100% of the women in the country have already rejected you.
The continuing series of rants from Dr. Helen about how women need to settle into marriage with anyone who asks, because men are men and like entitled and stuff, has been getting some attention around the blogosphere. (I briefly blogged it here.) For those who don’t want to click the link, the staunch economic conservatives over there have a really odd attitude about women—not that women are subhuman commodities that are exchanged on an open market (people all over the political map believe that), but that unlike every other good on the market in the libertarian eyes, communist principles should apply in the pussy market. The same people who’ll mock you if you don’t have enough money for food or shelter suddenly get teary-eyed and sentimental at the idea of some poor middle class white guy who can’t buy himself a model to marry like Donald Trump can. Anyway, I’ll get back to that in a bit, because Lindsay makes the good point about how there is a link between the declining fortunes of the rest of us (compared to the rising fortunes of the rich in what looks to be like a direct wealth transfer from labor to the elite) does in fact influence the marriage rate negatively.
I wish liberals would talk more about how increasing relative economic inequality might be affecting people’s day-to-day lives. Abject material deprivation is only part of the problem. For example, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that a lot of young people are priced out of marriage–not because they can’t find a willing partner, but because they don’t have enough financial stability to “justify” getting married.
If you don’t have substantial assets in common, or a job that would give benefits to a spouse, marriage just isn’t as practically alluring as it might have been.
That seems like it makes sense. For instance, if a couple is doing well enough to be saving money and perhaps getting assets like real estate, then marriage makes good sense, because it gives you a quick and dirty way to legally share your assets going forward. But if you’re both in debt (or if only one of you is), you sure as hell don’t want to get married and share the responsibility for debts you personally didn’t incur. As more and more Americans are going into debt and fewer and fewer are saving money all the time, we can probably expect that formula to kick in and marriage rates to decline.
Like Lindsay, I don’t care if the marriage rate declines to zero, even. But as it works as a rough measure of how well people are doing, since it can measure (to a degree) levels of hopefulness for the future, but for its own sake, who cares? Honestly, I think the marriage rate going down some would be a good thing, if it indicated that people were really thinking about it and only going into it if they really want to, instead of getting married because that’s just what you do or the TV told you that if you don’t cross that line by the time you’re 30, no one will have you. But as an economic indicator, declining marriage rates are probably part of the larger problem of the vanishing middle class.
The sexual communists who bemoan the high price of high priced potential wives cracked me up, I must say. Like the guy from Dr. Helen’s blog:
Most men are simply priced out of the marriage and dating market. If you dropped a mere $100K in the yearly bank account of those lonely, “shy” men women would be all around and over them. Because the men would have higher RELATIVE status. Which would make them sexy instead of losers.
And this guy from the comments at Majikthise:
well, it certainly is my experience that American women in particular are obsessed with status. I have a friend/ ex-GF who blathers on all the time about how much she cares about the poor, but somehow all her friends and ex-BFs are from Fairfield County and Ivy educated. She insists she doesn’t care about money and social class, but doesn’t get it that speaking French fluently and having a breezy familarity with Victorian literature and a noble indifference to having a career and making money are related to upper-class privilege. When I was a dishwasher, with no high school diploma, I crtainly knew no woman would give me the time of day. Nor an Ivy school, for that matter. With a 1500 sat I had an admissions officer laugh in my face for even inquiring about applying. (compare JFK, Jr, a guy dumb as a brick, but welcome at Brown and NYU Law). Anyway, I find all American checks to be dull and mostly chinky to boot.
The continuing theme of extremely shallow men seeking out trophies for girlfriends/wives and then whining when the very kind of women they seek turn out to be exactly how you’d expect such women to be never ceases to amuse me. What’s less amusing is the way that “woman” is defined by both these commenters in very narrow way, which is “woman who spends plenty of time in the tanning bed, the gym, the plastic surgeon’s office, the salon, and the make-up chair to prep herself for a role of rich husband-snagging trophy”. To be fair, the second guy also expanded his definition to include women auditioning for the role of high society wives, looking to get some old money instead of more new money. There are, in fact, other women out there, and in fact, I’d say the vast majority of American women do not fit the narrow definitions of “woman” offered by these assholes.
But I feel vaguely guilty pointing that out, because what if one of these guys, on an off-chance one day, actually listens to me and thinks, “Huh, good point. Maybe I should start looking at less shallow women if less shallow is what I want.” And then they’ll start imposing their shallow, worthless hides on perfectly nice women in bars and coffee shops across the nation, and then I’d be partially responsible for that minor uptick in the misery of the sisterhood. Extremely minor, true—being hit on by Republican-voting asswipes who’d probably hit you up with a line like, “You know, if you did your hair and wore some make-up, you’d be pretty,” is a small irritation in the grand scheme of things, but still. I ‘d feel guilty. But luckily, exactly 0% of the whiners are going to listen to a self-avowed feminist, so I shouldn’t worry about it.
This might have been OT but in fact, I think it’s got some bearing on the Frau Doktor Helen discussion. Did you know that women who don’t take their husband’s names are more likely to initiate divorce?
Found at Fundies Say The Darndest Things.” The same people who’ll mock you if you don’t have enough money for food or shelter suddenly get teary-eyed and sentimental at the idea of some poor middle class white guy who can’t buy himself a model to marry like Donald Trump can.”
Exactly! And I think there is some strange seven degrees of separation with your post below about wives and stay-at-homes.
I’m a single, childless woman, and many conservatives around me covertly believe that I ought to be at higher risk in a lay off and they ought to be a higher raise, because “they suppport a wife and kids.” I’m in a male majority profession, near the top — in high technology. You don’t necessarily notice this at the entry level of my profession. But there is some sort of strange socialism that kicks in when dividing up the pie of wages with these largely liberterian or conservative men. Many at this level have stay at home wives.
With me, it’s not about the cat fight of stay at home wives versus “working women.” It’s about my pocketbook. I have more education and experience than some men around me, but they thrust pictures of their wives and kids in front to compete for salary and promotions. What is out of the usual cat fight equation is the picture of these men and their part in it.
And the teary eyed sense of entitlement of “buying a woman” in a sense as written here. Please write about that.
“If you don’t have substantial assets in common, or a job that would give benefits to a spouse, marriage just isn’t as practically alluring as it might have been”
right now im flat broke; busted down to the working poor, basically. i dont even have enough money to save in my checking let alone a plan. yeah, i basically rule out nearly everyone i meet who has two dollars to rub together as being unsuitable –like i have the mark of cain on me.
and this is michigan, so things are NOT looking up any time soon.
“Anyway, I find all American checks to be dull and mostly chinky to boot.”
1) wtf does this even mean?
2) who are these losers who always gripe specifically about “american” women? are they american creeps who cant get laid & so are saving up for a mailorder bride from a 3rd world country? are they creeps from other countries that came here & cant get laid & so are looking to save up for a mailorder bride from another 3rd world country? or are they just your average asshole dreamer, addicted to asian porn or some ethnic niche where they only see a woman open her mouth to service a man & nothing else?
whatever the case, they must die.
and when i say “unsuitable”, i mean as in, unsuitable for a relationship, period.
