Categories
$MONEY$ a voice for men armageddon crackpottery evil women grandiosity misogyny MRA oppressed men paul elam pig ignorance playing the victim politics racism reactionary bullshit single mothers your time will come

The Coming Single Mom Crime Apocalypse: Not Really a Thing

unwed_lc

Manosphere misogynists love fantasizing about a coming apocalypse, invariably caused by the bad behavior of feminists and/or women in general, and invariably resulting in feminists and/or women in general lost and forlorn and realizing their mistakes, returning to men begging for help and asking for forgiveness. Like Doomsday Preppers waiting for the planet to suddenly shift on its axis due to the sudden reversal of the magnetic poles, most of the apocalyptic misogynists don’t seem to have the faintest idea of what they’re talking about.

Take, for example, one Paul Elam of A Voice for Men, who transformed himself into an environmentalist last week when he realized it would give him an excuse to rant about the evils of women  spending money. Turns out that the “conventional wisdom” his thesis depends on — that women are responsible for 80% of spending — is essentially an urban legend, and that men and women seem to spend roughly the same amounts. Similarly, there’s evidence that suggests men and women in developed countries have similar “carbon footprints,” with men if anything a bit more pollutey.

But of course this is hardly the only bit of apocalyptic misogynistic fantasy that, upon examination, turns out to be based on patent nonsense. Manosphere misogynists – particularly those on the racist right – love to complain about the evils of single motherhood, especially in the “ghettoes,” which they imagine will lead to crime rates spiraling out of control, riots, dogs and cats living together, and any number of other apocalyptic scenarios.

As one commenter on Dalrock’s manosphereian blog put it, providing a pithy summary of the coming single-mom apocalypse:

Single mothers bring the very wellfare state they depend on closer to the brink of colapse with every illegitimate child they pop out, who will most likely in turn create more bastards and be more likely to commit crimes thus placing an ever increasing strain on the state’s purse stings. …

[T]hings will collapse soon enough and then it will be everyone for themselves. No more suckling at the government’s saggy dried up teet.

Of course, manospherians are hardly the only ones who like to blame single moms for everything. You may recall that odd moment in the presidential debates when Mitt Romney responded to a question about gun violence with “gosh to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone, that’s a great idea.”

There’s just one tiny problem with the whole single-motherhood-means-higher-crime-rates argument: if you look at the history of the past twenty years or so you will find that while single motherhood has been on the increase, violent crime rates have been going down, down, down. Take a look at this chart, which I have borrowed from an excellent post on The Atlantic by University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen.

 

cohen_singlemomchart2-thumb-615x590-106252

Huh. First single motherhood and crime rise together, then crime plummets while single motherhood continues to rise. It’s almost as if the two social trends have no correlation with each other at all.

As Cohen writes:

Violent crime has fallen through the floor (or at least back to the rates of the 1970s) relative to the bad old days. And this is true not just for homicide but also for rape and other assaults. At the same time, the decline of marriage has continued apace. Looking at two aggregate trends is never enough to tell a whole story of social change, of course. However, if two trends going together doesn’t prove a causal relationship, the opposite is not quite as true. If two trends do not go together, the theory that one causes the other has a steeper hill to climb. In the case of family breakdown driving crime rates, I don’t think the story will make it anymore.

Once upon a time, when both single motherhood and crime rates were moving upwards, you couldn’t entirely blame some social critics for suggesting there might be some connection. But with twenty more years of data we can see clearly that this just isn’t so. At this point, anyone predicting a single mother crime apocalypse  is either a) an ideologue, b) ignorant about the facts or c) both.

In the case of the apocalyptic manosphere ranters, it’s obviously c.

378 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
reginaldgriswold
reginaldgriswold
12 years ago

Ugh, I knew I had heard of this stuff. I found a couple studies on NCBI, but this io9 summary is good, too:
[html]http://io9.com/5901088/gossypol-the-chemical-commonly-found-in-cotton-that-is-also-a-male-contraceptive[/html]

About 25% of men went permanently sterile. About 10% had a life-threatening potassium deficiency. Risk-free pill my ass.

Tulgey Logger
Tulgey Logger
12 years ago

I don’t want to work things out amenably with misogynists, racists, or proponents of any other kind of systemic unjust power structure. I want them to shut up and learn shit and then start doing the right thing.

pillowinhell
12 years ago

Translation: you’ve all been so mean to me that I don’t have to stop and look at the evidence you’ve given me or pause for one moment of thought!

Shorter: you’re all HYSTERICAL!!

hippodameia8527
hippodameia8527
12 years ago

No, Trollboy, on our side it’s just amused contempt.

rty23
rty23
12 years ago

“Keep it up, and we will actually move toward giving you the abuse you deserve, and seem to crave”.

What does that mean? Are you threatening me?

