That doesn’t strike me as a good reason. It strikes me as misogyny.

Oh, no, my friend. You are at the very bottom of the Geek Hierarchy, and for good reason. Oh, so many good reasons.

For women who want to get married to a responsible guy, and have kids, and the guy they want likes video games: take up a female geek hobby such as roleplaying on Livejournal or writing fan fiction (the more pornographic and slashier and featuring cultural icons such as Superman and Lex Luthor getting it on gets you extra points.) Then, while he sits around on his ass playing WOW, you sit around on your ass writing smutty fanfic or pretending that you are Hiro Nakamura or Rupert Giles. When shit needs to get done, both of you have a very important fun hobby you need time for, so there should be no “but I *need* my fun time! you’re just a humorless bitch who can suck up doing all the chores!” attitudes, as you can always respond with “but other people are depending on me for their porn!”

(And before anyone thinks that I am making fun of people who do these things… well, I am, but it’s in-group fun. I’m a Picard/Q and Magneto/Xavier slasher on occasion myself and have roleplayed on LJ. And I think these activities are every bit as worthwhile, if not moreso, as playing video games.)

I do try most of the time but it’s difficult to get through. He’s still going through all the teenage drama and is very self-centered and not really at that stage of maturity where he could actually comprehend it. Mostly he just sits there and nods dumbly for a moment before going back to whatever we were talking about.
It’s also hard for me personally to strike the balance between being informative and being preachy. I’ve kinda eased up on him a little (it’s lessened but no means will I stop) because I remember when I was at his stage of development (not too far past it, but trying hard to mature more) I just didn’t get it. Someone could explain it to me till I was blue in the face and it would still be an abstract concept to me. It probably has more to do with taking off the rosy-tinted glasses and actually seeing the world for what it really is.

He’s a friend, but a younger brother that looks up to me type. I’ve made some progress though, he no longer uses ‘gay’ all the time One small win at a time …

He would be, if you made him aware of them. Not that it is your job to do so, I hasten to add–but if he’s really your friend, why not call him on it? And if you can’t call him on it, is he really your friend?

But there is no necessity of being married to that man. If a woman is organized and financially secure enough to be able to afford a husband and kids, she’s probably able to afford the kids without the husband.

Ah, I get it now. Mary’s posts were all strawwomen, Elinor. that’s what was being responded too.

Frankly, that puzzles me. I would have thought that the normal response to a strawwoman would be to point out that it was a strawwoman, not to impersonate said strawwoman. I thought Mary was attacking a straw person too until I saw all the “so what? I don’t want to have kids anyway” responses. But I don’t disagree with you on anything substantive, so I’ll stop arguing about it.

Also, I’m not sure how “marriage to a person of the other sex +/- kids” translates to “the whole picket fence thing” (personally, I can’t drive and would probably go out of my mind if I had to live in a car-only suburb), but okay.

I’d been expecting the next line to read, “do I look as if I could afford that?”