise good women to make extremely unwise life choices, destructive to both themselves and others. This is unfair to both genders, and is a recipe for a rapid civilizational decline and displacement, the costs of which will ultimately be borne by a subsequent generation of innocent women, rather than men, as soon as 2020. The primary culprits in perpetuating this injustice are not average women, but radical 'feminists' and an assortment of sinister, dishonest men who variously describe themselves as 'male feminists' or 'social conservatives'.
Now, the basic premise of this article is that men and women are equally valuable, but have different strengths and weaknesses, and different priorities. A society is strongest when men and women have roles that are complementary to each other, rather than of an adverserial nature. Furthermore, when one gender (either one) is mistreated, the other ends up becoming disenfranchised as well. If you disagree with this premise, you may not wish to read further.
The Cultural Thesis
The Myth of Female Oppression : When you tell someone that they are oppressed, against all statistical and logical evidence, you harm them by generating discouragement and resentment. This pernicious effect is the basis of many forms of needlessly inflicted female unhappiness, as well as the basis for unjustified retaliation against men.
All of us have been taught how women have supposedly been oppressed throughout human existence, and that this was pervasive, systematic, and endorsed by ordinary men who did not face hardships as severe as what women endured. In reality, this narrative is entirely incorrect. The average man was forced to risk death on the battlefield, at sea, or in mines, while most women stayed indoors tending to children and household duties. Male life expectancy was always significantly lower than that of females, and still is.
Warfare has been a near constant feature of human society before the modern era, and whenever two tribes or kingdoms went to war with each other, the losing side saw many of its fighting-age men exterminated, while the women were assimilated into the invading society. Now, becoming a concubine or a housekeeper is an unfortunate fate, but not nearly as bad as being slaughtered in battle as the men were. To anyone who disagrees, would you like for the men and women to trade outcomes?
Most of this narrative stems from 'feminists' comparing the plight of average women to the topmost men (the monarch and other aristocrats), rather than to the average man. This practice is known as apex fallacy, and whether accidental or deliberate, entirely misrepresents reality. To approximate the conditions of the average woman to the average man (the key word being 'average') in the Western world of a century ago, simply observe the lives of the poorest peasants in poor countries today. Both men and women have to perform tedious work, have insufficient food and clothing, and limited opportunities for upliftment.
As far as selective anecdotes like voting rights go, in the vast majority of cases, men could not vote either. In fact, if one compares every nation state from every century, virtually all of them extended exactly the same voting rights (or lack thereof) to men and women. Even today, out of 200 sovereign states, there are exactly zero that have a different class of voting rights to men and women. Any claim that women were being denied rights that men were given in even 1% of historical instances, falls flat.
This is not to deny that genuine atrocities like genital mutilation have been perpetrated against women; they have and still are. But men also experienced atrocities of comparable horror at the same time, which is simply not mentioned. In fact, when a man is genitally mutilated by a woman, some other women actually find this humorous, and are proud to say so publicly.
It is already wrong when a contemporary group seeks reparations from an injustice that occurred over a century ago to people who are no longer alive. It is even worse when this oppression itself is a fabrication. The narrative of female oppression by men should be rejected and refuted as the highly selective and historically false narrative that it is. In fact, this myth is evidence not of historical oppression, but of the vastly different propensity to complain between the two genders.
The Masculinity Vacuum in Entertainment : Take a look at the collage of entertainers below (click to enlarge), which will be relevant if you are older than 30. All of them were prominent in the 1980s, some spilling over on either side of that decade. They are all certainly very different from one another. But they have one thing in common - that there are far fewer comparable personas produced by Hollywood today.
As diverse and imperfect as these characters were, they were all examples of masculinity. They represented different archetypes, from the father to the leader to the ladies man to the rugged outdoorsman to the protector. They were all more similar than dissimilar, as they all were role-models for young boys of the time, often the same young boys. Celebrities as disparate as Bill Cosby and Mr. T had majority overlap in their fan bases, as did characters as contrasting as Jean-Luc Picard and The Macho Man Randy Savage.
At this point, you might be feeling a deep inner emptiness lamenting a bygone age, as the paucity of proudly, inspiringly masculine characters in modern entertainment becomes clear. Before the 1980s, there were different masculine characters, but today, they are conspicuously absent. Men are shown either as thuggish degenerates, or as effete androgynes. Sure, there were remakes of Star Trek and The A-Team, and series finales of Rocky and Indiana Jones. But where are the new characters? Why is the vacuum being filled solely with nostalgia? A single example like Jack Bauer is not sufficient to dispute the much larger trend of masculinity purging.
Modern entertainment typically shows businessmen as villains, and husbands as bumbling dimwits that are always under the command of the all-powerful wife, who is never wrong. Oprah Winfrey's platform always grants a sympathetic portrayal to a wronged woman, but never to men who have suffered great injustices. Absurdly false feminist myths such as a belief that women are underpaid relative to men for the same output of work, or that adultery and domestic violence are actions committed exclusively by men, are embedded even within the dialog of sitcoms and legal dramas.
This trains women to disrespect men, wives to think poorly of their husbands, and girls to devalue the importance of their fathers, which leads to the normalization of single motherhood (obviously with taxpayer subsidies), despite the reality that most single mothers are not victims, but merely women who rode a carousel of men with reckless abandon. This, in turn, leads to fatherless young men growing up being told that natural male behavior is wrong, and feminization is normal. It also leads to women being deceived outright about the realities of the sexual market, where media attempts to normalize single motherhood and attempted 'cougarhood' are glorified, rather than portrayed as the undesirable conditions that they are.
The Primal Nature of Men and Women : Genetic research has shown that before the modern era, 80% of women managed to reproduce, but only 40% of men did. The obvious conclusion from this is that a few top men had multiple wives, while the bottom 60% had no mating prospects at all. Women clearly did not mind sharing the top man with multiple other women, ultimately deciding that being one of four women sharing an 'alpha' was still more preferable than having the undivided attention of a 'beta'. Let us define the top 20% of men as measured by their attractiveness to women, as 'alpha' males while the middle 60% of men will be called 'beta' males. The bottom 20% are not meaningful in this context.
Research across gorillas, chimpanzees, and primitive human tribes shows that men are promiscuous and polygamous. This is no surprise to a modern reader, but the research further shows that women are not monogamous, as is popularly assumed, but hypergamous. In other words, a woman may be attracted to only one man at any given time, but as the status and fortune of various men fluctuates, a woman's attention may shift from a declining man to an ascendant man. There is significant turnover in the ranks of alpha males, which women are acutely aware of.
As a result, women are the first to want into a monogamous relationship, and the first to want out. This is neither right nor wrong, merely natural. What is wrong, however, is the cultural and societal pressure to shame men into committing to marriage under the pretense that they are 'afraid of commitment' due to some 'Peter Pan complex', while there is no longer the corresponding traditional shame that was reserved for women who destroyed the marriage, despite the fact that 90% of divorces are initiated by women. Furthermore, when women destroy the commitment, there is great harm to children, and the woman demands present and future payments from the man she is abandoning. A man who refuses to marry is neither harming innocent minors nor expecting years of payments from the woman. This absurd double standard has invisible but major costs to society.
To provide 'beta' men an incentive to produce far more economic output than needed just to support themselves while simultaneously controlling the hypergamy of women that would deprive children of interaction with their biological fathers, all major religions constructed an institution to force constructive conduct out of both genders while penalizing the natural primate tendencies of each. This institution was known as 'marriage'. Societies that enforced monogamous marriage made sure all beta men had wives, thus unlocking productive output out of these men who in pre-modern times would have had no incentive to be productive. Women, in turn, received a provider, a protector, and higher social status than unmarried women, who often were trapped in poverty. When applied over an entire population of humans, this system was known as 'civilization'.
All societies that achieved great advances and lasted for multiple centuries followed this formula with very little deviation, and it is quite remarkable how similar the nature of monogamous marriage was across seemingly diverse cultures. Societies that deviated from this were quickly replaced. This 'contract' between the sexes was advantageous to beta men, women over the age of 35, and children, but greatly curbed the activities of alpha men and women under 35 (together, a much smaller group than the former one). Conversely, the pre-civilized norm of alpha men monopolizing 3 or more young women each, replacing aging ones with new ones, while the masses of beta men fight over a tiny supply of surplus/aging women, was chaotic and unstable, leaving beta men violent and unproductive, and aging mothers discarded by their alpha mates now vulnerable to poverty. So what happens when the traditional controls of civilization are lifted from both men and women?
The Four Sirens : Four unrelated forces simultaneously combined to entirely distort the balance of civilization built on the biological realities of men and women. Others have presented versions of the Four Sirens concept in the past, but I am choosing a slightly different definition of the Four Sirens :
1) Easy contraception (condoms, pills, and abortions): In the past, extremely few women ever had more than one or two sexual partners in their lives, as being an unwed mother led to poverty and social ostracization. Contraception made it possible for females to act on their urges of hypergamy.
2) 'No fault' divorce, asset division, and alimony : In the past, a woman who wanted to leave her husband needed to prove misconduct on his part. Now, the law has changed to such a degree that a woman can leave her husband for no stated reason, yet is still entitled to payments from him for years to come. This incentivizes destruction because it enables women to transfer the costs of irresponsible behavior onto men and children.
3) Female economic freedom : Despite 'feminists' claiming that this is the fruit of their hard work, inventions like the vacuum cleaner, washing machine, and oven were the primary drivers behind liberating women from household chores and freeing them up to enter the workforce. These inventions compressed the chores that took a full day into just an hour or less. There was never any organized male opposition to women entering the workforce (in China, taxes were collected in a way that mandated female productivity), as more labor lowered labor costs while also creating new consumers. However, one of the main reasons that women married - financial support - was no longer a necessity.
Female entry into the workforce is generally a positive development for society, and I would be the first to praise this, if it were solely on the basis of merit (as old-school feminists had genuinely intended). Unfortunately, too much of this is now due to corrupt political lobbying to forcibly transfer resources from men to women.
4) Female-Centric social engineering : Above and beyond the pro-woman divorce laws, further state interventions include the subsidization of single motherhood, laws that criminalize violence against women (but offer no protection to men who are the victims of violence by women, which happens just as often), and 'sexual harassment' laws with definitions so nebulous that women have the power to accuse men of anything without the man having any rights of his own.
These four forces in tandem handed an unprecedented level of power to women. The technology gave them freedom to pursue careers and the freedom to be promiscuous. Feminist laws have done a remarkable job of shielding women from the consequences of their own actions. Women now have as close to a hypergamous utopia as has ever existed, where they can pursue alpha males while extracting subsidization from beta males without any reciprocal obligations to them. Despite all the new freedoms available to women that freed them from their traditional responsibilities, men were still expected to adhere to their traditional responsibilities.
Marriage 2.0 : From the West to the Middle East to Asia, marriage is considered a mandatory bedrock of any functioning society. If marriage is such a crucial ingredient of societal health, then the West is barreling ahead on a suicidal path.
We earlier discussed why marriage was created, but equally important were the factors that sustained the institution and kept it true to its objectives. The reasons that marriage 'worked' not too long ago were :
1) People married at the age of 20, and often died by the age of 50. People were virgins at marriage, and women spent their 20s tending to 3 or more children. Her peak years were contained within marriage. This is an entirely different psychological foundation than the present urban norm of a woman marrying at the age of 34 after her peak years are in the past and she has had 10 or more prior sexual relationships. Some such women have already underwent what can best be described as a fatocalypse.
2) It was entirely normal for 10-20% of young men to die or be crippled on the battlefield, or in occupational accidents. Hence, there were always significantly more women than able-bodied men in the 20-40 age group, ensuring that not all women could marry. Widows were common and visible, and vulnerable to poverty and crime. For these reasons, women who were married to able-bodied men knew how fortunate they were relative to other women who had to resort to tedious jobs just to survive, and treated their marriage with corresponding respect.
3) Prior to the invention of contraception, female promiscuity carried the huge risk of pregnancy, and the resultant poverty and low social status. It was virtually impossible for any women to have more than 2-3 sexual partners in her lifetime without being a prostitute, itself an occupation of the lowest social status.
4) Divorce carried both social stigma and financial losses for a woman. Her prospects for remarriage were slim. Religious institutions, extended clans, and broader societal forces were pressures to keep a woman committed to her marriage, and the notion of leaving simply out of boredom was out of the question.
Today, however, all of these factors have been removed. This is partly the result of good forces (economic progress and technology invented by beta men), but partly due to artificial schemes that are extremely damaging to society.
For one thing, the wedding itself has gone from a solemn event attended only by close family and friends, to an extravaganza of conspicuous consumption for the enjoyment of women but financed by the hapless man. The wedding ring itself used to be a family heirloom passed down over generations, but now, the bride thumbs through a catalog that shows her rings that the man is expected to spend two months of his salary to buy. This presumption that somehow the woman is to be indulged for entering marriage is a complete reversal of centuries-old traditions grounded in biological realities (and evidence of how American men have become weak pushovers). In some Eastern cultures, for example, it is normal even today for either the bride's father to pay for the wedding, or for the bride's family to give custody of all wedding jewelry to the groom's family. The reason for this was so that the groom's family effectively had a 'security bond' against irresponsible behavior on the part of the bride, such as her leaving the man at the (Eastern equivalent of the) altar, or fleeing the marital home at the first sign of distress (also a common female psychological response). For those wondering why Eastern culture has such restrictions on women and not men, restrictions on men were tried in some communities, and those communities quickly vanished and were forgotten. There is no avoiding the reality that marriage has to be made attractive to men for the surrounding civilization to survive. Abuse and blackmail of women certainly occurred in some instances, but on balance, these customs existed through centuries of observing the realities of human behavior. Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilization has survived for over 5000 years and every challenge imaginable through enforcement of these customs, and, until recently, the Christian world also had comparable mechanisms to steer individual behavior away from destructive manifestations. However, if the wedding has mutated into a carnival of bridezilla narcissism, the mechanics of divorce are far more disastrous.
In an 'at will' employment arrangement between a corporation and an employee, either party can terminate the contract at any time. However, instead of a few weeks of severance, imagine what would happen if the employer was legally required to pay the employee half of his or her paycheck for 20 additional years, irrespective of anything the employee did or did not do, under penalty of imprisonment for the CEO. Suppose, additionally, that it is culturally encouraged for an employee to do this whenever even minor dissatisfaction arises. Would businesses be able to operate? Would anyone want to be a CEO? Would businesses even form, and thus would any wealth be created, given the risks associated with hiring an employee? Keep these questions in mind as you read further.
So why are 70-90% of divorces initiated by women? Women have always been hypergamous, and most were married to beta men that they felt no attraction towards, so what has changed to cause an increase in divorce rates?
Divorce lawyers, like any other professional group, will seek conditions that are good for business. What makes attorneys different from, say, engineers or salespeople, is that a) they know precisely how to lobby for changes to the legal system, bypassing voters and the US constitution, that guarantees more revenue for them, and b) what benefits them is directly harmful to the fabric of society in general, and to children in particular. When they collude with rage-filled 'feminists' who openly say that 90% of the male gender should be exterminated, the outcome is catastrophic.
The concept of 'no fault' divorce by itself may not be unfair. The concepts of asset division and alimony may also be fair in the event of serious wrongdoing by the husband. However, the combination of no-fault divorce plus asset division/alimony is incredibly unfair and prone to extortionary abuse. The notion that she can choose to leave the marriage, yet he is nonetheless required to pay her for years after that even if he did not want to destroy the union, is an injustice that should not occur in any advanced democracy. Indeed, the man has to pay even if the woman has an extramarital affair, possibly even being ordered to pay her psychiatric fees. Bogus claims by 'feminists' that women suffer under divorce are designed to obscure the fact that she is the one who filed for divorce. Defenders of alimony insist that a woman seeking a divorce should not see a drop in living standards, but it is somehow acceptable for the husband to see a drop even if he did not want a divorce. I would go further and declare that any belief that women deserve alimony on a no-fault basis in this day age is utterly contradictory to the belief that women are equals of men. How can women both deserve alimony while also claiming equality? In rare cases, high-earning women have had to pay alimony to ex-husbands, but that is only 4% of the time, vs. the man paying 96% of the time. But it gets worse; much worse, in fact.
Even if the woman chooses to leave on account of 'boredom', she is still given default custody of the children, which exposes the total hypocrisy of feminist claims that men and women should be treated equally. Furthermore, the man is required to pay 'child support' which is assessed at levels much higher than the direct costs of child care, with the woman facing no burden to prove the funds were spent on the child, and cannot be specified by any pre-nuptial agreement. The rationale is that 'the child should not see a drop in living standards due to divorce', but since the mother has custody of the child, this is a stealthy way in which feminists have ensured financial maintenence of the mother as well. So the man loses his children and most of his income even if he did not want divorce. But even that is not the worst-case scenario.
The Bradley Amendment, devised by Senator Bill Bradley in 1986, ruthlessly pursues men for the already high 'child support' percentages, and seizes their passports and imprisons them without due process for falling behind in payments, even if on account of job loss during a recession. Under a bogus 'deadbeat dads' media campaign, 'feminists' were able to obscure the fact that women were the ones ending their marriages and with them the benefit that children receive from a two-parent upbringing, and further demanding unusually high spousal maintenence, much of which does not even go to the child, from a dutiful ex-husband who did not want a divorce, under penalty of imprisonment. So the legal process uses children as pawns through which to extract an expanded alimony stream for the mother. The phony tactic of insisting that 'it is for the children' is used to shut down all questions about the use of children as pawns in the extortion process, while avoiding scrutiny of the fact that the parent who is choosing divorce is clearly placing the long-term well-being of the children at a very low priority.
So as it stands today, there are large numbers of middle-class men who were upstanding citizens, who were subjected to divorce against their will, had their children taken from them, pay alimony masked as child support that is so high that many of them have to live out of their cars or with their relatives, and after job loss from economic conditions, are imprisoned simply for running out of money. If 10-30% of American men are under conditions where 70% or more of their income is taken from them under threat of prison, these men have no incentive to start new businesses or invent new technologies or processes. Having 10-30% of men disincentivized this way cannot be good for the economy, and is definitely a contributor to current economic malaise, not to mention a 21st-century version of slavery. Sometimes, the children are not even biologically his.
This one-page site has more links about the brutal tyranny that a man can be subjected to once he enters the legal contract of marriage, and even more so after he has children. What was once the bedrock of society, and a solemn tradition that benefited both men and women equally, has quietly mutated under the evil tinkering of feminists, divorce lawyers, and leftists, into a shockingly unequal arrangement, where the man is officially a second-class citizen who is subjected to a myriad of sadistic risks. As a result, the word 'marriage' should not even be used, given the totality of changes that have made the arrangement all but unrecognizable compared to its intended ideals. Suicide rates of men undergoing divorce run as high as 20%, and all of us know a man who either committed suicide, or admits seriously considering it during the dehumanization he faced even though he wanted to preserve the union. Needless to say, this is a violation of the US Constitution on many levels, and is incompatible with the values of any supposedly advanced democracy that prides itself on freedom and liberty. There is effectively a tyrannical leftist shadow state operating within US borders but entirely outside the US constitution, which can subject a man to horrors more worthy of North Korea than the US, even if he did not want out of the marriage, did not want to be separated from his children, and did not want to lose his job. Any unsuspecting man can be sucked into this shadow state.