I’ve read that some poor couples won’t marry because they can’t afford the monstrosity that we call a wedding these days. Some people feel that if they can’t have a DJ and a Vera Wang dress they can’t get married. And others (including lots and lots of middle class people) go into massive debt to have the big wedding and destroy their marriage in its infancy.
My cousin says he won’t marry until he has enough in the bank to put on a big wedding and put a down payment on a house. He lives in the DC area. How long do you think it’s going to take him to save that kind of money?
But if you’re both in debt (or if only one of you is), you sure as hell don’t want to get married and share the responsibility for debts you personally didn’t incur.
Oh, my God, yes. I could go on at great length about that one.
Amanda wrote:
All of which brings marriage to the level of an economic transaction.
Marriage was supposed to be the legal, economic and cultural cementing of personal relationships, to aid in their stability, assist in their permanence, and provide a recognized and stable structure for procreation and child-rearing.
When our “modern” culture removed the bias against sex outside of marriage, ceased seeing illegitimacy as something to be avoided, and removed any strong assumption of permanenc from marriage, what was left but the economic calculation?
Even there, your sentence, “But if you’re both in debt (or if only one of you is), you sure as hell don’t want to get married and share the responsibility for debts you personally didn’t incur,” is a sentence with a bias toward separateness: even if you live together without marriage, the debts of one will be incurred by both, because while perhaps only one is paying the debt (out of his doubtlessly separate checking account), the total household income is diminished for both. Your sentence makes sense only if there is an underlying assumption that the partners’ relationship is not permanent, and that one can bail out, leaving the other to cope with the debt he incurred.
I totally understand the debt “deal-breaker” when it comes to marriage. The different between living together and getting married, is that if you live together, your credit history is not ruined and you can still get favorable rates and offers (by the way, ruined credit effects your job prospects when they do a credit check on you AND your health insurance rates in some places - why ruin yourself?), you don’t get pursued by debt collectors if you merely live together, and upon divorce, you don’t spend years and years repaying a debt you didn’t even get or enjoy the fruits of.
It used to be this was a problem of older marriages, now with the credit extended to students, you can find yourself strattled with over a hundred thousand in debt marrying someone in their twenties.
The best advice I think is to run a credit and legal history on someone you are thinking of marrying. Don’t think you can’t be fooled.
It’s a little bit selfish to say that if anyone rejects you due to debt that they are “separatists.” If you love someone you’ll clear up your debt situation before getting married.
Dana,
YOu are mistaken about the history of marriage. It is only recently that it has been about “personal relationships”. Its history is as an institutional framework for perpetuating kinship and economic structures regardless of the “personal” feelings of the individuals involved. By pointing out that marriage has an economic dimension, Amanda is actually *refreshing* our historical memory, not confusing it.
(& yeah, I do realize I am just going to be among the legions to point this out)
All of which brings marriage to the level of an economic transaction.
Of course it is. It’s definitely not about love and romance—you can have the former without marriage and marriage is kind of a romance-killer. It’s far more romantic to live in sin, with your love being too pure for tedious bourgeois nonsense like marriage and a picket fence.
Since marriage is not about love or romance, it appears to be about a familial/economic partnership.
Your belief that people should have artificial constraints that make them unhappy put upon them in order to force them into marriages that will mainly turn out to be unhappy because they didn’t test drive the relationship before making a commitment is baffling. Why should the institution of marriage be continued if it makes people unhappy, Dana? Why do you think institutions are more important than the people in them? I put people first. If marriage is not working for people, they should be encouraged to choose their happiness over the institution. You only live once; why do you insist that people squander their precious and short lives on institutions that will leave them unhappy?
Marriage has always been economic. The notion that marriage is “romantic” was a brief capitalist blip on the radar, a snow job to convince people to part with hard-earned money on ridiculously expensive weddings, because it’s “romantic”. No, it’s not. And the fact that a lot of people are desperately casting around for a way to individualize their weddings/conformity with heterosexist capitalism shows how people really do grasp that weddings are a lot of things, but romantic is not one of them.
As more and more Americans are going into debt …marriage rates to decline.
I know that was a sub-point to the overall article but
I’d also add future birth rates, which some also use as a rough measure of how well people are doing.(that’s not assuming that marriage and babies need to go together) When my wife and I got married, she had crushing student loans from undergrad and law school. We worked our asses off paying these out, and consequently had to wait years after we wanted to have kids. None of that even takes into account the future cost of schooling, health care etc.etc. after we had the kids.
Moreover and to me, most importantly, having to wait to be somewhat financially stable, put my wife’s and child’s health at greater risk because of the age we had our children. Should a women have to risk a stroke on the birthing table because she wanted to go to school and have kids?
That’s something I’d like to hear liberals, and I’m talking about candidates for President, address.
Did you know that women who don’t take their husband’s names are more likely to initiate divorce?
I’d be curious to see if there are (a) any actual statistics to back them up and (b) if it means that women who keep their own names are more likely to divorce overall or if someone pulled this out of their ass hoping no one would check.
Ah, the lovely smell of right-wing bullshit in the air ….
As more and more Americans are going into debt …marriage rates to decline.
I know this was a sub-point to the overall article but
I’d also add future birth rates, which some also use as a rough measure of how well people are doing.(that’s not assuming that marriage and babies need to go together) When my wife and I got married, she had crushing student loans from undergrad and law school. We worked our asses off paying these out, and consequently had to wait years after we wanted to have kids. None of that even takes into account the future cost of schooling, health care etc.etc. after we had the kids.
Moreover and to me, most importantly, having to wait to be somewhat financially stable , put my wife’s and child’s health at greater risk because of the age we had our children. Should a women have to risk a stroke on the birthing table because she wanted to go to school and have kids?
That’s something I’d like to hear liberals, and I’m talking about candidates for President, address.
speaking of economics, I wanted to know what you all think of these men with their stay at home wives who come to work with a sense that they are entitled to more than the unmarried. It’s like an entitlement still in place in upper rung jobs that they are owed that sort of woman at home. And the unmarried can just be laid off or not get the money when raises come around. It’s a wierd communism that kicks in with these conservatives.
Well, initiate divorce, which women already do a lot more than men. I think the anti-feminist panic attacks over the divorce rate need to be understood in this context—if divorce was largely a male-driven thing, it wouldn’t raise concerns. I agree with the fundie nut that women initiate divorce a lot more because women are, um, insufficiently submissive. There is a rainbow of reasons for divorce, but the plurality of them seems to be women who get tired of doing most of the emotional work, child care, housework, and just generally being treated like a second class citizen in their own marriage and ending it.
Are women who keep their own names likelier to be impatient with a sexist marriage where they get the short end of the stick? I’d be gobsmacked if the answer was no.
Dana, I couldn’t make you up if I tried.
I’ve been a broke-ass asset-free college student living with two other broke-ass asset-free college students, and I spent a year engaged to one of them. And our financial situation when we were engaged was definitely not the sum of its parts.
And the important thing that you neglect in your two-can-live-as-cheaply-as-one fantasy is that by not marrying your debt-riddled partner, you can legally walk away when you feel tapped out. If you love someone who is financially self-destructive, that’s a major plus.
