You may have already seen this appalling disaster of a post by Kim “I Don’t Even Pretend That I Don’t Hate Women” du Toit, where he takes it upon himself to explain men’s (and by men, he means himself) views of marriage so that we too can obtain and hang onto marriage with an appallingly misogynist (which he wrongly assumes is all men). Why would women want this? I suppose du Toit thinks we’re another species, or perhaps robots programmed to get a man, any man. We’re all familiar with the argument, “Give up your rights/self-esteem or assholes won’t want to be married to you,” but du Toit really puts his own, insane spin on it.
After quoting some Dr. Helen doing her schtick about how it’s okay to hate women, because she does, too (not a direct quote, but sort of the meta-theme of her writing), he dives right into how marriage is basically for men like a car purchase.
I think that men keep a running ledger going in their subconscious—all the good/great things about their relationship on the one side, and all the bad/terrible things on the other. At some point or another, if the perceived negatives outweigh the positives, the man will quit the relationship—I mean, just bail out of the whole thing—and usually with a swiftness and finality which confounds women.
He forgot the part where men check Consumer Reports to see if they can get fair trade for a non-cooking bitch in order to get the down payment on one who knows her way around a kitchen better. If they don’t have that section, they totally should, of course. Dr. Helen says it would be okay.
Sadly, I’m not exaggerating.
Now, because we’re guys, certain things have a disproportionate effect on both the good and bad things: on the good side, sex, food and shared interests being probably the best examples; on the bad, infidelity, constant nagging and invasion of privacy constitute the negative. The degree of each, good or bad, will vary among individual men, of course. Some men will put up with almost anything if the sex is of the “bed on fire” variety, for instance, while others will walk out of a relationship for something as trifling as compulsory weekly visits to Mom (hers).
Frankly, it doesn’t matter what these things are. What’s important is that they are each weighed, and applied to the ledger. And when the negatives consistently outweigh the positives, the man will say (to himself), “You know what? This isn’t worth the hassle. The hell with it.”
A woman, of course, being the purchased item, doesn’t have such an internal process. She’s either off the lot or back on it. I wonder if du Toit bought his wife at the SPCA Marriage Center, where women are all lined up in cages, perhaps fingering their tits at prospective husbands, or showing off their chili-making skills, similar to the way dogs at the shelter bounce around looking cute as if to say, “Take me! Take me!” Though I suspect that du Toit assumes a man can love a dog, whereas women are strictly functional purchases.
Of course, this begs the question: If a man is an independent creature who can cook for himself and perhaps even get laid without having to secure the wedding ring first, why would a man get married? That’s like buying a car when you have nowhere to drive. Kim’s answer: Men won’t get married. No, really.
And the fact that women have become more sexually liberated doesn’t help matters. The old saw is true: why would a man go to the trouble of buying, stabling and feeding a cow, when milk’s available at the supermarket?
Well, 95% of Americans have sex before they ever marry. Which, by du Toit’s logic, means 95% of Americans aren’t married and will never marry, because there is no reason for a man to marry a woman unless bribed with sex.
I am not interested, incidentally, in hearing the female side of this. The topic is “why men are putting off getting married”. Here’s why.
All the great advantages of the women’s liberation movement have created an environment which, frankly, does not leave men with much. We can’t flirt with women at school, college or at the office anymore, because one man’s “flirting” has become another woman’s “sexual harassment” and the punishments for such transgressions are not only severe, they’re permanent—crippling a man’s career and prospects thereof.
When a woman can get pregnant outside wedlock, and still hound a man forever for child support (with the enthusiastic support of the State), is it any wonder that men, even though ruled by their sex drive, might actually step back a little and think with their heads? And once married, if a divorce becomes a later reality, he stands a real risk of losing access to his kids forever, because if Milady is feeling vengeful—and most do, in a divorce—the merest suggestion of “endangerment” or “violence”, and he is completely screwed, forever, even if the allegation is a complete falsehood.
Well, if he’s so worried about maintaining the right to beat his wife without getting in trouble for it, he should move to South Carolina. They understand there that a man turns directly into a woman himself if he can’t smack a bitch up once in awhile.
So there you have it. The Kim du Toit prescription for how ladies need to live their lives:
- Give up any hope of having a male partner share in chores and cooking. That’s like a car thinking that it gets to do the driving once in awhile.
- Give up any hope someone will love you. Hello! You’re a woman. Women are for using and for loathing and as things to accuse men you don’t like of being. Loving is what women do for men; it’s one of their functions.
- Give up your sexual desire. Desire is something men have. Female sexuality is a bargaining chip used to obtain marriage.
- Quit your whining when your man hits you. Better than being single, isn’t it? You should be grateful he puts up with you, even though you drive him to hit you.
If you follow these instructions, you too can earn a marriage with a massive douchebag who votes Republican and uses the word “pussification” unironically.
So, get to work ladies. Hurry up! What are you waiting for? You’re not getting any younger, you know. Why are you all standing there?
125 Responses to “Stop eating chocolate or I won’t kick you in the shins”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
He may be the most blindly stupid person on the whole of the internets, and that’s quite a feat, considering that puts him in the running with my legitimately insane uncle-in-law, who swears Rod Serling taught him how to foresee the future.
It’s a draw between who’s more stupid: Him? Or people who read him seriously?
Loathsome. Just loathsome.
Wow.
Just wow.
Women are not even human to this guy.
And heaven forbid a father pay support for a child if he’s not married to the cow. But then, divorced men might not get to see their kids. Does momentary cow ownership make the children seem more real?
You think all this hatred could be based on the fact that people think he’s a woman from his first name?
Oh, the “mandles” video is much better than the robot/bike/woman. She was super creepy, though very appropriate for the topic.
Good god.
I couldn’t read the whole piece, but I read a lot of the comments.
Imagine “A Weekend at the Drumming Circle With Robert Bly” — except that Bob and the guys are all homo habilises.
I quit quoting after awhile, but he goes on to say, under no uncertain terms, that men only tolerate women’s bullshit because of sex. (And therefore if you have sex without getting a dotted line statement, he’ll never have you.) It’s weird how this legend seems impervious to all the evidence that women can have lots of sex with a guy, and he still will want to make a home with her. You know, the life story of myself and pretty much every woman I know, at some point in her life or another. Sometimes they even like your company when you’re not fucking. Hell, some men like women enough to be platonic friends with them.
I saw something interesting in a comment thread on Salon recently where they had excerpted from a book about a single dad who was having trouble getting laid.