Anyone who believes that two-parent families are important to the continuance of an advanced civilization, should focus on the explosive growth in revenue earned by divorce lawyers, court supervisors, and 'feminist' organizations over the past quarter-century. If Western society is to survive, these revenues should be chopped down to a tenth of what they presently are, which is what they would be if the elements that violate the US Constitution were repealed.
Marriage is no longer a gateway to female 'companionship', as we shall discuss later. For this reason, I cannot recommend 'marriage', in its modern state, to any young man living in the US, UK, Canada, or Australia. There are just too many things outside of his control that can catastrophically ruin his finances, emotions, and quality of life.
At a minimum, he should make sure that having children is the most important goal of his life. If not, then he has insufficient reason to enter this contract. If this goal is affirmed, then he should conduct research by speaking to a few divorced men about the laws and mistreatment they were subjected to, and attend a few divorce court hearings at the local courthouse. After gaining this information, if he still wants to take the risk, he should only marry if he can meet the following three conditions, none of which can substitute either of the other two :
1) The woman earns the same as, or more than, he does.
2) He has a properly done pre-nuptial arrangement with lawyers on each side (even though a pre-nup will not affect the worst aspect of divorce law - 'child support' as a cloak for stealth alimony and possible imprisonment).
3) He is deeply competent in seduction practices (Game), and can manage his relationship with his wife effortlessly. Even this is a considerable workload, however. More on this later.
There are still substantial risks, but at least they are somewhat reduced under these conditions. If marriage is a very important goal for a young man, he should seriously consider expatriation to a developing country, where he ironically may have a higher living standard than in the US after adjusting for divorce risk.
So, to review, the differences between Marriage 1.0 and Marriage 2.0 are :
- a) No fault asset division and alimony, where the abandoned spouse has to pay if he earns more, even if he did not want a divorce, and even if he is a victim of abuse, cuckolding, or adultery. There are rare instances of high-earning women getting caught in this trap as well.
- b) Women marrying after having 5 or more sexual partners, compared to just 0-1 previously. This makes it harder for the woman to form a pair bond with her husband.
- c) Women marrying at an age when very few years of their peak beauty are remaining, compared to a decade or more remaining under Marriage 1.0.
- d) Child custody is almost never granted to the man, so he loses his children on a 'no fault' basis.
Traditional cultures marketed marriage with such punctilious alacrity that most people today dare not even question whether the traditional truths still apply. Hence, hostility often ensues from a mere attempt to even broach the topic of whether marriage is still the same concept as it once was. Everyone from women to sadistic social conservatives to a young man's own parents will pressure and shame him into marriage for reasons they cannot even articulate, and condemn his request for a pre-nup, without having any interest in even learning about the horrendously unequal and carefully concealed laws he would be subjected to in the event that his wife divorces him through no reasons he can discern. But some men with an eye on self-preservation are figuring this out, and are avoiding marriage. By many accounts, 22% of men have decided to avoid marriage. So what happens to a society that makes it unattractive for even just 20% of men to marry?
Women are far more interested in marriage than men. Simple logic of supply and demand tells us that the institution of monogamous marriage requires at least 80% male participation in order to be viable. When male participation drops below 80%, all women are in serious trouble, since there are now 100 women competing for every 80 men, compounded with the reality that women age out of fertility much quicker than men. This creates great stress among the single female population. In the past, the steady hand of a young woman's mother and grandmother knew that her beauty was temporary, and that the most seductive man was not the best husband, and they made sure that the girl was married off to a boy with long-term durability. Now that this guidance has been removed from the lives of young women, thanks to 'feminism', these women are proving to be poor pilots of their mating lives who pursue alpha males until the age of 34-36 when her desirability drops precipitously and not even beta males she used to reject are interested in her. This stunning plunge in her prospects with men is known as the Wile E. Coyote moment, and women of yesteryear had many safety nets that protected them from this fate. The 'feminist' media's attempt to normalize 'cougarhood' is evidence of gasping desperation to package failure as a desirable outcome, which will never become mainstream due to sheer biological realities. Women often protest that a high number of sexual partners should not be counted as a negative on them, as the same is not a negative for men, but this is merely a manifestation of solipism. A complex sexual past works against women even if the same works in favor of men, due to the natural sexual attraction triggers of each gender. A wise man once said, "A key that can open many locks is a valuable key, but a lock that can be opened by many keys is a useless lock."
The big irony is that 'feminism', rather than improving the lives of women, has stripped away the safety nets of mother/grandmother guidance that would have shielded her from ever having to face her Wile E. Coyote moment. 'Feminism' has thus put the average woman at risk in yet another area.
Game (Learned Attraction and Seduction) : The Four Sirens and the legal changes feminists have instituted to obstruct beta men have created a climate where men have invented techniques and strategies to adapt to the more challenging marketplace, only to exceed their aspirations. This is a disruptive technology in its own right. All of us know a man who is neither handsome nor wealthy, but consistently has amazing success with women. He seems to have natural instincts regarding women that to the layperson may be indistinguishable from magic. So how does he do it?
Detractors with a vested interest in the present status quo are eager to misrepresent what 'Game' is, and the presence of many snake-oil salesmen in the field does not help, but as a definition :
The traits that make a man attractive to women are learnable skills, that improve with practice. Once a man learns these skills, he is indistinguishable from a man who had natural talents in this area. Whether a man then chooses to use these skills to secure one solid relationship or multiple brief ones, is entirely up to him.
The subject is too vast for any description over here to do it full justice, but in a nutshell, the Internet age enabled communities of men to share the various bits of knowledge they had field tested and refined (e.g. one man being an expert at meeting women during the daytime, another being an expert at step-by-step sexual escalation, yet another being a master of creating lasting love, etc.). The collective knowledge grew and evolved, and an entire industry to teach the various schools of 'Game' emerged. Men who comprehended the concepts (a minority) and those who could undertake the total reconstitution of their personalities and avalanche of rejections as part of the learning curve (a still smaller minority) stood to reap tremendous benefits from becoming more attractive than the vast majority of unaware men. While the 'pick-up artist' (PUA) implementation is the most media-covered, the principles are equally valuable for men in monogamous long-term relationships (LTRs). See Charlotte Allen's cover story for The Weekly Standard, devoted to 'Game'.
Among the most valuable learnings from the body of knowledge is the contrarian revelation that what women say a man should do is often quite the antithesis of what would actually bring him success. For example, being a needy, supplicative, eager-to-please man is precisely the opposite behavior that a man should employ, where being dominant, teasing, amused, yet assertive is the optimal persona. An equally valuable lesson is to realize when not to take a woman's words at face value. Many statements from her are 'tests' to see if the man can remain congruent in his 'alpha' personality, where the woman is actually hoping the man does not eagerly comply to her wishes. Similarly, the 'feminist' Pavlovian reaction to call any non-compliant man a 'misogynist' should also not be taken as though a rational adult assigned the label after fair consideration. Such shaming language is only meant to deflect scrutiny and accountability from the woman uttering it, and should be given no more importance than a 10-year-old throwing a tantrum to avoid responsibility or accountability. Far too many men actually take these slurs seriously, to the detriment of male rights and dignity.
Success in internalizing the core fundamentals of Game requires an outside-the-box thinker solidly in the very top of Maslow's Hierarchy, and in my experience, 80% of men and 99.9% of women are simply incapable of comprehending why the skills of Game are valuable and effective. Many women, and even a few pathetic men, condemn Game, without even gaining a minimal comprehension for what it truly is (which I have highlighted in red above), and how it benefits both men and women. Most of what they think they know about Game involves strawmen, a lack of basic research, and their own sheer insecurity.
For anyone seeking advice on learning the material, there is one rule you must never break. I believe it is of paramount importance that the knowledge be used ethically, and with the objective of creating mutually satisfying relationships with women. It is not moral to mistreat women, even if they have done the same to countless men. We, as men, have to take the high road even if women are not, and this is my firm belief. Nice guys can finish first if they have Game.
'Feminism' as Unrestrained Misandry and Projection : The golden rule of human interactions is to judge a person, or a group, by their actions rather than their words. The actions of 'feminists' reveal their ideology to be one that seeks to secure equality for women in the few areas where they lag, while distracting observers from the vast array of areas where women are in a more favorable position relative to men (the judicial system, hiring and admissions quotas, media portrayals, social settings, etc.). They will concoct any number of bogus statistics to maintain an increasingly ridiculous narrative of female oppression.
Feminists once had noble goals of securing voting rights, achieving educational parity, and opening employment channels for women. But once these goals were met and even exceeded, the activists did not want to lose relevance. Now, they tirelessly and ruthlessly lobby for changes in legislation that are blatantly discriminatory against men (not to mention unconstitutional and downright cruel). Not satisfied with that, they continue to lobby for social programs designed to devalue the roles of husbands and fathers, replacing them with taxpayer-funded handouts.
As it is profitable to claim victimhood in this age, a good indicator is whether any condemnation by the supposedly oppressed of their oppressor could be similarly uttered if the positions were reversed. We see an immense double standard regarding what women and men can say about each other in America today. This reveals one of the darkest depths of the human mind - when a group is utterly convinced that they are the 'victims' of another group, they can rationalize any level of evil against their perceived oppressors.
Go to any major 'feminist' website, such as feministing.com or Jezebel.com, and ask polite questions about the fairness of divorce laws, or the injustice of innocent men being jailed on false accusations of rape without due process. You will quickly be called a 'misogynist' and banned from commenting. The same is not true for any major men's site, where even heated arguments and blatant misandry are tolerated in the spirit of free speech and human dignity. When is the last time a doctrinaire 'feminist' actually had the courage to debate a fair woman like Camille Paglia, Tammy Bruce, or Christina Hoff Somers on television?
Ever-tightening groupthink that enforces an ever-escalating narrative of victimhood ensures that projection becomes the normal mode of misandrist thought. The word 'misogynist' has expanded to such an extreme that it is the Pavlovian response to anything a 'feminist' feels bad about, but cannot articulate in an adult-like manner. This reveals the projected gender bigotry of the 'feminist' in question, which in her case is misandry. For example, an older man dating women 10 years younger than him is also referred to as a 'misogynist' by the older bitterati. Not an ageist, mind you, but a misogynist. A man who refuses to find obese women attractive is also a 'misogynist', as are gay men who do not spend money on women. The male non-compliance labeled as 'misogyny' thus becomes a reaction to many years of unopposed misandry heaped on him first, when he initially harbored no such sentiments. Kick a friendly dog enough times, and you get a nasty dog.
There are laws such as the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), that blatantly declares that violence against women is far worse than violence against men. VAWA is very different from ordinary assault laws, because under VAWA, a man can be removed from his home at gunpoint if the woman makes a single phonecall. No due process is permitted, and the man's Constitutional rights are jettisoned. At the same time, half of all domestic violence is by the woman against the man. Tiger Woods' wife beat him with a blunt weapon and scratched his face, only to be applauded by 'feminists' in a 'you go girl' manner. Projection can normalize barbarism.
Rape legislation has also bypassed the US Constitution, leaving a man guilty until he proves himself innocent, while the accusing woman faces no penalty for falsely sending a man to prison for 15 years, where he himsef will get raped. The Duke Lacrosse case was a prominent example of such abuse, but hundreds of others occur in America each year. The laws have been changed so that a victim has 1 month to 'decide' if she has been raped, and such flexibility predicatably leads to instances of a woman reporting rape just so that she does not have to tell her husband that she cheated on him (until it becomes profitable to divorce him). 40-50% of all rape accusations are false, but 'feminists' would rather jail scores of innocent men than let one guilty man get away, which is the exact opposite of what US Constitutional jurisprudence requires.
But, unimaginably, it gets even worse. Polls of men have shown that there is one thing men fear even more than being raped themselves, and that is being cuckolded. Men see cuckolding as the ultimate violation and betrayal, yet there is an entire movement among 'feminists' to enshrine a woman's right to commit adultery and use the resources of her husband to dupe him into thinking the child is his. These misandrists even want to outlaw the right of a man to test the paternity of a child.
So, to review, if a woman has second thoughts about a tryst a few days later, she can, without penalty, ruin a man financially and send him to prison for 15 years. 'Feminists' consider this acceptable. At the same time, even though men consider being cuckolded a worse fate than being raped, 'feminists' want to make this easier for a woman to do, by preventing paternity testing. They already have rigged laws so that the man, upon 'no fault' divorce, has to pay alimony, to a woman who cuckolded him.
This is pure evil, ranking right up there with the worst tyrannies of the last century. Modern misandry masking itself as 'feminism' is, without equal, the most hypocritical ideology in the world today. The laws of a society are the DNA of that society. Once the laws are tainted, the DNA is effectively corrupted, and mutations to the society soon follow. Men have been killed due to 'feminism'. Children and fathers have been forcibly separated for financial gain via 'feminism'. Slavery has returned to the West via 'feminism'. With all these misandric laws, one can fairly say that misandry is the new Jim Crow.
Shaming Language and Projection as a Substitute for Rational Debate : As discussed previously, any legitimate and polite questions about the fairness of anti-male realities in the legal system and media are quickly met with Pavlovian retorts of 'misogynist' and 'loser'. Let us deconstruct these oft-used examples of shaming language, and why misandrists are so afraid of legitimate debate.
Contrary to their endless charges of 'misogyny' (a word that many 'feminists' still manage to misspell), in reality, most men instinctively treat women with chivalry and enshrine them on exalted pedestals. Every day, we see men willing to defend women or do favors for them. There is infinitely more chivalry than misogyny exhibited by the male population. On the other hand, we routinely see anti-male statements uttered by 'feminists', and a presumption that all men are monsters guilty of crimes committed by a small number of people of the same gender. When well-known 'feminists' openly state that 90% of the male population should be exterminated, the unsupported accusation of 'misogyny' is a very pure manifestion of their own misandric projection.
On the second charge of being a 'loser who cannot get laid', any observation of the real world quickly makes it obvious that men who have had little experience with women are the ones placing women on pedestals, while those men who have had substantial sexual experience with women are not. Having sex with a large number of women does not increase respect for women, which is the exact opposite of the claim that 'feminists' make. Again, this charge of 'loserdom' is merely the psychosexual frustration of 'feminists' projected outwards, who express surprise that unrelenting hatred by them towards men is not magically metabolized into love for these particular 'feminists'.
That misandrists are so unchallenged is the reason that they have had no reason to expand their arsenal of venom beyond these two types of projection. Despite my explanation of this predictable Pavlovian response, the comments section will feature misandrists use these same two slurs nonetheless, proving the very point that they seek to shout down, and the very exposure they seek to avoid. My pre-emption will not deter them from revealing their limitations by indulging in it anyway. They simply cannot help themselves, and are far from being capable of discussing actual points of disagreement in a rational manner.
Men, of course, have to be savvy about the real reason their debate skills are limited to these two paths of shaming language, and not be deterred. Once again, remember that this should be taken no more seriously than if uttered by a 10-year-old, and there is no reason to let a 'feminist' get away with anything you would not let a man get away with. They wanted equality, didn't they?
'Feminism' as Genuine Misogyny : The greatest real misogyny, of course, has been unwittingly done by the 'feminists' themselves. By encouraging false rape claims, they devalue the credibility of all claims, and genuine victims will suffer. By incentivizing the dehumanization of their ex-husbands and the use of children as pawns, they set bad examples for children, and cause children to resent their mothers when they mature. By making baseless accusations of 'misogyny' without sufficient cause, they cause resentment among formerly friendly men where there previously was none. By trying to excuse cuckolding and female domestic violence, they invite formerly docile men to lash out in desperation.
One glaring example of misandry backfiring is in the destruction of marriage and corresponding push of the 'Sex in the City/cougar' fantasy. Monogamous marriage not only masked the gap between 'alpha' and 'beta' men, but also masked the gap between attractiveness of women before and after their Wile E. Coyote moment. By seducing women with the myth that a promiscuous single life after the age of 35 is a worthy goal, many women in their late 30s are left to find that they command far less male attention than women just a decade younger than them. 'Feminism' sold them a moral code entirely unsuited to their physical and mental realities, causing great sadness to these women.
But most importantly, 'feminists' devalued the traditional areas of female expertise (raising the next generation of citizens), while attaching value only to areas of male expertise (the boardroom, the military, sexual promiscuity) and told women to go duplicate male results under the premise that this was inherently better than traditional female functions. Telling women that emulating their mothers and grandmothers is less valuable than mimicking men sounds quite misogynistic to me, and unsurprisingly, despite all these 'freedoms', women are more unhappy than ever after being inflicted with such misogyny.
So how did the state of affairs manage to get so bad? Surely 'feminists' are not so powerful?
Social Conservatives, White Knights, and Girlie-Men : It would be inaccurate to deduce that misandrists were capable of creating this state of affairs on their own, despite their vigor and skill in sidestepping both the US Constitution and voter scrutiny. Equally culpable are men who ignorantly believe that acting as obsequious yes-men to 'feminists' by turning against other men in the hope that their posturing will earn them residual scraps of female affection.
Chivalry has existed in most human cultures for many centuries, and is seen in literature from all major civilizations. Chivalry greatly increased a man's prospects of marriage, but the reasons for this have been forgotten. Prior to the modern era, securing a young woman's hand in marriage usually involved going through her parents. The approval of the girl's father was a non-negotiable channel in the process. If a young man could show the girl's parents that he would place her on a pedestal, they could be convinced to sanction the union. The girl herself was not the primary audience of the chivalry, as the sexual attraction of the girl herself was rarely aroused by chivalry, as the principles of Game have shown.
Hence, many men are still stuck in the obsolete, inobservant, and self-loathing notion that chivalry and excess servility are the pathways to sex today, despite the modern reality that a woman's sexual decisions are no longer controlled by her parents, and are often casual rather than locked in matrimony. Whether such men are religious and called 'social conservatives', or effete leftists and called 'girlie men', they are effectively the same, and the term 'White Knights' can apply to the entire group. Their form of chivalry when exposed to 'feminist' histrionics results in these men harming other men at the behest of women who will never be attracted to them. This is why we see peculiar agreement between supposedly opposed 'social conservatives' and 'feminists' whenever the craving to punish men arises. A distressingly high number of men actually support the imprisonment of innocent men for false rape accusations or job loss causing 'child support' arrears merely because these 'men' don't want to risk female disapproval, incorrectly assuming that fanatically vocal 'feminists' represent the official opinion of all women. These men are the biggest suckers of all, as their pig-headed denial of the effectiveness of Game will prevent them from deducing that excess agreeability and willingness to do favors for the objects of their lust are exactly the opposite of what makes women sexually attracted to men. No woman feels attraction for a needy man.
For this reason, after lunatic 'feminists', these pedestalizing White Knights are the next most responsible party for the misandry in Western society today. The average woman is not obsessively plotting new schemes to denigrate and swindle men, she merely wants to side with whoever is winning (which presently is the side of misandry). But pedestalizing men actually carry out many dirty deeds against other men in the hopes of receiving a pat on the head from 'feminists'. Hence, the hierarchy of misandric zeal is thus :
Strident 'feminist' > pedestalizer/white knight > average woman.
