Well, here’s a new twist. We all know, from reading the endless tirades on the subject scattered all over the manosphere, that women are evil, selfish and ungrateful creatures whose primary goal in life is to leech off of men and make them miserable.
In a recent post titled Playing Career Woman, manosphere blogger Dalrock takes on some of the most evil and selfish ladies of the whole lot of them: upper middle class ladies who insist on going to college and getting jobs, then later leave the workforce to raise their children.
You might think that these ladies would deserve some props from traditional-minded manosphere dudes for supporting themselves instead of leeching off of men during their twenties, then settling into a more traditional housewifely role once they have children.
Oh, but you don’t realize just how evil and disruptive and oppressive their phony careers are to the men of the world. After all, these aren’t women who need to work to support themselves. No, according to Dalrock, these are “women who use their education and career as a way to check off the box to prove their feminist credentials before settling down into an entirely traditional role.”
According to Escoffier, a commenter on Dalrock’s site whom he quotes with approval, in the good old pre-feminist days:
Women who pursued careers (apart from traditional female roles such as teaching … ) were considered at best sort of harmlessly odd … but we know that family life is superior and more important.
Then came feminism:
Now it’s “You MUST do this for own sake, not to do it is to not realize your potential.” …
The way the [upper middle class] has “solved” this problem is to send girls to college, let them launch their careers–whether in soggy girly stuff like PR or crunchy stuff like business and law–and then they marry late (~30), have kids a few years later and drop out of working at least until the kids are grown.
This answers a couple of needs, not least the need for two incomes to accumulate assets so that the couple can eventually buy into a UMC school district.
Oh, but these women aren’t really earning money because they need it to, you know, pay bills and shit:
[T]he real importance of this solution is to her psyche. Getting the education and career are a way of telegraphing “I am a complete person, not some drone like June Cleaver. I am just as smart and capable as any man. In my altruistic concern for my children, I choose not to use my talent in the marketplace but to devote myself to them.” In other words, she needs that education and early career to mark her as better than a mere housewife, even though she will eventually choose to become a housewife.
According to Dalrock, such women are far more evil than the feminist women who get jobs and stick with them. (Emphasis added.)
Men and women who work hard to support themselves understand that they are in it for the duration. There is a determined realism to them. … These aren’t the women we are talking about. The women Escoffier described see having a career as a badge of status to be collected on their way to their ultimate goal of stay at home housewife. They aren’t really career women, they are playing career woman much the way that Marie Antoinette played peasant and Zoolander’s character played coal miner.
In the comments, someone calling himself Carnivore explains just how unfair this all is to the poor innocent working men of the world:
When men get a degree or go through a vocational program and then land a job, they’ve normally got 40+ years to contribute to increasing the wealth of society. Women “playing” career damage society:
1. They displace men for positions in college or vocational school.
2. Upon landing a job, they displace other men for the job position.
3. The increase in the labor pool drives down wages (supply & demand).
4. While in the labor pool, women are less effective and less productive than men.
5. Because they are in the labor pool and cannot compete with men, women support labor laws to enforce “equality” which burden businesses and can cause men to get fired due to some infringement or just to meet quotas.
6. When they leave the labor pool after becoming bored, there is now a hole than can be difficult to fill because the men who would normally fill it have been displaced for all the reasons above.
Carnivore places part of the blame on the feminism-infected parents who taught these women the wrong things:
Women do NOT know what they want. They have to be guided. Most parents have so bought into feminism that they don’t see any other way. It’s a riot – or sad – talking to parents when they go into all the detail about choosing a college, going on campus visits, making sure she gets into the best school, etc., etc. You would think these parents would spend their time and energy on prepping their daughters for the most important life decision – choosing a man for marriage, how to make a husband happy and how to raise healthy children.
