Читать книгу Men on Strike - Helen Smith - Страница 12
ОглавлениеI guess I’m one of the boycotters. . . . About 6 or 7 years ago I gradually just quit dating. Without really thinking about it, I came to the decision that I would not get married, so I wasn’t interested in going through the hassle of dating. The interesting part is that I share a house with two other guys in similar situations. We all seem to have voluntarily removed ourselves not just from the population of marriageable men, but from the dating pool. One is a few years older than me, the other [is] in his early 30s. Both of them were previously married and don’t seem eager to repeat the experience.
—A commenter named Ernie from PJMedia.com in response to my question, “Should Men Get Married?”1
There are many guys like Ernie all over the country who are no longer getting married. And why should they? Western culture has spent the past fifty years making marriage a better deal for women, while for men it’s become a real ball and chain, sometimes almost literally. Men used to go to work, come home and, after a hard day’s work providing for their families, they rested, ate dinner and felt like “the king of the castle.” Fast forward to today, where the man works all day, comes home to cook or wash dishes, is chided for not doing a good enough job, is relegated to the basement while the wife and kids enjoy the run of the house, and spends the weekends watching the kids with a dirty diaper bag slung across his shoulders or hanging out in a shopping mall holding his wife’s purse. On top of an already stressful life, he also gets a bunch of pitying stares from the younger men who wonder what he has become and how they can avoid the same fate.
Now, instead of equality in marriage, he can expect to share household tasks, act as unpaid bodyguard and home repairman, pay for most of the bills, help with the kids and, for all his efforts, be denigrated by the wife and society. And if he does fight back? He pays child support, gets half or more of his stuff taken and has to leave the house, and he might even get a restraining order or, worse, be charged with child or domestic abuse. What is there to gain?
It’s no wonder that fewer and fewer men are getting married now than in the past. Kay Hymowitz states in her book, Manning Up, that “in 1970, 80 percent of 25-to 29-year-old men were married; in 2007, only about 40 percent of them were. In 1970, 85 percent of 30- to 34-year-old men were married; in 2007, only 60 percent of them were.”2
Men no longer see marriage as being as important as they did even fifteen years ago. “According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997—from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.”3
Even in middle age, fewer men are getting married, especially those without a college degree. The New York Times reports that “about 18 percent of men ages 40 to 44 with less than four years of college have never married, according to census estimates. That is up from about 6 percent a quarter-century ago. Among similar men ages 35 to 39, the portion jumped to 22 percent from 8 percent in that time.”4 Even college-educated men are marrying less often at 84 percent, which is a decline of 9 percent since 1980.5 And the marriage rates in general keep plummeting. According to men’s activists Glenn Sacks and Dianna Thompson:
The US marriage rate has dipped 40% over the past four decades, to its lowest point ever. There are many plausible explanations for this trend, but one of the least mentioned is that American men, in the face of a family court system which is hopelessly stacked against them, have subconsciously launched a “marriage strike.”6
There are many reasons that men are not marrying, and one of them is certainly the marriage strike as described by Sacks and Thompson. However, though family court injustice plays a big part in why men are no longer marrying as often, it is just one aspect. Men have other psychological and legal concerns about marriage in today’s post-feminist society that increase the likelihood of the marriage strike. This chapter will address those concerns and look to answer the question, “Why aren’t men marrying as readily now as they did in the past?”
WHY MEN DON’T MARRY—FROM THE “EXPERTS’ ” PERSPECTIVE
As I read through all of the comments I have received from men around the country over the years on why they do not want to marry, I can’t help but feel that many so-called experts are wrong when they say that men are poor communicators. My interactions and observations show that men often know their minds very well, but they are reluctant to communicate in interpersonal and political settings for fear of coming across as weak or, worse, being accused of being sexist or misogynistic. Or sometimes, they are communicating, it’s just that no one is listening or people are actively rejecting what they say.
I have even had relatives or case workers—almost always women—who tell me that the boy or man they have accompanied for an evaluation or therapy will not talk; they are too closed down. Yet, not once in my twenty-plus-year career has one of those men or boys refused to talk. How did I get them to talk? I listened.
The problem today is that society is not listening to what men have to say if they do open up, and, at the same time, the risks for men in talking about these politically charged issues keep them silent, making it hard to glean the truth. Even those experts or authors who write books on the topic of male reluctance to marry and who profess to be somewhat pro-male seem to get it wrong. What they don’t realize is that the incentives to marry have changed for men, and they are no longer willing to risk so much more than in previous years to gain potentially so much less.