Falconer
Falconer
12 years ago

Don’t let the door hit you where the Good Lord split you!

cloudiah
12 years ago

How can we threaten you when you’re an anonymous troll? Verbal abuse, troll boy.

hellkell
hellkell
12 years ago

rty23: how can we miss you if you won’t go away?

thebewilderness
thebewilderness
12 years ago

Somehow I just knew that he would not stick the flounce.

hippodameia8527
hippodameia8527
12 years ago

Thought you were leaving?

Ithiliana
Ithiliana
12 years ago

Sorry if I’ve been offensive or hostile. I’ve never had an exchange like this before and I’m glad I did. There’s an incredible amount of hostility from both sides. Hopefully it can work out amenably and everyone will benefit.

Holy whiplash, Batman!

Fauxpology: “sorry IF…”

“I’m glad….” OH RLY?

“incredible amount of hostility from BOTH SIDES” : False equivalency.

Hopefully who hopes?

“it” what?

“can work amenably and everyone will benefit” whiplash, as I said above.

If you spent some time reading, you might learn something–it’s doubtful, but possible.

But the only benefit I can see for us is that you STICK THE FLOUNCE.

Leave…..and don’t come back.

Falconer
Falconer
12 years ago

The Doctor does always lie, the skeezy little bastard!

Ain’t so little these days. Although when he’s at his shortest is when he can be at his least trustworthy.

Hell, if he hadn’t landed on Telos there wouldn’t have been anything to Tomb of the Cybermen! Not that I’m not glad the serial was found in its entirety, but c’mon, you can plot better, Pedler and Davis!

Tulgey Logger
Tulgey Logger
12 years ago

I give rty’s flounce a provisional 5.6. out of 10.

rty23
rty23
12 years ago

I don’t take well to threats.

Ithiliana
Ithiliana
12 years ago

WOes is me, they never stick the flounce.

Don’t they realize their chances of getting the last word are……somewhere negative minus something?

pecunium
12 years ago

rty23: Well, I’m going to leave. Sorry if I’ve been offensive or hostile.

Again, no, you are not. If you were, you wouldn’t have continued to be so after you made your first pretense of apology (and I’d not have to call it pretense).

You did what you wanted, count your coup and use it to dine out on later, when you need a fable of how mean the feminists were to you.

hellkell
hellkell
12 years ago

We don’t take well to dipshits. See ya.

cloudiah
12 years ago

He says he’s leaving but…

Tulgey Logger
Tulgey Logger
12 years ago

4.3

thebewilderness
thebewilderness
12 years ago

Nobody care a mite what you do or don’t take well to, since you have demonstrated yourself to be a complete sucker for this charlatan on the video.

thebewilderness
thebewilderness
12 years ago

And proven yourself to be a liar as well, trollboy.

hippodameia8527
hippodameia8527
12 years ago

2.7

pecunium
12 years ago

rty23: “Keep it up, and we will actually move toward giving you the abuse you deserve, and seem to crave”.

What does that mean? Are you threatening me?

Damn, you couldn’t stick the landing.

What does it mean? It means we’ve been more polite than you deserve.

Am I threatening you? Yes. I am threatening to be more verbally unpleasant.

Am I presenting an intimation of personal violence? Don’t be more stupid than you have already shown yourself to be.

1: If I were going to harm you, I’d not let you know.

2: If were going to attempt to scare you I’d be more overt, and subtle. Some reference to where you lived, or the like.

3: You wouldn’t be in doubt about it.

Don’t flatter yourself. I have no interest in hurting you. You’re a pissant annoyance, more akin to a yappy-dog on the other side of a fence. A nuisance, only in that I happen to like walking in the neighborhood and no one has properly socialised you; thus you think making a noise, and posturing makes you master of the street.

But you are powerless, and ineffectual. Your arguments are as leaves scattered on the wind, they obscure the viewm, and sometimes get in my jacket to irritate, but they don’t last, nor do they harm.

The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
12 years ago

rty’s provided one, and only one, thing of value: while we’ve been mocking him we haven’t paid any attention at all to Diogenes, who is now having a foot-stamp in the other thread.

So congrats rty, you inadvertently helped upset a troll who’s both stupid and pompous. I’ll give you that much.

drst
drst
12 years ago

@rty, since I know you haven’t left yet, women/feminists are not keeping a long-term, safe, reversible male contraceptive option from you. Pharmaceutical companies are:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/3/

He looked around for a corporate partner but found no takers. Unlike birth control pills, which must be used daily, sometimes for years, RISUG is a long-lasting, low-cost treatment (the syringe could end up costing more than the material it injects). “Pharmaceutical companies are not interested in one-offs,” Weiss says. “They’re interested in things they can sell repeatedly, like the birth control pill or Viagra.”

And oh what’s that? A woman is the one spearheading (sorry) the effort to get RISUG approved in the US? Wow that couldn’t possibly suggest that your opinion on this issue is ill-formed and made of bullshit. Nope.