“Are women who keep their own names likelier to be impatient with a sexist marriage where they get the short end of the stick? I’d be gobsmacked if the answer was no.”
Yeah. You’re bucking the norm already when you don’t take your husband’s name, so it would stand to reason that women who don’t will tend to have more invested in their own individual identity vs. the wife-and-mother identity than the average. Having gone against the gradient of social pressure in that would also seem to indicate that you’d be more willing to go against it in other situations, particularly when called to make a choice between what’s best for you and what society tries to pass off as your duty as a womb-bearer.
@d
I totally hear you on the “I have a wife and kids to support and therefore should get the raises and benefits.” The most disgusting part is these are the same guys who will say, “Of course women earn less. They spend less time at work. They’re always running off to have babies.” Personally I like the idea of corporations that respect families. But I think the standard should be evenly applied to women and men.
Pussy Tourmaline wrote:
“Anyway, I find all American checks to be dull and mostly chinky to boot.”
1) wtf does this even mean?
2) who are these losers who always gripe specifically about “american” women? are they american creeps who cant get laid & so are saving up for a mailorder bride from a 3rd world country? are they creeps from other countries that came here & cant get laid & so are looking to save up for a mailorder bride from another 3rd world country? or are they just your average asshole dreamer, addicted to asian porn or some ethnic niche where they only see a woman open her mouth to service a man & nothing else?
whatever the case, they must die.
__________________________________________
Actually, these “losers” don’t even put in the effort to get a mail order bride. There is a disturbing trend these days for men to save and expatriate to live in her country where all of sudden he is rich (due to exchange rates) and elevated to god-like status. Most disgusting and very disturbing.
Because it’s RIGHT, by God. People aren’t SUPPOSED to be happy. They’re supposed to do their bloody duty, mind their masters (in whatever form those masters take), then die. They’ll get their reward in heaven.
Why should people who are doing something WRONG (like seeking happiness) actually be happy without being punished, when those who do RIGHT, like Dana does, get no reward?
/snark
Kyso:
Well, if two can’t live quite as cheaply as one, they can live far more cheaply than two.
Actually, I did mention that:
We were both poor when we married 28 years, 6 months and 28 days ago, and it really was a marriage for love. It took a while, but we finally stopped being poor.
“being hit on by Republican-voting asswipes who’d probably hit you up with a line like, “You know, if you did your hair and wore some make-up, you’d be pretty,”
I get this shit ALL THE TIME. Guys will literally stop me in the street with the “Smile honey. You’d be so pretty if you smiled.” or “You should let your hair down. You’d be so pretty.” That shit makes me want to punch them in the face. Where does it come from? At the very least, don’t they realize that walking in front of a woman and stopping so that she has to go around you is a threatening if not violent gesture.
@pussy tourmaline
The emphasis on *American* women always gets me too. Has there been some discussion of that on these here blogs? I’d be interested in hearing other peoples theory of why “American”.
The BEST part of the comments at Dr. Helen’s is that they all keep insisting that it’s MEN that don’t want marriage, and how much men have to lose by marriage thanks to the legal system.
So the reason that women initiate divorce more than men is why? Because men are so afraid of the legal system? The legal system that has been created and run by men in this country over the last 200 years?
“That shit makes me want to punch them in the face. Where does it come from?”
Massive sense of entitlement, desire to push someone lower on the social chain around, and belief that the alpha and omega of female existence is to be decorative?
You are obviously not a student of anthropology. Marriage until recently, in the west, has ALWAYS been an economic calculation. And usually not even an economic calculation performed by the marriage partners, but by their PARENTS.
I could provide you with a reading list, to disabuse you of your romantic notions about marriage.
And there has NEVER been a bias against sex outside of marriage - as long as it’s been only men doing it.
You do realize that we are living on top of thousands of years of partriarchy, don’t you?
Welll, I have no doubt that our slow-witted troll would swear he’s happy, which just makes his willingness to make other people unhappy even worse, because he’s gloating and not just doing the “misery loves company” maneuver.
We were both poor when we married 28 years, 6 months and 28 days ago, and it really was a marriage for love. It took a while, but we finally stopped being poor.
That’s so beautiful. My ex’s parents married poor almost 30 years ago, and it took awhile, but his mother’s complicated propensity to run up massive amounts of credit card debt finally exceeded his father’s ability to arrange repayment in such a way as to avoid bankruptcy. That was game over for that marriage, because it is possible to love someone but not be able to live with them anymore because you simply can’t take another round.
Love does not, in fact, conquer all. If you’ve got a lot of debt and no assets, and you’re with another person who is in the same position, then you have to be careful. Student debt or credit card debt is not the same as merely having no money, or having a mortgage.
Oh, never mind. I just took a look at your right-wing libertarian web site. You are utterly clueless.
@preying mantis
of course you’re right. i knew that. i was just using this comment section to blow off some steam, as i’ve been repeatedly hit with this asswipe gesture in the past 2 weeks. sorry for using ya’ll as my vent.
Amanda wrote:
Far more romantic to live in sin? That strikes me as a rather strange comment: it’s as though you are saying that there’s an added thrill from doing something wrong, yet you’ve stated many times that you don’t think it’s wrong in the least.
As for marriage being a romance-killer, no, no way. If you live with someone, regardless of whether you are married or not, the same situations occur: dirty dishes, sick children, unexpected bills and clogged toilets. If those things are what you meant by romance-killers, then they are going to exist just as much for POSSLQs as married couples.
“With a 1500 sat I had an admissions officer laugh in my face for even inquiring about applying. ”
I take it he means on the new 2400 scale?
“Anyway, I find all American checks to be dull and mostly chinky to boot.”
Emphasis mine…VERY curious Freudian slip.
Know your troll people.
Here’s where Dana Pico is coming from - I got this from the blog:
Hey Dana, I thought you were AGAINST government telling us what to do. Why do you want the government to declare ownership of my reproductive system?
AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!! I literally LAUGHED OUT LAUD!!!
Me: “But if I don’t do my hair and wear makeup, I automatically weed out all the entitled, sexist assholes who think a woman has to spend a shitload of time and money changing her appearance in order to be pretty.”
Seriously, Amanda, it’s not a big imposition if you inadvartently cause guys to come up and say this. It’s so damned fun when they walk into it that perfectly.
“i was just using this comment section to blow off some steam, as i’ve been repeatedly hit with this asswipe gesture in the past 2 weeks. sorry for using ya’ll as my vent.”
No need to apologize. The world would be a much better place if everybody recognized the douchebaggery inherent in the behavior.
There’s a number of mail order bride companies out there, and that’s basically their pitch—American women have been “ruined” by feminism/economic independence, and women from (fill in country that’s recently seen an economic collapse that sent the majority of its citizens into abject poverty) know how to treat a man. A lot of these men spend a LOT of time reading Russian mail order bride sites and fantasizing about getting a wife who has to be submissive to your abuse because you hid her green card. The “American women” rant is a sure sign that the commenter is a fan of imperialist fantasies about exploiting women’s poverty to get dominance that non-desperate women would reject.
ummm.. the rather quaint sentiment of “living in sin” does not neccessarily apply to those of us who are, above all, practical.
i, for instance, live in an urban area, i have a graduate degree and modest debt. i work three part-time jobs and my rent runs about 1050 per month. the person with whom i’m living in sin works in middle management and recently paid off his credit-card debt. we live together and we are slowly merging all aspects of our lives lives together.
essentially, marriage is something we are working toward.
sounds pretty sinful.