One of the key points of the excerpt was that his kids nanny was always coming on to him but he felt that he couldn’t pursue the relationship.
I asked, very sincerely, in comments why he felt like he couldn’t pursue a sexual relationship with his kids nanny. I could think of a lot of negative aspects to such an affair, but frankly none that outweighed my basic belief that if two single people want to have sex, they probably ought to go ahead and do it.
I was amazed at the number of people who were shocked and said that such an affair - no matter what - would constitute harrassment.
This is where the right-wing caricature of sexual harrassment has brought us, to where otherwise reasonable people think that two adults happily fucking while also entangled in some kind of loose business relationship are necessarily abusing each other in some way.
Sheesh, says I.
APS
Just the mere fact that his name is “Kim du Toit” leaves me goggle-eyed. I mean really, who the fuck is named that? He’s got to really be some grad student in comparative literature who started writing his dissertation on irony and realized that this gig was more fun and profitable. The combination of the name and the sheer blinding idiocy make me very suspicious that “he” is for real.
There’s this gem: At ages 19 to about 27, men are at their most vulnerable for marriage, because the nice thing about married sex is not that it’s necessarily great, but that it’s pretty much always available, without too much work involved.
I don’t even want to begin thinking about what that means but it reminds me of this sex scene in the film, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, where one of the main characters comes up on his wife reading a magazine in the kitchen, pulls up her skirt (without any kind of heads up, or warning) shoves her panties aside and just fucks her, all the while she’s reading this magazine as if nothing is even happing back there and I felt very bad for her. Thankfully for her and the audience he finished quickly, but that’s what statement made me think of.
And there was one excellent (sarcasm) comment where some dude refereed to women over 30 as if there were “pre-pissed”. I honestly don’t know what that means and don’t think I want to. As long as I’ve been reading this, Feministing and Feministe, I still cannot wrap my head around the misogyny.
Ape, I don’t think it’s harassment if she wants it, but it could turn into a problem. People don’t necessarily have a good handle on the nomenclature, but it’s problematic and inappropriate. And what if they do have sex and she realizes, oh my god, she doesn’t like it? But then she has to keep doing it or lose her job? That turns from mutual attraction to a bona fide quid pro quo harassment matter immediately—that’s not even hostile environment. Granted, he could communicate to her that he won’t fire her if she changes her mind about continuing the sex after trying it on, but still, she might not feel comfortable being forthright with him.
I’m not against workplace romance, but it has to be under circumstances where the possibility of abuse isn’t so high that it almost has to happen as a matter of course, even if the party being coercive doesn’t know that he/she is. A peer who doesn’t make job decisions, a supervisor who is just one of a team that evaluates your performance and so is kept honest by it, sure. But someone who is literally a servant in your home, and therefore has no recourse to other supervisors or employees, to the degree that she may be afraid to speak up even if her employer-lover encourages her to do so? No, I have to say it’s only responsible to take a pass.
I would feel really uneasy if I were dating a man and found out that he’d slept with a literal servant. I might break it off. Even if I was convinced it was completely consensual, I’d be concerned that he has major boundary issues.
And I say all that, Ape, as someone who fully agrees that there’s exactly zero reason for two unattached adults to not get it on if they want to, no strings attached. I have no moral issues with casual sex, none. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em is my philosophy. A lot of people would probably be happier settling down if they ran that loop a couple dozen times and don’t have to wonder what they’re missing once they do settle down.
Ape, as someone who fully agrees that there’s exactly zero reason for two unattached adults to not get it on if they want to, no strings attached.
I think you were missing the “not,” Amanda. Or at least what you wrote says that people who want to fuck shouldn’t.
Thanks, I’ll fix it.
two adults happily fucking while also entangled in some kind of loose business relationship
Ape, you have neither been a nanny nor, I hope, employed one.
I’ve now done both sides of this incredibly intimate and fraught relationship and believe me–bad example. Very, very bad example.
At some point or another, if the perceived negatives outweigh the positives, the man will quit the relationship—I mean, just bail out of the whole thing—and usually with a swiftness and finality which confounds women.
I’ve seen it reported a lot that in fact, it’s more often the woman that ends a marriage / live-in relationship and it’s the man who “didn’t see it coming”. I don’t want to spend my afternoon googling, but don’t MRAs also complain about that? Therefore, his statement above seems not to stack up, at all.
Heh, here’s one, from Du Toilet’s comments:
I was surprised to learn that fully 2/3rds of divorces are initiated by women. Thanks to no-fault divorce laws, men are essentially handing their balls to women to crush any time they want, and all too often, the woman does so. That certainly doesn’t add to a man’s willingness to marry.
Men are unwilling to marry because they keep a running account of their happiness and then suddenly bail!… Men are unwilling to marry because women keep a running account of their happiness and then suddenly bail!!… Yes, we’re totally confused, but anyways, whatever’s happening, it ain’t fair!
Christ. I read too many comments over there. It was just sickening. I finally stopped at the one where the guy asks if women need to be held back for their own good.
He’s asking–just playing devil’s advocate–b/c he hopes it’s not true. But, you know, maybe those earlier societies knew something we don’t.
That’s just a few posts below the “the country’s gone to hell since women got the vote” post.
I just want to cry. So many hateful men.
Wow.
1. People evaluate relationships in terms of positives and negatives. Check.
2. Men like sex. Check.
3. A bunch of crazy stuff. Not check.
As I get older, I feel more and more sorry for people like this. They were brought us with some myth that men are breadwinners and women run the home as their servants. Sadly, it’s an idea that’s 50 years out of date.
They are obsolete, unable to compete normally (hey, find a women at a party or bar, it’s pretty easy if you aren’t a complete loser,) and so whine that you aren’t allowed to sexually harass your underlings on the job.
I would say “screw it, just ignore them,” but their proposed solution seems to be turn the clock back and make women chattel again.
Fuck em. I’m glad I live in NYC (where a cow gives milk if it wants to, not because of some property-rights thing with males.)
Ah, darn. Helen just about beat me to it. Doesn’t the standard MRA case history consist of treating a wife like a sex-and-meals dispenser for years on end, then being totally fucking gobsmacked when she stops putting up with it and decides to leave? If I recall correctly, it usually comes with a ton of seething resentment that anything might be owed for the years of unpaid servitude–the universal loathing of the concept of paying alimony.
I am not interested, incidentally, in hearing the female side of this.
Now there’s a shock. It’s a lot easier to pretend you don’t care what the bitches think when you don’t have to hear them tell you you’re full of shit.
