Saturday, April 30, 2011

Great Expectations, Dating, and the Battle of the Sexes
October 5th, 2007 ·
Sec­ond in a series of essays
=================================================
great expectations dating

In the so-called war between the sexes, men had been on the offen­sive by wield­ing most of the power in rela­tion­ships for thou­sands of years — but women had been turn­ing the tide back over the last forty. The result? Now, the two armies have stopped mov­ing. They have com­pletely sep­a­rated from each other, sit­ting motion­less while star­ing at each other across a no-man’s land of lone­li­ness and bro­ken hearts as a result of great expec­ta­tions in dat­ing.

How do I know this? I see the headlines.

A major­ity of mar­riage­able women are liv­ing with­out hus­bands. An increas­ing num­ber of sin­gle women are pur­chas­ing homes by themselves. The total num­ber of sin­gle Amer­i­cans is also grow­ing. More men say they never want to get mar­ried. In Britain, there are more sin­gle men than unat­tached women. Hun­dreds of web­sites offer advice for sin­gles rang­ing from pick­ing up a one-night stand to find­ing the love of one’s life.

More and more dat­ing web­sites exist for those who are unable to find a part­ner. (In busi­ness par­lance, the size of the mar­ket is increasing.) There are dozens of blogs on dat­ing on just this one list. Teenagers, col­lege stu­dents, and recent grad­u­ates are hooking-up rather than form­ing sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ships. Men and women are mar­ry­ing at increas­ingly older ages — now twenty-seven for men and twenty-five for women. “Starter mar­riages” are becom­ing more common.

Well, what’s going on?

Argu­ments Against Feminism

First, we need to under­stand the basic men­tal­i­ties of men and women in the con­text of evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­ogy.* For tens of thou­sands of years, men were the providers of resources and pro­tec­tion while women took care of hearth and home. Nature pro­grammed men to spread their seed as far as pos­si­ble while women wanted men to stay and take care of their chil­dren. So, soci­ety founded the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage to get men to stay with the chil­dren. (I believe there are spir­i­tual aspects to mar­riage as well, but its prac­ti­cal­ity can­not be overstated.)

These needs and desires were pro­grammed into our soci­eties – and our brains — over mil­len­nia. Men and women needed each other because each half of a cou­ple pro­vided things that the other could not. Women wanted men who would pro­vide resources, and men wanted fer­tile women who would bear and raise their chil­dren. Women date up; men date beauty. Forty years of fem­i­nism can­not change these sub­con­scious attitudes.

Over the last sev­eral decades, how­ever, the roles have changed. Women have become inde­pen­dent, and men have become less nec­es­sary. (New York Times colum­nist Mau­reen Dowd even wrote a book with that as its title.) The end result — and the rea­son for the increas­ing preva­lence of sin­gle­ness – is sim­ple. Men and women feel that they no longer need each other, and this atti­tude issep­a­rat­ing men and women:


That bat­tle of the sexes, accord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Andrew Hacker, a New York soci­ol­o­gist, will not be won any time soon. In a 2003 book Hacker argued that mar­riage rates may con­tinue to fall if young pro­fes­sional women seek only their finan­cial equals as mates.

“There is a greater divide between the sexes than at any time in liv­ing mem­ory,” Hacker said. “The result will be a greater sep­a­ra­tion of women and men, with ten­sions and recrim­i­na­tions afflict­ing beings once thought to be nat­u­rally companionable.”

Fem­i­nism Essay

What caused this? Fem­i­nism. More specif­i­cally, the unin­tended con­se­quences of fem­i­nism. Fem­i­nism helped women to over­come their lowly, unde­served sta­tus as non-voting cit­i­zens whose only duties were to get mar­ried and have kids, but like every social move­ment, it has had effects that no one could have foreseen.

First, we must start with women. After all, women make the choices in the dat­ing game: Women choose which suit­ors have a chance, but men hit on every sin­gle girl above a cer­tain gen­eral thresh­old of attrac­tive­ness. When a man makes the “first move,” he is usu­ally respond­ing to a sub­con­scious sign of inter­est that the woman has already sent. This is an impor­tant prin­ci­ple. Women make most of the choices in the dat­ing scene because they must be picky: They only have one fer­tile egg per month, and they lit­er­ally live with the con­se­quences of sex. Now that women are becom­ing equal to – and even sur­pass­ing – men in school and in the work­place, they can take care of them­selves. They do not need a provider.

How­ever, this con­flicts with the sub­con­scious atti­tudes that women have. Girls are raised with tales of a per­fect Prince Charm­ing who will res­cue them. They idol­ize their fathers (for bet­ter or worse, depend­ing on what type of men they were). They are treated like princesses. Most impor­tantly, they have the evo­lu­tion­ary impulse to “date up.” They want some­one amazing. Women, indeed, want it all. (This atti­tude can lead to more regret later in life when they real­ize that no one can have it all.)

This desire, how­ever, works against a woman’s inter­ests. Women are pro­gress­ing along a set path – high school, col­lege, grad­u­ate school/career, mar­riage, and then fam­ily – and only worry about hav­ing fun while they are teenagers and twen­tysome­things. Mar­riage and fam­ily now seem to be bur­dens to delay as long as pos­si­ble rather than won­drous joys. The irony of the sit­u­a­tion is that women have the great­est chance of attract­ing a part­ner before the age of twenty-five, roughly when they are most attrac­tive. Biol­ogy, after all, is work­ing against them. There is noth­ing wrong with get­ting mar­ried in col­lege or grad­u­ate school and wait­ing to have chil­dren, but this thought rarely crosses anyone’s mind.

Focus­ing on one’s career for a long time also poses another risk. The more suc­cess­ful a woman becomes, the smaller the pool of accept­able men becomes. In other words, suc­cess­ful, career-oriented women price them­selves out of the mar­ket unless they date men who earn less money or have less edu­ca­tion. Authors like Bar­bara White­head com­plain that “there are no good men left,” but the real­ity is sim­ple: Men have not fallen; women have risen. It is hard to “date up,” for exam­ple, when one grad­u­ates from Har­vard and works on Wall Street. Many suc­cess­ful women are unhappy because they feel that they must hide their suc­cess (see here as well), or they sub­con­sciously resent their hus­bands or boyfriends if they earn lower salaries. Fem­i­nism, in a nut­shell, has made women pickier.

Cri­tiques of Feminism

Now, I’m not only blam­ing women. Men, too, are at fault. Fem­i­nism also made men pick­ier — but for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Adver­tis­ers have always used sex to sell prod­ucts, but one unin­tended result of fem­i­nism is that overt sex­u­al­ity and pornog­ra­phy have become main­stream. (Pornog­ra­phy, accord­ing to one school of fem­i­nism, empow­ers women. I disagree.)

Men are bom­barded with images of fake, doc­tored, unre­al­is­tic women in tele­vi­sion pro­grams, adver­tis­ing and pornog­ra­phy. Their stan­dards have become higher, even though the vast major­ity of men should not rea­son­ably expect to date a Per­fect Ten (or even an Imper­fect Seven). Still, women have adapted to this trend by look­ing and act­ing like porn stars in order to attract men: expos­ing them­selves for Girls Gone Wild video crews; pos­ing in soft-core porn mag­a­zines like FHM and Maxim; mak­ing out with each other; wear­ing slutty clothes; and oth­er­wise act­ing like pieces of meat. (By the way, read this pro­file of Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Fran­cis. It will make you cringe.)


Fem­i­nism made men pick­ier, and it also made pre-marital sex accept­able and com­mon. How­ever, we have now trav­eled to the oppo­site end of the spec­trum. Men, by allow­ing their base instincts to take over, have allowed women to degrade them­selves rather than be treated respect­fully. In the end, women suf­fer because of the Madonna-Whore Com­plex: men want to hook-up with these women, but no man would ever marry one of them. Evo­lu­tion has taught men to value mar­i­tal fidelity — from a bio­log­i­cal standpoint, a man wants to be con­fi­dent that his chil­dren are, well, his. No guy wants to have sex with the girl whom every­one in the bar has already done. I won­der how many women are now alone because of this sen­ti­ment, but I imag­ine that the Madonna-Whore line is dif­fi­cult to tread.

The ease with which men can obtain sex is another rea­son for the lack­lus­ter dat­ing scene. Men, as a result of women’s liberation, can now have sex with women who are just as promis­cu­ous as they are. Why buy the cow when the milk is free? In fact, an unin­tended con­se­quence of fem­i­nism has been to remove any moti­va­tion for men to get mar­ried. Men do not need to take care of women. Men can get com­pan­ion­ship from his friends. Men can watch sports and play video games on flat-screen televisions. Men can have sex and hook-up with untold num­bers of avail­able women (or down­load free pornog­ra­phy). Men can cook for them­selves, or they can order take-out. Men can hire clean­ing services.

The only prac­ti­cal rea­son for mar­riage, it seems, is to raise chil­dren — but fewer and fewer men have that desire as well. Birth rates in the United States, as well as West­ern Europe, have been steadily declin­ing. I can­not pro­vide a sat­is­fac­tory expla­na­tion, but it seems that peo­ple have gen­er­ally become more self­ish and unwill­ing over the last sev­eral decades to spend their money and time on children. To para­phrase a line from a recent Econ­o­mist arti­cle, I guess club­bing is more fun than chang­ing diapers.

How­ever, there may be darker rea­sons for an anti-marriage bias among men. Recent hys­te­ria in the United States and Great Britain over sex­ual preda­tors has led soci­ety to view all men as poten­tial crim­i­nals who pose threats to chil­dren. Men have even had to develop cop­ing strate­gies as a result, and fewer of them are vol­un­teer­ing to work in edu­ca­tion and help chil­dren in need. Accord­ing to sev­eral reports, boys also face dis­crim­i­na­tion at school. I’m not sure that I would feel com­fort­able rais­ing chil­dren in this environment.

Male chil­dren may have a harder time at school, but men in gen­eral are now told that they are noth­ing more than idiots and buf­foons. Most tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials and nightly sit­coms por­tray men (and hus­bands) as stu­pid boors and women (and wives) as intel­li­gent and sexy. Women used to be stereo­typed as flakes, but now the tables have turned. Per­haps each gen­der will be treated with respect one day.

My gen­er­a­tion, the one that grew up in the sev­en­ties and eight­ies, became known as the Divorce Gen­er­a­tion for a rea­son. This upbring­ing has inter­fered, in para­dox­i­cal ways, with our searches for spouses. Since we grew up in bro­ken homes, we des­per­ately want to cre­ate the sta­ble homes that we never had. At the same time, we are extremely picky because we do not want to choose wrongly and endure a divorce again.

Men, however, fear divorce mainly because the courts are stacked against them. Fam­ily law comes from a time when women were depen­dent on men, so most divorce set­tle­ments included alimony and an equal divi­sion of assets. (Oh, and ex-wives always seem to get the chil­dren.) Despite the fact that men and women can now take care of themselves, women will still receive the house, the children, and half of her ex-husband’s salary. In a world in which half of all mar­riages will end in divorce, can men be blamed if they think that the ben­e­fit of mar­riage is not worth the risk?

Where We Stand

So, after all of the changes that fem­i­nism brought to soci­ety, this is where the two armies stand. Women are frus­trated because their worldly suc­cess has hin­dered their search for the manly provider that their genes and upbring­ing have told them to want. They are increas­ingly picky. They feel pres­sured to act in a hyper­sex­ual man­ner while know­ing that most men, in the end, will only marry the Madonna, not the Whore. Women real­ize that by becom­ing as inde­pen­dent as pos­si­ble, they are los­ing their abil­ity to become part of a code­pen­dent cou­ple. Women try to “have it all” — a full-time career with devot­ing enough time to raise a fam­ily well – while know­ing that it is prac­ti­cally impos­si­ble. Women think that all men are lazy slobs at best and poten­tial crim­i­nals at worst.

Men believe that they will all get a woman with the looks of a model and the abil­i­ties of a porn star, and they do not want to set­tle for any­thing less. At the same time, they want a vir­tu­ous woman who will raise chil­dren prop­erly and cre­ate a nice home. Men feel inad­e­quate because they are den­i­grated in the media, and they are unsure of their place in soci­ety because the role that evo­lu­tion has told them to play – that of manly provider — no longer exists. Men see lit­tle need for mar­riage because its ben­e­fits can be gained else­where, and they stand a fifty-fifty chance of los­ing their chil­dren and half their assets if they were to get married.

Many of the prac­ti­cal ben­e­fits of mar­riage are no longer applic­a­ble because both men and women are self-sufficient, so peo­ple may be look­ing pri­mar­ily for love. (See here as well.) While this is a nice thought, any­one who has been in the dat­ing scene for a while knows that it is extremely rare to find some­one with whom one imme­di­ately “clicks.” It is no won­der the peo­ple are remain­ing sin­gle for so long. But the longer that peo­ple are sin­gle and inde­pen­dent, the harder it is for peo­ple to com­pro­mise, change, leave their com­fort zones, and become part of an inter­de­pen­dent cou­ple (see this post, par­tic­u­larly the com­ment by 2 cents).

Now, the two armies – men and women – are sit­ting and fac­ing each other across the des­o­late no-man’s land. Each side wants to raise a neu­tral flag, stop the fight­ing, and offer terms of nego­ti­a­tion, but each side is too proud to make the first move. They would just rather talk amongst them­selves while com­plain­ing about the enemy — it’s eas­ier, of course. But no con­flict has ever been solved that way.

Other Essays: The True Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions and In Defense of Free Trade and Globalization

*Clar­i­fi­ca­tion: When I say “men” and “women,” I do not mean all men and women. I mean the major­ity of men and women. In addi­tion, I am dis­cussing gen­der rela­tions only in a het­ero­sex­ual con­text.
(source:samueljscott.com)
=================================================

7 comments:

  1. Pakistani Escorts are acclaimed for their redesignd lооkѕ, stand-out interest, extra regular perfection, and fаѕhiоn ѕеnѕе all оvеr the country Islamabad Escorts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Our sexy girls are available for in-call & outcall bookings across Greater Lahore Escorts. This way you can either enjoy the company.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Noida escort service congratulates you for reaching the right destination. Today, we have earned a reputation for working with the most impressive call girls.

    http://noidaqueen.strikingly.com/

    https://noidaqueen.splashthat.com/

    http://noidaqueen.escortbook.com/

    https://noidaqueen-27.webself.net/

    ReplyDelete


  4. Hellow everyone ,If you are looking for Call girls in Noida. if you want book call girls in Noida. call us on :- 9873940964. for get fully sexual satisfaction by our girls.visit my website:-
    uttam nagar escorts

    kalkaji escorts

    defence colony escorts

    chanakyapuri escorts

    greater kailash escorts

    east of kailash escorts

    surajkund escorts

    malviya nagar escorts

    saket escorts

    ReplyDelete
  5. Escorts Whatsapp Number 9873940964 Garima Garg Call Girls Service Rohini
    Chanakyapuri Escorts |☺
    Dwarka Escorts |☺
    Rohini Escorts |☺
    Laxmi Nagar Escorts |☺

    ReplyDelete
  6. If you are searching for escorts in Delhi, 9711199012 You can hire youngest girls for the sexual night with call girls in Delhi city of Delhi.

    Kalkaji Escorts||||||||||||||||
    Mayur vihar Escorts||||||||||||||||
    Mukherjee nagar Escorts||||||||||||||||
    Munirka Escorts||||||||||||||||
    New friends colony Escorts||||||||||||||||
    South ex Escorts||||||||||||||||
    Airport Escorts||||||||||||||||
    Charmwood village Escorts||||||||||||||||
    Chattarpur Escorts||||||||||||||||
    Civil lines Escorts||||||||||||||||

    ReplyDelete