For reasons described earlier, even a declaration that many men are bigger contributors to misandry than the average woman will not deter 'feminists' from their Pavlovian tendency to call articles such as this one 'misogynist'.
Lastly, the religious 'social conservatives' who continue their empty sermonizing about the 'sanctity of marriage' while doing absolutely nothing about the divorce-incentivizing turn that the laws have taken, have been exposed for their pseudo-moral posturing and willful blindness. What they claim to be of utmost importance to them has been destroyed right under their noses, and they still are too dimwitted to comprehend why. No other interest group in America has been such a total failure at their own stated mission. To be duped into believing that a side-issue like 'gay marriage' is a mortal threat to traditional marriage, yet miss the legal changes that correlate to a rise in divorce rates by creating incentives for divorce (divorce being what destroys marriage, rather than a tiny number of gays), is about as egregious an oversight as an astronomer failing to be aware of the existence of the Moon. Aren't conservatives the people who are supposed to grasp that incentives drive behavior? An article worthy of being written by The Onion could conceivably be titled 'Social conservatives carefully seek to maintain perfect 100% record of failure in advancing their agenda'.
Why There is No Men's Rights Movement : At this point, readers may be wondering "If things are this bad, why don't we hear anything about it?". Indeed, this is a valid question, and the answer lies within the fundamentals of male psychology. Most beta men would rather die than be called a 'loser' by women (alpha men, of course, know better than to take this at face value). White Knights also join in the chorus of shaming other men since they blunderously believe that this is a pathway to the satiation of their lust. So an unfairly ruined man is faced with the prospect of being shamed by women and a large cohort of men if he protests about the injustice, and this keeps him suffering in silence, leading to an early death. We have millions of fine young men willing to die on the battlefield to defend the values enshrined in the US Constitution, but we don't see protests of even 100 divorced men against the shamefully unconstitutional treatment they have received. The destruction of the two-parent family by incentivizing immoral behavior in women is at least as much of a threat to American safety and prosperity as anything that ever could have come out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, or Saudi Arabia. Men being too afraid to be the 'squeaky wheel' even when they have lost their children and their present and future assets is a major contributor to the prevailing status quo. Alpha men have no incentive beyond altruism to act as they benefit from the current climate, and thus my altruism will be limited to putting forth these ideas.
Any serious movement has to start a think tank or two to produce research reports, symposiums, and specific policy recommendations, and the few divorce lawyers who were compelled by their conscience to leave the dark side have to be recruited as experts. Subsequently, televised panel discussions have to be conducted at top medical, business, and graduate engineering schools (where young men about to embark on lucrative careers are approaching marriage age, but know nothing about the law), documentary films have to be produced, prominent victims like Mel Gibson, Paul McCartney, Hulk Hogan, and Tiger Woods have to be recruited as spokesmen, and visibly powerful protests outside of divorce courts have to be organized. In this age of Web 2.0/social media/viral tools, all this should be easy, particularly given how quickly leftist groups can assemble a comparable apparatus for even obscure causes.
Instead, all that exists are Men's Rights Authors (MRAs) that run a few websites and exchange information on their blogs. 'Something is better than nothing' is the most generous praise I could possibly extend to their efforts, and this article I am presenting here on The Futurist is probably the single biggest analysis of this issue to date, even though this is not even a site devoted to the subject and I am not the primary author of this site. Hence, there will be no real Men's Rights Movement in the near future. The misandry bubble will instead be punctured through the sum of millions of individual market forces.
The Faultline of Civilization : After examining all the flaws in modern societies, and the laws that exacerbate them, it becomes apparent that there are two realms of legal/judicial thought that stand alone in determining whether our civilization is going to be ever-improving or merely cyclical. These two legal areas are a) the treatment of paternity rights, and b) the treatment of due process in rape accusations. The human brain is wired to value the well-being of women far higher than that of men (for reasons that were once valid, but no longer are today), which is why extending due process to a man falsely accused of rape is not of particular interest to people who otherwise value due process. Similarly, there is little resistance to 'feminist' laws that have stripped away all types of paternity rights from fathers. The father is not seen as valuable nor as worthy of rights, as we have seen above. These two areas of law are precisely where our society will decide if it ascends or declines. All other political sideshows, like immigration, race relations, and even terrorism are simply not as important as none of those can destroy an entire society the way these laws can.
The Economic Thesis
Ceilings and Floors of Glass : Misandrists shriek about a supposed 'glass ceiling' of pervasive sexism that explains why 50% of the CEOs of major corporations are not women. What is never mentioned is the equally valid 'glass floor', where we see that 90% of imprisonments, suicides, and crippling occupational injuries are of men. If these outcomes are the results of the actions or choices of men who suffer from them, then is that not the same reason that determines who rises above the 'glass ceiling'? The inability of misandrists to address these realities in good faith tells us something (but not everything) about the irrational sense of entitlement they have.
One of the most dishonest myths of all is the claim that 'women earn just 75% of men for the same job'. Let me dispense of this myth, in the process of which we will see why it is profitable and seductive for them to broadcast this bogus belief.
It is true that women, on average, earn less per year than men do. It is also true that 22-year-olds earn less, on average, than 40-year-olds. Why is the latter not an example of age discrimination, while the former is seized upon as an example of gender discrimination?
If women truly did earn less for doing exactly the same job as a man, any non-sexist CEO could thrash his competition by hiring only women, thus saving 25% on employee salaries relative to his competitors. Are we to believe that every major CEO and Board of Directors is so sexist as to sacrifice billions of dollars of profit? When the 'Director of Corporate Social Responsibility' of a nun congregation wrote to TJ Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor, that his company should have more women in its Board of Directors, Rodgers replied with a letter explaining why the pursuit of profit could not accommodate such political correctness. That a nun congregation pays a recession-proof salary to someone as a 'Director of Corporate Social Responsibility' is itself an example of a pampered existence, and I was unaware that convents were now advancing secular Marxist beliefs.
Furthermore, women entrepreneurs could hire other women and out-compete any male-dominated business if such a pay gap existed, but we do not see this happening in any country in the world. Market forces would correct such mispricings in female compensation, if they actually existed. But they do not, and those who claim that they do are not just advertising an extreme economic illiteracy, but are quite happy to make similarly illiterate women angry about an injustice that does not exist. I notice that women who actually are/were CEOs of publicly traded companies never claim that there is a conspiracy to underpay women relative to their output.
I am willing to pass laws to ensure that 50% of all Fortune 500 CEOs are women, if we also legally mandate that 50% of all imprisonments are of women, and 50% of the jobs that involve working with heavy machinery, being outdoors in inclement weather, inhaling toxic fumes, or apprehending dangerous criminals are also occupied by women. Fair is fair. Any takers?
The 'Mancession' and the 'Sheconomy' : I would be the first to be happy if the economic success of women were solely on the basis of pure merit. For many of them, it is. But far too much has been the result of not market forces or meritocracy, but political graft and ideology-driven corruption.
In the recent recession and ongoing jobless recovery, the male unemployment rate continues to be much higher than the female unemployment rate. If this was simply due to market forces, that would be fine. However, 'feminist' groups have lobbied hard to ensure that government stimulus funds were steered to boost female employment at the expense of assistance for men. The leftist Obama administration was more than eager to comply, and a forcible transfer of wealth was enacted, even though it may not have been the best deployment of money for the economy.
Maria Shriver, a woman who has the most fortunate of lives from the vast wealth earned first by her grandfather and then by her husband, recently published 'A Woman's Nation : The Shriver Report', consisting of gloating about how women were now outperforming men economically. The entire research report is full of all the standard bogus feminist myths and flawed statistics, as thoroughly debunked here, as well as the outright sexism of statements like 'women are better managers' (imagine a man saying the reverse). Furthermore, the report reveals the typical economic illiteracy (evidenced by, among other things, the ubiquitous 'women are underpaid' myth), as well as belief that businesses exist to act as vehicles of social engineering rather than to produce a profit.
All of this bogus research and organized anti-male lobbying has been successful. As of today, the male unemployment rate is worse than the female unemployment rate by an unprecedented chasm. The 'mancession' continues as the US transitions to a 'sheconomy', and among the millions of unemployed men, some owe prohibitive levels of 'child support' despite not being the ones wanting to deprive their children of a two-parent household, landing in prison for lack of funds. Furthermore, I emphasize again that having 10-30% of the US male workforce living under an effective 70% marginal tax rate will kill their incentives for inventing new technologies or starting new companies. It is petty to debate whether the top federal income tax bracket should be 35% or 39.6%, when a slice of the workforce is under a 70% tax on marginal income. Beyond the tyranny of this, it also costs a lot of taxpayer money to jail a growing pool of unemployed men. Clearly, moving more and more men out of a tax-generating capacity and into a tax-consuming capacity is certainly going to do two-fold damage to governmental budgets. The next time you hear someone say that 'the US has the largest prison population in the world', be sure to mention that many of these men merely lost their jobs, and were divorced against their will. The women, in the meantime, are having a blast.
The Government Bubble : While public sector vs. private sector workforce distribution is not highly correlated to gender, it is when the focus is on women earning over $100,000 or more. This next chart from the Cato Institute shows that when total compensation (wages + benefits) are taken into account, the public sector has totally outstripped the private sector this decade. Has the productivity of the typical government employee risen so much more than that of the private worker, that the government employee is now paid twice as much? Are taxpayers receiving value for their money?
It goes further. The vast majority of social security taxes are paid by men, but are collected by women (due to women living 7 years longer than men on average). That is not troubling by any means, but the fact that women consume two-thirds of all US healthcare, despite most of this $2.5 Trillion annual expenditure being paid by men, is certainly worthy of debate. It may be 'natural' for women to require more healthcare, since they are the ones who give birth. But it was also 'natural' for men to finance this for only their wives, not for the broader community of women. The healthcare profession also employs an immense number of women, and not just in value-added roles such as nursing, but even in administrative and bureaucratic positions. In fact, virtually all government spending except for defense and infrastructure, from Medicare to Obamacare to welfare to public sector jobs for women to the expansion of the prison population, is either a net transfer of wealth from men to women, or a byproduct of the destruction of Marriage 1.0. In either case, 'feminism' is the culprit.
This Cato Institute chart of Federal Government spending (click to enlarge) shows how non-defense expenditures have steadily risen since 1960. The decline in defense spending, far from being a 'peace dividend' repatriated back to taxpayers, was used to fund more social programs. No one can seriously claim that the American public receives better non-defense governance in 2010 than in 1960 despite the higher price, and as discussed earlier, most of this increase is a direct or indirect result of 'feminism'. When state and local government wastage is added to this, it would appear that 20% of GDP is being spent just to make the government a substitute for the institution of Marriage, and yet still has not managed to be an effective replacement. Remember again that the earnings of men pays 70%-80% of all taxes.
The left has finally found a perfect Trojan Horse through which to expand a tyrannical state. 'Feminists' can lobby for a transfer of wealth from men to women and from private industry to the government, while knowing that calling any questioner a 'misogynist' will silence him far more effectively than their military fifth columnist and plain socialist brethren could ever silence their respective opponents. Conservatives are particularly vulnerable to such shaming language, and most conservatives will abandon their stated principles to endlessly support any and all socialism if it can be packaged as 'chivalry', the opposition to which makes one a 'misogynist'. However, there is reason to believe that tax collection in many parts of the US, such as in states like CA, NY, NJ, and MA, has reached saturation. As the optimal point has already been crossed, a rise in tax rates will cause a decrease, rather than an increase in revenue, and the increase in Federal tax rates exactly one year from today on 1/1/2011 is likely to cause another recession, which will not be so easily transferred to already-impoverished men the next time.
When men are severed from their children with no right to obstruct divorce, when they are excluded from the labor market not by market forces but rather by social engineering, and when they learn that the society they once believed in and in some cases joined the military to protect, has no respect for their aspirations, these men have no reason to sustain such a society.
The Contract Between the Sexes : A single man does not require much in order to survive. Most single men could eke out an adequate existence by working for two months out of the year. The reason that a man might work hard to earn much more than he needs for himself is to attract a wife amidst a competitive field, finance a home and a couple of children, and ultimately achieve status as a pillar of the community. Young men who exhibited high economic potential and favorable compatibility with the social fabric would impress a girl's parents effectively enough to win her hand in marriage. The man would proceed to work very hard, with the fruits of his labor going to the state, the employer, and the family. 80-90% of a man's output went to people other than himself, but he got a family and high status in return, so he was happy with the arrangement.
The Four Sirens changed this, which enabled women to pursue alpha males despite the mathematical improbability of marrying one, while totally ignoring beta males. Beta males who were told to follow a responsible, productive life of conformity found that they were swindled.
Men who excelled under the societal rules of just two decades ago are often left totally betrayed by the rules of today, and results in them refusing to sustain a society heavily dependent on their productivity and ingenuity. Women believed that they could free themselves from all their traditional obligations (only to find, amusingly, that they are unhappier now than they were then), while men would still fulfill all of their traditional obligations, particularly as bankrollers of women and protectors of women. Needless to say, despite the chivalry ground into men, eventually, they will feel that chivalry requires a level of gratitude that is not forthcoming.
To see what happens when the role of the husband and father is devalued, and the state steps in as a replacement, look no further than the African American community. In Detroit, the average home price has fallen from $98,000 as recently as 2003 to just $14,000 today. The auto industry moved jobs out of Detroit long before 2003, so the decline cannot be attributed to just industrial migration, and cities like Baltimore, Oakland, Cleveland, and Philadelphia are in scarcely better shape. For those who believe that this cannot happen in white communities, have a look at the white underclass in Britain. The lower half of the US white population is vulnerable to the same fate as the black community, and cities like Los Angeles are perilously close to 'Detroitification'.
Additionally, people seem to have forgotten that the physical safety of society, particularly of women, is entirely dependent on ratio of 'aggressor' men to 'protector' men staying below a certain critical threshold. As more men get shut out of the labor market, crime becomes an alternative. Even highly educated men who feel betrayed can lash out, and just about every shooting spree and every recent terrorist attempt in the West was by men who were educated and had good career prospects, but were unloved.
While professional men will certainly never resort to crime, what they could resort to is an unwillingness to aid a damsel in distress. More men will simply lose interest in being rescuers, and this includes policemen who may also feel mistreated by the prevailing misandry. Safety is like air - it is only noticed when it is gone. Women have a tremendous amount to lose by creating a lot of indifferent men.
Patriarchy works because it induces men and women to cooperate under their complementary strengths. 'Feminism' does not work, because it encourages immoral behavior in women, which eventually wears down even the durable chivalry of beta men, making both genders worse off. It is no secret that single motherhood is heavily subsidized, but it is less understood that single spinsterhood is also heavily subsidized through a variety of unsustainable and unreciprocated means. The default natural solution is for the misandric society to be outcompeted and displaced.
Population Displacement : So we have arrived at a society where 'feminists' feel that they are 'empowered', 'independent', and 'confident', despite being heavily dependent on taxes paid mostly by men, an unconstitutional shadow state that extracts alimony and 'child support' from men, an infrastructure maintained by men, technologies invented by men, and a level of safety that men agree to maintain. So exactly what has society received from this population of women who are the most privileged class of humans ever to have lived?
Now, let me be clear; I believe a woman should get to decide how many children she bears, or even whether or not to have any children at all. However, a childless old woman should not then be able to extract resources from the children of other women. Fair is fair, and the obligation of working-age people to support the elderly should not be socialized in order to subsidize women who chose not to reproduce.
Let us take a hypothetical example of three 20-year-old single women, one who is an urban lefto-'feminist', one who is a rural conservative, and one who is a devout Muslim. The following table charts the parallel timelines of their lives as their ages progress in tandem, with realistic estimates of typical life events. When people talk about falling birth rates in the West, they often fail to account for the additional gap caused by having children at age 23 vs. at age 33. As the table shows, a 1:1:1 ratio of three young ladies takes only 40 years to yield a 12:4:0 ratio of grandchildren. Consider, also, that we are already 20 years into this 40-year process, so each of these women are 40 years old today.
So how do we estimate the value society will ultimately receive from organizing itself in a manner that young women could choose a life of bar-hopping, shopping for $300 purses, and working as government bureaucrats to make the government a more complete husband substitute? If the sight of a pitiful 60-year-old Code Pink harpy lecturing 12 Muslim adolescents that 'gender is a social construct' seems amusing, then let us move on to the macro chart. This world map(click to enlarge) shows how many children under the age of 15 existed in the major countries of the world in 2005 (i.e. born between 1990 and 2005), in proportion to the country with the most children. Notably, Mexico and the US have the same number of children, while Pakistan and Bangladesh each have about as many as all of Western Europe. While developing countries are seeing their fertility rates converge to Western levels, the 1990-2005 births already seal certain realities. Needless to say, if we move time forward just 15 years, the proportions in this chart reflect what the proportions of adults aged 20-35 (the female reproductive years) will be per nation in the year 2025. Even the near future belongs to those who show up.
Lefto-'feminists' will be outbred and replaced very quickly, not by the conservatives that they hate, but by other cultures antithetical to 'feminism'. The state that lefto-'feminists' so admire will quickly turn on them once the state calculates that these women are neither producing new taxpayers nor new technologies, and will find a way to demote them from their present 'empowered' position of entitlement. If they thought having obligations to a husband was such an awful prospect, wait until they have obligations to the husband-substitute state.
The Fabric of Humanity Will Tear
Humans like ourselves have been around for about 100,000 years, and earlier hominids similar to us for another 1-3 million years before that. For the first 99.99% of humanoid existence, the primary purpose of our species was the same as that of every other species that ever existed - to reproduce. Females are the scarcer reproductive resource, since the number of babies that can be produced does not fall even if most men die, but it does fall for each woman that dies (humans did not live much past age 40-45 in the past, as mentioned earlier). For this reason, the human brain continued the evolutionary hardwiring of our ancestors, placing female well-being at a premium while males remain expendable. Since funneling any and all resources to women closely correlated with the survival of children, both men and women evolved to see this status quo as normal. The Female Imperative (FI) was the human imperative.
As human society progressed, priorities adjusted. For one thing, advances in technology and prosperity ensured that child mortality fell from about 50% to very low levels, so 12 births were no longer needed to produce 6 children who reach adulthood. Secondly, as humans moved away from agriculture into a knowledge-based economy, the number of children desired fell, and almost all high and middle-income countries have birth rates lower than 2 as of today, with many women producing zero children. Thirdly, it has become evident that humans are now the first species to produce something more than just offspring; humans now produce technology. As a result, the former direct correlation between funneling resources to women and the survival of children, which was true for 99.99% of our existence, now no longer is.
Yet, our hardwired brains have not adapted to this very recent transformation, and perhaps cannot adapt. Women are programmed to extract resources endlessly, and most men are programmed to oblige. For this once-valid but now obsolete biological reason, society still unquestioningly funnels the vast majority of resources to women. But instead of reaching children, this money now finds its way into consumer products geared towards women, and a shadow state designed to transfer all costs and consequences away from women. Most people consider our existing society to be normal, but they have failed to observe how diverting money to women is now obsolete. In the 21st century, there is no reason for any resource distribution, if there must be one at all, to be distributed in any manner other than 50-50.
