Professional antifeminist Phyllis Schlafly – perhaps best known for her fervent opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment – seems to have been channeling the manosphere in a column she published yesterday on the issue of “paycheck fairness.” Turns out she thinks such fairness is actually a bad idea, because ladies love marrying rich guys more than they love earning money.
According to Schlafly, equal pay messes with the fundamental female desire for “hypergamy” – that favorite manosphere buzzword – and undermines marriage:
[H]ypergamy … means that women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does. Men don’t have the same preference for a higher-earning mate.
While women prefer to HAVE a higher-earning partner, men generally prefer to BE the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference between the sexes has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap.
Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate.
Indeed, Schlafly argues, women love marrying men who earn more than them so much that when the pay gap is eliminated some of them just won’t marry at all. Which is apparently the end of the world, or something.
The pay gap between men and women is not all bad because it helps to promote and sustain marriages. …
In two segments of our population, the pay gap has virtually ceased to exist. In the African-American community and in the millennial generation (ages 18 to 32), women earn about the same as men, if not more.
It just so happens that those are the two segments of our population in which the rate of marriage has fallen the most. Fifty years ago, about 80 percent of Americans were married by age 30; today, less than 50 percent are.
So it’s not enough that most people end up getting married; civilization will crumble if more than half of them don’t marry before the age of 30!
And so, she suggests, if American women knew what was good for them they would be begging for employers pay them even less, relative to men.
The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.
Hmm. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that Schlafly – a best-selling author and popular speaker on the right – didn’t send back any of her royalties or speaking fees so that she would feel more like a woman and her late husband would feel like more of a man, and I doubt she’s doing so now, as a widow. She’s also been unmarried for more than twenty years. Coincidence?
NOTE TO MEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVISTS: When you find yourself agreeing with Phyllis Schlafly on pretty much anything (beyond, say, the existence of gravity, the need for human beings to breathe air, and other widely accepted beliefs of this sort), this is an indication that perhaps your movement isn’t the progressive, egalitarian movement that you like to pretend that it is, and that in fact it is sort of the opposite.
That said, I should also note that Schlafly’s notion of “hypergamy,” while sexist and silly, is decidedly less obnoxious than the version peddled by PUAs and websites like A Voice for Men — congrats, Men’s Human Rights Activists, you’re actually worse than Phyllis Schlafly!
She just uses the term to indicate a desire to marry up. For many manospherians, by contrast, “hypergamy” doesn’t just mean marrying up; it means that women are fickle, unfaithful monsters who love nothing better than cuckolding beta males in order to jump into bed with whatever alpha male wanders into their field of vision. (I’m guessing Schlafly hasn’t actually been going through the archives at AVFM or Chateau Heartiste looking for column ideas.) While many MRAs love to complain about hypergamy, many of them also seem to think that it’s unfair that “beta” males with good jobs aren’t automatically entitled to hot wives.
In case anyone is wondering, the actual definition of the word “hypergamy” involves none of that. According to Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, the word means “marriage to a person of a social status higher than one’s own; orig., esp. in India, the custom of allowing a woman to marry only into her own or a higher social group.”
That’s it. It refers to the fact of marrying up, not to the desire to marry up, much less to the alleged desire of all twentysomething women to ride the Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel. The manosphere’s new and not-so-improved definition came from a white nationalist named F. Roger Devlin.
ANOTHER NOTE: Big thanks to the people who emailed me about this story. If you ever see something you think would make for a good Man Boobz post, send me an email at futrelle [at] manboobz.com. I get a lot of ideas from tips!
That’s really faulty logic. Even though the majority of men say they want to be with a woman who earns less than him, that doesn’t necessarily mean a woman earning the same or more is a dealbreaker. The same is true of women who say they would prefer a higher earning man.
A lot of people will actually toss out their list of desirable qualities in a partner when they meet someone they feel a connection and attraction to. It happens all the time.
Says it all in that actual definition of hypergamy: women are only allowed to marry in their own group or higher.
Allowed.
Typical of these morons to ignore that it’s about social systems that severely limit women’s choices.
I love the way she also talks as if marrying a man who earns more than you means instant perfect marriage. It’s never the case that both might be on minimum wage and struggling. It’s never the case that marriages fail for myriad non-financial reasons. It’s never the case that women who get divorced are usually the ones who end up financially much worse off than before, having to find a new home and likely support and care for any children on one income and maybe-just-maybe child support. Noooo, marrying a man with more money than you, or even better, he has a job and you don’t so you’re totally dependent on him is just the best way to go!
GraMRA speaks again. Gah.
My mother often hints at my father that he is a failure because she makes more money than he does, although she measures the per hour wage and not the total income and my father does work more. It’s quite annoying.
I’d love to hear how she knows that the marriage rate is falling among 18-year-olds.
Wait, she’s just pulling stuff out of her ass, here, right? Is there (and I know this is probably an obvious and stupid question because this Phyllis Schlafly we’re talking about and the answer is probably “no”) any kind of research or statistics or anything like that to prove that women prefer to marry men who make more than they do?
This, also, from Schlafly’s article:
This always irritates me. Having children is always a choice that a woman has to balance against her career. And are constantly being told that they “can’t have it all” – both a family and a career. And that women will of course be expected to sacrifice their careers and earning potential in order to have children. Men, of course, can easily have both children and a career as a matter of course, and will not be expected to sacrifice one for the other.
Also ignored is the fact that some people don’t really give a flying fuck about getting married. Even *if* this gibberish had some grain of truth to it, (which it doesn’t) why should women who don’t care for marriage be inflicted with a forced pay gap?
rjjspesh, given that Schlafly has been single for the last 20 years, you’d think she’d understand that.
