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!
I’m at work so I have no kitties to hug! At least I have that ninja cat video, so thanks Sparky!
Kitty is not cooperating because she found a squirrel to watch, which is apparently more interesting.
@Ally S, “Scrufflecat”‘s love letter to his penis in the comments is literally pure comedic gold. JtO’s post made me want to scream in frustration but that one comment is WORTH it.
cloudiah: Most welcome. :).
Guest:
So, is it fun to live in Make-Believe Fairytale Land? ‘Cause, at some point, I would think the cutesy singing animal sidekicks might get a bit annoying.
Of course, over here in the real world, that’s not how that works. At all.
That ferry story is too horrible to process.
Any man who’s taller and stronger and darker than me is a prince? I’m just over 5ft2 – who knew the world contained so much royalty?
I had the same thought. I’d say at least 60% of the men I meet on a daily basis pass Guest’s stringent standards.
Also, I have very dark hair, so I guess all the blonde royals must be headed to the guillotine.
Please don’t send me to the guillotine!
In reality people pair up and marry people close to their own socio-economic level. That’s true for women but it’s true for men as well, because obviously it takes 2 to tango.
Hypergamy in women is a socialised thing from parents and society and a reflection of the gender inequality. Women are socialised to look for rich husbands, because that’s the only way for them to survive in a society that denies them any other opportunity. In reality no woman trully wants to marry because of money.
This whole hysteria about hypergamy is only used to deny women their full rights.
To be fair, it seems fewer MRAs bother to pretend they’re progressive or egalitarian these days. The new hotness in MRA circles is the whole “Dork Dark Enlightenment” thing, which is explicitly reactionary and anti-egalitarian. (And often explicitly racist and misogynist as well.)
I love RationalWiki’s take on her. The caption for one of her photos in their article about her is “Never trust an author who has written more books than they have read.” (RationalWiki was actually founded specifically to counter the absurdity and bs of her son’s wiki, ‘Conservapedia,’ but has become something much greater since.)
Have you confused episodes of The Bachelor with reality?
Personally, my fictional fantasy dream guy is Ben Wyatt from Parks & Rec, but OK.
Schlafly is a conservative traditionalist. She does not represent MRAs. MRAs support the ERA and support equal pay for equal work. Its just that the notion of women not receiving equal pay for equal work and credentials is practically entirely myth.
I finally read Schlafly’s entire essay. Her argument is seriously, “The pay gap is a myth made up by feminists, but it’s also real and society would collapse without it.”
Also, the lack of teen marriages compared to 50 years ago indicates an alarming new anti-marriage trend, and the low marriage rates in poor black communities are black women’s fault for making too much money. And, as has been the case for decades, it’s only okay to be a wealthy single professional if you’re a man or Phyllis Schlafly.
[H]ypergamy … means that women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does.
Waaaaait. But if men already get paid more, doesn’t that mean, yeah, no shit on average the man a woman marries will earn more than she does? And this is WOMEN’S fault? WTF.
If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate.
But… that doesn’t… that doesn’t make any SENSE. That’s like saying that if blond hair dye was magically erased from the world, a lot of guys would be unable to find partners. It’s STUPID.
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.
So the best way for women to make more money is to… make less money. Is today fucking opposite day or something? The hell is this shit?
RE: Guest
Schlafly got a point, many females hope to marry (not same as dating) THE ONE, and this fantasy male must be taller, richer, darker, stronger,… etc. than they are, basically, a “prince”.
Have you been drinking, or are you just masturbating under the table? Seriously, are you psychic? Do you have the magical ability to know all of the desires of all women everywhere? HOW DO LESBIANS MARRY?
emma: I dispute Bokek-Cohen, et al*. Since actual hypergamy is a social tool to increase the financial, and social, stability, of a woman (and by extention, her family): in circumstances where social mobility is strongly limited, it has a direct effect.
A trophy wife is a way for a man (in a different context) to brag that he, “made it” and so is able to afford to put one wife aside; and be able to afford to have a partner who isn’t contributing; it has, at best, an indirect effect.
What Bokek-Cohen, et al, seem to be arguing, is that hypergamy, in women, is a real thing in the Western/developed world; and that it’s reciprocal (i.e. the women who sequester their talent/earning, to be the trophy wife, are conferring an equal advantage to the men who take them as partners). Unless there is a material benefit to the men in this arrangement I don’t think using the same term, in a different way is a valid use of the term, because it conflates two, very different effects; resulting from two very different causes, and makes them seem equivalent.
It’s convenient that the term they use is one which has a greater (in the “developed” world) negative connotation for women, than it does for men.
* esp. when the et al includes Satoshi Kanazawa, and the publication is Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology. I have a hard time giving it much credence; given that, among the other things Kanazawa argued (contemporaneously to that paper) is that men (across the board, worldwide) are hardwired to like blondes.
Guest: So? Schlafly got a point, many females hope to marry (not same as dating) THE ONE, and this fantasy male must be taller, richer, darker, stronger,… etc. than they are, basically, a “prince”.
This doesn’t agree with, nor follow, what Schafly said. Even if, arguendo we accept the thesis that, “many” women (not females, note the subtle differences between adjectives and nouns, it will, generally, help your reasoning and improve your grasp of argument, but I digress), are looking for some hard to attain ideal (and setting aside the cultural reasons this might be so…. yes Disney, I’m looking at you), that’s not a reason to structurally punish women, as a class, because some are looking for an ideal which comports with Schafly’s ideas of how to best keep women “in their place”.
I just wrote a long post that ended up in moderation, and I think I know why, and I’m sorry for all the penis references but given the subject matter that is actually impossible to avoid.
LOL no
IDK what country you’re from, but here our very recent equal pay act is named for Lilly Ledbetter, a woman whose entire Supreme Court case was based on the fact that she was receiving less money than men who were doing literally the same job (that’s not why it went to SCOTUS, but it was her original complaint). So no, unequal pay for equal work is not a myth, at least in the US.
RE: emilygoddess
Don’t be so harsh on Pinky. Brain obviously wasn’t around to help out.
They’re like people who say they’re against rape, as long as “rape” is defined in such a ridiculously narrow way that it never applies to any case.
Yeah, MRAs are totally for equal rights. That’s why they have such a history of sending death and rape threats to random women on the Internet.
The point is that she’s an humongous hypocrite. Practice what you preach, old coot, shut the fuck up then go back to the kitchen make your husband a sandwich.
That lump on the top of her noggin doesn’t count, wise-ass.