The dials have been tinkered with already. Merely eliminating anti-discrimination laws that favor women would do much to restore breadwinner jobs. Why should employers be forced to ignore the fact that women in fact do often take maternity leave?
This does not address the discrimination point, where a man is forced to be paid the same for a fundamentally unequal and lesser amount of work, since all employment is somewhat of an investment in the future of the employee
I think if anything men are currently the beneficiaries of affirmative action, at least at universities. This has second-order effects in professions like law and medicine.
Girls are simply doing better at school nowadays than boys are!
I also find it very, very hard to cry for men having to cover for women on maternity leave when I’ve spent so much of my adult life working very hard on a gig or “vendor” basis, for a fraction of the money earned by men doing similar work, because their wives and families subordinated their lives to the man’s professional needs in a way that wasn’t realistic for me. I have a good life; I don’t spend it crying or marinating in grievance. But I do find “wah, nobody gives men a chance” very hard to buy. In general.
If women are given occasional accommodations to *sustain the human race* is that really so deeply unjust? I mean, I generally haven’t asked for or expected such accommodations (or enjoyed them), but that doesn’t mean I’m persuaded it’s a ridiculous ask.
The accommodation we would like to give you is to only have to focus on sustaining the human race. First and foremost, and if possible to the exclusion of any other duty. We want you to choose a single man that you like, and make him personally responsible for obtaining all the money you need to sustain your own personal contribution to the human race. It is the ultimate accommodation.
I understand the thought, but it's kind of an exclusionary one. And also entails the condition that you and your offspring must find a way to make do with whatever said man is able to obtain, and no more. Even if you have the capacity, willingness, and desire to add to it.
Motherhood is the most important thing that most women do in their lives. In 20, 30, or 40 years, noone will care what you achieved, wrote, sold, or managed at the office.
Children and grandchildren are the real treasures - the literal fruit of life.
Girlbossery is awful for women, for kids, for families, and for wider society. Feminism is a lie. A false bill of goods.
I've had this conversation with so many men, but the funny part is, when you ask them, "OK, so suppose your wife, or the state, were prepared to earn the money you earn while you stayed at home caring for your children and grandchildren, 'the literal fruit of life.' Deal?"
Oh, heck no. Almost nobody wants that deal.
Motherhood is indeed the most important thing most women do. Fatherhood is the most important thing most men do. Oh, except for worshipping God, that's probably even more important... should we all go into monasteries? There are many factors that determine how our time is best allocated, and women need to weigh the full spectrum of considerations when making those judgments, just like men do.
lies spoken by the media. Men don't magically make more money unless they are more talented and hard working than a woman like you. In fact there are countless women earning money for very little due the gender descrimination by women towards men. Your side is the ignorant and vile half. Now that men have been shown, by women, their evolved tendecies men have stopped putting up with the foolishness of females.
That third sentence is a doozy. I’m sitting here trying to work out what it means. Some women earn too little because other women pay men too much? Or is it that the women earn too much for too little work because they pay men too little for too much work? Or…
Well, you got me. I am indeed (still!) quite unaware of this harsh reality.
I think that the problem is a subtler one. The current anti-discrimination regime is basically an invitation to both men and women to forfeit their duties.
The girls are doing better in school because we’ve modified the schools specifically so the women will do better in them. If girls were doing worse in school it would be a crisis but when it’s the boys doing worse it’s their fault.
Any guesses about why men aren’t doing as well at school? Or why they wouldn’t want to attend university? Or are we simply chalking it up to “girls rule boys drool”?
All relevant, though one other I’d add is that boys have developmental “way stations” as it were, moments when they tend to fall behind the girls in terms of things like executive function, and sometimes they fall off the wagon there and don’t quite get back on. So, that’s a thing we can maybe address more helpfully. And should, if possible! Of course I want boys to thrive in school. But, I don’t actually think “wars on boys” are the primary reason they are falling behind, nor should we downplay the achievements of girls as though it’s reasonable to assume that any time they’re beating the boys at something they must have clandestinely cheated.
Yes, this is complicated issue so, lets slightly break down the factors you raise.
1. Fewer dads present in the home (Fatherhood has been widely devalued and also punished via divorce law. Likewise, religious belief has been devalued. This factor rests at the heart of Rachel's observations: Fatherhood poses special liabilities for men today and many have begun to notice.)
2. Fewer virtuous male role models (Number 1. leads to number 2. Notice that while men and boys need each other there are fewer male spaces available for them that foster this elimental need.)
3. Permissive or neglectful parenting (Individual men and women as well as society itself has taken on this permissive attitude of poor boundaries in parenting. This is a byproduct of demoting the virtuous masculine roles of fatherhood.) Again, 1. & 2.)
4. Boys having a lower propensity to sit quietly and focus for extended periods of time (Nothing new there. The question is whether boys are punished for failing to behave as well as girls who better suited to sit quietly and focus - and therefore are rewarded and favored for their superior test scores. Some claim exactly this point while others dismiss the “wars on boys” altogether. You go Girl!)
5. Refusal of American education to formally track students (This is a generalization so I'm not sure what you indicate. Consent and notice play crucial roles in such lawful data practices. Schools typically rely on district-wide policies, parent–guardian communications, and student privacy notices.)
6. Zoning and occupational licensing regulations that depress construction - a source of good jobs for men who work well with their hands (a fairly obvious factor in some states and municipalities; less so in others.)
7. Boys being more vulnerable to indulge in vices like gambling, video games, marijuana and pornography (This is also not new, but the volume is deafening today. It's the slippery slope of a permissive culture lacking in shame, yet these vices could still be dialed back in law. We refrain from doing so at our peril. If we truly cared for boys, this would be mitigated - but do we care? And that is a worthwhile question.)
The question that I still feel unsatisfied about in these conversations is: where is the internal motivation for men? Why does it seem everything is about providing external motivation?
This is a quite personal issue to me, because I have a 48 y/o brother who has never moved out of my parents' house. My dad is gone and my mom is, obviously, aging. At some point soon, he will be on his own and he is not prepared because he takes no responsibility.
I get that external factors aren't great, but surely at some point, you have to think to yourself, "I better get my s*&5 together or I'm gonna be in trouble."
I was thinking about this while out for a walk today, it may be that for a man today who is on the margins, getting your sh!t together to provide for a family is not the slam-dunk it was many years ago.