Far more romantic to live in sin? That strikes me as a rather strange comment: it’s as though you are saying that there’s an added thrill from doing something wrong, yet you’ve stated many times that you don’t think it’s wrong in the least.
Oh, there’s nothing wrong about making uptight pricks like yourself whiny, but it’s certainly thrilling and romantic to see morons scramble to justify their unjustifiable urge to conform brainlessly. It’s telling that you literally can’t tell the difference between “rejecting unjust authoritarian standards” and “wrong”. I would say that it would be very romantic to be a part of the anti-Nazi resistance, for instance, for roughly the same reason that it’s fun to live in sin. Would you consider being an anti-Nazi fighter “wrong” because it’s resistance to unjust cultural norms?
Dana, just for the record, there are plenty of reasons not to get married when one partner is in deep financial trouble. It frees up the partner who isn’t in trouble to buy houses wihthout having to explain why one partner won’t be on the deed or loan, have bank accounts that can’t be touched by garnishments . . . In community property states, I can’t really imagine why I’d want to get married - it seems so dangerous, even if you’re planning on being together forever.
“Hey Dana, I thought you were AGAINST government telling us what to do. Why do you want the government to declare ownership of my reproductive system?”
Dana wants the government completely out of all ECONOMIC aspects of human life.
Outside of the economic sphere, everything else is fair game. Dana feels those things are far too important to allow for individual “choice”, especially if that individual is a mere woman.
All patriarchy all the time for the Dana’s of the world…
I used to work for a guy who calculated what he was willing to pay his employees by whether they had families and how many children they had. I’m glad I don’t work for him anymore, since I’m unmarried and don’t have any children, and don’t want to have a husband or children. (I do want Amanda to save me a spot at the Disco Ball Memorial Old Spinsters’ Home, though.)
The place where I work now seems to understand that just because you don’t have a spouse and rugrats at home doesn’t mean you don’t have a use for money and/or time off, amen.
HE might well be happy, on his level.
As long as his belly’s full and his wife lies still when he requires it, he’s happy. But if we evil feminists get a few minutes with his wife, and SHE starts to see other women surviving (without having to put up with a clueless dink in order to feed their kids), that’s a direct threat to ol’ Dana’s way of life. Of course he wants us to shut up.
Those who are truly happy tend to have a “live and let live” attitude. The happily married could care less what other people do as long as they’re not hurting anyone.
We were both poor when we married 28 years, 6 months and 28 days ago, and it really was a marriage for love. It took a while, but we finally stopped being poor.
This is an attitude I hear alot from my parents generation. “Oh honey, you’ll never get married if you wait till you can afford it.” or “When you first buy a house it seems like so much money and then over the years it gets better.” or “I worked my way through college.” All of these attitudes ignore very basic economic realities. We’re living in a society where property values are not necessarily going to continue to grow. Where college prices have increased at more than double the rate of inflation which leaves many young people just starting out with the equivalant of a house payment without the equity. A young couple who buys a house right now will very likely buy an inflated albatross that isn’t even worth half of what they put into it. Only very recently did I realize that the money I was making in the late 90’s could possibly be the most I will ever make in my life. My grandmother who came into adulthood during the depression actually understands these things.
Keith and I are poor enough to be able to say we haven’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, and we are married. We love each other and we are romantic as much as two children, two (sometimes more) jobs and stress will allow.
We married for economic reasons, though. We were just as happy, just as much in love and just as romantic without the legal trappings of marriage, but we couldn’t cover each other on health insurance.
Yes, we married so Keith could put me on his health insurance.
The simple truth is that we were just as “married”, as in commitment, love, asset sharing and all the rest when we didn’t have the stupid piece of paper. It was the legal issues that forced us to get it formalized.
Oh, yes, the hypocrisy just drips from that. And not only is it indeed oddly socialist/communist for an otherwise conservative person, it’s also decidedly misplaced by income level. I’m assuming that this argument is the province of middle-to-upper-class (level?) employees, because that’s where promotions and salary negotiations tend to happen—this is not, I feel safe in saying, something that is utilized by janitors and fry cooks and other low-wage workers.
But low-wage workers are the only place that it really has validity as an argument. Certainly a person is entitled for a full-time job to pay enough to support that person’s family. But at the level that such things can be negotiated for, this is generally not an issue—the husband and father gunning for a six-figure management position is not struggling to make the rent payments and keep food on the table. He doesn’t need the damned promotion.
Every job should pay enough for a person’s basic needs to be taken care of. Every job, in an ideal world, would also sufficiently make sure its holder’s family was supported. But once that basic living wage has been provided, anything above that, you’re not entitled to. You get paid for the job, not for what you do with the money. If Mr. Joe Republican’s priorities include a stay-at-home wife to make sure all of his dealings with his kids are of the fun, sweet kind, that’s something he’s decided it’s worthwhile to spend money on, and it’s not something he deserves reimbursement for in the form of promotions and salary increases. Rather, like Ms. Jane Childfree-Liberal’s reef-diving expiditions to the Caribbean, they are the expenditures of money from the same job on the stuff the employee finds fulfilling. Paying one employee extra because of a values judgment on what it’s being spent on is the height of ridiculous.
Since no one has brought this up yet, do we agree that Dr. Helen has the compositional skills of an eighth grader?
Okay a few points:
1. Who says there is a *causal* link between declining marriage rates and increasing income inequality. This sounds more like correlation to me. Sure marriage is an economic transaction. But most of the economic benefits of marriage are now available outside of marriage (you can share space and expenses), so the increasing income inequality shouldn’t have a large impact on a couple’s decision to marry.
2. The same people who’ll mock you if you don’t have enough money for food or shelter suddenly get teary-eyed and sentimental at the idea of some poor middle class white guy who can’t buy himself a model to marry like Donald Trump can.
Are you kidding me? Are you now saying that men want to marry? What happened to the conventional wisdom that women go around trapping men into marriage? What a crazy reversal.
3. well, it certainly is my experience that American women in particular are obsessed with status. I have a friend/ ex-GF
Can we all as people agree that we should not judge entire groups of people by our exes? Otherwise all men are stupid, uneducated, threatened by intelligent women, selfish in bed, expect me to clean their bathrooms, spend hours each day surfing, eat lots of bean burritos (ugh, don’t remind me), and are obsessed with breasts, oral sex and hot tubs.
Hope this doesn’t post twice. My internets are acting up.
@Interrobang
I both agree and disagree with you. I’m very much a woman with no desire to have children. But at the same time I believe that as a society we have some responsibility for healthy families. I also think that an attitude of employers making room for people with children will be better for women, as women are often the primary care-givers of children..
bahh, I’m not even making complete thoughts here. But I do think there’s some larger things to be thought about other than, “It’s not fair that I don’t get compensated as much as they do.”