Authors Kay Hymowitz and Kathleen Parker have written books that, on the surface, seem to advocate for men. Hymowitz’s Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys7 and Kathleen Parker’s Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care8 are a good start to recognizing the war against men in our society, but the condescending titles alone give the impression that the authors care not so much about men as about how men relate to women. This is not to say these two books aren’t important. They are, as they give some good background on how and why society treats men in unhealthy ways. But I do have some serious criticisms.
Newsflash: If you want to be pro-male, using terms like “child-man in the promised land,” as Hymowitz does, is not the way to do it—and, frankly, comparing “saving the males” to “saving the whales” as Parker’s book does is, well, insulting. It implies that men are comparable to animals, which of course is how some women and their sexist male counterparts think.
When reading through these two books, I get the impression not that men are autonomous beings who deserve equality as equal citizens in a democratic society, but rather that they should be treated well enough so that they will want to marry women, have children and support them so that women will have a better life. I have a different take: I propose that men are autonomous beings who are entitled to justice and equality and the pursuit of their own happiness because they are human beings in a supposedly free society. Too bad this is such a radical departure that a whole book has to be written just to make this point. One would think it would be obvious, but it is not obvious in today’s America.
Other books, such as Guyland9 by Michael Kimmel or Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men10 by Leonard Sax, along with Hymowitz’s book, treat the men’s lack of interest in marriage as a kind of extended adolescence where men sit around playing video games and farting in order to ward off having to grow up. And all these “guys are losers” types stick together to add fuel to the negative image of men as boys. For example, Richard Whitmire, the author of Why Boys Fail11—another positive title!—endorses Hymowitz’s book by stating:
Kay Hymowitz does an exacting job describing the growing flock of man/children we’re seeing, and she lays out the disturbing reality of the “marriageable mate” dilemma. . . . Not only are there fewer college-educated men to marry, but many of those men who are available are little more than man/children—not anyone you would want your daughters to marry!12
As if that endorsement of Hymowitz’s book isn’t bad enough as an example of the condescension these men’s issues writers have for their subjects, Hymowitz, who professes herself to be “sympathetic” to men,13 has a chapter called “Child-Man in the Promised Land.” This chapter pokes fun at the men of today who refuse to grow up and who also—much to her chagrin—refuse to participate in “more civilized society”:
Nothing attests to the SYM’s [straight young male’s] growing economic and cultural muscle more than video games. Once upon a time, video games were for little boys. . . .
Indeed, the child-man’s home sweet media home is the Internet, where no meddling censor or nervous advertiser can come between him and his desires. . . . Contemporary undomesticated SY maledom appears in its darkest form in the person of Tucker Max, whose eponymous website is a favorite among his peers. . . . Crudity is at the heart of the child-man persona—the bad-boy tone epitomizes his refusal to grow up—but Max remains fixated on his penis and his “dumps” like a toddler stuck somewhere around the oedipal stage.14
Another of these books on the decline of men is Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men and the Rise of Women, which is frankly the most matronizing of all of these books.15 Rosin’s main thesis is that women have pulled ahead of men in many areas of society and are able to adapt and be flexible at home and work in ways that men cannot. In fact, in her book she refers to the “Plastic Woman” who is able to bend and do everything at once and who is climbing the ladder past men. These loser men are referred to as “Cardboard Men,” who are apparently inflexible and unable to adapt to the new world order.
What she doesn’t mention is that this new world order is a place where men are discriminated against, forced into a hostile environment in school and later in college, and held in contempt by society—and for the honor, are expected to conform to a society for women only. What she calls inflexibility is men rejecting her and other feminists’ suggestions that they become more like women. She has no clue how men really feel or why they behave the way they do, nor does she seem to care.
Case in point: Even her young son is appalled at the title of her book. In an interview with The Daily Beast, we learn the following:
There are a few things that happen when you attempt to travel the streets of New York with a bright yellow book that screams The End of Men under your arm. First, you get a lot of inquisitive stares. Some people snicker. When you accidentally leave the book on the counter of your morning coffee shop, the man who returns it to you points to the cover, giggles, and does a little jig.