Go to any department store or mall. At least 90% of the products present there are ones no ordinary man would consider buying. Yet, they occupy valuable shelf space, which is evidence that those products do sell in volume. Who buys them? Look around in any prosperous country, and we see products geared towards women, paid for by money that society diverted to women. From department store products, to the proliferation of take-out restaurants, to mortgage interest, to a court system rigged to subsidize female hypergamy, all represent the end product of resources funneled to women, for a function women have greatly scaled back. This is the greatest resource misallocation ever, and such malinvestment always results in a correction as the bubble pops.
This is not to suggest that we should go back to birth rates of 12, for that is neither desirable nor necessary. The bigger picture here is that a major aspect of the human psyche is quite obsolete, with men and women both culpable. When this situation corrects, it will be the most disruptive event humanity has ever faced. Some call this a variant of the 'Technological Singularity', which will happen many decades later than 2020, but even prominent thinkers steer clear of any mention of the obvious correction in gender-tilted resource flows that will occur.
The Four Horsemen of Male Emancipation
We earlier examined how the Four Sirens of Feminism unexpectedly combined and provided women with choices they never could have dreamed of before. Some women made positive contributions to society, but quite a few let misandry and unrestrained greed consume them, and have caused the disastrous situation we presently see. Technology always causes disruption in the status quo, always creating new winners and losers with each wave. In centuries past, Gloria Steinem would be a governess and Mystery would be a court jester.
The title of this article is not the 'Misandry Crisis' or even 'The War on Misandry'. It is 'The Misandry Bubble', because the forces that will ensure the demise of the present mistreatment of men are already on the horizon. So allow me to introduce the Four Horsemen of Male Emancipation as a coalescence of many of the forces we have discussed, which will shred the present, unsustainable hierarchal order by 2020 :
1) Game : Learning the truth about how the female mind works is a precious and transcendant body of knowledge for any man. Whether he uses it to become a fully immersed pick-up artist, to create a soulmate bond in a lifelong monogamous marriage, or even to engage in only infrequent yet efficient trysts with women, a man is free from the crushing burdens that uninitiated beta men are capitulating under.
When a man learns that there is no reason for him to buy a $50,000 car, $20,000 ring, $50,000 bridezilla festival, overpriced house contrary to any logical financial analysis, or a divorce lawyer to save him from ruin even though he was the victim of spousal abuse, there is no greater feeling of liberation and jubilation, equating to a windfall of $2 Million for all objective and subjective purposes. When a man realizes that reducing his income by half will now have little detriment to his sexual prospects, he can downsize to an easier job with a shorter commute and lower stress. When a man learns that appeasing a woman is the exact opposite of what he should be doing during the process of romancing and seducing her, that entire humiliating gauntlet of rituals can be jettisoned.
The ecstasy of two or even three concurrent relationships with women of substantially above average beauty are quite attainable to a man who has scaled the summit, which further deprives the hapless betas (again, male attractiveness to women is zero-sum in a way that female attractiveness to men is not). Thus, while 80% of men have no intellectual capacity to grasp and master Game, if the number of solid practitioners even begins to approach 20%, multiple parasitic beasts, from female moochers to the tax-swilling state to the corrupt real-estate and divorce lawyer industries, can be effectively starved.
2) Adult Entertainment Technologies of 2020 : What of the 80% of men who cannot conceptualize or master the core skills of Game? Won't they be condemned to live a life of frustration, humiliation, and near-slavery as second class citizens? Thankfully, these poor souls will experience a satisfactory release through technology, just like women did through technologies such as contraceptive pills, washing machines, and vacuum cleaners.
For a number of reasons, Internet pornography is substantially more addictive to the male brain than the VHS cassette or 'Skinimax' content of the 1990s. When yet another generation of technology diffuses into the market, the implications will be profound enough to tear the current sexual market asunder.
This site has written in the past about how haptic, motion sensing, and graphical technologies would elevate video games to the premier form of entertainment by 2012. 3-D/holographic images with haptic interfaces and sufficient AI will make rudimentary 'virtual sex' a technology available to many men well before 2020, but by 2020 we will see this cross certain thresholds that lead to a dramatic market impact far greater than contraceptive pills and Internet pornography combined. A substantial portion of the male population will drift into addiction to virtual sex without even realizing it.
For those (mostly women) who claim that the VR sex of 2020 would not be a sufficient substitute for the real thing, that drawback is more than superceded by the inescapable fact that the virtual woman would be made to be a 10/10+ in appearance, while the real women that the typical beta male user has access to would be in the 4-7 range. Real 10 > VR 10 > Real 7, making irrelevant the claim that a virtual 10 is not as good as a real 10 (under 1% of all women), when the virtual 10 is really competing with the majority of women who are 7s and lower. Women are unaware how vastly different the male reaction is to a 10 relative to a 7, let alone to women of even lower scores. As single men arrive home from work on Friday evening, they will simply default into their VR immersion, giving a whole new meaning to the concept of 'beta testing'. These sequestered men will be conspicuously absent from the bars and nightclubs that were the former venues of expenditure and frustration, causing many establishments to go out of business. The brains of these men will warp to the extent that they can no longer muster any libido for the majority of real women. This will cause a massive devaluation in the sexual market value of most women, resulting in 8s being treated like 5s, and 35-year-old women unable to attract the interest of even 55-year-old men. The Wile E. Coyote moment for women will move a few years ahead, and the alphas with Game competence will find an even easier field of desperate women to enjoy.
Another technology making advancements in Japan is that of lifelike female robots. I do not believe that 'sexbots' will be practical or economical relative to software/gaming-derived solutions, simply because such a robot is not competitive with VR on cost, privacy, versatility, and upgradeability.
Some 'feminists' are not blind to the cataclysmic sexual devaluation that women will experience when such technologies reach the market, and are already moving to seek bans. Such bans will not be possible, of course, as VR sex technologies are inseparable from broader video game and home theater technologies. Their attempts to lobby for such bans will be instructive, however.
Another positive ramification of advanced adult entertainment technologies is that women will have to sharpen the sole remaining attribute which technology cannot substitute - the capacity to make a man feel loved. Modern women will be forced to reacquaint themselves with this ancient concept in order to generate a competitive advantage. This necessity could lead to a movement of pragmatic women conducting a wholesale repudiation of misandry masquerading as 'feminism' that has created this state of affairs, and thus will be the jolt that benefits both men and women.
3) Globalization : The Third Horseman is a vast subject that contains many subtopics. The common theme is that market forces across the world eventually find a way around legislative fences constructed in any one country :
a) Islam : Aside from the higher birthrates of Muslims living in the same Western cities that 'feminists' reside in, an Achilles heel of leftists in general and misandrists in particular is their unwillingess to confront other cultures that actually do place restrictions on women. In Britain, Islamic courts are now in operation, deciding cases through Sharia principles. British divorce laws are even more misandric than US divorce laws, and so many British men, in desperation, are turning to Sharia courts in order to avoid the ruin that British law would inflict on them. The Islamic courts are more than happy to accomodate these men, and 'feminists' dare not protest too loudly. By driving British men to Sharia courts, misandry is beautifully self-defeating. The irony is that the group that was our enemy in the crisis of the prior decade are now de-facto allies in the crisis of this decade. I do not say this simply because I am a Muslim myself.
b) Expatriation : While America continues to attract the greatest merit and volume of (legal) immigrants, almost every American man who relocates to Asia or Latin America gives a glowing testimonial about the quality of his new life. A man who leaves to a more male-friendly country and marries a local woman is effectively cutting off a total of three parasites in the US - the state that received his taxes, the potential wife who would take his livelihood, and the industries he is required to spend money on (wedding, diamond, real estate, divorce attorney). Furthermore, this action also shrinks the number of available men remaining in America. The misandrists who project their pathology outward by calling such men 'misogynists' are curiously troubled that these same men are leaving the US. Shouldn't 'feminists' be happy if 'misogynists' are leaving? We thus see yet another example of 'feminists' seeking to steal from men while not providing them any benefit in return.
The more unfair a place becomes, the more we see talented people go elsewhere. When word of US divorce laws becomes common in India and China, this might even deter some future taxpayers from immigrating to America, which is yet another reason the government is losing money to misandry.
c) Medical Tourism : The sum total of donor eggs + IVF + surrogacy costs $150,000 or more in the US, but can be done in some countries for just $20,000 at top-quality clinics that are building a strong track record. While most customers of foreign fertility clinics are couples, there have been quite a few single men opting to create their own biological babies this way. While this avenue is not for everyone, the ability to have a child for $20,000 (and even two children in parallel with two different surrogates in a two-for-one bundle deal for $35,000) now exists. The poor surrogate mother in India or the Philippines earns more than she could earn in 10 years in her prior vocation of construction or housecleaning. It is a win-win for everyone involved, except for the Western woman who was priced out of the market for marriage to this man.
Medical tourism also prices the US healthcare system out of contention for certain procedures, and the US healthcare system employs a large number of women, particularly in administrative and bureaucratic roles that pay them over twice what they could make in the private sector. Such women will experience what male manufacturing workers did a generation earlier, despite the increasinglly expensive government bubble that has kept these women's inflated salaries safe for so long.
So as we can see, the forces of globalization are far bigger than those propping up the current lop-sided status quo.
4) Male Economic Disengagement and Resultant Tax-Base Erosion : Earlier passages have highlighted how even the most stridently egomaniacal 'feminist' is heavily dependent on male endeavors. I will repeat again that there will never, ever be a successful human society where men have no incentive to aspire to the full maximum of their productive and entrepreneurial capabilities.
The contract between the sexes has been broken in urban America (although is still in some effect in rural America). The 'progressive' income tax scale in the US was levied under the assumption that men who could earn 10 times more than they needed for themselves would always do so, for their families. A man with no such familial aspirations may choose an easier job at lower pay, costing the state more than he costs himself. Less tax revenue not just means fewer subsidies for single mothers and government jobs for women, but less money for law enforcement. Less tax revenue also means fewer police officers, and fewer court resources through which to imprison men. The 'feminist' hypergamous utopia is not self-financing, but is precariously dependent on every beta man working at his full capacity, without which the government bubble, inseparable from the misandry bubble, collapses. Misandry is thus mathematically impossible to finance for any extended period of time. A state with a small government is far more sustainable than a state seeking an ever-expanding government, which then cannot be financed, and descends into a mass of contradictions that is the exact opposite of what the statists intended. See the gangster capitalism that dominates contemporary Russia.
These Four Horsemen will all converge at the end of this decade to transfer the costs of misandry from men onto women, and on 1/1/2020, we will assess how the misandry bubble popped and the fallout that women are suffering under for having made the mistake of letting 'feminists' control their destiny (update : 1/1/2020 article here). Note that I did not list the emergence of any Men's Rights Movement as one of the Four Horsemen, as this is unlikely to happen for aforementioned reasons.
For those who dispute the Four Horsemen (I'd like to see their track record of predictions to compare against my own), women had their Four Sirens, and now the pendulum has to swing at the same amplitude in the other direction. Keep the Four Horsemen in mind throughout this decade, and remember what you read here on the first day of 2010.
Who Should Care?
As we leave a decade where the prime threat to US safety and prosperity was Islamic terrorism and enter a decade where the prime threat is misandry, anyone concerned with any of the following topics should take heed :
- Anyone with a son, brother, nephew, or mentee entering marriage, particularly without the partial protection of a pre-nuptial agreement. As described earlier, he can be ruined, separated from his children, and jailed in a manner few would suspect could happen in any advanced democracy. The suicide rate of divorced men is shockingly high.
- Anyone who agrees that a civilization where most adults are part of two-parent families will always outcompete and displace a civilization where a large portion of adults are not leading two-parent families.
- Anyone with minor grandchildren, nieces and nephews, or great-grandchildren. The divorce laws incentivize using children as pawns during divorce, and no serious thinker can dispute the trouble that haunts the children of divorce for years thereafter. 'Feminists' concoct bogus research about the role of the father being superfluous, but observation of real-world examples proves otherwise.
- Anyone who owns an expensive home in a community of families. The growing aversion of men for marriage will create fewer new families, and thus fewer buyers for those homes. I remind everyone that if they have 20% equity in their home and an 80% mortgage, even a 20% decline in home prices is a 100% decline in your equity, which might be all of your net worth. Detroit, the first major US city to see a loss of beta male employment prospects, saw the average home price drop from $98,000 as recently as 2003 to just $14,000 today. A decline smaller than this would devastate the net worth of remaining home owners, and can happen in any community of single-family homes. If you own a home, your net worth is inseparably tied to the formation and preservation of two-parent families.
- Anyone concerned about rising crime. 72% of African American children are born to single mothers, and the number among white children is approaching 30%. Furthermore, the 'mancession' will eventually ensure that the only means of survival for many men is to form gangs and take valuables by force. Unloved men, who in the past would have been paired with wives, are easy for both gangs and terrorist organizations to recruit.
- Anyone concerned about the widening federal and state budget shortfalls and medicare/healthcare costs, for which the state continues to insist on raising taxes rather than cut spending. Fewer men choosing to work the long hours needed to earn high incomes will break the model of the top 10% paying 75% of taxes, and more men being jailed for alimony arrears, not being good enough in bed, or defending himself from spousal violence will drain tax coffers. It costs $60,000 a year to maintain a prisoner.
- Anyone who thinks the US Constitution is a valuable document. 'Innocent until proven guilty' does not apply in many areas of feminist-heavy law. The previously discussed shadow state is using 'feminism' to conduct all sorts of horrible tyranny against innocent men, which greatly compromises America's ability to claim that it is still the land of the free.
- Anyone concerned about national security. As more men feel that this society is betraying him, fewer will risk their lives in the military only to find that divorce lawyers have been persuading his wife to leave the marriage while he is deployed. Coming home from one battlefield only to be inserted in another is a shameful betrayal of our finest young men. Furthermore, I have already mentioned how British men are turning to Islamic courts in the hopes avoiding ruin at the hands of British misandrist laws. Quite a few men may conclude that Islam offers them more than their native society that has turned against their gender, and will act towards self-preservation.
- Any woman who is appalled by the treatment of any woman who deviates from 'feminist' doctrine, and who is troubled by the words and actions of self-proclaimed 'feminists' today. If you believe that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, you should worry about what 'feminists' are courting by kicking a friendly dog too many times.
- Lastly, anyone with a young daughter or sister, who is about to enter a world where it is much harder for all but the most beautiful women to marry, where the costs of crazed 'feminism' are soon going to be transferred away from men and onto women, even if she had no interest in this doctrine of hate. As stated in the Executive Summary at the start, 'feminists' are leading average women into the abyss.
I could list even more reasons to care, but the point is clear. The biggest challenge of the decade is summarized before us.
Update (7/1/2012) : On this day, July 1, 2012, exactly 25% of the decade described in this article has passed. I did not include a poll on the original launch date of 1/1/2010, as the concepts described here were too radical for the majority of readers. But now that these ideas have become more mainstream, I can include a simple poll on the subject of whether we are indeed in a Misandry Bubble (poll closed after 60 days).
Conclusion
I am just an observer, and will not become an activist of any sort, although, as described earlier, being an 'inactivist' is also powerful. As a Futurist, I have to predict things before they become obvious to everyone else. Regular readers know of this website's track record of predictions being accurate, and heed my words when I say that the further inflation and subsequent precipitous deflation of the misandry bubble will define the next American decade. So here, on the first day of the '201x' decade, I am unveiling the article that will spawn a thousand other articles.
As mentioned at the top, what you have just finished reading is the equivalent of someone in 1997 predicting the entire War on Terror in vivid detail. The level of detail I have provided about the collapse of the Misandry Bubble will unfold with comparable accuracy as when my co-blogger predicted the real estate bubble two years beforehand, and the exact level the stock market would bottom at, 6 months before the fact. Similarly, misandry is the premier cultural bubble of this age.
This website has predicted that the US will still be the only superpower in 2030, and while we are not willing to rescind that prediction, I will introduce a caveat that US vitality by 2030 is contingent on a satisfactory and orderly unwinding of the Misandry Bubble. It remains to be seen which society can create economic prosperity while still making sure both genders are treated well, and the US is currently not on the right path in this regard. For this reason, I am less confident about a smooth deflation of the Misandry Bubble. Deflate it will, but it could be a turbulent hurricane. Only rural America can guide the rest of the nation into a more peaceful transition. Britain, however, may be beyond rescue.
I want to extend my thanks to Instapundit, Dr. Helen, Kim du Toit, The Spearhead, RooshV, and many others for their support of this article.
Required Reading :
Democrats and Republicans Unite to Form Misandry Party
The Sixteen Commandments of Game
The Medicalization of Maleness
The Feminist War on Everything Civilized
Feminist Gulag : No Prosecution Necessary
Decivilizing : Human Nature Unleashed
Note on Comments : As Typepad only allows 100 comments per page, here is a direct link to page nine, where you can comment.
Just because I linked to a particular blog does NOT mean that I endorse all of the other views of that author. Are 'feminists' all willing to be responsible for all of the extremism that any other feminist utters (note that I have provided links to 'feminists' openly calling for slavery, castration, and murder of men without proving him guilty of anything)? Also, you will see Pavlovian use of the word 'misogyny' dozens upon dozens of times, so remember what I wrote about the importance of not taking that at face value, as it is merely a manifestation of projected misandry, as well as a defense mechanism to avoid taking responsibility for genuine wrongdoings of 'feminists'.
Could you clarify where you are getting the evidence for saying that 90 percent of divorces are initiated by women. The Roissy post does not seem to provide the evidence. Thanks.
Posted by: Mike | January 03, 2010 at 02:13 PM
bleh you are a mangina loser.
For many men being cuckolded is worse than death.
To raise some unrelated man's kid makes you the ultimate evolutionary loser which you seem to be.
If biological paternity doesn't matter then maybe hospitals should just switch around woman's babies randomly at delivery so no woman really knows if the kid is truly hers. See what reaction you will get from women.
Even doing that is not as bad as cuckoldry because at least the woman knows that someone else is most likely raising her biological kid whereas for a man who has been cuckolded there is no biological kid.
You are a disgusting scumbag, anyone who suggests that cuckoldry is fine or not psychologically damaging is a retard.
Posted by: blehisaloser | January 03, 2010 at 02:17 PM
If I sound angry well it's because I am.
A few years ago it was found that the man who I knew as dad for 19 years was not my biological dad, he didn't know it either. The disgusting whore of a mother of mine knew but kept it secret for all that time.
My dad was devastated & later told me he contemplated suicide many times when he found out because of the humiliation & pain. He still considers me to be his son & I consider him my dad.
I haven't talked to the whore since all this came out. She has cancer & doesn't have much longer to live, i hope the evil bitch has a horrible death for what she did to my dad.
Our "justice" system would have forced him to pay CS for me even if he wasn't my biological dad in all the Anglo countries if this had been found out when I was still a kid. Feminists & many women support this obviously when they lobby for laws blocking paternity testing, that's what passes for justice in the US & many other Western countries if you are a man.
Posted by: blehisaloser | January 03, 2010 at 02:41 PM
Mike,
The Roissy article quotes a Devlin essay, where Devlin says 'nine tenths'.