I have taken some time recently to do some sense making on all this, and while it's been very helpful for me personally, it's also clarified certain societal realities that are unlikely to change anytime soon.
Here again, the civil society probably has much more to do with the mutual problem. There is no intelligible matrimony to enter if there really is a unilateral right in the mother, whenever she feels like it, to destory the offspring who are the first purpose, the central defining goal, of matrimony. And the situation is nearly the same under a regime where one party, husband or wife, is regularly invited by the state, whenever dissatisfied, to toss off the other for no good cause. Neither men nor women are "marriageable" in such cases.
I'm certainly sympathetic, although of course, we can make considerable headway by instilling other standards in culture, or at least our subcultures, without the help of the state. Surely your marriage is similar to mine in that we never ourselves considered divorce or spousal abandonment a live option. My husband could legally abandon us, but I truly never worried that he would.
Nor abortion of course. The thing is, you have to construct and maintain a counter subculture that is constantly at odds with what the political community as a whole honors. Such a culture has existed for us, friends, etc. Better for the political community to be reoriented--more just for all.
I want that too of course. My suggestion is basically that it may be necessary to return to that “from the ground up” as it were. There were some things to cope with. It wasn’t per se happy, but unavoidable. Christianity has the resources to overcome those challenges and bring us back.
I believe the solution to the problem is a proper understanding of marriage. Society has lost the concept of marriage as an unbreakable covenant. The "no one gets out of this until one of us is dead" sort of covenant. Right now marriage is a civil contract that can be broken at any time for any or no reason. The ramifications are serious and devastating. A man who commits to love his wife, that sacrifices his wants needs and desires for her good, will do those things that make him into a virtuous man. And a woman who sacrifices her wants needs and desires for her husband will maker herself into a virtuous woman. As it stands today nobody wants to sacrifice anything. Until we return to a proper understanding of marriage there will be no resolution.
I don't really have any answers to these very good questions, but I do have more questions!
Is the optimal number of marriageable men the number that would satisfy the aggregate demand of all women for marriage?
Or is it the reverse?
What if those numbers are different?
How did societies that suffered an acute marriageable men shortage in the past (think post-war Soviet Union), deal with it? (Hint: badly!) Has anyone solved this sort of problem in the past in a way anyone would consider good?
All interesting questions. I will at least note that the unmarried women as a group are doing far better than the unmarried men. Something worth considering for those eager to champion the rationality of “men going their own way.” (Which I don’t mean to imply includes you.)
I think we could sustain a society with somewhat lower marriage rates if those who did marry had more children. But a society where marriage itself is the “slumming it” option for the unsuccessful… not good.
In the past, high-paying jobs tended to be reserved for men precisely to make them "marriageable" (able to support a wife and children). Women must demand the restoration of their long-forfeited right to be "discriminated against."
Subjugating and/or discriminating against women likely would yield some dividends from the standpoint of "making men marriageable,"though I suspect not *quite* as many as advocates often suggest. But... that would be rather unjust to women. It's not reasonable to ask them to forfeit their own freedoms and general thriving to that extent, just to make men "bigger."
But we don't actually need to. As I've explained in this post. Men don't need the highest-paying jobs to be marriageable. They just need to be steady, reliable, employed.
Does it seem likely that the sort of man who chooses a life of pure indolence over a respectable job and middle-class marriage, would in any case be suited for a high-level, high-responsibility job? Hating women for their own excellences is not the answer.
What's your evidence that "steady, reliable and employed" is enough to make men marriageable? Maybe it's enough to get your stamp of approval as manageable. But will women actually marry them? Sometimes, no doubt. But I think usually that's not enough to get a woman to marry you and not get bored and leave you. Empirical question.
As for "subjugating and/or discriminating against women" being "unjust," what does that mean? If a woman is "subjugated" in the sense that she can sense to a marriage under Christian norms of male headship, is that unjust? What if I discriminate by marrying a woman who is objectively less qualified to be my wife, for reasons of personal attachment? What is discrimination, anyway? Do we need "subjugation" and "discrimination" as concepts? I don't think I make use of them in my own moral reasoning...
People have rights that shouldn't be violated. That's justice. Voluntary subordination does not violate rights, and people's genuine rights do not include the right to commandeer the resources and attention of others through anti-discrimination rules.
Here’s a thing I think you should think about a bit more. It’s just very obvious that historically, women’s preferences have been far less determinative than men’s. Men hold the stronger hand biologically; they are in a better position to get what they want, and they more often *have* gotten what they wanted. St Paul told them to be self-sacrificing, and sometimes they were, but more often they were not, because they fallen humans just like women. You say that men and women were once taught to be what the other desired. To some extent that’s true, but it’s more true on the female side, because women weren’t in as strong a position to demand what they wanted. We honestly don’t *know* as much about what women want. They haven’t as often been in a position to tell us.
Women are in a stronger position now. Not just because “feminism” or because of abortion (though, yes, I do think that moral failures on the female side have something to do with it) but also because “free societies” and because masculine strength counts for less than it used to. Men have to work harder to meet women in the middle.
Again, women have responsibilities too; it’s not all men’s fault. But men who spend their lives playing video games are *failed men*, and they have other options; it’s their choice to be that. You can pity them but don’t try to disguise that moral failure by calling them “victims” and complaining that women aren’t sufficiently “classical.” Women are persons too.
Men have never been in a position to get what they want when it comes to women, sex, and marriage. The vast majority of men simply take what they can get. It has always been this way.
Women don’t get to decide what a “failed man” is. The only thing women get to decide is whether or not to have sex with or procreate with particular men. All you were really doing here is making judgments about which men are worthy of sex and procreation according to you. That’s fine, but that is not anywhere close to the full measure of a man.
There seems to be an implicit Darwinism acting in how some women and men will remain partnerless and parentless today.
Enough men in the past were killed off in perpetual wars for this to be less noticeable; whereas most women were able to pass on their genes (with or without their acquiescence.) Yes, men "took" whom they desired. Genetic studies show that throughout most of human history, more women than men have contributed their DNA to the global gene pool, with ratios sometimes as high as 17 women to 1 man over certain periods. These are simply brutal factors in the past human historical record. Life's not always fair.