But if you are the author of a book called The End of Men—with a man for a husband and a boy for a child—you get sticky notes left on your bedroom door. “My 6-year-old, to whom the book is dedicated, writes things like, ‘Only bullies write books called The End of Men,’” says author Hanna Rosin, whose 2010 Atlantic essay turned 310-page book hit stands this week. She clarifies: “He’s learning about bullying in school.”16
It seems that Rosin’s young son, Jacob, has a better grasp of gender relations than this “celebrated” feminist who doesn’t have a clue. Yes, Jacob, mommy is a bully, and maybe when you grow up, you will lead the revolution that teaches bullies like your mom that men are not defective girls.
How are men going to grow up and relate well to women if women don’t seem to like them?
Clowns, failures, unmotivated and child-men: With friends like the authors mentioned, who needs enemies? Publishers and women complain that men don’t read self-help or relationship books, but after reading these books, who can blame them? How many women would buy books where women were made out to be failure-to-launch goofballs who couldn’t carry their own weight? I do think that some of these books have merit and are at least attempting to shed light on male development, and a couple of these books even include interviews with actual men. However, they do so in a way that is unflattering to men to say the least and they reinterpret men’s behavior to give credence to their views of men as uncivilized, verbally stunted semibarbarians who refuse to do what society expects of them: Marry women and shut the hell up!
These books treat men and their behavior as the problem, but that’s superficial. The real question is: What is it about our society that has made growing up seem so unattractive to these men?
Maybe there is no incentive to grow up anymore. It used to be that being a grown-up, responsible man was rewarded with respect, power and deference. Now you get much less of that, if any at all. You have spent much of your youth confronted with “Boys Are Stupid” T-shirts, listened in health class as you are told you are a potential rapist, had your girlfriend talk about “cutting off your balls” without a thought and, of course, there were no repercussions. By college, you realize that the hostility is coming at you like a knife.
And as you get older, it only gets worse, and the younger guys know it. As a post-college man, you are now seen by the media as a buffoon, a potential pervert, a bumbling dad—if not a deadbeat—and your wife gives you a death stare if you don’t satisfy her every whim.17 You might even have a child and find out later that it’s not yours, yet you still have to pay up. In short, you are a sucker if you grow up and fulfill what society now expects of the average married male. You have few rights and even less dignity. And what about the perks if you don’t get married and grow up? It turns out that there are many, as I discovered with a little digging.
First off, if you live with your girlfriend, research shows you might be happier than if you got married. A Men’s Health article mentioned one such study that followed 2,737 people for six years and found that cohabiters said they were happier and more confident than married couples and singles.18 Live-in girlfriends even stay thinner on average than wives.19 There are many reasons that those living together are happier than married couples, such as “cohabiters tend to have fewer expectations on each other, nixing unwanted obligations.”20
This means that men who live with girlfriends rather than get married may not be taken for granted as often, as it seems that married women often treat their husbands more like the hired help than an equal partner. Men who are married tend to see their friends and family less often, which can harm their self-esteem.21 Marriage is also more likely to end in financial risk for a man if he is divorced. And just as important, the psychological risks for men in marriage are greater than they were in the past. Women are told constantly by society that they are “empowered” and this often translates into a man working, earning a living, helping with the housework and being relegated to the basement while the rest of the family enjoys the entire house. Does he get rewarded for this behavior? No, he is often second to his wife, the kids and even the dog. Hence, all the “doghouse” references that reinforce the idea that if he doesn’t buck up and do what society and the wife expect of him, punishment will follow.22 Though it seems funny, it’s not. Society has stacked the deck against men in modern marriage, and the guys know it.
Ultimately, society is asking men to do something that is going against their own interests. Their lives as single men are fulfilling, happy and, if not respected, at least envied by their married brethren. Life as a married man is often difficult with few perks and little in the way of respect or rights. The discrepancy between the life of the freer, single man and the life of the less respected, less free life of the married man is at the heart of why so many men have gone on strike. This discrepancy between the perks of single life and the punishment of married life for men has become wider in modern times given the unequal legal terms, cultural empowerment for married women—but not men—and the lack of reproductive rights that men face in comparison to their female counterparts.
WHY MEN DON’T MARRY—FROM THE MAN’S PERSPECTIVE
As I sifted through these men-are-losers with-a-twist books, I found that a major flaw with many of them is that they lack a man’s perspective—even if they were written by a man. They theorize about why men don’t want to marry or they look at stereotypical books and magazines such as Maxim that make guys out to be horndogs—nothing wrong with that, but men are more than their sexual urges—as a lens to evaluate men’s lack of enthusiasm for whisking a woman away in matrimonial bliss. But using Maxim and guys like hook-up artist Tucker Max—or even digging up hard-partying frat guys as examples of normal men and their feelings about marriage—is like using Sex in the City, Cosmo or sorority girls to describe all women’s views of relationships. It’s rather narrow.