There is a link to the Devlin essays in the roissy article, but they are .pdfs and not linkable by me here in the format I want to keep.
No one is seriously disputing the 70% number, but the gap between 70% and 90% needs to be analyzed, as women are the initiators of conditions leading to divorce. When the law overwhelmingly favors women in the vast majority of instances, this percentage is not surprising. 96% of alimony is paid by men and only 4% paid by women.
If you know any male divorce lawyer as a friend, ask him. He will corroborate the 90% estimation.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 03, 2010 at 02:46 PM
Have you read this blog? I think you would find it interesting.
http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/
Posted by: Merv | January 03, 2010 at 05:13 PM
You lost me at the premise:
Why does it seem that American society is in decline
For all of U.S. history, someone has been making this claim. You fail to provide evidence to support your assumption that we live in a time of unique decline. Perhaps most of your audience agrees with this assumption, but, still, evidence would be useful, one might even say required.
that fairness and decorum are receding
Ditto. What time period are you comparing to today, and what is your evidence? We live in a society less fair than when only land-owners could vote? Than when a black man could be killed for not demonstrating proper deference to a white person?
that socialism and tyranny are becoming malignant...
Wow! And I'm just supposed to go with you here? Re: tyranny, are you referring to Bush's contempt for the Geneva Conventions and habeus corpus, or Obama's Christmas ornaments? And...socialism? Lower marginal tax rates than during the Reagan or Eisenhower years, but socialism is becoming "malignant"?
Given your warped perception of present-day reality, it is difficult to take your future predictions seriously. Your essay is a solution in search of a problem.
Posted by: Grumpy Old Man | January 03, 2010 at 06:24 PM
Could you let me know where you got the evidence that 90 percent of marriages are ended by women. The Roissy link does not appear to provide it. Thanks.
Posted by: Mike | January 03, 2010 at 07:14 PM
Mike,
It might be the typepad engine. I am not deleting anything.
Try again.
But see my reply ahead about where I saw the 90% number, quoted in the Roissy article from the Devlin essays (which themselves are not linkable).
Grumpy Old Man,
Please read the end of the article regarding US superpowerdom. I have been accused of being TOO optimistic about US dominance.
But by any account, the US is falling behind in many areas, and is a worse place than in the 1980s.
But I would submit to you that you may not be fully unaware how uncouth the younger generation of women have become.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 03, 2010 at 07:37 PM
The Futurist,
I am sure you know far more about India than I do, but having read about '498a abuse' and having watched this vile creature (an, until recently Indian govt. minister no less)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in_4QhWQaq4
...I am curious why you think that expat-ing to India would be a panacea.
Posted by: Matt | January 03, 2010 at 08:25 PM
Matt,
The 498A is certainly abused, and is an example of India starting to make the same mistakes that the US made 25 years ago with laws like the Bradley Amendment. but under 0.1% of Indian marriages are victims of it. In the US, a sizable minority of men are victims of VAWA, The Bradley Amendment, alimony, etc.
In India, there is no alimony and child support. A single mother has no financial recourse, which prevents children from being used as pawns to extract money from men. In America, that strategy is the opening move in any divorce with kids.
India has problems for sure, but there are very few ways in which the woman can screw her husband like she can in the US. Ammoral, slutty, and child-damaging behavior is still shamed in India.
Remember that most of this blog has been very pro-US. It is only now when some serious negatives are reaching critical mass.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 03, 2010 at 08:35 PM
This very comprehensive, yet incisive article pretty much confirms the suspicions I have harbored for a long time about the sorry state of relations between men and women.
That is, men are simply going to bypass women entirely and unplug from the economy, with unimaginably huge social, economic and political consequences.
These consequences may well prove to be the undoing of the United States, and disprove the author's contention that it will be the only superpower in existence by 2030. In fact, I'm more inclined to think that the middle part of the 21st century (and beyond) will belong to China.
The good news in all this is that I can easily imagine a time, say, fifteen to twenty years from now, when divorce lawyers are unemployed, and all the other cockroaches who deliberately foment divorce and other forms of
female misbehavior in order to make money will be dead broke.
Posted by: JFS | January 03, 2010 at 08:42 PM
JFS,
The thing is, China is likely to make many of the same mistakes. Their fertility rate is already lower than the US. But that is not a great way for the US to stay #1.
Men unplugging/expating is going to get easier, for reasons mentioned in the article. Islam will play a role in filling other vacuums.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 03, 2010 at 09:41 PM
Wow. Just came across your site.
Looks like I am in for some interesting reading.
Posted by: pdwalker | January 03, 2010 at 09:43 PM
pdwalker,
Thanks. The 'Core Articles' section is where the deepest thoughts are.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 03, 2010 at 09:52 PM
I am very worried and also awed by what I have read today, I had an inkling of what was really occurring but you have spelled it out for me. Please keep up the good work.
Posted by: Strikeforcemorituri.wordpress.com | January 03, 2010 at 10:18 PM
In order to gain back some advantage, traditional, masculine men need to reorganize. I'm talking about the lost art of fraternal orders. Imagine an underground network, one in each major city, where all women and soft males have been excluded. We use this network to identify one another, share resources, hire each other, etc. This is exactly what feminists and homosexuals have been doing. They have an "in group" (you wouldn't want to go through the intiation ritual) through which they identify and promote one another. In Minneapolis, we even have an absurd situation in which the Fire Chief (lesbian) was accused of sexual harrassment by two of her lesbian subordinates. They manage to do this even in the "butch" world of fire fighters.
The contemporary age is remarkable in the almost complete lack of organized fraternities. This has been a feature of masculine life for most of recorded history. It's just another thing that's been beaten out of men. The few remaining ones such as the Masonic Lodge and Knights of Columbus are beginning to turn a corner and attracting younger, mostly traditional men. There is an entire legal structure that allows them to operate outside the standard EEOC guidelines in discriminating against applicants. Even if that were attacked and the loophole closed, these groups could easily move back underground, which might make them more effective. I have built a hobby of sorts out of understanding how fraternal orders function and would like to hear your comments about it.
Posted by: Chestertonian | January 04, 2010 at 05:43 AM
I have noted a recent resurgence in televison manliness that is interesting. Deadliest catch. Dirty Jobs. Mythbusters. Ax men. Ice Road Truckers. Manly men doing manly jobs. All wildly popular.
Wrestling seems to be on every channel, and is more extreme than ever before. Boxing has given way to ultimate fighting.
I think the change is already happening. Note that the change is appearing first in "reality" TV - this suggests that the change is being driven from below rather than from above.
Someone soon will produce a fictional equivalent that is wildly popular. The Star Trek Movie might have been it, but there will be more.
Posted by: Geoman | January 04, 2010 at 10:25 AM
8 years late. This info was presented in November of 2003 by Kim Du Toit. And he used common sense and experience to write his shorter version.
The Pussification of the Western Male
http://www.theothersideofkim.com/index.php/essays/41/
Posted by: Jim in Monroe | January 04, 2010 at 10:34 AM
ok, maybe not 8 years late, but peruse his site and you'll be surprised how insightful Kim was.
Posted by: Jim in Monroe | January 04, 2010 at 10:47 AM
Futurist,do you have any more detailed stats of 1) how much $ women collectively contribute to Social security vs. how much they extract 2) same for men 3) % of female employees in civilian govt jobs compared to men 4) the aggregate total of female contribution to govt revenues vs. aggregate total of recievership 5) same for males?
Posted by: Numbers | January 04, 2010 at 11:25 AM
Jim in Monroe,
Go back further, Lord Byron said the same thing. The point is, this is now the biggest challenge to US safety and prosperity, which was not yet the case in 2003.
I like Kim du Toit's essay, but it is time to take it much further.
Numbers,
I am seeking those sources. Some, however, are obvious. The progressive tax system ensures that 75% of taxes are paid by 10% of taxpayers, who are disproportionately men (90% or so). I did provide sources of how women consume much more healthcare dollars then men.
Also, some are a matter of putting 2 and 2 together, such as the combo of female unemployment rate vs. male. and public vs; private sector jobs, with the link provided about how N.O.W. lobbied for stimulus funds to go to women.
If the dots are connected for the first time from 3 separate sources, there of course isn't a preexisting link that spells the new conclusion out.
I welcome good sources provided by others as well.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 04, 2010 at 01:13 PM
I got a vasectomy. I met a girl soon afterwards. She was nice and attractive but with a selfish streak that raised a big red flag. She was 32 at the time and I could practically HEAR her biological clock ticking. Regardless, she was a good lay, easy on the eyes, and reasonably good company.
I did NOT tell her about my vasectomy and I always used a condom with her to protect against STDs. She assumed, obviously, that the condom was only used for birth control. wacky girl.
We date for a few months. I never made any move towards commitment but she brought it up ocassionally. For me, this was a casual but pleasant relationship. For her - as I was to find out - it was part of life-changing series of events that she was planning very carefully.
Four months into dating, I get the “I’m pregnant” talk. She’s going on and on about how the condom must have broke and now we really need to think about getting married “for the baby”. She’s positively giddy. She has a baby in her and she thinks she’s gonna have a good meal ticket (me) to go along with her new 7lb annuity.
At this point, I’m just as giddy. I get to pull the reverse “oops” on her. I figured that she slept with some bad boy and got knocked up. Good thing I was using condoms! Better still that I have a serious mistrust of women who can’t think beyond their own uteri.
So I wait a couple of days to “think about all this.” I meet her again. I say I don’t want kids and that she should have an abortion. I know where this is going and sure enough it goes there. She goes completely batsh*t insane on me. There were the usual insults about my manhood. There were threats of legal action. It was all very ugly and I was loving every minute of it.
Well, I let her stew for a few days. She leaves me nasty messages on my phone. She sends awful emails. I’m laughing hysterically.
It was time to drop the hammer. While she was stewing I was busy. First I get a notarized copy from the urologist who performed the vasectomy. Next I get a notarized copy of the TWO test results indicating a “negative test result for sperm” to show I’m sterile and shooting blanks. Finally, I get a letter from a shark attorney stating he has seen the other documents and is prepared to litigate against this woman if she continues to communicate with me in such an unpleasant manner. Also, the letter states that we will insist on DNA testing to show that the baby is not mine. I’m ready.
I meet with this woman at her place. I bring flowers and a small bit of jewelry to show I am willing to reconcile and assume my responsibilities as a new father. I also have stuck in my pocket the documents I have prepared.
She’s all giddy again. Her plan is going perfectly - or so she thinks. We talk about our future. We have some pretty good sex. Then, as I am about to walk out the door, I ask her the $64,000 question. “Are you sure that this baby is mine?”
Well, she goes batsh*t insane again. Hell, she ought to. Her plan could completely unravel if there is ANY question about my paternity. Oh, she’s really screaming now. How dare I question her morals. Do I think she’s a slut. I’m just trying to weasel out of my responsibilities… blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I’m not really mad. I’m kind of embarrassed for her. But since she won’t shut up and the neighbors can hear all of this, I ask her to step back inside and sit down. She sits on the sofa and calms down a bit. She is glaring at me with all the moral self-righteousness that only a woman can muster up. She thinks she has me trapped. She is 100% convinced her plan has worked. Oh, the tangled web of lies and deceit she has wrought around herself and I am about to hack through them with a few pieces of paper.
I reach into my pocket slowly. I extract the three pieces of paper and unfold them slowly and deliberately.
I tell her simply, “You’re screwed”.
Her look doesn’t change. There is no way she can fathom what I have prepared.
I continue. “I am sterile”
Her look changes just a bit. Something is beginning to sink in. Naturally, she reverts to women’s logic. “You’re full of sh*t. You’re trapped and you know it.”
I hold up the letter and the test results. “Three months before we met, I had a vasectomy. Here is a notarized letter from him stating what I had done. Here are two test results showing that I tested negative for the presence of sperm. Blanks. I am shooting blanks. That baby inside you is simply not mine.”
This woman is not to be swayed by logic and clear documentation. “Bullsh*t, those are fakes.”
I was ready for that. “No, they are real. This last piece of paper is from my attorney. It’s a simple letter to you that states if you pursue any kind of legal action against me for child support that I will insist on a DNA test to prove paternity, that is, to prove that your baby is not mine.”
I give the woman all the documents. She reads them slowly, deliberately. With each passing second she can feel in her soul that she has made a very bad mistake. With denial swept away, she started to cry. It’s a small cry at first. Then it becomes deeper and more painful. By the time she gets to the letter from the lawyer she is sobbing.
I had no sympathy for her. I turned and walked out the door. Even after I closed the door I could still hear her sobbing.
Epilogue -
I never heard directly from this woman again. I did hear through my friends that she did indeed have the baby. I also heard that the real father was some guy in a band she had met. I assumed that after 30, women stopped going after musicians, bikers, criminals, and thugs. wacky me for thinking the best of American women.
The Moral of the Story -
Get a vasectomy but keep it a secret.
Posted by: wavescan | January 04, 2010 at 01:14 PM
How come these days MRAs always mix the feminist question with those crazy cospiracy theories about "muslims taking over" and all that crapola ?
Im quite sure it is this lunacy that will prevent the Mens Movement to ever become mainstream. Men's stupidity keep blocking men from defeating feminists, because they cant confront a just cause (antifeminism) without leaving aside racism and islamophobia.
http://www.loonwatch.com/
ps. LOL about you mentioning the crazy loony Michelle Malkin!
Posted by: AF | January 04, 2010 at 05:08 PM
Wow. I suspected many of the things this article points out, but never saw them articulated quite so well. This blows the roof of so much feminist wrongdoing.
Far too many women just refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. They always say that the man is 'not paying alimony', never mind that SHE left the marriage!! Why should HE have to pay?
Feminism is ruining our society, and I agree that women will ultimately suffer on account of it.
Posted by: Nathan | January 04, 2010 at 09:23 PM
"The 'if it doesn't work, do more' can't continue when the tax revenue needed to do it is not forthcoming."
Other 'personal autarky' enabling technologies are coming that will accelerate this trend as well. It will be interesting and I can't wait to flip the bird at the tax man and go Gault's Gulch on the government.
Posted by: Zyndryl | January 04, 2010 at 09:23 PM
Zyndryl! There you are.
I was really hoping that my regular trio of jeffolie, Zyndryl, and Geoman joined in when I had the mass of male vs. female comments going.
But this is the issue of the '201x' series of 10 years. And I didn't even know about many of these subjects 12 months ago.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 04, 2010 at 09:50 PM
The Futurist, I eagerly read your blog but this particular post made me think you've had some problems with a woman and you've responded with this long, cathartic, polemic manifesto.
While I have to admit I agree with much of what you say here, I'm left with the impression that you think of women as less than your equal, that they are little more than irrational, unthinking, biological automatons to be dissected and analyzed at your whim, and put in a place where you can feel smug and superior.
Let me offer some advice for you: Somewhere out there is a very intelligent woman who is easily your equal...but she won't be interested in you with an attitude like that. If you have a true sense of adventure there is even a woman out there who is smarter than you. Go find her. You'll be happy you did.
I married an Indian girl. It doesn't matter to me that she's Indian, but what she has to say about Indian guys is enlightening...on numerous occasions she's told me that she would never marry an Indian guy because they're sexist - they expect their wives to behave in a subservient way. I've certainly seen this in her extended family...at get-togethers the guys sit around and drink and eat while their wives & girlfriends cook and clean up after them. I don't blame her for not wanting to be part of that. I married her because of her intelligence - that and she's stunningly beautiful (she stops people dead in their tracks). She's as beautiful after 10 years of marriage as she was the day I met her, but I have to say it's her intelligence and good nature that keeps our marriage interesting. We're best friends, and trust me, after a decade of marriage that's what's important. And there's no way you can have a good marriage if you think you're somehow superior to your wife. You hint at moving to India...maybe you're thinking that you go can get yourself a nice subservient wife-appliance who has no thoughts of her own and only wants to meet your needs. If that's what you want, go for it, but just remember that you'll be fitting the stereotype that my wife and I laugh about.
Posted by: Dave | January 05, 2010 at 12:50 AM
Dave,
You haven't read the article in good faith, which is contrary to your usual dependability.
Let me point out just a few of the flaws in your assumptions.
a) As you know, this is the first time I have ever uttered a word about this subject in the 4 years of this blog. Most things here I became aware of just in the last 12 months. This is totally contrary to your ethnic stereotyping.
b) I am treating this as an economic and political crisis, much like the War on Terror or Real Estate bubble has been. That is why it fits into The Futurist's general theme, and why the article was scheduled precisely for 1/1/2010. This should be viewed as, 'Now that even The Futurist is talking about it, it really is a big problem'.
c) I have said India has a *better* set of morals than what the West has today, for detailed reasons. Also, I said that in the 1980s, the US had a more gender normative culture than now.
d) You know full well I am US born. You know how much I know about US politics, etc. You must not think much of US assimilation if you think I am still tied to a country I was not born in.
e) Surely you know that white women bash white men far more than Indian men/women bash each other.
f) You utterly ignored the multiple times I wrote 'this is unfair to women' and 'feminism does a disservice to women'.
g) You totally overlooked what I wrote about The Venusian Arts. You may not be familiar with it as a discipline of study just like Martial arts (and probably didn't read what I wrote about it in good faith), suffice it to say, my experience with women is about 10 times more extensive than the average man, and your assumptions regarding me couldn't be more off.
i) But the most important error of all in what you wrote is :
I am making PREDICTIONS, as I always do. I certainly have a track record at stake if I make a bad prediction, so how on earth can you claim emotions have biased by predictions? Why would I make a prediction for 2020 contrary to what I believe will happen?
That is the question you should be able to answer.
Plus, you totally ignored the majority of the article, and how this is a great threat to US safety and prosperity. As a commentator, I am treating this much the same way I would treat the War on Terror. I personally have a lot less to lose from this than someone who cannot easily relocate to another country.
Your lack of mention of the detailed economic, constitutional, and judicial points is surprising (which you can't possibly think are not serious problems). The 'economic thesis' and 'who should care' sections alone should have led you to make many comments. Surely you can't dispute that feminism is just about the strongest pillar of the hard left in the US.
Now try again.
-The Futurist
Posted by: The Futurist | January 05, 2010 at 01:29 AM
Dude,
You have absolutely, positively blown my mind with this post.
BLOWN MY MIND.
I have read it twice, read all of the links, some of THEM twice.
My brain is still firing off random synapses as my worldview shifts. It's like the focus on a real fuzzy picture suddenly snapped into place. Talk about a paradigm shift.
Where the hell were you 20 years ago?
Thank you for this. This is something I am forwarding to all my male friends. Vive le resistance!
Any thoughts as the power is corrupting influence of both female ability to choose combined with added enforcement of the state/religion/political correctness?
Posted by: Weary G | January 05, 2010 at 10:47 AM
Weary G,
Thanks, man. It is reactions like yours - paradigm shifts - which are the whole reason I write any article here, especially this one.
Where the hell were you 20 years ago?
In grade school.
Most of what I wrote here, I learned in the last 12 months. I never wrote single word on the subject in 4 years and 200 prior articles on this blog. But once I saw what was going on, the massive megatrends affecting society became clear.
This is the issue of the next decade (the 201x series of 10 years).