But your essay concerns men & boys in the present tense. Young men require positive role models and defining encouragement in their lives, but haven't boys been exposed to an undertone of ideas about masculinity write large as if it was always toxic, dangerous or as somehow nebulously oppressive? Sexism like that from any quarter doesn't become virtuous when directed at males. The traditional virtues of courage, strength, protectiveness, resilience and responsibility never deserved suspicion in the first place because that is a clash of society with its very self.
In other words, there is no moral authority in equality while tolerating selective prejudice by demonizing men and masculinity. I am by no means accusing you of doing so. Rather than that Rachel, you are pulling back from the brink. You're honestly thinking hard about marriageability and men - as you highlight, “Let’s not hate men for their excellences”.
Yet if the choices which men & women hold today, or the choices they are not taking because those somewhat are bleak, then our larger culture has had an obvious hand in making exactly this so. If that is the case, the drift is less personal and more social in nature. And that is why these conversations are worthwhile.
However, there's a risk in stating it in the context of a debate. Someone might possibly think you were under the impression that some significant thinker somewhere had denied it, so that the assertion that women are persons could be some sure of differentiator.
In that case, you might be mistaken for extremely ignorant.
So just be careful with that kind of rhetorical faux pas.
"Men who spend their lives playing video games are failed men"
Are they? What if they feel happy and contented? Are they still failures... maybe because they're not marriageable? What are the criteria here?
What if a woman pursues a career, has no interest in children, picks up a husband for a little while, gets bored and leaves him, but earns a six-figure salary? Is she a "failed woman" because she never started a family?
How do you judge people's lives? Should we?
I don't play video games. Ever. But given how dysfunctional the relations of the sexes have become, I think there are a lot of men for whom stable marriage was either never attainable, or would involve too much compromise (e.g., no kids likely). And maybe sometimes video games are the best way to ease the pain of that.
I see why female instinct would want these men to work hard to become theoretically marriageable, even if their odds of actually getting and staying married are low, andn many might be happier if they had never tried to be marriageable than by trying and falling. I see why women might consider them "failed men."
For my part, though... Judge not that ye be not judged.
No, women won't marry them. For at least 10 years I've known dozens of average looking, employed, decent churchgoing men and no women want them - not even the women they attend church with. They're not addicts, they're not video gamers. They're just good solid guys. Women, even the women they go to church with, don't want them - because they're not hot enough, not rich enough, not exciting enough, not fun enough, not "badboy" enough.
@frogerdevlin has the wrong framing here, although I think he would agree with my slight tweaking - Anti-discrimination laws as currently interpreted and enforced actually mandate discrimination against men.
And as a point of fact, men do need to earn more than women to be marriageable generally, and to be attractive to women generally.
Finally, we certainly should not hate women, but that's not really what it's about when you come down to the issue. Neither is the issue some supposed female excellence these days - most people are not excellent, including women.
Women are not doing better than men these days because they are doing excellent in their jobs or something. Both women and men these days I would say are much lesser shadowy and diminished versions of themselves and their potential greatnesses.
I mean sure, both women and men are fallen, but one cannot but note that on the right at least, successful men are obviously benefitting from their hard work and talent and excellence, while successful women obviously were benefitted by affirmative action.
Yes, most people of both sexes are normies, less than superlative. But it turns out women can compete far better than most people historically have believed. And some men don't like that.
It's all luxury belief. Normie women are only able to "compete" because of Feminism being baked into the Western operating model. It relies on men to enforce the laws, to acquiesce to them, and to accept a society predicated on them. If that consent is withdrawn or the operating model defaults back to a form of highly restrictive patriarchy (most of human history) what can women really do about it? Compete harder?
What do you think happened to all the professional women in Afghanistan after the Taliban regained control in 2021? They, for the most part, retreated back into the gendered norms outlined by their society. Do you think that wanted to, freely? No, of course not. But women require male protection and cooperation.
I use the example, not to suggest that the Taliban were right or that professional Afghan women "had it coming" but, rather, that the "competition" or opportunity you champion is utterly conditional. In the West, it is a 60 year experiment. Many men (even married ones who love and like women) don't particularly like the results.
Without Feminism there is no hookup culture or Onlyfans. This is the other side of the coin of "opportunity."
Men and women are different. We have different virtues and vices (on average). As Christians we need to recognize the "natural law" not to subvert it.
"Feminism sets a woman against her husband by defining cooperation within marriage through distinct roles as oppression. It does this because Feminism views marriage through a lens of competition and strife towards individualistic goals, rather than cooperation and harmony in service of a united mission."
Yea sure, women are competing better than we thought, and some ugly mean incels are angry/frustrated/discouraged about that. Our civilization is also dying and men and women kind of hate each other - perhaps because we're focused on the wrong things.
I'm pretty sure mothers are supposed to worry about making their sons marriageable. It's not exclusively their job; fathers and other people help too. But yes, definitely a concern of mothers.
No. Fathers make their sons into men. Mothers help the fathers; not vice versa.
“Worry“ and “concern“ are not the same as “do, make, create, and build“. Worrying about making your son marriageable will not make him marriageable. Being concerned about making your son marriageable will not make him marriageable.
Wiser societies taught men and women to be what the other sex likes, and to like the other sex.
Feminism decided that's incompatible with women's dignity.
Men like adventure and fun. Marriageability requires forms of discipline and cultivation of earning power that aren't very rewarding unless the reward is marriage. But now there are far and fewer women who are marriageable in a classical sense. That strongly undermines cost benefit calculus for men of being marriageable.
It feels like feminism set in motion pretty ruthless, Darwinian dynamic that is ultimately unsustainable by society and also unsustainable for the specific lineages that adopt it because it is so adverse that reproductive fitness? Do feminists have enough children to keep feminism alive?
But it will be with us for a while. Unmarriageable men are among the many victims.
There are a lot of quasi-empirical claims here. Are they meaningful? Are they sufficiently well defined that they could, in principle, be tested? Maybe somewhere beyond that we could even ask if they're true, if we get that far.
"Men have more often got what they wanted." People want a lot of things. Sometimes they're not sure what they want. Sometimes what they want isn't good for them, and they want ex post not to have gotten what they wanted ex ante. Could we, in principle, make a list of things wanted, and have things gotten, and calculate the ratio? What is an imaginative person wants a hundred good things and gets 10, and an unimaginative person wants 10 good things and gets five? Which of them "more often gets what they want?"