The commenter called Ray takes it one step further:
i was in the workplaces during feminism 1.0, and it had nothing to do with fairness, equity, egalitarianism, or any other positive attribute
in fact, it was a slaughter, resulting in the vast disenfranchisement and destruction of millions of american men — there were dozens of ways men could be hassled, RIFd, and forced from employment, and they were (all to chants of Equality and Empowerment)
this resulted in the massive unemployment of the very men needed to create, invent, and revitalize the culture. and to be fathers to sons . …
no female should be employed, or educated, if it means a qualified male must be excluded
Women, stop leeching off men by paying your own way!
NOTE: This post contains SARCASM.
I need to get ready to go this meeting.
At any rate:
That’s because it is’t an argument, Brandon, it’s a statement of verifiable fact based both on what I do know and what I don’t know about married people and single people. I understand your confusion.
I didn’t say that it did. What I said was that your statement that trends in marriage, and/or a decrease in the marriage rate is because people of our generation view marriage as “…archaic and unnecessary.”, is: 1) not supported by your evidence, 2) your opinion that you’re projecting onto others, and 3) a broad generalization.
Now, maybe when you’re debating in analog you deal with people who either don’t notice or don’t care when you change course mid-stream but I’ve called you out on this bull-shit back pedaling before and I see no reason stop now.
“hes 30. i still cant wrap my head around that. ”
-What? Seriously? Holy shit.
Block quote fail:
Had you, previously, been arguing about the risks entailed in the institution of marriage -without asserting, essentially, that they exist only for men- or the dangers of marrying impulsively perhaps I would have presumed your “questions” were asked in good faith. Bottom line, as Pecunium has pointed out, your communications skills are poor, you regularly ignore tone and context, and I don’t believe you were asking in good faith as I find you generally dishonest and intellectually inconsistent.
What I see is an unwillingness to address the logical fallacies within your central argument(s) or address the points about which you were flat out wrong and deflect the discussion by dragging something previously undiscussed into it. You were arguing, among other points, that men don’t value marriage because it impedes sexual variety. Now you want to talk about risks and impulse? Get the fuck out of here.
And after an all too brief respite, I see we’re right back to you making claims of empirical truth based on the statistically insignificant population of “people with whom Brandon has spoken.”
The rest of your post is, per usual, you off on an irrelevant tangent based on little more than your opinions and asserting, again and again, that marriage represents sacrifice for men but not for women.
Brandon, some people want to get married. Some people don’t want to get married. And no one here cares whether or not you get married.
Those are facts.
The mind boggle, no?
I think I managed to figure out that the world actually existed outside of myself before I hit 25.
Yeah, that line stood out to me too, ithiliana.
You’ve covered the “die” part, but man, even the work and sacrifice parts seem off to me. Normally what happens, in functional marriages that I’ve seen, is that one spouse works outside the home while one spouse works in the home (takes care of kids, cleans, does chores, cooks, etc.), or both partners work outside the home and split in-home chores to some degree (and I hope it’s not too misandric of me to assert that most of the time, when there’s an unfair split of in-home labor, it’s to a mans benefit), or one spouse works outside the home full-time and the other works outside the home part-time and does most of the housework too.
As far as sacrifices go, generally — again, in marriages that at least seem functional from the outside — there’s usually some give and take from both spouses. Ex. 1: Wife wants to visit her family for Xmas; husband wants to visit his. They go to wife’s family’s for Thanksgiving and husband’s for Xmas. And then next year they switch. Ex. 2: Husband saved up for years to buy a boat; wife inconveniently got cancer. Husband sacrifices dream of boat in order so wife can get treatment. Is it fair? I dunno. Life sucks sometimes. People do the best they can. I bet in Brandon’s view, the husband made a huge sacrifice like a sucker, and the bitch cancer wife should have died. In my parents’ case (I admit, this is a theory, since my parents are both in perfectly fine health), my dad would much rather have my mom around even for an extra day than have a boat. He loves her. She’s spent her life making his life easier, and if all he could do is make her death more comfortable by making a financial sacrifice, he would do it.