Amanda wrote:
There’s a number of mail order bride companies out there, and that’s basically their pitch—American women have been “ruined” by feminism/economic independence, and women from (fill in country that’s recently seen an economic collapse that sent the majority of its citizens into abject poverty) know how to treat a man.
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The lie being fed on these mail order bride sites - American women bad, foreign women good - is reaching the mainstream population. I don’t believe they are being read by just fringe weirdos anymore. This message is morphed into social propaganda and has manifest into some recent articles including that nasty Forbes article about not marrying career women.
This propaganda not only causes social disrespect for American women. It inflates the egos of American men and puts foreign women into potentially comprimising circumstances.
American men, armed with the Internet as their guide, cheap plane tickets and a passport, now have quick and unrestricted access to millions of these poverty-sticken women. When the men return home, just how do they view their American female peers? Likely to not want to date them or worse yet, expect them to kneel at their feet?
Forbes has always been an anti-feminist publication; just look who it’s run by, for heaven’s sake. I’m afraid the “American women bad, foreign women good” thing isn’t new either. Back when the US troops came home from WWII, American women were constantly told how wonderfully submissive the Axis women were, how “they even scrubbed our backs for us.” All part of dragging the US gals back to home and hearth, boys.
@Kyra
Thanks so much for your point that this is primarily an upper to upper-middle class concern. You’re absolutely right.
I really disagree that my employer should have the right to decide who’s personal choices are more important and should be factored into bonuses, time off, etc. I had a coworker say to me that people with children should get priority for time off during the Summer because that’s when the kids are out of school I’m sorry, but that is some first-class, grade A donkey shit. So let’s say I need time off to take care of an ailing parent. Who gets priority there?
Let the benefits/perks/pay be decided on merit and performance. I believe in flexibility of hours and location for everyone, whatever their needs maybe. But to say men and women who have kids should get priority consideration over everyone else for their personal choice is all kinds of wrong to me.
Blue Jean wrote:
I’m afraid the “American women bad, foreign women good” thing isn’t new either. Back when the US troops came home from WWII, American women were constantly told how wonderfully submissive the Axis women were, how “they even scrubbed our backs for us.” All part of dragging the US gals back to home and hearth, boys.
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Interesting history. But this time around I does not seem like the men are interested in dragging the US gals back to the home. The foreign woman is the goal - to have a foreign girlfriend or wife is the new status symbol. Its suddenly cool and the Internet and those international dating websites are certainly a contributing factor. Throw in the MRA sites and the mainstream press discussing scary (for men) divorce settlements and you have a formula for a potentially major social shift in US male mating patterns. The men can “Buy A Girl Like That” (title of this thread) but she may not speak English.
I was in Panama this past summer. It was shocking to see the number of American (and German) men staying for extended periods and living with their girlfriends. Some even had children. These men earn American money for most of the year but keep a residence and raise a family in Panama. Just 5 years ago, I did not see any of this in Panama.
@Shasta MacNasty
That very much feels like the same sort of libretarian meritocracy attitude that came out during the schip debate. Remember? “How dare that woman *choose* to have a baby, when she had no health insurance?” Of course you should get time off to care for a sick parent. I’m proposing employers should make more room for their employees personal lives across the board.
What you describe isn’t new. It’s THE defacto standard of male-female relationships for the past thousand years - men have the money, they’ll share it with women in exchange for sex.
The only difference in the situation you describe is that in some parts of the world, women have their own money, and men have to look farther afield for women to exploit.
Our goal as feminists is to create a world in which no women are expoited.
The goal of MRA is to increase the number of exploitable women. This is also Dr. Helen’s goal - she advises American women to adopt an exploit-me mindset in spite of our relative economic power.
Many more feminists are needed to spread the word and create a world in which no women are exploited. Although the number of women who are feminist is increasing in the West, it seems that the number of non-feminist women is increasing globally. In addition, it will more difficult to spread feminism (Western style feminism) abroad if more of our male peers are off supporting and propagating their desired breed of women.
Does “Dr” Helen have ANY posters/trolls who go against the tide over there? (I’ll not sully my monitor, I’ve done my time.)
women who don’t take their husband’s names are more likely to initiate divorce
In addition to the psychological reasons other people mentioned, there may be an economic aspect to this (if it’s true, that is): Among the people I know, the most common reason expressed by women who didn’t take their husband’s name is that they have established some kind of professional reputation, and they didn’t want to lose the credentials they had gained under their maiden names.
If that’s also common outside of the artistic and academic fields, then the women who didn’t take their husband’s name had some kind of job or economic independence when they got married, which would certainly increase the likelihood of them initiating a divorce.
What makes you think it seems so?
Desired “breed” of women?
Unless they manage to change the laws of the countries in which they reproduce, the children of those sex imperialists will be their heirs. Once their daughters start inheriting that sweet American wealth, bet your ass they’re going to want personal independence. Maybe a chance to go to college in the US.
There goes that plan for a dependent female zombie sex-slave empire.
Hee. Riffing off the “foreign mail-brides” bit, I have to say I’m always highly amused when I run into some dingbat who raves on and on about “submissive Oriental women.” A stereotype which could only be dreamed up by someone who has never seen how those societies really work. (Or talked to any “Oriental woman”, for that matter.)
i love how the good dr can just make shit up, i mean, she reads an article that has some pretty good explanations of why people don’t date, low self esteem, shyness, lack of opportunity, and she goes “eff that, you can take your research and shove it cos I KNOW THE TRUTH and the truth is men arent marrying cos american women are teh bitchez”
the woman is obviously unhinged.
frankly, i wish i lived somewhere with these wonderful declining marriage rates, i live in a rural/outer-suburban area in the midwest and pretty much everyone i went to highschool with, outside of my crowd of quirky art kids and LGBT kids, is already married with children, and when i see them around they all look downright miserable. i’m 26 and i can’t imagine being a wife or mother right now, i mean, who the hell can decide at 20 who theyre going to be at 80, and then plan their entire life accordingly.
Very nice indeed to see Shasta MacNasty back and kicking, very nice indeed.
The question that I’d have for you, Shaz, is this: at what point does a setup like the one that you posit become a punitive system towards parents? Your suggestion, taken to its logical outcome, has been tried: it was part of the glass ceiling, as women took time off to raise children and men did not. Moreover, since patriarchal structures are very egalitarian when it comes to keeping people down, business used to extend (free of charge!) this ceiling over women who didn’t have and wouldn’t have kids.
This dingbat never mentioned submissiveness. What goes on between a man and woman in their household is their business (excepting abuse). My concern is how the desire and attainment of foreign women as a backlash against American women will (or has) affected the feminist paradigm of equality between the sexes in the US. International dating sites (aka mail order bride sites) have an impact by opening up channels of commincation between US men and the foreign women they seek to date and perhaps establish families with.