"Women are in a stronger position now." What does that mean? They're less happy, according to survey research, but presumably happiness and strength are not the same. Does strength mainly ability to get what you want? Does a lack of men that modern women are able to deem "marriageable" mean that more women can't get an important piece of what they want? If so, does that count against their "strength," or not? What if one woman gets a long beautifully with her husband, while another constantly argues with him and wins? Is the second one "stronger?"
I'm not really a believer in "historic female disadvantage," but my skepticism takes its point of departure somewhat prior to a comparison of men's and women's lives on particular criteria. I feel like a philosophical failure to lay the groundwork dooms the concept of "historic female disadvantage" before an actual comparison of historical experiences of the sexes can even be brought into the analysis. Of course, men have more often died in battle, or in hard slave labor. More men have surely been subject to lifelong privation of sexual experience than women. Men have done most of the dangerous work. At a commonsense level, perhaps that counts against "historic female disadvantage," but I think common sense really refuses the question. Men and women are different. Apples and oranges. Some comparisons are possible, but men and women want different things, so their flourishing is inconventurable.
But I would challenge the idea that women have had to adapt to what men like more than men have had to adapt to what women like. The whole history of chivalry, with all its courtly love and quests for ladies, might have been concocted to refute such a notion. I think women like men to be impressive and respected among other men, so the need to impress women turns into a need to impress other men. But the need to win enough manly honor to deserve the esteem of women has been a very large factor in men's motivations down the ages.
It apparently hasn't occurred to you or your sisters at Fairer Disputations that one of the primary reasons so many men play video games is because they were raised by their mothers to be passive and nonassertive.
Another of the reasons those men retreat into video games is that they've tried to improve and ask girls out; and what they've gotten is ridiculed, bullied, nuclear rejected, and reported to their pastors, teachers, and employers merely for the crime of showing interest in a girl they liked.
In hedonistic-nihilistic societies such as ours, marriage rates will necessarily decline. Marrying and having children is a duty (e.g., according to *Humanae Vitae*), albeit one that requires discernment, is not enforceable, and is not universal. But this conversation is impossible to have, even in Catholic circles, and yet I think it is a necessary one. This is a inherent conflict between the Christian idea of marriage and the secular one, but the latter is more and more influential among Catholics. The consequence is that godly men and women with a vocation to marriage are not necessarily more "marriageable". Just to make an example among many, I have followed several discussions about vows of poverty for laypeople, and there is almost universal pushback against them from Catholic women.
About the other point, you make, re: "At the very least, perhaps the public can be persuaded that overt discrimination against men in hiring is not good, nor likely to benefit women, children, or society at large.", of course I agree. I think that there are real law issues to be addressed, but even moral ones. From a law standpoint, it's time for the "disparate-impact" provision to be repealed. From a moral standpoint (which is a little bit more difficult to enforce legally), there is a case for asymmetry. Those points have been addressed by @Margaret McCarthy here: https://humanumreview.com/articles/the-case-for-just-sex-discrimination and by @Erika Bachiochi and @Ivana Greco here: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/men-and-women-work
In my opinion a moral employment option will require some sort of (just) discrimination to facilitate the formation of families. To what extent this is has to be legislated, is to be discussed. Of course, this won't solve the "marriageability" issue (which has deeper roots), but will stop the job market to be "zero-sum" and, therefore, less conductive to mutual suspicion between the sexes, which is itself an obstacle to marriage.
Great job laying out the problem and exploring why it’s such a difficult problem to solve.
One thing I’m interested in is why this is a big issue in some societies and not others. Germany for example has lower fertility and marriage rates than the United States. However, a higher percent of German adults live with a spouse or partner, and there doesn’t seem to be the same kind of issues around guys not being marriageable.
Part of the problem is that, on average, men and women *just don't like each other very much*, and getting and keeping them together historically required strong external pressure—pressure that we've collectively decided is unjust. Now, the centrifugal forces that tend to arise between the sexes are free to do what forces do. I'm not sure how you solve *that* problem while also maintaining a norm of companionate marriage. Even if you could wave a magic wand and make men employed and unaddicted, all it would accomplish is moving them from the "deplorable" box to the "meh" box in women's minds. It's better to be in the "meh" box than the "deplorable" box, but "meh" isn't enough.
Here in the dating trenches, it's common to hear both sexes make harsh blanket statements about the other ("There are no good men!", "All women are crazy!", etc.), but reality is rarely so stark. I mean, have the dates *I've* gone on been *terrible*? Of course not. Very few of them have been *terrible*. But lots of them have been blandly okay. Blandly okay isn't much motivation to sustain anyone trying to navigate the complicated process of dating and marriage in the absence of any external help and an atmosphere of total freedom.
In my darker moments, I wonder whether companionate marriage is even sustainable as an institution. I don't like this conclusion, being as attached to companionate marriage as any modern person, but it's hard to avoid.
I do hear this from people. Never sure what to say, because I have hardly any dating experience myself. I met my husband (of 20 years now) at 24; within a few months I was pretty sure I'd marry him; I hadn't really dated many men prior to that time. So... I don't know! But I appreciate the perspective.
The dials have been tinkered with already. Merely eliminating anti-discrimination laws that favor women would do much to restore breadwinner jobs. Why should employers be forced to ignore the fact that women in fact do often take maternity leave?
But we already have plenty of unfilled breadwinner jobs. So "restoring" them may be somewhat beside the point.
This does not address the discrimination point, where a man is forced to be paid the same for a fundamentally unequal and lesser amount of work, since all employment is somewhat of an investment in the future of the employee
I think if anything men are currently the beneficiaries of affirmative action, at least at universities. This has second-order effects in professions like law and medicine.
Girls are simply doing better at school nowadays than boys are!
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/magazine/men-college-enrollment.html?unlocked_article_code=1.KlE.T6SG.A7PJyPx0zTOs&smid=nytcore-ios-share
I also find it very, very hard to cry for men having to cover for women on maternity leave when I’ve spent so much of my adult life working very hard on a gig or “vendor” basis, for a fraction of the money earned by men doing similar work, because their wives and families subordinated their lives to the man’s professional needs in a way that wasn’t realistic for me. I have a good life; I don’t spend it crying or marinating in grievance. But I do find “wah, nobody gives men a chance” very hard to buy. In general.
If women are given occasional accommodations to *sustain the human race* is that really so deeply unjust? I mean, I generally haven’t asked for or expected such accommodations (or enjoyed them), but that doesn’t mean I’m persuaded it’s a ridiculous ask.