There’s a line from Shaw’s introductory essay to “Heartbreak House” that comes to mind. A hypothetical Government spokesman is described as “without an idea in his head that his grandmother would have had to apologize for”. Schlafly likewise. Her worldview was painfully anachronistic twenty years ago; now she sounds as if she’s advocating a return to feudalism.
To the point, though, entertaining as base calumny is – she seems to view the state of affairs as she describes as somehow *good*. It’s as if she were decrying Loving vs. Virginia by pointing out how many people still opposed interracial marriage. William F. Buckley would be proud of her.
Sorry to be Captain Obvious here, but isn’t any data about whether or not women prefer to marry a man who earns more in an economy in which everyone knows that women make less money than men do kind of irrelevant to a potential scenario in which men and women are paid equally right across the board? There’s no way to figure out what’s actual preference and what’s pragmatic decision-making in a situation in which women know that they’re unlikely to ever be paid fairly.
cassandrakitty: Ooh, and that would be a confounding variable, wouldn’t it?
And are marriage rates actually relevant to anything?
I mean, if marriage rates are falling – so what?
Just from my personal observation living in a bunch of different countries, the tendency to seek a wealthier husband correlates pretty heavily with societal circumstances that limit or totally eliminate a woman’s ability to support herself, career-wise.
I’ve got Metallica’s cover of “Whiskey in the Jar” cranked up right now so seeing St. Phyllis’s dinosaurish self pop up on Manboobz was weirdly fitting. And dovetails nicely with my theory that NOTHING MRAs say is unique, original, or hip. And in fact nothing she ever said was radical either. Maybe if they all hopped in a time machine and went back to, like, I dunno, 6 BCE, and yelled all their woman hate at a throng of Assyrian priestesses? THEN they’d be radical and unique. And also I’d be pretty jealous of them, because time machine, and Assyrian priestesses.
There’s no evidence Schafly or MRAs wouldn’t try to pick a fight with gravity. Especially if they thought gravity was getting all uppity and shit.
^ What y’all said.
Because of reasons, green children like to be friends with blue children who have more candy than them so they can mooch extra candy. Blue children like to have more candy than their friends so they can share their candy and feel important, similarly because of reasons. If we give all children equal amounts of candy, HOW WILL ANY CHILDREN EVER BE FRIENDS?!!!!
Oooo … I hate it when gravity gets all uppity.
The full title of that Reddit link: “Can anyone actually explain why Phyllis Schlafly is wrong? The feminists in the comments section seems to know something about sexual dynamics that I don’t.”
Emphasis mine. I know he’s being sarcastic, but he’s actually spot-on, lol.
Actually, the most direct way to improve economic prospects for women would be: pay them more. Tying women’s economic prospects to something as iffy as marriage isn’t exactly a safety net.
And who’s going to create/subsidize these magical higher-paying jobs for men, and in what sector, and what’s the guarantee these jobs won’t get offshored? In free-market capitalism, the pressure on wages is relentlessly downwards. That’s precisely why so many women have sought work in the past few decades – because they have to, to keep their families afloat. There’s no choice about it. One income is no longer enough to support the average family. If you’re “pro family”, as Schlafly claims to be, why would you advocate policies that hurt families economically?
Schlafly is a hypocrite of the highest order. She’s never done herself what she preaches other women should do: be a docile and submissive stay-at-home wife and mother. One wonders how her husband responded to the fact that she not only made more money than he did (the horror), but that she effectively forced him to be a single stay-at-home dad for much of their married life.
Schlafly is to conservatism what Hugo Schwyzer is to feminism: a shameless, hypocritical opportunist who uses the movement to further her (his) own goals, which exist in flagrant contradiction of her (his) officially stated principles.
Oh, and what MRAs and Schlafly tend to forget about is that hypergamy is not gender-specific. Men are “guilty” of it as well, especially when they replace their old wives with newer, trophy models, which is quite common. But of course that, like much of actual reality, does not register in the ideology-warped MRA / misogynist minds.
gee, what possible forces encourage women prefer higher earning husbands in the first place? It’s like a lot of us looked forward to a future with a looming substantial chunk of unpaid, invisible labor in it and made efforts to adjust fire.
Maybe if we didn’t all get so completely and permanently whomped by a lifetime penalty on that kind of traditionally feminine duty we would not think it quite so important to shoot for a guy who could approach making up the difference.
Yeah, maybe feminists know something about sexual dynamics that a bunch of smug blowhards on reddit have failed to note. (!)
emma: I’m confused, how does marrying a younger woman = getting a more powerful partner? Unless we are positing a social advantage (of a significant nature, in terms of stability/comfort) to a having a younger/prettier wife than other men have, it’s not equivalent to the technical term hypergamy.
Given that the MRAs/PUAs/Schlafly’s of the world use it in ways which aren’t consistent I don’t see a way to use their terms at all, by means of comparative value.
Emma, yes, exactly! Like Jezebel says, she’s made a career out of telling women not to have careers (a very lucrative career).
The lack of self awareness in the MRA’s was funny at first, but now they’re beyond tone-deafness…they are well on their way to being a hate group.
Does it count as hypergamy if one marries a dude with no $$$$$$$$ but a big house?
http://i.imgur.com/yqxrLVg.png
Phyllis Schlafly is like Pat Robertson, in that it’s a complete mystery to me why anyone still gives either of them any attention at all. She was a reactionary dunce back in the 1970s, and she’s a dated reactionary dunce now. How about we let her go to her atrociously belated grave knowing that nobody cares about anything she has to say, and hasn’t for the last 40 years?
Oh, yeah — And how pathetic is it to be ninety-seven or however the hell old she is, and still saying stupid stuff so that the boys will like you?
Dear old Auntie Phyllis also forgets that men have often married richer partners, and specifically for money. Is that not also hypergamy? Or is it different when the dude is a fortune hunter?