One thing that I notice about the MRAs: the increasing tendency to use recent British divorce examples about why North American men should not get married. This is more than a bit paranoid. The highest British court has recently come down with some two very odd divorce decisions which, in one case, make great headway in ensuring that longterm contributory partners can’t be tossed aside, (a LONG overdue holding) and, in the other case, treat short-term non-contributory trophy spouses to a lottery win from the marriage, (a retrograde holding dressed up in pseudo-feminist finery). While it is the latter which should be disturbing to MRAs and feminists alike, it is more interesting and not unexpected that the MRAs see both as troublesome.
The last time I checked, however, decisions from the House of Lords, whether brilliant or stupid, ceased to be binding on American jurisdictions in 1776.
Regarding that one British case, lawyers for both sides commented:
The female lawyer who won the ruling for the wife-
“The ruling will serve as a deterrent to marriage. But prenuptial agreements will provide a good degree of protection — and I predict it will not be long before they are made binding. It’s not if, it’s when.”
The male lawyer who lost for the husband-
“It will have the effect of discouraging successful guys from getting married at all. You get these young women, in their thirties, the body clock starts ticking, and they are looking for someone to have their babies — then the marriage breaks up after a short while. I am already advising these kinds of men that they would be better off not marrying.”
Failing that, he would urge prenuptial agreements. “My advice is: 1, don’t marry; 2, if you do make sure your other half is as wealthy as you are and 3, do a prenuptial agreement and keep your fingers crossed.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,200-2196058,00.html
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Maybe now an IMBRA for Britain should be passed to slow down the potential exodus of blokes seeking to establish families with women in Eastern Europe and South America.
regarding Lindsay’s original point .
Republican policies that have [1] let the top 1% of incomes gather an ever larger share of all the income there is to be had and [2] made sure via spending for useless war instead of domestic needs and infrastructure that the lowering tide of US prosperity is leaving more and more working households to run aground.
That is not new or news. And it is also why marriage rates among the growing poorer class [yes, they that fell out of the middle class and those with no hope of joining it] can’t afford marriage.
Your sentence makes sense only if there is an underlying assumption that the partners’ relationship is not permanent…
And that would be quite a realistic assumption given current divorce rates, no? Why should people who aren’t yet married commit themselves to bolstering the institution and illusion of life-long marriage?
Let’s say a person who already has children to support has a boy- or girlfriend who is in some financial trouble. What is more important in this case, getting married to show how committed you are to a permanent relationship, or protecting your ability to care for the children? What Would Dana Do?
The British divorce article states right up front
“Family lawyers said that wealthy young men and women would be better off not marrying at all after Britain’s highest court ruled that a wife may be entitled to half the assets created during even a short marriage.”
Unfortuntely, American MRA’s see this and go ballistic. Seems that British papers are a bit direct. Maybe that is why the MRA’s look to Britain to justify their causes.
Dana is, as usual, ignorant of even the simplest things, and furthers this by trying vainly to find some sort of contradiction in Amanda’s statements, like a low-class, low-rent, low-intelligence Phoenix Wright.
But remember, conservatives have more class.
And there’s the rub. British courts have traditionally had a near-fetishistic respect for contracts except for domestic contracts, which have been condescendingly treated as if they were the silly scribbles of children. There must be either judicial or legislative movement in the UK to allowing people to plan their domestic affairs.We were both poor when we married 28 years, 6 months and 28 days ago, and it really was a marriage for love. It took a while, but we finally stopped being poor.
And how much debt were you in when you got married? The median student debt upon graduating college these days is $17,120,and it keeps going up. That’s strictly tuition/housing, no car or credit card debt run up during those years.
Half of the assets created during a marriage does not mean half of everything one spouse owns prior to the marriage.
If you own a house, for instance, before you marry, the spouse is entitled not to half the value of the house but half of any increase in value of the house measured from the date of the marriage to the date of the divorce.
Prenups are a good idea that have been dismissed as “unromantic.”
Jaffe, iirc from my reading at the time of the decision, the problem re the short term marriage was that it gave the wife a very large share of all the husband’s assets, hence my lottery analogy; it’s why the decision freaked out so many people. “Half of assets gained during the marriage” would be quite in keeping with fair distribution schemes in many jurisdictions (Canada and California, for example).Correct, regarding half the assets. However, when most people read stuff like this, they tend to react and assume the worst. They go off all kneejerk and start taking trips overseas to find “better” or “less greedy” women. The men do, that is. The preception of the divorce industry is very negative and get moresee each year. I don’t know how it could be made better and it seems that the men who are now landing in Manila, Bankok, Rio, Kiev are not waiting around to find out.
“its why the decision freaked out so many people”
I suppose you mean it freaked out many men. This is the crux of the problem. For feminism to really succeed at home and globally, men need to be on board. Especially men in the West and the US. I am not talking about MRA’s - just the average guy. That guy - your co-worker, boss, assistant, your neighbor, and maybe one day your husband. If they are not brought into the fold, they will remain single, go into isolation or get on a plane and leave. They will continue to join mail order bride sites in droves. They will leave American women to themselves and maybe that is fine for some women. But not all.
Amanda wrote:
I had no idea that any objections I might have to whatever your living arrangements are would make your life more romantic; that is far, far more influence than I ever thought I had!
For some reason I am reminded of campus life in the early 1970s, when it was a badge of non-conformity and rebellion for men to wear their hair longer — and almost all of the men on campus conformed to that standard of non-conformity and rebellion.
Wish I had the link to an article by a writer who took one of those Mail Order Bride trips to the Ukraine: he wasn’t looking, but recording the real deal.
And to a man, his companions on the trip were either social retards or nasty bastards.
Not normal men frightened of the divorce penalty: off-putting idiots and totally nasty bastards who would seem to have earned whatever rejections they’d received from “American” women.
The mail-order company arranged events with local Ukranian women that spelled out the cash exchange basis of any relationships.
Some young women stopped by the events for the food and drink,or to win cash prizes, and then had enough self-esteem to leave before the uglies could test the merchandise.
And the men were furious! furious! that the young and beautiful should have free will in the matter of being bought by the old, ugly and nasty.
Jaffee, I wouldn’t narrow it that way. Amongst other things, feminist thought opposes the notion that retrograde social compulsions should provide disproportionate benefits to one gender which has, almost entirely to this point, been men. It is at its heart a progressive and egalitarian doctrine which is why many men are already feminists. I personally don’t see any rationale for impliedly blaming feminism for dumbass unfairness going the other way, especially in a decision like the British short-term-marriage case. This is especially so given that the decision in question was just traditional old patriarchal “reward for the pretty pussy putting out!” nonsense made all the more foul by being dressed up in modern phraseology.
“For some reason I am reminded of campus life in the early 1970s, when it was a badge of non-conformity and rebellion for men to wear their hair longer — and almost all of the men on campus conformed to that standard of non-conformity and rebellion.”
Shorter Dana: “Ha! Those idiots wanted to be ‘different’ and they all ended up being the same! Dolts!”
…unless what they were rebelling against, and refusing to conform to, wasn’t the environment on campus - but the suit-wearing automatons who blindly supported the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, and the mindless military-industrial complex behind them both.