The accommodation we would like to give you is to only have to focus on sustaining the human race. First and foremost, and if possible to the exclusion of any other duty. We want you to choose a single man that you like, and make him personally responsible for obtaining all the money you need to sustain your own personal contribution to the human race. It is the ultimate accommodation.
I understand the thought, but it's kind of an exclusionary one. And also entails the condition that you and your offspring must find a way to make do with whatever said man is able to obtain, and no more. Even if you have the capacity, willingness, and desire to add to it.
Appreciate the offer, but pass.
YES please!
This sounds more like something out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan than the Christian west...
Motherhood is the most important thing that most women do in their lives. In 20, 30, or 40 years, noone will care what you achieved, wrote, sold, or managed at the office.
Children and grandchildren are the real treasures - the literal fruit of life.
Girlbossery is awful for women, for kids, for families, and for wider society. Feminism is a lie. A false bill of goods.
I've had this conversation with so many men, but the funny part is, when you ask them, "OK, so suppose your wife, or the state, were prepared to earn the money you earn while you stayed at home caring for your children and grandchildren, 'the literal fruit of life.' Deal?"
Oh, heck no. Almost nobody wants that deal.
Motherhood is indeed the most important thing most women do. Fatherhood is the most important thing most men do. Oh, except for worshipping God, that's probably even more important... should we all go into monasteries? There are many factors that determine how our time is best allocated, and women need to weigh the full spectrum of considerations when making those judgments, just like men do.
You are an addict. You are addicted to the illusion that you are the same as a man. You hold up that illusion with technologies created by men.
The first step to escaping addiction is admitting that you are addicted.
All of your words indicate you have swallowed the
lies spoken by the media. Men don't magically make more money unless they are more talented and hard working than a woman like you. In fact there are countless women earning money for very little due the gender descrimination by women towards men. Your side is the ignorant and vile half. Now that men have been shown, by women, their evolved tendecies men have stopped putting up with the foolishness of females.
That third sentence is a doozy. I’m sitting here trying to work out what it means. Some women earn too little because other women pay men too much? Or is it that the women earn too much for too little work because they pay men too little for too much work? Or…
Well, you got me. I am indeed (still!) quite unaware of this harsh reality.
I think that the problem is a subtler one. The current anti-discrimination regime is basically an invitation to both men and women to forfeit their duties.
Good point
The girls are doing better in school because we’ve modified the schools specifically so the women will do better in them. If girls were doing worse in school it would be a crisis but when it’s the boys doing worse it’s their fault.
You are out of your mind. 98% of new jobs in August went to women.
Any guesses about why men aren’t doing as well at school? Or why they wouldn’t want to attend university? Or are we simply chalking it up to “girls rule boys drool”?
It’s a complicated issue, but I think we’re looking at factors like…
1. Fewer dads present in the home
2. Fewer virtuous male role models
3. Permissive or neglectful parenting
4. Boys having a lower propensity to sit quietly and focus for extended periods of time
5. Refusal of American education to formally track students
6. Zoning and occupational licensing regulations that depress construction - a source of good jobs for men who work well with their hands
7. Boys being more vulnerable to indulge in vices like gambling, video games, marijuana and pornography
All relevant, though one other I’d add is that boys have developmental “way stations” as it were, moments when they tend to fall behind the girls in terms of things like executive function, and sometimes they fall off the wagon there and don’t quite get back on. So, that’s a thing we can maybe address more helpfully. And should, if possible! Of course I want boys to thrive in school. But, I don’t actually think “wars on boys” are the primary reason they are falling behind, nor should we downplay the achievements of girls as though it’s reasonable to assume that any time they’re beating the boys at something they must have clandestinely cheated.
Yes, this is complicated issue so, lets slightly break down the factors you raise.
1. Fewer dads present in the home (Fatherhood has been widely devalued and also punished via divorce law. Likewise, religious belief has been devalued. This factor rests at the heart of Rachel's observations: Fatherhood poses special liabilities for men today and many have begun to notice.)
2. Fewer virtuous male role models (Number 1. leads to number 2. Notice that while men and boys need each other there are fewer male spaces available for them that foster this elimental need.)
3. Permissive or neglectful parenting (Individual men and women as well as society itself has taken on this permissive attitude of poor boundaries in parenting. This is a byproduct of demoting the virtuous masculine roles of fatherhood.) Again, 1. & 2.)
4. Boys having a lower propensity to sit quietly and focus for extended periods of time (Nothing new there. The question is whether boys are punished for failing to behave as well as girls who better suited to sit quietly and focus - and therefore are rewarded and favored for their superior test scores. Some claim exactly this point while others dismiss the “wars on boys” altogether. You go Girl!)
5. Refusal of American education to formally track students (This is a generalization so I'm not sure what you indicate. Consent and notice play crucial roles in such lawful data practices. Schools typically rely on district-wide policies, parent–guardian communications, and student privacy notices.)
6. Zoning and occupational licensing regulations that depress construction - a source of good jobs for men who work well with their hands (a fairly obvious factor in some states and municipalities; less so in others.)
7. Boys being more vulnerable to indulge in vices like gambling, video games, marijuana and pornography (This is also not new, but the volume is deafening today. It's the slippery slope of a permissive culture lacking in shame, yet these vices could still be dialed back in law. We refrain from doing so at our peril. If we truly cared for boys, this would be mitigated - but do we care? And that is a worthwhile question.)
Men are not the beneficiaries of affirmative action and never have been. AA wasn't intended for men.
The question that I still feel unsatisfied about in these conversations is: where is the internal motivation for men? Why does it seem everything is about providing external motivation?
This is a quite personal issue to me, because I have a 48 y/o brother who has never moved out of my parents' house. My dad is gone and my mom is, obviously, aging. At some point soon, he will be on his own and he is not prepared because he takes no responsibility.
I get that external factors aren't great, but surely at some point, you have to think to yourself, "I better get my s*&5 together or I'm gonna be in trouble."
I was thinking about this while out for a walk today, it may be that for a man today who is on the margins, getting your sh!t together to provide for a family is not the slam-dunk it was many years ago.
I have taken some time recently to do some sense making on all this, and while it's been very helpful for me personally, it's also clarified certain societal realities that are unlikely to change anytime soon.