But the marriages I see around me aren’t between an evil, money-grubbing woman and a poor put-upon guy who can never do enough. They’re between two equals, two partners who both work (in whatever way that means), both sacrifice, and both … eventually, I guess, will die. Then again, I’m not viewing these marriages through the “all women suck!” lens of an MRA, so that’s probably why I’m not seeing that.
If you’re in a relationship
I’m sorry … completely forgot about that last line there.
I was going to say that, If you’re in a relationship where your partner makes you sacrifice and work and do everything while they do nothing for you in return, by all means get out, Brandon. That seems like an unhealthy relationship that needs to be worked on, at least. Luckily, I don’t know many couples like that.
The reason I don’t bring up women and why they may see it in a negative light is because they are often the ones defending marriage and telling me all the reasons why I should get married. I run into very few women that oppose marriage.
You’ve been hanging out among the wrong feminist blogs then, lol.
I am suddenly reminded of a George Michael song:
Why do I think Brandon is viewing marriage through this song rather then reality?
WHAM! This one goes out out to all the Brandons in the house.
Those young men need tee shirts STAT.
All I know is that brandon is still saying stuff, and that’s always funny, and we’re playing wham.
Also, he’s seriously 30? I just can’t. I just CAN’T.
^Those white skirts the back-up singers have on? I had one, only mine was floral and very very Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink.
Gawd, those were some bad clothes.
Um, hellkell, I can only assume that by “bad” you mean AWESOME.
And hair. Look at that hair!
I dunno, I had to live through it so… some of it was alright. But the shit I see coming back now from the ’80s and early ’90s makes say, “no thanks, that shit sucked the first time around.”
Oh, and I forgot about the blazer that matched the skirt. I looked like some shot a (very awesome) sofa.
That’s because you aren’t really attacking marriage as much as you are attacking women while putting up a flimsy pretense of being neutral. It’s one thing to say, “Marriage is an archaic institution rooted in outdated property and power transactions, as well as superstition, and I wish people wouldn’t perpetuate it.” People may disagree about the accuracy of that statement, but it is clearly a criticism of the institution of marriage itself. It’s quite another thing to say “Marriage is bad because it allows women, who are evil bitchez all, to exploit poor innocent defenseless men.” When you put it like that, it looks on the surface as if you are attacking marriage, but in substance, you are attacking women. So it’s no surprise that women get defensive about it — especially when they interpret your statements to their husbands as malicious attempts by you to intrude upon and poison their family lives.
Women offer plenty in return — you just place no value on anything women do, while terribly overvaluing the contributions of men. Take work, for instance. Marriage doesn’t force men to work. Single men work, and there are married men who don’t. A man’s decision whether or not to work, and his ability to get a job, has little to do with marriage. Child-bearing has more of an influence, but then, you really cannot deem children to be extensions of wives when children are a “problem” while complaining about fathers not getting enough credit. Can’t have it both ways. And, at the same time, most married women work. In fact, married women generally work more than their husbands, when you calculate the total hours spouses spend working both outside the home and in. So what we have here is a case of you pretending that men work solely on account of being married, while it’s absolutely not true; and simultaneously pretending that married women don’t work, even though they do.
As for women expecting men to die — bullshit, again. How many married men die for their wives? Seriously?
Sacrifice — again, the picture would not favor your argument if you applied the same standard across the board. We still live in a society where women are expected to do the bulk of household chores, and a simple request to a man to load the dishwasher or take out the garbage elicits an eyeroll. So if he takes out the garbage once a month, he’s sacrificing for her; but her doing everything else and spending many hours every day taking care of his needs — doesn’t count as a sacrifice. Right?