And even if researchers do interview men, the media, journalists or the researchers themselves often apply negative interpretations to the reasons that men do not want to grow up and get married. They still seem to think that marriage and the concept of being grownup has something to offer men. But when you look at the behavior and misinterpret the reasons behind it, the truth still remains elusive. They treat men more like resources that haven’t been extracted yet, rather than human beings who make rational decisions.
For example, I found some research done by researchers at Rutgers University that looked like a decent study on why men don’t get married, until I looked a little closer. Sixty “not-yet-married” men were interviewed in northern New Jersey, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Houston. The men were ages twenty-five to thirty-three, and none of them was gay. The researchers found that the top three reasons that men did not marry was “they can get sex without marriage more easily than in times past,” “they can enjoy the benefits of having a wife by cohabiting rather than marrying,” and “they want to avoid divorce and its financial risks.”23
The interpretation? Men don’t need to get married to get what they want these days—mainly sex. But dig a little deeper and you find this statement in the article: “Men see marriage as a final step in a prolonged process of growing up.” One of the Rutgers’ researchers, David Popenoe, in a New York Times piece on marriage, says “men do not marry because they do not want to. As unwilling to commit as ever, men have been let off the hook by more permissive social mores that have made it acceptable to live together and raise children out of wedlock.”24
Yes, perhaps men do feel less pressure to marry, which is a good thing in many ways. But rather than “let off the hook by permissive social mores,”25 the real reason many rational men do not marry is that the incentives have changed and growing up is no longer a reward but a punishment for men—so why do it? More readily available sex may be the by-product of not having to grow up, but to grow up to possibly not get sex, to lose your dignity, your rights, your kids, and possibly your financial freedom and to be hurt is hardly worth the chance for some, and can be suicidal for others. Instead of spending our time trying to figure out how to get men to commit to marriage in its current state, we should be asking more questions like how can we make marriage more appealing to young men so that they want to get married? And why have so many men gone on a marriage strike?
Why not talk to some normal, everyday guys and the people who work with them to shed light on these questions? First, we must understand what normal, everyday guys in their natural habitats think of marriage and do so without the preconceived notion that they are losers who are failing to launch if they won’t satisfy a woman’s every whim. What a novel idea! “Where are these odd birds?” I wondered. Since many men seem to go underground these days, I decided to check around to see if I could find some of the haunts that these guys frequent. I figured that guys like technology, so a good place to start would be on the Internet and in the gaming world of guys who like video games. One good thing about the Internet: People are more likely to say in cyberspace what they will not say to your face. After all, studies consistently show that people tend to reveal more personal and potentially embarrassing information in a computer-administered interview than a face-to-face interaction.26
WHAT MEN ON THE INTERNET ARE SAYING ABOUT MARRIAGE
It is said that men can’t handle intimacy. That’s not it at all. It is sadness that men can’t handle and they fear that intimacy will take them there.
—Jack at Dr. Helen blog27
Since I have a men’s rights blog, I looked back at some posts on marriage where I had asked men if they wanted to marry and, if not, why? I initially made the mistake of suggesting that men who didn’t marry were missing out.28 My readers set me straight about the ramifications of being married in a society that puts women’s legal and psychological needs first and men’s needs last or not at all. First off, let me say that I am a libertarian and do not believe much in the state being involved in marriage in the first place. I think people should have the right to decide for themselves the rules of their marriages and should do so with private contracts. However, since the state is involved and I don’t make the rules, let’s deal with the real world.
