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.
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.
half that stuff on the list already exists-or would be gross violations of the US Constitution.
Wow.
Somebody slept their way through U.S. History and civics classes.
Don’t make me start posting cat gifs in this thread too… XD
Don’t resist the temptation, cloudiah! Let the power of Basement Cat work through you …
Cat gifs are infinitely preferable to the wankings of a privileged little shit.
In honor of the tl;dr, I suggest deer pictures.
http://geniusbeauty.com/cute/cute-deer-rupert/#.UMFHTYbhAkc
What can I say? I knew more than the teachers.
I can totally do deer gifs.
Deer don’t like goldbugs or libertarians.
This deer is now ready for the conversation to continue.
I didn’t mean you, princessbonbon.
Return of the capital gains tax to pre-Reagan rates, repealing the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $500,000 a year, inflation under one percent per annum, a balanced federal budget in four years, to include payments on the principal of the national debt within eight, with a goal to have paid the debt in full by the end of the century.
I have no problem with the first. Why 500,000? Why one percent?
What is the magic of a balanced budget? Under what circumstances would you accept a deficit budget?
Stricter regulations on investment banking, prosecutions of those responsible for the 2008 collapse, full nationalization of any bank receiving a future federal bailout, and a slow move to a bimetallic monetary standard, to be accomplished gradually over 50 years.
You were doing ok until you go to the magic metal sentence.
An amendment to the Constitution prohibiting borrowing from foreign creditors,
Whut… pop-quiz time, how much of the US debt is held by foreign countries? Would you include private persons in that exclusion.
What is the purpose of it?
a drawdown of American military presence abroad, a reduction in the size of the active-duty Army, as well as the Reserve, and an end to cost-plus no-bid defense contracts.
What do you mean by that? Removal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan? I can get behind that. Germany… maybe (though it’s been reduced a lot already). Djibouti? Not a good idea.
We are too large, with too much of a presence in the world to not have staging, and eyes and ears, in other places.
What size do you think the Army ought to be? What’s the mission of the Army at full strength? How long is the ramp up period when the, “leaner meaner” people talk about in drawdowns has to be made, “full-strength” (see recent history)?
Every American should be able to serve for a year or longer in a program such as Americorps or in the National Guard and receive partial tuition benefits for their service, student loans should be dischargeable in bankruptcy,
The National Guard would require more than a year. The jobs are not the sort that 12 months makes one truly functional in. That doesn’t address the issues of unit readiness being a function of unit cohesion. Making it a ticket to punch on the way to college isn’t good for it. It’s also contradictory to the “reduce the size of the Reserve.
It’s also an interference in State’s Rights (though there is some serious interference on that front already, but I digress).
and performance and aptitude tests should be made a permissible part of hiring decisions.
Nope. Too much scope for abuse. Who writes the tests? Who evaluates them? To make it anything close to fair would require prescribedl; federal, standards.
The National Guard should not be deployed overseas, but rather used to secure the borders and as a militia in the even of an attack on the United States; following border closing, a gradual drawdown of H1B visas, deportation of illegal aliens with violent misdemeanor or felony convictions, and a path to residence without citizenship for the remainder.
Isolationist/nationalist Got it. Bad ideas, all around.
Lastly, raising import tariffs to correct for currency debasement and lack of workers’ rights in U.S. trade partners, to be adjusted based on the policies of the nation in question.
Protectionist. In an interventionist way. How would you feel about a nation that imposed that on us? A bit provocative, no? And a bit meddlesome in other people’s politics.
Some it might happen, but the overall picture, not gonna. Not just because it’s a huge remaking of the nation (not just in the economy, but the soul and focus), and the second order effects of each of those policy ideas is huge. The cumulative are completely unsupportable.
Not least because (contrary to what I suspect you would claim) all of it requires a larger federal gov’t, which is far more intrusive to individual citizens’ everyday lives.
Incidentally, my dear fellow, this:
doesn’t mean this
unless you have access to the whole study. That preview doesn’t break that number down by age. Also, while it proposes reasons for why couples may not have used contraception, it doesn’t actually show, statistically, which reasons are more prevalent. Not all reasons equal “throwing caution to the wind”.
I’m still laughing over his “no foreign debt” thing. How, exactly, does he think the U. S. even got its start?
That was already a part of welfare reform that took place a long time ago. If you have a child while on welfare, benefits do not increase. A majority of people on welfare actually work. I read a stat of 75%. I’ll post a link if I find it. People could work full time and then some and still be poor enough to qualify for welfare.
http://www.winningwordsproject.com/walmart_is_the_largest_food_stamp_recipient_in_the_country
I’m looking for work right now. Every job I have applied for so far has had a performance or aptitude test, depending on the job. I applied for a clerk position and took a typing test. I applied for a billing position and had to take a math test and a test to see if I knew how to use a computer. As far as I know, these are not against the law and employers are doing it. Although I do not see how if they couldn’t, and then were allowed how that would help the economy.
Cloudiah: Point taken. Yes, the ability to perform the required tasks can be tested; ought to,
But, “generic” tests of such things, not related to job performance are often used as tools to keep, “The Wrong Sort” from being hired.
How about spider gifs?
did somebody say spider gifs?
You people are evil. Spiders are bad enough when they’re not moving! Though cloudiah’s looks like a wooly pincushion that my Granny might have used.
Ahem… I believe both Pecunium and CassandraSays have confused me with other people. (I can’t even CLICK on spider gif links. If I did, my reaction would go something like this.)
Ack — I didn’t watch that one through to the end. TW for self-harm!
It’s a spidervideo and not a spidergif, but …
[html]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIy7AVlQts4[/html]
…oops.
Sorry, cloudiah! I meant katz. Her spider wasn’t so bad, it really does look a bit like an old-fashioned pincushion.
What you say may be so but there is no denying that feminists are trying to stop the development of new male contraceptives. When men have equal leverage over their own reproductive systems via side effect free and reversible sterilization, a huge power shift towards men will happen and feminism will run into a brick wall. Men, not women will have the final say in terms of when women have children.