Let’s talk about respective contributions in a sexist society. There has been a lot of back-and-forth here about whether being a stay-at-home parent is a “real job”, and I think to a degree, such a discussion misses the point: even women who work full-time, even women who work 60 hours or more per week are still expected to do most or all of the household chores and the child care. Even today, for men to have time off, to meet regularly with their friends is considered an entitlement, but women who get together with their girlfriends are hissed at as selfish layabouts. Married men are deemed entitled to their leisure, so they don’t feel emasculated and stifled; married women are expected to spend every waking second of their time either earning money or taking care of their families. Men are allowed their midlife crises and their “mancaves”; women enjoy no such indulgences. Fathers who take their kids to a baseball game once in a blue moon are considered heroic; mothers who spend their entire lives caring for their children, feeding them, educating them, caring for them when they are sick, are considered at best adequate — but are more frequently denigrated for being “overbearing”. And this, on top of the obvious fact that it is women — not men — who are expected to give up careers, income, and cherished dreams for the sake of their husbands’ convenience. Married men are entitled to pursue their professional and artistic ambitions, and their wives are obligated to support them in those ambitions — by renouncing their own.
In fact, I would submit that one of the main reasons why women file for divorce much more frequently than men is that marriage has so little to offer women in the long run, while extracting much higher costs from them than it does from men.
@Kyrie: I am not disputing that people aren’t putting off marriage. My generation is clearly getting married latter on in life. However, if that is what the reason for the marriage rates dropping, then in the next 5-10 years we should see a large increase of newly married 30-40 year olds.
If that doesn’t happen, then that just means fewer and fewer people in that age range are getting married overall.
@Bee: I made it a point to say that the few “benefits” of marriage that can not be duplicated are sort of low-risk, low probability of actually happening for me or most people.
Judges have been known to throw out pre nups especially when children are involved. Also, what purpose does it serve to sign a pre nup to protect oneself from the liabilities of marriage? When you can easily do that my not marrying.
While I do think a lot of MRA’s are bitter and resentful about their divorce, and are lashing out at women because one woman might have screwed them over. I don’t think this attitude is limited solely with MRA’s. I know quite a few men that don’t even know anything about MRA’s but still think marriage is a bad deal for them.
I myself have 3 uncles that have been dragged through the court system and one of their ex-wives even lied saying he was abusing his two children. Everything the ex-wife said was found out to be a lie…yet my uncle is still not allowed to see his kids.
It is those kinds of cases that act as a chilling effect with other men. The more men hear about divorces gone bad, the more they are going to be hesitant to marry.
@Hellkell: How about 4 in 10 say marriage is becoming obsolete:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40239472/ns/health-behavior/t/four-say-marriage-becoming-obsolete/
@ithiliana: Women are asking men to die for them. Men have the most workplace deaths (family). Police officers that die in the line of duty are mostly men (society). Most soldiers are men (warfare). Men basically go out of their way to make sure a woman never has to pick up a weapon…unless she wants to.
@Nobinayamu: I think men hesitate for many reasons:
1) lack of sexual variety
2) not wanting children
3) prefer to be single
4) see’s little benefit to marriage
5) doesn’t want to be the “provider”/”breadwinner”
6) doesn’t want a family
7) doesn’t want to answer to another person (e.g no “asking the wife first”)
8) wants to live alone
9) wants to spend money on himself
10) wants to travel and see the world instead of having a family
I can go on and on. It isn’t just ONE thing that makes men do a double take. You say these are just my opinions and that they aren’t representative of men in general. You may be right, but while the majority might not see it my way, I think a good chunk of men do.
I also never said that all men think this way. I do however say that 1) I think this way and 2) I think a large enough group of men think this way.
Most times when I get into marriage debates, I ask the person defending marriage to try and sell it to me like it was a product or service. It pretty much boils down to “you will have to change all these parts of your life…yet it only has 2 features the single model doesn’t have”.
But please do share in “how women sacrifice in marriage”. Note: If you actually want to be a stay at home mother…you can’t use that as an example of you “sacrificing” since that is what you wanted to do.
Police officers that die in the line of duty are mostly men (society). Most soldiers are men (warfare).
So WOMEN restricted the draft and selective service to MEN, and do not allow women in combat? So WOMEN require police officers to be mostly men until recently, and WOMEN demand their husbands become policemen or work other jobs that have mostly been restricted to MEN by those evil WOMEN.
