What’s with the sexes these days?
Questions about sex and the sexes are never really answerable, but people do notice things, and some of them seem illuminating, so an occasional comment is in order.
Everybody seems to agree there are problems today. Men and women have always complained about each other, but there seems to be less lightheartedness and more bitterness now. Also, they don’t seem to be forming durable connections. Charles Murray says that the situation is not so bad and has actually gotten somewhat better for the top 20%, but it’s remarkably bad and getting worse for people who don’t happen to be prudent and highly motivated careerist self-starters, and that will always include the great majority.
Somewhat conservative women who accept feminism and get published in mass market outlets say it’s a problem with men. Women are doing exactly what they should and getting on just great, but men are messing up and have to shape up. That’s why Kay Hymowitz wrote a book called Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys. She later conceded there may be a bit of an issue today with feminine willfulness and narcissism, but for some reason she’s convinced the issue only affects a very narrow range of situations like who picks up the tab at dinner.
For her part, Maggie Gallagher circulated an email last winter about saving marriage in which she said that the big problem was “How do we create young men who women want to marry and who want to marry women? … Young males need a civilized vision of masculinity if they are to shape their sexuality in ways that turn them into husband material–men who are good for women, and whom women want to marry.”
So her view is that men have to be remodeled to suit women. I sent her a response, which she didn’t reply to. Here is it, slightly edited to remove irrelevancies:
I very much approve of what you’re doing … but … how many marriageable women are there? Girls respond to social cues and do what they’re expected to do, and they’re mostly cautious in daily life, so today they go to school, study, graduate, get jobs, etc. That’s no doubt better than the opposite, but I’m not sure it makes them wife material. I hear lots of complaints from men and (at the anecdotal level) have noticed some problems myself.
So far as I can tell, the problems, from the man’s point of view, mostly have to do with narcissism and erratic behavior. My theory, for what it’s worth, is that women mostly understand things relationally, and if they’re in a setting in which the standards for relationships aren’t settled and functional, they can go haywire. They become radically narcissistic–everything has to be thus and so for me, with the thus and so always changing. Or they become insecure and depressed, since nothing can be relied on, which means endless problems for any man with whom they have a connection. Or they latch on to a sociopath, since that puts them in a definite and often rather dramatic setting, and something is better than nothing.
What they don’t do is form settled relations of trust, cooperation, and love with what bitter young men refer to (thinking of themselves) as “beta males”–nice, hardworking, provider-type guys who mostly just want life to make sense and function in a normal reliable way. The situation is made worse, it is said, by female hypergamy combined with general sexual looseness–women spend their twenties and early thirties trying to snare Mr. Big, and then after numerous affairs settle for Joe Beta. That situation is not much to work toward from the latter’s point of view, and it doesn’t do much to make Mr. Big good husband material either.
Such are the complaints, and it seems to me there’s probably enough substance to them that they should be taken into account. The basic point is that young men also have a point of view. They can’t be treated simply as a problem, and we won’t be able to restore masculinity without restoring femininity.
All the best,
jk
[What provoked this post are discussions I’ve been involved in regarding the sexes and why there seem to be such problems just now. I’ll be putting together a couple more posts summarizing the results of those discussions, for my own use and the use of anyone else interested in the issue.]
It’s also true that even
It’s also true that even religious women aren’t immune to all this. The more educated ones that I’ve been hanging around certainly aren’t sleeping around with bad boys or anything like that, so in some respects they are considerably better behaved than their secular sisters. But it’s far from an ideal situation. Many of these educated women seem utterly nonchalant about finding a husband, and are apparently content to spend long years investing in school and work and often wait around for nearly forever in hopes of snagging the religious equivalent of Mr. Big. It isn’t unusual for them to be in their 30s, sometimes even their late 30s before getting married. I’ve joked that conservative Protestants out to adopt as their slogan for educated men: “Evangelical Christianity: We Promise You’ll Get Laid By The Time You’re 40.” Needless to say this isn’t going to be something that attracts spirited and intelligent young men. Any environment which expects young men as a matter of course to wait until their mid-30s to have sex is going to run into certain problems, especially in an age like ours. Waiting can, of course, be done, but a considerable rate of failure should not be unexpected. Any social system where marriage doesn’t take place relatively young doesn’t really take seriously the prohibition against pre-marital sex.
A general problem is that men
A general problem is that men aren’t terribly of use to women in our society anymore. Women, if they are reasonably on the ball, can make enough of their own money to support themselves at a fairly high level, or, if they are poor, can simply get money from the government. So the provider role is gone. That means that the main value men have is as sex partners, and, of course, only a minority of men are sufficiently attractive to be of value strictly in that capacity alone. So, as far as young women see it, there’s not really that much reason to pair off with a man on her own level of attractiveness. Later perhaps she may want to have children, but why rush? Unfortunately, this also means the incentives for men, especially those in the middle to lower classes, are either to thug up and join the cads, or to simply drop out altogether.
If a woman wants children she
If a woman wants children she’d better find a husband. Women naturally want children. Unfortunately, they also naturally respond to social cues and the social cues today are all abouit career, consumption, and the carefree days of youth and young adulthood. So they delay things until they’ve become much less marketable, fertility is no longer a given, and a lot of the men have dropped out anyway. From the standpoint of a good life overall it’s not a great setup. Charles Murray says the top 20% are doing OK though, and Bill Clinton’s doing great, so our ruling class is not likely to worry much about the issue.
There’s simply no longer the
There’s simply no longer the same level of dependence on men for material goods.
“What provoked this post are
“What provoked this post are discussions I’ve been involved in regarding the sexes and why there seem to be such problems just now.”
Are these discussions you have been having online? The reason I ask is that I would be interested in reading your thoughts in interaction with others.
I have enjoyed reading your thoughts in these most recent posts on this subject. Thank you.
Not online
They were email and dinner table discussions. I’m glad you found the results interesting.
The sexes
I’m intrigued. What were the opinions of your dinner companions, considering the circles you move in? Do they see a problem with the sexes?