I followed up the marriage blog post with an article for PJ Media that asked men if they should marry, and hundreds of readers contributed their experiences; many did so anonymously.29 There was a lot of anger and sadness in the responses and typically, you know what that means to the politically correct or even the white-knight crowd: Men who complain are either wimps or misogynists or both. In reality, they are usually neither. Plenty of feminists are angry or sad, after all, but those emotions are just seen as lending authenticity to their complaints. The men who responded to the question I posed had legitimate legal and psychological concerns. Some of the commenters felt that marriage was too much of a risk for men and had been warned by other men not to make a mistake. Here is one example from an anonymous commenter:
Problem is, at least 7 out of 10 guys I talk to tell me that it is one of the worst mistakes that they ever made. Some tell me not to marry American women, that they are all feminist at heart. One married guy told me that I could get the same effect by selling my house, giving all my money away and having someone castrate me. This is really starting to unnerve me and the more I learn about the legal bias against men, I’m beginning to back off of marriage. I love my girlfriend, but all of these guys say their girlfriends changed once they married and begin to dominate and control. I am starting to think marriage in America cannot be saved.30
Still others, such as the following commenter, have made commitments to marriage but found out they were on the short end of the stick from both the women and the law once they were in the middle of a divorce:
I met a woman that I was sure was my soul mate. I was deeply in love and so, I thought, was she. All this changed when I lost my high paying job through downsizing. To my credit, I went to work immediately and had two jobs, but still only made about 80% of my old income. My wife gave me a year and then began sleeping with a man, who hadn’t lost his job, in my bed while I was at work. She left with him, taking almost all of my savings and anything else she could carry. Her explanation was that she was “an expensive bitch” and she was unhappy because I worked so much. The adultery doesn’t seem to matter to the court and she got essentially everything. Besides the financial losses, I was so devastated by the betrayal that I could barely function for months. She treated me like garbage and I never worked harder at any endeavor in my life.31
Another commenter by the name of “confused” stated:
. . . the problem is that marriage is quite explicitly NOT a contract in our modern society. Instead, it’s a collection of whatever the judiciary/legislature decides it is today.32
Psychologically astute commenter Jack weighed in with:
It is said that men can’t handle intimacy. That’s not it at all. It is sadness that men can’t handle and they fear that intimacy will take them there.33
Barry states:
Personally I hate the idea that a woman can stop anything and everything I care about doing just by making my life a living hell until I concede to her demands. I must hold my tongue, hold my temper and “be the man there” while the spouse screams invectives and shouts how I should stop riding my bike, horse etc. if I loved her! And let’s not even go to the “I want you to stop riding the bike, horses etc. because YOU WANT TO,” not because I am bitching you off of the bike, horse etc. You name the hobby and the only recourse is divorce where the state takes all my toys and gives them to her. Yes, marriage ain’t what it used to be.34
Though some will dismiss these men’s voices as bitter rants on the Internet, in hearing the more angry or frustrated views of those who speak out, we can understand better what many other men secretly think but won’t say. In doing so, we can learn what truly needs to be changed for men to feel that marriage is a more rewarding experience. Next, let’s turn to what guys who like video games think of women and marriage.
WHAT GAMERS ARE SAYING ABOUT MARRIAGE
A lot of the guys who opt out aren’t particularly angry at women, they just don’t see much point to pursuing involvement with them.
—Vox Day, game designer and blogger at Alpha Game blog
Source: http://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/2012/02/introducing-hypergamouse.html
Vox Day is a blogger who runs the Alpha Game blog that is summed up with the following caption across the top: “Breaking the chains, winning the games, and saving Western Civilization.”35 He is also a game designer and author who is interested in the plight of the modern male. His site is a place for guys to discuss the difficulties of modern relationships, video games and just general guy stuff. Although not all of the men who go on the site are gamers—those who play video games—a number of them are, and it’s a good place to gather information on how gamers think in terms of marriage.
Before I turn to the marriage information, let’s learn a few important terms that will help add perspective to the data. Much of the conversation on the Alpha Game blog and many others that are interested in “pickup-artist theory”36 is about hypergamy, which is a term used for females’ tendency to want to “marry up.” James Taranto, in a Wall Street Journal article on American women, says that hypergamy “more broadly defined as the female tendency to mate with dominant or high-status males or to be selective about one’s choice of mate—is also widely observed in other species.”37
Vox Day, like so many of the pickup artist bloggers, has a male socio-sexual hierarchy that he uses to classify men. Here are a few of his classifications and their characteristics:
Alphas—the male elite, the leaders of men for whom women naturally lust.
Betas—the lieutenants, the petty aristocracy. They’re popular, they do well with women, they’re pretty successful in life, and they may even be exceptionally good-looking. But they lack the Alpha’s natural self-confidence and strength of character.