Here again, the civil society probably has much more to do with the mutual problem. There is no intelligible matrimony to enter if there really is a unilateral right in the mother, whenever she feels like it, to destory the offspring who are the first purpose, the central defining goal, of matrimony. And the situation is nearly the same under a regime where one party, husband or wife, is regularly invited by the state, whenever dissatisfied, to toss off the other for no good cause. Neither men nor women are "marriageable" in such cases.
I'm certainly sympathetic, although of course, we can make considerable headway by instilling other standards in culture, or at least our subcultures, without the help of the state. Surely your marriage is similar to mine in that we never ourselves considered divorce or spousal abandonment a live option. My husband could legally abandon us, but I truly never worried that he would.
Nor abortion of course. The thing is, you have to construct and maintain a counter subculture that is constantly at odds with what the political community as a whole honors. Such a culture has existed for us, friends, etc. Better for the political community to be reoriented--more just for all.
I want that too of course. My suggestion is basically that it may be necessary to return to that “from the ground up” as it were. There were some things to cope with. It wasn’t per se happy, but unavoidable. Christianity has the resources to overcome those challenges and bring us back.
This, unfortunately, makes marriage an institution of the elites, which is exactly what we are seeing and you allude to in your article
I believe the solution to the problem is a proper understanding of marriage. Society has lost the concept of marriage as an unbreakable covenant. The "no one gets out of this until one of us is dead" sort of covenant. Right now marriage is a civil contract that can be broken at any time for any or no reason. The ramifications are serious and devastating. A man who commits to love his wife, that sacrifices his wants needs and desires for her good, will do those things that make him into a virtuous man. And a woman who sacrifices her wants needs and desires for her husband will maker herself into a virtuous woman. As it stands today nobody wants to sacrifice anything. Until we return to a proper understanding of marriage there will be no resolution.
Agreed.
I don't really have any answers to these very good questions, but I do have more questions!
Is the optimal number of marriageable men the number that would satisfy the aggregate demand of all women for marriage?
Or is it the reverse?
What if those numbers are different?
How did societies that suffered an acute marriageable men shortage in the past (think post-war Soviet Union), deal with it? (Hint: badly!) Has anyone solved this sort of problem in the past in a way anyone would consider good?
All interesting questions. I will at least note that the unmarried women as a group are doing far better than the unmarried men. Something worth considering for those eager to champion the rationality of “men going their own way.” (Which I don’t mean to imply includes you.)
I think we could sustain a society with somewhat lower marriage rates if those who did marry had more children. But a society where marriage itself is the “slumming it” option for the unsuccessful… not good.
You have it backwards. 50 years of man-hating feminism have made women obnoxious and insufferable. No man will go near, let alone marry, a feminist.
Even with good women, men know that they can get destroyed in divorce court, so men are shunning marriage for that reason, too.
Obtuse and insufferable women, that have no concern for the welfare of men, is what birthed the MGTOW movement.
In the past, high-paying jobs tended to be reserved for men precisely to make them "marriageable" (able to support a wife and children). Women must demand the restoration of their long-forfeited right to be "discriminated against."
Subjugating and/or discriminating against women likely would yield some dividends from the standpoint of "making men marriageable,"though I suspect not *quite* as many as advocates often suggest. But... that would be rather unjust to women. It's not reasonable to ask them to forfeit their own freedoms and general thriving to that extent, just to make men "bigger."
But we don't actually need to. As I've explained in this post. Men don't need the highest-paying jobs to be marriageable. They just need to be steady, reliable, employed.
Does it seem likely that the sort of man who chooses a life of pure indolence over a respectable job and middle-class marriage, would in any case be suited for a high-level, high-responsibility job? Hating women for their own excellences is not the answer.
What's your evidence that "steady, reliable and employed" is enough to make men marriageable? Maybe it's enough to get your stamp of approval as manageable. But will women actually marry them? Sometimes, no doubt. But I think usually that's not enough to get a woman to marry you and not get bored and leave you. Empirical question.
As for "subjugating and/or discriminating against women" being "unjust," what does that mean? If a woman is "subjugated" in the sense that she can sense to a marriage under Christian norms of male headship, is that unjust? What if I discriminate by marrying a woman who is objectively less qualified to be my wife, for reasons of personal attachment? What is discrimination, anyway? Do we need "subjugation" and "discrimination" as concepts? I don't think I make use of them in my own moral reasoning...
People have rights that shouldn't be violated. That's justice. Voluntary subordination does not violate rights, and people's genuine rights do not include the right to commandeer the resources and attention of others through anti-discrimination rules.
Here’s a thing I think you should think about a bit more. It’s just very obvious that historically, women’s preferences have been far less determinative than men’s. Men hold the stronger hand biologically; they are in a better position to get what they want, and they more often *have* gotten what they wanted. St Paul told them to be self-sacrificing, and sometimes they were, but more often they were not, because they fallen humans just like women. You say that men and women were once taught to be what the other desired. To some extent that’s true, but it’s more true on the female side, because women weren’t in as strong a position to demand what they wanted. We honestly don’t *know* as much about what women want. They haven’t as often been in a position to tell us.
Women are in a stronger position now. Not just because “feminism” or because of abortion (though, yes, I do think that moral failures on the female side have something to do with it) but also because “free societies” and because masculine strength counts for less than it used to. Men have to work harder to meet women in the middle.
Again, women have responsibilities too; it’s not all men’s fault. But men who spend their lives playing video games are *failed men*, and they have other options; it’s their choice to be that. You can pity them but don’t try to disguise that moral failure by calling them “victims” and complaining that women aren’t sufficiently “classical.” Women are persons too.
Men have never been in a position to get what they want when it comes to women, sex, and marriage. The vast majority of men simply take what they can get. It has always been this way.
Women don’t get to decide what a “failed man” is. The only thing women get to decide is whether or not to have sex with or procreate with particular men. All you were really doing here is making judgments about which men are worthy of sex and procreation according to you. That’s fine, but that is not anywhere close to the full measure of a man.
There seems to be an implicit Darwinism acting in how some women and men will remain partnerless and parentless today.
Enough men in the past were killed off in perpetual wars for this to be less noticeable; whereas most women were able to pass on their genes (with or without their acquiescence.) Yes, men "took" whom they desired. Genetic studies show that throughout most of human history, more women than men have contributed their DNA to the global gene pool, with ratios sometimes as high as 17 women to 1 man over certain periods. These are simply brutal factors in the past human historical record. Life's not always fair.
But your essay concerns men & boys in the present tense. Young men require positive role models and defining encouragement in their lives, but haven't boys been exposed to an undertone of ideas about masculinity write large as if it was always toxic, dangerous or as somehow nebulously oppressive? Sexism like that from any quarter doesn't become virtuous when directed at males. The traditional virtues of courage, strength, protectiveness, resilience and responsibility never deserved suspicion in the first place because that is a clash of society with its very self.
In other words, there is no moral authority in equality while tolerating selective prejudice by demonizing men and masculinity. I am by no means accusing you of doing so. Rather than that Rachel, you are pulling back from the brink. You're honestly thinking hard about marriageability and men - as you highlight, “Let’s not hate men for their excellences”.
Yet if the choices which men & women hold today, or the choices they are not taking because those somewhat are bleak, then our larger culture has had an obvious hand in making exactly this so. If that is the case, the drift is less personal and more social in nature. And that is why these conversations are worthwhile.
By the way...
"Women are persons too."
... is a statement that I agree with.
However, there's a risk in stating it in the context of a debate. Someone might possibly think you were under the impression that some significant thinker somewhere had denied it, so that the assertion that women are persons could be some sure of differentiator.
In that case, you might be mistaken for extremely ignorant.
So just be careful with that kind of rhetorical faux pas.
"Men who spend their lives playing video games are failed men"
Are they? What if they feel happy and contented? Are they still failures... maybe because they're not marriageable? What are the criteria here?
What if a woman pursues a career, has no interest in children, picks up a husband for a little while, gets bored and leaves him, but earns a six-figure salary? Is she a "failed woman" because she never started a family?
How do you judge people's lives? Should we?
I don't play video games. Ever. But given how dysfunctional the relations of the sexes have become, I think there are a lot of men for whom stable marriage was either never attainable, or would involve too much compromise (e.g., no kids likely). And maybe sometimes video games are the best way to ease the pain of that.
I see why female instinct would want these men to work hard to become theoretically marriageable, even if their odds of actually getting and staying married are low, andn many might be happier if they had never tried to be marriageable than by trying and falling. I see why women might consider them "failed men."
For my part, though... Judge not that ye be not judged.
No, women won't marry them. For at least 10 years I've known dozens of average looking, employed, decent churchgoing men and no women want them - not even the women they attend church with. They're not addicts, they're not video gamers. They're just good solid guys. Women, even the women they go to church with, don't want them - because they're not hot enough, not rich enough, not exciting enough, not fun enough, not "badboy" enough.
@frogerdevlin has the wrong framing here, although I think he would agree with my slight tweaking - Anti-discrimination laws as currently interpreted and enforced actually mandate discrimination against men.
And as a point of fact, men do need to earn more than women to be marriageable generally, and to be attractive to women generally.
Finally, we certainly should not hate women, but that's not really what it's about when you come down to the issue. Neither is the issue some supposed female excellence these days - most people are not excellent, including women.
Women are not doing better than men these days because they are doing excellent in their jobs or something. Both women and men these days I would say are much lesser shadowy and diminished versions of themselves and their potential greatnesses.
I mean sure, both women and men are fallen, but one cannot but note that on the right at least, successful men are obviously benefitting from their hard work and talent and excellence, while successful women obviously were benefitted by affirmative action.
Yes, most people of both sexes are normies, less than superlative. But it turns out women can compete far better than most people historically have believed. And some men don't like that.
It's all luxury belief. Normie women are only able to "compete" because of Feminism being baked into the Western operating model. It relies on men to enforce the laws, to acquiesce to them, and to accept a society predicated on them. If that consent is withdrawn or the operating model defaults back to a form of highly restrictive patriarchy (most of human history) what can women really do about it? Compete harder?
What do you think happened to all the professional women in Afghanistan after the Taliban regained control in 2021? They, for the most part, retreated back into the gendered norms outlined by their society. Do you think that wanted to, freely? No, of course not. But women require male protection and cooperation.
I use the example, not to suggest that the Taliban were right or that professional Afghan women "had it coming" but, rather, that the "competition" or opportunity you champion is utterly conditional. In the West, it is a 60 year experiment. Many men (even married ones who love and like women) don't particularly like the results.
Without Feminism there is no hookup culture or Onlyfans. This is the other side of the coin of "opportunity."
Men and women are different. We have different virtues and vices (on average). As Christians we need to recognize the "natural law" not to subvert it.
"It turns out women can compete far better than most people historically have believed. And some men don't like that."
Those are both objectively true statements. But I think that a little bit misses the point, particularly if the point of this article and our discussion is marriageable men (with the background elephant in the room being marriageable women). From The Marriage Quadrilemma (https://christendomcoalition.substack.com/p/the-authority-in-marriage-quadrilemma?r=2efta9&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web):
"Feminism sets a woman against her husband by defining cooperation within marriage through distinct roles as oppression. It does this because Feminism views marriage through a lens of competition and strife towards individualistic goals, rather than cooperation and harmony in service of a united mission."
Yea sure, women are competing better than we thought, and some ugly mean incels are angry/frustrated/discouraged about that. Our civilization is also dying and men and women kind of hate each other - perhaps because we're focused on the wrong things.
Women still don’t want those men. Well over half of those men will end up divorced, almost all by those wives who allegedly “wanted” them.
Whatever else happens, women cannot and will not create marriageable men. Only men can create marriageable men.
I'm pretty sure mothers are supposed to worry about making their sons marriageable. It's not exclusively their job; fathers and other people help too. But yes, definitely a concern of mothers.
No. Fathers make their sons into men. Mothers help the fathers; not vice versa.
“Worry“ and “concern“ are not the same as “do, make, create, and build“. Worrying about making your son marriageable will not make him marriageable. Being concerned about making your son marriageable will not make him marriageable.
Wiser societies taught men and women to be what the other sex likes, and to like the other sex.
Feminism decided that's incompatible with women's dignity.
Men like adventure and fun. Marriageability requires forms of discipline and cultivation of earning power that aren't very rewarding unless the reward is marriage. But now there are far and fewer women who are marriageable in a classical sense. That strongly undermines cost benefit calculus for men of being marriageable.
It feels like feminism set in motion pretty ruthless, Darwinian dynamic that is ultimately unsustainable by society and also unsustainable for the specific lineages that adopt it because it is so adverse that reproductive fitness? Do feminists have enough children to keep feminism alive?
But it will be with us for a while. Unmarriageable men are among the many victims.
There are a lot of quasi-empirical claims here. Are they meaningful? Are they sufficiently well defined that they could, in principle, be tested? Maybe somewhere beyond that we could even ask if they're true, if we get that far.
"Men have more often got what they wanted." People want a lot of things. Sometimes they're not sure what they want. Sometimes what they want isn't good for them, and they want ex post not to have gotten what they wanted ex ante. Could we, in principle, make a list of things wanted, and have things gotten, and calculate the ratio? What is an imaginative person wants a hundred good things and gets 10, and an unimaginative person wants 10 good things and gets five? Which of them "more often gets what they want?"
"Women are in a stronger position now." What does that mean? They're less happy, according to survey research, but presumably happiness and strength are not the same. Does strength mainly ability to get what you want? Does a lack of men that modern women are able to deem "marriageable" mean that more women can't get an important piece of what they want? If so, does that count against their "strength," or not? What if one woman gets a long beautifully with her husband, while another constantly argues with him and wins? Is the second one "stronger?"
I'm not really a believer in "historic female disadvantage," but my skepticism takes its point of departure somewhat prior to a comparison of men's and women's lives on particular criteria. I feel like a philosophical failure to lay the groundwork dooms the concept of "historic female disadvantage" before an actual comparison of historical experiences of the sexes can even be brought into the analysis. Of course, men have more often died in battle, or in hard slave labor. More men have surely been subject to lifelong privation of sexual experience than women. Men have done most of the dangerous work. At a commonsense level, perhaps that counts against "historic female disadvantage," but I think common sense really refuses the question. Men and women are different. Apples and oranges. Some comparisons are possible, but men and women want different things, so their flourishing is inconventurable.
But I would challenge the idea that women have had to adapt to what men like more than men have had to adapt to what women like. The whole history of chivalry, with all its courtly love and quests for ladies, might have been concocted to refute such a notion. I think women like men to be impressive and respected among other men, so the need to impress women turns into a need to impress other men. But the need to win enough manly honor to deserve the esteem of women has been a very large factor in men's motivations down the ages.
It apparently hasn't occurred to you or your sisters at Fairer Disputations that one of the primary reasons so many men play video games is because they were raised by their mothers to be passive and nonassertive.
Another of the reasons those men retreat into video games is that they've tried to improve and ask girls out; and what they've gotten is ridiculed, bullied, nuclear rejected, and reported to their pastors, teachers, and employers merely for the crime of showing interest in a girl they liked.
In hedonistic-nihilistic societies such as ours, marriage rates will necessarily decline. Marrying and having children is a duty (e.g., according to *Humanae Vitae*), albeit one that requires discernment, is not enforceable, and is not universal. But this conversation is impossible to have, even in Catholic circles, and yet I think it is a necessary one. This is a inherent conflict between the Christian idea of marriage and the secular one, but the latter is more and more influential among Catholics. The consequence is that godly men and women with a vocation to marriage are not necessarily more "marriageable". Just to make an example among many, I have followed several discussions about vows of poverty for laypeople, and there is almost universal pushback against them from Catholic women.
About the other point, you make, re: "At the very least, perhaps the public can be persuaded that overt discrimination against men in hiring is not good, nor likely to benefit women, children, or society at large.", of course I agree. I think that there are real law issues to be addressed, but even moral ones. From a law standpoint, it's time for the "disparate-impact" provision to be repealed. From a moral standpoint (which is a little bit more difficult to enforce legally), there is a case for asymmetry. Those points have been addressed by @Margaret McCarthy here: https://humanumreview.com/articles/the-case-for-just-sex-discrimination and by @Erika Bachiochi and @Ivana Greco here: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/men-and-women-work
In my opinion a moral employment option will require some sort of (just) discrimination to facilitate the formation of families. To what extent this is has to be legislated, is to be discussed. Of course, this won't solve the "marriageability" issue (which has deeper roots), but will stop the job market to be "zero-sum" and, therefore, less conductive to mutual suspicion between the sexes, which is itself an obstacle to marriage.
https://www.barna.com/trends/church-attendance-women-men/
43% of men vs. 36% of women now attend church.
Are these women worth being marriageable for?
Marriageable women are a hot topic lately in my friend group.
Women also need to display marriageability. Takes two to tango 🪩
Dave Greene covered this quite well back in April. Maybe he would be up for a good faith discussion in a podcast?
https://fiddlersgreene.substack.com/p/pygmalions-mirror
Rachel has shown no ability to deal with Dave in good faith in the past, so... probably not going to happen (from her side, not his).
Great job laying out the problem and exploring why it’s such a difficult problem to solve.
One thing I’m interested in is why this is a big issue in some societies and not others. Germany for example has lower fertility and marriage rates than the United States. However, a higher percent of German adults live with a spouse or partner, and there doesn’t seem to be the same kind of issues around guys not being marriageable.
Very interesting question. Now I want to look into it.
Part of the problem is that, on average, men and women *just don't like each other very much*, and getting and keeping them together historically required strong external pressure—pressure that we've collectively decided is unjust. Now, the centrifugal forces that tend to arise between the sexes are free to do what forces do. I'm not sure how you solve *that* problem while also maintaining a norm of companionate marriage. Even if you could wave a magic wand and make men employed and unaddicted, all it would accomplish is moving them from the "deplorable" box to the "meh" box in women's minds. It's better to be in the "meh" box than the "deplorable" box, but "meh" isn't enough.
Here in the dating trenches, it's common to hear both sexes make harsh blanket statements about the other ("There are no good men!", "All women are crazy!", etc.), but reality is rarely so stark. I mean, have the dates *I've* gone on been *terrible*? Of course not. Very few of them have been *terrible*. But lots of them have been blandly okay. Blandly okay isn't much motivation to sustain anyone trying to navigate the complicated process of dating and marriage in the absence of any external help and an atmosphere of total freedom.
In my darker moments, I wonder whether companionate marriage is even sustainable as an institution. I don't like this conclusion, being as attached to companionate marriage as any modern person, but it's hard to avoid.
I do hear this from people. Never sure what to say, because I have hardly any dating experience myself. I met my husband (of 20 years now) at 24; within a few months I was pretty sure I'd marry him; I hadn't really dated many men prior to that time. So... I don't know! But I appreciate the perspective.