Right, I call bullshit. “Women ask men to die for them” in the context of a discussion of marriage implies that individual women expect their husbands to die for them. What you are talking about is totally different and has been discussed before on this blog: when dangerous and high paying jobs are restricted to men, it’s men who did it. And lots of women have died in dangerous/low paying jobs (especially factory ones).
And in contemporary warfare, despite being denied combat positions, women are dying in combat, you dickbiscuit.
Quick fucking blaming women, and put the responsibility where it belongs: MEN who limited women’s access to education and employment.
brandon, still eager to find out where your insight into government spending is coming from?
Sharculese: I see you have moved on. I’m still waiting for his definition of slut. I am confused as to why he won’t share, since it’s so neutral and all.
Who is the one making the demand women have the choice-other men or women?
Who was legally barred from obtaining some of these jobs? Men or women?
Who passed the laws legally barring those people from the jobs? Men or women?
Who fought to get the right to be part of those jobs, and endured the taunting, vicious hazing and constant bad treatment that goes well beyond “just a couple guys making fun of one another” and borders onto this definition of assault: Intentionally placing another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent physical injury? Men or women?
Who ruled stating women were not to be included as part of the draft? Men or women?
Who has outlawed women from serving in combat here in the US? Men or women?
And if the answer to all of those questions is men, why are women being blamed by you?
*cues Brandon running away like a little boy who just had his dolly, oh I am sorry, ACTION FIGURE, taken away from him*
If you did not hate women so much you would not say such stupid things.
Again, bullshit. Even assuming men have the monopoly on living dangerously, it still does not prove that they are required to die for their wives. Male police officers and soldiers constitute a minority of men. Even within those groups, men aren’t dying primarily for women, much less their wives. And unmarried police officers and soldiers have just as much chance of dying on the job as married ones, so marriage is simply irrelevant here.
As for men making sure a woman never has to pick up a weapon — what a hoot. Both my grandmothers served in World War II, one as a combat soldier, the other as a medic. And in my own life, I distinctly remember the episode in which my ex-husband, an ex-soldier who was over six feet tall and a tough-talking mountain of muscle, suddenly got a “stomach ache” when our apartment was broken into; thrust his gun into my hands and told me to go check it out while he cowered in the closet. So it would be more accurate to say, men like you go out of their way to make sure a woman never has a weapon to pick up when she needs to … but make sure she has one when they need her to defend them.
Again, Brandon is devaluing and belittling the work a stay at home mother does for her family. It doesn’t matter how many meals she cooks, how many times she gets up in the night to help a sick child, or how much time she spends cooking and cleaning. She chose to do it, so therefore it’s not a sacrifice and not valuable. By your logic, a breadwinner chooses to take a job and work long hours to provide for hir family and therefore hir work is not a sacrifice either.
Stay at home parents make sacrifices for their families, and breadwinners make sacrifices for their families. It doesn’t matter if the mother is the breadwinner, or if the couple has two breadwinners and also shares the household responsibilities. It doesn’t matter if the family has two moms or two dads. The important thing is that the adults in the family put the needs of the children first, and give as much as they can to ensure their well being. Brandon, it’s also very annoying to have people who aren’t parents telling actual parents how easy parenting is.
brandon also hasnt considered that any of the things he listed might be reasons a woman might not want to marry, because brandon can’t handle women wanting anything other than what he wants them to want.
again, this is because brandon is selfish and spoiled.
Once again, Brandon fails the consistency test. If doing what it is regarded as necessary for the family is not “sacrifice” when a woman does it, the same logic should apply to men. No one forces men to become police officers, soldiers, miners or fishermen. No one forces men to work in any occupation. If you work, it is your choice, and therefore not a sacrifice. If you work and your earnings support your family, it is your choice, and therefore not a sacrifice. If you get killed on the job, it’s not a sacrifice, since it was your choice to take that job in the first place. Right, Brandon?