Wow…bitter bitter man right there. Blaming women for all his relationship problems when it’s most definitely him being a douchebag that’s the problem. This is what happens when you let hate eat away your insides.
What Gorobei said in Number 3.
What’s perhaps most incredulity-inducing about those parts of the post that aren’t steaming piles of surgical waste is this: he seems to assume that only men do this — that there is something specifically manly about it!. Clueless. Permit me to demonstrate to and for him: Here are the salient bits of his post, with the genders flipped:
Now, I ask you. Other than the pedestrian writing is there much there that, say, Amanda would disagree with? I don’t think so, save for the fact that Amanda doesn’t hate men and doesn’t assume that all of them bring “shit to the party”. But since Du Toit so damned certain that women are nagging shrews who have fish-hooks attached to the wedding ring that is the key to the pussy he can’t grasp even that simple notion.For a self-described “intellectual” that’s pretty astounding.
Ape, as I recall some of the other letter-writers at Salon put their fingers on a more pertinent point about the nanny (as described): that she had Trouble written all over her in capital letters and he was best to avoid the problem and find a new nanny.
I think a lot of the feminists and atheists who read this blog might be interested in the difficulties being faced by Taslima Nasrin, a feminist and freethought activist from Bangladesh who is facing difficulties from state governments in India, especially West Bengal, based on her views. If you Google “Rationalist International” and “Taslima Nasrin,” you can learn more about her.
Comment #92 (from Kim’s wife apparently):
“Marriage IS a financial arrangement for women. Men say and agree that sex is the motivator for them. Well, financial security is what it is about for women. Being the provider/protector, in every aspect, is what KEEPS a woman attracted to her husband.
I’m not suggesting that women should behave like gold diggers or behave irresponsibly with money, but that’s what he brings to the party.
Financial compatibility is just as important as chemistry and hobbies. […] We’re facing these issues from a different perspective now… because we have a 20 year old daughter. Men waste her time. […] This is a young woman who does want marriage, who does want children, who wants to be the adoring wife and mother, who is skilled in managing a house, and who is still virtuous.
But she doesn’t have a playboy centerfold body. That, we’ll have to address with surgery because she’s going to be EXPENSIVE. She’s MY daughter, after all, but she will provide a LOVELY home for her future (very lucky) husband.
It was really hard to tell her the truth about that–that men are shallow and successful men will want their wife to be both a best friend, super mother, and a trophy to show off to their friends. ”
WTF?!
Yep, that’s exactly what I did to the ex-before-the-last-ex. To this day, I hope he was able to get a refund on that engagement ring.
I love the “women’s liberation will hurt you all” argument because it’s just so fucking funny. Especially to those of us who are providing/have provided free milk to feminist-minded men the likes of whom would blow du Toit’s mind.
My favorite:
They’re not refusing to grow up: this is the reaction to the constant belittlement and the infantilizing treatment they’ve been exposed to all their lives.
Because saying men are only interested in sex and have no other emotional needs isn’t infantilizing men *at all*.
That being said…I *do* think people consider the pros and cons of a relationship…hopefully, without the misogynistic or misandric (as the case may be) view of what your SO should be.
PS. I love the implication that women are too emotional to critically analyze their relationship.
It’s great how he manages to insult women and men, all at the same time.
One of the comments:
Wow, how sensitive can you be, that you resent a woman asking what you do for a living because it must mean they’re figuring out how to take it away from you?
Wow, how sensitive can you be, that you resent a woman asking what you do for a living because it must mean they’re figuring out how to take it away from you?
Has anyone been on a first date where the issue of work didn’t come up? I haven’t. It’s part of getting to know someone, and it’s a very easy thing to talk about. When I do talk ask about it, I’m not checking out finances, but will usually ask what their work is like and how they like it and such.
These guys are such fuck-ups!
What an asshole. I’m glad he said it out in public. Good luck getting a date you don’t have to pay for, ever.
Kim du Toit should join the Taliban. He thinks just like they do; they’re his heroes. I love how conservative men so often sound just like the Taliban. “No, not that!!! Anything but equal power for women!!! I can handle anything but that. Aaauuuggggghhhh.”
Hey, Pandagonians - I only come around every few weeks - so it gets me every time - I just love the “Blaspheme!” button. Thumbs up!
You know, at one point I had a realization that, within my lifetime, things had changed drastically about relationships.
I was born in 1966, and back then, it was a complete given that a woman would get married and mostly be supported by her husband. (I might be misremembering history here, and maybe it wasn’t a *complete* given, but it was at least generally a given.)
Women grew up and got married; that’s how it worked. In fact, if you didn’t, how would you support yourself? And besides… wasn’t it… you know, *weird*? If you didn’t want a husband, I mean?
That a woman was expected to snag a husband created a very different view of relationships than we have today.
Without excusing or defending the behavior of misogynist imbeciles, I can sometimes see how they come up with these ideas.
Yes, that’s right, the things that worked for your (grand)parents, the expectations of that age, simply do not apply any more because there is simply no need for a woman to get married any more. All of the stuff that came from a woman *needing* a husband is out the window, and inside of the lifetime of some not-very-old people.
What we’re seeing now is what is normal (or a lot closer to it). What we saw in the 50s and 60s (and 70s? 80s?) was the result of very abnormal pressures that no longer exist.
But, unfortunately, we have a lot of cranky old people insisting that this just can’t be right.
I reckon every generation has something like this, some change where they have to recognize that, while they can’t deal with it, they should not transfer their harmful ideas to the younger generation.
I hope when my time comes, I don’t fuck it up as badly as my parents’ generation did.
Methinks he has rather more profound psychological problems than balanced pondering of gender relations.
“At some point or another, if the perceived negatives outweigh the positives, the man will quit the relationship—I mean, just bail out of the whole thing—and usually with a swiftness and finality which confounds women.”
In my male acquaintances (past and present), I’ve seen all kinds of reactions to relationship problems, spanning the gamut. Why aren’t men allowed to be individuals in this writer’s mind, allowed to have a range of reactions and decisions?
Furthermore, how can ending a relationship with this kind of ’swift finality’ tactics always be seen as laudable by him and his readers? It could be seen as understandable in a relationship that wasn’t very old or strongly established, but it seems a pretty shitty thing to do to a serious long term partner, just shucking them off without an explanation.
Personally, if I’ve committed to the a long term relationship, I’d try my hardest to overcome problems before calling it quits, even if the negatives outweigh the positives for a while, so long as I think there’s a possiblity of improving the situation.