Deltas—the normal guys. Deltas are the great majority of men. They can’t attract the most attractive women, so they usually aim for the second-tier women with very limited success, and stubbornly resist paying attention to all of the third-tier women who are comfortably in their league. This is ironic, because Deltas would almost always be happier with their closest female equivalents. When a Delta does manage to land a second-tier woman, he is constantly afraid that she will lose interest in him and will, not infrequently, drive her into the very loss of interest he fears by his non-stop dancing of attendance upon her. In a social setting, the Deltas are the men clustered together in groups, each of them making an occasional foray towards various small gaggles of women before beating a hasty retreat when direct eye contact and engaged responses are not forthcoming. Deltas tend to put the female sex on pedestals and have overly optimistic expectations of them; if a man rhapsodizes about his better half or is an inveterate White Knight, he is almost certainly a Delta. Deltas like women, but find them mysterious, confusing, and are sometimes secretly a little afraid of them.
Gammas—the obsequious ones, the posterior puckerers, the nice guys who attempt to score through white-knighting, faux-chivalry, flattery, and omnipresence. All men except true Alphas will occasionally fall into Gamma behavior from time to time . . .
Sigmas—the lone wolves. Occasionally mistaken for Alphas, particularly by women and Alphas, they are not leaders and will actively resist the attempt of others to draft them. Alphas instinctively view them as challenges and either dislike or warily respect them.
Omegas—the losers. Even the Gamma males despise them. That which doesn’t kill them can make them stronger, but most never surmount the desperate need to belong caused by their social rejection. Omegas can be the most dangerous of men because the pain of their constant rejection renders the suffering of others completely meaningless in their eyes.38
Hypergamy and the classifications are important to understand as we look at the world of gamers and men who are not the alphas of the male world: Think of The Big Bang Theory characters who would be seen as Gammas or Omegas, who are are the men on the lower end of the dating pool. Do the least and most desirable men avoid marriage? Let’s see.
Vox Day put up a request on his site for readers to reveal their demographic information and gathered general information about their marital status, desire for marriage and their self-perceived classification such as Alpha, Beta and so on. Here is what he found:
There were 141 male responses and 14 female responses. In order to more meaningfully calculate the income and partner averages, I threw out the top five and bottom five male outliers and the top and bottom female outliers.
First, the men. Their average age is 37.8 years (median 37) with an average annual income of $74.8 ([median is] $65k) and 7 ([median is] 3) lifetime sexual partners. 76% are religious, 24% are not. 49% are married, 51% are unmarried, and 14% have been divorced. Most of the divorced men remain unmarried.
The 80/20 rule is largely substantiated. Even if the outliers aren’t included, the 20% (27) most sexually successful men had sex with 617 of the 921 women involved, or 67% of them. But since the Alphas and Sigmas by definition, [are] outliers, it’s necessary to include them here even though we didn’t in attempting to determine what is average. Including all 10 outliers meant that the 28 most sexually successful men had sex with 1099 of the 1447 women, or 76%. So, in the interest of precision, it should probably henceforth be described as the 75/20 rule, wherein 20 percent of the men are having 75% of the sexual encounters.
Women were significantly more pro-marriage than men. 86% of women were either satisfied with their marriage or interested in getting married versus 63% of men. In general, divorced and irreligious men were the most likely to be anti-marriage. Younger men were very slightly less likely to be pro-marriage, but the average difference between the pro- and anti-marriage camps was only one year. To the extent that the “marriage strike” exists, it appears to cover the full range of male ages.
Monetary success does tend to correlate with sexual success for men. The average income of the 28 ALPHAs, who had an average age of 38, was 50% higher than the average at $112k. The average income of the male virgins, whose average age was 31, was 16% lower than the norm at $63k. Now, obviously the additional seven years was an advantage in providing more time to increase income and gain sexual experience, though not enough to account for the full disparity. And yet, money is clearly not the only determinant since there are ALPHAs with no income and virgins with very high incomes. Still, throwing out just one outlier on both ends would make the correlation even stronger.
There is a noticeable difference between the Alphas and the High Alpha players. The obvious dividing line there is around 40+ partners. So, there is the all-important distinction many women have requested. Any man with more than 30+ historical partners should probably be assumed to be a ruthless player intrinsically unfit for a long-term relationship as 62% of the men in this category were anti-marriage. Only the male virgins, at 66%, were more strongly anti-marriage. Compare to this the 80% of Alphas in the 15–30 partner category who were pro-marriage; all of those in this category who were anti-marriage were irreligious and most were divorced.39
So what does all of this mean as far as sex, marriage and gamers are concerned? Some interesting tidbits arise. It seems that men who have had more than thirty partners are less interested in marriage, as are men who are virgins, who are the most anti-marriage. The High Alpha men with numerous partners might be players and just enjoy being that way. But, female readers, take note: Those Alpha men with fifteen to thirty partners are the most marriage-minded. Perhaps if an Alpha is not an all-out player, he is more likely to have the confidence and prior positive experience to believe he can make a marriage work and is confident enough to feel that nothing will go wrong legally or otherwise.