Soak it in. Don't get married unless stringent conditions can be met. Learn how to read between the lines on what women are saying. And learn the Venusian Arts, even if only used to dodge the bullets fired at men.
You really should go read, and comment on The Spearhead often (www.the-spearhead.com).
Posted by: The Futurist | January 05, 2010 at 12:56 PM
I was very much enjoying the article, until you constructed and then demolished your "social conservative" straw man. I thought I was a social conservative, but I bear little resemblance to the social conservative you describe. My church still refuses to ordain women, a policy for which your article could be the starting point for constructing an excellent defense. Your comment about feminism being misogynistic because it devalues what women are good and and overvalues what men are good at is spot on in this connection. Remember the Marxist nuns?
I am skeptical that the wider dissemination of pornography will be, on balance, a good thing. Marriage is not just a sexual outlet for men; it is as much a civilizing influence on them as it is on women, though in different ways, as you yourself pointed out early in the article. Pornography does not provide this civilizing influence and cannot serve as a substitute for marriage for beta males. Now, if you meant to discuss it as a marginal phenomenon (in the economics sense), and leaving aside my moral qualms, your argument is more sustainable; but I still feel sorry for the "losers" (non-alpha, non-beta males) who feel it is their only alternative.
A bit tangential, but since someone brought it up: Autism is a very real and very disabling condition. It is, however, grossly overdiagnosed, if I can believe what I was told by the medical professor leading the autism team at a nearby teaching hospital. I would hate to see genuinely autistic boys fail to receive the assistance they need because a great many boys being boys are being misdiagnosed.
Posted by: Vader | January 05, 2010 at 12:57 PM
It is amazing to me how Dave can put his analytical and logical skills to full use when addressing some issues (technology, economy, knowledge etc) and transform himself into a blubbering mass of knee-jerk, emotional insults and intellectually bankrupt shaming tactics when addressing issues of much greater social importance (the feminist vilification of men and their dismantling of functional male and female roles essential to the operation of an economically efficient and socially healthy society)
Some men like Dave are just too weak-minded to resist the "women are victims and patriarchy is evil" conditioning they've been exposed to since birth by trusted adults, the public educational system and the emasculated Western culture at large.
Posted by: John | January 05, 2010 at 01:08 PM
The fastest way for a man to destroy his life is to get a woman pregnant. The second fastest way to ruin his life in our tyrannical matriarchy is to get married.
Posted by: John | January 05, 2010 at 01:18 PM
Vader,
Then you have to do something to confront the various men who continue to pressure and shame men into marriage, house buying, etc. while ignoring legal and judicial realities and also doing nothing to hold women accountable for THEIR actions.
Otherwise the word 'social conservative' will accumulate the same stigma that 'feminist' and 'environmentalist' have.
I explained why this was reasonable before 1970, but now is doing far more harm than good.
You could play a valuable role, through your church or elsewhere.
Porn is not 'good', but it does adjust power imbalances. It is my job to make accurate predictions, happy or sad.
John,
I like Dave, but I would prefer that he discuss the economic, legal, and political aspects of the article in good faith, rather than generalize about an ethnicity of 1.2 billion people, including those who were born in the US (Ohio, in fact).
But yes, far too many men just can't do the paradigm shift. In fact, so many commenters on other blog said that they agreed with everything in the article, EXCEPT the Venusian Arts part. They not only refuse to understand what that really is, but can't see how that is an inextricable part of the whole set of issues.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 05, 2010 at 01:21 PM
The Futurist,
"Porn is not 'good', but it does adjust power imbalances. It is my job to make accurate predictions, happy or sad."
Fair enough.
"Then you have to do something to confront the various men who continue to pressure and shame men into marriage, house buying, etc. while ignoring legal and judicial realities and also doing nothing to hold women accountable for THEIR actions."
I can't hold them accountable if I can't find them.
Look, I don't doubt such "social conservatives" exist. I have occasionally met men with a pronounced "take it like a man" attitude who might well have believed that chivalry meant the woman is always right, though our conversation didn't go far enough for me to find out -- life is too short to waste on idiots. But the social conservatives I know expect fidelity from women just as much as they expect it from men, and they condemn divorce for all but the gravest reasons no matter which spouse is seeking it, and they have done so consistently for decades. They have particularly condemned no-fault divorce and called for reform in divorce law.
In other words, they've touted the same model for marriage that you seem to.
But your mileage may vary. It's a big world and it's entirely possible you've accurately described those calling themselves social conservatives in your corner of it. Not in my corner.
Posted by: Vader | January 05, 2010 at 03:25 PM
I am a fifty-one year married woman (25 years) with a 16 year old son. I am a successful network engineer who has been in the field for over 25 years. I was mentored into the field of computer science by a Jewish man who believe I had what it took to do the job. I have worked for the past 25 years in a field dominated by men. When I first attended computer conferences in the Silicon Valley there was me and about 5 other women there. I have enjoyed it immensely and I am grateful for the opportunity. Yes, I worked with men who were jerks. Just like I worked with women who were jerks. Bosses are no better because they are women or men or what the heck ever. It all depends on your soul and makeup.
My 16 year old son does have ADHD - just give him a six pack of Coke and watch him fall asleep. We had nothing but problems with him in school, whether it was public or private. The problem - too many women and not enough male teachers. What things my son did at school he never did at home - why - butt whoopings. He knew how far he could push mom and dad. But the women at school could never handle him and he knew it. We pulled him out of school in sixth grade and started home-schooling him. We also live on a ranch so he rides, ropes, rodeos, raises livestock for 4-H, he is a junior leader, teen leader, he has been president, vice president, secretary and treasure of his 4-h Club, pulls calves, fosters rescue dogs, rides quads, blows off illegal fireworks, fixes broken trucks, gates, trailers, mowers, has guns, knives, shoots pigeons and crows, was driving tractors, trucks and cars on the ranch at age 8, climbs trees, falls into canals, broke his arm and shoulder, plays baseball, football and basketball, steer wrestles, calf ropes, surfs the internet, has a cellphone, myspace and facebook page, is a regular volunteer in our community and church. Heis a 4.0 honors student with his sights set on Vet School.. He is mistaken to be anywhere from 20 to 22 years old on a regular basis (he is six feet three inches tall). He has a great deal of respect for women. His dad and I drummed it into him. He is always flanked at rodeos and events by at least 6 to 7 girls - why - because they feel safe with him. I have been told this by not only the girls, but the girls' parents. I have had girl's parents ask me to have my son date their daughter. He is a prize - I know it. I talk to him every day about marriage and who he needs to find as a wife. I fear that he may end up with some Jane Fonda loser. I pray for him daily. I think he is figuring it out though because he recently dropped a girl he was interested in because her parents were complete psycho cases. He was able to see it.
There is no doubt in my mind that the feminists in this country have been on a complete destruction derby for the past 40 years. It has done untold damage to society. The only hope out there is that the unhinged, lefty feminists are not reproducing and the conservative, morally upright women like Michelle Duggar (the mother with 19 children) are raising the future men and women of this country.
Posted by: cowgirl | January 05, 2010 at 03:30 PM
Vader,
There were once equality-oriented feminists who had the word taken over by modern misandrists.
There were once classical liberals who had the word taken over by tyrannical leftists.
Socialcons who hold BOTH genders accountable may be at risk of having the brand damaged by those who hold only MEN accountable. This may be far more subtle than one may think, and is thus harder to notice..
I linked to articles where that assumption of 'socialcons' is already being made.
Calling for reform of divorce law is the right spirit. But if the vested interests cannot be swayed, there isn't real action. The direction things have gone in the last 40, or even the last 10 years, shows no real effect from such opposition, sadly.
Remember what I wrote about why there is no Men's Rights Movement. There are several ideas that *should* be done, but are not being done.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 05, 2010 at 03:35 PM
"Socialcons who hold BOTH genders accountable may be at risk of having the brand damaged by those who hold only MEN accountable. This may be far more subtle than one may think, and is thus harder to notice.."
I think we're in accord on that.
Posted by: Vader | January 05, 2010 at 03:55 PM
Vader,
And I have to say, I think the woman-pedestalizing type may be a majority (particularly since it extends to men both Right and Left, religious and atheist). It is too subtle, and too much of an accepted norm, for many to notice, and you yourself said that you don't waste time with them (which could conceal how common they are).
Their actions empower the very feminists that tout values that all religious people are appalled by.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 05, 2010 at 04:29 PM
Damn. I got half-way and gave up in exhaustion. Where's a Kindle when I need one? LOL.
Anyway, agreed with most of what I've read so far. Concerning the state of marriage, I agree and therefore advocate privatizing marriage and rescuing it from the corrupting hands of the state:
http://butterflysquash.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/get-rid-of-civil-marriage/
And, yeah, the gay marriage thing is just a side-show. I sometimes wonder if it hasn't been specifically constructed to side-track us from the real issues.
Posted by: Black&German | January 05, 2010 at 07:26 PM
Islam is the cure that's worse than the disease. Where Islam rules there is widespread abuse and rape of both boys and girls, general robbery/rape/murder on a scale not seen in the West outside active war zones, women are reduced to nothing more than walking wombs in sacks, non-Islamic culture, philosophy, and art is deemed worthless and systematically destroyed, and perhaps most importantly there is a permanent darkness of the mind. They invent nothing, author nothing, produce nothing. I can think of no greater betrayal of our children than to make Islam a significant power in the West.
Posted by: randian | January 05, 2010 at 07:37 PM
wavescan, I'm glad it worked out for you, but I wanted to point out that walking out, even if you can't be the father, isn't good enough to protect you. In every state you have 30-90 (usually 30) days to respond to a paternity petition. If you do not, you are judged to be the father, and in every state except Georgia and 1 or 2 others are permanently without recourse to overturn that judgment. Courts have consisently ruled that service to the wrong address does not stop the clock from ticking, regardless of how that address was generated. Ergo, a woman need only name you as dad, give the court a wrong address, and wait the statutory period to hook you for the next 20+ years. I am surprised that wealthy and famous men are not the targets of enterprising mothers to be, since as family law currently stands there is no bar to the strategy I described.
Posted by: randian | January 05, 2010 at 07:57 PM
aynryadgirl,
So if misandry guised as 'feminism' is destroying civilization to the detriment of women, what are saner women doing about it?
Posted by: The Futurist | January 05, 2010 at 09:03 PM
Speaking as your basic semi-reactionary social and economic conservative, I'm with the Bay Area environmentalist Marxist on this one: boring tripe.
Posted by: punditius | January 05, 2010 at 09:08 PM
punditius,
A social and/or economic conservative should care heavily about this. Just see the public sector salary chart.
The 'who should care?' section at the end may contain something that applies to you.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 05, 2010 at 09:23 PM
The Futurist,
First off kudos on a very well written piece. Secondly I'd like to offer my own personal experiences as evidence that you what you have written corresponds to the reality of at least one person (ie. me).
I'm a 39 yo recovering "beta white knight" who is university educated (engineer), professional, self-employed, makes 6 figures, has never been married, from a divorced family where parental alienation and all of the other dirty tricks were used. I'm that statistic.
I have given up on marriage and western women in general (no I'm not fat or ugly). I've shrunk my expenses by simplifying my life (ie. not dating or trying to meet what many people classify as society's expectations of someone in my position). I'm incorporated and I use the available legal shelters to protect my wealth. In a typical year I may work for 6 months because I just don't have the expense pressures that I would if I had a family to support. And I'm generally a non-consumer. In other words I live a simple life, for myself.
I am doing what you predict will become more and more prevalent amongst men who have "bailed". I'm not spending my money to perpetuate a broken system. I am actively encouraging others who are in a similar situation as me, of which I know many, to look out for and educate themselves in the same way.
Since I have a mobile skillset if the government decides to create even more ridiculous anti-male rules to try to subsidize their broken social model I can simply move to another country. I don't have any ties to keep me here. The net effect of that would be not only a loss of a taxable resource, but a high-skilled one as well. As an example I designed one of my country's (Canada) most widely used loyalty systems. And I see more and more men like me opting out. You are exactly right - If enough people like me drop out what sort of country are you left with? The consequences are very easy to predict.
And to clarify. I don't hate women. I simply think that western women live in a culture of unaccountability that has been codified into law. I recognized the pitfalls of this and decided not to be part of it.
My question to you Futurist is what economies do you think will be insulated from the fall of western culture? What do you think of eastern europe and scandinavia?
Posted by: Anonymous Protagonist | January 05, 2010 at 09:27 PM
Anon. Protagonist,
My question to you is what economies do you think will be insulated from the fall of western culture?
The rural US for starters. You may only have to drive 60 miles to escape tyranny, and even find a good woman.
Many countries in Asia will do well.
Scandinavia is NOT in good shape - they are even more misandric than the US. Go poke around The Spearhed (www.the-spearhead.com) for more.
Eastern Europe has a very low birth rate, so while they might be good now, the future is bleak.
So the rural US is the only Western region with a future, followed possibly by Australia, otherwise Asia is good.
I'm incorporated and I use the available legal shelters to protect my wealth.
Do tell me more. I am trying to learn more about the same.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 05, 2010 at 10:09 PM
It is males whom have let down and betrayed males for a private advantage that has brought about this ugly picture of misandry to society.
Posted by: POIUYT | January 05, 2010 at 10:46 PM
There was 190 comments when I checked this page a few hours ago and now there are 150. Have some comments have been deleted?
This book by Mark Nestmann (an asset protection and privacy expert) will help you protect your hard earned money:
The Lifeboat Strategy: Legally Protecting Wealth and Privacy in the 21st Century (3d Ed. 2007)(Interim Update 2009)
I found it at nestmann.com
Posted by: Guy | January 05, 2010 at 10:51 PM
Master Dogen "On game, you are just wrong. Game is a strategy for attracting a mate, just like wearing make-up is for women."
Everything I have ever seen of game has indicated that it's an inherently dishonest and deceptive method of social engineering, and that the general views and attitudes that gamists have are stupid and immature. The idea of using a "strategy" to "attract a mate" does nothing to alter that perception. And yes, I have actually visited your blog before, and it did not change my opinion at all.
This article would be pretty decent if it didn't have so much offensively stupid PUA agitprop. I'm not sure what kind of mind-altering substances The Futurist was on when he decided to tell 80% of all men to fuck off in an article concerning the misandry of feminism and the need for men to fight against it. So feminists hate almost all men, and he hates almost all men, but the difference between him and feminists is... uh... help me out here.
Posted by: bleh | January 05, 2010 at 10:55 PM
HR Lincoln "As to the notion that rape is in any fashion as reprehensible as cuckoldry, consider this: rape is transitory, while cuckoldry persists for a lifetime. "
Rape is transitory, while a scar on your left forearm persist for a lifetime, ergo a scar on your left forearm is worse than rape! Makes perfect sense oh wait no it doesn't. Your premise is flawed anyway since rape is not any more transitory than cuckolding. It stays with you for the rest of your life. But hey, if you keep trivializing rape for long enough then maybe it'll be de-criminalized. That's what you want, right?
isaloser "For many men being cuckolded is worse than death."
Doesn't change the fact that cuckoldry is nowhere near as bad as rape.
"To raise some unrelated man's kid makes you the ultimate evolutionary loser which you seem to be."
I have not raised anybody's child, and being an "evolutionary loser" does not matter at all anyway. In case you haven't yet noticed, life is now about more than just pumping out hordes of babies (which, funnily enough, is something that PUAs/MRAs are not interested in, even though they're endlessly droning on and on about being an evolutionary winner and whatnot). A great inventor, for example, contributes far more to society than some PUA who accidentally gets a skank pregnant.
"If biological paternity doesn't matter then maybe hospitals should just switch around woman's babies randomly at delivery so no woman really knows if the kid is truly hers. See what reaction you will get from women."
Not caring about whether your child is biologically related to you has nothing to do with randomly switching around everyone else's babies in the hospital. Kind of like how not caring about what car you drive has nothing to do with randomly switching around everyone else's cars.
"You are a disgusting scumbag, anyone who suggests that cuckoldry is fine or not psychologically damaging is a retard."
Except I have not suggested such a thing. Interesting how the psychological damage of cuckoldry is absolutely dependent on the claim that it's more damaging than rape.
The Futurist "Way too many false strawmen in your whining, that were already debunked long ago (as usual). "
Pointing out that someone is utilizing strawmen is all fine and well, except when you don't specify what those strawmen are. That's kind of important.
"Why so insecure?"
Did you steal this line from a feminist? Are you also going to question the size of my penis or tell me I'm just intimidated by strong and independent bloggers?
Posted by: bleh | January 06, 2010 at 12:48 AM
Looks like bleh is getting OWNED.
Posted by: Vassago | January 06, 2010 at 01:23 AM
Really, Vassago? What is this conclusion based on? You will no doubt regale me with a detailed explanation. I have full confidence in you.
Posted by: bleh | January 06, 2010 at 01:32 AM
All right then, bleh. I can recognize when I'm at an impasse with someone. I'll admit to being a little miffed that reading my blog didn't soften your view of game. Though, I suppose, I have some harsh words there for a lot of the women I've known. I imagine some of them have got harsh words for me, too. The thing is, I'm not so fragile as to think that being at odds with someone makes me (or her) a bad person. Life is messy, and you do your best to muddle through without unduly hurting another person.
I'll reassert, though, simply for the sake of polite defiance and refutation of your point of view, that, again, I love women; I love my sisters, my mother, and my girlfriend; and learning female psychology and letting my actions be informed by what I've learned has led to more happiness for myself and the women I date than if I had either remained ignorant or learned female psychology but failed to act on it on some misguided concept of principle. If we are measuring objective good by happiness generated, I think you're flat-out wrong (about my own version of game, at least).
However, if we are measuring objective good on some secular (crypto-religious) grounds of the ever-unstained purity of your angelic soul, then I readily concede that game has some troublesome thorns to negotiate, and is not an unmitigated good.
Personally, I don't believe in the Holy Purity of the Soul. I do my honest best; I'm happy with myself, and I genuinely love the people around me. In fact, cheesy as it might sound, I'm smiling as I write this.
Anyway, I think you're flat out wrong, but thanks for the engagement.
(Incidentally, I think you're playing a little fast and loose with the terms "social engineering" and "agitprop." I don't think it really detracts from your main point (which I still disagree with), but it kinda makes you sound more hysterical than you probably are.)
Posted by: Master Dogen | January 06, 2010 at 01:56 AM
So if misandry guised as 'feminism' is destroying civilization to the detriment of women, what are saner women doing about it?
Often, nothing. "Saner" women are frequently of the "savor the fruit while cursing the vine" sort.
Posted by: randian | January 06, 2010 at 02:26 AM
Why did you delete my comment? Did you check out the entry I linked to?
Posted by: Black&German | January 06, 2010 at 05:58 AM
Excellent, excellent article. I'm going to read it to my daughter. It pretty much explains a good bit of what I tell her about the world she's growing up in. I don't want her to be caught unawares like I was.
Posted by: Nicole Lasher | January 06, 2010 at 06:45 AM
I'm incorporated and I use the available legal shelters to protect my wealth.
Do tell me more. I am trying to learn more about the same.