That’s just what emotionally mature people do. So long as they view other individuals as people in the first place, that is..
Has anyone been on a first date where the issue of work didn’t come up?
Not even a first date. Invariably, whenever I meet someone new, the question “what do you do” comes up. It’s a normal part of life.
Mme. duToit on raising a daughter (in the comments):
We’re facing these issues from a different perspective now… because we have a 20 year old daughter. Men waste her time. They date her and treat her like a girlfriend, and then she discovers they aren’t interested in her as a future wife. They think it is OK to date a young woman and string her along. It would be different if they’d stated that up front, but they don’t.
These men are cads. They have no couth at all. This is a young woman who does want marriage, who does want children, who wants to be the adoring wife and mother, who is skilled in managing a house, and who is still virtuous.
But she doesn’t have a playboy centerfold body. That, we’ll have to address with surgery because she’s going to be EXPENSIVE. She’s MY daughter, after all, but she will provide a LOVELY home for her future (very lucky) husband.
It was really hard to tell her the truth about that–that men are shallow and successful men will want their wife to be both a best friend, super mother, and a trophy to show off to their friends.
Other than the pedestrian writing is there much there that, say, Amanda would disagree with? I don’t think so, save for the fact that Amanda doesn’t hate men and doesn’t assume that all of them bring “shit to the party”.
I don’t think that women—or men—judge relationships purely on functionality. It helps if things run smoothly, but I think love is a big thing. I didn’t move in with my boyfriend strictly because it was cheaper and easier—we delight in each others’ company.
I do think it’s wise to consider if you’re getting more out of a relationship than not, but du Toit seems to have completely ignored the idea that the immeasurable pleasure of love is in the plus column. It’s all food and sex on one side, nagging and just her general loathsome femaleness on the other. But yeah, I can love a man, because I think the opposite sex is human, instead of a subhuman functioning machine that I treat like dirt.
Wow. I read the link for South Carolina. I live in South Carolina. I grew up in South Carolina. I love South Carolina. I hate South Carolina.
Exactly what she wrote about the horror show that is South Carolina is true. And exactly what she wrote about how sometimes you can meet the nicest strangers is true.
I’ve wondered if the evil creates the good. I don’t know. But the story made me sad. Not shocked, because I’ve known this stuff goes on. Just sad. I love South Carolina. I hate South Carolina.
All I can say regarding a man like that is: I cook, I know what in the food on his plate. and He’s got to sleep some times.
Lorena Bobbit’s distant cousin
That “ledger” in the minds of Kim and his ilk sounds wrong to me. I think it’s women, not men, who ponder whether the negatives of their relationship outweigh the positives. Anyone remember the Dear Abby chestnut to her wifely readers: Ask yourself: are you better off with him or without him? Yeah, I know, she was advising women to think that way, meaning maybe they weren’t yet doing so. But I can’t see telling a het man to analyze whether he’s better off with her or without her. We all expect him to be more impulsive.
Or: maybe a woman tries to measure the mistreatment she gets in her relationship against the social and financial punishments for not being in one, whereas her dudely counterpart could be guessing whether he could trade up his 6 for an 8.
I absolutely cannot wrap my brain around the mother who thinks her daughter is going to require cosmetic surgery to snag the “right kind” of man. I have a baby daughter and we are years away from this, but if any man thought my girl needed surgical altering to make her acceptable wife-material, I would run him out of town myself. The kind of man that would expect that kind of nonsense is absolutely not the kind of man for my daughter. Or woman for that matter. I fully intend to raise both my girl and my boy to value other qualities over appearance or livelihood when choosing a mate. How horrible for that little girl, her mother doesn’t think she’s good enough on her own.
It was really hard to tell her the truth about that–that men are shallow and successful men will want their wife to be both a best friend, super mother, and a trophy to show off to their friends.
Well, she’s already had to deal with the truth that her parents are reptilian, unloving monsters, so this sort of thing should be routine by now.
Yeah, this sort of thing is more perplexing (even approaches amusing) than anything else until you find out they have a kid. And that probably most of the assholes from his comments could very well have kids. Then it gets very sad.
Wow, the comment section is a goldmine of Wingnuttia. The first comment really captures the tone of the entire article:
A message to wives: Bask in the magnanimity of your husband’s approval or it’s off to the pound with you!
I know I’ve been a less than perfect husband, though hopefully not a rotten one, but I’d like to think I’ve come a long way since I was a teenager. And boy, the things du Toit writes remind me very much of the clueless arsehole I was at 18.
Actually I find your commentary to be just as sexist as you say his is. I am a guy and I like sex. According to your commentary that makes me a sexist pig. Yet you blog about women’s sexuality as liberating. Kinda hypocritical I think. So your ripping into us younger men for saying “You know what, I’m not ready for a really serious relationship, just a sexual one.” And then putting up with a woman we are not having a healthy relationship with because one of our human needs is sex is then piggish and selfish. Yet a woman who puts up with an abusive boyfriend is a victim is yet another double standard.
Then to ridicule the men who say I am giving up on relationships and marriage because our emotional needs are not being met? Whatever. If you truly believe all the guys not interested in dating are sexist what do you people care. If they are not dating they can’t push their sexism on you.
The guy has apparently been married for some time, so we ought to consider the possibility that he’s simply bullshitting for the sake of his audience. If so, it says more about his audience than about him.
If you really want to psychoanalyze a bullshitter, you don’t start with his shit.
Nathan, are you saying that you like sex but you are giving up on dating?
No I am just defending the men who feel fed up., and defending us guys who have an “evil” sex drive.
Nathan, what are you really defending? My reading of Amanda is that she has no problem with men who have sex drives. However, she has a problem with men who use that as an excuse to coerce women into sex, or believe they are entitled to sex because of their drives.
It’s the latter that is evil, not the former.
Women have sex drives, too, and minds and personalities as well, which are as pleasurable to explore as their bodies.
We all have agendas and schedules, expectations and criteria. While there is a certain amount of complementarity between the sexes, there is considerably more symmetry, both parties being humans and our primary erogenous zone residing, in either sex, between our ears.
But she doesn’t have a playboy centerfold body. That, we’ll have to address with surgery because she’s going to be EXPENSIVE. She’s MY daughter, after all, but she will provide a LOVELY home for her future (very lucky) husband.
I don’t think there is an English word for how fucked up this is. I suspect you’d have to turn to German or Inuit or some other language that crams adjectives together.