However, the non-Alphas tell a different story. For those men who are not Alphas, many fewer women are available. If 24 percent of the men are sharing 76 percent of the women, the sexual prospects are poor for the 76 percent of men who are sharing the other 24 percent of women. Perhaps of those 76 percent, some are the virgins who are the most anti-marriage or are less marriage-minded because they have fewer women to choose from or feel socially rejected. It would be interesting to see if the men who are more in the Beta and lower classifications are playing more video games. Vox Day had this to say about the younger gamers with whom he has had contact:
I probably have a unique perspective on it due to my connections to the young guys in the gaming industry. It’s bizarre how some of them are in their twenties, have graduated from good schools, and have simply zero interest in women. They just have literally nothing in common with them and no interest in them.
The “strike” theory is generally correct, I think. The problem is that games and porn are entertaining, inexpensive, easily accessible, and reliable. Women can be entertaining, but they’re expensive, inaccessible for most men, and from the male perspective, shockingly unreliable. I would say that porn has raised the bar somewhat—it’s bound to be seriously annoying when Little Miss Real Life won’t give head when Jane Pornstar is twice as hot and is cheerfully performing all sorts of acrobatic stunts. And if you think about it, is a real woman who is average and only wants to have missionary-style sex once a week, minus a week for her period, actually any better than a wide variety of gorgeous porn stars catering to every bizarre fetish the Japanese can imagine and available on demand? It’s not quite so clear once you put it in those terms. The biggest communication problem is that most women see “relationship” as a positive thing. Most men see it as an ambiguous thing. So, when the selling point of Little Miss Real Life over Jane Pornstar is “relationship,” you can see where it’s not going to be very appealing. I don’t think there’s much of a “fuck you” element, though. The guys who think that way tend to be the players, particularly the Sigma players. A lot of the guys who opt out aren’t particularly angry at women, they just don’t see much point to pursuing involvement with them.40
Are video games that good, or are they giving those 76 percent of men who have to share 24 percent of the women a place to go where they feel good, masculine and alive, and where they feel more like an Alpha? Or as James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal said about guys who prefer video games to girls: “there’s a reason they’re attracted to that particular pursuit. Video games are a simulacrum of masculine virtue: challenge, mastery, control.”41 The Alpha question? That will have to be a question for future research. Meanwhile, let’s toss in some real-life guys who can shed more light on the marriage question.
WHAT MEN IN THE GYM AND AT THE BAR ARE SAYING ABOUT MARRIAGE
Eight out of ten girls my age today are “sketchy.”
—Twenty-three-year-old Max at the gym on why men don’t want to get married early
Marriage is a dying concept.
—Twenty-four-year-old Jamie, when asked why men don’t get married as often
I continued my search for everyday men out and about in the world and decided that the local gym might be a good place to informally target men who might be willing to talk about their views on marriage. I had been watching young and middle-aged men at a local gym for weeks and sizing up a few as potential interviewees. As I stared and watched many of them working out with weights, I caught their eyes and was a bit afraid that they thought I was a cougar on the prowl for some fresh prey. If only they knew it wasn’t that exciting. I was just there trying to find some potential research victims.
I finally approached a guy named “Max” who agreed to participate when I explained my book and need for his input. He seemed a bit reluctant at first, but when I told him that his interview would be anonymous and his name would be changed, he agreed. I could tell that he wasn’t sure if he should say anything negative and searched my face for a reaction. When he saw that I wasn’t upset or angered by anything that he said, he seemed to speak more openly about how men feel about marriage and women.
Max was a thoughtful twenty-three-year-old, muscular, white college student with blond hair from Michigan who told me up front that he had a girlfriend. “Do you want to get married?” I asked, to which he replied, “yes,” but admitted he was one of the “lucky” ones. When I asked him why, he stated that his girlfriend was trustworthy and honest, kind of like himself. He had been dating her for about a year and things had been going well.
He was raised by a single mother and his father left when he was young. His stepfather came into the home and acted as his dad, and his mother became a very happy person. “It was so much better with my stepfather there. My mother wasn’t lonely anymore. One of my uncles is divorced and I see how alone and lonely he is. My sister is also divorced, so yeah, I think about how marriage might not work out.” Max seemed a bit naive when it came to the legalities of marriage, stating that he had taken some classes in college on law but he didn’t know much about family court. He assumed that if he got divorced because his wife had cheated on him or done something wrong, the courts would be fair and lean in his favor. He did acknowledge, however, that “our society has shifted towards women. Even my stepdad makes all the money and my mother makes all the choices.”