The simplest step to take in Canada is incorporation, getting a corporate credit card and then using it for pretty much everything you buy. This will produce an audit trail of your expenses which an accountant will be able to mine for business expenses. The trick is to being able to honestly justify that the things you claim as expenses are directly related to your business, and that's where the simplification of your life comes in. For example if you work from home normally and spend most of your time in your local area, when you do have to do something out of your routine it's most likely business related and thus a business expense. Another example would be grooming and clothing - again if your lifestyle is very simple, it's easy to justify that the clothes you buy are related to business, because they usually are. Finally, taking assets out of the banking system removes an asset that can be tracked. Physical gold works here.
By no means am I an expert on fancy techniques like offshore incorporation in Gibraltar or BVI, or other shelters. What I'm talking about is strictly by-the-books stuff - just things where you design your life so that the delineation between work and non-work activities is very very clear. It's not for everyone that's for sure. Becoming a non-consumer requires effort.
Posted by: Anonymous Protagonist | January 06, 2010 at 08:17 AM
Counterpoint -
You and your amateurish misandrist shaming tactics. Here, the book for this has already been writen:
http://exposingfeminism.wordpress.com/shaming-tactics/
You are too late to the party dear.
Posted by: Puma | January 06, 2010 at 12:06 PM
Congratulations. A tour de force GK. Truly impressive and almost entirely dead on.
There's a few things I'd quibble with but that's what it would be.
As you know I know a fair bit about the divorce law situation (and perhaps schooled you in a number of things earlier on), and you've got that dead to rights. Even with little known (except by those hit or threatened by it) things like the Bradley law.
Posted by: Doug1 | January 06, 2010 at 12:50 PM
An ingaging essay! As a widower (who had a wonderful wife that left way too soon) I have avoided the 'meat market'. I was lucky once, and will stick with my memories. My son will graduate high school this year. He has shown almost no interest in dating girls and has avoided the ones who have chased him (noting that they were bad news to other fellows). His ambition is to become a video game designer. The future is sitting in my house, and I didn't realize it.
Posted by: tweell | January 06, 2010 at 01:08 PM
While I don't agree with all of it, your article is truly brilliant.
One critique: The Four Horseman should include a fifth - doing hookers, as Don51 has ably raised above. Indeed, the "guys' right to choose (willing sex partners)" is the central policy piece of guyinism, as set forth on my blog, "The Balls Monologues." I'm 47, and I regularly bang hot chicks less than half my age for $200 - no $50,000 car (actually, $9,000), no $20,000 ring (maybe an occasional thong I got free at Vic Secret), and no $50,000 bridezilla fest (I tend to offer my "date" little more than a cocktail and a couple of lines).
Posted by: DirkJohanson | January 06, 2010 at 02:22 PM
A well thought out article. Lots to digest.
However...
I do take issue with the notion that men need to learn game (ie. the Venusian Arts). While it can be a stepping stone to becoming a more confident and self-aware man, it is not where you want to end up.
As someone already commented, learning game is simply a way of adapting to women's hedonistic and reckless behaviour, encouraged by society. It does not lead by example and does not encourage personal growth among women (something the article encourages). It is merely a coping strategy, kind of like blackhat SEO where you are gaming the search engines to get the hits, instead of focusing on real quality and content that people want.
The problem with game is the same as the problem with chivalry, in some respects. It elevates women and shifts the burden on men to do it right, instead of expecting the women to do their share. The justification for doing this is always the same; women are "more complex" and "evolutionary biology" dictates that men must do it. What a great way to deflect criticism for my reckless behaviour... I just pull out the evolution-card and I don't have to face any consequences for my actions. There's not one single court in the world that uses the evolution-card as a defense, but Gamers in the seduction community justify all manners of cr*ppy female behaviour this way.
You have to be blind not to see that game only encourages women to be more whimsical and more smug in their assertions that they are the "prize" to be sought after. If she's a b*tch, stuck-up, selfish, lousy in bed etc, that's okay because Game will somehow work around that.
Game is in many ways a video game fantasy for left-brainers who actually do play a lot of computer games and get an ego rush from it. Not surprising that this spawns a lot of hubris in the seduction community by men who think they are the sh*t just because they can get some action using various "blackhat" tactics. Yeah, they can work on some women, but the end result is usually nothing to crow about. Dysfunctional tactics get dysfunctional women. Funny how that works.
The Venusian Arts is simply a more advanced way of transferring excess power to women, which is the main problem pointed out in this article.
Self-improvement is certainly important, but if I have to do backflips and walk on water to impress a woman then I have lost my way as a man.
The solution is not game. The solution is to marginalize the bad women and screen for women with qualities that you do like, and encourage women to do their part (and believe me, they are certainly capable of it). If enough men do this, the situation will improve dramatically and game will become irrelevant.
Posted by: Jakob | January 06, 2010 at 03:01 PM
Excellent article. More and more people are becoming enlightened through articles like these as well as men's rights blogs and news resources.
Also feel free to check out my blog, which includes a link to a daily e-mail on men's rights issues.
I'll also say that true progressive ideology is not in line with the radical feminism we face today. I hate to see how "the left" has been taken over by misandry and other ills, while the few progressives with their eyes open, those who see how most liberals in the Western world have been led astray, are caught in the mix. There are progressives, like me, who can see and fight the misandry bubble. The bubble won't pop without our buy-in. So don't count progressives out.
Posted by: Jay Hammers | January 06, 2010 at 04:27 PM
Sparks123--
You misunderstand life expectancy statistics. In fairness I do think they're almost or often actually usually intentionally misleading, in a "feel good" or "feel alarmed" sort of manipulative way. The main thing lowering life expectancy in previous times was 1) infant mortality and 2) death during late adolescence and early adulthood in war or skirmishing, particularly in hunger gather societies where it's been fairly recently shown that death rates per capita were on average a lot higher than even in the terrifically bloody (in absolute numbers) 20th century. Much more infant morality though. Infant and childhood. Less than one in two newborns tended to survive and sometimes much worse than that.
If you made it to 16 your life expectancy in most of history wasn't hugely worse than today's. We have extended life expectancy even of those age 20 and above, but at a guess from about 60 to 78. Not 35 to 78. Just a lot more newborns survive.
Posted by: Doug1 | January 06, 2010 at 04:56 PM
The Futurist--
I sent a comment addressed to you saying what a great post this was several hours ago. After initial problems getting it to post for reasons I didn't understand, it did. I come back and not here. Puzzling.
Posted by: Doug1 | January 06, 2010 at 04:58 PM
Now I see the earlier one above. Before I wasn't seeing anything more recent that Jan 4. And yeah I did refresh and so on. Weird.
Posted by: Doug1 | January 06, 2010 at 04:59 PM
Perhaps I misunderstand the Venusian Arts and 'game', but then again, I succeeded in having a happy marriage. My approach to the Venusian Arts was focused on making my prospective woman happy. With that aim, I first learned how to be a very good cook. The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, it applies to many women as well. Next, I read books and took classes in massage, even 'apprenticing' myself to a licensed theraputic masseuse. Finally, I went to some strip clubs, and instead of buying lap dances, I bought information. I asked what they liked, what they hated, turn-ons and turn-offs. Did this make my marriage a happy one? It wasn't the only reason, but it sure didn't hurt! My wife admitted years later that she got interested in me when I made a cheese souffle, and much more so after her first foot massage.
Posted by: tweell | January 06, 2010 at 05:28 PM
I can't keep track of all these comments.
I wonder why there hasn't been made a ballot proposition in California to mandate paternity testing at birth or at least during any divorce proceeding involving child support and custody issues.
Seems like a no brainer to me.
Posted by: Zyndryl | January 06, 2010 at 05:41 PM
"The better diet...[of] 40 years ago..."
That would be 1969: Velveeta, Cap'n Crunch, Wonder Bread, Jell-O, Stouffers TV Dinners... Yeah, a true Golden Age of natural healthy food. Not. Try looking through James Lileks'
http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/
Gallery of Regrettable Food.
>>"approximately 60% of women who file for divorce do so because >>the man has cheated on her."
>Bogus. Female adultery is just as prevalent as male adultery.
And your point is? You blame women for divorces initiated by men in response to women's misbehavior, but apparently also blame women for divorces they initiate in response to male misbehavior. Obvious double standard.
Let's run the arithmetic: women initiate slightly over 2/3 of divorces. We'll call that 70%. Of those, 60% (42% of the whole) are responses to male adultery; the other 40% (28% of the whole) are gratuitous. 30% are initiated by men, of which, according to you, 2/3 (20% of the whole) are in response to female misbehavior, and 1/3 (10% of the whole) are gratuitous.
So men initiate 10% of divorces gratuitously, and provoke 42% by adultery; women initiate 28% of divorces gratuitously, and provoke 20% by misbehavior. That adds up to 52% for men, and 48% for women. I'd say the dishonors are about even. Certainly there is no support for blaming women for 90% of divorces.
Note that this does not make any claims whatever about the relative incidence of male or female adultery; only about the proportions of divorces provoked by adultery.
Posted by: Rich Rostrom | January 06, 2010 at 11:21 PM
Oh brave White Knight, save me, save me for these bad men!
Posted by: Puma | January 06, 2010 at 11:29 PM
Rick Rostrom, the one man pulling statistics out of his ass, white knight machine.
Posted by: Guido | January 07, 2010 at 12:05 AM
the difference, rich rostrom, is in the outcomes of adultery. when married women commit it, they are financially and socially rewarded for it with man's-fault divorce (ie. no fault divorce). The man ends up forced to subsidize the immoral harlot who betrayed him emotionally and financially. State cuckolds men into servitude even in cases where the marriage collapsed as a result of the woman's evil actions.
Posted by: Guido | January 07, 2010 at 12:09 AM
Rich Rostrum - your numbers are bogus.
Women list "drifted apart" and similar as their most common reason for initiating divorce.
As well, when it comes to adultery as well as a number of other things, a double standard is appropriate, because men and women are significantly different here.
Yes women feel jealousy as well, but a great deal of the intensification of that and rage etc. from male cheating was in fact created by feminism. THis goes back to first wave feminism, with roots in the changing of divorce law, before women got the vote.
I could go into that but for now I want to focus on this. When a man cheats he rarely wants to leave his wife for his affair, despite what he may have said or intimated to her. This is wisdom women often pass down mistresses of successful married men. Indeed he usually doesn't want to stop full having sexual relations with his wife, if she's kept herself up at all and has any sexual appetite herself, or can be induced to have it. Men are indeed polygamous or want to be, esp. men with strong or even only average male sexual drive. Success tends to make men want some sort of polygamous play that much more strongly.
Women in contrast often DO want to leave their husbands after and affair and usually have much less (or no) interest in full sexual relations with him during -- and often after the affair has ended if it does. Even when women can't or discovers she ultimately doesn't want to go off with the other man very often her sexual interest in her husband is destroyed. Women very frequently interpret this by back dating the time she "no longer felt "in love" with her husband to before she started her affair -- because what else could explain her interest in sex and passion w/another man. After all women aren't dogs the way men are -- he wasn't meeting her emotional needs or communicating enough.
Yet if she hadn't had the affair often her relationship with her husband could and would rekindle, not into the new love they first shared but into real sexual desire again. It's much less likely to happen if she's had an affair and fallen in love, even temporarily, with the other man, even if she can never have him (because he won't leave his wife and family, etc.)
Yes there is a percentage of men who leave their wives for a younger woman they were having an affair with, even when their marriages were fairly good and they were still getting some sex from their wife, who has keep herself up. But it's pretty infrequent. They just tend to often be from the ranks of the most successful or desirable men that women want to focus on.
As well even when it is the man who divorces his wife because of her affair it often isn't because he simply refuses to take her back if she'll stop it. It's often because she won't stop it, or even if she does, won't try hard and in time succeed in again having enthusiastic sex, and in general won't take all or most of the blame and do everything she can to win her husband back (they way most caught cheating husbands do with their wives.)
In sum, female adultery is much more inherently theatening to the marriage. Male adultery is often used more as an excuse by wives to end the marriage, rather than something that makes it impossible for them to make it good again.
Finally another way of putting it is that strong sexual relations and attraction between men and women usually involve some degree of male dominance in sexuality and female submission. It seems to be inherent in submission that the woman only wants to submit to one man at a time (measured in at least months but often years), emotionally at least. This is often or usually true even in edgie sex play when the man she's submitting to "orders" her to sex other men (but ONLY if he does). That's the dynamic of hookers in love with their pimps. But money doesn't have to change hands. Dominance on the other hand isn't necessarily exclusive at it's core at all. But dominance does always want at least emotional monogamy from the dominated for it to feel enhanced and special.
That's another way of putting the male polygamy / female hypergamy dichotomy.
As well when the gender roles of dominance and submission are flipped, not just on a temporary edginess basis but pervasively, the female dominant does often come to have a polygamous nature, and the male submissive an hypergamous one. Hence the open and consensual versions of cuckoldry it seems. Which given the pervasive emasculation and encouragement by many feminist messages for guys to be rather compliant and submissive towards women, I expect to see greatly increase over the next decade and beyond.
Posted by: Doug1 | January 07, 2010 at 11:50 AM
Everyone,
Comments are still disappearing, and I still have a ticket open with Typepad.
I am clearly NOT moderating comments, as many hostile comments are visible, and many friendly ones are disappearing.
Doug1,
Thanks. A learned much about the legal subject matter present here, from you.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 07, 2010 at 01:04 PM
Bleh:
And I say gamists are misogynists because that's just what they are.
Care to substantiate that or are we supposed to be satisfied with a bald assertion (in fact, a hasty generalization)? Sure, there are some of those out there, but you haven't even attempted, much less succeeded, in making the case that misogyny is an inherent characteristic of 'gaming'.
Posted by: wombatty | January 07, 2010 at 01:38 PM
Bleh--
"Gamists" or PUA game players hardly hate women in general, which is what the word means. Instead they often hate or dislike and certainly sidestep feminism (except some of the core basics often, such as it being ok for women to be at any level in the workplace, if she's out competed for that place on a non AA for women basis).
Feminists do pervasively label any male opposed to any significant part of their agenda "misogynists".
No PUA gamers think men and women are the same except for "social constructs". Virtually all think men should generally lead, especially in relationships, as the natural order of things sexual politics wise, and what almost always makes both sexes happier.
So yeah to a feminist they fall within what they regularly call misogynists. Which is regularly hoseplot -- almost always in fact.
This idea that men should genuflect before women or give them everything they want is more horseplop.
Posted by: Doug1 | January 07, 2010 at 02:55 PM
Men with 'Game' are usually seen as willing to help other men improve their lot in life. They freely mentor and teach others.
I don't see any of the haters like 'bleh' doing that. Then again, he says cuckolding is no big deal, so his disapproval of Game is a good measure of the moral solidity of Game.
Posted by: The Futurist | January 07, 2010 at 04:46 PM
Isn't progressive income taxation a form of cuckholding? I mean, a select few are uses as cattle to provide for others so they don't have to be responsible for providing for themselves in the tax/government benefits arena.
So, it is quite understandable that the divorce laws reflect that attitude as well.
Posted by: Zyndryl | January 07, 2010 at 05:22 PM
"progressive" policies of both right and left seem to be oppressive against particular groups of people whether it be men or the rich.
Posted by: Booyah | January 07, 2010 at 05:34 PM
Doug1 ""Gamists" or PUA game players hardly hate women in general"
That's not my diagnosis.
The Futurist "Then again, he says cuckolding is no big deal, so his disapproval of Game is a good measure of the moral solidity of Game. "
Because rape is far worse than cuckoldry, it means that cuckoldry is no big deal? Care to explain this logic?
Posted by: bleh | January 08, 2010 at 07:18 AM
"My exposure to India helped me see an alternative view, however flawed, of ancient societal structure..."
Yeah like arranged marriages, throwing acid on unwilling brides, and a racist society. This article was junk. And this coming from a anglo saxon canadian, divorced full time single father, with a yearly income of over $120,000. You cannot compare apples to oranges, and there was nothing macho about the 1980's.
Posted by: Alan Swann | January 08, 2010 at 08:22 AM
bleh - Cuckoldry, especially when a man is forced by a court to pay for another man's children for 18-23 years, is far more damaging than rape. Both are bad, but Cuckoldry is meta-death for a man.
Not only has such man failed to sire his own kids, he is not left with any more resources to go on and sire any real kids of his own. He is done. His lineage is done. He has died a METADEATH even though he will still continue to breathe for a few more decades.
There are some paternity fraud links (from prominent Canadian and US news sources) on the WA site if anyone is interested:
http://weddedabyss.wordpress.com/
Posted by: Puma | January 08, 2010 at 09:15 AM
"Cuckoldry, especially when a man is forced by a court to pay for another man's children for 18-23 years, is far more damaging than rape."
No it isn't. Why are you trivializing rape?
Posted by: bleh | January 08, 2010 at 11:04 AM
Alan Swann,
How can you comment on a country that you know nothing about? What you say about India is like saying that America = what is seen on Jerry Springer.
Clearly, you are offended by facts, but are unable to articulate an intelligent argument.
bleh,
You are a projecting, self-loathing hatemonger (as most Omegas are) who tries to ignore that 80% of men have the opposite view as you. I dare you to go to The Spearhead (www.the-spearhead.com) and announce your views on cuckoldry there. You are too much of a coward to go there, aren't you?
Posted by: The Futurist | January 08, 2010 at 11:52 AM
What I don't understand is why countries who are regularly criticized by the West on their human rights records (China, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc.) Why don't these countries throw that argument right back into hypocritical America's face by exposing the atrocious non-merit based gynocracy and record levels of male imprisonment practiced by almost all countries of the West.
Posted by: Truth Seeker | January 08, 2010 at 12:26 PM
I can't find my earlier reply here. :(
Dave-
"I'm left with the impression that you think of women as less than your equal, that they are little more than irrational, unthinking, biological automatons to be dissected and analyzed at your whim, and put in a place where you can feel smug and superior. "
"You hint at moving to India...maybe you're thinking that you go can get yourself a nice subservient wife-appliance who has no thoughts of her own and only wants to meet your needs. If that's what you want, go for it, but just remember that you'll be fitting the stereotype that my wife and I laugh about."
I can assure you that viewpoint is long gone, at the very least in the intelligentsia.I am in an IIT, which are considered as the best institutes of engineering in India and none of my friends that I have ever talked to about the subject of marriage have had this notion of a subservient wife.They expect their wives to be as intelligent as them and to have a well-paying job and not to sit at home to obey their whims.My father is proud of his own wife, who has been working for three decades now, and I have not seen any of this subservience in the middle-class families around me, except for the TVs and newspapers which recount these horrors.
The boys from smaller towns are still in favour of arranged marriages which makes sure that their wives will be at least as educationally qualified as them. Educational qualifications and a job have become a major factor in a woman's marriageability resume, probably the biggest one after a family's background.
"on numerous occasions she's told me that she would never marry an Indian guy because they're sexist - they expect their wives to behave in a subservient way. I've certainly seen this in her extended family...at get-togethers the guys sit around and drink and eat while their wives & girlfriends cook and clean up after them. I don't blame her for not wanting to be part of that."