But to Dana, they were all DFH’s and therefore easily ignored. Dana was probably thrilled when he heard about Kent State…
This is a great thread, overall, with a lot of attention to the really interesting political and economic issues underlying “romance” and “marriage.” But I’m puzzled by Jaffe’s concern that there is a serious drain of non-marrying males to other countries. Why is that serious? Because there won’t be enough “real” american men for “real” american women? Because feminism in the US depends on biological replication and not social replication? Because we can presume that just because these american men married foreign wives that their marriages, inheritance and divorce laws are also (somehow) foreign? The problem that mail order grooms are having is that the wives *gain all the rights* of american citizens eventually including the right to divorce and to support for themselves and their children. To the extent that they can’t work to support themselves (like the evil feminist women rejected by their husbands) this is a short lived victory for the patriarchy.
And what are the numbers really like anyway? American society is and always has been one in which women marry up, socially, if they could. That has *always* left men at the bottom of the heap with fewer choices of wives and they have *always* gone outside their own location–importing foreign brides of their own culture? marrying or common law living with women from another minority? *never* marrying. At the upper end of the social scale the same problem manifests itself for the daughters of the highest class–they have had to marry out or remain celibate if no suitable mates can be found for them.
And yet we roll merrily along. I dont think we need to worry about the semen drain to russia or whatever other fantasy-bride-location the MRA’s are touting. Its no loss to the rest of us if these losers, unable to achieve an erection with a woman of their own society and class, have to pay for a bride. They pretty much have always had that opportunity. There’s nothing new under the sun.
aimai
I think that aimai wins best line of the day with “semen drain to russia”.
Not really, Dana. I’m mostly horsing around. But my point is that the entire attempt to make “conforming to stifling social norms” romantic is silly; everyone knows that it’s more romantic to be rebellious and think for yourself, instead of show automatic fidelity to oppressive social institutions. Which is a different thing than “doing right”—people like yourself who conflate what’s right with oppressive social norms are the ones who find themselves turning the hoses and dogs on people for resisting racial oppression, etc.
But yeah, I do what I want because I want to. It’s just the fancy sprinkles on the cupcake to know that my ability to think for myself bothers assholes like yourself to the point that you hang out at this blog non-stop, obsessing over this phenomenon of people who don’t get that it’s so much easier to just flip the brain off and do as you’re told. But yeah, as good sense about things like racial justice and feminism become the social norms, the pleasure of rebellion recedes. But what’s left behind is the pleasure of still doing what’s right because it’s right, not because some appointed authority told you to do it and quit asking troubling questions. I realize that all that’s waaaaaaaaay above your head; you have my pity.
And do you count yourself among the feminist men, Jaffe? Or are you the one who’s “hopping on board”?
Since you’re on this site, I’m guessing the former. But the idea that “if you gals don’t submit and give men all the control over the money, then we’ll just hop a plane to find more pliable women!” sounds like a slightly more mature version of Jr’s old threat “If you don’t give me what I want, I’m gonna hold my breath ’till my face turns blue!”
Of course, somebody inevitably calls Jr.’s bluff, so he holds his breath, his face turns blue, he passes out, breathes again, and wakes up with a headache. I suspect that most of the guys who say they’re going abroad to look for a zombie sex slave either a) never do it, or b) do it, and find (surprise! surprise!) very, very few women are desparate enough to put up with a self centered jerk, no matter how “foreign” said women are.
When my folks tried to get me to eat cauliflower by saying there were starving children in (fill in the blank nation), I always said “Fine. Pack it up and send the cauliflower to them. I bet they won’t eat it either.” If the sexist pigs want to jump on board to find submissive women somewhere else, that’s fine by me. Just don’t be hurt when the “submissive foreign” woman rejects you as well.
Dana:
Thank you, Dana, for confirming my suspicion that you’re not even smart enough to know when you’re being made fun of.
Actually, I think I’ve said this to you at least once before.
Now “Midnight Train to Georgia” is in my head.
I agree it doesn’t matter much. I saw a documentary about some control-freak American guy who got a Russian bride and brought her home. You could tell she was just WAITING for the time to be up so she could divorce him and take off. Her whole demeanor and body language were expressing, “Oh, GOD, sit still, you have to let him touch you, smile, smile, oh, UGH.”
Of course, he was clueless. He had the nerve to criticize her for being too tall.
All that will happen is these idiots will lose even more money supporting dependent women until they get a degree and bail out–then they’ll get to pay spousal support for a while because their wives didn’t work. Their misogyny will be further reinforced, because of course if a woman leaves it’s not because the guy’s a creep or anything but because wimmen are bitchez.
Oh, I so want to see these he-man-woman-haters marry Eastern European and Russian women and bring them to America. Every last one of them. It can’t happen fast enough for me.
They think American women gain weight after marriage? Wait until they bring a woman who has been starving most of her life AND likely has a genetic tendency to gain serious poundage (hello? remember your Aunt Dorothy?) and let her loose on even small portions of American food. They ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
They think American women win lots of alimony? Well, no, not really, because most of them work during the marriage (those eeeeevil feminists!) and thus aren’t normally awarded alimony much anymore. But a girl who has never had a paying job AND was whisked from her homeland, suing him for divorce? BOOM! You’ll be driving a cab after hours for the rest of your unnatural life, sucka.
They think American women are out to screw them? Oh no, it’s just not possible that your darling Tatiana was only pretending to be sweet and submissive so she could get a green card out of you. Never happens. Never. Hahahahaha. Oh, and also…hahahahaha.
My only hope is that these women are also carrying video phones while all this is going on. This shit needs to be YouTubed big time.
I disagree with the folks that think that employers who pay their employees with children and wife at home more is just a problem of the rich. If you are a line employee at Walmart or the burger place, it’s likely you’ll see promotions based on who has a wife and kids to support, passing over extraordinary single females.
Once females get out of the ghetto jobs or the entry level jobs or the “mascot wacky design” jobs (that are low paid), in fields with men competing for the same job- like high technology and software development, it’s not funny anymore and you find all the creepy crawly sexism coming to the fore.
It is not alright to give pay and promotions outside of merit.
But in my situation, it is in high technology on the tech side. Women are few and far between on the upper level. I would say that I am “entry-level” on the upper level. There are a large number of libertarians and conservatives.
I was making a connection between the weeping for men who can’t find a decent, low priced woman and the “family picture thrusting” of men who have wives at home and the expectation that in the “boy’s club” that bitching about the wife at home, being weary about the wife at home, will get you the raises and promotions. And they surely do in many cases. There’s an implied argument that you can’t lay Bob off, because he has a wife and kids to support. He needs the money. A strange sort of conservative socialism kicks in and these are the same people who applaud Bush for not supporting extensions of child medical care.
You can’t destroy his life by not giving him the bonus and the raise, the connection I’m making here is the same entitlement as the pitiful man who can’t afford a proper display wife who stays at home. They feel a man is owed this, especially the higher you go.
I’m reminded of a story a friend told me. He said when he was in Bosnia he met a bunch of girls who were laughing at him because he was from America. They told him that one of their girlfriends had just married an American soldier thinking she was going to be rich and have a big house in America. But then when she got to his hometown in Alabama she was like, “Oh shit, what have I done?! This place is a hell hole.” The funniest part is when the giggling girls asked him if it was true that you couldn’t buy wine in America.