Amanda:
Maybe. I’ll be honest; I don’t know anything about being single because I never have been. I married a woman I met when I was 18 (I’m now 31) and she’s the only woman I’ve ever been with. I have employed nannies, to answer a later question, but neither they nor I ever showed any outward interest in getting busy.
Maybe too many years of monogamy have skewed my view of just how much potentially negative stuff is OK on the other side of the ledger when considering the “to fuck or not to fuck” question.
That said, I still think if I were single and my nanny came onto me, I would probably go for it. If that means that I suck (or, I suppose, that my hypothetically available-and-still-nanny-employing self sucks), then I guess I suck.
I suppose I’ll have to replace Amanda on my laminated list of 5.
APS
“…where he takes it upon himself to explain men’s (and by men, he means himself) views of marriage so that we too can obtain and hang onto marriage with an appallingly misogynist (which he wrongly assumes is all men). Why would women want this?”
Well, someone should probably run out and tell Lori Gottlieb that her prince has come. But other than her…
“And the fact that women have become more sexually liberated doesn’t help matters. The old saw is true: why would a man go to the trouble of buying, stabling and feeding a cow, when milk’s available at the supermarket?”
Er, because most mens’ reasons for wanting to get married are a lot more complex and meaningful than a random desire for some pussy, any pussy? Does he actually personally know, has he ever even met somebody, who was motivated to marry someone else because she refused to have sex with him unless he did? or is this one of those imaginary pseudo-1950’s situations that some people fantasize about that never actually existed?
And what are you so “fed up” about, Nathan? Don’t be disingenuous. Nobody here, including Amanda, has a problem w/ men’s sex drives. Have you read the article in question?
Comment #92 (from Kim’s wife apparently):
*blink* *blink* Wow.
Nathan, that doesn’t even make sense. Amanda’s a straight woman who supports sexual expression for women like herself and lesbians/bisexual women alike. Who would the former group be sexually liberated WITH if she advocated that men’s sex drives are evil?
“Does he actually personally know, has he ever even met somebody, who was motivated to marry someone else because she refused to have sex with him unless he did? or is this one of those imaginary pseudo-1950’s situations that some people fantasize about that never actually existed?”
Many of those young marriages in the actual 1950s were because the couple did have sex, the bride got pregnant, and the groom “did the right thing”. Rampant teenage pregnancy only mars a generation’s moral standing, apparently, when it’s rampant teenage unwed pregnancy.
Ultra magnus, this would certainly make the tedious long grocery checkout aisle more interesting, though!
And then I forgot to add:
“Clean Up On Aisle 5!!”
That..without a doubt…is the most disturbing thing I’ve ever read in my life. Purity balls HA! Child’s play. That’s not just bottom of the barrel. They dropped some shaped charges in the bottom of that sucker and right now it’s flying somewhere past Mars.
And btw Nathan, there actually was another thread largely about what you’re talking about here, and the consensus was that by and large as long as all parties involved are honest and upfront about their expectations and wants, there’s nothing wrong with the casual hook-up, yes, even from then man’s side. (That men and yes women are sometimes deceitful about these things is a different story altogether.)
unree: I don’t think that women do or don’t think that way. A lot clearly don’t, or Landers wouldn’t have to suggest it. I think, though, her suggestion was aimed at women who find themselves out of love and unhappy, but afraid to be single. The assumption du Toit’s working off—that women will do anything rather than assume the worthless place of “unmarried” has never been as true as he assumes. But sometimes for some women it’s close to too-true—the pressure on women to be married and not be pitied as unchosen is immense.
One quick observation on Mrs. du Toit’s Declaration of Daughter’s Availability:
Who else is betting that the narcissistic and profoundly stupid du Toit parents have absolutely no clue about how “virtuous” their 20-year old daughter is? And have no clue about what she really wants (as if it were even possible for them to give have a shit about that)?
Typo — that should read “half a shit”. Need coffee.
Actually I find your commentary to be just as sexist as you say his is. I am a guy and I like sex. According to your commentary that makes me a sexist pig.
Wrong. And if you got that out of it, it’s because you probably can’t believe that women like sex. Maybe not with you. But my boyfriend’s desires for sex are not oppressive to me, because he enjoys it when I enjoy it.
Sorry that you can’t imagine sex as a mutual pleasure, instead of something dispensed unwillingly by women in order to keep you for reasons we don’t understand. There are books that can help you.
Because all I said in the article was women are entitled to sexual desire. Unless you believe sexual pleasure is a zero-sum game, where if she has it, you can’t, then I’m not attacking your sexual desire. But honestly, I’ve come to understand with all the hostile “feminists hate sex!!!!” strawman-erecters out there, it must be that sexist pigs really can’t get off if a woman enjoys it. It’s either she’s suffering, or a no go.
Is it the case that women who are out of love and unhappy but afraid to be single has much to do with male supremacism/patriarchy? There are a lot of men like that as well.
It seems to me that right-wing narratives generally are aimed at lonely, dissatisfied people. The mere existence of such folks isn’t necessarily CAUSED by chauvanism - it’s part of the human condition.
The chauvanism is part of the proposed cure, not the disease itself.
APS
Ape, yeah, sounds like you don’t have any experience doing the dance of casual sex. I have plenty of experience being single, myself, and can assure you, it’s not all zipless fucks. After a few of those, you realize they aren’t so great that it’s impossible to pass when the situation is problematic. If that guy needs some strings-free casual sex, he should look at Craig’s List or one of the many services out there dedicated to matching up casual sex partners. I’m sure a good nanny is harder to find than a partner for some casual sex.
Probably, Ape. But the strict patriarchy doesn’t hold a man’s worth on whether or not a woman chooses him—he does the choosing. I know that men in our culture do often feel the same pressure to be publicly chosen as women, because of the romance uber alles narrative, though. That’s outside of du Toit’s territory, since he doesn’t seem to think marriage is about love, but a strict transaction between a member of the male upper class and the female servant class.
I’d have been shocked in the du Toits didn’t have kids. Do you think there’s a chance in hell that du Toit would risk the chance of having his virility called into question by not procreating? Men like that literally can’t stand the idea of not making a kid, not because they love them but because they’re virility trophies. That’s why, apparently, trips to infertility clinics are motivated by the husband’s insistence far more on average than the wife’s, or at least that was true a few years ago. Which surprised me—there’s a lot of pressure on women to prove their womanhood through baby-making, but apparently men feel it even more.
I can’t help but feel that this is the libertarian/ “economic rationalism” view, carried to the extreme. Love? Huh? What’s that? Relationships are all about what you have to give in exchange for what you can get! It’s all about being Useful, and if you’re not Useful, you’re out on your ear.
I believe this is why many wingnuts hate cats. Cats are perceived as taking without giving - that is, not Useful. Likewise, the poor are not Useful. Unless they are cutting your lawn or watching your children.
Such a worldview is appallingly cold and sterile, leaving no room for such intangibles as love, affection, or friendship. It’s all about money and “bargaining power” and “marriage markets” and the cold, practical bottom line. In psychological terms, we call that the “Pragma” love style and it is unhealthy.
BTW, if Kim Du Toit (sorry, but that name sounds like the nom de stage of a stripper) cracked open a sociology or psychology tome/journal lately, he could read that college-educated professionals have the LOWEST rate of divorce. The less education and worse jobs, the higher the divorce rate. It seems to me that something other than wifey-poo not putting out is at work here.
Nathan, you must be new here or you wouldn’t take the position that “[Amanda’s] commentary to be just as sexist as [she] say[s] Du Toit’s] is. I am a guy and I like sex. According to your commentary that makes me a sexist pig.” This is a very sex-positive blog. Amanda notes:
It rather fits in with a delicious phrase that Ms. Marcotte has, “gatekeeping the pussy”. (You might want to see, for example, “Thanks for the baby, here’s your payment” or “Tripping over your skirts shall set you free”.) Roughly translated it means that our current gender structures set up the woman as a combination of shrew and prostitute that holds her sexuality hostage in order to have Demands(!) fulfilled. It is a viewpoint that is demeaning to both men and women and destructive to both of their sexualities. A feminist, egalitarian view of sexuality as expostulated by Amanda and most posters here is not one hostile to either gender, but one that says both sides are best left to find their own best path (absent force or cruelty) to happiness and fulfillment, including and especially sexual fulfillment.Longhairedweirdo says:
“I was born in 1966, and back then, it was a complete given that a woman would get married and mostly be supported by her husband.”
Wow. On what planet? I was first married in 1957, and we assumed that we would both work. My mother, who would be 110 if she were still alive, was married twice and worked her whole adult life.
Lot of assumptions about assumptions going on.
Mrs Nice Guy
The ability of mom to stay home and not work has been a class-based issue for a very long time.
If dad was able to get some good paying union job, or was an engineer, doctor, or in some other high-paying career, mom could stay home.
If you were REAL working class, mom had to work just like dad.
I was born in 1960, and while there were some periods of time my mom didn’t work, over all she worked almost as many years as my dad…
Amanda:
IIRC Landers changed her mind on the “would you be better off with or without him” issue, and rescinded that advice.
It was made clear to her that too much of the time, the women who are weighing this issue are being battered. They don’t need to consider the alternatives rationally, they need to *get out*.
So Dear Abby basically changed her official policy, from “weigh the alternatives” to “know when you’re in an abuse relationship, and LEAVE”.
Is there any way we could organize a boycott of asshats like this? You know, get a bunch of women together and have them all pledge to not provide LTR-related services to any men who are so hateful and resentful of women’s right to breath that they’ve fooled themselves into thinking that men are the ones who get the short end of the stick in marriage?
The boycott would still permit women to have sex with these douches (no need to deny women their sexual desires), but the guild would prohibit cooking, cleaning, emotional support, listening to their boring stories, being the cute women he can show off to his parents, bearing his children, and all the other things that women hate dealing with as much as men do.
If the boycott lasted long enough, would fucksticks like this reform their ways? At the very least, would they pretend to buy into it so they could have their beloved maids and babymakers back?
Of course, we have a small-scare form of this boycott already in place, and it’s called feminism, and the men in relationships with feminist women are the better for it.
What prompts a woman to get involved with a dickhead like du Toit? It’s posts like this that make me wish I were a psychologist.
Rebecca C, you indulge in a forlorn hope. There are always enough fools to link themselves to shitbags. It is a great universal constant which is not limited to gender, nor sexuality.
Actually I find your commentary to be just as sexist as you say his is. I am a guy and I like sex. According to your commentary that makes me a sexist pig.
What an utter load of bullshit. Try to not lie in the future, ok.
Didn’t the slaveowners miss the peculiar institution? Was there a lot of pinning for Dixie?
Funny, the same people missing the same social structures.
Feminisim didn’t enable men to not marry women if they don’t want to, they’ve always had the choice to wank off. Feminism enabled WOMEN to not marry men if we don’t want to.
Rebecca, I would dearly love to find out what is broken in Mrs. du Toit. My closest guess is that she has absorbed the idea that women are inferior, and gets told on a regular basis that at least she’s better than other women, because she’s not a fool about the miserable lot in life that is women’s, unlike those other women who foolishly believe that there is something better.
“When a woman can get pregnant outside wedlock…”
They can?? Wow, anything is possible in this day and age!!
I am weeping and nauseous with rage at Mrs. du Toit.
What kind of sad, despair in life must the daughter have, to be told — by her MOTHER, no less — that her only hope of worth is to snag a husband, and that the only way to do that is to get surgery for some imagined flaw.
Beyond abusive and vile.
Awesome post, Amanda. Du Toit seems to exist simply as a lesson to others, really, a case study in how not to write.
Just one wee thing. In this sentence:
“You may have already seen this appalling disaster of a post by Kim “I Don’t Even Pretend That I Don’t Hate Women” du Toit, where he takes it upon himself to explain men’s (and by men, he means himself) views of marriage so that we too can obtain and hang onto marriage with an appallingly misogynist (which he wrongly assumes is all men).”
I feel like there’s a word missing at the end of the sentence. An appallingly misogynist what? Prick? Asshole? Snausage-dicked manchild?
Not to be a grammar cop, of course.
Longhairedweirdo says:
“I was born in 1966, and back then, it was a complete given that a woman would get married and mostly be supported by her husband.”
I was born in 1965 and come from a long line of women who worked outside the home. Most of them did shit work - cleaning, charring, working on barges, meat-packing plants or factories. The expectation was that the husband would hold down a job, and that the wife would have the kids, take care of the house, hold down a job, and cook the meals. If the husband didn’t spend too much money at the pub or chase other women he was considered “a good man”.
And once again, any real conservative of previous generations would horsewhip a loser like this down the street.
(I still remember a straight-arrow, multigenerational military, terrifyingly republican family friend attempting to give me fatherly advice after meeting my then spouse-to-be: “Make sure you can talk to each other, because you’re going to have to do it sometime.”)
Snausage-dicked manchild?
Winner.
The DuToilets better hurry up with that plastic surgery appointment for their Daughter - the state fair livestock showing circuit starts in July.
I am amused by the random ads served by Google at the top of this page, just under the Pandagon banner. I realise that they probably rotate, but at the moment I have:
China Girls for Marriage
Beautiful Chinese Women Seeking Men For Love & Marriage. Join Free Now!
Be The Woman Men Love
Men Don’t Fear Commitment With The Right Woman. Show Him You’re It!
Filipinas look for love
Pretty girls from Philippines look for serious relation worldwide
I am amused by the random ads served by Google at the top of this page, just under the Pandagon banner. I realise that they probably rotate, but at the moment I have:
China Girls for Marriage
Beautiful Chinese Women Seeking Men For Love & Marriage. Join Free Now!
Be The Woman Men Love
Men Don’t Fear Commitment With The Right Woman. Show Him You’re It!
Filipinas look for love
Pretty girls from Philippines look for serious relation worldwide
Second for snausage-dicked manchild.
Longhairedweirdo says:
“I was born in 1966, and back then, it was a complete given that a woman would get married and mostly be supported by her husband.”
I belong to the same generation as Longhairedweirdo and , like another poster, also come from a long line of women who worked. My grandmother worked the night shift at Boeing and took care of the house ‘n’ kids during the day, while my grandfather worked at Bethlehem Steel. No one thought it was weird or neglectful. That’s what working-class women did to keep the household running. And my great-grandmother ran a small home-based business to supplement my great-grandfather’s halibut-fishing income. My mother worked, too.
Ms Kate, I’m ashamed of you- are you suggesting they make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?
I’m sure a good nanny is harder to find than a partner for some casual sex.
Deeply understated.
These DuToits, they are not well. Surgery? Virtuous?
That is all.
I know this has already been said, and said by lots of people, but it’s Mrs. du Toit’s take on life, more than her husband’s, that smacks me in the gob.*
“Oh, sweetie, don’t be silly…of course men don’t really like you; you’re not pretty enough for that!! But don’t worry, honey, we’ll see what we can do. Maybe if we fix you up with some bodywork we can still pass you off at only a moderate loss.”
Cripes.
*So he’s a choad. Big deal. He’s got lots of company; there’s plenty more just like him with the same set of characteristics and the same general conformation who might just as well have popped out of the self-same chute. {Shrug.} It’s not like we’re faced with some dreadful impending choadery shortage (alas). Though I admit it’s rare for choadery to self-explicate to the extent that it does in the case of Mr. du Toit.
re: Sciamanna
If I ever have a million dollars, I will start a woman for woman agency, helping Asian women who have gotten their green cards to ditch their husbands. Unless they are truly in love, as no doubt, SOME would be. Just yesterday in Ming Pao though, a little article in the China section covered two marriages to foreigners, one man remarks that western women are too independent, while Chinese women are ‘more family minded’, and that he looks forward to the daily home-cooked meal. Bwhahaha, it won’t last. She’ll fake it until she doesn’t have to, and then he’ll whine about how all women are users.
“snausage-dicked”
If you went and looked at his reviews and opinions on various firearms you would be doubly convinced of this. I’m sorry, but a man who is positively addicted to using the word “manly” and “extremely manly” describe heavier or effective lighter calibres is doubtless possessed of some issues in this regard.
There is one caveat to that, though. The aggressive use of this word leads me to wonder whether or not Du Toit’s site is subtle, within-their-walls parody. “Manly” gets used so much that it starts to sound like a mocking catch phrase, like “girly men” from the Hans and Franz SNL sketches.
seeker:
I am clinging to the hope that the whole site is a parody. Otherwise Mrs. Du Toit would have sent me into one of my let-me-out-of-this-species spirals of despair, and the residency requirement for Martian citizenship is a *pain*.
These DuToits, they are not well. Surgery? Virtuous?
I love the low standards for virtue in women. Apparently, you can rob banks and kick puppies in your free time, as long as that hymen is intact.
Sniper, don’t laugh: I knew one virgin who thought exactly that.
And now the pansy liberal disapproval police come down on a fine, established sport. God, what a milk-and-water nance you are, ginmar.The story from South Carolina is old news.
The General Assembly passed a bill that made cockfighting a felony while tabling a bill that made wife beating a felony.
That’s not the worst part. Sometime legislatures unintentionally do things that look really, really, stupid. Oversights happen, right?
Not in South Carolina. Rep. John Graham Altman (R-Charleston) actually defended the legislature’s action. Then a tape of the committee meeting got out where some unknown legislator was actually making jokes about domestic violence.
Is it any wonder why SC is at the top of all the bad lists and the bottom of all the good ones?
My favorite line in the essay is when Li’l Kim attempts to disguise the steaming load of opinion he’s just pulled from his nether regions by saying “It’s a plain fact.”
not ginmar, sniper. Ginmar is … [checks conservative terms of abuse, runs finger down list to find “combat veteran” … ah! here it is] … a phony soldier.
Yup, phony is right! You know, I think du Toit said something like that hiimself, so it’s got to be true. How come such a gun nut’s never been in combat?
Be fair, ginmar. It appears he was in the S.African army back in the day. Perhaps America’s current enemies aren’t sufficiently dark for him?
South African Army? Er….I’m sorry, I don’t know that they’ve ever done anything but massacre civilians seen action. Ahem. Being in the Army is not a guarantee that the guy saw action, either. He could have been book keeper for all I know.
But hey, I’m just his worst fuckin’ nightmare. I know more about guns than he has, I’ve used more than he has, and I’m female and I don’t care to marry. He’d wet his pants if he walked in front of my house.
Guys like that don’t walk in the front; they stay in the shrubbery by the bathroom window, furtively jerking. Sad but true. I hate to be the one to break it to you.I’m his worst fuckin’ nightmare, then. I’m a pinko liberal commie hippie combat veteran feminazi and I have guns. As a matter of fact, I know enough about guns to know he’s a limp poseur with more issues than National Geographic. Oh, yeah, and most of the local cops work with my 1st. Sgt., who’s a woman with four kids. I could shoot hte motherfucker and the locals would probably shake my hand.
Remind me again how feminazis are supposed to be the ones that hate men? This guy hates men something awful. Of course he hates women worse, but still…..can you imagine the childhood his kids had?
If we assume he’s for real. I genuinely wonder whether he’s a parody. But then again those emergency kits in case the n*ggers start running amok do smack of a genuinely unbalanced psyche.
They had me at “some men have drank the g-shot Kool-Aid.”
Ah yes, the mythical g-spot. Frolics with the gentle unicorns.
Hate to tell you but the S.A. Army has been badass for quite some time. They do have a rep for doing the job.
Yeah, thanks, as somebody who’s been in for sixteen years, I’ve never heard much that didn’t involve killing unarmed civvies. I’m funny like that, not being impressed. I don’t wet my pants over Blackwater, either.
They’ve done a bit more than that. They fought a stand-up war against the Cubans and MPLA in Angola, for example. Not to mention all the counterinsurgency work against SWAPO in Namibia. They have a reputation as a tough lot.
He must have been a clerk. I’ve yet to see a real military guy who puts on the show that these reichwingers do.
My Iraq CO has quite the macho resume. Funny, he never boasted about that. He told funny stories about what a clod he was. Stateside, he’s been a cop for twenty years. Hasn’t fired his weapon once, doesn’t keep a gun in the house. He’s got balls of solid steel and if he crooked his finger at me and asked me to suit up for a convoy to anywhere, I’d do it, because he’s just that great of a guy to serve under. But I had to find out from a third party that this guy had a resume that would make Du Toit wet his pants.
That would fit. It has been my civilian experience that, when talking to veterans, the brag level goes down as the one moves closer to the front. For example, my own father was an RAF WW2 Bomber Command veteran, and I think he spoke about three sentences about it during my conscious lifetime.Sniper, my friend Ed has come up with a neologism for the feeling I think many of us are feeling: “Wagonhalt.” It’s pseudo-German, in that they pronounce it like “vaganhalt!!” and I’ve been yelling it nonstop since I first read the definition.
It varies. One friend of mine, John, a Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot, is quite clinical when talking about his kills. Even in his ’80s he remains something of a blue-eyed killer. He still chuckles at the recollection of an operation over Yugoslavia where he gunned down a German in a strafing run.
That said, John is openly regretful about the friendly fire incident, a genuine accident, where he killed a Hurricane pilot. He’s particularly bitter about his C/O, Adolph Malan, who tried to have him cashiered by a courts-martial following that incident. The only thing he does not talk about is the time he was shot down during the Battle of France and had to be evacuated from Dunkirk. “That was a bad time,” is all he’ll say.
Another acquaintance of mine was a rear gunner on Lancasters during the war. I know from his son that he got extra pay for cleaning out the bomber after one of the crew was killed. He doesn’t talk about his war at all, and I know he was hospitalized for a while due to the trauma.
Lee, was it this friendly fire incident?
“At some point or another, if the perceived negatives outweigh the positives, the man will quit the relationship—I mean, just bail out of the whole thing—and usually with a swiftness and finality which confounds women.”
I’ve seen it reported a lot that in fact, it’s more often the woman that ends a marriage / live-in relationship and it’s the man who “didn’t see it coming”. I don’t want to spend my afternoon googling, but don’t MRAs also complain about that? Therefore, his statement above seems not to stack up, at all.
Well, you know, Du Toit is White Fang, master of his own destiny. In this hypothetical relationship, it’s him who gets to pick and choose, baby, and don’t you forget it.
The idea that he’s going to be the one who is left, and upset when some woman dumps his ass sorta conflicts with this internal mythology.
My Iraq CO has quite the macho resume. Funny, he never boasted about that. He told funny stories about what a clod he was.
Mmm - one of the quietest, gentlest men I knew while I was growing up, hell of a great guy, commanded an artillery battery in Vietnam - given the nature of the service, he almost certainly killed more people than anyone else I’m likely to meet.
My dad was a WWII veteran of the South Pacific. He fought for three years in conditions which make Iraq look like the Ritz. He told funny stories. He had nightmares. He knew every sorrowful poem written about war, and the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry the Fifth reduced him to tears. That’s how he coped.
When my squad was pinned down for a day and a night by a vastly superior force—eight hundred to forty soldiers of various nationalities—-my Iraq CO loaded up every last round of ammo we had and tried to get clearance to drive a twelve-man convoy across the largest province in Iraq at 3 AM under the noses of insurgents to relieve us and get us out—or die trying. When Battalion flatly refused he came within a hair’s breadth of commandeering a Blackhawk with his sidearm. I’ll never forget that. He got a Bronze Star, and he earned it. So you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical about Mr. Du Toit’s credentials.
Actually, if I remember correctly Du Toit took a few digs at me in typical Reichwing fashion after I blogged about that battle, in the interests of full disclosure. Of course having a vagina precludes combat experience, because the enemy checks your genitals before they shoot at you.
Sniper, my friend Ed has come up with a neologism for the feeling I think many of us are feeling: “Wagonhalt.”
Excellent! Now, instead of covering my eyes and fleeing the room when I witness something so godawfl stupid, I can just screwm “Wagonhalt!”
Thanks!
It’s much to late to respond directly to anyone on this thread, but… first, anyone who thinks I overgeneralized, I’m sorry. I was talking about my impressions and understandings, and, of course, children have very limited world views. I’m nowhere near the historian I’d have to be in order to determine if what I’m saying was more widespread than my experience (in working class Philadelphia).
However, I did not say “women did not work”. I said that the expectation was that they’d be “mostly supported by their husbands”. The man was supposed to be the breadwinner. I was not denying that women did work, or saying that it was seen as neglectful or wrong. (But my mom did seem to have extremely strong feelings about there being a parent at home any time the kids might be.)
But the economic reality - it was much, much harder for a woman to find a good job - fed into the social expectations that a woman would marry.
When that changed, when a woman has a decent chance of finding a decent job, it couldn’t help but change the nature of man/woman relationships.
Resurrecting an old thread here, but what really floors me about the Mrs du Toit comments about her daughter needing surgery to snag the right husband is that she believes that her daughter shouldn’t settle for less than being a trophy wife to some successful man (all tied up with bride-price language about how EXPENSIVE her daughter will be for her future husband to acquire).
It’s obvious that she thinks her daughter marrying a guy that likes her just as she is necessarily means that such a man won’t be as successful as she wants her son-in-law to be (because rich powerful men don’t have to settle for less than perfectly decorative women, and if they do there’s something wrong with their competitive streak).
See, MRAS? It’s this conservative, family-honouring, model of wifely perfection who is setting up the idea that women should always aim to marry the richest man they can find. It’s not feminists who advocate marriage as a mutual trophy-hunt - wealth for her, beauty for him - it’s patriarchal traditionalists.