re: #332 Blind Frog Belly White

There’s an article/op ed piece in the WSJ, saying basically “Why buy the cow if you an get the milk for free.” as the reason why marriage is declining. It puts the whole onus on women, for being slutty so that men don’t feel the need to marry.

The other reasons the author dismisses are men earning lower wages, but he finds a bullshit excuse to dismiss that.

Things he DOESN’T discuss?

- Women no longer rely on men for their identity and economic security.

- Many young people can’t move out on their own due to a combination of low wages and high housing prices - not just young men, but young women as well.

- Young women find satisfaction in their work, which is no longer merely something to do till they get married.

- As the number of unmarried people grows, more young people see that it isn’t such an awful, strange thing.

It seems to me that we’re in a big societal change that began a century ago. We’re redefining that marriage means, and why people do it. Already we are far past the need to ‘be fruitful and multiply’, and young people are probably sensitive to the fact of overpopulation. All these things are so much more interesting than the ‘women are too slutty’ argument.

I’ve noticed two groups keep making this “Women give it away too easily” argument: Boomers (particularly female ones) and the “MRA” crowd. The former do it because that’s what they were taught from birth, that they could get jobs and college degrees, but as soon as they found a man to support them they were supposed to give up all those “fantasies” and settle down to pop out a mess of kids. The latter do it primarily because they’re generally not the ones to whom it’s “given away” and hate that modern social dynamics mean they actually have to compete for female companionship rather than having it come to them via the need for financial support.