At our get togethers it's mostly the women who do the cooking but since our family comes from a background where men worked in the kitchen too, they chip in too.Some of the specialities are prepared exclusively by men who don't want the women to ruin them.
Yes, the elder males eat first when they are present, and the elder women eat the last, but there is nothing to imply that they are 'superior' by the virtue of sitting there and eating first unless you want to view it that way.You can as easily say that because it's the men who have to run for the ingredients that they are subservient to their women.
It's merely the fact that since the cooking in our households is not like "the turkey is cooked, now we sit,pray and and eat" Thanksgiving affair but a "make a chapati and toss it out" that women generally cook and serve and sit down to eat at last.However there is no distinction between me and my cousins.Only the eldest one used to eat after us since she helped the older women.
The young men who have recently found a job in cities like Bangalore,Hyderabad living together in groups learn how to cook, those who have been on interns in foreign lands,especially the vegetarian guys, learned how to cook, the research scholars in my mother's office cook their own food as well.And my mother keeps recounting me tales of sons of her colleagues who know even more recipes than her, but much to her chagrin, neither me nor my sister feel the need to compete.
About as many of my elder male cousins know about cooking food as my elder female cousins. I am kinda the inflexion point, the ones younger than me generally don't know much about cooking, and I gave it up after making a mockery of kneading dough and then standing below a fan for an hour to decrease the water content(yes it gets incredibly hot in summers in north India).
So if I don't find cheap places for hygienic food around me maybe I'll try again or marry and expect my wife to do it for me, unless she wants 'equality' and dinner at midnight.
Alan Swann-
I am not in favour of arranged marriage either, but after seeing my elder cousins getting married to grooms or brides of their parents' choices(not to imply that they don't get a say in the matter) and being happy and 50% divorce rates in the 'love-marriage' country, I am starting to have my own doubts.
Throwing acid on someone is a depravity of a sick mind, but how
Posted by: hankmoody | January 08, 2010 at 01:06 PM
@Puma
Absolutely right.
@bleh--
Clearly wrong. And why are you trivializing being deceived into believing a child or two (and sometimes more) is the husband's, who is thereby precluded from reproducing his own genetics in most cases, because the time has passed and he's already to many of his resources to children that aren't his to afford to do so?? Or is forced through incredibly unjust child support after tax percentage levels (which it's monstrously unjust to levy on him in these cases mere because he didn't uncover her fraud within a year or two depending on the state).
Cuckoldry resulting in fraudulent children prevents a man who wants to be a father and parent from having his own children. That's far more grave than a rape which doesn't result in a child - or even if it does because the mother still has the choice to 1) take a plan B pill (which is not abortion in the vast majority of cases but rather prevents fertilization just as the pill does - in fact it is about 4 bc pills in one dose), 2) abortion or 3) adoption. The defrauded father has no such choices.
By comparison with cuckold fraudulent childbearing, rape is relatively trivial today, particularly feminist gross expanded definitions of "date rape". Which can mean she just had quite a bit to drink, but could still walk and talk and say no. Just was just less inclined to do so, just as guys with "beer googles" on are less inclined to pass up the opportunity to get with a not so attractive pudgy or fat girl.
Even real rape has vastly less consequence that it used to. Very few men expect to wed virgins these days, and real rape is no longer regarded by the vast majority of men as shameful for it's victim. The deep psychological trauma is real for some but it's vastly exaggerated in both it's usual depth and how widespread that is, particularly among more sexually experienced girls. A lot of mileage is gained however by exaggerating the trauma. For one thing it tends to cement the total lack of blaiming the victime. For another exaggerating how serious rape always is is part of the radical feminist ploy of making all sex TOTALLY on the woman's terms and indeed even giving her an after the fact enormous cudgel to hold over him if she decides including because of how he treats her afterwords that it wasn't something she "really wanted" after all.
The change in laws and culture have in fact made even real rape (not to mention feminist date rape) a whole lot less necessarily devastating than it used to be, and as well the impact of cuckolded fraudulent children a whole lot more serious than it was. (Because a man can't just walk away when he finds out. Though learning you've been deceived as to being the father of children you've loved for many years in part because you thought you were has always been devastating
to men.)
For some it's only slightly traumatizing. For most it's more than that probably worse than
Posted by: Doug1 | January 08, 2010 at 01:19 PM
hankmoody, don't respond with respect to a feminist thought process such as Dave's which seeks to discredit functional male-dominated societies (currently China and India) which look after the interests of both men and women to be replaced by tyrannical female-dominated bureaucracies (the feminist West) which only look after women's interests at the expense and demonization of men.
I am witnessing India make the same disastrous social policy centered around the feminist red herring of equality as the West fell prey to beginning in the 1970s. Feminists and their hate movement will only gain mainstream acceptance in India because ordinary men like you have a protective instinct towards women, all women, even bitter women who wish to destroy your male dignity and identity.
Instead of responding to Dave's patronizing and ignorant feminist-brainwashed arguments you should be fighting against new anti-male sexist government policies being passed with frightening speed in increasingly prosperous India. Otherwise, your countrymen and women will be doomed to repeat the social and cultural disasters of the West.
Did you know India is proposing a law in which the government gives cash reward to women who make accusations of rape against men, even if their claims are proven false? Guess whose disgusting idea this was? Indian feminists. And guess who stays silent or while Indian men's civil rights are trampled even further? YOU (and men like you who respond meekly to evil women who want to strip your rights away).
Only dysfunctional women desire to hold authority over men. With great power comes great responsibility. Women are incapable of accepting accountability for their actions. By their very nature, women are unsuitable rulers of men. Most men in positions of authority (personal relationships, work bosses, other male leaders) look after the interests of women at the expense of their own gender. In contrast, very few women in power look after the interests of men (<5%)
http://www.manhood101.com (Manhood101) will enlighten you to the true nature of women and why women are unfit to hold any positions of authority over men. Spread the message of manhood101 in India where it is sorely needed to prepare men against the emerging feminist threat.
Posted by: Robert | January 08, 2010 at 01:38 PM
I've come to the conclusion that beh (beth?) is either a troll, or a fugly-chick, or quite possibly both.
Posted by: Puma | January 08, 2010 at 01:43 PM
Robert your comments about me have been spot on. I have been reading about misandry since the last three months because I had been one of those 'boys' who took feminism to be an equalling notion growing up and now I find myself cheated.
I replied to Dave's comment because I am an Indian who has been given an education to know what's right and wrong and that there are many others like me.
In my first post,which got lost, I linked to the "boy problem" in school which hasn't been mentioned in this article, but certainly makes for a good appendix read and which was my first point of introduction to the misandry that exists in western culture and yet is ignored.
A bit of history from my POV-
I have been reading this feminist propaganda before it truly exploded on the Indian scene in some scattered articles in newspapers and magazines, since reading and writing came naturally to me(thank God for making my brain more girl-like and my benevolent english school teacher).
I read about how women were subjugated in older days in the better nations so I thought it was true of us today, my sister never looked subjugated so I looked higher, my mother didn't look like it so I believed it was in the older days still, but even my aunts older than my mother by a decade didn't so I went farther still and settled on my grandmother and beyond.
When I heard her stories she told me of the difficulties my grandfather had to face in order to get proper schooling for his five kids, not that he was a lazy slob who ate the food and farted as movies depict these days and men are inclined to believe in it.
So I started looking for clues that showed this in my society, I started believing that more girls might have been in my school if there was true equality.Then I saw the disproportionate number of girls schools to boys schools in my city and the theory went out of the window.
Then I felt bad for looking at demeaning pictures of women, but often the same newspaper that carried the article showed a half-naked woman at the back and I had been living in two minds ever since.
I read an article about how every woman is beautiful because she can give birth, in other words 'performs the miracles of life'.Then my biology books taught me that I too had a role to play in that miracle and the aura diminished.
Infact my biology book told us that women were biologically superior(the exact terms) with a passing reference to the inherent complexity of their reproductive systems.I accepted that too, but my puberty lay those claims to rest.
I read about how girls get shafted at maths, and I saw it in my class how boys languishing at the bottom of the class suddenly got better at maths than me (I think that many of such bottom-rankers/backbenchers in the schools get into IITs which raises the question, how many more would be here if they were excelling at school and were motivated enough to try for the hardest entrance examination at the undergraduate level in India).
So I tried to pressurise my sister to take maths at the 10+ level thinking that she might be intimidated by her peers/teachers.Thank God that she was more headstrong than me and took what she likes(biology), now she is doing something that she really likes while I am still trying to look for what I like after dabbling in the western media for clues about my manhood.
Feminism, of the way of the so-called "gender" equal countries is arriving in India fast(the gender and sex debate is here) but fortunately the family ties are still strong and divorces are a rarity.But the rhetoric at the higher levels is growing, there's a bill for quota of women in the parliament, a quota system based on castes has been in place, girls have 20% reservation in my state engineering examinations, the inclusion of more girls at IITs is heralded as a historic phenomenon(the dilution of the credence of IITs is washed off altogether), reports of girls outscoring boys in the high school examinations are celebrated even though they have been fairly common for years now, the groin kicks in movies on TV, male rear nudity,BBC sponsored prime time serials that my sister and mother watch religiously...
At my first ragging session, we were shown porn to learn how to have intercourse(no sex education at our time, except telling girls how to pad up), our seniors told us the grim reality if we didn't.
"At your office you will have problems with your boss but an unsatisfied wife at home will be nastier."
One batchmate of mine who is a budding entrepreneur is worrying that his future wife might run away with a younger man if he is not able to fulfill her 'needs'.And I don't understand why he should, unless it's the Bollywood movies that have this recurring theme of a physically unsatisfied woman that have corrupted his thinking.But slowly I am realising that he might be more probabilistically correct than I am.
I don't know if I should feel cheated now for losing my time in these worthless pursuits and thoughts for a doctrine that seems to be doing the opposite of equality in the so-called developed nations but it has given me a very good lesson, to not to believe blindly in what the majority says, for the majority is generally the idiot who 'feels' rather than 'thinks'(thank you Ayn Rand).I find that so true on the men's rights and the feminist forums, one of them puts forth logic and numbers whilst the other puts emotions and history, not a difficult choice really.
So Robert you have pretty spot-on for I wrote this before I read your reply, but sadly I can't go on all this because my "male privilege" has to work on getting a job that pays well enough to pay off the loans of his parents and his sister's further studies.
And I hope that we'll probably learn a thing or two before going down the same lane and having the "equality" that countries like Sweden do.
Posted by: hankmoody | January 08, 2010 at 03:34 PM
My original post that got lost in the system-
One of the issues that you have left out(or prolly dealt with before) in your article is that of the declining aptitude or more accurately the motivation of boys in the education department.More and more girls are achieving academic excellence in schools and colleges which is partly due to their greater application in the classroom but mainly due to the increasing resentment of boys towards the educational system.
Addressing it concisely at the elementary school levels-
The gap between boys and girls in the reading and writing department in the lower classes leads to a growing disparity which never stops.It is merely shrugged off as a difference in the brain development between the sexes which gives the girls a learning advantage,while the same said of maths will lead you down the path of Lawrence Summers.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/ca6472910.html
But use of phonics in some classroom experiments has shown that both boys and girls can actually learn reading faster than the 'whole language' system and boys are often faster than girls in these studies.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/boys-read-better-using-old-methods-606816.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4794696.stm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1545818/Phonetics-teaching-helps-boys-beat-girls.html
As of writing, boys generally go for the more violent stories that are termed as too destructive by their teachers,almost all of them women, and their natural creativity is curbed at quite an early age.Stories written about feelings of animals rather than a science fiction dealing with zombies and spaceships are appreciated and lauded.
Girls tend to develop fine motor skills far earlier than boys and as a result have better handwriting, which plays quite a major role in determing the 'goodness' of an essay and the praise heaped upon a student for finishing his homework.
And there has been nothing on the part of government to rectify the issue, on the contrary in 1990s when the girls has already caught up with the boys there was a great movement to increase their advantage even further.Chritina Hoff Sommers' and Judith Kleinsfeld's works are eyes openers.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sommers-war.html
http://www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html
There is much more that can be put forward on this issue but I find replying to Dave's post more obligatory since I am living in India currently and fed up of American family law system and the undertones of misandry in western media and the continuing rise of the same themes here.
Posted by: hankmoody | January 08, 2010 at 03:38 PM
Alan Swann:
Throwing acid on someone is a depravity of a sick mind, but how much better is the depravity of a few than a legal system and a society that can punish false rape victims and treat the fathers like they are 'junk' after a divorce.
Racist society? In what way? And how does it affect the case of gender dynamics that the author points out?
Posted by: hankmoody | January 08, 2010 at 03:41 PM
The world doesn't much care for the righteousness of our positions. It is not the meek that shall inherit the Earth, but those that reproduce and are economically successful. So...what system leads to many successful, productive citizens?
Feminism? Liberalism? Please. Neither is economically successful or reproductive. Fool around with them, argue over them. Who cares? From a Darwinian aspect they are entirely irrelevant. They will die out - it is a demographic certainty. The only question is whether they drag the rest of us down with them.
Societies have undoubtedly experimented with every concievable type of social structure over the past 3 million years or so. Most societies developed strong patriarchal structures not because they are just, or right, or correct, or fair, but because they produced economic growth and lots of citizens. They also developed religion for the same reasons. You might not like it, but I have news for you - reality doens't care what you think, not one bit.
Communism failed for the same reasons - atheistic liberal thinking produced neither citizens nor economic growth. And before someone says it - China is no longer communist. It is now fascist, or to use a less loaded word, corporatist. And it is heading for a demographic crises.
The Futurist should be beating this with a drum. Right and wrong is irrelevant here - what is going to make lots of successful citizens? The current legal system is an epic failure in that regard. You can argue till you have lost breath over whether cuckoldry or rape is worse - who the heck cares? This is like asking which hole in the boat leaks the most water. In the end you are still sunk.
The legal system should clearly and unequivocally encourage people to get married and stay married, if only because married people often produce more goods and services at lower cost than unmarried people. One household is much cheaper than two.
Children are the future of our society and economy - the enormous cost burden of bearing them should be reduced to the amount practicable for individuals gutsy enough to raise them.
No fault divorce is perfectly fine, as long as the possibility of alimony is permenantly excluded. The indivduals are free to start again, assets divided right down the middle. The children go to whomever wants them and can best support them. Any alimony should require automatic proof of parentage and extreme grounds for divorce (mental instability, etc.). A simple and elegant system.
Posted by: Geoman | January 08, 2010 at 04:03 PM
By the way - I think I know why type pad is having trouble:
1) When you start typing in this box typepad assigns a number to the comment. When lots of people try to comment at the same time (for a very hot topic) typepad sometimes assigns the same number to two posts. One of the two gets deleted, or reassigned to a new number. It looks like The Futurist is screening ...but it is the system trying to keep up and correct.
Posted by: Geoman | January 08, 2010 at 04:09 PM
I don't think socialism is that unpopular. Polls show that people like getting stuff from the government for free. As any monarchist/aristocrat from the 18th century would have told you, socialism is the inevitable result of democracy. I agree with Glen Tomkins:
http://crookedtimber.org/2010/01/04/tweedledumb-and-tweedledangerous/#comment-300534
If everyone voted, we'd get more socialist policies. That's why those Get Out/Rock the Vote campaigns are so dangerous and the Dems are most enthused by high turnouts (off-year elections are better for the GOP).
I've got family in Pittsburgh. It certainly has not been devastated. Just ask IOZ.
Posted by: TGGP | January 08, 2010 at 06:05 PM
This discussion on game and the natural predilections of women is really beyond me. It doesn't matter to me whether there is some inherent advantage one group has over another. I choose to live my life being respectful of all. This is the choice that I make and I stand by even if that means it is an intentional blindness. I think the lessons of humility and humanity are lost when we start to consider ourselves better than others. That's really what it comes down to, to me.
That said, I read these posts and I have to think that I'm watching people argue over the nuances of a broken system when we all recognize that it is broken. Feminism has gone off the rails. It doesn't work. It's gone from being about equality (which I support) to being about an agent of abuse (which I do not support). And we sit here and argue about strategies on how to navigate this broken world. While it's practical it seems like arranging deckchairs on the Titanic. The way I look at it is that the people who are being abused (men) have to get themselves out of this situation because nobody else is going to do it for them. That may seem like fantasy to everyone, but I don't see any other resolution. Talk about game, psychology and all this stuff - fair enough; to each his own. But this is secondary to a much bigger problem. If we accept the victimization that is thrust upon us then we lose, and everybody else loses too. Solving that problem is much more useful to me than any other discussion.
And regarding this rape Vs. 20 years of child support for someone who isn't your child debate. Well, rape's bad I think we all agree. But where the consequences of rape can last for years, and even decades, this is no guarantee that they do. When you are stuck with a financial lodestone for 20 years that absolutely has a known consequence. One is definitely worse than the other. And it's not rape. If you were to ask someone how they would prefer to be victimized - get raped or spend 20 years paying some godawful tithe to your victimizer - you can be damned sure they would almost universally choose the former. And if you don't think that's the truth you're an idiot.
Posted by: Anonymous Protagonist | January 08, 2010 at 09:51 PM
Noticed a minor typo in the first paragraph: "Why does it seem that American society is in decline, that fairness and decorum are receding, that that socialism..." Great article, by the way.
Posted by: JDApostasy | January 09, 2010 at 12:39 AM
The Futurist "You are a projecting, self-loathing hatemonger (as most Omegas are) who tries to ignore that 80% of men have the opposite view as you."
Even assuming that omega has any widely accepted definition (it doesn't), what makes you think I am one? You are basing your accusation on nothing. Also, where have I expressed any self-loathing?
As for 80% of men supposedly having the opposite view, I have already clearly explained why this is utter nonsense.
"I dare you to go to The Spearhead (www.the-spearhead.com) and announce your views on cuckoldry there. You are too much of a coward to go there, aren't you?"
I've been to Spearhead. Since when did going to a website and posting a comment become some great act of courage?
Doug1 "Clearly wrong. And why are you trivializing being deceived into believing a child or two (and sometimes more) is the husband's, who is thereby precluded from reproducing his own genetics in most cases, because the time has passed and he's already to many of his resources to children that aren't his to afford to do so??"
Where have I trivialized cuckoldry?
"Cuckoldry resulting in fraudulent children prevents a man who wants to be a father and parent from having his own children. That's far more grave than a rape..."
No it isn't.
"feminism date rape blah blah"
Hey, guess what: this is totally irrelevant, and yet another ploy to trivialize rape.
Puma "I've come to the conclusion that beh (beth?) is either a troll, or a fugly-chick, or quite possibly both."
Oh look, the tinfoil hat brigade has arrived. To them, everyone is a feminist infiltrator or a troll (which is funny because their own posts always constitute trolling).
Posted by: bleh | January 09, 2010 at 01:12 AM
I don't want to perpetuate the "rape vs. cuckoldry" tangent, but someone needs to specify that "cuckoldry", as used in this argument, specifically refers to the wife's having another man's baby and passing it off as the husband's.
Some posters here are probably posting under the misconception that "cuckoldry" refers merely to female cheating.
--
The Futurist: Well done.
Posted by: Epoxytocin No. 87 | January 09, 2010 at 02:20 AM