Max didn’t seem quite as naive when it came to choosing women. “Most of my friends won’t even consider marriage until their late twenties. A couple of them have been in love and got hurt when they were younger and I think that’s why they don’t want to get married now. I think girls a long time ago, maybe forty or fifty years ago, were doing less cheating and were more trustworthy. Now girls are more like guys used to be. I would say that eight out of ten girls now are ‘sketchy’ and about six or seven guys out of ten are those that girls can trust.”
When I questioned him as to what “sketchy” meant, he replied that “a lot of girls today are crazy partiers; they flirt with other people and have sex with other guys. If they sleep with you on the first date, they are more likely to go off with someone else while they are with you. I think that’s why guys are waiting to get married; they have to go through eight of the ten girls to find the two that aren’t sketchy.”
I asked Max if it was available sex that made it more attractive to stay single, but his feeling seemed to be that readily available sex wasn’t necessarily the reason that guys didn’t want to marry. He explained that readily available sex, though, was a marker of a possibly untrustworthy woman; if she slept with you on the first date, she might sleep with your buddy on the next one. “My girlfriend made me wait,” he stated. He also added that as an accounting major, he did a cost-benefit analysis of marriage and felt that, for him, the benefits outweighed the costs. He does think he is unusual in his desire for marriage, as many of his friends have no interest.
In the past, having a sketchy wife who cheated was frowned upon and there were repercussions to her for doing so. Now cheating women are celebrated and encouraged by the culture. Even Whoopi Goldberg nonchalantly talked about how she cheated on her husband with little judgment or repercussions by society. In an interview, she stated, “is screwing around five or six times while married and with different men for that matter something you can say casually? In the celebrity world perhaps.”42 But if you are Tiger Woods, you can be hit in the head with a golf club if you cheat and society cheers on your wife for being empowered. You will also lose much of your income and assets in divorce court and may even lose your kids, even if the wife cheats. And you are always cast as the bad guy: People wonder what you did to make your wife cheat. If a man cheats, on the other hand, the wife is a victim and he’s a louse who deserves punishment.
Now that the risk in marriage for men is so high, guys must be much more careful about whom they marry. Neither the law nor the culture will support them if they make the wrong choice. Women are the empowered sex and their sexuality is celebrated. Men’s sexuality is much more controlled by the legal system and society, even—or maybe especially—in marriage.
My next interviewee at the gym was Jamie, a twenty-four-year-old who sells gym memberships and works fifty to sixty hours a week. He grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and told me that his parents had been married twenty-seven years. “I don’t plan to get married until I am around thirty and I can afford it.” Jamie went to community college and has an associate’s degree in business administration. He would like to go on to a four-year college but said that he heard there was a high drop-out rate at the local state college and he didn’t know if it would be worth it.
He is living with two other male friends who are around his age and he pays his own way. He has a girlfriend and said that they go out on weekend nights when he has time, but he likes to sleep and cook when he is at home and doesn’t have a lot of time. “For most of my friends, marriage is the furthest thing from their mind,” he stated, and explained, “My generation spends a lot of time partying and there really isn’t much loyalty. If you are out and meet a girl or a girl you are seeing meets a guy, you might be interested in that person. You might hook up.” Jamie felt that his generation was influenced by celebrities and reality TV where everyone is partying and having a good time. “You see Kanye West and he has all these girls, not just one.” He does have a married friend “who can’t go out much because he has to stay home more often.” Jamie described marriage as a “dying concept” because people just seem to hook up, have kids and move on. He said that not getting married made a person “a lot more free.”
Jamie seemed to have a sense of learned helplessness in regards to a man’s part in sex, marriage or reproduction. He told me about a friend who, when he was twenty or so, was partying with a seventeen-year-old girl. The friend is unable to get a job now because the girl’s parents pressed charges and he is on a sex-offender registry. When asked how he would feel if this happened to him, Jamie just shrugged and said, “If the government passes strict laws, there’s nothing I can do. I can just make a choice not to do that.” I pointed out that he may not have a choice; for example, if he was in college and a girl said that he had sexually assaulted her, he might be found guilty by the school without a preponderance of evidence, even if he were innocent.