These mail-order-bride fans need to be referred again to BigBadChineseMama.com.
Mrs Nice Guy
Now there’s another sense of entitlement. They honestly think they’re so special that someone would spend all of their precious little time scheming against them. Really?! We evil American women and feminists spend every waking moment down in our lairs–overrun by cats– wringing our hands, and conspiring against the American male…really?! Pfft! Everybody knows we’re far too busy planning our next Abortion-Party-Rave. Duh! They flatter themselves.
I am really confused. I don’t want to click the link, but are they arguing that marriage rates are declining because American women are shallow bitches who refuse to marry poor men?
Or that marriage rates are declining because American women are shallow bitches so men refuse to marry them?
It sorta sounds like they are trying to argue both, at the same time. Which is hilarious. You’d think they’d try to be a bit less transparent.
I disagree with the folks that think that employers who pay their employees with children and wife at home more is just a problem of the rich. If you are a line employee at Walmart or the burger place, it’s likely you’ll see promotions based on who has a wife and kids to support, passing over extraordinary single females.
Once females get out of the ghetto jobs or the entry level jobs or the “mascot wacky design” jobs (that are low paid), in fields with men competing for the same job- like high technology and software development, it’s not funny anymore and you find all the creepy crawly sexism coming to the fore.
It is not alright to give pay and promotions outside of merit.
But in my situation, it is in high technology on the tech side. Women are few and far between on the upper level. I would say that I am “entry-level” on the upper level. There are a large number of libertarians and conservatives.
I was making a connection between the weeping for men who can’t find a decent, low priced woman and the “family picture thrusting” of men who have wives at home and the expectation that in the “boy’s club” that bitching about the wife at home, being weary about the wife at home, will get you the raises and promotions. And they surely do in many cases. There’s an implied argument that you can’t lay Bob off, because he has a wife and kids to support. He needs the money. A strange sort of conservative socialism kicks in and these are the same people who applaud Bush for not supporting extensions of child medical care.
You can’t destroy his life by not giving him the bonus and the raise, the connection I’m making here is the same entitlement as the pitiful man who can’t afford a proper display wife who stays at home.
Cara, it’s why the MRAs are all up in arms about the new laws allowing women that have been sex trafficked into the U.S. to have special visas instead of getting deported. Mail order brides are properly considered sex trafficked, at least if they are subject to domestic violence from their new husbands. You beat your mail order bride, or steal her passport so she can’t escape, or deny her the right to seek outside activities or abuse her in some other way, she now has a right to get a special visa and doesn’t have to wait for her citizenship process to be complete in order to file for divorce. It’s a very good thing; now you don’t have to wait years, just until he hits you.
heh, my husband was a dishwasher in KFC when I married him. Yeah, all women are gold-diggers, right.
But even those who are, who can blame them? When it’s that much harder to be promoted to high-paying positions, the obvious alternative is to marry a man already in one and thereby reap the same benefits. When a man has his eye on a promotion, he’s showing drive. When a woman does, she’s a gold-digging slut.
COOL.
Well, not being hit, but if she can bail out if he’s a control freak that’s absolutely ideal.
Dana, you’ll find that most people are who decide to lay aside “cultural norms” when it comes to marriage do so not because they have a desire to “rebel” but because they realize that following those norms will make them unhappy. Look, I want to be married as much as the next guy (poor and all, as I was when some opportunities arose), but what stopped me was not a desire to conform to my peers by discarding culture norms, but rather because I realized that getting married wasn’t going to make me happy at the time with the people whom I could have married.
And, as unpopular as it may be to articulate this particular fact, it is true that financial stress and strains that could crop up in a marriage can cause unhappiness.
It is interesting that your explanation for the incentives to marry that existed in the past were not specific benefits of marriage, but rather punishments that existed for being single. You want more people to get married? Think: more carrot, less stick.
The second that we mention mail order brides, of course, the moderation queue fills up with a bunch of obsessive nutters who apparently have *nothing* better to do than troll around the internet pretending that the fact that they have to pay someone desperately poor to have sex with them, much less marry them is actually a sign of female desperation. A sample rant that’s not being allowed through:
In short: I the MRA have to pay women to have sex with me. This proves that I’m actually very desireable and you all want me and are just angry that you can’t have me. I can tell women are desperate to have me, because why else would they refuse to have anything to do with me without cash up front?
I suppose if you have to pay women to pretend they find you acceptable as sex partners, you have to spend a lot of time trying to get your ego back by running around bashing women. I mean, they call it “compensation” for a reason, do they not?
Well, not being hit, but if she can bail out if he’s a control freak that’s absolutely ideal.
Well, there’s also the prevention aspects of the IMBRA that our non-moderated friend above disapproves of. Basically, the law says that marriage brokers have to provide potential brides with the criminal records of the potential grooms—i.e., they have to disclose his domestic violence past. The MRAs really don’t like this, an attitude you pretty much would only have if you’re a wife-beater who wants your next wife to enter the marriage unaware. Considering that domestic violence is a) common and b) one of the big denialist hobbyhorses of the “men’s rights movement”, it becomes hard to avoid guessing that a majority, probably a vast majority, of men who are attracted to the movement are abusers who are very angry that radical feminism has shone a light onto their ugly little secret and made it that much harder to control a woman through abuse and violence in peace. Which puts a pallor over the laughter at them for idealizing a “submissive” foreign woman, since that means, for many if not most of them, a woman who takes her beatings without calling the police or fussing. Which is probably true to a large extent if said women are afraid of being deported if they seek help.
Domestic violence enablers and promoters—that’s who Dr. Helen is cozying up to.
He doesn’t get that we’re “bitching” on the other women’s behalf, because we feel so bad for them and believe having to fuck these guys amounts to a civil rights violation.
What a maroon.
Oh, and I absolutely agree that the MRA’s are big on whining about “false” accusations of abuse. It’s their big (”Judges listen to women and children now, can you believe that shit?”) issue.
I think foreign men certainly deserve to know the violent histories of the American golddigers who are interested in them. Don’t you agree?
This is so beautiful. I love so many things about it, particularly that he thinks that people here are going to disagree that this rule should be applied to both genders. Project much?
And also, that he is talking about mail order brides and he thinks the gold diggers are American women.* Like, hi, guy, America is still a rich country, your “real” women come from poor countries; what direction do you think the gold digging is most likely to go in? If he keeps his head in the sand this way then reality is seriously going to kick his ass.
*Not that I agree with using “gold digger” as a pejorative. People do what they have to do when they don’t have access to any other source of income.
I didn’t realize Fabio had to approve every marriage between an American and a foreigner. That is beyond The Pale.
BTW, all that information these guys have to provide is pretty much the standard for anyone who wants a job in a school. I’ve had to fill all that stuff out just to be a subcontractor in a school.
Why is “Dr.” Helen (there’s real doctorates, then there’s “real” doctorates) upset about this anyway? “Lack of desire for marriage” is surely just an example of the market governing behaviour, and I’m sure she’s in favor of market solutions generally.
Why the HELL is she such an enabler of bad male behaviour?
Note her response to someone suggesting girls have ambition: