Posted on 10/28/2011 5:09:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
Kate Bolick stares out at the world from the cover of The Atlantic magazine. She's wearing a black lace evening dress. "What, Me Marry?" asks the headline. She isn't smiling.
In fact, she isn't smiling in any of the photos that accompany her several thousand-word essay on singleness, marriage and the changing nature of dating and mating in America today. Bolick, 38, is groping toward accepting the idea that she may never marry. She badly wants to convince herself -- and us -- that older ideas about "unhappy" spinsters are silly cultural baggage best dropped off at the curb. And yet, there are those glamour shots -- Bolick behind the wheel wearing a fetching red dress; Bolick in a gold evening gown holding a glass of champagne; Bolick in a black cocktail dress -- but her expressions range from pensive to sad -- never happy.
Bolick seems genuinely conflicted about marriage. The daughter of a committed feminist, she marched off to third grade "in tiny green or blue T-shirts declaring: A WOMAN WITHOUT A MAN IS LIKE A FISH WITHOUT A BICYCLE." She recalls that when she was cuddling in the back seat of the family car with her high school boyfriend, her mother turned around and asked, "Isn't it time you two started seeing other people?" She took it for granted, she writes, "that (I) would marry, and that there would always be men (I) wanted to marry."
So sure was she of the limitless romantic opportunities available that at the age of 28, she broke up with a wonderful boyfriend. They had been together for three years. He was "an exceptional person, intelligent, good-looking, loyal, kind." Why did she discard him? "Something was missing."
Ten years later, she writes somewhat (though not entirely) ruefully "If dating and mating is in fact a marketplace . . . today we're contending with a new 'dating gap,' where marriage-minded women are increasingly confronted with either deadbeats or players."
There is a great deal of interesting data in this piece. According to the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of Millennials and 43 percent of Gen Xers think marriage is becoming obsolete. As of 2010, women held 51.4 percent of all managerial and professional positions, compared with 26 percent in 1980. Women account for the lion's share of bachelors and masters degrees, and make up a majority of the work force. Three quarters of the jobs lost during the recession were lost by men. "One recent study found a 40 percent increase in the number of men who are shorter than their wives." Fully 50 percent of the adult population is single, compared with 33 percent in 1950.
But these trends, however interesting, shed only an oblique light on the problem of the decline in marriageable males. Bolick edges closer to the truth in her discussion of sex.
"The early 1990s," she writes, "witnessed the dawn of the '"hookup culture"' at universities, as colleges stopped acting in loco parentis (actually they relinquished that role in the 1970s) and undergraduates . . . started throwing themselves into a frenzy of one-night-stands." Some young women, she notes, felt "forced into a promiscuity they didn't ask for," whereas young men "couldn't be happier."
According to economist Robert H. Frank, "when available women significantly outnumber men . . . courtship behavior changes in the direction of what men want." And vice versa. If there's a shortage of women, the females have more power to demand what they want, which tends to be (surprise!) monogamy. On college campuses, women outnumber men by 57 to 43 percent.
But economic analysis can take you only so far. Men's capacity to insist upon promiscuity rests completely on female cooperation. And women have been foolishly compliant for decades.
They've conspired in their own disempowerment, not because they love their sexual freedom (though a few may), but because people like Gloria Steinem and Ms. Bolick's mother convinced them that the old sexual mores, along with marriage and children, were oppressive to women.
The resulting decline of marriage has been a disaster for children, a deep disappointment to reluctantly single women and unhealthy for single men, who are less happy, shorter-lived and less wealthy than married men. The sexual revolution has left a trail of destruction in its wake, even when its victims don't recognize the perpetrator.
IIRC, the article on the correlation between Section 8
housing being introduced and the rise in crime in that
area was in The Atlantic. I’ve never been able to decide
if the authors were as naive as they were made to appear,
or why the magazine published it. There may have been
a few other informative items, but to the extent that I
have read it (a year through or more in college, long time
ago now, rarely now it’s notable only for missing the
point on all the big issues. I cannot understand why this
(the Bolick) article was published, i.e. why they think
this is newsworthy.
So it was. Didn’t realize it was 1973 though.
Should have guessed that would happen. After all, they
have been tossing out most everything else for decades.
There’s a type of man who will do just that. There’s
even a book about it, called “The Script” and a short
story c. 1925 by Mary Roberts Rinehart (in her collection
“Married People” ) that captures it perfectly.
Very good, albeit painful. One quibble: a CSW of my
acquaintance says that one recurring situation they face
at his workplace is single women with 4-5yo boys. Not
sure of the other background of his clients.
No pr0n in a lynx-view of the Internet (no graphics at
all) The only major drawback for me is that it’s ASCII
only and I need other alphabets. But it’s what I use
FR is quite lynx friendly I’m happy to report.
The imbalance is due to the ongoing and highly successful feminization of our boys. They got rid of shop class. Then they got rid of PE. Then they got rid of vocational and technical post-secondary schools.
There’s this enormous premium put on a piece of paper conferring some honor upon its holder as someone who spent 4 years showing up to class on time and partying on the weekends. I know vocational artisans who have been perfecting their craft for decades and could run circles around any cube-dweller. I know holders of Masters degrees and Ph.D.s who couldn’t tell you the difference between 1/8” and 1/16” on a standard ruler.
Colleges have become mundane, sterilized, and feminized campuses where women are empowered and men are second-class citizens who are going to spontaneously rape the freckled blonde who sits next to you in geography.
It’s a sick, sad world in which we live. The feminist counter-culture movement has gone mainstream, and for the last 30 years, the left, esp. academe, have been welcoming all of the leftist drivel you can have shoveled into your empty head.
And so that’s why the men can’t stay zipped up?
Go out to tea with your mom or girlfriend.
Don’t listen to crap from “therapists” and “death coaches” who will fill a person with crap such as “you need to do what is best for you” when you are in a family. No. That is wrong. If you are a member of a family, especially one of the parents, you need to do what is best for the entire family. Don’t kid yourself that your sex life takes precedence over anyone else’s needs.
Some of us conservative Catholic women are heartbroken because the men we married can’t stay zipped up and we can’t imagine why they would cause their wives and teenage children such grief and horror in order to satisfy their lust. Esp when the wives are good cooks, homemakers, mothers, skinny and blond.
No. I’m not offering excuses for others’ choices.
I’m saying the gubmint REWARDS such behavior.
If some man tells you he “can’t stay zipped up”, best advice is “NEXT!”
I don’t hang with that type. After all, my job isn’t a$$hole-whisperer now, is it?
Oh the men don’t announce they can’t stay zipped up. They sneak around sticking their anatomy where ever there is a hot spot.
I don’t have a sex life,so what I’m dealing with has nothing to do with sex nor marriage. If I did have a sex life I’d be discussing whatever’s going wrong with my husband about the marriage as well as the sex.
I’d be too uncomfortable discussing it with my mother.
I have a feeling this a reason why the good men go into hiding.
I’m pretty close to the experation date myself.
well, just don’t fall for their “me first” line of bs
I won’t,but it’s good to converse with someone who is neutral and won’t be biased.
I'm past my expiration date.
:)
I worked with a woman who was single and headed toward 50 who dropped a guy that she actually really had fun with and a lot in common. Her reason... he was two inches shorter than her and his hands were smaller than hers. I ran into her at a business networking event this year and she is now dating a married man who lives with her instead of his wife. He is a Catholic. He apparently feels he is committing a less grave sin by committing adultery than if he were to divorce his wife of 30 plus years. Crazy????
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