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!
Thank you, sparky. Hmmm. I think Adele Mercier is not a very good communicator. She’s left me confused about what point she’s trying to make. But I’m certainly not getting “it’s okay for adult women to have sex with children” from it.
So this is utter bullshit, though. She didn’t say anything about what is or isn’t criminal.
Thanks for posting the links, Sparky. I really should have tried to find them before commenting on the basis of whatever little distorted bits of information I had heard.
For the record, my relationship with my toaster is strictly platonic.
VAWA targets women in title and in the body. In 2005, wording was added through pressure to clarify that men were included, but discrimination against men by VAWA funded organizations is common:
http://thehill.com/opinion/letters/272919-stop-the-violence-against-women-acts-war-on-men-
Pinky: You realize that what you just posted is a letter to the editor, right? That really proves nothing. And the letter-writer gets his facts wrong right out of the gate.
85% of domestic violence victims are women:
http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet(National)
The claim that women commit 50% of domestic violence is probably based on studies that use the Conflict Tactics Scale, which has a lot of methodological problems. This explains some of those flaws:
http://www.xyonline.net/content/claims-about-husband-battering
Here’s the National Institute of Justice on the topic:
http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/intimate-partner-violence/pages/measuring.aspx
Pinky, you’re not citing any sources, you’re even linking wrong shit… you’re an embarrassment as a troll. Please tell me you’re a child, or I’m going to be so disappointed in my fellow adults.
RE: Alice
LBT – BUT BUT PENIS. YOU CAN SEE PENIS. WHY ARE YOU NOT HORRIFIED YET???
You seen one, you seen ’em all.
RE: grumpycatisagirl
I think Adele Mercier is not a very good communicator.
From what little I’ve seen of academic philosophy, I have no trouble believing this.
Seriously, Antz argued this better. ANTZ! That dude who thought men and women should divide down the Mississippi River! Where have all the good trolls gone?
Hope this link works. It shows discrimination.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CC0QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.saveservices.org%2Fpdf%2FSAVE-VAWA-Discriminates-Against-Males.pdf&rct=j&q=vawa%20denied%20geants%20to%20programs%20focusing%20on%20boys&ei=aI1RU9mBJ8bt8QHVyYG4AQ&usg=AFQjCNGbpycLEeyOaGD7ZOpILkp3lETTPQ&bvm=bv.65058239,d.b2U
…you are not reassuring me, Pinky. Really now. You couldn’t even use the actual URL? You had to use the Google search string? Wow, Pinky. WOW.
Pinky. is just kind of flailing around here. Hard to take hir seriously.
And (hint) that link even when fixed does not “show discrimination.”
Pinky is missing a Brain.
Pinky: OK, you’re getting closer to something g that is actually a source.
However, what that report is detailing is difficulties in finding services and funding for male victims of domestic violence, which is wrong and a bullshit situation. What that doesn’t tell you is that VAWA discriminates against men.
Or that feminists want “special protections” for women.
This is basically another, “Why haven’t feminists but any domestic violence shelters for men?”
Why hasn’t SAVE?
Pinky is boring, so I’m going to talk about something more interesting: my writeathon! 😀 There are orphaned stories up for sale, including a Borgcritter one for Feminist Borg and God Night at a crossover RP coffeehouse!
I can assure you, my writing is much more interesting and well-thought-out than Pinky’s.
Because VAWA includes women…and anything that includes women must be “special”, because women! It’s only not-special if it excludes women, like all good male-dominated societal institutions used to do, and should do again if we want to be truly equal.
(At least, that’s how I think the fucked-up reasoning goes…)
That was the only way I knew how to post a link to the PDF on my mobile device. I am actually 15 and it is I who am disappointed in adults being that I am attempting a discussion and have received childish insults from adults.
Consider it a learning experience. Now go read the header of this site. What does it say?
Hey, speaking of entertainingly hypocritical reactionary ladies, Sunshine Mary is attempting to quit the internet again. I pretty much blew off half my homework today catching up on the drama at GOMI and Matt Forney’s blog, but the entirety of the saga was a lil too TL;DR for me. My attention span is shot this week.
Anyway, wasn’t she concern-trolling people about birthrates and childbearing and “purchasing the reproductive capacity of other women” awhile back here? Well, it turns out she has a wholly modern and unremarkable two children herself, starting at age 30. (!)
She claims to also be helping raise someone else’s kids too, (thus accounting for the other two or three or whatever) which I reckon is– at least theoretically– admirable if true, but I have to admit I wonder what that actually means in practice. Part-time, full time, with or without external family/state/friend assistance? It’s obnoxious in much the same way as Schlafly: “women who work/use birth control/get college degrees/whatever are awful nasty sluts with poor priorities and no capacity for reason and should have their free will and financial comforts curtailed forthwith. Except me, because…. reasons. Anyway, do what I say, not what I did!”
lord, I can’t even get into that mindset hypothetically. lol I just don’t get it.
Anyway, whatever the situation in her life is, it sure sounds a lot more “modern” than she liked to present. Messy reality, though: not a pageview getter for that crowd, whatever they like to claim!
God, the grammar on that post. Sorry, y’all.
Ceebarks, that’s probably related to the “my abortion is the only good abortion” mindset. Several clinic workers have reported seeing women who they recognize as anti-choice protesters coming in for abortions, then going back to protesting. The cognitive dissonance is striking.
Pinky, freedom of speech works both ways – if you can say what you believe, so can we. Based on available evidence, you might consider lurking more.
RE: Pinky.
I am actually 15
Oh thank god. I was going to be truly alarmed if you were much older.
and it is I who am disappointed in adults being that I am attempting a discussion and have received childish insults from adults.
You realize this is a MOCKERY site, right? It says on the tagline: “Misogyny. I mock it.” Also, you aren’t attempting a discussion. You aren’t posting evidence of your claims, and the links you HAVE posted don’t prove what you think they do. So you’ve come to a football game to talk about baseball, while holding up pictures of hockey sticks. And you complain we don’t take you seriously?
If we were your teachers, and this was a persuasive essay you were writing, we would flunk you. But we aren’t, so we mock you instead.
Too right, Robert. I’m sure most people have at least some degree of hypocrisy going on, but dang, that really is a whole other level.
I mean, I actually DID spend my 20s as a SAHM, elbow deep in dirty diapers and tantrums and chapped nipples and sleep deprivation on one middling income. It was a lot of things, but sexytimes fun it was not. lol
So it makes no sense to me to pressure or shame people into it that don’t want it or feel like they aren’t ready. Especially if the main reason for wanting people to have a lot of babies is basically to force more of them into a particular set of fetishized gender roles. That’d be a disgusting reason to have kids if it actually worked, and since it doesn’t, it’s both pointless and disgusting.
Hey, kid. Tell us why you think laws against stalking and domestic violence and all the rest are a bad thing when they apply to women.
Because that’s all you’re saying here. You’re whining that women get acknowledged at all, even though the laws are gender neutral.
So tell us, why do you hate women? Why do you think women aren’t human? Why are you such a stupid little shit, and do you plan on growing out of it anytime soon?
Pinky: She shares the view with feminists that women should get special protections, but she is not a feminist.
Nope, you’ve begged a question.
Feminists don’t think women deserve “special protections”. What they are arguing for is the removal of the privileges and perquisites men get by virtue of being men.
I can see where the insecure might see the loss of group privilege as a grant of privilege to the previously disadvantaged (see the reactions of poor whites to the idea of slaves being citizens, and then to the idea that making blacks be second class citizens wasn’t acceptable).
Adele Mercier, is one person. She isn’t a significant spokesperson for “feminism” in the same way Schafly is for the Conservative movement. Now, if you can show me the major players in (contemporary to the statement to which you referred), who are lauding her comment; or the major news outlets who saw fit to take her ideas and present them as credible, you might have a case.
Good luck with that.